gabagool

Everything in him reacts instantly.

His head lifts before he even consciously decides to look.

And there you are.

Rainwater drips from your sleeves onto the café floor. Your hair is soaked near the ends, sticking slightly to your cheeks and throat. Your jacket hangs half off one shoulder while you apologize breathlessly for being late.

And you’re smiling.

Smiling.

Bright enough that it physically changes your whole face.

But you look freezing.

Your nose is pink from the cold.

The waitress with red lipstick laughs and starts helping you out of your soaked jacket while you keep talking, hands moving animatedly while you explain something.

Alive.

Fine.

You’re fine.

The relief hits him so hard it almost pisses him off.

Look at yourself.

Forty minutes spiraling because a waitress was late to work.

Pathetic.

You laugh suddenly at something the other waitress says and Dex feels the sound move through his chest strangely.

Your hair’s still wet near the ends.

There’s mascara smudged faintly beneath one eye.

You look—

His eyes stay on you too long.

Again.

God.

Then your head turns slightly.

Your eyes land directly on him.

Fuck.

He looks down immediately.

Too late.

Too fucking late.

He knows exactly what he looked like.

Staring.

Again.

Like a creep.

His stomach drops hard enough to ache.

Great.

Now she remembers you as the weird guy from last time who came back just to stare at her some more.

Perfect.

He keeps his eyes fixed downward for a second too long, pulse climbing unpleasantly into his throat.

Don’t look up.

Don’t—

He looks anyway.

Just quick.

Just enough to see how uncomfortable you look before he leaves and never comes back here again.

But you’re smiling.

Not nervous.

Not fake.

Playful.

Like you caught him doing something embarrassing.

Like you think it’s funny.

Dex just stares.

You remember him.

The realization lands slow and heavy.

Out of everybody in this café—

you remember him.

Then you turn away again and head behind the counter.

Still smiling.

His chest feels weird suddenly.

Too tight.

Like something’s trying to unfold itself between his ribs.

He watches you work.

Of course he does.

You keep tucking your wet hair behind your ear while talking to the waitress with red lipstick.

Friend.

They’re friends.

That bothers him more than it should.

Not because he wants you touching him instead.

No.

Because you fit together naturally.

You know how to laugh with people. How to stand close without looking stiff. How to exist around others without feeling like your skin was put on backward.

Dex watches you smile at customers.

Smile at coworkers.

Smile at everyone.

You smile so easily.

What the fuck would somebody like you even do with somebody like him?

Then suddenly—

“Hello, stranger.”

His pulse jumps.

You’re standing right beside the booth now.

Close.

Rain and vanilla again.

“Oh,” he says stupidly. “Hi.”

Great response.

Real smooth.

You smile wider.

“My friend said you still haven’t ordered.”

Friend.

Again.

Dex glances briefly toward the waitress before looking back at you.

You’re watching him expectantly.

Say something normal.

“Well…” His throat feels tight suddenly. “I couldn’t decide.”

That’s not even believable.

You probably know he’s been sitting here forever.

But you just nod thoughtfully.

“What about hot chocolate?” you suggest. “It’s perfect weather for it.”

You like hot chocolate.

You probably curl up on your couch during storms.

You probably wear fuzzy socks.

Jesus Christ, stop.

“That sounds good,” he says quietly.

Your face brightens instantly like he just told you something important.

“Okay,” you grin. “I’ll make it.”

You.

Not anyone else.

You’re making yourself.

Why?

You don’t have to do that.

His chest feels strange suddenly.

Too full.

Like his ribs are wrapping around something alive and struggling.

He watches your hands carefully while you work.

Milk steaming.

Chocolate powder.

Whipped cream.

Your movements look easy. Fluid. Nothing jerky or overcontrolled like his own.

You belong inside your body comfortably.

Dex doesn’t think he’s ever belonged inside his.

Then you walk back over carrying the mug carefully.

“Here you go, sir.”

Sir.

He doesn't like that.

Makes him feel old. Distant.

“Thank you.”

His fingers brush the ceramic mug.

Warm.

You don’t leave.

Instead you stand there watching him expectantly.

Waiting.

Oh.

You want him to try it.

Dex lifts the mug carefully and takes a sip.

Chocolate.

Sweet.

Warm enough to spread through his chest slowly.

“It’s good,” he says immediately.

Your entire face lights up instantly.

There’s that smile again.

“Thank God,” you laugh softly. “I thought I messed it up.”

You were worried?

About his drink?

His chest aches suddenly and he doesn’t know why.

No, that’s a lie.

He does know why.

Because you feel soft.

Soft.

And Dex feels like every sharp thing in the world was stuffed inside him at birth.

Watching you feels like pressing his hand against warm glass.

Then your eyes flick downward suddenly.

To his wrist.

“You’re not wearing the bracelet?”

Fuck.

His stomach drops so hard it physically hurts.

You noticed.

Of course you noticed.

And worse—

you sound disappointed.

Still smiling.

Still gentle.

But disappointed.

You fucked up.

“No, I— I wanted to wear it, I just couldn’t at work because—”

Slow down.

You’re talking too fast.

“I didn’t wanna ruin it,” he blurts out quickly. “Things happen at work sometimes and I thought maybe it could break or get damaged and I didn’t want that because you gave it to me and—”

Shut up.

Stop talking.

He hears himself spiraling and can’t stop.

Words keep falling out messy and frantic.

“I still have it,” he says quickly. “I kept it safe.”

Why would you think he threw it away?

Now you sound insane.

His chest tightens painfully.

There it is again.

That horrible feeling.

The one where he can physically feel conversations going wrong while they’re happening but can’t stop himself from ruining them anyway.

“Hey,” you say quietly.

Your voice cuts through the noise in his skull instantly.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

You smile at him gently.

Not scared.

Not mocking.

Gentle.

“Just breathe, alright?”

And suddenly Dex realizes he’s sitting there half out of breath like he’d been running.

His lungs hurt.

He inhales sharply.

You’re still looking at him softly.

And that—

that feels infinitely worse.

Dex had gone white.

Then he had walked very calmly into the bathroom with one hand over his mouth and vomited until his ribs hurt.

Because yes, he loved you too.

He loved you so badly it felt like his body had mistaken affection for a terminal illness. He loved you until being away from you made his skin crawl. He loved you so much it made him cruel to himself. He loved you so much he wanted to crawl out of his own skin because wanting to keep you felt like a crime. He had wanted to be loved his whole miserable life, and then when you came along and loved him, he wouldn’t fucking trust it.

Because there was no way you loved him back.

Not really.

Not if you were whole.

Not if he had not done something to you first.

Because the first time you met, he had broken into your apartment. After all, your window had the perfect sightline into the building across the street.

Because you had caught him in your living room with a mug in your hand and sleep shorts riding high on your thighs, and he had looked at you like you were a small obstacle.

“What the fuck—”

His hand covered your mouth before you could get any louder.

“I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely, because he was one of the good guys now. “I just gotta do this one thing.”

You bit his palm.

He hissed, then caught your wrist and handcuffed you to the exposed water pipe under your kitchen sink.

He flexed his bitten hand once. “I said sorry.”

You glared up at him.

That day, you should have screamed yourself hoarse.

Instead, you had talked for six straight hours. 

You. Fucking. Yapped. 

Like a pomeranian on cocaine.

You had insulted his boots, his posture, his insane audacity. You demanded coffee. You asked if the gun was compensating for something (you later found out it was definitely not). You asked if he always tied women up before breakfast or if you were getting special treatment. You even threatened to bite him again if he came too close, then immediately asked if he was single.

Dex had sat by your window with a rifle scope pressed to his eye. He was pretty sure he fell in love somewhere between the twelfth complaint that your ass was sore and the twenty-first threat to sue him.

So now, eight months later, with you under him, legs wrapped around his waist and your body taking him so well he could barely breathe, all he could think was…

He had done this.

He had broken something in you.

Still, he moaned your name. You were perfect beneath him, pleasing him so well that his own voice kept dying in his throat every time he tried to speak. He could barely form the guilt into words because you kept squeezing around him like your body wanted him closer than close, like every thrust dragged a sound out of you that went straight through his cogmium spine and lit him up from the inside.

“You don’t love me,” he suddenly rasped, because of course he had to bring it up again while he was inside you.

You laughed, but it broke into a moan halfway through when he moved again, and the stretch of him made your whole body seize. “Dex…”

He choked on the spit buildup in his mouth because he was drooling at this point, his hands fisting in the sheets beside your head. “Fuck,” he breathed, voice ruined. “Don’t—don’t say my name like that.”

You tried to answer, but he was too much, too deep, fucking you into the mattress hard enough to make the bed frame knock harshly against the wall like every thrust was an argument he was losing.

“You’re so… hmph,” His forehead dropped against yours. His voice cracked. “God, you’re so fucking tight. I can’t think when you— when you feel like this.”

You could barely hear what he was saying, you just dragged him down by the neck and kissed the scar on his cheek. You were practically making out with it, because hyperfocusing on it helped bring you back to earth. “Dex… fuck!”

His whole body jerked at the sound.

“Don’t,” he rasped, but he didn’t stop.

His hips kept driving into yours, deep and rough, punching the breath out of you until your hands pawing at his skin. “Don’t say it like that.”

You tried to laugh again, but it came out as a shaky gasp when he pushed deeper. “Like what?”

“Like you, hmm.” His head dropped now, his mouth dragging wet and open against your throat. “Like you love me.”

Your nails dug into his back, giving his back scar company. “I do.”

Dex’s brows furrowed like you had hit him.

His pace faltered for half a second. Then the panic caught up to him and he thrusted harder, like he could outrun the words by burying himself deeper inside you. “N-no.”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said again, and it came out so small it was nearly swallowed by the filthy sound of his body moving against yours. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what this is.”

“I know exactly what this is.”

“You don’t.” His hand grasped the sheets. “You can’t. You can’t love me.”

You were struggling to keep your eyes open. He was stretching you so much every thought came apart before it finished forming, pleasure dragging through you hot and heavy, making your thighs shake around his hips.

Still, you forced yourself to look at him. “I do love you.”

Dex looked like he might be sick again.

Every time.

Every fucking time you said it, even if it was a hundred times a day, his heart broke a little. Like his body wanted the words and his mind rejected them. Like being loved by you was too impossible to fit inside him without tearing a wormhole open.

“You hear y-yourself?” he demanded, breathless, furious, hips still snapping into yours. “You hear how insane that sounds?”

You moaned, head tipping back against the ridiculously expensive pillows he had bought you because his last one ‘made your neck a little stiff’ once.

He groaned at the feel of you tightening around him. “Fuck… don’t—don’t do that.”

“I… ahh, can’t help it,” you managed, voice shaking. “I fucking love you.”

“No, you don’t.” He sounded almost angry now, but all of it was pointed inward, all of it soaked in guilt. “I cuffed you to a pipe. I— Fuck— scared you. I held you hostage and now you’re here, telling me you love me while I’m—” His teeth clenched, his body shuddering over yours. “While I’m doing this to you.”

“You’re not doing anything to me,” you forced out, gripping his arm hard enough to make him hiss. “I asked for this.”

His eyes burned. “That doesn’t make it better.”

“It does, actually.”

“You’re sick.”

“So are you.”

He laughed once, but there was no humor behind it. He then buried his face in your neck as his pace got messier. “I think I gave you Stockholm syndrome.”

“You didn’t,” you insisted. It was barely a sound, it was a miracle he heard you at all.

“You’re not listening.”

“You’re not thinking.”

“I am thinking.” His voice cracked on the last word because you tightened around him again and his forehead dropped to yours, “Shit, you drive me insane.”

“Good.”

“No.” He kissed you hard. “No, not good. That’s what I mean. You make me like this. You make me want too much.”

“You already want too much.”

His hips stuttered, and you saw the guilt pass over his face at once.

Then he drove into you harder. You cried out, and his eyes went dark.

“There,” he said, voice ragged. “That. You should hate me for this.”

“No, Dex.” Your hands slid up, catching his chin, forcing his face close to yours while he kept fucking you breathless. “You didn’t give me Stockholm syndrome. I. Love. You.”

He shuddered. His mouth opened, but nothing came out at first. Then a broken moan as his body betrayed him again.

“You don’t,” he whispered.

“I do.”

“You can’t.”

“I can.”

“You’re perfect.”

“I’m not.”

“You are to me.” His voice sounded raw, almost boyish in its disbelief. “And if you love me, then I did something to you. I had to. I had to have broken something, because there’s no– hnggf— no other way.”

Your chest tightened.

He was still moving, still taking you apart with a rhythm so desperate it bordered on punishing, but his eyes were wet. His eyes filled with self-hatred. He looked like a man starving at a feast and hating himself for opening his mouth.

“Fine,” you gasped. “Have it your way.”

Dex went still for exactly one second. Not fully, and definitely not enough to pull out. Then his body reacted before his mind did and he thrust harder.

It was as if the sentence had scared him so badly he had to pin you beneath him with his weight, his mouth, his hands, his hips. Like if he stopped moving, the words would become real enough to take you away. “W-what?”

“Maybe— hm, maybe you did g-give me Stockholm Syndrome,” you said, voice shaking, half from pleasure, half from fury. “Now what?”

His breathing turned ragged.

“So what, huh?” Your nails dragged up his neck into his hair, combing his scalp “You gonna tell me to go?”

Dex’s face soured. “No.”

“You gonna leave me?”

“No.” The thought of it made him sick. You could see it. You could feel it. His whole body tensed, his grip tightening, his hips losing rhythm for a moment before coming back rougher, deeper, more desperate. 

Leaving you was the one noble thing he kept threatening himself with, and the second you suggested it, it destroyed him.

“No,” he said again, like he hated you for making him admit it. Like he hated himself more. “Don’t f-fucking ask me that.”

“But that’s what you’re… you’re saying.” You were so close now you could barely speak, words breaking apart every time he drove into you. “If you really think you ruined me, then stop.”

Dex’s eyes locked on yours.

Your mouth trembled into a cruel little smile. “If you really think, you— shit, you broke me, t-then stop fucking me.”

His breath hitched.

He didn't stop. 

You felt it in the way his body went even harder, even more frantic, like the command had gone straight into the darkest, neediest part of him and went feral.

“I-if you think you’re bad f’me, then get off me,” you whispered, mean and gentle all the same, by his ear, close enough to lick the lobe. “Then don’t touch me. Don’t kiss me. Don’t come in me, because we b-both know you’re— hmphh— planning to.”

Dex groaned, tortured, burying his face against your throat.

“No,” he rasped.

“No?”

“No.”

“Thought so.”

He kissed you then, hard enough to steal the rest of the taunt from your mouth.

It was perfect after that, fucking perfect and awful. Your bodies slick with sweat, his hands gripping your hips like he was trying not to bruise you and failing at restraint in every other way. He fucked you like he was confessing and denying the confession in the same breath, like every thrust said mine and every sound said I’m sorry.

“You should run,” he rasped.

“You’d follow.”

His eyes burned.

You smiled up at him, breathless and shaking. “And I’d let you c-catch me. I’m fucking into it.”

Dex looked ruined.

His rhythm stuttered, and for a second you thought that was it, that he was going to fall apart right there, but he grabbed your hips and flipped you with quick motion that left you dizzy.

Then you were on top of him.

Your thighs trembled on either side of his hips, your hands braced on his chest, and Dex looked up at you like you were killing him. His face was flushed, eyes wet, mouth parted as you sank back down onto him.

“Say it,” he said, voice destroyed.

You moved over him, thighs shaking, pleasure making you unsteady. “Say what?”

His eyes opened, furious and starving. “Say– fuck, baby— that you know you could leave and I’d let you leave.”

Your chest tightened. “Dex.”

“Say it.” His grip tightened, not forcing, just holding on. “Say you know the door isn’t locked. Say you know I’d let you go.”

You stared down at him. At the man who had wanted love so badly it made him monstrous with fear. At the man who still believed wanting you was worse than first degree murder. At the man underneath you, shaking, begging for proof that this was not captivity while his body betrayed how badly he needed you to stay.

You leaned down until your mouth brushed his.

“I know I can leave,” you whispered. “I-I know you’d let me.”

His breath collapsed.

Then you kissed the corner of his mouth without ruining your rhythm. “But I’m not.”

Dex broke under you.

His hands slid up your back, dragging you down against his chest as he thrust up into you, needy and completely undone. You could barely keep up, barely keep speaking, your forehead pressed to his as you rode him. 

“I love you,” you said again. and this time, he knew you meant it.

That was what did it for him. Not the heat. Not the filth. Not the way you tightened around him or the way he was losing himself inside you, though that helped.

That.

The idea that you had chosen him with all your mind intact.

Your breath hitched first, then your whole body seized, pleasure dragging you under so good that your words turned into a ruined little sound against his mouth. Dex’s eyes widened, his hands clamping around your waist as you went through it.

“There,” he rasped. “There she is.”

You came too hard to answer him properly, nails digging into his chest as he kept you there. “There she is,” he said again, almost broken. “That’s my girl.”

And then Dex broke completely.

He buried his face in your neck as he came after you, groaning your name like an apology, like a confession, like it was the only prayer he knew. His body trembled beneath yours, his arms locked around you while he spilled inside you, holding on as if letting go too soon might make the whole thing disappear.

Afterward, Dex held you like an apology.

His mouth fluttered gentle kisses over your temple, your cheek, your throat, frantic in little broken bursts. He kept whispering sorry so many times the word stopped sounding like language and started sounding like breathing.

You were half-asleep against his chest, your fingers tucked loosely against his ribs.

He kissed your forehead again. “Sorry.”

You breathed out, half asleep. “For what?”

Dex went quiet.

He didn’t know, not really. He was sorry for the pipe, for wanting you too much, for needing you in a way that still scared him. He was sorry for looking at your love and thought it must have been damage.

His arms tightened around you.

You opened your eyes just enough to look at him. His face was ruined, like he was still trying to decide whether holding you counted as selfish.

You giggled softly.

“Dex,” you murmured, eyes half-lidded, fingers lazy in his hair. “If I’m broken, then I was broken when you found me.”

His breath stopped.

You smiled like that was supposed to comfort him.

Instead, it crawled into him and settled under his ribs, sweet and infected. It made his heart thump hard against his ribs. It made the guilt twist, mutate, turn into a warm and fuzzy feeling. Because there you were, looking at him like he wasn’t the man that had ruined you, but the man that had finally made sense. Like whatever was wrong with you had looked at whatever was wrong with him and fuckin’ purred.

Dex stared at you, eyebrows relaxing.

You touched his face, thumb dragging gently over his cheek scar, and he leaned into it before he could stop himself. 

Pathetic. So utterly gone for you. 

“I love you,” he said.

It came out hoarse. 

You shrugged like you knew all along. 

“I love you,” he said again. His hand tightened at your waist. “I love you.”

And for the first time, Dex wondered if Stockholm syndrome could happen the other way around, to the captor instead.

There was probably a fancy word for it. Some clinical term made by people with normal hearts. Something he could look up, self-diagnose, dissect, pretend to understand.

But Dex didn’t care.

If that was what had happened to him, then fine.

He didn’t want it cured.

—end. 

benjamin poindexter, former fbi agent, veteran, and scarily-expert sniper, was in prison, said the TV. your heart stuttered in your chest when his picture filled the screen. blonde hair, hazel eyes, and a chiseled, scarred face. your hand snaked up to your neck, where the bruises had long faded from his strong fingers keeping you pinned against your bedroom floor. he had pressed a pistol gently to the side of your head, snugly in the spot just below your ear that dex refused to admit he wanted to mouth at. you could nearly feel the cool metal on your skin through his empty gaze in the mugshot.

you smirked at the sight of one particular scar on his neck, where you'd gotten him good. the TV switched to video of his arrest and your smirk got wider. you hadn't pressed charges against him after the incident, but this was satisfying enough.

you owed your life to matt murdock. you knew that. he jumped in at the last second, after having tracked dex across the city that night, and got the gun away from dex, away from you, and away from harm.

yet for some reason, when you really thought back to that moment, you couldn't shake the feeling that you weren't in any mortal danger in dex's hold.

you had put up a good fight — you really had — but he took you down in seconds. despite his hand gripping your throat hard enough to bruise, and the obvious threat of the firearm, there was something akin to curiosity in his eyes when you batted your pretty eyelashes up at him. rays of moonlight peeked through the blinds, casting harsh diagonal lines across his ruggedly handsome face. a face you'd seen a few times on the street or the subway, watching from afar, now that you thought about it. when the initial surprise wore off, you willed your wild heartbeat to slow, but it rejected this request at the starved twinkle in his stunning eyes.

"it's you," you gasped.

you...recognized him? dex short-circuited. his mind spun like a top.

your breath caught as his hold tightened on you. you remember the fear that shocked you at the question of whether he had a finger on the trigger. why even bother asking? the answer was yes, of course.

what you didn't know was that benjamin poindexter was doing his absolute best impression of a person holding it together. you, with your minty breath fanning over him, coming from between your soft, parted lips, with your favorite lip balm on them. he was there to kill you after stalking you for weeks, and now you were there, in his arms, pressed against him and the carpet. he should be pulling the trigger. but here he was, wondering what the lip balm tasted like on your sweet lips. dex let out a measured breath. and was that...desire? just there, in the flecks of green in his eyes?

"'s me," he spoke. you thought his voice would be confident, but it rasped, grating the way a gravel driveway might. desperate.

your fear seeped through you. it only emphasized your intoxicating scent: the salt from the sweat beading on your forehead; the layered notes of your perfume; the pheromones stirring beneath your soft skin. the fear mixed slowly with shame as you found your eyes flickering down to his lips.

dex inhaled sharply, tracking your movements. he should just do it. it's simple. pull the fucking trigger and be done with the mission, dex.

you made the situation oh-so-much worse when you drew one of your full lips between your teeth. he took a ragged breath and tried not to calculate the exact distance between your bodies: mere millimeters, if that. everything about you was warm and intoxicating. when was the last time dex was warm? he got lightheaded at the thought.

"what's your name?" you ask, voice shaking, not at all expecting an answer.

a beat passed as he considered you the way a predator would. a dangerous gleam reflected in his his haunting gaze.

"dex."

"you've been watching me," you realized.

"i have," dex answered steadily, carefully, like he was walking on eggshells, terrified of saying the wrong thing. as if this entire ordeal wasn't way past "the wrong thing" at this point.

"you're here to kill me."

"i am," he answered with that same guilty calm. he wouldn't meet your eye, but studied your face.

your stomach churned. you knew your work would get you in this type of trouble someday. you pissed off wilson fisk? this is what you got.

the clock on your night stand ticked the seconds away. otherwise, the charged silence and dex's clean, musky scent in the room suffocated everything else. this stranger was here to kill you and yet, his brows were pulled together, forming a crease on his forehead, like he was reconsidering. you were floored by the overwhelming urge to kiss him on the wrinkled, slightly damp skin...god, you were sick for that, right?

dex warily watched you swallow. he was nearly vibrating with the need to let out a single one of the tormenting emotions he was feeling, especially with how things were now that julie had left. the buzzing in his brain was building. he felt like a dog about to whine, begging to be pet.

without making any sudden movements, you engaged your core and lifted your hips just so, to grind with him gently. his eyes nearly bulged out of his skull, cheeks turning pink when he couldn't stifle the erotic moan that you pulled from him. the barrel of the gun had nodded off, no longer pressed directly to your skull. you grinned wickedly.

"already, baby?" you teased, of course, referring to the quivering erection dex was sporting.

for the life of him, he didn't know what to do. dex was so mortified, he wanted to crawl inside himself and never show his face ever again. the tips of his ears were a shade of deep maroon. equally shameful was how fucking turned on he was by the whole endeavor, down to simply finding you beautiful in the early days, now to this. it took every ounce of self control in his body to wrestle back his appetites before they slipped free from his grasp.

"fuck you," he spat. anything to cool the burn of your rejection. you brushed it off with a chuckle and it only infuriated him more. the corners of your mouth curved upward in a knowing smirk.

"yeah?" you mocked, tilting your head to the side. "you wanna?"

"knock it off, you fucking brat." dex thrust his hips forward, pinning you both to the floor beneath. he stole the wind from your lungs and tore a moan from deep within your chest. humiliation flared instantly.

and then the motherfucker had the audacity to laugh. your nostrils flared in irritation. "sorry, sweetheart. you make fun of me for getting desperate but i get you down here and its..." he took a grounding breath. "well, it's the pot calling the kettle black, here, angel, isn't it?"

"shut the fuck up," you sighed, digging your fingernails deeper into the jumpsuit fabric covering his bicep as punishment. dex sighed too, trying his damnedest to mirror your movements as to not spook you away. he invited the pain from your nails — found it familiar — as something to tie himself to.

he bound himself to your degrading words. he bound himself to the gasp you let out when he rolled into you again; to the feeling of your warm body against him; to the view of you beneath him. dex felt himself becoming obsessed in real-time. it was intoxicating.

you were dizzy for a similar reason, but you'd never admit it, quite literally with a gun pointed at your head. shame cooked low and slow in your core. you had only intended to tease him, to knock him off his game. never did you think you'd like it. heaven forbid. nor did you think he'd be so responsive and...big against you.

you got the distinct impression that if you were to ask, dex would gladly manhandle you in this position onto the bed. to even consider it was horrible...right? to want it was...

"are you gonna kill me tonight, dex?" your voice was barely above a whisper.

dex groaned like he was in pain, leaning down to nuzzle your cheek. "'m still thinking about it, honey, mkay? it's complicated. just...just let me think a second, hold on."

you nodded fervently. he was weighing his options. at this time, you had to weigh yours, too. was it clinical? to want to fuck your stalker? had to be. he's threatening your life, you fucking idiot.

dex's breath came in hot pants against you, his strong nose pressing into the soft skin of your face. yes, this was reckless. dumb, perhaps. if you didn't have so much damning evidence that he wanted you, maybe you could have just acted like a normal person and cried and begged for your life.

by the time matt — a dear friend — had swooped in and saved the day, you were certain that dex wouldn't kill you. he'd thrown something haphazardly after you once matt got him a safe distance away, but you couldn't tell anyone that, least of all matt. by god, how could you begin to explain?

"no, matt, he wasn't going to kill me. what was he doing here? he was here to kill me. but don't worry! he changed his mind!" is that what your line was?

as for exactly how dex changed his mind, you'd blame it all on the lack of oxygen getting to your brain from being choked.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

years went by and benjamin poindexter wondered if you were the same. he wondered if your smile lines had deepened; if you had changed your hairstyle; if you still smelled like an autumn evening. his leg bounced up and down in anticipation. the bus was nearly there.

calm and collected, dex got off the bus and went into the nearest thrift store he could find. after ditching the prison guard outfit in the nearest garbage bin, dex popped the tags off his new hoodie and sweatpants. thank you, goodwill.

in no time, he was off with a spring in his step, headed uptown to the cafe you spent most of your saturdays in. sometimes when he had a particularly awful saturday, he daydreamt of sitting beside you here.

despite being the most wanted person in new york city, dex passed through midtown without issue, with his head down, weaving in and out of people, like any other annoyed, overstimulated new yorker. because of course it was raining. he'd memorized the map to this cafe so many times that his feet took him there without much thought, even after all this time. the thought brought a rusty smile to his lips.

the cafe sign came into view and dex's steps slowed. he clenched his fists repeatedly, trying to keep his breathing steady. he could do this. he could talk to you.

he spotted you instantly: in the back corner as always, nose deep in a book, leg swung over the side of an armchair like a cat. you cradled a mug against your chest, cuddling against its warmth. you looked so cozy. dex let some very specific memories wash over him as he stood there, pretending to read the menu.

"fuck it," he said to himself. dex took a breath and steeled his reinforced spine, eyeing the armchair next to yours. he sat himself in it and grinned wildly at you.

"oh, um, hi," you greeted without looking, a smile on your eternally-pretty face, nose still in your book.

this stranger said your name in a voice that haunted your dreams and you froze. your blood ran cold. your eyes peeked over the edge of your book while your heartbeat was a stereo in your ear, and you met a set of fierce hazel eyes that you'd remembered all too well.

"hear me out," dex begged your name. it was quite the pleasant sound, you had to admit. he must have seen the horror on your face. "jus' wanted to let you know that i'm gonna be coming by tonight at eleven. want to apologize…for what i've done. gonna knock three times on the window, mkay?"

your stomach dropped, and your mug almost did as well.

"w-what?"

"'m home now." ben's cheek scars flexed as he smirked devilishly. "thought i'd come pay you a visit."

"you've already paid me enough visits," you spat with disdain.

"ouch, sweetheart, that hurts," dex softly mocked as he fake-cradled his arm. he leaned in low, lips right next to your ear. "i know you remember what happened last time."

you sat up abruptly, closing your book with a thump. dex caught your drink before it spilled, setting it down on the table beside you gently. you didn't have time to be grateful, instead doing your best not to look panicked to everyone else.

"really not tryna hurt you," he murmured. "i swear."

and with that, dex stood up and strolled to the door, exiting left and disappearing into the manhattan crowd outside.

by the time eleven o'clock had rolled around, your stomach was in anxious knots. you picked at the skin by your fingernails as you tried anything and everything to distract you: your favorite TV show, that book from earlier, etc. none of it could keep your mind from racing.

could you trust his word? probably not.

but something about the earnestness in his eyes was haunting. and he had chosen to spare your life before.

you were not entirely surprised when the tri-knock came at exactly 11:00:00 PM. it was your bedroom window, as you knew it would be. the same one he used to break into your home the night he tried to kill you all those years ago. the knock sent a thrill down your spine. you were frozen in place by it and its implications.

only after you took a shaky breath, and dex knocked thrice again, you scurried over to the window to unlock it. dex stepped into your bedroom and exhaled, smiling. he caught your watchful eye and clamped down his slight display of emotion. but he had to admit that it was nice to be back here again, surrounded by you.

shutting the window and blinds, you sat on your bed criss-cross applesauce, and so dex did the same beside you. your posture was razor-straight, rigid. he liked that about you. among many other things, now that he let his gaze drift over you.

he met your glare. "i'm so sorry…for trying to kill you. fisk made me."

your jaw dropped. "that's it?"

dex straightened, adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. your hand landed on his knee. "w-what are you doing?"

you chuckled, inching closer to him with your hand resting softly on his thigh now. "i think i deserve a better apology than that, benjamin."

"you want me to beg?" dex asked lowly, pressing his nose to your neck, inhaling your perfume. part of you ached at the thought. "i'll beg for you, baby. i'll do anything for you."

your fingers gripped his thigh with authority, or maybe it was desperation. "tell me how sorry you are."

"fuck," dex panted. "'m so sorry, sweetheart, i never really wanted to hurt you. you're so good. too good for me."

"you purposely missed at the end — when you threw those pens — didn't you?"

a smirk slid across his pink lips. "i plead the fifth."

you laughed. you actually belly-laughed, and knowing he'd been the source, seeing the twinkle in your eye, ben poindexter could die a happy man.

"just wish i could make it up to you," he whispered, eyes pleading, like a sad retriever.

"dex—" you inhaled sharply when his lips gently attached to the delicate spot of your neck and began suckling. on instinct, your hand on his thigh began to move higher and desire began to pool in your core. dex swatted your hand away and moved to lay between your legs.

your mind was spinning with the wrongness of it all. never mind if he hadn't wanted to hurt you, what about all of the other things he'd done? what about—

dex's quest began with taking off your fuzzy socks and sensually kissing up the insides of your calves. you could think of nothing else with his lips on your skin, leaving trails of fire in his wake. he relished in the taste of the scented lotions and oils that were part of your nighttime routine — they hadn't changed. he reached your pajama shorts and hesitated, looking up at you.

permission? you could have laughed at the absurdity, but you found yourself nodding with anticipation instead.

dex made quick work of your bottoms, exposing your lower half to the cool air of your room and his greedy gaze. with no time to waste, dex's lips teased your inner thighs and vulva for an unbearably long time before he pressed a sloppy kiss to your leaking pussy. the whine that ripped out of your chest was pornographic in nature, and dex giggled like a kid at christmas.

"yeah, you like that, pretty girl?" he teased, tongue swiping your juices off his lips like it was sacred.

"dex, please," you begged. for friction, for some kind of release, for anything at this point. shame tinted your cheeks a shade darker.

he groaned into your pussy, tongue working on your lips, until he finally paid some mind to your aching clit. you weren't shocked that he found it so easily: he was bullseye after all. but the pleasure from his lips wrapping around it was euphoric. your back arched away from the bed, so dex's arm slid beneath you. a smile touched your lips when you realized this was his attempt at closeness.

"so fucking wet…just for me," dex muttered to himself, possession taking root.

his tongue prodded your clit with perfect precision. oh yes, he noted each and every one of your honeyed sighs and rolling shudders. dex learned your body language so well he had you coming undone on his tongue in seconds. your legs shook as you rode your way through it, moaning and mewling.

dex thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

your fingernails scratched his scalp just right when you ran your fingers through his hair like that. he purred like a cat beneath your touch.

dex left open-mouthed kisses along your sensitive cunt, lazily lapping up your cum. "pussy tastes so good, baby. i knew it would."

you whined at the praise. "yeah? you think about me?"

a wicked grin appeared on his frustratingly handsome features. a thick finger pressed at your entrance. he gazed up at you, light-headed, waiting for your permission again. but you wanted an answer first.

dex whimpered, avoidant. "think about you every fucking day, alright?"

a beat of silence passed between you two.

"you're the only good thing i have."

your heart broke at his admission. there weren't any sort of words to convey what you were feeling. you reached down for him, your kind hand cupping his trembling jaw. you beckoned dex to settle between your legs at eye-level, and you laid a soothing kiss on his horizontal cheek scar.

next, you kissed his swollen lips. they were just as soft as you thought they'd be. he tasted of mint and you. your tongue dipped into his damned mouth and dex moaned as you explored him, grinding his clothed erection into your pussy. you kissed him hungrily, pulling at his hoodie, anything to get him closer.

dex nearly ripped his sweatshirt off, and you decided to take your top off too. he choked on air at the sight of you, eyebrows raised. you tugged his pants down so you were both naked and he could have died on the spot.

"please," he croaked.

"i know, baby," you cooed, cradling his cheek. you brushed your lips over his and he sighed in contentment, gripping your waist for stability. dex sat down, hand held out to you in invitation to join in his lap, and you accepted.

he kissed you like a man starved, with feverish, hungry lips and too much teeth. you didn't mind. he reached down between your bodies once again in question, fingers just barely dancing over your dripping cunt, before you were nodding and dex was slipping them in. the stretch of his calloused digits was delicious. dex's head fell like a dead weight against your neck and laid kisses there.

"f-fuck, dex, just like that, please," you insisted, voice high and sharp.

he had two fingers pumping in you while his ruthless thumb worked your clit, already nearing you to orgasm once more. his fingers curled toward him, reaching that spongy part of your insides. your breath hitched as you clenched tighter on him.

"mm, right there, honey?" he teased, gaining confidence now that your moans had become considerably louder. dex increased the pressure on your clit, drawing flawless circles.

"yes, please!" you were putty in his hands and you both knew it.

he chuckled erotically beneath your earlobe, occasionally biting it. "want me to make you cum again, pretty girl?"

you nodded, embarrassed, chewing your lower lip.

dex tsk-ed in disapproval. "words, baby."

"please make me cum again, dex," you sobbed.

the words made dex pause, bathing in the feeling of being needed, his eyelids fluttering shut in pleasure. he grinned like a maniac against your smooth skin.

"don't worry, doll, i will." he peppered tender kisses to your throat as he resumed fingering you. the relief almost made your knees go out and you subconsciously leaned further into his large frame.

"feels so good," you whispered. "don't stop. please don't stop, oh god."

dex grunted, nodding slightly. he kept his pace, pushing his long fingers in and out as you made a mess all over his hand. it was a mess benjamin poindexter sincerely didn't mind.

"'m gonna…" the muscles in your core pulled taut as orgasm washed over you once again. you collapsed against dex, who caught and cradled you as your legs continued to ruthlessly shake.

"that's it, good girl," he grumbled, planting a kiss on top of your head as you lay on his chest.

it took you a few moments to recover from the aftershocks before you lifted your head enough to catch his eye. your saccharine smile made dex melt on the spot. you traced his jaw absentmindedly, admiring his handsome, scarred face.

"thank you," you said bashfully, smothering your shame by capturing dex's lips in a lingering kiss.

"you are very fucking welcome," dex replied with a laugh, kissing you passionately. his fingers slipped out of you and you took an interrupting sharp breath, wincing slightly. "i know, baby, 'm sorry."

"'s okay," you reassured, readjusting your position on his lap. his erection brushed your soaked core and you both sighed.

dex smirked like the devil, bringing his juicy fingers up to your pouty, puffy lips. you opened wide for him, sucking his digits with hollowed cheeks. you tasted your syrupy coating on him and moaned, looking dex square in the eye as you did so. his mouth fell open as you licked his fingers clean, big eyes staring up at him, straight out of one of his fantasies.

when you were finished, you released him with an exaggerated pop! of your sinful lips. but your mercy ended there as you started to kiss along the side of his neck. dex was lightheaded.

you reached between you and gathered some slick from your pussy onto your fingers, then wrapped them around dex's girthy, veiny cock. he threw his head back and let out a choked moan of your name. he throbbed in your hand, length growing as you stroked him with each flick of your pretty wrist.

but as much fun as it would have been to tease him all night, that wasn't what you wanted right now.

you released your grip, positioning him against your cunt instead. dex couldn't breathe.

"not gonna last long, honey," dex confessed honestly, eyes flickering over you in hunger and insecurity. you nodded in understanding. he was in prison for nearly a decade.

you leaned forward and kissed dex slow and sweet, as you gradually sank onto his length, inch-by-inch. his leaky cock stretched you open to perfection as you swallowed each others' moans.

"hng, fuck, s-sweetheart, so fucking wet 'n tight for me."

you nodded with fervor, whines slipping from your beautiful lips, desperate to please him. "just for you."

dex shuddered, cock throbbing inside you. he wanted to scream that you couldn't just say things like that to someone like him, but he lost the willpower when he bottomed out inside you. your gorgeous eyes rolled back as his tip kissed your cervix. you steadied a warm hand on dex's left cheek and he nuzzled into your touch, as you began to build a fixed rhythm of your hips. his hazel eyes bore into yours with intensity and he rocked his hips against yours in tandem. he truly never wanted to leave this moment.

the only sounds that filled the room were the obscene schlucks of your pussy as you rode dex and the feral moans that the two of you coaxed from each other. your unoccupied hand ended up intertwined with dex's much larger one, fingers interlaced.

he took one of your nipples into his mouth, biting and suckling. the pain-pleasure mix sent a fresh wave of heat down to your core and you moaned uncontrollably with your bottom lip sucked between your teeth. the noise encouraged dex, who was a mess of his own, to continue mouthing at your tits and fucking up into you. his breathing was ragged now, as he snaked his precise fingers down to your clit once more.

"yes!" you whined. "fuck me, baby, please. just like that."

dex grunted. "yeah, you like that, beautiful? like having me deep inside you like that?"

"mhm!"

"mm, 's what i thought. look so pretty taking me nice 'n fucking slutty."

you gasped, preening at his explicit praise. he smiled up at you like you were the sun in the sky, sweat beading on his temple.

the familiar knot of tension in your abdomen was building. you could feel yourself getting wetter, the glide of his cock having so little resistance it should have been blasphemy. dex's cheeks were flushed, his intertwined fingers sweaty, his legs trembling.

you maintained your steady pace, licking a stripe of sweat from the base of his throat to just below his ear. dex whimpered and it's the sexiest sound you'd ever heard.

"f-fuck, baby, 'm close," he warned, trying to compose himself. "pussy just feels t-too fucking good. so fucking good."

"it's okay, dex," you said, laying another sweet kiss to his lips. "it's okay."

and something about your tone of voice, coating the "it's okay"s like honey, told him he was safe in your arms, and sent dex straight over the edge in hysterics. he crashed his lips into yours like a desperate teenager. you found it oddly charming, smiling against him. he moaned pathetically into your mouth, murmuring nonsense praise, while his cum spilled deep into you. his cock pulsed as your overstimulated pussy milked him dry.

your climax hit you violently at the sight of dex's red-rimmed, teary eyes. you wondered just how long his body had been deprived of that. you clung to him, trembling, as you rode out your high, leaving a juicy white ring around his cock that dripped onto his balls below. you were still holding hands — the grip suffocating.

you turned dex's gaze to yours and languidly licked up his tears. it almost made dex cry more — your kindness — but he methodically slowed his breathing with every bit of will power he had. and then you were kissing him and his cock was twitching inside you and he was dizzy all over again, but he was exactly where he wanted to be. his mind was dead silent.

you would figure out the mechanics of this tomorrow. for now, you were falling asleep with dex buried balls-deep inside you.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

a/n: hello again from the ether!! my goodness this was fun to write. sry it took so long to my lovely requester, since i wanted to give it my all, i took my time! i would suck this man dry à la capri sun. like mouth is actively watering. ugh. every day i wake up and thank god for wilson bethel.

i've decided to make this an ethel cain series because i think that fits dex horrifically well sometimes lolll

as always, pls lmk your thoughts! and as always, asks and requests r opennnnn!

xoxo, b

his breathing does falter though, when you tell him "this is gonna sting" moments before pouring antiseptic over his open wounds

instead of flinching at the sharp sting, the only visible reaction from him is a slight tic above his mouth, an almost pleased but still quiet “mmph” sound emanating from his tight lipped smile

dex is in a state of elation as you stitch him up, his stomach progressively pooling up with heat at your proximity, his infatuation for you nearly bursts out from the constraints of his chest as he stares, and on top of it all you continue to rub or pierce at his tender and bruised flesh like you don’t even know what its doing to him

you being the one to inflict pain on him (even if its on accident) never fails to make dex’s mind reel with adrenaline and well… devastating want

the moment your teeth finally rips the thread you were using to stitch his last wound up dex sits up so alarmingly fast, his mouth aiming and landing directly on yours, his filthy hands reaching to lift and sit you between his crassly, almost disrespectfully wide opened legs

he kisses like he's starved for it, grunting against your lips when you squeal at the metallic taste of blood clinging to his mouth, his lips still gnashed open because of the hard blows that were inflicted on his damn pretty face

"dex, your wounds-" you mumble in between wet, messy kisses, feeling kinda angry at him for being so adamant on undoing your hard work "they're gonna split open again if you keep moving like that"

good, dex thinks

i want them too, he laughs outwardly at the continuing thoughts inside his head, the airy and mocking sound exhaled straight into your mouth

he thinks he could keep bleeding if it means he gets to watch you patch him up all over again, maybe he'll slice open new wounds just so it takes you longer to finish, to make the rawness and pain on his skin all the more worse for himself, the thought makes his cock twitch inside his pants

"dex im serious-" you say, but theres a shaky, heated quality to you voice, like the mere taste of him, his mind bending intensity and the feeling of his blood stained chest against your bare palms is easing you slowly into forgetting and dismissing his ‘delicate’ predicament

"i know you are” he says simply, separating from your mouth so he can lift a teasing brow at you, but right away his hands are moving your hips to place you on top of him, aching to feel your heat sitting right over the rough black fabric of his clothed (now painfully hardened) groin, guiding you to wrap your thighs completely around him

when you start to keenly whine in response to the rough, hardened friction dex smiles against your mouth, his teeth clanking into yours, he loves that you’re the one who’s always on the losing side when it comes to this part, that you always fall victim to his dizzying and aggressive pace

he still relishes on you putting up a fight though, he loves the push and pull before you inevitably give in to him like he always does with you

you grab the hair at the back of his head in frustration and pull, making his neck crane backwards until he can no longer access your lips, you do it so abruptly and forcefully its evident that you failed to consider the soreness and tenderness of his muscles

so of course dex hisses at the pain, his mouth still wet with your saliva and his blood, he spits out an aggresive “uungh, f- uck!”

