יחזקאל

It was almost unfair how cozy she was tangled up in him. If she let herself settle, she could get used to this. She could be with a guy like Zeke and have him pull her close and make her feel like she was more important than she was. She spent her entire days gassing herself up, telling people she was the shit; but right now it felt like she was telling the truth a little bit. Luna was totally fucked. “Wow, you have such a way with words,” she teased. She made no real effort to move, just snuggled into him more.

Zeke chuckled, low and slow under his breath and into her hair. She smelled like something bright and fruity, smelled like waking up where Eva smelled soft, floral like e comfort and settling in to sleep. “Fuck off,” he mumbled without an ounce of real venom, but it felt right. Comfortable and crass at the same time like Luna was. “I gotta get up soon. Gotta get to the gym,” he started. He tried. He didn’t move a muscle, though, could hardly bring himself to save for nuzzling in behind her ear. “I was supposed to be home last night.”

“Should I be paranoid that some shit is going to go down because there’s a large group of us?”

"Dude, it was one time," Zeke whined, throwing his hands up in surrender. "Are people ever gonna let that go?"

It happened in a matter of moments, as Axel seemed to be stirring the wrong pot. It was hilarious to him as she watched the other guy’s face hit the realization and going through the motions of what he wanted to do next. He wasn’t sure what to expect from the guy though. And a swift knuckle to the face wasn’t anything he had prepare for. Sending his head back, Axel felt the throb hit him instantly as a rush of endorphins fled his system. “Oh, now she’s worth fighting over?” He added with a smirk, knowing that he wasn’t that guy anymore, but still paying the price. Jumping forward, he wanted to very badly to call his ability, but figured it would take too much of his time to concentrate that hard. Instead, he managed to bring his hands up and shove back at the young man.

The element of surprise was the only thing that Zeke had going for him in times like these. He kept himself looking a little too clean to get scrappy, but he had been around this block a couple of times. This wasn't the first time he'd gotten into a fight over Eva, and damn it all, he figured it wouldn't quite be the last. "Bro, you don't let a girl like that go without a fight," he laughed, stumbling back with the shove only to answer with a hard push of his own. "Believe me, you're not gonna win her over from me. Definitely not like this." Zeke was many, many things, and possessive was most of them.

A smile spread across her face as he pulled away, “Does it matter?” She stated against his lips, going in to kiss him again. It wasn’t like she was going to remember too much of this, and if she did she didn’t want to feel guilty about doing this in the first place.

@easyzeke

Zeke was tempted, and he was trying to reason with himself and get himself out of there, trying to be faithful in that way that he very rarely had been before, but her question was a big one, and his answering shrug and breath of "Nah," sealed the deal. His hands found her waist and the nape of her neck as he deepened the kiss.

A simple trip to the store, turned into an hour ordeal to find exactly what she needed. The voice next to her caused her to look up, not even sure where to begin. “Obviously, you can’t just throw anything on them and expect it to work out.” Her eyebrows knit together, shaking her head slightly. How old was he and he didn’t know how to clean properly? Aubrey’s eyes rolled, typical. “Just get something that’s specifically made for hardwood flooring. Do you even know what kind you have?” She let out a long sigh, “I don’t really think you thought this through.”

Zeke sighed, giving a bit of a shrug. They'd had someone to clean for them back home in Cali, so growing up he didnt totally have a lot of practice. The first time he did laundry for a brother when he was pledging he'd called everyone in his household before his heroin addict of a brother finally told him how to clean clothes. This wasn't a total shock, his not knowing what to use, but he got that strangers didn't have this sort of context. "What kind of hardwood? Nah, but I have the paperwork at home," he grinned. There was no shame in having enough experience with the finer things to be unprepared for getting down and dirty.

Luna knew how stupid it was to hook-up with the same guy twice. She has only ever made that mistake one time before Zeke and it ended with a restraining order and shitty diss track on youtube. But at the same time she couldn’t seem to help herself. Zeke was….just really cool. He didn’t look like her type, but his energy meshed well with hers and well..so did their bodies. She woke up first because she felt a little guilty. She din’t like being called a puta, and his girlfriend thought she was one and–the moment he spoke, pulled her in, she stopped thinking about it. Grinning, she turned around so that she could face him. “Sleep okay?”

Zeke sighed, “Shit,” rolling into her an inch or two, pulling her in and over his body the rest of the way. It was strange. She was just as tall as him which made for a change in logistics, and she felt different, smelled different. The morning hadn't brought the comfort that a body and a bed normally did, and he was well aware that this was at least in part because he was missing the perfume and curves that he'd grown around like ivy from his youth. It was different. Maybe that was the only reason he was here. He smiled still, slow like morning whispers, and smelled her hair, wondered at how he was becoming used to it. "Mm," he grunted noncommittally. He hadn't, but then neither had she.

Zeke didn’t sleep over when he slept around. He didn’t tend to, at least. When he did, it was normally because he was too drunk to function and there would be no point in going out to his car just to pass out in some rando’s bushes. That all said, staying over happened sometimes when the rando was a seminocturnal redhead and his girlfriend kept odd hours. It didn’t totally suck, either. She was cool and all. And cuddled. Which was admittedly sort of nice. When he felt her start to stir, he shifted himself, sitting up first with a swear before he remembered where he was at, mumbling “Mornin’” and pulling her in.

“Damn. Well who’s this, then? ‘Cause it’s hard to thank you properly and return the compliment when you’re faceless. Though, on the real, you’ve seen her right? She’s fucking immaculate.”

