Archive of Our Own ^beta

They’re exhausted, a little buzzed off the wine they’d had at dinner, and a little sugar high on the copious amounts of pie they’d feasted on all day when they finally stumble into the hotel lobby.

It’s one of the first times Claire has traveled outside of New York for one of these videos and, despite the exhaustion settling beneath her skin, she’s excited and beyond pleased to be here with Brad and some of her favorite members of the BA camera crew.

Colorado is beautiful, the air crisp and clean in a way that makes her feel like she can finally breathe outside of the tall skyscrapers in New York. She loves the city that’s become her home and her life, but the mountains and wide open spaces here make her feel relaxed in a way she’s missed since she was a kid.

Brad, too, is in his element—when isn’t he? They were supposed to be getting tips on what made the perfect pie from some of the best bakers in Colorado for their upcoming video. She’d spent hours meticulously writing down—in order of priority—her questions for these bakers.

But five minutes into the pie festival with Brad in tow, the plan had been shot to hell and he’d grinned at her and grabbed her by the hand and gone bounding off towards the tasting table, already talking about how hungry he is since his snack on the plane.

In the face of Brad’s overwhelming enthusiasm and the warmth of his hand in hers, all the carefully planned questions she’d had—the golden ratio of flour to butter, vodka or no vodka in the crust, the preferred pie dish, blind bake or no blind bake—all flew out the window.

Instead, she found herself just having fun. It was impossible not to when Brad so effortlessly charmed the patrons, made every woman swoon and bat her eyelashes and every man laugh and stare in envy. She’d sampled way more pie than she’d meant to, but how was she supposed to refuse when Brad grinned at Vinny behind the camera and lifted each spoonful of pie to her mouth with a little airplane noise and refusing to drop the spoon until she’d taken the bite.

She couldn’t even muster up the indignation at him when he’d swiped a finger down the bridge of her nose, leaving behind a trail of whipped cream that he’d swiped off the top of his slice of banana cream pie.

By the time they’d left, bellies full of pie and cameras full of footage, she couldn’t even muster the energy to be upset that she didn’t get any of her questions answered. They’d be back the next day anyway (as Brad has cheerfully reminded her with a roll of his eyes and a, “Lighten up, Claire!”).

But now, the events of the day and the tinge of jet lag were catching up to her and she was ready to change into her soft pajamas, order room service, and crawl into bed and throw on whatever movie was playing on the local channel.

Those plans came to a screeching halt as they tried to check in.

“I am so sorry, sirs and madame, but while we do have a room for a Matt Hunziker and a Vincent Cross, we only received a secondary room request for a Brad Leone. I don’t see anything about a third room.”

Claire groaned and dropped her forehead to the hotel check-in desk, the headache that was a gentle throb before now roaring back to life. She tried to reign in her frustration as she refocused her attention on the concierge.

“And do you have another room or—“

“I do apologize, ma’am, but we are fully booked. The pie festival brings in quite the crowd.” The concierge’s friendly smile faded in the face of Claire’s frown, Hunzi and Vinny’s panicked looks, but found a renewed strength in Brad’s amused grin, leaning on the counter and watching the scene unfold. “But,” the concierge added hurriedly. “There’s a fantastic motel down the street who I’m sure would have something.”

“Oh, nonsense, Claire,” Brad interjected, clapping Hunzi on the back and pushing his way to stand next to Claire. “You can bunk with lonely ole me. It’s not a big deal, Claire.”

Claire stared at him, her alcohol-and-sugar buzzed brain struggling to comprehend the scenario he was proposing. Sharing a hotel room? The thought made her mouth go dry. She struggled enough as it is keeping her distance and composure when their workstations were back-to-back.

Their dance was a fine one—flirt, retreat, touch but not for too long so it couldn’t be misconstrued by others, smile and laugh just the right amount to not raise suspicion. But sometimes they danced too close to their unspoken line: he’d catch her eyes drifting to his mouth, she’d catch him staring at her wistfully when he thought she couldn’t see.

Sharing a hotel room felt like more than a few toes across the line.

Still, it was better than being separated from the group and she really just wanted to crawl into bed. She just hadn’t accounted on sharing that bed with Brad. Brad, her friend and colleague and definitely nothing else. Nope.

She gave a weak smile to Brad and the concierge, the words coming out through gritted teeth. “Yeah, no problem. We can share.”

