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clazaries · 4 months ago

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Just a Neighbour Thing

(MarcSpector! x f!reader)

Summary: Your neighbour Marc Spector is a pain in your ass. Until he saves your life. w/c: 3.9k Warnings: a lil bit of violence but nothing too graphic. Fluff! a/n: I'll be posting a masterlist soon because I think I've got about three or four fics out now and a few to come!

Marc Spector is an elusive character. A man of very few words and an enigmatic personality - not that you know him well enough to judge his character - but from the rare occasions where your paths crossed in your apartment building, it can be summed up with a small smile from you and a smouldering glare from him. Often aloof, the opportunity to get to know him better as a neighbour never seems to present itself and it leaves you struggling to understand who’s to blame. It’s obvious personal defects are the cause; but his or yours?

There’s been many occasions where you’ve had to confront his brick-wall disposition, mostly due to the fact that his ringer on the main lobby doesn’t work, so naturally people go for the next best option which is to press the ringer directly below it: yours. You deliberately leave his mail to accumulate at your door until it becomes an unavoidable mound of tax letters, local advertisements and rent notifications and only then do you brave the trip to the apartment above to deliver his post.

It’s always the same. You knock on the door in a rhythmic pattern that’s become yours. Within seconds he answers the door with the same cold expression, wordlessly takes his mail no matter how hard you try to start up a conversation and before long, you’re staring face to face with the shabby wooden surface of his door. The only thing that changes with each encounter are the clothes that he wears. Different but fairly relative to his style. Purely functional and never dressed for any occasion.

You didn’t mind it for a while. There was some satisfaction and fulfilment to be found while doing your neighbourly duties and despite the fact that there was every possibility he wouldn’t do it for you, you weren’t someone who held a grudge or felt like they had ever been owed a favour. But the mailman had happened upon you on a very bad day and you didn’t feel like accepting his parcel. You had recently been made redundant after the company you worked for did a reshuffling of working positions and yours wasn’t to be included in the new phase they had turned over. So you wallowed at home, watched numerous brain-rotting films, ate a load of junk food and drank lots of wine.

It was nothing personal towards the mailman when he chapped on your door and demanded a signature for Marc’s parcel, but you couldn’t pretend to be the ‘lovely-neighbour-from-downstairs’ any longer.

“This is for 8B upstairs. Says there.”

“I know. I can read,” the mailman grumbles, “but I tried knocking on his door but there wasn’t an answer. The parcel needs to be left with someone and you’re the nominated designee.”

“Can’t you just leave it with another neighbour?”

“No, says it needs to be left with you.”

You look at the large rectangular box and consider it. Aside from Marc’s address scribbled on the top, the box is littered with numerous stamps from various international postal services, few you recognize. It looks to be well travelled and handled with very little care yet there’s nothing to suggest what’s inside. With a sigh, you take it from the mailman. It could be important, especially if it’s gone through so many countries to get here and the fact that you would be to blame if it got stolen or damaged. “Fine, I’ll take it.”

The mailman looks to his feet where a growing pile of letters addressed to Marc starts to spill over into the threshold of your apartment, judgement washing over his features. “Do you…do you normally take all of his mail as well?”

“Do me a favour? If you ever see the guy from 8B, tell him to come collect his fucking mail.”

