KYLE GARRICK X F!READER [9.4k] (18+)
synopsis. It's a long while before you give a name to this feeling, longer than it ought to take for you to realise just what it is. It's embarrassing really, that it should take you as long as it does. You'd brushed it off as admiration, that being in Kyle's orbit had crossed your wires. You never could think clearly around him, bashful, fluttery, easily mortified.
warnings. f!reader, friends to lovers, soft-hearted reader, selfship coded, piv sex minors or ageless blogs do NOT interact, you will be blocked
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He's one of your best friends, though you'd hesitate to call yourself his.
It seems odd, at a glance, that the two of you should know each other at all, let alone interact in any capacity beyond casual pleasantries. You suppose he's just one of those guys. The ones who get on with others easily, the ones who slip into conversations without feeling like they've committed some terrible sin by daring to breathe in someone else's company. It looks seamless, the way he manages to find connection with just about anyone.
You envy it sometimes. (Envy him, too, on your more miserable days.) You'd hate him if he weren't so him. It's difficult to hold anything against him. You'd been defenceless then, too. All it had taken was a single glance your way, warm, doe eyes crinkling at the corners and you, odd, little nobody that you were – you were his before he even knew your name.
Kyle Garrick enters your life one morning during your second year at university, striking up a conversation that unspools in the minutes before your lecture starts and continues to thread through the rest of your life, seemingly endless. He's a year older, handsome in a 'stranger you see at the airport and think about for the rest of your life' sort of way and worst of all, nice.
You could handle cool indifference. You've conditioned yourself to expect the unseeing slide of a gaze over you, comfort found in the press of the wallpaper against your back, lingering on the edges of a crowd alone. You're woefully unprepared for nice.
He finds out that you've started university early and you brace yourself for the slant of his mouth in that queer way you've grown accustomed to from your peers – belittling, a mocking smile that precedes a compliment that isn't really a compliment. But you're left stammering over your words when his eyebrows rise and he simply grins at you, tilting his head as if to say, cool.
For some reason, unfathomable, unknown, he takes a liking to you. He cares to spend his time in your company, taking up space on your lumpy little couch, or kicking his socked feet up on your bed when your flatmates are taking up the living space. He comes round with CDs in his hands, coaxes you into whatever plans he's got for the night.
Golden, brilliant, beaming –
Beautiful.
It's disarming to be near him, to have the weight of his attention on you like this. Your university days are something of a blur to you, spent trying to keep yourself steady on a tightrope. You wake up most mornings feeling like a clay creation taken out of the kiln too early, shaped by clumsy hands and half formed, hairline fractures you're sure everyone notices, brittle creation glaring in the company of their perfect porcelain.
If he does, Kyle doesn't say a thing about it. Your oddities are the least of the older boy's concerns. In those days, he'd been more interested in coaxing you out of the house, or swaying you to let him inside.
You give him a few of your firsts – the ones that don't really matter, not compared to the others anyway.
Your first drink is with him, nineteen and screwing up your face at the taste of the too strong mojito he's ordered for you, alcohol sharp and burning as it makes its way down your throat, chest warming with the shots you take a little while after. He laughs at you, hand coming to clap you on the back playfully, where it rests for the remainder of the night.
After your first night out on the town, the both of you stumble to his place and fall asleep on the couch with half finished boxes of takeaway on the coffee table. You wake up in the morning with his shoulder pressed against yours, his long legs kicked up against the glass tabletop, the sight of his mismatched socks making you muffle a laugh despite the soreness in your neck.
These aren't that big, compared to the other firsts, the glaring ones that make it into every movie and book and show. First kisses and first times are only things you dream about sometimes. These, these firsts you have had, you guard zealously, protective. You don't even think Kyle knows – he might’ve discouraged your drinking so much that first night if he had, but you grin drunkenly up at him and think that as far as firsts go, you're glad these are with him.
You fall asleep on that couch a great many times in the years afterward and when he moves into his first proper place, he insists on bringing the ridiculous thing with him.
In the beginning, you'd suspected you were something of a pet project to Kyle. That feeling doesn't ever fully go away. Wretchedly, sometimes you liken yourself to a puppy, lingering by his side and attached to his hip like you haven't quite been house trained yet. You smile bashfully at strangers when he slips an arm comfortingly around your shoulders and introduces you.
There's always affection in his voice, but the roots of self pity are deep and you wonder whether the silent warning reaches everyone as clearly as it does you – that you're a little fragiler than the rest of them, that the words you say never seem to come out right, that you're - in your more awful moments, you think – a freak.
He tells his friends one time at a party, arm around your waist to keep you anchored – don't spend the entire night hiding in the bathroom, mate, I want you to have a good time, these are good people, you're gonna like them, promise – that you're brilliant. You think about it all night as you’re steered from friend to friend, introduced by Kyle, wondering if you're worth the praise.
There's not much about you that's remarkable, not that you can note, but Kyle beams, proud, and brags about you like you are. It muddles your mind and leaves you feeling breathless in a way you don't want to inspect too closely.
It's a long while before you give a name to this feeling, longer than it ought to take for you to realise just what it is.
It's embarrassing really, that it should take you as long as it does. You'd brushed it off as admiration, that being in Kyle's orbit had crossed your wires. You never could think clearly around him, bashful, fluttery, easily mortified.
It had felt like being 11 again, wide-eyed and the dawning understanding that you weren't the same as your peers, that they, along with you, saw the invisible markers that set you apart from them. Kyle, funny, brilliant and beautiful – it was like drawing too close to the sun. This proximity, to have him so close, to be able to reach out and touch him – he'd grinned at you the first time you'd leaned in to greet him with a hug, arms squeezing you tight before releasing you – this was not something you'd ever thought was in the cards for you.
