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jetsandbennie · 5 years

Text

as both becomes all

summary: you’re pregnant and not with ben. it all feels like quite a lot to handle.

warnings: angst, fluff, smut (18+). female masturbation, female receiving oral, pregnancy

pairing: bodyguard!ben hardy x reader

word count: 13.1k

thank you so much for the positive feedback this little trilogy has gotten - i never expected that it would have gotten as popular as it did, and i’m so excited to be posting the final part of it!!

( gif creds to @ michaelscofieldx )

The tour ends abruptly.

Fans who were meant to be attending the last few shows are sent emails from your tour company, apologizing profusely, claiming that you had a health emergency that required you to not perform. And it’s true, of course, but you feel horrible. For nearly a week after you cancel the shows you’re getting angry tweets and DMs, people claiming it’s unprofessional.

News of you getting shot goes unnoticed. The first source came from DailyMail, and it was enough to make people assume it untrue. You don’t bother to correct it, because, after all, it is a rather private matter. And you need time to heal yourself.

So you make a few apology posts. A second email goes out with a $75 voucher for your merch, which is more than some of the tickets even were, but it seems reasonable. Sweatshirts and baseball caps and bracelets go out of stock within hours, and in a few days angry tweets change to ones of fans showing off what they’ve got.

You enjoy looking at them. Lying on the couch, head throbbing, your brightness so dim you have to squint to see what you’re scrolling through. You like a few, maybe type a comment, but eventually looking at your screen hurts your eyes even more. So you drop your phone onto your stomach, grumbling at your cousin to turn the lights down, and with a roll of her eyes she complies.

It’s been a painful week, and boring, as well. Your cousin comes over, the one who’d been watching your dog, and she talks to you for hours at a time. It’s easy to talk to her. It always has been, really.

“You know - this bodyguard, Ben -” and saying his name is just about painful. You swallow before continuing, pushing yourself up against the couch and swinging your legs over the edge. “We were a thing.”

She raises her eyebrows, looking up from her phone on the other side of the couch. Her eyes meet yours, narrowed in confusion, before nodding. “Well, I figured.”

“You -?”

“You talked to me about him a lot. And then not at all.” She leans over and rests her phone on the coffee table, hand stroking your dog in her lap. “Is it over?”

You haven’t told anyone. Intended to keep it a complete secret, hush hush, until you decided what to do. But you - you can’t - so you nod slowly, swallowing the lump in your throat, and mutter, “It’s over. He ended it. But there’s - I mean -”

“Mhm …”

“I’m pregnant.”

Saying it makes it so much real, and you draw your knees up to your chest. Rest your chin against them, shake your head slowly. And then you continue, “I’m pregnant, with his fucking baby, of course. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t -”

“Hey,” your cousin mutters, reaching over to grab your hands. There’s an instant flashback to the two of you as children, mere months apart, running through the park with your hands firmly clasped, and it’s some sort of comfort in this strange situation you’re forced in. “It’s okay. You know that. You’re gonna be fine.”

You roll your eyes without meaning to, and then you feel bad. “I just - it really doesn’t feel like I’m gonna be fine. This is a fucking problem.”

It’s something you can both agree with, at least. Your cousin raises her eyebrows, and then says, “Did you tell him?”

“Nope,” you respond, popping the p.

“You know you have to do that.”

“I don’t even know if I’m going to keep this thing. I don’t know.”

“He still has to know. Even if you decide not to keep it. He has to know.”

She’s fucking right. God, the asshole.

—————————

It takes a lot of Instagram stalking to figure out where Ben lives, and truthfully you’re a bit embarrassed by it. But you’d rather the internal embarrassment than the external type, by asking Ben where he lives, so you suffer in silence.

He doesn’t have an Instagram - statues generally don’t - but his best friend, Joe, does, and he posts religiously. At least three posts a week, and Ben takes up a lot of them. It makes your heart hurt, a bit, seeing Ben so beautifully carefree in some of these pictures -

A blurry shot of him and Joe on a boat -

A photo of him stuffing the largest cupcake you’ve ever seen into his mouth -

A video of the two of them doing the macarena at a party -

Because suddenly it feels like this is a whole new part of Ben, one you’ve never seen but Joe does. And the best friend is supposed to know more, you suppose, but you wish you could have stayed with Ben long enough to take silly videos and pictures with him.

It was all so secret.

When you scroll back down to 2016, there’s a group shot of four men - Ben and Joe among them and then two you don’t recognize - but their handles are tagged, and you click on the shorter stranger’s profile first (his name is just ramim, which, depending on what his name is, seems pretty straightforward.) It’s bare, two pictures and private, anyway, so you go back and click on the taller man’s profile. HIs username is gwilymlee, which is quite the name, and he has quite a few pictures.

Ben is in a few of them. Not enough, in your opinion, but you scroll down, eyes finding every picture with your blonde (ex?)bodyguard in them.

But then.

In 2016. A bright shot of Ben and Joe in front of an apartment building, the blonde holding a keyring with a positively overjoyed look on his face. It’s a building you know - one you’ve passed before - and you sit up just a bit straighter as you read the caption gwilymlee added.

New apartment for benny! Finally moved out of his parents’ basement!

Bingo!

You push your half eaten bowl of strawberries away from you, resting your elbows on the kitchen island and examining the picture more. You know where this fucking building is and you know how to get there and what if he is there? What if this is it?

Of course, there’s the chance that he doesn’t live there anymore. That he moved, perhaps. But there’s a feeling in your gut, the kind that feels like a handwritten letter from the universe herself, and you think it is his. His apartment, still. Think it might be fate. And you know you have to try to see if you’re right, at least.

Really, you try not to doll yourself up too much. You don’t want it to look like you put in effort to see him, but if you go looking like a total bum then perhaps he’ll think that the breakup destroyed you, and you can’t have that. So you settle - a pair of jeans and a hoodie - and a touch of makeup. Just enough, really. Then you punch the apartment building’s address into your maps and set off, positively determined and entirely too nervous.

In 23 minutes you’re there. Parked on the street outside, gazing up at the red brick building, with moss artistically climbing across the exterior walls - it’s positively beautiful and you’ve thought that since the first time you passed it. Always said it would be a dream to live here.

You press a hand to your stomach, over the soft cotton of your Billabong pullover. There’s nothing there. No movement. Not that you really expected there to be, but - well, maybe you thought the baby would be reacting to this life altering decision you’re going to discuss with Ben.

You’re stupid.

You climb out of your car, locking the doors before shoving the keys into your pocket, and slowly you walk up to the front doors, keeping your head down, gazing at the beige sidewalk beneath your feet. Your hands grasp the handle for the door - cold beneath your touch - and you pull it open, walking into the warm lobby of the apartment building.

There’s a mere receptionist at the desk, three couches, and an elevator, and you feel strangely claustrophobic in this space - but no, not claustrophobic, you don’t think. Maybe just uncomfortable. Ben has been here, once upon a time. Maybe today. Perhaps he has a friendship with this nice receptionist named Lola, or maybe he’s less partial to her.

You give her a smile and then a moment for her to recognize you, as always happens. And normally the moment of surprise bothers you, to an extent, but you appreciate it coming from Lola. Like watching her eyes widen, her lips part, and then she clears her throat and says, “Oh! Hi! What can I do for you?”

Freshly painted fingernails drum against her desk as you lean in, giving her a small smile before questioning in an ultra soft, sweet voice, “I was just wondering if you could tell me - I have a friend who I believe lives here. I thought, maybe, you could confirm the name for me?”

You’re not sure if this is against the rules for her to do, but Lola nods eagerly, dragging her fingers across her keyboard. “Of course! What’s her name?”

“Ben Jones,” you reply, watching her fingers fly across her keyboard. “He never really told me where he lived. And I really miss him.” It’s the truth but you don’t fucking know why you said it. To build a story, perhaps. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. Anyway, does he still live here?”

“Yes, he does,” Lola tells you, and your dumb heart skips a beat. “Unfortunately I can’t tell you what apartment he’s in, but -”

Whatever else she says goes unheard as the door opens again, and you turn around to look at who walked in -

“Oh!” your eyes widen and your cheeks heat up. “Joe. Hi.”

Joe is holding a bag filled with groceries - one of the fancy reusable ones from Wegmans that your mother always bugs you to use - and he looks only the smallest bit confused at you being there, in his best friend’s apartment building, but then he clears his throat and says, “Oh. Hi.”

Lola is forgotten as you take a deep breath before giving a smile to Joe. “Are you bringing those to Ben?” you question, nodding down at the groceries he’s holding.

“Yeah,” Joe nods, holding up the bag. “What are you doing here?”

“I was hoping to - um - visit Ben, actually.”

There’s a beat of silence. And then Joe clears his throat, turns to the receptionist and says, “Hi, Lola!”

“Hi, Joe,” Lola replies, and the absolutely uncomfortable situation is the tiniest bit rectified. “Going up to see Ben, I gather.”

“Yep.” Joe spares you a glance, walking to the elevator. “And I’m bringing her up with me.”

—————————

Ben’s apartment contains every ounce of personality that the man himself ever lacked - pictures on the walls, colorful furniture, a small dog jumping up on your thighs as Joe holds open the door for you to duck into. It’s small, you suppose, though nice - a small hall leads to the kitchen and living room, and it’s all open and nice, and you feel strangely choked up looking at it.

“What are you doing here?” Ben questions, drumming his fingers against his kitchen counter. You know the question, of course, is directed at you, and you can’t exactly explain it yet. Not with Joe here - unpacking the groceries he brought and setting them in their cabinets. It looks like he knows his way around the place, but considering he knew the receptionist by name - it isn’t shocking.

You brace your hands on the kitchen island and pull yourself up onto it, feet dangling as your eyes follow Joe’s path. “I’d love to tell you, really,” you begin, crossing your arms over your chest. Joe pauses in the middle of stuffing a second box of macaroni into a cabinet and meets your eyes, brows furrowed. You understand why Ben and Joe are friends, you think - they seem to balance each other out, in some sort of way. Joe is goofy where Ben seems to be serious. Opposites attract, you muse to yourself, in more ways than one. Ben just seems to be a magnet for the opposites. “Joe, would you be an absolute angel and mind giving us a few minutes alone?”

You’ll need more than a few minutes, but Joe doesn’t need to know that. Not right off the bat. You give him a smile and he sets the pasta down on the counter, giving Ben one final glance before making his way off down the hall. The front door opens and shuts and then your gaze snaps back to Ben, his hair messy with his sweatpants low on his hips, and you focus your eyes directly into his.

“Why are you here?” Ben asks again.

“You’re so blunt, Ben. Aren’t I allowed to visit you?” your voice is sweet and Ben sighs, rubbing his hand over his face. “Kidding. But, really, is it that much of a burden that I’m here?”

“It’s just -” he sighs slowly. “I don’t know.”