“oh shit! baby- i- im so sorry i didn’t think it would-” you’re quick to mumble out the worried apologies, searching his face frantically, looking for any sign that could indicate you hurt him far beyond what he could tolerate, what he can stand

the truth is, so so far from that actually

You ignore him anyway, because you always do when it’s your apartment and your life, and you can hear him struggling to keep somebody upright. You move down the hall barefoot, the hardwood cool under your feet, and you catch the shape of him in the living room by the dim kitchen light. He’s still in his suit, mask off, shoulders rising and falling too hard. One of his hands is clamped around an arm that doesn’t belong to him, hauling a second man forward like he’s refusing to let him hit the floor.

The second man stumbles, catches himself at the wall with a palm, then tilts his head toward you with a lazy kind of confidence that doesn’t match how unsteady he is. He’s dressed in blue gear that looks expensive and ruined at the same time, and the second his eyes land on you, his mouth curls like he just found something amusing. “Well,” he says, drawing it out like he’s tasting the word. “Hi.”

You stare at him, then back at Matt, and you don’t bother lowering your voice. “Why is there a stranger in my apartment, and why does he look like he crawled out of a fire?”

Matt’s head turns in your direction with that pinpoint focus he always has when he’s tracking your voice. “He’s not a stranger to me,” he says, and you can hear how carefully controlled he’s being. “He’s hurt and I didn’t have another choice.”

Dex laughs under his breath like that’s the funniest thing he’s heard all week. “You make it sound like you rescued a kitten. I’m touched.”

Matt’s grip tightens on Dex’s arm, and Dex hisses like it actually hurts. “Watch your mouth,” Matt snaps, then forces his voice back down when he speaks to you again. “We ran into each other on a call. There was a lab. Something broke. There were… containers.”

“Containers,” you repeat, flat, because it’s absurd and vague and you can see the way Matt’s suit is flecked with something that might be dust or dried chemical residue. “You’re bleeding?”

“I’m fine,” Matt says too fast, which is how you know he isn’t, and his shoulders hunch like he’s bracing against heat or pain. “It’s not bad.”

Dex slides down the wall like he’s trying to sit without admitting he needs to, then he looks at you again with that same sharp interest that makes your skin crawl. His gaze drags, slow and deliberate, from your face to the thin fabric of your nightgown and back up, and he doesn’t even pretend he’s being subtle.

You fold your arms over your chest and let your expression go cold. “Can I help you?”

His smile widens a fraction. “You’re prettier than I pictured.”

Matt’s head snaps toward Dex so sharply it’s almost violent, and for a second you see the exact moment his restraint threatens to split. “Don’t,” Matt says, low and dangerous.

Dex’s eyes flick up, mocking. “Don’t what? Look? Talk? Breathe in her general direction?”

You step closer without thinking, because you hate the way Dex is taking up space in your living room like he belongs here, and you hate even more that Matt is shaking with something that looks like exhaustion mixed with anger. Up close you can see the sweat at Matt’s temples, the damp hair stuck to his forehead, and the way his chest rises like he’s struggling to pull air deep enough.

“Matt,” you say, softer now, because whatever this is, it’s making him feel wrong in his own body. “Talk to me. What happened?”

Matt swallows, and his jaw flexes. “We fought,” he admits, like it costs him to say it with you standing there. “He showed up where he shouldn’t have been. We went through a glass enclosure, and there were test tubes inside it. They shattered.”

Dex shifts, his voice turning conversational like he’s discussing the weather instead of the aftermath of a fight. “You should’ve seen his face when the thing popped. Real dramatic. Whole room went sparkly.”

“You’re enjoying this,” you say, and you don’t bother hiding how much you dislike him.

Dex tips his head. “I enjoy most things.”

Matt exhales through his nose like he’s trying not to say something that would turn this into an even bigger disaster. “There was a chemical. I don’t know what it was. I just know the heat hit fast, and then we both went down for a minute.”

He shifts his grip, reaches into his suit with his free hand, and you instinctively lean forward because the motion looks clumsy, like his hands don’t want to cooperate. When he pulls his fist back out, he’s holding a broken length of glass, the snapped end jagged and cloudy like something coated the inside.

“I kept a piece,” Matt says, and his voice is tight with the kind of practicality that always kicks in when he’s scared. “I didn’t want to leave without something. If we can figure out what it was—”

“Matt,” you cut in, because the glass makes your stomach drop. “Why are you holding that with your bare hand?”

“I’m not cut,” he says, and you can tell he’s telling the truth, because his voice doesn’t hitch the way it does when he lies to you. “It’s not sharp on this end.”

Dex snorts. “Sure. He’s very careful, your boyfriend. Extremely careful. That’s why he dragged his enemy into your apartment at midnight, wearing his murder pajamas.”

Your eyes cut to Dex. “Stop talking.”

Dex’s grin turns delighted. “Aw. You tell him what to do too? That’s cute.”

Matt’s patience finally cracks in a way that has nothing to do with you. He yanks Dex’s arm up, not enough to dislocate anything, but enough to remind Dex who’s stronger, then he shoves him toward the couch with a controlled kind of force. Dex stumbles, catches himself on the back cushion, and laughs again like it’s foreplay.

“Sit,” Matt says, clipped. “And if you say one more thing about her, I’m putting you through the wall.”

Dex settles onto the couch with exaggerated ease, stretching his legs out like he’s in a waiting room. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

Matt turns back to you, and the aggression falls away from his face like it was never there, replaced by something strained and urgent. He holds the broken tube out in your direction, and you take it because you don’t want it in his hand anymore, even though you don’t know what you’re supposed to do with it.

The glass is warm, warmer than it should be, and the cloudy residue inside catches the light faintly. You angle it away from your body on instinct, then look up at Matt. “Okay. You brought me… a dirty shard of a test tube.”

“I know,” Matt says, and he sounds frustrated with himself, like he can hear how ridiculous it is. “I didn’t think. I just—I wanted it here. Safe.”

“You couldn’t have put it in a bag?” you say, and you can’t help it, because your nerves are trying to get relief through sarcasm. “Or a sock? Or literally anything that isn’t my bare hands?”

Matt’s mouth twitches, but it’s not a smile, not really. “I’ll clean up after. I just need you to—” He cuts himself off, breath stuttering like the heat is spiking again. “I need you to help me keep a clear head.”

You don’t say what you’re thinking, which is that he doesn’t look like he has one right now. Instead, you lift your chin toward the bathroom. “Both of you need to change, shower if you can. At least get those suits off, because whatever this was, it’s on you.”

Dex’s voice floats over, bright with amusement. “Oh, yeah. Tell him to take it off.”

Your eyes flick to him again, and you don’t bother masking the disgust. “You can shut up and do as you’re told too.”

Dex raises an eyebrow. “Bossy. I like it.”

Matt takes a step toward him like he’s about to make good on the wall threat, but you touch Matt’s forearm before he can. “Matt,” you say, grounding him, and his head turns back to you immediately. “Bathroom. Now.”

His throat works, and he nods once, sharp and obedient, because he trusts you. “Dex first. I’m not letting him wander.”

Dex pushes himself up with a lazy stretch, then pauses just long enough to look you up and down again, slow as he pleases. “Your nightgown’s a nice touch,” he murmurs.

Matt’s hand shoots out and clamps on Dex’s shoulder, and Dex makes a sound that’s half laugh, half choke. “Move,” Matt growls.

Dex lifts both hands like he’s surrendering, but the grin never leaves. “Okay, okay. Lead the way.”

You step back to give them space, holding the broken glass out away from your body like it’s something that might bite you. Matt herds Dex down the hall, and you watch them disappear into the bathroom, the door shutting with a firm click that sounds like Matt trying to lock his temper away in the same place.

For a second, the apartment is quieter, except for the muffled sound of water turning on and the rough edge of Matt’s breathing bleeding through the door. You look down at the test tube shard in your hand, then at your nightgown, then toward the kitchen where you keep plastic bags and gloves under the sink, and you mutter to yourself because you can’t believe this is your life. “Okay,” you say under your breath, moving toward the kitchen. “Cold water. Towels. Gloves. Something to cool them down. Then we figure out what the hell you two brought home.”

From the bathroom, Dex’s voice carries, too clear, too smug. “So, this is the girlfriend.”

Matt’s reply is low and sharp enough that even through the door you hear the warning. “Don’t.”

Dex laughs again, softer this time, like he’s savoring it. “God, you’re fun.”

You grab a roll of paper towels with one hand, dig for a plastic bag with the other, and you tell yourself you’re not going to let Dex get under your skin, because you’ve dealt with Matt’s stubbornness, his bruises, his secrets, and the way he tries to carry the whole city alone, and you can handle one sarcastic asshole on your couch.

Then the warmth hits you, subtle at first, like your apartment suddenly got too hot even though the thermostat hasn’t changed, and you pause with your fingers still in the cabinet because your skin prickles in a way that makes no sense.

You take a breath, then another, and the air feels thick in your lungs, not choking, just… heavy, like it’s carrying something you didn’t notice before. “Matt,” you call, raising your voice toward the bathroom. “How sure are you that stuff wasn’t airborne?”

There’s a pause, water still running, and then his voice comes back through the door, tight with a kind of grim certainty. “I’m not sure,” he admits. “But I think it was.”

Your stomach drops, and you stare down at the glass shard in your hand like it just turned into a live wire. You shove it carefully into the plastic bag, seal it with shaking fingers, and tell yourself you’re being dramatic, because you’re fine, you’re just warm, it’s probably stress, it’s probably adrenaline—

Except your nightgown suddenly feels too soft and too clingy, and your thighs press together on instinct like you’re trying to get friction from nothing. You swallow hard, forcing your hands to keep moving, forcing your brain to stay on the list of practical tasks you can control.

Cold packs. Water. Clothes. Get them out of the contaminated suits.

You grab two bottles of water from the fridge, then a third, because Dex can suffer but dehydration is still dehydration, and you yank the freezer open for ice packs. The cold air hits your face, and it should feel good, but it only makes the heat under your skin feel sharper by contrast.

You stand there longer than you mean to, letting the freezer’s cold wash over you while your pulse kicks harder for no reason you want to name. Your nipples tighten under the nightgown, your stomach flips, and you force your mouth into a hard line because this cannot be happening, not tonight, not with Dex in your living room and Matt barely holding himself together.

The water shuts off and then there are two sets of footsteps. One steady, one dragging with theatrical exaggeration.

You straighten up, slam the freezer closed, and turn with the water bottles in hand like you’re about to run a triage station, because if you keep moving, you can pretend your body isn’t suddenly acting like you’re the one who came home from a fight covered in whatever the hell was in that lab.

You hand them the water bottles like you’re running a field hospital out of your kitchen, and the second Matt’s fingers brush yours you feel how hot he is, like his skin is holding heat instead of just warming you the way it normally does. Dex takes his bottle without a thank you, of course, twisting the cap with a lazy flick and drinking like he’s trying to look unbothered, even though sweat is still beading at his hairline.

“Sit,” you tell them, nodding toward the couch and the armchair like you’re assigning stations. “Both of you. If either of you falls over, I’m not catching you.”

“I’m not going to fall,” Matt says, and he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as you. He’s in a dark t-shirt and sweatpants now, hair damp from the quick rinse, suit shoved somewhere in the bathroom, and he’s still breathing like his lungs are running behind his body. He stands there for a second, head slightly tilted, listening to the room like he’s trying to find the chemical in the air by sound alone.

Dex drops onto the couch and sprawls like he lives there, one arm slung over the back cushion. Matt doesn’t sit, not yet, and you can tell he’s vibrating with it, the need to keep moving, to keep control, to not let his body win.

“You said you don’t know what it was,” you say, and you keep your voice even because if you let yourself sound scared, you’ll make Matt spiral. “Did you see labels? Any markings? Anything at all?”

Dex snorts into his water bottle. “He didn’t see shit.”

Matt’s jaw tightens hard enough that you can see it. “There were racks. Glass. It was like a display enclosure more than storage. Maybe a demonstration.” He pauses, then adds like he hates the words, “there was a sweet smell. Like… hot metal and sugar.”

“That’s helpful,” you say automatically, even though it isn’t, and you can feel your own skin prickling again, that wrong warmth spreading across your chest and down your stomach. You shift your weight, trying to ignore it, trying to treat it like the apartment just got stuffy because two overheated men dragged themselves in and your adrenaline is still high.

Dex’s gaze drifts to you again, and this time it lingers longer, sharper. “You’re sweating,” he says, like it’s an observation and a victory at the same time.

“I’m fine,” you snap without thinking, and it comes out too fast, too defensive, which is annoying because it makes it sound like you aren’t fine.

Matt’s head turns toward you immediately, and his voice drops into that careful calm he uses when he’s trying not to panic. “You’re sweating?”

“Matt,” you say, trying to laugh it off, but it sounds thin. “It’s late, my boyfriend came home half-dead with a lunatic, I’m running on caffeine and anxiety. I’m allowed to sweat.”

Dex’s mouth curls. “He’s not your boyfriend right now. He’s a furnace.”

“Okay,” you say, too bright, already done with him. You point toward the hallway. “No more commentary from the peanut gallery. You’re sitting there, you’re drinking water, and you’re shutting up.”

Dex lifts his hands in fake surrender again, then settles back with an obnoxiously pleased look on his face. “Yes, ma’am.”

Matt finally lowers himself into the armchair, but he doesn’t relax into it. His hands stay on his thighs like he’s bracing, and when he exhales it’s rough, like the air drags. You set the ice packs on the coffee table and slide one toward him, and another toward Dex, trying to keep this practical because practical means you’re not thinking about the heat crawling under your nightgown.

“Put those on your neck,” you tell them. “Or your wrists. Something.”

Dex picks his up, presses it to his throat, and groans like he’s being dramatic on purpose. “Oh, that’s nice.”

Matt takes his, but he doesn’t immediately put it on. He lifts it, then pauses like he’s listening again, and his head tilts toward you in a way that makes your stomach drop because he’s noticed something, and Matt noticing something is never casual. “You’re breathing differently,” he says.

You stare at him. “What?”

“You’re breathing differently,” he repeats, steady, like he’s trying to keep it neutral. “It’s… faster.”

Dex’s eyes flick between you and Matt, and his smile turns sharp, like he’s watching a show start. “Uh-oh.”

“I’m fine,” you insist again, and you hate how your voice shakes at the end, because it makes Matt’s posture go even tighter.

Matt’s hands curl around the ice pack, and he forces himself to stay seated. “Tell me if you feel anything,” he says, and there’s a hard edge beneath the calm. “If it’s airborne, you’re exposed too.”

“I know,” you say, and you hate that the admission makes the warmth in your body flare like it’s responding to being acknowledged. You swallow and shift again, rubbing your thighs together without meaning to, then stopping when you realize you did it. “I’m going to look it up. Something has to match those symptoms.”

Dex’s gaze drops to your legs like he’s cataloging the movement, and your cheeks go hot in a way that isn’t just temperature. You pick up your phone before you can think too hard about that, because thinking too hard about Dex watching you is a problem you don’t want tonight.

You walk into the kitchen with your phone in hand, because if you stay in the living room with both of them staring at you in different ways, you’re going to lose your mind. You type fast, thumbs slipping a little because your hands feel clammy.

You stare at the results like they’re in another language, and you scroll anyway, because you’re stubborn and you need something concrete. Your mind keeps snagging on the words sweet smell, heat, exposure, and every time you try to force it back onto “poison” or “irritant” your body does something else entirely, like it’s dragging you toward a different conclusion. Your nipples ache against the thin fabric of your nightgown, your stomach tightens low, and the slick heat between your thighs becomes impossible to pretend is stress.

You type again, more frantic.

Your phone gives you a bunch of useless articles, clickbait and vague warnings and the word aphrodisiac showing up in places that make your pulse jump. You read half a sentence, then realize you’re not reading at all because the heat in your body is swallowing your attention. You grip the counter and try to breathe slowly like that will fix it, but the second you inhale, the air feels thick again, and the warmth in your lungs makes your thighs clench.

From the living room, you hear Dex’s voice carrying, casual and taunting. “So, how long you think before she starts climbing you like a tree?”

Matt’s voice is low, dangerous. “Don’t talk about her.”

Dex laughs, and you hate that the sound makes something flutter in your stomach, like your body is reacting to the idea before your brain can slam the door on it. You squeeze your eyes shut and force yourself to think about anything else. Cold water. Ice packs. Gloves. Cleaning supplies. Bag the glass shard. Call someone. Call—

You realize you’re holding your breath, and when you exhale it trembles.

Your nightgown clings to your stomach and thighs, damp where you’re sweating, and the sensation is suddenly unbearable, too soft, too much. You tug at the fabric like it’s suffocating you, then stop because your hands shake, and you’re not sure if it’s fear or need. Your phone is still in your hand, screen glowing with the word arousal, and you want to throw it across the room.

Instead, you set it down on the counter, hard, like you can punish it into giving you a better answer. “Okay,” you mutter to yourself, voice tight. “Okay. I’m not doing this. I’m not—”

You walk out of the kitchen, meaning to go back to the living room, meaning to keep control of the situation, meaning to tell Matt what you found and keep Dex from running his mouth. Halfway down the hall, the heat spikes again, sharper, and you stop like you ran into a wall.

Your skin feels too sensitive, like every brush of air is a touch. Your panties suddenly feel like a cruel joke, a thin strip of fabric that’s rubbing exactly where you can’t stand it, and you press your thighs together hard enough that it almost hurts. You try to keep walking, you really do, but your knees go a little weak and your breath catches, and you end up turning into the bedroom without making the decision out loud.

The room is dim and familiar and smells like you and Matt, clean sheets and laundry detergent and something warm underneath, and that makes it worse, because it makes the need feel safe enough to bloom.

You shut the door halfway behind you, not all the way because you don’t want to look suspicious, and you stand against the wall with your back against it like you’re steadying yourself. Your nightgown rides up when you shift, and the cool air hits your thighs, and your body reacts so hard you actually gasp.

“Fuck,” you whisper.

You try to be rational again, you try to talk yourself down like you’ve never been turned on before in your life, like this is just horny and not chemical and not dangerous. You tell yourself you can take a cold shower, you can drink water, you can breathe it out, and then your fingers slide under the hem of your nightgown anyway, because your body is done waiting for your permission.

Your hand slips into your panties, and the second your fingertips find your slick pussy you go still, eyes squeezed shut, because the relief is immediate and dizzying. You bite your lip hard enough to sting, because the sound that wants to come out of you is not something you can let Dex hear from your bedroom, not when he’s sitting on your couch like a smug parasite.

You circle your clit carefully at first, trying to keep it quiet, trying to keep it controlled, and it doesn’t work. Your hips rock into your hand without you telling them to, and the wet sound of your fingers moving makes your cheeks burn. You press your head against the wall, breathing through your nose, trying to keep your mouth shut, but the heat keeps climbing, building like pressure under your skin.

“Come on,” you whisper to yourself, harsh and frustrated, like you can bully your body into settling down. “Just—just calm down.”

You don’t calm down. Your fingers slide lower, two of them pushing into your cunt with a slow, shaking thrust, and you have to clamp your other hand over your mouth momentarily because the moan nearly spills out anyway. The stretch makes your stomach flip, makes your thighs tremble, and you can’t decide which is worse: the relief or the fact that it’s making you want more instead of fixing anything.

You pull your fingers out, then push them back in again, deeper this time, and your knees flex like you’re about to sink to the floor. You grip the fabric of your nightgown at your waist with your free hand, bunching it up so you can spread your legs wider, because you’re chasing friction now, chasing anything that makes the burning need feel like it has a direction.

The thought of Matt flashes through your head, automatic, grounding and devastating. Matt’s hands. Matt’s mouth. Matt’s voice telling you what to do when you can’t think straight.

Then Dex’s voice flashes too, the way he looked at you, the way he said you’re sweating, the way he keeps pressing at Matt like he wants a reaction. The idea of Dex hearing you through the wall makes your stomach clench again, and it’s not all disgust, and that realization pisses you off so much that you shove your fingers in deeper like you can punish yourself back into sense.

You’re panting now, sweat slick on your back, nightgown twisted up around your ribs, and you can’t get enough air. Your clit throbs under your thumb, oversensitive, and you move faster even though you’re trying not to. The sound of your own wetness fills your ears, and you tilt your head back like you’re trying to keep your mouth away from the urge to moan.

From the living room, you hear a muffled sound, probably Dex shifting, maybe Matt saying something sharp, and you freeze for half a second, panic jolting through you. You listen hard, holding your breath, fingers still buried in your cunt.

No footsteps yet.

You swallow, shaky, and start moving again because stopping feels like dying. You bite your lip again, harder, and the sting makes your eyes water, but it keeps you quiet. Your body builds toward the edge anyway, tightening and tightening until it feels like your skin is going to split open with it.

“Fuck,” you breathe, almost silent, and you chase the pressure harder because you need it to break. Right as you feel your orgasm start to crest, the sound of footsteps hits the hallway, steady and purposeful, and your whole body jolts like you’ve been caught doing something criminal.

Matt’s footsteps.

They’re careful, controlled, and they stop outside your bedroom door for half a beat like he’s listening, like he already knows exactly what you’re doing, because he always knows. Matt’s footsteps stay outside the door for a beat too long, and you can feel him there the way you always can when he’s focused, like the air in the room shifts around his attention. You freeze with your hand still in your panties, fingers slick, thighs trembling, breath coming in shallow, broken pulls that you’re trying to force quieter.

The door nudges open, not hard, just enough that it moves on its hinges with a soft click, and Matt’s voice follows immediately, low and careful like he’s holding himself back by the teeth. “Sweetheart… are you okay?”

You swallow, throat tight, and you try to make your face normal even though you can’t stop shaking. Your fingers twitch against your cunt, and the tiny movement shoots a hot jolt straight up your spine. “Yeah,” you say too fast, and it comes out wrecked anyway, breathy and cracked like you’re already begging. “I’m fine. I just—I’m hot. I’m just—”

Matt steps in and closes the door behind him with the gentlest touch, like he doesn’t want the sound to carry, and then he stops again, head tilted, listening to you the way he listens to everything. You know he can hear your pulse slamming in your throat, can hear how wet you are, can hear the way you’re trying to keep your breathing from turning into moans.

“You’re not fine,” he says, and it isn’t accusing, it’s steady, like he’s naming a fact. “Talk to me.”

You laugh once, short and sharp, because it’s either that or cry. “I tried to look it up. I tried to be normal about it. I—” You cut yourself off when your hips rock into your own hand again, helpless, and your eyes squeeze shut. “Matt, I can’t—I can’t think.”

He crosses the room fast, but not frantic, and the difference matters because it’s Matt; even when he’s losing control, he tries to make you feel safe first. His hand finds your wrist unerringly, gentle but firm, stopping your movement for a second, not taking it away, just holding you still long enough that you have to breathe.

“Hey,” he murmurs, closer now, and his other hand cups your jaw, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth like he’s checking if you’re real. “Look at me.”

You do, because you always do, and the sight of him in the dim light makes something inside you twist. He looks wrecked too, sweat still at his temples, hair damp, t-shirt clinging to his chest, and his mouth is set in this tight line like he’s trying to be your anchor while his own body is on fire.

“You don’t have to lie,” he says softly, and his thumb drags across your lower lip, slow and grounding. “Do you want help?”

Your throat bobs, and you try to answer like a normal person instead of somebody with their panties soaked through, but it comes out raw. “Yes.”

Matt doesn’t move right away. He holds your face, keeps his thumb at your lip like he’s keeping you from spinning out, and his voice drops even lower. “Say it again.”

Your breath shudders, and you nod even though you know he doesn’t need the nod, he needs the words. “Yes, Matt. I want help.”

His jaw flexes. His shoulders rise and fall once like he’s pulling himself together on purpose, and then he asks you the question that always matters more than anything else, even now, even like this. “Tell me what you want,” he says, and his voice is steady enough that it makes your eyes sting. “Use words.”

You wet your lips, and your cheeks burn because it feels too explicit to say out loud when he can already hear it, when he already knows, but he makes you do it anyway because that’s how he keeps you safe in the middle of chaos. “I want your fingers,” you manage, breath shaking. “I want you to make it stop—or make it better, I don’t know, just… please.”

Matt makes a sound in the back of his throat like the words hit him in the gut, and then his grip on your wrist loosens. He slides your hand out of your panties and brings it up, pressing your slick fingers to his mouth in a way that makes your stomach flip so hard you almost lose your balance.

He kisses your fingertips, slow and wet, and then he licks them, once, deliberate, like he’s tasting exactly what you need. His breath is hot against your skin, and he exhales through his nose like it hurts. “Okay,” he says against your fingers, voice rougher now. “I’ve got you.”

You barely have time to nod before his hand replaces yours, sliding down into your panties like he belongs there, like he owns the space because you gave it to him. He moves slow at first, two fingers brushing through your wetness, spreading it, teasing your entrance like he’s forcing himself to be careful even though your hips buck toward him immediately.

“Fuck,” you whisper, and it’s tiny, but Matt hears it anyway. His mouth finds yours, messy and hungry, like he’s starving and trying not to scare you with it. The kiss turns into something hot and open-mouthed almost instantly, your lips parting because you can’t do anything else, your hands grabbing at his shoulders to keep yourself upright.

Matt’s fingers sink into you, steady and deep, curling just right, and you make a strangled sound into his mouth because it’s too much relief and not enough at the same time. He keeps kissing you like he’s trying to swallow your noises, and the way he breathes tells you his control is fraying too, his exhale stuttering against your cheek.

“Good,” he murmurs, pulling back just enough to speak, then kissing you again before you can answer. “That’s it. Let me.”

You whine, hips chasing his hand, and your back hits the wall harder as you try to grind into him. Matt adjusts instantly, stepping closer, pinning you with his body without crushing you, and it’s the best kind of pressure because it keeps you from sliding apart.

Your hands are everywhere, grabbing at him like you need proof he’s here, and then your palms find the front of his sweatpants and you can feel him through them, hard and thick, and it makes you gasp into his mouth.

“Matt,” you breathe, half warning, half plea, and you rub him without thinking, dragging your hand over his cock through the fabric because the friction makes your whole body light up. He shudders, and his fingers thrust deeper like his restraint slipped a notch.

He breaks the kiss just long enough to press his forehead to yours, breathing hard enough that you feel it. “Jesus,” he mutters, and it’s the closest you’ve ever heard him come to sounding undone. “You’re soaked.”

“I can’t—” you start, and your voice breaks when his thumb finds your clit and presses in firm, circling just right. “I can’t, I’m gonna—”

“Go on,” Matt says, and his tone turns quietly possessive, not harsh, just certain. “Come for me.”

Your body snaps tight, knees shaking, and you clamp a hand over your mouth too late because the sound still leaks, broken and desperate. You grind into his hand, rubbing his cock harder because you can’t help it, and Matt’s breath turns ragged as he holds you steady and keeps working you through it.

You come fast, like your body was right at the edge already and he just pushed you over, shaking so hard your shoulders hit the wall again. Your cunt pulses around his fingers, wet and tight, and you moan his name into your palm like it’s a prayer and a plea all at once.

Matt doesn’t stop when you finish. He slows down, but he keeps moving, stroking you through the aftershocks with a tenderness that’s almost cruel because it drags the sensation out until you’re trembling and oversensitive, hips twitching away and then back again because you don’t want it to end.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, mouth at your cheek, kissing the corner of your jaw, then the side of your throat. “That’s my girl. Breathe.”

You try to, but every breath comes out shaky, and you can feel him shaking too. His chest rises hard against yours, his heart hammering so loud you can feel it through the thin fabric of his shirt, and his hand at your clit presses a little firmer like he’s fighting his own need by pouring it into you instead.

“Matt,” you whisper, voice ruined, and you tug him closer by the shirt like you need him to anchor you. “You’re… you’re not okay either.”

“I’m fine,” he lies automatically, and then exhales like he hates himself for it. His thumb keeps circling your clit, his fingers still inside you, and his hips jerk once when you brush his cock again through his sweats. “I’m managing.”

“You’re breathing like you ran a marathon,” you say, a shaky attempt at normal that falls apart when his hand hits a spot inside you that makes your eyes roll back. “And you’re hard.”

Matt lets out a rough laugh that doesn’t sound amused. “Yeah,” he admits, and his voice goes lower, tighter. “I noticed.”

You slide your hand over him again, slower this time, feeling the heat of him through the fabric, and Matt’s fingers stutter inside you like he lost the rhythm for a second. He pulls his mouth away from yours just enough to speak, and the words come out controlled only by force.

“Tell me you want me to keep going,” he says, because even now he needs it said. “Tell me.”

Your stomach flips, your cunt clenches around his fingers, and you nod too hard before you remember he wants words.

“I want you to keep going,” you say, breathless and shameless. “Don’t stop. Please, Matt, don’t stop.”

His hand flexes inside you again, and you feel him shudder against you like the fever is chewing through his restraint. He kisses you hard, messy, and keeps fingering you like he’s trying to chase the chemical out of both your bodies one orgasm at a time, even though you can hear it in his breath that he’s right on the edge of losing control too.

“You guys gonna do that all night, or are we sharing?”

Dex’s voice carries through the door like he’s leaning right up against it, like he wants you to know he’s listening on purpose, and it makes your whole body clench around Matt’s fingers.

Matt doesn’t flinch the way a normal person would. He goes still in that specific way he does when he’s deciding whether to be a man or a weapon, and his hand doesn’t stop moving even while his head turns toward the sound like he can see Dex perfectly through the wood. “Get out,” Matt says, and his voice is calm enough to be terrifying.

The doorknob turns anyway, and then the door opens just enough for light from the hallway to cut across the room, and Dex fills the gap with a grin and a body language that screams entitlement. He’s in Matt’s clothes like it’s a joke he’s telling with his whole presence, sweat darkening the collar of the t-shirt, hair damp, cheeks flushed. His eyes flick right to Matt’s hand between your thighs, then slide up your body, lingering on your bunched nightgown and your bare legs like he’s taking inventory.

“Wow,” Dex drawls. “And here I was thinking we were gonna be civilized about it.”

Matt’s hand tightens at your jaw, thumb still at your lip like he’s anchoring you there, and his other hand stays inside your panties like it belongs. “I said get out,” he repeats, and it’s not louder, it’s just sharper.

Dex leans on the doorframe like he lives there, like this is his apartment too and he’s just wandered into the room for a snack. “What, you gonna hit me? You gonna throw me out with your big righteousness routine?”

“Dex,” Matt says, and the warning in his tone is the same one you’ve heard on rooftops when he’s cornered someone and hasn’t decided yet how merciful he’s feeling. “Leave.”

You should say it—you should tell Dex to fuck off. You should tell Matt to shut the door, lock it, and keep taking care of you like he was. You can feel your body screaming for that simple outcome, begging for just Matt’s hand and his mouth and no complications.

Instead you hear yourself say, breathless and wrecked, “don’t leave.”

The words hang in the air for a beat, and it’s so quiet you can hear your own pulse thundering. Matt freezes like somebody stabbed him with the sentence, and Dex’s expression changes instantly, the grin turning sharp and delighted like you just handed him a key.

Matt’s head turns back to you, and his thumb presses at your lower lip, a soft demand. “Sweetheart,” he says carefully, “tell me what you mean.”

Your throat works, and your cheeks burn because you know how it sounds, you know how this looks, you know you’re standing here with Matt’s fingers inside you and your panties soaked and your nightgown twisted up like you got caught doing something you shouldn’t. You still say it anyway because the heat in your body doesn’t care about dignity, and because Matt asked you for words.

“I mean,” you manage, voice shaking, “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to stop. I don’t want him—” You swallow hard, and your hips twitch against Matt’s hand like your body is trying to talk for you. “I don’t want him to leave either.”

Matt’s jaw flexes, and his fingers don’t move for a second, like he’s forcing himself to prioritize the conversation over the way you’re clenching around him, and then he speaks like he’s laying down law in his own bedroom.

“You don’t touch her,” Matt says to Dex, voice flat. “You don’t come near her unless she says so again while you’re standing right here and I can hear her say it. You understand me?”

Dex’s smile turns almost polite, which is somehow worse. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Consent. Boundaries. Gold star, counselor.”

Matt doesn’t look at him, but his hand at your jaw tightens a fraction. “Tell me,” Matt says to you, slow and steady, “if you want him involved right now. Say it clearly.”

Your lungs pull in a shaky breath. You can feel Dex’s eyes on you like a physical pressure, and you can feel Matt’s body heat pressed close, the steady weight of him holding you upright. You don’t want Dex to have power over this, you want it to be yours. You nod, then force the words out because Matt needs the words. “I want him,” you say, and it comes out filthy in a way that makes you shiver. “I want… both of you. I want it to feel good. I want it to stop feeling like I’m gonna crawl out of my skin.”

Matt inhales through his nose, the sound tight. “Okay,” he says, like he’s agreeing to something dangerous because you asked. “Then it happens my way.”

Dex pushes off the doorframe and steps into the room like he’s been invited to a party he already planned to crash. “Your way,” Dex repeats, amused, and his gaze drops again to your thighs, to the wet line at the edge of your panties. “Sure. I’m flexible.”

Matt’s hand slips out of your panties, and you make a small, involuntary sound because the sudden emptiness is almost painful. He immediately replaces it with his palm over your cunt through the fabric, pressing firm enough to keep you from chasing him, and he leans in close to your ear. “We’re moving,” he murmurs. “Bed. Hold onto me.”

You wrap your arms around his shoulders, and Matt lifts you like it’s nothing, like your body is just another thing he knows by weight and balance and memory. He carries you the few steps to the bed, guiding you down onto the mattress with a gentleness that doesn’t match the heat burning through the room. The sheets are cool for half a second before your skin turns them warm.

Dex circles closer, eyes bright. “This is adorable,” he says, and the sarcasm doesn’t hide the hunger in his voice.

“Shut up,” you tell him, and it comes out breathless, half a laugh and half a warning, because your body is already arching for touch again.

Dex’s grin widens. “Yes, ma’am.”

Matt kneels on the bed beside you, then over you, and the way he positions himself is so Matt it almost makes you dizzy. His palm slides up your thigh, fingers splaying like he’s mapping you, grounding you. He hooks a finger under the strap of your nightgown and drags it down your shoulder just to kiss the skin there, slow and possessive, like he’s reminding you whose mouth you’re about to be moaning into.

Dex reaches for you, and Matt catches his wrist without even looking, grip iron. “Ask,” Matt says.

Dex holds your gaze, and his voice drops just enough to feel more real. “Can I?”

You swallow. You’re still trembling, still slick, still aching in a way that feels endless, and you nod once before forcing it into words, because Matt made you do that, and it matters. “Yes,” you say.

Dex exhales like that was the only permission he needed, and then he’s climbing onto the mattress like he belongs there, pushing your knees apart with hands that are firm and unashamed. His grip isn’t rough enough to hurt, but it’s controlling, pinning you open like you’re something he’s been hungry for since the moment he saw you.

“You’re gonna hate how much you like this,” Dex murmurs, and then he tugs once, hard, and your panties tear with a quick rip that makes you gasp.

“Dex!” you start, half shocked, half turned on by the audacity, and Matt’s hand slides up your throat at the same time, not choking, just holding you steady, thumb under your jaw like he’s keeping you anchored in your own body.

“Breathe,” Matt says against your mouth, then kisses you before you can say anything else.

Dex doesn’t waste a second, he grabs your thighs and drags you closer, burying his face between your legs like he’s trying to inhale you. His mouth is hot and wet and mean about it, tongue flattening and pressing hard against your clit like he wants you to break fast. The sound is obscene immediately, loud enough that you jerk and try to clamp your legs shut on instinct.

Dex’s hands tighten on your thighs and hold you open. “Nah,” he mutters into you, voice vibrating against your pussy. “Not running.”

Your back arches off the bed with a strangled noise, and Matt is there instantly, crowding your space above, one hand still at your throat and the other sliding up under your nightgown to cup your breast. His thumb circles your nipple slow at first, then harder when you whimper, and he kisses you like he’s stealing your breath on purpose.

“Put your hand on me,” Matt says, guiding your wrist down to the front of his sweatpants. His cock is hard and heavy under the fabric, and the second your fingers curl around him you moan into Matt’s mouth like you can’t help it. “Slow,” Matt warns, voice rough. “Touch me slow. Keep breathing.”

Dex hears Matt directing you, and he gets worse on purpose. His tongue pushes deeper, his mouth noisier, suction turning brutal on your clit until your hips buck hard enough you nearly slide up the bed. Dex holds you in place like he’s built for restraint, palms on your hips now, fingers digging in just enough to make you feel it.

Matt makes a sound in his throat that you feel against your lips more than you hear, and his hand at your breast squeezes like he’s fighting the urge to grab Dex by the hair and drag him off you. Instead he uses it, and the fact that he uses it makes your stomach flip.

“What do you think it is?” Matt asks, voice low against your mouth.

You try to answer, you really do, but Dex sucks harder on your clit like he’s punishing you for even attempting to talk, and Matt kisses you again like he doesn’t want the words out of you either. You break the kiss with a gasp, trying to speak, and Dex shifts his mouth just enough to drag his tongue along you in a slow, vicious stroke that makes your eyes roll back.

“Matt,” you choke out, voice fractured, “I—I don’t—”

Matt’s thumb presses under your jaw, steadying your head. “Use your words,” he says, and his tone turns gentle in the middle of all this like he’s still your anchor. “Tell me.”

Dex’s mouth goes back to your clit, relentless, and you clutch at Matt’s shoulder and stroke his cock through his sweats harder just to keep yourself from losing it. Matt’s hips jerk once into your hand, and his breath turns ragged, but he doesn’t stop you. He wants you to feel how much you’re getting to him.

You force your eyes open, force your brain to drag itself back from the edge. “It’s—it’s gotta be an aphrodisiac,” you gasp, and Dex growls into your thigh like he approves. “Airborne. It’s—it’s making us… like this.”

Matt hums like he already knew, mouth brushing your cheek. “And?”

You swallow, shaking, because your orgasm is building again, fast and merciless, and Dex is not giving you a single second to calm down. “And I think—” you try, then choke when Dex’s tongue hits exactly right and your whole body jolts. “I think it needs… multiple… releases. To burn off. To… feel normal.”

Dex mutters something into your thigh, words you feel more than hear, and his grip tightens like he’s proud and furious at the same time. Matt’s hand slides from your breast down your stomach, then between your legs, and for a second you think he’s going to push Dex away.

He doesn’t—Matt’s fingers slide into you from above while Dex keeps working your clit, and the double sensation is so sharp you make a broken sound that you can’t hide. Matt’s palm presses to your lower belly like he’s holding you in place, and his other hand returns to your throat, steady, not choking, just making you feel owned and safe in the same breath.

“That’s it,” Matt says, mouth at your ear now, voice so low it feels like a secret. “Let it happen. I’ve got you.”

Dex’s mouth doesn’t let up, and you can’t stop your hips from bucking against him. Your hand clenches around Matt through his sweats, stroking him in short, desperate movements, and Matt’s breath stutters like he’s right there with you, trying to hold control and failing.

You come hard, the orgasm ripping through you so fast your vision goes white at the edges. Your cunt tightens around Matt’s fingers, your thighs shake against Dex’s hands, and the sound that finally comes out of you is loud and wrecked and absolutely not quiet enough for anyone to pretend this isn’t happening.

Matt keeps you steady through it, hand firm at your throat, mouth on yours, kissing you messy while you shake. Dex stays between your legs like he’s starving, licking you through the aftershocks with a stubborn, hungry intensity that makes you twitch and try to squirm away.

“Don’t,” Matt warns softly, and the word isn’t a reprimand, it’s an instruction. “Breathe. Stay with me.”

Dex lifts his head just enough to look up at you, lips wet, chin shining, eyes bright with something sharp and satisfied. He smirks like he’s won a round, then glances toward Matt like he wants a fight. “See?” Dex says, voice rough. “Sharing. We can all be adults about it.”

Matt’s hand tightens on your throat just a fraction, enough that you feel the threat and the control. “Don’t push it,” he says, and the calm in his voice is the kind that makes people smarter.

Dex’s smirk only widens, because of course it does, but Matt doesn’t let Dex’s little victory sit in the air for long. His hand stays firm at your throat as you ride out the aftershocks, thumb resting under your jaw like a reminder that you’re still right here with him, still safe, still his responsibility even when you’re begging for things that make him grit his teeth. “Up,” Matt says, voice low, and his palm slides over your hip, guiding you before your legs can decide to give out. “Come here.”

Dex makes a sound like he wants to argue, like he wants to make a joke about being ordered around in another man’s bedroom, but Matt doesn’t give him the space. Matt doesn’t look at him, he doesn’t have to, and the stillness in his posture makes Dex go quieter in the way predators do when they realize they’re not the only one in the room.

Matt shifts back against the pillows, bracing himself with one hand behind him while the other finds your waist again. He pulls you up by feel, thumbs digging in just enough that it grounds you, and you end up straddling him before you can overthink it. Your nightgown is still bunched up around your hips, your thighs are slick from Dex, your pussy is swollen and oversensitive, and Matt’s sweatpants are a problem you can’t ignore.

Dex stays close, kneeling behind you on the mattress, crowding your back without touching yet, like he’s waiting to see what Matt allows. He’s breathing hard too, the heat in the room making everything feel too close, too intimate, too dangerous.

Matt’s hands map you like he’s memorizing all over again. He starts at your hips, then your waist, then slides up your spine with a slow drag of his fingertips that makes you shiver. He cups the back of your head, and he angles your face down so he can take your mouth the way he wants, slow at first, then deeper when you whimper into him. “Tell me you’re with me,” he murmurs against your lips, and it isn’t poetic, it’s practical. It’s Matt making sure you’re still choosing.

“I’m with you,” you breathe, and your voice shakes because the need keeps pulsing through you like a fever.

“Good,” Matt says, and his thumbs press into your hips, guiding you forward. “Now take it.”

He tugs his sweatpants down just enough, and you do the same motion with clumsy fingers, because your hands don’t feel coordinated anymore. His cock is hot in your palm, heavy and hard, and the second you brush the head you feel him flinch under you like he’s been holding back since the moment he walked into the apartment.

