summary: all that stands between you and your senior spring at MIT is two straight weeks of working with the most obnoxious programmer in the game design major. even worse, he's infuriatingly and undeniably hot.
pairing: college!walter 'keys' mckey x reader
rating: explicit (18+)
content warnings/tags: academic rivals to lovers, hate sex, face slapping (m receiving), p in v sex, unprotected sex, keys says he's sorry because he's a sweetheart deep down
word count: 8.3k
Sitting on a campus bench on a foggy October morning, warming your hands with a London Fog to pass the time before an early morning Mastering Game Mechanics class, you finally feel able to accept that fall in New England completely lives up to the hype. This was your fourth and final one at MIT, and you were committed to soaking it in as much as possible before you accepted a contract at a big, fancy West Coast developer. One last fall to breathe in the morning fog, or take day trips out to the farms that make a killing this time of year in pumpkins and apple cider doughnuts. If anything, it's a gift to have such wonderful things to miss—good friends, helpful mentors—but there's one thing you couldn't wait to shake off when you walk across the stage in May.
Being the only fucking girl in the Engine Development and Game Design Program.
Being the first to walk into orientation four years ago and seeing 20 chairs neatly arrayed in a conference room was exciting, right up until the room started to fill. You found your chair on the end of a row, and stuck on the cheesy 'Hello, My Name Is' name tag that sat waiting for you, already displaying your name in black Sharpie. The minutes ticked by and the room started to fill with a steady trickle of 18-year-old boys, the majority of them boasting summer coding program t-shirts and basketball shorts you could tell they had owned since middle school. When the boy entitled to the name tag in the chair next to you walked in, it felt a little possible that you could actually have a friend in your program for the next four years.
Your first look at Walter McKey inspired a slight, and embarrassingly awed spark of hope. At least, more hope than the current crowd of your fellow developers instilled in you. His presence once sat in the chair next to you filled the surrounding air with the scent of clean laundry, his hair looked soft and curled slightly in a charming way around his ears. The lenses of his glasses were spotless, attributed to the practiced way he would push them up if they slipped with the pad of his middle finger, right on the metal bridge. He was wearing a short sleeved button up shirt over a t-shirt, jeans that fit him nicely, not too short around the ankles as was common with the male coders you knew, and black-and-white checkered Vans, that were marked with subtle scuffs only visible if you looked too close.
You politely told him your name and stuck out your hand, which he shook with a limp hold before finally speaking.
"I'm Keys." And then he was silent for the rest of the day.
Getting to know him was impossible. He was quiet, dutifully took notes during lectures, corrected professors under his breath, his portions of group projects were done on time and flawlessly. You were never quite able to pin him for anything, not even after working with him directly for an assignment with a few other coders during your third semester. When you met up to work on it, he was near silent. Engineered his designated sections, stood up with the group to present, helped get you a good grade. It didn't matter if he seemed different at first glance—Keys wasn't interested in anything that wasn't a 95 or higher on his transcript.
It was after your fourth semester of putting up with the verbal jabs and rolling eyes that you decided to devote every second of your college career to proving him and all of the other Mountain Dew guzzlers in your major wrong. If you couldn't prove yourself in class by being as good as them, you would simply have to be better.
Progressing through semesters of having nearly every class with the same crowd of 19 fellow developers gave you the nearly scientific ability to split them in half and classify them—the gawkers, who never totally got used to having a girl in their midst. They stared with parted mouths when you presented your work, blushed and stammered when you were forced to partner up for projects. Never quite mellowed despite the now four years of being in your presence. The other half wrote you off the second they laid eyes on you during that orientation. Reddit-frequenting, girlfriend-less, snickering and whispering to each other conspiratorially when you spoke up in classes. You assumed that Keys fit firmly in the latter category. He didn't exactly laugh like the others, but he was prone to eye rolling, and definitely didn't stare at you with looks of awe and astonishment like the former.
Truthfully, and totally unbeknownst to you, Keys wasn't in either category. He didn't like you because found something in you that he didn't get from anyone else—you offered him an actual challenge.
A glance up at the clock tower tells you it's time to get on your way to class, and you sigh, steeling yourself for another two hours of stares and shit-eating smirks. Maybe it was good for you. You were always going to be in the minority in this field, and while you still hope you would end up in a company that had at least a few women on staff, the future was going to involve an uphill climb if you were committed to making games. At least the walk to the CompSci building was peaceful. Campus was still sparse, the only sounds around being the gentle rustling of red and orange leaves and your footsteps against the brick pathway. You liked being early for classes. It gave you the best chance to get moments like this, and limited the number of heads whipping around to look at you as you pushed the classroom door open.
Your usual chair sat dutifully in the front row, and you slip your backpack off of your shoulders, sliding into the seat. As you push up the screen of your laptop and start to enter your password to unlock it, the door opens behind you, and the footsteps of nearly spotless checkered Vans make their way to the front row table to your right. Keys had a similar and infuriating habit of being early.
"Morning," he mumbles as his own laptop meets the table and your spine stiffens, surprised to hear him initiate any kind of conversation, let alone one where he isn't making backhanded comments on how "approachable" your demos are.
"Someone's cheerful," you tease. "What, did new sexy elf skins drop on World of Warcraft?"
"I don't play World of Warcraft," Keys rebuttals weakly, clicking his Bluetooth mouse on and testing it with a few back and forth swipes across the table. You look over and cock an eyebrow.
"Anymore," he adds through his teeth.
"Thought so," you smirk.
He breathes hard through his nose before he speaks again.
"So, you got demo of the week last Friday," he says, attempting to seem casual. "How are things looking this week?"
Demo of the week—a sought after title given by Dr. Howell, faculty chair of the Game Design program and professor of many of its classes. Extremely tough, and very withholding of praise outside of his designations of demo of the week. You and Keys have been alternating the title on and off since August.
"I think it's as strong as last week's," you say, scanning through your files to load your entry for this Friday. "Why, you scared?"
"No," he says, far too quickly and with a defensive sharpness. "I'm just saying, enjoy your title while you still have it."
Demo showcase passes as it typically does—everyone watches each other's entries with laser focus, cringing internally at any aspects that feel unfinished, and mentally jotting down impressive tricks or assets for later. You and Keys both present, watching each other's work with scrunched brows and teeth digging into bottom lips, eager for any kind of slip-up. Yours goes well—no obvious bugs, punctuated with a nod from Dr. Howell. A nod is alright, but a smile is best, and usually indicates that you've been chosen. Today, his face is blank. Shit.
Keys follows right after you do, and infuriatingly, his work is incredible. He's obviously proud, speaking with a little more confidence than usual as he shows off that he's mastered a new movement mechanic he's been working on the past few weeks. All ten minutes of gameplay were clearly coded meticulously—polished textures, zero lag, balanced camera movement. As much as you hate to admit to yourself (and you would die before admitting this to him), it's better than yours. The room applauds politely once he finishes, and his eyes catch yours as he detaches his laptop from the cable, twinkling mischievously and squinted a little at the corners from the satisfied smirk that spreads across his face. Your head snaps nervously to Dr. Howell, who wears a similar expression, arms crossed as he stands from the empty seat at the back of the room and makes his way back to the front of the lecture hall.
"Most of you were middling," he says, finally facing the class. "A few of you were bad, I'm assuming you already know who you are." As if on cue, a sniffle from a few seats over briefly resounds through the room. He calls your name, a sharp wave of nerves crashing over you as your eyes widen.
"You were fine this week," he starts. "About as good as last week, but the purpose of this exercise is improvement. Your bar is high, I ask that you please meet it."
Your stomach churns harder as you nod, mustering a wobbly smile that you hope expresses that you're internalizing the criticism. You aren't sure what feeling turns in you faster—disappointment in yourself, or your anger towards Keys.
"Walter," Dr. Howell says, turning to face him fully. "This was strong work from you. Very dynamic, and that new trick of yours has come very far. Almost ready for a full length project. Congratulations."
Keys beams, shifting in his chair a little, as if unable to physically contain how pleased he is. His excitement would be endearing if he wasn't so fucking infuriating.
"Thanks so much, Dr. Howell," he says a little breathless, running his hand through his hair, which only causes it to flop more over his eyes and the frame of his glasses. Dr. Howell starts another round of applause, and you briefly slap your hands together lazily, biting the inside of your cheek. No matter how many times you lost your title to Keys, it stung. It felt like a step back from your mission to rise and topple the others, a concession to the staring and laughing and backhandedness. With a sigh, as the little clock in the upper corner of your screen finally ticks to 10:00 AM, you close the lid of your laptop and pack it into your backpack.
"Excuse me," Dr. Howell says in front of your table, Keys flanking his left side with his messenger bag slung onto one shoulder. "I've asked the two of you to stay because I have something of an…additional project for you both."
Your eyebrows furrow inward, gaze briefly flicking over to an equally confused Keys.
"Additional project?" You ask.
"Yes," Dr. Howell confirms, gesturing for Keys to take the empty seat next to you, and he sits rigidly, folding his hands on the table and subtly fidgeting with his thumbs.
"You two come to every class, you see these demos. I'm assuming it's no secret to you both that you're the most evolved students in my program," Dr. Howell continues, and you hear Keys's breath hitch as your heart quickens. Maybe this is working, you think. This is paying off.
"You're both seniors, and we're inching closer to the end of the semester. That means bigger and bigger projects," he says, crossing his arms again. "Instead of creating an hour long demo for the showcase in November independently, I want to see one collaborative three hour long playtest."
Fuck. Your brain fills instantly and rapidly with one, big internal monologue of fuck. You'd prefer being kicked out of the program. You'd prefer being publicly shamed for plagiarism. Honestly, you might take being burned at the stake over spending nearly every evening with Keys for the next month. Shit, finally finding a single plot concept to agree on is probably going to take up most of that time anyway.
"Dr. Howell, I really think we'd both prefer making something on our own," Keys says, his voice quick and jumpy. Finally, some common ground at least. "We're pretty different types of devs, I don't-"
"That's exactly why I want to see what you would create when working together," Dr. Howell insists, turning to you. "You're a story developer. Fleshed out characters, making connections, but your asset work isn't always the cleanest. Walter, you're a mathematician. Your code is neat as a pin, but I can tell that you're more concerned with having perfect work than engaging work. That's where you two meet. Pick up each other's slack."
"I was already kind of shaping some ideas on my own," you say, feeling your palms start to sweat a little.
"Then share them with him," Dr. Howell responds, shrugging a little as if entirely unaware of the issue. "I'm not doing this to punish either of you, in fact, I'm giving you both a look into what working on actual game looks like. 99% of things on market right now are made by teams ranging from duos like you two, up to offices of hundreds. You've done almost all of your course work on your own to this point, and I chose you two because you're my strongest designers. I suggest you both stop inventing excuses and start thinking up some actual ideas. I'm not asking."
Dr. Howell turns to pack his own computer into his briefcase, then walks with long steps up the aisle of the lecture hall. You and Keys remain frozen—a little out of shock, mostly out of dread, and both afraid to say the first word. Goddammit. Buck up, he's literally just a nerd. A nerd that just so happens to be really, really good at coding. A nerd with a stupid handsome face and stupid, sexy, big hands. A sigh in your right ear brings you back to the present.
"Are you free tonight?" Keys asks begrudgingly, still staring straight ahead at the front wall. "I don't even know why I'm asking, it's Friday. You probably have some rager to grace with your presence."
"Awe," you coo condescendingly, turning in your swiveling chair to face him. "You know, Keys, usually girls liked to be asked out with flowers, not brazen insults."
"I'm not asking you out," he scoffs, knee bumping into yours as he turns to face you. "I'd actually like to get this over with. If we marathon for the next two weeks, we can avoid any unnecessary time together until the showcase."
"That I can agree on," you huff, pulling out a pen and notebook, ripping out a piece of paper haphazardly. The jagged edges and uneven shape make Keys wince.
"Despite the popular assumption around here that I spend my weekends blacking out and fucking random Boston College guys," you say through your teeth, scribbling your phone number and address onto the paper. "I'm free through Sunday. I don't have a roommate, so we can get work done at my place without bugging anyone but each other. Come by at 8."
"Fine," he sighs, trying his best to fold the paper into a neat shape before tucking it into the front pocket of his messenger bag. This was going to be a very, very long two weeks.
"He's not ugly," Valerie says, picking up a fry from the plate you're sharing and dragging it through ketchup.
Valerie was your freshman year roommate—a funny, carefree architecture major, whose voice was sometimes your only point of reason after spending all day in your classes. Every Friday since September of your freshman year, you and Valerie met at a cafe just off campus at 6—ranting, bitching, laughing, anything either of you needed after the week.
"Ugly isn't my problem," you explain, chin in hand as you drink your iced tea, chewing on the straw a little once you're satisfied with the sip. "He's a pain in my ass, that's my problem."
"Why does he specifically piss you off, though?" She questions, leaning back a little in her chair. "Everyone in the program in a dipshit, what makes Keys so annoying?"
"Because I can ignore everyone else's weirdness," you say, taking a fry. "But his is different, I don't know."
"Is the weirdness his shiny hair and big brown eyes?" Valerie teases.
"Shut up," you say with a laugh, leaning your elbows onto the table.
"I'm just saying," she shrugs. "He's cute, not even CompSci nerd cute. Like, a normal, good-looking guy."
She's right, and you hate it. It would be easy to totally write Keys off if he was exactly like the other people in the program, but much to your chagrin, as it only made it harder to make any sense of how you felt about him, he wasn't. He was attractive, he took good care of himself (relatively, a bulk sized bottle of ibuprofen did tumble out of his messenger bag once), and he was an undeniably excellent programmer. Turning this over in your mind, you glance down at your phone, seeing it was approaching closer to 7.
"I need to get going," you lament, taking a last drink and scooting your chair away from the table. "He's coming over at 8, and I still need to shower."
"Ooo, wear something skimpy," Valerie giggles. "You can borrow one of my club dresses."
"To sit on my own couch and code?" You laugh.
"Just brainstorming."
Two sharp knocks sound on the front door of your apartment at 7:57, cutting through the soft music you had put on as you got yourself and your place ready for company, especially company as particular as Keys. You look over from the kitchen where you've been finishing clean putting dishes away (you figured tidying up would limit the amount of insult fodder available to him), and take a quick glance at yourself in the mirror. Despite Valerie's suggestion, you opted for a t-shirt, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks for tonight's session. You were in your own home after all, and Keys was decidedly not deserving of your usual routine before going out. Good enough for a little check in the mirror, though? Valerie's voice echoes in your head, so familiar to you that her commentary makes its way into your thoughts even when she isn't there. You physically shake your head, slightly damp hair whipping by your ears as you try your hardest to remove the thought from your conscience. Buck up. He's a programmer, for fuck's sake.
Keys has also dressed down for the occasion—he's traded his usual short sleeve button up for a worn, soft looking MIT sweatshirt and jeans. He steps inside and slips off his Vans before you can ask, revealing black socks covered in little stitched, colorful Tetris pieces.
"Nice of you to show," you say, locking the door behind him as he steps into your living room, taking in the atmosphere of your apartment, far cozier and more lived in than his. Furniture accumulated from years of risky Facebook Marketplace meetups and trips to thrift stores with Valerie, illuminated by string lights and a little sandalwood scented candle flickering weakly in the corner. Your music continues playing from the speaker on the coffee table.
"You know how to set the mood," Keys says, setting his messenger bag on the couch. "I'll give you that."
"Good to know it's cozier than your charging station," you tease. "Can I get you some water, or will that fry your circuit boards?"
"Let's just work, please," he sighs, pulling out his laptop. "You said you had some ideas?"
"Yeah, actually," you say, sitting on the opposite side of the couch. "I've never made a horror game before, so I was thinking of trying that out for my project back when it was still mine."
Keys rubs his eyes under the lenses of his glasses, then he takes them off, pulling up his sweatshirt a little to wipe them. The sliver of his stomach you can now see is lean and soft all at once, revealing a dark line of hair that travels from his waistband up towards his navel. Your instincts rapidly overtake your frustration with him—cheekbones stinging a little as your mouth waters, stomach starting to swirl with eagerness to see more. Keys lowers the grey fabric back over his abdomen and you snap back into focus, preferring a slow and painful death over the prospect of him catching you ogling like that.
"I actually haven't designed horror before either," he admits, his jaw tight like agreeing with you is physically painful. "It's big in the market right now, but we need an original idea."
Your tongue pokes inside your cheek, flip flopping between sharing the concepts you've been experimenting with over the last few weeks, and seeing if Keys has any competency outside of technically impressive code.
"You heard Dr. Howell, this is supposed to challenge your lack of storytelling skills," you taunt, reaching for your own laptop on the coffee table. Keys lets out a half hearted chuckle next to you, pushing up the sleeves of his sweatshirt.
"Oh, so we're actually sticking to this stupid challenge? Swapping roles and everything?" He retorts. "That's fine, I like cleaning up sloppy code anyway."
"Sloppy?" You challenge, sitting up a little straighter on the couch. "If I end up coding sloppy, it'll be because I'm working on some half-baked shooter with maybe two characters and no continuity! Plot courtesy of Walter 'Keys' McKey."
Keys's jaw clenches as he sets his laptop back on the coffee table.
"You know, on my way over here, I was actually looking forward to this a little," he says, voice gradually starting to raise, his hands starting to gesture sharply and without logic. "I thought 'her storytelling is actually decent, and maybe I have a few code tricks I can show her.' Now I see you have no interest in actually trying to grow as a developer, but I'm not too worried. I'm sure you'll make a great barista simulator someday!"
"What the fuck is your problem?" You lash out, standing abruptly to look down at him. The satisfaction of being able to do that doesn't last long, as Keys follows suit, standing face to face with hands stiffly balled at his sides.
"My problem is you," he spits. "For the most part, I really try my best to stay the fuck out of your way, which is seemingly impossible, considering you're my only actual competition! Seeing you, week after week, standing at the front of the class with that smile on your face, all of the attention on you, like you've already fucking won!"
"You're this mad because I actually like my own work sometimes?!" You shoot back, stepping closer to get in his face. "Maybe I should be just like you, Mr. Robot! I bet I could spit out perfect code too if I ran on batteries!"
"Yeah, I'm annoying about my code, but that doesn't give you the right to hate me!" Keys snaps, moving to close the distance even further, your chests nearly pressed together.
"What is it with you and the goddamn assumptions all the time, Keys?" You shout, feeling your heart thrum harder and harder against your ribs the closer you get, the more of his obnoxiously clean, stupidly charming scent filling your senses. "I don't hate you!"
"Then I would love an explanation of how you actually feel about me!"
Looking into those big brown eyes, wide and puppy-like behind his glasses, the growing flush in his cheeks, the way his chest heaves up and down, brushing against the front of your shirt as your sternum does the same, the swimming of hatred and frustration bundles and twists until it finally transforms into something else entirely—a spark. It would be easy to attribute the sudden and irrepressible urge to get into Walter McKey's pants to the fact that school had you wound tight as a vise, and you hadn't had a good hookup in over a year (let alone that the last one was bad, and seven months ago), but he's standing in front you—ridiculously cute, obviously worked up, and you want him. Before you can listen to your usually too loud voice of reason, your fingers are clenching the soft fabric of the front of his sweatshirt harshly, and your mouth is on his, eager and long overdue for a kiss.
Keys tenses for long moment before he gives into his own longing for your touch, buried and constrained beneath deadlines and code techniques—things that make sense to him. In the seconds that follow after you press your lips to his, Keys decides he's tired of making sense all the time. Soon, his lips are pliant and needy, messily reciprocating the kiss as his arms wind around your waist, closing any sliver of distance that remained between you two. He tastes clean and minty, probably now his natural state from the sheer number of Altoids he downs and sticks of gum he chews to help keep him focused. When you come up for air, both of you with warm cheeks and parted lips, Keys starts to smile, that same smirk from this morning, when he showed off his demo.
"So that's how you feel," he teases.
"You absolutely need to shut up or I change my mind," you warn, reaching down for his hand and pulling him down the hallway to your bedroom. Almost as soon as the door is open it's closed again, shutting under the pressure of your hands on Keys's chest until his back is flush to the wood.
"I have no idea why I'm doing this," you breathe before your lips are on his again, tongue swiping against the pretty dip of his Cupid's bow, the dip you now realize you've spent a good deal of time glancing at during lectures. Fuck, he's pretty.
"I knew my demo was good today," he says, words tumbling against your mouth. "I didn't know I was turning people on."
"Ugh, shut up," you huff, pulling Keys by the front of his sweatshirt over to your bed. He falls against it, bouncing a little as his back makes contact with your mattress. Your hips are on his, thighs falling to either side of his body before he can even align his head onto your pillows.
"You're so fucking annoying," you moan, as your clothed cunt makes contact with the annoyingly large bulge in his jeans, shuddering a little as his hands brace your hips.
"And yet you're here," he challenges, before pulling you down for another needy kiss. Your hips start to rock against him, the dull pressure of his body against yours only working you up more. "I should have known this would happen. I thought I saw you shifting in your seat during class. But hey, I'm flattered, really-"
Crack. The smack of your palm against his cheek echoes through your room, everything grinding to a stiff halt. In a panic, you tuck the hand that was just across his face against your chest, breathes growing shallow as you take in his bright red cheeks and his eyes, almost pitch black with pupils, big and round as planets, overwhelming the hazel.
"Fuck Keys, I'm sorry," you pant. "I don't know what I was thinking, I wasn't. Does it hurt?"
He sucks in a shaky breath through his open mouth.
"Do it again," he whimpers.
"I-what?"
"Hit me again," he pleads, fingers digging into the plush of your thighs. "Please, baby."
The same hand reaches forward, brushing over the little blotch that glows especially red against his already blushing cheeks before you draw your hand back, palm making contact again. Keys moans this time, pulling you down for another kiss when he recovers from the recoil.
"I think about you constantly," he confesses, reaching for the bottom of your shirt. Your arms lift upward on instinct, the soft skin of your torso dimpling slightly against the cool air. His hands reach up, cupping and feeling for your breasts through the cups of your bra. "You never smile in class, so I have to catch it across the library, when you're working with your friends. It's beautiful, and it drives me fucking crazy."
"So you're stalking me?" You tease, pulling his hands back to the hooks of your bra, which he manages smoother than you expected. His sweatshirt comes off soon after, finally revealing what had been cruelly teased on the couch—pretty constellations of freckles and moles all across his arms and shoulders and chest, thick hair that covers the broadest part of it, the full view of his tummy and happy trail.
"We go to the same school," he huffs, rolling his eyes. "What, you've never seen me outside of class?"
You had frequently, often enough that you picked up on the way his tongue would slightly prod the inside of his cheek when he was focused, the slight crinkle in his nose any time a bug would pop into his code lines, the constant hands in his stupid, perfect hair. But he wasn't winning this one.
"Some of us actually focus on out work and not trying to catch a girl smiling," you tease, dipping down to the long curve of his neck, kissing a trail down to his collarbone, where you gently nip and lick at the skin. Keys's back arches from his mattress slightly, little shockwaves of pleasure picking up speed in his veins.
"If I ever smiled in class, no one in class would take me seriously," you remind him, lips traveling across his collar.
"They're idiots," Keys sighs.
You lift your head from his chest, moving to be face to face again so you can quickly peck his lips. You smile sweetly as you pull away, lifting your hand to brush a stray hair from his forehead.
"So are you."
With your lips capturing his in another bruising kiss, Keys's hands grow bolder, traveling from the sides of your breasts down to the flimsy tie that holds your sweatpants around your hips, only needing a slight tug to unravel the knot.
"Can't wait to see what Pokemon you have on your underwear," you jab.
Keys lets out a huff before he pulls your chest flush to his, grunting next to your ear. In a heartbeat, he has you underneath him, glasses slipping down his nose and arms caging you in on either side of your head. Your heart beats harder than it has all night, eyes owlish and unblinking from the sheer shock of his strength, given the heaviest thing you've ever seen him carry is his ridiculous messenger bag.
"No comeback?" He taunts, tilting his head a little.
You manage to finally blink, attempting a scoff that comes out more like a measly clearing of your throat.
"You're exhausting," you say, with a little shake of your head for good measure.
"You're pretty."
The dreamy sigh that dares to escape from you is swallowed by another long kiss, Keys's hand wandering down your body from where it cupped your cheek to tug at the waistband of your sweats again, finally in the right position to tug them down. You're completely bare underneath him, thighs shifting together nervously as Keys sits back on his heels, eyes all moony again at the sight of you. He doesn't even look down at his jeans as he unbuttons them, clumsily pulling them down, leaving him in his boxer briefs. Much to your disappointment, they're just grey. You pull your lips into your mouth, biting back the giggle that threatens to escape at his lack of finesse, not that you anticipated much suaveness from him in the first place.
"You're," he breathes, kneeling between your thighs again. "I-I don't have anything stupid to say, you're so gorgeous."
"Really?" You muse, sitting up on your elbows. "I managed to silence Walter McKey. I'm taking that as a compliment of the highest caliber."
"But you are," he whines, settling on top of you again as he eagerly goes for a kiss, hand stroking tenderly at your side. You welcome his lips gladly, moaning as his tongue starts to slide against yours. Keys lowers his body further, nudging the tip of his nearly bare cock against your clit, puffy and aching for attention. His hips roll again, sending a deep and needed pulse of pleasure from your cunt to your belly, a little swell of warmth starting to build. You tap his chest a few times, needing to get out a breath, and a few (embarrassing) words. He pulls away, looking back at you eagerly.
"Despite what all of the losers in our courses like to say about me when they don't think I can hear, I haven't had sex in like, almost a year," you clarify, eyes trained on him to ensure he absorbs every word. "Disappointingly, I'm actually exactly like you guys, and I spend 99% of my Friday nights at my desk. I am under an insane amount of stress, and I feel insane for saying this to you, but I need to get fucked, Keys. At this point, you owe me that much."
He nods a little, all too eager and clearly from a place of understanding.
"It's been a while for me too," he agrees. "I'll try my best to last, really, I promise."
"You better."
The boxer briefs come off, and you no longer have the strength to pretend not to ogle. Keys is obnoxiously hung, veins prominent from the stiffness of his erection, pink tip curving upward towards his tummy, already glossy from drips of pre-cum. The hair that was teased by his happy trail is there, neatly trimmed for a guy in his demographic. You lick your lips. His cheeks go ruddy again as his weight settles on top of you again, hips slotted between your thighs, cock heavy on your lower stomach.
"See something you like?" He taunts.
"What did I say about shutting up?" Your arms wind around his shoulders, a hand traveling into the soft hair at the back of his head as you kiss him. Keys leans onto one elbow, his now free hand wrapping around the base of his cock, teasing up and down your cunt for a moment before he pushes in. The stretch is all pleasure, the curve of his cock fitting perfectly against the walls of your cunt, tip kissing just the right spot inside of you.
"Fuck," you moan, fingers digging into his shoulder as his hips grow closer to yours, cock filling you with unbelievable satisfaction. Keys lets out a precious whine as he bottoms out, head falling to your shoulder. The lenses of his glasses are cool against your skin, and probably smudging in a way that would send him spiraling under any other circumstances.
"You good?" You breathe, fingers giving his hair a gentle tug.
"Please be quiet, or I'll ruin this," he begs, voice muffled by your soft skin. "I-shit, I need a second. You feel so good."
The quip dies on your tongue as soon as it rises, and you opt instead to release the hold in your fingers, gently brushing through the strands as he adjusts. He needs this as bad as you do, after all. Keys's shoulders rise, the frame growing a little broader as he tries to calm himself down with a deep breath. He releases the air shakily against your neck, punctuating it with a kiss before his hips start rolling—slight, experimental movements to test how much he can handle.
Even with the tiniest of movements, the sheer size of him is enough to have you squirming beneath him, the warmth in your belly starting to pool even deeper, needing more motion, another kiss, something. His arms brace either side of your head, the veins in his forearms growing more prominent as he tries to keep his composure.
"I was promised a fucking," you remind him, pushing his slipping glasses up his nose with a single finger on the bridge, just as you had seen him do a thousand times.
"You can have it now or you can have it longer," Keys chides, giving another roll of his hips
"Come on, pretty boy," you taunt. "You've got good stamina for coding marathons, let's see if you succeed in other categories."
"I don't like losing," he says, finally pulling out a little more before he slides back in, a wet desperate sound from your cunt giving your true desperation away.
"Then pull it together."
Your hands fly up to his cheeks, pulling him down roughly for a kiss, disrupted by the sudden snap of his hips against yours, finally thrusting into you with his entire length.
"Shit-' you gasp,
"What, too much for you now?"
"I can't stand you," you say, voice shallow from the sudden fullness.
"Whatever you need to tell yourself," he grunts, leaning back with hands gripping onto the tops of your thighs hard, giving the right leverage for his cock to piston in and out of you at just the right rhythm.
Your orgasm starts to build embarrassingly fast, the months of last minute solo orgasms under your duvet right before you manage to sleep never quite scratching the itch that sits inside of you. The room suddenly fills with all manner of filthy sounds—the wetness of your cunt weeping at the pleasure, the slap of his hips meeting yours, desperate sounds tumbling from both of your mouths, chasing and rushing toward a once elusive satisfactory orgasm.
"Keys, baby, I'm-" you pant against his mouth, heels starting to dig against the mattress as the tightness in your belly becomes more and more taut, the once low heat now rushing hot throughout your whole body as your high comes closer and closer.
"Me too," Keys whines, the thrusts starting to stutter a little as his own orgasm creeps up on him. "Can I-fuck, um, inside?"
You nod frantically, thighs trembling as your walls start to pulse around his cock, tightness finally snapping and washing over you. Every nerve, synapse, and vein in your body filling with the pleasure you've been denied for too long. No thoughts about assets or source code rushing in you, no breaths stuttering from anxiety, just pure warmth that buzzes satisfyingly under your skin.
The high absorbs so much of your focus that you don't even notice Keys is flying on the same cloud, glasses finally dropping from his face and onto the mattress as his cock twitches against your spent walls, warmth pooling in you again from just how much cum he releases. Guess it really has been a while.
Keys's lips press to your shoulder before he lifts his head, thumb brushing at your cheekbone sweetly before he kisses your lips, a wordless thank you. He kisses again, easing the ache of him starting to pull out, releasing a little drop of your combined arousal.
"Do you have, like, tissues, or?" Keys asks, a hand fumbling next to the both of you for his glasses. You glance over and spot them, giving the lenses a wipe on the pillowcase before sliding them onto his face. He blinks a few times, smiling at the view of you beneath him, finally clear and in focus.
"Yeah," you let out, laughing softly. "In the middle drawer of the nightstand."
Keys stumbles onto his feet to pull on his underwear again, retrieving the little pack of on-the-go Kleenex before he sits on the side of the bed. He eases your thighs open sweetly, wiping the mess from your cunt as gently as he can, his other hand gently stroking your knee as you whine a little at the contact.
"I can get you clean clothes," he offers, wrapping the tissue in a clean one, then tossing it in the wastebasket next to your dresser. He points to the drawers. "Which one?"
"I'm good with just underwear," you say softly. "The top one on the left."
Keys pulls on the front, digging a little before he finds something that makes him chuckle—a pair of blue panties, covered in little red Autobot logo heads, TRANSFORMERS stitched obnoxiously loud all around the waistband.
"Those are a joke," you stutter out. "My friend Valerie, she gets me these joke gifts-"
"Is this why you haven't hooked up in so long?" Keys teases, sliding the panties up your legs as your face grows warm, arms crossing over your still bare chest. "You've been saving yourself for Optimus Prime?"
"No," you insist sharply. "I'm not a robot fucker, Keys. I have some pride."
"And yet here I am," he says, more endeared than smug as he slides into bed next to you, arms wrapping around you from behind, chest snug and comforting against your back. His lips press to the crown of your head before he tucks it under his chin.
Your eyes flutter shut with more ease than they have in months, sleep gently pulling you under as Keys never ceases the gentle stroke of his hand up and down your bicep, each brush helping to silence the usual nightly stew in the previous day's worries.
You sleep with more ease than you would ever expect with Keys's arms wrapped around you, his knees tucked too perfectly against the backs of yours until you start to stir around three a.m., turning over as your hand wanders lazily toward the side he was sleeping on. Except for you, the sheets are empty, and pool around your still naked hips as you sit up, wiping your eyes to get your bearings a little. He left, you realize as an unwelcome pang of disappointment fills your chest. He stuck around to hold you. Told you that you were beautiful. You thought about something other than programming for the first time in months because of him. And he left.
He didn't need to stay, you remind yourself, cringing at the coolness of the floor under your feet as you get out of bed. He didn't need to stay, over and over as you pull on sleep shorts and a sweatshirt. And it was true, what you and Keys had done was a mere exchange of services. A very passionate, satisfying exchange, but it didn't have to mean anything. It shouldn't. So what is the feeling swimming in your stomach right now? Not exactly regret, you did enjoy yourself, after all. Disappointment? A little closer, but not quite. Maybe a drink of water will help. Your mind is races against your heart so hard, so desperate for a single, logical answer that you don't even notice you've stepped over his jeans, still crumpled on your bedroom floor.
Keys has been sitting on the bench in front of your living room window for around an hour. He can't remember the last time he did something other than code or sleep for an hour straight, but right now, the hum of the night traffic and glow of the Boston skyline in the distance is more entertaining than any game he's played in months. Thankfully, he's the first thing you see when you step into the hallway, smiling softly with his head gently laid against the glass and one leg propped up, only in his boxers and those stupid, wonderful Tetris socks.
"You stayed," you say softly, more of a voiced thought than an attempt to start conversation.
Keys's face turns from the view out of the window to you, slight smile growing wider at the sight of you. He takes his glasses from the windowsill and puts them back on, gesturing with a relaxed hand for you to come closer.
"Did you think I was going to leave?" He asks, moving his legs from the bench to make room for you to sit, and you sink down across from him, knees tucked to your chest.
"You didn't have to stay," you shrug, picking at a loose thread on your sweatshirt cuff. "That was kind of…intense."
"It was," he agrees, his voice a little breathy with soft laughter. "I stuck around because I wanted to."
"I'm glad you did."
"Me too," Keys says, sitting up a little more. "I also realized that I'm long overdue to say something to you."
Your head tilts a little, eyebrows furrowing and signaling him to continue.
"I'm really sorry," he says sincerely. "I've been so wrapped up in trying to prove myself that I forgot you were just trying to do the same, and for you, it's a lot harder. You put up with so much shit from the guys in the program, and too much of it has been from me. And I didn't do it because you're the only girl there, I promise. It came from this awful, ugly jealousy because I didn't want to accept the truth."
A slow, grateful tear slips down your cheek as you look at him, all wide, earnest eyes and dimples impressed to his cheeks with the way he's frowning a little. You accepted a long time ago that you would never get an apology for the way you've been treated. Judgment and criticism is part of the career, Dr. Howell would say, as dismissive of your feelings as he was of the whining that came from your peers because ultimately, to him and to them, they were the same.
It's been such a long stretch of surviving—pretending you don't hear the whispering, trying to sift through whose opinions actually matter—you were starting to forget that it wasn't supposed to be like this at all. To finally hear someone say they're sorry for being apart of that pulls tears from you that you've neglected to shed for too long. You're glad they were still there, though. In your world of perfectly orchestrated numbers and impossible expectations, you were grateful for any reminder that you were still human.
"And what is the truth?" You ask, sniffling softly and wiping your cheeks with your sleeve.
Keys sighs.
"That you're better," he confesses, pushing his glasses up. "Better than all of us. And I think you always have been."
"You mean that?" You ask, voice wobbling.
"I do," Keys says, shifting a little closer to you. His hand reaches forward and softly clasps your ankle, thumb brushing from your ankle bone to your calf. "You know me, I don't say things just to say them. I'm envious of you."
"You should be," you say, letting out a watery laugh that sets Keys off too, his dimples reappearing as he chuckles with you. "Apparently I'm the best developer in my program."
"I mean it," he says, reaching to wipe the last of your tears with a brush of his knuckles. "You're good, but you're also, like, a real person. You go out, and you have so many friends. You're better than all of us without being a shut in."
"You don't have many friends?"
"Not good ones," Keys says, shrugging a little. "I don't like the guys in the program either, so I hang out with some other CompSci people, but they aren't great. They're…weirdly elitist about game design, like it's not serious work."
"That's tough," you console. "I'm lucky to have friends that pull me away from my computer."
"Maybe I'm lucky to have a friend like that now?" He asks, cheeks flushing a little.
A little giggle that you can't suppress escapes you, endeared and amused at his shyness—nervous at the thought of being friends despite the fact that you guys fucked mere hours ago, and that he was still in front of you in only his underwear.
"Yeah," you say softly. "That sounds good to me."
"I'm ready to have friends that are nice to me," Keys confesses, his own voice catching a little around the sadness in his throat.
"I'm sorry I smacked the shit out of you," you say, looking down at your lap bashfully. "That wasn't very nice."
"No, don't be," he insists, with a little dismissive wave of his hand. "I've had it coming to for a while. It was pretty hot, too."
You share another laugh with him, the shake of his freckled shoulders and wrinkle of his nose filling your chest with a long needed ease and warmth.
"The industry has been overrun by people like me for way too long," Keys muses, offering his hand with an upward palm to you, and you accept it gladly, melting at the way his thumb slides affectionately across your knuckles. "This world needs people like you, really. I can't wait to see what you make."
"You're not bad yourself, Mr. Robot," you say through a smile, gently squeezing his hand. "You made me this mad for a reason, you're good at what you do. I wouldn't mind having you look at my projects."
Keys laughs again, a little shy as his chin tips towards his chest for a moment.
"As long as I get a spot in the 'Special Thanks' once the credits roll."
His eyes meet yours again—warm, and soft, and eager for the chance at a place in your future. A future he's known would be bright as long as he's know you.
