She'd spent most of the previous afternoon finishing the project attached beneath it, staying nearly forty minutes later than she'd intended because she wanted it off her desk before the end of the week. Seeing the notification appear in her inbox again should not have irritated her as much as it did. Yet the moment she opened the message and read the phrase just a few minor changes, something deep within her soul sighed heavily and laid down on the floor.

Ordinarily, the request wouldn't have bothered her. The changes themselves were small. Reasonable, even. The problem was that they arrived after a morning already filled with tiny frustrations, each one insignificant enough to dismiss on its own but increasingly difficult to ignore when stacked together. 

She'd spilled coffee on herself before leaving the apartment, discovered halfway through her commute that she'd forgotten a document she needed, spent twenty minutes sitting in traffic because somebody had apparently forgotten how traffic lights worked and arrived at work already feeling as though she was playing catch-up. The email simply became the latest addition to a growing collection of inconveniences that seemed determined to follow her through the day.

By lunchtime, the feeling hadn't improved. 

She sat at her desk staring at a spreadsheet she no longer cared about while the sounds of the office drifted around her. Laughter from somewhere near the break room. The distant ringing of a phone. Somebody discussing weekend plans as though the week hadn't personally declared war on her. It wasn't that anything had gone catastrophically wrong. That was the frustrating part. There was no dramatic story to tell, no singular disaster responsible for her mood. She was simply tired in the way people became tired when too many small things demanded too much of them for too long.

The afternoon passed with the stubborn determination of a day that refused to end. 

Every time Y/N thought she was finally making progress, something else appeared on her desk. A question. A revision. Another email. 

By four o'clock, she had read the same paragraph of a report three separate times before realizing she hadn't absorbed a single word of it. Her coffee had gone cold nearly two hours earlier, her water bottle sat empty beside her keyboard and the list of things she still needed to finish somehow seemed longer than it had been that morning despite the fact that she'd spent the entire day working through it. The sensation reminded her of trying to run through waist-deep water. No matter how much effort she exerted, she never seemed to move quite as far as she should.

When five o'clock finally arrived, the relief she expected never materialized. 

The office gradually emptied around her, people shutting down computers and gathering belongings while conversations drifted toward dinner plans and evening routines. Y/N remained seated for several moments after her monitor went dark, staring at her own reflection in the screen. She looked tired. Not dramatically so. Nobody passing her desk would've thought twice about it. Yet there was something about her expression that made her pause. The faint tension around her eyes. The slight slump of her shoulders. The look of somebody who had spent the entire day holding everything together and wasn't entirely sure she wanted to keep doing it.

The drive home offered little comfort. Traffic moved in sluggish waves beneath the warm glow of the setting sun and the city seemed determined to place one final obstacle between her and the end of the day. By the time she finally pulled into her apartment complex, she felt drained in a way that had very little to do with work itself. It was the accumulation of everything. 

The apartment greeted her with silence. Normally, she liked that silence. She liked living alone. She liked having a space that belonged entirely to her. Tonight, however, the quiet seemed to emphasize how exhausted she felt. She kicked off her shoes near the door, dropped her bag onto the couch, and headed straight for the kitchen in search of something resembling dinner.

The refrigerator offered very little encouragement.

For a long moment, she simply stood there with the door hanging open, staring at the sparse collection of ingredients occupying the shelves. A carton of eggs. Half a bottle of dressing. A yogurt she was reasonably certain had expired. And, sitting in the vegetable drawer exactly where she'd left it several days earlier, a cucumber. She forgot she had to go grocery shopping today.

Y/N closed her eyes.

Then opened them again.

The cucumber remained.

There was something so absurdly representative about it that she almost laughed. After a day spent answering questions, solving problems and meeting deadlines, she had returned home to discover that her dinner options consisted of a single vegetable and whatever courage she could gather to make that seem acceptable. The ridiculousness of it should have been funny. Under different circumstances, it probably would've been.

Instead, she found herself reaching for her phone.

Jermajesty had been on the receiving end of enough of her complaints over the years that sending him a voice note required no thought whatsoever. It was muscle memory at this point. The conversation sat pinned near the top of her messages. Familiar. Safe. The kind of friendship where she could complain about absolutely nothing for ten uninterrupted minutes and somehow feel better afterward.

By the time she wandered into the living room, she was already talking.

She told him about the email. About the coworker who seemed determined to test the limits of her patience. About the project she'd completed only to be told it needed changes. About the fact that she was apparently expected to continue functioning despite being held together by caffeine and increasingly fragile optimism. The words came easily because they weren't meant to be filtered. They were the thoughts that lived beneath politeness, the ones she never bothered editing around people she trusted.

Somewhere in the middle of the voice note, she glanced toward the kitchen and remembered the cucumber.

That somehow made her rant worse.

Because now she was complaining about dinner too.

And adulthood.

And grocery shopping.

And the fact that nobody warned her how often she would be responsible for deciding what to eat for the rest of her life.

By the time she finally hit send, she felt marginally better, lighter. As though she'd taken some of the weight she'd been carrying all day and handed it to somebody else for a while.

Unfortunately, it would be nearly an hour before she realized she hadn't handed it to Jermajesty at all.

Jermajesty's silence didn't register immediately. 

At first, Y/N assumed he was busy. The thought barely warranted a second glance. People had lives. People got distracted. It wasn't unusual for messages to sit unanswered for a while. Yet as the evening stretched on and her phone remained stubbornly quiet beside her, the absence of a response gradually began to feel strange. Jermajesty, for all his faults, treated her complaints like a spectator sport. He usually answered before she finished talking. If she sent a voice note longer than two minutes, there was a decent chance he would interrupt it halfway through with a phone call. The longer the silence lasted, the harder it became to ignore.

The realization arrived while she was scrolling absentmindedly through her messages, searching for absolutely no reason other than boredom. One second she was checking her phone. The next, she was staring at the top of the conversation with a growing sense of dread. 

Everything looked normal at first glance. 

The profile picture was familiar. The chat itself was familiar. The recent messages were familiar. It took several seconds for her brain to identify what was wrong, and once it did, she found herself wishing desperately for the version of reality that had existed thirty seconds earlier, when she still didn't know.

The name at the top of the screen belonged to Jaafar.

Y/N continued staring at it long after the information had registered. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she expected the letters to rearrange themselves. Surely she had opened the wrong conversation. Surely she was tired enough to be imagining things. Yet every time she looked again, the result remained unchanged. The voice note sat directly beneath his name. Worse still, the small read receipt underneath it confirmed that he had listened to the entire thing nearly an hour earlier.

A slow wave of horror moved through her.

The problem was that the voice note had never been intended for Jaafar. It had been intended for Jermajesty, which meant it contained the unfiltered version of her thoughts. The exhausted version. The version that didn't bother sounding composed or interesting or particularly attractive. The version that spent several minutes discussing a cucumber as though it were a personal enemy.

Her fingers moved before she fully decided what to say.

The first message went out almost immediately.

Y/N that voice note was meant for jermajesty

Then, because apparently she had lost all ability to behave normally:

i am SO sorry

She stared at the screen.

please ignore literally everything i said about the cucumber

The moment she sent it, she regretted it.

Now the conversation looked less like a simple mistake and more like someone actively unraveling in real time. Y/N groaned, dropped her phone face down onto the couch cushion, and buried her face in her hands.

Three minutes later, she picked it up again.

Still nothing.

The silence shouldn't have bothered her as much as it did. Jaafar had a life. He wasn't sitting around waiting for her messages. Rationally, she understood that. Unfortunately, rational thought had abandoned the building some time ago. The longer she sat without a response, the more aware she became of every ridiculous thing she'd said. 

By the twenty-minute mark, she had convinced herself that he probably hadn't thought twice about it. 

By the thirty-minute mark, she had begun wondering whether he was deliberately avoiding the conversation. 

By the forty-minute mark, her imagination had become actively unhelpful.

Eventually, against her better judgment, she replayed the voice note herself.

The experience was every bit as painful as expected.

She sounded exhausted. Not dramatic, not unreasonable, just tired in a way she hadn't fully appreciated until hearing it reflected back at her. Beneath the jokes and complaints was somebody running on empty, somebody who had spent the entire day holding herself together and finally reached the point where even deciding what to eat for dinner felt overwhelming.

When the recording ended, she found herself sitting in silence for several moments, staring at her phone with an expression that suggested she was reconsidering every decision she'd made in the previous twenty-four hours.

That was when the tears finally arrived.

Not because of Jaafar.

Not because of the voice note.

Because she was exhausted.

Because the day had demanded more than she felt capable of giving.

Because sometimes people spent hours holding themselves together only to discover that the thing that finally broke them wasn't a major problem at all, but the accumulation of every minor frustration they'd been carrying since morning.

The tears came quietly at first.

Y/N leaned back against the kitchen counter and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, as though that might somehow stop them. It didn't. If anything, it made her more aware of how tired she felt. Not physically tired. Not the sort of tired a good night's sleep could fix. This was the exhaustion that accumulated over weeks of responsibilities and expectations and constantly moving from one thing to the next without ever quite feeling caught up. The kind that waited patiently beneath the surface until a particularly difficult day loosened something, allowing all of it to spill out at once.

She laughed once, a soft, humorless sound, and immediately felt ridiculous.

Because really, what was she crying about? An annoying day at work? A mistaken voice note? A cucumber? The answer, unfortunately, was all of it.

Eventually she pushed away from the counter and wandered back into the living room, carrying her phone with her despite knowing there wouldn't be anything new waiting on the screen. She checked anyway. Then checked again five minutes later. Then once more after that.

Nothing.

The silence should have reassured her. In theory, silence meant he probably wasn't making a big deal out of it. Yet somehow it produced the opposite effect. The longer it lasted, the easier it became for her imagination to fill in the blanks. Maybe he didn't know how to respond. Maybe he thought she was strange. Maybe he'd listened to the voice note while sitting with friends and now several other people knew about her refrigerator situation too.

The last possibility was so horrifying that she immediately banned herself from thinking about it.

By the time she settled onto the couch again, evening had fully arrived. The city beyond her windows glowed with scattered lights, the distant movement of traffic creating a soft pulse against the darkness. Normally she liked this time of day. There was something comforting about watching the city slow down while she retreated into the privacy of her apartment. Tonight, however, the silence felt unusually noticeable. It settled into the corners of the room and stretched across the empty cushions beside her, making the apartment seem larger than it actually was.

For a moment, she considered calling Jermajesty and telling him everything. The temptation lasted approximately three seconds before she remembered he would never let her live it down. The man would laugh himself into another dimension.

Y/N groaned and dropped her head back against the couch cushion.

Her phone remained beside her.

All evening she'd been waiting for a reply and now she wasn't even sure what she wanted the reply to say. If Jaafar texted back pretending it never happened, she'd feel embarrassed. If he acknowledged it, she'd feel embarrassed. If he teased her about it, she'd absolutely die.

There was no winning scenario.

Which was why the sound of the doorbell caught her completely off guard. The sharp chime echoed through the apartment, pulling her so abruptly from her thoughts that she actually jumped.

For several seconds she simply stared toward the hallway.

The bell rang a second time.

Frowning, Y/N pushed herself upright and glanced automatically toward her phone, as though it might somehow provide an explanation. The screen remained dark.

A neighbor, maybe.

Someone at the wrong apartment.

The possibilities seemed far more likely than whatever her exhausted brain was attempting to suggest.

She dragged the sleeve of her sweatshirt beneath her eyes, wiping away the lingering evidence of tears, then crossed the apartment toward the door. 

Jaafar stood on the other side of the doorway with a paper takeout bag hooked loosely in one hand and a cardboard drink carrier balanced in the other.

For several seconds neither of them spoke and Y/N simply stared because nothing about the image in front of her made sense. She'd spent the last hour imagining every possible reaction to the voice note. Embarrassment. Teasing. Awkwardness. Silence.

The concern on Jaafar's face appeared almost immediately, replacing whatever tentative smile he'd arrived with. His eyes moved over her features, lingering just long enough to notice the redness around them, and something in his expression softened.

'Hey,' he said quietly.

The single word was enough. After the day she'd had, after the exhaustion and the crying and the humiliating realization that she'd accidentally sent him eight minutes of emotional collapse, he'd gotten in his car and driven across the city instead of replying with a text.

His gaze dropped briefly to the takeout bag before returning to her face.

'I figured you probably shouldn't have to fight that cucumber for dinner.'

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it, shaky and breathless through the tears threatening to spill again. She pressed a hand over her mouth, half mortified by the sound and half overwhelmed by the fact that he was actually standing there. The laugh dissolved into something softer as she shook her head at him.

And somehow, against all odds, she found herself laughing through tears instead of crying all over again.

Jaafar remained standing in the doorway, the paper bag still hooked around his fingers, while Y/N stared at him as though he might disappear if she blinked too hard. The absurdity of the situation hadn't fully caught up with her yet. Her brain seemed stuck somewhere between embarrassment and disbelief, struggling to reconcile the fact that the man she'd spent the last hour mortifying herself over was now standing outside her apartment holding takeout.

The corner of Jaafar's mouth lifted slightly when he heard her laugh, though the concern never quite left his face. If anything, it seemed to deepen the longer he looked at her.

'Rough day, huh?'

The question was gentle.

And somehow that made it worse. Because if he'd made a joke, she could've hidden behind her embarrassment. If he'd laughed at her, she could've laughed too. Instead, he was looking at her with an expression that suggested he'd listened to that entire voice note and heard something beyond the complaints.

Y/N looked away first.

'You have no idea.'

Her voice sounded smaller than she intended.

The admission seemed to affect him immediately. Something softened in his expression, and before she could think of something else to say, he lifted the takeout bag slightly.

'Can I come in?'

The question finally snapped her out of her shock.

'Oh right, right. Yes. Sorry.'

She stepped aside quickly, and Jaafar slipped past her into the apartment. The familiar scent of takeout followed him inside, instantly making the room feel warmer somehow. Y/N closed the door behind him and watched as he crossed toward the coffee table, setting down the drinks first before carefully placing the paper bag beside them.

When he turned back toward her, she was still standing near the door with her arms folded tightly across herself, as though she hadn't quite decided whether she wanted to cry again or pretend none of this had happened.

His eyes lingered on her face.

The redness around her eyes.

The lingering exhaustion.

The evidence she'd failed to hide.

Whatever he saw there caused his expression to change completely.

'Hey.'

The word was quieter this time.

Suddenly, she became aware of how tired she looked. How tired she felt. How much effort it had taken simply to make it through the day.

Jaafar took a step closer.

'C'mere.'

Just two simple words spoken so naturally they felt less like an invitation and more like a certainty.

Something inside her gave way immediately.

The exhaustion she'd been carrying all day. The frustration. The embarrassment. The loneliness of sitting in her apartment trying to convince herself she was fine. All of it seemed to collapse at once.

By the time she crossed the room, she wasn't even thinking anymore.

She simply moved toward him.

Jaafar opened his arms before she reached him. The moment she stepped into them, he wrapped them around her with an ease that suggested there had never been another possible outcome. One settled securely around her waist while the other slid up her back, holding her close without hesitation.

The effect was immediate.

The tension she'd been carrying seemed to leave her body all at once. A shaky breath escaped her, then another and without thinking, she buried her face against his shoulder.

The apartment remained quiet around them.

The city lights glowed beyond the windows.

The takeout sat forgotten on the coffee table.

And standing there in the middle of her living room, held securely against his chest, y/N became aware of something she hadn't realized she'd needed all day.

One of Jaafar's hands moved slowly up and down her back.

'I'm sorry today sucked,' he murmured.

The words settled somewhere deep inside her.

Y/N closed her eyes.

For the first time since that morning, she felt herself relax. The kind that reached her bones and for a few precious seconds, she allowed herself to simply stand there and be held.

They stayed like that longer than either of them probably realized.

Eventually, embarrassment began creeping back in around the edges.

Not the overwhelming humiliation she'd felt after discovering the voice note had gone to the wrong person, but a softer awareness of herself. The awareness that she was standing in the middle of her living room being held by Jaafar. The awareness that she'd cried in front of him. The awareness that she had almost certainly left mascara somewhere on his shirt.

A small laugh escaped her at the thought.

The sound was muffled against his shoulder, but Jaafar felt it.

'You okay?' he asked quietly.

The question carried no urgency. No pressure. He wasn't demanding an answer. He was simply checking.

Y/N nodded before realizing he couldn't actually see her.

'Yeah.' Her voice sounded rough from crying. 'Just embarrassed.'

She felt his chest move beneath her cheek as he laughed softly.

'Why?'

The answer seemed so obvious that she immediately pulled back enough to look at him.

'Seriously?' His expression remained completely sincere. 'Jaafar, I accidentally sent you minutes and minutes of me complaining about my life.'

For a moment they simply looked at each other, both smiling despite themselves. It was only then that Y/n became aware of how close they still were. Neither had stepped away after the hug. Jaafar's hands remained resting lightly at her waist, and somewhere during the conversation she'd ended up holding onto the front of his shirt.

The realization should have made her step back. Instead, she found herself reluctant to move.

Something about the day had stripped away all her usual defenses. There was no energy left for overthinking. No energy left for pretending she wasn't comforted by his presence. Jaafar's smile softened slightly as his gaze moved across her face and without really thinking about it, he lifted one hand, then the other.

The movement was slow enough that she could have stepped away if she'd wanted to.

She didn't

His hands settled gently against her cheeks, warm palms framing her face with a tenderness that immediately stole the breath from her lungs. For a second Y/N forgot how to think.

The pads of his thumbs brushed beneath her eyes, catching the faint traces of tears she'd missed. The touch was impossibly careful, as though he were handling something fragile. Y/N found herself standing perfectly still, watching him through eyelashes that were probably still damp while his attention remained entirely focused on her face.

Jaafar's gaze lingered for a moment longer before he smiled faintly.

'There.' His thumbs brushed lightly across her skin one final time. 'Much better.'

The warmth that spread through Y/N had absolutely nothing to do with the apartment temperature.

For somebody who had spent the last several hours convinced she'd embarrassed herself beyond recovery, the simple fact that he was here felt almost surreal. Not just here physically, but present. Attentive. Looking at her as though showing up with dinner after a disastrous day was the most natural thing in the world.

The thought settled somewhere deep in her chest, because he could have texted, he could have replied with a joke, he could have told her not to worry about it and left it at that. Instead, he'd listened to a voice note that wasn't even meant for him, heard how exhausted she sounded, and gotten in his car.

Just because he cared.

The thought made her eyes sting all over again and immediately, Jaafar noticed.

'No,' he said firmly, pointing a finger at her. 'We're not doing that again.'

A surprised laugh escaped her. 'Doing what?'

'The crying.'

'Excuse me?'

'I've already solved the cucumber situation. We're making progress.'

The sheer seriousness with which he delivered the statement was enough to make her laugh properly this time.

A real laugh.

One that filled the room. And the expression on Jaafar's face when he heard it made it abundantly clear that, from the moment he'd arrived, that had been the goal all along.

Eventually, practicality won.

Not because either of them was particularly eager to move, but because the takeout sitting on the coffee table was beginning to fill the apartment with the sort of smell that made ignoring it increasingly difficult.

The transition happened gradually. The intensity of the moment softened into something quieter, something easier to carry. Y/N wiped the last traces of moisture from beneath her eyes while Jaafar pretended not to notice and within a few minutes they found themselves sitting side by side on the couch, the coffee table transformed into a makeshift dinner setup.

For the first time all evening, the apartment felt normal again, not normal in the sense that Jaafar regularly appeared at her door with emergency takeout and emotional support, although the thought was admittedly appealing. 

Normal because the heaviness that had followed her home from work seemed to have loosened its grip. The problems still existed. Tomorrow would still arrive. The emails would still be waiting for her in the morning. Yet somehow they felt further away now, pushed to the edges of her mind by the simple presence of somebody she cared about.

Jaafar reached for the paper bag and began unpacking containers with surprising seriousness, as though he had been entrusted with an important mission. Y/N watched him for a moment, amused despite herself, before her attention shifted toward the logo printed on the side of the bag.

Then she froze.

Her eyes narrowed, she leaned forward and looked again.

No.

No way.

Immediately, she grabbed one of the containers and opened it. The familiar smell hit her instantly. For a second, she genuinely thought she might cry again.

'You're kidding..'

Jaafar looked up.

'Mh, what? Something wrong?'

Y/N stared down at the food before looking back at him, then back at the food, then back at him again.

'How did you do this?'

The confusion on his face lasted approximately two seconds before realization dawned.

'Do what? Order?'

'This is my favorite.'

Now he looked confused.

'Yeah...'

'No, Jaafar, you don't understand.'

She sat up straighter, pointing accusingly at the container in her hands.

'This is my favorite favorite.'

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. 'I’m well aware.'

'No— how? I never mentioned it to you…'

The answer seemed obvious to him.

'Oh, because I asked.'

Y/N blinked. 'Asked who?'

'Jer.'

The response arrived so casually that it took her a moment to process.

'Jer?'

'Yeah.' The smile finally widened. 'Who do you think I called after listening to a voice note from a girl who sounded one bad grocery trip away from a complete emotional collapse?'

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

Jaafar looked far too pleased with himself.

'You called Jermajesty?'

'Immediately.'

'Oh my God.' Y/N dropped her head into her hand. 'He's never going to let me live this down.'

'Probably not.'

'Fantastic.'

'On the bright side,' Jaafar continued, reaching for his drink, 'he was extremely helpful.'

'Helpful?'

'Mhm.'

Y/N already didn't like where this was going, the grin on his face only confirmed her suspicions.

'He gave me your favorite order, your favorite drink and spent roughly ten minutes roasting you.'

She groand and Jaafar laughed.

'Actually, I think his exact words were, 'if she's talking about vegetables, she's at her limit.''

The worst part was that it sounded exactly like something Jermajesty would say.

Y/N covered her face. The smile refused to leave Jaafar's face and to her immense frustration, she found herself smiling too.

Because somewhere between the crying and the accidental voice note and the disastrous day at work, he'd listened. Really listened. He hadn't shown up with random food. He'd taken the time to figure out what she liked. He'd called Jermajesty. He'd driven across the city. He'd done all of that simply because she'd sounded tired.

Across the coffee table, Jaafar was busy opening his own container, completely unaware of the direction of her thoughts.

Or maybe not completely unaware because when he glanced up and caught her looking at him, his expression softened into something gentler than teasing, gentler than amusement.

Something that made her stomach do an unfortunate little flip.

'What?'

Y/N looked away first.

'Nothing.'

Jaafar hummed.

The sound carried absolutely no belief whatsoever

And for the remainder of the evening, with her favorite food sitting between them and the worst day she'd had in months slowly fading into the background, Y/N found herself thinking that maybe the voice note had ended up in exactly the right conversation after all.

The evening settled around them so naturally that neither of them seemed to notice how much time had passed.

