Fantasy and Putts - t.h. series [18+]

Meta-Fore of Love - part three *

words » 17.3k

warnings » Tom is tired and indisposed from his trip ; light angst and jealousy filling the air ; smut: angry making out in a maintenance closet, angry sex in the living room, possessive!Tom behaviour, fingering, mouth fucking, butt slapping, pussy slapping

~ ⛳️ ~

The glass is littered with the millions of drops of rain that have poured throughout the day. The clouds have only grown darker and darker as the hours went by. Right now, they're painted of a dreary gray as you eat pieces of dry fruit with a grumpy pout on your face.

You're sitting in the armchair by the big window to the balcony, watching the last rays of daylight filter through a rift in the clouds. There wasn't much you could do all day given that any outdoor activity was as doomed as the weather. Aside from leaving the flat in a heavy windbreaker to go to the job interview at the Toasty Den — which was postponed a day at the request of Mr. Crawford, the manager of the pub, but you think it went alright enough — you've been sulking from boredom. It was one of those days again, when you want to do something so bad but have no disposition to decide what or where or how, so you've been moving from seat to seat trying to keep your head empty and prevent the crumbling of your mood.

With a sigh, you cross your arms over your chest and try to cross your legs without the empty bowl on your lap falling to the floor. You must have eaten at least a dozen bowls of veggie sticks and fruit as you had zero patience to cook today, but you're officially full by now.

Your ears perk up when you hear something that resembles the lock on the front door. It's almost too bad it doesn't creak when it opens, but you let your heart pick up its pace at the sound of a voice coming inside.

"Seems like we came back to an empty flat, bro."

That's Tom, of that you have no doubt, so you uncross your legs and get up from the chair in one go. The bowl drops to the floor when you move. You don't even bother to put on your slippers as you bolt towards the door.

"Hey!" you greet him, unbothered to hide the big grin that nearly rips your face into two. You had a feeling that half of your mood was due to the fact that Tom was about to come home and you'd had no sign of him for hours.

"There she is," he says, carelessly putting down the shoulder bag he's holding and taking a step further.

There's a millisecond where neither of you moves, probably in fear of crashing into one another, but with a childish little jump, you finally wrap your arms around him. You don't even bother to contain your excitement. It was a horrid rainy day and this little ray of happiness was finally due, so you let him twirl you into his arms and accept his welcome-me-home kiss. Your forehead bumps against the cap he's wearing, and your lips don't really line up, but with a small tilt of your head to the side and a small tug on his hat, you kiss him fully on the mouth and welcome the taste of spearmint you haven't inhaled in so many days.

"Thanks, no worries, we got this," Harry says dryly from somewhere outside the flat. Seconds later, he comes in dragging Tom's luggage with his twin brother Sam in tow.

"Sorry, twins," you mutter after a quick peck on Tom's lips. He squeezes you into his side before letting go as you move the bags to the side and welcome them inside with big hugs, too.

While they lock the door, you turn to Tom. He's still stuck in the very same spot, gazing at you with an odd speck of anticipation on his face.

"What?" you ask, standing there with both hands holding his bags so he doesn't have to carry them inside after a long flight.

Tom smiles and grabs the bill of his cap. With a small breath, he removes it and throws it onto the shoe rack against the wall. You focus on that movement for no reason, but when you look back at Tom, he's got a cocky smirk and still the same look of anticipation.

It's when you look up that you get what he's trying to tell you.

The bags in your hands drop back to the floor.

It's his hair. All those inches of hair he let grow out in the few weeks prior to his vacation are gone now.

"I swear you had hair before you went to bed," you say.

"Well, it's summertime, and I like it."

"Tell her what really happened, loser," Harry says in a sand-like tone. Tom sends him a you really had to bring that up look, but his brother only stomps away towards the living room. Sam pats Tom's shoulder condescendingly and follows his twin.

"What happened?"

"I hate you," Tom says in sing-song, leaning to the side to look over your shoulder. When he straightens up, he adds, "I had a bit of an accident this morning. With sauce."

"And toothpaste," one of the twins yells from a distance.

"You shaved your head because of sauce... and toothpaste?"

"Yeah!" he exclaims, grabbing his larger piece of luggage and tugging on your hand. You pick up the shoulder bag from the floor and trek after him as he explains, "If it had been only the toothpaste, I would've let it go, but it was twice. In a matter of minutes. So I took it as a sign and solved the problem myself."

"And guess what?" he asks after he puts down the bag next to the couch. That same hand goes up to his head to rub his scalp from front to back. "No more accidents since."

"Oh, well," you say, approaching him with small steps. You lift a hand, but put it down before it gets past your shoulder. It recoils against your chest while you blink and keep appreciating his haircut that you have missed.

"You can touch it if you want," he says with a smirk. You can't contain a giggle in response.

"Yay." You run a palm on the side of his head. The spiky hairs prickle your skin just the way you remember they did when he came back home with this same haircut the last time. "I do like it."

"See?" Tom spits at his brothers as though they had had any doubts that the buzzcut would be anything other than a success.

"And I'm having thoughts," you say, grinning at him, hand running across the side of his head and twirling the top of his ear before it crawls to the back and holds him there.

The only thing you're actively thinking about is how your mood has definitely improved. It doesn't matter if nothing happens tonight because you can tell that Tom's priorities right now are rest first, shenanigans later, but the idea crosses your mind. And you have a feeling it's in his, too.

"Guess that's our cue to leave," Harry claims. He slaps his twin's shoulder on the way up like he's scared Sam won't even move. He does, though, practically at the same time.

"I'm surprised you even came round," you say as you turn to them. "Thought you'd want to go straight to your parents' given the, y'know, seventeen hours flight and all that."

"That was the plan," Harry tells you, scratching at the slight stubble under his chin, "but Tom wouldn't shut up about coming here first. So here we are."

"Are you staying?"

"No way," Sam blurts out. You chuckle at how fast that answer came out of him. "I want a proper bath. And my bed. Can't wait to see my bloody pillow again."

"Can't say I blame you," you say with a click of your tongue, following them to the door to see them out. "A flight that long isn't for the faint of heart."

"And flying first class doesn't mean it doesn't suck," Harry adds. "See ya later, bro."

After escorting them out politely, you go back to the living room and find Tom still standing there. He's turned to you, waiting, and he says, "So... What kind of thoughts?"

With a giggle, you trickle your fingers excitedly over the back curve of Tom's head, spreading a tickling sensation from your palm up your arm. It turns into a shiver once it gets past your shoulder. Then you say, "I'll show you later. Rest first."

"Shower first," Tom says at the same time before you both giggle in unison and lean forward at the same time, too. You end up in his embrace again, mouths together, tongues increasingly eager, while both of his arms rest around your waist and yours draw around his shoulders.

The kiss lasts a while despite the pungent airplane smell he's carrying. You cradle the side of his head now and pull away to say, "We should get some food into you, don't you think?"

He only shrugs, but you insist, so you grab your phone to order some dinner. With home delivery, this time. Until it gets here, you order him to go get that shower he so desperately wanted while you unload some of his luggage back into his room. When he's ready, you stay cozy on the couch, his legs over your lap and his arms tight around you, feeding kisses into each other's mouths as he tells the whole story of how his brother Harry ended up shaving his head in the airport restroom before their flight. You... don't even want to imagine the mess it was.

It doesn't take long before you have to go open the door for the delivery person, who hands you a delicious-smelling bag with two boxes of food that Tom let you choose. Something light but rich in protein and vegetables. Yet when you trudge back into the living room, he's already asleep with his elbow on the arm of the couch and his head in his palm.

"Hey," you whisper, crouched in front of him after leaving the bag on the coffee table. "Sleep or food?"

Tom takes a deep inhale and says, "Sleep. Definitely sleep."

"Alright, we can do that," you agree, slapping your hands softly on your thighs and getting up. "But I'm gonna make you some tea so you won't sleep on an empty stomach. Does that sound good?"

You're talking as you make your way to the kitchen, and when you look over your shoulder, Tom is straightening up and yawning while trying to agree to your plan of tea and sleep. Eventually, he walks after you with slow, heavy steps and sits at the table right as the kettle clicks to a stop.

As you wait for the water to cool, you approach him with every intention to sit next to him and chat to keep him awake, but before you can, Tom grabs you by the hips and leans his head against your belly. So you stand there, him sitting on the chair, with your hand on the crown of his head as he relaxes with his eyes closed.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he says in a low voice. "Missed you a lot."

"It was like, twelve days," you reason with him. You sort of chuckle at what he said, but it's only because you don't want to admit how weird the past days were without him around.

"Are you saying you didn't miss me?" Tom pouts at you, eyes barely open but still gazing up into yours.

"No, of course I did," you try to soothe him, caressing your palm across the back of his head and down his neck, fingertips trickling under the collar of his t-shirt. "But usually you're away from home for much longer than that."

"Yeah, I guess it's different this time," he says rather mysteriously. His mouth clamps shut right away as though he doesn't want to say something he doesn't mean.

"Why is it different?"

Tom is silent for a long time, only sighing into your stomach as one of his hands caresses the side of your hip. The other one is resting against your belly, right in front of his nose. Then he says, "Just is."

You're not sure what it means, but he must be too tired to have that conversation now. He probably doesn't even mean any of that. It could be his exhaustion talking, so you shrug it off and ask his permission to step out of his embrace and prep the tea.

As you're helping him into bed later, Tom pulls on your hand before you turn to leave and croaks, "Sleep in here?"