"Deal."
author's note: SMACK CAM!!! Thank you so so so much for reading :) I feel like I say this every time, but this may actually be my favorite fic I've written so far. Thank you Maya and Cat for sharing brain waves with me <3 as always, I would love to hear your thoughts! MWAH
⋆˚꩜｡pairing: eddie munson x fem!reader
⋆˚꩜｡summary: You know that TikTok trend where you call your partner a "friend" to see their reaction? Yeah… Eddie wasn't too happy about that
⋆˚꩜｡tags/tw: explicit sexual content 18+minors do not interact | no y/n, afab!fem!reader, modern!eddie, est. relationship, oral (f!receiving), unprotected p in v, multiple orgasms, squirting, praise?, soft!dom!eddie, possessive language (non toxic), aftercare, weed mention
⋆˚꩜｡word count: 3.9k+
⋆˚꩜｡a/n: based on this request i got! thank you @theswitch-witch for giving me the idea thehee<3
One of the things you loved most about Eddie was that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about social media.
It was mainly because Wayne raised him right. Eddie had grown up learning to play guitar and spending most of his time playing outside or at the library. He was sixteen when he got his first fancy phone; before that, he’d carried around an old brick of a cell phone that had once belonged to his uncle. Safe to say, he’d never really bought into the whole social media thing.
Sure, he had an instagram account. He barely used it himself, but he loved seeing the pictures you posted — the ones he’d taken of you — and he never failed to leave embarrassingly sweet and suggestive comments underneath them that made even your best friends blush.
Another thing you absolutely loved about Eddie was that he was possessive.
Not in a toxic way. Eddie never tried to control you or excessively claim you, nor did he treat you like you were anything less than your own independent person. He never isolated you from your friends or questioned where you were every second of the day.
He was possessive in the way that he never missed an opportunity to remind everyone that he belonged to you. He’d proudly walk around with the hickeys and scratches you’d left him, grinning smugly whenever someone pointed them out with a dubious look.
“Courtesy of my princess,” he’d say without a single ounce of shame.
You were his favourite subject, how could you not be? Eddie could spend hours talking about you. He could write ridiculous, overly dramatic sonnets about your laugh and the way your nose scrunched whenever something genuinely amused you. He could probably design an entire comic series inspired by the way your hair danced in the wind. Hell, he’d tattoo your fucking name across his neck if you asked him to.
That’s how hopelessly, ridiculously obsessed and possessive he was with you.
Which was exactly why, the moment you stumbled across the trend on TikTok, you knew you had to try it on him.
The calling your boyfriend your ‘friend’ trend.
It was stupid, and it was evil, and it was going to drive Eddie absolutely fucking insane.
Even though he didn’t care much for TikTok, or any other platform for that matter, Eddie always jumped at the chance to do whatever random thing you wanted.
“What are we doing again?”
“Uh…” you mumbled, balancing your phone on the kitchen counter. “There’s this viral…”
Taking a few steps back, you gently pulled Eddie by the wrist until he was standing beside you, squinting at the screen to check whether the lighting was good enough. Scrunching your nose, you gave his wrist another little tug when you noticed he’d drifted just outside the frame.
“Stay right here,” you instructed. “Do not move.”
Turning around, you walked over to the fridge, grabbed the light blue can, and returned to his side.
“There’s this viral beverage I wanted to try.”
“…And you wanted to get that on camera?” he asked quietly, the words carrying just the slightest hint of hesitation.
“Uh, yeah. Pretty much.”
You placed the can on the counter and shot him a sweet smile over your shoulder.
Eddie simply shrugged, nodding as though your explanation made perfect sense. “Alright. Whatever you want, sweetheart.”
“Ready?”
“I guess.”
With one smooth swipe, you switched your phone from photo to video, started the timer, and hurried back into place. You gave Eddie one last tug when he instinctively stepped out of frame again.
“Hey, guys!” you greeted brightly once the recording started, smiling at the camera as you reached forwards to grab the can. “I’m here with my friend Eddie today.”
Beside you, Eddie — who had been smiling awkwardly at the camera ever since you’d hit record — immediately stopped smiling.
“And today we’re gonna try the new Spindrift drink!”
You had to bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from laughing when you noticed Eddie turning his face towards you.
“What—”
Before he could finish, you held the can towards the camera as though clinking it against the screen before turning back to him.
“You wanna go first, bud?” you asked as you popped the tab up and broke the lid open.
Eddie, who had been staring at you with wide, uncertain brown eyes, slowly turned to look at your phone like he was a character on The Office.
For a long second, he simply stared at the screen. His gaze drifted down to the pretty light blue dress you’d put on — somehow the exact same shade as the can in your hand — before slowly lifting back to meet your eyes.
“…What the fuck?” The words came out equal parts confused and unamused.
“What do you mean?” you asked, furrowing your eyebrows as you continued holding the can out for him to take.
“Bud?” His nose wrinkled as though the word itself left a bad taste in his mouth. “Friend?”
“…Uh, yeah,” you replied slowly, tilting your head in practiced confusion. “What?”
“What do you mean, what?” His eyebrows remained knitted together as the corners of his mouth slowly turned down. “Did I… did I do something?”
“We’re literally just trying this drink.” You let out a small laugh, pulling a face as though he’d just said the most ridiculous thing imaginable. “Why are you acting weird?”
“Me? Acting weird?” Eddie repeated, hesitantly lifting a hand to scratch at his jaw. “You just… called me your friend.”
“Uh, yeah?” you scoffed. “What’s the big deal?”
“The big…” He blinked at you, looking completely lost. “Sweetheart, why do you keep calling me your friend?”
“Because you are?”
“No, I’m not.” Eddie shook his head, sounding almost offended by the suggestion. “I’m your boyfriend.”
“Exactly.” You nodded matter-of-factly. “My boy,” you paused dramatically, “friend.”
The second the last word left your mouth, a tiny snort escaped. Your hand flew up to cover your mouth as you hastily disguised it with a cough, praying Eddie hadn’t noticed.
But he had.
The longer you looked at him, the harder it became to keep the act going.
Eddie’s bewildered expression slowly gave way to suspicion as he watched your nose scrunch behind your hand, your shoulders beginning to shake with poorly concealed laughter.
“…You’re bullshitting me.”
Eddie rested his hands on his hips like an exhausted father of three and turned his head towards the phone. His teeth found his lower lip as he worried it beneath them for a moment before slowly looking back at you, one eyebrow raised in complete disbelief.
“Friend,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “I’m gonna show you fucking friend.”
He stared at you for another long second before finally reaching over and taking the can from your hand, setting it carefully back down on the counter.
Before you had a chance to react, he reached for your phone, tapping the bright red button to stop the recording.
Eddie left your phone exactly where it was before slowly turning back to face you. The look he gave you was one you knew all too well; you rarely got to see it, which only made it all the more memorable.
His eyebrows were drawn together, his lips pressed into a thin line of annoyance as he tilted his head back just slightly.
“You know…” he began slowly, dragging the tip of his tongue across his lower lip before continuing. “You’re real fucking funny, sweetheart.”
“Eds—”
He barely gave you a second to react before scooping you up into his arms and effortlessly throwing you over his shoulder.
“Maybe we should show your TikTok followers what I’m about to do to you, huh?”
You watched the black-and-white checkered kitchen floor slowly disappear beneath you as Eddie carried you out of the room.
“Eddie, what are you—”
“I’m gonna show you what a great friend I am,” he scoffed.
As if to prove his point that he was the furthest thing from being your friend — like you needed the reminder — he gave your ass a hard slap as he stepped into the hallway leading to your shared bedroom.
A startled shriek escaped you at the sudden sting of his palm, and you immediately began squirming in his hold, hoping to convince him to put you back — but no such luck, unfortunately. Eddie merely tightened his grip around your legs, a low, humourless chuckle rumbling from his chest as he nudged the bedroom door open with his socked foot.
He swiftly pushed the bedroom door shut behind the two of you with the heel of his foot before taking a few slow steps towards the bed — the fresh linens perfectly made from earlier that morning, when you’d changed them.
Carelessly, Eddie lowered you onto the mattress, letting you bounce lightly against it before straightening back up. He dragged a hand through his hair, pushing his unruly curls away from his face as he stood at the foot of the bed, broad shoulders filling the space with an almost unfair amount of confidence.
“I’m not your buddy,” he said, his voice low as you pushed yourself upright. “And I’m not your friend either.”
“Eddie, baby,” you began with a small, sheepish smile, tilting your head to one side. “It was just a—”
“I’m your boyfriend,” he interrupted without missing a beat. “But I guess you need a little reminder of that, hm?”
“I-I though you were gonna show me—”
“And I think you’ve said enough already, hm?” he scoffed.
Eddie didn’t miss a beat before making his way over to the vintage dresser the two of you’d found in that little antique shop a few weeks ago.
“Last time I checked,” he began slowly, dragging the tip of his finger across the worn wooden surface, “you didn’t share this fucking dresser with Robin.”
Another chuckle escaped him. Dry and amused this time, despite the mischievous glimmer dancing in his eyes that gave away just how much fun he was actually having.
“And all that talk about adopting a ferret together?” He held up two fingers as he continued listening off his evidence. “Sorry, sweetheart, but adopting an animal isn’t exactly something you do with your friends. Not usually.”
Leaning back against the dresser, Eddie folded his arms across his chest and looked at you with a cocky grin stretching across his face.
“You know what else isn’t something friends do?” He arched an eyebrow, though the look in his eyes made it clear he wasn’t actually expecting an answer. “The three orgasms I’m about to give you, just to prove my point.”
“T-three?” you gulped. “I’ve never—”
“Exactly.” He nodded slowly, the smug grin tugging wider at the corners of his mouth. “One orgasm for each time you called me something I’m not.”
Eddie uncrossed his arms, resting them against the dresser behind him as his fingers lazily drummed against the worn wooden surface, his eyes never once leaving you.
The baby blue dress looked painfully good on you. It hugged your waist in all the right places, and the neckline…
Jesus.
It drove Eddie nearly as insane as the little stunt you’d pulled in the kitchen not even five minutes earlier.
His dark brown eyes wandered slowly over your face before drifting down the length of your body, lingering for just a moment before finding yours again.
Pushing himself away from the dresser, he closed the distance between you with slow, unhurried steps. The mattress dipped beneath his weight as he climbed onto the bed, both hands sinking into the duvet on either side of you until his nose barely brushed yours.
Eddie looked at you through his lashes, a smug grin slowly spreading across his plush lips as he watched your own part ever so slightly.
“What?” he murmured. “Cat got your tongue, sweetheart?”
A quiet chuckle escaped him before he leaned in, pressing a slow, gentle kiss to your lips. He lingered there for a long moment, savouring it, before finally pulling away and settling back onto his heels.
Eddie’s hand lazily curled around the neckline of his black t-shirt, peeling it off without the slightest hint of urgency.
You swallowed as your attention was immediately pulled away from his eyes and towards the tattooed expanse of his chest, busier now than it had been when the two of you had started dating. Your gaze lingered on the newest addition to his collection — a neo-traditional raven inked along the right side of his stomach.
“Eyes up here, sweetheart,” he murmured, a teasing smile tugging at his lips as he gently tipped your chin back up with the crook of a finger.
Without caring where it landed, Eddie tossed the shirt over his shoulder before stepping back from the bed. Standing once again at the foot of the mattress, his fingers slowly trailed down the planes of his stomach until they reached the button of his jeans.
“The dress stays on,” he said quietly.
He undid the button, tugged the zipper down, and let the worn denim fall to the floor with a muted thud.
Eddie’s knees sank back into the mattress, making the bedframe creak underneath his weight. He reached out for your thighs, slowly running his hands up and down your legs until, finally, trailing his fingertips higher until they skimmed the lace trim of your panties. Hooking his fingers into the lace, he slowly dragged your panties down your legs, exposing your glistening folds to his dark brown eyes.
He hummed appreciatively as his fingers ghosted along your slick folds, marvelling at how wet you were for him already.
Leaning down, he captured your mouth in a slow kiss, his tongue swiping across your lower lip as he took his sweet time to taste and explore your mouth like he always did when he wanted to torture you. Eddie swallowed your low gasp, relishing in the soft sounds that escaped you.
Breaking away, Eddie blazed a trail of open-mouthed kisses down the column of your throat, pausing to lave attention on your pulse points as he nibbled right above your collarbone.
Eddie trailed kisses down your chest, making sure to skip your hardened nipples under the soft fabric of your dress, until his face finally hovered above your aching core. Being the obsessed freak that he was, he breathed in your heady scent before shooting you a smug grin.
“Hold on tight, sweetheart.” He placed a soft, lingering kiss on the inside of your thigh as he reached for one of your hands. He gave you a gentle squeeze before placing your hand on the back of his head. “Because I’ll not be going easy on you.”
With an arched, daring eyebrow, he plunged in, tongue delving deep into your slick heat. He lapped and sucked, worshiping you with lips and teeth and tongue until you were a trembling mess, falling backwards until your head hit the pillows behind you.
Your hips bucked involuntarily at the sudden feeling of Eddie sealing his mouth over your swollen clit, flicking the sensitive bundle of nerves rapidly with the tip of his tongue as he slowly plunged a thick finger knuckle-deep into your tight pussy. He pumped and curled his digit, stroking your slick walls until you were fluttering around him.
“A-ah! F-fuck, Eddie—”
He sucked harder on your clit, adding a second finger into you as he thrusted them faster and deeper until you’re shattering with a broken gasp, your release gushing over his chin as he worked you through the aftershocks.
Holding your gaze, Eddie slid his fingers out of you and pushed them into his mouth. His tongue lapped eagerly at them, licking them clean, while his eyebrows furrowed in pleasure at the way you tasted.
After licking his digits clean, he pulled the top part of your dress down until the fabric sat underneath your breasts. Cupping your boobs, he thumbed your hardened nipples teasingly. Eddie’s dark brown eyes locked onto yours as he slowly rolled one hardened nipple between his thumb and forefinger, tugging harshly. It made pleasure zing straight to your core, making you squirm underneath him. He lavished the same attention to your other nipple, pinching and tweaking it until he had you begging for more.
“P-please, Eds—”
“As you wish, sweetheart.”
Reaching between your bodies, Eddie pushed his boxers down just enough to free his aching length. The sight of his cock made your mouth water every single time — long, thick mushroom tip, and painfully pink.
He notched the broad tip of his cock against your slit, teasing and probing before sinking into your slick pussy with one powerful thrust.
“Is this what a friend does to you? Huh?” He chuckled darkly as he looked down at you. “C’mon, sweetheart. Answer me.”
“Hmm.” Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as you bit your lip. “N-no.”
He could swear you were molten silk clutching him tight, stroking his length with each desperate roll of his hips as you met his thrusts.
Eddie pistoned his hips faster, harder, burying himself to the hilt again and again. The room filled with the sound of skin slapping skin, breathy pants and bitten-off curses.
“F-fuck.”
“C’mon, sweetheart. Gimme another one,” He punctuated each word with a sharp snap of his hips, chasing your second release like his life depended on it. “Be a good fucking friend and come on my cock.”
“H-harder, Eds. P-please.”
The desperate, broken plea spurred him on. He grabbed your hips bruisingly tight as he drove into you with ruthless precision, angling to hit that special spot deep inside that always made you scream. The obscene slap of his balls against your ass echoed through the room, while his curly pubes brushing against your swollen clit pulled desperate gasps from your lips.
Your fingers curled into his hair, nails scraping against his scalp before you pulled at his roots, while your other hand raked down his sweat-slicked back. Your leg locked around his waist, heel digging into the plush fat of his ass as you urged him impossibly closer.
“You’re so fucking tight f’me, baby,” he growled, voice wrecked.
“E-Eds, I’m g-gonna—”
Your release crashed over you, white-hot and blinding as you clenched down hard on his aching cock. Your walls puled around him as he continued grinning wolfishly at your open mouth and glassy eyes.
He leaned down to capture your lips in a messy, desperate kiss. Eddie slipped his tongue inside your mouth, bobbing his head as he sloppily sucked on your tongue.
“That’s it, baby,” he rasped. “Just one more, you can do it. I know you can.”
“I-I can’t, Eds,” you whimpered, desperately licking your lips to get rid of the dry feeling. “P-please—”
Eddie trailed open-mouthed kisses along your jaw, down the column of your throat, suckling at your pulse points hard enough to leave marks.
He grabbed at your hips, guiding you to meet each roll with a grind of his own. His breathing was strained as his hips worked feverishly now, chasing that high. Curving one hand around to rub tight circles on your clit, Eddie doubled his efforts, determined to tip you over the edge and watch you fall apart on his cock, crying his name.
Sweat slicked your straining bodies as he plunged into your sloppy heat over and over. The wet squelch of your messy cunt, the lewd slap of flesh, your needy cries — it’s almost too much, even for Eddie.
“That’s it, baby. Soak my fucking cock.” He rasped desperately, fingers flying over your throbbing clit.
Eddie could tell you were close, pussy clenching hard around him, thighs trembling around his pistoning hips.
With a final twist of his wrist, he sent you over the edge with a high pitched, broken moan that somewhat resembled his name. Your pussy fluttered and gushed around him, soaking his thighs with a hot and unexpected jet, clenching so hard on his cock you milked him for all he’s worth.
“Ed-Ed— Fuckfuckfuck.” Your head was tilted back, neck on display and mouth wide open. “Mmpff!”
“Jesus— F-fucking take it,” he gasped, nuzzling into your neck to sink his teeth into your skin.
With stuttering hips, Eddie’s rhythm faltered as the feeling of your squirting pussy drenching him, unravelling the last thread of his control. With one last moan, he buried himself to the hilts pulsing and shuddering as he filled you up, painting your greedy pussy in that addicting sticky, milky white.
Eddie pushed himself up just enough for his gaze to drift lazily to where the two of you were connected, his tired, wide eyes settling on the mess you’d made of the fresh linens, like he’d just witnessed a miracle.
The sight drew a slow grin to his face. He caught his lower lip between his teeth before a quiet, satisfied chuckle escaped him. Reaching up, he gently tapped two fingers against your cheek before letting his hand cradle your face, his thumb brushing softly over your skin as he tipped your chin back towards him.
“So,” he murmured, his fingertips pressing ever so slightly into your cheeks. “Who am I?”
You blinked your eyes open, still dazed, your tongue sweeping absently across your lower lip before you managed a sleepy, satisfied smile.
“M-my boyfriend.”
A smug smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Damn right I am.”
Neither of you spoke much after that. You simply stayed tangled together, basking in each other’s warmth while your breathing gradually slowed and your racing heart settled back into its familiar rhythm.
After a while, Eddie wrapped his arms around you and drew the two of you a warm, well-deserved bath.
He settled into the tub first before gently pulling you back against him, your back resting flush against his chest. One arm stayed securely around your waist while the other slowly worked your favourite soap into a rich lather, his touch gentle as he washed over your arms.
“I love you,” you murmured, resting your head against his shoulder.
“I love you more, sweetheart,” Eddie replied, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your cheek. “But do not ever call me your friend again.”
A giggle escaped you as you nodded. “Deal.”
Some hours later, after Eddie had helped you into one of his oversized t-shirts and patiently combed the tangles from your hair, the two of you found yourselves curled up on the couch, you lazily scrolling through the comments on your TikTok while he started working on a joint.
He’d frowned when you’d told him you were posting it, though the look quickly faded once you explained that the trend was about getting your partner’s reaction — not trying the can of sparkling water that was still sitting forgotten on the kitchen counter.
Eddie, who normally didn’t give a rat’s ass about social media beyond hyping you up in the comments of your Instagram posts, had eventually let his curiosity get the better of him. Leaning over your shoulder, he stretched his neck to get a look at your phone.
Congratulations on your pregnancy girl!
oh, she’s exactly where she wants to be
I’m gonna show you fucking friend???? HELLO???
You couldn’t help the snort that escaped you, while Eddie merely blinked confused at the phone in your hand.
“…Pregnancy?”
“It’s a TikTok thing, babe.”
He frowned a little harder before reading the next comment.
“‘The way he looked at her after she said ‘my boy… friend’, girl I would have folded IMMEDIATELY’.”
A smug grin spread across Eddie’s face as he turned to look at you, a quiet scoff escaping him while hr raised his eyebrows in triumph.
“See? The internet agrees with me.”
You rolled your eyes, though the smile tugging at your lips betrayed you.
Eddie simply looked back down at his hands, carefully finishing the joint he’d promised to roll while the two of you soaked in the bath.
“Shut up.”
A soft chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Make me, sweetheart.”
(10) Bitch to Me Briar: Now I've got you in my space, I won't let go of you
John Logan x fem!reader
Summary: The day of the fundraiser and the week before the end of the semester both you and Logan can safely say you can enter the new year with a clear conscious and a little bit more love
Warnings: final chapter is here!!! slightest bit of angst, FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF
Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist
Previous Part
It was almost the end of the semester and both you and Logan had big events coming up. One was the much anticipated fashion show and the other was the fundraiser.
The past few weeks have been nothing but pure joy as you and Logan used those excuses to spend as much time with one another. In the beginning you were worried that you were being too clingy and losing your independence but Logan was really good at respecting boundaries. You had a good schedule where you mostly did your own thing during the early week. Logan had practice and you started writing for the school publication. But once it was Thursday you two were always all over each other.
Today you were chilling in your dorm which was a nice change from the hockey house. No smelly guys to interrupt your couple time.
“I need to shave,” Logan sighed from your bed, as you were finishing up an article.
You turned from your desk, tilting your head to give him a good look. There was a slight shadow of stubble growing but Logan wore it well. It was moments like this that you couldn’t believe that this man was your boyfriend. Boyfriend! That was a term you were also getting used to.
“Oh this is my,” your voice trailed off, trying to figure out how to introduce Logan to Katie’s mom at pick up.
“That’s her boyfriend,” Katie said.
“Yup I’m her boyfriend,” Logan confirmed.
Katie’s mom gushed at the two of you as you waved goodbye and overheard Katie talking about how she knew the two of you were dating the entire time. Logan grinned and gave your waist a squeeze as he directed the two of you to the car.
“Boyfriend huh?” you asked, a little bit shy.
Obviously you wanted him to be his girlfriend and based on the way the two of you were acting it seemed to be that way. But you also knew Logan’s past of no labels with other girls. Even though you were confident that this was something different you didn’t want to be the first to ask.
“I prefer the title future husband,” Logan teased, making you roll your eyes, “Of course I’m your boyfriend. Are you okay with being my girlfriend cause I’ve already told everyone.”
You laughed and pulled him in for a kiss.
“Sounds good to me.”
“I think it looks fine,” you said, shutting down your computer and making your way towards the bed.
“So should I grow a full beard then,” he asked, outstretching his arms for you to settle next to him.
“I did not say that,” you huffed, laying on your side to face him. Your hand came up to cup his cheek feeling the coarse hair tickle your palm, “But this looks nice.”
“Noted,” he hummed, turning his head to press a kiss to your palm, “Article all finished?”
“Yup! Hopefully it gets less than a hundred edits but that’s wishful thinking,” you sighed, settling your head on his chest.
“Can’t wait to read it babe,” Logan said, stroking your arm.
His praise made you blush, focusing your attention on the fabric of his hoodie. Even though you’ve been seeing each other for months now, you still hadn’t gotten used to the fact Logan’s loud personality would translate to his romantic life. You did love it, even though most of his complements had you groaning and hiding your face from him.
“You excited for this weekend?” he hummed.
Friday afternoon was the fashion show and Saturday night was the fundraiser. So a weekend filled with Logan.
“Are you excited? Mr. Model.”
“You know if this is what it takes to keep you as my girlfriend then yes I am excited. And I’m excited for the fundraiser.”
“Can’t believe the semester is basically over,” you sighed, playing with his hoodie string, “It went by so fast.”
“Maybe for you,” Logan huffed, “Felt like years trying to make you mine.”
“You are so dramatic,” you teased, playfully pinching his bicep.
He squeezed you tighter, making you laugh. Then Logan decided to press kisses all over your forehead, his stubble tickling your skin as you squirmed in his hold.
“I’ll be ok though,” he hummed, “Cause now I got forever with you.”
–
Friday came and John Logan was looking a bit too eager to pick you up from your dorm considering in less than two hours he’d be changing out of his scruffy jeans for a matching leopard set.
You and the girls were hauling the bins of clothing and accessories to the front when Logan came rushing up.
“I got it pretty,” Logan said, easily lifting two the bins that had you and Amy huffing and puffing earlier, “Garrett’s on his way to pick up Allie and Hannah.”
You and Amy had convinced most of your friends to model the kid’s clothing although the rest of the hockey guys said they rather just watch from the stands. Except Dean of course who he and Allie were sporting a cute couple’s set that one of the kids made.
“Maybe I need to get a boyfriend just for the free manual labor,” Amy huffed, wiping her brow.
You let out a laugh watching Logan load the car, muscles flexing underneath his cotton tee.
“I can’t even lie to you, it is nice,” you admitted.
“Well tell Logan to tell his football friend to lock in.”
“Oh this is new!” you exclaimed, “You and Beau.”
“It’s nothing. We just exchanged numbers the other night at Malone’s,” Amy said.
“Oh my gosh I can't with you,” you teased, “You know he’s coming to this right?”
Amy gave you a look before saying, “Thank god I opted to wear Stacey’s two-piece set. That girl could actually be a fashion designer.”
You let out a laugh as Logan came back ready to take another batch of boxes.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Amy said quickly.
You gave Logan a look that read I’ll tell you later which he gave an understanding nod. He was an even bigger fiend for gossip than you were, and you used to be Briar Bitch.
Soon Garrett arrived and everything was all packed into the cars. You Amy piled into Logan’s truck as you had a bet on who would get to the school first, Logan or Garrett.
The actual setup was pure chaos. The parents were slowly arriving with their respective kids in hand. The kids were bouncing around eager to see their clothes actually in the flesh. Amy made a big deal and had assigned seatings to make the kids feel special while you were in the dressing room making sure all your friends were in the proper clothes.
“I need this kid to seriously be my stylist,” Hannah said, putting on the flowy blouse made by eight year old Matthew.
“Speak for yourself. Not that I’m hating on a kid, we just have very different tastes,” Allie grumbled in her bright orange dress. Dean just laughed, admiring his matching jumpsuit.
“Logan come out buddy,” Dean teased, knocking on one of the stalls, “I wanna see that cheetah.”
“Fuck off Dean,” Logan called back.
“Come on Logan,” you pleaded.
At the sound of your voice, he unlocked the door to reveal a very eccentric suit. It took 0.2 seconds before everyone started bursting into laughter.
“Oh it’s even better than I imagined,” Dean said through tears, “The rest of the guys are not going to be ready for this.”
That only upset Logan, getting ready to step back in the dressing room until you put a hand on his shoulder.
“You look cute,” you giggled, “The pattern really compliments your eyes.”
Logan pulled you into a hug, shooting daggers at the rest of your friends, mumbling into your hair something about Katie being evil and him being hopelessly devoted to you.
“Why didn’t we get the couple outfits,” Logan said, looking at what Dean and Allie were wearing.
“Cause we weren’t a couple when you agreed,” you shrugged making him tickle your sides.
“You are really evil,” Logan declared, he took a moment to glance down at your own outfit, “And you also look really good babe. Who designed this dress?”
“Katie,” you said, looking down at the very pretty sequined dress on your body.
Logan let out a defeated sigh.
Soon enough it was showtime. Amy hooked up her phone for the runway music the group of you pretended you were strutting down Milan fashion week. The parents clapped and laughed seeing their kid’s designs while the children cheered and watched in awe. Katie literally screamed when she saw Logan in her suit, forcing her mom to take a photo.
Afterwards, you and Amy had all the kids come onto the stage and bow like they were real fashion designers which ended up in a standing ovation. The parents thanked and congratulated you and Amy on your hard work through the term. They all had come together to give each of you a very generous gift card to the fancy restaurant.
He immediately changed out of the suit which you couldn’t blame him for. The group had dispersed as you and Logan wanted an early night for the event that was tomorrow. You gawked at Amy who was chatting up Beau at the end of the show and she gave you a wink over her shoulder as Beau led her to his own car.
For a moment it was just you, Hannah, Logan and Garrett in the parking lot chatting about the event. Logan’s eyes flicked to Hannah as she was gushing about the little kid’s talents as you remembered long ago that gaze could’ve met something different. But now with Logan’s hands firmly planted on your hipbone, and plans of a movie night with just the two of you, that old thought made you laugh. You said your goodbyes to Hannah and Garrett as they had plans for a concert later. Logan turned back to you and gave you a quick peck on the lips as if he couldn’t help himself.
“Guess next dinner date night is on me,” you teased holding up your gift card, as Logan swung his arm around you.
“You deserve it,” Logan said, “Never seen 10 year olds so happy.”
“Well I did employ America’s top models. I caught some of the mom’s checking you out even in that ridiculous suit.”
“Jealous baby?”
“Hardly. I will say your ass looked great in those pants.”
Logan pressed a kiss to your temple with a chuckle.
“You can tease me all you want gorgeous,” Logan said, “Just know I’ll be wearing that exact outfit when you’re walking down the aisle getting ready to marry me.”
–
Thank god Saturday was a bit more chill than Friday. Mostly because your only responsibility was that you had the bookstore gift cards and made sure Logan at least ate something. Your boss was nice enough to let you work a half day shift at the bookstore so as soon as you were off the clock you headed to Malone’s to find your friends in a frenzy.
“I brought Thai food,” you announced, holding up bags of takeout.
“Oh you’re the best,” Allie immediately ditching her task and bounced over to you.
Everyone else followed as the group of you took over a table, everyone but the man of the hour.
“He’s on the phone outside,” Garrett said through a mouth full of pad thai.
You gave a nod, excusing yourself to find Logan.
Sure enough there he was, running a hand through his hair clearly stressed.
“Please take care of yourself,” he sighed, “Listen to the people there.”
It must be about his mom. You slowly approached him, tapping him on the shoulder. He flinched slightly at the action but eyes immediately softened when they found yours. He gave a hum to whoever was on the other end as you wrapped an arm around your shoulders pulling you into his chest.
“Yeah,” he said, and then looking down at you, “I love you too.”
The words sounded heavy as he hung up the phone and pulled you tighter against him.
“Everything alright,” you asked, voiced muffled by your face being pressed against his soft hoodie.
“Yeah everything is fine,” he said.
You pulled away slightly to search his eyes to see if he was lying. There was still some tension in his body.
“It was my mom. Just calling rehab,” he shrugged, “Sounds like she’s doing better. I’ll probably go visit her once classes are done.”
“That’s good news?”
“Yeah it’s good. Really good, just a lot to process,” he said, a bit more confident now, “Everything is good.”
“Okay I’m glad,” you smiled.
You let yourself stay in each other’s embrace for a moment, hearing the soft beating of his heart. Being in a relationship meant being there for one another, so you would stay out despite your stomach growling just to make sure he was fine. His breath tickled the top of your head as he slowly began to relax from the stress the day had brought down upon him.
“Do you want food?” you asked, “I got your favorite fried rice.”
“You are an angel,” Logan hummed, giving you a kiss.
In a blur the fundraiser was in full swing. They had Dean MCing while you and Logan organized the silent auction. Allie and Hannah were serving and Amy and Beau were supposed to be helping Garett and Tucker with extra donations but were too busy flirting with one another than actually talking to other guests.
“Hey,” Jules said, while you were busy counting up the bids.
This was the first time the two of you were actually alone. Every other time there were other people so you never actually got to discuss what happened.
“Hi?”
“Look I just wanted to properly apologize,” they looked around before continuing, “For you know what.”
“Oh,” you said, “It’s alright. I’m over it and I passed on the account.”
“Cool,” Jules nodded, “I feel like I need to explain myself. I think I was a little jealous you were able to garner that much attention without actually drawing attention to yourself. I feel like I’m always chasing a story for Fifth Line, never really handed one.”
You blinked at them and their confession.
“Oh well thanks for your apology,” you said, “And I’ll admit I do keep up Fifth Line.”
Jules just laughed and shook their head.
“Also thanks for giving Logan a second chance. You guys really worked well together.”
You looked over to where Logan was talking to some of the parents. His eyes flicked over to catch yours and he flashed you that beautiful smile that never failed to make your heart swoon.
“Yeah I guess we do.”
Hannah ended up winning the bookstore gift card prize which made you laugh. And Logan’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets seeing the winning bid amount for Bruin tickets Garett managed to negotiate for. Safe to say the night was a success.
In the chaos of laughing, drinking, and talking with all your friends, Logan asked to head outside with you to catch a breath of fresh air.
“You alright?” you asked, making sure the previous phone calls weren't still bothering him.
“Yeah it was just getting loud in there,” Logan hummed, “I wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh I’m all ears,” you smiled, “If it’s about your mom–”
“It’s not that,” Logan cut you off, wrapping an arm around your waist.
“Oh ok then what is it? You know I can’t give you hockey tips,” you said.
“I know,” he chuckled, “I was actually considering asking Briar Bitch but I remembered you still haven’t told me who runs the account.”
“It ruins the integrity babe,” you sighed, “Besides if we’re having relationship problems I’d like you to come to me first before asking a google form.”
Logan grinned and gave your forehead a kiss, “No not problems, just something that’s been on my mind about us. And fuck I guess I’m still struggling with now I’m with you here.”
“Ok…” you said, but Logan still stayed silent, “What if I pretended I was Briar Bitch? I’ll turn around and you can ‘anonymously’ ask me anything?”
“You’re a genius.”
He let go of you, entertaining the idea, and spun around so you were facing his back. You stared at his fluffy hair and wide back muscles as he let out a sigh.
“Dear Briar Bitch,” he began, “I’ve never been good at expressing my emotions but there’s this girl. Not even a girl, she's my girlfriend now which is crazy.”
“She’s the funniest and kindest person I have ever met. Giving me a second chance and all. But you know all of that. You also knew that my first message to you was claiming to be in love with someone even though now I know that wasn’t true and me being dramatic.”
You chuckled.
“Anways I’m asking your advice because this time around I truly do think I am in love with this girl. I’m in love with her wit, her smile, her passion for life. The way she teases me and has me wrapped around her finger. And even though I am whipped for her it’s for a good reason because she has never made me feel more seen in my life. So I want to tell her that I love her. I guess just even now I’m afraid because I’ve never felt such an intense vulnerable emotion. Please help a guy out. I love you.”
Logan let out a sigh while you touched your cheek realizing there were tears running down your face. Damn John Logan and his constant ability to be the most romantic person you ever met.
“Are you still there? Did I scare you away?” Logan panicked, spinning around.
His face softened at your teary expression as you let out your own confession.
“My only advice to you is to let yourself feel that love. Because I love you John Logan.”
Before anymore time was wasted, Logan reached out to pull you into a breathtaking kiss. Here you were kissing the man that loved you and loved back. And it was all because of one simple advice request.
A/N: Wow. Bitch to Me Briar is finally complete. I’m so shocked I actually finished it and even more shocked of how much love it’s gotten. Literally thank you to every single person who like, repost, comment it honestly kept me so motivated. I really hoped you enjoy this story. Ugh I literally love you all so freaking much ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
pairing: walter 'keys' mckey x female!co-worker!roommate!reader
summary: All great roommates have rules. You and Keys just have one. You can’t touch each other. But when your favorite fantasy show turns spicy, the couch suddenly feels too small, and some rules are meant to be broken...
tags: MDNI [smut] [roommates to lovers] [movie night] [accidentally watching a sex scene together] [no touching rule] [tension] [mutual masturbation] [panty licking] [spit play] [dirty talk] [flustered] [mutual pining] [literal idiots in love] [filthy fucking keys smut as promised] [cumshot on tits] 6k words
note from gray: This dialogue prompt was requested for my 3k follower special event multiple times, with you asking for both smutty and fluffy versions. Your wish is my command. Read the fluffy sister fic here! This goes out to my literal muse, @tellcherhesgone.
“You’re doing the thing again,” you say flatly from the couch, eyes still glued to the TV.
Your roommate, Keys, clears his throat behind you. “What thing?”
“The thing where you pretend you aren’t watching my show, but you totally are.”
“What?” he scoffs. “No, I’m…I’m just on my way to the kitchen…”
Ten seconds go by. When you don’t hear him move, you glance over your shoulder to see him still leaning on the doorframe, grey sweatpants hanging low on his hips, his white T-shirt rumpled under his crossed arms.
This is not the first time you’ve caught him pausing in the hallway, pretending not to be enamored by your favorite fantasy show, High Table.
You try not to notice how soft way his mussed brown hair looks the dim light of the living room, or the way his nerdy glasses reflect the castle on the screen.
You fail.
He’s chosen a great episode to watch tonight, though, because Princess Alice is about to have to choose between Prince Lincoln —who she’s supposed to marry for the sake of the kingdom— and the court Jester, Quinn, who has secretly stolen her heart.
But right now, you’re missing important dialogue because as you watch Keys’ lips part in shock at something happening on the screen, a warm feeling settles in your chest.
“Keys.” You pat the couch cushion next to you. “Sit down.”
He doesn’t even look at you.
“No, that’s okay,” he murmurs, distracted. “I’ll just…I’ll just head to my room. Got work to do. So....”
Music swells through your dark apartment, and you turn back to the show, afraid you’ll miss something.
Ten more seconds later, Keys is reaching a greedy hand into your popcorn bowl and kicking his socked feet up on the coffee table.
You smirk into your soda. The carbonation fizzes against your lips, and you will yourself not to get distracted by the way the couch dips as he sits next to you.
Seriously, your ab routine at the gym might need some work, because keeping yourself from falling into his side like he’s the new center of gravity feels a lot harder than it should…
“I’ve heard about this show,” Keys says.
You bend over to set your drink down. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, it’s up for some awards because of the fight scene choreography. And the historical features are supposedly really accurate, because they did the filming at—” He cuts himself off, glancing over at you sheepishly, but you just shoot him a knowing look.
His cheeks flush but he smiles, dragging the popcorn bowl into his lap
“…I’m just saying I’ve heard about it, okay?”
You settle back into the couch with a smirk. “Nerd.”
