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forasecondtherewedwon · 2 years

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Swimming the Sonoran

Fandom: Never Have I Ever Pairing: Devi Vishwakumar/Paxton Hall-Yoshida Rating: M Word Count: 5133

Summary: She’s here, taking her sweet-ass time meandering through every floor of every Arizona State dorm, because she’s too overachieving to permit loose ends in her decreasingly unravelling life. And because it’s hitting her that she really made Kamala drive nearly 400 miles for this and she might not be able to leave if she doesn’t get a chance to see his face.

You throw your mom one bone at the beginning of summer (basically promising not to abandon her by going to the Colorado Hippie School for Confident Dweebs), Devi thinks, and by the end of summer, she’ll let you do just about any goddamn thing you want. She wishes she’d figured this out years ago. She could’ve gotten a nose piercing way sooner! She could’ve gone to freakin’ Coachella or something, making flirty eye contact with drunk dudes with pretty contacts and scuzzy beards and swaying along to Rozzi with rich, bored, art-school burnouts on Molly.

At least she knows now—she knows the leash her mom’s had her on her whole life has the flexibility to stretch to multiple states if school’s involved. She knows that losing Kamala to the apartment complex from hell (indisputably filled with terrifying, convincingly demonic, child actors) has paid unexpected dividends. Who would’ve guessed a little bit of space would’ve made her mom trust Kamala that much more, and, more importantly, get her to entrust Kamala with Devi’s care for an entire week spent roaming the southwest?

With Mr. K along for the ride this weekend, flying into Phoenix to join them, the dynamic’s shifted, and though it’s disgusting to explore campuses while her cousin and teacher hold hands and probably make plans to befoul a hotel room later, it has its perks. With them focused on each other, Devi’s leash gets a little longer; they don’t hover as much as her mom would, instead allowing her to sit in on summer-term lectures and take residence tours by herself while they go off and stare at each other over iced coffee, or whatever passes for foreplay in Arizona.

Devi’s dream school is still Princeton, but ever since Shrubland, she’s tried to be more open to options she would either have dismissed or only fleetingly considered. These options include non-Ivies. They include remaining in states bordering the one in which her loveably overbearing relatives live. They include (and she thinks she’s being stealthy about it) visiting the colleges where her studly ex-boyfriends will be starting classes in about a week’s time.

…Ok, she only has one ex-boyf fitting that description (No shade, Des, she thinks, you were smokin’… just, like, on a level more familiar to humans) and she’s not even sure he’s moved into residence yet, and if they do bump into each other, she’s going to be bending over fucking backwards pretending it’s a funny coincidence, but still… she’s making the most of it. When in Arizona, check in on your ex to reassure yourself that he’s still hot and you once had the opportunity, though forever unseized, to hit that?

Though they are friends, or whatever. Maybe once upon a time they knew each other kinda carnally (Carnally LiteTM?), and maybe, in the extremely chill hours and hours she’s devoted to reflecting on it since the seniors’ graduation, she’s very casually come to the conclusion that Paxton shouting her out in a big way during his address to the graduating class was actually a huge goddamn deal. Like, there was a time when he didn’t want anyone to know he knew her, and he left Sherman Oaks announcing how important she is to him—announcing it to everyone. Even if they’re friends, which they are, that was sort of a masterclass, mic-drop, ball’s-in-your-court-Devi moment.

So she misses him! That’s allowed! There was an extended period of avoidance after their breakup, but with his best friend dating one of her best friends, they spent more and more time together over the summer. Always in a group, always exchanging quips that remained carefully on the safe side of flirting, but it was nice. It’s already not the same without him, and Devi expects the first week back at school to be hard, constantly remembering that she won’t run into him in the halls. They’ve come so far, gone through so much, and who’s to say that it’s totally over? Some stupid college? For Trent’s sake, she’s been smiling tightly and nodding along when he talks about the strength of his and Paxton’s friendship, how the distance can, respectfully, suck his dick (his turn of phrase). On the inside, she’s terrified that college is where high school friendships go to die. It’s like that fake farm parents tell their gullible kids their aging pets went to live on. Devi knows better. Devi knows nothing can replace proximity, especially when you haven’t said everything you could ever possibly want to say, or done everything you could ever possibly want to do.