Your feet thumb against the island with every swing of your legs, cut short by the rhythmic bangs. “Alright, Benny. Something kind of bad is happening.” You pause. Gauge his reaction, and you can tell he’s trying to appear calmer than he is but his eyes give him away. “I wasn’t going to tell you, truthfully. And maybe that’s kind of fucked up, but I was planning on just handling it myself. But my cousin - I told you about her, I think - she told me I have to tell you, because otherwise that kind of makes me a bad person. Not in those words, of course, but the implication -”

Ben holds up a finger to silence you. “What is it, Y/N?”

Your heart beats hard against your chest, and your throat feels oddly dry, but you don’t want to give your nerves away. Not to him. And the worst he could do is - is reject you, not support you in your decision, whatever it is. But that wouldn’t be too different from not telling him at all, right? Which was the original plan. So you take a deep breath, and your feet thump thump thump against the island. “So, you remember when I was at the hospital.”

You’re only starting from that point to fuck with him. But he nods, crosses his arms, and you continue. “Well, the nurse had a - um - rather pressing health update to tell me about.”

In an instant, it seems, Ben is by your side, and you fight the urge to shift closer to him, so your thigh is touching his torso, but your eyes are slightly leveled when you turn and look at him.

“Are you okay?” he asks, voice rich with concern. “Are you sick, or -”

“Pregnant, actually.”

Watching his expression morph into a thousand different ones would be amusing if you weren’t slightly terrified of his response. But Ben goes from concerned to surprised, and then confused, and then he rolls his eyes and takes a step away from you.

“Oh, shut up,” he says, back to you, and your brows furrow in confusion. Ben turns back around, and his lips are spread into a humorless grin. “You’re not pregnant, Y/N.”

You press your palms against your thighs, exhaling a deep breath, and then you retort, “I promise, I am. Took three drugstore tests and made the hospital take another more official one. I was in denial, too, but I thought you should know. You know, being the dad and all.”

The last sentence - a metaphorical bomb dropped - sends Ben’s head flopping forward into his hands, and for a few minutes he doesn’t move. Just stands still, his face in his palms, and you sit atop of his kitchen island and wait.

Wait for him to get it together, you suppose. You need him to get it together, to talk to you about it, to maybe go outside and tell Joe that you guys are going to need a lot more time than a few minutes, because this conversation can’t be jammed into a time slot. It’s positively indefinite. And getting started on it - on decisions, decisions, decisions - can only occur when Ben fucking stands up and looks at you.

“I’m not too thrilled either, Benny.” it’s the only comforting words you can think of, and your feet still hit the island. It’s a nervous tick, you think. “I promise. But you’re - the dad - and this conversation has to happen. With you.”

“Oh, god,” is all Ben mutters in response, and then he moves his face up so that he’s looking at you - eyes peeking through his fingers, wide and bright. His face is oddly pale. “Please tell me you’re not kidding. Please. If you’re joking …”

“I’m not,” you promise, and then you hold your hand out to him. Stick your middle finger out. “Oops,” you mutter, replacing the middle finger with your pinky. “I swear. I swear I’m not kidding.”

Murmurs of oh god reach your ears, and you let your hand drop back down to the island. Your other hand presses over your stomach, just a comfort thing, and then you swallow. Watch him, still. Make out the way he reacts to this, because he seems just as shocked as you were.

At least he’s not hearing it from a nurse he’s never met five minutes after being broken up with and after being shot, you think, but that hardly seems fair.

Slowly you push yourself off of the island and take a step closer to Ben, reaching out to wrap an arm around his shoulder. He doesn’t push you away and then you envelope him in a warm embrace, and he doesn’t necessarily reciprocate - too busy covering his face - but perhaps he feels comforted.

You do, at least.

“Hey.” you pull away and press your hands to his cheeks, pulling his head up. “Can we talk about this, Ben? Seriously?” He nods slowly, and his eyes look the tiniest bit watery. You hate to focus on it. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Okay,” Ben says, and you furrow your eyebrows at the complete non-response. Then he drops his hands to his side, sighing, and then he grabs your wrist. It isn’t your hand but it’s close, and you hate the way your heart rolls in your chest at the feeling. The thump thump thump you still hear is no longer your feet but your heart, beat beat beating inside your body. “You know I’ll support you no matter what.”

And because you did know this - did know he’s a decent man - you smile slightly and reply, “I know.” You’d thank him but it hardly seems like an extraordinary sentiment. More like something he’s supposed to do. But men were unpredictable, really, because when your best friend had a pregnancy scare in high school, her boyfriend said that he’d never talk to her again if she didn’t get rid of it.

She wasn’t even pregnant. So you push down your pride and cough dryly. “Uh - thank you.”

Ben takes his bottom lip in between his teeth, gnawing on the soft pink skin, and you open your mouth to speak again when the apartment door opens again - you jump, turning to look at who walked in, and Joe pops his head into the kitchen.

“Are we done talking?” Joe asks, as if the incredibly intense conversation you’re having with Ben involves him at all. But he’s nice. You appreciate him, even if you hardly know him.

“It’s gonna be a while, Joey.” Ben motions for Joe to leave, and the ginger sighs, then gives the pair of you a smile. Perhaps he’s noticed your close proximity to each other. Maybe he thinks you’re getting back together - maybe he wants you to. Or maybe he’s just a friendly person.

Joe leaves, and you turn back to Ben.

“Look, sweetheart,” Ben begins, and the nickname forces your eyes to the floor. You don’t want him to see what that name still does to you. He can’t see the heat in your cheeks - the softness in your eyes. “Do you know what you want to do?”

There’s a pause. Then Ben adds, “Because - I mean - I’ll pay for any procedures. If that’s what you want to do.”

The language makes you cringe a little, and you take a few steps back so you’re leaning against the counter. Procedures. It’s certainly a possibility, and outweighing the other option at the present moment, but you hate - well - thinking about it. You nod slowly. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I want to do. I mean, it’s a fucking - a fucking baby, Ben. And I’m doing pretty well now, career-wise. I can hardly take a break to care for a baby. And you’re -”

But you don’t want to finish that last sentence. Don’t want to tell Ben what you’re thinking.

“What? What am I?” His voice isn’t rude, really, as if he suspects you were going to say something completely horrible, and you appreciate him for it.

“Not with me, I guess. I mean, doesn’t having split up parents constitute as a broken household? I don’t want to raise a baby in a broken household.”

Ben shakes his head. “You know I wouldn’t make you raise our kid on your own.”

“I know that, but -”

“I don’t think it’s a broken household, then.” he shakes his head, blonde hair swaying from side to side. “They’d be loved by both their parents, if you decide to keep them.”

You drum your nails against the marble island. “It doesn’t have to be broken at all, though.” And this is where you need to shut the hell up, but you can’t stop. “If I - we - whatever - decide to keep the baby, why couldn’t we raise it together? Together?”

Ben brings his thumb into his mouth, nibbling at his nail, and it takes him a moment to reply. Perhaps he’s wary of this subject. Has to choose his words carefully. “You don’t understand.”

“Explain it to me.”

“This isn’t the time.”

“It’s as good a time as any. Let’s get all the painful conversations out of the way now.”

You think you should’ve kept your mouth shut, actually. But you’re going and going, and you can’t stop now. You need to hear what he has to say - hear it for yourself. Why have you been agonizing over this? The baby, the break up? You deserve some sort of closure, and he’s in the place to give it to you.

“I couldn’t protect you,” Ben speaks slowly, tongue darting out to run along his bottom lip. “And that scares the shit out of me, you know? Because I’m supposed to protect you. That’s my job.”

“Ben,” you interrupt. “That had nothing to do with being involved with me.” You hesitate. “Do you want to be with me?”

He opens his mouth immediately and then shuts it. Finally he clears his throat and says, “Yeah. I do. I really, really do. But I want to keep you safe more. And it’s hard when I’m - I’m distracted.”

It all sounds so fucking stupid. “You know, there were, like, a thousand guys who sent in applications to be my bodyguard.”

Ben raises his eyebrows. “Really? A thousand guys who wouldn’t have let you get shot in a fucking 7/11?”

“You didn’t let me, you know.” But that hardly seems the point of bringing the other applicants up. “You don’t have to be my bodyguard, Benny. If that’s really what’s stopping this from happening.”

There’s a heavy pause. The air feels thick around you, warm and constricting, and you shift slightly. You are entirely too hot, and you aren’t really sure why. It was so cold outside. Too cold, really. And you want to strip down to the bare dressing essentials right now.

Ben shakes his head, and a small, humorless smile tugs at his lips. “Let’s focus on the baby for now, yeah?”

—————————

Tomato sauce. Gnocchi. Sourdough bread.

It’s only three things, so you rolled your eyes when your cousin tried to write it down for you. I’m not an idiot, you know, you told her, and you’re still holding that sentiment strong in your mind.

You hate cooking, really. Your cousin, though, is a chef so she both loves and excels at it, and whenever she visits, she’s in charge of cooking duty. But you, though - you have to get the groceries and clean up and do the dishes. It’s an even price to pay for a good meal.

You have the pasta and the bread - perfectly firm, as your cousin told you - but the tomato sauces are a bit more tricky. Your cousin gets a specific brand, and she told you it so many times before you left the house but you can’t remember. God. You probably should’ve written it down. Your brain can’t handle all three things, apparently, and if that isn’t embarrassing.

u can’t already have pregnancy brain, your cousin replies when you text her asking for the brand confirmation. like ur barely pregnant. get it tf together.

look it isn’t my fault.

should i blame ben?

You shut off your phone and throw it into your basket. Well, fuck her. Pregnancy brain. Is that even a real thing? You feel just as smart - or not - as you were before you got pregnant.

You’ll just grab a random brand. If she gets mad at you for it then you’ll just throw it back at her for making fun of your pregnancy brain. But looking at all of the plastic containers full of bright red sauce, you can’t determine which is even the best to buy. And you could look at all of the brands but that’s so much work.

So you grab Prego. Just to give your cousin a little laugh.

Even looking at the word, though, makes you a bit nervous. Because you - haven’t really thought about what to do with the pregnancy. And you’ve talked to Ben since then but they’ve done little to make your mind up. Dropping the Prego sauce into your basket, you turn and make your way to the checkout, mind returning to the overdriven state it hardly seems to leave.

Sometimes you wish you could just get a break. Go back to before you knew about this. To when you still had Ben and not a care in the world, unaware of the baby, unaware of the impending bullet and breakup.

Time travel doesn’t exist. You can’t go back. Only forward. And that’s fine. You like to think everything will work out in the end, anyway.

Aisle number 5 has the least people while still being open. Giant never has open aisles so it’s between 5 and 9, and there’s a line at 9. Only one woman at 5, pushing a cart full of snacks, and in the cart is -

“Well, hi, cutie.”

Your voice has morphed into an ultra sweet, soft voice that’s reserved for your baby nieces and nephews and little cousins, and the small, pale baby sitting in the cart seems to enjoy it. She looks up at you with a smile, mouth containing one growing-in baby tooth, and her baby blue eyes are wide.