“Oh!,” Brad exclaimed, slinging an arm around her shoulders and hoisting their bags up onto his shoulder, dragging her towards the elevators, keycard in hand. “We’re gonna have a blast, Claire. It’ll be like a sleepover! Oh! Did you pack face masks? I’ve always wanted to try those sticky peely off things, y’know the ones that make your skin all tight and then you peel it off in like one big Hannibal Lecter lookin’ victim thingy—“

“Oh my god, ew, Brad!”

Hunzi and Vinny stared at them as they disappeared around the corner, their laughter echoing off the tile floors.

“Well,” Hunzi said with wide eyes, turning to his fellow cameraman. “This is going to be interesting.”

___________________________

Claire stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, suddenly self-conscious in a way she hadn’t been since high school.

She surveyed her grey-streaked hair, her pale skin and brown eyes and wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Her eyes drifted over her cat-themed pajamas and fluffy socks. If she’d known that she would have ended up sharing a room with Brad, that he’d see her like this, she would have packed something different. Not that she necessarily had something sexy—that label had never felt right applied to her—but something other than cat pajamas.

The fact that there was only one queen sized bed and not the two doubles that she was expecting had thrown her for a loop and she’d disappeared almost immediately into the bathroom, needing a moment to collect herself.

Brad had, for once, been lost for words when they’d stepped into the room and seen the reality of their sleeping situation.

One bed.

Sharing a bed was more than just a toe over the line. It was an entire 5K marathon beyond the line, leaving behind the rules and propriety and all the reasons they couldn’t and shouldn’t do anything about the attraction between them.

He’d been gallant, tried to offer to take the floor. “I’m tellin’ ya, Claire. It’s like camping! Throw a few blankets down, toss a couple pillows into the mix, and badda bing badda boom, you’re in bed town!”

But it seemed ridiculous, envisioning his giant frame curled up on a bed of blankets when there was a perfectly good bed right there.  And they were adults, after all. It was fine. Totally, completely fine.

Taking a deep breath, she ran her fingers through her hair and checked the corner of her mouth for stray dried toothpaste. It was time to face the music. And Brad.

When she stepped back out into the main room, Brad met her with an easy grin. “There ya are! Thought you got lost in there.” His eyes raked over her form, taking in her sleepwear. His grin widened and she tried not to flush under his scrutiny. “Nice pajamas, Saffitz.”

“Shut up,” she muttered. He laughed in that easy way of his and she felt some of her nerves dissipate. This was just Brad. She grinned at him and gestured over her shoulder. “Bathroom’s all yours. Um, it’s kind of late and it was a long day and we’ve got an early start tomorrow morning and—“

God, when did it get so hard to just say you were going to bed? She went to Harvard and she was struggling to form basic communicative sentences.

“Claire, go get into bed.”

His voice was a little rough and she felt her skin crawl with warmth at the instruction. She was so used to controlling every aspect of the kitchen and of her perfectly ordered and clean apartment, it was nice to just listen to someone stop her rambling and tell her what to do.

“Do you, um, have a preference for which side?”

“Nope!” he answered cheerfully, popping the p. “Whatever you want, Claire.”

Before she could process the possibilities of whatever she wanted, he was gone, disappearing into he bathroom and closing the door with a soft click behind him.

She worked to calm her sudden racing nerves and the eruption of butterflies in her stomach by flipping off the light switches to throw the hotel room into almost-complete darkness. The sheets were crisp and cool as she slid into bed, pulling the comforter up over her shoulders and burrowing down.

Brad’s whistling was slowly filling the hotel room, filtering in from under the bathroom door. She heard him talking to himself, bopping and booping and badda-binging to himself as he brushed his teeth and got himself ready for bed. It made her smile. One of her favorite things about Brad was that was exactly who he was, no matter where he was or who he was with.

It comforted her and she felt the edges of sleep take her, so that the hotel room and Brad’s movements were just soft background noises. The day and the overwhelming sudden sense of comfort at having Brad so near enveloped her and she felt herself dozing off.

A few minutes later, she felt the mattress dip as Brad crammed himself into his side of the bed. The motion and the sudden wall of warmth at her back roused her from sleep.

“Claire?”

His voice was a low whisper and she felt the corners of her mouth curl up in a small smile at his exaggerated whisper in the dark.

“What?” she stage-whispered back.

“I set the alarm for 7 tomorrow, is that right?”

She groaned at the prospect of an early start and buried her face further into her pillow. “Fine,” she grumbled. “There better be coffee tomorrow.”

