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The dream of becoming a lawyer had started when you were young. It hadn't started glamorously, no single defining moment, no courtroom drama that changed everything. Although you really did have a knack for binge-watching shows like How to Get Away with Murder and Suits. But the real want had started with the slow, accumulating understanding that the world was not fair, and that fairness was something you had to build rather than wait for, and that the people who built it tended to know the rules better than everyone else. You had decided, young and furious, that you were going to know the rules.

Now, years later, it finally felt within reach.

Last summer you had taken the LSAT. When the score came back — 176 — you had screamed so loudly your roommate came running from the other room convinced something had happened. Something had happened. Everything had happened. Applying to Harvard had been a no-brainer after that, the natural conclusion of four years of work that had never once felt like anything other than work. To say it had all been a dream would be a lie. You had earned every grade, every internship, every recommendation letter. Every achievement had come attached to long nights and sacrificed weekends and more cups of coffee than you were prepared to account for.

Still, every now and then, you allowed yourself a moment to appreciate how far you had come.

Then you remembered the Harvard interview scheduled in just a few weeks, and the knot in your stomach returned immediately. It lived there, that knot had been living there for months, through the application and the waiting and the acceptance, through every good thing that should have dissolved it and didn't. You had stopped expecting it to go away. You had just learned to work around it.

What if you stumbled over your words? What if they asked something you couldn't answer? What if four years of work came down to one bad afternoon?

Which was exactly why Professor Whitaker's announcement nearly made you lose your mind.

The second she wrote Semester Project across the whiteboard, a collective groan spread through the lecture hall. Over the next month, students would work in pairs to complete a research project on the evolution of constitutional rights in the United States , a project worth a significant portion of the final grade.

At any other point in your college career, that would have been merely annoying.

Right now it felt catastrophic.

You could not afford for your GPA to slip. Not when Harvard was finally within reach. Not when everything you had worked for was balanced on the edge of these last few months. And that meant you absolutely could not get stuck with a partner who didn't care like a jock who only cared about a sport, someone who would contribute three bullet points to a shared document at the eleventh hour and disappear for six weeks while your entire future quietly collapsed.

The thought alone made you grimace.

So as Professor Whitaker reached for her roster and began assigning partners, you found yourself doing something you almost never did.

Praying.

"The class will be sorted according to performance on the most recent exam," Professor Whitaker announced, scanning the room over her glasses. "That way the workload stays balanced and the pairing is fair for everyone."

A few students groaned.

You sat a little straighter.

Actually, that wasn't terrible. At least now there was a reasonable chance your partner wouldn't be dead weight. You had carried enough dead weight in your academic career to last a lifetime and you were done with it.

Professor Whitaker called your name first. You looked up from your notebook on instinct, even though she already knew exactly where you were. You hated change. You liked knowing where everything was. You liked routines, systems, the quiet reliability of things being where you left them.

More importantly, you liked being good at things.

Which was why hearing that your partner would be someone on your level was oddly comforting. Most of your life had been spent balancing on a very thin line between confidence and crippling self-doubt. On good days, you knew you were intelligent. On bad days, you were convinced everyone else was smarter and better than you. The trick was not letting either version get too loud.

Professor Whitaker glanced down at her roster.

The next five seconds would remain engraved in your frontal lobe for at least thirty years.

"Dean DiLaurentis."

Silence.

Jesus H. Christ.

Your head snapped up. Not because you needed to find him. You already knew exactly where he was sitting. You always knew where he was sitting, a fact you had never examined too closely and were not going to start examining now.

Middle of the sixth row. Today he was wearing a green cardigan over a white t-shirt, looking far too comfortable for someone who had just become the source of your newest academic crisis. He was mid-conversation with Beau Maxwell when his name was called, laughing at something, completely unaware that your entire carefully managed semester had just been handed to him without his consent or yours.

Dean turned around.

Then he smiled.

That smile. The one that belonged on toothpaste advertisements and nowhere else, the smile of someone who had never once in his life worried about whether he was welcome somewhere. It was the kind of smile that assumed the answer before the question had been asked, and it had always, privately, made you want to argue with it.

His eyes found yours immediately.

The realization landed half a second later, oh, you're my partner, and his grin widened, and then, because apparently the universe had a sense of humor that you had never personally found funny:

He winked.

He actually winked.

You stared back at him with the expression of someone who had just been personally wronged by the laws of probability.

You knew Dean. Not personally, god forbid. But you knew of him, the way everyone knew of him. Hockey player. Trust fund. Chronic flirt. The kind of person who walked into a room and somehow became the room. Loud and charming and surrounded by people at all times, the social gravity of someone who had never once had to earn a seat at the table.

Meanwhile, you considered making eye contact with strangers a form of cardio.

This could not be right. There had to be a mistake. How could Dean DiLaurentis possibly have a grade comparable to yours?

You spent your Friday nights in the library. You color-coded your notes by subject, by date, by relevance. You had cried over constitutional law, like actual tears, in the bathroom of the third floor study room, alone at eleven pm because that was what it cost and you had paid it without complaint.

Dean spent his weekends at hockey games and parties.

The math simply wasn't mathing.

Unless.

Oh.

Oh, god.

He was sleeping with the TA.

That had to be it. Everything suddenly made horrifying, perfect sense. The TA was a graduate student from somewhere in the Midwest who had spoken to you exactly three times all semester, and every single interaction had felt like she was being held at gunpoint. If Dean was somehow managing to maintain a functional relationship with her —

Honestly? He deserved the extra credit for that alone.

Three months earlier, it had started.

Professor Whitaker had a specific way of running discussion that you had privately categorized as controlled chaos. She threw a question into the room and stepped back and let whoever was going to talk, talk, with the quiet authority of someone who already knew what she thought and was waiting to see if anyone else did. The lecture hall always felt different during these sessions. Bigger somehow, the overhead lights slightly too bright, the charged quality of a room full of people deciding whether to say the thing they were thinking.

You almost always said the thing you were thinking.

Today the question was about Shelley v. Kraemer.

You had opinions about Shelley v. Kraemer.

"The court got it right," you said, when Whitaker's gaze landed on you. "State enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant is state action. The fourteenth amendment doesn't care that the covenant itself was private — the moment a court steps in to enforce it, the state is complicit. You can't separate the two."

Whitaker nodded — the small, noncommittal nod that meant continue or let someone else.

"I'd push back on that a little."

You turned.

Dean had his pen between two fingers, not quite raised, the posture of someone making a point rather than asking permission. He was looking at Whitaker, not at you, which was somehow more irritating than if he had been looking at you directly. Like the argument was with the room rather than with you specifically. Like you were incidental.

"The ruling is right," he said, "but the reasoning has a ceiling. If state enforcement equals state action, you've created a framework that depends entirely on whether someone decides to litigate. The protection isn't structural, it's reactive. It only exists if someone can afford to fight for it."

The room was quiet for a moment.

You became aware, distantly, that your jaw had tightened.

"That's not a flaw in the ruling," you said. "That's a flaw in the system the ruling exists inside of."

"Sure." Dean looked at you then, for the first time. His eyes were steady, interested in a way that wasn't performative. "But you're writing a decision, not a philosophy paper. The decision has to function in the system it's handed to."

"So your position is that the court should have ruled differently because the system might not implement it correctly."

"My position is that a protection that requires money and access to activate isn't really a protection." He said it evenly, without heat. "I thought that would be something you'd agree with."

The last sentence landed differently than the rest.

Not unkind. Not pointed exactly. Just specific, in a way that implied he had thought about what you would and wouldn't agree with, which was a thing he should not have been thinking about. Which meant he had been paying attention quietly and consistently.

Whitaker moved on.

You looked back at your notes and wrote nothing for the remainder of class. Outside the lecture hall windows the sky was the flat white of a November afternoon, and you sat with the particular discomfort of someone who had just been surprised by a person they had already decided to understand.

That was when it had started. Which meant that three months later, sitting in the lecture hall watching him smile at you like you were a problem he was looking forward to solving, you did not have the excuse of not knowing better.

The lecture hall emptied in a slow, shuffling wave that you had no patience for.

You were already packing your bag when you heard him.

"So." Dean dropped into the empty seat beside yours with the casual confidence of someone who had never once been unwelcome anywhere. He turned to face you, one arm resting on the back of the chair, bringing with him the faint smell of something clean, something woody, or the cold outside air. "Partners."

"Observant," you said, without looking up from your notebook.

He made a small sound, not quite a laugh, not quite not one. You could feel him watching you with that specific brand of unhurried attention that probably worked on most people and was currently working on you in ways you were categorically refusing to acknowledge.

"We should exchange numbers," he said. "Figure out when we can meet."

"I have time Thursday afternoon." You zipped your bag closed. "After three."

"Thursday I've got practice until five." He pulled out his phone, apparently unbothered. "What about evenings?"

"Tuesdays and Thursdays I tutor until nine." You finally looked at him. "Weekends I pick up extra sessions when I can."

Something shifted in his expression, brief, almost imperceptible. Not pity. Something more like recalibration, the specific adjustment of someone updating a model they had been working from.

You watched him process it and kept your face completely neutral, the way you always did when people did the math on your schedule and realized there was no give in it, no free afternoon that existed just for the sake of existing. You didn't need him to feel bad about it. You just needed him to understand that his time was not the only time being managed here.

"Okay," Dean said, and to his credit, he didn't make it weird. "Wednesday? I'm free after two."

"I have a session at two."

"After three, then."

You considered this. "Three. Library. Third floor."

"Done." He held out his hand for your phone with the easy expectation of someone who had never once been told no and somehow, inexplicably, made that feel more like charm than arrogance.

You looked at his hand for exactly one beat longer than necessary.

Then you unlocked your phone and placed it in his palm, your fingers brushing his warm hand briefly.

"Don't put anything weird in my contacts," you said.

Dean smiled and typed with the focused, two-thumbed efficiency of someone taking the instruction very seriously.

He handed it back.

You looked down.

Dean DiLaurentis 🏒 (ur partner deal with it)

You stared at it for a long moment.

"Truly," you said, "a legal mind."

He laughed then , a real one, surprised out of him, and stood to leave, shouldering his bag. He paused at the end of the row and looked back at you with the expression of someone who was about to say something and had decided against it.

"Wednesday, then."

"Wednesday," you confirmed, already looking back at your notes.

You did not watch him go.

You listened to his footsteps until you couldn't anymore and then looked back at your notebook and found the page completely blank.

By the time Wednesday rolled around, you had done the mental gymnastics of calculating exactly how much this project was going to cost you. Not much, you had decided. You were already at maximum stress capacity between the Harvard interview and the end of semester closing in, so there was simply no room left for anything Dean DiLaurentis-related to take up residence.

This was the conclusion you had reached.

You woke up early anyway, restless, and got ready with the focused efficiency of someone who was absolutely not anxious about a study session. In the kitchen, Elisa was at the stove, hair still in a braid from the night before, doing something that smelled like butter and brown sugar.

"Morning, sugar plum." She turned and pointed her spatula in your direction. "Do you want to have breakfast with me?"

Elisa was the easiest person you had ever lived with, which was not something you said lightly. You had moved into her house sophomore year knowing no one and she had made you feel like you had been there the whole time. Wednesdays were her day off no classes, no obligations, and she spent them cooking elaborate things and playing at domesticity in a way that you found deeply comforting. She called them the Tradwife Wednesdays, in a joking manner.

"I can't, I have a class I can't miss." You grabbed your bag from the hook by the door. "Sorry."

"That's okay." She stirred something. "Are you coming back for lunch? I'm trying a new caesar salad recipe I found on TikTok. Caesar 2.0."

"I can't do lunch either. I have a study session at noon."

"Bring your partner. We can all have caesar salad 2.0."

"My partner is —" you paused, already regretting what you were about to say — "Dean DiLaurentis."

Elisa put down the spatula.

"Shut up."

"I'm not going to —"

"No way. You hate him."

"I don't hate him."

"Despise, then."

"Not even that." You pulled on your jacket. "I don't care about him at all. He just exists in the same world as me."

"Sure," Elisa said, in the tone she used when she was humoring you. She picked up the spatula again. "Ask him if he remembers our little trip in the Mystery Machine."

"Goodbye, Elisa."

"Caesar salad is on the table if you change your —"

You closed the door.

session one

He was already there when you arrived.

That was the first thing that threw you off, small and inconvenient, the kind of detail that shouldn't matter and did anyway. Dean DiLaurentis, sitting at the table you had specifically chosen because it was tucked into the back corner of the third floor, away from foot traffic and group study noise and every possible social distraction. You had chosen it because it was your table, the one you came to when you needed to actually work, claimed over three years of afternoons and late nights. The carpet near the window had a worn patch from your chair. You knew which overhead light buzzed slightly and had learned to tune it out.

He was sitting in your chair.

He had a coffee on each side of the table.

Two coffees.

You stopped.

"I didn't know your order," he said, not looking up. "So I got you black. You seem like a black coffee person."

You were a black coffee person.

You sat down without commenting on it and pulled out your laptop.

"I started an outline," Dean said. "Sent it to your email."

You opened it without responding. It was actually structured. Clean headers, logical progression. You stared at it for a moment longer than you intended, turning it over, looking for the flaw. There wasn't one.

"You cited Marbury v. Madison in the intro," you said.

"It's foundational."

"It's also the first thing every professor expects to see. It makes us look like we opened the textbook once and called it a day."

He looked up then. "So where would you put it?"

"Section three. After we've established the framework."

Dean looked at the outline. Then back at you. "...Yeah, okay."

You pulled it up on your own screen and started restructuring. He watched for a second, then turned back to his own laptop without making it a thing, and something about that: the absence of wounded ego, the lack of argument, the simple yeah, okay, was quietly unexpected.

You worked in silence for a while. A real silence, the functional kind, punctuated only by typing and the occasional ambient noise of the floor around you, someone whispering two tables over, the elevator arriving and departing, the hush of a library in the afternoon when the day outside has gone grey.

At some point he shifted in his seat and his foot knocked against yours under the table. He pulled it back immediately, said a distracted sorry without looking up, and kept typing.

You looked back at your screen.

Ten minutes later it happened again his foot finding yours under the table, settling against it with the absent, unthinking quality of someone who wasn't paying attention to their own body. This time he didn't notice. Or didn't move. You couldn't tell which.

You didn't move either.

You looked at your screen and read the same sentence four times and told yourself it was nothing, the table was small, it meant nothing at all.

His ankle was warm against yours for the rest of the session.

An hour passed, and then another. The coffee went cold. The light through the window shifted from afternoon grey to early evening grey, and you were deep enough in the due process section that you had stopped noticing either.

"Take a break," Dean said, without looking up.

"I don't need a break."

"You've reread that page four times."

You looked up. He was still looking at his notes, which meant he had been paying attention to you without appearing to pay attention to you, which was somehow worse than if he had just been watching you openly.

You closed the case study.

"Fine," you said. "Break."

Dean leaned back in his chair all the way back, with the easy, unhurried comfort of someone who had never had to fight for a seat at any table he wanted to sit at. You had noticed that about him early, the specific posture of someone for whom things had always been available, every room an environment that had been pre-adjusted to suit him. It was the kind of thing that was difficult not to notice when you had spent your entire life doing the opposite.

"You know," you said, mostly because the silence was starting to feel companionable in a way you weren't ready for, "you hooked up with a friend of mine once."

Dean looked up. Something shifted in his expression mild interest, maybe the faintest trace of wariness. "Oh really."

"Daphne."

A pause. He turned the name over, and you watched the moment he didn't find it.

"I don't remember," he said.

"She was dressed as Daphne for Halloween. You were, surprisingly, dressed as Fred."

Something cleared in his expression. "Halloween two years ago?"

"That would be the one."

He considered this with the equanimity of someone who had made peace with a certain kind of personal history. "Can I ask why you're bringing this up?"

"No particular reason." You picked up your cold coffee. "Can you even remember her name?"

"I just said I couldn't."

"Right." You set the coffee back down. "Well. For the record."

Dean looked at you for a moment with the expression you were already starting to recognize the one that meant he was deciding whether to say the thing he was thinking. He usually said it.

"You know," he said, "you hooked up with a friend of mine too."

You kept your expression very neutral. "Did I."

"Garrett."

"We made out at a party freshman year," you said, with the patience of someone correcting a factual error. "Did he tell you we hooked up?"

"He didn't say anything." Dean's mouth curved slightly. "I saw you two leaving and made an assumption."

"A wrong one."

"Clearly." He tilted his head. "So. Has Daphne said anything? About her experience."

You considered the question with the gravity it deserved.

"She tried to tell me," you said. "I didn't want to hear it."

"So she didn't give a great review."

"Ravishing," you said pleasantly. "It almost made me want to sleep with you too." You paused. "But then I remembered I have something called self-respect."

Dean laughed a real one, sudden and unguarded. It was, you noted with some irritation, a genuinely good laugh. Warm and surprised, the laugh of someone who had not seen it coming and was delighted by that fact. The kind of laugh that made you want to have caused it again.

"That's funny," he said.

"I know."

He was still smiling when he looked back down at his notes. You looked back at your case study. The library settled back into its particular silence the low buzz of the overhead light, the distant elevator, thirty people pretending they weren't exhausted but something had shifted in the quality of it. Imperceptibly, the way temperature changes in a room before anyone acknowledges it's warmer.

You didn't say anything about it.

Neither did he.

Twenty minutes later he slid his notes across the table, pointing out something you had missed without making it feel like a correction. You leaned in to look without thinking about leaning in and then you were close, closer than you had been all session, his shoulder warm against yours, and you could see the slight curl of his handwriting on the page and the way his finger traced the line he was pointing to, and you became aware very suddenly of his hands. How big they were. How deliberate.

You had not thought about his hands before. Or you had thought about them in passing and moved on. But up close, right now, pointing at a citation on a page they were careful and unhurried, the kind that did things with attention.

You looked at the citation.

"You're right," you said. "Good catch."

He glanced at you sideways, briefly, with that expression.

You both looked back at the page.

Neither of you moved away.

It was near the end of the session when it happened. You were flagging sources, half your attention on the screen, the room around you reduced to the low hum of concentration, when Dean said, mostly to himself, still reading:

"You always sit in the same seat."

You glanced up. "What?"

He seemed to catch himself, just barely, a slight tensing around his jaw. "In Whitaker's class. Third row, right side, second from the aisle. Every lecture."

The air shifted in a way that was difficult to name. Outside the library window the sky had gone fully dark, the glass reflecting the room back at you, two people at a table, closer than they had been three hours ago, the space between them negotiated down to nothing without either of them signing off on it.

"I like consistency," you said, after a beat.

"Yeah." He looked back at his screen. Something in his jaw had gone slightly careful. "I know."

I know.

Two words. Completely neutral on the surface and yet carrying the specific weight of something that had not been meant to be said out loud. Not an admission exactly. More like a door opened a half-inch before he caught it and eased it shut , slowly enough that you both knew it had moved.

You looked at him for a moment.

He did not look back up.

"We should finish the first amendment section," you said.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Probably."

You both looked at your screens.

Neither of you said anything else about it.

You packed up at eight-fifteen, twenty minutes later than planned. The third floor was empty by then, the overhead lights on their late setting. You walked to the elevator in a silence that had become, somewhere in the last six hours, a different kind of silence entirely, not neutral, not loaded, just inhabited.

In the elevator he stood beside you with his shoulder against yours, the same way it had been at the table, and neither of you shifted. The floor numbers climbed down. You looked straight ahead.

His ankle had been warm against yours for three hours and you had not moved away once.

You filed that under the place where you kept everything you weren't ready to examine yet.

session two

The second study session had started with considerably less hostility than the first, which you were choosing not to read into.

It was late afternoon again, the library emptying out around you as people made the reasonable decision to leave, and you and Dean had been working for three hours straight with the focused efficiency of two people who were both too competitive to be the first to suggest stopping. The case briefs were spread across the table in a system that was half yours and half his and somehow, irritatingly, better than either would have been alone. Your color-coded tabs and his margin notes. Your precision and his instinct for where an argument wanted to go.

You had noticed that yesterday too. Filed it away.

What you had not filed away or had tried to and failed was the moment an hour into the session when he had reached across you to grab a case brief from your side of the table without asking, and his arm had crossed in front of you close enough that you felt the warmth of it before it was gone. He hadn't noticed. He had grabbed the brief and gone back to his side of the table and kept reading, completely unaware.

You had read the same paragraph for twelve minutes after that.

"Okay," Dean said, dropping his pen and leaning back. "Break."

"We just had a break."

"That was an hour ago."

You looked at the time. It had been an hour and twenty minutes, which meant you had lost track of time, which meant you had been absorbed enough in the work — in the conversation around the work, the back and forth of it, the way he argued a point and actually listened when you argued back — that the time had disappeared without asking permission.

You put your pen down.

"Fine," you said. "Break."

Dean stretched his arms above his head with the unselfconscious ease of someone completely comfortable in his own body, the cardigan riding up slightly, a sliver of skin at his waist, the line of his shoulders, the way his head fell back for a moment, which you observed in a purely detached and analytical capacity and then looked at the ceiling.

"So," he said. "Harvard Law."

"What about it."

"That's the goal?"

"That's the goal," you confirmed.

He nodded slowly, with an expression that was hard to read. Then, in a voice of complete casual confidence: "What, like it's hard?"

You turned to look at him.

He was already smiling.

"That's the second time today," you said, "that you have made a Legally Blonde reference."

"Is it?"

"You quoted it earlier when I said the admissions rate was three percent."

"I don't remember that."

"Dean."

"It's a great film."

You looked at him for a moment. "Is it your favorite movie?"

"Top two," he said, without hesitation. "Just after Top Gun."

You stared at him. Dean DiLaurentis. Hockey player, pre-law, top of the class, sitting in the library surrounded by case briefs, whose top two films were Legally Blonde and Top Gun.

"God," you said.

He laughed. "What?"

"Nothing." You picked up your pen. "It explains a lot actually."

"Does it."

"The confidence," you said, gesturing vaguely at him. "The hair. The complete inability to walk into a room without knowing exactly how you're going to be received." You paused. "You've watched both of those films a concerning number of times, haven't you."

Dean pointed at you. "Elle Woods and Pete Mitchell are two of the most —"

"Please don't finish that sentence."

"— compelling character studies in the history of American cinema."

You laughed and put your head down on the table.

His laugh was warm and close and you could feel it more than hear it, and when you looked up he was leaning on his elbow facing you — close, comfortable in the way he had gotten over the past two sessions, close enough that you could see the specific color of his eyes in the library light, and the way they crinkled at the corners when he was actually amused rather than performing it. The late afternoon light was doing something completely unreasonable to his face — the angles of it, the warmth of it, and you looked back at your notes with the focused energy of someone making a deliberate choice.

"Back to work," you said.

"Back to work," he agreed.

But he was still smiling when he turned back to his notes, and you were very carefully not smiling, and the library was quiet around you in that way it had been yesterday, warmer than it should have been, the silence between you easier than it had any right to be.

Top two, you thought, against your will. Just after Top Gun.

God help you.

You made it another forty minutes before it went sideways.

It started, as these things often did, over something small.

Dean wanted to include a law review article you thought was analytically weak. You had said so. He had disagreed. It had escalated with the particular efficiency of two people who were very good at arguing and had been carefully not arguing for weeks, the pressure of it finding the first available exit.

"It's not a weak source," Dean said, for the second time. "You just don't like the conclusion."

"I don't like the conclusion because the methodology doesn't support it. There's a difference."

"You've said that. You haven't explained it."

"I sent you three paragraphs —"

"You sent me three paragraphs about why you were right," he said. "That's not the same thing."

You looked up from your laptop. He was looking back at you with the expression that meant he was done being patient, and something about that, the specific quality of it, the fact that he was allowed to be done being patient when you had been managing your frustration for weeks —

"You know what, it doesn't matter," you said. "Include it. It's fine."

"Don't do that."

"Do what."

"Shut down and say it's fine when it's not fine." He closed his laptop halfway. "If you have a problem with the source, say it."

"I have a problem with a lot of things," you said, and it came out with an edge you hadn't entirely intended. "I have a problem with the fact that I have no idea how much of this grade I'm actually carrying."

The air in the room changed entirely. The low buzz of the overhead light was suddenly very audible.

Dean went very still. "What does that mean."

It means I've been doing this alone my whole life and I don't know how to stop assuming I'm about to have to do it again. That was what it meant. That was not what came out.

"It means," you said, and your voice was measured in the way it got when you were saying something you couldn't take back, "that I don't actually know how you scored high enough on that exam to get paired with me."

Silence.

Dean looked at you. Something moved behind his eyes, not hurt exactly. The thing that came just before.

"Say what you mean," he said quietly.

And because you were frustrated and tired and the Harvard interview was in two weeks and you had been holding this assumption for long enough that it had started to feel like fact —

"I thought maybe you were sleeping with the TA."

The silence that followed was a different kind entirely. Heavy and still, the kind that has a shape.

Dean sat back. He looked at you for a long moment with an expression you had never seen on him before — not the easy charm, not the careful attention, not the almost-smile. Something stripped of all of that, all the way down.

"I got a ninety-four on that exam," he said. "I got a ninety-four because I studied for it. I study for all of them." A pause. Each word placed with precision. "I know you think I'm here because of my last name or my hockey stats or whoever you've decided I'm sleeping with. I know that's easier than just —" he stopped. Exhaled slowly. "I've been doing the work. I've been here every session. I don't know what else you want from me."

You opened your mouth.

"And the TA," he said, " she has a girlfriend. So."

He opened his laptop again. The sound of it was very loud in the quiet room.

You looked at your screen. The cursor blinked in the document you had been sharing for two weeks, both your names in the top corner. You were acutely, uncomfortably aware of the specific kind of wrong you had just been.

Not about the source.

About him.

"Dean —"

"First amendment section," he said. Not cold. Not cruel. Just done. "Let's just finish."

You looked at him for a moment.

"Yeah," you said quietly. "Okay."

The Legally Blonde conversation felt like it had happened in a different library entirely.

Top two, he had said, and laughed, and looked at you like you were something worth looking at.

You stared at the cursor and said nothing else.

Neither did he.

session three

The third session was on a Tuesday.

You knew because Tuesdays you tutored until nine, which meant you had come straight from the library's second floor where you had spent an hour and a half walking a freshman through the commerce clause, and you were tired in the specific way of someone who had been performing competence for other people all day and had very little left over for themselves.

You had also been thinking about what you said for five days straight.

Not continuously. Like something that sits in the back of your mind and surfaces at inconvenient moments — in the shower, between tutoring sessions, at two in the morning when you should have been sleeping and instead were staring at the ceiling cataloguing every assumption you had ever made about Dean DiLaurentis and finding most of them wanting. I thought maybe you were sleeping with the TA. The words had a particular quality in retrospect, the quality of something that could not be unsaid, that existed now in the permanent record of things he knew about you.

You pushed open the door to the third floor reading room and told yourself you were fine.

Dean was already there.

Of course he was. He was always already there, with his laptop open and his notes spread out in the handwriting you had become, against your will, familiar with, slightly left-leaning, inconsistent spacing, somehow completely legible. He looked up when you came in. The room smelled like old paper and the particular warmth of a space that had been occupied for a while, and the overhead light buzzed its familiar note.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," you said back.

You sat down. Not beside him, you took the chair across the table, the one you had started in, back when the table felt like a neutral territory that required a border. You pulled out your laptop and opened the shared document and did not look at him.

He did not comment on the seating arrangement.

That was somehow worse than if he had.

You worked. The session had the functional efficiency of two people who were both too professional to let personal things affect the work, which meant the work was fine and everything around it was not. He passed you sources without commentary. You flagged edits without explanation. The back and forth that had become almost conversational — the small arguments, the digressions, the way he said okay when you made a point he couldn't refute — was gone.

The overhead light buzzed. Someone turned a page three tables over.

Around the forty-minute mark he said, "the due process section needs another source."

"I know," you said. "I'm looking."

"I found one this morning. Sent it to your email."

"I haven't checked yet."

"It's good."

"Okay."

Silence.

You checked your email. The source was good. You added it to the document without saying so and heard, very faintly, the sound of him exhaling.

An hour passed like that.

You had just pulled up a new case brief when Dean leaned back in his chair and said, to no one in particular, "I don't actually care about the TA."

You looked up.

He was looking at the ceiling, not at you, with the expression of someone who had decided to say a thing and was committed to the delivery. "I just want you to know that. In case it was still sitting there."

Outside the library window, the campus was dark and wet with recent rain, the paths lit amber under the streetlights.

"It was sitting there," you admitted.

"Yeah." He brought his gaze down to his notes. "I figured."

"Dean —"

"You don't have to." He said it simply, without edge. "I'm fine. I just didn't want it to be weird for the rest of the semester."

"It's already a little weird," you said.

"I know."

Another silence — but this one had more air in it, the quality of a silence that had been cleared rather than accumulated.

"I'm going to apologize properly," you said. "I just haven't figured out how yet."

Dean was quiet for a moment. Then, very carefully, not quite a smile: "Does it involve food."

You said nothing.

"It does," he said. "Okay."

"Back to work," you said.

"Back to work."

You heard her before you saw her.

The click of heels on library floor that had nothing to do with studying, moving with the purposeful energy of someone who had a destination and knew exactly what they wanted when they got there. You didn't look up. You were in the middle of a paragraph and you had a system and you were not going to lose your place.

The heels stopped at your table.

"Hey." Not directed at you. You turned a page. "I've been looking for you."

"Hey." Dean's voice, easy and careful. "Didn't know you were on campus today."

"I wasn't. Now I am." A pause with a specific texture. "Come outside for like five minutes."

"I can't right now, we're working."

We. You noted the word and kept reading.

"Five minutes," she said again. "It's not a big deal."

"I know it's not. I just can't right now."

You turned another page. The paragraph was about tort law and you had read the same sentence three times and retained nothing.

"Dean —"

"Seriously." His voice was still easy but there was something underneath it now, something with weight. "I'll text you later, okay?"

A silence. The kind that meant she was deciding something.

"Who even is she?" The question was directed at you. You looked up for the first time, because that was directed at you, and you had opinions about being spoken about in the third person by someone standing four feet away.

The girl was pretty in the specific, polished way of someone who had never had to try very hard at it. She was looking at you with an expression that was more curious than hostile, which somehow made it worse.

"His project partner," you said pleasantly. "We have a deadline."

"It's literally five minutes —"

"We're aware of how long five minutes is," you said, in the tone you had been practicing for courtrooms. "He said he'll text you. The reading room is a shared space and we're trying to work, so." You smiled. "Thank you."

The girl looked at you. Looked at Dean. Looked back at you with an expression that had shifted into something more speculative, something that said she understood more than you had intended to reveal.

Then she left.

The heels clicked back across the library floor and faded, and the room settled back into its particular silence, and you looked back at your notes with the focused energy of someone who had not just done what they had just done.

From across the table, nothing.

You turned a page.

More nothing.

You looked up.

Dean was looking at his notes with the carefully neutral expression of someone using every available resource not to smile.

"What," you said.

"Nothing."

"Say whatever you're going to say."

"I'm not going to say anything."

"Dean."

"I'm just —" He pressed his mouth closed. The not-smile was winning. "Thank you for your help."

"I didn't do it for you," you said immediately. "She was interrupting. It was annoying."

"Completely understandable."

"I would have done the same for anyone."

"Of course."

"It had nothing to do with —" You stopped. "We have three more pages to get through."

"We do," Dean agreed, in the voice of someone being very, very agreeable.

You looked back at your notes.

I would have done the same for anyone.

You were a pre-law student. You were supposed to be good at arguments.

That one had convinced neither of you.

You packed up at nine-fifteen, later than planned, and Dean walked out with you the way he had started doing without either of you deciding he would.

"She's no one," Dean said, when the elevator arrived. Not defensive. Just offered.

You stepped inside. "You don't have to explain yourself to me."

"I know." The doors closed. "I wanted to anyway."

You looked at the floor number climbing. He looked straight ahead. The elevator was small and you were standing close , his arm against yours, the cedar smell of him in the enclosed space, and something about the cleared air of the session, the I'm going to apologize properly, the we he had said without thinking, settled between you like something that had decided to stay.

The doors opened.

"Wednesday," you said.

"Wednesday," he confirmed.

You walked out into the night and did not look back.

You were going to need a very good cake.

session four

It was week four of the project, and Dean had gone back to sitting beside you, in the most inconspicuous way possible.

It had been gradual and deniable at every individual step. First the chair had been angled slightly toward yours. Then it had migrated. Now your thighs brushed every time either of you shifted, and you were acutely, unhelpfully aware of the warmth of his forearm against yours, the cedar-and-cold-air smell of him that you had catalogued in the first session and had been trying unsuccessfully to un-catalogue since.

Things had been a little strange since the fight.

The fight you had caused. With assumptions you had made. About a TA who, it turned out, had a girlfriend.

You had settled, eventually, on cake — specifically the lemon cake Elisa had made that morning, wrapped in foil and sitting on the table between your laptops like a small citrus-scented olive branch, which Dean had looked at when you arrived and had not yet commented on.

You had not told him it was Elisa's. You were not going to examine why.

"So," you started.

Dean looked up from his laptop.

"I would like to apologize."

He held your gaze for a moment. Something in his expression shifted — careful, like he was deciding how much to give you. "It's okay."

"It really isn't, Dean." You turned to face him, which was a tactical error because it meant you were now very close to him, close enough that you could see the dark blue of his eyes in the library light, and the soft fabric of the cardigan where your knee was almost touching his. "I made assumptions. I think the worst of people sometimes and I let it get ahead of me. You've been doing the work. I knew that and I said it anyway. That wasn't fair."

Dean looked at you for a long moment.

"It's truly okay," he said quiet and uncomplicated, completely without performance. "I get it. I know what it looks like from the outside."

"That doesn't make it okay."

"No," he said. "But it makes it understandable."

You looked at him. He looked back at you. The study room was very quiet, the overhead light doing its particular low buzz, the air carrying old paper and coffee and the warm-wool smell of his cardigan.

"The cake is Elisa's," you said, because you needed to say something. "My roommate. She made it this morning and I brought it."

Dean's mouth curved. "You brought me a peace offering."

"I brought us a snack."

"A lemon cake wrapped in foil."

"We've been here three hours."

"That," he said, "is the most you thing I've ever heard." He reached over and broke off a piece without ceremony, and you watched his hands doing it those careful, deliberate and huge hands of his, and felt something tighten somewhere that you immediately filed under irrelevant.

"Good?" you asked.

"Really good." He looked at you with the quiet expression, the one that sat closer to the surface. "Tell Elisa thank you."

"Tell her yourself," you said, and then realized what that implied, and looked back at your laptop.

Dean didn't say anything.

But he didn't look away.

You worked. The tension in the room had changed quality, no longer the awkward residue of an unresolved argument, something else now, something that had been building for four weeks and was running out of places to go. You were aware of him the way you had been aware of him since that first session, the warmth of his arm against yours, the sound of his breathing in the quiet room, the way he tucked the pen behind his ear when he was reading something carefully.

You were looking at your screen. You were not reading anything on it.

He shifted beside you. His knee pressed against yours under the table, not accidentally, not with the absent quality of the foot under the table in session one, but deliberately, with the specific patience of someone making a point without words.

You looked at your screen.

His knee stayed where it was.

Fine, you thought. Fine.

You did not move away.

Another twenty minutes passed like that, both of you working, neither of you acknowledging the point of contact, the room very warm and very quiet. And then Dean reached over, not for a case brief this time, his hand finding yours on the table, covering it, not grabbing, just resting there. Still. Like a question asked very quietly.

You looked down at his hand on yours.

You looked up at him.

He was already looking at you and he didn't say anything, didn't push, just held your gaze with the patience of someone who had been waiting for a while and had decided to stop waiting quietly.

You turned your hand over under his.

Something shifted in his face. Not the smile, something more careful than that, something that meant more.

Then his hand came up slowly, fingers brushing your jaw, turning your face toward his unhurried, giving you every opportunity to move.

You didn't move.

His eyes met yours — a question, patient and certain — and you answered it by closing your eyes and leaning in, and then his mouth was on yours.

You had kissed people before.

This was categorically different.

It started soft and then didn't stay that way. His hand slid into your hair and yours found the front of his cardigan — soft wool under your fingers, the solid warmth of him underneath — and when his tongue met yours you made a sound you were going to spend considerable time not thinking about.

The kiss was unhurried. Calculated in the best possible way. Dean kissed you like he had all the time in the world, and when air became a necessary concern he pulled back smiling, pressed a soft peck to your lips, and began a slow trail of kisses along your jaw and down your neck.

His mouth was warm on your neck, lips dragging slow enough to make your breath catch, and his hand slid down your thigh with a deliberate patience that made it very clear he was in no hurry whatsoever.

You pulled his hair and got a low, rough sound against your skin in return, and then his hand found your waist and pulled, dragging you onto his lap until you were straddling him and there was no distance left to negotiate.

You could feel exactly what four weeks of thighs brushing and careful silences had done to him.

Dean — you heard yourself saying. Dean, Dean —

Your hands had found their way under his shirt, palms flat against his stomach, and when you dragged your nails lightly down his skin he smiled against your mouth and rolled his hips up into yours with a slow, pointed pressure that dissolved whatever thought you'd been forming completely.

A loud, deliberate cough came from the doorway.

Mrs. Miller, the night librarian, stood in the entrance with the expression of a woman who had seen too much and was being paid nowhere near enough.

You scrambled back. Dean straightened. A beat of absolute silence.

"We're leaving," you said, with as much dignity as the situation permitted. "We're so sorry, Mrs. Miller."

Mrs. Miller said nothing. She held the door open with the energy of someone who had made peace with humanity's worst impulses but did not have to enjoy them.

You gathered your things in record time. Dean had the audacity to look almost completely composed, which was deeply unfair given the state of his hair, which was your fault. You looked away.

Outside in the hallway you made it three steps before he said:

"So."

"Don't."

"I was just going to —"

"I know what you were going to say."

A pause. Then, with great personal restraint: "Okay."

You made it to the elevator before you looked at him. He was already looking at you.

"The cake was really good," he said.

"Shut up, Dean."

He laughed. The elevator doors closed. You stood in the small lit space of it with your shoulders touching and said nothing else the whole way down.

You were both smiling though.

session five

The fifth session was on a Wednesday.

You had been avoiding him since the awkward encounter with Mrs. Miller.

Not obviously, you were too disciplined for obvious. You had shown up to every class, done every piece of work, responded to every text within a reasonable time. You had simply pulled back the parts of yourself that had started, over four weeks of thighs brushing and functional silences and one extremely ill-advised study room incident, to lean toward him without permission.

You were good at pulling back. You had been doing it your whole life.

The third floor smelled like old paper and the warmth of a space occupied all day, the radiator ticking in the corner, the last of the evening light grey through the windows. Dean was already at the table. He looked up when you came in. You sat across from him, the original position, the border re-established, and he looked at it and then looked at his laptop and said nothing.

You worked.

The project was almost finished. This was the last session, a conclusion, a bibliography built jointly over five weeks, your color-coded tabs and his margin notes. It was good work. You were going to get an A on this project.

You were also going to have no reason to sit in this library with Dean DiLaurentis after next week.

You were not examining that.

"We need to talk about the conclusion," Dean said, around the hour mark.

