Content Warnings: 18+, unprotected p in v sex, squirting
Word count: 912
Anon requested #116 & #137 from this prompt list from @dumplingsjinson
137 “Christ, I wanna fuck you so bad.” “You’ll get to do that once we get home.”
116 “Baby—shit—I don’t think I’m gonna make it to the bed like this.”
Ruffilo Masterlist
You knew what you were doing when you chose the dress: a short, black sundress adorned with sunflowers. One of his favorites. You knew it’d be hard for Nicholas to keep his hands out from under it. You accounted for his wandering, even choosing to wear his favorite lace thong. And like clockwork, the second he saw you in it, one if his hands was already underneath, softly trailing the waistband of your panties and groaning low in your ear when he realized what pair it was.
Nicholas was a man on a mission. He was determined to make the afternoon barbecue you were attending quick. He decided you’d be staying for an hour, long enough to catch up and have a hot dog or two, then he was dragging you back to your apartment and ripping that damn dress off. However, he quickly lost sight of you upon arriving. You slipped out of his grasp and disappeared. Eventually, he found you conversing with an old high school friend. You excitedly waved him over to introduce him.
His arms wrapped tightly and possessively around your waist, pulling you flush to him. You could feel the outline of his cock straining against his jeans. You pretended not to notice and pushed back. Nicholas squeezed you tighter, holding you firm in his grasp so you couldn’t wiggle out. He meant for the gesture to tease you, but it had the opposite effect. It only exacerbated his issue. He couldn’t care less about whatever you and your friend were gabbing about, only half listening and offering a smile or nod when appropriate. He was aching and ready to leave.
When your friend walked away, Nicholas couldn’t be more glad. Immediately, he snaked his hands under your dress again, grabbing your ass and giving it a firm squeeze.
“Christ, I wanna fuck you so bad.” He husked in your ear, hoping to rile you up enough so you could leave. Much to his dismay though, you only chuckled.
“You’ll get to do that once we get home.”
The hour he planned for turned into two, then three. It almost became four, but Nicholas finally reached his limit. He could no longer wait. All your teasing and blatant showing off every time you bent over did him in. He felt like a caged animal and needed out now. He hastily hurried along your goodbyes, all but shoving you inside his car and blasting out of the drive before you were even buckled in. You giggled internally, extremely proud of yourself for succeeding in getting Nicholas so flustered and worked up.
You stumbled over your feet to your door, him hot on your heels. When you crossed the threshold, Nicholas kicked the door shut and pounced. His lips were on yours, devouring your mouth with a feral, desperate need. You melted into him, matching his desire tenfold. He did his best to walk you backwards towards your room, but there was no way he’d make it.
“Baby—shit—I don’t think I’m gonna make it to the bed like this.” He said between hot breaths. He was about to burst.
Your hips gently collided with the console table only a few feet from the door. Nicholas swiped everything to the floor, shattering your favorite vase, and hoisted you precariously on top.
“Nick!” You gasped.
“Sorry. I’ll buy you a new one.” He mumbled against your neck.
Your anger was quickly forgotten as he pulled aside your panties, sinking his fingers into your pussy, easily being welcomed inside.
“Have you been this wet all day?” He murmured, making quick work of his belt and jeans with his other hand. You felt the head of his cock tease your clit, precum already leaking from him.
“Yes,” you breathed. “I probably won’t last long.
“That makes two of us.”
You moaned in unison as his thick cock stretched you wide. With how ravenous his kiss had been, you were surprised to find Nicholas holding himself back, fully expecting him to not give you time to adjust. Of course, maybe he stayed still to keep himself from blowing early.
His first thrust was painfully slow. He left only the tip inside, biting your neck and shoulder in time with the clenching of your pussy. The second was so deep you swore you felt him in your stomach. You threw your arms around him, pulling him as close as you could. By the fourth thrust, Nicholas found a rhythm that left the wall and table shaking and you gasping for breath. Every time he pushed in, it knocked the air from you.
Nicholas’ hips grew erratic. He struggled to keep a rhythm as he felt the tension in his loins tighten. He didn’t know how close you were, but he was on the cusp. He tried to slip a hand between you bodies, but it was too late.
With a final, powerful thrust that had him standing on his tiptoes, he unloaded, his body and lungs wracked with profound grunts. It almost hurt, how hard he came. You pulsed around him, beckoning his cock to give you all he could. You managed to get a hand to your clit and rubbed furious circles, desperately needing to fall over the edge. A few swipes is all it took to drench yourself, him, and the console that would now need to be replaced. You heard Nicholas swear under his breath.
