it's not an act of love if you make her

↳INSTAGRAM: @notteddyswims uploaded a photo:

↳INSTAGRAM: @ripleyluwho uploaded a photo:

↳INSTAGRAM: @dancingxtaylor uploaded a photo:

It had been one thing to realise that he no longer made Sephy roll her eyes whenever he spoke or stare at him like he’d grown another head. Or rather, she still did that, but there was an undercurrent of fondness in her voice whenever she called him a moro, one  that Bradley was sure he wasn’t imagining. Reckoning with the idea of being Persephone Blake’s friend was hard enough. And he wasn’t talking about Persephone Blake the actress, but Sephy, the spiky blonde baker who had slowly lowered her hackles the more he got to know her. That had been a feat in itself. He’d never once imagined that he’d work his way around to somehow being someone she wanted to kiss.

Like hell was he going to blow what was probably his one shot at something teenage boys around the country would take his head clean off his shoulders for a chance at.

He felt Sephy perch lightly on his knee and immediately curled his arms around her. Long, bony fingers, riddled with papercuts from turning comic book pages too quickly, pressed into the soft material of her shirt as Bradley pulled her closer, not altogether sure if his leg was the comfiest place for her to be.

The noise she let out suggested otherwise.

Bradley’s eyes widened. He couldn’t help it. A smile stretched across his face that he was sure she would either kiss or smack off. He definitely had a preference.

“Let what go to my head? The fact that, against all odds, you kissed me? And liked it? Kissed me first, mind you. It’s almost like you like me or something,” he grinned.

His smug superiority could only last so long once he felt Sephy’s lips against his jaw and her teeth on his earlobe.

“Ah,” he hissed, the sharp noise involuntary, tipping his head up eagerly. His grip tightened on her as he pressed his lips together, dazedly catching her eye.

“‘Kay, now we’re even,” he mumbled. “Get back here. Fuck the surprise.”

And then they were kissing again. He couldn’t think of anything that could be more important than kissing Sephy right now, even if his curiosity did tick away at his reserve for a few seconds too long. A wet smacking sound filled the air between them as their lips separated again and he inched back ever so slightly to give her a suspicious look, his hands busy with helping Sephy situate herself better in his lap.

“Wait, no seriously, is this a good or a bad surprise? Are you doing this to soften the blow about something else?”

At his tangent, Sephy exhaled on a laugh, shaking her head fondly. It was damn near impossible to not be endeared by him, and she’d know. She’d tried. 

“Kissed you to shut you up, if you remember,” she grinned, her tongue lazily chasing the seam of his lips. 

At his insistence and the urgent get back here, Sephy couldn’t control her response. There was something so incredibly sexy about Bradley taking the lead, particularly given how awkward he tended to be around her. She had known she needed to be the one to kiss him first, lest he overthink the whole thing and they find themselves waiting for another ten years to come. But now he was all in, and he’d never been hotter. 

A careful shiver racked her body as she felt his hands on hers as he helped her get comfortable. She slipped a hand up the front of his shirt, feeling her fingers glide along his stomach. He wasn’t all abs and taut muscles, but there was a softness to him that was a comfort. Sephy was comfortable now, straddling his lap and trailing kisses along his jaw, finding his mouth again as he fretted over her imaginary schemes. 

“There’s a drawer back there,” she whispered, words muffled against his mouth. “It contains a first edition comic book. In mint condition.” 

She’d been hoping to show him the comic as part of his surprise, but right now they were busy. She could hear his breath grow a little more ragged, more frantic as they kissed, her own breathy moans being caught on his tongue. Her skin was flushed with heat, and she slid her hand further up his shirt as her thumb swiped lazily over his nipple. She wasn’t trying to push things further, wanting to take things slow and move at her own pace, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have some innocent, chaste fun. 

“I can’t tell if you’re more turned on by the kissing or by the comic right now,” she teased. 

↳INSTAGRAM: @shepbloomwood uploaded a photo:

↳INSTAGRAM: @rowanberry uploaded a photo:

He couldn’t quite work out how they’d gotten from point A to point B. He and Sephy being friends had been unbelievable enough for some people - Maggie Chance, if he wanted to name one name out of many - and he’d even struggled to reconcile himself with the truth of it himself. Somehow, in between their bickering and his visits to the bake shop and his little sister’s unrelenting adoration of the blonde sitting next to him, something had shifted in their relationship. They’d become friends and now, apparently, something else had grown out of that.

Despite everything, dread stirred in the pit of Bradley’s stomach. Here he was, kissing the girl of his dreams, and he couldn’t help but think he didn’t really deserve it.

Tell her the truth then, idiot, he scolded himself. Blinking rapidly, he stared at Sephy in naked shock, mouth opening and closing as if he was gearing up to say something, when she beat him to the punch. Apparently that wasn’t the surprise.

“Wait, what?” he asked, confused. If the kiss wasn’t the surprise, then what had it been? Just an every day occurrence for him and Sephy that he’d somehow forgotten due to a bad case of sudden onset retrograde amnesia? His mind flicked through various Star Trek episodes for something similar happening so he could have a point of reference for how to deal with this.

“Do you mean there’s something more?” He tilted his head to the side, a wrinkle of confusion appearing between his eyebrows. “Was the kiss a distraction before like, Jackson Otto appears from nowhere to knock me out or something? Did you kiss me the same way you see videos online of dogs getting pup cups and trips to the beach before they’re taken to the vet to be put down?”

Oh, he needed to shut up right now. Word vomit was a Bradley Prestwick specialty but he really did need to absolutely can it, especially when Sephy dared him to rise to the challenge of kissing her back.

As soon as she leaned back in, he quickly readied himself and met her halfway, their mouths gently colliding in a proper kiss this time. Read: a kiss where both people were aware it was actually happening.