He leaves you warm-faced and woozy, like waking up from a nap beneath the summer sun, head wool-stuffed and tongue dry. Still, you linger.
Strange, silly girl. Shame warms you when you turn your face into your pillow after he leaves your flat, skin burning against the fabric his hands had rested against only a while earlier, your mouth pressed to the cotton. The cologne he uses hangs in the air, dizzying, and disgust wars with devotion, your lips parting in an inhale.
In the dark of your room, you hold your own hand and long for something you cannot name.
Cruel thing that it is, the world does not wait for your cognizance.
Your university days come to a close quicker than they'd arrived and you're adrift once more, moored only by the temp job you somehow manage to get before graduation – it's better than nothing, and you don't have to leave London like you had expected.
And it would be fine, this job of yours, your flat that you spend an exorbitant amount to occupy, the dawning feelings you've been harbouring for close to half a decade, but–
Kyle enlists.
– and it feels like the beginning of the end.
You try not to let him see the tears but by then he knows you too well, has traced the features of your face with sharp eyes too many times to count. Every breath, every expression, every flutter of your eyes, he knows. You're a shit liar to begin with but it's impossible to get by him.
He goes in the end, of course. But he holds you in the back garden of your friends' house and doesn't say a word as you ruin his shirt, before he does.
Listen, I'll be alright, yeah? I've been thinking about this for some time. Don't look so sad, it'll be okay. They'll care of you, the guys in there – don't make that face, I wanted to tell you first, I just…I needed to get things organised, alright? I need to know you'll be alright while I'm gone. A laugh, when you scowl at him. I know you're an adult, love, just…humour me. I'll write you when I can, I promise, and I'll call.
It feels silly, knowing he'd gone to such lengths. More than ever, you feel the brittleness of your bones, the unsteady ground beneath your feet – a sweet gesture turns into a shard of glass, a reflection of your inadequacy. You long for it, this invincibility that the others around you seem to carry, a solidness, a strength you sorely lack.
If you were… more, perhaps he wouldn't have to make such arrangements. Your face is warm when you return inside, and you're conscious of the others' gazes, a gentleness in their arms when they tuck you into their side to continue what you now realise to be Kyle's send off.
Baby bird with an awkwardly formed wing, you're passed from one set of arms to another through the night, love taking the form of kid gloves. They mean well, you know they do. It doesn't leave you feeling any less of a mess.
Kyle's brown eyes dance in your periphery all night. You don't meet them, ashamed, disgusted by the wobbliness of your mouth, the ever teetering emotions that threaten to capsize you.
You realise, horrified, that it's love when someone brings out a cake covered in messily scribbled icing – Good luck Garrick! – and you meet his eyes over the glow of the candles.
Full lips stretch into a devastating grin and he ducks his head when the congregation begin to descend into a drunken rendition of For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, your voice joining the fray in a broken warble. Over the flicker of the flames, Kyle Garrick holds your heart in his hands.
It's been his all these years and you hadn't even known.
Love takes hold and continues to bloom. The world does not stop when half your heart leaves for the other side of the world. It does not stop when he comes home, if only briefly, only to slip from your fingers once more. You rue the day John Price set sight on your friend, wish that Kyle would be selfish – come back, you want to say but you have no right to this, no right to plead him to hide with you in this bubble.
The world goes on. The years pass.
In his absences – long stretches of time before he returns home, almost always bloody and never not banged up, you enter the spring of your life. It feels like a betrayal to solidify, to bloom where he cannot see, the suggestion that you were only waiting for this – that you needed the time apart to mould yourself with wet hands once more is treasonous to your lovesick heart.
The edges of you fill out. Less and less do you feel like a ghost, still strange, still peculiar, but you bloom. No longer in stasis, no longer pinned in place by an invisible something, your twenties begin to take their course. The ground beneath your feet feels firmer and Kyle –
He remains out of reach, always a hair's breadth between your fingers and the sleeve of his jacket. Homecomings are fleeting things, short, treasured, moments before he's inevitably called away.
You love him still, how could you not? But little by little, your breaths begin to even out. Life unfolds, takes shape where you thought it never would, forming around the space in your heart where he lays, anyway.
You pass a few more firsts, some inconsequential and others momentous. Sharing shy grins over candlelit tables, presses of lips to yours, a real, proper job that makes your face ache with how widely you smile at the achievement. You make friends – friends of your own. Though you love your university friends dearly, it had been Kyle who'd introduced you to them, and it's Kyle you see in their smiles when you curl up next to them, that same brand of love you miss dearly in their arms, both comforting and stifling. It seems a silly distinction, but it eases something in your chest, a lonely, wounded part that's still unsure, still a little scared this is a fluke, that this isn't yours to have, that you get what you're given, and not an inch more.
It is yours, though. It's yours, this life you've built, the friends you've made. It's yours. It makes you glow to think about it. Precious thing that it is, you don't dare to tamper with it, fearful of it shattering if you get too greedy.
Greed – you long for more, yearn for it. The world finally delivered to you, no longer an outsider looking in, surer of yourself than you've ever been, your fingertips itch to sink into it, hungry. More, more, more.
You think of dark eyes and the only smile you've ever loved like this, and you want.
Fear though, fear stays your hand. It weighs your tongue when Kyle returns to make himself at home in your flat, fixing himself a cup of tea while you choose a movie to watch. It presses you into the opposite end of your small sofa instead of his side, legs trembling when the heat of his leg presses into your thigh.
Precious, treasured, beloved. You don't dare to tamper with this.
