Chapter 69

Requested – Ellielovesfanfics

The door clicks at 11:47pm; and you know it’s her before the key even clears the lock.

You pause the movie – some indie thing with subtitles you weren’t really reading anyway, and roll onto your side, cheek pillowed on your arm. The hallway light spills across the duvet in a long rectangle, and then Dani fills the doorway, shoulders slumped, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands like she’s trying to disappear inside them. Her gym bag hangs diagonally across her chest, thumping against her hip as she stands there, blinking at the warm dark of your bedroom like she forgot what home looks like.

“Hey,” you say, soft.

She looks up, and something in her face unlocks – jaw unclenching, shoulders dropping, the guarded exhaustion melting into something tender and young. “Hey.”

You don’t ask how it went. You don’t say you missed her, though you did, your whole body has been turned into the frequency of her absence since the morning. You just lifted the blanket, invitation and shelter both.

She crosses the room in three tired strides, toeing off sneakers that thud against the floor, shucking the hoodie so it pools behind her like shed skin. She climbs in still wearing rehearsal shorts and a tank top damp at the spine, still carrying the cold of November night in her hair. She smells like sweat and the lavender body spray she keeps in her bag and the particular metallic bite of studio air conditioning.

She lands face-first into the pillow beside you, groaning into the cotton. “I hate choreography.”

You smile, smoothing her hair back from her temple, fingers catching on the elastic of her ponytail. “The new number?”

“Evil,” she mumbles, voice muffled. “Physically impossible. My knees are filing for divorce. My spine submitted a two-week notice.” She rolls onto her back, arm draped over her eyes, blocking the soft glow of your bedside lamp. “Tell me you did nothing today. I need to live vicariously through someone who didn’t spend eight hours being shouted at by a man in a headset.”

“Woke up at ten,” you recount, fingers tracing idle patterns on her shoulder, down the slope of her arm and back up. “Made coffee that was actually good for once. Stared at my laptop for two hours pretending to work. Ate toast with way too much butter. Watched the neighbour’s cat try to fight a leaf for twenty minutes.” You pause, hand settling over her heart. “Missed you.”

Her arm slides down. She looks at you, something warm and tired and impossibly fond of swimming in the dark of her eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You thumb the edge of her jaw, the faint smudge of eyeliner she never quite washes off. “Kept looking at your side of the bed. It was too neat.”

She shifts closer, fitting herself along your side with the ease of practice, of want, of love. Her leg throws over yours, ankle hooking your calf, hand finding your waist under the shirt you stole from her last week – soft, worn cotton that smells like her even when you’re wearing it. The contact is grounding, familiar, wanted. You feel her exhale, long and shaky, tension leaking out of her muscle by muscle.

“Tell me about the impossible choreography,” you murmur, because she needs to unload, and you need to hear her voice.

She does – rambling, half-asleep, voice gravelly with fatigue. The new bridge that changed three times. Lara who kept accidentally stepping on her left foot. Grant who shouted ‘energy’ like it was a threat and not a direction. You listen, chin tucked against her hair, fingers stroking down her spine in endless repetition: up, down, circle, repeat. Her voice slows, syllables stretching, blurring at the edges.

“…and then Megan texted me a meme about it, which helped, actually,” she finishes, fading. “Something about a giraffe on roller skates. Very relatable.” Her fingers trace circles on your hip, absent, intimate, mapping territory she knows by heart. “You’re better, though. Being here. Just… you.”

“Being here is easy.”

She lifts her head, chin digging into your sternum, eyes catching the blue glow of the paused screen. “You’re easy.”

“Charming.”

“True.” She smiles, small and private, crooked at one corner, and something in the room shifts – exhaustion softening into something else, something awake and watching. Her hand stills on your hip, then slides up, thumb brushing the ridge of your rib. “Hi.”

“Hi,” you breathe back with a smirk.

You kiss her like punctuation, still breathing, like coming home to a door you left unlocked. No rush, no performance, no audience but the dark. Just mouths meeting at familiar angles, the taste of her vanilla lip balm and the salt of her day still clinging to her upper lip. She hums, a low vibration you feel in your chest, settling deeper against you, hand sliding up to cup your neck, thumb stroking the pulse point she finds there.

“Missed you,” she whispers into the kiss, and you feel it everywhere – in your chest, your stomach, the curl of your fingers in her hair.

“Show me.”

She does – slow, thorough, like she has nowhere else to be all night to prove it. Her tongue slides against yours, lazy, exploratory, relearning the shape of your mouth. You sink into the mattress, pulling her with you, until she’s half on top, thigh pressed between yours, weight perfect and wanted and exactly enough. Her hand slides under your back, palm flat and warm, holding you close as if you might drift away.

