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“Hey, come on, help me. I need ideas.” Ricky blinks quickly as a hand whacks him on his leg. He shakes his head a little to knock himself out of his daze.
“Okay.” He looks away from Nini for a few seconds, but his gaze eventually settles back on her face like it always does; he can’t ever really seem to look away, almost as if she's a magnet. Or maybe he feels like if he blinks, she’ll be gone or something will change. “Uhm, roses are red, violets are blue-”
Another whack, this time with a little force behind it.
“Ricky!” Nini looks up at him from where she’s sitting on her bed, leaning down to reach her paper, lips dropping into a pout, even if small twitches betray a smile slipping through. It feels like sunlight breaking through clouds and he cracks a smile, eyes softening even as a bit of frustration wells up inside of him.
They’ve been trying to work on a song for the rose and the beast for an hour now, but Nini’s writers’ block has kicked in and Ricky has absolutely no ideas. He’s never really been one to reach deep, and now the fate of the show depends on his girlfriend and his incompetent self to write a song.
“Well, uh,” he throws up a hand, “I don’t have any. I’ve hardly ever written songs before." That's a lie. "Actually, I’ve never even acted before the winter musical, so you gotta cut me some slack.”
Nini sighs and turns her focus back to the blank notebook page in front of her, fiddling with a pen in her right hand. “Help me think, then. You gotta have some ideas for the beast.”
Ricky exhales slowly as he tries to think, but there’s something about the beast that’s just awfully like him but different at the same time, and trying to find something meaningful feels like he’s dissecting himself.
“Maybe we could, like, reference other songs, like some musicals do! Something about, tale as old as time- hey, what does that even mean?”
“I- I don’t know,” Ricky says, but his attention is on the pen Nini currently has pressed against her lips. “Maybe something about the sun rising in the east?”
“Ricky Bowen!” Nini pats his leg a couple of times, and he shifts from where he’s kneeling to prolong the contact. “That could work! We could probably find cool sun metaphors or something! How’d you think of that?”
“That’s just how I remember which direction the sun rises,” he says, grinning sheepishly as Nini’s mouth falls open for a heartbeat before she throws her head back to laugh.
“I’m an idiot, I know,” he says.
“Yeah, but you’re my idiot,” Nini says, and rests her chin on her hand for a second to look at him. She peers up at him through long eyelashes, and if his breath catches at her small smile, it’s because she’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen.
She returns to the notebook to scribble something down after a moment of eye contact that leaves his heart beating a little faster.
Ricky rearranges himself so that he’s lying next to his girlfriend, head propped up on one hand so that he can face her.
After writing down a bullet point, Nini nibbles on the tip of the pen cap that sits snugly on the back of the pen, pink lips parting slightly as white teeth bite down on the plastic.
To say he’s distracted would be an understatement; he uses the hand not holding his head up to tuck a strand of her behind her ear although it’s not even in her face. The contact makes Nini turn to look at him almost questioningly, but her brown eyes soften at the expression on his face, slightly raised eyebrows falling into a more relaxed way.
“Don’t bite that,” he murmurs, maneuvering the pen out of his mouth and then his face so that he can kiss her, just a little awkwardly.
Nini puts down the pen to give him a fuller kiss, turning so that she can touch her lips to his gently but firmly for a second. His eyes flutter shut and he lets out a wordless whine and almost falls forward chasing her lips when she pulls away.
“Hey, we need to work on the song.” Nini turns back to the notebook, but Ricky doesn’t miss the way her eyes rest on his mouth a little longingly before picking up the pen.
“One more.”
“Richard.”
“Please?”
She groans and gives in, lingering a little longer than before, readjusting to press a second, harder kiss on slightly parted lips before pulling away.
“There.”
It leaves his lips buzzing, a feeling that radiates outward to the rest of his body, and it utterly fascinates that she can draw this feeling from him, even after a full year of dating. Of course, they had a little break and have only been back together for about a month, but one would think he’d slowly get used to it.
But he never seems to. It almost feels like the first kiss all over again, every time he kisses her.