Zeke wasn't the best with housework. He couldn't even use the excuse of being raised in a household where his mother stayed home and his father brought home the money. His mom was the scariest fucking lawyer he'd ever met and his father was an orthodontist for fuck's sake, he'd just never really had to deal with housework because he was focused on other things. Like girls and getting into college and lacrosse and staying cool enough to keep a woman who was a year older than him and still not fail out of school. It had been intense. Now was less intense. Now, he stood staring at cleaning products in complete confusion. "What the fuck is the difference between these," he gestured vaguely and glanced at the girl beside him. "Will it kill my hardwood if I use the wrong one?"

@aubreyfxller

“A sense of fun. Blonde hair, little longer than shoulder length, gets me every time. Killer. Accents clearly don’t hurt. I don’t even know but somehow I've been falling for shiksas since my bar mitzvah.”

Sent 12:17am : Eva I’m not lying I’m literally getting gas for my car right now, stop being paranoid.

What did you love most about the place you grew up? What about it did you love the least?

“I’m an L.A. native, born and bred. Everything about it is honestly magical. Just the vibe there in general - everything is so alive. I guess the only thing I didn’t love about it were the people that I was getting away from when I left. It was really free everywhere except at home. My brother got into some bad stuff and my parents were a little particular sometimes.”

Eva felt disgusting. The entire party made her feel gross and then finding Zeke with that puta made things fall into perspective. At least she thought it put things in perspective; she had Zeke drawn out, her decision on their relationship was final, and then the girl got hurt. He did a complete 180 and not Eva was standing in front of him trying to figure out where he stood. She knew there was a part of her that was hypocritical; her side job was on the back of her mind and she was sure that Zeke would feel like she did if he knew. Even though nothing was happening. “You want to hug me?” her voice was smaller than she thought it was going to be. Maybe she was more upset about the girl than she thought. “After everything that happened tonight….you want to hug me?” She didn’t move, didn’t give him any positive or negative symbols. “You’re unbelievable.”

Zeke nodded, feeling properly pathetic at this point. He would have been more concerned if he didn’t feel pathetic, honestly - if he didn’t feel pathetic he wouldn’t have been realistic about what was going on here, what he;d done. He knew what he’d done. He knew why they were here. He knew why Eva was giving him that look instead of hiding in his arms, and he wasn’t too stupid to realize that he deserved it. Still, he maintained what he said, and repeated as much. “Yeah.” A soft shrug. “I want to hug you.” That settled in the room for a moment. “I want to hold you and know that nobody’s going to get to you.” He braved a step closer. “I know I hurt you. I want to fix that. And I don’t want anyone else hurting you.” He could be unbelievable, but he needed something here between them that they might not have had for a long, long time: trust.

With all the trouble Axel had been getting in lately with flirting at the bars, this was supposed to be the least of his concerns, having another guy show some sort of resentment. After all, he thought all the women he had slept with were single. From the impressions he was receiving, that’s what he understood. However, as soon as the other turned the picture in his direction on the phone, he brows shot up before a simple smirk played across his lips. One that reflected the other’s smug grin. This was about to get good, he thought. “Okay, you’re right. She wouldn’t settle for me. But…” His eyes wandered all over the picture, from her frame to the curves her body. “That doesn’t mean she didn’t try.” He looked away from the phone to get a glance back at the young man. “And boy, we sure did have a fun time. Eva, right?”

Zeke felt a lot of things in very little time. He was hurt, yeah. He knew that Eva fucked other guys just like he himself fucked other girls, and honestly? Sometimes it was super hot, thinking of Eva sneaking around in secret and still coming home to him every night. Sure, sometimes he’d contemplated asking to watch. He knew himself and knew where he stood with that sort of thing. But this fucker?

This fucker changed things. He did not want to watch Eva and this wrinklebag  screw. He didn’t want to think about them screwing. More than that, though, he didn’t want him to think about it.

“That so?” he asked. That was the end of that. He spared a single moment to think about legal fees before he sent a fist flying into Axel’s face.

Jesus Christ, could this guy get anymore annoying. Axel had been done with him since the moment he pulled in, and was only pulling out all the stops and putting up the front because he needed business. But this was getting ridiculous. “Oh, I’m sure she doesn’t. With so many nice gifts, I’m sure she loves having you around.” He muttered off with a roll of his eyes. “Look, all I’m saying is that you let a real man treat her right and she’d never go back to you.”

Honestly, this guy was hitting on the maybe three insecurities Zeke had, and it was starting to really piss him off. Axel needed to step down and let him win soon, because he was about to pull his car away and tell them all to get fucked, and the man tipped like he meant business - that hadn't been a lie. Eva was a year older than him, which had always scared him a little bit, and yes, he'd thought about the money factor, and sometimes he wondered if that was how he'd managed to hold onto her. And maybe, just maybe, the fact that this ugly old fucker was a little taller than him was pissing him off. He didn’t show it on his face, he didn't think - just pulled out his phone and opened a picture of Eva with a smug grin. "I told you. Perfect. She's not about to settle."

Zeke was a man of many mistakes. When that pledge was put into a medically induced coma after his first proper kegger as a brother, he hadn't come forward about anything to the cops, and that plagued him. This could be the second party of his that someone died at, and that fact didn't go missing on him. The first time he cheated on Eva they hadn't spoken in a week, but she was on vacation with her family and she came back with a gift and with a smile on her lips, and that drunken mistake stuck with him. Clearly it must have, because that had paved the way for his many, many other mistakes. Tonight was one of them. And not just because he got caught, though that was maybe a big, big part of it, but because he could have lost her, he realized. That girl in the basement could have been Eva, and he couldn't shake that. The drive back to their place was silent. He locked the doors in silence. His regret hung heavy in the foyer and his exhale was loud and long. "Can I just hug you?" He mumbled. "Before you lay into me, before you yell, can I just be happy you're safe?"