Chapter Text
Why Miss, are you inviting me over to 'flix and chill?
My A/C’s out, so I think it’s more of 'flix and...a little stuffiness? We can open a window, though.
You shouldn’t leave your window open. Your neighborhood’s kind of dangerous, don't you know?
Somehow, it's strange to think of you having to use the front door, though.
_________________
She’s doing the thing.
The thinking thing.
The thinking thing that seems uniquely designed to drive him to utter distraction, since it involves both worrying her bottom lip and that thoughtful stare, and either alone are already things he thinks far too much about. Combined, they're deadly. Not to mention all too indicative of her mental state. Obi doesn't mean to mention it, but the murmur lilts from him without his permission, “I don’t recommend you pick up poker.”
“Hmm?” Her attention is green eyes and soft focus as she looks up at him, away from the screen. They’re huddled on her faded floral couch with its pretty throw pillows, and her knee is barely touching his, and he’s dismayed that he’s spoken, because she was thinking about something and now he's gone and interrupted it.
They’re supposed to be watching a movie. He flaps his hand, trying to redirect her back to it, even if it is pretty terrible as far as cinematic quality goes, “No--don’t think of it.” There’s something about the lip bite he is far too fond of to risk telling her more, to let on that he’s noticed how often she does it when she’s thinking. Just a slip of the tongue and nothing more.
She unfolds a bit, pulling one of the throw pillows into her lap, even as she obligingly turns her attention back where Obi’s encouraged it to go. “I can play poker. I grew up in a bar, you know.”
He hums in assent. He remembers. “Do they play a lot of poker in bars? Thought they tended more to trivia.” And darts. And pool. But those have...complications he’d like to skirt at the moment. Though the thought of Miss playing pool has an awful lot appeal. He has no doubt she'd clean the table with any opponent foolish enough to try.
She laughs, even though the actors are sobbing. Whoops. What did they lose? A goat? No--someone's letter. Sheesh. “Board games are making a comeback, if you can believe it.”
He’s going to ask if that’s so, if she has a favorite, if a teenage Miss hustled unwary drunkards with her mad monopoly skills (monopoly is an awful game, but he can’t think of another one), but the actors have stopped caterwauling to instead stand around explaining plot points, and she goes all distant and thoughtful again, bottom lip slanting between her teeth and eyes on the screen but unwatching. Well they’re sort of watching, he supposes. If you count laughing at the right lines and gasping at the appropriate moments, and ignore all the little tells in her hands, her eyes, her face, which has gone the faintest shade of pink, as she tucks her chin against the pillow she’d captured earlier. All signs, if he can read her (and he can) that she’s not really watching so much as psyching herself up for something she finds difficult. He doesn’t know yet what it is, only that it’s coming.
Well. Best to brace for battle in that case, even if it’s foregone that he’ll surrender before it ever comes to blows.
The most probable possibility is also the most unfortunate. That it's a question. Or a series of them. And he doesn’t want to lie—he won’t lie, not to her—but that doesn’t mean he’s looking forward to answering them. Sure, they didn’t exactly meet in the most conventional way. And sure, she already thinks he’s some kind of expensive escort who does extra thanks to that initial wrong number response, and Torou, and his own terrible sense of humor. And he nearly lost her once, because she really shouldn’t leave her window open and yes, alright, despite all that, they’ve somehow miraculously managed to end up sitting on the same faded floral couch, pleasantly prattling about pool and sort of watching zombies die but…
But part of him had convinced himself he’d never have to tell her, to explain it all. If she hadn’t asked that night, the night they really met, in person-met, would she ever?
Which, he rubs his face, is terrifying in its own way. He glances at her from the sides of her eyes, and her own are on the screen, but she’s still biting her lip and so something is still coming.
You can’t just let strange men you don’t know into your apartment in the middle of the night, Miss.
You’re only sometimes strange, Obi. And I think I know you pretty well by now.
