A/N: I own nothing, as much as I wish I did!
From a prompt at the P/R drabble meme:
"You start to get hurt the minute you start to care."
She's happy with their arrangement. He can live his life, she can live hers, and every Saturday night, they meet at a hotel in midtown—halfway between her apartment on the upper west side and his on the lower—and have sex. Just sex. They try different techniques and different positions and always leave wanting more.
He's getting really fucking sick and tired of splitting a hotel bill with her every week. He wants to be paying for it, and splitting a cab home instead.
Actually, if he's really being honest with himself, he doesn't want the cab at all. He doesn't want the hotel, or the bill. He wants to be at her place. Or he wants her at his place, either way. What he really wants is for her to treat him like more than a male prostitute. Because really, that's what he feels like lately. Sure, he uses her for sex just as much as she uses him, but at least he tries. The last few weeks, he's asked her out to dinner, or to come over ahead of time for drinks, and she always denies him. And he's getting really fucking bored with their routine.
So one night, after he's successfully made her come three times and his feeling of accomplishment has worn off, he snaps.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Rach?" he yells from across the room as he jerks his pant legs up his hips.
Her eyes widen in shock as she blinks, attempting to process his question. "Noah, I'm afraid you'll need to be more specific. As you made perfectly clear in high school, a lot of things are wrong with me."
Now he's livid. He's tugging on his t-shirt and pacing around the room angrily. "Seriously, Rachel, this is so fucked up. Why the fuck won't you just come to my goddamn apartment or let me take you out for a goddamn drink?" His fists are clenched and his knuckles are turning a ghostly shade of white.
Rachel swallows the lump in her throat, neatly folding the sheet across her chest an avoiding his gaze. "I don't want to see your apartment, and I don't want you to see mine," she murmured softly."
His eyes are blazing. "And may I ask, why the fuck not? Are you some sort of fucking robot who can't see sex as anything but a mechanical act?"
She folds her hands in her lap and picks at the thread of the sheet. "No, I'm not." She takes a deep breath before continuing, "When we see each other's apartments, this becomes personal." She lifts her eyes to lock with his. "It would be easy for me to fall for you. And you start to get hurt the minute you start to care." She drops her head again, pressing her eyelids shut."
Noah steels himself for a moment. He can't fucking believe she finally admitted what he's been wanting her to admit for months. "Dammit, Rach." He stalks back toward the bed and presses his hands into the mattress on either side of her. "I get hurt when you don't care. Fucking care about me, okay?"
The moment his body covers hers and she feels a kiss with more passion and emotion than she's ever experienced, she realizes that caring is worth the possibility of getting hurt.