Paring: Nicholas Ruffilo x Noah Sebastian x Laurie (OFC)
Warnings: Swearing, Angst
Word Count: 5.7k
To Know You're Mine Masterlist
Masterlist
The plan had been for Noah to stay with them for two weeks. Just until he finds a place for himself where he doesn’t have to compete with the roaches (or the two clowns he had for roommates before) for the contents of his fridge.
They’re breaching the end of week four now, and he’s nowhere near finding a place that he can afford. The ones he can get immediately stricken from the list for a variety of reasons. Roaches, rats, very bad plumbing, too far away. The list seems endless, and he’s starting to lose hope that he’ll find anything at all. At this point, Noah is willing to pay someone for a room in their basement. He’d ask Nick and Laurie, but he really doesn’t want to bother them more than he already has. Sure, he’s helping around the house. He’s even, for the first time, really figured out how to work a dryer without shrinking all of his clothes. No one’s going to tell him that he isn’t trying to carry his load here. They’re letting him stay in their house for free, the least he can do is take a little bit of work off his friend’s shoulders.
Staying with Nick and Laurie has come with the added benefit of getting to spent so much time with his friends. They’ve been together long enough for Noah to consider Laurie equally important to him as Nick. She’s always there to listen to his whining about the girls that scorn him, always there to tell him that he’ll find the right one eventually. And he’s inclined to believe her over most people. With Nick so busy at the tattoo parlour, Noah’s been hanging around Laurie much more. On some days, he goes down to the record store with her, hangs around while she goes about her normal day. He’s glad to help, even if it’s just carrying things around or packing up orders for the online shop. They spend their lunch break with Nick, meeting him half way in-between the record store and tattoo parlour for a quick bite. Noah feels like a part of them. He almost doesn’t remember what it felt like to spend his days without them.
For now, he’s paused the endless apartment hunting and has turned to something that gives him a little less of a headache. The melody that has been floating around his head has finally made it to the proverbial paper. He’s been slaving away at the bones of it for the better part of the day now, with no real end in sight. It’s slow-going, but at least it’s going. It’s been a little difficult to focus on the music recently. His head has been so full of worries that he can’t find the capacity to really focus on anything else. It feels good to focus on this for a change. The constant dread of having to find a place to stay has been wearing him down like little else.
A knock on the door finally shakes him out of the loose concentration he’s been in.
“Come in?”
It feels a little odd to invite Laurie into a room she technically owns, but he appreciates that they’ve given him a space of his own for the time being. It’s not big, but it’s more than enough for him. Laurie pushes into the room, her laundry basket resting against her waist. She sets it down on the pull-out they picked up shortly after he’d come to stay with them. For a very, very brief moment, his head goes back to that thought he tries to push away so desperately. Sometimes he finds himself filled with misplaced envy. There’s a shred of him that wonders how things would be if he’d met her before Nick. If he’d been able to get her before his friend, maybe things wouldn’t have gone so piss poor.
But he hasn’t, and now he has to deal with it.
“Come on.” She smacks her hand against his back, “You’re done for the day. Nick’s coming with food, and I’m done with the laundry.”
Her hands linger on his shoulders for a moment too long, Noah thinks. Not in a bad way, no. He likes how she digs her fingers into his skin and always finds the knots that have been bothering him all day.
It’s comfortable.
Everything with her is.
He wishes that she wouldn’t make it so damn easy for him to feel this way. If she was just a little less her he wouldn’t have such a hard time pushing this misplaced crush to the back of his mind. Noah swallows the feeling down as best as he can.
“What did he get?”
“Pizza I think?” Her hands are still massaging his shoulders. “We could watch that film we missed while you were away.”
Out of instinct, he lets his head thump back against her belly. He likes how affectionate he can be with her. The touch has never felt intrusive or out of place.
She brushes the loose strands of hair from his face.
“We don’t have to.”
“No, that'd be nice.” He replies, blinking up at her.
He thinks that she wants to say something, but she remains silent.
They remain locked in this staring match for a moment longer. If he wouldn’t know it better — no, surely not. Noah banishes the thought before it has a chance to develop properly. That’s his best friend's girlfriend and one of his closest friends.
