⋆｡𖦹°STAR LIGHT⭒˚｡⋆

♫ ♪ ♬ ♫ ♪ ♬ ♫ ♪ ♬ ♫ ♪ ♬ ♫ ♪ ♬ ♫ [ fucking alarm! ]

“Fuck,” he hears a voice beside him groan.

You jolt upright like you’ve just been struck by lightning, and when you reach for your phone on the nightstand, your next “fuck!” comes out even more desperate.

There’s no time to waste. Your body is running on pure adrenaline as you bend down to grab your panties first, pulling them on with impressive speed, then your bra, your jeans, your shirt… Your movements are frantic, and Oscar has only managed to push himself up in bed enough to rub at his eyes and try to keep up as you whirl around the room like a hurricane, looking for your socks.

“What… what’s happening?” he asks, voice rough with sleep.

You don’t even look at him as you finally tug your socks on and jump off the bed, dropping to your knees to reach for the sneakers that somehow ended up underneath it.

“I got a text. I have ten minutes to get to work. Shit. It was supposed to be my day off,” you complain, tying your laces.

Your hoodie. Oh my God. How many layers had you even been wearing last night? Where is it?

Oscar gets up. Calmly, he walks to the other side of the room and picks up his hoodie, which had been hanging over the back of the desk chair.

“Here. Don’t worry about giving it back,” he says, holding it out to you.

Your shoulders relax a little, and your hands close around the fabric before you shrug it on.

“Sorry for rushing out like this. Last night was really good, Oscar. Seriously,” you say, already heading toward the bedroom door. In a second, you’re in the living room, slinging your bag over your shoulder, and then you’re already at the front door, running your hands through your hair. “I loved meeting you. Hope you have a great day. Bye, cutie!”

And you blow him a kiss.

Oscar, naked and slightly bewildered, gives you a lopsided smile and a little wave, watching as you rush out of his house and straight into whatever morning disaster had stolen you from his bed.

From that distance, he can see through the front windows, past the curtains, the moment you reach the curb and wave down your Uber. Once you’re inside that car and it’s pulling away toward whatever address your job requires of you, Oscar finds himself officially alone.

He clears his throat, as if someone might be there to witness his pitiful state, and turns on his heel, heading to the bathroom.

He can say with a certain amount of pride that he left you with something to remember him by. He’s a perfectionist, deliberate by nature, which means the marks he left behind won’t be visible to the world, nothing that would give away exactly what happened inside those four walls to anyone looking from the outside, but you’ll notice them. That’s enough for him. When you look at yourself in the mirror, there they’ll be: two on either side of your waist, four on your stomach, and the faint little trail along the inside of your thighs. Ah, yes. He remembers those. Remembers how his mouth ended up there, making you sigh louder and—

No. Hang on. That’s too much.

Oscar needs to turn on the shower. Cold setting.

The water comes down over him in a steady cascade, doing what it can to freeze those thoughts in his mind before they have the chance to become a far more immediate part of his bloodstream. And once that happens, there’s only one direction they’ll go. Down, down, down. And how humiliating would it be to spend the rest of the day in that condition?

Fuck.

Oscar Piastri is reliving the final moments of his night with an intensity that can’t possibly be healthy.

He presses his wet forehead against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s really trying… but his hand already knows exactly where to go.

The thing about Oscar is that he’s not an impulsive man. If anything, the opposite is true. Everybody knows that. Calm and collected have been the two words trailing after him ever since he became relevant enough for the media to care. It’s his thing. His whole brand, really. Oscar Piastri: Calm & Collected™.

Only once in his life has he taken that particular fact about himself and thrown it straight out the window, consequences be damned. How did that happen?

The night before, in what was a completely justifiable course of action, Oscar had been lingering in the corner of the club, near the bar, a glass of his favorite tropical yellow drink in hand, when your voice cut through the air:

“Is that any good?”

He turns, the rim of the glass still pressed to his lips halfway through a sip. The first thing he notices is the purple and blue light catching on the glitter dusted across your cheeks. It's an interesting look. Artistic, somehow. He finishes the sip and lowers the glass.

The long lashes framing your eyes are still there. So is your gaze. Steady. Unbothered. Fixed on him.

"It's alright," he says, leaning back against the wall.

A hum of approval leaves you as you step a little closer.

"I was thinking about getting a drink too. Got any recommendations?" you ask, using that sweet, faintly distracted tone accompanied by a small smile that seems to be saying far more than the words themselves.

"I'm not sure I'm the best person to be giving that kind of advice," Oscar replies, taking another sip of his drink.

You tilt your head slightly, your smile growing just a little wider.

"I thought you were an expert. You've been standing here for a while."

That gets his attention. Oscar tips his head back slightly, narrowing his eyes as though he’s trying to solve a particularly complicated case.

"You've been watching me," he says at last.

The mischievous smile spreading across your face is answer enough.

"Have I?" you reply, slipping past him to look over the selection of drinks displayed behind the bar.

It takes exactly ten minutes for Oscar to end up at the back of the club, your hands tangled in his hair, both of you kissing like it’s a competition to see who can be more impatient.

His hands are everywhere.

Mostly because he can't seem to decide where he wants to touch you first. Jesus Christ. He's never kissed anyone like this before. There's so much heat, so much urgency, that neither of you notices when his hand slides down to your ass.

You both notice when he squeezes.

And he definitely notices the muffled sound you make against his mouth.

"Did you drive here?" you ask somewhere between kisses.

"Taxi," he murmurs. "Alcohol."

"Hm. Good call."

His mouth finds yours again immediately.

A few seconds later—

"Your place?" you ask.

"Okay.”

So, yeah. Right. It had been a good start to a good night that ended a little too abruptly, but… well, that’s okay. Oscar isn’t even thinking about it. He’s definitely not thinking about how he would’ve liked to bring you into his kitchen for a nice cup of coffee, maybe make you scrambled eggs because it’s simple enough to pull off and still might somehow surprise you, and talk about what the rest of your week was going to look like and all that.

He’d kiss you again.

Well, he’d want to. Obviously. If you wanted to. After breakfast, of course. And then he’d take you to the shower and the two of you could… you know. Again. Yes. Right. He would like that.

As he makes his way over to the simulator, though, he goes back over the morning in his head. Tries to figure out what happened. Because you weren’t upset with him. You weren’t angry at him. God, what kind of massive ego would Oscar have to think that anything about that morning had been his fault? You got called into work on your day off, and even then, you were still sweet enough to blow him a kiss on your way out.

Knowing all of that, why is he still so disappointed?

Oscar turns on the simulator, waits for the screen to light up, and settles into the seat. When he lets out a slow breath, he makes himself a promise: he’s going to let it go.

At some point in the middle of the night, Oscar is sitting on the bed while you’re walking back from the bathroom. The only thing on your body is his t-shirt.

You stop halfway across the room, hands settling on your waist as you look at him with one eyebrow raised and a small smile on your face.

“What?” he asks, squinting at you.

You shrug and shake your head. Don’t say anything. You just climb back onto the bed and make your way over to him.

“I want to kiss you again,” you say, swinging one leg over either side of his lap before wrapping both arms around his neck.

Oscar arches an eyebrow too.

“I think you can kiss me again.”

“You think?” you ask, resting your forehead against his.

“I thought you were tired,” he murmurs, a small smile tugging at his lips.

“Oh, I lied,” you whisper, leaning in to press your lips to his through your own smile.

His arms wrap around your waist, and then his hands slip beneath the hem of the t-shirt, his fingers gliding slowly upward and sending shivers racing across your skin. And the two of you have touched each other like this so many times since you got there, but Oscar still hasn’t gotten tired of the sound that leaves your mouth when he reaches the middle of your back and pulls you even closer against him.

Maybe Oscar isn’t actually all that good at keeping promises he makes to himself, because it’s already halfway through the next day and you still haven’t texted him. He doesn’t want to think about it, but he does anyway.

That’s not even the worst part.

At some point that morning, while taking out the trash, Oscar realized the two of you never exchanged numbers. Of course you’re not going to text him. But even if you did have his number, would it really be a problem if you didn’t text him? Oscar likes to think not.

He calls Lando.

“Hey, mate!” Lando greets, sounding a little distracted. “You left the club pretty early that night.”

“Hey,” Oscar says back, pinning the phone between his ear and shoulder so he can wash his hands at the kitchen sink. “Uh, yeah. I… went home.”

Lando laughs.

“With a girl. I saw,” he says, and Oscar straightens up, clearing his throat.

“Right. Yeah. You… you saw her with me?”

“Of course, mate. You literally waved goodbye to me as a warning, remember?”

Yes, Oscar had forgotten that.

“Do you… Do you think you know who she is?”

“Like, if she’s an influencer or something? Mate, I don’t think so,” Lando says, and Oscar can practically picture him shaking his head. “Anyway, I’ve gotta go deal with something. But good for you, though. Glad you had fun. I know these shiny party things aren’t really your scene.”

A small smile tugs at Oscar’s mouth.

“Yeah. It was fun,” he admits.

“Right. And about the girl, if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

“No worries. See you, mate.”

And finally, the call ends.

Oscar locks his phone, slips it into his pocket, and heads into the living room. He drops onto the couch, turns on the TV, and tries, really tries, to focus on the action movie playing in front of him, where some woman is busy throwing herself from one building to the next.

The only problem is that she looks a little too much like you.

You’re sitting on top of him, hands braced against his chest. His own hands rest on your thighs, thumbs stroking over your skin while you look down at him, again and again.

“You’ve got so many freckles,” you say, lifting a finger to touch a few scattered across his chest.

Oscar nods, a tiny smile pulling at his lips.

“I do. I think it’s genetics mixed with sun exposure,” he explains without much thought, because that’s simply what he’s always assumed.

Your head tilts to the side as you reach up to touch the small constellation along his neck. Oscar swallows.

“I once heard this theory that freckles show up in the places where your soulmate used to kiss you most in a past life,” you say, continuing your careful little exploration as your fingertips brush softly over his cheek.

Oscar closes his eyes.

“I didn’t know that,” he murmurs.

You let out a small laugh and lean down to press a quick kiss to his lips.

“I think your soulmate must’ve loved you very much in your past life,” you say.

And just like that, the conversation is over, because Oscar is kissing you again, and you kiss him back without even thinking.

He’s been running for hours now.

Oscar glances at the time and, yes, a full two hours.

His hair is soaked with sweat, and his t-shirt is even worse. Honestly, he’s pretty disgusting, if he stops to think about it. But he doesn’t stop. He keeps running, slipping past people like a guided missile — except he doesn’t actually have anywhere programmed to go.

Oscar just runs.

He called his trainer earlier to say he’d be doing his cardio outside today, which surprised the man enough, but he said it was fine as long as Oscar actually did it. Of course Oscar was going to do it. He just needed to get out for a while.

The pace of his feet only starts to slow when he turns onto a familiar street.

It’s not really a run anymore, just a slow walk along the cobbled street of the shopping district where some of the best clubs in the city are tucked away. Not exactly the kind of place people go for a casual stroll, but no one in Monaco would question it — the country is small enough that any stretch of road can be justified if you try hard enough.

He stops in front of that club.

The one where he met you three days ago.

“Can I help you with something?” the bouncer asks, giving him the flat, unreadable look of someone who’s had to deal with every kind of drunk in Monaco.

Oscar blinks at him, a little thoughtful, because he doesn’t really know how he ended up there, let alone what exactly he wants to ask.

But he has to ask something.

“There’s a girl who comes here. We met a few days ago, and I was wondering if maybe she’d shown up again after that, or if… if she’s a regular. If you remember her,” he says.

The man just raises his eyebrows and waits.

Oscar describes you to him. First name, age, height, job, eye color, what you were wearing, the way your gaze looks, the makeup you had on… everything he knows.

Then he waits.

The bouncer shrugs.

“No clue, mate. A lot of people come through here.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. How could he not recognize you with a description like that? Of course, Oscar doesn’t say any of that. He just nods politely and says,

“Right. Thanks.”

That, apparently, is the end of his walk home. Oscar decides he’d rather take an Uber back.

With one arm wrapped around your waist, Oscar keeps you tucked against him. Your body is still full of little aftershocks, still humming with the kind of pleasure that hasn’t fully faded yet, leaving you with nothing but a deep, sleepy need to stay exactly where you are — warm, boneless, and held against him.

Oscar lets out a very, very satisfied laugh and slides his other hand down to your hip.

“You okay?” he asks, his nose brushing into your hair.

“Hmm… yes,” you mumble, stretching out the word in a soft, sleepy little sound that makes him tighten his arm around you. “I’m slowly coming back to the real world.”

“I’ll wait,” Oscar murmurs, and you nod against him. “We should probably take a shower.”

You snuggle in closer.

“Can we stay like this for a little longer?” you ask in a whisper.

How was Oscar supposed to deny you anything?

“Of course we can,” he replies, and you melt against him.

It’s been two weeks, and Oscar doesn’t think about that night anymore. Or about the fact that, somewhere in the city, you’re out there living your life. Maybe wearing his favorite hoodie — the one he’s probably never getting back. The idea is ridiculous, obviously, and not something he spends any real time dwelling on.

So he carries on as if nothing ever happened, which is how he’s ended up at the supermarket, standing in the pasta aisle with a thoughtful look on his face. He's pretending he has any clue what separates one type of pasta from another, even though he already knows he’s leaving with five boxes of spaghetti either way.

That's when a woman passes by him.

Oscar’s head snaps up, and he turns so quickly it’s almost embarrassing, because for one stupid second, he’s sure that—

Oh.

No.

She doesn’t look anything like… anyone he knows.

Oscar goes still for a moment, then turns back to his cart and drops the boxes of pasta inside, red as a bell pepper as he heads for the checkout.

“Hi… are you Oscar Piastri?”

He blinks, sliding the gas nozzle back into place before turning toward the little girl staring up at him with huge brown eyes.

“Sorry, she… she spotted you from over there and really wanted to come say hi. I hope we’re not bothering you,” her mother says.

The smile that spreads across Oscar’s face is slow, but entirely genuine. He shakes his head and glances down again, this time noticing the orange cap in the little girl’s hands, with the number 81 stitched across the front.

“I don’t actually have a pen on me to sign—”

“Here.” Her mother quickly holds one out.

“Thanks,” Oscar says, taking both the pen and the cap. “Alright, what’s your name?”

“Estelle.”

“Estelle? That’s a beautiful name,” he says, scribbling his autograph across the cap before handing it back to her.

Her mother lifts her phone to take a picture, and Oscar steps closer to the little girl, smiling as he raises a thumbs-up for the camera.

“Did you get it?”

“Yes, I did. Thank you so much, Piastri.”

“Yeah, thanks, Piastri! Hope you actually win next year, at least.”

Her mother looks instantly mortified, but Oscar just laughs as he hands the pen back to her.

“I’m hoping to win too,” he says, giving Estelle a friendly pat on the top of the head. “Soon.”

The two of them wave goodbye and start to turn away, and Oscar lifts his head to watch them go… only to catch sight, all the way across the station, of someone very, very familiar climbing into a car and pulling the door shut.

For one long second, he just stands there in the middle of the gas station.

His McLaren is still parked by the pump. A line is starting to form behind it. Fuck. There’s a line. But—

He blinks.

It’ll be quick. There are other pumps.

He doesn’t think.

Oscar bolts past the two girls in such a sudden rush that even the attendants stop what they’re doing to stare. He keeps going, one step after the other, because Oscar only ever runs like this when he’s training, except now he has somewhere to be, and you’re getting farther and farther away, and if he doesn’t catch you now, maybe he never will.

He needs to know how you are.

And you’re right there.

And he’s almost there. And your engine is already turning over and—

Oscar is completely out of breath.

He comes to a stop beside your car, one hand braced against the hood, the other on his knee. This is so wildly out of character for him that he nearly passes out from the sheer realization of what he’s doing and where he’s doing it. Jesus Christ. One second. Calm down.

Your door swings open. He knows because he hears it.

Oscar shouldn’t be this affected. He has athlete lungs. Twenty-five years on this earth without ever touching a cigarette.

Fuck.

“Oscar?” you say, your brow furrowing as you hurry toward him. “Oh my God. Oscar!”

Finally — and very slowly — Oscar straightens up enough to look at you.

“Are you okay?” you ask, your hands flying to his shoulders, mostly because he still isn’t saying anything and he’s pale as a ghost, which is starting to genuinely scare you.

But he just blinks. Looks down at your hand.

“I am,” he says with a nod. “I’m okay.”

You’re not entirely sure you believe him, but you let your hands fall away anyway. Back at the station, a chorus of car horns starts going off, and the attendants have gathered in a small cluster, all waving impatiently for him to hurry up. Oscar looks mildly horrified.

“Wait here, okay? Don’t leave,” he says, lifting a finger toward you even as he’s already moving. “I need to get my car out of there, but I’ll be right back.”

Your eyes blink once, but you… you nod.

Okay.

Oscar hurries back toward the gas station, murmuring quiet apologies to a few people on the way before finally making it to his car and pulling it out of the way.

Oscar comes back a minute later, shutting the door of his McLaren with a little more force than necessary before making his way toward you.

You’re still standing beside your car, arms folded loosely over your chest now, watching him with a look that lands somewhere between concern and confusion.

For a second, neither of you says anything.

Oscar clears his throat.

“So,” he says, a little breathless still. “Hi.”

You blink at him.

“Hi,” you echo, like you’re not entirely sure this qualifies as a normal greeting after whatever the hell that was two minutes ago.

His mouth twitches.

“Sorry about the…” He gestures vaguely behind him, as if that explains anything. “Running.”

Your eyebrows lift.

“Right,” you say slowly. “I was going to ask.”

Oscar glances away for half a second, then back at you.

“Yeah. No, that’s fair.”

And there it is — the smallest hint of embarrassment settling over his face, enough to make something warm flicker in your chest before you can stop it.