This isn't an odd request at all. Tom knows perfectly well how much you love the smell of his room even when he isn't there. He knows how you've napped in here several times just to feel like you weren't home alone, how you sometimes just keep the bedroom door open to pretend that someone's around.

Not to mention that he's always like this when he comes back home after however long he spent away. It used to be much longer periods of time due to his work, but apparently something else might be at play this time. You don't mull on it too much given that you have no idea what's going on in his head. And well, because you can't help but love his clingy moods. It could be after two weeks or two months, he'd always throw a few pouts and whines to get what he wanted. And of course you would oblige.

"Of course," you smile gently at him, interlacing your fingers together. "Let me just get some food and then I'll come join you later."

"Mhmm." Tom hums, but you can tell he's asleep way before his arm falls back on the mattress.

Later, after eating your portion of dinner and sorting out the kitchen and other chores, you try to slide into bed without bothering Tom, but it's impossible to achieve that. Thankfully, he only mutters gibberish in his sleep and turns to the other side, so you're free to stretch your body behind him and cuddle against his back.

Sleeping with his warmth next to you after twelve days feels better than you had ever rationalized, but you fight that feeling to the side. You watch the starry night through the blinds-less window, thinking of him saying "Just is" at how this night is different from any other time he came back home after staying away. You push away the memory, though. Instead, you inhale the soft aroma from the back of his ear and let your heartbeat lull you to sleep.

∗

In the morning, the whole flat is quiet when you leave Tom's room. He's sleeping peacefully right now, after a long night of shuffling around and complaining about his stomach, so you close the door on your way out and let him stay behind.

You get ready in slow mode because you have no idea what you're going to do today. The plan had been to enjoy Tom's company, but that is not happening since he may not be up for a long time. So you suppose it's going to be a day to make stray decisions as the hours go by.

The sounds of the busy street outside lead the way, though you're moving much slower than anybody out there, you're sure of it.

On your way from the kitchen into your room to get dressed, a door opens loudly. You get pretty much the scare of your life and you inhale to chastise someone, but you control yourself upon the sight of Tom. He's dragging his feet and in the middle of a wide yawn, a hand scratching one of the buzzed sides of his head, the other hanging loosely down his side.

"Good morning, princess," you say playfully, but Tom looks at you in a completely different mood. "Feeling better?"

"Not really," Tom says, muffled by another yawn. "Stomach is still acting up. I was feeling a little ill yesterday before our flight, but thought all I needed was a few hours of sleep." He shrugs and stops in front of the bathroom. "Guess I was wrong."

"Hopefully, you're just tired," you reassure him with a hand softly on his elbow. "You did say the trip from your hotel to the airport was a little rough, so maybe it's because of that."

"Yeah. Hope so." Tom blinks. "What are you doing today?"

You shrug in response. "No plans, but I need to think of something for my video next week, so maybe that. I don't know. Doesn't matter."

"Sorry I won't be able to—"

"What?" You chuckle. "Shut up. You're sick, it's not like you can help it. You should get some more sleep. Do you want me to bring you some food? It's been a long time, so you should probably eat something, y'know?"

"Maybe later," he says, opening the door to the bathroom. "Is Harrison home yet?"

"Yes, I heard him come home last night, but I don't know where he is right now."

Tom disappears into the bathroom, the door left ajar in his wake, and you peek inside to ask, "Hey, I know you said no food, but... how 'bout a cup of tea?"

∗

You don't hear from either of your roommates for the remainder of the morning, so you stay in your room doing research for the next video for your channel. Harrison does stop by around lunch time and helps you prepare an omelet salad. He insists that he doesn't have time to eat with you, but you tilt your head at him, saying, "We didn't make all of this food just for myself, Harry."

With a chuckle, he says, "Fiiine," and rolls his eyes, but ends up sitting with you and sharing the big bowl of green salad, egg, veggies and sour cream dressing alongside the leftovers from last night's dinner. He asks about your job hunting business, then tells you about his new job that has left him in such a hurry since he has to drive a couple of hours to get to the place where he'll be shooting for half a day.

"Which means that I'll be out of town until tomorrow," he finishes with a chuckle. "I'll text you when I'm on the way back so you can open the windows for a couple of hours."

"Why would I do that," you giggle.

"To cleanse the flat from the smell of all the sex you'll be having."

"Oh shut up, will you," you scoff. Grabbing a forkful of egg and radish and dipping it in the sour cream dressing, you add, "It seems like Tom's gonna be sleeping the day away, so you're safe."

"Am I supposed to believe that's gonna stop you?"

"God, Harrison, that's vile," you say, punching him lightly in the shoulder.

"Thanks." He smiles at you funnily before putting some food into his mouth. You fake-punch him again for good measure, but he doesn't whine about it. Instead, he asks, "How are things between the two of you by the way?"

You blink at him twice. "What things?"

"Just... things, I guess. I would've thought you would at least admit you want something more."

"What?"

"You don't?"

"I don't know..." You hesitate, but your head is a complete blank.

"Then I suppose you should try and figure that out first before you end up, like, in a loop or something."

"A loop?"

You're the one who's totally out of the loop at this point. Nothing of what Harrison is saying makes sense.

"Yeah, I mean, do you really think this sex zone deal you two have going on will be healthy in the long run? Like, you're always together when you're both home, you already sleep in the same bed most nights, and then when one of you goes away, you both get in this mood that I just, I don't know, there isn't a proper name for it, I don't think. It's odd. And kinda painful in a way. And, and, I don't know, but like—" He sighs a little after his impromptu rant. "Hey, maybe I'm wrong, y'know?"

"Do you... know something I don't know?" you ask, looking down at your hands as they play with the corners of your napkin.

"C'mon, y/n," Harrison chuckles, "I know a lot of things you don't know." Once again, he seems to be very certain of what he's saying and yet you have no clue about what it could possibly be. He's obviously talking about Tom and the possibility that you may have feelings for him, which sounds oddly specific at this point, but then he adds, "It's not a very big flat, y'know?"

"What the hell does that mean?"

Harrison chuckles and eats a couple of lentils. "Nothing! I just," he pauses, wiping his lips together. "I could swear that something has been brewing between the two of you, though. Something more significant than sticking things into other things. Ugh, can't believe I just said that."

You try to laugh at what he says, but it comes out as stammered little puffs of air instead. "You're nuts."

He shrugs. "Sure."

You gulp, staring at him in silence. His expression doesn't give anything away, but his eyes are sort of boring into yours until they become so intimidating that you have to glance away.

"Look, I have to go," Harrison says, getting up from his seat with both hands flat across the table. Then he points at his plate. "Sorry to leave you with this mess in your hands, but I told you I shouldn't have stayed for lunch."

"It's fine, don't worry," you say with a big smile again. "Go bewitch your fans with your lovely blue eyes."

"Oh, that's already done, love." He clicks his tongue and makes a cocky gesture before turning on his heels and dashing out the door.

∗

You're left ruminating on Harrison's words after he leaves. What eats you up the most is that he likely knows things about Tom that you have no clue about. Things about his views on this situationship you've had going on in your flat for months. Things about himself, probably even things about you.

The main question in your mind is obviously whether the tugging in your chest when Tom's gone — even now, despite the fact that he's only in the bedroom sleeping his jet lag off — is more than just your sex drive talking.

You know you're comfortable with your current benefits deal even if it leaves you pining like stupid over him when he isn't around. The last days without him felt too damn long whenever you weren't busy. You remember finding yourself craving a text from him when you woke up in the morning, only to step down on your expectations when there wasn't one. And clearly the most exciting moments of the past week and a half were whenever he video called, just the two of you or with the whole gang. It didn't matter as long as you could hear his charming laugh.

That's probably the mood Harrison mentioned, too. But was he implying that Tom got in a similar mood when he wasn't home?

The answer to that question is never going to be revealed to you unless you ask. So after having this thought going round and round in your head for hours, you convince yourself that maybe you should talk to him. It doesn't matter if you don't come to a proper conclusion, but at least you think it's fair that he knows how much you really miss him when he's gone.

It totally sucks that you were never really good at this figuring out if someone likes you thing. Most of the time you have the impression that it's pure wishful thinking projecting onto what you read of their actions and words. Yet sometimes, if you think about it really, really carefully, you get that typical swoopy feeling in your gut when you look at someone and you could swear they like you a little. You just wish there was a way you could know for sure without having to talk about it, but there isn't one, so you brace yourself for what might come of it.

Sadly, you don't get a chance to talk about it just yet. Because when Tom wakes up, he's in a very, very unwelcoming mood. He complains of a stomach ache and a fuzzy head, so you make him some tea and keep him silent company as he drinks it. He goes back to bed right after that, and that's pretty much your routine the rest of the day. He wakes up, you make him tea, he goes back to bed. You keep chastising him to eat some proper food whenever you hear him dragging his feet across the hall, but he refuses to every single time.

You end up sleeping in his bed again tonight. It feels good to be back to old habits. He does keep waking up in the middle of the night, stirring you awake in the process, but you help him cater to his aching tummy no matter how often you have to get out of bed.

In the morning, things seem a little better after he sleeps for six hours straight. No bathroom breaks whatsoever. You think that's good, so you focus on your morning chores. You have put them on hold for long enough, you think.

It's around lunch time that Tom comes into the kitchen rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He doesn't complain of anything now, so you continue happily prepping your pasta salad for lunch. His pout when he notices you peppering the last bits of radish into the bowl is too funny.

In the end, he doesn't eat with you. He only sits there at the table chatting to you about your day even though it was so uneventful, and eventually about your channel that you've been slacking on given your lack of inspiration to create any content. Also from the lack of time due to your recent job hunting efforts, but Tom's face drops brutally when you mention it, so you don't bring it up again.

