As A Maggie Myself I No Longer Identify With Y/n - Tumblr Posts

Only an Almost (XIV)

Chapter 14: Heartbreak

Hi! Here comes a new chapter!

Alright, buckle up! We’re up for a wild ride! We are reaching the heights of the angsty mess, from this chapter all the way to chapter 17. Is our girl going to be an asshole? Yes, I’m afraid she’s about to fuck up big time...

Apologies for all the damage that is about to be made in this chapter.

It’s also the first chapter I wrote for this fic! It all started with this mess…

I hope you’ll like this chapter! Please, tell me what you think!

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Pairing: Hozier x fem!reader, friends with benefits AU

Warning: No explicit smut or nsfw content, but there are sexual themes and heavy make-out sessions (it’s a friends with benefits AU, I can’t really escape it), so 18+ only!

Summary: Andrew has been in love with you for years, and yet he has never confessed his feelings. But a night out celebrating the engagement of his best friend changes everything. However, you don't seem ready to be with him just yet. You make him an offer that he can't refuse... but will certainly regret.

Word Count : 3450

Masterlist for the series – Hozier’s Masterlist – Main Masterlist

It was 11pm, which was early for a night owl such as Andrew, but late for his friends. Neither Sam nor Daphne were nocturnal creatures, and so Andrew answered his phone in a hurry when Sam’s name appeared on the screen. Something had to be wrong. He suddenly wondered where he had put his car keys, in case he needed to leave in a hurry.

“Hello? Andy? It’s me. It’s Sam.”

“Yeah, I know, are you alright?” he asked with worry making his voice deeper than usual, pausing the tv-show he was watching, lounging on his comfortable sofa.

“Yeah, yeah…”

“It’s 11pm, is there something wrong? Is Daphne okay?”

“What? Oh, no! Don’t worry, we’re both fine!”

Andrew heaved a relieved sigh.

“God, don’t scare the shit out of me like that ever again…”

“Did I wake you? I thought you never went to sleep before dawn.”

“Vampires tend to do that indeed.”

“Whose blood did you drink this week?”

Andrew wanted to answer, but he heard Daphne pestering Sam about not having much time, and he merely frowned instead.

“Right… sorry, darling…” Sam mumbled through the phone. “Are you alone, Andy?”

“Erm… yes…?”

“Okay, erm… it’s… it’s about Y/N.”

Andrew sat straighter this time.

“Y/N? Is she okay? Did something happen?”

“No, no… I mean… she’s fine, but…”

“For fuck’s sake, Sam! Spit it out! What’s going on?”

“Look I… I know that you said that I couldn’t tell Daphne about you and Y/N… but Y/N told her, so we’ve talked about you two together…”

Andrew rolled his eyes, lying back down, resting his head on the armrest of the couch.

“It’s alright, Sam… I knew you’d break it to her sooner or later anyway.”

“No, Andy… look… have you talked to Y/N lately?”

Andrew frowned.

“Erm… I don’t know… about… three days ago. Why?”

“I think you should talk to her.”

“Why? Sam, what is it?”

There was a short silence, while the couple exchanged a glance, no doubt.

“Daphne thinks she might take a terrible decision,” Sam answered.

“What kind of decision? What are you talking about?”

Andrew was growing annoyed at this game of riddles. If something was wrong, he ought to know what it was…

But even if he insisted some more, Sam refused to speak.

“Just… call her, and tell her you love her. Tell her to choose you.”

“’Choose’ me? What do you mean?”

“Just… do it tomorrow, will you?”

“Alright, alright. I’ll call her tomorrow.”

“Good… good…”

When he hung up, Andrew stared at the ceiling for a while.

Choose me?

Andrew didn’t need to call you the next day. You were the one to call, and ask him if he was free tonight. You didn’t offer an activity, like you usually would: a movie on Netflix, the cinema, a walk, going to the beach, eating together… There was little ambiguity to the reason behind your demand, and Andrew wasn’t sure whether he was flattered or vexed by it.

He warned you that he wanted to talk to you about something tonight though, and you agreed. You had something to ‘discuss’ with him too. His heart dropped as you spoke those words through the phone. It ought to be some kind of bad news. Or maybe not. Maybe he was reading too much into this, and you meant… to talk about the upcoming wedding, or your job, or… something else entirely. He wondered if you knew that he meant to tell you that he felt more for you than what he had let on.

