“Powerful men need a woman as a sign of their power. Strong women do not need a man, she either wants him or she doesn't.”
― Chloe Thurlow, Katie in Love
babygirl the way you forsake your happiness on your relentless quest to vengeance, your complicated relationship with gender and the way you're covered in blood have bewitched me body and soul
Then suddenly, and all at once, there's a loudness in your head: a hundred whispers echoing in time to the same off-beat rhythm, full of memories and moments shared between you, threads woven throughout the years all buoying to the surface as you realise you're a little bit in love with him.
(And that, maybe, you've been a little bit in love with him the whole time.)
tags: friends to lovers (but the type of friends who are basically already dating and everyone knows except them - until suddenly they do), mutual pining. Slight Kent bashing, oops. Golden Girls as a coping mechanism.
warnings: none. very tame, considering who I am as a person. Heavy make-out sess, though.
word count: 6,6k
notes: This has been sitting in my requests forever (I lost the original, but the gist was: Gaz + pining + idiots in love). You can blame a lot of this on summer rain and 80s city pop. Been going to the pier and listening to it while I wrote this. Not my best, sure, but it was fun.
The Tinder date he warned you not to go on (and seriously, mate, who uses Tinder anymore?) ends like this:
Your date, the biggest gentleman in Kent, as proclaimed in his bio (a red flag in hindsight—there's no such thing as a gentleman from Kent), sneaks his number to the waitress, and then leaves you behind in downtown Manchester to go bar hopping with a group he just met.
It's not a great loss. All things considered, it's not even the worst date you've ever been on. It was just a spur-of-the-moment whim—equal parts anxiety and megrim: the sudden fear of being single forever (and no, despite what Kyle might say, it has nothing to do with the wedding invitation you'd gotten on Facebook, or the three others that came before it)—and therefore, there isn't much to be upset about. Not really.
But the world doesn't work on half-hearted lies and shaky truths, and on a dank little corner in Manchester, abandoned by your ride home, your abysmal date who barely looked at you, you can't deny that it hurts. That it's a little bit of a hit to your self-esteem in a way that makes you angrier than you were before, because, honestly—he wasn't even a catch to begin with.
Stupid.
You should have listened to Kyle, to his immaculate wisdom and emotional maturity far beyond his years, but you hadn't because—
Well. Sometimes the world should work on little lies. If only to the ones you tell yourself. Ones like:
It's completely fine—really it is—if your friend of nearly eight years is moving on with his life. And it's totally, absolutely okay if your best friend meets some flighty barista in Amsterdam and won't stop talking about her for the meagre three weeks he's been back from his impromptu trip to the Netherlands, then to Mexico. It's fine. It's all fine.
Because maybe you are, too.
And maybe that's the reason you went out with David from Kent.
From Kent? He texted, only hours before your date. (Hours because he'd been busy with this thing for his job—his boss is corrupt and the world is, too, but at least Amsterdam Barista is doing fine). You can do so much better than that, birdy.
You wanted to say, what? Like someone from Amsterdam instead? but you're doing this new thing where you try not to sound as mad as you think you are. Zen, maybe. Internal peace and happiness. So, instead, you say:
He's nice. I like him.
Words that, of course, have come back to bite you.
He isn't nice. He wouldn't stop staring at the waitress, and talking over you, or just generally ignoring your existence. He left you downtown, stranded without a way home. You don't like him. You really don't even think you were that interested in him.
But it makes sense.
Kyle is moving on. Your friends are getting married.
And where does that leave you?
Well—
It leaves you stuck downtown with shoes that were intended to be used for aesthetics, the kind that means standing entirely still and immobile, and not walking the fifteen kilometres to your flat because you'd spent all your money on this super flattering outfit and these unfunctional shoes, and can't afford a cab or an Uber.
Sometimes, you pretend you're a functional adult—one who knows how to navigate everything with ease, and you live in the present, the real world, where time is fluid and unchangeable, and things make sense (maths and geometry and physics) unless they don't (black holes and the vastitude of space and fate)—but moments like these remind you that you don't. That you live, instead, somewhere in the parentheses of both.
The indigo sky, murky black and void of any stars, seems to grumble along with you as you turn toward the street, readying yourself for the long walk home. Except the groan sounds less commiserating and more ominous. A noise that seems to reverberate through the crowded street, and right into your bones.
Some have the wherewithal to find shelter. A smart move because almost a moment later, the heavens split, and a summer deluge drenches the street. It's unrelenting in its downpour, soaking everything in its path in a shrill roar.
Caught in the middle of St Peter's Square, there are not many places to duck under for sanctuary, but you find an alcove beside a store, and dart toward it. The non-functional boots are pretty to look at, but with each step, you feel the hard synthetic rubber grind against your heel. Blisters form, break. The burn makes you inhale sharply against the pain, hobbling now on tender feet.
The wall is slick with condensation, but you lean against it to keep your feet from taking the brunt of your weight.
It reminds you, quite suddenly, of that night in Cardiff with Kyle. When you'd drank three-dollar margaritas at some downtrodden bar with your friends and ate rather limp-looking fish tacos (a mistake, of course, and Kyle still can't look at corn tortillas the same way), and laughed until your belly hurt at something he'd said—the words lost to alcohol and faded with time—and then leaned over, promptly throwing up in a bush.
You still can't drink tequila without giggling (and gagging) at nothing, a phantom memory, and the thought presses against a tender spot in your chest in all the wrong ways.
Time is fluid. An unavoidable truism that you can't escape.
There are people you've known since you were a child whose faces you can barely remember. Ones you promised the world to, to always be together, who you hardly think of anymore.
Moving on. Moving forward.