“I just—” He stops, exhales through his nose, and tries again. “I saw you getting into your car and thought if I let you leave without saying anything, I’d probably regret it.”

The way he says it makes you let out a breath.

“You idiot,” you say simply.

Oscar arches an eyebrow.

“You didn’t have to leave half of Monaco annoyed at you because of me,” you say, shaking your head before uncrossing your arms and stepping forward to wrap him in a hug. “This is how you’re supposed to greet someone, see?”

Shaking his head, he lets out a quiet laugh. Oscar isn’t even sure he’s allowed to do this, but he wraps his arms around you too, and the hug is a little awkward, a little clumsy — mostly because the two of you barely know each other and… yeah. You barely know each other. The thought makes him frown.

“How are you?” he asks, pulling away slowly.

You shrug.

“Normal. Fine. I’ve been working on a few new projects for uni this week,” you say, a little dreamily, gathering your hair in one hand as the wind keeps blowing it out of place. “I was actually on my way to get lunch. Do you want to come with me? It’s better than standing out here. My hair’s about two seconds away from sticking to my lip gloss and turning into a complete disaster.”

Oscar blinks because… did he hear you right? Lunch? You just asked him to lunch? As if the past two weeks hadn’t existed at all? As if they hadn’t been their own special little version of hell on earth?

“Yeah,” he says a little too quickly.

Then he clears his throat.

“Yeah. Sure. If you want.”

And because apparently he’s determined to make this worse for himself, he adds, a touch too late to sound normal:

“I mean— yes. I’d like that.”

A quiet laugh slips out of you at that, but all you say is,

“I’ll be right in front of you. No running this time, okay?”

As you walk back to your car, leaving Oscar behind, he rolls his eyes — but he’s smiling so hard it completely ruins the effect.

He drives slowly behind you, following your car through the streets of Monaco toward whatever lunch spot you had in mind. It’s not far, but it gives Oscar more than enough time to think. Or, more accurately, to sit there in a state of mild disbelief. For one brief second, he genuinely considers the possibility that he’s hallucinating. Maybe this is a dream. Maybe he hit his head somewhere between the petrol station and the parking spot. Maybe this is one of those bizarre out-of-body experiences people talk about, because up until today, you had been nothing more than a very good memory in his head — and now you’re leading him to lunch. Lunch. A thing you invited him to. With your own mouth.

Despite everything, Oscar really had thought there was a decent chance he’d never see you again.

By the time you pull into a parking space and step out of the car, he’s still sitting behind the wheel of his own, staring at you from that short distance like he’s trying to come up with some logical explanation for why this is happening at all. You walk over after a second, leaning down just enough to tap twice against his window.

“Come on,” you say.

Oscar drags his tongue over his bottom lip and nods, like that somehow makes him look less like a man who’s currently being led around by divine intervention.

As you walk into the restaurant, you head in front first to speak to the host, explaining that the reservation had originally been for one, but that you had a last-minute guest. He looks ready to say that won’t be possible — right up until he catches sight of Oscar and his eyebrows lift. Alright, then. He can come in.

You nod, and the two of you are led to your table, Oscar offering the man a grateful nod of his own while still biting the inside of his cheek, because he still hasn’t quite gotten used to how easily doors open for him.

And then, finally, you’re seated. One across from the other.

Oscar hadn’t actually thought that far ahead.

Your hand goes straight for the menu, and Oscar tries not to look at you too much. Predictably, he fails. Your lashes stay lowered as your eyes move from one option to the next, widening with interest whenever something catches your attention and narrowing again whenever something sounds questionable enough to make you pull a face. Your cheeks are pink, and you tap the edge of one nail against your tooth while you think.

“Do you eat seafood?” you ask after a moment, still scanning the menu.

“Yeah,” Oscar says. “Why?”

Now you finally look up at him.

“Because I kind of want the shrimp bucket,” you say. “But it’s way too much food for one person. Do you want to split it with me?”

A small smile appears at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding once. “I’d like that.”

You smile too and close the menu, then lean forward to rest your cheek against your hand.

Now it’s your turn to look at him. At his hair, his soft face, the freckles scattered across his skin…

“It’s been a little while since that night, hasn’t it?” you say. “If I’d known you were going to be here, I would’ve left your hoodie in the car.”

Oscar shakes his head.

“I told you not to worry about that.”

You smile faintly.

“So how’ve you been?” you ask. “Did you go back to the club? You said Lando likes going there.”

“Not really,” Oscar says. Not in the way you mean. “Lando’s more into that sort of thing than I am.”

You nod.

“Right.”

“What about you?” he asks. “Did you go back?”

“No, no. I haven’t had time,” you say. “Like I said, these projects have completely taken over my life lately—”

A waiter appears beside the table, and you glance up with a quick smile.

“Oh, hi. We’ll get the shrimp bucket, and…” Your eyes flick back to Oscar. “What do you want to drink, Osc?”

Osc.

His smile widens, just a little.

“The berry Italian soda, please,” he says. “Non-alcoholic.”

You nod and turn back to the waiter.

“And mine can just be strawberry, please.”

The waiter writes it down, and you thank him softly before he walks away.

“I love this restaurant,” you say, glancing around before your attention catches on an elderly couple tucked away in the corner. Oscar notices the little smile on your face and follows your gaze.

They’re adorable. The man is holding an analog camera, and his wife is posing like someone who knows, without a doubt, that she’s adored.

“They look happy,” Oscar says, tilting his head slightly.

Your nose scrunches with a smile as you turn back to him.

“They really do. They come here all the time.”

He lifts an eyebrow.

“So you’re a regular.”

A tiny smile tugs at your mouth.

“I’m a creature of habit.”

That earns a quiet laugh from Oscar.

“I’ve never been here before,” he says, glancing up at the decorations hanging from the ceiling. Everything about the place feels so… oceanic. A wash of blue and white, starfish painted along the walls, dark wood everywhere.

You grin.

“Yeah, they really commit to the theme.”

Oscar’s mouth twitches.

“I’m a creature of habit too,” he says. “I usually stick to the restaurants in the city centre.”

Your eyes widen.

“The ones that are basically lit entirely by candlelight?”

He shrugs.

“They’re charming.”

That pulls a soft laugh out of you.

“I’ve never been to any of them. People have recommended them to me, but I just never got around to it.”

“Maybe we—” He stops himself, already knowing exactly where that sentence was headed. But Oscar pushes on anyway. “If you ever think it sounds nice, maybe we could go there sometime. I imagine it’s better with company.”

Seeing the look on your face, Oscar realizes with a flicker of nerves that you’re actually considering what he said. And when you nod, all soft expression and soft eyes, he feels his shoulders loosen.

“I’d love that,” you say.

A small smile tugs at the corner of Oscar’s mouth.

“Yeah?” he says, like he just needs to hear it one more time.

Your smile deepens.

“Yeah.”

If Oscar could, he’d probably put this afternoon somewhere near the top of the list of the best days of his life. He can’t quite explain why, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that two weeks of waiting have finally led him here — to the realization that you’re still the same person who laid your head on his chest and asked for five more minutes.

How exactly is anyone supposed to recover from that kind of experience?

Well. Oscar doesn’t have an answer.

The question only gets worse over Italian sodas and fried shrimp, when you point at the sauce on his cheek with a laugh. The table is full of laughter after that, and the two of you talk about everything. And when you lean in to hear his answer to whatever question you’ve just asked, Oscar almost lets himself believe you keep asking and asking and asking just because you like the way he explains things.

Later, when you lead him to the back of the restaurant to show him the view of the sea, you point at a gull gliding back and forth overhead and say,

“That’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

But Oscar looks down at you and, for the first time that afternoon, feels the urge to disagree.

The days pass easily.

You don’t do anything out of the ordinary. Work, home, university. University, work, home. Lunch squeezed into whatever break the day happens to give you. The same routine, the same schedule, the same familiar little rush from one place to the next.

But now there’s something extra tucked into the middle of it all — a nice surprise that, if you’re being honest, you really hadn’t seen coming.

Ever since that lunch with Oscar, when you gave him your number so he could actually arrange the dinner the two of you had talked about, things have been… fun.

Which isn’t exactly shocking. He is nice; you already knew that much. You’d spent a night together, after all. A very intense night, actually. Intense enough that every now and then, when the memory sneaks up on you at the worst possible moment, your cheeks go warm because you genuinely don’t know who you were that night. Some insatiable little menace must have taken over your body. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.

You hadn’t meant for any of it to turn into more than that. A handsome guy at a bar, one good night of sex to work the tension out of your system after a string of exhausting days and the thousand things you always seem to have on your plate, and… well. That was supposed to be it. A solid plan. A very reasonable plan.

Then Oscar had quite literally run after you and nearly passed out in the process, leaving you a little stunned and far more charmed than you should probably admit.

So now, apparently, this is your life.

On your way into work, you stop halfway across the courtyard because a gull is circling overhead, and your first thought, naturally, is that Oscar needs to see it. You pull your phone from your pocket, angle the camera upward, and snap a picture before sending it off with the caption:

look. they’re following me now.

He replies two minutes later.

have you considered the possibility that they’re spying on you?

You lift an eyebrow, adjusting your bag on your shoulder as you head for the door and type back:

gulls aren’t spies. pigeons are.

His answer comes through almost immediately.

have you ever seen a baby gull?

And honestly, you don’t have a response to that. Not one that matters, anyway. All you can do is laugh under your breath as you pull the door open, because no — now that he’s mentioned it, you’ve never actually seen a baby gull in your life.

“Well, look who’s in a good mood,” Bonnie, the woman at reception, says.

You glance up, still smiling as you make your way toward the staff room.

“Just having a good week,” you reply.

And you’re not lying.

The day goes by nicely. Work is exactly what it’s always been too, nothing's new. The schedule is predictable, your break happens at the same time it always does, but there’s something particularly entertaining about knowing that, at around four in the afternoon, you can pull out your phone and text someone that Susan from finance is cheating on her husband with Robert, the man who delivers the chemicals for the photo developers.

Oscar seems especially horrified by the replies he sends back, and when he says that maybe he should tell Susan’s husband, you let out a laugh so loud that the girls in the booth immediately tell you to keep it down. You nod, covering your mouth with one hand as you text back, you’re getting me into trouble here. He answers almost immediately with a simple okay, sorry, and somehow that’s enough to leave a small smile lingering on your face.

Yes. Yes, things have been nice.

His break is almost over, which means you won’t be in the same city for much longer. Soon enough, he’ll go back to travelling the world in his tight little racing suit — as you so kindly pointed out to him. Oscar had smiled at that one and made sure you knew it by sending back a bright little 😁.

This gives you an idea.

It’s a silly one. Probably a little more compromising than you’re giving it credit for. But you and Oscar are friends now, aren’t you? And you’ve already slept together once. It was good. Very good. So what harm could a second night together really do, when he’s about to spend so much time away? It wouldn’t be anything new. If anything, it might even help. Oscar has an exhausting job. You have an exhausting job.

It takes him fifteen minutes to reply to your suggestion with a simple okay. Then it takes him an hour and a half to show up at your door.

Glancing around before opening it, you suddenly wonder if you might’ve backed yourself into a corner a little. It’s not as though you were trying to be subtle about why Oscar was here, but maybe the low yellow lighting and the slow music are making the whole thing feel a touch more deliberate than you meant it to. A flicker of embarrassment runs through you, and you hurry over to your phone, biting the inside of your cheek as you hit pause.

Okay. Better. Your shoulders loosen, and you head for the door.

“Hi,” you say, shifting your weight from one foot to the other as you pull it open.

Oscar looks ridiculous.

Ridiculously attractive, to be specific.

You’re not blind. You knew that from the first time you saw him leaning against that wall at the club, all soft eyes and unfairly pretty mouth. And when he gives you that crooked little smile, whatever lingering doubt you had evaporates on the spot.

This was absolutely the right decision.

God, you’re a genius.

“Hi,” he says back.

Your eyebrows lift, just a little, because suddenly you’re not nervous anymore. Not really. What you don’t know is that Oscar’s heart is beating so fast it might actually give up from exhaustion at any moment.

You tilt your head toward the inside of the house, silently inviting him in.

The door clicks shut behind you as you head for the couch. Oscar follows, glancing around with that curious, slightly charmed look on his face, but in the end, his attention settles back on you. He walks over and sits beside you.

“So…” he says, flicking you a quick glance. “Do you want to talk?”

The little look on your face already answers for you, but you say it anyway.

“We already talk all the time.”

Oscar laughs.

It’s low and warm and quietly melodic, and then he reaches for you, because suddenly he understands that he can. That he’s allowed to. That you want this just as much as he does. Christ, you invited him here.

You shift closer and swing your legs over his hips, and you know he loves that. He told you so that night. He told you so many things and nothing at all, and somehow, you remembered every single one.

“I want to kiss you,” he says, his eyes dropping to your mouth.

“I think you can kiss me,” you reply, repeating the same thing he’d said to you nights and nights ago.

His smile widens.

“You think?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not tired, so I’m not going to keep following the script. I haven’t worn you out yet,” you murmur, lifting your hands to his cheeks.

And Oscar becomes quite certain that he could die right there and still be perfectly happy about it in the afterlife.

He leans in, and he already knows exactly what to do.

You part your lips for him straight away, because this kiss was never supposed to be soft. No. It was always meant to burn.

Fuck. Yes. This is it. This is exactly what Oscar had been looking for for the past two weeks, and when you push his head back against the sofa and take over the kiss with an intensity that makes his grip tighten around your waist, he’s fairly sure he’s just been launched into another dimension.

One that smells like you. Feels like you. Has you everywhere.

This is casual, Oscar reminds himself. Just one more night before he leaves. Normal sex. With someone he trusts. A way to let off steam. Right. Of course. Sure.

Yes. He knows that.

He eases you back against the couch. Oscar is in control now. Or at least, that’s the plan. But the second he presses into you and hears that hungry little sound disappear into his mouth, he forgets what the word control is even supposed to mean.

You’ve just gotten out of the shower. Together.

Now you’re lying on your side, facing Oscar, wearing the hoodie you stole that morning before leaving his place — and he’s quietly losing his mind over the fact that it doesn’t smell like him anymore. Now it’s just you.

He’d love to steal it back, though not because he misses it.

“What are the next few weeks going to look like?” you ask softly, your index finger tracing absent little patterns over the freckles on his chest.

Oscar slips a hand beneath the hem of the hoodie and rests it on your waist, and you immediately pull a face when his fingers meet your skin.

“Your hand is freezing,” you complain.

He just laughs.

“Two races back-to-back,” he says, his thumb stroking over your waist, “and then two weeks without one.”

Your eyes lift to his.

“Two race weekends in a row?”

Oscar nods.

“And you like that?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“The racing part?”

You nod.

A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“It’s my favourite thing in the world,” he says.

Your fingers pause over his chest.

“What does it feel like?”

You shift a little closer into the bed, settling in as you wait for his answer, your eyes fixed on his. Oscar bites the inside of his cheek for a second, thinking, then blinks up at the ceiling.

“I think…” he says slowly. “I think it’s probably the closest anyone can get to real freedom.”

Your expression softens.

“And maybe a little like flying,” he adds. “If flying came with lower back pain.”

A laugh slips out of you.

“It hurts that much?”

“Oh, yeah.” He nods. “Feels like someone stuffed me into a sardine tin and then stretched me out with medieval torture equipment.”

That makes you laugh properly.

“Wow. Sounds lovely.”

“It is,” Oscar says, smiling. “I told you. It’s my favourite.”

Your expression softens again, and without really thinking about it, you nudge your forehead against his shoulder in a quiet little request to be held. Oscar immediately wraps an arm around you.

“Then I think you need to sleep, you sardine-tin masochist,” you murmur, your eyes already drifting shut. “It won’t do for McLaren’s best driver to show up exhausted.”

He goes still for a second, breathing a little mechanically.

“Sleep here?”

“Hm.” You tuck yourself in closer. “I’m not about to kick you out after you gave me some of the best orgasms of my life for the second time. That would just be rude.”

The heat that rushes into his cheeks is so immediate he’s half-convinced there might actually be smoke coming out of his ears.

“Oh my God.”

You burst out laughing and melt further into him.

“You’re so puritanical when you talk. It’s adorable.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.”

“Hm. Alright, then. Say something outrageous.”

Oscar thinks. Really thinks.

“Sex.”

You gasp.

“Wow.”

Now it’s his turn to laugh, low and helpless, as he pulls you in a little tighter.

“Go to sleep,” he says.

“Okay,” you mumble, already halfway there as your body goes soft against his.

And Oscar can’t quite believe this day is real — that you, of all people, are curled up against his chest, wearing his hoodie while you drift off to sleep.

When he closes his eyes, he already knows exactly what he’ll be dreaming about.

The two race weeks go by fast, but not kindly. Oscar feels every second of them.

Neither of them turns out quite the way he would’ve liked. In one, both he and Lando end up with DNFs. In the other, he drags home a hard-earned P5 in the rain after starting P9, in what had already been one of the worst qualifying sessions imaginable — helped along by three DNFs ahead of him and an overtake dramatic enough to earn its own replay. The whole thing is such complete chaos that Oscar isn’t entirely sure how he makes it out alive.

In the middle of all that, though, even knowing he’s exhausted from briefings, late-night team meetings, and complaints that never seem to go anywhere, Oscar still finds one way or another to reply to you.

He loves the voice notes you send him, especially the ones where you tell him that one wet corner he took nearly sent your heart straight out of your chest. And then, naturally, you decide to drop a bomb in his lap.

A photo.

You’re wearing a McLaren shirt you bought, one exactly like his. His number on the front. His number on the back. Big enough to leave absolutely no room for interpretation. The “fuck” that slips out of Oscar is so loud that half the garage turns to look at him. He actually has to apologise.

And when he finally gets back home, you call him and ask if he wants to celebrate.

“I’d love to,” he says, setting his suitcase down by the wall. “What exactly are we celebrating?”