He parked his car in front of your house, but didn’t climb out just yet. First, he ran through his speech one last time.

I know that you are not looking for a relationship at the moment. But I want more than just sex when it comes to you. To us. Our arrangement can’t go on like this. Again, I understand that you are not in a position now where you want to be in a relationship. And that’s okay. If you tell me that you could give us a chance, I will wait for you. I’ll wait until you’re ready, until your job is more stable and you’ve figured things out in your life. I’ll wait until you want a relationship with me. I have feelings for you, feelings that go beyond a casual fling. And that’s the reason why I’m asking you now to give me a chance. To give us a proper chance…

No l-word yet, you might freak out if he used it. But this speech seemed good enough. Short, to the point. He had written six versions of it this morning.

He took a deep breath, before finally climbing out of his car and walking up to your house.

You were quick to unlock your door and welcome him in. You looked lovely tonight. But then, you were always beautiful…

You went through some meaningless chit-chat while Andrew took off his coat and shoes and followed you down the hall to your kitchen.

You offered him tea without asking if he wanted one. It was late afternoon, but not quite dinner time yet. He could have used some alcohol, but it would have been impolite to ask for some, so he thanked you when you handed him his favourite mug with two teabags plunged in warm water. He leaned against your kitchen counter, his back to your tiny window and your sink while you were facing him, a couple of steps away.

“You… you wanted us to talk about something,” Andrew reminded you, taking a sip of the warm beverage. “And I wanted to talk to you too, so… who should start?”

You were growing nervous, the signs were obvious. In your modern kitchen, there was a window above the sink that let in some golden light. The photons embraced your form, in a way that made Andrew’s heart skip a few beats.

You pushed back some hair behind your ear, pulled on the sleeves of your jumper. Andrew frowned at the sight.

“You’re alright? I can start…”

“No, I… I reckon I should start.”

“Okay.”

He was nervous beyond reason and measure. Andrew dried his clammy palms on his jeans, tried to breathe deeply through his nose, but his heart kept on pounding and his stomach was turning into knots…

You stared at each other for a moment, him expectant and you hesitant. He raised an eyebrow as a silent encouragement for you to speak, but you merely bit on your lower lip.

But then you heaved a sigh, crossed the distance between your bodies in a hurry. Andrew barely had time to blink, and you had grabbed him by the collar, pulling him down to you while you rose to your tiptoes so you could slam your lips to his. But kissing you was a habit by now, and a delicious one too. Andrew’s body was reacting on instinct as he kissed you back, messy and passionate and breathtaking. Your teeth bumped into his in your passion, but he didn’t mind. It was easy to deepen the kiss instead, cradle your face in his hands while you wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him closer, closer, always closer.

You were making his brain short-circuit, despite the important talk he wanted to have with you. You were everywhere, blurring his senses, making all traces of reason disappear…

Only when he felt your fingers travel down his chest and towards his belt did he stop you, pulling away.

“Wait, wait… stop…”

You immediately took a step back, looking up at him with wide eyes.

“You’re okay?”

“Yeah… yeah… I… look, we… We wanted to talk, like… I think we should, erm, talk before we…”

“Or we can have sex, and talk after that.”

“Is that wise?”

“Do we really need to be wise?”

It was tempting. Too tempting to resist. God, he couldn’t think about anything else but your lips, how inviting they looked, how he wanted to kiss your neck too, he could feel his fingers tickle at the thought of touching all these places of your body, entire landscapes of bare skin…

He blinked a couple of times, struggled to swallow, trying to calm down. But blood was pulsing in his ears, and when he tried to remember his carefully-crafted speech, he couldn’t remember a word…

Fuck all of this…

“Alright,” he nodded. “But we talk tonight… cause it’s important…”

“Deal. Deal. Can I kiss you now?”

“Yes… God, yes, please… please, kiss me…”

You were back in his arms in a second, hands in his hair at first, while his travelled along your frame, from chest to hips and arse, feeling your shape through your clothes. You detached your lips from his to take his hand and guide him to your bedroom.

“We should get dressed to talk,” Andrew proposed, his breathing finally settling back into a regular rhythm.

He threw his condom away in the tiny bean next to the door of your bathroom. He grabbed his underwear as he walked back to your bed and handed you your large jumper.

“You’re too beautiful not to be distracting,” he chuckled, only half-joking, while you put on the piece of garment he was giving you.