“Oh, we can do some really cool rose metaphors! You know how a rose is pretty, and would pretty much be perfect if it weren’t for those little hidden thorns.”
“This rose is perfect, though,” he says, offering her a crooked simper when she turns to hit him on the shoulder.
“No, I’m not.”
“To me, you are.”
“Okay,” she whispers with a little smile, even if she looks like she wants to argue.
Nini turns to add a new bullet point to the lined paper, but she only makes it, like, halfway because she begins to bite her lip in concentration, lower lip held captive between front teeth that worry at it lightly.
“I love you,” Ricky says.
“Yeah?” Nini murmurs back, and though her eyes don’t leave the paper, her hand freezes.
“Yeah.” It’s no more than a mere breath.
He ducks his head down to kiss the inside of her left wrist lightly, just over the pulse point, cold lips landing on warm skin, and Ricky hides a smile as his girlfriend stiffens slightly.
“We can work on the song later,” he says, quietly.
“I don’t like to procrastinate.”
“You can write songs crazy fast. You’re crazy talented. Come on. It’s a weekend and we can do school stuff during the week.”
“You know musical stuff isn’t just school stuff,” she chides lightly, but her resolve is faltering, he can tell.
“I can help you too. You have a pretty solid idea, with the rose metaphors. You just need to add the beast to it. Can’t be that hard, right?”
“Maybe.” The pen leaves the paper and is set gently on the bed.
“Give me a kiss.” He beckons to her as he flops on his back, arms outstretched.
She raises an eyebrow. “ A kiss?”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes narrow in faux suspicion and her nose scrunches up in reluctance, and it’s probably the most adorable thing he’s seen in his life.
“Ricky…”
“Nini…”
Nini leans down to kiss him, again, and he sighs contentedly against her mouth, hand cupping her cheek.
She pulls away after the kiss begins to creep away from chaste, but hovers over him, a hand sinking into the mattress on one side of his head. Ricky strokes her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb so gently she huffs softly at the ticklish sensation. She leans into his touch for a second, gazing at him with such undisguised adoration he feels it right in the middle of his chest.
And then, dammit, she has restraint and pulls away to pick up the pen once more.
“Hey,” he says.
“I need to finish writing the sentence or I’m going to forget it.”
“Okay.” He lets her move away to write it, but he doesn’t miss the way her eyes flicker to him every few seconds and linger, chocolate eyes soft and warm with fondness.
The moment she finishes, he says, “Okay, now come and kiss me.”
“Noooo,” Nini says, “One more idea. One more bullet point or lyric first.”
“Do that thing in songs when they state the obvious and then go ‘that’s obvious.’”
“They do that?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
She hesitates for a moment, but scrawls it down anyway, a little too hastily.
“Okay, now c’mere.”
“Okay,” she whispers with a smile that looks just coy enough to be deliberate, crawling over so that she can straddle him properly, knees on either side of his hips, hands on both sides of his head.
Nini doesn’t move, but the gleam in her eyes tells him that she’s challenging him.
But he really just wants to kiss his girlfriend until the stars fall, so he pushes himself up on an elbow to let their mouths meet, softly at first, before lifting his chin so that their lips crush together tighter.
Ricky slowly maneuvers into a sitting position of sorts, a thrill running up his spine as Nini settles so that she’s sitting on his waist, legs wrapped around his torso. Their lips don’t disconnect once.
He’s grinning so big that when she goes back to kissing him after breaking away for a heartbeat to breathe, she’s kissing more teeth than lips. Her hands, first cupping his cheeks like she never wants to let go, slip further up into messy hazel curls, pushing his head closer, closer, impossibly closer, and when his lips part to gasp at the first flicker of tongue against his skin, she takes advantage of it to slip her tongue inside his mouth, and... oh.
It gets a little messy from there, and Ricky's not quite sure how far he can go since they haven’t made out since before their breakup, but Nini gives no sign of wanting to stop or even slow down so he just keeps going.
He groans softly when he feels her tongue on his, and it feels new. It feels so new even if they’ve done this before, it feels different, it feels like he’s going to implode and he kicks himself once more for breaking up with Nini. He’s not even sure why he did it, like, they could’ve been doing this the entire time.