Her hands pull away from him as if his skin is boiling hot.
“I’m gonna get the plates out.” She speaks quickly before rushing out of the room.
Noah sits in this odd silence for a long while. Surely she doesn’t feel that way. Laurie and Nick have been together for ages. It’s always been them as a pair, and as far as he’s aware they’ve always been happy. He can’t deny that he enjoys the affection Laurie showers him with. He likes how close they’ve become over the years, but he would never think to force himself between his friends.
Noah doesn’t know what to do with the feeling in his chest. He can’t act on it but ignoring it will do nothing for him either.
Music buzzes from the stereo when Nick unlocks the door. That itself isn’t unusual. Laurie always has something playing when she’s at home. It takes him a moment to recognise her choice of that evening before he thinks that this isn’t something Laurie would pick.
He finds Noah leaning in the corner of the sofa, one of the cats comfortable curled up in his lap. He looks up from the notebook in his laps and gives a quick nod to acknowledge Nick’s arrival. The air in the room feels oddly tense, even with Laurie not here. Something is up, and Nick isn’t sure that he likes it.
Laurie is pacing the length of their kitchen when he enters, her hands nervously wringing together in a way that he hasn’t seen since the false positive some years ago. He doesn’t want to see her like that ever again, and the fact that she looks so wrecked right now does nothing to ease his mind. He approaches, quietly as he can, but her already tense eyes seem to spot him immediately.
“You’re back.”
“I’m not late, am I?” He automatically checks his watch, just to find that he is, in fact, not late.
“No — we have to talk about something.”
He hates the look on her face, the tense posture of her shoulders.
“Before or after food?”
She shakes her head. They’ll eat first, she tells him. It won’t matter if they talk now or later.
Nick doesn’t enjoy the feeling it leaves him with. He knows that if it’s bad, she would have told him immediately, but she wouldn’t be so anxious if it wasn’t something big at the very least.
The pointed silence around the table when they sit down to eat doesn’t help. She and Noah are both tense in ways that he really does not like. He knows them both well enough to not consider that an option, but they look awfully suspicious. Something has changed today, and in a way, Nick already knows what she’s going to tell him later.
He’s seen how close they’ve become since Noah has moved in with them. They’ve always been close and really Nick has always liked that. Noah and Laurie are his favourite people, and he’s glad that they’re this close. He isn’t blind, though. He knows what Laurie looks like when she develops feelings for someone. They’ve talked about it – more than once, and Laurie has made it more than clear that feeling this way has nothing to do with him. And he knows her well enough to know that she would never go behind his back with this. The last (and first time) she’d seen someone who wasn’t him was years ago. Maybe it had felt different hen because the girl hadn’t been his friend and bandmate. He’ll hear her out before making further conclusions.
They don’t have time to talk until they’re getting ready for bed later that night. Noah had given a curt good-night shortly after they’d finished eating before vanishing into the spare room. Nick hates seeing them so distant so suddenly. He can’t stand the thought that something is keeping them apart like this, even if it’s a good thing at its root.
“You wanna have that talk?” he asks when Laurie slips under the cover next to him.
She sighs with a weight that could shift mountains, “I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it didn’t really become clear until today.”
Nick sits up a little. He takes her hands into his, hoping that it’ll calm her nerves a little. The shaky breath she draws in doesn’t make him feel too confident in that.
“Talk to me. You know you can tell me everything.” he squeezes her hands, but his heart sinks a little when he feels her hands still trembling.
Without pushing it further, Nick pulls her against his chest. His arms wrap around her, keeping her as close as he can while her body shakes with quiet sobs. Nick isn’t sure how long they sit like this. It doesn’t matter, either. He’s content to hold her as long as she needs it. Only when he feels Laurie calm a little again, does he speak again.
“Do you like him?” he asks quietly.
God does he hope that the words don’t make him sound as if he’s upset about it.
Laurie is silent for a long while, and Nick suddenly isn’t sure if he’s read too much into the situation.
“I don’t know when it happened, either.” she sounds so pitiful.
“Oh, darling.” he sighs, pressing a kiss against her forehead, “It’s not like you have a say in what your heart wants.”
“I just don’t know why it had to be him.” Laurie pulls away enough for her to be able to look at him, “Why could it not have been someone else.”
“I don’t think that Noah realises how easy he makes it for people to fall for him.”
