You woke with a violent start, disoriented beneath the heavy throw blanket. The living room was filled with pale morning light, the television showing nothing but grey static from the VHS tape that had finished hours ago.m, for one blissfully confused second, you didn’t understand why you were on the sofa then Bobby shifted beside you, your cheek was against his bare chest, one of his arms wrapped heavily around your waist. Your legs were tangled together beneath the blanket, your clothes scattered somewhere beyond the coffee table.
The previous night returned all at once.
The dancing.
The kisses.
The way the insides of your thighs hurt like you had worked out.
Your blood turned cold. “Bobby.”
He made a sleepy sound.
“Bobby, wake up.”
Footsteps entered the hallway.
You grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. “Wake up.” His eyes opened. “What..” he looked startled, he should be.
“They’re home.” You whispered.
Every trace of sleep vanished from his face.
The two of you stared at one another.
Then towards the living room doorway.
“Shit.” Bobby sat up abruptly, dragging the blanket with him, cold air struck your bare back.
You yanked it towards yourself. “Don’t take it!”
“I’m naked!”
“So am I!”
“I noticed!” The whispered argument came out frantic and breathless as both of you fought to remain covered by a blanket barely large enough for one person. From the hallway, your father’s voice carried through the house. “Why’s the television on?”
Bobby looked towards the front window.
There was nowhere to go.
The stairs were on the opposite side of the hallway. His clothes were scattered across the room. One of his shorts legs hung from the lampshade, though neither of you had any idea how it had ended up there. “The back door,” you whispered.
Bobby glanced towards the sliding glass doors.
Too late.
Jacob walked into the room.
He stopped, the overnight bag slipped from his hand. It landed heavily on the floor.
No one moved.
The static hissed from the television.
Bobby sat frozen beside you, one hand clamped around the blanket at his waist. You held the other side against your chest, your shoulder pressed tightly to his.
Jacob looked at you.
Then Bobby.
Then the clothes scattered around the living room, his eyes settled on Bobby’s shorts hanging from the lamp. Your bikini bottles beside the coffee table.
His face showed nothing at all, then something terrifyingly calm came over him. “Tell me, that I’m not looking at what I think I’m looking at.”
Your mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Bobby found his voice first. “Jacob, I..”
“Don’t.” The single word cracked through the room.
Bobby immediately fell silent.
Your mother appeared in the hallway behind Jacob, carrying her purse. She looked into the living room and stopped.
Her eyes closed briefly. “Oh, hell.”
Your dad came up behind her. “What is..” He saw you, he turned his head away so quickly that his neck nearly cracked.
“Jesus Christ.”
You pulled the blanket higher, humiliation burning from your face down your chest. “Dad..”
“I don’t know where to look.”
“Maybe don’t look anywhere,” your mom muttered trying not to look between you and Bobby, the mess of the living room.
Jacob still hadn’t moved, his attention remained entirely on Bobby.
Bobby slowly stood, keeping the blanket wrapped around his waist, the movement left you clutching the other half around yourself on the sofa trying to stand. “Stay sitting,” bobby told you quietly, offering you a sympathetic look.
That was the wrong thing to say.
Jacob’s face twisted. “You don’t tell her what to do.”
Bobby turned towards him. “I wasn’t”
“You don’t speak to her.”
“Jacob,” you said.
He pointed at you without looking away from Bobby. “Not now.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.” His head snapped towards you. “What the hell were you thinking?” The fury in his voice made you recoil.
Your mother immediately stepped into the room. “Jacob.”
“No.” He pointed between you and Bobby then to mom. “You knew?”
Your mother went still.
Jacob looked at her face and understood. “You knew.” His jaw went slack, now angry with your mom.
“I knew they kissed.”
“And you left them alone?”
Your father looked at your mother. “You knew they what?”
“This isn’t the time,” she said.
“It seems like exactly the time.” Jacob gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You dragged us to Aunt Carol’s.”
“Dennis needed help.”
“Dennis was asleep when we got there!”
“He has a bad back.”
“He spent six hours playing poker with Dad!”
Your father lifted one hand. “He did seem surprisingly mobile.”
Your mother shot him a look.
He lowered it.
Jacob turned back towards Bobby. “You.”
Bobby stood barefoot in the middle of the living room, naked except for the blanket around his waist, looking more ashamed than you had ever seen him.
He didn’t attempt a joke.
Didn’t smirk. “I’m sorry.” It’s all he could offer, he knew that he was telling Jacob today. He just didn’t want it to be like this, not you both naked. He hoped you both had time to hide the evidence.
Jacob stared at him then laughed again, this time there was no humour in it. “You’re sorry?”
“I should’ve told you.”
“Told me what?”
Bobby looked towards you.
Jacob stepped into his line of sight. “No, you look at me.”
Bobby did, he stood straight and didn’t break eye contact.
“Told me what?” Jacob repeated. “That you were waiting until I left so you could screw my little sister on my parents’ sofa?”
Your stomach dropped. “Don’t say it like that.”
Jacob rounded on you. “How should I say it? Oh Bobby, you made love to my sweet sister? Ohh how am grateful.” He spat, the sarcasm rolling off his tongue like liquid venom.
“Youre such a fucking dick Jacob, speak to me like I was actually here, like I didn’t participate.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m 19!”
“You’ve been 19 for five minutes!”
“I’m not a child.”
“You’re my sister.”
“And that doesn’t mean you own me!”
“I trusted him!” The words tore from Jacob so loudly that the entire room went silent, his face was red now, eyes bright with a rage that looked dangerously close to hurt. “I trusted him with you. I trusted him in our home.” He’s pointing at himself, frantic. The vein on his forehead had started to show, his neck is red.
You swallowed. “I never asked you to.” He only looked at you, his eyes softened. They are red, you brush the hair out your face. What a mess.
“That doesn’t matter.” He runs his hands through his hair as if this is all a bad dream.
“It matters to me, he matters to me.” You look at Bobby, the softness in Jacob’s eyes are now replaced again with anger as he lets out a humorous laugh.
“No, what matters is you’ve fucked my best friend that’s known you since you were 14.”
Bobby’s jaw tightened. “I never looked at her then.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.” The answer was immediate.
Firm. Something changed in Bobby’s expression, the shame remained, but beneath it was anger now.
Not at being caught.
At the accusation. “She was a kid,” Bobby said. “I never thought about her that way.”
“And now?”
Bobby hesitated, his eyes moved towards you, as if his defences had fallen and he became less guarded.
Jacob saw it, his fist connected with Bobby’s face before anyone could react.
You jumped.
Bobby stumbled backwards into the coffee table, the remaining pizza box slid from it and hit the carpet, scattering cold slices across the floor.
“Jacob!” Your mother caught your arm as you tried to stand, keeping the blanket around you with her other hand.
“Stay here.”
“He hit him!”
“I know.”
Bobby straightened slowly, blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Jacob stood in front of him, breathing hard, both fists clenched.
Bobby touched his lip. He looked at the blood on his thumb, then at Jacob. “I deserved that.”
“You deserve worse.”
“Maybe.”
Jacob hit him again, this time Bobby was ready enough to remain standing, but his head snapped to the side.
Your father stood at the edge of the hallway, rigid and silent. “Dad, stop them!”
He didn’t move, his eyes followed Bobby, jaw tight, face unreadable. “Dad!”
“I don’t know what to say,” he muttered.
“You don’t have to say anything. Do something!”
He looked at Jacob.
Then at Bobby.
For one moment, it seemed he might intervene. Instead, he folded his arms. This was between the boys.
Bobby wiped his mouth again. “You get two,” he warned Jacob.
Jacob stared at him. “What?”
“You won’t get to hit me a third time.”
The next punch came fast. Bobby blocked it, his hand closed around Jacob’s wrist, and the restraint he had been clinging to finally broke.
He shoved Jacob backwards.
Jacob crashed into the wall, knocking a framed family photograph crooked.
“You think you can put your hands on me?” Jacob shouted.
“You’ve been putting yours on me!”
“I’ll kill you!” Jacob lunged.
They hit the floor together.
The blanket slipped from Bobby’s waist.
Your father immediately turned his face away again. “For God’s sake, Franklin, put some clothes on!”
“I’m a little busy!”
Your mother pulled the throw blanket from the back of the chair and tossed it towards the fight.
It landed across Jacob’s head. He ripped it away, giving Bobby enough time to scramble upright and grab his shorts from the lamp. “Outside,” Bobby snapped. Jacob followed him immediately.
“No!” you shouted.
Neither listened.
Bobby dragged his shorts on as he moved through the kitchen, almost falling when one foot caught in the leg. Jacob shoved him hard between the shoulder blades, sending him into the sliding glass door.
It rattled in its frame.
Bobby spun around and drove Jacob backwards through the opening, they both stumbled onto the patio.
You clutched the blanket around yourself and tried to follow.
Your mother caught you at the doorway.
“Let me go!”
“Not dressed like that.”
“He’s going to hurt him!”
“They’re going to hurt each other.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
Outside, Jacob threw another punch.
Bobby ducked this time and grabbed him around the middle. They crashed into the picnic table, sending the ashtray and empty soda cans flying across the patio. “You lied to my face!” Jacob shouted.
“I didn’t lie!”
“You sat in the pool with me!”
“I know!”
“You let me joke about you two!”
“I know!”
“You said nothing was happening!”
“Nothing was happening then!”
Jacob punched him in the ribs, bobby grunted and shoved him away. “You think that makes it better?”
“No!”
“Then stop saying it!”
“You want me to tell you I planned this?” Bobby shouted back. “I didn’t! She came home and suddenly I couldn’t think straight!”
Your heart seized.
Jacob’s face contorted. “That’s my sister.”
“I know who she is!”
“You were supposed to protect her.”
“From what? Me?”
“Yes!”
Bobby laughed once, bitter and breathless. “She doesn’t need protecting from me.”
“You slept with her on the goddamn sofa!”
“That was her choice too!”
Jacob charged again.
Bobby met him halfway.
They crashed into one of the pool loungers, snapping the plastic backrest flat. Bobby caught Jacob’s fist, but Jacob drove his shoulder into Bobby’s chest.
Both men staggered towards the pool.
Your mother wrapped one arm around your shoulders. You didn’t realise you were crying until she wiped beneath your eye. “This is my fault.”
“No.”
“If I hadn’t kissed him..”
“Then he would have kissed you eventually.”
“Mom.”
“I’m not joking.” Outside, Bobby managed to push Jacob away. Jacob slipped on the wet concrete, caught Bobby’s arm and dragged him down with him.
They fell into the pool together.
The splash sent water surging over the edge.
For a moment, both disappeared beneath the surface.
You surged towards the door.
Your mother tightened her grip. “They can both swim.”
“What if they don’t come up?” They surfaced almost simultaneously, choking and furious.
Jacob immediately shoved Bobby’s head beneath the water, bobby caught him around the waist, lifted him and threw him backwards.
Jacob came up spluttering. “You asshole!”
“You pushed me in!”
“You pulled me!”
“You grabbed me first!”
They were still fighting, but the water had robbed the punches of most of their force. They grappled clumsily, slipping each time either tried to get enough footing to swing.
Your father finally stepped onto the patio.
Relief rushed through you, then he simply stood beside the pool.
He looked at them with the exhausted expression of a man who had woken expecting coffee and found a half naked man fighting in his backyard with his son.
“You going to stop us?” Jacob demanded.
Your father considered it. “No.”
Jacob blinked.
Bobby did too.
“You both made this mess,” your father said. “Work it out.”
“Dad!” you cried. He glanced back at you, still clutching the blanket around yourself while your mother held you.
His face softened for only a second.
Then he looked at Bobby, the softness vanished. “I haven’t decided what I think yet.”
Bobby swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“But if either of you cracks your skull on the side of my pool, I’m leaving you there.”
Jacob wiped water from his face. “He slept with her.”
“I gathered that.”
“In the living room.”
“I gathered that too.”
“On your sofa!”
Your father looked through the glass doors at the disordered room.
The fallen cushions.
The clothes.
The cold pizza scattered across the carpet.
His jaw clenched. “That part’s bothering me.”
Bobby looked down at the pool water.
“I’ll replace it.”
“You can’t replace my sofa Franklin.”
Bobby said nothing.
Your father sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say he’s never coming back here,” Jacob demanded.
Your chest tightened.
Bobby looked towards you through the glass, hs face was bruised, his lip bleeding, wet hair hanging into his eyes. He looked frightened again.
Not of Jacob, of losing you.
Your father followed his gaze. Then he looked at you.
You held Bobby’s eyes. “I love him.” The words came out before you could stop them.
Everything went still.
Your mother’s arm tightened around you.
Your father slowly lowered his hand.
Jacob stared.
Even Bobby seemed to forget how to breathe.
You hadn’t meant to say it.
You didn’t know whether it was too soon, too dramatic or simply true in the reckless way things sometimes became true before there was time to understand them, but it was out now. “I love him,” you repeated, quieter. “Or I’m falling in love with him. I don’t know. But this isn’t something he did to me.”
Jacob’s face twisted. “You’ve been home 3 days.”
“I’ve known him 5 years.”
“As my friend.”
“As Bobby.”
“He’s 23!”
“I know how old he is.”
“You’re going back to college tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“And what? You think he’s going to wait around while you play grown up?”
Bobby moved through the water towards the shallow end. “I’ll wait.”
Jacob turned towards him. “Stay out of this.”
“I’m already in it.”
“You don’t love her.”
Bobby stopped, the accusation landed differently from the punches.
You watched him.
He looked towards you again. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to call it yet,” he said, breathing hard. “But she left for college and this house felt wrong without her. She came back, and in one day I ruined every rule I’ve ever had.”
“That’s not love Bobby! That’s just you being horny.”
“Jacob,” your mother warned.
Bobby’s face hardened. “No. It isn’t.” He climbed from the pool, water streaming from his shorts.
Jacob followed.
Bobby didn’t raise his hands this time.
He stood several feet from his best friend, bruised and dripping across the patio. “I know what that feels like,” Bobby said. “This isn’t it.”
Jacob’s fists slowly loosened.
Not because he was calm.
Because the anger was giving way to something more painful. “You were supposed to tell me.”
“I know.”
“You were supposed to be my brother.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
Bobby flinched.
It was barely visible. But you saw it.
So did Jacob since entering the living room, Jacob now looked uncertain.
Bobby wiped the blood from his lip. “I’m sorry you found out like this.”
“You mean naked on the sofa?”
“Yes.”
“That’s going to be burned into my mind until I die.”
“I’m sorry about that too.”
“And you’re buying Mom a new couch.”
Your mother frowned. “There is nothing wrong with that couch.”
Everyone looked at her.
She shrugged. “What? It’s a perfectly good sofa.”
“Mom,” Jacob said, horrified.
“I’m not throwing out an entire piece of furniture because two adults had consensual sex on it.”
Your father closed his eyes. “Please stop talking.”
“You knew,” Jacob accused again.
“I suspected.”
“You set this up.”
“I gave them privacy.”
“You gave them permission!”
“I specifically told her not to sleep with him under my roof.”
Bobby looked towards your mother. “She did.”
Jacob stared at him. “You knew she knew?”
“Not until she opened her door and found me outside the bedroom.”
Your father’s head snapped up. “You were in her bedroom too?”
“Daddy, nothing happened then,” you said quickly.
“That sentence is not helping,” Bobby muttered.
Your father looked as though he had aged ten years since entering the house.
He walked to one of the dry loungers and sat heavily. “I need coffee.”
Your mother rubbed your back. “You need clothes.” You nodded, suddenly aware again that you were standing beneath a blanket while the entire family discussed your sex life.
“Come on.” She guided you away from the door.
You resisted long enough to look back at Bobby.
He remained beside the pool.
Jacob stood across from him, dripping onto the patio.
Neither moved. “Is he okay?” you whispered.
“He’ll be fine.”
“What if Jacob hits him again?”
“Bobby will hit him back.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
Your mother looked outside.
The fury had drained from the two men, leaving them soaked, bruised and exhausted. “They’ve finished.”
“How do you know?”
“Because now they’re hurt instead of angry.”
You looked at her.
She wiped another tear from your cheek. “You didn’t do anything wrong by choosing him.”
“Jacob hates me.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He looked at me like he did.”
“He looked at you like he realised you’d grown up without asking his permission.”
You swallowed. “I ruined their friendship.”
“No. They made their own choices.”
“But you left us alone.” Your mother gave you a smile. “I may have underestimated both of you.”
Despite everything, a broken laugh escaped you. “You think?”
“I expected kissing. Perhaps some dancing.”
You stared at her. “How did you..”
“I’m your mother.” She led you towards the stairs. Behind you, your father remained seated near the pool, staring silently at the water.
He still didn’t intervene.
Not when Jacob sat down heavily at the edge of the pool.
Not when Bobby lowered himself several feet away.
They didn’t apologise.
They didn’t look at one another for a long time, they simply sat there in wet clothes, breathing through split lips and bruised ribs.
Finally, Jacob spoke. “If you hurt her, I’ll finish this.” Bobby stared across the pool. “I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t forgive you.”
Bobby nodded. “I know.”
Jacob looked towards the upstairs window. “She really said she loves you.”
Bobby’s expression softened despite the swelling along his cheek. “Yeah.”
“You don’t deserve that.”
“No, I really don’t.” The answer came without argument. Jacob glanced at him. “You’re supposed to disagree.”
“I’m not going to lie to you again.”
They fell silent. Your father listened from the lounger without lifting his head. Jacob nudged Bobby’s foot with his own.
Not affectionately, Not forgivingly.
Just enough to acknowledge that he was still there. Bobby looked down at the small point of contact. Neither said anything.
It settled in your chest, tomorrow was coming to fast. The slow dance turn into more, the sway of your hips together, the gentle kisses, he led you back to the sofa, the thing you had both been fighting all weekend about to happen, that unforgivable line was crossed, you sat with your legs curled underneath you pressing weight into his bare chest with a kiss unlike the others, they had been easy to pull from but not this one, it felt heavy and bolder.
Bobby pulled your lower back closer, all hesitation gone as he motioned for you to straddle his waist on the sofa, you did, happy to mount his hips, a soft nonverbal puff of air left his lips and into your mouth as if he was grateful to feel your weight on him. You flicked your hair to the other shoulder, leaning down and holding his face in two hands rolling gently against him, kissing him was different than kissing anyone else, he was a man, a man you wanted for a long time and nothing was stealing this moment.
He pulled away momentarily, you sat in his lap, looking at him as though you had nowhere else to be.
Bobby’s hands rested at your waist, but he didn’t pull you closer. Not yet.
Shes beautiful, that was his first thought simple, helpless, immediate. Your lips are slightly parted, hands on his shoulders massaging softly waiting for him to kiss you again.
You wanted him and he wanted you.
But then he saw Jacob, not literally.. just enough of a reminder of him, lodged painfully behind every thought. His best friend.
The boy he had grown up beside. The man who trusted him in this house, with his family, with his little sister. Except you weren’t little anymore. That was the problem.. still, the guilt twisted.
Your fingers moved lightly through his hair, and Bobby’s resolve nearly broke beneath the tenderness of it.
You didn’t rush him, you just gave him a reminder that it’s just you two and no one else. He pulled you down for another kiss, his thighs stuttering under your weight, you needed him as much as he needed you. You pulled back just enough, enough to reach the hem of your shirt and slide it down either shoulders until it fell and caught his knees before crumpling on the floor, he watched with careful fingers stroking at your sides, feeling every part of exposed skin available. Sitting on his lap, nothing but the bikini top and bottoms you had worn yesterday, that made him lose near enough all control.
Bobby didn’t look anywhere apart from your face, eyes flicking between your mouth and eyes. The tiny freckle on your face that he could now see while up close. You reached back for the string that held the piece of fabric to your chest, he licked his lips and caught your wrist. You stopped, something pleaded in his eyes to say Stop, this is wrong. It was a guilt he would carry for a while, you had to push him through it. The constant reminder you are an adult making adult choices and he’s one of them.
He lets you go, you hold his glaze. He stops breathing, holding it back when you loosen the tie at your neck and let the flimsy fabric fall, he inhales another breath, holding it tightly in his throat. You see his chest raging, his eyes don’t quite know where to look.
“Bobby, it’s..” you snap him out of it, his panic. Taking one of his hands and placing it over your bare breast, he looked down and back up quickly. “It’s okay.” You tell him, his touch is rough, the palm of his hand callous against your skin. He nods, a faint smile. It’s Okay, he repeats mentally. He wanted this, you wanted this. The small sign of insecurity gone and replaced by his natural smug smirk, he was back but only looking at you in a way he never had before. He rolled your nipple gently between his fingers making you arch slightly, your core throbbing and gripping at air.
He thought about earlier, you admitting you like to be touched softly, you like to be asked if this is okay. He found himself constantly looking at you with a crease line on his forehead. “Like this?” He brought up a second hand, massaging gently.
You nodded, “like that.”
He swallowed slowly, you watched his throat move. The reality setting in, his eyes widened. “Shit! I don’t have a condom.” You leaned against his shoulder and laughed gently, before looking at him again.
“Birth control, 8 month relationship? College?” He nodded, you thought he looked adorable with the look on his face while he touched you, you slid forward and backwards slightly, trying to stir him. “Quit that.” He brought his left hand down and grab your ass cheek gently lifting you, “I’m already hard.”
You both looked down, he is. Painfully. You bit down on the inside you of cheek again. Watching his face, his eyes, the way his throat worked and moved each time he swallowed or forced his jaw to clench. You reached down, never breaking eye contact and gripped him in your hand. “Oh fucking finally.” The back of his head rested on the back of the sofa, you laughed as he shot his head back up. “I’ve had a hard-on like, 100 times in 3 days.” You stroked him through his shorts, earning a groan from him and a roll of his hips to meet your touch. “Yeah?” It was a rhetorical question, you didn’t want an answer.
“Fuck!” His hands found the back of the sofa along with his head, you watched the way they tightened and knuckles when white, the flex of the muscles in his arms as he tried to control himself. Bobby lifted his head to look down, he wanted you to removed his shorts but he always remembered what you told him, you don’t want to feel rushed.
Or so he thought, you sat up on your knees and hooked your fingers over the waistband of his shorts and boxers. His chest is rising and falling quickly, he’s now feeling oddly insecure and anxious.
You had never seen him naked, you only knew what he felt like through clothing. Thick, bobby is settling in on being shy. What if he could impress you?
His eyes looked at your breasts, he’s a man. Of course he’s going to look, then your face as you pushed his clothing down slightly. He watched your eyes, the way your head tilted with a plain expression. She doesn’t like it settled, until you met his glaze and blushed. Bobby wished he could read your mind, you brushed a strand of hair behind your ear, “I’m genuinely impressed right now Bobby.” The breath he held left, chest deflating.
You leaned forward and kissed him once, twice for reassurance before taking hold of him. He’s thick, very thick. Bobby loudly gasps when you touch him, without clothing constricting him. You wipe your thumb over the tip, only once and begin to stroke him. Bobby shakes his head, “Baby, no.” You pull away, “did I do something wrong?” He shakes his head again, taking your hands before you can pull away. “Tips sensitive, start in the middle.”
He guides your hand, holding him from the middle. Pumping down slowly then back up midway, down again. “Like that.” He breaths and closes his eyes, head falling back again. You watch him carefully, the sudden hard swallows and the shaking of his chest, the subtle twitches of the muscles in his arms.
This, this is a man. An incredibly awkward man who is coming undone beneath your hand. Beneath your touch, in Bobby’s mind he didn’t expect to get this far, he expected everything he felt to be one sided, he looked at you. The way you worked him in your hand, perfect. You moved perfect, you looked perfect. The sudden realisation of having to tell Jacob tomorrow creeped by again, don’t think of Jacob while she’s stroking my dick.
He frowned, he couldn’t blow on the fire then complain when the smoke blew back in his face. You are the fire, you are his fire. Jacob is the suffocating smoke that scares him, Bobby is the same height as him, much broader but when he’s angry? He gets angry and he fully expects to get hit. He was too lost in his own mind that he didn’t even notice you stopped until you took hold of his chin.
“You are doing it again.” You smiled, bringing him back to his own reality. His gaze shifted, he blinked. Leaning forward Bobby took your lips between his, latching on tightly. You found his shoulders, gripping. Bobby held you close, shifting you from his lap and your back flat on the sofa cushions, he is quick.
He’s settled between your legs, his right arm settled beside your head and left hand tapping his fingers slowly up your thigh, he’s teasing. He kissed you, you gasped into his mouth when he pushed the palm of his hand into the inner side of your leg, pushing you further apart for his hips to settle.
He’s heavy, the bone of his hip pressed against the inside of your thigh, shifting to find relief from the pressure. “Still okay?” He asks once, you nod. His lips are on your neck, sucking the skin between his teeth. You are aware of the new placement of his hand, settled on your hip placing at the string that held your bikini bottoms up. He looked at you, brushing the hair from your face with his other hand. “Still okay?” He asks again, Bobby would be sure to keep asking for confirmation.
You bit the inside of your lower lip, nodding again. Cheeks warm and pink, one tug. Just one tug and the thin item of clothing was removed in his hand, he looked down for only a moment when he discarded it to the carpet. Bobby realises he’s rushing, he needs to slow down. Let you take charge, what did you want?
He was answered by the roll of your hips, your knee hooking his hip pulling him closer. He rested at your entrance, one push forward and the line wasn’t only crossed, it was forgotten. He stilled, he never moved. He waited for you to make the choice. You can see the hesitation on his face, it’s constant. His silver chain brushes against your own chest, “I want you Bobby, it’s still okay.”
He reaches down, holding himself in his hand. He’s guiding, he never takes his eyes from your face, watching the way your eyes closed when he first entered, the way your lips parted. Bobby brought both hands up, taking yours above your head and let his hips continue the rest of the work. Bobby suddenly became conscious of his weight on your body and lifted himself slightly on his knees still allowing his hips to move forward.
You kissed the side of his lower jaw, squeezing his hands tightly while trapped beneath his frame. Bobbys own lips part as he huffs out a low gruntled sound from his chest, he holds still once fully inside, nose brushing up and down the side of your cheek as if he was a cat showing affection to its owner, owner. That sounds wrong? Did he belong to you? It felt like he did. Bobby didn’t move, he held position. He let you comfortably adjust to his size inside you, groaning each time you pulsed around him.
You mewed beneath him, unrestrained. He allowed every noise to escape you this time.
The worries of who might hear, forgotten.
The worries of who might see, forgotten.
“Move Bobby.” You practically purred into his ear, laced with honey. He shivered and looked at you, you looked beautiful. Hair messy, face flustered against the sofa cushions while he’s deep inside you. “Say please.” You dig your nails into his bicep. “Please Bobby.” You whimpered.
The evening sipped by, you laid beside Bobby wrapped in a blanket that wasn’t big enough for you both. He had asked multiple times if you are okay, you hurt a little but felt content.
It felt like the beginning of something neither of you had planned.
Not hiding.
Not ashamed.
Until the first thing you heard in the morning was the front door opening.
Not the car pulling into the driveway.
Not the station wagon doors closing.
Not Jacob complaining as he dragged his overnight bag up the path.
Aerion Targaryen x wife!reader - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Summary: Aerion, much to his dissatisfaction, realizes that he is growing fond of his wife. Warnings: SMUT 18+ p in v, unprotected sex, yearning, possessiveness, power imbalance, Aerion's pov, Reader is Margaery Tyrell coded, Aerion has insane ideas. Can be read as a oneshot, or as set between Growing Strong and Married Life.
The morning light streamed through the high windows of their chambers in the Red Keep, casting long golden bars across the rumpled sheets. Aerion Targaryen lay on his back, one arm flung above his head, the other pinned beneath the warm weight of his wife. She was still asleep, her breath soft and even against his chest, her hair that smelled faintly of rosewater spread across his skin.