“Your marriage to P5,” you reply. “I saw people on Twitter saying you’re very attached to that position. Apparently you only cheat on it with the occasional P7.”

Oscar shakes his head, but a helpless laugh escapes him anyway.

“That’s ridiculous,” he says. “People should mind their own business.”

You hum.

“Rude. Your fans won’t like hearing that you’re this badly behaved.”

“And are you planning to tell them?”

“Only if you don’t agree to go out and celebrate with me,” you say. “I’ve got an idea, and I’d hate for it to go to waste.”

Oscar goes soft immediately. He still has no idea how to say no to you.

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

“Yay.”

With a small smile still tugging at his mouth, he hangs up and goes to get ready.

“When you talked to me for the first time at the club, what was your first thought?” you ask, peering at him over the enormous witch-hat-shaped cotton candy in your hands.

Oscar pretends to think about it, but he already knows the answer. He reaches over to tear off a piece of your cotton candy, and when you immediately protest with an indignant, “Hey!”, he says,

“I thought, who’s this lunatic asking me for drink recommendations?”

“Lunatic?!” you gasp. “My God. You’re so rude.”

A quiet little laugh slips out of him, and by then the two of you are already making your way toward the shooting stall, because apparently that’s the next attraction you’ve decided you need to learn how to play.

Oscar hadn’t even known there was a festival in town with a fairground attached. It had been a long time since he’d been to one of these.

“Do you realise you’ve called me rude twice today?” he asks, clearly amused as he hands the tokens over to the guy at the stall.

You set your cotton candy down on the little ledge, take your toy gun, and shrug.

“Maybe you should reflect on that.”

“Me?” he asks, picking up his own.

“Yes, you. You’re the one being rude.”

Oscar laughs and ducks his head, squinting through the sight. You copy him, bending down a little beside him. When you fire your first shot, one of the bottles topples over immediately. Oscar misses by half an inch.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters, straightening up to see what went wrong.

“Ha! Okay. Again,” you say, already adjusting your stance for the next shot.

In the end, Oscar gets two strikes, and you only manage one.

You decide immediately that this is so, so unfair and inform him that, as compensation for the absolute tragedy of your performance, he’s going to have to give you the giant dolphin he won. Oscar complains, obviously, but somehow still ends up carrying two absurdly oversized stuffed animals — one enormous heart and, of course, the dolphin you’d already claimed for yourself — while you tug him along by the elbow toward the photo booth.

Oscar loves seeing you like this. All bright-eyed and happy, wandering around the fair like an overexcited little kid.

You slide onto the bench inside the booth, pull the stuffed animals in between the two of you, and then reach for Oscar’s hand to get him to sit down beside you.

“Do a good pose,” you warn him before pressing the start button. “And none of that thumbs-up thing you always do.”

“What’s wrong with—”

“Look!”

You grab his cheek and squish it, forcing his mouth into a pout while you do one of your own.

The next photo catches Oscar mid-laugh, with you wearing the most delightfully mischievous little smile. Then there’s one of both of you looking straight at the camera, and another where each of you is hugging one of the stuffed animals.

In the end, the two of you somehow end up at the top of the Ferris wheel, entirely because it was Oscar’s idea. Nothing could be more cliché than this, he’d thought. But then you were leaning over to look at the city below, pointing off into the distance with a bright little, “I can see my house from here!” and Oscar decided he didn’t care even a little bit.

At some point during the ride, though, things get a little out of hand. Because you turn to him with a look that means absolutely no good, then lean in close to his ear and whisper an idea so scandalous that the only thing Oscar manages in response is biting down on his own lip before kissing you hard and letting his hand drift somewhere very, very dangerous.

Oscar doesn’t do things like this. And, if you’re being honest, neither do you.

But when your mouth falls open and you have to hide your face in the curve of his neck to muffle the sound trying to escape, you find yourself thinking that maybe — yes — you could get used to doing things like this.

Of course you fuck that night. And the night after that. And the one after that, and the one after that too. What started as a one-night thing after the club — no strings, no expectations — turned into a second night with no strings attached, and then into weeks of no strings attached, until suddenly you have no idea what’s going on anymore.

Because now you’re lying in Oscar’s bed, and tomorrow he has to leave for a race week, and all you can think about is how much you don’t want to be here without him.

His eyes are closed, and he looks peaceful in that way only Oscar ever seems to manage. In that way you’ve somehow learned to recognise, and—

Oh, fuck.

You’d rather not think about it, so instead you just close your eyes, curl your arms around him, and breathe in the soft scent of the cologne he wears — the one that, somewhere along the way, became your favourite.

When you wake up, it’s to the sound of Oscar moving around the room, gathering his things and carrying them out to the living room.

And you can tell he’s doing it as slowly as humanly possible so he won’t wake you, because the room is still dark and he’s trying to see everything by the light of his phone torch alone.

“Morning?” you mumble, rubbing one eye with the back of your hand.

Oscar stops mid-step, looks over at you with his head tilted slightly to one side, and smiles.

“Morning,” he says. “Did I wake you?”

There’s a faint note of guilt in his voice.

You shake your head and yawn, reaching out to tug him closer by the hand.

“You’re leaving already?”

He nods and comes back to sit in the empty space beside you. Your hand curls around his forearm.

“And you weren’t even going to say goodbye.”

Oscar wrinkles his nose.

“I didn’t want to interrupt your sleep.”

“You were going to leave me lying here in your bed while you went off travelling,” you say. “Don’t you protect your belongings?”

A quiet laugh slips out of him as he glances down at the fingers absently stroking his arm.

“Of course I do. But half of them are already at your place, so…”

You hum.

“Fair enough.”

Your eyes are still heavy with sleep, and your grip on his arm loosens a little, but you lift a finger and tap your forehead.

“I want a kiss here.”

Oscar smiles like an absolute fool and leans in. Honestly, how can someone be this needy? He presses a kiss right where you pointed.

“Here?” he asks, and then drops one onto your cheek. “I’ll leave one here…” Then the other. “And one here too.” The tip of your nose. “Here.” And finally, your lips. “And one here.”

You’re smiling by then, one hand curled around the back of his neck, and when you open your eyes properly, you tilt your head to the side and nod.

“That’s better,” you say. “Now you can go.”

He leaves one last kiss on your forehead before getting to his feet.

“But I’ll be back,” he says. “You won’t even have time to miss me.”

Oh, but you will. You definitely will.

“Okay,” you murmur.

And when Oscar finally leaves, you let yourself go limp against the bed, staring at nothing as you wonder what the hell you’re supposed to do with your life now that you’ve somehow managed to ruin everything.

He’s absolutely brilliant that weekend.

You watch Oscar cross the finish line from pole position with the giant stuffed dolphin hugged to your chest, and the very first thing you do afterwards is grab your phone and text him:

DIVORCE FROM P5!!!!!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Watching the podium celebration is a little harder. Mostly because, honestly, how is he allowed to look like that while the Australian anthem is playing?

Half an hour later, he replies with a simple:

celebration?

And you send back whatever you want! before promptly dropping onto the rug on your back and staring up at the ceiling.

You’ve been doing that a lot lately.

As if the ceiling might suddenly decide to give you some kind of answer. It never does. Not even one.

Outside the restaurant, the one he promised he’d take you to, tucked into the middle of the city and glowing softly with candlelight, Oscar takes your hand.

He’s wearing a suit. He hates suits, but he told you he put one on because, once, you mentioned seeing a photo of him in one and thinking he looked really handsome. So now he’s standing there in a suit he doesn’t even like, his fingers threaded through yours like this is the easiest thing in the world.

Like it doesn’t pull at something deep in your chest.

He reaches for your chair and waits until you sit so he can gently push it in, then takes the seat beside you, not across from you, beside you, and orders for both of you, wine included, because tonight is a real celebration, isn’t it?

“Pole position,” you say, propping your head up on one hand as you look at him. “That deserves a proper celebration.”

Oscar has so much to say about it.

About the race weekend, about the way the team helped him get there, answering every question you ask mostly because you like listening to him explain things. He talks and talks, and all you can think is that you have no idea how people still insist he’s quiet, or reserved, or hard to read, because no one gets this version of him. Not like you do.

And in the end, when he finally runs out of things to say, he just looks down with a small, lovely smile and says,

“Yeah. Pole position. Pretty cool, huh?”

A soft laugh slips out of you as you look at him. Honestly, he’s unbelievable.

“Yeah,” you say, all fondness. “Pole position is very cool.”

He lifts his eyes to you and squints a little.

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Am I?” you ask, and he leans in closer.

“I don’t care,” he says, and steals a quick little kiss that makes your stomach turn over.

The food arrives, and the conversation keeps going.

It’s the same easy rhythm that always leaves you warm all over, full of butterflies, the same dry little jokes that make you laugh far more than they probably should, day after day after day, and it’s… perfect. Everything about it is perfect.

Then his hand disappears beneath the table and finds yours again, threading your fingers together like it’s second nature by now, and you look at him as you swallow hard.

Defeated. Ruined. Your heart in pieces.

He looks back at you, and you… You wish that look could stay forever. You wish it meant exactly what yours does.

By the time the two of you step back outside, the whole thing feels almost cinematic: a street in Monaco at night, all soft yellow lights and a couple dressed far too well for their own good.

“Osc?” you call, turning to look at him.

“Hm?” he says, stopping immediately so he can listen.

How are you supposed to say this without making a complete disaster of yourself in the process? Your eyes are already threatening to spill over, and you have to blink hard and tip your chin up just to keep the tears where they are.

“I—I…” you start, your voice already trembling as it fights to stay steady. “I don’t think we can keep doing… this.”

Oscar blinks, and you watch his shoulders drop.

“What?” he asks, patient, waiting.

But you don’t want to explain. You don’t want to talk. Your mouth is already wobbling into a cry, one tear slipping free despite your best efforts, and you’re lifting your fist to wipe at the corner of your eye while Oscar is about two seconds away from panicking.

“This,” you say helplessly. “Casual. I don’t want to force anything, but I can’t… I can’t—” You swallow hard, trying to breathe through it. “I can’t keep doing this casual thing with you. Going to your place, wearing your clothes, walking around holding your hand and seeing you wear… wear something just because you know I like it…” Your voice drops, smaller now, barely holding together. “And keep pretending that…”

His chest rises and falls, quick and shallow. Oscar is still waiting.

You lower your voice until it’s almost a whisper.

“Keep pretending I’m not in love with you.”

Oscar goes completely still, like his whole body is rebooting in real time.

He lifts a hand, asking for a second, and you — who were quite literally crying a moment ago — sniffle and stare at him, suddenly very confused by the reaction. He scratches the top of his head.

“Can you…” he starts, clearing his throat. “Can you say that again?”

Your arms fall uselessly to your sides. You blink once. Then again.

“I…” Your voice comes out small and uncertain. “I can’t keep pretending I’m not… in love with you?”

His eyes widen. He clears his throat again, bites at the tip of his thumb like he’s trying very hard to hide a smile, and says,

“You know, this is actually kind of funny…”

What?

“Because I—” He swallows hard. And then he looks at you, all soft around the edges. “Oh, my God…”

He lets the breath out of him slowly, tucks his hands behind his back because they’re shaking, and then finally…

Finally.

“I’m in love with you too.”

And now it’s your turn to stop functioning entirely.

“W-What?” you ask, blinking at him as you try, and fail, to make sense of any of it.

Oscar just shakes his head.

His hand comes to rest at your waist, and right before he kisses you — right before his mouth finds yours in a way that says far more than either of you has managed all night — he murmurs softly,

“I’m in love with you. Like a complete idiot.”

And somehow, all at once, everything falls into place. You hold onto him as you kiss him back, your knees going weak beneath you.

“Fuck casual,” he whispers when he pulls away just enough to speak.

A soft laugh slips out of you.

“Oscar…”

“My God,” he murmurs, smiling so helplessly it nearly does you in.

You’re grinning by then, all warmth and relief and something so fond it almost hurts, and you kiss him again. And again. And one more time, just because you can.

“My Oscar?” you whisper back.

He rests his forehead against yours, looking for all the world like a man who’s lost a battle and doesn’t mind one bit.

“Your Oscar.”

“OSCAR PIASTRI NEW GIRLFRIEND?”

That’s the giant headline currently making you smile so hard your cheeks hurt. Oscar notices immediately and, naturally, becomes suspicious.

“What are you looking at?” he asks, eyes still on the television as his fingers drift lazily through your hair, now that you’re stretched out with your head in his lap.

You don’t answer. You just turn your phone around so he can see the screen.

Oscar glances at it, lifts an eyebrow in a very poor attempt at pretending not to care, and then — about two seconds later — a little smile appears at the corner of his mouth.

“You like that,” you say, thoroughly entertained.

He looks down at you, still absentmindedly playing with your hair.

“You would too,” he says, far too pleased with himself, “if you had a girlfriend like mine.”

You let out an offended little huff and drop your phone onto the couch before lifting your face to glare at him, though it’s hard to look very irritated when your heart is trying to melt out of your body.

“I can’t make fun of you when you’re being all cute like that.”

A second passes. He doesn’t say anything.

Then another.

“I think we should do a hard launch.”

You go still.

“Since when do you know what a hard launch is?”

Oscar shrugs like this is a perfectly normal thing for him to say.

“Do you want to?” you ask, suddenly a little shy. “Tell everyone, I mean.”

He nods.

Your smile sneaks back immediately, and you hide your face against his stomach before he can see too much of it.

“You get shy too, you know,” he murmurs.

“Shut up.”

Oscar laughs softly and bends down to steal a kiss from you anyway.

He's sitting on the front steps of his building when you pull up.

Dark red jacket over a black shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, a thin chain at his throat catching the streetlight. The white streak at his temple is uncombed, pushed back by his own hand one too many times.

His elbows rest on his knees, the silver band on his right thumb glinting when he lifts his head and spots your car. The rigid set of Valarr's jaw—the clenched, held-together look he gets when he's keeping himself contained—eases, just barely.

He climbs in, the sleeve of his jacket brushing your arm. Cedar and vetiver underneath tickles your nose, the expensive cologne Jena buys him every Christmas, and beneath that the sharper, rawer note of whiskey and cold air.

"Hi," he says quietly.

"Hi." You glance at him. "Seatbelt."

His mouth twitches, but he puts on his seatbelt without a word.

You drive him to the diner on Aegon Street, the one with the cracked leather seats and the jukebox that only plays songs from the nineties. The one you've been going to since you were fifteen and he first drove you here in his mother's borrowed car, both hands on the wheel, serious about it, careful.

You order him black coffee and a plate of fries he doesn't touch and you sit across from him in the corner booth and you wait. Because you know Valarr, because you've known him since you were ten years old, and you know that when he's ready to talk he'll talk. Pushing does nothing.

A Stark knows how to wait.

He wraps both hands around the mug. The silver band presses against the white ceramic. His eyes—brown on one side, pale blue on the other—fix on the surface of his coffee, heavy-lidded, unfocused, and the fluorescent overhead light makes the white streak at his temple look almost silver.

You take a picture.

Can't quite help yourself. Phone in your hand, angled low against the table, tapping the shutter while you pretend to be checking your messages.

A habit you've never examined too closely, because examining it would mean admitting that your camera roll contains over four hundred photographs of Valarr Targaryen doing absolutely nothing remarkable, and that you add to it weekly, and that sometimes you lie in bed and scroll through them with the tender ache of a woman building a private archive of someone she won't allow herself to want.

He's easier to photograph tonight. Looser. The whiskey has softened the edges of his composure, dropped the calibration by a few degrees, and the effect is devastating.

His gaze stays on your mouth a beat too long when you speak, his knee pressing against yours under the table and staying there, no apology, no careful repositioning, just the steady warm weight of him against you through denim.

He talks.

Eventually. Halfway through his second coffee, staring at the fries neither of you is eating. His voice is low enough that you have to lean in to catch it over the jukebox.

"Margaux told me—at the end. When we were ending it. She said—"

You go still. It's been three weeks since the breakup.

You know this because you've been counting, silently, the way you've spent a decade cataloguing this man's availability without admitting to yourself you're doing it.

Three weeks since the text from Matarys (val ended things with margaux btw) and the savage, cold pulse of triumph that flooded your ribcage before you could stop it.

"What did she say?" you ask carefully.

"She said I was the most attentive man she'd ever been with. That I remembered everything. That I made her feel important." Valarr's throat moves. The chain shifts against his collarbone. "And that none of it mattered because I was in love with someone else and she could feel it every time I touched her."

The diner hums around you. Valarr's hands rest wrapped around the mug, the ring catching the light.

"She wasn't wrong," he adds, almost inaudible. His eyes find yours across the table. Brown and blue, stripped bare, the composed golden surface of him cracked clean through. "Was she?"

You don't answer. You hold his gaze across the cracked leather booth and let the silence do what silence has always done between you and Valarr: fill itself with the enormous, patient, decade-long thing neither of you will name.

And you take another picture. You can't help it. Your thumb moves on its own, tapping the shutter with your phone still angled low. Because his face right now, open and wrecked and so painfully honest that looking at him feels like pressing on a bruise, is a confession you need to keep.

Proof that you didn't imagine the way he looks at you.

He catches you.

Valarr's eyes drop to your phone. To the angle of it. To the screen, where his own face is frozen mid-confession in the frame.

Then they come back up to yours.

His expression changes. The rawness doesn't leave, instead it sharpens, gains an edge, the final tumbler in a decade-long lock falling into place behind his eyes. Recognition. The look of a man who's just been handed confirmation of what he hoped but never dared trust—that you want him back.

That you've wanted him back this whole time.

You lower your phone. Set it face-down on the table.

Your heart is slamming so hard you can feel it in your wrists.

Valarr reaches across the table. Long-fingered, the silver band glinting, the vein along the back standing in faint relief as he wraps his digits around your phone. Turns it over. The screen is still lit. The camera is still open. The last photograph is still there: his face, mid-confession, the washed light caught in his floppy hair.

