summary: an arranged marriage with John Shelby becomes something a little less unwilling than you expected.
warnings: smut, explicit language, power imbalance, possessive behaviour, mdni!
The door of John Shelby’s bedroom shuts behind you with a heavy click. It makes you flinch, but you don’t turn away from the window.
You’re still in your wedding dress, barely having time to come down from the night’s celebrations. And now here he is. Your new husband. One you had no say in. The one you had been wed off to so Thomas Shelby could strengthen business ties between your family and his.
You’d seen John before, of course. Hard not to. He didn’t blend into a room. But you’d never given him a reason to think you were looking. Never given anyone a reason to believe you’d appreciate being traded off to him like stock.
John stands behind you as he looks at the curve of your white dress. He isn’t subtle about it. That signature grin already forming as his eyes drag over you.
You hadn’t spoken a single word to him throughout the marriage celebrations. Just kept your head down. Letting the day pass as fast as it could. When he had asked you for a wedding dance, you’d said you weren’t much of a dancer and he had taken it as a hint to say no more to you and let you be. Drinking whiskey and smoking cigars with Isaiah and Arthur instead.
But his eyes hadn’t left you throughout the entire wedding. Not during the ceremony. Not during the reception. Certainly not as the evening celebrations lingered until early morning. What with the Shelby’s having invited almost all of Small Heath to send their perfect boy off.
But there’s only so many ways to avoid your new husband on your wedding. And sleeping in a separate bedroom during your wedding night was not something your father or Thomas Shelby would let you get away with. That much you knew. You could count yourself lucky that the Shelby brothers weren’t listening outside the door.
Still, you refuse to turn away from the window. As just to pretend you haven’t been married off for a few more minutes.
John lets you have it. Your moment of peace. There’s a pause where he just stands behind you, finishing off his cigarette. Then he stubs it, exhales smoke and moves towards you. “Not even gonna look at me?”
Your eyes stay fixed on the dark glass, the street below long gone quiet. “I’ve seen enough.”
There’s a low huff of amusement behind you. “Have you now?”
He’s closer now. You feel it before you hear it. His body behind yours. The weight of him moving into your space like it’s already his to take.
“You stood there all day…in that pretty little white dress, yeah,” John continues.
He stops right behind you, sliding a hand up your waist. Your breath hitches, but you don’t step away.
“Actin’ too good to even spare me a glance…” he breathes into your ear. “And now you’ve seen enough of me?”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“Yeah, well I don’t ask for things. Still get ‘em.” He smirks again. “So here we are. Carryin’ my name, sweetheart.”
His grip on your waist tightens as he spins you around. You keep your eyes on the floor, refusing to meet his.
He catches your jaw with his free hand. “Eyes on me now, love. Go on—spare your husband a glance.”
You hesitate, then make yourself look at him.
His eyes are an icy blue, fixed on you in a way that makes heat crawl over your skin. Up close, you notice the freckles on his skin, the way his hair sits rough from the night. There’s hunger there, and something close to fascination just beneath it.
“Knew you could,” he mutters.
Heat blooms deep in your stomach, completely unwanted as you take him in, Boyish, unwavering, and yet seen more than people his age should.
“Wouldn’t have gone through with it, would I? Not unless you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.”
You try to turn your head away. His grip on your jaw only tightens. “Don’t be like that.” His head leans back slightly, taking you in. He nods, like something’s been confirmed. “Yeah.”
You frown slightly.
“You spent the whole night avoidin’ me,” he says, eyes flicking to your lips. “What, you won’t even dance with your husband?”
“You’re not my—”
“I am, though.” He pulls you flush against him. “You think I’m just gonna let that go?” He lets out an amused huff. “No, sweetheart…you owe me.”
And then he’s kissing you. There’s nothing gentle about it. Just heat and pressure stealing the breath from your lungs.
His lips are warm, softer than you expected. The way his lips press into yours…a little careless in how he presses closer, like he’s not asking, but deciding you’re already his.
You freeze for a second, and then you find yourself kissing him back. Wanting more of his touch. Of the way he tastes like whiskey, mixed with the faint lingering taste of smoke. You wrap your arms around him, deepening it.
When he pulls back, he presses his forehead to yours, his breathing uneven. “Funny that.” He brushes his knuckles along your face. “Kiss me like that… then pretend you don’t want it.”
Your lips part, but nothing comes out.
He looks at you for a moment, like he already knows what you’re not saying.
He kisses you again, rougher now. His tongue presses at your mouth, and you let him in. Your hands sliding from his shoulders to his neck as you nip at his bottom lip.
This time when he breaks it, his grip tightens slightly as he turns you—slow at first, giving you time to stop him.
But you don’t want him to.
Your chest meets the cool glass of the window, and he’s already there. Crowding you, one hand braced beside your head, the other pulling you into him.
“Do you want me, love?” he murmurs.
His eyes flick down to your neck, and he brushes away the layer of veil, bending to leave soft kisses there.
You let out a sound as he marks your neck. You nod, unable to stop the way your body leans into him. The way you crave his touch.
He continues nipping at your neck, slower now.
His hands slide down your waist, lifting your dress just enough to get it out of the way, mouth still moving over your skin.
“John,” you whisper.
“Yeah…” he breathes against your ear.
His hand finds your jaw again, turning your head just enough. He kisses you like that. From behind. Deeper this time. He’s got you exactly where he wants you now.
His hand moves lower, over your hip, down to the back of your thighs, his fingers slipping between them, thumb pressing between your legs as he finds you already soaked for him.
“Knew it,” he says.
He slides a finger into your pussy, and you whimper. Your hips arch as he adds another, pumping them in and out. “Hmm John,” you breathe.
He pulls his fingers out, leaving you at a loss. You turn towards him. “What...? I—"
He’s already unbuckling his belt where he’s rock hard. He slides down his trousers, freeing himself. You look down, and your breath catches. He’s bigger than you expected, veiny, already leaking like he’s been hard a while.
His hand slides up your spine, pressing you into the glass as he drags himself against your slick. You gasp when his tip brushes against your clit.
“You want me to make you feel good, hm?” he asks, still teasing your entrance.
“Yeah… please.” You arch your hips further against him, chasing the contact.
“Good.” he says, pushing into you in one smooth motion. The stretch makes you gasp.
He stays still, breathing heavy against your neck, buried inside you to the hilt. “Fuck, I was right about you.”
You don’t have time to think about what he means as he slides out, and pushes back into you hard, forcing you further against the window. You moan and he takes it as a sign, gripping your hips hard enough to mark. He moves again, harder this time, setting a rhythm that knocks the breath from your lungs.
Your pussy flutters around him, chasing the movement. You see stars as he slams into your g-spot.
Suddenly he pulls out with a frustrated groan. The loss hits immediately, your pussy tightening around nothing.
“I want more,’’ you breathe.
“Patience, love,’’ he says, grabbing you roughly and flipping you onto the bed. He crawls over you, immediately working on the dress corset, undoing it as fast as he can. “Let me see you.” He finishes unlacing it, your tits spilling out and he immediately takes one into his mouth, massaging the other. Your hands find his head, pulling him closer as he sucks greedily, then switches.
His cock drags against your slick again. “I want to see my wife when I fuck her,” and with that he pushes in again. He groans, brow creased in concentration as he moves immediately, fucking you hard.
You arch and take his head into your hands, keeping him close, this time making him look at you. And there’s something deeper in his gaze than lust. Something he hasn’t admitted, even to himself. He rolls his hips into you again, pressure building deep in your core. “You’re gonna be the death of me, you know that?”
You respond by pulling him closer, squeezing him between your thighs, dress fabric everywhere.
It builds too fast to stop. Your pussy clenches around him as you cum, pulling him with you as he spills himself inside you.
“Fuck…fuck you’re so perfect,” he groans, still moving as he fucks his seed into you.
You’re both on your back, panting heavy. John turns his head towards you, and you see it in his eyes again. Satisfaction, underneath something deeper. The same thing you noticed earlier. “Wasn’t chance, this,” he says.
You blink, still too close to him, hand resting against his chest. “What?”
John’s eyes stay on you. The blue in them makes heat crawl up your neck, and you look away. He places his hand in your hair, making you look at him again. That boyish face. Those intent eyes. The soft spot he only has for you. It’s all there.
“Saw you first,” he mutters. “Garrison. Years back.”
You crease your brows—and then you understand. Years ago. When your family first moved to Small Heath and you went out for drinks with your new friends.
He had seen you. He had been watching you since.
“And when they started talkin’ about marryin’ you off…your name came up in it,” he says, like it’s nothing. “I made sure it was me.”
For a second, you just stare at him. Until it all starts to make sense. He didn’t just agree to marry you. He made it happen.
“You—” Your hand lifts before you can stop it, right towards his face. Nothing hard. Just a quick slap.
He catches it faster than you can blink.
His fingers wrap around your wrist, holding it there between you, his grip firm against your skin. He looks pleased, like he expected this.
“You serious?” you breathe, anger flashing now. “You did that?”
“Wanted you,” he says, shrugging, as if that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Your mouth parts, you shake your head, trying to pull your hand free.
He doesn’t let you, instead, he moves closer against you, closing what little space was left, eyes dropping to your mouth like the argument’s already over in his head.
“You were gonna slap me for that, yeah?” he murmurs.
You glare at him. “I should.”
That only makes his mouth twitch.
“Mm.” His thumb presses lightly against your wrist, holding you there. “Or—”
He leans in, his forehead dropping to your temple, lips brushing just against it. “—you just want round two.”
Your heart speeds up in your chest. He sees it. The flicker of hesitation, mixed with want.
He kisses your temple, then your jaw, then your lips again. Slowly, like he’s memorising you. Then he starts working on the layers of your wedding dress, stripping you fully until you’re naked beneath him.
He kisses you again. “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. And when he slides back inside you this time, it’s slower, like he’s taking his time now.
dividers: @dividers-are-us
tagging a few who might enjoy ♡ @opaliteraven @potter-solomons @tomhearty1 @maywritesromance @leereadsfanfiction @maywritesromance @sjuzn86 @theurbanmademoiselle @happy-booty
a/n: first time writing john shelby — i love this man🤭
summary: you were raised to always get what you wanted. then you married baelor targaryen, who says no to you with the patience of a saint and the immovability of a wall. it was funny, once. it isn't funny now. (5k)
pairing: baelor targaryen x fem!reader
content: canon divergent, reader is from house rowan, grief, fear of loss, stubborn baelor and reader (yikes), protective!baelor, angst with a resolved ending, hurt/comfort, arguing, fluff, and unedited work cause i wasn’t bothered with editing.
Your father had never said no to you. Not in any way that actually stuck.
There had been nos, technically, over the years–the soft kind, the ones that came with a but and a maybe and a let me think on it, the one that always, without fail, ended with you getting exactly what you had asked for. The horse you’d spotted at the marked when you were nine and pointed at until your mother told you to stop pointing. The third puppy from the hunting dog’s litter when your mother had already said two was plenty. The yellow dress with the embroidered hem that your father jad bought you the day before your wedding, because you’d said quite reasonably that you couldn’t possibly get married without something new to wear.
Lord Aldric Rowan of Goldengrove had three sons before you came along, and he loved them well enough. But you were his daughter, and that had always been a different thing entirely, and everyone in the household had understood it without it ever needing to be said out loud. You weren't spoiled in a mean way. You'd never been cruel about it. You simply had a very poor relationship with the word no and a father who had never seen much reason to improve it.
You hadn't known any of this was unusual until you married Baelor.
Baelor Targaryen says no to you like it's the simplest thing in the world. Not coldly, he's never cold about it. He just says it the same way he says most things, quietly and without any indication that he expects it to go differently, and then he waits for you to finish responding to it with the patience of a man who has genuinely nowhere else to be.
In the beginning you didn't believe he meant it. You'd assumed, reasonably enough, that his nos were like anyone else's nos, a starting position rather than a final answer. You'd tried waiting him out. You'd tried rephrasing. You'd tried the look, the one that had worked on your father without fail since you were old enough to know you had it, where you look up through your lashes and say nothing and let the silence do the work.
Baelor had looked back at you with those mismatched eyes of his and said, "No, my love," and that had been that.
It took you most of the first year to truly believe he meant it every time. A few months after that to stop trying anyway, mostly because the habit was so deeply set you did it without thinking. You still try sometimes. It's less about winning now and more about the shape of the thing, the back and forth of it, and somewhere along the way you'd stopped minding as much as you thought you would–because Baelor's nos always come with something else. He listens. He takes you seriously. And then he finds another way, always, and he delivers on it, and there is something in that you hadn't been expecting and have never quite gotten over.
This particular morning you’d found him in his solar after breakfast, sitting at his writing table with the focused stillness of a man who had a great deal to do and intended to do all of it. He looked up when you came in, giving you a small smile.
“I want a thing,” you say, because the preamble with Baelor is pointless. He sees through it before you’ve finished building it.
“Of course you do,” he says, and sets his quill down.
You come and sit on the edge of his writing table, which he allows from you and nobody else, and he looks up at you with a patient expression, knowing something is coming.
“There’s a market in the lower city today,”
“Is there?”
“A travelling one. From the Reach.” You fold your hands in your lap. “One of the kitchen girls said they’ve brought silks.”
"Mm," he says, which is not a yes but is not yet a no either, and you take it as encouragement.
"I want to go."
He sets his quill down. "Alone."
"With a guard."
"One guard is not a proper escort."
"Two guards, then."
"No."
"Baelor, it's a silk market—"
"Two guards is still no." He says it the same way he always does, no particular weight on it, just the word sitting there. "You're not going into the lower city today."
"Other women go into the lower city all the time."
"Other women aren't you."
"That isn't a reason."
"It's my reason," he says, with the perfect untroubled calm that you find both deeply reassuring and deeply maddening depending entirely on the day. "When the market comes through the city again I'll take you myself."
You kiss your teeth, rolling your eyes. "You say that every time."
"I took you to a market three months ago."
"That was three months ago." You look at him. He looks back at you. This is the part where your father would start to soften — you could always see it happening, the way his shoulders would drop a little, the way he'd look away first and when he looked back his face would have changed. Baelor doesn't soften. He just sits there. "The silks will be gone by the time you find a free afternoon," you say.
"Then I'll send someone down to buy them for you."
"It isn't the same."
"No," he agrees, pleasantly. "It isn't."
You make a sound that's somewhere between a sigh and a groan and slide off the table. He watches you with what you're fairly certain is amusement, though he keeps it mostly off his face. "Fine," you say.
"Thank you," he says, and picks his quill back up.
You stop at the door. "You'll actually send someone today. Not next week."
"Today," he says. "Tell me what you're looking for."
So you tell him. In considerable detail. The colour, a specific dark green, not just any dark green, the weight of the fabric, roughly how much you'll need. He listens to all of it without looking like he finds it tedious, writes something down, and nods. You go back to your morning.
The silk arrives before supper. It's exactly right. You don't tell him it's exactly right–he'd only be unbearably calm about it, but it is.
The puppet show had been the talk of the keep for nearly a week.
It had started with the kitchen girls, then spread to the stable boys, then somehow made its way up through the household until even some of the younger knights had mentioned it in passing, the way people mentioned things they assumed you already knew about and could simply go and see if you wanted. A travelling group from Lys, apparently, setting up in the square just beyond the main gate every evening after dark. Elaborate puppets, someone said. A full retelling of the Tragedy of Florian and Jonquil, with music.
You had mentioned it to Baelor on the second day, at supper.
"There's a puppet company in the square," you'd said.
"Mm," he'd said, reading something.
"From Lys. They're doing Florian and Jonquil every evening after dark." You'd reached for your wine. "I'd like to go."
He'd looked up then. "Outside the gate."
"Just to the square."
"At night."
"It's just beyond the gate, Baelor, it isn't—"
"No," he'd said, and looked back down at whatever he was reading, and that had been the end of it. You'd sat across the table from him and finished your supper in silence and felt the frustration of it sit in your chest like a stone.
That had been four days ago.
That had been four days ago. The group was leaving at the end of the week.
You'd thought about it every day since.
The thing was, you weren't asking for anything unreasonable. It was a puppet show. It was just beyond the gate. Half the keep had already been, freely, without anyone telling them they couldn't, and you had sat inside the walls every single evening watching the candles burn down and listening to people talk about it the next morning and thought about how unbearably unfair it was to be the only person in all of King's Landing who wasn't allowed to simply go and see a thing.
Baelor was in council meetings all day. He was always in council meetings all day. You'd had breakfast alone, which you did most mornings, and then sat with your embroidery for two hours, which you did most mornings, and then walked the same stretch of garden you always walked, and then sat in your chambers and stared at the ceiling for a while, and then it was supper and Baelor came back tired and preoccupied and you had an hour together before he fell asleep.
That was most days. That was nearly every day. Yes he always did make time for you, but you always thought it was merely never enough time.
You'd put on a plain dark cloak, the one with the deep hood that you used in winter, and told yourself you'd be back before the last bell.
The square was everything everyone had said it was.
The puppets were extraordinary, large and intricate, moved by six puppeteers in dark clothing who seemed to disappear into the shadows behind them so that the figures appeared to move on their own. The music was live, a lutist and a woman with a small drum, and the crowd was thick and warm and pressed in close around the low stage, and you'd stood at the edge of it with your hood up and felt, for the first time in what felt like a very long time, like a person who was simply somewhere, watching something, with nobody expecting anything from her.
Florian was wonderful. Jonquil made you cry a little, which you would deny if anyone asked.
You were back at the keep gate before the last bell, which felt like a technicality worth holding onto. Your cheeks were cold and your slippers were damp from the cobblestones and you were in a better mood than you'd been in all week, and you were very nearly back to your chambers with your plan of a hot bath and immediate sleep fully intact when one of the younger serving girls appeared in the corridor looking deeply uncomfortable.
"My lady," she said, not quite meeting your eyes. "His Grace has asked for you in his study."
You stopped walking.
"Has he," you said.
"Yes, my lady." She was very pointedly not looking at the cloak or the damp slippers or your windswept hair. "He said–he said as soon as you returned."
As soon as you returned.
You stood in the corridor for a moment and thought about the very small possibility that this was about something else entirely and knew, with the deep certainty of someone who had been married long enough to know things, that it was not about something else entirely.
"Thank you," you said, and turned around.
His study was lit when you got there, many candles flickering in the room, and Baelor was standing with his back to the door looking out the window when you came in. He didn't turn around immediately. You came to a stop just inside the doorway and waited, which was not something you were naturally good at, and the silence sat there between you and stretched.
"Close the door," he said.
You closed it.
He turned then. His expression was not the one you were used to, the patient one, the one that waited you out with perfect equanimity. This was something else. His jaw was set. His eyes were very steady and very still in a way that made something small and cold settle in the pit of your stomach, because in all the time you'd been married you had never quite seen this particular version of his face before.
"Where have you been," he said.
"I went for a walk," you said, which was technically true in the way that most things you said were technically true.
Baelor looked at you.
"Outside the keep," you amended.
"To the square," he said.
You said nothing.
"Three separate people have told me they saw a woman in a dark cloak in the crowd tonight who looked very much like my wife," he said. "Would you like to tell me they were mistaken."
You looked at him. He looked back at you with that still face and those serious eyes and you thought very briefly about saying yes, they were mistaken, and decided against it because Baelor always knew and lying would only make it worse.
"No," you said. "They weren't mistaken."
He was quiet for a moment. "You walked out of the keep alone," he said, slowly, like he was making sure you understood each word. "At night. Into a crowd of strangers. Without telling anyone where you were going."
"I had my cloak."
"You had your cloak," he repeated, as if it were the stupidest thing he has ever heard.
"Nobody knew it was me."
"Three people knew it was you."
"Three people thought it might be me," you said, "which is different—"
"It is not different." His voice was still low but there was something in it now that you had not heard before, something tight underneath the surface of it. "Do you understand what could have happened? Do you understand—" He stopped. Pressed his lips together. Looked away for a moment and then back at you. "You are the Princess of Dragonstone. You walked into a crowd of strangers at night, alone, and you didn't tell a single soul where you were going."
"I was back before the last bell," you said, which came out smaller than you intended.
"That is not the point."
"I know," you said, even smaller.
He looked at you for a long moment. You looked back at him and felt your eyes go wet, which you hadn't been expecting, the sting of it catching you off guard, and you blinked hard because you weren't going to cry about this, it was a puppet show, you were not going to stand here and cry about a puppet show.
"It was Florian and Jonquil," you said. Your voice came out very quiet. "Everyone in the keep has seen it except me and I just — I only wanted to see it. That's all. It was just a puppet show."
Baelor was still looking at you. The tight thing in his jaw hadn't entirely gone.
"I know that I'm not supposed to go outside without an escort," you say. "I know that. I've always known that. But Baelor—" You stop, and the words that come out next are not the ones you'd planned on saying, are not really about the puppet show at all. "You're in council from morning until supper every single day. I have breakfast alone and I sit with my embroidery alone and I walk the garden alone and then supper comes and I have an hour with you before you're asleep, and that's–that's every day. That is every day." Your voice is doing the thing again, tightening somewhere in the middle. "I'm not asking you to change everything. I know you have duties. I know the kingdom doesn't stop because your wife is bored. But I've asked you for things, small things, just to have somewhere to go or something to see, and the answer is always no, and I understand why, I do, but sometimes I just–" You stop. Press the back of your hand against your mouth for a second. "I just needed to go somewhere."
The study is very quiet.
Baelor looks at you for a long moment. Something has shifted in his expression, the tight thing in his jaw less rigid than it was a moment ago, and he crosses the room and stops in front of you and looks at your face in that way of his, reading all of it.
He's quiet for a moment, the anger in his face settling into something heavier. Then he reaches out and takes your face in his hands, tilts it up toward him. Your eyes are very wet and you're fairly certain at least one tear has escaped, which is embarrassing for reasons you can't entirely articulate. His thumb moves across your cheek.
"I didn't know," he says. "That it was like that for you."
"I didn't say," you admit.
"No," he says. "You didn't." He's quiet for a moment, his eyes on yours. "I'm not going to pretend I'm not angry about tonight. I am. What you did was dangerous and foolish and you know that."
"I know," you say.
"But I hear you," he says. "The rest of it. I hear it."
You look at him and feel the thing in your chest that had been tight since the corridor loosen, just slightly, not all the way, but enough. "Are you very angry," you say.
"Yes," he says, plainly.
"How angry."
He looks at you for a moment. His thumb is still against your cheek but his eyes are serious, no warmth in them yet, not the usual kind. "You had no reason to do what you did tonight," he says. "I understand that you're lonely. I hear that. But when I say no it is not a suggestion and it is not a starting point and you do not get to decide that it doesn't apply to you because you want something badly enough." His voice is low and even. "That is not how this works."
You look at him and say nothing.
"Go and have your bath," he says. He drops his hands from your face and steps back and the warmth of them goes with him. "We'll speak in the morning."
You nod and go.
In the morning he is up before you, which he always is, but he doesn't talk to you the way he usually does. He answers when you speak to him. He isn't cruel about it. But the easy back and forth of it, the morning stories, the complaints about Daeron, the small warm ordinary thing that is your favourite part of the day–none of that comes, and you sit across from him at breakfast and feel the absence of it like a bruise.
You don't push. For once in your life you don't push.
You take your embroidery to the garden instead and sit with it and say nothing and wait for it to pass.
You're in the garden some days later with some embroidery you're not making much progress on when one of the serving girls finds you, a letter in hand.
You see your father's seal before you take it. The rose of Rowan, pressed with the same signet ring he's worn your entire life. You break it and read it.
It's short. Much shorter than his letters usually are. His handwriting is shakier than you remember, the lines uneven in a way they never usually are, and you read it once and then read it again because the first time doesn't seem possible.
He's ill. He's been ill for some time, he says– in that careful way that means longer than some time but he's chosen not to say so. The maester is doing what he can. He wants to see you, if it can be arranged.
If it can be arranged.
Your father, who had rearranged the entire world on a regular basis to make sure you had whatever you wanted, is asking if it can be arranged.
You sit in the garden for a long time without moving. The sun moves. The letter stays in your hands. The embroidery sits forgotten beside you.
When you finally go inside you go straight to Baelor's solar. He's at the window with a cup of wine, a small frown creasing his brow, and he turns when the door opens. Whatever he sees in your face makes him set the cup down immediately.
"What's happened?"
You hold the letter out. He crosses the room and takes it from your hand and reads it, and you watch his face the whole time. The way his eyes move down the page slowly. The way his jaw tightens. The way a stillness settles over him, the particular controlled kind that means he's keeping something off his face on purpose.
He looks up and meets your eyes and you already know what he's going to say.
"I need to go to Goldengrove," you say.
"I know."
"Then I can go."
"No."
It lands differently than it ever has before. Every other no had been the silk, the market, the puppet show–small things, things you'd pushed back on out of habit more than anything. This is not that. This is your father's shaky handwriting on a short letter asking if it can be arranged, and Baelor is standing there saying no and looking at you like he's braced for what comes next.
"Baelor." Your voice is low and tight.
"No, my love."
"He is ill." You take a step toward him. "He is asking for me. Do you understand that? He has never in his life asked me to come home, not once, and he is asking now, and you are standing there–"
"I understand."
"Then act like it." Your voice cracks on the last word and you push past it. "He could be dying. He could be dying and you're telling me no like it's the same as everything else, like this is the silk market, like this is–"
"It isn't the same."
"Then why is the answer still no?" You're in front of him now, close, your eyes burning. "Give me a reason. A real one. Not the roads, not the timing, not whatever careful thing you're about to say–give me something real or get out of my way."
Something flickers across his face. His jaw is tight and his eyes are steady and he says, quietly, "The roads are not—"
"I don't care." The words come out before you've decided on them and you mean every one. "I don't care about the roads. Send fifty men with me, send a hundred, come yourself if you have to, I don't give a damn how it's arranged–but you do not get to tell me no on this." Your voice is rising and your hands have curled into fists at your sides and you're aware distantly that this is not how a woman of court is meant to speak to her husband and you cannot bring yourself to care about that either. "This isn't a silk market. This isn't a puppet show outside the gate. This is my father."
Baelor looks at you for a long moment. He doesn't flinch at the volume of it, doesn't step back, just stands there and takes it with that infuriating stillness of his, and the muscle in his jaw works once.
"I know," he says. His voice is very quiet. "I know what it is."
"Then tell me why." Your eyes are filling now and you hate it, hate standing here crying when you're trying to be furious, but you can't stop it and you're not going to look away. "Because I have trusted you every time. Every single time you've said no I have found a way to accept it because I trust you and I love you and I know you don't do things without reason. But you have to give me something, Baelor. You have to give me something to hold onto right now or I swear to you I will walk out of this keep tonight and you will not stop me."
A beat of silence.
Baelor's eyes move over your face. He's reading you the way he always reads you, carefully and completely, and whatever he finds there makes something shift in his expression. The tight set of it loosens, just slightly. He exhales through his nose.
"Sit down," he says.
"I don't want to sit down."
"Please." The word comes out differently than his usual pleases, less patient, more like it costs him something. "Sit down and let me tell you."
You look at him. Your chest is heaving and your eyes are wet and you're still furious but there's something in his face now that wasn't there before, something heavy and careful, and it makes you go still.
You sit.
He pulls a chair across and sits facing you, close, his elbows on his knees, and is quiet for a moment like he's deciding where to begin.
"Your father has debts," he says. "Significant ones. He has been carrying them for years, managing them carefully, and then about eighteen months ago he stopped being able to manage them."
You look at him. "What does that mean?"
"It means he borrowed from men who are not patient about repayment." He holds your gaze. "When the payments slowed, they started taking an interest in Goldengrove itself."
Something cold moves through you. "What kind of interest?"
"The kind that comes with threats." His voice is even, giving you the facts without wrapping them in anything softer. "Specific ones. Against the estate, against your brothers." A pause. "I became aware of it some months ago. I have had men watching the roads to Goldengrove since. That is why I cannot send you there alone–not because of the roads themselves, but because of who is on them."
The room is very quiet.
"Months ago," you say slowly.
"Yes."
"You've known for months."
"Yes."
You stare at him. "And you didn't tell me."
"Your father asked me not to." He says it plainly, without apology, but his eyes don't leave yours. "He came to me himself. He asked me to handle it quietly and to keep it from you. He didn't want you to know he was in difficulty." A beat. "He was very clear about that."
You open your mouth and close it again.
"I should have told you regardless," Baelor says. "That is on me. But I want you to understand that he asked me not to, and I thought I was honouring that." His jaw tightens slightly. "I was wrong to keep it from you this long."
You sit there and let it all settle into shape. The cheerful letters. The shaky handwriting on this one. Your father at the door when you left, holding on a beat too long.
"He's been carrying all of this," you say quietly. "This whole time."
"Yes."
"Alone."
"He had me," Baelor says. "For what that's worth."
You look at him and feel something complicated move through your chest that isn't quite anger anymore and isn't quite grief and sits somewhere between the two.
"The debts," you say. "Are they–can they be–"
"They're already being settled." He says it without any weight on it, like it's already done, which it nearly is. "Within the fortnight Goldengrove will be safe. The men watching the roads will be gone." His eyes are steady on yours. "And then I will take you there myself."
You look at your hands in your lap.
The room is very quiet when he finishes.
You look at your hands in your lap. You think about your father's letters, the cheerful ones, the ones about the estate and your brothers and whatever small ordinary thing had happened at Goldengrove that week. You think about the shaky handwriting on the letter in your hands. You think about how long he must have been carrying all of it alone, smiling in ink across the distance, not wanting you to worry.
"He didn't want me to know," you say. Your voice comes out very small.
"No." Baelor's mouth presses together briefly. "He didn't want you to worry."
You look up at him. "Is he dying?"
"I don't know." He holds your gaze and doesn't look away from it. "I think he's more ill than the letter says. I think he wanted to see you and didn't know how to ask for it plainly." A pause. "The debts are already being settled. Within the fortnight Goldengrove will be safe. When it is, I will take you there myself and we will stay as long as you need to stay."
"The fortnight," you say.
"The fortnight." He holds your gaze. "I give you my word."
You look at him for a long time. This man with the grey in his beard and the careful eyes and the particular way he says I give you my word, like it is the most serious thing a person can say.
"I'm angry at you," you say quietly. "For not telling me sooner."
"I know."
"And at him."
"That's fair."
"I'm angrier at you."
"Also fair," he says, without moving.
You look away, at the wall, at your hands. Your eyes are still wet and the anger has gone somewhere quieter now, turned into something heavier that sits low in your chest and doesn't have a clean name.
"I said I would walk out tonight," you say. "I meant it."
"I know you did."
"I still might."
"I know that too." He reaches out and covers your hands with one of his, warm and unhurried. "But you won't."
You look down at his hand over yours. "You're very sure of yourself."
"I'm sure of you," he says simply.
You sit there with his hand over yours in the quiet of the solar and feel the last of the fight go out of you, not cleanly, not all at once, but slowly, like something that had been held at full stretch finally being allowed to rest.
"The fortnight," you say again, more quietly.
"The fortnight," he says. "I promise."
You lean forward and press your face into his shoulder and his arms come around you and he holds you there, and you cry properly, the slow exhausted kind, and he says nothing and lets you.
You believe him. You always believe him eventually, even when you'd rather not, even when it would feel better not to. He has never once said something he didn't mean.
Your father had given you everything you ever asked for and you had loved him for every bit of it. But sitting there with Baelor's arms around you, you think there's something to be said for a man who knew when not to.
Summary: You show kindness to the wrong person - or perhaps the right one. (aka you’re nice to Daeron Targaryen one time and he is immediately unhealthily obsessed)
Warnings: 18+, darkish romance, obsessive behaviour, stalking behaviour, unhealthy codependence, alcoholism, super brief groping by a stranger, mentions of female masturbation, cunnilingus, slight dub-con, mostly unedited
Word Count: 7.2k+
targaryen masterlist
If you lived anywhere else, the monotony of your everyday life may have been too boring to bear. As it was, you lived in Flea Bottom.
It meant you knew where you were sleeping every night, and could grow used to the small shabby roof overhead. It meant you ate the same two meals every day and never went hungry. It meant you had a job that funded these things. You did not have to worry about the weather, nor the thieves, or the filth of the street.
Monotony in Flea Bottom was a blessing.
Westeros was not always a kind place, but it seemed Flea Bottom bought out the worst in people. You had found yourself there after a series of small tragedies in your life. The death of a parent, a bout of sickness and the theft of what little coin you had carried had ushered you to King’s Landing the way an undertaker would direct a funeral parade.
Your serving job in the tavern was the best thing that could have happened to you. The owners allowed you to rent a tiny room upstairs for a small amount of your already small wage. They watered and fed you and did not work you overly hard. A blessing, indeed.
You hummed to yourself as you swiped your cloth over the tables. No matter how frequently you cleaned them, they never quite seemed to lose that greasy, sticky feeling they had acquired over the years.
You liked to keep yourself busy, though, so you worked your way around the room clockwise until all the tables were as clean as they would get.
You tucked the cloth into the pocket on the front of your apron, frowning. The Mole’s Head was tucked away in the outskirts of Kings Landing, and so it could be rather quite on weekdays. There were always a few locals who turned up every night and you served them happily, glad for the company. Apart from them, Tuesdays were brutally dull.
Grabbing a jug of ale, you made your way back around the room, offering top ups and slipping coins into your pocket as you went. At the table furthest from the door, you paused.
You did not recognise the man there. You tilted your head a little before glancing around. It appeared as though he was alone.
Tapping your fingers on the edge of the jug, you debated whether to wake him up. It was not as though he needed more ale – or any alcohol, for that matter! – for he was slumped over, cheek pressed into the table, drool pooling around his face.
The tavern was due to close in half an hour. Not for long, of course. Just long enough for things to be tidied and money to be counted. It would open back up at seven in the morning, and you would begin your work again at midday.
You walked back to the bar, refilling a jug of wine and dropping it at a regular’s table. He pressed coins into your palm and you thanked him, distracted.
“Do you know that man?” you asked, jerking your chin in the sleeping stranger’s direction.
Joel followed your gaze. “Never seen him before. Want me to get him out of here?”
“No, thank you,” you shook your head. “We’ll leave him be for now.”
