#tbitb x reader

Bobby was a chronic clothing over-shopper who had to have his credit card taken away and frozen too many times to remember. She still recalled the unholy hellfire that had rained down on her when she revealed to him that she’d frozen it the same day the local mall was supposed to run a massive sale.

“You don’t need any more workout clothes! You sit at the front of the boat and yell, that’s it!”

“Melt it out of there right now, or so help me God, I will take YOUR card with me, and you do not want me to do that.” He usually won the card away from her with little argument after the threats started rolling out. And the only other way to corral his spending was to accompany him on his frenetic fits of financial irresponsibility and wrestle things away from him herself.

When he had woken her from her peaceful Saturday afternoon nap to announce that he needed a new shirt “because I want one”, she’d groaned and covered her eyes but ultimately found herself trailing behind him as he trotted from store to store and held up anything he needed her opinion on. 

It was a beautiful day at the open-air mall, and as she leaned her head backwards and waited for Bobby to change for the umpteenth time, she realized she was enjoying herself. Unprecedented. It had been happening more and more lately; having Bobby flit around at her ankles wasn’t grating on her nerves the way it usually did. She pulled out her phone while Bobby vocalized the bassline of a Temptations song from inside the cubicle and opened a new note. Research early signs of dementia. The swish, swish of Bobby turning on his ankles to vogue in the mirror made the corners of her mouth turn up without her consent.

“I like this one.”

“Then get it.”

“But there was another–”

“Robert.” He stuck his head back out of the curtain and gave a sunshiney, if slightly shit-eating, grin. 

“I can tell when I’m pushing my luck. I’ll get this one.” 

Bobby bounced lightly on the balls of his feet while the cashier rang up his record-low shopping haul of two shirts and a pair of swim trunks. He turned to his roommate, who was preoccupied with scrolling through pages of WebMD-sanctioned proof that she was losing her mind by enjoying his company. “Thanks for coming shopping with me,” he said.

“Someone has to keep you in line,” she responded without looking up from her phone.

“And there’s no one I’d rather have more!” He reached out to tweak her nose but she intercepted his hand mid-reach, still not bothering to glance at him, and squeezed his fingers backwards in a death grip. “Ow, ow, ow,” he said cheerfully, and without thinking, she pulled his hand to her lips and pecked three light kisses on the crushed fingertips, a remedy she had picked up from the man himself. She wasn’t sure if it was a holdover habit from his childhood that someone had used to soothe him or if doing things in threes was just another one of his compulsions, but the act had made its way into her rolodex of ways to calm him down.

“All better,” she murmured, her brow furrowing while the medical advice site recommended cryotherapy and the cashier handed Bobby a large shopping bag with his purchases and receipt. The woman’s severely slicked bun made the smile she gave them look tense. 

“You two are a very sweet couple,” she told them. “Have a great rest of your day, and thank you for shopping with us.”

Bobby’s face split into a smile that reached each of his ears. Next to him, his presumed-girlfriend’s face was melting into a mixture of mortification and outrage. “Oh no, we’re not–!” She wasn’t sure why alarm bells were blaring in her head, but she couldn’t even hear what Bobby gushed to the cashier as she yanked him by the forearm out of the store. 

“Sweetheart, that was rude,” Bobby deadpanned, letting himself be pulled along behind her. God, that idiotic grin was back and she wanted to peel it off his face like a sticker. It was so typical of him to delight in the fact that she was single and to rub it in her face. Any time someone even implied that they were dating, he would break into a giddy giggle as if the idea of her being able to sustain a relationship was impossible. 

And when he had realized that Shorty would not be a permanent fixture in her life, as with all the other people she brought home, he had been borderline insufferable. Their dinner from the evening following Shorty’s overnight stay was still being stewed over in her mind.

“Mm. Good soup.” Bobby made a ring with his thumb and forefinger, the rest of his fingers splayed out, to emphasize how delicious the pad thai in front of him was. She snorted and nodded, dipping back into her plate of noodles. “So,” he began. He dabbed his lips with an affected little sniff. “Post-sexual encounter debrief time.”

“Ew, no.” His eyes narrowed, and she started sputtering as if she owed him an explanation. “No! That is not a thing we do; when has that ever been a thing we do?!”

Bobby scoffed, “When the person you encounterrr—” (he stretched the last syllable out while lifting a noodle of the same length to his mouth) “—happens to be a dear, dear friend of mine.” It was her turn to scoff.