There’s a part of you that feels slightly bad for the mailman when you slammed the door in his face, but then you remember that if Marc stopped being so fucking immature about answering his own door to receive his mail, then you wouldn’t need to feel bad about anything. You leave the parcel sitting on your hallway table, waiting for the day Marc grows some responsibility and asks you for it.

~~~~

When you placed the parcel on the hallway table, you didn’t expect that it would be sitting there for over a week collecting dust, nor did you expect the curiosity of what’s inside to completely consume you. You walked past it every time you left or entered your apartment. It was in the corner of your eye every time you sat in the living room. It practically radiated temptation every time you took notice of it, screamed at you like it was begging to be opened and you had to force your grubby hands to keep still and not reach for it. But you so desperately wanted to know what was inside. Why was it so conspicuous? Why has it suddenly become the most interesting thing in your apartment?

Perhaps Marc was testing you, sending you a little something of no importance to experiment with your curiosity and test whether or not he could trust to leave you with his personal belongings like he does with his letters. That’s certainly what it felt like by the turn of day eight of the parcel being there and you simply refused to be a rat in his experiment.

That determination lasted for two whole days before it started to truly pester you. It was starting to get in the way and it felt as though it was getting impossibly bigger and bigger. On day nine you were ready to break it, smash it against every wall, rip every piece of cardboard that keeps it together and deliver it in that state to Marc yourself. From your sofa you stood, eyeing the parcel as if it was taunting you and with adrenaline thrumming through your veins, you stomped towards it. Hands outstretched, you were ready to throw it in any direction but something stopped you at the very last second. Something peculiar and completely out of the ordinary. You halted just centimetres out of reach from the parcel, centimetres out of reach from your door where you could hear the whispers of two or three men right outside. You could see the moulds of their bodies through the peephole.

“Look, I’m telling you he lives here-”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. All his mail is sitting here. It’s definitely the right apartment. The parcel is in there.”

The parcel. They’re here for the parcel.

“C’mon let’s get this over with. He’ll be back soon. Where’s the crowbar?”

In the very few heart-stopping, crucial seconds you have before anything happens, you quickly banish all hysteria and muster all rationality and flip over the keyless lock and quietly shuffle away from the door with the parcel in hand. You estimate you have about 15 seconds before they make any headway of getting into your apartment, not enough time for you to hide, but enough time to hide Marc’s parcel. After all, that’s what they are here for. With your heart pounding in your chest, your eyes scan over every nook and cranny of your apartment, quickly assessing each spot based on how likely the intruders are to find it and with the seconds dwindling into single digits, you make a snappy, slightly reckless decision. There’s a ledge just outside your kitchen window where you occasionally leave out some seeds for the birds and you think it’s just low enough that the parcel won’t be seen from the window. It’s risky but you’re running out of time, you have to move.

Scrambling over counter tops and at the sacrifice of knocking over a few utensils, you manage to wrestle the window open and precariously place the box on the window ledge. It’s risky. The ledge isn’t wide and it’s windy, but whatever is in the parcel is just heavy enough that it stays rooted to the spot.

Pulling back, your hand grazes the handle of a kitchen knife which, now that the intruders have made their way into your apartment, seems like a good idea to have.

They round the corner into your living room and immediately start looking for the parcel, noticing you only a few seconds into their search. You point the knife in their direction standing courageously but your wavering breath tells a different story.

The three of them turn towards you from where they stand, and given their expressions, they are just as shocked to see you here than you are to see them. You weren’t supposed to be a variable in their plan. They were supposed to be burglarizing Marc’s empty apartment. Not yours.

The two taller brown-haired men have similar features and builds, almost identical and you begin to wonder if they are twins. Brothers at the very least. But it’s the ageing stout man standing where the living room and kitchen divide who stares you down. He’s dressed smartly in a tweed suit with a golden pocket watch hanging from his waist coat, the type of man who doesn't like to get his hands dirty, because of course, that job belongs to the bulky twins behind him. This is a man who loves to watch it as it happens. He’s more business than manual labour.

His facial features morph from shock to something sinister, his lips twisting into a smile that’s as greasy as the hair on his head as if the cruellest of ideas just crossed his mind.

“I didn’t know Marc had a girlfriend,” he sneers.

“He doesn’t,” you snarl, aiming the knife directly at him with two hands. “He doesn’t even live here either.”

“Oh, so his mail just gets delivered here on a daily basis?” The man hovers over to your coffee table and picks up multiple letters addressed to Marc, the ones that were delivered last week and remained there because of your stubborn nature.

Okay, not off to a great start. “He doesn’t live here.”

He grins but it falls flat a split second later. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you. Now where is he?”

“I don’t know because he doesn’t live here.”

“Bullshit. Where. Is. He?”

“Not here. I’m not afraid to use this knife.”

“Oh, not from there you won’t. Let me help you with that.” The man crosses the space between you in three long strides until you’re pressed flat against the counter and the point of the knife grazes the tip of his waist coat. The audacity of this man is staggering. “Save yourself the hassle and tell me where Marc is.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know where he is! Now get the fuck out of my apartment. Whatever it is you’re looking for isn’t here.”

“And have you call the cops on us? Not a chance, sweetheart.”

His hand reaches out to grab you, and he almost does, but with your quick reflex swinging the knife around, you knick the palm of his hand. The man stumbles backwards with a pained yelp, watching the blood seep from his hand and drip onto your kitchen tiles, enraged that you would even do such a thing. Despite your heart racing and the slightly dizzy feeling of adrenaline raging through your veins, you stand strong, holding the knife even higher in warning.

“You bitch. Boys!” He shouts and the two brothers come running to his side, sizing you up. “Tie her up. We’re not leaving without that package and I’m certain she knows where it is.”

It was easy enough to defend yourself against this puny man with a knife, but against two brutes who manhandle you as if you are lamb for slaughter, you don’t stand a chance. Relentless, you squirm and wriggle and fight to get out of their grasp, and while you had accepted that you were fighting a losing battle, there’s still some pride to be had about how hard you made it for them. Rather than tying you up unscathed, Thing 1 ties your hands with a bloody, swollen nose and Thing 2 ties your ankle with a forming black eye and a bruise developing on his ribs.

With you strapped to the chair, they stuff a gag in your mouth to dim your screams while they scramble to ransack your apartment, turning it upside down to find the fucking parcel Marc left you with. After 15 minutes passes by, your home is a riot; furniture broken, plates, mugs and bowls smashed, everything you own on the floor.

“Boss, it ain’t here. We’re searched everywhere.”

“It has to be!” The stout man shouts, eyes glaring at you enraged. He crouches down, fiery ageing eyes level with yours. He rips the gag out of your mouth and presents a new threat. A razor sharp knife, gleaning in the light as he holds it directly in front of your face. “For the last time. Where is the parcel?!”

“I am telling you. I don’t know,” you spit, trying with all your might to sound as convincing as possible. “I don’t know what parcel you’re talking about. I don’t know where Marc is--I don’t even know the guy! And he sure as shit doesn’t live here. And if any of you had half a brain to actually read the letters will realise that his address is the floor above me. He never answers his fucking door and that’s why I have all his mess at my door.”

The guy jabs the point of his knife underneath your chin, tilting your head upwards. A nauseous feeling stirs in your stomach, raising your body temperature and conjuring a little bead of sweat to drip from your hairline. Your teeth clamp down onto the inner lining of your cheek, hoping, praying, pleading for someone to burst through your door and save you.

You can’t see anything change within the man in front of you, not taking your word for gospel and the more frustrated he becomes, the more danger faces you. Temperament rising, the man grunts and knicks the skin of your chin, splicing the skin open. “Argh, fuck!”

“Marc might not live here, but we know the parcel was delivered! And if you do end up with all his mail then it should be here. Now stop lying to me, you little bitch, and tell me where the fucking parcel is or you are going end up with a lot worse than a cut to your chin.”

You watch in horror as he presses the edge of the knife over your wrist tied to the armrest of the chair and no amount of squirming can break the ties. Fuck, please tell me that I’m not going to lose a limb over a fucking parcel…

Tears pool in the corner of your eyes, your brave facade failing. You’re absolutely terrified

“I’ll give you some context then. That parcel contains something I want, an ancient Egyptian artefact that contains unimaginable power and would bring me a lot of wealth, and Marc Spector has no business taking it from me--” So that’s Marc’s surname. “And unless you want to keep your thieving hands, you’ll tell me where it is.”

As he begins to press the knife’s sharp edge down onto your skin, you start to consider the depravity of the situation, the truth finding its way to your lips. There’s nothing more you want than for this to all be over, to be wrapped up warm and safe in your bed but you can’t shake the arrogance of this guy and his stooges, busting in here like he is entitled to, making a mess of your home, harming you, all to take something that was clearly meant for Marc, all because he thought it would be better with him than with Marc.

No. Fuck that.

“I. Don’t. Know.” A glob of saliva gathers on your tongue and you spit it into the face of your capture, because if your words can’t send the message, hopefully that will.

“You should believe her, by the way.” A voice emerges from behind you and simultaneously, all three men turn towards your front door in stupor. You try to twist your head over your shoulder as far as you can to catch a glance but he’s just out of your sight, however you don’t need to wait long before you get confirmation of who is standing at your door.

“Marc Spector,” your captur states. “Finally.”

“Mind telling me what you’re doing in my neighbour’s apartment?”

“For the very same reason why you’re here, Marc. The parcel. Our parcel. The one you stole.”

Marc snickers. Having gone so long without seeing what a smile looks like on his face, you’re itching to turn around and see him, but you only get as far as Thing 2 who stands with your back to you, blocking your view. “Torturing women for information? Tsk, tsk, that’s a little beneath your remit Donald, is it not? You’re wasting your time. I have the parcel locked up in storage.” An obvious lie, but not obvious enough to them. “She’s got nothing to do with it. In fact, I don’t even know her.”

“I don’t care who I have to go through to get what is mine, whether it’s her or you, I will have it by the time the day is up. Boys!”

“Your mistake.”

In the space of a second, the three men in front of you disappear and you’re left to stare at the vast emptiness of your white walls as chaos erupts behind you. Grunts and groans of pain are spliced in between the sounds of punches and kicks being thrown, furniture breaking, bones crunching and bodies thumping to the ground, all of which you try to drown out by hunching your shoulders over your ears and closing your eyes.

After suspenseful minutes of fighting, it’s clear one man stands victorious. Who? You don’t know. Aside from worrying about what kind of state of your apartment would be left in, you have no idea who you’ve been left in the apartment with and the likelihood of Marc succeeding against three men is slim and the anticipation is killing you.

At last, when a fully mummified figure with white glowing eyes kneels in front of you, you’re taken aback.

“I’m so sorry, are you okay?” His hand comes to tilt your head gently, inspecting the small cut to your chin with a small tut.

“...Marc?”

The mask that covers his face dissipates to reveal the Marc you recognise, looking more worried than you had ever thought he was capable of. He begins to make quick work of your bounds, easily ripping through them with a single fingertip where all the strength in your arms couldn’t.

“What the…”

“It’s a lot to explain. I promise, I’ll explain later. Are you hurt? Are you alright? They didn’t do anything terrible to you, did they? Fuck. This is all my fault. I’m so sorry-”

“Marc, hey, I’m okay. Just a little shaken up I think.” Now free, you come to stand in front of Marc who, weirdly enough, seems to don this mummified Egyptian regalia as a suit of armour. You remember this ‘Donald’ guy mentioning something about an ancient Egyptian artefact and you assume it has to be related to whatever Marc is wearing. You even try to mention it, but you can’t seem to get a word in with Marc fussing over your safety and blaming himself for any harm that Donald and his men have caused you as he gently dabs the blood away from your chin. After futile attempts, you decide to leave it be, marvelling over the new Marc as he carefully handles you with care despite having treated you with such indifference up until a few minutes ago.

Donald and his two bodyguards lie unconscious (...or dead?) on your apartment floor and you look over them with satisfaction, Marc’s unparalleled strength no match for them. Marc quietly lingers behind you, observing them over your shoulder with a similar resolve until he notices the complete disarray surrounding them.

“Sorry about the mess.”

You chuckle lightheartedly. “I’m just glad you came when you did. They got what they deserved.”

“Look,” he pulls you away from them to lock eyes, sincerity twinkling in his irises, “I really am sorry. I thought I was careful enough to not get anyone involved in my mess, but I guess I was wrong.”

You crunch your eyebrows together, recollecting every instance of Marc giving you the cold shoulder. You always thought he was just an unfriendly neighbour, someone who had no interest in anyone but himself, who viewed everyone as an inconvenience. But it was his safeguard, his way of not letting anyone he knew or cared about come into harm. “So you being an asshole was on purpose?”

“Completely. It was nothing personal.”

“I see,” you sigh, but with a gentle bump of shoulders, you add “I could’ve helped you, you know. You just needed to ask.”

He shakes his head dejectedly. “It would’ve been too much of a risk.”

“More of a risk than not asking me? I still got caught up in the crossfire anyway, if I had known why, or at least expected it, I could’ve been better prepared. I don’t need to know what trouble you got yourself into or what shady business you run, but I’m not just your neighbour, I could’ve been a friend if you had allowed me.”

“It had never worked out for me in the past. I didn’t want to make the same mistake again.”

“Okay, I get it. You’re forgiven. But Marc? A word of advice for the future? Just answer your fucking mail then maybe, just maybe, I won’t need to be dragged into all of this again, yeah? They thought you lived here.” You pick up a handful of unopened letters addressed to him and bluntly shove them against his chest with an appointed look and smirk.

He reciprocates the smile with less enthusiasm and turns his attention to your door. “Speaking of, I’ve got a very important parcel I need to track down. I actually have no idea where it is. I can’t let it fall into the wrong hands.”

“About that.” You don’t say another word as you lead him to your kitchen window, awkwardly mounting your counter to reach for the parcel lying just outside your window. As soon as you bring it into view, Marc’s face lights up like you’ve never seen before.

“You had it?! This whole time?! I heard you tell them you didn’t have it!”

“I’ve had it for weeks, actually. Those clowns didn’t exactly take the quiet approach when breaking into my flat so I knew what they were here for. I just had enough time to hide it before they came in. And I can be quite the convincing liar when I need to be.”

Marc quickly discards the parcel, throwing it onto the kitchen counter before throwing his arms around you, knocking the air out of you and squeezing tightly like his life depended on it. “You…are an angel. I can’t thank you enough.”

The two of you embrace for longer than what’s normal between two neighbours, partly in Marc’s resounding appreciation and partly because it feels nice.

“In all honesty, I was two seconds from opening the parcel myself. The curiosity was killing me.” Marc’s laughter shakes his body, his warmth slowly leaving you as he draws back.

“I can show you if you want. I figure you’ll be needing a place to stay while we get your apartment cleaned up. It’s the least I can offer for all the trouble I’ve put you through.”

“Yeah. That would be nice.”

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clazaries · 5 months ago

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Old Love, New Dream (NSFW)

(JonathanLevy! x f!reader)

Summary: Just when you think you've recovered from a debilitating breakup with Jonathan Levy, all those feelings come rushing back when he walks back into your life again as your best friend's boyfriend. w/c: a whopping 10.1k Warnings: angst, Mira is included in this, NSFW; smut, fingering, p in v, oral (fem rec.), eventual fluff a/n: HELLOOOO! I'm back. Sorry took a small hiatus to finish off college and I really struggled to finish the end of this so apologies if it's shit. I also watched a spanish film called a treves de mi ventana (specifically the third one) which I loved and took inspiration from while I was writing this. Anyway hope you enjoy!!!

Fuck Jonathan Levy.

Fuck him and everything he stands for. Fuck him in the past and fuck him in the future. Fuck him and the way he treated you with love in his heart, with stars in his eyes, and with you at the heart of everything he did. Fuck him for being the best boyfriend, partner and friend that anyone could’ve asked for. Fuck him for promising you that it would last forever, that you would always have him for as long as you live.

Fuck him, especially on that unassuming Tuesday morning when you woke up to sadness on his face, pain behind his eyes and the truth on his lips. Fuck his ‘I think we should take a break, we need to spend time on ourselves, by ourselves.’ Fuck him for making you think that life’s not fair; because how were you to know that after six years of a strong and stable relationship, especially one that guided you hand-in-hand into adulthood, would be ripped from you in a day.

Fuck him for making you miss him so, so fucking badly to the point where you struggle to get through your day without thinking about him. The countless number of occasions where you’ve had friends and family members tell you so naively to ‘move on’, or to ‘get over him’, or that ‘you don’t miss him, you miss what you had with him.’

And in all honesty, they’re exactly right. You can’t bear to reflect upon what could’ve been, so your only alternative is to miss what you had, and therein lies that problem of why he still subconsciously worms his way back into your mind. Because he’s tied to it, intertwined so deeply that he’s the knot you just can’t unravel.

It’s not like you think about him purposely, in fact, if you had the will-power to compartmentalise everything associated with him into a box, you would lock it and throw away the key. But he left such an imprint on you that in the quietest moments of thought, his name, his face, his eyes and Jesus, even the memory of his scent appears when you least expect it. What’s worse is that they’re good memories, not the ones that broke your heart, not the ones that should be reminding you of how much of an arsehole he is, but the ones that you look back on with nostalgia.

It took a long time to come to terms that he’ll never be a part of your life again, to shake hands with the devil and accept that he will always be the one that got away. That’s the part that will never leave you. He is the big gaping wound in your heart that will never heal.

The best you could do was move away to another state, to start afresh with the hopes of finding someone new that could give you everything he did and more. But it’s proven to be a bigger challenge than you anticipated because your desire to find someone capable enough to fill the hole and let it scar has never been satiated. No one, not even in the three years since your break up with Jonathan Levy, has come close.

You had gone for such a long time thinking that this level of pain and heartbreak was exclusive to you only and that there was no one else in this world who could empathise with you. That was until you met your next door neighbour Mira who was shockingly similar to you in every way; broken from a relationship that ended years ago, desperately searching for something or someone to alleviate years of hopeless longing and the need for fulfilment. She was the therapy you always knew you needed and vice versa. There were many nights spent drinking wine, talking about ex-lovers with the same yearning, indulging in each others’ wishes of how they could relive what you both once had. Surprisingly, divulging each others’ woes became a temporary fix to your problem and soon missing him turned from a daily issue to a weekly issue. Now, he’s a quiet thought just once a month.

But things started to change one night in Mira’s dining room when she announced something you hadn’t seen coming.

She’s got a new boyfriend.