There were many reasons why people drank. To socialise, to celebrate, to forget. You had seen it all within the year you had worked at The Mole. You felt as though you’d become rather adept in guessing exactly what each person’s reasoning was.
You stared at the stranger with the boldness of someone who knew they were unnoticed. His hair was tangled and unwashed but it was an interesting shade of yellow. His clothes looked expensive, all neat stitches, rich dye and careful embroidery. You recognised the colours of House Targaryen. Could it be that he worked at the Keep?
If so, he had come a long way just for a drink. There were a dozen taverns between the Keep and The Mole.
This man was running from something, you decided. A lover, or children, or duty, perhaps. You had run once too, from the sorrow that was drowning you and taking over your life. Funny how you had both ended up at the same place.
The stranger had chosen the shadiest, loneliest corner of the bar to drink in. You were the only one working and so it must have been you who had filled his cup; and yet you could not remember the colour of his eyes or the sound of his voice or even what he had ordered. Maybe wine, you thought, but you could not be sure.
Something like guilt prickled in your chest. It was easy to go unnoticed in Flea Bottom. Sometimes all that someone needed was for someone to see them. Markis and Ana had seen you, that summer’s day, and had given you a job that you sorely needed. They had stopped the rapid decent you were in and you would be ever thankful to them for it.
At the bar, you rested your face on your hands and propped yourself up on your elbows. It was almost closing time. The tavern was getting even emptier. Only Joel and the stranger were left.
Joel stopped at the bar, dropping his empty mug with a ‘thud’. “You sure you don’t want me to throw him out?”
“No,” you said quickly, “he, um, paid for a room upstairs. I just remembered.”
Upstairs there were three rarely used rooms. They were dust filled and the sheets were thin and moth-eaten. Once there was four but now one of them, the smallest, belonged to you.
Joel offered to drag the stranger upstairs but you shook your head and ushered him out. When he was gone, you paused, thinking.
You would wake the stranger up, you decided, and if he was too inebriated to make it home, you would help him to a room upstairs. The upstairs was so rarely used that Markis and Ana were unlikely to notice.
You felt like it was your fault for overserving him. Ana did not typically care about that sort of thing; money was money. But you would feel terribly guilty he was to take to the streets and have something happen to him.
Straightening your shoulders, you made your way over to the table. You stood in front of it, wringing your hands, wishing the man would just wake up himself. What if he was violent? It was too late now. You’d made your bed and now you had to lie in it.
Tentatively, you reached out and laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. You shook him as gently as you could and, when that did not seem to work, you grabbed a handful of his clothing and pulled.
The man shot up with a curse, waving a dagger that you had been unaware of. You squeaked and took a step back, holding your hands in front of you to show that you meant no harm.
“Please, my lord, I was just waking you up,” you explained.
It took a moment for the man to see you. He was blinking furiously, yellow hair plastered to his cheek, sweat drenching his face. He could be handsome, you realised, were he not so drunk.
“I-I,” the man swiped a trembling hand over his face. “Where am I?”
Sympathy panged in your chest as you told him. “There’s an empty room upstairs if you’ll have it, my lord.”
The man seemed to calm at that. He got unsteadily to his feet. He fumbled with the dagger for a moment before sheathing it and pawing at a drawstring bag at his side. His fingers dipped out of sight for a moment and returned with something shiny.
You blanched at the gold dragon. You could count on one hand the number of times you had seen one. The entire tavern was hardly even worth that much, let alone a creaky old room.
“Never mind that,” you said, “let’s just get you upstairs.”
The man blinked at you, dazed. When he did not move, you took the dragon from him and tucked it back into his coin pouch, ignoring the way his eyes burned into the side of your face.
“Can you walk?” you asked.
The man took one step, hip colliding loudly with the edge of the table. He swore and swayed on his feet. You panicked for a moment before tugging his arm up and sliding beneath it, bearing more of his weight than you thought yourself capable of.
“Together, then,” you said between gritted teeth.
It felt ridiculous. Between several near-falls, pausing to lock the doors, and navigating the twelve uneven steps, you felt as though an hour had passed by the time the pair of you made it upstairs.
You steered him into the room furthest from yours and closest to the stairs so he could make his way out in the morning. Sweating, you let the stranger go. He fell back onto the bed with an ‘oomph’, dust flying up from the disused sheets like foul confetti.
Both of you began coughing. You opened the one tiny window the room boasted and breathed a sigh of relief as the cool night air began seeping in. The stranger had gone quiet, and when you turned around, you half expected to find him asleep.
He was not. He peered at you with bleary eyes, fingers caressing the coin pouch at his side. He looked rather pitiful.
You tried to smile. “Wait here a moment.”
You dipped back downstairs, filling a cup with water before returning. The stranger was still awake and he watched as you placed the cup on the single rickety side table. Suddenly shy, you wiped your hands on your apron and glanced about the room.
“I’d feel better if you slept on your side,” you admitted. “In case you vomit.”
“In case I vomit,” the stranger echoed, nodding. “Would you, ah, help me? With my boots?”
“Oh! Of course.”
You knelt at the end of the bed. With deft fingers, you yanked apart the laces and pulled his boots from his feet, depositing them at the end of the bed. You glanced up and caught the man’s eye. You felt to flustered to decipher the look he was giving you and so you got to your feet and retreated to the door.
“The doors are locked at the minute, but they’ll likely be open by the time you wake,” you blathered, “you’ll be good to go by then. Um, sweet dreams?”
The stranger stiffened for a moment, eyes widening, before they landed on you and seemed to come back into focus. “Sweet dreams.”
Embarrassed, you left the room and fled to your own. With a curse, you shut your door and crouched on the floor next to your straw mattress.
“Have sweet dreams?” you whispered. “As though he were a boy? Oh, how humiliating.”
You wriggled about on the floor for a moment, willing yourself to just melt into the boards and disappear forever.
Once you were calmer, you considered your door. It had only a flimsy lock, one that you did not often use. The man had seemed harmless enough, but he was still a man. You slid the lock across and retreated to your mattress.
It was strange trying to relax, knowing someone else was sleeping only a few doors down. You tossed and turned for a short while before sleep came to take you. If you had dreams, you did not remember them.
The stranger was gone by the time you awoke. The bed was turned over neatly, certainly tidier than he had found it, and the window had been closed. It was like he had never been there at all.
You went about your routine with a bounce in your step, pleased by your good deed. You could hear the sound of the tavern downstairs as you washed your face and dressed yourself. You neatened your own room before descending the stairs.
Ana was waiting for you at the bar. She handed you a plate of buttered bread and helped you into your apron before disappearing to her own home out back. Ana and Markis lived in their own small home on the back of the property. Between the three of you, there was never a need to hire anyone else.
You ate your lunch between serving customers, fetching them bowls of hearty soup whenever they asked and topping up their cups. The tavern had a brief burst of business around midday before settling once again, leaving you with only a handful of regulars and a tattered paperback book you were attempting to get through.
Your father had taught you to read as best he could but you lacked the confidence and tried to practise whenever you could. Book hidden beneath the bar, you flipped through pages between top-ups and idle conversation.
Absorbed by your menial tasks, you almost didn’t notice him coming in.
He looked different this time. Nervous and twitchy. Tidier, maybe. His hair had been combed through and his clothes looked freshly washed. His face, too.
You were right. He was handsome.
He made his way to the same table as the night before and seemed to settle down. You flinched when he made eye contact, suddenly remembering your duties. You filled a pitcher of wine halfway, grabbed a cup and made your way over.
You placed both things in front of him. The man placed a coin on the table and your eyes widened, recognising the same gold and emblem from before.
“My lord,” you began, “this is too much –“
“No, no,” he interrupted, “please. This is for last night.”
You pushed the gold back across the table, toward him. “Truly, there is no need. I will only accept money for the wine.”
The man swallowed. He picked the coin back up and rubbed it between his fingers as though looking for imperfections.
“Then why?” he said finally. “Why did you – why were you so kind to me?”
You stood still for a moment, thinking. Then, “I find kindness is sorely lacking in Kings Landing. And you looked as though you needed it.”
You hurried through the last part; nervous you were overstepping. After an awkwardly long pause, the man slipped the coin away and instead presented you with several copper stars. You thanked him gladly and took the money, returning to the bar and squirreling it away.
Unlike the day prior, the man required no refills as the day progressed. You kept busy with all your usual tasks and tried to ignore the man who seemed determined to stare a hole into the side of your skull.
Every time you glanced over at him, he was already looking at you. He sipped slowly at his wine, observing you over the rim as you bustled about.
You made another lap around the room, topping up Joel’s cup as he chatted with a friend. He jerked his head in the man’s direction.
“Same man from yesterday. He bothering you?”
“No, no,” you brushed him off.
At least you didn’t think he was bothering you. The man’s gaze certainly made you feel something, but you did not feel confident enough to put a name to that feeling.
Deep in thought, you didn’t notice the drunken man swaying toward you. You yelped when the unfamiliar man jostled against you, hands squeezing at your thighs as he cackled into your ear.
Joel got to his feet and snatched the man up by his collar, dragging him toward the door before you could catch shriek. Hand on your breast, you sucked in a shaky breath and watched as Joel hit the man with an open-handed palm.
From the corner of your eye, you noticed that the man had also gotten to his feet. He was stood, hands braced against the table, eyes glued to you. You had no doubt that he would have dragged out the drunkard himself had Joel not gotten there first.
Still slightly shaky, you went over to him. “Can – can I get you anything?”
“Does that happen often?”
“Well,” you murmured, “sometimes. But Joel usually takes care of –“
“Who is Joel?” the man asked, eyes shooting up to your face.
You gestured over your shoulder. “The man who dragged him out. He watches over me.”
The man was still on his feet. You saw his jaw clench and his eyes dart behind you before he sat back down.
“Forgive me. I never asked your name?”
Surprise briefly took your words before you remembered yourself. You told him your name quietly and with more than a little uncertainty. “And yours, my lord?”
“You may call me Daeron. No need for formalities.”
There was something in the way he said it. Something pleading, something slightly desperate, that made you choke on air. You struggled to decipher his tone for several moments before even registering exactly what he had said.
Your blood ran cold. “My prince.”
The man – Daeron Targaryen – looked up at you with eyes like fresh rainwater puddles. How had you not seen it before?
“Please,” he insisted, reaching out to touch your hand, “Daeron.”
“My prince,” you dipped your head, “please, tell me if you need something. Anything.”
You turned your back on him and rushed back to the safety of the bar. Joel watched you, glancing suspiciously between you and the prince, before going back to his conversation.
Your heart was thudding in your breast as though it might tear right through the skin. You had liked him better when he was just a sad stranger, not a Targaryen fucking prince.
You busied yourself cleaning glasses, keeping your eyes fixed firmly on your hands and the repetitive process. How stupid had you been, really? The golden dragon, the clothing, the hair. Dirty yellow but – perhaps silver in certain lights?
You scrubbed a palm over your face and tried to regain your composure. There was no use in panicking. The prince had been kind and had done nothing untoward. You would serve him as you would anyone else in the tavern and never tell a soul he was there.
Daeron did not call for you the rest of the evening. He drank slowly from the same pitcher you had originally given him and watched you openly as you performed your duties. Ever the coward, you did not go over to check on him, instead reasoning that he would call you if he required anything.
As the sky darkened and a new wave of customers came in, you began to forget about the lost Targaryen in the corner. Eventually you turned only to discover that, at some point, he must have slipped out.
Relief swept through you like a tidal wave. Lighter, you wiped your hands over your apron and turned your attention onto the customers. This, you were familiar with. This, you could do.
The hours marched on and soon Ana appeared to relieve you for the rest of the evening. It was past eleven and you were due back downstairs by seven. You grabbed your book and tucked it into your skirt pockets before tugging off your apron and hanging it on the hook, wishing Ana a good evening as you disappeared upstairs.
It was like an entirely different world. Dust hung in the air and stirred as you walked through it. Sound was muted and you felt utterly alone, but all the better for it. It was easy to pretend that Flea Bottom wasn’t crushing in around you in the peace of the upper rooms.
You paused outside the bedroom Daeron had stayed in the night before. How simple he must have thought it. You huffed a laugh and continued toward your own room.
Once inside, you toed off your shoes and stretched your arms above your head. You pulled your book from your pocket and tossed it onto your straw mattress before finding a candle and lighting it, settling in for an hour or so of slow reading.
When you hit the mattress, something tumbled to the floor. You frowned and chased it until it rolled to a stop. You recognised the glint of gold and shock rose as it dawned on you exactly what it was.
You raised it to the candlelight. Some part of you could not held but admire the golden dragon, even as horror dawned in your chest. It had been on your pillow, placed gently in the spot you rested your head every night.
Daeron Targaryen had been in your room.
You had never held a golden dragon before. It could’ve been your imagination but you felt as though it carried its own heat, warming your palm as you turned it this way and that. In the candlelight it shone, obnoxious and lively.
It felt as though it was burning your skin.
You got to your knees and shoved it into your mattress, hiding it amongst the compressed straw until you were sure you would struggle to find it yourself. You felt numb as you sat on that same straw, crossing your legs and pulling your book onto your lap as though you actually intended to read it.
Your eyes scanned over the words but they did not register. The only thing on your mind was a question, repeating over and over again in its refusal to be ignored.
What was Daeron paying for?
The room, you told yourself. He was paying for the room. Overpaying, but why not? He was a Targaryen prince.
You told yourself that repeatedly, right up until the point you were tucked beneath scratchy blankets and falling asleep. At no point did you actually believe it.
Thursday slipped by without an appearance by Daeron. You were still nervous, casting glances over at the entrance every few minutes right up until you went upstairs.
The entire time, all you could think of was the golden dragon tucked into your mattress. When you got to your room, you had stuffed your hand into the straw until you felt it. You had ripped your arm away as though it had burned you and slept uneasily knowing it was just beneath you.
Friday was busier and you were thankful for it. You carried jugs and bowl of soups until your arms developed a pleasant ache and your feet were sore in your worn shoes. Since it was busy, Ana was assisting you in serving and you got good work done between the two of you.
You were not sure how you knew he had arrived. A flash of yellow hair, the hint of black and red. The tavern seemed suddenly smaller and you knew that a dragon had entered and made himself comfortable at his table.
You were not sure when it had become his table but it felt right to refer to it as such. People drifted away when he approached and made themselves comfy elsewhere until he had the entire table to himself.
You breathed a sigh of relief when Ana made her way over to him. Interaction with him seemed impossible at this point. Should you bring up the coin? Maybe you had time to go fetch it from upstairs and return it?
You jumped when Ana’s hand cupped your elbow. She looked you up and down, surprised by your suddenly jumpiness. “The gentleman has requested you.”
“Oh,” you said dumbly.
Ana smiled encouragingly and gently pushed you in Daeron’s direction. You stumbled a little before regaining your balance, wine nearly sloshing over the sides of the jug you were holding. You felt a line of it dribble over your fingers, sticky and bitter.
The difference between Daeron on that first evening and Daeron now was like night and day. He looked sober and looked worse for it. He was well groomed, eyes heavy and attentive on you as you made your way toward him. You, on the other hand, felt dishevelled and in need of a good soak in the tub. You wanted to drop the jug on the table and flee behind the bar.
Instead, you filled up Daeron’s cup without looking at him, heart hammering in your breast. Droplets of wine spattered on the table as result of your trembling hands.
You straightened up and met his eyes. “If that is all, my lord –“
Before you could turn, Daeron had reached out and grabbed your wrist. His slightly slick palms betrayed his otherwise calm appearance. He used his grip on you to tug you toward him until you were practically astride him, his thighs caging you in.
Mortified, you looked over your shoulder to see who was bearing witness to your shame. Ana looked surprised but made no move to free you. Money was money and Daeron looked like someone who had a lot of it.
Again, you thought of the gold dragon beneath your bed.
“Please,” he said, “drink with me?”
You heard the pleading note in his voice. It reminded you of the first time you had ever seen him, how the misery had seemed to seep from his pores and congeal around him. What, you wondered, did a prince of the realm have to be so miserable about?
It was hard to be under his full focus. The candles around the tavern made his eyes glint and shift. He looked every bit the blood of the dragon. He was devastatingly handsome, all soft waves and begging eyes, and his hand was smooth and warm where it held your wrist. It was the sort of hand that had never seen a hard day’s work.
“I cannot,” you murmured, “it would be inappropriate. And I have other customers.”
Daeron blinked as though he was only just remembering there were others in the bar. Still, he did not let go of you. He looked around and his lip curled in disgust. It was so different from his previous expression that you flinched and took a step back, pulling your arm from his hand in a jerky motion.
Daeron got to his feet as though he would follow, arms outstretched toward you. “Please! Please, just, sit with me for a moment. I need – I need –“
Daeron placed a hand to his chest as though he was struggling for breath. You paused in your retreat, concerned. His eyes were fluttering and he was swaying on his feet. Worry quickly stomped out your trepidation as you stepped forward and tucked yourself beneath his arm for support.
“It is alright, my lord,” you soothed, “it is terribly warm in here. Let’s get you outside for some fresh air.”
You lead Daeron to the door leading to the alley next to the tavern. The lights and noise faded away as the door swung shut behind you, leaving you with Daeron in the darkness. You blinked rapidly, trying to get used to the change in lighting as you helped Daeron lean his back against the crumbly brick wall.
His breathing was still fast. You looked around, half expecting the kings guard to appear and slay you where you stood.
Daeron’s hands fell heavily on your shoulders, dragging your attention back to him. He was shakier than you were comfortable with so you allowed it and tried to ignore the way you relaxed into his hold.
He allowed for no complaints as he dragged you into his chest, wrapping his arms around your back tightly and tucking your head beneath his chin. For a moment, you did not breathe. All you could smell was leather and some kind of scented oil. The aroma melted your brain and turned you to mush in his arms.
You could hear his heart thundering in his chest, though now yours surely matched it, and you could feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek.
You were not naive. You had been with men before. You had fumbled about with several boys in your younger years, clumsy and unpractised and unsatisfying, and you had had one lover since coming to Kings Landing.
You felt those same feelings rising at Daeron’s touch. The stirring in your stomach and the way your nipples seemed suddenly sensitive against the fabric of your top. Every inch of you seemed to come alive, eager for more touch, but your brain knew what your body did not.
This -Daeron Targaryen- was not for you.
You shivered as you felt the stirring of his manhood beneath his belt, lazily nudging into your stomach. His breathing was still fast but for an entirely different reason now. There was interest there, no doubt, but you would not have him.
You almost laughed. Never had you imagined that there would be a day you would have the interest of a Targaryen prince. But what was interest? It was not monotony, nor food in your belly, or a roof over your head and privacy.
It was chaos. And you would not allow yourself to fall into the same hole you had been in before you had come to Kings Landing. You would not go back to that place.
Placing your hands on Daeron’s chest, you firmly pushed back. There was a moment where you were afraid that he would not let you go but then his arms were falling away, allowing you to step back and look up into the hurt on his face.
“I will get you some water,” you said, clearing your throat. It felt bone dry.
Daeron stilled, eyes flickering over your face as he tried to decipher your emotions. You kept your eyes downcast as you made to move back inside.
Daeron’s hand found your wrist once again, tugging you back to him with firmness. You gasped as your shoulder hit his chest and his other hand found your chin, tilting your face up to meet his.
He pressed his lips to yours, saving you from any weak protest you may have been able to conjure up. His hand remained on your face, as though scared you would pull away before he was ready. You melted in his arms and shoved the shame away for a later version of you to deal with.
Daeron kissed like a man starved. You could taste the wine on his lips, on his tongue, as he lapped at your mouth with tender strokes. You let your own lips part with a sigh and felt Daeron groan at your acceptance, chasing the taste of you right into your mouth.
You let him have you like that, all pliant and wanting. Let him kiss the need from your lips and hoped he might take it all so that you could forget he even existed. He seemed to push his own need back into you; you could feel the hard line of his cock press into your belly and had a brief moment of madness where you considered what it would be like to be taken like that, shameless and hungry.
You practically had to tear his hands away from your face. Something like a whine rumbled in his chest as he chased your lips, stealing several more kisses before you pushed him firmly away.
Both of you stood there, chests heaving and knees weak. Dazed, you brought your fingers to your lips and felt the way they had swollen from his attention. Daeron’s eyes darkened at the movement and it wasn’t until he stepped forward, hands reaching again, that you shook yourself from your reverie.
“I have to go,” you said quickly, diving for the door and rushing inside as though dogs were at your heels.
You waited for a moment to see if he would follow. When he didn’t, you found Ana and made some excuse of an upset stomach and a headache that threatened to split you apart. She looked concerned but did not push, instead suggesting that you take the rest of the evening to yourself.
You took her up on her offer and took the stairs two at a time. Once you got to your room, you pushed open your tiny window and sucked in greedy lungfuls of the evening air. Your skin felt as though it was burning. You pressed your hand to your forehead and found it cool to the touch.
With a sigh, you threw yourself onto your mattress and closed your eyes. The darkness made the warmth between your thighs feel even more intense. You squeezed your legs together, sending tiny jolts of pleasure through your system. Slowly, you reached for the skirt of your dress and began to tug it up your legs.
Air caressed your exposed thighs as you let them fall apart. You could feel the slick gathered in your undergarments and felt oddly embarrassed. It was not like you to be so careless, so reckless. You tightened your hands into fists. All you wanted was to relieve the pressure a little bit, to touch your –
A floorboard creaked from right outside your room. You shoved your skirts back down and sat up, feeling caught. A quick glance told you that you had remembered to lock the door and you breathed a little easier.
It was not unusual for a customer to wander drunkenly upstairs. But this was not that. You could not be sure how you knew, only that you were certain Daeron Targaryen was outside your room.
You quietened your breathing and listened hard. There was a slight groan from the wood as whoever it was placed a hand against the wall of your room, as though they could feel you on the other side.
Cautiously you lowered yourself back to the mattress, hands bundled at your chest and skirts in disarray about your knees. You remained like that, half scared, half aroused, until eventually the footsteps faded and you heard the sound of someone descending the stairs.
Only then, when you were sure you were alone, did your fingers delve into your undergarments to bring you relief.
Daeron returned to The Mole’s Head every evening for the next three days, or so you heard. Ana told you over quiet breakfasts and meaningful glances. She was obviously curious about whatever had happened but, sensing your reluctance to talk, did not press the matter.
She and Markis had also allowed you time away from serving, sensing your warring emotions and confusion. You had been content in the kitchen, away from the eyes of regulars and Targaryen princes, but today would see you serving again. You could not hide forever.
But that was not until the evening. For now, you busied yourself with the market. You took your time wandering between stalls, attempting to keep your mind blank and body busy. Children raced about the place, knocking over baskets of fruit and pinching things whenever backs were turned.
As you walked at a leisurely pace, the buzz of anxiety was still very much present. You carried a holey bag with you and practically strangled the thin straps between your fingers. Your hands were relentless on the fabric, twisting and pinching and pulling as an outlet for your otherwise concealed emotions.
So absorbed were you in your actions that you almost did not notice the carriage approaching from behind. The smear of black and red in your peripheral vision had you jumping back, clearing out of the way of the approaching horses.
You kept your gaze down as the coach got closer. People began craning their necks, curious about who was inside such a fine vehicle, and with the Targaryen emblem no less. You beat your own curiosity down with a stick, urging the carriage to move faster and out of sight.
It did no such thing. Your mouth parted as the coachman directed the horses to a stop several feet in front of you. You made to move but then the door opened and familiar hands were reaching for you, pulling you into the shaded privacy of the coach before you could even shout.
Daeron pulled the door shut and sat back opposite you, something resembling sheepishness rounding his shoulders and softening his features. Thoroughly shocked, you could only stare. Daeron knocked on the roof of the coach and you rocked forward in the seat as the coachman directed the horses back into a lazy trot.
“You have been avoiding me,” Daeron said simply.
You were stunned.
“I do not understand why,” he continued, eyes searching your face, “when I know that you enjoyed our kiss as much as I. If you feel even a fraction of what I do, then I know the distance must be painful for you.”
The words may as well have been spoken in a different language. You held your hand up and squeezed your eyes shut, willing yourself awake. When that did not work, you sank back into the seat.
“It was just a kiss,” you said softly, “and you are a prince.”
Daeron’s face twisted with scorn. “Just a kiss?”
The words sat heavy on the air for a moment. You felt warm and flustered and wished the coach had windows to crack. The soft sway of it had you feeling vaguely nauseous and was ramping up your anxiety to levels unheard of.
Daeron seemed to think for a moment, his face smoothing into something soft and cunning. He sank to his knees in one swift movement. The coach had little room and it left his chest brushing your knees with every rotation of the wheels.
You flinched at the contact but Daeron was having none of it. He laid his hands on your thighs with a boldness you had not expected. His fingers squeezed the fabric, making indents in the soft flesh as his breath stuttered out of him. Despite your words, you did not brush him away.
“I can give you more than a kiss, sweetling,” he murmured, “I can give you everything you could ever want. And I will have the same from you in return.”
“My prince –“
“Daeron,” he lazily corrected, hands bunching in the fabric of your dress.
“Daeron,” you whispered, “please, you can’t.”
“But I can,” he insisted. He spoke as if he were trying to convince you of the fact. “And I so fucking want to.”
You could feel your lids getting heavy as Daeron began to push the bulky fabric of your dress further up your legs until it was bundled around your waist. You could not tell if he was shaking or if it was just the movement of the coach.
Daeron pressed his nose into the crook of your knee and inhaled. It tickled and had you shifting in your seat. Afraid you were going to push him away, Daeron opened his mouth and set his teeth to the soft skin there, sinking them in just enough to have you go still.
He pulled away, blinking up at you with watery eyes that screamed desperation. He laid his cheek on your thigh, eyes falling to the junction between your thighs that he had consumed his every waking moment since he had woken up in the tavern over a week ago.
He reached for the fabric that concealed you from him, tugging at it as though it had personally offended him. He cooed softly when you lifted your hips and let him tug it down thighs until you were completely bare.
“My sweet, kind girl,” he mumbled, eyes fixated on your cunt. “It is easier like this, no? When you cannot hide from me?”
His words were making your head spin. Daeron wriggled his palms beneath your ass and spread you wide, notching your knees over his shoulders. You squeaked as his breath hit your swollen folds, so sensitive that even the air felt like a physical caress.
After that, he wasted no time. It was like he knew that the longer he dragged things out, the more likely you were to come to your senses and go tearing from the coach. And he would not have that.
Daeron laved his tongue over your clit like he had done so a dozen times. He found your most sensitive spot with ease, flicking his tongue over it until you were clamping a hand over your mouth to keep in your noises.
The sight of him there, on his knees, face buried in your cunt was almost enough to have you shooting over the edge. Daeron must have sensed it in the way you pressed your cunt to his face, near grinding your clit on his nose as you approached your peak.
Daeron pulled him face from you with a groan. Your arousal coated the lower half of his face. His cheeks were ruddy and his eyes sparkled in the light that snuck in past the closed curtains. He pulled one hand from your ass and reached down and palmed his cock through his trousers, hissing through his teeth as he worked the sensitive head.
“Tell me you want me,” he urged, “just me.”
He was cruel. You canted your hips and whined a little, near dizzy from the denial. You would say anything if it meant he would put his mouth back on you.
“I want you, Daeron,” you managed, “only you. Please.”
He dove back in with gusto, tongue spearing your cunt as his nose nudged at your clit. You nearly yelled from the combination of sensations, torn between your clit and your entrance. Daeron’s eyes were glued to your face as he ate you out like a man who had not eaten in weeks.
Whether it was his tongue, his nose, or the fact that he was palming himself eagerly like a virgin boy, it did not matter. Daeron drove you over the edge like he had known he would from the second he set eyes on you. You knew that once you hit the bottom, he would not allow you to get back up. You let him do it anyway.
Daeron pulled away from you with reluctance and only after you’d pushed at his head, too sensitive to handle the soft lapping of his tongue at your spent cunt. He made no move to wipe his face, seeming to enjoy the scent of you on his skin. He did not finish himself, instead reaching to pull down your skirts and arrange you as he liked. It was unlikely he was content to remain that way for long.
He did not return your undergarments. You watched as he stuffed them under the seats and did not bother protesting. There was little use in arguing with a prince, you had come to realise. The gentle pulsing of your cunt eased the sting of realisation a little.
You tried to speak through your dry throat.“I have to go to work.”
“I will go with you,” Daeron said quickly, leaving no room for argument.
You watched as he licked his lips, eyes never leaving yours. You could still see the outline of his cock in his trousers and knew he intended to use it later. He seemed a little less intense now, a little more rounded after being placated.
Daeron squeezed your knee. “I will not be parted from you. Not after this.”
There would be no more monotony in your life. Not after Daeron had had his tongue inside you and his hands grasped at you like you were something he was afraid to lose.
additional mini Daeron PoV
The very moment Daeron had awoken in a dusty room with a golden dragon still weighing heavy in his coin pouch, he had been curious.
Daeron was not the curious sort. Usually he was too lazy, too drunk, too bored to be curious.
But there it was, burning hot in his gut as he left the stuffy room and stood awkwardly in the corridor. He could tell it was well past seven by the sun steaming in and the noise downstairs.
He looked from the stairs to the other doors. He wondered which one was yours. He stood there for a moment longer before turning back to his own room.
Daeron found himself closing the window and making the bed in the way he had seen the maids do. He almost laughed whilst doing it; perhaps he was still drunk.
🍷
Daeron returned that afternoon after a morning of pretending he wouldn’t. There was no harm in curiosity, he told himself, and he wanted to get a better look at the tavern girl who had refused his money.
You did not notice him when he entered, nor when he made himself comfortable at his table.
It gave him time to study you. You were pretty, he discovered. The type of beauty that one might not notice at first glance but was ultimately irrefutable. He admired the way your hair was working its way out of its style and the way you smiled easily at the men who occupied your attention.
Daeron wanted you to smile at him like that. The need rose unbidden and burning hot, clawing its way up his throat until he choked it back with a gulp of bitter wine.
You brought over some wine and Daeron tried not to feel smug that you remembered what he had been drinking the night before. Even he did not always remember. Again, he tried to give you money. If you took it, then that would be the end of it, he told himself. His curiosity would be sated and he could go back to the Keep, eventually return to Summerhall, and never think about you again.
Instead you smiled softly when he asked why, and said something about kindness. You, in a dusty tavern on the edge of Flea Bottom, wearing worn down clothes and surrounded by people who would kill you in a heartbeat for what Daeron was offering.
When was the last time he had experience kindness before you? Daeron could not remember.
When he snuck into your room that night, Daeron told himself he was only being kind in return.
🍷
Daeron did not pretend his visit the next night had anything to do with curiosity. This was about need and about the fierce possession that had raged in his gut when he had seen you be groped by that fool the day before.
Daeron needed kindness in his life. More than the small, stupid men who occupied so much of your time. Daeron needed you, he decided.
He looked at your warm but tired eyes, at the way you subtly tried to thumb through a book beneath the bar. He thought about the poky mattress in your tiny room and the absence of any possessions. He thought about the spark in your eyes whenever you caught him staring and the way your hands shook when you poured him a drink.
Perhaps Daeron could be something you needed, too. He would make it so.
a/n- people have been asking a lot for the mmc povs so i thought i’d include a mini one this time🫣
please leave comments, likes + reblogs if you enjoy my fics and would like to see more♥️
Summary: Once is a mistake, twice is a habit. (Sequel to and when her edges soften)
Pairing: TASM!Peter Parker x Female Reader
Word count: 11.1k
Rating: 18+, no minors
Warnings: unprotected sex, enemies? to lovers??? I cannot explain their vibe but boy it’s something
She’d sent him a picture on Christmas morning of the bruise he’d left on her thigh, marbled dark and blotchy against her skin. The only thing she’d written was happy holidays, parker, and it had gone straight to his head, like one of those stupid cartoons where a guy stepped on a rake and it whacked him in the face. Boi-oi-oi-oing sound effects and all. It felt sacrilegious to be turned on on Christmas even if he didn’t celebrate, but there he was, hard over a hickey.
He could not figure her out.
She had been the one to grab his arm and yank him furiously into that bathroom, dark nails cutting against his forearm like a cat scratch— he’d be the first to admit if it had been him. She’d also been the one to pull him by the collar for a kiss that he hadn't let her control. From there, it had devolved into sharp words that gradually lost their bite and soft apologies and kisses that stopped being battles. Or maybe he was overthinking it and she’d played him like a fiddle, although he’d seen the change in her eyes when he’d told her he didn’t hate her. The thought had never crossed his mind; he’d thought maybe he was just too loud for her and she preferred quiet in the lab, which Peter wasn’t particularly known for. Just a dumb workplace rivalry, right? It was easy to joke around with the haughty girl and see if he could get her to crack, loosen up just a little. And sure, maybe he was obnoxiously nice because killing someone with kindness was satisfying, but he truly had hoped that she’d soften eventually.
The fact that an idiotic comment he’d made had bothered her so much hadn’t even sunk in until he’d been in bed that night, staring at the ceiling in a haze, replaying every second of her in his head. He genuinely hadn’t known that that was why she usually gave him stony silence and snappish answers when she had to speak with him. A few dumb words meant as playful had eaten away at her for months, and honestly, he understood where she was coming from. He’d only met her an hour before while they’d completed paperwork. She didn’t know him or his sense of humor. Sucks to be you was something you say to your best friend, not your brand new colleague.
He also had no idea what the hell had gotten into him when he’d walked into that corridor, talking to her the way he had. Who was that guy? Something about her just spun him out entirely. Calling her spoiled was shitty, he knew that. It had been easy to fling at her after months of snippiness, and yeah, he should have apologized more sincerely. But instead he’d dug his heels in and told her why she was spoiled, tossing sharp little reasons out like horseshoes, watching her body tense with irritation before all hell finally broke loose.
It wasn’t like he’d followed her out of the dining room with the hopes of the night ending in brain-melting sex; he’d really wanted to squash whatever was between them. But now there was something different between them: uncertainty. Because why would she have kissed his chest and brushed his hair out of his eyes? There was no reason for any of that. That sweetness he’d insisted on just to needle at her might have been real, and it was eating him alive.