Well even if she doesn’t ask, he probably owes her some answers. But he’s been enjoying this. This sweet, slow, oddly domestic...thing they have. It’s killing him, to keep it sweet and keep it chaste, but it’s an easy death to decide on, and as happy of one as he could hope for. He remembers some of those early texts, back when it was wrong numbers and inadvertent secret identities, and he’d give up anything to keep her feeling comfortable and easy and...and sweet. To keep getting the texts she sends asking about protection (he will tell her he’s not actually turning tricks at some point, honest) at odd hours. To keep responding when she does with memes about anti-virus software (closer to the truth). Dropping by sometimes to teach her how to cook (it turns out her culinary skill set began and ended at pancakes and bar food) while she shares about her research, and ruins her saucepans, and asks his opinions like she’s actually interested in hearing them. To...
She’s gone awfully quiet, and he figures it’s about that time. Mostly to himself he murmurs, “Still not a night owl, huh?” She insists on movies anyway, and at least if he’s there when she slips off to sleep before the credits roll, he knows she won’t spend all night out here. This is one of those times, it seems, as her head comes to rest on his shoulder and his eyes widen before he relaxes with a huff of a laugh. He’s not enough to stop his arm from wrapping up, touch light and gentle, nor to stop his fingers from trailing softly through the strands of stunning hair falling to her shoulders. Just a few minutes, and the credits will roll. Just until then.
Maybe that’s what all the distant gazing and lip biting is about. He’d gotten texts pretty late—by his Shirayuki standards anyway, if not his own— the past few nights. She’s probably too tired to finish the movie, but doesn’t want to kick him out before it ends.
That’s just fine. He’s seen it before anyway—zombies bad, guns big, something something and it's very sad—and he’d rather she was rested.
That’s better than having this all end, because she asks a question with a terrible answer.
Too late, he realizes that her quiet isn’t sleep quiet, but still quiet.
That the arm around her shoulders has shifted her closer, and she’s gone completely unmoving under his touch. He flinches, heart lurching, and tries to stand up, but she twists and her hand flies to his chest and holds him in place and he feels like a startled rabbit in a trap he didn’t know was set. “Ah—”
“Obi.” Shirayuki says, very calm and very close. And--oh. Well. She’s done thinking, he thinks. Usually she's the one who runs when that's over. How funny that it's him this time. “I’ve been wondering…” Here it is, he thinks. His heart doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would, though it hasn’t quite calmed down. It’s almost a relief, he realizes. To have her ask direct. He can settle into the speech he’s rehearsed a hundred times since the undead started showing up on the screen and it’ll be over but she’ll know —there is the smallest of squeaks, and it takes him a second to parse it into whispered words.“...do you want to have sex with me?”
Oh.
Well.
His heart isn’t scrambling anymore.
No it, it appears to have stopped.
That's a shame.
He's pretty sure it's one of those organs most folk consider to be vital.
Shirayuki stares at him.
He blinks back.
Onscreen, a zombie head explodes, splattering over the camera lens.
Obi thinks, I feel ya buddy. Out loud he says, “What?”
She’s looking right at him. That pure, impossible, direct gaze that does too damn much for him, especially when just below it her cheeks are tinged pink and her adorable scatter of freckles is thrown into relief. “Sex.” She says again, and okay, yes, that’s a word and she said it and he didn’t realize she even knew it at least not in a non-clinical sense but in a she's asking him about it sense but it sounds almost conversational. If he didn’t know her so well he’d say she was as casual as she sounds, but her bare toes are curled and crossed and entirely still. “Do you…” she inhales, exhales. He can feel her counting to five.
‘Stop panicking!’ A gruff actor hollers. Not any time soon, pal, Obi snaps back.
Shirayuki’s done counting. “Want to? With me? Ah--” She blinks, for the first time, and in that brief reprieve from her stare he breathes. She repeats, “Do you want to have sex with me, I mean.”