The years have passed, the world has changed, the both of you, too, but this remains sacred. Your want remains locked in the deepest recesses of your heart – this is one thing you cannot have.
There's a clarity to the earth you see when you're a child. The grass ever verdant, fruit sweeter on your tongue, summer yawning infinite. Kyle loses that as he grows older as most often do, eyes aging, colours muting. The grey of London seeps into his awareness with startling clarity, stifling, acrid.
The day he meets you, the world flares up around him once more, ultraviolet and vibrant. Something unlatches in him, a notch undone. His ribs expand, a full, clear breath after years of pollution. Aurora lance through the air, solar flares that burn bright against his eyes.
He's preoccupied for a long time, unable to recognise this feeling for what it is. The rush of his twenties are a whirlpool, occluding his heart from him. He knows this, though. You're not much younger than him but there's a naivety to you that he finds sweet. Endearing, even. He reasons his sudden draw to you as a need to look out for you.
(It is not philanthropy that reels him to you every few days, that tugs him to the seat beside yours in the lecture theatre. It is not the responsibility of a good samaritan that desires to hear your voice, that searches for you in every room. He thinks himself a gentleman, but he isn't that kind.)
Still, there is always something that lingers, a lump in his throat that he can't ever fully dispel. It burns when he's away, when he tucks you into a corner of his mind every time he leaves London, drives him forward when he's rappelling out of a helo, free falling through the air with the scent of blood under his nose. This thread tugs him forward, keeps him coming home.
He loathes the change – adjusts poorly to the distance. It's difficult, the inability to see you, the uncertainty of wondering, more times than he'd like, if he ever will again. Homecomings are bittersweet now, every difference magnified. He burns the first time he realises you've changed your perfume – a sweet fragrance that curls inside his lungs, so different to the one you'd reached for through your university days. The intersections of your lives diverge further and further, no longer entwined like they had been before, meeting only briefly, a cache of things to catch each other up on, stories he no longer is part of but gets to hear and deliver.
You bloom tenfold each time he sees you, petals unfurling with every visit home. There are glimpses of the girl you'd been in the days when he'd been around, sweet, shy thing when you offer a bashful grin in response to his teasing. Now, he marvels at the changes, glaring, glowing .
Love makes itself known to him in the early days of his recruitment to the 141 when he wakes up in an infirmary, a little concussed, aching all over, and your name is the first out of his mouth. His captain quirks a brow, hides the twitch of his mouth in the shoe brush moustache above his upper lip.
Didn't know you had a girl back home, Garrick.
Keen blue eyes had watched him as he'd sunk back into the hospital mattress, uncomfortable, a pained scowl twisting his lips.
Not mine, sir. Not like that, anyway.
You planning on keeping it that way?
Sir?
This line of work…you don't get many chances for a do-over.
Price hadn't said much further, but those words had taken root, anchored just below his ribs. They're glaring each time he returns home, a cacophony that only grows with each year that passes. He burns, with every pass of your glances his way, fire roaring each time he reunites with the soft mass of your body, arms winding around your softness.
The changes don't matter so much then – not when the threads of his sanity steadily begin to unravel. The fibers twist and tighten, fraught with tension, fraying one by one.
When all but the last have snapped, when the leaves have turned and fallen, when the sands have trickled down, Kyle takes the last remaining thread –
sitting in the back of a bird inbound for base, the ache of a near decade of war worn deep into his bones
– and severs it himself.
"'Lo."
Your lips part in surprise and you have to bite down the surprised squeal that bubbles up your throat. Eyes widening, you barely think before tilting yourself forward into Kyle's already open arms, a laugh punching out of his chest at the collision. He staggers backwards, nearly taking the two of you down and you clutch his shoulders.
"You ass," you exclaim, stomach dipping suddenly when he pulls you so close you're forced to press up on your toes, arms squeezing you tightly. "You didn't tell me you were coming home!"
"I wanted to surprise you, didn't I?"
He chuckles and his breath tickles the skin of your neck. The smell of soap and musk, the lingering notes of his cologne on his collar reach your nose and you tuck your face against his jaw briefly, a fleeting moment for you to savour before sense washes over you and you realise what you're doing. You draw back, mortified.
Kyle doesn't say anything, only shuffling over the threshold and kicking the door shut with you still in his arms, the two of you clumsily stepping further into your flat. You're carefully let go of after a moment longer, pools of deep ochre sweeping over your features affectionately. A sweet smile plays on his lips, unrepentant in the face of your frown.
"Consider me surprised," you mutter, shaking your head. "Did the others know?"
He shakes his head. "Haven't told them yet, otherwise they'd all be coming round. I wanted to see you first."
You try, and struggle, to mask the flip your stomach does at that. "Oh."
"Yeah," he says, eyes crinkling. "You miss me?"
You'd never been a good liar and the time apart had done little to rectify that. Your face warms immediately under his attention and strained laugh makes its way into the air as you look away.
"Course I missed you, Garrick," you murmur, moving away in the direction of your kitchen. "It's not the same without you."
He follows, kicking his trainers off and trailing after you through the hall where your dinner is cooking on the stove.
"How long are you back?" you ask, drawing up to the pot, poking a fork into the softened pasta shells.
"Little while," he answers vaguely, parking himself against the counter. "Got a bit banged up so I'll be round for a bit. Captain's orders."
You whirl around at that answer, alarmed. "You're hurt?"
No compassion for your heart, he only grins. "I'm fine, love. Promise."
You regard him a little longer, lips twisted in a frown, before you let out a breath and return to your now boiling pasta. Shaking your head, you carry the pot to your sink, watching steam rise through the air as you tip the water in. In a quiet voice, you tell him, "You know I worry."