Laurie shoots him a questioning look at that, and it's only then that Nick really realises what he said. He can’t deny that he’s been harbouring a whole host of feelings for the younger for a few years now. But Noah had made it very clear that he had no interest in guys, and really that’s perfectly fine with Nick. It does make the ache in his chest bloom up just a little bit more.
Laurie’s hands cup his face, thumbs caressing the tops of his cheeks. There’s a sad strain of pity on her face, and Nick recognises it as the same kind of pity he feels for her. The kind that wishes to take the ache away, to make the hurt vanish without a trace.
It stays, though - no matter which way he turns it. He wants them to be happy above all else, even if that means shoving his own feelings to the side.
“I’m not going to stand between you, you know that. Even if it could make things complicated. We’ll figure it out. We always have.”
Nick tries his best to swallow the ache down, for their sake. This whole thing still hinges on Noah’s feelings, but he knows how easy it is to love Laurie. And he can’t possibly blame Noah if he really does feel that way for her. It’ll sting for a while, but Nick’ll get over it. Seeing them happy will be worth it, he reasons.
“Nicky?” she sounds so utterly defeated, and he doesn’t have to look up to notice the quiver of her lip.
He does regardless, and the deep-seated furrow of her brows really cements the severity of this all in his chest.
“You know I love you, right?” it’s Laurie’s turn to squeeze his hands, “Whatever happens between Noah and me will not change that. You will always be it for me. Nothing and no one can change that. I love you.”
It tears at him.
For her sake and for his own.
Seeing Laurie so torn up about this makes his chest ache. The worst thing is that he knows that Noah won’t make the first move. He won’t be the one to start the conversation, and Laurie is way too scared to ruin what they have right now to do it, either. He’ll play matchmaker if that means that they’ll stop trying to avoid each other.
Maybe his issue isn’t that he doesn’t want them to be together, but rather that they’ll be together without him. If it weren’t for the menial detail that Noah isn’t into guys, he could even see them as a trio.
All he can hope for is that this won’t break them.
In the days following that moment, Noah feels himself drifting away from them. The unspoken words still seem to dangle between them, and with every day that passes the wall becomes higher and higher. He returns to burying himself in work. If he works, he can’t think about the feeling that has settled in his chest. The feeling he thinks is the gentle beginning of love. He’d be fine with it under normal circumstances, but as fate would have it, the lucky lady is no other than Laurie. Noah isn’t sure what entity has been cursing him lately, but it’s starting to become a real issue. Maybe if he finds a place for himself, he’ll get over this.
A sharp knock sounds at his door before it flies open. The lack of courtesy tells him it’s Nick. He doesn’t say anything as he moves across the room towards the pull-out. Nick’s never this quiet. Noah can’t deny the tension that has been hanging over the house for the past few days. He’s tried so hard to keep his interactions with Laurie to a minimum, all in the hopes that it’d make that feeling go away. It’s only made things worse.
Noah turns his chair so that he’s facing Nick. He feels himself crumbling under Nick’s gaze.
“You got something to tell me?” Nick asks rather pointedly.
He feels cornered. There’s nothing to admit because nothing has happened, but he can’t stop the guilt from boiling up in him. At the same time, he isn’t even sure if this is what Nick wants to hear.
Thankfully, Nick takes the decision from him.
“I’ve known you for how long? Eight years?” He’s so awfully calm that Noah has no idea if he’s about to blow up in his face or if he’s about to break into laughter, “You’ve known Laurie for almost as long. If something’s up, you can tell us.”
“I- don’t know. I didn’t plan to- I can go.” He offers weakly.
The last thing he wants is to disrupt what they have. They’re still his best friends, the people who have given him asylum on more than one occasion. And as in return, he worms his way into their relationship like some kind of fucked up parasite.
“And go where? Are you going to sleep on someone’s sofa again?” It’s not mean, but the sting is still there, “Noah no one’s asking you to leave. I just need you to talk.”
He opens his mouth, but Nick quickly interjects, “Not to me. Talk to Laurie.”
“But you’re —” he gestures feebly towards Nick.
“Talk to her. Just this once, listen to what I tell you to do, okay? I know you don’t want to have that conversation, but I’m not going to have your inability to talk about your feelings fuck up my relationship or my friendship with you.” He’s never seen Nick look this stern with him, “Fucking fix this. I’m not going to dig you out of this one. If you can't, you better figure out what you’re doing next.”
He’s gone before Noah has the chance to reply, and maybe that’s for the better.