She’s here, taking her sweet-ass time meandering through every floor of every Arizona State dorm, because she’s too overachieving to permit loose ends in her decreasingly unravelling life. And because it’s hitting her that she really made Kamala drive nearly 400 miles for this and she might not be able to leave if she doesn’t get a chance to see his face.

Devi doesn’t know his dorm or his floor, let alone his room number, and yet crazier things have happened to her than leaning against the wall for a breather (she’s been sitting in the car for a week—it’s not like she’s in marathon shape) and hearing her name said by just the right voice, in just the right way.

“Devi Vishwakumar?”

She springs away from the wall with wide eyes, turning to see Paxton striding up the hallway. She breaks into a smile, her eyebrows twitching upwards with hope and yearning and it’s-only-been-a-couple-weeks-and-we-texted-like-four-days-ago-but-hi. The way he moves has changed: his walk is a little less confident in this new school, but he holds his head high, knowing he deserves the chance to find his place here.

“Miss me already?” Paxton asks, his head cocking with the playfulness she’s missed and his own smile tugging up on one side.

The guess is so dead-on that it trips her up. Not knowing what to say, Devi just swallows and nods like she could be indulging him.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he says. He looks stunned, but happy—really, genuinely happy.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t have anything better to do.” She shrugs into the hug Paxton wraps her in, her hands light on the sloping shoulder blades she can feel through his t-shirt.

He steps back, brushing a hand over her shoulder in a gesture of above-average fondness, and Devi has to work not to grab it in hers. His hugs still fluster her. They’re friends, but he’ll always be the Paxton Hall-Yoshida. He’s a well-rounded volunteer and brother and former competitive swimmer and ASU freshman, but he’ll always be hot as fuck. Not everything changes.

“You touring the campus or…?” Paxton starts, squinting slightly as he tries to understand her. The hilarious thing is that he does, a hell of a lot better than most people.

Devi nods, again, agreeing to the spoken and unspoken assumptions. Or are you just here for me? Admitting that out loud would be… a lot. It’s not like that—that she’s pining for him in some romantic way. You can miss your friends! It’s super normal to have to repeatedly justify that fact to yourself, while staring at caring brown eyes and a mouth you used to kiss!

“I didn’t know you were looking at any Arizona colleges.”

“Might as well, right? It couldn’t hurt to apply.”

“Devi, come on.” His smile is criminally persuasive. “You’re getting into Princeton. How many backup schools do you need?”

She blushes and lowers her eyes sheepishly for a second. When she glances back up, she catches Paxton staring at her, his mouth held in this way that makes her think he was about to say something else, something unrelated to her overcautious approach to post-secondary education. But he presses his lips together and smiles and she dismisses the urge to anxiously tuck her hair behind her ear.

“You know what?” he says. “You know what you’re doing. Trust your own judgement.”

Devi grins.

“Thanks.” Her eyes dart to a sign on the nearest door, a sign that says his name. How the heck did she miss that? “So, you been here long?”

“Two days since my family dropped me off. Rebecca spent the whole trip telling me how she’s going to turn my bedroom into fabric storage.”

“Damn. That girl does not wait a minute. Respect.”

Paxton laughs, then his face softens into something more vulnerable.

“Maybe you guys could hang out when you have time. I mean, she’s busy, and she’s great at making friends when she isn’t insulting someone’s fashion designs to their face, but she likes you, and I…” He takes a second and then finishes, “I like knowing you’re there for each other when I can’t be.”

“Can’t be?” Devi yanks her head back, face scrunched with doubt. “We’re literally a text away. I can’t believe you’re making me of all people say this, but don’t be so dramatic.”

When he laughs again, the laugh is gentle with her, not critical or cruel. It’s another way to say that he knows her. It’s a promise that her more emotionally intense moments are not too much, like the recurring fear she confessed to her mom. For a moment, she gets lost in a way she hasn’t on this campus, ASU map pulled up on her phone: lost in the safety of him. She’s come 400 miles to feel like she’s home.

She jerks her chin towards the other name on the sign: Ethan.

“How’s the roommate?”

“Nonexistent.”

“Huh?”

“Turns out he withdrew,” Paxton explains. “The housing people have already got somebody else assigned to the spot that was his, but they’re only coming up from Tucson, so they don’t care about moving in early.”

“Nobody’s… home then?” Devi wonders, voice drifting high as she rocks up on the toes of her sneakers.

“You wanna see my room?” he teases.

“Yes.”