"I know. I drafted something last night, it's in the doc."

He found it. Read it. Was quiet for long enough that you looked up.

"It's good," he said.

"I know."

Another silence. He wasn't reading anymore.

"Are you going to keep doing this," he said, "or."

"Doing what."

"You know what."

"Dean —"

"Because I can." Simply, without heat. "If that's what you want, I can pretend that kiss didn't happen and we finish the project and that's it. I'm not going to make it weird." A pause. "Weirder."

You said nothing. Outside the window the campus was dark and wet, the paths amber-lit below.

"But I'd like to know," he said, "so I can stop waiting for you to tell me."

The library was very quiet. The radiator ticked. The overhead light buzzed.

"It's not that simple," you said finally.

"Okay." He waited.

"I have the Harvard interview in four days. I have a GPA I cannot let slip. I cannot afford to be distracted by —" you stopped.

"By me," he said.

"By anything."

He was quiet. "That's fair."

"And you don't —" you stopped. Started over. "You don't do this. Whatever this would be. I've heard enough to know that's not something you do. Rollercoaster ride or something like that."

Dean looked at you then. Fully, the way he didn't always let himself — all the way, no management.

"What have you heard," he said.

"Dean."

"No. Specifically."

You met his gaze. "That you don't do relationships. That it's always casual. That you're consistent about that."

He held your gaze.

"That was true," he said. "For a long time that was true."

"And now?"

He looked at you like the answer was obvious and he was simply waiting for you to arrive at it, with the patience of someone who had been waiting for a while.

You looked back at your laptop. Your chest felt tight. You had spent five weeks building a careful wall and he had just put his hand flat against it and pushed, gently, without drama, without raising his voice.

The same way he had put his hand over yours on the table.

Just resting there. Like a question asked very quietly.

"Four more pages," you said.

Dean was quiet for a beat.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

You both looked at your screens.

You finished the project.

Professor Whitaker announced the grades on a Thursday morning.

You were in your seat when she read them out.

A plus.

You looked up. Dean was already looking at you from the sixth row, and the smile on his face was the quiet one, the one you had catalogued in week two and had been trying not to think about since. It crossed the room and landed somewhere specific.

You gathered your things after class with the focused efficiency of someone with somewhere to be, and you almost made it to the door.

"Hey." He fell into step beside you in the hallway, easy and unhurried, bringing with him the cedar smell. "A plus."

"A plus," you confirmed.

"Told you the Marbury placement was better in section three."

"That was my idea."

"I agreed with it enthusiastically."

"You said yeah, okay and went back to your laptop."

"Enthusiastically," he repeated.

You stopped walking. The hallway moved around you, students flowing past, and Dean stopped too, and you were standing in the middle of it looking at him.

You had done it. You had actually done it. Four years of work and one extremely stressful semester and a project partner you had spent the first two weeks convinced was going to ruin everything, and you had gotten an A plus and the Harvard interview was tomorrow.

The knot in your stomach, which had lived there so long you had stopped noticing it, was gone.

Dean was looking at you with an expression that had gone soft in a way you weren't ready for.

You hugged him.

You weren't sure you had decided to. Your arms were around him and his were around you a half second later, one hand flat between your shoulder blades, and he was warm and solid and smelled so good, and you stayed there for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

The hallway moved around you. Neither of you moved.

When you pulled back he was still looking at you.

"Good luck tomorrow," he said quietly. "You don't need it. But good luck."

You nodded. Looked at him for one more second.

Then you walked away.

You made it to the end of the hallway before you thought —

oh.

oh no.

And kept walking anyway.

the wednesday after

The Wednesday after the interview, you were in the kitchen with Elisa when the doorbell rang.

Elisa looked at you. You looked at Elisa.

"Are you expecting someone?" she asked.

"No."

"Should I get it?"

"I'll get it," you said, in the tone of someone who had a feeling.

You opened the door.

Dean DiLaurentis was standing on your porch in a green cardigan — of course he was, he owned approximately nine of them — holding grocery store flowers and a DVD copy of Legally Blonde.

You stared at him.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"I heard the interview went well."

"How did you hear that."

"Beau knows your roommate apparently."

You were going to have words with Elisa. "It went well," you confirmed.

"Good." He held out the flowers. The stems were slightly damp from the cold outside. "These are for you."

You took them. "And the DVD."

"Also for you."

"Dean." You looked at him. "I don't own a DVD player."

Something flickered in his expression, that almost-smile. "I know."

"So this is."

"A reason to invite me in," he said simply. "So we can watch it on your laptop. If you want."

"My laptop also doesn't have a DVD player."

He made a gesture as if to throw the DVD across the lawn, which made you laugh despite yourself.

You looked at him standing on your porch and thought about five weeks of sessions, the foot under the table, the arm reaching across you, the knee pressed deliberately against yours, the hand resting over yours on the table, quiet as a question.

"You drove here," you said, "with a DVD."

"I did."

"That's extremely old fashioned. You might as well stand under my window with a boombox playing George Michael."

"If that's what you want."

"Most people would have just texted."

"I'm not most people," he said, simply, without needing anyone to confirm it.

You stepped back from the door.

"Elisa made caesar salad," you said. "She's been waiting for an excuse to feed someone new."

Dean stepped inside. The warmth of the house closed around him.

"I love caesar salad," he said.

"I know you do," you said, closing the door. "It's very you. That and like, Steak Tartare."

"What's wrong with Steak Tartare?"

Elisa lasted forty-five minutes before she announced she was going to her boyfriend's and picked up her keys with the energy of someone who had orchestrated something and was not going to pretend otherwise. You did not look at Dean when she left. You heard the door close and the house settle into quiet and then it was just the two of you on the couch with the TV on and Elle Woods on the screen, his arm warm along the back of the cushion behind you, close enough that you could feel the heat of it without it quite touching.

You had made it approximately eleven minutes into the film.

"I got in," you said, to the screen.

Dean went still.

"The interview —" you stopped. The room was very quiet. The lamp on the side table cast everything amber, warmer than the library had ever been. "They called this morning. I got in."

A beat of silence.

"Harvard," he said.

"Harvard," you confirmed.

Another beat, long enough that you turned to look at him. He was already looking at you.

"I knew you would," he said.

And then he kissed you.

It felt like something he had been waiting to do since the door opened, like Elisa leaving had simply removed the last obstacle between the moment and itself. His lips were on yours immediately, and Dean tasted like mint, and you found yourself wondering distantly if he had come here prepared for this, if this was always how tonight was supposed to end.

He didn't kiss like a careful person. His tongue was thorough and consuming and somewhere in the back of your mind you remembered that cliché about tongues fighting for dominance, that was what Dean was doing, except you found you had absolutely no desire to fight him for it. You would give him whatever he wanted.

Your hands found his shoulders. His found your waist, your thighs, and then settled, decisively, with intent, on your ass. An ass man, you noted, which tracked completely. He pulled you closer and you went willingly, swinging one leg over his knees until you were straddling him. He groaned in satisfaction, his hands pulling you flush against him, his hips rising to meet yours.

Air became a problem. You pulled back, opening your eyes, and found Dean with his eyes still closed, already searching for your mouth again. You gave him a small peck, then made a slow path of kisses from his mouth to his ear to his neck.

On his neck you bit him, lightly, experimentally, and the response was immediate. His hand came down on your ass in a sharp reflexive slap that startled a breathless laugh out of you. Through your skirt and his jeans you could feel exactly how much he was enjoying this, and you rolled your hips deliberately. The sound that came out of him made you stop entirely.

God. You wanted to hear that sound on repeat for the foreseeable future.

He seemed to resurface from wherever he had gone, and then he was standing, actually standing, with you in his arms, your legs wrapping automatically around his back.

"So," he started, eyes dropping to your mouth in a way that was frankly unfair. "Where's your bedroom?"

"Up the stairs, first door on the left," you answered against his neck, punctuating it with another bite.

"Stop teasing me or I'll drop you."

As a direct response you attempted to suck a mark into his neck. He fake-stumbled dramatically on the first step, which made you shriek and then immediately muffle it, and he laughed, low and warm and entirely too pleased with himself.

"I told you," he said.

You made it to your bedroom, and you silently praised the rare burst of energy that had led you to tidy it the night before. He dropped you onto the bed and you propped yourself up on your elbows and watched him pull off his cardigan and then the white shirt underneath.

You let out a slow whistle.

Hockey had been very, very good to him.

"Has anyone ever told you you're kind of annoying?" he said, dropping to his knees at the foot of the bed and pushing your legs open. His eyes went to your underwear. Something in his expression softened. "Cute underwear."

"Only this blond guy I'm sort of into," you said, focusing very hard on something other than what was about to happen. "And I wasn't planning on sleeping with anyone today, hence the polka dot Snoopy panties."

"No, I genuinely think they're cute," he said, and pressed a kiss to your clothed center that made your breath catch. "But they do have to go."

He hooked his fingers in the waistband and pulled them down, and then — you watched, incredulous — tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans.

"Absolutely not —"

"Focus," he said.

"You're so wet," Dean murmured, his gaze on you in a way that made you feel simultaneously embarrassed and triumphant. He kissed the inside of your knee, your inner thigh, everywhere except where you needed him. "All from just kissing?"

"Stop teasing," you whined.

"Not so funny anymore, is it."

"Please, Dean —"

"Please?" He looked up at you, and the expression on his face was criminal. "So you're telling me I spent weeks and months putting up with you being rude to me, when I could have had you this polite just by bending you over a table?"

The image that produced made you moan before you could stop yourself.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do this," he said, voice low. "To taste you."

His tongue pressed flat against your center and you moaned so loudly you were immediately grateful Elisa had left. He explored you with single-minded thoroughness, his tongue parting you, learning you, the sounds filling the room obscenely, the wet heat of his mouth and your increasingly frantic responses.

When his mouth found your clit your hands flew to his hair, pulling, trying to bring him impossibly closer.

"You taste so fucking sweet," Dean said against you.

"Fuck — Dean —"

The feeling built and crested and his hand came down across your stomach to hold your hips in place as they jerked. Your thighs trembled. He felt the way you clenched around nothing and knew.

"Be a good girl and come for me."

The orgasm hit like a wave breaking — sudden and total.

"Dean — oh my god —"

He worked you through it, his tongue slowing gradually until he finally pulled back. When he stood you were completely wrecked, sprawled across the bed, unable to form a sentence, staring up at him. His chin was wet. He looked insufferably composed.

He removed his jeans and helped you out of your dress, then came down over you on the bed, his weight settling between your thighs. He kissed you slowly, his hands cradling your jaw with a tenderness that was almost absurd given what had just happened, sweet and careful and at complete odds with the rest of the evening.

You felt him against your thigh.

Oh. He was — yes.

"Breathe, honey."

It was annoying how well he could tell when you'd stopped.

Your hips rolled up against him instinctively, looking for him.

"I need you inside me, Dean —"

"So demanding," he said, cutting you off with a kiss. His hand slid down between you, pressing the length of him against your folds, and the sound you made was not dignified in the slightest. He tapped the head of his cock against you and you dug your nails into his back.

"Please — Dean — please, please —"

He finally gave you what you were asking for, positioning himself at your entrance. The thick head breached you slowly, stretching you out, and you tried to pull him deeper faster.

"Oh fuck —" you moaned as he bottomed out.

"God damn," he breathed. "You're so tight."

His hips pulled back and snapped forward and then he was properly fucking you, hard, deep, everything you had imagined during different library sessions. His mouth found your collarbone, your chest, and then he took one nipple between his lips and you arched off the bed.

"You really do have the most absurd —" he said against your skin.

"Do not finish that sentence —"

"— tits. I could spend all day here."

Your walls tightened around him as the second orgasm built.

"I'm gonna come —" you breathed.

"I know."

He moved back up to your mouth, kissing you as you fell apart, and at the last moment he pulled out, the warmth of him spilling across your stomach. He stood and disappeared into the bathroom, returning with a cloth to clean you up. He discarded it somewhere, then lay down beside you and pulled you against his chest without ceremony, your legs tangling together.

The room was quiet. The lamp was still on. Outside the window the November street was dark and still.

"So," you said finally, staring at the ceiling. "You really are an overachiever."

"Shut up, (Y/N)," Dean said, and kissed you.

You stayed like that for a while, his heartbeat under your cheek, the lamp casting everything amber, the particular quiet of a house when everyone who needed to leave has left.

You had spent four years not allowing yourself anything that wasn't useful. Not a detour, not a distraction, not a single afternoon that didn't have a purpose.

Dean DiLaurentis, you thought, had been the worst possible use of your time.

You pulled his arm tighter around you.

Woe finds you on a Tuesday at the staffroom lunch table. 

Picking apart the leftovers of a miserable thrown together attempt of fried rice that came to be after realising there were no better dinner options with the ingredients you had in the fridge two days ago and the determination to not get take out more than once a week that would surely fade come February. Alas, it is still January and all those new year resolutions are still sticking like cheap adhesive hooks that will eventually be weighed down enough to slip as time ticks on. 

Eat take out once a week, maximum. Read one book a month, minimum. Sleep more. Stop turning down social invites

The last one is what leaves you particularly perturbed, as your lunch goes lukewarm and your thumb flicks about on the social media profile.

“I just… I can’t say no.” You lament. “It would be weird.”

“Weirder than going?” Margot asks, pulling her own container of lunch from the oven. It’s also leftovers, but slices of impeccably cooked roast with what looks to be red wine sauce and vegetables- no doubt made by her smokeshow of a house husband (he just works from home, she insists. You’re pretty sure the pair are sitting on a lofty investment profile because no man ‘works from home’ cooks roasts bi-weekly and buys his wife diamond earrings for her birthday).

“I don’t know. Maybe.” You manage, the next bite of fired rice tasting like loneliness packed into an over-salted flavour profile. 

“What’s weird?” Ryland asks, sitting down in the chair across from you.

The staff room of E-Block is near abandoned. Of the ten-odd teachers with rooms in the little block of aging brick, most tended to eat in their classrooms. Save for you, Margot and Ryland. Occasionally there will be another visitor, but most days, it is just the three of you. 

“Wedding.” Margot supplies, sitting down and shuffling her chair in with a sense of poise so rarely found in Middle-Schools. She’s older, somewhere in her early fifties, and still manages to approach the job with the same level of discipline as before ipads made their invasion into the classroom. 

Ryland frowns. “You’re already married.”

He’s… well, Ryland's… actually you’re not sure how to put him into words, which is saying a lot considering the literature degree collecting mildew in the filing cabinet of your apartment. 

He’s in the same boat as you in terms of finding yourselves with a teaching career. Studied something else first, got your passion and love for it soured by morons and went back to college for a second round, dishing out more cash for a masters in teaching that has you trying to tame fourteen year olds all day. Delightful, truly. Although, Ryland had certainly lasted a lot longer with that first degree than you had. A doctorate. He hates the kids knowing that though. A handful of them had called him ‘Doctor Grace’ last year, after digging about online and getting their grubby fingers on his linkedin profile. 

‘Mr Grace’ as he is now known, is awkward. A little socially inept at times, but not enough to come across as anything other than endearing. Now is one such time, as he looks over the frames of his glasses at Margo, the stack of pop quizzes he’d brought to mark and keep himself occupied momentarily forgotten. His eyes darted from her face to the ring on her finger. 

“Mm mm.” She hums, shaking her head as she chews, then levels her fork to point in your direction.

“You’re not getting married.” Ryland states when he turns to look at you, like it’s a scientific fact, one he’s so assured of. 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr Grace.” You reply, still sort of wallowing at the photos on your phone. 

His gaze flickers, a little less sure as the corner of his lips fall and, like he had with Margot, settles his eyes on your hands. Your lack of a ring. “You aren’t, are you?”

“No. My ex is, though.” You sigh, despondent. The reminder glares back at you from the overly-bright phone screen. 

“Oh. That sucks.” He manages, clicking open a red pen to start circling and ticking the first sheet on his pile. “Happens to the best of us.”

The kettle rumbles away on the tiny kitchenette. You look at him for a long moment. The best of us. Like it’s happened to him. Ryland’s not one to discuss relationships beyond the occasional quip about quitting to be a house husband like Margot’s. He’s never mentioned past romances, you don’t think he’s been in a relationship in the three years since he started at Grover Cleveland Middle. It’s such a bizarre glimpse at his life, that he doesn't even seem to register what he's revealed, marking as he waits for the boiling water to cook another lunch of instant ramen. 

You sit up a little straighter in your chair, weary of knocking your shoes against where his long legs sprawl under the small table. The staff room is meant for ten but is cramped even with the three of you, nothing more than a little kitchenette and big whiteboard in the corner. There’s a shelf against one wall, just far enough away from the doorframe that the door doesn't crash into it when pushed open. There’s a long window the length of the wall on the door’s other side, a good view of the eighth-grade outdoor lunch area. The other staff call it the fishbowl, it’s why they opt to eat in their classrooms, not keen on the kids' eyes on them when it is supposed to be one of the fleeting breaks during their day.

Thank god the door is closed- if the kids heard you whining about this, a wedding, they’d never let up. “I’m considering the pros and cons of skipping it.”

“You were invited?” He baulks, dropping his pen.

You try not to smile, focusing on your self pity instead of the three shoddy attempts Ryland takes to catch his pen from dropping out of his hand, rolling off the stack of paper then off the table. “I already said I’d go too.”

“Why?” Ryland sounds appalled, like that one time you’d caught him trying to explain that the five second rule is not an effective barrier against bacteria to a student. 

“It’s complicated.” You say, biting at your cheek. 

“Bullshit.” Margot aptly calls. Looking over with the same expression she used to call students on their bullshit. You're not a big fan of having it directed at you. 

“We went out for maybe two months in college.” You sigh, setting your phone on the table face-down to stare at your lunch, contemplative. “He’s engaged to one of the girls from my sorority. We’re… friends.”

Margot watches. “With your ex or the sorority girl?”

“Sorority girl. Daisy.” That's the better option of the two at least. You think it is, not that there is much left to save you from the impending train wreck of discussing the relationship woes of your late teens and early twenties with the only two coworkers who care to eat lunch in a communal space. The company is nice, Ryalnd had said once, when you’d asked, gets me out of the classroom. 

Margot screws her face up for a second, muttering it again under her breath as if the name offends her. 

“You were in a sorority?" Ryland asks, face a little blank as he looks at you from across the table. 

It makes you falter, the way his thoughts seem to be buffering like the school's slow wifi. “I… Yeah? That’s the interesting part?”

He shakes his head, looking down at his marking sheets and pushes his glasses up from where they’re slowly slipping down the bridge of his nose. “No, I just can’t picture it.”

You purse your lips, consider pulling up some photos from your sorority days, then remember the kind of outfits the lot of you wore and think better of it. “Well Daisy and I were roommates for a year and a half. She’s nice. Works in PR now.”

“But she’s marrying your ex?” Ryland asks, still kind of baffled. 

You dismiss it with a lazy hand wave. “I mean, she asked before they went out and everything. I just think it’s a little weird. I don’t even know why I said I’d go. It’s going to be embarrassing.”

Margot tuts twice, done with her lovingly made lunch that symbolises how successful she has been in the department of marriage when you have all but failed so far. “Why is it embarrassing? Two months is nothing.”

“I was a little head over heels for this guy.” You admit, sheepish. 

Ryland stands up, clears his throat as he turns away. “Yeah? How so?”

His back is to you, as he peels the lid off his cup ramen and wrestles with the flavour packet. You come to the conclusion it’s easier to confess this sort of stuff with only one set of eyes on you. “I was sort of convinced he was my soulmate. He was doing pre-law, witty too.”

“Hot?” Margot asks, always straightforward.

You feel a blush rise on your cheeks as you remember the early days of your sorority experience, flopped back on the bed as you made little love sick sighs at your ceiling. “God, his jawline. And his hair- it was so… ugh!” 

The thud is dull when your forehead lands on the table, to the right of your now abandoned lunch. “I don’t even know why I said I’d go. It’s dumb.”

You hate how you sound- petulant like the kids you prod for not searching for better words in their assignments, moping like your world is ending over something so trivial. It’s not even the new years resolution that has you mulling this over so intently.  You’d agreed to go months ago- six months ago- and said yes to the offered plus one, adamant to yourself that you’d have someone by then, a partner or something. Someone of importance. 

Attending alone is going to be even worse than if you had just RSVP’d for yourself in the first place. It’s one thing to watch your college friend and ex-sort-of-boyfriend exchange vows alone, and a whole other monster to do it with a pointed empty seat beside you. 

All of it tumbles out your lips in a hurried hurl of word vomit, followed by a few moments of silence that has you cautiously raising your head to peek over the wall of your forearms. Ryland is staring at you, cup noodles steaming in his hands where it hovers over the sink, like he’d been about to pour out the excess water. Margot is looking at you with a frown, the same one she wears when teaching senior mathematics and the children have drawn up an equation for her to solve with the foolish belief they could stump her for more than ten seconds. 

And just as in class, Margot is not phased for more than a handful of moments. “Then find someone with a better jawline and better hair to go with you. You can borrow mine.”

You blink at her, mulling the words over before asking, “Are you trying to pimp your husband out to me?”

“Only for aesthetic reasons, of course. It’d be nice to have the house to myself for once. Not like you have better options.”

It would sting more if it wasn’t so true. There were very few options and with the wedding only two weeks away, that was certainly not enough time to squeeze in enough dates with someone to justify taking them to a damn wedding. 

“I mean, how good is his jawline?” Ryland finally says, walking over with his little cutlery box, plastic chopsticks he washes and reuses almost everyday, to set his lunch down on the table and settle back in across from you. “Are we aiming high?”

There is no way to un-dig this hole, not now that they’ve both decided to put their two cents in. You concede with another sigh and reach for your phone, arms and chin still on the table as you fish about Instagram for a photo. It’s the one that had reminded you of this awful upcoming event, posted by Daisy. You all but toss your phone on the table between your coworkers, sinking a little lower into your folded arms, awaiting judgement. 

The photos must be from a walk though of the venue, the pair of them posed together between some old marble arch where they were having the ceremony at. She was laughing, hand on his chest, showing off the ring on her finger while he looked at her, besotted. The caption made it worse. Only two weeks left till I get to marry my man on these very steps.

You like them both, you really do, but the thought of showing up by yourself, as the lonely friend who’d never found ‘it’, your own version of the love they were celebrating, well it was just nauseating.

Margot looks the photo over critically before humming in a sort of so-so tone. “You can do better.”

Ryland looks kind of at a loss. “This is your type?”

As if to emphasise the point, he lifts the phone up and turns it around to show you the image you were already being haunted by. “This is the hair that had you all…”

He doesn't find the words, just waves the hand with his chopsticks around in a messy motion, looks at you critically over the rims of his glasses.

“He slicks it back now. It used to be… I donno. Messy? Fluffy? Good to run my fingers though.” He scoffs a little to himself, dissatisfied maybe with your excuse.

The only forgiving factor is that the photo does highlight the sharp cut of his jaw, which even Ryland concedes to. “He does have a good jawline...”

Yours is better, you want to say. Immediate and impulsive, because it kind of is. Especially when the shadow of his stubble stretches a few extra days between shaves. Your ex is clean shaven- you used to think that was sexy, at least sexier than the patchy beards boys in college had back then. Now you’re kind of obsessed with the so-called ‘5-o’clock shadow’ Ryland sports on Fridays. 

It’s not something you’re likely to tell him though, especially not when you glance at the clock and realise you have a duty across campus in three minutes. Saved by the bell maybe, either way you’re able to liberate your phone from the pair of them and their conspiratory whispers, bin the scraps of your lunch and haul ass out of there. 

By the end of the school day, you have reached the conclusion that you will blame it on work. That some mandatory day of ‘professional development’ as it is called nowadays, has come up and you will just have to miss the wedding, truly you’re devastated about it all. 

Then Ryland corners you in your classroom. The bell’s long gone, as are the students. He’s dressed like he’s on his way out, his green backpack tossed over one shoulder and bike helmet hanging by the strap in one hand. You’re halfway through explaining your plan and the wording you’re going to use in the tragic text message to Daisy when he cuts you off. 

“I’ll go with you.”

He’s a little breathless with it, like he’d been saving up all his oxygen to get the words out, leaving him in one big rush as they topple though the doorway of your classroom and splatter onto the linoleum floor between you both. 

“I know that I’m not Margot’s husband with a ‘better jawline and better hair’ but we can go and eat nice wedding food- If he’s a lawyer it’s gotta be fancy, right? And we can make fun of his stupid slicked back hair together and you don’t have to be alone or make an excuse and feel guilty about it.” Ryland’s big speech is as flawed as it is heartwarming

Because he does have a better jawline and better hair. And Margot looks between you both during lunch hours and staff meetings like you’re her personal romance drama, there to occupy her during the day. 

But the wedding food will be good, your ex will shill out for the best and Daisy has always had a taste for the finer things in life. Ryland is the best company you can think of to have by your side and he knows you well enough to understand how guilty lying about something makes you feel, how it churns your gut. 

“Yeah. Okay.” You smile, something warm and fuzzy in your chest. 

His eyes don’t move, maybe widen a little before he speaks again, still a little breathless. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It isn’t a hard thought to come around to, taking Ryland to a wedding. As a date is something that goes unsaid between the pair of you, not sure whether it could be classed as such for real, or if this is simply a favour between friends-slash-coworkers. It is certainly a date for show, to the many college friends you’re about to reunite with after a few years, for your Ex, Jack who’s obsessed with his wife, for Daisy who you’d told years ago to ‘go for it, he’s a nice guy’ working under the assumption that she’d only last a few months by his side too. 

You’re not sure which answer you’d prefer, honestly; a date or a favour. 

He texts you a lot- after school, on the weekend- asking about what he should wear, what you’re going to wear, how he should prepare for this sort of thing. It’s sweet, cute in a way that has little butterflies flapping around in your stomach. 

“Okay, I’ll show you. Wait, hold on.” You placate, setting your phone down on the bed, screen up. 

“It’s a lovely ceiling fan, but I doubt it fits the dress code.” Ryland drawls, and you can hear the smile there. 

“Ha ha.” You reply, a little echo-y as you lean into your closet to pull the dress out. 

He’s up in arms about what to wear, says he needs to know what you’re wearing too so he can match. The invite’s dress code called for formal attire in ‘dark colours’. On the facebook page she’d made for the event, Daisy had a full post going into more detail, about how she’d love any and all dark tones- forestry green, navy, even burgundy was fine. You had taken a firm stance against burgundy considering there’s some old wedding traditions that state wearing red indicated you’d slept with the groom. Which you had, but you were not about to advertise that. 

So navy it was. 

You’d sent Ryland a picture of the invite, where it was stuck to your fridge with letter magnets spelling out ‘woe’- it had felt fitting when you’d stuck it up there- and several screenshots of the lengthy dress-code post Daisy had made that went into excruciating detail. He wasn’t satisfied though. 

Even your attempts to describe the dress you’d bought didn’t work well enough.

“I mean it! you expect me to know what any of those words apart from ‘floor length' means?” he bemoans from your phone speakers, face time call crackling. “I need all the data.”

“Oh listen to you, Mr. Science,” You drawl with a smile, pulling the dress out. It’s too long to hang from a door knob so you have to stretch up on your tip toes to hang the coat hook over the curtain rod of your bedroom window. 

“I was thinking of changing my name. Very to the point, don’t you think?” He replies, still smiling as you collect your phone. His eyes are sparkling with something cheeky when you appear back in frame. 

Ryland’s dressed down, in one of those dumb science t-shirts he wears on ‘Casual Fridays’ as it is called in staff meetings. This one’s dark blue and has the periodic table on it in worn down white transfer ink. You’ve seen it enough to know the punch line sprawled over his lower stomach even though it’s not in frame. I wear this shirt periodically. He finds an extra layer in humor that the shirt is factually correct as well, that he does in fact, wear the shirt in regular intervals as he’d explained to you during a free-period on one of those casual Fridays. 

He’s at his kitchen bench, phone propped up against something, while he taps away at his laptop. You’ve not actually been to Ryland’s apartment before, but it sorta feels like you have, the cramped studio always on display in the back of video calls like this one. 

It’s just one long rectangle. Kitchen by the front door, a bench, a gap that is probably intended for a kitchen table but he’s stuck a desk there instead, his bed that’s almost always unmade with a tv wall mounted across from it, and a balcony. Like this, you can see the expanse of it behind him. The stacks of paper piled up on his desk, the extra monitors and little trinkets gifted from students, the sage green sheets of his bed, peeled back on one side, sun shining in through his big glass balcony doors. Honesty, you kind of want to see the view from his apartment in person, he’s a little higher up than you are, in a better part of the city too. 

Ryland’s not brushed his hair, it’s all spiked up in different directions and you wonder if the mug he’s been sipping from, periodically, is his morning cup even though it’s just past ten. He’s blinking slow behind his glasses, sitting a little too still for his brain to be fully functional yet. 

“I’m sure the kids will love it. Harder to spell on their assessment sheets, though.” You can imagine it, the staff badge, the name on his board in fun bubble writing where it would stay untouched for a whole school term. 

You flip the camera, showing him the dress he’s been complaining about not understanding for the last half hour over text before he gave up and called you. 

It’s cute, how his head tilts and he leans towards his phone for a second before just picking it up and holding it close enough so his eyes and forehead are just about all that is in frame. “Is that velvet?”

“It’s fake satin. I think.”

“Fake satin?” He repeats, confused.

The dress was one you already owned, bought a year or so ago for another friend’s wedding that you had attended alone but not felt crappy about, even if it did seem like everyone your age was getting married nowadays. It’s got a fitted bodice, but there fabric is a little drapey, looks like it pools over the chest and down towards the fluid skirt. "Wasn't expensive enough to be real satin.”

“Okay, I know what you mean by delicate straps now.” That had been his main hang up, whining about, What do you mean delicate straps? Like they’re about to break?, swearing that the shit he was googling was just not helping the mental image considering there were about six different results for everything.  

“Yeah, and here, the lace up back.” You say, stepping up to twist the dress away from where it sat flush against the curtains to show the corset style back, with thin cord lace just a little thinner than the straps. 

“Isn’t that going to be a nightmare to put on?” He asks, squinting still.

“There’s a zip.” You say, dragging the little hidden zipper down, showing him how the dress fabric parts and slips open. “So it’s fairly easy to get on. The cords are about as tight as they should be anyway, it isn't hard to pull to fit.”

You fumble a little trying to get the zip back up but eventually just conceded to leave out like that until you put the dress away. When you glance down at your phone, Ryland has moved, no longer sitting down and if you had to guess, is now walking the length of his apartment instead. He looks a little distressed. 

“Come on, you’ve got the easy part.” You try, a little concerned he’s about to say he shouldn’t go. “You just have to put on a suit.”

“I can’t just ‘put on a suit’.” He whines, flopping down onto his bed like the world is ending. “I’m supposed to be like, your big ‘fuck you’ to the girl who got with your ex. I’m supposed to look good with you. I don’t know if I have a suit nice enough for that dress.”

“Ryland. It’s not about saying ‘fuck you’ to Daisy, or pulling some revenge stunt. I just didn’t want to go alone like a loser when I said I was bringing someone.” You can’t really help the little breathy laugh that weaves its way though his name, because he sounds like you did four days ago acting like the world was about to end, face down on the lunch table. “You don’t have to come.”

“No, I’m coming. I just need to go through my wardrobe.” He’s cute, you decide, in a round-about sort of way. The determination to play this self elected role well, to perfect it and give it his all, like he does with everything else in his life. The whole situation was elevating your ‘aesthetic appreciation’ of Ryland that you’d been attempting to suppress, to a new sort of level. 

You flop down on your own bed, roll over on your side and let him derail the conversation towards lesson planning, listen to him talk about the plans he has for the next weeks worth of classes, a couple of activities he’s got in the works. All while you consider the pros and cons of having him beside you instead. 

Ryland was probably the teacher you got on best with at work, despite being from two very different teaching areas. When he’d first arrived, you’d assumed he would be a little pretentious, with his Phd and professional experience beyond the classroom. You weren't expecting him to be so awkward. The children took to him so quickly, and Ryland had told you time and time again that he doesn't understand why they think he’s cool. 

Over the years you’ve found that he can be cocky, in certain bouts of confidence seemingly appearing via divine-intervention. A local bar had run trivia nights for some six odd months, and it had unleashed a beast within him.

On Monday afternoon he sent you a photo. A little black bag with a logo you’d googled, realising it was a menswear store before the second photo had come though. A tie, sleek navy like your dress, rolled up neatly with a matching pocket square beside it, both nestled in a box that screamed expensive. You’d sent back a random string of praise, imagining him lulling it over in the store. It was nearly five in the afternoon, he’d left work pretty much on the final bell. You wonder how long he spent comparing the seemingly endless ties the shop’s online store offered, considering what would match best to your dress.

It makes you a little giddy, to be honest, has you dreaming of a situation where you’d asked him to come to the wedding, or where you’d already been together long enough that it was simply a given when the invitation turned up in your mail box. 

Neither of you mention it during school hours, not keen on the kids hearing whispers of you and Ryland doing anything outside work hours- students will take anything and run with it.

But he messages you about it constantly. Makes a plan; he’d come to your apartment and you would uber from there to the venue, it was a sunset ceremony and evening reception. He lived close enough that it was a brisk walk or quick bus trip. He pointedly mentions that he would not be cycling- ‘In a suit? God, never’- and makes sure you know that the uber would also drop you both back to your flat and he’d walk home or take another separate uber. 

There’s talk about your ‘backstory’, which he takes as seriously as he does exam periods. You tell him it’s not super necessary, that saying you met at work is more than enough exposition for the gaggle of college friends you’d not seen in years. But he was never one to do things in halves. 

“We obviously would have met at school.” He says, like it’s a given. Ryland is laid out on the reading rug at the back of your classroom, staring at the ceiling. And the fake clouds that are actually just a hobby-fill glue gunned to paper and taped to the ceiling, he’d turned the fairy lights that are threaded though them on before he’d decided the floor was his resting place. “Maybe trivia is where it happened. We liked trivia.”

“We did like trivia.” You agree, pointedly. 

It’s almost impossible to not just sit there and watch him, the student folders that you’re sorting worksheets into acting as a very inefficient distraction. 

He’s got a button down on, some pale blue that looks nice under his grey wool blazer. The pale wash jeans and white converse are a bit more casual, but he wears the combination well. Too well. Laid out like this, with one knee up, he looks far too attractive for you to swallow. Glasses pulled down to hang off his jaw, sitting there catching the afternoon light as it came through the windows, casting rainbow refractions onto the back wall. 

“Maybe trivia was a date. What would you have done?”

“If you’d asked me to trivia as a date?” You glance up. He’s already looking at you, head tipped to the side, something soft, tentative there in his eyes.

“Yeah.” You can see the way his throat bobs when he swallows, how his chest rises with each breath. 

Ryland sounds… nervous, in a way that does remind you of the first trivia night you’d gone to. He’d been dressed similarly there, you remember thinking he looked nice, polished up a little more than he did in the school day with dress shoes and what smelt like cologne. Handsome where he waited by the entrance, backlit by the bar’s warm lighting. He’d been a little twitchy for the first hour or so, but settled into himself by round two. 

With the way he’s looking at you, now as he plans out the false scenario that’s beginning to sound a lot more like a confession, you’re starting to get the idea that trivia could have been a date. If either of you had put it into words. 

“Enjoyed it, probably.”

“Really?” He looks shy, a bit of a flush working its way up his cheeks. 

You smile at him, thinking about how nice it would have been to kiss him in that bar with a sweet cocktail on your lips, dizzy from his flattery about your trivia skills. You hum, nodding a little as you look at the folders and sheets spread out over your desk, feeling a flush rise to your own cheeks.

He knocks when you’re halfway through lacing up the back of your dress, holding the cords with one hand as you open the door. Ryland’s not been to your apartment before, something you’d failed to realise until he called you and asked during his walk over, if you’d have to buzz him in. 

He was appalled to find out the front door to your building was sporting a broken lock and had been tied back with a length of rope for the last two months while the landlords procrastinated fixing it. 

“See,” You say, opening the door for him, keeping it propped open with your foot as he shuffles in. “My door locks.”

“Still one less lock that you’re supposed to have.” he grumbles, stepping out of his very nice dress shoes. They look expensive- black leather shined up propper. 

Actually, Ryland looks expensive. 

“You look nice,” he says, smiling a little shy, as if the compliment had just slipped out and he was supposed to be embarrassed about that. 

“I uh,” You pause, swallowing thickly. 

Holy fuck he looks good in a suit. It’s the only thought spinning around your head. It’s a proper one, tailor made no doubt. Blazer, slacks and undershirt, all three of them a deep inky black. The navy tie he’d sent you a photo of is done up around his neck in a knot neater than you’ve ever seen him wear to work. The pocket square is folded too, fluffed up with a little volume that suggests he did so intentionally. 

Suddenly you’re reminded of all those times he’d complained about all the formal conferences and charity gala’s he’d attended during his days in academia. You realise you have made a grave error. 

There have always been little parts about Ryland that oozed wealth, the glasses he wore for one, that he told you were antique when you’d asked. The watch on his wrist that you thought looked like some practical sporty thing but found out was actually worth three months rent when you’d googled it out of curiosity. These little things fall out of the spotlight and become footnotes that are often ignored when he’s in his classroom, or tiny apartment. 

Dressed in such a nice suit, here in you apartment definitely wearing cologne- the same from that very first trivia night, something a little warm, woodsy like oaky bourbon, sharp and contrary to the fresh nothingness he smelt like at work- Ryland seemed so far beyond you. 

“You look good.” You manage, letting the door slip shut and dropping the lace of your dress, it loses its tension a little but stays in the same spot for the most part, to run a hand over the lapel of his blazer. “How long have you had this?”

“Ages. Dug it out of the back of my closet. A little tighter than when I last wore it, but it will do the trick. Right?” He tacks that last bit on, like he’s waiting with baited breath for your approval. 

“I’ll say.” You slide your hand down the lapel a little bit, down over the press of his chest. The tightness just shows the subtlety of his build, lean muscle that comes from idle exercise and good diet, maybe even a splash of genetics. He’s tidied his facial hair up a little, slid the electric razor over all of it to make sure it’s the same length, no doubt. Ryalnd’s still got his glasses on, you were a little worried he might have opted for contacts and are very relieved you get to see this outfit complete with the lenses that frame his face so well. 

With a realisation you might be getting a little lost in your head, you drop your hand, turning to walk further into your apartment, towards the couch where your shoes for the night sat on the floor. “Right, we'll, I'm nearly ready. The uber will be here soon.”

“Do you need a hand?” Ryland asks, and you’re about to turn, ask him, ‘with what’ when you feel his fingertips against the small of your back. It sends a jolt though your skin, he’s cold. From the outside air, where as you’ve been nice and cosy with the heat on while you’d done your hair and make up. 

Goosebumps rise under his hands as they gather the ties for the back of your dress. Something low swoops in your gut, like the dip of a roller coaster, free falling as he chuckles a little behind you. “Sorry, cold fingers.”

You swallow. “It’s.. it’s okay.”

“How tight?” He asks, giving the strings a gentle tug. You almost sway with the moment, feeling a little swept off your feet already. 