~~~~

You sit there, quietly in shock, at her oak dining table directly across from her, listening as she talks of her newly-established relationship as if she had been blessed by all the godly-deities of every power and religion.

“You have to meet him,” she says with a mouthful of spaghetti bolognese, “he’s just the sweetest guy.”

A twinge of bitterness and jealousy has your stomach clenching. “Yeah? Where did you meet him?”

“I’ve always kind’ve known of him, like, I met him last year when I was travelling for work, but recently we’re just really hit it off.”

“Do you think it’ll turn into something more serious?”

The lips of your friendly neighbour beam wider, a subtle coy sparkle evident in her eyes. “I would like to think so, I think we’re both in a really good place.”

“That’s great Mira, I’m happy for you.”

“I was actually thinking about hosting a dinner with the neighbours, like what we used to do years ago, but I might bring him along this time.”

“Wow, so really serious then. Must be something really special if you’re willing to dig up an old tradition just for him.”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Well you know, I miss those dinners. They were always so much fun. They introduced a lot of new things to us including you, and I feel it would be a good way to introduce him to the street too since they’ll be seeing a lot of him ‘round here in the future.”

The Maple Avenue dinners were once the highlight of your week, plucked from a suburban neighbourhood’s dream. It was a tradition you inadvertently started when you first moved into the street, a way of getting to know the neighbours around you. Mira, being your next door neighbour was one of the first to receive an invite and was also the one to convince others to join. Surprisingly, the occasion started a chain of events where other neighbours wanted to host their own dinners, play games, chat and share their life over wine. It happened so often that it became a weekly ritual that you all cherished, until organising a roast for ten to fifteen people became too overwhelming, especially for those who had started a family, or who had taken a promotion at work. Having no such responsibilities, you and Mira became the only two to keep the tradition alive.

“I’d like that. Want me to get in touch with the neighbours?”

“I’ll handle it.”

Two weeks pass and the Friday you have been silently dreading finally arrives. You had been prepared for it up until about an hour ago when you couldn’t remember who drinks white wine and who drinks red, who has an intolerance to dairy and who has an allergy to nuts.

Spotting Mira’s open window across the way, you decide to lean out your bedroom window, hoping to catch her attention. “Mira!” Within seconds she’s mirroring you, her hair still pinned in curls and her body wrapped in her satin robe.

“What?”

“I was going to bring my roasted hazelnut cookies but I can’t remember who has a dairy intolerance and who has a nut allergy.”

