Heart By Heart Chapter Fourteen: Fairy Lights and Friction
✨Masterlist✨
The first few months of living together had been something out of a movie.
Kat’s lipstick was always somewhere it didn’t belong. On Joe’s collar, their coffee mugs, on the mirror above the dresser with the words “kill it tonight 💋” scrawled in red. Joe left guitar picks everywhere. In the bathroom. On the kitchen counter. Between couch cushions like they were breadcrumbs he couldn’t stop dropping.
And still, every time Kat walked into the apartment and saw his shoes by the door, she smiled. Every time he brought her a coffee from the corner shop—the one with the oat milk just how she liked it and the barista who always scribbled “K + J” on the side in pink marker—she kissed his nose and said, “My hero,” like it never stopped mattering.
They got into rhythms. Shared playlists for Sunday cleaning. Danced in the kitchen when they cooked together. Argued about where to hang the fairy lights—and then kissed under them anyway. Kat stole Joe’s hoodies so often that he started hanging one on the back of the bedroom door just for her. Joe added her name to the buzzer downstairs without asking. She started keeping her shampoo in the shower. Her earrings found a new home on the bathroom sink. Her books mixed in with his vinyls.
One night, they burned the pancakes because they couldn’t stop kissing in the kitchen. Another night, she fell asleep on the couch with her head in his lap, and he stayed still for hours just to keep her there.
The apartment smelled faintly like rain and fresh laundry. Kat had just gotten in from a long shift, still wearing her black work flats, hair in a low knot. She dropped her bag by the door, kicked off her shoes, and turned the corner to find Joe standing barefoot on the couch, his arms stretched overhead, a string of warm white fairy lights tangled between his hands.
He didn’t see her yet.
And that was when the argument began.
Joe stood on the couch, arms outstretched, trying to drape the string of lights above the window frame. The plug barely reached the outlet, and the whole strand sagged like it was tired of being involved. Kat stood a few feet away, hands on her hips, watching with a mixture of amusement and judgment.
“I’m home,” she said, looking up at him.
“Hi, how was your day?” he asked, not turning from the window.
“You’re going to electrocute yourself,” she said flatly.
“I’m not even touching the plug yet.”
“I thought we were hanging them together? Joe, you’re too close to the edge.”
“I’m balancing.”
“You’re wobbling.”
“I’m fine, babe.”
Kat crossed her arms, unconvinced. “Why don’t we just wrap them around the bookshelf? It makes more sense. It’s easier, and we won’t have to rearrange the furniture.”
“No one said anything about rearranging.”
“You’re literally standing on the couch.”
Joe paused, lifting one eyebrow at her. “What do you have against windows and ambiance?”
She rolled her eyes. “What do you have against symmetry and not falling off the couch?”
He grinned despite himself, stepping down with a dramatic huff. “You just don’t want to admit my idea’s better.”
Kat narrowed her eyes. “Your idea is chaos. The lights will droop, the plug will show, and the vibe will be ruined.”
“I am the vibe,” Joe said, tossing the lights into her arms.
She caught them but didn’t look away from him. “Cocky much?”
He stepped closer. “Confident.”
“Mm.” Her eyes danced. “There’s a difference.”
Joe took the lights back from her hands and looped them around his neck like a glittering scarf. “I’ll wear them as a statement. Problem solved.”
Kat smirked, but there was a softness in the curve of it. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you love it.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He moved toward her again, slower this time. Their banter hung between them like the lights—warm and fragile. Kat’s arms stayed folded, but her fingers played with the hem of her shirt, eyes flickering from his mouth to his eyes and back again.
“I’m not letting you ruin my bookshelf with tangled wires,” she whispered.
Joe leaned in. “Then let’s ruin the window instead.”
Their lips met in the middle of the room, just a few feet from where the lights pooled across the floor. She kissed him like she’d been waiting for a reason to stop talking. He kissed her like it was the best win he’d ever earned.
When they pulled apart, his forehead rested against hers, breath shared in the quiet.
“So?” he murmured. “Window or bookshelf?”
Kat ran her fingers through his hair and smiled.
“Let’s try both,” she said.
But the conversation didn’t end there.
Because just when Joe moved to plug the lights in again, Kat hesitated—and the fight snowballed.
“I just wish you would’ve waited,” she said quietly.
Joe turned back around. “Waited?”
“For me to get home. To do it with you.”
He blinked. “I thought I was doing something sweet.”
“You didn’t think I’d want to be part of it?”
“I didn’t think it’d start a fight.”
Kat’s voice rose slightly. “It’s not about the lights.”
Joe sighed. “Kat, I know it’s not about the lights.”
Her arms dropped. “Then what is this? Because it’s starting to feel like you only want me here when I don’t disrupt your plans.”
His voice tightened. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither is feeling like a guest in the apartment I live in.”
That landed hard. Joe’s shoulders fell. He walked toward the couch and sat down, quiet for a beat, looking anywhere but at her.
“You’re not a guest,” he said eventually. “I just… I saw a photo of a room with lights like these, and it made me think of you. I thought it’d make this place feel more like home for both of us.”
Kat looked down at the strand in her hands.
“I would’ve liked them,” she said softly. “If we’d done it together.”
Joe stood again, slower this time, and crossed to her.
“I want you here. Not just your stuff. I want you to take up space. I know I mess things up. I rush. I get in my head. But none of that means I don’t want you in this.”
She nodded, voice quieter now. “You don’t have to be perfect, Joe. You just have to let me in.”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
Then she kissed him again.
Fierce. Forgiving. Full of feeling.
The lights stayed curled in a lazy heap on the coffee table while they curled up together on the couch instead, her sweatshirt halfway off, his shirt rucked up under her ribs, their hands and mouths discovering all the ways love stays, even after a fight.
Later, tangled together in the flickering glow, Kat whispered, “Window and bookshelf.”
Joe pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Anything you want,” he said, holding her tighter on the couch.
And that was the truth.
They never finished hanging the lights that night.
But they glowed anyway.
Like the fight was never really about the lights.
It was about choosing each other.
Even when it gets messy.
Especially when it does.
And sometime after the silence settled, long after the kisses turned to stillness and Kat drifted to sleep, Joe lay awake with one arm tucked under her shoulders and the other resting over her ribs.
The lights blinked faintly against the window glass.
Her fingers curled beneath his shirt.
And even though the lights never got hung, something about the night still felt complete.
Like home had never been the walls.
It was the space between them.
Always was.
