PISTOLWHIP | iv. right side of my neck
synopsis: peter parker is in love with his high school best friend, michelle jones, and you are in love with peter’s roommate, harry osborn. when mj and harry start dating, you and peter test your limits in a situation that “benefits” the both of you. how far will the two of you go to satisfy each others’ loneliness?
inspired by the anime kuzu no honkai.
genres: university au, friends to lovers, friends with benefits, fake dating, unrequited love
warnings: explicit content (18+), smut, alcohol usage, angst
wc: 6.1k
a/n: hahahahhaha what a fucking doozy! chapter four’s song reference is right side of my neck by faye webster. i'm drunk as i'm editing this i will be honest. i apologize in advance for what’s about to happen btw
series m.list / main m.list / join the taglist
It’s him who wakes up to an empty bed this time. Peter frowns at the lack of a body next to him, reaching out for the ghost of yours. He still feels your shape. Sunlight dapples onto the pillow next to him as he blinks himself awake, stretching his naked limbs after his many hours of dreamless slumber.
He unlocks his phone and there are no texts from you, just a spam of memes from the group chat and slurred texts from Harry asking where he is/where he’s sleeping/is it okay if MJ stays overnight, etc. Peter grimaces.
Peter realizes that after these past few weeks, the one place he approximates as a place of haven is your apartment. Harry had never really pried about where Peter would go, assuming he’d been seeing different girls from dating apps or patrolling. It was ironic – since he’d started sleeping with you, he’d stopped going on Tinder or any of those other apps. Peter also felt like he was slacking when it came to patrolling the city – he much rather enjoyed staying in with you at night instead of playing cop.
Not that you ever knew about his late-night adventures. Even though you had his body nearly memorized, Peter would always be away from you for whatever allotted amount of time it would take his body to heal through combat-induced bruises so that you wouldn’t have to see them. He knows that you’re careful enough to respect his privacy, but there are nights when he craves your touch and he can’t succumb to asking you to come over because his sides would be black and blue.
His ears perk up like a terrier’s at the sound of music playing on a speaker in the next room. The wafting smell of coffee fills his senses. You aren’t surprised to feel his presence, blinking up at his bare chest with a raised eyebrow when he settles into the kitchen.
“Morning,” Peter greets you, taking your mug for a sip of coffee and then returning it as you roll your eyes. He doesn’t remember when this habit formed – how the two of you would share everything from puffs of cigarettes to beverages to bites of food without asking the other. He hovers over the bare skin of your neck for a second, contemplating giving you a peck, but instead leans down to tug on your flesh with his teeth.
“Ow,” you scold. “Have you gone fucking feral?”
“Just wanted to make sure you were awake,” he sneers, pouring himself a mug of coffee.
You’re not trying to ignore him, but you don’t particularly feel like engaging with your usual shared banter. So you lean on the island of your kitchen with your book in hand as you skim the same sentence about fifteen times. You can feel his eyes searing into you.
He likes how you look when you’re concentrating. It’s cute, the way your eyebrows cinch together and then relax as your eyes flit over a sentence. Even the way you hold the paperback in your hands is delicate. Peter thinks that maybe it’s a crime to be that pretty. He can sense that you’re far away from him at the moment, but he doesn’t realize how intensely he’s looking at you until you look up at him.
“Are you waiting for me to cook you breakfast or something?” you ask with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. He quickly blinks in the realization that he’d zoned out and fixated on the curve of your jaw.
“Wh– no, you don’t have to. I can, though.”
He’s ready to get to work immediately and opens up your fridge to get the carton of eggs. His nose wrinkles at the barren sight of your grocery collection.
“We need to go shopping.”
“We?” you question, dog-earring the page you’re on.
“Yes. Unless you want to live on frozen gnocchi for the rest of the week.”
“Pay me rent first, Parker,” you retaliate. He chuckles as the eggs in the pan begin to sizzle.