He sits with his thoughts for the rest of the morning. Laurie’s long out of the door when he decides that he’ll take that first step, even if it terrifies him to no end.
Noah decides that he’ll stop by the café Laurie likes before he heads to the store. Showing up empty-handed feels like the worst option.
He gets her one of the sandwiches she likes so much and an iced coffee. The cookie will stay in the pocket of his jacket until she inevitably brings up that a little sweet treat would be nice. His own order doesn’t look too different.
Hell, she’s coloured off on him so much already.
His heart pounds in his chest as he gets closer to the record store. Noah doesn’t know how he’s even supposed to broach this topic.
Hey, I think I’m falling in love with you and your boyfriend said to tell you, and I don’t know what that means for us.
Every iteration of the sentence feels bad. Sometimes he wonders how he’s managed to write a single song. The sign of the store coming into view stops him from stewing on it for much longer. Noah stops dead in his tracks. He has to rip the band-aid off now. If he doesn’t do it now, it’ll make things so much worse.
His grip on the little paper bag tightens, crumpling the handle of it even more. His palms have never felt this sweaty before. Noah doesn’t know which outcome terrifies him more. It doesn’t matter what she’ll say, everything will be different after today.
Noah pushes through the door. The little bell dings and it makes him wince. Soft music filters from the speakers mounted high up on the wall. He doesn’t recognise the song, but it’s soft and dreamy, and it almost lulls him into a false sense of safety.
The bright red of Laurie’s hair pops through the crack in the curtain that obscures the back room. The smile on her face dims just a little bit, and Noah can’t deny the sting of it. She doesn’t say anything as she approaches the counter. Noah hates that she doesn’t come rushing around to greet him like she’d done before.
“I brought snacks?” He says, holding up the bag and tray with drinks.
The tense look on her face eases a little, but he can still see her chewing on the inside of her lip.
“Thought we could go sit in the park for a bit?” He feels so awfully helpless, “But we don’t have to. I can just leave yours here and —”
“I’d like that — the park. Not you leaving.” Laurie looks so hesitant.
He’s never seen her so nervous and fumbly, and he wishes that he could just make it go away again. He’ll swallow his pride and get over this feeling if it means that they’ll be okay again. But this breaks his heart.
“I’ll get the keys and my bag. Give me two.” She almost sounds as if nothing had changed, “Can you turn off the music?”
Noah gives a quick nod before he sets their lunch down on the counter. He’s done this often enough to know what she wants him to do. After the music, he flips off the lights in the back and makes sure that the lamp in the back is unplugged. It shouldn’t be an issue, but he knows that Laurie doesn’t trust it and will ask him if he’s pulled the plug on it before they leave. She always does.
When Laurie re-emerges from the back room, she gives the store a quick once over.
“Lamp’s already unplugged.” He adds before she can even open her mouth to ask the question.
She gives him the faintest trace of a smile, and that’s good enough for him. Laurie nods and Noah swears that he can see a tinge of pink on her cheeks.
They’ve taken this walk so often, and yet it still feels so very different today. They’re quiet. Noah doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say just yet. He tries to find a good way to start this talk, but none of the things he can come up with feel as if they do the situation justice. In the end, he decides that he’ll just wing it. Coming up with a big speech doesn’t feel like him, he’ll stumble his way through it, but he’ll say it. That’s what matters.
Their usual spot is a little bench under one of the trees. It’s shaded enough, but not so much that they’ll be cold. The tray with their drinks stands between them like an impenetrable wall. He watches as Laurie takes the first bite of her sandwich. He feels way too nauseous to eat. Maybe this was a dumb idea after all. But then she pulls her leg up under her body and turns towards him, as if she’s waiting for him to say something.
Say it.
“Laurie.” He starts softly.
She looks up from her coffee.
“Can we–we should talk about — fuck it — I know you’re with Nick and God this sounds bad —” he draws in a breath to sort his thoughts before the words suddenly bubble up and out of him, “I like you more than I should considering that you’re Nick’s girlfriend and I wish that it wasn’t like this, and I’ll go if that’s what you need, but I just want us all to be like it was before.”
His hands tremble like they’ve never done before. In the long seconds before she answers, his brain runs through every probable option, every scenario that could possibly follow.
Laurie reaches for his hands. They’re always so soft and warm and comforting. She’s held his hand so often, but it feels weightier now.