She says it bluntly because she’s had this guy on top of her, felt the press of his interest against her thigh even though he did his polite best to keep his hips at a hovering distance when they made out; she’s not gonna faint at the sight of his rumpled bedspread and a pair of boxers hanging over the side of a laundry hamper.

“If that’s ok,” Devi adds. “And if you don’t have to be somewhere.”

Paxton smiles and shakes his head.

“I have nowhere to be,” he promises.

“Great,” she says, the word sounding nervous to her, though hopefully not to Paxton. It’s not nervous like I’ve seen some horrible statistics about the things that happen to female college students in the dorm rooms of their male peers. It’s nervous like oh right, we haven’t been alone together in a while. Was the last time that night in her room? That opportunity for him to consider her lamp-scarf seduction tactics silly when he praised them instead? That minute or two that didn’t feel stolen until Des stepped into the doorway, face frosty with suspicion? If Devi’s voice is shaky, if her hands are twisting together and her face is getting warm, it’s because she remembers seeing the glow of candles through the tears Paxton tenderly swept from her lower lashes—and it’s not the tears she’s remembering so much as the touch.

“It’s kind of a mess,” Paxton warns with an apologetic smile, using his key card to swipe them into the room.

The room turns out to be a mini-suite, combo stove-less kitchen and living room when she steps through the door he holds open for her. There’s a door on either side of the personality-devoid couch that’s pushed against the opposite wall, and another one at the end. Devi assumes that’s the bathroom, and she excuses herself to use it when Paxton swipes open the door to his bedroom and she catches a sliver of the interior through the widening crack.

Inside, she pees, breathes, and checks her cheeks for mascara flakes. She looks at Paxton’s new tube of toothpaste and the disheveled, though coordinated, towels hung over the rail. This is different than waiting for him to climb through her window at home, or meeting him after school in his garage bedroom. Until his roommate arrives, this space is only his. Anyone who wants to come in has to knock, and he’s under no obligation to let them in. The wild freakin’ concept of total privacy!

“Friends,” Devi insists to her reflection. She walks out to meet Paxton in his bedroom.

Now that they’re in here, he looks about the same amount of nervous as she probably does (hella), standing awkwardly between the desk and the bed, hands stuffed in the front pockets of his jeans with his thumbs hooked out. She tries not to stare at his hands, then realizes she’s forced her gaze to his bed instead. In a panic, Devi blinks and looks at Paxton’s face. Only his face.

“You wanna sit?” he offers.

They both make for the desk chair, then lurch away, making for the bed instead. When that happens, they retreat again, both headed back to the chair, until Paxton releases a short laugh and grabs Devi lightly by the upper arms, steering her towards the end of the bed and backing into the chair himself. He lets out a laboured breath when he drops into it and, yeah, she knows. There shouldn’t be this much tension.

He sits across from her and laces his fingers together, then clamps his joined hands between his knees, leaning slightly towards her. He doesn’t actually prompt her to speak, but the words fly out of Devi’s mouth—the very un-thought-out words that immediately make her want to go sit in his closet and wait for death by embarrassment.

“I almost had sex with Ben in June,” is her kneejerk overshare. “I never, uh, told you that.”

Paxton’s face flinches with alarm.

“Shit. Are you ok?”

“Yep. It wasn’t, like, bad or anything,” Devi hastily backtracks, waving her hands as though she can wipe the first attempt out of the air. “I’m not traumatized by the near-miss. Or, no more traumatized than usual.”

She gives him a self-deprecating smile that he doesn’t return, looking even warier thanks to her brush-off reaction.

“You said you almost did?” he checks.

“We don’t have to talk about this! It’s weird! Forget I said anything!”

“We don’t if you don’t want to,” he agrees slowly, “but it’s not weird. If you need to talk to someone about this, it’s ok if it’s me.”

“Yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes, “but you’re my…” She trails off.

“I’m just…” Paxton smirks and plants his feet, then pushes off, rolling his wheely desk chair in her direction. “…someone who cares about you.”

She offers an uncertain smile, sitting up straighter at his proximity. He watches her with an open, patient expression. Devi huffs out a big sigh. She hasn’t had a chance (she hasn’t made the effort) to talk this out with Dr. Ryan first, and maybe it’s not fair that she’s bringing this to Paxton, but she’s not asking him to be her therapist. She’s just telling him because… because when she was with him, he was the one to stop things when she was uncomfortable and, honestly, fearful of the potential pain of losing her virginity. It could be thanks to the example he set her then that she was able to stop things with Ben before they went beyond kissing. With Ben, she wasn’t afraid of being physically harmed—she was afraid of harming herself. Like, emotionally. In both situations, sex wasn’t the right call. Devi thinks for a minute, then tries to put it into words for Paxton.