“Hey, at least you got me as your own personal snooze button and wake-up call.”

“Brad, don’t start.”

“What? I’m just saying! You’re not the most morning-est of morning people.”

“Good night, Brad.”

She could practically feel his grin in the darkness and it filled her with comfort as she perfectly envisioned his gap-toothed smile and his wild curls. It struck her then that he wouldn’t be wearing his hat to bed. She wished she could see in the darkness to learn if he was wearing a shirt or not, too. She’d seen glimpses of his chest on the rare occasion that he wore an open collar to work and the brief glimpses of tan skin and coarse chest hair had fueled the occasional fantasy for weeks.

There was some rustling and some pulling of the sheets as Brad settled himself in beside her.

“Good night, Claire.”

His voice was soft and warm and affectionate—the way it got sometimes when he was particularly proud of her when she’d nailed a recipe or come up with an innovative solution that no doubt involved arts and crafts and Brad’s help.

She listened to Brad’s steady, even breaths as he quickly fell asleep. His 6’4” frame was scrunched respectfully on his side of the bed, leaving a few inches between them.

But it didn’t stop her from feeling the warmth of his body or the way he twitched in his sleep and mumbled incoherently, active and talkative even in sleep.

The thought was comforting in a way she wasn’t expecting and, listening to his soft snores, she felt herself drifting back off to sleep.

She didn’t know what she was worried about. Everything was just fine.

_____________________

When her eyes fluttered open a few hours later, the hotel room was still bathed in darkness and the alarm clock on the bedside table blinked at her, informing her that it was the middle of the night and into the wee hours of the morning.

The first thing she became aware of was the warm, bare skin beneath her cheek and her fingers absentmindedly scratching through coarse hair on the slight swell of Brad’s stomach.

She woke in a sudden shock, wondering how they had ended up like this when they had started the evening so innocently, scrunched up into a ball on either side of the bed.

Now, though, she was wrapped around Brad—the big spoon to his little. Her arm was wrapped securely around his midsection and her nose was pressed between his shoulder blades. Despite the height difference between them, her legs were curled and tucked up against his, slotted side by side and her right leg was working its way between his legs so that they were tangled even further together.

The last cobwebs of sleep were clearing from her mind as she took stock of their situation. She should be panicked, she should feel that this was wrong, she should be pulling away.

Instead, she nuzzled against his bare skin and inhaled the spicy, earthy scent of him. It surprised her—or maybe it shouldn’t—that they fit together so well. His big hand was covering hers where it rested on her stomach. It would be so easy to just press her cheek to his skin, steal an irreverent kiss and press her lips to the freckled skin between his shoulder blades. 

But this wasn’t them.

They were friends and colleagues and though they had never explicitly said as much, acting on the thing between them would be potentially disastrous. They had a good thing going: YouTube had turned their lives upside down, for the good and the b ad, and if things went wrong between them, that would all be over. And it would be over for twelve million people to see.

With a heavy, regretful heart, she began to slowly pull away from him. Her fingernails inadvertently dragged along the sensitive skin of his abdomen because he groaned in his sleep and murmured her name.

“Claire.”

She froze, the prospect of being caught like this and the sound of her name on his lips sound like that, completely halting her movements. But he seemed to still be asleep and she continued rolling away from him and his warmth and his surprisingly soft skin and the possibility of what if, what if, what if….

When she drifted back to sleep, she shivered and fought the urge to wrap herself back around him.

He’d never have to know and it would be her secret to keep. In the morning, everything would be fine.

___________________

When she next woke, soft sunlight was streaming through the windows and thin curtains. She felt pleasantly warm all over, weighed down and safe.

“Claire,” a voice rumbled into her ear, a scratchy beard scraping over the soft, sensitive skin of her cheek.

Brad.

He was pressed behind her, arm slung possessively over her waist and his thumb stroking at the jut of her hip that had been exposed by the pajama top that had risen during the night. He was huge behind her and she felt suddenly, impossibly small in his arms.

Panic seized her as she became aware of the reality of their situation. Brad was holding her, touching her.

She half-turned in his arms, eyes wide, hands coming up to brace herself on his chest. His still very, very bare chest.

In the light of the morning, hair mussed and body warm from sleep, he looked so different. Like Brad but somehow more. There was no hat, no apron, no layers. It was just him with his earnest eyes and his big hands on her.

“Brad,” she said, voice cracking in panic. This wasn’t allowed, it wasn’t. Her brain couldn’t comprehend all of the lines that he was crossing now, willingly wrapping himself around her, touching her like it was a thing they did.