“Bit tighter.” You manage, as he presses a flat palm against the small of your back, over the criss-crossing cord, and gathers both ties in one hand to pull slow and firm. It tugs you back into his hand, a steadier hold than you’d expected. 

“There?” He questions when the dress is pulled in to sit flush with your skin but not dig in. You get the feeling he might have done some research, when he plucks at each string to even them out and make sure none of them are too tight, on how these dresses are supposed to sit. 

“Yeah, perfect.” It leaves you like a sigh, as his palm dips, brushes where the zipper sits before pulling back to tie a neat bow, tugging the cords out carefully so both loops are even. 

All of it has you lightheaded, directing more effort than necessary to get yourself to the couch and pull your heels on, black mary janes that are comfortable enough to walk in. As you fiddle with the buckles, you eye him. 

Ryland’s hair is tousled, intentionally a little messy, not combed or slicked back. Looks like it would be nice to run your fingers though, and you find yourself wondering if that’s why he’d opted for the style, if he’s here, dressed up as the guy with ‘better hair and a better jawline’ that Margot had pitched, unaware that he already was exactly who he’s trying to be. 

He holds an arm out for you to loop yours though, walking down the stairs in steady but slowed steps. You smile. “Wow, full gentleman experience.”

“I told you, I can't just ‘put on a suit’. It’s more than that.” He chides jokingly, and you pity the version of you that didn’t realise this was an option. 

He opens the door for you- the car door, the door into the building door tied back by a rope (he glares at it when you pass it)- then rounds the back of the little toyota that’s polished up to try and seem fancier than it was. You don’t talk much on your way to the venue, comfortable silence that the driver thankfully settles into. 

It’s nearing sundown when you pull into the driveway, a big circular road that’s already crammed with other cars and guests climbing out.

“You can just let us out here.” Ryland says to the uber driver, unbuckling his seatbelt to hop out, then rounding the car again to open your door, hand held out like it’s necessary, when the car is nowhere near low or high enough to warrant such assistance. 

You place your palm in his anyway, letting him pull you from the car, no more temperature disparity in your hands since you’ve both been in the car for fifteen minutes, but it still makes your skin tingle. He’s got cufflinks, the same pale gold as his glasses, in the shape of atoms. You flick one lightly. “I like these.”

He smiles, something a little smothered like he’s trying to stamp it down from a grin as he threads his arm though yours again, beginning the small walk to the venue's front steps. “Well I like your dress, so I think we’re even.”

It’s a ballroom, with these big stained glass windows in the room they hold ceremonies in, you’d seen some lovely shots on the venue’s website of sunset light streaming through them. Imagining Ryland in the warm sunlight has you in a good mood, he’s always suited it, even if the city’s never had much to offer. 

“Not too much for our first date?” You tease.

Something like a laugh tumbles out of his lips, leaning down to whisper in your ear. “First date was trivia- and you were underdressed. Keep up.”

You flush, crowding a little closer to his side to make it through the entryway without shoulder checking anyone. Had you been? It was so long ago you could hardly remember anything other than jeans, tight ones that dug into your waist when you sat down- tight jeans hardly felt like being underdressed, they probably meant you wanted him to stare at your ass. Either way you let him have the win, as minute as it is. 

Doesn't really matter what you wore back then when you’ve got him like this now. 

Together you sit about halfway down on the bride’s side, the pew’s nearly empty, only someone on the other end you don’t know but looks vaguely enough like Daisy, that's you’d guess extended family. 

“So why’d you like this guy so much?” Ryland asks, quiet enough for it to just stay between the two of you. He’s glancing around, but his eyes keep bouncing back to Jack at the front of the venue, where he’s talking to gaggle of similarly dressed guys, his groomsmen. 

“What?”

“Him,” Ryland says, tipping his head a little to gesture at Jack. “What had you talking about soulmates? Couldn't just be the hair, tons of guys have good hair.”

“They do.” You answer, raising a hand to tangle one of the longer stands where it’s dangling over his forehead around your pointer finger and give it a light tug. Ryland’s eyes settle on you, like there’s nothing else to look at. “He made me feel like the only girl in the world.”

“That’s a cliche.” He refutes. “And a song lyric.”

You smile. “I’m serious. He’s like that with every girl he went out with. He’s like it with Daisy. He just loses sight of every other woman, so attentive.”

Ryland stays silent for a moment, eyes searching for something in yours. Maybe permission, or a want, for him to keep digging, it’s almost as if he’s scared what he might find. “What'd he do? To make you feel like that?”

It’s cute, how nervous he is, despite the fact it feels as though all week, the pair of you have been laying this ground work, a path to follow that will lead you somewhere inevitable, like a trivia date, or the messy sprawled sage green sheets or Ryland’s bed. You smile at him, wondering if he’s thought about you in them. You wonder if he knows how easily you could be, that you might just follow him to the edge of the universe. 

Still, you answer his question, offering a peek into your brain, the way you used to operate when teenage giddiness was closer than adult yearning. "Took me dancing. Kissed me slowly, cared about how I wanted things to go. It was like he just couldn’t stop looking at me, for me. It was intoxicating.”

“I can’t.” Ryland blurts out, all reckless abandon, and he’s looking at you like you’ve already kissed him breathless just by being here. You let your leg shift to press the length of your thigh against his, warm even through the layers of fabric. 

You breathe in deep through your nose, the scent of his cologne sticking dizzyingly to the air, a scent you think is enough to get drunk on even without the assistance of wedding champagne. "Can't what?”

“Stop looking at you.” He clarifies, eyes darting down to your lips. “I can do the other things though.”

A flutter knocks about your chest, unsteady and uncoordinated. “Yeah, you like dancing Doctor Grace?”

“If it’s with you.” He amends. 

“And slow kissing? You like that too?”

“Yeah I do.” He’s not even trying to hide it now, gaze settled on the dusty pink line of your lips, his own a little slick with spit when he darts his tongue out to trace one quick line along them. 

You almost asked him to prove it, but in your peripherals, down the aisle and pausing at the sight of you, was Macey, another one of your college friends, smiling. So you place a hand on Ryland's thigh, just above his knee. “Good. Really good.”

Ryland looks dizzy with the praise, like it’s all rushed straight to his head. 

“Hey Macey, good to see you.” You greet, using your hand on Ryland's knee to tip his legs towards you, making room for Macey to shuffle into the pew. 

“Oh my god, good to see you too! It's been awhile, hasn’t it?” She leans down a little awkwardly to wrap you in a hug as you half stand, and it’s good to see someone after so long, to look at them and remember times when things were simpler and you were allowed to be a little stupid, a little dangerous. It’s nice to see her here, for her to sit next to you- Macey’s always encouraged you to be a little wild, and with the way Ryland’s been looking at you all night, you might need her ego-bosting tonight. 

“I’m Macey, nice to meet you.” She extends a hand to Ryland over your lap and he shakes it curtly, offering his own introduction. 

There’s a big rock on her finger, and you remember seeing it on an instagram post, some dreamy forest scenery with a ‘coming soon to a theatre near you’ caption under it. 

“I suppose it will be your wedding next then,” You tease, “Where’s Jamie?”

“Oh she had a work trip, couldn't avoid it. She wanted to come though.” Macey waves off. Her and her fiance met on some film set, both camera operators, at the time, although you faintly recall reading something about Jamie’s name working its way up to director for some upcoming project, amongst the throws of social media posts from people who once knew everything about you and now you only see once every few years. 

“So Ryland,” Macey starts with a glimmer in her eyes, something evil and mischievous that throws you back to seeing her in the living room with a bottle of tequila and monopoly board. “How’d you two meet?”

“We teach at the same school,” He grins, a hand sliding to your knee, just along the inside of it, where your dress fabric hangs low with slack, enough for his palm to press there, thumb drawing slow lines back and forth. “A little cliche but I don’t mind.”

Macey smiles, fans her face a little like that’s just soooo romantic. “What do you teach?”

“Science, opposites attract I guess.”

“Please tell me you used that line.” She practically swoons. 

Ryland huffs a little laugh. “No, the kids threw that one at me actually.”

“Really?” You question, a raised eyebrow because that was not part of the backstory he’d been cooking up all week.

“Oh yeah. You should hear them. “Mr. Grace, you and Miss are ,like perfect for each other. You should ask her to the spring dance. They’re relentless, I swear.”

He pitches his voice a little, lazy tones and improper grammar leaking out in the way it did when he did impressions of your students and you can’t help but giggle a little. 

“Their heads might explode when they find out.” Macey laughs too, then like a stroke of inspiration, slaps her hand against your arm a few times in pure, unrestrained excitement. “God- remember when we found out Professor Morisaki and Professor Collins were married? Holy shit it was like our heads exploded.” 

You bark a laugh, muffling it under your hand considering the rather low level of idle chatter in the venue. “Oh my god, I forgot about that.”

“Professors of yours?” Ryland asks, this soft smile spread across his lips still.

“Yeah, we were doing a car-wash fundraiser! They were kissing in the background of one of our photos!” Macey still whispers gossip like she did in college, like your students do now. 

Ryland looks a little red in the face when he asks. “A car wash fundraiser?” 

Macey smirks, always too good at picking things up from others' words and you kind of want to stomp your heel over her toes to tell her off before you remember how this evening had been going so far. “Oh? Don’t you know? We were a little wild in college.”

You scoff. “A little?”

“Okay, a lot.” She corrects. “The car wash was an annual thing. White tshirts, bikinis. There’s definitely pictures. I have pictures.”

“Macey.” You scold, mostly joking. 

She shrugs, straightens up and sits to face the fronts, pointedly not looking at you with a smirk on her face. “Hey- I’m just reminiscing on good times. Don’t you remember the kissing booth we ran? Of course you do you were the most requested-”

Now you stomp your foot onto hers, although she doesn’t do anything but laugh to herself. 

Ryland is back to that dazed look, like he’s on some far off planet in his mind, when he murmurs, "Kissing booth?”

You glare at Macey, for a sharp moment. Before patting one hand on Ryland’s chest, leaning in close when you say, loud enough for Macey to hear. “Tell you about it later, handsome.”

He ducks his head a little close to you, a tiny little movement that stops as soon as it starts. His cheeks are the reddest you’d ever seen, looking a lot like he’s about to kiss you now, when there’s a music cue somewhere further up the aisle and a hush falls over everyone. He doesn't look away at first, eyes glued to yours for a long second before he bites his lower lip, to stop himself saying something and reaches a hand up to lace his fingers together with yours over his chest. He pulls it gently to his lap, smothering it in between his warm palms, fiddling with your fingers as the ceremony starts. 

It’s beautiful, truly. The light lowered through the stained glass windows, reflecting and casting colour across the whole room, gentle music and teary vows. Picturesque really, and it reminded you of that time you’d all made ‘vision boards’ as a bonding activity, and Daisy had a little corner on hers that outlined the life she’d like to live, from a small sunset ceremony to the little white picket fence outside a cottage. You’re happy she’s finally arrived there, that she has a man who’s willing to give her everything she’d dreamed of. 

You tell her as much, when you catch the pair of them in the reception hall. A warm hug for each of them and a firm hand shake between Jack and Ryland. It’s a lot less daunting than you had thought it would be, seeing them with the knot tied, no bad blood lingering or awkwardness about what once was. Just contentedness, with where your lives had led you each. 

The food is good and the atmosphere is better, seeing people from a previous life chapter all reunited, laughing and catching up. The reception is held in a ball room, with gorgeous polished hard wood floors and lovely low lighting that hangs from the ceiling in delicate chandeliers. There’s a classical band, a memento board for people to take polaroids and write well wishes on them, a corner with photos from Both Daisy and Jack’s lives, in albums and tacked up on walls, showing where they meet and things bleed together into their future. All of it’s beautiful. 

It’s heading into the later part of the night, when some people have excused themselves and cake has been cut, a hefty supply of the champagne depleted, that a nice slow song comes on.

You aren’t really paying that much attention to it, until you see Ryland shift beside you, rising and holding out one hand, palm up, towards you. “Care to dance?”

Something warm spreads over your face, a flush probably, as you lay a hand in his and he ever so gently pulls you to your feet, right in close to him. He leans down again, lips pressing feather-light to your temple before he leads you towards the dance floor. 

It’s littered with other couples, celebrating the love they have for each other as well as the bride and groom. 

All of it has you a little dizzy, settling a hand on Ryland’s shoulder as his palm slides around your waist, fingers slowing around the lace up back of your dress, pressing into your skin with gentle intent. He’s warm, firm against you, breath fanning across your cheek as you look up at him. “I know this isn’t the kind of dancing you meant, but it’s the best I can do for now.”

You humm, feet shifting in time with his, a slow waltz you weren’t even aware he knew. “I think I prefer this kind of dancing nowadays.”

Ryland’s lips tick up into a smile. “Yeah?”

He looks as good in the warm lamp light as he does in sunlight, kissing across his tanned skin and stubble, showing off the highlights of his hair. You want to run your hands through it, press a kiss to the scruff of his jaw. You settle on talking instead, worried he’s not one for such public displays of affection. “Left my wild nights behind in college.”

He sighs, like this is a devastating blow, hanging his head slightly, glasses slipping a smidge down his nose. “A shame. I was looking forwards to an appearance.”

You purse your lips, lifting the hand from his shoulder to cup his jaw, tilting his head back up a little, the pad of your thumb pressing his glasses back up to where they're supposed to sit. “Might do a private showing. Just for you.”

“You going to wash my car?” He asks, teasing. Eyes following the movement of your hand as it slips back down into place on his shoulder. 

Your forehead falls, pressing against his collar bone as a furious blush blooms over your face, the worst it has been all night, murmuring, “You don’t have a car.”

He must have known what you were going to say, or some semblance of it because you certainly weren’t speaking loud enough for him to catch all of it, but he still sighs, a little dramatic. “Guess we’ll have to go with the kissing booth then.”

You lift your head a little, to look up at him where he’s smiling down, mirth dancing about in his eyes. “Oh, what a shame.”

The drawl has him crack a grin, cheeks flushed as he looks away. Fingers dancing slowly along the skin of your back, between the cords he’d tied up so perfectly for you. 

For you, all of it. His nice suit he’d dug out from the back of his closet, the smart shoes nudging against yours with every step of the waltz. Ryland would do a lot for you, the realisation comes a little late, considering everything. You lean forwards a little, resting your cheek on his chest, as the song slows right down, indulgent. 

“You got plans after this?” You ask, and it sounds so cheesy, so bland once it’s left your lips. 

Still, when he answers, the smile is audible in Ryland’s voice. “Thought I was getting a private show. Is that offer off the table?”

“Think I can manage it,” You murmur, listening to the final few chords echo about the ball room, basking in the way his voice had rippled and rumbled through his chest, low against your cheek.

He lingers for a few seconds in the quiet, holding you close against his chest. You wonder if he, too, is basking in it. The closeness, the idea of having something that you’ve both been pretending couldn’t happen, wasn’t there in the air of exhaled breaths and weighted stares. 

When he pulls back, there is nothing but adoration in his eyes, hand that holds yours falling low, but not releasing it, palm soft against your waist, almost as if he doesn't want to let you go just yet. “Wanna get out of here?”

“Bit forward, Ryland,” You tease, “we’ve not even taken photos yet.”

His eyes follow yours to the polaroid board in the corner, considers it for a moment before he’s pulling you gently by the grasp of his hand around yours, towards it. 

The polaroid camera is a little hand held thing, there’s a stand for it, and poster board instructions on how to set a timer delay. 

Ryland insists on taking one of just you, and while you’re grinning, trying to convince him to join you against the black fabric backdrop, the shutter goes off. 

He rolls his eyes, but lets you drag him in beside you for the next photo. The timer is set, and just as you’re preparing to smile, something a little sweet and knowing, he gets one hand around the small of your back, knocks one of those very smart shoes against your heel and tilts you into a dip. It leaves you a little breathless, as he smiles, nose almost touching yours, shutter flashing off to the side. 

He lets you choose which photo goes on the memo board. “Whichever one you don’t put up there, I’m keeping.”

You look a little silly in both, at least you think as much, caught off guard, and laughing a little out of breath. Ryland insists you look amazing in both. Something a bit selfish pulls at your gut, as you apprise both photos, and eventually, hand the one of you and Ryland to him- liking the idea of getting to see it again, of having a physical reminder of the night you two have spent together. 

He grins like he’s won something, pulling his wallet out from his jacket pocket- a crisp brown leather that looks worn but well cared for- and to your mortification, tucks the photo into the clear slot. The one most people put their licences, or photos of loved ones, like heart-shaped lockets back in the old days. Ryland says nothing on the matter and he folds his wallet back up and slides it back into his pocket, waiting for you to write your message on the other polaroid’s back. 

You scrawl some comment about happy endings and humble crazy beginnings, Signing your name on the bottom under the image of your laughter, and tack it up on the board next to the one Macey’s left. 

Ryland’s got his arm out, hooked there for you to loop yours through again. 

You manage to catch Daisy by the bar on your way out, and give her a tight hug, telling her again how beautiful the wedding has been, how happy you were for her. 

The night air is crisp and the second you’re outside, waiting for the uber that’s just a few minutes away, Ryland strips off his suit jacket, draping it over your shoulders with a lack of hesitation that makes it seems as if he’s been waiting to do it all night. 

You look at him and raise a brow, but don’t say anything when you catch sight of his pleased smile. It’s almost devastating to realise he looks even better in just the black button down and tie than he did in the full suit. 

Again, the drive is mostly silent, but you notice pointedly, that you’re not going back to your apartment. And when you tilt Ryalnd’s phone and tap the screen awake, you recognise his street name in the trip’s destination. 

“Presumptious.” You smile.

He grins back, lets a warm palm wander to the curve of your knee, fingers curling around it then venturing to settle a little higher around your thigh. “How are you going to wash my car if we don’t go to my place?”

“You don’t have a car.” You repeat, curious where all this teasing confidence has come from, if perhaps your very clear signals have finally given Ryland the means to throw out all of that unnecessary nervousness and doubt. 

“Right,” He hisses, patting his other hand on his leg, as if to say ‘drat, there goes that plan’. Then he leans in close, whispers to you, “What was the back up plan again?”

“You are much bolder after a few glasses of champagne.”

He hums, a considering sort of sound that rumbles in the minimal air between you. “More so when I know I'm right.”

“And what, pray tell, are you right about?”

“That you like-like me.” He teases, like a child on the playground and if you were a little less level-headed, you might have kissed him right there, leant across the middle seat to lock lips with him in an uber. 

But you don’t want the first time you kiss him to be viewed through a rear view mirror by a driver who looks very unimpressed by the conversation happening in the back seat. “You gonna prove that hypothesis in your apartment?”

“That’s very forwards of you.” He teases, head tipping down like he is going to kiss you.

Expect you turn your head, and his lips brush against your cheek, as you tut. “All scientists say experiments are supposed to be conducted in controlled environments.”

He leans back, still close enough for his warm breath to fan across your face. “You’ve been seeing other scientists? I’m heartbroken.”

“Give yourself some credit, your classes are very interesting.”

“Earsdropping, huh? Didn’t think you were the type.” He looks far too pleased by the idea that you’ve listened to him teach, like he doesn't know that when you come for something during class hours that you linger by the door and wait for him to finish whatever he’s saying, as if you could look at anything else when he was so captivating.

“I’ll Tell you exactly what type I am in,” You glance down to tap his phone awake, checking the ride estimate. “four minutes.”

He nods and you wonder if he’d get that head-rush distant expression on his face if you praised him for the patience. It’s something you want to save for later, you decide, for private. Just for you.

Ryland manages to wait, even keep his hands to himself, once you’re both out of the car, leading you though his building with a sort of reverent silence, that you get the impression wouldn’t return once broken. You stand across from each other in the elevator. With both his hands braced on the bar at hip height, Ryland fixes you with a look that echoes in the space, though the mirrors surrounding you and over the idle hum of machinery. You’re still wearing his jacket, over your shoulders, a slight barrier between the handrail and the curve of your back, as you stand with your arms crossed smiling at him. 

The giddiness that bubbles up and about inside you, as you huddle in close behind him through the hallway, as he unlocks his door and lets you squeeze in past him, is something you’ve not felt in a long time. There’s not much room for childish excitement in the modern dating landscape, it feels as though everyone is in a rush, trying to get where they want to be with a relationship before it’s too late. 

Ryland though, he’s here. You watch him latch the door, before he turns, standing there to let his eyes run up you again. 

“Soooo,” He says, pursing his lips and tangling his hands together in front of him, like he’s suddenly nervous. 

“So?” You ask, taking a few steps forwards to run your hand down the plane of his chest again, feeling it under your palm just like you did when he’d turned up at your apartment that afternoon. 

“It’s been four minutes.” He swallows, and this close you can see how his adams apple bobs. Your other hand reaches up to scratch feather light against the stubble of his jaw, hand on his chest catching on the silky soft fabric of his tie, the one he’d picked out just for you. 

Rylands hands are slow, one moves to the dip of your waist, landing where it had during your waltz, if not a little more firm as it presses you close against him. He catches his jacket by the collar, lets it slide back off your shoulders and hang from his grip as it slides to settle on the curve of your hip.

“It has.” You lick your lips. 

Tuggin on his tie was not supposed to be a demanding thing, more so a gentle tease like you have been doing all night, stepping around that first move like it was a pitfall trap you’d never make it out of. Expect he pitches forwards much easier than you expected and Ryland's lips are pressed against yours. 

Soft and still a little honeyed by the champagne, he moves slowly against you. He takes one step back, then another, pulling you with him and not letting his lips leave yours as he backs himself up against his apartment door. 

Your teeth catch on his bottom lip, and a sharp inhale escapes him, almost a gasp, before he melts into the wood at his back, parting his lips and slipping his tongue up against yours. 

It’s slow kissing, it’s dizzying and it’s want. Everything he’d promised you hours ago, in the afternoon sun of that venue, looking like a dream come true. 

For what could be hours, you stay there, pressed up against him, kissing at his skin, until he shifts his legs, just slightly, enough to press one somewhere between yours, a soft presence halted by the fabric of your dress. 

Breathless, you break the kiss and he lays a sweet peck against your temple, an echo of earlier, before he begins to nose at the line of your jaw, your neck. Kissing then sucking at the divot along your collar while you pant. “Ryland,”

He says your name, just as breathless against your skin, his hand dropping the jacket to pull at the chord of your dress. 

“Is your doorway where you take all the girls?”

“There are no other girls.” He murmurs like a confession, far more earnest than you’d been prepared for. 

“Just me?”

He pulls back, pupils blow wide and face flushed blotchy and red. “Yeah.”

Ryland leans forwards, crowds impossibly close until your feet begin to shuffle, back, back, back into his studio apartment. It passes in a blur as he presses in to kiss your lips again, glued to them until he deems it’s been enough backwards paces and presses another kiss to your jaw. Using his grip on your sides, Ryland turns you around, folds in around behind you. 

His bed’s unmade, messy sheets splayed out in front of you, a pile of sage green cotton that feels like a promise, a sight you’ve dreamed about far too many times.

There’s pressure there, against your ass, a hard length that’s tight against his slacks and it makes your stomach swoop to know he’s so turned on by the slow kissing you’d been thinking about all night. His shuddering breath rushes like wind by your ear, as his fingers pull at the bow he’d tied himself. “Been thinking about this for too long.”

“Yeah?” You shudder when his lips find their place against your neck, sucking and biting at the skin there in a way that will probably result in a lasting reminder. “Since you laced it up?”

“Since you showed me this zipper." He pulls at it and the fabric gives, parting to sit low on your hips. Ryland kisses at the juncture of your throat, biting, and nipping. 

The dress doesn’t fall, not with the straps still hanging loosely from your shoulders, but it’s a damn near thing. One of Ryland’s hands winds around your waist, dragging you back against him as he presses up with one slow grind that has him choking on a groan. His cock, still trapped in his slacks, drags between the zip and against your underwear in a tease that’s maddening with far too much still left to your imagination. 

You try to turn but he’s got you wrapped up so firmly in his arms that it’s not plausible, so instead you reach a hand back, over your shoulder to tug at the knot of his tie, fingers slipping against the silky marital, catching in the bulk to it to tug. A particularly hard tug has him whining. 

“Okay,” You huff out as he sucks a little harder just under your jaw that will definitely result in a hickey if you let him continue for much longer. “Come on, don’t you wanna fuck me?”

You punctuate this by groping around between you both until you get a hand over his cock, giving it a gentle squeeze. 

“Need to remember this bit.” He mumbles, hand around your waist retreating to slip inside your dress from behind, curving back around so his fingers can skate over the soft skin of your stomach, tips slipping just under the waistband of your panties. 

It has you clenching down on nothing and you become actually aware of how uncomfortably wet you’re beginning to get. You squeeze your thighs together, squirming in his grasp. 

“Next time, Ry-” He splays his hand over your stomach, using it to press you back into him. “Ryland, come on. Need you.”

It tumbles out in a breathy whine, and it’s like you’ve said the magic words. He’s turning you around in his grasp, hands reaching up to slip the straps off your shoulders and marvel at the sight. 

He swallows as you reach for his tie again, loosening it gently now you can get your fingers into the knot properly. Ryland’s hands hover nervously before settling against your rib cage, fingers brushing anxiously against the underside of your breasts. 

Your dress was not one that lent itself to a bra, so you’d gone without. You had assumed that he’d figured that one out, given how he’d both laced and un-laced the back of it, but now that it’s out of the way, he’s looking at your chest like he hadn’t expected to see it so quickly. 

“You mean it?” He manages, sounding all tongue tied as you pry the tie off, letting it fall onto the floor, blending into the puddle of your dress- a perfect shade match. “I.. I get a next time?”

“Yeah.” You breathe, working on his shirt buttons, one after the other, coming apart as easily as Ryland did under your gaze. “As many as you want.”

When you get to the bottom of his shirt and reach for the belt buckle, Ryland’s hands move from where they’ve been gently nudging your breasts, to your wrists, snagging them gently as he pulls them back. His shoes nudged against yours, another one of those silent signals to step back that you didn’t know you understood so well until tonight. 

“Let me.” He says, one hand coming to your hip to push you gently back and down onto his bed. 

You land softly, mattress springing underneath you as you shuffle back, leaning on your elbows to gaze up at him as he toes off his shoes and pulls off his socks, a little off balance like the whole path from the door has altered his centre of gravity. 

Ryland is a sight, heaven-sent. 

His hair’s spiked out in six different directions, and you want to scratch at his scalp and pull at the strands all over again. He slides his glasses down his nose and sets them on the nightstand. The skin of his chest is just as tanned as his arms, a wide expanse that’s begging to be marked up with your teeth and nails. 

The belt buckle clinks softly in the empty air as he slips it open, unbuttoning his slacks before he shrugs the black dress shirt off. God, you want to bite his shoulders. 

Your teeth clamp down on your tongue at the thought, kind of wishing the tie was in the picture so you could pull him down on top of you. Just when you’re about to reach up, aiming for his shoulder or maybe even his cheek, Ryland surprises you by taking a knee. 

His fingers are a little clumsy as they wrap around the heel of your left shoe, pulling it up onto his bent knee as he fumbles with the buckle. He’s gentle with it, more careful than he was with his own shoes that are certainly worth more than your cheap pair, right shoe, then the left.

Still, it has your stomach tied up in knots to witness with just how much reverence he’s treating you. And the sight of Ryland between your legs is certainly one you could get used to. 

He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee before blinking up at you. “Are you… Can I-”

Ryland cuts himself off and that same unwarranted nervousness from before takes over his face, fingers curling tightly around your ankle, as if to ground himself. You smile at him, something that feels a little too giddy and a little too much like your 20 year-old self from college, fumbling and laughing your way to bed. “What is it Ry? You’ve already got me on your bed, no need to be shy.”

He bites his bottom lip, rolling it between his teeth as he considers the words. “If you say so.”

Then he gently leads your leg, by the ankle that’s still gripped tightly in his palm, off his propped leg as he drops it to kneel, and hooks it over his shoulder. Ryland kisses a path up your calf and along the inside of your leg and with an overwhelming flood of realisation, you fall back against the bed, bracing for the moment where he presses a soft kiss on your clit, through the fabric of your underwear. 

Despite his earlier hesitance, Ryland does not dilly-dally. Once he hears your shuddering breath that sounds more like a moan than anything else, he hooks a thumb though the crotch of your panties, pulls them to the side and presses another slow kiss against you. 

It’s maddening, has you gasping out his name as he licks a stripe up your cunt, sighing into it like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He’s been teasing you long enough that when he presses two fingers along your folds, teasing the resistance of it, they sink in easily. He hooks them up, pressing up against the spongy wall and pulls another moan from your lips. 

You're not sure how long Ryland spends between your legs with your hands in his hair and name on your lips, but it’s got you dizzy, clenching around his fingers as he strokes them inside you, languid and slow as he lays gentle kisses over your clit. His stubble scratches against your thighs in a way you’d expected to hate, but are getting rather fond of. 

It’s a slow build that crests with you moaning his name and clenching around his fingers as his tongue slows, your hips twitching a little with overstimulation post-orgasm. He moves his kisses to the inside of your thigh, the one not hooked over his shoulder as you catch your breath and it’s highly plausible that he’s leaving another hickey there.

When he does pull back, Ryland is just as breathless as you. Cheeks flushed and chest stuttering as he licked his lips clean. His pupils are blown wide, so much so you can hardly see the blue as he gazes up at you. “You said I could fuck you, right?”

“Yeah,” you swallow, throat scratchy and dry. “You can.”

With your head still spinning from the attention and care he’s taking with you, it’s a moment before you realise his hands are back at your hips as he shuffles you around the bed, up until he can fit his palm behind your head and lift it onto a pillow that smells like him. 

Ryland’s above you, propped up on one elbow and a knee to keep his weight off your body. You can feel each heavy exhale on your cheek. “Like this?”

“Just like this.” You say, nodding hand reaching up for his cheek to pull him down into another slow, languid kiss. 

He leans in close, whining against your mouth as you part your legs for him to set his between and get a hand on the small of his back, pressing until he gets the hint and grinds downs. It has you both moaning and panting against each other. 

You’re getting impatient, and while he must have ditched the pants somewhere between eating you out and repositioning you right side up on the mattress, he’s still got his briefs on and you’re still wearing your underwear. 

“Off,” You grunt, hand pulling at the waistband of his briefs. 

Ryland’s head drops to the space beside yours, just above your shoulder as he reaches a hand down to pull his underwear down over his cock and down his legs, kicking them off somewhere at the end of the bed. 

He gasps, a shaky exhale hitting your skin as you wrap your hand around the length of him. 

Warm and heavy in your palm, he’s bigger than you’d expected. When you slide your hand up, swiping a thumb over the head of his dick, there’s so much precum that it pools on your thumb pad. You give him a slow pump, slide eased by the wetness. 

Ryland mouths at the skin of your shoulder, and the hand he’s not using to keep himself above you finds its way to your hip, slipping under your panties, pulling at them. 

“Condoms. I need-” He cuts himself off with another groan, biting into your skin then kissing it softly like an apology. “I need a condom.” 

His hand slips out from your underwear and he gets his knees up either side of your hips to reach over, straining for the nightstand. You take the moment to kiss along his collarbone, using the hand that’s not wrapped around him to tug your panties down, wriggling them off and down your legs. 

It doesn’t go unnoticed, and he drops the condom wrapper somewhere beside your head as his gaze whips back to your face. “I was going to do that.”

He sounds a little bit thrown, like he’d really been looking forwards to pulling your panties off. 

“You were also going to fuck me.” You prod, giving his cock another languid stroke, watching his face contort with pleasure as he groans. He eases himself back over you, legs between yours and his weight pressing down in a way that has you sighing in contentment. 

“Not fair.” He pants, forehead dropping against yours. A hand, so gentle and far too tender comes up to brush the hair by your temple, away from your eyes. “Next time, you let me take my time, okay?”

You press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “We’ll take turns.” 

The condom wrapper crinkles in your fingers and you pinch the edge of it between your teeth and rip the corner off, splitting it open with your thumb. Ryland whines, louder and needier than you’d heard him all night, when you roll it over his dick, hips bucking into your hand and cock bumping against your stomach. 

He gets his hand down between your bodies, runs three of his fingers through your folds, making your breath hitch. Then he nudges your hand out of the way and runs his cock though them next. You whine, high pitched and stuttered. 

It’s a slow steady push when he slips inside you, one that draws out a long moan from your lips. Ryland moans your name, panting and kissing at your throat.

“God,” he pants. “You feel so good, baby.”

A broken whine sneaks past your lips, one hand reaching up to slide around the back of his neck, to lead his face back to yours so you can kiss him all over again. 

This type of slow kissing might have been your new favorite, Ryland’s tongue teasing the seam of your lips before you slip them apart, tracing the line of his teeth with your own tongue. He rolls his hips, grinding down in a slow motion. The curve of his cock drags along your walls, along that spongy spot before bumping so deep inside that it must hit your cervix. 

You hook a leg up around his waist and it has his stomach pressing up against your clit when he moves again. Moaning into his mouth, you see stars. “Fuck, that’s perfect- so good.”

Your fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling in a way that earns you a whine and a jerky thrust of his hips. “Y-yeah?”

“Yeah Ry- perfect. Feel so full.” The praise kicks him into gear and his slow occasional grinds turn into a building pace, hips pushing against yours and he buries himself to the hilt with every thrust. 

You kiss at the line of his jaw, mouthing and biting at the stubble there. He moans, sharp exhale hitting your cheek. “‘M not gonna last much longer, sw-swetheart.”

“S’okay. Let go, baby.” You murmur by his ear, free hand slipping down to press against your clit. 

The pressure alone is almost enough to tip you over the edge, pussy spasming around him. Ryland groans, loud and unrestrained, his rhythm falling apart as you do. 

When he does come, he manages a couple more thrusts, shallow as they nudge up against that perfect spot inside you. Ryland whines, shaking a little with over stimulation. 

“Couple more.” You moan, fingers winding tight little circles over your clit. “Almost there.”

Your spine goes stiff and a drawn-out whine slips out as you cum, clenching around the weight of him. Ryland stills inside, buried deep as he pants. 

Slowly, he eases himself down over you, the gentle pressure of his weight relaxing. Ryland only takes a few moments there though, before sliding an arm under you and around your waist, slowly rolling you both, so he’s sprawled out with his back on those sage green sheets with you draped over him. 

He kisses your temple, mumbling your name like a prayer. “‘S a good kissing booth. Might be a repeat customer.”

You push up a little to look at him, hands either side of his chest, and a hitched breath sputters out of his lips as you shift, his cock still inside you. “Might? What happened to ‘next time’?”

He smiles at you, hands reaching for your hips as he draws slow lines up and down your skin with his thumbs. “Well, I don’t wanna push my luck.”

“You’re not pushing anything.” You murmur, leaning back down to kiss him proper. 

Once the aftershocks of your orgasm have faded and the idea of being empty no longer pulls painfully at your chest, you raise your hips up and let Ryland’s now soft cock slip out. He exhales heavily, and you lay beside him, eyes on the slow spinning ceiling fan.  

He sits himself up not long after, slips the condom off and wanders off to the tiny door that you now know is his bathroom. He comes back with a damp cloth, smiling at you shyly as he cleans you up, gentle swipes over your core and along the inside of your thighs. 

Ryland walks over and pulls some boxers on, then returns to the bed to slide a pair over your hips too. “You want a shirt?”

You bite your bottom lip in a poor attempt to smother a grin. “Only if it’s one of your nerdy ones.”

He kisses the smile off your lips and wanders back over to his wardrobe, throws a shirt in your general direction then goes about fixing the sheets. 

You admire the sight. It had never occurred to you how nice his arms were, you want them around you again. He pulls the sheets straight, then up over you before he crawls in beside you. 

“This okay?” He asks, pulling you over to lay up against him. 

“More than okay.” You snuggle closer, cheek pressed against the warm plane of his chest. “Been thinking about this.” 

The confession slips out in a rush of endorphins, like you’re so happy to be wrapped up in his arms and sheets, smelling like him, that you just can’t help but let him know. 

You can hear the confusion in his voice when he speaks. “Having sex with me?”

No. You almost say, even though you had. It wasn’t where you were trying to go with this though. “Sleeping in your bed. With you.”

The rise and fall of his chest, of a heavy exhale, moves beneath you. “Oh.”

“I think our next date should be trivia.” You declare, a quiet sort of smile on your lips as his fingers trace slow little circles on your back between the waistband of your borrowed boxers and the ridden up hem of the shirt. “So we can get it right this time.”

“Deal.”

[ Masterlist ]

Ryland sputtered, moving under you just enough to almost knock you over onto your back. You were almost positive his entire body was flushed a crimson red, visible even in the dim light coming from the nighttable lamp. He was going into acute panic, his eyes darting from their fixed position on the wall behind you, to your eyes for only a split second before trailing around the room, looking for something, anything that could lead to an actual explanation. He spotted his stack of books in the corner, affectionately named ‘the leaning tower of book-zias’ and decided on that. 

“Research!” Ryland squeaked. “Research,” His voice came out more collected this time but still held a semblance of worry around the out-most edges. “For uh… Human… Anatomy studies?” He sighed hard, letting his head plop back against the pillow with a soft thump. 

The laugh that spilled from your lips wasn’t one of judgement or cruelty, more of a melodic tinkling that Ryland felt fuzzy around as you quipped softly, “Human anatomy studies? Is that what we’re calling it now?” Your fingers began their descent against the skin of his chest once again, relishing in the sensation of the staccato beat of his rapid heart. 

“No…” He admitted, folding faster than Ryland wanted to but… There was barely any fight in this one. You probably thought he was disgusting. “I just saw it somewhere and I was curious and I thought… Maybe if you… Wanted to try…” 

His voice trailed off into nothingness, the embarrassment palpable and coming off every fiber of his being in droves. Oh yeah, he just totally ruined his chance at getting laid tonight. He reached a hand up and ran it through his semi-mused hair, still wet at the ends from the shower he took before bed. It was a nervous habit of his that you’d come to recognize while dating and it made your heart clench every time you saw it. With a small huff of a laugh, you propped yourself up on an elbow, looking down at him with a softened expression of admiration as the hand that had been so vicious in its movements against his chest moved up the curve of his thick neck to captivate around the stubbly hair of his jawline. 

“You want to try it, don’t you?” You were pressing but you weren’t being mean about it. You knew Ryland too well, you knew the way his mind worked, the way that his curiosities often got the better of him. It just depended from time to time whether or not he vocalized those to you. 

Ryland forced himself to meet your gaze, his entire nervous system telling him that uhhh hey, that might not be a good idea! But, he did it anyway. And despite the unspoken shame he was feeling, there it was. Right in the swirl of his dark blue eyes, still dilated to the point of losing color. The raw, unfiltered desire to experience something that piqued his interest, specifically with you. Only with you. 

“Yeah…” He confessed like a cardinal sin, voice barely above a hush. “I--- I do… If you’d be okay with that. Consent is important, I don’t want you to---” You replied not with words, but with actions as your head dipped down and captured his mouth in a kiss. Slow and intentional, Ryland’s eyes fluttered shut at it as your lips conformed to his perfectly, letting him know the silent affirmation of your trust in him and the desire to try something new. “We gotta make a deal though,” You murmured against him and shuffled a bit. “You’re going to have to tell me where you really heard about it.”

