heyyyy,,, ive been here for a while but i never really post or use tumblr but i decided it was high time because i want to be an unidentifiable freak in peace so here we go
hi im kaigel !!! i go by he/they and i like stuff like The Magnus Archives, Latin Rock, Creepypasta/Marble Hornets, Magical Girls, Vocaloid, Marvel, and a shit ton of other stuff !! I also am beginning to explore witchcraft n stuff cause i think its really dope
I post my art on different platforms under a different username, so if you recognize my art on like instagram or something then shhhhh dont expose me. but yes i make art of my ocs and i really want to get into writing but i am hashtag bad at it so it might be once in a blue moon that i post writing stuff
I'm a yumedanshi !!! it usually shifts based on my hyperfixation so dont expect me to stay in one fandom for a long time, but if you see me revisit one then heyyyy hows it going yknow yknow
im a lurker,,, sorry !!! but sometimes i just dont feel like posting/have no motivation so i just like looking n stuff teehee
anyways i hope u like what i post, and i hope u stay around !!
Colt has different ways of holding your hand depending on his mood. Sometimes it's fingers interlaced and tight. Sometimes it's just your pinkies linked while you walk. When he's feeling especially soft, he cups your whole hand in both of his like he's protecting something precious.
Right before he falls asleep, Colt gets chatty and whiney in this mumbled, half-conscious way. He tells you about his day in fragments, about the stunt that went bad or the lunch that was surprisingly good. You hum responses even when you're half-asleep too, and somehow you both understand each other perfectly.
You both add songs to a joint playlist without discussing it. Colt adds 80s-2000's pop and rock and you add whatever you fancy at the momment, and somehow it works. When you're driving together, you take turns guessing which one of you added each song, and the loser has to buy coffee at the next stop.
He started leaving his favorite jacket at your place "by accident" after the third time you mentioned it smelled like him. Now it's draped over your chair permanently, and sometimes you wear it around the apartment when he's working late. He pretends not to notice, but his eyes go soft every time he sees you in it.
Colt loves when you play with his hair. He'll rest his head in your lap while you watch TV, and your fingers card through the strands until he goes boneless. Sometimes you braid little sections just to mess them up again, and he lets you without complaint.
When you're walking together, Colt naturally positions himself on the street side. His hand finds the small of your back in crowds, and he keeps you tucked close to his side. It's not possessive it's just where he feels most settled, knowing you're safe in his space.
Colt always orders too much takeout because he knows you'll steal bites from his plate. He pretends to be annoyed when you reach over with your fork, but he angles his container closer to make it easier. Sometimes he feeds you directly from his chopsticks, watching your mouth with this soft, focused expression.
You both have a favorite way to tangle together on the couch, Colt stretched out on his back with you draped over his chest like a weighted blanket. Your legs slot between his, and his arms wrap around your waist. He likes when you rest your head right over his heartbeat, and you like how his chest rumbles when he talks.
Colt wakes up first most mornings, but he never gets out of bed until you do. He lies there with his chin resting on your shoulder, breathing slow and steady while his fingers trace lazy circles on your stomach. When you finally stir, he makes this soft, pleased sound and nuzzles into your neck like he's been waiting hours instead of minutes.
NSFW HCS AHEAD!
Colt gets visibly excited when you walk into a room. His whole body language shifts his shoulders relax, a grin spreads across his face, and he practically bounces on his heels. When he's turned on, he can't hide it. His hips shift restlessly, and he makes these soft, eager sounds in his throat that sound almost like whimpers.
You mirror his energy perfectly. When Colt touches you, you lean into it like you're seeking pets. Your breathing gets faster, and you make little almost inaudible sounds of desperation that encourage him to keep going. You both end up circling each other, playful and needy.
When Colt feels dominant, he uses his size and strength to pin you down. He holds your wrists above your head with one hand while the other explores your body. He loves when you squirm and try to break free not because you want to escape, but because the struggle turns you both on. He'll growl playfully in your ear, "Stay." and you respond by going still, looking up at him with big, trusting eyes.
When you take charge, Colt melts into a borderline useless puddle. You push him onto his back and straddle him, and he goes completely pliant beneath you. His hands grip the sheets instead of touching you because you told him to wait. He watches you with this desperate, adoring expression, waiting for permission to move, to touch, to taste.
Both of you love using your mouths. Colt will spend ages between your legs, licking and sucking with single-minded focus. He makes these satisfied sounds like he's found his favorite treat. When you return the favor, Colt's hands fist in your hair not pushing, just holding on while his hips twitch with the effort not to thrust.
Colt nips at your neck, your shoulders, the inside of your thighs. Always hard enough to hurt, enough to make you gasp and wince. You do the same to him biting his chest, his stomach, leaving little marks that he touches later with a dumbed smile.
When you're both too worked up to wait, you grind against each other fully clothed. Colt's hands grip your hips, guiding your movements. You can feel how hard he is through his jeans, and he can feel how worked up you are. The friction is almost enough, but not quite, leaving you both panting and desperate.
Post-fuck, you both become the ultimate cuddle bugs. Colt pulls you against his chest, and you burrow into his warmth. He strokes your hair while you trace patterns on his skin. Sometimes one of you will start getting worked up again from the gentle touches, leading to round two with even more enthusiasm.
He responds so well to being told he's a good boy. When you whisper it while he's inside you, his rhythm falters and he makes this broken sound. He returns the favor, telling you how perfect you feel, how good you're being for him.
Colt wakes up hard most mornings, and you wake up needy. You often end up lazily touching each other before you're fully awake with hands slipping under clothes, soft sighs filling the quiet room. Sometimes it leads to slow morning sex, sometimes just to falling back asleep tangled together.
His stuntman background means he can go for rounds. After he cums, he stays hard and keeps going, chasing your pleasure with single-minded determination. You match his energy, coming multiple times before he's satisfied.
At work events or gatherings, you both get handsy under tables. Colt's fingers trace patterns on your thigh while you palm him through his pants. The risk of being caught makes everything more intense, and you both end up rushing home, barely making it through the door before clothes come off.
“You look nice,” Ryland says, smiling a little shy, as if the compliment had just slipped out and he was supposed to be embarrassed about that.
“I uh,” You pause, swallowing thickly.
Holy fuck he looks good in a suit.
in which: You need a date to the wedding you foolishly agreed to attend, luckily your co-worker is a willing sacrifice. Extremely willing.
[warnings: eventual nsfw 18+, a bit of fluff, excessively drawn out flirting]
wc: 14.2k (Whoops) [ Masterlist ] [ ao3 Link ]
Woe finds you on a Tuesday at the staffroom lunch table.
Picking apart the leftovers of a miserable thrown together attempt of fried rice that came to be after realising there were no better dinner options with the ingredients you had in the fridge two days ago and the determination to not get take out more than once a week that would surely fade come February. Alas, it is still January and all those new year resolutions are still sticking like cheap adhesive hooks that will eventually be weighed down enough to slip as time ticks on.
Eat take out once a week, maximum. Read one book a month, minimum. Sleep more. Stop turning down social invites
The last one is what leaves you particularly perturbed, as your lunch goes lukewarm and your thumb flicks about on the social media profile.
“I just… I can’t say no.” You lament. “It would be weird.”
“Weirder than going?” Margot asks, pulling her own container of lunch from the oven. It’s also leftovers, but slices of impeccably cooked roast with what looks to be red wine sauce and vegetables- no doubt made by her smokeshow of a house husband (he just works from home, she insists. You’re pretty sure the pair are sitting on a lofty investment profile because no man ‘works from home’ cooks roasts bi-weekly and buys his wife diamond earrings for her birthday).
“I don’t know. Maybe.” You manage, the next bite of fired rice tasting like loneliness packed into an over-salted flavour profile.
“What’s weird?” Ryland asks, sitting down in the chair across from you.
The staff room of E-Block is near abandoned. Of the ten-odd teachers with rooms in the little block of aging brick, most tended to eat in their classrooms. Save for you, Margot and Ryland. Occasionally there will be another visitor, but most days, it is just the three of you.
“Wedding.” Margot supplies, sitting down and shuffling her chair in with a sense of poise so rarely found in Middle-Schools. She’s older, somewhere in her early fifties, and still manages to approach the job with the same level of discipline as before ipads made their invasion into the classroom.
Ryland frowns. “You’re already married.”
He’s… well, Ryland's… actually you’re not sure how to put him into words, which is saying a lot considering the literature degree collecting mildew in the filing cabinet of your apartment.
He’s in the same boat as you in terms of finding yourselves with a teaching career. Studied something else first, got your passion and love for it soured by morons and went back to college for a second round, dishing out more cash for a masters in teaching that has you trying to tame fourteen year olds all day. Delightful, truly. Although, Ryland had certainly lasted a lot longer with that first degree than you had. A doctorate. He hates the kids knowing that though. A handful of them had called him ‘Doctor Grace’ last year, after digging about online and getting their grubby fingers on his linkedin profile.
‘Mr Grace’ as he is now known, is awkward. A little socially inept at times, but not enough to come across as anything other than endearing. Now is one such time, as he looks over the frames of his glasses at Margo, the stack of pop quizzes he’d brought to mark and keep himself occupied momentarily forgotten. His eyes darted from her face to the ring on her finger.
“Mm mm.” She hums, shaking her head as she chews, then levels her fork to point in your direction.
“You’re not getting married.” Ryland states when he turns to look at you, like it’s a scientific fact, one he’s so assured of.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr Grace.” You reply, still sort of wallowing at the photos on your phone.
His gaze flickers, a little less sure as the corner of his lips fall and, like he had with Margot, settles his eyes on your hands. Your lack of a ring. “You aren’t, are you?”
“No. My ex is, though.” You sigh, despondent. The reminder glares back at you from the overly-bright phone screen.
“Oh. That sucks.” He manages, clicking open a red pen to start circling and ticking the first sheet on his pile. “Happens to the best of us.”
The kettle rumbles away on the tiny kitchenette. You look at him for a long moment. The best of us. Like it’s happened to him. Ryland’s not one to discuss relationships beyond the occasional quip about quitting to be a house husband like Margot’s. He’s never mentioned past romances, you don’t think he’s been in a relationship in the three years since he started at Grover Cleveland Middle. It’s such a bizarre glimpse at his life, that he doesn't even seem to register what he's revealed, marking as he waits for the boiling water to cook another lunch of instant ramen.
You sit up a little straighter in your chair, weary of knocking your shoes against where his long legs sprawl under the small table. The staff room is meant for ten but is cramped even with the three of you, nothing more than a little kitchenette and big whiteboard in the corner. There’s a shelf against one wall, just far enough away from the doorframe that the door doesn't crash into it when pushed open. There’s a long window the length of the wall on the door’s other side, a good view of the eighth-grade outdoor lunch area. The other staff call it the fishbowl, it’s why they opt to eat in their classrooms, not keen on the kids' eyes on them when it is supposed to be one of the fleeting breaks during their day.
Thank god the door is closed- if the kids heard you whining about this, a wedding, they’d never let up. “I’m considering the pros and cons of skipping it.”
“You were invited?” He baulks, dropping his pen.
You try not to smile, focusing on your self pity instead of the three shoddy attempts Ryland takes to catch his pen from dropping out of his hand, rolling off the stack of paper then off the table. “I already said I’d go too.”
“Why?” Ryland sounds appalled, like that one time you’d caught him trying to explain that the five second rule is not an effective barrier against bacteria to a student.
“It’s complicated.” You say, biting at your cheek.
“Bullshit.” Margot aptly calls. Looking over with the same expression she used to call students on their bullshit. You're not a big fan of having it directed at you.
“We went out for maybe two months in college.” You sigh, setting your phone on the table face-down to stare at your lunch, contemplative. “He’s engaged to one of the girls from my sorority. We’re… friends.”
Margot watches. “With your ex or the sorority girl?”
“Sorority girl. Daisy.” That's the better option of the two at least. You think it is, not that there is much left to save you from the impending train wreck of discussing the relationship woes of your late teens and early twenties with the only two coworkers who care to eat lunch in a communal space. The company is nice, Ryalnd had said once, when you’d asked, gets me out of the classroom.
Margot screws her face up for a second, muttering it again under her breath as if the name offends her.
“You were in a sorority?" Ryland asks, face a little blank as he looks at you from across the table.
It makes you falter, the way his thoughts seem to be buffering like the school's slow wifi. “I… Yeah? That’s the interesting part?”
He shakes his head, looking down at his marking sheets and pushes his glasses up from where they’re slowly slipping down the bridge of his nose. “No, I just can’t picture it.”
You purse your lips, consider pulling up some photos from your sorority days, then remember the kind of outfits the lot of you wore and think better of it. “Well Daisy and I were roommates for a year and a half. She’s nice. Works in PR now.”
“But she’s marrying your ex?” Ryland asks, still kind of baffled.
You dismiss it with a lazy hand wave. “I mean, she asked before they went out and everything. I just think it’s a little weird. I don’t even know why I said I’d go. It’s going to be embarrassing.”
Margot tuts twice, done with her lovingly made lunch that symbolises how successful she has been in the department of marriage when you have all but failed so far. “Why is it embarrassing? Two months is nothing.”
“I was a little head over heels for this guy.” You admit, sheepish.
Ryland stands up, clears his throat as he turns away. “Yeah? How so?”
His back is to you, as he peels the lid off his cup ramen and wrestles with the flavour packet. You come to the conclusion it’s easier to confess this sort of stuff with only one set of eyes on you. “I was sort of convinced he was my soulmate. He was doing pre-law, witty too.”
“Hot?” Margot asks, always straightforward.
You feel a blush rise on your cheeks as you remember the early days of your sorority experience, flopped back on the bed as you made little love sick sighs at your ceiling. “God, his jawline. And his hair- it was so… ugh!”
The thud is dull when your forehead lands on the table, to the right of your now abandoned lunch. “I don’t even know why I said I’d go. It’s dumb.”
You hate how you sound- petulant like the kids you prod for not searching for better words in their assignments, moping like your world is ending over something so trivial. It’s not even the new years resolution that has you mulling this over so intently. You’d agreed to go months ago- six months ago- and said yes to the offered plus one, adamant to yourself that you’d have someone by then, a partner or something. Someone of importance.
Attending alone is going to be even worse than if you had just RSVP’d for yourself in the first place. It’s one thing to watch your college friend and ex-sort-of-boyfriend exchange vows alone, and a whole other monster to do it with a pointed empty seat beside you.
All of it tumbles out your lips in a hurried hurl of word vomit, followed by a few moments of silence that has you cautiously raising your head to peek over the wall of your forearms. Ryland is staring at you, cup noodles steaming in his hands where it hovers over the sink, like he’d been about to pour out the excess water. Margot is looking at you with a frown, the same one she wears when teaching senior mathematics and the children have drawn up an equation for her to solve with the foolish belief they could stump her for more than ten seconds.
And just as in class, Margot is not phased for more than a handful of moments. “Then find someone with a better jawline and better hair to go with you. You can borrow mine.”
You blink at her, mulling the words over before asking, “Are you trying to pimp your husband out to me?”
“Only for aesthetic reasons, of course. It’d be nice to have the house to myself for once. Not like you have better options.”
It would sting more if it wasn’t so true. There were very few options and with the wedding only two weeks away, that was certainly not enough time to squeeze in enough dates with someone to justify taking them to a damn wedding.
“I mean, how good is his jawline?” Ryland finally says, walking over with his little cutlery box, plastic chopsticks he washes and reuses almost everyday, to set his lunch down on the table and settle back in across from you. “Are we aiming high?”
There is no way to un-dig this hole, not now that they’ve both decided to put their two cents in. You concede with another sigh and reach for your phone, arms and chin still on the table as you fish about Instagram for a photo. It’s the one that had reminded you of this awful upcoming event, posted by Daisy. You all but toss your phone on the table between your coworkers, sinking a little lower into your folded arms, awaiting judgement.
The photos must be from a walk though of the venue, the pair of them posed together between some old marble arch where they were having the ceremony at. She was laughing, hand on his chest, showing off the ring on her finger while he looked at her, besotted. The caption made it worse. Only two weeks left till I get to marry my man on these very steps.
You like them both, you really do, but the thought of showing up by yourself, as the lonely friend who’d never found ‘it’, your own version of the love they were celebrating, well it was just nauseating.
Margot looks the photo over critically before humming in a sort of so-so tone. “You can do better.”
Ryland looks kind of at a loss. “This is your type?”
As if to emphasise the point, he lifts the phone up and turns it around to show you the image you were already being haunted by. “This is the hair that had you all…”
He doesn't find the words, just waves the hand with his chopsticks around in a messy motion, looks at you critically over the rims of his glasses.
“He slicks it back now. It used to be… I donno. Messy? Fluffy? Good to run my fingers though.” He scoffs a little to himself, dissatisfied maybe with your excuse.