His hand slid up to her shoulder, which wasn’t the most sexy of positions, but he was learning on the spot here. Carefully, he kissed Sephy back, growing more confident when he realised that, for some reason, whether it be down to a miracle or pure lunacy on her part, she was just as into it as he was. 

His hand slid into her hair as they kissed, soft blonde locks falling through his fingers as he moved his mouth against hers, their tongues exploring the seam of each other’s lips.

“‘Kay, wow,” he mumbled in the shortest sentence of his life before leaning back in.

Right now, however, she needed him to shut up and kiss her. 

“Uhuh, yeah. That’s it, I’m giving you a good send-off,” she laughed, sweetly parting his lips with her tongue and swallowing the rest of his words. 

This time, he met her pace and the two were wrapped up in each other in perfect synchronicity, Persephone humming sweetly as she felt his hand slide into her hair. They were positioned awkwardly, with Persephone perched between his knees while he remained seated – though, admittedly, his obscene height meant they weren’t entirely unmatched. All the same, she decided to take advantage of how pliant he was being by lowering herself down to perch on his knee as she curled in and against his body. Her arm curled around his neck as she used it as leverage to pull herself in against him, her chest now plush against his. 

When she heard his gentle utterance of wow, a whimper spilled from Sephy’s lips and she immediately blushed, eyes widening as she pulled back to break the kiss. 

“Do not let that go to your head,” she laughed, before moving back in. 

This time, her lips peppered along his jaw instead, allowing them both a brief release as Bradley caught his breath. Sephy nipped experimentally at the lobe of his ear, wanting to savour this tiny, playful moment. It was a rare thing that she got to explore another man’s mouth and not feel sick to her stomach after, or that she could allow the press of his hands against her without needing to get high first. It was such a relief to her nervous system that she thought she might cry. 

“Do you still want your gift? Or would that cut into our makeout time?” she teased, lips a breath away from his ear. Heat pooled in the pit of her stomach as she readjusted herself, climbing more firmly into his lap. If he wanted to stop now, she wouldn’t mind, but she also knew she’d be more than content if this was all they did with the rest of their afternoon. 

↳INSTAGRAM: @maiaprestwick uploaded a photo:

Sephy had, somehow, managed to swoop in and wrap him around her little finger. It would be too generous for Bradley’s reputation to claim it was because of the charm and charisma she’d managed to hone over the years in the acting industry. In reality, it had everything to do with Bradley’s big, stinking, ill-advised crush on her. 

He wanted to reach up and rub a little at his nose, as if to heal himself from the slight ache that had flared up when he’d collided with Sephy. But he couldn’t see if Sephy was doing the same thing or not, and he didn’t want to be the only one grousing about it hurting. If Sephy wasn’t going to be a wimp then, by all laws invested in the first guy to ever declare that showing pain in front of the girl you were crushing on made you a pussy, Bradley just had to grin and bear it. It was a feat made easier when he heard Sephy’s musical laugh.

They’d fallen into a pattern lately where Sephy, who had scowled at him on their first meeting, now liked to laugh at him and with him. The significant thing to note was that Bradley really didn’t mind which one it ended up being. If cackling at his own misfortune was what brought a smile to Sephy’s face then Bradley would voluntarily start looking around for banana peels to slip on Looney Tunes-style.

He felt his smile stretch like elastic across his face, up until his mouth was suddenly preoccupied with being covered by Sephy’s own.

Immediately, Bradley broke his promise to keep his eyes shut. Like an absolute idiot, he allowed them to fly open, just to ascertain that Sephy was actually kissing him and hadn’t fainted then fallen on him, mouth first. Blinking as she allowed her lips to linger there for a second, his heart felt the way John Hurt’s surely must have in Alien before the xenomorph burst right out of his chest. 

Before he even had a chance to process what was happening or, heck, kiss Sephy back you absolute fucking buffoon Bradley Prestwick, the blonde had pulled back. But only just.

A pathetic noise crawled its way up the back of Bradley’s throat as she tried to swallow her words by clumsily kissing her again. It was a quick peck, and did nothing to satisfy Badley’s newfound craving.

“Was that the surprise… or…?” he asked, words slurring together as he displayed a degree of speechlessness, the likes of which had never been seen by anyone who clapped eyes on Bradley in years.

Sufficed to say, kissing Bradley was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. 

Admittedly, he hadn’t quite kissed her back, but the sensation of his mouth against her own, combined with the adrenaline that was now coursing through her veins, were enough to tell her she’d enjoyed even that brief delight. She pulled back, daring to place some distance between them so she could gauge his reaction, only for a burst of laughter to spill from her lips as Bradley finally caught up, his long gangly limbs seemingly locked into place as he bobbed his head after her, catching her lips in a clumsy, though this time reciprocated kiss. 

“No, dummy. That wasn’t the surprise,” she smiled, suddenly feeling elated at just how gormlessly dumbfounded her looked. She’d been hoping to shut him up, of course, but she hadn’t anticipated such quick results. 

It did mean, however, that she was too charmed by his dorky demeanor right now for the comic book to even to be a thought in her mind. Instead, she found herself bravely inching forward, her knee bumping his as she parted his legs, creating a gentle space for her to step in between them as she took his face into her hands again, this time more deliberately. Her thumb gently scraped along the meagre stubble along his jaw as she dipped her face down to meet his, a soft question of “You wanna try and kiss me back this time?” playing on her lips as her mouth met his. 

↳INSTAGRAM: @dalehudson uploaded a photo:

↳INSTAGRAM: @maggiemeichance uploaded a photo:

↳INSTAGRAM: @goosewoodrow uploaded a photo:

↳INSTAGRAM: @levimchell uploaded a photo:

↳INSTAGRAM: @stageyhalliday uploaded a photo: