#never forget elliot getting her date's name wrong in the most offensive way possible

[honeysidesarchived]

iv. just like magic ✤ pre-cult au

john/elliot + “i can’t stop picturing you with him” + “you belong to me” + new year’s eve prompt “they were so distracted, they even missed the clock striking midnight” because i’m a GREMLIN and didn’t get your request for that done until NOW requested by @lilwritingraven

words: 2.5k

warnings: oh, u know. naughty words, john and elliot steamy make out in a cramped bathroom. i think that’s really all. oh, and elliot has an embarrassingly poor memory when it comes to men who aren’t john.

It’s fifteen to midnight on New Year’s Eve, and Elliot Honeysett has no one to kiss.

Well, that’s not entirely true; she has a date, who is almost certainly anticipating a clock-strikes-midnight kiss, and in a pinch she can convince Joey for a midnight smooch so that she’s not standing around like a big fucking idiot at party in the city where she’s floundering like a fish out of water.

I shouldn’t have come, she thinks idly, finger dragging at the rim of her glass where most of the alcohol remains untouched. She’s too stressed out to drink. There are two—two—instances in which she wants to drink herself to oblivion, and as she neither listening to her mother talk about the timeline for grandbabies nor has her abandonment-prone father cropped back up, so her stress only makes her crave sobriety more. Can’t be spinning out of control, can we, if we can help it?

In fact, her date is making eyes at her from across the room, and Joey is somewhere out of immediate reach, and the boy—Dakota? Maybe?—is very nice, he’s very nice, and—

(And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it, that Dalton (???) is nice, but in a way that feels cloying, and his eyes are two degrees the wrong shade of blue and he keeps his facial hair close-trimmed and he doesn’t have a single lick of ink on his body, and these are significant problems that immediately remind her of the person that she wants to be kissing, which makes him so, so, so unattractive.)

—and he’s making his way across the house right that second, and Elliot doesn’t want to explain to him in a categorized list why she actually can’t kiss him (“Do you want it alphabetical, or more like…chronological?”), so she turns on her heel like she didn’t just make eye contact with him and beelines it out of the living room.

It’s a house party. That’s all it is. It’s a house party in the city, because Elliot and Joey are spending the holidays in Georgia with her mother and Joey said that she’d fucking die if they had to spend New Year’s Eve listening to Scarlet lament the lack of “good help” available “these days”. As if she has ever had anything less than pristine house staff.

So they came out to a house party. And Joey found her a nice boy, so that she can have someone to kiss at midnight.

And she doesn’t want to kiss him at all.

She moves so fast from the living room that she runs headfirst into a firm, solid body, promptly spilling the entirety of her drink all over the poor soul that had the distinct misfortune of being in her path. For a second, Elliot opens her mouth to apologize—sorry, so sorry, fuck, I’m so sorry, how much was that shirt, I can buy you a new one—but then her eyes land on that face and she promptly snaps her mouth shut.

“Jesus Christ, do you have any idea how much this—”

John is looking down at his shirt, drenched in vodka and something else, when his eyes finally meet hers. And then all irritation is wiped from his face—maybe not from his eyes, entirely—and a wicked grin splits across his expression. It immediately sends her heart fluttering, and she thinks maybe it’s just because she likes eyes exactly his shade of blue.

“Ell,” he greets her, his voice a slick purr, “you could have just texted if you wanted to get in touch.”

“I didn’t know it was you, John,” Elliot snaps, “and I wasn’t trying to spill my drink on your stupid shirt.” And then: “You look like a fuckboy in it, anyway.”

“It’s the Lacoste you picked out, last summer.”

“And you thought I didn’t pick it out to make fun of you?” she prompts, meticulously uninterested. It’s a careful facade which must be upheld at all times, of course—not caring about John Seed. “That’s very cute.”

The brunette fans the shirt away from his body, grinning at her, and the expression reaches straight to his eyes—blinks at her through those dark lashes, and for a second she forgets that she broke up with him two months ago because he’s insufferably full of himself, constantly impatient, and hates her job.

“Can’t believe you accosted me,” he tsks, undoing the top buttons of the polo.

Elliot says, “Don’t be a fucking baby. You wasted my whole drink.”

Pulling the shirt off over his head—because of course he fucking would, of course he doesn’t mind peeling it off right there, the narcissistic motherfucker—John slings the shirt across his shoulder and takes a step toward her. There’s already so little space between them, having been in close enough proximity to spill almost all of her drink on him instead of the floor, which means that he’s suddenly invading all of her personal space with that expensive cologne and the faint scent of vodka and—ah, yes. It had been a vodka soda she was drinking.

