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lovehugsandcandy · 3 years

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auld acquaintance part iii (ColtxMC, RoD)

A/N: But maybe this year, we all need a fresh start. And maybe it doesn’t get all the way there, it rarely does, but hopefully we all can make some forward progress.

Pairing: Colt x MC, ROD

Length: ~3,500 words

Rating/Warnings: N*FW (Swearing. Sex.)

Summary: Junior year.

Colt drums his fingers on the high top table, eyes trained on the path towards the balcony; when he sees an intricate updo edge over, he moves, sliding through the crowd to cut off her path.

“Dance with me.”

“What?” Ellie scrunches her nose but, in her eyes, he can see her waver.

“Please. Dance with me.”

“You hate dancing.”

“I know.”

He can see her mentally debate her decision. In the last year, they have slowly come to a truce, and it looks like she is weighing both pros and cons of spending any amount of time with him.

At first, the winter had been freezing, chock full of icy glares and strained silence. But by spring, she had thawed, sparing him an occasional half smile, a few small snippets of conversation. Fall brought them together in Organic Chemistry; for all the exams and lab work, the biggest learning had been how effortlessly and flawlessly they worked together. And by the first snow, they were back to some kind of strained acquaintance, perhaps not as easy as it had once been, but a kindling of a start.

And now Colt was going to blow it all up.

“Fine. One dance.” He can feel the chill in her voice but nods, following her as she steps through the crowd to stand wooden, hands locked across her chest, delicate tendrils of hair swirling at her temples in a marked contrast to the glare on her face. “What do you want, Colt?”

“This isn’t any dance I’ve ever seen.”

She groans, low in her throat, but begrudgingly winds her hands around his neck as his gentle fingertips grace the curve of her hip. “What do you really want?” she repeats.

“I can’t just want to spend time with you?”

Her gaze darkens, and he knows she’s remembering last year, remembering storming from this very hotel after he slipped out of her bed. “Apparently not.”

“Ellie, I told you-”

“Whatever.” She edges back just slightly but the distance - mere inches really, nothing notable, less than a gaudy marble floor tile - the distance is still enough to gut him, ache hot and sharp in his stomach. He’s always had a smart remark, something snide and cutting hidden just underneath his tongue, but now he falters, wondering what the magic combination of words and phrases could be, something, anything to ease the tension in her jaw, the shuttering of her eyes.

He’s always been great at words to keep people away; now that he needs words to draw someone in, he’s speechless.

“It’s whatever, Colt.” She interrupts his pained thoughts with a dismissive shake of her head. “Just forget it.”

“I can’t.”

“Whatever.” She sighs, heavy enough to be heard over the dull classical music from the quartet in the corner. “I’m sick of this. Let’s just forget about sophomore year. Start over. Friends? Again?”

Hell, no. Colt does not want to be friends. As grateful as he is that she is deigning to speak to him, what he desires would definitely not be considered friendly. “What’s with the change of heart?”

“New Year? Fresh start? Positive energy?” She softens slightly in his arms, though her lip is still down-turned in a pout. He can’t stop staring, especially now that he knows what it’s like to have it between his teeth.

“That sounds like my New Year’s resolution.”

“You. A resolution? Seriously?” He shrugs. Her mouth opens and closes for a moment before she snarks, “Is this you admitting you’re not flawless?”

“Aw, Ellie,” he drawls. “You think I’m perfect? I’m touched.”

“Hardly.” She rolls her eyes, but he sees a hint of a smile, barely, slightly, almost invisible if he weren’t looking so closely at every movement of her face. “It doesn’t really seem like you to make a resolution.”

“Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.” She’s looking at him with an eyebrow raised, disbelief painted clear across her features, and he tries with every cell in his body to deliver his next words with a gravity and sincerity from his chest unlearned from anyone else in his life. “Ellie, I’m so-.”

She doesn’t even let him finish the sentence. “It’s fine.”

“Ellie-”

“It’s fine.” She glances away, tone stressed on the last word in a way that lets him know it is decidedly not fine. “It’s not like I wanted to date you.” Some lingering scar inside his ribs twinges. She’s the smartest person he knows, top of their class and quick enough to keep even him on his toes, so of course she’s smart enough to want to stay away from him. His fingers tighten over the tiny beads of her dress, each one pushing a sharp divot in his fingertips. “What was your resolution, anyway?”

