fake it til you make it | greta van fleet

a lover's plight | three

Waking up beside Sam again was a weird sensation.

You woke up to his hair in your mouth, a feeling you'd grown far too used to, and his leg wrapped so tightly around your waist your own legs were going numb. His head was buried between the two pillows that were fighting to stay on the twin-sized bed, and both of his arms were pinned beneath his body.

Your own body was barely on the mattress, and you were fairly certain the only reason you'd managed to stay on it was due to the vice grip he had around you with his leg. For a few moments, you just laid there. It was peaceful having him invading your space like this.

After five years of only sleeping alone on the rare occasion, the two of you spent a night apart, it had been extremely difficult to adjust to sleeping alone night after night. Sometimes, since the breakup, you wondered if you'd set yourself up for failure all along. The two of you had taken your relationship to such a serious place so early in life.

You went from kids sneaking into each other's bedrooms in the middle of the night, straight to living together. The moment the two of you had graduated and saved up enough money, you'd gone right out and put down a deposit on a shitty one-bedroom apartment. You never had the experience of living on your own, of being out in the world all by yourself, because Sam had always been there.

"Sam," you murmured, sweeping the mess of hair aside until you could see his face, "wake up."

He grumbled quietly, burying his face further into the mattress and wiggling until he freed his arms from beneath his stomach. "Go back to sleep," he groaned, and one limp arm fell across your body as he covered your face with his hand, "it's too early."

Sam never had been much of a morning person, and you were well acquainted with his antics. With a sigh, you brushed his hand off of your face before fighting to untangle yourself from his leg. The only issue was that the moment you freed yourself, your weight slipped over the edge and you crashed to the floor with a grunt.

Your hip ached, and you winced as you rubbed your elbow which you'd landed on. Sam's head popped over the edge of the bed, his eyes barely squinted open, and he croaked, "Are you okay?" As soon as you nodded, he was flopping back onto the pillows and drifting right back to sleep.

Josh was surprisingly the only one awake when you managed to drag yourself out of the shower and get dressed. He was nursing a cup of coffee as he leaned back against the counter, and you watched with a little grin as he yawned dramatically. "Couch city not treating you well, Joshua?" you teased, and he scowled.

You knew there had to be a reason why he was up so early, typically the one to sleep the latest (pairing well with his uncanny ability to be late to everything in general). He moved his arm to set his mug on the counter beside himself and winced, immediately rubbing at his neck as he grumbled, "Jake beat me to the one in the basement, so I'm stuck in the living room on the one that's–"

"As hard as a rock, yeah." you laughed, your eyes drifting through the doorway toward the small sofa that was pleasing to the eye but not so much to the body. "I can sleep on it tonight if you want to bunk with Sam, that way you know you're safe from hearing anything with those virgin ears of yours."

Josh narrowed his eyes, a speculative look flashing across his face as you inspected you a little too closely, "It was awfully quiet last night, I noticed. You and Sammy usually can't keep your hands to yourselves."

You swallowed thickly, your heart kicking into second gear and beating a little faster as you grew nervous under his gaze. The two of you had been diligent in putting on a show for his family the day before, and you'd lied to your best friend with great difficulty–you refused to let this be the thing that gave you away. So, with a smirk that would have put even Jake's to shame, you shrugged, "We've gotten pretty good about being quiet. Believe it or not, Josh, we're not sixteen anymore."