“Her name is Ella,” her mom says to you from where she’s standing, placing her groceries into the same reusable bag that Joe used for Ben. (Kind of makes you feel like shit for not using that bag, but whatever.) Her hair is dark, tied into a ponytail, but her eyes have the same bright blue hue of her daughter. “Ella Grace, legally, but we all call her Ella.” Then the woman’s eyes meet yours, and a slow smile spreads across her face. “I know you, I think. Are you famous?”

Heat spreads through your cheeks, and you smile a little. Poke Ella Grace’s cheeks. “Um, kind of. I don’t know.”

“You’re modest,” Ella Grace’s mom says, pausing in the middle of stuffing a third bag of Lays potato chips into her bag. “My stepdaughter has a poster of yours in her room.”

“Oh,” you murmur, moving your hands in front of your eyes and then waiting a few seconds before pulling away. “Peek-a-boo!” You watch as Ella’s face lights up, and then she giggles loudly. “You’re such a sweetie, aren’t you, Miss Ella?”

Her mom grins at you, setting her bag in her cart. “She’s a sweetie now, but when no one else is around she’s a demon.” She maneuvers her way to the front of her cart and leans down to kiss the top of Ella’s head, and the baby gurgles in response. “You’re such a natural. Has anyone told you that before?”

Your stomach flips dramatically, and you swallow slowly. Begin setting your groceries onto the conveyor, and they move towards the entirely-unbothered cashier slowly. “No, haven’t really heard that before.”

“Well, you definitely are.” She begins pushing her cart away, and small pale fists reach out to grab the air near you. “See? Ella loves you.” The woman pauses and turns back to look at you. “My stepdaughter will never believe it. Really, she won’t.”

“Tell her I love her,” you hear yourself saying, but you’re not focused on it. Feel clammy and cold, all of a sudden. The woman bids farewell and leaves, and you shakily pull out $30 from your wallet and hand it to the cashier. Your total is less than $20 but the guy looks like he could use the extra cash, and you can’t stand to watch him pick out your change. You just grab your plastic bag, give him a smile, and walk as fast as you can out to the parking lot.

A car passes you - a black Toyota. The woman, Ella’s mom, waves at you from the driver’s seat, and you grin at her. As soon as she passes the smile melts off your face, and you grab your keys from the pocket of your windbreaker and unlock your car door as fast as you can.

When you’re in your car, heat turned up as high as it can go - for wind and for white noise - you let your head fall against the seat, a tear trickling its way down your cheek. You sniffle pathetically, bringing your wrist up to wipe away the evidence of your stress and sadness and anger - and all you can think about is Ella.

You’re a natural.

You reach into your pocket, where you’d stuffed your phone before ditching your basket, and unlock it with shaky fingers. Hot air surrounds you and it’s just about suffocating, but you’re unbothered. Just open up your text messages, look at your eighth most recent - simply named benny - and type out a text as fast as you can manage.

i’m keeping the baby. i have to.

And the response is lightning fast, as if Ben had been waiting for your text.

You know I’ll support you no matter what.

I love you more than anything.

And your fingers fly across the screen as you type your reply.

you know i do too.

Then, can i come over? really quick.

You’re always welcome here.

—————————

When Ben answers the door you get barely a moment to look at him before you’re being smushed into his chest, his arms tight around you, and it feels like home.

Your eyes are watery and the tears stain his light grey t-shirt, and you throw your arms around his torso. Squeezing him so tight it feels like he could burst and being in his arms is so great. God, you never want to leave. Never mind your cousin waiting for you or the things you have to do in life. You want to stay forever.

“You’re okay,” Ben mumbles, resting his chin on top of your head. His hand rubs circles into your back, slow and smooth. “It’s all going to be fine, alright? We’re gonna be parents.”

“I know,” you choke out, hiccuping. “I can’t - I have to keep it, Benny.”

His lips press against your head and then he pulls away, placing his hands on your arms to steady you, and you bring your wrist up to wipe at your eyes. “Alright.” And you can tell he’s struggling with what to say - you are, too - so he moves his hands down your arms. Grabs your hands, and his palms are warm and soft. “I’ll support you until the end of time, sweetheart.”

Another tear slips down your cheek but you refuse to move your hands first - squeeze his tighter, really. Then you clear your throat, mumble, “Sorry for showing up.” Because - really - it’s getting later, now, nearly 7. And you don’t consider that late by anyone’s standards, but what if he was getting ready for bed? Or preparing to go out with Joe and those other two guys on Instagram? “Didn’t mean to ruin your night.”

Ben smiles humorlessly. “I wasn’t doing anything. Just watching a movie, probably.” His eyes fall down to your joined hands, as if he’s just realized the physical connection between the two of you. You prepare for him to drop your hands, fast and sharp as if they burned him, but he doesn’t. Just squeezes tighter. “Is your cousin waiting for you?”

“How did you know I’m going home to my cousin?”

“You’re always going home to your cousin.” His face is a shade too red and his eyes look watery, and you feel slightly bad. “You talked about her a lot.”

On tour is the forgotten next part of that sentence. You don’t, surprisingly, want to think about your time with him now. Just want to focus on this.

Stay in the present, you think. The future, maybe. But not the past. It’s all you can do to move on from there, with this fucking baby and - and Ben.

—————————

i’m giving you a hypothetical situation here.

After sending the text to Ben, you rest your phone on the couch in front of you. Your house feels too empty, the lack of people you live full-time with suddenly overwhelming - your cousin is over a lot and so are some friends but, really, you just have your dog besides that. And he’s lazy, constantly wanting to lie on top of you and nap.

You’d been fine with that before, but at 15 weeks pregnant you’ve started pushing him off of you when he tries to rest in your lap. Your stomach is beginning to show, a small bump that goes unnoticed when you wear baggy clothes. You’re always hyper-aware of it, though. Worried that your dog will hurt the baby.

So your dog is ignoring you, now. Offended that you won’t let him stretch out over your body for hours at a time.

It just makes the loneliness worse. Even if you have a person attached to you at all times.

Alright. Hypothetical situation. Go.

if i was extremely desperate for nutella, and i was all out of nutella, would you get me some and bring it to my house?

A text bubble appears right away, indicating that he’s typing, and then it goes away.

Haha.

I can bring you nutella.

Wait, this is hypothetical, isn’t it?

it doesn’t have to be!! my address is 2275 sawyer street.

You throw your phone onto the couch with a grin, settling back against it with your eyes on the TV. Pretty Woman plays, a favorite movie of yours, and you hate not paying attention to it.

Even if you can recite every line by heart.

What if, by chance, you notice something new about the movie you’ve watched a hundred times? You can never be so sure.

After 10 minutes your phone rings, and it’s Ben - you let it play out for a few seconds and then answer it, pressing the phone to your ear.

“Hello?” Ben says, and you can hear rain softly pattering, both through the phone and from the outside. “Hey, I’m driving around your neighborhood, and I have no fucking idea how to get to your house.”

You smile slightly. “There’s a pretty long driveway.”

“Yeah, but where does it start?”

You sit up, put the phone on speaker, and lean over to rest it on the coffee table. “Look, I know exactly where you are, because everyone gets caught up in the same area.”

He pauses. “Seems like a confusing house to have.”

“Well, it’s more private, you know?”

“Private, secret, whatever. Just tell me how to get there.”

“Alright, so …”

After a minute of explaining exactly how to find your house - an explanation you’ve given more times than you can count - Ben hangs up with the promise of arriving in less than 2 minutes, and you push yourself up off the couch. Reach for the remote and pause your movie, and then you head down the hall towards the front door.

There’s a knock after a couple of seconds and you lean your head close to the door, calling out in a mocking, sing-song voice, “Who is it?”

There’s laughter from the other side. “I have your Nutella.”

You unlock the door and swing it open, coming face to face with Ben. In his hands is a plastic grocery bag, and through the sheer material you can see the Nutella label, staring you right in the face.

“God, Benny, you’re an angel.” you grab the bag and peek inside - three fucking containers of it, and you can nearly moan at the sight. “You know, I’d hate to be doing this with anyone else. I can’t think of a single person who would go out and get me Nutella at 9 at night, but here you are.”

“You can count on me, sweetheart,” Ben tells you, and you take a step backwards into the foyer. He lingers outside, a hand braced on the doorframe. “You know, your house is pretty big.”

You shrug. “I’d call it average size.”

“Always so modest.”

You look up, eyes meeting his, and then a smile spreads across your face. “You can come in, you know. I wasn’t planning on having this be a drop-off situation, but if you wanna go, then …”

Ben is inside before you finish the offer, shutting the door behind him and blowing warm air into his palms. You pad off back down the hall and into the living room, Pretty Woman paused right on the scene where Vivian is going shopping for clothes and gets kicked out of a store. Your favourite in the movie, really - though it does tend to make you quite sad, and even more when you watch it now.

“Hey, turn around real quick.”

At Ben’s voice you pause and then turn, brows furrowed. “What -”

“I didn’t realize you were starting to show.”

You look down at your stomach, the tiny swell of the baby clear in your tight tank top. “Oh. Guess I am.” Pause. “Barely, though. Soon I’ll grow more, probably too much, really.”

“Yeah, probably,” Ben replies as you turn back again to the living room. You throw the bag onto the couch and then flop onto the cushions, sinking into it. “When did that start?”

“A week or two ago.” You pause as Ben leans against the wall, watching as you dig through the bag to grab one of the containers of Nutella. “Believe me here, Benny. You weren’t purposely left out of the loop. My cousin said I have pregnancy brain already, but I don’t think that even exists. Can you grab a spoon from the kitchen? I swear, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass here.”

Ben dutifully turns towards the kitchen and returns a minute later. He sits next to you and then hands over the metal spoon, and you untwist the top of one of the Nutella containers and dig the spoon into the sweet snack.

There’s a moment of silence - broken only by the movie - and then Ben says, “I wanna know about these kind of things, Y/N.”

You look at him, lapping the Nutella off the spoon. Your brows furrow - truthfully you hadn’t thought it was a very big deal, starting to show. It just seemed like something that was bound to happen. Nothing special. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Ben tells you. He stretches his arm over the back of the couch, eyes on the television screen. “I just want to hear about the pregnancy. Developments and everything.”

“Alright.” you hesitate, digging your spoon back into the Nutella jar. “I mean - I am sorry. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, that’s all.”

“I mean, it isn’t, really. It’s just important to me.”

There’s an easy fix for this, you want to say. What if we move in together? What if we get together? You’d probably notice the bump before I do, Benny.

Ben looks at you and then moves his arm so it’s around your shoulders, and you practically melt into his touch. “I didn’t mean to make you feel shitty about it, you know,” he tells you.

You shake your head, curls brushing his nose as your head moves. “I don’t feel shitty. I’ll tell you about everything. Promise. Even when I wake up in the middle of the night and vomit my guts out into the toilet.”

He nods slowly, fingertips tickling the side of your arm. You take another spoonful of Nutella, pressing your head against his shoulder and trying to pay attention to the movie, but it’s hard, now. Because this feels quite a lot like cuddling, and it messes with your emotions quite a bit for Ben to be instigating cuddling with you. But after a moment Ben urns to look at you with a small grin tugging at his lips. “Now, how often does that happen? Should I be concerned?”