“Maybe.” Ryland uttered heatedly against your lips, his hands coming up to cup your face, his thumbs stroking your cheekbones as you smiled and allowed him to trace the expression for a few seconds. As if he were saying a reverent goodbye to you before you disappeared above him. “I’ll tell you later.”

“That a promise?” “Maybe.” 

He crinkled his nose at you as you began the task of shifting positions. You knew the basic concept of what the position foretold. Where you were supposed to be, Ryland already in his spot and waiting with anxiously baited breath as you chomped down on your bottom lip. Getting there, to where you needed to go, was a whole ‘nother story. The movement was less than graceful, it was an awkward tangle of limbs as you straddled Ryland’s chest, your knees on either side of his ribs, your hands resting on his broad shoulders for balance. 

Ryland watched you with wide, wandering eyes doing what his instincts told him to do. His large hands came to rest on your hips, his slender flingers pressing gently into your skin to leave a trail of fire in their wake. Despite the heat, you felt a deeply rooted shiver in your spine as you looked down at him, the sensation of Ryland’s ragged breathing against your inner thighs causing you to stir and feel momentarily displaced.

He wasn’t looking between your legs yet, though he could smell you, the draw was so powerful that he found himself counting in his head to keep himself collected. Ryland was focused on the way you moved above him, the way you tried to keep hold of his eyes. 

Ryland’s scientific mind, usually so precise and analytical, was overwhelmed. The sensory input alone was primal and dug into the deeper recesses of his brain to tickle along the edge of instinctual conquest. The scent of you came back to the forefront, a clean and intimate musk that was unique to you filled his lungs like the most delicious air, his restraint right at the cusp of collapse. He knew - God, Ryland knew it was a biological imperative, the body’s way to call to his brain in a way that made him feel powerless to ignore.

“A-a little closer?” Ryland shuddered a breath out of his mouth.  He was holding on for you, the way you looked down at him with a deepened trickle of want. Ryland had been trying to hold on, maintain some sort of control, to be the composed man of science he always was---! 

You nodded shyly, letting your hands leave his shoulders in favor of the headboard as you skidded your knees upwards. It was awkward. Even Ryland had to admit that as you hovered above him, trying to get your knees to settle comfortable on the uneven nature of the pillows and bed below before you managed to get them cupped around his head, Ryland’s strong hands aiding you as he dropped his touch from your hips to your thighs. The gaze that had been impertinent to your trust in him was broken, but as Ryland held your weight above him, you were trenched in the deeper aspect of it as a result. 

It was a slow, almost scientific descent. Ryland’s eyes traveled down the enitre line of your body, over the bonier ridge of your collarbones where he loved to placed his mouth, over the fleshy bits of your breasts where he loved to squeeze and play, over the soft curve and fuzz of your stomach that was often trailed with hot, saliva slicken kisses until they reached their hungry destination. The air hitched in his throat, a choked and pitiful excuse for a sound that was a half gasp, half surrender. 

All the nervous energy, the flustered embarrassment from the moments before evaporated, replaced by a deep respondent hum of pure, unadulterated awe. Because Ryland could see everything. The soft curls of your pubic hair framed your folds, and nothing about it was the sterile, smooth perfection from clinical diagrams. This was real, natural and profoundly beautiful. Ryland could see the delicate hue of your pussy, deepened with your arousal, the slight glistening of your wetness catching the lamplight and the almost fiery appearance of the fine hair. This was you, presenting yourself to Ryland like an offering, a secret shared now only between the two of you. 

“A-are you ready?” You muttered from above, leaning your upper half against the headboard to give yourself more of a vantage point of what your boyfriend was doing. He nodded wordlessly, almost positive that no rational words would even form. As you lowered yourself onto his face, Ryland’s entire world narrowed to this single, overpowering sensation. The first thing that immediately struck him was the heat. A humid, intimate warmth that bloomed against his mouth and chin, sticking to his skin and beard and it was far more intense than he’d ever imagined, way more potent it seemed than when he had you on your back with his head between your legs. Ryland’s brain was tickled once again by that primal surge, something ridiculously set into his DNA from antiquity, something possessive roaring to life inside of him as his nostrils were filled with your sweet aroma again. 

And Ryland’s initial tentativeness wasn’t just from inexperience, though it was incredibly plentiful as his mouth opened in anticipation. It was from an attempt to process the crazed reality of it. He was a man who dealt in vast ideas, microscopic and cosmic distances, a man who taught about the different forms of rocks! And now, the most profound intimacy he could calculate or conceive of in any retrospect was happening at zero range. The soft weight of you on his face was grounding, a pressure that anchored him to the moment and silenced the everlasting calculations and worries that usually plagued Ryland’s mind. There was no way to overthink this. He was only allowed to feel. 

When his tongue first came out to play, you jolted. “Ryland!” 

He hummed against you, not wanting to lose any form of momentum as he began data-collecting in the best way he could think of. The texture of your pussy was silky, the flesh yielding for Ryland so easily as he slid the muscle from your clit, down to your entrance, repeating the process as the taste of you exploded against his tastebuds. 

You involuntarily clenched your thighs around his head with a gasp of excitement at the feeling of Ryland’s prominent nose against your clit, fingers grasping at the headboard so tightly that your knuckles were turning that unholy off-white color. Ryland wasn’t ashamed to admit to feeling a bit of… Pride at your reaction. He was causing this. He was the source of your pleasure, now, and all of the times before, and all of the times in the future he could foresee. 

The stubble on his jaw became a tool for him to use. Ryland could feel the way it created a delicious and abrasive friction against your pubic arch as he snaked his arms around your thighs to hold you more surely by your pelvic bone. He wasn’t even sure why that seemed like a good idea, but it was almost immediately rewarded when you, through the haze of the pleasure, felt confident and stable to move, found a rhythm against his face that wasn’t entirely suffocating, but it was just enough to get Ryland to moan against you causing another rocket of ecstasy to shoot up your spine. 

There was a shift of weight above him as you tucked your feet in to rest against his clavicle, another leverage point as you pressed your hips a bit harder to grind against Ryland’s expectant mouth, almost losing yourself completely in the tangling sensations of his beard getting caught in your pubic hair with your motion, the heady pressure of his nose smashing against your pussy and his tongue, fast at work to bring you to your climax. This was quite frankly, the most erotic thing that Ryland had ever experienced. His own hard-on, laying against the expanse of his stomach, a smear of pre-cum tracing his belly-button, was slowly becoming a throbbing, insistent presence and a tell-tale sign of how much you were affecting him.

Every gasp you were giving, every moan that sounded a lot like his name vibrated through your entire body and directly into his bones as he pressed his tongue into your entrance, holding down on your thighs to keep you in place as you essentially rode the muscle, Ryland peeking it in and out at a heightened pace. That’s when it happened. Ryland could feel the sting of your fingers grasping at a handful of his blonde hair, the sensation an exciting counterpoint to the softness of your pussy against his mouth. He was no longer just a scientist observing, he was an active participant, completely consumed by the act of giving you this pleasure. Ryland felt rightfully powerful, needed and completely and utterly yours. And he wanted it no other way. 

“Ryland, Ryland, Ryland…” You chanted like a prayer, eyes falling shut as you rolled your head back. He relished in the motion, able to see it from his perch as his own eyelids fell shut slowly.

The rhythm of your grinding evolved sharply, growing more frantic and desperate, now a race that was both chaotic and perfectly synchronised. Ryland could feel the subtle tremors beginning in your thigh muscles, the way your breathing hitched and caught wilting in your throat as you tried to tell him to keep going and not to stop. Each tiny gasp and groan became shorter, more desperate as you chased your release. 

The blonde beneath you adjusted his grip, his fingers pressing more firmly into your pelvic bone as if guiding you against him as sparks of adverse pleasure began tightening in your lower stomach. The confidence of which Ryland moved below you was staggering and left him surprised as he felt like he was learning your body’s language all over again with each shudder than shattered against him, each swallow of your pussy he was able to get down his throat and each coaxed friction as you began tediously grinding your clit against his nose. He couldn’t breathe, but that was no longer the point as he pushed your hips down onto him. Harder than before, needier than before. 

“R-right there!” You managed to gasp out, Ryland’s tongue dripping deeper inside of you than it had before and curling right against the cusped bundle of nerves inside. Not directly on it, unfortunately Ryland’s tongue wasn’t long enough for that, but it was more of a kissing sensation against it, just enough to drive you insane as you bucked a bit more wildly against his handsome face, seeking refuge in the way that he held you above him, the way that he let you press your weight against him in a desperate plea to be closer. 

“Please, please…. Don’t stop…” Your voice was hoarse, the muscles in your neck strangled. “Please don’t stop, Ryyyy….”

And here’s the thing. Ryland had no intention of stopping. The sound of your vocal cords, so strained, the taste of you blooming across his mouth, lingering now in his beard, the feeling of your incoming orgasm against his face was all too intoxicating in the best way possible. His movements become more intentional, Ryland raising your hips before bringing them back down as his mouth trailed from your sleek entrance back to your clit to swirl for a moment before diving back in. His own needs were secondary now, almost forgotten in the intensity of you. 

“I-I’m going t-to cum…” You whispered, almost shamefully as the realization washed over you. It was going to happen. Ryland wasn’t going to pull away and whatever mess you were about to make was going to be messier than usual.

You glanced down at him. Finally, he thought as his eyes met yours in the flurry of the moment. Just in time to get an eyeful of the show.

He swept his tongue in one long, languid motion from bottom to top. You could feel the pressure of his nose against your entrance momentarily before it dragged upwards, leaving your body only to be replaced by the sensation of Ryland’s hot mouth swallowing your clit. 

The electricity passed between you, so raw that it felt like it was going to take you both down. Ryland held your gaze as his tongue worked to curl deeper inside of you, finding that perfect angle that his fingers had a knack for, the very one that made your entire body convulse. He could feel your moan against his tongue, sending a bending shiver through his entire body to rest in the head of his overly-sensitive cock. 

When your orgasm finally hit, it was like a wave breaking over you both. Your body did its thing. It tensed above Ryland, his heavy hands still locking you in place, your thighs clamping around his head tightly as a watery cry left your lips. “G-God, Ryland!” 

He held you through it, his tongue working lovingly, his nose caressing your pussy so gently as you rode through the pleasure, back arching ever so slightly as your essence spilled down his beard, trailing along the coarse hairs on the underside of his jaw. Ryland’s heart was pounding in his chest, he could feel the spasms of your thighs and the coiling and tightening of your pussy. Ryland felt a sense of awe that he could do this for you. That you let him do this for you. 

He moaned against you, moving quicker than before to lap up what he was able as your body began relaxing involuntarily against him, almost boneless and completely spent. The fingers in his hair left as he shuffled a bit, placing a few lingering kisses to your sensitive thighs before helping you as best he could. You shifted off his face, Ryland’s hands careful as if you were made of glass as you collapsed beside him on the bed. 

Through a half-lidded stare, you glanced at him and felt an inadequate amount of embarrassment at the sight of his flushed cheeks and his beard, glistening with the evidence of what just transpired. You licked your dry lips as a wall of affection tore through you at the sight of Ryland… Disheveled, aroused and so, so proud of himself. “Uh… wow.” You laughed breathlessly with a goofy smile, Ryland propping himself up on his elbow to look at you.

His blue eyes were dark with need, but there was something else there too. Maybe… Tenderness… And a vulnerability that made you lean over and capture his mouth in a kiss, tasting yourself on his tongue as you urged him to follow you back, Ryland almost crushing his chest against yours. The kiss was a collision of desperation and relief. Your lips were soft, minorly demanding against your lovers, his tongue sweeping in to claim your mouth with an urgency that stole what little breath you had left, at the same time, offering you more of yourself to taste. 

Ryland’s hand which had been resting on your hip, slid up to grasp at the back of your neck to pull you impossibly closer until there was no space left between your bodies, your legs wrapping around the narrowing of his waist as Ryland snuggled himself between them. 

“I’ve… wanted to do that for a while…” Ryland confessed, lips tickling against yours. Each word was swallowed up by you as you drew him in for a slow kiss, feeling the length of his cock against your wet pussy, causing yet another shock of pleasure to run through both of you simultaneously. You admired the way that Ryland’s eyebrows creased at the contact, his eyes fluttering in concentration that was wearing very thin. “Why did you wait so long?” You responded and let your fingers tuck into his blonde, sweaty hair. He drew a slow breath in, collapsing his arms around your head so he could rest on one forearm, the other now happily tucked between your two bodies so he could position himself just right against your swollen entrance. 

“I-I knew you’d ask me where I heard a-about it.” He murmured cutely, the blush on his face more from his words than the mere fact that his cock was straining for some sort of release. 

“W-will you ever tell me? I need to thank the s-source personally.” You teased, head tossing back against the pillows a moment later as the head of Ryland’s cock was swallowed by your tight pussy.

“L-Later. Let me finish d-decompressing first.”

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“Come on, guys. The final exam is next week and I really don’t want to have to fail anyone this time around…again. So let’s show a little more initiative! Yay, cellular anatomy!” 

He lightly pumped his fists in the air in an almost convincing cheer. You think it was meant to be encouraging but, looking around at your classmates, they didn’t seem to get the hint. They returned your dorky professor’s enthusiasm with glazed over expressions and the occasional monotonous click of laptop keys signifying they were likely working on another task all together instead of paying attention. 

You couldn’t exactly blame them. Dr. Ryland Grace’s courses were among the hardest in the university’s advanced molecular biology track. Rumor has it that his exams have made students literally drop out of the program before. It wasn’t exactly his fault, the subject was enough to melt anyone’s brain on its own, but Dr. Grace made up for it by being an amazing professor. 

He was always incredibly engaged, exceptionally witty, and, overall, just seemed to genuinely care for the material. You couldn’t deny that you definitely felt the insurmountable pressure of the high expectations he placed on his students, but something about his passion just…spoke to you. It was like he breathed life back into the subject that you chose to make your career all those years ago. 

Admittedly, you had been a fan of Dr. Grace’s work since you were in undergrad, opting to enroll in this university’s program for even the mere, microscopic chance, that you could study under him. As luck would have it, he was accepting new doctorate students the year you were admitted.

Pursuing a PhD in molecular biology was daunting enough, but you learned fast under Dr. Grace’s caring hand. He made it seem like you were the only student he had ever taught, with the way his eyes lit up at your ideas, doing everything his lab’s budget could afford to make them a reality. 

Over the past three years of your thesis study, you were shyly keen to admit you and Dr. Grace had grown fairly close to one another. After all, he strangely decided to stop taking students after he signed on to mentor your study, which meant that you always had his undivided attention  He was by far the best teacher you had ever had, which is why it made you feel all the more guilty that you also…had not been paying attention to his question.

“Okay.” Dr. Grace let his shoulders slump in a sigh. He looked as exasperated as his students. He ran his fingers through his messy blond strands and readjusted his glasses. “Tell you what. If someone can answer this last question correctly, I’ll let you all out early. I know it’s almost finals and my exam isn’t the only one you all have to worry about, so you guys just do me this one last favor and we can call it a day”.

Your ears, along with the rest of your classmates, perked up instantly. You heard the faint sounds of students adjusting themselves in their seats as they leaned in, eager to earn this rare reprieve from classes. Dr. Grace smirked and clapped his hands together. “Alright, signs of life! So, tell me, what are the three major types of lipids that make up cellular membranes?” 

This time, when you looked around, your classmates were deep in thought. Some of them looked like the act of searching for the information needed to answer the question physically pained them to work through. Not you though. This was something that you had already gone over with Dr. Grace for your research proposal write up. He had coached you through cellular membrane structure semesters ago. You raised your hand, albeit, hesitantly.

Dr. Grace had bitten his lip in anticipation looking around at his students in expectation. When his eyes met yours, his gaze softened. He nodded, waiting for your answer patiently. 

“Uh, I believe they are phospholipids, glycolipids, and sterols?” You knew it was the correct answer but you still held your breath, and Dr. Grace’s stare for that matter, waiting on his confirmation. Something about the intense blue of his eyes just seemed to make coherent thoughts impossible, even when it came to material that you knew inside and out. 

Dr. Grace nodded emphatically and threw up his hands. “We have a winner! Excellent work! That’s exactly right,” he exclaimed. You heard a few small cheers from your classmates in the back, who had already started backing their bags. Dr Grace retreated behind the lecturer’s stand and started to pack up his things as well. “Okay you all, a promise is a promise, you’re free to go.” The few students who had yet to pack up started doing so feverishly, as if they were afraid Dr. Grace would take back his seemingly merciful act of kindness.

Dr. Grace shouted to the back of the room as students shuffled out the door. “I will see you all bright and early next week for the final. Remember that you will need to know ALL of the protein pathways of the cell membrane to be able to answer the extra credit question! Don’t try to name only one and expect me to give you full points…” He smiled and cast his gaze down to his laptop, turning off its connection to the projector that had his meticulously detailed cell diagram thrown up on the lecture hall’s ginormous screen. 

You finished shoving your books into your bag and signaled to your classmates that you would catch up to them later. You had to ask your advisor a question about finalizing a date for your dissertation. It was a little over two weeks away and not knowing all the details was driving you insane. Or maybe it was just the thought of having to present all of your research findings to the very man that basically invented the topic you were researching. 

You had chosen to take an experimental approach to Dr. Grace’s hypothesis that life didn’t require water to survive. You had found some pretty compelling evidence in his favor among local bacterial life, but the thought of explaining his own research findings to the man himself had your stomach in knots. Or maybe it was just that Dr. Grace seemed to have your stomach in knots all on his own the last couple of months. 

You hated to admit it, but you had developed something of a schoolgirl level crush on your professor. Sure it was somewhat embarrassing, but could anybody blame you? He was unbelievably charming, so ridiculously intelligent it was almost intimidating, funny, passionate, sincere, and…yeah. 

He was pretty fucking hot too.

Everytime you walked into his lab, with him in one of those stupid science pun t-shirts that seemed to always be unfairly tight on him, leaving none of his muscular build to the imagination, you felt like your knees were going to give out from under you. Plus, he always seemed to stand right on top of you as he examined your findings through the microscope with you, which was not helpful at all. His forearms would often brush your side as he adjusted the lens settings, sending almost painful shockwaves through your body. Although, it was probably the glasses that sent you over the edge. He always seemed to look straight through your collected exterior you worked so hard to put forth when he peered at you over the rims that delicately balanced on the sharp bridge of his nose.

Who are you kidding? It was definitely the glasses that sealed your fate.

But that was inappropriate! Dr. Grace is your professor, your advisor for fuck’s sake. Nothing more!

 ……Right?

Yes, oh my god! Jesus, yes, of course he was just your professor. What were you even thinking? 

You snapped out of your thoughts and realized that you were soon to be the last student standing awkwardly in the lecture hall. With a grunt, you gathered up your bag full of textbooks and lab equipment and shakily headed up to Dr. Grace, who was still inspecting his laptop up at the lecture podium. 

He looked up from whatever he was poring over at the sound of your footsteps. He grinned at you and crossed his arms, leaning his hip onto the podium.

“Hey! There’s my favorite future doctor of microbiology. Got a nice ring to it, huh? Excellent job on that question, by the way.” He stared at you expectantly, though you know this was just another clever ruse to relieve the stress he knows he’s been putting you under. You laughed softly and cast your gaze to the floor at his praise, heat moving impossibly fast up your neck and onto your cheeks.

“You ready for the big day?” Dr. Grace asked, inquisitively, referring to your thesis presentation. His question quickly put out the flame that was building in your core and reminded you of the anxiety-inducing task you had ahead of you.

You met his eyes again. “Yeah! Totally…” you cringed, not even believing your own words. “Well, almost. I was just hoping we could talk about the dissertation date? I know you’re super busy and you’re going to have a lot of exams to grade and probably a lot of undergraduate papers too…and that I’ve technically already finished my research, really just need to finish writing the presentation slides, but I just really was..” the words seemed to spill out of you faster and faster by the second. Somewhere, in the back of your brain you willed yourself to stop babbling like an idiot but that thought never seemed to bring itself out of your subconscious and make itself useful. Dr. Grace looked at you back and forth hurriedly, trying his best to follow your words, before putting his hands on your shoulders and chuckling. 

“Woah, woah, easy tiger. Slow down.” His grip on your shoulders tightened, causing you to freeze at the sudden contact. God, his hands were firm. You eased up a bit under his touch. 

“Don’t get yourself so worked up. You are going to do fantastic. I know you are. That committee won’t even know what hit them,” Dr. Grace said. As he spoke, his thumbs worked their way up and down on your shoulders, almost as if they were trying to etch his words onto your skin so you would believe them. It did the trick though, you exhaled a bit before Dr. Grace continued.

“I know we have a couple of things to wrap up. Tell you what, I have to run to a faculty meeting in a bit but later tonight, how about you meet me in the lab and we can go over your data one last time, okay? Would that make you feel better?” Dr. Grace had sunk down on his knees a bit to be at eye level with you. His words warmly rushed over you, soothing your worried mind. With your thoughts a bit clearer, you hadn’t even noticed how close the two of you were. He was basically holding your body in place with his hands and his face was so close to yours that you could feel his breath as it fanned over your cheeks. He seemed to notice your close proximity as well as he dropped his hands from your shoulders suddenly and cleared his throat. 

You almost sighed at the loss of contact but caught yourself at the last second. Instead you said, “That would be amazing Dr. Grace, thank you.” He lightened a bit at your agreement. “Great! I’ll probably be in there at around 8:00? Feel free to drop by then.” You nodded and waved him off as he exited the hall. 

You were definitely in for a long night. 

--

You found yourself pacing outside of Dr. Grace’s lab at 8 o’clock on the dot, mentally coaching yourself to go in. Why were you so nervous, even? Dr. Grace was your advisor, you had been working with him for months, this is just an ordinary lab meeting like you’ve done with him countless times before. Before you could lose your courage, you swung open the door and immediately stopped in your tracks. 

Dr. Grace was positioned at the centermost lab table, carefully holding up a glass beaker to the glow of the moonlight that was being cast in through the lab’s window blinds. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he transferred a clear liquid into the beaker with a pipette dropper. He was in another one of his classic science t-shirts, his arm positioned almost at a perfect 90 degree angle holding up the beaker, which exposed every curve and vein of his bicep for your hungry eyes to devour. Bright, blue, latex  gloves were pulled tight over hands that were a stark contrast to his firm arms, instead, skillfully holding the beaker in place to not spill any liquid. His glasses were knocked slightly askew on his face as he wore protective goggles over his eyes, but to you, that just made him all the more endearing. 

Your eyes roved over his form, rigid and unwavering with the confidence of a man precisely in his element. Even though there was nobody else in the room except for you two, his presence seemed to demand attention. His fellow faculty members may have never paid much attention to his work outside of mindlessly recommending his lectures to their students, but, god, would you never get tired of marveling at this genius of a man. Both because he was a leading mind in your field and also because he was insanely attractive while he worked. 

Dr. Grace looked up from whatever he was studying as he heard the door close softly behind you. He greeted you with a smile. “There you are, right on time as always. I would’ve expected nothing less. I’m just about wrapped up with this. Why don’t you grab your slides from the back and get set up while I put this away and then we can get started. Okay, sweetheart?” 

Your heart felt like it dropped into your shoes. Dr. Grace had turned his back to you as he busied himself with something near the sink which gave you some time to process what you had just heard. 

Sweetheart? That was definitely a first. I mean sure, you’ve had teachers call you that before, usually just in an endearing, almost parental way when you were younger. But something about the way he said it left you reeling. It felt…charged. Almost like he was dangling the term of endearment over both of your heads, knowing that there was nothing either of you could do to act on it. You replayed his voice saying it over and over again in your head to convince yourself you didn’t imagine it, when Dr. Grace spoke again. 

“You alright over there?” He had now taken the goggles off and was wiping his regular glasses on the bottom of his t-shirt. He placed them back on carefully and put his hands on his hips, his t-shirt tightly coating his broad chest like a second skin. He raised his eyebrows at you pointedly, waiting on your answer. It was then that you finally noticed you hadn’t moved an inch. 

You choked out a laugh. “Yeah! Yeah, of course.” His eyebrows drew together in questioning. You smiled weakly and hurried to grab your slides.

--

The next two hours were full of calculations and write-ups that made your brain feel like it was leaking out of your ears. You and Dr. Grace worked silently and diligently, double and triple checking your work to make sure you were prepared for your dissertation. It was honestly impressive, the way the two of you moved in tandem, re-examining slides under the microscope and writing up the conclusions on the large whiteboard at the center of the room. You two seemed to glide in and out of your respective areas with ease, Dr. Grace stopping every so often to check in and make sure that you didn’t need help with anything. Busying yourself with your work did seem to help quiet the distracting thoughts you kept having about your professor. Instead of Dr. Grace making you dizzy, it was the goddamn microscope whose viewfinder just didn’t seem to want to work with you that had your vision spinning.

You groaned in frustration and threw your arms up onto the lab counter, dramatically flopping your head onto them with a huff. Dr. Grace spun around from his designated place at the whiteboard. Your eyes were so weak with exhaustion you could barely keep them open anymore but you were able to make out that he somehow had three different dry erase markers in his possession, one tucked into the top of his ear, one in his hand that he was currently writing with, and one clenched between his teeth. He looked downright sinful as he plucked the marker from his mouth, a few drops of saliva following his fingers from where the marker met his lips. Between the microscope, your report writing, and Dr. Grace’s incessant need to unknowingly drive you crazy with want, you were certain you wouldn’t even make it to your presentation day in one piece. 

“Aw, what’s wrong?” He chuckled softly. “Lens settings giving you trouble again?” 

“I don’t even know why they make the knobs this sensitive. It’s like the big science companies actually want to cause me anguish and despair every waking moment of my academic career,” you whined sarcastically. Dr. Grace walked over to you, tilting his head with a small smile at your frustrated state. “Do you want me to show you a trick I learned in grad school? It saved my life a couple of times when I was back in your shoes.”

You bobbed your head up and down excitedly. Anything to make your life easier right now was welcomed with open arms. Speaking of arms, your excitement almost died in your throat as you felt Dr. Grace’s hand on the small of your back, guiding you up and back to the microscope ever so gently. He positioned you in front of the microscope with his body directly behind you. There seemed to be only an inch of space between the two of you. One wrong move and your back would be flush with his chest as he caged you in.

You felt like all of the air just got punched out of your lungs.This was too much. It was one thing for you to admire Dr. Grace from afar, knowing that there wasn’t a chance in hell of anything happening between the two of you. It was another when he had you literally locked in place, his rock solid figure giving you no chance of escape.

This was real. This was painstakingly, agonizingly, undeniably real.

It felt like your world was crashing down, your thoughts empty except for your goddamn professor's frustratingly lean body behind you that almost had you wiping your salivating mouth with your shirt sleeve. I mean seriously. A microbiology professor has no business being that toned. Your breath hitched in your throat and you cast your view down to the microscope, trying desperately to focus on the task at hand. 

Except, Dr. Grace wasn’t letting you off that easily.

Dr. Grace delicately grabbed your right wrist and placed your hand on the fine adjustment knob. Except he didn’t stop there. His hand remained on yours, his fingers were ghosting your own, guiding them into exactly the right position. You felt a slight pressure in the pads of your fingers as he pressed down, swiveling the knob ever so slightly. He nudged your shoulder with his own, prompting you to take a look into the microscope. 

You moved your face down into the viewfinder, placing the bridge of your nose underneath the ocular lens. Dr. Grace followed suit, leaning his head down closer to you so that it was just next to yours. This caused the very top of his chest to connect with your shoulderblades and you tensed. This could not be happening right now. 

His words, a deep whisper that was very unlike his typical teacher voice, almost startled you as they were uttered so close to your ear. 

“You see, the key is to take two fingers,” Dr. Grace said intensely, “and slowly–”

He lifted your pointer and middle finger along with his own, placing your middle finger on the coarse adjustment knob in addition, and slid his fingers over yours so the knob rolled heavily under the both of you.

“--work both the knobs at the same time,” Dr. Grace finished. He leaned his head back and watched you carefully, making sure you understood his instructions. 

You could feel his gaze, hard and unrelenting, so you refused to look up from your slide and meet his eyes. You were almost panting with need now. The lab was usually sterile and cold, but from where you were standing it felt like you were in an inferno. You had never been this physically close to Dr. Grace before and it was setting your insides on fire. Part of you wanted to snap out of his grasp and run into the hall before you did anything you’d seriously regret. The other half of you was dying to find out what would happen if you didn’t. Pushed the boundaries a little bit. Fought fire with fire. 

You couldn’t. 

Could you?

You scolded your mind for wandering so far away from the task at hand and returned your thoughts to the microscope.Oh, would you look at that, Dr. Grace got the image of your slide looking pristine through the viewfinder on his very first try. 

You internally scowled. It also wasn’t helpful that his academic prowess was a major turn on. 

You clenched your legs together to relieve some of the pressure that had settled there, all the while, Dr. Grace still kept you in between his arms. His hands were now flat against the table, no longer guiding you. By all intents and purposes, he had absolutely no reason to still be standing so close to you but there he was, trapping you against him.

“See it now?” Dr. Grace questioned. He was referring to the absolutely gorgeous cell that was now blown up in scale through the viewfinder thanks to his help. You had to admit, you never got tired of that feeling. The feeling of staring at actual life, smaller than the tip of your pinky finger, teeming with blues and pinks and purples of the various organelles inside of it. 

“I do. It’s beautiful, Dr. Grace,” you admitted. You turned your head around on your shoulder and met his eyes. He really was close to you. Truly, you could step a quarter of a foot forward and your foreheads would be pressed together in a forbidden meeting. Something to never be seen by another’s eyes. Yet, standing here, almost fully enveloped by Dr. Grace, it didn’t feel as wrong as you thought it would. 

His gaze dropped down to your lips briefly. It was quick, but you noticed. He met your eyes again and you could have sworn you saw his pupils dilate in real time. The moonlight coming in through the windows earlier was now mixed with the soft glow of the campus lamplights that lined the walkways below the lab floor. The yellow lights mixed with Dr. Grace’s blue eyes, swirled a supernova of color around in his irises. 

And him? He looked transfixed on you, as if you had hung the stars in the sky. 

Could you do this? No. You were sleep-deprived and not thinking straight. Except your body had other ideas.You leaned in slowly, your eyes trained on Dr. Grace’s soft lips. Your hands had a mind of their own, coming up to almost cup his cheeks, like they knew you wanted this, knew you wanted to cross this boundary from which there was no coming back from. 

They were never able to reach their destination.

Dr. Grace jerked back from you suddenly and retreated into the corner of the lab, pacing, his hands thrown up in defeat, folded together to support the back of his neck as he let out a wavering breath. 

“Oh my god I-,” He started to spiral. “I wasn’t, I didn’t-”

He caught your eyes and immediately looked away, as if the simple act of looking at you was a punishable offense. You retreated into yourself, horrified that you would even think to act on your feelings. It was a dumb move, so ridiculously stupid, that you were afraid you just cost yourself your advisor, hell, your entire academic career. 

But Dr. Grace wasn’t looking at you anymore. He was running his hands through his hair feverishly. “I’m so sorry, god, I don’t know what I was doing I-”

He whispered to himself in a tone barely audible enough for you to hear. “She’s your student, Ryland, what are you thinking?”

You realized this wasn’t about you. This was about him. He was trying to keep himself in check. Not do something he would regret. The thought that he might be having the same ideas you were having, filled you with a confidence you had no business having. 

You slowly walked over to him and he flinched when he realized how close you had gotten. 

“Dr. Grace?” you whispered. 

Dr. Grace stilled as if your voice snapped some invisible thread that was holding him together. 

“Your hands are shaking–here let me help you,” you picked up his hands with your own, interlocking your fingers, half expecting him to recoil from your touch, but he didn’t. “I, I don’t know what to say,” Dr. Grace strained. “I’m so sorry, you’re my best student, I have no idea what came over me.” He sounded wrecked. Like you had stolen all of the air from his lungs. It was in that moment that you made a decision. One that was going to seal your fate either for better or for the worst. You took a deep inhale. 

In one deadly move, you surged forward and captured his lips into your own. You felt Dr. Grace tense up immediately but melt into your touch as you tangled your hands into his blond strands. His hands fell onto your hips like they were always made to be there. It was a searing kiss, with both of you putting your entire body weight into the other, as if this was the last chance that you were going to get to make this mistake. He pulled you closer to him, pressing his hands into you so hard you were sure he was going to leave a mark. 

You broke apart, breathless. Dr. Grace squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his forehead onto yours. He shook his head. “I am your professor,” Dr. Grace choked out. “I’m responsible for you, I could lose my job, my title, my reputation,” It sounded like he was trying to make a list of all of the reasons this was a bad idea but you didn’t care. The only person he was trying to convince at this point was himself. He cupped your face in his hands and scanned your expression.

“I need you to tell me to stop.” 

Silence.

“God, I am in so much trouble.” 

He drew you into another kiss and you happily reciprocated. It felt like fireworks were being lit off in your chest. Whatever you had imagined, this was a million times better. He was somehow both gentle and rough at the same time, trying to devour you like you were his last meal. He ducked his head down into your neck and took your skin between his teeth, nipping at the soft flesh.

“You have no idea what you’ve been doing to me” he breathed out. He was working his way up your neck, kissing the exposed flesh as he went. 

“Every time,” Kiss. “You talk,” Kiss. “All I can think about,” Kiss. “Is your mouth on mine.”

He walked you backwards, his mouth never leaving yours. Eventually your back hit the lab counter. It stung a bit but you didn’t care. All you could focus on was getting that t-shirt off of his frame and onto the floor. You were dying to see what was under those stupid science pun prints. 

You moaned into his mouth and tugged at the bottom of his shirt, signalling to him what you wanted. He leaned back a bit, arms still encircling your waist, and smirked. “Yeah? You want this off?” he questioned knowingly. You nodded. 

“Come on, use your words. You want my shirt off?” he asked. 

Oh, he was going to kill you. “Yes, Dr. Grace,” you answered, obediently. Dr. Grace’s eyes almost rolled into the back of his head. He groaned. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” you asked. “That thing with your voice,” Dr. Grace said. “Calling me doctor all sweet like you do, you know you can call me Ryland.” You tugged on the hem of his shirt once more. “Okay, Ryland. Shirt. Off. Now,” you demanded. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he snickered. He made quick work of grabbing the bottom of his shirt and ripping it over his head. He made to pull you back into another kiss but you stopped him just short of contact. You pushed him back slightly, leaning back and drinking him in. You couldn’t even believe what you were seeing. Ryland was fucking ripped. 

The evening light highlighted his abs just right, where you could take in every curve and detail, as his muscles seemed to strain against absolutely nothing. You ran your hands down his stomach and he shivered. His stomach intricately curved down into a sharp V that was so defined, you had to do a double take to convince yourself it was real. “Who knew microbiology was such a grueling subject?” you joked. 

Dr. Grace laughed. “Hey, I personally think that understanding cellular adaptation and atrophy is more difficult than any workout.” You shook your head and smiled. Even when he was hot and heavy, he still took every opportunity to make a science joke. You wouldn’t have it any other way. 

This time it was you who pulled him back into a kiss. He stole your move and tugged on the bottom of your blouse. You untangled your hands from his hair and began to undo the top buttons. Ryland followed your hands with his mouth as you worked your way down the shirt. With each inch of skin that was exposed to him, Ryland placed an open-mouth kiss there, leaving wet patches along your chest. As you reached the last button, Ryland’s mouth stayed on your navel but his arms snaked up to help you abandon the offending fabric..

He looked up at you from where he was perched on his knees, his chin on your stomach, those sweet blue eyes still in awe of you. That this was happening. That you weren’t something out of his wildest dreams. His right index finger toyed with the button on your pants. “Can I take these off, sweetheart?” Your eyes widened. Ryland grinned. “I’m going to take that as a yes with your eyes, now I just need your mouth to tell me the same.” 

“Yes”, you rasped. He wasted no time pulling both your pants and your underwear down in one fell swoop, nearly knocking you off balance, but, of course, Ryland was there to catch you as you fell. He steadied you by digging both his palms into the back of your thighs, palming your flesh. He stood up, hands not leaving you for a second, meeting your lips again. 

“Jump,” he stated simply. Without a second thought you hoisted yourself up by digging your hands into his shoulders and felt his strong hands grab the underside of your thighs, lifting you onto the lab table. The coldness of the counter was a stark contrast to the heat that was coursing through your body; it almost made you wince. You made to return Ryland’s favor and undo his jeans, but he caught your hands in his.

“Not yet, I want to make you feel good first,” he said, lips now working their way up the side of your face and under your earlobe.. “Is that alright?” he asked. You shuddered as the breath of his words met your skin. His hands had left their spots on your thighs and fluttered over your torso, tracing the outline of your ribs on your skin. 

“O-okay,” you stuttered. It felt like your entire body was numb, but also so sensitive to every touch that Ryland gave you, all at once. Ryland leaned back and took your naked form in again. “Thatta girl,” the words seemed to drip off his tongue. He tapped your knees in encouragement and dropped to his knees again, parting your legs gently. He met your eyes quickly, a silent ask for permission which you readily granted.

With that, he kissed the insides of your thighs, working his way inwards from the inside of your knees. As he got closer to the spot where you needed him most, you felt the sharp edges of his glasses rims knock into your inner thighs. Ryland leaned back on his calves. “Sorry, sweetheart. Let me get these out of our way,” he plucked his glasses off of his face and made to place them on the counter before you interjected. 

“No!” you startled yourself by how quickly you responded. Ryland looked up at you, puzzled. However, he paused where he was at, glasses still in hand. You sheepishly smiled. “Keep them on. Please.” You internally grimaced, embarrassed by your begging. However, after three years of pining after your professor, you were not passing up the thought of looking down to his glasses-framed face as he fucking ate you out. 

Ryland smiled smugly. “Got a thing for the glasses, huh?” He placed them delicately back on his face. “Tell me,” he said, “Is it the daring Clark Kent vibe that gets you going or the wizened academic look that you like more?” He gestured to his face, mostly jokingly, but you could sense there was a genuine question somewhere in there. You leaned down and pushed the glasses further up his nose. “What can I say, I’ve got a thing for hot, nerdy, men,” you replied. 

He laughed. “I’ll take it.”

It felt natural, the progression. His kisses felt earned, given with adoration, and he made sure that not an inch of you went untouched. After what felt like a million light years of him paying attention to everywhere except where you wanted, he licked a long, wet, downright disrespectful stripe up your folds. You moaned instantly and threw your head back. You didn’t even have any time to recover before he dove in again, his tongue swirling around your clit and sucking gently. 

He didn’t know all of the spots to make you squirm right off the bat, but god was he a quick study. Whenever his tongue brushed a spot that tore a sound out of you, he made sure to hit that spot again. Over and over again. He seemed determined to get as many sounds out of you as he could, and you happily obliged. Not like you had much of a choice in the matter. 

Fuck, he was good, you thought.

“Yeah?” Ryland asked from between your thighs. “You think so?” 