He softens then, chastised, and you have to shrug him off when he comes up behind you, still unamused. The contrite look on his face makes your heart squeeze in its chest and you look away.
"Will you go set the table?" you mutter. "This is just about done."
He presses his lips together, as though fighting the urge to say something, before nodding. You take a moment in the kitchen to collect yourself. The flat is too small to afford you any real privacy, you can feel Kyle's presence only a few strides away, but you make do, fingers tightening on your spoon as you portion the pasta onto plates, carefully arranging the food in obvious delay until you can no longer reasonably fuss over it. You carry the plates to where he's laid out the glassware and cutlery, your favourite drinks already waiting for you alongside a puppy-eyed man who holds your heart in his hands.
"Don't be upset with me," he murmurs, a hand covering yours when you set his plate down in front of him. You're anchored to his side instead of allowed to slump into your chair at the side of the table adjacent to him, and there's a plea in his wide eyes, entreating you to soften on him.
You've never quite been able to guard yourself against it. You pause, before your palm flips upwards to kiss his. Truce. His shoulders loosen and you offer a small shake of your head.
"I was just worried. I'm happy you're home."
He lets go of your hand after a moment, eyes still on you as you take a seat.
"Yeah," he mutters, softly. "Me too."
Dinner, and the company, thaws you inside out until you're warm all over, face aching with the weight of your joy. You both remain at the table long after you've cleared your plates, unwilling to move and shatter the moment – an unreasonable part of you fears he'll be called back the moment you do. Selfish, longing, you want him here with you, even if you'll have to endure the growing numbness in your bottom for it. Your legs are pulled up, folding between you and the table as you listen to Kyle talk.
He has a way of telling tales, you realise, clinging to every syllable that his lips shape, every pause, every sigh. The sound of his voice is one you'd missed these last few months, and you barely breathe as he talks himself hoarse, not wanting to lose a moment of it.
It's worse, to have his attention on you. He's unrelenting about it, insistent on catching up with every bit of your life he's missed. You pity the others that have been on the end of his interrogation, though perhaps you've gotten off lightly. You can't imagine him reaching out to fiddle with the fabric on their pants, after all, wrapping a stray thread around his finger and letting go, only to do it again. They're likely not being poured more water when their voice gives out, fingers brushing against his when he passes the glass over.
He only interrupts you once, and it's as the hour grows later, tilting his head inquisitively.
"Wait," he says and you pause. "Come on, you've got to be uncomfortable sitting like that – don't you want to move to the sofa?"
He doesn't give you a chance to stammer out a no, no I'm okay. Standing, he pulls you with him and you're tugged forward to sink into the plush cushions of your sofa. He picks your legs up to deposit them in his lap, and your fingers curl into the fabric beneath you at the closeness.
"What about the dishes?" you mutter, face flaming and he reaches forward to brush a hand over your cheek.
"Get them later," he says, voice taking on a softer quality, almost tender, even. "I missed you, I want to hear how you've been."
You affect a casual laugh, averting your gaze when it becomes too much to bear, fixing your eyes instead on the collar of his shirt. Blue, and beautiful against his deep skin. Your favourite shirt on him.
"What else is there to say," you murmur, pressing your temple against the back of the sofa, curling up against its arm. "Not all of us are falling out of helicopters and having gunfights, Garrick."
Something flashes in his eyes at that, a little laugh breathed out into the air. Your attention snags on the gleam of his teeth, the wet press of his tongue against his lips, and you’re conscious of the way your pulse throbs.
"Good," he rumbles, an arm resting over your thighs, thumb skimming back and forth over your covered knee. Heat blooms in its path, your skin warming with every pass of his finger. "You don't need to get caught up in that business. Want you safe, here."
You hum in response and he nods decisively. His shirt sleeve rides up, and you lean forward, reaching out when you catch sight of a new scar, something in your chest pinching at the sight.
"What's this?"
He lets out a breath when your finger brushes over the raised skin and your eyes flick up to his face, meeting dark eyes much closer to you than they'd been last. His breath tickles your skin and you tense at the proximity.
"Got nicked," he says, voice barely above a whisper. "Don't worry about it."
You frown, feeling your lip beginning to tremble, telltale signs of the waterworks to come in the pressure behind your eyes.
It’s been many years since your eyes had been opened to the consequences of a career such as Kyle’s. Imagination only went so far, a thin veil of protection between you and the threat of blood spilled, not quite real and easily banished. Easier to stomach, too.
There had been scars on him you’d never seen before when Kyle had returned home after his first tour. You’d crowded close to him in the pub that night, tucked under his arm and pressed between his side and your friends, all clamouring to hear the deviltry he’d gotten up to with horrified fascination.
Stiff with fright, stomach roiling and your drink untouched, you’d sat there and listened to the stories he’d relayed, voice a little rougher when he’d stumbled over the parts you suspected were too awful to give a name. The way his voice had grown a little thinner as the night went on, the too close encounters that he brushed over with forced lightness –
You had managed to keep it together right up until he’d taken you home, where you’d barely made it past the threshold of the bathroom before you’d thrown up. Bile and tears splattering against the porcelain, you’d kneeled over the toilet seat with Kyle’s hands smoothing over your back until your stomach had finally settled.
Though he’d never named you as the reason, Kyle had stopped talking about his deployments soon after that. The reminder of his mortality grows more and more tender as you age, your tender heart only fraying more with each season where you had hoped it might calcify – if only enough to hide your worry from him. But even now, there is no corner of the world for you to shy away from him.
"You got hurt. How could I not worry?" Your voice pitches, upset.
So quickly the night threatens to take a turn, but he keeps steady, shaking his head, forehead tipping forward to press against your temple. Unshed tears burn your eyes as you press your face into his neck, trying to compose yourself.