—————————

“How much money are you putting into the betting pool?”

Ben rolls his eyes, shutting the pamphlet he’d been reading and shoving it into his pocket. He has a stack of them shoved into the pocket of his sweatshirt - the waiting room had a variety of them and Ben took one of each.

He leans close, mouth right by your ear. He’s standing beside the table you’re seated on, his hand braced beside you. There’s no one else in the room with you but he still keeps his voice down, as if he’s wary of the doctor coming in and hearing your conversation. “I’m not putting money into guessing the baby’s gender, Y/N.” The last syllable of your name breaks off into a laugh, and you throw your head back with a giggle.

“Alright, alright. I’m just saying, Benny, I know it’s a girl.” you lower your voice, reaching into his sweatshirt pocket to grab one of the pamphlets. You unfold it and hold it in front of your face, and Ben bursts into laughter. “Shut up! Nothing’s funny!”

Ben rests his head against your shoulder, and you lean towards him, pressing your bodies impossibly closer despite the barrier between your seats. “And I know it’s a boy. I can feel it.” As a point he reaches in and presses his hand against your 20 week stomach. “See? That’s a boy.”

“That’s a girl.”

“This is why I want to make a bet.”

“And I refuse to bet on what sex my baby is gonna be.”

You cross your arms and huff pointedly. Ben picks his pamphlet back up and traces his finger along the page. You reach behind you and pull your phone out of your pocket, opening up Instagram. You have notifications - the result of a selfie posted earlier that’s already reached 700,000 likes - and you scroll through your homepage absentmindedly. Angry tweets and Instagram callouts have subsided dramatically in the past few months and you’ve been on your merch team to get all of the products out in record-breaking time - makes it so that people can’t get mad at you for it anymore.

Or, they can, but most people consider it unreasonable.

The door opens abruptly, and you shove your phone back into your back pocket, sending the doctor a wide grin. “Hello, Dr. Green!” you chirp, voice unnaturally high, and you pray that’s the correct name.

“Hello, Y/N. Ben.” Dr. Green is a sweet lady, short with dark hair, and she always seems happy. You appreciate it - appreciate the enthusiasm at your pregnancy. Her excitement at every new development marks the difference between a good doctor and a great one, you think. “It’s just a routine checkup - you know the drill by now, right?”

You and Ben nod in unison, and you reach for his hand on the table. He takes it, intertwining your fingers, and Dr. Green smiles at the pair of you.

You lie back onto the table, pulling your shirt up over your stomach as Dr. Green spreads some of the gel over your bump - it’s always cold, no matter how prepared you pretend to be for it. It’s always a surprise. Your eyes turn to the screen, your thumb rubbing the back of Ben’s hand, and you squint at the screen until you can make out the vague shape of your baby. And it’s -

Overwhelming.

Previously it had been hard to really make out the baby but now you can see it, make out its features. And it seems real.

LIke it’s really happening.

Dr. Green points at different parts of the screen, a manicured nail tapping against the hard surface. “You can see the eyes, here - look, this is the head. You see?”

Your eyes go glassy as you gaze at the screen, squeezing Ben’s hand. “Yeah. There he is, Benny,” you grin, looking up at Ben, and he rolls his eyes.

“She. There she is.”

Dr. Green’s eyes dart between you two, and then she asks, “Would you two like to know the baby’s sex? We’re far enough along that we can tell, and the baby appears to be in the right position.”

Ben says, “Oh, we definitely do,” at the same time as you nod furiously, hair swaying with every movement of your head. “Please,” you tell the doctor, pushing yourself onto your elbows to look at the screen. “We’ve kind of been fighting about it.”

The doctor smiles, raising her eyebrows. “I heard,” she murmurs. “Are you putting money on it?”

You turn and mockingly glare at Ben. “I wanted to, but Benny here thought it was immoral, or something.”

“Because it is,” Ben argues, “I don’t want to win money because of what sex my baby is.”

Then Dr. Green asks, “So, Ben, you think it’s a girl, correct?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, then, if this were a bet, I’d have to say that you -” Dr. Green moves the probe around your stomach, and then points again at the screen. You squint to see what you’re meant to be looking at. “You, Ben, would be winning money.”

It takes you a moment to process what she said, and your eyes widen.

Rewind. What?

You glance up at Ben, and you find that your vision is blurry as you look at him - from what?

Are those tears?

“Oh, my god,” Ben breathes, eyes fixed on the screen, and then he collapses into the chair beside your bed. “Oh my god.”

“Are you serious?” your mouth falls as you stare at Dr. Green, a smile spread across her face. “It’s a girl? You’re serious?”

“I’m 100% serious. You two are going to have a baby girl.”

Ben pulls your intertwined hands up to his face, pressing his lips to the back of your hand before losing it - his face drops and you can make out tears falling down his cheeks. You laugh a bit, leaning over and trying to wrap your arm around him, but it’s a bit difficult.

After a moment Ben looks up at you, and his face is red, eyes watery. “Oh my god, Y/N. We’re going to have a daughter.”

You look back up at the screen, hiccuping and giggling at the same time. “I know. A baby girl. I mean, you’re positive, right?” The last part is directed at the doctor, and she grins as she nods. “Holy shit. Holy shit.” You reach up and press your hand against the screen, as if it’s the equivalent of touching your daughter in real time. “Can we have copies of this?”

You’re positive you’ll never be able to capture the emotions you’re feeling now ever again, but having copies of it - well, it’ll be the perfect way to remember it. And when Dr. Green prints you two copies of the sonogram (and then a third and a fourth, for Joe and your cousin, you tell her, because Ben has been rendered incapable of speaking) you clutch it in your hands, eyes unable to leave the blurry picture of your daughter inside of you.

—————————

You gave Ben a key to your house the week you found out the baby’s sex.

And it really did seem like a great idea. You gave it to him and then marked it with a small, pink, heart shaped sticker, and Ben made a show of hooking it onto the same keyring he has his apartment key on.

In turn he gave you the key to his apartment. You put it in your pocket and have since lost it, but he doesn’t know that.

Now, though - giving him a key has started to seem like a really horrible idea.

Your fingers tweak at your nipples, peaked in the cool air of your bedroom - the window is open, sending the early morning breeze straight into your room. Your other hand works at your cunt, pumping one finger in and out of yourself, palm of your head rubbing against your sensitive clit.

Soft moans are like a mantra off your lips, and you squeeze your eyes shut. If you think hard enough, work your mind enough, you can trick yourself into imagining that your fingers aren’t your own.

Ben’s are larger, you decide. You add another finger to the one that’s fucking into your pussy, and you let out a louder cry at the feeling. When you curl your fingers just right - the way Ben knows how to, better than anyone you’ve ever been with - it brushes against your G-spot.

Ben was a master at finding it. You’re even better.

Your back arches up, and you bring your hand from your tits down to your pussy. Your two fingers rub desperate circles into your clit, and you swallow a mouthful of air.

“Fuck,” you hiss, tilting your head back into your entirely-too-soft pillow. And your mind goes back to the man you wish were here with you - the one you want, the one whose fingers you’re desperate for - and you cry out, “Fuck, Ben -”

“Fuck.”

The voice isn’t yours, and you sit up, panic flashing through your mind - bright red sirens, blaring around your mind, and you pull your sheets up over your body, naked except for your panties.

And - Ben is there. His cock is straining against his sweatpants, and in between his two fingers is the pink heart decorated key you gave him.

“Oh my god.” your voice is soft and you swallow thickly. “Ben. Hi.”

“I didn’t know you -”

“I’m fucking sorry -”

“Don’t be, I walked in -”

You squeeze your eyes shut and lean your head back, feeling a prickling behind your eyes - you’re needy and embarrassed and you have an unbelievable urge to rip Ben’s clothes off, because he’s so fucking hard and you were almost there.

You almost came from the thought of him.

“Ben,” you interrupt him, and he leans against the door, pushing his keys into the pocket of his sweatpants. “Ben, I’m really fucking - horny.”

He hesitates. “I see.”

“And I really, really miss you. And your - appendages.” You push yourself up so you’re kneeling, sheets falling down over your chest, stopping just above your stomach. “Please. Benny, please.”

“Sweetheart -”

“Please. Oh my god, Ben, I fucking need you.” you clasp your hands together as if you’re begging, and in a way you certainly are.

You can see Ben’s mind whirring - your eyes pointedly trail down to the bulge in his sweatpants, and then back up to his eyes, and then Ben lunges at you.

His lips meet yours and it’s frantic - desperate - everything you’ve been missing for the past six months, nearly. Your hands tangle in his hair and pull him down to you, and eventually the two of you lie on your sides, mouths not moving from each other’s.

It’s different, completely different, from how it was. His hand goes to your stomach, resting on top of the bump as his lips move against yours. You whimper into his mouth, and Ben groans as your hand trails down to the bulge in his sweatpants.

“Oh, fuck, sweetheart,” Ben grunts as your nails drag across his boner. “Six fucking months I’ve been wanting this, you know that?”

You pull away, attaching your lips to the underside of his jaw. “You know you could have had me. I was fucking desperate for you, Benny.”

“Mmm, well … I figured.”

You move your head away from him, furrowing your brows. “Awfully conceited.”

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting said that a lot of women have spiked sexual libidos during pregnancy.” You push Ben onto his back and throw a leg over his thigh, straddling his waist, your panty clad cunt pressed against his dick. “And - oh, fuck. I’ve missed this, sweetheart.”

You try not to wear your emotions on your sleeve but it’s hard - your heart swells and your cheeks heat up, and then you rock your hips against his once.

Try not to let him know how much you’ve missed this.

The pair of you have all the time in the world, really, but you can’t move fast enough. You grind your cunt against his rock hard erection, desperate for him to be inside of you, to be full of him again and he hisses, hand trailing behind you to land one firm smack on your ass. He grins as you yelp at the sensation.

Ben reaches down and tugs your underwear away, and your hands go to the ties of his sweatpants, undoing the small knot with deft, shaking fingers. You tug his pants down over his cock and it’s - it’s so much bigger than you remember.

He’s achingly hard, his cock swollen and purple at the tip, and when you wrap your hand around the base he lets out a soul-wrenching moan. His hands go to your hips, massaging your sides as you adjust yourself so you’re sitting just above his cock, positioning yourself above him before sinking down.

“Oh, fuck!”

He is bigger than you remembered, and it just about fucking hurts, having him inside of you. You throw your head back and cry out, feeling breathtakingly full after months of only your fingers. Ben moans loudly, fingernails digging into your sides, and you’re sure it’s just as surprising for him as it is for you.

“You’re so fucking tight. Oh my - god.” Ben’s face is coated in sweat and you bring your hands down to his cheeks, wiping some of it away before leaning down to kiss him sloppily. “Feel so good around me. I fucking missed this, sweetheart.”

“I missed it - I missed you,” you breathe. And you’ve seen him so much, still, in these past months, but it’s different. You know it is. Being around him and being with him are two separate planes of existence and you’ve been stuck on the former for six fucking months. 24 weeks. “I needed you so bad.”