“A friend whom you accused only last night of being illiterate.” She put her finger to her chin and pretended to be sussing out one of the great mysteries of the universe while Bobby ground his jaw. She knew she should stop, and that this rehashing would only reopen the wound that this dinner was supposed to heal. This dinner, and the cute note he’d left for her that morning, which, for some reason, was now stuck to the lamp on her nightstand. The note that had contained a few scratched out words that she still couldn’t make out.

He was starting to get irritated again. The jumpiness always started under his skin and worked its way out to his fingertips, which started drumming the table right on cue. Silence fell between them while they studied their noodles. Her shoes were sticking to the tacky floors of the restaurant, and “Big Flame” by Doris Wilson was playing over a tinny speaker perched in one corner. She almost dropped the whole thing to tell Bobby how much the song reminded her of him.

She could keep pretending to be annoyed with Bobby’s behavior, she reasoned, or she could start wondering why exactly he was this upset over her hooking up with his friend.

Speaking of. “I guess I was really surprised you decided to…on the first date,” Bobby said, slowly. “I didn’t think you’d go that fast.”

“Are there official rules and regulations I should be following?”

“For when to sleep with someone? Um, yes, my dear, they are found in a little socially and culturally significant piece of media I like to call Sex and the City.” She choked on the sip of water she was taking and began laughing hard. Leave it to Bobby to ruin her determination to be pissed at him by being himself.

While they were still laughing, Bobby motioned to his left cheek. “You’ve got…” He wrinkled his nose. “Somethin’.” She touched her face, swore, and began looking around for a napkin, but he beat her to it. Before she could stop him, Bobby leaned across the table, took her face in his hand and dabbed at the smear of peanut sauce on her cheek with the napkin in his other hand. “Hang on, jeez.” She was frozen in place, somehow annoyed at the intimacy of the act and somehow enjoying it at the same time. He was concentrating on her face, his tongue poking out between his lips while he scrubbed at the stubborn stain. When his brow furrowed, his lips tended to form a comical pout. They were pink, even in the restaurant’s grey-green fluorescent lighting, really pink. Soft-looking, too. 

She panicked and said the only words that had been pre-written by her brain in an awkward monotone: “This song reminds me of you.” Bobby stopped what he was doing and looked up at the ceiling, presumably to hear the song better. When he clocked it, he broke into a smile that made the parts of her face he was still holding onto heat up a little.

“Why’s that?” he asked, like the answer would get him “A”s in all his classes for the rest of the year. She shrugged. Very pink lips. And a cute nose, damn it.

Then Bobby pulled the napkin to his mouth without relinquishing her face and spat on it, a huge glob of saliva falling from his mouth, and raised it back to her face. She squealed and pushed him away so he rocked backwards into his seat and asked “What?!”

“Nasty,” she scowled. Chastising herself for…whatever that behavior had just been, she licked her own fingers and wiped away the rest of the food on her face. “Oh, but it’s fine when you do it,” Bobby said, rolling his eyes. The food on their plates had dwindled to a few scraps, and he craned his neck around until he made eye contact with their waiter. “May we have the check, please!” he called very politely, but still so loudly that it made her want to cover her face. 

The waiter hurried over and asked, “Two checks, or–?” Bobby held up one finger.

“One, please, sir. I owe this young lady a meal.” When they were alone again, Bobby sobered suddenly and said, “I really am sorry, you know. For what I said last night. I think…” He reached for his water glass and took an enormous gulp. “I think you guys will make a really sweet pair. You’re great for each other!” 

Bobby Moch, I’ve never heard you tell such a bald-faced lie, she thought. “Well, thank you, but even though Carrie Bradshaw has sanctioned our one-night stand, I think that’s all it’s going to be. We’re just gonna be friends.” Bobby looked far too happy at this news, so she added, “Probably still gonna hook up with him, though.” 

Glee, that was the only word for the expression on his face as he absently tossed his credit card at the returning waiter. As the waiter walked back to the kitchen, Bobby clasped his fingers under his chin and leaned on them, pure delight strobing off him. “Sad to hear it.”

“Clearly,” she growled. It hurt, more than she had realized, that Bobby enjoyed her romantic failures as much as he did. He practically celebrated every time she fucked up her love life by forgetting a first date or putting her foot in her mouth while flirting. And there was nothing he loved more than when they were mistaken for a couple in public and he could lord the fact that he was the only man she ever spent any time with over her for a good few days. In the interest of not exposing anymore of her vulnerability, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. 