He should have risen already. The training yard called, and Ser Roland would be waiting with the morning's first bout. Instead, Aerion found himself studying the curve of her lashes against her cheeks, the slight part of her lips, the way her fingers curled loosely against his ribs as if even in sleep she sought to hold him close.
Soft, he thought, not for the first time. Soft as a rose petal, this one.
She stirred, a small sound escaping her throat, and her eyes fluttered open. She rubbed her eyes with her sleeve, embroidered with roses. Roses were embroidered on every damned thing she owned. Her lips curved into a smile.
"Good morrow, husband," she murmured, her voice husky with sleep.
"You've trapped my arm," he told her flatly. "I've lost all feeling in my fingers."
Her smile didn't waver. If anything, it deepened, crinkling the corners of her eyes. "Shall I kiss them better, my prince?"
Before he could answer, before he could summon the sneer that usually sat so comfortably on his face, she lifted his numb hand and pressed her lips to his fingertips, one by one. The gesture was absurd. Childish. It should have irritated him.
Instead, he felt the stirring of want low in his belly.
"You are ridiculous," he said.
"I am a Tyrell," she replied, as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did. Growing strong, their words declared, but Aerion had learned that the roses of Highgarden grew in more ways than one. They grew into the cracks of things, their roots spreading patiently, until they had wound themselves so deeply into the stone that pulling them out would bring the whole wall tumbling down.
She had been doing that to him, he realized. Slowly, insidiously. And he had let her.
The wedding had been a political affair.His father, Maekar, had informed him of the match with the same tone he used when discussing troop movements or grain stores. The Tyrells were powerful, rich, and ambitious. An alliance with the Reach would strengthen the crown's position, given some of the houses in the region had sided with Blackfyres but Tyrells had remained loyal to the Crown. Aerion was a second son of a fourth son with little prospect of sitting the Iron Throne, but he was still a Targaryen.
He had raged, of course. He had thrown a goblet at the wall and demanded to know why he should be saddled with some flowery Reach girl with no Valyrian blood, no dragonlord heritage, no appreciation for the fire that ran in his veins. His father had stared at him with those cold, violet eyes until Aerion's fury had sputtered and died like a torch in the rain.
"You will wed her," Maekar had said. "And you will do your duty."
So he had. He had stood in the Great Sept of Baelor with a cloak of Targaryen crimson and black in his hands, and he had looked upon his bride, who had been trying to appease him ever since she had arrived in King's Landing. She had been beautiful, even he could not deny that, though he had wanted to. But beauty was common enough in King's Landing. What had unsettled him was her composure. She had met his sullen glare with a serene, almost indulgent smile, as if he were a child throwing a tantrum and she was merely waiting for him to tire himself out.
It had infuriated him.
It had also, though he would never have admitted it then, intrigued him.
The wedding feast had been interminable. He had drunk too much, determined to drown the indignity of it all, while she had sat beside him on the dais and charmed every lord and lady who approached. She had laughed at Lord Butterwell's tedious jests, complimented Lady Arryn's dreadful gown, and spoken so sweetly to his brother Aemon that Aerion had felt an irrational surge of something hot and unpleasant twist in his gut.
"Your brother is very kind," she had remarked as the dancing began.
"Aemon is a maester in training," Aerion had replied, his tone clipped. "He has no interest in women."
"I did not say he did." She had turned those eyes on him, and there had been sharpness beneath the sweetness, like a thorn hidden among petals. "I merely observed that he was kind. A quality that seems in short supply among princes."
He had wanted to snap at her. To remind her that she was a mere Tyrell, a flower grown in dirt, and he was the blood of the dragon. But the wine had made his tongue thick and his thoughts slow, and by the time he had formulated a suitably cutting retort, she had already risen from her seat and extended her hand toward him.
"Dance with me, husband. The lords and ladies expect it."
"I do not dance."
"Then you will watch while I dance with others." Her smile had not wavered. "Lord Lannister has been eyeing me all evening. I imagine he would be happy to oblige."
Aerion had danced with her. He had hated every moment of it, or told himself he did, but he had noticed the way the candlelight caught the gold thread in her gown, the way her hand fit perfectly in his, the way she moved with a grace that made the other women in the hall seem clumsy by comparison.
"You dance well," he had conceded grudgingly as the music ended.
"I am a Tyrell," she had repeated, as if those three words were answer enough for everything.
The bedding ceremony had been mercifully brief. His father had forbidden any of the more ribald traditions, a rare show of consideration that Aerion suspected had more to do with preserving the dignity of House Targaryen than with any concern for his bride's comfort. They had been escorted to their chambers, the door had closed behind them, and suddenly they were alone.
She had stood in the center of the room, still in her wedding gown, and for the first time since he had laid eyes on her, she had looked uncertain. The expression had flickered across her face for only a moment before she smoothed it away, but Aerion had seen it. He had seen her hands tremble slightly before she clasped them together.
He had heard the stories, of course. Everyone had. The women of Highgarden were said to be wanton creatures, as lush and eager as the summer fruits that grew in their orchards. Men whispered of their exploits, of the lovers they took before marriage, of the skills they learned in secret gardens and moonlit bowers. Aerion had expected a woman who knew what she was about, who could meet him as an equal in the marriage bed, who might even teach him something new.
What he had found instead was a maiden trembling with a fear she was trying desperately to hide.
"Take off your gown," he had commanded, voice rougher than he intended.
She had obeyed, her fingers clumsy on the laces. The golden silk had pooled at her feet, leaving her in her shift, and she had stood there like a sacrifice awaiting the knife. Her eyes had been fixed on the floor.
Inexperienced, he had realized with a shock that bordered on disbelief. She knows nothing.
The knowledge had kindled something dark and possessive in his chest. All those stories, all those whispers about wanton Reach girls, and here was his wife, untouched, unknowing, entirely his. The lords who had boasted of their conquests in Highgarden's gardens were liars, or else they had never met this particular rose.
He had been gentle that first night. Gentler than he had expected to be. Gentler than he had ever been with any woman. He had taken his time, had touched her until she stopped trembling, had swallowed her cry of pain with his mouth when he finally breached her maidenhead. She had clutched at his shoulders, her nails leaving half-moons in his skin, and when it was over she had looked up at him with those big eyes.
"Is that all?" she had whispered.
Despite himself, despite everything, Aerion had laughed.
That had been months ago. The trembling virgin of their wedding night was gone, replaced by a wife who greeted him in the mornings with sleepy smiles and kisses pressed to his fingers. She had learned some things, how to angle her hips to take him deeper, how to use her hands to stoke the fire in his blood, how to read the tension in his jaw and the rhythm of his breath. But there were limits to what she knew, limits that became more apparent with each passing week.
This morning, as the sunlight crept across the bed, Aerion's thoughts had already turned in a familiar direction. He had woken hard, he often did, especially with her warm body pressed against him, and the sight of her sleep-rumpled and soft was doing nothing to cool his blood.
"Come here," he said, tugging her up until she was sprawled across his chest. "I want you."
She went willingly, as she always did, her body pliant beneath his hands. He rolled her onto her back and settled between her thighs. She welcomed him with a soft sigh and the immediate, instinctive clench of her inner muscles that made him groan against her throat.
This was where the mask slipped. This was where all her clever words and knowing smiles fell away, leaving only the truth of her body. She could not lie here. She could not summon what she did not know.
He took her slowly at first, watching her face. Her eyes were half-closed, her lips parted. She was beautiful like this: undone, unguarded, entirely his. But as the pace quickened, as his need grew more urgent, he could feel her struggling to match him.
"Wrap your legs around me," he commanded, and she tried, but her thighs trembled with the effort and she could not hold the position. Her hands clutched at his shoulders, her breath coming in short gasps that were half pleasure and half exertion. She was trying, he could see that she was trying, but her body would not obey.
With a growl of frustration, he pulled out of her and flipped her onto her stomach. "On your hands and knees," he said. "I want to take you from behind."
She pushed herself up, her arms shaking. He positioned himself behind her, one hand on her hip, the other guiding himself to her entrance. But before he could push inside, her arms buckled. She collapsed forward onto the mattress, her back bowing, her body unable to sustain the position.
"Gods be good," Aerion muttered. "Can you not even hold yourself up?"
"I'm sorry." Her voice was muffled by the pillows. "I'm sorry, I..."
"Quiet." He reached for the pillows, stacking them beneath her hips, lifting her to the proper angle. "There. Stay still."
She did as she was told, her body soft and yielding beneath him as he entered her again. The position was everything he wanted: deep, tight, the sight of her rounded backside pressed against his hips enough to make his blood sing. But even as he drove into her, even as the pleasure built and built until it shattered through him, a part of his mind was cataloging her limitations.
Spoiled, that part of him sneered. Soft as a rose petal. She lies there and lets you take your pleasure, and what does she give in return? She cannot ride you. She cannot hold herself up long enough for you to take her properly. She cannot even...
"Enough," he bit out, though whether he was speaking to her or to his own thoughts, he could not say.
He spent himself inside her with a shuddering groan, she took it all, her body milking him with those delicious, involuntary clenches that seemed to pull the seed straight from his stones. When he pulled out, his seed dripped from her, staining the pillows he had arranged so carefully beneath her hips.
She rolled onto her side, her chest still heaving. "Husband," she began, but he cut her off with a gesture.
"Stay there," he said. "I'll want you again shortly."
He lay back against the headboard and closed his eyes, waiting for his body to recover. He felt her shift on the bed, and then her fingers were on his chest, tracing idle patterns through the light dusting of silver-gold hair. The touch was feather-light, and despite his irritation, he felt his cock twitch in response.
"Did I please you?" she asked softly.
He opened his eyes. She was looking up at him, her eyes wide and earnest, her expression vulnerable. He hated that vulnerability. He hated that it made him feel things he did not want to feel.
"Your cunt grips me like a vice," he said flatly. "You drench me like a fountain. You milk me until the last drop is wrung from my body. So yes, wife. You please me."
The vulnerability vanished, replaced by that knowing smile that was beginning to feel like home. "How poetic," she murmured. "The bards will sing of such romance."
"Mind your tongue."
But she was already laughing, and despite himself, Aerion felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward. He smoothed it away before it could become a smile.
Later that morning, Aerion made his way to the training yard. His body was pleasantly tired, his mind clearer than it had been in days. There was something about taking his wife thoroughly twice that settled his humors in a way nothing else could.
Ser Roland was waiting with practice swords. They sparred for an hour, the clash of steel echoing across the yard. Aerion lost himself in the familiar rhythms of attack and defense. His body knew this dance far better than it knew the dance of marriage. Here, there were no masks to decipher, no vulnerabilities to navigate, no pretty eyes watching him with that mixture of fear and trust that made his stomach clench.
He was mid-lunge when he caught a flash of green and gold at the edge of the yard. He faltered, his blade dipping, and Ser Roland nearly took his head off.
"Your Grace," the knight said, lowering his sword, "you are distracted."
Aerion ignored him. His eyes were fixed on the gallery above the training yard, where his wife had taken a seat beside one of her ladies. She was watching him, her chin propped on her hand, her expression one of polite interest. When she saw him looking, she raised her hand in a small wave.
"My prince," she called down, her voice carrying clearly across the yard. "Pray do not let me interrupt. I wished only to see my husband at his martial pursuits."
Go away, he wanted to say. This is not a place for women. This is not a place for you.
But he did not say it. Instead, he turned back to Ser Roland with renewed vigor, his strikes faster and more precise than they had been all morning. He was showing off, he knew it, he hated that he knew it, but he could not seem to stop himself. His body moved with a grace and power that drew murmurs of appreciation from the other knights in the yard. When he disarmed Ser Roland with a particularly clever riposte, there was a scattering of applause from the gallery.
"Well struck, husband!" his wife called. He glanced up. Her smile was genuine and bright, not the serene, practiced smile she wore at court.
The sight of it hit him like a blow to the chest.
He wanted her. Again. Despite taking her twice that morning, despite the exertion of the sparring, despite everything he knew about himself and the world. he wanted her with a ferocity that bordered on madness. He wanted to climb up to that gallery and drag her back to their chambers and bury himself inside her until neither of them could walk.
Instead, he gave her a curt nod and turned away, barking at Ser Roland to fetch him water.
That night, they dined with his family. It was a formal affair, with all the attendant tensions and undercurrents that characterized Targaryen gatherings. His father was in one of his cold moods, his displeasure settling over the table like a frost. His brother Daeron was drunk and quarrelsome. Even Valarr, usually a steadying presence, seemed distracted by some concern with his father.
Aerion felt the familiar irritation building behind his eyes. He wanted to snap at someone. He wanted to overturn the table and storm out. He wanted...
"Try the pie with Dornish spices," his wife said quietly, nudging the dish toward him. "I had the kitchens prepare it specially. I remember you said you were fond of it."
He blinked. He did not remember saying any such thing. But when he tasted the pie, it was exactly as he liked it: the pastry flaky, the filling rich with wine and spices.
"How did you know?" he asked.
She smiled that smile again. "I listen when you speak, husband. It is a wife's duty to know her husband's preferences."
"Most wives are not so diligent."
"Most wives are not Tyrells."
He snorted, but he took another bite of the pie. Across the table, Daeron was telling some long, rambling story about a whorehouse in Flea Bottom, and Baelor was looking increasingly pinched. Aerion felt the familiar surge of annoyance, could his brother not keep his mouth shut for a single meal? But before it could crest into anger, his wife's hand found his beneath the table.
She said nothing. She did not even look at him. She simply laced her fingers through his and held on, her thumb tracing slow circles on the back of his hand.
The anger drained away. Slowly, grudgingly, but it drained.
Later, when the meal was finished and the family was dispersing, Aerion found himself lingering in the corridor outside the great hall. His wife had stopped to exchange pleasantries with Lady Darklyn, and he was waiting for her. Waiting. Aerion Targaryen, who waited for no one.
She finished her conversation and glided toward him, her silk skirts whispering against the stone floor. "You waited for me," she observed.
"I wanted to walk you back to our chambers."
"There are guards enough in the Red Keep. I would have been safe."
"I know." He did not elaborate, and she did not press. She took his arm, her hand resting in the crook of his elbow. He felt a knot loosen in his chest that he had not even realized was tight.
In their chambers, she dismissed her ladies and began the long process of preparing for bed. Aerion watched her from his chair by the fire as she smoothed scented oil into her skin and slipped into a nightgown of pale green silk that clung to the curves of her body like a second skin.
She was soft, he thought again. Soft in body, soft in manner, soft in all the ways that should have bored him.
Yet he missed her laugh when it was absent. Yet her praise in the training yard had made him feel ten feet tall. Yet at dinner, when his family had been driving him to the edge of fury, she had anchored him with nothing more than the touch of her hand.
"Come to bed," she said. He went.
She curled against his side as naturally as if she had been doing it for decades rather than months. Her head found the hollow of his shoulder, her arm draped across his chest, her leg slipping between his. He felt her lips press briefly to his collarbone before she settled with a contented sigh.
He did not sleep well that night.
His dreams were restless, fragmented, full of images that slipped away as soon as he tried to grasp them. He woke before dawn with his wife still curled against him and his mind churning with thoughts he could not quiet.
The women on the Street of Silk had done things for him that his wife could not even imagine.
He had been a young man when he first visited the city's pleasure houses, full of fire, fury and the desperate need to prove himself. The whores there had been skilled. They had taught him things about his own body that he had not known, had shown him pleasures that existed far beyond the simple act of coupling. There had been one, a Lyseni girl with silver-gilt hair and knowing violet eyes, who had done something with her mouth that had made him see stars for a solid minute afterward.
His wife had never done that. His wife did not even know such things were possible.
Sometimes, in the dark hours before dawn, Aerion found himself wondering what it would be like if she did. If those clever, smiling lips could be put to other uses. If that soft body could be taught to move in ways that would bring him to his knees. If she could learn to take him in her mouth, her throat, her...
He shifted uncomfortably, his cock hardening at the thought. Beside him, his wife stirred but did not wake.
The whores had also done things to him. They had used their mouths and hands in ways that had made him groan and curse and clutch at the sheets. Some of them had seemed to genuinely enjoy it, or at least they were skilled enough at pretending that he had not been able to tell the difference. Would his wife enjoy it, if he did the same to her?
Or would she look at him with those bright eyes full of disgust and disdain?
He is her husband. He has the right. His wife should be pleasing him.
But the thought of demanding it, of ordering her to her knees as he might order a servant, soured his mood. He could imagine how she would look at him: the shock, the hurt, the careful mask sliding into place to hide her revulsion. He had seen that mask before, before their marriage, when he had been cruel to her simply because he could be. He did not want to see it again.
Why? a voice in his head demanded. Why do you care what she thinks? She is your wife. She is yours to command. If she is disgusted, what of it? She will obey you regardless.
But she would not look at him the same way. She would not smile that genuine smile. She would not laugh her low, musical laugh. She would not cling to him in her sleep as if he were the only safe harbor in a stormy sea.
And he would miss it. Gods help him, he would miss it.
Perhaps only some things, he thought. To try them out. See if she likes it.
The thought settled in his mind like a seed taking root. He would not demand. He would not command. He would...suggest. He would show her that pleasure could take many forms, that the marriage bed was a garden with many hidden paths. He would demonstrate, and then she'd want to reciprocate. To return the favor.
Then perhaps he would not have to choose between the skilled whores of his memories and the soft, sweet wife in his bed. Perhaps he could have both, in time.
Dawn was breaking outside the window, pale gold light seeping through the curtains. His wife stirred again, her eyes fluttering open. She smiled when she saw him watching her.
"You are awake early," she murmured.
"I have been thinking."
"Thinking?" Her smile became teasing. "How unlike you, husband."
He should have snapped at her. Instead, he found himself reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the soft skin of her cheek.
"There are things I would teach you," he swallowed. "Things that happen between a man and a woman. Things you do not know."
Her eyes widened slightly but her composure did not crack. "And what things are those, my prince?"
"I would show you rather than tell you."
She was quiet for a moment, searching his face. He wondered what she saw there. Did she see the hunger he could not quite suppress? The uncertainty beneath it? The strange, unfamiliar tenderness that kept sneaking up on him when he least expected it?
"Very well," she said at last. "Show me."
So he did.
He started slowly, kissing her with a thoroughness that left them both breathless. Then he kissed his way down her body, pausing at all the places that made her gasp: the hollow of her throat, the curve of her breast, the sensitive skin just below her navel. She was trembling by the time he settled between her thighs, her hands fisted in the sheets, her eyes wide and uncertain.
"What are you..."
"Hush," he said, and pressed his mouth to her.
The sound she made was unlike anything he had ever heard from her. A surprised cry that melted into a moan as he worked her with his tongue. Her hips bucked against his face, her thighs clamping around his ears, but he held her steady and continued his ministrations. She was drenched already, her taste flooding his senses, and he found that he did not mind it. Found, in fact, that he liked it: the intimacy of it, the way she came apart beneath his mouth, the knowledge that he was the first and only man to do this to her.
She peaked with a scream that echoed off the stone walls, her body arching off the bed like a bow drawn taut. He gentled her through it, his tongue soft and slow against her oversensitive flesh, until she collapsed back onto the mattress with a sob.
He crawled up her body, settling his weight on his elbows, and looked down at her. Lips swollen from kissing, eyes glassy with the aftermath of pleasure. There were tears on her cheeks, he realized. Tears.
"Did I hurt you?" he demanded.
"No." Her voice was barely a whisper. "No, I...I did not know. I did not know it could be like that."
"That," he could not quite keep the smugness from his voice, "is only the beginning."
Her laugh was watery but genuine. "The beginning?"
"There is much more to learn." He hesitated, then added, "If you are willing."
She reached up and cupped his face in her hands, her thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. The gesture was tender in a way that made him freeze. "I am your wife," she said simply. "I am yours, and you are mine. If there are things you wish to teach me, I will learn them gladly."
"Gladly," he repeated, testing the word.
"Gladly," she confirmed, and pulled him down for a kiss.
a/n: Besides the oneshot, I wanted to write from Aerion's pov in those early days of Growing Strong. I think it's interesting that he is aware to some degree that she's trying to placate him, or when she's not being genuine. He's not stupid or oblivious. But it doesn't register to him as manipulation because he thinks it's her trying to please him, as is a wife's duty to be pleasing to her husband. But at the same time he's pissed when it works on him. Reading his perspective after Growing Strong and Married Life adds layers to it, I think.
a/n: Liked the fic? You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
The sun had dipped low enough to soften the heat, leaving the backyard washed in amber light.
You and Bobby were still sharing one lounger despite the empty one sitting less than a foot away. Your cheek rested against his chest, one of your legs thrown lazily across his while his fingers moved through your hair.
The radio played quietly from the picnic table.
Neither of you had spoken for a while.
It was comfortable now, the silence. Not tense like it had been in the truck or filled with everything Bobby was afraid to say. Just warm and slow, broken occasionally by the sound of water moving through the pool filter or Bobby laughing under his breath whenever you traced absent patterns across his stomach. His high had faded enough that his eyes were clearer, though there was still a pleasant heaviness to him. He seemed softer around the edges. Less capable of hiding whatever crossed his mind.
Which was probably why he asked.“What really happened with Cole?”
Your fingers stopped, only briefly then they resumed tracing the thin line of hair below his navel. “I told you.”
“You said he wasn’t a great guy.”
“He wasn’t.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything.”
You lifted your head enough to look at him.
Bobby was staring towards the pool, deliberately casual, but the set of his mouth gave him away.
“You’ve been thinking about it?”
“No.”
“You brought it up.”
“Conversation.”
“You’re jealous.” His fingers paused in your hair. “I’m not jealous.”
You smiled. “You’re blushing.”
“I’m sunburned.”
“The sun’s nearly gone.”
“That doesn’t mean the burn disappears.”
You propped your chin against his chest, studying him.
He refused to look at you.
It was almost endearing, seeing Bobby Franklin who could flirt with practically anyone without blinking become awkward over a boy he had never met.
“There wasn’t some dramatic reason,” you said.
Bobby finally glanced down. “He didn’t cheat?”
“No.”
“Didn’t hurt you?”
“No.”
“Did he treat you badly?”
“Sometimes.”
His expression sharpened. “How?”
“Not like that.” You pressed your palm against his chest before he could sit up. “He could just be selfish, he didn’t listen. Everything had to be about him.”
Bobby’s jaw remained tight. “He sounds like an asshole.”
“He could be.”
“Then why’d you stay 8 months?”
You shrugged. “I liked him at first, and then we realised we weren’t compatible.”
Bobby frowned. “Compatible how? Was he gay?”
You stared at him for a moment.
There were several answers you could have given. You could have said you wanted different things. That Cole didn’t understand your humour. That he complained whenever you wanted to spend a weekend studying rather than going to some crowded party.
Instead, your gaze moved slowly over Bobby’s face.
Down to his mouth.
Then back to his eyes, then to his fingers then back to his eyes.
His brow creased. “What?”
You said nothing.
Bobby watched you.
It took several seconds, then understanding dawned. His eyes widened slightly. “Oh.”
You bit your lip.
Colour moved across his cheeks.
Not sunburn.
A genuine flush climbed from his neck to his face, and you immediately began laughing.
Bobby looked away. “Don’t.”
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“It’s hot.”
“You nearly died when you saw me in a bikini, and somehow this is what embarrasses you?”
“I didn’t know that’s what you meant.”
“That’s why I looked at you like that.”
“Yeah, I figured it out.”
“Eventually.” He covered his face with one hand.
You laughed harder, lowering your forehead against his chest. “This is incredible.” Bobby lowered his hand and gave you a wounded look. “I was trying to ask a serious question.”
“And I gave you a serious answer.”
“You stared at my mouth.”
“It was relevant.” His blush deepened.
You smiled so widely your cheeks began to hurt. Bobby caught you around the waist and rolled you onto your back, shifting over you just enough to wipe the smug expression from your face.
The lounger creaked beneath the sudden movement, his hair fell across his forehead as he looked down at you, one arm braced beside your head.“That’s enough,” he murmured.
“You’re still red.”
“Keep talking.”
“Or what?” His eyes dropped to your mouth, the threat had no real force behind it, but your pulse quickened anyway.
Bobby seemed to notice.
His expression changed.
The embarrassment faded into something quieter. More curious. “So,” he said, “you and Cole weren’t compatible.”
You swallowed. “No.”
“Romantically?”
You smiled faintly. “You can say sexually, Bobby.”
His eyes closed for a second.
You began laughing again.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“You asked.”
“I didn’t think you were going to answer like that.”
“How did you expect me to answer?”
“I don’t know. Normal.”
“That is normal.”
“Not while you’re lying underneath me.”
“You put me here.”
Bobby looked down at the position you were in and seemed to realise exactly how it appeared. He started to move away. You caught the waistband of his shorts, hips rolling up to meet his.
He froze.
“Stay.” His gaze lifted to yours, the teasing had disappeared from your voice. Bobby remained where he was, though he lowered himself onto one elbow, bringing his face closer.
“What wasn’t compatible?” he asked.
You tilted your head. “You’re very interested.”
“I’m curious.”
“You’re jealous.”
“I already told you I’m not.”
“And I already told you that you’re terrible at lying.” His mouth twitched. “Fine.” “Fine what?”
“Maybe I don’t like thinking about you with him.”
Warmth spread through you. “Why?”
Bobby stared at you as though the answer should have been obvious.“Because I don’t.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
You ran one finger slowly along the chain hanging from his neck.
Bobby watched your hand.
“He wasn’t attentive,” you said.
The teasing faded from his expression.“In general?”
“In every way, he never cared for what I liked.”
His gaze returned to yours, you could see the questions forming, but Bobby seemed unsure whether he was allowed to ask them.
It was almost sweet.
Almost. “What do you like?” he asked eventually, the words came quieter than everything else. Your fingers stopped against his chain. Bobby’s face had gone pink again, though this time he didn’t look away. His expression was careful, searching yours for any sign that he had gone too far.
“What do I like?” you repeated.
“You know what I mean.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“No.”
You smiled. “Still shy?”
“I’m not shy.”
“You’re asking me questions while staring at the pool.”
He forced himself to hold your gaze. “What do you like when you’re with someone?”
The question settled heavily between you.
Not crude, not intrusive, not playful anymore.
Bobby seemed to genuinely want to know, you studied him. Biting the inside of your cheek, his face is barely above yours. His bare chest close enough to touch. The uncertainty he was trying to hide beneath a faint smirk.
You could have answered, instead, you let your eyes move slowly over him.
Bobby’s breathing changed, your hand slipped from his chain and rested against his chest, directly over his heart.
It was beating faster than you expected.
You looked back into his eyes. “I’ll tell you later.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Later?”
“Mhm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means later.”
“When?” You smiled, enjoying the slight frustration in his voice. “When you’re less high.”
“I’m barely high.”
“You thought a pool float was a duck.”
“It looked like one.”
“You tried to balance an ice cube on your stomach.”
“That was science.”
“You forgot you were wearing a shirt.”
Bobby lowered his face closer to yours.
“I’m sober enough to listen.”
You leaned your face forward, enough for your lips to graze his ear. “Maybe I don’t want you just listening, I want you exploring.” He stopped, you watched the implication settle inside him.
The faint colour in his cheeks became something deeper. His hand tightened slightly against the lounger beside your head. “You keep doing that,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Saying things like that and pretending you don’t know what they do to me.”
You smiled slowly. “I know exactly what they do to you.”
“That’s the problem.”
“Doesn’t feel like one.” You nudged your hips into his, he exhaled out his nostrils. The vein in his neck sticking out as he closed his eyes.
You slipped your fingers into his hair, he remained there for a moment, warm and solid above you, his breath moving across your skin. “You’ll tell me later?” he asked again, his voice was muffled against your shoulder.
“Yes.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It might be.” You nudged him again, thigh brushing between his legs.
Bobby lifted his head, his gaze was darker now, though the uncertainty remained beneath it. “College girl!”
“Bobby.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game.”
You drew him closer by the chain. “So stop playing.”