Hours later, just as the sun is setting behind thin clouds through the glass of the big window to the balcony, he joins you in the living room and sits with you while you rewatch the first season of Shameless. You tried doing some work before, but your mind kept showing you either Tom's woozy expression or Harrison's questioning gaze, so you gave up on it entirely.

By the third episode, Tom gets up saying he has to go to the bathroom, which makes sense given all the tea he has drunk since he got back home two days ago. He's been lying on the couch while you occupy the armchair next to it, and now he approaches you and presses both hands on the cushioned arm of your seat.

"Sorry I pretty much ruined your day," he says, leaning to place a kiss on the top of your head.

"C'mon, Tom, it's Shameless. How does that ruin anything?"

Tom smiles lopsidedly and drapes a hand around the back of your neck, pulling you into the first kiss of the day. He barely pecks your mouth with his spread lips when he pulls back with a scrunched-up brow and whines, "I forgot about the radish..."

You can't help but laugh at him, kissing his cheek instead so as not to bother him with the one vegetable he seems to hate. "I thought you didn't mind it that much when you're tasting it in my mouth."

"Hmm, using my own damn words against me," Tom says as he straightens up and starts walking away.

"Well, I hate to say it—"

"Then don't," Tom cuts you off, giving you the finger over his shoulder as he totters towards the hallway.

Thankfully, his mood keeps only improving when he comes back. He even lets you feed him some pieces of fruit as a before dinner snack. In return, you let him choose his favorite episode to rewatch while you cuddle together on the couch.

When the final credits start rolling, you look down at your lap and smile at Tom. He has his head over your legs and you've been running your nails over his buzzed hair.

"Why do you keep rubbing my head?" Tom asks into your thigh, voice a little muffled. You retreat your hand right away, but he pulls on it and places it back on his head. "I don't want you to stop, I'm just curious."

"I don't know," you decide to joke, caressing all the way from his temple towards the back of his neck, your pinky finger tracing along the edge of his ear. "Maybe for good luck."

Tom chuckles. "For you or for me?"

"Mostly me, but it can be for you too if you want."

He lifts the hem of your plum-colored hoodie and blows raspberries into your belly before kissing it wetly. Then he looks up at you and says, "I have a little spidey that you could also rub."

You laugh. The only reason you haven't even mentioned that yet is because he's been jet-lagged and sick, but the only problem here might be that you haven't mentioned it yet.

Even so, you choose to play along and say, "Maybe I'll stroke it tonight, who knows."

"Not me," you both say at the same time, giggling in unison afterwards. You lean down to kiss him, but since he cranes his neck to meet you halfway, something goes wrong in his calculations and he ends up falling off the couch and hitting the floor on his back.

"Owww! I think you broke me," he complains with a grimace and a hand rubbing his side.

"Drama king," you tease with an eye-roll, getting up and extending a hand towards him to help him up. "C'mon, let's get some dinner into you."

As he gets up, Tom says, "I gotta go take a piss first."

"Again?!" You laugh.

"It's your fault!" Tom whines. "You've been giving me big cups of tea for, what, three days now? My poor bladder is kinda small, y'know?"

"Mhmm. Like you."

Tom fake-gasps and scoffs, but right after, he pulls on your hand until you're nose to nose with him and pecks your lips with a ridiculous 'mwah' noise.

"Why'd you gotta be so goofy?"

"What?" He pulls back to retort. "I'm just kissing my favorite girl."

With one last, dragged 'mmmmwah' that leaves you light-headed, Tom saunters off towards the bathroom and you stay in the middle of the living room with a stampede of elephants in your stomach. It's been a while since you've felt anything like it. These heavy butterflies are never there when Tom's away, only when he's on the phone with you or when he's home like today. There's something about his presence that makes you warm and excited and scared at the very same time.

Not wanting to dwell on any feelings right now, you bolt to the kitchen and get the kettle running. Earlier, you and Tom talked about ordering Japanese food for dinner, so it would go really well with a cup of jasmine tea, you think. He's probably going to bring up his small bladder again, but it doesn't matter. You missed that sort of banter anyway. A silly exchange of mindless quips between two who-knows-what.

Since the room is quiet and you fear that your head will go back to those troubling thoughts of whatever you feel about Tom, you hum to yourself a song you've been listening to on repeat whenever you're alone. It helps you decompress. It's an instrumental song from a soundtrack of a film that has been creating a lot of buzz online. The lack of lyrics helps you keep focused on nothing but the quiet sounds that leave your mouth.

The tea is ready shortly after and you pour it into Tom's Iron-Man mug and then into your favorite one, the color of the porcelain reminding you of everything you're trying to avoid because it matches Tom so perfectly. Shaking your head to keep that thought at bay, you grab it and start drinking right away, ignoring the burn on your tongue. As long as it keeps your head empty, it's perfectly fine.

It's all pretty much for naught once Tom waltzes back into the kitchen. You hadn't noticed before, but he looks so tiny today. Wearing a huge as heck hoodie that seems to have been stolen from someone twice his size. The hem goes way past his hip line, the sleeves rippled across his arms, the cuffs all loose from him tugging on them from either nerves or excitement or boredom, and the hood is a gigantic black hole framing his head. Way too big for him. Even his joggers are too baggy, hanging so low on his hips, you can even see the waistline peeking under the hem of his hoodie.

You sort of want to crawl inside it with him and curl up somewhere to hide the pounding of your heart that's starting to accelerate, to quiet down the sick swirling that's growing again in your gut, but you can't. You can't because Tom is approaching you with keen steps, those eyes of his boring into yours. Because he's grabbing the mug you're holding between your hands and putting it on the counter. And because he's leaning closer.

You bring a finger to his lips and say, "Radish."

"I don't care..." he says, kissing you with intent. "And I love the aftertaste of tea on your tongue," he murmurs against your mouth, showing you a crooked smile.

"Feeling better I see?" You tilt your head.

"Much better."

Tom pecks your mouth again, then dives in for a real kiss, dragging his lips over yours to let you savor every drop of his taste. You feel limb-loosed, legs like jelly, as you slump backwards against the counter. Kissing him back lazily, letting your hands run over everything you haven't touched yet since he came back home. His neck and the breadth of his shoulders down to his arms and the sides of his torso. His hands are cradling your jaw as though he fears you'll pull away when all you want, in fact, is to be able to do this the rest of the night.

You rub your thumbs over his hip bones and tuck your fingers under his hoodie, pulling up until your hands press against skin. The muscles on his belly tremble under your palms, and Tom utters a small hum of bliss.

It's the door banging in the background and a whispered "Shit!" that catch your attention. Tom's too, apparently, because he grunts and pulls back. His hands never leave your face, however.

"That's Harrison," he says, pecking your lips as your roommate moves across the flat. He doesn't stop by the kitchen, though. You find that odd since the light is on and he'd usually greet you, but judging by the noise of his steps, it sounds like he's in a hurry... or perhaps that's two pairs of steps. Huh.

You don't have the time or mind to question that now as Tom adds, "Wanna go to bed and continue this there?"

"What about dinner?"

"We can always order it later..."

You huff through a smile at his tender voice, at the crawl of his hands up your sides beneath your own jumper. His cold hands raising goosebumps on their way to your chest. And really, what else are you going to say? No, thanks? Of course not. So you nod and your forehead rests against his for a few fractions of a second.

"Yours or mine?" Tom asks.

"Do you have to ask?" You tilt your head at him.

"Mine it is, then."

"Though you should probably do something about that window. It's a little creepy," you say in regards to the fact that he hasn't put up any blinds or curtains protecting the view into his room.

"Yeah?" Tom smiles with sensuality in his gaze. "If it bothers you so much, how come you always want to sleep there?"

"It smells like you..."

"Or," he smirks. "Or you secretly want to be watched through the window. Hm? You ever thought about that?"

You smack his shoulder. "Is that why—"

Tom doesn't let you finish your question. He chuckles and collects your mouth into a couple of kisses before his hands lower to your waistline, his arm wrapping around you and pulling you tightly against his side. Just once. Then he pecks your jaw and moves away, turning around almost immediately to grab his mug and hand you yours.

The night goes on just like that. The city lights illuminating you and Tom as you lie in bed, making out for long periods of time without even taking your clothes off. Your nails swooshing across his buzzcut. His clawing at your skin. The music app on his phone as background noise rolling through an endless playlist of unknown hits that he found in his suggestions.

At some point, you chastise him when his stomach starts making loud noises. He bluntly refused to order dinner a while ago, so what you do is grab his hand and haul him into the kitchen for a late night snack. You bring the phone with you to keep you company as you work around a new recipe for cauliflower hummus that his brother Sam shared in the group chat during their holiday.

"Tortilla crisps or crackers?" he asks from under a cupboard door he's holding open with one hand.

You lose yourself in the flex of his bicep so you squeeze it with a silly honking sound effect and say, "Why only one?" You reach into the cupboard and take out both bags, opening them at the same time and nearly making a mess all over the floor.

Tom giggles and picks a tumbling crisp, dipping it in the sauce and eating it. Yet he kisses you before he starts chewing. The crisp is pushed into your mouth and his tongue tastes like cauliflower and paprika, and it's spicy, delicious and tantalizing as ever.

With two handfuls of food and a mouthful of Tom, you let him drag you back to the bedroom for the perfect late night snack.

You rush inside when the bathroom door unlocks, wanting to avoid a strange middle-of-the-night confrontation with Harrison, but you have no time to giggle about it before Tom has you pressed against the wall. The door closes and locks.

