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dirty shirley (nsft ryland grace/reader, wc 10.3k)

a how do you like your eggs in the morning? spinoff oneshot | ao3 link

Summary: Once upon a time, you asked Ryland Grace to help you not go off to college a virgin. The two of you spent the summer working up to it. You went to college a virgin anyway. A year and a half later, you run into each other in a frat basement at a school neither of you attends. He’s definitely not jealous. He’s definitely not about to make it your problem.

(or: the one where your grown-up childhood crush spits in your mouth.)

Tags: f!reader, childhood friends to lovers, pining, smut, drunk sex, oral sex (f!receiving), fingering, piv sex, dirty talk, praise, degradation, slut shaming, period-typical misogyny (it's the early 2000s), implied loss of virginity, angst, mild hurt/comfort, college setting, jealous!Ry, Coltland twins, Marissa mention, more angst

A/N: 18+ only! This is a standalone piece, but it's also technically an AU of the other fic in this series. That fic is NOT required reading for this—but if you like these two characters together, and want to see more of them, then you might enjoy the main fic. if you have read the main fic, know that this oneshot lives in what I am calling the “Prom Night AU,” where everything in their lives is exactly the same up until the very end of prom (which, of course, means most everything that follows is completely different) (mainly: he's meaner in this). Special s/o to @bringmeabagel for helping me figure out how mean to make the ending (tee hee)

Ryland's first thought, when he sees you, is that he must be hallucinating, because you don't go to school in San Diego.

Neither does he, which is half the reason he's so miserable; standing in a crowded frat basement, surrounded by mostly strangers, nursing a beer he doesn't really want (but definitely needs, if he's going to maintain his current buzz long enough to get him through the rest of the night).

He's only here because his roommate convinced him to go on a road trip to visit a friend. A friend of a friend. One of the two. He (roommate) was going through a breakup, and learned that he (Ryland) was also going through a breakup, and, assuming they were the same amount of broken up over said breakups (they're not), tried to convince Ryland that the best solution was to venture off-campus and find a couple of UC girls to hook up with.

Ryland is still not fully convinced of the virtues of this plan. The only thing that semi-convinced him was Marissa, fed up after hearing him bitch and moan about the whole thing for all of an hour. "Look," she'd said. "You should definitely go. You could use the fresh air."

"There's plenty of fresh air in Pasadena."

“Well, maybe I could use some fresh air. Some Ryland-free air. How about that? I'm sick of seeing your morose little face."

"I'm—I'm not morose." He has been, perhaps, a little bit morose (a word which he had never before heard out loud. That's what you get for befriending humanities majors). His lab advisor is an old-school, closed-minded nightmare. His mom, living alone now that both twins are out of the house, fainted at work, and apparently all their GP did was prescribe her an extra-strength iron supplement and send her on her way. Colt is on location across an ocean somewhere, which is cool in theory, but now means he's unreachable half the time. The breakup, amicable and for reasons entirely out of his control, is far and away the least of his problems.

"You're not happy," she'd pointed out. "Plus, you deserve to make out with someone who isn't, like, allergic to dicks. And I can't in good conscience pawn you off on any of my friends here. They've heard too much." She'd clapped. Once, sharply. A habit of hers, when she's figured something out. He's begun to catch himself doing the same thing. "I've decided for you. You're going."

"If you really wanted to order me around, maybe you shouldn't have dumped me."

"Go on, get packing. I'm serious. I have a girl coming over at six, and I think she's already worried about me being secret straight, so I really don't need an ex hanging around." She'd tilted her head, making a rectangle with forefingers and thumbs and squinting through, as though sizing him up for a picture frame. "Though I guess with the hoodie, and, like—if you shaved, you could probably just pass as butch. Huh. Maybe that's why—"

He'd put his hands up. "I'm leaving."

"Don't get anyone pregnant!" she'd called out, and then the door had shut behind him.

And then he'd gone straight to his room to pack. Because Marissa has never been wrong about anything in her life (except, evidently, for dating him).

And now he's here.

It's only a two hour drive from CalTech to UCSD. Not too bad. But Berkeley is halfway across the state, which just reconfirms that he is imagining you on the other side of the basement. He shakes his head. He forgets about it. Josh would have mentioned, if you'd transferred schools. Ryland isn't as close to your brother as he was in high school, obviously, but they still get together sometimes to smoke over school breaks.

A few times a year. That's the bar for maintaining hometown friendships. At any rate, it's more often than he sees you.

Your doppelgänger is in a short black skirt, and a tight denim top (thin straps, zipper down the front), and heels that you'd never be able to walk in. More proof of his insanity. Someone must have spiked his bottle. Or maybe he's just drinking a bad batch. He abandons his beer on the side of the stairs, and crosses to the drink table for a fresh one. The cooler's empty; he groans, squatting down to check under the table. He sees a promising box, rips it open, pulls out a bottle. And then—a nudge. Someone knocks into him, from the side, and he startles hard enough to bump his head.

"Sorry!" someone says from above.

"Shit," he mutters, rubbing the top of his head as he ducks lower, and frees his head safely from underneath the table. Great. Now he's drunk and/or possibly drugged and/or possibly concussed. "Whoever built these tables—great material work. That's sturdy, that's really fucking—"

"God, I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

Definitely concussed. Definitely. Because that's the only thing that can possibly explain the fact that, when he stands and turns around, he sees that the person who bumped into him is you.

Not a doppelgänger. Not someone who looks kind of you like you from across a dark and crowded room. You, with your hair curled, and your lashes long and dark, and your chest squeezed into a denim top with a zipper down the front. You, three inches taller than he's used to, as you stand in heels that, a year and a half ago, you would have twisted your ankles just looking at. You, with that familiar little line between your brows, staring up at him with all of the same confusion and surprise and (mild) horror that's currently washing through his chest.

"You," he says out loud.

Shit. Maybe he really is concussed.

"Ryland?"

