╰☆╮Sel╰☆╮

“Shut up.” The teasing comment gets your attention, and your hand reaches out to grab the faded pair from his grip. Even under the low light of the television, he can still make out your disgruntled expression, with your eyebrows furrowed and a blob of spot cream still sitting by your chin; there's a matching patch of it on Liam's own forehead from where he’d stood at your bedroom door earlier begging for that ‘weird magic cream’, annoyed that a rare blemish had appeared after years of being spoiled with clear skin. “Mind your business.” 

“Wear your pink ones.” Liam shrugs, giving his unsolicited advice since you always seem to ask for it when you have a date coming up; suddenly insisting he could dissect the true meaning behind the voicemails left on the answering machine by your ‘boyfriend-not-boyfriend’ because he had the advantage of ‘speaking boy’, unlike the majority of your other friends who were girls in serious long-term relationships who were now looking to move in with their sensible boyfriends.

“Vague.” Dipping your hand into the packet of sweets you’d bought on your way home from work, you scoff. Though you’d both adopted each other's mannerisms and vocabulary from being around one another so much, you still had to remind Liam that it didn’t mean you could also read his mind, and that he actually had to explain what he was talking about instead of automatically assuming you were on the same page. 

“The frilly ones.” They’d been burnt into his brain from the moment your summer dress had blown up at the park, when he’d graciously spent most of the afternoon holding the hem down whenever you bent over to wipe the grass off your knees; the image of the pink cotton stretched over your backside would pop up at the worst times, like a recurring intrusive thought that never failed to make him shift in his seat. “The ones with lace, or whatever it’s fuckin’ called.”

“Yeah, it’s lace. Here, have the last red one.” Unbothered by the conversation, you hold the sweet out for Liam to grab it between his teeth. Though he’d only mentioned it once in passing when you first started living together for the sake of making small talk, you never failed to remember that the red and purple sweets were his favourites, and ever since, you’d formed the habit of saving them just for him. 

wednesday

Liam knows it could be considered strange, and that the average person might feel some sense of humiliation or guilt about doing such a thing, though in his mind, it just seemed like the next logical step. He’d compartmentalised it as a sort of natural progression, inevitable considering your shared closeness, so logically, at least in Liam’s world, wanking to the thought of you wasn’t the most far-fetched idea.

It had all started so domestically, trudging into the bathroom and tutting at the cluttered mess you’d left, scanning over the products littering the countertop and kicking a pile of clothes out of the way; the outfit you’d presumably worn on your date sitting there like you’d melted and left it in your wake, with your knickers, the ones he’d suggested you wear, laying against the bathmat in all their pink glory.

At first, he doesn’t think twice about it and reaches for his toothbrush, putting all his energy into squeezing toothpaste from the tube because it had all solidified where he’d forgotten to put the cap on. While he’s brushing his gums, he finds himself looking again, noticing the way your slick has made the fabric a few shades darker, and though all he can taste is mint, he starts wondering what the material would feel like pressed up against his tongue. 

Suddenly twitching in his trousers, and too exhausted to go through the rigmarole of being hard and trying to come, he quickly picks up the bottle of face wash sitting by the sink and tries to focus on reading the instructions for some semblance of a distraction. He goes over the same line again and again, something about stripping oil from pores, but all he can think about is the mess he’d make between your thighs; the filthy mixture of his saliva and your arousal that would coat his lips like that shiny lip gloss he sometimes sees you reapplying in the mirror. 

Thudding the bottle down, Liam prematurely spits his toothpaste into the sink, running the water and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then, like he was relieving an itch he’d been desperate to scratch, he leans down to pick them up off the floor. Although he’s sure it’s probably more his overactive imagination than anything else, he swears they still feel warm against his fingers, like how you always seem to radiate heat whenever he presses his face into your neck to fall asleep against your shoulder. 

Bringing them up to his mouth, he experimentally grazes his teeth against the lace on the sides, biting down. He wonders if that would turn you on, if someone pulling your knickers down with their teeth would appear in the fantasies you probably conjure up while trying to get off; there’d been a handful of times when he’d heard your whimpers through the wall and tried to fall back asleep, ignoring your whines in favour of snoring with his cheek squished against the pillow. 

He sighs, moving hastily to undo the button of his jeans and pull down the waistband of his boxers as though he had no other choice but to touch himself. Saliva still minty from the toothpaste, he collects some of it against the roof of his mouth and watches the glob of spit fall lewdly into the middle of his palm. An unintentional moan leaves the back of his throat, all guttural like it’d been sitting there in his chest forever: “Shit.”

Trying to multitask, he strokes himself and lets his tongue dart out, almost kissing the cotton material the same way he always pecks the top of your head when he says ‘thank you’. Truthfully, he could never imagine actually kissing you properly; that would seem like too far, though the thought of bending you over or falling asleep without pulling out filled him with an alarming sense of ease, as though it were just an extension of you both cuddling on the sofa or sitting on his knee when there were no more chairs left. 