On the screen, Alice races down a castle corridor, her voluptuous dress bunched in her hands, red hair streaming behind her as she checks over her shoulder. Then, you and Keys gasp in unison as she yanks a sword from the wall with a metal clang and brandishes it against her own guards.
An intense action scene ensues, and you’re both so engrossed in the suspense that neither of you notice how close you’ve shifted towards the other. And when you reach for another handful of popcorn, Keys follows suit without thinking.
The soft brush of his hand against yours sends heat streaking through your skin. A gasp catches in your throat and you spring back from him in surprise, while he almost loses the entire bowl of popcorn in his haste to get away.
“Shit—sorry, sorry!” Keys apologizes instantly. “That one was my bad. Sushi?”
You think for a second. “Yeah, sounds good.”
The two of you turn back to the show in unison, ignoring the quickening of your heartbeats, and the fresh awareness of exactly where the other person’s limbs are in proximity to your own.
Listen, every good roommate arrangement has rules.
Like, for example; whoever dirties a dish has to clean it. That’s a good rule. Or, having a schedule for taking out the trash, labels on fridge items, and sending a courtesy text when you have someone over.
But you and Keys only have one.
You can’t touch each other.
If you do—even accidentally—you have to pay for takeout the next day.
Simple. Easy. And very, very necessary.
It’s not so much the money that keeps the rule intact, but rather the reminder of why it’s there in the first place.
Because Keys isn’t just your roommate. He’s also your co-worker.
The two of you work from home for Soonami Studios, thanks to their not-so-recent office resizing. You were promised this would be a temporary thing, but Antwon—your egotistical, asshole of a boss—has never been one to stick to his promises.
Little does he know, it really is temporarily, because you and Keys have already started job hunting.
Oh—and the cherry on the fucking cake? There is a zero tolerance company policy at Soonami studios, outlawing romantic employee relationships. It’s an ancient rule, but Antwon certainly doesn’t care to revise it. He’s happy as a clam to sit in his throne room, filing his nails and making crude jokes about the secretary, or—whatever it is he does up there.
Which means that sharing an apartment and an office 24/7 with your absurdly cute co-worker makes upholding this policy…difficult, to say the least.
Especially after what happened last March—
“Look at me, Your Highness.” The Jester rasps, drawing your attention back to the show. His dark curls spill down around his shoulders as he gently takes the Princess’ face in his hands. You and Keys both hold your breath, watching as the camera pans to show the castle guards scattered across the candlelit castle floor, their bodies bloody and still.
Slowly, as Alice lifts her eyes to her forbidden lover’s, yours turn to Keys.
He sits forward on the couch, hair falling over his glasses as his fingers steeple under his chin. Watching the scene with a rapt attention you can’t help but find extremely endearing.
“You’ve never looked at me like one,” the Jester rasps, his lips inches from hers. “But I’d gladly be your fool. Forever. Just tell me what to do.”
“I don’t know what to do, Quinn,” Alice says, breathless. “All I know is that I’d tear this castle apart again and again to be yours. If you’ll have me.”
The orchestra track crescendoes as he dips his head at the same time she rises to meet him, and the sound of kissing fills the room.
Keys clears his throat. “Wow. That was—”
Then the music shifts. It turns into something deep and thready, spinning a tendril of heat up your spine.
You feel your eyes go wide as her back hits the wall on beat as the kiss deepens.
Tongue and teeth flash in the candlelight as Quinn captures Alice’s wrists in one hand and pins them to the stone above her head.
Keys shifts on the couch, causing the cushions to dip again and nearly dragging you into his orbit. Your abs flex with the effort to stay upright.
The camera pans down….down to his hands climbing up her gown, long fingers slipping up past the fabric and wrenching a desperate gasp from her.
“They’re gonna cut away,” you say, voice wavering with false confidence. “They always—”
The sound of ripping fabric covers your words, and your jaw drops as the Jester tears open the Princess’s bodice, spilling her tits onto the screen.
“…It’s not cutting away,” Keys mumbles.
“No, they will!” You clear your throat. “Just watch.”
The camera moves again, this time pulling back for a wide angle. It catches the way Quinn’s muscled forearm flexes as he makes a rhythmic motion beneath her skirt, causing her mouth to drop open on a silent scream.
You drop your eyes to your lap, barely resisting the urge to palm your flaming face. But in your new field of view, you see Keys’ big hand twitch against his crotch.
Surely, this isn’t getting to him. Maybe it’s just that…universal groin discomfort men seem to always experience at inconvenient times. Because, you know, balls and all that.
But then it happens again.
You hold perfectly still, watching from the corner of your eye as his fingers spread over his thigh and his palm dimples his grey sweatpants ever so slightly.
Suddenly, his gaze flicks over to you.
Your stomach flips and you avert your gaze, pretending to be very invested in what’s happening on the screen.
“Not here,” Alice moans, arching against Quinn.
His lips leave hers reluctantly, and her wrists slip from his grasp. With one cautious, desperate look around, she clutches her dress over her exposed breasts and catches his sleeve, pulling him toward her bedroom.
The two of you sit silently, chests barely moving with each breath as the lovers stumble through the castle walls. They barely make it through her chamber door before they’re making out again.
And as you watch them fall into each other’s arms with abandon, your thoughts can’t help but return to that fateful night in March.
You and Keys had found yourselves in the kitchen at the same time a little past midnight. He was standing in the light of the refrigerator when you rounded the corner, muttering something about not being able to sleep, and you came to a shocking halt as Keys pulled out his sacred pint of Häagen-Dazs from the freezer.
Now, you knew him by this point, so you understood what a monumental, once-in-a-lifetime offer this was. Keys sharing his ice cream? Unheard of.
Besides, who are you kidding, under no circumstances would you ever turn down some chocolate chocolate chip.
You perched yourself on the island as he grabbed two spoons before joining you, and the second the chilled sugar hit your tongue, a soft moan escaped you. He blinked over at you, and then his eyes dropped to your mouth where a drop of ice cream had rolled down the spoon and onto your chin.
You were utterly mortified but Keys just smiled and leaned in to wipe it away with his thumb. Which lead to you leaning in, too, and before you knew it, you were making out against the cold marble countertop at one a.m.
You both broke off abruptly, chests heaving, swearing you didn’t mean it. That you were both just…not thinking.
But then it happened again. In April.
You were coming home from a boring date, smelling like your perfume and wearing that shade of lipstick that Keys could never quite get out of his head. All it took was one accidental brush of his shoulder against yours in the dark hallway before his glasses were fogging up as your tongues tangled together, his back hitting the wall with a thunk.
It wasn’t long before you were groaning into each other’s mouths in frustration, hands fisted each other’s clothes as you realized you had to stop.
That night, the rule was born.
And, the rule is good. It keeps things orderly, somewhat manageable, and above all—strictly professional.
Even if it makes you want to claw your eyes out every time you see your roommate because he’s too fucking perfect and you can’t have him and—
“Is this turning you on?”
Keys’ voice jolts you out of your thoughts, and you whirl back into the room, suddenly very aware of how damp your panties are just from the memory of his mouth on yours.
You blink quickly, first at the screen, where Alice and Quinn have finally made it to her bed, then over at him before you realize he asked you a question.
“What? N-no?” you stammer.
“Oh. It’s just your breathing got all—It’s fine, if you are, I mean. You know, I just—” He rakes a hand through his hair and his eyes widen before he looks away. “Sorry.”
You open your mouth, then close it, then open it again.
“Why?” you ask. “Is this…doing something for you?”
“What? No.” He shakes his head. Then, shakes it again harder. “No, why would you think that?”
“Well, you’re the one who fuckin’ said it, Keys!”
“I was just checking on you, okay?” he defends. “C’mon, it’s not like—” He gestures towards the TV at the same time Quinn crawls down Alice’s body, dropping kisses down her creamy thighs before disappearing under her dress. “Jesus.”
Alice’s tits are back on display again, the dips and valleys of her breasts painted in the light from the fireplace as she arches off the bed, moaning at the feel of Quinn’s mouth between her legs.
Keys’ pupils grow wider under his glasses, and his Adam’s apple bobs on a swallow.
You gasp. “Keys, you’re really into it!”
He gestures wildly towards the TV, rolling his eyes. “Oh. Okay. What am I supposed to do? Not look at the screen?”
Truth is, the need for him to look at you like that is burying itself deep between your hips, sharp and hot, making it hard to breathe. But you can’t say that, so you just…keep watching.
The two of them have moved further up the bed. Quinn’s spread out across the pillows while Alice brackets his waist with her knees. It cuts to a close-up shot of her locket dangling against her bare chest as she lowers her hips down. Though the camera doesn’t pan any lower, it’s pretty obvious she’s riding his dick from the way her head rolls back in pleasure, sending her red hair cascading down her back.
This new position reduces them to nothing but a gasping, growling, pawing mess of hungry mouths and limbs, and suddenly, your soft T-shirt and sleep shorts feel swelteringly tight.
The candle on the window sill felt like a cozy, atmospheric choice an hour ago, but now it feels downright sensual as the flame dances in the dark window overlooking the city far below.
Looking at it now, you can’t help but remember the first time you saw that candle.
When your previous roommate spontaneously married her boyfriend and moved out days before you were about to renew your lease, you had to find a new place to live and fast. You were talking to your friend Ria about it at work when suddenly, Walter McKeys interrupted with an offer.
You hardly knew the guy, but apparently, his best friend, “Mouser”, had just moved out thanks to a job change, and Keys needed a roommate to split the rent.
Now, you’re ashamed of the initial judgements you made on the bachelor pad. Days old takeout containers, a suspiciously stained couch, beds without headboards. The usual.
But, when you entered the spotless high-rise apartment for the first time, and found Keys in the kitchen, lighting a candle with the words teakwood and amber on the side, you realized you had severely misjudged your new roomy.
He was trying to make a good impression, that much was obvious. And you could tell he was nervous.
Because when you stepped into the kitchen with your bags, smiling at him softly, he gestured toward the candle and launched into an unprompted dissertation on why soy wax was the best, and that you should definitely buy candles with wood wicks, because they made a crackling sound akin to a real fireplace.
Now, that stuttering crackle is the only thing you can hear besides your own heartbeat whooshing in your ears, and the sounds of sex happening from the TV.
Suddenly, it all begins to feel like a bit too much.
Your shirt is tight against your hard nipples, and Keys has a pillow over his lap to hide the erection you’re pretending not to notice, and their moans are so fucking loud—
“God, how long is this scene?” Keys murmurs breathlessly.
Something about that desperation in his voice has you launching out of your seat to grab the remote off the coffee table. Embarrassment sends a flush up your neck, and your fingers tremble as you fumble for the skip button.
“Yeah, no, I can—” you chuckle breathlessly. “Let’s just...”
The TV screen goes black.
Oh. Shit. You didn’t mean to press the power button! You were just tying to fast forward! Should you turn it back on? No. God, no! The silence threatens to suffocate you. Except for the crackling wood wick.
Damn, that candle is loud.
Keys swallows hard beside you. “Well…goodnight.”
“Yeah,” you breathe. “Night.”
Neither of you move.
Keys’ knees widen ever so slightly as he goes to take the pillow off his lap, but seems to think better of it at the last second. You itch to tease him for it, but you can’t, because your panties are sticking to your wet cunt, your clit throbbing with a heavy ache you haven’t felt since April.
And it’s not from the fucking sex scene.
“Keys—” His name leaves your lips before you can stop it.
In the dim candlelight, his chest rises and falls under his T-shirt, and a stray lock of hair falls into his eyes as he glances over at you.
“Yeah?”
He’s looking at you so earnestly from behind his glasses. Like he’d do literally anything you asked him to right now, but more than anything, he just wants to listen.
“What if…?” Your eyes drop to your lap. “N-never mind.”
“No, what were you going to say?” he urges, and his voice has this eager, desperate edge to it that you absolutely cannot think about right now.
You shake your head. “It’s nothing. Seriously, just forget I said anything—”
“I mean, what else are we going to do?” Keys interrupts, then huffs a laugh that gets caught in his throat. “Go back to our rooms right now and pretend like we can’t hear each other getting off? Tell me.”
Oh, shit.
So he could hear you, too? God, it’s been torture listening to his uneven breathing though the thin wall. The slick sounds of him stroking his cock late at night. Those quiet groans that escape him when he thinks you’re asleep.
That one time you swore he said your name…
Heat rushes to your cheeks, but you shift to relieve some pressure on your aching clit just as his hand slips under the pillow on his lap, and your elbows bump together.
The contact forces both of you apart like lightning struck the couch cushions.
Keys rakes a hand through his hair, clutching the pillow to his groin like a fucking shield.
He clambers backwards into the other side of the couch while you shuffle in the opposite direction until your lower back hits the arm rest.
Both of you stare at each other, barely breathing.
All it would take is one of you walking out for all this to come to a screeching halt, but neither of you even glances toward the doorway.
“Okay, wait,” Keys says, “Let’s just…take a second here and think. Because what if…” His eyes catch yours and a shiver rolls through you. “What if we don’t break the rule?”
You watch his lips part, listen to his soft exhale— like he surprised himself by even saying that out loud—while your heart beats out of your chest. You know what he’s suggesting.
You’re just two friends who got horny from a sex scene, right? Right. Two friends who have made out twice in the past and swore they wouldn’t again, but, you know.
Semantics.
“We probably shouldn’t…” you breathe. But even as the words leave your lips, your finger twitches against the waistband of your sleep shorts.
His tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip, eyes dropping to your clothed cunt. “Yeah, you’re right….we shouldn’t…”
Your knees fall open slowly—one resting against the couch, while your other leg dangles comfortably off the cushions. Then, under his watchful gaze, your hand hesitantly pushes past your waistband.
“No, no, keep going. I mean—only if you want to, of course. But it’s hot. It’s really hot.” He swallows. “You’re really hot.”
A warm feeling settles in your gut at his words, and suddenly, you want nothing more than to see what you do to him. Your finger isn’t even to your clit yet, but just his eyes on you has it pulsing with your heartbeat.
He lets out a shaky exhale, and his fingers close around the orange throw pillow. God, you’ve never noticed how big his hands are before.
Have they always been that—? Oh, shit.
He pulls the pillow off his lap, giving you a stunning view of his erection pressing against his grey sweatpants.
Nevermind about the hands, now that is big.
Even from across the couch, you can see his waistband gaping from stomach, the thick tip pushing it away from his happy trail.
“Take it out,” you say.
Your cheeks burn from embarrassment at your eagerness, but you hardly feel the sting of shame anymore. Not when he’s right here, so close to you, looking like he’s been just as consumed by you as you’ve been with him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” you pant, eyes locked on where his hand inches closer to his cock. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that, right? We’re not touching.”
“Yeah,” he lets out a stuttering breath as he squeezes his length through his pants. “Yeah, okay.”
As you watch him from under heavy lids, he pushes his sweatpants down, taking his underwear with them, and his flushed cock lands against his stomach with a soft plop. It sits heavy against the course trail of hair leading down, and your tongue twirls against your teeth, aching to run over it. Your fingers finally circle your clit, and the rush of pleasure makes you lightheaded.
“You lied to me, you know,” he rasps.
You watch as his big hand wraps around his dick…and half of it still sticks out above his fingers. He gives it one long stroke that has your back arching instinctually against the couch’s arm rest.
You blink up over him, mind hazy. “W-wait, what?”
There’s a teasing look in his eye, even as he strokes himself in front of you. “It was turning you on, you just couldn’t admit it.”
Oh. The show. You’d almost forgotten about it.
“I mean, sure, it was hot…I guess,” you stutter, face burning. “But Keys, you were sitting so close, and I—”
“Yeah, I know,” he groans, eyes dropping to your hard nipples pushing at your shirt. “Trust me. I know.”
A part of you has wondered what it would look like—all this tension between you finally hitting a breaking point and boiling over.
Apparently, it looks like this.
Watching each other masturbate on opposite ends of the couch.
Your panties stick to your folds, hot and wet against your knuckles and Keys watches your teeth sink into your bottom lip as you press tight, hard circles against your clit under the fabric.
“God, this isn’t fair, though,” he grunts. “You still have your shorts on, and I’m—” His hips grind up into his hand and he pushes his glasses higher on his nose in agitation. “Fuck—let me see you. Please?”
You’re powerless when he starts begging.
With trembling fingers, you dig your thumbs under your waistband and slide both your shorts and your panties down your thighs, exposing your glistening cunt to his gaze.
He groans, like this sight is actually hurting him. “Look at you, you’re so wet. I really…fuck, I really want to touch you. I mean, I really…” He swallows hard, and his eyes snag on the pink panties still dangling from your fingers. “Toss those over.”
You blink. “What?”
Keys can barely form words, too busy looking at that damp spot where your arousal soaked through the fabric.
“Please?” he begs. “I know I can’t touch you, but…fuck, I can taste you, right? That’s allowed?”
Your mouth parts in surprise, a shaky inhale caught in your throat. You never suspected Keys to be like this. Desperate, and eager, and…downright needy.
You’re not exactly sure what makes you decide to toss them over, the pink lace landing in a small heap over his knee. Maybe you just want to see how far you can take this rule of yours. How much you can get away with.
His big palm envelops the fabric instantly, and he drags it up to his face. A shaky inhale catches in your throat as he breathes you in, his lashes fluttering shut with a moan. Then his mouth parts, his tongue flicks over the damp spot. And all of a sudden, all you can picture is his tongue doing the same thing to your cunt.
That silky, wet heat exploring you in that curious, but earnest way of his. Searching for those spots that make your thighs clench around his head, inevitably turning you into a writhing, moaning mess underneath him.
“God, you taste so good.” His head falls back on a groan as pre-cum beads at his slit. “I’ve thought about you so much. Thought about what it would be like to—” His jaw ticks, and he hesitates.
“Talking isn’t against the rule,” you remind him breathlessly.
“Okay, okay, fine,” he groans, stomach muscles clenching under his shirt. “Every time we pass each other in the hall, I want to kiss you. I really want to kiss you again. And I want you to curl your hands in my hair like you did that one night while you…” he swallows hard. “While you ride me in my bed.”
“I want that too,” you gasp, and the ache between your hips turns ravenous, sharp claws of need digging into you, leaving you red-faced and moaning.
Your breath shudders as you watch his thighs fall open a little more. His cock twitches in his hand and your lashes threaten to slip shut just thinking about how badly you want to choke on it for him.
“You’re so gorgeous,” he mumbles. “You’re so fucking pretty, oh my god.”
“Keys,” you whine. Your hips buck up into your hand shamelessly, wishing it was his fingers circling your clit instead. They look so strong in the candlelight, the veins around his knuckles shifting with every stroke of his cock.
His Adam’s apple bobs on a swallow, and his eyes search your face. “I know, I know. You want me to help?”
You nod frantically, not even sure what you’re agreeing to, but Keys lets go of his dick to take off his sweatpants fully.
“What are you—” you start, but the sight of him shuffling forward and kneeling on the couch in front of you whisks all thoughts from your mind.
“Can I…” He swallows, brown eyes catching yours. “Can I help? I won’t touch you, I promise.”
“Yes” you whisper. “Please.”
Curious, your hand slows on your clit as he leans forward, elbows digging into the fabric couch, and oh—fuck. Now, his mouth is so close to you! He may have promised not to touch you, but suddenly, you want nothing more than to arch your back and close the distance,
Gently, and with a precision you would expect from your neat and tidy roommate, Keys purses his lips, and warm spit falls from his mouth—right onto your clit.
His breath ghosts over your throbbing cunt and you’re trembling with the effort it takes to hold yourself back from bucking up into his face, from making his plush lips hit your mound and slide all over your folds.
“Rub that in for me,” he commands, and you do what he says. Your heart thrashes in your chest as he remains there, panting. A stuttering exhale escapes him, his brown orbs pinned to your fingers. “Yeah—fuck, just like that. Does that feel good?”
Your thoughts collide and dissipate over and over again, too strung out on the idea of his mouth on you to even form a real thought.
“Mmhhmm.”
His chin tilts towards you, like his neck can’t support the weight of how desperately he wants to lick your pussy.
You whimper, eyes connecting with his. “N-nobody would know, right?”
He curses under his breath, hand twitching on the couch cushion, an inch from your thigh.
“If you got fired because I couldn’t keep my hands to myself, and ruin your chances at getting that job at Pixel? I’d never forgive myself.”
His words should serve as an icy reminder, dumping ice water all over your arousal, and putting some sense into you both. But, for some reason, the fact that he remembers the name of the studio you interviewed at recently, and cares so deeply about your future, just makes you burn even brighter for him.
You open your mouth, seconds away from begging him to touch you, but cold air rushes between your thighs as he retreats back into his side of the couch, taking his hard cock in his hand again. He murmurs something encouraging, but you barely hear it, too consumed by the deep ache in your core.
Something about this feels like crossing another line. Not one that breaks your rule, but one that shatters every wall you’ve put up between him and your heart.
The dirty, raw truth of it is that Walter McKeys is it for you.
He is.
You haven’t gone on a date in months, and you haven’t wanted to.
You’ve ‘accidentally’ let your fingers brush his more times than you can count, just so you’d have an excuse to eat dinner together.
Every pass of your thumb over your wet clit has tight tremors coursing through your hips, and when you dip your fingers inside your slick channel, your stomach jerks with a preemptive wave of pleasure.
“Oh, fuck, are you gonna come?” Keys pants. His hand speeds up on his dick, and his lids grow heavy as he watches you chase your climax. “Fuck yeah, baby. Come for me, pretty girl. Just like that. You’re doing so good—”
The praise sends you over the edge.
You cry out as the hot band finally snaps. Your walls pulse heavily around your fingers as your orgasm tears through you. Keys curses again, groaning as he watches you slowly stroke yourself through the aftershocks.
When your lashes finally lift and your gazes connect, he looks positively wrecked.
His hair is mussed, his glasses askew on his nose. His shirt is rumpled, stretched over his pecs and biceps, and his thighs are spread wide in front of him, his cock angry and red in his hand.
Suddenly, you start to feel a little sympathetic. He helped you, so he deserves a little help too. It’s only fair.
Slowly, you rise to your knees and strip off your shirt. He makes a choked sound as it falls beside the couch in a rumpled heap, leaving your breasts on full display in the candlelight. Your nipples are hard, aching for his touch.
Keys looks up at you, his hand slowing on his dick. But as you crawl towards him, his lip disappears between his teeth.
“Are you going to be good?” you whisper, rising onto your knees. Saliva pools in your mouth as you brace yourself over him, careful not to touch his skin.
“Shit—yeah, I’ll be good,” he pants. “I swear. I swear I won’t move, just—”
He cuts himself off with a stuttering grunt as you lean forward and let the spit fall from your lips, right onto the swollen head of his cock. Your saliva slides down his aching tip, gleaming in the dim light, and his hand starts up again instantly, smearing it up and down shaft.
“Fuck, yeah,” he grunts. “Oh, yeah, that’s—fuck, that’s so—you’re so—”
His head tips back at the warm, slick feeling of your spit, and the sound of him stroking himself sends another mind-numbing jolt of arousal through your spine.
“God, can I come on you?” His eyes drop to your chest. “On those pretty tits? Please?”
You nod eagerly and shuffle back against the couch, looking up at him.
“Lie back for me, okay?” he says. “Yeah, just like that. Don’t worry, I won’t touch you.”
Oh, but you wish he would.
Fuck the rule. It was so stupid to begin with.
His arm shoots out to hold himself up against the couch as he kneels over you and starts jerking off again, each pass of his palm making a shlick sound that has you throbbing again already.
God, how are you ever going to be able to sit on this couch again without thinking of him like this? The way his glasses fog up with every whimpering exhale, how his hips buck up into his hand when his eyes catch yours?
His lips part as his thighs lock up, his dick pulsing in his hand. You arch your back, an invitation in the candlelight. A canvas, just for him. His core flexes rhythmically under his shirt and he groans as his climax rolls through him. Hot ropes of come paint your stomach and tits, and before you know it, you’re face-to-face, panting into each other’s mouths.
Still not touching.
But when Keys lowers his head, his breath ghosting along your cheek, your lashes flutter shut, and—
A loud ding suddenly sounds through your apartment. You both startle, and his arm brushes yours in the process.
“Shit,” you mutter, scrambling for your phone on the coffee table and squinting at the screen. “It’s an email from Pixel.”
Keys ducks closer, eyes roving the screen in your hand. “What does it say?”
“‘We’re delighted to offer you a position at…’” you trail off. “Oh my God!”
“You got the job?”
You nod slowly, heart hammering in your throat. “I got the job!”
Both of you turn to each other, eyes wide and searching for all of two seconds before Keys reaches for you, and you reach for him, and before you know it, you’re kissing.
His lips are soft and warm against yours, and he’s smiling into your mouth, his nose brushing your cheek, glasses knocking into your closed lids. It’s a messy, breathless kiss, full of laughter and hands wandering everywhere.
“You know this means I can take you on a date, right?” He murmurs, not pulling back from you. “Tomorrow. No takeout this time. A real dinner, you and me.”
“Yeah,” your heart swells, and you smirk against his lips. “And remember, you’re buying.”
note from gray: here’s the fluffy sister fic if you want to read it! The inspiration for Quinn is from this mood board of jester!Eddie, thank you anon for participating in my 3k special event! you can also check out more headcannons for him here by @basicallydjo if you want! 🩶 (also, yes Quinn as in Joseph Quinn, and did you catch the song lyrics from Djo’s song ‘Fool’ in his dialogue? i know you did)
your thighs were bracketing the muscle of steve’s bicep, one hand on the headboard to balance and the other running through his hair from where he was laid down under you on the bed.
steve’s big brown eyes had been locked on the sight, watching you grind your soaked pussy against his bicep for awhile now, and it didn’t take long for him to feel the same arousal you did.
“just so desperate for it, aren’t you?” steve cooed. your fingers were tangled tightly in his thick chestnut hair, eyes squeezed shut as he teased you with the filth of his words. one hand was wrapped tightly around his red and aching cock, he stroked slowly. letting the pleasure build until it bordered on pain.
steve told you he “wasn’t gonna fuck you tonight”, he said that he’d been giving his arms so much attention when it came to working out.. that he wanted some appreciation for it.
that’s how you ended up a whimpering mess on top of his bicep.
“feels so good, you’re getting soooo big.” you whined out, panting slightly.
“i know it does, all this muscle for my girl to play with. just for my pretty girl to get all dizzy on” his voice was soft and teasing, hypnotic in a way that felt like degrading love story.
you could feel your breath quickening as the desperation for pleasure grew. the sounds of your pussy rubbing against the muscle of his bicep were right by steve’s ear, and it made his grip on his cock tighten.
steve made the prettiest noises when he was getting himself off, brows all furrowed with whines and whimpers leaving his lips as he attempted to bite down to trap them. his cock was angled over his soft tummy, pre-cum leaking all down his lower stomach and into his happy trail.
his hand was moving lazily, because steve’s pleasure was second to you coming apart on top of him.
steves arm flexed against your pussy, his hand gently rubbing at your lower back to feel the heat on your skin.
“can’t think straight, can you? jus rubbing all over my arm like a good girl.” steve groaned
“mmmmph, please…please, steve. i wanna cum.” you begged softly, your body beginning to tremble as you fought the overwhelming urge to let go completely against him.
“nuh-uh, not yet. want it to hurt real good, baby.”
tears of frustration and overstimulation began to build in your eyes, and steve was mesmerized with how beautiful you looked because of it. all overstimulated and messy on his arm, grinding down desperately on top of his firm muscle.
“yeaaah, isn’t that nice? just taking it, feel how good i make you feel.”
you nodded eagerly, he made you feel so fucking good. overstimulation was something you craved from him when he was like this.
a choked gasp left your mouth as steve flexed his bicep again, pushing his arm further up against you. your hips lost their rhythm, stuttering before you could force yourself back into the slow grind.
“just a little more. show me how good you can be for me, baby. okay?” steve looked desperate. his eyes wide and soft, locked on your face as it began to contort in waves of euphoria.
“mhmmm, anything for you. i can be so good” you moaned out, the pleasure becoming more unbearable than before as he leaned his head over to trail open mouthed wet and hot kisses on your thighs.
“you wanna soak my arm? hm?” steve pressed gently
you’d been waiting, patiently for him to ask “please, god yes, yes i want to cum all over your arm.”
“go on, baby. give it to me”
you felt your body immediately speed up on his arm, the slow grind switching to something more frantic as you finally let your body find its release. your legs were trembling, and it felt like sparks were shooting through your veins as you came all over his bicep.
steve helped you lower yourself back onto the bed from his arm, his large hands running over your skin and digging into your flesh before he shifted on top of you.
he moved slowly as he pressed his hard cock against you, feeling your body twitch and hearing you whine against his shoulder at the sudden stretch of his tip against your entrance.
“gonna take care of you, yeah? show you how big i am everywhere.”
-
♡ likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated. thank uu ♡
Written for week 2 of the @steddiemicrofic three-year anniversary challenge
Prompt: years, 444 words
Rated: T
Tags: No UD AU; Rockstar Eddie; Hairstylist Steve; Eddie is a horny shit; Confident Steve
The salon is called The Hair.
Eddie rolls his eyes at the pink sign.
“Didn't you say he was a genius? Doesn't extend to naming stuff, obviously.”
Gareth sighs. “He's the best stylist in town, and you're lucky he agreed to see you. Let's go, he doesn't like waiting.”
“The fuck?” Eddie sputters as Gareth drags him inside. “I'm a fucking rockstar, I'm never late. The show starts when I arrive.”
“Okay, Gandalf,” says a voice.
Eddie freezes. Because damn, that was a solid comeback.
Also because it came from the most gorgeous man he has seen in his life. Perfectly styled caramel hair. Cheekbones that look like they were carved from marble. He's regarding them with his hands on his hips, the seams of his pink polo straining against the muscles of his arms.
On Eddie, another seam strains. Further south.
“Eddie and Gareth, right?” says the man. There's a name stitched into his polo, in the same cursive font as the sign outside. Steve.
“That's us,” Gareth nods. “It'll be ten years since our first number one hit next week, and we have that big photoshoot.”
Steve, who has been dancing around Eddie, lifts a strand of frizzy curls between two fingers.
“His last haircut was around the same time, I guess?”
“Fuck you!” Eddie blurts. “I did cut it. Like three years ago. Also, the hair is my trademark.”
Steve gives him a look. “This isn't a trademark, it's a cry for help. Give me two hours.”
He's lucky he's hot, Eddie thinks. He'd never agree to this otherwise.
*
“Done,” Steve declares, swivelling the chair around so Eddie can look at himself in the mirror. “What do you say?”
Eddie doesn’t say anything. For one thing, he’s still weirdly floaty from the feeling of Steve’s hands in his hair, Steve’s fingers turning his head, Steve’s voice telling him to hold still or sit straighter.
For another, his jaw is currently on the floor.
Gareth puts down his magazine and whistles through his teeth.
“Amazing! It looks like his hair but … good!”
Steve smiles, spritzing Eddie’s curls with something smelling of citrus and herbs. The bottle says it’s for a glossy finish.
“One of my easiest exercises. You like it?”
“It’s not horrible,” Eddie concedes, standing from his chair and grabbing a grinning Gareth to pull him out of the shop. It’s the understatement of the century and they all know it. “Call our management about the bill, yeah?”
“Will do,” Steve promises. “Make sure to come by for a touch-up soon. Preferably sooner than ten years from now.”
Eddie guesses he will. Just because the guy is hot, obviously.
synopsis – it’s duet night at Malone’s and a random choice forces a unique meet-cute between you and Logan
warnings – FLUFF AND SO MUCH FUN, reader and Logan are basically Troy and Gabriella, reader can sing and loves karaoke, reader is referred to as she/her
note – this idea came to me on a plane while I was blasting the high school musical soundtrack. special shoutout to @lunatic--charm and @kiatjuddae for some ideas they both had that I added to this! enjoy!!! ♡
masterlist
✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧
Malone’s always had some unique events going on, tonight being no different. Rather than taking volunteers for karaoke, they decided to have fun some and do duet night - two people selected at random, singing a song of their choice. The concept excited you, getting up to sing with a stranger, having fun and entertaining the crowd.
Throughout the night, people were chosen, songs were sung, and a good time was had. Anticipation settles in your stomach, wondering if you'll get lucky enough to get picked. Before you know it, the spotlight choosing people lands on you, the other one landing on the opposite side of the bar where a group of guys and two girls were huddled around a bar top. Focusing more on getting up on stage, your friends cheer you on as you walk up, eager to start.
The mystery man ends up on stage next to you, nervously adjusting his letterman jacket as you glance up and down his frame. Tall, handsome, hopefully a good singer, as you wanted to put on the performance of a lifetime tonight. He must feel your eyes on him as he looks back at you. He's taken aback by your beauty and the confidence that seemed to radiate off of you. Once your eyes met, you gave him a small smile, him returning the smile.
“Alright you two, what are we singing?” the emcee asks. Before Logan can even butt in, you grab his arm, eyes widening slightly,
“I have an idea, do you trust me?”
“I just met you,” he chuckles, as you give his arm a reassuring squeeze, heading over to where the emcee was, whispering into their ear your song choice. Logan's curiosity got the best of him before the start of the song began, Logan instantly recognizing the piano keys, lyrics that he didn’t need popping up on the screen.
You rejoin him up on stage, both of you standing behind the mics sitting on the stands as you glance over at him.
"You know this one?" you ask, covering the mic with your hand. His answer doesn't come by talking, but by singing,
‘Living in my own world,
Didn’t understand…’
A smile graces your face as you look at him while he sings. The group he came from hoots and hollers, his friends evidently unaware of his singing abilities. Your eyes find the group, thinking it's sweet how he had the support from his friends. His voice was smooth like butter, hitting every note perfectly as you look back at him, baffled that this random choice brought someone like him to you. His part ends as you start.
‘I never believed in,
What I couldn’t see…’
He finds himself enamored as you sing, holding the mic with both hands as you look at him with a softness as you sing directly to him. An excited feeling settles in his stomach, hearing your beautiful voice. You both join in together, your voices harmonizing beautifully as the crowd claps and cheers,
‘I know that something has changed,
Never felt this way,
And right here tonight…’
You both start singing the chorus, the comfortability level between the two of you growing as Logan finds himself feeding off your energy, feeling himself relax seeing you so bright and confident on stage. Your bodies slowly angle towards each other, shy smiles finding each other as the tension of the moment grows stronger. Neither of you breaks eye contact until the second verse hits.
‘Now, who’d have ever thought that, mmm’
Logan faces his body back towards the crowd, taking his jacket off, tossing it to the side of the stage, clearly getting into character. You jokingly roll your eyes and fan him with both hands like he’s too hot (because he definitely is), as you laugh, joining him in singing,
‘We’d both be here tonight, oh, yeah,
And the world looks so much brighter (brighter, brighter),
Oh, with you by my side (by my side)’
Cheers radiate through the bar as you both continue singing, your on-stage chemistry undeniable. Yours and Logan’s friend groups watch you both smiling and laughing as you sing through the second verse, knowing something amazing was being created right in front of their eyes. The crowd can feel it too, the positive energy hyping everyone up even more.
As the bridge of the song comes up, you take the mic off the stand, Logan doing the same as he steps closer to you as he sings, both of you now facing each other,
‘I never knew that it could happen till it happened to me, oh yeah,’
‘I didn’t know it before, but now it’s easy to see, oh’
The crowd cheers loudly as you nail the high note, Logan’s harmonies blending once again with your voice. Singing through the last chorus, the crowd claps in beat with the music as you sing, both of you bopping to the music, singing directly to each other. Logan taking slow steps towards you as you continue to walk backwards.
‘I feel in my heart,
That it’s the start-‘
Losing your footing for a half second, you feel yourself about to fall backwards, before Logan’s arm wraps around you, hoisting you back up. You laugh lightly as neither of you lose rhythm or lyrics, singing straight through the almost accident. Logan eventually moves his hand from your back to your waist, before dropping it to his side, the action sending butterflies in your stomach. Logan now takes backwards steps, you walking forwards following him as the song reaches the end,
‘And now, looking in your eyes (looking in your eyes),
I feel in my heart (feel in my heart),’
The claps die down, the end of the song slowing down as you and Logan are back to center stage, standing still and singing to each other,
‘The start of something new,
The start of something new,
The start of something new’
The close proximity distracting you both from the crowd getting even louder, everyone on their feet – cheering, pumping fists in the air, clapping. Breaking the intense staring contest you both seemed to be having, you both look out to the crowd, seeing the joy in the room before looking back at each other, large smiles on your faces.
“Logan,” he says, introducing himself as he holds his hand out. You return the introduction, giving him your name and shaking his hand.
✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧
note – walk with me here, the concept of turning this into a mini series and every chapter is the title of a high school musical song🤭
summary - you work with steve at scoops ahoy, and after hours, instead of sampling some ice cream, he tastes you instead.
c/w - smut 18+, semi-public sex, oral f receiving, hair pulling, temperature play, choking, creampie, spanking, foodplay (ice cream), fwb/sneaking around, fucking at work, use of ice cream scoop inside v, p in v, unprotected sex, praise, light degradation
it was past nine, and steve was staring. the doors were closed, mall was empty, and his eyes were locked on the way your skirt rode up your thighs when you leaned over the counter to wipe it down. steve was inching closer, as he always did, before his tall frame leaned over you to take the rag away. he nuzzled his nose against the side of your neck.
“cmon. it’s clean, you’ve cleaned it like ten times already.” steve groaned, you could hear the desperation filling in his voice.
“okay.. okay, let’s just go to the back” you said with a small smile, he was irresistible.
“nuh-uh, want you out here this time. right here.”
“what if we get caught…” your head tilted back into him, letting his hands tighten on your hips as he pressed himself into you.