Your voice, wrapped around his name. Proof that you're real—but, then again, he has enough memories of you to be able to recreate that with accuracy even in a hallucination. He's probably heard that sound, his name on your tongue, hundreds of different ways over the years. Laughing while you chased him and Colt and Josh across the yard as kids. Apologetic, that time you'd spilled lemonade over one of his library books. Grateful, whenever he gave you something you'd asked for (candy, or help with homework, or—it didn't matter, really. It never mattered what you'd asked for. He'd always said yes, up until the one time he didn't). Serious. Teasing. Shy. Pleading, breathless, against his mouth with his fingers buried in you. Thick with tears, when he saw you last.

And here, now, a new tone: cautious surprise.

He makes another attempt at speech. "What are you doing here?"

"Mock trial conference." You blink, and you swallow, and he can see you reset to neutral in real time. "The actual thing happened yesterday. This is just the victory lap."

"You won?"

You lift your cup. "Obviously."

"Congrats," he says, tipping his bottle against it. You stay perfectly still.

"Thanks," you say dryly. He can picture the exact smile you would have responded with two years ago. Back when his approval still meant something to you. "You?"

"Visiting a friend," he says, which is technically true, but he hears the pulling-teeth way the words come out, and it makes it sound like he's lying. Badly.

"A friend, huh?"

"Friend of a friend," he says. "Or something." He catches a glimpse of the inside of your cup. It's shockingly red. "What on Earth is that?"

You follow his gaze. Something passes over your face. Quickly. Just a hint, but he knows you well enough to clock it—embarrassment. "Vodka. Sprite. Grenadine."

He feels the corners of his mouth pull up. "No maraschino cherries?" He remembers a wedding, when he was thirteen and you were twelve, where you'd managed to find the bar's stash, and gorged yourself until you were sick. Your mom's third wedding (she's on husband four, now, he thinks. Maybe).

He'd danced with you at that wedding. Half of a slow dance. He'd seen Colt dancing with you, and gotten jealous. In a way, that wedding was the beginning of the end, because that's when he'd promised to take you to prom, and then prom was where he'd kissed you, and then had panicked about kissing you, and maybe he still could have averted the impending disaster if only you hadn't asked him to—

"Do me a favor?" You take a sip of your drink, scrunching your nose. His stomach flips. "Never mention maraschino cherries to me again."

He relaxes, without even realizing he's relaxing, because there's a teasing note in your voice. He hasn't heard you sound amused in years. "Why not? One of your best moments."

"Shut up," you say with a smile. A small smile, but a smile. And it's normal to look at someone's mouth when they smile, he tells himself, so it's normal that he sees your lip gloss and wonders what it would taste like. "Guess I had good taste in some things, back then. Hard to fuck up a Shirley Temple."

"Even with vodka?"

You shrug. "It's not too bad. I like a little kick." You lift your cup again. For one second, he thinks you might be offering a sip—but then someone calls your name from across the room. One of your mock trial friends. You wave at her, then turn back to Ryland. "Good to see you," you say, clinking your cup against his bottle. "I'll, um, I'll tell Josh you said hi."

You walk away, which means he gets to watch you walk away. Not that he's staring. But it's hard to look away from, the way you cross the floor in those shoes without so much as a stumble.

His not-staring is broken by an arm, slung quick and heavy around his neck, followed by the full weight of someone against his side. "Gracie!"

Matt. Frat Matt, the friend of a friend of a friend who's hosting them both. Ryland isn't a fan of the guy—even less so now, with beer breath hot in his face—but he upgraded them all from couches to bedrooms when it turned out a few of the other fraternity brothers would be gone for the weekend, so Ryland smooths out his grimace to something more friendly-neutral. "Hey."

"Hey, man." He gestures forward, in the direction you just headed. "I'm gonna level with you. Kind of a dick move, going for the only new girl at the party."

Ryland feels his brows knit together. "I wasn't—"

"I don't blame you," says Frat Pat (Frat Matt's younger frat brother—and yes, they do insist on being called by the rhyming nicknames every time). "Imagine sticking a finger in that slutty little zipper and pulling allll the way down."

Something stiffens in Ryland's chest. "Shut up," he says.

"Five bucks says she's a moaner."

Another guy smacks him on the arm. "Ten says she likes getting choked, you can always tell —"

"Don't fucking talk about her like that," he says. It comes out sharper than he means, which is still calmer than he feels. He brings the beer bottle to his mouth in an attempt to recover. "I know her, all right? We grew up together."

A pause. "Girl next door," Frat Pat says, nodding solemnly. "Hot."

Ryland rolls his eyes. "Very funny."

"I'm serious."

"So am I. She's off limits."

"Does she know that?" Frat Matt slaps him on the back, then points at you, across the room, talking to your friend, tipping your head back to finish the last of your dirty Shirley Temple. One strap is slipping off your shoulder. The bust is tight enough that it doesn't really matter, but his pulse kicks up anyway. "Come on. You don't wear a top like that unless you're looking for someone to take it off. And, by the way, you're a guest here, too, remember? I'm not going around telling the whole fucking house that half the fresh meat in here is off limits just because you called dibs."

"I'm not calling dibs. I'm not going to—it's not about that."

"So you've never?" Frat Matt and Frat Pat's nameless friend, sounding genuinely a bit awed. "You're telling me you live next to that, and you didn't fuck her even once?"

"No," he says, which is true. The beer is sour on his tongue, and he's probably chugged half the bottle trying to tune out the frat-guy sleaze, and he needs this conversation to be over. "No, okay? She's not like that."

"Fucking waste, man," Frat Matt says, with a disappointed shake of his head. Then he slaps Ryland on the back, harder this time. "If you change your mind, better move quick. Looks like Dawson's already got eyes on her."

His eyes flick back over to see yes, you're talking to someone. Another frat bro. Tall. Taller than Ryland, which shouldn't rankle him. He feels distinctly rankled.

Frat Matt continues, oblivious to all of the rankling going on. "And, you know, her, whoever—your room door locks. Condoms and lube in the bottom drawer. Just don't get anything on the sheets that won't come out in a quick cycle, yeah? Stop the drought!" He punctuates this last with a fist in the air, and then he and Pat and No-Name fuck off, presumably to go torment someone else. Ryland watches them go with another sip of his beer. Two sips. Three.

He looks back at you.

