Livre: One Shots

[46] it's looking like one of those nights

The fact that the chapters are 1 off from even by the end of each week has been driving me slightly insane (OCD probs?) so here is another chapter! Happy reading.

PROMPT: Can you do another board game or video game one where Karlie loses and she's super mad and stubborn about it because she's so competitive?

From my inbox on here. :)

-/-

Taylor has been lying on the couch in the darkness for almost three hours.

Not sleeping. Despite the pillow and blanket tossed to him by her girlfriend when she banished her from their bedroom with a snarky "I don't sleep with cheaters," she cannot fall asleep.

It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. But Taylor has to admit this isn't the first time this has ever happened.

What's even more frustrating is that the couch in their apartment den is actually comfortable. It's plush and welcoming and it's not even too short for him to stretch her 5′10″ frame out. She's spent hours napping soundly here before.

There's no reason she should be having trouble falling asleep right now.

It's just –- she really hates it when Karlie is mad at her.

She legitimately cannot calm her mind when she knows things aren't okay between them. And they're obviously not, or she wouldn't be on the damn couch for the night. Over a stupid video game.

Groaning, Taylor rolls off the couch and onto her feet. She leaves the blanket in a crumpled heap, but grabs the pillow. She's not trying to be stealthy, but makes very little noise as she pads up the sets of stairs and down the hall towards their bedroom. Years of habit and a benefit is that she'll most likely be able to observe her girlfriend when she's not aware of her presence. Karlie calls it creepy. She smiles at one of Karlie's funniest remarks, "'Now I wake up in the night and watch you breathe.' Taylor, you really couldn't have written a different lyric? Out of the years of dating this is it? "

The door to the darkened bedroom is cracked, and she pushes it further, peering into the interior lit only by faint, refracted light from the street.

Karlie is curled in a little ball, half under the blanket. It's unusual –- she typically sprawls across the bed, hitting her with limbs and rolling herself into knots under the sheets. Tonight, though, she's lying on Taylor's side of the bed. The uncomfortable tightness in Taylor's chest that's been there since their ridiculous, childlike fight earlier finally loosens.

She moves to the bed quickly, dumping her pillow above Karlie's head. This close, she can see she's sleeping in her henley, and whatever reservations she had about ignoring her instructions to get her ass to the couch disappears. She only resorts to sleeping in Taylor's clothes when she misses her.

Carefully, Taylor leans down and scoops her up which isn't the easiest thing to do. She murmurs something and turns her face into Taylor's chest. So Taylor turns and sits on the bed, easing further onto the mattress and reorienting herself before lying back and pulling her along so she can settle against her comfortably.

It's that last movement that finally wakes her.

"What's chocolate?" she asks, and she huffs a soft laugh into her hair. Karlie does not wake gracefully. Or coherently most times. Her first words every morning are usually nonsense sprinkled with random references.

"Sorry," she says, "no chocolate."

She grumbles a little and tilts her head back, blinking up at Taylor. "'M'still mad at you." Her head is resting on Taylor's shoulder, her fingers drawing little patterns against the singer's abdomen.