You think, then, of Kyle. Of the distance that lingers between you both, widening each day. It's nothing you've done, nor he; it's just—
Life. Concurrent. Everpresent.
It hurts to lose a friend, you'd always think. A small moment of grief, of loss. But not like this. Never like this.
Stuck in a downpour in the middle of Manchester, you realise you miss him. Have been missing him.
Huddling under an awning, you fish your phone from your soaked pocket, and pull up the only person you want to be around right now, in this moment of vulnerability. Loneliness.
You send him a quick text, date was a bust. Stuck downtown. Are you busy?
Kyle's reply comes three breaths later. For you? Never. Send me your location.
You send him your pin.
Another message pops up: stay put. I'm on my way.
You met Kyle Garrick at university.
It's one of those things in life that just sometimes happens. A happy accident. An eventuality that makes the world feel a little less daunting. A lock and key sliding into place. Sunsets in pretty ochre.
Someone you knew and someone he knew (two people who are now best man and groom in the upcoming wedding) decided to invite all of their friends out for a night, and it was then, slightly tipsy on cheap ale when you realised the boy in the back—a head taller than everyone else and more befitting inside the glossy pages of a magazine—was different, somehow, from anyone else you'd ever met.
It started when some stupid kids decided to pick on another. A smaller boy with a blue cap.
Kyle was the only one who noticed. The only one who seemed to care.
It was his anger that drew you to him in the first place. Moth to a flame. It's quick—the sizzling flame of a lit match: suddenly burning the wick and nearly uncontrollable. But it's short. A flickering star, burning bright, burning hot, and then being tempered and swallowed down until it's smouldering. Still hot, still dangerous, but—
Managed.
It was a snap. He was laughing, jovial. Telling jokes, and having fun, but still maintaining that enviable enigmatic persona: reserved but kind. Funny, but mature. And then it crumpled in an instant, folded away into anger. Bright and blistering. He walked to them, eyes blazing, and didn't wait for any excuses when the kids noticed him, just quickly decimated their foundations, and crushed their feeble lies between his teeth.
"Bullyin'? That's a pretty foul thing to do, innit, mate?"
And that was that.
He handed the kid back his hat—the one the others knocked off into the gutter—and told him, clipped, that he was better than them.
Just keep your chin up, yeah? Fuckin' losers, that lot. Don't go messing about with them anymore. Fucking pricks. That's a nice hat, too. Where'd you get it? Really? Oh, that's mint—
It was that moment when, unprompted and unnoticed, he easily slipped away from the group to help some kid he didn't even know that you realised you were very keen to get to know him.
"Fancy a kebab, hero?" You asked, smirking up at him.
A grin broke across his face. Sharp, feral. "I could always go to a lamb kebab."
The rest, really, just came quite naturally. Your best friend. The person you go to for anything—even terrible dates that leave you stranded in the rain.
You just wish you knew when it all began to change, to fall apart.
Kyle meets you near St Peter's Square.
You spot him first from your hiding spot beneath the awning, catching sight of his form moving through the (now) empty streets, hands shoved in the pockets of his denim trousers, the bottoms tucked, sensibly, into his fawn-coloured boots.
Even with the hood of his windbreaker pulled low over his brow, you can pick him out of a crowd with an ease that is as warming as it is jarring.
You wave him over when he stops on the mouth of Mount Street, looking in toward the Starbucks on the corner.
He finds you just as easily. And oh, his expression makes your toes curl in your misshapen boots.
Anger pinches the corner of his mouth, and hangs off the furrow of his brow, the divot between his eyes.
"Unbelievable," he huffs when he reaches you in the middle of the street, and sucks his teeth when you open your mouth to protest.
"It is what it is," you offer, playing the peacekeeper. You fall into step with him, trying not to wince. "I'm over it."
"Yeah?" The shadows across his brow deepen. "Are you sure? 'Cause… I'll fuck him up for you."
Setting your friend on a man from Kent feels entirely too vindictive, despite how much of a rush you get at the thought of seeing the man cowed a little bit. You shake your head, playing the part of a reasonable adult.
"It's okay. I'm just—I'm just, over this, yeah? Can we—"
Kyle stops you with his hand against your shoulder. "You alright?"
"My feet hurt," your smile is strained. "Terrible shoes."
"Take 'em off."
"Are you crazy—?"
"I brought slides for you. Figured you'd wear something stupid."
"Okay, fair. But—ouch? We can't all be crazy good-looking Armani models. Some of us have to work for it."
Kyle snorts. "Just take your shoes off, yeah? Throw 'em in my bag."
You can't deny it feels blissful when you lean against the slick wall outside of a shop, toeing off your tight boots. Aching feet freed from their prison. The sigh you let out makes him glance up at you from the pavement, bent over the rucksack he brought.
There's disapproval in his gaze—maybe at your choice. Choices. The date he warned you about. The boots. The socks he spots are stained with blood on the knob of your foot.
He tuts. A soft admonishment that cuts through the silence of the empty square. But it's all he says. He swallows the rest and drops the shoes he grabbed on the pavement in front of you, slowly pushing them forward with the tip of his toe.
You try not to grin when you see them.
Crocs. The ugliest ones you could find in Schuh. You'd bullied him into getting a matching pair with you. Neon yellow adorned with little clips.
You slip them on as Kyle reaches down to grab your boots. He pauses with them in his hand, eying them with something that taints the air with his disdain.
"When did you buy these?"
"On Friday." When he was sleeping off his impromptu trip to Chicago. He brought you home deep-dish pizza, frozen, and promised that it tasted much better fresh. "For the date."
"Why?" Is all he asks.
You shrug. "They're cute…?"