You line yourself up and sink down, slow because your body is already wrecked, but you still gasp when he fills you. Matt’s hands lock in on your hips, steadying you, and he exhales like it hurts and feels good at the same time.

“Fuck,” you whisper, and your forehead drops to his shoulder, because the stretch is perfect and too much, your cunt fluttering around him like it’s trying to pull him deeper.

Matt kisses the side of your head, mouth rough and greedy now that he’s inside you. “That’s it. Slow. Let me feel you.”

You rock your hips on instinct, searching for the angle that makes your nerves light up, and Matt gives it to you without you even having to ask. He shifts his grip, thumbs digging in, guiding you into a steady rhythm, easing you up and down on him like he’s taking control so you don’t have to.

Dex leans closer behind you, breath hot at your ear. “Jesus,” he mutters, voice thick, and you can hear the way he’s trying not to sound needy. “He gets to sit there and you just… slide right onto him.”

Matt’s head turns slightly, attention flicking toward Dex without his face changing. “Keep your mouth under control,” Matt says, quiet and deadly. “Or I’ll remind you whose bed you’re kneeling on.”

Dex lets out a low laugh, but it comes out strained, like the chemical has him by the throat too. “Yeah, yeah. Big scary—”

You gasp because Matt’s hips buck up, suddenly deeper, catching a spot inside you that makes your thighs tremble and your pussy clamp around him. Matt’s hand slides to the back of your neck, guiding you down so he can kiss you again, messy and hungry, like he’s using your mouth to keep himself from snapping at Dex with his fists.

Dex’s fingers sneak around your front like he can’t help himself. His hand slides between your thighs, finding your clit with a practiced ease that makes you jerk. His touch is rougher than Matt’s, more impatient, rubbing hard enough that it makes your nerves spark and your stomach tighten.

“Dex—” you start, voice breaking, and your hips stutter.

Matt’s grip tightens on your hips, keeping you steady on his cock. “Breathe,” he tells you, and he says it like an order because your body needs one. “Stay on me.”

Dex’s fingers keep going, rubbing your clit faster, and he presses his mouth to your shoulder like he wants to bite but settles for breathing you in. “You’re gonna come again,” Dex whispers, too pleased with himself. “You’re gonna come on his cock and he’s gonna feel it, and I’m gonna—”

“Dex,” Matt says, and the warning in his voice makes the air feel sharper.

Dex doesn’t stop, he can’t. He’s too much of a problem, too much of a little shit, and the heat is making him reckless. “What?” he taunts, rubbing your clit harder like he’s trying to make you cry. “You want her to beg? She’s already—”

Matt’s hand slides up from your hip to your jaw, and he tilts your face toward his, kissing you hard enough that it steals your breath. When he pulls back, his voice is low, controlled, and it lands like a line drawn in ink. “Shut him up.”

You blink, dazed, and your lips part on a shaky inhale. “Matt…”

Matt’s thumb presses at your chin, guiding, not forcing, and the look on his face—tight, heated, possessive—makes your whole body clench around him. “If you want him here,” Matt says, “then you listen. Shut him up.”

Dex makes a pleased, ugly sound behind you, like he’s thrilled to be included and furious that it’s on Matt’s terms. “Go on,” Dex murmurs, leaning in closer. “Do what he says.”

You reach back with shaking hands and grab Dex by the collar, yanking him forward. His breath hits your mouth, and then you kiss him, rough and immediate, because you’re too hot for hesitation and because Matt told you to.

Dex melts into it in a way that’s almost shocking, mouth opening for you like he’s starving, kissing you like he wants to prove something with his tongue. There’s anger in it, too, a bitter edge that feels like he’s biting down on his own resentment just to keep kissing you anyway.

Matt fucks up into you while you’re kissing Dex, slow at first, then harder when you whimper into Dex’s mouth. The movement jolts your whole body, makes you cling to Dex’s collar tighter to keep from falling forward, and Matt’s hands keep you anchored on his cock like he refuses to let you slip away into the haze.

Dex’s fingers never stop rubbing your clit. He’s using you and being used at the same time, and you can feel him shaking behind you like he hates how much he wants it.

Matt’s mouth finds your throat, kissing the skin there, and his voice drops against you. “Say it,” he murmurs. “Who do you belong to?”

Dex goes still for half a second behind you, like the words hit him in a place he didn’t want exposed. His kiss turns sharper, almost punishing, like he wants to keep you from answering.

Matt’s hand cups your skull, steady, guiding you through it. “Say it,” he repeats, and it’s quiet, certain.

You pull back just enough to breathe, lips swollen, eyes unfocused. Dex’s hand keeps rubbing your clit like he’s trying to make you forget language entirely, but you force it out anyway because the control in Matt’s voice is grounding in the middle of all this.

“I belong to you,” you gasp, voice wrecked. “Matt. I belong to you.”

Dex shudders behind you like it physically hurts, and the sound he makes is torn between a growl and a laugh. He kisses you again anyway, swallowing the words like he’s furious you said them and even more furious he liked hearing you say them.

Matt’s hips snap up, deeper, harder, and you cry out into Dex’s mouth because the pressure hits perfectly. Your cunt clenches around Matt, slick and tight, and Dex’s fingers press your clit in relentless circles until your nerves feel like they’re sparking.

You break the kiss with a gasp, head falling back onto Dex’s shoulder, and Dex grabs your jaw, possessive and mean, forcing you to look at him while Matt keeps thrusting up into you.

“You hear her?” Dex mutters, voice low and rough. “She said it. She’s yours. Doesn’t mean I can’t make her come, though.”

Matt’s hands clamp on your hips, and he takes control of the pace fully now, rocking up into you in a steady, relentless rhythm that makes your breath stutter. His mouth is at your ear, and you can hear the strain in his control finally cracking.

“That’s it,” Matt murmurs. “Hold on. Don’t you dare stop.”

Dex’s fingers go faster, brutal on your clit, and your body tightens like it’s being drawn into a knot. You grab at Matt’s shoulders, nails digging through his t-shirt, and you feel your orgasm build fast, almost too fast, the chemical making it sharp and unavoidable.

“I’m gonna—” you gasp, and you don’t even finish the sentence because your body does it for you.

You come hard on Matt’s cock, shaking, pussy clenching tight around him, and the way Matt groans is low and wrecked, like your orgasm pulled him right to the edge. Dex’s hand stays on your clit through it, not letting you escape the sensation, and you cry out again, broken and breathy, head tipped back against Dex’s shoulder.

Matt keeps thrusting through your orgasm, chasing his own, breath turning ragged. His hands hold you in place like he refuses to let you slide off him, and his mouth finds your throat, biting lightly, then kissing the spot like an apology he doesn’t have time for.

“Fuck,” Matt groans, and then his whole body tenses under you. His hips snap up once more, deep, and he comes hard, spilling inside you with a rough sound that turns into your name against your skin.

He doesn’t collapse afterward. He stays braced, arms around you, holding you chest-to-chest like he needs to keep you there, keep you claimed, keep you safe while the heat still burns. His breathing is too fast, his hands still tight on you, and you can feel the way his body is already refusing to settle, like one release didn’t fix anything.

Dex’s fingers finally slow on your clit, but he doesn’t pull away. He stays behind you, crowding your back, mouth at your shoulder, and when he speaks his voice is low with something sharp and pleased. “Damn,” Dex murmurs. “He came in you. That’s… cute.”

Matt’s head turns toward him, and the calm in his expression is the kind that makes your skin prickle for a different reason. “Don’t,” Matt says, voice even. “Not right now.”

Dex smiles against your shoulder like he can’t help himself, like he’s already planning the next push, and your body is still too hot, still too needy, still trembling on the edge of another want you haven’t even named yet. Dex’s fingers hook under the hem of your nightgown, and he doesn’t ask permission with words this time because he already did, because you already told him yes, but he still looks at you first anyway, eyes bright and sharp. “Still want it?” he murmurs, voice rough. “Tell me.”

“Yes,” you manage, and it comes out small and wrecked, because you’re still trembling on Matt’s cock and everything feels too sensitive. “I want it.”

Dex yanks the nightgown up and off in one impatient motion, tugging it over your head like it’s in his way, then tosses it somewhere behind him. The air hits your bare skin and you shiver hard, goosebumps rising and then flattening instantly under the heat. Matt’s hands spread over your ribs and stomach like he’s making sure you’re steady, like he’s keeping track of you the way he always does, and then he shifts you carefully off his lap because he isn’t going to let you fall in the middle of this.

“Easy,” Matt murmurs against your jaw, kissing you once, slow and grounding. “I’ve got you.”

Dex doesn’t wait for you to fully settle before he’s pulling you back into him, knees on the mattress behind yours, his chest pressed to your back. He loops an arm around your neck in a headlock hold that’s controlled, not crushing, forearm across your collarbone, hand braced at your shoulder so he can keep you upright and close. The position is meant to make you feel pinned, meant to make you feel owned, and your body answers with a violent clench that makes you gasp.

Matt’s head turns toward the sound immediately, like the gasp is a flare he can’t ignore. His hand slides to your hip and stays there, thumb rubbing slow circles into the skin like a quiet claim. “Breathe,” he says, calm and firm. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

“It’s not,” you breathe, and your voice shakes anyway. “It’s not too much.”

Dex laughs softly against your ear, the sound more bite than humor. “Of course it isn’t,” he murmurs. “You’re fucking soaked.”

He frees himself from his sweatpants with a quick, impatient shove, and you feel the blunt heat of him press against your ass, then slide down between your thighs. The second his cock drags through your slickness, you whimper and your knees flex like you’re going to collapse forward, but Dex tightens his arm and holds you in place. He doesn’t thrust in right away; he grinds against you first, spreading you open, pushing the mess around, making it obscene on purpose, like he needs you to feel exactly what’s still inside you.

“You feel that?” Dex whispers, mouth brushing your ear, and his tone turns mean in a way that makes your stomach flip. “That’s him. Still in you. Still there, even when it’s me.”

Matt’s thumb stops for a second against your hip, then starts again, slow and steady like he refuses to react the way Dex wants. “Dex,” Matt says quietly, warning without raising his voice. “Don’t.”

Dex ignores him, because of course he does, because he can’t help digging for the bruise. He lines himself up and pushes in with one hard, deliberate thrust that knocks the breath out of you. You cry out, sharp and broken, and Dex’s arm around your neck keeps you upright while his hips press tight to your ass, burying himself deep like he’s trying to overwrite what Matt just did.

“Oh, fuck,” you gasp, hands scrabbling for something to hold, and Matt’s hand catches yours immediately, fingers lacing with yours so you don’t have to search. The touch is steady and warm, anchoring you even while your body is being pulled in two directions.

“That’s it,” Matt murmurs, lips near your cheek, voice close enough that you feel the air of it. “Take what you need. Keep breathing.”

Dex starts to move, slow at first, grinding deeper on every thrust, making sure you feel the drag of him against your swollen cunt. The mess inside you turns it slicker, filthier, and you can feel it in the obscene sound of it, the wet slap of his hips against your ass, the way your body takes him like it’s desperate for anything that pushes back against the heat.

Dex’s mouth finds your shoulder and he bites down, not hard enough to break skin, just enough to make you gasp again. “Listen to you,” he mutters, voice low and sharp. “You sound like a fucking slut when you’re full.”

Matt’s hand tightens around yours, and his other hand slides up your side to your jaw, tilting your chin slightly like he’s guiding you back from the edge. “Hey,” Matt says, calm and deadly at the same time. “Watch your mouth.”

Dex’s thrusts get harder, like the warning turned him on or pissed him off or both. He keeps talking anyway, because he wants Matt to hear it, wants Matt to hate it, wants to provoke something ugly. “She’s taking me so fucking easy,” Dex whispers, breath ragged at your ear. “Like she’s made for it. Like she wants it dirty.”

You try to pull air in through your nose, but every time Dex drives into you your breath breaks, the sound spilling out of you in helpless little moans. Your cunt clamps around him, slick and tight, and Dex makes a rough noise like he’s losing control faster than he wants to admit.

Matt doesn’t insult him, he doesn’t even rise to it with words. He corrects Dex with touch, the way he always does when he’s angry and refusing to show it. His fingers slide to your chin and guide your face toward him, and his mouth finds yours in a kiss that’s slow and possessive, claiming without needing to look at Dex at all. His lips are warm, firm, steady, and it makes you melt even while Dex is fucking you hard from behind. “Say my name,” Matt murmurs into your mouth, barely audible. “Let me hear you.”

Dex’s arm around your neck tightens just enough to remind you he’s there, and he thrusts harder like he’s punishing you for obeying. The sensation spikes sharp, makes your eyes flutter shut, makes your pussy clench around him so hard he stutters.

“Matt,” you moan, the name spilling out as a broken sound against Matt’s lips.

Matt kisses you deeper, like he’s swallowing it, like he’s keeping it. “Good,” he murmurs, and his thumb strokes your jawline, calming and possessive all at once. “That’s it.”

Dex makes a furious, ragged sound behind you and snaps his hips faster, chasing his own relief in hard, brutal thrusts. “Say it again,” Dex growls into your shoulder, and you can hear the ugly need in it, like he wants you to say his name and hates that Matt’s making you say something else.

Matt doesn’t change his tone. He doesn’t have to. “Breathe,” he tells you, then kisses your mouth again, slower, and it makes your whole body soften into him even while Dex is trying to wreck you from behind. “Stay with me.”

Dex’s thrusts turn frantic, the heat and the jealousy and the chemical all smashing together into something that makes him reckless. His arm holds you pinned upright, cock driving deep, and the mess inside you makes every shove obscene, slick and loud. Your legs start to tremble, not from fear, but from overload, your cunt tightening and fluttering like it’s trying to drag both men into the same spiral.

Dex bites your shoulder again, harder this time, and you hiss at the sting. “Fuck,” Dex mutters, voice shaking. “You feel so good it makes me fucking mad.”

Matt’s hand slides down to your hip again, thumb rubbing slow circles, calm and steady, and you hate how much you love the contrast. Dex is all sharp edges and spite, Matt is quiet control, and your body is greedy enough to want both.

Dex’s breathing goes ragged, and his thrusts turn brutal for a few seconds like he’s trying to force his orgasm out of himself. He jerks once, then again, hips stuttering, and you feel him go rigid behind you. He clamps his teeth into your shoulder, not as a threat this time but as a way to stop himself from making a sound he’d hate, and his whole body shakes as he comes hard inside you, hot and thick, filling you in messy pulses that make you gasp.

He stays buried for a second, trembling, arm still around your neck, forehead pressed to the side of your head like he can’t pull away yet. Matt’s hand remains on your hip, thumb still moving, and his lips brush your cheek in a kiss that feels like reassurance and possession at the same time.

“That’s it,” Matt murmurs in your ear, steady. “Good. Breathe.”

Dex finally loosens his hold, just enough that you can take a fuller breath, but he doesn’t move away. He’s still behind you, still crowding your back, still panting like he ran a mile. When he lifts his head, his eyes flick to Matt with something sharp and furious, like he hates that Matt is still calm, still in control, still close.

Dex swallows, voice rough and bitter when he finally speaks. “Happy now?” he mutters, not really to you, not really to Matt, just to the room.

Matt’s hand stays on your hip, thumb still moving in slow circles like he’s keeping you anchored while your body tries to float right out of itself. Dex is still inside you, still trembling from his release, still crowding your back like he doesn’t know what to do with the fact that he got what he wanted and it didn’t fix the burn.

Matt shifts first, practical even when he’s wrecked. He eases Dex out of you with a controlled pull of your hips, not yanking, not careless, and you whine at the empty feeling because your cunt is greedy and overstimulated and already angry about losing the pressure. Dex makes a sharp sound behind you, half frustration, half hunger, and he starts to reach like he’s going to drag you back.

“On your back,” Matt tells him, and it’s not a suggestion.

Dex laughs breathlessly, but he listens, because even he can hear the edge in Matt’s voice. He drops onto the pillows with a rough exhale, legs spreading a little like he’s trying to pretend it’s his idea, cock already hard again and shiny with slick. His eyes track you the whole time, bright and feral, like he’s daring either of you to deny him.

Matt guides you forward with both hands on your waist, turning you and pushing you down until your knees sink into the mattress. He nudges you back so you’re over Dex, straddling him, your pussy hovering over his cock. You’re slick enough that the slide of your cunt over him feels obscene even before you take him, wetness smearing over his shaft with every tiny shift.

Dex’s hands clamp onto your hips immediately, grip firm, thumbs digging into the soft skin like he’s marking where you belong right now. “Yeah,” Dex mutters, voice rough. “Right there. Don’t be shy.”

You try to roll your hips, trying to find friction, and Dex helps, guiding you in short, grinding strokes so his cock drags against your clit and the swollen lips of your cunt. You’re not fully taking him yet, just teasing, just rubbing, and it still makes you gasp because everything is too sensitive. Your thighs tremble as the wet, hot slide keeps building pressure that you can’t relieve.

Matt kneels behind you, close enough that you feel his heat at your back before he touches you. His hands land on your hips over Dex’s, and the difference between them makes you shiver. Dex is possessive and impatient, Matt is steady and precise, and you’re trapped between them like a bad decision you can’t stop making.

“Stay right there,” Matt murmurs, mouth brushing your ear. “I’m going to fuck you from behind.”

Your breath stutters, and you nod too fast. “Please,” you whisper, because you’ve lost any ability to pretend you’re in control.

Matt lines himself up behind you, guiding you back onto him. The first press of his cock at your entrance makes your whole body clench, and Dex’s grip tightens like he’s furious that Matt is taking what Dex wants. Matt doesn’t rush. He slides in slow, inch by inch, making you take him fully, making you feel him again after Dex, and the stretch turns sharp and perfect.

“Fuck,” you choke, hands flying to Dex’s chest because you need something to hold. Dex’s skin is hot under your palms, his heartbeat too fast. He glares up at you like he wants to bite, like he wants to pull you down and ruin you, but he stays still because Matt’s hands are on your hips and Matt is in charge.

Matt sinks all the way in and stills for a beat, pressed tight to your ass. He leans forward until his chest meets your back, his mouth at your ear again, voice low and commanding. “Moan my name,” Matt says. “Right there. Into his shoulder.”

You make a helpless sound, and your body obeys before your brain catches up. You lean forward, mouth landing against Dex’s shoulder, and the next breath that leaves you is Matt’s name, broken and desperate like you’re confessing something you can’t take back.

Dex snarls, half-laughing, half-livid. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Matt starts to move, slow at first, deep thrusts that use the angle of your body to hit exactly where you’re already trembling. Every push drives you forward onto Dex, and every pull drags Matt’s cock through your soaked cunt in a way that makes your vision blur.

Dex’s hands squeeze your hips hard enough to bruise later. “You’re using me as furniture,” he growls, then his voice goes strained because the grind of your pussy over his cock is driving him insane. “And it’s—fuck—it’s working.”

Matt leans over you more, pressing his weight into your back, pushing your chest closer to Dex until your back arches. His hands slide from your hips up your sides, then one of them reaches forward and clamps around Dex’s throat. Not choking him out, not cutting off air, just holding him there, forcing him to stay still and feel it.

Dex’s eyes widen, then narrow, the rage and the thrill mixing into something ugly. “Touchy,” he spits, but his cock jumps under you anyway.

“Shut up,” Matt murmurs, calm as sin. “Take it.”

Your hips stop grinding on their own because Matt’s hold and the arch of your back locks you into the position he wants. Now all you can do is take Matt’s thrusts from behind, feel the deep roll of him in your cunt, and feel Dex under you getting more desperate with every movement.

“Matt—” you gasp, cheek pressed to Dex’s shoulder now, lips dragging over the skin because you need something to do with your mouth besides scream.

Matt’s pace picks up, still deep, still controlled, and his breath turns rough against your ear. “Good,” he says, like he’s praising you for falling apart exactly the way he wants. “That’s it. Stay open.”

Dex’s hands shift, one sliding down your thigh like he’s about to pull you down onto him properly, and Matt’s grip at his throat tightens just enough to stop him.

“You get what I give you,” Matt says softly, and it’s the kind of possessive that makes your cunt clench hard around him.

Dex laughs through his teeth, breathless and furious. “You’re insane.”

Matt doesn’t argue, he just fucks you harder, using you like you’re his, and every thrust makes your pussy flutter and drip, wetness smearing over Dex’s cock underneath you. The sound is filthy, slick and loud, and it makes Dex jerk under you like he’s about to lose it again.

Your hand moves between your bodies and you push two fingers into Dex’s mouth, because you need leverage and because the idea hits you like a spark. Dex’s lips part instantly, tongue sliding over your fingers with a hungry, spiteful eagerness. He sucks like he’s trying to prove a point, cheeks hollowing, eyes locked on yours as if daring you to flinch.

You pull your fingers out shining with spit and use it to stroke Dex, slow and cruel, palm sliding down his shaft, thumb smearing over the head. Dex’s head falls back into the pillow with a broken sound, eyes rolling, hands tightening on your hips like he’s trying not to buck.

“Fuck,” Dex breathes. “You’re—you’re doing that on purpose.”

“Yeah,” you manage, voice shaking, because Matt’s cock keeps hitting that spot inside you and you can’t think straight. “Shut up.”

Dex’s gaze snaps back to you, bright and pissed and turned on. He drags you down by the hips just enough to steal your mouth, grabbing your jaw with one hand and forcing a messy tongue kiss that tastes like heat and spit and something too sharp to be sweet. You whimper into it, and the sound gets swallowed between you.

Behind you, Matt’s breath catches like the sight and the sound hits him somewhere deep. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t stop. He keeps fucking you from behind, hand still around Dex’s throat, using the hold to keep Dex right where he wants him while you fall apart on top of him.

“Eyes on me,” Dex mutters against your mouth, possessive and mean.

Matt’s mouth brushes your ear again, and his voice is quieter, steadier, like a blade. “Say my name.”

Your body clenches hard, and the next moan that spills out is Matt’s name again, muffled into Dex’s mouth. Dex shudders like it hurts, like it makes him want to bite, and he kisses you harder anyway. Matt’s thrusts turn relentless, hips snapping in tighter rhythm, and you feel his control thinning. His hand at Dex’s throat tightens, then loosens, then tightens again like he’s gripping the last thread of restraint.

You stroke Dex faster now, spit making it slick, your fist sliding up and down his cock while your cunt takes Matt from behind. Dex’s breath turns ragged, hips twitching under you, and his hands clamp down like he’s trying not to shove you down and take what he wants.

“Jesus—” Dex gasps. “You’re gonna make me—”

“Not yet,” Matt says, and it isn’t loud, but it lands like a command anyway. “Hold it.”

Dex’s eyes flash, furious, and he trembles through it. “Go to hell.”

Matt’s answer is a hard thrust that makes you cry out and clench around him so tight his breath breaks. You feel his cock pulse, feel his whole body go rigid behind you, and then Matt groans low against your back as he comes again, deep and hot, holding you still with both hands while he rides it out. One hand stays on your hip, the other keeps Dex pinned by the throat, and the control in it makes your whole body melt even while you shake.

Matt doesn’t collapse afterward. He stays pressed to you, chest to your back, breathing hard, lips at your shoulder like he needs to keep contact. His grip loosens slowly, like he’s easing himself back from the edge by inches.

“That’s it,” Matt murmurs, voice rough, thumb stroking your hip again. “Breathe. Stay with me.”

Dex is staring up at you like he wants to kill someone and kiss you at the same time, cock twitching in your hand, frustration and need making his jaw clench. He swallows, then drags his thumb across your lower belly like he’s claiming a piece of you he doesn’t have the right to claim.

“You two are disgusting,” Dex mutters.

Dex doesn’t wait for Matt to answer, because Dex isn’t actually asking. He’s already moving, already reaching, already turning that restless, hungry energy into action like he can’t stand sitting in the aftermath for even one more second.

He hooks an arm under your thigh and drags you off him with a sharp pull, flipping you onto your back in one quick motion that knocks the air out of you. The mattress dips hard, sheets bunching under your shoulders, and your head ends up near the edge of the bed, slightly hanging off. Dex climbs over you immediately, sweat shining on his throat, eyes wild and focused like you just became his target.

“You think you’re done?” Dex mutters, and his hands clamp down on your thighs, spreading you open like he owns the right to. “You’re not done. I’m not done.”

Matt is close enough that you can feel him shift, and you can hear his breathing change, sharper, more controlled. He doesn’t grab Dex off you, but his hand lands on your ankle for a second, thumb pressing into your skin like a quiet check-in. It’s Matt’s way of asking without interrupting, and you answer the same way, flexing your foot gently against his touch because you’re too wrecked to form a full sentence without it turning into a moan.

Dex lines himself up and pushes back into you with a rough thrust that makes your whole body jolt. Your cunt takes him easily because you’re soaked and overstimulated, and the obscene slick sound that comes with it makes Dex’s mouth twist like he’s pleased and pissed at the same time.

“Fuck,” you gasp, hands grabbing at his shoulders because you need something to hold while he starts moving. Dex doesn’t build slowly, he drives into you like he’s determined to make you forget how Matt felt, like he’s trying to pound the comparison out of your body with brute force.

Matt moves to your head, not away, not sulking, just repositioning like he’s doing damage control the way he always does. He sits beside you on the bed and cups the side of your face, thumb brushing your cheekbone, then your lower lip. His voice is low and steady, close enough to be private even with Dex right there.

“Breathe,” Matt murmurs. “You’re okay. You tell me if you need anything.”

Dex hears it and gets worse on purpose. He leans down and kisses you mid-thrust, mouth hot and messy, swallowing the sounds you can’t keep back. His tongue pushes in like he’s trying to claim your mouth the same way he’s claiming your cunt, and you whine into it because the pace is brutal and the heat in your blood makes it feel too good.

When Dex pulls back for air, he keeps one hand on your jaw, fingers digging in just enough to make you look at him. “Look at me,” Dex demands, voice rough. “Say it. Say my name.”

Your eyes flutter, unfocused, and you try to glare at him because he’s being an asshole, but your body betrays you immediately. Dex thrusts deep again, hitting a spot that makes your thighs shake, and the sound that breaks out of you is helpless. “Dex,” you gasp, and his grin turns sharp and satisfied like he just scored a hit.

“Again,” he says, and he thrusts harder, making the bed creak, making your breath break. “Come on. Louder. I want him to hear it.”

Matt’s hand slides down to your shoulder, thumb pressing into the muscle like he’s keeping you grounded. He doesn’t argue with Dex, he just stays there, close, letting you hold onto him, letting you decide what comes out of your mouth.

Dex keeps driving into you, rhythm turning relentless, and you grab Matt’s wrist with shaking fingers because you need something solid. Matt’s palm flips and catches your hand, squeezing once, and you feel your stomach flip because even with Dex fucking you like he’s trying to win, Matt’s touch still feels like home.

Dex’s eyes flick to Matt’s hand holding yours, and something mean flashes across his face. He leans down again, kissing you hard, swallowing your moans, then breaks the kiss just to speak right at your mouth. “You like me?” Dex spits, like it’s an insult. “You like how I fuck you? Tell me.”

“Fuck, yes,” you choke out, because you’re too hot to lie and too far gone to be polite. Dex’s thrusts stutter for half a beat like the answer hit him hard, then he snaps back into a faster pace that makes you see stars.

Matt shifts slightly, moving closer to your head, and you turn into him automatically. His mouth brushes your forehead, then the corner of your lips, and you can tell he’s holding his restraint by force, breathing too hard for someone who’s “fine.”

“You can hold onto me,” Matt murmurs, voice rougher now. “Do what you need.”

Dex hears that too, and it makes him furious. He grabs your thigh and hikes it higher over his hip, angling you so he can go deeper, harder. The change punches a sharp moan out of you, and Dex makes a satisfied sound like he’s collecting it. “There,” Dex says, grinning. “There you go. That’s what I want. That’s mine.”

Matt’s thumb slides along your cheek again, and his voice stays calm even if the tension in it is obvious. “Don’t,” he warns quietly, like he’s reminding Dex he’s allowed to be here but not allowed to claim.

Dex doesn’t care, he leans down and kisses you again, filthy and hungry, and the way he thrusts turns almost frantic. He’s chasing something now, not just relief, but proof, and he wants it so badly it’s making him reckless.

Your hand slips down between your bodies, reaching for Dex’s wrist like you’re trying to steady him, and he catches it, pins it above your head with one hand while the other stays on your jaw. You’re spread wide, legs shaking around his hips, pussy clenching and fluttering around him like you’re teetering on the edge of another orgasm you can’t control.

“Say it,” Dex demands again, breath ragged. “Say my name. Please me. Come on.”

“Dex,” you moan, and then it turns into a breathless string of it because he won’t stop hitting that spot. “Dex—fuck—Dex—please—”

Dex’s eyes blow wide, and his mouth twists like he hates how good it feels to hear you beg. He thrusts harder, faster, the slick sound turning obscene, and you feel his control shredding.

Matt’s hand tightens around yours at your side, a steady squeeze that keeps you from floating away completely. He doesn’t interrupt, but his mouth brushes your temple, and his voice is low enough that only you can catch it. “I’m here,” Matt murmurs. “Stay with me.”

Dex’s breath turns jagged, and he makes a harsh sound like a laugh that got twisted into a groan. “Yeah, yeah,” he grits out, then thrusts deep and holds it there, shaking. “Fuck—”

Dex comes hard, angry and shaking, cock pulsing inside you in thick, hot spurts that make your body clench around him. He squeezes your jaw, then releases it like he just realized he was holding too tight, and he drops his forehead to your shoulder with a rough exhale that sounds like he wants to scream and refuses to give anyone the satisfaction.

He stays there for a second, still buried, breathing like he’s furious at his own body. Then he lets out a low, bitter laugh under his breath, the kind that doesn’t sound happy at all. “God,” Dex mutters, voice shaking. “That felt… so fucking good.”

Matt doesn’t let the silence after Dex’s last laugh turn into another round of posturing. He’s breathing hard, his palm still warm against your skin, and you can feel the difference now that the worst of the chemical spike isn’t clawing at your throat anymore. The heat is still there, still sticky under your ribs, but it isn’t as sharp as it was ten minutes ago, and that almost makes it worse because you can think again just enough to realize how fucking wrung out you are.

Dex shifts off you with a rough exhale, rolling onto his side like he’s trying to hide how shaky he feels. He looks at you like he wants to say something clever, something mean, something that puts him back on top of the moment, but the words don’t come as easily now. He settles for a tight smile and a hand on your thigh, thumb pressing into your skin like he’s reminding you he’s still here.

Matt’s voice cuts in, low and steady. “We’re close.”

Dex scoffs, but it’s weak. “Close to what, the end of your little domestic nightmare?”

“Close to it wearing off,” Matt says, and he shifts closer by sound and feel, his hand finding your hip like it always does. His fingers spread, grounding, and his thumb starts that slow circle that’s become the rhythm of the whole night. “You’re not shaking as much. Your breathing’s different.”

You swallow and nod even though he can’t see it, then force the words out because that’s how you’ve stayed sane through all of this. “It’s not gone,” you say, voice raw. “It’s still there. It’s just… not screaming.”

Matt hums once, like he agrees. Dex drags the back of his hand across his mouth, eyes flicking between you and Matt like he’s trying to decide if he hates the idea of it ending more than he hates the fact that Matt’s right about it.

“We finish it,” Matt says, simple as that.

Dex’s smile sharpens. “We?”

Matt turns his head slightly toward him, and even without eye contact it’s obvious who’s in control. “You’ve been in my apartment for hours,” Matt says, tone flat. “You can handle ten more minutes without trying to start a fight.”

Dex opens his mouth and then closes it again, jaw working like he’s biting down on the urge to run it. His gaze drops to you, then to Matt’s hand on you, then back up to your face like he’s looking for the crack he can wedge himself into.

You breathe in, slow, then say it before Dex can poison the moment. “If it’s fading, I want the last part to… end. Like, actually end.”

Matt’s hand slides from your hip up your side, his palm flattening over your stomach for a second like he’s checking you’re steady, then he kisses the corner of your mouth, slow and grounding. “Alright,” Matt says, and his voice drops into that calm command that makes your body settle even while it’s on fire. “Dex. On your back. Head on the pillow. Hands where I can find them.”

Dex stares at him for a beat, then smirks like he’s about to refuse on principle, but he doesn’t. He flops back onto the pillows with exaggerated ease, arms spreading out like he’s presenting himself for inspection, cock already half-hard again and twitching like the chemical is refusing to fully let go. “Bossy,” Dex mutters. “Thought you were the Catholic one.”

Matt’s answer is quiet. “Keep talking and you don’t get anything.”

Dex shuts up immediately, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t also obscene. Matt guides you by your waist, turning you carefully, helping you get your knees under you again because your legs are still shaky from everything. He doesn’t look at Dex to place you, he doesn’t need to; he uses touch the way he always does, hands firm on your hips, moving you inch by inch until you’re positioned over Dex’s face.

Dex’s eyes go bright, and his hands lift like he can’t help himself, then he freezes when Matt’s fingers press into his wrist as a reminder. Dex’s mouth opens slightly, tongue visible, and he looks up at you like he’s about to ruin you just to prove he can. “Sit,” Dex murmurs, voice rough. “C’mon.”

Matt’s hands tighten on your hips. “Slow,” he tells you, close to your ear. “You tell me if you get dizzy. You tell me if you can’t breathe.”

“I can breathe,” you manage, and you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself, because the position alone makes your cunt throb. “I’m good.”

Matt helps you lower, guiding you down until you’re hovering right above Dex’s mouth, then another inch, until Dex’s lips brush your slick skin and you jerk with a gasp. Dex’s hands clamp onto your thighs immediately, holding you open, and he moans into you like he’s been denied air for hours.

“Fuck,” Dex breathes against your pussy, and the vibration makes your thighs tremble. “That’s—yeah. That’s it.”

He starts eating you out like he’s making a point. His tongue is flat and heavy, pressure too much and perfect, and you have to grab Matt’s forearm to keep from collapsing forward. Matt steadies you instantly, one hand on your waist, the other sliding up your back, holding you upright while Dex’s mouth works you open and greedy.

Your head ends up near Dex’s cock, and the sight of it—hard and flushed, twitching—makes your stomach flip. Dex notices, of course he notices, and his fingers squeeze your thighs like he’s trying to keep you exactly where he wants you.

“Go on,” Dex says, voice muffled against your cunt. “Use your mouth.”

You lean forward and wrap your lips around him, and Dex makes a harsh sound that turns into another groan into your pussy. The combination is instantly overwhelming: Dex’s mouth on your clit, your mouth on his cock, and Matt behind you, hands steady on your hips like he’s preparing to do the last thing your body needs to finally stop buzzing.

Matt shifts behind you, and you feel him press in close, his breath hot at your shoulder. His fingers slide down your spine, then to your hips again, and he nudges you forward just enough to get the angle he wants.

“Breathe,” Matt murmurs, and he kisses your shoulder once, slow.

You moan around Dex’s cock, the sound vibrating, and Dex’s hands tighten on your thighs like he’s losing patience. Matt pushes in slowly, stretching you in a way that makes your eyes water, and the moment he’s inside you, the world narrows down to sensation again. It’s not the frantic, desperate edge from earlier; it’s heavy and deep, like you’re so sensitive that every inch feels doubled.

Dex’s tongue goes meaner the second he feels Matt moving inside you. He sucks hard at your clit like he’s trying to pull your orgasm out of you first, like he’s trying to prove he can still win something even in a setup Matt arranged.

You pull off Dex’s cock just long enough to gasp, “fuck—Dex,” then you take him again, because the heat is still there and the only way through it is more. Dex’s cock jerks in your mouth, and his groan turns into another muffled sound against your pussy as he eats you out harder.

Matt sets a pace behind you, steady and controlled. His hands stay on your hips, guiding the motion when your body tries to squirm away from the overstimulation, and every time you wobble, he corrects you with touch instead of words, keeping you upright, keeping you open, keeping you from falling apart too early.

Dex tries to talk again, of course he does, and it comes out broken between breaths. “You taste—fuck—you taste so good,” he mutters against your cunt, loud enough that Matt can hear it. “You’re gonna—yeah, you’re gonna come all over my mouth.”

Matt leans closer and his mouth brushes your ear. “Stay with me,” he says, and his voice is calm even though his thrusts get a little deeper, a little firmer. “Don’t rush it. Let it build.”

Dex’s hands slide up your thighs like he wants to drag you down harder onto his face. Matt’s grip on your hips tightens, and he pushes you down just enough that Dex’s mouth is fully buried, your pussy pressed into his face. Dex groans into you like he’s in heaven and hell at the same time, and the vibration nearly makes you lose your grip on his cock.

You gag slightly when Dex twitches hard in your mouth, and you pull back for air, spit shining on your lips. Matt’s hand slides to the back of your head immediately, not forcing, just guiding, and his voice turns low and firm. “Back on him,” Matt murmurs. “Just like that. Take what you need.”

You do it because you can’t not, because the structure is the only thing keeping you from going dizzy. You take Dex again, sucking him slow and deep, and Dex makes a strangled noise that turns into a growl into your pussy. His tongue keeps working your clit with brutal, perfect pressure, and his fingers dig into your thighs like he’s trying to hold you still while his whole body wants to buck.

Matt’s thrusts deepen, steady and relentless, and the way his cock hits inside you makes your entire body tighten. You moan around Dex’s cock, the sound wet and obscene, and Dex shudders under you like that noise just tipped him closer to the edge.

“Fuck,” Dex gasps into you. “Matt—stop—she’s—”

Matt doesn’t stop, he doesn’t even acknowledge the plea with words. He simply changes the angle, lifting your hips slightly with his hands and driving into you a little harder, and the shift makes Dex choke on a groan because your pussy grinds down on his tongue in a way that feels like punishment and reward at the same time.

You can’t keep quiet anymore. The orgasm builds fast and heavy, not the sharp frantic spike from earlier, but a thick wave that keeps rising, and you’re trapped between them—Matt filling you, Dex swallowing you—until your whole body starts trembling.

“Matt,” you gasp, pulling off Dex’s cock just long enough to say it, voice broken. “I’m gonna—”

“I know,” Matt says immediately, and his voice turns softer even while he keeps thrusting. “Let it happen. Breathe.”

Dex doesn’t give you time to breathe. He sucks hard at your clit like he’s trying to make you black out, and your thighs shake around his head as your orgasm hits. You come hard, cunt clenching around Matt, hips jerking downward onto Dex’s face, and the sound you make is messy and loud and completely uncontrolled.

Matt holds you through it, hands locked on your hips to keep you from collapsing. His thrusts turn shorter and tighter, chasing his own edge as your pussy clamps around him, and you feel him go rigid behind you. His breath breaks against your shoulder, and he groans low as he comes, deep and hot, holding you still while he rides it out.

Dex’s cock twitches in your hand as he hears Matt lose control, and Dex makes a furious, needy sound like he hates that it turns him on. You take him back into your mouth without thinking, sucking him through it, and Dex’s hands squeeze your thighs hard enough to leave marks.

“Don’t stop,” Dex grits out, voice shaking. “Don’t you fucking stop.”

You don’t. You keep sucking him, spit slick, rhythm steady even while your body is still shaking from your orgasm. Dex’s mouth is still on your pussy, tongue slower now but stubborn, like he refuses to give up the contact. The chemical is fading, but Dex is greedy and spiteful and desperate to get his last release before it fully lets him go.

Dex bucks once under you, hard, and Matt’s hands tighten on your hips again to keep you balanced. Dex’s cock throbs in your mouth, and he comes with a rough, broken groan that he tries to swallow, but fails. His orgasm makes him tremble under you, hands clamping down like he’s trying to hold onto something while it slips away.

For a few seconds none of you move. You’re panting, slick, shaking, and the heat in your body finally starts to ebb in a way that feels real, like the pressure is draining out instead of building again.

Matt stays behind you, chest pressed to your back, mouth at your shoulder, breathing hard but slower now. His hands soften on your hips, turning from control into support.

Dex lies under you with his eyes half-lidded, still flushed, lips wet, chin shining, and he looks up at you like he wants to say something cruel just to prove he can. What comes out is a rough exhale and a bitter, shaky laugh. “Holy shit,” Dex mutters, and he sounds like he hates that he means it. “I think it’s actually… wearing off.”

Matt’s hands stay on you for a while after, not gripping anymore, just steadying, like he’s making sure you’re actually present and not drifting. He shifts carefully to get you off Dex, guiding you by the waist and shoulders so you don’t topple on shaky legs. The second your feet touch the floor your knees threaten to give, and Matt catches you like he’s done it a thousand times, one hand at the back of your neck, the other braced at your hip.

“Slow,” Matt murmurs, mouth near your temple. “Breathe for me. In and out, don’t rush it.”

“I’m breathing,” you rasp, then immediately prove you’re not by sucking in a short, shaky inhale that turns into a laugh because it’s either that or cry. Your skin feels too warm, tacky with sweat, and the air in the room feels thick even though the worst of the fever is finally fading.

Matt steers you to the edge of the bed and sits you down, then disappears for a second. You hear the faucet run, cabinets opening, the muted clink of a glass, and then he’s back with water and a cold washcloth. He presses the cloth to the back of your neck first, then your forehead, then your cheeks, gentle and methodical.

“Drink,” he says, and he guides the glass into your hands like he’s worried you’ll spill it.

You take a few sips and immediately realize how dry your throat is. “Jesus,” you mutter, swallowing again. “I feel like I ran a marathon.”

“You kind of did,” Matt says, dry but not teasing. His thumb drags over your pulse point at your wrist in a small check, then his palm settles there like he wants to feel you steady. “Any dizziness? Any nausea?”

“No,” you say, then pause because your stomach flips once as the room tilts slightly. “Okay, maybe a little dizzy.”

Matt’s hand tightens lightly on the back of your neck. “Then you sit,” he says, calm and firm. “You don’t try to be brave right now.”

Across the bed, Dex is quieter than he has been all night, which is almost unsettling. He’s sitting on the floor with his back against the side of the mattress, head tipped back, forearm over his eyes like he’s trying to hide the fact that he needs a minute. His breathing is still too fast, but it’s not frantic anymore, and the sharp edge of him looks blunted, like somebody finally turned the volume down.

He lifts his arm just enough to peer at you and Matt, and even now he can’t help himself. “You always this domesticated?” he asks, voice rough. The line is clearly meant to be snarky, but it lands thin, like he didn’t have the energy to sharpen it.

Matt doesn’t take the bait. He wipes your cheek with the cloth again, then sets it on your shoulder and keeps his hand there. “You’re leaving as soon as you can stand without falling,” he says, like he’s reading a grocery list.

Dex’s mouth quirks. “So romantic.”

“You’re still in my apartment,” Matt replies, and the calm in his voice is the kind that makes the room feel smaller. “Don’t make me regret letting you walk out instead of dragging you.”

Dex’s eyes flick up toward Matt’s face, then down to Matt’s hand on your shoulder like he’s cataloging the claim again, even if he’s too wrung out to argue with it. “Relax,” he mutters. “I’m not staying for brunch.”