What began as dinner gradually became something else entirely. The food remained between them on the coffee table, forgotten and revisited in equal measure as conversations drifted wherever they pleased. Sometimes they were talking about people they both knew. Sometimes about absolutely nothing at all. The topics changed so often that neither of them could have traced the route back afterward. One story led to another, which led to a memory, which somehow became a debate about music, a conversation about childhood, or an anecdote neither of them had intended to tell. By the time Y/N realized she hadn't thought about work in nearly an hour, she also realized she hadn't looked at her phone once.

It struck her then how different she felt from the woman who had opened the door earlier that evening.

The problems themselves hadn't changed. Tomorrow's responsibilities still existed. The emails waiting for her in the morning hadn't magically disappeared. Yet the weight of them felt different somehow. Lighter. More manageable. As though somebody had helped her carry them for a while without asking for anything in return.

Across from her, Jaafar was in the middle of telling a story that had somehow become dramatically more elaborate than when he'd started and Y/N found herself smiling before she'd even reached the punchline. At some point during the last few months, she'd learned that being around him felt remarkably similar to exhaling after holding her breath for too long. There was no effort involved. No performance. No pressure to be entertaining or impressive or perfectly put together. She could show up exactly as she was, exhausted and emotional and one bad day away from crying over vegetables, and somehow he still looked entirely content to be sitting on her couch sharing takeout.

The thought stayed with her long after the conversation shifted elsewhere.

Later, when the containers sat empty and only the remains of their drinks occupied the coffee table, the apartment settled into a comfortable quiet. Not the heavy silence that had filled the room before Jaafar arrived, but the easy kind that existed between people who no longer felt obligated to fill every second with conversation. Y/N had curled deeper into the corner of the couch by then, her legs tucked beneath her, while Jaafar sat beside her with one arm stretched along the back cushion.

It was during one of those quieter moments that he glanced toward her.

'You know,' he said, turning his cup slowly between his hands, 'I really don't mind getting those voice notes.'

Y/N immediately groaned. The smile that appeared on his face was impossible to miss.

'I'm serious.' For a moment, Jaafar seemed to search for the right words. 'I mean it, Y/N. Everybody has days like that. Everybody gets overwhelmed sometimes. And if you're having a terrible day, I'd rather hear about it than find out you've been sitting with it by yourself.'

The sincerity in his voice made joking impossible.

She stayed quiet, not because she didn't have a response but because the response felt lodged somewhere behind her ribs.

Jaafar looked back down at his drink. 'You don't have to bottle everything up just because you think it'll bother people.'

The words landed harder than he probably intended or maybe exactly as hard as he intended. Either way, Y/N found herself looking at him for a long moment without speaking.

Because he meant it.

The conversation continued after that, but the warmth of those words stayed with her.

Hours later when Jaafar finally pushed himself to his feet and reluctantly announced that he should probably leave before midnight arrived, Y/N felt a small flicker of disappointment she couldn't quite hide.

The apartment had become so full of him over the course of the evening that the thought of it being empty again felt strange. She followed him to the door while he collected his jacket, both of them moving more slowly than necessary in the way people often did when neither was particularly eager for a good night to end.

When they finally reached the doorway, Jaafar turned toward her with that familiar softness in his expression.

'Feeling any better?'

The question sounded simple, but she knew what he was really asking.

Y/N nodded.

'Yeah.' The answer came easily. 'Much better.'

Something about that seemed to satisfy him.

A small smile appeared on his face and before she could overthink it, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. The hug felt different from the one earlier. Less desperate. Less emotional. This one wasnt about seeking comfort. It was about gratitude. Jaafar's arms immediately settled around her, familiar now, warm and steady as they tightened around her shoulders.

Y/N simply closed her eyes and allowed herself to enjoy the moment, then she pulled back slightly, just enough to look up at him.

'Thank you, Jaafar,' she said quietly.

Before she could lose her nerve, she leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss against his cheek.

Jaafar looked momentarily surprised, pleasantly caught off guard. The smile that followed was small, but impossibly soft and somehow that made her even more flustered than if he'd said something.

'Seriously,' she said, because she suddenly needed words. 'Thank you so much. For everything.'

For a moment he simply looked at her then he reached out and squeezed her hand once.

'Anytime Y/N'

The answer came so naturally that it sounded less like reassurance and more like a promise. And somehow, standing there in the doorway watching him leave, Y/N believed him.

“You’re scary when you’re mad.”

“You should be scared.”

“I am.”

“You should be.”

You pointed half an orange at him threateningly.

He remembered staring at you thinking, This is it.

The terrifying realization that his chest felt lighter whenever you were around.

He is seriously inlove with his childhood bestie, the girl he been around for almost 12 years.

And worse, he started building his life around that feeling without noticing.

You had your own drawer in his apartment over the years.

Neither of you acknowledged when it happened.

One day you opened a drawer looking for batteries and found:

• your charger

• your lip balm

• spare pajamas

• hair ties

• a toothbrush

You held up the toothbrush slowly.

“…Did you buy me a toothbrush?”

Jaafar glanced over from the couch.

“You come over a lot.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You were using your finger.”

“I could’ve bought my own.”

“You didn’t.”

You stared at him.

He stared back innocently.

Then you muttered, “This is how cults start.”

His laugh followed you into the bathroom.

The line between friendship and something else blurred so gradually neither of you noticed where it disappeared.

He’d reach for your hand automatically in crowds.

You’d fix his chains absentmindedly while talking.

Sometimes you fell asleep on his shoulder during movies and he wouldn’t move for hours even when his arm went numb.

One night, all of the close friends and cousins had a sleepover at the Jackson’s.

You woke up at 3 AM half asleep and wandered into the kitchen to find him sitting in darkness drinking water.

He looked exhausted, emotionally exhausted.

You leaned against the counter quietly.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re lying.”

He paused a bit then, “I think people forget I’m an actual person sometimes.”

Your chest tightened immediately.

You walked toward him without thinking and rested your chin briefly against the top of his head where he sat.

A silent soft, familiar gesture.

Jaafar closed his eyes.

“You know what’s weird?” he murmured.

“What?”

“You never ask me to be anything.”

You frowned slightly.

“What do you mean?”

“Like…” he searched for the words. “Everybody always expects a version of me. You just…” His eyes lifted to yours. “don’t.”

You smiled faintly.

“That’s because you are just Jaafar to me.”

Something about that expression on your face nearly ruined him.

Because you actually meant it.

People noticed before you did, his cousins, your friends, even strangers noticed.

A thought crossed your mind while he was driving you home late one night.

The city lights blurred past the window beside you as you rested your head against the glass, quiet for a moment before asking almost absentmindedly,

“Why does everyone always think we’re dating?”

His fingers tightened slightly on the steering wheel.

“…I don’t know.”

“You think we act couple-y?”

He chuckled and mumbled , “Probabl-y.”

You laughed softly. “Shut up.”

He smiled too but didn’t answer.

Because the truth was, he thought about kissing you almost constantly now, and that terrified him.

Not because he didn’t want you.

Because he did.

You were the safest thing in his life.

If he crossed that line and lost you afterward, he genuinely didn’t know what would be left.

So instead he stayed silent, careful, stayed your best friend.

Until Adam.

Adam was easy.

That was the problem.

He was kind and clear in uncomplicated ways.

He asked you on dates instead of dancing around feelings for years.

The first time you mentioned him, Jaafar felt something ugly twist in his stomach immediately.

You were sitting on his couch scrolling through your phone.

“Adam wants to take me to this place downtown,” you said absentmindedly.

Jaafar muted the TV.

“Who’s Adam?”

You looked up.

“Oh. Guy I met a few weeks ago.”

A few weeks ago.

The fact another man had existed in your life for weeks without him knowing made irritation flash through him instantly.

He hid it badly.

“You like him?”

“I think so.”

That answer sat wrong in his chest for the rest of the night.

Things changed after that.

You started spending less time at his apartment.

Your toothbrush stayed untouched in the drawer.

Sometimes he’d instinctively reach for his phone to text you something dumb, only to remember, you were probably with Adam.

And every time that happened, resentment curled tighter inside him.

Not at you but at himself, because he had created this situation.

He had every single opportunity and he never said anything.

The jealousy started leaking out in embarrassing ways.

One night you canceled movie plans because Adam surprised you with dinner reservations.

Jaafar replied :

“👍”

You stared at the message for a full minute.

Then immediately called him.

“What is wrong with you?”

“What?”

“The thumbs up.”

“…It’s a thumbs up.”

“It’s an aggressive thumbs up."

He scoffed.

“You’re insane.”

“No, you’re weird lately.”

“I’m literally fine.”

“You sound annoyed.”

“I’m not annoyed.”

“You are.”

“I said I’m not."

“Jaafar.”

“What?”

“…Did I do something?”

The irritation vanished instantly.

Because your voice suddenly sounded small.

And guilty.

Like you genuinely thought you’d hurt him somehow.

His chest ached immediately.

“No,” he said quieter this time. “No, you didn’t do anything.”

But after the call ended, he sat staring at his ceiling feeling sick.

Because he wanted to tell you,

I think I’m in love with you and it’s making me miserable watching someone else have you so easily.

Instead, he said nothing.

Again.

The fight happened on a Thursday.

You remembered that later because Thursdays used to be your night together.

No matter how busy life got, Thursdays somehow always ended with the two of you together.

Food.

Drives.

Movies.

Talking.

But lately Thursdays belonged to Adam too.

That night all three of you had ended up at the same industry birthday party through mutual friends.

Jaafar hated every second of it.

Not because of Adam specifically, but because Adam could touch and own you openly.

Hand on your waist, leaning close to hear you, kissing your temple casually.

Things Jaafar had imagined doing for so long that seeing another man actually do them made him feel physically ill.

And what is worse is that you looked happy.

Later that night, when Adam said he had to leave the party early, you started gathering your things too, until Jaafar casually leaned over and suggested that he could drive you home later, giving you a reason to stay a little longer..around him..without Adam.

The car ride afterward started silent.

Heavy silent.

The kind where both people feel the tension sitting between them breathing.

Streetlights flashed across Jaafar’s face as he drove.

Your heels were off, tossed near your feet.

You looked exhausted.

“So,” you said eventually, trying to ease the weirdness, “Adam wants me to go to France with him next week.”

The second the name left your mouth, Jaafar’s jaw tightened.

You noticed immediately.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You did the face.”

“What face?”

“That face where your jaw gets sharper than a knife.”

He stayed silent, “Jaafar.”

His grip shifted higher on the steering wheel.

“I said nothing.”

You looked back out the window for a second before muttering:

“You’ve been acting weird for weeks.”

“I haven’t.”

“You have.”

“Maybe you’re just spending too much time with him to notice.”

Your head turned slowly.

“…What?”

“There it is,” he muttered under his breath.

“There WHAT is?”

“You disappear constantly now.”

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Are you jealous?”

“I’m not jealous.”

“You absolutely are.”

He laughed sharply.

“Right.”

“You are! Every time I mention him you get all.. all passive aggressive and weird.”

“I’m not being passive aggressive.”

“You literally just accused me of disappearing!”

“Because you HAVE.”

Your eyebrows lifted in disbelief.

“I’m allowed to have a boyfriend, Jaafar.”

“I know that.”

“Then stop acting like I committed a crime.”

“I didn’t say that either.”

“But you’re treating me like it!”

His voice rose slightly now.

“Because suddenly everything revolves around him!”

“Yeah! Because he’s my boyfriend!”

The words echoed inside the car.

Boyfriend.

Jaafar felt something genuinely painful twist in his chest hearing you say it that casually.

You noticed his silence immediately.

And suddenly realization flickered across your face.

Not complete realization.

But enough.

Your voice got quieter.

“…Wait.”

He kept driving.

You stared at him.

“Don’t.”

“Are you actually upset because I’m with someone else?.”

“I said don’t.”

“You cannot be serious right now.”

Something in him snapped then.

“Do you know what it’s been like watching this?”

You blinked hard.

“Watching what?”

“Some guy getting every version of you I—” He cut himself off violently.

The car went dead silent, your heart started pounding.

Jaafar looked horrified at himself, because he’d finally said too much.

Neither of you spoke for a few seconds.

The only sound was the low hum of the engine and the blinker clicking as the city passed outside in streaks of gold and red.

Your heart was beating so hard it actually hurt.

Jaafar kept his eyes fixed on the road like if he looked at you something irreversible would happen.

“…What did you mean by that?”

He swallowed once.

“Nothing."

“Don’t do that.”

“I said nothing.”

“You literally just said—”

“I know what I said.”

“Then explain it.”

His jaw tightened hard enough for you to see the muscle move.

“You’re dating someone,” he muttered. “Forget it.”

Forget it.

After years of blurred lines and almosts and moments that meant too much, forget it felt insane.

You let out a breathless laugh of disbelief.

“No, absolutely not.”

He finally glanced at you then.

You looked shaken and angry.

“You don’t get to say something like that and then tell me to forget it.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“But you did.”

The car slowed at a red light.

Orange streetlight poured through the windshield, illuminating the tension in sharp pieces, his clenched hand around the steering wheel, your glossy eyes, both of you breathing too hard.

You looked at him carefully.

"the only valid explanation to this is that you are in love with me?”

The speculation hit him like a car crash and his entire expression changed instantly with fear, real fear.

And that answered you before he even spoke.

“Y/n…”

“Oh my God.”

The light turned green.

Cars behind you honked when Jaafar didn’t move immediately.

He jerked the car forward again with a curse under his breath.

You leaned back against the seat slowly like the air had been knocked out of you.

“You’re in love with me,” you repeated quietly, almost to yourself.

“Can we not do this right now?”

“Right now?” you stared at him incredulously. “When exactly were you planning on doing this, Jaafar?”

“I wasn’t.”

“That’s even worse!”

His frustration cracked through immediately.

“What did you want me to do?”

“I don’t know!” you shot back. “Maybe say something before I built an entire relationship with somebody else!”

His laugh came out sharp and humorless.

“Yeah, because that would’ve gone great.”

“At least I would’ve known!”

“You knew.”

Your head snapped toward him.

“What?”

“You knew.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Jaafar, I thought we were—”

“What?” he interrupted suddenly. “Just friends?”

The words landed harder than they should’ve.

Because neither of you had treated each other like just friends in a long time.

Your throat tightened,“You never said anything.”

“And you never stopped it.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

He sounded angry now.

Not at you, but at himself and the situation.

At years of restraint turning poisonous inside him.

“You think it was easy watching you with him tonight?” he asked tightly.

Your brows furrowed.

“Then why didn’t you DO something before???”

“Because if I lost you, I’d lose everything!”

The confession exploded out of him so suddenly it silenced both of you.

Your breathing caught.

Jaafar looked stunned by his own words.

Then exhausted.

Like he was finally too tired to keep carrying them.

“You’re my best friend,” he said, quieter now. “You’re—”

He stopped.

Ran a hand down his face roughly.

“You’re the first person I look for everywhere.”

Your chest physically ached hearing him say it.

His voice got lower.

“When something happens to me, you’re the person I wanna tell first.”

“You know me better than anybody.”

You looked away quickly because your eyes started burning again.

“And you waited until I was with someone else to say all this?”

The second the words left your mouth, guilt flashed across his face.

Because you were right, that was the ugliest part.

You laughed weakly, shaking your head.

“This is unbelievable.”

“It’s not like I planned this.”

“No, you just let me move on while saying nothing.”

“I was trying not to ruin what we had!”

“But you already did!”

That hit him hard and you saw it immediately, the hurt flickering across his face almost made you take it back.

But you were hurting too now.

Years suddenly rearranging themselves in your mind..every touch, every look, every almost-confession.

You remembered every moment people assumed you were together.

Every time you secretly wondered, what if?

And now he was telling you it wasn’t imaginary.

The realization should’ve felt good, instead it felt devastating because the timing was horrible.

Because another person was involved now.

Because if he loved you this whole time, then why did you spend years feeling unwanted?

“There were so many times I thought maybe there was something between us and then you’d pull away and act normal again and I started thinking I was delusional.”

Jaafar’s stomach dropped.

Because he remembered every one of those moments too.

The nights he almost kissed you, almost said it, almost reached for you.

Then got scared and buried it again.

“You think I didn’t feel it too?” you whispered.

That nearly broke him as the car went silent again.

Not empty silence.

The kind too full to breathe inside.

Then he asked quietly, “Do you love him?”

You closed your eyes briefly. “…I don’t know yet.”

The honesty of it wrecked him anyway.

Because there was possibility in those words, a future, something IS growing, something he was already too late for.

Jaafar nodded once like he deserved that pain.

“We should probably stop being friends.”

Your head turned sharply.

“What?”

“I’m serious.”

“No.”

“You’re with somebody now.”

“So?”

“So this—” he gestured between you both helplessly “—whatever this is, it’s not fair to him.”

Your chest tightened violently because he was right.

And you hated that he was right.

You stared out the window suddenly because looking at him hurt too much.

The city blurred outside.

Then quietly, without looking at him, you said:

“I would’ve chosen you.”

The words shattered the air instantly.

Jaafar’s breath caught so hard it almost sounded painful.

You kept staring forward.

Voice trembling now.

“If you had said something… I would’ve chosen you.”

He looked destroyed. Actually destroyed.

One hand left the wheel briefly like he almost reached for you instinctively before stopping himself.

“Don’t say that,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“Because we can’t do anything with it now.”

Tears finally slipped down your face silently.

His grip on the steering wheel loosened.

His breathing became uneven.

His eyes shut briefly like he physically couldn’t handle hearing that.

And suddenly the car swerved slightly.

“shit,” you muttered, grabbing the door for stabilization.

He handled the steering wheel of the the car immediately.“Sorry.”

You stared out the window because looking at him suddenly hurt too much.

The city lights outside blurred together through the tears gathering in your eyes.

“I am trying to do the right thing.”

“The right thing?” you repeated. “After dropping this on me NOW?”

His frustration cracked instantly.

“What was I supposed to do?!”

“ANYTHING!”

Your voice echoed loudly inside the car now.

“Anything would’ve been better than this!”

He shook his head harshly.“You don’t understand.”

“No, YOU don’t understand.”

Your breathing turned uneven.

“You don’t get to suddenly tell me you love me after years and then act like I’m supposed to go home and continue my relationship normally!”

“I know that!”

“Then why are you acting like this is simple?!”

“It’s not simple!”

“Then stop pretending it is!”

The car fell into another suffocating silence.

You could hear both of you breathing.

Emotional exhaustion soaked every inch of the space between you now.

Then Jaafar said quietly, “Maybe we should’ve never crossed lines in the first place.”

That one hurt differently.

Like something cold sliding directly into your chest.

You stared at him slowly, pure hurt, because suddenly he was talking about your relationship like it was a mistake.

Like all those years together had become something shameful now that feelings were involved.

“You know what?” you whispered. “Stop the car.”

Jaafar exhaled sharply through his nose. “We’re five minutes from your apartment.”

You laughed once in disbelief.

A horrible little laugh.

His jaw tightened immediately.

“Y/N listen to me.”

“NO YOU LISTEN TO ME.”

The tension finally snapped completely.

“every time things get real between us, you decide my feelings for me!” you shouted. “You don’t get to confess something like that and then act like I’m the problem for having feelings about it!”

Jaafar’s expression hardened immediately afterward.

“You know what?” he muttered coldly. “Forget I said anything.”

You stared at him in disbelief.

“You cannot be serious.”

“I mean it.”

“You just finally confessed—”

“And clearly that was a mistake.”

That sentence physically knocked the air out of your lungs.

And before either of you could recover from it, your apartment building appeared beside you.

Jaafar pulled up by braking harder than usual before throwing the car into park.

The engine still running beneath it.

You just stared ahead for a second, stunned.

Because somehow the argument had ended here, with that sentence.

With him looking at you like he regretted everything.

Jaafar kept both hands tight around the steering wheel, jaw locked so hard it hurt.

He could already feel the regret creeping in.

Could already hear how cruel it sounded.

But pride kept his mouth shut.

Then the click of your seatbelt echoed through the car.

His eyes flickered toward you instantly.

You reached for the door and suddenly panic crawled up his spine because this felt real now.

You were leaving angry, like actually leaving.

“Y/N—”

You cut him off by opening the door anyway without hesitation or waiting for him to finish his sentence.

You just stepped out of the car like you couldn’t stand being inside it anymore.

And somehow that hurt worse than if you screamed at him.

Jaafar stared at you in disbelief for a second, something sharp twisting painfully in his chest.

Because you didn’t wait for him to finish.

His jaw tightened immediately.

That wounded part of him, the ugly, egoistic part, flared up before the softer part could stop it.

So instead of following or stopping you, he gripped the steering wheel tighter and slammed his foot on the gas.

The tires screeched violently against the pavement as the car sped off far too fast.

The sound made you flinch instinctively.

It echoed through the quiet street like another argument.

But you refused to turn around, even as your vision blurred.

You just kept walking toward your building while the sound of his car disappeared into the night behind you.

A/N : …am sorry?

Knowing that you wouldn’t have been in this position if you had acted differently a few months ago makes scrolling through her Instagram feed hurt even more.

You shouldn’t be so obsessed. The obsession started the next day when you posted the photos Giselle took of you on the fire escape. She came out with the smokers after everyone sang Anton happy birthday and took a picture of you on her digital camera. The tears were gone by then, only leaving you embarrassed and trying to hide from Giselle before she asked what was wrong. You cried some more, the smokers offered you a Lucky Strike to help you feel better.

Giselle took the cigarette on your behalf and clicked through her recent pictures on her camera. She said you were giving indie sleaze and Spring Breakers, all of that. You wouldn’t have preferred to post pictures of yourself after a cry. But your eyes didn’t look too bloodshot and you wanted to post proof that you were there, waiting for Anton on the fire escape even after he went inside. So you posted it and Anton liked it. But he didn’t comment and he didn’t ask if you privately if you had taken that photo on his fire escape. You were still clinging to the railing from when he had a hand around your waist but he didn’t comment. 

He commented on his own post, though. The girl who told him it was time to cut the cake and who planned the after party commented and Anton responded almost immediately. 

A simple reply from Anton started the obsession. You spent every night alternating between her Instagram feed, Anton’s Instagram feed, and your message history with Anton. You were stuck in a loop, late into every single night thinking about what you should’ve done. 

You were stuck on your chat history with Anton a little longer than usual. After his birthday there was there was radio silence from you both. You scrolled up through the history of you telling Anton that you were outside, him asking when and where to meet you. 

You didn’t know you had it so good then, that it was so easy. Anton was always there for you, early in the morning and late into the night. After classes and before, during parties, and after exams. You didn’t think that the conversation on the fire escape would’ve been the last. 

You kept scrolling. The implication of seeing the other around wasn’t a farewell. It didn’t feel like a farewell then, you don’t know if you could handle it being one now. 

