Chapter Text
Chatty would be lying if he hadn’t felt… that … for her already. The first time he wasn’t even sure what it was. He just felt so torn between wanting to be near her and frustrated by her proximity at the same time.
Then he slowly started putting the pieces together. As much as he hated to say it… Mr. Ratchet was probably the final piece to the puzzle.
“My god, motherfucker, this shit reminds me of my boyfriend! He turns me on so much.”
“What the Yuc–”
And it hit him.
Oh…
So that’s what that was.
After that, he would do everything in his power to not encourage that kind of reaction out of himself. It was difficult, yes, especially when she dressed in those tight corsets and mini skirts… yuck… but it wasn’t impossible.
Neither of them had really been much of a physical couple anyway. When Tessa was trying to teach them both about love languages, it seemed pretty clear that “physical touch” was low on both of their lists. Yet with each passing day, their relationship grew stronger, and Chatty felt something missing in the air between them. Something charged with untempered electricity.
And he knew she felt it too. He saw it in her eyes when he caught her staring at his rolled sleeves. Or when she brushed up against him in an ungodly close manner.
After that point… It was just fear.
Neither of them were confident enough to break the barrier despite the obvious desire threatening to overcome them both. Therefore, they both resided in their bubble of familiarity and comfort.
But truth be told it was getting more difficult for Chatty to dispel the urges. She surprised him more and more frequently in ways that triggered something inside him. He could only blame it on the corruption of the clowns around him. Never once did he think about yucking or sex before. He was too innocent and naive. And now… with a bunch of freaks surrounding them… he was exposed to all sorts of conversations that only seemed to pique his interest more than he’d care to admit.
And Ray for that manner wasn’t so yucking innocent herself. While she frequently dissolved physicality, she was just as loose-lipped as the rest of them. And perhaps even more unhinged.
Therefore the crux of it all was that his inexperience frightened him. He knew this kind of stuff was significant… and he wanted to be good enough for Hiccups in everything that he did; So the fear that he might not know what he was doing, overcame the desire to give in to temptation more times than most. No matter how much she teased him.
So ya… He’d be lying if he said he’d never felt a certain desire for something more … but he considered himself pretty good at diffusing the fire before it burned right through him. At least until….
“Hi Sweetheart!”
They were standing at the street corner of their neighborhood as Cups held the wired end of the payphone up to her ear. Chatterbox clicked his phone into sleep mode and slipped it back into his pocket having just read Gigi’s number aloud for her to call.
Still, her sweetened tone surprised him: “What?”
He took a step back gathering her in his view. Over the course of their relationship, he’d gotten pretty good at reading her body language. Chatterbox would certainly never call her motionless. In fact, she was rather expressive. For one, there was her classic ramblings. Her frequent zoomies were clear indications of stress or boredom. He’d even come to learn that she tapped her foot impatiently when yucking around, almost like the excitement had to be expressed somewhere in her body.
Glancing down, her foot bounced, and Chatterbox’s jealousy dissipated into satisfaction instead. With Geegee, he could never be too sure… they were, after all, kind of flirtatious with one another. Ray even mentioned that they might’ve once had a—
“Tick. Tock.”
Chatty’s eyes shifted back up to her face, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Tick. Tock.”
There he saw pure mischief ignited behind charcoal eyes. Her eyebrows pinned down in anger, but her lips pierced up in genuine pleasure. The pure tone laced behind each word was playful… yet equally terrifying.
“Tick.”
Click
And she gently placed the payphone back on the hub. Almost as if it weighed nothing at all. He was… amazed.
Chatterbox couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He’d taken pleasure in doing this very same thing to others many times over. Not once had he really shared that with Ray. There was the obvious exception to the fact that he prank-called her many times (if only that Chatterbox knew), but she hadn’t really seen him do much of it after their relationship quelled.
“Okay,” she blinked at him innocently, “let's go find her.”
She jumped excitedly toward his club car leaving him standing in utter shock and… yuck he couldn’t deny it anymore… that same feeling he usually avoided. And this time… this yucking time… he wasn’t sure he wanted to avoid it.
“Chatty?” She pulled at the locked car door over and over again, her impatience to leave becoming more obvious.
“O–Okay,” he finally responded.
