Nighttime (Fangs Fogarty x OC)
Summary: He gets a call one evening when she needs him the most. She doesn’t say much, but that’s okay. A lesson in comfort is made less scary by the comfort of nightfall.
A/N: Special thanks to @reggiemantleholdmyhand-tle for making the moodboard for me and just always being so open and interested in my ideas. Thanks, Vannah!
Fangs answers his phone on the third ring.
“Everything okay?” The panic is evident in his voice and Ari almost felt bad for waking him up.
“Everything’s fine, mon trésor, I didn’t mean to worry you…” Ari whispers into the phone to avoid waking up the rest of her sleeping family.
“I like it when you call me that” He reveals, still half-dreaming.
“Mon trésor” She repeats to him again, slow and steady. Fangs hums in response, still clouded in that thick blanket of sleep. “Can I come over?” Ari whispers, as though she feels embarrassed for even asking. There’s a rustle on the other line as Fangs tried to wake himself up. Ari heard the creak of his mattress as he stood up, can hear him rustling around for his keys.
“I’m coming…bring a jacket, it’s cold out tonight” Fangs adds, grunting as he put his boots on.
They hang up quickly and Ari grabs her essentials before burrowing herself in a sweatshirt, tucking her shoes under her arm as she tiptoed around her room. She tries to unlock the window as quietly as possible, knowing that her mother’s ears were attuned to mischief. There’s a beat of silence between all of her movements as to not attract attention to herself. She knows that there’s a hole in the trellis that’s about the size of Gus’s skinny foot, and Ari uses it to her advantage as she strategically climbs down from her window to scale the side of the house. Fangs pulls up just as she sticks the landing; he kills the lights and the engine at the bottom of the driveway and Ari jogs over to his junky car.
Instinctively, she can’t help but look across the cul-de-sac at her best friend’s house…although Ari wasn’t exactly sure about where she stood with Nadya at this point. Of course, she sees the blonde beauty hanging out of her window, quietly trying to have a cigarette as she loomed under the pink glow of her bedroom lights. The two girls lock eyes, but Ari looks away first, using it as an excuse to duck into Fangs’s car and shut the door behind her. As they drive away, Ari thinks she sees Nadya smirk before asking her cigarette on the windowsill and retreating inside, shutting her lights off behind her.
Ari doesn’t go for the radio like she usually would, instead she revels in the quiet and holds Fangs’ warm hand over the gear shift. It’s a quiet drive back through the Southside and into the rusty gates of Sunnyside Trailer Park. Fangs maneuvers the car through the grid-work of spaces, pulling uo quietly in front of his house and shutting off his car. Both him and Ari are wordless as they gather their things and lock up.
Fangs feels it in his bones that something isn’t right. Ari’s too quiet, and she never calls him this late…especially not for an impromptu sleepover (though he wouldn’t mind it becoming a habit). He walks groggily over to the passenger’s side and wraps his strong arms around Ari, pulling her close to his chest and trying to silently let it out into the universe that he was there for her, that he wasn’t going anywhere and that she didn’t have to hide from him. She melts into his touch and suddenly she seems so much smaller than she actually is.
“Lets get you inside” he mumbles into Ari’s hair, keeping her close as he fished his keys from the pocket of his sweatpants.
They navigate through the darkness with minimal difficulty, with Ari holding back a giggle when Fangs nearly trips over his brother’s skateboard. He opens the door to his bedroom just enough so that they could enter without the old wood lurching and giving their presence away. Fangs’ room is warm and inviting, even in the moonlight. Ari kicks off her shoes and slips under his flannel sheets, reveling in the traces of body heat still barely warming up the pillows. Fangs clambers into bed beside Ari and the two of them fight for enough blankets before falling into a tired comfort. He slots his arms around Ari’s waist and holds her close. He can feel the tension in her body release, as if Ari could only relax and untangle herself from everyone else if she was in his presence.
Her breathing events out and he can’t help but stare at her, his calloused thumb running over the apples of her cheek as he counts constellations in her freckles. Something blooms deep inside his chest and Fangs can’t help but feel some sort of cosmic shift.