And the joke was on him, because he’d spent the weekend thinking of her: the cherry red of her mouth, the soft sighs she’d given him, and the absolute worst thing, which was the utter confusion. He didn’t know for certain if she’d enjoyed it or if she’d decided to screw with him. The moment she’d kissed his jaw and asked to ride him was when she’d flipped him around entirely. He hadn’t ever thought that her giving up control would be his downfall, but the second she’d gone sweet was when he’d started to lose himself. And now, his brain was all over the place. One minute, he’d be totally convinced that he’d made her come four times and the next he’d be wondering if she was just a great actress. Being up in the air with her was a complete headfuck.
But it hadn’t stopped him from thinking about dragging her into the supply closet at work and eating her out until she couldn’t take it anymore. It hadn’t stopped his brain from drifting to her in the shower after he’d swung in from a long cold night and imagining her on her knees with her nails raking down his thighs and mascara trailing down her cheeks. It hadn’t stopped him from thinking of a lot of different things.
It was becoming a problem.
The lab’s New Year’s Eve party was at some ridiculous hotel in the heart of the city. Apparently, they had the run of the ballroom, not to mention an open bar, which was nice since he didn’t get hangovers. She’d said maybe she’d know by New Year’s, and that was all part of the game, right? If it was a game? Was she agonizing over it like he was? Honestly, he didn’t even know if she’d be there, and it was gross to show up just on the off-chance of seeing someone he’d fucked in a bathroom, hoping for a repeat. Come on, Parker. Be better than that guy. Why couldn’t he just treat a one night stand the way other people his age did? That’s all it was, just two people taking out months of irritation on each other by banging it out. It wasn’t a thing, and he was making it a thing.
The hotel lobby was all chrome and black, and it looked more menacing than inviting, like some kind of mid-2000s sex dungeon. There was a sign pointing toward the ballroom that he followed, fidgeting with his tie as he found the rest of his coworkers. Why Juliette had spent so much on balloons for a bunch of adults, he’d never know.
Peter spent the next hour slipping in and out of small talk, holding a beer more to have something to squeeze rather than drink, because his nerves were up and it wasn’t even a spider thing. He was bouncy and maybe talking a little too fast, because he kept thinking of her and her sharp little mouth and how her eyes had gone glassy with pleasure before she’d shoved her face into his neck, like she could hide it from him.
But as good as his senses were, he did not have even close to a solid read on her. Cagey little thing. It was the lack of clarity, that was all. He just needed to know, and then he’d be over it and it would be out of his system and he could go back to sleeping badly for other reasons.
He set his bottle on a table and a draft of cold air caught him. The balcony doors were open, and there she was.
She was with Annika, and she was wearing black again, although he could only see the hem of her dress peeking out from under her coat. It hit her just above the knees, with a slit up the side that shorted his brain out for two seconds. Bits of snow dusted her shoulders and hair and she shivered slightly as she spoke, grinning happily and clinking glasses with Annika before snaking their arms around each other to drink. The cocktail was either bad or too strong, because she shuddered and wrinkled her nose as she coughed. Shaking her head, she caught his eye and froze for a split second before giving him a small wave.
That was a positive sign. She didn’t want to kill him. Maybe. He hadn’t texted her back after that picture, because what the hell was he supposed to do? Send one in return of the scratch she’d left on his shoulder? Text a wink emoji? Call her? There was no so you fucked your coworker, now what? brochure he could consult. Instead, he’d just stared at the photo and then he’d remembered how fucking good she’d tasted and before he knew it, he was taking a cold shower.
Annika left a few minutes later, and Peter took that opportunity before he lost his nerve.
“Hi,” he said much more confidently than he felt, sidling up to her. Was that weird of him? Was he acting entitled? Maybe he needed a Xanax. Or a lobotomy.
“Hi,” she replied, looking lethally pretty. Her mouth was dark red, lipstick staining the rim of her glass. “Happy almost New Year.”
He nodded. “The, uh, ball’s over there.” He pointed across the skyline, through the myriad of glittering windows and lights. Smooth. Why the hell was he talking about that? He knew only a few things about her, but one piece of information he had was that she was as local as he was. Telling her about the ball was like her taking him on a tour of Fifth Avenue.
“I know where it is,” she said, but it wasn’t unkind. “My parents used to bring me to see it drop when I was a kid and I hated it. It was too loud and too cold.” Little clouds lifted from her mouth as she spoke, disappearing as quickly as they came.
“I only ever saw it on TV.”
Silence settled over them while he agonized over what was possibly the worst small talk he’d ever engaged in. The New Year’s ball, that was super sexy and cool of him. Why not go ahead and talk about his annual physical or the article he’d read last week about intestinal parasites? Maybe he could explain the electoral college to her while he was at it.
“I talked to Dr. Scott,” she said, taking another sip of her drink, scrunching her nose at the bite of it. “Told him it wasn’t fair that I was being benched when I’m more than qualified to take on bigger responsibilities. But I said it more, you know. Kiss-assy than that.”
“Good,” Peter said, immediately wondering if that meant they’d work together more, because that might just worsen his overactive imagination.
“And,” she began after a moment, bouncing slightly as she jammed her hands into the pockets of her peacoat, but he wasn’t sure if it was the cold or nerves. “You got your way. I thought about last week a lot and I’m sure if we’d been scheduled together, I would have looked at your hands.”
Oh. It had been on her mind too. “What else did you think about?” he asked before he could stop himself. It was selfish to ask, but he wanted to hear it. Maybe she’d spent the entire week just as fucked up and horny as him.
She hesitated, biting her lip, and he knew he should have kept his mouth shut. He also knew that he should stop staring at her. “Four oh eight,” she replied finally, downing the rest of her drink.
Peter stared at her, wondering if she’d misheard him. “What are you—”
“Every January first, I get brunch with my best friend and then we go on a really long run together in the park to work it off, and then we make our resolutions by the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. We’ve been doing it since high school. I figured since I’m supposed to be a few blocks east tomorrow, I’d spend the night.”
It clicked, and heat flooded his body. “Four oh eight—”
“Is the room I’m staying in,” she finished as she pulled a cherry out of her cocktail and popped it in her mouth. “I don’t think I should answer your question in front of our colleagues. That would be unprofessional.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” he agreed, still trying to process her words. Room number meant, well, he knew what that meant. Unless he was being a pig. God, she was good.
After a moment, she pulled the knotted stem from her mouth, twirling it between her fingers. “Happy New Year. I’m gonna head upstairs. To room four oh eight.” Setting it on the railing, she disappeared back inside, weaving through everyone like a scrap of silk without a backward glance.
The stem sat innocently on the cold metal, and all he could think of was her tongue and how she’d licked his neck right after he’d come and the stars that had burst under his skin when she’d done that. It was cyclical thinking like he’d never experienced in his life. If he looked at a fork, he’d loop back to her somehow. He couldn’t get his head out of that fucking restaurant. And if he was honest with himself, he didn’t want to.
He checked his watch. It was just after ten, and he rocked back on his heels thoughtfully. It didn’t seem wildly off-base to think she might have invited him to her room for a hook-up. And Peter was more than fine with that. He wasn’t looking for anything serious, because that’s how people in his life always got hurt, right? And if his gorgeous albeit hard-to-decipher coworker wanted to have sex, he would be an idiot to go home.
So he headed for the elevator bank, slipping past all his half-inebriated coworkers. Maybe it was stupid, but he couldn’t help himself. Curiosity buzzed through him the entire ride up, and as he passed each floor, he wondered if he should just leave. Once was a mistake, twice was a habit, right?
Still, he found himself in front of her room, the three gold numbers under the peephole glinting at him like an invitation. Before he could chicken out, he rapped his knuckles under the four and stuck his hands in his pockets while he waited. There were small noises from behind the door: something being zipped, soft footfalls, a quiet thud, and a muffled ow, shit that followed.
The urge to flee grew worse the longer he waited. It felt like a guillotine blade was hovering above him, ready to drop through his neck. This was dumb, right? He should just—
The door beeped and swung open. She was still in her party clothes, heels and all, and for a moment he was stunned at how truly lovely she was. Normally it was jeans and a fitted tee under her lab coat with sneakers. Not this stupefying beauty that fuzzed his brain out, an elegant viper of a woman that he’d let strike him if she wanted.
Shit, he had it bad. Whatever it was.
“Did you want to come in?” she asked, resting her temple against the door. He couldn’t tell if she was being coy or not. “Because my feet are killing me.”
“Uh, yeah,” he spluttered, and Jesus, he sounded like some fumbling-ass kid who’d never talked to someone in his life.
The door seemed too loud as it closed behind him, and he was hyper-aware of everything: the swish of her dress against her thighs and how it hugged her hips, the creak of the bed as she sat down on it, the chill of the air conditioner (how were hotel rooms always so perfectly freezing cold? he could never figure it out) and the slight rattle it made. It was a basic single room: a king-sized bed with a green comforter and a few pillows, a little desk and chair next to the dresser with a TV on top, and a nightstand that probably had rumpled take-out menus shoved unceremoniously between the never-read pages of a Bible.
“Earth to you,” she said with a flutter of her fingers. Fingers that he’d thought of way too much in the last week. He was an idiot for being smug about her focus on his hands because that had backfired spectacularly in his own brain. “You want something to drink?”
He shook his head, even though his mouth was bone-dry, like he’d swallowed sand. Where was he supposed to start? Was he supposed to start? She was the one who’d said she’d answer his question and then given him her room number. The carousel in his brain spun madly, and he pictured ugly chipped porcelain horses and tigers and ostriches flying around in hideous pastels.
“Why’d you send me that picture?” he blurted out, because all he had thought of for days had been her thighs and how he’d wanted to be between them again.
She gave him the ghost of a smile as she considered his question. “I wanted to get under your skin,” she replied, perching on the edge of the bed primly, legs pressed together from ankle to knee. Controlled. Forbidden. Like those perfect little dolls that sat inside china cabinets. He always wanted to touch those, just because he wasn’t supposed to. “Wanted you to feel the same way I did. I wore your fingerprints for days. Couldn’t get away from you.”
Peter sank down in the too-hard plastic desk chair opposite her. Her words sliced through him, quick and blade-sharp, lodging uncomfortably in the gaps between his ribs. The space between them felt excruciatingly wide, crackling with some unknowable wild thing.
“I shouldn’t have left marks on you, I’m sorry.” Shit, that was what he should have texted back a fucking week ago.
She raised an eyebrow, mouth quirking like he’d said something funny. “You don’t think I would have stopped you after the first one if I didn’t want it?”
His dick twitched at her words, and he dug his blunt nails into his palm in a useless attempt to take his mind off it.
“It was obnoxious,” she said after a minute, toying with the slit of her dress. He could see now that it wasn't black, but a deep red, and it clung to her like a second skin. The coat she’d worn had done her a disservice, because she looked like absolute sin, and for what? A work get-together? “I couldn’t stop thinking about your mouth all over my tits and how you kept making me come.”
Jesus Christ, that was like a taser. Peter could practically feel those little darts being launched at him, crackling away merrily as he writhed in pain. He swallowed hard, hoping it wasn’t obvious, but he knew it had to be. “Yeah?” he replied, because the only other words in his head were an invitation to sit on his face and he needed to keep his greedy mouth shut. He wished he hadn’t slunk down into the chair with his legs thrown open, because if she kept talking the way she was, it was going to slowly kill him and she was going to see that.
“I couldn’t walk on Saturday,” she continued calmly, standing up and stepping out of her shiny black heels slowly, the same ones she’d worn to the restaurant. The ones she’d dizzily stumbled out of when she’d come on his face, and God it had been so uncomfortable kneeling on the ground but so worth it to watch her fall apart. There was something deadly in her soft tone, quiet and simmering. “My thighs were all seized up. And the other night, I thought about how you said my name when you came and it made me lightheaded.”
Peter shifted again, her words branching through him like quicksilver. He was already half-hard just from listening to her, and a million possibilities raced through his mind. Had he ever wanted someone so badly? It was impossible to label the shifting dynamic between them, but whatever it was was addictive.
“You kept calling me pretty and telling me I felt good, and you didn’t have to say any of those things. You could have been greedy and only cared about getting yourself off but you made me come four times. And when I told you to stop calling me baby, you did.” Standing in front of him now, her chin was tilted as she took him in, eyes sweeping over him. She purposefully lingered on his crotch before looking back at him, and it felt like an eternity passed until she spoke again. “I was messing with you until I wasn’t. Because I think you stopped messing with me first. Did you?” she asked, and there was the slightest bit of uncertainty in her eyes. That little crack in her façade made him like her more, because for a moment, she wasn’t an aloof little glass doll that he couldn’t get close to. She was a normal person, just as confused as him. That split second gave her away: she’d also been wondering where she stood with him.
He nodded. Whatever games they’d been playing had disappeared as soon as she’d slumped back against the wall, unable to stand properly. Fear had flared up his spine, and the idea of her passing out and busting her head open because of how rough he was being had knocked a little bit of sense back into him. “I did.”
“I spent a lot of last week thinking.” She took a step and stopped between his spread thighs, then reached for his tie, turning the dark green strip over in her hands contemplatively. “When I stopped being stubborn, I did like it,” she admitted quietly. “And I was wondering if we could try again?”
That was exactly what he wanted, and it took every last ounce of restraint not to groan out loud and pin her to the bed. He swallowed hard, desperately trying not to shift around too much even though he was ready to jump out of his skin. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “I thought if I could be nicer this time, it would be better.”
“Nicer?” he echoed with a raised eyebrow.
“Sweeter,” she clarified, and it was the deliberate use of his words that arrowed through him. “Because that was when I started enjoying it more. When I decided to play nice, because I was trying to— to win, I guess.”
“Are you sure?” He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and she took another step, her eyes dark with want, glittering in the low light of the room.
She nodded quickly. Eagerly. “Or you can go catch your train.”
“Well, you know, trying again. That’s important,” he said as he grabbed her hips, fingers splayed wide across her waist. Super cool, Parker. Shut up.
“For sure,” she drawled as she gave his tie a playful tug. “Very important.”
“Yeah,” he said before he could blurt out any other dumb things. His hands seemed huge against her, his thumbs tucked up against the bottom of her ribs like they belonged there.
She let him pull her closer, tracing his cheekbone before returning to his tie. “I liked when you called me baby,” she whispered as she began to work at the knot, nimble fingers dancing against his throat. “And I liked how you kissed me all slow.”
“Told you you were sweet,” he breathed as she moved to straddle him, placing her knees against his hips, balancing her shins on his thighs. The movement forced her dress to ride up, and his fingers twitched traitorously against her waist.
“I can be,” she said, rocking against him gently, a little noise squeaking out of her when he let out a harsh breath at the friction. Her eyes widened. “You liked hearing how you got inside my head?”
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed as she ground down hard just once before stopping. “You’re a menace.”
“When you got hard from just touching me…” she trailed off quietly, playing with the buttons on his shirt. Every tap of her dark nails against the plastic was torture, the staccato beat teasing his brain. “It made me wet, even though I was mad at you.” She rose up and kissed his cheek, rubbing her nose along his jaw like a kitten. “I’m sorry I acted like a brat for months instead of saying something when it happened.”
“Shouldn’t have said it.” His words were strangled, because the way she was talking all honey-slow had him in a fucking chokehold. Deadly girl, indeed. He pulled her closer, nuzzling at her bare shoulder, grateful that her dress showed so much skin.
“I spent a lot of time thinking about the things you said,” she told him as she began to unbutton his shirt. “I don’t usually appreciate it when people talk to me like that. But something in my head liked that you took control. It was nice to turn my brain… onto a lower setting.”
That was unexpected. “I didn’t think I was the one steering that ship,” he admitted. Sure, he’d been busy running his mouth and spinning her this way and that, but he’d listened to everything she’d told him, verbally and physically. It was an intoxicating dynamic he’d never been part of before, and it had sent his blood roaring feverishly through him the whole time. And maybe he’d started in control, but it sure hadn’t ended that way. He’d been at her mercy, completely drunk on her, so fucked up on how she was trembling in his arms and around his cock that he would have done anything she’d told him: burned down the restaurant, stolen a car, fought a nun; it didn’t matter.
She shrugged with a small grin. “Co-captains, maybe.”
He scooped her up and she squeaked, wrapping her legs around his hips. “I don’t know what the hell came over me the other night, but—”
“You should do it more often,” she interrupted as he settled on the bed with her, and she pushed him back to straddle his thighs. “Because I spent all week thinking about how much I wanted you to fuck me again.”
She was making him a little dizzy with her proclamations, and if that’s what she’d liked, he was more than willing to say those things for her again. He let her trace down his stomach, curiously following along some old scars. The nerves were dead in certain places, but the sight of her gently touching him was more than enough. “Wanted you on a bed,” he admitted, slowly pushing the silky hem of her dress up a bit, greedily searching for any remnants of the hickey, but it was long gone. “You didn’t deserve a bathroom.”
She dipped down to kiss his neck, pulling back before he could touch her. He could smell how turned on she was and it shot through his gut like a bullet. “What happened here?” she asked, delicately tracing the smallest scar from Connors. They’d faded over the years but they still split across him in three ugly slashes.
“Juggling accident,” he replied, because there was obviously no way in hell he could tell her that he was Spider-Man. “Wasn’t ready for chainsaws.”
“Okay,” she said agreeably, leaning down to kiss the longest one. “You don’t owe me, I was just curious. I’m sorry for whatever it was.” Her tone held no malice or irritation. Just a quiet sort of understanding.
She continued to trail her mouth over his chest, her tongue darting out every so often to swipe at him. A trail of red lip prints decorated him, stark against his winter-pale skin. Part of him kept waiting for some kind of razor blade of a comment, and then he wondered if she was anticipating the same from him.
“I know you said you liked it, but I said a lot of stuff last time, and it wasn’t all— shiiiit,” he interrupted himself as her teeth grazed his nipple for a split second. “Wasn’t all nice of me to say.”
“Don’t apologize.” She shrugged as she sat up, her fingers still busily exploring his chest, tracing and teasing over scar tissue. “We didn’t agree on rules beforehand. And it’s not like you called me a slut or slapped me.”
“So what are the rules?” Peter asked, taking a steadying breath as she left a searing line of open-mouthed kisses down his ribs.
“Don’t call me a slut and don’t slap me.” Her cool wasn’t contagious; every part of him was buzzing with anticipation as she kissed lower, licking a path down his stomach.
“Anything else?” he asked, tensing for a moment as she began to mess with his belt. He felt unnaturally heavy, weighed down by lust like he was going to crash through the bed.
“Kiss my neck and fuck me until I can’t remember my name?” she asked, looking up at him with big eyes, her chin sharp against his hip. “Please?”
Peter shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment, wondering if he’d ever been this hard in his life. “That’s what you’re gonna do?” he asked as he sat up. “Say those things like you’re not gonna make me lose my mind?”
“I thought you could handle me, Parker.” She blinked up at him innocently with a gemstone-bright gaze.
“Back to Parker, huh?” he muttered, pulling her up into his lap.
“Earn it,” she whispered in his ear, her breath hot against his neck as she ground against him with a faltering sigh. “Earn it if you want it so bad. Be a big—”
His brain snapped and he had her on her back so fast it took him a moment to process it. Beneath him, she was breathless and staring up at him hungrily as she yanked the rumpled collar of his shirt to drag him down, his chest pressed to hers as she anchored him close.
“You want me to earn it?” he asked, spreading her thighs with his. Again, where had this Peter Parker been hiding? This wasn’t how he spoke to people, but he couldn’t shut himself up with her. She brought something out in him, some version of himself with filthy thoughts that turned into filthy words that spilled from his mouth uncontrollably. She did something to him, and he liked it a little too much.
She nodded immediately, slowly arching into him. The air was heavy with the smell of her perfume, something pretty and overwhelming that he wanted to drown in. “I wanna feel it tomorrow,” she said quietly, tugging at his belt loops to keep him close.
Her words jackknifed into him. “Fuck,” he muttered as she held his face in her palms, thumbs gentle against his jaw as she gazed up at him. Something mischievous twinkled in her eyes. Something dirty. “That’s what you want, baby?”
A pleased smile tugged at her dark mouth. “Uh-huh.” Her own lipstick was smeared against her chest, mimicking the marks he’d left last time. “Will you kiss me?” she asked softly. Her question would have sounded innocent if she hadn’t been painting all sorts of erotic imagery for the past ten minutes. “You haven’t kissed me yet.”
Experimentally, he dragged his thumb along her bottom lip, absurdly wondering if he could leave a fingerprint on her oxblood lips. Her tongue darted out to lick his calloused skin, and it nearly killed him.
“You’re a dangerous little thing, aren’t you?” he mumbled, pulling his hand away and propping himself up on his elbow. He was busy trying to memorize her face: long dark lashes and severely sharp eyeliner that made her look like a cat, pretty pouty lips that he was dying to have all over his body, and those devastating eyes that had filled most of his thoughts in the last week.
“You don’t wanna put your fingers in my mouth?” she asked, tilting her head in that enticing who, me? way.
He leaned in, and her pupils bloomed as his lips brushed over hers. There was no reason to be a smartass and ruin the moment. Instead, he tilted her chin and kissed her jaw, listening to her sigh turn into a gasp when he ran his teeth along her throat. If her fingers in his hair were anything to go by, she was done for.
“That’s not a real kiss,” she whispered as he made his way to her collarbone, humming as he nibbled at her smooth skin. Her voice was pleasure-wobbly, but she pushed him away slightly so she could see him.
“You want a real kiss, sweetheart?” he asked, caging her under him.
She nodded eagerly, and her pulse thundered against his chest as he leaned in, her mouth parting under his with a soft moan. She tasted like cherries— always fruit with her— sweet and bursting across his tongue like a firework. It was easier this time, because he knew some of what she liked, the rhythm of her body, the spots that made her gasp and shiver. He cupped her cheek, spreading his fingers wide as her tongue slid along his lazily. Her hands snaked to his shoulders, pulling him close as she rocked up into him, grinding against him hard.
“That feels good,” she sighed, pushing his shirt down his arms with unsteady hands. It ended up in a heap somewhere near her shoes. “I need…”
“Poor little thing,” he said, kissing the apple of her cheek as she grabbed his hand and guided it between her thighs. “You need me to make you feel better?” She nodded quickly, and he pushed her underwear to the side and dragged his finger through her slick folds, watching her slump heavily into the bed as he teased her clit. “You liked telling me how I got inside your head, huh?”
“Maybe I was thinking about you eating me out again,” she said, trying for confident and landing closer to breathless. Her calm was beginning to crack, but he didn’t think it was from nerves. Rather, it was from how much she wanted him.
“All you have to do is ask.”
Her eyes went dark. “Will you eat me out?”
Peter slid a finger inside her wet heat, and her nails scraped against his shoulder, a sharp sound slipping from her mouth. “You don’t wanna ride my hand instead?” he asked, forcing her to keep her eyes on him, gripping her jaw firmly. “Don’t want me to fill you up like this?”
She whimpered and ground down against him, her heart tripping around in her chest like it was drunk. “Parker...”
“You’re dripping for me, aren’t you?” he cooed, pressing his middle finger inside her as he brushed his mouth over hers. “Hear how pretty you sound?”
She nodded, and he began to pump his wrist slowly, his fingers sinking lewdly into her cunt. “But I think your mouth would sound better,” she whispered, tugging him close so she could press a deceptively chaste kiss to his mouth. “Please?”
She made him dumb, plain and simple. Needy and vocal were a heady mix from her, and it was driving him just a little out of himself. And the fact that she was being up front about her neediness this time was a double-edged sword: she wanted him and she was going to make him lose his fucking mind along the way if he didn’t make her lose it first.
Peter let her push his hand away and she tugged her dress over her head while he kicked off his shoes, because everything felt too tight— his skin, his clothes, his brain. It was all too small and ready to burst apart from her and her words, her black magic words that were casting some sort of spell over him that he didn’t care to fight off.
Leaning down, he returned the kisses she’d given him, starting at her neck and making a lazy path down between her breasts to her ribs. Her heartbeat was wild, thrumming harder the lower he went. When he reached her hip, her fingers threaded through his hair, and he looked up at her. The expression on her face was priceless: her wide pretty eyes, her parted red lips. It was a far cry from how she usually looked at him: one brow raised as if to say really?, her jaw set so tight he often wondered if she was literally biting her tongue so she didn’t lose her shit with him, her eyes rolling in irritation at something he’d said.
This was much more preferable.
“Are you gonna let me have you?” he asked, running his fingers up her stomach until he reached her chest. Her bra was the same material as her underwear, and he ran his palms over her breasts, pleased when she arched into his touch with a kittenish noise. Her nipples were hard through the thin material, and he squeezed her tits gently before sliding his hands back to her hips.
“Yes,” she said softly, raking her nails over his scalp when he nipped the top of her thigh, nuzzling his face between her legs for a moment before looking at her again. She let go of his hair to push herself up on her elbows, watching him intently, her eyes dark with desire. Good. That was how he wanted her to look at him.
“Why’d you wear these? You wear ‘em for me?” he asked, slipping his thumbs under the lace to touch her hips.
“You think everything I do is for you?” she teased. Her breathing had kicked up again and she was struggling to stay calm as he tugged the scrap of material down her legs, baring her to him. It took every bit of strength not to groan at the sight of her. “Maybe I just—”
With a yank, he pulled her forward and set her legs on his shoulders, kissing the insides of her knees. There was a slice of a scar he’d seen last time, paper-thin and almost imperceptible, but he’d noticed it because he’d cataloged every inch of her like he was gonna be tested later. How many freckles? Any tattoos? Birthmarks? Dimples? “How’d you do this?” he asked, dragging his tongue against it.
She huffed out a noise that sounded like a stifled laugh. “Juggling accident.”
“Cute.”
“I know,” she sighed as he kissed higher, her heel digging into his back as she jumped at his touch. “S— skates. Tripped over them and split my knee. Never touched ‘em again.”
He hummed as he made a path up to her hip, breathing in her bare skin, clean and floral and her. For a moment, he just took her in: how the deep red of her bra contrasted so beautifully with her skin, how her ribs trembled, and how she was trying to stay propped up on her elbows to watch him, to keep some semblance of control. “You got scared?”
“I got mad. Felt stupid, I don’t— oh,” she sighed as he let his cheek scrape against her. “I liked your beard. Looked nice on you. Felt nice.”
Peter was gonna burst if he didn’t taste her. He pinned her hips to the bed with his forearm and she peered down at him in anticipation.
“I know you said it’s not a trade, but I want to—” she tried to say, but she fell back against the pillows as he found her clit with the flat of his tongue. Burying his face between her legs was all he’d thought of for days, and he found himself rocking his hips into the mattress to find some kind of relief as he ate her out. It didn’t help much.
“Want to watch you arch your back, didn’t get to see that last time,” he muttered as he planted a kiss on her hip. She was soaked and shaking already and it was a rush to know that he’d done that to her. She squirmed under his touch, bucking against his mouth to try to get more friction, gripping his wrist hard where it lay across her stomach. Her hand shook as she clutched the sheets, and he wondered if she wouldn’t break a nail. “You look so pretty like this.”
“Please, like that,” she mumbled, tugging his hair, rocking up against his mouth messily as he lapped at her. “Wanted this all week.”
“You needed it bad, huh?”
“You ruined me.” Her voice was broken, and he groaned against her. Ruined, Jesus Christ. “I lied when I said I’d had b— better. I haven’t, I—”
He couldn’t help himself. Shifting onto his knees, he shoved his hand down his boxers so he could jerk off while he devoured her. He was so hard that his own touch was a momentary shock.
“I wanna do that,” she said indignantly, weakly grabbing at his shoulder, and how she still managed to sound haughty when his tongue was inside her was beyond him.
He pulled away, wiping his chin on the back of his hand. “Come on my face and then we’ll talk.”
“Mean,” she mumbled petulantly as he licked a harsh stripe against her, and she shivered as she threw her arm over her eyes.
He focused on her; what made her shake and arch and pull his hair and dig bruises into his back. Arousal spiked in his gut when she let out a shattered moan and he stopped touching himself so he could pin her thighs down with both hands.
“I’m—” she tried to say, and he flicked his gaze up in time to see her eyes roll back, long lashes damp and fluttering like butterfly wings. “I’m gonna—”
He latched his mouth against her clit and sucked hard, pushing her over the edge. Her body went rigid under his hands, and her heart screamed in his ears as a slow shudder rolled through her, leaving her trembling against his mouth as he let her ride it out, leaving messy kisses all over her cunt and thighs. He knew he was holding her too tightly but he couldn’t let go, because something in the animal part of his brain wanted her to have his fingerprints again as a reminder. Like he was still touching her even after they went home.
Her chest was heaving and he crawled up to kiss her, and she grabbed his face frantically as her mouth crashed into his, her tongue greedily trying to find his. “There you go,” he assured her between kisses, cradling her cheek. “Doing so well, baby.”
“Felt so good,” she panted, pressing kisses all over his face. Her pupils were blown out, swallowing the irises. “Wanna make you feel good too.”
“Yeah?” he managed, because he was not the in-control guy he was pretending to be, and her hand was trailing down his stomach and it was making his vision cloud just a little. The clink of his belt buckle rushed through him like a flash flood.
“Let me touch you,” she whispered as she licked her palm and slipped it into his boxers. “Let me be sweet.”
It was terrible, the featherlight touch of her fingers as she wrapped her hand around his cock, stroking him slowly as she pulled him closer, pressing slow kisses down his neck. He tried not to move, to just let her caress and explore him. She pushed him back and knelt between his legs, tugging his boxers and pants down impatiently, her eyes widening at the sight of him. She hadn’t looked last time, watching his eyes stubbornly instead as she’d touched him, like she was trying to prove some kind of point.
Tentatively, she ran her fingers down the length of him, as if she was trying to calculate something. He sank his canine into his lip, trying to stay still as she gazed up at him. “You know,” she said thoughtfully as she pressed a kiss to his hip, licking a path up the muscle, “if you’d told me this was going to happen a week ago, I would have said you were insane.”
Before he could form any sort of articulate response, she leaned forward and swiped the tip of her tongue across him and he let his head fall back against the pillows even though he’d thought about this for days. The idea of actually seeing what she was doing might be enough to make him come, and he wasn’t going to do that, not until he was inside her again and she asked him for it. Maybe it was presumptuous of him to hope for that, but there he was, praying to every deity he could think of that she’d let him do that again.
She was just on the edge of unfair with him, dragging her tongue too slowly, letting her nails scrape along the flat of his stomach, twisting her wrist perfectly while she took more of him in her pretty mouth with each stroke. “Fuck,” he muttered inelegantly, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until it hurt. Neon shapes flared in front of the black of his eyelids and he blinked, trying to shake it off.
“Thought you wanted to see me looking at you,” she whispered, her breath ghosting across him. “Don’t you?”
He looked down at her, and it was something he’d remember for the rest of his life: her coquettish expression, her smeared lipstick, her cheek leaning innocently against his thigh while she jerked him off. Lethal. Reaching down, he cupped her cheek, and guided her back where he wanted. “Come on,” he urged helplessly, watching as she took him in her mouth again, his cock sliding between her lips until her eyes watered. He tried to think about something stupid to distract himself from how unholy good she felt, like pi or reciting the presidents, but it didn’t work, because her mouth was so wet and inviting that he began to meet her with small thrusts of his hips, pressing farther inside until she moaned quietly and tapped his thigh, pulling off with a gasp.
“You’re too big, I can’t,” she mumbled apologetically, sitting up on her knees as she wiped the remainder of her lipstick away on the back of her hand. “I have a bad gag reflex—” and he couldn’t help it, he laughed because how the hell were they having this conversation? She frowned, rocking back on her heels, clearly unsure of what had just happened. “Don’t— don’t be mean.”
“No, hey, I’m not,” he assured her immediately, reaching out to touch her knee. “I swear I’m not. I can’t believe you’re apologizing for what you just did for me. I was trying to remember who was president after Coolidge so I didn’t come in your mouth.”
“Oh.” A sheepish look crossed her face. “It was Hoover.” Her eyes were soft, and she leaned down to kiss him as she straddled his thigh. “Sorry, I thought—”
“I’m not gonna be mean,” he promised, stroking her cheek. “We’re not doing that, remember?”
She nodded, swallowing hard. The more she talked, the more he learned who she really was. And it made him wish he knew her better, because he didn’t think she was mean, just protective of herself. As if he could blame her. As if he was any different. “I know, I just… I don’t mean to be defensive.”
This softer version of her was radically different and Peter was beginning to realize that she was less tough than he’d thought. Or maybe her handing off control wasn’t really handing off control. Not entirely, anyway. It was like a game of tug of war, but it didn’t feel like either of them was trying to win this time. It just felt filthy and good. An even playing field.
“You’re doing fine,” he said, pulling her close to kiss her neck, because he’d been neglecting it and she’d asked him to do it. Trailing his lips against her skin, he dragged his tongue up the column of her throat, and her broken sigh lit him up. He didn’t know how he could possibly get harder, but somehow it was happening. “Doing so well for me, aren’t you, baby?”
“I was so mad last time because you kept making me feel good and I wanted to— I thought about— fuck,” she mumbled, rolling her hips as she tried to find friction against his thigh, and Jesus Christ he truly didn’t know how long he could handle her doing that. She was dripping wet and grinding against him mindlessly as he sucked a bruise at the hollow of her throat. He wanted her to see it and remember that she’d breathlessly told him to earn it. “Please,” she begged, her pulse shivering under his tongue as she dug her nails into his shoulder. Soothing the spot briefly, he kissed her newly-marked skin and then pushed his tongue into her cherry-sweet mouth, cradling her jaw like she was something precious.
“You taste so fucking good,” he cooed against her lips, and she sighed blissfully. “You making all those pretty little sounds for me?”
“Yes,” she breathed, tilting her jaw to give him access. “But don’t go thinking I’m the only one moaning, because you’re just as bad as I am.”
“Is that a problem?” He spread his fingers across her throat, pressing his thumb against the hinge of her jaw.
“No, I like it. And I— I did wear it for you,” she admitted as he hooked his thumb under the strap of her bra, watching goosebumps scatter across her skin.
“Well, aren’t you something,” he muttered as she sat up and reached back to fiddle with the clasp. The straps slipped down her arms and there she was, nothing but skin, peering down at him with just a hint of nerves. Each time there was the slightest bit of wondering in her face, it only endeared her to him more. She bit her lip, eyes bright with anticipation. “A pretty little something.”
“You and your words,” she breathed as he rolled them, pinning her in place, his forearms pressed into the mattress next to her head. She bucked up against him with a soft whine as she touched his face, pressing starry aches into his jaw. “Will you please fuck me?”
“Say it again,” he said, already positioning himself at her entrance, and Christ she was so fucking wet that he sank his teeth into the inside of his cheek so he didn’t lose it, hoping the pain would take the edge off.
Her eyes widened. “Please fuck me,” she repeated, and he thrust into her slick heat, and she felt even better than he remembered, tight and hot and trembling around his cock. “Oh, fuck.” Her head rolled to the side in pleasure as she arched up, trying to take more of him, and he groaned into the hollow of her throat as he bottomed out, pressed as close to her as he could manage. No space, just them tangled tight and inextricable.
“God, you feel fucking perfect,” he told her roughly, pulling back with a sharp thrust that sent her nails raking across his back. “Couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Her eyes were soft and hazy, staring up at him in utter adoration as he fucked her. She kept kissing him all over, skittish little movements that reminded him of a deer. “Wanted this so badly,” she confessed brokenly, digging her heel into his back when he reached between them to touch her. She clenched around him suddenly, eyes falling shut as she began to tremble, and Jesus Christ, she was about to come again.
“Look at me,” he said with a hard thrust. “Look at me when you come.”
“Mouthy,” she whispered with a weak grin, opening her bleary eyes nonetheless.
“Just with you,” he groaned as her cunt spasmed around him unforgivingly hard and that unfocused look came over her face.
“Please kiss me,” she mumbled, still clenching around him, and fuck, she was gonna kill him with please. “I want—” A low moan left her and he kissed her hard, his tongue finding hers as she carded her fingers through his hair harshly.
“There you go,” he crooned. He slowed down to give her a moment, and her hands slid down his spine, exploring his back.
“You were right,” she panted, baring her neck to him as she shivered through an aftershock.
“Yeah?” he asked, leaving a line of sloppy kisses along her shoulder before he began to worry a mark above her collarbone.
“I— oh, like that… I am spoiled. I do want my way.”
“It’s good to know what you want,” he replied, slowly rocking into her.
“What do you want?” she murmured earnestly, tracing his jaw. This was not the girl he’d spent months butting heads with. This was someone he was genuinely starting to like, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was fucking her.
“I think I’m doing just fine right now.”
She made a pleased noise and squirmed under him, and he let her push him onto his back. Bracing herself against his chest, she sank down on him with an almost too-slow roll of her hips and he stared dumbly at that perfect spot where their bodies met. “Jesus, you make me feel like I’m losing my fucking mind.”
“Good,” she said sweetly, leaning down to brush her nose teasingly against his. “Show me how crazy I make you.”
She was a sharp girl, somehow perfectly walking the line of sweet and filthy. He grabbed her hips, helping her move in perfect circles, her knees digging into his sides. She fluttered around his cock, and he reached between her legs again. “Did you touch yourself and think of me?”
She nodded unsteadily, trying to match his pace. “Didn’t feel as good. I wanted your mouth and your fingers and— oh, fuck, right there,” she said, grabbing his wrist and holding it in place.
“What else did you want, huh?” He rubbed a slow circle against her clit, mesmerized by how she sank down, shuddering around him with each stroke. “Use those pretty hips, come on.”
“Wanted your cock again. Kept thinking about how good it felt—” she cut herself off, clenching around him hard for a moment before she leaned forward with a shaky sigh, like she was trying to fight it off.
“Atta girl,” he told her, rubbing her thigh gently, watching her face change entirely when he said that, looking pleased as punch for a few seconds. He’d noticed it last time and wondered if he’d imagined it. But no, she lit up at his praise. “You wanna know you’re doing a good job too, look at you.”
Something unsure flitted across her face. Maybe it was embarrassment, or that stubborn streak that she’d hidden behind for so long. “I don’t know.”
He held her still, buried to the hilt inside her. “You don’t wanna hear that you’re a good girl?” he asked, not letting her move as she tried desperately to grind her hips down into his.
“Maybe,” she squeaked out, her thighs trembling against his. “Stop not fucking me, come on.” Her words were a plea, and her dark nails dug into his chest in painful little half moons.
He pulled out and she grumbled in frustration until he turned her onto her stomach. She turned to watch as he leaned down to kiss the small of her back before pushing her thighs apart, bracing himself over her. But before he could sink into her again, she nudged her wrists against his hands before slipping them under his palms.
Oh.
He laced his fingers through hers and she fucking moaned as he thrust forward, grinding hard into her before setting a slow pace, wondering which of them wouldn’t be able to stand it first. When he covered her body with his, she looked up at him with a face that was halfway between misery and bliss. “How do you do that?”
He was so distracted by how she was taking him that it felt like his brain was on a delay. “Do what, baby?”
She arched up into him like a cat, and the new angle made him out of his mind stupid. “Fuck me ‘til I wanna cry,” she mumbled, her nails digging into the sheets as he leaned down to kiss the back of her neck.
“Come on,” he grunted, dropping his forehead to her shoulder blade before pulling her upright against his chest. “You’re killing me.” A whine left her mouth as he rolled his hips into hers, slowing down even more. She was silent for a few moments as she pressed back into him, and he wondered if she’d reached her limit. “You okay?”
“Have I been a good girl?” she blurted out, her breathing going shallow. So that’s why she’d been so quiet. The fact that she’d been seriously weighing his words burrowed under his skin and the room spun for just a second.
“What do you think?” He ran his hands up her ribs to gently pinch her nipples and caress her breasts. It pulled a contented sigh from her, and she leaned back against his shoulder.
“I’m trying.” She took his hand and guided it up to her throat, and that made his hips stutter. Somehow, she was a step ahead of him, constantly figuring out a way to knock him for a loop even though her thighs were shaking against his.
Experimentally, he wrapped his fingers around her neck, squeezing lightly. Clearly, she liked it, because she moaned and pushed his other hand between her thighs. “You like being good?”
“I…” she trailed off. “I think I do for you.”
“Yeah, you do,” he groaned, kissing her until they were both breathless. The room was warm but she was shivering against him as he circled her clit, her hips moving erratically as he fucked her. “So good for me, sweetheart.”
She didn’t answer with any discernible words, just a wrecked little moan. “I like sweetheart,” she managed, and she pulled against him weakly until he let go. She slumped onto the bed, and when he slid his palms up her back to her shoulders, she mumbled something again that he couldn’t understand, her words lost to the pillow she was hiding her face in.
“What?” he asked, bending so he could hear her.
She turned her head to the side, stretching her arms out with her palms heavenward, and her eyes fluttered as he drove into her harder, the loud smack of his hips against her ass filling the room. “Hold me down again, please?”
Peter obliged her immediately, lacing his fingers through hers again. “You need it like that?” he growled, burying his face in the crook of her neck as he ground his hips into hers, the filthy sounds of their bodies echoing around his brain. “You feel how well you’re taking me? Hear how sweet that sounds?”
Again, she made a blurry sort of noise that spun him out, a dazed acknowledgement that sent heat racing up his spine. “Harder… I can take it.”
He snapped his hips and she dug her nails into the backs of his hands as she giggled breathlessly. When he repeated the motion, she laughed harder, shoving her face against the sheets. He was fucking her so hard that she was practically melting into the bed, pushing back into him as best as she could. “You still remember your name?”
She couldn’t stop laughing, trembling around him agonizingly, and he kissed the back of her neck. “Don’t think I have one.”
“You remember mine?”
“Parker,” she sang out, and he flipped her over again. It was a gut-punch to fully see her pleasure-twisted face again as he rocked back on his heels to dull the ache that had started to build in his lower back.
She reached for him, her fingers slipping against his waist as she parted her legs for him mindlessly, kissing his jaw when he settled between her thighs. She was sweet, he’d been so right about her after months of being so wrong. “How— how are you still going?”
“Because you come first,” he replied, grinding his cock against her slick folds, enjoying the shudder that ran through her body as he pulled her knees up tight against his ribs.
“I’ve come twice,” she corrected with a helpless moan as he rocked against her. “Parker, please.” She reached for his face with both hands as he plunged back into her, groaning in relief when he bottomed out. The new angle allowed him deeper, and it was borderline heaven.
Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment and he braced his forearms next to her head. Her hands trembled against his jaw before she looped her arms around his neck and tucked her face into his shoulder. She sighed contentedly, and he wondered how she was still going too. He knew he could last a while, but she was hanging in there just as well as him.
“You’re doing so good, huh?” he asked, and she nodded against him, leaving careless kisses against his chest, teeth scraping along his skin affectionately.
“Feels so good.” Her voice was uneven, splitting apart as he thrust into her. “Gonna come, you feel so good.”
Her phrasing made his hips falter and he struggled to regain control, because fuck, she’d said you feel so good. Not it feels so good. “Go ahead, baby,” he encouraged. “Let me feel you.” He pulled her knees up higher against his ribs and she curled into him like a collapsing star as he pushed her over the edge again, kissing the sob right out of her mouth as she tightened around him so hard that he almost lost it too.
“Peter,” she said helplessly, nosing at his neck while she tried to compose herself, but she was still shivering under him, dripping all over his cock. “Peter, I want—”
She stopped talking because he began to pound into her, not caring that the bedframe was knocking into the wall. A bomb could have gone off and it wouldn’t have made a difference to him, because she’d sighed his name like a prayer and he didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him that that was what made him lose his mind. He’d thought last time was just a fluke, but it wasn’t. It was the intimacy of it all, and what a thing to discover about himself.
“Yeah,” he grunted, dipping his face against her neck and leaving a line of kisses there. “Whatever you want, sweetheart, tell me what you want.”
“Want you to come inside me again.” She was wrapped around him like a vine, ankles crossed at the small of his back, her arms tight around his neck. “Please.”
“You and your words,” he groaned as she raked her nails down the planes of his back, and he snapped his hips hard.
“That’s so deep,” she gasped, clutching his face and kissing him desperately. Her fingers tangled in his hair and he buried his face in her shoulder, fighting the urge to leave another mark there because he’d left quite a few already. “Peter, please.”
He wasn’t sure if it was the way she was begging or how she was rolling her hips up into his, but it was his breaking point. “I’m gonna—”
She kissed him with a sigh, so damn sweetly that it branded itself onto his brain, and he came hard, panting against her lips, forgetting that he should be more gentle. But she was still moving with him, her hips following his like a shadow as he rode it out, her heels digging into his back to urge him on. “Fuck,” she said dazedly and he kissed the underside of her jaw in response.
“You okay?” he panted, stroking her cheek tenderly, trying his hardest to stop moving but he could only manage to slow down.
She gave him a fucked-out dizzy smile, and trailed her fingers up his back to wrap around his shoulders. “I’m good,” she sighed, her body going limp under his as he gave her one last hard thrust. She made a soft sound when he kissed her neck, nuzzling his way across her tits as she tried to catch her breath.
“So fucking pretty,” he muttered while he focused on not collapsing on top of her. “You’re so pretty, sweetheart.”
His limbs felt like concrete, and he could only imagine how she felt with him on top of her. He kissed her once more and slowly pulled out, her nails scoring his shoulder as he did. Flopping on his back next to her, he scrubbed his hand across his jaw and tucked his wrist behind his head.
Now what? Was he supposed to leave? Or did she want him to stay? Last time they’d just awkwardly separated after a bit, avoided eye contact as they’d straightened up, and left in ten minute intervals. Somehow, they hadn’t been missed at the party and had managed to sneak out undetected.
“Do, um… do you want to order food and try being humans together?” she asked quietly, pressing her cheek against his chest, tapping along some of his freckles absently. “Or, um, I don’t know, maybe— maybe we could make it down to Times Square to see the ball drop? Or if you have to go, you know, I don’t want to keep you—” Oh, she was freaking all the way out. That was usually his thing.
“Hey,” he said, tilting her chin up. “It’s twelve degrees outside and we just had sex, I don’t think we’re heading out quite yet.”
“Oh,” she nodded sheepishly. “I wasn’t thinking, I guess.” This from the girl who’d remembered the thirty-first president not too long ago when she’d scrambled his brain with a blowjob. Maybe he’d scrambled her right back.
“What about disco fries?” he offered after a moment. He didn’t want her to feel embarrassed. “We could order those.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Will they even make those here? Isn’t it like… turf wars? New Jersey versus New York?”
“Capulets and Montagues,” he nodded grimly, and she giggled. It was a nice sound. “Hatfields and McCoys.”
“You and me?” she asked softly. For someone who was so good at showing how pulled together she was, she was just as vulnerable as everyone else. She’d shown that multiple times throughout the evening.
Peter studied her, tracing the bow of her mouth before pulling her close to kiss her gently, reveling in how she melted into him, her hand sliding up his neck to tangle in his hair.
“Nah,” he said, kissing her once more. “Not anymore.”
~
Title comes again from Love Me Dead by Ludo.
My dumb ass really wrote an open ending to the last one like I wouldn’t do something about it, huh?
Warnings: mouthy hate sex cuz they’re stubborn jerks who don’t communicate (and spend most of the time trying to play mind games), unprotected sex, bratty reader, cocky Peter, enemies to dumbasses
She didn’t like Peter Parker and his perfect Boy Scout face. Maybe it was her own fault, for measuring her success against his, because wasn’t comparison the thief of joy? But wasn’t it human nature to do it regardless? Yet here she was, squashing her own worth down every day against his. Like her value hinged on some guy with a perma-smirk on his lips and a dumb joke always dancing on the tip of his tongue.
They’d been hired on the same day, filled out their paperwork with an empty chair between them in the intake area of the lab that was all bright white and shiny, like something out of a retro sci-fi film. She’d glanced at his paperwork (not super on purpose, just his schooling and background) when she’d set hers on the counter and figured they would have similar workloads and assignments.
But no. Dr. Scott immediately threw something interesting his way when she had just as much experience as him. And there she sat, tasked with running tests that a machine could do. Absolutely asinine. Was it Peter’s fault? No. And maybe she wouldn’t loathe him if it had been left at that. But he’d grinned at her and said sucks to be you as they left Dr. Scott’s office, like it was fucking funny that she’d busted her ass in college and was given intern-level grunt work. Maybe it was just meant as a stupid joke, but it was enough to turn her cactus-prickly whenever he was near her, with that crooked smile and those stupid brown eyes. And God, he was always talking. The man was wholly incapable of shutting the fuck up.
He drove her absolutely nuts.
So she proceeded to be bare minimum civil to him, with one word answers and terse nods, and she tried to keep it to when it was just the two of them. But because he wasn’t stupid, he picked up on it lighting-quick. He launched an opposing assault of being overly charming and praising her work when someone else was around, needling at her until she wanted to scream, which was exactly what he was aiming for. Was it childish of them? Absolutely. Did she plan on stopping? She’d rather eat a brick. Her mother had always told her to forgive and forget, but she much preferred to resent and remember.
It was Christmas Eve Eve, and they were at a too-fancy Cuban restaurant for the lab holiday party. She’d had a glass of sangria, which was unfortunately more fruit than alcohol, and she wasn’t really in the mood for pastelitos or tostones. It went until eleven, and it was barely nine thirty. She liked most of her coworkers, but honestly, the idea of going home and wiggling out of her frilly black cocktail dress was much more appealing right now. Then she could curl up in bed and mindlessly scroll through Instagram while an episode of Happy Endings played in the background. It had been a long work week, and she was looking forward to a few days in her red flannel pajamas of doing absolutely nothing.
Shifting in her heels, she glanced around and accidentally made eye contact with Peter, who gave her a saccharine smile that she rolled her eyes at. Ire burned bright in her chest, hot and mean and ugly. It was ridiculous that they were acting like middle schoolers, but they were both different brands of stubborn which meant nothing would ever change.
Excusing herself from her conversation with Eliza, who was well-meaning but long-winded, she left the blocked off party room and snuck to the deserted hallway on the other side of the restaurant where their coats hung in a bulky rainbow across the wall. The corridor was awash in red neon from the exit sign, and she wondered when all the other lights had burnt out, leaving it Halloween-eerie in December. The only other thing in the hall was a bathroom with an OUT OF ORDER, SEE HOSTESS sign crookedly taped to the door. She leaned against the wall, taking in the relative quiet. Music piped through the speakers and flowed through her head, joyous and catchy, something familiar that she couldn’t quite recall. Rubbing her eyes carefully, she sighed as she straightened back up. If she left now, she could still catch—
Someone called her name behind her, and for a moment, she thought about ignoring it. Against her better judgment, she turned, only to be faced with Peter Parker. Wonderful.
“Hi,” she said, fighting the childish urge to wrinkle her nose as her dream of a quiet exit vanished out from under her.
“I wanted to, um, ask you something,” he said hesitantly, but she wasn’t buying it for a second. He was too clever to be tripping over his words. She might not like him, but she could admit that he was smart. The sheepish act was just that: an act. Peter Parker and his ploys.
“What?” she prompted impatiently, glancing pointedly past him at the coats. Her leather jacket hung there, practically waving to her and calling her name. Come get me, I’m your ticket home.
“Can we stop this?” he asked, holding his hand out to her as a peace offering, his watch glinting red under the sign. She considered it for a moment; how easy it would be to fit her hand in his, but she wanted him to acknowledge why they were calling a truce. To say sorry and mean it.
“Stop what?” she asked coolly, crossing her arms and tilting her head in feigned confusion. It was immature, but the thought of him apologizing was nothing short of thrilling. Grovel, Parker. Get down on your knees and say how bad you feel.
But he didn’t do any of that. Instead, he shrugged off his sports jacket in the too-warm hallway and tucked it under his arm as he considered his words.
“This…” he gestured vaguely between them, “you know. The Sam and Diane bullshit.”
“The Sam and Diane bullshit?” she repeated incredulously, face heating up at the insinuation. All she remembered from Cheers was them furiously groping each other all over a couch after a few seasons of will they won’t they nonsense; she could never fathom kissing someone she didn’t like. Not until she was an adult and she’d made out with some persistent frat guy at a mixer, and honestly, it had just been to shut him up. “So you’re an obnoxious womanizer who flamed out of professional baseball and I’m, what, naïve and out of my depth at my job?”
“No.” He shook his head, running his hand through his hair and she was displeased to realize how good his black button-up looked on him, all well-fitted around his biceps and shoulders. “No, you think you’re better than me. You think you’re too good for your assignments.”
She gaped at him. “I do not.”
She absolutely did think that she was better than the stuff Dr. Scott had her working on. But fuck him for calling her out on it. She’d worked just as hard as him in school and it wasn’t fair that he was the de facto golden child from the jump. Some days she wondered if she wouldn’t be sent on a drink run and become the coffee girl, holding an oversized carrier of watery chai and lattes full of almond milk, juggling breakfast sandwiches and egg white omelets on top of the lids.
He shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I think your anger is misdirected. Maybe talk with Dr. Scott instead of contemplating stabbing me with a scalpel every time you see me.”
“God, I can’t stand you.” She dodged around him and grabbed her coat, making her way toward the door. “You know what, Parker? I was just trying to go home and you’re ruining it. So have a great fucking holiday and—”
He shook his head and scoffed. “You’re spoiled.”
“Excuse me?” She turned on her heel so fast that she wobbled, her hand shooting out to steady herself so she didn’t wipe out in front of him. Because that’s just what she needed on top of verbal humiliation, busting her ass on the tile in front of this guy.
“You’re spoiled,” he repeated calmly, folding his arms over his chest, and it made her want to shove him. How dare he name call and stare her down like she was an idiot. “I think you’re used to getting your way, and when you don’t, you stomp your foot like it’ll change someone’s mind.”
“I do not,” she retorted, planting her hands on her hips and fuck him because she did want to stomp her foot. The idea of pulling the framed photo of Havana off the wall and whipping it at his all-knowing face was tantalizing. “I got passed over for you on the first day and you were a dick about it. You didn’t have to say anything, but you decided to be cruel.”
His eyes widened. “Cruel? I was kidding. It was a joke.”
“It wasn’t funny.” Her chest was so tight from confrontation that it ached. It was an ugly feeling, to be reduced like this by him, and she was embarrassed that she couldn’t keep her emotions under control. Peter Parker had driven her up the wall since day one, and she didn’t know why she ever expected otherwise.
“Well, I’m sorry,” he simpered with what was meant to be a winning smile, his words hollow and useless, a parody of what she’d wanted to hear.
The door beckoned. She needed to get on the train and forget about all of this. Maybe she could be nicer in January for a resolution. But right now, she had no capacity for it, because she didn’t like how he’d pulled her aside to what— admonish her like a child? Compare her to an old sitcom that she couldn’t stand? “Whatever,” she muttered.
Like a warning shot fired, the neon sign flickered above them ominously, casting a brief shadow over Peter’s face and it sent a tingle up her spine. She wasn’t stupid; she knew he was attractive. And she hated that she thought that, because how was she supposed to despise someone and still think they were hot? Diametrically opposed thoughts, surely. It made zero sense.
Peter took a step toward her, and she took one back, bumping into the wall and frowning as he reached toward her shoulder. He moved slowly, giving her every opportunity to knock his hand away, to sidestep him, to tell him to stop it right now, but she didn’t. Despite herself, she was curious.
“You wanna know what I think?” he asked quietly, tracing the strap of her cocktail dress, his calloused fingers tripping against her collarbone. His touch was more gentle than she’d expected. “You don’t actually hate me. You keep staring at my mouth—”
“Because you’re talking,” she interrupted angrily, shame rising in her belly, because yes, she had been. He’d let his beard grow in a bit and she’d never seen him with anything past a five o’clock shadow, so excuse her all to hell for looking at something new. “Where else should I look?”
He shrugged arrogantly, tilting his head to study her as though she were a strange thing. Maybe she was. “You look at my fingers all the time in the lab—”
“Eat me, Parker,” she spat, pushing past him. This was done, whatever this was. An uncomfortably tense pigtail pulling contest that she had no clue how to win. God, he just loved getting under her skin—
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you,” he muttered.
“You couldn’t handle me,” she shot back without thinking, and his eyes went stupidly big at her challenge. Just leave, shut up and leave, stop having the last word every time.
It was too late. She wasn’t sure who was doing the pulling, but somehow the bathroom door was being slammed behind her, and the ugly yellow fluorescents burst on above them. The scent of lemon cleanser invaded her nose and stung her eyes for just as second as she adjusted to the light. He had her shoved against the wall, his long fingers wrapped around her wrist. But instead of shooting her mouth off again, she stared up at him. Her heart was beating so fast it stung, hummingbird-skittish in her breast.
“I could absolutely handle you,” he said, and it was that utter arrogance that she just wanted to knock out of him, just take a bat and swing right at his head. She thought of that college party and that loudmouth frat guy, and before she could stop herself, she grabbed his collar and yanked him close, watching his pupils dilate as he met her halfway.
It burned her up inside to find he was a good kisser. She wanted him to be all teeth and awkward so she could sneer at him and push him away, grab her coat and march out the door. But he was holding her face in his hands like they hadn’t spent months sniping at each other, and when his tongue slid against hers it made her toes curl. Dizzying heat rushed through her. He’d had sangria too; the cloying taste of wine evident as he deepened the kiss. She’d meant for it to be quick and mean, but it was lazy and exploratory, his thumb sweeping along her cheek gently. She’d made a grave mistake, but couldn’t bring herself to care. A parade of thoughts raced through her her head— you’re making out with him, what is wrong with you, what else are you going to do, you want him to fuck you— and she wove her fingers through his hair as a pleased sigh slipped from her before she could catch it.
That was mistake number two.
He pulled away from her, umber eyes glittering as if to say I knew it, and she swayed into him like some sort of planetary pull was guiding her.
“Would you look at that?” he muttered, gripping her jaw and tilting her face like he was appraising her, a jeweler with a loupe. Absurdly, she wondered if she measured up, and why she was so fixated on how she compared to him? What did it matter what he thought of her? “All bark and no bite. You’re not as mean as you want me to think, huh?”
“You don’t know me,” she breathed, pushing his hand away from her face, ignoring how nice it had felt, wide and warm and firm. “Always so sure of yourself.”
“I think there’s something sweet under all that vinegar,” he continued as his hand settled on her hip, pulling her against him. Again, it was purposefully slow, giving her every chance to break free. She didn’t.
“And what, you’re gonna find it?” It was difficult to keep snapping back at him because his other hand was under her skirt, sliding up her thigh, higher and higher until he paused. She’d forgone stockings because she always managed to get a run, and they weren’t comfortable, no matter what anyone said. But now his fingers were too close to her, with nothing but her underwear separating them. It made her head spin, the confounding idea of wanting someone who drove her insane. It was eighties romcom stupidity, movie plots she rolled her eyes at and complained about every time she’d seen something like it. Why the hell would Sally want someone as boorish and crude as Harry? Not that Peter was—
“Say the word and I’ll stop,” he offered, cutting through the ivy-vine tangle of her thoughts. “You can go catch your train, I’ll go back out there and keep talking about stocks with Will, but this is more fun, don’t you think?”
“Fun?” she repeated icily, determined to undermine him, but he tugged at the lacy edge of her underwear and she sucked in a shaky breath when he let the elastic snap against her hip.
“Fun. You know, a diversion.” He bent to brush a lingering kiss to her neck, so slow and sweet that she held her breath. Why wasn’t he being more callous and cruel, this wasn’t supposed to be—
Oh. This was deliberate.
This was what he did at work, with his sugared compliments and blinding smiles that made her want to throw test tubes at him, and he was going to do the same thing here.
Maybe an eternity had passed since his proposal, maybe it had been only three seconds. She was trying to process it but it was difficult when he was caressing her thigh and watching her with keen eyes that shone with something she’d never seen from him before.
Part of her was deeply scandalized that his hands were up her skirt and that his beard was scraping against her, leaving a fiery trail along her skin. Another part of her, some strangely curious part, was dying to know what he might do. How he might kiss her and spin her apart. If he was any good. But her bullheaded streak wanted to get him worked up— maybe grind herself all over his lap and then leave him hard and aching for her, because what was he gonna do? Chase her down? He wasn’t a sociopath; if anything, he’d call her spoiled again and that would be the end of the night.
“You’re awfully quiet,” he commented as he tilted her chin up, and she shivered as he took her mouth again in a lazy kiss, working her open with his tongue like he’d done it a million times, and it melted her sharpness down for just a split second before she shook it off. “What’s going on in that pretty head?”
“I can’t stand you,” she informed him as she plucked at the buttons of his shirt while he grinned down at her maddeningly. Smugly. This was stupid, why was she doing this instead of going home? What was wrong with her? Normal people didn’t do things like this, normal people didn’t let their obnoxiously good-looking jerk of a coworker pin them to a wall at an office party and they certainly didn’t let them kiss their necks.
“You wanna show me how much you can’t stand me?” he asked, not missing a beat as he pushed his thigh between hers. It forced her skirt up to her hips and she froze under his gaze as he shuffled the floaty material out of the way, his thumb rasping over her clit. Even though the thin material of her underwear, the sensation stole her breath. He paused, holding her gaze, and she took the opportunity to push his shirt off his shoulders so she could see him. Tentatively, she ran her hands down his pale chest, fingers tripping over a bunch of scars. Some looked years old, others seemed barely healed.
“What, are you in a fight club or something?” she muttered, mapping a silvery one that skimmed his ribs. It was hard to say which was more surprising: the lean muscles or the scars.
“Sure,” he agreed amiably, watching as she traced down along the vee of his hip. He was in shockingly good shape for a guy who seemed to live off cheap ramen. “You worried about me?”
“I don’t think about you,” she said haughtily, resisting the urge to nip at his collarbone. The fact that she had to remind herself not to do that nagged at her; she shouldn’t need to practice such self-control around someone she loathed.
“Keep telling yourself that, baby.” His fingers slipped between her legs again, toying with the flimsy material that did nothing to dull his touch, and his eyes were hawkish as he teased her with his thumb. “Sure you don’t wanna catch that train?”
She opened her mouth to say something snippy, but he ducked down and kissed the words out of her mouth with a lewd groan that she swallowed down. “You—” she tried to say, but he was cradling the back of her skull, distracting her as he tugged her underwear to the side.
Dragging a finger along the split of her, he hummed in satisfaction as he gathered her slick, rubbing a quick circle against her clit that made her stutter. “Can’t stand me, huh?”
She moaned, grinding back against his hand. “Shut up, Parker.”
“It’s okay to say you like it,” he murmured against her neck, sucking a bruise against her soft skin as he pressed a finger inside her. The dual sensations made her jump; the way he crooked his finger as he licked at her pulse, and goddammit he knew what he was doing and it sent her blood boiling. “You wouldn’t be moaning like that otherwise.”
“I am not,” she huffed indignantly. She wasn’t a moaner. Her ex had berated her about it once, and that had been the last time they’d slept together, although it had been multiple other things, not just him whining about her in bed. Her eyes drifted down, and it was impossible to ignore the raspberry splash of a bruise on his pec, and she wondered how he’d done that. “I’ve had better, you’re so full of yourself—”
Her words were dead in the water when he curled his finger again. “You just like fighting, huh? That’s what gets you wet, that’s why you always have an attitude with me.” His tone was vexingly calm, and all it did was rile her up more. She wished he’d match her frustration, because his composure was annoying. Get mad, call her a brat, raise his voice a little.
“N— no,” she replied unconvincingly as she rode his hand. “I just don’t like you.”
“You seem to like my hands just fine.” He added another finger and she slumped against the wall, pressing back hard to keep herself upright as he pumped his wrist slowly. “Be a sweet girl and tell me you like it.”
“Thought I was spoiled,” she laughed breathlessly as his free hand wandered up to her neck, forcing her to look at him. His movements were all firm, achingly controlled. “I’m not saying that.”
He nodded, and withdrew his fingers. Strangely, he kept rubbing tight circles against her clit, and it hit her: he was giving her a chance to do what he said and taking himself away from her like he was counting to three. She bucked her hips against his palm; this would be easy for her to beat. He was turned on too, she could see the hard outline of his cock straining against the front of his dark dress pants, and his breathing was just a little faster than normal. And she hadn’t even touched him other than when they’d kissed, which meant he was hard over what he was doing to her. Something like that made her brain thick with want, and it just added another piece to the inconceivable puzzle of her quick-shifting feelings for him. It was probably just arousal.
Men were simple. All she had to do was make a breathy little sound and he’d continue. This was cake. So she shook her head with an airy sigh, rubbing herself along the heel of his hand, but he still didn’t give her what she wanted.
“Tell me you like it and I’ll let you come,” he promised, his thumb perplexingly gently against her pulse. Her blood was hammering under her skin and her legs shook as she tried to roll her hips up against his hand again. She was so close and he’d just stopped and now he was just looking down at her expectantly. He really wanted her to capitulate, flutter apart for him like a house of cards.
“Can you just…” she mumbled, because the thought of admitting that infuriated her. This was so much worse than if he had no clue what to do with his hands. She wished he were incompetent and fumbling, because him actually getting her off was something she’d never live down.
“Say it,” he repeated, moving his hand away entirely, and she grabbed his wrist desperately, pulling his fingers back to where she wanted them. “Say I like it, Peter, and I swear I’ll let you finish.”
“Parker—”
“Peter,” he corrected, his mouth ghosting along her throat and it sent her brain reeling, how fucking dare he. “You can say it. It’ll stay between us.”
“That’s not nice,” she whispered petulantly, trying for whiny so she didn’t have to give him what he wanted. Maybe she could pluck at his heartstrings with teary eyes and soft words.
It didn’t work. His hand hung limp between her legs, tantalizingly close but galaxies away from what she craved.
“I’m plenty nice,” he replied, pulling the strap of her dress down her shoulder so he could explore her skin, caressing her collarbone with a featherlight skim of his fingers, and she knew he wasn’t going to touch her again until she gave in. If that’s how he wanted it, fine. She could figure out a way to get back at him later.
“I like it,” she caved, and the surprise that lit across his face for a split second was worth it.
“Atta girl,” he said, but she could tell he hadn’t expected it. He was true to his word, thrusting his fingers back into her cunt and catching her elbow so she didn’t buckle to the floor in a boneless little heap. “Go ahead and take it, baby.”
Some strange noise left her as he touched something that made her absolutely shatter, and she grabbed at his arm in a frenzy. Before she could get any louder, he bent to cover her mouth with his. “I know you don’t want everyone to hear you coming all over my hands,” he whispered against her lips, like he was doing her a favor in all his grand benevolence.
But she couldn’t form a response as something weightless swept over her and she clenched around his fingers and mumbled some kind of broken sound into his mouth, and God this was not how she saw her Friday night going: a belly full of golden butterflies from Peter Parker with his big hand shoved between her thighs while rumba music crept under the door. And the fact that he was good with his hands and mouth, what the hell was that about? Every part of her was thrumming and electric because of him. This was the absolute definition of fuck around and find out: after months of fucking around, it seemed it was time to contend with it.
With a heaving chest, she looked up at him dizzily, and he had the nerve to lean down and kiss her again, and she had the foolishness to let him, his lips just barely touching hers, pulling away slyly when she tried to deepen it. “Parker,” she tried weakly as she touched his neck, unsteadily tracing a freckle. “Come on.”
“Stubborn little thing,” he said as he stroked her cheek, and it sounded nearly affectionate. “I know you know how to use your words. Always spitting bullets at me. What do you want?”
God, the thought of getting needy over a kiss he’d refused her made her want to crawl into a hole and die. “Nothing.”
He hummed thoughtfully, fisting her hair in his hand and exposing the column of her throat to him, and she unsuccessfully tried to stifle a moan, because something about the way he had his hands all over her body was pushing her over the edge. “You want me to eat you out?” he asked magnanimously, licking the hinge of her jaw like a cat, running his nose along her throat possessively and to her utter humiliation, another sound bubbled out of her mouth, something that sounded suspiciously like the word please. “Let me get between those pretty thighs?”
“No,” she lied as he spun her around, pushing her against the wall a little too hard but she was too turned on to mind.
“You’d hate that,” he continued, rucking her skirt up just enough to pinch her thigh as he ground his hips against her ass teasingly. “Because every time you look at me after that, it’ll be the only thing you’ll think about.”
