first fight — sharky (betasquad) x reader
summary they'd never argued. not like this. turns out being married meant learning things about each other you couldn't learn any other way.
prompt – first argument, miscommunication, he breaks first, soft making up
warnings – argument, mild emotional distress, soft ending 🎀
word count – ~2.5k
note – two stubborn people learning each other 😭🎀 lover boy sharky breaking first was inevitable and i loved every second of writing it 🫶
That was the thing about first arguments — they never started where they ended. They started somewhere ordinary and manageable and then something shifted, one wrong word landing in the wrong place at the wrong moment, and suddenly you were somewhere neither of you had been before and neither of you quite knew the way out.
It had been a long week. That was the honest context of it. Sharky had been in and out — filming, editing, meetings that ran long, the particular exhaustion of a schedule that didn't leave much room for anything else. You'd been busy too, your own work bleeding into evenings, the two of you passing each other in the apartment with the distracted energy of people who were present but not quite there.
You'd been married for four months. You were still learning what that looked like when things weren't easy.
The argument started over something that didn't matter. A plan that got changed without proper communication — he'd assumed, you'd assumed differently, and neither of you had checked before it became a problem. By the time you were actually talking about it the conversation had picked up weight it hadn't started with, old frustrations attaching themselves to it, and then you'd both said things that were sharper than you meant them.
He'd gone quiet. You'd gone quiet.
And then you'd both gone to separate rooms, which was new and uncomfortable and felt wrong in a way neither of you had words for yet.
The apartment was very still.
You were in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, not really doing anything. Just sitting with the particular awful feeling of an argument that hadn't resolved, the words still circling, the version of yourself that had said them sitting uncomfortably in your chest.
You weren't wrong. You held onto that. Some of what you'd said had been fair and true and needed saying.
You also hadn't said it well. That part you were less comfortable holding onto.
Through the wall you could hear nothing, which meant he was doing the same thing — sitting with it, the way he sat with things, quietly and for longer than most people needed. That was the thing about Sharky you were still mapping. He processed slowly. He needed the space to turn something over before he could talk about it properly.
You processed out loud. Always had. The silence felt like distance to you in a way it didn't feel to him.
You'd known this about each other, theoretically. You were learning what it meant in practice.
You heard his footsteps in the hallway. Slow. Stopping outside the bedroom door.
Not the tired of a long week — though that was there too — but the specific tired of someone who'd been sitting with something heavy for forty minutes and had come to a decision about it. His eyes found you immediately, the way they always did, and the set of his jaw was different from how it had been during the argument. Less defended. More honest.
He crossed the room and sat down beside you on the bed. Not touching — a few inches of space between you — and for a moment neither of you said anything.
"I didn't mean it the way it came out," he said finally.
His voice was quiet. Not apologetic in the way that was just about ending the discomfort — genuinely quiet, the way he was when something actually mattered.
"Which part," you said. Not unkindly. Just honestly.
He exhaled. Looked at his hands. "The part about you not telling me things."
You were quiet for a moment. That had been the sharpest thing he'd said — the implication underneath it, that you kept him at a distance, that you didn't communicate. It had landed wrong because it had landed on something you were already insecure about.
"I do tell you things," you said.
"I know." He said it immediately. "I know you do. I said it wrong." He paused. "I was frustrated and I said it like it was about you when it was about me not asking the right questions." He looked up at you. "That's on me."
You looked at him. The honest face — not the YouTube face, not the public one, just him, sitting in your bedroom in the quiet of an evening that had gone sideways.
"I assumed," you said. "About the plans. I should have checked instead of just assuming you knew."
"I should have told you when things changed instead of thinking you'd figure it out."
"Didn't talk to each other," he said. Simply. "Yeah."
The space between you on the bed felt different now. Still there, but lighter.
"We're both stubborn," you said.
The corner of his mouth moved. Just barely. "Yeah."
"That's going to be a problem sometimes."
"Probably." He turned to face you slightly. "We'll figure it out."
You looked at him. The certainty in it — not breezy, not dismissive, just the quiet solidity of someone who meant what they said completely. We'll figure it out. Like it wasn't even a question. Like the argument was a thing that had happened and now they were on the other side of it and the only direction was forward.
That was the thing about him you'd fallen in love with, early, before you'd even had words for it. The steadiness underneath everything else. The way he held things.
"I don't like fighting with you," you said quietly.
"I know." He reached across the space between you and took your hand. Slowly. Carefully. Like he wasn't entirely sure of his welcome yet and was asking rather than assuming. "I don't like it either."
You let him take it. Felt his fingers close around yours, warm and familiar, the particular way he held your hand that you'd memorised without meaning to.
"It felt weird," you said. "Being in separate rooms."
"Yeah." His thumb moved across your knuckles. Once, slow. "I didn't like that."
He looked at you with the expression that undid you sometimes — the completely unguarded one, the one that was just him without any of the layers.
"I came because you're my wife," he said simply. "And I don't want to sit in the living room when you're in here." He paused. "And because I was wrong about some of it and I needed to say that."
You were quiet for a moment.
"I was wrong about some of it too," you said.
"I know." He said it without smugness, without satisfaction. Just acknowledgement. "We both were."
The room had gone fully dark around you without either of you noticing. The city outside the window, the quiet of the apartment, the two of you on the edge of the bed with your hands joined in the space between.
"We're going to argue again," you said. Not pessimistically. Just honestly.
"We're both too stubborn not to."
"Definitely." This time the corner of his mouth went further — a real movement, the beginning of the smile he couldn't always help. "You're very stubborn."
"I came in here first," he pointed out.
"Because you broke first."
"Because I was right to." He said it simply. No ego in it. "Sitting out there wasn't going to fix anything."
You looked at him for a long moment. Then you leaned sideways, slowly, until your head found his shoulder. He didn't move — just let you settle, adjusted slightly to make room, his hand still holding yours between you.
"Next time," you said into his shoulder. "Can we just — talk about it faster?"
"Yeah," he said quietly. "We can do that."
"The separate rooms thing was horrible."
"Agreed." His head dropped slightly, resting against yours. "Won't do that again."
A pause. His hand squeezed yours once.
You stayed like that — the two of you on the edge of the bed in the dark, heads together, hands joined, the argument somewhere behind you now and the rest of everything still ahead. Four months married. Still learning. Still figuring out what it looked like to navigate this with another person, to be stubborn together instead of at each other.
"Sharky," you said, after a while.
The pause was brief. Warm.
"I love you too," he said. Quietly. Like it was the simplest and most obvious thing in the world. Because for him, it was.
You closed your eyes. Felt him shift slightly beside you, his arm coming around you properly now, both of you leaning back onto the bed without quite deciding to, the way things happened when you stopped overthinking them.
The city carried on outside.
In the apartment, everything was quiet and settled and fine.
First argument. First time finding their way back.
Not the last. But maybe the hardest — because now they knew they could.
