#1000x

There’s no response other than a snicker. “‘Fraid I’m here on official business. Got a call ‘bout a suspicious figure climbing up on some trash cans to break into this apartment right here.”

“What happened to ‘to protect and serve?’” you ask, your voice pointed, cutting.

“I ain’t in the service industry,” Gator says, and he sounds amused. “Protectin’, uh, whoever lives here from you, see?”

“I live here,” you say, because it’s true, and you know that Gator knows that. You haven’t really fucked with him since high school—it was a four-year long, four-year strong relationship, that only fell apart once he decided to hit the police academy to prepare for a career in his daddy’s sheriff department, and you didn’t want to be the housewife he expected of you.

You’d been talking about making things way more serious after graduation that summer. You’d been talking marriage, kids, a two-car garage and an island in the kitchen. Whose family would get Christmas and whose would get Thanksgiving. And then he dropped the bomb that he was actually going to derail all of those plans because he—his father, more like—expected you not to go to university at all and just bake bread and keep house or whatever. Which was fine, just not what you wanted to do personally.

Roy had always been a point of contention between you and Gator, so much so that when it became clear his side of things was non-negotiable, so became yours. You hadn’t thought that Gator would break up with you after one last romp in your sheets—because of course, that fuckface—but he did. He left you with tears on your face and on your thighs and you hadn’t heard from him directly since.

You’d heard about him, sure. It was hard to come home to Lehigh every winter and summer break and not hear about the Tillmans. It was even harder to stomach it because after everything, you couldn’t shake the thought that he was, unfortunately, the one who got away.

Something you never wanted to admit to anyone, most specifically yourself.

Cut to now. You’d knocked over the trash cans in your attempt to vault yourself up into your first-floor unit, so you were stuck half in the window and half out of it, the flat stucco of the building not really giving you much purchase at all in your platform heels.

“Unfortunately I got no way’a verifyin’ that without seeing some identification,” Gator replied.

“Gator, you know it’s me,” you say. “I know you know I live here.”

“You seem pretty sure’a yerself.”

“Help me get inside and I will show you my ID,” you snip, clearly enunciating each word in your irritation.

“I mean,” he says, clearly ignoring you, “y’can see how this is a little suspect, can’tcha? Yer basically askin’ me, a man of the law, t’help ya break in. If you lived here, you’d have… y’know, keys?”

“You’d think,” you half-shout, because yes, obviously you had keys. You just didn’t have them at the moment. You had misplaced them in either Angela or Julia’s purse, but since they were both knocked out for the evening, slumbering off all the drinking they’d done, neither were answering your texts and so you had no way of getting your apartment keys, even if you went back to their loft.

“Well,” Gator says, and you startle a little when you feel his hand wrap around the back of your knee. “If yer so sure I know ya, I can think of one way t’tell.”

You try to lift yourself up over the windowsill, even just to see him standing behind you, but you’ve been stuck like this for so long, your arms are shaky and exhausted. You can barely move.

“What’s that?” you ask. Part of you honestly suspects that you already know.

His rough palm slides up the back of your thigh, slow enough that you can stop him, kick him off.

You don’t.

He continues moving his hand up your bare leg, right underneath your skirt, pushing it up and out of his way to reveal the poor excuse for panties you have on—flimsy fabric, a thong that covers next to nothing, and even though his next words are the same cocky Gator you remember, you do hear the waver to them. Because after the five years since you graduated high school, you still know him that well.

“Startin’ ta look familiar,” he says. “Yeah… maybe I do know ya.” With both hands on you now, he shoves your skirt up the rest of the way over your hips and hooks a finger beneath the elastic of your underwear, sliding it straight down so the back of his finger brushes over your ass, tugging the satiny cloth away from your core.

“Gator,” you say, half admonishing him, and half definitely wanting it. More than half of the latter, actually, as loath as you are to admit it. This is humiliating—and yet, there’s still a pathetic, buried part of you that will take it, because you’ve been carrying a torch for him for half a decade.

“Still can’t tell,” he mutters. “Hold on, lemme try somethin’.”

Your breath catches as you feel his tongue trace over your folds, delving in between your labia to lick at you, taste you; he sucks one of your lips into his mouth, pulling off with a wet smack. You quiver where you’re nearly folded in half over your windowsill.