He looks at it.

He looks at you.

"Come with me," he says, voice low.

The register he's used maybe four times in your shared history. Always at moments when the performance drops away and what's left is just Valarr, raw-voiced and silky.

He slides out of the booth. You follow.

Valarr's hand finds the small of your back—the place, his place, the spot he's been touching since you were children—except tonight his fingers curl against the fabric of your shirt, pressing, pulling slightly, and the possessiveness of it sends a jolt of heat through the base of your spine.

He walks you past the counter, past the kitchen, past the corridor with the payphone nobody uses, to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Single-stall. Lock that sticks.

He holds the door. You go in, forcing your breath to stay even.

The lock clicks behind him and the light buzzes overhead and you turn to face him. The room is small and too bright and Valarr is leaning against the door with his hands at his sides, breathing carefully, his chest rising and falling with the controlled rhythm of a man who is holding himself in place by force.

"Tell me to go home," he says.

"No."

His eyes search your face. A flicker in them. Surprise, or hope, or the sharp bright edge of a want he's been keeping under glass since he was old enough to understand what it was.

He lets out a raspy, huffing laugh. "Tell me this is a bad idea."

"It's a terrible idea." Your voice is steady. Your heartbeat is not. "I'm not going to tell you to stop."

"Why not?"

You push off the wall. Cross the two steps between you. Close enough to see the faint damp at the corner of his jaw where he's been clenching. Close enough to smell the whiskey on his breath, warm and sharp under the coffee. Close enough to see the fine tremor in Valarr's hands when he pulls them from his pockets.

"Because I've been waiting, Val," you tell him. Quiet, measured. The truest thing you've said in ten years. "I've been waiting to see if you'd choose me."

His face cracks open. The composure fractures along every fault line he's spent fifteen years reinforcing, and what's underneath is just Valarr, raw and looking at you with ten years of accumulated want so visible on his face that it has a physical weight.

You feel it settle against your chest.

"Choose you," he repeats, his voice hoarse. "I chose you when I was nine. I chose you before I knew the word for it. Every girl I've ever been with has been a—a placeholder for a place I've been saving and you know that, you've always known that—"

You take the lapels of his red jacket in both hands and pull him down and kiss him.

His mouth is warm. It tastes like whiskey and coffee and underneath both of those, purely and unmistakably, Valarr.

The boy who walked you home from school with his hand at the small of your back, the man who sat beside your bed for four days after your grandmother died and didn't speak and didn't leave, the man who slid a silver band onto his own thumb a week after his father's funeral because you'd pressed it into his palm and said I need you to keep this for me, I need a piece of mine on you and he'd worn it every day since without ever asking why.

You feel that ring now.

His right hand comes up to cup the side of your face and the band presses into your cheekbone. Smooth, blood-warm from his skin, the weight of it so familiar from a thousand casual touches that the intimacy of feeling it here, now, with his mouth on yours in a diner bathroom with the buzzing overhead and his breath ragged against your lips, makes your knees dissolve.

Valarr kisses you the way a man kisses a woman he's been rehearsing kissing for a decade.

There's nothing tentative in it. Every late night and remembered preference and hand at the small of your back has been foreplay, and the foreplay is over, and his hands are shaking against your face. Actually trembling, the fine barely-visible vibration.

You bite his lower lip. Catch it between your teeth and pull, the soft inner flesh of it caught against your incisors, and the groan that rips out of Valarr vibrates through your own mouth and settles low in your stomach.

You release it. Suck it back in—slow, greedy, your tongue dragging along the swollen swell—and Valarr makes a sound that has no composure left in it whatsoever. Guttural and raw, broken at the edges.

Your hands are still fisted in his jacket. You shove it back off his shoulders, dragging it down his arms, and the red fabric catches at his elbows.

Valarr shakes free of it without pulling his mouth from yours, the jacket crumpling to the tile floor behind him. He's in the black shirt now. Just the black shirt, the chain at his throat gleaming against the dark cotton, the first two buttons undone, the hollow of his collarbone visible and flushed.

You hook one finger under the chain. Tug.

Valarr growls.

His whole body jerks forward, his hands clenching on your hips, and the sound that comes out of him—high, fractured, disbelieving—is the sound of a man whose composure has just been yanked out of him by the throat.

His eyes fly wide. Brown and blue, the pupils blown so dark the colour is almost gone.

"Again," he breathes. "Please."

You wrap the chain around your index finger and pull him down to you, slow, steady, the thin metal digging into the back of his neck, and Valarr follows it like a man on a leash.

His mouth crashes into yours, his hands scrabbling at your waist, your ribs, the curve of your hips, desperate and graceless, nothing like the measured careful composure of fifteen years of friendship. He's groaning into your mouth between kisses, a continuous low sound, and his hips grind forward against yours.

You feel the full hard length of him through his trousers and the heat of it sends a spike of want so sharp through your centre that your vision swims.

He lifts you. His hands slide under your thighs, helping you up, and you settle on the edge of the sink counter. The cold of the porcelain bites through your jeans and you don't care, you can't care. Because your legs are wrapping around his waist and his mouth is at your throat and Valarr has a decade of repressed longing cracking open inside him and every fracture shows.

You feel it in the way he goes at you. Teeth first, the scrape of them down the tendon of your neck, followed by the hot drag of his tongue, the seal of his lips sucking hard enough to leave a mark that will still be there in the morning.

He doesn't linger. He moves, roams, claiming. His mouth travels from your throat to the hinge of your jaw, open and wet and hungry, and then down. First the dip of your collarbone, the arch of your neck, the pulse point below your ear where he presses his tongue flat and drags and your hips jerk forward against him involuntarily and the sound that comes out of you is one you don't recognise. Raw. Startled.

Your hands fly to his silky hair, twisting into the dark strands, and you pull. Hard. Valarr's head yanks back, throat bared, the chain pulled taut against his adam's apple, and the gasp he makes, ragged and shocked, grateful, echoes off the tile.

"You," he pants, staring up at you from the angle your grip forces. His eyes are wet. The flush has spread from his throat to his cheekbones, and the white streak at his temple is disordered, damp at the root. "You and your—god. Do you know how long I've—do you have any idea—"

You yank his mouth back to yours.

The open-mouthed, tongues sliding, the wet heat of it making your thighs clench around his waist.

You suck Valarr's tongue into your mouth—hard, a sharp sudden pull that drags him deeper into the kiss—and Valarr makes a sound against you that is barely human.

His hips slam forward, grinding the hardness of him against you through fabric, and his whole body locks, rigid, trembling, a punched-out groan vibrating between your mouths because he's close.

He's close from that, from the suction of your mouth on his tongue, from the obscene wet pull of it, and his hands clench on your hips hard enough to bruise as he forces himself to hold still.

"Fuck—" he chokes against your lips, shaking, his forehead dropping to yours, and filth sounds good in his usually overly polite mouth. "Fuck. I almost—you can't—I nearly just—"

You don't let him recover.

You grab the chain and yank his mouth back to yours and kiss him again, slower this time, deeper, your tongue sliding against his in a rhythm that is filthy and designed to take him apart.

Valarr groans into it, and sucks your tongue back, matching you, the wet sloppy heat of it filling the space between you. The kiss is a mess. Messy, consuming, all teeth and tongue and the slick obscene sound of ten years of want.

His hands are everywhere. Your ribs, curve of your waist, your thighs, your ass, pulling you to the edge of the sink so you can grind against him, and you do. You grind into him, rolling your hips forward, seeking the friction of him through his trousers, and the pressure of his cock against your centre wrenches a moan from you that breaks the kiss open.

You can't get close enough.

Your legs lock tighter around his waist. Your hands drag him in by the chain, by the hair, by the collar of his black shirt, and it's still not enough. There's still fabric between you and that's unacceptable, and Valarr seems to arrive at the same conclusion in the same instant because his hands are at your jeans, fumbling at the button with fingers that are shaking badly enough that it takes two attempts.

"Off," he rasps against your swollen mouth. "I need these off, love. I need to feel you, please—"

You help him. Both of you pulling, yanking, graceless and urgent, your jeans and underwear shoved down your thighs and kicked to the tile floor. His hand slides between your legs and the sound Valarr makes tells you what his fingers have found.

"You're soaked." His voice comes out wrecked. Awed. He drags two fingers through the slick of you, slow, feeling the evidence of what he's done, and the pad of his thumb grazes your clit and your spine arches and a gasp tears out of you that has nothing controlled in it, nothing northern, nothing composed. "You're—god—you're dripping, sweet girl, you're so wet—"

Your hands go to his belt buckle, your fingers slipping on the metal because your hands are shaking now too.

Your hands are shaking.

You almost laugh. Your famously steady Stark hands are trembling because Valarr's fingers are still between your legs, circling, pressing, his thumb working your clit in slow devastating passes while he watches your face with that fixed intensity, and the heat building in your core is a wildfire. Every ounce of composure you've spent a decade constructing is crumbling under the focused, determined weight of a man who has ten years to make up for and is making up for them right now.

You free him. Wrap your hand around him. He's hot and impossibly hard, the head slick against your palm, and when you stroke upward Valarr's hips buck into your grip and a moan grinds out of him. Deep, agonised, the sound of a body that's been starving.

His fingers are still on you, still circling, still slick, and the dual sensation—your hand on him, his hand on you—makes the air between you feel combustible.

"Sweet girl." The endearment breaks out of him like a confession, a hoarded thing finally released. His right hand comes up to your face, cupping your jaw, the silver band pressing into the curve of your cheekbone, his thumb leaving a streak of your own wetness against your skin, and the intimacy of that makes your vision swim.

"I need to be inside you," he whispers. Valarr's forehead presses to yours, his breath ragged and hot against your mouth, his eyes open and locked on yours from so close the brown and blue blur together. The chain at his throat hangs between you, swaying with each shudder of his breathing. "I've needed—god—I've needed this for so long. So long. I need you. More than anything. Please."

You guide the flushed head of his cock to you. The first press of him against your entrance makes your breath hitch and his jaw clench, the muscle at the side of his throat jumping. You hold his gaze.

"Then take me."

Valarr doesn't need to be told twice. He sinks in.

Slow, easing into you, stretching you open for him. Every inch deliberate, his forehead staying against yours, his breath stuttering out of him in pieces.

The stretch of him fills you up—the thick, aching, devastating fullness of him finally inside you—and your lips part. Your fingers tighten in his hair and a sound comes out of you that you didn't give permission for, low and helpless, the sound of ten years of wanting finally being answered.

Valarr watches your face with those mismatched eyes. Lashes damp at the corners, his mouth hanging open, cataloguing every micro-expression, every shift, because this is the first time he's inside you after a lifetime of wanting and he's building a permanent record that he will never, ever discard.

He bottoms out, and you both go still.

His arms come around you. Tight, clutching, pulling you to the edge of the sink so there's nothing between your bodies. Your chest presses to his, cold metal and hot skin between you.

Valarr's forehead stays on yours. His breath bursting out in shallow, shaking pulls, and his hands flatten against your back, spread wide, holding as much of you as his palms can cover. You can feel the ring against your spine. Can feel the chain against your sternum.

You can feel him inside you, hot and pulsing, and your thighs are trembling around his waist. Slick with your own want, thrusting into him, and the composure you've worn like plate armour since you were fourteen is in pieces on the tile floor with your jeans.

"Oh," he says softly. "Oh."

You cup the back of his neck. Press your nails in, gently this time. Feel him shudder.

"Move, Val."

He moves.

Long, deep strokes that drag out of you slow and drive back in hard, each one measured, each one hitting a place inside you that makes white light bloom behind your eyes.

His hands grip your hips, pulling you into each thrust, and the sink edge digs into the backs of your thighs and the sound of skin on skin fills the small tiled room. His mouth finds your throat and stays there. Biting, licking, sucking bruises into the tendon, working his way down to the ridge of your collarbone where he sets his teeth and bites, and the sound you make is throaty, snarling and hungry.

Your nails rake down his back under the black shirt and your hips roll to meet him and you're so wet you can hear it—the slick, squelching evidence of how thoroughly he's fucking you—and the sound of it makes his rhythm falter.

"Fuck," he breathes against your collarbone, that golden boy act in pieces at the taste of you. "I can hear—you're so—my love, you're so wet for me—"

Valarr's mouth drags down the open neck of your shirt. His lips find the swell of your breast above the fabric and his tongue traces the edge of it, hot and starved, and then his teeth close on the skin and he suck. You jerk against him, grinding down onto his cock, and the grinding pulls him deeper and Valarr moans against your chest, the vibration of it buzzing through your ribcage.

You fist his hair and yank, clenching around him on purpose. Valarr gasps, his rhythm stuttering, and then picking back up harder, meaner, his hips snapping forward with a ferocity that rocks you back against the mirror.

"You're mine," he groans against your ear, and the words tumble out of him silky and dark, half desperation, half certainty. "You've always been mine. Since we were kids, since before that, you've always—"

And his sheer, unguarded, insatiable want—the enormity of it, the years behind it, the way his voice cracks on always like the word itself is too small to hold what he means—melts you.

The ice in you. The wolf. The decade of holding yourself still and steady and contained because a Stark doesn't yield. Because wanting him back felt like handing him a weapon and trusting him not to use it. It melts under the heat of Valarr's body and the desperate clench of his hands.

You cradle the back of his head. Draw him close. Press your lips to his temple. The white streak, the damp silver of it, and whisper against his skin.

"I know, Val. I know. You've always been mine too."

He shudders. His whole body, a full-length tremor, his cock pulsing inside you.

"My Valarr," you whisper, and your voice is soft in a way you never let it be, the girl under the wolf, the tender centre you guard with teeth. "Just mine. Only ever mine."

A broken, gorgeous sound rips free from him. His arms tighten around you, crushing you to his chest, and Valarr's face buries in your neck and his hips drive forward in a deep, shaking thrust that grinds against your clit, making your vision white out.

His hand slides between your bodies, his thumb finding your clit and presses firmly. Focused and circling in time with his thrusts, and the combination of the fullness of him inside you and the pressure of his thumb and the sound of his ragged breathing against your throat unravels the last thread of your control.

Your head falls back against the mirror and a moan rips out of you that is loud enough to be heard through the door, through the corridor, through the whole godforsaken diner, and you don't care, you can't care.

"There," Valarr breathes, and his voice is dark and triumphant and shaking. "There you are. There's my girl."

He pulls back to look at you. His hands come up to cradle your face—both of them, the silver band pressing into one cheek, his bare palm warm against the other—and he holds you there. Holds your gaze. Brown and blue eyes, wrecked and blazing, pinning you in place while his hips keep moving, deep and devastating and steady.

"My love," he rasps, and thrusts into you so deep your breath shatters. "My love, my love, my love—"

Each repetition punctuated by the snap of his hips. Each one driven into you like he's trying to etch the words into your body, brand them along your spine, carve them so deep they'll live under your skin forever.

His hands cradle your face, his thumbs stroking your cheekbones, the ring pressing warm circles into your flushed skin, and his mouth finds yours between each thrust. Not kissing so much as breathing you, his lips brushing your lips, sharing air, the taste of whiskey and coffee passing between you in tiny, warm gusts.

You break.

The ice cracks open and what pours out is a decade of held-back tenderness so concentrated it burns.

You wrap your arms around Valarr's neck and pull him in until your foreheads press together, your noses brushing and you can feel his lashes against your cheekbones, damp and fluttering. You whisper to him—soft, fervent, the words tumbling out of you in a rush because you've been holding them so long they've built pressure.

"You're so good, Val. You feel so good. I've wanted you—I've wanted this—you have no idea how long I've—"

"Tell me." A ragged plea, his hips stuttering, pulsing inside you. "Please. Tell me."

"Since I was fourteen." Your nails drag through the hair at his nape. Your lips brush his, his breath searing against your mouth. "Since before I had a name for it. Since every time you touched my back and I wanted to turn around and climb into you and never leave."

Valarr's hips snap forward, burying himself to the hilt, and his arms wrap around you so tight your ribs creak and his face presses into the curve of your neck and he clings—desperate, greedy, shaking—and you hold him just as tight.

Your legs lock around him, your hands in his hair, and you give him what you've never given anyone. The softness under the wolf. The yielding.

"My Valarr," you whisper into his hair. "Just yours. I've always been just yours."

He drives in deeper, bruising, fucking into you while he holds you down.

His mouth covers yours, and it's messy, desperate, tongues sliding, and you suck his tongue into your mouth again, his hips stutter violently.

Valarr groans against you, shaking, fighting the edge, refusing to go over because he's not done with you yet. He pulls back, gasping, and kisses you again, and you suck his lower lip, biting it and he sucks your tongue back and the kiss is sloppy and consuming.

You can feel the vibration of his moans through your teeth, and your legs tighten around him. You grind into him, rolling your hips in a slow, mean circle, clenching around him, and the friction of his pelvis against your clit combined with the depth of him inside you pulls a whimper from your throat that surprises you both.

You can't get close enough.

You hook your heels into the small of his back and drag him in and Valarr comes willingly, eagerly, pressing himself against you until there is no space at all, until you can feel his heartbeat through the wall of his chest, the frantic gallop of it, and his hands slide under your thighs and grip.

His mouth finds the spot below your ear where your pulse is hammering and he licks it lazily, breathing against the damp skin, mine, mine, mine.

You turn your head. Press your mouth to his ear. "Yours," you whisper, and feel him shake. "Always yours, Val."

You drag your nails up his spine under the black shirt again, ten lines of fire along his back, and Valarr hisses between his teeth, driving in deeper, his voice breaking apart. A man standing at the edge of everything and tipping forward.

"I'm going to fill you up." Low. Shaky. His mouth pressed to the hinge of your jaw, his hips snapping forward with a desperate, mounting urgency. "I'm going to come inside you because you've always been mine, you were mine before anyone else ever touched you, and I should have—I should have done this years ago—"

You close your hand around the chain. Pull it taut.