The only forgiving factor is that the photo does highlight the sharp cut of his jaw, which even Ryland concedes to. “He does have a good jawline...”
Yours is better, you want to say. Immediate and impulsive, because it kind of is. Especially when the shadow of his stubble stretches a few extra days between shaves. Your ex is clean shaven- you used to think that was sexy, at least sexier than the patchy beards boys in college had back then. Now you’re kind of obsessed with the so-called ‘5-o’clock shadow’ Ryland sports on Fridays.
It’s not something you’re likely to tell him though, especially not when you glance at the clock and realise you have a duty across campus in three minutes. Saved by the bell maybe, either way you’re able to liberate your phone from the pair of them and their conspiratory whispers, bin the scraps of your lunch and haul ass out of there.
By the end of the school day, you have reached the conclusion that you will blame it on work. That some mandatory day of ‘professional development’ as it is called nowadays, has come up and you will just have to miss the wedding, truly you’re devastated about it all.
Then Ryland corners you in your classroom. The bell’s long gone, as are the students. He’s dressed like he’s on his way out, his green backpack tossed over one shoulder and bike helmet hanging by the strap in one hand. You’re halfway through explaining your plan and the wording you’re going to use in the tragic text message to Daisy when he cuts you off.
“I’ll go with you.”
He’s a little breathless with it, like he’d been saving up all his oxygen to get the words out, leaving him in one big rush as they topple though the doorway of your classroom and splatter onto the linoleum floor between you both.
“I know that I’m not Margot’s husband with a ‘better jawline and better hair’ but we can go and eat nice wedding food- If he’s a lawyer it’s gotta be fancy, right? And we can make fun of his stupid slicked back hair together and you don’t have to be alone or make an excuse and feel guilty about it.” Ryland’s big speech is as flawed as it is heartwarming
Because he does have a better jawline and better hair. And Margot looks between you both during lunch hours and staff meetings like you’re her personal romance drama, there to occupy her during the day.
But the wedding food will be good, your ex will shill out for the best and Daisy has always had a taste for the finer things in life. Ryland is the best company you can think of to have by your side and he knows you well enough to understand how guilty lying about something makes you feel, how it churns your gut.
“Yeah. Okay.” You smile, something warm and fuzzy in your chest.
His eyes don’t move, maybe widen a little before he speaks again, still a little breathless. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
It isn’t a hard thought to come around to, taking Ryland to a wedding. As a date is something that goes unsaid between the pair of you, not sure whether it could be classed as such for real, or if this is simply a favour between friends-slash-coworkers. It is certainly a date for show, to the many college friends you’re about to reunite with after a few years, for your Ex, Jack who’s obsessed with his wife, for Daisy who you’d told years ago to ‘go for it, he’s a nice guy’ working under the assumption that she’d only last a few months by his side too.
You’re not sure which answer you’d prefer, honestly; a date or a favour.
He texts you a lot- after school, on the weekend- asking about what he should wear, what you’re going to wear, how he should prepare for this sort of thing. It’s sweet, cute in a way that has little butterflies flapping around in your stomach.
“Okay, I’ll show you. Wait, hold on.” You placate, setting your phone down on the bed, screen up.
“It’s a lovely ceiling fan, but I doubt it fits the dress code.” Ryland drawls, and you can hear the smile there.
“Ha ha.” You reply, a little echo-y as you lean into your closet to pull the dress out.
He’s up in arms about what to wear, says he needs to know what you’re wearing too so he can match. The invite’s dress code called for formal attire in ‘dark colours’. On the facebook page she’d made for the event, Daisy had a full post going into more detail, about how she’d love any and all dark tones- forestry green, navy, even burgundy was fine. You had taken a firm stance against burgundy considering there’s some old wedding traditions that state wearing red indicated you’d slept with the groom. Which you had, but you were not about to advertise that.
So navy it was.
You’d sent Ryland a picture of the invite, where it was stuck to your fridge with letter magnets spelling out ‘woe’- it had felt fitting when you’d stuck it up there- and several screenshots of the lengthy dress-code post Daisy had made that went into excruciating detail. He wasn’t satisfied though.
Even your attempts to describe the dress you’d bought didn’t work well enough.
“I mean it! you expect me to know what any of those words apart from ‘floor length' means?” he bemoans from your phone speakers, face time call crackling. “I need all the data.”
“Oh listen to you, Mr. Science,” You drawl with a smile, pulling the dress out. It’s too long to hang from a door knob so you have to stretch up on your tip toes to hang the coat hook over the curtain rod of your bedroom window.
“I was thinking of changing my name. Very to the point, don’t you think?” He replies, still smiling as you collect your phone. His eyes are sparkling with something cheeky when you appear back in frame.
Ryland’s dressed down, in one of those dumb science t-shirts he wears on ‘Casual Fridays’ as it is called in staff meetings. This one’s dark blue and has the periodic table on it in worn down white transfer ink. You’ve seen it enough to know the punch line sprawled over his lower stomach even though it’s not in frame. I wear this shirt periodically. He finds an extra layer in humor that the shirt is factually correct as well, that he does in fact, wear the shirt in regular intervals as he’d explained to you during a free-period on one of those casual Fridays.
He’s at his kitchen bench, phone propped up against something, while he taps away at his laptop. You’ve not actually been to Ryland’s apartment before, but it sorta feels like you have, the cramped studio always on display in the back of video calls like this one.
It’s just one long rectangle. Kitchen by the front door, a bench, a gap that is probably intended for a kitchen table but he’s stuck a desk there instead, his bed that’s almost always unmade with a tv wall mounted across from it, and a balcony. Like this, you can see the expanse of it behind him. The stacks of paper piled up on his desk, the extra monitors and little trinkets gifted from students, the sage green sheets of his bed, peeled back on one side, sun shining in through his big glass balcony doors. Honesty, you kind of want to see the view from his apartment in person, he’s a little higher up than you are, in a better part of the city too.
Ryland’s not brushed his hair, it’s all spiked up in different directions and you wonder if the mug he’s been sipping from, periodically, is his morning cup even though it’s just past ten. He’s blinking slow behind his glasses, sitting a little too still for his brain to be fully functional yet.
“I’m sure the kids will love it. Harder to spell on their assessment sheets, though.” You can imagine it, the staff badge, the name on his board in fun bubble writing where it would stay untouched for a whole school term.
You flip the camera, showing him the dress he’s been complaining about not understanding for the last half hour over text before he gave up and called you.
It’s cute, how his head tilts and he leans towards his phone for a second before just picking it up and holding it close enough so his eyes and forehead are just about all that is in frame. “Is that velvet?”
“It’s fake satin. I think.”
“Fake satin?” He repeats, confused.
The dress was one you already owned, bought a year or so ago for another friend’s wedding that you had attended alone but not felt crappy about, even if it did seem like everyone your age was getting married nowadays. It’s got a fitted bodice, but there fabric is a little drapey, looks like it pools over the chest and down towards the fluid skirt. "Wasn't expensive enough to be real satin.”
“Okay, I know what you mean by delicate straps now.” That had been his main hang up, whining about, What do you mean delicate straps? Like they’re about to break?, swearing that the shit he was googling was just not helping the mental image considering there were about six different results for everything.
“Yeah, and here, the lace up back.” You say, stepping up to twist the dress away from where it sat flush against the curtains to show the corset style back, with thin cord lace just a little thinner than the straps.
“Isn’t that going to be a nightmare to put on?” He asks, squinting still.
“There’s a zip.” You say, dragging the little hidden zipper down, showing him how the dress fabric parts and slips open. “So it’s fairly easy to get on. The cords are about as tight as they should be anyway, it isn't hard to pull to fit.”
You fumble a little trying to get the zip back up but eventually just conceded to leave out like that until you put the dress away. When you glance down at your phone, Ryland has moved, no longer sitting down and if you had to guess, is now walking the length of his apartment instead. He looks a little distressed.
“Come on, you’ve got the easy part.” You try, a little concerned he’s about to say he shouldn’t go. “You just have to put on a suit.”
“I can’t just ‘put on a suit’.” He whines, flopping down onto his bed like the world is ending. “I’m supposed to be like, your big ‘fuck you’ to the girl who got with your ex. I’m supposed to look good with you. I don’t know if I have a suit nice enough for that dress.”
“Ryland. It’s not about saying ‘fuck you’ to Daisy, or pulling some revenge stunt. I just didn’t want to go alone like a loser when I said I was bringing someone.” You can’t really help the little breathy laugh that weaves its way though his name, because he sounds like you did four days ago acting like the world was about to end, face down on the lunch table. “You don’t have to come.”
“No, I’m coming. I just need to go through my wardrobe.” He’s cute, you decide, in a round-about sort of way. The determination to play this self elected role well, to perfect it and give it his all, like he does with everything else in his life. The whole situation was elevating your ‘aesthetic appreciation’ of Ryland that you’d been attempting to suppress, to a new sort of level.
You flop down on your own bed, roll over on your side and let him derail the conversation towards lesson planning, listen to him talk about the plans he has for the next weeks worth of classes, a couple of activities he’s got in the works. All while you consider the pros and cons of having him beside you instead.
Ryland was probably the teacher you got on best with at work, despite being from two very different teaching areas. When he’d first arrived, you’d assumed he would be a little pretentious, with his Phd and professional experience beyond the classroom. You weren't expecting him to be so awkward. The children took to him so quickly, and Ryland had told you time and time again that he doesn't understand why they think he’s cool.
Over the years you’ve found that he can be cocky, in certain bouts of confidence seemingly appearing via divine-intervention. A local bar had run trivia nights for some six odd months, and it had unleashed a beast within him.
On Monday afternoon he sent you a photo. A little black bag with a logo you’d googled, realising it was a menswear store before the second photo had come though. A tie, sleek navy like your dress, rolled up neatly with a matching pocket square beside it, both nestled in a box that screamed expensive. You’d sent back a random string of praise, imagining him lulling it over in the store. It was nearly five in the afternoon, he’d left work pretty much on the final bell. You wonder how long he spent comparing the seemingly endless ties the shop’s online store offered, considering what would match best to your dress.
It makes you a little giddy, to be honest, has you dreaming of a situation where you’d asked him to come to the wedding, or where you’d already been together long enough that it was simply a given when the invitation turned up in your mail box.
Neither of you mention it during school hours, not keen on the kids hearing whispers of you and Ryland doing anything outside work hours- students will take anything and run with it.
But he messages you about it constantly. Makes a plan; he’d come to your apartment and you would uber from there to the venue, it was a sunset ceremony and evening reception. He lived close enough that it was a brisk walk or quick bus trip. He pointedly mentions that he would not be cycling- ‘In a suit? God, never’- and makes sure you know that the uber would also drop you both back to your flat and he’d walk home or take another separate uber.
There’s talk about your ‘backstory’, which he takes as seriously as he does exam periods. You tell him it’s not super necessary, that saying you met at work is more than enough exposition for the gaggle of college friends you’d not seen in years. But he was never one to do things in halves.
“We obviously would have met at school.” He says, like it’s a given. Ryland is laid out on the reading rug at the back of your classroom, staring at the ceiling. And the fake clouds that are actually just a hobby-fill glue gunned to paper and taped to the ceiling, he’d turned the fairy lights that are threaded though them on before he’d decided the floor was his resting place. “Maybe trivia is where it happened. We liked trivia.”
“We did like trivia.” You agree, pointedly.
It’s almost impossible to not just sit there and watch him, the student folders that you’re sorting worksheets into acting as a very inefficient distraction.
He’s got a button down on, some pale blue that looks nice under his grey wool blazer. The pale wash jeans and white converse are a bit more casual, but he wears the combination well. Too well. Laid out like this, with one knee up, he looks far too attractive for you to swallow. Glasses pulled down to hang off his jaw, sitting there catching the afternoon light as it came through the windows, casting rainbow refractions onto the back wall.
“Maybe trivia was a date. What would you have done?”
“If you’d asked me to trivia as a date?” You glance up. He’s already looking at you, head tipped to the side, something soft, tentative there in his eyes.
“Yeah.” You can see the way his throat bobs when he swallows, how his chest rises with each breath.
Ryland sounds… nervous, in a way that does remind you of the first trivia night you’d gone to. He’d been dressed similarly there, you remember thinking he looked nice, polished up a little more than he did in the school day with dress shoes and what smelt like cologne. Handsome where he waited by the entrance, backlit by the bar’s warm lighting. He’d been a little twitchy for the first hour or so, but settled into himself by round two.
With the way he’s looking at you, now as he plans out the false scenario that’s beginning to sound a lot more like a confession, you’re starting to get the idea that trivia could have been a date. If either of you had put it into words.
“Enjoyed it, probably.”
“Really?” He looks shy, a bit of a flush working its way up his cheeks.
You smile at him, thinking about how nice it would have been to kiss him in that bar with a sweet cocktail on your lips, dizzy from his flattery about your trivia skills. You hum, nodding a little as you look at the folders and sheets spread out over your desk, feeling a flush rise to your own cheeks.
He knocks when you’re halfway through lacing up the back of your dress, holding the cords with one hand as you open the door. Ryland’s not been to your apartment before, something you’d failed to realise until he called you and asked during his walk over, if you’d have to buzz him in.
He was appalled to find out the front door to your building was sporting a broken lock and had been tied back with a length of rope for the last two months while the landlords procrastinated fixing it.
“See,” You say, opening the door for him, keeping it propped open with your foot as he shuffles in. “My door locks.”
“Still one less lock that you’re supposed to have.” he grumbles, stepping out of his very nice dress shoes. They look expensive- black leather shined up propper.
Actually, Ryland looks expensive.
“You look nice,” he says, smiling a little shy, as if the compliment had just slipped out and he was supposed to be embarrassed about that.
“I uh,” You pause, swallowing thickly.
Holy fuck he looks good in a suit. It’s the only thought spinning around your head. It’s a proper one, tailor made no doubt. Blazer, slacks and undershirt, all three of them a deep inky black. The navy tie he’d sent you a photo of is done up around his neck in a knot neater than you’ve ever seen him wear to work. The pocket square is folded too, fluffed up with a little volume that suggests he did so intentionally.
Suddenly you’re reminded of all those times he’d complained about all the formal conferences and charity gala’s he’d attended during his days in academia. You realise you have made a grave error.
There have always been little parts about Ryland that oozed wealth, the glasses he wore for one, that he told you were antique when you’d asked. The watch on his wrist that you thought looked like some practical sporty thing but found out was actually worth three months rent when you’d googled it out of curiosity. These little things fall out of the spotlight and become footnotes that are often ignored when he’s in his classroom, or tiny apartment.
Dressed in such a nice suit, here in you apartment definitely wearing cologne- the same from that very first trivia night, something a little warm, woodsy like oaky bourbon, sharp and contrary to the fresh nothingness he smelt like at work- Ryland seemed so far beyond you.
“You look good.” You manage, letting the door slip shut and dropping the lace of your dress, it loses its tension a little but stays in the same spot for the most part, to run a hand over the lapel of his blazer. “How long have you had this?”
“Ages. Dug it out of the back of my closet. A little tighter than when I last wore it, but it will do the trick. Right?” He tacks that last bit on, like he’s waiting with baited breath for your approval.
“I’ll say.” You slide your hand down the lapel a little bit, down over the press of his chest. The tightness just shows the subtlety of his build, lean muscle that comes from idle exercise and good diet, maybe even a splash of genetics. He’s tidied his facial hair up a little, slid the electric razor over all of it to make sure it’s the same length, no doubt. Ryalnd’s still got his glasses on, you were a little worried he might have opted for contacts and are very relieved you get to see this outfit complete with the lenses that frame his face so well.
With a realisation you might be getting a little lost in your head, you drop your hand, turning to walk further into your apartment, towards the couch where your shoes for the night sat on the floor. “Right, we'll, I'm nearly ready. The uber will be here soon.”
“Do you need a hand?” Ryland asks, and you’re about to turn, ask him, ‘with what’ when you feel his fingertips against the small of your back. It sends a jolt though your skin, he’s cold. From the outside air, where as you’ve been nice and cosy with the heat on while you’d done your hair and make up.
Goosebumps rise under his hands as they gather the ties for the back of your dress. Something low swoops in your gut, like the dip of a roller coaster, free falling as he chuckles a little behind you. “Sorry, cold fingers.”
You swallow. “It’s.. it’s okay.”
“How tight?” He asks, giving the strings a gentle tug. You almost sway with the moment, feeling a little swept off your feet already.
“Bit tighter.” You manage, as he presses a flat palm against the small of your back, over the criss-crossing cord, and gathers both ties in one hand to pull slow and firm. It tugs you back into his hand, a steadier hold than you’d expected.
“There?” He questions when the dress is pulled in to sit flush with your skin but not dig in. You get the feeling he might have done some research, when he plucks at each string to even them out and make sure none of them are too tight, on how these dresses are supposed to sit.