Her hands tug lightly at his curls now, and his jaw drops with a stuttering, shaky sigh and she whimpers back in response, and it’s a back and forth of quiet noises and louder pants and hips unconsciously shifting to chase any sort of sensation while lips move almost frantically, as if making up for lost time.
Hands are in his hair one second and the next, they slip under his shirt to splay over his abs, her skin burning hot on his, and he feels his stomach clench involuntarily as she brushes searing fingertips over his skin. His fingers rest on her hips, a little afraid to venture any lower, so he just lets his thumbs stroke her hipbones, creeping under her shirt just a little bit.
Her moan of approval is completely worth it, and he grips her hips a little harder, kisses her a little harder, a little more desperate and he vows to himself to never let her go, to never stop holding on to this precious rose he has in his hands.
When they stop, it’s only because their lungs ache with lack of oxygen, just slightly more than the way their hearts ache for them to be impossibly closer.
He runs a hand through the hair that’s falling in front of her face as she looks down at him, threading his fingers through the strands and to the back of her head to push their foreheads together. It’s a little painful, how their heads bump together, but he wants to be near, wants to feel her breath on his lips as the taste of her lingers on his tongue.
Ricky’s eyes flicker over Nini’s face, taking in the blown pupils and the way her lips are red and swollen and how her the area around her lips are slick with spit and how her cheeks are colored rose-pink. His heart hammers rapidly behind his ribcage, and the searing breaths hitting his mouth don’t do anything to slow it down.
She gazes at him with such an intensity it makes his heart stutter slightly, and he tries to look back the same way, tries to put all his feelings into one look, all his love and happiness and desire into the way he looks at her because he wants her to- no, he needs her to know that he loves her he loves her he loves her more than anything in the world, but he’s quite inarticulate at the moment.
“I love you,” Nini says it for him, all rushed out in a single exhale, chest still heaving with each breath she draws in.
“You’re beautiful,” he manages instead.
“And you’re not so bad yourself,” she says, stroking his face softly.
“Yeah?”
She cracks a smile. “Yeah.”
They sit there for a moment, and Ricky’s back aches a little from holding her up, and their breaths calm down, but their hearts don’t, not really.
He tilts his head up to kiss her again, just to recall that wonderful feeling, and it’s soft. It’s so soft and it's gentle as it is passionate but slow, so slow it's almost agonizing. It’s much more chaste than the making out they were doing earlier, and it’s just the dance of lips against the other, a virtually soundless exchange of tender and loving kisses.
Ricky lets himself lay down, shifting so that his head is on a pillow, and sighs in contentment when Nini rests her full weight on top of him, stretching out to intertwine their legs and lay on top of him, every inch of them pressed together as close as possible.
“I love you,” he says against her lips and opens his eyes to watch her reaction.
She gives him a little grin against his mouth and whispers it back. “I love you.”
They’re a bit too occupied to notice that the pen has made marks on Nini’s sheets, or that the notebook lays sprawled on the floor, too lost in each other to notice anything , not the last rays of the sun slipping behind the horizon, not the first shimmer of stars in the night sky, not the occasional chime of cell phones.
Ricky’s not going to let her go, not until the ocean dries up and the moon stops shining and the stars fall and the world goes blind and the sun swallows the earth whole, not until he’s physically incapable of holding on, no, he won’t, he’s sure of that now, and he’s never been surer of anything.
***
They don’t really regret anything when Miss Jenn frowns at them the next weekend. They have absolutely nothing to show for the song, and hey, in Ricky’s defense, once he starts kissing Nini, it’s kind of really difficult to stop.
The theater teacher walks away, and Nini just meets his knowing gaze with a slightly sly smile, that reflects exactly how he feels.
“Yeah, I don’t really regret anything,” he says with a chuckle and strokes a spot on her neck that is covered in concealer. It’s not quite visible, but he knows what to look for, and he smirks at Nini when her breath stutters slightly.
“Yeah, me neither,” is all she says.