You hadn’t realized you said that part outloud. You were too overwhelmed with bliss to even care. “Fuck yes, Ryland. You feel so fucking good, oh my-”

A finger being pushed into your folds cuts you off instantly. After that, there truly was no hope for you. He set a punishing pace, pumping his fingers in and out while using his tongue to get to all of the spots that his fingers couldn’t reach while preoccupied. You clenched around his fingers and you felt him tense as he jut his hips forward involuntarily. “Ryland,” you gasped. “I’m gonna-” You couldn’t even finish your sentence before Ryland picked up his pace further, if that was even possible. 

“Come on, sweetheart. You can do it, let go,” you heard Ryland say, even though his voice sounded muffled and far away. His mouth returned to your clit, sucking hard, and the coil in your lower stomach finally broke. A loud moan tore out of you and you bit the back of your hand to silence yourself. You were still in the campus lab after all. Euphoria washed over you, from head to toe, and your legs shook with the impact. Ryland’s hand came up to steady you as he slowed slightly and worked you through it. 

“There you go, just like that. I got you,” he coaxed gently. You moved the palm that you were biting down your face as the waves subsided. You couldn’t help it, you collapsed back on the table. Ryland resumed his ritual of kissing up your navel, to the center of your sternum, in between your collarbones, and finally, standing up, to your lips. You returned his kiss, although rather weakly. 

“You okay?” he asked. You nodded. He paused for a moment, seemingly pondering if he should speak again. He decided on another question. 

“You want more?” he asked, his voice deeper this time, lower. 

“Fuck yes,” you cursed.

His words invigorated you with a second wind. You sat up quickly, hands rushing to undo the button and zipper on his jeans as he leaned into your hair and placed kisses to your head. As you fumbled with his belt loops, you could feel his arousal underneath your palm. Just to test the waters, you palmed him slightly, earning a whimper from Ryland into your hair. You hopped down from the counter as you finished unzipping his jeans. Ryland took over from there, sliding his jeans and underwear down in one go. Your eyes immediately cast downward and you bit your lip. 

His cock sprang forward, rock hard and already leaking pre-cum. You would have never guessed in your wildest dreams that he would be this big. It made your mouth water. You slowly began to sink to your knees to show him as good of a time as he just gave you, but he stopped you with a hand to your chest. 

“Please I- I can’t wait any longer,” Ryland searched your eyes. “I need to be inside you.” 

Oh. 

His words almost made you falter. As if you hadn’t had enough life-altering experiences tonight, here was Dr. Ryland Grace, published scientist, respected research and professor, begging to fuck you. 

Ryland seemed to take your silence as a yes, as he grabbed your hips and gave you one last kiss before spinning you to face the lab counter. From your perspective, you could see out the lab’s large windows. The lab was on the second floor of the science building, so all you could see out the window was the tops of the trees on the grounds. Still, all that was running through your mind at this moment was the fact that students could be walking down below, without a clue about all of the filthy things you and your professor were doing in his lab. 

Ryland places a hand on the small of your back and pushed you forward, effectively bending you over the lab counter. Your palms hit the counter, leaving an imprint on the black tops. Ryland kissed your back and you felt words muttered onto your skin. “Is this okay?”

“Yes, Ryland, please just-” He didn’t even let you finish. As soon as the word ‘yes’ left your mouth, he was pushing inside you. His cock stretching you out slow and depraved, making you gasp. Ryland cursed behind you, his hands flying to your hips and digging his short nails into your sides. He pushed slowly inside, inch by glorious inch until he was buried completely inside you. You turned your head slightly to see Ryland’s perfect face. He had his head thrown back, eyes closed, as if the act of being inside you was something that deserved a moment of silent reverence. 

“Ryland?” 

“Hm?” he hummed without opening his eyes. 

“Move,” you demanded. 

Well, you did ask for it. He pumped in and out of you like a piston, building up a rhythm that had you sobbing. Ryland’s hands never left your hips, you think he needed to hold on to them for his own sanity at this point. “Fuck you feel, you’re-” you sputtered. “You’re so fucking tight.” 

His pace quickened as tears squeaked their way out of your eyes and onto the lab counter. You were sure that you had never felt this good in your entire life. You could feel that low simmer in your stomach that you felt earlier. You were close. “Just like that Ryland, I’m gonna cum again”, you croaked. Your voice was gone, all of the air absent from your lungs.

Ryland seemed to sense it too as his once steady rhythm faltered and failed at points. He was losing steam, and fast. “Oh my, oh my fucking god,” he growled. “Come on, cum with me, that’s my girl.” 

The praise sent you over the edge. As your second wave rocked your body, you felt Ryland following suit. His hips stuttered as he spilled inside of you with a broken moan. His head fell forward onto your back as you felt his last few strokes, slow and intimate, pushing everything he gave you back inside, not letting a drop of the evidence of both of your choices drip onto the lab floor. 

You could barely breathe. It was the best feeling in the world. Ryland stroked your hair and slowly pulled out from you, with you whining at the loss of contact. You rolled slightly on to your side, looking at your professor, a sheen of sweat gracing his gorgeous body, glasses askew on his nose. Ryland leaned back onto the lab table and brushed his fingers through his hair, a deep sigh leaving his cheeks. He turned over to you. 

“So professor,” you teased in a sultry tone. You batted your eyelashes innocently. “Does this mean I get extra credit?” 

“g-gosh, taking me so deep huh? feel good?”

he’s standing at the edge of the bed, you’re lying on your back on the mattress, one leg wrapped around his waist and the other propped up against his body, the heel of your foot resting on the front of his shoulder.

he’s watching the way your stomach bulges as he thrusts into you.

one of his hands comes to your hip now, the other splays over your torso, pressing lightly.

you can feel every inch and every ridge and vein of his cock as he slams into you. hard and deep, but not too fast. he’s taking his time.

one hand snakes down to rub at your clit, the other moves up to rest below the base of your neck.

“please,” you moan out.

“please what, baby?” he asks, “am i not giving you enough? so greedy.”

you can’t find the words to beg, so you place one of your hands over the one he’s placed below your neck and move it higher up on your throat.

he gets the hint and squeezes lightly, applying the perfect amount of pressure as his hips start to move faster.

he groans as he watches your mouth fall open, his name falling off your lips over and over again.

“s’good, ryland. you feel so good,” you mumble, starting to feel drunk on his cock.

he stops rubbing your clit just before you can finish.

“keep telling me how good it feels, honey. need you to tell me,” he rasps.

his eyes are half lidded, drooping behind his glasses, which are starting to slide down the slender bridge of his nose.

he squeezes your throat again after a moment of reprieve and feels you instantly clench around his cock.

“f-fuck! you feel so good, ryland. so good to me, wan- want to c-cum,” you whine, your hands moving to reach out for him.

both of his hands move to your waist and he pulls out quickly, letting your legs fall.

you want to cry.

“what—” you begin to ask.

but he beats you to it, he flips you over so you’re bent over the bed.

he lines himself up, letting out a shudder as he pushes back inside you.

you moan louder than ever before as he hits the perfect spot inside of you.

your head falls into the mattress, cheek pressing into it as you arch your back and take it.

ryland moves to grab your wrists with one hand, holding them behind your back as he fucks into you mercilessly.

“still good, baby?” he asks, blissed out.

“y-yea, so good,” you whimper into the mattress.

finally, he finds your clit again, rubbing circles as his hips start to stutter.

you know he can’t cum until you praise him again, but you make him work for it.

he works you closer and closer to your orgasm as he’s hanging on by a thread.

he releases your wrists, moving to give your ass a gentle slap with the hand that had them pinned down. he’s urging you to say what he needs to hear.

you cave in just before you cum.

“good boy, ryland. so good for me, you make me feel so good,” you praise, chasing your own high now.

he lets out a guttural moan, his breathing picks up, the sound of deep gasping breaths fills the room.

he’s whimpering your name now as he works carefully on your clit, trying his best to get you there before he taps out and finishes.

“baby,” he whines pathetically, finally dropping his dominant facade.

you smirk, cheek still buried in the mattress.

“cum for me, be a good boy,” you finally say, voice completely wrecked as your orgasm tears though you.

“oh, ohhhh,” he wails, finally breaking and filling you to the brim with his cum.

you feel him pulse inside of you as he finishes. his spend runs down the back of your legs. his body nearly short circuits as he watches it drip.

at last, he collapses forward onto you, enveloping you in his strong arms.

he presses a kiss to your temple before picking you up and cradling you in his arms and taking you to the bathroom to clean up.

he sits you gently on the counter and turns on the sink.

after you both freshen up, you brush your teeth together, giggling the whole time.

eventually you fall asleep with your head on his chest, completely content and completely fucked out.

——————————

writing smut is getting a little easier, but it is still so hard. im trying my best, you guys. thanks for reading :3

You knew when you started dating Ryland that he was touch starved but nothing could’ve prepared you for how bad it actually was. He’s so sensitive everywhere. Even when you mean your touches in a purely non-sexual/romantic way he can’t help but melt into them. His neck, his arms, his back, all of it makes him twitch, and it only gets more profound when you’re having sex. God forbid you tug at his hair even a little bit and he’ll be whining into your neck or your mouth (or your cunt) uncontrollably.

Speaking of, he’s a Munch. Gets arguably more pleasure out of eating you out than he does when he fucks you because of how much you love it. And he’s good at it, too. Figured out exactly what you like and how you like it so he can give you a mind melding orgasm every time (or multiple times). Definitely definitely the type to tell you when he’s had enough of you, “just one more for me, please sweetheart. I know you can do it for me.”

(And his NOSEEE. His perfect, pointed nose is something he learns early on drives you crazyyy. Your legs over his shoulders while he’s eating you out and his pushing his beautiful nose into your clit over and over again with his tongue inside you makes you want to scream. He’s never been happier than when he realized your comments about his nose were not some elaborate joke about him and you were completely serious. I think I could write a whole seperate thing about Ryland's nose tbh)

LOVES a makeout session, anytime, anywhere. (This is me projecting onto him deal with it) any obstacle he has to overcome in life, big or small he tries to fix with a makeout. You had to miss a lunch date with him because of work? He’s making out with you as soon as you get home that day. He had to sit through a terrible staff meeting today? The second he sees you next he’s pulling you onto his lap, kissing you through a rant about how stupid the school board decisions are recently. You’re going out for a girls night instead on spending your joint day off with him? Mandatory 45 minute makeout with him before you start getting ready and potentially a secondary one once you’re dressed if he can catch you before you’ve done your lipstick. He doesn’t even care if it leads to sex afterwards, in a perfect world he gets to have his tongue inside your mouth basically at all times.

With a sigh and a wave of your hand, you gave Olivia the okay to answer the question. She happily took your permission and ran with it, always the first to answer any questions you posed in class. If only the rest of these damn middle schoolers were as eager as she was.

“Penelope didn’t want to marry anyone else, so she gave them an impossible task,”

“Why does she always know everything?”

Marcus thought his comment was whispered just low enough that you wouldn’t hear him in the first row, but he was never quite that lucky. He quickly shut his mouth and looked anywhere but in your direction the second he caught sight of the disapproving look you were casting directly at him.

“You are exactly right, Olivia. Thank you for answering my question,” there were a few chuckles in the room at the obvious sarcasm laced through your words, as you hopped up onto your desk to relax and get a better look around the room full of kids. “Penelope knew the only person that could string her husband’s bow, was her husband himself. She needed to buy time, especially when these suitors only really wanted to be the ones to inherit Ithaca-”

There was a loud knocking on the door to your classroom that had been left open for the last 20 minutes of class, interrupting your words. You weren’t surprised in the slightest to meet the eyes of none other than Ryland Grace, the science teacher.

“Uh- sorry! Didn’t mean to interrupt important book talk stuff. Super important, you uh-you never know when Shakespeare will come up at your future desk job,” the cringe that Ryland physically did at his own comment was easy to see, even from across the room. He gave you a sheepish smile, his glasses barely hanging onto his face from their unconventional spot hanging off of one of his ears. The blonde held up the brown bag in his hand, and you could practically smell the food that rested inside. “I’m early, I’m sorry. Didn’t think you’d want to have a cold burger for lunch.”

“I told you!” Marcus still didn’t understand the concept of a whisper, leaning over to his best friend Jason at the desk beside him, slapping him on the arm. “They’re totally dating!”

“As if Mr. Grace could pull her,”

There was a chorus of snickers and laughter through the class, any semblance of order you might’ve had descending into chaos as every single one of your loveable, little shits just kept casting looks between you and Ryland, who still stood awkwardly in your classroom doorway with reddened cheeks.

Your face was surely no better, you were sure you could feel the heat that was emanating off of your skin, as you ran a hand down the burning skin of your face and wondered why you chose to teach these little menaces for the rest of your life. The world decided to be kind to the pair of you though, for once, letting the lunch bell save you from any further embarrassment from a group of 13 year olds.

“Please come to class prepared to actually answer questions tomorrow!” you called out over the hustle and bustle of the class as they grabbed their things, eager to scurry off to their lunch hour and finally eat. “Your unit test is at the end of next week, and I would prefer not to fail all of you.”

They weren’t listening, but by this point in the day you were hungry and didn’t have the energy to try and argue with them.

Any of that tiredness they brought to your bones? It disappeared the second you watched the way they all interacted with Ryland on their way out the door.

Big smiles, every single one of them excited to see the school’s favorite science teacher lingering in the doorway to their English class. You could just barely hear the tail end of one of Ryland’s terrible science puns, something about a hungry planet needing a ‘light snack’ that got a groan out of Marcus. All it did was bring a soft smile to your face, though, one that somehow softened even more at the quick, secret handshake Olivia shared with him before she was out the door.

Then, it was just the two of you, smiling like idiots as you locked eyes across the room again. And god, did you want that fluttering group of butterflies in your stomach to calm down for just a moment.

Having a crush on Dr. Ryland Grace, the former molecular biologist turned San Francisco middle school science teacher, was inevitable from the moment you turned up at the school for your first day over a year ago. Incredibly smart, amazing with kids, and so incredibly handsome you thought your heart stopped beating the first time you saw him–hell, Mrs. Doyle, the math teacher for over 5 years, said there were at least 4 other young teachers that absolutely had crushes on this man. You were far from the first.

He broke that perfect vision of himself you were building in your head within 5 minutes of meeting, tripping over his own two feet and knocking the stack of papers a mile high from the Principal’s hands, but you had only found it even more endearing.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he apologized again, long legs striding across the room and reaching your desk in a matter of seconds. “I had a free period before this, a-and you mentioned this morning you forgot lunch so I grabbed some for both of us-”

“Sal’s?” you questioned, pointing to the bag of foot now sitting on your desk with the familiar logo. “They’re, like, 10 blocks away. Why’d you go that far?”

“Because I know they’re your favorite,”

The flare of heat in your cheeks was instant. Ryland Grace, who rode a damn bike to the school every day, used his free period to ride 10 blocks away and pick you up lunch from your favorite spot, all because you mentioned offhandedly at 7 a.m. about forgetting your lunch for the day.

Well, he certainly didn’t do that for the four fresh out of college teachers that had crushes on him. You’d mentally consider that a hefty win in your book.

“How sweet of you to remember,” Ryland simply waved you off, head turned away as he passed your wrapped burger into your hands, taking up space on your desk chair while you stayed comfortable on top of your desk. “You even remembered tomatoes this time!”

“I forgot them one time and I never hear the end of it,” laughter was shared between you both for a moment as Grace took a bite of his own burger. “I caught the tail end of that discussion. Olivia answering all your questions like a champ?”

“Isn’t she always,” you shot back with another laugh, turning slightly on your desk to better face him. “I swear she’s the only one that I can ever get to answer any of my questions. She might be the only one that does any of my assigned readings.”

“To be fair, can you blame her?” Ryland’s words were muffled slightly by the food in his mouth. You couldn’t even contain the slight smile that grew as he managed to just barely catch the ketchup dripping off his burger before it could smear itself on the stack of papers that needed graded at your desk. “Shakespeare was just…so interesting. Couldn’t get enough of his stuff. Don’t know why your kids don’t want to read it.”

There was silence for a moment, your eyebrow quirked in his direction. The blonde stopped mid bite of his burger, looking back at you quizzically, trying to figure out what he had said wrong.

“You know we’re currently learning The Odyssey, right?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll let you think about that for a second,”

He did, just slowly blinking in your direction. He glanced at the chalkboard behind you, covering in little notes you’d made throughout the class discussion, before they flickered to the copy of the book that sat on your desk. That was finally when you saw the light bulb flicker on above his head, Ryland’s eyes shutting as he let out a loud sigh.

“...that wasn’t written by Shakespeare, was it?”

The laughter that bubbled out of you practically had you throwing your head backward.

“No, but I’m sure Homer won’t be too offended,” feet landing on the ground as you hopped off your desk, you gave Ryland’s shoulder a quick squeeze as you moved past him. “The attempt was cute, though, it was a good try.”

Cute. Why in the world did you let that one slip? You were practically cursing yourself in your head for that one, taking another bite of your burger as you worked to erase the whiteboard to prepare it for your next class. You didn’t dare steal a glance over at Ryland, in fear that your little slip-up was going to ruin everything.

There was only quiet for a moment before the single moment of awkwardness was gone.

“I promise you I know Homer wrote that. I swear!”

The desperation to believe him drew another laugh out of you. Sparing a glance in his direction, Ryland was giving you his best, exaggerated puppy dog eyes, begging you to believe him, as a smile just barely squeaked its way onto his lips.

“Right, of course you did. My mistake. Whatever you say, Ryland-”

“I mean it!” It was his turn to laugh this time, a sound that had those butterflies rattling around once more. “I was just…distracted.”

“Uh-huh, distracted,” as if you were preparing to scold one of your students, you turned to face him fully with a hand on your hip, eyebrow raised expectantly. “By what, exactly?”

If a human being could buffer, Ryland Grace always seemed to be constantly buffering. Your eyebrow remained raised, waiting for him to piece together his response. All he could do was open and close his mouth like a fish, before looking away and taking another bite of his food.

“Nevermind that, just finish your food before it gets cold. I did bike, like, three miles to get that thing,”

With a roll of your eyes that held zero malice what-so-ever, you made sure the blonde could see your next bite of your food, a satisfied smile on his face.

“Back to the previous topic,” you steered the conversation in another direction, wiping off the last bits of chalk on the board and writing down your next period at the top so that you could start the discussion on the reading over again. “I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get some of these kids to just read the content. They all pay attention in your class!”

“I heard Jason make a comment yesterday during class that Marcus has a crush on Olivia. Maybe they’re too distracted to read,”

You shot him a skeptical look.

“Marcus, crushing on Olivia? He was just making fun of her before you came in the room,”

Ryland averted his eyes, suddenly very interested in his ID badge hanging around his neck from his school issues lanyard.

“W-well, maybe he just doesn’t…know how to express his feelings,” he spared a glance up at you, seeing you were still watching, as he tripped over his words again. “It can be hard for boys–and men–of all ages, to…tell someone how they feel.”

“Well, I don’t know where he’s learning from, but making fun of the girl you like isn’t the right way to go about things,” you shot back.

“Then teach them!” Ryland sounded absolutely ecstatic, that light bulb over his head going off again as he looked like he’d come up with the world’s greatest idea. “Classic literature, there’s plenty of great love stories in there. Get his interest by teaching them about that, so he can learn from them.”

“Alright, give me an example then, Mr. Suddenly an Expert in Classic Literature,”

“Romeo and Juliet,” he said like it was the easiest thing in the world, balling up the remnants of his finished food and tossing it in the bag it came in. “Greatest love story ever told, so great Taylor Swift wrote a song about them.”

“Except they don’t run off and get married and live happily ever after, Ryland. Romeo thinks she is dead and kills himself with poison, and when Juliet realizes he’s dead she stabs herself,”

Ryland’s excitement fell slightly, his mouth forming a little ‘o’ shape.

“...oh,”

“Don’t think that’s what I want to teach young, impressionable pre-teens about love-”

“Daisy and Gatsby, then! He loved her so much he stood on that dock staring at the-the bright yellow light of a stoplight for her,”

“It was a green light and it was the dock light, first of all. I’m not even sure how you could be that off. Secondly, Gatsby is murdered at the end of the book and Daisy doesn’t even attend the funeral, she and Tom move away and pretend it never happened,”

Ryland’s eyes are shut at this point, his fingers massaging his temples and those glasses just barely hanging on from their place around his neck.

“...does anyone not die in these old books?”

The sound of your laughter permeates the room and you sweep over, collecting his trash and combining it with yours. You never even spared him a glance, though you could feel his eyes on you, as you swept the trash away with you to the other side of the room, his voice echoing across to you.

“I’m going to get lucky on one of these guesses!”

What Ryland Grace was really lucky about was how adorable you found him, and how head over heels you were for him, because his lack of literary knowledge was astounding.

❤︎

“I’m sorry, you’re trying to tell me that aren’t currently fucking the eye candy that is the science teacher in room 305?”

“Evelyn!”

Evelyn Doyle was in her late thirties, married since she was 18, and already had three kids with her high school sweetheart. Since you had transferred into Grover Cleveland Middle, you’d become fast friends and she had become a great mentor.

She had, sadly, caught onto your pathetic crush on Ryland Grace before you had even fully realized it, and was now ‘vicariously living through you’ as she always said.

“There’s not a single child left in this entire school right now,” she shot back, gesturing around her empty classroom, as she finished cleaning up anything her students had left around at the end of the day. You rolled your eyes at her excuse, perched on the edge of her desk. “Please, I’m tenured, what are they going to do?”

“I’m more so yelling at you for butting into my love life, once again,” was your reply through laughter. “Ryland and I are good friends, that’s it.”

It was her turn to laugh, finishing up her cleanup around the room before she joined you at her desk, packing her things away into her shoulder bag.

“Oh please, you keep denying that little crush of yours-”

“I never said I was denying that,” you cut her off. “Lord, you realized I liked him before I even did. But he and I aren’t anything besides friends. I’m not lying.”

Your pleas fell on deaf ears, like they typically did when you were around Evelyn. She simply waved your statement off, tossing her bag over her shoulder as you followed her out of her room and down through the quiet of the school hallway. The quietest the hallway ever was, in the hours right after students were sent home for the day. You’d rather be anywhere else, preferably at home, but these mandatory once-a-month staff meetings were unavoidable.

“Whether you’re telling me the truth or not, you have to understand why everyone thinks so–teachers AND students. I think even some parents think so!” The only response she got was an eyeroll, her shoulder bumping into your’s playfully. “He brings you lunch at least once a week, meaning he rides that dingy bike to get whatever you’re craving that day.”

“It’s usually just something random-”

“Constantly in your classroom, or vice versa,” she cut you off, and you quickly realized you weren’t getting a single word into this conversation. “I’m pretty sure Principal Marshall has considered, somehow, moving your classroom closer to his just so he’ll stop being late to classes because he’s busy talking to you.”

Okay…yeah, you didn’t have a retort for that one. Your classroom was on the opposite end of the school building from Ryland’s own, and yet every time he had even a split second he was somehow always leaning in your doorway. Even if it only resulted in a conversation that lasted all of a minute.

Many times those ended with your students having to remind him that the bell rang and he definitely had students in his own class unattended, waiting on their teacher. More than once he’d slipped as he tried to sprint back to his classroom from yours. It didn’t matter how short those little conversations were, though, because every second around him was precious to you.

“Awe, look at you blushing about it-”

You slapped Evelyn’s hand away, throwing her a look of disdain that didn’t really hold any true malice to it.

“Look, all I’m saying is the ball is in his court,” was the response you finally settled on as Evelyn propped the door of the small auditorium open for you to enter. “Ryland is nothing but friendly to me, so if he’s interested then he’s got to show me.”

“You’re acting as if you’ve made your own feelings clear, honey,”

“No, but I clearly don’t do a good enough job of hiding them,”

Speak of the devil: there he was. Ryland’s head shot up the moment the pair of you walked into the auditorium. Those damn glasses hanging down from one side of his face, framing his stubbled jawline perfectly. A smile lighting up his face the second those blue eyes found yours, gesturing to the empty seat beside him.

A packed auditorium, as you and Evelyn were the last ones there. Every seat up practically filled, and yet Ryland Grace sat among a crowd of people, eyes trained on you and a single seat saved for you amidst it all.

All you could feel was the heat in your cheeks, and the touch of Evelyn patting your back as she laughed, voice low but loud enough to hear as she shifted past you to find a seat of her own.

“Doesn’t have interest in you my ass,”

Her words swam through your head with every apology you muttered to the other teachers as you snuck past them in the cramped rows, happily taking the empty seat beside Ryland.

“You didn’t have to save me a seat, you know,” your voice held a hint of teasing to it, but it was soft. Filled with an adoration that you knew you were terrible at hiding. Luckily, Ryland was terrible at picking up on it.

“Wanted to sit next to you,” he whispered back as Principal Marshall began to drone on about updates neither of you particularly cared about. He leaned in close, a hint of his breath wafting over the shell of your ear as he spoke. “You make these slightly less boring.”

Close proximity to this man was your worst nightmare, and the cramped auditorium wasn’t helping. That single touch of his breath against your skin was enough to send a simultaneous shiver down your spine and another round of heat to your cheeks. His suit jacket covered arm rested on the shared armrest between your seats, the edge of his bicep ghosting against the bare skin of your arm with every little shift he made, tapping incessantly against the armrest.

The slight action made you smile. He never could sit still in these meetings, always hated them.

“Did anything fun happen in class today?” you kept your voice low, eyes trained on the principal, as your head tilted slightly over to Ryland so he could better hear you.

“Uh, if you count Madison telling me that she thinks the sun orbits the earth, then sure,” you had to stifle your laugh at that, casting Ryland a side glance as he grinned at you, doing a terrible job of whispering back at you as usual.

“How could she possibly think that?”

“You’d be surprised,” Ryland leaned just a tad bit closer, the side of his arm pushed up fully against your own. You could almost hear the smile in his voice without even having to look over at him. “The National Science Foundation estimates that 26% of Americans still think the sun orbits the earth.”

“Jesus, that many?”

“Well, 100% of them are stupid, so,”

Nasty looks from other faculty were shot your way that second you choked on your own breath, slapping a hand over your mouth in an attempt to stop yourself from breaking out into uncontrollable laughter. You gave them the most sympathetic look you possibly could, learning how to breathe normally again before mouthing sorry at them all.

Ryland didn’t care in the slightest for the warning look you shot him, a bright smile on his face as his eyes seemed to trail over every inch of your face.

“If you keep doing this in every faculty meeting, they’re going to separate us, Ry,”

“I met Madison’s parents for the first time last month for parent-teacher conferences,” he continued, ignoring your plea. Instead, he leaned in even closer, eyes locked on yours, and god it was impossible to look away. “They are, 100%, undeniably, part of the Flat Earth Truthers Club.”

You shook your head, a smile creeping back up on your lips. Ryland’s gaze could still be felt on the side of your face as you turned back to face the front, eyes focused back on the principal again in an attempt to pay attention to the meeting.

“Flat earthers are ridiculous. They’re just scared of science,”

“Well, you know what they say…the only thing they have to fear is sphere itself,”

There simply wasn’t enough time to clap your hand over your mouth and conceal your laughter, a split second of it breaking through the quiet of the auditorium. And Ryland? His smile was somehow even brighter than it was before, still locked onto your face, never having strayed once.

“Dr. Grace, is there something you feel needs to be shared with the rest of your fellow faculty?”

Principal Marshall’s voice was enough to knock Ryland out of whatever trance he seemed to have put himself in. Eyes wide as if he’d just seen a ghost, hands barely able to catch his glasses as they almost fell right off of his ear where they dangled, a burst of red spread through his cheeks instantly as his deer-like eyes locked onto the unamused principal.

“I-I uh, no. No, nothing, Principal Marshall,” he scratched at the back of his head, ruffling up his already messy hair, a nervous tick you’d picked up since the moment you’d met him. You simply buried your head in your head, eyes trained on your shoes and Ryland out of the corner of your gaze, terrified to look up at your fellow faculty that you’d already apologized to once. “Just getting super jazzed about faculty updates. Hard to keep it in here. I’m like a mushroom, getting all…hyphae…”

A collective groan sounded through the auditorium at the terrible biology pun that rolled off of him with ease. All you could do was smile into the palm of your hand.

“Please just…pay attention to the meeting, Dr. Grace, before I separate you and your other half,”

Other half. That’s not how she meant it, but it was impossible not to let your mind wander to the idea.

Early mornings. Coffee, the smell of eggs and toast burning in the kitchen. Ryland and his hair that was surely even more unkempt that early in the day. The guarantee that he definitely had about 120 science puns ready to go at any moment.

Late nights. Curled up on a couch. A movie, a shared blanket, warm in the embrace of his arms. The quiet of just being with someone that made you happy in ways you’d never felt before. The promise of another day with them on the horizon.

It was becoming increasingly harder not to think about Ryland Grace like that every day, of what a life with the awkward, endearing science teacher could be.

And as Principal Marshall continued her meeting, and your eyes met the blue ones that were already looking at you: soft, kind, a hint of something you couldn’t understand in them, you could only dream he thought the same thoughts when he looked at you.

❤︎

“Alright, who can tell me the day of the first human space flight?”

Not a single middle schooler, packed into the building’s planetarium, raised their hands at first. Many of them started whispering to each other, confused looks on their faces, but Ryland just waited with a smile on his face. A brave soldier from Mr. Harkin’s class, Damien, finally raised his hand.

“Uh, Mr. Grace? Wouldn’t that…be today?”

“Excatly!” Grace’s clap echoed through the room as he pointed toward the young kid sitting in the front row of seats. “International Day of Human Space Flight, commemorating the first human space flight by Yuri Gagarin. It was a trick question, and you passed my tiny friend.”

Were you excited about losing a chunk of your day to escorting your class to the planetarium, along with other classes in the building, for a special science presentation? Absolutely not, especially not with how terribly your class did on their last The Odyssey assignment.

When you found out that Ryland was giving the presentation during your allotted time? Suddenly, The Odyssey meant nothing to you. Not when you could watch Ryland teach, something he did so effortlessly.

The way he captured every single child’s attention with ease. That glowing smile on his face every time they answered a question right, and simply the way he seemed to love what he taught. You were captivated every time you got the chance to see him teaching the thing he loved so much.

“Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet cosmonaut who became the first person in space in 1961 aboard the Vostok 1,” the planetarium was lit up with the night sky, little stars reflecting down. You could almost see them in the students eyes, in their bright smiles as they looked up into the vastness of space. Your eyes trailed to Ryland, already looking at you with a soft smile of his own, before he cleared his throat and moved throughout the room, focusing back on the kids. “Over the course of 89 minutes, his ship traveled to a maximum altitude of 187 miles, as it orbited the Earth.”

“Wait, so we weren’t the first people in space?” one of your students, Lydia, called out. Ryland laughed, pointing over at her.

“No, we kind of sucked,” you rolled your eyes with a grin at Ryland’s statement, though it drew a laugh from all of the kids. “No, America had actually scheduled its first space flight for May 1961, so this was a huge blow to us. It really heated up the space race.”

“He really is good with them, isn’t he?”

Glancing over, Mr. Harkin had saddled up beside you on the edge of the room, head tilted toward you and voice low so as to not disrupt the lesson the kids were being taught. Your gaze drifted back to Ryland as he continued his lesson, eliciting more laughter from the kids. It only brought another soft smile to rest on your lips.

“He is, in a way that I just don’t understand,”

Those blue eyes you’d become so fond of met yours for a moment across the room, face illuminated by the light projecting onto the planetarium’s dome walls. The little grin he wore seemed to drop just slightly, gaze still locked on you but flickering every moment over to Mr. Harkin as he spoke to the students. Harkin’s elbow dug lightly into your side.

“Careful, you’re giving him major ‘heart eyes’ across the room right now,”

You did your best to conceal your laughter, shooting Harkin a look, Ryland’s gaze still felt on the side of your face even as you looked away.

“Why do I feel like I’m about to find out that every teacher in this school has a secret betting ring going on when it comes to Ryland and I?”

“I mean, it’s not a secret. Principal Marshall runs the damn thing,”

“Mr. Grace?” one of the youngest girls in the grade, Aurora, called out, raising her hand up to get Ryland’s attention. “My mom told me the other day that there’s 8 planets in our solar system. What happened to Pluto?”

Ryland went to answer when Mr. Harkin beside you laughed, capturing the attention of everyone in the room, as he shook his head at his young student.

“No, honey, scientists a couple years ago decided that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore,”

Your eyes flickered to Ryland, who was already staring at Harkin from across the room as he tossed his little crochet earth back and forth in his hand. His response was a bit of a forced laugh.

“Well, your teacher isn’t wrong. Scientists classified Pluto as a dwarf planet a couple years ago,” he explained to the kids, eyes trained on the little crochet sphere in his hands. “But there’s 8 other very important, even closer planets that we should focus on. I mean, who really cares about a tiny, slow planet that takes 248 years to orbit the sun–honestly, he should just accept that he’s slowly falling into obscurity and stop trying to steal the spotlight.”

The room got quiet. Your eyebrow raised slightly, head tilted, as everyone just seemed to stare at Ryland, who had yet to look up.

“Uh, Mr. Grace?” some student in the back called out. “Why did you call Pluto ‘he’? Are the planets boys and girls like us, too?”

Ryland’s head shot up, as if he suddenly remembered he was in a room full of students. His eyes shot to you, his mouth opening, then closing, before he quickly looked away.

“I–well…planets don’t really…I’m not trying to misgender the planets, you know? That’s not for me to decide, that’s for them to–you know what, does anyone else have any other questions that aren’t related to Pluto?”

You really didn’t want to laugh at Ryland, but only he would be able to accidentally turn a lesson about space and planets into almost a lesson on bodily autonomy. He caught your eye, his widening just slightly and you could almost see his cry for help written across his face, but it only made your laughter worse.

It was little Madison that raised her hand next, speaking before she’d even been called upon.

“Are you sure the Earth isn’t the center of the universe?”

Ryland hung his head in shame, the shaking of his head evident from across the room as a few of the kids around laughed at the young girl’s comment. You were quick to shoot them a warning look, not keen to hand out any detentions today.

By the time your gaze turned back to Ryland, he was already looking at you. His gaze flickered to Harkin, then back to you, and it was like a light bulb had just flickered on the way his eyes lit up.

“Yes, Madison, I’m sure the Earth isn’t the center of the universe. And I can show you,” his long legs crossed the room in seconds, his body sliding between you and Mr. Harkin as his hands landed on your shoulders with a tiny little squeeze that sent your heart leaping through your chest. “But to do that, I’m going to need this volunteer that I’m not quite giving a choice.”

“It’s not volunteering if you didn’t ask, Ry!”

You exasperatedly tried to whisper to Ryland as he steered you across the room to stand before all the kids. He only shook his head as a bunch of your own students started cheering for you around the room, only worsening the red that coated your cheeks the second his hands had landed on your body.

“I need you for this,” he shot back hastily, positioning you in the middle of the room, standing in front of you. His body blocked the students from your vision, blue eyes boring down into yours, hands gently squeezing at your upper arms as you begged the blush in your skin to not be too obvious. “You trust me?”

A ridiculous question, because the only answer was yes. You gave him a nod, and Ryland’s smile only widened as he turned back to the kids in the room.

“Alright, kids. Your gorgeous teacher here is the Sun,”

Little oohs and awes sounded from the kids around the room at Ryland’s little slip in of the word ‘gorgeous.’ There was a sting in your bottom lip as you bit into it with your teeth, trying to contain your own smile. Marcus spoke up from across the room without raising his hand, as usual.

“Then what’s Mr. Harkin?”

“Oh, he’s Pluto,” Ryland shot back immediately, nodding his head. “Suits him.”

Laughter rang through the room, the young boys as rambunctious as ever. Ryland met your astonished look with a tiny wink of his own, one that forced a small laugh to tumble from your lips. Then, he began to slowly spin, walking around you in a circle.

“And I am the Earth,” he called out to the kids, and you could only hope he didn’t trip over his own two shoelaces. “The Sun holds 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, which means it’s packing some massive gravity.”

Ryland stopped spinning himself, still moving around you in a circle. He held his hand out toward you, and you slipped yours into it without hesitation, spinning in that circle slowly with him.

“Because the Sun holds such intense gravity, it’s actually pulling Earth into it. But, Earth has such high forward velocity that it actually keeps us moving sideways. Put these two together, and it keeps Earth moving in an almost perfect circle around the sun. Can anyone tell me another fun fact about our movement around the sun?”

The words went in one of your ears and straight out the other. There was no paying attention, not when Ryland’s hand held your own. Soft skin, just slightly rough around the edges, and those blue eyes were so soft, locked onto you as if there was nowhere else he wanted to look.

“Our speed changes!” Olivia called out from somewhere in the back, but you didn’t even try to look and find her. “When we’re closer to the sun in our orbit we move faster, and the further away we are, the slower we move.”

“Very good, Olivia!” Ryland called out, sparing just a quick glance over to the kids in the room as his hand held yours tighter, still spinning slowly together. “Madison, we also know this works because there’s other sun-like stars out there that are also orbited by planets. Like Tau Ceti, which has four Earth-like planets orbiting it.”

“Is the sun important for other things, besides just being the center?”

Ryland’s eyes flickered to you, and you watched as he paused. The slight hesitation on his face, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple for a moment, before those blue eyes locked onto yours and refused to look away.

“I-It is…for a lot of reasons. The Sun is the Earth’s entire reason for existing. The Sun gives the Earth life. The Sun is the reason the world is beautiful,”

Your breath hitched, eyes still trained on Ryland. There was something in his words, something in that earnest, raw look that he had written across his features as he looked at you that added a weight to his words. A weight that sent a tiny chill across your skin, raising the hair on your arms.

“Without the Sun…the Earth would be nothing,”

There was quiet across the room. Then, a couple snickers, followed by Olivia’s smug little voice.

“The Sun sounds beautiful the way you talk about it,”

“She is,” his voice was lower, softer than it was before. Until, he seemed to realize what he said, the red on both of your faces spreading further than before as his eyes shot wide. “THE SUN I mean! I-I’m talking about the sun, obviously, b-because this is a science presentation!”

Laughter rang through the room, little chants of your names mashed together coming from some of the kids as the bell rang and saved either of you from further embarrassment.

Ryland, being Ryland, chose that moment to finally trip over his own two feet. You pulled on his hand as hard as you could, saving him from plummeting to the ground as he instead just landed on his one knee.

“Make good choices,” Ryland commented lowly as some of the kids walked past the two of you, still snickering and giggling to themselves. You let go of his hands finally, simply resting it on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze. “Don’t uh, I don’t know, blow up the world during lunch or anything. Or pop those chip bags and give kids heart attacks, whatever you kids do these days.”

You laughed, stepping around Ryland as your kids lined up outside of the room, waiting for you. He shot you a sheepish smile from the floor, and your skin still burned with heat at the memory of his words as you looked at him.

“Every time I think you’re doing well with those kids, they manage to knock you down a peg,”

“Yeah, well, what’s new?”

When you met your class outside, you didn’t let them get a word in before you warned them not to say anything. You could still hear little comments talking about ‘shipping’ their English and Science teachers the entire way back to your classroom.

❤︎

Ryland Grace didn’t understand how he had ended up here.

Well, he did. Calling the leading scholar in his field a “staggering waste of carbon” at a UNESCO conference in Denmark was an easy way to get blacklisted from the field he’d studied in for many years in college. It was an easy explanation for how he ended up teaching middle school science at Grover Cleveland Middle in San Francisco.