It’s quiet in your kitchen except for the sound of jazz playing from your speakers to fill the ambiance, which changes to a Velvet Underground song that Peter begins to hum along to. The warm, buttery sunlight trickles from your window and makes a home on the slope of Peter’s shoulders and back, and for a second, you see the scene like a polaroid picture. It feels so domestic that you shamelessly snap a picture with your phone without him knowing.
“Sweet Jaaaaaane,” he mumbles along to the music.
When he hands you your breakfast, you want to snap back with something witty, but the first few bites are genuinely good.
“Well?” Peter prompts you.
“Pretty good,” you respond casually, shrugging. “A bit runny. Hope I don’t get salmonella.”
“Yeah, okay.”
He plops down next to you with his own food, eating silently as he looks at you with a teasing smile. You can’t exactly explain this connection that you two have, but the light bouncing around between his irises and yours are enough of a conversation.
It’s moments like these that are very peaceful to you, yet the comfortable silence always settles into a cloud of suffocating dust once you allow yourself to think about everything for a bit too long. You feel pessimistic about love considering the experiences you’ve had, and Harry Osborn was so far away from you that you were starting to think of your infatuation with him the same way you would think of your crushes as a little girl – idealistic and bound to never happen.
And then there was Peter, who was tangible, and right in front of you with his hair mussed up rolling out of bed from a night of debauchery with you. A night where he’d made you cry and then come undone one thousand times over. And although his presence can both calm you and shake the lights out of you, you are unsure if this is love. You’re too afraid to ask.
You think maybe this thing you have with Peter – friends with benefits, a pretend boyfriend, whatever – might end up in flames. You consider kicking him out of your apartment so that you can breathe in your own miserable silence, maybe sage the fuck out of your room and lay on the carpet with your face toward the ceiling. The way he looks as he merely eats his breakfast in your kitchen is so picturesque and yet so normal, like he belongs there. Like he’s always belonged there.
“Do you have class soon?” His voice brings you out of your thoughts.
You shake your head.
“Cancelled today. Thank God.”
“Wanna hang out?”
“We’ve been hanging out for like, forty-eight hours. Maybe more,” you snort.
“Sheesh, you were counting?” he throws his hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry to take up so much of your time.”
You bite on the inside of your cheek to contain a giggle. You watch his expression change from amused to serious, and you can tell that he’s grappling with something difficult. Tiredness gravels out of his throat.
“I– I can go, though, soon. I’m sorry about… you know,” he mutters sheepishly.
“If calling me MJ in bed gets you off, then okay. Just… warn me first, I guess,” you reply, your voice small. “And don’t bring up Harry, it’s sadistic. I don’t care how drunk you are.”
Peter swallows up his guilt like it’s a boulder in his esophagus, but he’s still also reeling from the first sentence out of your mouth.
“I’m not– I’m not going to call you that. I’m really sorry I did that. I just… I was really drunk and I slipped up without even realizing it.”
“Isn’t that why we’re doing this, though? To get over these people? Or what, be replacements for each other?”
“That’s not what this is,” Peter defends, though he knows you’re right. You had been using each other from the beginning. Your mouth turns down into a bitter scowl.
“Then what is this, Peter?”
He winces at your raised voice. You never raise your voice. You watch him react, playing with his fork with nimble fingers as he looks down at the countertop with shame.
“I’m sorry,” you say quietly. “I’m not angry, just frustrated. And I was very emotional last night and it was weird and I don’t know how to talk about it.”
“You’re right to be angry. I got cocky. It was like an adrenaline thing except in the form of word vomit and it was really stupid of me. I won’t say anything like that again, I promise,” he apologizes, taking your jaw gingerly in his hands.
Oh, God, if only he could’ve apologized to you without doing that. Because now his eyes are drinking you in while you’re in this vulnerable state and you want to give in to him even though he’s not necessarily asking anything of you. Nevertheless, you think that you would do anything for him if he did.
