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Jacob is paying attention to the movie. The music’s swelling through Charlie’s living room while a foggy morning field fills the screen, and in the dark on the couch beside him, Bella is fixated.
This is a rewatch for her, he knows, and she won’t even admit how many times she’s seen it, so it’s got to be a lot. She’s blinking every quarter second, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Even without the screen’s blue tint that’s warming quickly on her smooth skin like a sunrise, Jacob would be able to pick up every nuance.
Bella clutches at the blanket and pulls it tight to her, her knees drawn up.
So maybe he’s not paying super close attention to the movie. It’s not easy when they’re alone like this.
Jacob leans forward and grabs the little square tissue box resting on the coffee table between their emptied bowl of popcorn and still-crackling cans of Dr. Pepper. Wordlessly, he deposits the tissues in Bella’s blanket-tented lap.
“Thanks,” she whispers thickly. Her lower lip has freed itself from the denting hold of her teeth and is wobbling for real now.
The scene’s not sad at all, but Bella’s an artsy crier. She’s moved by unexpected things. Happy, poignant, tragic. Doesn’t matter. And when the timing’s just right (and Jacob will never tell her that it’s like monthly hormonal clockwork), literally anything can set her off.
He is one sick fuck, because it gets him going. Like, so bad that he propped his socked foot up on the edge of the coffee table at Bella’s first too-quick blink, because Jacob knows how he gets and how fast he gets there.
Where she can’t see, he is hard.
It’s not a normal hard, either. The boners he gets when his best friend cries like this aren’t the kind he can just let simmer down like a pot that’s boiling over. He needs ten minutes in the bathroom with the fan on to cover how rough he’s beating off into a handful of toilet paper. One time Jacob tried to aim for the toilet in her pristine bathroom and a shot somehow landed on the wall behind him. He cleaned it up, obviously, but had felt so bad that he hadn’t been able to visit again for the rest of her winter break, even though college kept her away for most of the year and he always misses her like crazy.
Being irrationally horny definitely has its downsides.
Like right now. Trying to calculate when he can run away to the bathroom without making it obvious that he’s smuggling a throbbing, stomach-tight boner tucked beneath his waistband is practically rocket science in his current state. Hopefully Bella won’t remember that he was just in there not even half an hour before to wash his hands post-popcorn.
She’ll totally notice.
The logistics of erection management are way easier when he’s at home. But Charlie’s working late, and Bella called the house and asked Jacob if he wanted to hang out. So of course he drove over immediately instead of planning for something extremely foreseeable. Because he’s just that desperate to be around her, even if it also makes him so stiff that his brain can’t really function.
The cry’s a happy one, or maybe cathartic, and those are his two favorite kinds on her.
Bella dabs at her eye, and her eyelashes are clumped with tears. He can fucking smell the salt. He needs her so bad that it actively hurts, and he’s pretty sure there’s going to be a very obvious damp precum spot on the front of his shorts if he doesn’t rearrange stuff right now. Someone on the screen is talking and Bella is utterly entranced by it.
Jacob slips his hand beneath the blanket that’s draped over him. He never needs the layer, but Bella says it makes her feel self-conscious when she’s the only one wrapped up. To compromise, Jacob accepts her offers of fringed throws but peels off his shirt, and it ends up balancing out. He’s grateful for the coverage now as he nudges the head of his cock away from the hidden, straining front of his gym shorts. And even more grateful for the barrier when his dick bounces back instantly, undeterred from jutting out like it’s actually going somewhere this time.
Bella gives a soft, trembling sob, her cheeks splotched red, and it’s a thoughtless instinct when Jacob grabs the end of his cock and squeezes it through his clothes.
Fucked up. Criminal. He’s breathing hard, and she’s yanking out more tissues and openly weeping, and Jacob is…
God, is he going to come?
How’s that even possible? He needs to leave the room. Now. Turn the corner into the kitchen at least before—
Bella leans her head on his bare shoulder and sniffles wetly before her whole body jolts with the force of a suppressed sob.