“I know you do. You’re not very good at hiding it.” Noah feels his cheeks heat, “It’s okay, though. I’m glad that you told me. I know that’s difficult.” She goes quiet for a moment, “I know that this is a strange situation. You don’t want to cross a line that you can’t exactly uncross again, and I understand that it's scary. Nicky and I have talked about this a few times. He knows that I’m not against seeing more than one person. I’m not saying that that is what has to happen. But I want you to know that whatever you feel for me is perfectly fine.” She briefly glances down at their joined hands, “I won’t lie, it scares me too. I don’t want your friendship with Nick to suffer if something goes wrong here. And I don’t want what we have to suffer, either.”
“What if we just don’t let it go wrong?”
It feels so simple, too simple, but it brings a smile to her face nevertheless.
“I’m going to try everything in my power to not let that happen.” Laurie sounds so earnest and mixed with the soft look that she fixes him with, he can’t help but believe her.
“And you’re sure that this is fine? I don’t want to push myself into something I should not be in.”
“It is absolutely fine. If you want to see where this — us — can go, I’m all for it. It doesn’t have to be more than a bit of fun, although I would not be opposed to it becoming more.”
Noah thinks for a long moment. She doesn’t let go of his hands. Her thumbs rub gentle circles into the skin on the backs of his hands.
It feels like the biggest decision he’ll ever make. A part of him wants to back out and leave them be as they are right now, but there’s a different part of him that begs him to say yes to this. He hadn’t considered this to be an option, but now that he thinks about it, it just makes so much sense. If it means that they’ll all be happy, it’s good.
Noah shifts their hands around so that he can squeeze hers.
“You’ll tell me if I mess something up, right?”
She breaks into a relieved smile.
“Of course.” She replies, “And regardless of this, you know that you can always talk to Nick and me. In fact, I would love it if you and Nick had your own talk about this.”
He swallows. Nick and he have had plenty of talks, many of them getting into more personal things. But the idea of discussing the parameters of their relationship somehow terrifies him beyond reason. Nick knows more about him than most people do. It’s nerve-wrecking – all of it is.
“I just want you to be on the same page. This will only work if we all talk, okay?” Laurie’s words ring around his head for a moment.
He knows that they’ll be so very patient with him. They’ve always been. He has never felt as if there was something he couldn’t tell them. As much as this all scares him, he knows that ultimately they’ll be alright. The brush of Laurie’s thumb against the back of his hand soothes his mind. It almost makes him forget his worries. It feels as if they’re back to normal, except that it’s all different now. Noah’s heart still pounds with the knowledge that it’s more than okay for him to feel this way.
While they sit here, Noah almost forgets that she isn’t just his. Almost. But it doesn’t sting. Laurie looks less burdened now that they’ve talked about it. The constant worried frown has disappeared from her brow. His own chest feels lighter, too. The brick-heavy feeling had slipped from his shoulders, and instead he feels a lightness. A gentle, bubbling feeling that makes him jittery in the best way possible.
His eyes flit across her face while Laurie tells him about her morning. Noah keeps getting caught on her lips. He can’t look away, can’t stop himself from thinking about what it would be like to finally kiss her.
“Laurie?” he doesn’t mean to interrupt her like that, but he absolutely has to feel it now.
She stops in the middle of her sentence, “Hm?”
His heart thumps so heavily that he’s sure that she’s heard it. Noah’s chest feels so tight all of a sudden.
“Can I kiss you?”
She’s quiet for a second, breath caught between her lips. Noah doesn’t think that she’s ever been more beautiful. Her skin shines in the warm afternoon sun, the little sparkles of whatever makeup thing she’d put on her cheeks that morning reflect the light so beautifully that it makes her look like some enchanted being.
“Please.” he knows that he must sound so pitiful, but he’s beyond caring for that.
The hand, that isn’t still holding on to his, comes to brush against the side of his face. The touch is so gentle, so delicate. He leans into it, lets himself enjoy the warmth of her palm. Noah feels her fingers drift towards his neck before a thumb traces across his cheek. He feels dizzy, heart pounding so fast that he thinks that he’ll pass out at any moment. His eyes fall shut as she steers him closer. The first touch of her lips against his fills his ears with static. He’s kissed enough girls to know what it feels like, but somehow kissing Laurie feels so very different. His hand flies to her waist, and Noah isn’t sure if it’s to keep her close or to steady himself. Either way, he presses closer, just for a moment. It’s over way too soon, he thinks. Noah soothes himself with the knowledge that he can kiss her whenever. She’s his as much as she’s Nick’s. He’s allowed to kiss her, to touch her, to like her – to love her.