“Don’t you remember? Alan doesn’t have dairy, it could get hairy, and Steph doesn’t have nuts, no buts. You don’t need to worry though, they can’t make it tonight.”

“See, this is why you’re the better neighbour. Red or white?”

“Go for red. Jonathan drinks red.”

For a moment, your heart stutters a little in your chest, a small sense of unease tightening your muscles, but you need to remember, it’s just a name. A popular boy’s name. “Jonathan?”

“Jonathan as in boyfriend Jonathan. As in the-reason-why-we’re-doing-this Jonathan.”

“Oh right,” you nervously laugh, “you’ve always referred to him as ‘the boyfriend’ it made me forget that he actually has a name.”

“Yeah, well he’ll soon have a face too. Although he said he might be a little late tonight and doesn’t mind missing the starter. He'll be here for the main.”

“Okay, can’t wait!”

Having food preparations sorted, you take the remaining few hours to present yourself; washing, bathing, moisturising, curling your hair, applying that little extra bit of makeup, and finally choosing an outfit. Despite it only being Mira and a handful of the neighbours who have seen you in worse states, you still feel the need to look presentable in front of a new face, perhaps the result of your mother’s behaviour rubbing off on you when she faced similar situations. ‘Always presentable, always welcoming. First impressions matter.’

Her words stay true to this day. It’s what banked you a job, friends amongst the neighbourhood, and impossibly so, Jonathan Levy’s attraction many, many years ago.

Since the weather had transitioned well into the Spring’s warmth, you settle for a sundress knowing that Mira fully intends to use her beautiful backyard to see off the sunset after dinner. It fits you perfectly, complimented by the sparkling golden necklace that sits squarely between your clavicles; the very same Jonathan had gifted you on your 21st birthday, which to anyone should be reason enough to get rid of it, but just like how you can’t completely get rid of the thought of Jonathan, you can’t get rid of the necklace. At least, not yet.

You arrive a little earlier than Mira had instructed but with good intentions. You help her set the table, stick the necessary food in the oven and ease her nerves. You’re glad to see her dressed similarly, having put in that little extra glamour on top of her usual appearance to appease her guests and, of course, her boyfriend which you both casually joke about.

Soon, one by one, the neighbours start arriving and quickly settle into their own seats as the first course gets plated out. Only one seat across from you remains empty.

You’re surprised by how quickly it starts to feel like nothing’s changed at all; being here together conversing over a roast, clinking glasses and laughing over memories and you remind yourself to give thanks to Mira’s new boyfriend for reigniting a fire that burned out long ago. However it seems like you might need to wait your turn with how engrossed the rest of the neighbours are in Mira’s new boyfriend, everyone wants to meet him. His name fails to fall out of conversation with now being the only chance to ask about him before he arrives.

“So how did he ask you out?” Lisa, from number 32, asks, sitting next to her husband Tom.

“He took me on a date to Rosano’s, very generously paid for my meal, and then we went for a walk along the pier where he surprised me with a bouquet of pink peonies that he had the ice cream vendor keep before the date. He had it all planned out.”

Everyone around you awes with adoration, their lips pouting and their hands over their chest, almost identical to the way people reacted when you told a similar story to your friends when they asked you how your Jonathan asked you out. Only after you swallow the soft lump of potato do you force yourself to respond in the same way, too caught up in your own memories to give an immediate reaction.

Pink peonies. Your favourite flower.

It takes everything in you to ignore the blaring alarm in your head, screaming and fussing over the coincidences. You boil it down to emotions running high and how everything lately has been reminding you of your ex, subconsciously relating everything back to the time you spent with him. Fuck, you didn’t even need to try that hard to link the lentil soup you’re eating back to him. The first meal you had together when you both moved into your new apartment…

The starter course and the conversation concluded when Mira’s boyfriend chapped on the front door. With an understanding nod, you take the plates from Mira’s hands, offering to take them to the kitchen while she answers the door. While there, you can hear through the walls, listening to the cacophony of people greeting one another, sharing names and pleasantries while you stand over the kitchen sink. While the tap runs, you look up to your reflection in the kitchen window, twisting your strands of hair to re-curl that one piece that had fallen flat. First impressions. Better make it a good one.

You enter the dining room once again with a beaming smile on your face ready to welcome him in, and standing there, by Mira’s side, is the last person you want to see.

Jonathan. Fucking. Levy.

It is by chance, or perhaps by fate's cruel hand, that you find yourselves face to face once again in the most unexpected of places. There’s barely enough time to react when your eyes meet from across the room, picked out from a sea of people being none the wiser to the unfortunate predicament you both face. In that moment, amongst the din of the dining room, time almost comes to a stand still and you’re left waiting in the doorway with bated breath, overrun by a wash of emotions as Jonathan’s eyes are confronted with the same feeling.

Between you and him, Jonathan seems to keep up the pretence better than you do as his smile barely dips, but enough to know that he recognises you, enough to know that he too is filled with the same amount of dread and confusion as you are. And as Mira walks him over to introduce you, he doesn’t let the facade fall.

She introduces your name to him and without a seconds’ hesitation, he offers his hand. “Hi, I’m Jonathan, nice to meet you.”

There’s a moment’s delay before you take it, his warmth no stranger to your skin, and with a little wobble to your voice you relay his words back to him. “It’s…it’s nice to meet you too, Jonathan.”

His eyes stay on you as Mira thankfully takes control of the conversation. Poor, oblivious Mira who is unaware of the fact that your Jonathan has just become her Jonathan…because surnames were never mentioned. “Is the food ready to come out?”

“Uh, yeah. I can…I can help out if you need.”

“Perfect! Jonathan, honey, you go sit and get yourself a drink, ‘kay? Dinner won’t be long.”

You watch agonisingly as Mira peppers his cheek with a kiss and follows you into the kitchen where you finally get a chance to navigate the minefield of unresolved emotions without a roomful of witnesses.

Mira instantly tends to the roast slowly cooking away in the oven leaving you to stand in the corner, almost not knowing what to do yourself. An explosion has just gone off inside you yet Mira and a roomful of people are expecting you to carry on as normal, as if years and years’ worth of recovery hasn’t just been stripped from you within a single second. Thousands of layers of hurt have been peeled back and left you bare and vulnerable to your biggest fear, and yet Jonathan’s pretence to not know you has forced you to deal with it as if it’s nothing.

What the fuck are you supposed to do?

“So what do you think?” Mira pulls you from your musing and peers up to you, a proud smile on her face. Her. Mira. It’s all for Mira’s sake, the innocent party in all of this. The realisation hits you like a freight train. If she knew anything about Jonathan being the ex you talked for hours about, it would destroy her. “He’s nice, right?”

“Lovely,” you gleam back, kickstarting your limbs to dish out the cooked vegetables. “He seems very nice.”

“I knew you’d like him.”

If only, Mira, if only.

Not enough time passes before everyone is sat at the dinner table once more, tucking into the delicious food warmly prepared by Mira. You wouldn’t even know, you’ve barely touched it. You can’t find it in you to enjoy the food nor engage in the jovial conversation happening around you because Jonathan Fucking Levy, your ex of six years, is sitting right across from you behaving so casually it makes your stomach churn.

The little ball of stuffing rolls across your plate, dancing from side to side over and over again. You take the small amount of comfort you can find in the hypnotic motion, stuck in a trance of watching this stuffing ball roll back and forward while Jonathan Fucking Levy drones on about his endeavours. You try to pay him no attention of course, but when everyone else around you is sucked into his conversation narrated by his smooth-like-honey voice that used to whisper sweet nothings in your ear, it’s harder said than done.

You dip in and out of his story telling every now and then because you can’t stop your curiosity from wondering just how different the last three years have been for him. Apparently he took ‘personal growth’ seriously and you come to realise that it wasn’t just a shoddy excuse to break up. He’s become a reputable academic, striving in the industry and made quite a name for himself which he explains so beautifully, so fluent with expression and elegant with his choice of his words that hooks everyone in which, given his career choice, makes all the more sense. Then, when you throw in his confident manner and the slightly animated way he presents himself when he speaks passionately about something (which, back in the day, used to be you), it accumulates to something you can’t help but admire. You see it in the eyes of your neighbours around you, afraid to blink for fears of missing something spectacular.