Jacob pulls his hand away like his cock burned him through thin layers of fabric. What is he doing? What the fuck is he doing?
A tear plops onto his chest and slides down his skin, then another, and he has to slam his eyes shut because if he looks down and sees Bella actively crying on him, he will absolutely have a gasping hands-free orgasm on her couch in the dark.
“Sorry,” she laughs through the tears, maybe misunderstanding why he’s pressing his lips together with his eyes closed. Jacob wouldn’t know because there is not a force on earth that will make him glance at her right now.
“’S’okay,” he manages.
Bella swipes at the path of moisture with her hand, and to her it probably seems like wiping it off, but to Jacob it feels like rubbing her tears into his skin. Crammed against the overstuffed cushion behind him, his back is damp with panicked sweat.
He has to act normal, immediately.
Jacob uses his less-guilty hand to stroke her loose hair.
“You alright, Bells?”
Can she hear how rough the words are? How much work it took to sound like nothing is happening?
“Yeah. It’s just…” Bella trails off and her shoulders shake with another round of sobs she’s attempting to swallow, and she tries to curl into him. If she moves her knee a couple of inches down, she’ll hit whatever the hard-on version of the Comstock Lode is.
Jacob fumbles for the remote and pauses the DVD. It’s a closeup shot of a shut door, the wood so old that it’s nearly black, and the room is plunged into darker tones. He turns a little to face Bella, propping his other leg up to better conceal the anatomical dilemma. A situation which Jacob refuses to let turn him into a shitty friend. Or shittier than he was just being, anyway.
Unhesitatingly, Bella folds herself into his arms and mushes her flushed cheek against his chest.
In the quiet, Jacob’s using his non-dominant hand to trace soothing swirls over the back of her wrist. “Want to talk about it?”
She shakes her head. “Maybe later.”
Jacob presses a kiss to her hair, and she clings to him. The strands smell like strawberry Push Pops and Bella and a little like Tuesday night’s bonfire on the beach, but faintly enough that the scent must have transferred from her pillow onto her hair after she washed it.
It’s not exactly calming, since Jacob wants to do wet and rough things to her, but it is grounding.
Bella nuzzles up to his neck and breathes in with a sniffle. “You’re the best, Jake.”
He is not. He can feel precum gathering and slipping a bit over the head of his cock, but that is just going to be the situation until he can dart up to the bathroom. Especially if she keeps exhaling against his throat like that in almost panting puffs.
Bella’s lips tickle faintly over his skin and Jacob goes completely still.
It’s an accident. He’s overreacting. It’d be so easy for her to bump against him like that. They’re wrapped up in each other, their top halves at least, and Bella has a knack for finding pockets of closeness when she puts her mind to it. She loves warming herself up on him, and he loves letting her. Jacob resumes tracing swirls over her arm, venturing from her wrist to her forearm like he usually does. She’s wearing a baggy shirt that was shot out of a t-shirt launcher during halftime at the one college football game she went to her freshman year, and her pj pants are faded purple flannel.
They’re the kind of friends who cuddle a lot. Bella naps on him and Jacob slings his arm around her every chance he gets because she feels so good. It’s been like this for years now, comfortable and known and—
Bella’s lips land softly on the side of his neck, but they land for sure. And then she pulls off and does it again, a fraction of an inch higher. And again. Her mouth is puffy from crying, and Jacob has to inhale intentionally to get any air into his lungs otherwise he’ll pass out. He skates his palm up her arm to round the ridge of her shoulder, then goes past where he usually stops. Jacob traces the side of her neck and cradles her head against him because he cannot believe that this is real unless he helps somehow. They were just watching a movie. Or she was. And yeah, he was basically edging while he sat next to her, but this is impossible. His chest is heaving with his rushing breaths now, and arousal smells a lot like rain on her.
It’s a dream. He fell asleep. Right? He’s going to wake up soon to the credits rolling and her elbowing at him, but for now, Bella is sending chills ricocheting across his skin. She finds a way to pull herself even closer.