Your thumb pressed on the chat absentmindedly. You were pulled all the way down to the recent message, a month ago when you told Anton in the middle of his party that you were coming. The bright light of your screen was burning your eyes as you typed something out before deleting it. You did that a million times, turning to your side trying to figure out what to do. Your blanket rested gently over your body as you pressed your face into the pillow, typing each word carefully.

you: are you mad at me?

you: i’m sorry if i did something wrong

Regret instantly bubbles in your chest and you squeeze your eyes shut like you’re trying to will away the message. But you see the speech bubble at the bottom of your chat history.

anton: i’m not mad at you

anton: is everything okay?

Anton told you himself that he’s not mad. He’s told you before that he’s never been mad at you. He’s told you he’s been confused by you, and now it seemed like he was worried for you. He texted back immediately just like he used to. It wasn’t too late into the night. You could be at his place in ten minutes.

You think Anton might’ve texted again while you were getting ready. You were just thinking that he’s never been mad at you, just confused or upset. He wasn’t mad on the fire escape when you told him that you probably wouldn’t go to the afters, he wasn’t upset that you said nothing in response to him to suddenly ask if he was mad at you. He didn’t tell you he was mad so he wasn’t, just worried. You didn’t need to read his text because you were already convinced, fully dressed and ready to go to his side of campus.

You got dressed in the dark, spritzing a perfume you bought with Anton in mind while you wore a shirt of his. You zipped up a hoodie of his that he gave to you and put sweats over your sleeping shorts. You got dressed quick, filling in the gaps of Anton asking you to come over.

You had figured he had given up to some extent to get you to be his. You were devising a plan in the midsts of getting dressed to let him know that you wanted more from him. Once you made it inside of his room you’d tell him that you missed him. During sex he’d ask you—like he always has—if it was all for him and you think you’d actually nod your head this time. Instead of teasing him you’d be brutally honest, or you’d say yes so sincerely he’d hear all the regret in your voice. You know that you’re the most vulnerable with him in the middle of the act. Maybe you’d let a declaration slip out in the middle of it, telling him that you could never handle a month of silence from him ever again. Maybe you’d say you were sorry while he laid you down and you would beg for another chance. He was more receptive to your emotionally stunted ways in that state, too. You know he’d coo at you and accept your apology. You know he’d tease you but there’d be sincerity, some gratitude for you being upfront. He might tell you he’d take you on a date and hold your hand in public. You’d react and tell him yes, because you’re positive that’s what you want now. 

The possibilities of the night made you move in a haste. You cleared campus to his dorm in eight minutes, phone tucked in the pocket of your hoodie. You were going through the outcomes when you entered his building, asking the resident assistant proudly if you could be scanned in to go to Anton’s floor. You bounced in front of the doors of the elevator, watching the number climb until you got to Anton’s floor.

You got out of the elevator quickly, turning the corner and going to his room so fast your feet dragged across the carpet. You went over your plan in your mind: tell him that you missed him, have sex, start an actual relationship. You were so preoccupied telling yourself this plan you didn’t notice your phone vibrating in your pocket. Only when you were in front of Anton’s door were you still enough to hear the sound of a phone vibrating and feel the slight sensation.

You fished your phone out before you knocked on his door. His contact picture took up your entire screen, and your heart seized in your chest at your routine being fulfilled. He was probably calling to ask if you could bring a condom. You had a few in your bag, but if this night went how you wanted maybe you wouldn’t need them at all. A teary love confession right before you both finished together sounded like something straight from a movie. You declined the call but instead reached forward to knock on his door.

Your phone started vibrating again as you stood in front of the door. Almost immediately the call dropped, and your phone revealed a series of texts you didn’t know you were ignoring on your journey here.

anton: hey is everything alright?

anton: i’m not mad, just confused.

anton: even more confused now.

anton: call me

anton: are you outside my door?

You could hear him on the other side of his door. Shuffling, moving things around, turning the lock. Your eyes were trained on the door where you thought he was on the other side. The more shuffling you heard the more nervous you became, thinking about the tone of his texts. 

Regret seizes in your chest and you think that Anton would’ve told you to go home if you were on your way. The longer it takes for him to open the door the more your mind wanders. The urge to leave takes up everything. You grip your phone tight and take a step away from the door.

Before you could turn and head back towards the emergency staircase, the door opens.

You have been here a million times before with Anton. Usually you’d be clad in black with a hat on like you concealing your identity. Regardless, he’d always pull the door open then pull you through it, kissing the top of your head to welcome you in. 

This time he only opened it enough for half his body to fit through. He doesn’t come into the hallway to greet you. He stayed in his entryway, caught between the door and the frame. He doesn’t greet you. He just stands there in his sweats. His hair had just finished drying, the length fluffy and curling around the frame of his face. There’s not the shy smile or smirk on his face either. His features are pulled together in worry and confusion, looking at you like you’re not real. He can look you right in the face without having you take off a hat or sunglasses. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks. 

He leans closer, just enough for his head to peer into the hallway. He looks left and right and you do the same, looking at an empty hallway on both sides. You teeter from side to side, hearing your sneakers drag across the low pile carpet. The slight scraping is grating, more than the fact that Anton hasn’t invited you in yet. He has also never scoped out the scene before. You usually did that because you were afraid of being caught.

He’s not mad at you; he could never be mad at you. You tell yourself he asks the question out of worry. You always gave a warning that you’d be coming over. But you also remember the sentiment that you were always welcome. Anton told you that you could come by any time when you asked if you could crash at his one night. He said that he wished he could give you a key so you could drop in whenever you liked.

But you also remember that he said those things post sex. His lovey-dovey pillow walk could’ve been all for show, or it could’ve been recanted when you said nothing to him for a month. When you had sex in your dorm it was pretty devoid of feelings then. You don’t think you looked at Anton’s face too much when you offered that he could spend the night. You try to find the same look on his face now.

“Sorry,” you say.

Anton shakes his head.

“Don’t apologize,” he says. 

He shuffles on his feet. You can barely see into his room but you’re thinking about why you haven’t been invited in yet. You can barely see into his room, only the part over his shoulder that shows the ceiling and the light embedded in the middle. 

He doesn’t smile at you in the moment of silence. He just keeps looking, one hand holding the door open and the other behind him. You can’t even reach out to him.

“What are you doing here?” he asks again.

You thought you were always welcome. It feels like you knocked on the wrong door, a stranger opened up instead of your Anton. 

“I’m sorry, I just thought…” you say, words trail off at the end.

“Is everything alright?” he asked.

The question was sincere. He leaned a little closer when he asked it. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to keep his voice down or if he was trying to come closer to you so you’d take a step forward. 

“Are you okay?” he repeated.

His concern is palpable. You take a step forward and he doesn’t flinch away. You nod, trying to string together enough of an apology to find your way in.

The arm he extended and the step you took forward made more of the room visible. In the smallest space that was open, you saw a shadow dancing on the ceiling. Your eyes darted from the space above Anton to the small gap that opened between his body and the door. 

You saw her sitting on the couch and she was looking towards you. You recognized her face from endless scrolling on Instagram. You recognized the shock because it was the same look she gave you and Anton when she came on the terrace. You couldn’t mistake her because you had seen her a million times. She was pretty in person too, even when she was shocked.

You pulled back almost immediately. Anton’s eyes got wide and yours did too. He couldn’t block your view in time. He blocked the small gap between his arm and the door, but it was too late. Suddenly the tone of his texts made sense. His urgency to get you to respond. You’re sure he would’ve told you stay home and that he had someone else over. But you ended up here, not trying to hide yourself. The girl knows who you are, she has seen you before.

Your face heats up as the second of eye-contact plays in your mind again and again. Everything comes down at once and so quickly you feel lightheaded. There’s an intent to get out. Your feet are planted, frozen in the doorway. Like you’ve been caught you hold your breath. You grip your phone so tight and finally take a step back. Anton comes forward, leaving his doorway and closing his door behind him so quick you jump.

He’s against his door and he’s looking at you like he’s waiting for something. He’s wearing the sweater with the swim team on it and a pair of jeans. He probably walked from practice with her. You thought you saw textbooks on the coffee table. Maybe he went and picked her up from class. Or maybe that Instagram story you couldn’t click on was a date. She was sitting in the same space you always used to occupy with a bewildered look on her face. You were supposed to be on that couch, or at the very least inside. Now you were trapped outside, Anton and the door and the girl in the way. 

“I should go,” you said finally.

You think Anton said something. You didn’t hear because you had turned on your heel and made your way for the staircase that led you down to the courtyard. 

You were a flight down when you heard the door open on Anton’s floor. You heard him making his way down the steps too, hurried like yours were. You kept going, the steps blurring together as you felt the sting at your waterline. You were closer and closer to the courtyard, then you could make the speed walk towards your dorm. You think you could hold your tears by then. Anton would see you disappearing down the path and give up to go back to his girlfriend that he was waiting for him in his room.

You pushed the door open and a gust of air hit you. The fresh air provided no relief, instead just stinging your already sensitive eyes. You immediately cut through the courtyard, speed-walking across the bricked path to your dorm. You heard the staircase door closing again, and the sound of footsteps following after you. A moment later you heard heavy footsteps coming closer. You kept moving forward. Anton called after you, but you didn’t stop moving.

He caught up to you eventually. With a hand on your forearm he stopped you from walking any further. Tears break past your waterline, forcing you to look down at the ground instead of looking at him.

You can feel Anton looming over you. You stare at his feet, his slides quickly thrown on in a haste to catch you. His hand is still around your arm, holding it gently. You can feel each finger pressed into your skin, burning from his body heat and your embarrassment.

“Why’d you run?” Anton asked. 

You shake your head. You bring your other hand to your eyes to wipe away forming tears.

“Didn’t you want to talk?” he asks. 

“I didn’t know you had someone over,” you say, still looking at his feet.

Anton lets go of your arm and you immediately try stepping backwards. He covers the distance you try to make. The wind settles, you see Anton’s other hand go to push his hair back.

“I didn’t even know you were coming over,” he says. 

When you still say nothing, Anton brings a hesitant hand to your shoulder. You feel the weariness when he massages you gently.

“I’m not mad.” He continues to massage your shoulder. You nod pathetically, wiping away more tears. “I just wish you would tell me what you were thinking,” he says.

“I just wanted to see you,” you say.

You’re surprised that the sentiment came out so quickly. You were supposed to hold it in until you got him alone in his room. You weren’t supposed to be completely vulnerable until you could blame it on the heat of a moment.

When you finally look Anton in the eyes you immediately see his expression drop. The confusion melts. Almost immediately the entirety of him softens, his hand is sure as it rubs your shoulder gently.

“Why are you crying?” he asks. When you try to look away his other hand goes to your other shoulder, angling your body towards him. “What’s wrong?”

Anton’s reflex to worry about you makes you even more teary. You hadn’t spoken in so long but he still cares. You think about that night on the terrace and how Anton was giving you the opportunity to stay. But then you think about the same girl that was at the party telling him to blow out the candles was the same girl that was in his dorm. You were in her place at one point, and knowing that you’ve been replaced but he’s still considerate of your feelings makes your vision watery.

“I just thought for some reason that if I came here like this it’d fix the problem between us.”

There’s a silence between the two of you. You hear shoes tapping on the paved walkway and there’s a gentle breeze. It pushes Anton’s hair back slightly.

“What’s the problem?” he asks.

You know he knows. Anton always seems to know everything, he only tries to coax answers out of you for sake of conversation. There’s something holding you back still. You know he knows that too.

The breeze wisping through the courtyard provides little relief to your stinging eyes. 

“Your birthday party,” you start.

“What about it?” he asks.

You turn your head to look at the side of his building. You think his room is facing the courtyard. You wonder if that girl is up there in the window looking down at the two of you.

“I know I said I’d see you around, but it sucks leaving it to chance,” you say.

“You don’t have to leave it up to chance,” Anton clarifies.

“That’s why I came here.” 

Your words trail off at the end as you vaguely look up to the floor Anton lives on. You don’t know which window is his exactly. Still, you scan the face of the building looking for someone standing in the window. 

You only look back to him when you hear him move. When his eyes catch a circular metal table he walks towards it, pulling at your shoulder slightly. You drag your feet to follow him. He sits down first and motions to the spot next to him. 

There’s no distance when you sit down. You look at the spot where your knees touch his. Anton is looking down too, before he looks up and catches your eye.

He’s silent for a long time. The light breeze pushes his hair before he flicks his head back. 

“We don’t have to leave it to chance, but knowing would be nice.” You watch Anton bring his hands together, messing with each individual finger. You can tell he’s thinking carefully about what to say next. He’s acting like you’re liable to burst into tears without telling him why. The thought of how gentle he is makes a bigger lump materialize in your throat. “I think what we had before—“

“Was better?” you finished.

Anton shakes his head. His hands go to the top of the table. His thumbs tap slightly on the grated top on the table. The small metallic sound is barely audible over the sound of people talking around the courtyard.

“What we had before was more consistent,” he says carefully, head turning towards you. “I knew what you wanted when you texted me late asking if I was up. I don’t know what you want when you pop up on me at a reasonable hour wearing my clothes.”

You look down at his hoodie. You’ve been sweating nonstop since he opened his door. You want to take it off, but underneath this you’re wearing one of his shirts.

“I just really wanted to see you,” you say.

“My friend also really wanted to see me.”

Anton emphasizing friend has your heart dropping to your stomach. You don’t think during your previous involvement you’ve ever referred to him as your friend. You think maybe he makes the girls he hooks up with call him that. Or you two were never anything to begin with. What he could’ve meant only hurts, and you’re forced to take it in stride.

“I’m your friend too,” you say after a moment of silence.

Your tone makes it sound like a question. The way Anton raises his eyebrows makes you even more confused. 

“My friend?” he asks.

You nod. His knee is so warm it bleeds through your clothes. It feels like there’s direct skin contact, or bone clashing into bone.

“I’m glad we are friends,” you emphasize.

You nod again. Anton’s eyes are burning holes into the side of your face, but you focus on where your knees touch. The parts of his body that are in view flex, and with a quick peak upwards you see that he’s leaning against the table. His elbow is pressed into the grated metal and the side of his face is resting on the bottom of his palm. He taps his fingers on his face in a wave, looking at you with an expression you have trouble reading. The lamps in the  courtyard turned on automatically, lighting the parts of his face that the setting Sun missed. You think you see a smile before you focus somewhere else.

“Well,” he says, hands clapping together. “I’m glad we are friends, too.”

You hear the playful lift to his voice. Anton leans forward, until his elbow moves to rest on the edge of the table. He leans in, the same time he puts a hand on your knee that touches his.

“How was your day, friend?” he asks.

You can’t look down at your knee because you can feel the warmth of him through the fabric. The hand on your knee makes you believe you’re more than friends. The taunting tone in his voice makes you think he already knows what you’ve been doing all day. Cyberstalking him and the girl that was in his room. Ruminating on the past. Wallowing in self pity while trying to do coursework. Letting all your emotions boil over until they forced you come over to his dorm unprompted.

“I went to class,” you look towards a lamp post, squinting your eyes trying to think of what else you could say that wouldn’t be so pathetic. “did some homework.”

Anton hummed and nodded. Your hands were balled into fists, joints stiff as you motioned vaguely towards him.

“How was your day?” you asked.

Anton tilted his head towards the dark sky like he was thinking. His hand was pulsing a grip on your thigh.

“I also went to class. Then I went to practice and tore a hole in my swim cap by accident,” he answers.

You see the first break in Anton’s demeanor as he remembers his torn swim cap. He frowns slightly, fingers rubbing at his forehead.

“Gotta buy a new one, but I have to go to the other side of town to get the caps I like.”

“You’re in classes all day tomorrow too, right?” you ask.

Anton’s face changes again. He tilts his head and smiles at you, instead of a taunt you can tell he’s pleasantly surprised. You’ve had to pick up a thing or two about his schedule in the midst of your previous entanglement. He knew about yours, and he told you everything so it was only natural to remember it.

“Yeah, I’m in class all day.” Anton says, running his hand through his hair. “I gotta get the cap before my hair gets all messed up from the pool.”

You nod your head like you understand. You understand chlorine enough, the concept of chemicals and how they’d react to hair. You imagine being submerged in water in any capacity for hours on end would be Hell on hair. On Anton Instagram and the girls Instagram everyone is always wearing their headgear. Anton always ends up having a few strands of his hair peaking out from the bottom. 

Anton runs his hands through that part of his hair, staying at the ends and carding it through his fingers. You want to do the same, you get lost in the motion of Anton’s large hand grooming himself. His hand on your thigh just remained in a gentle squeeze. 

“You know,” he begins. You instantly perk up and stop looking at his hand. “I think friends also go to their friend’s swim practices.”

You nod. Anton smiles and nods back. It’s silent between the two of you. People pass by the both of you in the courtyard, coming home from night classes or a last minute cram at the library. You don’t withdraw from him at all. You let people walk by and look, you watch Anton watch them walk by. His gaze would flicker to you, like he was gauging for a reaction. To not pull away and to not react you had to freeze completely. But you felt Anton apply a little more force behind the hold on your thigh. 

Anton’s gaze flickers as one more person walks by. You hear a small sound of them saying hi and Anton is waving back and responding to them. You peer over your shoulder. You’ve seen that person before, you’re sure of it. Maybe it was at his party, or one of the functions at the abandoned warehouse. But you’re sure they know Anton because they make small talk, and he looks like he’s about to take a seat before he sees the hand on your thigh. Without missing a beat he bids Anton a farewell, and he continues making his way through the courtyard.

The two of you wait in the heavy silence. Someone saw you and Anton having a moment, where you were like a deer in the headlights and he was calm and collected. This must mean the hand on your thigh means more than just friends. 

But before you can read any more into it, Anton retracts his hand. He gets up from his seat fast, making you tilt your head up to look at him. This angle is awful. Too reminiscent. For a moment the reason you came by flashes through your mind. You were supposed to be spilling your guts in the middle of sex with Anton, not partially spilling your guts and groveling just to be in his life again. You didn’t think this is how the night would go. Now you’re his friend and he’s touching your chin playfully, making it tilt up even further to look at him.

“You gotta get home though, right?” he asks.

You swallow and nod your head to recenter yourself. You get up too, slowly but almost shaky on your legs.

Anton’s hands clap your shoulders. This is something he’s never done with you. He shakes you slightly, and you think he’s going to pull you in for a hug before he pulls away completely.

“Text me when you get home,” he says.

You want to ask him to walk you home. But you know that if you ask, he will say he has company over, and you will get that pang in your chest and the tense feeling in your jaw. 

“I will,” you said.

You turned the other direction and started walking back towards your building. You felt Anton still watching, and when you took a quick look over your shoulder he was there. Like a shadow he stayed by the table, lit up partially by a lamp post. You took a glance over him, where you think the light in his room was still on.

You texted Anton that you made it home and he responded. You went to sleep thinking about his indirect invitation slash order to come to his swim practice, and the girl that was waiting for him in his room. You woke up that morning thinking about how you were his friend now. You asked yourself what do friends do for eachother. Anton would be going to practice today with a torn swim cap, exposing his hair to the harsh chemicals of the pool. Friends wouldn’t let friends go through that.

All of your stalking came in handy. You found the brand of swim cap by zooming in on a picture Anton posted two weeks ago. The sports goods store wasn’t too far, and you had no classes to get in the way. You got his cap and you went back to campus.

You circled the entrance of the practice hall for twenty minutes. The nerves continued to prevail, each time you reached towards the door you thought about all of the possibilities. He had found enjoyment in labeling you as a friend last night. Maybe this was a trick to get you here, so he could laugh and joke with his friends about the desperate girl who wanted a second chance. You knew that girl would be here too, you’re sure you would be seen by his entire team. 

But you lost the right to choose. You were just his friend now, a friend who was on thin ice. If you wanted to get back to a semblance of anything you had before, this was the only way. If you turned around and left, you’d fill every room you entered with regret. Anton was waiting for you the same way he waiting for you to come to his game. You weren’t sure you’d be able to look at Anton ever again if you didn’t do this. So you took a deep breath, gripped the swim cap tight and pulled the door open.

Instantly when you passed the door you smelled the pool. The hallway had fluorescent lights embed into the ceiling and had warm lights in the display case. You saw trophies and banners and pictures of different athletic teams. You saw the accolades for the swimming team as you continued following the sound of water splashing.

The other parts of the gymnasium were relatively unoccupied. Some people were in the weight room, others were lying on cots getting massages or being inspected. You kept walking down the hallway, trying to seem like you belonged while gripping the swim cap like it was proof.

The pool was behind another set of double doors. You stay near the entrance, making the door close gently to avoid the sound echoing. The white walls are a stark difference to the vibrant green of spring outside. The tiled floor is different from the dirt, or the concrete that you nervously paced over for ten minutes. The weather in here is different too, the almost exact opposite of the clear spring outside. In here you’re drowning in the humidity, instantly feeling hot and damp in your clothes. Your heart is beating fast too, because you’ve never been here and you can already hear Anton’s voice echoing off the walls of the pool. You hear splashing and the sound of people jumping off the boards. Timers, clocks, instructors yelling about strokes. You squeeze the swim cap in your hand, feeling like you should turn around. You’re behind the coverage of the stands, you could turn around and no one would know. 

The air is so thick in here you could chew on it, and you can already feel sweat beading at your forehead. You walk forward, matching breaths with your steps trying to figure out why your heart is hammering in your chest.

Although you could hear Anton you had no idea where he was. His voice bounced off the water and the white walls, the sounds of people swimming threw you off. You thought that he would be on the other end of the pool, giving you a chance to see him before he saw you. Anton didn’t miss a beat instructing his team but he must’ve heard the door open, because the moment you passed the coverage of the bleachers and you saw him in your peripheral, he was already looking in your direction. 

You froze under his stare, staying still in the spot by the bleachers. You saw Anton freeze too, his hands that clapped for his teammates stayed fused together.

You wanted to turn on your heel and leave. The humid air was choking you and the warmth was making you sweat. You felt like every unpleasant smell from the day was attached to you, amplified by the muggy atmosphere. You felt sticky, your dirty hands were rubbing off on Anton’s brand new swim cap.

You saw Anton turn to his coach. Against it all you forced yourself to face him, even if you felt like your clothes were rubbing against your clammy skin. You felt soggy here, and it felt like Anton knew it. He walked towards you casually, looking like he belonged here. The blue reflecting off the pool complimented his tan skin, the water droplets on his shoulders from his hair looked perfect. 

In moments like this you remember that this could’ve been yours the whole time. Anton is careful navigating from the bleachers but doesn’t take his eyes off of you. You’re standing still and watching him, just waiting for him to come to you. 

You’re messing with the swim cap so much you think you’re wearing it down, already rubbing a portion of it thin from nerves. The repeated motion provides no relief, only making the palms of your hands sweaty. 

By the time Anton is in front of you, you’re sure you’ve rubbed a hole in the latex. Regardless, you present it to him, holding it out between the two of you so he couldn’t come any closer. 