It really makes you wonder how he can act so calm and collected. It’s been three years. Surely there has to be one little atom inside him that's swayed by your being here. There has to be.

Oh, there definitely is.

You don’t know it because you refuse to look at him, but every part of Jonathan is burning with anxiety. If you could just spare him one glance you would see that his fingers twitch around the thin stem of the wine glass, that his whole body shakes with his bobbing knee, and that his teeth incessantly chew away at his bottom lip. At least he has the red wine to thank, staining his cheeks with enough colour to conceal how pale he would be otherwise.

Because he’s terrified. Terrified of not only seeing you, but missing you. Desperately, hopelessly, and unquestionably missing you. He feared he would never see you again to tell you. Yet here you are, sitting an arm’s length away from him, unknowingly tormenting him with the scent of your perfume that consumes every particle of air around him, effortlessly resurrecting memories of how he used to wish that scent would wake him up every morning like it used to. If only he could reach out to feel the buzz of your skin on his, just like it did when you shook his hand, the electricity that flowed through him when your eyes found his. He’s already experiencing withdrawal and he craves for your attention but you won’t look at him anymore. He needs you to look at him again, he needs you to know that he’s been plagued with regret since the moment you split. How can he get you to look at him?

“So what do you do?”

His question cuts through the running conversation like a sharp knife, demanding the attention of everyone at the table as they silence and wait for your answer. It takes you a second to realise he’s talking to you and had it been without everyone staring at you, you would’ve ignored him. But you don’t want to come across as rude to the other guests, and you settle for answering coldly.

“Just corporate work, just a simple nine-to-five-Monday-to-Friday kind of job. It’s nothing special.”

Mira interjects and you happily give her your attention if it means taking it away from Jonathan. Only, she’s leaning against his shoulder, softly patting his thigh affectionately. “Oh she’s being modest, she’s a finance manager, runs the full finance department with an iron fist, don’t you?”

“I manage a small team of bookkeepers and accountants, it’s barely a department.”

“Interesting, how did you get into that?” You pan back to Jonathan who’s munching away, glaring at him through the furrow of your eyebrows, almost vehement at his audacity because he already knows how you got in financing. It was him.

“A friend.”

“What do you mean?” This bastard.

“A friend convinced me to do it. I didn’t have the confidence at the time and he motivated me.”

“That was nice of him.” Sarcasm drips with every word.

You bite back. “Yeah, he was nice. Until he wasn’t. Anyway, that’s a different story for a different time. More wine, anyone?” There’s a few mumbles of agreement, giving you enough of an excuse to rise from the table and make your way to Mira’s pantry in search of a stronger, more bitter tasting wine because God knows you’re going to need it to get through the rest of this dinner.

Dessert comes and goes at an agonising pace. With the help of wine and the particularly boozy dessert, you become less inhibited, detangling yourself from the thick tension that’s lassoed tight around you and Jonathan.

Instead, you find solace in Harry, who lives at number 30, sitting next to you, telling you about the struggles of being a single dad to two troublesome toddlers. It’s quite a depressing conversation and not the pick-me-up you were looking for, but anything is better than having to quietly observe the flirting that’s happening across the table. You deceive Harry into thinking that he’s got your full attention but really you’re hyper aware of Mira and Jonathan in your peripheral vision, sharing small, intimate touches, glancing at each other with stars in their eyes, embraced by the bliss of new-found love.

That used to be you. You haven’t had anything like that since.

“So…uh…” You have all intentions of continuing the conversation with Harry but you weren’t listening well enough to remember where he left off. “Who’s looking after the kids tonight?”

“I hired a babysitter. Which reminds me,” he checks the time on his phone. “I said I’d be back by 8 and it’s 7:57. I better go.” To your dismay, your distraction rises from the table, grabs his jacket from the chair, thanks Mira for the meal and bids everyone a good night. Damn. There goes your distraction.

Everyone around you is locked deep in conversation under the lowlights of Mira’s dining room. All except you. With a heavy sigh, you reach for your wine glass to once again relish the dry, bitter taste of the alcohol as it trickles down your throat. You slouch further and further back against your chair, wallowing in your isolation that no one seems to take notice of.

But Jonathan does, and to your surprise, you feel something tentatively brush against your leg. At first you thought you had gotten too close to the table leg, but when it starts creeping up the length of your leg underneath your dress, your only option is to consider the man sitting directly across from you. Your eyes burn into the side of his head, ignorant to you while he talks enthusiastically about something you’re not privy to. Not that you want to be, especially when the tip of his shoe caresses the back of your calf, pulling it out from underneath you and hooking your ankle closer to him. He remains unfazed as your foot gently rests atop his underneath the table, tracing small circles over your achilles heel.

Your heart beats widely inside you, violently disorientating you as much as the twisting in your stomach does. The gesture is so provocative you’re almost sweating in your seat. It’s scandalous, outrageous, and downright inappropriate, but you’ll be damned to hell if you don’t admit to yourself that it feels mildly arousing.

Only when Mira leaves for the bathroom does he catch a glimpse of you over the tip of his wine glass and old sparks fly as you read the words in his eyes that his mouth can’t say. I miss you. I want you. I need you.

Shaken, you draw back your leg and pull your eyes from his, feeling completely lost and indecisive about what to do. The hidden touches, the secrecy, it’s all too intimate for you to be opening an old wound that still hasn’t fully healed. You’re not ready for three years of hardship to manifest.

Yet again Mira comes to the rescue when she returns from the bathroom and ushers all the remaining guests out into the backyard where you sit yourself as far away from Jonathan as possible, but it’s not without the touch of Jonathan’s hand to the small of your back as you all walk out through the glass panel doors, unnoticed by everyone else. There isn’t a doubt in your mind that he saw the momentary shiver that wracked your shoulders the moment his fingers splayed across the bottom of your spine, virtually feeling the heat of your body through the cotton sundress as if it was your own skin. You make a mental note to yourself to never get close to Jonathan for the remainder of the night.

Once you get outside, you look up to your bedroom window, visible from all areas of Mira’s garden, wishing that you return to the comforts of your own bed, lost in your book and free from this emotional torment. It takes just a glimpse of your window to see everything inside it, something you hadn’t realised was possible until Mira had to awkwardly knock on your door the second week of you moving here and gently warn you to draw your blinds when you were changing. And just as the thought arises…

“Do you remember,” Mira hiccups, perhaps on her sixth glass of wine of the night, “when I had to tell you to close your blinds two weeks after you moved here? I actually thought you were maybe trying to seduce me!” She laughs wholeheartedly, nearly spilling her wine onto Jonathan’s lap.

A blush blooms on your cheeks. “I didn’t realise you could see in! If I had known I would’ve! Jesus, Mira, way to make me out as a flasher in front of the neighbours.”

“Listen, if it makes you feel any better, some guys would’ve paid thousands to have seen what I saw every morning.”

With a nervous glance of your eyes, you see Jonathan’s glare hard on you.

“Do I need to contact the HOA and tell them we’ve got a pervert in our neighbourhood?”

The neighbours laugh but Mira rushes to her defence, unknowingly giving Jonathan that all important detail that he might take advantage of later. “My window is right there! How could I not see you?”

“Conversation over.”

Against your wishes, Mira dives into many conversations of a similar nature provoked by Jonathan who annoyingly asks all sorts of questions that involve how you and Mira became friends, forcing her, in her now drunken state, to divulge all the memories you share together, including the many nights you spent talking about ex-lovers. The minute she starts spilling everything, nausea starts to pool inside you and the colour trickles away from your cheeks. Knowing none the wiser, she talks on and on and on about how you bonded over the troubles and hardships of being single, detailing everything about how you would reminisce over ex-lovers and compare them to every shitty cheesy romance film you watched together. And with just a few stories, she single-handedly exposes all of your inner thoughts and feelings towards Jonathan. Right in front of him all for him to hear.

You silently plead with your eyes, solid in their gaze in the hopes that Mira would catch on and shut up, but she’s seven, no, eight glasses of wine deep that she can’t hold anybody’s gaze let alone yours.