The weight of the blanket drags over the outline of his cock, and the groan that Jacob lets out is completely involuntary and sounds exactly like he’s four seconds from coming. Which is pretty much true.
It’s Bella’s turn to freeze.
“Sorry,” he says through a fractured laugh that also kind of sounds like another groan. “Keep going if you want to. Anything. Fucking anything, Bells. I mean it.”
Jacob knows her. Reckless and surprising. And there are enough jokes about the quiet ones being the biggest freaks that he should expect it when Bella starts to wriggle out of her pants right there in the dark, but his thoughts are mostly a pleased, confused buzz of anticipation. Although the concern that they’re going to fool around in her living room, in full view of the front door, thankfully rises to the top.
“Want to go up to your room?”
Bella tosses the discarded bunch of lilac flannel on the sofa beside her. “He won’t be home before two in the morning.”
She wants it fast. Here. What, exactly, he doesn’t know, but it’s something she doesn’t need pants for, and that is definitely something he also wants.
Jacob kisses her before he can overthink it. Dr. Pepper allegedly has twenty-three flavors but cherry always takes over, even in her perfect mouth, and she tastes like crying, too, and it all melts together. Not their first kiss, but that had been a thing they stopped three years ago and fifteen feet away from where they are sitting and fucking everything up right now. There is nothing cautious or testing about the way Bella’s tongue slides greedily against his, or the way her bare legs are twisting. His cock basically has its own pulse at this point, and Jacob takes her hand—the one that wiped her dripping tears from his chest—and presses her fingers to the straining ache.
Bella gasps a little into the kiss, a cooling pull of his air into her mouth, before she scrapes her teeth against his lower lip, tugging as she makes for his waistband. He will come everywhere if she does that. No preamble, no warning.
Jacob breaks the kiss. She’s first; she goes first. He doesn’t know much, but that part he’s sure about. Or maybe he knows too much, thanks to unintentional pack-brain sex ed, but the doing it part is new. But it’s Bella, and he knows her like part of himself.
So he disentangles himself from the blanket and eases the coffee table back so there’s room. Bella is sitting up, wide eyed and disheveled, by the time Jacob is on his knees in front of her. Maybe he’s going too fast, but she is acting like he’s correctly following some step-by-step guide that he has certainly never read, so that’s got to be a good thing.
She tucks her hair behind her ear and swipes at her still-splotchy face.
“I look like crap,” Bella warns apologetically, like he has not been here watching raptly as it unfolded.
“No, it’s hot.”
The words tumble out and bounce like an out-of-bounds ball between them. He meant to say that she’s hot. Because she is, rumpled and bare legged and always, but the more specific truth is now very obvious.
“When I cry?”
Jacob swallows, and it’s not easy. “Yeah. Sorry. I like it.”
An understatement so bland that it’s probably a lie, legally speaking.
“I mean, I hate when you’re upset or hurt,” he clarifies. “I just…”
“Get so hard that I can’t function” doesn’t seem like the correct thing to say, so he doesn’t.
Bella’s trying and failing to hide a smile. “That’s really cute.”
“It’s really not, Bells. Think about it. You’re crying and meanwhile I’m imagining being inside of you. How the fuck am I supposed to help you?”
Her grin fades, but Bella is not a good liar and she can’t hide interest in something to save her life.
It’s like slow motion when she unwraps herself and lets her legs splay a little. The t-shirt is big but there’s nothing underneath, and Jacob wants to dive in. Bury his face and disappoint her. Instead, out of habit and an overwhelming urge to touch her, he rubs at her shin, warming the newly exposed skin.
Bella grabs the remote and slides closer to the edge of the couch. To him.
“Should I watch that part again?” she offers.
“Only if you want me to come embarrassingly fast.”
Her smile returns, except now it’s kind of a smirk, and he shouldn’t have told her any of that. It’s really a lot for their first time together. And weird. He’s so weird.