Valarr loses his mind.

His hips slam forward, burying himself to the hilt, and a keening, desperate sound fills the bathroom.

His hands clamp on your hips hard enough to bruise and he fucks you in earnest now, every pretence of control abandoned, just raw frantic need, the wet slap of it echoing off the tile, and you're dripping. You can feel it on your thighs, on the porcelain beneath you, the evidence of what he's done to you, what he's still doing, and his voice keeps coming, broken and streaming.

"More—I need—please, I need more of you, I need to take you apart, I need—" Valarr's forehead presses hard against yours, his breath coming in sharp gasps that burst hot against your parted mouth. His eyes are open. Wet. Burning with agony and worship in equal measure. "You're so—you're so perfect, you feel so perfect, I want to stay inside you forever, I want—"

You come first.

The orgasm crashes through your body with a violence that bows your spine and tears a sound from your throat that you will never, under any circumstances, admit to making.

You clench around him, pulsing, your nails sinking into his shoulders hard enough to draw half-moons into the muscle, and the contractions of your body around his cock wrench a moan from him. Needing.

You kiss him through it. Deep, consuming, your tongue sliding against his, and you bite his lower lip again. Harder this time. Your teeth sink in until you taste copper—the bright metallic bloom of blood on your tongue—and Valarr moans against you, a ruined sound, his whole body jerking like he's been shocked, his rhythm turning ragged, his hips stuttering.

"I'm—" he chokes, pulling back just enough to gasp, a thin thread of blood on his lower lip, his eyes wild. "I'm so close, I can't my love, I'm going to—"

"Come inside me." You hold his chain, hold his gaze. Your other hand cradles his jaw, thumb tracing his bloodied lip, gentle now, so gentle. "Fill me up, Val. Come home."

His hips drive in one last time and stay and his whole body draws tight at the same time. Every muscle locked, the tendons in his throat standing in sharp relief, his mouth open in a soundless gasp.

Then the groan breaks out of him like a wave, long and guttural, shuddering, and you feel him pulse inside you, hot and deep, the spill of him filling you up while his hands cradle your face and his forehead presses so hard against yours that you feel the ridge of bone under his skin.

"My love," he gasps, still coming, still shaking. "My love. My love."

You hold him through it. Both arms around his shoulders, your legs locked at his back, your fingers threading through his hair, stroking the dark strands, finding the white streak at his temple and tracing it the way you've wanted to for years.

You press your mouth to his cheekbone. His jaw. The corner of his eye, where his lashes are wet and clumped.

"I'm here," you murmur. "I'm right here, Val."

He comes for a long time. Shaking against you. Small, involuntary thrusts, each one punctuated by a broken exhale, his face crumpled with pleasure so intense it looks like grief.

You hold him and you let him feel you holding him and the wolf in you lies down and the girl underneath. The one who's been in love with this man since she was fourteen and too proud to say so.

You press your mouth to his temple and breathes him in.

He stays inside you.

His face drops into the curve of your neck, his breathing ragged and damp against your skin. His arms come around your waist, wrapping tight, pulling you off the edge of the sink and flush against his body so there's no space left between you at all.

The chain is warm against your collarbone. The silver band on his thumb traces unhurriedly, absent circles against the bare skin above your hip where your shirt has ridden up. The unconscious gesture, the one he does when he's checking the ring is still where you put it, that it's still where it belongs.

He's checking that you're here.

"Val," you say softly.

"Mm." Muffled. Wrecked and content.

"You're bleeding." Your thumb finds his lower lip. Traces the small split where your teeth broke the skin. A bead of red, already drying, sits at the corner of his mouth.

He opens his eyes. Brown and blue, soft and dazed and so full of love that your chest physically aches.

He catches your thumb. Kisses the pad of it, tasting his own blood, and his mouth curves into a slow, wondering smile.

"Worth it," he murmurs against your thumb.

You study him. Your best friend. Your Valarr. Just yours. The boy who walked you home with his hand at your back. The man who wore your ring on his thumb for years without asking why, because you asked him to, because you needed a piece of yours on him, and that was enough.

"Take me home, Val," you whisper.

His arms tighten around you.

"Yours or mine?" he murmurs.

"Yours."

He kisses the corner of your mouth. He picks his jacket up off the tile floor. Drapes it over your shoulders instead of his own as you both readjust your clothes. The red fabric is warm and smells like cedar and him. His hand finds the small of your back, his place, and he walks you out of the bathroom.

Past the corridor, past the counter where your coffees sit cold in their mugs, and out into the night.

You leave the photos on your phone.

Her hand hung at her hip from the doorway, shaking her head as she stepped into the room.

That same argument carried on for a few more minutes before dissolving into laughter and accusations of snack theft. Which wasn’t exactly wrong. Somehow he’d devoured the entire bag before you and Kat had properly sat down onto the couch.

The apartment had gone hazy around the edges. Incense burned slowly in the corner beside an army of plants crowding the windowsills. Someone had cracked open a window, the thick air blowing out through the blinds with the distant hum of the city around you.

You’d found yourself curled up on the couch somewhere in the middle of it all, tucked beneath an old blanket you’d long since claimed as your own.

The camera sat abandoned on the coffee table, tossed aside where you’d left it. But Bobby, being him, he noticed it immediately, the calm silence going with it.

“You’ve got film in this?”

You cracked one eye open, Kat stirring beside you as she flicked through the tv channels.

“Maybe.”

He picked it up with careful hands, turning it over beneath the amber lamp light. It was one you’d been gifted, a cheap little recorder enough to fit in a few tapes.

“Y’know you don’t leave a loaded camera lying around,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else, checking it out at all angles.

Kat snorted from beside you, nudging you with her arm.

“There he goes.”

“What?” Your head angled to look at her, rested onto the seat of the cushions behind you.

“Film geek Bobby.”

His eyes widened in mock surprise, but he didn’t speak, entirely transfixed on the device in his hands instead. From the high or his pure passion you weren’t sure. Likely both.

“You only have…” He checked the counter, scrolling his finger along the wheels and buttons.

“Eight shots left.”

“How can you tell that?”

Bobby looked up at you over the top of the camera, offended. He adjusted the focus ring absentmindedly while he talked, thumb brushing over the body of the camera like muscle memory.

“This lens is nice,” he said. “Did you thrift this?”

“Sure did.”

The teasing expression he had given you softened immediately.

“Oh.”

His fingers became gentler somehow, smiling at you as he continued.

“…Then we should use the rest properly.”

And he does. Of course.

He crouches by the plants, catching Kat’s mid rant about something that happened at work the other week, casting across the room like it’s something important. And not as plain as it is. You then find the camera angled at both of you, a smirk appearing just behind it.

“Bobby.”

“Hm?” He barely registered over the way he stared into the lens, inching closer to you teasingly.

“Don’t.”

“Why?” He pulled back just a touch, you and Kat curled under the blanket grimacing at him.

“Because we look half asleep.”

He leaned back down and peered through the viewfinder anyway, his own lidded eyes peeking over it.

“Exactly.”

But it wasn’t what he saw. Sure, the pot you’d smoked horus ago had left all three of you mellow, perfectly relaxed and comfortable lounging together. But there was more. His fingers pressed onto the zoom, turning the lens to fit you both into the recording, and in his eyes, perfectly.

The clear, white haze swirled about the room, sunlight peeking across you and Kat in dappled patterns, across your face, your eyes, the faces of the two people he found loving the most.

“You look great.. perfectly candid, see.”

He slid down between you both then, straightening his back just before he parked himself onto the couch with. squeeze. He shut the camera off but kept it in his lap, tracing his fingers along the plastic as the tape saved to file.

You and Kat shared an amused glance over his head, awaiting what was apparently so.. perfect.

—

The television played to itself.

None of you had been paying attention for the better part of twenty minutes. Bobby had shoved himself further between the two of you, one leg kicked out beneath the coffee table, the other pressed against yours. His fingers absently traced over the worn leather strap whenever the commercials got too loud.

Kat had migrated at some point, curled into his side with the familiarity that she’d done a hundred times before. Her socked feet were thrown over him and into your lap, lazily nudging you every so often whenever she caught you gazing off into the distance. You rested at his other side, as eased as you could without the thoughts racing.

It was comfortable in every way, just as it always had been, but the tension still grew tight, somehow more than before. Somehow stronger since last time..

The apartment smelled like incense and old upholstery and whatever snacks had survived Bobby’s attempt at “sharing.” And it was warm, too warm.

Bobby glanced down at the camera, brow furrowing.

“Three left.”

“You’re still counting?” Kat asked.

“Of course I’m still counting.”

“Nerd.”

“Film enthusiast,” he corrected on instinct and you huffed out a quiet laugh.

“There’s a difference?” Bobby looked over at you then.

“A massive one.”

The television cast shifting light across the room. Blue. Gold. Blue again. Kat’s head tipped back against the couch cushion as she looked between the two of you.

“You know,” she said eventually, voice gone thoughtful, “we never actually used them the way we said we would.”

Bobby blinked.

“…What way?”

She shot him an incredulous look, raising an eyebrow.

“Seriously?”

And then the realisation dawned slowly across his face. Because they had spoken about it. Often.

“Oh.”

His hand tightened slightly around the camera.

“Right.”

You could feel both of them looking at you, the wright of their stare, and the apartment suddenly seemed much quieter than it had a moments ago. Bobby’s thumb brushed along the edge of the viewfinder before he glanced away toward the flickering television.

“Well…” he said, trying, and failing, to sound casual. “We did say next time.”

He looked back at you then, blue eyes looking more hopeful than he’d wanted to let on, his lip curving by the slightest when he saw you looking back. Tempted, wanting, unsure..

“And we’ve got a few shots left.”

Kat’s hand smacked lightly against Bobby’s chest, curled around him from his other side.

“Unless you… want to?”

She couldn’t quite hide the smile pulling at her mouth, strands of hair falling into her face as the pair of them looked at you. Neither of them pushed. The question settled softly between the three of you, wrapped up in incense smoke and television static and the warmth of sharing a couch long after whatever movie had been playing stopped mattering.

“Kat we’ve been through this..”

She knew it, all of you did. It was a yes. Everything said it. You’d known it the first time she snuck kisses your way, the way you orbited each other and the way they both held you days ago at the store.

“My turn this time..” Her lips found yours first, reaching over Bobby between you just to hold your face in her hands. Wet muscle poked at your mouth, running and tracing across the plumpness of your lip. Her fingers tangled into your hair, stroking her thumb at the apple of your cheek before tugging you downward.

Your back pressed into the worn plush cushions of the couch as she moved over you, all of you silently thanking the fact it curved into an l-shape and somehow fit all three of you on, tangled limbs and all.

Her knee slotted between your legs, the skin rubbing into the fabric of your pants. Bobby watched you both patiently, sliding to the other end to give you room, a shaky breath leaving his lips at the sight.

Her tongue slipped inside of your mouth, pressing it further open, hands sliding down your sides urging you to sit up onto the armrest. They worked together then, kneeling over you as their hands trailed your waist, rising where the other one fell. Careful fingers adored your skin, tracing the curves as you breathed right between them. Kat took off your jeans, tugging the fabric down your legs inch by inch, and Bobby took your shirt, rising it over your arms until you sat there bare.

The cool air kissed your exposed skin, your nipples pebbling as Kat’s mouth left yours and trailed lower. She pushed your thighs apart with firm hands, kissing down while her eyes gazed up into yours. Bobby stayed close at your side, kneeling where she settled over your aching heat, his fingers brushing your breasts.

Kat’s breath ghosted over your pussy first, hot and teasing, before her tongue dragged a slow stripe from your entrance up to your clit. She moaned against you, tasting you with a torturous slowness, sealing her lips around the swollen bud. Her tongue flicked fast, circling and sucking through your folds, scissoring two of her fingers to slide around them, curling deep against your g spot.

Your hips rocked against her face, and she devoured you with an eager hunger, swirling her tongue until slick began to coat her chin, dripping from her lips with your sweetness.

Bobby watched every movement, his cock already hard and flushed, shorts shoved down to his knees. “That’s it babe, get her dripping for me,” he rasped, one hand stroking himself lazily.

Kat pulled back only when your thighs started to tremble, reluctant with her lips shining. She licked her lips, savouring you on her tongue as she nodded toward Bobby with a flushed smirk.

“Okay, up you get baby..” Bobby patted his thighs, shorts bunched at his knees as he moved to lay long ways shamelessly across the whole length of the cushions.

You swung your leg over Bobby’s lap, both of them watching with dark, hungry eyes. His hands gripped your hips as you lowered yourself, the thick head of his cock nudging your soaked entrance. A hand reached at your legs, slyly picking up the camera where he’d placed it onto the other armrest earlier.

It switched back on with the familar whirring sound, the faint glow of the screen lighting up Bobby’s face flushed and tranced. He let the camera find all three of you and focus just as you sank down onto him slowly, taking inch by inch until your ass met his thighs and he filled you completely.

“Look at you.. both of you fuck.” The blinking red flicked up with a stutter, his hand slotted carefully inside of the wrap, drawing your bodies into view.

“So lucky.”

The recording picked up where Kat moved behind you, kneeling close so the peaks of her hard breasts pressed to your back. One arm wrapped around your waist while her other hand slipped down between your legs. Her fingers found your clit, rubbing teasing, tight circles as you started to move. “Ride him just like that,” she whispered against your ear, voice low and encouraging. “Nice and deep. Feel how full he makes you.”

You rolled your hips, Bobby’s cock dragging against your walls with every rise and fall of his arms coaxing you. And Kat’s fingers didn’t stop, they were relentless, rubbing your clit in time with your rhythm while her free hand slid down to her own pussy. She spread her legs wider behind you and pushed two fingers inside herself, fucking them in and out with wet sounds that matched the slap of your skin against Bobby’s.

“Faster,” Kat coached, her breath hot on your neck. “Make him feel how tight you are. How good you feel..” Her fingers worked faster on your clit, thumbing it until your head fell back to her shoulder, her own moans bitten into the sides of your neck when her own fingers curled inside her. Bobby’s grip tightened on your hips, thrusting up to meet you as Kat’s touch pushed you closer to the edge, the three of you moving together in a wanton, desperate rhythm.

“So good.. so good for us.”

Sweat beaded over Bobby’s forehead, sticking tacky to skin where you all rocked together. His hand stoked at Kat’s thigh, soothing circles across the skin just as he did for you, her lops reaching and kissing up the back of your neck. Your back arched in their hold, folded between them in heat and lust, taking all of him as he fucked himself deeper.

“Our girl hm? Want to remember this.. want to..” The camera seems to cut just where he captures the wrecked look on your faces, it slipping from his grip where his own greed tightens. The need too much, the control slipping, and it fell helplessly with a bounce onto the blanket.

His hands clamped tighter at your hips where they’re were free, fingers digging in just at the hipbones to draw you closer, dragging you down so hard as he fucked into you. Your clit grazed the base of his cock, the few golden hairs rubbing at your clenching pussy.

The moan that left your lips was broken, tangled in a hungry desire. Kat swallowed it, and the answer that was left on your lips. Yes. Your bodies bunched together as he sat up, his torso rising into yours as his mouth wrapped around your nipple, teeth grazing over your sternum. His arm reached out for you both, hugging around you as far as he managed to draw you closer and closer to that peak you were chasing.

Your breaths mingled, mouth parted slack in pants and moans just along with the haze in the room.

Bobby’s hips snapped up harder, driving his cock deep with every thrust as your walls fluttered around him. Kat’s fingers rubbed frantic circles over your clit, her own soaked pussy clenching around the two digits she pumped inside herself. Her moans grew louder against your ear, turning into broken whines when her orgasm hit, body jerked bonelessly behind you.

Her thighs shook from underneath you as wetness coated her hand, her hips driving into the flesh of your ass as she came undone.

Bobby growled low in his chest and sat up fast, one thick arm stretching as far as it could to pull both of you tight against him. His lips latching onto a nipple as he sucked hard, the sudden closeness pushing you over the edge. Your pussy clamped down around his cock in heavy pulses that wracked your whole body into a shiver, Kat’s fingers working on your clit to urge you through it.

He groaned against your breast, each thrust turning sloppy as he chased his own high, pulling from you with a careful tug as thick ropes of cum spilt hot across your lower belly and the top of your cunt. Kat’s hand slowed on your clit, her own orgasm still rippling through her as she pressed messy kisses to the side of your neck. His cock twitched leaking onto his stomach, and the three of you made no attempt to move, staying locked together, breathing hard, skin slick and spent.

“Fuck.. wish we caught all of that on tape.” Bobby huffed out, raking a hand through his hair.

“Be grateful for what you got..” Kat breathed, eyes focusing as she eased herself, embracing you closer from behind.

“Hey.. no complaints here.” He held his hands up.

But you didn’t argue after that. Because after all his crudeness, all of you knew it was true. The same words repeating over and over that both of them had whispered and spoken into your ear.

Our girl, our girl, our girl..

Kat’s body sagged into yours, soothing at your arms as Bobby did the same at your middle, rubbing small circles across the skin until your breaths mingled once more, this time eased..

And you were lost in it, completely.

So lost in it, you couldn’t hear the pounding from the door on the outside. Not until the blinds peeked open. And a tapping on the window had you shifting.

—

Heavy knocking came from the door. Once, then twice, and again. Somehow you’d managed to ignore it for as long as you could, curled up and collapsed into eachother onto the couch, for what felt like only minutes.

Before you really had no choice.

Kat moved from behind you, stepping swiftly into the bathroom, securing a towel for you as you shrugged the rest of your clothes back on, her own being thrown back on instantly. The large t-shirt she’d pulled from the closet covering nearly her entire body. Bobby took the slow approach, shoving his shorts back on with a groan before standing, his bare chest flexed in the low light.

And then the door swung open, sunlight blinding the apartment as you and Bobby squinted to see who it was.

“Captain Clark..?”

Bobby leant onto the doorway, holding the door with the other as you came into view behind him.