Jonathan merely sits and listens, amused by everything that is pouring out from Mira’s loud mouth.

“I mean, it’s hard. And you’ll agree with me on this, that trying to get back into the dating scene as a single woman isn’t an easy experience! You go on dates with guys that bore you to sleep, clicking with absolutely none of them and it just leads to you going home and dreaming about meeting the one guy that sweeps you off your feet. Of course, you’ll know what I mean because you’ve already met him--”

“Mira--”

She turns to Jonathan to give him context. Knowledge that he already knows himself. “She had this one guy that she dated years ago, the one-that-got-away kind of guy. We used to laugh about him--”

Jonathan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh really? How so?”

Fuck.

“Mira--”

“Just the usual girly stuff, what we would wear at our weddings, thinking about baby names, and talk about owning the perfect house in the suburbs, that kind of stuff.”

Jonathan turns to you with an emotion you can only only describe as being distressed, possibly on the verge of being disturbed and you don’t blame him. You’re sure that he could see the very same feeling in you through the gaps of your fingers as they hide your face in embarrassment.

This is possibly your worst nightmare come to life. The entire night had dwindled into absolute ruins and there’s nothing more that you want than to bury yourself into the ground, away from Mira, away from this mortifying feeling, away from Jonathan. You know it’s not her fault, but everything in you is wanting you to blame Mira, to be judge, jury and executioner and lay out all that she is guilty of in front of her. However in reality, you’re projecting. You were the one to tell her about Jonathan. You were the one to feed her all this information believing that not a word of it would ever reach Jonathan’s ears, and when you consider all that has led up to this exact moment, you are just as at fault as she is.

And you need to make a run from it while you can.

“I’m…uh, I think I’m going to go home,” you announce, not realising how shaky your voice is until you speak up. Mira’s expression falls with disappointment, coming immediately to a stand and trying her hardest to convince you to stay. But you know nothing could.

“Do you want us to walk you home?”

“Mira, I live next door, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

She persistently follows you back into the house. “I’ll walk you to the door then.”

“I know where the front door is--”

“I just want to make sure you get home okay--”

“Mira, honey, you go sit, I’ll walk her out.” Jonathan’s voice appears from behind you both, reassuring enough that Mira follows his word and returns to the back garden with a mousey ‘okay’. Once gone, Jonathan, stoic as ever, catches you in his stride, escorting you to the door with a hand to the back of your shoulder.

This time, when you speak, you can’t stop the sniffle as your emotions run high. “If I don’t want Mira walking me out, I sure as shit don’t want you walking me out.”

He merely looks down to you and sighs, not listening to a single word you say. Within a matter of seconds, you exit through Mira’s front door, ready and willing to slam it in Jonathan’s face but he’s just a pace too quick and is already following you through the front garden. Your body goes into high alert, having no idea what he’s about to do now that for the first time in three years, you have a moment alone together.

“Jonathan,” you warn. “Go back inside.”

“Just let me walk you home.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I want an explanation as to what the fuck just happened in there.”

“You’re not getting one. You don’t deserve one. Go back inside, Jonathan, your girlfriend is waiting on you.”

“Like hell. Will you just talk to me for one second?!” He reaches out and grabs your arm, swinging you around to face him where your bodies stand inches apart. It’s not in anger nor frustration but in desperation, as if this is the only chance he’ll ever get again to speak to you alone and he’s not willing to let it slip by him so easily. “Is…is what Mira said true? Did you really talk about all those things?”

You look down to your fingers wringing them out while you wait for the courage to build. “That wasn’t her information to share. But what does it matter anyway, it’s…stupid.”

“It matters to me.” He tilts your chin with the gentlest of touches, his hand lingering close to your neck as he picks up the necklace sitting delicately around your neck, one that he’s all too familiar with. “I miss you.”

“Don’t…don’t say that to me.” You begin to feel the tethers keeping the remains of your composure snapping, your mouth sinking deeper into a frown the way it always does when you’re about to cry. “You don’t get to say that to me.”

“Nonetheless, it’s true. And I think you missed me too.”

You roll your eyes and he immediately scorns you. “No, no, don’t do that. Don’t invalidate it just because I said it. I’m not trying to be smug or patronising, I want to know the truth. Did you miss me?”

The wobble in your lip becomes uncontrollable. You don’t have the option to lie because he can read every minute feature on your face like it’s laid out for him in words, he would know if you didn’t tell the truth. With a deep breath, you push out the admission. “Every. Fucking. Day.”

He nods understandably, retracting his hand from your necklace and sinks it deep into his pockets. He looks up to your window before quietly murmuring words suggestive in tone, “then keep your window open tonight.”

