Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s not often that you all go out as a group and actually just get to hang out. When that does happen, though, you enjoy every minute, and tonight is no exception.

You and Leota had decided you needed to decompress after all the monotonous preparatory research you had to do for your new mission. It hadn’t taken much to convince Emilia to go, and once he knew Leota and Emilia were going, Chris was immediately on board.

When you had asked Adrian if he’d like to come, too, he’d immediately asked, “You’re going, right?” and you had blushed. Your relationship was still relatively new— and completely secret— but his nature as an open book and his easy affection with you never failed to warm you from the inside-out. You hope you’re not being too obvious.

“Yeah,” you’d told him, “I am,” and he’d agreed to go along, too. You were glad for it, because now you were shoved into a booth at the bar with the rest of them, sandwiched in between John and Adrian, trying not to think too much about the line of heat along your side where Adrian is touching you.

After a while, his hand starts to drift down off the table. He’s left his phone on the table so that he can instead find your knee with his fingertips, a faint pressure along the joint before he starts to gain confidence.

You’re trying to keep your attention on the conversation. You tune back in just as John says, “I went to the popcorn stand next, but they had never heard of it, either, so the first guy definitely just lied to me.”

Everybody laughs, and even though you have no context, you laugh, too. You’re trying not to be too obvious, but you’re distracted; Adrian’s hand has slipped just a little further up your leg, increasing his pressure as he creeps up along the loose fabric of your clothes towards your inner thigh.

“So, obviously, I tried to go to the pizza place after that, but they just stared at me like I had two heads,” John says. “I thought I’d been hallucinating! It was like I was in the Twilight Zone!”

“What’d you do then?” Adrian asks, dropping his chin into his other hand, propping his elbow up on the table. He’s all smiles, though he has a red flush to his cheeks that wasn’t there before. You hate him as much as you absolutely don’t.

Your own hands come up to hold Adrian’s wrist loosely, clinging to him when he traces a little further up your inner thigh. Your heart is starting to beat faster, blood pooling in your gut, heat gathering at the base of your spine.

“I went to the Dippin’ Dots—” John starts, but Chris frowns at him.

“Dippin’ Dots is out of business,” he tells him.

“No,” John says, “They aren’t.”

“Uh, yes,” Chris argues with him, as if he’s lost his mind. “They are. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” John demands. “You make up the weirdest shit to be mad about someti—”

“I’m not making this up!” Chris insists. “Look it up.”

“Look it—”

“On your phone, look it up,” Chris tells him. John sighs, but he does pick up his phone to look it up.

Or, he thought he was picking up his phone. Your phone, along with his and Adrian’s, were all laying together, and he lifted the wrong one.

For a moment, he just frowns, staring down at the lit screen. Then, he says, “This isn’t my phone.”

Your stomach drops. You wonder if he’s looking at your phone and Adrian had sent you some message that he shouldn’t be seeing, and you snap your head around to look at him, incredulous. You’re bewildered to see that Adrian’s eyes are also locked on the phone in John’s hands, and you realize his fingers have stilled at your inner thigh, frozen only inches from where you want them most.

“Your wallpaper is you?” John asks you in the next second. Your confusion grows in that moment, because you know your wallpaper is a photo of all of you in the back of the van together, a picture that Chris had taken from an atrocious selfie-esque angle just the other day.

Adrian’s hand vanishes from your thigh a beat later, snapping out and snatching the phone out of John’s hand. You realize, in that instant, that it was Adrian’s phone he had, not yours. Your heart jumps up into your throat, a delighted feeling making you immediately buoyant as you also realize what that means.

“I’m your lock screen?” you ask Adrian, trying to hide just how emotional that was making you. It was just his lock screen, for fuck’s sake; it’s not like you saw him looking for an engagement ring. But the idea that he thinks about you when you’re not around— that he cares enough about you to want to see your face whenever he checks your phone, before anything else— it feels like the first real solid piece of evidence you have that he’s taking you as seriously as you’re taking him.

Adrian’s face has gone completely red, glasses slipped to the end of his nose. He shoves them back up when he says, agitated, “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

There’s a beat where nobody speaks before Leota says, “Oh, shit,” and Chris laughs out loud.

“You have a crush on (Y/N)? Are you kidding me?” Chris demands.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Adrian snaps.

“Yeah, what the hell?” you ask, feeling slightly irritated. “What, I suck that bad?”

“No, no, I just mean— No offense, you know we’re buds,” Chris says to Adrian, “but (Y/N) is so far out of your league.”

“Everybody is,” John comments. “You’re kind of fucking insane.”

“Hey,” you snap at them, before anyone else can say anything. “I don’t care if we’re friends, you don’t say shit like that. It’s rude.”

“It’s true, though,” Adrian comments. “I mean, yeah, dick move, but he’s not wrong. And he’s—”

You turn and silence his self-deprecating nonsense by kissing him. This is not your first kiss, nor will it be your last, but it’s certainly your first in front of the rest of the team. It may not last very long, but you can feel Adrian smiling into it, and some of the weight and tension that’s just landed on you floats away at the feeling.

When you separate, you turn back to the rest of the team and say, “And I’m out of nobody’s league. I almost got sick the other day because I drank expired milk. I’m not fucking bright.”

Adrian laughs, tugging you into his side with an arm around your shoulders, overjoyed to be able to publicly display his affection. “Gross,” he says, kissing you loudly on the cheek. You laugh, feeling your face heat up.

After a moment, John says, “I take it back. You’re both below my league,” which makes you choke on another laugh, feeling lighter again.