“no one’s coming, baby. malls closed. it’s just us.” steve whispered against your hair as you turned your head to capture his lips with yours.
it started slow and soft, his tongue gently colliding with yours as you made needy noises into eachothers mouths.
his hands were all over your hips, guiding you to bend over the front countertop next to the cash register. your palms were flat, and the position made your skirt ride up on the back of your thighs.
you could feel how hard he was when he’d press into you, trailing his fingers up and down your spine to push your hair to the side and run his hands under your uniform.
steve picked up the metal ice cream scoop that sat beside you, and brought the cold metal to the base of your neck. the temperature made you shiver as it traveled slowly down the line of your spine.
“mm, tell me. tell me what you’re gonna do with it.” you breathed out, pressing your face further into the counter.
“i’m gonna push it in your pussy, nice and slow. i want the cold to wake up every nerve that you have, then i wanna watch you clench on it before i get my mouth on you.”
his fingers hooked into your underwear before slowly pulling them down your thighs, letting them fall to the floor. his hands trailed back up your legs before he pplied a slight pressure against your entrance with the metal, the cold tip of the handle beginning to press into you. the feeling was so unfamiliar, and it had you arching your body up as you gasped for air.
he was watching every single second, mesmerized, and his breath hitching as he watched the way your body was responding for him.
“yeah.. like that.. you’re gonna drip for me, baby. then i’m gonna lick it all up, wanna taste you with the ice cream.”
you could feel your knees buckle as the handle pressed further. he was pulling the handle out, and pushing it in deeper each time. the stretch had you trembling on top of the counter.
“gonna make you cum like this. then i’ll replace it, with something.. warmer.”
your palms dug into the counter as he continued to teasingly thrust the handle in and out of you.
“warmer? yeah? keep talking, harrington.” you loved talking back at him.
steves thumb found your clit and he began rubbing small circles, pressing down hard as he continued to fuck you with the handle of the ice cream scoop.
“yeah, baby. my cock. can’t wait to fill you up, show you how warm and aching it is for you.”
his words sent sparks through you, electrifying every feeling. you and steve had been hooking up for pretty much all of summer, since you started at scoops ahoy at least. something about steves dick made him unforgettable and intensely desirable. he was huge. huge and he knew how to take advantage of it too. steve was easily the best sex you’d ever had, and the fact that it happened in the mall every time made it more thrilling to you.
you could feel your pussy clenching around the cold metal, drenching it as the pleasure built to an unbearable level. you couldn’t help yourself. your hips began moving in desperate circles, fucking yourself on it as steve continued toying with you.
“fuck, you’re so desperate. go on, take what you need.” his eyes were locked on where your hips were moving, your skirt rustling against the counter with every movement and your ass beginning to become exposed.
“come on, gorgeous. cum for me.”
your hips were stuttering and broken sounds were leaving your throat as your entire body shattered against the counter, soaking the handle just like steve had asked you to.
steve let your body ride out every last tremble and aftershock before he removed the scoop handle and left your side to dip his fingers inside of the vanilla ice cream bin.
before you could even process it or catch your breath, he was smearing the ice cream all over the inside of your thighs. the temperature shock made you flinch, pushing yourself further down onto the counter as you shivered.
his tongue followed the path of his fingers immediately, the warmth of it putting goosebumps on your skin as he licked a slow path up the inside of your thigh. he was groaning against your skin, his hands coming up to dig into the flesh of your thighs.
his mouth began to move, lips closing on the sensitive skin of the inside of your thigh. he was sucking, biting down and then soothing it over with his tongue.
“so fucking sweet.” he muttered against your skin. the second the ice cream was cleaned off your thighs he nudged your legs further apart, taking a breath of air before his tongue was fucking deep into your pussy. he was whining and groaning, his tongue moving desperately to clean you up.
you were sensitive, and overstimulated. each nerve screaming as he held you in place. his fingers would tighten on your skin each time you tried to squirm away from the feeling.
you felt your body reach another orgasm, trembling against steve’s face from where he was pressed against you before he stood back up slowly, his fingers still toying around with your wetness.
you could feel how hard he was from where he kept pressing into you to dry hump you, most of the time you could see it too. the blue thin shorts that scoops ahoy offered weren’t very helpful when you’d purposely rub against him in the cooler or bend over to pick something up, knowing he’d be watching the way your panties peek out just slightly.
you watched steve embarrass himself with random girls for approximately two weeks before you took initiative. there was no way someone as pretty as him was going an entire summer without any pussy, especially when you found out how eager he was when it came to eating.
steve’s hand came up to grip your hip, adjusting your body as he freed his hard pulsing cock, and began to nudge it against your entrance. steve had been hard for hours, probably since the start of his shift. he couldn’t help himself when it came to you.
“not gonna last long, baby. you’re too…” he whined as he continued to tease you, his cock throbbing against your skin. “you feel too good” he forced out.
“steve, please. fuck. just fuck me.” you were thrumming with need, your body aching to be filled with him.
he pushed into you slowly, your back arching up when his hips finally pressed against your ass. steve always began a slow rhythm, and it always turned frantic. his thrusts were desperate, full of the days pent up want and behaving.
each thrust jolted your body forward, the sound of his skin smacking against yours echoed in the empty ice cream shop. you could feel every inch of him hitting spots deep inside of you, your legs spreading wider to take him as deep as you could.
“my pretty sailor, bent over the counter you serve sundaes at to take my cock” you could hear the smirk in his tone. he got so cocky when he was using his dick.
steve’s hand moved from your hip to grasp at your hair, his fist wrapping around it and tugging it back.
“you like that, baby? getting fucked stupid when anyone could walk in? you’re so dirty for me.” his hips slammed into yours as he said it, your body jolting as your hands gripped the edge, your elbow bumping into the bell and causing it to ding over and over again.
“shut.. up.. steve” you gritted out in between moans.
“just want you to make me so bad” he whined. steve’s hand tightened in your hair, tugging it to expose more of your throat.
“but you can’t, and you know you can’t.” the next thing you felt was steve’s palm coming down on the skin of your ass that was exposed before he pushed your skirt up to your waist.
the sensation of his thrusts and his palm was making your head spin. steve’s hand rubbed over the skin he spanked, rubbing circles slowly while thrusting deeply inside of you.
“ohhhhmygod, steve.. you feel so good. baby.. you feel so good. ‘m so full.”
you heard him whimper before letting a deep moan out to cover it up, his hand left your ass to slide up your spine and over your neck, grasping onto your throat. his large fingers splayed across the skin as he began pressing into your pulse point.
each time his fingers pressed, you pushed further into him. pleading for more, for less, for everything. you wanted him to give you everything and ruin your body at the same time.
he was still rolling his hips against you, his cock branding you from the inside.
your head felt light, every sense you had focused on the feeling of his hand around your neck and his cock pushing into you and hitting spots you never thought imaginable.
each breath was a conscious effort that steve allowed, and the feeling of your pulse under his fingertips was making his body tremble. his hips were beginning to stutter, his breath quickening, and the muscles in his soft tummy clenching as he tried to hold back.
the force of steve’s release inside of you seemed to trigger your own, intense pleasure flooded through your entire body as your eyes rolled back. the stream of moans that fell from his lips made you smile. you could picture him. his brows furrowed together while his plump pink lips pouted just a bit. steve was always loud during sex, so needy. so eager.
steve’s body slumped on top of yours, his forehead resting on your back as he panted before sitting up to let you adjust. “oh god, that was so…”
you turned back to look at him, and he had the same goofy smile that he always did.
“some shift, huh?” he asked with a grin.
“you’re so annoying, you know that?”
he smiled softer and stepped closer, helping you adjust your skirt and fix your hair while you stood up.
“yeah? maybe you should shut me up again, then.”
“you’d like that. wouldn’t you?”
steve’s eyes got big and soft, he was so pretty when he begged.
“please. you know i would.” he whispered.
“maybe if you’re a not being a good boy tomorrow during our shift. you teased. you couldn’t wait to clock back in.
-
♡ likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated. thank uu ♡
a/n: kinda down to do more for this pair. leave suggestions in inbox if u have any ideas for scoops steve x coworker reader
➷(just an idea of what if you offered an alternative payment for the delivery guy. p in v sex, unprotected sex, back shots, ass slapping, fluff, cream pie (getting stuffed <33))
imagine kurt deciding to do food delivery alongside his spree rides. you order pizza after a long day and wait patiently, you're starving.
imagine when he arrives you don't have the cash on you and he's about to leave but you're sooo hungry and tired from the day you beg him to let you take the food. you dont know he's already willing to let you off because he's so enamoured with you already but you quickly offer to let him have his way with you...
imagine his eyes widening, he can't believe you're offering yourself to him like that... you must really be desperate. he is too, so desperate to touch you, fuck you, do anything to you, after all you said your body would be all his to use.
imagine eating pizza with him first, you don't want to food to get cold after all. he abandons the rest of his rides for the night, opting to talk and connect with you over pizza. he tells you all about his channel, you tell him all your wishes for your future.
imagine the second that you're done he's already on you, already hard. he's been hard since the second you offered yourself to him, cum already leaking through his shorts -you can feel the wet spot as grinds his hips against your ass.
imagine kurt bending you over your kitchen table, fucking you from behind, hard and fast and sloppy. your pussy is so wet for him, so puffy from his assault and he relentlessly drills into you.
imagine the sound of your creaking kitchen table as he quickens his pace, him whispering dirty, desperate thing into your ear from behind as his cock abuses your insides, this angle is just too good for the both of you.
imagine him leaning back, running his hands over your ass, softly squeezing it like he's kneading dough. he uses his thumbs to separate your ass and watch as his dick enters you, watches your pussy fluttering around his wet slippery cock. the sight is too much for him and he's crying out your praises, saying your pussy takes him so well, how your ass jiggles with each thrust.
imagine him smacking your ass, watching in desperation how it recoils under his palm as you cry out at the mix of pleasure and pain. he watches, obsessed at the sight of this. your ass red and swallowing him whole, your pussy wet around him, you bent over the table and it's all too much and he's cumming right inside you. you cry out at the feeling of his seed filling your insides, you gurgle his name, so fucked out it's the only thing on your mind.
imagine feeling so tired out from your long day and being thoroughly fucked from behind you let yourself lay there on the table for a while, his cum still leaking out of you, tired, babbling about how good he was to you.
imagine him softening at the sight, gathering you from the table and laying you down on your couch, covering you with a blankent. he's about to leave- this was only for a payment after all- but you grab him down with you. no way you let someone fuck you as good as he did and just let him walk away.
thank you for reading <3 if you liked it pls lmk if you want me to make this into a full story!
pairing: steve harrington x female!reader wc- 6.1k
summary: an all consuming situationship between you & “king” steve harrington.
c/w: porn with a plot 18+, smut, oral f receiving, possessiveness, king steve persona, insecurity, dom!steve, shy!reader, dirty talk, miscommunication, toxic relationship, angst, steve’s mean, some fluff.
You breathed in the scent of him that lingered on the pillow, a hungry gasp to trap the essence of him in your lungs for as long as you could. You curled around the pillow as you laid in the now empty bed, and your body ached in the places he had touched and marked in only places you could see.
Even as the hurt took root in your brain, other parts of you were buzzing in anticipation. You could remember everything, and you remembered the way he spoke. The way his voice became vulnerable when he asked if you wanted him.
You tried to tell yourself it was a lie, a beautiful addicting lie, but you knew how desperate you were to hear it again.
The rest of the weekend passed by in a blur of quiet and empty hours, loneliness seeping into your veins as you talked about nothing while on the phone with your friends and read romance books about a love you don’t know that you’ll ever find.
School felt different now that you were back from the weekend, you were holding a secret from everyone, a secret that was eating at you and making every nerve feel alive. It felt like there was two versions of you. The girl who was on the debate team and rarely spoke unless spoken to, and the girl who let Steve Harrington climb in her bedroom window to fuck her senseless before leaving before the sun could rise.
Steve continued to look untouchable at school, like he had no cares in the world, let alone a secret relationship that involved you. You weren’t sure if you could even consider what was happening with Steve a “relationship”. You’d never actually been in one, and from what you’d read and heard, this sounded nothing like the fairytale people talk about.
He was so good at playing the golden boy, so good at being the king every girl wanted a taste of. Every time you saw him, you were reminded of how you fell into this situation. He was effortlessly charming, yet somehow made himself seem vulnerable all at the same time. Steve wasn’t vulnerable with his feelings, but his eyes made him look like he was. The way they widened and softened when he wanted something, it would make anyone melt, and it did. He used it to his advantage.
It was five days after Steve spent the night that you found the note in your locker after lunch. There was no signature, but you could recognize his handwriting anywhere.
Stop looking so sad. It’s making me want to pull you in a closet right now. Meet me on the corner of your street. 8pm.
It wasn’t a love letter, it wasn’t even close, but the way he worded it made a smile slip on your face. All you could pay attention to was that he wanted to pull you into a closet, because you looked sad. It made you wonder if he was starting to care for you.
You knew deep down that he didn’t.
But that didn’t stop your brain from convincing itself that he did.
The note felt like a tease. It was a reminder that even when he was ignoring you, he was watching. He knew he was living in your head, and the note was just his way of ensuring that he was still the only tenant.
The rest of the afternoon felt like torture. You were practically buzzing in anticipation for tonight, smiling to yourself as you remembered that by eight pm, you’d be with Steve again. You tried to do homework when you got home, but the words all swam together on the page. Every tick of the clock felt like a countdown.
At ten til eight you told your parents you were gonna take a walk, they didn’t question it, they never did. You were the kind of girl who could be trusted, the kind of girl who didn’t lie. At least you were. Now you’re lying to your parents, telling them you’re going for a walk when you know you’ll end up in the backseat of Steve’s BMW.
You waited. And waited. Checking your watch every ten seconds.
Around 8:15 you finally saw the headlights of his car cutting through the darkness down your street. He didn’t pull over, and he didn’t turn the car off either. He let his car come to a full stop in the middle of the street and rolled down the window to the passenger door.
“Get in.” Steve wasn’t looking at you as he said it. It was more of a command than it was a greeting, but you registered it like a sirens call.
He put the car back into drive as soon as you slid into the seat, glancing over at you a few times with his jaw tight.
“You tell anyone?” His voice was flat.
“No, no. Of course not. Why?” You shook your head immediately, with a sort of desperation for him to believe you.
Steve looked back over at you as he continued driving, taking turns a little too fast. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
Confusion was written all over your face, this was really the first time you and Steve had begun to discuss whatever was happening between the two of you. “But.. why?”
“Because it’s nobody’s business. You think I want people all in my shit? Asking questions?”
He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like if your connection was public knowledge, it would become a source of annoyance for him. You stayed silent for a long minute, processing his words and the tone he said it in.
“That’s the deal. Do you have a problem with that?” His voice became quieter, losing the harsh edge that usually occupied his voice.
“I.. I don’t know. I think I’m confused, on what this is.”
He drove for a few minutes in silence before his car pulled onto a dirt road near the overlook. Steve shifted in his seat to look over at you as soon as the car was in park.
“The deal is.. this. You don’t tell people. I show up. We…” He paused as he let out a long breath. “You know what we do.”
“You mean we have sex.” It was barely a whisper as it left your lips.
It was a blunt, simple term for the relationship between the two of you.
“Yeah. We have sex. Do you have a problem with that?”
He was offering close to nothing. Late nights, physical releases, and absolute secrecy. But something inside of you was certain you could change him. Maybe if you gave enough, if you got him to open up to you in ways that was unheard of, maybe then he’d be yours in the way you wanted him to be.
“No, Steve. I don’t have a problem with it.” You knew you were lying as you said it, but the alternative would be not having him at all, and you were already addicted to the taste of him on your tongue.
A smirk began to form on his lips, it looked like pure satisfaction. “Good.” His hand reached over the center console to brush his finger against your chin, tilting your face up to meet his. “Then stop looking so confused.” He murmured before bringing his lips to yours.
The kiss felt soft at first, his lips barely touching yours before his tongue began tracing the seam of your lips then sweeping into your mouth with pure possession.
“This… it’s simple. You and me. Nobody else needs to know.” His hand slid from your chin to the nape of your neck as his fingers threaded in your hair.
“You.. and me?” It was softer than you intended it to be, full of a hope you didn’t want to speak out loud. It implied a unit, something more than just an arrangement after dark.
“Yeah, baby. You and me.” His other hand came up to trace your jawline with his thumb. “When it’s just us, like this.”
Your eyes were locked on his, shivers going down your spine from his touch. He was so easy to believe, so easy to fall into.
“But out there…. It’s different. You know that, right?” You could see the shift in his eyes, how wide and soft they had gotten. It was hard to tell if it was calculated, or if he was letting his walls down for you.
Steve’s hand reached out to cup your cheek, his thumb gently stroking the skin in a way that felt too close to affection.
“It’s not because im ashamed or anything. You’re.. you’re gorgeous. You know that.” He tilted your downcast face upwards again, ensuring your eyes were locked onto his, soaking in every word he was saying.
“It’s because of them. Tommy.. Carol.. Ani.. that whole crowd. You know how they are. They’d be all over you, giving you shit and trying to get a rise out of me.”
You nodded, you understood that part at the very least. His friends weren’t generally considered the nicest people in school, and you were sure they would latch onto you if they knew Steve was involved with you.
“This way… it’s ours. It’s better this way. Don’t you think?” He smiled a little, but it was sad.
“You think it’s better this way?” You asked quietly, desperate for reassurance from him.
“Mhm. No one gets to ruin it. I’m trying to protect this, protect you.”
“Protect me?” You couldn’t help the smile that was forming on your face. Protect you. It’s the kind of thing a boyfriend would say. It suggested care, and a claim. His face got even gentler as he continued stroking your cheekbone.
“Yeah. You’re different. You’re not like them.” Steve leaned in again, kissing you in a way you hadn’t experienced from him yet. It was slow and searching, his lips moving against yours in a way that made your head spin. Soft noises were leaving his lips as you kissed back, bringing your hands up to thread in his hair.
“So we keep it quiet? For now.”
“For now. Okay.” Your head filled with possibilities at the two words. For now meant not forever, for now meant just now. Not tomorrow or next week or next month. You weren’t sure when it would end, but you wanted to stick it out. You wanted him to be yours, only yours. You wanted to claim him in public, you wanted him to take you on dates and hold your hand while you crossed the street. You wanted him always.
He smiled as you agreed, it looked genuine and goofy all at the same time, and it made your heart clench. The unguarded expression on his face felt like a reward.
“Good girl.”
The words went straight to your head, your body feeling warm. It felt like the highest praise coming from him. You nodded, unable to find the words or just unable to speak them. Your throat felt tight. All you could feel was the confusing combination of desire and submission.
He held your gaze for a long minute, his eyes soft as they searched yours before he opened his car door to get into the backseat.
You watched him move and settle in from the passenger front seat.
“Come here.” He reached over for your hand and practically pulled you into the back with him until you were straddling his lap. His hands were roaming your back and hips as he took his lower lip between his teeth. Your hands lightly sat on Steve’s shoulders, shaking slightly with nerves.
“Couldn’t stop thinking about you today.” He leaned forward to bury his face in the curve of your neck, and you could feel his mouth begin to trail up to your jaw, leaving shivers down your spine as you melted in his arms from the touch.
You sighed, closing your eyes as your hands gripped tighter onto his shoulders while he laid you down in the backseat, his hand moving to the button of your jeans.
“Relax, baby. Yeah?” Steve’s head lowered, trailing down the fabric of your shirt before pushing it up then kissing the exposed skin of your stomach while continuing to take off your jeans.
Everything was so overwhelming, the feeling of Steve’s lips all over your skin was confusing you as much as it was desiring you. You felt Steve’s fingers hook into the cotton of your panties as he pulled them down.
The first stroke of his tongue against your soaked folds had your back arching off the backseat and your lips parting as your breath hitched.
“St- Steve.. oh god. Oh god.” Your hands flew to grip at his hair, tightening every second to steady yourself as the feeling of his tongue against your pussy took over every nerve.
You’d never gotten head before, and you never imagined it happening like this. The boys you usually dated cared more about their pleasure, and you assumed Steve did too. There was something about the way Steve was relishing in your pussy, something that said he didn’t care about his pleasure at all in that moment. Every stroke of his tongue, movement of his hands and shift of his nose against your clit felt eager. Too eager.
Steve was completely lost in it, lost in the taste of you. His voice was desperate as he muttered against your pussy “Fuck, you taste good. Mmmm, god, can’t get enough.”
He groaned as his hands tightened their hold on your skin, pushing his face in harder as his tongue fucked deeper inside of you.
Steve’s eyes were open the entire time, forcing them to stay on your face as he drank in every single reaction your body was having due to his mouth.
You’d never felt the feeling that quickly filled your thoughts as you looked down at Steve drunk on your pussy. It felt like worship, it was the closest you’d come to feeling worshipped by someone.
But that never lasted for long. As soon as you came, legs trembling as they squeezed his head from where your thighs bracketed his shoulders, He was already maneuvering his body away from you, already wiping his mouth and catching his breath while leaving you breathless in the backseat of his car.
The sensation of his fingers trailing up your sensitive skin left chills down your spine as he pulled your pants and panties back up your legs, assisting you in moving on as fast as he was.
“Wait.. just.. hold on a second.” You said breathlessly, trying to catch up to the speed of his pace.
“Wait for what? It’s late. Gotta get you back.” He said it so obviously, like he never expected either of you to even request extra time together.
He pulled himself back up to the front seat, buckling up and fixing his hair as you followed swiftly, straightening your shirt as you clumsily fell into the passenger seat.
“Well.. can’t we just, I don’t know, talk?”
“What about? What’s there to talk about?” Steve was already putting the car back into drive, impatiently. “We had a good time. Don’t make it complicated.” He sighed in annoyance.
You felt yourself getting defensive, you couldn’t wrap your head around why you couldn’t just talk for a few minutes before immediately needing to go back home.
“It’s not complicated to want to talk! We don’t even have to talk about whatever this is. We could talk about life, or… something.” Your voice felt more uncertain as you rambled.
“Life? What about it. You go to school, work then home. I go to school, play basketball, then go home. Life isn’t all that interesting.”
If you weren’t listening so hard, you probably would’ve missed the slight insecurity in his tone. The way he talked so flatly about life, like there was nothing to look forward to. Like all life was, was high school. You began to wonder if that’s what he genuinely thought. You wanted to show him there was more, that he was more than just being Steve Harrington at Hawkins High.
The car was silent for a minute, both of you unsure how to proceed before you asked gently “What made you get into basketball?”
The question seemed to throw him off. It wasn’t about you, or what just happened. It was about him. It was about his interests.
“My old man.” He let out a soft huff, it seemed to bitter to be a laugh. “He was some hotshot player. Thinks his son has to be one too.”
Steve tapped his fingers against his steering wheel a bit. “Got my first ball when I was like six.”
“Six? I can imagine you, you know, running around with it.” You could feel yourself smiling, it felt so easy to smile around him. You tried to keep your eyes on the road, you didn’t want your smile to fall if you saw his face as flat as it usually is.
Steve kept his eyes on the road too, he was afraid to look over at you. Afraid to see the gentleness and care he knew was in your eyes. He didn’t know what he’d do if he made contact with them. He felt a smile start to form on his face as he heard your response. He shook his head and let out a laugh.
“Could barely dribble the damn thing. Drove my mom nuts. I thought I was so cool” He risked a glance over at you, and saw you also staring at the road like he had been doing. He watched your smile grow and eyes crinkle at the corners as he talked.
“You are cool, Steve.” You said quietly, twiddling with your fingers in your lap.
It felt so sincere to Steve. It didn’t seem like one of the performative comments the boys at school would chant as they pat him on the back, or girls would say as they batted their lashes. It just felt honest, like an observation.
“Yeah, well. It’s just something I’m good at. Not that deep.” He said it like he was trying to brush it off before clearing his throat, trying to mask whatever was going on in his head.
“You ever play? Like, as a kid?” Steve asked softly. You were surprised he asked, surprised he wanted to know things about you. You were fully prepared to let him just talk about himself all night long.
“No. I was more of a bookworm.” You didn’t want to look over at him, but the silence was killing you. Steve knew you weren’t in the popular crowd like he was, but maybe voicing it out loud finally made it sink in for him.
“Maybe you could teach me, if you wanted to.” The words rushed out before you could stop them.
“Yeah? You wanna learn how to shoot hoops?” Steve smirked, and it didn’t feel as forced as normal.
“Maybe. If you’re my teacher”
“Alright. Then I’ll be your teacher.” His hand moved from the wheel to your thigh. Squeezing gently before pulling his arm back. Your cheeks rushed with heat.
The car slowly pulled up to the block that Steve picked you up on just a few hours ago.
“I’ll uh, see you around. Okay?”
You nodded as you began to open the car door before glancing back once.
“Will you call me?”
Steve seemed to grow tense, the easily smile that was on his face was now completely gone.
“Maybe. If I can.” It wasn’t a yes, or a no. It felt like distance was already coming between the two of you forcing him further and further away from you.
“Go. Before someone sees.”
All you could do was nod as you got out of the car and stepped back onto the pavement and took the path back to your house. You could feel his eyes locked on you, it made you terrified to turn around.
The weeks that followed felt too secret to be real. You couldn’t tell if anyone was suspicious or not, all your friends acted normally. You tried to act normal around them, but it was hard. It was hard to be in a room with Steve and not stare at him the entire time. It was hard to pretend you didn’t want his lips on yours, and it was even harder to pretend that your body wasn’t having physical reactions to being near him.
The weekends were usually the same. He’d show up around midnight, maybe later, and tap on your window. He never looked doubtful, like he always knew you’d let him inside. It made you angry, but not angry enough to turn him away.
His eyes captivated you, and the way he pouted his full lips just slightly when you showed any sign of irritation made any negative thought about him vanish.
Sometimes Steve would call in the mornings, these calls made you more confused than anything. The first time it happened was on a Monday, you were getting ready for school when the line rang in your bedroom. It was Steve, and he said he wanted to “wish you a good day at school”. He also wanted to tell you what you should wear.
He seemed to enjoy that. Steve began cataloguing your closet, and telling you what you should wear sometimes. Not in a demanding or controlling way, just in a way that told you he liked how you looked in it, and he wanted to see you in it again.
Steve was the most vulnerable in your room late at night, mostly when he assumed you were sleeping. He’d lean his head down to leave soft kisses on your shoulder while his hand threaded through your hair gently. It was hard to fight back a smile. His head would tilt so he could inhale the scent of your hair and sigh into it. It made your heart clench.
But then you’d wake up, and he’d be gone. The bed would be cold and empty next to you, and it felt like the beginning all over again.
Tonight you were hopeful for some sort of change. Steve’s basketball game had ended just over an hour ago, which meant most students were on their way to a party or some sort. But Steve shouldn’t be. He’d written earlier, and left a note in your locker that he’d come over right after the game. That the party scene wasn’t his thing tonight.
You wanted to believe him, this was the first time he’d ever told you he was choosing you over a party. So you did. You sat, and waited on your bed in the silk pajamas that he always liked to see you in.
He arrived at 10:02, and he was still in his basketball jersey and gym shorts. His hair was still sweaty and his body was glistening. It was clear he didn’t shower.
You sat up immediately when you heard the window slide open “Hey. Um, good game tonight.”
“Hey. Thanks.” Steve said quietly while moving towards the bed.
You smiled a little. “You got here fast. Did you even shower? Did you miss me that much?”
The question was more direct than he would’ve liked. A low deflective laugh escaped him as he stepped closer and rested his hands on your hips to pull you closer. “Sure, baby. Whatever you say.” He murmured in a teasing tone while his lips found the skin of your neck.
His stubble rubbed against your skin enough to cause you to shiver as his thumb came up to press against your lower lip. It always felt as possessive as it did dismissive. You thought it was Steve’s way of ending the conversation, or maybe he was just really into you sucking his fingers. Both would make sense.
His thumb pushed its way into your mouth as you sucked on it, making desperate and performative sounds. “Missed this, though. Fuck. I missed this”
Steve’s teeth gently bit into the side of your neck as you gasped around his thumb and he began guiding your body to lay down on the bed, kissing you with a hunger that was barely being held back.
Your hands came up, pressing gently against his chest as his body was on top of yours. He pulled back an inch to ask breathlessly “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I just wanted to talk for a minute. Tell me about the game.”
Steve slowly pushed himself up and let out a frustrated sigh. “Talk? It was just a game.”
He seemed uncomfortable with the stillness, with the intimacy of sitting together in silence.
“We won. I played alright. It’s over now.”
“Okay. Forget the game then, tell me about your day.” You asked a little frustrated, you didn’t understand why a simple conversation was such a foreign concept to him at times.
“My day? It was fine. Woke up late. Had practice. Then class.” Steve listed off the things he did like he was checking items off a list.
You didn’t know what to say after that. It wasn’t a response that required another response. You let the silence fill the room, unsure on where to go from there.
Steve sighed. “My dad called.” He said abruptly.
“Wanted to know how the talk with some college coach went. I told him it hadn’t happened yet, and he wasn’t very happy.”
Steve glanced up at you, and you could see the slight twinkle in his brown eyes. “Then Tommy wanted to go to the diner after school. But I.. I dunno. Didn’t feel like it. Went home and listened to some records instead.”
He sounded shy as he admitted it, like there was something wrong with staying home alone instead of going out with friends.
“What records did you listen to?” You asked quietly, your hand moving to trace lines up and down his forearm in the darkness of your room.
A smile crept on Steve’s face as he scooted even closer to you “The new Springsteen. Played one side, like, three times in a row.”
His hand came up to rest gently on your hand while you rubbed his forearm, following your rhythm. “What about you? What’d you do today? Besides watch me at the game.” He smirked.
“Homework. Nothing much, really. Just.. waited for this all day.” You tried to hide the giddiness in your tone. You couldn’t lie, all day you had just waited on when you could finally see him.
His voice took on a teasing tone. “Nothing much, hm? Seemed pretty into the game from where I was standing.”
He took ahold of your hand and laced his fingers through yours, holding on lightly. “I saw you. In the bleachers. Biting down on your lip every-time I had the ball. You looked.. nervous. For me.”
Your cheeks felt warm as he spoke, completely unable to play it cool. “You noticed that?”
Your shyness seemed to always please him.
“Mhm. I notice everything about you. It’s kinda hard to notice anything else when you’re in the room.”
You looked up to look him in the eyes, your eyes darting across his face nervously.
“Drives me crazy. In the halls, at the game, in class. I’ll be talking to someone and my eyes can’t help but look for you.”
He shook his head slowly with a frustrated sigh. It was the first time he’d ever admitted thinking about you so often, it was the first time he’d really let you into his thoughts.
“You don’t have it fight it, you know. If you don’t want to.” You said it as soft as possible, they were a challenge to the walls he has built.
“Don’t I? That’s the deal. That’s how it has to be.”
You could see him shutting down, retreating back into his shell as his hand began pulling away from yours.
“Steve, come on-“
“Come on what? We’ve been over this. You think I want it like this? Pretending I don’t see you?” Steve stood up, pacing back and forth as he talked with his hands. He was getting frustrated, the same way he always did when you brought up the secrecy of your relationship.
“I’m sorry, No, i didn’t mean it like that. I just meant-“ You were panicking now a little bit, so you stood up with him and grabbed onto his arm, kissing his bicep.
“Don’t. Don’t apologize. Just.. Stop talking.” Steve sighed, turning his head so his cheek brushed against your hair then shifted to stand in front of you, brushing his fingers over your lips again.
“Just.. be here. With me. Right now.”
You just nodded, running your hands down his arms and holding onto him. “Okay. I’m here. I’m here, Steve.”
His hands were everywhere, pulling your nightgown up over your hips and dipping his head to make out with the skin of your neck. It felt like showing any vulnerability made him hungry, it made him desperate to erase the softness with the roughness of his physical touch.
Steve walked your body backward until you were falling down onto the bed with him above you. His hands grabbed at your wrists, holding them up and above your head with one hand.
You were arching your body as much as you could, pressing up into him and making desperate whines and whimpers that were traveling straight to his dick.
His hand on your wrists was tightening as he watched you beg with your body.
Steve flipped you over so you were laying on your stomach, pulling you up onto your knees by your hips. He had you positioned exactly how he wanted. Your cheek pressed against the mattress as your knees dug into the edge of the bed, your wrists behind your back being held together by his hand, and your back arched up as far as you could push it.
Steve loved toying with you before fucking you, he loved teasing you just to see how much you would take before taking some sort of initiative.
“Fuck, look at you.” Was all he could manage as you heard him pull down his shorts and yank off his jersey.
Steve fucked you the same way everytime, each time it felt like he was trying to brand himself onto you. There was no softness or slowness. It was rough, and dominating. He wanted to overwhelm you, overstimulate you until you were a trembling mess under his fingers.
It was when you felt most his to him.
You laid down next to him afterwards, wrapping your legs around his to tangle them together while his arm found its way around your shoulders. Your hand was beginning to gently trace through the chest hair that went across his sternum.
You and Steve were both quiet, letting the silence of the earlier intimacy hang in the air as he ran his fingers down your spine. It felt like he was tracing shapes, or maybe writing letters.
Steve turned his head to kiss your temple then whisper on your skin the words that always came after. The words that always extinguished your hope. “I should probably go soon.”
You should’ve known they were coming, they always did, yet you were surprised every-time.
“Stay.” You said softly against his chest, your ear still pressed against where his heart is.
“You know I can’t.”
“Steve, just this once. Please” You were pleading at this point. His eyes were darting all across your face, and all he could see was the hopefulness that was shining in your eyes.
“What if someone sees my car? Tommy or someone could drive by…” It was a dumb excuse, but normally he didn’t make excuses. Normally he said no, and he left.
“Would that be so bad?” Your voice felt small, you felt vulnerable asking this from him while you were still naked, wrapped around him like he was a life raft.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Steve sighed “It’s complicated. You know it’s complicated.”
“Stay. Be here in the morning just this once. Everyone will be hungover from the party anyways”
Steve looked like he wanted to fight it, he looked like he wanted to create another excuse or find some other stupid reason as to why he had to leave. But Steve couldn’t stop looking at the way you were curled against him. He couldn’t bring himself to look away from your eyes that were full of a vulnerable hope that matched the feelings he wondered about sometimes in the darkness of his own room.
It wasn’t about staying the night, and it wasn’t about waking up alone. It was about having someone. It was about the safety of knowing they would be there when you woke up, because they wouldn’t have to hide it. Because it would be natural to love you. Steve felt like he wanted the same thing sometimes, deep down when he could allow himself to just be Steve, without the crown attached.
Steve wanted someone to love him, he wanted to be loved. He fantasized about finding someone who could love him enough to create a family with him.
He’d grown up with the idea that love wasn’t found in relationships or marriage, but in work and popularity. To run a family business, to be captain of the basketball team, and to be the most popular guy in school. To be the king.
Steve knew the type of love you were willing to give him was the type of love he craved, he just didn’t know how or if he could give that back to you.
But the thought of having it at all made his resistance crumble.
“Okay. Okay. Just this once” His body shifted, his arm pulling you in closer to his body as he nuzzled his head on top of yours.
You couldn’t help the excitement that was bubbling inside of you. You asked him to stay, and he said he would stay. This had to have meant something, right? It had to mean he was feeling deeper than he did originally, which meant maybe he would change his mind?
Your brain was full of hope and possibilities due to the fact that you’d wake up in the morning next to Steve. You’d wake up still wrapped around the length of his body. You’d get to hear his sleepy voice and see how perfect his hair is after a nights sleep. You began leaving soft playful kisses up his jawline, a soft giggle coming out of you.
The sound caused his body to stir and he looked down at you with a sleepy smile on his face.
“What’s so funny, mm?”
“I’m just.. I’m happy.” You said softly, running your fingers over his cheekbone.
“Yeah? Me too, princess.”
You laid awake for what felt like hours, just listening to him breathe steadily. You were afraid. You were afraid that you’d wake up and he’d be gone, and it would’ve been just another broken promise.
Eventually sleep claimed your body too, tucked in safely inside of Steve Harrington’s arms.
When you woke up, he was facing you. He looked perfect. His hair was a mess, falling over his forehead and into his eyes. He looked peaceful as he blinked his eyes open with a sleepy smile.
“Good morning, princess .” His voice was rough from sleep, and his arm tightened around your waist to pull you closer so there was no extra space between the two of you.
The way he was looking at you all sleepy and soft felt like a promise.
Summer was just a few weeks away. No more hallways, no more performing for an audience.
A fragile hope was forming in your chest, the belief that he might want you as more than a secret. More than someone to sleep with at nighttime.. All you wanted was for him to smile at you in the sunlight too.