“Stop pouting like that, you’re making it hard for me to be mad at you,” you grumble.
“You just said you weren’t angry!”
“Well, I am.”
“I could make it up to you.” The sound of his voice makes you shudder.
You glare at him like a petulant child. He raises his brows, a faint, teasing smile lingering on his face as he watches the emotions on your face change. You groan loudly.
“Fine.”
It’s so easy for you to give in even when you’re stubborn. He chuckles at how difficult you’re being as if you aren’t sitting in your seat squirming at the wet heat between your thighs just from being close to him at all. To your dismay, he picks you up like you’re a cat and throws you over his shoulder.
“Peter!” you huff, your hair wild and upside down as you weakly punch your fists to the smooth skin of his back in an attempt to defend yourself, but he merely laughs at your efforts.
When you make it back into your bedroom, you bounce onto the bed when he drops you. Before you can berate him about his choice of transporting you, he’s already kneeled to the foot of your bed to pull your legs towards him forcefully.
Your breath hitches when he kisses your thighs, teeth nipping at your flesh. You watch the veins in his hand flex as he squeezes your taut flesh gently, and you think that you’d let him mold you into something new entirely if he wanted. His touch makes you feel like melting clay. Your mouth is ajar and slack as you watch him, but when he lifts his eyes to meet yours, you almost panic.
“So wet for me already,” he muses as he rubs a finger to your slit. You whimper, encouraging him.
“Tease me and I kill you,” you sputter, though your efforts in trying to scold him don’t take much effect. He knows that you’re wrapped around his finger right now.
“Sure, Y/N.”
The sound of him saying your name is enough to make you crumble. You sigh sweetly as he slides your underwear down your legs and touches his tongue to your clit so gently that you think he’s hovering ever so slightly just to piss you off. When you look back at him and see his wanton gaze, you feel alarmed.
“Y–you don’t have to do that,” you stammer, pulling at his chestnut locks so that he doesn’t continue.
“What are you talking about?” he gives you a puzzled expression. He was already making his way there before you suddenly changed your mind.
“Just fuck me.”
“I want to make you feel good.”
“But–”
“Do you have something against getting head?” he asks, his expression quizzical. “You never let me.”
Your mouth feels dry as you gulp down your confession. Yes. I think I might fall in love with you if you make me cum with your mouth.
But you can’t say anything remotely close to that because of how pathetic it sounds, and then you realize you’re already in way too deep because for fuck’s sake, you want this so, so, so badly.
“I said I’d make it up to you. Will you let me do that?”
Your eyelashes flutter. He talks to you so delicately and you think that you don’t deserve it after being so stubborn with him. Even though you’re upset about last night, you don’t mind being used so harshly. How are you going to stand him being so gentle with you?
You merely nod at him, and with that, you lie back on your bed and close your eyes.
“Oh,” you gasp. He buries his face into your cunt, lapping at your wetness fervently, devouring you.
“You taste really good,” he mumbles. You pretend you don’t hear him, but he plays this game better than you do. He wants to get a reaction from you, wants to see you unravel for him, so he sucks a bit harder and coaxes a finger inside of you.
“Fuck.”
“Tastes so sweet, Y/N.”
“Stop talking,” you gasp. Your eyes are screwed shut as he buries himself into you. He groans at the feeling of you pulling his hair with your fingers.
Your stomach wells up with a soft fuzz, warmth trickling from your core upwards to your head. You feel so lightheaded. You grab a fistful of his hair and he moans once more, his warm breath fanning your cunt deliciously.
“More, more,” you whimper. You feel like your heart is about to kick out of your sternum when he speeds up and licks you up like you’re his last meal. He slides his fingers out of you and moves his face slightly away from your bud.
“Need more fingers,” you groans. “Fuck.”
And then, suddenly, he stops.
