Chapter Text
I can feel his eyes burning into the back of my head, as he looks out at the crowd from the stage. But I know he’s looking directly at me, I can fucking feel it, and I feel a ripple of heat run through my body at that realisation that confuses me to no end.
“So if there are any last minute requests,” his tone changes in a miniscule moment of pause, “changes of heart,” and the sensation of him looking at me intensifies. God I cannot believe him right now, in front of all of these people? Is he crazy?
But the feeling of being wanted, being thought of, him wanting to talk to me so badly he slips in a hint for only me in front of a roomful of watching people? I cannot help but to look at him. The plate in my hands suddenly feels heavy, my body weighed down as I turn my head. The sparkly lights illuminate his golden skin, skimming over the glossed golden surface of his exposed shoulders. He looks so good my throat feels tight and my fingertips stiffen imperceptibly.
“Remember that the photo booth is out of order.”
And our eyes lock for an electric second before he casually gestures his head and his clever, clever finger away from its resting spot on the microphone and towards the aforementioned photobooth. He presses his lips together, and I can’t help but gaze at him. I want to kiss him so badly my chest aches, to feel his stupid long wavy hair between my fingers, those lips against mine, those fingers inside of me.
I look at the photobooth, and a maelstrom of emotions engulfs my mind as I quickly push my body into necessary motion. I hear the brittle sound of him saying his goodnights to the crowd of donors and friends alike from the microphone, and the vague sounds of the crowd clapping and whooping over the top of the slight ringing in my ears.
Should I?
>-<3->
Of course I go to the photo booth, who wouldn’t?
As I walk up, I see his legs under the curtain before I see him in his entirety, and a spike of adrenaline rushes into my chest cavity. He’s casual, slouched. His fucking ankles are crossed like he knows I’m coming, and I honestly can’t believe that I am. My eyes sweep across the room one final time, before I pull aside the fabric and I step inside the booth.
He moves back to make room for me, and I ache to be closer to him. Close enough to feel the heat of his body radiating into mine in dependable waves, his heartbeat against my chest, quickening with every touch against his body.
“Change your mind?” He says sheepishly, smiling in a shy, distinctly un-Dean DiLaurentis fashion. Smiling in a coy way I have never seen him smile like with anyone else, and that dark, shameful possessive feeling tugs at me incessantly.
“No. Maybe?”
God I’m stumbling over my words, and I can see it on his face that he can read my mind, like my forehead has a window into it, with a big sign behind it saying “I NEED YOU IN A WAY THAT IS CONCERNING TO FEMINISM!” scrawled in his favourite lipstick shade of mine across the walls of my thoughts.
And it’s not helpful that he’s looking at my lips like he wants, no, needs, to consume me. As I avoid that thought, more words spill out of my mouth in a stressy rush.
“Just every time we do this, I feel so-”
“Amazing?”
Yes.
Wait, no.
“Bad. I feel bad.” I say, with more than a hint of frustration lacing my blunt words.
“Guilty.”
And now I’m looking at his lips.
“Wait, are you Catholic?” He asks, in a puzzled, stupidly flat question.
What? Men can be so dumb sometimes.
“No. I’m just a girl.”
He purses his lips as he listens, and I need to speak quicker to avoid thinking about the fact that I’m thinking about his lips again, and that when he said ‘Amazing’ I thought about Sean, and how amazing he didn’t make me feel; and that guilt intensified.
“I have to think about what everyone else feels before I can figure out what I’m feeling. And I can’t even do that right now because this fucking breakup is totally messing with my head.”
But even as I’m speaking, the words that are true to what I’m thinking, my eyes are flickering. Over the shape of his tensing and untensing jawline, his neck, the muscular shapes of the sides of his arms; my eyes quickly sliding down the side of his form. Fuck.
“I don’t even know what to think.” I say quietly, blinking in an attempt to control my uncontrollable eyeline.
“Then don’t. Don’t think.” He says gently, his brow furrowed and the rest of his face soft with concern, “Tell me what you want.”
He steps closer to me, and I finally feel the soothing presence of his smell and his heat and the everything about him. We share a breathing space and my heart slows enough for me to gain the courage to meet his eyes, and my heart melts.
“Allie Cat, tell me what you want.” He asks honestly, in that soft voice he uses when he asks me, ‘does this feel good baby?’, ‘do you like it when i touch you like that?’, ‘look how pretty you look for me.’
My eyelashes flutter at the memory, and I gravitate towards him. I think I know what I want, but I know that I want him, and badly.
“This is not a relationship, okay? No strings, no feelings, just sex.” I sound sure, final, and I’m glad that the sour feeling in my mouth as I say those words aren’t spilling into them.
“Just fucking kiss me.” In that voice, again.
My hands connect with the sides of his face, the tips of my fingers brushing into his soft hair as our lips collide into the puzzle perfect connection I had been craving. His hands slip up either side of my waist as my hands run more adventurously into his hair, our lips pressing together harder.
I only realise I’ve gone onto my tiptoes when I feel his hands slide to the back of my hip bones, pulling our bodies flush against each other, my chest pressed against his, the flutter in my lower stomach practically begging to be held against him closer.
I feel my brain melting into it, getting lost in the dance, the to and fros of our hands and our tongues brushing lightly against each other's lips; and I pull myself out of it enough to whisper in his ear,
“Meet at mine in an hour.” with my fingers splayed against the back of his neck, my thumb pressed against his pulse point that is hammering against my fingertip.
His lips graze against the soft space below my ear as my sentence trails off, making my nails dig into the skin slightly as we pull ever so slightly closer, but not close enough. I smile against the side of his neck as I pull away, not allowing myself the satisfaction of seeing him there left wanting. Which I know I did, I felt it pressed against my stomach.