mac and jeeeeezzzz

↳INSTAGRAM: @carrieskywalker uploaded a photo:

She thought that her heart and her head were working in tandem together on that front, both of them understanding that her stupid, unrequited crush on Xavi shouldn’t be given any more thought at all.

Then, they got in the elevator together, Elena tucked securely into Xavi’s side. She spotted her reflection in the mirror, under the harsh lighting that did nobody any favours. Well, except Xavi, who looked frustratingly handsome as always.

Elena peered at her own face, frowning as she lifted a hand to rub at the mascara smudges under her eyes, scrutinising the wayward mess of her hair. She didn’t like how little she recognised herself right now, and was almost glad when Xavi pulled her attention away from her unfamiliar reflection.

“You can say that again,” she joked softly when Xavi said it had been a shitty night. She was hard-pressed to remember any that had been shittier recently, and then wondered again if she was blowing this out of proportion. People had bad sex. They didn’t create theatrics out of it like Elena was right now, surely.

When Xavi spoke again, Elena stared up at him. Part of her wanted to squint against the glare of the overhead light, but she didn’t. She looked up at Xavi, her expression opening up into something she wasn’t sure there was a name for. Maybe Xavi would know. He was better at recognising feelings than she was.

A sudden warmth filled her chest, the first good emotion that had touched her that night, bar the relief she’d felt seeing Xavi’s car pull up. She continued to stare up at him, mouth parted as he talked her up. He called her beautiful. It was enough to turn her head offline and let her heart commandeer the steering wheel.

“Xavi, I….” she began, before realising she didn’t have the words. Instead she swayed forward a little, catching herself by gripping onto his arm. Eyes still trained on him, taking note of his curls, his warm brown eyes, and the sincere look on his face, Elena acted on instinct over anything else. 

She pushed herself up onto her tiptoes as the elevator carried them upwards. Reason had been left on the ground floor. Slowly, she tipped her head towards Xavi.

Ding!

As soon as they reached their floor, her boots thudded on the ground again as she stumbled back, her hip catching the railing on the wall. She stared unseeingly into thin air for a moment before collecting herself, just as the doors trundled open.

“Um. Yeah. Sorry, I was just… Thank you. For saying that, Xavi. That’s really nice,” she rambled, nearly tripping over her feet in her haste to get out of the tiny enclosed space.

She stumbled into the hallway, and turned, pressing her back against the wall and sandwiching both her hands in between her tailbone and the wallpaper, not trusting them to be allowed to roam free right now as Xavi searched for his keys.

As she’d looked up at him, her brown eyes wide and adoring, he’d felt something shift in his chest, a warmth stirring in the pit of his stomach. He and Elena had kissed before, more than once, but it had always been on the fly, a little spur of the moment fun at a club or a party. It was always sweet and a little playful and muddled in with shots and cocktails or whatever their preferred drink of the night was. It usually didn’t last, and they both fell away from it giggling before Xavi took her hand and spun her onto the dancefloor, the two of them sweaty and warm and enjoying the warm press of each other as their friends bounced alongside them. 

But there was something different in the air tonight, in the low buzz that seemed to be settling beneath his skin, the electricity in his veins. He didn’t know if he wanted to encourage her or push her away, a wave of caution washing over him as he thought about the awful night she’d had. Would Elena even be kissing him if she wasn’t so upset? He wasn’t sure, but he would hate to be another cog in her already torturous night, adding an extra layer of discontent. Selfishly, though, the thought of her kissing him made his head spin and his heart flutter in his chest, like he’d be gifted the opportunity to prove that he’d treat her better than that asshole had. 

His hand moved to lazily settle against her hip, as though egging her on and inviting her in, only for his best friend to pull away abruptly as the elevator doors slammed open behind her. Xavi blinked, watching as she rushed out onto the landing, and crashed into the wall outside his apartment. He felt so confused right now that it made his head hurt. 

“Oh, um. Yeah, I mean... You don’t gotta, like, thank me or anything,” Xavi told her, his gaze distractingly flitting back and forth between her and the collection of keys in his hand. 

