Roommates With Benefits [BL]

For three full seconds, Damien’s smile vanished from his face. Three beautiful, glorious seconds where I felt like I was ahead in some unseen game, even if I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I was winning.

But then, just like that, it returned...not wider or more exaggerated, but somehow better positioned, like it intended to stick around.

”Oh,” he said. Just that, two neutral letters, delivered with the kind of leisurely tone of someone who’s just had a thought and is weighing how much to relish it.

Right then, I knew I’d messed up. The kind of mistake you make just before a situation spirals into a complicated mess, way more tangled than it was thirty seconds prior.

”Oh?” I echoed, wary, like I was trying to make sense of an unfamiliar noise in the dark.

”Nothing.”

”It’s obviously something.”

”It isn’t.”

”It is.”

”It isn’t.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. He mirrored my expression, which shouldn’t have been as infuriating as it was, yet here we stood. The standoff stretched for about five seconds — enough time for me to conclude that whatever was brewing in his mind had a structure and a timeline, and I was almost certainly a part of it without having agreed to anything.

I pointed at him. ”You’re plotting.”

”Am I now?” he questioned, as casually as someone talking about the weather.

I opened my mouth to keep arguing but he cut me off. He let out a dramatic sigh, one that screamed of a man performing for an audience he believed deserved the show.

”I suppose I have no choice now.”

Every instinct I had started shouting at me. ”No choice for what?”

Damien reached into his sweatpants pocket.

...why did I feel like I had just fallen into a trap of his?

My already high suspicion shot up even more. I watched his hand, his expression, the way he composed himself, which seemed to shift into something deliberate and pleased, like he was about to unveil a secret.

When he pulled out two shiny tickets, my mind went blank, totally derailed.

I eyed him, ”What are those?”

His smile widened just a touch, clearly reveling in the moment.

”The solution,” he said.

”I don’t like that answer.”

”You weren’t meant to.”

He held the tickets between two fingers, and I couldn’t stop staring, first at them, then with more intensity as my brain processed what I was seeing.

VIP tickets? Those were VIP tickets, the kind of hockey tickets that screamed someone had splurged an insane amount of cash. Not your regular tickets with decent views, but ones that fell into an entirely different category, seats that cost more than my monthly grocery budget, bought by people who look at large sums of money and feel nothing at all.

My eyes widened uncontrollably.

”Damn, where in the world did you get those?”

Damien looked genuinely offended for a moment, like he couldn’t believe someone would suggest he got them through less than straightforward means. ”I bought them.”

”Of course you bought them.”

”How else would I have gotten them?”

”I don’t know,” I shot back. ”Maybe hockey fairies.”

A pause. ”Hockey fairies.”

”Don’t focus on that.”

His mouth twitched, a familiar expression I had noted and resented. He placed the tickets on the counter between us slowly, deliberately, timing it just right, like he understood the weight of his props. They looked expensive and significant, like a problem I hadn’t seen coming.

”What does this have to do with anything?” I asked.

I wanted to keep arguing, but I also couldn’t take my eyes off the tickets, glossy and VIP, they kept drawing me back in like a magnet.

He tapped them lightly with one finger. My gaze followed the movement almost against my will.

Traitor eyes. Absolute traitor eyes.

”Since you refuse to apologize,” he started.

”I do,” I confirmed. ”Refuse, completely and without exception.”

”You seem proud of that.”

”I am.”

”You shouldn’t be.”

”Too bad, I don’t even care if it makes me look immature. If I don’t want to apologize, then I won’t.”

He shook his head slowly, the expression somehow balancing disappointment and amusement, along with something warmer underneath... which was entirely unfair and shouldn’t have been possible on one human face.

”I’ve decided you’ll need to make it up to me instead.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, bursting out loud before I could stop myself. ”Make it up to you?”

”Yes.”

”For what?”

”My emotional distress.”

I stared at him, letting that phrase hang in the air as I mulled it over. ”Emotional distress.”

”You heard me.”

I laughed again, louder this time, because saying anything else would mean acknowledging feelings I wasn’t ready to confront.

Fuck...this guy might actually kill me.

”You’ve lived for about twenty years looking like that,” I said, gesturing at him like it was obvious, ”and you want me to believe you’ve felt emotional distress.”

Damien’s eyebrow lifted slowly and deliberately. ”That’s your argument?”

”It’s an excellent argument.”

”It really isn’t.”

”It is to me.”

His eyes shifted slightly, a softening that happened quickly and without warning, something resembling affection that was the most dangerous thing they could have done right then, and I needed him to stop.

Then he slid the tickets toward me across the counter with the calm deliberation of someone who’s already thought three steps ahead of the game.

And that’s when everything went sideways.

”Take me out on a date,” he said.

I stared at him. The phrase landed in my brain, which had been running on a specific track lately, and it processed the words in the least rational way possible.

My heart staged an emergency drill. ”...what?”

”Take me out.” He repeated it, same tone, same calm pace as if he hadn’t just set off a bomb in my chest. ”On a date.”

The ensuing silence felt thick. It stretched between us long enough to develop its own meaning, long enough for my face to betray me in ways I hadn’t authorized, and for the warmth in the kitchen to feel significantly more intense.

I stared at him at him like he’d suddenly grown two heads and sprouted a pair of tinkerbell wings.

No, he didn’t just say that. I must have heard wrong...

Then:

”There’s absolutely no way you just said that.”

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’𝔰

melanie: *takes oliver out on a date*😊

damien: you’re not the only one who can do that😎