Jiley Oneshots

Want you back

a/n: so sorry for lack of updates lately, I've been all over the place for the past couple weeks but should be back to regular updates now. This one might seem a bit disjointed, but I wanted to get something up.

season 2

James groans from his room after his mother had called him to open the front door after the bell had just so frequently rang. He pauses the game he was playing on his PS4 and begrudgingly shuffles along his bed before getting off and exiting his room to go downstairs, where his sisters were baking cakes in the kitchen. He rolls his eyes at them and scolds them for the amount of mess they had made, but dips his finger into their sloppy mixture haphazardly before licking his finger.

"Ew, James, go away!" the oldest girl, Piper, shrieks at her brother. He smirks at her then wipes his finger with a paper towel whilst walking towards the front door where he eventually opens it up, but when he sees his ex-girlfriend stood there crying, his grin dissipates into a frown. It was drizzling with rain outside, and the girl's hair had gone rather frizzy as she stood there, looking down at the ground. 

"Ri," he says, taking her cold and wet hand and pulling her inside. "Riles, what's wrong?" he continues to pester her, the sweet nickname escaping his lips like a breeze. She doesn't answer, but remains stood there, shaking and crying incessantly, the tears rolling down her cheeks two at a time. The commotion of sniffles causes James's three sisters to look up and wonder what was happening. 

"What's wrong with Riley?" Lola asks as she makes her way over to her brother, but James stops her just before she reaches Riley. He wraps an arm around the shaking brunette and strokes her arm up and down, but shakes his head at his youngest sister.

"Don't worry, Lo. We're going upstairs and then Ri will talk to you later on, okay?" he tells her. She was clearly still confused as it's obvious through the look plastered across her face, but she makes no comments and allows her brother to take charge. He leads himself and Riley upstairs to his room and closes the door behind them. 

Riley almost immediately sits down on his bed before lying down on her side, closing up her body and huddling into a ball. James watches her for a few moments but shortly decides to follow her guidance. He gets onto the bed as well and spoons her over the top of the duvet, one arm wrapped around her waist and the other using his fingers to comb through her hair. He listens to her soft sniffles as she continues crying, her breaths growing shaky and putting him through pain as he listened to the girl suffer.

"Baby," he says softly after several minutes of pure silence. She doesn't respond but her hazel brown eyes open slightly. She had unconsciously been playing with his hand in the time it had been completely silent between them two, and now she looked down at it, playing with his fingers every now and again. "What happened, sweetheart?" James asks gently. He nuzzles his head further into her neck, hoping to get an answer as he continues to stroke her hair. "Please talk to me, angel."

She sniffs again and his heart shatters the same way it had done when she first broke up with him a couple days prior, but he shuffles away a little when she slowly begins to roll over so that she was laying down flat on her back. However, when James sits up properly with his own spine against the headrest, she copies. She pulls her legs up to her chest and holds them close to her body, looking down at her hands that James tries to hold. She looks at him and then eventually allows him to grip them ever-so-gently in his palms, steadily beginning to entrust him again.

"James . . ." she says slowly, gradually fixing her gaze on him. Her eyes trace his knuckles and the way they held her hand. They trace his arms and how one was wrapped around her body, with the other keeping his hand placed over the top of her knee. They trace his stance and how he was so close beside her, their bodies curled in a slight embrace. Then finally, they trace his eyes and the look of concern and worry in them. "I . . . I found out I'm adopted," she tells him after a short wait.

"What?" he questions back without thinking first. The confusion in his voice only makes Riley feel worse and hurt more as she breathes out slightly and, instinctively, James tightens his grip around her. "How did you find out?"

"I put it together. I asked Mom the question and she didn't say yes, but she didn't say no either, and there's only one thing that could possibly mean. I'm adopted, James. No wonder I'm so different to Emily. She's blonde, I'm brunette. She's beautiful, I'm whatever you wanna call me. She's popular, I'm not. She gets along with everyone, and I struggle talking to people. I can't believe I ever even thought we were related. She's exactly like Mom, and I'm nothing-"

"No, Ri, don't say that," he says sternly, making her cry even more. "You're amazing, baby girl. And I'm saying this as someone who has the decency in their heart to be completely truthful. Because you are amazing. And you're talented and cute and friendly and you respect everyone no matter what. You're perfect-"

"If I'm perfect then why did my biological parents give me up?"

"I don't know the answer to that," he tells her solemnly, wiping away her tears and raising her head with a light finger to direct her pupils to meeting his. "But I do know that giving you up would be the biggest mistake a person could ever make. And if your parents could see you now and witness the gorgeous, warm-hearted, spectacular girl you've become, they'd regret not being there for you all your life. Because I know that I definitely do. I'm sorry, Ri," he tells her with full sincerity. "For everything. I never meant to cheat on you, but I'm here now. I don't want to ever leave you again."

"Why are you even saying this? You've moved onto Beth and we're not together anymore," she says, but as constructed as what she had just said was, James finds a fault in her statement and shakes his head.

"If we're not together anymore, then why did you come here in the first place?" 

Riley doesn't answer, just sighs and curls up even closer to him, tangling their limbs together and resting her head on his shoulder whilst he hugs her tightly. They both ignore the fact they weren't officially back together, but instead focus on the fact that they were by each other's sides in that particular moment as Riley puts together an answer to his previous question.

"It's because I love you," she whispers to James so quietly that he wasn't even sure she had said it, or even if he had heard it right. Her heart beats inside her chest as she waits for him to correspond and say the same back. After all; the first 'I love yous' were what could make or break a relationship, and the petite brunette was unsure of whether their own relationship was even worth fighting for still. 

But then he says it:

"I love you too," he tells her. Riley relaxes in his warm arms, his touch comforting and soothing her until she was coaxed into a peaceful slumber, and as he watched her gradually fall asleep, he hushed his voice and switched off his light, turning off the tv in his room and tucking the girl into the covers before cuddling up next to her. "I love you," he repeats, kissing her nose. "More than anything."

Then out of the blue, he hears her respond:

"So do I," before she reaches up and pulls him in for a kiss, their lips connecting and not breaking contact for many moments until they were desperate to pull away. 

"I want you back, Ri," he says, but she doesn't say anything to that, just keeps her head buried in his chest, her arms straddling his torso.