“Yeah, perfect.” It leaves you like a sigh, as his palm dips, brushes where the zipper sits before pulling back to tie a neat bow, tugging the cords out carefully so both loops are even.
All of it has you lightheaded, directing more effort than necessary to get yourself to the couch and pull your heels on, black mary janes that are comfortable enough to walk in. As you fiddle with the buckles, you eye him.
Ryland’s hair is tousled, intentionally a little messy, not combed or slicked back. Looks like it would be nice to run your fingers though, and you find yourself wondering if that’s why he’d opted for the style, if he’s here, dressed up as the guy with ‘better hair and a better jawline’ that Margot had pitched, unaware that he already was exactly who he’s trying to be.
He holds an arm out for you to loop yours though, walking down the stairs in steady but slowed steps. You smile. “Wow, full gentleman experience.”
“I told you, I can't just ‘put on a suit’. It’s more than that.” He chides jokingly, and you pity the version of you that didn’t realise this was an option.
He opens the door for you- the car door, the door into the building door tied back by a rope (he glares at it when you pass it)- then rounds the back of the little toyota that’s polished up to try and seem fancier than it was. You don’t talk much on your way to the venue, comfortable silence that the driver thankfully settles into.
It’s nearing sundown when you pull into the driveway, a big circular road that’s already crammed with other cars and guests climbing out.
“You can just let us out here.” Ryland says to the uber driver, unbuckling his seatbelt to hop out, then rounding the car again to open your door, hand held out like it’s necessary, when the car is nowhere near low or high enough to warrant such assistance.
You place your palm in his anyway, letting him pull you from the car, no more temperature disparity in your hands since you’ve both been in the car for fifteen minutes, but it still makes your skin tingle. He’s got cufflinks, the same pale gold as his glasses, in the shape of atoms. You flick one lightly. “I like these.”
He smiles, something a little smothered like he’s trying to stamp it down from a grin as he threads his arm though yours again, beginning the small walk to the venue's front steps. “Well I like your dress, so I think we’re even.”
It’s a ballroom, with these big stained glass windows in the room they hold ceremonies in, you’d seen some lovely shots on the venue’s website of sunset light streaming through them. Imagining Ryland in the warm sunlight has you in a good mood, he’s always suited it, even if the city’s never had much to offer.
“Not too much for our first date?” You tease.
Something like a laugh tumbles out of his lips, leaning down to whisper in your ear. “First date was trivia- and you were underdressed. Keep up.”
You flush, crowding a little closer to his side to make it through the entryway without shoulder checking anyone. Had you been? It was so long ago you could hardly remember anything other than jeans, tight ones that dug into your waist when you sat down- tight jeans hardly felt like being underdressed, they probably meant you wanted him to stare at your ass. Either way you let him have the win, as minute as it is.
Doesn't really matter what you wore back then when you’ve got him like this now.
Together you sit about halfway down on the bride’s side, the pew’s nearly empty, only someone on the other end you don’t know but looks vaguely enough like Daisy, that's you’d guess extended family.
“So why’d you like this guy so much?” Ryland asks, quiet enough for it to just stay between the two of you. He’s glancing around, but his eyes keep bouncing back to Jack at the front of the venue, where he’s talking to gaggle of similarly dressed guys, his groomsmen.
“What?”
“Him,” Ryland says, tipping his head a little to gesture at Jack. “What had you talking about soulmates? Couldn't just be the hair, tons of guys have good hair.”
“They do.” You answer, raising a hand to tangle one of the longer stands where it’s dangling over his forehead around your pointer finger and give it a light tug. Ryland’s eyes settle on you, like there’s nothing else to look at. “He made me feel like the only girl in the world.”
“That’s a cliche.” He refutes. “And a song lyric.”
You smile. “I’m serious. He’s like that with every girl he went out with. He’s like it with Daisy. He just loses sight of every other woman, so attentive.”
Ryland stays silent for a moment, eyes searching for something in yours. Maybe permission, or a want, for him to keep digging, it’s almost as if he’s scared what he might find. “What'd he do? To make you feel like that?”
It’s cute, how nervous he is, despite the fact it feels as though all week, the pair of you have been laying this ground work, a path to follow that will lead you somewhere inevitable, like a trivia date, or the messy sprawled sage green sheets or Ryland’s bed. You smile at him, wondering if he’s thought about you in them. You wonder if he knows how easily you could be, that you might just follow him to the edge of the universe.
Still, you answer his question, offering a peek into your brain, the way you used to operate when teenage giddiness was closer than adult yearning. "Took me dancing. Kissed me slowly, cared about how I wanted things to go. It was like he just couldn’t stop looking at me, for me. It was intoxicating.”
“I can’t.” Ryland blurts out, all reckless abandon, and he’s looking at you like you’ve already kissed him breathless just by being here. You let your leg shift to press the length of your thigh against his, warm even through the layers of fabric.
You breathe in deep through your nose, the scent of his cologne sticking dizzyingly to the air, a scent you think is enough to get drunk on even without the assistance of wedding champagne. "Can't what?”
“Stop looking at you.” He clarifies, eyes darting down to your lips. “I can do the other things though.”
A flutter knocks about your chest, unsteady and uncoordinated. “Yeah, you like dancing Doctor Grace?”
“If it’s with you.” He amends.
“And slow kissing? You like that too?”
“Yeah I do.” He’s not even trying to hide it now, gaze settled on the dusty pink line of your lips, his own a little slick with spit when he darts his tongue out to trace one quick line along them.
You almost asked him to prove it, but in your peripherals, down the aisle and pausing at the sight of you, was Macey, another one of your college friends, smiling. So you place a hand on Ryland's thigh, just above his knee. “Good. Really good.”
Ryland looks dizzy with the praise, like it’s all rushed straight to his head.
“Hey Macey, good to see you.” You greet, using your hand on Ryland's knee to tip his legs towards you, making room for Macey to shuffle into the pew.
“Oh my god, good to see you too! It's been awhile, hasn’t it?” She leans down a little awkwardly to wrap you in a hug as you half stand, and it’s good to see someone after so long, to look at them and remember times when things were simpler and you were allowed to be a little stupid, a little dangerous. It’s nice to see her here, for her to sit next to you- Macey’s always encouraged you to be a little wild, and with the way Ryland’s been looking at you all night, you might need her ego-bosting tonight.
“I’m Macey, nice to meet you.” She extends a hand to Ryland over your lap and he shakes it curtly, offering his own introduction.
There’s a big rock on her finger, and you remember seeing it on an instagram post, some dreamy forest scenery with a ‘coming soon to a theatre near you’ caption under it.
“I suppose it will be your wedding next then,” You tease, “Where’s Jamie?”
“Oh she had a work trip, couldn't avoid it. She wanted to come though.” Macey waves off. Her and her fiance met on some film set, both camera operators, at the time, although you faintly recall reading something about Jamie’s name working its way up to director for some upcoming project, amongst the throws of social media posts from people who once knew everything about you and now you only see once every few years.
“So Ryland,” Macey starts with a glimmer in her eyes, something evil and mischievous that throws you back to seeing her in the living room with a bottle of tequila and monopoly board. “How’d you two meet?”
“We teach at the same school,” He grins, a hand sliding to your knee, just along the inside of it, where your dress fabric hangs low with slack, enough for his palm to press there, thumb drawing slow lines back and forth. “A little cliche but I don’t mind.”
Macey smiles, fans her face a little like that’s just soooo romantic. “What do you teach?”
“Science, opposites attract I guess.”
“Please tell me you used that line.” She practically swoons.
Ryland huffs a little laugh. “No, the kids threw that one at me actually.”
“Really?” You question, a raised eyebrow because that was not part of the backstory he’d been cooking up all week.
“Oh yeah. You should hear them. “Mr. Grace, you and Miss are ,like perfect for each other. You should ask her to the spring dance. They’re relentless, I swear.”
He pitches his voice a little, lazy tones and improper grammar leaking out in the way it did when he did impressions of your students and you can’t help but giggle a little.
“Their heads might explode when they find out.” Macey laughs too, then like a stroke of inspiration, slaps her hand against your arm a few times in pure, unrestrained excitement. “God- remember when we found out Professor Morisaki and Professor Collins were married? Holy shit it was like our heads exploded.”
You bark a laugh, muffling it under your hand considering the rather low level of idle chatter in the venue. “Oh my god, I forgot about that.”
“Professors of yours?” Ryland asks, this soft smile spread across his lips still.
“Yeah, we were doing a car-wash fundraiser! They were kissing in the background of one of our photos!” Macey still whispers gossip like she did in college, like your students do now.
Ryland looks a little red in the face when he asks. “A car wash fundraiser?”
Macey smirks, always too good at picking things up from others' words and you kind of want to stomp your heel over her toes to tell her off before you remember how this evening had been going so far. “Oh? Don’t you know? We were a little wild in college.”
You scoff. “A little?”
“Okay, a lot.” She corrects. “The car wash was an annual thing. White tshirts, bikinis. There’s definitely pictures. I have pictures.”
“Macey.” You scold, mostly joking.
She shrugs, straightens up and sits to face the fronts, pointedly not looking at you with a smirk on her face. “Hey- I’m just reminiscing on good times. Don’t you remember the kissing booth we ran? Of course you do you were the most requested-”
Now you stomp your foot onto hers, although she doesn’t do anything but laugh to herself.
Ryland is back to that dazed look, like he’s on some far off planet in his mind, when he murmurs, "Kissing booth?”
You glare at Macey, for a sharp moment. Before patting one hand on Ryland’s chest, leaning in close when you say, loud enough for Macey to hear. “Tell you about it later, handsome.”
He ducks his head a little close to you, a tiny little movement that stops as soon as it starts. His cheeks are the reddest you’d ever seen, looking a lot like he’s about to kiss you now, when there’s a music cue somewhere further up the aisle and a hush falls over everyone. He doesn't look away at first, eyes glued to yours for a long second before he bites his lower lip, to stop himself saying something and reaches a hand up to lace his fingers together with yours over his chest. He pulls it gently to his lap, smothering it in between his warm palms, fiddling with your fingers as the ceremony starts.
It’s beautiful, truly. The light lowered through the stained glass windows, reflecting and casting colour across the whole room, gentle music and teary vows. Picturesque really, and it reminded you of that time you’d all made ‘vision boards’ as a bonding activity, and Daisy had a little corner on hers that outlined the life she’d like to live, from a small sunset ceremony to the little white picket fence outside a cottage. You’re happy she’s finally arrived there, that she has a man who’s willing to give her everything she’d dreamed of.
You tell her as much, when you catch the pair of them in the reception hall. A warm hug for each of them and a firm hand shake between Jack and Ryland. It’s a lot less daunting than you had thought it would be, seeing them with the knot tied, no bad blood lingering or awkwardness about what once was. Just contentedness, with where your lives had led you each.
The food is good and the atmosphere is better, seeing people from a previous life chapter all reunited, laughing and catching up. The reception is held in a ball room, with gorgeous polished hard wood floors and lovely low lighting that hangs from the ceiling in delicate chandeliers. There’s a classical band, a memento board for people to take polaroids and write well wishes on them, a corner with photos from Both Daisy and Jack’s lives, in albums and tacked up on walls, showing where they meet and things bleed together into their future. All of it’s beautiful.
It’s heading into the later part of the night, when some people have excused themselves and cake has been cut, a hefty supply of the champagne depleted, that a nice slow song comes on.
You aren’t really paying that much attention to it, until you see Ryland shift beside you, rising and holding out one hand, palm up, towards you. “Care to dance?”
Something warm spreads over your face, a flush probably, as you lay a hand in his and he ever so gently pulls you to your feet, right in close to him. He leans down again, lips pressing feather-light to your temple before he leads you towards the dance floor.
It’s littered with other couples, celebrating the love they have for each other as well as the bride and groom.
All of it has you a little dizzy, settling a hand on Ryland’s shoulder as his palm slides around your waist, fingers slowing around the lace up back of your dress, pressing into your skin with gentle intent. He’s warm, firm against you, breath fanning across your cheek as you look up at him. “I know this isn’t the kind of dancing you meant, but it’s the best I can do for now.”
You humm, feet shifting in time with his, a slow waltz you weren’t even aware he knew. “I think I prefer this kind of dancing nowadays.”
Ryland’s lips tick up into a smile. “Yeah?”
He looks as good in the warm lamp light as he does in sunlight, kissing across his tanned skin and stubble, showing off the highlights of his hair. You want to run your hands through it, press a kiss to the scruff of his jaw. You settle on talking instead, worried he’s not one for such public displays of affection. “Left my wild nights behind in college.”
He sighs, like this is a devastating blow, hanging his head slightly, glasses slipping a smidge down his nose. “A shame. I was looking forwards to an appearance.”
You purse your lips, lifting the hand from his shoulder to cup his jaw, tilting his head back up a little, the pad of your thumb pressing his glasses back up to where they're supposed to sit. “Might do a private showing. Just for you.”
“You going to wash my car?” He asks, teasing. Eyes following the movement of your hand as it slips back down into place on his shoulder.
Your forehead falls, pressing against his collar bone as a furious blush blooms over your face, the worst it has been all night, murmuring, “You don’t have a car.”
He must have known what you were going to say, or some semblance of it because you certainly weren’t speaking loud enough for him to catch all of it, but he still sighs, a little dramatic. “Guess we’ll have to go with the kissing booth then.”
You lift your head a little, to look up at him where he’s smiling down, mirth dancing about in his eyes. “Oh, what a shame.”
The drawl has him crack a grin, cheeks flushed as he looks away. Fingers dancing slowly along the skin of your back, between the cords he’d tied up so perfectly for you.
For you, all of it. His nice suit he’d dug out from the back of his closet, the smart shoes nudging against yours with every step of the waltz. Ryland would do a lot for you, the realisation comes a little late, considering everything. You lean forwards a little, resting your cheek on his chest, as the song slows right down, indulgent.
“You got plans after this?” You ask, and it sounds so cheesy, so bland once it’s left your lips.
Still, when he answers, the smile is audible in Ryland’s voice. “Thought I was getting a private show. Is that offer off the table?”
“Think I can manage it,” You murmur, listening to the final few chords echo about the ball room, basking in the way his voice had rippled and rumbled through his chest, low against your cheek.
He lingers for a few seconds in the quiet, holding you close against his chest. You wonder if he, too, is basking in it. The closeness, the idea of having something that you’ve both been pretending couldn’t happen, wasn’t there in the air of exhaled breaths and weighted stares.
When he pulls back, there is nothing but adoration in his eyes, hand that holds yours falling low, but not releasing it, palm soft against your waist, almost as if he doesn't want to let you go just yet. “Wanna get out of here?”
“Bit forward, Ryland,” You tease, “we’ve not even taken photos yet.”
His eyes follow yours to the polaroid board in the corner, considers it for a moment before he’s pulling you gently by the grasp of his hand around yours, towards it.
The polaroid camera is a little hand held thing, there’s a stand for it, and poster board instructions on how to set a timer delay.
Ryland insists on taking one of just you, and while you’re grinning, trying to convince him to join you against the black fabric backdrop, the shutter goes off.
He rolls his eyes, but lets you drag him in beside you for the next photo. The timer is set, and just as you’re preparing to smile, something a little sweet and knowing, he gets one hand around the small of your back, knocks one of those very smart shoes against your heel and tilts you into a dip. It leaves you a little breathless, as he smiles, nose almost touching yours, shutter flashing off to the side.
He lets you choose which photo goes on the memo board. “Whichever one you don’t put up there, I’m keeping.”
You look a little silly in both, at least you think as much, caught off guard, and laughing a little out of breath. Ryland insists you look amazing in both. Something a bit selfish pulls at your gut, as you apprise both photos, and eventually, hand the one of you and Ryland to him- liking the idea of getting to see it again, of having a physical reminder of the night you two have spent together.
He grins like he’s won something, pulling his wallet out from his jacket pocket- a crisp brown leather that looks worn but well cared for- and to your mortification, tucks the photo into the clear slot. The one most people put their licences, or photos of loved ones, like heart-shaped lockets back in the old days. Ryland says nothing on the matter and he folds his wallet back up and slides it back into his pocket, waiting for you to write your message on the other polaroid’s back.
You scrawl some comment about happy endings and humble crazy beginnings, Signing your name on the bottom under the image of your laughter, and tack it up on the board next to the one Macey’s left.
Ryland’s got his arm out, hooked there for you to loop yours through again.
You manage to catch Daisy by the bar on your way out, and give her a tight hug, telling her again how beautiful the wedding has been, how happy you were for her.
The night air is crisp and the second you’re outside, waiting for the uber that’s just a few minutes away, Ryland strips off his suit jacket, draping it over your shoulders with a lack of hesitation that makes it seems as if he’s been waiting to do it all night.
You look at him and raise a brow, but don’t say anything when you catch sight of his pleased smile. It’s almost devastating to realise he looks even better in just the black button down and tie than he did in the full suit.