She sat down in his car twirling a piece of hair between two fingers as he pulled the handle into reverse. Distantly that familiar frustration between pulling the yucking car over and flooring it all the way to the city called out in his mind.
He beamed over at her.
She smiled unknowingly.
“I like that,” he admitted. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably and anxiety settled in his nerves, “Uh… I used to do that.”
She blinked in response, “Do what?”
He pulled out into the intersection flooring it past the light as it turned yellow. Lord knows what he’d convince himself to do if it turned yucking red. He didn’t know where to place his hands other than to grip them tightly on the steering wheel.
“Oh, prank-calling people?” She asked again, thankfully distracted enough to not notice his internal battle.
He cleared his throat, nodding along with the conversation as a distraction, “That… and threatening them and hanging up.”
Her fingers drummed impatiently against the skin of her thigh and he never felt more interested in the movement. There was a new urge to replace her fingertips with his own.
Oh Yuck.
“IN FACT,” He yelled, the tone of his voice increasing, “I DID THAT TO YOU!”
Yep… it was true. He was pretty good at diffusing these situations. All it took was a distraction here. A reminder there. Bonus points if she got mad at him and they engaged in some playful banter. This feeling would be extinguished here in a moment, he just needed to keep her talking.
“OH YA,” she matched his energy, “YOU DID. It was so scary…………… but then it made me horny .”
Fu–
He coughed, nearly choking on thin air when she said that. Gone were the days when he could easily deny knowing what that word meant. He wasn’t innocent anymore. She wasn’t innocent either. Both of them knew what she meant and this was the first time either of them admitted it… out loud.
“Huh?”
His plan had backfired. When he decided to keep her talking, he wasn’t expecting this kind of talk. And that feeling returned within him. Only it grew ten times over.
“ That feeling”… “turns me on”… “horny”… it was all the same yucking thing and Chatty couldn’t deny it any longer. He felt that for her.
Yuckyuckyuckyuckyuckyuckyuckyuck…
She made no further comment to clarify herself. Nor did she get discouraged by the uncertain silence that followed. She remained firm in the confession and sat in the resignation that it held between them. And once again… Chatterbox felt the air between them charged with electricity as it threatened to shock him into action.
God, his seat was uncomfortable.
“Ummm…” he was unsure how to proceed. His brain told him to keep quiet and drive faster while his body told him to pull over into the wooded trees at the bottom of Mount Chiliad, “Okay. I’m… learning.”
To his right, her cheeks flushed, “You know, you don’t call me like that anymore.”
He gapped confusedly, “What? You want me to do that?”
“Oh my god,” she gasped, “Are we getting… bored?”
The bridge of her nose scrunched up in concern and he saw her face flash with worried emotions.
“What? Ah–” he was stumbling… unable to form a proper beginning to a sentence.
NO, he wanted to scream, If only you knew what you do to me! The things I want to do to you.
When the worry on her face only increased, he scrambled for a way to dispel her overthinking, “No– wha– Wait, You want me to call you and threaten you?”
The mischievous smile returned successfully driving away her worry. He saw the memories flash behind her eyes: “Ya,” she giggled.
Her confession drove his foot to let up on the gas. A spark ignited in him. The electricity in the air finally took effect as he decided to ignore the fear for the first time.
This yucking time–
“OH?”
Just as Chatterbox was turning the wheel, his intention to pull the club off to the side of the road and find an exit immediately , they passed by a figure lying on the ground.
“Oh my god,” She exclaimed, turning in her seat to look back, “Who was that?”
Chatterbox hit the brakes and turned the car around.
Was this their future? Perpetually interrupted when things finally got serious? Maybe this was a sign… maybe they would never get to take that extra step… maybe…
And now he was the one spiraling.
“Oh no,” his Cups opened the door, retrieving the motionless figure on the road, “Are you okay?” Thankfully she was too occupied with helping the man into the backseat to see his anxious shifting. He had to fix… himself…
When Cups got back into the car she avoided his gaze. Was it possible that she was just as affected as–
“I feel like I’m in the middle of a relationship dispute,” the man commented, his hand cradling what was definitely a broken arm.
“No–”
“Do you like melons?”
The silence that stood after that sentence was deafening. Chatterbox looked at Ray strangely, their injured guest must’ve done the same, and the whole car sat in unexpected quiet.