“I got you a new swim cap,” you said.

You felt your voice get overtaken by the echo of water splashing. 

Anton looked down at the swim cap and you heard the coach blow the whistle. More splashing and water moving in the pool bounced off the walls. 

He took the cap from your hands, fingers brushing against yours. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said.

The genuine surprise in his voice cut through everything. The way he made eye contact made you look at his bare shoulder instead. Without even looking down you knew that his shorts were hanging low, only meant to cover the jammers he was swimming in. You could see his chiseled stomach, and you were thinking about the last time you had seen him like this. You also felt a flash of jealousy at the thought of everyone who has seen him like this since his birthday in March.

This could’ve been your life all this time. Bringing him things, crashing his practices, having him look at you with a grateful smile on his face. You like seeing him surprised, you like seeing him look at you and having other people see it too.

“It’s the brand I like too,” he says. 

You can’t stop yourself from smiling. You know that you did good, and that Anton likes it. He looks to the people swimming in the pool, then his coach behind him. The whistle blows again and you think that it’s time for you to leave.

“I just wanted to stop by—”

“Practice is almost over,” he says. “you don’t have any classes today, right?”

“You still remember my schedule?” you ask.

“Of course,” he says simply.

The coach blows the whistle and you hear the sounds of relief. The sound of water splashing decreases almost immediately, you hear wet footsteps splash in puddles surrounding the pool before Anton turns around. He’s holding the cap the same way you had it clutched before.

“Practice is almost over,” he repeats. He points past the double doors. “there are some chairs right past the doors. Wait for me?” 

You nod, and Anton immediately smiles. Before he turns around to join his team he comes close. You’re too slow to react, and he moves quick. He pecks your forehead when the creases from nerves finally smoothed out. You were in a state to react slow, because his reaction to the swim cap was already disarming. You can only let out a quick chirp, a delayed tensing of your entire body before Anton was already turning around to walk towards the rest of his team. You were there in the same spot for a solid six seconds, frozen until you heard Anton’s coach speak. Only then did you turn around and head back towards the double doors.

You waited patiently on the seats. You could hear the muffled sounds of everyone cheering and clapping, what you assumed to be the official end of practice. You heard the quiet chatter and the sound of people gathering their things. You were waiting to hear for something, then suddenly the doors swung open and everyone was leaving in a large crowd. You instinctually kept your head down as everyone walked by. You just stayed focused on their feet or pretended to look at your phone as they passed by. You didn’t look up, afraid you’d catch the eye of someone who would somehow know you.

Only when the final pair of feet stopped in front of you did you look up. Everyone else kept moving past Anton but he stayed there, one hand holding the strap of his duffle bag that was slung over his shoulder. He looked down at you with a smile on his face. You looked towards his teammates, who weren’t concerned with anything else besides making their way to the dining hall or finally going homw. He looked down at you like he didn’t kiss your forehead like he’s your boyfriend. He only motioned towards the exit.

“This way,” he said gently.

You can’t say much after you leave the gym. Your mouth is dry from Anton following your lead to get out of the building. You almost lead him to the locker room on accident, too afraid to ask him where the exit was. You couldn’t even manage looking behind you helplessly for Anton to point in the right direction. You just stumbled through, hearing his footsteps close behind you. 

When you were finally out you breathed the fresh air. April was always crisp, the cold weather from winter making the transition to spring. The setting Sun made the warmer weather become even more cool. The sweats Anton threw on after practice was perfect for this weather. His gray set looked comfortable, even in the sparse sections where the gray was dark from getting slightly wet. The neck, the bottom hem. Part of his sleeve and the hood. 

You’re still looking at the damp part on his chest when he’s suddenly coming too close again. You brace yourself for another kiss on the forehead, but he goes even further. He caves into you, one arm wrapping around your waist while the other cupped your face. You could feel the prune in his hands from being in the pool. He smelled like chlorine and a warm room, filling your nose as he kissed you. 

You instantly put your hands on the base of his neck to keep him there. The fabric of his hoodie was damp underneath your fingers from where the bottom of his hair was still shedding water droplets. You felt a few droplets fall on your hand, cold and slipping between the cracks of your fingers. You held him a little tighter because you thought he was pulling back, but he was only tilting his head to get a better angle. You mirrored him, leaning further into his body just to feel his arm wrap around your waist tighter.

He breathed hot air into your mouth and you did it back. Each time you pulled your lips back Anton chased after you, and when he pulled back you did the same thing. You were panting into him, too afraid to break him out of whatever mood he found himself in. Your chest was heaving from lack of air and excitement but you were focused on giving Anton back everything he gave you. 

You couldn’t stop yourself from whimpering when you felt his tongue push into your mouth. You touched your tongue to his, remembering the last time you were both like this. You fisted his hoodie to keep him in place and you felt his hand shift to palm the back of your head. You found yourself desperate to reach through the fabric and touch him. You were greedy, hand trailing up from his neck to grab a handful of his damp hair. You were careful to not grip, to not add too much pressure. Despite being lost in him you felt like you were only one misstep away from Anton remembering how awful you were and that he was supposed to be indifferent to you. You felt water droplets fall from his strands to transfer to your hands, traveling down your tilted arms before wetting the fabric of your shirt.

Anton’s arm wrapped around your waist to pull you even closer. You felt yourself shift to your tiptoes to accommodate, and then his hand that palmed your head moved to your chin. He tilted your head up until it broke the kiss. 

Before you could react to the loss of contact you felt his soft lips close around your bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth. 

He’s never done this with you. The idea that he’s tried this on someone else almost makes you want to pull away, but you feel the lightest pressure from his teeth and his arm around your waist refuses to loosen. It felt like he was trying to take a piece of you with him, you felt the pressure and the suction from his closed lips around yours. 

Both of his hands shifted to holding your face. You felt him press your cheeks together with gentle pressure, causing your lips to push into a pout. You narrowed your eyebrows from the inability to kiss him like you wanted. He was just eating you alive just a few moments ago but now he was hindering you. You let out a defiant sound, something that was pitiful because you wanted to keep kissing him and whiny because you wanted to show him that you were good at it.

Anton stopped kissing you deeply, pulling his tongue and face away to start kissing your squeezed lips. They were chaste and obnoxiously loud, replacing the sultry quiet with obvious smacking. 

You felt a breeze and opened your eyes to the orange sky and remembered that you were in public, and the loud sounds your lips were making could draw attention. You still didn’t pull at Anton’s hair, even if your cheeks were flamed from embarrassment. The side of his face caught the Sun, making his skin turn to a beautiful gold. The Sun came through the black hair you still refused to grip, blocking some of it from blinding you. You knew that behind you on the building for the indoor pool you and Anton formed one shadow. You could see Anton instead of just feeling him, the gentle swiping motion on your cheek with his thumb and the way his lips started curling into a smile with each loud kiss. You gripped his sweatshirt tighter, puckering your lips even further trying to do something on your own volition. 

The moment you started adding to the loud sounds of kissing, he pulled away. Anton ended it with a big final kiss, pressing your wet lips together before he pulled away with a mwah! Even if this was some form of torture you still whined from loss of contact, because Anton’s hands went back to being at his side. He smiled like his lips weren’t covered in your spit and like your bottom lip wasn’t thrumming from the pressure. 

Your chest was rising and falling quickly. When Anton pulled away. the Sun was fully on you now, the light slightly blinding you. Your pupils weren’t prepared for the light, you were disoriented from lack of oxygen but Anton was smiling at you like you weren’t about to burst into flames. You were so consumed that when he came close you leaned in again, preemptively parting your lips.

He passes your lips completely, mouth going to your ear instead.

“Thanks for the swim cap by the way,” he whispers.

His voice is surprisingly even. Your fingers were cramped from holding his sweatshirt so tight. He bent over to grab his duffle bag. You were trying to figure out when he dropped it as you cleared your throat.

“No problem,” you replied.

Your voice was scratchy and raspy. You straightened your clothes and didn’t know what to do with yourself.

“You gonna come see me at practice tomorrow, too?” he asked.

You nodded, licking your lips to taste him.

“At the end of the week there’s a few teams coming from surrounding colleges and we are going to have a little mock swim meet.” 

You were still nodding your head. Your chest was heaving, you breathed through your nose like you just climbed a flight of stairs. You were still clutching desperately at his hoodie when he smiled and touched your chin.

“Tomorrow you can just go up to the press box and watch from up there,” he said. 

Each order was received with a nod. You were still trying to ground yourself when Anton started walking away from the gymnasium.

“You gotta get back to your dorm right?” he asked, tilting his head in the general direction of your place.

You trailed behind him, fixing the part of your jacket that slipped off your shoulder. You were rushing behind him, trying to figure out if whatever had happened to you actually happened. Your chest was still hammering looking at Anton push his hands into his pockets. Those same hands were pushing your jacket off your shoulder and pulling you closer. He was everywhere just a few moments ago, you couldn’t fake nonchalance like he was. He slowed down and you closed the distance. The moment you were next to him he pointed his thumb in a different direction.

“I have to go somewhere though,” he said. 

“That’s fine,” you said.

“I’m meeting somebody,” he added.

There was a falter in your steps. A break in the steady breeze. You shook your head slightly before looking down to your feet.

“I understand,” you said.

“See you tomorrow,” Anton bumped playfully into your side. “friend.”

This was the fourth day you were trapped in the press box during Anton’s swimming practices. The broadcasting microphones for announcers and the rigid seats were your only company. You were scared at first being here, afraid to even settle in the seats worried that you’d mess something up. Anton had to assure you over text that he was using his captain privilege so you had endless access to the empty space. The room was unused in the off-season and wasn’t stuffy like the pool, a perfect place just for you.

You had the best view of the swimming pool below. You stopped telling yourself that you were here to do homework on the first day. You made sure to get everything done before coming, because the books you brought would always end up closed, your head balanced on top as you looked down at him. Now, you shamelessly watched Anton from above. You felt like a creep, keeping a close eye on him and never bothering to look anywhere else. You had to cover your face with your hand whenever he would take his shirt off and bashfully look away when he’d occasionally lift his head towards you. 

Anton was talented. Even by knowing only the bare minimum about swim you knew that he was gifted. There was always kept a gap between him and whoever he was next to in the water. He watched his teammates alongside the coach and helped whoever needed it. He even had his own whistle, leading reps whenever the coach was out doing something else. 

You were subjected to seeing him shirtless while leading a team everyday. You have been forced to think about your relationship up here in the solitude of the press box. Atleast you weren’t in the muggy atmosphere of the pool. Here the air was clearer and didn’t smell like chlorine. 

Still, it would get a little harder to breathe seeing Anton from up here all day. You had grown accustomed to hearing your own labored breathing at the sight of him pulling himself up out of the pool. He always wore the swim cap you got him, water shedding from his body as his muscles tensed. Seeing him hold his breath and get serious as he sliced his hands through the water. 

You found an inexplicable joy in watching him from up here. You knew what he was doing, who he was talking to. Because you had limited access to Anton now, there was plenty left to your imagination. When you were up in the press box looking down at him, there was no room for confusion. 

But today was different. Anton told you that colleges surrounding the area were coming for a mock swim meet. When you came into the press box today and sat in your chair you saw that the usual number of people had tripled. You were lost in the sheer amount of swimmers, your elevated view of the gym didn’t help. You couldn’t find Anton by his swim cap because everyone was wearing the cap of their designated school. 

Your elbows are propped on the small desk as you search for him. He’s not poolside, he’s not chatting with his coach who is chatting with the other coaches. He wasn’t in the pool getting practice laps in. You kept searching, you looked for people wearing your school colors one by one. You even scooted to the edge of your seat, trying to get the best vantage point possible.

You found Anton sitting on the bleachers. On the outskirts of what you could see, he was at the edge, leaning against the safety curtains. A towel was slung over his shoulders. He wasn’t wearing the swim cap you got him either. What was the most jarring was seeing the amount of people surrounding him. He was not talking to anyone from his team, you saw they were mingling with people from other campuses or helping organize the space as stand-in managers. 

Anton was fully entertaining a group of girls. He was in the middle of it, too. Two girls sat on the row behind him, leaning forward to hear every word he was saying. One of the girls feet was propped on the row Anton sat on. Her foot was so close the side of his leg, each time she moved she grazed his body. A girl on the row in front of him had her back fully resting against the safety curtains, looking at him and anyone who was talking. When she spoke she only looked towards him. She was sitting next to a girl whose head was on a swivel, the closest to Anton and the only one you couldn’t get a good look at. Anton had one foot propped right next to her. Sometimes the conversation only seemed to revolve around them, with everyone else listening in. Two girls sat at the row below them, side by side. They fully had their backs facing you, but you could see them occasionally bump shoulders whenever Anton wasn’t looking at them. There were three more girls on his side that wasn’t against the safety curtain, one on each row their group occupied. They all leaned in, facing towards Anton. The girl on his row was only separated from him by his duffel bag.

They all had the same body language, caught up in Anton and every move he was making. You watched each of them take turns looking at his shoulders and what his towel was covering. Occasionally  they’d catch eachother taking peaks, to which they’d make small expressions they thought Anton didn’t catch. Or maybe they wanted him to see. 

You never thought a view of him from up here could end up like this. You liked seeing him from up here because you liked thinking about him having an audience up here. You wondered if he behaved differently with you watching as opposed to you not. You told him you would come a little bit before the mock swim meet because you had class. You took your phone out of your pocket, placing it flat on the table. You continued watching him as you pressed your passcode from muscle memory. You went to your messages, only taking a peak at your phone to make sure you were in the chat you had with him. 

There was anger in choosing what to look at. You couldn’t bring yourself to miss Anton getting closer to a girl to repeat something but watching all of them lean in. You watched one fold her arms closer to her chest and make the smallest movement to get closer to him. When he stopped holding his towel over his shoulders they all peeked, looking at his hands go down to rub down his legs quickly. They smiled when he smiled, they laughed when it seemed like he said nothing. You rolled your eyes and fully went to your phone. You picked it up from the surface of the table, hearing each defining click as your fingers jabbed your keyboard.

you: i’m here.

Heat fanned your face as you watched his phone light up on the bleachers. You saw three of the girls lean in at the same time, trying to see what was happening before Anton grabbed his phone. He was calm. You gripped your phone tight in your hands, fingers pressing into the keys so hard alternative options for the letters popped up. 

You didn’t even get the satisfaction of seeing the read receipt. No text bubbles to show he was typing, no glance upwards to the press box. You just watched Anton turn off his phone and set it face down on the bleachers, continuing the conversation like nothing happened. 

You didn’t know what he was saying, just watching his lips move before he sat up a little straighter. You watched his towel slide off his shoulders, falling down completely to the aisle behind him. Part of the towel ended up on the foot of the girl sitting behind him. She moved and you watched her hand push into his bare shoulder. All the other girls followed suit, pushing at some part of his body. One pushed his bare knee, the other pushed his thigh. Someone pushed at his other shoulder, and another pushed his chest. Each of their hands touched his body in a terrible sequence, to which he held up his arms like he was sorry. You saw his arms flex, to which all the girls pinched the muscle and made shrill sounds you swore you could hear.

Anton was bashfully putting his head down too. You saw that he had the same knowing smirk when he’d wind you up. He shook his head while all the girls chatted amongst themselves. The second they weren’t looking at him he was looking at you up in the press box. Your tongue was poking the inside of your cheek, you pulled your hands across your chest so tightly it almost hurt. His smile is so innocent. You think your phone is going to crack in your hand. 

You go to your phone and start typing again.

nice to see you with your other frien|

this is why i never|

you need to stop talking to the|

Nothing seems right. You know that you can’t stop him, but it’s egregious. The way he lets the girls touch all over him, how he doesn’t try to stop it. He knows you’re up here. He knows you’ve been watching him and usually around this time of day he would be kissing you like he was yours again.

When you heard the voice of the coach saying it was time to start the meet all of them turned around. The girls whose face you couldn’t see turned around, and you let out a quick sigh of defeat. The girl that was caged in by Anton’s foot and looking at him intently the entire time was the same girl in his dorm that night. She made sure to wait for him to gather his things so she could follow him down the bleachers too, holding out a cautionary hand towards his back like she was going to fall.

you: it’s nice to see you with your other friends.

You sent the text in a blind rage. You saw his hand holding his phone, and felt the quick satisfaction of seeing him receive the notification. You saw him look at his phone and felt sick pride bubble in your chest as his steps faltered on his way down the steps. You saw him type, and in real time you saw the text bubble appear at the bottom of your message history.

anton: you haven’t even seen all of them yet :)

The mock swim meet continued with the same energy. You didn’t know that Anton was such a celebrity. People from colleges who weren’t outwardly cheering him on watched from the bleachers. Even those who were next up weren’t concerned with getting their head in the game; they were concerned with watching Anton get into position on the starting block. The low chatter ceased and there was bated breath. Anton went into each different pose with the countdown, then when the whistle blew he dived in. 

There was a different intensity compared to his practices. Where he was more focused in helping his teammates or talking to his coach, this was different. He launched himself into the pool, he was bringing his arms so quickly into the pool you almost missed it. He pushed off the other side of the pool with ease. That playful attitude was gone, replaced with a need to win at a competition that meant nothing. 

He beat a record, you were sure because everyone was amazed when the final time appeared on the board. The easygoing way he approached practice was replaced with speed and technique. You understood why he was beside the coach during practice and the captain of the team. 

Seeing him win only fueled that anger rolling in your stomach. The sensation became even worse because he was a good swimmer, and he knew that he was playing you. You were also mad because you should’ve been uninterested, but the way he went through the water had you on the edge of your seat watching intently.

The meet went by fast. You were up in your tower, watching as Anton and everyone else made their way out of the pool and put their clothes back on. 

Everyone gathered around the edge with their towels draped over their shoulders, listening to whatever the coaches was saying. You watched Anton meander off to the edge of the group, and then you saw him look up to you. Almost immediately you sat up a little straighter, and when he waved slightly you just clutched your hand at your side.

You don’t think anyone noticed you up there. But a moment after Anton looked up to wave at you, the girl standing beside him looked up next.

You and Anton haven’t talked about her since you came to his dorm that night. You figured that you don’t really have the right to ask because you two weren’t together. The conversation in the courtyard was about being friends. You think the making out was meant as a form of torture, and the fact that you two only kissed in public instead of in private was punishment as well. The girl that was in Anton’s room must’ve known about you, you’re sure of it. She was looking at you like you were familiar, and you saw her take the smallest side-step away from him.

But you’re taken out of your rumination. Anton watched everyone else clear out of the gymnasium and stayed behind like the good captain he was. You were sure he was also fishing for more attention, because almost everyone on their way out congratulated him on his performance. They patted his back and you were rolling your eyes. You noticed that the girl stayed behind too. While Anton was saying goodbye to his teammates, the girl talked to the coach. When everyone had finally left it was the two of them talking to the coach for a while. You were fidgeting in your seat, wondering what their coach was saying to them that had them listening closely and nodding their heads. 

You felt your chin dig into the top of your hand. You knew that it was past the time for thing to be over, and that this meeting was cutting into your after-practice time with him. You two were supposed to be spending a good five minutes kissing like you’d never get the chance to again. 

The first day it was outside the building. The second day it was on the bleachers, when Anton beckoned up to you in the press box and you rushed down. Yesterday, he sent you a text to go come into the locker rooms and you had to pretend to have better judgement just for him to tell you it was clear and you wouldn’t get caught.

Without fail, each time was intense. Anton using one hand to cradle your neck and the other pulling you closer. You were always holding onto him so roughly your fingers would cramp and you’d work through depleted lungs and a tense jaw. You knew you were taking it more serious than him, when his kisses would turn playful you were just as desperate, pulling him closer and tilting your head in an effort to push into him. You were so enveloped you never even commented on how he’d smile into your lips, obviously finding humor in the way you were so clearly obsessed.

You couldn’t tell him to not make fun of you because you were too entranced. You were completely engulfed, completely submerged in everything about him. The way he smelled like chlorine and a warm room, the way he held you even if he found it amusing. He kissed you like he meant it, even if you were sure this was another way of him torturing you for previously torturing him. 

Regardless of how he treated you, the post-practice makeout was the only time that it felt like you two weren’t at odds. Even if he laughed into your kisses and he was always the one to break away from you, that was the tiny sliver of life with Anton where his intent of remaining friends faltered. 

You took your kissing time very seriously. So you couldn’t stop yourself from letting out a sigh while watching Anton and the girl and their coach talk. You’re sure it was important. But they were talking for two minutes already and that was two minutes less you’d have of Anton kissing you and pulling you closer. He already spent so much of the meet with her. You wondered what else they could be talking about while you clutched your phone tighter to your chest.

When the coach walks off you let out another breath. This one is relief, you turn the chair next to you to start putting all your things together in your backpack. You waste no time slinging the bag over your shoulder to get ready to meet him poolside. You look down one more time just to get the signal from Anton on where to meet. Instead of him looking up at you with a knowing smile on his face he is looking down at the girl and talking to her.

You can’t stop yourself from plopping yourself down in the chair and letting out an annoyed breath. You tilt back in the chair as much as it will allow, until it creaks and you have to dig your feet into the ground to keep going. The chair rocks back and forth, letting you see Anton and the girl before you go back too far and they disappear from your view. You repeat the motion over and over, tilting back and forth to watch their conversation continue to go on. One minute of Anton kissing is replaced with him talking to the girl. You can’t stop yourself from rocking back and forth, each time they disappear from your view you pray that they won’t still be talking. 

When you rock forward, convincing yourself that you’ll get up and leave this time, you see both of them looking up at you. 

Instantly you straighten. The chair creaks behind you again but you remain upright, not giving to the momentum. You look down at them, hands gripping the armrest as you push yourself further upright. Anton motions to you and the girl reaches a hand up to wave at you. You wave back after a moment, and then Anton is looking at her again. You see her nod, then he puts a hand on her shoulder and she starts walking towards the exit. 

You continued to watch her walk away, leaning forward as far as you could go. You leaned so far you almost slid out of the seat. Only when you saw the exit open do your shoulders relax. You quickly look back where Anton was walking, just to see that he’s standing on the outskirts of your line of sight. He’s smiling up at you, just to exaggerate turning his body towards the exit that the girl walked to. You try to change the subject by getting up from your seat, but Anton puts both of his hands up and mouths stay there. So you stay. You sit back down in the creaky chair and wait for Anton to make his way through the gymnasium to get to you.

Anton knocks and peaks through the door like you wouldn’t be there. You can tell he’s being playful before opening the door fully to come in.

He changed back into the clothes he was wearing before the swim meet. Light wash jeans hugged his thighs and he was wearing something that looked like a band tee. He had a zip-up hoodie slung over his duffle bag.

“You were watching me like a hawk,” he says playfully.

You go to take your backpack out of the chair so Anton can sit but he just comes closer to you instead. He throws his duffel over your bag. Instantly you reach forward and pull his bag off of yours, putting it on the floor.