And it was him.. their manager. Clark. He looked dumbfounded, taking the pair of you in as his face remained flat, almost apologetic.

“Kat..” Bobby called out. No answer. You looked down the corridor, hearing her fumble with the rest of her clothes and smoothing down her hair.

“KAT!” He called louder that time.

“I’m coming.” Her voice shouted down the doorway before piling in beside you both, her arm curling at your waist.

“I need that camera.. do you have that camera?..”

Clark eyed the three of you, offering an eager smile, one that left you all confused, rocking back onto your heels on anticipation. And the highs you’re all desperately attempting to hide. Though from the faint scent of alcohol on his breath, you supposed he wouldn’t have noticed.

“For what..?” Kat questions calmly, crossing her arms over her chest.

There’s a pause then between all of you, his eyes darting around as you just stand there.

“Research.”

Kat’s eyes found yours, then Bobby’s, and then back to Clark’s where all of you glanced at him wide eyed.

Bobby spoke up, nodding slowly with his fingers tapping on the wood of the door.

“Yeah, yeah, sure you might want to uh.. just don’t click anything.”

But he had explained that he’d need their help for it, it wasn’t a one man job, and that Bobby could hold onto the camera, seen as he’d be the one using it. Not Clark.

“Oh and bring your friend too. We’ll need all the help we can get.” He called out lastly, before turning from the doorway with a short, hopeful smile.

Leaving you all to question one thing.

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ˚₊

marlin academy. 

the finest coed boarding school that alabama had to offer. they had a specialized program that was perfect for you. it would open doors for you—doors into ivy league universities. 

so, your parents coughed up the cash. it wasn’t much, not for them at least. and besides, you were their only daughter, their special princess. they would do anything for you. you were supposed to take over your dad’s company when he got too old and couldn’t lead anymore.

they had it all planned out. or so they thought. 

most of your life was spent being homeschooled by private tutors. your parents shielded you from anything that could ruin your chances of a clean record. they were certain marlin academy would be good for you, but they were still terrified. 

they were right to be terrified. 

“have you seen the new girl?” eric asked francis during a game of pool. eric was losing majorly, and his last chance at winning was to distract francis. 

francis lined up his shot before answering. 

“no,” he responded before he hit the ball into the pocket with ease. “is she cute?”

“oh yeah,” eric nodded. “she’s this innocent little thing, y’know? she bites her lip when she thinks, her skirt is a little too short, but she hasn’t noticed it yet.”

“seems like you’re into her,” francis chuckled. he moved around the table to where the cue ball ended up. he lined up another shot but missed. 

“shit,” he hissed. 

“i actually think you’d like her,” eric replied. francis raised his eyebrow and smirked. 

“really?” he asked. he was curious now. 

“she’s just your type—speak of the devil,” eric said, nodding towards the door. you entered the common room with your roommate next to you, deep in conversation. you were both carrying textbooks.

eric was right, you were just his type. francis watched as you and your roommate made your way through the room towards the library. his eyes stayed on you the entire time, not even noticing when eric took another chance after he missed his shot. 

even after you both had left, he was still in a trance. eric elbowed him, snapping him out of it. 

“huh?” francis asked. eric burst out laughing. 

“god,” he said, comically wiping tears from his eyes. “you got it bad.”

francis’ cheeks went red. he shoved eric lightly and scoffed. 

“whatever, man,” he replied, rolling his eyes. he moved around the table to get the perfect angle of the cue ball. 

but he couldn’t help but glance towards the entrance to the library. 

francis later found out that you two had some classes together, namely history and literature. he also found out that your room was down the hall from his. 

he started to sit next to you in the classes you shared, something that did not go unnoticed by spangler. 

“i see you enjoy coming to class now,” spangler commented to francis at the beginning of class one day. francis nodded, a sly grin on his face. 

“yessir. i’ve suddenly found great use in these classes,” he responded. when he said that, he glanced at you, effectively bringing a blush to your cheeks. 

after class, he more often than not found himself walking you to the library. 

“hey, i was thinking,” he said one day. “i kinda get confused in this class. i was wondering if you could help me?”

you eagerly accepted. who wouldn’t, you thought. francis was cute, and he always smiled at you and stood up for you. he would pass notes to you in class, calling you pretty.

you were excited to tutor him. 

in the library, in a secluded corner, you and francis sat side by side. you were close, your thighs touching every so often. the subtle contact always made you feel warm inside, but you couldn’t quite pinpoint the feeling. 

all you knew was that you were enjoying the extra time with francis. 

and he enjoyed it too. was he learning anything? no. but it was worth it to watch the way your mouth moved as you explained historical events he didn’t really care about.

it was worth it to get closer to you. 

eventually, the accidental touches turned purposeful. he would sling his arm around you when he walked you to and from class. during your study sessions, he would nudge his knee against yours in attempts to distract you.

and it usually worked. 

francis started to become a bad influence. you found yourself skipping class just to sneak off campus and go to some random fast food place with him. you also kept your skirts short deliberately, and you left more buttons open on your shirt to reveal the slightest bit of cleavage.

all because francis said you looked pretty like that. 

you called your parents often, updating them on what was going on at school. they asked if you were making any friends, and of course you thought of francis. you never mentioned him though, and you also never mentioned how close you were getting with him. 

when you two weren’t off campus, you were in his room. your tongues were down each other’s throats as his hands roamed places you’ve never let anyone touch before. but it never went further than that. 

you always stopped it. 

to be honest, you were nervous. you had never gotten this close with a boy before. you didn’t want to scare francis away.

but you wanted to be honest with him. 

“francis, i need to tell you something,” you nervously said while “studying” with him. not much studying was being done, you two were goofing off in the library and cracking jokes. 

“what’s up?” he asked. he was scared, noticing your demeanor change from playful to serious. 

“i wanted to let you know since we’ve been getting kinda close,” you said, playing with the hem of your skirt. you gnawed on your bottom lip, thinking about how you wanted to say it. 

“go on,” francis urged. “we don’t have all day. it’s almost lights out and—”

“i’m a virgin,” you blurted out, cheeks turning red. he stared at you blankly, and you almost crumbled. then, he smirked at you. 

“really?” he asked, raising his eyebrow. you nodded, avoiding his gaze. 

“i’m sorry, i just wanted you to know because i always stop when things get heavy—”

you were interrupted by the sound of the alarm, signaling to you that it was almost time to return to your dorms for the night. francis helped you get up, his touch lingering a little longer than normal.

before you two parted ways to go into your rooms, he kissed your cheek. 

“this doesn’t change anything by the way,” he said, reassuring any nerves you had. you felt a huge weight lift off your shoulders. 

“i still like you for you, and besides,” he leaned in close to your ear, his lips barely grazing the skin. 

“it’s kinda hot knowing i’m your first everything,” he whispered. he pulled away with a lopsided grin. 

“goodnight!” francis said, turning to walk to his room. he knew exactly what he was doing. you were left dumbfounded at his words, redder than an apple. 

you were thankful your roommate had gone home earlier that weekend because you did not want to explain to her why your face was so red. 

francis was also thankful your roommate was gone for the weekend. 

you quickly got ready for bed, putting on a tank top and a pair of shorts. you tended to stay up later than most people would, which is why you were surprised to hear a faint knock on your door in the middle of the night. 

you tiptoed to open the door, and to be completely honest, you weren’t surprised by who you saw. 

“francis,” you hissed. “what are you doing?”

you moved out of the way as he walked into your small room. just him being in there after lights out was a huge infraction of the rules. he looked around at the girlishly decorated room. 

“nice place,” he commented. his eyes focused on you, looking you up and down. you felt your cheeks get warm as he spent a little too long ogling at your figure. you crossed your arms. 

“you can’t be here,” you argued. 

“i know i can’t, but i want to,” he said, stepping closer to you. you didn’t back away. his hands tentatively found their way to your waist and yours went to his shoulders. 

francis leaned in slowly, capturing your lips with his. you kissed him back, settling into the rhythm you two usually had. he backed you into your bed, spinning so he could sit down. you stood between his legs. his hands traveled up slightly under your tank top, resting just below your ribcage. 

you moved your legs to straddle him, sitting on his lap. he held onto your waist tightly so you wouldn’t fall. when you finally pulled apart for air, his lips chasing yours, francis’ pupils were wide. he panted softly as you ran your fingers through his hair.

francis was always so pretty—especially like this. 

his blue eyes, barely visible due to his dilated pupils, studied your face intently. his lips were swollen and his cheeks were slightly pink. his hands were warm against your skin, and you felt it in your heart. 

you needed francis. he was the one. 

“francis,” your hands moved to cup his face. “i think i’m ready.”

his eyes widened, mouth opening and closing as he looked for the words to say. 

“are you sure?” he asked nervously. “i don’t want to force you into anything you don’t wanna do—”

you cut him off by kissing him deeply. 

“i want this,” you said when you pulled apart. “i promise.”

a grin snaked its way onto francis’ face before he kissed you again—this time with a hungry desire. he played with the hem of your tank top. 

“can i take this off?” he asked, breath hot against your lips. you nodded, and he quickly removed the small top. 

you didn’t have anything on underneath, and you instinctively moved your arms to cover your chest. your cheeks felt warm as you avoided his gaze. he chuckled softly. 

“baby, i’m not gonna judge you. i wanna see you,” he said reassuringly.

you slowly removed your arms, feeling your face get impossibly red. francis admired your chest, biting his lip as his eyes raked over you. you felt him hardening through his pajama pants beneath you. 

he gently took your nipple in his mouth, sucking languidly, as his large hand squeezed at your other breast. your breath hitched at the feeling of his tongue over your hardened nipple. your hands gripped at his blonde curls. 

“francis,” you whined. his lust filled eyes met yours before he switched his attention to your other breast, making sure to leave a lovebite before focusing his mouth on you. 

you started to roll your hips, searching for any sort of release. francis groaned around your boob before detaching himself. he held you steady. 

“don’t,” he whispered. “let me take care of you first. you’re so hot, i’ll cum in my pants before i even get inside.”

you laughed softly, the sound going straight to his dick. he moved you off his lap, laying you down gently on the bed. he started to pull your shorts down, looking at you for approval. 

when you nodded, the shorts were gone faster than the speed of light. your underwear soon followed. your face flushed and your legs were firmly closed, you were entirely bare for a boy for the first time in your life. you reached for francis’ shirt, not wanting to be the only one naked. 

he tossed his marlin academy branded t-shirt into some corner of your room. francis reached out, his hand resting on your knee. 

“do you wanna keep going?” he asked softly. you nodded eagerly. 

“yes, god yes,” you practically begged. he removed his hand from your knee, taking his fingers to his mouth. he made eye contact with you as he coated them in saliva. the sight went straight to your core, making you more wet than you already were. 

he moved to open your legs, fingers reaching towards your core. his thumb pressed against your clit and you gasped at the contact. he slowly inserted one finger inside of you, then another. 

“let me know if it hurts, okay? i’ll stop,” he promised. you nodded, urging him to do something with his fingers. 

you bit your lip to hold back your moans as he worked to scissor you open while he rubbed circles over your clit with his thumb.

you had masturbated before, but it felt different this time. francis knew what he was doing, that was obvious by his movements. his calloused fingers were longer, more precise.

you felt yourself getting closer and closer. francis watched you carefully, making sure you weren’t in any pain.

you gripped at his forearm, your knuckles white as the coil in your stomach grew tighter. 

“francis, i—oh my god—i’m gonna cum,” you whimpered. he moved his fingers faster, working frantically to bring you to your orgasm. 

your back arched slightly as you came on his fingers with a hushed cry. francis felt himself getting impossibly hard at the sight. you looked so beautiful—sounded so beautiful—when you choked out his name.

he removed his fingers slowly, bringing them back to his mouth to taste your arousal. the sight was obscene. he got up off your bed, moving to take his pajama pants and boxers off. when you saw his dick, your eyes widened at his length. 

“francis,” you panted, still coming down from your high. “that is not going to fit inside of me.”

“it will, i promise. unless you want to stop here, which is totally fine too,” he started to ramble. you laughed softly. 

“just get over here,” you teased, rolling your eyes playfully. he smirked at you before crawling over you, caging you in with his arms. he settled between your legs. 

“tell me if it hurts,” francis said, pumping himself a few times before lining up with your entrance. you acknowledged his words with a nod. he leaned over, placing soft kisses on your lips. 

you felt him poke at your entrance, and you definitely felt the sting when he pushed in. he entered slowly, low groans escaping him as he sank into you. letting out a soft moan, you winced while you adjusted to his length.

he was longer and thicker than your fingers, obviously. he reached places you could only dream of reaching. 

“tell me when i can move,” he grunted into your ear. your legs wrapped around him, and you snaked your arms behind his neck, your fingers playing with the curls at his nape. you placed a soft kiss on his jaw. 

“i think i’m ready,” you said. francis slowly pulled out before pushing back in again, setting a slow but steady pace. the sting soon dissolved into pleasure, and you needed more. 

“francis,” you whined. he looked at you and stilled his movements, a worried look in his eyes. 

“are you okay? are you hurt?” he asked. you shook your head and dug your heels into his back. 

“go faster.” 

something switched inside francis’ head when he heard your words. he snapped his hips against yours harder, but not hard enough to overwhelm you. he placed sloppy kisses along your neck, leaving bites here and there. 

your nails dug into francis’ shoulders, certainly leaving marks that would last well into the next day. 

“fuck—y’feel so good,” he groaned. his hand was planted next to your head, holding himself steady, while his other held your leg up by your thigh. 

“francis—”

his lips met yours, silencing your moans with a needy kiss. your legs started to shake around him. francis slightly shifted his position, his dick curving in a way that was hitting the spongy part inside of you. 

“oh my god—right there,” you gasped. he continued fucking into you as your second orgasm crashed through you.

your stomach tightened as you shook around him, clenching him so tight he almost couldn’t pull out. your nails dragged down his back, leaving cat-like scratches in their wake. 

“shit—” francis moaned into your ear. his hands moved to grip your hips tightly as he flipped you over so you were on top. 

“francis, i’ve never done this before,” you panted, getting nervous at the new position. your hands were splayed across his bare chest, feeling the uneven rise and fall of his breath. 

“don’t worry, baby,” he said, guiding your hips slowly. “i’ll help you.”

he moved you back and forth on his cock until you started moving on your own. you ground yourself sinfully against him, getting drunk off the way his dick felt inside of you. 

in all honesty, ever since francis first saw you, he dreamed of this. he dreamed of the way you would moan his name, and when he snuck off to the men’s bathroom in the middle of the night to fuck his fist, he pretended it was you. 

but this was better than anything he could’ve imagined. 

you slightly leaned forward and started to bounce softly on him, moaning a bit too loud at the pleasure francis was giving you. you were both too wrapped up in each other to notice. 

his eyes alternated between watching the movement of your breasts and the way his dick disappeared inside of you with each bounce. he thrusted his hips upwards to meet yours. the room smelled of sex and sweat and was filled with the sounds of skin on skin and yours and francis’ satisfied moans. 

“feels so good, fran,” you whimpered. you were quickly approaching another orgasm, feeling so incredibly full and dizzy on his cock. all you could think about was francis. just before the coil inside of you could snap, however, francis held you to a stop. 

you whined and pouted at him, feeling extremely dissatisfied by the denial. francis, wearing his signature boyish grin, pulled you off of him gently. you winced at the empty feeling. 

“on your stomach,” francis guided, his voice raspy. you did as he said, eager to get his dick back inside of you. he lifted your hips and watched the way your pussy clenched around nothing. the sight of your desperation alone almost made him cum. 

within mere hours, francis turned you from an innocent virgin into a slut for his cock. 

he realigned himself, biting his lip as he sunk into you and watched your cunt take him perfectly. you buried your head into your pillow, muffling the sounds coming from your lips. 

francis set a wanton pace, reaching over you to grip the wooden bed frame—anything to try and stop the steady thudthudthud sound coming from the frame knocking against your wall. 

the new position had you seeing stars, and you quickly were shaking beneath francis. he was getting close too, his hips stuttering with each thrust that fucked you further and further into the mattress. 

“francis,” you babbled out. he tilted his head back with a low groan. the sound of your moans were close to heaven to him. 

“shit—’m so close,” he groaned lowly. you couldn’t even comprehend his words, too focused on the hot pleasure burning in your stomach. you snaked your hand to your clit, rubbing small circles on the bundle of nerves.

anything to relieve the pressure. 

and it worked. with a loud sob of his name, your back arched and your hips grinded harshly against his own. francis’ thrusts slowed before he pulled out, stroking himself a few times before shooting his warm load over your back. 

“oh my god,” you panted, still coming down from the whole experience, as francis raced to find his discarded clothes. he was tired, extremely tired, and didn’t bother putting his shirt on. 

as per his usual style, he did leave a mess. but you were special to him, and he wanted to clean up this mess. 

“stay here,” he muttered before leaving to where you assumed was the bathroom. he was back quickly, a damp towel in his hands. he gently wiped you down, making sure your back wasn’t sticky. 

“francis,” you called with a raspy voice, turning around to look at him. his heart softened at the sight of you. you were completely fucked out, hair messy and eyes watery, but you had a soft smile on your face. 

“thank you,” you whispered. he smiled back at you. 

“anytime, sweetheart,” he cooed. out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his t-shirt on the floor next to your pile of ditched clothes. he scooped them up before helping you get dressed. instead of your tank top, however, he pulled his t-shirt over your head. 

“i have to go back to my room,” he said as he placed a soft kiss on your temple. his heart broke when a small pout made its way onto your face. 

“why,” you whined. he chuckled softly. 

“don’t want spangler to catch me in here,” he responded, getting up to quietly make his way back to his room. 

he placed another kiss to your lips before he slinked out of your room. your room reeked of francis, but you didn’t mind. you knocked out the second your head hit the pillow. 

the next day, francis and some other boys were in the locker room. it was time for their physical exams. francis shed his uniform shirt, and eric whistled. he whipped his head around, meeting eric’s smug grin. 

