#isa manalo & adonis irvine

[gccdwitch]

The angry stirring of her coffee stops. Her jaw drops. Isa takes a couple of moments to process the words coming out of her ex’s mouth, really and truly digest them, before she shrieks. “Adonis, what the fuck? I’m not even a little presentable. Holy shit. Why wouldn’t you tell me earlier?” Ten minutes. She has ten minutes. Freaking out, she scrambles towards the bathroom. There’s no time for her usual routine but she leaves the door open just so she can glare at Adonis while she quickly splashes some water on her face. “I will shave you. I will fucking shave you bad while you sleep, Adonis, you hear me?” The words probably don’t sound even the slightest bit of threatening considering she’s still trying to wipe some blue toothpaste from where it has stained the corner of her mouth and is entirely incapable of following through anything of that nature anyway. “You better sleep with one eye open after tonight.” Feeling only slightly better but much cleaner, she hurries to the bedroom. She has no idea how to dress to meet the standards of these people and her brain is too busy counting down the seconds like their arrival is a bomb to be any helpful but Isa puts an outfit together before finally coming out, eyes still narrowed in a glare when they settle on Adonis again. “You are absolutely not getting away with just this one coffee as a way to pay me back, you get that, right? You owe me a fucking coffee truck at the very least.”

Yeah, lying to his parents and roping his ex-girlfriend into said elaborate lie wasn't exactly Adonis' shining moment. He didn't often care all that much about his family's opinions of his dating life (or lack thereof). But when they called to "check in" after nearly a year of no contact, he fell into his old people pleasing habits. It’d been a long time since he heard either of their voices and surprised himself by how quickly he complied to their demands. Out of all the things he had accomplished since coming into adulthood, his relatively stable relationship with Isa was apparently the only thing worth celebrating. He was honestly surprised that they even bothered to remember her first name. And if he hadn’t fibbed about their non-existent relationship, they would’ve pressured him to go date one of their friend’s annoying daughters. It was easier for everyone for Adonis and Isa to present a united front so they hopefully never bothered him again — at least that’s what he’s told himself.

The questions Isa asked were very obviously sarcastic, and he deserved that. One of the biggest issues in their relationship was his tendency to keep his struggles to himself, only to have them blow up in his face and hit everyone in a five mile radius. “No, I don’t think it’ll be necessary to involve the kids you’re babysitting into this.” He answers, pretending like the inquiry is genuine. As obnoxious as Elijah and Iris tended to be, they both had about a fifteen minute time limit for their bullshit social niceties. They knew better than to overextend their stay. “Because they’re gonna be here in 10. Ooops!” Adonis quickly backed away and gave a nervous smile. “Don’t hate me. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. Remember the coffee I made? We have such a good rapport!”

[gccdwitch]

She’s been preparing for a much longer disagreement, impossibly on edge, so when Adonis relents almost immediately Isa feels almost weird. Hearing him confirm that he hasn’t really been with anyone since her shouldn’t be making her relieved or happy and she forces herself to frown at her ex. It’s done. They’re over. It shouldn’t matter to her what he does or with who. Even when she heads to the coffee like it’s a lifeline, she’s not ready to let her guard down or celebrate him admitting she was right (like she usually was), keeping her narrowed eyes at Adonis like she’s waiting for him to surprise her with... something, a secret ace up his sleeve. “Don’t hon me,” she mumbles, nose wrinkling as she finally focuses her tired eyes on the more important task at hand—getting her drink ready. “What?” Isa swivels her head to look at him, coffee spilling on the countertop, a couple of droplets landing on her fingers. She hisses out some curses, shaking the liquid off of her hands. “Adonis, are you insane? Why would you let them think we're still together, let alone engaged?” Furiously, she wipes the counter, more so she can have something to do with her hands while she processes the information that any desire to immediately clean her mess. Breakups aren’t an easy thing to talk about, she supposes, especially to parents as demanding of perfection as his are. Would hearing that the relationship was over disappoint them? Maybe… that makes sense. What if they’ve been hounding on him to propose to her? That wouldn’t be pleasant and—fuck. She’s given in already. “When are they coming?” Isa asks, sighing in defear. “Because I’m babysitting at noon so I won’t be around to play house then but I should be free at like, four.” She purses her lips and cocks an eyebrow at Adonis. “Unless, of course, you want to come along and bring them with you and tell them those are our kids that we’ve kept secret from them the whole time?”

Although not known for starting conflict, Adonis certainly had way of getting under people’s skin if that’s what he intended to do. Living with his ex was a precarious enough situation without his snarky little comments. He was well aware that it’d be better for the both of them if he kept to himself and she kept to herself and they kept going their separate ways. Termination of the lease agreement would cost a bunch of money that he was honestly too cheap to fork over. “Maybe I do need to go on the apps more ‘cause I’ve had a dry spell since we broke up.” But she knew him well enough to probably know that he’d never entertain dating apps, no matter how many times it was considered. Hopeless romanticism and a desire for long term commitment made him feel unable to keep up with modern dating trends. So he was used to feeling like he was doing too much. “ There’s coffee left for you, hon. And I’m sorry you my attitude. Doesn’t help anything. ” He took care of his own dishes and then leaned against the countertop. Maybe he just wanted to be needed by her again. “Oh, and, uh, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but my parents wanna swing by later and they think we’re engaged. Not that I told them that, but it was their conclusion and I guess I didn’t interrupt them to tell them the truth. Should I tell them to not bother, or should we entertain them for old times sake?”