“To make it up to you.” This stops her in her tracks and he has to stop as well, lest he land on her towering heels.

“What?”

“To make up for last year. To have a better start to this year. With you.”

She looks shocked, speechless, and he feels like an idiot, standing stock still in the middle of the dance floor while couples spin around them. It’s like he’s standing in judgement, sweating in the grey suit he trots out to this party every fucking year, awkward and lost in the haze of champagne and money.

He doesn’t notice the buzz until it’s echoing against the gilded walls of this fucking room, excitement and rich people coming together into a heaving drone that knocks insistently on his consciousness until it’s impossible to ignore.

Ten. Nine. Eight.

Shit.

The fucking countdown.

He sucks in a breath.

She bites her lip and quirks a half-smile, tentative and weak. “You know, I’ve never made a resolution.”

“Because you’re so flawless?” He chuckles when she swats his arm. She moves to hit him again, but he moves faster, grabbing her hand and twining their fingers together, pulling her ever-so-slightly closer.

“Maybe because I didn’t think things would ever change for me,” she whispers.

“Maybe nothing will change unless you make it change.”

Seven. Six.

She blinks up at him.

“You said that freshman year, Ellie.”

“You remember that?”

“Yeah.” He clutches his fingers in hers, warm and impossibly small. “This New Year, maybe I’m the one who wants to change things.”

Five. Four. Three.

“It’s a somewhat ridiculous tradition,” she murmurs. “I don’t know what’s so special about today. You could resolve to change any day of the year.”

She’s not wrong. “Yeah, but you barely spoke to me any of the other days of the year.”

“I was hurt.”

Two.

He pulls her closer, hand tracing the line of her dress to the small of her back, and the way her eyes water fucking does him in. “I’m sorry.”

Her breath catches and she looks up-

One.

-and the second hangs forever. He can’t pull his eyes from hers and she looks stunned, staring up at him, and he can’t fucking breathe in the middle of the crowd pressing in on him when all he can see is her.

Vaguely, he registers the cheers, couples exchanging chaste kisses and noisemakers ringing shrill throughout the room. None of it alters his focus from Ellie, from her hand cradled in his, from the way her arm tightens around his shoulders, from the way she bites her lip and, God, he’s seen her tilt her head like that in his dreams and he can’t stop himself from surging forward.

She responds immediately, lips fervent against his, and he pulls her flush to his chest. He can’t think, can’t function, not at all; with every motion, she’s stealing sense from his brain and air from his lungs, and it’s all he can do to kiss her back. She drops his hand to wind her arms around his neck, pulling him down, using him for balance as she teeters on her heels.

But he himself has never felt less stable, needing air as he detangles their lips. “I really am sorry.” He barely pulls back, mere millimeters, so his lips catch on hers with every consonant.

“Seriously? You?”

“I am. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Her breath is warm on his lips, and it takes every bit of his resolve not to close the distance. “I was pissed and overreacted.”

“Let me make it up to you.” This makes her lean back, and her eyes trace his face. He searches around in his pocket until he clasps a plastic card. “Here. Come to my room this time.” He closes her fingers around the card and can’t resist stealing one last breathless kiss.

He doesn’t look back when he walks out of the room, even when he’s walking down the hall and through his door to slump against the bed. He wonders if she will show, if the memory of last year will be enough for his apology to ring true, and he’s half convinced himself that she’s going to go back to ignoring him when the door clicks open and he staggers to his feet.

She shuts the door behind her, then studies him with a keen eye. “You didn’t think I would come, did you?”

“Not at all.”

She shrugs. “Well, like you said: maybe if I want things to change, I need to make them change.”

He nods, steady steps forward until they’re face-to-face, “Your words.”

“Things changed since freshman year.”

The comment could refer to a million various changes- classes and dorms and friends and majors and apartments - but there is one thing he wants to change, right now, and he can’t wait another second before he tilts her chin up and kisses her, desperately, pulling her in for an embrace that would have sent Ingrid’s prissy elderly relatives to an early grave.

She’s breathless when he pulls back and he wonders, for a second, if he were too hasty, but she only tangles her fingers into his tie and pulls him back, shoving the jacket from his shoulders while his hands dive into her hair, winding his fingers through the updo that probably took far longer to create than it will to destroy.

