James Cook falls in love with you - Headcanons
notes: this is my first time writing and posting something like it. jack o'connell has me so obsessed that i had to do it. if you see any grammatical errors, no, you didn't. english isn't my first language, so just imagine it's written correctly. let me know if you want a part 2!!
tags: fluff, mention of trauma, angst, demonstrations of affection (in their own way).
cook falls in love with you because you're the only one who doesn't kiss him or fuck him or mess with him because you're more worried about your future than snorting drugs up your ass with the group but when someone sees him hanging around you every chance he gets like a fly and asks him if he likes you he totally denies it, not because he's embarrassed that the nerd has his heart but because he doesn't want to be reminded that you obviously deserve better so he always observes every detail of you in silence while you're not looking even though he still makes jokes by offering to distract you from your books with his cock but what you don't know is that inside he begs you to say yes.
"do ya need help with that?" he said pointing at your notes and sitting on the chair next to you without permission.
"i don't think you can help me with this even if you were born again."
"love that about ya. i would like to know if you are that bratty during sex."
"i'd rather watch an 8-hour documentary on how grass grows than sleep with you." you said while you look straight ahead pretending that you're paying attention to the teacher and not to how he turns to look at you while smiling as if you had just told him the biggest compliment in the world. you also pretend that you don't like the way his teeth look when he smiles and you don't know exactly by heart what they look like right now even when you're not looking at him.
he didn't expect you to show up at that bar on his birthday at all. he couldn't have been happier that you'd put aside your responsibilities for a day to be there with him, not even when you left a small pack of cigarette papers as a crappy birthday present. so he had to hide how he felt being a complete, hyperactive, drunk idiot. he still has that unused pack tucked away in his pocket, and every time he changes pants, he takes it out and puts it in his new one just to have it there w him.
that night you agreed to go to a party with them. you got so drunk that you ended up tangled up with cook on the corner of some stairs. cook moaned like a bitch the moment your mouth touched his. he always wanted this and imagined it five hundred times while watching you in class. but you didn't hear him because of the loud music. the next day, you forgot about it, and no one witnessed it because no one saw you two. so now it only exists in cook's mind, and no one believes him, they make fun of him saying that he was so high that he probably had hallucinations even when he still remembers how warm the skin of your waist felt under his hands when he held you while kissing you.
he knew he was fucked and deeply in love with you the day you didn't judge him, you just hugged him and offered him a room to stay the night without hesitating for a second when his mom kicked him out of the house even when that wasn't compatible with the way you always kept him away from your personal space. you didn't think your grandma would have any problem welcoming a "friend" of yours who needed help into her home with you. he loved you even more when you kept the secret and walked home on a different street so no one would suspect he was staying with you and ask questions about it. he never understood why you did it, but he never asked, just as you never mentioned the reason why he slept in the bed that used to belong to your older sister that is in your room.
like the traumatized kid that he is, he has nightmares he's never talked about with anyone. the first few nights you witnessed cook's nightmares, you ignored them because you didn't know what to do and didn't want to make him uncomfortable by intruding on his vulnerability. until one night, he was crying in his sleep again, and you had to wake him up. he was half-conscious, asking you to stay by his side, so you curled up next to him and let him wrap you completely in his arms. that night, you discovered a level of intimacy neither of you had imagined existed before.
since that day, you've been together. only god knows what you are, but cook respects you (in his own way), and you respect him, since you both know each other's vulnerability and kindness. no one knows about the two of you, but cook always makes sure no guy bothers you, even when no one approaches you with other intentions. he even gets into fights to defend your name because nothing bothers and offends him more than someone messing with you. meanwhile, you help him become better in many ways, even if it costs you a lot. no one could believe it when cook passed the math and history exams.
no one knows how difficult it was to get cook to study. it took weeks of trying and watching him get distracted by your own face, trying to steal kisses, or just plain trying to get into your pants. you thought you weren't succeeding until he passed more than two exams and you realized he's capable of retaining information and how sweet it's to hear him recite details about world war II.
you don't agree to kiss him that often because deep down you don't want to be just another girl for him and you enjoy keeping things more interesting between the two of you although whenever he's lying on your thighs or on your chest and you touch his hair while he kisses your cheeks wanting more you simply want to eat him alive.
one of the few times you let him kiss you properly, you almost ended up having sex a room away from where your grandma slept.
"we can't do it here, cookie" you said breathlessly as he kissed your neck. your legs on his waist.
"if you keep calling me cookie, i'm going to ruin ya so much that people will hear you 5 blocks from here, i swear."
you never asked him for labels because from the start you were afraid that he would never respect the basic conditions of a relationship and you already knew that he was going to hurt you sooner or later so it completely surprised you when you started to notice that he no longer hooked up with girls or insinuated anything about anyone else, not at school and not at parties. you tried to casually get information out of the girls at the parties you didn't go to and they all answered that they thought cook was turning gay or that he probably had such a big scare with drugs that he can't even get a hard-on. the two answers generated such great satisfaction in your heart that you began to wonder how hard your fall would be when he finally let go of your hand.
you were the first person who made him feel loved and wanted. he knows you're waiting for him at your house in case he doesn't have a place to sleep, or when he's smoking with freddie and jj. he knows you just want him to be okay. you made him not feel alone anymore. you wiped his tears when no one else was there, even when he didn't even want to be there. you saw his soft side, buried deep inside, and you brought it out with you, taking complete ownership of it. sometimes he wakes up in the night and sees you cuddled up with him, and he feels a little less miserable with himself. the nights he's not with you he misses you and he also misses your grandma and her cooking and how, at least for a few nights, he felt what it was like to have a family.
when he's so caught up in his thoughts about you and how good you make him feel, he can't help but fantasize about you becoming part of his family permanently in the future, but that thought also terrifies him because he's not supposed to be thinking about being the father of your children and having a little girl who looks like you bear his last name at his age. he's not supposed to be thinking about it because he doesn't want to ruin your life by chaining you to a person like him forever but sometimes he likes to forget that and fantasize. he never confesses to you that he thinks of you that way.
but he does confess that his first kiss with you wasn't when you were cleaning his wounds after kicking some guy's ass for bothering all the girls in the group that night at the party. you thought, for an idiot like him, that had been pretty noble. he just looked you in the eyes and said, "think this is the exact moment when ya kiss me." and you had no choice but to agree with him. he told you that his first kiss with you was at a party on his birthday and that it was the best gift he ever had. you beat yourself up for not remembering, but he tells you everything in detail until you have to shut him up before he gets to the part where you asked him to fuck you right there. he just made that part up just to make fun of you.