Ben’s hands on your hips help you work your way up and down, and you just want to lie down and let him fuck you but that’s - not necessarily a possibility, now. Not with your girl inside of you, restricting your movement in that way.

(You wouldn’t give her up for the world.)

His thumb presses into your clit, rubbing circles into it with an achingly slow pace as you try to maintain steady rhythm, bouncing up and down, rock n’ rolling your hips against his. You brace your hands on his chest for leverage, lifting yourself up off of him and then back down, and with every movement, mixed with his hips bucking up into yours, that perfect spot inside of you is hit.

Again and again.

You were so close when he started and you topple over the edge within minutes, cumming desperately, seeing the night sky behind your eyes. Stars align your vision and it’s so beautiful, so great, all you want to see. That ball of pressure builds up in your core and explodes, again and again.

“Fuck,” you moan out, voice strangled and throaty, and you finally have to stop moving - admit defeat - because your legs are exhausted and you’re completely emotionally and physically overwhelmed, and really, you’re not sure that this isn’t some crazy dream you’ve made up in your mind, anyway. “Wait -”

And you detach yourself from him. Ben cries out and you resist the urge to grin at the noise, how needy he is for you, how much he’s wanted this. You roll onto your side and Ben follows, his chest pressed against your back, and with this new position he re enters you.

It’s different - you’ve never tried this before, even in your hypersexual relationship in the pre-gunshot, pre-break up, pre-baby days. He wraps his arm around your body, fingers rubbing at your clit again and you know you’ll be reaching your second orgasm at the hands of the man you’re so fucking in love with it physically hurts.

Every time your lungs fill with oxygen Ben tears it away - short moans escape your body as he fucks you, mixed with the firm circles on your sensitive nub, and you lean your head back into your shoulder. Ben tilts his head so he can press his lips to yours in the messiest kiss you’ve had, but it’s perfect. It’s all you wanted - no, needed - and your eyes water just at the feeling.

“Want me to cum inside of you?” The question is fucking stupid, because you’re already pregnant - there’s nowhere else you’d rather him cum except for inside of you, filling you up again. His other hand works at your sensitive breasts, tweaking your nipples so they’re peaked in the cold air. Even with the sweat that drips down your body you’re fucking freezing, and it reminds you of that first night you spent together.

(And you swear this is the most passionate sex you’ve ever had.)

You nod, thick mane of curls tickling his nose, and Ben buries his face into your locks. He presses his body close to yours and finally lets himself fucking erupt, releasing a strangled moan. Thick spurts of hot cum coat your inner walls and you sob out, squeezing your eyes shut, and the feeling of his cum inside of you after so long sends you over for the second time. Your chest rises and falls with desperate, heaving breaths, and you suck in air until you’re coughing.

Ben buries his head into your shoulder, his breathing just as desperate as yours. And the pair of you don’t speak - can’t, at least in your case - and you try not to think about any of it. The break up, the future, the past. Just let yourself live in the moment, in Ben’s arms, until exhaustion chases you into a dream filled sleep.

—————————

When you wake up Ben is gone.

You’re not sure what you expected, but he hasn’t answered your texts in three weeks. You told him that you have to talk, and that you should be getting started on the nursery as you approach 7 months, and the read receipts mocks you.

You hate being the one to double text. It only seems necessary.

you can’t fucking ignore me benjamin.

Read.

we’re adults. we’re having a fucking kid. this isn’t right.

Read.

what did i do?

Read. Read. Read. Read.

You find the key to his apartment in your car and you debate going to pay him a visit but you decide - foolishly, perhaps, and for the sake of your pride alone - that you want him to find you first. To seek you out.

You’re not really sure if you’re being the adult or the child here. Maybe both. Maybe neither. You’re just being you, and as you get further along you find that it’s the easiest thing to be.

—————————

At 7 months you find yourself getting a bit panicked about the Ben situation. He hasn’t texted you nor sought you out yet, and you can’t help but think that this is it. Unconditional support has found its end. You and Ben are done, and he’s gone.

Wouldn’t be the first man in your life to do that, but with a child on the way?

(Still not the first man.)

It’s a heavy cloud weighing down on you, raining on your parade wherever you go. LIke sitting at a restaurant with your cousin, picking at your lo mein with a permanent lump in your throat.

And she looks at you, brows furrowed, bringing her hand in front of your face to snap twice. Regain your attention. “Are you alright?”

No, you want to say. I think I fucked everything up. And you didn’t, you have to remind yourself. You haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t know what the fuck is happening with Ben but - but what did you do? To deserve what he’s doing?

So you smile at your cousin. “I’m fine.” The baby moves inside of you. “She’s crazy, I swear. Wanted Japanese and now she’s freaking the fuck out at the thought of it.” And that’s a lie. You’re so hungry for the noodles you could fucking scream, but you also think you drank your lemonade too fast.

You shove your phone into the pocket of your jacket and stand, giving your cousin a smile before turning and walking towards the bathrooms. It’s a small corner of the restaurant - two doors, marked with a small man and a small woman, and you lean against the wall by the women’s restroom.

Breaaaaathe.

It’s hard. You open your phone and look at your texts, as if expecting to see a response from Ben that you’d somehow missed but it isn’t there. Of course it isn’t. You’d know. You’ve only been checking it obsessively for weeks, desperate for him to reach out and apologize for the shit he’s been pulling.

And there’s nothing.

He doesn’t fucking care.

It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t.

You put your phone away and look up, shock flowing through your veins. “Joe -?”

The ginger looks up from his own phone, and your eyes meet.

“Oh!” And he looks genuinely happy to see you. It’s - it’s so good. So nice, that he looks as if running in to you is some miraculous experience. When have you last felt that from someone? “Y/N! Hi!”

“Hi, Joe,” you smile, and then your mind connects the dots - Joe - Ben’s best friend - Ben who won’t talk to you -

And then you take a step forward, hugging your jacket closer around your body, and ask, “Have you spoken to Ben lately? By chance?”

Joe furrows his eyebrows and takes his bottom lip in between his teeth - the way Ben does. You wonder if one of them picked it up from each other, or if it’s just a coincidence. “I … I have. And I heard about your, uh, situation with him.”

“You have?” You tilt your head, smiling. “Can you explain it to me?”

“What?”

“Ben hasn’t texted me in nearly a month,” you tell Joe, and you don’t want to be getting angry but you can feel the heat flowing through your veins. It isn’t Joe’s fault, you tell yourself. “I don’t know what I did. I mean - well, if he told you, then don’t you know why I’m being fucking shunned?”

Oops. You hadn’t meant to slip the f-word in there. Sometimes it just wiggles its way into your thoughts.

Joe hesitates, and then says, “I think he’s scared.”

“Scared?”

“I don’t know. That’s what he told me. He said he was scared.”

I’m scared too, you want to say. You want to yell it. Your phone feels like a fire lit in your pocket, all of a sudden, and you want to throw it on the ground until it fucking smashes. You want to shake Joe - no, Ben - until he understands, understands that everything he’s feeling is amplified for you. And you’re fucking furious about it. But you can’t take this out on Joe. It isn’t his fault.

You swallow. Take a deep breath. “Okay.” You need to think about what to say. Because now there’s - a prickling behind your eyes, and you can feel the tears on their way, and if you cry in front of Joe you’ll never forgive yourself. “Can you tell him to call me?” And, fuck, your voice cracks on the very last syllable. “Please. That’s - I just really, really need him to call me, okay?”

Your eyes are watery and you sniffle pathetically. Joe nods - you see that - and then he steps forward, wrapping his arms around you, and you let yourself fall into his embrace.

It doesn’t matter that he’s practically a stranger.

It doesn’t matter that you’re waiting for the bathrooms at a random Japanese restaurant.

All that matters is this. The comfort. The silent promise of some sort of remedy for whatever’s been going on with Ben. Joe can help.

You trust him on that.

—————————

The doorbell rings as soon as your cousin drops you off at home - you’ve kicked off your sneakers and ripped off your jacket and then there it is.

Ring.

You grip the doorknob with a sweaty hand, swallowing thickly before calling to the other side of the door, “Who is it?”

There’s a pause. And then, “It’s me.”

So you open the door. Come face to face with Ben, his hair messy, and every bit of your anger evaporates at the sight of him.

Ben takes a step inside and shuts the door behind him, and then you throw your arms around his shoulders. He presses his hands against your back, and even if your stomach is in the way it’s fine - feels good. Good to have him back.

“I’m so sorry,” Ben mumbles into your hair. His voice is muffled by your locks and you tighten your grip on him. A silent it’s okay, even if it isn’t. It will be. “I should’ve never - fuck. I’m so fucking sorry, sweetheart. I love you so much.” He pauses. “I’m not your bodyguard anymore. I quit. I had to. You know - you know I had to.”

You pause. Pull away, brace your palms on his cheeks. It’s what you’ve needed to hear - all you’ve ever wanted to. It all feels so fucking right - the relationship you’ve needed, the baby you’re going to have, the future you can foresee.

“Fuck, Benny. I love you,” you tell him. “I love you so much.”

And then you lean up, press your lips to his, and you work your way further into the house. There’s no better place to start making up for lost time like the present, you moan into the cool air, and he throws his head back and laughs, the small distraction breaking his focus away from suckling a hickey into your inner thigh. Just like how he used to.

—————————

“You know, we should do one of those things where we put her name up on the wall above her crib in - like - block letters, or something.”

You push yourself on the rocking chair in the corner of the future-nursery, watching as Ben works at the crib on the ground. You haven’t bothered yourself with helping too much - at least, not with the heavy-duty, manual labour type of shit - but the decorations have been perfected because of you.

It’s a beautiful room. You and Ben spent weeks agonizing over how to do it and you finally think you’ve nailed it - white walls and a grey crib, carpet so soft that your feet sink right into it. You picked out the rocking chair, too. Same shade of grey as the crib, and adorned with a pink pillow and a dozen of stuffed animals that have been evicted to the ground so you could sit.

“That’s a good idea,” Ben tells you, squinting his eyes to read the instructions for setting up the crib. “We don’t have a name, though.”

You hum. Not officially, you don’t - haven’t gotten around to that conversation - but you certainly have ideas. “Well, let’s get on it, then. Wanna hear my ideas?”

Ben grins. “Sure, sweetheart.”

“Alright!” you clap your hands together and then fish your phone from your pocket. You turn it on and flick to your notes app, scrolling until you find the list of names you’d put together. “Starting from my favourites and going down. Evangelina, Charlotte, Madeline -”

“They’re long.”

“Well, long names can get cute nicknames, you know? Anyway … Madeline, Caroline, Genevieve, Adaline …”

Ben holds up a finger, and you stop reciting your list. “I like Genevieve a lot.”

“Really?” you tilt your head to the side. “Because that’s closer to the bottom of my list, really.”

He laughs, turning so that he’s looking at you. “Well, I like it more than the others. I don’t know a lot of girls named Genevieve, either.”