“Get you a new one,” John offers in a sleek rumble.

For a second, her brain short-circuits: John Seed, exceptionally handsome and insufferably egotistical, crowding up against her at a house party in an expensive neighborhood of Atlanta, fifteen (now ten) minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve, is her greatest weakness. Mostly, it’s that he’s shirtless, but the other things help too.

“With someone,” Elliot manages out, clearing her throat. “I mean—I’m here. With someone.”

John arches a brow loftily and opens his mouth, certainly about to reply that he doesn’t see anyone with her right now, when a hand glides onto the small of her back and she sees David smiling at her, bright and handsome and just. So sweet.

“You tryin’ to start your own party or something?” her date asks her amusedly, eyes glittering with warmth. He leans down and presses a kiss to her temple, closer to the top of her cheekbone. He’s been doing that all night. Inching closer and closer to her mouth with his shy little kisses.

“N-No,” Elliot says quickly. “John, this is—my…date.”

Dalton? David? Dominic.

A moment lays, suspended between the party of three, where someone is clearly waiting for Elliot to introduce her date whose name she cannot remember for the life of her—and then she doesn’t. So her date laughs and picks up the slack easily and holds his hand out to John.

“Daniel,” he says, and Elliot quickly makes a mental note of that. “It’s nice to meet you, John.”

“Likewise,” John replies, though he’s not nearly as enthused as before. “Daniel’s a biblical name, isn’t it?”

Elliot groans. “Don’t.” When her date looks at her inquisitively, she sighs. “All of John’s siblings are named after Biblical figures.”

“That’s fun,” Daniel says, even though it isn’t. “How do you two know each other?”

“Dated,” John offers up, and as he goes to say, “Long-term, too,” Elliot interjects, “just for a wink,” and they look at each other.

Daniel clears his throat. He stares at Elliot and John for a moment before he goes, “Your glass is empty. Can I get you another drink?”

“Please,” she eeks out, amidst the burning humiliation that comes with having absolutely no control over the situation, and passes him her glass. Fuck, where is Joey? She can dig her own grave, but she’ll need someone to dump the dirt over her once she climbs in. “Thank you, David.”

He gives her another long, searching look, one that she doesn’t quite understand the intention of, before he walks off with the glass in his hand. After two seconds of him being gone, John is very clearly trying to stifle his laughter.

“What?” Elliot grinds out. “If you’re about to say something narcissistic and cruel, John, he’s very handsome and I—”

“You called him the wrong name,” he says, gleefully.

“No I didn’t,” she replies instantly, but then the mortification washes over her, panic setting in. His name was Daniel. Not David. “No,” she says anyway, again, “I—said…Daan—”

“David,” the brunette clarifies. His eyes are bright. “You said David. His name is—and we can say it together, this time, with feeling—”

Elliot sucks in a sharp little breath. “Fuck you.”

“I’d love it,” John replies as quick as instinct, voice pitching low, “more than anything.”

And there it is—wretched, vicious man, sinking his claws right back into her just like that, like it’s nothing, like she’s completely incapable of holding her own against a man she broke up with.

Her face flushes scarlet. She doesn’t even have the excuse of being drunk. Where the fuck is Joey?

“Elliot,” John starts, but she clears her throat.

“Should wash out your shirt,” she says abruptly, snatching it from his shoulders and gripping it in her now-empty fist, “otherwise it’s going to be sticky and you’re going to bitch about it and send me an invoice.”

And she turns on her heel and marches to the nearest bathroom. Anything to get some space between her and John, anything to get her a little fucking breathing room. This whole thing had been a mistake from the get-go; she shouldn’t have ever agreed to coming to this party. But Joey is making out with a pretty red-head, she sees on her way to the bathroom, and it’s her duty, as a best friend wingman, to not end the festivities early.

Of course, taking the shirt to the bathroom had been a bad idea, because while it provides her a temporary reprieve from John’s closeness, he’s soon sliding into the bathroom behind her and shutting the door.

“Anyway, I’ve been having a great time,” Elliot says, which isn’t true, turning the water on cold and running her fingers under it for a minute even though she doesn’t need to. “He’s very nice. And—”

“I’m glad you’re here,” John interrupts, and he’s crowding up behind her, meeting her eyes in the mirror, and he’s shirtless, and it’s so fucking unfair. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”

“We—” She clears her throat, sticking the shirt under the water. “Broke up.”