“Oh, yes.” Falls out of his mouth before he can stop it. Which is embarrassing, maybe. But it’s marginally better than fuck yes. Or please or so, so much and slightly less pathetic than me? Or did you lose a bet or something? All of which, given the lack of bloodflow and battering around of his brain at the moment, could have been what slipped out instead.
She’s still murmuring, blush bright and words stumbling, “If you want. Which is--I’m asking? Oh--oh. You--yes, okay. Yes. Good. Great! That’s great.”
His mouth opens, and closes, and Shirayuki sits up, toes uncurled. His hands reach for her without his say so, and she takes them, tangling their fingers together and facing him, and after a moment of clear, thoughtful deliberation, steps forward.
The part of his brain that actually functions sometimes, that’s used to picking up on the tells broadcast by a person’s movements realizes she’s signaling something, but that’s as far as it gets him. The rest of his head is still repeating her first question, so even though he knows she’s giving him time to…to do something, or say something, or indicate anything at all in regards to the nearing of her careful movements, he’s fundamentally incapable of reading it, and only wonders in shock as she slowly sets her knees on the couch on either side of his thighs, and slips into his lap with that same beautiful, determined focus he’s seen on her face while in combat with a particularly puzzling crossword clue.
He breathes.
She’s the puzzle, this one. All his careful consideration, and she’s splattered his brain to bits. What a picture that puzzle comes together to make though, he thinks, dazed. Brain bits and faded florals and beautiful green eyes, staring so intensely into his own.
Staring like she’s waiting for something.
Oh.
He probably...needs to say something. Words. Sentences, maybe. Sounds, at least? The syllables trip over his tongue as he watches hers dart out nervously, please don’t bite your lip “I—you—? Shit, sorry.” Or do. Her weight stays on her knees, like she might need them to bolt at any moment, and that hesitancy breaks him, and a hand frees from hers to run his fingertips to her cheek, featherlight on what feels like scorched silk, soft and sunburnt in the dark of night, though he’s seen her cheeks pale just minutes before. She shivers and his breath catches nevermind, let me bite it for you and he blurts because he has to say something, “Think you might’ve short circuited me there for a sec, Miss.”
“Oh.” She says simply, and pink spreads to scarlet and it’s almost impossible to breathe. “Sorry!” There’s that lip bite, right on cue, and Obi thinks it’s a very good thing she hasn’t lowered herself that last inch or this would be a much more urgent conversation. Her voice lowers but her gaze doesn’t, and the words rush out of her in a blur, “You can say no! I mean, I’m sure this is out of the blue, and I don’t want to pressure you, or think I’m trying to get, to take advantage, I—our friendship is everything to me Obi and I don’t want—no is, no is a perfectly acceptable response here, are you—?” His brain registers she’s about to flee, and her legs twitch and his hands fly to press her gently in place before she can bolt. Not enough to stop her, if she really tried, but an entreaty to stay, and his palms feel too hot against his gloves, too much and not enough between him and the thighs they rest on.
“Miss,” Obi breathes, as much a groan as it is an endearment, and he’d put a finger to her mouth to make her hush, but lips and fingers are a bit too much with her question ringing in his ears, though he suspects the thought will crop up to haunt him when this temporary madness leaves her and he goes home to his silent sheets. Take advantage, she says. She’s so smart. He knows she is. She’s so brilliant, and so smart, and so, so wrong. “No is not exactly the first word that comes to mind here,” he manages, half-strangled but certain. “I was just surprised.”
“Surprised?” She looks it now, “But I thought--isn’t this what... Did I do it wrong? I thought I invited you with the right phrase.”
He laughs, and he doesn’t even mean to, but that's what she does to him. “Any implications about a shared experience intaking B-side horror films was secondary. I think technically you just told me your window was open.”
She fixes him with a look, slightly skeptical. “Well how else do you come in?”
Every bit of oxygen he’s ever held leaves him in a whoosh, and he tears his eyes away from her to focus on the ceiling. Somewhere, a zombie bunker is being built. “Oh that was quite clever, honestly. Was it intentional?”
