Author Note: I haven’t seen anybody write for him so I decided to..hope you enjoy!
“The Spaces In Between” - Bakari Bronson x Fem!Reader
When she first met Bakari Bronson, she hated him.
Not because she actually knew him. She didn’t. She only knew the version of him everyone at school talked about—the kid who got into fights, skipped class, and always looked like he was one bad day away from walking out on the world completely.
The first time they spoke, she was sitting on the front steps of the community center after volunteering for a tutoring program. Bakari was there because he’d been assigned community service after getting into trouble.
“You got a pen?” he asked.
She looked up from her homework. “No.”
He stared at the six pens spread out beside her.
“You really just lied like that?”
She shrugged. “You looked like you’d forget to give it back.”
He laughed.
And somehow, that was the beginning.
At first, they only saw each other twice a week. She would do homework while Bakari swept floors or stacked chairs. Eventually, he started sitting next to her after he finished.
“What you working on?”
“Chemistry.”
“You understand that?”
“Barely.”
“Good. Thought I was just dumb.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re not dumb.”
He didn’t answer.
Over time, they developed a routine.
She’d complain about school.
He’d complain about everything else.
They argued about music, movies, and whether pineapple belonged on pizza. He teased her for carrying color-coded notebooks. She teased him for pretending he didn’t care about things when he obviously did.
Somewhere in between all of that, they became best friends.
She was there when Bakari got accepted into a writing program and didn’t believe he deserved it. She was there when he got rejected from another opportunity and pretended not to care. She sat beside him on bad nights when he couldn’t explain what was wrong and good nights when he finally felt like maybe his life could become something different.
And Bakari was there for her too.
When her parents separated during her senior year, she didn’t tell anyone for weeks. She told Bakari.
When she got rejected from her dream college, he sat outside her house for three hours with takeout and didn’t leave until she ate something.
They never talked about what they meant to each other.
Maybe because they were scared.
Maybe because once you said something out loud, you couldn’t take it back.
By the time she graduated high school, everyone assumed they were together.
They weren’t.
“Why don’t you just ask her out?” Papa asked Bakari one day.
Bakari looked offended.
“Because.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t wanna ruin what we got.”
Papa stared at him.
“So instead you’re just gonna suffer?”
Bakari didn’t respond.
Because he was right.
He was suffering.
Not because he wasn’t happy. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. That’s what made it terrifying.
He’d spent most of his life losing things.
People.
Places.
Versions of himself.
The thought of losing her too made his chest hurt.
So he stayed quiet.
And she stayed quiet too.
Until the night everything changed.
It was raining.
Not normal rain. Chicago rain. The kind that made the streets shine under streetlights and soaked through your clothes in seconds.
Bakari was sitting outside Smokey’s after closing, staring at a notebook he’d been trying to write in for an hour.
She found him there.
“You’re gonna catch pneumonia,” she said.
He looked up and laughed.
“That’s your opening line?”
She sat beside him anyway.
“You didn’t answer my texts.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
He looked back at the street.
“I don’t know.”
She waited.
He hated that she always waited. Never pushed. Never demanded. Just waited until he was ready.
“I’m scared,” he admitted quietly.
“Of what?”
He laughed again, but there was no humor in it.
“Everything.”
The rain hit the pavement around them.
“You know my life. You know me.”
“I do.”
“What if one day you wake up and realize I’m not who you thought I was?”
She frowned.
“Bakari.”
“What?”
“Look at me.”
He did.
“You think I’ve stayed all these years because I didn’t know who you were?”
He didn’t answer.
“I know exactly who you are.”
He felt his chest tighten.
“You do?”
She smiled.
“You’re stubborn. You overthink everything. You act like you don’t care when you care too much. You think every good thing in your life is temporary.”
He stared.
“And you’re one of the best people I’ve ever known.”
Nobody had ever said that to him before.
Not and meant it.
The rain kept falling.
“I’ve been in love with you for a long time,” she said softly.
For a second, Bakari thought he’d imagined it.
“You what?”
She laughed nervously.
“Please don’t make me repeat that.”
He couldn’t breathe.
“You’ve…what?”
She covered her face.
“Oh my God.”
He started laughing.
Not because it was funny.
Because after years of believing he was impossible to love, the one person he’d been afraid to lose had just told him she’d loved him all along.
“I love you too,” he said.
She slowly lowered her hands.
“You do?”
He nodded.
“Been trying not to for years.”
This time, she laughed.
“That was your plan?”
“It wasn’t a good plan.”
“No.”
He smiled.
“No.”
For the first time in a very long time, Bakari didn’t feel scared of what came next.
Because maybe love wasn’t about knowing everything would work out.
Maybe it was trusting someone enough to find out together.
And somehow, through all the spaces in between—through arguments, late-night phone calls, bad days, and second chances—they already had.