His eyes stray to your shoulders. The wet fabric of your shirt. His chin lowers slightly, but his eyes stay fixed on your flesh, on the goosebumps that bubble to the surface, spreading over your exposed skin. Eyes flicker, catching a droplet of water you can feel running down from behind your ear, falling over the slope of your neck. It breaks against your collarbone. He watches it all.
There's tension in the air. Static. The pressure builds and reeks of ozone when it presses into you, knuckles digging into the hollow of your throat. It renders you unable to speak—locked in a paradigm where the world beyond the honeycomb of his eyes ceases to matter, to exist almost. Thick honey ensnares you. Molasses. It clots against reason, logic, and makes you feel weightless. Floating, unmoored, in this unfamiliar abyss that closes in around you.
Except—
It isn’t.
There’s something aberrant about it, anomalous, that you can’t ignore; but beneath it sits a preternatural sense of familiarity that bends the paradox into knowns. Into tangibles. Concretes.
This is the same tension that has been simmering—festering, almost—since before he joined the miliary. In Cardiff when he leaned against you in the taxi, boney shoulder digging into your arm, and said, ‘dunno what I'd do without you, y’know?
It was the hazy smear of neon from the shops perched on the street. An ethereal gold hue streamed in from the window, cutting across the tenebrous in an asymmetrical chiaroscuro. The light was soaked up by him. Warm honey, the perfect compliment to his eyes, to the soft pink of his lips.
How could you possibly describe the feeling that spumes in the pit of your stomach outside of undiluted comfort?
Home.
It feels like like in shades; muted. A soft undercurrent that lingers inside something else, something deeper—
Moments in the foyer when he was heading back home for the evening. When he’d linger in the doorway, shoulder balanced against the frame, arms folded over his chest, and warned you not to watch Taskmaster without him.
He’d know, he said.
When you asked how, he just said:
“Because I know you.”
It feels like that. Like that and something more. Everything, all of it, coalesces into this. Into this moment where you can’t stop staring into the flecks of mahogany and charred birchwood in his eyes, and he can’t seem to decide where to keep his, vacillating between the slope of your neck and matching your stare. A lurch, a flash of something in your chest when your gazes meet. The deep sfumato of a bare forest in the middle of winter—rich browns, raw topaz, honey and amber in a sea of white. A sleepy hinterland. Solemnent and peaceful. Dreamy. Hypnogogic.
The world always seems to shudder into a deep slumber whenever he’s around.
He dips closer, swaying into you. Gravity, maybe. Tidally locked satellites on the same rung. Something bubbles in your chest. Unwinds from its dormant perch between the gaps in your ribs, and climbs up your esophagus. Ready, you think, to be free—
In the distance, tyres squeal against the pavement.
—and all at once, the moment burst, breaks. Shatters into a million pieces, cosmic dust, and you watch them fall around you, blinking rapidly, as though you’ve just woken.
It feels like slowly coming down to earth when you quietly gather your things, words now stuck in your throat. In their prison.
Kyle tears his gaze away from your bare skin, clearing his throat.
"Hardly." He murmurs after a moment and slips his jacket off his shoulders before wrapping it around yours. It smells of rainwater, wet rubber. Beneath the polymer, you can smell Kyle—vetiver, cypress, jasmine; sweet and heady—and you bury your nose in the hood when he turns back to the empty street. “Well, uh—”
You can’t speak. Not yet.
He seems to understand.
"Yeah," he nods, and reaches out, tugging on the end of the drawstring. "Let's get out of here."
The rain lightens into a muted drizzle, soft droplets that fall, almost rhythmless, on the wet pavement. The town sleeps, the streets bare. Empty. The only sounds come from your slick footfalls, a horn in the distance.
It’s an easy silence that lapses between you—not at all unlike the lulls before, when things were easy and featherlight and endless; when you could talk to him about everything, anything, and all of the worries in your life were saved for something else. Never him. Never, ever him.
But it tugs at something in your chest. The same pressure blooms at the edges, lingering in the periphery. You think of the spell you fell under—quiet yearning—and shake your head, desperate now to break it.
It’s just as easy to slip into familiarity. To tease, and taunt. And so, you do.
"I'm surprised you haven't said I told you so by now. That's so impressive self-restraint."
His gaze slides over to you. "Well, you know, it's implied."
"Oh, is it, now?"
"Yeah, like when you messaged me and told me about it and I said—"
"Who even uses Tinder?"
"—that he's knobhead, and you're gonna get hurt."
You scoff. "He's from Kent, so."
"Even worse," he makes a face, derision contrasted by the jaundiced lamp spilling over the pavement. "A Tinder date with a guy from Kent? What's next? Moving to Bristol?"
"It's a nice area."
He rolls his eyes. "Sure. As nice as Essex, maybe."
"The two are not even comparable—"
"'Dunno why you're rushing into anything, anyway,” he angles his chin toward you. “If this is about Carver's wedding, I said I'd go with you, didn't I?"
"Yeah, but…"
"But what?"
"That's sort of—like, you just have your own thing going on. I don't want to get in the way."
"I've always had my own thing going on. So have you. But that's never stopped us before, has it? What's changed."
"What about—" you swallow down something thick, bitter that wells in the back of your throat. "You know. Amsterdam. The Barista, or whatever."
His brow knots together. "And what about David from Kent?"
You sweep your hands out, motioning morosely toward your Crocs, your damp outfit. "This is what happened with David from Kent. Not exactly the fairytale meet cute you have with Amsterdam—" he makes a noise, like he means to interrupt. You cut him off. Bury it. "And besides, you should take her. I'll just—"
"I want to go with you."
"Why?"
