It's a usual Friday night. She's finishing up outside in the fenced off nursery while Ian shelves boxes that need to go back up into the stacks again, and she knows he's working just as quickly as she is because Friday nights are movie nights.
She's seen the trailer for Goliath all week, a psychological thriller that Ian's reluctant to see but said he would, she knows, only because she wants to and he likes to make her happy.
The terracotta plant pots in her hands end up shoved under the daylily section, and then she's off, jogging back into the store and through to storage in the back.
"Hey, Zip!"
Her voice echoes back on her as she looks through the high metal stacks. She passes by the chemical section before she finally sees him.
He's sitting at one of the high desks that the supervisors use during the day, fixing up two battered radios for them to use when they're doing the night shift. He's been talking about them all week.
She smirks when she's standing right behind him, looking down at his hunched shoulders as he twists a couple of wires around each other. His earphones are in. She can hear Dylan's distinct voice on Subterranean Homesick Blues.
For a split second, she wonders if this is how people with nefarious plans feel, walking right behind their victim, like death. But then the thought's gone and she ducks her head to nip at his neck.
He jerks upright. "Jesus!"
She tugs one earphone out of his ear. "What if I were a vampire? You'd be dead by now. Need to keep more of a watch on your back, baby."
Ian's always held a special talent for smiling, and his sudden smirk is one of the finest she's seen yet.
"Pip, sweetheart, if you were a vampire you would have turned me by now." He twists on the stool to face her. "You know you just can't live forever without me."
His hand reaches up and slips into her golden-red curls, and he strokes her neck with the side of his thumb as she leans down to kiss him.
Erin's hands grip the edge of the desk, Ian between them, and as she presses in closer, leaning him back into the desk, his breath hitches in his throat. He's so easy.
She smiles against his mouth, dragging her teeth across his bottom lip. He pulls her down onto him in retaliation, sitting her on his lap and kissing her hard.
This is something she likes about Ian – he might be easy to wind up, in so many different ways, but he can always give as good as he gets and he matches her perfectly.
Like now, with his tongue against hers, doing fucking sinful things, she's getting a taste of her own teasing medicine, and she really, really likes it.
He breaks away, both of them breathless, to say, "Movie?"
She hums. "Yeah, starts soon."
At the moment, she really can't care less.
Ian's always been pale, just like her, ever since they played together in his backyard, but it's only been the last year, since they took their best-friendship to a relationship, that she's discovered his colouring's an advantage when she wants to see how she affects him.
Right now, his cheekbones are pink, and it's another thing she really likes.
Erin runs a hand through his hair. He's left it soft, without gel all day, and she'll take advantage of it later when they go back to hers, or his. They don't have to decide right now. After all, they've lived next door to each other since they were born.
One last kiss and she slips off of his lap.
"Siren," he accuses, smiling a little lopsidedly.
She gives him a sultry look over her shoulder as she turns for the back entrance, knowing the rest is now all locked up.
"I'll bring the van 'round."
He nods, still smiling, as he puts away the walkie-talkies.
Erin grabs her coat from where it's thrown over a stack of wooden pallets and leaves, crossing the parking lot to Ian's van. It takes a couple of tries to get it running, and once she's pulled around, Ian's already locked up the back and is waiting for her.
He climbs in, eyeing the dash with a grimace. "Piece of shit. As soon as we graduate and we get out of here, I'm getting a new car."
"You heard it just now then." She grins. "It is dying, but a car? Not another van?"
She sees Ian's eyes slide to her as she pulls out of the parking lot and onto the road, heading towards town.
His smile is sly. "You want me to get another van, Pip? Has that got anything to do with the fact that cars don't have nearly as much...leg-room?"
She rolls her eyes, taking a left. "One time, Ian. One time."
"One time I'll never forget," he tells her. "You ever think about that night we took this heap of shit up to the Point and–"
Erin cuts across him, grinning. "Oh, the night you thought you gave me an orgasm, you mean?"
He loses his smirk. "What d'you mean? I gave you a goddamn orgasm."
She just grins, saying nothing and knowing that it'll wind him up much more effectively than anything else. She laughs when he looks like he's about to sulk.
"Oh, look, we're here," Erin tells him sweetly, and Ian just glowers.
It just makes her laugh harder.