“Parker—”
“My mouth all over you while you tell yourself you hate it…” he trailed off, wrapping an arm across her shoulders, pulling her flush against him, “when you’re really just dying to come all over my face.”
His arm was a steel band across her chest, strong fingers digging into her bicep, anchoring her in place. When she tipped her head back against his shoulder, his face swam into view. It was a nice face: a sharp bearded jaw, doe eyes that were darker than she’d ever seen, that freckle on the side of his neck that she wanted to kiss, no she didn’t, shut up.
“You just want me to go down on you,” she accused, wiggling back against him, trying to find some sort of friction because he felt so good it wasn’t even funny and sure, fine, she wanted him to fuck her. But there was no way he was offering to eat her out without expecting her to drop to her knees for him, and the idea of being that submissive for Peter fucking Parker made her want to hug a land mine.
“It’s not a trade. Is that how it’s always been for you?” he asked, a frown in his voice as he pushed her hair away from her neck. “Someone’s been treating you all wrong, huh?”
Another mistake. She’d given away a detail of past relationships and flings without thinking.
“So you don’t want me to blow you?” she asked, turning to face him. Bullshit. He wasn’t different from any other guy.
A muscle in his jaw tightened at her question— a crack in his confidence. Good. He could see how it felt to be toppled by a few words, to have a rug yanked out from under his feet.
But then he shrugged, broad shoulders rising and falling sinfully. “If you wanted to, I wouldn’t stop you. But that’s not what I asked. I asked if you wanted me to eat you out.”
She huffed. “Because you’re so selfless?”
“You’ve never had someone go down on you just ‘cause they wanted to?” he asked as he kneeled— fucking kneeled— in front of her. “Poor girl.”
She ignored the false sympathy. “What’s your— your goal here, huh?” she asked shakily as he kissed down her hip, spreading her legs. This wasn’t what she’d pictured when she’d imagined him on his knees, this was so beyond—
“Get your skirt out of the way.”
“What?” She pressed herself against the wall as her calves went wobbly from the hickey he was sucking against her thigh.
“Move this so I can see you,” he instructed.
“Pushy,” she mumbled, shuffling her gauzy skirt as best she could, but it was next to impossible. “This doesn’t— it won’t—”
He stood and spun her around easily, tugging the zipper and pulling her dress down her hips. It happened so quickly that she didn’t have time to think. He sank back down and helped her step out of it, pulling her left knee over his shoulder as she tried to keep balance on one foot in her teetering heel. Warm breath floated across her skin as he pressed a messy kiss to her cunt through her underwear before tugging it aside and licking into her like a shock.
This was fucking bad.
“Oh, baby,” he cooed. “Aren’t you a pretty thing?”
His hand was on her right hip, holding her tight (and God, he was strong) as he spread her open and lapped at her with deadly focus, spinning her stupid at an alarming pace. Oh, she’d fucked up tremendously and he was right: this would be all she ever thought of when she saw his mouth. Exhaling slowly, she tipped her head back until the ceiling tiles came into view, the lights hovering at the edge of her vision. The air was thick and for a moment, it was hard to breathe because of how he was devouring her. This wasn’t exploratory and lazy, it was him showing her that he could handle her and he was gonna make sure she loved every second of it.
He mumbled her name against her and her thighs shook embarrassingly. She tried to shift, dig her heel into the hard muscles of his back, but his hand was too tight against her hip, his thumb digging an ache against her soft skin. “Parker—”
“Lemme see your eyes,” he said as she bucked against his mouth. She glanced down without thinking and the sight of his tongue curling into her was unbearable. Unbearable because he was causing her brain to go all cloudy and dumb, and because it tore her up to be wrong. He hummed against her clit before circling it with the tip of his tongue, shaking her to the core. It was merciless and precise and it sent thick pleasure winding through her body, turning her practically boneless in his grasp. “Look at me when you come. Wanna see that pretty face.”
“Please,” she urged weakly, threading her fingers through his thick hair and pulling him closer. Peter groaned appreciatively against her, and that gutteral sound knocked her over the edge unexpectedly, lightning-bright as she came again. It left her trembling against his jaw as her legs went rigid, her heel clattering to the ground somewhere behind him. “Fuck, please—” and maybe she said his name too but her head was all cottony and she could have told him her banking information and she wouldn’t have had a clue.
“There you go, baby,” he encouraged as she ground herself against his slick mouth, his tongue still working at her as she came back down. “Love those sweet words.”
She let out a frustrated groan at his teasing but it was probably impossible to discern it from the rest of the noises she was making. “You talk too much,” she panted, tugging uselessly at his hair.
“Maybe,” he hummed as he licked one last stripe up her cunt, sending a helpless spasm through her. “My goal is to make you think about me all weekend,” he continued casually, nipping at the hickey he’d just left on her thigh. Pleasure cut alongside the pain, making her whine softly.
What the hell was he talking about? She was so dazed from coming that she just stared down blankly at him while he kissed the inside of her knee, nipping at a childhood scar from a fight she’d lost with a pair of skates. “Huh?”
“You asked what my goal was,” he reminded her as he stood, looming above her, dangerously tall in a way that excited her. That was like a brick to the head: she was actually into this— him?— and she wanted more. “I want you to think about me all weekend. When you get up tomorrow morning and your thighs ache, I want you to think about me. Want you to think about me when you touch yourself, and when you see me next week at work, I want you to look at my hands and think of how you fell apart all over them.”
The way he spoke to her was staggering and it left her with a rush of heat between her thighs. “Quite a list,” she breathed as he bent his head to kiss the slope of her shoulder, his large palms sliding up her shivery ribs to cup her breasts. “Anything else?”
“I told you, I wanna find that sweetness,” he said, flicking his tongue against her nipple through the flimsy material of her bra, some lacy black thing that she’d picked at the last minute. “It keeps coming through and you don’t even know it.”
She arched into his touch before fumbling with his buckle with useless fingers. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re so turned on you can’t even get my belt off,” he said softly. “Came so hard you fell outta your shoes.” Christ, her other shoe was gone and she hadn’t even noticed. Taking her wrist, he guided her hand until she was palming him through his pants. “See what you did with those pretty sounds?”
Anticipation flooded her body, with more than a few nerves. He felt ridiculously big, and she swallowed hard. Looking up at him, she wondered if it was a genuine smile he was giving her or just more of his games. Holding his gaze, she popped the button of his pants and slipped her hand into his boxers, watching the slightest flutter of his long lashes when she wrapped her fist around him. Good. He could see how it felt to be thrown for a loop.
He let her stoke him for a few moments, clenching his jaw when she circled the head of his cock with her thumb, smearing precome around the tip. She watched his eyes the entire time, not wanting to miss a second of his control wavering. To her utter satisfaction, they went glassy at her touch. “That’s enough,” he said suddenly, blinking rapidly as he pushed her hand away.
She raised an eyebrow. “Thought you could handle me,” she taunted as he tugged his boxers down his lean hips. Still, she didn’t look down, because somehow that would make it all tangible, driving home the fact that she was going to fuck Peter Parker.
“You’ve got a smart little mouth,” he informed her as he backed her into the wall again, but it was more of a statement than a criticism. “Are you on the pill?” he asked, skating his teeth along her collarbone.
“Y—yeah.” Even that one simple word was a struggle. “You don’t have a condom?” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d met a guy who’d actually wanted to wear one. Everything about this man made her crazy.
He shook his head as he pulled her against him, his thick cock pressed to her hip. “Of course I do. I just wanna feel how wet you are for me. Wanna feel what I did to you.”
“Oh.” She blinked up at him. He was asking permission, giving power back to her for just a second. He’d already made her come twice, what did letting him fuck her without a condom matter at this point? “It’s fine.”
He tilted his head questioningly, like she’d said something totally insane. “There’s a difference between something being fine and something being what you want. What do you want?”
It was the second time he’d asked her that. Nothing didn’t cut it as an answer this time. “I want you to fuck me,” she blurted out in a rush.
“Just like this?” he pressed as he turned her around slowly, and she nodded, letting him pin her against the wall, spreading her legs as he pushed his cock between her thighs. She closed her eyes as he teased her, the head of his dick gently nudging her clit. Embarrassingly, she clenched around nothing. “Just like this,” she mumbled as he positioned himself at her entrance, pushing in inch by inch. It was slow and teasing, and when she tried to reach back to grab at his hip, he took her hand and pinned it to the wall.
“Don’t be greedy,” he crooned, pulling back for a torturous second before thrusting all the way in, and it made her breath falter, the way he filled her up so completely. “I know what you want.”
He was big, and she refused to say it. There was no way he didn’t already know, and she certainly didn’t need to feed his ego by moaning about it. The way he was stretching her out was near criminal, some kind of sweet agony that pulled a breathy whimper from her.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he purred in her ear, and she gritted her teeth to keep any sort of flattery from leaving her mouth. “See how easy it is for me to tell you that?”
She shook her head as words scrambled around in her skull, and he pinned her other hand to the wall. “Why do you need to hear it so badly?” she managed to ask as she ground back into him. “Your work doesn’t stand on its own?”
Peter chuckled, his hot breath floating across her shoulder. “You already came twice. Maybe you should try to pull your weight.”
He let go of her left hand to ghost his fingers against her clit as he thrust up hard, and it was nearly too much. Biting down on her lip, she slumped back but he was whispering in her ear again, poor baby you want it so fuckin’ bad huh, and she did.
“Parker,” she muttered as his hand came up to spread across her throat, his thumb against her collarbone as he nudged her knees farther apart. She arched into him as he cupped her breast, teasing her nipple through the thin material of her bra.
“Did you ever think about this? Me fucking that attitude out of you?”
She tried to roll her eyes but couldn’t. Everything he said was in a low, even voice and it was like a dagger every time, spearing through her, sending her out of her mind. It was a strange thing, to feel lust and irritation side by side, but the lust was beginning to outweigh it.
“No.” That wasn’t a lie. Months ago, she’d dreamed about him kissing her in an elevator, but it had ended with her slapping himself across the face, and when she’d woken up, she didn’t remember it until he’d walked past her in the break room and given her a too-nice grin that was for his own enjoyment. But wanting to fuck him? Never. Not until that broken sign had lit his face up and something had twisted hot and sharp in her belly. “Told you, I d— don’t think about you.”
“I thought about you a couple times,” he admitted without a shred of embarrassment as he licked at the juncture of her neck, teeth cutting against her in a quick sting that he kissed away with a filthy sound. “Thought about how pretty you’d look riding me.”
Jesus, he knew how to get to her. Weirdly, she didn’t know if she should be offended or flattered that he’d thought about fucking her. The fact that she wasn’t sure made her think that she liked it, and that was a hard thing to contend with. “You’re unbelievable.”
He took her arms and pulled them back so they were looped around his neck. “You’re gorgeous,” he replied, his hands rough against her tits, squeezing and caressing appreciatively until she yanked at his hair.
It made him laugh, but he stopped moving and she pushed back desperately, trying to find that delicious rhythm again. “You said you were plenty nice, this isn’t…”
“Take what you want.” He nuzzled at her temple, planting a sugary-fake kiss there. “Be a big girl and take it.”
She huffed. Her legs were unsteady and she wasn’t tall enough to get what she wanted without her heels. “I can’t.”
He thrust again, slow this time. “You’re usually so sure of yourself. What happened, baby?” he asked softly, his thumb gentle against her throat. It would be easier if he’d just bruise a mark against her neck instead of this, this quiet sweetness that she knew was just building up into him getting the upper hand again.
She shook her head, refusing to give him more than she already had. “Stop— stop calling me that,” she said, because that was the problem, not the fact that he was fucking her into a wall with sharp snaps of his hips, filling her up so well it was making her brain blur. Pleasure rippled through her body as he kissed the side of her neck, and she cried out when he sucked another mark there, quickly soothing it with his tongue.
“How about princess?” he grunted harshly, and she shivered, pressing her warm cheek to the off-white plaster. “Sweetheart? Angel? Kitten?”
“Stop talking, you n— never shut up,” she ground out, lacking any kind of authority because he felt so fucking good inside her that it was making her eyes droop shut like she was drunk on him.
He hummed against the crown of her head, stilling his movements again and she pushed back against him greedily. This impulsivity she’d gotten herself twisted up in was going to ruin her for anyone else, because fuck he knew what he was doing. Maybe she had left the restaurant and gotten hit by a bus on the way to the subway and this was some circle of Hell that Dante had neglected to mention: divinity at the hands of Peter Parker.
“Poor girl,” he cooed, honey dripping off his tongue. “So eager for my cock.”
“You’re rock hard over me so I guess we’re both—”
He spun her and scooped her up, briefly tracing her hip bones as she wrapped her legs around his waist. “What can I say, I like mouthy girls.”
She barely had time to reorient herself as he thrust into her again. There was no room between her and the wall, forcing her to either look at him or rest her chin on his shoulder. What thrilling little head games he was playing, trying to pull sweetness from her with his words and touches. But she was beginning to realize that something in her liked this, maybe even liked him. Maybe she did like arguing, maybe she was as predictable as some stupid eighties movie—
“Where’d you go?” he asked, burying his face against her neck and nipping at her, the sharpness of his teeth yanking her back to the present. “Thinking about how good it feels?”
Weakly, she pushed at his chest, tapping the borders of the bruise. “Where’d this come from?” she muttered as he hitched her up higher. “What’d you do?”
He shook his head, his once-neat hair falling messily across his forehead. “Kiss it and make it better,” he deflected with a smirk. Instead, she clenched around him and he groaned, thumbs digging so harshly into her waist that she could imagine the bruises blooming under his touch. It was the first time she’d managed to catch him completely off-guard, and it thrilled her to have the upper hand, only if for a moment. One of his hands came up to caress her neck, tracing and teasing, following her carotid as he slowed his hips to a dreamy grind.
“Tired?” she asked, and he just grinned that pearly self-assured grin.
“Aren’t you?” He was pulling almost all the way out each time and then filling her back up languidly, his thumb pressing agonizingly against her clit. “You get this dizzy look on your face when you come—”
With a moan, she kissed him hard so he couldn’t finish telling her about how desperate she was for him, but he was still smiling as he cradled her cheek and pressed his tongue into her mouth. In retaliation, she dragged her nails across his shoulders and earned an atta girl that made her melt.
No matter what she tried, it felt like she couldn’t gain control over him. Maybe she should just be sweet like he said. It wasn’t really giving in, was it? It was enjoying. She could admit that it was fucking divine, the way he bottomed out with every stroke and kissed her totally stupid. She could even admit that she was glad he’d found her in the hallway and that one of them had pushed the other into the bathroom. She still wasn’t clear on who had done that; it had just been a neon red whirl of hands and irritation and pent-up lust.
Be a sweet girl.
It dawned on her: that was her move. That was how she played his game.
“Harder,” she asked, tugging him close to kiss his jaw, and she watched his brows knit together in slight confusion. “Please?” she added before he could prompt her.
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “I want you to fuck me harder,” she repeated, tracing his bottom lip, his beard scratching at her palm.
“Fuck,” he groaned, and he thrust so hard she saw silvery stars. He kissed her harshly, and she rolled her hips up to accommodate him as he sank in deeper. “You look so pretty when you ask for my cock.”
“Parker…” she trailed off, and she was rewarded with another rough thrust, and she wondered if the wall would hold her weight. In the very back of her mind, she had no clue how she was supposed to get to the subway, because he was fucking her so hard she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to walk afterwards.
“What?” he asked, inhaling raggedly when she leaned forward to work a mark into his collarbone. Playing nice was easy, especially when it turned the tables. Maybe she should have figured it out sooner, but he’d made it difficult to focus.
“Wanna ride you,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his strong shoulders, circling her hips as best she could but it was hard to do in her current position. “Like you said.”
Peter set her down and sure enough, she stumbled on jello legs. The room spun and tilted like a carnival ride under her feet and she shook her head to try and clear her vision as she pressed herself against the wall for some kind of support. Suddenly, he was holding her wrists and gathering her close. Her pulse fluttered under his touch. “I’ve got you, whoa. You okay?”
She nodded. Without thinking, she leaned her temple against his chest, listening to the thump of his heart to try and ground herself. “Can’t feel my legs.”
She expected a self-satisfied grin from him, all glowing and grandiose, but it didn’t appear. Instead, there was a softness in his expression that was foreign to her, and it made her knees even weaker.
“Come here,” he said, holding his hands out to help her into his lap. Tentatively, she took them, studying how easily they engulfed hers. Maybe this was the peace offering she’d refused earlier. “Don’t want you knocking yourself out.”
They sank to the floor on top of his rumpled sports jacket. His grip was gentle as she straddled his thighs, a departure from how he’d been pinning and manhandling her for however long they’d been locked away. “You always know what to say, huh?” she murmured as he stroked her knee soothingly, a too-intimate move from the man who’d been calling her baby as he fucked bruises into the backs of her thighs. “You and your clever mouth.”
“You seem to like my clever mouth.” He grinned at her as she sank down onto him, closing her eyes as she adjusted to the stretch of his cock again. “You’re messing with me.” His words were intended to be good natured, but there was a flash of uncertainty in his dark eyes, and she knew that he didn’t have a clue where he stood with her. For some reason, it didn’t feel as good as she thought it might. What a time to grow a conscience about this. About him.
“How?” she asked innocently as she tried to shake that feeling off, tracing a long white scar that was etched deep into his chest, like he’d lost a fight with a sword. What the hell kind of hobbies he had, she’d never know.
“Being sweet.”
He had her number. She shrugged as she bucked her hips, and he groaned, knocking his head back against the wall. “What else do you want from me, Parker? A certificate that says you fucked me until I couldn’t think straight?” She leaned forward and kissed the hollow of his throat, grinding down hard onto his cock as she pulled another strangled noise from him, and fuck if that didn’t turn her on. “Make up your mind, baby.”
“You feel incredible,” he grunted, wrapping his hand around the back of her neck to drag her mouth to his, and she bit his lip before running her tongue across it to soothe away the sting.
“What do you want?” she asked sweetly as she draped her arms around his neck, pressing her chest to his. “You want me to cry about how good you feel inside me? Want me to call you daddy?”
Oh, that got him. He gritted his teeth, screwing his eyes shut at her questions. “God, you’re…”
“Use your words,” she reminded him softly, and he snapped his hips into hers hard, nearly unseating her. “Want me to beg you to suck your cock?” Truthfully, she wasn’t sure if she meant any of it or if she was still playing along with the strange power struggle they’d been locked in for months. Whatever it was left her feeling just a little power drunk.
“Sweet of you to ask,” he muttered as he gripped her jaw, his tongue pressing into her mouth in a dizzying slide. She secretly liked when he held her face like that, all demanding and rough, and she wondered what that said about her. Maybe she did want him to fuck her until she was sweet.
“Knew it,” she panted triumphantly as she broke away from him, raking her nails down his shoulders, jagged pink lines trailing behind her red nails. “I knew you wanted me to blow you.”
“No.” He shook his head, hands tight against the tops of her thighs, setting the pace he wanted as he guided her hips. “Keep riding me just like that. God, we should do this more often.”
“Hatefuck each other?” she blurted out as she sank down to the hilt with a blissed-out sigh. “Parker, that’s really deep—”
He stopped moving, his grip loosening slightly, the harsh dig of his fingers dissipating.“You really think I hate you?” he asked, blinking in confusion as he pulled back to look at her. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think his feelings were hurt. This wasn’t supposed to be something meaningful between them, what the hell was he doing?
She trembled as her arousal pushed at her. “It’s just a phrase.”
His soft brown eyes were serious, glittering with something that tried to break her heart. She had hurt his feelings. “I don’t hate you.”
She shifted with a gasp, feeling small under his gaze. Yesterday she wouldn’t have given a shit if she’d disappointed him and now she felt like an asshole. “I know. I shouldn’t have— that was stupid.”
There was a long strange moment of limbo where neither of them moved. At least they had one thing in common: she couldn’t figure out where the hell she stood with him either. She wondered if she’d somehow wrecked the situation she shouldn’t have gotten herself into in the first place.
“What about a grudgefuck?” she hedged.
The corners of his mouth pulled up slightly. “Maybe.” He reached to toy with the small lace bow on her bra, and she leaned forward, gently kissing the bruise on his chest as an apology and he let out a hiss of pain.
“Sorry.” She hadn’t meant to hurt him. It wasn’t like she actually enjoyed seeing him in physical pain, no matter how many times she’d fantasized about whipping a stapler at him after some stupid comment he’d flung her way.
“It’s okay.” Peter cupped her cheek, studying her for a moment, and that made her feel more vulnerable than the fact that he was buried inside her. His eyes swept over her: the bridge of her nose, the Cupid’s bow of her mouth, her pleasure-teary eyes. “You are a soft little thing, aren’t you?”
Something had shifted between them, and she realized that they’d both been pretending it hadn’t. It wasn’t something she could pinpoint— maybe it had been when she’d struggled to stand and he’d helped her without so much as a joke, or when he’d looked disheartened at the idea of her believing that he hated her. What a pair they made.
Her mouth twitched at his declaration, and she buried her face against his neck while he rocked up into her steadily. “Feels good,” she told him as heat spiraled up in her belly.
He pulled her knees tighter against his hips, splitting her open in a way that was making her eyes roll and flutter. “Gonna come for me?”
She nodded jerkily as he hit that deep part of her again, setting her on a path to fall apart for the third time. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, please d— don’t stop.” He smelled good, cologne and clean sweat and something spicy that swirled around her head as he pushed her over the edge. Shuddering hard, she dug her nails into his shoulders. “Don’t hate you either,” she panted against his neck, shivering when he stroked her hip as he fucked her through it.
His fingers trailed down her spine and it was too tender to think about. But when she tried to say his name, he swept her into a kiss that spun her out completely. It was slow and sweet, with his hands all over her throat and when his tongue pressed against her lips, it was like he was asking what she needed rather than telling her.
“I know you don’t,” he said, but it lacked the arrogance from when he’d insisted on it earlier.
“Don’t— don’t get all soft on me, Parker,” she muttered, because whatever gentle thing was trying to bloom between them wasn’t welcome. This was not the start of something, it was not some movie meet-cute, it was months of immaturity coming to a head.
“I’m anything but,” he replied pointedly, and God, was there a polite way to tell someone to come because she’d never been waiting on a guy like this before. He tilted his head, that scrutinizing look crossing his face again. Like he could somehow hear what she was thinking. “You okay?”
She nodded, and he dipped his head to kiss her breasts, murmuring pretty as he tugged one of her bra straps down her shoulder so he could take her nipple in his mouth, sucking and teasing and licking until she whined. He’d slowed down, like he knew that she needed him to, moving with deep drags of his cock, and she let him do what he wanted, because it wasn’t giving in, it was enjoying. He wrapped his long fingers around her neck again and pressed his forehead to hers. “Gimme another one,” he urged, his nose brushing hers. “Wanna see those dizzy eyes one more time.”
He sounded like he was underwater; she was so overstimulated that everything was blurring together. But his words cut through the fog and a hazy orgasm rolled over her, and she couldn’t believe she’d just come on command. It made her chest tight and she grabbed his shoulder to anchor herself. “Can’t do it again, it’s too much,” she panted, her nails slipping against him.
He groaned her name at her words. It made sense that praise set him off— someone as talkative as him would want it back so he could relish in it. She’d gotten to him earlier with all her little questions; her backhanded compliments must have cut him straight to the bone.
“Peter,” she tried, because she never called him that— only ever sneering and biting out his last name like a curse— and she was desperately curious to know what it would do to him.
“Sounds so good when you say that.” His words were broken, shattered little syllables that she snatched up for herself. The smack of his skin against hers was deafening, and she couldn’t even hear what else he was saying to her. For a moment, she just watched his mouth move, and it was so stupidly pretty and why hadn’t she noticed that before?
“Peter,” she said again, not because she was trying to get into his head this time, but because she didn’t know what else to say other than his name. Peter Parker and his pretty mouth and his sinful hips and his big shoulders and his scarred chest, Peter Parker who was looking at her like she knew the secrets of the universe.
“Where do you want me to come?” he asked desperately, his thrusts turning mind-numbingly hard and sloppy and Jesus Christ she was still coming, shaking against him uncontrollably from the rush of watching him crumble. “Tell me.”
“Come inside me,” she said hoarsely. She was exhausted, her body humming and too sensitive, and the only reason she was upright was because he was holding her in his strong arms.
He searched her eyes, looking like he wanted to ask if she was sure, but an aftershock hit her and sent her cunt fluttering around him. With a groan, he shoved his face in her shoulder as he came, his hips slamming into hers. “Fuck,” he hissed, and his fingers were so tight against her that it ached, but she was too tired to push them away. Instead, she would take home ten little souvenirs from their indiscretion, if not more. He thrust again helplessly, muttering her name, and she was acutely aware of how sore she was, and how sore she’d be for days after. He’d gotten both of his wishes. “Sorry, fuck, you feel so fucking good.”
That little bit of praise lodged itself firmly in her brain and she exhaled shakily as it echoed in her head. It was the first time she’d ever wanted to hear that she’d pleased him, and it had to be from the euphoric high she was experiencing, right?
She was collapsed against him, sweaty and drained, and his pulse thrummed against her nose. Curiously, she darted her tongue out to lick at the tendon in his neck and he twitched inside her.
“You gotta stop that,” he said brokenly, his mouth hot against her collarbone. “Jesus Christ, what the hell did you do to me?”
“Picked a fight,” she mumbled as he shifted her carefully, pressing open-mouthed kisses all over her breasts, leaving a trail of goosebumps under his tongue. He’d turned her into a rag doll: pliant and boneless with a brain full of nothing. Moving was too hard, and they stayed tangled as a sailor’s knot. Out of sheer curiosity, she ran her fingers down his back to stroke and explore the hard muscles she found there, wondering if she ought to climb out of his lap. Peter didn’t move either, his knuckles trailing over her trembling calves, and she took that as an invitation to remain.
“Which was it?” he asked after a moment, planting a kiss against the hollow of her throat and nuzzling a tender spot he’d left behind. Eleven souvenirs, although she knew there were far more than that.
“Which was what?” she asked, her head still spinning wildly.
“Were you messing with me or did you like it?”
“I don’t know,” she said as she traced his bottom lip.
She did know. It was unquestionably both: messing with him had turned into liking it. Without thinking, she brushed his messy hair from his face, studying the crinkles at the corners of his eyes that she’d never noticed. Maybe it was because she was full of endorphins and had just been fucked thoroughly, but she thought they were cute. Ugh, cute? That was the millionth mistake she’d made tonight. He had her all turned around and she wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Well,” he said after a moment as he fixed the twisted strap of her bra, his fingers lingering against her flushed skin for a moment too long, “maybe I’ll see you on New Year’s Eve. Maybe you’ll know by then.”
She sighed as he kissed the side of her neck gently, the scratch of his beard making her squirm. “Maybe I will.”
~
Title comes from Love Me Dead by Ludo.
Obviously this could have all been solved by talking things out like adults as soon as they left the office but then how would they have angry mindgame sex with someone in a Cuban restaurant? Also, I’m incapable of writing a trope in a traditional sense so uhhh that’s what happened here. The more I thought about the title, the more I knew the direction it would take.
This spawned when Rae and I were talking about how I had intended my sex pollen fic to be more rival-based but about 800 words in, I couldn’t stand the vibe I’d created. Naturally, we started discussing hate sex and it went from there. So thanks for putting this idea in my head, Rae! I threw in a P alliteration in your honor.
‣ Pairing: Adult!Neteyam (20) x Fem!Omatikaya Reader (19)
‣ Warnings: mentions of bruising and biting, mean Neteyam yet again & a little bit of slut shaming
‣ Word Count: 2.4k
‣ A/N: Did I mention there might be smut in part two? We're not quite there yet it's coming don't worry. This fic has truly taken on it's own life and what was meant to be a two, maybe three parter is looking like it's going to be much longer. I'd like to thank you all on your love for the first part and I hope you all love this part just as much. This was proof read at nearly midnight so if you see any errors, no you didn't. English is in bold italics all other dialogue is in Na'vi.
‣ Na'vi word bank: parultsyìp - term of affection for children
SERIES TAG | SERIES PLAYLIST | JOIN THE TAGLIST | SERIES MASTERLIST
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“Slow down Parultsyìp.”
At Jake’s words, you inhaled a deep shaky breath, attempting to steady yourself and give the explanation he demanded of you. He had said those words to you many times, but now they lacked the softness they had had when you were a child, and his fluency was not developed enough for the hastiness of your speech. His tone was now laced with disappointment that sank into your chest like a knife.
It had taken nearly an hour to get to this point and much negotiation on Jake’s part. While he hadn’t been able to convince you to remove yourself from where your back was firmly planted against the wall of the tent affording you as much distance from Neteyam as you could manage short of leaving the family’s home. You had considered your escape momentarily, but you knew you had no chance of doing so with the three Sully men in between you and the exit.
He had practically had to pry your hand from where it covered your other, clearly concealing an injury that you insisted you didn’t have. Until then you’d been clinging to hope that you could take the fall for the whole ordeal, take your licks and leave. Unfortunately, your shaking frame and wild eyes that couldn’t go more than a few seconds without tracking Neteyam had given you away. Jake had gently pulled your arm towards him, his eyes widening as he saw the imprint of his son’s hand impressed onto your skin in purple and navy.
The Olo’eyktan didn’t have time to comment before he had to intervene as his youngest son barrelled towards his eldest. With a shove out of the Marui, Lo’ak had been sent to the Tsahiks tent to get his nose looked at and to send his mother and sister to tend to the two he declared as “Dumbasses.”
So, you found yourself still pressed as far as you could away from Neteyam, Kiri tending to your bruise as Neytiri tended to her son’s injury, Jake crouched in front of you with his eyebrows raised as he waited for your retelling of the events. “Slow down, try again.”
You took a deep breath, not seeing much of an out for yourself. Whatever marks Neteyam had left on your body, and whatever else he was going to do to you if he had reached you, you had intended to break curfew and inflicted a much worse injury on him. Neteyam had been awfully quiet since his fathers entrance, seemingly finding some spot on the ground more interesting than his father’s questioning of you. You were sure it was only a matter of time before he took his opportunity to drop you in it, so you found no point in lying.
“I was going to stay out past curfew.” You saw Neteyam’s eyes flicker to you from the edge of your vision and tried to stay focused on the man in front of you, nodding for you to continue. “Neteyam tried to get me to come back, but I didn’t want to, and he grabbed me.” You winced, as Kiri pressed a little too hard as she applied the healing balm to your wrist, uttering a quick apology before continuing with a gentle hand.
When you returned to look at Jake, you noticed Neteyam had finally lifted his head and his eyes were on you, his jaw tightened as you met his gaze before he looked away. “I don’t know what happened, I panicked.” You continued. “I just wanted him to let go so I bit him… and I ran.”
You failed to add that for a moment, you felt like you were running for your life, or that you weren’t entirely sure what would have happened if you hadn’t found Lo’ak.
Jake sighed, his hand coming to press against his brows for a moment before he shared a look with his mate.
“Kiri, go check on Lo’ak.” The girl nodded, giving your shoulder a gentle squeeze as she left to follow her father’s order.
Jake rose to his feet, turning to his son. “All that true?”
“Yes sir.”
There’s a silence that sets your teeth on edge. He should just get it done, whatever punishment he could throw your way could hardly be worse than the atmosphere of the Marui right now.
“You two need to grow the hell up. This is starting to get really old.” Jake didn’t look at either of the offending parties, pacing the tent with one hand on his hip, the other pinched at his brow. “Are you guys not tired of this by now? Because I know I’m exhausted.” You sniffed, blinking back the tears that threatened to fall, determined not to cry in front of Neteyam even if it broke your heart to hear the expression of Jake’s disappointment in you.
Jake, along with Neytiri has been a constant in your life from the moment you were born. He was a second father figure to you and when your own father returned to Eywa while fighting alongside him, he was the only one you had left. It hurt to see him look at you with such shame in his eyes.
“You. You are to be Olo’eyktan after me. Do you think this is the behaviour of a clan leader?” He turned to Neteyam, his eyebrow raised as his son struggled to meet his eye. “Indulging in petty little rivalries, causing harm to clan members out of rage?” He gestured to your arm, Neteyam’s gaze following. “To family?”
Neteyam’s eyes met yours, he wanted you to know he meant what he was about to say. “She’s not my fa-“
“Boy don’t even finish that thought.” Jake warned. Neytiri hissed, pushing at her son's forehead. He shook his head, his gaze leaving yours after successfully having lit a fire in you.
“And y/n. Panicked or not, you took it too far. That’s going to leave a scar.”
“All mighty warriors have scars. I did him a favour, maybe now he can stop trying so hard to convince everyone.” The disapproving look you received from Neytiri was worth it to see the tensing of Neteyam’s shoulders as he tried not to react.
“Geez, I don’t know what we’re going to do with you two.”
As it turned out, it didn’t take long for him to figure out what to do with you.
You and Neteyam had received matching punishments, starting with no Ikran for two weeks. It had been the longest you’d been away for Anì since you bonded. You had tried to argue the cruelty of this only to be threatened with a Lo’ak ban being issued if you didn’t stop.
At the suggestion of your mother when she’d joined the other parents’ deliberation, you’d also been stripped of all your duties as warriors during this time and placed on clean up duty for the entire clan each night. It was only a week in and your will to live had begun to slip away, the only solace you found being in the presence of your best friend.
Of course, it had only been fair to punish you equally, but you could not yet be trusted to be left alone together without supervision. Kiri was too busy working alongside the Tsahìk as the raids they had been barred from continued, and Lo’ak had picked up some of Neteyam’s responsibilities, an unspoken reward from Jake for his intervention. Tuk had outright refused, bursting into tears and exclaiming how it was unfair for her to be punished just because they couldn’t get along. That left Spider, whose desperation to be useful to the clan and Neytiri’s personal request – a good move on Jake’s part you had to admit – could not refuse.
You didn’t miss the irony when the three of you received your orders for the day. You were to map out the unoccupied areas of the cave systems, documenting which areas were suitable for expansion. The current layout of High Camp was liveable, but the clan was in need of room to breathe.