"Locked, huh?" you ask, smirking at him.

Tom doesn't say anything. He only leans in and kisses you hotly, one hand crawling up your front as the other holds the small bowl of hummus. A couple of squeezes on your sides later, his tongue battling yours in hunger, he finally pulls away. You're a little breathless, always taken aback by the ferocity of his kisses.

"Food first," you remind him when his stomach makes another angry noise.

"Mhmm," he agrees into the curve of your chin. "But then I want your thighs around my head." His body is pressed into yours, shoulders entrapping you against the wall.

"About time you asked," you tease, kissing him briefly before you launch forward. He steps back once, eyes burning all over you when you waltz closer to the bed and climb onto it, your knees first.

Tom rubs his lips together with a grunt before he joins you, fingers wrapped tightly around the bowl in his hands. He lets you feed him a few crisps and crackers in a row, all dipped in the spicy sauce, alternated with lots of kisses. In pure Tom's cheeky form, he does it with his eyes low, eyelashes fluttering, his seductive demeanor convincing you to give in.

You do so without hesitation, eventually letting him lay you on your back, food long forgotten over the duvet. Tom kisses you deeply, with passion and a whole lot of tongue, his hand exploring your front all the way down until he reaches between your legs.

"Missed this pussy," he says in a croaky whisper, rubbing with a few fingers where you've been wet all this time.

"Missed all of you," you let the words slip out when he bends to kiss your neck, dragging his lips across your skin, sucking exactly where it makes your back arch into his side.

"Yeah," he whispers, once more pursuing your mouth, "I missed you too, baby." He kisses you for a long time, sliding his hand past the waistband of your pajama shorts, over your underwear and sipping a fingertip over the edge straight to your slit. "Fuck, my favorite pussy's all wet for me."

You feel his cock twitching against your thigh. "Hungry?"

Tom only grins, stealing another kiss before he leaves thousands of tiny pecks down the center of your chest. He mouths your breasts over your jumper, pinching the nipples until they're poking through the fabric. Unsatisfied, it seems, he uncovers them and continues his sweet abuse of them directly on your skin, investing lips and tongue, sometimes even teeth.

Lost in his fervor, you moan his name over and over, trying to grab at his shoulders, but slipping from the sweat growing on your palms. So you pat continuously at his head, relishing in the itch of his growing hair.

"Love this hair," you say, holding the crown of his head, scratching your fingers on it. "So bristly. Rough. Exciting."

Tom hums around where he's suckling your left nipple and pulls away with a smack, tonguing at his lips to remove the spit that surrounds them. All with his eyes on yours. And with the most brazen smirk on his face. Without a word, he skims the buzzed head over your hardened bud, the side of your breast, one then the other, leaving little kisses and little licks as he switches from side to side. It feels like chafing skin but in the best way possible, robbing hums and whimpers of delight from your chest.

Eventually, predator eyes back on yours, he starts kissing down your belly. Your legs spread excitedly, full body craving what he's implying. Yet he tongues into your navel and changes directions, going back up instead. He kisses between your breasts, between your collar bones, wrapping his hands around the sides of your torso and squeezing softly, extracting a deeper moan from you almost against your will.

"Tom—" you whine to suppress it, but he shuts you up with a fiery kiss.

"C'mere," he says when he breaks it. You blink and watch as he puts the bowls on the bedside table and lies down next to you. "Hop on."

He pats his chest and you move immediately, climbing his body like a bull. Both thighs around his head as he had requested earlier. Watchful as he moves your knickers to the side. Tom gives you a little lick, missing all the right spots but still drafting a shiver up your spine.

For a second, you hover over his mouth without touching it, pretending to lower yourself on him but pulling away at the last second. Tom groans and looks up at you through his lashes, hunger and defiance in his gaze. His hands fly to your ass and yours to the top of his head. He pulls you down. You shove your pussy onto his face at the same time, moaning at the wet touch of his tongue.

∗

"Hey, Tom?"

You peek into the bathroom the next morning and find Tom getting ready to shower. He has literally one leg in the tub, his perky peachy butt on display, when you knock and crack the door open after he lets you in.

"Yeees?" he says, dragging the vowel because you're just standing there in the doorway looking down at your phone in your hand.

You glance up at him and smirk, saying, "Do you remember how Cinderella had a golf coach?"

"Really? You're asking me that now?" he deadpans, rolling his eyes.

You shrug, poking your free hand in the air like it's so obvious that there's no reason why you're telling him this now instead of after he's done. "It's as good a time as any."

"Fine, I'll bite..." Tom steps completely inside the bathtub. He's just waiting there, fully nude, static like that awkward standing emoji, one hand around the edge of the glass door as he adds, "Yes, I remember. Her coach was a pumpkin. What about it?"

"Well, it's just that, um, as it turns out, there was another reason why she was so bad at golf."

Tom sighs. "Okay... and what was it?"

"Because she always runs away from the ball, Tom."

You show him a tight-lipped smile, proud of yourself. Feels like you've just told him the best joke in the world.

He doesn't seem to think so, of course.

"Okay," he says with a huff, stepping out of the bathtub.

He's laughing, though, which makes you laugh too. Little do you know what he's planning to do. You look down at the phone in your hands for a second, ready to tell him a second joke, but he pulls you into the room despite your resistance.

The door closes behind you, perhaps he pushes it with his foot or something, you can't really tell. You're trying to struggle against his hold, calling him all sorts of bad names you can think of.

It's by sheer luck that you think of dropping your phone on the mat by the tub. It's even luckier that it doesn't get wet. Yet you can't say the same about your sleeping attire.

Tom has both hands around your forearms and bends you over the edge of the tub. He pushes your legs inside next, making you slip and fall on your front. He climbs in after you and grabs the showerhead, pointing it at your head as he turns the knob on the wall. The lukewarm stream goes straight into your eyes and your mouth and everywhere in between. If someone ever says you gurgle under the water, you'll deny it with all your might. You try to take big gasps of breath and fight against him, but you're giggling at the same time. It's all for naught anyway. Tom keeps you locked in place with his arm around your neck like a vice, hand clasped around your wrists even though you keep trying to escape his grip.

You try to speak, but he moves the showerhead so that the water spurts all over your mouth. Using his hand to mess up your bed hair even more, he says, "Not so funny now, huh?"

∗

You come out of that well-deserved play fight in the shower as a victor, of course. Tom may have more upper body strength than you, maybe even more dexterity, but he's clearly not fast enough. And his penance for losing is having to stand there with his hands on the wall, unable to touch, watching you rub one off as you sit in the tub. Legs stretched around him, cunt all wet, mouth warm and still around his cock until you come. You follow up with fast, sloppy bobs of your head, allowing him a quick release, watching his eyes roll back before he floods your mouth in record time.

To be fair, it's more of a reward than it is a punishment, really, but you still count it as your win.

He doesn't counterargue anyway.

∗

Since you hogged the shower for a good ten minutes longer than you should, you compensate Harrison by making everyone breakfast. He's in a bright mood this morning, or perhaps that's just a reflection of your good mood, but you don't think too much of it.

You're happily listening to him talk about his day yesterday, how it was an advertising job, and probably some of the best modeling work he's done so far, when Tom comes in at last. You have no idea how you got ready faster than him.

It's Tom who interrupts Harrison's chatter when he sits down at the table and looks at the plate of food you put in front of him. "That's the weirdest looking eggs I've ever seen."

You chuckle only, sending Harrison a head gesture to tell him he can continue what he was saying. Yet after a single bite, Tom interrupts him again. "And the weirdest tasting eggs I've ever had, too."

"'Cause it's not eggs, Tom, what the fuck," you laugh at his cluelessness. Harrison does, too. "That's a delicious portion of scrambled tofu with tomatoes and spinach. Found the recipe online the other day while I was bored. It said that you may not even realize you're not eating eggs, so I thought, why not?"

"Well, they were wrong," Tom complains around a small mouthful, "that's definitely not eggs." He uses the fork to separate the pieces of chopped tomatoes and the spinach leaves to the side and starts eating those only. Turning to Harrison, who's munching on his food quietly now, he says, "Why'd you let her cook this, man?"

"Uh, excuse me, let her?" you protest.

Tom shushes you jokingly with a pst-pst-pst sound and a funny hand gesture, a finger pointed at Harrison, who keeps his eyes on his own plate and says, "Would you rather eat poorly baked beans on toast à la me?"

Tom gives Harrison a repulsed look that makes you laugh and takes another forkful to his mouth. It's filled with tofu and a few pieces of tomato this time. You serve him some tea while he chews.

"It's not so bad compared to that, no," he says, taking yet another fork full of yellowed, perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned tofu to his mouth as he keeps mumbling, "Not bad, not bad."

"Is it really not bad, or are you trying to convince yourself?" you joke, joining them at the table. Tom gazes at you through an almost sneer over his cup of tea when he takes a sip. "Just eat your damn food, you crazy breakfast food monger."

Tom rolls his eyes exaggeratedly.

"You know what?" Harrison puts in, staring at the both of you in turns. "I call a breakfast cook-off sometime next week. What do you say?"

"We both cook the same recipe?" Tom asks.

"Sure."

"And who gets to be the judge?"

"We could, I don't know, tell the twins and Tuwaine? Make it a sort of challenge or something," Harrison says, shrugging and eating more food. "Or it could be at your parents, if you'd prefer."

"No way," Tom objects, "you think anyone would choose me? Over her?"

You almost choke on your tea by laughing at his accusation. He's probably right, though. His friends and family do love to roast him.