His mouth hovered over yours, for a moment, it seemed he might finally forget every warning and every reason he had spent the weekend holding back. Instead, he smiled.
Small. Slow.
“Later,” he murmured, using your own answer against you then he rolled away from you and stretched out on the other side of the lounger.
Your mouth fell open. “You’re annoying.”
Bobby folded both arms behind his head, looking far too pleased with himself. “You started it.”
“You were the one asking questions.”
“And you didn’t answer.”
“I said I would.”
“Later.”
“Yes.” He turned his head towards you, the blush had faded, but the interest had not. His gaze moved over your face, lingering at your mouth. “I’ll hold you to that.” You settled against his side again, resting your palm over his stomach. “I’m counting on it.”
Bobby swallowed.
Later was coming and judging by the way Bobby’s heartbeat refused to slow beneath your hand, neither of you was going to forget it.
-•-
Dinner was nearly forgotten, nearly.
You had both ditched the pool, the loungers and made way inside. The sofa, it was a place to sit and laugh now its where you had him on top of you, between your legs. Pulling him closer with each make out.
Bobby had settled between your knees, his hands sliding slowly over your thighs while his mouth moved against yours. The earlier clumsiness had disappeared. He seemed to be learning you now, when to slow down, when to press closer, how the light pull of his teeth against your lower lip made your fingers tighten at the back of his neck.
You felt him smile against your mouth when you drew him closer. “Thought you were hungry,” he murmured.
“I am.” You pushed him back, hungry for him. Nails on his back and lips on his neck, teeth catching the metal of his chain every now and then, you didn’t care.
“For pizza?” You felt his throat bob as he spoke, you felt the smugness.
You opened your eyes, his face was only inches from yours, hair falling untidily around his forehead. That lazy confidence had returned, but there was something less certain beneath it. Something watching for your reaction.
“Don’t get cocky,” you whispered.
“Too late.”
You kissed him just to wipe the smirk from his face. Bobby’s hands tightened around your thighs, and for a few dangerous seconds, the empty house seemed to disappear around you. There was only his warmth, his mouth, the quiet sound he made when your fingers slipped into his hair.
Then the doorbell rang.
Both of you froze.
Bobby’s head lifted.
The bell rang again. “Pizza,” you breathed.
He didn’t move. “Let them leave it.”
“It’s 1998. They’re not going to leave it.”
“They might.”
“They need paid.”
Bobby closed his eyes and lowered his forehead to your shoulder. “Right.”
You laughed softly, still slightly breathless. “Go answer it.”
“Why me?”
“You’re closer.”
“I’m not wearing a shirt.”
“That hasn’t bothered you all day.”
“It might bother the pizza guy.”
You pushed gently at his chest until he sat up, Bobby glanced down at himself, painfully hard in his shorts for the 10th time in 3 days, then at you sitting on the sofa with your shirt open over your bikini.
“You answer it.”
“I’m wearing less than you.”
“Debatable.” The bell rang a third time.
“Someone has to go,” you said.
Bobby grabbed the throw blanket from the sofa and wrapped it around your shoulders. “There.”
You stared at him. “I look insane.”
“You look modest.”
“I look like I escaped from a hospital.”
“You’re welcome.”
He handed you the money from the coffee table, then disappeared towards the kitchen before the delivery driver could see him.
Coward.
You pulled the blanket tightly around yourself and opened the front door.
A boy who couldn’t have been older than 17 stood on the porch holding two pizza boxes and a paper bag. He glanced at the blanket, then past you into the house. “Party?”
“No.”
“Right.”
You handed him the money. “Keep the change.” His expression brightened. “Thanks.”
As you took the boxes, Bobby appeared behind you. He had finally put on a white shirt, though the hem sat so high above his shorts that it had done very little to improve his modesty.
The delivery boy looked between you.
Recognition flickered across his face. “Franklin?”
Bobby stopped, FUCK! “Eddie.”
“You hanging out with Jacob?”
Bobby’s hand came to rest on the door above your head. “No.”
Eddie looked at you again, then at the blanket wrapped around your body.
Then back at Bobby.
A slow grin began to spread across his face.
Bobby’s expression hardened. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
You bit the inside of your cheek.
Eddie held both hands up. “Have a good night.”
Bobby shut the door before he reached the path.
You turned towards him. “You know him?”
“He used to work with Jacob.”
Your amusement vanished. “Oh..”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think he’ll say anything?”
Bobby looked through the narrow window beside the door, watching Eddie climb into his battered hatchback.
“Probably.” Your stomach tightened.
The car pulled away.
Bobby remained by the door, shoulders suddenly tense.
The entire mood had changed in seconds. “He didn’t see anything,” you said.
“He saw me here.”
“You’re always here.”
“Alone with you.”
“He doesn’t know we’re alone.”
Bobby gave you a pointed look.
You tightened the blanket around yourself. “Okay. He might know.”
“He definitely knows.”
“Knows what? That we ordered pizza?”
“That I answered your door half naked while you were wearing a blanket.”
“You weren’t half naked.”
“My shirt is up to my ribs.”
“That’s how all your shirts fit.”
“That isn’t helping.”
You set the pizzas on the coffee table.
Bobby was still standing near the door, staring towards it as though Jacob might burst through at any moment.
“Bobby.” He looked at you. “Come eat.”
“What if Eddie calls him?”
“He’d have to call the house and he isn’t here..” That seemed to ease him slightly.
You dropped the blanket onto the sofa and opened the first box. The smell of melted cheese filled the living room.
“Besides,” you added, “if Jacob asks, you stayed because Mom told you to watch the pool.”
Bobby walked closer. “While you wore a blanket?”
“I was cold.”
“It’s 80 degrees.”
“The air conditioning works.”
“Barely.”
You held out a slice of pizza. “Do you want this or not?”
He took it. “You’re not worried enough.”
“You worry enough for both of us.”
“That’s because you keep kissing me where people can see.”
“You followed me into my bedroom.”
“You dragged me inside.”
“You knocked on the door.”
“Quietly.”
You smiled and bit into your pizza.
Bobby stared at you for a second, then laughed despite himself. He sat on the floor in front of the sofa, back resting against it. You slid down beside him, your shoulders touching while you balanced your plates on your knees.
For a few minutes, neither of you spoke.
The television remained off. The radio outside had gone silent. You ate to the faint hum of the air conditioner and the occasional passing car.
It felt strangely normal.
That frightened you more than being caught might have.
Bobby stole one of the mushrooms from your slice.
You slapped his hand. “You said you didn’t like mushrooms.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why did you take it?”
“To confirm.”
“You’ve eaten them before?”
“Could’ve changed.”
“Did it?”
“No.” He dropped it onto your plate.
You stared at him. “You’re disgusting.”
“You kissed me.”
“That was before I knew you stole food just to hate it.”
Bobby smiled around his next bite.
When the first slice was gone, he reached for another, then paused. “So.”
You groaned. “There it is.”
“You promised.”
“I know.”
“You said after food.”
“We’re still eating.”
“You finished your slice.”
“I’m starting another.”
“That’s cheating.”
“You asked a vague question. I gave a vague deadline.”
Bobby set his plate aside. “You’re avoiding it.”
You selected another slice with exaggerated care. “Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to blush again.”
“I’m not.”
“You are already.” He touched his cheek defensively. “I’m warm.”
“The air conditioning works, remember?”
Bobby narrowed his eyes.
You smiled and took a bite.
He waited.
He didn’t tease or pressure, he simply sat beside you, shoulder warm against yours, giving you enough silence to decide whether you genuinely wanted to answer.
The question had felt playful outside.
Here, alone in the darkening room, it felt different.
More honest.
You lowered the pizza. “I like someone who pays attention.”
Bobby glanced at you. “That’s it?”
“No.”
“What else?”
“I like not having to ask for everything.”
His expression became thoughtful rather than smug. “You mean he didn’t..”
“I mean Cole treated intimacy like something he was doing by himself while I happened to be there.”
Bobby’s jaw tightened.
You looked down at your plate. “He wanted to be told he was great. He didn’t actually want to know whether I thought he was.”
“What an asshole.”
You laughed faintly. “You keep saying that.”
“Because he keeps sounding like one.”
“He wasn’t evil Bobby, just selfish.”
“Still counts.”
You placed the half eaten slice back in the box. “I like being kissed slowly, sometimes.”
Bobby’s eyes settled on your mouth.
“Sometimes?” His gaze returned to yours.
You continued before losing your nerve.
“I like someone who asks, not every two seconds, but enough that I know they care whether I’m comfortable.”
Bobby remained very still, he rested his elbow on the sofa and watched you, tried to work you out.
“And I like being touched like am not something to rush through.”
The confidence in his expression softened. “How?”
You looked at him, he almost blushed again, but he didn’t look away this time.
“Like you were touching my thighs, how you treated me in the pool.” His fingers shifted against his knee, he thought about how he sped up, how he practically covered your mouth to silence you. God, am an asshole.
“Softy bobby, gentle.”
Bobby nodded once, absorbing the information with such seriousness that affection tightened in your chest.
You nudged his shoulder. “You look like you’re studying for an exam.”
“I’m listening.”
“I noticed.”
“What else?” You smiled. “You’re very eager.”
“I asked a question.”
“You’ve asked about 12..”
“I like complete answers.”
“No, you don’t. You barely passed English.”
“That was because the teacher hated me.”
“Mrs. Frisk loved you.”
“She failed me.”
“You never handed anything in.”
“Exactly, Personal grudge.”
You laughed, resting your head against his shoulder.
Bobby leaned into you, after a moment, he said quietly, “I don’t want you to have to ask me to care.”
Your smile faded.
His voice lacked its usual playfulness.
You turned your face towards him.
Bobby stared at the pizza box rather than at you. “I know this is complicated,” he continued. “And I know I’ve been acting like an idiot. But I don’t want you thinking I’d treat you like that.”
“I don’t.”
“You barely know what I’m like with someone.”
“I know what you’re like with me.”
He looked at you then. “What am I like with you?”
“Scared.”
He gave you an unimpressed look.“Besides that.”
“Protective.”
“That’s what got me into this mess.”
“You listen.”
“Sometimes.”
“You notice things.”
“Too many things.”
“You stayed last night even though you thought Dad might kill you.”
The smile disappeared from his face, his expression opened instead, tenderness moving through it so plainly that you almost had to look away.
Bobby reached out and brushed his thumb beneath your lower lip, collecting a spot of pizza sauce. “Messy,” he murmured.
“You ate a mushroom you don’t like.”
“That’s unrelated.”
He wiped his thumb on a napkin, then his hand returned to your face.
This time, his knuckles traced slowly along your cheek.
Softly.
Exactly as you had described.
Your breath caught.
Bobby noticed. “Like that?” he asked.
You nodded.
His fingers moved into your hair, pushing it back from your face. He leaned closer, but stopped before kissing you. “Can I?”
The question was barely a whisper.
You smiled. “Yes.”
His mouth touched yours slowly, no teeth knocking, no frantic tangle of tongues. He kissed you with deliberate patience, one hand cradling the side of your face while the other rested loosely against your waist.
You felt every small movement.
The brush of his thumb beneath your ear.
The quiet breath he released when you leaned into him.
The faint smile against your lips when your fingers curled into the front of his shirt.
It didn’t rush anywhere.
When he pulled back, you followed without meaning to. Bobby’s forehead rested against yours. “That?” he asked.
“That.” You confirmed.
He looked pleased with himself. “Good.”
“Don’t ruin it by getting smug.”
“Too late.”
You kissed him again before he could say anything else, the kiss deepened naturally, still slower than before but warmer now. Bobby’s hand slipped to your thigh, fingertips moving carefully across your skin.
He didn’t go farther.
He simply touched you as though he had all the time in the world.
The thought arrived unexpectedly.
You were leaving tomorrow.
One more day had sounded generous when the sun was high and Bobby was laughing in the pool. Now the night had begun, and every hour seemed to be disappearing faster than the last.
You pulled away.
Bobby searched your face. “What?”
“I leave tomorrow.”
His hand stilled. “I know.”
“I don’t want to.” The admission sounded younger than you intended.
Bobby looked down. “College is important.”
“I know that.”
“You have classes.”
“I know.”
“And your life there.”
“I know, Bobby.” His mouth tightened, he had slipped back into practicality because the alternative hurt too much. “What happens after I go?” you asked.
He stared at the carpet. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I’m not trying to avoid it.”
“You avoid everything.”
“Not everything.”
“You called me a kid. You said the kiss was nothing. You’ve spent two days hiding every time Jacob walks into a room.”
“Because he’s my best friend.”
“And I’m leaving.”
“I know.” His voice cracked with frustration.
You went quiet.
Bobby rubbed both hands over his face.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth.” He lowered his hands. “The truth is, I don’t want you to leave either.” Your chest tightened.
“The truth is, I’ve spent the entire weekend wondering what happens when Jacob finds out. Because he will find out. I can lie to him for a few days, maybe a few weeks, but I can’t do it forever.”
“So you want to stop?”
“No.” The answer came instantly, Bobby even seemed surprised by his own certainty.
He turned towards you fully. “No. I don’t want to stop.”
You searched his face. “Then what do you want?”
He looked at you for a long moment.“You.” The word was quiet, almost reluctant because admitting it made everything real. “I want you,” he repeated. “And I have no idea how to do that without hurting Jacob.”
You reached for his hand. “He might surprise you.”
“He said it would be horrifying.”
“He also thinks I’m a baby.”
“He threatened to kill me.”
“He threatens everyone.”
“He means it with me.”
“Probably.” Bobby stared at you.
You smiled faintly. “Not helping?”
“No.” You laced your fingers through his. “We don’t have to solve everything tonight.”
“It feels like we do.”
“Why?”
“Because you leave tomorrow.”
“And I’ll come back.”
“When?”
“Thanksgiving.”
Bobby’s expression fell. “That’s months.”
“I can visit before then.”
“You’ll call?”
The vulnerability in the question caught you off guard. “Yes.”
“Not just your mother?” You squeezed his hand. “You.” He nodded, looking down at your joined fingers. “And I could drive up,” he said like it was the most casual thing ever. “To campus?”
“If you wanted.”
“I’d want.”
Bobby’s thumb moved over the back of your hand, then he lifted your hand to his mouth and kissed your knuckles.
The gesture was so unexpectedly tender that you stared at him. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re looking at me strangely.”
“I like that.” His eyes moved to your joined hands. “This?” He did it again, slower this time. You smiled, bobby watched the smile spread across your face, and something inside him seemed to settle.
He stood, pulling you gently with him.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re dancing.”
You smiled as he pulled you against him, one hand settling at your waist. He spun you once beneath his arm, laughing when you stumbled back into his chest.
Your arms slipped around his neck, and you looked at him as though loving him was the easiest thing you had ever done. Love?
Bobby held you closer, his forehead rested against yours as you swayed together. Neither of you spoke, just moved together in silence, his heartbeat a gentle rhythm.
You looked up at him, he held a struggled expression. The one he wore when he was thinking too much.
“What is it?”
He swallowed, eyes searching yours. “I’m telling Jacob in the morning.”
Your arms tightened around his neck “Everything?”
“Everything.” His thumb moved slowly against your side. “About the kiss. About tonight. About how I feel.” Fear flickered across his face, but he didn’t look away. “I don’t want to hide you,” he said. “And I also dont want to keep pretending this is something I can walk away from.”
Your heart stumbled. “Bobby..”
“I want to be with you.” The words came quietly, but there was no hesitation in them.
He pulled you closer until there was no space left between you. “Whatever happens tomorrow,” he whispered, resting his forehead against yours, “I’m choosing you.”
Tags: Reader is a pretty boy who looks like his mama, dragon rider!reader, pre relationship, attempts at flirting, it's pretty cute in my opinion but I am bias so, reader lowkey cleaning up his father's messes, Oscar Tully is already down bad for reader, and now reader is down bad for him
*Occurs during season two when Daemon is at Harrenhal
You only followed your father to Harrenhal to ensure he stays in line and stays loyal to the Queen Rhaenyra. You figured a pair of eyes that could and would report any traitorous activity to the Queen might help remind your father of his purpose at Harrenhal. It was well known by the realm that Deamon wasn't exactly… tame for lack of a better word. That was where your focus was, on your father.
Until Oscar Tully showed on behalf on his grandfather Lord Grover Tully.
He was around your age with brown curls and blue eyes. He stood to be about your height, you may have been an inch or two taller but that could have also been the effects of your riding boots. Despite his, unsurprising, nervous behavior around Daemon there was something about him that haunted your thoughts. Maybe it was the way he didn't take his eyes off you for very long even though he was speaking with your father. You weren't used to that direct attention, no matter how small the attention was.
You knew you had inherited your mother's looks and beauty, many had simply said so. Then of course there were young Lords or sons of Lords that had passed through Dragonstone and came to you for affection. Though they only came when you were alone or in darkened halls. They never blatantly stared at you, and especially not in front your father, like Oscar Tully did.
It truly did consume your thoughts.
Which made keeping an eye on your father much harder than you would have liked. You decided to go for a ride on your dragon to help clear your thoughts. Time alone in the air always helped you focus on what was important.
This plan backfired though when descended on a river bank for your dragon to take a drink and noticed said distraction already down there.
He was sitting with his back against a tree and looking up at you and your dragon. You sighed realizing he had noticed you and you couldn't exactly fly away now without seeming rude. You climbed off your dragon when you landed and made your way over to him.
Oscar was now standing, but he wasn't moving closer to you or your dragon.
"Lord [name]," He greeted with a smile, seeming more put together than when you first saw him.
"Lord Oscar," You returned the greeting and smile.
Seeing him up close again reminded you how attractive the riverman's features where. Especially the brown curls that seemed soft to the touch.
"Not a lord quite yet," He reminded you, though it wasn't in a rude way.
"You're right, my apologies," You amended. "How is the current Lord?"
Oscar narrowed his eyes at you and there was a slight smirk on his face as he spoke, "Did you really ride out here on dragon back just to find out if I'm Lord Paramount yet?"
You rolled your eyes with a small smile.
"No. I was not looking for anyone, let alone you-"
"I'm wounded."
You chuckled, "That does not mean this isn't a pleasant surprise. I'm glad to run into you, I would like apologize to you."
"Apologize," Oscar repeated, sounding genuinely surprised.
"The way my father pushed you, regarding your grandfather's health, was harsh and disrespectful," You told him earnestly. "I'm sure you can imagine the stress of this current situation but that's no excuse for his actions."
There was a beat of silence.
"Well, it's not like my father is polite in non stressful situations but still."
Oscar laughed, "Now that I can imagine.”
You couldn't help but smile at the sound. It was pleasant to hear.
"Could I ask you a question?" You treaded carefully with your words.
Oscar nodded.
"Do you think the Lord Paramount would raise his banners to the Queen Rhaenrya's cause?"
"Yes." There was no hesitation in his answer.
"Then why not fulfill his wishes for him?"
"Because he still lives," Oscar spoke bluntly. The same answer he gave your father.
You nodded, not pressing the issue any further.
"Nothing else to ask," Oscar inquired.
You shook your head, "If I were to continue then my apology on behalf of my father would be pointless."
Oscar stared at you with an unreadable look.
"You're quite intriguing, my lord," Oscar stated with the smallest of smiles. "Nothing like what they say you to be."
"How so," You asked, turning to face him more.
Oscar took a slight step to be closer to you.
"Well, you truly are as beautiful as they say-" You can feel a slight blush creeping onto your face at his words. "-but you hold no similarities to your father."
"Well, I am as skilled with a sword as he is and I take pride in being a dragon rider as he does but I suppose that is where the resemblance stops.”
As if on cue your dragon poked your back to get your attention. Though you only stumbled a little closer to Oscar, your hand grasped his bicep out of reflex and he placed a hand on your waist to steady you. There were only mere inches between your faces and you realized the two of you were the same height.
"I think it's a good thing," Oscar said, his voice a little quieter now. "How you differ from your father."
Neither of you retracted your hands from each other and it did not go unnoticed as Oscar looked at your lips.
Your dragon let out a huff of annoyance.
"I think I need to go back to Harrenhal," You spoke just as quiet. "But do come by if anything changes regarding the Lord Paramount."
You looked at Oscar's lips for a moment.
"Or for anything at all," You added quickly.
A confident smile grew on Oscar's face.
"I will," He told you.
"Good."
You stayed staring at each other for a moment and your dragon hissed a bit aggressively. You looked over your shoulder, not dropping your hand from Oscar, to look at the beast who seemed very irritated. You looked back at Oscar, the smile still hadn't left his face.
You finally dropped your hand and stepped back and Oscar folded his hands behind his back.
"Til then," You stated.
"Til then, my Lord," He said.
You gave him one last smile before mounting your dragon. Although you weren't looking, you could feel his eyes on you as took to the sky.
Warnings: 18+ // MDNI // fem pleasuring. Bobby has a vivid imagination
They left shortly before three.
Your father loaded the bags into the station wagon while muttering that Dennis should sell the canoe.
Jacob stood in the driveway with the expression of someone being sent to prison. “This is bullshit.”
“You’ll survive,” you told him.
“You get the house, the pool and no parents.”
“I’m 19. I don’t need supervising.”
“You’re still annoying.”
“Have fun with Aunt Carol.” You waved sarcastically.
“I hate you.” He pulled you into a rough hug anyway.
Bobby stood near the garage with both hands in his pockets, trying to look as though he had no particular interest in whether the family left.
Jacob pointed at him. “Don’t let her throw a party.” Bobby nodded solemnly. “I’ll keep her under control.” You looked at him, his mouth twitched. “Don’t let him smoke all my weed,” Jacob added.
“That’s your primary concern?” you asked.
“Yes.”
Bobby lifted both hands. “I make no promises.”
Your mom climbed into the passenger seat, then lowered her window. “You two behave.” She put on her sunglasses, you saw her eyebrows raise playfully above the black rims.
Your father started the engine.
Bobby went pale again.
Jacob looked between you. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” your mother answered brightly. “I say it every time I leave.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Get in the car Jacob!”
Jacob climbed into the back seat, still frowning.
The station wagon pulled away from the curb.
You watched until it reached the end of the road and disappeared around the corner.
You and Bobby remained several feet apart.
The neighborhood sounded strangely louder without your family, the distant buzz of lawnmowers, a basketball bouncing against concrete, children shouting somewhere behind the row of houses.
Bobby looked at you. You looked at him.
“Your mom just kidnapped your family,” he said, sounding surprised. We’re alone crossed his mind.
You folded your arms. “She’s supportive.”
“She’s insane.”
“She likes you.”
“She threatened me last night.”
“She gave you the house today.”
Bobby stared down the empty street. “This feels like a trap.” His eyes narrowed, suspiciously.
“You think Dad’s hiding in the bushes?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out.”
You laughed, breaking the tension, Bobby shook his head, smiling despite himself. Then he took your hand.
Not secretly. Not beneath a table or behind someone’s back.
He simply reached for it in the middle of the driveway, laced his fingers through yours and led you towards the house. The casualness of the gesture affected you more than the kisses had.
It was different when there was no one nearby to hide from.
Bobby must have felt it too, his thumb moved slowly across the back of your hand.
Neither of you let go until you reached the pool.
The rest of the afternoon belonged entirely to the two of you.
You changed back into your bikini while Bobby found towels and brought the radio outside. By the time you returned, he had moved two loungers together beneath the umbrella and opened a pair of sodas.
He sat on the edge of the pool in his shorts and shirt, one hand trailing lazily through the water. Today hadn’t been as hot as yesterday, the blunt rested between his fingers. He made quick work to roll one up while you changed.
“You’ve already smoked enough,” you said.
Bobby looked over his shoulder. “I’ve smoked exactly the right amount.”
“You fell over putting the umbrella up.”
“The ground moved.”
“The ground does not move.”
“Not with that attitude.”
You laughed and sat beside him, dipping your feet into the pool, he held the blunt towards you.
You shook your head, politely declining. “Someone needs to remain capable of calling an ambulance.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been staring at the same pool float for five minutes.”
“It looks like a duck.”
“There is no angle where that’s a duck.”
Bobby narrowed his eyes at the float. “You lack imagination, college girl.”
“You’re too high.”
“Probably.” He sounded pleased by this, chuckling lightly to himself.
You rested your head against his shoulder.
Bobby went quiet, for all his foolishness, touching him still affected him. Making him look around, someone was bound to appear. Every casual touch from you seemed to surprise him as though some part of him expected you to come to your senses and pull away, maybe you decide this isn’t what you wanted, he wasn’t what you wanted. He leaned his head gently against yours anyway.
The radio played softly from the picnic table. Sunlight glittered across the water, and the neighborhood stretched lazily around you beneath the afternoon heat. “This is weird,” Bobby murmured.
“What is?”
“Being here without everybody.”
“You’re here without everybody all the time.”
“Not with you.”
You traced your toes through the water. “That’s because I was away.”
“I know.”
“Did you really miss me?”
He tilted his head to look at you. “We already talked about this.”
“You said the house was quieter.”
“It was.”
“And that was bad.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Bobby stared across the pool, his joint had nearly burnt out to the roach between his fingers. He dropped it into an empty soda can and set it behind him. “You were always making noise.”
“That sounds like an insult.”
“It’s not.”
“What kind of noise?”
“Music upstairs. Fighting with Jacob. Talking to your friends on the phone for four hours.”
“You listened to my phone calls?”
“The entire house listened. You weren’t quiet.”
You smiled at the reminder of his words outside the guest room.
Don’t be quiet.
Bobby saw the connection in your expression, his gaze dropped to your mouth and a small blush creeped on his cheeks. He had heard you that night, his name. He cursed himself for interrupting, he should have let you continue. “You know what I mean,” he said. “I do.”
“The house felt empty.”
Your teasing faded, he looked faintly embarrassed by the admission.
You pressed a small kiss against his shoulder.
Bobby’s eyes closed.
“I missed you too,” you said.
His head turned. “You did?”
“You came over every day.”
“That doesn’t mean you missed me.”
“I used to know the sound of your truck.”
Bobby smiled. “You still do.”
The statement was quiet and certain.
You looked at him, every time you looked into the blue of his eyes you felt your pulse quicken, he is beautiful. He leaned in slowly, the kiss was nothing like the one in the truck, there was no panic behind it. No eyes opening to search windows. No hands hovering in indecision.
His mouth touched yours with careful warmth, lingering gently, you held the back of head to pull him closer, he stiffened his shoulders when you slipped your tongue past his lips searching for his, he relaxed and found it. Gently massaging, a soft flick when you turned your faces in opposite directions. When he pulled back, he stayed close enough that your noses brushed. “You know your mom probably expects us to spend the entire time doing that,” he murmured.
“She specifically told me not to have sex with you here.”
“Exactly.”
“So we should disappoint her.”
Bobby laughed, head tipping back. “Your logic is dangerous.”
“What? She left us alone.”
“She left us unsupervised. That doesn’t mean she gave permission.”
“You’re 23.”
“That didn’t stop her pointing at me like I was 15.”
You laughed and pushed him into the pool.
Bobby hit the water with a surprised yell. You scrambled to your feet, but he surfaced immediately. “You’re dead.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I mean it this time.” He grabbed your ankle.
You shrieked as he pulled you into the water. The splash soaked the towels and knocked one of the sodas onto its side. You surfaced laughing, pushing wet hair from your eyes.
Bobby stood in front of you, water reaching just above his waist. His hair was plastered across his forehead, and his white shirt clung completely to his chest and stomach.
“You went in with your shirt on.”
He looked down. “Apparently.” You laughed so hard you had to hold onto his shoulders.
Bobby wrapped his arms around your waist to keep you upright. For several minutes, neither of you could stop. It was ridiculous.
Nothing had happened except pushing him into a pool fully dressed, yet every time you looked at him, you started laughing again. Then he began, which set you off once more. Eventually you rested your forehead against his chest, breathless.
“You’re an idiot.”
“You pushed me.”