You whine, mumbling expletives, but you’re too dazed to say anything coherent. He looks up at you from between your legs with a crooked grin and the sight of him makes your insides flip. There’s a loose curl over his forehead and his brown eyes are so wide with desire that you feel almost embarrassed.
“Why’d you stop–”
“You’ve got to be a little nicer to me, pretty girl.”
You blush at the nickname. If you weren’t so drunk on his touch, you’d probably say something stupid, like, oh, you think I’m pretty?
“Peter, please.”
“You can beg a little better than that,” he taunts, continuing to finger you at an agonizing pace.
“Peter, please, I need your mouth on me so bad,” you mewl, eyes screwing shut as you gasp at the way his fingers curl inside of you, hitting your sweet spot.
“Good girl.”
You nearly hiss when his mouth is back on your bud again. He spells out his name on your clit with his tongue, then yours, then words like, please, more, yes. He thinks that maybe he should lick your cunt for the whole length of a poem considering your reactions.
“I’m— Oh my God,” you cut yourself off when he sucks sharply. Your face feels like it’s burning. He’s knuckle-deep, going faster and faster so easily because of how fucking wet you are.
You whine his name over and over and over. He thinks he might cum before you just from hearing it out of your mouth.
“Look at me,” he demands. “I wanna see you.”
You don’t want to open your eyes, but you do just because he asked. Your sight is blurred, tunnel vision zeroing in on the boy below you as if he’s the only person in the world. The eye contact heightens Peter’s senses, and now he’s moaning along with you as he tastes you. You can feel the bed creak slightly from the way he’s rutting into the edge of the mattress.
He groans again when you pull his hair harder. You can feel the pit of your stomach tightening like an elastic band ready to snap.
“Peter, gonna cum,” you moan desperately. You babble please over and over and it’s music to his ears. He grips your thigh tightly with his left hand while his other snakes up your waist to squeeze your breast and touch your collarbone. The vibrations of your body only encourage him further.
“Fuck!” you gasp. The elastic band breaks and you reach your peak, limbs jolting like flying sparks as you come. Peter’s body shakes against the bed along with you and his groans are brutish, carnal.
He’s about to lift himself off of you, the gallant pride of his smile warming his cheeks when he watches the aftermath of you, but he freezes when he feels some wetness in his boxers.
You don’t notice his reprieve, instead, lifting yourself from the bed to plant a passionate kiss on his mouth while he’s still kneeling on the ground. You’re kissing him so harshly that he’s about ready to fall backward onto your bedroom floor with you on top of him. Your hands are caressing the sides of his body sensually and he has to grab your arms to prevent you from exploring further.
“Do you want me to return the favor?” you ask him innocently, confused as to why your wrists are in his hands now.
“N-no, that’s okay, you don’t have to,” he hurriedly replies, attempting to hide his lower half from you. “Did you like it?”
“Yes,” you exhale. “Are you sure you don’t want me to? I really want to–”
“No!” he interrupts you with panic. “I mean, I wanted to make it up to you. I– um.”
“Why are you being so shy suddenly?” you giggle. You’re still blissed out from your high, not realizing how anxious he’s become, so you grab for the waistband of his boxers again. He deflects you.
“Wh–” You pause at his beet-red face, looking down. “Oh, sweetheart.”
He winces at the nickname. You’ve been far above intimate with him, but he doesn’t know if you’ve ever been particularly tender with him in that way. He forgets how to speak properly, managing to mumble something of an apology.
“Are you apologizing to me for cumming?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God, don’t be embarrassed, puppy,” you coo. It’s a new side of you but he gives in to your praise so easily.
“That’s never happened before, I swear,” he rasps, adjusting his underwear. God, does he even have a change of clothes around? He tries not to look at you but he doesn’t realize how small he looks from trying to crawl back into his skin, knees to his chest in an attempt to hide his body from you.