"It's nothing, I've had worse," he tries to soothe and it only hollows the pit in your stomach. You make a noise, trying to rear back, but his hand has come to loop around your waist, keeping you close to him. Another settles on the back of your neck, warm, heavy, grounding.
"How is that meant to make me feel any better?" you demand, fingers reaching up to curl into the fabric of his shirt. He pulls back slightly and you loathe the calm on his face, the stillness that only regards you gently.
"I'm here, aren't I?" he tells you, and you scowl at that, trying to pull back. He doesn't let go. "Look at me – love, look. I'm fine. I'm home."
"You're hurt."
"It's always gonna be a risk of the job, you know that," he says quietly. Doesn't offer you platitudes, and you don't know if you wish he would or not. Your heart is too tender to bear the thought of him hurt but any placation would make you bristle. Perhaps because you know they can’t be relied on. There will always be another cut, another scar you only learn about inadvertently, wounds hidden to you but their weight evident when Kyle comes home favouring his side, uncharacteristically careful when he holds you instead of his usual exuberance. "But I'm always gonna come home to you. Haven't let you down yet, have I?"
It feels heavier, somehow, this proclamation. Like there's something you're not reading in his tone, dipping slightly, sober. But you get caught up on the words – the fallibility of such a promise.
"What about –" your voice catches in your throat, fingers fisting the shirt under you. "What about when it's in a box? Am I supposed to be happy then?"
He takes a moment too long to answer and it terrifies you when his eyes turn gentler. It's not something he hasn't already given thought. You're pushing at him before you can think, staggering off the sofa to storm into the kitchen. You can barely stand to look at him a moment longer.
Kyle only gives you a minute before he's after you. You're reaching for the sponge, wet fingers scrubbing at the pan you'd left to soak in the sink. Face twisting to hold back your tears, your hand curls tightly around the metal handle.
Warmth at your back, hands bigger than yours coax the pan back into the sink, guiding your hands under the water to wash away the suds. He doesn't say a word, head pressing into the back of your neck, thumbs swiping down the centre of your palm to wash the bubbles away.
When he speaks, the timbre of his voice breathy, you can feel the brush of his mouth against your skin.
"You'd be taken care of. I wouldn't do that to you, leave you alone like that."
Your fingers curl into fists under his, knuckles bumping against his palm. "That's not – that's not what I want, Kyle. I–"
"Will you look at me?" He turns you around anyway, hands sliding to your hips. The counter is hard against your spine as you press backwards, but he doesn't give you much room to escape him.
You stare at him and it's as though the years pass through you in a blink. Kyle fills out before your very eyes, bigger, more commanding. The boy you met at university ripples, invisible hands carving and moulding. Despite the near decade he's spent away from you, you'd always managed to cling to the image of him as he'd once been – genial, the sun in his eyes, sleeping on your couch and pressing his head against yours under awnings when the rain pushed you off the streets. Water dripping from your eyes, the two of you had laughed despite the chill clinging to your clothes.
You see it now, the man you'd caught glimpses of in the moments in between. The serious, intense set of his mouth, eyes darker than night. A reflection of a quiet emotion in his gaze. It's one you know well. It resides in the dark hollow of your chest, locked tightly away.
Kyle makes no such attempt at inhibition.
"What are you doing?" you whisper when he tilts his head downward.
Panic rears its head, doomsday too close for comfort. Desire is destruction – you're certain of it. And you want to tell him no, don't, Kyle, your worst fears poised to strike with the closing distance between your lips and his, but you long for it all the same, trembling in his arms.
"Relax," he breathes against the corner of your mouth, lips pressing into your skin sweetly. It's still damp where your tears had slipped down, and the wet press of his tongue makes your knees weak, gripping the fabric of his shirtsleeves. "You worry too much."
He dips his head, nose carving a burning trail down the slope of your jaw. Heat blooms where he touches. Your hips, your neck, your face. You're aflame, loose-limbed and weak, so close to him. He keeps you upright, hips pressing yours against the counter.
You can barely mutter a response before he continues. Perhaps he doesn't mean for you to speak at all. His words reach you thickly, a veil over you that he peels back only slightly. Disoriented, you blink at him.
"Such a sweet girl," he says quietly, ghost of a kiss pressed to your throat. "So good to me, fussing over me all the time. Course I wouldn't leave you alone – wouldn't do that to you. 'M going to take care of you – always been mine to take care of…"
"Kyle," you whisper, eyes slipping closed, and he thumbs away another tear that rolls down your cheek, chasing the salt smudge with his lips.
"Haven't always been here, haven't told you, but I'm making good on it now," he professes, pulling back. You open your eyes, meeting blurry ochre pools. "Such a good girl, waiting for me – always known, haven't you? Knew you were mine. My girl."
When he kisses you, the little thought that you'd been capable of slips downstream. You cling to the solidness of him, fingers biting into hardened muscle, jewel toned lenses over your eyes. Twilight shimmers over the small space of your kitchen and your best friend puts his mouth to yours like they should have never been apart.
You've been kissed before. Overeager, wet swipes of mouths, hot breath against your cheek that had carried the hint of wine. But this –
Kyle breathes life into you anew, soft mouth sliding against yours and you shudder. The soft scrape of his stubble against your chin makes you squirm, letting out a little gasp into his mouth. Greedy, he swallows it, tongue brushing against the seam of your lips, coaxing you open.
He mumbles something, a sighed Fuck, that slides around your shoulders and slips down your spine, pooling in the bottom of your stomach. Amber flickers in your periphery, heady, low lit want shrouding you.
