bad days — aj shabeel x reader
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summary AJ was having a bad day. she could tell. she always could. the problem was getting him to let her do anything about it.
prompt – bad day AJ, reader tries to reach him, established relationship warnings – light swearing, AJ being AJ about his feelings word count – ~1.5k note – AJ shabeel and his complicated relationship with letting people in - thank you for this request 🫶
requests are open :)
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She noticed it the moment he walked through the door.
Not that AJ would ever announce it. That wasn't him. He'd sooner shave his curls than sit someone down and say I'm having a bad day, please be nice to me. No — with AJ, you had to learn the language. The specific, subtle, thoroughly inconvenient language of a man who felt things deeply and showed them sideways.
Today's dialect: he came in, dropped his bag by the door instead of putting it away, and went straight to the sofa without saying a word.
No stupid joke. No wallahi you would not believe what happened today. No dramatic retelling of something that had happened to him on the way over.
Just silence.
She let him have it for a bit. Made herself busy in the kitchen, put the kettle on, listened to the specific quality of the quiet he was sitting in.
Then she went and sat beside him.
Not too close. Not right on top of him — she knew better than that. Just. Beside him. Near enough.
"Aight?" she said.
"Yeah," he said. Flat.
She looked at him.
He was staring at the TV, which wasn't on.
"You're staring at a blank screen," she pointed out.
"I know."
"Okay." She reached for the remote and turned it on, flicking to something neither of them would pay attention to. "Cool."
They sat there for a few minutes. The TV played. AJ stayed in whatever room he'd gone to in his head.
She tried again.
"You eaten?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
A pause. "...This morning."
"AJ."
"I wasn't hungry."
"It's seven in the evening."
"Yeah." He shifted slightly on the sofa, still not looking at her. "I know."
She looked at his profile — the set of his jaw, the way he was holding himself, the specific tension of someone who had been carrying something all day and hadn't put it down yet. She'd seen it before. Not often, because AJ was frustratingly good at being fine, at being funny and loud and filling a room until there was no space left for anything else. But sometimes, on days like this, the performance dropped and she could see the underneath of him.
She hated that she couldn't just fix it.
She also knew that saying that would get her nowhere.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
"Nah."
"Okay."
Another few minutes of TV neither of them watched.
"It's just—" AJ started, then stopped.
She waited. She was good at waiting for him.
"It's nothing," he said. "Forget it."
"You brought it up."
"I said forget it."
"AJ."
"What?"
She turned to look at him properly. He was still doing the thing where he wasn't quite looking at her — eyes somewhere adjacent, jaw tight, the specific posture of someone who wanted to say something and had decided against it and was annoyed at themselves for wanting to say it in the first place.
"You're allowed to just tell me," she said. Simply. "Whatever it is."
"I know that."
"Do you?"
He finally looked at her. His dark brown eyes doing the thing she'd learned to read — the flash of something real before the deflection arrived.
"It's embarrassing," he muttered.
"More embarrassing than the time you tried to do that backflip at Niko's and knocked over the whole table?"
Despite himself, the corner of his mouth moved. "That was Niko's fault."
"You said that at the time. Nobody believed you then either."
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost.
"It's just been a long day," he said finally, quieter. "One of those days where everything's a bit—" he shrugged, searching for the word, "—a lot. You know?"
"Yeah," she said. "I know."
"And I don't—" he stopped again. Exhaled through his nose. "I don't want to make it a whole thing."
"It's not a whole thing," she said. "It's just me."
He looked at her for a moment.
Then, slowly, some of the tension in his shoulders did something. Not gone — just less. The specific release of someone who had decided, against their better judgement, to let something in.
"Come here then," she said. Soft.
AJ looked at her. His eyes narrowed slightly, suspicious of the gentleness the way he was always suspicious of gentleness when it was directed at him, like some part of him was still waiting for the catch.
"I'm not a child," he said.
"I know you're not."
"I don't need—"
"AJ." She held his gaze. "Come here."
He looked at her for another second.
Then, with all the dignity he could manage, which was not very much, he leaned over and let himself rest against her. His head on her shoulder, his whole tall awkward self attempting to fit into the space she'd made for him.
She didn't make a big deal of it. Just let him settle. One hand coming up to the back of his neck, fingers moving through the curls at the nape, slow and gentle the way she knew he'd never in a million years ask for.
He exhaled.
Proper — the long kind, the kind that meant something had been let go.
"There he is," she said quietly. Not to embarrass him. Just because it was true.
He said nothing. But she felt him press slightly closer, and that was its own kind of answer.
They stayed like that for a while. The TV played. The light in the flat changed as the evening moved through it.
"The curls thing," AJ said eventually, his voice low and slightly muffled against her shoulder.
"What about them."
"You can — I mean." A pause. "That's — yeah. That's fine. If you want."
She bit her lip to keep from smiling. "Noted."
"Don't make it weird."
"I'm not making it weird."
"You're smiling."
"You can't even see my face."
"I can tell." He shifted slightly, getting more comfortable in the most elaborately casual way possible. "Wallahi, you're always smiling when you've won something."
"I haven't won anything."
"You've got me laid on you like a labrador, don't you."
She did laugh then — properly, the helpless kind — and she felt him smile against her shoulder despite himself. The specific reluctant smile of AJ Shabeel when something was funny and he didn't want to admit the mood had lifted.
"You're an idiot," she said.
"Yeah, yeah." He was quiet for a moment. "Thanks, by the way."
She looked down at the top of his curls. "For what."
"For not—" he stopped. Tried again. "For not making it a thing."
"I told you it wasn't a thing."
"Still." A pause. "Ta."
She pressed a kiss to the top of his head. Felt him try to act like he didn't care about that and fail completely.
"Anytime," she said.
And meant it.
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