“I think I just went over there because I was scared.”

“Scared of what?” he asks.

Devi shrugs.

“Come on,” Paxton presses, giving her knee a gentle shove.

A smile creeps up her face, which is a complete fucking mismatch for her words when she says, “Nobody ever loving me for who I am. Not like my dad did.”

“You thought having sex with Ben Gross would make him love you like your dad did? That’s really messed up, Devi,” he jokes.

“It’s just… Ben and I are friends now, and he obviously knows all my flaws and vulnerabilities because we’ve traded insults for years.”

“You know that’s messed up too, right? If you really thought he was a good choice because he’s been a dick to you.”

His expression is concerned, not judgy.

“But a perceptive dick,” she defends breezily, making Paxton release a light laugh. She grimaces. “Don’t make me say ‘dick’ when I’m trying to tell you my sex story. You’re muddying the narrative.”

“Sorry.”

“The point is, I didn’t do it, and I’m fine. I know I made the right decision.”

“So what do you need me for?” he asks. The question’s light-hearted, but the look on his face says he honestly wonders. Devi thinks that’s reasonable, since she introduced the topic. And yet… she hasn’t spoken to Dr. Ryan. No one’s made clear to her why she feels what she feels about aborting the almost-boink with Ben, why she would loop Paxton in at all when she truly is fine and, aside from being her friend, he isn’t connected to the incident—besides being the person she’s willing to drive (to get Kamala to drive) 400 miles to go see, only to fail to come to any real point, even if she tries to sound like she has. From Paxton’s semi-earnest question, she hasn’t fooled him. Damn.

Her mouth opens. I need the person who maybe, almost loved me, she has the wherewithal not to say.

“I guess I just need… you,” she says, wincing because maybe this watered-down version of her initial thought wasn’t less mushy or pathetic or intense. On top of that, she’s on the freaking debate team; was that seriously the most convincing response she could’ve come up with?

But Paxton says, “Devi, I’m here. I’m glad you came all this way.” And then he holds her hand, uncurling her fingers from the anxious fist she’s unwittingly made on her thigh. She gets goosebumps when his fingers accidentally skim her bare skin below the hem of her skirt. Maybe that’s why she does what she does.

Devi springs forward and stamps her mouth to his.

Paxton’s lips part in surprise, breaking from hers, but then he’s back and she’s keeping the whimpers inside because he cradles her cheek and kisses her. Like Ben “One Free Boink” Gross couldn’t manage. Like Des never quite cared enough to. This is that first kiss in Paxton’s car times ten, and it might actually be the first time since they broke up that she knows she’s grown; the girl she was then would’ve worried this was a pity kiss. Now, she trusts them both enough to know it’s not.

Her hands find the back of his neck, his shoulders, tugging him forward. The wheely chair brings him close to her smoothly. Her palm slips to the front of his shirt and she feels his heart, fast and strong.

“He wasn’t you,” Devi mutters between pulls of their lips. “I kinda had my heart set on my first time being with you.”

“Devi…”

Paxton’s voice is gentle, but not ok-that’s-enough gentle like he’s letting her down easy, not I’m-coming-to-my-senses gentle like kissing is nice but he doesn’t really like her like that anymore. She blinks, daring to meet his eye.

He reaches out and glides a fingertip over the curve of her nose ring.

“I missed this,” he says, wearing a small, nostalgic smile.

And then his hand is in her hair, not delicate but determined, plunging into the wavy strands, and her fingers are wrapped around his wrist, pulling him into that grip, telling him yes, telling him get your ass over here, college boy. There’s a clunk as Paxton tips forward in the chair and lets its wheels slam back onto the floor, his weight no longer on the seat; he’s hunched over her now, one knee on the bed as he allows her to draw him down. Devi shuffles backwards in what would probably look like a flailing backstroke to such a talented swimmer—if he weren’t too busy to look, reacquainting their tongues with his eyes shut.

There’s a pause once Devi’s all stretched out, head on a pillow that smells like him, Paxton hovering over her high enough to stand a ruler up in between their bodies. They look at each other.