Not that he had a problem with teaching! He actually loved it. Loved his kids, loved talking about science. He loved teaching the future little scientists of the world about why every facet of science was awesome. The pay wasn’t great, though.

Especially when it was the reason he rode a bike to school daily.

And there was currently the equivalent of a monsoon raining down from the sky onto the pavement, the reason he’d been standing at the front doors for the last 20 minutes hoping that the rain would simply let up. The heavens didn’t take pity on him, though, and it only rained harder and harder. His rain coat and bike were not meant to withstand heavy rain and damaging winds to this extent. 

Best cast scenario? It takes him a little longer to get home on his usual 20 minute bike ride than normal. Worst case? He crashes and dies, dead in a ditch covered in mud.

“Ryland, please tell me you aren’t thinking of riding your bike home in this?”

Then there was you. You were probably the single greatest reason why he loved teaching at Grover Cleveland Middle. If he ever had the unfortunate chance to meet that scientist from the conference again, he’d thank him this time for being a staggering waste of carbon, because it led him down a path to you.

“I can’t be that bad,” he tried to joke, waving you off as a crack of thunder seemed to shake the entire building, and his fake confidence faltered for a second. He glanced back at you, coat wrapped around your bag instead of yourself in order to keep its contents dry. “Just, you know…the slight threat of bodily harm.”

He really wished the path that led to you was less bumpy and full of himself looking like an idiot, but at this rate he’d take what he could get from the universe.

“Yeah, absolutely not,” was your immediate reply, head shaking as she fished your car keys out of the bag still covered with your coat. “I’m giving you a ride home, can’t risk the best science teacher’s life over a dumb storm.”

Ryland immediately shook his head, turning to face you beside him. He was not letting you risk your own life in the storm for him. If it really came down to it, he’d sleep at his desk. There was a change of clothes he kept in the bottom drawer, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to do it.

“I can’t let you-”

“This isn’t up for discussion,” Ryland snapped his mouth shut as you cut in once again, dangling your car keys up in front of him with a little shake. “I…care about you, okay? I want to know you are home safe.”

There was no stopping the immediate heat that filled Ryland’s cheeks, and he knew it. There was red blooming across your own, but Ryland shook all wishful thinking from his mind. The AC unit in this school was unreliable, you were definitely just flushed from the heat. No other reason.

Ryland decided he wasn’t going to put up a fight at this point, but he wasn’t going to let you do this without anything in return. He shrugged the yellow raincoat hanging over his own shoulders off as he kicked the glass door in front of him open, the muffle sounds of the torrential downpour now louder as droplets of water splashed into the front door. He held the jacket out, hanging it above your head to protect you from the rain.

“At least let me save you from getting drenched,”

“You’re going to look like a dog that just had a bath by the time we reach my car,” Ryland only smiled at your joke, and the little giggle that fell through your lips. The close proximity didn’t help as he held the jacket up around you.

“Actually, it’s not windy today,” he shot back with a grin, nodding out the propped open door into the rain. “That means if we run, I’ll be drier than if we walked, because the rain that’s hitting us from above is proportional to time. Though, the rain hitting us from the front is proportional to distance, and when running-”

“Ryland Grace, you are adorable when you get all science-nerd, but if we’re going to run…we should run,”

Ryland was thankful that you couldn’t see the renewed heat flooding his cheeks, as you were both too busy sprinting through the torrential downpour to the staff parking lot.

Being a gentleman (who was head over heels in love with you and too terrified to say a damn thing) was thrown out the window with how fast you were booking it to your car, the idea of shielding you from the rain with his jacket abandoned after just a moment booking it across the lot. He could feel the coolness of the water settling against his skin as it soaked through every layer of clothing he had, every few seconds having to furiously wipe at his glasses in hopes of seeing through them.

None of it really mattered in the end, not when he heard your laugh. The little shrieks of laughter as a particularly big drop happened to fall right in your eyes. Or the laughter as Ryland managed–in his signature fashion–to slip on the final step into the parking lot, and you had to double back in laughter to help haul him to his feet.

He’s spring clumsily through the rain a thousand more times if he got to see you smile like that. And that is why his kids always told him that he was definitely ‘whipped’ for you. Whatever that meant.

The second you had both jumped into your respective seats of your vehicle, doors slamming shut, there was only a moment of silence between the both of you. Ryland felt like his chest was going to explode, remembering why he always hated gym class, his heavy breathing mixed with yours as you both caught your breath, before you locked eyes over the center console.

Then the laughter resumed.

He held his hand to his stomach, feeling an ache settling in as he couldn’t stop his own laughter. Your’s grew slightly louder in his ear as you leaned over, trying to help him wipe at his glasses that were still covered.

“I was right, you look like a wet dog,”

Ryland’s only response was to shake his soaking wet hair like one, a simple reaction that earned yet another shriek of laughter from you and a light slap to his shoulder. You muttered something unintelligible under your breath, but Ryland found himself unable to tear his gaze away from your lips as you started the car and began to pull out of the staff lot. How soft they looked, the way the little beads of water running down your cheeks fell over them.

Whipped. He still didn’t get it, but he agreed wholeheartedly with his kids at this point.

There was no driving fast in this rain, especially when the windshield wipers were moving at their highest programmed speed and it still wasn’t enough. It was quiet in the car for just a moment as you pulled out of the parking lot, but Ryland broke it the second your phone had connected to the car’s bluetooth, music filling the space between him and you.

Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.

“Frank Sinatra,” Ryland couldn’t help the growing smile on his lips as the familiar song flooded through the car speakers. He kept his eyes trained on the side of your face, watching the little smile grow on your own lips, eyes focused on the road conditions in front of you. “Old books and old music. Didn’t know you had such an old soul.”

“You calling me old, Ryland?”

“N-no!” Ryland immediately back track, hands flying up and shaking back and forth as his eyes went wide. “I might say some stupid stuff some–okay, most of the time–but I know better than to comment on a woman’s age.”

“I’m just teasing you,” he could thankfully hear the sincerity mixed in with the teasing lit to your voice. “But yes, I do enjoy some old music. Always been a big fan of Sinatra, especially this one.”

“It’s a nice song…just not scientifically accurate,” he caught the side eye that you threw his way for just a moment, another crack of thunder banging across the sky and almost shaking the car. Ryland couldn’t help but jump slightly. “Jupiter only has a 3.13° tilt to its axis, so it doesn’t experience seasons like we do. Mar’s would, though, because its axis is tilted at 25°, only 1.5° more than our own tilt…”

Ryland trailed off as the car rolled to a stop at a red light, and he caught you fully facing him this time with a bemused expression written across your face. His smile dropped just slightly as he let out a sheepish laugh, adjusting his glasses as they slid back down the wet bridge of his nose.

“...I went full science-nerd again, didn’t I?”

Your laughter drowned out the rain beating against the roof of the car as your attention returned to the road once more.

“You always do, but I happen to enjoy it very much,”

If only teaching paid more, because the commute to Ryland’s apartment was a lot shorter than his bike ride home every day from work. 

Parked in an open space across the road from the dimly lit apartment building, Ryland Grace hesitated with his hand on the handle of the door. His eyes swept out over the area around the vehicle, still being hounded with rain. The top of his road looked like the beginning of a river, the way the water was rushing down the small incline to pool at the bottom.

“Thanks…for this,” he gestured toward the weather right outside the card.

You moved to respond to him, when the weather alert on your phone propped up on your dashboard sounded out. Ryland could just barely make out the headline: FLASH FLOOD WARNING.

The roads were far too dangerous, and Ryland already knew from various conversations that you lived on the opposite end of town from him.

He…could ask you to stay for the night. Just for safety reasons, obviously! He was quickly trying to work through the pros and cons list in his head.

Pros: his only friend that just so happened to be the woman he’s been head over heels in love with for the last year would be safe and not driving in this storm.

Cons: his only friend that just so happened to be the woman he’s been head over heels in love with for the last year would be inside his tiny little apartment that looked like it had been hit by a separate hurricane than the one it felt like they were currently suffering through.

“I should probably get home-”

“Stay,” Ryland cut in, quickly continuing his words after his vague statement. “I-It’s just, the roads are bad, and you live on the other side of town. This storm is just going to get worse, and I-I’d hate to know something happened to you.”

You hesitated, he could tell, shaking your head.

“Ryland, I couldn’t ask you to let me stay,”

He hesitated himself for a moment, every feeling he’d kept bottled up for a year now threatening to escape past his lips. Instead, he settled on echoing your own words.

“I…I care about you. I want to know you’re safe,”

Moments later, he had his rain coat draped over your head as he rushed you inside his apartment to shelter from the storm.

Ryland’s hands shook the entire time as he put his key into his front door’s lock. The last time he had guests over…was never. His apartment was built and designed for him and his brain, scattered with notes and books and piles of arts and crafts that he worked on in order to decorate his classroom. It was not meant for visitors, especially not ones as pretty as you.

“Don’t, uh, mind the mess,” he mumbled, holding the door open and motioning after you, allowing you to take a step inside his apartment as he let out the small breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

Chucking off his sneakers, little puddles of water forming below them on the ground, his jacket found its way into a pile with them. Ryland wiped his hands nervously against the thighs of his jeans, the action doing nothing against the soaking went material, as he watched you take in his apartment.

The apartment that looked like it had been ransacked, at least partially. Stacks of books relating to a thousand different topics were stacked on the ground by the tv stand, on top of the coffee table along with the coffee cup he’d abandoned there early in the morning in a haste to get to the school, and and by his desk that had a stack of papers scattered around it after her strewn them about in order to find one specific slip of paper at 11 p.m.

It was a mess, and Ryland regretted everything.

“It’s not messy, it’s homey,” your reply sent a burst of heat through his skin as you turned to him with a bright smile, leaving your own bag and coat by his pile of wet items before gesturing to your own soaking wet clothing. “Do you maybe have something a little less…wet?”

He scurried away into his bedroom, trying to ignore that little section of his brain that took your comment in a MUCH different way.

His bedroom was worse. Ryland wasn’t letting you sleep on the couch, but he surely wasn’t letting you see his room in a state like this.

Clothing was thrown across the room and Ryland quickly ran about, shoving piles of clothing away into corners where he was certain you wouldn’t be able to see any of it. Throwing it into his closet and slamming the door before it could fall out, pushing it down in his laundry basket, kicking it under his bed so it was out of sight and out of mind, whatever he could think of.

“Great idea, Ryland,” he muttered to himself, pulling on a dry pair of sweatpants and a tshirt for himself, trying to shake the remaining water out of his hair as he rummaged for something you could wear. “Almost get the woman you’re in love with killed by letting her drive you home in a monsoon. Invite her to stay the night in your apartment that makes you look like an even bigger loser than you are. Amazing idea. A doctorate in molecular biology and this is the best you can do.”

You were waiting by the couch in his living room, just glancing around at everything with a smile, when he reappeared. Sheepishly, he handed the folded clothing over to you, hand running through his soaking wet hair as he pointed down the hall.

“You can take my bed for the night. Uh, just leave your clothes in the bathroom, I can throw them in the dryer in a bit. I can scrounge up something to eat in the meantime,”

“Thanks, Ry,” your hand reached out, squeezing his upper arm lightly, and he felt the heat in his skin instantly bloom under your touch. “For all of this.”

If it wasn’t for the giant crack of thunder that flickered the lights of the building for a moment and made Ryland jump out of his skin, he would’ve forgotten how to breathe again.

He rummaged through every part of his kitchen, desperately trying to find something that he could make the two of you to eat that also wouldn’t make him seem pathetic. All he could come up with…was a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly.

Yesterday. He’d stayed late after the end of the day to help in tutoring. He forgot to go grocery shopping. Ryland let out a sigh at his realization, back to his fridge door and head banging back against the stainless steel, hand running down his face and dragging against his skin as his glasses were knocked off, hanging off of one ear.

“Great,” he muttered into his palm. “Just absolutely freaking great, Ryland.”

Ryland Grace desperately wished he had the guts, the bravery, to just simply tell you how he felt.

From the moment he met you, when you had arrived for your first day at Grover Cleveland Middle, he was a goner. It had been a long time since he’d had a partner, his last one certain that he was too busy with his head in the clouds to pay attention to her, and she wasn’t wrong. But from the moment he looked at you, waving and smiling as you introduced yourself to all of the teachers that had gathered to welcome you, you were suddenly the only thing his brain wanted to focus on.

He had been so focused on you, too busy admiring every inch of you in silence, that in his typical clumsy fashion he tripped over his own two feet and knocked Principal Marshall’s papers out of her hand, spreading them five feet across the floor. But you’d joined him on the ground, laughing lightly to yourself, as you helped him clean up the papers, and Ryland knew he was a goner for you.

It only continued every single day, getting worse, and you somehow became his friend. His only friend, if he was being quite frank. So he tried to hide the way he really felt, too scared to mess anything up. He’d rather have you in his life in any way he could, then mess this up and lose you forever.

Keeping those feelings in was getting increasingly harder in the last few months. Which explained why he’d traveled cross town just to get lunch from your favorite place, or compare you to the sun and basically called you his entire reasoning for living in front of a bunch of children-

Either Ryland was going to blurt it out at some point, or he was taking these feelings to the grave with him.

“Peanut butter and jelly? Sounds like we’re eating like royalty tonight,”

He shouldn’t have looked over at you. He really, really shouldn’t have. Leaning against the opposite wall of the kitchen, hair still damp and dripping onto the cheesy “I had potential” shirt he’d been gifted by one of his students the following year. Sweatpants that were bunched up around your ankles so that you didn’t trip over the length, waist tied in as tightly as possible so they didn’t just slide right off your hips.

Ryland Grace had never thought it possible that you could look more gorgeous than you did every day, but he stood corrected. He felt more in love than he ever had just looking at you right in this moment.

“Sorry, I don’t exactly…live a life of luxury,” Ryland awkwardly laughed as he spoke, pulling out two sad paper plates from the cabinet next to him and flashing them in your direction, shaking them lightly in the air. “Hope this doesn’t ruin my perfectly curated image.”

His eyes followed you as you brushed past him, humming to yourself with a little grin. You fumbled through every drawer in the kitchen, looking for something, when Ryland quickly popped open the one right next to him, showcasing his small selection of utensils. You flashed another heart-stopping grin at him before digging out two knives from the drawer.

“That image cracked a long time ago, Ry. Like that time you let Marcus perform some chemical reaction and got the fire department called to the school,”

The tall blonde groaned to himself, rubbing at his temple as you pushed past him to throw some of the bread down onto the plates and crack open the jars of peanut butter and jelly set out.

“That was one time!” he tried to defend himself, saddling up beside you as you passed him one of the knives. He almost completely missed the opening of the peanut butter jar, eyes too transfixed on the sight of you in his clothing. It was still up in the air if his heart was actually working correctly yet. “I learned my lesson very quickly not to let him handle any more chemicals.”

“Don’t worry. I made the mistake of doing popcorn reading when we were working on The Outsiders. Marcus seemed to end up with every single instance of profanity in the book, which he would yell at the top of his lungs,”

Ryland snapped his fingers, glancing down at you at his side with a teasing smile.

“You know what? That explains that really loud ‘HELL’ I heard across the school a couple months ago. I was so sure that it was going to shatter the windows of my classroom,”

“Oh, shut up! It wasn’t that bad!”

Your laughter permeated the air, elbow digging into his side as you spoke. And when your eyes locked with his, and Ryland got the perfect look at every square inch of your face, he could see it so clearly in his head.

Mornings just like this, where you’d both struggle to get out of the warmth of the blankets. The way he would surely annoy you with his very disorganized morning routine, but he’d make up for it with coffee already set out for you, just as you liked it. The lingering moments by the door, too wrapped up in each other because you didn’t want to leave the peace of this space, even though you were going to the same place.

Late nights, curled together on the couch with some movie playing on TV that neither of you were particularly paying attention to. Whispered words, laughter shared. Kisses that lingered, hands that trailed-

Thunder broke Ryland from his spell, thoughts gone in a flash. He was back in his dingy kitchen, with you just inches away, staring up at him as the picture of true beauty.

“T-This is nice,” he cleared his throat, turning back to his sandwich as he spread his toppings along the bread, heat blooming across his cheeks again. It always did around you. “Making dinner with someone…no matter how sad the dinner is. I haven’t done this in awhile.”

“Right,” your voice responded after a momentary pause. “Sarah, wasn’t it? You were dating her when we first met. What, uh…what ever happened to her?”

“Oh, we broke up a long time ago,” Ryland waved the comment off, shaking his head. “She just, uh, thought my head was too far in the clouds. Didn’t think I wanted to be down here on Earth. She wasn’t wrong. It was for the best, though. She hated…all of this. The rundown apartment, the lack of a car, my love of science. She just never understood it. I was just…too much for her. But she’s with Mark now, so I’m sure she’s happy.”

Ryland chose not to mention that his last relationship had been dead long before it officially ended, the pair not having seen each other in well over a month by that point. If his math was right, which it usually was, Sarah had started dating Mark before she’d even broken it off with him.

He also failed to mention the relief he felt inside when she had called it off, knowing his heart had belonged to you the moment your eyes had locked with his.

Fingertips just barely ghosted over Ryland’s cheek, and he froze in place. Eyes trained on the plate in front of him, he could feel the way your hand curled around his cheek. The way your thumb glossed over his skin, back and forth, and the way your other fingers barely grazed over the shell of his ear. He couldn’t help the way he instantly leaned into the touch, a touch he hadn’t felt in so long.

Ryland turned his head, still resting in the palm of your own, to look you in the eyes. You gave him the softest smile, hand trailing across his cheek and ghosting over his jawline. His eyes watched it move, the way your fingers gently curled around the frame of his glasses dangling precariously from his face, and placed them gingerly back where they belonged, resting on the bridge of his nose.

His breath caught, your body so close to his, as your hand trailed back down and rested on his chest for just a moment, your own gaze flickering to its resting spot while his gaze stayed on your face.

“You are never, and will never be, too much, Ryland. Not for the right person. They’ll love every part of you. The clumsy parts, the nerdy parts, every part that makes you…you,”

The Sun. That’s what you were to Ryland Grace. He meant every word he had said in that planetarium that day, driven by the rare jealousy of seeing Harkin that close to you. 

The Sun was the reason Earth had life. Without the Sun…the Earth would be nothing.

Without you…well, Ryland Grace had accepted long ago that he didn’t understand what it was like to truly live until he’d met you.

Your eyes flickered for just a second, and Ryland took in an audible breath, swearing they settled on his lips for just a second. The apartment was quiet, except for the hum of the fridge and the pattering of the rain against the living room windows.

The moment shattered with yet another terribly timed clap of thunder, your body jolting away from his, focus turned back to the counter in front of you, face hidden from his wide eyes.

“Y-you know…I can’t tell you the last time I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,”

Ryland shook his head, smiling slightly to himself at the little stutter in your own words, turning back to finishing his own food as well. But the moment still lingered in his head, the heat that bloomed from where your skin touched him still lingering.

“Since peanut butter is banned in school for allergies, probably awhile,”

“I almost forgot that rule a couple weeks ago and almost packed peanut butter crackers,” you joked back, before Ryland heard you snap your fingers. “Oh! Speaking of work, did you put yourself down to volunteer for the school dance next week?”

Sandwiches finished off, Ryland packed the ingredients away and stashed them back in their appropriate spots, laughing awkwardly to himself.

“Hah, uh, no I didn’t. I chaperoned last year and kind of left covered in punch, became the kids’ favorite ‘meme’ for a week afterward since one of them got a picture of it,”

He turned back to you. Leaning against the island counter, holding your sad little sandwich in your hands, face still lit up red as you smiled toward him.

“I think so far it's me, Doyle, and Harki, plus Principal Marshal and I think Katie and Dawson from the front office. We could really use another teacher,” he swore the fluttering of your lashes was on purpose just to kill him and his resolve. “Sign-up? For me?”

Well, there was no universe in existence where Ryland said no to a request like that.

Rejoining you at the counter, he held his own sandwich in his hand, reaching out and tapping it against yours as if you were sharing a toast.

“For you? Totally,”

Even as you both took a bite of your sandwiches, eyes still locked together, Ryland felt as if something had shifted in the air. Your eyes were still as kind, your smile still bright, but it felt like there was a new weight to your gaze as you looked at him.

And he swore–and hoped–for just a split second, that your eyes had just flickered down to his lips again.

❤︎

The student council had outdone themselves with this end of the year dance.

As you stepped through the main doors of Grover Cleveland Middle’s building, the smile on your face grew immediately at the sight before you. The walls were lined with little fairy lights, little styrofoam planets hanging down from the ceiling at various lengths, glow in the dark stars right around them and glowing. Silver streamers hung around the fairy lights, with the check in desk decorated with tons and foam and lights behind them to look like twinkling lights in the clouds.

“A space theme?” you called out as the two kids in front of you ducked away from the registration desk. Evelyn Doyle finally looked up from the sign-in sheet, grin growing as she took in the sight of you and rounded the desk. “I hadn’t heard anything from the student council on the theme, but they did well.”

“Nevermind the theme, you’re finally here!” you laughed as you threw her arms around you, reciprocating the hug, before her hands landed on your shoulders in order to get a good look at you, eyes trailing you up and down. “And look at this dress, oh my god!”

The deep yellow dress fell right around your knees, the fabric light and airy as it swooshed through the air with every move you made. Buttons lined the front down to the tie around your waist, leaving just enough room for the little gold necklace resting against your collarbone. You thanked yourself for choosing a short sleeve option, already feeling the heat in the building from how many kids were all packed in and dancing together.

“Thank you,” was the sheepish reply you gave your friend as she let you go. “I’m sorry I’m late, I caught one of my student’s parents in the parking lot and they turned it into a mini parent-teacher conference, sadly.”

“Not a problem,” she waved the comment off, gesturing toward the doors of the gym just off to the left of you both. “Just get on in there, have some fun, and keep those slow dancers at least 12 inches apart at all times.”

If the hallways were gorgeous, the inside of the gym shone even brighter. Bathed in blue and purple, even more little lights twinkled around the room, hung off the walls, the ceilings, and on every surface they could possibly find. Moon and star decals, made by the art students, hung off the walls and from the ceiling, almost glowing under the lights.

Your eyes trailed over all of your children, scattered throughout the room, already having been dancing for at least thirty minutes. The smile on your face grew as you watched each one of them, gathered with their friends as they danced together in groups, or even stood off to the sides and just observed from beyond the dimly lit dance floor.

Mr. Harkin had been stationed at the punch table, and you could hear him from across the room warning these middle schoolers not to try and spike the punch. You could only giggle to yourself, shaking your head at his antics, before your eyes swept over the crowd once more-

The music seemed to stop in your ears, breath hitching, the second you laid eyes on him across the room. Ryland Grace.

He wasn’t in anything fancy. A nice pair of jeans, the worn pair of black dress shoes you’d seen by his apartment door that night. A dark green shirt was tucked into his jeans, adorned with a worn, navy blue suit jacket overtop, and those same glasses almost falling off the bridge of his nose as he spoke animatedly to Olivia.

Ryland looked good. Too good, in your eyes.

For just a second, he looked up, and his eyes happened to meet yours across the room. You thought for sure you’d forgotten how to breathe.

Whatever had happened that night, in the silence of his apartment with only the beating of the rain against the windows and the roof as a witness, had shifted something. From the moment your fingertips had ghosted along his skin, your hand had rested against his chest, and you’d been close enough to see the specs that danced in those ocean blue eyes of his up close, nothing had been the same.

Like the little bubble you had been existing in with your harbored crushed had finally popped. Like a toe had dipped just slightly over a line, and there was no going back from then on.

You always blushed around your friend, every time he’d manage to fumble his way through a comment that borderlined on a kind-of-not-just-friendly compliment. But since that day just a week or so ago, every time he has been within a few feet of you, your face lit up like a hot summer’s day.

Moments where he’d find a second to linger in your classroom door, held a new weight to them. Sharing lunch together, fingers just barely brushing for a second as you both reached for your food, to moments when you’d simply be walking together down hallways, back of hands brushing along each other’s but no one making any moves to stop it from happening.

Something was different, and you weren’t sure you wanted to go back to how things were before. Not after touching his skin, or existing in his orbit like that. Not when you’d seen the side of him beyond these school walls.

You were in love with Ryland Grace. You had been for a long time. And, finally, you were done trying to pretend that there wasn’t at least a small chance that he felt the same.

“I need your help,”

The heated staring contest between you two was broken by the sound to your right. You turned, just to see Marcus standing directly beside you and reaching up to pull on the sleeve of your dress. His hands wrung together, foot tapping incessantly on the ground, and you immediately knelt down in front of him to get a better look at his face that he was trying to hide from you.

“Marcus? Honey, what’s wrong?” you asked gently, hands coming to rest on his arms as you tried to get him to look at you.

“I…I like Olivia,”

Oh. It was one of those problems. The anxiety you felt in that moment finally washed away, an easy smile falling to your lips as you took a quick glance over in Ryland and Olivia’s direction, the former’s eyes still locked onto you from across the room.

“I did hear a rumor about that. Olivia is a great girl,”

“She is,” he said quickly, finally looking at you. His nerves were basically written across his face. “I-I’ve been really mean to her. I didn’t mean to be.”

“I know, honey. Sometimes feelings can be confusing,” you stood up, hands on your hips as you looked down at him with a smile. “Do you want to dance with her?”

“I do,”

You held your hand out toward him with a smile.

“Then why don’t we start by going and apologizing to her?”

With Marcus’s hand in yours, you confidently led him across the room, eyes locked back onto Ryland’s as you approached. He stood with Olivia at his side, who was talking his ear off, a dopey looking grin on his face as he nodded to whatever she said as he continued to watch as you approached him.

“Dr. Grace, I’m sorry to interrupt you and Olivia,” you announced yourself to the pair with a grin of your own, hands on Marcus’s shoulders and you lightly pushed him forward. “But Olivia, there’s something that Marcus here wants to say to you.”

The young boy shuffled awkwardly forward, hands wringing together again as he stood in front of his crush.

“I, uh, I wanted to say I was sorry. For being really mean to you. I didn’t mean it,”

Olivia’s eyes went wide, as she too shuffled uncomfortably for a second. Ryland saddled up to your side, the pair of you sharing a glance as you watched the interaction happen right before your eyes. His hand graced over yours lightly, and it took everything in you not to reach out and lock your fingers with his.

“Oh! It’s, um, it’s okay. Thank you,”

“Say, Marcus?” Ryland called out to them both, catching the boy’s eye and gesturing toward Olivia with a wink. “What do you think of Olivia’s dress?”

“I…I think she looks really beautiful,”

That comment finally seemed to catch Olivia off guard, her eyes wide in shock as she giggled nervously.

“Oh! I…thank you, Marcus. You look really nice too,”

“Thank you,” his posture seemed to straighten out at Olivia’s reaction, like seeing her accept his compliment gave him the confidence he needed. “Do you want to dance with me?”

Olivia shot you and Ryland a look, and you both immediately gave her a thumbs up. Then, your happy eyes could only watch the two pre-teens awkwardly shuffle away together to the dance floor, not daring to meet the eyes of the other.

“Look at us, playing matchmaker for middle schoolers,”

“I think they did that for themselves, we just helped,” you laughed, turning your head. The laughter died on your lips the second your eyes met with Ryland’s, voice low and breathy as you whispered to him through your smile. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he whispered back just as breathily. His hand came up to the back of his head, running through his hair for a moment, and you could see the red and pink hues that lit up his cheeks. “I got worried when I didn’t see you. I was ready to call you.”

“You could’ve,”

“I’ll remember for next time,” he shot back, hands finding their way to rest in the front pockets of his jeans. His eyes moved back over the crowd, finding your two young students once more. “I’m proud of him for that. That…must have taken a lot of guts to do.”

You followed his gaze, landing on the pair as they danced together, laughing and talking like old friends.

“Like you said before, it can be hard for boys to express their feelings. All he needed was to pull up his big boy pants and ask her,”

Ryland laughed beside you.

“Yeah…I should probably follow in his footsteps,”

You glanced back to him, seeing him already watching you. A single eyebrow raised toward him quizzically, even though your heart felt like it was ready to beat directly out of your chest.

Ryland’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, as if he were trying to force out words that he couldn’t quite seem to get right. You didn’t even realize you were holding your breath, hoping inside that whatever he wanted to say would address the weight that seemed to be hanging between your gazes.

“Stay here,”

There wasn’t even time for you to respond before the tall blonde rushed away, almost tripping as he dashed over to the DJ booth across the way from the makeshift dance floor. He whispered something to the DJ, and you could see the thumbs up he got in return, before he rushed back over to you, panting slightly.

“Ryland?” you questioned softly, the man who held your entire heart without knowing it standing just a foot in front of you with a nervous grin on his face. “What did you just do?”

As if on cue, the song changed, and familiar lyrics floated through the room, bouncing off the walls.

Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars

“I’m pulling up my big boy pants,” he responded with a nervous laugh, his hand outstretched toward you. “And asking you to dance with me.”

Nothing else existed the second that you slid your hand into Ryland Grace’s without hesitation, letting him pull you in. You weren’t in the school, not in a room decorated for a middle school dance, and certainly not surrounded by middle schoolers and a bunch of faculty that had placed bets on you both.

It was just you and Ryland Grace. That’s all you wanted it to be.

Your arms found a place to rest around his shoulders, fingertips just barely brushing past the strands of hair that tickled the back of his neck. There was a fluttering in your chest the second that his hands made their way to your waist, curling around the divet just above your hip bone, pulling you into him just by another inch.

In other words, hold my hand. In other words, darling, kiss me. Fill my life with song, and let me sing for ever more.

"I didn't tell you yet…,” his voice was soft, words whispered just between the two of you in a crowded room. “But you look beautiful,"

"You don't have to flatter me, Ryland,"

"No, really, you look-"

"Like a banana in this yellow dress?"

He paused. His tongue poked out, running along his bottom lip, and you could see the nervous bob of his Adam’s apple before he spoke again.

"...like the sun,"

You are all I long for, all I worship and adore.

Oh. That fluttering in your chest was back, and suddenly, you weren’t at a middle school dance anymore. You were back in that planetarium, spinning in circles. And this time, there were no doubts in your mind. You were the Sun, and he was the Earth. And what was the Earth, without its Sun?

"Ryland-"

"I wasn't lying,"

You cocked your head.

"...about what?"

"That I knew Homer wrote The Odyssey,"

That drew a short laugh from you, but you could still see the nerves that were laced through Ryland’s smile.

"Right, you were just distracted,"

"I was. By you. I'm always distracted by you,"

In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.

You took a deep breath. He’d crossed the line for you, thrown himself onto the other side, and was waiting for you with open arms. It was just a leap of faith.

“I’m always distracted by you, too. Since the day we met,”

The song faded away, melting into the next. There could’ve been eyes on you both, either from students or from faculty, but nothing would break either of your gazes away from the other.

Ryland took a quick look around the room, before his hands took hold of your own, bringing them down between you both. He gave you a grin, one filled with more happiness than you had ever seen–and you knew your own matched his perfectly–before he tugged you toward the doors of the gym.

“Come with me,”

“Ry, we’re supposed to be chaperoning!”

“I don’t see Principal Marshall anywhere. What’s the worst she could do, fire us?”

“Quite literally, yes!” you shot back with a laugh.

Ryland only shrugged his shoulders, tugging you again, and you didn’t even try to fight back. Your feet simply moved with him.

“Worth it,”

Hands clasped together, fingers intertwined, your laughter echoed off the walls of the empty hallways as Ryland Grace ran you down them, a destination clear in his mind. Every few seconds he’d look back, just smiling at you as his eyes trailed over every single inch of you, before you’d yell at him to look at his own feet before you’d both be sprawled across the linoleum floors.

The door to his classroom was open as you flew inside, hand slipping from his as you caught yourself on the projector cart sitting in the middle of the room. Spinning on your heel, you caught his eye just as he shut the classroom door behind him, and the silence enveloped you both once more. Finally alone, no prying eyes to watch.

The momentarily confidence that seemed to seize hold of Ryland dissipated in that moment. He wiped his hands against the front of his jeans, chuckling awkwardly as he took a few steps toward you.

“What was your plan here, Dr. Grace?” you teased, taking a couple steps toward him as well, too high on the feeling of everything you’d just finally realized. High on the feeling of finally not denying what your heart knew long ago: you and Ryland Grace were never just friends.

“I’m not going to lie,” he shot back, coming to a stop just in front of you, barely an inch or two separating you. “I hadn’t thought this far ahead.”

“Then stop thinking,”

No one had leaned in first. It had been both of you, as if drawn together like two magnets, as your lips finally found one another's.

Goosebumps rose across your skin as Ryland Grace’s mouth moved against yours with an ease that shouldn’t exist between two people that have never kissed before. It was like a perfect dance between two partners that knew each other better than anything.

Your lips never left his, moving against his as if you couldn’t believe you had deprived yourself of this for so long, as your hands wound around his shoulders. Fingers curled into his hair, finally carding themselves through the blonde strands that felt so soft between your fingers.

The slightest little moan, enough to send heat coursing through your body the second you heard it, slipping from Ryland’s mouth into your own. His hands grasped at your hips, winding around your back to press into your lower back and tug you as close as humanly possible, as if he was a starved man that craved to touch you in any way that he could.

His lips were soft, a feeling that you knew you were going to crave for the rest of your life now that you’d had a single taste of them. You pressed further into him, a small mewl tumbling from your own lips and swallowed by his mouth as you pressed every inch of yourself into him, desperate to hang onto the moment in case the world would be cruel and wake you from this dream moments later.

The need to breathe was what finally separated you, but not far. Ryland’s forehead pressed to yours, his breath fanning out across your skin. His hands still gripped at your hips, holding him to you, as yours stayed carded through his hair, nails gently scraping at his scalp as you chest heaved as it tried to level your breathing back to normal.

“If I haven’t made it clear already, you’re my best friend,” his words were breathy, accented by the way he was still trying to catch his breath. But his smile was bright, his eyes almost shining, as he looked down at you. “And I’m completely in love with you. Literally, since the moment we met.”

You laughed, trapped in this little bubble with him, as your hands slid from his hair to instead cup his cheeks. The tip of your nose just barely brushed against his, and he bumped his right back against yours without hesitation.

“I’m completely in love with you too, Ryland Grace. Since the moment you tripped over your own two feet,”

The sound of your laughter filled the empty, dark science classroom again as Ryland’s hands came to scoop you up around your thighs, spinning you in relentless circles. All you could do was hang onto his broad shoulders and smile, his lips peppering a thousand kisses to every inch of skin he could possibly reach.

The Earth needed the Sun, like how Ryland said he needed you. The person that makes it all worth it, that makes the days brighter, that makes this short little life worth it.

When you're riding him, his hands will run all the way up to your breasts, If it's not the hands, it's his mouth; preventing Grace from embarrassing himself by saying something stupid. His eyes simply can't look at other things when he has such a beautiful sight, occasionally alternating between looking up at your face and then back at your boobs like he can't simply focus on the two things at the same time; having many pretty things to look at with only one pair of eyes.

And then, when he's fucking you from behind, body bent over under his. Grace will be totally head over heels for the curves of your waist and ass, looking down to watch you; with both hands over your hips, his fingers pressed against the warm skin like it's as a way to reassure himself he wasn't dreaming about it instead. And if he's not paying attention to the view of your body, he'll be distracted watching the way your needy cunt takes him just so perfectly, along with the sound of your moans (and his too).

There's also the times when all he needs is to feel the warmth of your thighs right over each side of his head. His hands resting on your thighs, feeling the soft and warm flesh against his fingers while his tongue works restlessly on you.

Ryland, being such a giver, could never choose any other thing to do other than spending hours savoring the sweetness of his lover. He's a mess and he loved it, running his tongue from the bottom up and then giving full attention to the sensitive bud. —And on all the times, he would be looking up at you, glasses starting to get foggy or out of place in his face; eyebrows slightly furrowed for the dedication.

Even after being married for over a year everyone still whispered about the pair of you in disbelief. Poor sweet kind you that had been trapped with sour old man. Even though you had chosen him. You had married not for duty, but for love. Maekar adored you, without a shadow of a doubt to anyone who had eyes, but gossip never did tend to mix with reason.

You had accompanied Maekar to King’s Landing, his presence was required and he insisted you come with him. He was off doing some business with Baelor as you sat enjoying the nice weather of the gardens and a book stretched open on your lap. 

That is when you heard it, clear as day your husbands’ name in someone else's mouth, and the way they said it caused you to stand making your way toward the sound. “Prince Maekar is a miserable bastard. I am unsure how his wife put up with it. I would have tossed myself off Maegor’s holdfast by now if I had to deal with him that much.”

“I heard she fucks the Princes’ brother instead.” 

Two knights you did not recognize stood talking to the other. One was older with silver sprouting through his dark locks and beard, his teeth looked as if they were going to fall out of his skull, and that if he had to protect anyone they would be better off to wield the sword himself. 

The other was much younger, probably not much older than Daeron. He had red hair, and a handsomeish face, but nothing spectacular. He had a smug grin across his face that reminded you too much of Aerion. 

Your fists curled as you made your way toward them without even realizing, the two knights immediately turned toward you, their eyes widening in horror. You continued toward them until you stood before them, your eyes burning into them, as your head snapped between the two,  “Mayhaps you stupid cunts should learn to check your surroundings before you see fit to sprout bullshit or are you too dimwitted for that.”

You raised a brow waiting for one of them to respond, but neither of them did, they only stood blinking at you, “Who was the one that suggested that I bed Prince Baelor?” you then asked. 

The younger knight immediately pointed to the bigger man, ratting him out as you turned toward him, your hand raised slapping across his cheek, his entire face turned at the emotion. “Not only do you question my dignity, but you question the Heir to the realms, Be glad you are not losing your fuckign tongue!” you hiss before stomping away making your way to your chamber as you shook with a feeling of rage. 

Maekar and Baelor’s conversation erupted with a knock on the door, and a young girl entering inside once the elder beckoned her in. She stood nervously scratching at her arms causing the brothers to share a glance before looking back to her. 

“Uh…my princes there has uh… been an incident,” she stuttered out. 

Maekar sighed leaning back in the chair, “What has my son done now?” he asked, rubbing his face harshly. He knew he should have left the children at Summerhall, it would have been more of a peaceful trip at least.

“It was not your son, my prince.”

That caused his head to shoot up, “Well, what is it then?”

“Your wife?” It came out as more of a question than a statement. As if she was not the one informing them of the incident rather than informing her.

Maekar’s pale eyebrows drew together, “My wife? Is she alright? What has happened?” he rattled off leaning forward in his chair. 

His questions only making the girl more nervous causing her to stumble over her words and nothing being coherent between her low whisper and pausing after every syllable. 

“Speak plainly,” he hissed. 

“Maekar,” Baelor chided at his younger brother’s tone, but knew it was no use. His words would not get through until he heard the confirmation that his wife was alright. 

“She… Well she struck a knight,” she finally got out. 

Both brothers stared at her only blinking, Baelor said your name as if he needed to check to make sure they were all speaking of the same woman. The one who brought them lunch hours ago pressed a kiss to Maekar’s cheek and reminded them to eat. 