“what? what’s wrong?” francis asked. the other boys were gathered, giving their shares of catcalls. 

“did an animal latch onto you or something? your back is shredded, dude,” eric laughed. some of the boys gave francis punches on the shoulder as they left the locker room. 

francis turned his back towards a mirror. sure enough, just as eric had said, his back was littered with scratch marks—marks that were left by the drag of your nails the night before. 

his face turned red from the memory, and eric immediately noticed. 

“francis got lucky!” he chanted, the other boys soon joining in. 

although he hated the chant, francis had to agree.

he did indeed get lucky. 

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ˚₊

You're sitting on his kitchen counter in one of his shirts and nothing else. The white linen one, the soft one, the one he wore to dinner three weeks ago and left here on the back of the bathroom door. Your bare legs rest crossed at the ankles, and you have toast in one hand and coffee in the other. 

May sun spills through the eastern windows of his apartment in long gold panels, lighting up the cut peonies on the island, lighting up the smooth marble, lighting up, especially, the sweat at Valarr's collarbones.

You watch him. You take your time about it, too. Your eyes drag—deliberately, calculated, unsubtle—from the wet hair down to the line of his throat, across the soaked t-shirt where it sticks to him. Your attention lingers on the lean cut of his torso under the cotton, down to the shorts, finally to his bare feet on the dark wood floor. You make sure he sees you doing it. 

You bring your eyes back up to his, and you raise one eyebrow, calmly, as if you’re reviewing a piece of property.

Valarr’s jaw ticks once, the brown eye darker by half a shade than it was a minute ago.

"Love."

"Yes?"

"I'm going to shower," he informs you.

You take a sip of your coffee. "Are you?"

"I am, yeah," he says, half a laugh in it, drinking you in with that fascinated focus that's become his default in your presence. "I'm—I'm fairly gross, I just got off the rower and the trainer was a sadist this morning. I won't subject you to—"

You crook two fingers at him.

It's a small gesture. Two fingers, lifted, curled. Just once. Come here.

Valarr stops talking.

He stops talking with the visible suddenness of a man whose train of thought has just been derailed by the simplest possible signal. Your two fingers, one small motion, the kind of summoning a woman might do to a dog she's fond of. You watch him do exactly what you knew he would do, which is start across the kitchen toward you without thinking about it.

"You don't actually want to—" he begins.

You sigh. "Valarr."

"—I really am sweaty, love, give me five minutes—"

"Valarr."

He's at the counter. His hands land on your bare knees, automatic, because your knees are at the level of his hands and because he can’t stand near you and not touch you. The contact is hot and slightly damp, not unpleasant, and you watch him register the heat of his palms on you and not pull them back.

"Yes, love?" 

Your eyes narrow. "Come here."

His brows wrinkles a little. "I am here."

"Closer."

He laughs. Soft. A little wrecked already, and you've barely started. He steps in between your knees, his hands sliding up your thighs an inch and stopping with that intentional, leashed restraint that’s the central tic of his physical presence. The way he always pauses an inch before he means to land, the calibration he’s constantly performing in the millisecond before he touches you.

Valarr leans down and kisses you.

It's a careful kiss. It's a good morning, sweet girl kiss. Closed-mouthed, warm, his hand coming up to cup your jaw, his thumb stroking once along your cheekbone. He tastes like salt, like the espresso he downed before he left for the gym, like the mint in his pre-workout gum. His nose nudges yours, and Valarr makes a small contented sound in his throat that’s so unbearably boyish that for half a second you almost let him have his shower.

Almost.

You set the coffee down beside you, and set the toast down right after. You free both your hands and you put one of them in Valarr’s damp hair—high, at the crown, where the sweat is—and you fist your fingers in it, and you pull, just enough.

He makes a sound.

It's a small thing, coming out of him like he didn't know he was going to make it at all. A short involuntary catch in his throat—half a groan, half a question—and you feel Valarr’s whole body go still against you. Feel his hand at your jaw arrest, feel the breath leave him and not come back.

You growl.

You don't mean to. It comes out of your throat low and warning and entirely without your permission. A thin rough sound at the back of your tongue, the kind of noise something with teeth makes when it's decided what it wants, and Valarr stops moving altogether.

He stops kissing you, stops breathing. He stops, full stop, his mouth a half-inch from yours, his hand cradling your jaw. The towel still hangs from his neck, his pupils dilating in real time so fast you can watch the brown one go almost black, the blue one going luminous.

"Love," he breathes hotly.

You don't answer.

You hook your bare legs around the back of his thighs, and you pull him forward into you. Yank him in until his hips are pressed against the edge of the counter and against the inside of your thighs. Until the soaked cotton of his t-shirt is against the linen of his shirt you're wearing, and you can feel the heat of him through everything. The post-workout furnace of his body, the damp cling of sweat-warmed cotton against your bare skin.

"You said you needed to shower," you say mildly.

Valarr swallows. "I did say that."

"Do you?" you question, deceptively mildly.

"I—I think I—love."

You're already pulling at the hem of the t-shirt.

You drag it up slowly. You make Valarr lift his arms for you, and he does it instantly, his eyes locked on your face, and the wet cotton peels off him with that particular reluctance damp cotton has. Sticking, releasing, sticking. Until you've got it bunched at his shoulders and then over his head and then balled in your fist and then dropped, wet, to the marble counter beside the toast, where it lands with a small slap that neither of you registers.

He is. He is—

You knew. You've known what Valarr looks like under the t-shirt for three months now.

You’ve catalogued every line of him, watched him strip down in the dim of his bedroom, and traced your hands over him in the dark. You have, several times, watched him swim laps in the building's pool while pretending to read by the glass. 

You know what he looks like. But you haven't ever seen him in this light before.

The eastern sun is fully on him, illuminating him fully, painting him golden. 

He’s the long, lean, particular shape of a man who works out with the discipline of someone who has time and money to consider his body a project. Not bulky, never bulky, that wouldn't suit him, but cut. 

Every line of his body is beautiful and deliberate. The cut of his hipbones above the waistband of the shorts, the smooth, lean stomach with that faint dark and white trail of hair below his navel you've licked twice now. The lift of his chest, where his breath is going uneven, and the long, elegant lines of his toned arms.

There’s sweat in the hollow of his throat. Sweat gathers at his sternum, too, gathers and trails down. There’s a small mole low on his ribs that you’ve kissed three times in three months, and that catches the light now in a way that makes you want to sink your teeth into him.

He’s beautiful. Absurdly beautiful. Valarr is the kind of beautiful that’s been worshipped his whole life and has therefore developed no real defence against being wanted. 

You can see it in his face. In the slight parting of his mouth, in the held quality of his breathing. The way Valarr stares at you like you’ve just announced war against him.

Nobody has ever wanted him quite like this before. Not for his wealth or name, or pretty boy looks, but in an older way, the animal way.

You put both hands on him.

You start at the jut of his collarbones. Both palms flat on the slick of him. You drag them down leisurely over the planes of his chest, your thumbs grazing the small dark points of his nipples because you can’t help yourself and because he makes another small sound when you do. Ragged, swallowed; then over the cut of his ribs, the flat of his toned stomach, the line of his sides where his obliques narrow into his hips; down to the waistband of the shorts, where you stop, where you let your fingers hook into the elastic for one held second.

He’s shaking faintly under your hands.

"Love," he rasps again, like it’s the only word left available to him.

"Shhh."

You lean forward.

You put your mouth on his throat.

Right where the sweat gathers. Right at the hollow at the base of Valarr’s throat, where you can taste salt and the dark woody thing that’s his soap and underneath both of those, the warmer animal smell that is just him, just Valarr. The thing you've known by scent since the third week of knowing him by name. 

You suck. You set your teeth, very lightly, against the tendon at the side of his neck, and you suck until the skin there gives a little. Until you feel the heat rise to the surface of his skin, until you feel his pulse pound against your tongue. His hands come up and land hard on your hips, fingers digging in, ungoverned.

Valarr groans.

No perfect control in that sound.

It comes out of him into your hair, your throat, the bare line of your shoulder where the linen has slipped. It’s the sound of a man whose composure has finally—finally, after three months of every careful, courteous can I, sweet girl, may I, my love—slipped its leash entirely.

His hands tighten on your hips. He goes hard against you instantly. You feel it happen through the thin shorts, against the inside of your thigh where you've pulled him in between your legs. The heat of it shoots up your spine and turns your vision white at the edges.

"Oh," he breathes against your hair. "Oh, fuck."

You keep your mouth at his throat, mouth twitching with satisfaction. You drag your teeth. You suck a second mark, lower this time, near the cut of his collarbone, and feel his hips push forward involuntarily against yours. Then jerk back as he tries to remember himself, tries to remember he's gross and sweaty and was going to shower.

You don't let him remember.

You hook your legs harder around the back of his thighs, rolling your hips against his. Once. Slow and hard. You make sure Valarr feels the line of you against him through the thin linen of his shirt, through the thin cotton of his shorts and through the heat of his own ridiculous body. His hand at your hip slides up your back, under the hem of the shirt, finds the bare skin there, and his fingers spread, and he holds. Possessive, dazed, cradling you close.

You pull back enough to look at him.

His face. Gone soft, completely glazed. Those mismatched eyes are blown, his mouth parted slightly. His hair is pushed back from his forehead where you've fisted it, his pulse going at his throat so visibly you can count it. 

Valarr’s gazing at you the way he looks at you across rooms, the way he looks at you when you laugh at something he said, the way he looks at you when you walk in late to a dinner he’s set up. That immortalising look, the one where he’s making a permanent record of you.

Except now there’s no polish on it. None. The look is stripped down to the thing underneath, which is hunger, which is wonder, the dazed, unguarded face of a man who’s not, in twenty-six years of being adored, ever been taken.

You rake your nails down his chest.

Just enough to leave four faint pink lines that will pink up red within a minute, that he’ll notice in the shower later and trace with his fingers when he looks at himself in the mirror. That will make him hard again four hours from now in some meeting he’ll remember nothing of.

"My love," he says softly. "Christ, what—what are you —"

"Need you," you rasp. “Need you right now, Val.”

It comes out of you low, rough, without softness. Not I'd like, or will you, or any of the carefully negotiated phrasings you’ve used with Valarr for three months, because that’s the register he speaks in. You’ve dropped the register. 

You’re looking at him with your eyes gone dark and your mouth wet from his throat, the linen of his shirt slipping off your shoulder, and you have told him exactly what you require.

He stares at you.

The brown eye is so dark now you can't see the iris anymore, the blue one lit from within. He’s breathing through his mouth in shallow pulls, and his hands have not let go of your hips. You can feel him, hard, throbbing, against the inside of your thigh, and you watch the last of his composure go.

You watch it. You watch the moment.

It’s extraordinary.

Nothing slips or cracks. He's too dignified. It’s a handing-over. Three months of careful patient attentive I won't presume, love, and you’ve asked him for one thing in two words. He has, without taking his eyes off your face, simply given you the leash he’s been holding on to himself the entire time, set it down at your feet.

"Whatever you want," he says.

His voice has gone low and ragged. Half-octave under his usual register. Reverent.

"Whatever you want, sweet girl. Whatever you want. I'll—anything. Tell me."

You lean forward. You put your mouth to his ear. You feel the shiver that goes through him when you do.

"Counter," you murmur, lips brushing against heated skin. "Here. Now."

"But—"

"Now, Valarr."

"Yes, yes."

You barely hear it. He's nodding into your hair. His hand is sliding down the back of your thigh and lifting you slightly and pulling you to the very edge of the counter, the marble cool under the back of your thighs and Valarr’s hand hot under them. 

His other hand comes up, going into your hair, grabbing a fistful at the nape of your neck. Then his mouth comes back to yours, and this time he’s not polite. There’s nothing careful about this at all. The kiss is open and wet, a little desperate, and it tastes like salt and espresso. Valarr’s making small, devastated sounds into your mouth that he doesn't seem aware of, and his hips roll forward against yours without his permission. 

He doesn’t pull them back this time, hasn't apologised, hasn't asked.

You bite his lower lip. Lightly. He groans and you swallow the sound. 

"Sweet girl."

You let out a small, pleased hum at the hungry groan in his voice.

"Sweet girl,” he says again, pecking you, then again, one hand at your jaw. "I—what are you—"

"You said anything?"

He murmurs against your lips, "Anything."

"Then stop talking."

He nods with a low groan, his forehead dropping to yours. His hand tightens in your hair. His other hand has come up under the hem of his shirt and slides up the bare skin of your back, splayed hot against your spine.

You roll your hips against his again. Harder, this time. His whole body shudders.

"Oh."

You peck the corner of his mouth. "Shh."

"You can’t,” he whispers, ragged, “you can't do that—"

"I can."

"—you can't, you'll—"

"Valarr."

His breath hitches. "Yes?"

"Be a good boy."

The sound that comes out of him is going to live in your head for the rest of your life.

You smile.

You bring his face up to yours. You make him look at you. He’s looking at you like you’re a miracle he gets to claim for himself, and you look back at him, letting him see your face. You let him see the wolf in you that you’ve been carefully keeping behind glass since he met you, let him see the thing he’s been suspecting was in there and not been allowed to see until now.

His mouth parts.

"Where," he says quietly, wrecked. "Where have you been all my life?"

You smile gently, dragging your thumb across his swollen lower lip.

"Right here, pretty thing," you say lovingly.

A groan rumbles in his throat. "Pretty thing," he repeats, dazed. 

Your mouth curves, and you kiss the corner of his mouth again, cradling his cheek. "Mm."

Valarr laughs. Silky, ruined. He turns his face into your hand and kisses your palm, then your wrist and then the inside of your forearm. His eyes, when they come back to your face, are dazed and adoring in a way that’s bordering, you realise distantly, on something more dangerous than adoration. 

He drops to his knees. He kneels there, on the dark wood floor, and looks up at you.

For one suspended second, Valarr doesn't move. His hands are at your knees, splayed wide, and he’s on the floor of his own kitchen, gazing up at you. He is, you realise after a beat, waiting.

He’s waiting for you to tell him what you want from him.

Three months of carefully negotiated can I, sweet girl, may I touch you here, may I taste you, will you let me, and you’ve stripped that out of him in eight minutes flat. He’s on his knees, bare-chested, sweat-slick, the early sun gilding the long lean lines of him.

You spread your legs. Just enough. You shift your weight onto the marble and let your knees fall a fraction wider, watching Valarr’s eyes drop to where the linen of his shirt has ridden up. His breath leaves him in one long, painstaking exhale through his nose.

"Love," he breathes. “Anything for you. Just ask.”

You say nothing for a full minute. "Then eat, Valarr."

The sound he makes goes through you like a struck bell.

He surges forward. There’s no other word for it. Doesn't crawl, doesn't lean, he surges, both hands pushing your knees wider as he comes, his mouth opening against the bare inside of your thigh first. High, where you’re softest, and biting, not hard, just enough to make you arch off the marble. Just enough to leave a small crescent he’ll be staring at later in the bathroom mirror like evidence.

Then his mouth is on you.

A sound you don’t recognise slips past your clenched teeth. 

It comes out of your throat broken and surprised, unbearably loud in his quiet kitchen, the morning sun slanting across both of you, and Valarr—who’s been so unfailingly polite for three months, who’s asked permission for every step, and eaten you out before with that slow reverence—Valarr eats you now like a man who’s been waiting his entire life for someone to tell him he can do this.

His hands drag across your body, devouring each curve. One comes up under the linen shirt, spreading hot and wide across the small of your back, anchoring you, pulling you to the absolute edge of the counter. 

The other hooks under your thigh and lifts, draping your leg over his shoulder, the bare back of your knee against the slick, damp skin of him. Valarr’s hand grips your other thigh hard enough that you'll have small fingertip bruises by lunchtime, four neat ovals in a row on the inside.

And his mouth. His mouth. He’s using his teeth in a way he hasn't before. Lightly, with calculation. He’s using his tongue with the same focused accuracy he’s always used it, but he’s shed the carefulness; he’s shed the I won't presume, he’s going at you with the dazed greed of a man who wanted this for a long, long time.

You fist your hand in his hair.

You pull. Hard. You drag his face deeper into you because you can’t help yourself. 

Because the sun is full on both of you and the marble is cold under your thighs, his hair damp under your hand, and his mouth is exactly where you need it, and Valarr moans into you, the sound vibrating against you. His hand on your thigh tightens, and his shoulder presses harder under your knee, making him go at you with renewed focus, as if the pull of your hand in his hair were an instruction he;s just gratefully received.

You come embarrassingly fast.

With one hand fisted in his damp hair and one hand braced flat behind you on the marble. Your back arches, your toes curling, the linen of his shirt sliding off one shoulder, your thighs clamping around his head, and Valarr’s hands grip you through it, holding you exactly where he wants you while you go to pieces against his mouth. He doesn't stop. Doesn't slow. He keeps going through it, soft and persistent, his mouth gentling but not lifting, his tongue dragging through the aftermath of your release with the same dazed, reverent focus.

"Valarr—"

He hums against you, and your hand spasms in his hair.

"Valarr."

He lifts his head a fraction, mouth wet, chin wet too. The white streak at his temple is plastered with sweat, and the dark of his hair is sticking up in places where you’ve been pulling, and his eyes, when they meet yours, are destroyed.

He licks his lower lip.

"More," he states, voice low. “I want more. All of you, sweet girl. Let me taste you. More.”

It's barely a word. More so, a request, a question, and a small wrecked plea rolled into one. You watch Valarr’s face, and you feel—sharply, delightedly, with a clean cold satisfaction in the centre of your chest—that you have him.

That you’ve just had him in a way you haven’t had him before. 

Those three months of polished, restrained worship have just been redrawn, definitively, in your favour.

You drag your thumb across his wet lower lip, holding his eyes. You let him see you.

"Up," you tell him softly.