Again, the drive is mostly silent, but you notice pointedly, that you’re not going back to your apartment. And when you tilt Ryalnd’s phone and tap the screen awake, you recognise his street name in the trip’s destination.
“Presumptious.” You smile.
He grins back, lets a warm palm wander to the curve of your knee, fingers curling around it then venturing to settle a little higher around your thigh. “How are you going to wash my car if we don’t go to my place?”
“You don’t have a car.” You repeat, curious where all this teasing confidence has come from, if perhaps your very clear signals have finally given Ryland the means to throw out all of that unnecessary nervousness and doubt.
“Right,” He hisses, patting his other hand on his leg, as if to say ‘drat, there goes that plan’. Then he leans in close, whispers to you, “What was the back up plan again?”
“You are much bolder after a few glasses of champagne.”
He hums, a considering sort of sound that rumbles in the minimal air between you. “More so when I know I'm right.”
“And what, pray tell, are you right about?”
“That you like-like me.” He teases, like a child on the playground and if you were a little less level-headed, you might have kissed him right there, leant across the middle seat to lock lips with him in an uber.
But you don’t want the first time you kiss him to be viewed through a rear view mirror by a driver who looks very unimpressed by the conversation happening in the back seat. “You gonna prove that hypothesis in your apartment?”
“That’s very forwards of you.” He teases, head tipping down like he is going to kiss you.
Expect you turn your head, and his lips brush against your cheek, as you tut. “All scientists say experiments are supposed to be conducted in controlled environments.”
He leans back, still close enough for his warm breath to fan across your face. “You’ve been seeing other scientists? I’m heartbroken.”
“Give yourself some credit, your classes are very interesting.”
“Earsdropping, huh? Didn’t think you were the type.” He looks far too pleased by the idea that you’ve listened to him teach, like he doesn't know that when you come for something during class hours that you linger by the door and wait for him to finish whatever he’s saying, as if you could look at anything else when he was so captivating.
“I’ll Tell you exactly what type I am in,” You glance down to tap his phone awake, checking the ride estimate. “four minutes.”
He nods and you wonder if he’d get that head-rush distant expression on his face if you praised him for the patience. It’s something you want to save for later, you decide, for private. Just for you.
Ryland manages to wait, even keep his hands to himself, once you’re both out of the car, leading you though his building with a sort of reverent silence, that you get the impression wouldn’t return once broken. You stand across from each other in the elevator. With both his hands braced on the bar at hip height, Ryland fixes you with a look that echoes in the space, though the mirrors surrounding you and over the idle hum of machinery. You’re still wearing his jacket, over your shoulders, a slight barrier between the handrail and the curve of your back, as you stand with your arms crossed smiling at him.
The giddiness that bubbles up and about inside you, as you huddle in close behind him through the hallway, as he unlocks his door and lets you squeeze in past him, is something you’ve not felt in a long time. There’s not much room for childish excitement in the modern dating landscape, it feels as though everyone is in a rush, trying to get where they want to be with a relationship before it’s too late.
Ryland though, he’s here. You watch him latch the door, before he turns, standing there to let his eyes run up you again.
“Soooo,” He says, pursing his lips and tangling his hands together in front of him, like he’s suddenly nervous.
“So?” You ask, taking a few steps forwards to run your hand down the plane of his chest again, feeling it under your palm just like you did when he’d turned up at your apartment that afternoon.
“It’s been four minutes.” He swallows, and this close you can see how his adams apple bobs. Your other hand reaches up to scratch feather light against the stubble of his jaw, hand on his chest catching on the silky soft fabric of his tie, the one he’d picked out just for you.
Rylands hands are slow, one moves to the dip of your waist, landing where it had during your waltz, if not a little more firm as it presses you close against him. He catches his jacket by the collar, lets it slide back off your shoulders and hang from his grip as it slides to settle on the curve of your hip.
“It has.” You lick your lips.
Tuggin on his tie was not supposed to be a demanding thing, more so a gentle tease like you have been doing all night, stepping around that first move like it was a pitfall trap you’d never make it out of. Expect he pitches forwards much easier than you expected and Ryland's lips are pressed against yours.
Soft and still a little honeyed by the champagne, he moves slowly against you. He takes one step back, then another, pulling you with him and not letting his lips leave yours as he backs himself up against his apartment door.
Your teeth catch on his bottom lip, and a sharp inhale escapes him, almost a gasp, before he melts into the wood at his back, parting his lips and slipping his tongue up against yours.
It’s slow kissing, it’s dizzying and it’s want. Everything he’d promised you hours ago, in the afternoon sun of that venue, looking like a dream come true.
For what could be hours, you stay there, pressed up against him, kissing at his skin, until he shifts his legs, just slightly, enough to press one somewhere between yours, a soft presence halted by the fabric of your dress.
Breathless, you break the kiss and he lays a sweet peck against your temple, an echo of earlier, before he begins to nose at the line of your jaw, your neck. Kissing then sucking at the divot along your collar while you pant. “Ryland,”
He says your name, just as breathless against your skin, his hand dropping the jacket to pull at the chord of your dress.
“Is your doorway where you take all the girls?”
“There are no other girls.” He murmurs like a confession, far more earnest than you’d been prepared for.
“Just me?”
He pulls back, pupils blow wide and face flushed blotchy and red. “Yeah.”
Ryland leans forwards, crowds impossibly close until your feet begin to shuffle, back, back, back into his studio apartment. It passes in a blur as he presses in to kiss your lips again, glued to them until he deems it’s been enough backwards paces and presses another kiss to your jaw. Using his grip on your sides, Ryland turns you around, folds in around behind you.
His bed’s unmade, messy sheets splayed out in front of you, a pile of sage green cotton that feels like a promise, a sight you’ve dreamed about far too many times.
There’s pressure there, against your ass, a hard length that’s tight against his slacks and it makes your stomach swoop to know he’s so turned on by the slow kissing you’d been thinking about all night. His shuddering breath rushes like wind by your ear, as his fingers pull at the bow he’d tied himself. “Been thinking about this for too long.”
“Yeah?” You shudder when his lips find their place against your neck, sucking and biting at the skin there in a way that will probably result in a lasting reminder. “Since you laced it up?”
“Since you showed me this zipper." He pulls at it and the fabric gives, parting to sit low on your hips. Ryland kisses at the juncture of your throat, biting, and nipping.
The dress doesn’t fall, not with the straps still hanging loosely from your shoulders, but it’s a damn near thing. One of Ryland’s hands winds around your waist, dragging you back against him as he presses up with one slow grind that has him choking on a groan. His cock, still trapped in his slacks, drags between the zip and against your underwear in a tease that’s maddening with far too much still left to your imagination.
You try to turn but he’s got you wrapped up so firmly in his arms that it’s not plausible, so instead you reach a hand back, over your shoulder to tug at the knot of his tie, fingers slipping against the silky marital, catching in the bulk to it to tug. A particularly hard tug has him whining.
“Okay,” You huff out as he sucks a little harder just under your jaw that will definitely result in a hickey if you let him continue for much longer. “Come on, don’t you wanna fuck me?”
You punctuate this by groping around between you both until you get a hand over his cock, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Need to remember this bit.” He mumbles, hand around your waist retreating to slip inside your dress from behind, curving back around so his fingers can skate over the soft skin of your stomach, tips slipping just under the waistband of your panties.
It has you clenching down on nothing and you become actually aware of how uncomfortably wet you’re beginning to get. You squeeze your thighs together, squirming in his grasp.
“Next time, Ry-” He splays his hand over your stomach, using it to press you back into him. “Ryland, come on. Need you.”
It tumbles out in a breathy whine, and it’s like you’ve said the magic words. He’s turning you around in his grasp, hands reaching up to slip the straps off your shoulders and marvel at the sight.
He swallows as you reach for his tie again, loosening it gently now you can get your fingers into the knot properly. Ryland’s hands hover nervously before settling against your rib cage, fingers brushing anxiously against the underside of your breasts.
Your dress was not one that lent itself to a bra, so you’d gone without. You had assumed that he’d figured that one out, given how he’d both laced and un-laced the back of it, but now that it’s out of the way, he’s looking at your chest like he hadn’t expected to see it so quickly.
“You mean it?” He manages, sounding all tongue tied as you pry the tie off, letting it fall onto the floor, blending into the puddle of your dress- a perfect shade match. “I.. I get a next time?”
“Yeah.” You breathe, working on his shirt buttons, one after the other, coming apart as easily as Ryland did under your gaze. “As many as you want.”
When you get to the bottom of his shirt and reach for the belt buckle, Ryland’s hands move from where they’ve been gently nudging your breasts, to your wrists, snagging them gently as he pulls them back. His shoes nudged against yours, another one of those silent signals to step back that you didn’t know you understood so well until tonight.
“Let me.” He says, one hand coming to your hip to push you gently back and down onto his bed.
You land softly, mattress springing underneath you as you shuffle back, leaning on your elbows to gaze up at him as he toes off his shoes and pulls off his socks, a little off balance like the whole path from the door has altered his centre of gravity.
Ryland is a sight, heaven-sent.
His hair’s spiked out in six different directions, and you want to scratch at his scalp and pull at the strands all over again. He slides his glasses down his nose and sets them on the nightstand. The skin of his chest is just as tanned as his arms, a wide expanse that’s begging to be marked up with your teeth and nails.
The belt buckle clinks softly in the empty air as he slips it open, unbuttoning his slacks before he shrugs the black dress shirt off. God, you want to bite his shoulders.
Your teeth clamp down on your tongue at the thought, kind of wishing the tie was in the picture so you could pull him down on top of you. Just when you’re about to reach up, aiming for his shoulder or maybe even his cheek, Ryland surprises you by taking a knee.
His fingers are a little clumsy as they wrap around the heel of your left shoe, pulling it up onto his bent knee as he fumbles with the buckle. He’s gentle with it, more careful than he was with his own shoes that are certainly worth more than your cheap pair, right shoe, then the left.
Still, it has your stomach tied up in knots to witness with just how much reverence he’s treating you. And the sight of Ryland between your legs is certainly one you could get used to.
He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee before blinking up at you. “Are you… Can I-”
Ryland cuts himself off and that same unwarranted nervousness from before takes over his face, fingers curling tightly around your ankle, as if to ground himself. You smile at him, something that feels a little too giddy and a little too much like your 20 year-old self from college, fumbling and laughing your way to bed. “What is it Ry? You’ve already got me on your bed, no need to be shy.”
He bites his bottom lip, rolling it between his teeth as he considers the words. “If you say so.”
Then he gently leads your leg, by the ankle that’s still gripped tightly in his palm, off his propped leg as he drops it to kneel, and hooks it over his shoulder. Ryland kisses a path up your calf and along the inside of your leg and with an overwhelming flood of realisation, you fall back against the bed, bracing for the moment where he presses a soft kiss on your clit, through the fabric of your underwear.
Despite his earlier hesitance, Ryland does not dilly-dally. Once he hears your shuddering breath that sounds more like a moan than anything else, he hooks a thumb though the crotch of your panties, pulls them to the side and presses another slow kiss against you.
It’s maddening, has you gasping out his name as he licks a stripe up your cunt, sighing into it like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He’s been teasing you long enough that when he presses two fingers along your folds, teasing the resistance of it, they sink in easily. He hooks them up, pressing up against the spongy wall and pulls another moan from your lips.
You're not sure how long Ryland spends between your legs with your hands in his hair and name on your lips, but it’s got you dizzy, clenching around his fingers as he strokes them inside you, languid and slow as he lays gentle kisses over your clit. His stubble scratches against your thighs in a way you’d expected to hate, but are getting rather fond of.
It’s a slow build that crests with you moaning his name and clenching around his fingers as his tongue slows, your hips twitching a little with overstimulation post-orgasm. He moves his kisses to the inside of your thigh, the one not hooked over his shoulder as you catch your breath and it’s highly plausible that he’s leaving another hickey there.
When he does pull back, Ryland is just as breathless as you. Cheeks flushed and chest stuttering as he licked his lips clean. His pupils are blown wide, so much so you can hardly see the blue as he gazes up at you. “You said I could fuck you, right?”
“Yeah,” you swallow, throat scratchy and dry. “You can.”
With your head still spinning from the attention and care he’s taking with you, it’s a moment before you realise his hands are back at your hips as he shuffles you around the bed, up until he can fit his palm behind your head and lift it onto a pillow that smells like him.
Ryland’s above you, propped up on one elbow and a knee to keep his weight off your body. You can feel each heavy exhale on your cheek. “Like this?”
“Just like this.” You say, nodding hand reaching up for his cheek to pull him down into another slow, languid kiss.
He leans in close, whining against your mouth as you part your legs for him to set his between and get a hand on the small of his back, pressing until he gets the hint and grinds downs. It has you both moaning and panting against each other.
You’re getting impatient, and while he must have ditched the pants somewhere between eating you out and repositioning you right side up on the mattress, he’s still got his briefs on and you’re still wearing your underwear.
“Off,” You grunt, hand pulling at the waistband of his briefs.
Ryland’s head drops to the space beside yours, just above your shoulder as he reaches a hand down to pull his underwear down over his cock and down his legs, kicking them off somewhere at the end of the bed.
He gasps, a shaky exhale hitting your skin as you wrap your hand around the length of him.
Warm and heavy in your palm, he’s bigger than you’d expected. When you slide your hand up, swiping a thumb over the head of his dick, there’s so much precum that it pools on your thumb pad. You give him a slow pump, slide eased by the wetness.
Ryland mouths at the skin of your shoulder, and the hand he’s not using to keep himself above you finds its way to your hip, slipping under your panties, pulling at them.
“Condoms. I need-” He cuts himself off with another groan, biting into your skin then kissing it softly like an apology. “I need a condom.”
His hand slips out from your underwear and he gets his knees up either side of your hips to reach over, straining for the nightstand. You take the moment to kiss along his collarbone, using the hand that’s not wrapped around him to tug your panties down, wriggling them off and down your legs.
It doesn’t go unnoticed, and he drops the condom wrapper somewhere beside your head as his gaze whips back to your face. “I was going to do that.”
He sounds a little bit thrown, like he’d really been looking forwards to pulling your panties off.
“You were also going to fuck me.” You prod, giving his cock another languid stroke, watching his face contort with pleasure as he groans. He eases himself back over you, legs between yours and his weight pressing down in a way that has you sighing in contentment.
“Not fair.” He pants, forehead dropping against yours. A hand, so gentle and far too tender comes up to brush the hair by your temple, away from your eyes. “Next time, you let me take my time, okay?”
You press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “We’ll take turns.”
The condom wrapper crinkles in your fingers and you pinch the edge of it between your teeth and rip the corner off, splitting it open with your thumb. Ryland whines, louder and needier than you’d heard him all night, when you roll it over his dick, hips bucking into your hand and cock bumping against your stomach.
He gets his hand down between your bodies, runs three of his fingers through your folds, making your breath hitch. Then he nudges your hand out of the way and runs his cock though them next. You whine, high pitched and stuttered.
It’s a slow steady push when he slips inside you, one that draws out a long moan from your lips. Ryland moans your name, panting and kissing at your throat.
“God,” he pants. “You feel so good, baby.”
A broken whine sneaks past your lips, one hand reaching up to slide around the back of his neck, to lead his face back to yours so you can kiss him all over again.
This type of slow kissing might have been your new favorite, Ryland’s tongue teasing the seam of your lips before you slip them apart, tracing the line of his teeth with your own tongue. He rolls his hips, grinding down in a slow motion. The curve of his cock drags along your walls, along that spongy spot before bumping so deep inside that it must hit your cervix.
You hook a leg up around his waist and it has his stomach pressing up against your clit when he moves again. Moaning into his mouth, you see stars. “Fuck, that’s perfect- so good.”
Your fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling in a way that earns you a whine and a jerky thrust of his hips. “Y-yeah?”
“Yeah Ry- perfect. Feel so full.” The praise kicks him into gear and his slow occasional grinds turn into a building pace, hips pushing against yours and he buries himself to the hilt with every thrust.
You kiss at the line of his jaw, mouthing and biting at the stubble there. He moans, sharp exhale hitting your cheek. “‘M not gonna last much longer, sw-swetheart.”
“S’okay. Let go, baby.” You murmur by his ear, free hand slipping down to press against your clit.
The pressure alone is almost enough to tip you over the edge, pussy spasming around him. Ryland groans, loud and unrestrained, his rhythm falling apart as you do.
When he does come, he manages a couple more thrusts, shallow as they nudge up against that perfect spot inside you. Ryland whines, shaking a little with over stimulation.
“Couple more.” You moan, fingers winding tight little circles over your clit. “Almost there.”
Your spine goes stiff and a drawn-out whine slips out as you cum, clenching around the weight of him. Ryland stills inside, buried deep as he pants.