You take another sip of water, then set the glass down on the nightstand with a careful clink. Your muscles feel heavy, and your skin feels too sensitive in that post-overload way that makes the idea of putting on clothes feel like work. You grab the sheet and pull it over your lap because you need one normal human action to latch onto. “Okay,” you say, voice steadier now. “We’re not doing the ‘stand around and glare at each other’ thing. We need to clean. We need air. And we need to get rid of anything that might still have that chemical on it.”

Dex makes a noncommittal sound, but he pushes himself upright with a small wince, like his body is protesting. Matt’s head turns toward you immediately, attentive. “You want windows?” Matt asks.

“Yes,” you say. “All of them. Bedroom, living room. And we need trash bags. Gloves. Anything that touched your suits needs to get bagged.”

Matt nods once and stands, moving with that careful efficiency he slips into when he’s trying not to think about what just happened. You hear the bedroom window slide up, then the living room windows. Air drifts in, cool and city-dirty, and it helps. It doesn’t erase the heat in your blood, but it takes the edge off the room.

Dex gets to his feet and stretches like he’s trying to shake out the last of the chemical from his bones. He looks steadier now, but his gaze keeps drifting to you like he’s trying to memorize the situation and file it away for later. You point at him. “Bathroom. Wash your hands. Like, actually wash them.”

Dex’s brows lift. “Bossy.”

“Not negotiable,” you shoot back, and you’re proud your voice doesn’t wobble.

Dex’s smile twitches, then he actually goes, disappearing down the hall. You hear the faucet turn on and, shockingly, soap.

Matt comes back in with trash bags and a roll of paper towels. “I’ll bag the suits,” he says, and you can hear him trying to keep it neutral, trying to turn it into a task so he doesn’t have to sit in the reality of having Dex here at all.

“I’ll wipe down surfaces,” you say, already standing carefully, sheet clutched at your waist. “Coffee table, counters, doorknobs. Anything you two touched.”

Matt’s hand finds your elbow immediately, steadying you without smothering. “If you start to sway, you sit,” he says quietly.

“I will,” you promise, then add, because you know he needs to hear it, “I’m okay.”

He pauses like he’s listening to your heartbeat, then leans in and presses his forehead lightly to yours. “Okay,” he says back, softer than he’s been all night.

You move into the kitchen and find the plastic bag with the broken test tube shard where you left it. Seeing it again makes your stomach tighten, because it’s a stupid little piece of glass that caused all of this, and it feels unreal that it’s still sitting there like any other mess.

Dex comes back from the bathroom wiping his hands on a towel he definitely didn’t ask permission to use. He stops when he sees the bag on the counter, eyes narrowing slightly like his brain is finally catching up to the mission part of the night.

“That the souvenir?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you say, and you keep your tone flat. “And you’re not touching it.”

Dex gives you a look that says he’s annoyed you clocked him so easily. “Wasn’t going to.”

Matt’s voice comes from the hallway, calm and cold. “You were.”

Dex turns his head toward the sound with a sharp little grin. “You can’t prove that.”

Matt doesn’t move closer, doesn’t raise his voice. “Try it,” he says simply.

For a second the room feels like it’s on the edge of snapping again, not chemical this time, just old hatred and pride and the fact that Dex is Dex. You step between it before it can happen, because you’re done with men trying to make your apartment a battleground.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” you say, and you make your voice firm enough that it cuts through both of them. “Dex, you’re leaving. Not later when you feel like it—when you can walk straight, which looks like it’s basically now. You don’t take anything from this apartment. You don’t touch that bag. And you do not come back.”

Dex’s eyes flick to you, then soften into something sharper. “Aw,” he says, quiet and ugly-sweet. “You’re making rules.”

“Yes,” you say. “Because you clearly don’t know how to exist without someone making them for you.”

Dex’s jaw flexes, and you can see the irritation, the spite, the obsession all mixing behind his eyes. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something cutting, then his gaze flicks past you to Matt. “You hear that?” Dex says, voice low. “Your girl’s got a spine. I like that.”

Matt’s answer is immediate and controlled. “Leave.”

Dex takes a step backward toward the door, then pauses like he can’t help himself. “This isn’t over,” he says, and it’s not even a threat that’s trying to sound cool. It’s just a fact in his tone, like he’s already decided he gets to stay in your orbit.

You stare at him, letting your expression go flat. “It is for me.”

Dex’s smile twitches like you slapped him. He looks at you too long, then turns and walks out. He doesn’t slam the door; he lets it click shut behind him like he’s leaving on purpose instead of being thrown out.

Matt locks it immediately. The sound of the deadbolt sliding home is the first thing all night that makes your shoulders drop. Matt stands there for a second with his hand still on the lock, head bowed slightly like he’s listening for Dex’s footsteps in the hall, for the elevator, for proof he’s actually gone.

Then Matt turns and comes back to you, and the moment he reaches you he cups the back of your neck and leans his forehead to yours again, breathing like he’s finally allowing his lungs to work.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“You can apologize later,” you murmur, and you squeeze his wrist. “Right now, I want a shower and clean sheets and, ideally, a world where nobody ever breaks a glass cage full of mystery chemicals again.”

Matt lets out a strained laugh that sounds like relief more than humor. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

---

Two weeks later, the apartment feels normal again in the way it always does after something violent tries to stain it. The sheets are clean, the couch has been scrubbed, the trash bags are long gone, and you’ve managed to file the whole night into that mental drawer labeled “never talk about this unless you absolutely have to.”

Matt comes home with groceries and bruises and a tired kiss that makes you feel like your body belongs to you again. You make dinner, you argue about whether he needs more sleep, and you pretend you don’t flinch when you hear sirens outside.

On a Tuesday afternoon, you bring the mail upstairs in a messy stack, flipping through the usual junk with your thumb. Matt’s at the kitchen counter, rinsing fruit, head tilted toward you like he’s listening for the tone of your voice more than the words.

“Bills,” you mutter. “Ads. Something for you from the bar association.” You pause, because one envelope doesn’t match the rest. It’s a plain envelope with no return address, and your name printed neatly on the front like somebody took their time. “Matt,” you call, trying to keep your voice casual and failing.

“What is it?” He asks, turning off the faucet.

“There’s… a letter,” you say, and you pick it up carefully, like it might bite. “No return address.”

Matt’s footsteps are quiet, controlled, and he stops close enough that you can feel him beside you. “Don’t open it yet,” he says, and his voice goes tight in that way it does when his instincts are screaming.

You don’t, not until he’s right there, one hand hovering near your wrist like he’s ready to pull you back if something goes wrong. You slide a finger under the flap and open it slowly, trying not to tear the paper. Inside is a single card, thick and clean, like it came from a nice stationery shop.

There’s no long message; no rant, no explanation. Just a small circle drawn in black ink, and inside it, a clean bullseye.

Your stomach drops.

Matt’s hand closes around your wrist gently but firmly. “What is it?” he asks, already knowing it’s bad from your breathing.

You swallow and slide the card toward him even though he can’t see it. “It’s… a symbol,” you say, voice tight. “A bullseye.”

Matt goes very still. His jaw clenches. His thumb presses once at your pulse point, not to calm you, but like he’s grounding himself too. “Is there anything written?” he asks, voice low.

You flip the card over with shaking fingers. There’s one line in the same neat print as the envelope: Thanks for the hospitality.

You look at Matt, and his face is calm in the way it gets right before violence, right before he turns into Daredevil instead of your boyfriend.

“Was he here?” you whisper.

Matt’s hand slides from your wrist to your cheek, warm and steady. “No,” he says quietly. “He wants us to think he was.”

You stare at the stupid little card, anger and fear twisting together in your chest. “He’s not done.”

Matt’s mouth tightens, and he leans in until his forehead touches yours again, voice low enough that it feels like a promise. “Neither am I.”

extra notes: look, all i'm gonna say is, i prob will come back to this as my horny release, lol. mostly because i feel betrayed by myself and really want to write a dexmatt kiss. like could you imagine them fucking you from each end while kissing over you?????? yeah can't believe i didn't write that

everything: @clxt-lamb1 @person-005 @bookoffracturedescapes @macbaetwo @demiebarnes

matt murdock: @ultimatewolverine @steviebbboi @crowleythesexydemon @harleycao @wkhannah @star-yawnzzn @baguwagu @hawke1917 @hexedangelx

dex poindexter: @ultimatewolverine @nightmerzer @hexedangelx @avidreader73

"Where have you been?" you breathe while you basically sprint toward him. Your arms extend just the right amount enough for him to crash into you and scoop you up into his hold. Then to spin you around while squeezing you so tightly that you think your spine might snap in half.

You welcome that, though. It's better than being here alone while he's off-planet and you're making yourself sick over whether or not he'll ever come home. You let yourself be engulfed in him, in his crushing hold, in this tight hug, because at least he's here.

"I'm so sorry," he whispers. He presses a kiss onto your temple, gentle and reverent, and you melt into him. Wrap your legs around his waist just to pull him closer to you, to feel the press of his hard, familiar body against yours.

"The mission wasn't supposed to last that long. Everything that could have gone wrong ended up going wrong."

The sigh he pushes out against your temple is full of solace. Maybe a little guilt, as well, judging by the way he tightens his grip on your waist. He buries his face in your hair right after that.

Definitely a not-so-subtle way of inhaling your scent after he'd lost it for two weeks.

You pull back and shake your head.

"Doesn't matter. I'm so happy you're home," you confess through a breathy, relieved laugh.

Your hands, still tingling from the excitement of seeing him after so long, somehow manage to find their way up to his face. You brush your thumbs over the apples of his cheeks while your eyes reorient themselves with his beautiful features. Although he'd been gone for what felt like an eternity, you never forgot what he looked like.

Which proves a problem, because he doesn't look the same as when he left.

Clark leans in to kiss you, but you don't let him. You ignore your body when it screams at you to let him do it. You quickly press your hand over his mouth to hold him back, earning a confused little hum from your boyfriend. When his brow knits together, you bite back a laugh that very desperately wants to burst from your chest.

There's no doubt in your mind that he wants to kiss you even more than you want to kiss him, but that's not happening until you figure out what's new.

"What on Earth are you doing?" he mumbles against your palm.

"Shh. Hang on," you command, eyes still combing over his features. Your hands follow, fingers gently tracing over his soft, warm skin. He's got a little bit of stubble, which was to be expected. Apparently he had access to a mirror to shave with off-planet, though, because it's more of a five o'clock shadow than actual stubble.

You blink a few times. Your fingers trace over the sharp line of his jaw, and the straight, prominent bridge of his nose, and his high-set cheekbones, and his brow, and...anything on him that you can get your hands on.

"M'starting to feel like a lab experiment. Are you high?" he teases, words a little slurred because you're too busy poking and prodding at his cheeks. Laughs at you, too, giving you a glimpse at that beautiful smile you've missed so much. That smile that's the same as it was when he left.

So...his face is the same. What the hell?

"You're different."

His hold on you gets a little more firm. The easygoing, relaxed features you know so well tighten and morph into concern. A furrowed brow instead of a relaxed one. Widened, slightly scared eyes. Tensed shoulders, an even more tense jaw, and his lips quirking downward into a frown.

"Okay, now you're scaring me."

He sets you down in front of him to get a good look at the top of your head, to crane over you like he always does since he's so fucking big.

"Are you sure you're alright, honey? Did you hit your head or something while I was gone?"

He cradles the back of your head with one hand, clearly feeling for a bump or indent or anything that could explain your odd behavior. Then he leans in a little further to get an even closer look.

And that's when it hits you.

When he tilts to the left to look at where his fingers are basically mapping out and exploring your skull, your eyes fall on his hair, and everything starts to fall into place.

On the way that the curls atop of his head are longer. More defined. Water falling over his head and ever-so-slightly adding to that signature curl that always rests on his forehead.

Then your eyes travel down to the back of his head, at the way his hair is longer there, too. Long enough now that it curls at the nape of his neck, or to stick out and curl upward in the case of some of the thicker ones; a subtle difference, but enough to throw you off.

Enough to turn you on, too, because his hair has never been this long. How he managed to grow it this much over two weeks is beyond you; blame it on Kryptonian biology, maybe.

All you know is that you love it.

"It's your hair!" you squeal. "It's longer!"

"Oh, yeah," he says, face melting back into that general, lovey-dovey, gooey ease he usually has when he looks at you. He chuckles and releases your head, opting for reaching down and grabbing your hands instead.

"It's a little overgrown. I was gonna cut it when I got home."

You scoff. Why do men always cut their hair when it finally looks perfect?

"No, don't you dare! I'll break up with you if you do that!"

You get an eye roll from him for that one, but the way he's smiling down at you makes you think he's not all that upset.

"You think it looks good, huh?"

"It's so pretty, Clark," you purr. You must have laid that soft compliment on him much thicker than you thought you did. His cheeks turn pink, and he grins, and he looks down at your intertwined fingers to avoid turning any redder.

You break free of his hold to touch some of those longer curls, but your fingers stall at his suit's collar. It's different. A little shorter, maybe? The gap in the middle at his throat just a little wider? You aren't sure. Either way, you can see more skin. More of that beautiful, golden skin you dream about being pressed against yours at all hours of the day.

You lean back far enough to look at the rest of his suit, which is also slightly different. Still the same bright blue. Still the same gorgeous, flowing cape. But that symbol, the beacon of hope on the front of his chest is a little bigger. And the stretch of the fabric is a little tighter around his biceps. And those ridiculous trunks - the part that genuinely makes you salivate the most despite being so ridiculous - are a little higher up.

Fuck. He looks incredible.

"This...is this a new suit?"

He beams down at you. Steps back to do a quick little spin. You've never had a problem with a show-and-tell moment. Especially when he's showing himself off.

"You like it? It's not technically new, just...upgraded. Had to get Ma to fix the old one 'cause it was super beat up. She made a couple changes along the way."

He braces his hands on his hips and puffs out his chest. Something that should make you laugh, but now that you can see just how well his not-so-new but definitely-new-at-the-same-time suit's clinging to his thighs, you can't speak.

So you swallow when you're done ogling him and your eyes meet again. It was much harder than you wanted it to be. He definitely heard it, and the way he visibly softens and drops his mouth open tells you he's about to ask if you're okay again.

You don't give him the chance to do it, though, because you're too busy pouncing on him. Jumping into his arms and smashing your lips against his. Clark groans at your suddenness, but he doesn't skip a fucking beat. He'd been waiting to kiss you, after all; makes sense that he'd reciprocate it so quickly.

The kiss is immediately hot. It's heavy and obscenely needy on both ends. Your teeth click together in the most deliciously painful way. Your tongues fight for purchase in each others' mouths. Your hands tangle in his thick, longer hair while his hands slide down to your ass, groping it about as roughly as he knows you can handle while he stumbles out of your living room and toward your bedroom instead.

Your dorky giant trips over his own feet a couple times. His cape doesn't really help, either. Gets caught up and tangled in his boots, makes his steps all wobbly before he kicks your bedroom door open and bounds for your bed. And yet, through all that stumbling and near-falling, he manages to keep you steady in his grasp.

The best part about being with Superman? You never have to worry about him dropping you.

Clark doesn't even break the kiss as he kneels on the edge of your bed and bends over to lay you down on it. You're the first one to break it, and it's only so that you can suck in a breath to prevent passing out.

Damn him and his ability to hold his breath for an hour.

"I've thought about this," Clark mutters, leaning down to kiss your jaw and neck about as frantically as possible, "every single second that I was gone."

You laugh and tilt your head back to give him more access to your skin.

"Ditto," is all you can muster as a response. Your head is swimming with lust and a tiny bit of oxygen deprivation, and he doesn't make it any better when he nips at the sensitive spot at the junction where your neck meets your shoulder. His tongue laves over the new sore spot and pulls a moan out of you that you had no idea was nestled in your lungs.

When you unravel your legs from his waist, he settles between them. You have to hold back a whimper as soon as you feel the thick, warm hardness of his cock against your inner left thigh.

You whine, tugging on his hair to get him out of your neck while you tell him, "Kiss me. I haven't seen you in two weeks."

He obliges, but he does it in his own way. A smirk against your hammering pulse at the side of your neck. A few kisses in a trail toward your collarbones. A thin, hot line that he licks up the column of your throat.

"Anything for you, baby," he mumbles just before connecting your lips again. This kiss is slower than the last one, but so much messier. So much deeper. His tongue doesn't even need to slide over your bottom lip and beg for purchase in your mouth - you both went into it open mouthed and burning with need for each other.

You raise your hips to meet the stiff length of his cock. Even through all of your combined layers of clothing, the feeling of his hardness just hardly bumping against your clit is enough to make your walls flutter and clench.

Clark gently rolls his hips against yours, eliciting a moan from both of you. That was some very much-needed friction. It only exacerbates your need. Makes you burn. Makes you tighten your hold on his curls and pull on them again.

He groans and breaks the kiss, but his hips instinctively buck against yours. It takes all of your strength to not come from seeing the thin string of saliva keeping you connected.

Clark lets out a nervous little chuckle.

"This reunion celebration won't last long if you keep pulling my hair like that, honey."

In a playful act of defiance, you twirl some of his thick curls around your fingers and give them another tug. You smirk up at him when his hips buck again.

"You like having your hair pulled that bad, Clark?"

"I like it a normal amount, thank you very much," he sarcastically counters, but his eyes shift away from yours and he buries his face in your neck to attack it with kisses again. He's always been a bad liar.

"So if I do this," you pause to pull on his hair again - a little harder, a little quicker.

"You won't come in your cute trunks?"

Clark literally shudders. His hand falls to your left hip so he can pin you down on the mattress; it was just to get you off of him, to keep you from brushing against his cock again. Prevents him from blowing his load before you even get your hands on him.

"No, I won't." His voice went up about 10 octaves. You laugh at him and kiss his temple just before he can start moving down your chest.

With a flick of his wrist, the buttons on your work blouse are done for. They pop off of you and fling around your room, hitting the walls and clinking down onto the floor all over the place.

"I liked that shirt!" you squeak out. Your feeble little attempt at scolding him bounces right off of him, though.

"I'll buy you another one, honey. Don't worry about it."

Clark spreads your now destroyed shirt open and kneels between your legs so he can get a good look at you. All you can do is push yourself up on your elbows and watch his gaze slowly travel over your bare, heaving chest, your kiss-swollen lips, the soft, pinkish-red marks he'd left on your neck to claim you as his.

But he doesn't speak until he meets your eyes. When his lust for you gets swept aside, and he smiles so big that his dimples pop out. He reaches down to grab your hands. As your fingers intertwine with his, he lowers his voice to a whisper and confesses, "I missed you so much."

Clark's sweet, tender-hearted nature isn't something you're unfamiliar with. He's always got that big heart of his on his sleeve. Always displaying sincerity, and compassion, and kindness because he was raised that way. That's just the way he operates.

And yet there's something so special about when he's directing it at you. Something more genuine, something sweeter and kinder and more compassionate.

Because he loves you. Sure, he loves the people in Metropolis. He cares about them and their well-being.

But at the end of the day, he really, really loves you.

"I love you," he coos while his massive hands give your much smaller ones a tight squeeze.

See?

"I love you," you return without hesitation. You get a flash of that pretty grin from your dorky giant.

Then he leans down to kiss a trail down between your breasts, down your stomach, and toward your waist. He stops there. His hands, big and warm and gentle as ever despite the frantic need threatening to explode out of him, graze over the bottom of the skirt you wore to work. Thankfully, it isn't too tight.

Not like that'd be a problem. He'd just tear it off of you. But, seeing as he already tattered one piece of your clothing today...well, at least you get to salvage the skirt.

Clark pushes your skirt up until it's bunched around your hips. As soon as he gets a glimpse of what he's been missing for 14 long, long days, he lets out a shaky little sigh. His thumb gently glides over the wet patch in the middle of your panties, slow and exploratory and so fucking intoxicating that you're worried you might actually be drunk on him.

"Clark, don't," you cut yourself off with a pathetic whine as he presses down on your clit through your panties. One of your legs jolts and falls over his shoulder, the other still pressed down on the mattress because his big hand's claimed its spot on your thigh.

"Shit, don't tease!"

"I'm not teasing," he mutters. Starts rubbing soft circles on the sensitive little bundle of nerves, making you twitch and claw at the sheets beneath you just to keep it together.

"Just admiring you, sweetheart. Wish you could see how pretty you are when you're making a mess for me like this," he purrs, leaning forward to press a few soft kisses on your thigh. That five o'clock shadow burns your thighs. God, you missed that burn.

As he's marking up your thigh with soft bites that he suckles on to soothe your pain, that thumb slips away from your clit to push your panties to the side.

It all happens so fast. One second, he's torturing you through your panties, the next, he's dipping his head down to suck your clit into his mouth. You gasp and instinctively reach for him, one hand tangling in his hair while the other meets his where it rests on your thigh.

His longer hair is incredible, to say the least. It looks good. Fits him very well. Makes him look more mature even though he's already in his 30s.

Also, though? Fantastic to pull on while he's seated between your thighs and taking you to heaven. It keeps you grounded while he's moving down and dipping his tongue into your cunt. Plus, every time you yank on it, you get rewarded with a moan or grunt from him that shoots deep, gravelly vibrations straight up your core.

A particular gentle shake of his head while he's attempting to get his tongue deeper into you has you seeing stars. His nose gives your clit some much needed attention; enough attention, in fact, for you to whimper his name so loudly that it echoes within your room.

Also enough attention to get you to finish almost immediately.

You come so hard that your eyes might permanently be stuck rolled back in your head. While your body falls apart beneath him, the only thing keeping your soul from leaving it is that tight hold you've still got on his hair. You pull it a little harder as you're cresting over that wave that brings you to paradise, and while you're convulsing and trembling, he's letting out a rather loud moan of his own to match yours.

You come down a few moments later thanks to Clark's muttered sweet nothings and his gentle touches.

"Atta girl," he purrs through a few kisses he's pressing on your inner thighs. You keen. Then you blurt out a command to him, something telling him to get up off the floor so you can really get this party started.

"Um," he murmurs through an awkward laugh, "I think...maybe I'll just stay down here a little longer. If that's alright with you, of course."

That piques your interest. He does love to go down on you, but he's never turned down your begging for him to fuck you. You push yourself up on your elbows and take a good look at him.

At his widened eyes that keep darting away from you. At his bright red cheeks. At the way his chest is heaving much more than you'd expect it to be right now when he hasn't even really done anything.

You let out a weak giggle.

"What the hell are you talking about? You okay, Kent?"

"Yeah," he lies. A literal lie through his teeth. He pushed that little word out at you through a grin.

"Then come up here, weirdo," you tell him. "Sit against the headboard and let me repay you."

He presses his lips into a thin line. Swallows so thickly that you can see his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. But, he's never been anything less than obedient, so he very reluctantly starts the process of doing as you say.

As soon as he pushes himself up from the floor where he was kneeling in front of you, you see what the problem is and why he wanted to stay down there a little longer. It's in the form of a relatively large wet patch on the front of his trunks.

No wonder he moaned so loudly when you yanked on his hair while you came.

It riddles you with guilt when you feel the giggle bubbling up and out of your mouth at his expense, but you couldn't hold it back if you tried.

"Clark, did you-"

"I don't wanna talk about it," he grumbles, cutting you off relatively effectively. You cover your mouth with one hand and gnaw on your bottom lip. That helps you hold in your laugh.

It passes a few seconds later.

You shake your head.

"We don't have to."

As he reaches up to release the latches that secure his cape to his shoulders, you clear your throat.

"So...you definitely like it more than a normal amount when I pull on your hair, huh?"

Clark tosses his head back to let out a loud groan. You fall into a fit of giggles, but he's not having any of it. He huffs and crosses his arms over his chest.

"Enjoy it now, because I'm cutting it in the morning just to spite you."

Despite being crammed like a sardine in a tin can, the narrowness of the alleyway was at the rock bottom of Clark’s problems. Why? Because, he had you slumped against his body. Unconscious. Snoring. (He wouldn’t even address the darkened patch of blue on his suit from the drool leaking from your mouth.)

This was your fault. As most downfalls of missions were.

You, a vigilante within your own right, were reckless, blinded by impulsivity and the incessant need to one-up your unofficially assigned partner: Superman. A loose canon, waiting for the worst time to set yourself off. Green Lantern once referred to you as a ‘spitfire’ and refused any further collaborations with your efforts. Clark wholeheartedly agreed, on the ‘spitfire’ part, but had enough common decency to wade through the ocean of flaws you had; because you had the same motive as him.

To do good. In your own maniacal way.

You basked in the peril of your own actions, putting yourself in precarious situations that Clark ended up fishing you out of with a mouthful of reminders as to why you shouldn’t listen to the little voices in your head. At some point, you had caused irrefutable damage to Clark’s nervous system and any grey hairs he had found nestled in his dark hair were in result of being partnered up with you. Not the heavy burden of feeling the need to be the saviour of Metropolis, not the deadline he hadn’t reached at Daily Planet, not even Lex Luthor.

You.

Golly. You were…OK. Call a spade, a spade: You were…gorgeous. In an infuriatingly obvious way that had Clark’s jaw slacken the first time your paths crossed.

But, that was besides the point. All the bad overshadowed the good, and it was the very reason you were propped up against the ‘S’ on Clark’s chest.

It had happened in a split second. An alien species had spawned in the middle of Metropolis, causing carnage in its wake, and it was up to you, Superman, and the Justice League—when they decided to show up—to contain and snuff the growing flame out. You had shown up first in your tactical gear and a point to prove that even without the ‘fancy schmansy powers’ that had been bestowed upon your fellow hero-friends…You were the one who managed to get to the scene of the intergalactic crime.

It drove Clark mad.

And then, you started as you meant to go on. Bickering.

With Clark in the sky and you on foot, chasing this…thing—you couldn’t even identify what it was. It was just ugly. And a pain in your ass—the petty arguments that were highly anticipated happened through a small earpiece, that you had gifted Clark and the Justice League during the winter festivities.

For work purposes. Not to chew their ears off.

You were amidst correcting Clark that when he said, ‘On your left’ and you asked: ‘My left or your left?’ That the response was not to say: ‘Does it matter? It’s left!’ Because, how disorientating to your senses if you couldn’t decipher whether Clark Kent meant his left or your left. It really did matter.

That’s when it managed to hit you. Square in the face, a plume of pollen-like particles exploded in your face and you hit the deck like a sack of potatoes; your skull making a nice crunching sound when it hit the concrete below.

Clark had been watching you from above. As he always had to, because again, you were unpredictable in the worst sense. When you went from upright to horizontal in a matter of seconds, Clark projected himself from the sky, with little regard to the alien form tormenting the streets of Metropolis, as his sole focus honed in on you.

His chest burned when he reached you, his heart pounding as he dropped to his knees and gathered you up into his lap.

“No, no, no. Please—!” Clark panicked outwardly, his eyes darting over your features. His ability to hear your heartbeat was overruled by his own blood pumping in his ears from the anxiety he felt. He then dropped his head to your chest. Thud thud, thud thud, thud thud.

You were alive.

You then began to stir in his arms. Eyelids weighty, a groan elicited from the back of your throat from the searing pain that pierced through your skull that had been well and truly rattled.

“Supey.” You slurred. “I’m so—I’m really tired.”

“OK.” Clark nodded along to your yawn with one palm applying pressure to the bloodied gash on the backside of your head. Something he didn’t need to address for the time being. He scanned the area, “OK. I’ve got you, sweetheart. Come on.”

Clark hooked two thumbs under your armpits and dragged you backward into an alleyway that had seemingly been made for people that were 2D. He managed to manoeuvre you so that your back was against the wall opposite to him.

Your head lolled and Clark was quick to take your face into his hands so you could maintain eye-contact with him.

He tapped your cheek, “Hey. Keep your eyes open, do you hear me?”

“Don’t…” You lazily prodded a finger into his chest, “Tell me what to do, Supey.”

Clark gave you an incredulous look. Even compromised, with an open wound at the back of your skull, you still managed to argue with him. His nostrils flared, “I need you to stay awake for me. I’m not sure what you got hit with. Can you do that, please?”

“What’s are you? Me—My mother or sumn’?” You closed your eyes for a moment, “Gets off my back.”

“Golly gosh. Do you have to argue with me over everything?”

And, within five minutes and one stress-signal sent out to the Justice League to get their asses to the scene, you had dozed off on Clark Kent’s chest. Body slumped forward, Clark struggled to keep you upright from the position he had dragged you both into.

It was when your knees began to buckle from beneath you, beginning your decent to Clark’s lower half.

“Gosh, no. No.” Clark awkwardly had to bend his body to pick you back up. His cheeks were aflame as he spoke, “Don’t go there. Please—”

He nervously chuckled to himself after you were brought back up to rest against his chest. He watched you for a moment, mouth agape, eyes moving beneath your lids and the softest snore Clark had ever heard. It was a stark contrast to the chaos that you brought in your wake. The silence from you—aside from the ambient snores—was almost terrifying.

(Clark wouldn’t admit it. But, he supposed he would miss your endless amount of vocabulary if it ever happened to stop on a more permanent basis.)

He also noted, with his chin tucked to his chest and his mop of curls falling forward in order to look at you…that, you were even prettier up close. Hey, Clark Kent would go as far to say that he’d be thrilled if this were the first thing he woke up to in the morning.

OK. He needed out of this close proximity.

“Michael!” Clark whispered to the monitor in his ear. You shifted. Clark held you tighter. He spoke again, “Have you got it under control?”

There was a pause and Clark thought he might have to sit you down and hide you beneath some damp cardboard boxes, so he could throw himself back into the action. (He’d apologise to you profusely if you woke up beneath the mountain of junk at a later time.)

As he began to move you, his earpiece crackled. “Under control. Some sort of sleep paralysis demon. Half the city was put to sleep, some of them are starting to rise now.” Mister Terrific continued, “How’s the alleyway with Spitfire? She still unconscious?”

You began to stir in Clark’s arms again. Brows furrowed in your sleep as you let out a whine that let Clark know you were dissatisfied by the noise feeding through your own earpiece.

Clark sighed with relief. “Yeah—Yeah. Still asleep.” He shifted you up against him once more. The red flush now spread to his ears at the thought of you nuzzled into his neck. When Mister Terrific asked if he needed to come get you, Clark was quick to add, “It’s OK. I’ve got her.”

You worried the hem of your dress enough that you had pulled a thread and snagged the fabric.

“Shoot.” You mumbled to yourself with the skirt pulled between your forefinger and middle to inspect it. (That’s the last time you placed a fast track order from an Instagram Ad again.)

It was a nice dress. Pretty, sat on your figure well. Completely out of your comfort zone but that was the whole point of a first date. And now? Now it had a ladder that—if you weren’t swarmed in nerves—you’d remember to cover with the satchel you brought to cling onto for moral support.

You and your flimsy excuse for a dress stood outside of a tall building, Destiny, Metropolis’ renowned Asian restaurant with five floors to it. Each floor with its own option of cuisine, you know, if you were a picky eater. Now, you hadn’t expressed that to Clark Kent when he had asked you out on a date with a bunch of tissues stuffed under his armpits from the perspiration you had caused him. But, he thought if he gave you five different options; one of them would stick.

There was the risk of it potentially backfiring in his face, because you might sway into the grounds of intimidation and pressure to select a singular floor, and you’d both be left a little frazzled and hungry.

Either way, you showed up.

You pulled your phone from your bag. 6:58PM.

Your eyes then scanned the surroundings around you in order to catch a glimpse of someone with a nervous disposition all neatly wrapped into a six foot four, broad shouldered man. There was no pressure of arriving on time—even when you had arrived fifteen minutes ahead of schedule—as you knew Clark had to wrap up his work schedule, bolt for the Metropolis Subway and make it to your side without it seeming as if he hadn’t broke into a muscle burning sprint to get there.

Stepping back on your heel to allow some post-work grumblers past, you managed to spot the very person you had been thinking about in the flurry of foot traffic. Your neck extended in a meek attempt to get his attention, you raised your hand in the air with a warm smile to match as his blue eyes caught sight of you in the Metropolis hustle and bustle.

Clark perked up in an instant. Shoulders squared, he weaved through the crowd with a few apologies falling from his mouth. He looked down at you and let out a hefty sigh of relief, “You made it.”

“You did say 7PM.” You teased.

“You look—You look beautiful.” Clark used all his restraint to not drag his eyes up and down your body as you thanked him, in a dress that looked as if it had been poured onto you to accentuate your curves. You wouldn’t mind if he did, sort of the point. Aside from feeling good about yourself. Clark blinked a murky thought away and spoke, “Oh—These, uh, these are for you.”

He sheepishly held out a bouquet of flowers that had seen better days. Pretty, in a droopy way.

Clark jumped at the chance to explain his sad excuse for flowers. “They got caught in the doors of the subway, and I didn’t have time to buy another bouquet without making myself late.”

He was endearing.

You beamed and took them from his grasp, “It gives them character. I love them. Thank you.”

Onlookers may have felt nauseous at the scene unfolding, if they cared to take a minute out of their day to observe their surroundings. They’d see two strangers, absolutely besotted by each other, eyes filled with warmth, fingers itching at their sides to have the smallest human connection in the form of pinkies linked, or a big smooch on the lips. (Something Clark had been often caught thinking about at his desk.)

The catch was: this was only the first date.

“Have you ever been to Dynasty?” Clark asked after clearing his throat.

“No. But, I’ve heard good things about General Tso’s chicken.” You shrugged and tried to put as little pressure on Clark for handpicking the place for your first date. Both of you fell into step as you continued, “Have you?”

Clark nodded. “Yeah. I—Well, I actually came here myself the other day to test it out.”

This made you frown in minor confusion.

“Test it out?” You repeated back to him as you reached the door to the building.

“Well, you know. I wanted to make sure it was perfect. For you.” Clark opened the door and gestured for you to walk in first. He offered you an amused smile when you stared at him wide-eyed, “My stomach hurt after the third floor.”

Oh. He tested all five floors for you.

Clark Kent was exceeding all your expectations and it hadn’t even been five minutes of his time spent with you.

After that, Clark responded to everything in the most gentlemanly way possible. Every door had been opened for you, and once you had picked a floor out of the five, Clark’s hand ghosted your back as the server guided you through the rows upon rows of seats to the very back booth, tucked away from the rest of the entourage. He even allowed you to scooch along the plush seat of the booth before he slotted himself next to you, a sudden yelp eliciting from the back of his throat when he almost flipped the table when his knees knocked the underside of it.

You exchanged stories—Clark visibly hanging onto every word you said—you laughed together, shared your food and somewhere in between the main course and dessert, the proximity between the pair of you was closer than ever before. Now, you were entering dangerous territories of never returning to a time before Clark Kent. Something you were OK with never looking back on.

Stomach bursting at the seams, you leant back in the booth comfortably with your eyes willingly closing for a moment. Clark had waved the server as you did so, his head turning to you to admire you in such a tranquil state; a smile splitting on his face, dimples and all, when you peeked an eye open to look at him too.

“I’m in a very vulnerable state right now, Clark Kent.” You joked, hands on your stomach, “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I was just enjoying the view.” Clark retorted so casually you almost got whiplash. He threw you a smug grin and fished his wallet out of the pocket inside his suit jacket as the server approached.

You sat up and began to dig into your own satchel. “I can pay half.”

“No you won’t.” Clark mumbled in a monotonous tone, as if it was common knowledge that your purse was not to leave the confines of your satchel. The transaction went through with a ping and the server bid you both a goodnight, leaving Clark and you to your own devices.

“Thank you. For paying.”

Clark shrugged. “It’s the least I could do when you said yes to going on a date with me.” He stood, his hand outstretched for you to take. “We’ll call that even now.”

You stood and tugged at your dress, taking mind of the ladder at your side and let out a laugh, “Are you comparing me to a three course meal?”

Clark went pink. His tie suddenly victim of a sudden attack of fidgeting fingers as he gawped through the fumble of his words.

You intentionally squeezed past him and the table, bodies flush against each other momentarily before you put space between the both of you with a mischievous glint in your eyes; something that sent Clark internally reeling.

“Relax. I’m kidding.” You reassured, “Do you want ice cream?”

(Clark was positively astonished at your appetite, but then he reminded himself he just had a three course meal, plus your leftovers, and was still starving at the sight of you in that dress.)

He nodded with enthusiasm and it led to the both of you strolling through Metropolis with the sunset replaced with pretty moonlight and an ice cream shared between you.

Clark paid for it after nudging you out of the way of the cashier’s register.

The conversation dipped into a comfortable silence. Neither of you had run out of things to talk about, even if it meant turning to work, but the moment felt right to just bathe in each other’s presence. Clark fed the ice cream on the littlest plastic spoon, into your mouth and you hummed with gratitude; not realising any sort of satisfied noise that came from your mouth had Clark white-knuckled and a little dizzy.

He had counted about ten of those moments throughout the night. Why had he picked food as the first date? It felt like a cruel punishment.

Shaking him from his rather lewd thoughts, you let out a gasp of excitement, finger pointed in front of you. “A photo-booth!”

Clark followed your finger to see a tattered old stall with a velvet curtain.

“You want to go in?”

You scrunched your nose, “Would that be weird? It’s a little weird, right?”

“Not weird.” Clark reaffirmed, “I’ll take some photos with you. You said you like the sentimental value of things like this.”

Alright. Clark Kent was about to be kissed silly.

You wrapped your fingers around his forearm and dragged him to the photo-booth, halting when you yanked the curtain back to reveal a tiny stool with barely any room for just one person. Let alone two. One being enormous in all the right ways.

There was a little deflation in your shoulders that Clark furrow his brow until he saw what you were staring at. With little deliberation—because Clark Kent was seizing the moment—he brushed past your body and sat on the stool that may, or may not have creaked under the weight of his body.

Clark looked up at you, his bottom lip jutted out a little with innocence plastered across his face before he patted his thigh.

Pat, pat.

You blinked at him.

“Are you coming in, or what?”

Unbelievable.

When you took one step forward, Clark’s hand snaked around your hip and guided you into his lap. For stability, you wrapped one arm around his neck, hand twitching on his shoulder as he reached to pull the curtain shut.

His hand remained on the curve of your hip, his own fingertips fiddling with the fabric of your dress as his other hand came to tap on the screen to get the whole thing started.

“Alright.” He mumbled, his hips raised—and you with them—as he pulled out some money to slot into the machine. It gave a mechanical whir and Clark shuffled the both of you in the seat. “What faces should we make?”

Part of your brain was short-circuiting. This wasn’t like you. You were direct, you were the mouse in the game of Cat and Mouse. Mischievous, always one step ahead and here Clark Kent was, the man who tripped over air and flushed a shade of pink whenever you smiled at him; rendering you speechless.

“Um.” You chewed the inside of your cheek, the timer counting down to the first picture being taken, “Just a smiley one. Right?”

“Sure.”

The camera flashed the most obnoxious light in your faces as you both smiled, heads tilted together. The timer reset for the second time and you mulled over your choices, Clark being the one to suggest funny faces.

Flash! Reset.

“OK.” You warmed up, “Let me wear your glasses.”

Clark hesitated, “Oh, uh—” Flash! He groaned, “Oh, sorry, sweetheart.”

You waved it off. Part of you desperate to cling back to the advantage you usually had on Clark’s senses. The timer ticked and you had a lightbulb moment.

You grinned wickedly, fingers curled into the knot of Clark’s pink tie in order to loosen it. Clark took a harsh swallow as you fluttered your lashes at him, his fingers curled into your hip now.

All roads were going to lead to this moment. At some point. You just had to coax it out of its obvious hiding place.

Your nose nudged against Clark’s, your plush lips ghosting his as he licked his own in anticipation. The photo-booth suddenly felt a little smaller, in the best way possible.

“This could be for research purposes.” You whispered and Clark hummed for you to elaborate. “You know. To make sure for any future photos taken, that we look good kissing.”

“Research purposes.” His eyes were set on your lips.

You nodded slowly, “Don’t you journalists enjoy the whole boots on the ground journalism?”

Suddenly, the timer had been forgotten about as Clark pressed his lips against yours in the much anticipated kiss. You both moulded against each other, breaths shallow until the kiss deepened and your heads were swarmed with blind infatuation. When you tugged at the curls at the nape of Clark’s neck, he let out a whimper and you smiled against his lips; feeling rewarded.

He was good. At being a journalist, a good person with good morals, a good date. And, to put the cherry atop of the very tall cake of why Clark Kent was a good person…he was even insanely good at kissing.

You both then realised how easy it was to get lost in each other, and Clark was happy to destroy any map that led him away from you.

Click! Flash!

You pulled away from Clark at the sound of purring from the photo-booth, smiling sweetly as he peppered kisses along your jawline in lieu of your lips.

A strip of black and white photos spat out of the dispenser and you bent at the waist to snatch them for inspection. With your back pressed against Clark’s chest, you held the photos up so he could look at them too. The third photo made you both chuckle, caught in the middle of a plan to wear Clark’s glasses, his eyes widened with a frown at the proposition you had made about removing the glasses from his face.

That was a conversation for another day. A rainy one. Not in a photo-booth. Or in a public setting, preferably.

“These are great.” You stated, admiring the moments captured on your first date. You pointed to the last photo, “Oh! Look, we do look good kissing.”

“That’s a good omen. For future photos.” Clark nodded, his glasses partially fogged from the intense make-out session you had just engaged in.

When you turned to smile at him knowingly, because both of you knew what sort of statement he was making in that brief sentence, Clark returned the smile with a gentle squeeze against your hip, just above the laddered fabric from your anxieties pre-date.

He sniffed, leaning forward to slot more money into the machine as he spoke, “Want to try opposite sides? See if we look good kissing from a different angle.”

⚓︎ prologue ⚓︎

ch. 1 

ch. 2

ch. 3

ch. 4

ch. 5  pt. 1

ch. 5  pt. 2

ch. 6  pt. 1

ch. 6  pt. 2

ch. 7

ch. 8  pt. 1

ch. 8  pt. 2

ch. 9  pt. 1

ch. 9  pt. 2 

ch. 9  pt. 3

Extras⋆.˚𓇼

high school flashback 

hoping

He’d told the story before. There was a version he liked to wheel out when he was coked up, the sandbox-or-whatever version that made people laugh. It had Topper crying over a kite at six, or maybe it was Rafe crying over a kite. And that was the short joke of it, and neither of them could keep it straight and it didn’t matter, because the point was they were the kind of friends whose beginnings had dissolved into pure fact. ‘We’ve just always known each other.’ People liked hearing that. It sounded like belonging. It sounded like the thing Rafe had been failing to convince his own father he was capable of since approximately birth. It sounded like there was a reason for their friendship despite their family’s tax brackets.

The problem was that he couldn’t get to the kite anymore without going through you.