You lifted your face, he was already smiling down at you. The look in his eyes was soft and unguarded, helped considerably by the weed and the absence of anyone he needed to hide from.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. The words came so naturally that you almost missed them.
Your laughter faded. “What?”
Bobby blinked, the delayed realization of what he had said moved across his face. “I said that out loud?” You nodded, he looked towards the house as though your mother might still be watching from the kitchen window. “You’re too high to lie,” you teased.
“I wasn’t lying.”
Your heart tightened, bobby’s arms remained around your waist. Beneath the water, your body rested against his, held gently rather than urgently swaying you both gently in the water. “You really think so?”
He looked almost offended. “I almost died when you walked outside wearing this.” He pinged the strap of your bikini making you flinch. “Hey!” You playfully tapped his hand away. “That was the smoke.”
“No.” His face became completely serious. “It was you.”
You smiled.
Jacob had laughed at him.
Bobby had blamed the blunt.
But your mom had known, you should have known too.
“You couldn’t have said that yesterday?”
“I was scared yesterday.”
“And today?”
He considered the question with exaggerated care. “Still scared.”
“But high?”
“Very.”
“That helps?”
“Tremendously.”
You laughed again, bobby leaned forward and kissed the tip of your nose.
Then your cheek.
Then the corner of your mouth.
Each kiss was slow and playful, making your stomach flutter, you kissed his lips and pulled away searching his face while sucking your lower lip between your teeth, painfully so. You took his hand and placed it on top of your bikini covered breast, he looks down and inhaled sharply with a crease on his forehead. He’s scared, but he doesn’t pull away. Arching his head down to kiss you again, it’s slow and heavy. He keeps his hand on you chest, giving a small squeeze that caused his lips to fall apart and gasp as if you had touched him. This is wrong, this is.. right.
He had completely surrendered all will, all hope is lost he told himself. Between the thought of you and the buzz of the static caused by the weed he was either thinking straight, thinking with his dick or worrying, worrying about being cause. He pulled away, one quick look towards the house then you, then his hand on you, then the house again. He looked back at you and nodded once, kissing you again. “You’re..” “so..” “amazing.” He broke away from your lips each time to speak, he couldn’t be away from them for long.
You pulled back, too embarrassed to look at him. You kissed the side of his check once, then twice before speaking. “I want you to touch me, bobby.” You whispered it in his jawline, he looked around as if anyone might see. No one is around, the house is empty. “Where?” He breathed carefully, you took his wrist and pulled his hand away from your breast and brought it under the water, hiking your leg up to his waist opening your legs for him to feel you. He pressed his forehead against yours, water dripping faintly from his hair as you guided his hand between your legs and placed him over your bikini bottoms. “Are you sure?” He’s hesitating again, he’s scared again. You would have called him a massive pussy but you wanted to have him finally touch you, cross that line neither of you were coming back from.
You nod, pulling him closer by the shoulders into a kiss. He doesn’t move his hand, he doesn’t intrude. He just allows his middle finger to move side to side between your cloth covered folds. Moaning into his mouth, nails digging into his shoulders leaving small welts on his skin. He doesn’t enter, he’s a man who can work you with just his finger moving lazily. You’re trying to climb him, you need to be closer, you couldn’t get closer, you fumbled a hand into the water, frenzied. You need more, you grip at the cloth between your thighs and pull it aside pushing your hips further into his touch.
Bobby inhaled sharply when you kissed him, his breath trapped somewhere between surprise and surrender, it left him in slow, unsteady bursts against your lips, as every time you pulled away, he had to remember how to breathe again. His finger slipped between the skin, contact with the bundle he knew how to find with experience. He watched you with glazed covered eyes as you lowered your head back, chest heaving against the water as he moved slowly. He still never entered inside you, he only touched, he only rubbed the pad of his finger against you.
He wondered to himself, if you’d make these noises while he’s inside you? Would you be able to take him? His mind running a million miles an hour, from the moment you asked him to touch you his cock jumped. He didn’t want to take you in the pool, he’d fuck you anywhere you asked but not the pool, he hoped a bed. Your bed, tangled in the sheets, sweaty. He shook his head, trying to contain the images in his mind and focus on you, focus on his speed and movements. You are both wet from the water but he can feel the slicked heat on your folds, you want him.
You looked at him with lowered brows, lips parts and chest raging. You had been fingered before, you had sex before but nothing felt like this, no one made you feel this way. He knew what he was doing, bobby knew to touch you again in the same spot every time a whimper escaped your lips. Before long he had you gripping him tightly, clinging to him as if you might fall off the earth. Hips rocking into his fingers, those soft whimpers turned into loud prolonged moans, he looked around now and then making sure, making sure it was only you. He looked at you with concern, concern that this was still okay, you were okay. “Bobby.” The way his name slid from your tongue felt weighted, “Bobby am close.” He’d wrap his arm around your waist, holding you close moving his fingers a little faster while you rocked.
He looked around a final time, he knew he’d have to kiss you. Kiss you to stop from screaming in pleasure, you had already gotten loud, “come for me.” He whispered, forehead against yours. You nodded, he felt the still of your hips. His mouth found yours, swallowing every noise. He allowed nothing to escape, he didn’t want to get caught fingering you in the pool by the neighbours. The way you gripped him with your nails was almost painful but he took it while your hips shuddered against his hand, he would take everything you would throw his way, he wasn’t letting you go.
He’d tell Jacob tomorrow, the truth.
When you finally caught your breath, controlled your chest from rattling, bobby removed his hands and allowed you to stand in the water. He still held you, he looked happier than you had ever seen him. Smug by his skill. He thought you looked beautiful, lower lip plump from biting at it, cheeks red. The unmissable read of I want you, written across your eyes.
Neither of you mentioned it yet, for now, there was sunlight, warm pool water and Bobby’s arms around you.
There were no parents watching.
No Jacob making jokes.
No brotherly loyalty being measured against every glance.
Only the two of you.
You lifted your hand and pushed the wet hair from Bobby’s forehead.
He turned his face into your palm, pressing a kiss against it. “You’re staring,” he murmured.
“So are you.”
“I’m allowed.”
“Since when?”
“Since you just came over my hand.”
You blushed, then laughed. “That’s the rule?”
“Apparently.” He kissed you again.
Slowly this time, his hands spread against the small of your back, drawing you closer while the water moved gently around your bodies.
When you parted, his forehead remained against yours. “Do you want me to touch you?” You asked, the evidence of his erection strained against your hip. Bobby’s smile faded, his eyes moved across your face as though trying to memorize it.
You swallowed.
“No.” He shook his head, then looked towards the floating pool chair again. “The duck’s watching us.”
You followed his gaze. “It is still a chair.”
“Don’t ruin this for me.”
You laughed and splashed him.
The seriousness dissolved.
Not completely.
It remained beneath every smile and touch, reminding you that time was moving whether you wanted it to or not but for the rest of the afternoon, you let yourselves forget.
You floated side by side beneath the sun, your fingers linked between the loungers. Bobby told you ridiculous stories about Jacob from the months you had been away. You read paragraphs from your English literature book aloud until Bobby declared every dead poet miserable.
At one point, he became deeply invested in whether Shakespeare had ever been high.
At another, he spent ten minutes trying to balance a melting ice cube on his stomach.
You laughed until your sides hurt and every so often, the laughter would quiet.
Bobby would look at you.
Really look.
Then his fingers would trace gently across your arm or his mouth would find yours, as though he needed to reassure himself that the day was real.
You lay together on one lounger despite there being two, your head against his chest and his arm around your waist.
The high had softened into drowsiness.
Bobby’s fingers moved lazily through your hair. “You know,” he murmured, “your mom might be my favorite person.”
“You were terrified of her this morning.”
“I’ve changed.”
“She’d be delighted to hear that.”
“Don’t tell her.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to retain some dignity.”
You lifted your head and looked at him. “You fell out of my bed in your underwear.”
Bobby closed his eyes. “I forgot about that.”
“I’ll never forget.”
“You’re cruel.”
“And yet you missed me.” His arm tightened around you. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I did.” The words held no hesitation now.
You settled against him again, listening to his heartbeat beneath your ear.
The sun continued sinking behind the neighboring rooftops.
You get injected with an unknown toxin and now your loyal teammates are determined to help ease your suffering.
— pairing: Task Force 141 × fem!141!Reader
— cw: 18+ | sex pollen; dubcon/fuck or die; dd:dne; medical & military inaccuracies; pining; hurt/comfort; angst; fluff; cum and orgasms as the antidote; wc: 12k+
author's note: This has been in my drafts for two years 💀 And she would've said yes to all of them.
"We need some answers, Kate. Now." Captain Price's voice booms inside the spacious briefing room.
He's practically pacing in front of the desk like some anxious K-9, arms folded over his plate carrier as he keeps his sharp eyes trained on Laswell and the two scientists sitting behind their laptops, staring at their respective screens.
Meanwhile, the rest of his team is still as geared up as their Captain—all waiting for orders or further instructions, scattered around the room and listening with bated breath while Price grows more agitated with each shaky exhale he can hear coming from you.
You're currently sitting on one of the tables, boot-clad feet dangling off the edge as you stare at the ceiling, right into the fluorescent lights above, ignoring the way your eyes begin to sting from their brightness.
You've been putting on a brave face since getting stabbed with the needle a few hours ago and you've kept the façade up since hopping off the helo back on base, but it's getting harder to mask the panic rising inside you as your body starts to feel funny.
You swipe the back of your gloved hand over your sweaty forehead, catching the cold perspiration on your feverish skin with the rough fabric, and out of your peripherals, you notice the way your teammates' heads snap in your direction—different-coloured pairs of eyes assessing you with worry, concern, and a hint of curiosity.
Soap and Gaz are standing to your left and right respectively, sneaking glances at you whenever you shift on your spot, while the Lieutenant is still as a marble statue a little offside, arms crossed over his bulky tac vest.
Laswell begins to explain calmly, clutching a thick folder to her chest.
"We're still waiting on anything concrete, John, but the research papers your team managed to extract have offered a great insight on that—whatever that bioweapon is."
Bioweapon.
Your eyes widen as you sit up straight, the word making your heart race and your skin crawl with fear. Both Soap and Gaz take a step closer—two strong pairs of arms outstretched and ready to catch you if you faint.
"Easy there, John—" Laswell says firmly, unbothered by his tone as she takes a step towards the captain and gestures at the two scientists watching the scene unfold with wide eyes from behind their laptops.
"They said she won't die. The amount of injection was too low… apparently."
Apparently?!
You inhale sharply and open your mouth to announce your imminent panic, but you're interrupted when one of the scientists speaks up first.
"That is correct, sir. She won't die."
Professor Doctor Boswel, as the name badge on his white lab coat states, chimes in. Price stops pacing at once, though his sharp eyes scream you better start explaining now, or one of you will be made responsible for this.
"Bringing the syringe back to base was the decisive factor. Our team at the lab is still working to decipher and translate the medical reports and research papers your team recovered, but we can confirm that this bioweapon is most likely a toxin."
A low murmur of various curses goes through the briefing room as you try to ignore the odd tingles in your limbs—like they're going numb from sitting in a bad position for too long—and process the doctor's words instead.
"You're saying I've been poisoned, doc?" You butt in crudely, letting out a humourless laugh as you begin fidgeting with your hands, clenching and unclenching them to get rid of those tingles while a cold drop of sweat trickles down your left temple and is swiftly wiped away by Soap's gloved thumb.
"Fuckin’ hell, lass. Ye dinnae look too good," Soap mutters under his breath, exchanging a concerned glance with Gaz, who then looks to the captain for guidance with a serious frown.
When Gaz turns around abruptly, you get a whiff of his scent, and you're ashamed to admit to yourself that you inhale it deeply—musk and sweat and gunpowder smoke, a hint of his fancy body wash lingering underneath all the grime. A perfect concoction of what is entirely Gaz.
It's intoxicating. Mouth-watering.
And absolutely inappropriate, because he's one of your best friends and a comrade.
What the hell is happening?
Of all the injuries and wounds you've already acquired during missions and deployments, this must be the fucking worst. You'd rather get shot or stabbed than sit here, feel strange as hell and be ogled like a failed science experiment.
Price's eyes flicker to Ghost, who hasn't said a word since sitting you down on the table with a gruff order to stay seated, and then to his three sergeants, lingering on you heavily before he turns back.
"What kind of bloody toxin?"
"It seems to be some sort of aphrodisiac, but… uh, well—about fifty times worse than that."
The other scientist, Professor Doctor Adebayo, answers tentatively, as if explaining it out loud makes him uncomfortable.
"The reports say it turns men—"
Dr. Adebayo hesitates, clearing his throat and looking between Laswell and Captain Price, until the latter lets out an exasperated sigh.
"Turns them what, doc?"
It's Laswell who says it eventually, "Turns them aggressive, John. Feral with lust, as ridiculous as that might sound."
The CIA agent finally looks in your direction before approaching you slowly while Dr. Adebayo seems to heave a sigh of relief as soon as she takes over.
"A high dose of it can be used to lower one's inhibition levels to a point where even the most honourable man would resort to sexual assault to ease his urges."
Her factual yet grim explanation makes the tension inside the briefing room spike tenfold. Every man present tenses up, visibly uncomfortable—Ghost especially, who's practically vibrating with strain.
Using a toxin like that—a bioweapon—on soldiers in the field could lead to even more and worse war crimes, and everyone here is aware of that.
"Wait—what? What the fuck?" Gaz utters, bristling next to you while you grip the edge of the table, gritting your teeth as the tingles intensify and wreck through your body in waves that leave you shuddering with each one.
"'Scuse me, what now?" You scoff. "Does that mean I'm gonna turn into a fuckin' nympho any second?"
Multiple pairs of eyes snap towards you at your choice of words. Some look intense and laced with worry. Price scolds you with one glance. Others look mildly amused—the latter being Soap, who lets out a snort but tries to cover it up with a fake cough into his fist.
Laswell surveys you intently, though her voice softens when she addresses you directly.
"How are you feeling, Sergeant? Are you in pain? Nauseous?"
A beat of silence follows. Your eyes flutter briefly as you meet Kate's blue gaze, and you exhale a long breath through your nostrils before you answer curtly.
"I feel weird."
You feel like you're about to get your period, but you keep that information to yourself for now and try not to wrap your arms around yourself self-soothingly.
Your lower abdomen is starting to tighten and cramp. Your gut twists like you just chugged a steaming bowl of soup and your limbs keep tingling—from your toes to your fingertips, and up to the tip of your nose. Tiny vibrations along with hot and cold flushes that make you quake and squirm in your seat on the table.
Kate squints at you, though she doesn't press further.
"What kind of effect will this stuff have on her?" Price enquires gruffly, more level-headed this time, his gaze shifting from the two scientists over to you and then back.
Meanwhile, as you crank your sore neck from left to right to get a good crack in, your eyes catch sight of Soap's muscular forearms and—to your horror—they linger.
The sleeves of his combat fatigues are rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark coarse hair and thick veins and that damn SAS insignia tattoo.
You want to trace the black lines with your tongue and imagine the salt of his skin on your parched taste buds.
And your eyes widen when a sudden rush of mind-numbing, pulsating heat makes you squeeze your thighs together as you clench your jaw to keep the lewd sound bubbling up in your throat from escaping.
Soap shoots you a quizzical look, one eyebrow raising as you avert your eyes from him swiftly, heat crawling up your neck and prickling beneath your skin.
"Fuck," you breathe, doubling over with a groan as the muscles in your thighs and lower abdomen begin to cramp up painfully while you can practically feel your pussy start convulsing around nothing, leaking with arousal and soaking into your underwear.
In a matter of seconds, your team—Ghost included, like a solid wall of quiet reassurance—are by your side, keeping you upright, asking questions, though their deep, accented voices are muffled as your quickening heartbeat begins to thud in your ears.
Their every touch seems to burn through the thick layers of your kit.
"Kate—Kate," Price is by her side in a few long strides, ducking his head to get on eye-level with her as he points at the two scientists accusingly, though Kate is already on her smartphone, contacting the lab again.
Price huffs like an angry bull trying to protect his herd as he turns his attention back to Dr. Boswel and Dr. Adebayo, who seem to be in a frenzied discussion, watching the way you're cramping and writhing.
"What the fuck is happening to her?" He barks at them, demanding an answer yesterday.
"It's—it's the toxin," Dr. Boswel stammers obviously, blinking up at Captain Price from behind his glasses. "She didn't get the full dose, but it's still—" He pauses, eyes flickering nervously under the captain's glare. "—bad."
Another gut-wrenching moan from you echoes through the briefing room as you squirm in Gaz's embrace, and Price must restrain himself from directing his wrath towards the two men in front of him—it's not their fault, after all.
It's his.
"Oxytocin might help… neutralize the toxin in her body," Dr. Adebayo remarks, clicking his pen nervously as he stares at his laptop screen before meeting Dr. Boswel's eyes, who is waiting for an elucidation.
"The hormone," Dr. Adebayo clears his throat again, clearly uncomfortable, "—not the drug." He clarifies, clicking his pen a few more times.
Laswell lowers her phone and shares a look with Price, holding an entire conversation with one long, meaningful glance, the one learned and perfected over more than a decade of working together, when Gaz's voice breaks through the chaos, calling for attention.
"Cap'n! What do we do?!"
You're not brought back to the barracks but Captain Price's private quarters.
Your squad makes sure to keep you out of sight in your condition; away from prying eyes while Ghost sneaks through the shadows with your quivering form cradled against his chest, carrying you bridal style like you're something fragile, something vulnerable he must protect.
Once safely inside the captain's flat, the curtains are drawn before your heavy gear is stripped from you, all while you don't even bother paying attention to who is grabbing or holding you at this point.
All that matters is someone touching you.
Your brain is mush, reduced to your most simple and carnal desires. No shame nor worry about the needy noises you're making whenever one of their big, strong hands strips another layer of clothing.
"Shit, I think she has a fever," Gaz mutters, cupping your face with both hands as he investigates your hazy, unfocused eyes while you let out another pathetic whimper. "She's completely out of it."
"Get her into the guest bedroom. Down the hall, first door on the left," Price orders gruffly, trying to keep his eyes from wandering up and down the length of your trembling, half-naked body.
"I'll call the senior consultant."
Ghost grumbles a low curse under his breath when your hand brushes over the front of his crotch—by accident or voluntarily this time, he doesn't dare imagine—and leaves the guest bedroom while Gaz and Soap manoeuvre you onto the king-sized bed.
Meanwhile, you don't care about the effect your uncharacteristic behaviour has on your teammates and superiors.
Whenever they try to make you drink or take an easy bite of food—whether it's a chewy protein bar or an overripe banana, because Price has no proper groceries at his place—you twist in whoever's embrace you're in, turning your scrunched-up face away like a petulant toddler.
"I don't wanna," you whine and hiccup, protesting each time Gaz tries to lift the rim of the water bottle to your lips, your speech now slightly slurred, glossy eyes averting their gaze as you breathe shallowly, squirming while Soap keeps you propped up with your back resting against his chest on the bed.
Gaz, who has been trying again to make you drink a sip of water for the past twenty minutes, looks back at his Lieutenant and Captain helplessly.
"Doc said we need to keep her hydrated," Price announces, rubbing his bare hand over his tired face. "Keep flushing that bloody poison outta her system and—"
Suddenly, Ghost's deep, gravelly voice interrupts the captain's speech with a harsh bite to it. "Johnny."
Soap, who has been trying his best to ignore the way you keep grinding your arse against his crotch in this position, ducks his head at the sharp and sudden warning.
"What? 'M not doin' anythin'," he grunts before sucking in a sharp breath as his cock keeps stirring and twitching in his combat trousers, "Fuck, lass, please—"
Soap tries to keep you from moving; his ungloved hands get a firm hold of your hips, but you're practically panting and mewling in his lap, making it harder for him not to crumble under the pressure building up in his dick.
Then Gaz is swift to pluck you out of the Scot's embrace with a disdainful frown, like you're some toy that was stolen from him.
"Don't be a fuckin' perv, Soap," Gaz snaps, cradling you into his arms, where you immediately begin pawing at his black compression shirt, determined to get your palms under it and on his bare skin.
"She can't consent!"
It's Price who approaches the bed then, while Ghost stays leaning against the doorframe, keeping a keen eye on the situation.
"Enough! Both of you," Price barks, eyes flashing before his shoulders drop with a rough sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Doc said it might help if—"
John stops mid-sentence, clenching his strong jaw. He can't believe what he is about to say, and he crosses his arms over his chest again, feigning control while he internally braces himself for his next words.
"Those doctors said it might help if she… climaxes."
His words hang in the air like a thick fog that no one can quite see through nor think in, and everyone seems to be holding their breath while you finally manage to tug Gaz's shirt out of his waistband, making him cuss under his breath when you go on to lick a long, wet stripe over his exposed abs like some feral lioness, utterly hungry for a taste.
"Shit—Babygirl, no, d-don't—" Gaz stammers helplessly while a rush of heat goes straight to his neck and cock simultaneously, overwhelmingly so.
He pushes you away by your shoulders—and hates himself for how reluctant he is at it—and he winces when your blunt nails claw into his bulging biceps, digging into his skin even through his shirt with another whimper.
"Please, Kyle… Let me—" you mewl, batting your eyelashes up at him. "It—It fuckin’ hurts."
Soap pushes his fists into his eye sockets, heaving a deep breath that turns into a frustrated groan. "Steamin' Jesus, lass, ye’re fuckin’ killin' us here."
"Take a bloody walk, MacTavish," Price orders, pointing his thumb at the door over his shoulder, and while Soap climbs off the mattress, grumbling to himself with an obvious erection pressing against the seam of his zipper, Price addresses Gaz.
"And you, Garrick, take—" He hesitates again, balling his hands into fists at his sides, trying to keep his own body in check at the sight and sounds of you, before he nudges his chin towards the door of the bathroom.
"Take her to the shower to get the fever down and… help her."
The captain's last words are nothing more than a strained grumble.
Gaz gapes at his superior. Soap freezes in his steps at the end of the bed, openly gawking and blinking like he didn't just hear right. Ghost visibly stiffens and shifts his stance, still leaning against the doorframe of the guest bedroom. No one can see the way he grits his teeth so hard he might chip a tooth behind his balaclava.
"But sir—"
Price shakes his head; brows set in a stern frown as he holds Gaz's widened gaze.
"She'd want you to take care of her if she could actually consent to it. And that's an order, Sergeant."
Ghost wants to disagree, but keeps his mouth shut and exhales a sharp huff of contempt instead.
The rest of the men try to distract themselves around Captain Price's flat while Gaz takes you to the en-suite bathroom like he was ordered to.
Not asked, ordered to.
He keeps repeating that in his head as he walks you towards the bathroom door with his arm around your waist, your body listing into his side like you've forgotten how to hold yourself upright. His jaw is set so tight his molars ache.
He's been ordered to do a lot of things in his career. Clear rooms. Hold positions under fire. Drag wounded men through mud while rounds cracked overhead. He's followed every order without hesitation, because that's what good soldiers do—they trust the chain of command and they execute.
This doesn't feel like any of those things.
He keeps the bathroom door unlocked—just in case you faint and he needs help—and lets out a huff when you fling yourself into his body suddenly and the air is knocked from his lungs.
"Easy," he pleads with you while his head dips down, and he inhales your familiar scent before he can stop himself. Sweat and the remnants of whatever lotion you put on this morning underneath your gear before the mission, something warm and sweet that he's caught whiffs of a hundred times before in passing and never let himself think about for longer than a second.
"Easy there, love," he tries again, his trembling hands wrapping around your midriff tentatively.
Gaz hates these circumstances. Hates how the mission ended in such a bloody mess. Hates how excited he is to undress you to your underwear, and he despises that this is how he'll get to have you for the first time.
This is not how he'd imagined it.
He never imagined it. Not in any concrete, detailed way. Not like he'd planned it in his head, step by step—the restaurant he'd take you to first, somewhere nice but not so nice you'd take the piss out of him for it. The way he'd tell you after the second drink, maybe the third, that he'd been thinking about you. Casually. Like it hadn't been eating him alive for months.
He hadn't planned any of that.
Fucking liar.
You make a sound against his chest, somewhere between a sob and a moan, and your fingers twist into the wet fabric of his compression shirt, tugging weakly.
"Kyle… Kyle, I need—"
"I know," he murmurs, and his voice comes out rougher than he intends. "I know, love. C'mon."
He manoeuvres you towards the shower, reaching past you to turn the dial to lukewarm. The water sputters, then hisses to life against the tile, and steam begins to curl at the edges of the glass.
You're still in your underwear—plain, standard issue, nothing designed to be sexy—and it doesn't matter, because the sight of you trembling and desperate in front of him with water beginning to mist across your skin is doing things to his head that no amount of mental discipline can counter.
He starts to dismantle his assault rifle in his head.
You stumble into the shower cabin and he follows, still fully clothed. The water hits his chest and soaks through his compression shirt in seconds, plastering the fabric to his skin, and the cold shock of it helps. Briefly.
Bolt. Firing pin. Cam pin.
"C'mon, Babygirl," he coos at you as he turns your quivering body in his embrace until your back is flush against his chest. One arm wraps tightly below your breasts, forearm pushing up against the swell of them through the soaked fabric of your bra, and he tries, and fails miserably, not to take a long look over your shoulder.
Buffer tube. Buffer spring. Buffer.
You melt against his body and his cock throbs in his combat trousers, straining against his briefs uncomfortably. The water is doing nothing for the heat radiating off your skin. If anything, you're burning hotter, pressing back into him with small, involuntary rolls of your hips that make his breath stutter.
Lower receiver. Trigger assembly. Trigger—
"Please," you whimper, and his entire train of thought derails.
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, exposing the column of your throat, and he can see the way your pulse hammers beneath the surface, rapid and frantic. Your hips buck against his hand when he finally—finally—lets it trail down over your lower belly, his calloused fingers dragging across the wet skin, feeling the muscles jump and twitch beneath his touch.
"Yes—yes—yes—" you chant breathlessly, and your hips cant forward, chasing his hand with a desperation that makes something crack open in his chest.
Fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck.
He cups your pussy through your knickers and the heat of you against his palm nearly makes his knees buckle. He can feel you through the thin, soaked fabric and he's not sure if the wetness is from the shower stream or if it's all you.
His chest is heaving when he finally gathers enough courage to dip his long fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear. His jaw clenches and his mind grasps desperately for the drills again—clear left, clear right, move to the next room, check your corners—anything to stay anchored while you let out a moan that echoes off the tile walls and punches straight through him.
You're so wet, so swollen, it's obscene. His fingers slide through your folds with zero resistance and the groan that rips from deep within his chest is involuntary, guttural, ashamed. He can feel your arousal ooze from your entrance, slick and hot, and he can already tell how tight you'd feel clenching around his fingers, how you'd—
No. He's not going there.
"Fuck," he curses under his breath, more to himself than to you. "I'm only doin' this for you, Babygirl. This is only about you."
He says it like a prayer. Like if he repeats it enough, it'll be true.
His fingers press on your clit, pulsing and twitching already, and he starts rubbing small, firm circles over it, adjusting the pressure when your breath hitches or your thighs clamp around his wrist. He reads your body like he reads a room. Methodically, attentive, and cataloguing every reaction.
You writhe and squirm in his tight grip, your nails digging into the arm he has banded around your ribs, and every sound you make, every whimper, and stuttered gasp of his name, chips away at the wall he's trying to keep standing between following an order and wanting this.
"M-more, Kyle, please!"
Gaz curses himself, but he gives you more.
Two fingers pressing into you, slow and careful despite every instinct screaming at him to give you what you're begging for. You clench around him immediately, hot and tight and silky, and his cock kicks in his trousers so hard he must bite the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning.
He curls his fingers, searching for the spot that makes your thighs shake, and when he finds it, you keen so loudly the sound bounces off every hard surface in the small bathroom.
"That's it," he murmurs against your temple, his lips brushing your skin without quite kissing. "That's it, love. Let go for me."