"Your brother Paddy would... I think," you say casually. Harrison snorts around his food.

"Ha. Ha." Tom sends you a hateful look and pushes the plate in front of him towards you in protest. "I'll take that bet anyway. A new recipe neither of us knows, no practice round, Sam judges by himself."

"If you think that will help..."

"He's a professional chef," Tom says in a harsh tone, "or studying to be one anyway. And he knows better than to cater to your whims."

"Sounds fine to me," you agree.

"That's settled then," Harrison says. "I'll ask Sam if he'd like to judge. If he agrees, we'll settle the details."

"Deal."

You extend your hand towards Tom, but he ignores you by grabbing his tea mug instead.

∗

"Guess what?!"

You jump into the living room with your phone still in hand after one of the greatest calls of the month. Okay, maybe the greatest call of the week because it cannot compete against that pretty awesome video chat you had with Tom the other day while you were in town. Nevertheless, you're probably sporting the widest grin known to humankind right now because both Tom and Harrison give you a very odd look.

The coffee table is totally off center with the couches and the carpet, and you realize that they're playing some golf game on the tv.

"Seriously? Even at home?" you ask with your thumb pointed at the big screen.

"Where else are we gonna practice?" Tom says with a scoff.

"Yeah, y/n, where else? Do you think Tom's going to allow himself to be embarrassed by me at the course? Please." Harrison scoffs, making you giggle. Tom sends you both a threatening look, but Harrison ignores him with much more ease than you. "What happened though?"

You clutch your phone into your chest and say, "That was David—"

"Uh, great."

Harrison looks at Tom at the same time as you do before he turns to you with an enquiring frown on his forehead. "... And?"

You grin again at them first, then fill your chest with a big intake of breath. "I got the job!"

"That's awesome!"

"Yeah! I mean," you trail off, accepting Harrison's hug, "it's not the best job, and it's nothing I've done before, but hey—"

"Still a job," you and Harrison say at the same time. Tom is awfully quiet, but he's smiling — hesitantly, you reckon, but smiling nonetheless — as he gets up from the couch.

"It's better than having to worry about it for much longer," Harrison says as he lets you go, and you agree, but your gaze doesn't leave Tom's face. There's a slight shadow to his eyes. It's no longer there when you pat Harrison's arm in return for his kind words.

Tom pinches your side playfully and shows you a much more genuine smile when you do a double take of his face. "Congratulations."

You grin widely at him and say, "C'meeere," embracing his shoulders as well. You feel his sigh in your ear at the same time as his torso grows a little smaller beneath your hands, but you don't make a big case about it. He's probably thinking of how you'll be spending less nights at home because of this job.

"Don't worry, champ," you say when you pull away. His eyes are still on Harrison before he flicks them to you when you hold him with both hands on his shoulders. "David said I'll probably be working more mornings than nights, so I'll still be here to tuck you into bed."

"Gross," Harrison deadpans, and when you glance at him with a laugh, he's covering his ears. Then he goes back to the couch and grabs the gaming console remote.

"In that case," Tom says with a little smirk. He seems a little happier with that piece of information, but you don't expect him to say, "You'd better not cheat before our breakfast food cook-off, young lady."

"Relax, I know the rules..."

"And I know you're capable of cheating," Tom says in sing-song, patting your arm. He turns around to sit next to Harrison again, who sends him a weird look with his eyebrows raised.

"Takes one to know another, eh?" you chime in. Tom only clicks his tongue in response. "What, you're gonna go by the pub every morning to see what I'm serving?"

"If I have to," Tom says, scoffing. You laugh at his lack of faith in you, but to be fair you didn't expect anything less of him.

"Control freak," you mutter, sticking your tongue out at him while he's still fumbling with his remote. You retreat it immediately when he looks up again. Then you gesture towards his hands and say, "Gimme that, let me show Harrison what it's like to lose."

"Eh!"

You're not sure if Tom's agreeing with you or not, he probably isn't, but his offended expression at you implying that you can do better at the game than he could is hilarious. You wish you could take a picture of this moment for posterity, but right now your phone has been discarded on the coffee table and you're already stealing the remote.

You turn to Harrison and ask, "Best of five?"

Tom's groan is so loud it could wake up the neighbor's dead pet.

∗

You spend the rest of your afternoon working on a new video for your channel to tell your subscribers about your new job, without disclosing the name of the pub or your location of course, and to inform them that content would probably stop coming every week, but that you'd try to make it every two weeks now. The comments started pouring in almost immediately, so you take to them with a big smile in between texting David all the details for your first day next Tuesday morning.

It's when you come out of your room for a bathroom break that you hear the boys bickering somewhere in the flat. Probably in the kitchen since the living room is empty when you peek into it from the door to the hallway. You go for a piss first and when you return, things are a bit quieter, so you trek towards the kitchen.

One of them shushes the other, then you hear one of them say in a sort of whispered shout, "You have to tell her."

Then the other, who sounds a lot like Tom, says, "Stop."

There's a short silence while you're waiting on the outside of the open door, just making sure that you don't walk in the middle of their whatever the hell this is. Since nobody says anything else aside from a disgruntled groan, you step inside and say, "What's up, boys? You're not fighting, are you?"

Tom jumps, and the proof that he's honestly startled by your presence is the fact that one of his hands is crammed into a fist. He cracks his neck with a gesture to the side, eyes on Harrison, then he explains, "It's nothing. He wants me to tell my mum about my, um, that leg exam I'm going to do next week."

You notice a bit of an eye-roll from Harrison, but decide to shrug it off. "A leg exam?"

"Yeah, it's routine stuff, don't worry," Tom clarifies, talking with his hands as per usual. "To check up on an old muscle injury and all. My leg's been acting up when I work out, so I called my doctor. I still don't see how it is so urgent that I need to tell my mum of all people."

To be honest, you have no idea what he's talking about. You remember a few injuries he's had due to work, but nothing that would require follow-up testing. At least, as far as you know. It doesn't seem to be a big deal, given that he's so chill about it and Harrison's hardened jaw relaxes. So you hum on your way to the top cupboard to retrieve a glass and say, "Alright," and let the subject die on its own.

"Anyway, I'm, um," Harrison says, clearing his throat. You look over your shoulder when he makes a slight pause and find him on his way out. "Yeah, I'll be right back. We need to discuss dinner anyway, don't we?"

While you pour water from the pitcher in the fridge into the glass, you can see through the corner of your eye that Harrison is turned to Tom, who whispers, "No."

You turn to them in time to see Harrison's wide eyes and another eye-roll as he leaves the kitchen completely.

Then you're left alone with Tom. There's a bit of a silence now that Harrison's gone. Tom's scrolling through his phone and you're drinking your glass of water. It's not that you needed one, but it's been a while since you had anything to drink and you sort of wanted to see what they were bickering about. It seems like you got your fix, so you ask, "Something the matter?"

"No," Tom replies, taking a breath in. "He's just being a weirdo, don't worry."

Harrison 'aaargh's all the way from wherever he is right now, but Tom only shrugs.

"Mhmm. Is your leg okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine," he says, shoving his phone into the pocket of his joggers and looking up at you. "So I was thinking we go out for dinner, what do you say?"

You have nothing against it, you've been spending enough time at the flat anyway, and Harrison thinks it's a good idea too. And by the time you get to a restaurant that you'd never notice if you weren't hanging out with Tom, Harrison and their fancy ways, you're once again sitting at the table with five loud boys and begging them to stop making you laugh so hard.

Food and white wine aplenty, one of them ends up suggesting a proper celebration of you getting your job by going out to a pub. You don't want to impose, and really you don't want to start celebrating everything at your future place of work, so you vote for one of the other suggestions that comes up. Tom turns to you and utters an expression of surprise, with his eyes wide and a nod of his head, as though he expected you to mention the Toasty Den.

As the night progresses, and you end up crawling from one pub to another looking for more beers to experiment, you do pass by the Den. Beth happens to be hanging out outside on her short break and she spots you immediately.

"Hey, girl!" she calls out to you and tugs on your hand until you're face to face with her, a bit down the alley that leads to the side door of the pub. "I heard you got the job. That's so great!"

Something catches the corner of your eye while you chat with her. She's saying she's tired of sharing her shifts with 'smelly boys' (her words, not yours), but your focus is somewhere else. Because it seems like your boys have somehow 'trapped' Tom in a half circle. He's facing you while they're all turned to him so you can only see their backs, but their shoulders are tucked in forward. Harry pokes Tom's chest with a finger. It's like they're giving him a pep talk of sorts.

You laugh inwardly at the thought. Tom is the person who least needs a pep talk of any kind. He's naturally confident and well-established in life. You figure there must be something he isn't good at, like for example the sock graveyards although it's been a while since you've found any in the bathroom, but you have yet to find out exactly what. You may have been looking at him through very rosy glasses, that's pretty much a given. And right now you wonder what could be happening for them all to gang up on their friend like this.

Beth grabs your attention again when she says, "Alright, my break's over, but look, David's working tonight and he said he wanted to call you? I don't know why."

"That's odd," you frown, "we already texted a lot today."

"I dunno, maybe he forgot something," she says, curling her arm around yours and throwing you a kiss without touching your cheek. "You wanna come in and talk to him?"

"Oh, erm..." you trail off, gazing at the guys. They're all laughing now, so you guess whatever was going on before has passed.

"I can tell him to come out here if you want."

"Yeah, I think that might be the best idea," you tell Beth, looking back at her. "If you don't mind."

"Sure, girl! Wait right here."