God, maybe they had in their minds for this long but now he was doing it for real and it was too much.

“Okay, don’t freak out, Saffitz.” She felt his hands tighten on her hip, felt his legs shift and press against her and hold her to him. “It’s just that, I felt your lips take a little midnight rendezvous across my shoulders and I thought maybe you were on the same page as I was.”

Her heart felt like it was hammering out of her chest. She wondered if she could subtly pinch herself because it felt like a dream.

“W-what page is that?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “C’mon, Harvard, take a guess.”

He was going to make her work for this, to take the step with him—together—over that line they’d drawn. She hated him a little for it but that was so Brad: pushing her, making her be a little braver, waiting for her.

But he didn’t push. He just held her, fingertips a light pressure on her hip, looking at her, waiting for her decision. She knew that if she pushed him away, told him she wasn’t ready, he would let her go in a heartbeat with no questions asked and no awkwardness, the day going on just as they had before.

The thought of him rolling away to the other side of the bed, of him taking his easy, soft smile and wandering hands left her feeling strangely panicked. It was the last thing she wanted.  

It ended up being one of the easiest decisions of her life.

She relaxed in his arms and slid her fingertips up over his chest and shoulders to bury themselves in the riot of curls at the base of his neck. The grin she received in return was bright enough to power the Test Kitchen.

“Yeah?” he asked, eyes crinkling at the corners.

She tugged him down with a slight press of pressure on the back of his neck, encouraging him to dip down and slot his mouth over hers.

“Yes,” she murmured against his lips, tilting her head to kiss him more deeply. He let out a little groan from somewhere in the back of his throat that reverberated against her lips and it made her shiver, pushing up into the kiss and swiping her tongue against the seam of his mouth.

He rolled her in his arms, trapping her between the mattress and his body. She hummed against him and readjusted her legs to allow him to settle against her and she gasped at the sensation of his weight atop her, the feel of his lips against hers (she knew he liked cherry chapstick), the scratch of his beard on the soft, pale skin of her neck as he kissed and sucked his way down the column of her throat.

She sighed his name out and clutched at his shoulders, his back, the dip above the waistband of his sleep pants. It was too much, too fast. She felt like she could just sink into this, into him.

“Brad,” she gasped as he nipped at the skin above the swell of her breast—and god when did he pull her shirt aside, when did his hand slip beneath her shirt to tease along her ribcage.

“I know, I know,” he said, easing his touch, slowing things down and pressing gentle, reverent kisses to the hollow of her throat, then to the underside of her jaw, and the finally back to her lips.

When he pulled back, lips swollen and curls even more of a riotous mess than before thanks to her clutching fingers, he was grinning gleefully, like the cat who got the cream.

She supposed she was the cream.

“We gotta get up,” he told her, eyes drifting past her to check the time on the bedside alarm clock. “Get breakfast, coffee, get ole Hunzi and Vinny, and get back to pie central.”

Neither of them made any attempt to leave the warm cocoon of their bed.

Instead, her fingers curled back over his shoulders and pushed so he fell back onto his side of the bed with a soft oof.

“Claire, what—“

She moved quickly, switching their positions so this time he was pinned beneath her, her knees on either side of his hips as she straddled him. Her hair fell in a curtain around them as she leaned down to nip at his bottom lip. He kissed her back readily, easily. She liked that.

She pulled back and looked down at him, thumb swiping over his bottom lip. The gesture made his blue eyes go dark and hazy.

“Brad, I will only get out of this bed if you promise me coffee and a vegetable or fruit for breakfast. I don’t think I can go another day on the pie only diet.”

“Claire, there’s fruit in pie. It’s practically healthy.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “No, it’s really, really not.”

And then because she could—because she had wanted to do it for so long after having an exchange just like this one with him—she let the kind of bemused, exasperated affection she felt for him fill her up before leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to his mouth.

From the way he cradled her against him, his hand cupping the back of her head and his fingers threading through her hair, brushing the long strands back behind her ear, she figured he felt the same way.

Later, when they met up with Hunzi and Vinny in the lobby, the backs of their hands brushing, their cheeks pink, and arriving about forty-five minutes late, Claire just shrugged and with a charming smile blamed their later arrival on Hunzi for telling them the wrong call time.

Hunzi didn’t have the heart to tell her that she had a Brad-shaped hickey on her neck that he would have to spend hours editing out later.