He's not sure when he started talking to you like this. Somewhere between the first touch and the second, the clinical detachment he'd been clinging to crumbled and something else took its place—something tender and fierce and terrifyingly honest.
Your first orgasm hits you hard enough to make your entire body seize in his arms, your back arching away from his chest as a strangled cry tears from your throat. He holds you through it, fingers still working, still pressing and giving, because even as the tremors wrack through you and your legs give out, he can feel your body already winding up again, the toxin refusing to let you rest.
"Shh, shh, I've got you," he breathes, adjusting his grip to take your full weight when your knees buckle entirely. "I've got you."
You cum again two minutes later, and then again after that, and again, and Gaz loses count somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, when his fingers are cramping and his arm is trembling from holding you upright and the water has long since turned cold.
Each time, he thinks it'll be enough, and each time, your body coils tight again within minutes, the toxin driving you right back to the edge with a cruelty that makes him want to put his fist through the tile.
He doesn’t want to imagine what a full dose would have done to you. To anyone.
When you tell him that you're hurting—repeatedly, begging him to make you cum in that desperate, broken tone of yours—the young Sergeant is sure something dies inside him on the spot.
"Kyle—Kyle, I need more, I need you to—please—Fuck, please!"
He knows what you're asking for. You're grinding back against his cock, which has been rock-hard and aching for what feels like hours, and every roll of your hips sends a jolt of white-hot arousal through him that he must physically brace against.
"I can't," he grits out, and it takes everything in him. "Christ. I can't do that to you. Not like this."
"Please—"
"No, Babygirl." His voice cracks on the word, and he presses his forehead against the back of your head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not like this."
He drops to his knees instead.
The tile is hard and unforgiving under his kneecaps and the now cold water from the shower hits the back of his neck, but he barely registers any of it as he turns you to face him and hooks one of your legs over his shoulder.
He looks up at you once—your hazy, unfocused eyes, the way your chest heaves, the water running in rivulets down your body—and then he leans forward and drags his tongue through your folds in one long, broad stroke.
The sound you make is devastating.
Your hands fly to his head, fingers scrabbling for purchase on his wet hair, and your hips jerk forward so violently he must grip your thigh to keep you steady. He groans against you, he can't help it, and the vibration makes you cry out again, blunt nails raking over his scalp.
Gaz eats you like he's starving for it, because the truth he can't say out loud is that he is.
He's thought about this. Dreamed about it. Wanked to the idea of it in the dark of his bunk with his fist shoved against his mouth to keep quiet. And now he's here, on his knees in his Captain's shower with cold water running down his back and your taste flooding his mouth, and it's everything and nothing like what he imagined because you're not choosing this—you're not choosing him—and that knowledge sits in his chest like a brick.
But he doesn't stop.
Gaz licks and sucks and fucks you with his tongue until his jaw aches and your thighs are shaking so badly you can barely stand, even with his hands gripping your hips. He makes you cum on his mouth twice, then thrice, pressing his face into you each time your body locks up, working you through it with relentless, single-minded focus because if he stops to think about what this means, about what happens after, he'll fall apart.
When he finally pulls back, his lips are swollen, his chin is slick and his cock is so hard it genuinely hurts. You're still whimpering, still reaching for him, still not done, and the toxin is still pumping through your veins with no sign of stopping.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and exhales a shaky breath, pressing his forehead against your hip.
"I need—" His voice is wrecked. He swallows hard, then tries again. "I need a minute."
Not because he's tired, or his fingers are cramped and his jaw is sore and his knees are bruised from the tile. No.
But if he stays on his knees in front of you for one more second, he's going to give you what you're begging for, and he will never forgive himself for it.
He stands on unsteady legs, turns the shower off, and reaches for the towel hanging on the rack outside the cabin. His hands are shaking as he wraps it around, and you cling to it loosely, swaying on your feet.
"C'mon," he says, guiding you towards the door with one hand on the small of your back. His voice has steadied, but his eyes haven't. "Let's get you dried off."
You're protesting. He's cursing under his breath. There's shuffling, a stumble, and then he grabs the door handle and swings it open—
And Soap nearly falls backwards into the bathroom.
"Soap!"
The Scotsman catches himself on the doorway, one hand gripping the frame as he glances over his shoulder with a look that's not even remotely sheepish enough for a man who was clearly pressing his ear to the door thirty seconds ago.
Gaz is still wearing his clothes, though they're completely drenched—his compression shirt is a second skin, his combat trousers heavy with water, boots squelching on the tile. He's holding you by the forearm as you stand next to him, loose towel wrapped around your body, still trembling, still making those small, desperate sounds in the back of your throat.
"The fuck, mate? Did you eavesdrop on us?"
Soap shrugs as he straightens up, adjusting his stance in a way that's clearly meant to disguise the state of his trousers. "Was jus' checkin' on ye."
"Checking on—" Gaz's jaw works, nostrils flaring. He wants to snap, wants to shove Soap back into the hallway and slam the door, but he's running on fumes and you're leaning into him again, your face pressed against his soaked chest, mumbling incoherently.
"She needs—" Gaz starts, then stops. Looks down at you, back up at Soap. Something heavy passes between the two men, unspoken but understood.
"She needs more than I can give her right now," he finishes quietly, and the admission costs him more than any of them will ever know.
Soap's expression shifts. The boyish smirk drops, replaced by something sobered, and he gives Gaz a short nod—the kind they exchange in the field when one of them is spent and the other takes point.
"A'right," Soap answers, surprisingly steady, rolling his broad shoulders. "Ah’ve got 'er."
Gaz transfers you into Soap's waiting arms with a gentleness that borders on reverent—one hand on the back of your head, the other guiding your shoulders—and he doesn't let go until he's sure Soap has you secure.
Then he walks past them both, water dripping from every inch of him, and doesn't look back.
He makes it to the kitchen before his hands start shaking badly enough that he has to brace them flat on the counter. He stands there, head bowed, water pooling on the linoleum beneath him, and breathes.
Ghost is leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, and he doesn't say a word.
There is no need to.
Soap carries you back to the bed like you weigh nothing to him; one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the towel slipping loose and neither of you caring, and he lays you down with a surprising gentleness that contradicts every tightly coiled muscle in his body.
He's been hard since the briefing room, balls throbbing uncomfortably. Over two hours of it. The kind of persistent, throbbing ache that sits low in his gut and pulses in time with his heartbeat, and he's been dealing with it the way he deals with most discomfort.
By ignoring it aggressively and hoping it fucks off on its own.
It has not fucked off unfortunately. Truth be told, he’d be worried about himself if it did.
"Right then," he mutters, kneeling on the mattress beside you as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders again like he's about to breach a door. "Let's sort ye out, hen."
And that's the thing about Johnny MacTavish—he doesn't agonise. Not the way Gaz does, all quiet guilt and moral calculus. Soap's moral framework is simpler, blunter, built from different materials. You're his teammate, you're hurting, and he can help. Everything else is noise.
That doesn't mean he's unaffected; doesn't mean his hands aren't shaking when he settles between your legs and pushes the towel fully away from your body, or that his breath doesn't hitch hard enough to hear when he gets his first proper look at you fully naked, spread out on the white sheets with your chest heaving and your thighs trembling and your eyes half-lidded, glassy, barely tracking him.
Christ, you're beautiful.
He's thought about this. Fuck. Of course he has. He's not a bloody monk, and you're you.
He's thought about it in the gym when you spot him on the bench press and your face hovers above his, upside down and grinning. He's thought about it on long transports when you fall asleep against his shoulder and he stays perfectly still for hours so you won't wake up. Or when you laugh at his shite jokes that no one else finds funny, when you steal chips off his plate in the mess, when you call him Johnny instead of Soap and don't even notice you've done it.
He's thought about it a lot.
But not like this.
"You with me?" he asks, tapping your cheek lightly with two fingers. Your eyes roll towards him, struggling to focus, and you make a sound that's part whimper, part plea.
Close enough.
"A'right, sweetheart. I've got ye."
He doesn't ease into it the way Gaz did. Where Gaz was methodical, with careful touches, measured pressure, and constant checking, Soap is instinct. He reads you through vibration and sound, adjusts on the fly, follows the frequency of your moans like he's tuning into a signal.
He dips his head between your thighs and licks into you without preamble, broad and hot and greedy, and the noise that tears out of you rattles something loose in his chest.
"Fuck—tha's it," he groans against you, the vibration making your hips jolt, and his big hands grip the backs of your thighs to keep you spread open and steady. "Tha's my bonnie girl."
He's not quiet about it, either. Soap eats pussy the way he does most things. With enthusiasm, commitment, and absolutely zero self-consciousness. Wet, filthy sounds fill the bedroom, punctuated by his own groans and your increasingly incoherent cries, and he doesn't give a single shit that the door is open, and his team can hear every obscene noise he's wringing out of you.
Let them hear.
His tongue works over your clit in fast, tight circles, then broad, flat strokes, alternating rhythm and pressure every time he feels your thighs start to shake. When you try to close your legs, he pins them open with his forearms. When you try to squirm away—overstimulated, oversensitive, too much and not enough at the same time—he follows relentlessly, dragging you back by the hips with a growl that rumbles against your soaked flesh.
"Nuh-uh. Stay still f'me."
He makes you cum with his mouth in under five minutes and then doesn't stop.
Your fingers twist into the sheets, into his mohawk, clawing at his scalp as your back arches off the mattress and a wrecked sob punches out of your lungs. Soap groans in response, the sound reverential, like your pleasure is a hymn and he's on his knees in church.
He keeps going. Lapping at you through the aftershocks, sucking your clit between his lips until you're keening, pressing his tongue inside you just to feel you clench around it, and when you cum again with his name breaking apart on your lips—Johnny, Johnny, fuck yes, Johnny—he nearly blacks out from how hard his cock throbs in response.
His hips have started moving on their own. Small, involuntary rolls against the mattress, his aching cock grinding against the sheets through his combat trousers, and he knows he should fucking stop, should pull his hips back, should focus on you and not the desperate friction building between his body and the bed.
But he doesn't stop.
He is physically incapable.
You taste like honey and salt and something almost medicinal underneath—the toxin, probably, working its way out of your system through your sweat and your slick—and he's drunk on it. Drunk on the way you say his name, how your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, drunk on the wet sounds of his tongue on your cunt and the way you keep pulling his face closer, harder, more.
"God—fuck—lass, ye taste so fuckin' good—"
He's rutting against the mattress in earnest now, his hips snapping in sharp, desperate little thrusts, and the friction is nowhere near enough and exactly too much at the same time.
The sheets are going to be ruined. He doesn't care. Can't. He’s a weak man, and his entire world has narrowed to the taste of you on his tongue and the ache in his junk and the way your body keeps arching into him like he's the only thing keeping you alive.
"Please—please, Johnny, I need—I can't—"
"I know, hen, I know—" he pants against your inner thigh, pressing a biting kiss there that makes you yelp, "—jus' one more, c'mon, give me one more, aye?"
He flickers his tongue, seals his mouth over your clit and sucks, hard, and you shatter. Your thighs clamp around his head, your hands fist in his hair so tightly it stings, and the scream that rips from your throat is ragged and raw and so fucking beautiful that he comes.
Inside his combat pants.
His hips stutter against the mattress and a guttural, muffled groan vibrates against your pussy as his cock pulses and spills, hot and wet, soaking through his briefs and into his trousers. His arms shake, his vision whites out for a second, and he has to press his forehead against your inner thigh and just breathe through it, chest heaving, while you whimper above him, still trembling from your own orgasm.
He pulls back slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the reality of what just happened settles over him like a cloth soaked in ice water. He stares down at himself, at the damp patch darkening the front of his trousers, and lets out a long, defeated exhale.
"MacTavish."
Ghost's voice comes from the doorway; flat and sharp, dripping with contempt.
Soap closes his eyes, disappointed in himself, exhaling through his nose. "Aye. I know."
"You know?" Price's voice joins Ghost's, closer, much heavier. The captain is standing just inside the bedroom now, arms folded, jaw set. He looks at Soap the way a father looks at a teenage son caught doing something monumentally stupid.
"Get yourself sorted. Now."
Soap doesn't argue. He climbs off the bed on unsteady legs, not meeting anyone's eyes, and adjusts his trousers with a grimace as he shuffles past Ghost in the doorway.
Ghost doesn't move to let him pass. Makes him squeeze by, shoulder to shoulder, just to make it uncomfortable.
"Disgusting," Ghost mutters, low enough that only Soap hears it.
"Fuck off, LT," Soap mutters back, and there's no heat in it. Just shame.
You don't notice the shift at first.
One moment there are hands and mouths on you, voices and pressure and friction. The next, everything is quieter. Stiller. The mattress dips on one side and stays dipped, a solid weight settling beside you but not on you, not against you, not close enough to touch.
You whine at the loss of contact, of heat, of anything, and reach blindly for whoever is there.
A large hand catches your wrist. Gentle and firm, holding it in place.
"Don't."
One word. Low and gravelly, scraped raw like it was dragged over broken glass and wire mesh on its way out of his throat.
Ghost.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed with his back straight and his boots still on, because taking his boots off would mean he's staying, and staying would mean—he doesn't finish the thought.
Price asked him to sit with you while Gaz and Soap pulled themselves together. Asked this time, not ordered, because Price knows that ordering Ghost to do something he doesn't want to do is about as effective as ordering the tide to turn. Ghost agreed with a single nod, and now here he is, and every muscle in his body is locked so tight he might snap a tendon.
You're lying on your side, curled in on yourself, wearing nothing but your sodden underwear again and the ghost of everyone else's touch on your skin. The towel is long gone. Your body is still trembling, still feverish, still caught in the grip of the toxin, and the soft, pained sounds you keep making are doing things to him that he absolutely cannot allow.
He's hard. Has been since you doubled over and moaned and he had to watch your body betray you in front of everyone. His cock is straining against his trousers, thick and heavy and insistent.
Ghost pretends it isn’t. He's very good at pretending things don't exist.
"Simon…"
His jaw clenches beneath the balaclava. You rarely use his first name—none of them do—and hearing it now, in that voice, breathy and desperate and small, is a kind of cruelty he wasn't prepared for.
"You need to drink something," he murmurs, and reaches for the water bottle on the nightstand without looking at you.
"Don't want—"
"Wasn't bloody askin’."
He unscrews the cap and turns to you, and the mistake—the critical, tactical, unforgivable mistake—is that he looks at your face next.
Your eyes are glassy and wet, your lips parted around shallow little breaths, and you're looking up at him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's been spinning for hours.
Not with lust—not the way you looked at Gaz and Soap—but with something quieter. Something that reaches past the toxin and grabs hold of something deeper.
Trust.
You trust him. Even now, reduced to your basest instincts, your intoxicated, unhinged brain still recognises him as safe.
Something fractures behind his ribs, and he shuts it down immediately, brutally, the way he shuts down everything that threatens to breach the walls.
"Sit up," he orders, and his voice is soft yet steady even if the rest of him isn't. He slides one hand behind your head—just his palm, just enough to support your neck—and lifts the bottle to your lips.
You drink. Slowly, reluctantly, with small sips that dribble down your chin, but you drink. He holds the bottle still and watches the column of your throat move with each swallow, and when a drop of water runs from the corner of your mouth and trails down your neck, dark eyes track it all the way to your collarbone before catching himself and looking away.
"More," he says curtly, bringing the bottle back.
You manage a few more sips before turning your head away with a pitiful sound, and he lets you, setting the bottle aside. His hand lingers on the back of your head a moment too long—his thumb brushing once against the nape of your neck—before he pulls it back like he's been burned.
You reach for him again. Fingers closing around the fabric of his sleeve, tugging weakly.
"Stay. Please. Don't—Don't go."
"'M not goin’ anywhere." The words come out before he can vet them, gruff and low, and he immediately resents himself for saying them so quickly, so easily, like a confession slipped out under duress.
He lets you hold onto his sleeve. That much he can allow. That much won't cross a line he cannot uncross.
You shift closer, seeking warmth, and your body curls towards him until your forehead is pressed against his thigh. He goes completely rigid, every muscle locking and nerve firing, and his hands hover in the air on either side of you, not touching, not pulling away, suspended in the unbearable middle ground of a man who wants desperately but won't take.
Another small whimper from you. Not desire this time but pain. The cramps rolling through your body in waves, the toxin still doing its vicious work even after everything Gaz and Soap wrung from you. You're shaking, and not just from arousal. You're exhausted. Dehydrated. Your body is at war with itself.
Ghost is not a gentle man. He knows this about himself the way he knows his blood type and his boot size. It's a fact, unalterable, built into the architecture. He doesn't comfort. He doesn't soothe. He handles.
But.
His hand comes down on the back of your head, and it stays.
Heavy and warm through the leather of his glove. Not stroking just resting, a solid weight against your skull, and you let out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in your lungs for hours.
You stop shaking. Not entirely. The tremors are still there, running through you in small aftershocks, but the worst of it eases under the steady pressure of his palm, like he's an anchor and you've been drifting.
"Ghost?" Your voice is small, barely a whisper.
"Yeah."
"It hurts."
He closes his eyes behind the mask. His hand presses down just slightly—a fraction more weight, a fraction more warmth—and his throat works around words that don't come.
He knows it hurts. He knows Gaz and Soap's efforts weren't enough. He knows what the doctors said—what Price said—and he knows what would fix it, and he can't.
Not because he doesn't want to. Because he wants it too fucking much.
Simon Riley is not a man who trusts himself with things he wants.
Wanting, in his experience, is the first step towards destroying, and he has destroyed enough for one lifetime. Touching you now the way his body is screaming at him to would not be careful or measured or controlled or gentle.
It would be all consuming, and he would take too much, and he would never be able to look you in the eyes again.
So he sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and his cock aching and his hand on the back of your head, and he holds himself perfectly, agonisingly still. Just a solid shadow in a bedroom.
You press your face harder against his thigh and he lets you. Your fingers tighten on his sleeve and he lets you. Your breath evens out incrementally but still too fast, still too shallow, though calmer now, and he lets that happen too, guarding it like a perimeter, daring anything to disturb it.
He doesn't know how long you stay like that. Long enough for the light under the curtains to shift and for his leg to go numb beneath the pressure of your head. Long enough for Gaz to appear in the doorway, freshly changed into borrowed civvies, and stop dead at the sight of them.
Ghost meets his eyes over the top of your head. His expression is unreadable behind the mask, but his hand doesn't move from your hair, and that says more than his face ever could.
Gaz nods once and backs out without a word.
In the kitchen, Price is pouring two fingers of whisky into a tumbler and staring at the far wall like it owes him money. Soap is sitting at the table in a pair of Price's joggers, his soiled trousers balled up in a plastic bag at his feet, looking like a scolded dog.
"She's calmer," Gaz says quietly as he enters, and both men look up. "Ghost's with her."
Price takes a long drink. Sets the glass down. Rubs a hand over his beard.
"It's not enough, is it."
It's not a question and Gaz doesn't answer it.
"She's still in pain. She keeps—" He stops and swallows thickly. "She keeps asking. Saying she’s in pain."
The captain stares at the whisky in his glass. The silence stretches, tense and heavy, pressing in on the walls of the small kitchen.
"She needs more than fingers and a mouth," Soap says bluntly, because someone fucking has to, and delicacy has never been his strong suit. Gaz shoots him a look, but Soap holds it, unapologetic.
"He's right," Price agrees suddenly, and the words taste like bile. He pushes away from the counter and stands to his full height, shoulders squared, and for a moment he looks every inch the officer. Burdened, resolute, carrying a decision he'll second-guess for the rest of his life.
"Gentlemen's agreement," he says. His voice is low, steady, absolute. "What happens tonight stays in this flat. No one treats her differently when this is over. No one brings it up unless she does. No one holds it over anyone, including himself."
He looks at each of them in turn—Gaz, then Soap—and holds until he gets a nod from both.
"And we tell Ghost."
Ghost doesn't agree.
He listens to the terms of the gentlemen's agreement from the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed, stance wide, radiating the kind of stillness that makes lesser men instinctively check their exits. When Price finishes, Ghost holds the silence for a long, loaded beat.
And then: "No."
Price doesn't flinch. "No to which part?"
"All of it. My part." Ghost's voice is flat and final, stripped of everything except the decision itself. "I'll stay with her. I won't fuck her."
Soap opens his mouth—probably to say something spectacularly unhelpful—and Gaz kicks him under the table without looking.
Price studies his Lieutenant for a moment. Then he nods once, heavy with an understanding that doesn't need to be spoken.
"Fair enough." He rolls his sleeves up to his forearms. The mechanical motion of a man preparing for something he cannot delegate. "I'll go first."
No one dares to argue.
Unlike Soap, Price closes the guest bedroom door behind him and stands there for a moment with his hand still on the knob, just breathing. It smells of sex and pheromones, but wrong.
The room is dim. Someone turned off the overhead and left only the bedside lamp, casting everything in low amber light that softens the edges of the furniture and the shape of you on the bed. You're curled on your side, knees drawn up, one hand clutching the pillow beneath your head. The sheets are wrecked; damp and twisted, pulled loose from two corners, and your skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat.
You look small.
That's the thing that hits him first and hits him hardest.
You're one of his soldiers. He's seen you clear buildings, haul wounded men twice your size to extraction, take a round to the vest and get back up swearing. You are not small. You have never been small or fragile.
But you look it now, trembling and fever-damp and reduced to a version of yourself that he never should have had to witness, and the weight of that sits on his shoulders like a ruck full of stones.
He crosses the room in a few strides and sits on the edge of the mattress. The frame groans under his weight.
"Sergeant."
You stir, your head lifting, and your eyes find his face. They're glassy and unfocused, but there's a flicker of recognition—Captain—before it's swallowed by the next wave rolling through your body. You let out a sound that's half sob, half moan, your thighs pressing together, and your hand reaches out blindly until your fingers catch the fabric of his shirt.
"It hurts," you whisper. "Still hurts. Why does it still—"
"I know." He catches your wrist, holds it. His thumb presses against your pulse point to check, and it’s rapid, thready, way too fast for simply lying on a bed. "I'm going to help you."
He says it the way he says we're moving on that compound at 0300 or I need eyes on that ridgeline. Leaving no room for ambiguity, because if he allows ambiguity into this room, he'll start thinking about what he's doing, and if he starts thinking, he'll stop, and if he stops.
You'll keep hurting. Under his command.
He stands long enough to strip his shirt over his head and remove his belt, and then he's back on the bed, propped against the headboard with you between his legs, your back against his bare chest; coarse salt and pepper hair rasping against your tacky skin. One arm wraps around your midsection, heavy and secure, anchoring you.
"Easy," he murmurs against the top of your head. "I've got you, love."
His free hand trails down your stomach, and your muscles jump and twitch beneath his rough palm. He catalogues every reaction. The hitch in your breathing, the way your hips tilt up to meet him, the small, desperate noise you make when his fingers dip below your navel. The same way he catalogues threat patterns and exit routes.
This is a mission. He is completing the objective. He is taking care of his wounded soldier.
He keeps telling himself that as he peels your underwear down your thighs and off, tossing them aside. As he runs his hand up the inside of your thigh and feels you shake. As he finally cups you and discovers just how wet and swollen you are, dripping on his fingers, he has to close his eyes and clench his jaw against the visceral punch of arousal that knocks through him.
This is the job. You gave the order. See it through.
He works you with his fingers first, because he needs to know what you can take. Two thick fingers pressing into you slowly, carefully, and the sounds you make guts him.
"That's it." His voice is lower now, rougher. "There you go, sweetheart."
He doesn't call his soldiers sweetheart. He has never, in twenty-odd years of service, called anyone under his command sweetheart. The word falls out of him like a loose round, and he can't take it back.
Your sopping hole clenches around his fingers and his cock, already hard and straining against the front of his trousers, jerks so violently he must bite back a groan. He curls his fingers inside you, finds the swollen spot that makes your spine arch and your breath stutter, and works it with a patient, devastating precision.
You cum and gush on his fingers with a broken cry, your body locking up in his arms, and the aftershocks roll through you in long, shuddering waves that he holds you through without a word.
It's still not enough. He knows it won't be for a while longer.
Price reaches for the condom on the nightstand—Gaz found them in Price's bathroom cabinet, a half-empty box, almost expired, shoved behind the toiletries like an afterthought—and tears the foil with his teeth while you keen and squirm against him, already spiralling back up.
He undoes his trousers and pushes them down just enough to free himself, because keeping them on feels like maintaining some essential boundary, some last scrap of separation between Captain Price doing what needs to be done and John wanting what he shouldn't want.
Rolling the condom on is a particular exercise in self-control. His cock is thick, flushed dark when his foreskin slides back, weeping pre at the tip, and every brush of his own fingers against the oversensitive skin makes his abs clench.
He lifts you with ease, one hand on your hip, the other gripping himself, and positions you above his lap.
"Sergeant," he grunts through gritted teeth, "look at me."
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, eyes half-open, and you meet his gaze as best you can. He searches for something in your expression—recognition, maybe awareness, you—and finds enough of it to quiet the loudest of the voices screaming in his head.
"If it's too much, y’tell me. That's a bloody order."
You nod hazily. He doesn't know if you actually processed the words, but he needed to say them. Needed that on the record, if only between himself and God.
He lowers you onto him slowly.
The sound that comes out of him is not one he's ever made before.
You're scorching hot and soaked. Your body takes him inch by inch, clenching and fluttering around him as gravity and his guiding hand ease you down, and by the time you're fully seated in his lap, he's seeing stars and his fingers have left dents in the flesh of your hip.
"Fuck," he breathes, and the word is ragged at the edges, torn from somewhere deeper than his chest.
You moan shamelessly, and the relief in the sound nearly undoes him. Like something that's been wound unbearably tight has finally been given slack. Your body relaxes against his, tension draining from your muscles for the first time in hours, and the change is so visible, so immediate, that it almost justifies this.
Almost.
He starts to move. Rolling his hips up into you, slow and deep, both hands gripping your waist to control the pace. He keeps it measured; long and deliberate strokes that drag against your inner walls and make you whimper with each one, because if he lets himself go, if he fucks you the way his body is begging him to, he'll lose himself entirely.
And he hates—Christ, he hates—how fucking good you feel.
He hates the way you fit around him like you were made for it, and the way your head falls back against his shoulder, how your lips part and you breathe his name—not his rank, not Captain, but John—and the sound of it rushes through him hot and electric and wrong. Hates the wet, obscene sound of your body taking him repeatedly; that his hips are moving faster now, snapping up into you with a force that makes the headboard knock against the wall.
Hates that he doesn't want to stop.
Your eyes squeeze shut, your head tips back as you cry out. "John—John—oh god—"
His arm tightens around your ribs, crushing you back against his chest, and his mouth finds the curve of your shoulder—not kissing, just pressing there, teeth grazing skin, breathing you in. His other hand slides down between your thighs and rubs tight circles on your clit in counterpoint to each thrust, and you come apart so violently in his arms that he has to hold you through it with every ounce of strength he has.
You clench around him like a vice and he follows you over the edge with a bitten-off groan, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing deep inside you as the orgasm tears through him with a ferocity that whites out his vision.
For a few suspended seconds, there's nothing left. No rank, no mission, no guilt. Just the pounding of his heart and the aftershocks rippling through both your bodies and the impossible, terrible warmth of you around him.
Then reality seeps back in, cold and unforgiving, and Captain John Price opens his eyes and begins the long process of hating himself for every second of the last twenty minutes.
He pulls out carefully, disposes of the condom, and fixes his trousers. When he leans you back against the pillows, your eyes are already glazing over again, your body winding up for more, and the sight of it makes something weary and furious crack behind his chest cavity
He cups your jaw, tilting your face up. "Stay with me, Sergeant. Stay with me."
You whimper, and your hips shift restlessly against the sheets.
Price stands and walks to the door on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
"Garrick. You're up."