That simple fact made him want to put his fist through a wall. He’d try to land on a clean memory; Topper at twelve, sunburned and furious, reduced to tears, because Rafe had out-fished him at the dock. It was something Rafe thought he’d hold over Topper for the rest of his life and then, characteristically, never used. The memory of it would start fine and then it would bend, routing itself towards you. Topper at twelve became Topper at eighteen describing his future with you in it, because Topper’s hand on your knee in over-furnished basements, became the simple pride in Topper’s voice when he talked about you like you cured cancer. Every road into Topper now had you standing somewhere on it, and Rafe couldn’t reach past you to the kid he’d genuinely considered a friend back when he cared about something like having a best friend. You’d colonized the whole territory without trying.

He resented you for it the way he resented the good food at the Thorntons’ table, the unfairness of being made to want a thing and then made to feel like garbage for the wanting.

Topper was good. Yeah, he was good-family, good-school, good-on paper. But Rafe found that Topper was good in the way that should have made him insufferable. Topper had decided, somewhere back before either of them remembered, that Rafe was worth keeping, and then he had simply never revisited the decision. He didn't keep a tally. He'd watched Rafe show up fucked up to a hundred things, watched him pick fights with golf clubs and bigger men, watched him be cold and mean and impossible, and Topper had kept clapping him on the shoulder like his father did, kept being there that it had taken Rafe to realize this was rare.

And Rafe was going to take you from him anyway. Had already started. Was, in the part of his head he didn’t visit in daylight, fully planning to. That was the whole obscene buildup of it, that the one person who’d never once made Rafe earn his place was the person Rafe was robbing. He wasn’t even doing it out of hatred, which would have at least been clean. He was doing it because of a hundred small things he'd had no business collecting and had collected anyway. How you laughed half-a-second late at jokes, always, because you were checking the room first to see if it was safe to, and how that half-a-second was the only honest thing when the laugh actually came. The way you ate the crust off of people’s plates, Topper’s, Ruthie’s, like the food tasted better when it wasn't yours and nobody was watching you want it.

None of it was Topper’s fault. Topper’s only crime was being there for two years and never noticing the half second, never wondering what you were checking for, just hearing the laugh and taking it at face value the way he took everything, gratefully, completely, without the suspicion that there was a whole second self standing behind it.

There was a thought Rafe had, late, that if it had been the other way around, if Rafe had gotten to you first, Topper would not have done this. He wouldn’t have wanted to. It was far from the idea that Topper was weak or because Topper didn’t have it in him to want a thing; it was because Topper was built somewhat right. Topper had been loved correctly and consistently and on time, and so Topper had turned out to be someone who could be trusted around the things other people loved. Rafe had been loved the way Ward did everything, which was to say conditionally, expensively, and from a distance, and so Rafe had turned out to be the kind of person who, handed something good that belonged to a friend, could not keep his hands off it.

He’d been on the boat for nineteen minutes and he was being so good it was fucking annoying. This was day eleven. He had a streak going. Day eleven of not texting you, not driving past the library on Tuesdays, not allowing his brain to build a small detailed house for the two of you and then moving you both into it. Eleven days, for Rafe’s standards, was basically monastic. He’d told himself after he’d dropped you off at your house—after you made that sickly-sweet confession then passed the fuck out, sparing you the indignity of remebering you’d said it. That two weeks was the number. If he could do two weeks, the wanting would sand down to a manageable size, the same way a callus made a thing stop hurting by making the skin too thick to feel it.

He didn’t actually believe this. He had never once in his life successfully made himself want something less. But he wanted a number, and two weeks was a number, and he was eleven days into it and the boat smelled like sunscreen and diesel.

He took a hit off the bong because it was there, and clearly Topper’s parents hadn’t been on the boat because it wouldn’t have been there if they had. He found the stash of weed in the same place Topper always kept it, inside the couch. He’d been making good use out of Topper’s things given Topper was late.

Topper was always late. It was one of the few genuinely annoying things about him, and Rafe had a theory that Topper thought the thing wouldn’t start without him at some point in his life, and decided he never had to make himself hurry. Ward did it too. Rafe, who had spent his whole life arriving places early and then sitting in his truck so nobody would see him be early, found it unbearable in a way he never said out loud.

He was being good. He was being so good. And your foot landed on the gangway and the boat took your weight, and Rafe felt the small dip and correct of it through the hull. He knew it was you before he turned to see who it was. He’d gotten like that. It was nothing to have been proud of. 

You came down the cockpit and didn’t see him at first, which meant he got a second of you before you did of him. Rafe took the second, because Rafe took every second of you he was handed and a number he wasn't.

You looked like hell. Not actual hell, you’d have to work much harder than you’d ever worked in your life to look actually bad, and Rafe resented this about you in a low background way, the unfairness of it. But you did look like you’d been crying somewhere with the door closed, and had then done the small expert repairs and come out, and Rafe knew that particular finish on a person because it was the finish he saw in his own mirror. The eyes slightly too clean. The mouth set in a straight line. Yo’'d put something pink on the mouth on the way over. He noticed that. 

Then you saw him and your face moved slightly, like you were recalibrating and deciding which version of yourself this required.

“Someone looks happy,” Rafe said.

It came out lightly, a little meanly, and exactly how he’d intended for it to. He was good at this. It was, if he was honest, the only thing he was good at; saying a thing that closed a door so quietly the other person wasn’t sure a door had been there. He'd been doing it to you for two years. He'd done it to you because the alternative was doing the other thing, and the other thing could not be undone, and so he had picked, every single time, the small mean sentence over the catastrophe.

You didn’t rise to it. You didn’t do much of anything, in fact. 

“He’s not here yet?” you asked, and your voice sounded so even Rafe wanted to tear the edges off of it. 

“Nah. Late,” Rafe said, letting it sit. “Shocking. I know.”

“Right.” A small laugh, the half-second one, except there was no room to check and so it came out hollow, on cue. The type of shit you’d give another guy for describing an unfunny encounter. 

And that should've been it. The two of you should’ve stayed exactly where you were, not looking at each other, until the rest of the people showed up to act as witnesses. He could do that. 

But you stood at the bottom of the cockpit steps with your bag still on your shoulder and looked around the room. 

“Did they ever fix the—” You tipped your chin at the cleat. “Topper said his dad was going to have someone look at it.”

Rafe raised a brow. You were talking to him like he’d heard you talked to everyone else, a good fucking voice that asked absolutely nothing and gave absolutely nothing. And you were using it on him, as if asking shit like this to him was normal. Something in his chest did a small ugly turn, and he heard himself before he’d decided to talk.

“You don't have to do that,” Rafe said.

You blinked. "Do what?"

“That.” He tipped the bong toward you, at the bag, the mouth, the cleat. “That voice. The—” He almost got to the end of it, but the end was a cliff, so he took a hit instead and let the smoke buy him the half second you were so good at stealing. “I don’t give a shit about the cleat. Neither do you.”

He sounded more annoyed than he’d meant, and it was real but not about you; mainly about the fact that you’d decided you were going to pretend nothing happened, even though that was exactly what he needed from you. Still, getting it felt like being handed a glass of water and told it was the fucking ocean.

You stayed silent. The water did its small work against the hull. Somewhere across the marina a halyard was tapping against a mast, that thin patient sound that Rafe normally didn't hear and now could hear individually, every strike of it, because the boat had gone that quiet. He looked at the bong. He looked at the cooler nobody had opened. He was aware of you not moving.

You moved then, setting your bag down onto the cushion of the bench seat and you crossed the cockpit. Three steps. Four. Past the table, past Rafe, close enough that he got a wash of you, the floral scent, clean and expensive and so aggressively innocent it had always made him want to break something just to have something to apologize for.

Behind the couch he was sitting on was a door. The head, the boat’s bathroom, a closet of a room, teak and a mirror and not quite the square footage to turn around in. You put your hand flat on it and opened it. 

And Rafe didn't understand. He watched you open the door to the head and his brain, his stupid traitor brain that had a whole drawer with your name on it, did not produce the thought it should have produced. It produced something sadder. It thought that he’d made you isolate yourself from him until everyone arrived. And now you were going to go stand in front of Topper's mirror and come back out with the distance reinstalled, and it would be his fault, and he'd earned it.

He even opened his mouth to say something. Sorry, maybe. He wasn't sure. He hadn't gotten there.

You were standing in the doorway of the head with one hand still on the frame, and you weren't going in, and you weren't fixing anything, and you turned your head and you looked back at him across the small bright cabin.

“Rafe,” you said.

He was up off the couch before he'd finished understanding. The bong went onto the table too hard, making the water move in it. Two years of holding still, of the mean sentences, of the moat he'd dug with his own two hands, and it turned out the whole mechanism had been resting on you never once asking him not to hold still, and you hadn't asked him anything, you'd just said his name and left a door open, and the mechanism was already on the floor behind him.

He crossed the cabin in three steps and he did not let himself count them.

You stood in the doorway, the head behind you flooded with the harsh, blue-white of the marine bulb, and you looked at him like you’d always known he’d follow. 

He stopped close, and the head was small enough that close was the only thing available, and Rafe found that he had no words ready. That was new. He always had words ready. He'd built a whole personality out of having the word ready. But the apparatus that supplied the words was on the cabin floor with everything else, and so he just stood there in the blue-white light, breathing, looking at you looking at him, and said nothing at all.

Your hands came up. Rafe’s eyes were fixed on them as they reached up, shy and sudden, to the sides of his face, just to hold. You were just holding, palms careful against his jaw like he was someone who deserved to be held carefully at all. 

His whole body leaned down to it before his brain had been consulted. His head just went where your hands asked it to go, the way water went downhill, the way Topper was late; some law older than choosing.

“Can I—” you started, then the sentence went out of track.

You just stopped, and the third word wouldn’t come. Because the third one was a want, and you were someone who Rafe knew had spent years not saying those out loud, and Rafe watched the question strand there an inch from his mouth, watched you not be able to finish it, and understood that finishing it was a thing you could not do and were never going to be able to do.

So he did it for you. That was the deal, apparently, the complete contract of whatever this was. You couldn’t say the thing and he’d say it; you couldn’t finish and he’d finish. He'd be doing it for the rest of his life and he already knew that, standing there.

“Yeah,” Rafe said against the space where your sentence had been, throwing eleven days outside the window completely. “You can.”

You reached past him instead, one hand leaving his face, and you pushed the door shut behind him. It made a small sound of a click, and it landed in Rafe like a gunshot, because you'd done it. He hadn't reached back and done it for you. You'd closed the door yourself, with your own hand, taken the last out off the table and folded it up and put it away, and Rafe stood in the new confines of the room understanding that he had just watched you say yes in the only language you had.

And then you kissed him. It was careful at first—both of you were, for about a second and a half, careful—and then your fingers slid back into his hair and you breathed yourself through a small, relieved sound.

It was barely a sound at all, but it was a sound you had not chosen to make, Rafe could tell the difference, he’d spent two years watching you choose every sound and every breath and every tilt of your head, and this one had just slipped out of you. He’d spent the last few times he was in your proximity getting a closer read on you. And this was just involuntary proof, that this was happening to you as much as he was making it happen, that you were in here with him rather than being there for him.

He’d run the tape on this so many times it embarrassed him, and in every version you were careful. Soft, a thing he had to coax and gentle and be slow with. 

So when your hand came up and fisted the front of his shirt and pulled—like you’d been the one standing on the wrong side of a door for two years—Rafe's entire model of you went out the porthole, and the loss of it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“Okay,” he said to nobody, to the new discovery of you. “Okay.”

Rafe's control didn't snap so much as it discovered it had never really been there. You kissed him, and he’d been expecting to be the one to do it to you, Rafe the corrupting agent, Rafe with the dirty hands. He didn’t know this one. It felt like being handed a part of you that he couldn’t have witnessed from across rooms, and it turned out to be this—appetite, slow, a little mean—and he wanted it so badly it scared him sober.

His fingers went to your hair, fingers closing at the root and pulling your head back just enough to change the angle, and his other arm came around your back to haul you in past there was room to be hauled. The size of the room was nothing and he wanted you closer than nothing. 

Your chest pressed flat to his and he could feel you breathing through the cotton of your top, could feel the ridge of your bra and the heat of your skin underneath it. His arm tightened across your back.

Somewhere in it, he heard himself say “fuck—you—” against your mouth and didn't get the rest of it out. The rest of it was two years long anyway and wouldn't have fit in the room.

“Rafe,” you said, voice breath-shaped against his jaw, the vibration of it traveling down his neck and settling somewhere at the base of his spine. 

“Mhm.”

“I—” You let his teeth catch onto your bottom lip and gently tug on it. You rose to your toes. “I haven’t been able to—stop—”

“Hm?” He was already gone. His hands found the hem of your denim skirt. His fingers traced the seam where the fabric ended, running along the edge of it, before his palms slid underneath and made contact with bare skin. His palms caught against skin still slick from the humidity, and the give of you under his hands briefly wiped every coherent thought from his head. “Stop what?”

“Being able to think—about you.” Your words came out in two short breaths as Rafe’s fingers palmed the curve of your ass with more greed than finesse, pulling your hips forward into his.

“Shit—yeah?” His voice had gone somewhere low and ruined. A stupid part of him wanted to ask why, hear you say it again, spell it out, tell him exactly what you thought about. “Me too.” 

The same broken noise slipped out of you again, urgently, like the next one and all of the ones after that were owed to him. 

He walked you backward until the bulkhead caught you. You hit the teak with a dull sound and your spine arched off it, pressing your hips into his. Rafe’s vision briefly went white because the pressure of you against him—specifically where he was already hard and had been since you closed the door—was a feeling his body processed before his brain got anywhere near it.

He kept one hand flat behind your shoulder blade so the boat's roll wouldn't knock your skull into the wood. Some backroom part of him was still telling him to make sure you didn’t get hurt.

His hand found the hem of your skirt again and pushed it up slowly, gathering the denim in his fist, and the scrape of the fabric against your skin was loud in the small room. 

You shifted your hips off the teak to help him—lifted without being asked—and Rafe had to stop.

He put his forehead against your shoulder and breathed, because your unconscious cooperation did more to him than everything before it combined. He'd imagined it, and in every version you were hesitant, uncertain, something he had to ease into, and the reality was that you'd just lifted your hips for him like you wanted this as much as he did.

“D’you—” His voice was gone. He couldn’t recognize it. “Tell me to.”

“Rafe.”

“Say it.” He turned his mouth against your neck, found your pulse point, and it felt it hammering against his lips. He tasted the salt on your skin. His hand was on your thigh, fingers spread wide, thumb pressing to the soft inside of it where the skin was the thinnest, and he could feel the muscle twitching under his touch. “Say it?”

You let out a breath into his ear, body loosening up under his hold. “Please.”

“Jesus fuck,” Rafe muttered, and it came out wrecked, halfway to a laugh, because you kept finding things he had no defense for without even trying.

He pushed the lace aside with two fingers, careful at first because the carefulness was a reflex even now, and then he felt you—your warmth and the give and the fact of it—and the careful went the way of everything else. Warmer than he’d imagined, softer, wetter. His fingers slid against you experimentally, testing his touch out, afraid you’d vanish if he made the wrong move.

Your eyes squeezed shut and your thigh clenched against his hip. 

Everything was replaced by the single present-tense reality of his hand between your legs, and the reality was so much more than the fantasy that he understood, suddenly and completely, that he wasn’t going to recover from knowing this.

He pressed his forehead to the side of your head and shut his eyes. Looking at you was too much information all at once; he needed to subtract a sense or he was going to embarrass himself.

He bit down the inside of his cheek, hard, on principle, because the sound that wanted to come out at just this—just his fingers against you, nothing more, the most preliminary fact of you—was a sound that would have told you everything.

It would have laid the whole two years out on the floor, and Rafe was ready to give you a great deal tonight but he was not, yet, ready to give you that.

You made a short, desperate sound. Your hand came off his shirt and gripped his wrist to keep him, to make sure his hands stayed, the fingers wrapping around the bones of his wrist and holding on.

“Not going anywhere,” he said against your temple, which was true in the small immediate sense and a lie in every other, and he chose, this once, to mean only the small one.

Your free hand moved between you, down, and found the waist of his jeans. You fumbled at the button. It was clumsy—your fingers weren’t sure, and Rafe wondered if you’d ever done the reaching before, or if you’d only ever done the reaching before—and that clumsiness nearly took his legs out; the fact that you were trying, that you’d decided his wanting was a thing worth tending to. You, who tended to everything, were turning all the careful attention now onto him. 

He caught your wrist with his free hand before you got to the button.

“Hey. No.” It came out rougher than expected. He pressed his mouth to your jaw so he wouldn't have to look at you while he said it. He could feel your pulse in your wrist, fast under his thumb, and he held it there. “Not—Just you right now. Okay?”

You went still, uncertain, and he felt the small recalibration in you. He couldn’t have that either.

“S’not—” Rafe huffed, frustrated at his own mouth, at the fact that the truth was right there and he had no clean way to hand it over. The truth being that if you touched him, he was done, and he needed it to last longer than that, he needed more of you before he let it be over. He had no way to say any of it that wouldn't crack him open.

So, he said, against your skin, “Let me have this one. You can deal with me later.”

He felt the curve of your smile against his cheek. “Promise?” you asked, like it genuinely could have been that simple.

He chose to believe it could be.

“Yeah, okay.” His fingers moved inside you again and your breath broke and the smile went with it. “Yeah. Promise.”

You made a noise, broken, your hips chasing his hand like the wanting had gone out ahead of you. He almost said it then. The thing. It got all the way up his throat and he swallowed it down because saying it here, like this, with his fingers inside you on Topper's boat, would've made it the cheapest it could ever be, and the one thing Rafe was sure of was that it wasn't cheap. He curled his fingers instead to find the place that made your whole body forget its manners.

His hips pressed forward against your thigh just once off their own accord, moving in a slow grind.

His body was finding pressure where it could, chasing the friction he’d denied simply because of the fact that he was so hard it had passed uncomfortable a while ago and entered something closer to pain.

The pressure sent a wave of relief through him so acute his breath came out shaky against your temple, and his hand stuttered inside you for half a second before he caught the rhythm again.

He locked his hips and stayed still and put everything he had back into you instead, into the curl of his fingers and the pace you needed, and the dull throb of himself went unanswered and that was fine.

That was fine. He could sit with it. He'd been sitting with wanting you for two years; what was another few minutes?

“Look at me.” It came out slow, almost a plea, far from having an order in it. He’d had his eyes shut a second ago and now he couldn’t survive not being able to see. “C’mon. Lemme see.” 

Your eyes dragged open, gone glassy, unfocused, and he held them. He’d wanted to see this for so long and he wasn’t going to spend it blind. 

Your hand twisted in his shirt. You were shaking. He could feel it building in you, your peak, close, and he kept his rhythm exactly where you needed it because for once in his life he wanted to give perfectly, get one act completely right.

“Rafe.” Your voice cracked on it, warning, almost.

“I know,” he said. “I got you.” 

You broke. He felt it happen—felt you go tight, squeezing his fingers, and then gone, your forehead dropping hard to his shoulder, a sound against his neck that you didn't choose and couldn't have stopped—and he held still inside it and let you have all of it, every second, until you went heavy and loose against him and the only thing holding you up was him.

Rafe kept his hand where it was one second longer than he should have, just to feel the last of it, then drew it back slow and fixed the lace with more care than he’d taken with anything in his life. He settled it back like he was hiding the evidence, which he was. He pressed his forehead to yours. Your hands had found his shirt again. Your eyes were shut.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, shaken, as you tried to recover yourself. He saw your jaw tighten like you wanted to say more and were physically biting the words down.

He already knew what was coming. He'd watched it happen enough with you now, the way the wanting closed over and the apology surfaced. He just didn't know it would land the way it did.

The words landed wrong in him, because ‘sorry’ was a thing people were for Rafe, a thing that arrived in his direction with his name attached. 

If you were going to keep reaching for him and you were going to be sorry every time, and he was going to let you, and the wanting was always going to come to him pre-wrapped in your regret.

He couldn't have that. Of all of it—the wrongness, the boat, Topper—that was the one thing Rafe found he could not stand in the room.

He brought his hand up and brushed his knuckles along your cheek, slow, and shook his head, just slightly, just enough. 

“Don’t,” he said, and his voice came out rough. “You see me complaining?”

You looked at him, and Rafe got the full, sober weight of your eyes for the first time since the door had clicked. In them was something he had no idea what he could with, the furrow of your brows and the frown on your lips, like you didn’t want to go.

That made something between his ribs sore, because he could deal with you regretting it; he’d dealt with people regretting him. What he had no capability for was you standing so, so fucking close to him looking like leaving him was the hardest part.

“Hey.” He had reached the edge of what his mouth could do. So he kept the knuckles against your cheek, because moving them was beyond him, and the two of you stood there in the bright nothing for a second that Rafe would later try and fail to make last longer in his memory than it had any right to last.

Then your eyes moved past him—to the door, to the world on the other side of it—and he watched the second you started leaving. 

He watched your face close over. Then your hands left his shirt—he felt the complete loss of them, a cold where they’d been tugging—and went to work; you smoothed the denim of your skirt where he’d greedily bunched it, the shirt next that had, at some point, lifted up, then your hair, fingers finding the loose pieces and threading them back into the shape they were supposed to hold. 

Forty seconds, maybe less, and there was almost nothing left of you that Rafe had put there. That meant you’d walk out into the sun and stand next to Topper, and Topper would look at you and see his girl, intact, unmarked, and returned to him in good condition. 

But you’d been sad to go. Rafe held onto that with both hands. He’d take it up the stairs with him; he’d take it home; he’d take it out later and look at it. He knew, even now, that keeping that would be the worst thing to keep, because the fact that you hadn’t wanted to leave didn’t mean you were going to stay. You were still going. Sad to leave and leaving weren’t opposites; you could do both. In fact, you were about to.

“You should head up,” he said. “Before anyone else comes.”

You nodded.

Rafe reached out one more time, the last time he could, and ran his thumb along the corner of your mouth where the pink had smudged, where he’d smudged it. He wiped it clean, almost carefully, and he tucked the one piece of hair you’d missed.

“I don’t know what—I’m sorr—”

Rafe cut your words off by placing a finger under your chin.

He knew while doing it that he was putting Topper’s girlfriend back together. He was reassembling you with his own hands so the seams wouldn't show, gentle as anything, and he hated himself the exact right amount and did it anyway, because the alternative was you walking up there with the truth still on you and Rafe was not—whatever else he was—going to be the reason it showed.

“Go,” he said, stepping back to give you the door. He found something like a smile somewhere and got it up onto his face and held it there with what he had left. “You look perfect.”

It was at the lawn party that happened every year because the Murrays had a lawn and a reason was not, on Figure Eight, something that was required to have a party. Rafe had come anyway, because not coming was its own kind of information, and another week into a thing like this he started doing calculation on what your absence said as carefully as what your presence did.

He’d been there an hour and he watched you the whole hour. He was good at it by now; he’d had years of practice so it didn’t look like anything, the trick of keeping his face pointed at the person talking to him while the rest of you stayed aimed at the far side of the lawn. Nobody saw him do it, and he watched you move around the grass in a green dress with a drink you hadn’t taken a single sip of.

You were bright and frictionless and doing that stupid fucking laugh exactly on time. Your hand found people’s forearms when you said a kind thing, and the whole set-up of it was so smooth and so total that he had a hard time believing you were the same person who’d asked him to come into a tiny bathroom on your boyfriend’s boat. 

By seven, the parents had thinned out and left Brad and Charlie Murray in charge of the lawn. It was by eight when Rafe noticed Topper leave. It was with some guy Rafe half-knew, a friend of a friend, who looked like he was going to be a problem, and Topper had peeled him off from the keg to deal with him. Topper was doing the small, good thing and taking a guy home before he woke up the next morning with an earful of everything he’d done.

He got his phone out before his mind even processed it. 

where are u, he texted you, making use of that almost-empty chat thread with you that was mainly filled with small logistic details he never cared about that you did. It was deniable, a sentence that would make him look like he was only keeping an eye out for his best friend’s girlfriend. 

He told himself that, too. He just wanted to know where you were; he’d also spent his time unable to decide if the boat had been a real thing or a girl having the worst night of her summer in a small room he just happened to be in. He didn't know which, and not knowing was its own kind of hell. 

about to catch a ride w ruthie

Rafe immediately read it and his mind snagged on the fact that you’d answered him at all. You could've gotten in Ruthie's car and let the question rot. Rafe felt something ugly and electric go up his spine that he had the decency, at least, to be disgusted by.

come by the pool in the back

The typing bubble didn’t come back up. He picked the label off the beer in wet strips and watched the path up to the pool. And you did come up the path, and Rafe got his answer, that the boat may not have been a fluke. 

He should've felt like he'd won something. He'd been telling himself for three weeks that knowing would feel like winning. 

You came around the hedge and saw him sitting on the pool ledge with his feet in the water and his beer on the stone beside him. 

“Hey,” you said. You looked at the pool, the empty chairs, the dark windows of the Murray house where the party noise was muffled into bass and the occasional shriek. You looked everywhere that wasn't him.

“You been avoiding me?” Rafe asked, trying to make it sound as even as possible. 

“No,” you said quickly. Your hand went to the chain around your neck and turned the pendant once.

He huffed out a breath. “Yeah?”

“I’m here, am I not?”

Rafe had no fucking clue how he’d managed to get you in this position, head between your thighs as you laid on the top of his white duvet.

The room was dark except for the dock lights off the marsh throwing slow, liquid patterns across the ceiling. Tannyhill was empty, and Rafe usually hated that, but right now, the silence was his and it had you in it, and that made it the best fucking room he’d ever been in. 

Your thighs were shaking with a small tremor, barely there, and his hands were holding them apart. His thumbs pressed into the soft inside of your skin as your whole body tried to close around him. He could feel the tension in the muscle under his palms, the restless shifting of your hips, and the way your hand had gone to his hair and stayed there.

He’d barely started. His mouth was working up from the inside of your thigh, tasting the salt on your skin, and you were already breathing like you’d been running. He could hear the short, caught inhales that you kept trying to smooth out. 

He said your name against your skin, and you jolted. “Stop thinking,” he murmured.

“I’m not—”

“I can feel it.” He looked up at you from between your legs. Your face in the dim was already flushed with eyes too wide and your bottom lip caught between your teeth. “Relax.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try less,” he drawled, thumb doing a gentle stroke against your skin. “That’s the whole point.”

His mouth moved higher, and your thighs clenched against the sides of his face before you caught yourself and relaxed it. He let his tongue drag down the slit, savoring the taste as your hips came off the bed. The sound you made was small and shocked; you immediately bit it back, swallowed it behind your teeth.

He wanted to stay like this. He wanted to take his time, learn you like this, take in every sound and shift of your body. But your body was rigid underneath him in a way that wasn't anticipation. You were lying on his bed with your legs apart and his face between them and some part of you couldn't stop being aware of it. He could feel your self-consciousness like a physical thing, the way you kept adjusting, kept shifting your hips.

“Rafe,” you said quietly.

He lifted his head. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s—wrong.” You pressed your lips together. Your hand in his hair loosened, then tightened, then loosened again. “Can you come up here?”

“But I’m good here.”

“I know. I just—I wanna—” You stopped, letting out an almost-frustrated breath he found deeply amusing. Your eyes were fixed on the ceiling, and furrow between your brows had deepened in a way that wasn't just arousal. You were embarrassed. You were lying in his bed asking for something and you were embarrassed about the asking. “I want you like—closer.”

Rafe tugged his lip between his teeth, and he was sure his own pupils were blown as wide as they could be. “Closer how?”

Your eyes found his in the dark, and the shy wanting in your face hit Rafe in a really, really, difficult fucking way because he had no idea how to deal with it. You held his gaze and your hand gently tugged at his hair, pulling him upward and toward you.

“We don’t have to—” He went, because there was no version of this where he could deny you. He was already crawling up your body because his own was making the decision, his brain, his mouth dragging up your stomach, your ribs, the valley between your breasts. “I don’t mind.” 

Your hands went down from his hair and cupped the sides of his face with your palms, practically forcing him to look at you. “Do you—you don’t want to?” 

The question was so far from reality that his brain physically stalled. He was hovering over you, hands on your shoulders, and you were looking up at him with genuine uncertainty. 

“Are you—” He almost laughed. “You’re really asking me that?”

You grumbled something under your breath, causing him to chuckle then.

He moved his thumb to your lip, pulling it down, as he said, “I wanna. Just wanna make sure you’ll be fine.”

Your lips closed around his thumb, as if relieved at his answer, and Rafe’s brain went to place it wasn’t coming back from.

Your eyes stayed on his, still carrying the shy uncertainty from a second ago, and Rafe was supposed to reconcile that with the warm press of your tongue against his thumb. 

“Okay,” he said flatly. “Yeah. Thanks for that.” 

The corner of your eyes creased. You would’ve laughed if you weren’t currently occupied. 

He pressed his thumb down against your bottom lip, dragged it slow across the fullness of it, and watched your eyes go heavy. His cock was pressed against your thigh and he was fairly sure you could feel exactly what this was doing to him, which was fine, whatever, he'd abandoned dignity somewhere around the second week of wanting you.

“So fucking annoying,” he said, almost conversational. 

He pulled his thumb free, letting it drag. The wet shine it left on your lip caught the silver light. You looked up at him with your mouth still parted and an expression that was dangerously close to being pleased with yourself. 

He leaned down to press his forehead against yours, bracing his arms against your sides as his hips came flush against yours, cock grinding over the wetness of you. He let out a broken gasp at the feeling, eyes closing for a moment. 

Your breath hitched underneath him and your hips tilted up—chasing—and the friction made both of you go still for a second. Your hands were on his shoulders, fingers pressing into the muscle, and your eyes were shut and your mouth was open and you looked like someone at the edge of a cliff deciding whether to jump.

He rocked against you again, watching intently the way your brow creased and your lips pressed together. He could feel you—the heat, the slick of it, how easy it would be to just push forward—and the restraint of not doing it yet, of keeping this unbearable almost-contact, was winding something tight behind his ribs.

“Why’re you letting me do this to you?” he asked, unable to stop the words from stumbling out. He rolled his hips again.

“Huh—”

He shifted his hips, unfair. He knew it was far from fair, but whatever deflection you’d been making lost its integrity. “Why?” he asked, voice quieter.

Your hands slid from his shoulders to the sides of his neck. You held him there, thumbs against his jaw, and he watched you try to find the answer while his body was making it very difficult to think. Your hips moved against his again; small, restless, like your body was having its own conversation separate from the one your mouth was attempting.

“Why are you doing this?” you said, turning it back around on him.

“I’ve got my reasons,” he said without missing a beat. 

Something flickered across your eyes, curiosity, maybe, then washed out. “And I’ve got mine.”

That was enough for Rafe. That was more than enough, that there was something in you that wanted to do this.

His hands went down to find his cock and align himself against you. He pushed forward in one, slow continuous motion, and any words you had for him dissolved into a sound that started as a gasp and ended nowhere. Your lips parted and your eyes widened just slightly at the newfound intrusion in your body as your nails sunk into the sides of his neck hard enough to leave crescents. 

His own breath left him somewhere guttural and graceless, his face dropping to the crook of your neck. He held still, breathing through his nose against your skin, jaw clenched as every muscle tightened.

Your body was adjusting around him in increments he could feel; the tension in your thighs loosening, your hips shifting beneath his to find the angle, your breathing going from held to shaky. Your fingers moved from his neck to his hair, threading through it, holding on.

“Okay?” he managed to say through his teeth.

“Yeah,” you said, voice coming out through a breath. “Just—stay there a second.”

He stayed, and he would’ve done so for the rest of the night if you’d asked him to. Your legs were wrapped around his hips and your fingers were in his hair and he was inside you in his bed and the whole situation was so far from anything he deserved that he was fairly sure the universe was going to correct the error any second now.

Your hips moved first with a small roll, testing, and whatever you found made your head tilt back and eyes close. You let out a small, surprised sound like you’d answered a question. 

“Good?” he said against your neck.

“Move,” you said instead of answering.

He pulled back and pushed in again, and your body rose to meet him on the first stroke like it had been waiting. The angle you found together made you gasp and him swear and it something in motion neither of you could stop. 

He pulled back to look at you because he needed to see your face. You looked wrecked already—mouth open, eyes half-shut, heat spreading down your neck—and something about the expression was more than just pleasure. It was surprise, like you hadn't known it could feel like this.

Rafe thought about Topper—a brief flash, Topper in this position, Topper on top of you—and felt something ugly and possessive claw up his throat. He wondered if Topper had ever seen this face.

He pushed himself up to the hilt to shove the thought aside. Your body kept meeting his with a push that matched his own, your hips rolling up into every thrust, and the careful dissolved in the face of it. 

At some point, through the haze of too-much-pleasure, more than Rafe deserved, your mouth found his shoulder, breathing hard against his skin. On a thrust that went deeper, your teeth came down reflexively, the bite sharp and sudden, sending a jolt down through him. A bright sting that braided into the pleasure and amplified it, and his hips snapped forward hard in response, punching a sound out of you that vibrated against his shoulder.

You pulled back. “Sorry. I’m sorry—”

He let out a small chuckle, shaking his head. “Don’t really care. You do what you want.”

His hand found your thigh, hiked your leg higher around his waist. The angle shifted and your head tipped back and the sound you made was loud enough to fill the room. Your throat was exposed, the pendant resting in the hollow of your collarbone—the initial that belonged to every version of you that existed outside this bed—and it caught the light as your chest heaved.

Rafe's hand moved before his brain had signed off on it. It shifted from your thigh up your body, over your ribs, your collarbone, and settled against the side of your throat, resting. His palm was against your neck, fingers curving around the column of it, his thumb was against your pulse where it was hammering fast enough to count.

You let out a shuddered breath as your back arched off the mattress, and your hips ground up into him. “Rafe,” you said, sounding almost needier. 

Rafe sucked in an inhale. “Yeah?”

Your mouth opened and nothing came out for a second—your body processing—and then a sound that was so unguarded your hand flew up to cover your mouth.

He caught it and pinned it to the mattress beside your head, fingers lacing with yours. His other hand stayed on your throat, elbows resting against the mattress, as his fingers rubbed the skin under your jaw. “Don’t do that.”

Your fingers squeezed his where they were pinned. Your eyes were bright and locked on his. He could feel you everywhere.

Your legs tight around his waist, your hand gripping his, your pulse racing against his palm, the way you clenched around him every time his thumb shifted against your throat. He was keeping all of it. He was putting it in the drawer that had started as a nook and had overtaken every other room in his head. The specific rhythm that made your eyes roll back. The way your body curved into him when he hit the right angle. The small, bitten-off sounds you made.

His lips found yours, tugging them with his teeth rather than kissing at all. Your shaky breaths ghosted over his face.

He could feel you getting close, your breath fragmenting into short gasps and you clenching around his own pulsing. Your hands squeezed his against the mattress hard enough that the bones ached. 

“I think I’m—” you started saying against his lips.

“I know,” he said, letting himself find a rhythm—the perfect one, if there even was one, to make you fall apart under him—as his finger reached up to trace your jaw. “I know.”

Within three minutes of Rafe’s body rolling off of yours, he noticed your body stiffen like a fucking stone. He stayed where he was, on his back, and he let the quiet sit because it was, for now, holding. 

Your shoulder was against his arm and your knee was somewhere near his. The length of you was just there, warm and breathing, close in a way that the boat or the truck or your bathroom hadn’t allowed. Rafe had never had that with you. He found he didn't entirely know what to do with his arm.

He sat up, swinging his legs off the bed and reaching for the jeans on the floor. He got his cigarettes out of the pocket and put his jeans back on. He crossed to the window and pushed it up with the heel of his hand and Rafe sat himself on the sill, half in the room and half out of it. He took the first drag and felt his hands finally have a job. He needed something to do with his hands; lying in bed next to you without reaching out for you again wasn’t, it turned out, a thing his body had been built to do.

He let himself look back at you. You’d propped yourself up on one elbow, the duvet pulled across you, and you were watching him, the way he did you, except he’d had the cowardice to do it across rooms and you were doing it from eight feet away with no apparent shame about it at all. 

When you realized he noticed you, your eyes went down.

Rafe huffed, smoke going with it. “Now you’re shy?”

“Shut up.”

“You can stare. I’m right here.”

You shifted under the duvet at his gaze, and your eyes came off him and went to the middle distance. Something in your shoulders drew in, like you were folding half-inch under a thing you had no cover for.

He shifted on the sill, opening the space between his knees so the foot still inside came down flat on the floorboards. He made the room and let it sit there, took another drag, and looked at the dark outside.

You pushed the duvet off and got up to cross the room in his t-shirt, the grey one, the hem of it at the top of your thighs. You sat down between his legs with your back to his chest, and Rafe forgot, for a second, what he’d been doing with his cigarette.

“You cold?” he said, because you’d drawn in against him.

“A little.”

He brought his arm around you and flattened it over your stomach to pull you back the last inch into him, and it sat there like a bar across your front. Your spine fell against his sternum and his chin landed somewhere at the top of your head without fully thinking about it. He smoked over your shoulder, angling it away so it wouldn’t go in your face. 

“Can I say something?” you asked after a moment.

“That’s never good.”

“It’s not bad.” you said.

“That’s worse.” He felt you huff, the small laugh going through your back into his chest. He tapped the ash out the window. “Go.”

“I didn’t know I’d—” You stopped, looking out the window. “I don’t usually—” The sentence continued to fall halfway, each version dying before it cleared your teeth. You sighed, longly, then gave up on saying it cleanly at all. “It’s usually never like that for me. That’s all.”

It took Rafe a moment to register you weren’t talking about the sex as much as you were talking about yourself. You’d been in one bed your whole life, and so the basic structure of the thing was a blank you were handing him, with no management on it, trusting him—him, of all people—to draw it in honestly.

“Yeah,” he said carefully. 

You nodded against his collarbone, and he felt the small loosening in your body, as though you’d been quietly worried about admitting it and just found out that it was fine. 

“Makes sense, though.” He took a drag, the cigarette going into its last embers. “One person your whole life. You don’t even know what you—” The words came out magnanimous, older, knows-better, and he tried to reel it back because he most definitely didn’t know better. “You gotta get out more. Figure out what you like. Who does it for you.” He shrugged, almost stiffly. “You’ve got catching up to do.”

It sat there for half a second, and then the picture loaded behind it—you, like this, and someone else being the one to go looking and find the same pieces he just found—and Rafe discovered the offer he’d made out of generosity was the single most intolerable sentence he’d said all summer.

You tipped your head back against his shoulder to look up at him. There was something small and amused in your face, because you'd caught the seam in his voice a beat before he'd even finished hating himself for it.

“How many more?”

He huffed, low and hot against the side of your head, and shook it once. “Yeah, alright.” His arm drew tighter across your stomach. “Pretty sure I should be enough.”

The cigarette was dead. He’d smoked it past the point of it being anything, down to the place where it was just paper and heat between his fingers, and he reached out and crushed it on the brick of the sill outside. His hand came back in with nothing to do, and he solved it the way he’d started solving most of it recently, which was to find some part of you and settle on it; the flat of his palm went to your hip and stayed, his thumb moving once over the bone of it and then going still. 

“I should probably drive you home soon, yeah?” he said into the side of your head. “It’s late.”

He felt your spine taking itself back, the slack going out of you, and the cold rushed back into the warm place at his chest. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” you said quickly. “I’ll get dressed really quick.”

Before he could even process it all, you were already up, crossing for your clothes. He watched you put them on.

Stay was right there, but it wouldn’t come up. 

“Hey.” You stopped at his voice, one sandal on, the other one in your hand. “The catching up—” His thumb found the brick where the cigarette had been rubbed. “I’m right here. If you—want to—up to you.”

It was the most he could get out. 

“You’re bad at this,” you said, almost matter-of-factly. 

He huffed, eyes leaving the window to go back to you for a second. “Yeah, I know.” He laughed then, slightly. “Never really been in this situation before.”

“Yeah,” You bent and set the sandal down on the boards. “Me neither.”

Thick syrupy light that came down at six and made people you couldn’t even stand look like they were worth everyone’s time covered your entire vision. You were on a long teak bench against the pergola with Topper’s arm across the back of it, and you had a sweating glass of something pink you’d been holding for thirty minutes. The Devreux twins were in the pool; someone had fallen asleep upright on the Adirondack chair, a tray of those little crab things was going around, and the citronella candles were already lit. 

Topper’s hand was on your knee, it had been there a while. It landed the same way as it always had, without his eyes following it. Two years ago, one year ago, a month ago, it had been nothing, only a thing that came with being his. 

The problem was that it wasn’t anything anymore. You could feel exactly where his palm was, and your whole body had started to keep a completely different count this summer that had nothing to do with anniversaries. The count was three, and it was something your skin knew all too well, even when your face didn’t. So his hand sat on your knee in the gold light and you had to make yourself not move it, the way you made yourself not do a lot of things now, and you understood with a small flat horror that you'd become a person who had to be aware of your boyfriend’s touch.

“—no, that’s the thing about her,” Topper said, free hand sloshing as he gestured, and you pulled yourself back in as you realized it was you he was speaking about. “Last year for her birthday, I planned the whole thing, booked the place on the water and got everyone out—like forty people—and she just—” he tipped his head toward you, fond, the spotlight swinging, and you felt it land before you'd arranged your face for it. “She had the best time. Didn’t ask for anything. My mom says it all the time, she’s gonna be so nice to be married to.”

The bench made a unanimous warm and approving sound. Somebody said ‘we love her.’ You smiled, head tilting on autopilot, and you let yourself remember—for exactly one second—that you had wanted, very badly, to spend that birthday at home. That you’d told him so, gently, twice, and he’d heard you didn’t want a fuss because that was an easier version of you to plan around. 

Forty people on the water; you’d had the best time because you were good at your job. Topper was saying the truth, that was the unbearable part. Topper stood it was a true story about a girl who didn't want anything, and the girl who hadn’t wanted it had simply never made it across to him, had filed the wanting down small and smooth so he'd never have to notice her carrying it.

He loved to talk about that birthday. He’d talk about it for years. He’d talk about it at the wedding. 

Across the lawn, Rafe was leaning against the pergola post with a beer, angled half away from it all. You couldn’t see his face, and you didn’t need to. He was the only person who somehow knew you’d wanted to stay home—a fact that slipped out when your lips had been loose while you were in a haze, simply trying to fill silences—and you had to put your glass to your mouth and not drink just to have something to do that wasn't turning your head.

“You’re quiet,” Topper said, leaning in, the scent of sun and beer filling your nose. “Should I get the car? We can dip early.”

“No need,” you said, smiling. “I’m good.” 

You got up after a few minutes and said something about grabbing finger sandwiches and Topper asked you to grab a beer, already halfway into a discussion about a jetski. You said you would, which meant now you would be grabbing a beer. 

You went the long way, around the deep end, past the abandoned crab tray and the sleeper with his drink balanced on the side of his chair. You walked through all of it with your empty pink drink and the specific loneliness of being the only sober-feeling person at a party that was working perfectly for everyone else.

You stood in the far end of the pergola where the lattice cut the gold light into pieces, and you set the glass down on the ledge. You put both your hands on the wood and looked at the marsh going gold past the property line and let yourself, for one supervised minute, feel it. 