He noticed how you looked away, how you seemed uncomfortable, all of a sudden. Instead of joining you in bed once more, Andrew sat down on the edge of the mattress, right next to you.

“So… who should begin?” he asked, voice soft and a little timid. “I… like… actually, I think I should…”

“Andy, I… I think you should get dressed.”

He frowned at that remark, or rather… he frowned at the tone you used. Cold and distant, whispered, and your eyes were still fleeing his.

“Why? Am I distracting too?” he asked with a charming smile, forcing a chuckle out. But you didn’t laugh, merely brushed a strand of your hair behind your ear.

Andrew’s nervous smile soon crumbled.

“Right,” he let out in a breath, blushing hard now, heart racing.

He grabbed his undershirt, slowly put it on while trying to swallow back the lump in his throat.

“Look, I… We should talk about… this arrangement of ours…” he started, but you interrupted him, blurting out words he wasn’t expecting so fast he second-guessed if he had heard you right.

“We need to stop sleeping together.”

He was half-bent to grab his pants when you spoke. He froze, looking up at you, cursing at his long hair when it fell before his eyes and hid you away. He stood back up in a jolt.

“What?”

“We… we need to stop this arrangement. Things have changed.”

And all of a sudden there was hope again, brighter than a sun and blinding every bit of reason in him… And he fell for it. No matter the odds, he fell for it, flew straight to it like a moth ready to be burned at the pyre of your flames…

“Right… things have changed for me too. So, actually, I do think that we need to change things between us…”

“I have a date next week.”

He froze again. Stared at you, too stunned to say a thing, too stunned to protest or ask any question or even comprehend what you were saying.

“I… I have a date with a coworker, Maggie. Next week. So… we should stop this… We said we would if we wanted to try something with someone else…”

A date? Next week? Maggie?

You… you wanted to date again… just… not him…

“But… we’ve just had sex,” breathed Andrew.

It sounded stupid and he knew it, and yet these were the only words he could summon now. The first that came to mind, the only protest he could find.

There were too many emotions all at once. It felt… like falling… falling forever… like the ground being stolen from under his feet. He had no air left in his lungs, and he had forgotten how to breathe.

“Yeah… it wasn’t planned. But I… I just… Maybe I shouldn’t have done that…”

His lip trembled, but his cheeks were still dry.

You were regretting him now?

“I think I just… wanted one last moment with you. Before we’d stop and I would date someone else.”

“So… you… you have a date?”

“Yes, I have a date with Maggie.”

“What do you mean, you have a date with Maggie? Who the fuck is Maggie?”

Andrew stared at you as he was about to cry, and he couldn’t help it. He blinked tears away, but they lingered at the edges of his eyes, ready to fall at your words.

“She’s nice. She works at HR, she’s a secretary. She asked me out, and… I don’t know, I said yes. So… I think we should stop this arrangement.”

“Oh…”

At long last, the information was being recorded in his brain. Andrew shook himself back to earth, turned around, fleeing you and your beautiful eyes, hurrying to put his trousers back on. He almost fell in the process, already looking for his shirt. He felt so exposed like this, so vulnerable, so flawed…

You were going on a date… with someone else… because you didn’t want to date him… he was the fucking problem. He was all along…

“I just… it was… good.”

He nodded, but didn’t let out a sound.

He couldn’t look at you. He would start crying if he did. He needed to run away as fast as he could…

“And she’s nice, you know? And… just… easy. Not like, easy to sleep with, but…”

“I understand.”

Of course, he did. Same argument all over again. And he couldn’t blame you, how could he?

But what if he dropped everything? What if he stopped touring? Stopped the whole music thing?

He thought about what you looked like right now, perfect and dishevelled and still gently glowing after the efforts of love-making. Absolutely perfect. Yeah… yeah… You deserved better than him, no matter the touring or the staying…

“Andy… are you angry?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t start acknowledging his feelings now. He would start crying if he did.

Where the fuck was his sock?

“I loved the nights we had together,” you went on, apparently unaware of the daggers each of your words planted through his heart, and for the first time in the long years the two of you had known each other, he wanted to stop hearing your voice.

You seemed to need to fill up the silence that Andrew was trying to maintain. Perhaps it was a way to reach out, perhaps it was a way to keep him at bay. He wasn’t certain about that.

“It was nice.”