-
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a/n: genuinely want to say im so sorry for the delay. life has been so hectic and i got hit with the worst mental health state and it really took all my joy out of writing, and it was really hard to find any motivation at all. i appreciate everyone that’s been patient and kind to me. it means so much. you are all so special to me. <3 so much love.
summary: the four times your friend group tried to set you up with logan, and the one time they find out you’ve been dating the entire time
established relationship
warnings: just pure sappy fluff, usage of y/n
word count: 4.2k
a/n: based on this request! i hope you like it :))
john logan masterlist off campus masterlist
── ᵎᵎ ✦
the funny thing about keeping your relationship with logan a secret was that neither of you had ever actually decided to.
if someone had asked during those first few weeks, you probably would’ve told them. there wasn’t anything scandalous about it. no reason to hide. nobody in your friend group would’ve cared beyond teasing the two of you for a while before eventually moving on.
it just… never came up.
the relationship itself had arrived so quietly that, looking back, neither of you could really pinpoint where friendship had ended and something else had begun.
after hockey season, you’d simply started spending more time together. study sessions that always seemed to run too late to justify walking back to your own dorm straight away. dinners that lasted twice as long as either of you intended because conversation came so easily with him. evenings spent wandering across campus without much destination in mind, filling the silence with the sort of conversations that only happened when neither person felt any pressure to keep talking.
somewhere between spring arriving and final exams looming over campus, he’d walked you back to your dorm after one of your study sessions like he always did.
the conversation had drifted off several minutes earlier, leaving only the sound of your footsteps against the pavement and the distant buzz of students enjoying one of the first genuinely warm evenings of the year.
you’d stopped outside your building. he’d looked at you for a moment before kissing you.
it hadn’t been particularly dramatic. there hadn’t been fireworks or declarations or some overwhelming certainty that everything had changed. it had simply felt… right.
afterward, logan had rubbed the back of his neck with the slightest hint of uncertainty before quietly asking if that had been okay. you’d kissed him again instead of answering.
that had been four months ago.
the next morning, you’d still met everyone for breakfast. logan had still sat beside you because he always did. you’d stolen fries from his plate because you always did. he’d walked you back to your dorm after classes because he always did.
the only real difference was that now, when nobody was looking, he’d steal a quick kiss before heading back across campus.
for a while, having something that belonged only to the two of you had been… nice.
your relationship existed outside everyone else’s opinions. there were no questions, no teasing, no constant interruptions every time one of you sat beside the other. it was just yours, tucked quietly into the spaces between lectures and late-night walks and evenings spent curled up together in your dorm.
eventually, though, the novelty faded.
more than once, one of you would look at the other and say, we should probably tell everyone.
the other would agree, but then someone would change the subject, or dinner would arrive, or you’d both forget. the conversation kept being postponed until it somehow became stranger to announce it than not to.
neither of you worried about it, because you assumed everyone would find out eventually. you just hadn’t anticipated it to take so long.
by the time coach finally called it, the sun had already started dipping behind the campus buildings, painting long shadows across the parking lot outside the arena. everyone was tired in that familiar, satisfying sort of way that followed a good skate. conversation came easier once helmets were off and sticks had been tossed carelessly into the back of trucks, the intensity of practice gradually giving way to the comfortable rhythm the team always seemed to settle into afterward.
logan adjusted the strap of his hockey bag higher on his shoulder as he stepped out of the rink. he’d texted you nearly an hour earlier.
logan: running late don’t wait if you’re hungry
you: too late already ordered enough fries for both of us x
he’d smiled to himself without really thinking about it.
logan: good
the parking lot had begun emptying by the time he started walking toward campus. several of the guys peeled off in different directions, climbing into cars or heading toward the hockey house, until eventually only garrett remained beside him since they had decided to carpool.
for a while, neither of them spoke. garrett, however, lasted about three more minutes until he felt the need to break the silence, “you know…”
logan glanced over. garrett shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, looking ahead as though the conversation wasn’t particularly important, “y/n’s cool.”
logan nodded once, “yeah.”
garrett continued walking, “i mean it.”
“i know.”
“she’s funny.”
another nod from logan, “she is.”he wasn’t entirely sure where the conversation was going yet.
people complimented their friends all the time. it didn’t seem especially noteworthy. garrett kept talking anyway, “she actually knows hockey.”
“yeah.”
“which is rare.”
logan thought about the number of times you’d sat through games you hadn’t understood at first, asking quiet questions until the rules gradually began making sense. now you caught missed penalties before half the people around you did. you’d been strangely pleased with yourself the first time that happened. he’d been pleased too, though.
“she’s easy to be around,” garrett said.
logan looked at him, “…she is.”
there wasn’t much point pretending otherwise; you were. conversation with you never felt forced, and silence didn’t either. most evenings, the two of you could spend hours together without either of you feeling the need to constantly fill the space between you. logan had never realised how rare that was until he’d found it.
garrett slowed slightly as they reached the crosswalk outside the arena and looked sideways at logan, “you should ask her out.”
the traffic light changed. logan waited for a car to pass before stepping off the curb, “oh, i already did.”
garrett laughed. not the polite sort of laugh people gave when they weren’t sure whether someone was joking. it was a genuine laugh, “yeah?”
logan frowned faintly, “yeah.”
“good one,” garrett laughed again.
for a second, logan wondered whether he’d said something wrong. then he realised garrett thought he was kidding, but before he could explain, garrett was already talking again, “seriously, though, i think you’d really like her.”
you discovered hannah’s theory by the middle of the semester over afternoon coffee.
the two of you had escaped campus between lectures, ducking into della’s diner. it had become something of an unspoken tradition over the past year. whenever your schedules lined up, you’d spend an hour there together before heading back to class, talking about everything and absolutely nothing until one of you inevitably glanced at the time and realised you were already running late.
that afternoon was no different. hannah was halfway through describing one of garrett’s increasingly questionable cooking experiments when she paused.
her expression shifted ever so slightly. not dramatically, just enough that you’d learned to recognise she was about to say something she’d clearly been thinking about for a while.
she stirred her coffee absentmindedly before looking up, “can i ask you something?”
you nodded, “always.”
her spoon clinked softly against the side of her mug, “have you ever thought about logan?”
thankfully, your coffee was already back on the table, otherwise, you suspected you might’ve dropped it. you blinked as you did your best to keep your expression neutral, “in what way?”
hannah shrugged one shoulder, “in a dating way.”
you hummed thoughtfully, lowering your eyes to your drink before she could read your face too closely, “why are you asking?”
she smiled to herself, “i don’t know.” which, coming from hannah, almost certainly meant she knew exactly why. she tucked one leg beneath herself in the booth before continuing, “i’ve just been watching you two.”
your heart gave the smallest, traitorous little skip. not because you thought she’d figured it out, but because she was far more observant than most people gave her credit for.
you’d spent the last four months being careful. never sitting too close when everyone else was around. never holding hands unless nobody could see. keeping kisses to empty hallways, quiet walks back to your dorm, and the brief moments before one of you inevitably headed home for the night.
you’d convinced yourself nobody had noticed and, for the first time, you wondered if maybe someone had.
hannah rested both hands around her mug, “he always ends up sitting beside you.”
you smiled faintly, “there’s usually a free seat.”
“maybe.” she shrugged, but she looked unconvinced, “but he always notices when you leave the room.”
you hadn’t realised anyone else had noticed that. it happened almost unconsciously; whether you were getting another drink, answering your phone, or stepping away to use the bathroom, his eyes almost always followed you for a second before returning to whatever conversation he’d been having.
he didn’t seem aware he was doing it and neither had you. until now.
hannah continued, counting quietly on her fingers, “he remembers everything you tell him.”
you opened your mouth to answer, but immediately closed it again. she wasn’t wrong.
logan remembered things. all sorts of things. the name of your favourite author after you’d mentioned it once in passing. which professor insisted on surprise quizzes every friday. how you always ordered extra fries but never ate the last one. the way you preferred your coffee. the fact that you hated walking across campus with wet socks after it rained.
he carried little pieces of information about you as though remembering them required no effort at all.
“and,” hannah added, smiling into her coffee now, “he always makes sure someone walks you home after group nights.”
this time, you couldn’t help smiling. not because she was wrong, but because she thought it was someone. she had no idea that, more often than not, the someone was logan himself.
you looked back at her, “you’ve thought about this a lot.”
she laughed softly, “a little.”
“a little?”
“okay.”she grinned, “more than a little.”
you shook your head, laughing under your breath, “so…”
hannah leaned forward just enough to rest her elbows on the table, “i think he likes you.”
you let the silence linger for a second. eventually, you took another sip of your coffee, “you think?”
she nodded immediately, “i’m almost certain.”
you traced absentminded circles around the rim of your mug, “i’ll keep that in mind.”
hannah smiled, clearly satisfied she’d done her part.
malone’s was busier than it had been when you’d first arrived; conversations overlapping beneath the steady hum of music drifting through the speakers. pool balls cracked together somewhere behind you every few minutes, punctuated by the occasional cheer whenever someone managed an unexpectedly good shot. every booth seemed occupied, and the warm scent of fried food lingered in the air long after the plates had been cleared away.
the eight of you had claimed the same corner booth you always seemed to end up in.
tucker and dean were arguing over something that had happened during practice earlier that afternoon. allie was attempting to convince hannah that dean had, in fact, exaggerated the entire story. garrett kept interrupting to make things objectively less accurate, while beau looked increasingly entertained the longer the argument continued.
logan sat quietly beside you, only contributing every now and then with the sort of dry comment that somehow made everyone laugh harder than the original story had.
the first round of drinks disappeared into a second. someone ordered fries for the table, garrett immediately claiming most of them.
eventually, dean pushed himself upright, “pool.”
nobody seemed particularly invested one way or the other, but everyone followed him toward the tables anyway.
there was a brief discussion about teams. mostly because dean insisted there needed to be strategy involved despite nobody else caring very much who they played with.
he looked around the group for a moment before pointing at you and logan, “you two, you’re together.”
a silent looked passed between the two of you, but neither of you questioned it, “alright.”
dean looked absurdly pleased with himself and you caught the expression immediately. logan, apparently, did not. he’d already reached for one of the cues leaning against the wall, turning it over once in his hands before offering it to you instead, “this one’s straighter.”
you accepted it automatically, “thanks.”
the game started. calling it competitive would’ve been generous. beau insisted dean wasn’t keeping score properly. dean insisted beau simply couldn’t count. garrett somehow managed to sink the cue ball twice within five minutes. allie laughed so hard she almost missed her own turn.
you weren’t especially good at pool. you’d played often enough to understand the rules, but accuracy remained … inconsistent. halfway through the game, you leaned over the table, squinting down the cue as you tried to line up a shot that looked considerably easier in theory than it did in practice.
you adjusted your grip. then adjusted it again, but something still felt wrong.
before you had the chance to rethink it a third time, logan stepped quietly beside you. he didn’t say anything straight away. instead, he looked from the cue to the angle of your arm before gently reaching for your hand, “here.” his voice stayed low enough that only you heard it. his fingers shifted yours slightly higher along the cue, “you’re holding it too tight.”
his hand was warm and steady against yours. he moved your wrist barely half an inch before stepping back again, his attention returning to the table as though nothing particularly noteworthy had happened, “try that.”
you did and suddenly the ball rolled neatly across the felt. two seconds later, it disappeared cleanly into the corner pocket. you stared after it, “huh.”
logan’s mouth lifted at one corner, “better.”
“little bit,” you smiled despite yourself.
across the room, dean noticed the entire interaction. he leaned sideways toward allie, “see?”
allie followed his gaze, “what?”
“chemistry.”
she looked back toward the two of you. logan was already focused on the table again while you circled around the opposite side, trying to decide which shot came next.
“i think he just helped her,” she knitted her brows as she looked back at the blonde.
“exactly.”
“you’ve become weirdly invested in this.”
“i just think they’d be good together,” he shrugged.
she smiled to herself, “they would.”
by the time the game ended, nobody seemed entirely sure who had actually won. dean claimed it had been your team, but beau disagreed loudly, and garrett insisted the score had become irrelevant after someone accidentally knocked two balls off the table.
eventually, everyone gave up trying to work it out.
chairs scraped against the wooden floor as people stood, conversations overlapped while jackets were pulled on, and someone inevitably realised they’d forgotten to close their tab just as everyone else reached the door. after a few hours, the evening had settled into the comfortable kind of tiredness that came from spending too long laughing with people you genuinely enjoyed being around.
outside, the air had cooled considerably.
the streets were quieter than they’d been when you’d arrived, most of the foot traffic now made up of students wandering back toward campus in small groups. the lights from the bars spilled across the sidewalks, catching against puddles left behind by an afternoon shower and turning them gold.
everyone lingered outside for a minute or two, deciding who was walking where.
dean and allie had parked across the street, garrett and hannah were already arguing over whether they had enough food left at the hockey house to avoid another late-night grocery run, and beau and tucker had somehow wandered into an entirely separate conversation before anyone else had finished saying goodbye.
you slipped your arms into your jacket, only half paying attention.
“i’ve got to head this way,” you said absentmindedly, nodding toward the opposite side of campus, “my dorm’s clear across the other end.”
before anyone could answer, allie looked toward logan who was stood beside you, “logan, can walk you back, right?”
the suggestion landed so naturally that nobody questioned it. logan didn’t hesitate, “yeah.”
you caught the smile dean tried, and failed, to hide. it lasted barely a second before he looked away, but you’d seen it. you knew exactly what he thought had just happened.
allie, on the other hand, looked entirely unconcerned. if she had any ulterior motive, she hid it considerably better than dean ever could. she simply smiled at you, wished you both goodnight, and climbed into the passenger seat of dean’s truck.
one by one, everyone drifted away. before long, only you and logan remained standing beneath the glow of the streetlights outside malone’s, “ready?”
you nodded, “ready.”
the walk back toward campus began in easy silence. you’d discovered early on that neither of you felt any pressure to speak simply because there was empty space to fill. sometimes one of you started talking after a few minutes. sometimes neither of you did. either way, it never felt awkward.
the sidewalks were damp beneath your feet, carrying the faint scent of rain and warm pavement. somewhere across campus, music drifted lazily through the night air before disappearing again as you turned down a quieter path lined with trees.
logan matched his pace to yours without seeming to think about it. he always walked slightly slower when he was with you. not enough that anyone else would notice, but just enough that you never had to hurry to keep up.
you’d made it halfway across campus before you finally smiled to yourself. logan glanced over, “what?”
you shook your head, “i think everyone’s trying to set us up.”
he blinked, “what?”
“garrett, hannah, dean, and now allie,” you gestured vaguely behind you, toward the direction of malone’s, “they’re trying to get us together.”
logan was quiet. you watched him think, his gaze dropping briefly toward the pavement as he replayed the last few weeks in his head. you almost saw the moment everything clicked into place, “oh.”
you smiled, “there it is.”
he looked back at you, “they are trying to set us up.” another few steps passed before he spoke again, “i didn’t notice.”
“i know.”
he rubbed absently at the back of his neck as he chuckled, “i thought garrett was just being friendly.”
you returned the laugh, “he was.”
“…and dean?”
“less subtle.”
“huh.”his expression settled somewhere between thoughtful and faintly amused. for another minute, neither of you said anything. then, quietly— “that’s kind of nice.”
you looked at him, “what is?”
“they like you,” his mouth twitched and the smile that appeared was small enough that most people would’ve missed it entirely.
you didn’t, though. you never did.
the path narrowed as you approached your dorm, forcing the two of you a little closer together. your shoulder brushed his once, then again a few steps later.
the building came into view not long afterward, its windows glowing softly against the dark campus.
you stopped near the entrance and for a moment, neither of you spoke. the night had settled comfortably around you, carrying the distant sounds of laughter from somewhere across campus. “thanks,” you said.
logan looked at you, “for what?”
“walking me home.”
he seemed almost surprised by the question, “always, you know that”
the answer came so simply. as though there had never been another possibility.
something warm settled quietly in your chest. you stepped a little closer, close enough that nobody looking out from the dorm windows would’ve noticed anything unusual. your fingers briefly caught the sleeve of his hoodie, “i know.”
his hands found yours for the smallest moment, hidden between the two of you. he gave them one gentle squeeze before slowly leaning closer to place a soft kiss against your lips, “night.”
the hockey house was unusually quiet that evening. someone had left a hockey game playing on the television more out of habit than genuine interest, and dean and garrett were arguing half-heartedly over something that had happened during practice while tucker scrolled aimlessly through his phone.
allie and hannah occupied opposite ends of the couch, comparing notes for a class neither of you had been unfortunate enough to take.
logan had disappeared upstairs twenty minutes earlier to shower after practice.
you’d made yourself comfortable in the corner of the couch with one of your textbooks balanced across your knees, though you’d spent considerably longer reading the same paragraph than actually understanding it.
your attention drifted every few minutes. sometimes toward the television. sometimes toward whatever dean was complaining about now. sometimes… toward the staircase.
you heard footsteps before you looked up and logan appeared a second later, still rubbing a towel absently through his damp hair. he’d changed into gray sweats and a faded briar hoodie, the sleeves pushed halfway up his forearms. his hair was still slightly damp around the edges, curling faintly where it hadn’t quite dried yet.
your eyes lifted from the textbook almost automatically.
the smallest smile appeared the moment he noticed you. he wandered into the living room, only half paying attention to whatever dean was saying.
as he drew closer, you noticed one of the hoodie strings had twisted itself awkwardly beneath the collar.
without thinking—
completely, utterly without thinking—
you held out your hand, “logan.”
he stopped beside the couch, “hm?”
“come here.”
he stepped closer immediately. not because you’d sounded particularly serious. simply because you’d asked.
you reached up, gently tugging the twisted drawstring free before smoothing the collar flat against his chest. the fabric had folded awkwardly beneath the hood, so you fixed that too, “there.”
logan glanced down briefly, “thanks.”
you brushed one last damp strand of hair away from his forehead before letting your hand fall. the movement had become so instinctive over the past few months that neither of you gave it a second thought.
logan certainly didn’t, because he leaned down to press a brief kiss against your forehead before dropping onto the couch beside you. his hand found yours beneath the blanket draped across your lap with the same unconscious ease he’d done it a hundred times before.
it took several more seconds before you realised the room had gone completely silent.
you looked up to find that dean had stopped talking mid-sentence, garrett still held an unopened bag of chips in one hand, hannah was looking between the two of you with an expression that suggested several months’ worth of observations had suddenly rearranged themselves into one very obvious conclusion, allie blinked only once, and beau looked at each face in turn, then at you, then at logan. the corners of his mouth started twitching.
logan followed your gaze around the room, “oh.”
you looked at him, “shit, we forgot.”
dean found his voice first, “what.”
neither of you answered immediately. mostly because there didn’t seem to be much else to say.
you and logan looked at each other before you finally closed your textbook and set it carefully on the coffee table, “we’re dating.”
silence. dean blinked, again, “what.”
“logan and i are dating.”
another pause and garrett frowned, “since when?”
this time, logan answered, “about four months.”
garrett slowly lowered the bag of chips onto the coffee table as though any sudden movement might somehow change what he’d just heard, “four months.”
logan nodded, “yeah.”
garrett looked genuinely wounded, “i told you to ask her out.”
“i know.”
“you were already dating.”
“yeah.”
garrett stared at him, “why didn’t you tell me?”
logan frowned slightly, considering the question with complete sincerity, “well, you didn’t ask.”
beau made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cough. dean ignored him completely as he looked between you and logan, “hold on.”he pointed accusingly between the two of you, “the pool game.”
you looked at him, “what about it?”
“i put you two together.”
“you did.”
“because i was trying to set you up,” he voice raised slightly as he spoke, obviously in complete disbelief.
“we know.”
“you knew?”
you nodded and dean looked personally offended, “the walk home from malone’s.”he turned toward allie, “you literally asked him to walk her home.”
allie slowly covered her face with one hand, “oh my god.”
you smiled apologetically, “he’d actually been walking me home for months.”
allie let out a quiet groan, “we spent an entire semester trying to get these two together.”
another beat of silence passed. then beau finally gave up trying to hold it in. his laugh echoed through the living room, loud enough that dean shot him an unimpressed look before the sound became contagious.
garrett started laughing next. then tucker. even hannah eventually shook her head, smiling into her coffee, “to be fair,” she said, “i did tell her i thought logan liked her.”
you laughed, “you did.”
hannah looked at you, “you could’ve said something.”
“…probably.”
dean threw both hands into the air, “probably?!”
you couldn’t help but smiling, “it was kind of funny.”
dean stared, “funny??”
then beau laughed even harder. dean dropped backward onto the couch with the sort of dramatic resignation usually reserved for championship losses, “i cannot believe,” he muttered, rubbing both hands over his face, “i spent four months accidentally rooting for a relationship that already existed.”
logan gave him a sarcastic smile, “hey, thanks.”
dean groaned loud enough for the entire house to hear, which only made everyone laugh harder.
through the middle of it all, unnoticed by everyone except you, logan’s fingers tightened gently around yours beneath the blanket, and when you looked around the room and found everyone still laughing at dean’s expense, you realized there wasn’t any reason to hide it anymore.
(9) Bitch to Me Briar: Love it when you look at me baby
John Logan x fem!reader
Summary: Finally you and Logan get to see what the two have been avoiding for the past few weeks. Safe to say it was always going to be you two together.
Warnings: FLUFFFF
Seires Masterlist | Main Masterlist
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Logan kept his promise in taking things slow.
Your first date was him taking you to an art exhibit you had mentioned on the off hand during your carpooling to Hastings Elementary. He picked you up from your dorm which had Allie and Hannah being annoyingly happy about the situation. Even though he was dressed the same, leaning against the same truck that drove you around Hastings, seeing him outside your dorm knowing he was here for a date with you made your heart flutter.
“You look nice,” he smiled, giving you a polite side hug greeting which you appreciated.
“Thanks,” you said, as he jogged around to open up your door.
The gallery was everything you imagined and more. It had been awhile since you’ve been to a museum with someone, normally opting for solo trips, but Logan was good company.
“The colors are beautiful,” you sighed, getting as close to the paintings as you could without getting yelled at by the security.
“Yeah I really like this style,” Logan smiled, shoulder brushing yours as he leaned close.
You missed him sneaking a few photos of you looking at the art, but he saw those images for himself as a reminder how lucky he got.
You felt a bit shy making him walk around a gallery but he followed you with patience and let you explain to him all the history and techniques behind each article. If he seemed bored he didn’t show it at all.
When he dropped you back off at your dorm and walked you to your dorm, you both stood in front of each other for a moment. For the first time you realized he was nervous, hands shoved into his pockets.
“Thank you for giving me a chance,” he smiled, “I had a lot of fun.”
“Me too,” you said, fiddling with your hair.
It was actually one of the most thoughtful date you ever been on but you still felt like you need to keep him on his toes.
“Would you be interested in going out with me again?”
You pretended to think about it which had Logan press his lips into a thin line waiting for your answer.
“Yeah I think I would like that,” you said.
“You think?” he teased.
You gave him a playful shrug which made him chuckle. Before he could say anything else, you leaned to give him a kiss on the cheek. If he was disappointed not scoring an actual kiss on the first date he didn’t show it. Instead he looked more than happy just knowing that he was spending time with you.
“I’ll text you about this second date we will be having,” he sighed, “Good night.”
“Good night Logan,” you smiled.
He watched you walk into the building and you waited until you were safely in the walls of your dorm let your face morph into the biggest grin that you were trying to hide.
–
Your second date was technically a studying one in the library which was spent doing absolutely no studying. Logan kept distracting you by playing with your hair and telling you about all the things he had seen in the past few days that reminded him of you.
“There was a bird that flew into the rink yesterday,” he said, arm draped across the back of your chair, “Definitely wasn’t a boring sparrow but I didn’t get a photo.”
“Well that’s very helpful,” you sighed, scrolling through the latest articles you needed to read for class.
“Oh also we have a game on Friday,” he said.
His voice trailed off as you looked up at him from your notes. You found it kind of adorable how nervous he got. You knew it was because he didn’t want to mess up but you were so used to seeing a cocky John Logan that it made you feel a bit prideful that you were the one making him into a mess.
“I know,” you said teasingly.
“Umm you should come,” he said, “I mean you normally do anyways but I thought I’d ask just to make sure.”
You giggled at his rambling as he scratched the back of his neck.
“Yeah I’ll be there,” you said.
That bright smile flashed across his face which made your heart flutter. Feeling a bit more confident you grabbed your chair to pull closer to his own so that your thighs were pressed against each other. He reached out to tuck a piece of stray hair behind your ear which had your face grow hot.
“Look out for the goal I score,” he said with a grin.
–
The next time you went out on a proper date was a simple dinner and it was genuinely the best meal you ever had in Hastings. You had been busy with your midterms which Logan made a point to accompany you in the library whenever he could. You could feel yourself starting to opening up to him more, less afraid of what could happen and enjoying the moment.
"You're a very good listener," you said, ranting about how awful your midterm went.
"Thanks you just happened to be a very interesting talker," he smiled, bumping your knee from underneath the table, “But I don't think you did bad."
"You didn't see the test Logan," you sighed, "I fucking hate philosophy."
"Rest in power Socrates," Logan joked which made you roll your eyes.
"If it makes you feel any better I have an econ paper up and I haven't started," Logan said.
"Why would that make me feel better?" you scoffed jokingly.
"Knowing that you're definitely the smarter one in the relationship," he grinned.
The word relationship made your heart stutter. Even though you both agreed to take it slow there was no denying where the two of you were heading. You thought about Amy’s advice about being willing to accept love and she was right. You could’ve easily avoided seeing Logan again after the first date but after his confession in the bookstore, seeing him so vulnerable, it made you feel okay with exposing a bit of yourself to him as well.
Neither of you mentioned it as you continued your conversation about everything and nothing. You both talked about the fundraiser and fashion show coming up in a couple weeks.
“How intense is this leopard situation?” Logan asked, pushing his plate of fries towards you. You were previously upset that your own meal hadn’t come with a side so Logan ordered your favorite sweet potato fries to share. You didn’t know he hated sweet potatoes. You didn’t need to know.
“Very. You’ve met Katie, she doesn’t do anything halfway.”
“As long as it’s not spandex,” Logan sighed, “And none of the hockey guys are allowed to have their phones.”
“You’re no fun,” you groaned as Logan grinned at you. However you were still in the mood to tease.
“I guess this is our last date. Such a shame I was starting to like you,” you sighed, purposely turning away from Logan.
A quick look of hurt flashed across his face as he said, “Aww come on,” but you just crossed your arms.
“Fine I’ll allow photos. No videos though. And Jules cannot post about it.”
You laughed at how easy he folded which made him narrow his eyes at you.
“That was quick,” you giggled, “I bet I can make you do anything now.”
“I thought that was clear when you got me willingly coaching middle schoolers on the weekends,” Logan said.
“You didn’t even know that was me,” you said.
“Still even when I didn't know I still knew to listen,” he shrugged, “By the way how is that going?”
“The account?”
“Yeah. Jules post didn’t mess anything up right?” he said, his hand creeping across the table to brush against your fingers, “They are sorry I think. I still don’t really know their obsession with the account.”
“It’s fine,” you shrugged, over it, “The account is under new management anyways.”
“Really?” Logan said in shock, “Don’t tell me it was because of me?”
“It was a number of things,” you said honestly, “It just didn’t feel the same running when I first started. I think it was slowly starting to eat me up inside and I realized there’s probably better outlets for me.”
Logan gave a supportive nod, reaching out to squeeze your hand. He had already paid for the check when you went to the bathroom earlier so he guided the two of you out of the restaurant. The night was cool but your hands were still intertwined as you walked to the car.
You gave him a smile and a shiver ran down your spine. Logan instantly shrugged off his jacket and put it around your shoulders. Now you both were inches apart so that you could smell his cologne.
“You wanna know now who runs it don’t you?” you teased at his silence since the previous conversation.
“Hey, can you blame a guy for being curious?” Logan exclaimed, “It might be nice to know who’s behind the screen now in case I need help planning our next date. Or maybe even an anniversary down the line.”
“Wow you’re really thinking ahead now,” you laughed, but your heart still skipped a beat realizing Logan was really serious about his future with you.
“I told you I was gonna do it right,” Logan said, “You look really pretty by the way. You always look pretty. I should tell you that more often.”
“You really know how to lay it on thick,” you joked.
“Can’t a guy admire his girl?”
“I’m your girl now?”
“Well in due time yes. I see it in the very near future but for now I’ll just be your man.”
“My man?” you chuckled, “You make it sound like I have a new toy.”
“I’m all yours. Even if after tonight you decide to stop going out with me I’ll be yours,” he said with a small sigh, “You’re it for me.”
“Well we haven’t even kissed. What if I’m a horrible kisser and you decide I can’t be your girl.”
“Then we should figure that out sooner rather than later,” he grinned, hands around your waist already pulling you closer.
You leaned in to press your lips to his. The short stubble on his chin tickled your face as his hands came up to cup your jaw. Your own hands tangled in his hair, pulling your bodies flushed against each other. You kept kissing in the moonlight until eventually you needed to come up for air.
Best kiss ever.
“Yeah I didn’t have any doubt,” he grinned before kissing you again.
–
Despite Logan being 90 percent sure that you were his, he was still nervous about the situation. His mind kept thinking about the kiss from two nights ago, how soft your lips were and that he could taste the vanilla gloss you had just applied. Man he was obsessed. And lucky. So fucking lucky.
Which is why he needed to make sure tonight was great. The Hawks win and he finally asks you to be his girlfriend. He brought over an extra jersey to your dorm earlier but you weren’t home. Allie teased him before promising to pass along the message. But there was no set way in knowing you would actually wear it.
His legs bounced nervously in the locker room as Coach Jenson gave their final pep talk before the game. It shouldn’t be a hard game but Logan did promise you a goal which would be embarrassing if he didn’t deliver.
“Hey there lover boy,” Dean teased, patting his back as they walked out the locker room, “Heard you got a special fan wearing your jersey in the crowd tonight.”
Logan looked over with a confused look, “How do you know that?”
Dean’s face dropped as he quickly said, “Thought I might’ve seen her walking in.”
Logan didn’t think much of Dean’s statement as he was now excited to see you in his jersey.
The noise of the arena was loud as he followed his teammates onto the ice. His eyes scanned the crowd for another 22. After a few minutes of head swiveling he spotted your face in between Allie and Amy with a big smile. Sure enough your body was engulfed by the large jersey with his number plastered on the front.
You gave him a shy wave before continuing your clapping with the crowd. Logan couldn’t stop smiling as he skated past where you were sitting to give you a quick wink. Garrett did yell at him to get into position after but it was so worth it.
It wasn’t a difficult game but Logan still hadn’t scored as they moved into the final period. He knew that you didn’t really care but there could be a chance you’d tease him to death after so he needed to eradicate that possibility. He was a man of his word.
Thankfully the third period began to pick up with only a few minutes left on the clock. Logan skated down the rink looking for an opening so Garrett could pass. In a quick turn, Logan blurred past his defender and Garrett shot the puck right in his direction. Like all the times in practice, Logan swung at the puck with a loud crack. The black object flew straight past the goalie straight into the net, the sound of the buzzer confirmed the goal.
Garrett engulfed Logan into a celebratory hug but Logan’s attention was somewhere else. Not focused on the goal, his team, or even the crowd chanting his name. His eyes narrowed in on where you had jumped to your feet cheering so loud your cheeks were bright red.
He pointed his glove right at you, confirming that he followed through on all his promises.
–
After the game, Hannah, Allie, Amy, and you were waiting behind to meet up with the guys to go to Malone’s. The team slowly trickled out as you said your polite congrats to the other members and promised to see them later at the bar.
Dean and Tucker emerged first which you and girls gave them high fives and hugs before Garrett came out making Hannah sprint to him. You looked over their shoulders in search of the person you wanted to see. His jersey clung to your frame as the smell of his cologne was wrapped around you.
John Logan emerged from the tunnel, his hair damp and duffel bad in hand. He looked a little short of breath but his eyes lit up when he met your gaze. You couldn’t help but smile as he approached you, stopping just inches away from you to take in you in his jersey.
“Cute outfit,” he hummed, arm gripping your waist through the thick fabric.
“Thanks,” you said, “Found it on my bed today. Very weird. I don't remember buying it.”
“So weird,” he murmured before pressing a kiss to your lips cause he couldn't help himself.
You reacted immediately, wrapping your arms around his neck. Logan was trying to deepen the kiss until an awkward cough cut through the tension.
“So we’re gonna go to Malone’s,” Tucker said, “Go ahead and continue sucking face.”
The whole group was staring at you with knowing grins and wide eyes. You felt your cheeks heat up, always a bit shy, mumbling an apology.
“Don’t apologize,” Logan said, squeezing your side, guiding the two of you to follow your friends, “Let them be jealous.”
“Can’t believe I’ve become someone who does PDA,” you groaned, trying to hide your face in his side.
“Oh this is just the beginning baby,” he grinned, wrapping his arm around your shoulders feeling like the luckiest guy in the world.
Next Part
A/N: Hiiiii here's a cute fluffy part before the last chapter!! Omg that's so crazy to think I'm basically done with this series. I'll save my thank yous for the next chapter but enjoy!!!!
mr. handyman. literally every single thing that falls apart in your life, logan’s there to fix it. kitchen cabinets coming loose? great, he’s fixing them. doors squeaky? he’s already on it. something wrong with your car? perfect—he’s taking his shirt off (for your eye candy) and getting to work. and he’s not one of those sexist assholes who thinks men have to fix things while women just stand there and yelp when things fall apart. he actually makes a habit of fixing things with you there, showing you how to do it so next time you can handle it yourself in case he’s not around.
this sweet, sweet man with those pretty doe eyes cannot stay mad at you for more than a day. if he has to go to sleep without fixing things with you, he feels like he might actually die. he just can’t do it. so when you two argue, like normal couples do, he always gives you both time to cool down before coming back to you to offer your favorite takeout, lots of kisses and cuddles, a movie night, and his heart practically in his hands just so you could forgive him. anything. he’ll do anything. just don’t stay mad at him.
as much as he’s a homebody, he actually loves going out—especially with you. restaurants, new cafés, movie theaters, hiking spots, even loud busy bars he’s not usually a fan off. and he’s always patient, giving you all the time you need to get ready without rushing you. and when you’re finally done and looking pretty, he’ll have you leave a bright lipstick kiss on his jaw, visible for everyone to see he’s taken, before you head out together. his favorite part about this whole thing is walking with your hands intertwined and sharing food.
again, he’s big on acts of service. waking up a little earlier to make you breakfast because you’re too lazy to make something yourself and usually skip it. taking the time to draw you a bath after a long day. making your drinks exactly how you like them—no ice, because you hate the watery taste when it melts, buying you things you’ve run out of, whether it’s your favorite snacks or products. taking your makeup off for you when you’re too tired. giving you massages, filling your gas tank—he’s all about it.
he’s so starved for you, so don’t expect him to leave you alone when you’re both home with nothing to do. he constantly has you laying on top of him, just lazing the day away. cooking simple meals together, which he’s surprisingly good at. he believes staying practically glued to you the entire time is good for his mental health and it’d be cruel to deny him.
this man figured out your weakness long before you even started dating that you can never keep your hands to yourself when he’s sweaty, fresh out of the gym. so when you move in together, he starts timing it, leaving the gym just a little after you get home. the second he walks through the door, your eyes snap to him, the sight of him making your knees weak, heat pooling in all the right places. and you don’t even try to fight it. you just walk up to him, grab him, and kiss him deep, fully intending to have those sweaty, ripped biceps wrapped around you in a tight headlock.
warnings: whew. gator munch tillman. foot fetish tillman. gator refers to her as a slut. tit worship. stripping. no touch play. outside. hot sexy sweaty sticky.
A day without Gator Tillman.
One where you weren’t pissed at him or one where he wasn’t away… in fact - he was less than 10 minutes from you. You knew it and you swear you could even feel it. As if your heart could connect to the bluetooth of his own, in range and playing a song only the two of you could hear.
And you could still feel his hands on you. His lips traveling down your neck. Your fingertips graze over the slight pink skin that he gave you last night.
Said it was just another early birthday present…
Maybe that was because the fucked up week was closing, and as reluctant as your are about your birthday, you were kinda excited for tomorrow. Victoria was here, and you had a boyfriend - not just any fucking guy either… the guy. Your guy. Your Gator.
The summer sun beat down on the two of you, tanning with no shade in the dryness of North Dakota? It was nearly as good as…
“Im telling you, we need a beach trip!”, Victoria yelled over the Nelly Furtado that enhanced the tanning experience.
You squint over to your best friend, both of you bare naked because who the actual fuck cares? You’re in the middle of nowhere and its nothing you hadn’t seen before.
“You know that I am trying to get clients back right?”
“Yes? What does that have to do with anything?”, Victoria scoffed, upset that you’re already dismissing her idea.
A smile squirmed its way out, “It means that I actually need to be here in order to fill my books…”
“I thought you filled them already?”
“Yeah… with men. And men don’t make appointments and the most I can get out of a cut here is like $35… maybe $40.”
“But they tip good, huh?”
You smirked, “Yeah… ‘specially when I get my acrylics into their hair for the scalp massage.”
“I'm surprised Gator lets you do that.”
“Gator doesn’t fucking let me do anything… this is my business-”
“Well he got you all the male clients…”
“Nope… he got me a couple. Charlie got me the rest.”
“And Charlie issssss?”
“Sid’s boyfriend- or… I don’t know if they’re official, but - her man.”
“Oh, okay… and the one you’re setting me up with is?”
“Wade”
“Okay okay… and I'm meeting him tonight?”
“I mean - maybe? I don’t know, I guess I could get Gator to send him to Ralphs tonight?”
You grabbed the strawberry lemonade between the two of you, taking a big gulp - ice long melted inside the plastic.
Victoria smiled, an evil plan formed in her green eyes, “I like that idea. Don’t plan on me coming home tonight because I need dick.”
The lemonade shot out of your nose and mouth as you laughed, “OH- MY GOD”
Victoria howled out a rumbling laugh, her plan worked. Too fucking easy. Bringing her sunglasses back down over her eyes, she mumbles “You good, babe?”
Sitting up, the lemonade ran down your body and dripped from your chin, “No! Thanks to you! This shit burnt my fucking nose-”. You pull the towel from behind your back and go to drape it across your body to clean the mess, you were laughing but already thinking about the sticky mess you were about to be.
“Girl-”
“What?”
“Send him a pic.”
You looked down at your sweaty, bronzing, lemonade dripping tits that glittered in the sunlight due to the tanning mist you used. Now, you knew you weren’t horrible to look at, but you were still learning exactly how to see yourself in Gator’s eyes. Right now? You see what he sees in you. And Victoria was right - this might just kill him.
“Wait - turn around… don’t look at me-”
“I have been laying next to you naked for thirty minutes and now you’re shy? I- I cant. Im going inside.”
“Wait! Really, V?”
“Girl, I am going to burn - I am too fair for this shit, but you go right ahead miss never fucking burns”, she shot out her tongue in defiance towards you, easing you.
“Your ass is hot!”, you whistle back to her.
Victoria throws up her middle finger at you swaying her hips dramatically for emphasis, which caused you to laugh even more… but then you were alone again.
And then it came on.
Milkshake.
Kelis rang through the yard, and you couldn’t help but glance down - aroused by yourself.
And then you thought of him.