“I don’t want my bag smelling like chlorine,” you say.

There’s an edge to your voice. Anton picks up on it immediately, raising an eyebrow. He’s slow draping the strap of his back on the back of the chair so it’s not touching the ground.

“Fair enough,” he says casually. 

The refusal to give a reaction makes you even more upset. The fact that he gets on his knees in front of you and parts your legs with his own hands to accommodate his body makes you even more upset. Like he wasn’t whoring himself out for everyone, he puts his head against your knee and cages himself between your legs.

“I wasn’t watching you like a hawk either,” you add.

Anton guides your hand to his head but scoffs. You refuse to touch him, a motionless hand just resting on top of his soft hair.

“I could feel your eyes on me the whole time,” he says

You grip his hair slightly. He only leans into your hand, rubbing gently on your thigh.

Anton moves to fully rest his body against your leg. His other arm wraps around your calf to bring it closer.

“I’m so drained,” he says.

“I’m sure you are,” you scoff.

Your hands in his scalp become a little tighter. You purposefully pull at his hair rough, gripping rather than massaging. He only moves to balance his chin on your knee to look up at you.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks.

“You just looked busy is all,” you answered.

“Well I was swimming a ton,” he says.

The faux innocence is palpable. His eyes are wide like he’s genuinely confused, but there’s that same haughty smirk he wears after kissing you. You didn’t know he was such a player. You pull at his hair again, he doesn’t wince like you wish he would. He just sighs, leaning into your grip.

“Feels good,” he sighs.

Just for that, you pull a little harder. Finally he winces, eye closing on the side you pulled.

“You like the swim cap I got you?” you ask.

Anton hums a yes. You feel more of his weight lean into your leg, to the point that you have to flex so you can support him. 

“Why didn’t you wear it?” you ask.

You know why. He had to wear the school-issued hat because it was a swim meet. He has to follow your hand to alleviate the pressure. You move a piece of hair from the side of his face to see his reaction. 

“Had to wear the schools,” his arm wraps tighter around your leg. “gotta represent.”

You watch him part his lips to say something else.

“Did you know everyone here?” you ask.

He moves his head so his chin is balanced on your thigh. He looks you right in the eyes and his hands drum a pensive beat on your thigh.

“I went to highschool with some of them. Met some of them through competitions over the years. Friends with a few of the girls—“

At that you pull Anton’s hair too hard. He reaches up to grab your wrist quickly, rounding around it with ease.

“Too rough,” he breathes out. 

“Sorry,” you apologize.

Anton’s hand around your wrist makes you have terrible flashbacks. There are thoughts of him being in this same position with him, playing with his hair after everything. The sound he made when you pulled at his hair made you remember how easily he folded to pain and liked being marked. Despite your apprehension Anton would reveal his neck and chest to you. You’ve compromised with him by leaving a few marks on his waist before his meets, something that would be covered up by his compression shorts. As you look down at his face now you wished you would’ve left an angry mark on his neck. If there was a purplish bruise forming on his chest those girls wouldn’t have been all over him. 

Anton fully lifts his head from your leg to smile. Your cheeks are burning that you were caught being jealous. He just clasps over both of your hands easily, moving them back and forth before he kisses the side of your fist.

“Come with me to the bar tonight,” he says.

Anton was completely indifferent to your confession. He kisses your hand again when you take too long to answer, and you remember that you haven’t kissed his lips in more than twenty-four hours. 

“Who’s going?” you asked.

Anton’s lips are still pressed into your hand before he pulls away slightly. His bottom lip catches on your thumb before he pulls away fully.

“My teammates,” he answers. “the girls from the other colleges are going, too.”

You clench your fists in his hold, your tongue runs over your top row of teeth.

“Why are you inviting me?” you ask.

“I like inviting my friends to functions.” Anton says. 

Your jaw tenses at his answer. The quick answer causes almost a knee-jerk reaction. Your eyes that were always darting around him threatened to roll to the back of your skull. Anton keeps his eyes on you, and you pull your hands from his grasp to reach for your backpack in the seat beside you.

“Yeah. I’ll go,” you say.

Anton perks up immediately, standing to his feet in an instant to clap his hands together.

“That’s great to hear,” he says.

He already is turning around and adjusting his duffel on his shoulder to head for the door.

“As friends,” you add.

“As friends,” Anton repeats.

He opens the door for you, using his foot as a stopper and stretching his arm towards the dark hallway. You’re trying to keep your face neutral, it’s harder to hide when you don’t know how to feel. You just know you’re tired of seeing the smirk on Anton’s face everytime he gets a good look at you. You force yourself to smile as you clutch your strap closer to your body.

“As friends,” you say one last time.

Anton doesn’t repeat it, he just nods as you pass by him, reaching his body forward to nudge you as you tried to make your way through the doorway.

The gymnasium has been completely cleared out by the time you leave. Anton leads the way because most of the buildings lights have been turned off. You have to go a different way than usual, going through the weight room instead of past it like you had before. As he led the way you were thinking about all the possibilities of going to the bar. There’d be girls drinking. The thought of drunk girls surrounding Anton made you upset, and being upset made you cringe inwardly and even more angry. You couldn’t stop thinking about girls becoming more bold and properly touching him, or feeling him up in some dark corner of the bar. Anton was single, he only had friends. You couldn’t stop him but you didn’t want him to go.

He pulls out his phone while he’s walking in front of you. It’s the only source of light in the emptied building. You can see Anton hunched over to look at his screen. You watch his duffle sway back and forth on his shoulder, bumping into his leg while he’s engrossed in whatever is on his screen. 

Your journey is mostly quiet, just the sounds of your feet moving against the linoleum floors. You hear the occasional squeak. The blues from the pool reflect through the hallways. You follow the light of Anton, who is so engrossed in it he doesn’t look up even when opening the door. You’re sure he only holds it open for you from muscle memory, still looking at his phone while he his foot acts as a doorstopper. He only leaves the door when you walk past him. 

You take the quickest peak to the side. You don’t know who you were expecting Anton to text. You hoped it was one of the men on his team, maybe even the coach. But when you took the quickest peak while Anton was enveloped in the conversation it was with the girl. Something about where she parked her car. She was asking about his estimated time of arrival because you saw Anton take a look at the time on the top of his phone before his eyes darted to you.

You were already looking forward by that time. You were sure he saw you inspecting the chat history between him and the girl. Maybe if he slipped up enough you could see him sending the same teasing texts he was sending you. You eye his phone again, trying to focus between looking and taking steps towards your doom. You can’t imagine what a car ride would be like with her. You couldn’t imagine sitting through the journey of Anton sitting in the passenger seat, just to go to a bar where a million girls would hit on him.

You make it to the parking lot. To the left is Anton’s dorm and to the right is yours. Straight ahead there’s the car. You watch Anton wave and the headlights blink twice.

“I call shotgun,” he says casually.

You stop in your tracks. You see the same smirk he’d have whenever he’d pull away after kissing you like his life depended on it. You know he’s not joking, and you imagine how happy he’d be to have you and the girl in the same small confined space together.

Anton turns around after you didn’t follow behind him. His smile doesn’t falter. He only tilts his head casually towards the car and holds out a hand.

You go past the offer to his wrist. You grab it fast, hand wrapping around the bone and you press your fingers into his skin. His arm falters from the sudden force, his body gives when you pull him towards you. The shock on his face is palpable, his eyes are wide and looking at you. The car lights blink again and you go left, pulling Anton after you. 

When you feel the hesitation in his steps you only pull harder. When he staggers because he’s off-balance and confused you only keep going. You deviate from the path to walk on the grass. The car lights fade away and you hear the notifications coming through on Anton’s phone. You only look behind you to make sure Anton is following every single step. He does take a peak at his phone, walking confidently before falling in place behind you.

“Her car is this way,” Anton says, pointing in the opposite direction. 

You barely grunt in response.

“She texted me saying she saw you pull me away,” he continues.

“I don’t care,” you reply.

Despite the unnecessary words, Anton doesn’t stop you from pulling at him. You know the grip you have on his wrist must be painful, but he says nothing. You dig your nails into his wrist just to prove it, you even change where you grip his forearm to get a better hold on him.

“She asked me if everything is okay,” he says.

You can hear his feet dragging across the grassy field. 

“Stop talking about her,” you say quietly.

His dorm is in viewing distance. For the first time since you started moving you feel the slightest resistance in his steps. 

“Where are we going?” he asks.

He talks too much. He has to know where you’re taking him. He knows what his dorm building looks like, he’s walked this path hundreds of times. 

He has been on a mission to push your buttons, prying and asking questions he already has the answers to. Insisting you two are friends but kissing you, showing off his body to anyone who will look, making you come to his practices like you’re a fan. He has had you watching him from a distance entertaining everything that would’ve gotten a rise out of you. You came to him and even apologized. You watched the girl in his dorm room staring at you while you were wallowing in regret and gettin ready to apologize and beg for another chance. You have been working off the regret and shame that came with turning him down you’ve accepted the shit he’s thrown at you. You’ve taken all of that but he won’t even shut up and follow you back to his place. 

After you don’t respond to him you get your moments of silence. You continue to cut across the large grassy quad, breathing through the bursts of liquid anger that bubble in your stomach. The dragging steps calm you, and you think you might be able to vocalize calmly to Anton about where you’re taking him to.

“My friend is waiting up so we gotta go to her car—”

Instantly you turn around. Anton almost bumps into you from the sudden stop.

“We aren’t fucking going to her car, we aren’t going anywhere with her,” you say.

You are still holding onto Anton’s forearm tightly. You can see the dimples in his skin around your fingers from the force. 

Despite this, despite everything, he still has that coy look on his face. 

“Why not?” he asks tilting his head.

You smile, letting out a sigh and closing your eyes. For the first time you let go of Anton’s forearm and your fingers cramp for a second from the rough hold you had on him. 

You take a step forward. Your hand presses to his solid chest and like a lightning strike everything comes down at once. You laugh dryly and take another step forward.

“You think I’m going to go to the fucking bar,” you tilt your own head slightly. “so I can watch a bunch of drunk girls throw themselves at you?” 

Anton keeps the same coy look. There’s a twitch upwards at the corner of his lips. You drag your hand from his chest to his forearm, where your fingers fit right where they were before. You don’t even have to tug on him again. He follows behind you silently. You can feel his arm tensing in your hold.

The first few steps are silent. You make it to the crosswalk.

“Then where are we going?” he asks.

Anton’s question floats in the air right as you two end up in front of his building. 

You’re calmer now though. Instead of having an outburst like you did on the grassy quad. People walk by you two, going in and out of the building. Your hand moves down from Anton’s forearm, interlacing your fingers. He reciprocates the hold, and you guide him to walk at your side.

“We are going to your room,” you say sweetly. “is that not fucking obvious?”

The sudden change of light going into the lobby of the building makes you blink. The harsh fluorescent lights are different from the warm glow of the street lamps. You can see Anton clearly now, and he looks at you like he knows something that you do not.

But he’s obedient. You both make a straight path for the elevators. He presses the button and by a stroke of luck there’s an elevator already waiting for you both. You step in forth, and you pull at his hand to bring him in.

There’s barely any commotion in the lobby. Many people opt to take the stairs, others sit in chairs scattered throughout the space. Some boring movie plays in common area. A residence assistant sits at a brown reception desk, scrolling away on his phone. No one notices you impatiently spamming the button to get the doors to close.

You two both watch the doors come to a close at the same time. In the gray metal reflection you see Anton standing behind you, leaning against the brown speckled wall. There’s a moment before you feel the upwards lurch of ascension. You turn to face him. 

Anton is fully smiling now, and you press both hand to his chest to fully back him into the corner. In the stumble you bring your lips to his.

The clash of teeth causes you both to stumble. You have both of your hands fisted in his shirt, wrapping them in your hold as you bring him closer. He wraps his arms around your waist quick. Like you’re going to lose him you pull even harder, working down to try and find the right place. You kiss him deeper and Anton reciprocates. You push against him harder, until you hear the dull thud of his head hitting the walls of the elevator. You finally find satisfaction in tucking your fingers under the waistband of his jeans where you can feel the bare skin of his waist.

“So warm,” you murmured against his lips. 

Anton was breathing heavy against your face. His lips were already pink and plump, there was a flush across his cheeks. His chest pressed against yours.

Anton mumbled something back and you felt his hands collect around your wrists. With the smallest amount of force you used all of your strength to keep your fingers tucked in his waistband. Anton didn’t pull your hands away but he moved his head backwards. You carelessly chased after him. 

“All mine,” you breathed out.

You don’t know if you said that on purpose. You were feeling heady, because Anton followed after you and showed no intent on disobeying. The more you press your fingers against his waist the more you think about Anton looking to you while talking to the girl. He was trying to make you jealous. The conversation in the press box, the intense makeout sessions. All of it was a ploy to get you here, pressing desperately against him and trying to swap more spit with him.

“All yours?” Anton asked.

“You’re mine,” you answer. “tired of pretending you’re not.”

He leaned fully in the corner of the elevator, standing straight to look down at you. You nodded without missing a beat and Anton shivered against your body.

His hands were still wrapped around your wrists. The elevator continued to dinged as it climbed up the floors. You thought that you had been in here for a century because something grand was waiting for you at the end of the journey. You didn’t even bother looking towards the door, busy trying to push past the threshold of Anton’s strength to go deeper into his jeans. The denim was already causing enough resistance. After you maintain eye contact there’s not only a lack of force from Anton’s hands, but guidance. He pushes your hands further into his pants, and you go even deeper. You can feel his dick hardening in his boxers, you can feel his taut skin against your fingertips.

You hear the ding of the elevator and it opens up to Anton’s floor. The hallway to his room seems so far but you have to take the trek. You pull your hands out of Anton’s pants to tug at his belt loop. He gets the hint and walks out of the elevator past you. Under the bright light of the elevator you can see him trying to catch his breath. 

Anton makes his way down the hallway leisurely. You’re walking behind him, dragging your feet because he’s doing the same. You take this time to be all over him: running your hand up and down his back, shifting your hands into his pockets, touching his hair. Every part of Anton you can touch you do. 

You’re still pawing at him when you get to his door. You feel the hard planes while you hear the sound of a key bumping into metal, a door handle failing to turn fully and the small sounds of Anton’s exasperated sounds. You’re pushing a little harder into him, wrapping your arms around his body. You feel up his arms and his hands, failing to put the key in and failing to properly open the door.

“Anton,” you whine. “hurry up.”

“I’m sorry baby,” he says gently.

You keep leaning against his body, until your ear is pressed to his back. When you’re flush against him you feel the light vibration of laughter, and you pull away instantly.

“Are you messing up on purpose?” you ask.

This is the loudest you’ve ever been in this hallway. The words bounce off the wall and has Anton looking over his shoulder to properly laugh at you.

You snatch the keys from his hand and bump into his body to push him out of the way. He purposefully puts his hand on your shoulder, trying to cage you in. You don’t falter, shrugging your shoulder to get his hand off of you. When you actually miss the keyhole Anton laughs even louder. 

Then, a second later the door opens. It’s a sound that comes with relief from you, and you step through the threshold first. You pull him in after you because he’s standing not moving an inch. By both hands on his arms you pull him and Anton lets himself be pulled, all the way until your back is against the door and he’s caging you against it. You bring him down by a hand on his neck until he bends into you. 

You’re purposefully sloppy with your kisses. You figure it’s giving him a taste of his own medicine, sticking your tongue inside until it touches his. Your hands are spanning down his chest, unzipping his hoodie and pushing it off his shoulders and revealing his undershirt. You run your hands over the ribbed fabric, going over his chest and even kneading his solid body. When he tries to touch your waist you reach down and smack his wrist away.

You’ve wanted his touches. You gave him the chance to reciprocate. You need time to reclaim everything before he tries to do the same. 

On the third smack of his wrist he finally understands. He presses his forearms to the door on either side of your body when your tongue runs over his lips.

“I don’t know why I let you convince yourself that you’re hard to read,” Anton says.

His chest pushes into yours each time he breathes. You think it’s your spit peaking past his lips. Your hand tucks underneath his waistband again and you reach your hands deep, until you’re hand is pressed between denim and muscular thighs. You like the perverted gropes you’re taking of his body and how he lets you. You keep feeling him, working your way to his soft inner-thigh. You can feel his dick twitching against your hand, but you refuse to touch him just yet. Reclaiming what’s yours, that’s all you’re doing.

“Touch me already,” you order against his lips.

“Yes ma’am,” he says.

You know that he’s taunting you but he slides his hand to the base of your neck to grip it. He bends his head to the crook of your neck and you press your head against the door, elongating it to give him more space. 

“You think I don’t know when you’re jealous?” he asks.

His lips are on the column of your neck, each word is ghosted over your clammy skin and you can feel the warmth of his breath.

You nod your head. Then you shake it. Then you start pulling at Anton’s leg while the other presses against his back to bring him closer.

He gets so close that he’s almost pressing into the door too. You hear it move in the frame, and you can feel Anton’s thigh come between your legs.

Anton’s hand briefly leaves your neck to go to your shoulder. He presses his hand down, pushing you down. He keeps pushing you, until you finally feel his solid leg pressed between yours. You immediately grind against him, and a pathetic sound slips through your lips when his hand goes back to your neck. 

Anton pulls away. He looks you in the face and your eyes are already watery, and you grind your hips in the smallest motion against him again. He kisses the tip of your nose, then your hot cheeks. He ends with placing a kiss on your forehead, smiling when he looks down at you.

“You’re so pent up you think you’d cum like this?” he asks. 

Before you can answer Anton pushes his own leg up. The random pressure makes you jolt, causing the door to move in its frame again. 

“Not jealous,” you push the words from the back of your throat as you apply more weight against his leg. “I don’t get jealous.”

He presses a kiss to the sensitive part of your neck. You tilt it to the side and try to bring him closer while your hips move slowly again.

“Not even when those girls were touching on me?” he asks.

You grind even harder against his thigh. You can’t tell if there’s something going on outside of your immediate senses. You think you feel yourself sliding down the door, you can feel your feet firmly planted into the ground. Anton is lower too, when he had to bend to kiss you it’s now you having to bend down to him. He kisses your neck hungrily, and a hand goes to your hips to keep guiding you back and forth. He forces your movements to be bigger. Tiny grinds that were just winding you up turns into something more languid. It feels too much like the real thing, especially after not having it for so long. 

“I was getting so jealous, you know.” Anton’s fingers slip underneath your shirt, fingertips pressing into your soft stomach. He makes you grind harder into his thigh. The feeling almost makes you forget what he was saying to you. You have to nod dumbly before moving your hands to his shoulders to focus. “I had to let you know how I was feeling,” he says.

“Jealous of what?” you ask.

“Everything,” he says casually.

Anton shrugs his shoulders like it’s nothing. You have to fight moving against the feeling of his leg between yours to refocus.

“Like what?” you ask.

Anton sighs and looks off to the side. He still guides your hips with his hand like it’s a mindless task he’s tending to. He looks back up at you with a smile on his face.

“The people you talked to in public,” his hand dips underneath your jeans to press fingers into your ass. He guides your hips by pushing on your soft skin. You can feel the force a little more while he thinks about it. “The people you were dancing with before you’d come see me.”

Anton laughs for a moment. You grip his shoulders and drop your head to his neck. You twist his undershirt in your hold when you feel that churn building in the pit of your stomach. 

“When it was really bad I was jealous of the food you’d eat and the music you’d listen to,” Anton’s voice is heavy and labored as he talks. “I was getting jealous thinking about what you were watching instead of watching me swim.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything. You’e just letting out desperate whines into his neck and clawing lightly on his back.

“I just hide it better than you,” he says.

Only that brings you from your concupiscent stupor. You pull your head up from his neck, hands trailing up his body to grip at his hair harshly.

“Well I’m not throwing myself at a group of guys like a fucking whore,” you seethe.

“I had to do a little extra to make you feel the way I was feeling,” he says.

Suddenly you find yourself pushing at Anton’s broad shoulders. You engage your legs, working through the sore feeling to stand up fully. Anton looks up at you from the ground. On one knee it looks like he’s about to propose to you. Despite your lack of response he shows no remorse in his honesty, he almost seems happy as he looks up at you. 

“Go,” you point weakly to the couch behind him, swallowing the spit that gathered in your mouth and the shaky tone in your voice from grinding against his leg. “go to the couch,” you order.

Anton obeys immediately. He gets up from one knee but still faces you, watching you breathing heavy by his door. You follow him by mirroring each step. You’re slow, stalking him like prey while he’s walking like he’s baiting you in. 

His legs hit the back of the couch but you don’t stop. You get close until you’re chest to chest. One hand goes to your waist and the other goes to your chin, tilting your head up until you look at him. 

“I got you jealous, didn’t I?” he asks. 

Anton leaves the place on your hips to point at your face. That word sticks out in the most annoying way, nagging and constantly mentioned. When his finger stays in your face you smack it away. 

He only laughs. You push him until he’s sitting down on the couch.

“I knew it,” he says.

“Don’t make fun of me,” you chide.

“You deserve it,” he says.

Anton widens his legs. He’s splayed out for you, dick jumping in his pants. He’s inviting, despite what he may think he’s all yours. 

“I’ve suffered enough,” you say honestly.

You motion towards his undershirt. His hands that were resting on his thighs went to the bottom, grabbing the fabric. He only flicked the fabric up, making a part of his lower stomach bare. You can see his navel, you know where that vein on his stomach leads to. It disappears underneath the start of his pants.

“Take it off,” you say.

Anton leans slides from the back of the couch until he’s partially lying down on the cushions. He scoots a little closer to the end, until he can partially rest his head on the armrest. More of his shirt rides up from the movement. You can see the outline of his abs, flexing each time he moves.

“Make me,” he says.

You’re rough when you close the distance. Anton is lifting his hands preemptively, shirt riding up even higher. You pull the shirt up and over his head, tossing it somewhere. You have a knee on the couch beside his leg but you refuse to come closer. You create the distance so Anton has to look up at you. His hair is jostled from you taking off his shirt, brown strands layering across his forehead. Through his bangs he looks up at you, a playful glint in his brown eyes. You reach for his waistband next. You purposefully leave his boxers on but pull his pants off angrily. Anton is little to no help, only lifting his hips off the couch so you can pull at him again. The muscles underneath his skin tense and flex from all the movement.

He’s too beautiful. He’s Adonis on the couch, his legs are over the edge of the couch so you can sit next to him. You’re able to sit next to him and admire all of it. His hand goes behind his head on the couch and he settles in. Your hands run up and down his body, light as a feather. You go over his chest like a cross, going over the thin chain that hangs from his neck. You go across his nipples, pebbled from the attention and the cold air in his room. You go over the side of his body, strong and chiseled from swim before going right back to the vein on his lower stomach. You repeat it over and over again. Anton is still relaxed but he lets out a shaky breath. 

