The Roommate||Chris sturniolo pt.3
Summary: chris accidentally wakes up up from a nap
CW: little bit of flirting i think
(All photos and dividers found on Pinterest ❤️)
Rain had been falling since morning.
The heavy, steady kind that turned the sky charcoal gray by noon and made the entire house feel wrapped inside dim weather.
Water streaked down the living room windows in uneven lines. Wind rattled tree branches against the side fence. The world outside looked blurred around the edges, softened by sheets of rain and low clouds heavy enough to swallow the afternoon whole.
The house felt warmer because of it.
The lamps downstairs had been turned on hours ago even though technically it was still daytime.
Quen stood near the front door pulling her hoodie over her head dramatically.
“This,” she announced to absolutely nobody, “is criminal weather.”
Nick snorted from the kitchen.
Matt grabbed the grocery list off the counter.
“You still want groceries?”
Quen pointed toward the nearly empty pantry.
“Unfortunately, humans require food to survive.”
“Debatable,” Nick muttered.
You sat curled sideways on the couch beneath a blanket, only half paying attention to the conversation unfolding around you.
The television played quietly in the background.
Some random movie nobody had been properly watching for almost an hour.
Rain tapped steadily against the windows.
You shifted deeper beneath the blanket.
Matt grabbed his keys from the entryway table.
“Coffee creamer,” you answered immediately.
Nick looked mildly offended.
“You drank the entire carton?”
“You survive every day somehow.”
Quen opened the front door.
Cold gray daylight spilled briefly across the hardwood floor.
Rain noise immediately doubled in volume.
“Okay,” she announced. “Nobody burn the house down.”
Nick pointed vaguely toward the hallway.
“That instruction is mostly for Chris.”
Chris looked up from where he’d been leaning against the kitchen counter scrolling lazily through his phone.
“You made microwave popcorn smell like electrical failure yesterday.”
You laughed quietly into your blanket.
Chris looked toward you immediately.
“You’re taking their side?”
“I’m taking the side of functioning appliances.”
Quen pointed dramatically toward the door.
Nick grabbed an umbrella.
Cold rain sounds flooded the house again.
The familiar chaos of everybody leaving at once.
Silence settled over the house almost immediately afterward.
Rain filled the leftover space.
You adjusted beneath your blanket instinctively.
The house always felt different after people left.
The quiet stretched wider between rooms.
The television continued murmuring softly in the background.
Across the room, Chris pushed himself away from the kitchen counter.
“Okay,” he said lightly. “Sudden silence is unsettling.”
You kept your eyes on the TV.
He wandered toward the hallway.
Or doing whatever people did during rainy afternoons.
You didn't think much about it.
thinking about Chris had started happening automatically.
Small moments resurfacing at inconvenient times.
You look like you stepped out of a Sofia Coppola movie.
You groaned softly beneath your blanket.
The problem wasn't that something huge had happened.
That would've been easier.
Huge things announced themselves.
Huge things demanded attention.
Which somehow made it worse.
Dangerously normal things.
You liked talking to him.
That realization had started showing up more often lately.
You liked looking for him downstairs without meaning to.
Liked hearing his laugh from another room.
Liked the easy rhythm conversations slipped into with him.
Dangerous thought territory.
Rain hit the windows harder for a minute.
The television glowed softly against the dim living room walls.
You shifted lower into the couch.
The kind of sleepy rainy afternoons created without permission.
Your eyelids felt heavier than they had twenty minutes ago.
The movie blurred gently at the edges.
The house hummed softly around you.
Your thoughts drifted lazily again.
Because apparently your brain hated you.
The stupid movie comment.
The way he’d looked mildly horrified immediately after saying it.
You smiled despite yourself.
The thought barely finished forming before sleep started pulling harder at the edges of your consciousness.
Your body sank deeper into the couch.
Rain softened into distant sound.
Television dialogue blurred together into meaningless background noise.
Your last sleepy thought before drifting off landed somewhere dangerously close to:
This is becoming… something.
felt far too important for a random rainy Thursday afternoon.