Where was that fucking sock?!

“Andy?”

He put on his jumper, abandoning the thought of his black sock. He couldn’t lose any more time, he couldn’t breathe properly anymore…

“You’re okay? Can you say something?”

Silence. Only the rubbing of fabric against fabric as Andrew was getting ready to leave. He only had to grab his shoes and jacket in your hallway.

“Andy, wait!”

But he was already outside of your bedroom.

“You can’t be mad at me! We agreed about this, Andy! We agreed that… that… this was nothing but sex! It didn’t mean anything.”

He was blinded by tears when he reached for your doorknob, unlocking the door without seeing the keys he was turning in the lock.

“Andy! Where are you going? Stop! We need to talk about this!”

He shrugged you off when you reached for him.

“Andy!”

But then he was shutting the door behind him, his movement so harsh it shook the doorframe. He hurried to his car while he dried his eyes, refusing to crumble now, in the alley leading to your house.

He drove blindly, unaware of a destination, of a will behind the turns he took and the roads he chose. The words kept ringing in his ears, he couldn’t shut them out, they played on repeat in his busy mind…

This was nothing but sex.

It didn’t mean anything.

Did it not? The way you touched him, the way you kissed him, the way you held him… did it not mean something?!

His hold tightened on the wheel. His jaw clenched until it was painful, until he could hear it.

Nothing. The tenderness in your touch, the fondness in your gaze, the sighs on your lips. The way you held him after it was done, like you needed him to land again gently on the ground, like you held onto a dream before it faded. How you stared into his soul when you connected in the most intimate way possible. How you laughed together until none of you could breathe, how you talked for hours about the most meaningless things and the most intimate parts of your lives. How you let him be yours, how you almost let yourself be his…

Only an almost…

He parked the car before a house he had always called home, and it was only then that he realised where he was. He stared at the familiar door of his parents’ house, the curtains behind the windows, the light that came through them.

So, you had let him love you, and it meant nothing at all?

He turned off the engines, stared at the house for a suspended moment. What would he do now? He couldn’t possibly face you again after this. He was about to lose you for good; because after having a taste of what loving you felt like, he couldn’t go back to being a mere friend. No… no, he wasn’t strong enough for that. For seeing you happy with someone else, knowing that you held him close for a moment only to let him go, because he wasn’t enough.

He picked up his phone, ready to do something stupid, something he would regret the second his thumb would press send. He typed the text under your name.

If I gave up on touring, if I stayed home… would you give me a chance? Would I be enough if I weren’t just a ghost?

He heaved a sigh, resting his head against his seat, head tilted upwards in his exhale. He blinked tears away, staring at the dark ceiling of his car.

Did you really feel nothing now? Did it not hurt at all for you? Not even a little bit? Not at all?

Andrew didn’t press send. He deleted the text, opened the door, climbed out of the car and into the street bathed in an inky darkness and orange streetlights. His feet guided him to the safest place on Earth while he tugged his phone into his pocket. His right foot was hurting in his shoe without a sock on. He didn’t even notice.

It took his mother a moment to open the door, nothing surprising at this hour. She saw him through the glass of the backdoor, and her eyes grew round. Andrew finally noticed he was crying.

The door opened in a hurry, bumping into Raine’s foot in the process.

“Andy? Honey, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

His lower lip trembled as he stared at his mother, hands digging further into his pockets, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His throat was too tight to speak.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Tell me. Tell me what’s wrong?”

She narrowed her eyes a little as she guessed, aiming straight for his heart.

“Is it Y/N?”

He opened his mouth to answer but all that he could let out was a sob. His legs were shaking, he could feel all of his strength leaving his body. He barely registered his own moevements as he bent into his mother’s arms, folding around her frame.

“Oh, Andy… here, it’s alright. It’s gonna be okay, darling. It’s okay. I’m here, I’m here…”

She rubbed his back, in this soothing movement that had never failed to appease him ever since he was a child. His voice was a hoarse whisper when he let out the most painful words he had ever pronounced.

“She doesn’t love me, mom. She doesn’t feel anything… What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do without her?”

She let him cry for a moment longer, his father calling from the living room to know who was at the door. Raine merely answered with her son’s name, and gently pushed him upwards so he would stand straighter again.

“Well, for a start, I’m going to make you a cup of tea, with a lot of honey. And then, we’ll figure out the rest.”