You didn’t mean for your fingers to pass overtop of your hardened nipple. You didn’t mean to lick the tip of your finger that had the remnants of strawberry lemonade on it. And you definitely didn’t mean to begin pulsing around nothing. God… you needed something.
And then you don’t even allow yourself to overthink as you snatch your phone from underneath the lounger, keeping it shaded from the sun. You don’t think as you open up the camera, nor when you angle it down to your dripping tits, nor when you stick your tongue out wide and flat, nor when you press send.
The response? Well it was not surprising when an incoming FaceTime call rang through not even 30 seconds later - which you just as swiftly declined.
Wrong choice, sweetheart.
A few more minutes of the beating sun on your skin and your playlist ‘Cunt Cult Classics’ ringing through the backyard, and then you heard it. Tangled in with ‘Hot in Herre’, you heard the faint sound of an engine growling… coming from? The field behind your yard?
Oh. Oh no.
The field that makes up the country road perimeter of The Tillman Ranch.
Instinctively, you swipe the old ratty Harley tee-shirt of Gators that you were using as a hair shade off of your seat. It slips with a bit of struggle over your head and onto your sticky skin, falling over the curves of your hips.
The sound began ripping louder than the music.
Didn’t take long to see the source as Gator Tillman revs the engine, jolting the dirt bike into sight. Fuck. He was on the complete other side of the stretched out 2 acres yet you could see everything you needed to see - sweaty, shirtless, and clearly hot and bothered.
He climbed off the bike, carelessly letting it fall to the ground - ripping off the helmet, his eyes fall directly on you. Stone cold staring.
You lift your back off the lounger and watch as he begins taking heavy steps in your direction - falling just short of the well maintained grass that he cut just last week. Right at the property line.
“What are you doing?”, you yell out to him from the grassy distance between you.
“You think you’re real funny, don’t ya?”
Your lips flick up in a curve, time to play, “I don’t know what you mean?”
“I was out shooting with some of the deputies. And you send me that.”
You slowly stand to your feet, grab your glass of strawberry lemonade and begin walking across the grass, the blades glide through your toes in your barefoot state. His shirt tickles your thighs. He hasn’t come into your yard.
“Why are you standing back there?”, nodding to the fact that he is standing at the property line.
“Its a ‘no Gator’ day.”, he hasn’t blinked.
“Exactly… boundaries are important, Gator bug.”
“Im respecting your boundary. Im on my property.” He tips his head down to a small row of rocks that create a boundary line, “Put these here years ago.”
“The rocks?”, you questioned with amused curiosity.
“Mhm. Dad told me I had to respect Miss Rosie’s yard.” He mumbled low.
You didn’t realize he knew your landlord like that, “You know her?”
“Shit… she’s known me since I was born. But were not talking about that.” Gator dismissed.
“Then what are we talking about?” You asked teasingly, knowing what is coming.
He pulls out his phone from his pocket, and swipes open to the picture.
“We, baby, are talking about this.”
You glanced down at the phone and quickly looked away, embarrassed but still so very needy. He took a step closer to the rock line.
“No, no. You’re not gonna get all shy now, you started this.”
He towered over you, you glanced up at him through your lashes. You ignored the fire burning inside of you, you were outside - Victoria could walk out any minute. And yet?
You sat down the lemonade.
Your hands slipped over the top of your hips, playing with the hem of the torn up t-shirt. His. Nails grazing your skin, digging in slightly. You took a step back - he leaned in, but stayed on his side. Gators breath began to grow deeper, heavier. His chest heaved, lungs filling itself with whatever intoxicating spell you placed on him.
Slowly, you lifted the shirt up and off your body - throwing it, he caught it without looking.
Your bare frame stood there, untouchable - a tease, always a fucking tease for a girl who’d only had sex twice.
“Holy fuck, baby -”, his eyes roamed your body, desperate for relief, “Fucking goddess.”
“You like?”
“Love. I fucking love. Adore. Worship.”
His head shook slowly, “Can’t believe my perfect girl has just been out here fucking naked, like a fucking slut. You know anyone could’ve seen you?” You could visibly see him struggling not to touch you. There weren’t many things Gator truly loved, but two of the things he did - he couldn’t have right now. You and control.
“What was it, hm? Fucking sweating out here in the heat? Or did ya have to hose yourself down?”
“Don't ya wish you could find out?” You reach down to grab the cup again, taking a messy swig - letting it dribble down in the same pattern as before. His eyes watched the liquid run, run, run right to your peaks and drop down to the tops of your toes.
Gators knees gave out entirely, “Oh fuck.”
His hands rested on your side of the yard. That simply wouldn’t do.
Your foot tucked under his chin, tilting his face up to look at you, “You passed the rocks.”
Before you could react, his hand clasped your ankle. His tongue instantly running across your toes, licking up the drops of strawberry lemonade.
“Holy shit, Gate!”
“Your mamaws recipe. My favorite.”
He continued to lick the sticky substance from your toes, giving open mouthed kisses over the tips - finally giving in to his desire, he opened his mouth.
You didn’t even know how to respond, but you couldn’t even if you wanted to - Gator Tillman under your control? On his knees for you? Fucking worshipping you at your feet? On your feet?
The softness of his tongue ran on the underside of your big toe before he closed his mouth down around it, hallowing out his cheeks. The sight nearly undid you right there and then.
“Fuck, Gator! What- Gator I am barefoot!”
“Yeah, for fucking once-”, he muffled out, too preoccupied, “always in those fucking heels, I fucking swear, woman. The things these feet do to me - finally gonna show you exactly what you put me through”
His teeth sunk down into the arch of your foot, making you gasp sharply and release a low moan, “Holy fuck - Baby! What the fuck are you doing to me… holy shit-”
“Feels good, Mama?”
“Like sin.”
His tongue ran across the length of your sole, teeth grazing at your little toes, eyes locked on how your body is reacting. He would have to be blind to miss the way your pussy was on full display with your foot propped in his hand. And Gator was mesmerized, your cunt shining from your slick. He hadn’t had you in a week, and after all the fighting, the sleepless nights, and the entirety of yesterday - God, he needed you in every single fucking way.
His mouth filled itself with your freshly pedicured toes, his hand finding your other - not wanting it to feel left out.
Your thighs began to tremble. You couldn’t tell if it was from standing on one foot for this long or if it was from the outright worship you were receiving. All you knew is that Gator knew. He shifted, sitting on his heels now - his large calloused hands grab at your ass, literally sweeping you off your feet and setting you down onto the grass bare naked.
He tapped your ankle and gave a flicking motion, commanding you to open your thighs for him. He needed an unobstructed view of his reward for being such a good obedient boy.
“You know I've stayed on my side…”
“What about it?”
“I’ve been good.”
“You still came over, when I explicitly told you I needed a day-”
“And yet, you were the one who walked up to me.”
He cocked his eyebrow up to you, cocky grin growing - he knew. He knew the truth. The truth was you needed him just as much as he needed you.
Slowly, you separated your legs - exposing yourself entirely to him. He squinted, eyes glued to your core.
“Holy shit, princess - you’re right, I am a fucking dog. Pickin’ up your scent from here.”
He lowered himself down, low to the earth and crawled on his knees and forearms across the rocks that marked your property line. The rocks scratched through his happy trail and brushed against his hard denim covered cock, an aggressive relief.
He was about to lose his mind.
Gator planted his elbows in between your thighs, locking them opened.
You whined out as he hovered over your dripping cunt, “Baby, please-”
“Please what?”
“Please - please me”
His eyes shifted from your pussy to your eyes, smirk dropping, “Say my name when you beg like that. Let me hear exactly who you’re asking for.”
Your breath hitches, chest heaving up and down.
“Gator, please fuck me-”, you body so pent up and needy, back arched and bottom lip trembling.
“No.”
Your eyes shot open to argue, but his mouth was on your cunt - causing the words to die on your tongue and replace it with a string of high pitch moans that filled the yard. Music to his ears. He let out a low vibrating groan against your core in response to your responsiveness. God, you wrecked him. He knew it and he was proud walking to the slaughter.
“But I said please!”
He pulled himself up to your face, placing an elbow by your face, “And you put me through hell for a whole fucking week and I treat you like a motherfuckin’ queen despite it all, so I will decide when you’ve had enough. For now, you’re going to learn patience.”
Before you could protest, he slid his hand down right on top of your pussy - which unfortunately for you, made your hips buck up into him for more friction. His fingers pulled back and smacked your cunt in punishment, pulling a scream out of your lungs.
“What did I just say? Learn. Patience. I have been so fucking patient for you, for years, in fact. And now… its your turn.”
His face returned back to your cunt, sucking you in completely with hallowed cheeks, tongue flicking up to your clit and lapping at it. Your back arched up and your hands flew to his hair, which thankfully was loose and windblown. Your nails scratched at his scalp, tugging at the root - causing a growl to rumble out of his chest and vibrate against your skin. The feeling was over whelming. Your thighs clenched aground his head, and his arms wrapped underneath your thighs and he grasped ahold of each of his own forearms, locking you in place. One hand remained in his hair as the other traveled over all his exposed skin, biceps, forearms, back back back back fuck. Holy shit, his back. You could see the dips right above his waistband. You could see his shoulder blades, crafted by God.
You could feel the burn inside of you, he knew it too.
Hips bucking into his mouth, back not even touching the grass anymore - speaking of grass, you had ripped out all the blades within reach, just trying to fight the stimulation. Whines rolled out of your mouth, curses, cries, and mostly his name.
“Gator! Baby! Fuck - baby, I’m gonna cum!”
He released you, mouth off your soaked core. He pulled himself back up, taking both of your tits in just one hand, squeezing them at the base causing them to swell in his face.
“Time to taste what I came for-”, he reached next to you, you were so wrecked from your assassinated orgasm that you didn’t even notice him grabbing the strawberry lemonade.
The cold liquid poured out onto your tits, spilling all over your body - and his mouth reconnected. His lips secured themself around one of your nipples, moaning onto your skin as he tasted the tangy lemonade mixed with your sweaty skin. Absolute perfection.
Chilled from the lemonade, you were at the brink once again - so close to your orgasm. You couldn’t help it as your hand shifted down, circling overtop of your clit as Gator hooked your other nipple in his teeth, pulling slightly.
You weren’t being very patient, were you?
It came fast and hard. You pulled back your hand in hopes you weren’t caught bringing yourself to the selfish finish you craved, as your body shook in release. A string of whimpers chased from your tongue as Gator captured your mouth with his own, holding your face in place to lock the kiss.
As soon as you were able to move, you shoved him up and back - ready to finally get the full relief you needed, and you knew he did too by the look of his pants.
But he swiftly stood, and stepped back over the rocks, “Enjoy your ‘no-gator’ day baby.” And with that, he turned and picked up his dirt bike. He winced as he climbed onto the bike, uncomfortable with his painfully hard cock remaining untouched. He watched you as he lowered the helmet on his head. You sat there in shock… awe, pain, disparity. The bike roared to life and he ripped through the dirt, and suddenly - out of sight.
Between the devilish orgasm and the strawberry lemonade poured all over your body, you really were a sticky mess.
Briar University had a way of making everything look more romantic than it was.
The old brick buildings were softened by ivy, their windows glowing gold in the evenings like they held secrets worth keeping. The pathways curved beneath towering maples, and in autumn, the ground became a stained-glass mosaic of amber and red beneath students’ shoes. Snow came early here, too—powdering the rooftops and settling in the hollows of the campus lawns until everything looked untouched.
It was beautiful.
It was also cold, expensive, exhausting, and full of people who seemed to have arrived already knowing exactly who they were.
You had not.
You were twenty years old, a junior in the journalism program, and most days you felt as though everyone else had received a map at orientation while you had been handed a blank page and a pen that barely worked.
So you wrote.
You wrote because words made more sense than people did. They could be edited. Rearranged. Cut away when they became too heavy. You could take a mess of facts and make them mean something, could turn a moment into a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
People, unfortunately, refused to follow any kind of structure.
Especially the boys next door.
The hockey house had been loud since the first day you moved into your townhouse.
Not regular loud.
Not the occasional party-loud that came with living off campus, where someone played music too late on a Friday and woke up embarrassed the next morning. No, the hockey house was a living thing. It breathed through its speakers, shook through its walls, and laughed with too many male voices at impossible hours.
It had a porch that looked permanently injured. Red plastic cups appeared in its garden like wildflowers. Someone had once left a traffic cone on the roof for three days. Another time, you had found a hockey stick wedged into the branches of the small tree outside your bedroom window.
You had no idea how it got there.
You had not asked.
Your roommate, Olivia, found the whole thing hilarious.
“They’re harmless,” she said one Saturday morning, stepping around a half-deflated football on the front path. She wore one of your oversized sweaters and held a mug of coffee in both hands. “Mostly.”
“Mostly is not a comforting word.”
“You’re just grumpy because they woke you up.”
“They woke me up at two-thirty in the morning by singing ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ like they were being held hostage.”
Olivia grinned. “I heard harmonies.”
“You heard a crime.”
She laughed and leaned against the doorframe. “You know they’re the hockey guys, right?”
“Yes, Liv. I have eyes. And ears. Unfortunately.”
“You could go over there.”
You stared at her.
“Why?”
“To make friends.”
“I would rather eat the hockey stick in our tree.”
Olivia took a slow sip of her coffee, her smile widening over the rim. “You say that now.”
You did say it now.
You said it again later that afternoon, when your editor at The Briar Beacon assigned you to cover the men’s hockey team for the season.
“No,” you said.
Your editor, Paige, did not even look up from the stack of articles in front of her. “Yes.”
“I cover student life.”
“You covered student life last year.”
“Exactly. I’m good at it.”
“You are good at it.” Paige finally looked at you, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “You’re also good at interviews, and you don’t let people give you empty answers. Hockey needs that.”
“Hockey has a sports desk.”
“Hockey has three writers who are all trying to get internships with ESPN and would sell their grandmother for a quote from Garrett Graham.”
You leaned back in the battered chair across from her desk. The Beacon office had once been a storage room, judging by the exposed pipes and the fact that the heating system seemed to be powered by a dying animal. “I don’t know anything about hockey.”
“You know how to ask questions.”
“I know enough to know they hit each other and skate fast.”
“Perfect. That puts you ahead of half the audience.”
“Paige.”
“Y/N.”
You narrowed your eyes.
She smiled in the way editors smiled when they had already decided your fate.
“The first home game is Friday,” she said. “I need eight hundred words by Sunday. Game recap, player quotes, season expectations. Make it readable. Make it interesting. And please, for the love of everything holy, do not write that they ‘gave one hundred and ten percent.’”
You opened your mouth.
Paige lifted a hand. “You’re assigned.”
That was how, on Friday evening, you found yourself standing near the edge of Briar’s ice rink with a press pass around your neck and a notebook tucked beneath your arm.
The arena was already filling up.
Students packed into the stands in Briar blue and white, their voices rising in waves as the players skated out for warmups. The ice reflected the overhead lights in long, trembling strips. It looked almost delicate from where you stood—like glass, like a frozen lake, like something that would shatter if anyone moved too suddenly.
Then the players slammed into one another along the boards, and you remembered that nothing about hockey was delicate.
Your phone buzzed.
OLIVIA: Are you at the game??
You glanced at the message and typed back.
YOU: Unfortunately.
Three dots appeared immediately.
OLIVIA: Look for the blond one. He’s cute.
You frowned.
YOU: That narrows it down how?
OLIVIA: The REALLY cute blond one.
You looked toward the ice.
There were several blond players.
Then one of them turned, laughing at something his teammate said, and you understood.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and moved with an ease that made the rest of the rink look slower by comparison. His helmet hid most of his hair, but loose golden strands curled at the nape of his neck. He had the kind of face people probably trusted too easily: open, bright, made for crooked smiles and apologies that worked when they should not.
Logan.
You knew his name because Briar knew his name.
Logan was one of the team’s stars. Logan was a junior. Logan had a reputation for being charming, reckless, and apparently incapable of attending a party without becoming the centre of it. Logan lived next door.
Logan, you thought, was probably responsible for at least forty percent of your sleep deprivation.
As though he could feel your annoyance from across the rink, he glanced toward the press area.
His gaze landed on you.
It held for a second.
Maybe two.
Then he smiled.
Not a polite smile. Not the distant kind athletes gave reporters before answering questions they had heard a thousand times. This one was quick and warm and entirely too knowing, as if he had recognized you.
You looked away first.
Your phone buzzed again.
OLIVIA: Did you see him???
You did not reply.
The game began with the sharp crack of sticks against ice and the roar of the crowd. You took notes mechanically at first, writing down names, penalties, shots on goal. But slowly, despite yourself, the game pulled you in.
There was a rhythm to it.
Not graceful, exactly. More like a storm. Players surged forward in bursts of speed, then collided in sudden violence. The puck disappeared and reappeared. The crowd rose and fell around every near miss. The ice became a battlefield painted in white, and every player seemed to carry some private hunger beneath his jersey.
Logan scored in the second period.
The goal happened so quickly that you barely understood it until the arena erupted. One second he was near the boards, boxed in by two defenders. The next, he had slipped between them, his body angling low, his stick moving with a precision that made the shot look effortless.
The puck hit the net.
The crowd screamed.
Logan threw one fist into the air before his teammates crashed into him, helmets knocking together, gloves gripping shoulders.
You wrote in your notebook:
“John Logan plays like he is trying to outrun something.”
Then you crossed it out.
Too dramatic.
You wrote:
“Logan scored Briar’s second goal midway through the second period, shifting momentum in a game that had remained close through the opening half.”
You stared at it.
Boring.
You sighed and kept writing.
Briar won 4–2.
By the time the final buzzer sounded, the arena was buzzing with the aftermath of victory. Students poured toward the exits, still loud with adrenaline. The players disappeared down the tunnel toward the locker rooms, and you stood near the media area with two other reporters, waiting.
You had interviewed student council presidents, professors, local business owners, and once, a visiting poet who had spent twenty minutes explaining why questions were a form of violence.
You could handle hockey players.
Probably.
The first few came through quickly, damp-haired and flushed from the game. They answered questions in the clipped, practiced language of athletes everywhere.
“Good team effort.”
“Focused on the next game.”
“Credit to the guys.”
You wrote down what you could use and ignored the rest.
Then Garrett Graham walked past, surrounded by reporters who had clearly been waiting for him. He looked tired but composed, his expression carefully neutral. You watched him answer questions about his performance, his father, the season ahead.
He was good at this.
Not because he enjoyed it, you thought. Because he had been trained for it.
There was a difference.
You were still considering whether to approach him when someone stopped beside you.
“You’re new.”
The voice was close enough that you startled.
You turned.
Logan stood there in a grey Briar hockey T-shirt, his hair damp and messy, his cheeks still pink from the cold. Up close, he was even more unfairly attractive than he had been on the ice.
You hated that your brain supplied that observation without permission.
“I’m not new,” you said. “I’m a junior.”
He tilted his head. “New to hockey, then.”
“What gave it away?”
“The notebook.”
You looked down at the pages in your hand. “Reporters use notebooks.”
“Yeah, but you’re writing like you’re translating a foreign language.”
Your eyes narrowed. “Maybe hockey is a foreign language.”
“Not really. It’s mostly swearing and skating.”
“I gathered.”
His smile appeared again.
You had seen it from across the rink. It was worse up close.
“You’re with the Beacon?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you writing about me?”
“Maybe.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Depends. Are you secretly terrible?”
He laughed, a real laugh this time—low and surprised. “That’s a pretty aggressive first question.”
“You asked.”
“I did.” He held out his hand. “Logan.”
You looked at it for a beat before shaking it.
“Y/N.”
His hand was warm, his grip firm but brief.
Then his expression shifted slightly.
“Wait,” he said. “You live next door.”
You let go of his hand. “Unfortunately.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You’re the girl in the townhouse.”
“I’m not sure whether to be offended that I’m known as ‘the girl in the townhouse’ or relieved that you don’t know my name.”
“I know your name now.”
“That is not necessarily an improvement.”
He laughed again, and something about the sound made irritation rise in you—not because it was unpleasant, but because it was too easy. Because he seemed too comfortable. Because boys like Logan always looked at the world as though it existed to entertain them.
You had known boys like that.
They were fun until they were not.
“You’re loud,” you said.
Logan blinked. “What?”
“Your house. It’s loud.”
His mouth twitched. “Oh.”
“At two-thirty in the morning.”
“Was that Tuesday?”
“Wednesday.”
“Right.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That was probably Dean.”
“You say that like it helps.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No.”
“Okay.” His smile softened, just slightly. “I’m sorry.”
The apology caught you off guard.
You had expected him to laugh it off. To tell you that you should get used to it. To say something charming and useless.
Instead, he looked genuinely apologetic.
You hated that, too.
“You should be,” you said, because you had already committed to the bit.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m not—”
“Sorry. You just have a very serious reporter face.”
“I have a normal face.”
“No,” he said, studying you with entirely too much amusement. “You have a face that says you’re about to expose corruption in local government.”
“You’re avoiding my questions.”
“I haven’t been asked any yet.”
You flipped open your notebook.
“Fine,” you said. “How did you feel about tonight’s game?”
Logan groaned softly. “That’s the first question?”
“It’s standard.”
“It’s boring.”
“Then give me an interesting answer.”
He looked at you for a moment.
The hallway around you was loud with voices, equipment bags, and the metallic clatter of someone dropping a water bottle. But for one strange second, it felt quiet.
“We needed it,” he said finally. “The win.”
His tone had changed. Less playful. More careful.
“Why?” you asked.
“Because everyone keeps talking about what this season is supposed to be. What we’re supposed to prove. It gets in your head.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Tonight felt good because we just played. No expectations. No future. Just the game.”
You wrote it down.
That was better than you expected.
You asked him about the second-period goal. He answered with a joke first, then gave you something useful. You asked about team chemistry, and he spoke about Garrett’s leadership, about how much work the team had put in over the summer.
Then you asked, “What do you think Briar gets wrong about hockey players?”
Logan looked at you.
Not flirtatiously this time.
Thoughtfully.
“That we’re all the same,” he said.
You paused.
“And are you?”
“No.” He glanced down the hallway, where one of his teammates was yelling something incomprehensible. “Some guys are idiots. Some guys are worse than idiots. Some guys are actually decent, but nobody believes it because they’re wearing the same jersey as everyone else.”
You looked at him for a moment longer than necessary.
Then you wrote that down too.
When the interview ended, Logan stepped backward.
“So,” he said. “See you around, Y/N.”
“You mean next door?”
“Yeah.” His grin returned. “Try not to write anything too mean about me.”
“I make no promises.”
“I like that about you.”
You watched him walk away before you could think of a response.
Your phone buzzed.
OLIVIA: Well?
You typed:
YOU: He is annoying.
Her reply came almost instantly.
OLIVIA: That means you think he’s hot.
You shoved your phone into your coat pocket and left the arena without answering.
By midnight, you had written six hundred and eighty-three words.
Your article was open on your laptop, the cursor blinking at the end of a paragraph that refused to work.
Outside, the wind scraped bare branches against the windows. Your bedroom was small, but it was yours: thrifted desk, uneven bookshelf, string lights pinned above the bed. A stack of unread novels leaned dangerously near your lamp. Your favourite mug sat empty beside your keyboard.
Across the narrow space between your townhouse and the hockey house, lights glowed in several windows.
You could hear music.
Of course you could.
You pressed your fingers to your temples.
Then your phone lit up with a notification.
Instagram — @briarhockey
@briarhockey Home opener W. See you next week, Briar.
The comments were already flooding in.
@briargirl94: LOGANNNNN
@hockeyfanatic: what a game!!
@emilyharrison: 4–2 BABY
@oliviajames: @yourusername your new beat is looking very educational 👀
・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・゜
You stared at Olivia’s comment.
Then you locked your phone and went back to your article.
You did not look at Logan’s face again.
Not for the rest of the night.
Not until three days later, when you found him sitting on your front steps.
It was raining.
Not heavily. Just enough to turn the pavement dark and make the streetlights blur at the edges. You had stayed late at the Beacon office, arguing with Paige about a headline and finishing a piece on campus housing shortages. Your backpack was heavy on one shoulder, and your umbrella had given up halfway home.
By the time you reached your townhouse, you were damp, tired, and in no mood for surprises.
Logan was sitting beneath the shallow cover of your porch roof, elbows resting on his knees.
He looked up when he heard you approach.
“Hey,” he said.
You stopped at the bottom of the steps.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
Your entire body went still.
It was not fear, exactly.
More like caution. The kind that lived beneath your skin, sharp and alert.
Logan seemed to notice.
His expression changed immediately.
“Not in a creepy way,” he said quickly. “I mean—I saw you leave campus earlier. I was going to ask you something, but you were with your editor. Then I had practice, and I thought I’d catch you when you got home.”
You stared at him.
“You saw me leave campus?”
“Okay, that sounds worse when you say it back.”
“It should.”
He exhaled through his nose, looking embarrassed. “I live next door. I wasn’t tracking you. I just saw you.”
The rain tapped softly against the porch roof.
You considered him.
He was wearing a dark hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. No hockey gear. No crowd around him. No easy, public version of himself. He looked tired, actually. Shadows sat beneath his eyes.
“What did you want?” you asked.
He stood.
“I wanted to ask if you’d come to the game on Saturday.”
You blinked.
“For work?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
He hesitated.
It was only a second, but you saw it.
“I liked your article,” he said.
You had not expected that.
“You read it?”
“Yeah.”
“You read the Beacon?”
“Sometimes.”
“You read my article?”
“Okay, you don’t have to sound so shocked.”
“I am shocked.”
He smiled faintly. “It was good.”
The compliment landed strangely. Not because it was extraordinary, but because he had paid attention. Because he had read something you wrote and remembered it.
You looked away first, fumbling with the strap of your bag.
“Thanks,” you said.
“So,” he said. “Saturday?”
“I have plans.”
“That’s a lie.”
You looked back at him.
He lifted both hands. “Sorry. That sounded rude. But you have the face you make when you’re trying to think of a reason to say no.”
“You know my face?”
“I’m observant.”
“You’re annoying.”
“Also true.”
You should have gone inside.
You should have told him you were busy, that you did not need to attend hockey games for fun, that you did not want to become the kind of person who let a pretty smile and a few sincere words rearrange her better judgment.
Instead, you said, “Why do you want me there?”
The question seemed to surprise him.
He looked out at the rain, toward the street, toward anywhere but directly at you.
Then he shrugged.
“Maybe I want someone there who doesn’t think I’m just a hockey player.”
The words were quiet.
Not dramatic. Not polished.
Just honest.
And that was worse.
Because you understood that feeling.
You understood being reduced to one thing. The scholarship student. The girl who worked too much. The person who always had a notebook in her hand. People saw the version of you that made sense to them and rarely bothered to look further.
You looked at Logan again.
The rain had dampened the shoulders of his hoodie. His hair curled slightly at his forehead. He looked less like the golden boy everyone talked about and more like a person standing on your porch, hoping you would say yes.
“I’ll think about it,” you said.
His smile was small this time.
“I’ll take it.”
He stepped off the porch and moved toward the hockey house.
At the edge of your yard, he turned back.
“Hey, Y/N?”
“What?”
“Your serious reporter face is kind of terrifying.”
You folded your arms. “Good.”
He laughed, then disappeared into the rain.
You stood there for another moment, keys cold in your hand.
Across the yard, the hockey house glowed warm behind its windows.
And for the first time since you moved in, it did not feel like an enemy.
It felt like a question.
One you were not sure you wanted to answer.
・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・゜
@yourusername: Some nights feel like unfinished sentences.
Comments:
@oliviajames: this is why you need to date someone messy and emotionally complicated
↳ @yourusername: I need you to stop commenting on my posts
↳ @oliviajames: no ❤️
@briarhockey: poetic
↳ @yourusername: who gave the hockey team access to Instagram
↳ @johnlogan: Probably Dean.
↳ @yourusername: That explains everything.
↳ @johnlogan: See you Saturday?
You stared at the comment for a long time.
Then, against every instinct you had carefully built over the years, you typed back.
˚꩜｡pairing: 40s!eddie munson x 20y!fem!reader
˚꩜｡summary: Coming home from the summer was supposed to mean backyard barbecues, Fourth of July fireworks, and spending time with your parents before your final year of college. Falling into bed with your dad's forty-something tattoo artist had definitely not been part of the plan.
˚꩜｡tags/tw: 18+ explicit sexual content, minors do not interact | no y/n, afab!f!reader, big age gap, oral (f!receiving), fingering, unprotected p in v, squirting, fourth of july jumpscare (this is a joke pls dont shoot me), 1 comment about reader losing weight but no descriptions of how much and/or body type, im sharing my parents w u guys in this one bc they’re cool and i miss them, underage drinking, smoking marijuana/tobacco, reader has tattoos, mentions of getting a tattoo as a minor, kinda self indulgent sorry, the faintest of angst at the end, lemme know me if i forgot anything :)
˚꩜｡word count: 17.1k+
˚꩜｡a/n: so i know it has been six days since the fourth, but i saw this tiktok and i immediately started to write this so all credits to @/arthursfemalehorse on tiktok for the edit that inspired this<3 (this was supposed to have been posted two days ago but i got too horny to continue writing)
At eighteen, freshly graduated from high school, you couldn’t wait to forget your old life, sever all contact with your old classmates, and never return to the godforsaken town of Hawkins, Indiana, where you had been born and raised.
Now, at twenty-one years old, and just one year shy of graduating NYU and snatching your master’s degree in Art Therapy, you couldn’t wait to return to the sleepy little town.
It had nothing to do with missing your old mates or the achingly slow routine you’d left behind two years earlier. Hell, it wasn’t even because you missed your parents — which you did, obviously — but that wasn’t the reason you were planning to move back.
New York was, for lack for a better, great. Truly. It was everything you’d dreamt about throughout your teenage years — multicultural, freeing, authentic in a way that demanded respect, with a shit ton of opportunities Hawkins couldn’t even dream of offering.
But it was also… just too much.
Too loud. Too smelly. Too busy. Too anxiety-inducing.
Hawkins, on the other hand, wasn’t amazing. Most of the time, it wasn’t even fun.
But it offered a quiet that you never realized you needed until you moved to the East Coast, without ever asking anything in return.
It wasn’t a place that expected — nonetheless demanded — you to keep up, nor did it punish you for slowing down and taking a breather. You could leave the house without planning every minute of your day around subways delays, packed sidewalks, and whether or not you could afford another ridiculously overprices coffee just to justify sitting somewhere for an hour.
In Hawkins, you knew the cashiers at the grocery store and which roads flooded first after heavy rain. You knew which diner stayed open the latest, where to get your tires replaced without getting ripped off by some surprise inspection tacked onto the bill, and exactly which back roads to take if you simply wanted to drive with the windows down for a while.
It was the kind of comfort you missed in the big city.
So the moment your final summer break before your last year of graduate school rolled around in the middle of May, you’d already made up your mind — you were going home for the first time in two years.
Unfortunately, your bank account had other ideas.
Rent in New York — even while sharing a shoebox apartment with two other girls — had a funny way of reminding you that dreams didn’t pay themselves, and neither did tuition. So instead of immediately packing your bags and hopping on the first plane to Indiana, you picked up every extra shift your manager was willing to throw your way.
Mornings behind the espresso machine turned into afternoons. Afternoons bled into closing shifts. Before you knew it, six weeks had disappeared somewhere between burnt coffee, impatient tourists, and people who genuinely believed ordering six different modifications somehow made them easier to deal with.
It wasn’t until the first week of July, when your savings account finally looked healthy enough, that you were able to point yourself towards Indiana.
Not forever. Come mid August, you’d be squeezing back into your apartment, picking up where you’d left off, and tackling one final year before graduation. But for the next month and a half, Hawkins was home again.
Funnily enough, the cheapest flight back from New York to Indianapolis landed in the middle of the night on the Fourth of July — only forty bucks cheaper than the alternatives, but still. An extra forty bucks for a college student meant not eating ramen for four consecutive days.
And, considering, you hadn’t given your parents an exact date for your return, arriving early on the holiday made for a nice surprise.
What wasn’t a nice surprise, however, was the half-hour delay it took to get off the plane. The two-hour drive from Indianapolis to Hawkins in a cramped rental car wasn’t exactly enjoyable either, although the endless stretches of cornfields and the occasional herd of cows were enough to pull a small smile onto your face again.
The weather had already been bordering on suffocating at almost ten in the morning when you passed the Welcome to Hawkins sign, and the cracked windows of the car did little to help in that regard.
But it was the Fourth, and that meant your parents were probably putting up the pool — if they hadn’t already done it the day before — and that an endless supply of ice-cold drinks was already waiting for your surprise return.
You instinctively turned the volume of the radio down as you made the familiar right turn into your old neighbourhood.
The early morning sunshine stretched across the quiet streets, warming the asphalt as it spilled between neat rows of modest houses and leafy trees. Tall utility poles and tangled power lines framed both sides of the road, looking exactly as they had the day you’d left.
Your foot eased off the accelerator almost automatically when the familiar house came into view. The wraparound porch looked exactly as you remembered it, supported by simple wooden posts and bordered by a railing that had hosted more lazy summer afternoons than you’d probably ever admit missing.
And then you noticed the ridiculous red, white and blue decorations your dad insisted on dragging out of the attic every year.
A massive American flag covered nearly the entire front window. Patriotic garlands hung from the porch ceiling. And, judging by the perfectly coordinated flower beds, your dad had somehow convinced your mom to plant red, white and blue flowers just in time for the holiday.
Jesus fucking Christ.
That… was definitely something you hadn’t missed.
You’d save the annual debate about nationalism, capitalism, and the political and economical state of the country and why you didn’t believe the Fourth of July and its founding fathers were something worth celebrating for another day. Preferably one that didn’t involve your father.
The engine died with a quick twist of your wrist, followed by the familiar click of your seatbelt, but you didn’t get out just yet. Instead, you sat there for another moment, your shoulders relaxing almost instantly as you looked at the house you’d once spent every waking moment trying to escape.
Your street had barely changed. Down the road, Mr. Flynn was moving his front lawn like he did almost every morning, while the kids of number 61A were already testing fireworks far too early.
Your lips curled into a small smile as you finally pushed the car door open and made your way to the trunk to grab your bags.
The fence around the house had recently been given a fresh coat of lacquer, and the brick path leading to the backyard had clearly been scrubbed clean days earlier.
Pushing open the familiar creaking gate and stepping into the backyard pulled a content sigh from your chest as you finally set the heavy bags on the ground.
“You here already, Ed?”
Your dad pushed the screen door open with one hand while carrying a heavy-looking cooler in the other.
“Who is Ed?” you asked when your eyes landed on your greying father.
A heavy thud echoed through the otherwise quiet backyard as he let the cooler slip from his hands, standing frozen between the back door and the patio.
“What the fuck?”
“Please don’t curse this early in the morning!” your mom called from somewhere inside the house.
“I’m pretty sure you’ll be cursing too if you saw what the fuck I’m seeing.”
While your dad remained rooted to the spot, eyes still wide with disbelief, your mom mumbled something unintelligible as he made her way towards the backyard.
The towel she’d been drying her hands with joined the cooler on the ground.
“What the fuck?”
“Told you.”
A disbelieving chuckle escaped you as the two of them simply stared.
“I told you guys I was coming home from the summer.”
“But not that you were coming today!” She hurried over and wrapped her arms around you, only pulling back enough to cup your face between her hands. Her eyes searched every inch of it like she hadn’t seen you in decades. “Why didn’t you call? We could’ve picked you up from the airport.”
“I wanted to surprise you guys.”
Your dad finally seemed to reboot.
“Did you rent a car?” was the first thing out of his mouth.
“Hi to you too, Dad.”
“How much was it?”
“That’s your first question?” You tilted your head in disbelief.
“Oh, Pigeon,” your mom whispered, still holding your face. “You’ve lost weight. Have you been eating properly?”
“Mom, I’m fine—”
“Rentin’ a car is expensive,” your dad muttered, already fishing his phone out of his back pocket. “On top of paying New York rent? Jesus, Pigeon. You should’ve called.”
“Dad, I rented the car for three days—”
“I’m sending you money.”
A laugh escaped you despite yourself.
Almost twenty-one years old, and you were still their baby girl — apparently incapable of looking after your own health or your own finances.
Not that there was any point to trying to convince them otherwise, their minds had already been made up.
The cooler had been completely forgotten beside the screen door as your dad wrapped his hands around the handles of your bags — despite your repeated insistence that you were more than capable of carrying them yourself — and made a beeline for your childhood bedroom.
He was still going on about the rental car as you followed him up the creaky staircase, only abandoning the subject once he’d nudged open the familiar white bedroom door with his foot.
The door was still decorated with stickers. The walls were still painted your favourite shade of pale green, and the embarrassingly emo and scene band posters you’d sworn you’d take down before leaving college were still scattered across them.
Aside from the new rug in the middle of the room, nothing had changed.
“You should call your friends,” he said as he set your bags down on the bed. “See if anyone’s around to hang out.”
“I kinda lost touch with everyone, Dad,” you replied with a small shrug. “I’m perfectly happy hanging out with you two.”
“Well, us two and Eddie.” He scratched at his beard. “And a handful of our other friends too.”
“Who’s Eddie?” You frowned.
“Eddie Munson.” He pushed the sleeve of his Hawaiian shirt farther up his arm, revealing the tattoo he’d gotten the year before. “He moved back last year when his dad got sick. Opened a tattoo studio downtown not long after.”
Your hand reached out almost on instinct, fingertips brushing over the healed ink.
The words of an embarrassingly sentimental poem you’d written in elementary school curved neatly around his upper arm, permanently preserved in your own unmistakable chicken-scratch handwriting.
And just above it sat a black-and-grey coloured realistic pigeon.
You still weren’t entirely sure which tattoo was more ridiculous.
“I still can’t believe you actually got this tattooed,” you snorted, looking back up at him.
“Yeah, well,” he chuckled, tugging his sleeve back down. “Can you blame me for being obsessed with my only child?”