Dawson is standing closer to you, definitely closer, crouching down to let you say something into his ear. When he touches your arm, you don't pull back. He picks up a bottle of something from the table next to you, and starts filling two shot glasses.

Ryland tips back the last of his beer, grabs another off the table, and crosses the basement.

"Hey," he says. He can't step between the two of you, because you're standing too close together for that, but he does his best. "What's up?"

You look up. Dawson looks down a medium amount. "Uh," you say. "Ryland. Hi. Again."

"Hey, man." Dawson looks between you and Ryland. "You know this guy?"

"Mm-hm," you say, nodding, slow, your eyes doing something that he assumes is supposed to be a signal for get out of here. He cheerfully ignores it. "Ryland and I went to high school together."

"Freshman when I was a senior," Ryland adds. "You're getting your SAT results back soon, right?"

The little divot between your brows returns, deeper than before, as you do an honest-to-God double take. "What?"

Dawson straightens up to full height. This would be a little intimidating, if his face weren't so perfectly screwed up in confusion and alarm. "Hang on. You're in high school?"

"N—"

"My best tutoring student. Precocious." Ryland ruffles your hair. He looking up at Dawson, now, not at you, but he can practically hear the cartoon steam coming out of your ears. "Skipped two grades. Or was it three?"

Dawson takes a large and decisive step back. "Nah, dude," he says, shaking his head. "Fuck that shit. I'm not messing around with that."

He's gone. Ryland lets out a relieved breath, and takes a sip of his new beer.

You turn on him. "What the fuck was that?" you demand. "I don't look thirteen. I haven't looked thirteen in seven years."

"Five, maybe," he says, which makes you fume even harder. "And, FYI, twenty is still technically under the legal drinking age."

You laugh. It's not a pleasant laugh. "What's next, a lecture on the dangers of premarital sex? Little late for that. FYI." You give that a beat to land. It lands, in some inflamed back corner of his mind, right next to five bucks says she's a moaner and ten says she likes getting choked. "Also, I'm supposed to believe you'd never touched a drop of alcohol in your life until last week? Happy belated, by the way." You pick up one of the shot glasses, full to the brim, and offer it to him. "Here. Celebratory shot."

He shakes his head. "No." No way in hell is he going to drink something some other guy poured for you.

You squint up at him. "Okay, so you came over here to cockblock me and then—what? Just stand here in miserable silence? Don't you have friends somewhere around here? A friend of a friend?"

"I thought we were friends," he says. It comes out all wrong, a miserable combination of too jokey and too serious. "Or. You know. We used to be."

You hesitate. For a moment, he expects—sincerity, maybe. Sincere anger, which he knows is the least he deserves.

Instead, you just sigh. Like he's a nuisance. Something easily swatted away. "Can we not do this right now?" You wiggle the shot glass at him. "Come on. It's a party. Lighten up." He doesn't move. "Or don't. All right. Guess I'll go find someone else to take this, since you're too much of a pussy to—"

He plucks the shot glass out of your hand and empties it into his mouth. Then he pulls you in with one hand on your hip, winds his other arm far enough around your neck that he can get his other hand on your jaw, and lets the vodka pour from his mouth into yours. He closes the distance just in time to feel the end of the surprised little moan you let out.

Your hand is fisted in his shirt when he pulls back. He reaches for the other shot glass. Down in one. You watch him, a little slack-jawed.

"Happy?" he asks.

In lieu of words, you pull him back in for another kiss.

There's none of the hesitancy he remembers. Not that you were ever a bad kisser—awkward at first, like anyone, but a quick study. You were just always a little shy. Nervous, maybe. It was sweet. You're all confidence now: sucking his tongue into your mouth, your hands decisive, your teeth grazing his lower lip. Liquid courage. Or maybe just more experience. Obviously you wouldn't have had any trouble finding people to kiss in college. To kiss, and more; and now his brain is spinning all sorts of images of other hands on you, on you and in you, other mouths, other—

He tries to get his brain to shut up. He can't get his brain to shut up. He kisses you harder instead.

It's loud enough in here, music and talking and bad acoustics, that he feels the sounds you make more than he actually hears them. That's okay. He lets his memory fill in the blanks. A little pleased hum when he does something with his mouth that you like. A whimper when he presses you flush against him with a hand on the small of your back. A gasp when the hand on your waist runs further up your torso and—

"Ryland." You break the kiss. "Ryland. We're, this is, there's people here. We're in public."

"Right," he says, as though he can be expected to focus on anything other than the fact that your lip gloss tastes like Skittles. "Sure."

"And, look, I'm supposed to be crashing on someone's couch tonight, so I don't—"

"I have a room," he says, and for a moment he genuinely considers getting on his knees to say a prayer of gratitude for Frat Matt and Frat Pat and Dawson and everyone else who pays dues so that this house can exist. "I have a room. Here. With a bed. And a lock on the door. And condoms. Apparently."

You've gone very still in his arms. Your eyes dart between his, back and forth, like you're thinking. Like you're deciding something. "Okay," you finally say.

He huffs out a quiet little laugh. "Okay?"

"Okay," you repeat, except you don't even manage to get the full word out before leaning back up to press your mouth back to his. You pull back. “I want another shot first.”

-

He kisses you up two flights of stairs, down a hallway, through a door. The lock clicks. The clothes come off piecemeal. His shirt. Your skirt. He's first on the bed, and you kick off your heels before you follow, climbing into his lap to kiss him deep and hungry. The Skittles flavor is more or less gone, at this point, leaving just you behind. You and vodka and grenadine.

"Lean back," he says, and you do, just enough for him to get a hand between the two of you. "Need to get this stupid fucking top off."

"What's wrong with my top?" you ask. There's a laugh in your voice, and genuine confusion behind it. "It was a birthday gift. It's nice."

"Off," is all he can manage.

He finds the zipper. He pulls it all the way down.

All at once, he is warm all over. There's the heat of anger, to know that this is what Matt and his dickhead friends were imagining; and there's the heat of relief that he's here, not them, like he's protecting you somehow; and, most importantly, there's the heat of you, your chest bare against his chest, your mouth open against his mouth. You, moaning when he drags his thumb across your nipple. You, meeting his hips in a urgent, desperate grind, even as you break the kiss to say, “Just so you know. Sometimes when I'm drunk, it's. Um."

