Mr Van der Linde | Dutch x Reader

Year I - Term II

Summary: You visit John's family home once again and spend more time with Mr Van der Linde than you'd expected.

Chapter word count: 7,062

You were more than excited to be returning to the Van der Linde's once again, especially now you'd gotten over your girlish crush on Mr Van der Linde himself. Or so you thought.

Abigail had suggested an Easter ski trip, and you made an excuse to get out of it, not wanting to admit that you just couldn't justify the expense. Money was tight enough, without blowing hundreds on a week away in the snow which truthfully, you wouldn't enjoy much anyway since you didn't know how to ski. John didn't want to go either, you didn't know why but you told yourself he had a fear of heights, or the snow, much like his fear of water. It probably wasn't true, but you amused yourself at the thought and made sure to tease him about it.

What it did lead to was John inviting you to stay with him for the week and of course you said yes because how could you say no.

Truthfully, John's father slipped out of your thoughts relatively quickly and was replaced by thoughts of your family and friends at home and how much you'd missed them. It was only when you got back to university and John handed you a bag filled with portions of frozen lasagne that had apparently been left over from his own batch that Dutch had made for him, that he re-entered your mind and niggled at your thoughts every time you reheated one of them for your meals. You'd briefly seen him over John's shoulder on facetime and thanked him profusely for the food.

Despite John driving like a lunatic, you managed to get some sleep on the journey over; you were exhausted since you'd not only been at work the night before, but you'd also had two lectures and a lab that day. Whoever timetabled a three-hour lab on a Friday afternoon was surely a descendant of Satan himself.

You woke with a start and the first thing you saw was John laughing outside the car after slamming his door shut to wake you.

"What did I ever do to you?" you grumbled, pushing the door open and walking round to the boot to grab your suitcase.

Déjà vu hit you at the same time the cloud of smoke from his cigarette did as he blew it in your face, and you batted it away before shoving him.

The house was quiet when you entered, void of life and you asked John where everyone was. He explained that Tilly was staying with Arthur because his father was out of town on business, and wouldn't be back until Sunday evening. Three days from now. You couldn't push away that small part of you that was disappointed, and you told yourself it was because you just liked his family. Sure. Seems plausible. On the other hand, John was ecstatic at the prospect of a free house and had already messaged a few friends from home to come around for beers that night. You drank a bit with them, but soon excused yourself after a chain of yawns thanks to late night shifts and day-long university work.

The two of you relaxed mostly for the next couple of days, going for lunch with Javier one afternoon and having half of a film marathon the next. For all that John was, he was a good friend and understood how much you needed to rest and do nothing. But on Saturday night, when he held up two joints and wiggled his brows at you, you couldn't say no.

He promised you it was okay to smoke in the small garden house, which was big enough to hold a few chairs and a table and had a big glass window covering the wall facing the back of the main house, so there you were. The sun had set, and it had only taken an hour for the two of you to be as high as kites as you chatted and laughed.

"I can't believe you've still not asked her out," you thought out loud, leaning back in your chair and passing the joint over to him.

"Abigail?" his eyebrows rose in forced surprise, and you didn't show the eye-roll you'd been tempted to display at his blatantly obvious attempt at hiding his feelings. Nothing had changed since the start of term, the two of them getting drunk and staying with each other but not taking it further than that. You'd grown friendly with Abigail, initially she'd wanted to get close to you for advice on John but that soon turned into a sisterhood of sorts between the two of you. Karen had taken pity on her, you'd both half-assumed she'd get over her crush on John but it didn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. "She's... nice enough, I guess. But I'm not the relationship type."