It's odd that David wants to talk to you. He could have just texted you like he did with everything else. While he doesn't come out, you rejoin the rest of your squad and listen to them cackle in unison about some sort of anecdote about footie.

"Heeey," Tuwaine says in his booming voice, "you done talking to your new friends, love?"

"Aw, are you scared I'm gonna trade you for them or something?" you joke, letting him squish you against his side as he usually does. "Nah, Beth just wanted to congratulate me for the job, and um, now I'm waiting for David—"

"David," Tom says dryly.

"Yeah. Beth said he wanted to talk to me— Is there a problem?" you ask Tom directly, noticing how his eyes don't disconnect from yours.

"No, no problem at all."

"Cool." You're not really certain that there's no problem at all, like he said, but you let it go and engage in their previous conversation the best you can until David comes into the alley and calls your name.

"Hey, what's up? Why didn't you text me?"

"I thought about it, but then my shift started and I sort of vented about it to Beth instead of waiting to text you," David chuckles, hands tucked into his pockets, the thumbs poking out as though they don't fit in there.

As usual, he's standing very far from you, more than any other person you've known. Once you mentioned to him that he seems to keep about the same distance as when he's serving and you're on the other side of the Den's bar counter, which made him laugh immensely. You're not sure what it is that makes him so guarded about your or his personal space. Nonetheless, you don't step any closer than the boundary he has silently set when he's around you. It's only fair to respect that about him even if you never really considered it with anybody else.

"So, what's going on?" you ask.

"Basically, I told Mr. Crawford that Beth and I had trained you prior to your interview, and he suggested that we adjusted everyone's schedule so that I, um," he hesitates a bit, wetting his lips. "He said he wanted me to continue your training for the next few weeks. And that, uh, he wants me to report to him directly in case of any issues or any progress. That's what I wanted to say. I could've called, really—"

"Yeah, you could've," you laugh, nodding your head in a funny way. "That's fine. It's been fun, and I suppose you've been doing this a while, so it should be fine."

"Yeah. I agree."

"Is it gonna be weird?" you ask him, honestly curious about this. "I mean, going from working afternoons and nights to working mornings exclusively?"

"I never worked that shift before, so yeah, it'll be pretty hard to have to get up when the sun isn't even up, y'know?"

You agree with an annoyed noise in the back of your throat at the thought of having to do so yourself. Until last week, you thought you'd done your fair share of waking up at the wee hours of the morning, but apparently the future had something else reserved for you.

"But I have the next two nights off so that I can be here bright and early on Tuesday morning."

"Well, I can't wait to start, to be honest," you say, taking a swift glance over your shoulder to check that the boys are still waiting for you. Which is when you notice that Tom is ogling you all hawk-eyed. You brush it off for the moment and add, "I'll see you Tuesday, then?"

"Yeah. At five to six, don't forget."

"Five to six. I'll be here, sir." As a joke, you salute him in a gesture of respect to who's technically your superior at work. David laughs and calls you a goof before you bid each other goodbye and seal it with a quick hug.

When you turn around after he's a few steps away, your eyes meet Tom's immediately. He turns his head to Harrison as though he's responding to his friend calling his name, but you're positive Harrison hasn't even said a word. The reason why Tom would be watching you so intently goes over your head as of now, and you shove it to the back of your mind and rejoin your friends, telling them the latest news about your job.

"Hey, guys, guess who's working mornings with me so I can be properly trained at serving drinks to pub bums like you..."

"Please say it's Beth."

You swear to yourself you hear Tom utter those words under his breath, so you frown and ask, "What?"

"I dunno, Beth?" he says with a very weird look. It's a crossroads between bitter and embarrassed with a dash of that brazen poise that he has, but you're not quite sure how you should read it.

"Aw, no, David," you correct him. "He said the boss seems happy with my training so far, so yay for me. But—"

You sidle up to Tom with a cheeky smile and put an arm around him. The rest of the group starts moving towards whatever the next destination was supposed to be before you were forced to stop here.

"If you want, we can go check out Beth right now, champ. She's working tonight. You want to take a second shot at her infamous Green Dragon cocktail, eh? Is that it?"

"No," Tom says rather assertively, grabbing your arm and letting it fall to your side. "I was only trying to guess, okay?"

"Well, alright," you leave him be. It seems like his mood has lowered drastically tonight, so you don't insist on your matchmaking joke. Instead you ask him where you're going next to try and get some normal conversation from him. It doesn't seem to be too hard in the end.

It's when you get to the next and final pub of the night that things get weird.

Tom sits at the booth Sam chose mostly in silence, eyes burning every bit of your skin no matter where you look. They're there if you sit talking to his friends, if you go by the bar to order another round of drinks. They're there even when you go to the freaking bathroom. So it's really no wonder when you come out through the door and find him standing right there, his jaw clenched, eyes dark and low.

"Come with me," he growls into your ear, but doesn't give you any time to react. Tom only grabs your hand and pulls, hard, in the direction of a door that has a faded 'employees only' sign on it.

"Tom, we're not supposed to—" you try to say, but he doesn't let you finish. Not a second longer. As soon as you're inside a rather small closet, he throws his full weight against you and his tongue snakes into your mouth in your next inhale.

This kiss is not just hungry. It's fierce and fucking vicious, same as the grip he has on both of your wrists, pinning your body against the wood. He uses so much strength that you're one hundred percent certain that nobody will be able to push the door open if they manage to spot that you've sneaked in here.

There's a sturdy passion to his motions, his shoulders pushing forward, dipping into yours hard. Keeping you in place as you try to follow his tongue, but end up giving up and letting him kiss you as he pleases.

When he stops, it's to say, "Tell me to stop."

You don't understand what he means, so you stay quiet and watch. You watch him bury his face in your neck, sucking on the skin under your jaw, nose spewing out hot air and a tingle of curiosity down to your legs. They tremble for a second and you buck your knees, but Tom is there to catch you. Hands on your hips now, pulling you to him then back against the door with a dry noise.

The course of his kisses goes from your jaw to your chin and your lips, so you're expecting him to kiss you again. And when he finally lunges forward, you welcome his tongue and his taste and all of the desire he forces into your mouth. The guttural sound he makes travels straight down to your toes, making them curl in your shoes.

"What the fuck," you gasp, trying to talk to him first, trying everything to at least understand what's been going on tonight that he's suddenly kissing you like he hasn't done it just this morning. Like it's been years since the last time he got to do it and all he can think about is splitting you open.

"Tom—" you try again.

All you want is to ask what's going on with him. What he wants from you. But all he does is pressing his crotch into you. He grabs your chin with a hand and keeps your head tilted back. You can't really open your mouth to speak, not even if he asks you to, so you surrender to his merciless hold and let him handle you however he likes.

"Can we fuck?" he asks with his mouth on yours as though he's sucking the air you exhale into his own lungs. "I'll make it quick," he adds, easing his grip on you. "Just need my cock in your fucking pussy."

"Fuck, Tom," you moan, mostly at the tone of his voice that keeps you shivering from the feet up. "I didn't bring a condom tonight."

"Get me my fantasy then," he says, nipping on your bottom lip and pulling until his eyes find yours. He lets it go after a few seconds, but crashes your mouths together before you can reply.

He's making you throb all over the place, light-headed from his words and his urgency and just the rarefied air in the room. You hold on to his white t-shirt, the shape of his muscles underneath that you already know from memory calling out to your fingertips. For a second, you have to remember to breathe or you will freaking die under his kiss. Your wrists are starting to hurt from how tight he's grasping them, but also from how much strength you're using to make it hurt more, because fuck, fuck, he tastes so damn good.

Everything tastes good. His tongue, his lips, his teeth when you swipe behind them in search of that spot in the roof of his mouth that always makes him moan and hold you tighter.

The only images in your mind are your bodies half naked as he holds you against the door, legs spread, all obscene, his cock buried so deep you practically feel it poking your lungs. Yet you can't really give him what he wants, not here at least. Not like this.

You fight against him and break the kiss. Both of you gasp for air, and Tom's about to dive in for another round, but you use your shoulders to block his, then say, "Tom, no, not here. The timing isn't right."

Tom steps back for a second, leaving you panting against the door. You stare at him and try to read his face, but there's none of his usual signs except for his eyes. They're all blown and trampled with lust, calling out to you as they always did.

He sighs, moving his hands from where he's trapping you to your neck. Holding you almost sweetly now, a dire contrast with the fire in his gaze, burning embers that melt your willpower into nothing.

"Period math?"

"Among other things," you reason with him, pecking his mouth to tell him that it's not that you don't want to. "But, hey, what's up with you tonight?"

"Ugh, nothing," Tom says, taking another step backwards. The intensity in his eyes reduces to a soothing evening fire on a cool February night. Then he sighs again and says, "I need a beer. C'mon."

His hand finds yours and he tugs on it. Gently now. You move out of the way, studying the downward slope of his shoulders and trying to figure out whether he's horny or angry or sad. However, you don't come to any conclusion as he leads you back to your friends' booth.

You expect him to sit down and grab his beer, but instead he stands there squeezing your hand, inadvertently not letting you sit down either. He chugs half the bottle down in one breath, bangs the bottom of it on the table while all the other boys observe him attentively, and says, "I'll see you guys tomorrow, okay?"

"The fuck?" you mutter, mostly to yourself, but Harrison seems to hear you. He looks up from Tom to you and makes a questioning gesture with his head, but you shake yours since you have no idea what's going on.

The next thing you know, Tom is twirling his arm around yours and asking, "You wanna go home with me?"

"You're going home so early?"