You break apart just enough to breathe, foreheads touching, noses brushing. “Tired?” you ask, though you already know the answer, you’re asking for something else entirely.

“Not anymore,” she murmurs, and kisses you again – deeper this time, hungrier, the last of her fatigue burning off like morning fog. Her hips roll once, experimental, and you gasp into her mouth, fingers tightening in her hair.

“Bed’s creaking,” you whisper, half-laughing, breathless.

“Let it.” She kisses your jaw, your throat, the hollow above your collarbone where your pulse beats visible. “Let them hear. Let them know you’re mine.”

The words shiver down your spine. You arch into her, offering everything. She takes the opportunity and peppers your skin with hot, open mouthed kisses, teeth grazing just hard enough to mark – to claim. Her hands slide down your sides, thumb hooking the hem of your stolen shirt, pulling up until you lift your arms, until she tosses it somewhere dark and unseen, until she’s looking at you, bare and breathing hard, like you’re the only thing in the room worth seeing.

“Beautiful,” she breathes, reverent, ruined already.

“Come here.”

She does – skin to skin, warm and real, the length of her pressing into you from chest to knee. You run hands down her back, pressing her closer, feeling her shiver when your nails drag light and deliberate. She kisses you again, and again, and again – messy, desperate, lipstick long gone, both of you swollen and gasping.

“Can I?” she asks, hands hovering at your waistband, checking in even now, especially now.

“Please,” you whisper, arching into her touch. “Please, Dani.”

She sits back, straddling your hips, and peels her tank top off in one fluid motion. You watch, throat tight as she shakes her hair out. She reaches for your sleep shorts and you lift your hips as she strips you bare and leans down, skin to skin, warm, real and finally.

“You’re warm,” she murmurs, kissing your collarbone, your shoulder, the swell of your breast.

“You’re cold.” You run hands down her back, pressing her closer, feeling her nipples hard against your own. “Come here. Warm up.”

She giggles, breathless and lowers her mouth, trailing down your sternum, your stomach, the curve of your hip. She looks up from the valley of your thighs, checks in one last time, waits for your nod, your fingers in her hair. You give both, guiding, grounding.

She takes you apart with her mouth – slow, worshipful, like she’s undoing every hard hour of her day and replacing them with this: your gasps, your grip tightening, your whispered name falling like a prayer. When you come, it’s soft and shaking, her hands anchored on your hips, holding you through the aftershocks, murmuring love against your trembling thigh.

She crawls back up, kissing your jaw, your eyelids, your mouth – tasting you, unbothered, smiling. “Hi,” she whispers again.

You chuckle, breathless, pulling her down until she’s sprawled half across you, leg thrown over yours, heart slowing against your ribs. “Hi.”

You switch places – her back to the pillows, you kneeling between her thighs, returning every touch she gave you and then some more. She’s sensitive, wrung out from rehearsal and wanting your mouth. You take your time – fingers first, curling just right, watching her face crumple. Then your mouth, tracing the path she taught you until she’s arching off the bed, fingers white, knuckles in the sheets, your name breaking in her throat like something holy.

After, you collapse together, limbs tangled, sweat cooling on shared skin. The movie is still paused, forgotten, the room quiet except your breathing. She tucks her face into your neck, humming something tuneless, something that might be the bridge of the song she’s been learning, maybe nothing at all.

“Better than impossible choreography?” you ask, fingers tracing lazy patterns on her back.

She snorts, then kisses your shoulder, your collarbone, the corner of your smile. “Infinitely.” A pause, her hand finding yours under the blanket, threading tight. “Love you.”

“Love you back,” you whisper, and feel her smile against your skin.

You pull the duvet up, cocooning you both in warmth and dark against each other. She traces lazy shapes on your back – circles, hearts, your name in cursive, and you feel her heartbeat slowing, syncing with yours, two rhythms finding one.

“Stay,” she murmurs, already half-gone, voice thick with sleep.

“Nowhere else,” you promise, and mean it as you watch the shadows on the ceiling, her breathing evening out, the rise and fall of her chest under your palm, the night becoming morning without either of you noticing – just this, just her, just home. 

———-

I promise I didn’t plan to come back with chapter 67… 🤑

But anyway, I think I’ve left you guys hanging for enough time now, thought I’d give you a little something something. A couple fresh chapters to keep your brains stimulated 😉

Anyways, it’s good to be back <3 I’m gonna drop a couple now, and then probably some others in the next week or so, so keep your eyes peeled… I’ve got some spicy ideas coming for yous 😉

Keep upvoting and sending me requests btw!!! it means like SO MUCH to me <3