“Shit, it is you,” he says, feigning surprise. “Well, fuck, ya shoulda just said so.”

You can’t answer—mostly because you have no words, but also because you know if you tried to speak, he would be able to tell exactly how you feel. About him, about this, about everything that was left unsaid when he left you the summer after high school.

“Well,” Gator says, after you remain silent. “I can help ya out—or in, I guess, if that’s what ya want, but I’m gonna need some repayment.”

“How magnanimous, deputy,” you mutter, and you’re not sure if he even hears you as he smooths both hands over each of your thighs, pushing them a little further apart, opening you up for him.

“How ‘bout it?” he asks, and when you feel his breath warm against your folds, and you absolutely melt for him.

“Fine,” you say, but it’s not an acquiescence, at least not in the way where you don’t want this. Because you do. The singular word is an admission of the way you still feel about him, and even though it’s doubtful that he still feels the same way about you, you’ll take any crumbs you can get. Moving back to Lehigh after you graduated held the risk of seeing your ex—but seemed like maybe it held a reward for you too.

He doesn’t answer you, just leans in, pressing a kiss to your ass cheek—you ignore how that makes you feel—before he turns his head just a little to the side and puts his mouth back on you. A short gasp is punched out of you as you feel his fingers tighten around your legs, his tongue sliding in between your folds up to your slit. You duck your head, tucking your chin against your chest as he pleasures you, lets his tongue move inside you, fucking you with it as you feel his cheeks press tight against you as he tries to move as close into you as he can.

You don’t speak, just focus on your breathing, on keeping your eyes closed, on the way he never used to like to do this but would do it for you. The thought flickers through your mind that that seems to have changed, and you tamp down the idea that someone else got him to reconsider.

“Fuckin’,” Gator says, his lips against your thigh as he replaces his mouth with one of his hands, fingertips slipping through your slick lips, rubbing at your slit before sliding the other way, down, toward your front. “Missed this.”

“Missed—what?” you ask, because you can’t help yourself, even though you didn’t mean to ask it.

“This fuckin’ snatch,” he says, and well—that stayed the same for sure. His fingers circle your clit as he leans back in to trail his tongue over your lips, teasing you. “Never should’a…” he says, but trails off, instead closing his mouth over your folds and sucking at them, the pads of his fingers still working over your clit, sensitive and pulsing beneath his touch. He presses his tongue flat against your slit, feeling it give with just the slightest bit of pressure, but he doesn’t enter you again, not yet.

“Thought you”—you start to say, breathless—“weren’t in the service business, G-Deputy.”

You feel him pull away just enough to laugh. “That what ya think this is?” he asks. “I ain’t servicin’ ya,” he says, and you could swear you hear him mutter your name in weak exasperation as he laughs again, amused by your pluck. “I’m just gettin’ ya ready fer more.” He licks a long, slow stripe from your clit up to your core, tasting you. “Plus. This ain’t exactly work.”

Your thighs shudder a little as he changes up what he’s doing yet again, switching his mouth and his hand so he can tongue at your clit while he rubs your slit with two fingertips. You moan quietly as he curls them inside of you, his thick fingers stretching you so perfectly, exactly the way you remember, but he’s better now, he knows where to press to try and find your g-spot, and he knows to try and find how much pressure you like, rather than just ramming his fingers as deeply into you as he can.

“Gator,” you whimper, and for a moment you feel his mouth leave you, almost like he’s going to say something in reply, but then he’s back on you, your clit in his mouth, sucking gently at it. The softness hits you hard, the easy pull of his tongue and upper lip as he sucks your clit, and the way his fingers are scissoring you open, stretching you just enough to feel it, but still giving you something to grip down on as you squeeze his fingers—it all comes to a head suddenly, your whole world collapsing to a single point until you’re coming, on his fingers and his face, your pussy clenching down while your clit jumps against his tongue, your body tensing up against him and then falling back down limp over the windowsill.

He moves his face from your cunt but not far, letting his forehead rest against your thigh for a moment before you feel his lips brush over your leg again, leaving a wet smear behind—a kiss? No, he wouldn’t, this can’t be anything meaningful to him—and then his hands leave you too and you hear the slight shift of his boots as he steps back from you.