It came up fast once you let yourself feel it; it was the low, slick, swelling kind, the kind that had your name on it. Because Topper was good. Topper was sitting forty feet away being genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy, telling a roomful of people he loved how easy you were to love, how little you needed, how lucky he was. Every word coming out of his mouth was true to him, and he had driven you across the island when you were bored, had asked if you’d eaten, had loved the wrong version of you so correctly that you couldn’t even hate him for not finding the real one. 

He would continue being good, and you had spent the summer doing the single worst thing a person could do to another, to him, to the boy who’d done nothing but be exactly what everyone said he was. 

Your eyes went hot and you blinked hard as you felt the first one go before you could stop it. You wiped the tear fast with the heel of your hand because crying here would be a catastrophe, and you hated yourself with a completeness that almost steadied you, because at least the hating was honest, at least it was the one true feeling you'd had all day that you weren’t forcing for anybody.

You felt the change in the air, the quiet of someone arriving who knew not to announce it, and you didn't turn around because you couldn't, not with your face like this. Rafe had already seen you like this more times than you would have liked.

“Hey,” he said, voice low behind you, to the set of your shoulders. “You—”

“Not now, Rafe,” you said, voice coming out cracked. You kept your back to him and pressed the heel of your hand under your eye, fast, like you could get there before he saw, and you couldn't, and you knew you couldn't. “I can’t—I’m sorry, I can’t give you—” Your words were interrupted by a hiccup. “Not right now. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not trying to…” You heard Rafe suck in a sharp breath and let the words trail off. “That’s not why I—” He tried again, and he couldn’t get there again, sounding genuinely unsure about how to finish the sentence. “Jesus. No.”

You turned then, because he sounded too caught off-guard, and you got your first look at his face which was filled with genuine confusion, brows furrowed.

“Why would you think—I saw you walking off looking like—” He looked almost offended as he stared at you. Then, he gestured vaguely at your face, his motions moving awkwardly. “Like that. So I came over. That’s it.” He shook his head, frustrated at himself now. “I don’t—I’m not trying to fuck you or whatever. I just came over, alright?”

You let yourself sit with his words for a moment, feeling something like warmth cover your chest and then immediately feeling like a monster for feeling it. 

“Okay,” you said finally, voice small.

He nodded once, sharply. “He’s being an idiot.”

You let out a sound that was meant to be a laugh but just came out as a hiccup again. “No, he’s not.”

“I’m just saying,” he said, and you could feel how difficult it was for him to talk right now.

“No, he’s not,” you said again, shaking your head. “He’s good, Rafe. He didn’t do anything and I’m—” You took in a deep breath, forcing yourself to look away from him. “I’m just being a horrible person to him.”

“So fucking what,” Rafe said, the words coming out as the complete opposite of a question. “You’ve probably done a hundred good things for strangers in the last six months.” He scratched at his chin for a moment. “It’s annoying to even watch. Maybe you get one bad thing to do.”

You looked up at him with what should’ve been gratitude, but what came was the reflex. “You’re just saying that ‘cause you wanna keep sleeping with me.”

Your words came out smaller than an accusation, like you were just handing him the easy version on purpose. The one where this could stay a thing you understood, because a guy who said nice things to get something was a guy you knew how to be around, and a guy who said them for no reason was not.

Rafe’s face shifted—you’d stung him, you realized, a beat too late—and he chose to not take the out you’d given him.

“Yeah,” he said flatly, voice dry. “That’s it. That’s exactly why. Came all the way here just to lock that one down.” He looked at you with a look you couldn’t recognize. “Don’t be dumb.”

You wanted to let it end there, because it was all going out of left-field, into an area you couldn’t manage. But Rafe continued, like he was the one who hated silences, “I stole a turtle.”

“Today?” you asked, the word coming out of your mouth before you could process his words.

He shifted his neck back as he looked at you. “No, not today. Obviously.” He looked over you for a moment, reassessing. “Eighth grade. It was a class turtle.”

You let out a laugh that was mainly the aftershocks of your wet eyes and stuffy nose. “What’s wrong with you?” you said, and it came out clogged and unsteady and not unkind at all, almost grateful, the question you’d meant as an accusation arriving as something closer to relief.

“Lotta things,” Rafe said, then took a sip of his beer. “Connor’s mom was gonna keep it for the summer. I didn’t like him. Kept the turtle three months in my closet.”

“What’d he do to you?”

“Dunno.” He shrugged. “Something.”

You laughed then, and your hand went up your mouth. The corner of Rafe’s mouth went up. 

“Took care of it, though,” he said after. “Probably better than they would’ve.” 

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mhm. They were going on vacation that summer, anyway.” He picked at the label on his bottle. “Let it go after. It’s fine out there somewhere.”

You wiped under your eye, the crying mostly gone now, just the wreckage of it left. “I’d look for it.”

He looked at you for a long second, like he was deciding whether you were serious and landing on, in this second, maybe. Then he shook his head, slow, the brows still up.

Rafe’s brows went up a little. “Yeah, that’s all you.”

The overhead lights of Kelce’s basement were off and somebody had plugged in the lamp with the scarf over it that Kelce’s mother did not know her son owned, and the room had gone a low amber colour that made everything look a little more like something was wrong. Upstairs, the party was loud. Down here, it was a circle—the deep couch and the floor and the coffee table that had cigarette burns Kelce blamed, every single time, on a cousin—of eight or nine of you, the number loose for people kept arriving then going. 

You were between Topper and Rafe, and you hadn’t chosen this. You’d come down the stairs and there’d been one gap on the couch, and it had Topper on one side of it and Rafe on the other. There was no version of the next two seconds where you would stand in the middle of the basement doing visible math to get out of the situation, so you sat on it. 

Topper’s arm went along the back of the couch behind you, which meant he’d stopped tracking where you were, which was its own kind of love and also the reason any of this had been possible all summer. He was already pitched forward into a conversation about a boat motor; Topper could run a conversation with no fuel at all, indefinitely, like a hybrid. So you sat in the loose bracket of his arm and did all the things you were good at, the nod and the small affirming sound and the face set to show you were listening, and you did not look to your other side. 

Your other side was Rafe leaning over the glass with a card and a folded bill, and you were spending real effort trying to watch him not do it. The effort was the tell.

You’d gotten frighteningly good at it over the summer; the alibis with no holes, the texts timed so the read receipts said the right story, the whole situation of getting away with it. The easy thing, the keeping your eyes where you put them, turned out to be the one you couldn’t do. 

It was difficult, and what came with it every time was the low unstable interest in watching him. There was this wanting to look directly at the thing you’d spent your whole life being walked quickly past. Rafe didn’t manage himself. Rafe had a whole room in him with the lid off, and your whole life had been lids—on drinks you didn’t finish, on sentences you didn’t end, on the want you folded up small and put away before anyone could see the shape of it—and watching him just not do that, just reach for the thing and take it in a basement full of people, did something to you that you couldn’t find a clean name for. 

The bill went around. Madi did hers with a wince. It traveled—a guy you half-knew, back across the table—and came near you, and you said, “I’m good.”

“Course you are,” Rafe said, a half-laugh in it. “You ever loosen up?”

“I loosen up,” you said, the words coming out before you could get a hand on them.

His head came around a few degrees. “Yeah?” He sat back off the table and looked at you. “Okay, then,” he said, soft, just for you. There was a dare folded in it only you could hear, because the only honest answer was sitting six inches to your left and getting off on this. “Name one thing you do.”

You felt the heat go up your neck and sealed your mouth. You watched a grin build itself across his face slow and unhurried, enormously enjoying the trap he’d set in plain sight. 

“Hey.” Topper’s hand came to your knees, squeezing. “She’s gonna stop humoring you if you keep doing that,” he said, laughing with no heat in it.

He wasn’t even facing Rafe—or you—half his attention already drifted back into the room, because to Topper this was nothing, just two people he liked talking beside him.

For a second, something flickered down behind Rafe’s face, ugly and fast, gone before it finished calcifying. You knew the look he’d swallowed a hundred times this summer watching Topper kiss your temple in front of people. 

Rafe leaned back against the couch, head against the cushion. He lifted his hand and dragged two fingers slow across his lip and held them there, and you understood now what the gesture was, forcing it down with two fingers because there was nowhere on God's earth he was allowed to let it out, least of all here, least of all at the person whose lap you were sitting across.

You sat with Topper's thumb moving idle on your knee and watched Rafe swallow a thing he had no business owning, and the awful part—the part you'd think about later—was how it answered something. How Rafe somehow made it feel better than being had.

Then Topper’s phone lit on his leg. He looked at it, said “My dad,” with the apology already on his face, and squeezed your shoulder and stood up, going to the stairs with his phone against his ear.

You saw Rafe’s head turn at the edge of your vision, his body staying exactly where it was, so that when he spoke it came angled at the side of your face. “You see Kelce with that girl earlier?”

You turned to meet him there. “Yes,” you said, too fast. “I’ve never seen her before.”

“Visiting for the summer.” He shrugged, short. “Think he’s pretty into her.”

You weren't a gossip. You didn't do this—it was meant to be beneath the girl everyone had agreed you were—but it came up in you anyway, quick and a little mean and good. “Into her or the summer thing?”

Rafe huffed—almost a laugh, low—and you realized both your heads were turned all the way, that you were angled to him now, and that the two of you had built a tiny private room inside a basement full of people and not one person could have pointed at the thing you'd done to build it. 

“What’s gonna happen?”

“Dunno.” A corner of his mouth went up. “I’ll tell you later.”

You opened your mouth a little, then closed it again. You looked at the coffee table, at the cigarette burns, at anything that was not Rafe, and you found that your hand had gone up to the side of your neck on its own and you made it come back down.

Rafe watched you do all of it as a smile settled into the side of his mouth. 

“Don’t make that face,” you said.

“But it’s the only one I’ve got,” he drawled. The smile got worse, almost bigger and lazier, and he held your eyes for a second longer. Mercifully, he let you go and leaned forward off the couch and back to the glass of the table.

You watched him line it up, the quick work of his hands with his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, and the party was a wall of sound somewhere above you. Down here the tally you ran on every room you'd ever been in—who was where, who could see—had quietly stopped running, and you were watching Rafe with your whole stupid face.

He sat back up a few seconds after doing the line and his eyes met yours once again. 

“You’re staring,” he said.

“You’re in my eyeline,” you said.

“Move your eyeline,” he said without missing a beat.

“It’s my eyeline. You move.”

“Guess you’re stuck then.” He didn't look away. Neither did you.

He tilted his head a degree, slow, openly, the way a person looks at a thing when they've stopped pretending they're not looking. There were eight people in the room and one of them was upstairs on the phone with his father, and you let Rafe look, and you looked back, and for a second the not-hiding was so much more dangerous than anything you'd actually done.

“Since when,” Kelce started, apparently not by the stairs anymore, “are you two friends?”

Both of you turned to the sound. Kelce was just standing there, between the two of you, his face mostly amused.

“She’s Top’s girl, she has to—”

“He’s Topper’s friend—” you said at the same time as Rafe, the two of you landing the same beat and the same word and the same lie from two different directions, and you heard it happen, heard your voice and his voice arrive together like that, and so did he, because he stopped, and so did you.

Kelce laughed. “Jesus, I didn’t realize it was a sore subject.”

You should’ve gotten up then, but you remained seated exactly where you were when Topper came back down the stairs.

Topper looked at the couch, at the space between the two of you on the cushion—not a wide space, a space that had been closing all night by degrees each too small to be charged with anything on its own—and he stood on the last stair and looked at it, and something moved across his face that you had no name for, that you had never needed a name for, because in all these years you had never once seen Topper look at you like he was wondering something.

It felt like a snag—probably half-a-second where his face caught on the two of you with something close to confusion—and then it was gone, smoothed over, and he was Topper again, coming down off the stairs, sliding the phone into his pocket, saying something to someone about something.

It was the first time you’d fallen asleep. You would drift off sometimes after, heavy-lidded but you’d still surface if he moved wrong. This time you were actually asleep, all the way under, your breathing dropped into a slow even rhythm. It had happened maybe twenty minutes ago and Rafe had been lying very still since, on his back, one arm dead under you, not moving it. If he moved, he’d risk the chance of waking you, and if you did, it’d mean the end of this. He’d decided, at some point, he wanted to know long you’d stay if he just didn’t fuck with it.

He’d never quite had this part. He’d had the rest of it plenty; the wanting it, the having it, the after where they gathered their clothes because they had somewhere better to be. Nobody slept. Girls didn’t sleep at Rafe’s, that was a thing you did somewhere comfortable, and Rafe had never been once mistaken for comfortable. He had, in fact, spent a great deal of effort making sure he wasn’t, and so the sleeping went to other people’s beds. And now you were here, the one girl on the island who had the most reasons to keep one eye open around him, out cold on his chest. 

He had no idea what he’d done to earn it. He suspected he hadn’t earned it at all, that you’d simply gotten tired and this was an accident of exhaustion rather than a verdict of him. But he was choosing, for the length of your nap, to take it as a verdict. 

Your hand was open on his sternum, fingers half-curled. You’d kicked the duvet down to your knees at one point. You ran hot, he learned. You started every night wrapped up and ended it shoving the covers off—that you slept like being contained was a thing you couldn’t stand—which struck him as the single funniest fact.

He should’ve woken you. It was getting late, you had a home to return to with people in it. You had a phone lying on his nightstand that would start lighting up with the name he’d forced out of his mind while you were lying on him. 

Still, he laid there and let the minutes run on, and somewhere in the running, the minutes stopped feeling like luck and more like debt. A good thing arrived and sat with him long enough to stop being a surprise, and the second it stopped being that, it became something he owed, a thing with a price-tag faced down that he doesn’t get to keep this. 

So when you woke—your hands twitching against his chest—he was almost relieved. Awake, you were a problem he knew how to have. You made a small displeased sound and pressed your face harder into him, like you could climb back under.

“You’re out,” he said, voice coming out rough. He hadn’t used it in an hour.

“‘M not,” you said, voice muffled into his sternum. 

You pulled the duvet back up over the both of you instead, and hooked your leg over his, and settled your cheek back down with a weight that had staying in it, and Rafe lay very still under the fact of you deciding that, and felt the want come up hard enough to scare him.

“Can I say something?” you said into his chest.

He huffed slightly. “You don’t gotta ask.”

You breathed through your mouth into his chest. “Think I should end things with Topper.”

The first thing in Rafe was wrong. Fast, animal, up before he could get a hand on it—a kick of pure want, yes, do it, be free—and it was gone almost as fast as it arrived. The second thing came down on top of it like a ceiling; ending things with Topper meant this thing stopped being deniable. The cover would be gone, the frame would be gone, the whole careful system that let any of this exist would come apart in your hands.

So he went still. He felt the stillness travel down into you and turn into fear, felt you reach the conclusion you'd clearly already half-built and come braced for, and your hand went flat on his chest and you started speaking fast, into him, before he'd surfaced enough to get a single word out.

“Not for—” You stopped yourself, taking in a sharp inhale. “It’s not about you. I’m not—I wouldn’t be doing it because of that. It’s just me. For me.”

You’d handed him the out and all he had to do was take it. 

“Then don’t,” he said.

He felt you shake your head against him. “Don’t what?” you asked, almost tired, like you knew where he was going.

“End it.” He heard how it sounded yet he couldn’t stop the rest of the words from coming. “You’ve been with him two years. You’re not gonna—what? Throw that out over—” He stopped. Started again, flatter, building the case he needed to be true. “It’s not even—don’t let this be a thing, okay? It’s not me. You feel like this ‘cause you’re not supposed to be doing it. It’d feel like this with anyone who made the move. Just happened to be me.” 

You went quiet on him for a second. Then you lifted your head off his chest—something you almost never did, for you said the hard things angled away from him—and you brought your face up so he had to look at it. 

“Don’t say things like that about me.” Your words came out even. He’d braced for mad, that would’ve let him be an asshole and you the wronged party; everyone would’ve been in the right place. “I mean it. Don’t.”

And he, who had a hundred things he could’ve said, who’d built a personality out of always having something to say back, found that the only thing in him was the need to take it all back immediately.

“Alright,” he said.

“I’m serious.”

“Alright,” he said, lower this time, as if that would let you see he was listening. For some reason, he wanted you to know he listened. “I won’t. I won’t say it.”

You eyed him for a moment, then said, quietly,  “Don’t act like you’re better than me.” He was practically forced into staring at you. “Don’t sit here telling me to stay with Topper like you’re doing some favor, when the only reason any of this happened is ‘cause I’m dating him.” You took a breath, then. “You’d never have looked at me twice if I wasn’t with him.”

He let the words move through his body for a moment before he moved, turning to you, getting an arm braced over you as his weight came up onto his side, over you, close. 

“That’s what you think?” he said, and it was the furthest thing from a question. 

“Rafe—”

“No, s’fine,” he said quickly. His hand found your jaw and tilted it. “Is that what you tell yourself?”

He brought his mouth to the corner of your lips and stopped there, close enough to feel you breathing wrong, and let you sit in it, because he had nothing to say and a great deal to prove and he wanted you to feel the difference before he made it.

His palm flattened over your stomach and drifted lower, and yours followed behind, a little more hesitant but still determined. His body jerked slightly as your fingers curved around his cock, and he pushed himself unbelievably closer to you. His fingers found the waistband of your underwear, tugging them off your hips just the slightest, enough for him to press down against your heat.

He bit back a groan at the remnants of your everything you’d done before your nap sliding against him.

He got your underwear off the rest of the way without ceremony with one hand, you lifting your hips and bending your knees to help, eyes never leaving your face. 

His fingers came back to your jaw and it went slack, head tipping back, and he followed it with his mouth to your throat because he couldn’t not.

“Don’t,” you murmured.

He stilled for a moment.

“Mark.” 

Something in him went dark about it, fast and ugly, because it meant you had to go back up that bluff road in a few hours looking like nobody had touched you. He wanted to mark you so badly his teeth ached with it. He wanted to put something on your throat you’d have to explain, wanted Topper to see it and wonder.

Rafe wanted to leave a single piece of proof somewhere on you that this happened, that he had happened. He wanted to ruin the clean line of you on purpose. It was the most honest want he had and it was the one you'd just forbidden.

He lifted his mouth off the soft place and dragged it to the hinge of your jaw instead, somewhere safe and he hated it—and he hated it, hated the leash of it, hated that being good to you and being denied you were the exact same motion—and he let the fury of it pour into everything his hands were doing instead, because that, at least, left no marks if he was being careful.

He got his hand under your thigh and pulled it around his hip and felt you—the heat of you right there, nothing between it now—and had to press his forehead to the side of your face and breathe for a second. You turned your face slightly into his and your mouth found his cheek, the corner of his jaw, a want of a kiss rather than a kiss at all.

“Rafe, do it—”

He pushed in slow, slower than he wanted to. It was slower than his whole body screaming at him to. You made a sound against his temple, a small broken thing, and your fingers dug into his back hard enough to leave something.

He kept going until his hips pressed against yours, flush. He pulled back and drove forward and felt you take it, your whole body shifting up the mattress with the force of it, and he got an arm under your lower back, lifting you slightly, and held you where he wanted you and did it again. Your head fell back and his eyes focused on your throat move.

“Look at me,” he said fast, rough.

You did. You always did, when he asked, and every time it nearly took him apart.

He set a pace that was far from gentle and you rose to meet it, hips tilting, finding the angle, adjusting without asking him to, and he felt the precise moment you found what you needed because your whole body changed and you made a sound low in your throat that he felt in his sternum.

He pushed your leg higher and went deeper, pulling you up so you were almost off the bed, and your hand flew up to the headboard, bracing.

“Yeah,” he said, and didn't mean to say anything at all.

Your eyes were half-closed, your mouth open, and you looked like something he had absolutely no right to and was going to have anyway, had already decided, had already been unable to stop from the moment you'd said his name and left a door open.

His mouth found yours, messy, barely a kiss, more breath than anything. Your hips moved against his and he groaned into your mouth and felt you shiver at the sound of it, your whole body registering it, which meant he did it again deliberately and watched what it did to your face.

He moved his hand between you, finger finding the bundle of nerves, pressing down slightly before he found a smooth motion. He extended his other arm around your back, holding you up.

Your reaction was immediate and unguarded and your head went back against the air with a force that was almost funny, almost—he wanted to say something, he felt it come up—but he swallowed it and pressed his mouth to your jaw instead and kept his hand moving because he wanted you there, wanted to feel it, had earned it by two years of not having it.

“Please—” The word came out of you fractured halfway.

“I know. C’mon.”

You went tight around him and he felt it building, felt the shape of it in the way you gripped him and the hitch in your breathing and the small desperate sound you were trying and failing to keep from happening, and he put his mouth to your ear and said nothing, just let you hear what you were doing to his breathing, let that be the thing to let you know you weren't alone in it.

You broke apart quietly. A deep shudder moved through your whole body, your face open and unguarded, your fingers gripping his back hard enough that he'd find it tomorrow and not mind.

You could mark him.

He followed you over the edge with his face pressed into your hair, your name in his mouth, a low rough sound into your hair and his whole body giving up the careful hold it had kept on itself.

He stayed where he was for a moment, both of you breathing. Your hand was flat on his back, not gripping anymore, just resting. He held you for a moment longer before setting you down on the mattress.

At the dock in the last week of July, during the hour everyone else had gone up to the house before the mosquitoes forced them in, Rafe had stayed back because Topper had, and Rafe understood about ninety seconds later it was to get him alone. 

Rafe had spent his childhood being gotten alone by Ward, summoned to the study (to this day, Rafe still had no idea what he used it for)—or the boat or the living room, for conversations that always meant his father had decided something for him.

So when Topper stayed behind while the others left, Rafe felt the old thing tick over his chest, the same bracing. So, he stood at the end of the Thorntons’ dock with a warm beer he’d stopped drinking a while ago, waiting to decide what Topper had decided for him.

He was surprised when he realized Topper was nervous, the same guy who had never had to go looking for a sentence. He was doing something useless with the dock line—wrapping it then unwrapping it—and Rafe watched his hands and, for a moment, thought that Topper fucking knows.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah,” Rafe said, the word trailing off awkwardly.

“You think she’s happy?”

Rafe felt his mouth go dry. He kept his face pointed at the water. He had four or maybe fifteen answers and ran through all of them—he didn’t even know his brain could think that fast—and under all of them, traitor-fast, arriving before he could shut the drawer on it, Rafe heard your voice against his truck window, ‘I don’t know if that’s normal or if something’s wrong with me.’

Rafe had the answer to Topper's question. He'd had it cold for almost three months, carrying it around like a stolen thing he kept meaning to give back and didn't.

He shrugged, and he hoped it didn’t look as stiff as it felt. “She’s fine. I don’t really know her.”

“That’s not—” Topper stopped, then looped the line again. “I didn’t ask if she’s fine.”

Rafe felt himself turn to look at Topper, because the correction was so unlike him, the small insistence on the gap between ‘fine’ and ‘happy,’ a gap Rafe had never known Topper could see. For the first time, Rafe felt that Topper was acting differently.

Topper looked wretched. “I think she’s somewhere else. Lately.” He gestured with the line, at the dark water, at nothing. “I don’t know how to say it.”

“I don’t know, man.” The words came out of Rafe slow, as though he was reaching for it. “Girls get like that when you’re—” He made a vague motion with a bottle. “On ‘em too much.”

“I’m not on her.”

“I’m not saying you are.” He shrugged. “I’m saying you’re doing the whole—” He made another lazy motion. “Apartment. Rings. The you’re gonna do this with her, you’re gonna do that. Every time you talk about her.” He kept his eyes on the water. He kept his voice in the register that couldn't be weighed. “If some girl was telling me what to do with my life, I’d get weird about it, too. That’s my hunch.”

It wasn’t a hunch so much as it was him molding the exact words you’d said to him about Topper only a few nights ago. Rafe had taken it and scrubbed every fingerprint off of it, scrubbed you off of it, until it was dull and safe enough to hand to your boyfriend.

He watched Topper receive it exactly as that, as a hunch. 

“You think I should back off?”

“I think—” Yes. Back off. Loosen the hold you’ve got so the other guy can—“I have no clue. Girls come back around.”

And Rafe’s words may have meant even a little bit of something if, within two hours of the conversation, he didn’t have you on top of him, the tailgate down and the night doing its loud thing past the trees, and Rafe had his hand flat on your back between your shoulder blades.

Your cheek was on his chest and you weren't talking, and Rafe was finding out for the hundredth time that he didn't know what to do with this part.

The sex he understood. This—the after, your weight settled all the way down onto him like you'd stopped holding any of it up, your breathing gone slow—this he still had no instructions for. So he stayed still and let you be heavy on him and looked at the dark shape of the trees.

“Can I say something bad?” you said against his chest.

“Obviously.”

“Dean, that guy at the party tonight.” You picked at a thread on the moving blanket where it had pilled.  “I think he’s annoying. He was hitting on Madi and she wasn’t into it.” 

Rafe huffed, the laugh moving up through his chest under your cheek. “What’s annoying about him?” 

“He said my name like nine times in two minutes. He did the same thing to her. It makes me trust him less.”

“That’s so mean.” Rafe felt himself blow out an amused breath. “You’re so mean. Nobody knows.” 

“Don’t tell.”

That was even more amusing. “Who am I gonna tell? Barry?” His hand moved on your back, down, stayed. “He’d probably forget in two seconds.”

“I can’t believe he’s the person that makes you go to The Cut.”

“And he beats me up sometimes.” He felt his palm slightly push your body down against him, as if you could get any closer. “Barry would love you.”

“Your dealer,” you said flatly. “Thanks.”

"Don’t ever meet him, though.”

His hand flattened against your back, drawing you up the half-inch it took to put your face level with his. 

His lips found yours slow, a kiss with no chase behind it. His hand cradled the back of your skull off the cold metal, like there was all the time in the world. He felt you sink into it; that was getting easier, as though you’d stopped being scared of how easy.

When he pulled back, his mouth stayed close. “You going to that dinner with Top’s lacrosse buddies on Friday?”

“I’m supposed to.”

His thumb moved at your jaw. “You’ll want to die.”

“I told him I’d go.”

Rafe shrugged. “Tell him you’re tired. Pretty sure my house is gonna be empty Friday, too.”

You took a shaky breath and dropped your head into the crook of his neck. “That’s such a shitty thing to do.”

“Yeah.” His hand went still at your jaw, and he felt his chin involuntarily dip to rest against the top of your head. “You gonna do it?”

“Maybe,” you said, voice muffled against his body.

He moved his hand up to the back of your head again. “Good.”

That should have been all the night asked from him, the two of you going quiet, him heavy and stupid and content underneath you in a way he’d never tell a living soul he was capable of being. He’d half-decided not to move for an hour; he had the whole thing planned, to stay right there.

The phone went off on the floor of the backseat.

He groaned, low, the whole of it vibrating up his chest and into your cheek. “No.”

“Rafe—”

“No.” He pulled you in tighter, an arm banded across your back, like he could keep both of you out of range by its sheer hold. The phone continued buzzing against the floormat, ugly and insistent. “Not right now.”

You were laughing slightly, you'd tipped your face up off his chest, and he felt the warmth of it more than heard it. “Could be important.”

“Yeah? Could be your boyfriend,” he said, teasing.

You exhaled. “I hate you.”

He laughed then, feeling it move up him easily. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You’re the worst person I know,” you said it into his neck, where you'd tucked your face again, and your breath was warm there and your hand had gone back to the hem of his shirt, the idle pulling thing, no point to it. 

He tilted his chin slightly downwards to press his lips against the top of your head. “That’s okay.”

You were smiling, he could feel the shape of it against his throat. The phone was still going on the floormat and neither of you were looking at it, and Rafe thought, for a moment, that he would have signed anything to keep the night exactly here. Not further, not better, only here.

The phone stopped, and he let out a breath slowly. Then, it immediately started again. This time, he felt the change go through his body—the warmth pulled out of him in one motion, the loose gone, everything in him drawing up into the old brace—because nobody rang twice back to back at this hour. Except for the one person who had never, in twenty years, accepted a thing Rafe didn't pick up as anything other than a thing Rafe was going to pay for.

The smile went out of you against his neck, and you got very still, and your hand stopped its idle work and just rested flat over his chest, over the place his heart had started doing the wrong rhythm. 

“You should get it,” you said. 

“Yeah.” He kept you there through one more buzz, and one more, taking the last of it while it was still his to take. “Yeah. Okay.”

He got the phone off the floor without letting go of you. That took some doing; a long reach down the side of the seat with one arm while the other stayed banded across your back. He came back up with it and you stayed exactly where you were, your cheek over his heart, and he answered with his thumb and put it to his ear and did not move you one inch. 

“Yeah,” he said into the phone. He put his free hand into your hair, slowly dragging his fingers against your scalp, the small idle motion his body reached for the way it reached for the truck door, automatic, before the part of him that named things had any say.  “...No, I lost track of time.” 

Ward’s voice then came clipped down the line, and Rafe shut his eyes against the dome light and let it fill his ears, hardly processing it. His thumb found the shell of your ear and was tracing it, completely out of sync with the thing going up his spine. 

“Yeah. The Fischers. I know. I know.” He didn’t know. It was a blank where a plan should have been, one more thing he’d been told and lost. He listened through Ward’s of course you forgot speech, let it go on without interruption. “I’ll be there. Twenty minutes.”

He kept his hand moving on you the whole time, going down your spine now in one long stroke then back up. He half-forgot you could feel it, that you weren’t simply just a warmth but a person who could feel every inch of this. He pressed you down against his chest, firmer, on the hard part of it, and felt his own heart going at the wrong speed under where your cheek was and couldn't make it stop.

“I said I’ll be there.” The edge came up despite him trying to train himself to keep it out when talking to his father. He hated it the second it was out, because the edge was a tell, the edge told Ward he'd gotten in, and he should never let Ward know he'd gotten in. He flattened it back down. “Twenty minutes—yeah. Okay. Okay.”

He hung up. 

His hand was still buried in your hair, his heart still wrong under your cheek, and he kept his eyes on the roof of the cab and waited for himself to come back from wherever the phone had sent him.

That was a thing that took a beat, the return, and you knew it took a beat, and he could tell you knew because you didn't move and didn't ask, you just stayed heavy on him and let him do it.

Rafe thought, not for the first time, that you'd somehow learned the one thing about him almost nobody had ever bothered to; that the worst moment to reach for him was the moment right after, and the kindest thing was to just be there and weigh something and wait.

“Sorry,” he said to the roof, voice coming out rough. He tipped his face down then, into your hair, breathing you in. “M’Sorry. I gotta go. I’ll drop you home.”

“Right now?” you asked, voice muffled against him. 

“Mm.” His arm tightened around you, body lying to his mouth again. “Not yet.”

He stayed under you for a second he didn’t have. He'd be late. He was always going to be a little late to Ward; might as well earn it.

But he did push himself to sit up, and he got his arm that was around you to bring you up as he came off the seat-back, the blanket sliding. Your legs ended up across his lap and his hand stayed flat against your spine. He held you there a beat, upright now, your face level with his in the dome light, and he could see the leftover softness in you not entirely cleared yet, the you that came out here and nowhere else.

Rafe had no idea when he’d agreed to let you look through his closet, but he had. It was almost four in the morning, and you were standing in the open mouth of his closet in one of his t-shirts and nothing he was going to be able to think about clearly, going through his clothes like this was something you just really wanted to do.

He’d put himself on the bed on purpose; it was a safe distance from whatever that was happening, which was you, sliding hangers down the rail one at a time, considering. Rafe was lying back on his elbows pretending the sight of you in his bedroom like this wasn’t doing anything to him.

He’d let it slip on accident, post-haze, that he had to meet Ward’s friends for dinner tomorrow. He’d wanted it to come off as light, carry no weight, because he, three months in, still didn’t want you to see him as a person who was afraid of a simple, stupid dinner with his dad and his asshole friends flying in from fuck-knows-where.

“What’s the dinner for?” you’d asked him.

“Don’t know. Ward wants me there to—” Rafe rolled a shoulder, his lips involuntarily curving into a grimace. “Impress them or something. No idea. Don’t even know what I’m gonna wear.”

Rafe was mildly surprised when you asked him, voice so stupidly lighthearted, if you could help him. And now you were humming, low, as you pulled a jacket halfway out, looked at it, and put it back. 

Somewhere along the way, he’d understood that you’d started being able to read him, too. Maybe not in the way he had been reading you for years, but you’d started to understand his tells. He had a lot of those.

You were standing in his closet frowning at his clothes because you’d worked out, from a sentence he'd stripped all the weight off of, that he was scared, and you were trying to help. The way a person helps another person they don't want to watch walk into something alone.

And Rafe felt his whole body go wrong about it.

He was finding out the hard way that being looked after did the opposite of soothe him; he watched you take him seriously, and every reasonable part of him understood this was a good thing happening to him.

And the rest of him, the older and more reliable part, the part that had been doing Rafe's load-bearing since he was a kid, stood up and started checking the exits.

He couldn’t lose a thing he never had. And you, trying to help him be a son his father could stand to look at, you were a thing he was, very obviously, in the disastrous process of having. Maybe not completely, but it was the most he had ever had.

And the better it felt—and it felt like a hand on the back of his neck and being the right size—the more it was going to cost him later. And Rafe’s nervous system ignored the later was later, for it had started accounting now.

So he reached for the other thing. “C’mere,” he said.

You glanced over at him—a short look, unbothered, God, when had you started being able to be so fucking mean?—and then went back to the rail. “In a second,” you said. 

“Now’s good,” he said flatly. 

You pulled another shirt out and held it up against the dark of the closet. “I’m finding a shirt.”

“Yeah.” He pushed himself up off his elbows and sat up, feet against the floor. He heard his own voice drop a register. “Come find it here.”

“Doesn’t even make sense,” you murmured.

You slid another hanger down, completely unbothered by him, and that was the part of it all that had been killing him lately, you’d stopped being nervous around him. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, and he knew he’d never be able to undo it. 

“Are you cold?” he tried again.

“Not really.” You pulled out a navy button-down, considered it, turned. “Why are you being weird?”

“I’m not being weird.”

“You’re being so weird.” You looked at him, and Rafe had a feeling you were realizing that he was reaching for you because you were being so kind to him and it had gotten too big for Rafe to be in a room with, and sex was the only thing Rafe knew how to do with his hands that wasn't standing still inside something good. “You’re gonna distract me,” you said instead.

“Not trying to.”

“You’re completely trying to,” you said lightly, and then you went back to his clothes.

“This one,” you said after a moment. You'd pulled a shirt. You turned around with it, held it up against him from a few feet off, your head tipped, your eyes doing the careful work. “Navy. You look good in navy.”

“You think?” He wanted to hit himself for how fast he asked. “That the one?”

“Mhm,” you hummed breezily. “And it’ll make your dad shut up.”

Rafe sat there and let you look at him, and felt the fight go out of him the way air goes out of a thing, slow, and without much ceremony. He’d spent twenty years not being allowed things, mostly by himself, mostly on purpose, and he was sitting on his own bed with a girl holding a shirt up against his chest and trying to help him not get hurt tomorrow, and he found he did not, tonight, have it in him to keep the door shut. So he didn’t hold it.

He swallowed, then forced out a laugh. “Probably not, but that’s a good one.”

You crossed the room when you were done with the shirt—laid it over the back of his desk and everything—and came to stand between his knees. Rafe got his hands to your waist because they’d been idling the whole time just waiting for you.

You were warm through his shirt. You smelled like his room now.

“You’re gonna be fine tomorrow,” you said, voice completely sure.

“Mhm.” His palms tightened around your waist then, slightly tugging you forward. “You gonna come back to bed now?”

“You’re so impatient,” you said, but you let him pull you, your knees bracketing his as you settled into his lap like you’d done it a hundred times, which—Rafe did the calculation—you basically had.

His hands found the small of your back and stayed there. “Because you didn’t come to bed.”

“I was busy.” You looped your arms loose around his neck, looking down at him. “Someone’s gotta dress you.”

“I can dress myself.”

“Clearly.” You glanced at the floor, at the four shirts he'd left in a heap before you got here, and back at him, brow up.

He snorted, and you went quiet, your fingers playing idle with the hair at the back of his neck.

“Oh. Saturday,” you said after a minute, “Ruthie finally got Topper to do that lunch at the yacht club.” You shrugged. “Till like five.”

It took him a second to process the words. “The whole day?”

“Yeah, I think so. Whole day.” you said quietly. There was something almost shy folded into it, like you'd handed him something and weren't sure he'd want it.

“Yeah,” You reply, unable to think of anything else.

“He’s a strong guy, and he skated off on his own.” Another girl says positively, nodding.

“Right.” You nod with her, trying to convince your mind to agree with them.

Somebody calls your name, and your head whips sharply. Red hair. Blue eyes looking at you with a mixture of confusion and what looks like pity.

“He left already. His sister took him home.” Holiday says, stopping beside you.

“Oh, okay.” You breathe a sigh of relief, feeling like if he was sent home, then it wasn’t too bad.

“He’s fine.” He assures, voice firm. “We’re all tougher than we look.”

The walk to your apartment feels like forever as your finger hovers over the call button on your phone. You want to call him, to hear his voice, but you don’t know if your own voice will betray your emotions. If you seemed this emotional from one hockey injury, that could freak him out and send him running.

“Hey, partner,” Rafe’s voice as you turn the corner in the dorm hallway startles you into dropping your phone. You think you might be hallucinating, but as your phone clatters to the floor, you look up to see Rafe sitting in front of your room door.

“Jesus,” You stammer, grabbing your phone and checking for cracks in the screen. Thankfully, it’s fine. And Rafe looks fine. And real. Smiling at you like he didn’t just get pummeled. “What are you doing here?”

“Making sure you come with me to the bars, like you promised.” He says it so casually that you immediately stiffen.

“Rafe, seriously?” There’s an edge to your voice and you try to soften it. “You just got punched into the ice. Taken out of the game. They didn’t even let you go back in.” His eyes widen just for a second before narrowing, shrugging.

“All precautionary,” He insists. “They cleared me. I’m good.”

You scoff, nudging him aside so you can unlock your door. Thankfully, Katy was out of town visiting her family so she didn’t have to deal with you arguing with this idiot.

“Inside.” You demand, and he reluctantly follows. Taking a seat on the edge of your bed, you watch as he leans against your desk, eyeing you warily. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to go out and drink after something like that?”

“I won’t drink,” He promises, trying to force that cocky grin back. “And you can keep an eye on me.”

“Sounds fun.” Sarcasm drips from your voice.

“Listen, I’m fine. Everyone said I’m fine. I don’t get why you’re freaking the fuck out-”

“I saw your head hit the ice!” You interrupt, voice loud but shaking. Tears sting your eyes again, and you look away and try to force them to stop.

“That’s what the helmet is for.” He says, and your emotions simmer faster.

“You didn’t move, Rafe. You weren’t moving. Even if it was just for half a second, I don’t care what you say. That was terrifying.”

Rafe finally shuts his mouth, looking away from you now. The silence feels charged, thanks to your emotions boiling over.

“Hockey’s hockey,” He starts, voice measured. “We know what we signed up for. This shit happens.”

“I understand that,” You take a deep breath. “But I’m allowed to be scared for you. I’m allowed to give a damn about you.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t-”

“You’re acting like it!” You shoot back, eyes boring into his. “Fuck, Rafe. Just imagine, just for one second, if someone hurt me. Just try. What if they hurt me on purpose, and I wasn’t moving? How the fuck would you feel?” A tear falls down your cheek, and you wipe it away swiftly. He goes quiet again, eyes darkening, jaw clenching. He’s gripping your desk so hard his knuckles are white.

“I get it.” Rafe forces the words out. “Shit, I’m sorry. I just-” He stops himself again, releasing your desk and cracking his knuckles. “I’m not used to, um, people giving a shit, I guess.” The words tug on your heart a little bit.

“Well, I do. So, get used to it.” Your lips curve up despite how hard you try to keep your expression firm. He smirks.

“That’s a little terrifying.” His voice is mischievous, but there’s a little truth in it.

“Oh, fuck off. What’s terrifying is the bruise forming on the side of your head.” You point, and he turns to the mirror hanging by your desk, touching the spot softly.

“Huh.” He shrugs. “Not bad. You should see my torso. Banged me up pretty good.”

“I think I’m okay.” You swear, voice tight.

“Since when do you not want to see me shirtless?” He turns back to you, finally getting you to laugh a little.

“Whatever,” You wave him off. “Also, your sister clearly cares about you. Does she know you’re here and trying to go to bars?”

“No. And trust me, her giving a shit is new.” Rafe tries to keep his tone light but you can hear the edge in it. You don’t want to push him, especially after the night he’s had.

“If you wanna go out with the team, we can go. But no drinking.” You tell him sternly.

“Yes, ma’am.” He salutes you, leading the way eagerly. He takes you to a bar a couple blocks from his house, but thanks to it being Friday night after a rivalry hocky game, there’s already a long line to get in when you meet up with the team.

“Glad you made it!” Meghan hugs you as you all take your place in line. There’s Miguel, Holiday, and a handful of other boys you don’t recognize. Rafe introduces them to you, but the only name that sticks is Bobby Flynn. The boy Meghan had mentioned. He was huge, clearly a defenseman, with blonde hair cut short and brown eyes and freckled skin. His smile was much more friendly than everyone else’s.

“My dad’s calling,” Rafe announces with a sign as he pulls out his phone. “Sarah probably overexaggerated everything and made him think I’m in the fuckin’ hospital. I’ll be right back.” He walks off a bit to take the call, leaving you with Meghan and the team.

“Good to meet you finally. I think having you here will calm Cameron down a bit.” Bobby says to you as the team chuckles.

“Was he really that bad?” You wince.

“Oh, you have no idea how many times we had to talk him out of all the drunk ‘I miss you’ texts he wanted to send.”

“Seriously?” All the blood rushes to your cheeks, and you look away from the boys at Rafe, who is pacing while on the phone.

“Dead serious.” Bobby replies.

“That doesn’t sound like Rafe.” You shake your head, trying to imagine it.

“Well, maybe he wouldn’t have said ‘I miss you’. But he wanted to text you. All the time.”

“We all saw it.” Another boy says. A flash of baby blue takes your focus back up front in time to see a group of UNC boys ditching your group. You stiffen as the Duke boys around you curse under their breath, but they don’t move. Probably in enough trouble with their coach after the chaos of the game earlier.

“Great,” Meghan mutters. “Now I’ll have to wait even longer to finally pee.” Somehow, that was enough for you to do something. Maybe it was the hockey team behind you. Or the anger from watching Rafe get hurt. But something was building, and you weren’t afraid to be confrontational. You tapped the closest UNC boy on the back and waited for him to turn around.

“Excuse me,” You cross your arms, looking up into his dark brown eyes. “There’s a line, if you didn’t notice. You and your little friends should wait like everyone else.” The boy just laughs at you, eyes narrowing.