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“My wife? My sweet wife struck a knight?” She nodded in confirmation, causing Maekar to bark out a laugh, kneeling over in his chair at the thought of his wife hitting anyone let alone a knight. The same woman who made him take a bug back outside the other day, because she cried at the thought of him killing it. 

“Why did she hit a knight?” Baelor questioned, glaring at his brother trying to get him to stop his laughing so they could hear what else the young girl had to say, but he could hardly catch his breath hitting his leg. Finally after a moment Maekar sat up leaning back as he waited to hear what else she would have to say. 

“I am unsure of my lord. I only know that she told them they should be pleased they are not losing their tongue, and used language unbefittingly of a lady.” 

“Did this language reflect on how my brother talks?” 

The young woman eyed Prince Maekar for a moment as if she was afraid he would bare his teeth at her for answering honestly, but she finally whispered, “Yes, Your Grace.” 

Baelor dismissed her with a kind smile and a thanks for this information. “Two moons ago she told me it was her mission to save all the stray animals around Summerhall and now she's striking knights,” Maekar laughed, shaking his head slightly. 

“If I would have to guess she is probably striking a knight, because they said something about you,” the elder suggested. 

The comment hung in the air for a moment as the pair stared at each. It made sense. It was one of the only things that would make sense that you were trying to defend him to some capacity, but it still shocked your husband. Maekar’s eyebrows drew together, “You think my sweet wife was trying to defend my honor?” he then asked. 

Baelor shrugged, “It would make sense. I cannot see her striking and threatening tongues for anything else.” 

Something then flowed through Maekar, causing him to stand, “I must go see her,” was all he said as he pushed out of the office before practically sprinting through the castle trying to find you. 

There was something he couldn’t quite explain at the thought of his sweet, darling wife slapping and cussing someone out for him. The same woman who cried when Rhae does, the same woman who stayed up all night making Aegon a tunic like his father so that he and Aemon could reenact the Blackfyre Rebellion, and the same woman who would gently sing to Daeron as she forced him to drink water. 

His cock was semi-hard in his pants as he reimagined the scene. Your hand colliding with a knight's face as you spat at him urging him that he was lucky you were not taking his tongue. He groaned slightly, as his tip rubbed against the material of his breeches as he got harder and harder with each passing step.

Fuck. He really needed to find you before he came in his pants like a virgin boy.

To his luck you were in the first place he checked. 

You sat near the fire, your currency embroidery work held in your hands as you hummed to yourself lightly. “My sweet wife,” he called out as he shut the door. 

You turned toward him with a gentle smile, “Are you done for the day?” you questioned as you stood to your feet. Your hands moved, flattening your skirt as you set your work down, his face softened as noticed you were working on something with his house sigil. 

“We were not, but then I was brought some news,” he started moving forward, his hands cupping either side of your face. “I heard you struck a knight?”

“Oh,” you said, closing your eyes in shame, “I am sorry,” you immediately apologized. 

He laughed slightly, “Why did you hit him?”

“He was speaking ill of me?” he asked, his smile growing along with something else. 

“Yes. So I mayhaps have called them stupids cunts and told them they should be happy they did lose their tongues instead.” 

“You’re growing a mouth,” he joked, using his hands on the side of your 

“In truth they were your words, I have heard you say them before.” 

He leaned down claiming your mouth with his own. The action shocked you slightly. You expected him to lecture you on not hitting knights, but here instead he was kissing you as if he was a man starved and your lips were his last meal. Then you felt his hardening cock press into your thigh, and you raised a brow. “Maekar?” you questioned, causing him to hum. “You are hard,” you pointed out as if it was not obvious. 

He only leaned down pressing his lips to your mouth, then your cheek and then trailed down the side of your neck, “I am,” he confirmed, sucking just below your ear causing you to arch into him slightly.

“You liked that then? The thought of my striking men and cussing them out, because they said something about you,” you said as your hands moved to the ties of his trousers. 

“My sweet wife struck a knight attempting to defend my honor. I have corrupted you,” he mumbled against your neck, nipping his teeth into you as punctuation. 

“You would do the same,” you replied, pulling his trousers free, and then his breeches, until his lower half was naked. You pulled away from him sinking to your knees, as he began to undress his top half. 

“I would do worse, but that is me. You are different,” he groaned when your fingers wrapped around his length stroking him lazily as you looked up at him. You kissed the precum already coming out of his tip as his hands moved lacing through your hair. 

You leaned forward about to take him in your mouth before his hand that had been in your hair yanked hard from the root pulling you away. He angled your face upward as you looked up at him in confusion, your eyebrows pulling together. 

He then pulled you to your feet by your hair, as you continued to eye him in pure confusion, “Maekar?” you question, but he does not answer instead pressing his mouth to yours. He yanked your hair again causing your mouth to open in a gasp before his tongue was entering into your mouth, conquering it as his own. 

He led you back toward the bed as his fingers worked the strings of your dress pushing it down your shoulders caused it to pool at your feet. His fingers then worked trying to remove your small cloth before he let out a frustrated growl, finally removing his tight hold on your hair to rip apart the seams. This was not the first time he had done this nor would it probably be the last.

You tumbled back into your legs, hit the bed and you fell back, your husband then fell to his knees as he spread your legs over his shoulder dragging you toward the edge, “Let me taste her,” was all he said, staring up at you. 

You only nodded, and that was the last you saw of his face as he was diving in between your thighs. Maekar would spend hours between your thighs if you would let him, half the time you had to pry him off of you as he would not willingly leave himself. 

His tongue ran up your fold licking a long strip, and you could feel him grin as he met your swollen nub. He sucked his clit in between his lips as his tongue lapped against it as you arched into his hold. Your hand tugging harshing in his silver locks caused him to groan which sent a vibration through you. 

His beard provided an amazing friction as he worked his tongue around your pearl, his fingers moving to your entrance as he teased it slightly, before inserting two digits. You moaned his name loud as he continued on his way, fucking his fingers in and out of you as his tongue switched between lapping and sucking at your clit. 

Your hands gripped his hair as you pushed your hips further into his face as they began to move on their own, grinding harshly as you chased your own high. The coil in your belly finally snapped as your orgasm washed over you crying out your husband’s name as you soaked his face and fingers. 

He did not stop though, “Maekar, please!” you cried out trying to pry him away from your sensitive cunt, but he fought against your hold diving back in for more as if it was the only source of water on a hot day. 

You finally managed, to pry him away he looked up at you, his violet eyes blown from lust as he panted. You moved back up the bed as he did the same crawling after you until your head rested at the top. 

Your legs trembled slightly as you wrapped them around his hips, as he gripped himself in his hand stroking himself slowly as he held your gaze, he took his tip rubbing in between your folds gathering his slickness as he grinned down at you a moan slipping as it ran against your sensitive clit. 

“What do you say to those knights?" he asked, as he ran his tip over your clit once more, and then again. 

“I called–oh, fuck–stupid cunts,” you moaned out, your hands moving to claw against the pale skin of his back, leaving angry red marks in their wake. 

He grinned as he finally moved his cock lower entering inside you with one fluid thrust. His hips were flushed against yours as he hovered above you watching your face contort at the new feeling of fullness, “Such a mouth on you,” he tsked, as he began to rock his hips back and forth against yours. 

“Fuck off,” you muttered, your nails claiming his back, marking it as your own masterpiece as he began to set the fast rhythm. His hand moved down gripping your left leg and pulling it above his shoulder causing him to hit deeper than before as his free hand gripped into your hip no doubt leaving bruises. 

“Fuck, Maekar!” you cried out, as he fucked into you like a man possesed. 

“That’s it. Let everyone hear the mouth of my sweet wife,” he instructed, his hips pounding into you as the coarse hair as his base rubbed against your clit. He dipped his hand lower moving to attach itself to your hardened nipple, his teeth grazing it slightly. 

“Shit! Oh, fuck!” you moaned, you arched further into his hold as his tongue worked over the peaks. You could feel the pit already begin to form in your lower belly as he moved his mouth showering the other bud with the same attention. 

He could feel you clench into him as he picked up his pace, fucking into you harder, fast, sucking onto. Your nails split the skin of his back as your second release of the night claimed you. You came with a cry of his name, your body feeling on fire as your vision momentarily went white as the feeling of ecstasy filled your veins. 

“Fuck,” he grunted as he felt your cunt clamp down on him like a vice as his head moved from your breast to your neck his teeth barring down hard enough to break the skin as he chased his own high. 

Tears streamed down your fast as he fucked you through your high toward the point of overstimulation as you turned to putty between him. He continued to fuck into you brutally, your cries of his name only fuelign him further as  his hips never falterign until finally with one final thrust he buried himself to the hilt. He came with an animalistic snarl as ropes of cum shot out from his tip painting your walls white. 

His chest heaved as he leaned his head against your chest, feeling it rising and falling rapidly to match his own. He stayed buried inside you as your hands moved, petting the top of his hand gently, much too sweet for the event that just occurred which caused him to laugh in between your breasts. “Oh, my sweet wife,” he cried, pressing a tender kiss to your skin before lifting his head to press another to your lips. 

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he suggested, moving to pull out from you but your legs suddenly locked around him keeping him in place, pulling him back against your sweat soaked skin. He obliged lying back down and allowing you to run your fingers back through his hair as he simply enjoyed the feeling “I love you,” he muttered, causing you to grin as you leaned down pressing a kiss to his slick forehead.

maekar taglist: @sacha1slytherin @erylilly @thebl00dwyrm @ilocuras24 @xisabellaxo @eleventhboi @alaeratrrn

His arm was starting to tingle slightly, and he was itching to reach for his glasses on the bedside table, but he remained still. He could see you well enough like this—soft around the edges, a tad blurry. It was almost like a photograph on film, one that had not quite come into focus. It was an image that would be burned into his brain for mornings to come, and afternoons, and evenings, for that matter. 

He feared that if he moved to sharpen the image, it might break the moment entirely. He remained still. 

You’d probably tell him off, catching him in the act. He would probably think it was odd if the roles were reversed, watching one sleep, but he couldn’t feel guilt if he tried. 

His attention always seemed to bend toward you; the rest of the world would have to wait a while. 

The sunlight caught your face just right, tracing along your cheekbone, softening at the curve of your mouth. You were wearing one of his old t-shirts, and it swallowed you slightly, slipping off one shoulder as he tried not to stare at the bare skin.

He thought, not for the first time, that you might be the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

Which, scientifically speaking, was ridiculous. He could list a dozen scientific phenomena that objectively outclassed a sleepy human in borrowed clothing. Mitoses. Photosyntheses. The rings of Saturn.

But you being here was slowly dismantling his entire sense of scale on the matter. 

He exhaled slowly through his nose, careful not to shift the mattress, as he recalled the previous night. 

The previous night. 

He had been so damn nervous. 

Months of careful courting, getting to know you piece by piece and always eager for more. ​​Shared dinners that stretched far too long because neither of you wanted to leave. Walking you home under streetlights, where conversations continued to flow so easily.

Sometimes you let him steal a kiss—or three—with him always pulling away at the last minute, insisting that he wanted to take his time. He wanted to do it right. 

He was old-fashioned—not in the way people tend to mean now—but in that he believed in taking his time.

You just mattered to him. More than he cared to admit. That, tied with the fact that he was years out of practise, meant that this was even more rare. 

He could not mess this up by rushing anything. 

Not when the first girl he had the guts to ask out in years laughed at his terrible jokes, let him ramble through every scientific theory that caught his interest, not when your cheeks warmed at his soft compliments—especially not when his did the exact same. 

He was a goner from day one. Every time he got home, he felt like he was floating. In high school all over again, with the pretty girl deciding to sit next to him in class for a change. You didn’t shy away from his personality, didn’t shrink. The knowledge that he had not ruined anything by just being himself. 

He knew how easily it could happen. It had before—people brushing him off as distant, too lost in his own head to be taken seriously. He’d be damned if he let you slip through his fingers, not when you understood him so effortlessly.

So he hadn’t rushed, hadn’t pushed. There was no assumption of anything physical, no reaching for more than you were willing to give. But he couldn’t stop last night, not when you had been so certain, so soft. 

It was natural with you, easy in ways intimacy never quite came to him. 

All the nerves he had been holding in his stomach seemed to quiet. How could he be nervous when your legs pulled him deeper? Looking up at him with those eyes of yours as you asked him so nicely? 

He knew he would give you anything you asked for in that moment—everything, actually. He’d be a fool not to. 

You shifted then, barely more than a breath, but it pulled his attention back instantly. Your hand slid across his chest, fingers curling slightly in the fabric of his shirt as you turned, instinctively, toward him.

He froze, every muscle going still on instinct, like any movement might break whatever delicate, unconscious decision you were making. He could feel your weight against him, solid and comfortable. Like this wasn’t new for you, even if it was for him. 

He hoped that, in time, it would no longer feel so novel to him. The fact that you were still here come morning was all the reassurance he’d done his job right.

You moved slightly against his arm again. Though it wasn’t like before, your unconscious shift still shrouded in sleep. Now you move with purpose, slowly stretching your limbs as you surface, waking in layers. Your hand slid across, your body pressing a little closer as you relaxed, settling into him once more. 

He was perfectly still, not wanting to disturb you further. 

Your eyes blinked open, still heavy with sleep. It only took you a few seconds of looking at him before your expression softened. 

There you are. 

“Hi,” you murmured, almost shy, not fully awake just yet.

“Hi,” he echoed, just as soft. 

His eyes traced your face again, before he finally moved his hand. His fingers traced gently along your shoulder as you began to focus on him. Your gaze sharpened slightly as you assessed him. He seemed far more cognizant, and your lips curved into a gentle smile. 

“...were you watching me sleep?”

The question, entirely fair and completely reasonable. The answer, however, deeply incriminating.

“…no?” he tried, failing miserably. 

You uhuffed out a sleepy laugh, barely more than a breath as you nudged him with your foot, your smile widening. “Liar.”

You got him there. 

He offered you a helpless shrug before leaning over, trying to salvage his dignity. He reached blindly for the bedside table before his fingers found his glasses. He slipped them on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose, the soft image of you coming in a little clearer. Both were equally lovely to wake to. 

“Well,” he said, “in my defence—you weren’t exactly in focus.”

You laughed properly at that, your nose scrunching as you gave up on berating him. You curled yourself into his collarbone, forehead brushing lightly against his skin as you nuzzled closer to him, still amused. His arms enveloped you as they were itching to do all morning. 

“Did you sleep okay?” you asked, voice slightly muffled. 

“Perfectly,” he replied, although to him, it was a silly question. Even if he’d barely slept, the simple act of you being right beside him would have been perfection. 

“Good,” you hummed. 

Your body pressed more firmly against his, your leg sliding up just enough to tangle with his, your hand tracing absently along his chest in the soft morning glow

His breath hitched. 

The warm feel of you, the way your soft thighs slide higher between his, the press of your breasts against his ribs under that oversized t-shirt…

His mind was already dipping into the memories of last night. 

Images flickered behind his eyes in vivid flashes: the way you’d pulled him in with your legs wrapped tight around his hips, the breathy little sound you’d made when he finally sank into you, the way you’d looked up at him with those same sleepy, trusting eyes. 

He’d tried so hard to be gentle, to take his time as he’d promised himself, but you’d been so warm and wet and eager, rocking up to meet every careful thrust until his control had frayed at the edges.

He needed to get his mind out the gutter—fast. There was no way you’d be up for that so early, but his mind circled back to your skin in the pale moonlight. 

Your draping over him was not helping the situation; his body was reacting faster than his brain could. His cock stiffened fast, thickening against the soft give of your thigh, the thin fabric of his boxers doing nothing to hide how quickly he was hardening for you.

Oh, come on—seriously?

He tried to distract himself, but you felt it immediately. He knew you did, because the corner of your mouth curved against his skin in the tiniest, most wicked little smirk.

Whatever he was in for, he didn’t know, but that expression didn’t put him at ease at all. 

Your lips brushed his jaw first—deliberate kisses that trailed down to the sensitive spot just under his ear. Then lower, along the line of his collarbone, slow and open-mouthed, like you were tasting the morning on him. When you pushed your knee up even higher, pressing right against the hard line of his cock, he twitched visibly beneath you. 

A helpless sound slipped out of his throat before he could stop it. 

You breathed a quiet laugh against the side of his neck, warm air ghosting over skin, and it did terrible, wonderful things to him. His hips jerked once, involuntarily, chasing the pressure of your thigh; he couldn’t help himself.

“Excited this morning, hm?” you teased, voice still husky with sleep but laced with mischief.

This was cruel. 

He huffed, but it melted straight into a groan when your mouth found the side of his neck again—this time harder, lips and teeth and tongue working over the same spot until his toes curled against the sheets.

“I—it’s biology,” he managed, voice rough, “waking up in bed next to a pretty girl, it’s not—”

Your teeth sank gently into his neck, right where his pulse hammered, and the rest of the sentence shattered. His arm shot out across your back, hand gripping your shoulder hard. 

In one smooth movement, you swung a leg over and straddled him, settling your weight right over the aching ridge of him. The thin layers between you doing absolutely nothing to dull the sensation. 

You looked down at him, all doe-eyed and teasing and absolutely loving how flustered he was getting. You were still laced with sleep, but your lips curled as you knew exactly what your were doing to him. 

“You think I’m pretty?”

God, you were gonna be the death of him. 

His head was so foggy as you grinned down at him, loving the reaction he was giving you. Last night was all chaste kisses and whispered words.

Now, you were looking at him like you wanted to devour him. 

All he could do was nod up at you, glasses slightly crooked, hair a mess against the pillow. 

“Sweetheart,” he breathed, voice wrecked already, “like you—like you even have to ask.”

The flush that bloomed across his cheeks was beautiful and your grin grew even wider. You wasted no time in rewarding him with a slow drag of your hips against his, rubbing along his full length through the fabric, the friction pulled a sharp groan out of his chest. 

You took the opportunity to lean down, lips brushing the shell of his ear. 

“Ry…” you teased as you rocked against him again. 

His hips bucked up into you, trying to chase the heat and pressure like his body had a mind of its own. 

He could barely think when your thighs pressed against his hips so deliciously. He didn’t trust himself to speak clearly, worried his voice would crack further. 

“T—top drawer,” he managed, his words stumbling out between quick breaths. 

You pulled back with the proudest smile, clearly pleased with yourself. You pressed a gentle kiss against his lips as you leaned over to grab your reward. You stretched toward the bedside table, letting the hem of his t-shirt ride up your thighs, allowing him the devastating view of your bare skin. 

You chuckled when his breath hitched at the display. He was far too easy to rile up—you loved it. 

The drawer slid open with a quiet rattle. You reached in, fingers closing around the familiar box of condoms before giving it a small shake. 

His stomach dropped. 

Goddamn it. 

He groaned, cursing himself repeatedly in his head. This was mortifying. One hand dragged down his face as reality hit him. 

After so long without anyone, he barely touched the damn things. Not like he was getting anything close to action these days. 

He should have remembered—there had only been two left yesterday, and you’d made such sweet, perfect use of both of them last night. You’d asked so sweetly if you could say, if that was alright, and then one thing led to another in the glow of the bedside lamp. 

He should have been better prepared—god, if only—but he had been selfish last night. He gave in. He wanted to memorise every sound you made, every way your body fit against his, every breathless call of his name that was suddenly flashing through his mind once more. 

Now, he would be facing the consequences. 

“I–I’m sorry,” he started immediately, voice thick with apology, eyes wide behind his glasses. “I should have—I wasn’t expecting—I’m an idiot, I—”

You shushed him gently, stopping his rambling. You leaned down close again, forehead almost resting against his. 

You didn’t look upset, which was a good thing? 

With a gentle voice, so filled with affection despite its teasing edge, so much so that he never would have guessed the filthy words that left your mouth. 

“I’m protected, Ry,” you placed one hand on his jaw, keeping your lips to his ear. “If you want… we can still…”

Surely you didn’t mean….

It took every single scrap of willpower not to combust right then and there. His brain scrambled as he caught your insinuation. 

He’d be lying if he said he’d never thought about it—of course he had. 

He was a man, and he was stupidly, helplessly in love with you. And, at the end of the day, biology was biology. Late at night after those long dinners, goodnight kisses that left him aching in his car, his mind wandered to the most primal thought: what it would be like to feel you. All of you. 

No barriers—nothing. Just the soft and slick feeling of your skin against his. 

He’d always shoved the thought away, called himself delusional, told himself it was far too big of an ask to impose on anyone, let alone you. 

He’d never done that before. Not once. Not with the handful of careful, cautious flings he’d had years ago. Nothing this intimate. Nothing that held like handing you every last piece of him. 

But you were offering it so willingly. Sitting all pretty on his lap like it would be a pleasure for not just him. His cock gave a helpless throb against you at the mere idea. 

You chuckled at his reaction, you knew the effect you had on him. 

He was nodding before he could stop himself—quick, frantic bobs of his head, glasses struggling to stay still, mouth dry. 

You smiled that little smile and placed two fingers under his chin, tilting his head and forcing his dazed eyes to meet yours. 

“I need words, Ry,” you whispered as your thumb brushed his bottom lip. “Can’t do it unless you tell me yes.”

You were going to be the absolute death of him. 

“Yes,” he rasped, voice cracking. “Yes, I want—but only if you do. Please don’t feel as though—I would never—”

You quieted him with a kiss to the corner of his mouth, cutting off the rambling before it could spiral. 

“I want to,” you murmured against his lips. “Wanna feel you everywhere.”

The groan that tore out of him was completely broken and involuntary. If that’s what you wanted, that’s what he’ll give you. Gladly. 

“I’m gonna be on top, okay?” you ask, but it isn’t really a question. 

He forces himself back to reality, to the fact that you are going to be on top of him. That the fantasy of you riding him is unfolding right in front of his eyes. You give him a second, a small window to object as you pull your underwear down slowly—like you think he might. Like that’s even remotely a possibility right now. 

You smiled down at him as you hooked your fingers into the waistband of his boxers, eyes locked on his, a knowing smile playing on your lips that made his stomach flip. 

He watched, utterly transfixed, as you tugged the fabric down his hips with aching slowness. His cock sprang free, painfully hard and already leaking at the tip. The cool morning air hit his overheated skin, he hissed through his teeth. 

“Eager, hm?” you murmured as your fingers brushed against his thigh. 

He opened his mouth, some half-formed protest already forming, but your hand wrapped around him before he could get a single syllable out. The sudden pressure of your palm stole every thought. His hips jerked up into your grip on instinct, and all that came out was a broken, breathless babble.

“Never—never done it like this before,” he managed, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Not—not bare, I mean—”

You pulled back just enough to look at him, your expression softening in a heartbeat. 

Your hand stayed right where it was, stroking him, thumb circling the slick head in a way that made his vision blur at the edges. For one terrifying second he thought you were going to stop, that the weight of being someone’s first for something this intimate might be too much. 

That maybe you’d decide he was too much.

But your cheeks flushed darker, your eyes gleaming with something possessive, and your fingers tightened just a fraction around his shaft.

“Does this mean… I’m the first?”

The thought was dizzying. You were going to be the first one to give this to him, the ultimate trust. The idea sent a jolt down to your lower belly, your breath getting heavier in your lungs as you looked at his dishevelled expression. 

You stroked him again, base to tip, torturously unhurried. 

“Y–yes,” he nodded. “You’re the first.”

He could barely get the words out, your hand distracting him from anything coherent. 

“Hm,” you hummed, low and fond. You leaned over him until your breath ghosted over his lips. Your hand never stopped its slow, devastating rhythm on his cock. 

“Better make it worth it then, don’t I?”

He was gone. 

Helplessly gone.

A wrecked sound tore out of his throat and his hands flew up to grip your thighs, fingers digging. His cock throbbed hard in your fist at the words, another bead of pre-cum sliding over your knuckles. He couldn’t even form a reply—just nodded frantically, cheeks burning crimson.

You sat up and peeled his old t-shirt up and over your head in one smooth motion. It dropped somewhere off the side of the bed. Ryland’s eyes went wide, pupils blown behind the lenses as he drank in the sight of you—bare, soft, perfect—straddling his hips. His mouth went dry. He stared at the swell of your breasts, the way your nipples had already tightened in the cool air, the gentle curve of your stomach, the place where your thighs pressed warm against his.

You caught the way he hesitated, his hands hovering like he was afraid to ruin the view, and you laughed again.

“You can touch me,” you said, voice warm. “I want you to touch me.”

Gladly. 

His hands found you instantly, reverent and greedy. Palms sliding up your sides, thumbs brushing the undersides of your breasts, then cupping them, feeling the goosebumps rise across your skin. 

He leaned up on his elbows, mouth following the path of his hands—open-mouthed kisses pressed to your sternum, your ribs, the soft underside of one breast before he dragged his tongue over your nipple and sucked gently. 

It was clumsy with his adrenaline, but you still sighed, arching into him. Your hand threading into his messy hair and scratching at his scalp in that way that made his eyes flutter shut.

He kept going, lost in the taste of your skin, the little sounds you made, even as his cock ached and leaked against you. 

He could have stayed there forever, worshipping every inch of you, but you gently tugged his head back by the hair. He hissed at the sting, glasses fogged and crooked, eyes dazed and glassy as he stared up at you.

Please, do that again. 

You cupped his face with both hands, thumbs stroking his flushed cheeks. 

“Lie back.” 

He obeyed quickly, falling back against the pillows, hands still locked on your hips.

He almost felt bad, the way you took over so easily. Surely he could be doing more, giving you more. But the thought faltered under the weight of the look in your eyes.

There was something in your expression that made his stomach flip, something that felt almost dangerous in the gentlest way. Like you were about to take him apart piece by piece.

The moment he was flat, you wrapped your fingers around the base of his cock again and gave him one long, torturously slow stroke. 

“Please—” he squirmed beneath you, hips twitching.

You smiled down at him, wicked and sweet. 

“If I’m the first one to have you like this, Ry,” you purred, stroking him again, even slower, “I gotta take my time.”

The look on his face must have been devastating, because your eyes darkened with pure satisfaction. He whined when you kept teasing him, thumb pressing right under the head on every upstroke, spreading the slickness until his cock glistened.

“This is cruel,” he gasped, voice cracking, head tipping back against the pillow. His thighs trembled under you. “Sweetheart, please—I can’t—”

He needed to feel you—now. 

You took pity on him then, because he looked so desperate, so beautifully wrecked beneath you. 

“Only because you asked so nicely.” 

Thank God. 

You shifted your weight, guiding the flushed, angry tip of his cock to your entrance. The first brush of wet heat against him made his breath stutter.

“Oh—God—” he choked out as you started to sink down.

The slide was slow, deliberate, and devastating. Nothing between you. Just slick, perfect heat enveloping him inch by inch until you were seated fully on his cock, your ass flush against his hips, nothing separating you at all.

“Baby—I—” 

He could feel everything. Every flutter of your walls, every tiny twitch and clench as you adjusted around him. The way your body welcomed him completely, hot and wet and so tight it made his head spin. His hands spasmed at your sides, fingers digging into the soft give of your hips. He watched, transfixed, as your eyes fluttered and rolled back for a second when you rocked your hips experimentally, your walls rippling around his bare cock.

“You feel that?” you asked, voice husky, one hand braced on his chest as you rolled your hips again, taking him even deeper.

“Yes—yes, I feel it,” he gritted out, the words ragged. “I feel all of you—it’s—”

Every nerve in his body was lit up, oversensitive and raw. Nothing could have prepared him for this. 

All those nights he was alone, his cock in his hand as he felt guilty about what he was doing. Images racing through his head of you like this, raw, so beautiful on top of him. 

All those half-hearted imitations didn’t come close to this bliss. 

“I need you to move,” he begged. “Need you to move, sweetheart, please—”

He sounded almost pathetic as he pleaded with you. 

You began to ride him, rising up until just the head of his cock kissed your entrance before sinking back down, taking every thick inch again. The wet, filthy sound of it filled the quiet room. His head fell back, a moan tearing from his throat as pleasure exploded behind his eyes like fireworks. Sparks shot down his spine, pooling hot and heavy in his gut. 

He watched you through half-lidded eyes, completely blissed out—your head tipped back, lips parted on soft little gasps and moans that made his cock throb inside you, the way your breasts bounced with every roll of your hips, the way your thighs flexed as you rode him like you owned him.

And you did. In that moment, you absolutely did.

“Fuck, Ry,” you breathed, leaning forward so your hands braced on his chest, nails digging in just enough to sting. “You’re so deep—”

Fuck, he knew. He could feel it. 

Every thick inch of him buried to the hilt inside you, the slick, velvety drag of your walls hugging him so perfectly with nothing between you. It was overwhelming, obscene, the wet heat of your pussy swallowing him whole and clenching like it never wanted to let go. His hips snapped up on pure instinct, chasing that devastating friction, but you were the one in control, grinding down slow, making sure he felt every single flutter.

You picked up the pace then, rising and sinking with purpose. He whimpered, the sound punched out of his chest as pleasure coiled tighter in his gut. His glasses were completely fogged now, the lenses useless, but he didn’t care. He could barely see straight anyway, too lost in the sight of you above him: flushed cheeks, lips parted. 

You looked like sin in the morning sunlight, and he was helpless beneath you.

“Does it feel good?” you teased, voice breathy but dripping with satisfaction as you clenched around him on purpose, a rippling squeeze that made his cock throb hard inside you. “Can you feel it?”

Can he feel it? 

You were killing him. 

He didn’t know where this new, wicked confidence had come from—last night you’d been soft and sweet and letting him set the pace, but now you were riding him like you owned every inch of his body. 

He wasn’t complaining. Not even a little. If anything, the contrast made his head spin faster.

“Yes—yes, god, yes,” he babbled, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush. “Feels so good—been thinking about it for weeks—”

The confession slipped out before he could stop it. Your movements slowed instantly, dragging to an aching crawl until you were barely rocking on his cock, just enough to keep him throbbing and leaking inside you but nowhere near enough to satisfy. 

You looked down at him, one hand sliding up to cup his jaw, fingers firm as you forced his blue, glassy eyes to meet yours.

“Weeks?” you echoed, voice soft but edged with pure delight.

He was panting, chest heaving, sweat already beading at his temples. He nodded frantically, too far gone to lie. His cock gave a helpless twitch inside you at the way you were looking at him—like you wanted to devour every filthy secret he’d ever had.

You leaned in closer, lips brushing the shell of his ear as you rolled your hips with excruciating slowness. 

“Come on, don’t be shy now,” you whispered, voice dripping honey and sin. “How much have you thought about this? Be honest.”

This was mortifying. 

He groaned, cheeks burning hotter than he thought possible. This wasn’t fair. This was cruel. You were sitting so pretty on his cock, pussy wrapped tight around him, and now you were pulling dirty confessions out of him like it was nothing. 

He wasn’t good at this—words always tangled on his tongue around you at the best of times, and now, with you clenching around him on every slow drag, it was torture. Pure torture.

“I—I don’t know, I just—ugh, please move faster,” he begged, voice cracking, hips twitching uselessly beneath you in a desperate attempt to get more friction.

You stopped moving completely. Just sat there, warm and full of him, smiling down at him with that innocent little tilt of your head that did not match the filthy way you were keeping him buried inside you.

“I’m not moving until you tell me,” you said sweetly, like you were asking him about the weather instead of demanding he spill every desperate fantasy he’d had about filling you up bare. "

His brain short-circuited. The contrast—your soft, almost shy tone against the way your pussy was still fluttering around his aching cock—was going to end him. He was so sensitive, every tiny shift of your body sending sparks shooting up his spine, his body drawing tight with the need to cum.

“Ah—okay—since the second date,” he gasped in a humiliated rush. “Just—please, honey—don’t stop—you’re killing me here—”

You had the nerve to giggle, the sound vibrating through your body and straight into his length. For a second, he thought you were going to lean back and finally ride him properly, but you just stayed there, smiling down at him like he was the most adorable thing you’d ever seen.

Just take pity on him already.

“Long time, huh?” you murmured, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Well, now we can do this whenever you want, Ry. Just gotta ask.”

Whenever he wants? 

Christ. 

He swore he was going to die. The casual promise in your voice sent a fresh wave of heat crashing through him. 

You owned him. Completely.

You finally took mercy and started moving again, you rode him with purpose. You moaned his name, and he could barely contain himself. 

He was so sensitive, every drag of your pussy around his bare cock sending him spiralling higher, the heat of you with nothing between you driving him out of his mind. He could feel everything—the way your walls squeezed, the slick slide of your arousal mixing with his, the way your thighs trembled against his hips.

“Fuck—” you groaned, voice so gone it broke him. You leaned down, pressing your forehead to his, eyes locked on his as you kept riding him deep and perfect. “Please, Ry?—Wanna feel you.”

The polite little plea combined with the filthy request shattered what was left of his control. He came with a shattered cry of your name, hips jerking up hard as he gripped your waist. 

“Baby, I'm—” 

The words tumbled out, even as his cock pulsed and throbbed, spilling thick, hot ropes of cum deep inside you. Wave after wave, more than he thought he had in him, flooding you until he could feel the slick mess of it already starting to leak out around where you were joined. 

His whole body shook with it, oversensitive and wrecked, glasses slipping down his nose as his head tipped back against the pillow.

You kept moving through every pulse, milking him for everything he had, whispering soft praises against his mouth until the last weak spurt finally faded and he was left trembling beneath you, spent and panting and so full of love and lust he couldn’t even form words.

Slowly, the world came back into focus. His heartbeat thundered in his ears while the rest of him felt loose and heavy. You were still straddling him, full of him, but your movements had gentled into lazy little rocks that sent aftershocks rippling through his oversensitive cock. He was still buried deep inside you, the mess of his release already starting to leak out around where your bodies were joined, warm and obscene and impossibly intimate.

Your lips were on him, sweet kisses scattered across his flushed face. One to the corner of his eye where his glasses had slipped, one to the bridge of his nose, one to the corner of his mouth that was still parted on a shaky exhale. You kissed his forehead, his temple, the flushed shell of his ear, murmuring little nothings between each press of your lips. 

He was still floating somewhere outside his own body, chest heaving, but the sweetness of it pulled him back down gently. His hands, which had been locked in a death grip on your hips, loosened and slid up your back in a dazed caress.

When his eyes finally fluttered open, hair a complete disaster against the pillow, he looked up at you with pure, raw apology written all over his face.

“I’m so sorry,” he rasped. “I’m so sorry, I—I didn’t mean to—”

You pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. 

“What?” you asked, genuinely confused, one hand brushing damp strands of hair off his forehead. “Ry, I asked for this. I wanted it. There’s no need to apologise.”

He huffed out a half-frustrated groan, and let his head fall back against the pillow. His cheeks burned hotter. 

Of course you’d say that. Of course you’d be sweet about it. But the guilt still twisted in his gut like a live wire.

He’d come so fast. Like a damn teenager who’d never touched a girl before. He hadn’t even lasted long enough to get you off, and that was the part that stung the worst. 

He was supposed to take care of you—had promised himself he would, after all the careful, patient months of waiting. He was the one who was supposed to make you fall apart, not the other way around. 

He’d spilled inside you like he had zero control, like the bare feel of you around him had short-circuited every rational thought he’d ever had. 

Pathetic. 

He could already feel the scientific part of his brain cataloguing the humiliation: refractory period probably shot, ego thoroughly demolished.

“What about you?” His voice was still shaky, but the concern was there.

You blinked down at him, all innocent again, like you hadn’t just ridden him into oblivion. 

“What about me?”

“You didn’t even—” He gestured vaguely between you, cheeks flaming. “I didn’t get you there. I couldn’t even last long enough to—”

You chuckled, as you slowly lifted yourself off his cock. The wet drag pulling off him made him twitch hard, a broken sound escaping his throat as the air hit his oversensitive length. You flopped down beside him on the mattress, curling into his side, one leg sliding over his thigh.

“Well,” you said, propping your chin on his chest and looking up at him with sparkling eyes, “we have the rest of the day. I’m sure you can make it up to me later.” Your smile turned just a little wicked. “Or maybe in the shower?”

He groaned, already turned on again, and pulled you closer, arms wrapping around you. 

You were unbelievable. 

The way you could go from filthy and commanding to soft and playful in the space of a heartbeat left him dizzy.

“You’re gonna be the death of me, you know that?” he muttered against your hair, pressing a kiss to the top of your head even as his body still hummed with aftershocks.

You laughed softly and tilted your face up, catching his mouth in a deep kiss that tasted like morning and sex and everything he’d been dreaming about for months. When you pulled back, your lips brushed his one last time.

“I’m gonna hop in the shower,” you whispered, voice warm against his mouth. “You’re more than welcome to join me.”

You slipped out of bed and he watched as you padded toward the bathroom. His eyes dropped to your thighs, where the evidence of what you’d just done together glistened in the sunlight: a slow, shiny trail down your skin. The sight hit him like a punch to the chest, possessive and so fucking beautiful it short-circuited whatever was left of his brain.

He was out of bed in an instant, nearly tangling himself in the sheets in his rush, cock already half-hard again just from the sight of you. You glanced over your shoulder and giggled and he followed without a second thought, trailing after you like a man who had already accepted his fate.

Yeah. He was definitely going to make it up to you in the shower. 

a/n: im ovulating idk i think i blacked out when writing this. two people have asked me about creampies and this is where my mind immediately went

also sub ryland is real to me and i'll do anything to write about him being pathetic <3

“I am having a moment, bud.” Grace said while his eyes were shut.

“Why Grace need time. question?”

“Because I am trying to recall my full name, Rocky.” eyes were still shut and sitting in the center of the LED dome made for the crew in the ship.

“Grace has more names. why? Question.”

“Because on Earth— argh you know what? nevermind, I lost focus.”

Rocky accompanied him for the past 3 months, since then he never cared about knowing him at all, compared to the first 6 months since he woke up. He is now accompanied and occupied. Not until now.

“Rocky checks on Grace okay.”

“Yeah, Rocky. I am fine. Thanks bud.”

“Grace thinking but not science.”

“It’s because..” He paused, “I wanted to know how I got in here. It’s like a missing puzzle piece for me. I can’t recall what's the benefit of this to me. what made me convinced to come here. If I could just ask the crews,” 

Grace sighed, “...but they are all dead now. If those 2 crew just left any note or clue before they passed and left me alone in coma.”

Rocky rolled closer to Grace, “Grace is not alone. Not all dead. statement.” and that made a smile on his face and Grace threw his shoulder over the glass. “Thanks, bud. Thank you for accompanying me, You’re making me alive too.”

Grace never expected his bond with Rocky would grow strong like this. He knew he’s middle school teacher when the sudden excitement of wanting to share new things hit him, especially when he met Rocky, “The kids would be amazed to know about you. They’re little minds would explode.”— Kids? I have kids? Oh! I am a teacher. Science teacher. 

“Grace never been alone. statement.”

“Yeah- yeah. I got it, bud. I am very glad you are here.”

“No. crew still rest.”

“Yes. They are resting in peace.”

“Rocky know dead. crew only rest.”

“They are dead as fudge, Rocky. 2 dead crew.” Grace detail while showing his two fingers up. He grabbed his laptop and checked if there were any translation issues but the words he had input in here was enough to form understandable human grammar.

“Grace is wrong. 2 dead. 2 alive crew. statement.”

“What are you talking abou— two what??” Grace immediately got up and wore his glasses properly. “Where is he?”