“I can give y’a push,” Gator says. “Promise me ya won’t land on yer head.”

“Promise,” you reply weakly, stretching your arms down toward the carpet of your living room. There’s a pause, and you almost laugh when you feel him straighten your underwear and then tug your skirt down over your ass, and then he’s got his arms around your legs and is lifting you, pushing you, enough that you’re able to work with him and slide yourself forward, tipping fully into the window. You brace your hands on the floor and manage to climb into the window properly with his help. You roll onto your back once you’re fully inside, one hand coming up to tangle in your own hair, the other resting on your stomach as you stare at the ceiling, because now that you have some post-orgasm clarity you wonder just what in the fuck you did and why you let it happen.

You’ve just decided that you will, in fact, shower before bed, when you hear the scrabbling of heavy-soled boots on the facade of your building and glance over; as you watch, you realize Gator’s hands are hooked over your windowsill, and then after a moment, his head appears as he climbs through your window. He lands heavily beside you, on his feet—of course, he makes climbing into a window look easy—and your eyes meet his in the dimness of your living room as he stares down at you on the floor.

“Didja land on yer head?” he asks.

“Did you just climb in through my window?” you counter.

Gator turns around and looks at the window, then back to you and shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Thank you for your help,” you say, not moving from where you’re supine on the ground, still. “Door’s over there.” You lift your arm and point.

“Git up,” Gator says, bending down to grab your elevated wrist. He tugs it and you rise to a sitting position, though you refuse to do more. “Woman, I said git up.” He leans down further, settles his hands beneath your arms, and lifts you to your feet. Once you’re upright again, he doesn’t take his hands away—he slides them down to the curve of your hips and looks straight at you. “Fuck’s yer problem?”

You were never one to mince words, and he was never one to really grasp or understand nuance, so you just tell him straight. 

“I’m honestly a little unsure of how to take the fact that my ex boyfriend is the one who responded to a—actually somewhat necessary—911 call and then before actually helping me, went down on me. Just trying to make some sense out of that. Since you were the one who ended things. Any insight you can provide?”

And Gator looks absolutely gobsmacked before his shocked expression turns into a smirk. “Ass was practically out on a silver platter. ‘Nd you weren’t sayin’ not to.”

You feel your cheeks warm, thankful for the darkness of your living room. Your thighs are still a little shaky, your pussy still feels hot and wet, and having Gator in such close proximity after so long, after what you’d just let him do, it’s bringing you back to five, six, seven years ago, when you were attached at the hip and dreamed about being together forever, even if you didn’t understand what that meant at 18, 17, 16.

“Because I still want you… to,” you admit, shrouded by the darkness and the afterglow of your orgasm and the unfortunate comfort his presence still gives you. Your mind may have been able to suppress how you felt, but your body remembers, like muscle memory that never really fades even after years. 

“What’s that?” he asks, stepping closer, tentative, like he expects you to back away. You don’t.

“I still…” you begin. “I still want… you.”

Gator doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even seem to react. Then his hands tighten on your hips, slide up to your waist, tug you closer. “Never really gave up on ya,” he says, “even though all’a ev’rything was my fault. Thought maybe I’d—we’d meet up again ‘nd… Well, not that”—he jerks his head back toward your window—“but somethin’.”

You’re not thinking when you do it, because one moment you’re just looking up at him, and then the next you’re pressed flush against him, your lips on his, arms around his neck, kissing him like you haven’t missed a day with him. You lick into his mouth, a small, content noise in your throat as you taste yourself on his lips and his tongue. He kisses you back roughly, starved, like he can’t possibly get enough, like neither of you can make up for the lost time but fuck, he wants to try.

He’s never been in your apartment before, but he still steers you toward the short hall that leads to your bedroom, and you break away only to grab his hand and pull him behind you, the two of you fumbling like the teenagers you’d been the last time you saw each other. You sweep your arm to the side, swing him around in front of you, and push him down onto your bed, climbing onto his lap before he can even right himself. 

“I should hate you,” you murmur, lips trailing over his neck as his hands skim over your back, “I should make you regret everything—”

“Should,” Gator agrees, tugging your shirt up over your back, hands sliding underneath it, already trying to unclasp your bra. “Deserve it fer what I did. Ya don’t do that t’someone ya love.”