Her cheeks were flushed, “You know… like the green ones…”
Cups?
“The cantaloupe… those are pretty good right…”
Cups… what the yuck?
She was rambling. A classic sign of overthinking and if they weren’t in a car, he suspected that she would be pacing in circles right about now. Her foot tapped anxiously against the ground, indicating she was just joking around, and yet her hands traced the metal of the car door. She was itching for an out. But of what… he couldn’t determine.
“I’m,” the man engaged, “not a big fan of cantaloupe.”
After a moment, she took a deep breath, visibly shaking her hand on something that was clearly bothering her. Whatever it was, the motion seemed to dispel it and her shoulders straightened, returning to a posture of disparity.
“And um,” she glanced at Chatty with mischief, “What's the one that is like green? But not a Watermelon. It’s the one that no one likes.”
“Oh, I know the one you’re talking about,” their companion replied. Chatty saw where this was going. He smirked in response, “The Honeydew melon.”
“HONEY, DO THESE NUTS FIT IN YOUR MOUTH!”
Chatty honked the horn before she even finished the sentence watching as a bright smile spread across her beautiful face.
—
Hours later, Chatterbox parked the car in front of the Funhouse and stared through the windshield up at the tattered walls. It had been days since he’d returned here at night. His shoulder ached and the bandages desperately needed to be changed, but he couldn’t find it in himself to move.
To his right, Ray shifted in her seat. She’d been cradling her head the whole way there. Likely it was throbbing, having hit the ground way too hard after her tumble.
The two of them must have been a sight. She suffered two stitches above her temple and he had a yucking bullet wound across his bicep. Luckily it nicked the skin, but from point-blank range, the momentum was enough to knock him down in the moment.
“The Funhouse?”
She finally took in their location.
He blinked, “Ya. I don’t know why I came here, it must've been a habit.”
They took a major loss today. Both of them got caught lacking and he knew Ray was frustrated with the fact that she wasn’t able to help out when they needed it most. She hadn’t said it yet, but she didn’t have to. He saw it every time she glanced down at his bandages.
“Sorry,” he turned the ignition back on, “I’ll take you somewhere else.”
“No,” her hand jumped and rested on his. He paused looking down at the contact. “No, I like the Funhouse.”
For a moment they just remained there… in the pleasure of their touch. Then she cleared her throat and stepped out of the vehicle. The Funhouse had been rather quiet since the purchase of the Paleto house. It seemed that the house was never really the issue… it was Chatterbox himself. No matter where he stationed himself, clowns seemed to follow.
Together the two of them helped each other up the stairs. Chatty hugged the left wall, unable to use his right arm much, and Ray clung to the banister like it was a life vest out at sea.
Yuck, he thought to himself, For yuck's sake… look at us. They really were clowns.
When they made it to the top he pushed his door open for her to walk through. The familiarity of his childhood home quelled his anger as he breathed in the air of comfort surrounding them.
She clutched the bedframe and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’ll just make sure these are closed for you,” he uttered as he fumbled with the blinds of the windows.
“You’re not staying?”
His hand stopped mid-turn. His back was to her but he could feel her questioning gaze. They’d never… he hadn’t…
“If you think I’m letting you suffer alone tonight, then you really are crazy, Chatty.”
He turned back slowly until heated eyes met one another. He gulped, “I’ll just be in the room across the hall, Cups.”
“And let you roll over in your sleep and ruin your bandages, I think not.”
Glancing down to his shoulder, he watched as she crossed her arms. Disapproval spread across the features of her face, and Chatterbox could do nothing but stare back in surprise.
“I–”
“Besides, it needs changing anyway,” she stood up a bit too quickly, her knuckles turning white from the effort it took to steady herself against the banister. Without thought, he stepped into her space and grasped her elbow before she tumbled to the ground.
“Woah there,” he soothed, “One fall was enough for today.”
Her eyes scrunched with embarrassment.
But he smiled at the idea of her fumble. In fact, Chatty was rather glad things ended up the way they did. Who knows what would’ve happened if she got shot?
“I can’t believe I did that!”
He squeezed her arm reassuringly, “It’s okay, Cups.”
“No, Chatty, it isn’t. What if… what if Gigi’s aim wasn’t shit.”
When she opened her eyes, she stared intently at the bloodied bandage of his right shoulder.
