Shut Up and Kiss Me || Ethan Dolan

A Bonus: Stress and Studying

PSA: this takes place a few weeks before fall semester finals, so during the course of the story, just not included in any chapters.

Blake paces back and forth, feet padding across the living room floor, her environmental chemistry book resting on one arm. She gets like this when she's stressed—by now, it's a familiar sight to Ethan.

Her brows are furrowed and tense, eyes scanning the pages furiously. She mumbles incoherent things to herself, occasionally stopping to scribble something down. There was a big upcoming test she was worried about.

"Chérie," Ethan hums, attempting to pull her head out of her book. It doesn't make it to her ears. "Blake," he tries again. Her eyes flick to the side toward him for a moment, noticing his head tilted at her accusingly. She pauses and lowers the textbook. "You're pacing again. You know you're gonna do fine."

"There's no way to know that," she mumbles with a frown. "You don't have to be here, I still have a lot to study."

"You need a break," he chuckles, deep and low. Ethan reaches out for her hand, attempting to pull her to his lap, but she just steps back and rolls her eyes. "Half an hour won't hurt!"

"You're a distraction, Dolan," Blake says playfully. "I really can't. You can head back to Kappa if you're bored, we can hang in a couple of days?"

It's Ethan's turn to roll his eyes. Blake really has a one track mind sometimes.

With her distracted, he reaches to pull the book right out of her hands—she'll hate him for it, but be thankful later.

"Ethan Grant Dolan, you're not funny."

"Chérie, seriously, you're stressing too much!" He shakes his head, grip tight. Blake crosses her arms and scowls at him—sometimes she really doesn't know why she likes him at all. But he cracks a grin and that reminds her right away. "I'll quiz you."

"...fine."

Flipping through the chapter at random, Ethan's eyes scan the page. It feels like reading a different language, because he doesn't understand any of it.

His fingers tap mindlessly on the hard cover of the textbook as he reads through some of the paragraphs. Blake's getting impatient, and he knows that, so he drags out the reading a few seconds longer until she's getting huffy and pouting.

Ethan reads through and quizzes her on different things, and even though he has the answers in front of him he still isn't quite sure how she knows what any of this means. But he helps, and as he suspected, Blake only misses a few questions.

"Hm. Oh! Explain the difference between epidemi--what the fu--epidemiology and toxicology?"

Ethan looks up at her with wide, shining eyes as she goes into detail, the words rolling off of her tongue so confidently. Even though he isn't sure what the hell she's saying, it's attractive, and more importantly, admirable.

She's wringing out her hands, staring up at the ceiling as a focus point, but her eyes trail down to meet his honey colored ones and she loses all focus.

A small, encouraging smile grows on his lips, urging her to continue. His attention is fully on her, and the fact that he's spending his Saturday night helping her study makes her heart swell.

"I think, maybe, I can take a little break."

"Yeah?" Ethan smirks, the textbook being tossed aside for what will be the rest of the night. He yanks Blake down to his lap, startling her and a gasp coming from her lips that's muffled with a kiss as he breathes her in. She slowly relaxes into his arms, melting her lips against his. "Glad to hear it, chérie."

"Thank you, Dolan."