"What?" he says between kisses.

"It's harder for me to finish. Like, I can't focus enough, or it takes too long, so—"

He gets his mouth on one of your tits, and your sentence cuts off into a moan. "You're the one who insisted on doing shots."

"I wanted to piss you off," you say, winding one hand into his hair. The bluntness, the sweet, unfiltered honesty—it's so you, so like the old you, that he can't help but smile against your skin. "I didn't know that you'd—I wasn't expecting—I don't need any more favors from you. For the record." Something in his head flinches. He keeps kissing his way back up to your throat, your jaw. "I was supposed to meet someone, before, so if you're just here because you feel like you have some weird unpaid debt or something you should just go and I can—"

He reaches the corner of your mouth, and then the whole of your mouth, and he kisses you quiet. "Stop that," he says. "Stop threatening to go find someone else. You're here. With me. Be here with me."

Your brows furrow, but you nod. You lean back in.

The kissing is slower. Gentler. He slows his hands accordingly, tracing little paths across your waist, your back. He can feel how it affects you, every little touch. Squirming in his lap. Little breathy moans against his mouth. You were always responsive, but he's never seen you drunk, your inhibitions somewhere on the floor with your top, and it's making him a little dizzy with want. When he runs a hand back down over your hair, over your neck, you shudder.

He laughs. He can't help it. Your lips curve against his. "What?"

"You," he says, pulling back for a second. "You were on my ass about cockblocking you, when you were the one trying so hard to get drunk, even though—"

"It's not funny," you say, even though he can feel you smiling against his shoulder.

"I'm not complaining," he says, pressing a kiss to your temple. "It's cute." You bring your head back up to kiss him again, at the same time he gets one of your nipples between his forefinger and thumb and pinches, and the sound you make into his mouth is pleased and surprised and maybe louder than any he's heard you make before. "Can't come, but you're even more sensitive than usual, huh? Poor baby."

"Shut up," you say, entirely unconvincingly to begin with, and even less convincing when he kisses your neck at the same time he pinches your nipple again and you cry out even louder without anything to muffle the sound. Five bucks says she's a moaner. "I just. I know guys get butthurt sometimes, when they can't get a girl off. And you always. When we." The unsaid words settle warm in his chest. He doesn't even try to hold back a grin. "So I just wanted you to know, if I don't—it's not something wrong with you. It's something wrong with me."

He stops. "Nothing's wrong with you." He leans back to look up at you. "Jesus. Who told you that?"

You hesitate. "No one," you say, in a tone that makes it clear you have a very specific person in mind.

"Okay." Part of him wants to press. He wants to know, wants to find this guy, wants to—no, nope. Even if he was capable of beating someone up (he's not, and Colt is in a different time zone), that wouldn't be useful. That train of thought is just a distraction from the rare and precious reality of you, here, in front of him. "Well, that's normal," he settles for saying, because you're straddling him, and you're looking down at him with a little bit of genuine distress in your eyes, and he wants so badly to make it better. "Alcohol is a, it's a depressant, so it—anyway, you, the whole thing, normal. Super normal. Whiskey dick, for guys, there's a name for it and everything."

You relax a little bit, much to his relief, angling your hips back against his. "You don't seem to be having any problems with that."

"Well, yeah." He kisses your sternum. "There's a hot naked girl in my bed."

"Technically it's not your bed."

He chuckles. "Right."

"And technically I'm not naked."

"We can fix that." He tips you down onto the bed, settling above you, and hooks a thumb into either side of your underwear. Black lace. He thinks about the cotton ones you used to wear, the ones he ran fingers over and reached under and pulled off you so many times, and he wonders who you might have bought this pair for, as he leans down and kisses your stomach just above the scalloped hem.

You giggle.

"What's so funny?" he asks, distracted again. He missed getting to make you laugh. The laugh erases any thought of jealousy and reseats him firmly back in this moment, here, the two of you the only people in the room.

When he looks up, your hands are pressed against your face. "You think I'm hot," you say through your fingers.

"You say that like you're surprised."

"I." Your hands move, but you're still looking up at the ceiling. Away from him. "You called me cute, a lot. That's different than hot."

"Come on," he scoffs. "You know you're hot. Walking around the party with your tits out like that, you don't think every asshole guy in there was looking at you?"

You pause. You finally meet his gaze, with a look in your eyes like you're trying to figure something out. When you speak again, it's quieter. "I didn't think you were."

"You're smarter than that." He works the underwear down over your hips, pressing another kiss to your hipbone as he goes, one side and then the other. "You're pretty, too. I told you that, right? I had to have told you that."

"A few times."

"Yeah." He tugs the underwear free of one ankle, then the other, and drops it on the bed next to him as he looks at you. "Always so fucking pretty."

You shift your legs a little bit, like the looking is making you embarrassed. Like he didn't spend an entire summer seeing you like this.

Then again, maybe that isn't fair, because you hadn't been naked right off the bat. Not for the first few weeks, at least. That had been the deal. You'd kissed at prom, and you'd made your request, and he'd given his caveats; and then there were the last few weeks when he'd gone back to CalTech for finals, and when he went home and saw you again it was back to kissing. Slow, soft kissing. Fully-clothed kissing. A few days of that before he'd gotten you to grind yourself to a quiet, shaky orgasm on his thigh, with your face buried in his neck, and his hands splayed over your hips to steady you.

A couple of days after that, you'd gotten topless for the first time. And he'd made sure to make you finish like that, again, clothed from the waist down, before moving on to the next thing.

And the next thing. And the next.

Days into weeks. Fingers. Tongue. Weeks into months. All of you naked, shy and trusting, and the only reason he'd been able to keep his hands from shaking was because he knew he needed to keep his cool for you.

He doesn't worry so much about keeping his cool now. He's a few beers and two shots too far in to care if his hands are shaking or not. The shaking is irrelevant. The relevant factor is that they're on you, running up from ankle to calf to pull your legs a little further apart as he settles between them.

"So pretty," he says again. "Or, no, hot. You wanted me to call you hot, right?"

"Not if you don't mean it," you say, covering your face again. "You can call me whatever you want."