“And if you were caught in the crossfire, Cups?”
She rolled her eyes, “At least I would’ve been useful.”
“Not if you were dead.”
They both huffed in frustration, yet neither made an apparent move to pull away from each other’s arms. Perhaps he could blame it on keeping her steady. Just then she peered up at him with a new look in her eyes. One he wasn’t particularly used to. A familiar feeling started filling his gut.
“As upset as we both are regarding the situation,” he tucked a strand of her wild hair behind her ear, “I’m glad you weren’t more hurt.”
She smiled slightly but her pupils wavered with emotion, “When they took you to the back of the hospital–” and the words choked in her throat.
Concern flooded through him and his uninjured arm caressed her cheek softly, “I’m okay, Cups.”
“You weren’t”
“I am. I promise. I’ve gotten worse than this.”
“It’s just,” tears finally filled her eyes and he could see the dignity it took in her to keep them from falling, “it reminded me of the shootout… when you went to the ICU!”
That all seemed like ages ago at this point. They’d been through so much already that a single month of their relationship spanned centuries to him. And he’d greedily take centuries more.
“Cups,” he brushed his thumb over her tears, saving her the embarrassment of letting them fall, “Ray, I promise. I’m okay. I’m not going back to the ICU anytime soon. I’m here.”
She nodded, as if trying to convince herself, “just… just…”
“What?”
“Please stay.”
He knew what she was indicating. Fear once again kept them from saying the truth… but she didn’t have to say it for him to understand. She was still distraught and he suspected that her inability to help earlier left her with a need to stay close by. But she was prideful like him so she likely wouldn’t admit it.
“Well,” he smiled sadly, “Someone has to keep you from ruining your stitches in your sleep.”
When she smiled back, her eyes shed the remainder of her tears, which he quickly wiped away for her.
“Thank you,” she whispered so silently and he breathed it in like it was a love confession from her lips. He took a moment to treasure the closeness of her body. The heat pressed into his. The smell of sea salt and cinnamon in her hair. Even the metallic taste of dried blood with every open-lipped breath he took.
Yuck that feeling was growing deeper in his stomach. The possessive urges revealed themselves and he had to swallow the lump forming in his throat.
“Can… Can I borrow a shirt or something?”
He opened his eyes, unaware that he even closed them to revel in the moment, and found her blushing at the ground.
“I didn’t bring anything to sleep in.”
“Oh…” That’s right. He drove straight here from the hospital.
“Of course,” he cleared his throat, stepping away from the comfort of her arms. He stepped out and across the hall to where a tall dresser stood in the other room. Many of the clowns left things here, but he had a T-shirt somewhere.
Distantly the sound of water running filled the air and he dug around the piles of unfolded clothes until finally landing on a solid red Tee. He also grabbed a few clothes for himself.
He knocked on the door entering only with the sound of her confirmation. The water shut off in the bathroom and she padded back into view.
“Okay,” she nodded to him, taking the shirt from his outstretched hands, “you first. Let me know when you're done and I can help change your bandages.”
“What?”
He peered around the corner into the lighted bathroom and saw a pool of water steaming from the bathtub.
“Chatty,” she scoffed, “You’re filthy. Go wash off.”
His chin jutted backward in surprise, though amusement was laced behind his voice, “Did you seriously draw me a bath, Cups?”
“Well you can’t shower with an open wound now can you?”
He hadn’t thought about that, and clearly she could tell,
“Ya… maybe use your brain next time.”
He laughed, shaking his head, “is this how it’s going to be?”
She blinked back at him unaware of what he was insinuating.
“Commanding me around all the yucking time.”
He meant it as a joke but it seemed she took it in an entirely different manner as her cheeks flushed red.
“I–” she stumbled, “Just– Just hurry up,” and her hands pressed against his chest to push him inside the threshold of the bathroom. He stepped back laughing at how cute she was when she was flustered. In response, the door shut harshly in his face.
After an embarrassingly long time, Chatterbox finally figured out how to remove the worn bandages around his shoulder (his pride not allowing him to admit the need for help), and he finally washed the dirt and grime of the day off. He’d be lying if he didn’t have any effects of her still lingering…
When he was done, his hand hovered in the air where his mask lay on the sink counter. Familiarity told him to grab it. Fear told him he needed it. It’s just her. She’s seen you before… the real you.