“Yeah? Whose puck bunny are you, huh? Holiday’s?” He sneers down at you, his friends turning to the commotion.

“She’s no one’s.” Holiday cuts in, voice laced with annoyance.

“Then what’s your deal? All sad your school lost tonight?” He mockingly pouts, and that makes your body tighten.

“Duke could’ve won if your team didn’t play so dirty. Y’all were so threatened you had to try to actually hurt us to win.” You retort, hearing the boys chuckle behind you.

“Oh, so you’re Cameron’s girl?” The boy’s grinning now, his friends egging him on. “Sorry your pussy of a boyfriend got a few more screws knocked loose in that fucked up brain of his.” Meghan gasps. Holiday steps up beside you. But you can barely hear anyone else, your heart lurching as your vision turns red.

“Shitty team, shitty fans. Of course, you have to ditch like a fucking child to make yourselves feel good. Pieces of shit.” You hiss.

“No need to be such a bitch.” The boy scoffs, ready to turn and ignore you.

“The fuck did you call her?” You hear Rafe’s voice before you see him. The UNC boy goes pale, looking behind you.

“Nothing.” He mutters as Rafe steps in front of you, solid but simmering with anger.

“Nah, say that shit again.” Rafe snaps, and the UNC boys practically cower.

“We were just going to the back of the line.” One of the other boys insists, and they sulk away like the past five minutes never happened.

“Cameron saved the day.” Miguel tries to soften Rafe, patting him on the shoulder.

“Only because they were scared shitless.” Bobby chuckles, shaking his head.

“What’d they say to you?” Rafe turns to you, still laser focused, still tense.

“Don’t worry about her, Cameron. She handled her own.” Holiday says, surprising you with the compliment.

“And we wouldn’t let anything happen to her.” Miguel promises.

“Looked like they weren’t doing jack-shit.” Rafe murmurs, leaning toward you so only you can hear.

“Like they said, I can handle myself.” You shrug, glad that he seems to be slowly relaxing.

“Did they say some shit about me? Is that why you were so mad?” He smirks, seemingly amused at the thought. You flush, clearing your throat.

“He just made it seem like he was glad you got punched. Called you a pussy.” You say evenly, watching his expression.

“Well, I am what I eat.” He winks, exaggeratedly licking his lips.

“Ew, nasty.” You chuckle, shoving him away.

“You like it.” He grins, and you’re relieved to see his smile. Even if it was brief. He definitely didn’t need to be getting in trouble for you.

“Hey, with all the free stuff you get, how come you can’t let us cut the line?” You change the subject, tapping your foot with fake impatience. He shakes his head.

“Best I can do is getting your 20-year-old friend in without a fake.”

“Aw, bars don’t care about hockey players?” You pout.

“Not enough.” He places a hand on the small of your back while you wait in line, like he’d lose you if he didn’t. His jaw was still ticking, a little too quiet. The moment you all got into the crowded bar, you asked the team for shots to help loosen you up. Bobby gets everyone a lemon drop, and you watch Rafe skip like he promised while taking your own. Without him able to drink, you didn’t know if he’d let himself relax. You order a drink for you and Meghan quickly, while you’re still at the counter.

It doesn’t take long for a group of girls to come up to the team. One of them, a girl with dark auburn hair, beelines for Rafe and tries to chat with him. But it’s like he doesn’t even hear her. His eyes dart around the bar, as if he’s expecting the UNC boys to show up again and cause trouble. As soon as the girl moves on, you pull Rafe to the side.

“Your head bothering you?” You ask.

“What? No.” He narrows his eyes.

“Then relax, please. Have fun with your team.”

“I am having fun.” His voice is not at all convincing.

“You just ignored a girl that tried to talk to you.” You point out, nodding at the girl who’s still sneaking glances at Rafe while she orders a drink at the bar.

“I did?” His brow furrows, meeting her eyes. “Damn. I got you, at least.”

“Rafe,” You give him a knowing look. “Don’t change anything because I’m here. Stop worrying about me. Go have fun, please.”

“What, you want me to go talk to another girl?” He smirks at you, straightening up.

“It’s not like it’s illegal.” You shrug, pushing him in her direction. That was the whole point of being casual. Either of you could do what you wanted. Those were his terms.

“Fine. If that’s what you want.” He walks away slowly.

“Do what you want, that’s the whole point!” You call after him, doubtful if he heard you over the crowd and the loud rock music playing. Meghan sees a chance to drag you with her to an open high-top table, taking a seat with you.

“Getting them to give you space during a night out feels impossible sometimes.” She commiserates, giving Miguel a flirty wave. “Although, I don’t know how you can stand watching him talk to other girls like that. Much less encourage him to do that.”

“We’re not dating.” You shrug.

“Which I understand,” Meghan assures you. “I just don’t think I could handle seeing that.” Truthfully, you hadn’t been watching Rafe since he left. You might’ve actually been avoiding looking at him. You sneak a glance, just in time to see the girl put her hand on his arm. It’s enough to make you feel very warm, your stomach twisting as you look away.

“I feel like jealousy is a little normal,” You try to justify it. “Or maybe I’m just not used to the whole casual thing.”

“Better at it than me, that’s for sure.” Meghan widens her green eyes.

“Ladies,” A slightly familiar voice interrupts you both, and you turn to see a slightly familiar face.

“Joker! From the Halloween party.” You say as recognition hits, and he laughs.

“Mike, actually.” He corrects lightheartedly. “Can I get you both another drink? Vodka cran?” He guesses.

“Yeah, thank you!” You smile at him, and he smiles back as he heads to the bar. Meghan gives you a sly smile as you giggle in return. Mike was definitely cute, even if you couldn’t really remember his name. And perfectly fine to talk to when things were casual.

But Mike is only just walking back with your drinks when you see Rafe. His eyes are ice, jaw tense from before, locked on the frat boy. At first, you feel anger itching under your skin. There wasn’t anything wrong with you talking to another guy. Having a guy buy you a drink.

And then, you’re startled. Rafe grabs Mike’s shirt and shoves him against the brick wall of the bar, drinks sloshing. You call out his name, but he doesn’t seem to hear you. The hockey team moves toward Rafe faster than you can even leave your seat.

“The fuck did you put in there, huh?” Rafe’s voice carries over the crowd, causing a few people to turn. “I saw you! You slipped shit in their drinks. Admit it.”

You freeze at his words, your body feeling numb and too warm all at the same time. Just like at the arena, you grab Meghan’s arm as if it would steady you. The hockey boys move for you both, Holiday stepping beside Rafe while the others stand to block Mike from both of you. Mike’s still protesting, struggling against Rafe, voice shaky and stuttering.

“Thompson, get the bouncer.” Holiday orders, and one of the boys takes off toward the front. “Okay, frat boy. You know this place has security cameras. You gonna fess up, or what?”

“Okay, okay, shit, I did it!” Mike whimpers.

“Did what, bitch? Say it.” Rafe hisses, somehow pressing him further into the wall.

“I drugged their drinks, okay? I did it.” Mike admits more firmly. A gasp slips past your lips, Meghan gripping you back enough to sting. But you barely feel it. True terror surges through you, because you would have taken the drink without thinking. Mike probably thought it was just you and Meghan, and that he could get one of you home. The thought made you nauseous.

“Alright, Rafe. Let him go. We got the confession.” Holiday says calmly, holding up his phone. He places his other hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “Bouncer’s here.” Only when a burly man steps into view does Rafe let go, seeming to snap out of his rage.

“Where are the girls? Where is she?” Rafe stammers, eyes searching. Holiday reassures him, but you call out anyway, gently nudging Bobby aside.

“Rafe!” You call again over the noise, and his eyes lock on yours. So many emotions seem to flash through him all at once. Fear, sadness, relief. Both of you push through the crowd, and the second you’re close enough, you launch into his arms. He holds you tight enough you can barely breathe, like he has to remind himself that you’re safe now. Your body gives out against him, tears falling as the adrenaline fades.

“You’re okay, you’re safe, you’re okay,” He repeats like he wants to convince you and himself. You pull away just enough to look into his eyes again.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.” You plead, your skin still crawling with the thought of someone spiking your drink and taking advantage of you. Rafe nods quickly, pulling away just enough to take your hand.

You’re standing by a sliding glass door, and while the crowded house is warm, the January cold still presses through the glass. It’s another house party in Figure Eight, and being back here reminds you that the island never really changes.

You lift your cup to your lips. No alcohol, since it’s better that you don’t drink right now. The pain that dug into you since the last time you saw Rafe hasn’t gone away, and getting drunk will just make it worse.

It’s been three weeks since you left his bedroom. Since the last words between you twisted everything you thought you understood about the two of you. The holidays came and went, and now it’s mere days before everyone here heads back to their colleges to start the spring semester.

You’ve spent so much time telling yourself Rafe didn’t even hurt you, that you were simply angry that he tricked you. But you’ve resigned yourself to the truth now.

At some point over the months you spent getting to know him, you did give him the power to hurt you. And he used it.

The worst part is you don’t even know how much of what he said was manipulation. Which parts were fake. If any parts were even real.

The party hums around you as your friends talk over the music. You haven’t told Ivy and Alayna about any of it. They asked about the bet and you said you gave up, that Rafe was too annoying for you to pretend to like him. They laughed it off.

Through the glass door, there’s a backyard bonfire in a stone pit, a group gathered around it. Rafe’s there, shoulders hunched slightly against the cold.

He’s been drinking a lot. Even from here, you immediately noticed the way he keeps tilting his beer back, again and again.

It’s only been minutes since you and your friends drifted toward this corner of the house, relieved when you didn’t spot him inside. But then you glanced out the door.

The glass reflects your face back at you. You can’t believe how easy it is for you to look unaffected. Like nothing he did ever got to you. But then again, you’ve gotten very good at burying things where no one can see them.

You think about the last time you spoke to him, how he stammered and cried and told you he wanted to be with you. But even if that were true, this started because he saw you as a challenge. You were just a girl to fuck so he could brag about it to his friends.

At least you could tell that you really did hurt him when you told him it was all fake for you. You broke his heart, but what you never saw coming was that he’d break yours, too.

You force yourself to stop looking outside. You turn back toward your friends. You let yourself get pulled into their conversation, and for a few minutes, it works. Then Ivy’s eyes widen, her gaze toward the backyard. You turn.

A fight has broken out near the bonfire. And Rafe is on the ground, surrounded. You wait for someone to step in, but the guys not involved just watch. You stare, hoping someone will do something, but he’s getting pummeled.

And despite everything you’re feeling, the pang of fear is the loudest.

Impulsively, you set your drink down and push through the crowd inside the house. It’s easy to spot one of Rafe’s friends, Topper, leaning against the kitchen island. You’ve known him by sight for years.

You lean in close so he can hear you over the music.

“You need to help Rafe,” you say. “He’s in the backyard.”

Topper’s smile disappears and he shakes his head like he’s irritated, used to the fact that his friend is always stirring up trouble. He grabs two other guys and they head for the backyard. You follow, zipping up your hoodie the second the chill hits you.

His friends manage to get the group to back off, shouting and shoving. The crowd around him loosens.

Rafe is still on the grass, though. He’s curled on his side. His hair’s fallen into his face, and he’s breathing hard. He doesn’t even try to get up when his friends tell him to.

He doesn’t look like the man who once made you feel protected. Now it feels like you have to be the one to save him.

Worry digs into you. You step closer, leaning down.

“Rafe,” you say sharply. “Get up.”

Hearing your voice does something to him, even though the last time he saw you, you’d proven what people say about you is true.

“Get up,” you repeat.

Rafe lifts his head and his eyes finally land on you. From where he’s lying, you’re framed against the starry sky, the bonfire’s glow catching the edge of your face. You look unbelievably beautiful.

Your voice cuts through the ringing in his ears. He hates how nice it sounds. Hates that it still gets to him. Hates you.

But even with all that, this is the first time in a long time that he feels a semblance of steadiness. He forces himself onto his knees, swaying slightly.

Your eyes scan the massive yard, searching for somewhere you can take him that isn’t in full view of the crowd. Then you spot the poolhouse tucked behind the in‑ground pool. You hope it’s unlocked. And you hope your friends don’t see you doing this.

You don’t want Ivy or Alayna to catch you worrying about him. You don’t even know how you’d explain what you’ve done so far. You’re not sure you can.

“Let’s go,” you say firmly.

He tries to stand and nearly tips, so your hand finds his arm, steadying him.

The moment your fingers close around Rafe’s bicep, traitorous warmth buzzes under your skin. You despise him. You’ve told yourself that a hundred times. He hurt you. He made you feel stupid. You should want nothing to do with him.

But your body won’t listen. It’s unfair that it brings you comfort to touch him again.

The walk across the yard is long. Rafe’s breaths are ragged and he leans some of his weight into you and the voices fade the farther you get, replaced by the distant hum of ocean waves.

When you reach the poolhouse, you try the handle and thankfully, it turns. You push the door open and guide him inside. The space is dark and chilly and smells like chlorine. You flick on the light.

Rafe sinks down onto the closest couch, elbows on his knees, staring ahead with a blank expression. And now, you can see him clearly.

His bottom lip is split. He obviously got punched in the nose, too, because it’s covered in blood. His hands are trembling, and he keeps blinking as he stares ahead.

A drop of blood falls onto his thigh, soaking into his jeans, and you unzip your hoodie, shrugging it off even though the cold immediately sinks into your arms. You can’t believe your instinct is to choose his comfort over yours.

Rafe is dazed. Then he sees a bunched‑up cloth in front of his face. You’re standing over him, offering him something to press to his nose.

Past the blood, he can smell you on the fabric. Your expression is tight and unreadable. But he could never read you all that well. Obviously.

“Take it,” you state.

You’re helping him. After everything. It’s what he always wished for, someone to look after him after he loses it and gets hurt, but it’s ruined, because all he can remember is the cruel way you told him you could never feel anything for him.

He lifts a hand, takes your sweater from you, and presses it to his nose with a wince.

You watch him shaking, standing a few feet away, arms wrapped around yourself. You can’t make yourself move any closer. And you can’t make yourself leave either. What the hell is it about him that makes you act this way?

You’re curious and worried and angry. You try to piece together what happened, why he got ganged up on like that. Obviously he couldn’t fight back for once because of how drunk he is.

You teeter between caring and refusing to care, because as much as you tell yourself you’re done with him, walking out of this room while he’s shaking and bleeding feels impossible.

“Why are you even here?” Rafe mutters, not looking at you.

He’s been hanging on by a thread. The guys by the fire were already annoying him, laughing about how wasted he was. Normally he’d just tell them to shut up, but tonight he was drinking because he’s trying to forget you.

Rafe was already close to snapping. He made a comment to one of the guys about his parents just to piss him off, some gossip he heard a while ago. To get Rafe back, the asshole said something about his dad.

That’s what broke him. He swung. The other guy swung back, harder and with his friends backing him up.

You don’t know how to answer his question, because you have no idea why you’re here. You stay silent, staring, never having felt this before.

“They said something about my dad,” he says under his breath, trying to justify himself. His words are slurred. He’s too drunk to filter anything. “Bet he’s real proud.”

You still. You remember Rafe saying that he’s not what his family wants him to be. To know he lost it over a stupid comment about his dad makes it clear that that’s really something that gets to him.

Or maybe not. You don’t know anymore. Every memory you have of him feels poisoned, warped by the fact that he was lying to you through so much of it.

Rafe hates the silence, that you’re just standing there, that you shattered his heart.

“What? You’re thinking I deserve this, right?” he rasps, bringing the bunched up hoodie to his lap, looking down at the blood sinking into the fabric. He’s simply repeating what you told him. That he deserved to be fucked with, that he’s stupid.

Anger floods you so fast it’s dizzying. He’s actually feeling sorry for himself, after he got himself in this mess, after he admitted to trying to use you. The audacity almost makes you laugh.

“Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?” you say.

Rafe lets out a breath, your cold words slicing into him. And finally, he looks up at you.

“No,” he mutters, shaking his head slightly, squinting, grimacing. “I don’t expect anything from you.”

That’s what makes you snap. You scoff and storm out, the door slamming shut behind you. You should’ve just left him on the cold ground.

Rafe doesn’t move. He keeps staring at the floor long after you’re gone, shoulders hunched, breath shaky, his nose and jaw pulsating with pain.

The silence presses in around him. All he can smell is blood now. Tears burn his eyes and he squeezes them shut.

・・・・・

You never get attached. Every fling you’ve had always stayed surface‑level. It wasn’t even a conscious effort; it was how you protected yourself from getting hurt.

But with Rafe, it’s like he broke you apart, like he lit a fire in you and doused it in fuel until you became someone you didn’t recognize.

And you had the same effect on him, because while he did lie to you when this started, there was no faking the meltdown he had. His voice cracked in a way that didn’t sound like him as he told you he regretted the bet, that you deserve better.

You hurt him, too. It doesn’t even feel satisfying, though.

It’s Sunday afternoon and you’re lying in bed in your sorority house bedroom. Your mind keeps going back to Friday night in Kildare. The way Rafe looked, bloodied and hurt. The way your instinct kicked in to help him.

You’d caught up with Ivy and Alayna at the party after leaving the poolhouse. And you lied. You told them that even though you don’t like Rafe, you just couldn’t stand there and watch him get hurt. No matter who it was, you’d help.

The guilt of lying has been eating away at you. But how can you possibly confess to making a fool of yourself for someone who disrespected you the way he did?

You got back to campus yesterday. You desperately want to pick up where you left off before Rafe. It’s like he knocked something loose in you and you can’t get it back into place.

You stare up at the ceiling, wired. You told your sorority sisters you were going to take a nap, exhausted from the trip back. But you haven’t slept. You’ve just been lying here, listening to the muffled voices drifting up from downstairs.

The loud rumble of an engine drifts in from outside and you push yourself up on your elbows to peek through the sheer curtain.

A black pickup rolls to a stop in front of the house. Rafe steps out, something bunched in his hand. You stay still, watching him.

Time drags by and then there’s a knock at your bedroom door. Your breath catches.

He can’t see you like this. You want to have the power here. Even after you helped him on Friday night, he still looked at you with so much hatred. Like you don’t give a shit about him. And it’s best that he thinks that.

You edge back toward the window to see Rafe walking away from the house, heading for his truck again. Relief finds you. It’s not him.

“Yeah?” you call, forcing your voice to sound normal.

Jada cracks the door open. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

You shake your head no.

“Rafe came by,” she says, stepping inside. “He dropped this off.”

She holds out your hoodie. The same one you’d pressed against his face in the poolhouse. The fabric is soft and clean now, scrubbed of every trace of him. You take it, thanking her.

“He looked rough,” Jada adds, watching you. You’re still, staring ahead as you hear his truck drive away. “You okay?”

A while ago, you’d told her you were done with the bet, that you’d keep seeing Rafe just for fun. Then, when things fizzled, you told her you got bored. You never said how you actually let your guard down for the first time.

You clutch the hoodie to your chest. And you don’t have it in you anymore to pretend.

“I liked him,” you say, the words thin. Your eyes well up before you can stop it.

Jada sits beside you immediately. You can see it in her face: she’s never seen you like this. You’re supposed to be the one who never cries over a boy.

“He had a bet with his friends that he could have sex with me,” you tell her. “That’s why he started this whole thing.”

“What?” Jada breathes, stunned. “Are you serious?”

“He cried when he admitted it,” you say, letting out a scoff. “And I couldn’t even feel bad for him. Like, what, you realized I was a person and now you’re sorry?”

Your breath catches. You look away.

“I told him that I was in it to break his heart. And he said I did.” You swallow hard. “I forgot about that bet with my friends a long time ago, but I said that just to hurt him back.”

“I’m so sorry,” she says softly. “What a mess.”

“I know.” You wipe your eyes, your breath shaky. “Why does it hurt so bad?”

Jada’s brows pull together, her expression warm and aching with sympathy. She reaches for your hand.

“It won’t forever,” she tells you. “I promise.”

You nod, even though you don’t believe it yet. You’d give anything to feel like yourself again. To feel like Rafe never touched a single part of you.

・・・・・

Rafe thought he wanted you to open the door. Once he got to the front step of your sorority house, though, he realized he couldn’t face you. He barely said a word when your roommate answered.

He held out the hoodie, muttered that it was yours, and went. He only returned it because he hates having something of yours lying around.

His hands are tight on the wheel. He turns off Greek Row. He doesn’t have a destination. He just needs to move to protect himself from drowning in his thoughts.

His stomach pinches in pain and he realizes he hasn’t eaten all day. He imagines you in the passenger seat, teasing him as you go to get food together, and he hates that his mind goes there.

Friday night crashes back into him, the way you grabbed his arm and led him to the poolhouse. He thought you’d never speak to him again. He doesn’t know why you did it. And he can’t read into it, because it wasn’t that long ago that you looked at him like he was nothing.

How could you do that to him? He keeps replaying it, over and over, torturing himself. The way you sat in his bed, eyes cold, telling him it was all a bet for you, too.

Admittedly, before all that, it felt good that the girl who seems to hate every guy saw something in him. But now he knows you faked it all.

He tells himself he doesn't need you. But all he can think about is how easily you said you never liked him, that you never could, and how much it hurts to know you meant it.

・・・・・

Rafe sits in the lobby of the main lodge while his friends talk around him.

He didn’t want to come. He got out of the spring day trip for the past two years, but Trey was serious that everyone needed to show up after the whole probation bullshit.

And Rafe doesn’t care for orders, but he cares enough not to let the frat president make an example out of him. He refuses to look weak, to be cut out socially, to be even more isolated than he already feels.

Rafe’s been bracing to see you since the moment he stepped out onto the college-owned retreat center. The place is huge, a cluster of buildings that face a lake. It’s big, but not big enough that he can fully avoid you.

He rubs a hand over his face. He has no idea what he’s supposed to do if you come.

・・・・・

You’ve been excited for this all year. It’s one of your favorite parts of Greek life. This day trip is a long‑standing tradition. Every spring semester, every chapter is invited out for a Saturday of team‑building and fun.

But this year, you’ve spent the entire 45-minute drive wondering if Rafe will be here. You’re in the backseat of your sorority sister’s car, music blasting as you approach the retreat center.

Your phone buzzes in your lap. It’s the guy you met at a party earlier this week. You hated how, the entire time he talked, you kept comparing him to Rafe. He didn’t catch your humor, didn’t look at you like you’re the most interesting thing in the world like Rafe used to.

Usually you can distract yourself with someone new. It won’t work this time.

・・・・・

The chapter leaders, made up of the frat and sorority presidents, welcome everyone in front of the main lodge. There are a lot of people here. With most members of all the chapters on campus, maybe a hundred students total. With so many people gathered, the air feels even hotter, sun beating down hard.

You spot him. Rafe is standing with his frat, that stupid hat sitting backwards on his head again. He’s too far away for you to see how much he’s healed since that fight he got into.

But you can tell he looks tired. He doesn’t want to be here. You’re not surprised. The last time you saw him was through your bedroom window a week ago. He looked just as tired then, like a light he once had is gone now.

And if you didn’t believe it in that moment, you do now. You really did break his heart. It’s painfully obvious.

He looks up. Your eyes meet through the crowd. For one second, it’s just you and him, standing on opposite sides of a crowd, pretending you’re strangers.

You’ll have to get used to that. You look away.

・・・・・

Fireflies drift over the grass in the warm night air. It’s the last stretch of the day, the lull after a big dinner. It’s tradition to end the day trip with a dip in the lake. You did it last year and you’re eager to do it again, to plunge into the water after a hot, tiring day.

Some cars in the lot are already gone, surely the chapter presidents. They know all about the swim, and they don’t forbid it, but they don’t encourage it. They just slip away once dinner ends, leaving the night to everyone else.

You walk with your sorority sisters to the trunk of the car to grab the towels you’d packed, then head back to the lake, hopeful you’ll be able to keep avoiding Rafe like you have been all day.

Rafe’s frat brothers talk over each other as they exit the dining hall, hyping up the lake jump, saying he skipped the last two years so he doesn’t get to bail on anything.

He didn’t even know about it until five minutes ago. He’s exhausted, though, and the idea that the day isn’t over yet annoys him.

He just wants to leave. Unfortunately, he got a ride with them, which means he’s stuck until they’re done splashing around like idiots. He tells them he’s not coming, so Mac tosses him the keys. They jog off toward the lake under the moonlight while Rafe stays behind.

He reaches the car and yanks open the door, thinking he can sit inside, but the moment he leans in, a wave of trapped heat slams into him. He ends up leaning against the side of the car instead and pulls out his phone to kill time.

From the lake, he can already hear the distant splash of someone jumping in, followed by cheers.

Minutes later, he hears footsteps on the gravel. He assumes it’s someone heading back to their car, someone else who decided not to jump. But the footsteps angle closer, weaving between the cars.

Then he glances up. It’s you. And you don’t notice him.

You’re heading for your sorority sister’s car, your phone tight in your hand. You’d forgotten to drop it off earlier, too rushed to think straight. Now you’re back to stash it in the car before heading back to the lake to finally jump in.

You reach the car, find the backseat handle, and pull. It’s locked. Your friend swore it wasn’t. You sigh and try the driver’s side next. Nothing.

Rafe is watching you, because like always, he can’t tear his eyes away. He’s angry. Embarrassed. Confused, because he still feels a pull towards you, and it’s the worst part of this whole thing.

You tug the handle again out of frustration. That’s what makes him speak.

“I think it’s locked,” he mocks you, words edged with annoyance.

The sound of Rafe’s voice hits you. You look up to see him slouched against a car parked at a diagonal, barely ten feet separating you.

And immediately, it’s effortless to be mean to him again. You’d let your guard down with him once, but before that, snapping at him was second nature. And you want to be that old version of yourself again.

“Really?” you scoff sarcastically, turning away. “Asshole.”

Rafe’s jaw firms, the sting of anger and hurt and betrayal rushing through him.

“I’m the asshole?” he replies.

You stop in your tracks, blood boiling. And you can’t let any of your heartbreak show. He lied to you, humiliated you, was so mean to you when you helped him at that party, and now he’s acting like he’s blameless.

You turn and glare at him, arms crossed, the words sitting on your tongue. You’re just close enough that you can see the tight line of his jaw in the moonlight.

“You think you’re totally innocent here?” you mutter, taking a step forward, heart pounding.

Rafe looks away and scoffs. What he did doesn’t compare. It doesn’t even come close. He came clean. And he never set out to hurt someone. You did.

“I’m better than you,” he mutters.

“Sure,” you huff. “Starting a bet with your friends that you can trick a girl into fucking you is what a really good person does.”

He grimaces. He knows how it must’ve sounded, like he was just another asshole who wanted you for only one thing. You’d told him how men make you feel that way, and while nothing you shared with him was real, he knows the anger you felt when you told him that was.

“It’s not like that,” he mutters. “I didn’t think you’d care.”

You scoff, the sound of splashing and laughter carrying from the lake. You can’t help thinking how different things would be if you’d never let him in. You could be out there in the water, light and unbothered, instead of standing here with this weight pressing on your heart.

“Is that what you tell yourself?” you reply.

Rafe adjusts his hat as if it’ll steady him. He’s thrown by how merciless you sound, how easily you can cut him down when he’s trying to explain himself.

“Come on,” he says. In the back of his mind, he hears every rumor he ever absorbed about you, about the girl who treats guys like they’re disposable. “You know what people say about you.”

“Right. They say I’m a bitch, so–”

“They say that you don’t even have feelings,” he cuts in, fast and sharp.

It stings. You thought it’s what you wanted, for people to think that you don’t get hurt. That you can’t. But hearing him say it, like it’s the truth, makes you realize how much of yourself you’ve hidden.

Silence settles between you. Rafe’s expression shifts, pain flickering through it.

He thinks about everything you’ve been through together, everything people say about you, and how not that long ago, he thought that none of it matched the girl standing in front of him.

You’d told him to stop bothering you. But if you’re letting him bother you right now, if you’re still here, still talking, still glaring at him like he’s actually getting to you, then maybe a part of you cares.

“I’ve never been a guy who can just mess around,” he admits, realizing how weak it makes him sound, but needing to get it out nonetheless. “But I thought I could with you because I didn’t think it’d mean anything to you. And I was right.”

He says it hoping you’ll refute it.

“That doesn’t make it okay,” you tersely say instead.

Then, your eyes flick down. He hates the way you go quiet, the way you slip somewhere he can’t follow. You do this. You shut down without warning.

“When were you going to tell me?” Rafe asks, voice tight. He needs to know how long you would’ve kept stringing him along.

You remember how fast everything collapsed when he told you about the bet, when you told him it was a bet for you, too. And as your gaze remains on his chest, simply to avoid eye contact, you hate that you also remember how good it felt to be pressed against him, to feel his heartbeat, to hear his breath.

“When I felt like it,” you say simply.

It’s too much. The whole conversation, the way he’s looking at you. You turn, your phone still in your hand, planning to hide it somewhere in your clothes and hope you can find it again after the cold plunge you desperately need.

Rafe’s heart picks up when you start to walk away.

This can’t be where the conversation ends. There’s a part of him that always wants clarity, always wants the truth spelled out, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. He can’t stand loose ends, and you’ve become the biggest one in his life.

He moves before he even thinks about it.

Rafe rounds you in a few quick strides, cutting off your path. He steps into your space, close enough that you have to tilt your chin up to meet his eyes. He’s inches from you when he speaks.

“Why’d you help me the other night?” he asks, because it hurts not knowing anymore.

Now that he’s close enough, you can see the still‑healing bruise at the bridge of his nose. It reminds you of the jolt of panic that shot through you when you saw him on the ground at that party back home. And it’s a quiet accusation of how much you care about him.

“I wish I didn’t,” you mutter. “You were such a dick.”

You step to the side, but Rafe blocks you and sternly says your name. Just like the night at the beach when this all started, when he tried to apologize for spilling his drink on you, when you told him to fuck off and you wish he’d listened.

“Move,” you say sharply. But he won’t. He can’t believe that he actually had an effect on you that night. Or ever.

And the possibility that you bluffed about your bet rattles him now. The way you said it that night was almost too perfect to be made up on the spot, but he so badly wants you to tell him you were lying.

“Was there really a bet?” he says.

You sigh. It hurts, knowing you’d once agreed to something so cruel, knowing he’s asking you if you ever saw him as more than just a game, knowing that he started this whole thing with bad intentions, too.

“Was there?” he presses.

You look down at the gravel. And you don’t know what possesses you to be honest, whether it’s the bruise on his nose, or how close he is, or how he said your name. Or maybe it’s simply because you’re tired of pretending.

“At first,” you relent.

“At first?” he echoes.

“I decided to forget about it.”

“When?” he asks.

“That day you came to my room after I got off the phone with my mom,” you tell him. You look up at him again, and the eye contact is both hard and relieving, slicing through the distance you’ve put between you. “I felt guilty about it because I thought I was wrong about you. I thought I saw good in you.”

You see the impact of your words in the way Rafe’s brows pull tight. Your instinct is to be spiteful, to hurt him the way he hurt you.

Rafe remembers that day in your room so clearly. It was a long time ago. You forgot about the bet, and you still wanted to keep him around, even though you’d been clear it wasn’t for a relationship.

You being the person who saw something in him felt better than anything else. It felt like proof that he could be someone good. Someone better. And then he showed you that he can’t be trusted.

“Got it,” he says, clipped, his voice low. He didn’t think he mattered enough to hurt you, but it’s obvious that you’re already checked out and done with him.

The defeated way Rafe says it makes it clear to you that he’s given up. You swallow hard. You know that if you tried to step away now, he’d let you.

“You think I don’t have feelings?” you scoff, the accusation still pressing on your chest. “You don’t know me at all.”

Nobody knows you. And with him this close again, the fear flares that he’ll see you for who you actually are, and he’ll realize you’re not someone worth putting time into.

“I tried to,” Rafe murmurs, his voice coming out sharper than he means it to be.

You think about how he apologized to you, cried over you, told you he wanted more than whatever the two of you had. And then you called him stupid, told him you never liked him, to dig the knife in deeper.

Loss, guilt, and betrayal crash together in your chest, a vicious pressure that won’t ease up.

You’re just two people who never expected to like each other. Something between you ran deeper than either of you meant it to, but you don’t have it in you to try with him. Not after he lied. Not after you lied, too.

“I regret it, too, okay? I… actually liked you,” you admit. Your lips press together, your body heavy with pain. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. I told you this is over and I meant it.”

Rafe gets it now. Even though you felt something, he sees that this was never going to work. Because you don’t want it to.

He purses his lips, offers a curt nod, and steps aside to let you pass. He gets a dose of you, and it sticks with him like it always does, like it always will. But he knows he can’t get any more.

You walk past him. You’re not built for wanting someone, for letting them want you back. And as you pace towards the lake under the night sky, hearing crickets chirping and people splashing, an unexpected relief settles in your heart.

Because for once, you didn’t hide or pretend you were above anything. You showed Rafe that this hurt you, too. It’s an honest kind of victory, and it’s so much lighter than the forced pride you’ve been carrying.

Laying everything out feels good. Clean. And now you can focus on trying to put it all behind you.

(to be continued) (next part is the last)

Because despite your valiant efforts at fighting the stubborn spine of your copy of The Phenomenon of Man flat, and despite Matt’s visibly pained attempts to not cringe so openly at the sound of its pages being manhandled, absolutely no studying has occurred. 

The conversation has veered off course. Reliably, you’ve spiraled it toward the hot topic of hookups. It’s an area in which Matt seems to be constantly embroiled, as far as corridor gossip—and Foggy’s colorful commentary—is concerned. It’s also an area that feels masochistic to keep asking about, yet you do again and again with your needling and poking and prodding, for no other reason than to wind up that sick thrill of jealousy in your chest.

Of course, all of it is inconsequential to Matt. He never seems to take offense. He plays along with impeccable composure, which all the more confirms that your chances of getting with him live somewhere in the zip code of Fuck All and Nowhere. It’s your conviction he’s on a much different playing field than you—his revolving door of ruthless future litigators/intense poets/vowelless heiresses. All undeniably drop-dead gorgeous, much so that you weren’t even sure at first who you were jealous of, them or him. 

Besides, it’s not that you like to wallow. You’d like to believe you’re fairly attractive yourself, thank you very much—but there’s much ease in giving in to joyless comparison when, like right now, Matt’s face is lit golden from the afternoon sun and he’s so beautiful, the shapes and lines of him so harmonious it’s only natural he’d be surrounded by people just like him. 

Not like you.

So, rash girl that you are,  you lash out the only way you can. Sarcasm, disbelief.

“You’re telling me,” you say slowly, jabbing your highlighter into the air, “that you, Matthew Murdock, are a virgin. You. You?”

His lips twitch at the corners, amused. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“What the fuck were they doing in and out of your room then? And I quote–‘he was really good’? You giving them confession or something?”

Matt feigns innocence, presses a hand to his chest. With an air of clipped smugness, “Who knows, maybe they were talking about Foggy.” 

Your silence must clue him to the fact that you’re gaping. 

“What? Girls love him!” he says, grinning wide. You can’t argue with that, at least, that much is true. “Besides, it’s a question of semantics. For one, what the word ‘virgin’ even entails when—”

“Just strangle me if you’re going to quote Wittgenstein again, Murdock. You’re a virgin or you’re not.”

Newly emboldened, Matt holds out a thumb to press it against your arm, pushing you playfully. 

“Well, then, enlighten me.”

Enlighten me.

You’re being confronted at your own game and clearly, your prodding can’t hold its own water—embarrassment flooding you instantly at discussing something this bold with someone you’re wildly, secretly in love with. Matt seems to pick up on this, granting you a little reprieve. His mouth quirks, “Alright, I’ll tell you what I think, and you tell me if you agree.”

You have to hope you’re doing a good job of pretending his suddenly stern, even tone doesn’t send your blood pressure skyrocketing.

Calm as ever, he continues, “One would define a virgin as someone who’s never had sexual intercourse.”

One would also define your face as going nuclear, hotter and hotter with each second he discusses this so breezily. Just another day of laying out the facts, like he’s in a debate.

“Yeah,” you manage.

“Sexual intercourse, to mean sexual contact with penetration. Yes?”

“Oh, stop it, Matt,” you groan, hands fidgeting with the page.

“Well—yes?”

“Okay. Yes.”

“Okay.” He leans back, casual, like this is the simplest thing in the world. “If penetration has to be the only metric—then yes, I’m a virgin. Again, if it has to be.”

As if that made any sense, you nod at him, blinking. “Yeah, yeah.” Another blink, upon finally coming to your senses. “Has to be? The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” he repeats airily, biting down a smile. Oh no, he’s enjoying this—“do you think sex is just penetration?”

It takes you a second.

To be more precise, it takes you three seconds. Your confused gaze flicks from his shielded eyes to his mouth, to the tip of his tongue, that which has darted out to wet his pink, pink lips… 

Oh.

“Oh my God,” you utter. Cheeks aflame, you bury your face in your hands instantly, eager to escape his puppylike yips of laughter at your mortification. “Oh my God.”

Jesus. Of course he’d eat pussy like a champ.

“What? What?” His voice has gone high and incredulous.

“Shut up! This paints you more like an asshole in my book, actually.”

He’s grinning wide. “Because?” 

“Because!” Dropping your hands, you stab a finger at him. “I’m pointing at you very disapprovingly, by the way. It’s one thing to brag about being good at sex, y’know, the–uh–uh…p..” 

Just say the word, goddammit! You’re giving yourself away!

“C’mon,” he teases lowly, that delicious rasp in his voice. “You can do it. P-p-p–”

“Penetration,” you spit. “Ugh, Matt!” 

You smack his chest and, scandalously pleased with himself, unbidden laughter escapes him. You have half a mind to simply leave the room; perhaps by doing so, you’ll be spared the punishment of suffering that immaculately handsome smile. Instead, you do nothing but groan. 

“You are such an asshole. Anyway—being good at that is one thing, but you’re saying all that praise was for oral? That’s even worse.”

“Worse? How is that worse?”

“You can’t really coast on– on mutual friction with that. You gotta… um… actually be good at it.” 

Immediate regret bubbles up as soon as the words leave your mouth. Because consequently you’re now picturing Matt’s face between an array of legs, all immaculately smooth, un-stubbly legs, shapely deerlike legs that aren’t yours.

A grotesque fantasy; it may be the worst thing you’ve ever done to yourself.

Matt raises his hands in mock surrender. “They said it, not me. I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Sure. Right.” Eyes returning to the textbook, you grumble low and bitter words you yourself can’t even make form of. Jealous, though you’d sooner bite your tongue in half than admit aloud that you are.  In front of you, the chapter title reads The Season of Life—and Christ take yours now, you’re praying. Matt’s lucky enough he can’t see the withering look you’re leveling at him, but never one to pass up the opportunity to be petty, you utter, “That’s all fiction anyway.”

His head tilts fractionally. 

“Sorry?”

“It’s all fiction.”

“Being good at oral is fiction?”

“Yes.” 

“As in, not real?”

“Yes.” 

Where you’re going with this, you don’t know either. Your brain and your mouth are no longer on speaking terms.

There’s a pause before he speaks again, his voice amused but careful. 

“So in the entire span of human existence—through all of time—you’re telling me not one person has been good at going down on a woman? Not a singular one?”

“Yes!” You throw your hands up, giggling. All rational thought has hurled itself out the window, given way to stubborn absurdity. “Because I’m horrible. And egocentric, and I have to see to believe. Or—feel, sorry. So as far as I’m concerned, no, it has not existed.”

A barrage of your thoughts fill the silence that comes after. What are you even saying? What are you trying to insinuate? Are you coming onto him? Why can’t you just control the goddamn words coming out of your mouth?!

“That’s a terrible worldview,” Matt says at last.

“You’re welcome to leave,” you utter, plenty aware that this is his dorm room.

“Mm. Fiction,” he drawls, mouthing the word again like he’s testing wine. You dare to glance up at him and immediately know you’ve made a mistake: he’s got that smug thing going, head cocked and looking too entertained for his own good.

“I don’t know,” he muses, “it seemed pretty real to me. And to the very respectable women you’re currently calling liars.”

You roll your eyes hard enough you’re sure you can see your brain.

“No, I’m serious. Not only is that dismissive of their agency–”

“Oh God.”

“–but you’re also insinuating I was– What? Pity-praised?” Matt leans forward just slightly, that damned tongue darting out again to lick his smirking lips. “You think it was pity praise for the blind guy?”

“What?! No! I think–” You reel back, flailing, face hotter than it’s ever been in recorded history and you tug away from him as if that’ll help. “Matt, fuck you for real.”

Matt’s grinning so hard now, showing teeth and you can’t bear to face him so you rub your cheeks with your palms again.

“Christ. Okay fine, I walked right into that one.”

“Yeah, you did,” Matt repeats your words, mouthing fiction, shaking his head. “I hope that’s not from experience.” He pauses, tipping his head, a funny expression crossing his face. “Is it?”

Fuck me, you think, panic blooming white-hot, Fuck me, literally, preferably now–

“I- I– Well.” You swallow, finally slamming your textbook shut.

So as not to give anything away to his freakishly good perception, your next words are as matter-of-fact and carefully enunciated as you can manage: 

“Who I put between my legs is none of your business, Murdock.”

Matt raises his brows, frowning and nodding as if to say, ah, alright then, if you say so. Sinking back in his seat, he lets out a sigh so dramatic, you’d roll your eyes again if your entire bloodstream weren’t currently on fire.

“Duly noted,” he says coolly. “And who I put between mine is fair game. Good to know.”

You blink. Fuck.

He’s right. You’re unsure what the etiquette here ought to be. What is it one does when your stupid-smart, obscenely hot crush hits you with an uno reverse that’s technically correct? And now you have to face the fact that you’re the asshole for slut-shaming him when really you’re just… 

A little bit, catastrophically, stupidly jealous…?

“I– um– shit…” you answer brilliantly. “Um… Shit… Okay-you’reright-I’msorry.”

But Matt doesn’t have an answer to give you, no quip to shoot back. He dips his head low, and his shoulders start shaking incessantly. You can’t see much of his face like this—only his mouth twitching in a tight line.

He’s… crying. 

That made him cry?

No way. You’ve never seen him cry before. 

No, no. He’s wheezing. 

From laughter.

“Ha!” he says, eyes bright behind his glasses as a full-bodied laugh finally breaks free from him, smug and delighted. “Got you!”

“Oh fuck OFF, Matt!” you snap, the heat clawing its way down your neck. “I thought you were crying! That’s not–!”

“You walked into that one again.”

“That’s not funny!”

.

Ever the asshole, Matt does find it pretty funny, though. 

Your outrage, your flushed face, the ridiculousness of it all at your expense. And if he weren’t currently fighting for his goddamn life, he’d have the presence of mind to really savor it. Teasing is what the two of you do, an unconsciously learned dance. Yet for Matt, evidently, this back-and-forth holds more weight for him, it being what he can do to deflect from that… what even is it? 

That bite in your voice, every time the topic turns to that.

Disdain, maybe. Disgust. Pity, if he’s being generous.

An indulgent part of him wants to believe it’s jealousy.