The other great thing about Ian? He doesn't hold onto anything for too long. One second he's pissed she didn't have an orgasm five fucking months ago and the next his arm's around her waist and he's muttering things in her ear as they cross the street to the movie theatre.
She buys the tickets. He gets the snacks. It's worked this way ever since they've been old enough to come on their own.
They take up the back row while a few other couples filter in. The doors shut after about ten minutes, and she frowns at the lack of other people seeing the film.
"Fucking town," she mutters. "No one appreciates anything."
Ian looks around, obviously amused. "What did you expect? Hordes?"
She doesn't bother replying, just digs into the nachos.
"Everyone's seeing that new chick-flick with Sandra Bullock anyway," he tells her.
"And since when do you know about everyone?" She's grinning again.
"Since Ashlyn and Ashley unintentionally cornered me at my locker and talked and talked and talked about it," he replies. "I know everything now. All your dirty little secrets, too."
She blows him off. "You already know all my dirty little secrets."
His arm makes an appearance around her shoulders, his lips at her ear. She wants to shiver from his hot breath, but she manages to keep her cool. It's a game they love to play: who'll crack first.
"I am your dirty little secret," Ian whispers, and she can hear his smile.
She keeps eating the nachos, eyes on the brightening screen. "Sure you are, except everyone knows about you and me."
His hand finds her leg in the dark, sliding up the inside of her thigh. "They don't know you like it when I talk to you."
She frowns, not watching the trailers at all as his hand slides up higher. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"When I talk to you, like when I use your name, Erin."
Oh, Jesus, he's right, she does like that. It's so...normal.
She wouldn't go as far to say that she isn't normal, because the only difference between her and the rest of her peers is that she appreciates different things, but she really does like it when they, she and Ian, are normal.
When he puts his arm around her while they walk, when they're on the phone and he tells her he doesn't want to hang up first, when he talks to her like he loves her, and definitely when he uses her name. Not Pip, not baby, not sweetheart, but Erin.
It gives her shivers.
"You like it when I kiss you here," he tells her, pressing his lips just behind her ear. "And you definitely like it when I look at you."
She keeps quiet, trying to focus as the titles roll, but she still smiles. She can't help it. He's such a goofball, but he knows what he's doing, and she loves him for it.
Erin glances at him to see he's looking at her, and not because he just said she likes it. No, she can tell he wants to, and it makes her burn for him. His eyes are on her like she's the most fascinating thing in the universe.
"Fuck you," she whispers, and she sees his teeth flash out of the corner of her eye.
"And you know," he tells her casually, voice low and still obviously grinning, "that I like it, too."
The movie starts, and she has to physically remove his hand from her leg before she can even begin to watch the screen with any amount of attention.
She'll get him back for it later.
"Well, it wasn't a classic, but I think the ominous beginning really set the tone, don't you?"
Erin turns to see Ian not at her side like she'd thought. In fact, he's not even in the foyer.
Frowning, she goes to the double doors of the entrance, looks out at the midnight-lit street, and waits. After five minutes, she goes looking for him.
He comes around the corner before she can even get there.
"What's up?"
He shakes his head. "Nothing."
But he's smirking again, secretly, and that doesn't ever mean 'nothing.'
Erin shrugs it off though, for now, because she still has to plan how she's going to get him back for that stunt at the beginning of the movie.
They're both quiet on the ride back, but peacefully so. Ian's found a station they like while she drives, and his arm is along the back of the bench behind her, making her feel warmer as the cool air comes through the constant crack in the driver's side window.
"You're right," she says. "This van is a piece of shit."
He laughs, leaning in and rubbing his thumb along her shoulder. "Baby, when we blow this town, I'm going to get something nice and never look back."
She glances at the mattress and the posters in the back in the rear-view. "I'll get the mandatory dash decoration. Only seems right since I decked out this one."
A thought strikes as she takes a right onto their quiet street and then backs up into Ian's drive.
"How are you going to get this car?" His quirked eyebrow tells her. "Really? I thought you hated that little nest-egg they put away for you?"
Ian shrugs. "My father told me to use it or lose it. Thought I'd just get it over with."
She tries not to wince at the way he talks about his step-dad, but it's difficult. Re-marriage is always a sore spot for her, ever since her mom died and her dad skipped town to run off with his next wife, leaving his only child with Aunt Millie.
