Ethan x Reader

I sigh, and twirl a piece of hair around my newly manicured finger. It's unlike my parents to be so late, and to leave me sitting alone, in a booth at a four star restaurant, for hours.

Hours.

Alone.

I check my cell phone… 6:19.

An hour and nineteen minutes late. What's so important they could be this late? I quickly type up yet another text and send it to both Mum and Dad, seeing that calling them hasn't worked so far.

I sigh and lean against the cool leather of the booth's backing, tilting my head back and gathering my thoughts into a heap, closing my eyes. Crossing my arms over my chest, I breathe another breath out and take in deep inhale.

When I lean forward again and open my eyes again, there's a handsome boy, maybe 17 or 18, sitting across the table from me, just looking at me with his head cocked. He's got these cheekbones perfectly chiseled in his cheeks, and these lips with a perfect bow, and hair like sunshine, and beautiful cyan blue eyes outlined by dirty blonde lashes.

"Come here alone?" he asks, a bit of sarcasm playing with the tips of his words.

I laugh a little, immediately charmed. "Nah, Mum and Dad are just running slightly late."

"Slightly?"

"Yeah, slightly."

"Well," he replies, "I've been here for nearly an hour, and no one's shown…."

I blow out a breath and look into my lap.

"Oh, it's all right," he says, reaching across the table and cupping my chin. "I know what it's like when the parents forget a date."

I look up from my lap and look into his deep blue eyes.

"Do you now?" I reply rhetorically.

He pulls his hand back and laughs. "You've no clue."

I hear my phone beep and pull it from my pocket. A text from Dad.

Sorry hun, can't make dinner. Something at work came up. Rain check?

Fighting the urge to throw my phone at the nearest possible wall, I slide it back into my pocket. I guess anger was pretty apparent on my face.

"That was… one of the parents?" the beautiful boy across from me asks.

"Hah! No. Nope. Not even. As if. Never." I don't know why I lie, especially with such an apparent fashion.

He looks at me with his head tilted. "I know that look, it's 'Disappointed-and-Angry-With-a-Dash-of-Hatred' chic."

I smile a little and shrug, glancing down.

"C'mon now," he says, flashing a brilliant, white, perfect smile at me, "Let me buy you dinner."

I look up from the table and reach out my hand.

"Callie Parker," I say politely.

"Ethan Karamakov," he returns.

Dinner was spent laughing and flirting and blushing and story-telling, much better than any dinner I could've had with the parents. Ethan and I decided to go on a walk after dinner.

"So what do you do?" I ask.

"As in, for a living?" Upon my nod, he continues. "I dance, choreograph and compose."

"Woah woah woah. Dance?"

He grimaces. "Yes, dance."

"Like… ballet?" I ask, pushing him a little to make sure he knows I'm kidding. Kind of.

"No way around that one, is there?" he replies grimly.

I giggle and move in front of him, so I'm still facing him but walking backwards. "Nah, but I don't think it's that bad…. Besides, I think I'd kill to see you in tights!"

We both laugh, and somewhere he stops walking and grabs my hand. I return to his side and lean my head on his shoulder for a couple seconds, before looking up at him.

"You know, who would've known my parents being jerks could've wound out turning out so well!"

We walk by a beautiful view of a bay; it's a clear night with a crescent moon shining through the thin clouds that line the sky, dotted with stars. The moon and streetlights reflect onto the water and cast faint shadows. A black railing is the only barrier between me and the ocean and a steep drop.

Ethan stops walking and moves me between him and the rail.

He carefully kisses me, just a peck at first to test my reaction, and when it's a smile he plants another, then another, and another, each growing in length until his lips dance with mine. He wraps one hand around my back, dropping it further and further down as the kiss progresses, the other pushing some caramel brown hair blown by the night breeze out of our faces. I drape arms around his shoulders, my right hand tangled up in his beautiful golden hair, pulling him to me.

His body is completely against mine, pressing me into the rail until it's almost painful. Not that I care.

His tongue glides into my mouth, at first just touching my upper lip to test waters before pushing into my mouth. His lips are light as breath and warm on my mouth. I inhale, and a smell that reminds me of Christmas; a cinnamon-y mint scent hangs in the air.

He pulls away, but trails kisses to my ear, then down my jaw line and to my breast bone, where his lips linger in a sweet caress. His lips travel back up to mine, and his hands play with the hem of my shirt. His kiss is sweet and his skin is like a smooth porcelain. Gradually he slips his hand under my top and draws small circles on my tummy and hipbone. The circles get larger and larger, inching closer and closer to my breast. He starts to tease me, sucking on my bottom lip then pulling away, laughing as my eyes flutter open, wondering where his warmth went, only to return to kissing me and then repeating the same silly process, until he stops returns to the steady and somehow romantic kiss.

Carefully, he puts both his hands on my waist, takes a few steps back and lifts me. He places me so I'm sitting on his shoulder, but only for a moment, and then he sets me on the thin black railing. For a few seconds he lets go to blow some golden blonde hair out of his eyes.

I look down at the steep drop and into the eyes of the bay's water and reflex back, right into Ethan's chest. He responds by grabbing my hands and wrapping his arms around me, like he's a safety net, letting my head rest on his shoulder.

We both look out over the bay; the city lights are burning bright on the other side, casting long reflections into the water. The constellations above are beautiful, too, and the clouds dance around the stars with the breeze.