You lean your head back, pushing your foot off of the ground to rock yourself a bit more. You shut your eyes, rest a hand on your stomach and think - Genevieve. You certainly like it or else it wouldn’t have been there in the first place - and it presents the nickname Evie, which you dubbed as the ideal nickname for Evangelina, your first choice.

“Hypothetically,” you begin, and Ben mockingly rolls his eyes. “If we named her Genevieve, what would her middle name be?”

“Does she need one?”

“It seems right.”

Ben pauses, looking away from the instructions he’d been trying to comprehend. “I don’t know. Marie?”

You groan. “Something less basic, would you?”

“Then what about Charlotte? That’s cute, isn’t it? And I know you like it.”

The name flies around your head - Genevieve Charlotte Jones - and then a tiny grin tugs at your mouth. You nibble on your bottom lip and then bring your thumbnail up to your mouth.

Ben glances up at you, gauging your reaction to the suggestion. “What do you think?”

You push yourself off of the chair and kneel down beside your boyfriend, leaning in to press a firm kiss to his lips. “I love it. I love it so much, and I love you so much.”

—————————

Hitting the nine month mark is surprising and unsettling and it certainly shouldn’t be. Almost every mother gets to this point - where, as Dr. Green says, it’s any day now. But you feel special for it - feel an amount of pride, especially when you walk into the nursery and look at the nine letters spelling out your daughter’s name, right above her crib.

Hitting the nine-month-and-one-week mark is normal and it doesn’t bother you, really, that your girl has gone past when she’s supposed to come out. Pregnancies are nine months, aren’t they? But she wants to stay, you suppose. And that’s fine. You accept that. Lord knows how difficult it’ll be when she comes so you’re fine with it, fine with her staying.

Hitting the nine-and-a-half-month mark makes you desperate.

You decide you want her out. You’re done with being pregnant, having her kicking you at all hours of the day, craving everything, constantly feeling exhausted. And you try your best to keep it from the public, reducing it to rumours coming from unreliable news sites, so social media has been a burden.

Selfies. Selfies and shots of just your face, and absolutely nothing from your stomach down. No photoshoots, and you don’t let your friends post anything that’ll give it away.

Genevieve and Ben can be your surprise until she comes. Then you’ll decide what to do, whether to tell everyone, whether to keep her a secret for a bit longer.

Until she comes. And it seems like she never will.

You and Ben decide to make Joe and your cousin her godparents, in case of any emergency, and they take the role with (in your cousin’s case) a squeal and a hug, or (in Joe’s case) tears. There hardly seems anyone more fit for the job than the people who, in their own way, brought you to this point.

At nine and a half months you’re lying in bed with Ben, your hair wet from a shower, and your body is riddled with tiredness - it’s all you’ve been feeling. Tired and sore, all the fucking time, and Genevieve is still in no rush to make her appearance into the world.

“Ben,” you mumble, feeling his arms around your waist, hand against your stomach. “I can’t wait until she’s here.”

You can feel him smile against your neck. “Me, too.”

“No.” you turn your head so you can look at him. “I’m really sick of being pregnant, if you want to hear the truth. It’s a real pain in the ass sometimes.”

Ben untangles his body from yours and sits up on his knees, looking down at you. The moonlight streams in through the window, illuminating his body to you and yours to him, and he leans down to kiss your neck. “What can I do to help?”

It’s such an innocent request. You’re already prepared to taint it as you push yourself onto your elbows, sighing and telling him, “Well, there’s this rumor I heard.”

“Alright …”

“That having an orgasm can induce labor.”

You raise your eyebrows at him, and Ben grins. His hand trails from your stomach to your pajama shorts, undoing the tie before starting to pull them down your thighs until they’re dangling from one ankle, and he can push your legs apart with warm hands. His hair is floppy and the light lets you see it better, every individual strand highlighted by the glow.

“I’ll give you all the orgasms you want, sweetheart,” Ben tells you, voice soft yet loud in the silent room. In what feels like a heartbeat he’s lying on his stomach in between your legs, bracing his palms on your smooth inner thighs. He traces your skin, drawing pictures and telling stories that only he can understand until a chill runs right up your spine, and your fingers run through his hair before squeezing the locks.

Ben takes the hint, leaning in to press a soft kiss to your clit. Your hips buck up instinctively - the small jolt of pleasure makes you feel so fucking good already, so desperate for him. Ben looks up at you with a wicked grin, teeth shining, and then he leans in to nip at your clit.

“Fuck!” you gasp, sucking in a sharp breath. “God. God.”

One of his fingers, as thick as two of yours, traces along your folds, collecting wetness on his fingertips. Slowly he slides his digits into your cunt and your body accepts them eagerly, walls clenching around him - Ben leans in to kiss your inner thighs again, sucking another dark hickey into the skin.

He fucks you nice and slow with his fingers, moving his mouth from your thighs to wrap his lips around your clit. He sucks the small bud desperately, cheeks hollowing, and you’re sure he’s rock hard but all he wants is for you to cum. You can tell when he gets like this, when all he’s chasing is your pleasure and not his own. His hips, though, give him away. Rocking against the mattress, needy for any bit of friction, and it’s so unbelievably erotic to watch.

You reach down and search for his free hand, the one not pumping in and out of your pussy, and you intertwine your fingers. Ben’s eyes flicker up to you and he raises his eyebrows, waggling them until you’re giggling and then choking on the air you’re sucking in.

Your bodies are luminescent under the moon, and you press your other hand overtop of your stomach, crying out as your hips buck into your boyfriend’s mouth. Ben’s teeth graze your clit at the same time as his fingers curl to brush your g-spot and the pressure building in your abdomen finally releases, legs quivering and throat raw and skin clammy.

Ben milks it out for every last drop he can, and then he laps the juices up off his fingers that are beginning to trail down his wrist. You can feel stickiness on the inside of your thigh but you don’t mind, really. Usually that would bother you, and maybe you’d ask Ben to go get a washcloth, but you don’t want him to move as he cuddles into your side.

“Do you want me to help you?” you question, soft voice giving away the exhaustion you’d been hoping to hide. “You looked … needy, Ben.”

He snorts, kissing your shoulder. “I fixed it myself. Don’t make fun of me.”

A grin tugs at your lips. “I wasn’t planning on it. Jesus. Go to sleep.”

Ben kisses your puckered lips and then tugs the sheets up over you. They stick to your sweat covered body and it feels good. Cools you off, almost, even as your human furnace of a lover attaches himself to you.

Fingers run absentmindedly through his hair, and your eyelids are brutally heavy but you can’t fall asleep. Even as Ben begins to snore.

This is how it’s supposed to be, you think. How you wanted it to be. You and the love of your life and your unborn daughter, stirring inside of you.

(By tomorrow night, she won’t be stirring inside of you - she’ll be very much outside, sobbing with her fists in her eyes that match her dad’s.)

(But you don’t know that yet.)

#ben hardy x reader #ben hardy smut #ben hardy fluff #borhap imagines #borhap smut #pls follow the maker of that absolutely beautiful gif #and thank you all o much for reading these bodyguard fics

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spine-buster · 6 years

Text

I Thought You Might Be Mine (Ricochet) - Part III

May 31st, 2016 On a bullet train, somewhere in Japan

Iris never saw Trevor so attached to his phone in the two and a half years she had known him. They were nearing the end of the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, and just a few days before, he’d had a match with Will Ospreay. And good God almighty, was it a match. Everybody was talking about it on social media. Hundreds of gifs were being made of the match. Everybody had something to say about it – good or bad. It was probably the most buzz either men had received for a match in their careers.

Trevor was his own worst critic but in the hours that followed the match he was glued to every social media and wrestling site available on the internet. Even Fox News had picked it up. He didn’t really care about random news outlets and their opinions on it – he made that perfectly clear to her. What mattered to him instead was the opinion of the wrestling community. Vader had already voiced his extreme displeasure with the match, comparing the two men to high school gymnasts.

“You know, I keep watching the gifs,” she said, trying to get his eyes away from the screen. What she said hadn’t been a lie. She saw them being posted all over Twitter and Instagram and loved reliving the feeling of seeing it all live. “They’re fucking awesome.”

Trevor temporarily ignored his phone to look at her. Unlike most other time he looked at her, when she knew she had his undivided attention, she knew his mind was elsewhere now. “What have you been reading?”

“The same things that you’ve been reading,” she rolled her eyes. “Websites don’t change their content just because a wrestler reads them.”

“Vader keeps going off about it,” he grumbled as someone on the train bumped into him on their way to the washroom. He let her have the window seat because he was a gentleman, even though he hated aisle seats. “Keeps talking about changing the business. I’m sorry I’m capable of more than just Vader bombs off the second rope.”

Iris couldn’t help but smirk at his attitude. “Yeah, when are you gonna add that corkscrew to your 630, anyway?” she huffed.

He gave her major side-eye. “Don’t you start too.”

“I’m joking Trev! Jesus,” she defended herself. “You’re really hung up about this, aren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

Iris didn’t know what to answer with. Trevor was probably one of the most hardworking people she knew, and he always told her she was one of the most hardworking people he knew outside of wrestling. If thousands and thousands of people decided to shit on her job performance, she’d be pretty pissed off too. “Listen, Trev…it’s like people who shit on teachers,” she began. “If they’ve never worked with kids or teenagers before, their opinions are horseshit and completely irrelevant because they don’t know what it takes. It’s the same with wrestling fans. Unless they’re wrestlers too, on the same grind as you are, do their opinions really matter? And, like, the people that do matter, like Chris Jericho and Stone Cold Steve Austen…they liked it!”

Trevor considered her words. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

Iris chuckled. Of course he hadn’t. If he had, he wouldn’t be obsessively checking his phone. “Did you like it?”

“Yeah.”

“Did Cameron like it?”

“He loved it.”

“Then that’s all that matters, right?”

Iris watched as slowly, almost painstakingly slowly, a smile appeared on Trevor’s face. After two and a half years of being best friends, she knew how his brain worked. She wished he knew how his brain worked. “You always find these ways of bringing the most basic logic into things that just makes sense all the time. Why can’t my mind be like yours?”

“One of us has to be neurotic, Trev,” she joked.

“Nah, I mean it. You’re not even in wrestling and you get wrestling.”

“It’s because I hang out with too many wrestlers.”

For the first time in what seemed like days, Trevor locked the screen on his phone and dedicated all of his attention to her. “One day I’m gonna forget my head in the morning and not know what to do, and you’re just gonna swoop in and save me.”

Iris shook her head. “No you won’t. You’ll learn and you’ll grow. You won’t need me – you don’t need me. At least not as much as you think you do.”

“I don’t know about that,” Trevor shifted in his seat, smiling. “You’re the only person in this world who keeps me sane, Iris.”

She didn’t know what to say. What could she say? She knew she was important to him, just as he was important to her. She’d be lying if she said he didn’t keep her sane most of the time too – every time she’d remember she lived a four hour flight away from her boyfriend; anytime she remembered she lived a fourteen hour flight away from her family and friends; anytime when, despite her happiness in Tokyo, a sneaking feeling of loneliness would creep up on her and all she would have to do was text him and he’d make her feel not alone.