Bella angles the remote over his shoulder at the DVD player and jabs her thumb at a button. The light in the room changes, flickering cozy gold and then early-morning blue around him, and Jacob gives up on trying to figure out where the line for normal is for them or if there ever was one.
Piano music gentles the air again. What if she doesn’t cry? Because Bella’s already seen this enough times to keep the number a secret, and she just watched it so whatever emotional impact the scene had has long since faded. She’s also staring at him instead of the movie. Sitting at her feet, he’s probably disconcertingly large between her legs as he ties his hair back.
Slowly, Jacob leans in and presses a kiss to her knee, just along the smooth inside curve, to show her why he’s down here, in the unlikely event she can’t tell that he wants to come with her on his tongue.
Bella sweeps her finger along the edge of his jaw, trailing the touch to his mouth. It’s affectionate and kind of relaxing, and her gaze lifts to the screen behind him while she traces his lips. Jacob lays his head on her knee and waits.
It doesn’t take long. Her hand stills on his mouth and her eyes start shining, and Bella gives a sniffle before her touch falls away. Jacob has apparently underestimated either the effects of classical conditioning or just how great the scene is, because she’s blinking like she’s trying to hold it back. Being watched like this is strange as hell, he’s sure. But his cock pulses hard and the drag of fabric against the head is too much. If there’s going to be any chance at all of him making Bella come first, absolutely nothing can touch his cock right now. Or press on it, or rub against it. Nothing. He inches his shorts down, trying not to distract her while the waistband slides and his cock pops free and he peels the shorts off completely.
Bella’s lips tremble and the first tear spills out, trailing down her cheek, and then more droplets trickle, and he’s allowed to groan quietly this time.
Jacob settles in for real, pushing her shirt up to her waist and hooking her legs over his shoulders. He stares at her spread out and glistening already like she’s begging for a tongue to lick it up, and there’s the instant before, when he has never eaten anyone out, and then his mouth is on her and that becomes something that used to be true. Bella gasps shakily and digs her heels into his back and clutches at his hair. Jacob kisses and guesses, and rolls his tongue over the places that make her grind into the pressure, and the taste is the kind that he needs to lap up every chance he gets from now until forever. He’s reminded of tidying melting summertime ice cream cones before vanilla drips over the side and onto his thumb and of unwrapping Starbursts with his tongue, and he has to hold Bella’s hips still because she’s bucking.
Adding a careful, kissing suction, he looks up at her. And Bella, stubborn as she is, has her damp eyes locked on the screen and tears have streaked down her face and cling to the delicate point of her chin.
Jacob can’t wait. He pulls one arm away and reaches down to grip his cock. His groan is muffled by her, by the velvety softness and the rougher thrusting against his mouth. He lets her do it, releasing his hold on her entirely so she can grind. His discarded boxers are nearby, which is good because he’s going to need something to empty into really soon.
Bella starts to bring her hand up to brush away the droplets of tears, to smear the tracks and dry her chin.
Jacob detaches his lips from her enough to speak.
“Don’t wipe it.” He’s done for. He’s leaking so much precum that his sliding palm makes wet sounds, making it obvious even over the movie’s score that he’s fucking his hand fast at her feet. Jacob rests his head on Bella’s leg again, filling his lungs with the smell of her spit-drenched body, and watches her face. He’s done. “Fuck, don’t wipe it off.”
He comes so hard that he can’t breathe. Comes into the boxers crumpled in his fist, and it’s not that different than jerking off in the bathroom except that this situation is absolutely nothing like it. He is pumping himself out in front of her, and Bella isn’t watching the movie anymore because she wants to see this. Him. How fucked up he is and how much he wants her and how good it feels to empty in harsh waves that eventually slow, even though he just broke the one rule he knew about sex by coming first.
She plays with herself, swirling her fingertips through the slippery, unfinished mess he left behind with his mouth.
“I wanted that in me,” she says, and it’s close to a whine, which is close to a whimpering sob, which means he wants to fuck her while she does it again.
But more than any of that, Jacob likes to finish what he starts.