Gaz and Soap take you in turns after that, and it's different this time.
Where the first round was clinical in its own way—Gaz with his careful guilt, Soap with his missionary zeal, Price bearing the weight of command—this his round is rawer.
The boundaries have been breached, and the gentlemen's agreement hangs over the room like a ceasefire that everyone knows is temporary.
Gaz is gentler than Price was. He lays you on your back and settles between your thighs with a tenderness that borders on devotion, pressing his forehead against yours as he pushes inside you.
He goes slow and gentle, and whispers things against your temple that no one else can hear, private things meant only for the space between your mouth and his.
"I've got you," he murmurs repeatedly. "I've got you, Babygirl, I'm right here. I will be here."
He comes inside the condom with a shudder and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder, and when he pulls out and rolls onto his back beside you, he stares at the ceiling for a long time without blinking, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
Soap goes after. He's not gentle—can't be, doesn't know how to be, not with the way you claw at his back and wrap your legs around his waist and beg him harder, please, harder—but he's present.
He hooks your knee over his broad shoulders and fucks you deep, watching your face with a focused intensity that's almost clinical in its own right, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, adjusting angle and depth and rhythm like he's zeroing a scope.
"Tha's it, sweetheart, take it—fuck, yer so—fuck—"
The condoms run out after Soap's first round.
Gaz discovers this when he reaches for the box on the nightstand and finds it empty, and the look on his face—the quiet oh, shit—would be funny in any other context.
"Cap'n," he calls, voice strained. "We've got a problem."
Price, who has been standing in the hallway staring at nothing, appears in the doorway. Gaz holds up the empty box. Price closes his eyes.
"Then pull out," the captain says flatly. "That's an order."
It should be simple, and it’s anything but.
Gaz tries. He genuinely, sincerely tries, but you're clenching around him so tightly and making those sounds, those desperate and wrecked, grateful sounds, and when your orgasm hits and your walls contract around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses, his hips stutter and he buries himself to the hilt and spills inside you with a choked groan before his brain even registers what his body has done.
"Shit—shit, I'm sorry, I—fuck—"
He pulls out too late, watches his cum leak from you onto the sheets, and drops his head against your sternum with a devastated exhale.
Soap doesn't even pretend he's going to manage it.
"'M not gonna be able to pull out," he announces with a frankness that makes Gaz want to strangle him. "Jus' bein' honest, Cap."
"You'll pull out or I'll pull you out myself, MacTavish."
And yet Soap does not, in fact, pull out in time.
Price has to physically haul him back by the shoulder, and even then, Soap's cock jerks and pulses as it slips free, painting your inner thighs and lower belly with hot, thick ropes of cum while the Scotsman lets out a string of Gaelic curses that would make his mother disown him.
The room smells like multiple people fucking and sweating and something medicinal—the toxin, working its way out of your pores at last—and you're finally, finally, starting to slow down.
The desperate edge has dulled. Your whimpers are quieter now, tired rather than urgent, and your body has stopped arching off the bed every few minutes.
You're still reaching, though. Still searching for contact, for warmth, for a body against yours.
Ghost enters the room without being asked.
He's stripped down to his black t-shirt and trousers. The balaclava is still on, but his gloves are off, and the sight of his bare, scarred hands is somehow more intimate than anything else that's happened in this room tonight.
He doesn't look at the other men or acknowledge the state of the sheets or the smell or the heavy, post-coital guilt saturating the air.
He simply moves to the bed, sits down, and gathers you against his chest with a practised efficiency that suggests he's been rehearsing this moment in his head for the last two hours.
You go willingly. Boneless, exhausted, trembling with the last dregs of the toxin and the cumulative aftermath of more orgasms than your body was designed to handle in one night. Your face presses into the crook of his neck, your fingers curl loosely in the front of his shirt, and you let out a breath that sounds like surrender.
Ghost pulls the duvet up over both of you. One arm settles around your back securely. His other hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he holds you against him like he's shielding you from blast radius.
"Go to sleep," he says quietly. An order and a request and a plea all compressed into three words.
You make a small, incoherent sound against his throat.
"I know." His hand moves over your hair, slowly and gentle. "Sleep."
Price watches from the doorway for a moment. Then he pulls the door halfway closed and leaves the Lieutenant to his vigil.
In the kitchen, the captain pours himself another whisky—three fingers this time—and drinks it standing up, staring at the drawn curtains. Gaz is in the shower. Soap is sprawled on the sofa in the living room, one arm over his eyes, dead to the world.
Price's phone buzzes. Laswell.
How is she?
He stares at the screen for a long time. Types and deletes three different responses before finally settling on one.
Handled. Debrief in the morning.
He sets the phone face-down on the counter and finishes his drink.
Hours later, you wake up slowly, like surfacing from deep water.
The first thing you register is warmth. A wall of it, solid and breathing, pressed against your back. An arm draped over your waist, heavy with sleep. Fingers loosely tangled in yours against your sternum.
The second thing you register is that you are naked, sore in places you don't want to think about, and your mouth tastes like the inside of a boot.
The third thing is the balaclava.
You can feel it, the knitted fabric against the back of your neck, and the slow, even exhale of breath warming your skin through the cloth. The chest behind you rises and falls in the deep, steady rhythm of genuine sleep, which means the Lieutenant trusts this room enough to have let himself go under.
Which means something, though you're too foggy to figure out what.
You shift slightly, testing your body. Everything aches. Your thighs, your hips, your abs, your jaw for some reason, and there's a deep, bone-level exhaustion settled into your muscles that reminds you of the tail end of a bad flu.
The cramps are gone, though. The tingling, the feverish heat, the desperate, clawing need—all of it has receded, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out emptiness.
And memory. Fragments of it. Arriving in pieces like delayed radio transmissions.
Kyle's hands shaking as he touched you. I'm only doin' this for you, babygirl. Johnny's mouth on you, hot and relentless. The sound he made against your thighs.
The shower. The water. Voices.
John.
Your eyes open wide and your body goes rigid, and the arm around your waist tightens reflexively. Ghost pulling you closer in his sleep, an unconscious response to a perceived threat, even though the threat is just you waking up and remembering.
You lie very still.
The flat is quiet. Early morning light edges around the curtains, pale and grey, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear the muffled sounds of the base waking up—vehicles, a distant shout, the rhythmic thud of boots on tarmac.
You don't move, don't speak. You stare at the wall and breathe and try to organise the wreckage in your head into something you can process.
Behind you, Ghost's breathing changes. Shifts from deep and even to something shallower, more aware. His arm tenses around you, a brief contraction of muscle, there and gone, and you know the exact moment he wakes up, because his entire body goes perfectly, absolutely still.
Neither of you says a word.
His hand is still tangled with yours against your bare chest. His thumb rests against your knuckle. But he doesn't pull away.
The silence stretches. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Heavy. Full of things that need to be said and won't be. Not now, certainly not yet, and maybe not ever. And there is a fragile, terrified understanding that what happened in this room changed the molecular structure of something that can never be unchanged.
Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably two minutes, Ghost speaks.
"How do you feel?"
You consider the question. Really consider it, not the reflexive I'm fine that sits on your tongue out of habit.
"Like shit," you answer honestly. Your voice is wrecked, raspy, and it hurts to talk.
Then, so quietly you almost miss it, he answers, "Yeah."
His thumb moves once. A single, slow stroke across your knuckle.
Then he lets go of your hand, carefully disentangles himself from around you, and gets up without another word. You hear his boots being pulled back on. The soft click of the door.
You lie in the bed that smells like all four of them and none of yourself, and you stare at the wall, and you breathe.
Plot: you come home from college for the week and realise you still have a crush on your brothers best friend.
Warnings: brother they actually kiss like fuck me, FINALLY!!
Neither of you spoke on the drive home.
The truck rattled through the familiar suburban streets with the windows rolled down, hot air pushing through the cab and carrying the scent of cut grass, sun baked pavement and somebody’s charcoal grill.
The radio played quietly beneath the engine.
Normal sounds.
A normal afternoon.
Nothing about the silence inside Bobby’s truck felt normal.
Everything.
The word had followed you out of the convenience store parking lot it sat between you now, filling every inch of space separating your bare thigh from his hand on the gearshift. Every so often his eyes looked down, he wondered how soft you felt.
Bobby stared resolutely through the windshield, he could still see the smile you had tried to hide when he closed the passenger door. He could feel the weight of what he had admitted settling against his ribs.
He had told himself he would behave.
Then he had followed you into the kitchen.
Volunteered to drive you.
Admitted he had missed you.
Told you that every part of you looked good.
He was failing spectacularly beside him, you shifted in the seat.
Bobby’s knuckles tightened around the steering wheel.
The movement caused your loose shirt to fall farther from your shoulder. He caught the flash of skin from the corner of his eye and immediately focused on the road again.
Three more days.
The house appeared at the end of the road, your dad was still standing at the grill in the backyard, judging by the smoke rising beyond the fence. The driveway was empty except for your mom’s station wagon. Jacob’s music could be heard faintly from behind the house.
Bobby pulled up against the curb rather than into the driveway.
The truck rolled to a stop.
The engine remained running.
Neither of you moved.
Bobby looked towards the house, then at the bags of ice sliding around in the truck bed. “We should get those inside.”
His voice came out rougher than he intended.
You turned towards him. “Bobby.”
He kept his eyes on the windshield. “What?” He was too scared to look, incase he looked anywhere other than your face.
You didn’t know exactly what you were doing or perhaps you knew and simply didn’t want to give yourself enough time to lose your nerve.
You unfastened your seat belt.
The metal buckle snapped back into place.
Bobby glanced over at the sound.
You leaned across the seat and kissed him, for one perfect second, he didn’t move, his mouth was warm beneath yours, lips parting slightly in surprise. His breath caught, and something inside you lurched at the realisation that Bobby Franklin the man who always had something clever to say had been rendered completely still.
Then his hand closed around your upper arm, he pulled away.
Not hard.
Just fast, his head turned immediately towards the house.
The front windows.
The driveway.
The wooden gate leading into the backyard.
His breathing had changed. “Jesus Christ.” He checked the rear view mirror as though Jacob might suddenly appear behind the truck.
“No one saw,” you said.
“You don’t know that.” He’s panicking, all composure lost.
“There’s no one outside.”
“Your whole family is 20 feet away.”
“In the backyard.”
“That doesn’t make this better.” Bobby looked at you. Your faces were still only inches apart. Your lips tingled from the brief contact, and the loose ends of your hair moved across your cheek in the breeze coming through the window.
He could smell chlorine on your skin.
He could see the questions in your eyes and beneath them, unmistakable satisfaction.
You had wanted to kiss him.
You had actually done it.
Bobby released your arm as though he had only just realised he was touching you. “Don’t do that.” The words sounded harsher than he meant them to.
Your expression changed. “Why?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” You sat back slightly, though not all the way into your own seat. “Because of Jacob?”
“Because of everything.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Bobby dragged a hand through his hair.
“You’re a kid.” The moment the words left him, he knew they were a mistake.
Your face hardened. “I’m 19.”
“I know how old you are.”
“Then stop talking to me like I’m 12.”
“I’ve known you since you were 14.”
“And?”
“And I was 18.”
“You haven’t been 18 in a while.”
Bobby looked towards the house again, you forced him to look at you. “just as I haven’t been 14 in a while.” He searched your eyes, looking away. He needed to end this conversation. He needed to get out, carry the ice inside and pretend you hadn’t just pressed your mouth against his. Instead, he remained behind the wheel, trapped by the look on your face. “You’re Jacob’s little sister,” he said, low.. almost sad.
“I’m also my own person.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because every time you start looking at me like a woman, you panic and call me a kid.”
His jaw tightened. “That isn’t what I’m doing.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
He laughed once, without humour.“Explain what? That your brother would kill me? That your parents trust me in their house? That I’ve spent years looking out for you because Jacob asked me to, and now you’re kissing me in his driveway?”
“I didn’t ask you to look out for me.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” Bobby stared at you.
You were angry now, not embarrassed, not uncertain. Angry.
It was one more reminder that you weren’t the girl he remembered. That girl would have looked away when confronted, retreated behind sarcasm and carried the humiliation upstairs with her.
You held his gaze instead. “I’m not a child, Bobby.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You called me a kid.”
“Compared to me..”
“You’re 23 not 50.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“What is the point?” He didn’t answer because the point was that he wanted you badly enough to frighten himself.
The point was that the kiss had lasted barely a second, and every part of him was screaming to pull you back across the seat.
The point was that he couldn’t stop looking at your mouth.
Your voice softened. “I’m not an innocent little girl Bobby.” You held his chin, forcing him to finally look at you, not able to turn away.
Bobby’s eyes snapped, something changed in his expression, a small flicker of jealousy arrived before he could hide it.
He thought of Cole. 8 months. Your mom asking about protection.
The conversation in the kitchen that Bobby had desperately tried not to listen to while hearing every word.
He hated the sudden images his mind offered him. “You don’t need to tell me that,” he said.
“Why? Does it bother you?”
“No.” The lie came too quickly, you shifted closer, closing the space. He looked down, your bikini top beneath the loose shirt, he had to fight to breathe. “You asked me not to be quiet, you heard me.”
Your eyes narrowed, his breathing stilled. “I didn’t.” He tried and failed to protest.
“You’re terrible at that.”
“At what?”
“Pretending you don’t care.”
Bobby’s mouth tightened. “I care because I’ve known you half your life.”
“That’s not why.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think I do.”
“You think you came home from college and suddenly everything’s different.”
“Everything is different.”
“Not enough.” The words stung but your gaze dropped to his mouth.
Bobby saw it, his breathing stopped.
You leaned in again.
He had time to move, he knew you were going to kiss him before your hand even touched his chest.
He could have opened the door, he could have barrel rolled out.
Could have told you to stop.
Could have remembered Jacob laughing in the pool, calling the idea horrifying.
Instead, Bobby remained completely still as your lips met his for the second time.
The first had been reckless and quick, gone before either of you could understand it.
This one lingered.
Your mouth moved softly against his, testing the resistance he claimed to have. Your fingers rested against the thin fabric covering his chest, directly above the frantic beating of his heart.
Bobby’s eyes closed for a few seconds, every reason disappeared.
No Jacob.
No parents.
No years of knowing you as something safe and untouchable.
There was only the warmth of your mouth and the faint taste of the soda you had shared at the store, his hand lifted and it hovered beside your waist, fingers curling as he fought the instinct to pull you closer.
You felt the hesitation.
You shifted nearer, practically leaning on him.
That was what broke him.
Bobby kissed you back.
Not fully.
Not without restraint but enough, his mouth pressed more firmly to yours, and a quiet breath escaped you, his hand finally settled against your waist, thumb brushing the bare skin between your bikini and the open shirt.
The touch sent a shiver through you despite the heat for one stolen moment, Bobby let himself have it.
The kiss he had imagined without ever admitting it.
The proof that he hadn’t invented the way you looked at him.
The warmth of you beneath his hand, you had placed your right palm openly on his thigh, dangerously close to somewhere he wanted you to go higher on, no! Bobby tore himself away, he looked towards the house again, breathing hard.
You remained close, lips parted, hand leaving his thigh and sliding up to rest against his chest. He covered it with his own, for a second, you thought he might push it away. Instead, he held it there. “This can’t happen” His voice was barely audible over the idling engine.
“It already did.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I know what you keep telling yourself.”
Bobby looked at you, there was no smugness in your face now. Your eyes glanced down quickly to his lap, he followed. Tight, straining against his shorts. He fixed himself quickly by a shift of his thighs and a small cough.
Only certainty, only certainty that you now knew he wanted you as much as you wanted him. “You’re going back to school in three days,” he said, awkwardly.
“So?”
“So this is nothing.”
You flinched, bobby felt it beneath his hand.
He regretted the words immediately, but fear made him cruel because if it wasn’t, he had no idea what he was supposed to do with it.
You slowly pulled your hand from beneath his. “Right.”
“That’s not..”
“No, I understand.” You moved back into your seat and reached for the door handle.
Bobby shut off the engine. “Wait.”
You opened the door. “The ice is melting,” you said, throwing his earlier excuse back at him, you stepped down and slammed the door behind you.
Bobby remained inside, staring through the windshield as you walked towards the back of the truck. He touched his thumb to his lower lip. He could still feel you there.
Three days.
He had three days to convince himself it had meant nothing.
The first kiss had lasted a second. The second, perhaps ten. It had already ruined him.
The moment you walked through the side gate, the noise of the backyard swallowed you whole again.
Jacob was still stretched across the lounger, one arm hanging over the side while the radio played beside him. Your father stood still over the grill, lifting each burger as though checking them every five seconds would somehow make them cook faster.
You were too busy wrestling one of the bags of ice from the back of Bobby’s truck, determined not to look at him. Your face was still hot. Your mouth still tingled. Worse, his words sat heavily inside your chest.
This is nothing.
Bobby came around the truck and took the bag from you. “I’ve got it.”
“I can carry ice.”
“I know.”
“Then let me.” You tugged at the slippery plastic, but his grip tightened, the two of you stood there holding opposite ends of the same bag as if a game of tug of war started. His eyes found yours. “Just let me help,” he said quietly.
“I don’t need you to help me.” Bobby’s jaw shifted to speak, you didn’t want to hear it so you released the bag before he could answer and walked ahead of him through the gate.
Your mom watched the entire exchange from the kitchen window.
She had watched more than that.
She had been rinsing a bowl in the sink when Bobby’s truck pulled up outside. She had seen the two of you sitting inside long after the engine stopped. At first, she’d assumed you were arguing.
Your mom had frozen with the dishcloth still in her hand, she watched Bobby pull away, watched him look towards the house in sheer panic.
Watched you say something that made his face change before you kissed him again and she had watched, with considerably less surprise when Bobby kissed you back.
Only for a moment.
By the time you entered the kitchen, she had moved away from the window and resumed slicing tomatoes as though nothing had happened.
“Three bags?” your father called from outside.
“Three bags,” Bobby answered as he came through the sliding door behind you, cold water dripping from the ice and darkening the front of his white shirt.
Your mother glanced at him.
Bobby immediately looked guilty.
It was almost impressive, he had the expression of someone trying desperately to appear normal while standing beside a broken lamp.
“Put one in the freezer,” she said. “The other two can go in the cooler.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He avoided looking at you.
Jacob lifted the towel from his face. “Did you get my Slurpee?”
“No,” Bobby said.
“You were gone forever.”
“The line was long.” You looked at him.
Bobby felt it, his shoulders stiffened, there had been no line.
Jacob groaned. “You could’ve called and asked what flavor I wanted.”
“This isn’t a restaurant.”
“You’re a terrible friend.” Bobby dropped the first bag into the cooler with more force than necessary. “You have no idea.” The words were quiet, but you heard them.
So did your mom, she placed the knife down.
Bobby carried the remaining bag towards the garage freezer. When he passed you, the back of his hand brushed yours.
She waited until Bobby disappeared through the laundry room before speaking. “Sweetheart, can you help me upstairs for a minute?”
You looked at her suspiciously. “With what?”
“The sheets.”
“What sheets?”
“The ones on my bed.”
“You changed them yesterday.” Your mom smiled pleasantly. “Then this should be quick.”
You glanced towards the laundry room door, bobby hadn’t returned.
Your mom picked up a basket of folded towels and pushed it into your hands.
“Come on.” There was something in her tone that made your stomach drop. You followed her out of the kitchen and up the stairs, holding the basket between you like evidence.
The second you entered your parents’ bedroom, she closed the door and locked it. “What?”
Her eyebrows rose. “What, what?”
“Why are we hiding in your bedroom?” It came out as a whisper. “We aren’t hiding.”
“You closed the door.”
“To have a private conversation.” Your heartbeat began to climb. “About what?” Your mom walked to the window and adjusted the curtains, though they didn’t need adjusting.
Then she turned around. “Bobby.”
The basket slipped slightly in your arms.
You recovered it quickly. “What about Bobby?”
“Oh, honey.” The gentleness in her voice was worse than anger would have been.
You lowered the basket onto the end of the bed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I saw you.” Every thought left your head, your mom let the silence sit between you.
“You saw what?”
“I was standing at the kitchen window when you came back.”
Your face burned. “Mom..”
“I saw the first kiss.” You stared at the carpet.
“And the second.”
“Oh my God.” You covered your face with both hands. “I’m moving back to school tonight.”
Your mom laughed softly.
“It isn’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“The way Bobby looked around afterward was very funny.”
You dropped your hands. “He thought Dad or Jacob saw.”
“They didn’t.”
“Are you going to tell them?”
“No.” The answer came without hesitation.
You blinked. “You’re not?”
“No.” Relief rushed through you so suddenly that your knees felt weak. You sat on the edge of the bed.
Your mom remained standing in front of you, arms loosely folded. “I’m not angry.”
“You should be.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s Bobby.” You rolled your eyes.
“Yes. I know who you kissed.”
“And Jacob would lose his mind.”
“Also true.”
“And Bobby’s 23.”
“You’re 19.”
“That’s what I told him.”
Your mom’s mouth twitched. “Repeatedly, I’m guessing.”
“He keeps calling me a kid.”
“He’s trying to convince himself.”
You looked at her sharply. “What?”
Your mother sat beside you. “I was young once.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” She smiled. “You know me as your mother. You don’t know who I was before that.”
“You’ve shown me the pictures.”
“Those pictures have been heavily edited for family consumption.”
Despite yourself, you laughed. Your mom leaned back on her hands, looking towards the ceiling as if remembering another lifetime. “I spent most of the 70s in embroidered skirts, listening to Fleetwood Mac and making decisions that would make your grandmother rise from the grave simply to yell at me.”
“Mom!” You blushed, poor grandmother.
“What? You think your generation invented sex?”
You covered your ears. “Now I’m with Jacob. This is disgusting.”
“Exactly what I told him downstairs.” Your mom nudged your knee with hers.
“My point is, I’m not going to sit here and pretend kissing a handsome man is the end of the world.”
“You think Bobby’s handsome?”
“I have eyes.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
“It isn’t a crime to notice.” You gave her a horrified look.
She laughed again. “Relax. I’m happily married.”
“Please stop talking.” Her expression softened. “But I am going to warn you.” The small amount of ease you had found disappeared.
You looked down at your hands. “I’m listening.”
“Do not sleep with him in this house.”
“Mom!”
“I mean it.”
“We kissed twice.”
“And the second one lasted considerably longer than the first.”
You wished the mattress would open and swallow you. “I can’t believe you watched.”
“I wasn’t going to stand there with binoculars, but I wasn’t about to announce myself either.”
“There’s nothing happening.”
“Good. Then following that rule should be easy.”
You folded your arms. “You really think I’d do that while everyone was home?”
“I think you’re 19, he’s frightened of his own feelings, and you’re both sleeping across the hall from each other.” You said nothing.
Your mother’s voice became gentler.“You can make your own choices. I’m not going to ask for details, and I’m not going to shame you for wanting someone. But not while Jacob is here. Not under this roof.”
“Why does it matter where?”
“Because your brother trusts Bobby.”
“He trusts me too.”
“Yes, but you’re his sister. Bobby is his best friend.” The distinction made something twist inside you.
Your mom took your hand. “If something ever happens between the two of you, Jacob may be angry regardless. He’ll probably act like an overprotective idiot. But finding out Bobby slept with you in the bedroom across the hall while he was downstairs?” She shook her head. “That would feel like betrayal.”
You swallowed. “Bobby said the same thing.”
“About Jacob?”
“He said Jacob would kill him. That Dad trusts him in the house. That he’s spent years looking out for me.”
“He isn’t wrong.”
“He also said it was nothing.” Your mom went still, you stared at the seam of the comforter. “It doesn’t matter.” You exhaled, a soft pang in your chest that hurt like an anxiety attack.
“Of course it matters.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Your voice had already begun to shake, you hated that the tears arrived now, after you had managed to hold them back through the entire drive home. You blinked hard, but one escaped anyway, sliding hotly down your cheek.
Your mother’s face softened. “Oh, sweetheart.”
“Don’t.”
She reached for you, but you turned your face away. “This is embarrassing, crying over a boy.”
“It isn’t.”
“I kissed him.”
“I gathered that.”
“Twice.”
“Yes.”
“And he barely kissed me back.”
Your mother gave you a look. “You weren’t watching closely enough.”
“He pulled away.”
“Because the truck was parked directly outside the house.”
“He told me not to do it.”
“And then you did it again.”
“I told him I wasn’t a child.”
“That was probably necessary.”
You wiped quickly beneath your eyes.“He said I’m going back to school in three days and that this is nothing.”
Your mom’s expression changed, not anger exactly, but irritation on your behalf. “That was unkind.”
“He meant it.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Honey.”
“He doesn’t even seem interested.”
Your mom stared at you for a moment, then she laughed.
You looked at her in disbelief. “I’m crying here??”
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
“You don’t sound sorry.”
She pressed her lips together, trying to stop. “Oh, honey.”
“Stop saying that.”
“He choked when you walked into the backyard.”
“That was the smoke.”
“He has been smoking since he was 16. The man knows how to inhale.” Man, he is a man.
You sniffed, looking away.
Your mom continued, gentler now as she squeezed your hand. “And when you walked in carrying the ice, Bobby looked like someone had handed him his own death sentence.”
“That doesn’t mean he likes me.”
“No,” she agreed. “The way he looks at you means he likes you.”
Your breathing hitched.
You turned towards her. “What way?”
Your mother’s smile was small now. Knowing. “The way he tries not to.”
The room fell quiet.
Outside, somebody shouted from the pool. Jacob, most likely. Your father answered with something about the burgers. The familiar sounds of the house drifted through the walls, grounding you while your mother’s words settled inside you.
“He hardly looks at me,” you said.
“Exactly.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It will someday.”
You frowned as she sighed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear as though you really were still a child.
“When a man isn’t interested, he looks at you normally. He talks to you normally. He doesn’t freeze every time you enter a room. He doesn’t watch you when he thinks no one else is paying attention, then suddenly become fascinated by the floor when you turn around.”
Your heart began to beat harder. “He watches me?”
Your mom gave you a pointed look. “You know he does.”
You did, you just hadn’t trusted yourself to believe it. “He looked scared after I kissed him.”
“He is scared.”
“Of me?”
“No.” She smiled. “Of himself.”
You thought of Bobby’s face inside the truck, the way his hand had hovered at your waist before finally touching you.
The way he kissed you back for those few stolen seconds, restrained even as his breathing changed.
Fear of what it meant. “He’s scared of Jacob,” you said.
“Partly.”
“And Dad.”
“Your father can be intimidating while holding barbecue tongs.” You laughed weakly. “But mostly,” your mom continued, “I think Bobby is afraid that wanting you makes him a bad person.”
Your smile faded. “Why would it?”
“Because he remembers you at 14. Because he’s been treated like part of this family for years. Because your brother trusts him. Because sometimes people confuse guilt with morality.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means feeling guilty doesn’t automatically mean you’ve done something wrong.”
You looked down at your joined hands.
“He called me a kid.”
“He called you that because the alternative frightens him.”
“What alternative?”
Your mother tilted her head. “That you’re a woman, and he wants you.” The words sent warmth rushing through your chest.
You felt foolish for how much they affected you. “How can you be so sure?”
“I saw him kiss you back.” Your mom’s tone was simple. “A man who isn’t interested doesn’t forget where he is when your entire family is 20feet away.”
You pictured it again.
Bobby’s eyes closing. His hand settling at your waist.
That brief, almost desperate pressure of his mouth against yours before the sound of a car door brought him back to reality.
Your mom stood and picked up the basket of towels.
You remained sitting on the bed, staring towards the window. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I’m your mother. I’m supposed to tell you to leave him alone.”
“But?”
“But I remember what 19 felt like.” She walked towards the door, then stopped with her hand on the knob. “Don’t chase him so hard that you make all the decisions for him. If Bobby wants this, he has to be brave enough to choose it himself.”
You swallowed. “And if he doesn’t?”