You don’t look up at him. Just seeing his body and remembering that other people were able to see it today makes heat flare in your chest. If you saw the face attached you’d vocalize it. You’d probably tell him he’s never allowed to go to a swim meet again or force him to delete and block that girls number. You’re determined to find a medium between what you’ve given Anton thus far and how you plan on carrying the relationship in the future.

“How’d you feel when you saw me talking to her?” Anton whispers. 

You can’t stop the tick. It’s a twitch in your jaw and the slight pause of your hand. The moment only lasts a second but Anton sees it, a smile on his face as he runs light fingers up and down your arms. You lean back on your haunches, feeling his hands go up to your shoulders before going back down. 

You refuse to answer. You just run your fingers over the thin red lines you left on his chest. 

“You know she’s not interested in me, right?” Anton’s hands are gentle going up and down your arms. He tilts his head to the side before his hands go to your head, patting your hair affectionately. “I’m not sure about the other girls but I can say for a fact she’s not into me.”

“She was in your apartment,” you say.

Anton’s eyes get wide. You were a little too harsh when you spoke. Instead of being breathy your words were firm. This was also your first time bringing up seeing the girl in his dorm. She had been so close to him during the meet and she saw you come to his dorm to confess.

Anton’s hands go down your arms to rest over your hands. He clasps your hands with his, and leans forward so he’s in your line of sight.

“She was coming over to talk about a leadership role on the team,” he says gently.

Anton sits up on the couch, fully propped up on his elbows to look at you. When he sees the pout you can’t stop he smiles.

“She thinks you’re nice by the way,” he says while leaning back. He settles against the armrest of the couch. “if only she knew.”

“That doesn’t matter,” you say.

You see Anton tilt his head to the side. He narrows his eyes. His hands go from your hands up to your forearms. He pulls you a little closer.

“What doesn’t matter?” he asks.

You come a little closer to him and run your hands over his stomach. The light red marks are still there, you touch him lighter. You tilt your head to match his, leaning into him a little more.  

“Doesn’t matter how bad someone else wants you if it belongs to me.”

Your confession was purposefully saccharine. You laid it on thick and worked through the cringe you felt prickling across your body. You felt sexy enough. You saw Anton twitch in his pants and he held your forearms a little tighter.

“What’s it?” he asks.

“You know,” you answer. 

Anton shakes his head.

“No,” he says, tapping on your forearms. “you gotta be a little more specific than that.”

“You know,” you said.

“I really don’t,” he says, laughing.

You said nothing, only focusing on unbuttoning the top of Anton’s jeans. You didn’t bother pushing the jeans further down than his mid-thigh. When you saw the bulge you stopped pushing the denim down, instead reaching your hand underneath his waistband to grab his dick. Anton wastes no time to buck into your hand, and you watch his muscles contract as he sits up on the couch. 

He props himself up on his elbow, with his other arm pressed between your body and the back of the couch just to keep a hand on the small of your back. When he moved his chain caught the light perfectly, reflecting slightly on his skin and yours. He was able to go underneath the bottom of your shirt to press into your back. When you pulsed your grip around his dick he pressed into your skin deeper.

“If I had known having girls as my friends would make you act like this,” he started.

The thought of Anton with other girls makes you squeeze your fist around him a little tighter. He tilts his head back, revealing his neck and underside of his chin. You can see the patch of light stubble he missed and his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. You repeat the motion just to see it again. His lips part and his head leans to the side, balanced against his elbow before he turns to look at you.

His euphoria is undeniable. His lip between his bottom teeth, his eyelids dropping low as he looks at you.

“I would’ve done all that sooner,” he finishes.

You have a firm grip on his dick, moving against the restriction of his underwear. You see his hands flex from the sensation, arms tensing where they’re propped to keep his body up.

“I would’ve danced with a girl at that warehouse,” he says.

You tease him where he’s most sensitive, rubbing precum with your thumb on the underside of his tip. You watch his hands tense as he tries to center himself. You increase the speed. His hips jerk the tiniest way into your hand. You like watching the pathetic movement and seeing his face mix with the pain of being teased and the euphoria of being touched.

You continue moving your hand, causing a protrusion in his boxers. You lean in close to Anton when you hear the wet sound of your rough handjob. Now it’s you tracing your nose along his sharp jawline. You go to his neck, tracing upwards and he thrusts into your fist.

“I wouldn’t let that happen,” you say. 

You suck on his earlobe and you follow after his head before he tilts it back to look at you. 

“You wouldn’t let that happen?” he asks.

You shake your head, going back to the teasing your thumb on his tip. He reacts instantly, a weak thrust as he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth.

Your hand that wasn’t fisting his dick scratched down his abs. You reveled in his reaction, feeling him adjust his hand on your back to push into you deeper.

“We wasted so much time,” you said quietly.

“You wasted so much time,” Anton clarified.

He hissed when you pressed your nails deeper on the drag down, leaving red streaks in their tracks. You sped up your hand too. Anton scooted down the mattress to get closer to you.

“So much time was wasted,” you rephrased.

The marks you left faded to a blush pink as your fingers moved further down. You kept going, focusing on your hands on his body instead of his face.

You made it to Anton’s boxers. You tucked your fingers underneath the cotton feeling them lock into place against his skin. His skin was hot from all the layers of clothes and the touching. You couldn’t stop yourself from taking one hand away to feel the rest of his body. He was so sculpted, every part of him showed discipline. You didn’t stop, tracing over the same pattern again and again. He was so soft too, you changed your touch from your fingernails to the pads of your fingers just to really feel him. 

You purposefully went lighter, the prodding turning to featherlight brushes. Anton was big but he was sensitive, skin jumping as he suppressed the urge to flinch away from the tickling. 

You were driven by his reactions. Anton was dedicated to the nonchalant demeanor as of late. He made out with you everyday until you were breathless but kept the same even tone, he let girls flirt with him while you were watching. He’s been so cool that seeing his body twitch away from you made you keep going. Your touches went even lighter, until you started to feel the tickle on the pads of your finger. The tiniest whimper had you looking to his face, and the same time your eyes widened he collected your hand with his wrist. 

You were held in place before you could trace your way back up his side. He was settled further into the couch, shoulders leaned against the armrest. 

“You were just talking about wasting time right?” he asked.

You nodded. You watched Anton’s hands go to his jeans that were still caught on his mid-thigh.

“Right,” you agreed.

You took your hand out of his boxers and began pulling them down. Anton was pulling his jeans down and you followed with his underwear. He also moved away from the couch, and you moved your legs to straddle his waist. You leaned your body forward to rest your head on his chest as you started taking your own pants off. The angle was awkward, both you and Anton were in the pursuit of wasting no more time that you both became clumsy. Your pants were caught on your ankles, you had to fully rest your body on his to get it off. Anton struggled against his jeans too, you heard the quick thrashing of him getting them fully off as you went back to straddling him.

You were desperate to waste no more time. You didn’t ask Anton to finger you, you even shook your head and smacked his hand away when he tried it. You were very serious about your foreplay. You saw the shocked look on Anton’s face when he moved his hand away from your pussy to instead hold your hips. You watched him get comfortable only for a second. You were sure his long legs were over the edge of the couch to accommodate his height.

“You sure?” he asked.

He looked so pretty underneath you. His dark was splayed against the dark cushion of his couch. He looked up to you with his eyes already blown out, but still so concerned with your pleasure. You were very serious about your foreplay. Anton was serious about yours too.

“I’m sure,” you said, nodding your head.

One hand balanced on his chest, right above his heart. Your other hand went between your two body’s. When you grabbed his dick in your hand you both gasped. There was something prickling in the air. Something felt new. Like it was the first time. You held his dick up straight and pulled in a breath, feeling the excitement tingle over your entire body. When you felt the tip prod you, your entire body tensed.

Anton’s thumbs started rubbing your waist gently. You felt each individual finger dimple your skin.

“Just relax,” he says carefully.

You nod again, bending your head so it’s facing away from him completely. You bite your lip and focus on the inside of your elbow. 

You let your hips sink. Anton’s body underneath your hand also stills. You can feel the intrusion, then the pressure when you get him inside. 

It’s like the first time again. You’re taken back to that first time you met him at the warehouse party and took him home. You two were in the same position then, after an hour of making out and messy foreplay. You didn’t know you’d be in this same position with him, with so much history behind it. Your walls close around him and it’s impossible to move further down. You pitifully pulse around just his tip and a little bit of his shaft, feeling like you’re already getting fucked.

“You got it baby,” he encourages. You hear the falter in his voice, when he has to pull in a sharp breath before the words crack. “you said it’s yours, right?”

“Yeah,” you answer.

You feel another inch inside of you. He presses against every part of you, and you can feel it deep. Anton’s fingers massage your hips, but you can feel quick moments of him holding you extremely tight.

“It’s all yours,” he repeats. “just gotta take it.”

You nod, still focusing on that part in your elbow. You press your teeth into your bottom lip, trying to take it.

“Look at me baby,” Anton says.

You put both hands on Anton’s chest and listen to what he said. You pull away from yourself to look down at him. 

He became wrecked in the small amount of time, cheeks fully flushed. You can tell his face is warm to the touch, and his own lip is red and swollen from being bit. You feel yourself loosen around him, all the want you’ve felt since Anton’s birthday helps your hips go further down.

Your hips can finally grind against his and Anton’s breathy words turn into a whimper. His fingers hold onto your hips rough. He guides your hips in the smallest motion back and forth. You grind against his waist, getting used to feeling him inside of you again. His lips are parted in ecstasy, you bring a hand to touch his cheek.

“I missed you,” you said quickly.

“I missed you too,” he says back immediately.

He feels so good inside of you. He fits inside like a puzzle piece. You already feel tears prickling your vision. You know Anton sees it, because his grip switches back to soothing circles. You can’t bring yourself to stop. He feels so good, even if you’re only moving your hips in the smallest motion. You need to feel him deep, you don’t think you find any pleasure in the speed or the roughness or the size. You just need to feel him pulse and press against your walls. The small moves you take is only supposed to prove that he’s inside.

“You know I’m not usually like this, right?” you ask.

You’re pleading with him to see your side of things. You should’ve been riding him for doing so good at his swim meet, or fucking him with a vengeance to get back at him for flirting with those girls. Whatever you were feeling fizzled into this, pathetic little whimpers and holding him for stability. 

You may have been immature before and you didn’t tell him how you felt but it’s not fair what he’s been doing to you. He’s been inconsiderate of your feelings, not understanding how it would make you feel to see him with all those girls. The attention he receives from people who aren’t you is unfair. 

You keep moving despite the burn in your legs. You were alternating between grinding and small little bounces, trying to get more. You don’t know what it is, but it’s not enough. Your hands go to Anton’s chest, your nails digging into his flesh.

“I’m not usually like this,” you repeat.

You’ve been desperate for Anton before, you’re sure of it. Times you’ve held him tight, times you’ve whimpered and said you needed more. There were times you begged Anton just for a touch, you’ve texted him before that you’ve needed to come over immediately. 

But this was unlike you to be grinding against him and refusing to even lift your hips because you just needed him to be inside. Your voice is so close to breaking you think if you lifted your hips you wouldn’t be able to stop the tears. You don’t know what you were close to crying about, you didn’t know why you were feeling everything so intensely. His body sways with yours from how much strength you put behind your hips.

“I know, I know,” Anton says honestly.

Before he brings a hand down on your ass you’re already pouting from him making fun of you. 

“I’m serious,” you lament.

Your hips move against Anton’s, you can feel his dick hitting deep. Each time you rotate your hips it’s like he touches something else. You can’t stop yourself from doing the motions, even if you need more to orgasm. 

You bite your lip and press a hand to Anton’s lower stomach to stabilize yourself. One of his hands leaves your ass to go over your hand, carding his fingers through the gaps.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks.

His voice is even, making you feel even more desperate. You rotate your hips the other way and a moan falls from your lips.

“I need it,” you moan.

“You’ve got it,” he says lowly. “you’re taking it.”

You shake your head and bend forward, until you’re chest to chest and your grinds against him barely do anything. 

“Need it in that way we did it one time,” you whimper.

Anton stills underneath you. His hand that was holding yours freezes. Everything about him is still and you get ready to explain in detail what you need.

“That time you said it was too much?” he asks.

You nod into the crook of Anton’s neck. Your moans are quiet just by knowing Anton remembers what you’re talking about.

“You sure?” he asks.

“Please,” you beg.

In the middle of another pathetic grind Anton stops your hips. You didn’t realize how weak you had become because he exerts almost nothing to stop you. 

He pushes his body up from the couch and your chests are touching. Then he moves you quick, where his feet are touching the ground and you’re still straddling him. 

“Not enough room,” he says simply.

There’s no teasing in his voice, only analytic. His arm wraps around your body and cages you closer to him. You’re almost satisfied with the closeness, you flick your hips again.

But you try to grind your hips again and he lifts you off the couch entirely. He’s still inside of you but the lack of stability forces an impatient whine. He presses a kiss to the side of your head over your hair, letting out a labored breath. You go to his neck and suck on the skin underneath his ear, you even press your teeth into him.

When he takes a step towards his room you shake your head. You know his soft springy mattress is too forgiving and would mitigate the strength you need to feel. You pull away from his neck, looking at the spit bead around the angry red mark. You look Anton right in the eyes, the brown almost lost to his blown out pupils. There’s no trace of playfulness. You feel like he is finally understanding the weight of your situation.

“Do it here, on the floor,” you say.

Anton readjusts you in his hold. You feel his dick pulse inside of you.

When you first started seeing Anton, he fucked like he had something to prove. Maybe it was your nonchalant attitude towards him or that you two only got together after a party. You thought he was determined to make you a part of his revolving list of hookups so he pulled out all of the stops. His energy was endless, endurance and strength lapped yours a hundred times over. He was pulling out positions you had never done before, prefacing everything with a shy this will feel good. 

You had seen him after a swim competition and you could tell he was trying to get something out of his system. He asked you to try something new in that innocent voice and you complied. Before you knew it your knees were bent to your chest while Anton pressed his weight into you. His arm was possessively wrapped around your ankle and your calves were pressed to his shoulder. The stretch, the strength, the way you couldn’t look away from him was too much. Everything about it was too intimate, and when Anton told you breathily it was the best he’s ever felt you had to tap on his shoulder to get him to stop. 

You need that right now. You need to be forced to look him in the eyes and have him unbelievably close, burning your legs from the stretch and hitting deep. Your body won’t settle for anything less. 

Anton finally understands. He lays you down on the ground and gets on top of you immediately. You relax your legs just to see Anton put you the way he wants. Just like the first time he grabs your ankles and settles between your legs. You feel his muscular legs cage you in, and the beginning of the stretch starts when he guides your legs to rest on his shoulders. Anton scoots closer and you know that this was what you needed. This wasn’t a want anymore but a necessity, you started clawing at Anton’s legs because he was taking too long.

“I need you, Anton.”

“You got me.” His hand reaches where you can’t see it, but you can feel the brush of his knuckles on your inner thigh. You can hear the wet sound of precum, you can feel some of it smearing across your skin. “I’m right here,” he whispers.

With each movement his chain dangles above you. The silver is almost mocking you, dangling above you like a taunt. You want to reach up and take it into your mouth. 

You feel him lining up again. You try to move further down but the position makes it pointless. Anton comes even closer, you feel your ass lift off the ground as he tilts your body up.

“Can’t you see how responsible I am?” he asks.

You’re lost in the throes of anticipation that your mind is hazy. Anton asked you a question. You blink and nod your head, thinking about responsibility.

Anton teases you, his dick pushing between your folds. You both twitch at the same time from the sensation, you let out a groan and Anton lets out a tiny whimper.

“We are so in tune with eachother,” he says. His tip nudges your clit again, then catches slightly on your hole. He’s so close to where you need him the most. “I know you can read me like a book, too.”

“I try my best,” you say.

Tears are threatening to spill past your water line from being teased. You’re in this position, your body being curved unnaturally from Anton’s weight. He brings his body closer to you, making the stretch in your legs feel even more severe. You whine underneath the stretch, you know your walls are fluttering around nothing.

Anton doesn’t push into you any further. There’s a lack of air from the amount of want and the position you’re in. He looks down between the two of you, just watching how his dick nudges and catches on you.

“Give me another chance after all of this,” you whimper. “I just need you to help me get this out of my system.”

“All that jealousy?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you say, nodding. “all of it.”

“What about after this?” he asks.

“I’ll tell you how I’m feeling all the time,” you answer.

As if that was what Anton needed to hear, he slid inside instantly. The position and your wetness made it easy. He was sheathed, hips kissing your ass and your face instantly contorted from the pleasure. Anton closed his eyes tight, letting his head hand low before he looked at down at you again.

He pulls out all the way. You know he’s covered in you, and he leans even more into you. You see his hair fall slightly to look down at you. You mirror his expression, eyebrows knitting together in euphoria.

“Don’t hold back from me anymore.” Before you can reply he pushes all the way into you again. It’s the deepest you’ve ever felt him, like your body is trying to expel him but suck him in even deeper. He pulls out a little to push right back in and a gasp is punched out of your gut. “Hurts my feelings,” he says.

“I won’t,” you whimper. Your hands are pulling at his muscular arms in an attempt to get him closer. “please don’t stop.”

Anton nods and keeps going. The wet sound fills the room, bouncing off the couch right next to you both. The hard ground doesn’t yield, giving Anton the proper stability to plant his body to go deeper. His hand holds your shoulder to keep you from sliding.

The ground doesn’t even hurt. Your body is thrumming with every movement, feeling him consume you and give you what you need. Anton is consistent. He’s fucking you like he wants you to be here forever. You don’t want it to end, impatiently pulling at him and whimpering each time his pace falters.

You see the sweat accumulating at his brow line. Your body’s are starting to stick together from all the sweat, you can feel your body leaving a sweaty imprint on his rug. Anton doesn’t stop, despite the burn he may feel and it makes your body reach that high again. Your hand goes to his cheek, pinching his soft skin.

“I love you,” you say.

The declaration hangs in the air. Anton stops, partially sheathed inside of you. His eyes focus blinking rapidly down at you. You don’t regret it. You nod when he says nothing in response, still rubbing his cheek gently.

“I really do,” you lament.

The moment of silence ends abruptly. Your legs fall from his shoulders to his waist, Anton comes all the way down until your pressed chest to chest. Your ass goes from being partially suspended in the air to pressed fully into the carpet. Anton wraps his arms around your body, pulling you impossibly closer to him. You feel the cold sweat on his chest and his hammering heartbeat.

Anton looks you right in the face. The tip of his nose touches yours, deep exhales fan across your face.

“I love you too,” he says.

Anton immediately resumes the brutal pace. You’re sliding across the covers now, held in Anton’s arms and feeling it all. Not only dos he pulse inside of you but his entire body ripples against you, muscles contracting as he gives you everything. You hear his legs moving against the carpet. He changes between fucking you forward, pulling you back, and pulling you up into him. 

You’re just as lost. The sounds you make are pathetic and feral. Whimpers that are cut off from a fast thrust, a moan that’s loud and prolonged when it’s deep. You can’t control anything, only digging your nails into your back to keep him there.

“Feels so good,” Anton whimpers. His voice has changed. It’s weak but firm, like everything in him has to get the words out no matter what. You nod against his head, finally feeling the warm tears slide down your face. You feel something wet against your cheek too, and when Anton sniffles between another moan you know what it is.

You pull Anton away from your neck by a gentle handful of his hair. Although it’s awful to not have every part of him pressed into you, you need to see his face. He’s reluctant only for a second, but then he presses his forehead into yours. You look into his teary eyes and he does it back. You both sniffle at the same time before Anton presses his lips to yours. The chaste kisses become carnal quick. Your tongues touch after you both push them past your lips. It’s messy, the wet muscle going over teeth and overlining lips before they find their way back. You’re tilting your head and Anton does the same. You are already running out of breath, feeding off of the euphoria of being so close. 

Anton’s devolve to rutting. Your moans are cut off abruptly, and you can feel your walls spasming around him. 

“I’m so close,” you whimper between kisses.

Anton nods and breaks apart.

“Me too,” he wedges a hand between your two body’s and instantly goes to your clit. Your body twitches against his. immediately, and you know you’re leaving terrible marks on his back. “cum with me baby, please,” he begs.

There’s nothing you can do after he asks. His fingers were moving perfect circles between his thrusts, and he was pressing against your walls more intensely. Everything was magnified, his body against yours, the sweat, the movement, the kissing, his cold chain against your skin. You couldn’t have resisted even if you wanted to. You brought him closer just to feel the weight of his body against yours, and your entire body was releasing at once. You felt the climax, mouth opening to let out loud moans. Anton did the same, pulling apart slightly to drive into you the last few times before stilling. His breathy moans were louder than yours, and he was holding tight to any part of your body he could touch. You let it happen, the coil that snapped seemed to twist even tighter before snapping again.

Your sounds eventually subsided. Anton was still letting out breathy whimpers, almost sounding pained from how good it felt.

Even after he finishes he stays in. Each twitch of his dick is twinned by your walls pulsing around him. You feel another spurt and can feel yourself gush around him again. Even with him inside it leaks. You can feel the mess web between your thighs and his balls. The stickiness doesn’t deter either of you. Anton lets your legs fall in a more comfortable way, sliding from the hold of his weight. There’s a shudder through your body, and you can feel more of you and Anton seep from you.

He kisses you with the same fervor as before. The orgasm was spent with you too moaning in eachothers mouths, whining loudly and swapping spit. Anton’s whiny moans got quieter, but were still prominent each time you pulsed around him.

“That’s what you needed, right?” he asked.

Anton looks at you sincerely. You can see the  skepticism. He has the same somber look that you used to ignore before shutting him out. You know it was the heat of the moment, you know that Anton knows you have the habit of getting sentimental when you’re close.

The flighty feeling is gone. You’re grounded, despite Anton partially lifting his weight off of you and instead using a forearm beside your head to hold himself up. 

“You know after this if you pretend like I don’t exist after, I’ll actually move on this time,” he says.

You hold his face with both of your hands.

“I meant everything I said,” you say, not breaking eye contact. “I really won’t hold back anymore. I’ll tell you how I’m feeling all the time.”

“You really want me around?” he asks. He holds your cheek gently, rubbing a thumb over your skin. “Not just for this?”

“I want it all,” you say. “I’m sorry I wasn’t upfront about that before.”

“I want it too,” he says. “I always have.”

There’s a moment of silence. Anton plays with your hand before putting it to his chest. His heart is beating like a drum.

“So I guess I’ll be seeing you around then?” you ask.

You chuckle against his chest. You don’t know why hearing him say it like that is so funny.

Not uncomfortable because you dislike it. Uncomfortable because you do. And will never admit that.

“You always smell nice,” he says casually.

You keep your eyes on the wire in your hands. “Battery pack’s loose.”