He frowned, nose scrunching and forehead wrinkling, just as he always did when he fumbled to unlock his front door. His set of keys held his apartment keys, Mac’s apartment, his car key, his mom’s key, and a key to the locker room down at the rink. It also had, like, twelve keychains on it. All super important and rad enough that he didn’t wanna take them off, meaning he sometimes struggled to find his own key. His tongue poked out between his teeth as he searched for it, and finally he held it up above his head in victory with a hearty and celebratory aha! He made much quicker work of turning it in the lock and nudged his door open, before finally turning back to face Elena again. 

His heart was still beating, like, really fast, and she looked a little shamefaced over whatever had happened just moments before, but none of that mattered. Tonight was about making sure she was okay and cheering her up, and he wasn’t about to leave her in the corridor looking sad or feeling lost. 

“C’mon, babe. Last one inside gets dibs on all the best hoodies and the ice cream,” Xavi grinned. He was a bit of a dummy, but even he knew Elena would get the pick of the lot. He extended his arm to her, fingers wriggling in the hopes that she’d take his hand and let him pull her inside. 

↳INSTAGRAM: @hold_em_golden uploaded a photo:

↳INSTAGRAM: @asspeenlol uploaded a photo:

“I know, it’s just…” she trailed off, lifting her eyes to look up at Xavi when he insisted he would never.

She believed that too. The shadow on his face had changed from red to green, but he didn’t press his foot down on the gas and keep driving. Instead, the car remained where it was, idle in the middle of the street as Xavi did whatever he could to make Elena feel better about her shitty night.

She wished she could nod and thank him, tell him, “yeah, you’re right!” in her brightest tone. But they’d both see through that in no time. Elena wasn’t a good liar and Xavi wasn’t stupid. Instead, she tried to dry-swallow the truth: that she wasn’t entirely sure how to move on from this without feeling like she was going to be plagued by mortification for the rest of her life.

The words ‘I would never’ spun around her head as she stared at Xavi, keeping her eyes on him as he looked back at her. Her chest hurt a little.

“I know you wouldn’t,” she said, honest. It shouldn’t be something that she thought about in too much depth, but it was hard not to right now. Not when her mind was already drawing up comparisons of how different her evening would have been if it was Xavi she’d been with. She knew he’d have been nice about it being her first time. He would’ve gone slow instead of questioning the wince on her face when they first started. He wouldn’t have told her, “That’s normal, you get used to it.” before continuing. She knew without a doubt that Xavi would have taken care of her the way he took care of all the other girls that he had been with. Truthfully though, that would have been another brand of humiliation for Elena. Xavi would have made her feel safe in the moment, but she knew that as soon as she got dressed again she would begin comparing herself to all the other girls he had been with before her, measuring up where she lacked and knowing that no matter what she felt for Xavi, it wouldn’t be enough to get him to look at her in the same way.

“Sorry,” she said at once, realising her vision had blurred, tears gathering in her eyes and distorting the picture of Xavi in front of her.

She dug her fingers into the corners of her eyes, as if to stem the flow of her tears, She cleared her throat, quickly looking away from him. All he’d been doing was trying to comfort her and Elena had managed to turn it into some dumb, lovelorn way to feel sad about her unreciprocated crush. Maybe she was just a glutton for punishment who liked being sad all the time.

“I know it wasn’t my fault,” she said, with a quiet sniff. She tugged Xavi’s sleeves down over her hands. “I mean, logically, I know it isn’t my fault. I don’t even know why I agreed to go out with him. I think I was trying to just…”

Whatever she was going to say was interrupted by the sound of someone behind them beeping their horn, reminding them of the green light. Elena jumped a little in her seat.

“We should go,” she said softly.

He felt completely useless, an ache building in his chest as he yearned to pull his best friend into his lap and wrap her up in a warm hug. That's what he'd have done any other day of the week, only right now they were pulled up at a traffic light with minimal space between him and the steering wheel. All he could do was wave away her apologies, his hand feebly stroking an inconsistent pattern against her calf. He wanted to soothe her and make her feel better, but it felt like nothing he said was the right thing. Whatever had happened tonight had hurt her monumentally, even if none of it was physical, and Xavi knew that he didn't have the capacity nor the language that she needed to address it right now. He felt hopeless.

“Babe, hey. You got nothing to apologise for,” he insisted, his tone earnest.

There wasn't a lot to be grateful for right now, but he was glad she had his hoody if nothing else. Elena had always loved snuggling up inside the confides of his sweatshirts and hoodies, the way they enveloped her body so snugly always so freaking adorable. Elena wore a lot of quirky, cute fits that made him cheese until his cheeks hurt, but he'd be lying if he said these weren't his favourite. What guy didn't love seeing a pretty girl wearing his clothes?