She moans as he kisses down her neck, bites gentle on her clavicle, and he can’t get his fucking jacket off fast enough to touch her. He traces up the deep slit in her dress and her legs part as she sags against the door with a low moan. His fingers tease higher, under the delicate beading, to where her thighs meet warm and she gasps. When her breath catches, he slides over the silken fabric again, tracing spiraling shapes over what feels like very expensive underwear. His mouth waters and he resolves to look later, but right now he can’t possibly be expected to wait. Pushing her thong to the side, she’s so wet, head craning back as his fingers ease inside her, and the way her voice stutters around his name makes his cock twitch in his stupid fancy suit.

Fuck, he really can’t wait, free hand frantic against buttons and zips, until his cock springs free and his teeth find the slope of her neck. It’s messy and desperate and it takes mere seconds for him to rub slick fingers against her clit, to push her waist against the door until she is barely balanced on the toes of those strappy heels, to lift her thighs so her legs interlock around him, and finally to bury himself inside her welcoming heat.

“Fuck.” The word is punched out from his throat, into the hollow of hers, and he drags his lips across heated skin, nips and bites delivered while she lets out the most delicious moans.

His thumb is tracing haphazard designs on her clit when she somehow finds a voice to gasp out, “You… you couldn’t wait until we got into bed?”

“I’ve been waiting forever, Ellie.”

“Jeez, it was only five minutes.”

He stares at her, head on, and rasps, “I’ve been waiting a year, Ellie.”

She has no answer to that, only pulls his head down to crash his lips into hers and the passage of time (Five minutes? Ten? Infinite? Mere moments?) is a heady rush of pleasure and heat. Her legs tighten around him, the firm hold matching the vise of her body, and her dress pools below, flowing down the door and into a heap under his feet. His shoes crinkle the fabric with every thrust and he wonders if it will rip, if the expensive fabric will tear because of their frenzied movements, but realizes he doesn’t care much. Any jagged holes and consequent tailoring bill will be worth it for the way she pulls him in, the way she sobs his name, the column of her neck completely exposed for his teeth and tongue to find purchase. His hands press her hips into the door as she quakes around him, name breathy and high in his ear, and he lets go, muscles tightening and releasing as the room splinters and all he can see is Ellie’s perfect pout, wide open in pleasure.

When the world comes back into existence, she’s slumped against the door, hair terrifically falling out of place and it would take only one more tug before her curls cascade to her shoulders (so he tugs, of course he does, right before he eases her feet onto the ground so she can blink slow up at him, wide eyes surrounded by curtains of hair). He slides her out of her dress, one strap at a time, leaving it pooled by the door; he takes a moment to admire the thong (deep red, matching her flush) and then pulls it off, hands tracing greedily down her legs, to join the heap of fabric.

When he ushers her over to his bed, admiring every square inch of bare skin, she slides against the sheets and he covers her body with his own. He’s still dressed, barely, and she looks like a goddess, a goddamn siren, sent from above to tempt him away from the life he leads, offering salvation in the guise of a valedictorian with a winning smile. His clothes take far too long to come off, even with her hands easing the way, and the first touch of his bare skin on hers only inflames him. He ducks his head to taste his way down to the spot that makes her fingers tighten in his hair.

Once she shakes apart and falls boneless to the bed, he crawls up, her hands reaching for him, clasping arms, chest, every inch sliding past her fingers as he slots between her legs. He teases her, length situated right at her entrance and dipping through her folds, until she’s arching off the bed, nails scratching up his spine to his hair until he’s impatient, insane, can’t wait another fucking minute before his hips move, her legs trembling as she wails.

He wants nothing more than this, hours passing with her hands all over him. He tries to make each moment infinite, each kiss and every touch an attempt to prove that this is a New Year’s tradition that should last all year.

It doesn’t work.

In the morning, he rolls over and his arm meets only the cool sheets. His heart lurches, though he belatedly realizes that he should have expected it. Turnabout is fair play. He sighs, raking a hand over his face, and throws on some sweats, one last forlorn glance at the empty bed before heading to the lobby.

He can’t wait for the first hit of caffeine in his veins but freezes when he turns the corner. At a circular table next to carafes of milk and hot water, sit his friends, Ellie perched in the middle, oversized sweatshirt dwarfing her slight frame and hair tied up in a ponytail (he doesn’t know who she thinks she’s fooling; there are tangles framing her face and, if he had his way, he’d fuck her out of that hairdo as well until his fingertips were at her scalp, hair a disheveled mess that would take a shower, a shared shower, to fix).