“If your obsession makes you do stupid things?” You folded your arms. “Then yes. Absolutely.”
He raised an eyebrow and rested his hands on his hips in that particular way that always told you your dad was about to call you out.
“Says the girl who got 1D tattooed on her ankle when she was fourteen.” He pursed his lips for a moment before they curled into a disbelieving grin. “Still have no idea how you managed to get a tattoo back then.”
“Black ink from a pen and a sewing needle.” You shrugged as you unzipped one of your bags. “Saw a tutorial on YouTube.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Your giggles echoed through the bedroom as your dad simply shook his head, muttering something about teenagers while backing into the hallway.
“Put your bikini on. It’s gonna be hot today,” he said, pausing in the doorway to rap his knuckles against the frame, and then pointed a finger at you. “And then get downstairs and help me with the grill.”
“Aye, captain,” you laughed. “I’ll be down in a bit.”
“Good.”
The door clicked shut behind him, and silence settled over the bedroom once again.
You let yourself sink onto the edge of the mattress before eventually falling backwards with a soft whump, the old springs protesting underneath your weight just as they always had, and you let your eyes wander across the familiar room.
The glow-in-the-dark constellations were still stuck to the ceiling. The bookshelf tucked beside your desk still leaned ever so slightly to the left after you’d tried to climb it when you were ten. The faded Polaroids hanging from the mirror still showed smiling faces you’d long since lost touch with.
Nothing had changed — not really.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, you were kind of grateful for it.
It took you a few more seconds of studying an older, more innocent version of yourself before you finally pushed yourself off the bed to change into a bikini like your dad had suggested.
For a second, while pulling open one of the drawers, you considered putting on the ridiculous American flag bikini as a joke, but the thought of your dad embarrassing you by saying something along the lines of, “Now that’s what I’m talking about! Celebrating the American spirit!” was enough to make you think better of it.
So you opted for another one instead — the one with the gold sequins and pink beads you’d bought during your junior year in a desperate attempt to impress Andrew Harrington.
Despite what your mom had claimed downstairs, you hadn’t actually lost weight. If anything, somehow surviving almost exclusively on ramen and bread had convinced your body that your chest needed to grow another cup size. The bikini still fit, but the straps leaned a little more to the digging into your shoulders side.
A pair of light-washed denim shorts covered the bottom half of your bikini, and your sneakers were swapped for sandals.
The familiar creaks of the staircase were drowned out by the unmistakable roar for a pickup truck pulling into the driveway as you made your way downstairs.
“Dad,” you called as you stepped into the kitchen. “Need anything from inside?”
“Uh…” he thought aloud for a second. “No, Pigeon. I think we got everything already.”
You hummed in acknowledgement and wandered over the fridge instead.
Having a beer at ten-something in the morning wasn’t exactly frowned upon if it was the Fourth of July, right?
You grabbed one from the bottom shelf before popping the cap off against the edge of the countertop, taking a long sip as the icy bitterness settled pleasantly against the summer heat that had already begun creeping into the house through the open windows.
Outside, a car door slammed shut, and your dad’s voice carried through the open window almost immediately.
“About time you got here!”
A man’s laugh answered him.
“Had some things to sort out.”
You were halfway through another sip when your dad called again.
“Pigeon! Come out here for a sec!”
Beer still in hand, you made your way towards the backyard, already half-expecting him to need help moving the grill or finally dragging the pool out of the garage.
Your dad stood barefoot on the grass, tongs in one hand and a bag of charcoal in the other, a broad grin already spreading across his face.
Beside him stood a man in a faded band t-shirt and a pair of dark three-quarter shorts, two six packs tucked beneath one arm.
Greying curls brushed his shoulders, a pair of sunglasses resting on top of his head. Tattoos disappeared beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt, and you were fairly certain you caught the glint of a small silver hoop through one of his nostrils.
Jesus fucking Christ.
He looked up at the sound of the screen door creaking open.
“Well,” he chuckled. “I’m guessing this is the famous poet who wrote Lovely Purple Pigeons.”
A warm laugh escaped you as you finally snapped out of your thoughts. Shaking your head, you walked down the few steps towards the two men before offering him your hand.
“Well, I’m no Emily Dickinson,” you joked, “but I’m glad you enjoyed my greatest work.”
You ignored the feeling of your tongue sliding over your bottom lip when a large, calloused hand wrapped around yours, his handshake firm without being overbearing.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said with a smile. “Kinda impossible not to become a fan of your work.”
“I’d say the same,” you replied, “but I still think letting my dad get that tattoo counts as a felony.”
That pulled another laugh from him.
Meeting new people had never exactly been your favourite thing. While you weren’t the most sociable person in the word, you weren’t exactly an introvert either. More often than not, though, first conversations felt painfully awkward.
Meeting Eddie was nothing like that, and conversations came surprisingly easily.
He laughed at your jokes — whether because they were actually funny or simply because he was being polite, you had no idea — and every question he asked felt genuine instead of obligatory.
More importantly, he never once spoke to you like you were still fifteen. Considering most of your parents’ friends still seemed convinced you were, that alone was enough to make you like him.
Your dad, who had wandered over to the grill while you and Eddie were talking, pulled you out of your thoughts when he spoke again.
“Emily Dickinson has nothing on you, Pigeon,” he called over his shoulder before doing a double take. “…Is that a new one?”
Your eyes followed his line of sight to the palm-sized, fine line design of a little fishing boat resting against your ribcage.
“Uh, yeah,” you admitted. “Got it during spring break with a friend.”
“You don’t even like boats.” He frowned.
“It’s an inside joke from when we were, uh,” You hesitated for a second before taking another sip of your beer, “…stoned.”
Your dad raised an eyebrow before pinching the bridge of his nose.
“There was something about boats and Led Zeppelin.”
“I don’t even wanna know.”
“Tattoos and Led Zeppelin?” Eddie laughed beside you. “Oh, I definitely wanna know.”
You looked over at him, only to find warm brown eyes already fixed on yours, and your mouth opened and then immediately closed again.
A stupid little laugh escaped you as warmth crept across your cheeks.
“It’s really not that interesting,” you warned.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Jokingly rolling your eyes at him, you gave in anyway.
You told him about spending spring break in Florida with one of your roommates, getting far too high one evening, and somehow ending up in a twenty-minute conversation about whether Led Zeppelin sounded more like the name of a rock band or a fisherman boat.
Somewhere along the way, your roommate started pronouncing Zeppelin in an exaggerated Southern accent that had reduced the two of you to tears.
Looking back, it wasn’t even that funny — not unless you’d been there, at least.
“See?” you finished with an awkward shrug. “It’s one of those stories.”
The crowfeet beside his eyes deepened as he laughed.
“No, I get it.” Eddie smiled. “I’ve got a shit tone of those too.”
Adjusting the two six-packs, he nodded towards your side.
“Mind if I take a look?”
You returned the nod before turning slightly, lifting your arm just enough for the tattoo to come into view.
Eddie stopped closer — not enough to crowd you, but just enough to see the details.
“Can I?”
You nodded again, and his fingertips brushed lightly against your skin as he gently stretched it, the touch careful and practiced in a way that immediately gave away years of experience. Professional. Matter-of-fact, even.
Which definitely didn’t explain the fresh wave of heat climbing into your cheeks.
“It healed really well,” he said quietly, studying the delicate shading. “Nice line work.”
A smile tugged at your lips. “I’ll pass the compliment along.”
“Ribs are a bitch to get tattooed.”
“It honestly wasn’t that bad,” you admitted. “It tickled more than it hurt.”
“Huh.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “That’s a first.”
He let his hand fall away before straightening to his full height, and only then you realised just how much taller he actually was.
Well over a foot, if you had to guess. Which definitely wasn’t something you were thinking about either.
His eyes lingered on yours for just a second longer before he looked over towards your dad.
“So,” he said, lifting the six-packs. “Where do you want these?”
Your dad muttered something unintelligible while gesturing vaguely towards the house.
Eddie looked back at you.
“You wanna show me where the kitchen is?”
You raised an eyebrow at that.
If Eddie was more than just your dad’s tattoo artist — which, judging by how comfortably the two of them interacted, he clearly was — then he absolutely knew where the goddamn kitchen was.
But still.
“Sure.”
Turning on your heel, you led the way inside.
Entering the kitchen, your mom had just put the lid on the bowl of potato salad before turning around and making a beeline for the backyard.
Balancing the bowl on her hip, she pulled Eddie into a quick side hug, asking how his dad had been while you set your bottle down on the counter and opened the fridge.
“I’m gonna see if your dad needs any help,” she said over her shoulder. “Be right back.”
You hopped up onto the counter beside your beer as Eddie stepped over the fridge.
“How long are you staying?” he asked absentmindedly while tearing the plastic wrapping off one of the six-packs.
“I fly back on the twentieth of August,” you answered lightly.
A low whistle escaped him before he spared you a quick glance as he returned to stocking the already overcrowded fridge.
“That’s a long time to spend in a town like Hawkins.” He huffed out a quiet laugh. “Especially when you’ve got New York to go back to.”
“Yeah.” You nodded, reaching for your bottle again. Your fingers absentmindedly started peeling away the label. “It’s just…”
The sigh that followed was almost drowned out by the refrigerator humming as it struggled to keep up with the summer heat and the open door.
“It’s not what you expected?” Eddie offered.
“No, it is.” A small smile tugged at your lips. “More than I expected, actually.”
You looked down at the bottle slowly turning between your fingers.
“But I guess I found out there’s beauty in simplicity, too.”
Silence settled comfortably between the two of you after that.
Eddie finished squeezing the last few cans into the fridge before his eyes drifted towards the nearly empty bottle in your hands.
Without asking if you wanted another one, he reached in one last time and grabbed two cold beers.
“I spent twenty years trying to escape this place.” He popped the caps off both bottles with a battered old lighter before holding one out towards you. “Now I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
“Yeah.” You bit your lip as your fingers curled around the cold bottle. “I’m thinking about moving back next year.”
His eyebrows lifted at the confession.
Taking a long sip of his beer, he stepped closer to the counter and leaned against it, turning his face towards you.
“It’s the rent, isn’t it?” He teased.
“Definitely.” A laugh escaped you before you took another sip.
The sound of clattering dishes and your parents’ laughter drifted through the cracked kitchen window, filling the comfortable silence that settled between the two of you.
“So…” you spoke up after a few moments. “Your own studio, huh?”
Eddie’s eyes, which hadn’t really left your face since he’d walked over, softened into a smile before he glanced down at his boots.
“It’s busier than I expected,” he admitted, scratching thoughtfully at his beard. “Guess Hawkins isn’t the conversative little town it used to be.”
“Was it that bad?”
“Oh, yeah.” A disbelieving chuckle slipped from him. “The principal called my old man the first time he saw this.”
He swapped the beer into his other hand before extending his right arm towards you, and your eyes immediately fixed on the faded marionette inked across his forearm.
“Master of Puppets by any chance?” you asked quietly.
His gaze lifted from the tattoo to your face. “You’re a Metallica fan?”
You tipped back the last of your first beer before answering.
“I went through a metal phase,” you admitted with a sheepish smile. “Always skipped that song, though.”
Eddie tilted his head back dramatically, placing a hand over his chest as though you’d personally offended him.
“Oh, fuck off.”
A laugh burst out of you at his antics.
“Welcome Home was my favourite.”
“Jesus,” he sighed. “That’s somehow even more depressing to hear, sweetheart.”
The word settled somewhere low in your stomach.
Not because it was particularly intimate — if anything, it rolled off his tongue with the effortless ease of someone who’d probably called half the town sweetheart at one point or another.
But it somehow felt different directed at you.
Heat crept into your cheeks as you looked away, your tongue absentmindedly sweeping across your bottom lip before your attention dropped to the empty bottle in your hand. You rested it against the windowsill, intending to throw it away later.
“Yeah, well…” You shrugged, searching for the right words. “Guess I–”
“Pigeon!” Your dad’s voice boomed from the backyard. “Help me light the goddamn grill, for the love of God.”
You squeezed your eyes shut before answering.
“Coming!”
Eddie’s snort of laughter followed you as you hopped off the counter.
“I should probably go save him from himself.”
“Probably for the best,” he grinned. “I’d hate for your old man to burn his eyebrows off before lunch.”
You laughed, shaking your head as you headed for the back door.
Being your parents’ only child, your dad had spent the better part of twenty years making sure you knew how to do just about everything he could think of — from managing your finances, although he sometimes questioned your abilities, to cooking what he insisted was the perfect steak.
Which was why, apparently, you were the only person capable of getting the grill started.
The very same grill he’d begged for two Father’s Days ago after doing, in his words, extensive research on the best one money could buy.
Your beer instantly found a home on the folding table beside it as you crouched down to inspect the brand-new gas cylinder.
A sigh escaped through your nose as you shot your dad a quick glance before you reached down and connected it to the grill.
“Just tell me your knees are hurting next time.”
“That’s slander.”
“No,” you replied, straightening back up. “That’s old age, Dad.”
Somewhere behind you, Eddie laughed.
You glanced over your shoulder just long enough to catch him leaning back in one of the lawn chairs, beer balanced against his tattooed knee and a grin still lingering across his face.
Your dad, meanwhile, looked thoroughly offended.
“I’ll have you know these knees still work perfectly fine for my age.”
“Clearly.”
You turned the gas valve before pressing the igniter, and the grill roared to life on the first try.
“There.” You dusted your hands together. “Happy?”
“I would’ve gotten there eventually.”
“But you wouldn’t have gotten back up.”
The familiar creak of the backyard gate interrupted whatever comeback your dad had been preparing.
A chorus of cheerful greetings immediately followed as a handful of familiar faces filtered into the yard, coolers swinging from their hands and bowls of homemade food balanced carefully against their hips.
Your mom was already making the rounds, hugging nearly everyone before they had both feet inside the gate.
It didn’t take long for the backyard to settle into the kind of comfortable chaos that only existed at neighbourhood barbecues. Someone had already claimed the lawn chairs beneath the shade, while another group gathered around one of the many coolers in search of cold drinks.
Laughter drifted across the yard, blending with the occasional pop of early fireworks somewhere in the distance as the late-morning sun climbed steadily higher.
“You wanna help me with the pool?” Your mom asked as she approached, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. “God knows your father will take too long getting it out of the garage.”
“Yeah, of course.”
Keeping her arm around you, the two of you made your way towards the garage.
During one of your many phone calls, your mom had mentioned she was planning on spring-cleaning it, but you hadn’t actually believed her until you stepped inside.
Gone were most of the shelving units that had once covered the entire back wall, along with the countless heavy boxes that had sat on top of them. The concrete floor looked freshly swept, and judging by the faint smell that still lingered in the air, the walls had recently been given a fresh coat of paint, too.
“So,” your mom started casually as she searched between the remaining boxes, “what do you think of Eddie?”
You turned towards her just in time to stop yourself from looking quite as startled as you felt.
“Uh…” You cleared your throat. “Yeah. He’s… cool.”
If she’d noticed the slight hesitation or the awkwardness creeping into your voice, she didn’t let on.
“He’s handsome too, isn’t he?”
“Mom.”
She dismissed your protest with a wave of her hand, a grin already spreading across her face.
“Oh, come on. I’m not blind, Pigeon.” She crouched down to tug at a large carboard box before looking back up at you. “And I’m closer in age to him than I am to your father.”
Right.
The age gap between your parents was practically the size of the Atlantic Ocean.
But still somewhat smaller than the Pacific Ocean-sized gap between you and Eddie.
Guess having a thing for older men ran into the family.
“He kind of looks like one of those boys you have all over your bedroom walls.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Just… older. And without make-up.”
“I guess.” You shrugged, hoping the conversation would die there.
The sound of cardboard scraping against metal shelves echoed through the garage as your mom finally managed to wrestle the pool box free.
She let it drop onto the floor with a heavy thud before turning back to you, the faint smile she’d been wearing slowly softening.
“You alright?”
“Yeah.” You nodded a little too quickly before reaching down for one side of the box. “Of course, Mom.
She studied you for another second or two before deciding not to push any further, and offered you a warm smile.
“Come ne.” She grabbed the other end of the box and nodded towards the backyard. “The longer we wait the longer it’ll take to fill the pool.”
The box was just as awkward to carry as you remembered, and your mom laughing at the disastrous way the two of you shuffled back towards the party definitely earned her a look.
Somehow, the two of you managed to carry it across the backyard before dropping it onto the grass with a heavy thud.
You immediately crouched down to pry open the cardboard flaps, fishing the instruction booklet from the top for a quick refresher. A few pages flicked by beneath your thumb as your eyes skimmed over the familiar diagrams.
“We’ve been putting this thing up for almost a decade, Pigeon.” Your mom looked down at you as though consulting the instructions was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever witnessed. “We don’t need the instructions.”
“Last time I was here, this thing nearly collapsed,” you muttered dryly, still scanning the pages.
A teasing smile spread across her face. “What happened to all that loud Girl Power thing of yours?”
“I turned the volume down,” you deadpanned, setting the booklet aside before reaching for the folded blue liner.
The plastic unfolded with a dramatic whoosh, nearly knocking your backwards. Your mom burst into laughter, gripping the edge of one of the folding tables to steady herself.
“Oh, shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You carried me for nearly ten months. I’m literally capable of reading your thoughts, Mom.”
Still chuckling, she helped you spread the liner across the grass while the metal poles clicked together with familiar little snaps.
As always, the liner refused to cooperate, folding in on itself every other minute before one of you inevitably sighed, untangled it, and started again.
From the other side of the backyard, Eddie tipped his bottle back before glancing over at the two of you with quiet curiosity.
“Should we help them?”
Your dad looking over his shoulder, and a chuckle escaped him before he turned his attention back to the burgers sizzling on the grill.
“Not if you wanna keep your head.”
By the time the pool was finally standing upright instead of threatening to collapse every five minutes, the sun had climbed high enough for the backyard to shimmer beneath the relentless July heat.
Burgers and hotdogs had long since disappeared from paper plates, coolers had been emptied and restocked more than once, and you’d already claimed the half-filled pool despite the water still being cold enough to make you swear.
The other guests drifted in and out of the house as though it were their own, someone had put on a questionable summer playlist that crackled through the garden speakers, and every now and then another firework echoed somewhere across town despite it only being four in the afternoon.
Somewhere between rescuing your dad from overcooking another batch of burgers, helping your mom carry dishes back and forth, and watching Eddie seamlessly weave himself into every little task the afternoon seemed to produce, he had quietly made it a habit to bring you a fresh beer whenever he got one for himself.
You never asked. He simply remembered.
You’d spent the last ten minutes talking to one of your mom’s friends about New York, college, and the seemingly endless questions of the existence of someone in your life.
“So you’re still studying psychology?”
“Art therapy,” you corrected with an easy smile, grateful for the change of subject.
“Oh, right!” she laughed. “I keep forgetting.”
She excused herself to the bathroom not longer after that, and before the chair she’d left beside the pool had even stopped rocking, a smudge of black dropped into it.
Eddie leaned back with a satisfied sigh, one arm draped over the backrest of the pool.
“First Zeppelin, then Metallica, and now art therapy.” He took a slow sip of his beer as his eyes drifted towards you. “You’ve got a surprisingly eclectic résumé.”
A laugh escaped you. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was meant as one.”
Silence settled between the two of you for a few seconds before he broke it again.
“I gotta admit,” he started, unable to stop the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You’re not exactly what I expected.”
“What were you expecting?” Your eyebrow lifted.
“I don’t know.” He answered truthfully and took another sip of beer. “I’ve heard so much about you over the last year that I think I accidentally invented an entirely different person.”
He looked you up and down — but not once did he linger anywhere below your clavicles.
“You’re considerably more interesting that I had imagined.”
Your tongue swept across your bottom lip as you tilted your head to the side.
“I would’ve thought you’d have learned how to flirt better at your old age.”
Eddie barked out a surprise laugh.
“Old age?”
“You heard me.”
He was still too busy laughing to notice your fingers curling around his beer bottle. You stole it from his hand with surprising ease before taking a slow sip without ever breaking eye contact.
His laughter faded as you tipped the bottle back.
“Careful. Keeping doing things like that,” he smiled, “and people are gonna think you like me.”
“What if they are right?”
Your fingers lingered for a second longer than necessary against his when you handed the bottle back.
“I don’t know.” He wrapped his hand around the neck of the bottle again. “You tell me.”
Neither of you looked away, and after a moment, Eddie scratched thoughtfully at his beard.
“You wanna know something,” he began slowly, his eyes dropping briefly to the bottle in his hand before finding yours again. “I’ve been trying very hard not to flirt with you all day.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded once.
“Thought it’d be inappropriate.” His gaze flickered towards your parents for the briefest of moments before returning to you, shrugging lightly. “You know… Me being friend with them and all.”
The pool creaked softly as you leaned back against the wall, cool water lapping gently around you. Tilting your head back just enough to let the afternoon sun warm your face, you closed your eyes with a quiet sigh.
“You’re forgetting there’s a big age gap between them too,” you murmured.
Silence settled for another moment — long enough for you to become acutely aware that he still hadn’t looked away.
In fact, you were fairly sure his eyes had trailed somewhere past the tight straps digging into your shoulders.
“Thirteen isn’t quite the same as twenty-three, sweetheart,” he replied distractedly.
“No,” you admitted as a quiet laugh escaped you, opening your eyes again. “I suppose not.”
“It’d be different if I didn’t know them.”
You studied him for a moment, catching the way his gaze indeed lingered on your bikini before trailing up to meet yours.
“You know,” you stared slowly. “You’ve been doing a terrible job with the whole not flirting thing.”
“Yeah?” Eddie barked out a laugh. “Thought I was being subtle.”
“There wasn’t anything subtle about the way you just stared at my breasts, Eddie.”
You bit your bottom lip to stop the smile threatening to spread across your face as you watched his mouth fall open.
That was clearly not something he’d been expecting, and for what was probably the first time all afternoon, he looked completely speechless.
His mouth opened once, only for him to close it again. then he clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth, clearly searching for something — anything — to say.
Somewhere behind him, your dad’s booming laugh cut through the silence that had settled between the two of you.
“Ed!” he called from the grill, and pointed towards the man standing next to him. “Get over here. You gotta hear this.”
Eddie’s eyes flickered back to you for one last glance before he pushed himself up from the chair.
“Try to pay attention,” you called after him before he’d fully turned around, and then lowered your voice just enough as you continued. “And try not to imagine them without the bikini.”
If he hadn’t been flustered before, he certainly was now — the flush spreading across his milky cheeks deepened as he paused mid-step, his mouth opening before immediately closing again.
A quiet laugh escaped you when you noticed his Adam’s apple bobbing.
Then, as he started walking backwards towards your dad, he pointed the neck of his beer bottle in your direction.
“We’re not done with this.”
A grin tugged at your lips.
“Promise?”
For a split second, he looked like he’d forgotten how words worked.
Then he simply shook his head, mumbled something and laughed under his breath as he finally turned away.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The rest of the afternoon slipped away much the same way the earlier hours had.
Somewhere along the way, your dad had insisted on putting on his classic rock playlist after declaring the previous one too depressing, despite nobody remembering who’d put it on in the first place. A few more neighbours filtered through the creaking backyard gate with desserts balanced on plates, while the coolers slowly emptied for what had to be the fifth time that day.
Every now and then, you’d catch Eddie looking your way.
Sometimes he’d smile. Other times, he’d simply lift his bottle ever so slightly in your direction before absentmindedly dragging his tongue across his bottom lip and returning to whatever conversation he’d been pulled into.
And every single time, your stomach betrayed you over the smallest breadcrumb of attention he offered.
The relentless July sun eventually began to lose some of its bite, giving way to a softer warmth that settled over the neighbourhood, while the sky above slowly traded its bright afternoon blue for streaks of peach and pale gold stretching lazily between the telephone poles.
The water that had felt heavenly just an hour earlier had cooled enough for goosebumps to creep across your arms. With a quiet sigh, you climbed out of the pool and reached for the towel draped over one of the lawn chairs.
As you dragged it over your arms, your gaze wandered across the backyard.
People were sitting instead of standing now. The grill had long since been turned off, paper plates were stacked in uneven piles on the folding tables, and the softer evening light settled gently across everyone’s faces.
This was exactly what you’d missed; not the fireworks, or even the stupid holiday, just this. People lingering without watching the clock. Conversations drifting from one topic to the next. Nobody in a hurry to leave.
After drying your feet just enough to slip your sandals back on without worrying about eating shit in front of half the neighbourhood, you made a beeline for the house.
You had barely let go of the screen door behind you when it was pulled open again from the other side. The damp strands clinging to the back of your neck barely shifted as you glanced over your shoulder.
Eddie.
“…Toilet,” he mumbled, though the word lost some of its conviction when his eyes betrayed him and briefly flickered to your hard nipples peeking from underneath the bikini before snapping back to your face.
“Right.” The corners of your mouth twitched as you turned around and continued walking. “You know where that is or do you want me to show you that too?”
The screen door slammed shut behind him.
“Funny,” he muttered, falling into step a few paces behind you.
Resting you hand against the banister, you paused just long enough to watch Eddie reach for the downstairs bathroom door, only to find it occupied.
“Be out in a minute,” your dad’s muffled voice called from the other side.
A quiet chuckle escaped you as you watched Eddie pull a face.
“There’s one upstairs you can use,” you offered softly before turning towards the staircase without waiting for an answer.
The heavy footsteps against the old wooden steps were enough, anyway.
Once upstairs, you silently pointed towards the door next to yours before disappearing inside your own room.
Pretending to have forgotten to close the door behind you wouldn’t hurt anybody, right?
Biting your thumb, you waited for a moment until the loud flush from the bathroom next door slipped through the cracked bedroom door, followed shortly by the brief hiss of the sink before throwing the bikini on the wooden floor with a wet slap!
A content sigh escaped you at the freeing feeling of finally peeling it off, the towel quickly finding its way across your chest before you leaned over your bed in search of the first oversized shirt you could find in your bags.
While pulling the shirt out of your bag, the familiar stick-covered door creaked further open again.
“Interesting interior design.”
You glanced over your shoulder just enough to Eddie leaning casually against the doorframe, his eyes slowly wandering across the pale green walls before landing on you.
“One Direction and Black Veil Brides posters weren’t exactly what I was expecting.”
“That seems to be a recurring theme today, huh?” you replied with a small smile before turning back and throwing the towel onto the bed before pulling the shirt over your head.
It took him longer than expected to find a reply.
“You keep surprising me.”
Behind you, Eddie wandered farther into the room with his hands tucked into the front pockets of his shorts, taking his time looking over the bookshelves and framed photographs scattered between rows of well-loved fantasy books.
You’d long since stopped feeling embarrassed every time someone looked at your old pictures. If anything, they only made you feel strangely nostalgic now.
“How old were you here?” he asked quietly, his attention fixed on a framed picture of you and your dad and a sea of strangers behind you.
You followed his gaze, landing on the picture your mom had taken at your very first concert.
Mark Knopfler — not exactly your first choice, but after your parents had failed to find someone willing to babysit, you’d ended up having to tag along anyway. Looking back, it had eventually become one of your favourite childhood memories.
“Twelve, I think.”
Taking advantage of Eddie’s attention remaining glued to the picture, you stepped out of your damp bikini bottoms before pulling on a pair cotton shorts you’d fished from your bag.
The quiet rustle of fabric followed by the metallic clink of a small tin opening finally pulled his attention away from the picture. His eyes settled on the weathered little metal box resting in your hands, the dents and scratches along its surface giving away years of previous owners.
“You smoke?” you asked, holding up the small resealable bag tucked.
A crooked smile slowly spread across his face.
“I used to deal when I was your age,” he admitted with an almost sheepish shrug. “Obviously I don’t anymore but…” His eyes flickered briefly towards the bag before finding yours again. “Yeah. I still smoke on occasion.”
Your eyes wandered over him almost absentmindedly, taking in the faded band shirt, the tattoos disappearing beneath the fabric, the rings decorating his fingers and the curls brushing his shoulders before one corner of your mouth tugged upwards.
“Yeah, I can see that.” One teasing eyebrow lifted. “I bet you had the whole bad-boy thing going on.”
A warm laugh rumbled from his chest.
The silence that followed settled comfortably between the two of you as you returned to the task at hand — grinding the buds, laying a thin layer of tobacco onto the rolling paper, and tucking a paper filter into one end.
Heavy footsteps echoed softly against the walls as Eddie wandered farther into your room before eventually settling onto the edge of your bed beside your begs.
“Not bad,” he murmured, watching your fingers roll the paper back and forth before your tongue swept across the adhesive strip to seal it shut.
The brief glance at your mouth hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Many years of experience,” you chuckled.
“You say that like you’ve been smoking for a decade.”
“Eh.” You shrugged. “Half of one.”
You tapped the finished joint against the little metal tin a few times to pack the contents before pushing yourself off the bed and making your way over to the window seat.
Eddie’s eyes drifted towards the open bedroom door.
“Your parents don’t mind?”
A laugh escaped you as you accepted the lighter he held out before patting the empty cushion beside you.
“My dad doesn’t care as long as I’m not doing coke,” you replied with a shrug. “And my mom will probably ask for a hit later.”
The old wooden window seat creaked beneath the added weight as Eddie settled beside you. It was just wide enough for the two of you, provided you both kept your legs on the ground or close to your chests.
The excess paper burned away beneath the warm flame of his lighter, and before long the room filled with the familiar earthy scent you only let yourself indulge in every now and then.
The first drag hit the back of your throat in a sharpness that almost made you cough — though, thankfully, not quite to embarrass yourself — and left behind the grassy, slightly citrusy taste you’d always associated with summer evenings.
Just like that, the joint began making its way back and forth between the two of you while the muffled sounds of laughter, music and clinking bottled drifted up from the party downstairs.
“So…” Eddie finally spoke after another drag, exhaling the smoke slowly through his nose. “Art therapy.”
You looked over at him.
“What do you actually do?”
“It’s pretty much in the name,” you smiled, handing him the lighter when you noticed one side of the joint had started burning unevenly. “Traditional therapy doesn’t work for anyone.”
Eddie took another drag while he waited you to continue. When you didn’t, one corner of his mouth lifted.
“Tell me more.”
“You sure?” A small smile tugged at your lips as you accepted the joint back from him. “Because once I get started, I tend not to shut up.”
“I enjoy flirting with you,” he admitted with a quiet smile, “but I’d like to get to know you better, too.”
The warmth that spread across your cheeks had absolutely nothing to do with the weed of the last few remaining streaks of golden sunlight.
Your eyes dropped briefly to the lighter turning absentmindedly between his fingers before you took another drag and handed the joint back.
“We guide clients through different themes and encourage them to express themselves through art,” you began, speaking a little slower than before as the familiar fogginess settled comfortably over your thoughts. “Afterwards, we reflect on what the creative process might be communicating rather than focusing on whether the artwork is actually… good.”
Eddie nodded quietly, never once interrupting or taking his eyes off of you.
Encouraged by the genuine interest in his expression, you found yourself explaining how different materials could encourage different forms of expression, why the finished piece almost never mattered, and how every client inevitably communicated something unique through whatever they created.
Only when you heard yourself wandering into the four levels of expression did you finally stop.
“Sorry,” you mumbled with a sheepish smile, scrunching your nose.
“What are you apologising for?” Eddie asked gently, tilting his head before offering the joint back to you.
“I tend to…” you shrugged, lighting the uneven edge again before taking another drag. “Ramble.”
“You shouldn’t apologise for being passionate about something.”
His words settled over the room almost as softly as the evening sunlight pouring through the open window.
“You’ve got this look on your face when you talk about it, you know.”
“What look?” You frowned.
“The same one people get when they’ve found the thing they’re supposed to do.”
It took a few long seconds for his words to truly settle while all you could do was look at him.
No teacher, no classmate, not even your parents had ever described it that way.
And somehow, hearing it from a man you’d only met that morning made something warm settle quietly in your chest.
The grip you had on the joint faltered ever so slightly as your lips slowly parted.
Before you could think twice about it, you pushed yourself away form the wall and reached up to cradle his face between both hands, gently pulling him into a kiss.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Eddie’s lips were every bit as soft as they looked.
It took him the briefest moment to realise what was happening before his eyes fluttered shut and his head instinctively tilted, deepening the kiss just enough to make your stomach tighten.
One of his ringed hands, warm and calloused, settled naturally against your waist, his thumb absentmindedly brushing over the fabric of your shirt before you slowly pulled away again.
“…Sorry,” you breathed, slightly out of breath.
Hazy brown eyes searched yours for a quiet moment while his free hand reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear.
“You really gotta stop apologising, sweetheart,” he murmured with a chuckle, his gaze drifting briefly to your lips before meeting your eyes again.
“Sor–”
The word died somewhere behind a bashful laugh as your eyes darted anywhere but his face. When you finally looked back at him, he still hadn’t moved.
This close, you could make out the crow’s feet fanning gently from the corners of his eyes and the faint smile lines that years of laughter, cigarettes and sunshine had carved into his face. Even the way he smelled was somewhat different now that there was hardly any space left between you — a clean, woodsy scent with something faintly minty lingering beneath the warmth of a sunny afternoon.
Almost distractedly, your tongue swept across your bottom lip before you leaned forwards once more, pressing a lingering peck against his lips.
“Why tattooing?” you asked quietly as you settled back against your side of the window seat.
Eddie’s hand lingered on your waist for just a second longer before reluctantly slipping away.
“That’s one hell of a subject change.” He replied with a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
A quiet laugh escaped you when you realised you were about to apologise again before stopping yourself.
“I know.”
He reached for the joint absentmindedly, brushing his fingers against yours for a moment longer than necessary,
“Because it isn’t only about tattooing.” His eyes found yours again after he lit the joint. “It’s about making people feel heard for a couple of hours.”
He shrugged lightly and took a drag before continuing.
“The ink’s just the excuse they give themselves for walking through the door.”
“That sounds familiar,” you murmured, gently taking the joint from his fingers.
Eddie’s eyes drifted briefly toward your bent legs before he wrapped a hand around your shins and effortlessly pulled them across his lap.
“I guess that’s another thing we have in common, huh?” you added with a small smile.
Somewhere across town, the first proper fireworks of the evening split the sky open, their heavy booms rolling across Hawkins until they drifted through the open bedroom window.
You’d been too distracted by the bursts of colour blooming against the deepening purple sky to notice that Eddie hadn’t looked away once.
“Would it be presumptuous of me to assume you don’t have anything planned for the rest of the evening?”
An easy laugh escaped you.
“It would, yes,” you admitted, slowly catching your bottom lip between your teeth as you turned back toward him. “But you’d also be right.”
“Good.”
The smile that spread across his face was slow and unhurried.
He looked at you through his lashes for a quiet moment before his lips pulled into a smile.
“Would it be presumptuous of me to invite myself over to your place?”
Your attention barely lingered on the dying joint as you stubbed what remained of it against the brick windowsill outside before looking back at him.
“I was actually hoping you’d say that.”
His thumb, heavy silver ring catching the last of the evening light, traced slow, absentminded circles just above your ankle while the fireworks continued blooming somewhere beyond the open window.
Your eyes drifted past him and landed on the open bedroom door, where the muffled sounds of laughter and clinking bottles still floated up from the backyard.
“We should probably head back down,” you suggested quietly.
Eddie let out a thoughtful hum.
“Probably.”
Neither of you made any move to leave just yet. His thumb continued tracing slow circles against your ankle while your eyes slowly found his again.
“…Definitely.”
Another few seconds passed before the two of you finally laughed and pushed yourselves off the window seat.
You slipped your sandals back on before turning around to find Eddie leaning casually against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What?”
“Just admiring the view,” he answered lowly.
A quiet chuckle escaped you as you shook your head.
“You definitely don’t know how to flirt.”
“And somehow I still got you to kiss me, hm?”
Uncrossing his arms, he reached out and gently pulled you toward him by your waist.
Under the warm glow spilling in from the hallway, his eyes looked closer to amber than the deep brown you’d grown used to over the course of the afternoon.
His gaze wandered painfully slowly down your face before settling on your lips, his tongue absentmindedly sweeping across his own.
Then he leaned down until his lips found yours again.
His fingers tightened ever so slightly against your waist as a quiet, involuntary sound escaped you when his tongue brushed softly against your bottom lip, and for one brief moment the rest of the house disappeared entirely.
“Now we can go downstairs,” he murmured when he finally pulled away.
Eddie stepped back as though he hadn’t just turned your already hazy mind into complete mush, only sparing you a grin over his shoulder before making his way toward the staircase.
“You comin’, sweetheart?”
The conversations in the backyard hadn’t even faltered when the two of you stepped outside again.
Well… Almost.
Your mom looked up from her folding chair, her slightly bloodshot eyes moving from you to Eddie and back again while one eyebrow slowly lifted.
The smile threatening to tug at the corners of her mouth was barely contained before she decided to let whatever she’d noticed slide.
“Did you seriously smoke without offering your own mother a hit?” she asked instead, narrowing her eyes at you before finally giving in to the grin.
“You were busy,” you shrugged, reaching for her beer and stealing a quick sip.
“Was I now?”
“There’s more than enough upstairs if you want to roll yourself one.”
By the time your mother had finally worked up the motivation to leave her chair and roll herself a joint, and the first few proper firework bloomed overhead, most of the neighbours had settled into folding chairs scattered across the backyard.
The conversations had quieted, drifting lazily beneath the warm July night while bursts of colour painted the sky overhead every few minutes. Somewhere between the booming fireworks and the shrieks of the neighbourhood children slowly fading as midnight approached, the backyard gradually began to thin out as people responsibly decided they’d had enough to drink and wandered back home.
It hadn’t taken long for your mom to return with a slightly wonky-looking joint between her fingers before settling back into the chair beside your dad, while he and Eddie effortlessly fell back into conversation.
You had quietly started making your way around the backyard, gathering abandoned paper plates in one hand and empty beer bottles in the other.