"Yeah." Tom swallows, the muscles of his throat moving with it. "You know why." He gives you a hard, focused look, filled with the red fire you saw in it just now in the maintenance closet. "Wanna come?"

You're not sure if his question has a double meaning or not, but you nod and follow him out of the pub nonetheless. The sting of not knowing what this moment could mean continues to itch in the back of your mind, but all the questions you have about it remain unanswered.

Tom stays quiet until you get home. On the way out of the pub. Waiting for the taxi by the curb, his arm tight around your waist. During the whole ride home, too.

The only moment he dares to speak is to help you out of the car when you get to your building, but he grows quiet again once you're back on your feet on the sidewalk. While struggling with the front door and in the lift, going up to your floor. His hand is back on your waist, but this time he pulls your shirt out of your bottoms and burns your skin from his hot, sweaty palm. He also scratches his nails on your side, forcing you to struggle not to flinch as you watch him nibble on the inside of his cheek.

Tom seems nervous somehow, but you have no idea why.

You let him inside the flat first and lock the door behind you, inhaling deeply, but when you start to speak, Tom twirls you on your feet and pushes you against the door. He has his eyes on you, hungry, eager, desperate, but you knew that much by now. You've been vibrating for this since you left the pub, feeling the tension ooze off of him the whole way here and every time he almost reached out to touch you but didn't.

When his hand was on your leg in the taxi and all you wanted was those fingers in your mouth, choking you as he called you 'baby girl'. When his knee was bouncing up and down and all you could think about was straddling it and riding it until you passed out from pleasure. When he scratched his crotch absentmindedly in the lift and your first thought was to cup him and kiss him and swallow his cock right on the spot.

Yet you held it all in for yourself, letting him control the narrative instead, waiting for him to pounce so you could pounce back just as hard.

And when you finally jerk forward into a kiss, it's almost violent, and you relish every fucking second of it. You want his tongue mixing with yours, his spit on your lips. Want to lick the spearmint and the liquor off the roof of his mouth until he cries out for mercy. And you want your hands on him, want to rip his clothes off as he does the same to yours. But for now all that happens is that you stumble into the living room, all lost limbs and rabid kisses, and you reach the tv console table and open one of the decorative eggs on it.

You always thought they looked weird, but once you realized that they could be opened, that you could store things in them, they became perfect. And yes, there it is. In the smallest, taupe colored one. An even smaller stash of condoms for emergencies like tonight.

Tom grunts into your mouth as he plucks the wrapper out of your hands, making you smirk into the kiss. His true colors are finally shining through. He's got his hands around your arms, shoving you away until you're at arms' length, panting with your mouth ajar, his just the same. His little pink tongue wiping across his lips before he clashes them on yours yet again.

This time, however, he manhandles you even more. He twists you on your feet, neck all craned and hurting so the kiss won't stop, and starts peeling the clothes off your body. He doesn't even touch your skin, but it inflames from the lack of contact anyway. You twinge and whine and beg into his mouth, but he doesn't listen. He only moves. Shirt, bottoms, socks and underwear, all gone from your body in seconds. And by the time you're naked in front of his fully clothed self, he shoves you once and you fall with your hands on the coffee table.

Pressing his hard-on against the back of your ass, Tom grabs your chin and lifts your head until he can peck your cheek and your mouth, then he presses down on your neck and says, "Stay down, beautiful."

You obey. Immediately and without thinking, letting your body do the talking for once.

It's a painful waiting game with your face on the cold surface of the coffee table, hands grasped around the sides and your legs cramped from the odd position. Your butt is still in the air, still pointed at Tom's crotch while he undoes his trousers. You're so wet just from watching him, you're nearly blind with it, but you want this to be the best time ever. Tom looks like he needs it, whatever it was that bothered him tonight and left him so on edge. And you crave it just the same.

The coldness of plastic is what you feel first. Tom places the condom wrapper in the middle of your back, keeping his palm over it as he says, "I'm gonna finger you until you're fucking dripping down your legs. In the meantime, you're going to make sure that doesn't move. We're gonna need it later."

You can only nod in response, curling your hands around the table and focusing on not moving at all.

The pad of a finger comes next, warm against your spine, tracing its shape down to the very bottom. A shiver runs through you in the same direction, though it's impossible to arch your back any further. The wrapper slides closer to your neck, but it doesn't fall.

The same finger teases your folds, spreading them open, Tom's head tilted to the side as he zeroes in on what he sees. He's caressing you slowly, so tentatively, but at the same time heightening the fire he lit on you back in the maintenance closet at the pub. And your whole body's thrumming with it. With him. The smell where he leans over you and drops little kisses of bliss onto the back of your neck. The texture of his skin when he palms your right buttock, then the left one, then right in the middle until he's drenched from your wetness.

Several of his fingers now trace the soft line where your bum ends and your legs begin. The skin there so thin that you tremble with the goosebumps it raises on your skin. When your eyes flicker upwards, you first catch sight of the grey packet still on your back, waiting, patiently unlike you. Then you find his eyes, boring into yours like in a dare. And finally you see his dick, hard under his briefs, prominent in the v of his zipper. He's still fully clothed, a powered up predator over your bare self.

"Tom—" you croak after you've waited long enough, and he seems to finally react.

His fingers slide down between your folds, circle your clit, collect wetness and prickles on your skin, and finally find your middle. You shake in anticipation and gape at the first touch of a tip around your hole, just teasing, then slipping inside until the heel of his hand slaps against you.

Your back bends in response, but the sound of the condom gliding downwards alerts you to what's going on. You have no way to know what he'll do if the wrapper falls from where he placed it, so you bend in the other direction, accidentally fucking yourself further on his hand.

"Fuuuuck," you whine when the tip of his finger brushes your spot. Your whole insides clench craving for more, but the condom is still dangerously close to your shoulders, way too close to falling off, so you push down even more. Crying out when Tom inserts a second finger at his will, filling you up so beautifully yet not really enough to make you feel any pleasure. Just full, eagerness, tension and thirst running through your body in its search for more, more, more.

You manage to make the plastic wrapper slide a little to the middle of your back, and then you hold the position and let Tom finish fingering you. One after the other, he plays with your pussy as he pleases. He slides one or two fingers at a time, intercalating them in a pattern you cannot distinguish. Crooked knuckles rubbing your walls, in and out of you at shutter speed. Pressure builds on every surface, making you shake all over with it when he twirls his hand to rub your clit with relentless fury.

Chest running out of air, you moan a grumbled 'ungh' and grind back into the familiarity of his touch. Your body welcomes him and adjusts to him from memory, head dropping between your shoulders at the crescendo of pleasure. It goes up, up, up, flatlining in your brain, all thoughts fleeing from you.

Tom is quiet, but he's groaning, his free hand clasped around your arse as the other slaps against you at an unforgiving pace. At the poke of his fingers on your spot, you start to tremble, wishing that he'll keep pressing there. Wanting nothing more than to come around his fingers like this. Their slender shape wrecking noises out of you, gathering a tight bundle of joy so fucking deep in your gut.

"Close," you choke out a warning. And you feel it. Between your legs and in the pit of your stomach. A swirl of viscera and emotion. The orgasm starting to build, and grow, and expand until all you see is fucking black.

He pulls out before you get there, though. You groan and collapse onto the table, but perk back up when he taps your bum as though to get your attention. You open your eyes, not having realized they were closed. And you watch, keen-eyed, as he shows you his fingers. All wet and nearly white. For a second, you think he's going to lick them clean the way he sometimes does, crazy as he is about your taste. Yet instead he splays his clean palm on the small of your back and leans closer, grunting and gesturing with his head as his hand approaches your face.

The instruction is clear even to your smelted brain. You have to suck them clean, but you never really wanted anything more in life. Your lips spread by instinct and the next thing you know is your gagging noises around his fingers because Tom rams them in your mouth way too fast and way too deep. It feels almost too much at first, yet soon your throat relaxes and you hum around him in pure delight. Hips tipping backwards to find friction.

You immediately recoil at the press of his open zipper on your sensitive skin, but Tom doesn't let you pull away at all. He presses his crotch into you, scratching the cleft of your thigh on his fly, cock poking right in the center. Your muscles contract in response even though he's nowhere near inside you yet.

His hand darts to your chin and he holds you there, still jabbing his fingers into your mouth at the same pace he was inflicting between your legs moments before. No complaints from you whatsoever, though. You love his freaking fingers, their shape and length choking you to perfection. Certainly you don't expect what he does next, but Tom shoves your head until you're lying on the table again and keeps fucking your mouth like that for a few more seconds.

The empty in your head swirls around that idea, being shoved around by him for whatever reason that he has yet to explain to you. You could just ask him after he retrieves his fingers, but he slaps your cheek softly with the back of his hand and the thought flees your mind right away.

It's astounding how he lets you gather your breath after all this, especially when you realize how dark his gaze has become. Something is possessing him tonight. Tom's never been this rough with you. Yet there's something about it that draws you in.

Before you have any time to organize a question in your head, Tom grasps your hair and hisses, "Your fucking eyes on me, c'mon."

You obey blindly and try to focus around the desperation in your body, watchful as he plucks his cock out and shows it to you. Dark red and hard, weeping at the tip. Tom grabs the packet that's still waiting on the nape of your neck to rip it open and fumbles with the rubber until it's rolled down on his full length.

A small eternity must pass from that moment to the instant Tom's cockhead presses into your hole and pushes in the first inch. The stretch is ever so beautiful, but you have zero seconds to adjust as he surges forward until he's buried to the hilt. Your mind splits into pieces when he starts moving right away. Slowly at first, one agonizing thrust after the other. The drag of his cock inside you sweeter and hotter each time. Again and again, your voice breaking into little hums and moans and gasps whereas Tom remains quiet.