Kyle falls to a stop near the Kebab shop you usually go to whenever he comes back from his missions, when he's craving good, hearty food that will rot his insides and clog his arteries. A small comfort from before, when everything he has now was just a dream, and you were struggling students in university who could barely afford a meal each and would split a lamb dinner over ale and terrible movies from the noughties back at your flat.
The suddenness of it all makes you blink beside him, slowly angling your chin up at him. A questioning noise wells in the back of your throat, but when you finally turn your gaze to him, it does out. A snuffed flame.
He brings his hand up, finger scratching at the soft patch of skin on the bridge of his nose where it starts to arch up. The look on his face, hidden, slightly, by the night blanketing overhead, but just illuminated enough by smears of neon and flushed street lamps for you to see it clove into something slightly flustered, hesitant. Sheepish, almost, like he hadn't meant to say what he did, and now doesn't know how to proceed forward. Cards tucked tight to his chest. Does he play his hand or fold?
You blink. Then blink again. Struggling, almost, to take in the suddenness of his flustered state.
Because the thing is:
Kyle doesn't get embarrassed or sheepish.
A running gag in your mutual friend group is that Kyle is twenty-eight going on sixty-five. An old man crammed inside the body of a young adult. He runs hot—passionate about his beliefs, quick to temper when he thinks an injustice is being doled out; a disciple of loose stoicism, but of a new age variety that is half parts stereotypical stoner chillness and ripe maturity—but he rarely is ever caught unawares enough to become embarrassed by something. He just has a perfect gauge of himself and those around him, able to quickly make friends with anybody he meets, and self-aware enough to know when he's in the wrong, when he needs to dial it back.
Being his friend for so long, you know the nuance of these expressions. His mien is ingrained in your head: known and catalogued. Nothing about Kyle is a mystery to you except the things you're barred from knowing (his second life away from home, you often joke: wholly confidential, entirety draped in secrecy).
But the look on his face is entirely alien to you. An expression you hadn't thought him capable of making.
It's jarring. It bludgeons into you with a ferocity that takes your breath away.
You know the man standing beside you, but this, everything else, is so unearthly. So foreign.
"Kyle," you hedge, taking a small step closer to him. You're not sure why. Maybe to reacquaint yourself with the man standing before you. Maybe to find something of familiarity within him to comfort the sudden crescendo of your pounding heart because even just the heady scent of his cologne—vetiver, amber—quells the sudden bloom of anxiety in the pit of your stomach. "Are you—?"
"No," he mumbles, then huffs out a soft laugh. It sounds mean, in a self-deprecating way, and your heart lurches for him. "Yeah, no. I'm alright. I just—shit, you know? 'Course I'd wanna go with you. Should be kinda obvious, no?"
Sure, you want to say. Sure, no, totally. Very obvious. And maybe had he not stopped, not made this peculiar expression on his face—like he isn't sure what to do when he always knows what he wants, what he's meant to do—you might have said them. Might let them tumble from your lips, equally self-deprecating and a touch forlorn despite never really knowing why, but that would be a lie, now.
Because you do.
The look on his face is upsetting—not because Kyle never makes that expression, or because he's never uncertain about anything, ever, but because you don't know it. It's not something you've ever seen before. And it hurts.
It's stupid. This whole thing. It shouldn't make you feel some sense of loss when he does something you don't expect. He always does. It's his brand, now—jettisoning across the world to catch bad guys and slap the trite American sense of justice and liberty for all across the faces of anyone who tries to oppose it—and you're very much acclimated to this side of him, the one he hides away from you, giving nothing at all about where he's going, what he's doing, what he's done, until he's back in England, safe and sound, and texting you at six in the morning for an English spread because he missed home. And maybe, maybe he missed you, too.
Those quiet moments are tucked into a cosm where it's only you and him, and greasy food, and reruns of Golden Girls together with your feet in his lap as you sit on the chaise and pick favourites (his is, of course, Rose) until the sun goes down, and he heads home because he has a debriefing in the morning in Hereford, and you have work. It's bereft of unease, of tension. Time slips through your fingers fluidly, and you hardly notice it's been hours since he first arrived. Comfortable, wholly, in his presence and in your skin.
Soulmates, everyone used to joke. You just get each other. Near finish each other's sentences.
Except for lately, where there has been this undeniable tension simmering between the two of you—a sense of fragility that you can't comprehend.
Growing apart, you thought. And then: guess it's time to do the same.
It made sense to make the first move. To download Tinder—much to his chagrin—and start looking for your—
Your Barista from Amsterdam.
And oh.
Oh.
Maybe it's the way the street light frames the angles and plains of his face, or the shadows that run deep lines of tenebrous across the valleys in his eyes, the sharp slope of his lips, the soft pout. The inscrutable expression that rents a jagged divot between his brow, and an unsure twist of his mouth. Maybe it's everything. Nothing.
But the only thing you know right now is that you know him. Have known him. Deeply. Intimately. In a way that goes beyond the boundaries of bodies, of flesh and blood. Bones and marrow. You know his soul. His essence. The foundations of who he is cobbled together in a lonely kebab shop over cheap ale, commiserating on an endless stream of papers and assignments; the eventuality of ever after when you hand in the final one. Over beans and toast in the afternoon, a whole day spent lounging in your flat watching reruns of Golden Girls, and petty arguments over Taskmaster that always seem to go a little bit too far, and never far enough. Fights that end two days later when he shows up with Greggs and a complete box set of that show you said you wanted to watch but never had the time for. Bargain shopping in Tottenham on an early Saturday morning because there's this chair, you see, one that you saw on their Instagram page and you simply must have it.
