J 🪐

Her luggage is still unpacked.

Slid off to some undisclosed corner of her room, glowing with only fractions from the blinds. 

Open, and carelessly, carelessly ransacked.

She can still feel his touch, fading underneath her skin like the tail end of a sad dream. 

Last night had been a multitude of things. It had been complicated. Selfish. And in some graven form of hers, inevitable.

Because it hadn’t started out normal. They didn’t avoid the road that led them there. 

It was a messy chain of events. 

The first time she rang him in two weeks since they had decided to go separate ways, was for his assistance in fetching suitcases from the attic.

He drove by within minutes. It didn’t hit her at the time how quickly that’d be taken away from her—that reassurance that he lived close enough to be at her doorstep in a heartbeat. 

Her job set her off on an abroad session for the year.

It was the reason she broke up with him. It was him denying the situation, sure that they’d stick through the distance that was the reason they argued.

But all her doubt came flooding when they packed. They were quiet. Then they were talking like usual. After all, the only one who had been avoiding calls was her. They fought over who’d sit on the luggage and who’d zip. 

“You’re gonna break my freaking suitcase,” she had charged, hacking out laughter at his display when he finally rolled off.

Luggage still yet to be shut, he sprawled out long like her carpet, lying on the floor, and finally, he stared up at her.

All of her wishes for him to move on, to stop loving her so painfully, all of it burst into flames the instant she crept over him and kissed his lips. 

They slowly stepped back into themselves, one of his hands gently sliding to her back while he lifted himself up.

“Stay tonight,” she said.

Like it was a matter of fact. Like it didn’t go beyond whatever was to happen after.

And for an hour or so, it was simply what they said. On her queen-sized mattress, she still felt small in his arms. The impending loss had shriveled her into something smaller than herself. When she turned from his chest to the cold press of the night, it was like he could detect her sorrow.

First, his lips were on her head. Then, at the back of her neck. It churned from soft to bitter. Or maybe that’s what she had thought when the hand draped over her waist began to sizzle through her skin. 

Trying to remove it was a mistake. Touching his hand awakened something like a forest fire. 

“Should I stop?”

Despite the effort of the question, his hand was already wading past her hips, creeping the soft center of her thighs, right before lifting it.

She tug it back into place, “Don’t—”

“Turn around and face me, Mikasa.”

His voice was just above a whisper, demanding nonetheless. She could feel the pain in it, throat scraped coarse and raw from her damage. And when tears clung to her lids, she twisted her face and kissed him.

Easily, she was swept back in the feat of losing, flushed against him, held up by the makeup of his bones. 

In that instant, she wanted nothing less.

Their mouths were seamless, her tongue slotting in at every deep inhale.

“Fuck,” Jean grunted. An oblong, sudden excursion he had let out as he broke from her lips, his eyes dragging down at the swollen state he had left them in. Only then seeming to realize the threat of the impulse.

Despite himself, his thumb slowly parted her lips. Without further thought, her tongue latched onto it and she bit, sucked, eyes innocently but insistently watching him. 

From the edge of her lips to the peak of her breast, his fingertip traced her like he wanted to test whether or not the moment was real.

Fire coiled through her guts at the lewd way he watched her, at the way she watched him back, testing in equal temptation.

Nose to her throat, he began, “Why are you making me do this, hm? Why did you kiss me earlier? Does it feel good? You want me to touch…?”

“Your,” his fingers were barely a nudge, but still enough so that she parted her legs all the way, letting him slot against the rupturing heat, “wet—You’re fucking—” 

Involuntarily, she bucked her hip as she clamped down on his hand, letting it sit there. 

Under the three a.m. veil of her bedroom, repercussions didn’t unfold in front of her. They didn’t exist yet.

Her body moved entirely against her.

Her breath had prowled out far too needy, singing like a cheer when he finally dipped his hand past her underwear, heeling against her clit. Her hands had presumed it okay to implore him, to dig into his scalp sweetly at the ministrations his teeth carved along her neck. Her stomach had clenched like a white-knuckle fist. 

They were back to their natural rhythm. Eager to shed their clothes. Clumsy with their restraint. 

“Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Even as a whisper in her ear, his voice rumbled quakes all over her body. 

As much as she wondered if it were just the lust talking or the spite bubbling up in him, she wanted to take as much as he had to offer. Wanted her pain to mar deep and paint her a fool for giving him up. 

“Let me on top of you.”

In a beat, she had his back to the headboard.

His palm bracketed against her waist. His thigh parted her legs as she began to rock back and forth. His mouth shaped around her breast, lapping as generously as her fingers around him. 

Sturdy and rich, he stiffened in her hand as she pumped to the length of him. When his head jolted back, she leaned in, face messy in his, all tongue and breaths barely measured.

Meanwhile, she ground onto his thigh mercilessly, collecting every breath of pain and relief like droplets of blood as she moved her hips. 

The chicory flare that always radiated off of him came back to her. Thick and intense. 