She linked her arm through his and laid her head on his shoulder, not bothering to use the wall like she had intended when she begged for the window seat when they first got on the train. Trevor’s arm rested along her body, his hand on her thigh, as she felt him lean his head on hers.

She would miss this.

June 7, 2016 Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

When Trevor heard a knock on his door at 11:30 at night, the night that Will Ospreay was crowned the first Englishman and the youngest-ever winner of the Best of the Super Juniors, he didn’t know what to think. He assumed it to be one of the guys but then he thought about how tired everyone was and how they were probably all already sleeping. Then he thought it would be Matt or Nick, surprising him, maybe even Akira. But when he opened the door and saw Iris, he was thoroughly shocked.

“Can we talk?” she asked quietly, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course,” he answered automatically, moving away from the door to let her in. He watched as she entered the room and walked towards his bed, moving to sit down but then deciding against it. She looked down at the floor and started pacing. He was getting worried. “What’s up?”

She looked up at him. “Can you come here?”

He did as he was told. He could feel the nervous energy radiating off of her and he started to become nervous too. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m…I’m leaving.”

“You going back to Tokyo already?”

“No,” she shook her head. “Trevor…I’m leaving Japan.”

Of all the languages she spoke, ‘I’m leaving Japan’ were the most foreign words to ever come out of her mouth. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He couldn’t understand them anymore than he couldn’t understand French, or Italian, or any other language she knew. “You’re what?”

“I can’t…I don’t really believe it either…but yeah,” she mumbled out. “I’m leaving New Japan. I’m leaving Japan.”

“What the hell?” was all Trevor could muster. It wasn’t exactly polite but it was all he could say. In his mind, it’s what the situation called for.

“Ryder…he got a job in New York City. A promotion. He’s moving in about six weeks --”

“Six weeks?”

“He’s going to be in New York City and I’ll be based in Orlando. I’ve been hired by the WWE.”

Now Trevor really couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “H…hold on,” he huffed out, sitting on the bed in pure confusion. If he continued to stand he probably would have fallen over from shock. “Start from the beginning.”

Iris took a deep breath. “About six months ago, a position came up at Ryder’s work that he’s been dreaming about getting for years. So when he applied and they interviewed him, they basically put him in the position temporarily to see if he could handle it. And he passed with flying colours. So when he finally got hired, they told him he’d have to move to New York City.”

“Just because Ryder’s going doesn’t mean you have to go,” Trevor said.

“I know. But then, around that same time, Nick heard from Matt, who heard from Chris, who heard from Rami…anyway, through the grapevine, I heard that the Performance Centre was hiring for a position similar to mine, for all the international recruits they have and anticipate getting. Ryder thought I should apply, because then that would mean we would both move to the States…and I did. New Japan gave a sparkling reference. And lo and behold…”

Trevor was happy for her. He really was. He knew he wasn’t exactly acting like it, but he was happy if she was happy. He just knew how much she adored living in Japan and how much she loved her work here. He couldn’t help but wonder to himself that if the job hadn’t come up in WWE, if Iris would have followed Ryder to New York City or if she would have stayed in Japan. He wanted to think she would have chosen to dump Ryder and continue living her dream, but that was all heresy now. Because that meant, in some small fraction in his mind, if she chose Japan over New York City, it meant that she chose him --

“It’s just that we’ll be on the same damn landmass again,” Iris said, wiping a tear, obviously referring to Ryder. Trevor nodded his head, despite his previous thoughts wishing she would leave him. “We’d be in the same country. It’s only a two and a half hour flight. We’d be able to see each other more often…”

“Hey, c’mere,” he said, reaching out for her hands and holding them in his. He looked into her eyes and saw how red they were becoming and wished she would stop crying. He hated seeing her cry. “I’m proud of you, okay? I’m so proud of you. And I want you to be happy. I’m just shocked.”

She sat down on the bed beside him, turning to face him immediately. “I know you know how much I love Japan,” she said. “But I couldn’t bring myself to tell you any earlier. You were so wrapped up with the Ospreay match stuff and the tournament as a whole and I didn’t want to derail you. It wasn’t a good time.”

“It’s never a good time to tell me you’re leaving Japan,” Trevor commented, causing Iris to smile slightly for the first time that evening. He rubbed the backs of her hands with his thumbs tenderly. “But he’s not taking you away from me. You’re…you’re not being taken away from me. Instead of Japan being our thing, the States will have to be our thing now.”

She let out a small chuckle. “Japan’s always gonna be our thing, Trev,” she said. “Unless you get signed at the PC. Do you want to come too?”

Trevor snorted, leaning forward to hug her. “I’m gonna follow you wherever you go,” he said as their bodies were entwined with each other’s in their embrace. “You’re never getting rid of me.”

Neither were quick to let go of the hug. Iris wasn’t quick to lose the warmth of his body on hers, and Trevor wasn’t quick to lose the intoxicating coconut smell of her hair in his lungs. It was Iris who chose to move closer to him, practically sitting on his lap and nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. They stayed like that for a while; Trevor beginning to realize and understand the ramifications of her new job and big move; Iris beginning to realize how much different the next stage of her life would be in comparison to where she was now.

“Can we lie down together, Trev?” her voice filled the void.

His favourite thing in the world. Was he really going to say no?

Without saying a word, they moved their bodies further onto the bed, never letting go of one another. Trevor lay down on his back while Iris moved to lay her head on his chest, resting a leg between his. He wrapped both his arms around her, pulling her close.

“Trev?”

“Mhm?”

“I’d never want to get rid of you,” she said softly.

“I know.”

“Japan’s been really special to us, huh?” she asked. “We’ve made so many amazing memories here.”

“Damn right we have.”

“Can you promise we’ll make amazing memories in Orlando too? Or wherever we find ourselves together?”

Trevor kissed her forehead, leaving his lips against her skin. “I promise.”

@wrestlewriting @wrasslin-x @thegenericluchadora@thewriterformerlytaggedas@fan-fiction-galore @anerdysouthernbelle @spot-of-bother @amaranthine-reign@baleesi @flnnbalor @smuppies@sarahmatthews7 @daintymissdevitt@newjapan @corey-renee @running-ropes @balorsomega @karleedaniels27@kazuchika @ileana0300 @alexahood21@ohcristimhookedonhavocimsodunne@fembxt @heelturn-timesten@kaitlynwwefan @50shadesofadamcolebaybay@50shadesofkennyomega@chasingeverybreakingwave @thyestean-feast @thecandicej @devittsbalor@sp00kylesley @danahart @sietefinns@kaydee-kayyyy @powerbombshell@swedish-strong-style @blondekel77@irish-newzealand-idian-dutch@nickysmum1909 @houndofjustice-imagines @wwesmutdonedirtcheap@wweximaginesxd @indywrestlinglover-life @mandi512 @kakakatey@ourscratcheddreams @sleeplessandcynical @badame124 @thevixeniris@fabulousrockstar @lunatic-sambrose @writing-reigns @caramara3

#ricochet #ricochet imagine #ricochet fic #ricochet fan fic #ricochet fan fiction #ricochet fanfic #ricochet fanfiction #wwe #wwe imagine #wwe fic #wwe fan fic #wwe fan fictio #wwe fanfic #wwe fanfiction #itymbm series

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cali-holland · 4 years

Text

Wrong Twin- Harry Holland One Shot

Pairing: Harry Holland X Reader

Prompt: You and Harry have your first big fight and you call him the one thing he never wanted to be called- your ex’s name, his brother’s name, Sam.

Word Count: 3000

Masterlist Harry Holland Masterlist

Warnings: swearing, maybe a mention of anxiety?