You didn't know how long you'd been asleep.
Long enough for the rain outside to darken further against the windows.
Long enough for dreams to start forming at soft blurry edges.
The living room remained dim and warm around you.
Blanket tangled loosely around your legs.
Television still running quietly.
Sleep clung stubbornly around your thoughts.
Half buried inside couch cushions.
You blinked toward the hallway entrance.
One hand wrapped around a mug.
Messy hair somehow worse than earlier.
You stared at him sleepily for a long second.
“…Sorry,” he said quietly.
Your brain struggled to reboot.
You rubbed one eye tiredly.
He looked genuinely apologetic.
The rain continued hammering softly against the windows behind him.
The whole room felt strangely dreamlike in your post-nap haze.
Chris standing barefoot on creaky floorboards holding a mug like he'd been personally attacked by old-house architecture.
“Traitorous floorboards.”
You pointed vaguely downward.
Then Chris laughed quietly.
“Glad we've identified the real enemy.”
You pulled the blanket slightly higher around yourself.
“That’s… not how time works.”
“It’s basically nighttime outside.”
He glanced toward the windows.
The sky had darkened into deep storm gray.
Rainwater crawled slowly down the glass.
The living room looked dipped in soft amber light.
Chris lifted his mug slightly.
You narrowed sleepy eyes at him.
He looked mildly offended.
He walked farther into the living room.
The floorboards creaked again.
And without really thinking about it—
you shifted slightly beneath your blanket to make room on the couch.
Sleepy instinct more than conscious decision.
The space beside you sat empty.
Chris noticed the movement.
Just long enough to matter a little.
The couch dipped softly under the added weight.
Rain continued against the windows.
The television murmured quietly.
Warm tea steam curled from his mug.
And somewhere deep in your sleepy, overthinking brain—
the quiet didn't feel empty anymore.
YES. Going straight into it.
The couch settled softly beneath the both of you.
Rain pressed steadily against the windows.
The television continued playing quietly in the background — forgotten enough that neither of you could've said what movie was actually on anymore.
Wrapped up inside weather.
Chris balanced his mug carefully between both hands, steam curling upward into the dim living room light.
You shifted deeper beneath your blanket, still half tangled in sleep.
“Tea?” you asked again, suspicious.
“You’re weirdly focused on this.”
“You don’t strike me as a tea person.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You have coffee energy.”
He looked mildly offended.
You pointed vaguely toward him.
“Hoodie. Chaos microwave popcorn incident. Strong opinions during movies.”
Rain rolled harder against the windows for a moment.
The sound filled the room softly.
Chris lifted the mug slightly.
“Tea is weather appropriate.”
“You're secretly eighty years old.”
“That’s rich coming from somebody napping voluntarily at four in the afternoon.”
You pulled the blanket tighter around yourself.
You hated slightly how much you were beginning to recognize his different laughs.
His louder one when Nick said something genuinely stupid.
The one that showed up during conversations like this.
Dangerous information to possess.
You adjusted your legs beneath the blanket.
The movement pulled one corner loose off your shoulder.
Cold air touched your skin immediately.
Before you could fix it properly—
Chris reached over absentmindedly and tugged the blanket back up.
His attention still half on the television.
Like helping hadn’t even required conscious thought.
Your brain completely stalled.
Chris noticed your silence a second later.
You glanced toward the TV aggressively.
“...blanket maintenance.”
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
that tiny stupid moment caught you more off guard than it should have.
Not because it was dramatic.
The problem was how easy it had been.
Gentle without performance.
No big deal made out of it.
Your chest felt unexpectedly warm.
You shifted farther into the couch cushions.
Unreliable emotional conditions.
Across the room, thunder rolled faintly somewhere far away.
The living room darkened another shade deeper.
Chris looked toward the windows.
The sky looked nearly evening-dark despite the clock barely pushing late afternoon.
Rainwater blurred the backyard into watercolor shapes.
“Quen’s gonna complain the whole drive home.”
“Matt’ll pretend he doesn’t care.”
“While caring aggressively.”