The hard of his muscle and the prickle of his hairs caught between the friction with her raw, velvety cunt, turning her slide along his thigh into small, weightless bounces.

Somewhere between her self-realization and doubt, he pulled her from his lap to his hips, ripping past her tough skin like tides on the surface.

“I should hate you,” he whispered hoarsely. 

Caught off guard, she pulled her head back to peer at him. But he was all dizzy, laving his tongue over the bruises he marked earlier, fondling the plush of her ass. 

She knew he was just talking about the way she made promises with how she pressed him, about the hot way she squeezed him, and all that other erotic nonsense she misconstrued in her melancholy.

So, she kneeled and met his thrusts, tugging on the hairs at his nape as the burn enveloped her skin and she had to pull back for rest. As her hands were on his chest, then, she felt the way his heart galloped for her. 

Their eyes met and lingered.

Not a speck of time was wasted, though. Jean clenched her chin and brought it to his lips, trailing upwards and then in, swirling his tongue at the nectarous roof of her mouth. 

The mercurial taste of him coated her tongue. The culmination of it turned her light skin a hotter shade of red.

“‘Close, baby?”

It became second nature to moan as a response, nodding her head as promptly as her high crept up on her. 

As if more satisfied by the fact, his head fell back and he sighed, “Me too.” 

Their slick beats of skin filled the room in labored harmony.

“I missed this,” he continued, sloppy and dazed, “I missed you.”

She relished the intimacy of his buildup. It burned through the iron grip he had on her waist. Shone through the hollow shade of his eyes. The slurry beads on his chest. 

Always so present. Always so in touch with her needs.

Knowing she still had the ability to make him fall apart at her fingertips, meant that in some minor way, he was still hers. It meant that their bodies still had some vital connection.

Besides the chills rolling through her spine, jealousy had rattled in with fire force. 

Someone else would take the sweet slide of his tongue. Would collapse with him. He’d melt into another woman’s bed. Another woman would feel all the heights, flush head to toe with colors she wouldn’t imagine. She’d feel her most vulnerable, her skin—her hair, her breaths, all of it—standing on a peak with him. 

She had to give him up. She had to give him up.

But she took the ride as his arms hitched her back against the bed. Her own knees dug into her chest, ankles overlapping on his back as he thrust her into the mattress. The escalation of sound and pressure—of skin on skin threw her into overdrive, to the point she was babbling. 

Bit by bit, she began to crumble.

“I love you,” was a ripe moan at first, until tears bled from her eyes, “I love you, Jean—God, I love you so much. I still do.”

Exchanging nothing but a sharp glance, Jean’s hands took to the flesh of her hips as he fucked her faster, taking her cries as a signal of release. 

But it wasn’t that, entirely.

All that was left for her was to curve her face into the shell of his neck and let him do the work, the tears burning where she kept them. 

His breaths were fire whips and his groans were pivotal scars.

“Oh—Mikas….”

“Jean—”

“... I’m gonna—fuck… There we go.”

Then came her climax, splintering hard. The quick way he helped her to end it hurt even more. 

But morning’s light has seeped up her scars. 

When she rolls over, he’s still sleeping. She slides closer until the air between them is thin and her mouth is on the hard jut of his shoulder blade. Her lips creep over to the tender spot, where his neck and shoulder meet, brushing just ghostly. 

When his eyes open, the rush of his gaze on her doesn’t hurt as bad. 

Because she should be out the door in less than an hour, she skips the formalities and cuts to the chase.

“Was that all a mistake?”

For what they are to each other, for what they’ve done, she knows it isn’t an easy ask.

For the way he scoops her close, it’s like they’re still themselves.

But this is only leaning for the best.

If it were up to him, he’d be in London every other weekend if not more. It’s both an expense and devotion she doesn’t want him to feel like he has to live up to.

With her breathing air miles different, she can’t promise her heart he won’t change. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself then, to learn his love for her has turned to some kind of indifference.

She stares at him; his fresh form, all puffy lids with light-kissed complexion. His hair messy from the simple act of sleeping.

“Last night, I…” she thinks of how the words poured out of her so effortlessly, “think I got carried away.”

When I said I loved you.

Jean’s eyes fall to her neck, “Me too.”

His fingers trail where the hickeys sit, and only then does yearning shroud her, a physical ache.

Suddenly, Jean drawls out, lifting up one of her hands, “I’m not sure if it was obvious enough, but in case it wasn’t,” he laces his fingers through the dents, “I’m still in love with you. I’d be willing to do whatever you feel is right for us.”

Us. She thinks. Realizes. It still exists, and the sound of it is sweet.

After a long, quiet moment, she breathes out, the sound of it meant to be defeat.

“So… What do we do now?”

“I say, you let me wash you in the shower, we get dressed, and I take you to the airport.”

He grins, toothy like a boy. She can’t help herself from leaning in when she realizes she gets to kiss it.