“Was what--oh.” She squeaks. “No. But.” Somehow the ceiling has lost its appeal, and he can only watch her as she screws her courage and nods, once. “Anyway. About the...question? That recently come up?”
“The question,” He repeats, the question. Had he answered that? He feels like he did but he can’t remember. He wonders what life must be like, for folks who can have access to regular supplies of oxygen.
Shirayuki shifts, but doesn’t relax, and he can feel the warmth of her in his palms, through the cotton fabric of her patterned shorts. He’s not used to seeing her hesitate, about anything, and her nerves spark his own. “So...yes?” Her voice is quiet.
He doesn’t want to break this.
He can not fuck this up.
He also can’t manage a deep breath so he takes a few quick, shallow ones, and forces his voice to softness. To an easy smile and a sly croon. “Is it a yes from you?”
Her face falls slightly on an exhale of her own. “Um. Well. I should warn you I’m...I’m pretty bad at it.”
Crap, that’s not a yes.
It’s also something he doesn’t think she should say, so he manages to cock a grin, crooked and entertained. “You say this while straddling my lap,” which is making this conversation increasingly urgent with each slight shift of her weight, and he has to swallow because his throat is so dry, “And I’ve yet to get a good breath in since you did, so that’s already obviously inaccurate.” She makes an uncertain sound of disagreement, and he chuckles, “Or at least, it seems highly improbable to me, Miss.” Maybe...his hands drift from her thighs where he stopped her, up to her hips, desperately gentle and barely there in his touch, in case she comes to her senses and needs to scramble away unhindered for some reason other than his brain-splattered silence, but he watches with- wonder as her eyes go dark. God he wishes he weren’t wearing gloves. It’s summer, he doesn’t need them, except when he’s climbing up to windows that have been left open ...
Her voice is a little low, and a little shy, “I’ve...well my last partner wasn’t exactly...impressed.”
Obi nods, “I’ll kill him.” It's terribly conversational.
Shirayuki laughs, gleeful and horrified at once, with a snort she doesn't even hide, and the sound eases something tight in him he hadn’t realized was wound tense. “No! He’s—oh, we just. Maybe it was more that he was embarrassed? We were each other’s first.”
This would not ordinarily be his conversation topic of choice while she’s sitting in his lap, Obi thinks. But it’s Shirayuki, and so it also makes sense, and he finds he doesn't mind at all.
She lowers her head to his collarbone and her mumble feels like a smile where she’s turned her face to press against his neck, “We didn’t know what we were doing? I guess? I mean I thought, instinct and all, but it wasn’t…instincts weren’t as helpful as I thought.” She’s babbling, he realizes, because he’s not responding, but it’s really, quite incredibly hard--hah--to have a coherent conversation while she’s fidgeting and breathlessly sweet in his lap, speaking of sex. She shifts her hips experimentally against his jeans and swallows hard as Obi caves at last, banding his arms around her waist and pulling her weight forward and down so she sits snug against him instead of on her knees. Her breath hitches against his pulse in a way that sends it scattering. “It was fine. It was! But I’ve read some books since—”
“You read books?” It bursts from him, delighted with her, “On how to have sex?” Oh, how he wishes he’d stumbled on that, and it is almost certainly being filed away for later when he can properly tease her about it.
“On how to have sex well!” She clarifies, almost primly, head snapping up from his neck to glare at him.
Ah, shame.
But he’s hard pressed to regret it, when even her rage is radiant as long as it’s directed at him.
A gloved hand ghosts up her spine and down again and he marvels that she shudders through her breathless sentence, and her fingers tighten in the fabric of his shirt and—yeah. This is, this is now an urgent conversation.
What were they talking about?