“So you’re going to ignore me?”

“Well I work,” she snaps. Her fingers scrub the polo uselessly. “I have a fucking job. And, I’ll remind you, I’m here with someone, so if you want to give me a little more—”

“Ell,” he murmurs, his voice low, his mouth against her ear, “are you trying to make me jealous?”

Yes, everything in her says as his hands cage her in against the sink, just the way that he knows she likes. “I’m not that petty.”

“It’s working.” He makes a low, despondent sound, the timbre of it rumbling against her skin, and it’s so fucking ludicrous, how can someone be so attractive when they’re complaining?

Elliot slaps her hand down on the faucet to stop the water and turns around, steeling herself against him. “I’m not—”

“I can’t stop picturing you with him, and I hate it,” John says, their foreheads touching and their noses brushing—and it’s so unfair, so fucking unfair, he is so attractive and she misses the way that he kisses her. She’s fucking weak and she hates it. “Is that what you want, hellcat? A nice boy named Daniel to mix you a drink and kiss you at midnight?”

“Fuck,” Elliot says, about to say You, but he’s kissing her. His hands immediately go to her hips through the flimsy black silk of her dress and he hoists her onto the sink’s counter so that he can sidle between her legs, closer closer closer, always discontent with how much of her skin is within reach.

He kisses her like he’s hungry—a man, starving, for her, Elliot Nobody Honeysett, backwater hicktown Deputy with nary a designer anything to her name, but he’s hungry for her all the same. He kisses her, and from there on out it’s No Man’s Land: there’s no Joey, no crowd of people, no Nice Boy Dalton (Daniel) to make sure she’s behaving herself, and so she knots her fingers in his hair and kisses him back.

Stupid, she thinks, even when her lips part for him almost immediately, especially when she moans into his kiss because his teeth drag on her lip. Stupid, stupid fucking girl, you can’t, you can’t.

But she is. John’s breath fans hot and silky against her neck and she feels her lashes flutter, his hands sliding up under the hem of her dress, and it’s so fucking loud—loud, and hot, and the sink started running again because she bumped it, that neither she nor John pay any attention to the countdown starting outside.

“I don’t think you do,” John rumbles, voice thick and laden with desire. “Want a good boy. Do you, Ell?”

“Shut the fuck up,” she grinds out, “and kiss me, fuckface.”

He grins against her mouth and yanks her hips against his. It’s tight; the bathroom’s small, meant to be a quick stop, and certainly in a house like this there’s a bigger master bathroom that would be much more comfortable, if they could just—

Stop, she thinks furiously, stop mapping out a route to get fucked in.

A whimper pitches out of her when John slides his arm under her and hauls her closer still. Her fingers dig into his bare shoulders, and he says, “Love when you make that sound, Ell, so fucking good—no good boy for you, isn’t that right?”

“No,” she gasps obediently against his mouth. Later, she will think back on the absurdity of the moment: she has a perfectly nice boy waiting to kiss her come midnight waiting outside, and she and John are making out like fucking teenagers in a tiny, cramped bathroom.

Yes, later, she will think back on the absurdity of the moment, and feel a great deal of shame. For now, she thinks only of John, and the way he grips her hips with his hands until she moans and the way he says, “You belong to me,” and how if anyone else said that shit, they’d get clocked in the fucking face, but with John it’s—

Different.

It’s always different.

The whole thing is all very distracting. John, bunching her skirt up around her hips so that he can get her closecloseclose, ever craving her touch, and her ever craving to be touched; John, breathing her name against her mouth; John, John, John, doing anything, doing literally anything is so distracting and all-consuming that it’s like there’s no oxygen left in the room anymore for her to breathe.

“Fucking missed you,” he sighs, kissing her palm, the inside of her wrist. “You know I can’t get enough of you. So tell me you missed me, too—”

Went to wash out his shirt, she’ll tell David, and we got distracted.

That’s a good way to put it. We’re distracted, Elliot thinks, gliding her hands along his shoulders and kissing him again. That’s all. Just distracted.

They’re so distracted, they even miss the clock striking midnight.

But at least she got her kiss.

#archive q #facelift q #spilled ink #x: death keep off; i am your enemy #no cult au #c: elliot honeysett #c: john seed #john seed/oc #john seed/female deputy #never forget elliot getting her date's name wrong in the most offensive way possible #far cry 5 fic #fc5 fic