Slowly, he eases himself down over you, the gentle pressure of his weight relaxing. Ryland only takes a few moments there though, before sliding an arm under you and around your waist, slowly rolling you both, so he’s sprawled out with his back on those sage green sheets with you draped over him.
He kisses your temple, mumbling your name like a prayer. “‘S a good kissing booth. Might be a repeat customer.”
You push up a little to look at him, hands either side of his chest, and a hitched breath sputters out of his lips as you shift, his cock still inside you. “Might? What happened to ‘next time’?”
He smiles at you, hands reaching for your hips as he draws slow lines up and down your skin with his thumbs. “Well, I don’t wanna push my luck.”
“You’re not pushing anything.” You murmur, leaning back down to kiss him proper.
Once the aftershocks of your orgasm have faded and the idea of being empty no longer pulls painfully at your chest, you raise your hips up and let Ryland’s now soft cock slip out. He exhales heavily, and you lay beside him, eyes on the slow spinning ceiling fan.
He sits himself up not long after, slips the condom off and wanders off to the tiny door that you now know is his bathroom. He comes back with a damp cloth, smiling at you shyly as he cleans you up, gentle swipes over your core and along the inside of your thighs.
Ryland walks over and pulls some boxers on, then returns to the bed to slide a pair over your hips too. “You want a shirt?”
You bite your bottom lip in a poor attempt to smother a grin. “Only if it’s one of your nerdy ones.”
He kisses the smile off your lips and wanders back over to his wardrobe, throws a shirt in your general direction then goes about fixing the sheets.
You admire the sight. It had never occurred to you how nice his arms were, you want them around you again. He pulls the sheets straight, then up over you before he crawls in beside you.
“This okay?” He asks, pulling you over to lay up against him.
“More than okay.” You snuggle closer, cheek pressed against the warm plane of his chest. “Been thinking about this.”
The confession slips out in a rush of endorphins, like you’re so happy to be wrapped up in his arms and sheets, smelling like him, that you just can’t help but let him know.
You can hear the confusion in his voice when he speaks. “Having sex with me?”
No. You almost say, even though you had. It wasn’t where you were trying to go with this though. “Sleeping in your bed. With you.”
The rise and fall of his chest, of a heavy exhale, moves beneath you. “Oh.”
“I think our next date should be trivia.” You declare, a quiet sort of smile on your lips as his fingers trace slow little circles on your back between the waistband of your borrowed boxers and the ridden up hem of the shirt. “So we can get it right this time.”
“Deal.”
[ Masterlist ]
baby's first Goose fic? more proabaly on the way, although next fic published will proabaly be an oc one, with either Ryland Grace or Holland March from the nice guys.
i've been researching pup play cuz i've read too many fanfics with it and im ngl i'm starting to really see the appeal of it, but more so non-sexual play,,,,, the idea of kind being able to like turn my brain off and be taken care of like a lap dog seems so nice,,,,, ૮ ◞ ﻌ ◟ ა
Ryland was getting ready to leave for school. “I'll see you later, baby” he said, adjusting his tie and leaning down to press a kiss to your lips like he did every day.
The moment his lips touched yours, the thick, slick product transferred to his lips. The warm scent of vanilla filled his senses, making him pull back slightly.
“Is this a new lip balm?” he asked, his eyes dropping from your eyes to your mouth. You hummed in response, “Yeah, I bought it recently”
While he was used to kissing you with lip balm on, you had never used a flavoured one before.
“M’kay” he muttered. He dipped back down to kiss you properly, his grip on your face tightening as he tasted the vanilla. His tongue swiped across your bottom lip. Usually, your morning parting kisses were quick because he had to rush out on his bike to reach school on time. Today, however, he lingered. He kept moving his lips against yours, lost in the feel of your mouth as the vanilla mixed with the lingering taste of coffee on his tongue.
For the rest of the day, he couldn't stop kissing you. He kept finding excuses to steal a quick peck, or better yet, pull you into a proper kiss. You were literally just existing, and the man was all over you, constantly leaning in with a quick, “Lemme just...” before pulling you into a smooch. You had to reapply the lip balm dozens of times because half of what you applied ended up on his lips, or directly into his system because he kept licking it off.
A few days later, he kissed you expecting that familiar vanilla flavour he had grown to love. Instead, a sweet, fruity scent hit him just before his lips landed on yours. He made a muffled noise against your mouth before pulling back, his tongue darting out to taste his own lips.
“It’s different” he whispered.
“What?” you asked.
“The flavour” he replied, “It’s not vanilla”
“It’s peach” you informed him.
His gaze dropped to your lips, noticing the sheer, light nude tint.
“‘S nice” he murmured. He leaned in to kiss you again, his tongue brushing the corner of your mouth. A tiny amount of the balm transferred to his tongue before it entered your mouth and he deepened the kiss. When he finally pulled back, you raised your hand to his face, your fingers gently wiping away the excess product smeared below his lips.
“If this keeps up, I'm going to run out of this balm way too soon” you teased.
“You have more than one, so it's fine” he said softly with a small smile.
The next few days went exactly the same way, with Ryland kissing you insistently as if he had absolutely no control over himself.
Then came the day you chose a new flavour - cherry, which left a sheer, slight red tint on your lips. Ryland noticed the difference immediately. The day went on as usual, except Ryland kept cutting you off in the middle of your sentences just to kiss you. Sometimes, his tongue would brush your lips before his actual mouth even touched yours, making you gasp into the kiss.
You were looking at your phone, “Hey, Ry, about dinner, I was thinking-”
He suddenly stepped into your space, and captured your lips in a deep, needy kiss, devouring your mouth like he was trying to taste every drop of it. When he finally pulled back just enough to breathe, he murmured against your lips, “Sorry for interrupting you, babe”
You blinked, breathless, a little flush spreading across your cheeks, “It’s fine, but as I was saying-”
He leaned right back down, cutting you off again. His hands found your waist to pull you against him. Yeah, he’s not sorry in the slightest.
Another day brought another flavour - caramel. It amused him because he wasn't eating any toffee, yet he kept getting the sugary taste of it directly from your mouth. This flavour made him nip at your bottom lip a lot as if he were eating actual toffee.
One morning, you were getting ready for the day and reached out to grab whichever tube your fingers landed on first. Ryland, who was tucking his shirt into his jeans, suddenly stopped you.
“Baby, can you...” he trailed off. His eyes were trained on the peach lip balm in your hand, “Can you use the cherry one today?”
You paused, processing his words, before a slow smile spread across your face, “Oh, do you like the cherry one, Ry?” you teased.
A light blush spread across his cheeks, and he finally forced himself to look into your eyes, "Uh, n-no, nothing like that. It just...” He stumbled over his words, trying to find an excuse, “It just tastes the best out of all of them” he managed to say.
You laughed softly, switching the peach tube for the cherry one, “You know, you could just use it on yourself, right?”
He stepped closer to you the second you finished applying it, wrapping his arms around you, “Won't taste as good as it does from you” he murmured, before leaning down to kiss you.
I’m obsessed with your Ryland grace one shots. If you ever feel like writing it I have an idea that I think about often
Ryland finding out reader has never had an orgasm with a partner. Like maybe she just lets it slip or they play never have I ever or something idk and then he’s like flabbergasted that no one took the time or bothered to make it happen.
And then he wants to try to do it for her and he just like helps her relax, pays attention, talks her through it, and maybe like teaches her how to like let herself let go if that makes sense.
Maybe he’d even like watch her do it herself first to like take note of what she likes.
Anyway thank you for your writing. No pressure to write this I just feel like you’d do it perfectly if you wanted to. You write Ryland so perfectly. You’re talented and I’m obsessed.
❤️❤️❤️ ❤️
Spotter
Ryland Grace/Reader | Explicit, MDNI | ~14k words
Tags: friends to lovers, mutual pining, oblivious ryland grace, anorgasmia, no Astrophage au!, hurt/comfort, slow burn, confessions, second person, reader insert, talking during sex, aftercare, skittles, houseplants, the chair did not get to participate
You mention, offhand, that you’ve never had an orgasm. He’s never let a solvable problem go in his life. He proposes an experiment. Strictly platonic. Variables controlled. You say yes because he’s the only person who’s ever asked you what you want in a voice that doesn’t expect an answer.
[ Cross posted on Ao3 ] [ fic master list ]
The thing about saying it out loud, you realise, is that you can't unsay it.
You can try. You can take another sip of diner coffee and pretend the sentence is still hypothetical. You can let your eyes drift to the laminated dessert menu like there's anything on it you haven't memorised. You can wait for Ryland to do what Ryland does, which is fill a silence with whatever's nearest to hand.
He doesn't.
He's looking at you across the booth with his glasses sitting askew because he pushed them up an hour ago and forgot, and he's doing the thing he does when his brain is loading. You've watched him load before. You've never been the thing he was loading.
"You'd know," he says.
"What."
"If you had. You'd know. It's a, it's not a subtle. It's not the kind of thing where you'd be like, was that it. It's the kind of thing where you'd be like, oh, okay, that. So."
"So."
"So you haven't."
You don't answer. You don't have to. He's already answered for you, with the calm of a man who has just looked at a result and decided, on balance, that the result is the result.
He picks up his fork. He puts it down. He picks it up again.
There is pie on the table between you. He ordered it like a man being held at gunpoint and it has been sitting there for nine minutes untouched, which is fine, because you've both been doing other things with your mouths, conversationally speaking, and now neither of you is doing anything with your mouth at all.
"Okay," he says.
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You said okay."
"That's a sound. Okay is a sound. I'm allowed to make sounds."
"It's a sound you make right before you say a thing."
"Sometimes." He sets the fork down for what you decide will be the final time. "Not always."
"Name one time."
He thinks about this. He thinks about it for longer than the question deserves, which is sort of his whole deal, and you watch him work through what is presumably a mental list of every time he has ever said okay, ranked by how much it preceded a thing, and you can see the exact moment he abandons the search.
"Fine," he says. "I was about to say a thing."
"I know."
"You want me to not say the thing."
"Correct."
"Even though we've now established, scientifically, that I was going to."
"Especially then."
He nods, slowly, like a man being reasonable. He is not about to be reasonable. You have known him long enough to recognise the specific quality of his nodding, and this nod is the nod of a man buying himself approximately four more seconds of runway before takeoff.
"I'm going to say the thing."
"Ryland."
It comes out before you can route around it. His name, in your mouth, sober, at a diner, on a Tuesday. You feel it land. He feels it land. The waitress, two booths down, refilling somebody's decaf, almost certainly feels it land. The whole diner tilts about half a degree on its axis and then rights itself, and you are both still sitting there, and the pie is still uneaten, and he is looking at you the way he looked at you the time you told him your dad was sick, which is to say like he is recalculating the entire evening from scratch.
"Right," he says, quieter. "Okay."
You wait.
He doesn't walk it back.
You've watched him walk things back before. You've watched him walk things back from cliffs of his own engineering. You have, on multiple occasions, handed him the rope yourself, and he has taken the rope, and you have both pretended very hard that the cliff was never there. It is one of the things the two of you do. It is, you might even say, foundational.
He doesn't take the rope.
"I have a thought," he says. "About this. The thing. The thing you said. I have a thought about it and I want to tell you the thought, and I'm asking, as a, as a friend, as your friend, I'm asking you to let me get to the end of the thought before you say anything, because if you stop me in the middle I'm not going to make it back to the start, and then we're both just going to be sitting here, and the pie is going to congeal, and somebody's going to have to pay for it, and it'll probably be me, because you always do this thing where you pretend you're going to pay and then you go to the bathroom right when the check comes."
"That's not."
"It is. It's a pattern. I've logged it."
"You haven't logged it."
"Mentally. I've mentally logged it. There's a spreadsheet, in my head, and you're on it."
You almost laugh. He sees you almost laugh. Something in his shoulders comes down half an inch and you realise, with the kind of clarity that only arrives slightly too late, that he was scared.
He is still scared. He's just less scared than he was eight seconds ago, because you almost laughed, and almost-laughing is, in the long and unwritten constitution of your friendship, a kind of green light.
"Okay," you say. "Tell me the thought."
He picks up the fork. He gestures with it, briefly, in a way that is not about pie.
"Here's the thought."
"Okay."
"The thought is, and I want to be clear that I've, this isn't a, I'm not. Okay. The thought is that this is a solvable problem."
You look at him.
"Not a problem," he says, immediately. "Wrong word. Solvable's the wrong, no, solvable's right, problem's wrong. It's a, it's a thing. It's a thing that has a, there's an answer to it. There's a, somebody could, with the right. Okay. Start again."
"You're doing great."
"I'm doing terribly."
"You're doing the talking-yourself-out-of-the-thing thing. Just say the thing."
He sets the fork down. He folds his hands on the table in front of him like a man who has decided to commit to a posture, and the posture he has committed to is guy at a parent-teacher conference, which is so deeply on-brand for him that you have to look at the dessert menu again.
"I think I could help you," he says.
The dessert menu is suddenly extremely interesting.
"Not. Not like that. I mean. Not, like. With me. I don't mean. I'm not proposing that. I'm proposing the opposite of that."
"The opposite."
"The supervised opposite. The, the. Okay. You've never gotten there because you're in your head. Yes? Generally? When you've tried? Solo, I mean. When you've tried solo."
You consider lying. You consider getting up and walking into the parking lot and starting a new life under a different name. You consider, briefly, the pie.
"Yes," you say.
"Right. Okay. So the variable isn't the, the mechanics. The mechanics are fine. The mechanics, presumably, the mechanics work. The variable is the part where you're in your head."
"And it's. It's been a thing. With. Generally. With other."
"With other people. Yes. I'm aware of the. Yes."
"Right. Right, sorry, of course you're, I wasn't implying you'd. I just meant. It's the same thing, every time, basically? The in-your-head thing?"
"Basically."
"Okay. So it's not a, it's not a them problem, necessarily, it's a, it's a you-with-them problem. Which is. That's a different problem. That's a much more interesting problem."
"Glad you find it interesting."
"I find everything interesting, that's a separate issue."
He's gathering speed now, the way he does when he's stopped being scared of the sentence and started being interested in it. You can see the gear-change happen. It's the same gear-change you've watched him do at parties, in your kitchen, in the passenger seat of your car on long drives, every time something has caught the front of his brain and the rest of him has had to scramble to keep up.
"So the solution isn't a technique thing, it's an environment thing, which means somebody can help with that without, without being a, without it being a."
"Without it being a sex thing."
"Yes. Thank you. Without it being a sex thing." He exhales. "I could sit with you. Not sit with you. I could be in the. Adjacent. I could be adjacent. I could help with the part of it that's the, the relaxing part. The talking part. The, you're safe, you can stop thinking part. And you would do the, the. You. You would do the you part."
You stare at him.
"I'd be a spotter," he says.
"A spotter."
"Like at the gym."
"Like at the gym."
"Yes."
"You're proposing to spot me."
"I am proposing," he says, with the dignity of a man who has heard his own sentence and decided to stand behind it anyway, "to spot you."
There is a silence. It is not a short silence. In the silence, the waitress refills both your coffees without making eye contact with either of you, which suggests she has been refilling coffees in this diner for long enough to know when not to.
"As your friend," he adds.
"As my friend."
"Yeah."
"In a totally."
"Totally."
"Platonic."
"Platonic."
"Capacity."
"That's the, yes. That is the capacity. The platonic capacity. I would be in a platonic capacity. Capacitating, platonically."
"That's not a word."
"It is now. I've logged it."
You drink your coffee. It is no longer too hot, which means time has been passing, which means you have actually been sitting here, in this booth, having this conversation, with this man, who you have known for years, who has just offered, in apparent good faith, to platonically supervise you having an orgasm.
The thing you should say is no.
The thing you should say is Ryland, what the fuck.
The thing you should say is any of the seventeen things lining up in your throat, all of which are reasonable, several of which are funny, two of which would let you both walk away from this booth with the friendship intact and the pie still uneaten.
"Okay," you say.
He blinks.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
"Okay as in."
"Okay as in I'll think about it."
"Right. Right. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Think about it. Take your. There's no, there's no timeline. There's no, I'm not. Take your time."
"Ryland."
"Yeah."
"Eat your pie."
He eats his pie.
It is Saturday. It is four in the afternoon. It is, by every reasonable metric, the least sexy time of day that has ever been invented, which is part of why you picked it.
You spent Wednesday thinking about it. You spent Thursday pretending you hadn't spent Wednesday thinking about it. On Friday morning you texted him saturday? and he texted back saturday eleven seconds later, which suggested he had been waiting, which you then had to spend Friday afternoon not thinking about either.
He is in your kitchen. He is in your kitchen because you let him in eight minutes ago and neither of you has yet been able to figure out how to leave the kitchen, which is the room in your apartment that has the most furniture between you and any other room, and therefore the safest.
"So," he says.
"So."
"This is your kitchen."
"It is."
"It's nice. I like the, the. There's a thing on the wall."