Rocky led him back to the part of the ship where he woke up from uncounted years of coma. He never took Rocky here and never detailed to him this part of the ship as for him it won’t be necessary to look back.

“Up up up. Crew resting.” Since rocky could only roll most of the surface, Grace needed to take it from there. There was a containment that Grace did not bother to look at since most of the things on the ship were meant for 3 crew, he never thought there could be another human in the ship. 

Hopes are filling up into his heart in every step he takes in the ladder to check the chamber higher than where he woke up. Another human, another chance for him to know everything. It was a bigger MRI-like chamber where you could step inside or slide out the patient’s gatch bed. Grace was able to easily open the door and step inside. 

“What Grace see? question.” He can hear Rocky from below waiting for him.

Grace sees a similar apparatus he has been before, monitoring computers and your unconscious body that is perfectly resting with signs of condemnation.  You are a person that is buried in his memories. 

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡✮ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆｡°✩.˚  ݁ ˖ ✧ ‧₊:･ﾟ:･.˚｡☽ ･:･.:☁︎ ⋆⭒˚｡⋆𖦹. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊𓈒𓏸.°•

Grace heard only a few banging of the door before footsteps inside his room. He did not bother. He continued to his sleep while on his sheets and boxers. Yesterday was a tough day doing his research and preparing for his presentation. Sleeping in a Naval Station wasn't the best experience but the best option he has for all extended effort he did last night.

“Since you often get yourself ready for 20 minutes, you'll be late for approximately 8 minutes for your presentation today with the world’s leaders.” He ignores the voice and buries his head to the pillow and covers his head. 

“You need to get your rocket-boxered ass ready, Dr. Grace.” You commanded with a bit of firmness. 

You questioned to yourself if the rocket printed boxers were still in 30’s men's choice of underwear or scientist thing, or maybe it's just him. You turned your head to Carl and asked, “Do you have any specific choice of underwear? If you don’t mind me asking.” Carl only shook his head while still standing firmly next to you. You looked back to the scientist who is still fighting for a nice sleep. “I see. I see. It’s just him. Last time his boxers were molecule printed.” 

“I don’t get why they call you a Stratt clone, Stratt doesn't talk about someone else's underwear.” Grace said beneath the pillow, and that hit him. Hair tousled when he lifted his head and the first thing he met was your eyes. “Good morning, Doctor Grace. Time to get up.” 

It was not the very first time you did it to Grace and the doctor can’t get help but to feel timidly as he covers himself with his blanket to hide his flushed face from you. 

Grace was lucky that the presentation went well as he practiced last night. The world leader only threw questions related to his presentation since their interests were leaning more to strategy and planning which is under Stratt responsibility already.

A sound of a box placed in his desk woke Grace from his power nap in his laboratory, “You haven’t got your breakfast.” He sits properly off his body from the head rest of his swivel chair while eyes are still half open, “Thank you” trying to keep cool.

“How did you manage to get bento on a naval station? We’re practically sailing around Faslane.”

Most people saw you as another Eva Stratt in heels, sharp-edged and impossible to rattle, all clipped professionalism and firmness. Copying it was not that hard, just a couple of years working with her. But after months of working beside you, Grace learned the truth: once you let someone close enough, the steel gave way to something warmer. Playful. Gentle. 

Caring in quiet little ways that caught him off guard. Carl and him are the most who sees it.

“I made it myself,” you said simply. And somehow, even after all this time, he realized there were still so many things about you he had yet to know. 

You waited for him to take a big scoop and shove it into his mouth before asking, “So what’s with rocket printed undies?” He almost spit all of the food he took as he choked.

Grace knew you were well aware of how patient he could be, years of teaching middle school had made sure of that. He never lost his temper when you pulled things like this. If anything, all he ever felt around you was that strange little flutter in his stomach he still didn’t quite have a name for.

“You don’t ask someone about their underwear.” Grace said as soon as he swallowed food that almost choked him.

“We wanted to  know if it is a scientist thing or just your thing. We are just curious. Right, Carl?” You said and turned away from Carl and faced Grace again. 

Carl just casually mouthed “I am not” to Grace while shaking his head.

“It's just— It just happened that they made this kind of underwear. This is something I customize myself. And for God’s sake can you please not go inside my room?” His worry lies not in his privacy but on how you would think of him seeing him sleep— during hours where he is careless about himself.

“You are in a naval station. Basically it's owned by the government and we are authorized to check it anytime.” Your eyes smiled at him. Grace raises his index. “That sounds power tripping to me.” that only made you chuckle. 

You put a bottle of water in front of him at the exact moment he chokes. Grace knows how reliable you are, not just inside the laboratory but in many aspects even to the smallest one.

“Carl, would you mind getting Dr. Grace some soda?” With no question, Carl followed what you asked and you waited for him to leave the laboratory. 

You pushed his loose glasses towards his radix which made him get a clear sight of you in front of him.

“Wanna go stargazing later? I know a spot on the ship.”

It was the first time anyone had ever asked Grace to do something that wasn’t tied to work. Just one simple question, yet it stirred something unfamiliar in his chest, a strange warmth spreading through him at the thought of being wanted for something other than the job. 

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡✮ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆｡°✩.˚  ݁ ˖ ✧ ‧₊:･ﾟ:･.˚｡☽ ･:･.:☁︎ ⋆⭒˚｡⋆𖦹. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊𓈒𓏸.°•

Mission was never left behind as it is still his priority while consistently checking on your unconscious body. Ofc he would always check on you since Rocky is asking about you every hour. 

 “You couldn’t hide how excited you were about her, yet somehow you hid from me that there was another crew here you can see for months.” Grace said to Rocky while observing you in your sleep.  “Grace did not ask. statement.”

“How could I—” He stopped from there since Rocky got a point. 

It was tricky to move your body to the lower chamber where the Chinese crew, Yao, used to be placed, but Grace managed to do it.

Your unconscious body wrapped in a translucent body bag which is being monitored by designated machinery in the chamber turned into Grace’s hope to unlock his true self, to recall who he was, but he was also having fear if he should still know about himself. “I should know.” He should know the answers why his body involuntarily gives him shivers and warmth whenever his hand lands in your skin. 

You could be something more than a crew. You could be more than part of this project. You must be something more.

“Woman is beautiful. Grace want Woman. statement.” Grace’s dissociation was interrupted by Rocky. As he always does. Since Grace has no clue of her name, he just set it on Rocky’s translation as Woman so he wouldn’t constantly hear it as Adrian, “Please don’t do that once she wakes up. You’ll freak her out.”

“Do Grace want Woman. question.” 

“We are professionals here.”

“Professionals… |”

“Our priority is the mission.”

“mission… |” Rocky copied.

“Yes, that's correct.”

“Grace did not answer rocky question.” Rocky rolls closer to Grace, “Grace want Woman. Statement.” Grace could lie to himself but not to Rocky. 

Rocky could sense how his heartbeat skips and increases pace whenever he sees you and the different toxins his brain releases whenever he checks on her. Rocky knows that all.

He never pushes himself to remember everything but only lets his brain do it by nature. Grace only relies on the images from his memory of you. Doing laboratory stuff, him asking you to search information he needed and lunch together but more of work related activities. yet feels different. His smiles were different, words from his mouth were stuttering. 

“When Woman wake up, question?” No one knows. Grace wouldn't take the risk to wake her up. They just both continue their routine in finding new information about how to eliminate these star-eating bacteria while on their journey to Tau Ceti. 

“Did Woman wake up, question?” Grace couldn’t give more information than no, but never failed to check her, it became part of his routine. 

There will always be room for new things to learn about each other. They have discussed a lot of things about each other’s planet and practices— although Earth has different practices in every corner.

“Earth is complicated, not like Erid. statement.”

“We are guilty as charged.”

“So how do humans breed, question?” 

“Wow oh! that escalated fast.” Rocky got confused with how Grace reacted. He knew that humans are not vocal about breeding. 

“Eridian breeding technique is beautiful.” Rocky said while his arms were raised. “Do Grace want to see the Eridian breeding technique, question?” He added.

“No. no. not now. I am not ready to see. Maybe next time, bud.”

“Does Grace have breeding techniques?”

“Of course, I do.”

“So Grace has breeding experience, question?”

“Breeding doesn't sound appropriate to me.”

“Humans are complicated. statement.” Grace couldn't even recall any past lovers— if he does have one. Surely he got some. He said to himself before looking again to the unconscious body in the bed.

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡✮ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆｡°✩.˚  ݁ ˖ ✧ ‧₊:･ﾟ:･.˚｡☽ ･:･.:☁︎ ⋆⭒˚｡⋆𖦹. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊𓈒𓏸.°•

“You seriously haven't been in a relationship before? woman? man?” You shift your focus to him, off from the monitor and turn your chair to face him. “What’s making you keep your virgin ass?” 

“I didn't say I’m a virgin. I said— I haven't been in a proper relationship before.” Grace clarified. “Most of them I’ve only been with for some months, 10 months max. but they never really cared. So I just focus on my career, the longest relationship I’ve been with.”

“How about the other teachers in the school?”

“Who would you pair with a Science Teacher, then?”

“Math Teachers”

“One is a married man and the other is lesbian.”

You were suggesting more,“English Teachers?”

“All were my work besties plus they were way too young”

“Physical Education?”

“They are also the Math Teachers.”

“Principal?”

“Do you seriously have a thing in office romance?”

That caught you off guard. Like Stratt, You often stay professional and have no room for romance especially in the workplace. But you are not closing the door for opportunity, after all you are just a human with a beating heart. 

You were about to ask him another question just to not cause any awkward silence but then he speaks, “—Because I don’t.” Grace added, with a very noticeable movement in his throat. “I’ll do the job, finish it, pack my stuff and go home. Making my life less complicated.”

Right on time, Stratt walks into the laboratory with Carl behind her. It's like a switch, you turn back on to your work mode. “Am I interrupting something?” Stratt.

“No, w-we are just talking about my student loan haha that's it.” Grace answered Stratt which made you look at him.

“You still have a student loan, Dr. Grace.?”

“Well, It is supposed to be paid off by the university if they just keep me there.”

You gasped, “Gosh— so I’ll be still paying my student loans till my 30s.”

Eva slowly looked at you, “You have a student loan that I didn’t know about?” 

You immediately look for a valid escape goat and the first thing you see is Grace. “Dr. Grace asked me to get him some food.” and quickly exited the lab. Startt’s eyes followed you as you made your way out of the room, “I did not ask for food” Grace.

In the past few weeks of being locked up in the Naval Station, the most fun activity you often do with Grace is stargazing, and surprisingly he did appear every time you asked him to.

Focus was still on the mission, Startt has this kink in micro managing and you are the first hand receiving those tasks making you unable to spend time with him by night.

That particular week had been brutal. Stratt buried you under endless workloads on top of research assignments and experiments with Grace. He noticed that. Of course, he noticed it. and at the same time he was waiting for you to ask him for stargazing tonight. “Anything I can do for you, Dr. Grace?” You asked with half eyelid open

“Rest.” he said gently. “You need to rest. I’ll be fine here.”

You did follow that else your body will collapse. You immediately went to your assigned room and slept even if it wasn't still aligned to your body clock that you often follow. 

Your body suddenly wakes you up by night, it reminds you that sleep was not enough, you need to fill up your tummy as well. While eating your dinner, you open your phone, which you are trying to avoid so you could have excuse to Stratt not seeing her messages

But you received a message from someone you did not expect.

Dr. Grace *⁠.⁠✧: Wanna watch the stars? Here at the same spot.

While in your pajamas and cardigan, You made your way to the upper deck on the side of the naval ship. Spot doesn't often check by the authorities in the said ship where you two could have a moment in peace.

“Nice Pajamas. Kuromi is a great choice.” Grace compliment half meant tease you. “It's not something I customized for myself.” You replied to aim to copy what he responded to you before. 

“Hey— how do you know Kuromi?” You asked as you walked towards him he shrugged his shoulders in response. Of course he knew who Kuromi was. He’s a cool middle grade teacher.

You sat beside him, close enough to feel his body temperature in this cold night which noon was the only source of light but light enough to see his face clear.

He sighed, “I did not prepare any star fun facts today, sorry.”

“No pressure. I’m just here to relax and get some air.” You chuckled.

“Yeah— yeah. Oh! I may have no stars fun facts today but—” Grace paused. “I could get one for you.” He winked.

You smiled while raising an eyebrow at him, “Show me then” challenging him. 

He rubs his palm against each other, “Okay then. Point the star you want.”

You have chosen Alphecca in Corona Borealis which is on your far side. Grace actually reached for it, lifting his hand and grabbing it like light years distance didn’t matter, like the sky might give in if he tried hard enough. You were about to laugh, but it caught in your chest when a faint glow lit at his fingertips, soft and warm, like a secret he brought to life just for this moment.

You never knew that thumb tip light magic would be this fun.

The light glowing in his fingers while the space between you quietly disappeared, did notice but did not bother. You watched how he passed the light from his left finger to right like a kid first time seeing magic, first time feeling a newly introduced feeling.

You didn’t ruin his show—you let him show you, let him have this small magic, because the way he looked at the sky… and slowly back to you, felt more real than anything else. And maybe that’s what made your heart stutter—he wasn’t reaching for the star anymore, not really. Grace was close enough now to what he really wanted more than the stars.

You were laughing at how creative he was and there were the show ends when he saw you smiling again. “Hope it's not lame.”

A soft hit to his chest while laughing “No—no. it's not. I wouldn't think that. I find it really nice. I did not expect it. Did you use that in your class?”

“Actually.” 

He watched as you got over it and didn't bother to call you out on leaning on him. His eyes landed in your smiles, in your lips. His eyes made you recall all of the unspoken things you two have— you both have. 

You cannot recall when it started but being on his side was no longer part of the job for you, but willingness to be on his side most of the time. 

“Dr. Grace...”

“Call me Ryland.”

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡✮ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆｡°✩.˚  ݁ ˖ ✧ ‧₊:･ﾟ:･.˚｡☽ ･:･.:☁︎ ⋆⭒˚｡⋆𖦹. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊𓈒𓏸.°•

Ryland didn't know if that new memory was helpful or not. In a moment he was full of hope, and now it suddenly shifted to not knowing what you do once you woke up and still doesn't know who you were for him back on Earth because the last thing he saw on that memory was how close your lips to his.

Did we kiss? 

What are we then?

Am I not really a virgin? 

“What Grace is thinking, question?” 

His dissociation was again declined when Rocky appeared on his side. “It's nothing Rocky. I just found out our names. My name is Ryland, Ryland Grace.”

Grace took a marker and went closer to your bed. He wrote both your full name on the wall, big enough to be noticed first. “....is here,” he added.

It's been a month since Grace found out your comatose body and marked it his 10th month from the time he woke up. 

By this point, checking on you was just helping him to recall pieces of his life, but not entirely. If Rocky is resting in his ship, he would go to you and talk. slowly hope’s fading. yet you did help him to recall some of what he was used to.

“Amaze. amaze. amaze. Grace knows all his name.”

“Yeah, feel lightened up.”

When they were about to leave, Grace stopped and looked back when he heard familliar voice command. 

“Body movement detected.” followed by “What is two plus two?” 

They both stopped for a while to see if there might be a real movement or just a bug on the machine. “Oh god—” Grace runs towards you when eyelids tried to open.

You have no clue where you are or what was happening. The guy caught your attention away from looking at the blank white ceiling with floating machines around you. “Am I in the hospital?” questioned yourself but felt different. It wasn't the room, it was the atmosphere.

In his excitement, Grace answered the question that supposed to be answered by you.

“What's two plus two?”

“Four…”

“What is the root cube of 8?”

“Two…”

“What is the factorial of 6?”

“Seven hundre— That wasn't asked to me before.”

He did realize that you must answer those questions yourself as it was able to recognize his voice but also it was designed to know if you are conscious enough to think and answer. 

“Seven hundredzbs— glunnn— twenty.” Tube that was in your mouth may cause you hard time to speak but you were able to manage answer it till stating your name which made the tubes automatically taken away.

This man helped you to get up. He must be the doctor? but he doesn't look like one, based on your guts. 

“I am Ryland Grace. D-do you remember me?” He said while sitting in front of you. You remembered nothing than your name. You looked around but nothing. Just only sub conscious thoughts and body pain. 

You don't mind what you were wearing, translucent body bag, but Grace does and wrapped you with a common lab coat. 

“amaze! amaze! amaze!”

“Hello woman. I am Rocky. statement.” It was a blurry glass you assume was machinery. it does not surprise you until it moves closer to you. There was an alertness switch in your body but did not make you react much. Enough for Grace to notice. 

“I know it does not look like usual, and it is new. but he’s a friend. He's from Erid.” He said while holding the glass around Rocky. “I don’t want you to freak out, but I believe you should and you must be aware of this— that you are not on Earth anymore.”

“You are in Project Hail Mary. Welcome aboard”

“cheer! cheers! cheers!”

—not the best word in Rocky’s translation to use at that moment.

Ryland was hands on in taking care of her. Never feel a burden while you are in the state of recovering yourself. He knew how hard it would be, so he won't let you alone.

He could say that you’re recovering fast, and if his calculation were correct you could recall her memories faster than him. but at the moment, they are taking things slow. Days and turn to weeks since you woke up.

“Did we kiss? Should I ask?” Ryland asked himself. Yet also, not right thing to ask for someone who is recovering.

“Grace thinking what, question?”

“Nothing, Rocky.”

“Grace can't think of nothing. Humans are always thinking. statement.” He knew Rocky wouldn’t stop but he can't just tell him everything, not that you are just behind them.

You walked towards Rocky with a rag in your hand, kneeled down to wipe his barrier. “Rocky is correct. humans can't think of nothing,” you said softly. “We just take a little time—sometimes to understand things better, sometimes to rest our minds, and sometimes because we’re trying to decide what’s right. The best thing you could do while we are taking some time to think is, to let us be. spare us more time.”

It did not take long for you to get comfortable with Rocky. Ryland did a great job in being a bridge for you two to build connection and know each other. Just like two kids befriending each other.

“Awesome awesome. Woman good explanation. Woman is best human ever. statement.”

Ryland protested, “Hey! you told me that first.”

“Grace is Rocky favorite human.” He paused, “—second. statement.” Rocky added.

Ryland also did give her a tour around the ship, from do’s and dont’s to how the ship works. Ryland did pass all things he knew about their spacecraft, but most of the time he gave you a light task why you are still recovering. Also since you can't find your bag here in this ship, you use Milana’s stuff. May God rest her soul in peace.

You did not bother adding your name or changing “woman” in Rocky’s translation. You got used to it.

“Hey, something's bothering you?” shiver crawls on Ryland’s back when he feels your hands on his near waist. He cannot deny that but you don’t notice it at all. “I am f-fine haha.” He responded. 

“Let me know what else I could help you, okay?” You said before going out of the room to do other tasks. 

Sound object skittered noisily as it rolled.

“Grace heart skipping beat. statement.”

“Shh Rocky! She’ll hear you.”

There were no new memories of you with Ryland and what you mostly recall about your life before the project, but you have a glimpse of memories working with him. You often check on Ryland since you could hear him talking with Rocky constantly but his words are getting fewer whenever you are around.

But if you two were colleagues, you two must be comfortable with each other, right? maybe not. But your guts says yes.

Been 3 weeks since you woke up and you can sense you are starting to recall what happened during the process of this project. You could be the hope for Ryland to know how she hopped in this ship. You start to learn how to manage the facility when Ryland realizes it takes more than two hands to operate the ship properly.

Today was so different it was too hard to interact with Ryland, especially that you woke up from a dream that felt so real. It could be real. It could be from your memory. In that dream, you can feel Ryland's soft breath touch your neck while he is sleeping next to you. The tolerable weight of his arm was in your waist while two of you were sharing one blanket. Feels so soft. Feels so light. Feels free. and felt so real.

“Earth to you?” Ryland said and snapped next to your ears. He moved to your side and checked on you while you were trying to hide your flushed face from thinking about what you dreamed of. 

“Impossible. Why earth to Woman. Can Woman carry Earth. question?”

“It's an idiom, Rocky.” Ryland said.

“Oh, Earth idiom. very confusing.”

Ryland faced you again and asked, “Are you alright? You seem so distracted since you woke up.” You can't answer it. God knows how much respect you have for him. You couldn't tell him what your dream was about, that couldn't happen. He leads this project, and you? You don't know, you can't recall about yourself entirely.

When you looked at his face, you saw the same detail of your dream. much detail as you were only inches away from his sleeping face in that dream. 

“Are you sick?” concerned Ryland.

“Woman is sick? DIE?! Woman is going to die no no no no no!”

That made you chuckle after you saw Rocky panicking inside his glass, “No and no. I am not dying and I am not sick.”

“You sure?” Ryland asked and you just nod at him.

He clapped and wore his glasses again. “Alright, need to get back to work. We haven't figured out how these things breed fast.” referring to Astrophage captured back in Venus sitting in his table.

“Rocky taught Grace how Eridian breeds but Grace did not teach Rocky human breeding technique.” That caught off guard both of you. 

“And that was out of nowhere, Rocky.”

“Rocky remember sudden. statement.”

 You just watch them discussing, not bother to interrupt. Ryland responds,“It's just— It's because— we don't teach others how to do it. I just came naturally? Yeah naturally.”

“Grace parents not teach, question?”

“That's disgusting. I am glad they did not do that.” 

“Rocky is curious. Show me. command.”

“Woaw that’s such a demand.” disbelief in Ryland's face. “But no! It takes two humans to do it and the opposite gender.”

For a minute, they both went quiet. Ryland just realized what he just said and immediately blood rushed up to his face that he doesn't want to turn and face you. The silence made you also realize what Ryland has just said. 

Rocky turns to you and back to Ryland, 

“Grace men, Woman women. opposite gender. statement.”

“No!”

“Oh gosh— No!”

Ryland took the opportunity to talk to you in your so-called kitchen and handed you a pack of skittles in a sealed pack. “No expiration date but hope it won't hurt your tummy on that light years-old Skittles.”

“Thanks, Ry.” You said and put some of your hair in the back of your ears which gave Ryland a better view of your face.

“Uhm” He pauses, “Sorry if you might find it annoying earlier. Rocky is just curious about us. humans. He finds us very complex. too complicated to understand.”

“I totally understand. We are very different from each other. I myself also curious about Eridian.” You replied

“Well, I just also think that he’s messing up with me too. He knew I don't like talking about— you know— the breeding stuff. I barely discussed sex education to my students before.” and the two of you laugh.

He does check on you time by time, to see if there's any improvement with your memory or recalls something new. something you two shared. maybe time you two with each other, only two of you. To know if that's his imagination only or if it did happen back on Earth. 

“May I ask? Do you—”

You cut him off by holding his arm when you felt something strange with your weight. “Do you feel that?” You asked him. Both your heads snapped toward the nearby monitor just as the warning flashed across the screen.

[ CENTRIFUGE DISABLED - PREPARE FOR GRAVITY SHUTDOWN ]

Before you could react your feet lifted off from the floor. The thing is you haven’t practiced floating around as Ryland wanted you to focus on your recovery. “R-ryland…” Ryland could see the terror in your eyes and immediately took your hands pulling you closer to him. “Relax, relax. You're safe.”

“This is the reason why there are many strings around the ship. You could try to hold with those if you wanted to go to another facility.” He explained while your hands were gripping tight in his arms.

“Please, don’t.” You plead asking not to let go of you. Ryland agreed.

But with no control over where your body wanted to drift, your hands latched onto the first thing you could find—Ryland. Before you realized it, you were clinging to the scientist outright. Ryland didn’t mind the way you held onto him. What worried him more was whether you’d mind it once you noticed exactly how close you were.

“Okay, I’ll put us lower, closer to the floor before I go to the function deck— to turn on the centrifuge again. Would that be fine for you?” Ryland asked for your approval. As soon as you nod while face is buried in his neck, and with gentle care, he pushes the two of you off the ceiling, guiding your drifting bodies downward.

When two of you were only inches away from the floor, the gravity went on immediately with more pressure, causing a loud sound across the room. 

“Ouch— my back.” You complained while Ryland’s hand was on your back which he used to support your body. 

“Are you hurt?” worried Ryland.

Before you could answer Ryland, Rocky entered the room and stopped on the doorsteps— that made two of you realize your positions. How you were lying beneath Ryland with his arm at your back and side of your head supporting his body from falling to yours.

“Nice nice nice. Grace and Woman breeding. statement.”

“No, we are not!” You and him said in chorus.

Ryland’s passion in teaching is not limited to his classroom. From everything he learned in handling kids, he was able to apply it in his everyday life— or maybe he is just patient in nature.

You could hear them discussing from the other room.

“Rocky turned on the centrifuge. statement.”

“How did it go off first?”

“Rocky too” 

You chuckled silently after hearing it. No gravity could be fun sometimes.

During times that you all decided to rest, you often found him sitting in front of the window. Staring at the endless space composed of stars “Y’miss earth?” You asked as soon as you stepped in.

“Who wouldn't?” He looked at you with a smirk on his lips without moving his body. “I mean, yes, People there are not highly recommended to interact with, they are incredibly unfair— but it's still home.”

Ryland continues, “I have a bunch of memories being mistreated there, but I don't think that was enough for me to join here. That's why I was still wondering how I got in here.” For a moment, he forgot what just said as he faced you, “How about you? Do you recall going in here now?”

Your face looked almost angelic in the dim light. All he could do was look at you and wonder how someone could exist and make the whole room feel gentler just by being in it.

“No, actually sorry.” You answered. Ryland hopes to know if he has indeed shared the moment you have gone again. Getting itchy to know anything, even a clue.

“— but I have this dream. I am with you—” You couldn't decide whether to tell him the truth or you’ll just be judged. You don’t want him to think you are daydreaming of him. 

There's only 3 living with conscious matter in the ship and you don't want to make it awkward. “...and?” Ryland was waiting for you to detail it.

“Oh— it's just a random dream. It just felt real? That you and I… were…” You sighed, “we’re colleagues. You know, just a random scene at work.”

Ryland nodded in response. “Yeah, I think that one is real. We won’t be here together if we aren’t working for this project. Makes sense right?”

For a brief moment, there was silence in between you two. He clears his throat and takes something out of his pocket. “I also have this dream? Memory? Uhm— of us. Kinda work related. That we are stargazing together.” He said, and yes you have a glimpse of those, like an old photos in your memory.

“We often star-gaze in a Naval Station since there are only limited things we can do. We are locked in research for this project—” He explains and moves closer to you. 

“So uhm— ‘kay. Choose a star and I’ll get it for you.” Ryland said. You chuckled and pointed out random bright stars since you can’t identify names of the stars from where the ship was right now. 

You watched him as he acted like a catching star using his bare hard— he even showed exhaustion after his ‘attempts’, and after a couple of catching stars he finally got one and kept it in his palm. “Gotcha!”

He slowly leaned to you while palm was still closed. Curious, you leaned toward him too, your attention fixed entirely on his hand. When he opened it, a tiny folded paper star rested in his palm. “Sorry, I don't have my thumb lights, so I improvised.”

That made your memory clearer.

“Oh! Yes! Hahaha I remember it now! stargazing on the Naval Station’s deck and we…” You stops.

“And we what?” Ryland asked

Before you could answer, Your gaze went down to his lips. Unsure if that really happened or just your brain tricking you since he’s the only guy you could interact with— but don’t feel like that. Everything seems so… natural.

He also noticed how your focus shifted to him instead of answering his questions. your eyes lingering where they shouldn’t have—on the slow bob of his adam’s apple as he swallowed, bullet sweats on the side of his forehead, on the faint, restless twitch of his jaw every time he fought for composure. You all notice those. surroundings went quiet, quieter than the endless dark outside the ship. Like the only person in the universe are the two of you.

Inch by inch your face was getting closer with no gravitation needed to pull each other closer. pulling you toward each other with the slow, inevitable force of magnets finally giving in.

“Are you hugging without Rocky, question?” 

And just like that, you immediately part away, face flushed, and avoid each other’s eyes.

It all came back with painful clarity, even the memories you wished you could leave untouched. You remembered everything. You shared a brief time with him before this project took off but those weeks were the most wonderful weeks in your life. It was beautiful. He is.

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡✮ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆｡°✩.˚  ݁ ˖ ✧ ‧₊:･ﾟ:･.˚｡☽ ･:･.:☁︎ ⋆⭒˚｡⋆𖦹. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊𓈒𓏸.°•

Been almost a week since your last stargazing in Naval Station and he barely speaks to you since. Not unless it was strictly work-related and it was obvious. Unluckily for him, nearly everything that needed to be done requires talking to you.

“Carl, Can you pass me the pen— oh nevermind let me.” the pen was literally on your desk that he could have just asked you to hand it to him. Carl noticed this strange behaviour of Ryland and eye-questioned you, you only shrugged your shoulders in response.

Only the two of you left when Carl takes Stratt's call. You moved your swivel chair closer to him. “Want to grab something for lunch?” You asked.

“T-thanks but I have some errands to do.” That’s when you confirmed that he’s avoiding you.

You know he has nothing to do after lunch. You are the one who organize his schedule. You wanted to confront him but you know he would avoid you more, so you need to think of a way where he doesn't have any choice. Did he just kiss-n-run me?

In the other hand, Ryland hates himself for having no balls to tell you what he felt. It's just the hate for himself stays when he could tell her right away that he wanted that. Coward coward coward. He tells himself. He could have the chance to tell you that night, but chooses to run after kissing you.

After a long day, he immediately packs his thing like he has need to bike back home.

“Where are you going?” You asked when you saw him packing up his stuff.

“Where do you want me to go on this ship? I’ll be resting.”

“We are throwing a farewell party for them tonight.”

Everyone is having a great time, laughter is in every corner of the room while Ryland is only having an almost empty bottle of beer with his notes. You did not expect him to join but there he is. He was surprised when a hand closed his notes followed by another bottle of beer being set beside him. He heard you mutter a complaint about your head before you sank down beside him.

“Working hours are over, Dr. Grace.” He knew he couldn’t get off of this now you are there. You winked. “Set off your nerd mode for tonight, this is a party.”

Ryland knew he couldn't let this pass, so he set his notes aside and replaced the pen in his hand with a bottle of beer. Lucky for him you did not bring up what happened on that night. purely topic under the sun.

The party was loud and full of people, but you two were already in a world of your own. It was just better to be alone, as long as you were alone together, and that is what you two did.

“Be careful” He said while you were walking through the benches on the side of the deck. “It’s fun! Sometimes you need to explore things, Dr. Grace.”

He really finds you adventurous, easy to hangout with and not afraid to try new things out. Different from him who just kept himself in one place, comfort zone. One of the reasons why he can’t stop himself adoring you. 

You were getting quiet, and he doesn’t want that feeling it gives him. Ryland used to hear you being expressive. Transparent of what you felt or what you were thinking. You stopped walking as soon as you reached the upper deck. “Why?” He asked.

“Nothing.”

“Humans can’t think of nothing.” He said. He is indeed a scientist. Cool scientists with just stupid displacement of eyeglasses often made you laugh.

The cold sea breeze is passing to his cardigan and making your scarf swing. You are looking into the eyes of someone who made you feel butterflies in the stomach that you thought you could only hear in teenage fiction.

You wanted to know if he treats everyone else like he did to you, or could be something special. Exclusively yours.

“Don’t you really mean that kiss?” You asked out of nowhere. His lips suddenly shut. That caught him off guard. “Was it really nothing for you?”

He wasn’t looking at your eyes, “Look, I don’t want you to get it wrong. No beef on you. It’s just—” 

You stepped closer to him and pushed his eyeglasses again towards his radix. His face is almost next to yours.

“Dr. Grace, the question is closed ended. So, is it a yes or no? I am making it easier for you.” He can’t believe that he could get intimidated by someone way younger than him.

Ryland gulped, “It meant… nothing for me.” You nodded before placing your hand on his cheek and reached out his lips, placing a slow and heated kiss in his lips. You watched his eyes shut and deepen his face towards yours.

His cold hands crawl on your waist supporting your body. You move away when you feel his lips moving on yours. He even chased your lips when you moved it away. His body is telling you different story. telling you the truth that he couldn't say.

“I thought it was nothing?” You asked while foreheads were leaning to each other.

“I was.. a liar and coward to tell you it was more than everything.”

Ryland doesn’t know how to calm his pounding heart while you two are on your way to his room. He is trying to keep cool— as he doesn't want to give you an impression of being too eager. 

Didn't he know you were the one being impatient.

He was thinking about what he should do once you reached his room. All of what he plotted in his mind was useless when you grab his face and claim his lips again. There was no time wasted. He reacted fast and joined you, dancing along with your lips while his arms secured to your waist and back. 

Tongues were dancing, nose tips were bumping each other. It was a total mess, but exactly how he wanted. exactly how he daydreams that he often pushes away because of his respect for you. He loses it, so you do. 

You're thankful that his cardigan’s button was cooperating. Your hand slides under the shirt and touches it with a light scratch of your nails, that sends him little shivers crawling all over his body. Even if he doesn't tell you, you can sense it, his arm around you tightened. “Stop.. teasing me… please.” He pleads in between the kisses.

You walked him to his bed which is a few steps away without breaking the kiss, and pushed him to his own bed. You admire the view of him in his bed leaning on his elbow. 

“I like your shirt, Dr. Grace, but we need to let go of that.” and it didn't take a second for him to understand that, he immediately sits up and removes his shirt, finally showing to you the toned body he is hiding beneath. 

You knew he got something under those lab coats, but it exceeded your expectations. You tried not to be impatient. Ryland watches as you slowly unbutton your tops, for him it's like a show he doesn't want to miss every scene. He crawls back till his back hits the headboard when you knelt in front of him.

His glasses were still on, but the usual not on its right place. You still find it attractive along with his messed up hair because of your hands.

“Do you have any prepared safe words, Dr. Grace?” You asked.

He let out a shaky laugh, “I’ll choose Torcularis Septentrionalis— longest name of a star but I’m not planning to use it either.”

You can't deny that his nerdy tricks attract you, making you want to devour him. Once again your lips and his links. You took the opportunity of touching every inch of his exposed skin. “Damn, where have you been all this time?” He asked while his eyes were shut.

“Hmm let’s say when you got your bachelor degree, I was in 8th or 9th grade.” You said.

“Please don't make this sound weird.”

“You were asking where I have been.”

“I love kids, but not that kind of love.” He said “Your humor is really in the wrong timing.” added.

He was interrupted when you shifted your focus to his ears. His mouth left open as you made your way through his jaw— taking much time as you enjoyed his scent there. 

Ryland did not fight and surrender his body to you, letting you do anything you wanted. He enjoyed it. He did try his best not to make any sound, but you were a sucker of whimpers. 

While busy with his neck, you sat in his pants exactly on top of his crotch and did an intentional friction there. Combination of light sucks in his neck and your hips rolling on top of him is driving him insane. 

Not long after, his shaky breath turns to fading groans. His deep manly voice continues playing in your ears as your kisses travel down his abdomen.

He watched you while undoing his pants, giving him a final look before pulling it off was sinful. His thing sprung out proudly as soon as it freed itself. He was above average— as shown in his height and thick enough to give you a hard time later. 

Ryland couldn't hide how embarrassed he was. You can't blame him, it's been almost a decade since his last.

But he let you take care of him, using your soft hands wrapping around his cock with gentle strokes— observing effects on him. He pressed his lips together once he felt your warm breath down there, trying to conceal the sound he might make. 

You started with teasing your tongue on his tip,“Oh god— please.” He murmured and buried his head back in the pillow. You took him slowly inch by inch, sucking all down to the base for once only before it chokes you, then  your tongue plays around his cock inside your mouth. 

“Shit shit shit— fuck.” You knew he's losing his shit when he started cursing repeatedly with no censor unlike what he does most of the time. “Stop— please. I’m near. Torcularis— fuck— septentrionalis!” You slowly let him go and go up. He was panting.

“I just..” catches his breath between the words, “....finishes with you.”

You are glad he is using his words now. You stood up and stripped all of the remaining clothes you have, as you went back he was already leaning again to his headboard. 

You placed yourself in his lap trapping him in between your legs. His cold hands were travelling in your bare skin, adoring every part of you. You held him again and positioned it towards your entrance. 

“You sure with this?” He asked while staring directly into your eyes.

“I wouldn't suck the hell out of you if I am not sure.” Your response. 

You lower yourself down, making him go inside you. You sucked up air half way through, You knew you would have this trouble. He was gripping your hips and waist. Still you manage to sit till its base. “You still sure?” He asked and you nod. 

“Plus I forgot your safe word anyway, no way to stop.” You winked before clenching around him causing him to lean his head again in the headboard which gives you a better view of his neck. “You are torturing me.”

As soon as you adjust with his size, you start moving on top of him. He watched you like heaven in the sky and again your lips met his again. He held the back of your head to deepen his kisses on you while he rocked his hips so that you could bounce on him steadily. He knew what you needed. 

“Fuck, Ryland.” whispered to this eat following up with a moan. The pleasure is very visible in his face. He looked helpless while eyes were half lid open. Never met someone who please you more than he did, and that encourage you to fuck him better. 

He was murmuring something inaudible. You continued bouncing on his lap but you also noticed him being soft like letting you do whatever you wanted. Eyes closed, his eyebrows furrowed— signs he is trying to keep his focus. “I am near…” He said while panting.

“Hold it baby, hold it.” You whisper to his ears. 

When he opened his eyes, he saw your flushed face which made it harder for him to hold. His hand landed in his bedsheet and gripped on it to help him keep his posture.

His other hand went down to your clit and rubbed it to help you. His hand was soft and his touch was gentle.

“I am near.” You announced. In just a few seconds, you were able to hit your climax and not long after a few bounce, Ryland hit his limit and released inside. “Oh no…” worries lie in his face for brief seconds.

“Don't worry, I’m safe.” then points out your inner arm. 

He let rest on top of him, both restless yet satisfied. The overflowing feelings are unexplainable even to the genius mind of Ryland. He let his mind rest and let his heart take over— not thinking but only taking that moment. so you do.

“Stay” You said

“I won’t leave.” Ryland.

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡✮ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆｡°✩.˚  ݁ ˖ ✧ ‧₊:･ﾟ:･.˚｡☽ ･:･.:☁︎ ⋆⭒˚｡⋆𖦹. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊𓈒𓏸.°•

You snapped back to reality and the first thing you saw was Ryland’s worried face right in front you. Heart pounding with all memories you retrieved. Your lips were shaking but afraid to let Ryland know.

Should you tell him?

Would he believe you once he found out?

Would he trust you?

Would he accept it?

“I have something to tell you, Ryland.”

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡✮ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆｡°✩.˚  ݁ ˖ ✧ ‧₊:･ﾟ:･.˚｡☽･ﾟ::･. ⋆.˚｡:･ ˚｡

COMING SOON: Part 2 - No lights year between us

Ryland and you found out how you two got into the ship.

👎 Comment for tags for sequel 👎

MASTERLIST

:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡✮ ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆｡°✩.˚  ݁ ˖ ✧ ‧₊:･ﾟ:･.˚｡☽･ﾟ::･. ⋆.˚｡:･ ˚｡

Tags: @lowbudgetdoll @ladybirdbeetle7 @dontworryboutmyname @darnsit @beeisaokay @moonlitblossomsofthesun @storiesoferoda