He rises to his knees and drops the balled-up boxers aside, away from the area rug that has done nothing to deserve getting crusted with cum.
Jacob presses a kiss to her cheek and, like a dog that wants to lick her tears for some wild, instinctive reason, lets his tongue slide out to taste a drop. His fingers slip beneath her shirt to glide along her side, and Bella arches into his touch. His other hand traces her knuckles where her fingers are working rougher between her legs.
“My hand is clean,” Jacob tells her. She can still snap out of this, whatever this frenzied, impulsive thing is that has her whining because he hasn’t come in her yet.
Bella grabs his wrist and presses his touch to her, to the swollen wetness he made and the stiff hidden ridge of her clit.
This he has a better idea of, thanks to Quil’s numerous hookups and loud internal thoughts, and Leah’s eyeroll-laced complaint that he was giving the entire pack cheat codes if only any of them were smart enough to pay attention, which of course she seriously doubted.
So Jacob curves his fingers slightly and thrusts in a little at first, and Bella’s body clings while she gasps. Sinking into her is easy, and she claws at his shoulders and buries her face against his neck where she kissed him first. She kissed him first, and now he’s letting out years of wanting.
When Jacob pumps his fingers deeper into her and hooks them harder, he gets sobs like begging. He gets her nails digging harder and latching, and the movie is still playing in the background but he needs to make Bella come. In the warm room, on his fingers.
She’s gasping his name, and it doesn’t sound like she wants him to stop at all, but Jacob pulls his head back to glance at her anyway.
“You’re okay?”
Bella’s red-rimmed eyes meet his and she nods frantically, her mouth opening like she wants to say something but can’t. Like he’s doing it so well she can’t even talk.
A low sound rolls through the back of his throat, and Jacob wraps his arm around her waist to drag her past the edge of the sofa’s seat cushion. He sinks back to the floor again, pulling her down onto his fingers, fucking her with them in his lap, or more like fucking his fingers with her because Bella is so easy to lift and hold, even as helpless weight. Her tears cling like clean minerals to his lips, and god, he’s hard like he’s been controlling himself this whole time instead of very recently draining his cock with his other hand. He’s drippingly hard again, and even now he’s selfish. Her eyebrows are drawing together and her mouth’s hanging slack, and he doesn’t relent.
“Ever cry when you come, Bells?” he asks her.
A harsh exhale shudders out of her, and she tightens around his fingers once. Twice. Jacob keeps them in the exact same spot because if it’s working, it works.
“I’m coming,” she breathes.
Bella arches hard in his grasp, twisting in his lap with another broken sob, and fresh tears glisten along the blurring edges of her eyes, spreading from the swollen corners. And Jacob waits as long as he can, but before it’s totally over, he pulls his fingers out with a soaked sound and presses them to her clit as he guides her to the tip of his cock. Lets her hover over the blunt head and decide if she wants it as bad as he does. Jacob expects easing, an inching into her that lets him process what’s happening. But Bella drops down onto him like they’ve done this before, like sometimes she fucks him on the floor in the dark when they’re alone, and the shocked groan is his, and the abrupt four-lettered encouragement is coming from him. She gets maybe halfway down his length before friction or thickness wins out, but she is still fucking coming a little, the glide clenching around his cock and—
“You’re gonna make me come again.” He barely gets the warning out, and he’s definitely half begging, and Bella starts to pull off, only to sink down again even farther in a gripping bounce. Jacob tightens his hand in her hair, and locks her to him because he is going to leave it in her this time, just like she wants.
“Like that,” he tells her. “Like that.” Again and again, and he empties hard into her. The pulses drag out low groans, and he’s being loud but it doesn’t matter. They’re alone and she is telling him that he feels so good, and how could he possibly be quiet when that is happening?
And then it’s over, like getting rolled onto shore without your board by a wave that you seriously underestimated.
Jacob loosens his arms around her before letting his hands slide to the floor, slack and suddenly heavy.
“What just happened?” he says.