"It's a calendar."
"Right. Yeah. That tracks."
He has brought, for reasons he has not yet explained, a paper bag from the bodega on the corner. He sets it on the counter. He does not open it. The bag sits there, between you, doing the same job the pie did at the diner, which is being the thing both of you can look at instead of each other.
"What's in the bag," you say.
"Skittles."
You look at him.
"It's a bag of Skittles," he says.
"You brought me Skittles."
"I brought, yes, I brought Skittles. I went into the bodega and I, I needed to bring a thing, you bring a thing, when you go to a, when you go to a." He stops. "I don't know what the etiquette is. There isn't an etiquette. I made up an etiquette and the etiquette said bring a thing and I went in and I just."
"Skittles."
"Skittles." He reaches into the bag. He produces them. He looks at them like he's never seen them before, which is a face he makes a lot, around objects he himself has purchased. "For after. I think. I think they were for after."
"After-Skittles."
"Apparently."
You look at him.
"I'm aware," he says.
You take the Skittles. You put them on the counter. You leave them there because if you put them in a cupboard you have to walk past him to do it and walking past him is currently a thing that requires more planning than it should.
"Okay," he says.
You both stand in the kitchen.
"Okay," you say.
"So the. So I was thinking, on the way over, about the. About how to. Because there's a, I think there's a setup question, right, like, where do we, where does this. Where am I."
"Where are you."
"Spatially. Where am I, spatially. In the. During."
You hadn't, until this exact moment, thought about where he would be spatially. You had been thinking about it in the abstract, in the way you think about a thing by not thinking about it, and the abstract version had him as a sort of disembodied voice somewhere in the middle distance, not a six-foot man with a bag of Skittles currently standing four feet from you in your kitchen.
"Bedroom," you say. Because the bedroom is the room with the door and the door is the thing you are increasingly aware you are going to need.
"Bedroom. Right. Yeah. And then in the bedroom I'm."
"You're."
"On a chair? Is there a chair? I could be on a chair."
"There's a chair."
"Great. Chair. Chair is good. Chair is a, chair is a piece of furniture that says I am here in an observational capacity, which is, that's the. Yeah. Chair."
You lead him to the bedroom. You do not look at him while you do it. He follows you at a distance of approximately one and a half normal-person follow-distances, which is the distance a person follows you when they are trying very hard to seem like they are not following you.
The chair is the chair in the corner where you put clothes you have not yet decided whether to put away or wear again. You moved the clothes this morning. You moved them twice. The chair, freed of its clothes, looks naked in a way the chair has never looked before.
He sits on the chair. He sits on the chair like it is the witness stand. He folds his hands in his lap. He looks at you.
You look at him.
The bed is behind you. You are extremely aware of the bed being behind you. The bed is doing a thing where it is simultaneously much larger and much smaller than it has ever been. The duvet, which you washed yesterday, which is the same duvet you have had for four years, is suddenly the most aggressive piece of textile in the apartment.
"Do you want me to," he says.
"What."
"I don't know. I was going to finish the sentence."
"Finish it."
"I lost it. I had a sentence and I lost it. It was going to be helpful."
You almost laugh. You don't, because if you start laughing you are going to keep laughing, and if you keep laughing you are not going to do the thing you came here to do, except came here is wrong, this is your apartment, you live here, you have lived here for three years and now you cannot remember how any of the rooms work.
"Okay," you say. "I'm going to."
"Yeah."
"And you're going to."
"Sit. I'm going to sit. I'm sitting. I am, currently, sitting."
"Right."
You sit on the edge of the bed. The bed makes a noise it has never made before in its life. You look at the bed, betrayed. You look at him. He is looking very intently at a spot on the wall about three feet above your head, with the specific concentration of a man who has decided that this spot, of all the spots, is the safest spot.
"This isn't going to work," you say.
"No," he agrees, immediately. "No, it's not."
"I can't. I'm not even. I haven't done anything yet and I already can't."
"Yeah."
"You're on a chair."
"I'm on a chair."
"In my bedroom."
"In your bedroom."
"You brought Skittles."
"The Skittles, I will admit, in hindsight, the Skittles were."
"What were you thinking with the Skittles."
"I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking. I was thinking what does a person need, and I got as far as sugar and then I just sort of."
You start laughing. You can't help it. You laugh with your face in your hands, which is also not a thing you usually do, and you can hear him start to laugh too, and his laugh has always been one of your favourite of the things he does, and the bedroom, which forty seconds ago was the most charged room in the building, becomes, slowly, just a room again. Just a room with you in it and him in it and a bag of Skittles two rooms away on the kitchen counter.
He waits until you've stopped.
He waits a few seconds after that.
Then he says, quietly, in a voice you have not heard from him before, "Tell me what would actually help."
You stop laughing.
You look at him. He is still on the chair. His hands are still folded. His glasses are still askew. He is the same person he was four minutes ago in your kitchen and he is also, somehow, not, because the question he just asked is not a question a facilitator asks. A facilitator does not ask what would help. A facilitator already has the protocol.
He has put the protocol down.
He is asking you.
You sit with the question. You sit with it for longer than is probably comfortable for either of you, because the honest answer is I don't know and you have spent most of your adult life refusing to say I don't know out loud about this in particular.
He waits.
This, you realise, is the new thing. Not the chair. Not the bedroom. Not the bag of Skittles two rooms away. The new thing is that he is waiting. Ryland Grace, who fills silences for a living, who would rather narrate his own hands than let a quiet go unmolested, is sitting on a chair in your bedroom letting the silence sit.
"I don't know," you say.
"Okay."
"That's the. That's basically the whole problem. I don't know what would help because I don't, I haven't ever. I don't have a, a baseline. To work from."
"Right."
"So I don't know what to tell you. To do. Or not do. Because I don't know."
"Yeah."
"And that's the. That's why I said yes, at the diner, I think. Because you said environment and I thought, oh, maybe somebody else could figure out what the environment is, because I clearly can't."
You stop. You hear what you've said. You hear, specifically, the part where you outsourced the figuring-out of yourself to him, and you wait for the embarrassment to land.
"Yeah. Yeah, because I was about to ask you a whole list of things. I had a list. In my head. I was going to ask you the list. And the list was wrong, because the list assumed you had answers, and the answers are what you don't have. So."
"So?"
"So we don't do the list."
"What do we do."
He thinks about this. He thinks about it with his elbows on his knees and his hands loose between them, which is a thinking-posture you have seen him in a thousand times, in a thousand other rooms, about a thousand other problems. The familiarity of it does something to your chest you decide not to examine.
"I think," he says, slowly, "we just talk."
"Talk."
"Yeah."
"About."
"About anything. About nothing. About the. The thing you were going to do today before I showed up. About a movie. I don't know. I think the, the issue is that you're sitting there waiting for it to be a thing, and as long as it's a thing you're going to be in your head about it. So we make it not a thing. We just. We're just in a room. We've been in rooms before."
"Not like this."
"Not exactly like this."
"You're on a chair."
"I know I'm on a chair."
"You're on a chair for a reason."
"I am aware of the reason for the chair, yes."
"You can't just talk to me like the chair isn't a thing."
"Why not."
You open your mouth. You close it. Because you don't actually have a good answer to why not. The reason the chair is a thing is that you both agreed it was a thing. He's now proposing, with his elbows on his knees, that you both un-agree.
"Okay," you say.
"Yeah?"
"Talk to me, then."
He talks to you.
He talks to you about a documentary he watched last week about deep-sea anglerfish, and the absolutely unhinged reproductive arrangement they have, which involves the male biting the female and slowly fusing into her body over time until he is essentially a permanent attached sperm-producing organ, which Ryland thinks is wild, because, and this is his exact phrase, think about the first guy who tried that. He talks to you about how he keeps meaning to repot the plant on his kitchen windowsill and how the plant keeps almost dying and then rallying, which he has started to take personally, like the plant is doing it on purpose to make him feel bad. He talks to you about the undergrad his advisor has dumped on him for the semester, who has started labelling all of her sample tubes with the same brand of glitter pen in increasingly elaborate colour-coded schemes that nobody else in the lab can decode, and Ryland cannot decide whether to address it or just let it run its course and see what the system ends up being.
He talks to you the way he talks to you on long drives. He talks to you the way he talks to you in your kitchen when you're cooking and he's allegedly helping. He talks to you the way he has been talking to you for years, and you slowly become aware that you are, despite yourself, listening.
You are also, you realise, no longer sitting on the edge of the bed.
You don't remember the moment you moved. You are leaned back against the pillows now, knees up, one hand under your jaw. He is still in the chair. He has not moved. He has been very careful not to move. The not-moving is, you suspect, deliberate, but you can't tell whether he knows it's deliberate or whether he's doing it on instinct.
"And then," he is saying, "I realised the plant was on the side of the window that doesn't get morning sun, so I moved it about eighteen inches, and now the plant is, the plant is thriving, the plant is having the best week of its life, and I am taking this entirely too personally as a, as a sort of personal."
He stops.
He has noticed you're listening. He has noticed, specifically, the way you are listening. He looks at you for a second too long. He looks away.
"You should try it," he says.
You blink.
"What."
"Touching yourself."
You stare at him.
"Now," he says. "I mean now. Not. Not while I, I'll, the chair, I'll. I can. I'll be here, but I'll be. I'll talk. I'll keep talking. About the plant. I have more about the plant. I have a, a substantial amount of additional plant content. And you just. You do the thing. You don't think about me. You don't think about it. You think about, whatever, anglerfish. And I'll just be the." He gestures, vaguely, at himself. "The voice. In the room."
"The voice in the room."
"Yes."
"That's your pitch."
"That's the pitch. The revised pitch. The pitch is, I'm going to bore you into it."
Something in your chest loosens. You don't, this time, because the loosening would break the thing that has just happened in the room, which is that the temperature has come down about six degrees and your shoulders have come down with it and you are, against everything you would have predicted forty minutes ago, considering it.
"Okay," you say.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
You reach for the hem of your shirt.
He looks, very deliberately, at the spot on the wall three feet above your head.
He starts talking about the plant.
He talks about the plant.
He talks about the plant with a level of commitment that makes you understand, in a way you have not previously understood, that he has been thinking about this plant a lot. He has theories about the plant. He has theories about the theories about the plant. He is, you realise, talking about the plant the way a man talks when he is deliberately not talking about something else, and the something else is you, sitting on your bed with your hand under your t-shirt, and he is doing this for you, and the doing-this-for-you is the part you are not supposed to be noticing, because the whole point is that you are supposed to be thinking about anglerfish.
You are not thinking about anglerfish.
You are thinking about the specific care of him not looking. You are thinking about the way his voice has gone slightly quieter, which is not a voice he uses on purpose, it's a voice that happens to him when he's concentrating on a thing he doesn't want to break. You are thinking about how, in the entire time you have known him, you have never once heard him talk this long about a houseplant without circling back to a joke, and the absence of the joke is the most attentive thing he has ever done.
Your hand has stopped moving.
He notices. He doesn't look at you, but he notices. The plant content stutters, briefly, and then resumes at a slightly different angle, lower-pressure, easier, like he's giving you a wider lane.
"You okay?" he says, into the plant story. Doesn't break the flow. Just slips it in.
"Yeah."
"You sure."
"I'm. I'm in my head."
"Okay."
"It's not. It's not the room. The room is fine. The room is. The room is fine."
"Okay."
"It's me. I'm the problem."
"You're not the problem."
"I am, though."
"You're not. You're not a problem. You're a, you're a person trying a thing. That's not a problem. That's just a person trying a thing."
You close your eyes.
You close your eyes because if you keep looking at him on that chair with his glasses askew and his hands loose between his knees, speaking very quietly about how you are a person trying a thing, you are going to start crying, and crying is not what you came here to do, and crying would be, by any reasonable measure, worse than the original problem.
"Tell me something else," you say.
"About the plant?"
"No. Not the plant. Anything that isn't the plant."
He thinks for a second.
"Okay," he says. "Okay. There's this. There's a thing I've been thinking about. About, about how your body knows things before you do. Like, physiologically. There's a, there's a fraction of a second, before you consciously feel something, where your body has already, it's already done the thing. Your heart rate's up. Your pupils are dilating. You're already responding. The conscious feeling comes second. It's catching up. It's, like, narration. The body's already in the scene and the narrator's running to keep up."
You keep your eyes closed.
"And I think about that a lot," he says, "because it means the part of you that's, the part that's thinking, the part that's worrying, that's the slow part. That's the part that arrives late. The faster part already knows what it wants. It just doesn't have words for it. So sometimes, I think, the trick is to just. Let the body have a head start. Let it. Let it get ahead of the narrator."
His voice is the quietest it has been all afternoon.
"You don't have to think about it," he says. "Your body already knows. You're just. You're letting it run."
Your hand moves.
You don't decide to move your hand. Your hand decides. Your hand has, you realise with the part of you that is still narrating, been given permission, and your hand has taken the permission. It slides down past the waistband of your jeans, which you did not unbutton, which it turns out you do not need to unbutton, and the part of you that has spent your entire adult life trying to figure out what your body wants is, for the first time, briefly, quiet.
Your fingers find the place they always find. The pressure they always find. The small careful circle they have made a thousand times alone in this bed, in this room, against this ceiling, and never once with another person in the apartment, let alone in the chair.
He keeps talking.
You don't track what he's saying. You track the cadence of it. The shape. The fact of him still being there, still in the chair, still not looking, still giving you the room. He talks about something. He talks about something else. The words slide off you and what's left is the voice, low and steady, a thing in the room with you, and you let yourself listen to it the way you let yourself listen to rain.
You are getting wet.
You notice it the way you notice everything tonight, which is late. Your fingers have been making the same slow circle and somewhere in the last few minutes the friction changed. The drag of your fingertips softened. Your body has been listening to his voice in a way your brain was not keeping track of, and your body has responded, and the response is not ambiguous. The circle gets easier. Slicker. You press slightly harder to compensate and the pressure sends something up through you that you were not expecting, a small bright flare behind your navel, and your breath catches, and you hear him pause for a fraction of a second before continuing, and you understand that he heard it too.
Something is happening.
Something is happening that has not happened before, or has not happened in this shape before, or has happened in this shape before only in fragments you couldn't trust. Your body is moving toward a thing. The thing has an edge to it. You can feel the edge. You have never felt the edge from this side, or this close, or with this much awareness that the edge is what it is, and the closer you get the more you understand that the closeness is its own problem, because the moment you notice you are close, the noticing becomes a thing you are doing, and the thing you are doing is no longer the thing your body was doing, and the narrator is in the room again.
You try to push past it. You try to do what he said. You try to let the body run.
The body slows.
You can feel it happen. You can feel the precise moment your fingers become fingers that are trying. The circle gets slightly faster, slightly harder, the way it does when you are alone and impatient with yourself, except now the impatience has nothing to do with being alone. You can feel the precise moment your breath becomes a breath you are controlling. You can feel the thing you were moving toward stay exactly where it is, neither closer nor farther, and you are no longer moving toward it, you are negotiating with it, and the negotiation is the thing you have been doing your entire adult life, and you have never won the negotiation.
You stop.
Your hand stops. You leave it where it is for a second, pressed flat, willing the feeling back, and it does not come back. Your eyes are still closed. Your jaw, you discover, is clenched, which is the opposite of what was supposed to happen.
He notices the shift in your breathing. He stops talking.
The room is very quiet.
"It's gone," you say.
"Okay."
"It was. I was. I was almost. I think I was almost."
"Yeah."
"And then I noticed I was almost and it. It left."
"Yeah."
You open your eyes. You don't look at him. You look at the ceiling. The ceiling has a small crack in it shaped like the state of Florida. You have looked at this crack while trying to fall asleep more times than you can count and you have never once successfully fallen asleep faster for having noticed it.
"That's not. That wasn't nothing," you say. "I was close. I've never been that close."
"Yeah?"
"I think so. I don't. I don't have a baseline. But I think so."
"Okay."
"It's just." You stop. You try to find the word for the feeling, which is not just frustration, although it is also frustration. It is the feeling of having stood at the edge of something and watched yourself flinch back from it, and knowing the flinch was the part you have always done, and being briefly furious at the part of yourself that flinches. "It's just frustrating."
"I know."
"You don't, actually."
He huffs out a small laugh. Not at you. With you, or at himself, or at the situation.
"Fair," he says.
You slide your hand out of your jeans. You let your arm fall to the side. You stare at the Florida crack. You are aware, distantly, that you are not crying, which is a small victory, because for a second there it could have gone either way.
"Tell me what you noticed," he says. Quiet. "About what worked. Before it didn't."
You think about it.
You think about it for longer than the question deserves, because the answer is sitting right there, and you have not yet decided whether you are going to give it to him.
The answer is your voice.
The answer is that you were here.
