enemies to lovers one shots

habits

I'd done this a thousand times, I knew what to do. Sneak in, sneak out. That was all. Yet for some reason, my heart was pounding crazily. I'd never been this nervous before, never.

I sat back behind the bush we were hiding behind, taking in a shuddering breath. My eyes squeezed shut as I repeated the words to myself.

In and out. In and out.

He grabbed the hand I'd placed on my leg. "Stop that!" he hissed.

I glanced at his angry face in surprise. "What?"

He pointed towards my hands in disgust, "That... thing you do with your hands when you're nervous. Twitching them against your leg."

"What?" I asked dumbly. I stared at my hands, I had no clue what he was talking about.

He sighed, "What are you, deaf?"

I glared at him. Ever the jerk. 

No matter how many times I attempted to be amicable, to even offer a truce between us, he'd shove me away. It wasn't like I was pleased to be in this situation either, why would I want to spend my days working under some cold-hearted brute?

"Your right hand always twitches against your thigh in some weird pattern," he held up his hand placing it on the ground and moving his fingers in a beat. 

I stared in surprise as I recognized the motion. 

"I don't know if it's a code or something but it drives me crazy," he spoke, dusting his hands off.

It was a code. One I'd grown up learning from Papa. I stared at my own fingers - they looked foreign. I hadn't known I'd been doing it though. How had he noticed it?

Papa had taught me the finger-code when I was five. We'd talk at the dinner table, our silent words hidden from Mama and my sister. 

There was one phrase though, I'd started to use when I had trouble in school. And when Papa used after he'd gotten sick and couldn't leave his bed. 

Tap the middle finger twice, click it with the pointer, slide the pinky. 

I'm okay. 

He'd done it even as he died, even as he barely had the energy to look at us. 

"It is a code," I whispered, suddenly overcome by emotion. I didn't like thinking about Papa, about any of my memories before the Order. People here weren't like me or my family.

People like him. 

"What does it mean?" he asked, gray eyes looking across at me. 

It felt like a betrayal to tell him, a breaking of mine and Papa's code, so I ignored his question.

"When did you notice it?" I asked, impressed that he'd even been able to tell in the first place. The code was always a subtle motion - unnoticeable. 

"Back at camp," he said after a second of thought, "When we first arrived."

I looked at him in surprise. Camp? Back when he hated me? He could barely stand me now, but before he barely even spoke to me. 

"How..." I was speechless.

"You have a lot of habits," he shrugged, "You tug your hair when you're waiting for something, bite your cheek when you're angry... and when you're happy, you smile from your eyes."

My mouth opened slightly. He spoke as though his observations were normal, as though this were something anyone knew about me. 

I didn't think he paid any attention to me, but he'd given me more thought than I'd expected. 

"What?" he asked, staring at my startled face.

I shook my head with a light laugh, "I don't know how you know those things about me. I don't even know some of them."

His face hardened and he turned away from me, staring stoically at the castle. "Let's focus," he said gruffly, "It's almost time."

I should have been offended, or at least slightly upset. But I didn't even mind his rudeness right now. All I could think about was his words. He could yell at me, fight me, insult me, ignore me. It didn't matter. He couldn't take back the words that had just left his mouth. The ones that told me more than enough about him. About us. 

He cared.