He's nipping on his lip, you find out when you gaze at him. You can't see him properly, not well, your body in the way, and also because he has his head down. Watching himself, both hands holding your cheeks apart. Squeezing the flesh so hard you're seeing white. So you focus on his hips, moving back and forward, out and back into your heat, getting more and more eager. Less dragged, more deliberate. Hips starting to slap against yours.

You want to tell him that you're getting close already, that he's brushing your spot too often and just right from this angle, and you want to ask him if he's good, if he likes it, if he'd do anything different, but you're too far gone, holy fuck. The fact that he doesn't stop, speeding up instead, should tell you enough, but you hate that he's so quiet tonight save for a few moans that escape through his gaping mouth.

And then you look at the TV. At his reflection. You can see everything in it, the tilt of his body, the flow of his hips, the sweat glistening on his skin from the speed he's gaining by now. The moans fall from your lips and you're gasping for air, gasping for words, lost in the silence that he's forcing on you tonight.

"Tom, look," you pant onto the coffee table, tilting your ass upwards, pointing a hand at the tv. His eyes follow your finger and soon he sees himself on the black screen.

He stops moving altogether, holding only the tip of his cock by your entrance. You clench around the emptiness and whimper, body keen on following his movements until he touches you again.

His hands clasp around your hips and he angles you a little to the right, his leg out of the way, and when you look, your own cunt is exposed in front of your eyes. Tom tries a few short thrusts, then longer ones, concentrated on his mirrored image. Making a show of it. Hands rubbing up the curve of your ass. Nails biting into the skin on his way back down.

A soft slap lands on your cheek and you slant into it, quivering for a second one. It's not usually your style, but there's something dark about his mood today. Something that drags you in without a second thought.

The second slap is stronger and louder, spasming your shoulders as your front collapses onto the table. Tom keeps his hips still against you, testing a couple more slaps, on your cheek or on the side or right at the top, flesh wiggling with every strike as he restarts moving. Slowly again, that nasty fucking tease, in long, languid thrusts that roll your eyes into the back of your head. Your mouth agape as you struggle to contain your moans, little groans escaping not when he hits, but when his hand moves away. When his hips smack wetly against you.

His silence holds you curious, though. You miss the thrill of his voice, the string of praise he always used against you. Yet you see them in his eyes, in the way they're holding you hostage as he gains speed. Body curved into yours. Head dipped forward as he slams into you. And he doesn't stop until your eyelashes get sticky from the sweat.

"Gonna— come—" you choke on your spit, trying to focus on your pleasure. But there's too much happening at once. So many pressure points. There's his hips pounding against your ass, your walls clenching around his cock, the smack of sweat. All of it reflected back at you if you look up.

Your eyes brim closed until you can barely see again, forced open by a sudden slap of his hand on your buttock.

You gasp and arch your back, Tom's hand coming around your throat to push your back against his chest. It looks beautiful on the screen. He looks beautiful on the screen, mouth agape in front of yours, hand clasped on your neck, squeezing, rendering you breathless. His hips still moving against you, cock stretching you open so tight you edge yourself every time he pulls out.

He slaps you again and pushes inside, reaching for your clit next. You arch into him and tighten all around, crying out as your orgasm hits. Your body spasms from the shock, feeling it from the inside, squeezing around his cock. Elbows kicking out until your chest falls on the table again. Your whole existence loses meaning, except for that beautiful reflection on the black surface.

You shake and completely lose your shit, throat coarse from moaning. He's still holding your hips up with one hand, the other slowing down on your clit as you ride out your high. Your legs flail about from the aftershocks and drop all of your weight down until his cock slides out of you completely.

"Tom, Tom," you cry out for him, trying to grasp consciousness back into your brain. Your mind is all want and need, pure desperation to feel him come too. You whine his name on repeat trying to tell him. Your hands seek for him, for his hips and his cock, but he's faster than you.

He rearranges you on the table, pinning your naked chest against the cold surface. Spreading your legs apart with a foot, then climbing over you. He sets both legs on each side of you, sort of sitting on your hips. Pressing the head of his cock between your butt cheeks, a croak fleeing your dry lips when he tips onto the wrong hole, then hissing and bending his knees a bit more to keep going down. When he finally finds your cunt, the tip dipping inside through dripping folds, he fucks into you with despair. Your next moan loud and hoarse, everything in you still overstimulated from the previous peak. But the angle is all wrong and he can't move as deep as before.

Tom whines in annoyance.

"I got you, I got you," you wail in humdrum. You twirl on the table and lie on your back, letting him push and pull your legs until your thighs are pressed against your torso.

He holds them there, shoulders hooked on the crook of your knees, sitting on your arse and sliding all the way inside this time.

"That's my fucking pussy," Tom finally speaks, moaning your name and another curse right after. He sets an implacable pace, leaning forward to kiss your mouth as you hold on to his biceps.

One of his hands holds your jaw and keeps it slack and stock-still, lips spread begging for his through wheezing little breaths. You wonder if he'd like to spit on you again, because you'd honestly take it all and beg for a millionth round, eyes rolling back at the thought, but he barely licks a straight line from your jaw into your mouth.

He can't do much else anyway. All it takes is three thrusts and the slap of your own hand on your clit, walls so much snugger around his cock before he starts shaking uncontrollably.

"Fuck, fuck yeah," he moans over your warm skin, and he looks and sounds so fucking hot, heat encompassing heat. Your hand stays on your swollen nub, rubbing in erratic circles, and a second orgasm wave splashes over you. It rocks your body from end to end, the impact a little slower this time, but that doesn't stop the strangled cry of his name that it whimpers out of you.

His body keens over yours, first all tense, shoulders shaking with unease. Your hole is absolutely filled with him, clenched tight as if you could feel his cock pulse while he comes the more you squeeze. And then he slumps forward, chest heaving, mouth open hovering over yours. He's still balls-deep in you, hands clamped around your calves now. Waiting for that beautiful post-orgasm pain to pass.

Tom lets you run your nails over the buzzed sides of his head, nuzzling into your palm with a moan. You spend the longest time there, caressing his head, cradling the back of his skull and scratching the scalp while he practically mewls and melts into your body. Breathing, once faltered, starts to soften. When you release a deeper sigh and adjust your legs so that your feet touch the floor, Tom stirs and pulls out.

A hand on each side of your torso, he pulls himself up and your eyes immediately find the wet spot of sweat in the middle of his chest. You want to touch it and lick it, smear it across his pecs with hot laps of your tongue, but Tom is quick to stand up and reach for your hand.

"You okay, champ?"

"Mhmm."

You're not quite sure if everything is okay, judging from his silence. You wish he would just tell you what's going on, but you don't question him about it. Not just yet. You hate when you have to pry for things. It makes you feel like you're imposing yourself. And that's the last thing you want to do. Coercing him into telling you would most likely have the opposite effect of what you want. And hopefully he'll open up to you when he's ready.

The flat remains as quiet as the night while you make your way to the bathroom to wash up. You showered before dinner, so you don't want to take another one just now. Instead, as he discards the condom and pees, you study the slope of his shoulders, sitting on the toilet after he's done using it to continue watching him attentively.

He's quiet, feet thumping on the floor as he moves about, eventually shedding his clothes and stepping into the tub right when you're flushing the toilet. The water starts running while you're sorting out your make-up and night routine in front of the mirror. When you're finished, Tom's still in there. You open the glass door and peek inside. The first thing you notice is that the tap is turned to cold, and he's just standing there, both hands on the wall, head tipped down between his elbows, the water stream hitting the back of his neck.

"I'm done here, so, um, I'm heading to bed first," you say tentatively.

Tom only nods, without even glancing up. He looks contemplative at least. Almost sad, if you look at it from another angle. You wish you could see his face, but since you can't, you have to move on and wait at least until he's finished here.

"Hey," you try again. He turns his head to the side, but his eye doesn't flick towards you. You can tell he's paying attention even though he isn't looking at you. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," he croaks and looks down again. "All good. Shower."

"Okay." You pause, studying the slouch of his body. When he sighs and turns the tap to the other side, steam starting to form around him, you add, "I'll leave the door open."

Hopefully he'll understand that you mean your bedroom door. You could easily lie on his bed and wait for him there, but he's been so odd tonight that you don't want to risk it. He was clearly angry at something, at least his silence and the way he fucked you gave you that impression. You just have no idea if it's at you or something else.

You take a step back to leave and raise a hand to slide the door closed, but Tom does it himself. Quickly. It bangs when it shuts completely, startling you a bit. Through the fogged up glass, you can see the shape of his hand on the door as though to stop anyone from opening it again.

The shower keeps running for longer than usual. You can hear it while you get ready for bed, then as you lie on your back, ears perked up for any sign of normalcy. It only really comes when the front door bangs in the distance and Harrison curses himself for it, followed by a couple of muffled laughs. You can't be sure if it's the twins or someone else, but you're not going to get up to check.

And then everything is quiet again. Even the shower.

The bathroom door clicks open and not even two seconds later, you hear Harrison's voice.

"Oh, there you are."

He's probably talking to Tom. You can imagine him holding his towel with one hand and rubbing his head with the other one. That image fades away as soon as Harrison speaks again, in a much more hardened voice, "Get in here."

You hear steps down the hallway and see shadows moving towards the living room, but you don't hear anything else afterwards.

And in the next morning, you wake up alone, your bedroom door still open ajar.

~ ⛳ ~