“So wet.” He mumbles out loud, to no one but himself and the bathroom tiles, as the line between fantasy and reality blurs with the pleasure: imagining your face scrunching up as he bottoms out, embarrassed by the filthy skin slapping noises as he reassures you that it’s just him, the same old Liam who skips and does roly-polys with you in the street when you’ve had to much to drink, and who had looked after when you ill with the flu and had to vomit every twenty minutes. 

Grabbing the side of the countertop to steady himself, his whimpers are muffled by your underwear being between his teeth and hanging from his mouth like a puppy that’s refusing to drop its favourite chew toy. It’s borderline shameful how quickly he’s finishing, thinking about coming all over your stomach and watching it drip down by your belly button. His chest heaves like he’s been running on a treadmill, and before he can stop it, he’s coming, and out of habit, he instinctively wipes the mess away with the nearest thing, this time it being your knickers.

“Ah, fuck.” Liam swears under his breath, staring at the sticky mess he’d made and suddenly wondering how on earth he’d be able to get the stains out without you growing suspicious. Illogically, his first thought is to look for the label; if he finds out where you’d bought them, surely he could go and get the exact same pair tomorrow to replace these, as if nothing had happened. Yet, despite his vigorous searching, he finds nothing. “Fuck sake.”

Hair still clinging to his sweaty forehead and with the zipper of his jeans still undone, Liam hurries to wash the material under the sink, trying to copy what he’d seen you do to try to get period stains out; hurriedly pumping the hand soap and rubbing the fabric together under cold water. Finally, he hooks them over the towel rail to dry, and for the first time in his life, Liam finds himself cursing the fact that he wasn’t doing the laundry two weeks in a row. 

thursday

“Got one.” Grinning proudly like he’s holding up a gold medal on sports day, Liam displays the foil packaging between his thumb and index finger, letting his bedroom door fall shut behind him. In the morning, he’d add condoms to the long list of things he needed to buy when he next went to the supermarket, along with more of your favourite cereal because he’d finished the last of it that morning without asking.

“Thank god.” She sighs, looking up at him as though he were a hero from an old fairytale story returning from a long mission, when in fact, he’d just stomped into your bedroom and rummaged through your bedside drawer, shoving past the half-empty packets of ibuprofen and the vibrator you pretend you don’t own, before a box of them gleamed up at him like a prayer being answered. 

“C’mere.” Crawling back onto his unmade bed, Liam pulls her in for another kiss. In the taxi on the way back from the pub, and while tumbling through the front door with all the grace of a baby elephant, Liam had tried to explain to her why he was a famous rockstar still living in a flat above a corner shop, though luckily, his nonsensical explanations were muffled by her tongue being in his mouth, smearing mauve lipstick all the way down his chin.

“You smell of shampoo.” She comments, and with his nose pressed up against her throat, he can feel the vibration of her words. Truthfully, they’d been in this exact same position from the moment they’d been introduced by a mutual friend, with an obligatory joke about the cliché of a model hooking up with a rockstar; Liam’s face had been buried by her ear, flirtatiously toying with her dangly earrings and kissing her neck until they decided to get a cab and go to his place. “It’s like coconut or something.”

“Stole my flatmates.” Resting his chin against the zipper of her denim skirt, he can feel her perfectly manicured nails digging into his scalp. To your face, Liam pretends as though he would never do such a thing as use your shampoo, or your body wash, or your expensive face cream, though you’d always counteract him with the fact that everything was mysteriously running out twice as fast, and that it certainly wasn’t the work of ‘ghosts’, like he would sometimes imply with a disinterested shrug.

“You’re so cute.” Though the compliment feels nice coming from someone who had been on the cover of at least three fashion magazines in the past month, it still feels hollow in comparison to the way you use the same phrase; hearing you utter it when you saw him with a face mask smeared all over his cheeks, or with his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in concentration when he was cutting up vegetables for dinner, always seemed undoubtedly sincere.

“Fuckin’ hell.” There, under the dim glow of his bedroom lamp, Liam feels like the universe is both working for and against him. Pulling up her designer skirt, he’s met with a pair of knickers that look eerily similar to ones that have been driving him borderline mad for the past forty-eight hours; if he really tried, he's sure he could almost convince himself they were exactly the same as yours, despite the shade of pink and the lace being slightly different. “Can you keep these on?”

“I mean, yeah. If you want to.” With her shiny hair spread out over his pillows, Liam finally recognises her from that famous swimsuit advert he’d seen in Times Square while the band were playing in New York; something he maybe would’ve realised earlier if he’d been concentrating properly, and not putting all his attention towards nibbling at her neck and silently wondering if it was too late to call the flat and ask if you’d changed your mind about not coming out to drink.

us?” liam’s voice was incredulous as he gestured between him and andy.

“yeah,” you answered, a small giggle as you looked between the two.

andy was red as liam’s eyes flickered down to his mouth before scoffing.

“fuck off,” he said, laughing.

“c’mon!” you pleaded, laughing still at the look on both their faces.

“would be a bit weird, wouldn’t it?” andy asked, unable to even look at liam.

you shrug, taking a sip of your drink.