The woman isn't bad, just tiring. She doesn't know when to quit and she doesn't like Ian – they're two strikes against her that will never disappear. But she buys food, unlike Ian's mom, and she turns a blind eye to Ian actually staying over, even if she thinks he's the worst thing to happen to Erin since her dad.
She parks up and cuts the engine. "You know, the more you talk about getting out of here, the more I want to leave."
"It's all I think about," he sighs, climbing out and crossing over so they can walk up to Erin's house.
"All you think about?" She asks slyly.
He nearly stops. "Oh." A full-blown smirk. "Well, no, not all."
Erin takes out her keys, finds the right one under the dim porch light, and smiles to herself as Ian's arms come around her waist, his hands exploratory, like he's never quite touched her the way he wants to.
He puts his lips to her neck as she opens the door and they step inside, closing the door quietly behind them. She enjoys his touch, even as she makes sure that Millie's in bed. Erin can see the light of the TV flickering under her aunt's door by the stairs and she knows she's dead to the world.
She disentangles herself long enough to go to the kitchen and get a glass of water, knowing Ian will make his own way up to her room, like he's always done. When she's up the stairs and at her open door, she sees him.
"Do you remember?" Erin asks, before lifting the glass to her lips and watching Ian as he studies the framed photo in his hands.
She kicks the door shut behind her, and it closes with a soft and practically inaudible snap. It breaks Ian out of his daze, as he puts the picture back on her shelf and turns to her.
"Of course I do," he replies, coming to her and putting his hands to her waist as she finishes the water. "That summer your mom took us to the lake was the best time I can remember growing up."
Erin nods and sets the glass aside, before putting Ian's hands to the buttons of her jeans. He doesn't waste a moment, but he takes his time undoing the buttons and thumbing the waistband of her panties.
"Blue," he mutters. "You know I love blue."
She does, and not that she'll admit it but it's kind of why all her underwear is in shades of sapphire.
She shakes off her coat, letting it drop to the floor, before pulling her sweater over her head along with her t-shirt. Ian's fingers are in her panties by the time their eyes meet again.
He steps in so close, wrapping one arm around her as his other hand feels her out.
"God, you're so warm," he hisses against her lips.
Erin works off his jacket and his t-shirt, and when she's at the zipper of his pants he's still feeling her out, just touching her the way she likes, just being.
But his hand leaves her when she drops, crouching to pull off his shoes and pants and underwear. She pulls down his clothes first, so he can sweat a bit while she tackles his laces, his cock at mouth-level. She knows he likes her tease – it's in his eyes when she looks back up at him, his sneakers cast off to the side.
She stands again and kicks off the last her own clothes, yanking off her boots and letting them fall to the thick green carpet she put down herself a couple of years ago, with Ian's help of course.
He fits in so well, she thinks, between the posters on the walls and the full bookshelves, and he looks so nice on her bed, on top of her sheets, staring up at her like he's amazed she even exists.
"You're right," she murmurs. "I do love it when you look at me."
His sure smile is a bit quick, she thinks.
"I love it when you call me by my name, and I love it when you kiss me just behind my ear." She pushes him down on the bed further and meets his body with hers. "And I love it when you talk to me."
She leaves a trail of kisses down his hairless chest that leave him breathless, as her fingers play with the trail of light blonde leading down from his navel to his twitching cock. Sometimes, she hates that he dyed his hair so dark, but she understands that it's just a way of expressing himself, making himself different from everyone else.
He's always been the instigator, standing up and speaking out, while she's always been the one to clean up the mess afterwards in one way or another. But they have always – always – been Zip and Pip, two halves of one whole.
She loves that he doesn't rush her like most guys, urging her to just ride him until he loses it. He appreciates the rush of the build-up just as much as she does.
"Do you remember Leon from a couple of years ago?" She asks.
He looks pissed. "How the fuck am I meant to forget him? That guy was an asshole."
Erin just sits there, over him, running her fingertips over the tattoo he'd gotten his last birthday: a small black atom just over his collarbone, two electrons hovering around the central nucleus, just about to meet.
"You know he was my first," she says, and Ian's creased brow softens.
"Yeah, I know." He strokes her hip soothingly. "Just like you know you were mine."