“Then you deserve someone who doesn’t make you beg to be wanted.”
She opened the door.
You stood, wiping beneath your eyes one final time. “Mom?”
She looked back.
“You aren’t going to tell Jacob, are you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Or Dad?”
“Your father still thinks you’ve only held hands with Cole.”
Your mouth fell open. “He asked me if Cole hurt me.”
“He’d ask fewer questions if he knew what protection meant.” You groaned and followed her into hallway.
As you reached the stairs, Bobby came out of the bathroom.
He stopped.
You stopped.
Your mother continued down without either of you.
Bobby’s hair was damp at the temples, as though he had splashed cold water over his face. His white shirt clung slightly to his chest. He looked at your reddened eyes, and something troubled moved across his face. “You okay?”
You remembered your mother’s words.
“I’m fine.”
Bobby glanced downstairs, then lowered his voice. “Did your mom say something?”
Your heart jumped. “Why would she?”
His gaze moved over your face, searching. “I don’t know.” He knew, or at least suspected. He stood near enough that you could smell soap over the lingering trace of smoke. You could have reached out and touched him.
You didn’t.
Bobby noticed the distance.
He had expected anger. Another question. Maybe another reckless kiss.
Your restraint unsettled him more than any of those things would have. “I didn’t mean what I said,” he murmured.
You looked at him. “Which part?”
His throat moved. “That it, the was nothing.” He gestured between you both with his hand, resting it on the banister afterwards.
Something inside you softened, but you didn’t let it show too easily. “What is it, then?”
Bobby’s eyes dropped briefly to your mouth.
The answer frightened him. “I don’t know.”
You nodded slowly, you didn’t push. You just stepped around him and began walking downstairs.
Bobby turned after you. “That’s it?”
You glanced over your shoulder. “For now.” you left him standing alone in the hallway
my darling peter prior so underappreciated. would you ever write for him? i'd love to dress up as a cop on halloween and cuff him with fuzzy cuffs and have my way with him. fawkk he is so submissive in true detective. thank you for your writings! ilyyy
──── Peter Prior┆Fuzzy Handcuffs
author’s note: Not exactly ‘Priors Family’ but I think it’ll do too <3 This work contains: pure smut, riding, dress up, p in v, sub!Peter, handcuffs, bondage, unprotected sex
Peter Prior x girlfriend!reader
mdni
Peter was tired. But it was nothing new — he was constantly tired nowadays. Constantly tired, overworked, cold and annoyed. Annoyed by Liz and by his work and by the fact that the only thing he wanted to do he wasn't able to. He wanted to spend an entire day with you — uninterrupted. So that you can lay in bed tangled together, warm and without care in the world.
While pulling into the driveway he had only one thing in his mind — to pull off his uniform and slip straight under the covers of your bed. He took his time in his car. Sitting in it in silence for a second, trying to calm his frustration so he wouldn’t get into the house angry before finally scrambling out of the car and pulling out his house keys.
The house is dark when he walks into it, the only sound present is the buzzing of the fridge and quite scraping of nails against the couch — probably your cat lounging on it before he would decide to have a late night snack. He kicked off his shoes quietly, placing them clumsily by the doors as he tried to not make a noise and disturb the silence.
His jacket goes off and Peter momentarily flinches as the soft something walks head first into his leg and rubs itself into his trousers — a quiet meowing is enough to calm his racing heart.
Fucking police officer getting scared by his own cat, fucking wonderful Peter, great job.
He thought to himself while brushing his hair back gently — his eyes felt dry from hours of sitting by the laptop and scrolling through the reports, printing out documents and trying not to roll them at the comments coming from his dad’s desk. What was more than hard for him, not saying nothing about people who worked with Hank long before Peter came to the station with a badge of his own.
He wondered how your day was, now probably was too late to talk about it anyway as you were probably long asleep in your shared bed, wrapped up in blankets and pillows to fight off the cold that was sipping through the cracks of the windows.
Peter meant to fix them a week ago but among all that mess he had to go through at work he kinda… well… forgot.
He flickered the lights on before freezing before even fully stepping into the bathroom — not because of his cat bumping into his leg again, not because of the squeaks of the house settling that sometimes made him uneasy after watching something scary and stupid.
There was blood, a whole pool of the crimson liquid splashed on the cold tiles, smudged over the bath and cabinets — long smeared as if someone was struggling or putting up a fight while actively bleeding out. Peter saw scenes like that, on the training back in the police school or even sometimes when he got called after another tourist got attacked by a polar bear.
Yet never would he expect a sight like that to appear in his own house.
Peter’s own blood went cold, any color draining from his face before his eyes widened and breath hitched. He suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move as various scenarios ran through and through into his head like a never ending train.
Only tough grabbing against his waist made him come back from spiraling — hands over the fabric of his black turtleneck, cold and so so familiar.
“Officer Prior hands in the air! You are detained on suspicion of murder” you said from behind him and Peter’s eyebrow lifted before both of them scrunched in a frown.
“Babe– what?” he inhaled trying to turn around and finally face you.
“Hands in the air where I can see them” you said only before he felt you letting go of him and setting back “Turn around slowly.”
Despite the ridiculousness of the situation Peter only rolled his eyes gently. And then he turned — slowly – so slowly as if it was a real situation and you were a real cop and it was not just one big joke you decided to play on him in the middle of the night.
And then he stopped and his eyes widened before his lips parted slightly in shock.
There you are — in the navy blue uniform, fake badge pinned right next to your way too unbuttoned neckline, short sleeve showing almost your whole arms, fabric of the short, yes shorts skin tight and the black belt holding a pair of the pretty, pink handcuffs wrapped around your waist where he’s been so keen on stealing touches. His cheeks warmed up at the sight but the stupid booking hat on your head making it a little bit unserious on top of that.
“I— I don’t reckon today being my birthday.” he chuckled quietly with his hands still in the air.
“Cuz it’s not, baby” you said and smiled — and the way you did it with adding ‘baby’ at the end just made something inside him warm up “Happy Halloween, Peter” you added quietly.
And that was the moment Peter stopped dead in his tracks and his smile slowly disappeared from his face as the feeling of dread suddenly dropped on him.
Halloween?
Halloween.
Ain’t no way it was today right? He’d remember if it was today — actually back home earlier and watch some spooky movie with you, occasionally getting up if someone would knock on your doors for candy.
“...You forgot didn’t you?” you asked, raising your eyebrow gently — your tone not disappointed thankfully but not pleased either.
“No baby, fuck I swear—” he tried to find an excuse or somehow get himself out of that situation. “Yeah… okay I did… I’m sorry” he said and dropped his gaze to the floor, making himself unintentionally look like a scolded hamster.
You sighed quietly, not wanting him to feel bad but still feeling bitter at the situation you were in. You got that he was trying to prove himself and earn that special place or whatever it was he was going for but sometimes… you just wanted your boyfriend to actually be with you. And he couldn’t exactly blame you for that.
“Oh now you got the right to remain silent” you said and shook your head as a playful smirk somehow made it back on your face. “Anything you say might be used against you.” you added and looked up at him and his gentle frown.
“No, baby, I’m serious—”
“Caught red handed at the crime scene?” you clicked your tongue and shook your head. “With a service gun still attached to your… belt? Not looking good for you, Officer Prior.” you tried to sound as professional yet playful as you could manage — yet you were far from being a cop and it seemed like your fumbling managed to bring back the small, shy smile on his face.
He knew you were trying to make him feel better after the fuck up, despite it all.
“It’s been like that when I got here, officer!” he said and lifted his hands slightly higher.
“...that is like the worst excuse I’ve ever heard in the whole history of television.” you said and shook your head with disbelieving eyes.
‘You are breaking the character—” Peter gasped before clicking his tongue and rolling his eyes playfully.
The mood definitely shifted — the surprised-sorry part shifted and you could hear in his voice how his mind shifted and finally got into ‘finally being home’ mode. The carefree, playful and slightly bratty version of your boyfriend was back — the only complaint of yours were the dark circles under his eyes… but you knew that after tonight they won’t get much better anyway.
“Okay, okay–” your sign was filled with an attitude that made people crack even a wilder smile. “You are under arrest, officer Prior.” you repeated before a smirk bloomed on your face. “I will now question you, on your whereabouts” you said dramatically before leaning in to finally press a kiss to his lips.
They were still slightly cold from when he was outside although it didn’t take long for them to warm up after connecting with yours. He finally let his hands fall down — one hand moving to slide his fingers into the belt loop of your shorts and pull you closer before another cupped your cheek gently. You shivered from the coolness of his fingers against your skin — your own hands on his chest, already undoing his tie and letting it fall on the tiles, if it falls into the fake blood pool… well you will just have to do an unplanned laundry.
“Not the ‘questioning’ I’m familiar with.” he murmured after you finally parted away. “But I’m not complaining though.” he added before you shook your head gently.
You bit your lip gently, trying to stop a smile that was creeping onto your face again before your hands gripped the collar of his uniform and pulled him back into the kiss, at the same time, blindly guiding him out of the bathroom and into your bedroom.
The doors were kicked open as Peter deepened the kiss — his tongue licking over your lower lip and asking for an entrance. Because Peter loved to kiss you — to steal pecks, to press quick kisses when he was leaving for work and he was already running late, to make out on the couch with some random show playing in the background, when you got to do something together in the kitchen and the small kisses on the neck or shoulders ended up being more than should be performed on the kitchen counter.
Peter’s breath hitched the moment his back hit the bed — his head on the pillows, his body finally melting into the mattress after a long day. And then tensing again at the sight and the feeling of you on top of him. This cop costume looked hotter on your than it should’ve — now messy from his hands wandering all over on your way here, your hat now lost somewhere on the floor and your cheeks rosy in the light of the Christmas lights you lit up before scaring him in the bathroom.
“Fuck–” he breathed letting his head fall back down on the pillow as you reached to the buttons of your shirt, undoing it one by one, slowly as with an almost devilish smirk on your face that suddenly made him uncomfortable in his pants.
Peter watched silently — first came off your shirt, showing off the black, lacy bra you had to get in secret and then hide it somewhere deep in the closet where he wouldn’t even look. Then his chest raised at the sight of you unclasping the handcuffs from your bet and tossing them nearby.
Fuzzy, pink handcuffs — stupid looking compared to what he used daily yet still somehow making him so flustered and hot all over at the thought of what you had planned.
“Jesus Christ, baby.” he swallowed and had to fight himself to keep his hands away the moment you pulled off the shorts too and tossed them at the floor by your bed, the fabric landing with a soft thud — one that sounded strangely similar to Peter’s speeding heart.
“See something you like?” you chuckled quietly before moving to finally sit comfortably on his hips.
Heat raised to your cheeks as you felt his hardness pressing gently against your core — demanding attention even if fully clothed and barely seeable in the dim light. Yet you felt it and it only made your cunt throb and shiver run down your spine.
“You have no idea.” Peter sounded breathless. Why was he breathless? He saw you like that hundreds of times — on top of him, blushing, sometimes in a pretty lingerie he didn’t know you bought.
Yet it felt different now, better somehow despite the very familiar surroundings. It was the same room, same bed and even sheets still smelled like the laundry detergent and a little bit like your body wash.
Was it the surprise? The fact that you’ve done something so ridiculous yet so hot as buying a sexy cop costume and dressing up for him? He couldn’t tell, yet he wasn’t complaining about anything but the ache in his boxers.
You moved, grabbing the handcuffs again before somehow putting them between the metal posts of your headboard. “Your hand, officer.” you said, hovering over him with a smirk and Peter looked at you with pupils so dilated as if you hung the stars on the sky.
You heard him swallow the moment the handcuffs closed around both of his wrists – tight enough for him to not slide, able to slide out from the grasp but loose enough to not actually do any harm. You were careful because it’s not like you’ve ever done this kind of thing before, but it’s not like you’re gonna google ‘how to put my boyfriend in handcuffs’ either. So careful with them it was.
Peter’s hips bunched up as if in a pleading and you could only gasp quietly as he rubbed himself against you through the fabric of his pants.
“Baby please—” he mumbled, looking up at you with pink cheeks and pleading gaze. “Please, I’m dying here.” he added and inhaled — his chest lifting and falling rapidly under the fabric of his shirt.
You moved again – your fingers rushing to the buttons of his shirt as you lips pressed kisses down his collarbone and his chest with each button that came undone. You felt his muscles go rigid under your lips and he only closed his eyes and pressed his lips in a tight line as if to not let out any sound.
Peter could feel your smirk against skin each time you pressed a kiss and went lower. The cocky smile that drove him crazy with love and desire and now made him want you more than anything.
You felt yourself get wetter against the fabric of your panties when your fingers finally pulled at his belt – letting his shirt on, just open so you could see how deeply he was breathing. The metal clink of the clasp seemed to echo in the room before Peter lifted his hips to help you pull it out of the loops and you only grew more desperate while trying to tug his uniform pants off.
“I actually hate those uniforms of yours.” you grumbled quietly and shook your head after the fabric finally joined the previous ones on the floor.
“...last week you said it makes me look hot.” you said and bucked his hips again when your hand tugged at his boxers.
“It does… but taking it off is a pain in my ass.” you said and huffed quietly but a small smile bloomed on your face anyway at the thought that he actually remembered it. “Not worth it at all.” you added.
Peter opened his mouth to argue, yet only a surprised whine left his mouth after our hand wrapped around him. You felt him twitching in your hand — his cock already leaking precum from his pink tip, desperate for attention and needy for your touch. Your hand worked slowly, stroking him up and down and helping yourself with the white liquid to make it smoother. His hips twitched again as your skin made contact with his sensitive tip — teasing it as if to taunt him when his hands itched to touch you.
“Fucking— baby, please?” he inhaled shaking. “Please just— just ride me please.” he looked up at you as the lights illuminated in his blue eyes.
“...You’re so annoyingly pretty like that y’know?” you huffed quietly before crawling up the bed to press your lips back to his.
The kiss was passionate — way more messy than before, way more desperate as if neither of your bodies could withstand the tension that built up between you and seemed to snap at any moment. With one hand you carefully pulled our panties to the side — your fingers grazing accidentally over your wet cunt that only made you moan into his lips before finally positioning yourself above him and sinking down on it.
You both whined into each other's lips as his cock finally slid into your heat all the way in. You pulled away — your forehead resting on his as you both breathed out curses and gasped quietly with closed eyes.
You straightened up reluctantly — shaky hands on his chest as you tried to steady yourself on top of him and regain your focus. You could hear your heart beating wildly in your chest, probably mirroring Peter’s as heat raised to your cheeks.
You started slowly. Rocking your hips against his — forward and back in a steady rhythm and the sensation made your toes curl up and your eyebrows scrunch up in a frown of pleasure.
“I missed you so much—” he breathed bucking his hips to draw up into you to only heighten the sensation. “So much I was thinking everyday about you” you breathed and let his head fal back down against the pillow.
He groaned quietly, feeling you clench at his words — gaze already hazy as if his eyes were behind a cloud as he looked at you.
“Everyday? Pervert.” you let out a breathy chuckle before looking down at him.
“Pervert? That’s—” he grunted again before shaking his head. “You’re being annoying on purpose.” he said but you felt him throb inside you with each drag.
“And what else? You jerked off thinking about me?” you asked before you hand lifted off his chest to undo the clasp of your bra and let it slide down your arms.
“No!?” he said and inhaled deeply at the sight of your hand nipples before swallowing down. “Okay— maybe once? Twice. Okay twice, yeah.”
You could only laugh quietly before your moves quickened enough to tilt your head back as you pushed your hips upwards to chase the pleasure. And it coiled in your lower belly, the innocent tingling between your legs as you sped up — the first sign of the wave to come, one that got you so excited already.
You were rocking your hips, lifting yourself slightly to sink back on him as your hair sticks to your forehead and back. Another whimper left your lips as your hand pressed back against his chest to steady yourself without losing the pace. You could feel how rapidly his heart was beating, could feel every breath he took under your fingertips as his own pressed to your skin, helping you move above him.
Peter’s hair was a mess — all messed up and tangled from where your hands were while you kissed him and from when he tilted his head against the pillow. His cheeks rosy and pupils wide as he tried his best to match the rhyme despite the desperation for release.
You could feel his coil in your guts, every time his cock hit this one right spot – the one that almost made you see stars or tears to prickle in your eyes. “Peter–” you mumbled looking down at him with need blooming in your eyes.
“I know, baby, I know.” he nodded and swallowed again, biting down at his bottom lip and for a moment you were sure he would draw blood. “Touch yourself for me—” he inhaled and you were sure that if not the bounded wrists he’d have his hands all over you.
You swallowed down before your hand sneaked between your legs — fingers pressing to your throbbing clit and making you moan quietly as you focused on not losing the rhythm. The gesture – so simple and almost forgettable was the thing that made you fall apart around him. You clenched on him, tightly, desperately, circling the pearl with your fingertips just to feel the pleasure coil itself tighter in your belly.
“Fuck, that’s so hot.” Peter mumbled before wetting his lips as his hands pulled slightly against the pink handcuffs as if needy to be freed and touched whenever they wanted. “Keep doing that for me—”
“Jesus, fuck, Peter—” you inhaled closing your eyes as they watered before gasping as your fet him finally match the quickened pace and thrust up into you.
“I know–... I know–” he nodded and looked up at you. “I’m close too, baby, I know.”
You could feel him twitch inside you, his cock needy for release after so much stimulation. You pulled your hand away — you felt like you needed your whole will for that — before leaning down to press his lips to his again. Needy, sloppy and on the bring of falling of the age right into the wave of pleasure.
But instead it crashed into you — suddenly — making your groan into his lips and squeezing your fingers at the sheets as your hips twitched to prolong the feeling somehow. Peter followed right behind — spilling deep inside you in a messy spurt that made him tilt his head back with hissy gasps and eyes squeezed shut.
You rested your head against his collarbone, breathing deeply to calm down, to come down your high as your heart thrummed loudly — his cock still twitching inside you in aftershocks as you refused to immediately get off of him.
“You… you know where the keys to those are?” he asked and weakly tried to lift his hands.
Your blood suddenly ran cold at the memory of throwing the packaging of the handcuffs away “Fuck—”
Thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed it! Subby Peter forever my favorite. I don't consent to copying my work or translating it, don't upload it to an other platforms. DO NOT TURN THIS INTO AN AI BOT - like it happened with my Shawn Heard fic, to the person that did that is so disrespectful of you to feel entitled enough to steal someone's work and turn into into an AI bot. Without any consent or even doing so little as to give credit. To any that might have similar idea - I do not consent to any form of copying, do NOT steal my work.
obsessed with your voice dex would totally jerk himself off when otp with you.
you’d be laying on your bed, talking dex’s ears off about your frustrating work day. you’d hear the occasional, “mhm..” “oh man that sucks..” “im sorry that happened to you baby.” from dex as you blabber. soon dex becomes quiet, his responses lessen, and you hear his breathing become heavier and louder. “hey babe, are you okay?” you ask, curious as to his change in demeanor. on the other side of the phone, dex is fisting himself as he pumps his hand up and down his cock dripping of pre cum. “m-mhm.. just keep talking baby…” he groans. dex tries his best to hold in his moans but he can’t help but let a few slip out. you try to ignore it, playing coy. sometimes you stop talking for a new seconds to hear his needy whimpers for you. “b-baby… where’d you g-go..?” as the slick sound of his hand going down his cock fills the background noise. dex’s chest rises as he waits for you to keep talking before he jerks himself off again, edging himself to the cadence of your arousing voice. you hear him picking up his pace and his heavy breathing taking over his audio. you hear a groan and know he finished all over his stomach. his cum spewing from his sensitive tip and his head thrown back in pleasure. “thank you baby… thank you so much..” dex says breathlessly.
☆ ──꒰summary꒱ ❞ aerion says sex is something for best friends, and that it’s a secret just for the two of you. after finding a dirty magazine in your older brothers room, you have some ideas on how to expand your friendship.
contains! p-in-v, manipulation, modern au, doggystyle, semi-public sex.
requested material
೯⠀⁺ ⠀ 𖥻 𝗢 ⠀ᰋ “whats eatin’ at ya, sweetheart?” Aerion asked, spitting tobacco into the grass. you had been worrying the hem of your shirt for five minutes straight, your eyes fixed on your shoes, and he’d gotten annoyed with the lack of talk from you.
“i want to try our… best friend thing but, in a different way.”
Aerion straightened up, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, “a different way? well, we already got the basics down, so i guess it’s time to move on…” he mused, “you got something particular in mind?”
“i found a book…” you started, your face already flushing red, “and the lady in the picture was on her hands and knees, and the man was… he was, um, behind her. i wanna do that.”
Aerion froze, his eyes widening before a laugh erupted from him. “where the hell did you learn about that? you been peekin’ at filth?”
truthfully, you had found said literature in your brothers bedroom, hidden in a closet that your mother had told you to clean out because he refused to. the dirty magazine now laid under your own bed, hidden behind a pair of shoes that you were saving for next years easter sunday. “it was just there!” you simply said, covering your hot face. “is that how best friends do it too?”
“course they do, sweet thing. best friends do whatever feels good.” he wrapped his arm around you, using it to guide you towards the shadows of the nearby toolshed. “now, uh, get that dress up baby. ’nd get down on your hands and knees.”
he liked commanding you. he liked watching the things you’d do for him, how far you’d go. and right now, he was thoroughly enjoying watching you obey, hands digging into the cool grit beneath you, flipping up the skirt of your dress so that he could see the cute little cotton panties you were wearing today.
you stared at the grass that your hands pressed into, listening to the familiar sound of the unbuckling of his belt. you closed your eyes as you felt him move in close, his knees on the grass while he positioned himself behind you.
the head of his cock rubbed your folds, then positioned at your entrance. “you ready?” he asked, slowly nudging in. Aerion didn’t really care about permission, he just liked the way your voice sounded when you told him you wanted it, all needy and soft.
“yes, Aerion, please.” you whined. he drew in a sharp intake of breath, your tone washing over him like something warm and pleasurable.
he buried himself inside you, your head dipping down and momentarily brushing against the tall grass. “fuck you’re tight.”
he started to thrust, already at a hammering pace. something about this position made it feel deeper, like his cock was hitting somewhere that had never been touched. it made your arms shake and struggle to hold you up. he gripped your hips, hips slapping against your ass sharply. you moaned, the pleasure overwhelming.
“does it feel good?” he grunted.
“yes!” you cried. Aerion reached around, maneuvering his arm underneath you to find your clit, his rough, calloused fingers rubbing the small nub with rough, aggressive pressure that made your legs feel like jelly. “it feels… it feels so good, Aerion. you make me feel so good…” your voice was breathy, your nails digging into the dirt.
“you’re gonna cum for me, ain’tcha, baby?”
“uh huh, i think i am…”
he increased the pace, his cock slamming into you while his fingers ground relentlessly into your clit. your breath came in short, sharp hitches. the tension built until you couldn’t breathe, your internal muscles clamping down tightly around him.
“c’mon, baby, give it to me.” he said, rubbing harder, chasing your orgasm.
you screamed into the grass as a violent orgasm ripped through you. your pussy pulsed in waves, squeezing his shaft as you came hard.
Plot: After matching on tinder, he suggested taking couples therapy, anger management and then a parenting class.
Warnings: NON ~ They FINALLY kiss. Suggestive baby making talk at the end.
The acting studio smelled faintly of coffee, old wood and fresh paint.
A dozen people lingered around the room introducing themselves while sipping from coffee cups the size of plant pots. Rachel, the instructor, arranged scripts on a folding table.
Aerion nudged your shoulder. “I’ve got one rule.”
“Oh no.”
He began counting down on his fingers,“We’ve done married.” One finger. “We’ve done divorced.” Two fingers.
“When did we do divorce?” You asked him, curiously look around the room and the stage that held a few boxes of different props. Aerion looked offended, “Oh yeah! Anger Management.” He counted that as his second finger while you shook your head. “We’ve done parenting class.” His third finger.
“Poor Kevin.” You muttered, “I’ll need to include him in my future tinder bio.” You wiggled your brows getting a straight faced look from Aerion. “Eh! I deleted my tinder when I met you.” You went to question him but he caught you off with the wave of his hand.
“So today…” He grinned. “we’ve never met.”
You laughed. “You’ve got a problem.”
“I’ve got commitment to the roles.”
Rachel clapped her hands. “Okay everyone! Find someone you don’t know.”
Aerion immediately walked in the opposite direction, you did the same.
You counted silently.
One…
Two…
Three…
He wandered back over with the worst fake smile you’d ever seen. “Hi.” Tongue catching between his teeth with a roll of his shoulders. “Hi.”
He stuck out his hand. “I’m Aerion.”
You shook it. “It’s nice to meet you.” It’s warm, he’s warm. His hand swallows yours in its grip.
He looked thoughtful. “Have we met before?”
“No.”
“You’ve got one of those faces.”
“What kind of face?”
“The kind I’d remember.”
You felt your cheeks warm. “That was smooth.”
“I wasn’t trying.”
“You absolutely were.”
Rachel pointed at you both. “Perfect! You two.” She called for you both to go first with the scene. The first exercise was called Instant Connection.
“You’ve got sixty seconds,” Rachel explained. “Become complete strangers waiting for the same delayed flight.”
Aerion looked around the imaginary airport. “You look like someone who’d fight customer service.”
“I would.”
“I respect that.” He offered a small smile from the corner of his lips.
“What about you?” You asked, faking a drink from a cup keep his glaze.
“I’d cry.”
If you actually had a drink, it would have been snorted. “You don’t strike me as a crier.”
“I’d cry beautifully.”
“You’ve practised?”
“In mirrors.” He nodded, his ego inflating. Most days you wondered how his head never exploded.
The room laughed.
Rachel smiled. “Very natural.” Next scene. “You’ve just become neighbours.”
Aerion knocked on an imaginary front door.
You answered. “Can I help you?”
“My Wi-Fi’s out.”
“So’s mine.”
“Then why did I come over?”
“You thought I was attractive.” You smiled, making up he came over just to talk too you.
He blinked and whispered into the back of his hand. “I wasn’t going to say that until page three.”
“There are no pages.”
He smiled. “I know.”
Rachel was already laughing. “You two are very quick.”
Third exercise. “You’ve been set up on a blind date.”
Aerion pulled out an imaginary chair “So…”
“So.”
“What are your red flags?”
“I collect medieval swords.” It was true, you did.
He nodded while making an O shape with his lip. “Green flag.’
“You?”
“I think birds are government spies.”
You stared. “Like.. Pigeons?”
“Especially pigeons.” He narrowed his eyes, leading forward keeping his face straight. You had wondered if he was being serious.
“Still green.” You replied.
By now, the rest of the class was watching your scenes instead of rehearsing their own, not because you were the best actors but because the two of you looked like you were genuinely having the time of your lives.
Every joke landed.
Every pause felt natural.
Every smile earned another.
Rachel eventually stopped everyone. “I need to know.”
She looked between you. “How long have you known each other?” She could spot actors and liars, she knew you both knew each other.
Aerion answered immediately. “About..” He checked an imaginary watch. “Eight minutes.”
The class laughed.
Rachel smiled. “No, seriously.”
You shrugged. “We matched on Tinder.”
Half the room burst into laughter.
Rachel blinked. “Wait.”
“Last week.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
She looked genuinely impressed. “I would’ve guessed years.” Finally she handed every pair a script. “This one’s simple.” She smiled, a bit of mischief sparked in her eyes.
“A first kiss.”
There was a chorus of teasing groans around the room.
Aerion took the pages.
You leaned over his shoulder.
The scene was cheesy.
Almost painfully so.
Two strangers meet in a bookstore.
Spend all afternoon talking.
Realise neither of them wants the day to end.
The last line read: He kisses her.
Aerion looked at it, then looked at you.
“Guess we drew the short straw.”
You smiled. “Could’ve been worse.”
“What?”
“We could’ve been siblings.”