Soft moments in between, brackets where life doesn't seem to wrap its cold hands around your throat. Time spent in each other's company just for the sake of it.
Climbing onto your roof—a thatched mess of moss and straw and broken asphalt shingles that will one day give under your weight—and watching the stars, always searching for one that rockets across the sky while he murmurs beside you, quiet in this stillness that falls like snow in the dead of night around you. A hushed whisper as he relays the places he's been—all stars, he rasps, hand brushing wide strokes across the raspberry sky, dusted with light pollution: I'll take you there one day to see. Best fucking beer I'd ever had, too, just don't tell my cousin because he thinks the shitty lager he makes for his bar is good—and you try to picture it amongst the grey clouds. A life on the opposite side of the world. Just the two of you. Always.
And that's what it's always been, hasn't it? Just you. Just him.
It's sometime past midnight on a street corner in Manchester. Your feet hurt from walking all night, and your clothes are damp from the rain that caught you off-guard. A summer downpour. It clings to your skin in a way that's both freeing and wholly uncomfortable, but you're not thinking about that. You're not thinking about anything at all, not now. Not really. There's a silence in your head as the world falls into pieces, breaking like the jaundiced light that cuts crevasses and canyons in the tenebrous that colours sharp valleys of his face. He turns, then, a gentle list of his head as he takes you in, breathes your silence and questions the wideness of your eyes, the soft parting of your lips. The movement makes the light spill over the arch of his nose, the slope of his brow. The dawning of a new day. A new world. The untouchable of the moon where no light shines now burning hot under the sun.
Then suddenly, and all at once, there's a loudness in your head: a hundred whispers echoing in time to the same off-beat rhythm, full of memories and moments shared between you, threads woven throughout the years all buoying to the surface as you realise you're a little bit in love with him.
(And maybe you've been a little bit in love with him the whole time.)
So, you say it. You whisper all the words that bubble up, impatiently waiting between your teeth, effervescent and burning white-hot as they throw themselves over bone and flesh to be free.
Confessing goes like this:
Molten agony in your guts as the secrets you barely understand yourself dissolve into the atmosphere, spoken aloud and born on cobblestone and petrichor. Wide-eyed shock, uncertainty, as a new quiet falls over your shoulders, louder than anything you'd ever heard. Guncotton in your nose. A million detonations in your ears.
You've never much liked the silence. You break it, then, with your bare hands.
"...and that's basically it."
It isn't much. It isn't poetry. You're not even sure the words were real. A figment of your imagination, broken free because of baristas in Amsterdam and losers from Kent, abysmal dates and the unending fear of being wholly alone in a world you're not prepared for, all without the person who makes you feel a little bit better about the nothingness that permeates around you.
And sure. Sure. You don't need him. If Kyle decided never to speak to you again, you'd cry and you'd hurt, but you wouldn't be less of a person because of his absence. He doesn't complete you in the same way you've read about in thick books with strong-willed protagonists and an abundance of petty misunderstandings, but he compliments you. Elevates the good and stifles the bad. You want to experience things with him—not because there's some grand force at play, red strings knotted around your fingers that lead you back to him—but because you like his company. His thoughts. His mind. His presence. His essence fills you with joy in the same strokes it makes you want to pull your hair out sometimes. Good and bad. You want it all.
You want it. Want him.
And he—
He's taking you home a little past midnight where you'll make yourself beans and toast and maybe try and sleep, or turn on the television to watch four women you're intricately connected to eat cheesecake and solve each other's problems. He could be at his own flat right now, playing that video game he said he wanted to try when he got back, or watching that movie he was supposed to with his flatmates, his friends. He could be talking to some barista in Amsterdam.
But he isn't.
He's here with you. Still. Still.
"I just—," you say, or try to.
But the rest is a muffled gasp against soft lips when he presses his against yours, stealing the words out of your mouth.
You can feel your heart beating through your lips. Taste him on your tongue when he draws you closer, hands reaching, grasping. Pulling you into him, into his body. You fit against him, tucked safe between the parentheses of his arms. He tastes of cardamom and cornflower. Lavender notes between his molars. Hints of milk on his tongue. You drink him down and know, then, that this is what they mean they talk about love being a feast because you chase this taste for the rest of your life and never be satiated.
He loops his arm around the small of your back, dragging you closer still. As if any atom between your bodies is an affront. There’s no hesitation in the action, in the way he burrows into your skin. No trepidation.
And maybe it would be silly for there to be any. You know him—every iota, every inch; secrets whispered at midnight in a shallow breath and dreams uttered at noon. To be known, to know, is a powerful thing. You feel it ghost across your flesh, featherlight, and reach for it with your bare hands. Seeking, searching. You don’t stop until the tips of your fingers meet his warm skin, curling around him. Anchoring yourself to him. Stuck, now, in permanence.
You find spots that were untouched before. Behind his ears, the dip of his brow, the curve of his nose, and the slope of his jaw. Cupping it in the palm of your hand, a plinth for him to rest his chin.
Your canvassing makes him groan, makes him tilt down into you as he begins his own exploration, chasing you in a mad pursuit. Sliding over your valleys, your plains. Running over the rugged mountains and the steep cliffs. He scours your topography with eager, nimble fingers. It’s slow, languid. There’s no rush with this, a consensus you both seem to come to rather quickly when he pries open your mouth and tangles his tongue with yours. It’s sweet, soft. His hands mimic his chase, sliding along your body as if he means to commit the entirety of you to memory, searing it in his brain.
It’s only when he comes to a crossroads at your navel, pushed flush against his body, does he stop. You moan in despair at it, wanting more and more, not ready to give up this taste that curls over your tongue—saccharine sweet, salty—and Kyle echoes the noise with a groan, a quiet plea for air that both of you desperately need but can’t quite make yourself take.