“Leave it, Pigeon,” your mom called softly from her chair. “We can do it tomorrow.”
“It’ll rain tomorrow,” you replied absentmindedly as you dropped another stack of paper plates into a garbage bag. “Besides, I don’t mind.”
Somewhere between politely turning down the joint your mom offered him and your dad deciding to get up and help you, Eddie quietly slipped inside to use the bathroom.
While you held the garbage bag open, your dad tossed in whatever disposable cups, napkins and paper plates he’d come across, the two of you working together in an easy silence that only came from having done this after every barbecue for as long as you could remember.
“You know, Pigeon,” he started quietly after a while, glancing up at you before pointing toward his nearly white hair, “as you can probably tell… I wasn’t born yesterday.”
You merely blinked at him before reaching for another abandoned plate.
“And I’m not blind either.”
“Dad—”
“I’d be a hypocrite to, I don’t know…” He vaguely gestured over his shoulder. “…tell you not to see him.”
“Jesus Christ,” you groaned, squeezing your eyes shut for a brief moment as warmth crept steadily up your neck. “I really don’t want to have this conversation.”
“Me neither,” he admitted with an awkward chuckle. “Glad we got that sorted.”
His attention drifted toward the screen door just as the faint sound of the downstairs bathroom door opening echoed through the house, followed by the familiar weight of heavy footsteps making their way back outside.
“Listen, I’m just saying…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “If you wanna go with—”
“Dad.”
“Yep. I’m done talking.”
He clapped his hands together once before plucking the garbage bag from your grip. Turning on his heel, he made his way toward the large bin just outside the fence gate, leaving you standing in the middle of the backyard with burning cheeks and absolutely no desire to think about the conversation you’d just had.
The backyard had grown quiet by the time the very last neighbours wandered — more like stumbled — home, offering lazy waves and promises to see one another before the next barbecue.
Your mom stretched with a content groan as she pushed herself out of her folding chair, gathering the last few empty bottles with her joint carefully balanced between two fingers, while your dad carried the final cooler back towards the garage.
Eddie stepped back into the backyard and held the screen door open for your mom before making his way over to where you stood.
“So…” he started, rubbing the back of his neck as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You still serious about inviting yourself over?”
The way he stood awkwardly in front of you — absentmindedly rubbing at his neck while looking at you with an expression that betrayed far more nerves than he’d probably care to admit — pulled a small smile onto your lips.
It was surprisingly easy to forget the age difference when he looked at you like that.
“If I’m still allowed to be presumptuous.”
“Always.”
Silence settled comfortably between the two of you while your eyes drifted somewhere over his shoulder.
Your dad had apparently taken the long route back inside through the front door and now stood in the kitchen beside your mom, and had his back turned towards the backyard.
Mostly.
Every now ant then, he’d steal a quick glance over his shoulder while pretending to be far more invested in the conversation he was supposedly having with your mom.
A quiet sigh escaped you.
“Can we get out of here before my dad tries to talk to me again?”
Eddie followed your gaze towards the open kitchen windows.
“Did he say something?”
The question came so casually that you almost answered it. But instead, your eyes squeezed shut for the briefest moment.
“Please don’t ask.”
“That bad?” A crooked smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“You really don’t wanna know.”
“Oh, but now I’m invested.”
Before you had the chance to explain that no, he really didn’t, your mom reappeared in the screen doorway and leaned casually against the frame behind it. Her eyes wandered from you to Eddie and back again while she absentmindedly patted her pockets in search of her lighter.
“Take your keys,” she mumbled around the joint tucked between her lips before finally lighting it and taking a slow drag. “You’re too old to be sneaking in.”
A horrified groan escaped you.
“Mom.”
“You’re complaining like I’m not a cool mom or something,” she laughed, completely unfazed by the look you shot her as you brushed past.
“Right now?” you muttered while disappearing into the kitchen. “You damn straight you aren’t.”
Your keys were still sitting exactly where you had dropped them that morning.
By the time you stepped back outside, Eddie had pressed his lips together so tightly they had almost disappeared, and the warning finger you pointed at him did absolutely nothing to help.
“Don’t.”
His shoulder bounced ever so slightly, while a reluctant laugh escaped you despite your best efforts as you guided him towards the fence gate. By the time the two of you stepped out into the quiet street, your parents had already disappeared upstairs for the night, leaving only the warm porch light glowing beside the screen door.
The walk to Eddie’s truck passed in an easy silence — the kind that settled naturally after spending an entire day talking.
He unlocked the passenger door for you before making his way around to the driver’s side, and it wasn’t until he’d pulled away from the curb that the two of you finally looked at each other.
Neither of you said a word for a moment. Then, almost simultaneously, the memory of your mother’s comment caught up with you. The first laugh escaped Eddie, while yours followed a heartbeat later.
Within seconds, the cab of the old Ford filled with the kind of helpless giggles that only came after an exhausting — but undeniably wonderful — day.
“She’s unbelievable sometimes.”
“Your mom really doesn’t have a filter, huh?”
He glanced over at you, his grin softening as he brought the truck to an easy stop at a red light.
Your own smile lingered with the familiar streets of Hawkins rolled quietly past outside, the last few fireworks still blooming overhead as Eddie shifted the gears once the light turned green and turned onto the road leading towards downtown.
There was little movement left at that hour and even less sound, save for the occasional firework rumbling somewhere in the distance.
The warm glow spilling from inside one of the storefronts caught your attention long before Eddie slowed the truck to a stop. The neon sign above the tattoo studio had been switched off for the day, but a lamp somewhere inside still cast a welcoming light through the front windows. Through the glass, you could make out framed flash sheets and posters covering the walls, the familiar outlines of tattoo chairs sitting further back in the room.
Eddie switched off the ignition before turning towards you.
“This is me,” he said quietly, gesturing towards the apartment above the studio.
“Must be nice,” a small smile tugged at your lips as you followed his finger, “never being late to work.”
A laugh rumbled from his chest as the click of your seatbelt echoed through the cab. “You’d be surprised how often I’m late.”
“Eddie.” Your eyebrows lifted as you turned towards him.
“How would they know I wasn’t upstairs finishing someone’s design?” he replied with a grin as he pushed open his door.
The heavy door of the old Ford creaked far louder than either of you would’ve liked as he walked around to open yours, though neither of you paid it much mind — compared to the occasional boom of fireworks still echoing somewhere over Hawkins, it barely made any sound at all.
Eddie pushed the passenger door shut behind you with one hand while digging through the front pocket of his short for his keys.
The warmth of his palm settled against the small of your back as he guided you towards the unassuming door tucked beside the storefront window, its surface covered in layers of old stickers and faded spray painted tags.
The lock gave way with a quiet click before he nudged the door open with his foot and gently tugged you inside by your wrist. After pushing it shut behind the two of you, he shot you a quick glance over his shoulder as he led you up the steep staircase.
Neither of you made any attempt to fill the comfortable silence by the time you reached the top. The moment Eddie stepped into the narrow hallway leading towards the living room, he crouched down to loosen up the laces of his boots before straightening again and flicking on the lights.
And suddenly, the apartment was there — like it had been ripped straight out metalhead magazine.
The polished wooden floors carried a dark lacquer that caught the warm light overhead, while the walls had been painted a deep shade of grey that border on charcoal and decorated with framed vintage band posters. It wasn’t overly tidy, but it wasn’t messy either.
Just… extremely Eddie.
Your eyes wandered curiously around the living room as you stepped farther inside.
Eddie lingered in the doorway leading to what looked like the kitchen, his lips pursed slightly as his gaze quietly followed you taking everything in.
“You, uh…” He scratched at his beard. “You want something to drink?”
Your tongue swept across your bottom lip as you slowly approached the leather couch, your fingertips trailing absentmindedly along the backrest.
“Are you nervous?” you asked gently instead of answering.
A quiet, awkward chuckle escaped him.
“Kinda, yeah,” he admitted with a bashful smile. “It’s, uh… been a while.”
Your gaze lingered on his face for another moment.
The thin silver hoop through his nostril caught the warm light overhead, and his salt-and-pepper curls had become just frizzy enough throughout the day that they felt impossibly soft beneath your fingers as your hand found the back of his neck.
Had it not been for the genuine uncertainty and awkwardness swimming in his brown eyes, it would’ve been impossible to believe what he’d just said.
Not when he looked like that. Like he had just stepped out of a fucking Lana Del Rey music video.
“It’s okay,” you whispered, your nails lightly scratching at the curls near the nape of his neck. “It’s been a while for me too.”
The nervous glimmer in his eyes slowly melted into something closer to disbelief as his hands settled more firmly against your hips, gently drawing you closer.
“Bullshit,” he snorted, fingertips pressing playfully into your sides. “You’re way too smart and ridiculously beautiful.” His eyes wandered across your face. “No way you don’t have an entire fucking queue of men begging for your attention.”
A bashful laugh escaped you.
“Yeah, well…” You shrugged lightly. “New York’s full of douchebags who think playing Hey There Delilah on an acoustic guitar is the secret to get girls to hop on their dicks.”
“Hey There Delilah?” Eddie’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Seriously?”
“Either that or Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.” You rolled your eyes. “And believe me, neither of them sound particularly romantic in that annoying Dave Mustaine kind of twang.”
“Hey, now,” he said, lowering his voice. “No Dave Mustaine slander in my home.”
A grin slowly tugged at the corner of your mouth.
“Or what?”
The faint ticking of a clock somewhere deeper in the apartment settled between the two of you while Eddie simply looked at you.
Long enough for three cars to pass somewhere out on the street below.
Of all the shit you’d thrown his way throughout the day, surely this wasn’t going to be the thing that finally made him reconsider inviting you over.
A startled shriek escaped you when he suddenly swept you off your feet and effortlessly threw you over one shoulder.
“I’m getting real tired of that fucking mouth of yours,” he muttered, unable to hide the laugh threatening to break through his voice as he carried you out of the living room and back towards the hallway.
While the view of his ass was admittedly nice, it also meant you had absolutely no idea where he was taking you.
The dull thud of his foot against a door echoed through the apartment before old hinges creaked in protest, followed by the faint rustling of fabric somewhere in the darkness as Eddie stepped inside the pitch-black room.
Finally pulling you off his shoulder, another wave of shriek-induced giggles escaped you when your back met a surprisingly soft mattress, the old springs dipping beneath your weight.
For a brief moment, all you could make out was Eddie’s silhouette standing over you, tall frame and broad shoulders, barely outlined by the faint glow of the streetlights filtering through the curtain.
Your heart stumbled over itself when the faint outline of his body disappeared around the other side of the bed before he reached for the lamp on the nightstand.
There was something inherently unfair about the way the warm amber light settled across his face when he looked back at you, turning his eyes into something closer to honey than brown.
You couldn’t remember who moved first. One second you were still leaning back on your elbows, and the next Eddie was straddling your lap, both hands buried in your hair while your mouth instinctively parted for his.
He kissed you slowly at first, like he wasn’t feeling the same desperate drop in his stomach that had just swept through yours. Then, the moment your barely contained sigh reached his ears, the kiss deepened.
He tasted faintly of the last beer he’d had hours earlier, and it only made your head spin faster when his familiar, comforting scent settled around you. One hand slid to the back of your neck, the heavy silver rings scratching lightly against your scalp while the other cradled your cheek as though you were something impossibly delicate.
This wasn’t anything like the kiss you’d shared back in your childhood bedroom — not even close.
He kissed you like a starving man. Teeth brushed against teeth, his tongue met yours with an urgency that stole the air from your lungs, and his fingers tightened gently around the strands of your hair before giving them an experimental hard tug.
“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he murmured, his voice rough as he slowly pulled back just enough to look at you.
A dry lump settled in your throat beneath the weight of his gaze, and swallowing around it became nearly impossible when his hands drifted from the back of your neck to the curve of your waist.
“I mean… That fucking bikini?” A quiet, almost disbelieving chuckle escaped him as he pushed a few loose curls away from his face, holding them back for a moment while he tilted his head ever so slightly to the side. One corner of his mouth twitched upwards. “Teasing me like that all day was fucking unfair.”
The slightly nervous, awkward man from just minutes ago had disappeared, his voice lowering into something quieter, more confident — and just a little condescending.
Eddie was the first to lose his shirt, tugging the dark fabric over his head and making his curls bounce free in the process.
“Fuck.”
The word slipped from your mouth before you had the chance to stop it.
The loose-fitting shirt he’d worn all day hadn’t done his body any justice. He was built in that particular way that wasn’t overly muscular, but just enough for the ink stretched across his skin to move with every shift of his shoulders and every steady breath he took.
Your eyes couldn’t decide where to settle — on the large neo-traditional Saint George slaying the dragon spread across his stomach, on the mirrored goats framing the saint, or on the blacked-out star that had replaced his left nipple.
Warm fingertips gently harshly into your cheeks finally pulled your gaze away from the artwork scattered across his chest and back, forcing your eyes to meet Eddie’s once again.
A knowing smile had already settled across his lips by the time you looked up.
“If you could only see yourself right now, sweetheart,” he chuckled, giving your cheek a couple of light, teasing taps. “Looking all dumb and drunk…” His grin widened ever so slightly. “…And I haven’t even done anything yet.”
Eddie’s expression softened just enough as he lowered his voice.
“You tell me if I start doing something you don’t like, yeah?”
You merely blinked up at him for a few long seconds, your mind too busy trying to catch up with everything he was making you feel to form a coherent thought. Eventually, you gave him a small, stiff nod, his fingers still gently pressing into your cheeks.
“Words, sweetheart.”
A quiet groan escaped you.
“Yes, Eddie.”
His eyes lingered on your face for another moment, quietly searching for any signs of hesitation or discomfort before he finally let go of your cheeks when he found none. The bed creaked beneath the two of you as Eddie pushed himself off your lap and stepped to the foot of the bed instead.
The loss of his weight and the overwhelming warmth of his presence was immediate. Apparently, you weren’t the only one who noticed the way your eyebrows had drawn together ever so slightly, a quiet chuckle escaping him as he slowly peeled off his shorts, his eyes never once leaving your face.
You couldn’t help the way your gaze wandered lower with every new inch he revealed.
He really was a walking piece of art. A faint trail of dark hair disappeared beneath the waistband of his boxers, different tattoo styles stretched across his legs, and scattered freckles and little moles interrupted the ink here and there, making him feel all the more real beneath the artwork.
And then your eyes trailed back up, stopping right at the ridiculous volume he’d been packing underneath his clothes.
The heavy denim hit the floor with a dull thud before Eddie made his way around the bed once more. He gave your cheek another three gentle taps before helping you to sit up, only to step in behind you a moment later. The mattress dipped softly beneath his weight as he settled against the headboard, drawing you back with him until his bare chest rested flush against your back.
“The first thing I’m gonna do,” he murmured absentmindedly, his hands settling around your thighs as his thumbs alternated between slow strokes and gentle squeezes, “is take a good, long look at whatever you’ve been hiding from me underneath that shirt.”
His fingertips gradually wandered higher until they found the hem of the oversized fabric.
“Then,” he continued, his voice dropping another notch as he slowly began gathering the fabric in his hand, “when I’m done teasing you…” The shirt slid painfully slowly up your frame. “I’m gonna do what I’ve been wanting to do all fucking day.”
One hand left your waist and slowly travelled upwards until it settled against your cheek, gently turning your face towards the full-length mirror standing against the opposite wall.
It had been hidden behind his frame when he’d stood at the foot of the bed, but now there was nothing shielding your reflection from view.
Eddie rested his face in the crook of your neck, his lips brushing featherlight kisses along your skin while the hand curled around the hem of your shirt continued slowly pulling the fabric higher. Only when the fabric reached your shoulders did he finally have to lean back from you, lifting it the rest of the way over your head. The oversized shirt fell to the ground without either of you paying much attention to it.
His warm hands trailed your arms as the two of you looked at your reflections in the mirror.
Your breath, already quick and shallow, hitched as Eddie leaned to kiss the crook of your neck. His lips left intense and tingling kisses in their trail, and it felt like his dark eyes, transfixed on the way your ribs expanded as you fought for air, bore holes in you.
“Jesus, sweetheart,” he mumbled against your neck. He propped his chin on your shoulder, leaning forwards and flickered his gaze down to your breasts, warm fingers trailing to meet the spot where his gaze had been fixed. “They’re even better than I’d imagined.”
Your fingers were tearing all the loose skin around your nails and your throat went dry when Eddie’s hands cupped your breasts. Four of his ringed fingers found the underside of your boobs, while his thumb traced soft circles right above your nipples.
When Eddie felt your face angling to meet his eyes, he immediately curled his thumb and forefinger around your nipples, tugging hard to get your attention.
“Eyes on the mirror.”
The hard squeezes he gave you only made your back arch away from his chest, which was apparently something else he wasn’t satisfied with; he put more pressure on your breasts, not only on the fingers around your nipples, but to pull you back flush against his chest.
“F-fuck.”
You blinked, taken aback by the way Eddie was playing with your chest. The warmth of his fingers and the harsh tugs sent a thrill down your spine. The world narrowed to the press of his chest against your back, the way he touched you, the slide of his lips against your neck.
Eddie’s fingers rolled your nipples, relishing the way you kept arching away from him only for him to pull you back twice as hard. His dark eyes found the mirror again, and the reflection showed him everything – the parted sheen of your lips, the feverish glaze of arousal in your eyes. It was dizzying, intoxicating even, and he’d decided then and there that he could watch you come undone like this forever.
“M-more,” you whimpered. “Please.”
A condescending chuckle escaped Eddie at your request. He increased the pressure, pinching and tugging at your sensitive nipples until you’re choking on your own breath and writhing against him.
He kept drinking in the sight of you, desperate for more. Reverently, he covered you with his hands once more, thumbs circling your nipples before he ducked to suck the spot right beneath your ear. The hot suction made you cry out, fingers reaching out to tangle in his greying curls to hold him closer. Teeth grazed lightly before soothing with flicks of his tongue.
The way you’d started to rock your hips against the bed hadn’t gone unnoticed by him — not when the small of your back hit his erection every time you ground back and forth.
“You’re so responsive,” he praised huskily, trailing biting kisses across your neck and shoulder. “Gonna make you fall apart.”
The wicked promise sent a fresh wave of heat flooding your veins. You could only nod frantically, surrendering yourself to whatever the fuck he wanted to do to you.
When a broken whimper escaped you, Eddie gentled his touch, caressing your trembling form with soothing strokes. He let go of one of your breasts and cradled your face in his hand. He pressed tender kisses to your temple, to your cheekbone, to the corner of your mouth. He traced the delicate line of your jaw, the graceful column of your throat, marvelling at the power he wielded over you.
He let go of your face, not without turning you back towards the mirror, and trailed his hand down your abdomen, dipping just below the waistband of your shorts—
Only to immediately retreat with a teasing nip at your belly.
You feel his lips, still resting against the side of your cheek, pull into a smirk when another broken whimper escaped you.
Eddie flickered his eyes up to meet your through the mirror. He drank in the sight of you drunk and desperate in his hold. With deliberate slowness, he hooked his free hand in your waistband, dragging the elastic just low enough for him to find a thin lined tattoo that had been hidden under your bikini all day — he couldn’t read what it said from where he sat, but he’d find out soon enough.
“P-please.”
“Please what, sweetheart?” he purred, trailing his hand lower until his fingers were met your drenched folds. He slowly circled your aching clit, watching your body bow off the mattress with dark eyes. “This?”
“E-Eddie—”
“Or maybe this?”
Without warning, he plunged two thick digits inside you, pumping steadily as his palm ground against your swollen clit. Your shattered moan was music to his ears, spurring him on. He worked you mercilessly, curling and stroking your inner walls until you’re writhing mindlessly, chasing the feeling.
Eddie abruptly withdrew his fingers, leaving you bereft and whimpering. He caught your pleading gaze through the mirror, a wicked glimmer dancing in his dark eyes.
“I’m not done teasing you, sweetheart.” He sucked harshly at your throat, sinking his teeth in the skin before smoothing it out with his tongue.
His calloused hand mapped the contours of your body, cupping and teasing until you were all but a puddle on his bed. Deft fingers plucked at your nipples, rolling and tugging until the sting blended into electric pleasure.
And then his touch is nowhere to be felt — not his hands on your breasts, his plush lips against your neck, or even his warm chest against your back.
Standing up from behind you, he guided you until you were perched on the edge of the bed, legs dangling off the mattress. He knelt before you, the heat of his gaze searing as he slowly pulled your shorts down your thighs, inch by torturous inch until you were bare in front of his eyes. Your breath came even shallower and faster, skin prickling with anticipation.
Eddie froze at the sight of your tattoo, his eyes darkening and his lips pulling slowly into a smirk.
“Valentine, huh?”
He sat back on his heels, running a hand through his tousled hair. His gaze darted between your face and the ink marring your skin. Slowly, he reached out to trace the still-healing letters with the tip of his finger, watching your skin jump and quiver under his touch.
When he lifted his eyes to meet yours, the look in them is dizzying. His ringed fingers danced higher, teasing the creases of your thighs. He parted your legs with a practiced touch, exposing you fully to him.
The first swipe of his tongue is electric, drawing a broken moan from your lips. He growled low in approval, doubling his effort until you were trembling and whimpering helplessly.
It was one thing when boys eat you out, but this?
Eddie acting like he was hungry, making out with your pussy?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Dark grey curls tickled the insides of your thighs as pressed his face harder against your slick folds, nose bumping against your swollen clit and tongue circling your leaking slit.
With one final, devastating lick, Eddie pulled back, leaving you gasping and desperate. His dark eyes bores into yours through his lashes as he issues a husky directive.
“Keep those pretty eyes on yourself.”
He hooked one trembling leg over his broad shoulder, spreading you wider. Cool air met your dripping core, followed by the hot rasp of Eddie’s tongue painting your slit. Your reflection was debauched perfection – hair mussed, the thinnest layer of sweat covering your forehead, lips parted on breathy cries.
Just as you crested the peak, teetering on the knife’s edge, Eddie retreated once again. Denial clawed viciously at your insides. He grinned at your anguished whimper, clearly relishing in the control he held over your pleasure. Your chest heaved with ragged breaths, pupils blown wide with need. Eddie drank in the sight, fingers digging into the meat of your thigh as he prepared to drive you wild once more.
Then, without taking his rings off, he pushed two fingers in your dripping pussy, pumping steadily as he leaned back down to suck at your clit. He maintained his punishing pace, alternating between deep, probing thrusts and fluttering licks that made you see stars.
“F-fuck. Ed-Eddie!”
The coil wound tighter with each pass of his tongue, with each hard, curling thrust of his fingers, until you writhed shamelessly, reduced to garbled curses and pleading whimpers of something that vaguely resembled his name.
Ecstasy crashed over you in dizzying waves, every nerve ending alight with bliss. Eddie worked you through it, wringing out every last shudder and aftershock until you collapsed bonelessly against the mattress.
You watched through hooded eyes as he rose, stalking towards you with a shiny lips pulled into a knowing, cocky smirk and a glint in his eyes.
His knees made a faint cracking sound as he climbed up the bed. With tender care, Eddie gently pulled you upright, gathering your limp form into his arms. He claimed your mouth in a deep, searing kiss, swallowing your dazed whimpers at the taste of your own release.
You clung to him, moulding your arms around his neck as his tongue brushed against yours. He guided you onto his lap, cradling you against his chest. The solid heat of him grounded you even as residual tremors wracked your frame. Calloused fingers trailed reverently over your sweat-slick skin, mapping every dip and swell.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he whispered when he pulled away from your lips, tucking your face into the crook of his neck. “Just breathe.”
Eddie continued cradling you close, murmuring soft reassurances. His wandering hand slipped lower, deft fingers pushing his boxers down just enough to free his straining length. You felt the swollen tip notch against your slit, poised to claim you fully.
“Gonna fill you up now, sweetheart,” he rasped, voice gravelly with need.
His other hand still held the back of your head, pushing you down to keep you in the crook of his neck while he pushed himself deeper and deeper, until he sheathed himself to the hilt.
“Ed– Mhmm!” Your cry is muffled against his sweat-dampened skin as he started to move, rolling and grinding until you were a boneless, pliant thing in his arms. His hand roamed restlessly, mapping every hidden place that made you gasp and writhe until reaching your ass, pulling you harder against him.
“Keep looking in the mirror f’me, weetheart.”
The filthy visual drove you wild — tangled limbs, sweat-slicked and tattooed back, the depraved picture the two of you painted together. Eddie’s murmured command urged you on, hips moving in filthy counterpoint to his steady thrusts.
“F-fuck. Just like that,” he groaned approvingly, fingers digging bruises into the globe of your ass.
He moved faster, harder, grinding deep until you were sobbing wordlessly. Distantly, you registered the crude slap of skin on skin, the lewd squelch of his cock working in your sopping cunt. Tension coiled tight and taut, winding higher with each precise hit against that delicious, hidden spot. You were so close again, watered eyes staring back at the ridiculous way Eddie had your eyebrows pulled together and your teeth sunk in his shoulder.
You convulsed in his arms, wailing your release to the ceiling. He worked you through it ruthlessly, wringing every last drop until you collapsed limply against his tattooed chest, utterly spent.
Eddie, not being a complete monster, gave you a brief moment to catch your breath before gently pushing you onto your back. He positioned himself between your spread thighs, looping one leg high up over his hip. The new angle allowed him to sink impossibly deeper, stretching you deliciously.
“You’re so fucking beautiful like this,” he groaned out as he gave you a hard thrust. “Crying as I fuck you stupid.”
His intense gaze locked with yours, dark with hunger and devotion. Slowly, deliberately, he withdrew until just his tip remained nestled inside your slick walls. Gripping your thigh, he rolled his hips in a slow, sensual grind, until he had you arching into his touch.
“P-please, Eddie,” you whimpered.
Eddie’s eyes gleamed with delight at your breathy plea. He maintained his torturously slow rhythm, leaning down to capture your nipple in his teeth, grazing the sensitive bud with his teeth. He soothed the sting with a swipe of his tongue before switching to the neglected nipple, lavishing it with the same devoted attention.
“Hm? You want more?” Eddie rumbled, voice dripping in sin. “Fuck. You feel so fucking good.”
He straightened up, hands gripping your raised thigh as he powered into you with deep, jarring strokes. The change in pace had you seeing stars, inner walls clamping down desperately. Eddie set a brutal pace, grunting with effort, determined to unravel you one more time before he even considered letting himself come.
Eddie’s calloused finger found your swollen clit, circling maddeningly as he pounded into you. Electric shocks of pleasure radiated outward as he varied his technique — brushing feather-light, flicking firmly, rubbing in maddening figure-eights until you’re writhing beneath him, incoherent with need.
“C’mon, pretty girl,” he groaned out, eyebrows knitted together as he stared at the salty tears rolling down the sides of your face. “Just one more, that’s it.”
Another finger joined the fray, plunging deep in tandem with his thrusts. The dual stimulation proved too much, and your orgasm barrelled through you like a freight train, stealing the breath from your lungs.
Eddie’s eyes widened as your release gushed forth, wetting the base of his cock and the lowest part of his stomach.
“F-fuck,” he groaned, momentarily stunned by the sight of you squirting over him. “So beautiful when you let go f’me.”
He didn’t relent, continuing to pump into your spasming heat. Overstimulation warred with reluctant pleasure, keeping you suspended on a razor’s edge. Eddie’s grip tightened, anchoring you as he ground deeper, working you through the overwhelming waves of your orgasm.
“I’m almost there, sweetheart.” He placed an open-mouthed kiss at the side of your neck as he quickened his pace, desperate for his own release. “I– Fuckfuckfuck.”
Your spasming walls milked his cock mercilessly. With a guttural groan, he hilted deep, painting the insides of your pussy in thick, milky ropes of cum.
Wave after wave crashed over the both of you, seemingly endless. Through it all, he kept your trembling form anchored, murmuring praises into the sweaty crook of your neck.
“Good girl, took me so well.” Eddie placed a lingering kiss against your throat.
Eddie held himself up, gazing down at you with hooded eyes, pupils blown wide with satisfaction, damp grey curls clinging to his eyebrow. A fine sheen of perspiration glistened on his sculpted torso, highlighting every ridge, valley and detail of his tattoos.
“You’re fucking incredible,” he whispered.
“I’ve never–” You gulped down, licking your lips as your eyes trailed down to the base of his cock. “Not with somebody else, I mean.”
Eddie followed your gaze to the few translucent beads decorating his happy trail, a lazy smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. He reached down, swiping a finger through the slick trail, bringing it to your lips for a taste.
The gesture made a whole new wave of heat spread across your face. Hazy with the aftermath, your lips instinctively parted further, while Eddie hummed at the sight of you sucking his finger.
A broken moan spilled from your lips as Eddie slowly pulled out. The loss of the fullness left you aching, empty in a way that bordered on painful with your muscles fluttering weakly in protest, seeking to draw him back in.
Eddie pressed soothing kisses to your dampened temple. Carefully, he arranged you atop the tangled sheets, cradling your spent body flush against his larger frame. One hand drifted low to gently clean his leaking cum while your fingertips traced the bold lines on his stomach.
“Didn’t take you–” You cut yourself off with a broken hiss when Eddie’s fingers thrusted back into your pussy. “F-for the rel-religious type.”
“I’m not,” he chuckled — whether it was at your comment or on the way you’d reacted at the intrusion, you didn’t know. “Just have a thing for dragons.”
His deft fingers continued their shallow thrusts, coaxing forth fresh waves of sensations.
“What about that Valentine tattoo of yours?” he urged, voice low and enticing as he ignored the strangled whimpers spilling from your lips. The pad of his thumb found your swollen clit, circling with maddening slowness. “Tell me about it.”
“J-just thought it’d be hot.” You gulped down at the sight of Eddie’s lips stretching into a grin. “Someone reading it if they went—”
Eddie’s grin widened at the confession. His free hand traced idle patterns across your skin, while the other continued abusing your overly sensitive pussy.
“P-please, Eddie,” you begged. “I c-can’t.”
“Just one more?” he whispered back, biting his bottom lip. “Please, sweetheart.”
His eyes had softened at the broken sounds spilling from your lips, but there was no mercy in them. The answer you gave him, another broken whimper, was punctuated with a curl of calloused fingers, grazing that deep spot.
Your spine arched helplessly, mouth falling open on a silent scream as new tears rolled down the sides of your face. Through the haze of overstimulation, Eddie’s face came into focus above you, awash with smug satisfaction.
“That’s it, sweetheart. Just one more, that’s it.”
“Eddie!”
He gathered you tenderly into his arms as you shuddered through the aftershocks, ragged breaths mingling with your whispered name.
“Atta girl,” he murmured approvingly, stroking damp strands of hair from your eyebrow. “You’re so beautiful when you come for me.”
You felt absolutely boneless in his embrace, barely incapable of pushing his hand away when he gave your clit one last, teasing, flick. Eddie’s fingers mapped soothing circles across your back, gentling you from the high.
“I could really use that drink now,” you mumbled tiredly against his chest.
A quiet chuckle rumbled beneath your cheek. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”
Eddie shifted carefully beneath you before easing you back onto the mattress. The bed dipped as he climbed off, pausing only long enough to brush a few strands away from your face before disappearing through the bedroom door.
The room fell strangely quiet without his presence. You stared at the ceiling for a moment, listening to the old floorboards creak beneath his footsteps somewhere down the hall while the occasional boom of another firework echoed faintly through the open bedroom window.
The corner of your mouth tugged upwards before you could stop it.
Jesus fucking Christ.
You’d left New York that morning convinced you were coming home for nothing more than a quiet summer with your parents. Instead, you’d somehow ended up in the apartment of the ridiculously handsome tattoo artist you’d met at ten-something in the morning.
Eddie reappeared in the doorway carrying two empty glasses in one hand, a bottle of water tucked underneath his arm and a bottle of whiskey dangling from his fingers.
“There she is,” he smiled when he found you exactly where he’d left you. “Didn’t know which one you’d want.”
“Water, please.”
He crossed the room and handed you the bottle before settling back onto the mattress beside you, balancing a on one thigh while he poured himself a generous splash.
The water was almost painfully cold against your dry throat. You hadn’t realised just how thirsty you were until nearly half the bottle disappeared in one go.
“Damn,” Eddie chuckled, watching you lower the bottle. “You weren’t kidding.”
A sheepish smile tugged at your lips as you wiped the back of your hand across your mouth.
The room settled into another comfortable silence. Outside, another firework bloomed over Hawkins, briefly washing the bedroom in flashes of red and gold before fading back into the warm amber glow of the bedside lamp.
Eddie rested against the headboard, his shoulders brushing yours as he lazily turned the whiskey around in his glass.
“So…” he said after a while.
“So...”
A teasing smile spread across his face. “I think your mom likes me.”
That pulled a laugh from you loud enough to echo around the bedroom.
“Obviously. You’re her friend.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” He tilted his head.
“Yeah, well.” You shrugged, taking another sip of water. “She’s probably thinking you’ll tattoo her for free now, since you fucked her daughters brains out and all that.”
Eddie barked out a laugh, nearly spilling his whiskey.
“I knew there was a catch.”
“There always is.”
He looked at you for a moment, the grin lingering on his face. He swirled the amber liquid around his glass for another second before speaking again.
“What’s yours?”
“My what?” You frowned. “My catch?”
“There’s gotta be one, right?” He took a slow sip of his whiskey before setting the glass down on the nightstand. “Because a girl your age, pretty and smart and funny, doesn’t just sleep with someone my age after meeting, what? Fifteen, sixteen hours ago?”
You looked at him for a long moment, the crease between your eyebrows deepening the longer you held his gaze.
“That’s not fair.” You ignored the confusion that flickered across his face, and turned to set your water bottle on the nightstand before reaching for your discarded shirt. “Not to me, and not to you either.”
“Sweetheart, wait.” His voice lost every trace of teasing. Before you could pull the shirt over your head, his hand found your wrist, not enough to stop you by force, only to make you pause. “I didn’t mean…”
He sighed softly, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.
“I wasn’t trying to put words in your mouth.” His eyes searched for yours as he let out a quiet, almost embarrassed laugh. “I guess I still have a hard time believing someone like you would look at someone like me and think, Yeah that’ll do.”
“I didn’t come home with you because you’re some hot, older tattoo artist.”
He stayed quiet, and you could almost see him trying to work out what you were going to say next.
Your eyes drifted away for a moment, replaying the day in your head. The beers he’d quietly kept replacing before you’d even realised yours was empty. The way he’d helped your dad with the grill without being asked. The way he’d sat beside you in your childhood bedroom, genuinely listening while you rambled his ear off about art therapy.
“You looked at me all day like I was someone worth getting to know.” A small smile found your lips, and you slipped your fingers around his. “You actually listened when I started rambling.”
A soft scoff escaped you, followed by easy chuckles as your eyes trailed him up and down.
“The tattoos are nice, and the curls definitely helped too.” Your expression softened. “But I came home with the man who made me feel like the most interesting person in every room we walked into today.”
Your eyes drifted down to the floor, finding his black shirt lying forgotten close to where yours had been. Without saying a word, you tossed yours back down next to it and reached for his instead.
Neither of you felt any need to fill the silence while you slipped your arms through the sleeves, the fabric hanging far too large on your frame and carrying the faint scent of sandalwood and mint, cigarettes and whatever laundry detergent he used.
When you turned back around, you found Eddie staring at nothing in particular, absentmindedly worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.
“Hey.”
His dark brown eyes lifted immediately.
“C’mere,” you whispered.
You eased yourself back onto the mattress before shuffling closer and gently tugging at his arm until he followed, settling onto his side to face you.
His hand found your waist almost instinctively while yours came to cradle his jaw, your thumb lazily tracing circles along the stubble covering his cheek.
“Do you work tomorrow?”
He shook his head. “Studio’s closed on Sundays.”
“Good.” A small smile found your lips. “I want a private tour. After you make me breakfast.”
“Oh, wow.” The grin that spread across his face was slow enough to make your own grow wider. “Demanding, are we?”
I hc that Keys gets flustered pretty easily and enjoys good puns, so telling him "u got the key that unlocks my heart" and watching him roll his eyes and seeing the tips of his ears redden simultaneously
the key to my heart | walter mckey
“keys!” you exclaim happily as soon as you stumble into his apartment, drunken giggles leaving your lips as the key he had given you a little over a week ago clatters to the floor. “keys!”
keys—your boyfriend who did not at all expect you to be coming back from a girls night to his apartment and certainly, did not expect you to be so drunk—gets up quickly from where he had been lounging on the coach.
“sweetheart? what are you—”
but the sight of you in his hallway, doubled over laughing at your failed attempts to peel off your heels makes him pause. jesus. you were really drunk.
“keys!” you repeat, tripping over your own feet in your haste to reach him. keys manages to catch you, his hands planting themselves firmly on your waist, before you could hurt yourself.
“did you—how did you get here?” keys asks in a mild panic, one hand lifting to cup your face so he could see the drunken, dazed look on your face. “you didn’t walk, did you? or get an uber alone or—”
you interrupt him with a hiccup before you lean your full body weight into him, nuzzling his chest in a way that makes keys falter, his face start to feel hot.
“you smell like home,” you murmur into him.
keys smiles a little and decides to save the questions on just how you got to his apartment for the morning.
“you’re very sweet, honey,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your forehead that makes you hum in content.
“no, you’re sweet,” you tell him, leaning back to blink up at him. “so sweet. my sweet keys.”
keys’ face reddens, the way it always did when you said something particularly sweet. even if you were incredibly drunks.
and of course, the sight of your boyfriend’s flushed face only makes your drunken smile widen.
“my sweet keys,” you smile up to him, your fingers curling into the front of his shirt as you lean in to clumsily kiss his chin. “m’call you keys because you have the key to my heart.”
you laugh so hard at your own words that it was not for keys not to laugh too. even if the tips of his ears had turned red.
“let’s get you to bed,” he tells you gently, pulling away so he could wrap an arm around your shoulder and guide you towards his bedroom. “before you wake the neighbours.”