Staying several paces ahead of your companions, you tread lightly over the stone path, skipping over the familiar areas you knew from your previous explorations were not suitable. Spider’s presence between you and Neteyam created a distance you were more than comfortable with. Your parents may have had hope that the time you spent with each other would push you closer to one another, or at least closer to tolerating one another but it had been a failure thus far.
If anything, it had proved Spider had a promising future in mediation, having managed to keep the two of you civil.
You had been walking for an hour before you reached your intended destination. A cavern you had come across with Lo’ak in the early days of High Camp. Its walls lined with vines and bioluminescence, a spring at the centre. For a moment you considered that maybe you shouldn’t have brought them here, that you should’ve kept this place a secret between yourself and your friends, but you shook off the doubt.
“Oh, come on man, I’ve seen how Tsani looks at you. There’s no way you haven’t tapped that.” You had tuned out Spider and Neteyam’s conversation for most of the journey, a good choice you found once you started listening in again. Rolling your eyes you walked further into the cavern, running your fingers through the vines.
“I’m not Lo’ak, I don’t have the luxury of passing myself around the clan.” You snorted at that, Neteyam pausing at your interruption, the first sound you’ve made the whole journey. His eyes narrowed as he followed you into the cavern. “Something to say?”
You shouldn’t, you really shouldn’t. It’s not like Spider’s supervision would do anything if you really pissed him off again, but you couldn’t resist when faced with his blatant lies. Girls talked, a lot. And of course, when it was the future Olo’eyktan, there had been some bragging involved.
“I mean of course you don’t but you’ve had the luxury of Tsyal, Kyuna, Yina…” You drew out each name, pleased as Neteyam’s face dropped. You were ready to declare yourself another win when a smirk crossed his face, your stomach sinking at the sight.
“The same luxury you’ve given to Ralu, I’m sure.”
A sharp intake of breath was heard from the cavern’s entrance, and you looked to see Spider open his mouth, his face melting into worry as he attempted to intervene, his hand wrapped around the vines at the mouth of the cavern as if he were holding on for support. You held your hand up, quieting him before he could speak.
“You are wrong.” You bluffed, and badly at that. It was not something you expected him to know. You had only told Lo’ak and Spider and you were sure they would not share the secret of the intimacy you had shared with the hunter after the second successful raid you had been paired with him for. Neteyam laughed, his face emanating the most joyful look you think you’d ever seen on his face in your presence.
“Oh, I’m not sure, I think I heard him right. What was it he said?” He pinched his chin, fake pondering for a moment. “Insatiable… Like a Palulukan in heat.”Heat pooled at your cheeks, the humiliation bringing back that sharp stinging sensation at the corner of your eyes as you tried to keep your promise to never cry in front of Neteyam again.
“Seriously bro? Too far.” Spider moved towards you, struggling to detangle himself from the vines he’d been clinging to in his rush to move towards you and give comfort. You turned to tell him it was fine, to stay out of it because you were more than ready to wipe the smirk off of Neteyam’s face.
That’s when you saw the crumbling rock land by Spider’s foot. “Shit!” Looking up at the mouth of the cave, your fears were confirmed as more, bigger rocks followed the path of the first, detached from their original place by the pull of the vines. There was no time to warn Spider, not in words at least, and your body could move faster. You lunged forward, pushing Spider’s body away from the path of the collapsing cave entrance, not missing the crunch and his cry of pain as he hit the ground.
There was no time for you to react before you felt hands wrap around your waist, your body yanked back with a force that took the wind out of you. Your back hit a hard surface as your legs were knocked out from under you. All you could do was lie there for a moment, chest rising rapidly as you tried to regain control of your breathing.
Blinking rapidly, you tried to sit up, finding resistance against your middle that pulled you back down. Neteyam’s hands squeezed tighter around your middle as he groaned in pain, he’d had a much harder landing than you had when he twisted you out of the way of the falling rubble, his body hitting the uneven rocky ground as you landed on top of him.
Your body froze as the current position you were in registered in your brain, the hands pressed into your waist were not half as bruising as the grip around your wrist, but the rush of your heart and your body screaming at you to get away once more had you scrambling out of his grasp towards the cave exit.
Except there was no longer an exit. “No. No. No.” You shook your head, refusing the reality before you. The wall of rock where the exit had once been, where Spider had just been standing, could not be real. You moved closer, pushing against the blockade with as much force as you could knowing before you had even touched it that it would not work.
Turning back, you faced your fellow prisoner, now sat rubbing at his neck with a grimace. “Please tell me you brought your comm with you.” He didn’t need to answer, even without the look on his face you could see the absence of the device from his neck. Crumpling down to the ground against the newly formed cavern wall, you called out to your friend. “Bro, you good?”
“Yeah.” Spider coughed, his voice quiet from outside of the rock prison. “Thanks for the save.”
“Thank me by getting us out of here.” Your eyes met with Neteyam’s, his holding a similar panic to your own. “Quickly.”
tag list: @inntercreationflower, @lili-of-the-dream, @arminsgfloll,@strawberryclouds22,@aliceantalus,@afro-hispwriter,@gretesstuff
There I was, sitting on my couch leisurely scrolling through a chapter. Once done I go to press “Next Chapter”, only to be befuddled by it lagging. ‘This is fine,’ I thought, foolishly. ‘It’s probably just my internet.’
But then tragedy struck, AO3 said I was moving “too fast”, that I needed to check a little box to confirm that I am not “Lore”. Dread pulsed through my veins. ‘Another attack?’ I thought terrified. ‘I barely made it past the last, how am I to survive another?’
Desperately I reloaded my page, only to be met with denial in the shape of “CloudFare”. Hurriedly I ran towards Tumblr, bursting through the doors I desperately pawed through the ancient texts to see if I was alone in this time of great need. Book after book appeared, detailing the strange occurrences that surround AO3.
In our deepest time of need the refugees and I fled towards DownDetector, hoping for salvation. Sitting by and huddling together for warmth, we made our theories. Hurt No Comfort and Major Character Death allegations flew around.
I sat by and watched, silently praying to the Volunteer Gods and wishing them luck on their grueling journey ahead.
I love you "boring" female characters. I love you ingenues. I love you female characters who aren't "modern" enough. I love you female characters who aren't "badass" enough. iI love you female characters who aren't "empowering" enough. I love you quiet female characters. I love you unappreciated female characters. I love you polite female characters. I love you female characters who "can't appeal to modern audiences." I love you frightened female characters. I love you female characters labeled as not complex just for being nice. I love you female characters who get criticism just for not being their tomboy or femme fatale counterpart. I love you silk hiding steel trope.
you are shocked when your friends reveal their theory: jungkook, your brother’s annoying best friend, has a crush on you. a bad one.
however, the more you become aware of the way he acts around you, the more you begin to wonder…
✧ pairing: jungkook // reader
✧ rating: 18+
✧ genre: brother’s best friend, idiots to lovers, mutual pining, college au
✧ warnings: very idiotic and illogical behaviour from both oc and jk, jk being horribly smitten, unnecessary amount of swearing, intense pining, unrequited feelings, masturbation, explicit sexual content, dirty thoughts, bad humour, mostly unedited and written at 1 am, condescending self-talk, alcohol and drug consumption, a lil bit of blood (but not from violence or sexy times), driving under the influence, also beware that english isn’t my first language, author has no talent for punctuation
[하루 하루, haru haru] is the Korean word for ‘day by day’
summary; a series of drabbles about two best friends raising a child together
pairing; dilf!jungkook x best friend!reader (f)
genre/warnings; angst, longing, pining, mc is a homebody, unrequited love (or is it?), potential idiots 2 lovers, best friends 2 lovers, but there’s a poopy ex-girlfriend, potential toxic relationship, alcohol use, explicit language, eventual fluff, eventual smut
[taglist is OPEN]
part 1; year one
01. the m-word
jungkook’s baby calls you the m-word just as he and his ex-girlfriend return from a night out
02. dr. feel good
you and the doctor in-house have a conversation about life
03. my bestie
jungkook feels guilty for holding you back
04. awkward ohs
you don’t understand why jungkook is suddenly so pissy
05. one year, my love
celebrating the first of many of haru’s birthday with jungkook (and sena)
06. champagne lane
you and jungkook have your own little celebration by the lake
part 2; year 3
07. common law marriage
you and jungkook finally do the thing you’ve been talking about since haru’s first birthday
08. so this is love
you and jungkook get the full disney experience, cliche love story included
09. back to reality
all you and haru want to do is go back home and take a nice long rest
10. silent night
while you wait, unexpected closure finds their way to you
11. day by day
jungkook makes a decision for his family
final; and many more — aka, your family wraps up a decade of love
PLEASE READ AND RESPECT THE AGE RESTRICTIONS ON THE FICS AND THE AUTHOR'S BLOGS, IF YOU AREN'T 18+ DNI. ALSO PLEASE READ ANY WARNINGS ON THE FICS BEFORE INTERACTING.
STEVE HARRINGTON
ONESHOTS
Eyes Half Shut
Laugh Like Lovers, Kiss Like Friends
Both by @crappymixtape
Hands On You by 18+ @usedtobecooler
We Fight To Make Up 18+ by @lovebugism
More Than Just Friends 18+ by @scoopsahoy
Peanut Butter Vibe 18+ by @carolmunson
Filthy Whispers 18+ by @fettuccin-e
SERIES
A Couple Days In (I Call You Baby) // Part 2 18+
Sweetness // Part 2 18+
Both by @upsidedownwithsteve
Dark Honey // Part 2 by @caxde
EDDIE MUNSON
ONESHOTS
Whatta Man 18+ by @loveshotzz
Tug At My Heart 18+ by @wipkinz
Cool With It 18+ by @chainsawmunson
Western Nights 18+ by @rosemaremembrance
Black Dahlias by 18+ @munsons-curls
SERIES
Twenty-Four Hours 18+ by @ghost-proofbaby
I Want You To Want Me // Part 2 18+ by @upsidedownwithsteve
Trapped Under Ice // Part 2 18+ by @munson-blurbs
Honey, I'm Home 18+ by @trashmouth-richie
Don't Stand So Close To Me 18+ by @word-wytch
Trouble // Control 18+ by @imjuststeddietrashatthispoint
series:three tangerines
pairing: fuckboy!yoongi x reader(f)
rating/genre: m (18+) ; brother’s best friend au, implied age gap au ; angst, smut
summary: “when yoongi told you he would be there if you needed anything, this isn’t what he had in mind”
warnings: stated in each installment. minors dni.
mood:moonlight, 28, people - agust d
by readers:inspo | playlist mlist: created 2022/01/04
wanna read in chronological order?:click here
status: ongoing
He wasn’t supposed to be yours. His foolery wasn’t supposed to target you. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
➳ pairing: Jungkook x reader
➳ genre: enemies to lovers, royal!au; angst, fluff, smut
➳ contents & warnings: fuckboy!JK, royal!jk, lies, miscommunication, hints of fake dating but not really, past side character death mentioned, banter, crying, guilt, jealousy, explicit sexual content (such as oral, fingering, making out, (unprotected) sex, cum eating, etc.); and more chapter specific warnings! | 18+
➳ current word count: 100.8k
➳ status: completed
➳ collaborative playlist 🎶
⁂ CHAPTERS
⤞ c&f: water (24.6k)
“To you, you’re water, and he’s fire — but perhaps there’s a grey area where you meet. Where you collide and become steam, evaporating, hot yet calm.”
⤞ c&f: fire (22.8k)
“The flicker’s colours are soothing. This fire is harmless, warm and tender; there are so much worse flames in your very own world.”
⤞ c&f: steam (34.3k)
“You thought you were water, cool as ice; and that he was fire, hot-headed and irresistible. You wanted to evaporate with him, but right now, you’re both burning.“
⤞ c&f: epilogue (19.1k)
“Neither the glowing star above nor the flickering flames will *ever burn as bright as you.”
⁂ TINY BONUS
⤞ c&f asks 💌
⤞ c&f moodboard, made by ivi 🤍
⤞ FAQ (or questions I found fun lol):
When do you always update?
Whenever a part is done. I will try to finish C&F, including the epilogue, by the beginning of May ‘23!
How many chapters will C&F have?
Three + the epilogue! For now, that’s all I’ve planned.
What inspired you to write C&F?
The urge to write a royal JK, Bridgerton and you guys. <3
Were there condoms in the 1800s?
Actually, there were!
jj maybank x fem!kook!shy!reader | the music the band plays in this are songs by beach bunny (that's the music style i envisioned for the reader) - check them out!
content warning: drinking & drug use; anxiety & anxiety attacks
word count: 18k. (the definition of a slow-burn, so just hang in there, okay?)
Blurb: after your band plays a show at kiara's parents' restaurant, you find yourself face to face with jj maybank. shy and socially awkward, you fumble through, knowing that a guy like jj would never want a thing to do with you, right?
“I don’t understand you,” Kiara says. She’s perched atop one of the speakers.
“What’d you mean?” you ask from where you kneel on the floor. You’re detangling wires.
“When you met my parents, I could barely get your name out of you. But now I find out you enjoy singing to a crowd of strangers in your spare time?”
You laugh, shrugging.
“I mean, if I was shy, I think my worst fear would be singing to a group of anybody – let alone strangers,” Kie tells you with a chuckle.
“I guess it’s cause I’m in my element when I’m singing and stuff. I feel calm,” you think aloud.
You’d never really thought of it that much. Performing music always came easy to you. Talking to people, not so much.
The wires finally unknot and you go about plugging them into the correct amps. Kiara had offered to help you and your band set up before your gig. It was at The Wreck – her parents gracious enough to let you guys play – and Kie, being your friend for just over a year, was all for it.
You’d met at school when she transferred to (what she proclaimed as) Kook Academy. Kie felt as if she didn’t fit in, away from the Pogues and amongst the snobs. You felt like an outsider too. Making friends never came easy to you. Your shyness got in the way and made you clam up. The good first half of your years at school were spent having panic attacks during breaktime and hiding behind the sheds to eat lunch alone. One day you made your usual journey there to find Kiara, sat crying. You’d struck up your best attempt at conversation, sympathising immediately. She confided in you about missing her old school, and how this ‘bitch’ Sarah Cameron had started a rumour and ditched her. You nodded through it and offered up eating lunch together, which soon turned into hanging out after school, and overtime Kie pulled you out of your shell. That was when you told her about your band.
The only reason you’d managed to find your band was from the school counsellor’s insistence that you join an extra-circular. When you meekly confessed that you liked playing music and writing songs, she’d thrust you into band practice. Seriously: she literally escorted you there. Benny, who played drums, and Pansy, who played guitar, were your first friends. Pansy had an effervescent charm to her; naturally outgoing but not intimidating. Strangely, she was easy to talk to. Non-judgemental and non-pushy. Never asked you the age-old question ‘how come you’re so quiet?’ Benny was a little like you and it was as if the two of you clocked each other and decided to stick it out. Over time, you both opened up, with Pansy’s assistance of course. The bassist was someone Pansy met (and probably cornered) at a kegger, named Mike. Aloof and mysterious, you spent a great deal of your time wondering if he liked you and a greater deal wondering who he was. Finally, with you on vocals, the band was formed. Pansy lovingly named it The Wallflowers, in your honour.
As soon as Kie found out, she insisted on having you play at The Wreck. All of that led up to today, with the show due to start in two hours.
“I’m so excited to hear you guys play,” she grins. “I can’t believe it took you so long to tell me you were in a band.”
“Just never came up,” you chuckle, standing up. “How many people do you think’ll come?”
“Maybe fifty or so? Dad posted about it on the Facebook page and I put up some posters.”
Your stomach drops. “Posters?”
Kie jumps off the speaker. “Only around the cut! None at Kook Academy, don’t worry.”
The panic eases somewhat with her clarification. You weren’t exactly enthused to have some of your classmates, who seemed to find pleasure in teasing your quietness, coming to see you play. Your band was like your safe spot: where you could express yourself. Pansy practically had to prise the songs you’d written out of your hands at the first practice.
As if summoning her by thought, the afro haired girl waltzes into the restaurant, guitar case slung over her shoulders. “I can’t believe I haven’t been here before! This place is hella cute, Kie!”
“Thanks,” Kiara smiles.
Pansy hops onto the small make-shift stage you’d borrowed from the school’s music department, looking around the room as if she’d conquered the land.
“Yeah, yeah. This’ll do nicely.”
“This your lots’ first gig?” Kiara wonders as she gets up to get you all drinks.
“Nah. We’ve done a couple at my uncle’s bar,” Pansy replies. “Benny managed to get us this thing at a fundraiser too, last month.”
“It’s nice trying somewhere new though,” you say. Pansy nods enthusiastically.
“Especially somewhere this cute!”
Kiara laughs, walking back over with three cups balanced in her hands. You and Pansy take one each and have a sip. Fresh lemonade; perfect for the April weather warmth.
“When’s Benny and Mike getting here?”
“Mike’s hitching a lift with Benny. Said they’ll be about ten minutes or so,” Pansy replies.
She puts down her cup and shrugs off her guitar case. Unzipping it, she retrieves her ‘baby’. You’re surprised she doesn’t start gushing over how beautiful she is. You and Kie keep chatting about how schools nearly finished for the year as Pansy sorts out the cables and amps for her electric guitar. She then props it on the stand.
Just as she said they would, Benny and Mike walk into The Wreck just under ten minutes later. They’re both wheeling in drum pieces. Mike dashes out to grab his bass from the van. You move to help Benny set up his drums.
“You borrow your dad’s van again?” you ask him.
He nods. “Surprised he isn’t making me pay for gas.”
As you sit back on your haunches, screwing in one of the bolts for the kick drum, Benny looks at you. “You look nice, by the way.”
“Thanks,” you smile, not looking away from your handy work.
“New shorts?”
“Nah. Had them a while.”
“Oh. Well, they look nice.”
Benny lingers a moment longer, as if he might say something else, but then must think better of it and goes back to fixing the hi-hat.
“You nervous for tonight?”
“Not more than usual. I know I’ll be fine once we start playing,” you reply.
As the two of you finish setting up the drumkit, you glance off to see that Pansy has trapped Kie in some intense discussion about crystals. You knew it was risky introducing the two of them: two astrology girlies are a deadly combination. Mike sits off to the side, tuning his bass. The speaker’s on and it echoes around the room.
“Sounding groovy,” Kiara’s dad calls from the doorway of the kitchen.
Kie groans. “Dad, nobody says groovy.”
“Well, I do,” he says, winking at her. She rolls her eyes lovingly. “Think it should be a good crowd tonight, guys. Excited to hear you play.”
Pansy beams at him. “Thanks! We’ve been practising like mad for it!”
“Yeah. Pansy didn’t give us much of a choice,” Mike sardonically grins, making everyone laugh.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you!” Kiara says your name to catch your attention. “You remember me telling you about my friends, John B and all that? They’re coming too.”
“They are?” you ask, nervousness spiking.
She nods. “They’re super excited to meet you.”
There must be clear panic on your face because her enthusiasm evens out into a calming smile. “Hey! Don’t worry. They’re super chill.”
“Kie, no offense, but from some of the stories you’ve told me, they don’t sound super chill,” you mumble, going back to fixing another part of the drum into place.
“I mean they’re non-judgemental. Especially Pope. He’s a little weird too. Uh, no offence.”
“Offence,” you reply, though you smile when you do.
Kie calling you weird doesn’t bother you. Any other Kook at school doing it though, and you’d probably burst into tears.
“It’s alright. I’ll just sneak you out after the gig in a suitcase like they do with Taylor Swift,” Benny whispers to you. You laugh, rolling your eyes.
“Great plan. Not obvious at all.”
The rest of the set-up goes to plan. After an hour, the instruments are plugged in and tuned up. Mike and Pansy have practised the bridge to one of the songs about twenty times, making your head begin to pound. Kiara’s dad has elicited Kie’s help in the kitchen with making the buffet-style meal. Their working was to do a pay-for-it-all sort of method: a set price of ten dollars per plate, loaded up as full as you want. Seconds and thirds were another five dollars. It seemed the best way to take orders without interrupting the gig. Kie’s mum comes to prepare the drinks. Bowls of punch for the kids and teens, and beers and cans for the adults.
By the time it comes close for you guys to play, the room is beginning to pack. You sit on the side of the stage, mostly hidden by one of the amps, with Pansy acting as an unofficial barrier for anybody who tries to talk to you. She’s glad to answer any questions, quickly diving into stories about the band name and the songs and whatever else comes to mind. Mike chimes in too, also rather extraverted, and you and Benny cower in the back like lost children in a shopping mall searching for their parents.
There’re the nerves before you play – like always – but the calmness of knowing that as soon as the first chord is strummed, it’ll fade out. You seem to slip into a corner of your brain when you guys play your songs. Like nobody can touch you or judge you. You’re almost able to fully let go.
“You guys ready?” Kiara’s dad asks, walking over to your foursome.
Nope. Nerves are back and in full force. Maybe you’ll throw up right here right now, and they’ll have to call the whole thing off.
“Hell yeah!” Pansy exclaims. She probably thinks she’s talking for all of you.
Kiara’s dad steps onto the stage and goes to the microphone, flicking it on. It buzzes to life, the noise catching people’s attention, and when he taps on it to make sure it’s working, the conversations naturally die down.
“Alright, folks! You guys are in for a treat tonight! The grooviest band from Kildare County is here to perform!”
You see Kie groan and shake her head from the back of the room, making you laugh. It helps ease your nerves. You don’t have time to check if her friends have arrived because you’re being ushered up by Pansy.
“Let’s here it for The Wallflowers!”
The applause from the small crowd that’s gathered feels like a stadium cheering you on. Pansy jumps on stage first, grabbing her guitar, waving happily to the crowd as if she knew each of them personally and had been banking on them to come. Mike gives a casual nod as he steps up and pulls on his bass. Benny slinks behind the drum kit, flashing the briefest of smiles to the crowd.
You focus on the floor and take a quick breath in. Here we go. Then you’re stepping onto the stage, forcing your head up, plastering on a smile, and waving.
Pansy always introduces the band. You can’t bring yourself to form words at the start of the show.
“How we all doing tonight?” She loudly asks, her voice echoing through the speakers.
The crowd give another whoop and cheer. It’s mostly teenagers and young adults, with some older couples and families intermixed. You catch Kiara’s eye and feel your shoulder’s relax a little when she gives a grin and thumbs-up. There’s not enough confidence in you to look at her friends.
Pansy introduces herself then names each one of you, pointing as she goes. Finally, she declares, “We’re The Wallflowers and we’ve got some songs to play for you tonight. You guys ready?”
You don’t take in the response from the crowd. Just close your eyes and wrap your hands around the microphone, searching for the tap of Benny’s drumsticks to count you in. Wait for it. Wait for it…
Two, three, four—
The moment Pansy strums her first chord, and Mike hits his first note, your mouth opens and the words fly out, second nature, without a thought.
“Sometimes I think I see your ghost…”
The anxiety gets shoved down, suppressed by something akin to confidence, and you manage to open your eyes. Your body naturally sways to the music, hands not leaving the microphone until you reach the first chorus.
“If you’re gonna love me, make sure that you do it right. I’ll be under your window in the moonlight.”
Fingers pushing through your hair, sweeping it off your shoulders, you dance a little to the beat. Benny’s hitting, keeping you all in rhythm, and Mike’s bass thrums lowly to keep you in tune. Pansy’s grinning – you see it from the corner of your eye – as she plays her guitar. It makes you smile. Your band; a mismatched group of teens from the sweeter side of Kook Academy. You have no idea how you managed to find them, but there’s no complaints to be heard. As if sinking into the cosiest of beds after a tiresome day, you relax into the music, relax in yourself.
After the first song, it becomes easy. You feel in your element, like a bird returning from migration, and start to engage with the crowd some more. Start having them clap along to the beat when the bridge starts up for the third song. Have them jumping a little to the chorus of the fifth.
“Ain’t she great?” Pansy encourages from them after the sixth song.
The strangers who’ve accumulated to see you, now a little buzzed, applaud and whistle. You feel your face flush hot. At the back, Kiara cheers the loudest, accompanied by several guys’ voices who holler. You look over and it’s then that you meet his eyes. JJ Maybank.
The nerves hit you full force.
Oh God.
Oh God.
How the hell are you supposed to sing another song knowing that he’s watching you? That someone who looks like that is listening to you sing your stupid little love-sick, fantasy-formed songs? You knew he was friends with Kie, but you didn’t think he’d actually show up.
You consider pretending to faint, but that’ll probably be more humiliating than just powering through. To distract yourself, you duck down to take a sip of water from your bottle.
“Come on,” you whisper, closing your eyes. Just one song left, and then you’re home free and can hide under your sheets for a week. Maybe two.
“This next one is mostly me and my girl,” Pansy announces, nodding to you as you rise back to stand. “We’re gonna bring it down a minute, alright? I wanna see lots of loved up couples slow dancing, you hear?”
There’re some chuckles. You’re always in awe of how easily she interacts with the crowd. Pansy begins to pick out the melody on her strings, turning to face you. She smiles reassuringly, nodding to count you in. The anxiety melts away as the words line up ready in your head. Taking a breath, you turn back to the microphone.
“I wither within when I’m without. Baptised in sin and blessed with doubt.”
From the corner of your eyes, you see a phone torch lift into the air. Then you see more and more people do the same, until there’s a powerful white glow shining on yourself and Pansy. You let out a small, bashful giggle. Through the phones, you spot Kiara again, nodding along to the beat and swaying. She’s got an easy smile on her face. You can’t help but glance your eyes to JJ, who’s at her side. His arms are crossed over his chest, face nearly stoic, but he’s swaying too. Looks almost deep in thought. Before he can clock that you’re looking at him, you flit your eyes back to the wall.
“There’s always someone, I’m tryna live up to. I can never get to you. You always seem closer, in the rear view…”
As the song goes on and your voice sings out, your eyes slip shut again. You sink into the words and let your mind drift into thoughts of romance and love. It had never been all that present in your life. Talking to strangers in the chance that they might be your friend was terrifying enough; if you find them attractive, then it’s game over. You practically become mute from nerves. That left you pretty lonely, romantically and otherwise. Besides, guys didn’t tend to go for girls who could barely spit out a sentence in a group project and are as often seen at a kegger or house party as a dodo bird. At least, not the type of guys you liked.
The ending of the song starts to build; Mike picks out a steady beat on his bass. You slowly begin to clap on every other beat. Gradually, the crowd joins in as the melody from Mike continues. Once enough people have joined, you decide to pick up the lyrics.
“You love me. I love you. You don’t love me anymore, I still do. I’m sorry. I’m trying. I hate it when you catch me crying.”
One the final lyric, Benny’s joining in, Pansy in tow. The big finish arrives, the crowd stopping their clapping to whoop and bash their heads to the heavy beat. You repeat the lyrics again, finding your grin once more at the sight of everyone having fun (save for some dwellers and shoe-watchers on the outskirts).
“I hate it when you catch me crying.”
The song comes to an abrupt end. Pansy lets her last note ring out. When the crowd cheers and applauds, you laugh bashfully into the microphone, your face so hot that you worry it might explode.
“Thank you,” you manage out with a smile.
“We’ve been The Wallflowers! Follow us on Spotify and Instagram! Good night!” Pansy shamelessly promotes, waving with both hands in farewell.
You take an awkward bow, Benny waving nervously from behind the drum kit, and then Kiara’s dad is flicking on the main lights. The chatter of the crowd soon kicks up now that you guys are done playing, and Kie’s dad switches back on the usual playlist that buzzes through the restaurant to fill the background’s quiet. You turn to Pansy to find her beaming, practically vibrating on the spot with excitement. She ambushes you and Mike in a group hug.
“You guys did amazing! We fucking rocked! Holy shit! We’re playing here all the time!”
You laugh at her ways, hugging her back tentatively. You’d never been the best with physical affection, which was a perfect match for Pansy, who didn’t seem capable of doing anything without a bear hug.
“It was pretty rad,” Mike agrees, nodding. Cool and calm as ever.
Benny emerges from behind the drums, shaking his head of ginger hair out of his eyes. “I think we sounded alright, yeah,” he says, smiling at you.
“Alright? We sounded fucking amazing!” Pansy screeches.
You flush with embarrassment. “I could’ve hit the note a bit better on—”
“Oh, would you guys stop it and just enjoy the moment!” Pansy berates, pulling back to mirthfully roll her eyes. “The truth is we sounded great, and you know it.”
“She’s right!” Kiara calls from below.
You turn your head and smile at her. Pansy nods in approval, pulling Mike and Benny into a conversation, as you climb down to talk to Kiara.
“You liked it?” you ask.
“Are you kidding? You guys are awesome!”
“Thanks,” you laugh, reluctant to accept the compliment.
The place is starting to fill out now that the gig and serving is done. A few people linger to chat and discuss the show, but most filter out the front and back doors. Gradually, it gets easier to hear the reggae music through the speakers.
“You’ve gotta meet the gang before we leave! Come on,” Kiara says as your chatter about music dies down.
Before you can register her words, she’s grabbing at your wrist and guiding you outside to where the boys are loitering. Your meek protests fall on deaf ears and soon you’re face to face with the trio. Kiara announces your name proudly, as if presenting an award, and you awkwardly wave, barely making eye contact with any of them. Least of all JJ.
“Hey,” John B smiles. He has a nice smile. Friendly and warm. “I’m John B. This is Pope-”
“-You guys sounded great, by the way,” Pope says to you. You feel overwhelmed by the praise and vaguely nod in thanks, hopefully smiling as you do.
“-And JJ.”
At his name, you find yourself looking up at him. He’s taking a hit of his vape and offers you a smile, then he holds out his fist to bump yours. It takes you too long to clock what he means. By the time your fist hits his, he’s halfway retracted his own. It’s already a mess. Oh God. Maybe that spilt-beer puddle on the table is deep enough to drown yourself in.
“I liked that last song.”
You blink out of your panic-filled haze and into his eyes. “The last one?”
“Yeah. The slower one that goes all loud at the end? What’s it called?”
“Rear view.”
He bobs his head, the silence stretching out. Say something else. When you wrote it, maybe. Before your brain can catch up to formulate anything else outside of your blunt response, JJ’s taking another hit of his vape.
“Well…It’s a good song.”
“Thanks,” you cloddishly say.
Oh God. It’s terrible. It’s painful. It’s…
“You wanna come back to the chateau and hang out?” John B wonders.
“The chateau?”
“It’s just this dumb nickname for John B’s house,” Kiara says.
“Hey!”
“You wanna?” she asks, ignoring him.
“Oh, um…”
You glance back inside The Wreck, through the window, seeing you friends chatting animatedly. Benny’s smiling, which is always a good sign. Then you look back to Kiara and her friends. The Pogues, as she often called them. Your eyes fall on JJ last. He isn’t looking at you, instead out to the distance, as if waiting to leave. Yep – you blew it. Good job.
“I’ll pass,” you say, tone apologetic. “Need to talk with my band.”
“Oh. Well, let us know if you change your mind,” Kie smiles, recovering easily.
You nod and accept her offer of a hug. Then you’re walking back into the restaurant, ungainly waving goodbye to her friends. John B and Pope wave back, and JJ nods his head at you in farewell.
As soon as you’re out of ear shot, you look down at the floor and sigh.
Whispering to yourself, you can’t help but say, “good job, me.”
~*~*~*~*~*
The fishing supply shop you’d stumbled upon was more like a shack. There was a mom-and-pops feel to it; a hand painted sign that creaked when it swung in the breeze (the lingering presence of spring, fighting to stay before summer would cast it out). You push through the door, hearing the chime of the bell, and look down at the list your dad had given you. Looking back up to the rows of goods, you feel as if everything is spelt in Spanish. Sighing, you go to start searching for the things on his list. It doesn’t help that he’s been wonderfully vague: lures, hooks, bait. You look at some of the boxes and take one down to inspect the label better. You’re pretty sure these are hooks…
“Hey, you’re Kie’s friend, right? That chick in the band?”
Assuming somebody’s talking to you, you look up, to the right, and come eye to eye with JJ. Your mouth instantly goes dry like the Sahara.
“Yeah,” you say. You’re trying to smile but it’s like the muscles in your face have gone lax. Why are you so Goddamn inept sometimes?
“I’m JJ,” he says, fixing his cap. “We met at The Wreck?”
“No, I know,” you tell him. You don’t mean for it to sound rude – merely stating a fact that of course you know who he is – but through your nerves, it sounds clipped. Like he’s bothering you.
JJ nods, a little awkward himself now. “No, yeah, of course.”
Just as you’re willing up the guts to apologise for your hopeless social skills, JJ’s filling the silence once more.
“You fish?”
“What?”
“Do you like fishing?”
What a weird question. “No.”
“Oh,” he says. He glances around. “Then…Why are you in a fishing shop?”
Oh. Yeah, duh.
“Oh, my dad does,” you say, lifting the list to show him. JJ’s eyes skim it briefly and he nods, quietly letting out an ‘ah’. “Asked me to pick some stuff up for him.”
Oh God, shut up.
“Well, this place is a pretty good spot to go for your gear,” he tells you.
“Do you fish?”
And, good job, you’ve managed to ask a normal question.
JJ smiles and it seems as if he’s relaxing into himself again. It makes you feel easier too; it’s always painful when your awkwardness rubs off on others, like the spreading of a disease.
“Yeah, I do. My whole family were fishermen and stuff. Can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fishing,” JJ says.
Whilst you prepare yourself to ask more about his family, and what sort of fishing he does, JJ’s flashing you a friendly grin and nodding down to your list.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Hope you find everything.”
“Oh. Yeah, thanks. Um, you too,” you reply.
You final have enough control of yourself to smile at him. It might be your delusions contorting your perception, but you’re sure JJ’s smile grows a bit brighter when you do.
Turning away, you go back to staring hopelessly at the box in your hand. The front is raving about the benefits of this style of hook, reeling of jargon as if trying to impress a university professor. It’s useless. Not only are your thoughts now hijacked by overthinking everything you said in that conversation, and the fact that JJ Maybank spoke to you on his own agenda; you still haven’t learnt anything about fishing in the last five minutes. You’ll just get a receipt and your dad can come back and fix whatever mess you make of this seemingly easy errand.
“You gonna buy those?”
JJ’s still there, stood at your side. He’s looking at the box from over your shoulder. You look up to him.