“That wasn’t related to what I said.”

You took a deep breath as your eyes shut instinctively for just a moment.

“I know.”

“Hm.” You can hear the smile in his voice, and if you lowered your gaze you knew you’d be staring right at a deep dimple and a cheeky twitch of his chin.

You clip the pack onto the back of his pants, fingers brushing the warm fabric of his shirt and leaving just as quick as they got there.

“All set,” you call, slapping your palms to your sides lightly as you back further away from his body.

And then he’s looking at you. In that way he always does before he goes on stage. A rudely passionate look of teasing that will leave you dizzy for the next 2 hours. He knows it, too. It’s why he does it.

“What?”

He doesn’t answer you for a minute. Just stares at you a bit longer. Over your jaw. The curve of your neck, exposed by your loose pony. All with a grin of his own deepening and his eyes squinting just a tinge.

And then he snaps back into casualness like nothing was on his mind at all.

“Nothing,” he shrugs, standing from his chair, “see you after the show.”

You nod.

“See you.”

He turns toward the door, shoulders brushing past one of the stylists waiting near the hallway, and for a second you think that’s it. Because it usually is.

You fix what you need to fix. You set him up. You say goodbye. And then he’s on stage and you have a brief intermission of peace before he’s back in front of you at the end of the night.

But then he glances back.

Just briefly, but enough for your stomach to tighten in that stupid familiar way that you worry will someday get you fired.

The hallway outside the green room still buzzes with movement and things you half understand. Stage managers calling cues, security talking into headsets, other crew members rushing past with last minute equipment. Harry looks entirely unbothered by any of it. Calm, even, like he has all the time in the world.

Your mouth moves before your brain catches up.

“Good luck.”

The words slip out softer than you intended. More personal, too. Less like a colleague hoping for the best and more like someone who cares too much about the other. Immediately, you regret them.

Because Harry stops dead in the doorway. And then slowly turns back toward you like if he's worried that it was someone else who said it. The grin spreading across his face is instant.

God.

That unbearably smug expression that only gets worse the second he realizes he’s gotten something genuine out of you. Then his smile widens even further, dimples pressing deep into his cheeks and eyes crinkling kindly.

“Thanks, y/n.”

Far too satisfied with himself.

A laugh slips quietly out of him as he starts backing into the hallway again, still looking directly at you with that same sly expression stretched across his face. Like he’s just won something.

Someone calls his name farther down the corridor.

So he finally tears his eyes off you, spinning around smoothly and continuing toward stage with an annoyingly confident bounce in his step.

Entirely too pleased with himself over two stupid words.

And even worse? You’re smiling a little before you can stop yourself.

It is endearing—his crush. It’s also incredibly obvious. The last few months of your life have been filled with flirts and teases and smirks that have your heart on the brink of exploding right there in your chest.

Champagne problems, right?

But it really was starting to become a problem. You were a professional. Apart of this industry for longer than you can count. And you were not about to start things up with your boss and destroy the reputation you’ve built for yourself for years. No matter how sexy his gaze got or how desperate his words became.

So you spend the entirety of his show in his open dressing room backstage, lounging upon a green velvet chair and scrolling mindlessly through your screen. You were grateful you had the night off tonight apart from backstage aid.

Baking recipes. Funny clips of animals. A new way to wear your hair. Skin care brands random people are trying to sell you.

Anything to get your mind off of him.

But it’s hard when his voice is echoing around the arena simultaneously. Whining through the microphone and screaming melodies that flow through him as if there’s no effort needed at all.

It was a sick routine you’ve been stuck in. Every show. Set him up, do your duties, listen to him against your will backstage or in the audio booth if that was your assignment, and then dissemble him before he goes home. You’ve been stuck with him every minute of all your days for the entire tour. Which would usually be great news; if he wasn’t nagging at you for a drop of attention too.

But you would stay professional. Calm. You knew you would.

So when the show ended and you both ended up back in his green room, you took a deep breath and prepared yourself to exercise your best rejection tactics.

The show leaves him glowing every time. Not literally, obviously, but close enough. So extra preparation was more than necessary. Especially considering there were about 6 other colleagues back here awaiting for his arrival as well.

By the time Harry pushes through the green room door, the adrenaline is still clinging to him—cheeks pink from exertion, curls damp at the edges, chest rising heavier beneath the half unbuttoned shirt clung lightly to his skin. The roar of the crowd still echoes faintly through the arena halls outside while people trail in after him offering congratulations, water bottles, notes about tomorrow’s schedule.

And somehow, within five seconds of entering the room, his eyes find you.

Of course they do. And you’re not totally sure if you want to die right there or enjoy it with a smile.

You’re crouched near the coffee table reorganizing equipment cases from the stage reset, pretending not to notice.

“You stayed,” he says immediately.

You don’t look up from the tangled wire in your hands. “I work here.”

“Mhm.” You can hear the grin in his voice already. “Still very professional as always.”

You ignore that completely.

Harry drops onto the couch with a dramatic sigh, legs spread comfortably while someone hands him a towel. He thanks them absently, attention never really leaving you.

“You work in the sound booth tonight?”

“Had the night off. Was just back here tonight.”

“Mm. Maybe that’s why it smells so nice back here.”

You finally glance up briefly. “Need something?”

His mouth twitches. There’s always this look he gets when you refuse to react properly to him. Half amused, half fascinated. Like he genuinely cannot understand how you keep resisting him after months of this.

“Need?” he repeats lazily. “No. Like hearing your voice, though.”

You bite down your smile as hard as you can. Fighting to stay within the boundaries of a work place and not further alarm your other colleagues around you.

You go back to untangling the cable immediately. “Sounds serious.”

“It is serious.”

“Thought you were exhausted.” You dead pan, looking over at him sprawled on the couch from your position on the floor.

“I was. Then you spoke to me.”

A nearby stylist snorts quietly before pretending not to listen. Your jaw tightens slightly.

Because that’s another thing Harry loves. Saying things in front of other people just to watch you try to stay composed. It was fucked up. And it was constant. Like, all the time.

You stand, carrying the equipment case toward the table near him. The second you step close enough, Harry tilts his head back against the couch cushion to look up at you.

Way too pretty after a two hour show.

Honestly rude.

It was all post-show warmth and lazy satisfaction. Sweat still clung faintly to his skin beneath the dim lights of the green room, curls damp and pushed messily away from his forehead where he’d run his hands through them a dozen times already. His cheeks were flushed pink from the stage heat, lips slightly parted while he caught his breath, and those marbled green eyes stayed fixed on you with a softness that felt entirely too intimate for a room still full of people.

And then he smiled. Slow at first. Sleepy almost. Until the corner of his mouth pulled higher and that deep dimple pressed into his cheek.

“You’re staring.”

And shit, you were.

You snap your gaze away quickly and trot across the room to gather the box for his in-ears with a shake of your head. “Wasn’t.”

“Was.”

You look back at him sharply, “Wasn’t.”

“Was too,” and his smile tells you all you need to know. This is fun for him. A game of sorts.

You just huff, opening the box in front of him and silently gesturing for him to put his monitors inside so you can, you know, get the fuck out of here.

He complies. Placing his in-ears in the box gently and staring up at you with a cocked grin while he does it. You kept your gaze down. Focused on the box and the work in front of you.

Once the box is closed and back on the audio cart, you grab your purse and take out your pony tail.

And also try to ignore the burning gaze that’s been following your every move while you do so.

“Alright, I’m heading out for the n—”

“I like your hair down like that. Looks nice.”

You stare at him like he cannot be serious right now.

“Thank you,” you say, clearing your throat and gripping tighter against the strap of your purse. “I’m heading out for the night.”

He grins. “Ok. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight,” you nod, pattering out of the room as quick as you can.

“Goodnight.”

-

“Good morning!”

Someone was in a fantastic mood this morning.

You, were not.

“Morning,” you mumble, wobbling past him as you rub your eyes carelessly.

The venue halls were painfully bright at eight in the morning. Fluorescent lights reflected harshly off concrete floors, cases rolled loudly through corridors, and somewhere nearby someone was already doing mic checks loud enough to make your headache worse.

You were exhausted.

Not normal tired. Not fixable with coffee tired. Bone deep, eyes burning, don’t talk to me tired.

The kind that sat heavily behind your ribs after months on tour and too little sleep and too many late nights spent tearing down equipment after shows.

You threw your headset crooked over your hair while you leaned against one of the equipment tables at monitor world, staring blankly into the cup of coffee in your hands like it was useless. It kind of was.

And he was already trotting back behind you to continue to bother you.

Harry leaned against the edge of the table across from you, completely uninvited and entirely too comfortable there. His eyes moved slowly over your face, taking in the dark circles under your eyes and your obvious irritation with visible amusement.

“You look tired.”

You look back up at him plainly.

“Insightful.”

“You sleep at all?”

“A little.”

“Mhm.” His grin deepened knowingly. “You’re doing that thing where you answer questions like you hate me.”

“I do hate you right now.”

He could’ve laughed at your face right there.

“No, you don’t.”

You took another sip of coffee just to avoid responding. Harry stared at you over the rim of his own cup. Completely entertained, like this was his morning news and he needed to tune in.

“Y/n, the sound booth needs you in 5.”

You wince, shutting your eyes briefly before calling out an okay and shrugging off your purse.

“Bye y/n,” Harry smiles, tilting his head playfully like your exhaustion is only here for his entertainment.

“Bye Harry.”

You barely saw him for the rest of the day after that.

Every time you turned around, someone needed something. A frequency issue during rehearsals, a missing pack during load in, comms crackling endlessly in your ear while production schedules shifted by the minute.

By the afternoon, you were too busy to think about him much at all, which was probably a good thing considering the smile he’d walked away wearing that morning.

The show passed in a blur from the booth. You stood behind the glowing soundboards with your headset pressed tighter against one ear while the arena shook around you, lights flashing across thousands of screaming fans.

From back there, Harry looked different. Bigger somehow. Untouchable. All confidence and movement and effortless charm under the stage lights. Still, more than once, your stomach tightened when you caught his gaze flick briefly toward the booth like he was checking for you without meaning to.

Now the show was over, and you stood backstage in the green room with tired shoulders and aching feet while crew members rushed around tearing equipment down around you. The adrenaline of the concert had faded, leaving only exhaustion behind.

You leaned against the wall quietly, absentmindedly twisting your headset cord around your fingers while waiting for the post show chaos to settle.

Voices echoed down the hallway before the door even opened. You recognized Harry’s immediately, warm and animated in that post show way he always got, still riding the adrenaline high from stage.

But there was another voice with him this time.

A woman’s laugh floated down the corridor a second later, light and airy. Your stomach tightened instinctively before you could stop it. You didn’t want it to. But it happened.

Then the green room door swung open.

Harry walked in first, still glowing from the show, hair damp around his forehead and sleeves shoved messily to his elbows. Beside him was a brunette woman you vaguely recognized from the VIP tent earlier, pretty in an effortless kind of way, light eyes bright as she looked up at him while he talked.

And she was laughing. Like, a lot. At everything.

Harry said something you didn’t even catch properly while shrugging off his jacket, and she laughed immediately, hand brushing his arm like he’d said the funniest thing she’d ever heard in her life.

You looked back down at the audio sheet in your hands before your expression could betray you.

Absolutely ridiculous.

People laughed at Harry constantly. He was charming. Funny. Famous. None of this was unusual. You’d fallen victim to it more times than you’d like to mention too. It really wasn’t anything you weren’t used to, especially working so close to him.

Still, every time her laugh floated across the room again, your eyes flicked over before you could stop them.

And every single time, Harry caught you doing it.

Of course he did.

You could feel it almost instantly, the subtle shift in his attention whenever your gaze landed on them together. Like he became hyperaware of you the second you started pretending not to look.

Annoying.

You crouched beside the audio cart near the wall, reorganizing cables that were already organized just to keep your hands busy. It was sad, but you were this close to breaking something and you’d rather it be equipment instead of someone’s face.

Across the room, the brunette laughed again at something mildly amusing at best.

No offense to Harry.

Your eyes rolled automatically before you could stop them. And when you glanced up, Harry was already looking at you. His mouth twitched instantly, like he’d officially decided everything you were feeling now. His assumptions have been proven correct.

“Y/n,” Harry called casually from the couch area, too close to the mystery women for comfort.

Your response came flat without looking up. “What?”

“Did you switch comm packs after the encore?”

A stupid question.

“Mhm.”

“That one’s mine or Glen’s?”

“Yours.”

It came out colder than you meant it to, but it was honestly a stupid question and you were growing more and more irritated with every passing second.

You heard the tiny pause afterward, like Harry was reveling in this moment and couldn’t believe it was real.

“Thanks,” he said slowly, amusement already slipping into his voice.

You only hummed in response.

The brunette looked between the two of you curiously before turning back toward Harry when he said something quietly to her.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, she laughed again.

Good God.

Your jaw tightened slightly without meaning too, stuck between the frustration of these fucking wires layered between the echoing laughs of a spunky brunette.

“You alright over there?” Harry asked after a minute.

You clipped another cable into place. “Fine.”

“You seem grumpy.” He called, the second time he’s said the word today.

“I’m tired.”

“Mhm.” That sound alone irritated you.

You glanced up briefly to find him leaning back against the couch cushions now, one arm stretched along the back while he watched you with obvious interest. Like he was enjoying this. Actually enjoying it.

“Could you grab us two waters?” he asked suddenly.

You blinked at him once, like you couldn’t beleive this was a real question. Then looked toward the fully stocked fridge less than six feet from where he sat.

“There are plenty of other people here,” you said evenly. “I’m busy.”

Silence.

The brunette shifted awkwardly beside him while Harry stared at you for half a second. And then, a grin spread slowly across his face. Deep dimples. Bright eyes. Entirely too entertained.

Your stomach dropped immediately.

Because he knew.

“Oh my God,” he murmured softly, almost to himself.

You narrowed your eyes instantly, standing straight up against the cart now with your hands leveling you, “What?”

But Harry was already standing and looking much too pleased with himself.

“I’ll get them myself,” he said lightly to the brunette before starting across the room.

Toward you.

You immediately looked back down at the cables in your hands like they suddenly required your full concentration. Unfortunately, Harry didn’t stop until he was directly beside the audio cart. Close enough that you could smell the lingering mix of cologne and stage sweat still clinging to him after the show.

“You’re jealous,” he said quietly.

You scoffed immediately, “I’m not.”

“Y/n.” His voice was warm with amusement. “You practically rolled your eyes to the back of your skull every time she laughed.”

You dropped what you were working on and pulled closer to his face, “She laughed at things that weren’t funny.”

Harry bit back a grin.

“There she is.”

“Harry, what?” You weren’t in the mood for this. Not now. Not ever, really. And you had shit to take care of.

“You got mean.”

“I’m usually mean to you?”

“No,” His eyes dragged slowly over your face, “Usually you’re pretending not to like me. Tonight you looked like you wanted to kill somebody.”

Heat crawled violently up your neck before you could stop it, his words genuinely shocking you past your normal point of surprise. He was always bold with you. But this was honest. Too honest.

“I do not care who you bring backstage.”

You barely even believed yourself when those words fell out of you.

“Mhm.”

“I don’t.”

“You told me to get my own water,” he continues to whisper, trying to hide the conversation from the women on the couch. Who, by the way, has clearly been growing more antsy for his return with every passing second.

“There was a fridge right there,” you say like it’s an obvious reason for your denial.

“You’ve gotten me water before.”

You opened your mouth immediately, then stopped. Harry’s grin widened in triumph.

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” he laughed softly.

You don’t know why you started to feel genuinely angry, but you did. Maybe it was the way he was speaking, almost patronizing, like he had you all figured out before you had the chance to yourself.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that he was starting to pull the truth out of you which you’ve been so desperately avoiding.

“You are so full of yourself,” you said, and it came out more honest than you intended. Harsh, even.

“And you,” he said, stepping just slightly closer, “are jealous. And too fucking scared to ever admit it.”

Like your comment before didn’t phase him at all.

You just stare at him with heavy breaths, your face and neck heating up before you could stop them. You were furious over his attitude. His confidence. The way he spoke like he was the smartest person in the room and the way he was looking at you like he knew you’d fold soon.

“Enjoy your night. I hope your dick enjoys her as much as your head enjoys this bullshit.”

Way too mean. Absolutely past the point of professional boundaries.

You knew it the second you said it, and so did he. His face was genuinely shocked, like you’ve officially surprised him for the first time in his life. He didn’t seem angry, necessarily. Just…you don’t even know. Just shocked.

And silent.

You shoved through the backstage hallway doors before he could say another word to you.

The sound room was blissfully empty when you stormed inside, the muffled crowds from the arena now distant through thick walls while rows of glowing consoles blinked quietly in the dark.

Good. Because if another person looked at you right now, you might actually lose your mind.

You dropped a headset onto the table harder than necessary and immediately started yanking cords loose from the side rack with sharp, irritated movements. Stupid. This whole thing was so unbelievably stupid.

Your chest still burned from the look on his face back there, smug and amused while that girl sat beside him laughing at every breath he took. Like he enjoyed watching you unravel. Like this had all just been a game to him for months.

A cable slipped from your hands and smacked loudly against the table, echoing throughout the empty area.

“Careful,” Harry’s voice came from the doorway. “Those are expensive.”

You froze for a moment, breath hitched at his sudden presence, and then continued packing without turning around.

“Go away.”

The door shut behind him, closing the two of you inside of the empty room much too late in the night.

“No.”

Your jaw tightened, already frustrated at his quick denial as if your words were a suggestion. They weren’t. You heard his footsteps approach slowly across the room while you wrapped another cord aggressively around your hand.

“Seriously,” you snapped, “I’m working.”

“You’re furious.”

“I’m not furious.”

Harry laughed once under his breath. Wrong move. You spun around immediately.

“Do you seriously think this is funny?”

His expression shifted slightly at the volume in your voice, but he still looked more frustrated than apologetic now. Green eyes sharp beneath messy curls, chest still rising faintly from the remains of the show adrenaline.

There was no smiles anymore. From either of you. It was clear how frustrated you both were as you stood a small distance apart, breaths heavy and eyes low like you two were trying to figure out how to speak without screaming in each other's faces.

“I think,” he said carefully, “you’re finally reacting honestly for once.”

You stared at him in disbelief, as if he knew you at all.

“Honestly?” you repeated. “You bring some random girl backstage and spend the whole night looking at me like it’s the most entertain—”

“She wasn’t random.”

“I don’t care who she was.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I care that you’re sick in the head.”

Harry blinked at the one. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Your voice echoed sharply off the walls now. “You spend months messing with me and flirting with me and pushing me constantly, and then you parade another woman around in front of me like you’re trying to prove how easy this is for you.”

His eyebrows pulled together instantly, taking a step forward until there were only a couple of inches between you both.

The crease between his brows was loud. The flush on his cheeks was freshening, and the sharp glare of his eyes was the most telling of it all.

“Easy?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“That’s what you think this is?”

“I think you like attention.”

Harry scoffed sharply, taking another step closer. “You think I’ve spent months chasing after someone who acts like she hates me because it’s easy?”

“You flirt with everyone.”

“No,” he snapped back immediately, “I flirt with you.”

Silence cracked heavily between you. Your pulse pounded hard enough to hurt.

Harry dragged a hand through his curls roughly, frustration officially overtaking the amusement he’d been carrying all night.

“You know what your problem is?” he started, “You never admit anything. Ever.”

You laughed harshly, closing up another box and tossing it to the side, “Because there’s nothing to admit.”

“Bullshit.”

“Harry—”

“You feel something and immediately bury it under this professional act because God forbid anyone knows you actually care about something.”

Your stomach twisted angrily.

“You don’t get to psychoanalyze me because you sing songs and smile at people for a living.”

That wasn’t fair. You didn’t even really mean it.

But his jaw tightened anyway, swallowing the words and pushing back up with whatever felt right in his chest.

“And you don’t get to act like I’m manipulating you just because you’re too stubborn to admit this thing between us has been happening for months.”

You folded your arms tighter across your chest like that could somehow hold you together.

“There is no thing.”

Harry actually stared at you for a second like he couldn’t believe you’d said it. Then he laughed once. Not amused. It was more in disbelief. Because there was really no way you could genuinely beleive that.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“And you’re just fucking cruel.”

That landed worse than the line before. You saw it immediately in the way his expression shifted, dragging across your face with so much anger that you had to swallow to keep yourself grounded.

“Cruel?” he repeated quieter.

“Yes.” Your throat felt tight now, anger bleeding messily into something worse. “You knew exactly what you were doing tonight.”

Harry stepped impossibly closer again. “That girl was someone my mum wanted me to meet after the show.”

You paused, tilting your head as you catch your breath from frustration.

“What?”

“She’s a family friend’s daughter,” he said sharply, “And it had absolutely nothing to do with showing off for you.”

You looked away immediately, embarrassment and anger tangling together violently in your chest in a more obvious way than you would’ve liked.

Harry noticed.

“See?” he said, “You jumped straight to assuming I was trying to hurt you.”

“You were enjoying it,” you say, rolling you eyes as his point had no relevance to you.

“Because you were jealous.”

“I was not jealous.”

“You were glaring at her like she was, like, offending you.”

“She was laughing too hard.”

A completely incredulous laugh escaped him, “Oh my God.”

“Don’t ‘oh my God’ me.”

“How do you seriously not see that you were jealous? Just admit something for once in your fucking life!”

“I wasn’t jealous!”

“You were!”

“I am not jealous of every girl you drag backstage! Just leave me alone!”

The second the words left your mouth, the room went dead silent. Harry stared at you. Your own breathing sounded too loud suddenly. Because that last part had been a mistake.

His eyes flicked slowly over your face, something shifting there.

“You mean that?”

You take a breath, settling into yourself for a moment as your hands come to rub against your temples. It was late. You were both over tired. This whole thing was just a big fucking mess that you were deep into now to get out of.

Oh, and you both were half sure the entire crew was listening outside of the door.

But that was a problem for tomorrow.

“No,” you start, “I don’t mean that. But you don’t get to stand there and act like this is all my fault.”

“I’m not saying it is.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’m exhausted!”

His voice cracked louder through the room than your yelling somehow.

“I flirt with you every day. I look for you every day. I walk into rooms looking for you first every day and you act like I’m insane for noticing you feel it too.”

Your chest tightened painfully, knowing in the back of your mind that he was right.

“And then tonight,” he continued, eyes locked on yours, “you looked at me like I’d betrayed you. You can’t do that. Not after pushing me to the floor like dog shit for months.”

You swallowed hard.

Because he wasn’t wrong.

Which only made you angrier.

“You don’t get to make me feel crazy for this,” you shot back.

“I’m not making you feel anything.”

“You know exactly what you’re doing to me!” The words ripped out louder than intended.

Harry went still at the burst, breaths racing quicker while he sat on what was next. What he should say. What he should do. If this was ruined for good and you’d be on the next flight home.