"I mean all of it. All of them, you're all of the things.” He kisses your thigh, the hollow of it. “God. You know how much I thought about this? Missed seeing you like this.” Another kiss, above your clit. “Tasting you like this.” He licks into you, all of you, messy and complete, and the sound you make is a perfect echo of the one you made when he did that for the first time a year and a half ago. Muffled into your hands and everything. “Missed getting my mouth on this cute, wet little pussy."

"Ryland," you say, still into your hands.

He laughs. “Oh, now you're shy? You had no problem calling me a pussy when you were trying to piss me off."

"I'm just not used to hearing you talk like that."

"Do you like it?”

You nod.

"Okay,” he says, between little licks to your clit. “Good to know.” He drags his thumb down, through your slit, and he groans. “Fuck. Can't believe you're this wet just from me spitting in your mouth."

"Not just from—from that. I didn't know I'd like that, either."

"But you did?”

"I did,” you admit. He licks up against you, letting his tongue dip into your entrance, and your hands fly to his head. “I like that, too. That, what you just did."

"This?" He repeats it, going deeper this time, and then deeper, and maybe dating Marissa was worth it after all, because she was nothing if not thorough with her instructions, and now he gets to use all of that hard-won knowledge on you.

He keeps fucking you on his tongue like that, letting you guide him with your hands on his head; moaning into you when you tug at his hair. He goes until he notices the tell-tale signs that you’re getting close, and then he stops, pulling away with his mouth still wet and your chest still heaving.

"You know, maybe it's better like this,” he says, pressing two fingers into you. You’re relaxed enough from his tongue that they slide in with ease. “You can't get off but you're still so—so—I mean, I can just keep you on the edge for as long as I want. That was always my favorite part, anyway, the sounds you make right before.” He curls his fingers, and you demonstrate on cue. “That's it, that's the one—and your face. Like that. Just like that?” He fucks his fingers into you a little faster. “Right there?” You’re on the edge, he can hear you’re on the edge, and he can hear the frustration in your voice at the fact that it’s not tipping over, and it’s so cute he has to fight back a laugh. “It's not enough, huh? God, it's like you were made for this. Perfect fucking toy. Press a button, make a fun noise, right?"

Your moan breaks off into a laugh. “You're making me sound like—” You laugh again, harder. “Like I'm a Bop It, or something."

He snorts. He can’t help it. A few seconds pass like that—the two of you, giggling, like you hadn’t been squirming on his tongue less than a minute before.

“Sure,” he says, once he recovers. “It's kind of the same. If you tell me what to do. You just have to tell me what feels good, and then I can just do that, right?"

"If you. With your fingers.” It comes out quickly. Like you’re afraid you’ll chicken out and stop if you speak slowly enough to consciously process the words coming out of your mouth. “And then suck on, on my clit, at the same time. That’s. That will.”

He does both of those things, and you almost immediately stop forming coherent sentences.

He does that for a while. Working you up. Stopping. Taking little breaks to suck marks into your thighs, your hipbone (a fun little surprise, for whoever you hook up with next), his fingers still pumping lazily in and out, or else leaving you empty to rub circles into your clit. His other hand on your hip, or your stomach, or your tits, tweaking a nipple for the pleasure of hearing your voice break. And then, when he feels like it, he brings you back to the edge and keeps you there.

And keeps you there.

Your breath is catching again, in that specific way—and it keeps going, but there’s a new edge to it. To your voice. To the way you’re clenching down on his fingers. Like you’re closer than before. Closer closer. Close enough that—if he just keeps on like that, but more—and if he doesn’t stop—

Your hand tightens in his hair. The other reaches down, and he takes it in his, and you squeeze his hand as your thighs squeeze around his head and your pussy squeezes around his fingers, long and hard and desperate, your voice cracking in surprise as you come.

He keeps his mouth on you one second longer, two, until the hand in his hair pushes him off.

“Aw.” He doesn’t even try a little bit to hide the smugness in his voice. Your hand twitches in his. He rubs his thumb in little circles over your wrist. “Look at that. So you can come when you're drunk. Guess those other guys weren't trying very hard, were they?”

“Fuck,” is all you manage.

“Or maybe they just didn't know you.” He kisses your stomach. You’re still going, throbbing around his fingers as he works you through the aftershocks. “Maybe I just have a leg up. Maybe I shouldn't be jealous of, of whoever—it doesn't matter, because I'll always be the first person who saw you like this, right? I'm always going to be the first person who got to taste you. The first person who made you come. God. I want another one.” He gets his thumb back on your clit, and your hips buck. “I want another one out of you. You can do that for me, right?” You shake your head. “Come on, you can, I know you can."

"Not right away,” you say, and your hand comes to his wrist, and he relents.

“Okay,” he says, making his way back up the bed. “I can wait. I waited a year and a half already, I can wait. Just—here.” He kisses you. “See how good you taste?"

You nod, making an mmhm sound against him. You kiss him, and kiss him, and then break the kiss to sit up.

He pulls you back with a sound of protest. "Where are you going?"

"To return the favor,” you say against his mouth.

He shakes his head. “Stay here. Just a little longer." He needs a second. He needs more than a second, actually, because he just made you come, and his fingers are still wet with you, and his ego is like a balloon about to pop, and any blowjob you try to give him now would last a humiliatingly short amount of time.

"You don't want—you don't want my mouth on your cock?" you ask. He blinks up at you. You keep going. “You don't want to fuck my mouth?"

You trip over the words a little bit, like they're unfamiliar, which he knows is just the alcohol, but it's still adorable. He'd tell you as much, but apparently you don't want him to call you cute. So he keeps it to himself.

"I mean, I'd rather actually fuck you," he says instead, because it's true, and also to tune out the little voice that’s wondering where you learned to talk like that.

"Now?" you ask. Your leg is still hooked over his hip. He pulls you in closer with a hand on your ass, the whole length of him up against the whole length of you, and you melt into the next kiss. "Okay. Yes. Yes, I would like that, very much."

"One sec." He rolls over. As promised, there's a box of condoms in the nightstand drawer.

As he tears one off the strip, he hears you, behind him. "We can go slow, though, right?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Okay." You exhale, shaky. “Good."