Their eyes meet. She wonders how she's been the only one at school and in the entire town to understand just how special Ian is. Yeah, it took her a while – a long while – to figure out that he liked her just as much as she liked him in that way, but it took him a long time to figure it out too.
He's smart, everyone knows that, but no one but she knows that he's allergic to bananas or that he's deathly afraid of roaches. Everyone can see he's meant to go to college, get a great job, rake in the money for mouthing off intelligently, but no one but she knows that he wants to live with her for the rest of his life, watching movies on Friday nights and working an honest job until he dies.
He's special because he understands perfectly what and who he is, and he still just wants to be with her.
"He told me if I didn't sleep with him again then he'd tell everyone how much of a slut I was, remember?" She asks, knowing he does.
She can tell he's not happy with the turn of conversation by the way the corners of his eyes crease.
"Yes, I remember, and I beat the shit out of him for it. His family moved away a month later. Where's all this going?"
Erin leans down, covering his body with hers and enjoying how warm he is.
"I just wanted to tell you thank you." She kisses him. "I never told you, but that's when I knew."
"Knew what?" He asks quietly, eyes wide in the gloom.
"Do you really need to ask that?" She smiles, slipping down his body.
His cock hasn't gotten any softer, and she finds that a huge compliment to how much he wants her that not even her topic of choice has deterred him.
She presses him against her pussy. He draws in a sharp breath at the same moment she does.
"You loved me after that?" Ian asks, and Erin nods. "Well, I have you beat by a few years, sweetheart."
She keeps up her rocking, the friction immense. "Years?"
"Ever since you told Ashlyn to mind her own fucking business when it came to us." He laughs. "God, I fell hard for you that day, Erin."
She moans freely at his use of her name, so soft, so...normal.
She catches his grin. "Oh, did I say something, baby? Come here."
He pulls her down on him, slipping his hands down to her ass and keeping up her rocking.
"You smell so good, Erin," he says into her hair, and the pleasure from his kisses on her neck are like she's already come a thousand times. "You always smell good, so good..."
She can feel him right there, so ready, but she's the one to push down on him, letting him inside of her. He feels so big, and she knows she feels tight to him.
Ian's face twists in pleasure as he presses his face closer against hers, his breath hot on her ear.
"Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods," he whispers to her, and she melts just a little bit more.
"Only you'd quote dead Greeks to me at a time like this," she says harshly, and she feels him smile against her skin.
As she rocks, he builds up his own rhythm, the both of them creating something that works to tease and soothe.
His chest against her nipples gives her chills, and his hands on her ass make her feel like she's going to lose it before he even thinks about it. But she knows he's close, because she can feel his teeth against her neck, and she knows his mouth is open wide, waiting for her to let him know when he can muffle his groan of release.
She rolls her hips one more time, rubbing her clit against his pubic bone, and she breaks, shattering into a thousand pieces as she stiffens over him before collapsing in a panting heap. He tightens beneath her, muscles bunching, as she feels him come apart inside of her, hot and wet.
Ian kisses her temple, his heart hammering in his chest against hers, before reaching over the side of the bed and pulling something out of his pants pocket. Erin frowns at him, feeling like a useless, boneless thing.
"What are you doing?"
She's suddenly presented with a bag of M&M's, and she takes them off of him with a quick grin and a kiss. Now she knows where he went after the movie: back to the concession stand to get her favourite candy.
"Have I ever told you you're the best boyfriend ever?"
He smirks right back. "In fact, I don't hear it enough."
She opens the bag and shakes out the blue ones, sorting them on his chest and eating her favourite ones. She flaunts the yellows in his face, watching him lick his lips at his favourite.
"Can I–"
She cuts him off. "No. Punishment for being a tease in the movie earlier."
He rolls her over onto her back before she can say another thing, letting the chocolate roll everywhere as he kisses her hard and steals a few yellows.
Her scowl only makes him snicker, but it ends when she throws an M&M at his forehead. It turns into an all-out war, and it's the most fun she's had in ages. She only hopes Millie doesn't hear, and that graduation gets here even faster.
She can't wait to get out of this town and spend every night with Ian, exactly like this.
Author's note: Just a jaunt into FD fanfic (: Love these two beyond all reason. Thanks for reading!