Fear reminded him of how he got his scars.
“What do you mean?” Her words echoed in his head almost as if responding to fear itself, “You’re so handsome.”
It’s just her.
It’s just her.
And they both so clearly wanted to overcome that physical barrier. He had to prove to her that he could do it.
It’s just her.
Instead, his outstretched hand shifted from the direction of his mask to the doorknob. He didn’t want to give himself any time for guilt, so he turned it abruptly and strutted back into the bedroom.
He caught her sitting, with her knees up, leaning against one of the windowsills. On the bed, her phone was blowing up in a series of buzzing messages but she only had eyes for the flickering light of the fireflies dancing in the air outside. They twinkled like a backdrop of stars around her. She was beautiful.
She turned at the sound of the door and he held his breath.
Instead of the indignation he typically saw in others at the image of his face, he watched a steady smile of glee spread over her features.
“Hi,” she grinned, drinking him in.
“Hi,” he responded, feeling like he was meeting her again for the first time. His heart was thrumming in his chest as fear fought to overcome him once more.
She chewed at her bottom lip, “All done, handsome?”
He chuckled at the floor catching her reference to their first unmasked situation but didn’t call her out on it and instead let her attempts to soothe his unease actually work.
“Yes.”
She noticed his unbandaged wound immediately. Just like he could read her expressions, she too could tell of his inability to request her assistance.
“Come on,” she motioned, her body unfolding from its position against the window. As she strode past him, her fingers intertwined with his ungloved ones, pulling him with her back into the bathroom. His stomach somersaulted at the touch.
“Sit down.”
She began tearing at the packets of gauze the hospital staff loaned them after lecturing him about the importance of avoiding an infected wound. As he sat on the edge of the tub, he tried to hide his smirk of amusement but she caught it through the mirror.
“What?”
“So demanding.”
Her gaze shot him a warning this time and he clicked his tongue in response. Instead, he watched her fingers fumble around at different packages, noting how she laid them out in a specific order for herself to follow.
“Okay,” she finally spoke, her heels spinning to see him, “We’ve got to clean it, first.”
He blinked back at her.
“Okay?”
She cleared her throat, “That means take your shirt off, Chatty.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
Her hands fumbled with the sterilized gaze and the bottle of antibacterial solution.
“R-right.”
He fumbled with the collar of his shirt, tugging it off with only one good hand.
Ray shamelessly blushed at the sight of him despite never taking her eyes away until the fabric was safely bunched up on the tiled floor. His shoulders tightened with vulnerability. Chatterbox had no concept of beauty other than when it came to her. He had no idea what kind of comparisons might be running through her mind at the image of his scarred upper half.
“Uh-” she flustered, “Okay.”
She did that thing again where she shook her head physically to chase away her thoughts.
“Okay, so this might hurt a bit.”
Chatty watched as she took two steps, closing the distance between them, and kneeled down on her knees to be level with his shoulder. Yuck… the image sent his mind reeling.
“O-okay.”
“I’m going to try to make it quick though.”
She pressed the gauze to the opening of the bottle and tilted it upside down. With one final flash of her eyes, she told him she was waiting for his approval.
He nodded.
For as gently as she tried to make it, his body shuttered with a stinging sensation when the gauze graced his skin. He hissed through his teeth with each dab of the cloth and for every noise that he made, she apologized triple times over.
“Okay,” she finally grimaced looking at the red-stained fabric, “okay bad parts over.”
Tossing it into the garbage can, Cups spread something from a tube onto a fresh piece of gauze and laid it gently on his injured shoulder, “now we just wrap it up.”
It only just now occurred to him that she was the one taking care of him. He glanced up at her temple checking the two stitches and finding them perfectly in place without a single drop of blood.
For yucks sake, I should’ve followed her up the ladder.
Though he knew he couldn’t blame himself for every bump or bruise she endured, it was difficult not to feel protective over her.
“Cups,” he whispered in need of something to distract himself. She made a small noise in response, her mind entirely too focused on pulling apart the spool of wrappings. “Cups, is your head okay?”
She shot him a look of annoyed confusion, “What are you yapping about?”
“Your head,” and he gestured back up to the stitches.
“Chatterbox, I know you are not asking me about two stitches when you are sitting here with an open bullet wound.”