“Fuck—” he groans again, breath stuttering out in sharp, deep gasps. “Can’t bloody tell you how long I wanted to do this for, fuck—”
His words seem to peel back the dreamy gossamer of a slowly burning sensuality. It ignites in a blaze, not at all unlike the swiftness of his anger. The sharp, sudden strike of a match. The crackle and hiss of flames renting the air.
The blaze starts at the point where your upper lip touches his, and almost immediately, it consumes you.
It's frenzied when he kisses you again—feral and wild: all teeth and tongue and nips against your bottom lip but the moment you sink into the fervour, Kyle changes it. Slows down. Chaste pecks to your sore lips amid a sensual onslaught. A languid roll of his tongue, soothing the burn his teeth left behind.
The way he kisses you feels like a paradox.
It's organised chaos. Refined madness. A cluttered mess of finesse and deliberate suckles; an artist's masterstroke.
You can't keep up. His rhythm is fierce and uncatchable.
Each step seems to stutter. An avartan you can’t keep pace with. Elongated taals, dips. A crescendo of harmony that is matchless, unreproducible. You struggle along with his swift current, his unerring tide that sweeps you away; unmoored, adrift. The tentative exploration ends. He knows you, now. All of you. And this is his summit. His scramble to the top. It’s biting passion; roaring flames.
You cling to him, holding tight to the liferaft he offers in a slow huff, a gust of mirth across your lips and into your lungs, slowing down to accommodate you. Malleable, now, he lets you lead, lets you take over, and move seamlessly with him. In tandem, parallel. Equilibrium brings you to heel, and you sigh into his mouth—a deep exhale of everything that has been building and building, tipping the scales around you until it was unbalanced and precarious. Teetering on the edge a precipice unknown.
His hand roams across your known geography—hills and streams, rivers and canyons—until he reaches your hand still bracketed around his cheeks, slowly peeling it away from his flesh to slide his fingers between yours, holding tight, and—
Kissing is immaculate. Bending at an altar, and making an offering to something bigger than yourself. It’s the spark of lightning flashing overhead, static in the air. Magnets drawing closer and closer until they snap together in the middle.
But holding his hand?
It feels like coming home.
The world tipping back into place. Amber warmth in your veins; the softness of a jasmine petal. You suck in a deep breath at the shock of it all.
You think of missing puzzles and loose sea ice drifting alone in the vastitude of the ocean. You think of a life where he isn’t in it and find yourself shuddering at the wrongness that emanates from it.
You want him. Want him—
It’s Kyle who pulls away first, resting his forehead against yours. You blink slowly, eyes catching dark amber, honeycomb. It draws a smile from you, full and deep. Giddy on the taste of him, of this.
The only thought in your head is finally, finally.
You see his lips curl in response, eyes lidded and heavy. Blooming with want, affection. Adoration.
"What, ah—," he laughs a little, then, breathless and happy, and the noise anchors itself to your breastbone, pressing into the hollow of your ribs. A place you'll keep it forever. "What now?"
He hands you the starless sky, and places it into the cup of your palm. Breathes laughter in the air, paints the moon with his joy. You think about the places he wants to take you, and the ones he swears you'll never go. You think about aeons from now when the world is gone and the stars all die out, when there's just the hazy lavender of endless abyss you can't make sense of. You think of him, and you think of you, and you wonder when it started to just make sense for there to always be two.
Maybe that night in Cardiff when he held your shoes and gave you his coat. When he draped his arm around your shoulders, laughing at something stupid you'd said. A year before he joined this task force he makes cheeky remarks about but never goes too deeply into detail. When it was just endless summers spent working and drinking and eating good food.
He'd asked the same thing, then, half slumped over in the taxi, and three sheets to the wind. It made his eyes darken, endless pits. Black holes. The expanse of the sky is framed by brown lashes, and drooping lids.
And you'd said—
"Beans and toast?" It feels right. It feels good. "We can—"
He huffed, too, just like he does now, and squeezes your hand once, tugging you along.
"We're not watching Golden Girls."
You watch Golden Girls. Kyle wraps his arm around your neck, keeps you tucked in close to his side. He steals kisses from you when Sophia says something that makes you laugh until you're breathless and trembling.
When David from Kent texts you, he grins wide, and whispers in your ear, think I've always been a little bit in love with you, you know?
Yeah, you say, and kiss back until the taste of him is etched into the space between your teeth. Since Cardiff. For you?
"Since Uni for sure." He smiles again, sheepish and a touch flustered. It glitters on his brow and nips the apples of his cheeks. "You stole my heart when you devoured four lamb kebabs and then ate my tabbouleh. Said to myself, yeah, that's the one for me, innit?"
"On second thought, what's that Barista's number? Might try my luck instead."
"Nah, you're smitten," he presses his lips into the hollow of your throat, nips his teeth against your pulse point. "And you're all mine. No take backs."
"Ah, for fuck's sake—"
Ahhhhhhhh. Sappy romcoms are my kryptonite and it shows.
pairing: miguel o'hara x f!reader
rating: mature
word count: 2.2k
summary: he's got a plan that neither of you like
warnings: enemies to lovers, predator/prey dynamics, biting, bondage, temporary paralysis, concussions, miguel is not nice, no use of y/n
notes: this was supposed to be longer but the cut off at the original point was super awkward. this chapter is super exciting for all you fang lover out there <3
You really can’t catch a break.
The city bustles with a verve rivalling your own, a kaleidoscope of luminescence dancing upon the glass facades of its skyscrapers. Their spires pierce the ink-dark cloak of night, and if you weren’t so busy running for your life, you’d stop to admire the way their aviation obstruction lights mimic the stars back home.