He nearly laughed loud enough for Rachel to hear. “I actually wouldn’t have minded that.” You looked at him in disbelief and he held his hands up and backed up.
When your turn came, you stepped onto the little stage.
The chatter died away.
You began. “You dropped your book.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“You dropped it on purpose?”
“I panicked.”
“You panic by littering?”
“I panic creatively.” The room laughed.
The scene rolled on effortlessly.
Neither of you had to think anymore.
The words on the page became your own.
The teasing felt real.
The smiles came without effort, at one point you laughed at something he improvised, not because your character was supposed to but because you genuinely couldn’t help it.
Aerion caught himself staring.
It hit him suddenly, you looked even prettier when you forgot there was anyone else in the room.
Your eyes crinkled when you laughed.
You bit your lip trying to stop.
You reached for his arm without thinking whenever he said something ridiculous.
When did that start?
Across from him, you were having an equally inconvenient thought.
He wasn’t just handsome.
He was kind.
He always checked you were comfortable before taking the joke too far.
He listened.
Actually listened.
Every ridiculous idea he’d dragged you into had somehow ended with him making sure you were okay first.
You realised, with a little jolt of panic that you weren’t pretending to like him anymore.
You reached the final page.
The kiss.
Neither of you looked at the script.
You simply looked at each other.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that you could smell his cologne.
Close enough that he quietly asked, “Still okay?”
You nodded. “Yeah, Are you?.”
A tiny smile spread across his face. “I really am.”
He brushed his thumb lightly along your jaw, not because the script said so because he wanted to. Then he kissed you, it was supposed to be a quick stage kiss.
Instead, it was slow. Curious. The kind of kiss where neither person rushed to be the first to pull away. You had expected to kiss him for the first time might be awkward, it might be rushed but it felt like two people who had built a life together. Imaginary or not.
The applause around you faded into meaningless background noise.
He smiled into the kiss, you did too.
Somewhere in the distance Rachel laughed. “Okay!”
Neither of you heard her. “Guys?”
Aerion’s hand had found the small of your back, you leaned instinctively closer. Wrapping your arms around his shoulders deepening the kiss with teeth, his tongue darted out catching you off guard but a small moan slipped into his mouth, a hand in his hair.
“Guys!” Nothing, Rachel walked onto the stage. She gently tapped Aerion’s shoulder, still nothing. Finally she wedged herself between the two of you, pushing lightly until you both stumbled half a step apart. “There!” She folded her arms. “I think we’ve established the chemistry.”
Neither of you looked at her, you were still looking at each other and each other only. Trying and failing not to smile.
Rachel cleared her throat. “So, what did you think of the exercise?”
Silence.
Aerion took your hand, his eyes stayed fixated. You intertwined your fingers with his without even noticing.
Rachel tried again. “Any feedback?”Nothing.
He leaned down, still smiling like an idiot.
“So…”
“Yeah?”
“My apartment’s ten minutes away.”
You laughed quietly. “To rehearse?”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
You picked up your bag, he grabbed his jacket.
Rachel watched the pair of you walk straight past her as if she’d turned invisible. “Excuse me?”
No answer.
You were both too busy laughing as the studio door closed behind you, Rachel looked at the rest of the class and slowly shook her head. “I don’t know whether they were the best actors I’ve ever taught…” She smiled to herself. “or they stopped acting halfway through.”
As they reached his car, he unlocked it with a click and opened the passenger door for you.
You leaned against it instead of getting in. “So…” you said, folding your arms. “What’s the plan?” Aerion pretended to think, looking up at the evening sky as if weighing his options.
“Hm.”
“What?”
He looked back at you with a perfectly straight face, he pressed wedging you between his hips and the car door. A smile now on his face, “I guess we make a real Kevin.” His hands found your waist. You blinked. “What?” He shrugged. “We can’t exactly go back to the parenting class empty handed.”
You stared at him for a long moment.
“You are not serious.”
“We’ve built an entire backstory.”
“You forgot him.”
“I know.”
“It was your idea!”
“I’ve had time to reflect.” He nodded solemnly. “I owe Kevin an apology.”
You burst into laughter, doubling over against his shoulder. “Oh my God…”
“I’m just thinking long term.”
“You’ve known me for, what, two weeks?”
“Twelve days.”
“You counted?”
“I’ve got a spreadsheet.”
“You have not.”
“I’ve colour coded it.”
You laughed even harder.
When you finally caught your breath, you looked up to find him smiling at you, not the smug grin he wore when he won an argument, not the mischievous smile before another ridiculous prank. Just… a quiet one. “So,” he asked softly, “my place?”
You shook your head, still smiling. “Yeah.”
He opened the passenger door with a little bow. “And Kevin?” His eyebrows wiggled suggestively.
You climbed in. “We’ll discuss him after dinner.”
Aerion grinned to himself as he shut the door. “That’s the closest thing to a ‘maybe’ I’ve ever heard.”
Shawn didn’t really know what would happen to him after that nasty school fight he got himself into. The guy at the local high school had an ego of a peacock and running mouth that brought him more trouble than good.
He really didn’t mean to beat him up that badly — no broken nose and punched out teeth were on his mind when he landed the first blow.
Because despite everything Shawn cared — he cared what people think about him and what they say, what kind of dirt is passed around through the school about him and as much as he tried to show it didn’t affect him god knows it did. Every mean whisper and dumb rumor made his blood boil and feel like something is crawling under his skin. This awful feeling of everyone’s eyes one you and sneers that we’re only leaving a scar on the brain.
Normally he ignored them, get his mind away from the thoughts during work in the car shop where nobody really cared who you were nor what were you doing — only things that mattered were if you’re doing your job right and a paycheck.
But the pain of his father’s passing still lingered somewhere deep in Shawn and he would be damned if he let that guy run his mouth about it.
He remember the fight vividly — the adrenaline spiking up, the punch under punch landed on the guy’s face and everyone screaming to ‘get the teacher!’. He remembered how his ear rang while he sat outside the principal’s office, waiting for his aunt to come and try and sort this mess out. He remembered how his knuckles pulsed with pain but he haven’t looked up from the floor until she came and only wrapped her arms around him without saying anything.
He couldn’t look anyone in the eye after leaving that damned room — the heat in the air made it impossible to think and the raised voice on the principal and his aunt Linda made it only worse.
He didn’t say anything while gathering his stuff from the locker, he didn’t say anything while passing Julie in the corridor — no explanation, no goodbye nor ‘I’ll see you at the docks’.
Only thing his mind seemed to focus on was the word expelled — weighting down on him as he sat in his aunt truck with smoke of her cigarette curling around them in the air.
He was living with her shortly — just till he finally reached 18 and she would no longer have to be his legal guardian. His cousins were little brats that complained when he changed the channel to watch a game and he couldn’t wait to move out.
Not like he had anything against aunt Linda — she had it great here, way better than he and his dad had in that trailer that still waited for him to reach adulthood. A proper house, nice car in the garage, nothing fancy but not falling apart either — a single mom to two kids and a cat, three considering him after her husband left for some dumb blonde and moved with her to Nebraska.
But yet he still had no idea how the fuck she got him into that new school. Their village was technically not in the middle of fucking nowhere — just thirty minutes away from a movie-looking American town where it seemed like the time stopped in the 2000’.
He didn’t want to go there, not really. The school was a one of the ‘nice schools’ where their biggest concern was who will be a prom queen and king or who blew who in the locker room. Feeling with bunch of rich kids that had a trust fund bigger than their ambitions.
He knew he would stick out as if he was an alien from a different world — he had no desire to make it to the football team, no desire to make some dumb quotes to the yearbook and absolutely no desire to be there at all.
Before the summer ended he was back in his trailer — he told aunt Linda that it was closer to school and he wouldn’t have to worry about being late, a complete bullshit if he was honest — he simply wanted out of that house where he was feeling like a inconvenient burden.
And among the bills, work and trying to somehow fit into the school’s reality there were you.
And Shawn swore he never met more Regina George vibe-giving girl than you. He wanted to roll his eyes each time you spoke in class, each time the fake compliments about someone’s skirt — oh how ironic — left your lips. He wanted to leave the room each time you reapplied your pink lip gloss or brushed your hair. A daughter of some rich prick, living off of your father’s money and attending every pool party there was.
But he found himself smirking — the most nasty, frustrating and exasperating smirk known to mankind each time you grimaced while passing him and mumbling a quiet ‘ew’ at the sight of his grin.
It fast turned into something more — him picking you up in his old truck, cigarette dangling from his lips as you complained about the mess under the seats and how they probably had every bug known crawling in them.
Shawn knew he was a charity case — each time you grabbed his jaw to press your pink lips to his face but pretended not to see him in the hallway the other day, each time you let him fuck you dumb against the creaking mattress of his bed but refused to stay the night later, calling a taxi to pick you up and saying you don’t want to catch anything from his bed with that smug smirk you send him while fixing the straps of your bra. When you gave him money for bills when his paycheck was running late but then murmured something to your friends behind your hand when he was passing your table at lunch.
He never really complained — it stung when you ignored him, sure but it’s not like he wasn’t more than aware he was nowhere near your league.
But god knows he always had his revenge when you came over later in the evening — never your house because god forbid someone see him leaving your house at night.
The images above are purely for aesthetics none of reader’s features are not mentioned!! Thank you for reading hope you liked it and will read when the full version is published ❤︎ moodboard
The late afternoon heat was thick and heavy, baking the cracked, dusty pavement of the empty lot behind the old grain silos.
You sat behind the wheel of Shawn’s truck, your hands locked onto the leather at a strict ten and two. The truck was an absolute beast; loud, rumbling, and smelling strongly of old leather, exhaust, and the faint edge of tobacco smoke.
Shawn was lounging in the passenger seat, one arm propped casually out the open window. His dark eyes flicked down to your feet on the pedals, specifically, your thin flip flops hovering nervously near the brake, before tracking up to your wrist. A subtle, crooked smirk tugged at his lips when he saw the colorful, woven friendship bracelet wrapped around your wrist, an exact match to the slightly battered one sitting on his own left wrist.
"Alright," Shawn said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble over the vibrating engine. "Just slowly ease off the brake. Give it a little gas. It ain't rocket science."
"I know how pedals work, Shawn," you shot back, rolling your eyes as you braced yourself.
You took a breath and tapped the gas pedal, but you misjudged the truck's capability. The heavy engine roared, and the truck lurched forward with a sudden, violent jolt.
"Whoa, whoa!" Shawn yelled, grabbing the dash as his head snapped around. His volatile temper, the sharp, defensive edge he carried around everyone else flared up instantly. "I said ease into it! You’re gonna tear the damn transmission apart slamming it down like that!"
Instead of cowering, your eyes flashed. You slammed your foot onto the brake, sending the truck to a hard stop, and turned to glare right at him.
"Don't you yell at me, Shawn Heard!" you snapped, unbuckling your seatbelt with a harsh snap. "This rusted out tank of yours reacts if a fly lands on the gas pedal! If you think you're such a brilliant teacher, you drive!"
Shawn blinked, caught completely off guard by the fire in your voice. He stared at you for a long second, his jaw tight and then, slowly, the harshness in his eyes dissolved. A quiet, breathless laugh broke from his chest, his dark eyes sparkling with genuine amusement. He loved that you never backed down from him, loved that you met his sharp edges with your own.
"You look real pretty when you're mad at me, you know that?" Shawn murmured, a slow, lazy smirk spreading across his face as he let his eyes trace over you.
"Don't try to charm your way out of this, Heard," you warned, though a subtle flush crept up your neck at the sudden shift in his voice.
"I'm not tryin' anything, baby," he drawled, his dark eyes dropping to your lips for a lingering second before locking back onto yours. "Just stating facts. You get all fiery and it's kind of hard to pay attention to the driving."
"You're impossible," you muttered, biting back a smile.
Before you could say another word, Shawn unbuckled his seatbelt and reached across the space between you. He put the truck in park, shutting off the engine until the loud rumble faded into the quiet chirp of summer crickets.
Then, effortlessly sliding behind the wheel, Shawn scooped his hands under your hips and pulled you directly onto his lap, straddling his legs as the steering wheel pressed against your back.
"Shawn!" you gasped, your hands automatically flying to his broad shoulders to steady yourself.
"What?" he whispered, his hands settling possessively on your hips, his thumbs rubbing slow, deliberate circles against your skin. "Much better view from over here."
"I was supposed to be learning how to drive," you reminded him softly, wrapping your arms loosely around his neck as you looked down at him.
"Okay, maybe I was a little loud," Shawn admitted, his tone dropping into something low, warm, and sweet. He reached up, his thumb lightly tracing your jawline before sliding up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear. "I'm an idiot. You know how I get."
"Yeah, a hothead," you teased, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Only sometimes," he murmured, his gaze dropping back to your mouth. "Come here."
He leaned in, cutting off any further arguing with a deep, lingering kiss. His lips were warm, tasting faintly of the summer heat, and his hand moved to the small of your back, pulling you flush against his chest. All the lingering annoyance drained out of you, replaced by the heavy, comforting weight of him holding you tight.
When he pulled back, his dark eyes were soft, locked onto yours with that quiet, fierce devotion he saved exclusively for you.
"You done yelling at me now?" he asked softly, a dangerous little smirk playing on his lips.
"Depends. Are you gonna teach me right this time without throwing a fit?" you countered.
Shawn let out a low, quiet laugh against your temple, pressing a soft kiss to your skin before resting his forehead against yours. He reached down, tangling his fingers with yours so your matching bracelets clicked together in the quiet cab.
"Yeah, baby," he whispered, his grip warm and steady. "Let's try it again. I've got you."
Shawn didn’t really know what would happen to him after that nasty school fight he got himself into. The guy at the local high school had an ego of a peacock and running mouth that brought him more trouble than good.
He really didn’t mean to beat him up that badly — no broken nose and punched out teeth were on his mind when he landed the first blow.
Because despite everything Shawn cared — he cared what people think about him and what they say, what kind of dirt is passed around through the school about him and as much as he tried to show it didn’t affect him god knows it did. Every mean whisper and dumb rumor made his blood boil and feel like something is crawling under his skin. This awful feeling of everyone’s eyes one you and sneers that we’re only leaving a scar on the brain.
Normally he ignored them, get his mind away from the thoughts during work in the car shop where nobody really cared who you were nor what were you doing — only things that mattered were if you’re doing your job right and a paycheck.
But the pain of his father’s passing still lingered somewhere deep in Shawn and he would be damned if he let that guy run his mouth about it.
He remember the fight vividly — the adrenaline spiking up, the punch under punch landed on the guy’s face and everyone screaming to ‘get the teacher!’. He remembered how his ear rang while he sat outside the principal’s office, waiting for his aunt to come and try and sort this mess out. He remembered how his knuckles pulsed with pain but he haven’t looked up from the floor until she came and only wrapped her arms around him without saying anything.
He couldn’t look anyone in the eye after leaving that damned room — the heat in the air made it impossible to think and the raised voice on the principal and his aunt Linda made it only worse.
He didn’t say anything while gathering his stuff from the locker, he didn’t say anything while passing Julie in the corridor — no explanation, no goodbye nor ‘I’ll see you at the docks’.
Only thing his mind seemed to focus on was the word expelled — weighting down on him as he sat in his aunt truck with smoke of her cigarette curling around them in the air.
He was living with her shortly — just till he finally reached 18 and she would no longer have to be his legal guardian. His cousins were little brats that complained when he changed the channel to watch a game and he couldn’t wait to move out.
Not like he had anything against aunt Linda — she had it great here, way better than he and his dad had in that trailer that still waited for him to reach adulthood. A proper house, nice car in the garage, nothing fancy but not falling apart either — a single mom to two kids and a cat, three considering him after her husband left for some dumb blonde and moved with her to Nebraska.
But yet he still had no idea how the fuck she got him into that new school. Their village was technically not in the middle of fucking nowhere — just thirty minutes away from a movie-looking American town where it seemed like the time stopped in the 2000’.
He didn’t want to go there, not really. The school was a one of the ‘nice schools’ where their biggest concern was who will be a prom queen and king or who blew who in the locker room. Feeling with bunch of rich kids that had a trust fund bigger than their ambitions.
He knew he would stick out as if he was an alien from a different world — he had no desire to make it to the football team, no desire to make some dumb quotes to the yearbook and absolutely no desire to be there at all.
Before the summer ended he was back in his trailer — he told aunt Linda that it was closer to school and he wouldn’t have to worry about being late, a complete bullshit if he was honest — he simply wanted out of that house where he was feeling like a inconvenient burden.
And among the bills, work and trying to somehow fit into the school’s reality there were you.
And Shawn swore he never met more Regina George vibe-giving girl than you. He wanted to roll his eyes each time you spoke in class, each time the fake compliments about someone’s skirt — oh how ironic — left your lips. He wanted to leave the room each time you reapplied your pink lip gloss or brushed your hair. A daughter of some rich prick, living off of your father’s money and attending every pool party there was.
But he found himself smirking — the most nasty, frustrating and exasperating smirk known to mankind each time you grimaced while passing him and mumbling a quiet ‘ew’ at the sight of his grin.
It fast turned into something more — him picking you up in his old truck, cigarette dangling from his lips as you complained about the mess under the seats and how they probably had every bug known crawling in them.
Shawn knew he was a charity case — each time you grabbed his jaw to press your pink lips to his face but pretended not to see him in the hallway the other day, each time you let him fuck you dumb against the creaking mattress of his bed but refused to stay the night later, calling a taxi to pick you up and saying you don’t want to catch anything from his bed with that smug smirk you send him while fixing the straps of your bra. When you gave him money for bills when his paycheck was running late but then murmured something to your friends behind your hand when he was passing your table at lunch.
He never really complained — it stung when you ignored him, sure but it’s not like he wasn’t more than aware he was nowhere near your league.
But god knows he always had his revenge when you came over later in the evening — never your house because god forbid someone see him leaving your house at night.
The images above are purely for aesthetics none of reader’s features are not mentioned!! Thank you for reading hope you liked it and will read when the full version is published ❤︎ moodboard
The late afternoon heat was thick and heavy, baking the cracked, dusty pavement of the empty lot behind the old grain silos.
You sat behind the wheel of Shawn’s truck, your hands locked onto the leather at a strict ten and two. The truck was an absolute beast; loud, rumbling, and smelling strongly of old leather, exhaust, and the faint edge of tobacco smoke.
Shawn was lounging in the passenger seat, one arm propped casually out the open window. His dark eyes flicked down to your feet on the pedals, specifically, your thin flip flops hovering nervously near the brake, before tracking up to your wrist. A subtle, crooked smirk tugged at his lips when he saw the colorful, woven friendship bracelet wrapped around your wrist, an exact match to the slightly battered one sitting on his own left wrist.
"Alright," Shawn said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble over the vibrating engine. "Just slowly ease off the brake. Give it a little gas. It ain't rocket science."
"I know how pedals work, Shawn," you shot back, rolling your eyes as you braced yourself.
You took a breath and tapped the gas pedal, but you misjudged the truck's capability. The heavy engine roared, and the truck lurched forward with a sudden, violent jolt.
"Whoa, whoa!" Shawn yelled, grabbing the dash as his head snapped around. His volatile temper, the sharp, defensive edge he carried around everyone else flared up instantly. "I said ease into it! You’re gonna tear the damn transmission apart slamming it down like that!"
Instead of cowering, your eyes flashed. You slammed your foot onto the brake, sending the truck to a hard stop, and turned to glare right at him.
"Don't you yell at me, Shawn Heard!" you snapped, unbuckling your seatbelt with a harsh snap. "This rusted out tank of yours reacts if a fly lands on the gas pedal! If you think you're such a brilliant teacher, you drive!"
Shawn blinked, caught completely off guard by the fire in your voice. He stared at you for a long second, his jaw tight and then, slowly, the harshness in his eyes dissolved. A quiet, breathless laugh broke from his chest, his dark eyes sparkling with genuine amusement. He loved that you never backed down from him, loved that you met his sharp edges with your own.
"You look real pretty when you're mad at me, you know that?" Shawn murmured, a slow, lazy smirk spreading across his face as he let his eyes trace over you.
"Don't try to charm your way out of this, Heard," you warned, though a subtle flush crept up your neck at the sudden shift in his voice.
"I'm not tryin' anything, baby," he drawled, his dark eyes dropping to your lips for a lingering second before locking back onto yours. "Just stating facts. You get all fiery and it's kind of hard to pay attention to the driving."
"You're impossible," you muttered, biting back a smile.
Before you could say another word, Shawn unbuckled his seatbelt and reached across the space between you. He put the truck in park, shutting off the engine until the loud rumble faded into the quiet chirp of summer crickets.
Then, effortlessly sliding behind the wheel, Shawn scooped his hands under your hips and pulled you directly onto his lap, straddling his legs as the steering wheel pressed against your back.
"Shawn!" you gasped, your hands automatically flying to his broad shoulders to steady yourself.
"What?" he whispered, his hands settling possessively on your hips, his thumbs rubbing slow, deliberate circles against your skin. "Much better view from over here."
"I was supposed to be learning how to drive," you reminded him softly, wrapping your arms loosely around his neck as you looked down at him.
"Okay, maybe I was a little loud," Shawn admitted, his tone dropping into something low, warm, and sweet. He reached up, his thumb lightly tracing your jawline before sliding up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear. "I'm an idiot. You know how I get."
"Yeah, a hothead," you teased, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Only sometimes," he murmured, his gaze dropping back to your mouth. "Come here."
He leaned in, cutting off any further arguing with a deep, lingering kiss. His lips were warm, tasting faintly of the summer heat, and his hand moved to the small of your back, pulling you flush against his chest. All the lingering annoyance drained out of you, replaced by the heavy, comforting weight of him holding you tight.
When he pulled back, his dark eyes were soft, locked onto yours with that quiet, fierce devotion he saved exclusively for you.
"You done yelling at me now?" he asked softly, a dangerous little smirk playing on his lips.
"Depends. Are you gonna teach me right this time without throwing a fit?" you countered.
Shawn let out a low, quiet laugh against your temple, pressing a soft kiss to your skin before resting his forehead against yours. He reached down, tangling his fingers with yours so your matching bracelets clicked together in the quiet cab.
"Yeah, baby," he whispered, his grip warm and steady. "Let's try it again. I've got you."
Plot: after swiping right on tinder, the crazy man offered Couples Therapy as a first date. Few days later, he had a new date planned.
-•-
Three days later, Aerion texted.
Aerion: I have terrible news.
You frowned.
You: What?
Aerion: Our therapist discharged us.
You: We were never patients.
Aerion: Still hurts.
You laughed.
You: So… dinner?
A typing bubble appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Aerion: Better.
Your stomach sank.
You: I don’t like that pause.
Aerion: Anger management.
You burst out laughing.
You: Absolutely not.
Aerion: Think about it.
You: I’m thinking.
Aerion: It’ll be funny.
You: It’ll be a criminal offence.
Aerion: Exactly.
-•-
Two hours later you were sitting beside him in a church hall on stackable plastic chairs.
A paper sign taped to the wall read:
WELCOME TO MANAGING OUR EMOTIONS
“You look happy,” you muttered.
“I’ve never been happier.”
“You genuinely need psychiatric help.”
He smiled. “I’ve been told.”
The instructor was a woman in her fifties named Denise, she radiated the sort of calm usually found in Buddhist monks. “Good evening, everyone.”
Aerion raised his hand immediately.
She smiled. “Yes?”
“When do we fight?”
Her smile vanished. “We don’t.”
“So why’s it called anger management?”
“Because we manage anger.”
“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “I thought we’d rank our enemies.” He scanned the crowd, trying to seem intimidating with eyes narrowed. He picked a man who started to squirm a little in the plastic chair.
You pinched the bridge of your nose, the group had already been quick to side eye him as being really odd.
The introductions began.
A burly man stood first.
“I’m Dave.”
“Hello, Dave.” We all greeted him, the hall echoed.
“I’ve got road rage.”
Everyone nodded supportively.
A woman spoke next. “I shout at my printer.” Again, supportive nods.
Then Denise smiled at Aerion. “And you?”
He stood confidently. “I’m Aerion.” Hands clasped behind his back.
“Welcome, Aerion.”
“I don’t think I have anger issues.”
You slowly turned towards him, arms crossed and waited as he continued.
“I just believe other people should stop being wrong.”
Several people looked up.
One man actually stopped writing.
Denise smiled politely. “And what brings you here today?”
Aerion pointed at you. “She.”
Your jaw dropped. “Me?”
“She weaponises sarcasm.”
“You told a pigeon to ‘watch its mouth’ yesterday.”
“It looked disrespectful.”
“It was eating a fry!”
“It knew what it was doing.”
Denise turned to you. “And your name?”
You smiled sweetly.
“I’m here because he’s impossible.”
Aerion gasped. “Impossible?”
“You thanked an automatic door.”
“It opened.”
“It sensed movement!”
“It didn’t have to.”
Denise clapped her hands. “Wonderful. Let’s try an exercise.” She placed a tennis ball in the middle of the circle.
“When you’re holding the ball, you’re the only one allowed to speak.”
She handed it to Aerion.
He nodded. “I feel unheard.”
You snorted.
He ignored you. “I also feel judged.” He quickly glanced at you.
The ball came to you. “I judge him because yesterday he tried to negotiate with a self checkout.”
“It accused me of stealing.”
“You hadn’t scanned the milk.”
Half the room was trying not to laugh.
Denise persisted. “What emotions does that make you feel?”
Aerion answered before you could “Betrayed.”
The tennis ball came back to you.
“Last week,” you said, “he called customer services because his toast landed butter side down.”
A woman across the circle covered her mouth. “You actually did that?”
Aerion nodded proudly. “They deserved to know.”
Denise inhaled slowly. “Let’s all take a calming breath.”
Everyone complied.
Aerion looked around. “This is a cult.”
“No, Aerion.” Denise looked as if he was getting on her last nerve, maybe she needed to attend angry management rather than hosting it.
“It feels cultish.”
“Now,” Denise said, “I’d like everyone to share something that recently made them angry.”
People gave sensible answers.
“My neighbour.”
“Traffic.”
“My ex husband.”
“My kids.”
Then it reached Aerion.
He didn’t hesitate. “The moon.”
Silence.
“The moon?”
“It keeps following me.”
You slid lower in your chair, a hand over your eyes in embarrassment.
“It has for years.”
Denise blinked. “That’s…”
He leaned forward. “Suspicious.”
The room had started laughing openly now.
Even Denise smiled despite herself.
She pointed at you. “And what about you?”
You looked at Aerion. “He alphabetises my spices.”
“I was helping.”
“You put paprika under ‘S.’”
“‘Spicy.’”
“It starts with P!”
“It identifies as spicy.”
By the end of the session, Denise looked ten years older, as everyone stood to leave, she stopped the two of you.
“I have to ask…” You both looked innocent. “You don’t actually have anger issues… do you?”
Aerion answered honestly. “No.”
She sighed. “I thought so.”
“We’re just on a first date.”
“A first date?”
“We thought this would be more memorable than mini golf.”
Denise stared at the two of you then, against every professional instinct she possessed, she laughed. “You know…” she said, shaking her head, “I’ve been running this group for fourteen years.”
She pointed between you. “You two haven’t stopped trying to make each other laugh for two solid hours.”
Neither of you answered.
She smiled knowingly. “I don’t think either of you came here for anger management.”
Aerion glanced sideways at you. “No?”
Denise smiled.
He looked at you for a moment before saying, “Would it ruin the moment if I admitted I already have another terrible first date idea?”
You folded your arms.
“I’m listening.”
His grin was immediate.
“I found a parenting class down the hall in 10 minutes.”
You stared at him. “We don’t even own a houseplant.”
“I know.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “I want to see how long it takes before they realise we don’t have a baby.”
You covered your face, laughing so hard your sides hurt. “You are the stupidest man I’ve ever met.”
He offered you his arm with exaggerated pride. “And you’re already saying yes.”
You took his arm. “I really, really hate how right you are.”
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