His mouth gaped open.
“I’m just fine. You are not.”
And he realized that no amount of affirmation would prove to her that she didn’t need to feel guilty for his injury. She really was just like him. Too stubborn and too possessive.
“Okay,” he sighed, “Let me rephrase.”
She pushed at his collarbone, demanding him to fix his posture before beginning the process of wrapping him up.
“Do you still have a headache?”
“I’m fine.”
“I thought we promised not to lie to one another.”
She paused. The whole process of rewrapping had pushed her in rather close proximity. The spool dipped down and around his entire body; with each turn, she had to lean into him to grasp it on the other side.
Glancing up at him from her knees, a hint of despair crossed her features.
“I’m not lying. I am fine, Chatty.”
“Physically,” and his good hand brushed against the side of her arm.
In a long silence, she finished the job. Her other hand secured the fresh bandages into place and then rested atop her knees.
“I’m–”
He could see the emotions practically swimming in her eyes. The whole car ride back was spent in silence. He was fuming himself, still seething with the fact that his guard was down, but he still took the time to watch her as well.
Ray was scary when she was angry. Scary when she got serious. The smile that lit up the world disappeared and the tone she would harbor was salted with sadness. He didn’t like seeing her that way.
Despite the silence, he could hear the sound of her walls building up. The bricks high into place and by the time they reached the Funhouse, he wasn’t sure how deep those emotions were buried.
“I’m just–”
He reached out and caressed her cheek in case more tears decided to spill.
“I’m just– tired Chatty.”
And he could hear the exhaustion in her voice.
“I know.”
“I’m so tired of losing people.”
The walls began to crumble.
“I’m tired of making enemies. Of feeling fucking betrayals all the fucking time. I can’t fucking deal with another friend or family member acting this way again. And it happens all the fucking time, Chatty. I’m tired. I’m fucking tired.”
He couldn't catch the tears this time. He didn't even care how much she was swearing because he knew she usually made an effort to refrain around him. That fact alone proved just how deeply she was hurting.
His body slumped off the lip of the tub and onto the floor to join her.
“Who's next? Max? Taco?”
“No, Cups.”
“Yuno?”
“Shhhhh,” and she let him scoop her up as the sobs replaced all words. It was true. They had suffered a major loss today. War might be brewing and their egos were definitely shot down, but more than anything, she has lost another person in her life.
Chatterbox knew a thing or two about loss. And he knew the guilt that typically came with it.
He wanted to promise her that there would be no more betrayal or that there was no more hurt in the world, but he simply couldn’t. The world was yucked up and he had absolutely no way of protecting her from it all.
That thought alone made him cling to her harder.
“I can’t, Chatty. I’m not… I’m clearly a problem… I’m really fighting all the urges to leave again."
But he knew that already. He didn’t blame her, but the truth of the matter was that she admitted it to him knowing full well he might be able to calm that away from her.
“You're not a problem. Hey,” he turned her melted gaze up to meet his eyes, “you are certainly most yucking not the problem, Ray.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because you are the best yucking thing to ever happen to me, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt you or betray you. Do you realize how much you pour into the world around you, Cups?”
“What?”
“When you came into the city, how long did it take you to get adopted into CG?”
She didn’t answer.
“When I first threatened you over the phone, how long did it take you to become queen of the Clowns?”
“Those are horrible examples, Chatty, they don’t mean anything.”
“The yuck they do. Ray, there's a reason why people look to you for things. You’re incredible. Caring. Welcoming. You’re firm but not uptight. You take control but still listen to the opinions of others. You have your likes and dislikes and yet still try the passions of other people. And when you can’t, you always make promises for the future. Ray,”
He held her tight and willed everything in her to listen to him.
“You fulfill the needs of others more often than your own by pouring your heart and soul into everything that you do.”
“Chatty,” she cried, more overwhelmed than reassured, “It's killing me. I don’t want to be that person anymore if it’s only going to lead to more heartbreak.”
He shook his head, “The problem is not you, my love. It's the others capitalizing off of your kindness because the second it’s not there… the second you devote it to someone else… they feel entitled to have it once again.”
She sobbed between gasps, “What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying Gigi was using you. It just… it feels like… sometimes she only appreciates you when you’re pouring yourself into her and the things she likes.”
