You Stole My Heart, I'll Steal Your Last Name.
A rough looking but comfy leather couch with plum velvet cushions. A vanilla and toffee coloured kitchen and a blood red bedroom. Cassette tapes lined up alongside the player, Led Zeppelin beside Madonna, Duran Duran next to Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden along with George Michael.
Pastel blouses and pencil skirts hung in the wardrobe next to scruffy flannel shirts and denim jackets. Designer Pumps and Doc Martens on the floor beside their bed.
The lights never worked when the shower was on and the water always got scalding hot when the toilet flushed.
Perfectly imperfect, perhaps?, but it was their place. It was home.
There was a time when John Bender was well used to having no expectations of anyone. It was what happened when your father beat the shit out you for fun and your mother was too drunk to ever say anything to him about it.
His seventeen year old self had more or less accepted that his fight for self preservation had hardened him beyond caring for anyone but himself. Now, six years after that Saturday Detention he had spent with four of the people he would have been least likely to talk to on a regular day, he knew that it was complete and utter bullshit. Of course he damn well cared!
...but that didn't mean John didn't spend the first year after he and his prom queen had moved in together half expecting for the other shoe to drop and for her to leave him...her parents had been damn sure (or rather hoping) she would...(Hell, her father had even gone as far as trying to pay him off when he first found out who his daughter was dating-John had just flipped him off, letting the older man know that he was going no where).
Six years together and John and Claire were together and happy. Things were good.
They fought on occasion and there still were times when they pissed each other off beyond belief, but John wasn't the same asshole Claire met that day in detention and she wasn't the conceited daddy's girl she once was.
They grew up.
John worked two or three nights a week in a bar downtown and in a garage restoring old vintage cars during the day. Claire had just finished her degree and was working her way through law school in an apprenticeship with a firm nearby.
Nobody scrutinised him for being some burner teenager anymore and she made her half of the rent without her parent's help. They were their own people now and damn, it felt good.
Sliding his key into the lock, John let himself into their little Brooklyn apartment. He knew Claire would probably be asleep already, she usually was on the nights he worked until late at the bar.
Quietly opening their bedroom door, he started to undress, not bothering to turn on a light. He pulled off his shirt and jeans, leaving him only in his boxer shorts. He slid under the covers beside her.
Surely enough, Claire was sitting up in bed, leaning against a stack of files and law textbooks, silver round rimmed reading glasses sliding off her face, propped up by pillows and completely asleep. Her hair was almost shoulder length now but apart from that she hadn't changed much, appearance wise, since they first met.
John smirked affectionately, removing her glasses and sliding the books off her lap on to the ground. He knew between work and her exams, she was exhausted. Happy but exhausted.
It wasn't the first time in the last few months that he found her like this and he was sure it wouldn't be the last, her bar exams were still quite a long time away.
They had come pretty far since they were seventeen.
From two kids sneaking out through bedroom windows, midnight swims in her family's pool, driving around Shermer in his piece-of-shit pick up truck late at night with fogged up windows and a faint smell of cigarettes in the air, stolen kisses in deserted classrooms and behind the bleachers on the school's football field while ditching class, leading to hours spent in Saturday detention to the twenty three year old people they were today.
She wasn't a good girl who 'fixed' a bad boy, just like he wasn't a bad boy who 'corrupted' a good girl. It hadn't been just a youthful romance or a high school fling or any of that bullshit.
Being with him had made her become less shallow and in turn, she had made him a 'one girl kind of guy'.
He, John Bender, fell head first in love with Claire Standish and she for him and the feeling only got stronger since.
"Cherry", he whispered, trailing kisses across her shoulder and up her neck towards her mouth. He would never stop calling her that, even if it hadn't been accurate in a very long time. "Cherry, you been out long?".
Claire grumbled, sleepily opening her eyes. "Not long", she replied her voice still a little groggy as she tugged him closer until he was lying between her legs, hovering right above her, his dark eyes shining in the dim light. She buried her hands in his long shaggy tresses, pulling him down for a long kiss.
He was warm and familiar but still every bit as passionate and rough around the edges as he had been the day their lips first touched. She let one of her hands slipped from his hair and down his back, toying with the waistband of his shorts. God, she loved him
She felt a hot breath on her neck, then the tender brush of lips. Burning as they make contact.
His hand ran through her hair, as the kisses became harder and more urgent. Another hand slid around her waist, and pulled her close to his body.
John's kisses were now on her shoulders and in her hair. Everywhere, she wanted him everywhere.
Claire whimpered in protest as he pulled away despite how they both need the oxygen.
"Just can't get enough of me, can you Sweets?", John teased playfully a few minutes later, rubbing his nose against hers as he squeezed her hip bones.
Claire grinned, rolling her eyes. "Hell, no", she panted, not quite sarcastically and once she caught her breath, reached for him again.
John smiled against her lips. She was as sweet and tender as ever and tasted of coffee. She was his, just like he was hers. They fit together like two very mismatched puzzle pieces, nobody understood how it was possible for them to come together but it just was.
And holy shit, he wanted it to be forever.
Claire smiled into his mouth, trailing her lips down to his throat and Adam's apple. Kissing John there was always like turning the key to his engine. Once that's done he was all hers. Just the gentle movement of her warm breath in his ear and he had no resistance at all.
But this time he pulls away reluctantly.
He couldn't keep this in any longer, he couldn't wait another day without at least asking her.
"Hey Claire", John said, breaking apart from her with a smile. She looked a little discontented at the interruption but that just made his Cheshire Cat grin wider as he mentally prepared himself to ask her.
"Wanna get hitched?"
Claire looked at him blankly for a second, trying to determine if he was being serious or not. She ran a hand down the side of his face, seeing a slight flicker of panic in his eyes at her lack of response.
She giggled...knowing John he was probably asking completely spontaneously but it seemed as though he was for real.
"I see you've thought a lot about this proposal."
He let out a sigh of relief, flicking his hair out of his eyes cockily. So she wasn't completely apposed to the idea, well that was a start. "You know me, Princess. I wanted to get it just right", he told her sarcastically.
Claire pursed her lips in thought. All messing around aside, this was a serious matter. She did want to spend the rest of her life with him but was now really the right time to get married?
"I love you, John. But are you sure? We're still really young"
John shrugged. "Sweets, I've been absolutely crazy about you since we were those two kids sneaking around Shermer, you know that"
Claire sighed quietly, tracing his bottom lip with her thumb. "Of course I do but I reckon some people still think we're those two kids."
John nodded reluctantly, he didn't like it but there was probably some truth in that. Her parents still thought they were two fucking kids playing house.
He kissed her fingertips, "...And I reckon that I still haven't gotten an answer?"
Claire smiled softly, feeling like she was making the decision to date him when they were seventeen all over again. She knew there would be people who wouldn't be too pleased about it but she couldn't care less. It was relieving, exhilarating like free falling, making her giddy.
She loved John Bender, wholly and completely. She wanted to be married to him. "John", she said with a slight laugh. "You stole my heart years ago, I think it's time I steal your last name."
John let out a loud bark of laughter, crushing her lips with his. Relief and elation filling his whole body. She was the love of his life, and now she was going to marry him!
Who the fuck would have ever seen that coming back when they were just two kids at opposite ends of the high school spectrum, defying the status quo of teenage social norms.
"My last name,huh? Who knew my princess could be such a criminal?"
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