“i’ve kissed all my friends,” you answer simply.

“all?” liam and andy guffawed.

“most,” you shrug again, smiling.

“why the fuck—“ liam started, before breaking himself off, shaking his head.

“for fun,”

andy swears, liam’s stare is pointed.

“olivia?”

you nod.

“lace?”

another nod.

“fucking hell….. s’kinda hot,” liam admits sheepishly. andy laughs but bites his lip in shame when you look at him.

“i know,” you answer smugly, pointedly.

liam takes another sip of his drink, a drop spilling down his jaw. you notice andy’s eyes following it, suppress a smirk at his obvious attraction to liam. you couldn’t blame him. liam was the most gorgeous man you’d ever met. his hair was dark against his skin, his blue eyes arresting in contrast to his constantly pink lips. his mouth was like a woman’s you’d always thought. plump and pink and begging to be kissed.

you’d all been friends for years now. you and liam had been silently sleeping together for the last year. it was casual; that much you’d both agreed on. privately, though, you hadn’t been with anyone else and you hoped the same for him.

tonight, you were at the birthday party of a mutual friend in primrose hill.

some time in, you three had wandered upstairs, finding a private room to lounge in and share a spliff without having to share with anyone else.

you were all three in a circle on the floor, you on you tummy, propped up on your elbows. liam and andy were sprawled on their sides.

from up here, you could hear the muffled bass of music, random shouts, the unmistakable smell of weed permeating every inch of the house.

your limbs were warm and languid, you were laying on your belly, perched on your elbows. across from you, andy and liam laid on their sides, the forgotten joint in front of you all.

you giggle a little at the sudden tension in the room.

you’d dared liam and andy to snog: an idea that had sprung in your mind on your way up the stairs, past a couple who were passionately swapping spit.

liam groans at your snickering.

“what now?”

“s’nothing. jus didn’t realize you two were so square,” you teased, aiming to rile them up.

“are we fuck!” liam exclaimed, coming to sit up straight.

“jus’ don’t wanna snog my fuckin’ mate. that doesn’t make me square,”

“if you say so,” you say, taking another sip of your watered down drink.

“andy, c’mon. back me up,”

andy’s still red. he shrugs.

“i can kiss andy and it wouldn’t be weird,” you say.

both their heads whip to you in disbelief.

“wouldn’t mean we fancy each other. right, andy?”

he nods, a little dazed.

liam’s looking between you two— jealousy and desire coursing through him.

“c’mon,” you beckon andy to you, sitting before him.

he sits up, his lips are red and slick from his drink. his eyes are heavy-lidded and stuck on your mouth.

you lean in, lightly cupping his jaw, and brush your lips against his. he’s nervous, you can tell, but once your lips find his, he melts into you.

he kisses slow, letting you meld your mouth to his. you slip your free hand under his shirt, slipping your tongue into andy’s mouth when he gasps.

you smile into the kiss, feel andy’s hands come to rest on your waist. then you pull away, turning to liam.

his face is inscrutable. his pupils take over his usually blue eyes, darkening them. his mouth is parted. his breathing is shallow.

you turn back to andy, see him staring at liam too.

“what’d ya think, andy? rate me outta ten,” you smile, cheekily.

he laughs, still dazed. high.

“ten,” he breathes easily.

you two share a laugh, spurring liam’s jealousy more.

“feeling left out?” you tease.

liam reluctantly nods.

you smirk, gesturing to andy with a quirked brow.

“but why’s get to kiss you and i’ve gotta kiss a bloke?” he whines.

“c’mon. andy’s so pretty, he’s nearly a girl anyways,” you joke, “or do you jus’ wanna kiss me, li?”

liam flushes red to the tips of his ears at your accusation. andy doesn’t know about the two of you.

liam takes a chug of his drink and scoots toward andy.

quick as a flash, liam pecks andy, turning to you with a scowl when you start booing.

“come onnnnn,” you moan.

liam faces andy, tentatively grabbing his jaw and leaning in slowly.

heat pools in your belly as you watch their lips connect slowly, languidly. andy’s hands come to push him forward, leaning deeper into liam’s kiss.

liam’s mouth parts, his tongue forcing itself into andy’s mouth. you’re not sure if the whimper comes from you or andy. the sounds are obscene, the heavy breathing from everyone, the smack of their swollen lips against each other.

so caught up in the moment, the boys are fisting each other’s shirts, only breaking apart once you’ve cleared your throat, some intoxicating cocktail of desire and jealousy forcing you to break them apart.

they turn to you, lips swollen, chests heaving.

you smile, a little breathless.

“well?”

they move apart suddenly, both trying to adjust their clothes to reveal the hard on’s you’re sure you spotted.

“s’alright,” liam says, turning to andy who nods.

“alright?” you smirk, unconvinced.

the boys nod.

you hum, moving to stand.

“where ‘re you goin?” liam asks nervously.

“downstairs,” you say heading to the door, shaking your empty glass. you pause at the door, turn over your shoulder, “plus three’s a crowd,” you smirk.