The answer is that the thing that worked, that got you closer than you have ever been, was the specific fact of him being in the room with you, and the specific fact of him not looking, and the specific fact that he was talking, and the way the talking made you feel like you were being held without being touched. The answer is that the variable he controlled for was himself, and the variable he controlled for is the variable that worked, and you can feel, with the part of you that has been pretending very hard for years now, that telling him this would be telling him a different thing entirely.
"I don't know," you say.
He waits.
"I don't know," you say again, and you mean it slightly differently the second time, and you are fairly sure he hears the difference.
"Okay," he says.
He doesn't push.
He sits in the chair and he waits, with his hands loose between his knees again, and you stare at the Florida crack, and the room is full of a thing neither of you is saying.
You eat the Skittles.
This is not what you expected to be doing. You expected to be doing one of several things, most of which involved more clothing being removed and fewer sweets being consumed, but here you are, sitting cross-legged on your own bed with your jeans still buttoned, splitting a bag of Skittles with a man in a chair, and neither of you is talking about the thing that just happened.
He is sorting them by colour. He is doing this automatically, the way he does everything, which is without noticing he's doing it. He has a small pile of reds, a small pile of oranges, a slightly larger pile of yellows, and he is eating the greens first because, he told you once, two years ago, on a drive back from somewhere you can't remember, the greens are the worst and he likes to get them out of the way.
You remember this. You remember this the way you remember everything about him, which is involuntarily and in too much detail.
"You're staring at me," he says.
"I'm not."
"You are. You're staring at me and I'm trying to eat the greens."
"I'm looking in your direction. There's a difference."
"There isn't."
He eats a green. He eats it with an air of finality, like a man who has completed a task.
"So," he says.
"So."
"That was."
"Yeah."
"You were close, though."
"I was close."
"That's. That's something. That's data."
"It's data."
"We could. I mean, if you wanted. We could try again. Another time. Adjust the, the variables. I think the chair was maybe too far away. Not that I, I'm not suggesting I should be closer, I'm just. Spatially. The geometry of the room might have been."
"Hey."
"Yeah."
"It's okay."
He looks at you. He looks at you the way he's been looking at you all afternoon, which is carefully, but the carefulness now has something else in it, something tired, and you recognise it because you are tired in exactly the same way.
"Yeah," he says. "Okay."
He stays for another twenty minutes. He stays because leaving immediately would make it a thing, and if there is one skill the two of you have refined over the years it is the skill of making sure things are not things. You talk about a podcast he's been telling you to listen to. You talk about whether the diner has ever actually changed its menu or if the laminated dessert card is a permanent installation. He does a bit about the pie, about how the pie has been on that menu since before either of you were born and will outlive you both, and you laugh, and the laughing is real, and underneath the laughing is the thing neither of you is saying, and underneath the thing is the afternoon, and underneath the afternoon is everything else.
He leaves at six. He puts his shoes on in your hallway and he says "see you" and you say "see you" and he does the thing he always does, which is pat the doorframe on the way out, twice, like the doorframe is something he needs to acknowledge on his way through it. You have never asked him about the doorframe thing. You have noticed it every single time.
You close the door.
You stand in your hallway for a minute.
You go back to the bedroom. The chair is still in the corner, angled slightly toward the bed. The Skittles bag is empty on the duvet. You pick it up. You throw it away. You put the clothes back on the chair and the chair becomes, once again, just a chair.
You sit on the bed.
You sit on the bed and you think about the sound his voice made when it went quiet.
Three weeks go by.
Three weeks go by and nothing changes except that everything changes. You see him. You see him the way you always see him, at the places you always see him, doing the things you always do. He texts you about the plant. He sends you a link to an article about anglerfish mating habits with no caption, which is the kind of thing he has always done, and which you have always read as friendship, and which you now read as something you cannot stop reading as something.
You do not talk about the Saturday.
He does not bring it up. You do not bring it up. It sits between you like the broken spring in the diner booth, a thing you both know is there and have agreed, silently, to navigate around. Except the broken spring was always just a spring, and this is not just a spring.
You try, alone, one night. You try the circle. You try the pressure. You try closing your eyes and letting the body run and the narrator catch up. You try everything he said. You try the breathing. You try not thinking.
It is different now.
It is different because the silence in your apartment is the wrong silence. The silence in your apartment has a shape, and the shape is the absence of his voice, and you cannot not-notice the absence. You got closer with him in the room than you have ever gotten alone, and the reason was not the technique and the reason was not the breathing and the reason was not the letting-go. The reason was the specific fact of him, in the chair, not looking, talking about a plant, and his voice going quiet without him noticing it had gone quiet, and the way that quietness felt like a hand on the back of your neck that wasn't there.
You stop trying.
You lie in the dark and you stare at the Florida crack and you think about the fact that your body has apparently decided, without consulting you, that the thing it needs in order to let go is a specific man on a specific chair saying specific things in a specific voice, and your body has furthermore decided this without any regard for the fact that this man is your best friend, and that telling him this would be telling him something else entirely, and that the something else is a door you are not sure either of you can walk back through.
A few days later he calls you because he locked himself out of his apartment and needs to kill an hour while the super finds the spare key, and you sit with him on the steps outside his building sharing a bag of chips, and he is telling you about a simulation that keeps crashing and the very specific way it crashes, which involves a number going to infinity in a way that should not be possible, and you are not listening, because his knee is touching your knee, and the place where his knee is touching your knee is the loudest thing in the city.
He doesn't notice. Or he does notice and he is doing the thing you both do, which is not noticing.
The following week you go to a bar with a group. He is there. He is always there. He is across the table talking to someone else and you watch his hands and you watch his mouth and you watch the way he pushes his glasses up with his ring finger, specifically the ring finger, which is a detail you have been carrying for longer than you are willing to calculate, and a girl next to you says something and you say "sorry, what?" and she says it again and you hear it the second time but you do not remember it afterward because his laugh has just cut across the table and landed in your chest like a thing with weight.
You go home alone. You lie in your bed. You do not try. You do not try because trying means thinking about why it doesn't work and thinking about why it doesn't work means thinking about him and thinking about him means thinking about the Saturday and thinking about the Saturday means thinking about the sound his voice made when it dropped, when it went from the voice he uses to fill a room to the voice he used to fill just the space between the chair and the bed, and that voice is now a thing that lives in your body, and your body does not care that it is inconvenient.
Another week. He sits next to you at the diner. The same booth. The same broken spring. He has pie again. He eats it this time, which feels like a statement, although you could not tell you what the statement is. You watch him eat the pie and you think about the way he said you'd know weeks ago, sitting in this exact booth, with this exact fork, and how he was right, you would know, you do know, you know everything now except the one thing, and the one thing is what his hands feel like.
You are becoming an expert in the specific weight of him. The weight of his arm when it brushes yours reaching for the check. The weight of his laugh landing on you from across a room. The weight of the silence when he looks at you one beat too long and then looks away, and the looking-away is the thing, the looking-away is the tell, because he does it the same way every time, a small sharp cut of the eyes to the left, and you have been cataloguing this cut for weeks now and you know what it means. It means he was looking at you the way you look at him and he caught himself and he stopped.
You want to tell him to stop stopping.
You don't.
You go home. You lie in the dark. You don't try. You think about the voice. You think about the voice and the chair and the quiet and the way the room felt when he was in it, and the word that keeps arriving, the word you keep circling, is safe.
You felt safe.
You have had sex with people. You have been naked with people. You have been touched and held and pressed against and none of it, not once, made you feel the thing you felt sitting fully clothed on your own bed with your best friend in a chair talking about a houseplant. You felt safe. Not safe as in nothing bad will happen. Safe as in you can stop performing. Safe as in nobody in this room needs you to be anything. Safe as in his voice was a room inside the room and the room inside the room had no expectations and your body, for the first time, did not have to negotiate its way past the fact of being watched.
He wasn't watching. That was the thing. He was there and he wasn't watching and the combination of those two facts, present and not-looking, was the thing your body had apparently been waiting for your entire adult life, and your body had not thought to mention this to you until a man on a chair started talking about a plant.
You think about the fact that permission is the word. That the thing you cannot give yourself is permission. That he gave it to you without knowing he was giving it, because the permission was not a technique, it was not a word, it was the specific fact of being safe with him, fully, in a room, with nowhere to hide, and being safe was the thing that let your body stop negotiating.
You think about this for days.
And then he is in your kitchen. Because he is often in your kitchen, because your kitchen is one of the places he exists. He is eating crackers out of a box he found in your cupboard. He is telling you about a paper his advisor rejected and the specific, surgical way the rejection was phrased, and he is doing a dramatic reading of the margin notes, and he is funny, he is so funny, and you are laughing, and your body is doing the thing where it catalogues him without your permission.
His voice.
The way he leans against your counter. The way he uses his hands when he talks. The way his whole body is oriented toward you, slightly, like a compass needle that has found its direction and does not know it has found it.
You have been looking at this for years.
"You okay?" he says.
"Yeah. Fine."
"You're doing the thing."
"What thing."
"The thing where you go somewhere and don't tell me where."
You look at him. He is leaning against your counter, in your kitchen, with cracker crumbs on his t-shirt, and his glasses are slightly askew, and he is looking at you with the same expression he wore in the chair, which is the expression of a man who is paying attention to you with a kind of focus that has nothing recreational about it.
"I tried again," you say. "Alone. After the Saturday."
The crackers stop.
"Okay," he says.
"It didn't work."
"Okay."
He says it the way he said it at the diner. The way he said it on the Saturday. The way he always says it, which is like a man setting a plate down gently so it doesn't break.
You should stop here. You have given him the update. The experiment failed to replicate. That is a clean, scientific sentence and you could leave it there and he would let you leave it there and you would both go back to the thing you do, which is not saying the thing.
You are so tired of not saying the thing.
"On the Saturday I was close," you say. "I was closer than I've ever been. And then alone, after, I couldn't even. I couldn't get anywhere near it."
"Okay."
"And I've been thinking about why. About what was different."
He waits.
You look at him. He is leaning against the counter with cracker crumbs on his shirt and he is waiting for you to finish the sentence and you can see, in the very specific way he is not moving, that he already knows what you're going to say. He knows the way he knew at the diner. He has run the numbers and the numbers have told him something and he is standing very still because the numbers are telling him a thing he does not trust himself to hear without standing very still.
"It didn't work because you weren't there."
The kitchen is very quiet. The kitchen has never been this quiet. The kitchen is the room in your apartment that has always been the safest and it is no longer safe.
He puts the box of crackers down. He puts them down carefully, the way he put the Skittles down, the way he put the fork down at the diner, the way he puts things down when his hands need to be empty for what's coming next.
"Say that again," he says.
"You heard me."
"I did. I want to hear it again."
"It didn't work because you weren't there. Your voice. It was your voice the whole time. You asked me what worked and I said I didn't know and I was lying. I knew. I knew it was you."
He is very still. He is the stillest you have ever seen him, which is not a thing you thought Ryland Grace was capable of, because he is a man who moves, who fidgets, who narrates, who fills, and right now he is doing none of those things. He is just standing in your kitchen looking at you like the whole room has rearranged itself and he hasn't caught up yet.
"I need to tell you something," he says.
"Okay."
"I need to tell you something and I'm going to be bad at it."
"Okay."
"I am in love with you." He says it to the cracker box. He says it the way he said "solvable problem" at the diner, like a man who has arrived at a conclusion and is slightly surprised by it even though the data has been pointing there for years. "I have been. For a while. I don't. I don't know when it started. I think it might have always been. I think the diner might have been the first time I let myself. And then the Saturday. The Saturday was."
"The Saturday was what."
"The Saturday was the worst idea I've ever had. And I've had a lot of bad ideas. I've had, I've had professionally bad ideas. I once almost set a lab on fire because I wanted to see what happened. And the Saturday was worse than that, because I sat in your chair and I pretended I was there for, for science, for the experiment, for the variables, and I was there because I wanted to be in the room with you. That's it. That's the whole. That's what it was."
"I think I knew," you say. "I think I've been trying not to know."
He looks at you.
"For how long," he says.
"A while. A long while. I just didn't want to be right, because being right meant the chair wasn't a chair and the experiment wasn't an experiment and we weren't."
"We weren't what."
"We weren't just friends. And I wanted us to be just friends. I wanted that so badly, Ryland. Because the version of you that shows up in my kitchen with crackers and talks to me about his plant and pats my doorframe on the way out. I didn't want to lose that. I would rather have that version and not have this than not have you."
"You would rather not have this."
"I didn't say that."
"You said."
"I said I didn't want to lose you. That's different."
He looks at you. He looks at you for a long time.
"I'm scared too," he says. "I've been scared for, for a while. I've been scared since the diner. I've been scared since before the diner, probably, I've just been, I've been filing it wrong. I filed it as, as friendship. As, that's just how this is. That's just how you feel about your best friend. You show up in their kitchen and you eat their crackers and you send them articles about anglerfish at two in the morning and you pat their doorframe on the way out, and that's. That's friendship. That's."
"That's not friendship."
"No," he says. "It isn't."
The kitchen is still very quiet.
You should be happy. You are, you think, happy. He is standing in your kitchen and he has said the thing and you have said the thing and the things are the same thing and this is, by any reasonable definition, the moment. This is the part where the door opens.
But there is something behind the door, and it has been there the whole time, and you have been trying very hard not to look at it, and now the door is open and you cannot not-look anymore.
"I need to tell you something," you say, and your voice comes out wrong. It comes out small and tight and nothing like the voice you have been using for the rest of this conversation, and you can see him hear the change, and you can see the half-second where he braces.
"Okay."
You look at the floor. You look at the floor because looking at him while you say this is not something you are able to do.
"I'm scared that if we do this. If this becomes a, a thing." You stop. You start again. "Every person I've ever been with has eventually. There's a moment where they realise I can't. Where it stops being a thing we're working on and starts being a thing that's wrong with me. And they don't always say it. But I can feel it. I can feel the moment they start thinking about it differently. And I don't want. I can't."
Your throat closes.
"I can't watch you think about me like that," you say. "I would rather not have this than watch you get tired of me not being able to get there."
He looks at you.
"Hey," he says. Quiet. "Listen to me."
"I'm listening."
"If you never get there. If this is the thing that doesn't happen. If we spend the rest of, if we're together and it never. That's okay."
"It's not."
"It is. It is okay. It is genuinely, completely okay. I didn't fall in love with you because I thought you'd, because of what you can or can't. I fell in love with you because you let me sit in a chair in your bedroom and talk about a plant. Because you remember which Skittles I eat first. Because you go somewhere in your head sometimes and I can see you go and I just want to be there when you come back. That's it. That's the whole thing. The other part is. The other part would be nice. But it's not the thing."
"Ryland."
"It's not the thing."
You are standing in your kitchen, three feet apart, and he has cracker crumbs on his shirt, and his glasses are askew, and he has just told you that he is in love with you and that whether or not you ever have an orgasm is not the point, and you believe him, because he is the worst liar you have ever met, and because his hands are shaking.
"Come here," you say.
He comes.
He comes the way he does everything, which is slightly too fast and with not quite enough plan for what happens when he gets there. He crosses the three feet of kitchen and he is in front of you and his hands are at his sides and he is looking at you and neither of you has thought past this part.
"Hi," he says.
You almost laugh.
"Hi."
"I don't. I don't know what to do with my hands."
"You could put them on me."
"Right. Right, yeah. That's. Yeah."
He puts his hands on you. He puts them on your waist, carefully, like he is handling something he is not sure he is allowed to handle, and his hands are still shaking, and the shaking is the most honest thing in the room.
You kiss him.
You kiss him because if you wait for him to do it you will both be standing in this kitchen until the heat death of the universe. You kiss him and his mouth is warm and he tastes, faintly, of crackers, and there is a moment, a very small moment, where you can feel him not know what to do with the kiss, where his mouth is just receiving yours without participating, and then the moment ends and he is kissing you back and his hands are no longer shaking because his hands have found something to do, which is pull you closer, which they do with a certainty that the rest of him has not caught up to yet.
You pull back.
"Bedroom," you say.
"Bedroom. Yeah. Okay."
You take his hand. You lead him down the hallway the same way you led him down the hallway on the Saturday, except on the Saturday you did not look at him and he followed you at one and a half normal-person follow-distances, and tonight you are looking at him and he is right behind you and his hand is in your hand and neither of you is pretending about anything.
The chair is in the corner. The clothes are on the chair. He looks at the chair.
"I'm not sitting in the chair," he says.
"You're not sitting in the chair."
"Good. I just wanted to. Officially. For the record."
You sit on the edge of the bed. The bed makes the same noise it made last time. You do not look at the bed, betrayed, this time, because this time you are looking at him, standing in the doorway of your bedroom, backlit by the hallway light, with cracker crumbs still on his shirt and his glasses slightly askew, and you think, very clearly, I am going to remember exactly what he looks like right now for the rest of my life.
"Come here," you say, again.
He comes. He sits on the bed next to you. The bed makes another noise. He looks at the bed.