She feels it, apparently, and there’s a soft, throaty sound that only increases the urgency but she returns to the point, “So if...well if you’re alright with me not being—very good at it, then yes, I—” she pulls back, looking him in the eyes again, and not for the first time he thinks she’s the most brilliant, courageous woman he’s ever encountered, and he wonders how the hell she was charmed into sitting in his lap, and asking a question with a painfully obvious answer that she is, in fact, well positioned to receive. “Yes. From me.” He might have died right then, he supposed, were it not for hot and urgent need tethering him to a blissfully tortured existence, and she’s licking her lips and adding in a grumble, “Even if I’m rubbish at it.”
Yeah he’s putting a stop that.
“Okay even if —and that’s a big if —you’re terrible, which I can’t imagine is even a remote possibility, I happen to be pretty great at it, so we’ll net out to passable, at least.” It has the desired effect of eliciting that laugh, that beautiful sparkling laugh he’s loved for weeks, and it makes him dizzy, sends him floating from his skin. Good lord, he thinks, blindly spinning. They’re talking like it’s actually going to happen. But why... ?
“I’m not sure that’s how it works.”
It’s absolutely not how it works. It’s also not going to be a problem, so there’s no point in telling her that. “Sure that’s how it works.”
“The books say—”
“Books,” Obi hears himself huffing, “Are no substitute for practical experience.”
And—oh.
That’s what this is.
Of course.
The odd, dizzy sensation of floating flees, and he’s back in his own skin for all that it’s pulled too hot and stretched too thin. She still thinks he’s, you know, a professional. Of course that’s why she asked him. This is practice, with a safe friend who won’t think anything of it. “Right.” He manages, voice tight and forced around a smile that he must not do a great job of, because she frowns slightly, “Well we’ll practice, if you want. Until your marks are up to grade. So if you think there’s an ongoing quality issue,” The smile comes easier now, the low purr natural as breathing because god it’s the truth because he wants whatever she’ll give even if it’s nothing at all, and she’s as vital as water. “I don’t mind teaching you, Miss.”
Confusion clouds that stunning gaze, flickering in the meager light brought on by an absurdly choreographed fight scene left forgotten.
He can’t think of anything to add.
She frowns at him and he waits, until she raise an eyebrow and huffs, and he’s distracted by the pout of her lips but he always listens to her when she speaks, which she does, slowly, as if she doesn’t trust him not to be too slow to catch the meaning. Which, given how diverted blood flow is from his brain at the moment, may be more fair than she realizes. “I’m not...looking for lessons, Obi. Not that, well it’s always good to learn new things. And I hope you’ll show me what you like—” There’s no stopping the groan this time, and it turns her shoulders pink though she doesn’t look away, “—so that I can, um, make sure you’ll enjoy it too, but I’m not...” She seems to run out of steam, and sighs against him, warm and pliant and so painfully perfect it shatters him. “I just want to be with you.”
“Okay.” He breathes, just to say something, just to stop her from saying anything else, anything more, because he already can’t handle it, though he will for her. “Okay,” he repeats stupidly. Show me she’d said. Show. Okay. Okay. Whatever last thread of sanity he held frays to nothing, and the hand that drifts to her chin shakes so badly he’s afraid she’ll feel it, but she follows it as he draws her forward and tries— tries to show her what it is he likes. If she’s asking.
There is a particular way to kiss someone you have just very boldly propositioned for sex.
Obi’s got a knack for it. Several folks have said so, and a number of them he even trusts. But that is not—it’s not how he kisses Shirayuki. He should, given that that is, in fact, the scenario they have bewilderingly found themselves in. But all the heat and want and turbulence and fury is nothing against her sweetness, and this, now, he can’t give her anything but what she is. It’s the pound of his heart and entirety of his existence at the moment, but it’s nothing, nothing at all, when it’s her lips against his. Gentle is not the right word for her, though the kiss he gives her is, nor is slow though it’s that too, but if a kiss can be clever, if a kiss can be kind, and curious and courageous and occasionally careless she is all of those things and it’s still only a fraction, but if she wants what he likes then she’s all he can give. He draws whatever sweetness pools from the seam of her smile that he can, reveling in the soft noise that escapes them and sounds like his name, and offers every meager scrap of it he possesses in return.
