take it how you want it (take on my love) // carmuel one-shots

4+1

description: this started out as a "four times they shared a bed or something similar to one" type of thing and then i got hit with writer's block and it became messy, so do with this what you will lol

rating: teen

//

The couch's cushions are sunken in with years and years of use. They're also stained in some places; a splotch the color of wine here, something white and dubious there, but considering what they've just done on the thing, Carla supposes she's hardly in a place to complain. It's a narrow piece of furniture—so narrow that it warrants Samuel having to hold her close with an arm around her waist to keep her from falling right off the edge, and she doesn't know exactly why they hadn't gone to his room, except that, also, a little part of her does.

They'd stumbled into Samuel's apartment in a tangle of arms and legs and tongues, breaths mingling, hands wandering, and somewhere in the back of Carla's mind, she'd thought, this is a lot. It was only her second time with a boy she'd hardly paid any attention to before he deemed it necessary by asking stupid questions whose answers lay right under his nose, and yet her blood had sang as he pushed her up against the wall dividing the kitchen and grazed his fingers down her hips. It was distracting. It was dizzying. It was a lot.

Too much. But it was also easy to blame that all on everything else and not on how intensely Samuel did or didn't make her feel, and it was easy to shrug him out of his plain jacket and then peel him out of his uglier shirt, push him down onto the ottoman near the window, and appreciate how the moonlight cut across his abs and their spit on his bottom lip.

Somewhere in the middle, sometime after she'd thought this is a lot for the hundredth time and said it's weird, no? for the first, they'd ended up on the couch. And now here Carla is, her back pressed to Samuel's front, feeling his steady heart thumping against her spine. Their legs are entwined, their heads are sharing the same pillow. Carla has no fucking idea how she's not uncomfortable, but she isn't.

Samuel's lips graze the nape of her neck just slightly, and she has no clue why she isn't at all.

Because it is weird. The two of them, in this apartment. The two of them, period. What the hell is she even still doing here? They had their fun, Samuel's too fucked out to bother with his amateur investigation at the moment, and now her job's done, at least, for now. She should go home.

Almost like he knows what's going through her head, Samuel's arm squeezes around her midsection. "What are you thinking so hard about?"

He sounds half-asleep already, voice low and gravelly. She's just glad that he can't see her face, because it makes her smile a little.

Honesty works with him, she knows, but honesty is something she only offers when the light is hitting him just right, when he's looking at her just so, or when she's drunk. So she lies, smile morphing into a smirk. "What I'm going to wear tomorrow."

"Yeah, must be a real tough decision, having to pick between a blue or gray blazer."

"Some of us like to accessorize beyond fifty beaded bracelets and a cheap silver chain, Samuel."

He laughs, a soft, quiet thing huffed against her skin; he seems to like it when she teases him, flirts with the right side of too mean before drifting away, and she likes that he likes it. She's grinning.

And then she isn't, because a handful of seconds later, he murmurs, "My mom won't be back until the morning," and she's aware of exactly what he's getting at.

Maybe he did know what she'd been thinking about, after all, and was just asking because he wanted to see if she'd actually tell him. He seems to like doing that, too—however, it only works on her under the same circumstances where she's willing to offer up honesty.