Recognition flashed through her eyes.
“And the second you focus on your favorite things, she turns away from you.”
He watched as their entire friendship flashed behind Ray’s eyes like haunted memories.
“That doesn’t mean that what you had with her wasn’t real… it's just…”
“One-sided,” She finished for him.
His heart broke for her.
“And that, dear Cups, is most certainly not your fault.”
Charcoal eyes dipped downward on his face and her bottom lip trembled with the revelation that Chatterbox only really dawned himself in the peak of these emotions. Seeing her this way… broken… tattered… unconfident… It was like looking into the darkest memories of himself. He felt these emotions. He knew the clever tricks to mask them from all the world… for yucks sake… he wore a mask DAILY.
He couldn’t let her succumb to it as well.
Not when she tore herself down for reasons that actually brightened the world.
“Don’t you ever,” her hands clasped around his neck, “fucking leave me.”
He tilted his head.
“You’re not allowed to pick up my pieces and then scatter them across the city!”
And his heart swelled. His own grasp wrapped around her waist to pull her closer, “I’m working on putting the puzzle together, Cups, not taking it apart.”
For as much as he claimed to be able to read her body language, she still found ways to surprise him every day. This moment, for example, happened to be one of them:
Her lips bridged the final gap of fear between them.
Before the yucking words even left his mouth, she kissed them back like a secret that deserved to remain unspoken.
This kiss felt different. One of very few from the span of their early relationship. Their first kiss didn’t really count. The fabric of his mask kept them from physicality. Their second kiss was all nerves. Sure he enjoyed it, but it was rushed, no doubt from the pressure of the other clowns. And like he mentioned, electricity sizzled between them with the idea of physical touch being so near.
Only this time… this yucking time… it fucking ignited within him.
One kiss melted into two. Then three… then a whole arsenal of open-mouthed gasps. Her fingers buried themselves in his hair and scratched light lines all the way down his neck. Frustration grew within him being down an arm, but his one good one got to work roaming her skin.
Every inch… every yucking inch of exposed skin she wore from those short clothes would not go untouched… he was determined to map it out.
The noises that filled his ears were truly embarrassing, but neither of them clearly cared enough to cringe. Instead, the desire to burn drove them forward. Ray tumbled onto his lap, her knees bracketed around his hips.
God, why had this taken so long for them? Why didn’t anyone tell him what he’d been missing?
When her mouth opened, a gasp forming in her throat, Chatterbox chased the urge to kiss the beautiful neck giving her air. He kissed and nipped a pathway down, the expanse of his reach increasing with an unexpected arch of her back. Holding her steady around the waist, he grazed his teeth gently over the skin of her collarbone.
“ Oh–”
The effect was clearly felt.
Ray jolted against him, and the result was an entirely new kind of pressure resting on his lap.
They both paused.
A stillness filled the room with nothing but the sound of their labored breaths. She peered up at him, he down at her, and together the two of them lingered in that shared space of desire.
Should they continue? What would that mean? Chatterbox desperately wanted to find out but the time it was taking to decide was allowing more and more fear back into his chest.
“It's–” She breathed deep, “it’s probably late.”
“Ya… really late.”
Neither of them moved.
“We should probably get some sleep.”
“Ya… definitely sleep.”
Still, they remained.
They had no interruptions… no clowns knocking down their door to demand their time and attention. This might be the only opportunity they’d get…
“Cups,” he whispered, nearly begging for her to make a decision for them.
“Let's–” She cleared her throat, and rolled off his lap, “Let’s go to bed.”
It was embarrassing how affected he was by their frantic motions.
“O–okay.”
She abandoned the medical equipment on the counter and flipped the light switch above the bathroom counter. Chatterbox was left in the dark, still scrambling to his feet in disbelief.
One breath. Two.
He was pretty good at diffusing these feelings, he just had to–
Passing through his doorframe, Chatterbox watched as Ray (facing away from him) stepped out of her tan dress and kicked it lightly to the side of the room.
She slipped into the sheets, ignoring his red T-shirt folded neatly above the comforter, “No promises, Loverbox.”
He blushed.
“Trust me when I say this… I wouldn’t even know what you are or are not promising.”
She rolled her eyes, “Liar.”
And truth be told… Chatty would be lying if he said he didn’t know a thing or two about… this.