When they were together, his go-to move was giving her exactly what they were both aware she’d always wanted: Paxton Hall-Yoshida, the popular hunk. He’d trot out the sexy head-cock-and-self-assured-smirk combo, say all the right things to make her eyes go wide and her cheeks go pink, advance swiftly to the moment where he’d peel off his shirt and reveal his abs. There was no waiting, there was no doubt, but, in the end, that had never really worked. He couldn’t be her unattainable fantasy forever. She couldn’t spend every second with him feeling utterly undeserving, like him kissing her was some act of charity.

So this is different. It’s different because they’ve both become so much more themselves, and it’s different when he lowers himself on top of her, sinking all the way down until his hips touch her hips. Instead of keeping themselves out of alignment with a thigh slotted loosely between the other person’s, they’re lined up, and Devi can feel through her skirt what Paxton was always polite enough not to nudge demandingly against her.

“This ok?” he asks.

“Super ok,” she says.

It’s also different because it lacks the ever-present threat of her mom downstairs. This is the first time she’s gotten to kiss anyone without sneaking around to do it. Well, ok, she still lied to get here. Like, obviously the whole scoping-out-colleges thing was a pretty sneaky pretense, but she technically has parental permission to be on this campus, even inside these dorms. For her mom, that would ideally be during a residence tour, but it’s close enough to approval if Devi mentally squints. And, squinting, L.A. looks a long way from Tempe.

They kiss slowly, but it heats up, Paxton reflexively rocking his hips forward as their mouths slide achingly together and apart. Devi’s making noises she’s never made before—quiet ones, but high and pleading—and after he shoves his own shoes off, he skims a quick, light hand down her calves and removes hers too. She feels surprisingly sexy, and she hasn’t even sanitized her PTA with an old takeout wipe! Also, calm. This time, she didn’t over-plan the encounter (didn’t have any real, tangible clue that it would happen, like a ham-handed sext or a rifle through Kamala’s lingerie drawer), and nothing in her wants to tense up at the feeling of Paxton on top of her. When Devi sits up to pull her shirt over her head, it doesn’t snag on her earrings. She doesn’t even think about that, doesn’t get bogged down by lingering, leftover fears, because Paxton’s mouth is on her the whole time—on her mouth, on her shoulders, high on her chest above her lacy turquoise bra. And his hands always hold her.

“You’re not, like, seeing anyone, right?” Devi freezes to ask, out of breath as Paxton’s warm kisses descend towards her cleavage. She doesn’t think Paxton would ever commit the same relationship sins she did, but she can’t help wanting to know that they’re 100% in the clear.

“I’ve been here two days, Vishwakumar,” he reminds her, smile flicked up on one side. But then his expression changes and he confesses, “I haven’t actually been with anyone since Phoebe.”

“Wait, really?”

Paxton sits back on his heels as he shrugs, and damn, she’d rather he stay on top of her, but she doesn’t want to ruin this moment with her category-5 thirstiness.

“When she and I got together, it was because I thought she was exactly what I wanted. After you,” he clarifies, which hurts like a bitch, but, yeah, Devi clocked the fact that she and Phoebe weren’t that similar, like, immediately. “I started to understand myself better—or maybe let myself understand myself better?—and I ended it with Phoebe. Since then, I’ve just thought more about the kind of person I’d want to be with. Somebody who makes me better, and who feels like I make them better too.”

Would it be overeager to let her hand shoot up like they’re back in class? Probably. Thankfully, Devi is the master of playing it cool, so she purses her lips thoughtfully and nods, steadily acknowledging the validity of his sage soul-searching.

“Word,” she says sincerely, and he laughs.

“And maybe this isn’t—” Paxton motions between them, the gesture a little bit nervous in its haste. “—exactly how we thought this was gonna happen, you know, since we’re not dating and you’re going home and I’m staying here, but…”

“But we care about each other. Nothing’s changed that.”

“Exactly,” he says with a relieved sigh.

“So maybe it can still be the right call? I guess we always were a little unorthodox.”

“We pretty much met because you walked up to me and asked if I’d have sex with you.”

“Sooo, like I said,” Devi prods.

Paxton doesn’t attempt to hide his smile as he shakes his head in pretend exasperation; she knows he’s not really exasperated with her because he tenderly cups her knee and says, “Devi Vishwakumar, would you be interested in having sex with me?”