He turns to you. "Hey," he says, abandoning the condom for a second to reach up to cup your face. "We don't have to, if you don't want to. We can keep doing other stuff."

"No, I want to. I just haven't." Your eyes leave his. He watches them travel to to the condom, on the bed, and then lower, to his hips, and then back up—not to meet his eyes, again. Somewhere lower. His chin. His chest. "You're bigger than I remember," you admit. "Than, um, than I'm. Used to." He gets his fingers back into your hair, tipping your head up, and now you do look at him again, directly. “I still want to, though.” He tightens his fingers a little, and he sees your eyes go a little hazy. "Please."

He kisses you—deeply, then just a peck. "Okay," he says, reaching back for the condom. "Nice and slow. Works for me. Do you want to be on top? On your back? We can change later, I just. I want to see you." There's a warmth in his chest, a flush going upward. He hopes you can't see it painted across his cheeks. "Want to see your face."

You lie back as he rolls on the condom. "Is there lube?"

"Yeah, somewhere in here, I think. You want?"

"Just in case."

You're wet enough, he doubts you'll need it, but he puts some on the condom. Just in case. He squirts a little more out onto his fingers, and presses them into you, over your clit, dipping inside you. "Good?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Do we need—is there anything else? Like, a pillow, under the hips—I know that's supposed to be good—"

"I think that's supposed to help get deeper, so. Maybe not the move here."

"Okay. That makes sense," you say, as he settles between your hips. He doesn't line himself up yet, just leans down, pressing his whole body against the soft heat of yours. Your hands find his arms, running up and down. "Hi," you say.

"Hi." He kisses you, and moves his hips a little. You meet the movement. For a few moments he lets it be this, just this—your mouth under his, and your hands on his shoulders, and the length of him rubbing back and forth against you. Teasing. He lets it go on long enough that your little whimpers turn to whines, and the tilting up of your hips becomes impatient. He presses his forehead to yours. "Ready?"

Your hands tighten on his arms. You nod. "Ready."

He reaches down. He lines himself up.

He presses in.

He goes slow. Torturously slow. Slower than he thought himself capable of, especially here, right now, with you. But it's worth it to feel every tight, wet inch of you opening up around him. It's worth it to pull back, slightly, just enough that he can see your face, the flutter of your lashes, the slight parting of your lips

He goes as far as he can, and stops. Your hands are a little looser on his arms. Your chest is rising and falling against his, heavier than before.

"There," he says, pressing his lips briefly to yours. "That's it." This is sort of a lie, because the whole length of him isn't inside you, but he's bottomed out, so he's as far inside you as he's going to be able to get. "Not so scary, right?"

"Right. Right. Can you—" You reach up with one hand, fingers in his hair as you pull him back down to kiss you, and as he kisses you he moves a little, out and in, and you flutter around him, and you're making little rhythmic sounds against his mouth, and he's fucking you. Properly. For the first time.

It shuts off his brain a little bit. For the first time all night, he's at a loss for words. He's inside you. Not that he hasn't been inside you before, with his fingers, or his tongue, but this—now—and you're hot and you're wet and you're squeezing down on his cock, and he lets out a moan that would probably embarrass him if he were sober. But also it's hard to be embarrassed, because he's inside you. If there's anything to be embarrassed about, it's the fact that he had the chance to do this with you a year and a half ago, he had the chance to be the first person you ever did this with, and he threw that chance away with both hands.

That thought brings his speech system back online. "Who were you meeting? Before."

"What?"

"You said you were supposed to meet someone, before. Who?"

Your words are a little messy, a little unsteady as you try to speak between moans. "Not anyone in particular, just—like, generally—it's a party—"

"Whoever gave you the time of day, huh?" He picks up the pace a little. "You just like the attention? Is that what you thought about, when you picked out that slutty little outfit—all of those eyes on you, wanting you, thinking about. God. You should have heard what they were saying about you, fucking killed me."

Your arms are wrapped more completely around him, now, one around his back and the other around his neck. He keeps himself braced above you on one forearm, hand up around your head to keep you from bumping against the headboard; and with the other, he catches one of your hands, pressing it into the mattress beside your head.

“One guy bet me five bucks that you're loud in bed, and I thought he was wrong, because you were always so shy with me, but I guess he was right, huh? Should I go back and tell him he was right?" You make a muffled noise, shaking your head into his shoulders, tightening around him with your arms and your legs both. "No. No, okay. I'm not going anywhere. Don't worry, I'm staying right here."

You've relaxed enough that he can get into you a little deeper than before, hitching one of your legs up over his arm, and you bury your face in his neck with a surprised little cry. “There,” you say. “There, there, right there.”

“God,” he mutters, mouth on your temple. “I should have fucked you like this the first night you asked. All that time we wasted because I didn't want to, I don't know. I wanted to make it nice for you."

"You did.” You say it into his pulse, against his throat. "You did, you were—it was good, Ryland, it was so fucking good."

"Yeah. It was a good summer." He thinks about something you said before, something someone said, about choking, and he separates his fingers from yours in order to get his hand around your throat. Light. Barely a squeeze. You reach down between you, and the thought of you touching yourself while he fucks you—it does something unfair to his head. "Kind of a wasted effort, though, huh?"

More moans. Different, somehow. “What do you mean?” It comes out more or less as one continuous word.

“Never thought you’d be like this. Rubbing yourself off while I’m inside you. Getting yourself off with my cock inside you and my hand around your throat. All those months I spent being soft with you, so worried I wasn’t being gentle enough—maybe I wouldn't have been so careful if I'd known you'd turn out to be such a slut.”

“Wait.” Your hand presses against his chest. “Wait.”

He slows down. When he pulls back to look at you, the little crease in your forehead is back. "What? Should we stop?"

You hesitate, then shake your head. “Just. Just, can you kiss me again? Please.” Even with your hand on your clit, and his hand wrapped around your neck, you are still so polite in this request, so polite and so desperate all at once, that he can't say no to you. He never could.

He crushes his mouth against yours. He tightens the hand on your throat, and finds the angle again, the spot you’d liked, and you're making that sound again. His favorite one. The one that means you're close.