After a few minutes, I lift my head and look at him.

"Ethan?"

"Yeah?" he replies.

"…you don't have a girlfriend, do you?" I ask.

He looks at me seriously. "Well I-"

"I knew this was to good to be true!" I yell.

"I'm kidding, love!" he laughs, and I laugh too.

"And don't tell me you're only here in Australia for one night, or you've got some kind of criminal record, or I'm going to wind up only dating one of your personalities?" I laugh.

He smiles. "Yeah, right. I mean, one of the my characters is a serial killer, but other than when he's around you should be fine," he replies, and turn my head and laugh further into his chest, into his plain white tank top.

When I look back out to the view, and he places a few kisses on my neck.

A tugboat pulls a barge along, pulling with all its might to bring the big ship to the dock. Both of the boats' wakes combine, and make this ripple within a ripple; one moving fast, one slow, one inside the other, dancing against each other like they've rehearsed this beautiful choreography.

Ethan leans into my ear after a little. "Why all the questions?" he whispers, his voice sending chills through my body.

I don't look away from the two boats, but turn my face towards him. "I… this is too good, too amazing to be true."

Ethan pulls back a little and I can see him looking more directly at me from the corner of my eye. "What do you mean?"

I can't tell if he really doesn't know how beautiful he is, or if he's trying to get me to flatter him, or if he's just teasing me in an attempt to embarrass the crap out of me.

"I mean… this is perfect. A girl sits alone at a restaurant, as her parents don't even care enough to come to see her off to school, and a dashing Prince Charming comes to her rescue, whisking her away from reality, even if it's for but a few hours." The tug boat finally pulls the barge into its dock, and I turn and lock eyes with Ethan. "And the few hours are… just… perfect. Like a fairy tale, but more vivid and pretty."

I feel his arms tighten around my waist. "It doesn't have to be just a few hours."

I bite my bottom lip and lean in for a kiss, which he returns. I feel his lips pull back into a smile while they're still pressing against mine.

When the kiss breaks, we return to the crescent moon and water and stars and ships. But when the next breeze blows, it's no longer a warm one, and my denim shorts and thin tee aren't really readying me for this kind of assault.

I guess Ethan feels my skin getting all goosebump-y, because he lifts me from the rail so I'm facing him, grabs my hand and starts walking.

After a little, I start to get curious.

"Yes, Ms. Parker?" he says.

"Where is it exactly you're taking me?" I ask, not really minding.

"I know this abandoned alley where I'm pretty sure no one could hear your screams," he jokes.

I look down, not letting him see my smile. God, I hope I read his voice right.

"So you dance and choreograph and compose, correct?" I ask.

"Mmhm," he answers, "but let's not get too caught up on the whole ballet thing, yeah?"

I laugh a little. "You look so young though, like maybe a high school graduate."

"It's my fourth year at the National Dance Academy," he replies.

"And you have to work already?"

He looks at me. "Not have to… just, the experience is good for the future, and if I want to continue on this path, I've got to appease my dad."

"And your dad…?"

"He's a bit crazy," he says lightly. "He composes and choreographs for my mother, and he gets a bit uptight about my sister and myself being as successful as them. I love both my parents, though."

I nod. "So you're one of those guys who're all about acceptance from the family?" I tease.

"Excuse me?"

I guess he thought I was serious, because when he looked up at me from the concrete under our feet, his face was tense. But once he saw my sarcastic smile, he lightened up. "Yeah, if you want to put it like that."

"You're serious about all those jobs, though? You've got a passion for all of them?"

"Not so much dancing… I mean, I enjoy it, but… this past year I got offered a contract to join a dance company, but declined because my real passion is writing and choreo."

I give a half hearted smile. "I guess no one was too happy to hear about that."

He looks off in the distance for a minute, then shakes his head. "But enough about me, you? What brings you here to Sydney?"

"I'm looking for my son, Nemo."

I hold a straight face with Ethan for as long as I can until I start laughing.

"But really, I'm here for med school; I want to be involved in sports medicine, not sure exactly what yet. I just transferred from Lithgow."

"What school?"

"Williams Academy for Medical and Physical Sciences, but I've started just calling it Williams."

"I heard it's a good school," Ethan says.

"Yeah, tomorrow's my first day… My parents were supposed to help me around, but seeing as work called, they couldn't."

Ethan turns up the stairs of a nicely sized house and pulls out a collection of keys from his pocket. He slips a silver one into the lock and swings the door open.

"You live here?" I say, awestruck.

"Yeah, my parents help me pay for it." He puts his jacket on the back of a chair. "Anything to drink?"

"Uh, a water please?"

Jesus, this house is huge.

He reaches into a cabinet and pulls out a glass, then fills it with ice and water from the system he has installed in his refrigerator, then hands it to me. He walks into the living room and plops down on the sofa and pats the cushion next to him.

I put my water on the coffee table and curl up next to him, my head on his shoulder and my feet tucked in between the arm of the couch and the cushion I'm sitting on. Ethan wraps his arm around me and uses the other to operate the remote. After a bit of flipping through channels, he stops on a classical music channel.

After a bit of piano playing, I look at Ethan. His eyes are closed, and it looks like he's sincerely enjoying the music. I can't tell if he's sleeping or not, but his rhythmic breathing makes it seem like he's knocked out. I lean my head between his neck and shoulder and let the lull of the music send me to sleep.