"Your bed is very opinionated," he says.
"It has thoughts."
"It has thoughts. Okay."
He is next to you. He is next to you on a bed he was not on the last time he was in this room, and you can feel the difference the way you can feel a room where someone has moved the furniture. Everything is almost the same and nothing is the same.
He kisses you. He kisses you this time, and it is different from the kitchen, because in the kitchen he was catching up and now he is here, and his hands are on your face, and his thumbs are on your jaw, and he is kissing you the way he talks about things he loves, which is thoroughly and with his whole attention and with small, unnecessary detours that somehow end up being the point.
His shirt comes off first because it has cracker crumbs on it and you both agree, in a wordless negotiation that takes about four seconds, that the cracker crumbs have to go. Your shirt comes off second and he looks at you and you watch him look at you and the looking is nothing like the not-looking from the Saturday. The not-looking was protection. The looking is something else.
"You're staring," you say.
"I'm looking in your direction. There's a difference."
"You said there wasn't."
"I've revised my position."
You pull him down. He goes. He is, it turns out, slightly worse at navigating the geometry of a bed than you would have expected from a man who thinks in spatial variables, and there is a brief, deeply human negotiation of elbows and knees and where things go, and you are laughing, and he is laughing, and the laughing is not the kind of laughing that deflects. It is the kind of laughing that says we are here and we are both bad at this and that is fine.
His mouth is on your neck. His mouth is on your collarbone. His mouth is on the place between your ribs where your breathing lives, and you can feel him paying attention, the same way he was paying attention from the chair, except now the attention has hands and the hands are on your skin and the difference is so large that your brain briefly whites out trying to calculate it.
"Tell me," he says, against your stomach. "Tell me what you want."
"You."
"More specific."
"Your hands. I want your hands."
He gives you his hands.
He gives you his hands and they are not shaking anymore.
He puts them on your stomach first. Just that. Just his palms flat on your stomach, warm, still, like he is introducing himself to your skin. He stays there long enough that you feel your breathing change under his hands, and you know he feels it too, because his thumbs move, just slightly, tracing the lowest edge of your ribs, and the trace is so slow and so deliberate that you understand he is paying attention to your body the way he pays attention to everything, which is completely.
His hands move down. Over your hips. Along the waistband of your jeans, his fingers tracing the edge where fabric meets skin, and the edge is the point, the boundary is the point, because he is touching everything he is allowed to touch and not one inch past it, and the restraint is doing something to you that the touching alone would not do.
"You're thinking," you say.
"I'm always thinking."
"You're thinking like you're taking notes."
"I am taking notes. Mentally. There's a spreadsheet."
"You're bringing the spreadsheet to bed."
"The spreadsheet goes everywhere. The spreadsheet is non-negotiable."
You laugh. You laugh and his hands are on your hips and the laughing does something to the muscles in your stomach that makes his hands shift, and the shift sends something through you, a small involuntary pull, and you feel his breath catch against your neck. He felt it. He felt your body respond to a thing neither of you planned, and the feeling of him feeling it is its own thing, a feedback loop you did not anticipate, his attention on your body and your body responding to the attention and his attention sharpening in response.
Your jeans come off. You don't remember which of you undoes the button. It might be both of you, simultaneously, which would be on-brand for the evening.
His hands move lower. Slowly. Giving you time to say stop. You do not say stop.
His fingers find you. He touches you the way you touch yourself, two fingers flat against your clit, the same slow circle, except his circle is slightly different from yours, slightly slower, slightly more deliberate, and the difference is everything. When you do this yourself your hand knows where it's going. His hand doesn't. His hand is learning you in real time, adjusting pressure by the half-second, reading your breathing like a dial, and the not-knowing is the thing, because when your own hand touches you the touch is predictable and your body discounts it, and when his hand touches you there is nowhere for your body to hide.
He slides his fingers lower. Through the wet. You hear him inhale, sharp, quiet, when he feels how wet you are, and the sound of him discovering that does something to you that his hands alone could not have done. He brings the slickness back up, spreads it under his fingertips, and the circle gets easier, slicker, and you feel your hips tilt toward his hand without deciding to, your body asking for something your mouth has not said yet.
"Talk to me," you say.
"About what."
"I don't care. The plant. Anglerfish. Anything."
He laughs, softly, against your hip.
"Okay," he says. "Okay. There's this thing. About, about the way nerve endings work. The ones in your skin. They fire faster when the stimulus is unfamiliar. Your own touch, your body knows what's coming, it can predict, it sort of. It discounts. But someone else's touch, it can't predict, it doesn't know the pattern yet, so everything is. Everything is louder."
His fingers adjust. You inhale. He hears the inhale.
"That's why this is different," he says, quieter now. "That's why. Your body can't get ahead of my hands the way it gets ahead of yours. So it has to just. It has to just be in it."
You are in it.
You are in it in a way you were not in it on the Saturday, because on the Saturday you were trying to let go and tonight you are not trying anything. You are lying in your bed with his hand between your legs and his voice in your ear and you are not thinking about whether this is going to work because you are not thinking. The narrator is gone. The narrator left somewhere between his mouth on your ribs and his fingers finding the place, and what is left is the body, and the body is not negotiating.
His voice drops lower. He is not talking about nerve endings anymore. He is talking to you the way he talked to you from the chair, low and steady and close, except he is not in the chair, he is pressed against your side with his mouth near your ear and the words are less important than the sound and the sound is less important than the fact that it is him and the fact that it is him is the whole thing. The whole thing. The only variable that ever mattered.
You feel safe.
You feel safe the way you felt safe on the Saturday, except more, except closer, except his skin is against your skin and his hand is between your legs and you are not performing. You are not performing for him. You are not narrating for yourself. You are not watching yourself from the outside trying to figure out if this is working. You are just here, in your body, in your bed, with a man who has seen you fail at this and did not flinch, and the not-flinching is the safety, and the safety is the permission, and the permission is the thing your body has been waiting for.
Something builds.
Something builds and it is not like the Saturday. On the Saturday the building had an edge and you moved toward the edge and the edge stayed where it was. Tonight the edge is moving toward you. You are not chasing it. It is arriving.
Your breath catches. Your breath catches and then, without deciding to, you hold it. You hold your breath and your whole body tenses, every muscle pulling tight at once, your hand gripping his arm, your thighs closing around his wrist, and it is the opposite of everything he told you. It is the opposite of letting go. It is the opposite of letting the body run. It is holding on, holding still, holding your breath and clenching every part of yourself around the feeling so it cannot leave, and it does not leave.
It does not leave.
It breaks over you like something with weight, like something that has been waiting, like something your body knew how to do the whole time and simply needed you to stop asking it to explain itself. You make a sound. You make the sound with no air in your lungs because you are still holding your breath and the sound is small and tight and broken-open and nothing like what you imagined, nothing like what you thought it would be, and his hand does not stop. His hand keeps moving, slower now, gentler, working you through it, and his forehead is pressed against your temple and he is breathing and you are not breathing and the room is the smallest it has ever been.
And then his fingers move over you again and your whole body jerks.
You have never felt this. You have never felt what comes after because you have never had an after. Everything is oversensitive, swollen, raw, his fingertips on your clit almost too much but not quite too much, and each pass sends a smaller wave through you, an aftershock, a bright sharp thing that pulls a sound out of you that is half gasp and half something else, and the something else is surprise, because you did not know there was more, you did not know it kept going, and it keeps going. He reads the aftershocks the way he has been reading everything tonight, adjusting lighter, slower, barely touching, his fingers moving through the wet of you with so little pressure it is almost nothing, and the almost-nothing is still sending you somewhere, still pulling small involuntary shivers out of your thighs, out of your stomach, out of parts of your body you did not know were connected to this.
You breathe.
You breathe and his hand goes still. Not because he decided to stop. Because he felt you come back. He felt the exact moment your body stopped shaking and your lungs opened and the air came in, and he stilled his hand at the same moment, like the two things were the same thing, like your breathing and his hands were part of the same system.
"You'd know," he says, very quietly.
You start crying.
You don't mean to. You don't expect to. It arrives the way the other thing arrived, without permission, without negotiation, your body simply doing the thing it has decided to do, and you are crying and laughing at the same time, which is a combination you did not know you were capable of, and he pulls you into him, both arms, your face in his neck, and he holds you the way he held the fork at the diner, which is like he is never going to put you down.
"Hey," he says. "Hey. You're okay."
"I know."
"You're okay."
"I know. I know I'm okay. I'm. Ryland."
"Yeah."
"That."
"Yeah."
"That was."
"Yeah." His voice is thick. His arms are tight around you. He presses his mouth to the top of your head. "Yeah. It was."
You lie there. You lie there in your bed with your face in his neck and his arms around you and neither of you says anything for a while, because there is nothing to say that the room does not already know.
After a while, you become aware of his heartbeat. It is fast. It is faster than it should be for a man who is lying still, and you realise, with the part of you that has started paying attention again, that his body has been doing its own thing this entire time, and its thing has been waiting.
You move your hand down his chest. Down his stomach. He breathes in.
"You don't have to," he says.
"I know I don't have to."
"I just mean. Tonight was. You don't have to make it about."
"Ryland."
"Yeah."
"Shut up."
He shuts up.
He is hard. He has been hard, you suspect, for a while, possibly since the kitchen, possibly since the aftershocks, possibly since a Saturday afternoon three weeks ago when he sat in a chair and listened to you breathe. You touch him through his jeans and his hips push up into your hand once, involuntarily, and the involuntary push is the most honest thing you have learned about him tonight, and you have learned a lot of honest things about him tonight.
His jeans come off. His boxers come off. You look at him the way he looked at you and you watch him let you look, and the letting is hard for him, you can tell, the same way the letting was hard for you. He is a man who fills silences and narrates his own hands and makes jokes at the exact moment a normal person would make a different face, and right now he is doing none of that. He is lying in your bed with his clothes off and his glasses off and he is just a person, quiet, watching you look at him.
"Hi," you say.
"You keep saying that."
"I keep meaning it."
He pulls you down. He pulls you into him and kisses you and the kissing has changed again, it is different from the kitchen and different from the first time on the bed, it is slower and more certain and his hands are on your back and your skin is against his skin and the amount of skin is new, the full length of him against the full length of you is a thing neither of you has had before and you both feel it arrive, the contact, the warmth, the simple animal fact of another body.
His hand finds you again. Not the same way as before. Slower. Exploring. His fingers slide through the wet of you and you are still sensitive from before, still swollen, and the touch sends a shiver through you that he feels against his chest. He keeps his hand there, not circling, not pressing, just feeling you, learning the shape of you with his fingers like he is reading something in a language he is teaching himself.
"You feel," he starts, and doesn't finish.
"What."
"You feel incredible. I just want. I want you to know that."
You kiss him because if you try to respond to that with words you are going to cry again and you have already cried once tonight and you are trying to maintain at least the appearance of a person who has it together.
His fingers move inside you. One first, then two, and the stretch is slow and careful and his thumb is still on your clit, barely touching, and the combination makes your back arch slightly, and he watches it arch, and you feel his cock twitch against your thigh.
"I want you," you say. "I want. All of you. I want."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He reaches for his jeans on the floor. He finds his wallet. He finds a condom. He tears the wrapper with his teeth because his hands are shaking again and you take it from him and roll it on yourself because his hands are shaking and your hands are steady for the first time all evening, and the reversal of that, the steadiness of your hands on him, makes him close his eyes and breathe out through his nose like a man counting to ten.
You guide him. He presses into you slowly, slowly, and you feel yourself open around him, and he makes a sound when he is all the way inside you, low and involuntary and slightly startled, like he is surprised by something he knew was coming, and you make a sound too, and the sounds are not performative, they are just the sounds two bodies make when they stop being separate.
He moves slowly. He moves slowly and carefully in a way that is not about being gentle, it is about paying attention, the same attention he has been paying all evening, except now the attention is inside you and the inside is a different kind of close. You can feel him adjusting. You can feel him reading you the way he read you with his hands, by breath, by sound, by the way your body tightens or opens, and the reading is the thing, the reading has always been the thing.
"Okay?" he says.
"Yeah."
"Still okay?"
"Ryland. I will tell you if I'm not okay."
"Right. Right. Sorry. I just."
"I know."
He moves. You move with him. There is a moment, early, where the geometry doesn't quite work, and there is a brief, honest negotiation of angles, and he laughs, quietly, against your neck, and you laugh, and the laughing is the permission it has always been. The laughing is what lets the bodies figure it out without the brains getting in the way.
He finds a rhythm. You find it with him. His forehead is against yours and his breath is on your mouth and his hands are in your hair and you are looking at each other, which is a thing you did not expect, because you have spent your entire life closing your eyes during sex, and tonight your eyes are open, and his eyes are open, and the openness is its own kind of naked.
He says your name.
He says it once, quietly, against your mouth, not as a question, not as a request, just as a fact, just as confirmation that you are here and he is here and neither of you is pretending, and the sound of your name in his voice in this room in this bed is a thing you are going to carry for a very long time.
It is not, you understand, going to happen again tonight. Your body is done with that particular miracle for now. But it does not matter. It does not matter because the sex is not about the orgasm, the sex was never about the orgasm, the sex is about the thing he said in the kitchen, which is that the orgasm is not the thing. The thing is this. His forehead on yours. His weight. His breathing getting faster. His hands gripping the sheets next to your head because he is close, he is close and you can feel it in him, and you wrap your legs around him and pull him deeper and say, very quietly, "it's okay, you can let go."
He lets go.
He lets go the way you let go, which is all at once, his whole body tensing, a sound pressed into your neck that he did not plan to make, and you hold him through it the way he held you through yours, your arms around his back, your mouth on his temple, and you feel him shake, and the shaking is the mirror of your shaking, and the room is very quiet, and the room is very full.
After a while he pulls out, carefully, and deals with the condom, and comes back. He comes back immediately, like the three seconds of not touching you were three seconds he did not care for, and he lies on his back and pulls you into his side and you go, your head on his chest, your leg over his, your hand flat on his sternum where you can feel his heart still going too fast. He presses his mouth to the top of your head and leaves it there.
After a while, you say, "The plant metaphor was a stretch."
He laughs. He laughs with his whole chest, the laugh you have been cataloguing for years, the one that cuts across rooms, except now it is in your bed, against your hair, vibrating through his ribs into yours, and it is yours. It is yours.
"The plant metaphor was science," he says.
"The plant metaphor was you buying time."
"The plant metaphor was me buying time, yes."
You lift your head. You look at him. His face, without the glasses, is a face you have technically seen before but have never seen like this, this close, with this specific expression on it, which is the expression of a man who is looking at you like you are the coolest thing he has ever seen, and he has seen anglerfish.
"Hi," you say.
"Hi."
"I think the experiment worked."
"I think," he says, "the experiment had a significant confounding variable."
"What variable."
"Me. Being in love with you. That's, that's a confound. You can't. You can't control for that."
"No," you say. "You can't."
"Might need a bigger sample size, though."
"Might."
"For rigour."
"For rigour."
He is smiling. You can feel him smiling against the top of your head. It is the smile of a man who has found a problem he would like to spend a very long time not solving.
You think about what it would be like. To get there with him inside you. To feel that edge and not flinch and hold your breath and let it break while he is as close as another person can be. You think about it not as a fear, which is new. You think about it as a thing that might happen. On a Tuesday. On a Saturday. On some unremarkable afternoon when neither of you is trying.
You kiss him. You kiss him slowly, with no urgency, with the specific calm of a person who knows she has time, and he kisses you back, and his hands are in your hair, and the chair is in the corner with the clothes on it, and the kitchen has cracker crumbs on the counter, and somewhere in this apartment there is a bag that once held Skittles, and the room is full of everything you have both been carrying, and it is light. For the first time in a very long time, it is light.
hyperfixations fading is so sad for me becuz i usually feel guilty I COULDNT EVEN TELL YALL WHY but it usually illicits something like "wait im not getting excited by this anymore ? :((( but i was excited about this last week ?? :(((( and i love this thing so much ??? :((((( "
YUMAY DAY 7 !!!! THE CHILD I HAD WITH MY ARCHIVIST !!!!
a few days ago i got the amazing news that my Jon mii and my mii had a BABY !!!! AND HER NAME IS LAKE !!!!!! she is the cutest thing in this entire world and i just HENGJKDBFJGJG THATS MY BABY 😭😭😭 it was perfect timing i swear
my beautiful baby Lake ANYWAYS HOPE U LIKE THIS !!!!
i've recently actually restarted TMA cuz i've come to realize that Jon's storytelling voice in the earlier seasons seriously help me sleep, so i've been listening to it every time i go to bed and it feels like Jon's reading me like bed time stories,,,, very horrific bed time stories,,,,, SIGHHHHHS <3333333
also i just miss my not skeptic skeptic oh where has that man gone, when his only concern was to organize the archives </3