And it takes your breath away.

~~~~

It’s late. A little past 1am. It’s been all too silent since the last of Mira’s guests left about an hour ago leaving only her and Jonathan next door.

His last words to you before you separated still echo loudly in your ears but you just can’t figure what he meant. It’s the only thing that’s kept you up this late, and even as you sit on your bed just a few metres from your open window that lets in a cool, calming breeze, you still can’t fathom what he’s intending to do because her window across from you is closed, her curtains drawn and her lights out.

Is this a joke? Is this Jonathan’s cruel twisted idea of a joke to make you watch as he and Mira settle for the night? Teasing you with something you can’t have? The foundation of that idea had developed a little less than half an hour ago and the more time ticks on, the more bricks are added to it.

Having enough, you turn your back to your window, taking your duvet and slinging it over your head and around your shoulders, blocking out the world behind you. There’s no point trying to sleep, the embarrassment and the emotional trauma of tonight are still too raw for you to find any peace, so you reach for the half-finished book on your nightstand.

Fuck Jonathan Levy. Fuck him and everything he stands for. Fuck him in the past and--

Wait, what was that?

Just then, not even two lines into your book you hear the small creak of a door opening and closing coming from outside. Your eyes dart to your digital clock reading 1:10am. It could be Mark coming in from his backshift. It could be Erin, Alan’s teenage daughter sneaking in from a night out. It could be Rebecca, taking her dog out on a late night walk. All options are plausible and wouldn’t be completely out of the ordinary. But there’s one option that you’re afraid to consider.

What if it’s Jonathan?

You don’t look to check because you wouldn’t know what you would do if it was him, and so in the meantime, you continue to anxiously sit and listen out for any other clues.

In time, they come. The rustling of the ivy that weaves in and out of your lattice fencing on the side of your house. The breaths of a man as he scales up the wooden structure to your window. The heaviness of his boots as they thud against your floorboards. The raspiness of his voice as he mutters your name. He’s here. In your room, and yet you still can’t bring yourself to turn around to face him. Your breaths are tremorous as he makes his way closer to you, almost shaking with anticipation of what’s about to happen.

He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t make any rash decisions. For a moment, he pauses by the side of your bed eyeing you up with your duvet slung over your head and decidedly reaches for it, taking a fistful of the sheets and dragging it slowly away from you until you’re exposed to him, still dressed in the sundress you couldn’t bring yourself to take off. The tension locks you in a chokehold, unable to move, unable to speak, waiting for the moment where Jonathan’s hand reaches out to touch you once more but you know it’ll be different this time. No more gentle touches hidden in plain sight, no more casual excuses to lay his hands on you, everything that will happen here on in will be the result of three years of separation and withdrawal.

The bed dips under his weight and only then do you turn your head to look over your left shoulder. He’s closer than you expected and you see the tufts of his curls hanging over his forehead come into sight, low and looming. His nose comes into contact with your shoulder and even the slightest touch sets you alight. He scales up the curve of your neck to hide deep within the locks of your hair behind your ear and inhales.

“That fucking perfume,” he whispers softly into your hair. “It’s just as perfect as I remember.”

“Jonathan, we…” you heaved a breath, fighting temptation. “We shouldn’t do this.”

“You have no idea, do you?” He murmurs directly into your ear, his arm coming around to circle your waist and hug you closer to him. “No idea just how much I missed you, how much I regret what I did, and every day I spent not being with you was a reminder of the mistake I made to the point where I thought I would never get to hold you again.”

He renders you speechless when he scrapes away the strands of your hair and mouths at the curve of your neck, humming into your skin. It’s almost the same as before, soft pillowy lips showering you with unreserved passion, except this time they’re followed by the slight scrape of his beard grown in the years you hadn’t seen him. It makes his kisses more exhilarating, stimulating. While your body screams for more, your morals just can’t shake the guilt of betraying your own friend.

“But Mira--”

“Mira knows.”

You detach yourself from his lips to face him, still half-lidded and unfazed by his admission. You’re almost nauseous with the way your heart drops in your chest. “What do you mean she knows?”

Despite your surprise, Jonathan simply tilts his head as he assesses your face in the sheen of the streetlight like he’s seeing you for the first time all over again and doesn’t stop his fingers from intertwining with the short baby hairs at the nape of your neck.

“She had an inkling that there was something going on between us. There was a reason why she brought me up in the conversation earlier in the garden because she knew from the moment she saw the look on your face when you saw me. So I came clean. We decided to be completely honest with each other and we talked for a while.”

“And?”

“Well, she knew your thoughts on me…and it was more than I had ever thought to hear.”

Your cheeks flush angrily, wincing at the thought of Mira revealing every confession told with such a lack of restraint. Back then, telling Mira these things felt like securing all of your secrets into a vault, trusting that they would be safe, trusting that they were secure enough that no one besides you would have access to them. In hindsight, you should’ve perceived her as more of a time capsule, planted, hidden for the time being, and when after enough time passes, they are bound to be found by someone else.

“I know that you hated me for a while - and I did too. I always wondered whether you resented me as much as I did, for a while I thought it wasn’t possible. And while I knew the resentment was one sided, there was a part of me that wished that missing each other wasn’t. I guess I found my answers tonight.”

“Was Mira mad?”

“No, darling,” he grazes his chin over the curve of your shoulder, lips inching closer and closer to your own. “She considered you to be too much of a friend to get in the way and cause you any pain, not after all that you had told her. She knew you would’ve done the same for her.”

“I…I don’t know what to think. It’s all just a mess.”

You turn your head towards the book in your hands, fingers fiddling with the page, while you try to figure out where your loyalties lie. With your head? With your heart? It’s a wonder how the same body can feel two entirely opposing feelings and yet still wonder which one is the right one.

“Maybe…” Jonathan whispers, his hand reaching for the book and sliding it from your grasp, “maybe, you don’t need to think at all. Let me do the thinking for you. Let me show you just how much I’ve missed you, because fuck, as much as I love this dress you have on, I’m much more interested in what’s underneath it.” While one hand pulls you tighter against his chest, his other hand comes to slide down your thigh until curls around your knee, bunching the fabric tight in his fist and pulling it higher and higher. You watch with eager eyes, succumbing to Jonathan’s temptation and letting go of all of your inhibitions. Your eyes grow heavy, wanting to relish the feeling of his fingertips tracing the length of your inner thigh as they gently pull your legs apart, but it’s much more satisfying to watch. Jonathan doesn’t need to watch, not when he can taste the supple skin of your neck.

It’s almost agonising how slow his pace is, how he stalls every couple of seconds to trace circles on your skin and devilishly chuckles when you whimper. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed though, talking about our life’s plan without me.”

Just as his fingers feel the outer rim of your underwear, you tilt your head back to lean against his shoulder with a sinful sigh. Opening your legs just that little bit wider tells Joanthan everything he needs to know. It’s been years. Years since he’s had you like this, so he has every reason not to take it slowly and fuck you like a man starved of your touch, but there’s something in him, perhaps the little devil on his shoulder, that persuades him to take it slowly, to exploit the part of you that has missed him and prove to you that the years spent apart, however painful, was worth the wait.

“Tell me,” he urges, “tell me what you had imagined.”

Call you ignorant but you’re not quite in the talking mood. However, you feel he won’t do a single thing to you unless you do as he asks. “That…that we’d get married in the small church near the vineyard where we grew up. I imagined a quiet house in the suburbs, just us two, at least for a while.”

“Hm, what kind of house?”

“One that wasn’t too big that we’d feel far apart, and not too small that we would get in each other’s way. One with a garage and a garden where our dog could run around.”

“Good,” he praises into your ear. A single digit slips beneath your underwear which instantly gets a feel of your warm, wettening cunt, and you grow impatient. “What else?”

“After a while, we…shit…we’d have our own kids. A boy and a girl. I’d hope they’d have your eyes.”

After doing a few rounds of your entrance, the tip of his finger rests upon your clit, barely moving. Your hips start moving fluidly, all of their own volition but he eases his touch. Instead he gives a gentle tap tap tap, urging you to continue before you can get any more.

The hand that keeps you stable around your middle eventually slithers up to wrap around your neck squeezing with a dizzying pressure.

“Keep going…”

“We’d take an early retirement so that we could grow old together. Taking vacations to places we’d never been to before, being the same couple we were when we were younger.”

“Oh yeah? I love the sound of that. Just as much as I love the sound of those moans you make. Keep singing little siren.” The moan that leaves your lips the minute he nibbles on your lobe is unrecognisable. You haven’t been seduced like this in years and every atom of you is buzzing with anxiety and in your physical form, you can’t sit still. It takes the weight and pressure of Jonathan’s thighs resting either side of your hips to keep you anchored.

His fingers make quick work of building you up, conjuring that deep, guttural feeling of pleasure and desire to stir within you. Even after years, he still knows you so well, still knows what makes you tick and what makes you scream. There isn’t an inch of your neck that Jonathan’s lips haven’t touched; sucking, licking, biting until you’re coloured with bruises.

“Seems like you have it all planned out, darling. But why don’t I tell you how I imagined tonight would go?”

“Please.”

Just as his words flow from his mouth, two fingers slide easily into you and curl into that spot makes your body restless and your lungs heaving. “Just as I did, I’d find you here, confess that there wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t think of you, tell you how I yearned to have the sweet taste of you on my tongue again and the tight squeeze of that cunt around my cock. I’d seduce you every way I knew I could and I’d want you to want it. I’d want you to tell me that you want it and once I knew I had you again, I’d get on my knees, lift up that dress of yours and taste you. Get you nice and wet, ready to take me.”

“Fuck, Jonathan--”

“After years, I thought my patience would get the better of me if I ever had this chance again, but seeing you here like this,” his fingers pick up the pace, drilling into you and filling the room with sacrilegious sounds. “I think I might want to take my time, let each minute that passes reflect what I have been thinking about every day we were apart.”