He only thinks to bank the want, to hold back how much he wants her beneath him, mewling and panting and writhing, to avoid startling her though he’s rarely seen her scared, that he doesn’t think about what’s left when you strip it away.
That he kisses her with longing.
But when the shape of his name shakes into a moan and her lips part to free it, the crest of want overwhelms and he jerks back and knows his breath isn’t coming quick enough, and he watches, anxious, and wonders if he’s given too much away.
Her eyes, when they stutter open, blink as though bewildered. They don’t leave his, and, and there she goes. Thinking. Terrifying, of course, but god but he loves watching her do it. Loves the way those stunning, brilliant, beautiful eyes never slide away from the problem but meet it head on, and work their way through it. He loves the curiosity, bright and troublesome and all her own. She could say no, still. Always, any time. She could finish working through whatever train of thought is processing in the long stretch of silence, and slide off his lap and say no thanks, and he’d—he wouldn’t blame her. Gently, carefully, the gloved pad of his thumb brushes her bottom lip, pleading mercy on its behalf when he realizes she's going to trap it again, then shifts to the soft cheek still flushed with pink over a gentled jaw. His other strokes slow circles, brushing the warm skin over the waist of her shorts. It’s an admission of admiration he doesn’t mean to make, and when he feels her still he pulls his hands back, quick as a cat, so the palms face her as he holds his hands by his ears.
Right. He was letting her think. “Sorry—”
“Obi?” It's a whisper when she asks.
And a whisper when he responds. “Yeah?”
“Can we still be friends--” Oh. Well. His heart falls through the floor, but he lets it go freely and he makes sure his expression doesn’t flinch, and god there’s only one answer.
“Of course—”
“--If I’m terrible at it?”
“Huh?”
“If I’m really bad at it, and you don’t...want to wait until I can get it right.” She shifts nervously on his lap, rocking from her knees to her hips and it takes everything he has not to throw his head back and moan as he tries to keep up. “Can we still be friends?”
His voice is rougher than he means it to be, low and a little hoarse, and he has a front row seat--or she does, he supposes--to how her pupils blow wide at the tone of it. Her hands lift to the ones he’s raised, fingers tracing the shape of lines in his palms, tight under black cloth. She’s going to kill him. He laughs, though it’s a little hoarse, and passes her hands to cup her face sweetly, and if he were braver he’d kiss her again and promise her forever but he settles for, “Miss, there’s not a thing you could do that would stop me from being your friend." And is it even a question of waiting? Even if all you ever want is to hold hands, or nothing at all, it’s more than enough for me. As long as she’s smiling more than she’s not. Telling her own story the way she wants it told.
Her fingers curl and he feels them on his heart. He doesn’t even mind how the squeeze makes it harder to breathe. “You can’t say there's nothing I could do. What if I were a, a puppy murderer or something.”
He lets his face go solemn, expression wide with surprise at the admission, “Gosh. Are you a puppy murderer?”
“I could be.”
No. Nice try, though. “You’re not a puppy murderer.”
“But I could be.” She grins, teasing and fun and slides off his lap and onto her back on the pretty couch, tugging him over her and he doesn’t blink, not once, not to miss this and the invitation he really needs to take before she thinks it's a no again.
“No you couldn’t.”
She hums, and one hand tangles with his and the other touches his cheek, and he can't--oh who needs a heart. It's hers anyway, so if she wants to stop it, is it not within her right? “Maybe you don’t really know me, huh?”
It’s a joke. Just a joke. The correct answer is maybe not and a laugh and then fun, teasing and dangerous and silly, but he can’t answer anything but honestly, and makes his smile pained but so pleased, as he watches her limbs shift restlessly in the flickering dark, and he turns his head to kiss her palm, and grins when her smile freezes to vanish into a haze of red, “But I think I really do, Miss.”