[gccdwitch]

Blood rushes to her cheeks, though she’s not exactly sure if it’s out of anger or embarrassment from being called out. Either way, Isa huffs, tugging on her scrunchie that kept her hair up and away from her face to occupy her fingers. “I know perfectly well how to take care of myself and that includes how and when and with who I sleep. Thank you very much.” The words are sharp and bitter, her glare not softening for even a fraction of a second. “But since we’re apparently giving unsolicited advice, maybe try getting laid from time to time? Then perhaps you wouldn’t be such a spiteful dick 24/7. But I guess it’s probably hard for you to attract people when you act like that.” Had her activities really kept Adonis up, though? That would be pretty shitty considering he usually got up at the crack ass of dawn. She’d really had no intention to take away from his sleep when she’d invited another guy over. Provoke him a little, piss him off slightly, sure, maybe. And while that wasn’t particularly mature or nice of her, she didn’t want him to lose on his rest or anything. Fucking amazing, now she’s feeling bad for him. “Well… you don’t exactly make it easy for me to be peaceful,” Isa says, indignant as she spreads her arms out only to let them flop back down to her sides mere 2seconds later. “Whatever. I can’t continue this conversation on a coffee-less brain. Is there any left for me or did you make it just for yourself?”

Before he started his career in personal training, Adonis would’ve rather died than got up at 4:30AM every single day. But now he was up before dawn, even on the weekends and was highly determined to get his exercise done before most people had breakfast. So it wasn’t a surprise that by the time Isa rolled out of bed, he’d been up for hours. Maybe that was why he tried having banter with her and she stared daggers at him like she wanted to kill him. Yeah, he should've known better than to start a passive-aggressive argument so early in the morning. Cohabiting with an ex was a fragile enough situation without his constant sarcasm and snark. Adonis didn't consider himself to be a confrontational person by any means, but he did have the tendency to make snide comments and then put up a white flag. Most people let him get away with it because they couldn't be bothered to deal with his bullshit, but of course Isa directly called him out for it in five seconds.

He laughed as she continued the argument but not out of discomfort – he was genuinely amused by her fiery response and couldn't help but fan the flames. "I was gonna say that you get like this when you don't get enough sleep. Which you clearly didn’t.” He leaned back against the counter and looked her up and down with a curious expression. “Maybe don’t have random people over late at night and you won’t be so tired? Y’all were loud as fuck.” Did he really need to be in the living room in hopes that he could catch the stranger and live out his macho fantasies? Probably not, but he wasn’t going to admit that. “I’m just saying. It takes two to maintain a peaceful living area and you’re kind of all over the place.”

[gccdwitch]

If it wasn’t for the call from one of the families she nannies for, Isa would still be fast asleep. And if the call wasn’t from one of those families, the one who paid well enough that their bratty children were very much worth the headache, she would have never picked up the phone or agreed to watch them over lunch on a day when she was supposed to be free. Getting herself out of bed is a nightmare despite the excitement she feels over the way her bank account is going to look come tomorrow morning, her body’s tired and her head is pounding and she swears she’s never craved coffee more in her life. “Morning,” Isa mumbles, slipper-clad feet noisily dragging against the floor as she makes her way over to the kitchen, lured by the smell of fresh coffee like a character from an old-school animation. It’s midway there that reality crashes on her. Brutally. Despite the fact that she hadn’t woken up with Adonis next to her in quite some time and the weird state of their relationship nowadays, it is easy to forget sometimes that they weren’t together still; that their companionship was now simply out of necessity and that she had had, in fact, other company last night. Company that was nowhere to be seen right now. Whatever. If that peeves her slightly, there’s something about Adonis’ words that really makes her angry but she has no time, nor any desire to try and unpack what it is exactly that sets her off. “No, no.” Swiftly, or as much as she can manage, at least, she moves to stand in front of him, frown set into stone. “Go on. Don’t hold back. How do I get exactly?”

closed starter for @gccdwitch based on this plot!

When Adonis told his friends that he was co-habiting with his ex, they looked at him like he was out of his mind. Anyone who knew him was familiar with his sheer inability to move on from people and situations, often holding grudges years after the fact for no real reason. It took him forever to trust people enough to let them into his life, and it was even harder to let them go. One thing he wanted to curb for sure was his incredibly possessive nature. He was already her ex-boyfriend – the last thing he wanted to do was start problems over nothing and make things more complicated than they needed to be. So in an attempt to do just that, he avoided eye contact while making his coffee. "Oh, hey. Sorry, I wasn't expecting you to be awake so early. Heard you awake last night and assumed you just wanted to sleep in. You know how to get when you –" he cut himself off. "Never mind. Kitchen's all yours."