(Everything has a trade off, you suppose. You remember what it was like as light pollution gave away to reveal the cosmos above, the beauty of it lost upon your own grief.)
Now, it’s fear – clinging like a shadowy spectre to your heels. The pavement is unforgiving beneath you, each step sending a jolt of energy through your bones. Despite it, you can’t go any faster. Sidewalks crowd with the humdrum of everyday life – people filtering out from work and bodegas, dressed in a slightly odd fashion, their clothes a reminder of your unfamiliar landscape. Car horns blend into one another, providing an unsteady tempo to the race of your heart.
It’s disorienting, all of it. Times like these, you wish you’d been given the opportunity to hone your abilities. Stamina, flexibility. Web shooters in particular would have proved handy in avoiding the bustle of the ground.
Of course, he has that advantage on you too.
You can’t see Miguel, but you sense his proximity. It prods you, nipping at your flesh in a constant assault, intensifying goosebumps and raising hairs. Your spider sense usually doesn’t last this long, solely serving as a warning for immediate danger. Yet that’s just what he is, immediate. Dangerous. Predatory eyes track your every move, sourced from all directions. He’s everywhere; atop buildings, within alleys. Neon signs morph into twisted apparitions; serrated talons, red skulls.
How did he track you down so fast?
The day pass?
You wonder if he’d brought back-up – whether there are other spider-heroes here who trust in his noble cause. Your anxiety triples, and passerby’s begin to warp too. Their hurried footsteps now strike discordant notes, amplifying your isolation. You think you see some tense their wrists, or unbutton their coats, ready to reveal their tailored suits and ensure the capture you’ve managed to evade thus far.
It’s luck. It’s only ever been luck, and that fact changes depending on who you ask. You’ve never outsmarted him, never disabled him. You just so happen to have the power of being a pain in his ass.
Something itches at you, though. A nagging sense of foreboding. His presence in the past has spurred chagrin, annoyance, and – admittedly – arousal. But the genuine terror that lights your nerves now is new. Perhaps because you understand him, are far more familiar with his pride than most. The logical part of you can predict that he won’t let you off so easily, not after your stunt with the kiss. You won’t – can’t – get away this time, even if it damn well nearly kills him.
Any hope you had of a bargain dissipates, rolling back from shore and into the depths of an elusive sea. You jerk the rubber band off your wrist, throwing it into some undisclosed corner.
In a then desperate bid to throw him off, your path loses cohesion. Like a leaf seized by a tempest, you turn based on split-second instinct, weaving through the labyrinth of New York’s grid. Your body sways in frenzy, bolstered by pure adrenaline, which works to dim everything else. Your ribs haven’t fully healed yet – they’d taken a pretty bad beating upon your last fight with Miguel – but you can barely feel the ache as you focus purely on the task at hand.
Your determination surges, recklessness taking hold of your rationale. Veering abruptly, you just about collide with the racing line of cars that flow at a green light. In fact, you think you do. Your skin prickles, and a taxi runs straight through you, blearing a loud honk all the while. Some vehicles break off, drifting around your form at the last minute. In your peripheral, you can see the glowing red of your pursuers web, stretched across the gap between two apartment complexes.
Chest tightening, your breathing loses depth at the sight, shallowing to leave room for the distress that torrents up your system. You clamber up on the hoods of parked cars, using a mast arm pole to propel yourself forward. It’s a fruitless effort. You know it’s too late – have known it since he walked into that convenience, prowling in search of one thing.
(A lion only catches its prey a quarter of the time. But that twenty-five percent?)
Your ankle is the first victim to his hardwearing web, wrapped in the silk and pulled out from underneath you. The back of your head smacks into the concrete below, a high pitched ring reverberating through your skull upon impact. The collision sends a shock wave of pain throughout your being, and in that harrowing moment, everything stutters to a crawl. Spots speckle behind your clenched eyelids, metallic warmth flooding your mouth.
Well, fuck.
To add insult to injury, your atoms rip apart and splice into one another, a consequence of your abandoned day pass. The glitch aggravates the headache that begins to pound at you. You’d allowed yourself to forget how bad it could be.
The willpower that had just played a forefront in your mind steadily starts to trickle out, absorbed by your humiliation and the ground below.
“You really gonna give up that easily?”
Yes.
You make a point to never lie to yourself. In truth, you won’t ever get enough of Miguel’s cadence. Deep and resonant – it smoulders with a charred ruggedness. Commanding attention, rumbling like distant thunder, an unmistakable authority woven into each word. Yet, even amidst the rough contours, there lingers a softness, a subtle grace that soothes the edges of his threats.
More webs bind you, erupting from an unclear point to circle your legs, chest, and secure your arms behind your back. You’re diminished to little more than an aggravated caterpillar, ensnared in a spider’s web. And, just as his little game of bondage draws to a close, said spider stalks within view, splitting through the crowd that quickly forms around the commotion.
With his mask on, he stands as completely impenetrable. You, on the other hand, try to reduce your quivering the best you can, afraid of relaying how truly pathetic you feel.
“Maybe I’m biding my time.” You bite back, calling on a complete bluff. “I’m sure you know how good I am at that?” It’s a low blow. Even if you could control when and where to phase out, you wouldn’t get very far before he catches up to you again.
But Miguel doesn’t waver in his closing in – not until he towers over you, looking down at your incapacitated state. Space buckles under the gravity of his existence; you, too, can feel yourself sinking, drawn in closer by the credence that bubbles off him in flares. You wish you had a cover – your pair of makeshift goggles, a face mask, anything that could elevate you to a degree relative to his. But you’re bare, figuratively naked, and you’ve never hated him more.