How long you stand there, letting him forever change the bounds of your relationship, you don't know. He licks at your mouth like you've syrup behind your teeth, traces of his tongue smeared over your bottom lip. The very air around you shifts with his touch, fingers curling against your spine, spanning up to cradle your jaw, to open you up for him.
You're breathing hard when he pulls away, dizzy, unmoored. Up close, you can make out the thin ring of his irises, a shade lighter, inscrutable to most, known dearly to you.
No words are spoken when he leads you down the hall. On shaky legs, you let him guide you to your bedroom. The glow of your lamp greets you, and Kyle muffles his knowing laugh into the curve of your neck, teeth ghosting over the thin skin.
The shirt and trousers you have on suddenly feel lightweight and you gaze up at him through watery eyes when he turns you around. Gooseflesh ripple over your skin, and his fingertips graze the skin of your stomach, dipping below the hem of your shirt. Slow, so slow, he drags it up with deliberateness until it's lifted off your torso.
A beat passes in which you both stare at the other, silent. Kyle remains clothed and you, with trembling fingers, bring your hands to his chest. The beat of his heart travels through layers of skin and fabric to meet your fingertips, picking up when you take a half-step closer.
"You can–" he cuts himself off, inhaling shakily. He whispers, "You can take it off."
You look up at him. He meets your unsure gaze with a nod, almost solemn if not for the tender creases around his eyes, soft russet irises gazing down at you with a familiarity that settles over the raised flesh on your arms like a blanket.
Warmth pools in your face when you dare, even with his instruction, to take hold of his shirt. Under his watchful gaze you feel rather on display. It brings forth a swell of embarrassment – this is Kyle, but a shade of him previously unknown to you and in your own place stands a rabbit-hearted girl once more, your inexperience seeming to you to be written all over your face.
As if he's able to read your mind, Kyle bends forward to press his head to yours, nosing against your cheek comfortingly. It's reminiscent of the turn your nights out would take, long past midnight and the warmth in your belly from the liquor dwindling into restless laughter. Kyle, leaning his weight into you, a heavy arm slung over your shoulder on the walk home. Where you'd spend the night was dependent on whoever's flat was closest to whatever takeaway place you'd inevitably find yourselves in afterwards, hungry and getting into a drunken scuffle with the older boy when you would attempt to pay.
You'd won once, taking advantage of Kyle's distractedness at spotting your other friends on the way in and slipping inside to place your order, though sometimes you still suspected he'd let you.
The whisper of your name reels you through time back to this moment, now, and you meet the questioning set of your best friend's brows.
"What?" he's smiling, as though you're withholding a joke from him that he longs to be part of. You realise it to be in response to your own smile, unconscious and affectionate.
You shake your head, a breathy laugh expelled from your lips. Love bolsters your resolve and with renewed purpose, you grip the hem of his shirt. Bit by bit, he bares himself as you had until you stand in front of each other shirtless, chests rising and falling in tandem.
Your eyes track along the shadowed marks of injuries past, rippled, raised skin that makes your heart twist until he descends upon you once more, soft mouth claiming your attention to drive it through –
I'm here. I'm still here.
All at once you are brought back, hyperaware of the press of his chest against yours, the edges of him slotting against yours. You move in between breaths. One moment, you are standing and the next he has you settling down against the sheets, the softened linen of your untouched bed cool against your flushed skin.
He hovers over your form, a vision in amber light. You let him drag your trousers down your hips, every patch of skin exposed to the air rippling with gooseflesh, warmed once more when he bows to press his mouth against you. The softness beneath your navel jumps under his touch and he muffles a snicker against your hip, fingers petting the crease of your thigh.
When he begins to unbutton his own pants, you will your sluggish limbs to move, unclasping your worn bra with trembling fingers and dropping it over the side of your bed. Before your courage fails you, you push your underwear off too.
For a moment, Kyle pauses in front of you to stare, jeans halfway down his thighs. Nervous, your hands twitch by your sides, the urge to cover yourself growing stronger until he lets out a heavy breath, returning to undressing himself. There's a touch of urgency to his actions, pushing his clothes off uncaringly. You glow with pleasure when you realise it's so he might return to you faster.
He kneels at the side of the bed once more and greets you with a kiss like he's been parted from you for an age. You suppose he has been. This reunion feels different, charged with all the things you never said, that now lay out in the open, your vulnerabilities splayed for him to see. His own, in turn, are made known to you.
Kyle's hands cradle your face as he kisses you, big palms pressing down against your cheeks, fingers spanning your jaw and nape to draw you closer against him. The first brush of your bare chest against his has your breath hitching, gasping against his smiling mouth.
He lowers himself against you and it's then that you feel the length of him press into your thigh. You tense beneath him in surprise and ever attuned to your mood, your best friend draws back from you. The thought of him retreating has you leaning forward to cling to him, circling your arms around his shoulders.
He nearly loses his balance, planting a hand beside your head to steady himself. The other comes to your back, warmth suffusing through you under his touch. When you tuck your face into his throat, closing your eyes, Kyle curls himself over you more protectively.
"What's up?" he whispers. "You okay? We don't have to –"
You cut him off. "I want to," you insist, lifting your head to gaze at him through widened eyes. His features slacken, shoulders dropping where they'd tensed. He strokes your cheek gently, eyes searching your own.
"Then what is it?"
It feels embarrassing to admit to him when you've always felt like his little shadow, head tipped always in search of him and his exploits. In comparison your own are…not bare… but middling, perhaps. A late bloomer, your life placed on a slow burner.
"I haven't ever…"
His response comes in rapid, stunned blinks. As though he hadn't expected it, as though he finds it difficult to believe – who would I even do it with, you want to ask, surprised by his disbelief.