“No, really!” But he was fighting through laughter that made her stomach sink in humiliation. She tried to look away. Bobby’s laughter was a special breed of contagious. It had been known to rip  through entire lecture halls in mere seconds if he found something really hilarious. No matter how angry or sad she was, if Bobby found something that tickled him, she inevitably found herself laughing along. “Shorty’s so–mm, he’s just so yummy!” He was almost in hysterics at this point, and although it was the last thing on Earth that she wanted to be doing, she felt her shoulders start to shake a little, as well. Then a smile was fighting the frown of her face. Before she knew it, Bobby was saying, “Think about all those yummy babies you’re missing out on!” and they were both doubled over the table, heedless to the tables next to them that were giving pointed and exasperated looks. 

She wiped a tear from under her eye. “He is yummy, you bitch. And very smart, for the record.”

“I know, I know,” he said, and waved a hand at her dismissively. “I just have to keep you humble.”

“Oh, do you?” An eye roll was locked and loaded, but he had to go and interrupt it by saying, “Oh, yeah. If you ever figure out how pretty you are, I would never get to spend any time with you.”

To say that this memory came back to her wasn’t quite accurate; she was fairly certain it hadn’t left her head since he’d said it, but she spent so much time trying to expel it that she thought she might be going insane. It had kept her up for two weeks now. They had left the restaurant and returned home as if he hadn’t even said it. If you ever figure out how pretty you are… She released her vice grip on Bobby’s arm and turned on him. 

“Why do you do that?” she cried. Her voice came out weaker and more wounded than she’d intended. She realized that they were standing in the middle of the street outside the store and pulled Bobby and his shopping bags back up onto the deserted sidewalk. The look of unrestrained joy had melted off his face and been replaced by sheer confusion. His lips were doing the pout-y thing again. Idiot.

“Do what?!” he demanded.

“Make fun of me because I never have a boyfriend.” It sounded dumb now, a very high school complaint for a college student to be making. “You always laugh and make jokes whenever I break up with someone or suck at talking to them, and you always rub it in my face when we get mistaken for a couple.” She sniffed and discovered that she was crying. It wasn’t much, just a few tears streaming down her cheeks and settling, salty, on her mouth. She decided not to be embarrassed by them, and to not let him make her feel embarrassed.

Bobby was aghast. “You think I’m…making fun of you?” She made a guttural noise in the back of her throat.

“I know you’re making fun of me, Bobby. You get so happy that people think we’re together, because of course you’re the only guy I could possibly sustain a relationship wi–”

“You are so stupid.”

She had gotten all revved up, and he’d gone and ruined it again. “What the hell did you just say?” Bobby was staring at her like she’d just insisted that nine plus ten equals twenty-one. His thick brows were drawn together.

“You can’t think of any reason, other than some horrible and malicious intent, that I might be happy someone thought we were dating? Like, oh, I don’t know, flattery, maybe? That someone thinks I could land a girl like you?”

No less than thirty cars had whipped past them on the busy street they stood in front of before she could form thoughts again. Oh, he isn’t making fun of me. He just likes people thinking I’m his girlfriend. Alright.

Alright. That’s fine. “Don’t call me stupid,” she muttered stupidly. Then he was hugging her, and it was warm and really nice and his arms fit into the contours of her body like they were made for it. 

“I’m sorry,” he said to her hair, “that it seemed like I was making fun of you. I think I might be passive aggressive even when I’m not angry.”

“Passive regressive,” she replied, still completely dumbfounded but refusing to let Bobby Moch have the last word. “You child.” He smelled like the cologne she’d bought him for his birthday, plus a little bit of the cupcake store they’d been in prior to the clothing one.

“Ah, see, you’re fine,” and Bobby released her to smack her gently on the forehead and wipe the tear tracks away from her cheeks with both his thumbs. They started walking back in the direction that they’d come from, weaving in and out of stores and window-shopping to Bobby’s heart’s content. As was starting to become a pattern, she noted, they didn’t talk about what he’d said. And really, when she considered each word carefully, all he’d meant was that it was nice to be mistaken as anyone’s boyfriend. He didn’t have much time for dating either, between crew practice and his pre-law course load. That’s what he’d meant. 

And calling her pretty? He had obviously just been trying to win her over after laughing at her. The flattery seemed transparent in retrospect. Now that she considered it all in conjunction, the conclusions were so undeniable, she couldn’t believe that she’d been losing sleep over it all.

That night, while she layed in bed, ready for a night free from overthinking, she admitted to herself that she wanted to kiss Bobby. She rolled over, grabbed her phone off the nightstand, and texted Shorty.