But why would it be? You’ve never given him any sign, done anything to be an indication that you’d think of him as anything more than a friend. He knows you: smart, uncompromisingly honest. 

The kind of person who’d never waste time on someone who can’t keep his dick in his pants. 

Which is clearly how you see him.

So that edge, those jabs and barbs and the snide twist with which you said really good… For lack of a better expression, he’s not blind to the fact that you’re disgusted at how careless he must seem. At the thought of him being cheap, shallow, shameless, all of it. Your image of him must be comical, he’s certain: throwing himself in half-clothed thrill, a meaningless chase of affirmation—since anything deeper would be too much. 

Matt likes being your Friend. Loves it, if he’s honest. Which is why he lets you believe what you believe, and he does what he always does: grins, gets on your nerves, then backs off. Just like he’s supposed to. 

Still, it’s not so easy, especially not like this. It’s not so easy now when he’s in sensory hell, and he can smell your apple-scented lotion and the ghost of sunscreen warm on the backs of your knees from walking across campus in the sun. He must catalogue it all: your clean sweat, blooming its sweet human humidity in the bend of your elbows; your anklet clinking and betraying your every restless shift; your rapid heartbeat he can’t even begin to dissect. 

He can smell all of it, hear it, feel it, and God help him—just from this stupid conversation, he’s already hard. 

Be self-controlled and sober-minded, for the sake of your prayers.

Matt exhales, long-suffering, trying to summon some humor for a shield.

“Fine,” he says at last, aiming for flippant and failing spectacularly. “I plead guilty. The rumors are true.”

Your dry snort hits him square, and he can practically feel the eye-roll radiating from you. Still, he goes on, fully aware of what he’s risking. Sentimentality scares you away, he knows this. “The nuns at the orphanage, they’d say it was something special. To share with someone within the sacrament of marriage.” Matt says it grandly, the theatricality making you snort again. Then a little pointedly, because he can sense your mouth already poised for a quip, “I’m not exactly waiting for my wedding night. If that’s what you’re thinking.”

The little hitch in your breath betrays you before you can speak. 

“It’s just…” voice dropping, shoulders curling slightly, Matt doesn’t even know why he feels the need to explain this to you. A bid for understanding, maybe, though he knows that’s too much to hope for. “I haven’t found it in myself to go all the way yet, what with the”—he waves a hand vaguely, words quieting down into a mumble—“the words… in my head, and all.”

“What?” Your brow furrows. “What words?”

He shrugs, lips quirking into a cornered smile. “Nothing.”

“What?!” Before you can even finish talking you’re laughing, grabbing at his wrists in mock outrage. It makes him inhale sharply, your two fingers grazing the tender skin there, and he thanks God you don’t have his senses or you’d know how embarrassingly fast his pulse had leapt beneath your touch. 

“What words, Matt? Do you hear the Holy Spirit or something? Is that a thing?”

He huffs. “I think it’s called a conscience, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. 

For a second—just a second—your heartbeat skips after he says it. Usually, for anyone else, it’d be that tell he knew by heart: Gotcha. Granted, it’s a useful gift, one that’s gotten him into more agreeable doors and down more girls’ jeans that he’d expect. Only it’s not like that with you. He’s long learned that you’re anything but usual to him, the opposite of an open book.

“Don’t call me sweetheart.”

Just as he’d expected, it’s annoyance. Not interest.

Matt glances away, smile wavering. “Ah. Sorry.”

But like it’s nothing you’re already chuckling and saying, more quietly, “All that repression, Matt. M’starting to believe your rumors now.”

Tilting his head back again, he nods to himself. There’s not much to say anymore, the two of you falling into a sort of ambivalent silence as you bury yourself back into the study material as if it’s suddenly become fascinating. But for him, it’s less studying the text and more studying you, picking up your heartbeat that seems to be beating quicker and quicker in… Anticipation?

Erratic, like a caught moth, like you’ve found something to say that’s titillating, or inappropriate. 

He could do you one better. He could do inappropriate. He could ruin your friendship right now.

No, no. He has to bite his tongue, chastising himself. Bad Matt. Friendship. Don’t.

Still, your pulse keeps climbing faster and faster.

“Okay,” you finally eke out, mouselike. “My turn.”

Matt tilts his head.

“I’m a virgin too.”

Oh?

That’s not what he expected, and he’s not entirely sure how to react, brows lifting slightly. Keeping his expression careful, one hand rises to rub between his eyes the way he does only when he’s attempting to buy himself time.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with your admission. It’s not a big deal; it shouldn’t even be one at all. Only, it’s sparked something in him that feels too much like relief. Yet it’s for this reason Matt had shut it down the second it reared its head. He knows himself well enough. If he lets that door open, lets himself want anything from that admission, that greedy part of him will enter and everything else he’s spent so long trying to hold back will come barreling with it. 

He can’t afford that. So he shoves it down, hard.

“Okay,” Matt says gently. “That makes two of us then.”

You groan and collapse so far back into your chair it creaks in protest under you. 

“Ugh. Actually, I’m like half a virgin too or something. Aren’t you gonna be a little weird about it? I was so weird about yours, I feel horrible.”

“No, not at all. I’m deeply moved by your honesty, actually.”

“Dick.”

He smiles.

You sigh, scratching at your temple. “I know there’s more leniency when it comes to girls, and I kind of hate that that’s a thing. Like, I don’t give a crap about it, which is why I do? Does that make sense?”

Matt nods solemnly, though the smile’s still tugging at his mouth. “No flaws in logic there.”

You swat at him again, but it’s lighthearted and your hand finds his arm and stays there, fingers drumming absently at the fabric of his sleeve.

“It’s not even about the sex,” you continue. “A lot of stuff makes me feel like it’s a lot more important than it actually is—”

“Hey.” He cuts you off, soft and steady, “You don’t have to justify yourself, you know. Not to me. I get it.”

You nod, shoulders relaxing. You’d gotten completely unaware of how worked up you were getting, the heat starting to pool again in your face.

“Thanks. Sorry.” You pause for a bit, thinking. “I’d just… I’d like it to be with someone I like. Doesn’t even have to be someone I love– I think I’d actually prefer that, just so it isn’t that big a deal. Just… not some random asshole.”

Right.

Matt has to chew the inside of his cheek until he starts to taste blood.

He could be that asshole. He really could. He could make this easy, make it soft, careful, good for you. For both of you.

“Mm,” he says, noncommittal. “Yeah, I know.”

“Just do it once—then it’s over.”

“Then it’s over,” he agrees helpfully. 

“Stop repeating my sentences!” You laugh and slap his chest again, and by that touch he’s a little breathless. He exhales, tongue running along the back of his teeth. There goes the apple-scented waft from your skin again, mingling with the sun-warmed salt.

“Right,” Matt says promptly, forcing himself to lean back. He places his earbuds back in—a futile effort, he’s unable to hear anything over the blood rushing in his ears—and swipes back at his notes with the pad of his finger to seek where he left off.

The issue, of course, is that he’s hard. 

Hard and sweating and stuck. 

If God were any bit the merciful being He claimed to be, Foggy would walk in right now. He’d take any easy excuse to stop and force him out of his predicament. But Matt knows he won’t. He knows it’s just you and him, and nothing but his own will could stop him now. 

Set a guard, o Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips.

You’re murmuring to yourself over the book again, lips shaping out words he can’t hear because all his focus has narrowed down to the sound of your heartbeat. Then you’re leaning closer, pointing something out, and the hem of your top’s brushing his arm. You don’t realize how much he’s shifted, so when you turn to finally look at him, your breath’s fanning his cheek and he stills. You stop laughing, then you laugh again at the sight of his jaw tightening like he’s bracing for impact.

“You okay?” you murmur.

He forces a tired smile, an expression soothed to something carefully neutral. “Just trying to focus.”

“Oh, sorry.” You duck your head, meek, guilty. Suddenly abundantly aware of the weight in the air, you say, “I can move–”

“No, no.” Matt’s hand finds your waist with unerring accuracy, fingertips skimming your side in a featherlight touch. “Stay. I like it when you’re close.”

Something in your chest flutters, and Matt’s more than a little pleased at the shift in your pulse, the way his words had landed and rippled through you.

Christ, Matt. This how you do it?

He’s so close now he can hear every heavy thump of your heartbeat, and he’s listening hard, desperate in his search for anything to prove it’s more than biology, more than proximity, more than his wishful thinking. 

But he can’t take it anymore. He can’t care anymore.

His thumb strokes your side.

“Alright,” Matt whispers, breath escaping ragged, “I’m gonna kiss you, okay?”

You nod before your brain can even catch up.

“…Okay.”

For an agonizing second, neither of you moves. Then he tilts his head, closing the distance slowly—almost painfully so, like he’s giving you every last chance to pull away. Your heart’s ricocheting so hard he can hear the shape of it.

And then his mouth is on yours.

The kiss when it comes is soft. His hand cups your jaw, thumb stroking your cheek as he presses his lips to yours. You make a sound—a little hum, surprised at yourself—and that’s all it takes for him to deepen it. He’s clued in infinitely to the goings-on in your body, the stutter in your breath, the way your hand lifts hesitantly before settling against his chest, fingers splayed over the steady hammer of his heart.

There’s the faint tang of your lip balm on his tongue when it dares to flicker against you, coaxing your mouth open. Strawberry, kiwi—no matter, he hungers to swipe all of it off you with his own lips. His tongue slides against yours and Christ, he can’t help the soft noise that rumbles in his own throat. When Matt pulls back it’s only enough to breathe, noses bumping, but before you can think any better of it—before you can even think about what you’ve ruined, what you’ve just begun—you’re already leaning back in for more, and he catches your bottom lip between his teeth in a fleeting, tender bite before kissing you again, harder this time and less careful. 

Your fingers clutch at the fabric over his chest like you need something to anchor you. And just as you’re shifting closer and closer, the kiss much deeper, the chair under you creaks ominously and then—

It jerks, slipping sideways.

You yelp and flail gracelessly, but Matt’s faster by years, catching you before the fall can register. His arms wrap around your back, a firm hand finding your thigh to steady you as you land hard against his chest, your body flushed against his. You burst out laughing, breathless and embarrassed.

“I got you,” he murmurs, voice roughening at the edges. His black glasses have slid slightly crooked in the commotion, making him look just a little disheveled. His smirk is nothing short of devilish now that you’re straddling his lap fully, thighs bracketing his own with snug pressure. 

It’s then that you both feel it: the heat and the hardness of him beneath you. Even through the barrier of clothing it’s impossible to ignore; by instinct, your body shifts to feed its own want, the hot ridge of his cock grinding against your center through your own clothes.

“Should we…” you start, unsure what it is you’re even asking.

“Yeah,” Matt says shakily, “Bed. Before you fall again and actually get hurt.”

You nod and start to move off him awkwardly, but he catches you again—arms looping around you without effort—and then he’s standing, lifting you against him like it’s nothing. By reflex, your thighs wrap around his strong waist, arms snaking around his neck as he carries you across the room. There’s a second you consider offering directions, murmur clumsy instruction, but Matt moves with complete certainty—exactly where to place you, exactly how to touch you. The surety makes your stomach knot with something sharp and bitter: experience, you think, even as you tell yourself not to—don’t ruin this, don’t rob yourself of how good it feels just to be wanted by him. Fighting against impulse, you swallow it down and let yourself surrender to the moment. 

Matt deposits you gently onto the bed: a twin-sized mess of rumpled sheets and textbooks shoved aside. Coming up to between your legs, when he kisses you this time it’s worlds away from the one before—it’s deeper, hungrier, tongue slick and mouths sliding together in a mess of panting breath and soft noises, your fingers curling into the hem of his shirt.

“Can I—?” he asks between kisses, and you nod, already tugging it up. The dark shirt comes off easily, pulled one-handed over the back of his neck. Like an errant magpie, your gaze is caught momentarily by the silver glint of his cross necklace catching the light, just before your eyes slide down his broad chest, lean and defined, the clean cut of his abs tapering down with a trail of dark hair arrowing below. 

Jesus. 

But you don’t get to ogle him as long as you’d like—it’s your turn then, his hands at your sides, slipping beneath your shirt. Matt’s an impatient man and sure enough, sooner than soon your band shirt comes off, tossed somewhere over the bedframe.

“Goodbye, Nick Cave,” you murmur solemnly.

Matt huffs a laugh, and his lips scorch your newly-bare shoulder, then your collarbone, trailing heat as his hands roam—sliding over your soft stomach, then up to cup your breasts gingerly through your bra, thumbs brushing the edges of the material. You’re tugging at each other again, kissing between whimpers, your fingers fumbling at the button of your shorts, and Matt’s hand covering yours to help. 

Cursing under your breath, you kick the shorts off with a frustrated huff, left in your underwear now, damp and clinging. Unfairly so, Matt’s still wearing those goddamn grey sweatpants that make everything impossible to ignore. You can see everything. You can feel everything. Still above you, now between your legs he ruts forward without meaning to, and his cock grinds against your soaked, clothed core through the layers of cotton and elastic. Like the rhizomatic nature of your conversations with him, natural and free-flowing, the both of you move in unconscious rhythm now, tuned in completely to the feeling of his thick ridge dragging across your core.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters into your mouth.

“For what?” you ask, breathless, trying not to fall apart too quickly.

He hesitates. “I just… didn’t know if you wanted to keep going.”

“Are you kidding?” you whisper. “I was about to ask you that.”

A giggle breaks out from both of you, soft and nervous, mouths brushing, and he kisses you again, desperate. “This feels good,” he mumbles against your lips.

“Yeah?” you breathe.

“Yeah. Yeah.” His fingers slide behind your back, fumbling at your bra clasp. You arch slightly, trying to help, but he curses softly. “Fuck—sorry—can’t—”

“Let me,” you say, laughing again, sitting up just enough to undo it yourself. His ears are flushed now, the tips red with embarrassment, and he opens his mouth to apologize again but your kiss finds him instead, as you reach for his hand and guide it to your chest.

Matt groans into your mouth when you place his palm over your exposed breasts, and he wastes no time, pawing at you greedily, kneading and squeezing like he’s starved for it. Fingers finding your furled nipples, pinching lightly, you shudder under him, clutching his wrist. Summer be damned, the velvet feel of his skin on your skin makes your head swim, and you can’t steal enough of his warmth to be sated. 

His kisses then trail lower, down your neck now, down your sternum, each breath ghosting sultry heat across your skin, and then he’s at your navel, tongue flicking briefly at the dip there. But just as he ghosts lower, nose nudging at the waistband of your panties, you jerk. Acrid panic comes up your throat; before you can think you’re already tugging him up by his hair and the back of his neck, heart hammering against your ribs.

“Wait. Wait—”

He stills instantly, blinking up at you unseeing. His hair is mussed, lips wet, mouth open like he’d been caught mid-word. “…What?”

“I don’t—” The words knot in your mortified throat, and you can’t find the nerve to look at him directly. “Um—I just—”

It’s a burn not solely from want but from the shadow of uncertainty: the thought of him down there, to see you with such closeness, tasting you, and what if you’re disappointing, what if you’re not worth it, if every rumor you’ve pretended not to care about has been true after all and you’re nothing compared to them—

“What’s this, then?” His voice is low, teasing, sufficient enough to puncture your own spiral. Chuckling softly, he asks, “Gonna keep pretending it’s fiction?”

You flush so hard it makes your ears ring. “Shut up. Next time, okay?”

His brow quirks. “‘Next time,’” he echoes, savoring the phrase on his tongue like it’s proof you’ll never get away from him now. 

“Ugh, Matt—just come here—” Flushing hot and annoyed, you yank him up by the necklace, mouth crashing against his before he can say another word, swallowing his grin into your kiss. Slick and consuming, it feels euphoric to slot your own mouth against his like this—lying down, full-body, you could kiss him for hours, your recent indiscretion forgotten—and you’re melting beneath him, your hips grinding up against his, your hands pulling at his pants.

Picking up on your insistence, Matt pulls back, breath ragged, and peels off his sweatpants. They catch at one ankle as you help him tug them off, hands brushing his calves. What’s left then is the stretched fabric of tight black boxer briefs, the full outline of his cock thick and unmistakable, a dark patch of damp where precome’s already leaked through.

You reach for the waistband, teasing it down with one finger. “This okay?”

His voice is strained. Nearly breaking. “Yeah. Please.”

Pulling the briefs down, you have to take a second as his cock springs free, flushed and leaking while it curves toward his stomach, the base nestled in a thatch of dark hair. You swallow hard, because he’s beautiful, Christ, he’s so hard, and he’s already twitching. 

You shimmy your hips forward to be closer to him, legs parting, and he groans loudly the second your plush thighs close around his cock. Beginning to rut forward, he grinds against you slowly, dragging the thick length along your clothed slit, again and again, the damp cotton thankfully doing little to dull the obscene friction. The pressure of each hardened pass catches your clit just slightly makes you gasp, makes you rut back up against him. You can feel the heat bleeding off him, your cunt pulsing with how close he is, how much you need more.

It’s everything and nothing and still not enough. Then, as if to notice this, Matt’s hand drifts down, thumb brushing the waistband of your panties.

“These…” he murmurs lowly, fingertips tracing the edge of your panties with the kind of searing touch that makes your lungs forget their rhythm, “describe them to me.”

For a beat you’re not even sure you heard him right. “What?” you manage, though it’s hardly more than a whisper.

That damned smirk of him has made a reappearance, lips glossy from your kisses. The mockery in his tone is pure provocation, prodding at you endlessly, testing your limits. “Tell me what they look like.”

At his demand, the rush of blood behind your ears is instantaneous. You’re not sure whether it’s that or simply the love-addled lens you’re viewing him through, but a ridiculous little giggle betrays you, shy and uncontainable, as though your body is already conspiring with him. And so despite your attempts to suppress, you relent because he’s waiting, and frankly, because his devilish smile has unmoored you completely. 

“They’re… white,” you begin, voice faltering as though you’re confessing something forbidden, “cotton. Lace at the sides.”

And because this is Matt, you can’t seem to stop, seizing his hand and tugging it down until his broad palm rests against the soft material, your pulse jumping beneath prickling skin.

Matt tilts his head as if he can see every detail anyway. Savoring the description, tasting it out as his smile curves wickedly. “Mm. Fancy?”

“Not really.”

“They expensive?” 

“What? Jesus. No, you perv.”

“Good.” His tone’s dropped lower, thicker with play; its cadence is so warm it flushes heat straight between your thighs, beneath his palm most especially. And as if that singular word has become verdict— his purposeful fingers hook into the waistband sharply. 

RRRIP—!

Your thighs jerk, eyes flying wide as the cotton gives under his decisive grip. Matt tears the panties apart at the seam as though they’re paper, unable to find patience to stop himself from wrenching the ruined fabric aside until you’re bared to him completely. It takes you a second to catch your breath, but you finally break into incredulous laughter, shock and arousal having knotted together in your chest so tight it feels like a stone in your sternum. 

“Couldn’t wait,” Matt pants, “Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“No, I’m not.” His grin widens, flashing wolfish teeth. “Not even a little.”

“You’re gonna have to pay for that, Murdock.”

His laugh tumbles directly into your mouth as he kisses you again to shut you up, hot and reckless, and then drags lower once more— “This is okay, right? You’re okay with this?”

“Yeah. God, yes. Oh—” Yet despite thinking you’ve already tamped it down, the reality is that the two of you are now completely bared to each other; hence the voice of reason from inside your head still emerges, causing you to swallow hard. “Wait, Matt. Are we gonna— I mean, is this—?”

Christ, you don’t even need to finish. He knows what you’re asking, he can tell. And the fact of the matter is, it’s not simply the nature of his suggestibility. Matt’s will is strong, mostly unshakable. The only counterpoint is that it’s you. You’re the one offering, wanting, needing. He’s the one with the conscience clawing at him and telling him to stop. 

But how the fuck can he stop, when you’re whimpering under him, begging for him so openly?

The thought of whether this is the line he’ll cross, it hammers in his chest and remains. Matt can’t bring himself to say it out loud, can’t let the words be real, because despite all his guilt, all his restraint, he wants it too much. He wants to do it right this time. He wants it with you.

He should stop.

“C’mon,” you whisper, bold and desperate in equal measure. “As long as it doesn’t go in, it’s okay. Right? For you?”

Matt’s breath shudders out of him, chest pressing hard against yours. His lips part on a half-formed prayer you don’t understand, and then he’s nodding, rendered helpless by the way you’ve said it.

“Jesus,” he mutters, breaking. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

Wetting his lips, he pulls back and he pushes your pillowy thighs together slowly, and slides his cock between them, the swollen head dragging slickly between your bare folds, through your wetness. Slow at first, drawing each movement out until he feels like he’s about to die from lack of it. Every pass coats him more, precum mixing with your arousal, smearing the softness of your thighs as his cock glides in tight, controlled thrusts. 

You’re wet. So wet he can hear it. The sounds filling the room are lewd and rhythmic, your thighs slick, your cunt clenching around nothing, desperate.

And Matt’s losing it.

He’s not even inside you and already he feels like he’s going to break.

His hands tighten on your hips, heavy enough to remind you he’s holding back by the skin of his teeth. With each pass of his shaft it’s cushioned indulgently by the soft flesh of your thighs, dragging along your folds, hot and wet and thick, the ridge of the swollen head bumping against your clit with every motion and sending zings of pleasure shooting up your spine until you’re breathless, gasping, toes curling.

You don’t realize you’re whining loudly until he leans over you, breathing hard onto your cheek, his chest heaving. Mouth brushing your ear, he mutters, “Mine.”

His claim on you makes your whole body arch, makes your cunt clench down uselessly on nothing, aching.

And it’s true. You’re his, no question now about it. All of it is proof enough: the wetness slicking your inner thighs, your bare pussy glistening and desperate and utterly bare beneath him. 

You roll your hips up instinctively, desperate to catch more of him, to press harder against the hot, swollen weight grinding between your thighs, chasing the flash of electricity when the crown of his cock skims your clit. But his grip only tightens, fingers biting bruises into your waist, holding you down like he knows better than to let you move, like he’s the only thing keeping you tethered to sanity.

It feels like sin. This little game the two of you are playing at, it feels better than it has any right to, filthy and exquisite in equal measure. Each rut of his cock through the slick vise of your thighs drags the swollen tip across your folds, every pass smearing you wetter, every sound between you growing louder, lewder. The air is thick with it, every breath you take steeped in sex. It feels so fucking good—all of it, all of it—all building towards something, something you realize to be this conclusion: it’s not nearly enough. 

“I want more,” you gasp, the words tumbling out unbidden as your eyes flick helplessly downward, caught on the sight of his cock sliding in and out of the tight press of your thighs. The swollen head keeps vanishing and reappearing, glazed with you, every filthy pass making you shiver harder, “Want you.”

“I know,” Matt exhales, and the sound is ragged, breaking in his throat. He presses his forehead against yours, his feverish skin scorching yours completely. “Me too. But we can’t.”

As if a spoiled child, you whine, “Why not?” high and frustrated as you rock your hips against him anyway, greedy, begging with your body even as he keeps you pinned.

Without needing to speak aloud, the answer to your question comes to him with absolute certainty. A hoarse rasp of conscience: Because I’m an asshole.

“Please,” you whimper, every instinct in your body screaming for more. His hands only tighten to keep you down, yet it finds no success in having you stop; it only makes your need bloom sharper, makes your pleas spill faster. “Please, it won’t change anything. We’re still friends, right? Right?”

And then, just for an instant, just enough to catch at your entrance, the head of his cock slips and pushes blunt and hot and shocking against the swollen threshold of your body.

The air is torn from both of you in the same instant, gasps ripping through the thick silence.

The shock of it intoxicates you, blinds you—just that sliver of him breaching you, and you’re undone.

Beside your head, his arm strains to brace his weight, with biceps taut and straining, veins standing out as though his whole body is about to snap. The silver cross around his neck swings free, dangling above your face, catching the faint light with every tremor. 

Matt doesn’t move, shouldn’t, but his cock throbs where it presses into you, every instinct commanding him to push deeper, to sink, to lose himself. To give you what you’re pleading for.

“Fuck—m’sorry,” he grits, wrenching back, pulling himself back out. He’s shaking, chest heaving, the words tumbling from him wild and frantic. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to—I didn’t—You’re just so wet, fuck, I’m sorry—”

And if your hand causes you to sin…

“It’s o-okay—” You’re trembling, nails biting into the meat of his bicep. Your body is buzzing, still lit by the electric shock of him almost inside, and what terrifies you most is the clarity flooding you. 

Singular and decisive: you can’t stop now.

“Matt,” you whisper, sordid with want, “what if—what if you put it in, just a little. A little, please. It’s not enough. It won’t even count.”

You sound like you’re begging for your life. Reduced to nothing but a bitch in heat.

Matt’s hand slides up to your jaw, thumb dragging across your cheek in a trembling, sultry caress, and his head dips, unsteady laughter rasping out of him, “Don’t tease.”

“I’m not,” you plead, “S’long as… s’long as it’s not fully in, it doesn’t count, right?”

“Fuck—” Matt exhales hard, head hanging as if the weight of it will break him. His throat works as he swallows, trying to claw the words out of his conscience. 

He needs to stop. He knows he needs to stop.

Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds.

But how can he refuse you?

“Fuck. Okay. Are you sure?”

You nod, frantic. For Matt, whose senses are paradoxically both focused entirely on you and tuned out by the intense arousal in his head, this simple gesture is insufficient. He shakes his head. “I need you to tell me you’re sure.” His lips brush over yours as he breathes it, a coded message of him desperately begging you to say stop, to absolve him, control him from his own sin.

You do no such thing. 

“Fuck, I’m sure,” your eyes are wet, and you cling to him as if he’s the only thing keeping you alive. “I need you, Matt.”

Need you, Matt.

He squeezes his eyes shut. “Fuck. Okay. Just the tip, okay?”

You nod quickly, almost giddy with relief. 

God can forgive him if it’s just the tip. It doesn’t even count. He’ll be forgiven. 

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability…

Having made his decision, Matt bites down on a groan, then kisses you so hard it steals the breath from your lungs once more. You have the sense his mouth is fierce and desperate to seemingly smother the truth of what he’s about to do. And, ever obliging, his hand reaches down, fumbling between your bodies, guiding himself to your entrance.

Then he’s pushing forward.

Just the tip—barely inside, barely breaching. Enough to tear the air from your lungs, enough to lock every muscle in your body.

“Mmff—” the sound wrenches from him, low and ragged, almost a growl as your heat swallows the thick crown of him. His head drops, sweaty hair brushing your face. “Fuck—that’s tight. You okay?”

You nod quickly, clinging to his arm, your teeth sinking into your bottom lip as you feel him stretching you out.

“Y-yeah,” you gasp, fighting for your voice not to tremble, “it just… hurts. A little.”

Hurts.

Stop now, Matt. Stop it. Stop it.

If he’s looking for a sign, this is it. He’s hurting you. Right? He should stop. Pull out. Apologize. Pretend this never—

But your body won’t allow him to believe it. Not with the way you’re squirming under him with need. Still, he must keep to his word—just the tip. So he doesn’t move, though his cock throbs thick inside you, just the swollen crown wedged in that slick tight heat that’s clenching and fluttering so helplessly around him.

The moment he’s lodged fully inside your entrance, you instantly wish you hadn’t begged for it. The taste of it is too good, too much, and now that you’ve had it, there’s no way this could ever be enough. You want more. You want all of him.

As if hearing your own thoughts, Matt grunts low in his chest, the sound guttural. He grits his teeth, refusing: he knows better than this.

Instead, one hand braces you at the waist, keeping you still, the other fisting the rest of his exposed length. His hand slides up and down his shaft in a desperate grip, every stroke smeared with the arousal you’re drooling down his cock, wetting him to the base. He shouldn’t be doing this. He really shouldn’t. No condom, no plan, no fucking clue how to stop. All he’d need to do was push forward, slide the rest of his cock in and bury himself to the hilt. And as if to compound his own struggle you’re writhing, too, trying to roll your hips the tiniest bit, trying to fuck yourself on him, his grip on your waist being the only thing stopping you.

“Unfair,” you whined, trying to defy the iron clamp of his hand.

“What’s unfair?” 

Jesus. He’s so hoarse he can’t even recognize his own voice.

“You get to—” your chest heaves, words tripping over the wreck of your own pathetic desperation, “—get to jerk yourself off while I—while I can’t even—” Another sharp whimper breaks you off, and for a second Matt thinks you’re going to start completely sobbing right then, with your cunt clenching down helplessly on the head of his cock buried inside you. “I can’t even take it all.”

Christ. 

Matt swallows.

This girl is gonna be the death of me.

“S’not—” he tries, but the word shreds out of his throat like gravel, sweat dripping down his temple. His fist works himself tighter, faster, the slide of it wet and obscene from the mess you’re making all over him. You’re so fucking slick; all of it his, yours, both of you, smeared together down his cock and onto his knuckles. 

“No, no– see–” As if to abate the mounting tension his fingers find your clit, rubbing in frantic little circles with your own wetness. The effect is instant: your back arching, cunt clamping down on his cockhead.

“See?” he rasps, eyes wild. “See? You can feel good too, sweetheart. Just like this.”

Thumb working circles onto your clit, you squirm helplessly under him, sobbing into his mouth when he kisses you again. Every squeeze of your pussy around him frees another curse from his lips, another jerk of his hips forward without his permission, the thick crown driving a fraction deeper before he can stop himself.

“Fuck—” his forehead drops to yours, trembling with effort, “fuck, sweetheart, I can’t—”

The moment his fingers drag again over your clit, you buck deeper onto his cock with a sob.

“I’m not gonna move,” he pants, nipping at your lip to keep himself tethered, “I’m not gonna—fuck—” 

But even as he says it, his hips are already rocking, shallow thrusts plunging his cock just barely in and out of your pussy, every ridge of him catching on the trembling mouth of you. Just the tip, he tells himself. Just the tip. Over and over like a prayer.

The truth is, Matt doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. A live wire embodied, he’s guided by instinct and need alone, no practiced rhythm, no skill, just messy, urgent biology taking the reins. Having given way to baser impulses, his body moves the way it wants to, chasing what feels good, listening to every slick sound, every clench of your cunt, every gasp from your pretty mouth.

“Shit—sorry—sorry—” he grunts, rocking forward again, every shallow thrust ratcheting up the tension inside him like he’s being wound too tight, like he’d snap if he stopped.

“Matt—” you beg, arching up to claw at his arm. “More. Please. More.”

“I can’t,” he says hoarsely, but he doesn’t stop either, still working the tip of his cock into you with ragged little thrusts. “I shouldn’t.”

But your body’s melting open beneath him already, milking him just from that shallow stretch. Just the tip, just the tip, he repeats to himself, but every second inside you only makes him wonder how much better it would feel if he gave you all of it.

He shouldn’t, but Christ, it’s you.

You. Always you. Not just his friend, not just the girl he teases and studies with, but the one his hands ache to memorize, the one whose heartbeat he knows better than his own.

“Fuck—” the curse shudders out of him, his breath stinging your face, “You’re—Christ, you’re so good to me, my girl—” 

Sweat’s beginning to sting his unseeing eyes now as he focuses on the way your pussy squeezes around him. But each time he pulls out, his hips push back in deeper—just a fraction, just a millimeter more. It’s not conscious, not yet, but his cock’s greedy, his body aching for more, and he lets it happen again. And again. And again.

His mouth is everywhere—kissing you hard, biting your lip, licking the sweat from your collarbone as his hips twitch, plunging deeper. Bit by bit. Inch by inch. Until he’s slipping past the point of no return, your walls stretching to take him, your moans soft and broken in his ear.

You gasp when the thick crest of his cock pierces deeper than ever.

“It’s alright,” Matt rasps, between his sultry claims of my girl into your neck. “It’s just a bit, just a little, it’s okay, right? S’okay? Sorry, sorry, shit—”

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue.

And then suddenly, inevitably, he’s in all the way.

Bottomed out, buried to the hilt, his hips pressed flush to yours. His cock seated deep inside your body, throbbing, pulsing, sheathed fully in your wet heat to the very base. He can’t breathe, can’t think, and the only thing tethering him to the moment is the frantic hammer of your pulse and the tight, fluttering clutch of your pussy strangling his cock like you were made to fit him.

Knowledge with self-control… self-control with steadfastness… steadfastness with godliness…

Fuck off, he thinks viciously, growling it in his head to drown the endless refrain of scripture that batters at him even as he trembled above you. He’s not praying anymore—he’s fighting to silence the voice that tells him this is wrong, that this is sin, when all he wants is to make you feel good. 

“Matt,” you whimper, soft and urgent. “Move. Please.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, exhales raggedly against your jaw, and then—hesitantly, testing—he slides his cock out.

It’s too slow. Painfully so. Your swollen folds cling to him desperately, like your pussy is trying to suck him back in, each inch dragging fire across his length until he nearly loses his mind. Your cunt stretches, weeps around him, and when he pushes forward again, even slower, the shaft sinks back inside with obscene resistance, the slick sound of your bodies meeting loud in the overheated room.

“Fuck, so tight,” he gasps, forehead dropping to yours.

He pulls out again. Slides back in again. Every retreat slick, every push met with a bearing down so tight he chokes on his own breath.

And then he does it again.

And again.

And again.

Your thighs tremble against his hips, your back arching, your mouth falling open as you watch him—watch the way his cock disappears inside you, coated thick in your wetness, then reappears glistening, only to sink back inside to the hilt. A ring of wet white clings to the base of his shaft, spreading with every stroke, proof of how thoroughly he’s splitting you open.

“Oh my God,” you whimper, voice thin, eyes glued to the sight. “Matt.”

As if through otherworldly understanding, he says your name back to you, siphoning heat into your mouth—and almost without meaning to, his pace picks up. The slow grind of his hips becomes sharper, his thrusts longer, the rhythm picking up with every drag of your pussy milking him tighter. He pulls back halfway and drives forward again, harder this time, and the sound it makes—the wet slap of your bodies, the squelch of your slick around him—nearly unspools him.

“Fucking hell,” he pants, brow furrowed, eyes shut tight, as if concentration alone can keep him from losing himself entirely. “You’re so—so fucking tight, sweetheart.”

Your hands clutch his shoulders, helpless against the pace as he pumps into you now, faster, deeper, your cries tumbling into the room in a shameless chorus. And still you can’t stop watching his cock slide in and out of your pussy, faster and faster, his stomach clenching, his silver cross swinging tauntingly above you.

One moment he’s easing in, trying to keep that tight rhythm steady, whispering prayers and half-formed apologies against your mouth, and the next he’s simply gone, for lack of a better word. Crossing the threshold of his own control, he’s resorted to straight up fucking you, hips hammering into you, cock pistoning in and out like something feral’s taken hold of him. He’s sloppy, untrained, rutting wildly, but again, biology doesn’t need finesse, and when someone’s fucking you like this—driving into you hard, desperate, needy—the result is still more than enough to make you arch and moan and claw at his back like you’ll die if he stops.

“Fuck—fuck—” Matt pants, forehead slick and pressed against yours, his voice dissolving into hoarse groans each time his fat cock slams all the way in. He’s greedy with it, chasing his own high with reckless abandon. Ever errant, his mouth searches blindly for balmy skin—your neck, your jaw, your shoulder—pressing wet, scorching kisses between bitten gasps. He tastes sunscreen and sweat, your salt and his and that damned apple-scented lotion, the tang so sweet it makes him dizzy, and when your anklet clinks in counterpoint to his every thrust, the tinkling chime fills his ears like music, like a hymn that drives him to thrust harder.

The bedframe protests, the cramped mattress squeaking beneath the combined weight of his body pressing yours down into it. There’s no space left between you at all; he’s smothering you in heat, his musk, his ragged breath against your lips, and you’re drowning in it, in him. His cane clatters to the floor when his thrusts jostle it loose from the headboard, forgotten completely, as though he’s swearing off every marker of restraint with every thrust.

“Matt,” you breathe, and then again, louder, chanting it helplessly, “Matt, Matt, Matt…” with the same fervent rhythm he’d once used to pray the rosary, your cries his new litany.

He can’t get enough. Your cunt is so wet, so tight, clenching around him like it was made to keep him, and he can’t stop laughing breathlessly into your face, disbelieving, “So fucking tight—Christ, you’re so tight—” before his hand’s sliding down again to abuse your swollen clit, your shared wetness slicking his touch until your body jolts violently against him.

Knowing you so well, that’s all it takes—your whole body seizes, your mouth falling open on a silent cry as your orgasm rips through you like a snapped cable. Your vision goes white and you writhe beneath him, clutching and pawing at his back, shaking so hard your knees knock into his hips.

By reflex, Matt buries his face against your neck, his body surging with yours as your cunt spasms around him, soaking him even more. He knows he should pull out. He knows. But the way your pussy’s gripping him, sucking him back in, the soaked evidence of your orgasm leaking down his cock, the way you’re still trembling and panting his name like it’s salvation—

He can’t.

He’s not thinking anymore. Just fucking.

And the bed’s tiny, barely big enough for both of you, and there’s nowhere to go but into each other, sweat dripping off his forehead onto your own, your skin hot and shiny under his, your nails dragging down his spine, and he’s laughing now—breathless, manic—between thrusts.

…That each one must know to control his own body in holiness and honor… 

It should shame him, too. Matt catches it: the slight copper tang of blood lacing the air, the sting of your body stretched too suddenly—but instead it makes him shake, makes him rut harder, makes his cock twitch greedily inside you. Some dark part of him finds the trace of blood endlessly alluring, proof that you’ve ruined each other for anyone else. He doesn’t stop to think, finding himself unable to.

…not in the passion of lust.

Was he this much of a fucking freak, that verses floated up unbidden even while his cock was bullying your cervix, stretching you indecently deep?

He’ll be forgiven. He’ll be forgiven.

As long as he doesn’t come inside you. 

That’s the line. That’s the last shred of self-control he has left, and he clings to it while his hips rut and slam with abandon, while your body milks him so good he’s dazed with it.

But he wasn’t supposed to go this far, so what’s a little farther? 

He doesn’t believe in halfway sins. If he’s going to hell, then he’ll make it worth everything.

“I’ll pull out,” Matt rasps, his voice half-promise, half-prayer. “I’ll pull out, I swear—just a little longer, just—fuck—”

But “a little longer” turns into a little too long. His rhythm breaks down into sloppy, desperate pounding, each slam of his cock inside you wetter, louder, deeper than the last, his breath coming in ragged sobs. His cross necklace clinks wildly above your breasts, slick against your skin where his chest presses you down. His mouth drags open over your lips, teeth nipping, tongue sloppily seeking to catch yours, and when you kiss him back he groans like he’s being possessed, his entire body jolting with the force of his thrusts, helpless as he says again without thinking, “Mine.”

And finally, in acquiescence, you whisper back, “Yours,” clamping down so tight, twitching and moaning under the maddened stroke of his thumb over your overstimulated clit, and he can’t take it, can’t fight it anymore. The thought of pulling out vanishes as though it never existed.

“Oh fuck—fuck—” he chokes, hips slamming forward one last time, burying himself deep as he can go and his cock pulses violently, spilling hot, thick spurts of his seed into your cunt.

It gushes out of him, painting your walls with ropes of it, mixing with your creamy slick as he groans loud and shameless into your open mouth, kissing you through the ruin. His body wracks with it, every muscle seizing, every thrust reduced to helpless little jerks determined to push his spend as deep inside you as he can.

And all you can do is take it—take every spurt, every twitch, your body clenching and milking him desperately as though it refuses to let him go, your name and his name blurring together into moans and gasps until there’s nothing left but the sound of your hearts, hammering in tandem, and the wet, lewd squelch of his cock still seated in your dripping, stuffed cunt.

Matt gasps against your throat, body twitching with aftershocks as his cum leaks out around his cock and down the curve of your ass. You whimper at the warm, slippery sensation, still pulsing around him, still clinging, your cunt reluctant to let him go.

Afterwards, there’s nothing but silence.

Neither of you has any mind to move. His cock is still lodged deep inside you, twitching weakly with every tremor that runs through him. You’re trembling together, not from cold or the heat but from everything, from the enormity of what you’ve just done and the enormity of how right it still feels despite that.

Finally, Matt groans in defeat and rolls his weight just enough to keep from crushing you. It’s not far, though. Not far enough to leave, which relieves you immensely. 

His arm slides beneath your back, gathering you against him like he has no intention of ever letting you go, anchoring you to him, anchoring himself to you. Your legs slip apart at the shift and a tiny whimper of protest spills from your throat, but his grip only tightens, grounding you as if to say, don’t drift away from me.

The sheets are damp beneath your back, your thighs tacky where sweat has sealed you together. Matt’s hand spreads broad at your ribs, thumb stroking lazy arcs into your slick skin. His other arm stays firm beneath you to lock your bodies together, his cross cool and sticky where it’s fallen between you.

“…Jesus Christ,” you finally whisper, the words barely more than breath.

“Yeah.”

Your lips are still swollen from his mouth. “That was intense.”

The pause that follows is thin and fragile as an oyster windowpane. He has no desire to break it at all, but he has to for your sake, and you’re aware of the conscious effort he makes to soften his voice, stripped raw: “You okay?”

“Yeah.” You turn your head toward him, brows faintly knitting, heart twisting. This must be it, he’s going to tell you he wishes it hadn’t happened. “...I was about to ask you.”

Oblivious as you usually might be, you know you’re feeling each other out, testing the waters. 

“Yeah. I’m okay,” he answers finally, then, so quiet in comparison, he continues, “but you’re not… freaking out?”

“No,” you murmur. Your throat tightens as you add, almost shyly, “I liked it.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Matt huffs affectionately against your hair, and tilts to nudge his nose against your temple, pressing dazed little kisses along your cheek, your face, your jaw. Tension having snapped, the silence fractures into soft, exhausted laughter—half relief, half disbelief. And for a long moment you’re content to drown in it, until Matt shifts, arm bracing to push himself up, muscles trembling. 

Your hands clutch at him before he can slip free. “Don’t.”

“I should—I should get you cleaned up.”

“Later,” you insist, pulling him down again, hooking your leg over his to keep him trapped. Your voice is small but iron-willed. “Let me have this, Matt.”

There’s no fight in him, not when you ask like that. He finds it to be what’s ubiquitous across it all: the inability to deny you what you want, no matter what. And so he collapses back into you obligingly, burying his face in your neck. 

A small giggle slips out of you. He lifts his head, curious. “What?”

“I think my brain’s finally coming back online,” you say, stretching enough to wince at the soreness between your thighs.

“Aw, tragic,” Matt drones, “You were so agreeable when it was melted.”

You smack his arm weakly. He catches your hand, presses a kiss to the back of it, and keeps it there against his mouth.

“We should probably get back to studying.”

“Speak for yourself. You’re the one who said you were behind.”

“You’re the one who made me more behind!”

His laugh is a vibrating buzz against your collarbone, tickling you as he nuzzles in closer. “Five more minutes, then.”

You hum, pliant, with no snide retort to shoot back.