“Yeah?”
“Those ones are pure crap. No, no, you want the good stuff,” JJ tells you, shaking his head.
He takes the box from your hand and replaces it with another, from a higher shelf. Tapping on the cover, he begins to read off some of the hooks’ perks (who knew there could be so many?).
“I mean, they’re a little more expensive but you get more bang for your buck, you know? Those other ones’ll snap after like four days on the water.”
When he looks back into your eyes, he must see the blank look behind them. He laughs. “Just trust me on this.”
“Okay,” you say, finding a laugh.
“Here, what else’s on your list?” JJ asks, taking the scrap of paper from you.
You don’t complain. Being in his orbit feels like you’re seeing the earth from space; even if it’s just him helping you buy fishing gear, there’s no way you’re going to pass up this opportunity.
JJ keeps talking, jovial in tone, casually dropping reams of information and tips about fishing. As he starts moving around the store in search of items, you blindly follow, nodding along, though only half understanding what he’s saying. It just feels nice to hear him talk. He has a nice voice; one that easily brings a smile. There’s the strong, Carolina accent that shines through, intermixed with slang that’s robust on the cut.
“So, what band are you guys a tribute for?” JJ wonders as he inspects different wires.
“What’d you mean?”
“You know, like who’s music are you playing? I haven’t heard it before.”
“They’re originals,” you say. His head whips around, eyes wide.
“No way.”
“Yeah. I, uh, wrote the songs myself,” you admit, modest.
“You wrote them? That’s insane!”
“Well, they’re not Fleetwood Mac or anything—”
“—Well, nobody’s Fleetwood Mac, for starters,” JJ interrupts, turning back to the wires. “And not anybody can write songs. I sure as hell can’t. Fucking hopeless with words.”
“I find that hard to believe,” you laugh. You feel as if you’re inching out of your shell, the longer you talk to him.
His shoulders, strong and built, shrug under the cotton of his tee shirt. On the back, there’s an emblem: Kildare County Boating Supplies. “Born with my foot in my mouth. Never know when to shut the hell up, half the time.”
“Oh, same here.”
JJ laughs. He glances over his shoulder at you. The crinkles on his cheeks from his smile give him a boyish look of innocence. “Oh, you’re funny, huh?”
“Not usually,” you reply.
“Nah, I doubt Kie could be friends with someone who didn’t have a sense of humour,” JJ lightly argues.
He seems to have decided on a wire and picks up a box, handing it to your building pile stacked up in your arms.
“I think we got it all,” he says, checking over the list. It’s fickle how the term ‘we’ makes your heart stutter.
The two of you head to the counter, gently dumping all the items. You request two bags, knowing you’ll need as much help as you can get to lug it all home. JJ’s still lingering by you. The cashier begins to scan through the items.
“Oh, shit,” JJ mumbles, grinning. He’s looking at a pocketknife on the counter; picks it up to inspect it.
Confused, you ask, “what is it?”
“It’s the latest model,” JJ says.
“There’s different models of pocketknife?” you hear yourself ask.
JJ chuckles, still inspecting it. You notice how the cashier is eyeing him up, like he might just slip it into his pocket, then and there. He probably doesn’t catch the glare you shoot at him.
“These guys make the best ones. My dad gave me his old one and it lasted for like ten years. Damn.”
Your eyes glance down to the box he took it from, checking the price. It’s more than what you’d pay for a pocketknife, but apparently it seems to be worth the money. JJ eventually puts it back.
“That everything for you, dear?” the cashier checks.
JJ seems to take it as his cue to leave. Shoving his hands in his short pockets, he flashes you a smile and a nod.
“Well, I’ll see you around, Kie’s friend.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Course,” JJ shrugs. He nods to the cashier in farewell, too, then heads out the door.
Looking to the cashier, who’s still waiting for a reply, then down to the box of pocketknives, you smile, overcome with an idea. After you’ve paid up and packed your bags as quickly as you can, you thank the cashier before darting out the store, glancing around for JJ. He hasn’t gone very far, walking towards the docks. You remember Kie telling you about Pope’s dad Hayward, and how he lived on the waterside, and you put two-and-two together. Before the small bout of adrenaline can leave, along with your confidence, you jog over to him, calling his name.
JJ turns around and smiles, a little confused. “You good?”
“Here,” you say, digging about in your short pocket to retrieve the knife. You hold out the pocketknife to him, hands shaking a bit. “As a thank you.”
He looks down at it. Then, he begins to frown. “Why’d you do that?”
“As a thanks,” you repeat. You’re still holding it out. Heart pounding in your ears. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all. You overstepped. He was just being helpful and you made it weird, like always.
JJ scoffs, shifting his weight. He glances off to the water. Looking down at you, jaw somewhat tense, he says, “I don’t need your charity, you know?”
Frowning, you reply, “it’s not charity. It’s…A sign of gratitude, I guess?”
He eyes the knife like it might be laced with Anthrax. Okay, this is getting slightly ridiculous.
“Look, will you just take it? I’ve got no use for it, so it’ll just go to waste if you don’t,” you say impatiently.
JJ’s eyes flash up to yours. There’s a twitch in his cheek, threatening a smirk. Chuckling quietly, he reluctantly accepts the gift.
“Okay, I will. Uh, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” you say, nodding. Good. That was good. The only problem is that now that you’ve done that, the interaction has come to a natural end, and you have nothing else to say to fill the gaps. “Well…Have a good day.”
Chuckling, he nods, waving you off. “You too.”
The moment your back’s turned to him; you exhale out the lingering nerves. Your smile doesn’t fade, turning almost giddy from the fleeting conversations you’d shared. It’s brought you too much joy that JJ just accepted a pocketknife off you; it’s practically pathetic. Nonetheless, you don’t berate yourself too much. Instead, you walk home, replaying the way JJ chuckled and smiled down at you when you let your patience slip.
~*~*~*~*~*
As an introvert, you’ve managed to find your way out of plenty of social gatherings. Award ceremonies? Stomach bug. Presentations? Stomach bug. House parties? You guessed it – stomach bug. Keggers? Any ideas…?
One gathering that you’ve never been able to get out of - nor have ever been able to say no to, out of guilt - are birthdays. Any sort of birthday celebration, no matter how big or how small, and you feel have to go. You almost feel like it’s your duty to. Friends were a rarity in your life, like finding emeralds and gold, and you didn’t want to risk it by making it seem like you didn’t care about someone’s special day. Even if parties made your stomach feel like it was filled with led and you barely opened your mouth in fear that you might puke with anxiety, you force yourself to any that you’re invited to.
For Pansy, it was always a house party. Some big, ridiculous do that her rich parents would throw. Streamers and themes and a hired DJ. A huge, ridiculous cake that barely got eaten and party favours that were practically insulting in price. She didn’t care all that much about it, but she was an only child and boy do rich parents like to spoil their only off-spring. It was sort of sweet though. Her parents weren’t trying to buy her affection: they genuinely did care for her, and just wanted her to have a good time. So, when Pansy’s birthday rolled around, at the beginning of June – just after school finished up for summer – you get the dreaded text:
Birthday bash on Friday night: be there or else.
A knife emoji, and then…
Love ya!
You groan and toss your head back, flopping onto the pile of pillows on Kiara’s bed. Her phone chimes a moment later and, after reading the text, she flashes you a pitiful smile.
“Pansy’s birthday party?”
“Mhm,” you hum.
“It’ll be fun!”
Unconvinced. “Mhm.”
“Come on. We can get ready together and pre-drink together and get drunk together. It’ll be great.”
Easing yourself up reluctantly, you cock a brow at her. “Really?”
“Yes! It’ll be great,” she repeats, firmer as if in promise. The ding of her phone prompts her to read the second message. You watch as her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh! She invited the Pogues, too.”
“Like the band?” you ask tiredly, rubbing your forehead.
You wouldn’t be all that surprised. One year her parents managed to bag ‘The 1975’ for a birthday-shoutout-video-call. Don’t ask.
Kiara rolls her eyes. “Like JJ, John B and Pope: The Pogues. Dumbass.”
Your eyes shoot open.
JJ.
Hoping to sound nonchalant, you watch Kie type away on her phone as you ask, “well, you don’t think they’ll wanna go though, right? I mean, didn’t you say they hate Kooks?”
There’s the telling whoosh noise that a text has been sent. She looks up at you and shrugs. “They probably will. They might hate Kooks but they love open bars.”
Great. No, yeah, that’s great. You’ll run into JJ again and the conversation will be doubly as awkward and you’ll make a fool of yourself, like you always do, and you’ll go drown in the pool that’s overflowing with your tears of embarrassment. No, great. That’s just—
“Great.”
The theme for Pansy’s seventeenth turns out to be 2000s. She’s dressed up as Regina George from Mean girls – the scene where she has circles cut out of her white vest top, showing through her pink bra. She sends you a picture of her costume on the night, whilst you’re at Kiara’s getting ready.
“Woah. She looks amazing,” you grin, showing the phone to Kie.
She’s sat on the bed, working on her eye make-up. Momentarily glancing away from the mirror to check your phone, she smiles and gives her mark of approval. You text Pansy back, gushing over her costume, and then follow it up with a blatant lie: so excited for tonight! Tossing your phone to the side, you look in the mirror and get back to working on your hair, portioning it in two to style it into pigtails. You’ve dressed up as one of the Powerpuff Girls. Namely, Bubbles: the sweet, quiet, innocent one. In many ways, you feel as though you are Bubbles. The costume’s fun and reminds you of childhood.
“John B just text me,” she tells you, glancing down at her phone that’s pinging away. “Says they’re still at the chateau and will probably show up later. I reckon we’ll be ready to leave for Pansy’s in ten.”
“Are all of them going?” you ask. You’re not sure what you want her answer to be.
“Yep. Even Pope,” she says.
You look back into the mirror and swallow your nerves. It’ll be fine. It’ll be great, just as Kiara promised. Reaching for your bottle of cider, you down the rest and finish getting ready.
It takes about fifteen minutes to walk to Pansy’s house from Kiara’s. The two of you start up the path towards the house. It’s impressive. Modern and ageless, with contemporary finishes and floor-to-ceiling windows on nearly every wall. Painted exuberant white, the place stands as a monument to money. There’s a fountain in the front garden and an electronically powered front gate that’s been left open for the night. The two of you head up the stairs to the front door. Music is pulsing, sneaking out the house and into the night, and you take a breath in preparation. Kie seems to notice and takes your hand, smiling and giving it a squeeze of reassurance. With that, you remind yourself why you’re putting yourself through this hell. Pansy’s birthday.
It's rammed and loud and overstimulating in every way. There’re couples making out on the coach and friends dancing near a speaker and two guys arguing loudly by the window. Empty cups and bottles, an abandoned bong on the coffee table (another perk of having rich parents: they let you do whatever you want). Somebody’s already passed out on the stairs, with other party goers narrowly dodging them as they rush off to the bathroom or in search of a quiet room. Kiara guides you through the house, through the kitchen, in search for Pansy. Your hand never leaves hers. The pounding of the bass is so loud that it’s hard to tell what’s your heartbeat and what isn’t.
You spot Mike first. He’s lent on the counter of the island, chatting to a girl you don’t recognise.
“Hey, Mike,” you say, finding your smile from the familiar face. He looks to you and grins.
“Hey!” his low voice booms. He wraps you in a quick hug. “Wasn’t sure if you were gonna come?”
“You know me,” you smile, queasy. “Anything for Pansy.”
“Amen,” he nods, tipping his beer in approval. He greets Kie, having met her at The Wreck the other week.
“You know where Pansy is?”
“Out back, last time I checked,” he replies, nodding to the backdoor.
You thank him and drag yourself and Kie out the patio doors and into the garden. Scanning the area, you try and spot your friend. There’s people swimming in the pool, cannonballing in, and others dancing to the music. Someone throwing up. A bong being passed around. Beer pong and drinking Jenga and…It’s chaos. Keep it together.
Then, you spot Pansy. She’s lent against the shed, chatting away to a half-arsed Juno. Walking over, the moment she clocks you and Kiara, the other conversation is ditched. Throwing her arms out – already drunk and probably high – she gives a cheer of your names.
“You made it!”
“Better late than never,” Kiara grins.
You let her hug you; almost have the life squeezed out of you in the process. “Happy birthday, Pansy.”
“Damn right, it’s a happy birthday,” she grins. “Look at this rager!”
Kiara nods in approval, taking it all in. “Having fun?”
“I am now!” Pansy exclaims. “Maybe now that you’re here, Benny’ll finally show up.”
“Benny’s here?” you ask.
“Mhm. I lost him about five minutes in, though. He’s probably hiding under the stairs, poor thing,” she says, shaking her head. Looking to Kie, she asks, “did the Pogues come along?”
“They should show up at some point,” Kie nods, smiling.
“Oh, yes! Finally, my plan can come into action!” Pansy says. She then gives a laugh that borders on psychotic.
You frown, befuddled. “Your plan?”
“My set-you-up-with-JJ plan? Only been waiting since the fifth grade,” she buzzes.
Your face drops. Your stomach plummets. All your internal organs flop out of your body and land on the floor, with your heart last.
One too many drinks in Pansy, and she casually lets slip of your biggest, most pathetic secret on earth, to none other than one of JJ’s best friends.
“What?” Kiara practically shouts. She gapes at you.
Pansy’s face quickly switches from excitement to dread, as her brain seems to catch up. “Wait…Shit, I wasn’t supposed to say that, was I?”
“Nope,” you say, through gritted teeth.
Hold it together. Hold it together.
“JJ?” Kiara checks. She’s staring at you as if you’ve just done an Irish jig.
You don’t reply. Not sure you can. You swallow thickly and stare down at the floor.
Then, scarily calm, you say, “I think I’m gonna go get another drink.”
Neither of them stops you – Pansy already distracted and Kiara practically in shell-shock – and you slink back into the house. You grab the first thing you find (another bottle of beer) and frantically search for a bottle opener, cracking it open. Downing half of it, you look around for Mike. He’s not where he was stood before. You have no idea where the hell to even start looking for Benny. You finish the bottle and then look for another. In the process, you decide that having a shot of vodka might be alright and take a swig or two right from the bottle. Okay, maybe a little more than a shot.
There’s a hand on your arm, tugging, and it catches your attention.
“There you are!” Kiara sighs in relief. “Look, it’s okay that you have a crush on JJ. If anything, it’s better than okay! It’s kinda sweet! I just wish you’d told me—”
“Kie, please, stop,” you say, shaking your head. “I really don’t want to talk about this right now, alright? Pansy didn’t mean to say that. I don’t…It’s not even true!”
She pulls a face as if to say ‘yeah, right’ but doesn’t argue. “Well…If you ever wanna talk about it—”
“--I really don’t—”
“--But if you ever do! You can, alright?”
She means it. You can hear it in her voice and see it on her face. Sighing, you nod. She smiles at that.
“Look, I’m not gonna tell him, okay? I would never do that,” she assures you. You smile, nodding once more. Your stomach feels like a mosh-pit.
“Good. Now, come on! I promised you a great night and I meant it.”
Kiara ropes you into a game of drinking Jenga. At some point, Pansy joins, then Mike. After three rounds – and two shots to get out of doing dares – you begin to feel weird. It’s then that you realise, as the world becomes fuzzy and your thoughts start to mush, that all the alcohol you’ve been necking is hitting at once.
Oh no.
You excuse yourself to go find the bathroom, hoping to have a moment to pull yourself together, and despite Kiara’s instance you tell her not to follow. You just need a moment alone to calm down your heartrate. Why does it suddenly feel like it’s going to beat out of your chest now? You’ve been to Pansy’s house plenty of times before, but you suddenly feel lost. People are crammed into every room like sardines, all of them strangers, and you can’t grasp your bearings. The alcohol isn’t helping, nor the panic, and the longer your search for a bathroom or an empty space, the more you feel like the walls are closing in. At some point, you end up in a corridor of the house. It’s a little quieter than in the main rooms, a few bodies lining the walls, some girls sat on the floor chatting. The only light is a single bulb hanging above. At the sight of you stumbling down the hall, one of the girls must think you look as bad as you feel.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asks.
You nod, trying to smile, but you’re honestly not sure what expression is on your face anymore. The bathroom door is locked. No. The girl is coming up to you, maybe thinking she’s being helpful, but you hate strangers and you hate conversations and you hate parties and
Why did you come?
You’ve spoken about five words to Pansy all night! She’d understand if you didn’t; probably wouldn’t even miss you. Great. Something about that thought has tears stinging your eyes, and the random girl who’s made it her new mission in life to help you is only spurred on. She’s shushing you and it makes it all worse: you’re so embarrassed. If there’s anything you dread more than talking to strangers, it’s crying in front of them. Is this a nightmare?
The sound of your name reflexively has you turning your head. It’s JJ.
“Jesus, you don’t look too good,” he says.
Great.
His eyes flit to the girl uselessly trying to calm you down from your panic attack. He ushers her off you, half-arsedly thanking her, and then he’s guiding you from the hallway and through a door. It’s a bathroom. Maybe the door you’d been trying earlier wasn’t a bathroom? It’s all so confusing. You didn’t even know JJ was here; just assumed the Pogues hadn’t bothered showing up. You suddenly realise that you’re still hyperventilating, in front of your crush of all people, and then you remember that Pansy let slip to Kiara that you have a crush on JJ and…
You’re shaking your head, waving him off. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Sorry. I’m sorry! You can go back to the party!”
That would all be believable if you weren’t gasping out the words. JJ doesn’t listen. He doesn’t even acknowledge that you’ve spoken. You don’t bother to try again. The ground seems a good place to go. Solid and unmoving. You slide down the bathroom wall and gasp in air. It won’t seem to stay in your lungs, as if fighting to escape, and you start to cry.
JJ’s saying your name in a soothing voice. He’s squatting in front of you, watching as you pull your knees up to your chest. God, this is humiliating.
“We’re gonna play a game, okay?”
A game?
“Yeah, yeah. It’s called the ‘five things’ game, alright?”
“I don’t…I don’t understand…” you cry, shutting your eyes.
Playing a game is the last thing you need right now. You just need to breathe. Why can’t you breathe?
“I’ll go first, alright? I have to name five things beginning with…Gimme a letter,” he says.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You write songs, for Christ’s sake,” he laughs, tone gentle. “Come on. One letter. That’s all I’m asking.”
You sort of want him to shut up, so you scramble through your thoughts. “T.”
“Okay, alright. I have to name five things beginning with ‘T’,” JJ says.
All you can hear is your panting for a while. You feel lightheaded.
“Um…Toothbrush. That’s one. How about…”
You crack open your eyes. He’s looking around the room. You notice his cap’s abandoned on the floor. Move your eyes to his legs, mostly bare save for his shorts, and to his chest.
“Tee shirt,” you offer, breathless. JJ’s head whips around to look at you. He smiles encouragingly.
“Yeah, tee shirt. Okay, three more.”
You begin to glance around the room. Stomach still rising and falling, you try and search for something beginning with ‘T’. It’s suddenly become the most important thing in the world.
“Toilet,” you say as your eyes drift over to it. “And toilet brush.”
“Damn, you’re on a roll,” JJ chuckles. You barely manage a laugh. Your head doesn’t feel as fuzzy anymore. “Just one more.”
It’s then that you realise he’s had a hand on your knee the whole time. Rubbing slow, concentric circles on the skin. You start to focus on the feeling of it, looking down as he does it. He’s gone back to searching the room, as if he’s forgotten he’s doing it.
“Touch.”
JJ frowns, looking back to you, then following your gaze to his hand. His smile is almost shy. “Yeah, that counts. Touch.”
The panic attack has eased off. Your lungs are finally doing their job, filling with air and holding it for longer than a millisecond. Exhaling slowly, closing your eyes, you tilt your head back against the wall.
“Better?” JJ wonders.
“A little. Thank you, for helping I mean,” you say.
“Don’t mention it. I know how shit it feels. I’ve had my fair share of panic attacks,” JJ tells you.
There’s a shuffle as he moves to sit on the floor. He retracts his hand from your knee and you immediately miss the feel. Opening your eyes, you look at him with a frown.
“You have?”
“Mhm,” he nods. “John B had to calm me down almost everyday at one point. It sucked.”
“Is that where you learnt that trick?”
“Yeah,” JJ says, offering a small smile. “It’s a good distraction.”
You nod. You’ve never tried it before. Always found that you could ground yourself with your breathing, but everything out there was too much, too crazy, for you to focus. Correcting how you sit, crossing your legs (the skater skirt smoothing out over your thighs), you sigh and hang your head.
“I hate parties.”
JJ chuckles. “No kidding.”
You snort, shaking your head.
“But hey, least you look pretty though.”
You look up. There’s very little energy left in you to overthink what he’s just said. No room left to panic.
“I do?”
“Yeah,” he smiles. “I like your costume.”
“Thanks,” you mumble. Your fingers move down to mess with the hem of your skirt.
“Who’re you meant to be?”
You can’t help but bark out a laugh. “How can you like my costume when you don’t even know who I am?”
JJ laughs, after seemingly being taken aback by your outburst. “I dunno. I like that skirt on you.”
“I’m Bubbles. From the Powerpuff Girls,” you tell him as your laughter dies down.
Realisation flashes across his face as quick as a comet darting through the sky. “Oh! Oh shit, of course!”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Hell yeah!” JJ grins. “Mojo Jojo was my favourite character as a kid!”
“Ugh, he’s iconic,” you groan happily, tossing your head back.
“That one episode, when he gets told off by the professor,” JJ reminisces excitedly.
“I loved that one!”
The two of you laugh.
“Who’re you meant to be?”
“Um…Well, I didn’t get the memo it’s a costume party,” he admits with a wince, smiling.
“You could say you’re from…The Hangover?” you offer after a moment’s thought.
JJ cringes. “That might be worse than just saying I forgot to wear a costume.”
You laugh, nodding. “True.”
There’s a brief moment where the two of you just look at one another, smiling contently. You always knew JJ was pretty (as Pansy so graciously revealed to Kie earlier), but up close, under the white light of the bathroom, he’s gorgeous. A cute smile, shining eyes. The most perfect jawline that you could write reams of songs about just on its own.
“Think this is the most you’ve ever spoken to me,” JJ points out.
Your smile turns solemn, nodding. When you reply, you talk quietly, as if revealing a secret.
“I’m not very good at talking to people.”
“Can I ask you a question, then?”
“Mhm.”
“Why’d you come to this house party? Doesn’t really seem to be your scene,” JJ asks.
Nodding, affirming his theory, you shrug and look down at his feet. He’s wearing black boots, shiny and heavy.
“It’s Pansy’s birthday, and she’s always been a big birthday fan. She’s one of my closest friends and she’s always there for me; always has my back. So, I figure, I can hack one night of the year at a stupid, over-the-top party for her. And usually I can…But I guess, I just couldn’t tonight.”
As you finish talking, you lift your head to take in JJ’s reaction. He’s nodding, a small smile still on his face.
“You’re a good friend.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You are,” he affirms. Your face goes warm and you shrug. Laughing, he adds, “you’re also shit at accepting compliments. I noticed that when we first met after your gig.”
You chuckle. Looking up to the ceiling, you feel your confession bubbling out of you, likely driven by the alcohol. “Yeah, well, all what I remember after the gig is thinking that you didn’t like me.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” you say, chuckling in self-deprecation. You meet JJ’s eyes, see the confusion shining in them. “You sorta seemed uninterested to talk to me. Which is fine, I figured you would be. But after the fishing shop - and now tonight - I’m starting to think I was wrong?”
“Yeah, you’re wrong,” JJ laughs. He’s not laughing at you, though. It’s almost as if he’s laughing at himself.
He rocks his head back and nods at the ceiling, pursing his lips in thought.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like that, at The Wreck. It’s just…Kiara told me you were kinda quiet, before we met, and I’m kind of…not. I didn’t wanna freak you out or anything, so I tried to be more chill. Guess it had the opposite effect though.”
There’s a selcouth feeling in your body when JJ speaks. It’s like something in your chest lurches. In your stomach, there’s a feeling like the butterflies you get before a show, but they’re sweeter and gentler, as if calming down in preparation to cocoon. As if the nerves are fading and you’re desensitised.
He looks back down at you, right into your eyes, and you wonder if he can see into your thoughts. If he can see how much you like him.
“Well, I think we’re friends now, so, no hard feelings,” you tentatively say. JJ cracks a smile, nodding.
“Yeah. We’re friends,” he assures you.
Strange, how something that you thought would bring you so much joy only makes you feel a little bit worse than before.
~*~*~*~*~*
It’s dark in the chateau, the kitchen counter only illuminated by a single orange-hued lamp. You’re halfway measuring out some sugar when you think you hear a noise. The creak of a floorboard. Frowning, you hesitantly start towards the corridor, where the sound’s coming from. Maybe something got in the house? A raccoon?
JJ rounds the corner the same time you do, almost bumping into you. He lets out a yelp and grabs at his heart, the same time you jump back about ten feet.
“Jesus Christ,” he gasps, laughing. “You scared the shit outta me.”
“Sorry,” you smile in apology (as if he hadn’t made you almost crap yourself too).
“Thought you were Big John’s ghost or something,” JJ mumbles, rubbing at his face tiredly.
You frown, walking back to the counter where you’d previously been. “Are you saying I look like John B’s dad?”
“No you- That’s not – You look very womanly-”
He cuts off his rambles with a sigh, shaking his head as he laughs at himself. Running his fingers through his bedhead, he seems to come to a realisation that you’re not usually at the chateau.
“Wait? What are you even doing here? It’s late.”
“Went surfing with Kie. Got tired, took a nap on the pull-out, woke up about ten minutes ago,” you explain, keeping your voice soft as to not wake-up John B.
“Can’t fall back asleep?” JJ asks.
“Wide awake.”
“Damn. Hate when that happens. How come you’re in the kitchen?”
“Thought I’d make brownies,” you shrug. You pick up the box of cocoa powder and the bag of flour, showing them to JJ. “You guys have all the ingredients.”
“God, brownies sound so good right now,” JJ moans, tossing his head back.
Laughing, you go back to measuring out flour with a cup. JJ goes to the fridge. The white light shines bright on his face. There’s the indent of the pillow on his cheek. His eyes are squinting against the light, a little bleary from sleep.
“Come to think, the last time I had brownies, they were these amazing edibles,” he says as he searches for something to take.
“Oh? Were they good?”
“So good,” he says. JJ grabs a carton of juice and hops onto the far counter to sit, taking swigs.
“I probably have enough stuff to bake a batch of edibles too, to be honest,” you offer after a moment’s thought. Looking to him, hands dusted with flour, you ask, “you got enough to spare?”
“Hell yeah!” JJ grins.
Ever since you and JJ bonded at the party, you feel as though there’s been a barrier removed. He isn’t as scary as you thought he would be. Easier to talk to than you imagined.
“I’ve always kinda wanted to try them,” you admit.
“Wait, have you ever smoked before?”
You chuckle down at the bowl, then sarcastically ask, “What do you think?”
“Really?” JJ gapes. “I thought you’d be all for it. It’d probably help you relax and stuff…”
He almost cuts himself off, as if trying to reel in his words. “I…I mean…”
You can’t help but glance to him, face serious as you deadpan, “what do you mean? I’m like the most laid-back person ever.”
JJ’s crystal-clear panic that he’s genuinely offended you has you breaking your façade with a quiet laugh.
“I’m joking. I’m probably the most high-strung person ever. Feel like weed was kinda made for me.”
JJ laughs too, giving a small sigh of relief.
“I’m kinda curious to see what you’re like high,” he tells you.
“Me too. Hopefully it doesn’t have me bouncing off the walls,” you say.
“Nah. That’s coke that’ll do that to you. Hard to imagine you on coke.”
“You tried it?” You wonder, non-judgemental as you ask.
JJ shrugs. He has another swig of juice. The muscle tee he’s wearing hangs lose on his built frame.
“Once or twice. My dad’s sorta a junkie though. Put me off, you know?”
“Shit. I’m sorry,” you softly reply.
JJ hadn’t mentioned his family a lot, but neither had you and neither does anybody. You’d heard the passing news of JJ’s dad being involved in some sort of pharmacy robbery in the county for Oxytocin, but never dug about. It wasn’t any of your business, and the malicious world of medicine and addiction wasn’t some black and white picture like the Kooks at school liked to paint it out to be.
Shrugging it off, clearly not in the mood to get into it, JJ asks, “was that fishing stuff you got for your dad useful?”
“Yeah,” you say. You’ve started on the wet ingredients now: cracking eggs into a measuring jug. “His exact words were, ‘I never knew you had such a gift for fishing’. I think I’m gonna become his fish-fetching-bitch now.”
JJ barks out a laugh. “You know, I never expected you to be funny.”
You roll your eyes as you begin to fold the wet ingredients into the dry. “I’m not.”
“You are. You’re also cute when you bake.”
“Can you not compliment me?” you nervously chuckle. “It makes me uncomfortable. Not cause of you, it’s just…I’m not good with the complimenting thing.”
“Too late. It’s my life’s mission to get you to actually accept a compliment without going all-”
You catch him do an overemphasised impression of you becoming flustered. You scrunch your nose in light-hearted disapproval. He grins at you as he snaps out of the character.
“-You know?”
“Well, I hope you’ve got a long life,” is all you say. “Wanna grab the goods?”
JJ hops off the counter with newfound fever, making you laugh. When he returns, he stands beside you, juice carton ditched to the side. He smells like soap and weed and smoke from the bonfire. You go to grab the plastic bag from him but he pulls it out of reach, looking down at you in disapproval.
“What?”
“This is Kildare’s finest bud,” JJ scorns. He gently places it in your hand. Cupping your fingers around it, he envelopes your hand with his. His touch is warm. “You gotta treat it with care. It’s the meaning of life itself.”
“I thought the meaning of life was enlightenment,” you mumble, distracted. You’re pretty sure your heart might beat out of your chest.
“Meh. Depends who you ask.”
He takes his hand off yours and let’s you open the bag. The smell of marijuana hits, full force. Before you go to mix it in, you need to check the brownie base is up to scratch. You’ve been perfecting your recipe for years. Dipping in a finger, you suck it clean, debating the flavour. Unsure, you grab for the spatula and scoop some batter up, holding it out to JJ without thinking. You’re a little surprised to catch him staring at you.
“Wanna try?”
For once, JJ doesn’t say anything. Just takes the spatula and has a lick. His eyes widen. “Oh my god. That’s so good.”
“It’s alright.”
“It’s amazing.”
“I’ve made better,” you find yourself saying, and maybe he has a point about the whole compliments’ thing…
You tip in some of the bud as JJ finishes licking the spatula clean.
“You’re like a triple thread, aren’t you?” JJ says.
As you mix, moving to prop the bowl against your waist, cradled in your arm, you frown.
“A triple thread?”
Listing with the spatula, he says, “She can bake, she can sing—”
“—she’s socially inept,” you sarcastically finish.
“You’re not socially inept,” JJ says. When he dips the spatula back in for a second taste, you don’t bother fighting back. “Just a little quiet, is all.”
“No, no, I’m like a lost cause,” you chuckle. “I’m fine with it, for the most part. I just don’t like not knowing what people are gonna ask me. I get all nervous, thinking I’m gonna make a fool of myself or something. It all just snowballs until it’s easier to just…not try.”
JJ nods, listening, licking the plastic utensil clean.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s good that you’re a quiet person. Helps balance out the world,” he offers.
“How’d you mean?”
“Like, I’m one end of the spectrum, yeah?” He gestures wildly to one side of the kitchen. “And then you’re the other.”
His theatrics create an imaginary continuum. He lists his friends, labelling them on this make-believe spectrum, doing it in such a way that has you laughing at his antics.
“Think people sometimes forget being quiet isn’t the same as being boring,” JJ thinks aloud.
You smile. It’s a nice way to summarise it. You’re not a rock: you enjoy spending time with friends and you have hobbies and interests. When you feel in control of the situation, you can even tolerate crowds. But when you don’t speak a lot, loiter around at parties or keggers, and get nervous to read in front of a class, people make an assumption that you’re dull. There’s not much coming out of your mouth so there can’t be much going on in your head. It’s almost a relief to hear from JJ, of all people, that not everybody thinks that way. Makes your heart do funny things, as if he didn’t already have enough power over your emotions.
JJ leans in to take one more scoop from the bowl. As he does, his shirt slips forward enough for you to catch a glimpse of a hickey on his collarbone. Fresh purple, not yet bruising. It hurts more than you expect it to. A clear-cut reminder of who he is, and who you’re not, and who you never will be. That JJ sees you nothing more than a friend – Kie’s friend – and that he’d never look your way because…Well, because why would he?
You distract yourself by looking back down into the bowl, continuing to mix.
The two of you finish preparing the brownies and set them to cook in the oven. As you wait, you sit on the opposite counter to him, falling into a conversation about surfing and snacks. He’s fighting for justice for peanut-butter jelly sandwiches whilst you’re battling for the recognition of Nutella sandwiches. It’s easy and comfortable, and as the sun slips into view through the window – its rays chasing up the floorboards – the brownies cook and cool, and you do your best to enjoy the moment and not think about the hickey on his chest.
~*~*~*~*~*
Now that summer had begun and school had ended, it felt the days stretched on for miles. Light mornings and lighter nights. Good weather near daily. The odd hurricane warning and occasional storm to give the water a drink, and then back to beauty. You decided not to waste a minute of it. Most days were spent with you band, writing songs and practising for gigs. Pansy was constantly on the search for new shows and venues that would let you play. Kiara’s parents were already talking about letting you guys do another gig at The Wreck. Benny had taken it on to try and teach you how to play the drums, even though it was halfway hopeless. It meant that you’d been hanging out at his house a lot more. You didn’t mind; liked his company.
Kiara had you hanging out with the Pogues near daily too. You’d become a regular at the chateau, with Pansy sometimes tagging along, and had felt more and more comfortable around all the guys. Especially JJ. Whatever awkwardness that used to linger between the two of you had mostly vanished. He didn’t seem to hold back anymore; being his usual, effervescent self. ‘Young, dumb and broke’, Kie dubbed him.
“Hey, are you listening?” Benny asks you from behind the drum kit.
You look up from your phone, having read a text from Kie. We’ll be at Benny’s in five minutes.