“Please,” you whisper, growing evermore impatient. It all sounds too good. The more he speaks his feelings into words the more you want it. To have the feeling of him touch you everywhere, to feel him inside you, snug and shaped by him and bringing you to the precipice of losing your mind the way only he could. “I need you, Jonathan, need you now.”

His lips come to your cheek, shaped by a smile of satisfaction. “You will, darling. Soon. I just want to savour this right now.”

His fingers slip from your cunt, trailing all that he’s gathered up the length of your slit to come crashing down onto your clit. While he circles and swirls his fingers, you twist your head to lock eyes with him and even in the cover of darkness, you can still make out the fire that’s burning within him leaving no doubt that he truly wants to ravish you just as he has described. But it isn’t a roaring fire, it’s a slow burning candle, flickering away to slowly dissolve all of what’s left of his patience.

Like instinct, your lips clash together hungrily not sparing a second before your tongues and welding together and tasting the remnants of the red wine you both had earlier. Inexplicably, it tastes sweeter on his palate.

The fingers that curl around your neck tense as if they’re fighting to keep you stable, surging to keep your restlessness at bay and all of this is making you wonder ‘why not just get on with it?’.

You decide to hasten the pace, raising your hips closer to his fingers with the tips of your toes, feeling his cock grind against the small of your back where it should be grinding against your cunt. Though that may be how you truly feel, you make do with his fingers toying with you with his palm flat against your pubic bone to keep you close, once again making you twitch with anticipation and hum with desire. You’re close, so close that with just another lap of his fingers would make you explode.

Holy shit. You’re going to cum. You’re to cum on Jonathan Fucking Levy’s fingers.

“Don’t you think we should maybe close your blinds?” He taunts, suddenly halting all of his movements. “Surely you wouldn’t want the neighbours to see how easily you fall apart for me.”

Jesus. Where did this side of Jonathan come from?

“Um…y-yeah. Close them.” God, it’s starting to take effect on you. When was the last time a man made you stumble over your own words like that?

With a gentle kiss to your cheek, he rises from the bed to leave you attempting to find relief from the friction of your thighs, chasing what you were seconds from having.

When you begin to wonder what takes him so long, you turn to face him staring out of the window, his silhouette blocking the light of the streetlamp that normally floods in through the glass. The fingers that were toying with your cunt seconds ago twitch by his side rubbing together the remnants of your slick, so sensual that it has you biting your bottom lip. Before he closes the curtain he takes those fingers and puts them in his mouth as if he’s just swiped the whipped cream from atop a pudding he’s forbidden to have. But sometimes that’s what makes it all the sweeter.

“Jonathan?” you whisper to pull him from his reverie, your patience waning.

“Coming,” he says gently. “Just taking it all in. You, me…” he snaps the curtains closed and plunges you both into darkness, “your taste on my tongue.”

Slowly and somewhat menacingly he turns around and his shoulders are hunched, his fists are clenched, his breathing is audibly racing. The tone instantly changes when he comes to stand over you, his fingers tilting your chin up to look at him directly. It hooks you in immediately, suddenly feeling the compulsion to do whatever he wants, to go wherever he guides you.

Jonathan’s voice slithers through the air like a snake through the wreaths, worming its way into the valley of your ears so clear and precise. “I know I said I was going to take this slowly and I whole-heartedly intend to follow through with that. But just so you know, I don’t think I can be gentle. Can you allow me that?”

“Yes, Jonathan, yes.”

“Good.”

It amazes you how one short syllable completely changes the aura of the room, how easily Jonathan commands control of the situation because all of a sudden, the gentle traces of his fingertips circling your chin changes to a clawed hand around your neck, drawing you into an all-consuming kiss that’s more powerful than before. Without missing a single beat, he forces you onto your back and hovers over you, caging you in and anchoring his weight down onto your pelvis. It should feel claustrophobic and intrusive, but instead it feels like a sanctuary; warm, safe, secure.

Where it feels like he belongs.

Shivers race up your spine and throw your hands into motion as they cling onto his shirt, luring him even closer until the beat of his heart is pounding against yours. Not only that, but you can feel his hips thrusting into yours, grinding his contained cock against your heat and it elicits a moan from both of you. With a sudden rush of adrenaline, he races to undo his belt, pulling himself free and you almost squeal with the anticipation of knowing how well he can undo you with one swift thrust. But like Jonathan promised, he isn’t going to rush this. He slowly peels off your underwear until you are well and truly exposed.

Not without a few pumps of his fist, he lines himself up and anchors you down, teasing your entrance with the head of his leaking cock, giving you a taster of what’s to come.

“You drive me fucking insane,” he grumbles into your mouth. “Always have, always will.”

“Please stop talking.”

“Or what, huh?” he chuckles. He takes the head of his cock and batters it against your swollen clit. Deliberately, you guess, to render you speechless. And it works, the snide quip hot on your lips quickly loses all conviction and you’re back to moans and whimpers. “‘S what I thought. You and I both know how much we want this. How much we’ve missed this.”

This time you take the chance to bite back before he robs you of it. “Well get on with it, then.”

Now driven, he snags your bottom lip with his teeth dragging it out until it’s released with a pop. “Fine.”

Giving you a final taste of his lips, he comes to a stand taking your legs with him with a mighty pull until your hips lie just over the precipice of the bed. He hugs your legs to his chest, his cock lining up with your exposed cunt perfectly and with powerful thrust, he sinks deep into you. All of the air punches out of your lungs in a single beat and you claw at the bed sheets while you fight for your breath back. You’re momentarily debilitated while you acclimate to his size, filling you so effortlessly. Despite being slightly uncomfortable, it’s a welcome intrusion and you’re thankful that he gives you a minute.

“Fuck, you’re so tight. Holy fuck.”

Not a moment later, he pulls his hips back, completely withdrawing and just when you think you’ve got your breath back he charges into you again, snapping his hips against your ass and sending aftershocks up the length of your body. It’s a motion he repeats over and over again, giving you that pleasurable feeling of being so full of him as he grinds into you all to be taken away within a moment leaving utterly empty. You have just enough awareness to listen out for the staccato notes of his hips slapping against yours followed by your sheepish sobs.

It’s insatiable. He never changes pace and the power of his thrusts never falters. He certainly doesn’t allude to breaking his promise of rushing things and frustratingly so, continues his slow rampage, finding pleasure in that little sweet spot where the swollen ridge of his cock drags from your cunt. It’s enough to get you going, but not enough to finish you off.

“I need more,” you beg between breaths. “Please.”

Jonathan doesn’t respond, and instead waits until the cheeks of your ass are red raw from his poundings (which feels like a lifetime) and only then, does he take a new approach. Your legs swing apart, forced wide open by his greedy hands and you’re left to watch with bated breath as he drops to his knees and devours you.

“Fuck, Jonathan!”

“Mm, that’s right, baby, say my name.”

“Jonath--fuck!” His mouth completely consumes every inch of your cunt, lavishing the taste of you with his tongue from deep within you to the tip of your clit. Amongst the buzzes of his hum, the soft scrape of his beard, and the crescent-moon marks pressing into your waist, your back arches as desire slowly morphs into a desperate pain, needing to give his hot mouth more access to your cunt if it was at all possible. And just when you think you are ready to give in, he steals the moment from you. With two fingers, he slots them easily into you and starts working your pussy at a torturous pace.

“Look how soaked you are.” His lips brush against your clit as he speaks, a depraved grunt rolling from the back of his throat.

“I’m gonna cum.”

“Do it. I want it. I wanna taste you. I want you.”

Your heart grows, a small smile appearing on your lips. The warmth of affection stills you momentarily to appreciate how you have your old love back, the man you could never really get over, that all those years of waiting and wanting are over. You don’t know what it was about the sudden softness and love-drunkenness that washed through you, but God, he was stunning. Everything about him was annoyingly perfect. Stupidly, annoyingly perfect. Yet, here he was, lavishing you as if you were an elixir of life.

Your fingers itch to race through his locks to pull him closer, tempted to never let him go. Through his dark lashes, his lust-heavy eyes find yours as if he knew what you were insinuating.

“Don’t worry, baby, I’m never leaving. Let go for me.”

You didn’t need to be told again. With the final swipe of his tongue across your clit, you internal combust, your entire body folding into itself with Jonathan trapped between your thighs.

----

You and Jonathan spent the night catching up on all the years you spent apart, sharing orgasm after orgasm until you were completely and utterly spent. Despite only having just a few hours of sleep, you awoke early in the morning, just in time to see the sun rise over the peak of your neighbours’ houses. All is calm in the street aside from the few birds tweeting in Mira’s tree and Jonathan’s steady breathing beside you. The tranquil, blissful few moments of consciousness fills you with a sense of rejuvenation from all that has happened within the last 24 hours. If it hadn’t been for Mira’s approval beforehand, you would be drowning in guilt. You make a mental reminder to talk to her and apologise later.

You roll over on your side of the bed to find Jonathan sleeping peacefully beside you, his hand tucked under his chin like it always did when he was deep in slumber and you quirk a smile when you realise that nothing’s changed. With a delicate finger, you sweep away the curl resting against his forehead, careful not to wake him but yet he still stirs, readjusting himself subconsciously. Though not fully awake, he reaches out for you as if it was instinct and little do you know, it is. Every morning since you split, Jonathan had always reached out for you to find nothing but empty cold space on the other side of his bed and it was a sad reality he couldn’t quite accept. But now, when his fingertips feel the warmth of your skin against his, he doesn’t hesitate to lure you into his embrace to relish the lingering scent of your perfume, the slow beating of your heart, the little content hum singing from your throat. You’re here. You’re real. And he’s certain to never lose you again.

In his drowsy state, he puckers his lips in a timid kiss to the surface of your forehead.

“Love you,” he quietly murmurs.

With a breathy laugh, you return his kiss, whispering the same words against his bare chest directly over his heart.

I love you too, Jonathan Fucking Levy.

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