Bella snorts out a laugh and snuggles against him, still in his lap. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Not the first time they’ve said the words, but definitely the first time they’ve been joined and sweaty while they said it. She looks like she just ran the sexiest 10k on earth and won.
Jacob reaches over and passes Bella her can of soda. Grinning, she takes it from him and sips.
“Thanks. Want a snack?” she offers. “I made some salsa this morning, or I could heat up leftovers. It wouldn’t take long.”
“Bella, we just had sex. And I think you could make a solid argument that we still are.”
“Is that a yes to food?”
“Give me a sec.” Jacob strokes his thumb along her cheek. They’ll have time for joking around and acting like everything’s normal, but right now matters more than he’d like to admit. His defenses are all the way down.
“This counts, right?” he asks. “Us.”
Only Bella could manage to look shy with a load dripping out of her, but she nails it: a faint blush glows on her tear-stained cheeks and she avoids meeting his eyes. Just absolutely, indescribably beautiful, even though Jacob’s favorite is when she can’t stop laughing at some stupid joke he made.
He needs this to count.
“I thought that was obvious,” she says.
“Pretend that I am completely clueless about how to do any of this.” Which is not pretending, actually.
“You could start by spending the night,” Bella says. “That’s normal for boyfriends to do.”
The word is buoyant and correct, and he loves it. He loves her.
“I’ve spent the night before,” Jacob points out. He’d slept on the couch a few times when it had been too late or icy or stormy to drive home, and woken up to the smell of French toast or bacon.
“Yeah.” Bella pulls two tissues from the forgotten box behind her on the sofa. “And I’m sick of pretending that you’re not my boyfriend.”
He can breathe. He hasn’t been alone in imagining that he is hers. “Me too.”
Jacob watches as she eases off of him with a delicious, sensitive drag. He pops out with a gut-punch groan, already wishing for next time.
“Put it back in,” he tells her. “Doesn’t feel right without you.”
Bella shoves at him, and her pleased blush is different than the one before. Her lips are berry-stained pink from the orgasm and soft from the crying, and Jacob will remember a lot about this.
She dabs at herself briefly before Bella Cleaning Mode kicks in for real. She gathers the blankets and his boxers and her pants and wobbles to her feet to get dressed.
“I’m going to put in a load.”
“Give me twenty minutes.”
“Laundry, Jake.”
“Fifteen if you keep it up with that bossy housekeeping thing.”
Downstairs, the living room is tidy and the now-empty salsa bowl is drying in the steaming dishwasher. Bella is studying the ceiling of her bedroom, using his arm like a pillow.
“So,” she says. “Crying, huh?”
Jacob groans in embarrassment and tries to hide his face against her shoulder. “I can’t help it.”
“I know. I still think it’s kind of romantic.”
Romantic? Everything he feels about her sort of is, just by proximity, but maybe she doesn’t get that this particular thing is specifically about getting off. Telling someone that you sometimes like to think about the time they got choked up reading a book of poetry in your garage when you jack off isn’t exactly casual conversation.
He lifts his head to look at her. “Think you could cry about something good while I fuck you?”
“Yes. But not right now. I’m a little sore.”
Jacob laughs. “We’re freaks.”
Bella hums in happy agreement, then yawns.
He should’ve made the first move. It always felt like he was supposed to. But then she was everything, and the stakes were way too high. Jacob let so many moments drift away undone and unspoken, and they’d almost missed this one, too. Here, in her midnight room, and the sheets do smell faintly of woodsmoke and the weight of Bella resting safely in his arms is so perfect that tears burn in the corners of his own eyes.
He could tell her anything. That he loved her when he was too young to know better and then never stopped. That even when he hated that he had to be a monster, he was sure she wouldn’t abandon him because of it, even though that would've been the normal thing to do. That Jacob is certain in a way that doesn’t make sense or have words that there is nobody else for him but her. Ever, anywhere. She is it, natural and chosen and beside him.
Jacob waits until she’s asleep, her breath flowing slowly.
“Thanks, Bells.”