“I’m aware that I’m a virgin,” she points out. “You don’t have to make it a big deal by being, like, extra sweet to me.”

“I was always sweet to you,” he says plainly. “Maybe you forgot.”

His expression doesn’t display criticism or hurt, just a gently nudging reminder that, yeah, they were good together once upon a not-very-long-ago time. She wasn’t ready for what she now believes they could grow into, and Paxton might not’ve been either. Her persistent, painful jealousy of Hayley, his procrastination with the college application process she’s been taking way too seriously for as long as she can remember.

And they still might not be ready!

But they aren’t trying to start from there—they’re starting from here.

From Devi’s “Paxton Hall-Yoshida, I would be interested in having sex with you. I take it you still wanna hit this?”

“Devi.”

“My bad. Would you be interested in having sex with me?” she asks instead.

Paxton grins and it’s a little of the old, self-aware sexiness, a little of the smile they shared over the summer when their gazes would cross from opposite sides of their friend group, everyone laughing about something dumb and fleeting and precious. Devi also used to see that smile too late at night, Paxton risking a backwards glance as he left through her window. She can still recall the soft darkness around him, only him bright, illuminated by the glow of her lamp, trying to climb out without making a sound.

“I’d be honoured,” he says.

And they’re still starting. From Paxton crawling over her again, from her adjusting the space between her knees until he has room but the clamp of her thighs around his hips is still urgent, from his sure hand guiding Devi’s to the hem of his shirt so she can peel it off this time. None of it scares her, except maybe in a good way, and removing items of clothing feels natural, not like something she has to offer because of some offensive, ill-informed rumour that Paxton dumps girls who won’t put out.

“I’ve never done it in this room,” he offers generously, lightening the mood as Devi takes a breath and unzips her skirt.

She stiffens.

“Oh shit. Does that mean you don’t have condoms?!”

Paxton laughs.

“No. Thanks to a very awkward moment where I caught my dad slipping a box into my nightstand… we’re good.”

“Nice. Way to come through, Mr. Hall-Yoshida.”

“Are you talking about me or…?”

“Your dad. But you don’t have to relay that message,” Devi assures him with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“I definitely wasn’t going to,” Paxton says.

Her skirt comes off, and then his jeans, and then, probably for the first time in her life, Devi forgets to talk for a while. What will stay with her later are the distinct moments when they help to strip each other of their final items of clothing. How she doesn’t feel inferior or inexperienced when he gets her bra undone on the first try. How he doesn’t tear his boxers off and start getting pushy now that they’re so close. She’s comfortable with his ease and he’s conscious of her need to take things slow—not out of dread, but because she’s savouring it all.

“Is this alright?” Paxton asks, before touching any part of her with his hands, his lips, his tongue. One time, it’s mumbled right up against someplace it makes her dizzy to see his face, but Devi hears him and forces out a verbal “yes” when the only thing she wants to do is nod and thrash her head back and forth on his pillow, dampening the pillowcase with sweat from her temples while his arms loop around her tremoring thighs so she can’t accidentally block her response from reaching his ears.

She’s thought about this. A lot. When he kisses up the center of her torso and murmurs the question again, she gives the same answer, clutching him close to her. Paxton sways forward and back, gasping into her neck, and Devi feels like one of those deep-space photographs. She feels like a windchime. She feels shattered yet glistening, silent yet musical, in tune with some very distant part of herself that’s almost been a stranger yet entirely present and susceptible to the environment: the light of an Arizona afternoon through Paxton’s half-drawn blackout curtains, the smack of a cheap headboard against a not-yet-decorated wall, the muffled sounds of doors closing somewhere out in the hall. Other people coming and going while Devi helps Paxton make dirty laundry of his clean, white sheets.

“Somebody,” Paxton pants, “is gonna love you exactly the way you want.”

Devi gets her eyelashes to quit fluttering; this is so much better than even what her horny brain imagined. She’s looking up at him through the wobbly shine of unshed tears—borne of overwhelmed intensity and pleasure and delight—when he suddenly meets her eye.

Oh, she thinks, as a tear slides down her temple and into her hair, you mean they already do.

#my writing #Devi Vishwakumar #Paxton Hall-Yoshida #Devi x Paxton #Never Have I Ever #Daxton #Never Have I Ever spoilers #Never Have I Ever season 3 #NHIE #NHIE spoilers #NHIE fanfiction

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