As she tried to make sense of the way her night had unfolded, Xavi listened intently, only to be jolted back to reality by some asshat driver behind them. Wincing, he gave the girl beside him a swift nod in acknowledgement. And with a crinkle of his nose and a whiny groan as the driver behind them honked just for extra measure, Xavi shifted the gearstick into drive and stepped down on the pedal, moving them along the street and closer to his apartment complex. Had the other driver never heard of overtaking before? Dumbass.

The rest of the drive was mostly silent, and Xavi's brain was whirring with more thoughts than he knew he was even capable of having. He was overwhelmed with each and every one, trying with all his might to figure out what the right thing to say was, and how to get Elena back on track. She'd just been about to say something back then, he was sure of it, but now she simply had her face buried in the lining of his hoody, her arms wrapped around her knees where she'd drawn them against her chest. She looked so tiny next to him now, even smaller than usual, and he thought he might burst into tears any second now too.

By the time they pulled up outside his building, he felt the sort of exhaustion that settled deep down into your bones, rendering you useless. But he'd persevere for Elena because he had to. As quickly as he could, he slipped out of the driver's seat and circled around to the passenger's side so he could open the door for her, holding one hand out for her to take. Then, as he lead her to the front steps of his building, he pulled her into his side, practically attached at the hip and leaving her very little space to step away. His grip wasn't tight by any means, and he was sure Elena knew that she could let go any time she wanted, but he also needed her to know that he was here, and that he wanted to help, even if he wasn't super sure how to say that out loud.

They'd just stepped into the lift – which was miraculously working for the first time in months – when Xavi finally turned to face her properly, under the dim light that reflected around the various mirrors inside.

“I know tonight was, like, really shitty,” Xavi breathed, his uttered words seemingly the understatement of the century. “But you know it's not like that all the time, right? Some guy – or girl, like, if that's what you're into! – is gonna, like, totally sweep you off your feet and make you forget tonight even happened.”

He gave her a sad smile as he reached down, lifting a finger to gently tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

“You're the cutest, hottest, funniest, and most smartest person I have literally ever known, Elena,” he told her, this time using her real name instead of petnames. That's how you knew shit was serious. “You deserve someone who reminds you how, like, crazy beautiful you are. Someone who takes their time and is gentle and makes it all about you.”

Part of her wanted Xavi to keep his hand on her leg, but when he finally moved it away to grip the wheel again, she had to admit that it felt easier to breathe when he wasn’t touching her.

All of her messy, confusing, Xavi-centric thoughts were a burden at the best of times. To have them pile on top of everything that had happened tonight would be too overwhelming. She had no doubts that they’d creep up at some point, especially when she was wearing his hoody, but at least they were diluted right now, far away enough for Elena to pretend that they weren’t an immediate concern. Or the reason she’d even gone out with Brent in the first place.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she said quietly. Arturo worried about her far too much when he should really be worrying about himself. She didn’t want to weigh Xavi down with misplaced concern for her either.

As Xavi recounted his usual routine after a hook-up, Elena tried to will away the gnawing feeling of jealousy that threatened to chew up her insides. She kept her gaze trained firmly on the New York that existed outside the car window, wondering if there was another girl in the city right now going through what she was. It was a small comfort to imagine that the sudden loneliness that had hit her the moment she crawled out of Brent’s bed wasn’t the solitary experience she imagined it to be. New York was so large, unique experiences were few and far between. After taking a moment to be selfish though, she realised she wouldn’t wish this feeling on anyone else.

“Oh,” she said softly when Xavi explained that he liked to cuddle after sex. That he had no problem letting girls stay.

She wondered what the girls Xavi slept with looked like, if they had anything in common. She knew he hooked up with Win a bunch and they were pretty and tall and always very, very witty in a way that left Elena’s cheeks aching with laughter when she wasn’t sweating over what they got up to along with her best friend. Win also didn’t mind being casual. Her opposite in every way, really.

Tipping her head back against the headrest, she wondered what all those girls had done right, what unspoken rule they had obediently followed. Elena had managed to trip up where they hadn’t and she tried to pinpoint exactly where she’d gone wrong.