"Never?" he questions, voice pitching ever so slightly. You roll your bottom lip inwards, teeth worrying the skin of it as you shake your head.
"Oh," Kyle says, soundly oddly strangled. You hesitate, feeling as though your confession has soured things between you – had he been expecting something else? Did this change things?
You're beginning to gather the courage to voice this when he lets out a breath and shifts closer, thumb resuming its path across your cheek where it'd frozen in the wake of your admission.
"You don't know what you do to me, do you," he mutters, exasperatedly, dropping his forehead against yours. The air between you seems to lighten exponentially and you brave a smile, huffing out a nervous laugh.
After a bit, Kyle admits, "It's been a while for me too."
Your turn to be surprised, now. You look up at him and meet unlaughing eyes, almost shy in extending this branch.
"What, you never…" you stumble over your words, unmoored. "In all those cities you visited –?"
At that, Kyle's lips tug down into a displeased frown and he snips, though without heat, "Wasn't there for pleasure, was I?"
His eyes avert to something off to the side momentarily and he mumbles, "Work, y'know…And it's not like I was going to–" Suddenly flustered, he shakes his head, grumbling, "Whatever. Doesn't matter."
You fight back a smile, endeared, reaching up to press your lips to the corner of his own. The tension in his face slips from his as though snagged by a current, lost to the water, and he tilts his head, sighing into your mouth.
You stay like that for a moment and it feels as though you've shifted lenses, switching out the old for newer, sharper ones. The readjustment comes in shades, in soft kisses and the odd, pleased giggles you don't manage to stifle, giddiness stirring in your chest.
"Can I have you?" he asks through swollen lips, voice rough. You've all but melted back into the mattress, head cloudy. Need pools between your legs, desire smearing between your thighs.
You want to tell him he's had you . That you've been his since you were 18 and he smiled at you in the lecture theatre. That in every interaction thereafter, in whatever shape or form, you have always been his.
That the seasons have come, passed by and arrived again, that you've begun to discover new aches in places you had not thought were possible, that the ice is melting and there is a hole in the sky and the world has been turning and through all of it, it comes down to this –
You have always been his.
In the end, though, all that comes out is a simple, "You do . "
A shudder rolls through him at that. Kyle closes his eyes briefly, before surging forward to claim your mouth.
The hand on your jaw holds you to him firmly and Kyle kisses you with a vengeance. It is so distinct from the gentle press of his mouth, the slow, languid brush of his tongue over yours – this is burning. This is the weight of time passed, the culmination of the years away and stewing desire.
He bears down on you, every edge of him pinning you to the mattress as he steals your breath. You are emptied of all thought, reduced to muffled gasps and the noises he plucks from your mouth unthinkingly. It comes to him as easy as breathing, yet another skill he picks up effortlessly.
His fingers trace over your stomach. Down, over your sides and to your navel, repeating the route when your breath hitches and you shudder beneath him, muscles jumping after he brushes over a sensitive spot. His lips curve into a smile against yours and you gasp, but he does not relent. Not until you begin to whine, wrapping your hand around his wrist to push it further down.
He takes pity on you, tweaking the skin of your hip and letting out a little laugh that slips into your mouth, sinking on your tastebuds. It tastes rich, salt and thyme settling on your tongue.
The crease of your thigh is next to receive his ministrations, the sweeping path he carves from your hip stalling just a few breaths shy of where you long for it the most. By now, you've begun to drip steadily, you're sure of it, want bleeding into the sheets beneath you. When you press your thighs close, they glide together and you hear Kyle grumble above you.
It's the only warning you're given before he's pressing your legs open, a hand settling on the inside of your thigh and guiding it outwards and up, until it's slung around his hip and you're bare to him.
He pulls away from you then, eyes hazy and flickering down to where only inches separate the two of you. A breath punches out of his chest and he groans, eyes fluttering closed briefly. It's an expression you've never seen on him before, one you drink in with soft fascination, eager to be let in on another side to the person you love the most. When it comes to Kyle, you find yourself unendingly curious, always conscious of him. You can't help it – you've been attuned to his every breath since you were 18.
This devotion, you learn, is not rebuffed but met with equal vigour. Dark eyes fall on you and you have only a moment to blink up at him before a noise tumbles from your lips at the press of fingers at your entrance. The blunt press against your cunt makes you squirm, mouth falling open at the slight sting that comes with the stretch of your channel. Your vision swims and Kyle, split in two, lets out a breathless laugh.
The hand holding your leg pets your skin gently, but you can only feel the insertion of his digits – bigger than your own, certainly – where, only in your most gone moments, you'd dreamt of them touching. Reality is blunter than daydreams, and Kyle shushes you a little, dropping his head to kiss you again when you begin to whine.
"So noisy," he tuts gently, but there is only amusement in his tone. You turn teary eyes to him – when had you begun to cry? It's mortifying. He doesn't seem to mind, only pressing his lips to your wet cheek. "It's late, baby, you've got to keep quiet."
How can you be quiet when he has you like this? When the man you have loved for nearly a decade is hovering above you, his hands on you – in you – looking down on you as though he's been starved. When the stuff of your most shameful dreams, your most wretched desires, has not only come home to roost but longed for you, too?
It is so different from those days, young and wandering the late night streets, on your way to let Kyle claim a shade of you. But here, all these years later, once more he takes a first of yours and the length of time thins until only a thin veil separates you from back then. You are so different, yet entirely the same; both the tender hearted girl and the woman steadfast in your new life.