A/N: This may have been loosely based on another part of last man standing but i’ll never tell ahaha; also i was too lazy to find a pic/gif

~~~

June 23rd was considerably your least favorite day of the year. It used to be your favorite day of the year. Well, it was for a year.

You know how you can grow up with someone and be their best friend, and then they ask you out and you say yes because you thought you liked them romantically and they thought they liked you that way too, but then after a year together, you both realize you don’t actually like each other in that way, so you decide to mutually breakup?

Yeah, that was your relationship with Sam. Sam Holland. Your ex-boyfriend.

And that was why you found yourself wide awake at four in the morning, unable to sleep on June 23rd. If you two were still together, it would have been your three year anniversary as weird as that is to say now, especially considering it was a completely mutual breakup and you were both now fully committed to other people.

You finished your four am tea and shuffled back to the bedroom, desperately wanting sleep to overcome you.

“Where’d you go, darling?” You heard a muffled voice ask from under the sea of blankets on the bed as you closed the door quietly behind you. You let out a small sigh, climbing back into the bed.

“Can’t sleep.” You replied, softly. Your boyfriend wrapped an arm around your waist, cuddling into you and bringing you into his warm embrace.

“Wanna talk about it?” He murmured. His eyes were still closed and his hair was falling over his shut eyelids, making you think he was still half asleep or even completely asleep. You ran a gentle hand through his curls, placing a little kiss to his forehead.

“It’s fine. Go back to sleep, Harry.”

Harry. Harry Holland. Your present day boyfriend.

You grew up with the Hollands, and you were best friends with Sam and Harry since you were young. When Sam asked you out, you were a bit concerned that it’d mess up the trio, but it somehow didn’t. And then, when you broke up, you realized that maybe you had been with the wrong twin- can you even say that without sounding like a heartless bitch? They’re not just brothers; they’re twins. There were no problems in your relationship with Sam, so what could stop you from saying yes to Harry when he asked you out over a year later?

The three of you rarely ever brought up your relationship with Sam, even if it did last for a solid year. It was just awkward to think that you’d been with both twins. The three of you were still close friends; you’d even sometimes go on double dates with Sam’s girlfriend. Sam was your friend way before he was your ex-boyfriend.

You weren’t sure if Harry knew about June 23rd. You’d been with Harry for 11 months- the genius had asked you out on July 23rd (you didn’t know what the twins had with the number 23). You kind of had a thing about avoiding both twins, especially Sam, on June 23rd, just to avoid the awkward “hey this would’ve been our anniversary” thought. This year was no different; you fully intended on not seeing them, but Harry had asked you to stay over last night, so you really didn’t know what excuse you could use to get away from him today. You loved Harry, you really did- in fact, you loved him more than you loved Sam while you were dating (well, that was established as a more platonic, but forced romantic love). On June 23rd, though, there was no stopping your mind from running wild with memories of your old relationship. While it was simply just reminiscing on a year of your life, it made you feel so wrong to do that to Harry, but you couldn’t help it.

You didn’t sleep at all between when you went back to bed and when Harry woke up. You were so lost in thought, laying on your back and staring at the ceiling, you didn’t realize Harry was awake. Harry pressed a kiss to your shoulder, making you jump a little at the sudden intimacy.

“Good morning.” He smiled, trailing kisses up from your shoulder to your lips.

“Mhm, good morning.” Your hand went to play with the hair at the nape of his neck as you pulled him in to kiss you again.

“Did you not sleep last night?” Harry asked, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. He could tell based on briefly remembering waking up to you returning to bed and based on how he woke up to you not cuddling him that something was up.

“I’m fine.” You reassured him. You went to kiss him again, but he pulled back with a frown.

“What’s wrong? You don’t typically try this hard to distract me in the morning.”

“You never make it this hard for me to distract you.” You countered, “Are you going to complain about my distraction?”

“I’m going to complain about you not telling me what’s wrong.” Harry was truly worried, you knew that. You couldn’t bring yourself to tell him what today was though.

“I’m just stressed over work. It’s not that big of a deal, I’m completely fine.” You told him, hoping he’d believe your lie, “Now, you gonna kiss me or not, Harry?”

He smiled softly, leaning in to kiss you some more.

Once you and Harry had finally managed your way out of bed and got ready for your day, Harry began to make your breakfast in the kitchen.

“So, what are the plans for today?” He asked, knowing you didn’t have work at all.

“Girls day with Molly.” You replied, and he looked at you confused.

“Molly’s in town?” He knew your friend traveled a lot for work (not unlike him). Harry set down a plate of pancakes in front of you at the nook in the kitchen, sitting beside you as you split the stack and shared the plate because less dishes.

“Yeah, she got in yesterday.” You lied. You needed the day away from Harry, and you needed to get out of his. Avoiding Sam for a day didn’t quite work when Harry lived with him- and Tom, Harrison, and Tuwaine.

“Oh, well, tell her I said hi then. Where was she this time?”

“Tokyo, I think? I’m sure I’ll know today.” You joked nervously.

“Can I come over tonight then?” Harry asked through a mouthful of pancakes. You were surprised by your boyfriend’s seemingly endless list of questions, but he was a major cuddler and, if he could sleep with you beside him, he would, so whenever he was home, he always wanted to spend the night with you.

“Molly’s probably coming over for drinks, but I’ll let you know, okay?” You placed a hand on his thigh, squeezing it reassuringly. You hated lying to Harry, especially over something as stupid as a day.

“She’s just stealing you all day. God, I hate when she’s in town.” He teased, letting out an overdramatic sigh before tugging your chair closer to you, draping an arm around your shoulders. Harry pressed a kiss to your temple before you both continued to eat your breakfasts.

“I should get going. I still need to shower and stuff before I go out with Molly.” You said, standing from your seat when you had finished the food and clearing the empty plate from the table.

“Are you sure everything’s alright?” Harry asked, still concerned over your wellbeing.

“I’m fine, I promise.” You told him before giving him a goodbye kiss. He deepened the kiss before you could pull away, one hand on the back of your neck and one hand maneuvering its way down to rub your ass a little. You moaned into the kiss, enjoying its tender passion. Harry loved to kiss you goodbye, always making sure to show you just how much he loves you.

“Fucking hell, in the kitchen, really?” A voice made you jump back from Harry, but, considering his grip on your ass and your neck, you only really disconnected your lips from his.

“Way to ruin a moment, Sam.” Harry glared at his twin.

“This is a communal zone!” Sam insisted.

“I need to go.” You gave Harry another quick kiss before stepping out of his embrace. You offered Sam a small smile as you left, leaving the two twins alone in confusion. It wasn’t usual for you to just not say anything to Sam.

You spent the rest of your day alone, trying to think of ways to actually talk to Harry about this subject. He had never said anything about you and Sam, but you assumed it was a sensitive topic for him, you assumed he probably didn’t like to think of his girlfriend being intimate with another guy, let alone his twin brother. You knew you needed to tell Harry though; you needed to tell him that June 23rd meant you could not see his brother and relive any awkwardness. You saw a future with Harry, which meant you’d spend a lot more June 23rd’s together.

As for Harry, he spent the rest of his day trying to think of what could possibly be wrong with you. If something was upsetting you or if something was just on your mind, you’d tell him; that’s what you always did, so now why is it different? He thought maybe he did something to upset you, but he couldn’t think of anything- he didn’t even hog all the blankets last night (yes, he was concerned you were upset over the bedding).

When Tom invited him to the pub for some drinks with him and Harrison since Sam was out on a date, he couldn’t say no, thinking maybe a beer or two will enlighten him on how he messed up. He tried to clear his mind of his concerns over you; you were out with your friend, he had no reason to be worried. Or so he thought.

“What’re you looking at?” Tom asked, noticing his younger brother’s face fall as he stared at his phone. He looked over Harry’s shoulder to see Harry was on Instagram, viewing a story.

“Who is that?” Harrison questioned.

“Molly.” Harry replied, replaying the story to see your friend, smiling brightly in Tokyo. She wasn’t back; you had lied to him. “Y/N lied to me.”

“Oh shit.” was all Tom could get out as Harrison still tried to connect the dots between this Molly girl and you.

“She said she was with her friend, but her friend’s in Japan.” He exited out of the app and locked his phone, shoving into his pocket. He drank the rest of his beer down quickly, too upset to think straight. “I mean I knew something was wrong with Y/N today, but I didn’t think it’d be wrong enough for her to avoid me.”

“Maybe she isn’t?” Tom suggested.

“My girlfriend lies about hanging out with her friend all day. She’s avoiding me or she’s cheating me or both.” He sighed, trying not to go immediately to the worst case scenario.

“Maybe you should go see her?” Harrison offered. None of them knew what to do; it was extremely abnormal for you to not only avoid Harry but also to lie to him- even back before you started dating. He knew everything about you, just like you knew everything about him.

“Yeah, yeah, I should go talk to her.” Harry nodded, getting his thoughts together. He called for an Uber and left the other two at the pub. His mind was racing with plausible explanations, but he kept drawing a blank. He couldn’t think of any reason why you’d lie to him and avoid him; he started to worry maybe he did hog the blankets too much?

When Harry arrived at your small apartment, he stood anxiously on the doorstep. Three nervous knocks later and he was waiting for you to answer, praying that you were alone. He let out a sigh of relief when you opened the door.

“Harry,” You breathed out, surprised to see him at your door. You could tell by the slight red hue on his cheeks that he’d had at least a beer. He made his way into your apartment, his eyes searching the entryway almost suspiciously as you closed the door behind him.

“I know you weren’t with Molly today.” Harry said, his eyes finally landing on you, hurt glistening in them.

“Wh- what?” You tried to play it off.

“Don’t bullshit me. Are you cheating on me?” He asked, his voice raising accusingly. You stepped back in your own confused hurt.

“Why would you think that?” You questioned, but you already knew the answer.

“You lied to me today, and I know you’ve been avoiding me.”

“I just- I needed today.” You said, trying to calm him down. Harry wouldn’t have it though.

“What’s going on with you today?” He pressed, “And you never answered me. Are you cheating on me?”

“No.” You answered, sternly.

“Then what’s the matter with you? Why did you lie?” Harry couldn’t help his shouting, and you couldn’t help the words that came out of your mouth next.

“God, just shut the fuck up, Sam.”

The second you said the wrong name, everything froze. You felt a thick tension come over the air, and Harry grew quiet.

“Sam?” He questioned, his voice was just above a whisper.

“Harry, that’s not-“ You started, but it was too late. Harry left without another word, slamming your front door behind him. You let out a sob, falling to the floor as you cried weakly. You’d done the unthinkable- you called your current boyfriend not only your ex-boyfriend’s, but also his twin brother’s name.

When Harry stormed off, all he wanted was to be left alone in his room, but the universe had other plans. He marched up to his door and let out a grumble of swears at the locked door. He was too furious and upset to get a good grip on his keys, making him even more infuriated.

“Are you trying to break down the door?” Sam questioned jokingly, opening it from the inside. “Why are you home early?”

“Don’t want to talk about it.” Harry muttered, immediately going to his room. Sam stood there dumbfounded by his brother’s mood. He made his way towards Harry’s room, but paused as he heard your familiar ringtone sounding from the other side of his brother’s door. Harry let out a string of curses, declining your call. Cautiously, Sam opened the door.

“Is everything alright?” He asked, genuinely concerned about his twin’s wellbeing.

“Y/N and I got into a fight.” Harry said with a sigh as Sam leaned against the door frame. Though the twins didn’t really disclose a ton of details about their relationship with you to each other specifically, Sam was worried and so of course he’d listen to his brother’s relationship problems, even if the girl was you, his own ex.

“About?”

“She just-“ He sighed again, “She blew me off today, and she lied to me. It’s like she doesn’t want to be around me today.”

“Did something happen?” Sam inquired, trying to find some sort of answers.

“I don’t know. It’s just like she woke up today and decided I wasn’t enough. And- and when we were fighting, she called me Sam.” Harry trailed off. He felt a knife twist in his gut at the memory. The lightbulb went off in Sam’s head as he connected the dots of your sudden aloofness.

“Harry,” Sam paused as he tried to come up with the best way to tell his brother, “Today is- well was, my anniversary with Y/N. It might not be that she’s avoiding you, but she’s avoiding me.”

“Today? Why wouldn’t she tell me that?” He asked, his voice calm for the first time since he saw you just earlier.

“I don’t know. I didn’t tell you.” He offered. “It’s probably hard for her to talk about. I mean, it’s awkward for me to talk about sometimes.”

“I- I guess.” Harry pondered, “I just didn’t think that your anniversary from, what, three years ago would be that big of a deal for her?”

“Just talk to her about it, okay? It’s weird enough for us to know we’ve both been with the same girl; it’s gotta be weird for her too.” Sam stated and Harry grimaced.

“I appreciate the help, but I don’t need to picture you having sex with my girlfriend.” He gagged.

“Hey, she was my girlfriend first.” He teased, exiting the room. Harry took out his phone to see you’d texted him a few times after he ignored your call, and Sam called out to his twin again, “Call her back, you div!”

Harry didn’t even look through your worried texts as he called you back. He was shocked when it went to voicemail; for you to call him and text him numerous times, you not picking up his call was odd. The surprise wore off as he heard rushed knocking on the front door. A small grin formed on his face and he raced down the stairs, opening the front door immediately.

Before you could even react to Harry’s sudden presence, he had wrapped you up tightly in his arms.

“I’m so sorry.” Harry said, quietly. He pulled back from the hug and rested his hands on your waist.

“Why are you sorry? I should be apologizing. I- I called you Sam, and I never-“ Tears streamed down your cheeks as you shook, unsteadily. Harry cut off your rambling with a kiss.

“I know what today is, and I understand why you didn’t tell me, but you know you can tell me anything, even if it has to do with Sam.” He reassured you. “I’m sorry for accusing you of cheating and just for everything. I was being an inconsiderate dick. It was uncalled for, and I never should’ve yelled at you.”

“I should’ve just told you.”

“It’s alright.” He smiled softly at you, before jokingly adding, “Next year, we’re going to spend June 23rd somewhere so far away from Sam that you won’t even connect the day to him anymore.”

“Sounds like a deal.” You laughed, and Harry pulled you in for another kiss, happy to have you back to your normal self again.

~~~

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