“Loved,” you say, emphasizing the past tense of it all, spiteful. Even so, you suck at his neck, wanting to mark him.

“Nah,” he retorts, releasing your bra and just letting his hands settle on your skin, sliding down to your lower back, even as you pull away from his neck, lips swollen from where you’d been pressed to him, and look down at him on your bedspread. “I was a fuckin’ stupid kid. Didn’t know what I wanted or thought ‘bout anything, listened ta Roy too much.” You’re the one not to move this time, not to speak, not to react. “Still… love ya,” he says, sheepish, like maybe he’s embarrassed to still feel that way for you after so long. 

“Gator,” you manage, voice thick with emotion, and then your lips are on his and you’re kissing him soft and sweet, the way he’d let you kiss him one last time after he’d dumped you but before you let him walk away.

He remembers too—you feel his chest kick beneath yours.

“Come fuckin’ here,” he says, even though your front is already flush with his, already on top of him, your legs straddling his hips. He holds you tight and rolls you both over, landing on top of you this time, and before you can do anything else, he’s kneeling above you, stripping off his tac vest and his shirt and undoing his belt. He covers your body with his again, lips finding each other’s easily, and you hold him close while his hands slink up your sides, moving your blouse up and over your tits.

You lift your shoulders, your arms, and he slides the garment off of you, lowering his mouth to your chest as you spread your legs, letting him slot right in between them, your thighs hugging his waist as he kisses the expanse of your chest, the swell of your breasts, tongue flitting between them and making you half laugh and arch yourself up against him even more.

He makes quick work of your bra, taking one of your nipples in his mouth with no hesitation, and it’s less that he’s re-learning your body and instead just remembering everything about it as it’s revealed to him; he sucks at the hardened nub while you reach around him, your hands palm-flat on his back as you feel his muscles flexing, tensing and relaxing each time he moves. Your mouths find each other again after a moment, and then you’re pushing down the waistband of his camo pants, and he’s feeling at your waist for the zipper of your skirt.

After a few seconds where neither of you make progress, you just each return your hands to your own bodies, Gator ridding himself of his pants and you unzipping your skirt, shoving it down around your thighs. Before you can sit up to remove it, Gator does it for you, deft hands curling into the fabric to tug it down and away. It joins his jumble of clothes on your bedroom floor.

He crawls back on top of you between your legs, one hand moving to curl half around your throat, half around your chin, as he licks into your mouth, feeling your pulse racing beneath his touch.

“All worked up,” he mutters, and you nod, tipping your chin up, catching his lower lip with your teeth, tugging at it for a moment before he covers your mouth with his again and kisses you, deeply, desperately, your tongues moving together as you roll your hips against his. With only a couple layers of cotton between you now, you feel your pussy aching for the hard line of his cock, definitely visible now, definitely feeling him against your mound.

“You too,” you reply, and he huffs a laugh before he reaches down between you, cupping you through your underwear before he just pushes them to the side and lets his fingers dip into your slit again. “No—just—” you cut yourself off as he pulls his hand away from you, his back bowing up and away as he looks down at your face. “Just fuck me,” you finish.

At first, he looks disbelieving, like he can’t quite imagine it’s this easy. Then you whine out a “Please” and he doesn’t bother with any more meaningful looks or thoughtful questions—he pushes off of you, pulls your underwear down, rubs his hands over the front of your hips appreciatively, his gaze trailing over you, transfixed. You don’t bother squirming under his scrutiny or acting shy—he’d always looked at you like this, and even though he’d changed in other ways, you’re glad this stayed the same.

“Gator,” you say, his name a reminder, and part your legs a little wider so he can see you better. His eyes dip down to your core, and then he’s hooking his thumbs into the elastic of his boxer briefs, pushing them down around his thick thighs, his cock jutting out from his front. You watch him, his dick bobbing a little as he steps back to the bed, kneels on it, then, in true Gator fashion, curls two fingers down beneath his length, holding the top with his thumb, and flexes his hips to get even closer to you. He’s so close you can almost feel the heat radiating off of his flushed, leaking tip, but he doesn’t enter you. No—

Gator taps the head of his cock against your clit, and you whine, low in your throat, tongue flicking out over your lower lip.

