#also reread that thrupple fic because that concept has me hotter than an ant on your neighbor’s weird kid’s sidewalk

[nathandrakeisabottom]

When Sunlight Hits : Nathan Drake x Reader

Summary: After the events of a more-than-fortunate sleeping bag situation, you and Nate play chicken to decide whether or not your twin confessions the night before were in the heat of the moment... or exist even brighter in broad daylight. Warning: None! Just some fluffy quick-fic goodness! Reader is briefly implied to be blonde/redhead/etc. with brown/hazel eyes due to the specific dialogue some unrelated freakazoid wrote. Feel free to disregard.

Your first time. Your first time back. You almost can’t believe it.

You’re wearing a dress. He’s wearing a suit. And the drinks you both hold are only to soften the brutality that follows. For one brief hour, you two find the will to believe you deserve to soften, deserve to meet your worlds intertwined in the middle. Where danger becomes mundane, and where danger is born from the mundane. 

Born in a ballroom in Italy. 

“You havin’ a good time?” Nathan smiles with teeth, grip leveraging up to mindlessly swirl his glass of whiskey. It’s three quarters of the way gone, but that doesn’t near out-do your double drag of lemon drop. Or maybe he’s just better at holding it than you are.

“It’s alright.” You match his grin with your own, blood beating with the drum and twirl of alcohol, heart palpitating to be so close to him. He doesn’t move his arm when your elbows bump on a lean over the balcony. He smells like vanilla sandalwood and aftershave. Overwhelming. Perfect. “A bit disappointed I haven’t bagged any hotties yet.”

He laughs full and open— and your heart takes a breathtaking nosedive. “Well, there’s still time.”

His body leans further over the railing, eyes scanning through the stripes of jade, ruby, sapphire, amethyst, black silk-covered crowd, eagle-eyeing for a win. “Anyone your type?” 

And maybe it’s just the liquor that does it, cheeks flushed and making the whole room spin warm and possible, that makes you spitball a death-defying risk.

“...Sam’s single, isn’t he?” 

You take a half-glance over the rim of your glass on another sip. And Nathan’s eyes bug in some reaction you can’t quite decipher. Your heartbeat thunders for his reply.

“S-Sam?! Are you kidding me?” His mouth falters for a fallen grin, or maybe he’s just swallowing back upchuck. No self-respecting man would give the go-ahead for a friend to jump the bones of his potential crack-head older brother. “Please tell me you're joking.”

“And what if I wasn’t?” 

You trail, slinking up onto a nearby pub table bathed in white linen, ankle crossing over ankle. You play coy so you can ignore the way your hands start to sweat. But the alcohol, the flabbergasted way he looks at you makes it easy to forget.

“Nah… nah, I don’t see it.” 

And Nate leaves it at that before swigging back and emptying the last of his glass. A pathetically reasonless answer. But you need more.

Please.

Oh god please, you need more. 

“Why not?” The next gulp makes your thoughts warp. You’re far from sober, even farther from thirst, but your body does what is necessary for your growing fight or flight. You don’t even know the person who asks with such mystique. 

He says nothing, only tips back his head for the backwash remnants of a drink that no longer exists. 

“What kind of person do you think would be better?” You;re putting my life on the line when you ask it, balancing precarious upon a tightrope as wonderfully garish tulle collects sweat between your chest, between your thighs, beneath your fucking pits. There is no escape from what his presence does to your body, to your barely beating heart. What his answer could possibly incite next. 

“Better? Well, uh…” 

But maybe it doesn’t really matter. 

“Blonde or Brunette?” You swing back to standing when he’s pulled back abash from speech, palms swaying just barely against your laying skirt. You hope he likes the dress you picked. 

You know you do.

“What does that matter?”

“Just curious what you think.”

“Well, brunette would… pair better, I guess.” His reply warbles uncomfortable at the edges, reluctantly sets his glass down when no reason to hold presents itself. And you’d be dumb to not notice the way he eyes your dress— wishing with all my heart that he was eyeing you— sinking into bombastic, glaring hues for example. “I know you like color contrast.”

You hover on closer to him. It’s everything your body chooses without you.

“I–- I don’t know! Whatever you like best is fine, I’m sure.” His breath barely breaches past withholding hysteria. Downstairs: glasses clink, a gentle jazz thrums through the echoing space, rich crimson reds of parted, velvet curtains, satin cloth magnetizing to a triple dozen wealthy socialites’ curves, dips, hips, tricks. 

And yet his eyes are only on you, cloudy over and gorgeous sky, before they pull back once again. Shrugging shoulders do little to hide his timidity. It’s a way you never see him when Sam and Sully are around. It’s the way he is when your heart plucks over his safe, beautiful, gentlemanly visage and fawns. 

“Blue eyes?” And now textile has been added for sight, fingers carefully moving over the soft polyester of his suit, a touch you would never have the courage to give without the booze. The music. The dress. The solitude. “For the contrast?”

“Heh, I guess that makes sense.” His chest stutters for inhale as his warmth meets yours, quirking sideways smiles you want to taste and grin against and give love to. “Whatever you like.” 

You slide your palm across his back, nestle, thumb over where his shoulder blades sit. The places on his body you want to wring the pain out of. He takes a less than steady inhale. Form forced to turn towards it. And his eyes speak such tender shyness into yours.

You love him.

You want to tell him in the places he might actually believe you.

“How about someone sweet? Boy— man— next door type?” His eyes drop bashfully at the closeness, lips still quirking in that petal-soft grin. “Someone who will be good and gentle with me. That’s what I like.”

Your fingers brave farther, farther, farther, and the wool polyester translates into starch cotton and the big band below is playing smooth jazz you’d have to be an idiot to not think is romantic and the liquor bubbles and pounds and twitters through your skin so strong that it dematerializes any pointless barrier.

And you ask:

“What do you think?”

He finally looks up at you. His lips look unbearably soft, and in any and every other instance that you’ve known him, you would’ve near thrown yourself into the sea for even daring to look. But when you look back up, he’s only looking back at yours. 

“That sounds… nice.” — Soft, dreamy, distant. Like he’s a hundred miles away and inside your very soul simultaneously.

And you’re so stupid, so fucking stupid. 

“Do you know anyone like that?” 

And he’s stupid, so fucking stupid.

And so fucking brave. 

“ Maybe.”

This time, for the first time, he doesn’t speak coy words he hardly makes coy, doesn’t reach for his empty glass to combat the nerves anymore, to fix his uneven footing. Or maybe there’s just no more space for his hands to even reach with how close you drift. His eyes are soft and gentle when he looks back up at you, cautious and bearing all that the man with a gun refuses to. 

Or maybe just never allows himself to.

“I know one.”

And that’s when you finally, finally, finally—

Fucking finally—

After all this fucking time—

In the light of a full moon and a marble-sheened dance floor, outside the world of dreams, outside of secrets held in warm sleeping bags and claustrophobic caves and all the life you didn't live until you found each other, finally, finally, within your sunlit, unashamed reality—

You meet him into a kiss.