Laurie stays close, even after they part again. He dives back in for another quick kiss, and she giggles so sweetly that it makes him feel as if he’s floating a few inches above the ground. They stay on the bench for a little while longer, idly talking until their phones ding with the same notifications.
Either you’ve strangled each other or you’ve made up. Can you bring dinner when you come back?
Noah scoffs at the message. He types his reply saying that they’ll be back soon, before he looks over to Laurie. The softness on her face sends a shiver down his spine. No one has ever looked at him like that before.
“What d’you wanna get?”
“What a-”
“Don’t say pizza. Not again.” She interjects quickly, “If it were up to you, that’s all we’d eat.”
He wants to protest, but Noah knows that the last few times they’ve asked him, he’s always given the same suggestion.
They settle on sushi. Laurie holds his hand while they wait for their order, and it all feels so very normal. Nick is already waiting for them when Laurie unlocks the door. His eyes drift between them as if he’s trying to read their minds. Something eases his worry though and he gives Noah a curt nod.
Nick has cleared off the coffee table in front of the sofa so that they can have their food there. It’s comfortable. The awkwardness of the last week has worn off as quickly as it had made itself known, and Noah is glad that he doesn’t have to sit with the anxiety of losing both of his best friends over a misplaced crush.
He helps Nick clean up the remnants of their dinner while Laurie gets herself into something comfy. It feels so oddly domestic, so very normal. They move around each other without much issue, as if they’ve been doing this for years. And maybe in a way they have.
“I’m glad that you told her.” Nick breaks the comfortable silence between them, “She really does like you, you know? It tore her up just as much as it did you.”
He takes a moment to comprehend the words, “She’s so —”
The right words fail him then, but the look on Nick’s face tells him that he knows exactly what he means.
“I know.” He pulls Noah into a tight hug, “I will fucking skin you if you fuck this up.”
There’s just enough humour in his voice for Noah to know that he’s not in any danger yet.
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Don’t have to promise me that. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” Nick says as he detaches himself from Noah, “Let’s get back there. Our girl’s waited for long enough.”
Our girl.
The phrase makes his heart pound with joy.
When they get back to the living room, Laurie has already found a comfortable space in the middle of the sofa. The makeup from the day is gone, and her hair is piled up in a mess of a bun on top of her head. Noah thinks that she looks just as beautiful now as she did earlier when they’d been in the park. She pats the cushions to either side of her in a silent invitation.
“The choices are Raiders of the Lost Ark and Phantom Menace.” She announces as they find their spots.
It’s not really a question. They’ll watch Phantom Menace and have a little giggle about it, as they always do.
Nick slumps down to her right, leaving Noah the slightly more spacious spot to her left. Noah immediately sags against her, his head leaning on her shoulder. Over the course of the movie he ends up leaning somewhat against her. They’ve been close like that before, but it feels so different now. Her fingers are in his hair, gently combing through the strands. Noah lets himself be lulled into a comfortably dreamy state by her touch. For a moment, he forgets that she isn’t just his — that Nick is sitting on her other side, his hand placed firmly against her thigh.
The brief and quite frankly misplaced irritation subsides quickly. He’s surrounded by people he adores. Comfortable, safe and loved. They’re his oldest friends. Always there when he needs them. Hell, Noah knows that he could call either of them in the middle of the night, and they’d be with him in an instant. And he’d do the same for them. Because that’s what you do for your friends, right? Except the feeling in his chest feels so much deeper than just friendship.
They’re more than friends. He feels safe here, comfortable. For once, he doesn’t feel as if he has to be on edge or ready to bolt.
The realisation hits him then.
He knows that what he feels for Laurie is more than friendship. He’s sure of that. But when he forces his thoughts towards Nick, the feeling doesn’t really go away. He doesn’t quite know what to do with that realisation. It sits on his chest like one of their cats, heavy but so strangely comforting. It’s a little unnerving, he’s never felt this way for another man, and suddenly he isn’t so sure if this is a new feeling or if it’s been there the entire time.
Noah decides to deal with it on another day. For now, he’s content to feel Laurie’s hand in his hair and the soft rise and fall of her chest against his back.
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