He grabs his coffee and ambles over, purposely slow, and greets everyone, saving the best for last. “Good morning, Ellie.”

She only stares evenly at him but finally fidgets under his certain gaze. As his eyes sweep down, she pulls her sweatshirt closer and he can’t stop the left side of his lip from quirking.

He knows exactly what she’s trying to hide, knows with abject certainty that underneath the shifting fabric, his marks remain, shadows of his lips and tongue blooming under her skin. The smirk turns into a full grin when she finally glances away, turning her attention out to their friends.

She can pretend all she wants. She’s not as unaffected as she appears to be and, as Colt settles into a stool, he hides his satisfied smirk behind a coffee cup.

~~~~~

Ellie doesn’t mention it, so he doesn’t either, trying to unsuccessfully convince himself that he’s satisfied they are more than acquaintances again.

Until Riya lets it slip that Ellie has a date, a dreamy smile on her face, hands cupping her coffee and sharing detail after morbid detail, blind to Colt’s fouling mood. He knows he shouldn’t but a dark, self-hating part of his mind somehow grabs control of his body and wanders downtown that night, past bougie restaurants and small businesses hawking crap trinkets until he makes it to her favorite taco joint.

Her silhouette beams over guacamole and watered-down margaritas in his memories, mouth open in a laugh, a massive difference compared to the sight in front of him. Because now, she’s perched at the bar with her chin on her hand, vacant eyes watching some prissy asshat from her Bio group. She looks bored, miserable, and her eyes widen in thinly veiled panic as she spies him through the giant glass window. With a few words, she stands and stalks outside. He shoves his hands into his pockets and tries to make his smile a little less smug before she slams the door behind her.

Based on the fire in her eyes, he’s not sure he succeeded.

“What are you doing here?” she spits, hair flying around her face as she points right into his chest.

He smirks. “I can’t walk downtown?”

“Tonight? The very night I have a date? Seriously?”

He shrugs, and a smile plays across his lips as her fury slowly fades into mere annoyance. “Well?” he asks.

“Well, what?”

“How is your date going, then?”

She looks down. “...It sucks.”

“Yeah, looks awful.” She groans in agreement and Colt, who’s never met a risk he wasn’t willing to gamble on, well, he can’t help but try his luck. “Blow him off, then. Let’s get out of here.”

“What? I can’t just-”

“You can.” He shrugs. “Why are you gonna waste your time going back in? Let’s get out of here.”

She gapes back at him. “Just leave? And abandon Tony at the bar?”

“Yeah. Change your night up. Let’s go.”

She looks at him incredulously and then turns back to the bar. He can see her wavering and holds his breath until, finally, her face alights in a devious smirk. “Fine. Let’s go.”

She walks up the street without a second glance, and Colt is grateful as her steps hide his beaming grin. He follows briskly to catch up to where she’s already heading back to campus. And, as they walk, he realizes it’s something.

It’s not a date. Colt doesn’t go on dates. But it is something.

Because from outside the restaurant, it’s easy enough to stroll back to campus side-by-side, arms knocking together as they wander up the street and she complains about an idiot professor.

And then it’s easy enough to swing through the cafeteria minutes before closing for ice cream.

And from there, it’s easy enough for her to edge closer, right outside her room, and easier still for him to press her against the door to capture the vanilla on her tongue, and easiest of all to follow her inside, her fingers tangled in his.

The bed is tiny, spaciousness of the hotel exchanged for a mattress unsuitable for two, but they move as one soon enough. He coaxes fervent pleas from her lips, her hips quake under his tongue, and he knows the jagged lines from her fingernails will take days to heal, each one an aching reminder of her falling apart under his touch.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” she huffs into his skin as he tucks her against him, his chin cupping her forehead. He doesn’t reply, just stares at the ceiling until her breaths slow and, finally, he lets the steady sound lull him into a warm sleep.

The next morning, they get coffee together. While it’s still the shitty campus center coffee, at least she sits with him, their knees knocking together, perched on stools overlooking the quad.

And when Colt gets back to his dorm, it’s alone, but he has three lines blooming red on his back.

For now, that’s enough.

#n*fw #lemon #30 diamond scene

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