The silence afterward felt massive.

“It’s not fair, Harry,” you continue, “You don’t get to do this to me.”

Your voice was shaking now, words spilling faster the longer he stayed silent.

“You don’t get to stand there and act like I’m the one making this complicated when you’ve been doing this to me for months.”

Harry didn’t say anything, and it made your chest tighten harder.

“Every day it’s something,” you went on, pacing now, unable to stay still under the weight of it. “You flirt with me, you push me, you look at me like I’m the only person in the room and then you just expect me to function like it doesn’t affect me?”

Still nothing. Your frustration snapped sharper.

“You think I don’t notice it? You think I don’t feel it?” You shot another time, voice rising again. “Because I do. I feel it every single time you look at me like that and I hate that I do. And I have a life I’m trying to protect. I built something for myself here. I worked too hard to be taken seriously to just—throw it away because I can’t stop thinking about you.”

He swallowed thick at the last line, listening to your words helplessly and sinking in thoughts he can’t say. “And the worst part is I don’t even get a break from it. I have to choose. Every day. Between being good at my job and feeling whatever this is when I’m around you.”

Your eyes flicked up to his again, glossy with frustration now.

“Between my career and my happiness,” you said quieter, but more honest than anything you’d said all night. “And you just stand there like it’s nothing when it’s not nothing for me! It’s impossible and it’s—”

Harry crossed the space between you in a single step and crashed his mouth into yours, hands coming up to either side of your face, holding you there so quickly you didn’t even have time to react.

For a second, you didn’t move. Didn’t kiss back. Just froze completely against him, breath caught somewhere between your lungs and your throat while everything in your brain tried to catch up.

But neither of you pulled away.

And then, slowly, when it finally registered, your hands slid up to the back of his head and your lips found their way against his. You pulled him in even closer than he already was, squeezing your hands against him like you jus couldn’t get close enough.

The breath you both released at the same time broke whatever line was left between arguing and something deeper.

The kiss shifted, still urgent, still overwhelming, but no longer just interruption. It turned into something heavier, driven by months of tension finally collapsing into contact neither of you had managed to stop.

“Harry—”

“Sh,” he shut you up through smashing lips before you could even finish the thought, “just let me kiss you for a bit.”

So you did.

It didn’t take much convincing, considering his tongue was minty and warm and his nose was nudging up into your face exactly how you dreamed it might. He was strong and confident and, in the least weird way, skilled. It was like he’d already learned exactly how you want it and rolled it out of him with no effort at all.

“Just tell me to stop,” he mutters through kiss, “just tell me.”

You just nod, quick and aggressive as he pulls you in even closer and inhales you like he needs you to breathe. Your heart was slamming and your mind was dizzy, fogged in the forbidden mesh of the two of you and the stupidity behind it all.

Because really, one crack of the door and you’d be fired on the spot. It was the most insane thing for you to ever do, especially after screaming in his face for all to hear from the hallway.

But you didn’t care. You couldn’t stop. You wanted him. You needed him. You wanted him to handle you and treat you like he’d been dreaming of—whatever that may be.

And as his tongue slid across the insides of your mouth for the thousandth time, you let your mind drift into what he might do. What he’s been begging to do. You knew he had to have something shoved up deep in sleeves, something he’d been putting off until this moment and thought of more times than he should.

His hands came tugging up at your top before you could slip too deep into that thought. The pass of the fabric through your faces broke the suction to each other for only a moment before he was crashing back down onto you, a kiss laced in so much hunger that you didn’t know what to do with yourself.

And once your chest was covered in nothing but the flimsy cotton of your black bra, his hands couldn’t land. He was everywhere. Up your ribs, across your tummy, pressed into the open curve of your lower back.

The pass over your clothed breasts was long. Like he was mapping out exactly how they sat without actually breaking the kiss to look at them.

And you were only thinking one thing—just take off the bra and fucking touch me.

As if reading your mind, his hands slipped underneath the top of the cup and grasped at your smooth skin tenderly, cupping around your full breasts until his thumb found the perk of your nipples and his palm found its place underneath the curve.

“Fuck,” he groaned, “so soft.”

It was mostly to himself, like he was marking the exact moment out loud to remember forever.

Now you really were jealous.

Your hands worked desperately at his damp button up, undoing every last one like a ravenous animal until it wore him more as a jacket of sorts instead of a shirt.

You let your eyes fall.

Of course you’ve seen him shirtless before. But this was different. This was vulnerable—the flap of his butterfly on his chest, mixed in nerves and anticipation and the feeling of something new yet forbidden. The subtle sheen of his sweat bouncing off of his pecs, still not fully recovered from his show.

Then there was the hair. Littered across his chest and more importantly, trailing thick down to a screaming bulge below.

You groaned before you could stop yourself, and his smirk was deep in response before pulling you tight to his lips again.

“Harry,” you start breathlessly, still in between sloppy kisses, “I have to go soon. I have to catch the last train.”

He shakes his head immediately, “I’ll drive you back.”

You consider telling him the truth. The humiliating truth. The truth that will probably turn that growing hard on down into a sad softie that’ll never come back up.

“No really,” you murmur again, kissing him harder, “I really do have to go soon.”

He backed up this time, hands placed somewhere between your waist and your shoulders lazily.

“Why? We can stop.”

You shake your head immediately, “No, I…I don’t want to stop. I just want us to…um…hurry?”

“Y/n…” he nagged with a smile, teasing you already, “don’t break your honesty streak now.”

You shake your head, “it’s embarassing.”

“Just say it.”

You roll your eyes, sucking in a deep breath and thinking of the vaguest way to say it.

“Fine,” you huff, “my mom calls me every night at exactly 12AM. Okay?”

His eyebrow cocks upward, “that’s not embarassing.”

“Right, so, let’s just keep going?” You clear your throat, nodding a placing your hands back behind his neck as if to prepare for another kiss.

He’s still staring at you with a small smirk that you hate.

“Not so fast,” he teases, “Something in me says you’re keeping out a very important detai—”

You unclasp your bra in the middle of his sentence, letting your tits fall loose in a desperate attempt to cut off his train of thought right there.

And it works, for a second.

His eyes fall, his words come to an abrupt halt, and his mouth goes dry in a state of total holy fucking shit this can’t be real life.

“That’s not fair, y/n,” he says, but he’s still looking down at your chest, “not at all.”

You just grin, looking down at him as he gawks at the sight in front of him and lets his hands drift upwards to cup them once again. This time it was different. This time he was looking at what he had in his palms. And they were even better than how he’d dreamed of them, perky and pink and so full.

And then he’s grabbing you by your ribs, hands wide and rough, lifting you until you’re sat on top of the counter behind you, covered with equipment that was far too expensive for this behavior. But neither of you really seemed to notice, let alone care.

His lips locked around nipples before you had the time to process the shift, sucking and nagging and groping the untouched one with his other hand.

But then he was back on subject.

God damn it.

“Tell me,” he cooed, still latched to your breasts, “tell me what you’re hiding.”

You sighed at the feeling of his lips on your bare skin, naked and exposed and more vulnerable than you’ve been in awhile. More time than you’d like to admit.

“Can’t.”

He stopped his kissing and looked back up at you.

“Y/n.”

You huff, rolling your eyes and sinking into the cabinet behind you. “My dog. My mom FaceTimes me every night at 12AM so I can talk to my dog before bed. Okay?”

He pushed his lips tight together through his smile, fighting to keep it in as to not embarrass you even further. But his crinkled eyes were telling and the raise of his brows said even more.

“Oh, well that’s adorable.”

You drop your head into your hands, searching for an escape from this moment forever.

“Harryyy.”

“Ok, listen,” he lets out a loose laugh now, bringing his hands up to your cheeks until your face reveals itself again. “It’s not embarrassing. You’re cute. I’ll get you home by 12.”

You peaked your eye open a bit and let your face sink into his palms. “Yeah?”

He nods, face pulling closer to yours again already, “promise.”

And then he was back on you, splitting your lips open softly and letting his tongue fall onto yours as if it was the most natural thing to ever happen.

Suddenly you understand why this has felt impossible to ignore for so long, because kissing him feels terrifyingly right. Soft in a way you never expected from someone who spends all day teasing you, but underneath it there’s still that same intensity he always looks at you with—as he’s been holding himself back for months and finally doesn’t have to anymore.

You can feel it in the way he pulls you closer. In the way his thumbs brush once beneath your ears. In the way he kisses you like this means something. Like it’s exactly what he needed.

Exactly what both of you needed.

He’s drifting his mouth back down to your chest as slips his fingers in your waist band, and suddenly everything feels very real. Harry Styles. Famous. Like, ridiculously famous. In the middle of his tour. In an empty sound room backstage. And, more importantly, your boss.

His hands feel your nerves before your mouth could vocalize them.

“Relax,” he coos, lips resting against your bare chest, “it’s just me.”

You take a breath, shutting your eyes and desperately searching for a place of peace.

It’s Harry. Harry who’s been yearning for you for months. This isn’t a one night stand. This isn’t an unintimate fuck after the adrenaline of a show. It’s raw, it’s real. It’s just Harry.

So this time, when his fingers tug harder on your pants and your full body starts to reveal itself, you don’t feel so suffocated.

He had your pants and thong pooled down to your ankles quicker than you expected, leaving you in nothing but your skin as you stayed perched atop the cool counter.

“Fuck,” he whispered to no one, dropping slowly to his knees as his palms rested atop your knees.

You were bare in front of him, legs half spread and core dripping onto the surface beneath you. You figured it had to leave a mark. His eyes turned inward as they locked onto where he needed most, what he’s been clawing at desperately for months, right in from of him and oh so beautiful.

His hands pushed your knees further apart slowly, revealing more of yourself to him until it was all on display. And right when you started to relax, his hands left your legs and fell to in between your thighs instead.

“Shit,” he breathed, fingers coming to toy with your folds, “so pretty. Fucking perfect.”

His finger tips pressed against either side of your wet hole, and slowly spread apart from each other until you were wide and gaping in front of him. Your breath hitched somewhere deep in your chest and your mind stilled, watching his eyes as he inspected what was before him closely.

“So tight,” he hummed, spreading you open even further, “beautiful, you know that?”

You just gulped, letting a hand fall on top of his head to play with his curls mindlessly. Anything to give you something to do.

His fingers drifted higher up to your clit now, pinching at either side of the swelling bud before spreading that apart too. The ball of your sensitivity came pushing outward at the movement, throbbing in front of him while you dripped helplessly just below.

And then, with eyes glossed up towards your gaze, he stuck his tongue out, skinny and pointed, before pressing the tip onto your overly exposed clit.

Your eyes shut before you could stop them, chest panting and brows turning inward. It was the most sensitive you’ve felt in awhile, so worked up from the arguing and the teasing and the kiss that was forever too short.

“Mm,” he hummed, circling once around your clit and watching for your reaction, “tastes so good. So sweet.”

You groaned, tugging at the hair on his scalp and letting your head roll back until stopped by the wood behind you.

His lips came to suck harsh against your swollen clit, suckling at your arousal and rolling the bead in his mouth as his palms came to grasp around your hips. He was nestled into you like he needed you to breathe, groaning against the taste and pulling closer to you.

His tongue flattened as it pressed against your dripping hole, lapping up your arousal and whispering at the sweet taste on his tongue. You were wet and so fucking pink in front of him, drenched in desperation and the need for something more than just his warm tongue against you.

“Harry,” you whine, “feel so good, but—”

“I know,” he cuts through you, already knowing just what you need instead, “me too. Just give me a couple more minutes, wanna remember this.”

And who were you to deny that?

So you let him feast at you for another five or so minutes, lapping you up and swallowing you with every new drip. It was his heaven. It was what he’d been fucking his fist to for the last couple of months, the thought of you on his tongue and mixed with the melodic sounds of your moans.

“Please, Harry,” you groan, fingers tightening against every strand of his hair and thighs clamping absentmindedly around his skull.

“Hm? What do you need?”

You roll your eyes again, “Harry.”

He detached from your swollen pussy, face wet in your juice as he rose back up to level with your face. His hands land on your bare open thighs, head tilted as he catches his breath in front of you.

“Y/n,” he repeats, challenging you, “tell me what you need.”

You tug your bottom lip into your mouth, eyes glassing up at him as your chest juts outward.

“You,” you breathe, “want you to fuck me, Harry.”

His eyes fall shut as if instinct.

“Fuck,” he breathes, head dropping for a moment, “wish I could’ve fucking recorded that. Listen to it forever.”

And then his lips are back on yours, harsh this time, splitting you open as his hands gripped tight against the meat of your outer thighs.

It happened quicker than you expected—his hands working his zipper, his lips turning sloppy as he breathed heavier inside of your open mouth. And at the sound of his button popping open and his zip hitting the base, your skin chilled at the noise, adrenaline rolling through you as a fuzz rolled down your spine.

His pants shoved down to his mid thigh, boxers following suit, and before you knew it, there it was. Your boss's cock. Thick and dripping in between your open thighs.

He was…big. Bigger than you’d ever been with before, for sure. He was swollen and girthy and just crying with a slow salty drip of precum. For a second you thought, maybe a big dick comes with being a world famous sex symbol.

And in a moment of total honesty, eyes locked on his erection, “I’m kind of nervous.”

He just grins, like it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard, before shaking his head and kissing you another time. “Don’t be. Just me.”

It settles something in you. Your smile comes beaming right as your chest softens, nodding softly at him as you try your hardest to regulate your breathing and calm the warmth on your face.

You know, to act like you weren’t about to get fucked in the sound closet while a staff of a hundred was waiting for you both.

By your boss.

And global phenomenon.

Oh, and there was a cute brunette waiting for his return in the next room.

But you’d rather focus on the less life ending matters right now.

His hand comes to hold the base of his dick, taking a step closer to your open legs as he held you propped atop the counter still. Your head was racing, eyes flicking back and forth between the nearing head of his cock and his face like you were trying to actually decide if the two were here at the same time.

And just before pressing in, breathlessly, “you’re sure?”

You nod immediately. “I’m sure. Please.”

He pushed into so slow that it ached, stretching your tight hole gently as he filled you up inch by inch. He was…a lot. Pulling you apart without even trying to and sinking in deeper than what’s ever been reached before.

Once he bottomed out and his tip was kissing some place deep in your tummy, you both let out a simultaneous “Fuck.”

His forehead dropped against yours in a sweaty mess, pulling out of you until his tip reached your folds before pushing back in with a force stronger than the one before. More certain. Like he couldn’t be more sure now. And you couldn’t either.

To say it was heavenly wasn’t even doing it justice. He was filling you up just as you liked, big and profound and pumping in and out of you with careful precision. Knocking into that spongy spot inside of you that had your vision blurry and tear ducts jamming.

“Harry,” you moan out, desperately trying to keep your voice down, “it feel so good, you feel so good.”

His thrusts deepen, “yeah? Like that?”

“Mmm,” you weren’t totally aware of any noise you were making, your mind just sort of rolled out whatever it was feeling and expressed itself in sudden waves.

He felt it. The organic nature of it all. The way you clamped around him desperately and grabbed at the skin on his back like it’d somehow be able to keep you grounded through this.

But then it got rougher. Quicker. Sharp in your belly as he slammed into you over and over and over again.

“Ah!” Your head tossed back, “fuck, shit, it’s so good, Harry, so big.”

It only spurred him on faster.

“Like my cock?” He was pumping into you so fast that your back was smacking loud agaisnt the unstable cabinets, “how big is it. Tell me how good this dick is.”

Your walls tightened again around him at his filthy ask, finger nails scratching into his skin until inflamed and bleeding at the touch.

“So big, mmm,” your whine draws through the closed space, “so good inside of me, so deep, fuck!”

He fucked you like this for awhile, stealing quick kisses from you from time to time and pulling you as close to him as you could get.

And then he scooped you up and off of the counter effortlessly, cock still buried deep inside of you, before placing your back down flat on a lower standing table in the center of the room. Covered in expensive electronics and hazardous wires that neither of you knew the importance of. Or cared.

When he started fucking into you again, it was different. You were flat against the surface, legs locked around his waist and hair sprawled around you like a halo you just grew within the last half hour. Which, you honestly felt like you did.

But his tip was deeper this time, with the new position, and crawled up into your tummy until the skin of your lower stomach was tenting in the pressure of his cock. Thrusting up into it until it pulled upwards and created a pretty indent of his shape.

You’ve never experienced a thing like it.

He grabbed a hand and placed it over the space, brows sewing together and a whimper slipping out at the feeling of his cock showing through you. It was a fantasy come true.

Your tits flowed with his rhythm, bouncing up and down, flattened like pancakes, with every thrust. Your moans followed it too, a high pitched huff falling loose every time he slammed into with that same persistence.

“God, Harry,” your hands grab onto nothing, “don’t stop, please, gonna cum soon—”

And then his phone rang. Loud, in the back pocket of his half-off pants that hung right around his knees.

Just when you thought he would stop, pull out and answer the phone, or even silence it and continue to fuck you, he didn’t. He kept his thrusts steady, reached into his pocket, and fucking answered.

“Yeah?” He called through the line, half breathless as he slammed his hips into you beneath him.

You’d never held your voice so hard in your fucking life.

There was random mumbling through the other end, a deep voice, rambling about something you couldn’t quite decipher. His head tilted backwards as he listened, the grip on his phone a little lose as he shut his eyes in pure bliss.

“That’s fine,” he starts again, “I’ll take care of it.”

All while sliding his tip out of you and pressing himself back in fully until your arousal wettened his pubic hairs. And it continued like this until your stomach was bubbling and your face was hot and scrunched into itself.

“Mm, gonna cum,” you whisper, still trying to keep yourself hidden from wherever the hell was on the phone with him for this long.

Harry just smirked, phone still pressed up against his ear, as he quickened his strokes into you again. His free thumb came to rest atop your clit, rubbing slow circles onto the sensitive bud until you throat was strained in a sad attempt to keep every noise in.

“No, not home yet,” he spoke again, “taking care of a couple things.”

He fucked you harder. Faster. As if he was challenging you to see who could keep their composure best.

But you’d already lost. You knew you had. Your legs were vibrating violently around his waist, pulsing with every new swipe at your clit and every new slam of his hips.

And the second you finally reached your orgasm, a long, drawn out moan escaped up your chest before you got the chance to silence it.

His hand smacked hard over your mouth with so much force that you shut up immediately.

But he wasn’t upset. He didn’t even look phased. He was still grinning at you, in awe of your fucked state as he pounded himself in and out of you and shut you the hell up with his wide palm.

You came hard. Stuck in the trance he’s set you in and fading into the light as he rides you through it. Your limbs were numbing, your skin stuck between a mix of hot and cold and not quite landing on just one.

He pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment as the other man spoke to nothing. “Fuck, you’re so hot. Feel good?”

You hum lazily, eyes shut as a small smile crawls up to your face absentmindedly. It’d been awhile since you felt this fucked. Just laying there limp and useless and half awake.

Regardless, he wasn’t stopping.

“Mhm,” he said, back on the phone, a little too suspicious of a noise for an average discussion. “Ok. Mhm. Bye.”

“Who was tha—”

“Fuck, you feel so fucking good y/n,” he cut you off, letting his phone hang loose in his grip now as his eyes meld shut in reflex.

It was the furthest thing from calm anymore. He was slamming into you relentlessly until your tits smacked into themselves and your throat strained in purple veins and reddened skin.

“Oh my god,” you groan, cupping your own breast with a squeeze, “shit!”

“Yeah, let everyone hear you,” he spits, “just fucking scream, tell them how good your getting it.”

And you did.

There was no taming whatever was begging to come out of you. You were loud and rambling and just crying whatever filth came to mind without giving yourself a minute to process a thought.

“Shit, can’t fucking believe you,” his head dropped into itself, “gonna remember this, best pussy I’ve ever had y/n.”

You hum, loud, as you let your neck push out and your head rolls back harder onto some sort of sound board that definitely has a couple switches knocked off. His eyes were locked to the movement on your chest—the way your tits shook and belly shook and tented up with his tip.

You’re not really sure what made you think of it. Maybe the way he was staring, maybe the way he told you he wanted to remember, or maybe the way his phone was still hanging lose in his thick fingers from the call.

But you nudged your head towards his phone before you got a chance to think twice about it.

He looked down at where you gestured.

Then back at you.

Back to the phone.

And another time back at you.

Then, shakily, “…yeah?”

You nod through a bitten grin, pinching your nipples between your fingers as if to ask for that to be the focus.

Like any man who’s alive and breathing, the idea only sat with him for about a half a second before his phone was back out and the camera was faced down at you.

And then he was fucking you again, harder this time, so riled up from the devious act in the first place, as he slammed into you until his balls smacked against the bottom of your ass.

Your tits slapped into each other through the camera, clapping against themselves in the most erotic way he’d ever seen. You could see it on his face. The way his lips fell apart through broken groans and his eyes were so zoned into one place that you figured he’d forgotten about everything else surrounding.

“Harry,” you breathe out, “so good. Gonna make yourself cum to this later? Watch yourself fuck me where you shouldn’t?”

He brought his free hand to the small of your waist, gripping tight before using the grip to tug you down onto him harder. His cock was pressing so hard up into your belly that you thought it’d be bruised, so worked out from his thick cock in a way you’ve never gotten it before.

“Fuck, yes, fucking yes,” he groaned, gripping you tighter without trying, “M’so close.”

“Yeah? Gonna cum all over my tits, Harry?” You call, dramatized for his video and paired with an extra shake of your rolling breaths on top of you.

With that, he pulled out of you quick as his fist came to wrap around his length, pumping in sloppy motions with a twisted face and held breaths. His salty cum painted itself onto your tits beautifully, dripping down your smooth skin and coating itself over the peak of your nipples like it belonged there.

His head fell lazy as his breaths lengthened, grounding himself slowly through small touches and deep inhales. The video had stopped, now fallen to the edge of the table you laid on still.

“Fuck,” and then he was looking back up at you with a crooked smile, “did we just fuck?”

And, like usual, your eyes rolled as a grin curved up your mouth, “yeah. Now don’t torment me.”

He pulled out of you slowly, taking his time to not further stress your body before tugging his pants loosely back up to his waist.

“Y/n,” he starts again, grabbing a rag from the counter, “do you know you and I just had sex? You? And I? Y/n and Harry?”

“What part of don’t torment me do you not understand, hm?” You tease, sitting up on your elbows as he begins to wipe up your chest and whatever spilled to your stomach.

“But you’re cute when I torment you,” he shrugs, smirking down at you as he tosses the now dirty rag to the side.

“I don’t think I like you very much.”

His teeth show through his dimpled grin now, arms locked on the table by either side of your hips as he brings himself closer to your face.

And with a sweet kiss and a press to your forehead—

“I like you very much.”

pls like/reblog if u enjoyed !🤍

masterlist

ask/request anything

join my masterlist or comment/message