“I’m honored,” you laugh, turning his jaw towards you when he huffs and tries to look away. “Hey, hey, I’m not laughing at you. I’m just… flattered, s’all.”
“Jesus Christ,” he groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I have to change.”
You grab a change of clothes for him – he’d stayed with you long enough for you to just throw his dirty clothes into the wash with yours. Peter calms down enough to lie down by your side and chuckle about the ordeal with you.
“Fuck, your sheets.”
“I have a washing machine, you know. That’s how I washed your clothes.”
“You’re a little shit. And you’re also too good to me, you know that?”
“Oh, I know.”
You tease him about his stench and he feels insecure enough to believe you, so you wait in your room while he showers (after rejecting your suggestion to get in the shower with him). The glow of your post-sex haze is showing on your face, and when you realize you can’t stop grinning, you have to reassess the way you see this boy. This boy that makes you feel like you’re in heaven every time he touches you. You think that maybe, just maybe, you want to keep him.
“Rabbit!”
The familiar nickname comes from a different mouth. When you turn around, you see Harry jogging toward you with open arms, and you’re surprised when he wraps them around you. It feels like whiplash.
“Not you, too,” you sigh.
“What? I think it’s cute,” Harry grins. “Unless that’s like, a special you and Peter thing? If so, that’s even more adorable.”
“He made up the nickname,” you shrug. “You usually call me chicken. Which is more insulting, by the way.”
Your eyes flutter when Harry leans into you again. He inhales the scent of something familiar. When he pulls back, he smiles at you in a knowing way. It makes your chest thump like a drum.
“You smell like my house,” he teases, head cocking to the side. You feel exposed.
“You’re hallucinating.”
“No, I don’t think I am,” he furrows his brows, leaning in again to the right side of your neck. Your breath hitches. “You kind of smell like Peter.”
“Oh, yeah, I just saw him,” you lie. You had noticed it when Peter had left your house earlier – his smell was everywhere. On his t-shirt that he’d left behind, on your bedsheets, on your shoulder. You would inhale the ghost of him and you didn’t mind. It almost scares you how comforting it is.
“He’s always at yours nowadays, huh? Am I just a shit roommate or are you guys fucking?”
You nearly choke on your iced coffee when you hear his words. Does he know?
“No! No, he’s just– we just started Killing Eve together. We’re already on season two.”
Harry gives you his charming, lopsided smile, the kind that makes everyone around him melt. You hate how just him looking at you makes your knees weak – you feel like a teenager. And yet, the topic at hand was making your heart race, and you can’t tell if it’s because you’re afraid of being found out or if it’s because a certain brunette is now on your mind.
“You look so freaked out, baby. I’m just kidding,” Harry chuckles. Baby. Does he call everyone that or is he doing it on purpose?
You follow him, watching the spring in his step as he rambles on about his week considering he’d barely seen you during it. Your mind wanders, taking in the beauty of the city until you’re crossing the street, to which Harry has to yank your arm towards him. You’re surprised at the way a car drives by you at a speed that’s certainly not legal, and Harry looks at you with wide eyes.
“Jesus, Y/N, I thought you were going to get run over just now!” He runs a hand through his hair haphazardly.
“Sorry. I’m out of it, today.”
“Seems to be the consensus with everyone. No one’s around. And Peter – do you know what’s up with him? Every time I try to have a conversation with him he’s so distracted.”
“I don’t know,” you shrug. “He seems fine to me.”
Before Harry can respond, the city street is flooded with a crowd of people hooting and hollering like a flash mob, and suddenly Harry’s hands are on your waist to prevent you from getting trampled. You blush at his touch and follow him into the corner of an alleyway as the two of you assess the antics of the public.
You follow the line of sight of the crowd several feet away from you, looking up to see a red and blue figure. Spider-Man.
The hero swings from building to building until he perches on the platform of some balcony and waves at the crowd below once he realizes he’s unable to escape their attention.
“Do a flip!” shouts a bystander. And so the hero does.
