Chapter Text
Feyre is an early bird and Rhys is a night owl.
For the most part, this suits them just fine. They share a small apartment and they are never trying to use the bathroom or kitchen at the same time.
Rhys does weights in his room every day at 9pm. Feyre supposes this is some sort of afternoon for him, since he tends to wake up around noon. She herself is usually climbing into bed around this time, but does not mind the rhythmic clanking of the weights. Particularly because on nights she can’t sleep, there’s one thing that cures her insomnia, and it helps to know that Rhys is not going to knock on her door while she does it.
Feyre prefers reading erotic fiction to watching video porn, and this is convenient because it is silent. She has a library of short, filthy stories on her iPad, which never runs out because Mor sends her new ones periodically and then squeals about them over coffee.
Feyre’s summer routine is to get up early, go for a run, then work in the living room. She works from home most days, and is able to sit on the beach in the afternoons if she finishes on time. Rhys works free lance and has an office in the city, but by no means keeps regular hours.
Feyre is glad Rhys is often out of the house, because she’s starting to find Rhys slightly distracting. There’s just something about hot weather that always seems to make her a little more... excitable. And after months of thick sweaters, she’s suddenly looking at her room mate a little too long these days. She can’t remember if he’s always been this attractive, or if she’s only now noticing.
This week the season is tempestuous, and it has been alternately been storming and baking them alive in their apartment. Feyre has been trying to work, but can barely think straight in the heat. It does not help that Rhys has started walking around the house shirtless, and he seems to always be slicked with sweat. One day Rhys comes home after being caught in the rain, and his t-shirt is plastered to him in a way that is worse than when he is not wearing one at all.
“Hello Feyre darling,” he says, leaning in to kiss her cheek.
“Hey Rhys,” she says, ignoring the tingling sensation where his lips touched her. “You’re dripping everywhere.”
“Sorry,” he responds, and grabs an apple off the kitchen counter. He takes a large bite as he disappears into his bedroom, and then emerges a minute later in dry clothes and towelling off his hair.
“Real bad storm brewing out there,” he comments.
“Yeah, no beach for me today,” Feyre replies, and then feels this is a dumb thing to say. She hurries on. “Where have you been today?”
“Was supposed to be on a shoot, but of course it was a disaster with the weather,” Rhys says. “I’m just happy none of my equipment got destroyed. Gonna flick through the photos now and see if we got anything worth keeping.”
He rummages in the fridge and gives Feyre a wink before going back to his room with an armful of food. Feyre smiles at him, then turns back to her very blank computer screen.
By the evening, the building is shaking in the grip of the thunder storm. Feyre is very grateful that she is in the living room when there is a loud crash, and both she and Rhys rush toward the sound to discover that Feyre’s bedroom window has been smashed in. They rush forward and try to move things out of the way as water torrents in, but there is not much else they can do with the glass gone.
In the end, the storm blows over and most of Feyre’s things are okay. It takes two days for the landlord to fix up the window, and Feyre stays at Mor’s. When she gets back, the debris has been cleared and the window is whole, but the carpet is wet and it smells like damp. Feyre collects her things and sleeps on the couch.
Rhys offers to sleep in the living room so she can have his bed, but Feyre declines. And so she finds herself lying in the dark trying to get to sleep while Rhys potters around hours from his own bedtime.
Feyre is a creature of habit. She finds it difficult to sleep in the wrong place, and after a half hour wide awake, she wonders if her usual trick for falling asleep is feasible here in the lounge room. After all, she can hear Rhys lifting weights in his room so she knows he isn’t going to walk in.
Feyre’s hand slides between her legs under her thin summer blanket, and she is now bitterly regretting that her iPad was ruined in the storm. She flicks through her phone with her free hand, scrolling past images and snippets of bad fan fiction, and misses the familiarity of the short stories she already knows she enjoys. She’s having trouble focusing on anything, and trying to keep an ear out in case Rhys finishes his workout and comes out looking for food or the bathroom or something.
Luckily, she can still hear him. Could count his reps if she wanted to, using the sharp metal clangs. She can even hear him breathing, deep inhales and grunting exhales as he exerts himself.
Now that she’s listening to it, she realises that the sounds coming from his room sound a lot like other bedroom sounds. The pattern of his breathing, the little groan he makes at the peak of each extension, is frankly erotic. Before she knows what she’s doing, Feyre’s fingers are moving and behind her closed eyelids she can see Rhys panting for a different reason.
It’s not difficult for Feyre to imagine Rhys naked. She knows the bare planes of his chest in more detail than she cares to admit, knows the flow of his tattoos and the contours of his abs. Has seen him in sweatpants enough times to estimate the shape of other areas too, and although she hasn’t let herself have this fantasy before, now that she’s started it so easy to fall into.
Feyre does not like to consider whether she’s in love with her roommate. It would be far too inconvenient if she was, so she doesn’t think about it. The fact of her attraction, however, is not something she can deny- Rhys is objectively, and unreasonably attractive. She knows he does some kind of martial arts, but he’s not a violent sort of a person. In fact he’s infuriatingly calm at times, and on more than one occasion he has helped to ground her when she is freaking out about a deadline or family drama with her sisters. He’s always kind, and patient with her in a way that no... but this isn’t what Feyre wants to be thinking about.
Easier to focus back on the breathing, the sharp exhales, the image of the movement of his muscles. In her head, every breath is taken by her ear, blowing against her lips, the rhythm matching his pace above her.
In real life, she had never been the sort of girl who could make the first move- not like Mor, who had enough confidence for the both of them. She would be mortified for Rhys to discover her little crush. But here in her imagination it is so easy between them. That smirk Rhys sometimes gives her when she feels like he is reading her mind seems so much sexier when it is inches from her own mouth, when she can lick her tongue against it while her hips move to meet his.
She imagines the surety he always seems to carry would cross over into Rhys’s sex life. She imagines he would be completely in control in the bedroom, unruffled and measured as ever as he moves inside her. Feyre, on the other hand, is surely a more reactive creature, and would squirm beneath him. Her head falls back against the arm rest of the couch as her hand- no Rhys, moves faster between her legs. He is delicious, he is exquisite, he is going to make her come.
“Is that good, baby?” Rhys says in her mind.
“Yes,” she breathes back.
“Say my name when you come,” he tells her.
“Rhys,” she murmurs, as her climax builds on her fingertips. “Rhys.. Rhys!”
She’s so lost in it that she doesn’t notice that the clanking weights have stopped, and that she’s just spoken out loud. Is not at all prepared when a real life Rhys walks into the room and says “yeah Feyre what’s...”
He trails off as he takes in the sight of her. Knees pull up, head thrown back and eyes glazed. His name still warm on her lips.