Roommates With Benefits [BL]

A week.

That was how long we had been on the island, which was long enough for me to develop several concerning habits, including sleeping until I felt like waking up, eating food I couldn’t pronounce, and expecting someone to appear whenever I became mildly inconvenienced.

I had also developed a dangerous attachment to the ocean. More specifically, I had developed an attachment to sitting beside it while somebody else did all the work.

I still wasn’t convinced swimming was necessary.

I had nearly drowned once, and I felt that should count as a perfectly reasonable reason to retire from aquatic activities permanently.

Damien disagreed. He had spent the past week trying to convince me that I could, in fact, learn how to swim if I stopped behaving like the ocean had personally insulted me.

I maintained that the ocean had done nothing to earn my trust, and that until it apologized, we were simply going to coexist from a respectful distance.

The week itself had passed far too quickly.

There had been mornings where we stayed in bed until the sunlight was already high in the sky, afternoons spent on the beach, evenings wandering around the property, and nights where we talked until neither of us could remember what we’d originally been discussing.

There had been arguments over food, arguments over whether I was allowed to call the island ”unnecessarily rich,” and at least one very serious disagreement about whether Damien’s coffee-making skills were actually good or whether I had simply been too tired to complain properly.

There had also been moments that I knew I would remember long after we left.

Damien surfing while I pretended not to stare. The first night I realized how completely relaxed he seemed here. The way he’d laughed when I nearly drowned. The way he’d held me afterward, still smiling while I threatened to sue him for emotional damages. The late-night post-sex conversations we’d had in the bedroom with the doors open to the ocean, the sound of waves filling every pause between us.

And everything else that had happened behind those closed doors.

I wasn’t going to think about that. Not while I was trying to have a civilized dinner.

Damien laughed even more here. He smiled more. He touched me constantly without seeming to realize he was doing it, small absent gestures that felt more intimate than anything deliberate could have been.

Sometimes I’d catch him looking at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, and whenever I asked what he was staring at, he’d simply say, ”Nothing.”

Which was a lie.

A very attractive lie.

But still a lie.

That evening, the staff had prepared dinner on the terrace overlooking the ocean.

And when I say prepared dinner, I mean they’d apparently decided we were royalty.

There was a long table covered with a white cloth, candles flickering in glass holders, plates arranged with the kind of precision that made me afraid to touch anything, and flowers scattered down the center like someone had raided an entire garden purely for our benefit.

The ocean stretched beyond us, darkening beneath the evening sky while the last traces of sunlight painted the horizon in shades of orange and pink.

It was beautiful.

Suspiciously beautiful.

The kind of beautiful that made me feel like somebody should have warned I was going to get proposed to or whatever.

I looked down at myself. I was wearing a dark button-up shirt Damien had convinced me to pack, along with black trousers.

I had even allowed him to fix my hair, smoothing down the strands I usually left to their own chaotic devices.

This was serious.

I looked across the table. Damien was dressed in a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms, and his hair was slightly tousled by the breeze, the kind of effortless handsome that made me deeply suspicious he practiced it in a mirror somewhere.

I stared at him for a second too long and as usual he caught me. ”You’re staring.”

I immediately picked up my glass. ”I’m evaluating.”

”Again?”

”It’s an important skill.”

His mouth twitched. ”What exactly are you evaluating?”

”Your outfit.”

”And?”

I took a sip. ”Acceptable.”

He laughed softly. ”You’ve been here a week and you’re still pretending you aren’t impressed by anything.”

”I’m very impressed.”

”Really?”

”Yes.”

”By what?”

I gestured vaguely around us. ”The food.”

He gave me a look.

”The view.”

Another look.

”The bed.”

His eyebrow lifted.

I cleared my throat, feeling heat crawl up my neck. ”And the other amenities.”

”Other amenities?”

”Stop looking at me like that.”

”I’m just trying to figure out what amenities you’re referring to.”

”You know exactly what I’m referring to.”

His smirk widened, I pointed my fork at him. ”Don’t you fucking dare.”

”I didn’t say anything.”

”You were about to.”

He laughed again, and I found myself smiling despite myself, despite the fact that I was supposedly the one under interrogation.

This was exactly what I had wanted.

A quiet dinner, just the two of us.

Just Damien and me, sitting beside the ocean like we were normal people who hadn’t somehow ended up on a private island because one of us had the financial resources of a small country.

Except there was something else I had wanted from tonight.

Something I’d been thinking about for the past several days. I’d rehearsed it several times, in my head, in the shower, once while brushing my teeth.

And, unfortunately, once while standing in front of a mirror looking like an idiot, mouthing the words to nobody and immediately deciding I would never, under any circumstances, do that again.

I love you.

I had never said those words before.

Not to anyone.

I’d dated girls before, sure. I’d liked people. I’d thought I loved people.

But I’d never actually said it. I’d never looked at someone and willingly made myself that vulnerable, handed over the one sentence that could be used against me forever if things went wrong.

And now I wanted to...tonight.

I wanted to tell Damien I loved him. I wanted to ask him to be my boyfriend.

Technically, we’d already crossed every possible line between ”roommates” and ”something else,” but apparently my brain had decided we needed an official label before it could rest, some formal declaration to make it feel real instead of just something that had happened to us by some crazy as fuck accident.

The problem was that every time I tried to say it, my courage abandoned me somewhere between my chest and my mouth, leaving the words stranded halfway.

I had spent the entire week building myself up...tonight, I was going to do it.

I looked across the table again.

Damien was watching me.

”What?”

”You’ve been quiet, got something on your mind, Sunshine.”

I looked down, he was right as usual. My fork was sitting in my hand and the food was untouched.

”I was thinking.” I began.

”About?”

”Stuff.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, that familiar look of a man calculating an angle I hadn’t given him yet. ”Oliver.”

”Damien.”

”What’s wrong?”

”Nothing.”

He leaned back slightly, studying me with the kind of focus he usually reserved for contracts and family arguments.

I knew that look.

He was trying to figure me out...normally, I enjoyed that because finally someone was making an effort to understand the fucked up mess that I was.

Tonight, I wanted to throw myself into the ocean, drowning skills be damned.

”You’re nervous,” he said.

Looks like he nailed the understanding part.

”I’m not.” I denied.

”You are.”

”I’m perfectly calm.”

”You’ve been rubbing your thumb against your glass for the last five minutes.”

I looked down. My thumb was, indeed, rubbing against the glass in slow, anxious circles, it stopped immediately.

”That’s not enough evidence.”

”It is.” He smiled. ”You’re cute when you’re nervous.”

I groaned. ”Don’t call me cute. I’m trying to have a serious conversation.”