As the street outside slowed to a stop, Elena realised they were at a red light. Slowly, she turned her head to look at Xavi, the stop signal casting a warm shadow across his face.

He looked so devastatingly sincere, she didn’t stand a chance.

“He kicked me out.” She knew she had spoken softly but her admission felt like she’d grabbed a megaphone and screamed it out the car window, waking up the whole city. Loud enough for even her brother to hear.

She shrunk back into the warm folds of Xavi’s hoody, suddenly unable to look at him.

“God, I’m such an idiot,” she said, wiping her hands down her face as she fought to speak around the lump in her throat. “I don’t know what I did wrong but… He just rolled over after it and told me to make sure the door closed properly on my way out.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, fingers tightly gripping the sleeves of the hoody. She inhaled raggedly and shook her head.

“I don’t know where I went wrong.”

He’d always hoped he could do the same for her, in some small way. She was the kindest, funniest and most deserving girl in the whole wide world as far as he was concerned. Whatever had happened to her tonight to dim her light, he would make it his life’s mission to bring that spark back. 

“I’m always gonna worry about you, little snoop, We got each other’s backs,” Xavi told her easily, leaving no room for debate. It was the plain truth. He was ride or die for Elena, and nothing she said could change that. 

Fingers drumming lazily against the wheel, Xavi stared out at the empty road as they waited at the stoplight. He was brutally aware of the silence that was now stretching out between them, and he wondered if he’d made Elena uncomfortable. For the most part, they didn’t really talk about sex and stuff. He was a no-strings-attached kinda guy, whereas Elena had always struck him as a little more romantic. Even when he’d waxed lyrical about the pretty girl he’d made out with in the club, desperately hoping she’d see his tiktoks and stumble back into his life, Elena’s own comment had been so sweet and bashful, as though she was genuinely surprised to discover he’d been out there looking for her. Xavi always wondered if she knew how special she was, or that was lost on her too. 

He was about to change the subject, find a new way to ease her back out of her shell, when her words hit him square in the chest. He sat there, brow furrowed in disbelief, the light ahead of him turning green though he remained unmoving. His foot seemed incapable of pressing the gas, and instead his head turned slowly to face his best friend, his heart aching as he watched her hide herself away from him. 

“What the fuck?” Xavi whispered, the curse word spilling from his lips, soft on his tongue as his tone carried him through several stages of disbelief. 

The quiet roads stretched out far beyond the traffic lights, and yet he couldn’t move. Maybe he’d get a ticket for this, he wasn’t sure. Was it a crime? He couldn’t say for sure, but right now he didn’t care. He’d pay for twenty tickets if it meant getting to sit with Elena for a little longer. 

“Whoa, babe, nah,” Xavi gasped, eyes wide as he shook his head rapidly. He was so floored by the jackass's behaviour that it hadn’t even occurred to him that Elena might be blaming herself. 

For the second time that night, his hands tightened around the wheel, frustration brewing in his chest. What kind of loser kicks a girl out after sex, leaving her hopeless and embarrassed? He couldn’t get his head around it, and even moreso when he added the context of that girl being Elena. As far as Xavi knew – and he tried not to pry or make shit weird – Elena had never been with a guy like that before. And as first times went, he understood why she might feel humiliated. 

“No, Elena, that ain’t it. It’s not you.” he insisted, this time following through as he slide a hand across to touch her. He wrapped his fingers delicately around her ankle, giving a gentle squeeze. “That guy’s a total dirtbag, are you kidding me? He never should have done that. I would never – I wouldn’t... He shouldn’t have done that shit.” 

It seemed redundant, waxing lyrical about all the times he’d practiced aftercare with girls he took home. Win had always said one of their favourite things about Xavi was the post-sex cleanup, which usually involved Xavi carrying them to the shower and washing them before going down on them again beneath the warm spray. He cared about making it good for whoever he was with, but Elena’s own experiences hadn’t been reflective of his. The last thing she needed was for him to rub it in right now. 

“Guys like that don’t care about making it good for you, but that don’t make it your fault either,” Xavi sighed, sliding his hand along her calf before letting it come to rest on her knee. He squeezed again, seeking comfort in her now just as much as he hoped she was in him. “You deserved to be treated like a damn princess, babe.” 

@xavimacaroni: he listnin 2 conrad finch 😀

@xavimacaroni: luk @ him he so smol 🥺🥺🥺