“Are you going to come for me again?” You’re having trouble kissing him back. He takes that as a sign to keep going. “Come on. I told you I wanted another one out of you, right? Thought about it so much—want to know what you feel like—like this—come on—”

Your lips are parted. He can see your tongue behind them, pink and wet, and you’re looking at him like you want something.

He brings the hand on your neck up to your jaw. He presses gently, and your lips part further. He spits in your mouth, and kisses you again, just before you clench down hard around him.

He follows immediately after, letting a low moan in perfect time with yours.

-

The condom’s been disposed of. His glasses are on the nightstand. The house is as quiet as any frat house on a Saturday is capable of. You’re in the bed next to him, still naked, on your side, facing away, his arm loosely slung across your waist.

If this was two years ago, he would have held you. Properly held you. Kissed your forehead, your eyelids, your nose. Told you how good you were, what a good job you’d done. You probably don’t need that now, he figures, turning over to lie on his back. Even if part of him wishes you did.

And besides, all of that only ever led to you getting more hurt in the long run.

He got hurt, too, if he lets himself think too much about it (which he never does, except maybe for when he is drunk). He shouldn’t have gotten hurt. The facts of the situation: you, asking him sleep with you. So that you wouldn’t go off to college a virgin. So that your first time wouldn’t have to be with a stranger.

He should have said no.

Technically, he did say no. As in: no, not tonight. As in: not all at once. As in: if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right.

Days spent getting snow cones along the boardwalk, watching movies in the basement. Holding hands whenever there was nobody around to see. And then nights spent—the way nights get spent, sometimes. Kissing. More than kissing. Sneaking in and out of each other’s houses. Slow. A little bit at a time.

It had been a really good summer.

More facts of the situation: you, his best friend’s little sister. Him, liking you more than he should have. Thinking about you in the middle of lab. Thinking about you on dates with CalTech girls. Calling your landline number with some bullshit reason or another, on the hopes that you’d pick up. Coming back from college for the weekend just to keep a promise he’d made to you at thirteen. And then, of course, all of the evidence in his head as to why he shouldn’t, why he couldn’t like you that way. Statistics and anecdotes alike. All of the guys you’d meet in college. All of his friends who’d broken up with their hometown girlfriends. All of the misery he’d seen from long-distance couples.

The conclusion: as long as you didn’t date date, you’d be safe. Both of you would be safe.

It had made sense in his head at the time.

He was doing you a favor. You’d asked him to do you a favor. Feelings were outside the boundaries of the favor. So when you were lying in your childhood bed, one night, the two of you giggling over the fact that he’d bought condoms and forgotten to bring them; when you’d looked up at him, and opened your mouth, and said—

“Ryland?”

His name, on your tongue, here. In the present. You’re still turned away from him. “Yeah?” he says.

“I’m not. I mean.” He can’t quite read your tone. “You don't really think I'm."

"What?"

You pause. You’re breathing oddly. Unevenly. “It doesn't matter,” you say. Your voice is quiet. Too quiet. The last time he heard that tone from you, he didn’t talk to you for a year and a half.

He reaches out to touch you. “It sounds like it matters a lot." Your shoulder starts shaking a little beneath his hand, and his stomach flips. "Hey," he says. "Hey, what's wrong?"

Your face is already shiny when he turns you to face him. "I'm not a slut," you say.

“Oh,” he says. He pulls you in closer, pressing your face into his neck, because you're crying and it's making his chest hurt to look at you and it's all he can think to do. “Okay.”

"I don't know if—if it was just dirty talk, or if you really meant it. And I know I said you could call me whatever you wanted, I just didn't think. I didn't think that would be. And I know it shouldn't matter, I just. Fuck.” You hiccup. “Sorry."

"It's all right. You're all right. I'm sorry, okay? I was just being stupid. Drunk and stupid. I don't think that about you. I wasn't thinking about anything, it was just, like, the heat of the moment."

"I feel like you wouldn't have said it in the heat of the moment if it weren't a little bit true," you say into his neck. "Like, if it wasn't something you believed at least a little bit."

“No, I don't. Even if I did, a lot of time has passed since we. Since everything. And, you know, things change in college, it's normal to sleep around in college—"

"I don't." You let out another sob, heavier, distraught. "I didn't."

“Okay,” he says. “I know, okay? I believe you. I promise.”

You don't stop crying. You don't stop talking, either, but it's all coming out as rambles, fragments of thoughts, and he wishes you were sober and he really wishes he were sober. "I mean, I've done other. I wanted to, you know, with someone who, or in, like—and then you were here, and I didn't think, but then you—and I just figured. Because it was you, and I—Please don't be mad."

He almost laughs at that last part. "Why would I be mad?" He tugs you a little closer, fumbling to get the blanket up over you, and runs a hand back over your head. "I'm not mad, and I don't think you're a slut, and it's fine, all right? Everything's going to be fine. I'm sorry." He kisses the top of your head, and repeats, "I'm sorry."

Your breathing is still hitched, unsteady—but slower, now. Softer than before. Your voice is softer, too, when you say, “Okay."

There's a pause. "Are you mad?"

"A little."

“Hm,” he says, with a joking calm he does not feel. “What would make you feel better? Do you want to slap me? I can put my glasses back on, for maximum impact." You shake a little against him, which he thinks might be a laugh—but then he hears another sob. "Or I can go downstairs and get you a drink to throw in my face. That could be fun, yeah?"

You let out a little sniffle. "I want a redo."

"A redo? Of what?"

"Everything."

“Okay. I get that." There's a moment of silence. His hand stroking your hair. Your face, wet against his throat. "Maybe some sleep? Sleep is like a redo. Kinda."

Your breathing does something funny. Like you're trying harder to get it under control. "Right," you say. Your voice still isn't steady, exactly, but he can hear the effort as you continue, "Yeah, just. Give me a second." You shift a little. He keeps his arms tight around you. "Ryland."

"Yeah?"

"You need to let go. I can't get up, I can't get my clothes if you don't let go."

"Okay." He lets you go, just so that he can find his shirt. You're already off the bed, standing, looking around the room on shaky legs, as he holds it out in your direction. "Hang on, just—you can just have this. More comfortable, probably."