“Stop,” you try, but your voice is weak, needy.

He does it again, this time hitting his dick into your clit twice, the second time letting it rest there, and as he pulls his hips back barely an inch, you shudder at the feeling of it sliding over you. He pushes back forward, fucking the underside of his cock against your clit, and smirks as you toss your head back and forth.

“Like that?” he asks, cocky as ever, and you shake your head. “No?”

“No,” you whine. “Baby, fuck me, please.”

The pet name—which you realize you’ve said a beat after you’ve said it—was unexpected for both of you. You look up at him, eyes wide, wondering if it was a misstep. But it doesn’t seem to be, because Gator is looking back at you almost in a frenzy, brow tight and furrowed, his eyes locked on yours, lips just slightly parted. And then he pulls his cock away from you, lowers himself, and presses the tip right into your cunt, fucking into your wet heat easily with no resistance, as your body welcomes him back, takes him in, brings him home, fully fitting inside of you as he moves his body over yours, taking your lips again in a searing kiss that has you arching up into him, wrapping your arms around him, and when he starts to move his hips, starts to actually fuck you, you feel the rumble of his own moan echoing yours in your chest.

He doesn’t fuck you the way he did when you were younger. He’s moving slower, steadier, purposeful, thrusting into you deep and firm, his hips rolling into yours like the tide, waves of pleasure coursing through you and over you as he makes love to you—that’s what it is, what it feels like, the years of time between you meaningless now because you have each other again.

“Fuckin’—Never should’a let you go,” Gator mumbles against your lips, and you realize that that’s what he was going to say earlier, when you were still stuck in the window. Your eyes open to meet his, and they look glassy even in the gloom surrounding your bed, and you suck his lower lip between yours as he kisses your top lip, your bodies working in tandem. When he pushes, you meet his movement against your hips; when he pulls back, you lower them, only to grind back up into him and take him full to the hilt again. No one else—no one else has ever known your body like this, able to just read you with the subtlest of movements or change of angles. No one else ever had the chance to know you for the number of years that Gator did.

“Hold me again,” you tell him, words soft on his cheek. “Take me and don’t—let go.”

“Never,” he says, then lowers one of his hands down between your bodies, because he can tell you’re close, your cunt fluttering around his cock, but he also still knows you need more to finish. “Never.”

His fingers move over your clit, and you’re not sure which way to move, to twist, to stretch as you feel your hips buck upward against his hand, but as your chest moves away from his, you miss the feeling of his solid weight on you.

“Gator,” you sigh, wrapping your arms around him and holding him tight against you, his arm trapped between your bodies, but with the way he’s still working his fingertips at your clit, he doesn’t seem to notice or care, his movements not impeded at all. Your breath starts coming thinner, and Gator notices—he rolls his hips against yours a little harder, pounding into you with the absolute perfect rhythem—not too much, but exactly what you need. You feel his hips start to stutter in his rhythm, and you lower one of your hands down from his back to snake it in between your bodies, too. You wrap your fingers around his wrist, holding him, and you feel the pads of his fingers slipping over your wet clit, hard and swollen—until they hit the angle that feels best, and you squeeze his wrist so he keeps doing it, keeps going, keeps—

He buries himself inside you one last time, a guttural groan falling from his lips as he feels you tighten up around him, your walls clamping down on his cock where he sits, fully sheathed inside you. You come so hard on his cock that he looses a broken whimper, high and pitched up, and then as you start to come down you feel his cock twitch in you, the sticky, hot spread of his come. Your eyes hold on his face as his throat tightens up, his jaw tensed, and if your orgasm was intense it appears to be nothing compared to Gator’s. He keeps coming in you, spurt after thick spurt filling your pussy, until finally he very nearly collapses on you, catching himself at the last moment to avoid letting his full weight hit you all at once.

“Lemme stay with ya,” he says, not pulling out but just kissing you again before you can even reply. “Ain’t gonna fuck it up this time,” he says, speaking each word between kisses. “Promise. I promise,” he repeats. It’s only after ten or so times saying it that you’re even allowed a chance to say anything back.

“You’ve always been with me,” you say, because now, you know it’s safe to admit it.