“Doesn’t he get exhausted doing that? This city treats him like a zoo animal,” you contemplate. Harry says nothing next to you. You notice him locking eyes with the hero, then nodding his head towards him as a term of acknowledgment. You don’t see anything in those wide, black and white eyes, but you feel like Spider-Man is staring intensely at you. A beat passes and he swings away.
“Sorry,” Harry mumbles when he realizes his hands have been on your waist a bit too long.
“Do you know him?”
“Uh, not really,” Harry answers. His crooked smile is warm but you can tell that there’s something behind it.
You don’t respond, your attention still fixed on the vigilante who’s swinging around the wide stretch of the city in front of you. You hadn’t really thought much of Spider-Man in your time of living in New York City, but that was certainly the closest encounter you’d ever had with him. You still feel dazed from it, but it could also be the daze of Harry Osborn’s presence that makes you feel drunk even though you’re sober. That or the fact that he’d just saved you from getting hit by a car on the crosswalk.
“Can I buy you a late lunch?” he chirps.
Your ears perk up at the sound of Harry’s voice. “I’d love that, Harry.”
You spend the rest of the day with Harry, eventually graduating from downtown to a new bar in Midtown that’s having its grand opening, which gratefully allows for discounted drinks.
It’s so fucking loud, which you’d expected, but the ringing in your ears from the bass-heavy electronic tracks booming in the space would probably give you a migraine eventually. You do shots with Harry a few times, and now you’re sipping on a Dirty Shirley that he’d ordered for you as you sit on a spinning booth chair right next to the wall.
Harry’s picked up a game of pool with a bunch of guys that go to a neighboring school that you don’t remember the name of, nor do you remember any of their actual names. You can feel your drunkenness settle in when one of the strangers talks to you, asking about your name and where you’re from, and who you’re with.
“I’m with him,” you nod towards Harry, who’s hellbent on winning his current game of pool that his face looks like it’s made of stone.
“He your boyfriend?” the boy next to you asks. He’s pretty, you think, but pretty in the way that if he was a celebrity in 2009, you’d definitely swoon over his photo in an issue of Tiger Beat. And you think that at the moment, he’s cute enough, and maybe you’d sleep with him. His brown eyes aren’t nearly as kind as Peter’s, nor does his lanky frame show off any kind of muscle the way Peter’s body does.
God, you were comparing this boy to Peter. Peter, who is your best friend and not your boyfriend, who sleeps with you and is so enamored by you that he cums at the sight of you getting off without ever being stimulated by you, and who makes you breakfast and has your coffee order memorized. Fuck.
Your head is swimming. You try to push out the thoughts of the boy who’s usually in your bed away from your mind, and you attempt to recall the name of the person who’s pining for you at this very moment. You can’t for the life of you remember.
“No, that’s… that’s Harry. He’s not my boyfriend,” you finally respond after remembering his initial question.
“So he wouldn’t mind if… I stole you away for a bit, right?” the boy purrs into your ear.
“What was your name again?” you giggle.
“Max.”
“Maximillian,” you slur. “Wow.”
“I live a few blocks from here you know, if you’d wanna—”
“Y/N! I forfeited, how are you doing, sweetheart?”
Your back straightens, head alert suddenly at the sound of Harry’s voice beckoning you. You see his slim frame sauntering over to you and Max with an expression you can’t quite read, though you blame the weird lighting and how dim this area of the bar is.
“Harry!” you slur excitedly, throwing your arms around your friend. He smells sweet and spicy, like cigars and lemon and vanilla.
“Hey,” Harry greets you warmly, ignoring Max’s presence entirely.
“Oh! Um, this is Max! He goes to… um–”
“Columbia.”
The two boys shake hands in a way that looks too stiff and formal. You laugh when you watch it unfold.