The conversation slipped naturally after that.
The kind of conversation rainy afternoons invented when there was nowhere to be and nobody rushing the silence along.
The fact that your house apparently owned an absurd number of mugs.
Chris discovering Quen organized the pantry “like a tiny dictator.”
Your dramatic defense of rain naps.
His deeply incorrect opinions about movie endings.
Time softened around the conversation.
The way it always seemed to when the house got quiet enough.
At some point, without either of you really noticing, the distance between you changed.
A shift of blanket fabric.
A better angle toward the television.
One of you leaning closer to hear something during a louder burst of rain.
Warm through layers of hoodie and blanket.
Neither of you commented.
Which somehow made it worse.
Your body should've registered it immediately.
Natural in a way that startled you quietly.
Like your brain had expected awkwardness and been handed comfort instead.
The realization landed slowly.
The comfortable weight of somebody else's presence beside you.
The thought arrived softly.
You kept your eyes on the television.
Chris glanced sideways slightly.
“You’re getting sleepy again.”
You pointed vaguely beneath the blanket.
“I already had my legally required rainy afternoon nap.”
“You fell asleep less than an hour ago.”
Chris looked unbearably smug.
“Sleepiest person alive.”
“You made tea during a thunderstorm.”
“That argument doesn’t even connect.”
The room fell quieter afterward.
The kind of comfortable silence that arrived naturally after enough conversation.
Your eyelids felt heavier again.
You blamed the weather immediately.
Not finishing that thought.
Your head tilted slightly back against the cushions.
Chris noticed immediately.
You opened one eye suspiciously.
“Dangerously close to unconsciousness.”
Rain rattled harder against the windows.
Without thinking, you shifted slightly toward the warmer side of the couch.
Your sleepy brain noticed approximately one second too late.
Shoulder fully against his now.
You should probably move.
Reasonable human behavior suggested moving.
Because moving would make it weird.
Chris went very still beside you for exactly half a second.
Just quiet acceptance of shared couch geometry.
The television glowed softly across the dim room.
Your eyes drifted shut for a moment.
Chris glanced down slightly.
You made a sleepy face at him.
“Historical accuracy matters.”
You breathed out a quiet laugh.
The warmth beside you felt increasingly unfairly comfortable.
Rain softened again outside.
The room dimmed deeper into storm-afternoon darkness.
your body made the decision before your brain finished participating.
Your head tipped gently sideways.
You registered it dimly through the haze of sleep.
Your thoughts drifted slower.
Steady breathing beside you.
The last clear thought that floated lazily through your sleepy mind landed somewhere near:
was not helping the situation at all.
Conversation long gone now.
Soft television light behind closed eyelids.
And somewhere very far away—
you thought you felt Chris adjust slightly beside you.
Like he was making space for you without waking you.
Your sleepy brain noticed.
Filed it somewhere dangerously important.
Rain tapped steadily against the windows.
The television played quietly to an audience of absolutely nobody paying attention.
Head against his shoulder.
Blanket pooled around both of you from somewhere during the last hour.
Trusting in the absentminded way sleeping people were.
Chris stared at the television for a solid thirty seconds without absorbing a single frame.
The problem wasn’t even that you’d fallen asleep on him.
Like some part of him had made room for it automatically.
Your blanket had slipped lower again near your arm.
Carefully— stupidly carefully— he adjusted it back up.
Rain softened against the glass.
The house stayed quiet around him.
And somewhere between the storm-dark afternoon, the sleepy living room, and the weight of you asleep beside him—
something landed quietly into place.
the last few days rearranged themselves in his head.
Sleepy movie comparison disaster.
Looking for your laugh in crowded rooms without realizing it.
Warm against his shoulder like this was normal.
Chris stared blankly toward the television again.
The problem wasn't the closeness.
The problem was how much he didn’t want to move.
How much the idea of waking you up felt immediately wrong.
How naturally the quiet wrapped around the two of you.
rain continued falling against the windows.
the house stayed warm and sleepy around him.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it—
Chris realized, with slow dawning horror—
he was probably in trouble.