"But I’m not done—"

"Up."

Valarr rises. Like a man who’s forgotten how legs work and is figuring it out in real time, sluggish, stupefied, his hands sliding up the backs of your thighs as he comes, his mouth coming up to yours. He’s kissing you before he’s fully standing, his mouth open against yours, and you taste yourself on him. Sharp and bright and warm. You make a low sound of approval in your throat, biting his lower lip, hard enough to leave a mark, and he whimpers into your mouth.

Oh, that sound.

That sound is going to live in your head until you die. 

A beautiful, rasping sound of a man who hasn’t known he was capable of producing that sound until a moment ago. Your hand fists tighter in his hair in reward, and you yank his head back. Your mouth goes to Valarr’s throat where you’ve already marked him once, but you bite him there a second time, harder now, dragging your teeth across the place his pulse is pounding, sucking until you taste salt and the faint copper-edge of where you've broken a capillary, and Valarr—

Valarr's hips jerk forward against yours.

Once. Twice. Hard. Involuntary.

You feel him through the thin gym shorts, against the bare wet of you on the very edge of the counter, and the heat of him is shocking. His gasping breath breaks against your hair in ragged little catches, so you set your teeth into the muscle at the side of his neck and bite. 

Hard, unapologetically, the way you would bite into something you intended to keep, and Valarr makes a sound you haven’t heard from him before in your life, low and shocked and delightfully animal. His hips jerk forward one more time and stop, his whole body going rigid against you, his hands clamping on your hips, his forehead dropping hard to your shoulder, and you feel him—

You feel him come.

In his shorts. Through his shorts. Against the inside of your thigh, the bare wet of you, the marble counter underneath. You feel the pulse of it through the thin cotton, and you feel the heat of it bloom against you. He’s shaking, properly shaking, his fingers digging into your hip. Valarr’s mouth slacks open against your collarbone, making small ragged pained sounds into your skin.

You go very still.

You watch his face, eyes wide. His face angles into your throat and stays there, hidden, his shoulders shaking finely under your hands.

You feel the wet heat of him soak through the cotton against your inner thigh, slow and too warm and absurdly intimate, and you understand—with a low, bright pleasure that has nothing to do with reciprocation—that you’ve just made Valarr Targaryen come in his pants in his own kitchen on a Tuesday morning by biting his neck.

He’s gone, distinctly, several shades pinker.

"Fuck," he chokes out, faintly, into your throat. "Oh, fuck."

Your mouth curves into a pleased, feline smile.

You already hear the apology forming on his tongue when he whispers, "I didn't mean—"

"Look at me," you drawl.

"I—"

"Look at me, Val."

He lifts his head.

His face is wrecked, cracked open by pleasure. His mouth gapes, his perfect hair destroyed. His pupils are blown so wide his eyes are nearly black, both of them, even the blue one, and there’s colour high on his cheekbones and the hollow of his throat is heaving. There’s a fresh red bruise blooming under the line of his jaw where you’ve just sucked it into being, and he’s looking at you, just looking like you’ve cracked something open in him. 

He swallows.

"I—" His voice is ruined, quiet, faintly embarrassed. "I'm sorry, that has—that hasn’t happened to me since I was—"

You stroke your thumb up his jaw. "It’s alright. I liked it."

"—fifteen, love, I—" 

"Valarr, I liked it," you tell him. "I like making you fall apart just as much as you enjoys doing the same to me."

His eyes sharpen, focusing on your face. "You do?"

You drag your hand down his chest in response, watching his eyes track the path of your hand.

You feel him still hard against you—still hard, even through what just happened, the impossibility and the inevitability of him, twenty-six years old and beautiful and on a strict regimen, his body already rallying—and you drag your fingers down across his stomach. Down to the soaked waistband of the shorts, and you slip two fingers into the waistband, and you tug playfully.

"Off."

"Are you sure?" he croaks.

"Take them off."

He nods, fumbling with the drawstring. His hands are shaking—actually shaking, you can see them, his fingers can't manage the knot at first—and you watch him laugh once, breathless, embarrassed, and it makes you smile at him fondly. His own expression softens further when he catches you looking at him like that, some tension melting from his shoulder blades. 

The knot finally loosens, and he pushes the shorts down, stepping out of them. He kicks them aside, naked and sweat-streaked. Wet at the front of his thighs where he spilt moments ago, but still hard, gloriously, almost insolently, his cock heavy and flushed dark against the cut of his hip. 

You look at him.

You take your time looking at him.

He stands there in his own kitchen and lets you. Valarr’s hands hang at his sides. His face is naked in a way that pricks inside your chest, so you take your time with him. 

You let your eyes drag inch at a time. Over the planes of his chest, the four pink lines down his sternum where you scratched him five minutes ago, the two darkening bruises at his throat, the smoothness of his stomach, the trail of hair below his navel. You watch him bear your hungry examination. Watch him stand there and let you look, watch a small, almost-shy smile pull at the corner of his mouth.

"Sweet girl," he says quietly.

You tilt your head. 

"You're—"

"Hush, pretty thing," you say instead, still drinking him in. 

You reach down between your own thighs.

You don't break eye contact. You drag two fingers through the wet mess of you—your own, his, the slick of both of you mixed at the edge of the marble where his shorts had pressed against you—and you bring your fingers up between you, glistening, and see his face change.

"Oh."

"Open your mouth, Valarr," you instruct gently. 

He opens.

He opens with the same dazed, automatic obedience he’s been giving you for the last fifteen minutes.

His head tilting back a fraction, his lips parting, his eyes locked on your face, and you slide your two wet fingers into his mouth, and you push—past his teeth, past his tongue, two knuckles deep—and Valarr's eyes flutter half-shut. 

He makes a tiny, muffled sound around your fingers and his hands come up to brace on the counter on either side of your hips. His tongue moves against your fingers, sucking at them, lapping up the wet of himself off your skin with such immediate pleasure that something hot and possessive unfurls in your chest.

You push your fingers a fraction deeper. He takes them. Valarr’s throat works around the heel of your hand. He keeps his eyes on yours.

You pull your fingers out slowly, dragging the wetness across his lower lip, leaving a slick smear.

He makes a small, ruined sound.

"You taste yourself, pretty thing?" you ask quietly. 

"Yes," he answers, breathless, eyes hooded.

He leans forward and kisses you.

He kisses you with his mouth still wet from your fingers and your wet still on his tongue, and he kisses you the way he ate you ten seconds before. Open, urgent, no carefulness anywhere in him. You taste him in your own mouth, salt and bright and warm and slightly bitter and him, and his hands have come up off the counter and gripped your hips again, fingers digging in. You feel him roll his hips forward against the bare wetness of your core and groan into your mouth.

He’s so hard. Again. Still. His cock is hot and heavy against the inside of your thigh, and there’s wetness against your skin, and you don't know whose anymore. Valarr’s mouth moves against yours, slick and fully open-mouthed. 

You break the kiss after another moment. You hold his face in both your hands.

"Harder," you order huskily. 

He groans against your lips. "My sweet girl."

"Harder, Val."

He nods. He kisses you harder. His teeth catch your lower lip, and he sucks at it, tentative, and then—when you make a hungry, pleased sound into his mouth—bolder, biting, the carefulness sliding off him in real time as he learns that you want this. That you’ve wanted this for a while. That the ferocity he’s been keeping behind glass for three months because he was afraid of frightening you was, in fact, the thing you were waiting for.

You drag your hand down between you. You wrap his length in your fist.

Valarr chokes.

"Shhh." 

You kiss his cheek, stroking him, once, slow, grip tight. He’s hot and slick at the head from his own coming, from his own anticipation. Valarr shudders against you, his forehead dropping to your collarbone. His hand fists in the linen of his shirt at your back.

"You can't,” he groans, barely audible, “I'll come again, I'll—"

"You will," you agree softly, kissing the shell of his ear. 

He loosens a groan. "Love."

"You will, pretty thing,” you say again, thumb rubbing over the slit of his cock. “As many times as I want."

He makes a sound, a ragged half-groan, and you smile against the side of his head, kissing the spot where his white streak meets his temple and you feel him shudder under your mouth.

You keep stroking him. Just at the edge of unbearable. You watch Valarr’s face turn into your shoulder, his hips pushing forward into your hand. You watch the discipline of him—the man who deadlifts at five in the morning, who runs his portfolio with surgical precision, who has never not been in control of a room—fall to absolute pieces against the linen of his own shirt on your shoulder.

"Show me," you murmur into his hair.

"Mm?"

"Show me, Valarr," you whisper into his ear.

Valarr ruts into your fist, a hot, wet pant burning the hollow of your throat, "Show you what, sweet girl?” he croaks. “I—anything, for you—"

You hum, twisting your wrist as you exhale, "Show me your strength."

He stills.

You feel it. He stills against you, his face still pressed to your shoulder, his cock heavy and pulsing obscenly in your hand, his hands locked at the small of your back. You can hear him breathing. Can hear the pulse in his throat against your shoulder. 

You feel him register the words, feel him understand them, exactly.

"You're a dragon, aren't you?" you wonder idly. “My golden, beautiful dragon.”

"—yes." 

No hesitation. 

"Then claim me."

He lifts his head.

The stupified, shocked compliance of the last fifteen minutes is gone. 

What’s in its place is something you haven’t seen on Valarr's face yet. He’s not the polished, smiling, immaculate boy who brought you peonies and asked permission to kiss you; what’s in its place is the thing his very polite Targaryen ancestors used to be before three generations of money and manners stripped it out of them, the thing he’s been told all his life he’s too well-bred to be. 

The thing he didn't know was in him until you put your two fingers in his mouth and said hello to it.

He doesn't say anything.

He yanks you up off the counter.

One motion. His hands are on you, and your back hits the cold marble of the kitchen island. His mouth is on your throat, and he’s biting you, properly biting you, hard enough to make you gasp. His hand fists in your hair at the nape of your neck, and he’s angling your head exactly where he wants it, and his other hand drops between you. Between your legs, two fingers, no asking, sliding into you with the slick that’s half him and half you and the heel of his hand grinds hard against your core. Your vision goes white.

"Yes," you breathe. “There, yes, Val.”

He kisses your throat, jaw, and tip of your nose. "Sweet girl."

"Yes—"

He pecks your mouth, curling his fingers. "Tell me again."

"Claim me. Use me, Val."

He kisses you. Bruising. He kisses you like he’s furious with you, like he is grateful to you, like he’s been holding his breath for three months and you have only just told him he’s allowed to use his mouth.

Valarr’s fingers work you with the kind of precision that asserts he’s been studying you the entire time and remembers every signal you’ve ever given him.

His thumb—Christ, his thumb—is exactly where you want him, mean and relentless, and he’s learning you all over again. Learning what you sound like when he’s rough with you, learning what you look like when you stop being careful with him, his eyes on your face the whole time, immortalising, committing the whole thing to a permanent record he will not let himself forget for the rest of his life.

You come around his fingers in under a minute.

You come with your forehead pressed to his, moaning loudly, and his mouth open against yours, swallowing the sound.

The fingers buried in you keep moving, and his other hand stays fisted in your hair, and you’re making sounds that are not words, and he’s murmuring into your mouth (that's it, my sweet girl, there she is, my beautiful girl, give it to me, that's mine, you’re mine) in a tone of voice you haven’t heard before. Low and hoarse, certain of himself, and you feel the mine hit something in your chest that makes you bare your teeth with pleasure. 

He pulls his fingers out of you, pushing them into his own mouth.

Valarr sucks them clean while watching your face.

You stare at him, still panting, your nerves on fire.

He smiles around his fingers, slow, crooked.

"Love," he says, drawing his fingers out with a wet pop, "tell me where you want me."

"Inside," you tell him. "Need you dripping out of me, pretty thing."

Valarr squeezes his eyes closed, counts mentally, then, croaked, "Counter or floor?"

"Floor."

He doesn’t lower you carefully.

Valarr goes down with you. Goes down to his knees on the dark wood floor with you locked around his waist, and he tips you back, one hand braced behind your head, the other splayed wide at the base of your spine. 

He lays you down on the wood with the gentleness of a man laying out a relic and the greed of a man about to break it open. 

The wood is cold under your back, the linen of his shirt crinkled up around your ribs. The morning sun is on you both, gilding the slick lines of him, lighting up the white streak at his temple, painting the bruises you've left on his throat in dark purple.

He braces above you.

His hair falls forward over his face. His hand slips between your thighs, lining himself up, and his eyes are on your face, and he’s waiting for the word.

"Now," you urge him.

He pushes into you.

You arch off the floor.

Valarr watches your face, he gives you the half-second to adjust, reading you in real time the way he reads everything. But he doesn’t give you the deliberate measured slowness he’s given you for three months. 

He pushes in to the hilt in one long slow stroke that has you fisting your hands in his hair and tipping your head back and making a sound that is going to embarrass you in approximately twenty minutes when you can think clearly again, and Valarr—sweat-slick, marked, beautiful,so beautiful, gone—drops his forehead to yours and breathes against your mouth and doesn't move.

"You’re so perfect," he exhales, a silky sound.

You breathe out a small, pleased sound.

"You drive me insane," he whispers, and there’s a hint of laughter in his ragged voice. “You undo me, love. Do you understand that?”

"Val,” you breathe out, feeling how the fond shortening of his name makes him pulse inside you. “Move."

He does. 

He moves the way you’ve asked him to move, the way you’ve told him he’s permitted to move. 

He fucks you on the kitchen floor, his hand fisted in your hair. Valarr’s other hand hooks under your thigh, pushing your knee up against your chest, opening you wider for him. His mouth is on your throat, your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder where the linen of his shirt has slipped, biting and sucking and leaving marks of his own, finally, claiming you along the line of your throat the way you’ve just claimed him.

His hips snap forward. Again. Again.

You feel him in your teeth. The tempo is so painfully efficient that it drives you insane. You feel him through your spine in every stroke. The wood of the floor is cold against your back, and your shoulder blades are going to be bruised by tonight, but you can’t bring yourself to care.

His pelvis grinds against yours on every powerful thrust and his hand slips between you, circling where he’s pushing into you, and his thumb is—his thumb is— 

You come again, your walls fluttering around his cock, embarrassingly, helplessly, with your nails dragging four red lines down the middle of his toned back. Valarr groans into your throat, yes, yes, that's it, sweet girl, my wolf, that's mine, that's it, give it to me, and he’s fucking you through it without slowing, his rhythm only stuttering for a second and then catching, his eyes wild on your face, his mouth open against yours.

He’s sweating. He hasn’t stopped sweating since he came back from the gym. 

The whole of him is slick and hot, the morning sun on him and you feel the salt of him against your mouth when you pull his head down to yours. His hair is a complete wreck where you’ve been yanking at it. His back is going to be a map of your nails by tonight and his throat is going to be a map of your mouth and you almost laugh in delight.

You arch under him instead. You hook your heel into the base of his spine, dragging him deeper.

"Harder, dragon."

The sound that comes out of Valarr is barely human.

A low broken thing. His name lands exactly where you placed it, dragon, not pretty thing, not sweet boy, dragon, the old word, the one his blood has been waiting for. 

Valarr’s eyes darken, impossibly so, and his hand at your hair tightens and he gives you exactly what you asked for. 

He gives it to you so completely that the world around you becomes very narrow and very sharp and he’s fucking into you with the strength he’s been hiding for three months, the strength of a man who deadlifts at dawn and rows until he aches, the strength of the thing in him that his ancestors used to ride into wars on, and it is—

It is exactly what you needed.

You bite his shoulder. Viciously. Copper burns on your tongue and you feel Valarr’s whole body lock against yours and his hand fist convulsively in your hair and his hips drive forward one last time hard enough to push you up the floor by several inches, and Valarr—

Valarr comes inside you with a sound that’s torn between a sob and a roar, his face pressed into your throat, his other hand braced flat on the wood beside your head with his fingers spread wide and white at the knuckles. 

He shakes. Through the whole thing, his hips jerking against yours in small uneven thrusts, and you can feel the heat of him filling you up, gushing deep, and you can feel the pulse of him and you can feel his teeth set into the side of your throat at the very end, marking you, finally properly marking you. Your answering moan sounds more animal than woman, your body coiled around his.

You both go still.

The kitchen is suddenly painfully silent. 

It takes you several minutes to come back to your body. 

You blink up at the ceiling blearily, squinting. You’re on the dark wood floor of Valarr’s kitchen with his weight on top of you and his face buried in your throat. The linen of his shirt is soaked through at the ribs with sweat that’s now also half his and half yours. 

Valarr breathes against your throat. 

Then he lifts his head.

He’s looking at you with an expression that’s not quite settled into anything yet. Not fully shock, or joy, not even fear. There’s only the unguarded face of a man whose entire model of himself has just been rearranged by the woman pinned under him on a kitchen floor.

He laughs. Gentle, breathless, fond. He drops his forehead to yours.

"My sweet girl," he says, and his voice is hoarse, "what the fuck have you done to me?"

Your mouth curls into a pleased grin.

You bring his mouth down to yours, kissing him gently, lingering at the seams of his lush mouth. You taste yourself on his mouth, and you taste sweat and salt and the metallic edge of where you broke skin on his shoulder, and you keep your hand fisted lightly in his hair.

"My golden dragon," you murmur fondly. “My beautiful, perfect Val.”

He laughs into your mouth, a terrible, broken sound. He shakes his head against yours.

"Christ."

You only tighten your arms around his shoulders in response. 

"You're going to ruin me," he rasps, mouth on your collarbone. "You're my ruin, sweet girl."

"Yes," you agree lightly, stroking his flushed face.

"My love, I need—"

You know what he needs; even if his body is spent, he still wants more, always more. Your knuckles fondly skim over the white streak against his temple. 

"Yes, Val," you say quietly, closing your eyes when he begins jerking his hips inside you again, pleasure raking through your oversensitive nerves as his cum drips onto the kitchen floor between you. “Take what you need.”