“Impressive,” Harry remarks, smiling at the boy with acidity that you don’t pick up because of how drunk you are. He manages to pull you away slightly with his arm around your waist, much to the disdain of the Columbia student who’d had his eyes set on you from the moment he saw you in the bar. You feel like a rag doll, the way Harry’s handling you. Your vision blurs a bit.
You blink a few times and suddenly you’re in a quieter, darker corner of the bar, and Harry pulls you towards a photo booth.
“Oh! We should take pictures!” you say gleefully.
“Of course,” Harry nods. He smooths out a few dollar bills to stick in the machine’s slot and squints at the changing screen in front of him, meanwhile, you’re so giddy that you nearly fall into his lap trying to pose.
“Was that guy bothering you?” Harry asks.
“Huh? No, he was just being friendly.” A flash from the camera. As the second photo counts down, you lean into Harry and pose with two fingers making bunny ears behind his head.
“Yeah, I could tell. Very friendly. Like, wanted-to-get-into-your-pants friendly,” Harry murmurs with a scowl.
“Harry, he was just being nice,” you reply, shoving his shoulder playfully. “I promise.”
His hands tighten around you. You’re on his lap and his eyes are so animated as he watches in awe, rambling about Max and the bar and how fucking nice all these strangers are to you. Harry looks at you with an unfathomable gaze that you aren’t reciprocating because you’re too busy looking at the camera. As the seconds tick, he turns your face with his hand and you look at him in question, and when it happens, it’s all too fast.
His mouth is on yours. His mouth is on yours and it’s moving, and his tongue is in between your teeth, and you’re grinding into him because you’re on his lap, and you hear him sigh. You’re so absorbed in the kiss that you throw your arms around him. The sound of his exhale is unfamiliar to you. You pull back with wide eyes.
With a puzzled expression, you look at the boy you’re on top of and you’re out of breath. Your first instinct is to flee, so you brush past the curtain of the photo booth and snatch the photo strips, eyes blown wide when you see the last photo. Frozen in time, Harry’s lips are locked on yours. It looks foreign to you.
“Y/N, wait–”
You don’t hear the rest of what he says because you’re too busy making your way out of the bar and into the alleyway outside.
You don’t know why you’re crying. You don’t know why anything is happening at the moment, but all that grounds you is the warmth of the tears running down your face and the exposed brick wall that you’re running your hand along to ground yourself.
It doesn’t take long for Harry to find you. When he’s in front of you, you cover your face reflexively, but he takes your wrists in his arms and pulls you close.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he whispers to you, holding your body close to his so that your cheek is flat against his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
You sniffle, attempting so badly to collect yourself. You pull away from him, looking right into his blue eyes, and you don’t know what to feel. His expression is unfathomable.
“I shouldn’t have done that, I know, I’m sorry,” he rambles. Your heart sinks to your shoes when he says it. You know that he’s right, but you also know that your negative reaction was merely that – a reaction, because you’re confused and surprised and drunk and emotional. And you’re still processing what’s happened and he’s already apologized to you as if kissing you was a sin.
“Why did you kiss me?” you whisper, slowly collecting yourself and embracing the warmth of his body.
“I– I don’t know,” Harry confesses. “I just felt protective of you when you were with that guy, which was shitty because it wasn’t my place and you’re an adult and you can do whatever you want. I– I thought about you going home with him and it made me so mad. I don’t know why.”
“I wasn’t going to go with him.”
“But you could’ve. And that would’ve been okay. It’s not fair for me to butt in.”
“So why did you?” you glare at him. It’s not like you wanted me for yourself. You want to yell this to him. You want to yell it from the rooftops.
“I don’t know,” he mumbles. And his forehead is against yours, and his soft hands are wiping away your cheeks, and all of it makes you want to sink into yourself and disappear.
Fuck. He’s fucked. He’s fucked everything up with you.
“Y/N, can I… can I bring you home? Do you want me to call an Uber?”