“Just replying to Kie,” you tell him. “I’m going surfing with the Pogues.”
“Surfing? Since when did you like surfing?”
“Since this summer,” you shrug, pocketing your phone. You get up from your spot on the floor and walk around the drum kit, standing by his side.
Benny practised in his garage. His dad had soundproofed the place. Today was a hot one, leaving you no choice but to open the front shutter. The picture-book street he lived on was mostly empty, asides from the odd couples walking their dog or a kid flashing by on their bicycle.
You glance down at him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Play it again?”
He smiles up at you and begins to play a beat, lips flattening in concentration. You smile as you watch him play. Some people are born musicians. They have a gift to find rhythm, can escape within it. Benny was one of those people. For someone so quiet, you found it funny how he settled on choosing the loudest instrument.
You nod your head to the beat. Shouting over the kick-drum, you say, “it sounds good! Think Pansy’ll find a good riff for it?”
“I’m more excited to hear your lyrics,” he loudly returns.
Coming up with lyrics hadn’t been any problem as of late. Your inspiration had never been more fruitful, for good and for bad, all thanks to a certain blonde haired boy.
He finished the repetitive rhythm, ending with the hi-hat. As he looks up at you, shaking his ginger hair off his damp forehead, he smiles.
“Your hair looks pretty today,” he tells you.
You take your hand from off his shoulder to touch at it, as if on reflex. “It does?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Thanks,” you say, smiling. “You don’t look to bad yourself, for it being like one-hundred degrees outside.”
Benny’s cheeks shine pink. He looks down at the drum kit in thought. “You wanna give it a try?”
“The drums?”
“Mhm.”
“I thought we’d learnt by now that me and drums don’t mix,” you laugh, shaking your head.
Benny won’t seem to take no for an answer, shoving the sticks into your hands. “Just, give it a try. You’re good at everything.”
“Not true,” you sing-song, but oblige in taking his seat.
Joking around, you tap a beat above your head on the sticks, counting yourself in like a rockstar. Then, you’re stumbling through a simple beat, laughing at your frequent mistakes. Benny’s smiling at you – you can see it in your peripheral – and nodding along as if you’re playing like a pro.
“Yo! Didn’t know Travis Barker lives here?”
At the sound of JJ’s shout, you stop and look up, laughing.
“Yeah. The Kardashian’s are just across the street,” you joke along. Benny comes to stand behind you as the rest of the Pogues walk into the garage.
“I’d believe it. Anything’s possible in Kook land,” John B shrugs.
Pope’s sauntering behind. “You ready to go surfing?”
“Yeah. Just need to grab my bag from the kitchen,” you say.
There’s the sudden feel of Benny’s hands on your shoulders, squeezing gently. He brushes some of your hair off one of them as he replies. “I’ll go grab it for you.”
Blinking away the surprise, you turn to catch a glimpse of the boy’s back as he darts into the house. That was weird.
Kiara starts talking about the waves they’ve already spotted. You move to stand, looking back to the Pogues to see that JJ’s staring at the door that Benny just went through. His hands are in his short pockets, jaw locked tight, as if he’s annoyed. That makes two weird things.
Walking over to your friends, laughing under breath at a joke John B makes, you nudge your shoulder against JJ’s bicep, hoping to lighten his mood. He looks down at you and smiles, tension somewhat fading. Benny returns with your bag, handing it to you, and you give him a wave farewell. Then, yourself and the Pogues are heading out the garage and into the banged-up Twinkie.
By the time you get to the beach, it’s late afternoon. Sunset is beginning to creep, teasing at the earth by patterning the sky with pink and orange. That doesn’t put the five of you off surfing. Instead, it’s like it spurs you on. Paddling out deeper into the waves, you hear Kiara give a small ‘whoop’ as you all turn to watch John B ride on the water. The rest of you are quick to join. You know how to surf; learnt when you were a kid. Having never had many friends, you didn’t surf all that often. But after meeting Kie – an avid surfer – and now hanging out with the Pogues, you found yourself out on the water more and more.
After an hour or so of surfing, the sky nearing dusk, you and JJ take a moment. JJ sits on his board, floating near you. You look down at your legs, kicking back and forth leisurely in the water.
“You have fun at Benny’s?” JJ asks.
You glance over to him. He’s watching the Pogues surf.
“I guess,” you shrug. “We’re working on some new stuff.”
JJ nods. His wet hair makes the highlights of blonde darker, curling slightly at the ends from the sea salt. It hangs shaggy over his face. Bare back, muscles taught, freckle-kissed from being out all day.
“Why are you acting all weird?” you can’t help but ask.
He looks to you. “I’m not acting weird.”
“Yes, you kinda are.”
“I’m not.”
“JJ, things haven’t been weird with us since the party. I don’t want them to go back to how they were before.”
“It’s not weird!”
“Look, if I did something—”
“You didn’t do anything, alright? It’s all good,” JJ insists. He nods at you, affirmingly, but you can’t shake the feeling that he’s lying.
You sigh and lay on your back on the board. Closing your eyes, you bask in the remnants of sunlight. If he doesn’t want to talk, you won’t force it. You know more than anyone how awful it feels to have words forced out of you.
The moment of bliss is interrupted by the feeling of cold, seawater splashing over you. You gasp, sitting up in shock. JJ’s laughing his ass off, hands on his chest. You glare through a smile and shake your head.
“Oh, you’re in for it, Maybank.”
His laughter doesn’t cease. He’s looking to you again, quirking a brow. “Oh, am I?”
“Uh huh,” you grin. You kick a splash at him, barely making enough to cover his legs.
“That was pitiful.”
“Shut up,” you chide.
“You Kooks can’t do anything right.”
With that, you’re jumping off your board and swimming over to his. He doesn’t have time to paddle away. You come to a stop by the side of his board and splash at him from up close, getting him perfectly in the face. He winces, laughing, spluttering out some water that seeps into his mouth.
“That’s cheating!”
You roll your eyes and grin, hoisting yourself onto his board. He starts to protest through his laughs, moving to wrestle you off, and in the process, you end up pulling him into the water with you. The two of you emerge, laughing, drenched like drowned rats. You brush your hair out of your face and wipe the water out of your eyes. When you open them, blinking past the sting of the salt, JJ’s watching you. There’s a strange look on his face, one that you think you might’ve seen before. The longer you look at him, the shadow of a smile resting comfortably on your sun-kissed cheeks, the easier you find to place it. From the gig, during the last song, when he seemed almost absent in thought.
Before you can dwell much longer, JJ seems to snap himself out of his haze. He shakes his hair of the water and pulls himself back onto his board.
“We should probably start heading back to shore,” he says.
That was weird.
You frown but don’t argue. Returning to your board, you listen as JJ hollers that the two of you are heading back to land, and then you both start to paddle. The gang soon follows. Wading out the water, carrying your board, the five of you head to where you’d dumped your stuff. JJ makes quick work of building a fire. Pope and Kiara dip into the snacks and drinks you’d brought, passing them around. You dig about in one of the bags for some water, instead coming out with a Uke. The stickers on it hint at it being Kie’s. Hanging onto it, you look around and decide to take the empty spot on the sand next to JJ. The water from your wet hair dribbles down your back. In the embers, you feel yourself beginning to dry.
JJ hands you a cider, taking the cap off using the pocketknife you bought him. You have a sip.
“That was a pretty good surf,” Kie says, leaning back on her forearms.
Pope’s taken out his book, using his hoodie as a makeshift pillow to sit against as he reads.
“Just think tomorrow, we get to do it all again,” John B grins.
Kie clinks the neck of her bottle with his. “Here’s to that.”
Sand working as a makeshift bottle holder, you’ve taken to picking out random notes on the uke, absentmindedly tuning it.
“What you up to tomorrow?” JJ asks.
You look up at him. He’s put his cap back on; a green one, worn around the edges of the beak.
“Chilling out at home and practising, I think. Pansy managed to get us a gig at the June-Jam.”
“Wait, isn’t that kinda a big deal?” Kiara says. She must’ve been eavesdropping.
You shrug. “It’s only a fifteen-minute slot.”
“But the June-Jam Fair?”
“Yeah, folks from all over the county come out for that,” John B agrees, smiling.
“My dad’s setting up a shop there,” Pope tells you, looking up from his book. “If you guys need a snack, he’ll hook you up for free.”
“Thanks,” you smile, grateful.
“When is it?”
“Couple weeks’ time.”
“We’re coming,” Kiara declares. You chuckle, flustered and flattered at once.
“You don’t have to.”
“Well, we are, so…”
“You gonna play any of the new stuff you’ve been working on?” JJ wonders.
“Maybe,” you say. Fingers still chipping away at the strings, you shrug. “Got a few ideas that’re coming together.”
“Gonna play my favourite?”
“Of course,” you say. Rear view. He’d mentioned several times since hanging out with you how much he liked that song.
JJ sighs and moves to rest his head on your thighs. You don’t complain. Feel your heart stammer at having him so near, so comfortable in your presence. He takes his pocketknife out and begins to mess with it. The campfire light reflects off the blade as it zips in and out of sight.
John B and Kie have fallen into a conversation of their own and Pope is lost to the world of fiction.
“Why’d you like that song so much? I’ve written better ones,” you ask JJ.
He shrugs. Tips his cap over his face, as if taking a nap. “Just makes me think of things. I like the lyrics.”
You stare at the crackling fire. Small sheds of burnt up wood spit off into the air, fading away like dust, hiding into the smoke. There’s the cosy smell it churns up, tinted with the sea water that’s coated your skin. The rustle of movement has you looking back down to JJ, watching him retrieve a blunt and his lighter. He sighs. Balancing the joint between his lips, he flicks the lighter to life. On the metal of it is his carved initials. JJ. As you watch him take a drag, overcome with the smell of weed, you wonder how your life lined up in a way to end up here. Fifth grade you would have a fit if she knew you were hanging out with JJ Maybank. Hell, current you isn’t far off doing the same.
He's so effortlessly pretty. Maybe it’s because he has an aura about him that he doesn’t care what people think. Self-assured and light – all that you envy. There’s the faded colouring of a bruise on the apple of his cheek from a scruff he got into at a kegger the other night. The thought of the kegger that you didn’t attend makes your head stammer.
It seems whenever you let yourself fade into the fantasies of wondering what it might be like to have JJ as more than a friend (if he were to ever lean that way towards you), reality always finds a way to sink in. The reality that JJ is the loudest example of an extrovert, and you the spitting image of an introvert. He can pull chicks any time he wants, practically just has to look at them to have them swoon. Lies as if it’s second nature and strikes up conversations with strangers as though they’re lifelong friends. Crowds don’t make him uneasy and he can glide through a house party without needing to hide in the bathroom during a meltdown. He’s funny and charming and likeable.
But you? You spend your evenings sat in your room or on the porch, song writing, living in the safety of a daydream. Baking into the early hours of the morning and socialising with a select few individuals who had the patience to get to know you. Quiet and simple and boring. What the hell would JJ want with that?
Sighing, you hear yourself strumming out a melody. It seems to have naturally emerged from trial and error of messing with notes. You look down to watch your fingers work. There’s a melancholic undertone to the tune you’ve found, different to the one Pansy had shown you on the guitar, when the song had started to form.
Kiara and John B’s conversation momentarily dwindles at the sound of your playing. You try not to be discouraged, knowing they don’t mind the disturbance. JJ takes another hit of the bud, blowing it out and up into the air. After the chorus, you let the music fade away; the song’s only half-finished.
“That new?”
“Mhm,” you say, nodding. You’re looking at the stickers: Animal Rights in a pink, cartoon love heart…
“You’ve got the prettiest voice,” JJ quietly tells you. So quiet, you’re not entirely sure he did say it, or if you’ve contorted the murmurs of John B and Kie’s conversation, and the crackles of the fire, and the slosh of the waves, into something of a fantasy.
But, when you look down to him, he’s got this vacant smile on his face. “I’m real glad Kie introduced us.”
“Me too,” you smile.
Under his gaze, you feel how you imagine flowers do when the sun allows them to bloom. It’s a blissful rarity, to be affected by someone in such a way. Overwhelming, even. You force yourself to look away, towards the fire.
It hurts too much to stare at something you can’t have.
~*~*~*~*~*~*
The June-Jam Fair comes around faster than you expect. It’s like being caught off guard like a lorry switching lanes without indicating. You only feel half prepared when you and the band are loading up Benny’s dad’s van.
“Who packed the back-up wires?” Pansy worries.
“I did,” Mike grunts, lifting one of the amps into the hold.
“Microphone stand?”
“Got it,” you say, sliding in a box of electronics.
“Okay, then, I think that’s everything,” she mumbles.
She’s spent the last ten minutes running through a mental list of every piece of musical equipment to ever exist. You wouldn’t be surprised if on the way to the fair, she starts listing off all the ways the show could go wrong (though that does seem more Benny’s style): guitar string breaking; microphone stops working; nuclear strike…
It’s hard to believe that the gig at The Wreck was three months ago, now. You’d spent the majority of the previous months hanging out with the Pogues, finding it hard to fathom how you killed the hours before knowing them.
As the four of you load into the van, with you and Benny in the front, Mike takes control of the aux. As him and Pansy sing along, venting out their pre-show nerves, you strike up conversation with the ginger haired boy. He’s been quiet – quieter than usual – with his fingers tapping on the steering wheel, a drummer’s habit.
“I feel like I haven’t spoken to you in ages,” you half-laugh, somewhat awkward. “Summer’s going so fast.”
“Well, you dip at the end of nearly every band practise to hang out with your new friends, so,” Benny grumbles.
He seems mad about it, more than you expected him to be.
“I don’t ‘dip’, I just head-out,” you say.
“Yeah. All the time,” Benny mumbles.
Frowning, you say sincerely, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it was bothering you guys so much. I just like hanging out with the Pogues. They’re fun.”
Benny sighs, shaking his head. “No, it’s cool. It’s just…I just missing having you around, is all.”
“But, I am around. I still come to band practise. Hell, we all got breakfast the other day.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he says, shaking his head once more. “It doesn’t matter.”
“If it’s messing with our friendship then it does matter, Benny,” you say.
You see him debate whether to expand or not. In the end, he does. As he speaks, he looks at you.
“I miss me and you hanging out, is what I mean.”
Your lips part. Oh. “Well, we can still do that.”
“We can?”
“Yeah, of course,” you smile. “How about tomorrow we go for food or something?”
“Yeah?”
“Sure.”
“Why not tonight?” he wonders, looking back to the road.
“I’m hanging out with the Pogues tonight,” you say, apologetically. “JJ and Kie and everyone.”
“JJ,” Benny repeats. He says it under breath, in a scoff, like he didn’t mean to let it slip.
You frown. “What? Don’t you like him?”
“No, yeah, he’s…He’s a character,” Benny settles on, giving you the briefest of looks as he replies. “I just don’t see why he’d wanna hang around with you so much.”
You try and ignore the sting of his words, digging into your chest like the horn of a thistle. “What’d you mean?”
“You two barely have anything in common. I just find it kinda weird how you get along so well,” Benny explains. His voice is always gentle, soft and non-demanding, but somehow it doesn’t lessen the blow. “You talk about him all the time. All the dumb shit you get up to. Not to mention how much weed you’ve been smoking with him. Just find it weird how you’re suddenly the type of person who gets along with JJ Maybank.”
“Well, I just…am,” you say, shrugging. Off put from the conversation, you look out the passenger window.
“I know you like him.”
Crap. Your stomach flips. “No, I don’t.”
“Of course you do,” Benny says, laughing. “Who doesn’t? He’s an attractive guy, I’m not stupid. He’s an adrenaline junky and a bad-boy, and everybody loves a bad-boy, don’t they?”
“He’s not a ‘bad-boy’, Benny. Sides, who actually says that, outside of the movies?” you add, hoping to recover the exchange into something light.
“He’s trouble, is what he is,” Benny tells you. His voice is firm and definitive. The way he says it makes you think back to the fishing shop, and how the cashier was watching JJ like a hawk.
“He’s not trouble,” you reply, trying not to keep your tone softer. “He’s nice.”
“Nice,” Benny scoffs. Licking his teeth, he nods, staring ahead at the road. “Sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
The foul taste from the conversation with Benny doesn’t ease up for the rest of the journey. It lingers in your throat as you set-up on stage and comes back, full force, when the Pogues come over to greet you. Wish you luck for the show. The rough feeling of JJ’s knuckles, and the cold press of his rings, when you fist bump him. How he knows that you don’t like to hug before shows, with your anxiety sky-high. As you sing through the songs, talk to the crowd, work through the nerves that never fully fade, you find yourself looking to JJ more and more. Whenever you do, there’s Benny’s voice in the back of your head, almost judgemental as he repeats the mantra: ‘I just don’t see why he’d wanna hang around with you so much.’
Was he right? Does JJ just like seeing how he can make you nervous? Enjoys watching you squirm and fumble through social interactions, wade through his compliments as gracefully as a paralysed ballet dancer?
No, he’s not mean. He’s kind and he’s soft with you, but not in a way that makes you feel like you’re made of glass. He knows how to joke with you, how to get a laugh from you. Knows how far to push and when to pull back. JJ knows you. He’s your friend. He wants to be your friend. Doesn’t he?
Or did Kie talk to him, after all? He’d said how she’d told him you were quiet before the gig at The Wreck, as if warning him off. After the party, how do you know that she didn’t hunt him down before he bumped into you in the bathroom? That she told him about your pathetic school-girl crush, and it bolstered his ego, and he found himself trapped in this awkward thing of having to be friends with the weird, quiet girl who has an unattainable crush on him…
As your overthinking goes to hell quicker than a penny falling from the Empire State Building, you manage to keep up with the songs and belt out the lyrics. You can’t bring yourself to look at JJ when you conclude on Rear View. Have to close your eyes. The lyrics sting a bit too much. More than they usually do.
The Pogues are waiting at the end of the show.
“That was dope, you guys! Everyone loved it!” Kiara buzzes, high-fiving Pansy.
“Might be our best show yet,” Mike agrees, nodding. He’s packing away his bass.
“We’re gonna head off in about ten minutes or so,” Kie says.
“Pope’s meeting us at the Chateau later. His dad roped him into helping out,” John B tells you.
“You guys are coming right?” Kie asks the four of you.
Mike looks up from his spot near the amp, unplugging wires. “I’m gonna pass. Got a date.”
“You’ve got a date?” Pansy gapes.
“Yeah?”
“With who?”
“This chick I met at your birthday party,” he shrugs. You have a vague memory of seeing him talking to a girl, before you went up to him that night.
“Why are you so secretive, Mike? What other second-lives are you leading?” Pansy teases.
Mike rolls his eyes, giving a covert smiling. “They die with me. I’ll see y’all later.”
As he waves farewell and walks away, Pansy shakes her head, almost impressed. “God bless that weird, strange man.”
“So that leaves three?” John B checks, pointing to you three.
You still haven’t looked at JJ. Pansy answers on your behalf. “Well, us two definitely are. Benny?”
“I’ll pass. I’ve got a curfew,” Benny says.
“Most Kook thing I’ve ever heard,” JJ sniggers.
“Yeah? Well, I’m sure it’s nice having parents who don’t give a shit,” Benny replies sharply.
You frown. Looking to Benny, your eyes are narrowed in confusion.
JJ frowns too, only for different reasons. Staring him down, he stands a head higher.
“What’d you say, princess?”
“Look, man, I’m sorry your dad’s a criminal but I don’t see what that’s gotta do with me.”
JJ’s jaw goes rigid. His body tenses. Anger comes over him suddenly like a hurricane. He takes a step forward, gladly getting in Benny’s face. JJ’s taller, broader, stronger. Benny’s hours spent playing the drums don’t stand a chance in a round with him.
“You wanna say that again, Kook?”
“Guys, come on,” Kie says, trying to step between them.
“You like messing with her, huh? You having fun with it? Like having her gawking after you?” Benny bites back.
His eyes flit to you as he talks. Your heart fractures.
JJ shoves him on the chest. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, man.”
“I know who you are, JJ. Everybody does. You don’t fool me, with this whole good-guy act you’ve got going on with her. You’re messing her up. Getting her to do drugs with you and shit? You’re gonna end up hurting her, like you hurt everybody else. Just what you Pogues do.”
“Benny, what the hell?” you whisper.
JJ isn’t as silent in his anger. He swings a punch, knocking Benny straight in the cheek, sending him backwards against the stage. Some stranger from the fair exclaims when they catch sight. John B immediately steps in between. JJ is reluctant to backdown, standing over Benny, urging him to fight back. When Benny goes to do retaliate, you come to your senses and step up. You grab for his wrist before he can throw his punch.
“Don’t be an idiot, Benny,” you snap.
His eyes flash to you. Something behind them seems to break. He hides it with anger. “You’re taking his side?”
“I’m not taking anybody’s side,” you say, annoyed. “This is pathetic. Both of you.”
As you talk, you let your eyes glance to JJ. He’s breathing heavy, still pissed, but takes a step back at your disapproval.
“We’re at a Goddamn family fair. Both of you need to get your shit together,” you tell them sharply.
You let go of Benny’s wrist and walk off, heart beating out your chest. You hate confrontation. Hate when people fight.
Kiara and Pansy come after you, both of them bitching about how useless boys are. You fold your arms across your chest and blink back tears. No matter what emotion you experience, it always seems to resolve with waterworks. It’s then, as you think back to the altercation, that you hardly recognise the memory of Benny in that moment. It’s so disappointing when you see who people for who they truly are, beneath all the personas, only for them to end up being fickle and fake.
Your feet carry you to the back-ends of the fair, lit up by the remnants of daylight. It’s nothing but storage containers, vans and trucks, the odd horse and animal box from the farm-show. You take perch on the step of one of the empty caravans. Pansy and Kiara sit beside you, the former coiling her arms around you in a hug. You place your head in your hands and let out a few tears. There’s no point fighting them off.
“JJ is so stupid sometimes,” Kie mutters.
“No kidding. And Benny? Pushing at him like that?”
“Asking for a fight.”
“Guys are so dumb,” Pansy concludes with a sigh, shaking her head.
You sit up and wipe your cheeks.
“Where’s your head at, hun?” she asks you, softly.
Shaking your head, you scoff. “I have no idea. I don’t understand why Benny would say things like that. Why he’d lash out at JJ like that, about me.”
“Well, it’s cause he likes you,” Pansy says plainly.
You shoot her a look of pure bewilderment. “What?”
“Girl, it’s so obvious,” she chuckles, sympathy in her gaze. “The guy practically follows after you like a love-sick puppy.”
“She’s right, you know? Even I can see it,” Kie confirms.
You look between the two of them. Benny? Seriously?
You’ve spent so much of your life alone, out of the minds of boys and girls, void of compliments, that you find it hard to believe anybody might have a thing for you. Least of all, Benny. Sweet, quiet, unassuming Benny. Well, until tonight, that is.
But come to think…The last few months, he’s been weird. The random compliments he’s been dropping, when he never used to before. That time in the garage, when he messed with your hair and put his hands on your shoulders. The car ride today, disapproving of JJ.
“I know you like him.”
The penny drops.
“He’s…jealous?” you whisper.
“No duh, dumbass,” Kiara mutters.
“But- Wait, of what?”
Your life feels as though it has suddenly become a teenage rom-com after being nothing but years of a podcast of white-noise a person could fall asleep.
“Of JJ,” Kie answers, as if it’s obvious.
“Why in the hell would he be jealous of JJ?”
A look gets shared between Pansy and Kiara.
“Because JJ has a thing for you too…”
“JJ does not have a thing for me,” you snort. “He doesn’t have a thing for me, alright? You guys are way off.”
“Hun—”
“No, he doesn’t, alright?” you can’t help but snap at Kie. The emotions of the last few months are bubbling inside of you. More tears well up. “Why would he? I’m awkward, and I’m useless, and I’m desperate, and I’ve been in love with him since I was a kid and have never done anything about it! I’m pathetic! And he’s…Well, he’s him. He’s funny and charming and fucking gorgeous and…And I’m just me.”
Pansy and Kiara are staring at you with eyes full of pity. They don’t speak, but Kiara grabs at your hand and squeezes it tight.
"Don’t ever talk about yourself like that,” she tells you in a voice that’s firm but sweet, like cookie dough.
“I’ll slap you if you say anything like that again,” Pansy not-so-delicately doubles.
You laugh through your tears at that. Wiping your face, sighing, you look down at the ground.
“I…I think you should really talk to JJ,” Kiara offers. “You can say whatever you want, but I see how he is around you. He’s never like that, with anyone. You bring out a different side of him, and I mean that in the best way.”
“She’s right,” Pansy nods, nudging your shoulder. “I was looking at him through the set, and he had his eyes glued on you.”
“I’m the singer,” you sigh in disagreement.
“Yeah, but I’m the most talented one up there,” Pansy replies, as if it’s obvious. You laugh at her antics. “Everyone should be looking at me.”
Looking to your two friends, you can’t help but feel a swell of gratefulness for having them stick by you. Nodding, you sniff away the last few tears.
“I wanna talk to JJ,” you tell them.
“Perfect,” Kiara says. “He’ll probably be at the chateau. I’ll give you a lift.”
Doing as she says she will, Kie drops you off at the Chateau on her drive home. As you climb out the car, Pansy sticks her head out the back window.
“You sure you wanna go on your own?” she double-checks.
You smile at her. She’s a good friend.
“Yeah, I’m good,” you nod.
She smiles back. “Alright. Now, remember: you’re hot, you’re talented, and you’re a catch-twenty-two.”
“Got it,” you say with a laugh, rolling your eyes.
“Good,” Pansy nods. Mission accomplished. “Go get ‘em.”
You wave farewell to Kie as she pulls back out the driveway and onto the road. The moment the car’s gone, you’re abandoned in darkness. A few birds are giving their final caws of the day, settling down for the night. Crickets and night critters merge with the distant lapping of the water of the marsh. Sighing, you wrap your jumper tighter around yourself in a hug and walk towards the back garden. You’re hoping JJ’s here. Kiara said he should be.
As you round the side of the house, you make out the hammock. It’s swaying lightly. There’s a foot extended out of it, heel of a boot dug into the ground, causing it to rock. The faint puff of smoke that blows up makes you certain it’s him.
“JJ?”
The rocking stops.
You walk a bit closer until you’re in his line of sight. He’s looking down at his hands, one of which is messing with his pocketknife as the other cradles a joint.
“Hey,” you quietly say.
“Hey,” he mumbles. His cap is tilted down, concealing his face slightly.
“How’s your hand?” you ask.
He glances to it. Nods. “It’s fine.”
Nodding, you shift your weight from one foot to the other. “Can I join you?”
He stops fiddling with the knife. There’s an awkward pause before he nods, shifting so you can climb onto the hammock. You take a spot by his feet. He uses his foot as an anchor to steady the sway.
“Did you like the set?”
“Mhm.”
“I played one of the new ones,” you say. He nods, feigning disinterest.
“It was nice,” he says. “Benny help you write it?”
You sigh. “Seriously, JJ?”
He looks up at that. Eyes dazzling in the moonlight. “What?”
“Did you have to hit him?”
“The guy was asking for it, alright? You heard what he said to me, didn’t you?” JJ defends, sitting up.
“Of course, I did. But you can’t just hit anybody who pisses you off.”
“You don’t get it, alright?”
“Sure I don’t,” you reply, sarcastic.
“No, you don’t,” he repeats, firmer. He pushes his cap back as he goes on, blunt momentarily abandoned. “You live in your little Kook world, ignorantly bliss to the shitshow that goes on around you.”
His words set off something inside of you.
“I’m not some stuck-up snob, JJ. Don’t treat me like I am. That’s not fair. Being a Kook and a Pogue has nothing to do with you picking a fight with Benny at the fair.”
JJ laughs, tossing his head back. He wipes a hand down his face. “Oh, you’re so stupid sometimes, you know that? It has everything to do with it!”
“How!? How does that make any sense?” you gape, sitting upright. You wave your arms around. “In what Pogue-Kook universe do you have to pick a fight with Benny? We’re just friends!”
“For someone so quiet, you sure don’t pay attention,” JJ insults, staring you in the eyes.
Your resolve slackens. “Don’t be mean, JJ.”
“According to your little boyfriend, that’s all I can be,” he mutters, looking back down to his pocketknife.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” you sigh, exhausted. You rub at your forehead. “I don’t know where all that stuff came from, okay? He’s never acted like that before. I’m so embarrassed, and I’m so sorry he said all that to you, and he was way out of line. I don’t know why he did it.”
“I do! Everyone does! It’s obvious! The guy’s in love with you. He thought he was defending your honour or some shit,” JJ spits.
“He’s not in love with me,” you deny. Maybe he might have a crush on you, but in love? Come on now.
“Seriously? You seriously don’t see it?” JJ says, voice rising again.
You shrug, making a face as if to say ‘no, I really don’t’.
It seems to make him angry again.
“He follows you around all the time! He’s always watching you, alright? Always. He’s looking at you all the time. Complimenting you. Making little jokes, hoping that you’ll laugh. Finding any excuse to spend time with you. Like with that teaching-you-the-drums bullshit? What the hell was that? And don’t get me started on that little display he did in the garage that day! With the hands on the shoulders and stuff and grabbing your bag for you like a little pussy-whipped simp. Helping you out without you even asking for him too--”
“That’s your definition of love?” you practically shout, cutting him off with a scoff. “You do all of that!”
“Exactly!” JJ yells.
Silence.
JJ’s breathing heavy. You see the moment the words catch up. See his face drop into panic, then glaze over as if uninterested. Your mind’s racing, scrambling for purchase and muddling through interpretations…
But…there’s only one though. Right?
JJ looks out to the water. He takes a hit from his joint, almost desperate.
“JJ,” you whisper.
He shakes his head. Looks down at his joint as if it’s something to inspect. As if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “Doesn’t matter, alright?”
“Yes, it does.”
“No-” his clipped tone is cut off with a sigh. You see him close his eyes. Collects himself. There’s a lingering quiet. A mosquito nips at your ankle but you can’t bring yourself to waft it away.
“You don’t know the effect you have on people, do you?” He asks you quietly. He opens his eyes to look out to the water. You’re not sure if you’re meant to answer. Before you can, he’s talking once more.
“Benny’s got almost everything in common with you, okay? He’s rich, he’s got a nice house, nice family. Goes to a good school. I bet he gets good grades, too. Talented. And he’s not the worst looking asshole, alright? So, yeah. It is a Kook-Pogue thing, alright?”
His eyes flit to you for a moment but he doesn’t let them linger. He looks back down to the pocketknife. His thumb dances over the wood of it.
“It was always gonna be a Kook-Pogue thing. The moment that I realised I liked you; I knew there was no chance. I mean, what the hell would you want with a guy like me?”
Oh.
There’s a strange, euphoric feeling that comes after JJ talks. You suddenly feel like you understand why you’ve always gotten along with JJ. It’s like you’ve been staring in a mirror this whole time. It’s then that that you realise that you’re not nervous anymore. That you haven’t been nervous in a while, whenever JJ’s around. That if you ever do feel anxious or unsure, finding his face, meeting his eyes, searching for his smile; it always brings you back. Suddenly, you don’t care about the differences; the small, insignificant things that really don’t matter, when you think about it, because as long as you’ve got JJ, you don’t care what happens.
He says Benny’s got more in common with you, but Benny doesn’t know about the panic attacks or how to ease you back from them. He doesn’t know how to make you laugh; not to the point where you feel your stomach might collapse and your ribs might break. His compliments don’t make you feel like there’s a shot of electricity running through you, quick and painless. With Benny, they’re just nice words, like when a cashier tells you to have a good day. Maybe he’s book smart and plays the drums well, but JJ could tell you anything you want to know about fishing: how, where, when. Mechanics and boats and handy-man tricks. Intelligence wasn’t one thing; it wasn’t just about being able to dissect a Shakespeare quote. And you could sit and listen to him talk all day. The cadence of his voice rising and falling like the tide of the water.
You’ve liked JJ since you were a kid. Since that stupid day on the marsh, when you were frog hunting, and you saw him on the rope swing. He was so funny. So bubbly and lively. Everything you wished you could be. And when he looked at you, through the bushes of the marsh, and smiled…that smile became every inspiration for every song you wrote. The thought in the back of your mind when you conjured up the lyrics. As he got older, he became more beautiful, twisting into the definition of an American heartthrob. Your lives stretched differently and you came to accept that liking him would be a pipedream. Something you could live in your fictional songs. But then came Kiara, and The Wreck, and everything else, and it all lined up so nicely. It was as if an invisible string was tied around your wrist the first day you saw him, guiding you to now.
Right now.
You shift onto your knees and move up the hammock until you’re face to face with JJ. Before either of you has time to think, you’re cupping his jaw and guiding his lips to yours. Under the unsteady purchase of the hammock, you move your free hand to his chest for balance. It’s hard and sturdy. Once the shock slips away, JJ’s kissing you back. One of his hands comes to your face, swiping across your cheek and pushing back some of your hair that’s fallen into your face. His other comes to sit on your waist. Squeezes your skin softly, as if checking that you’re real: joint and pocketknife abandoned. A feeling zips through your body, right down to your toes. It’s indescribable. It’s sweet and mercurial and…it’s JJ. It’s all JJ.
When you pull back, you’re smiling.
JJ’s eyes open slowly. A smile is blooming on his face too, cheeks pink, lips still parted, damp from your touch.
“Okay,” he whispers.
You giggle, biting your lower lip. “Okay?”
“Not what I was expecting,” he admits with a small laugh.
You can’t help but kiss him again, wanting to taste his laughs. He gladly pulls you closer, shifting you so you’re straddling his waist. The more you kiss, the more he eases into touching you, the more you relax into kissing him. Finding a rhythm and a pattern that has the two of you short of breath.
Breaking apart once more, JJ stares at you as if in a trance. The same look from The Wreck and from the ocean. You recognise what it is now.
He strokes a finger across your cheek and you lean into the touch of his palm. Makes him smile brighter.
“You gonna write a song about me now?” he quietly jokes. His eyes flick down to your lips.
You smile, laugh almost silently as you shake your head. Before leaning down to kiss him again, you confess your only remaining secret to him in a whisper.
“They’re already about you. Every single one of them.”