He lingers, assessing you, weighing his options. The moment he turns to survey the mass of people who look on inquisitively, you wiggle upward into a sitting position, then throw your head forwards, aiming for his crotch. His wrist gets in the way, though, blocking your pitiful attack on his only defenceless area. Your forehead cracks against his dimensional travel watch, shattering its screen.
“Tu puta madre!” Miguel hisses, snapping back to survey the gadget while you begin to slink away. He seems to have an eye on you, however, because you’re tugged back just as soon as you make the effort.
Like a naughty cat. You shift uncomfortably at the thought.
“Are you gonna spend all night deciding what to do with me, then? I have plans, even if you don’t.”
“Plans. I have plans alright.” The low timbre of his threat slices you where it hurts.
With a calculated flex of his shoulders, he crouches down, gathering the webs around your arms. They serve as leverage when he hauls you upward, exercising his muscles – of which you’d suspected had been padding up to this point – with one swift motion. The world upends on itself, nausea enveloping your senses with its oppressive weight. It allows space for little else; not the uncertainty, not the trepidation. You divert all your efforts on keeping your scarce lunch down, accepting the possibility of a concussion by product of his less-than-refined manhandling.
The journey to wherever he takes you is not at all long enough for you to recover. Before you know it, he’s busting through the creaky door of an empty storelot, carelessly tossing you to the floor. Your vision doubles.
Yeah. Definitely a concussion.
Like you could afford one right now.
“You’ll stay, and you’ll listen.” He points an accusatory finger.
“Sure. Until I’ve had enough, that is.”
“And where would you go, exactly?”
“Nice try, O’hara. Like I’d tell you,” Snickering, you let your head roll to face the ceiling. The action sends you back to earlier, to the robbery you’ve been seeking to suppress. How careless you’d been, letting your fortune to date trick you into thinking that any collateral was safe too. You’d killed that woman. You. “Maybe I’ll fall right through the floor. That way, you’ll never have to worry about seeing me again.”
The notion makes him pause mid-pace, hands on his hips, tilting his head to look at you with what you imagine is the most earnest glare. The air bobs, suspended in static tension, a crackling constant that only unravels once he seems to make up his mind.
Marching forward, he drags you along with him to a nearby wall, upon which he then pushes you upward until you have to look down to meet his eyeline. Your bound legs kick forward, but the struggle hardly affects him.
“I didn’t want to resort to this.”
You assume he means treating you like a toddler does its shiny new toy, hurling you across this playpen of a city. “You really didn’t have to, then.”
He stays quiet, fists clenching tighter around you.
“I suppose we’re past the courtesy of letting the other recover from the last fight before starting a new one? My forearm is still fucked, thanks to you. Maybe if you’d given it some time, I would’ve proved more of a challenge today.” Your words, whilst never your most steadfast allies, betray you in lieu of this restlessness, tumbling forth with unruly incoherence.
Miguel reaches up and slips his mask off. Your mouth moves faster.
“Okay, I get it. The fate of the multiverse and all that. I’ll listen, whatever you want, but at least try and make the lecture original.”
His hand cups your jaw, tightening around your chin to firmly guide it upwards. Your throat stretches taut at the motion, its smooth expanse spread across the wall – an evening repast for a party of one. The imagery breaks down an all too sobering realisation into fragments small enough for you to register. His talons rest against your cheek, bordering perilously close to your waterline.
Traces of that patchouli aftershave hit you. His skin looks especially bronzed in the dark, highlighted at the edges from the phosphorescence outside. His curls droop where they’re plastered to a sweat slicked hairline.
You can’t help it. Your gaze flickers down to those plush lips.
Fuck. Fuck. It’d felt so good to kiss them.
Please let this just be a kiss.
“O-Or go with the… the usual, y’know. I don’t–”
Miguel lunges, sinking his fangs into the fleshy sinew of your neck.
Christ.
Your jaw hangs open, but no breaths filter in. Shock wedges itself at the site of his bite, implacable, steadfast as a barrier between logic and uninhibited emotion. Your reasoning plays no part in this, provides absolutely no valuable contribution to the series of reactions you undergo.
It’s physical, first. The cold slither of paralytic venom distends through your nerves, neurotoxins striking their functions, rendering them useless beyond the point of sensation. Which, you’d say, is the cruellest part. Miguel’s poison doesn’t stop you from feeling anything; not the puncture, nor the burn. You can truly feel it, trekking its graceful path to all muscles in your body, taking hold of the tissue, suppressing their vitality. Your back arches, your body doing its very best to fight what it cannot prevent. It cracks up your bone, down your spine. Your toes unfurl, fingers loosening to hang lamely at your side.
And, when you lose all executive authority over yourself, you’re pulled in to centre on his mouth again. His canines slowly retract, tongue taking their place. It’s warm – so fucking warm – and dextrous, covertly lathering the blood that beads down your nape.
Your last proper breath is wasted on a whine; a loud, keening, absolutely wanton whine. After it, you can do nothing but hold your flat inhales to cycle in as much oxygen as possible – diaphragm weak, your resolve weaker.
Miguel draws away, letting you slump to the floor, heavy and just as useless as a sack of flour. He wipes the excess carmine from his chin, kneeling to regard your glassy eyed stare.
“Fall through now, and you’re as good as dead.”
(You might as well already be.)
chapter four coming soon…
click here: join the taglist to be notified of future updates!
(tags will be in a reblog; if you were not tagged then i couldn't get your url to work!)
vaporwave
dededos
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
andulkaphoto
kaledo-art
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