It leaves you vulnerable and panting, tilting your face up to Kyle when he replaces his fingers with something bigger, the blunt stretch of his cock against your insides carving your breath from you with every rock of his hips. You cling to him for purchase, disoriented and dizzy. Eyes streaming, no matter how he shushes you, cradles you as the thrusts come harder, until you're jolting with every drive forward.
His brows knit together, his fingers grip your leg, the other slipping beneath your neck to hold you close. Gone is the boy who'd laughed with you and in his place, bullying your body to another orgasm – the first having arrived embarrassingly quickly after only a few strokes of his fingers – the man who'd cornered you in the kitchen to claim your mouth as his.
The sounds you're making are foreign to your ears, strangled moans, gasps that sound entirely out of place in your bedroom. Mewls too breathy to be your own – the kind you'd always thought to be a practiced form, spilling from you in repeated oh, oh – oh! 's that have Kyle goading you on, greedier with every passing second, control steadily unravelling.
It has you searching for something familiar – something known to tide you through this new, sudden change, brilliant and wonderful and terrifying. You look up through your tears, at your best friend and you beg him.
"Ky–Kyle," you whine and he dips his head forward, cooing, nosing at your cheek.
"Yeah, baby," he murmurs, sweat dripping from his brow and onto the pillow beside you. "Yeah, it's me, it's – fuck – 's me."
Him, making you feel this good. The pride of it all makes him preen, you can see it. Pure, masculine pride that you might've ribbed him for in another instance. Now, your eyes only roll back a little more, his name slipping from your lips again. You're in desperate need of an anchor, overwhelmed by the cacophony of noise in your head – you'd let him do whatever he wanted, but you needed –
"What's it, hm?"
"Need –" your breath hitches, skittering over a hiccup, utterly pitiful. "Can I –"
"What, baby?" his breathing is ragged, but he folds himself over you further, forehead pressing against yours. "Tell me."
"Kiss me," you manage to choke out, lips turning down, pleading and his hips stutter. "Please, I –"
He doesn't make you ask twice, only pulling you by the back of your neck up to him in a clumsy kiss. He kisses you like you need – like he knows you need. The hand on your neck slides up to cradle your cheek, and Kyle kisses you like he loves you, like he's breathing every bit he'd hidden in the years away into you.
And you know this, winding your arms around his neck and holding him close, until the two of you are flush and the only thing he can manage is to grind his hips into yours, reduced to a desperate tilt of his hips and the press of his mouth against yours. You know this –
He loves you, he does.
He always has.
He tells you as much when you ask him, in the quiet after you've come together, his cum sticky on your thighs and your chest pressed against his. Your limbs are loose, your head heavy above his heart. Fingers that had gripped your thigh rub apologetic circles into the sore flesh, and you look up at him.
"Did you mean it?" you ask, and he sits up a little to kiss your shoulder.
"Meant everything I said," he affirms, steady. Then, glancing away briefly, he asks, "Did you…when you said you were mine.."
You offer him a wobbly smile. "Yeah. Since we were 18, I think."
He lets out a breath, and the arm around your waist tightens. "Long time."
"It is." You bite your lip. "Is that okay?"
The smile he gives you is rueful. "Just pissed I kept you waiting so long."
"You're here now," you say, through a yawn. Kyle rucks up the blanket a little closer over your shoulder, kissing your head. You lay back down against his chest and you fiddle with the tags on his necklace. "And I…I don't know, it never felt like that."
He makes a questioning noise and you loop the metal chain around your finger.
"Dunno," you mumble. "You were gone so often, but I never felt like you were gone – from me. Not in that way. Am I making sense?"
Kyle's chest shakes a little with suppressed laughter, and it makes you huff, pressing your face to his chest to hide the smile he draws from you. "Not a bit, baby."
"I just," you pause, thinking over it. "I never felt like I didn't have you, even if it wasn't romantically."
He’s silent for a moment, long enough that the heaviness of your eyelids begins to weigh them down with no conversation to delay it further. When he answers you next, you’re startled a little by the sound.
“Good,” he says, squeezing you. His hand strokes a path over your shoulder, knuckles briefly caressing your cheek. “You did, you know. Have me.”
“I love you,” you whisper, emboldened and his hand stutters, before resuming its path.
“I love you,” he echoes, hushed. And then, just as you’re succumbing to your dreams again, a secret you only just manage to catch, he confesses something to you once more.
“I always have, I reckon.”
this fic was conjured up when i went camping in the outback in the dead of winter last year. i was mad and cold and hungry and i ended up kind of cutting off a near decade of friendship afterwards, which is funny because reader in this is doing really well with her own decade long friendship.
anyway this took me nearly ten months to write because i find writing smut so difficult and i wanted it to be more purposeful about the emotions or whatever, because the main thing i had to go off when i was daydreaming about this scenario was the idea of letting someone you love do whatever they want to you but needing that reassurance that they still love you - tilting your head up and begging for them to kiss you because you could bear anything (even scary, if years-long desired, change) with that anchor.
so um. i hope it translated from my cold + hangry + coping mind to paper well. this is my first proper proper gaz (and cod!) fic and i'm a little nervous because i want to get him right. i hope it's received well!! he's so beautiful i am forever yearning for more fics about him, and i hope my contribution to that is good!!
the playlist for this:
edge of desire, john mayer | holocene, bon iver | return of the mack, mark morrison | south london forever, florence + the machine | towers, bon iver | wait by the river, lord huron | stop this train, john mayer | wish that you were here, florence + the machine | perth, bon iver | 29 #strafford apts, bon iver | michicant, bon iver | beth/rest, bon iver | carry me away, john mayer | kiss me, sixpence none the richer | like real people do, hozier | nfwmb, hozier | i lied, lord huron + allison ponthier