You nod wordlessly. Your eyes are still closed shut when you answer him as if two clicks of the heel will get you there in record time, but it doesn’t. You nearly blackout for the entire ride, hands clutched on the car door while your entire body leans away from him.
When you stumble upon the door of your apartment, Harry helps you, picking up your keys from the floor for you and using them to unlock the door. Your ragdoll frame is thrown across your couch and you’re too weak to protest him being so close to you.
“I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable, just wanna make sure you’re safe, okay?” Harry whispers to you with reassurance. You’ve finished crying but you’re still too afraid to open your eyes to meet his, knowing that your face is probably red and puffy. But he manages to convince you anyways, holding your chin gently as your eyelids flutter open.
“There she is. There’s my girl,” Harry coos, smiling softly. There’s my girl. It echoes in your brain. It makes you feel sick.
Your throat’s caught up in a knot and you’re still blinking through your drunken stupor. You don’t know what to say to him, so you stick to what’s safe, what you know, what you’re so used to saying to everyone in your life.
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, honey, you didn’t do anything wrong, I did,” Harry whispers, pecking you on the temple. He mumbles something against your hairline but you don’t catch it. You attempt to focus on your breathing. Christ, he’s so fucking close to you, and you can smell him and feel his warmth, and it’s everything you’ve dreamed of. But not in this way. In this way, it feels pitiful. In this way, it feels fucking humiliating.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. It was out of line,” he croaks. “God, I don’t even know how to tell — fuck.”
“Tell who?” you furrow your brows. “MJ?”
The swallow he takes in his throat is nearly audible.
“I’m so sorry, Y/N.”
It all comes together for you at that moment. He really has been seeing MJ in ways that were more than friendly, you knew this, you weren’t stupid. And then he’d kissed you tonight, and now he’s at risk for fucking up whatever relationship with he has with MJ. You can barely process any of it – your brain is going at a million miles an hour.
“I… I think you should go, Harry.”
“I wanna make sure you’re okay. You’re really drunk,” he tells you with genuine concern written all over his face.
“I’ll be fine, just… just go, Harry,” you choke back tears, inhaling and exhaling deeply in an attempt to regulate your breath. “I won’t tell MJ. I promise.”
The way he looks at you is so solemn. It makes you feel fucking pathetic.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
You don’t respond. Instead, you curl your legs into your chest and close your eyes. You listen to the sound of his footsteps getting farther away from you until you hear your door open and close.
Silence. You’re sure Harry is long gone, so you cry. You cry to the point where you nearly choke on your sobs, and then with a heavy ache in your head and wet tears on your cheeks, you slump into the comfort of your couch and you fall asleep. You don’t dream of anything.
iii. saying your names ← / → v. circle the drain
tags: @venomsilk @silkholland @g3org1al33 @nocturnalms @edgycatx @sleepingdancer @bluebearxy @marshmellowyellow @hoe-4-sebstan @evanpetersisreallyhot @ronweasleyslut @takenbyheartstrings @inthegetawaycarwithtaylah @sinisterspidey @she-wintersoldat @freeshavocadoooo @moonyslantsov @lowkey-holland @inlovewithremusjohnlupin @runawaywithmyghost @mischeifparker @stiles-stilinski-24-dylan @letssee2468 @arlo-sanders @adayasgeorgia @spookiespoons @iloveboobs3000 @vigilanteswife @theglitterymess @babyfezco @4ndreaaa @agustdee @trvlllx @mayal0pez @yourlocalomlette @wisdomcrys @sapphosdilemma @juliatpwk @starksview @noemiix1 @lmnp89 @marohares @pure-a-tea @allazay101 @pixiehollands @babyspiders @ellesalazar @honeyspidey @dark-night-sky-99 @spideyspeaches @peterbtwparker @wh0re4zaynmalik @liltimmyst @widowlogy @weak-aesthetic @peterparkerh0le @elishi03 @dontmindmeboo @hollandsangel