You pick something up off the floor. Your shirt. You pull it on, look at the zipper, and immediately give up, letting it hang open as you look for the rest of your clothes. "No, it's okay, you're going to need that, and I don't know if I'll see you in the morning to give it back."

He blinks. "What's happening?"

"Sleep," you say, picking up something else. A shoe. You don't look at him. "You wanted to sleep."

"Yeah. What." You don't stop looking for your clothes. "Hey. It's, like, four in the morning. You're not walking across campus wearing that."

You laugh. You don’t sound amused. "My slutty little outfit. Right."

"Come on. That's not. Come back to bed? Please?"

You hesitate. For a long moment, he wonders if he's going to have to stand up and somehow physically convince you not to leave. But then you sigh, and you drop the shoe, and you do come back to bed. You tug on his shirt, and you curl up with your back to him, a little bit of space between you. “I just feel so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.” He's more tentative, this time, in reaching out, but you don’t resist at all when he presses up against you, getting the blanket back up over you both. He gets his arms around your waist. His chin atop your head. Your body perfectly nestled into his. “You won that fancy mock trial and everything.”

“I mean, when we were kids, I—you were so nice, you know? So was Colt, he still is, but you. And you were smart, and funny, and I just. I thought you were really cool. But everything’s so different now.” A pause. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”

“Like what?” He forces a laugh. “What, I’m not cool or funny or smart anymore?”

“You are,” you say. “You’re just also kind of mean.”

“Oh.”

You sit for a while in the frat house silence. The distant thrum of basement music. Creaking floors. The buzz of an AC unit down the hall.

“I wasn’t trying to be mean,” he finally says.

“Okay,” you say. “I believe you.”

Enough time passes that he assumes you’ve fallen asleep, when you turn, getting your leg back over his, your face against his chest, into which you say, quiet, groggy: “I just miss when you were nice to me."

He presses another kiss into your hair. “I can be nice to you,” he murmurs. Your hair smells like your lip gloss, like candy. Like cherries. Like you. “I’ll be so nice, okay?"

You don’t answer. Your breathing is steady. Your head is heavy on his chest.

He tightens his arms around you. He kisses the top of your head again. He can fix this, somehow. He has to. He doesn’t know how, yet, he’s too drunk and too tired and still trying to piece together half of what you were saying, but—he will. He’s smart. He’s stubborn. He’ll find a way to make it up to you in the morning.

-

You’re gone in the morning.

You’re gone, along with your clothes, and your shoes. His shirt is crumpled on the edge of the bed. His borrowed pillow still smells like you.

He pulls his pants on inside-out twice, and talks to three frat bros, and stumbles in and out of four separate dining halls before he finds the one where the mock trial stragglers have set up for Sunday brunch. You’re at the end of a long table, laughing blearily at a comment from the girl sitting opposite you, when you look up to see him.

“Hey,” he says.

You put down the pancake-laden fork you were holding, back into a plate swimming with syrup. You always did have a sweet tooth. “Hey."

"Can we talk?"

"Sure,” you say. You push out your chair to stand, gesturing one minute to your friends, and he follows you over to a corner of the dining hall. You lean against the wall, arms crossed. Your hair is in a bun. Your face is bare, save for a few specks of mascara under the eyes, and the lip gloss that he now knows the taste of. “What's up?"

"Last night,” he begins. He didn’t have a lot of time to work on this particular monologue, what with all of the tugging his clothes on and running across campus, but he was able to plan a little something. “I said a lot of things—"

You cut him off immediately. “People say things in bed. You were drunk. It happens."

Okay. Scratch the monologue. He cuts to the important bit. “I just wanted to say I'm sorry."

“Great, I forgive you." You don’t give him anything else.

“You sure? You seemed pretty upset."

"Yeah. I was drunk. It's fine."

"I made you cry, I don't know that I'd call that fine—"

"Wouldn't be the first time, right?” You give him the unhappiest smile he’s ever seen. “Look, I have a flight to catch, and I'd really love to get some non-airport food before I go—" You push off the wall, and he stops you with a hand on your arm.

"Well, I mean, can we talk about it later? I can call you, when you get back to school."

You gently pull your arm away from his hand. “I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?"

"It's not like we talked a lot before, Ryland,” you say, and whatever patience you had at the start of this conversation is gone. “And maybe I don't feel like sitting on the phone waiting for you to make me cry again.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t say anything at all.

You sigh. “You apologized for whatever you wanted to apologize for, right? So you don't owe me anything. Last night was just, like, closing a loop. Fun. Casual. Favor complete.” Before he can protest, you continue, “And, you know, if it helps, I'm seeing someone. Back at Berkeley. We're not exclusive, or anything, so, like, you don't have to worry about—it wasn't cheating. But probably soon. So whatever you said, whatever I said, don't worry about it, okay? It's fine."

It’s not fine. It’s not fine, and there’s nothing in the monologue that will make it fine, and you’re already five steps in the direction of your table. “Okay."

“Get home safe,” you call back over your shoulder.

“Right,” he says to nobody in particular. “You too.”

-

His first thought, looking across a frat basement at CalTech (which, if he’s being honest, is identical to the frat basements of UCSD, and every other frat basement in California), is that lightning has struck twice.

The top. The shoes. The skirt. The cup in your hand. He walks before he thinks, before his brain has a chance to do anything but stall, which means he is two feet away from you before he realizes that it isn’t you at all. Your doppelgänger turns. Not a doppelgänger at all, actually. Different hair color, different eyes, different everything. He knows that top, though. The straps. The zipper.

Of course it isn’t you. You don’t go to school in Pasadena. And if you were ever in Pasadena, it wouldn’t be to visit him.

She smiles, as though he isn’t a complete stranger. “Ryland, right? We were in orgo together. Freshman year.”

“I remember,” he lies.

“Great! That’s great.” She holds up two little glasses in one hand, and a bottle in the other. “What do you think? Happy end-of-midterms?”

He accepts the shot. He swallows it all the way down.

Later, when they’re lying in his bed, with his arm over her waist and her top somewhere on the floor, he thinks about how her mouth tasted: vodka, and nothing else.

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