okay people 3 things
1. this chapter is p long and i'm very proud of myself please leave some kind of feedback because i thrive off positive validation
2. in america do u have school trips? like to different states etc. because in england the only trip we had was a history one to france to see the battlefields so i have no idea if u have them in america but if u do i was thinking it could be a chapter
3. i had my history exam yesterday and i asked my teacher a little while ago what it would be on (we're doing the russian revolution) and he said "oh nothing before 1917 and nothing after 1921 because that's the course specification" and i was like "but we spent ages doing the build up to 1917" and he was like "yeah that's not in the exam" so i was like cool beans i won't revise that as much
then i go into the exam
and the compulsory question is on the 1920s
and then the optional questions are about 1914-1917
and the late 1920s
WTF
"Morning."
Glenn turned around at the sound of Maggie's voice, smiling tiredly at her. "Morning," he replied, yawning at the end of the word and covering his mouth bashfully.
"Late night?" she teased, opening her locker to retrieve her books and folders.
She thought she saw the faintest hint of a blush cover his cheeks but it was difficult to tell under the school's budget lighting. "I was busy. No, wait, that sounds…I was finishing something off. And that's not any better." He sighed, his eyes pleading with her to understand.
"Hey, we're in a relationship now," she cooed, giggling at his distressed expression. "You don't have to hide this stuff from me." She kissed his cheek, leaning against him and nuzzling into the juncture between his shoulder and neck.
He sighed at her but wrapped his arms around her anyway. "You know what I meant," he grumbled at her, but kissed the top of her head and squeezed her tightly. It had become a kind of ritual for them in the mornings, gave Maggie the confident she needed to cover up her shyness and insecurities until she could get home and relax in her own skin.
"What were you doing then?" she asked curiously as he released her from the hug and ruffled his hair to push it from his forehead.
"Nothing important," he replied, a little too quickly. He shoved a black spiral-bound notebook into his locker and then slammed it shut.
Guilty. She narrowed her eyes at him. "What's in the book, Glenn?" She crossed her arms over her chest to appear more intimidating. (And amplify her cleavage for maximum distraction.)
He glanced down momentarily, eyes roaming over the wide expanse of skin he could see, and then a glint came into his eyes. "I don't know what book you're talking about," he said airily, taking a step towards her.
She didn't back away. "The book you just put away in your locker."
"Oh, that book." He stepped forwards again and gently uncrossed her arms, gripping her wrists gently. "Well," he pressed a disgustingly adorable kiss to the tip of her nose (and no she did not squeak because it was so cute and unexpected thank you very much) and continued, "it's none of your business."
She raised her eyebrows in mock outrage and gasped, "None of my business?" Maggie was sure that if she glanced in a mirror at that moment her eyes would hold the same playful sparkle as Glenn's did.
"None of your business, Miss Nosey." He was close to her now and had a lazy grin on his face like he knew exactly what this was doing to her (because he did).
She adopted a stern expression, fighting to hold back the grin, and protested, "I am so not nosey." Total lie.
The scowl was wiped off her face when Glenn murmured, "Yes you are" right on top of her lips and then kissed her lightly, gently, only deepening the kiss when she pressed her body against him to show that she wanted it as well. He let go of her wrists and she immediately slung them around his neck in a loose knot as she melted into his embrace.
"You know, some of us only just ate," Tara complained from behind them.
Maggie forgot about the book after that until it reappeared in Tara's hands at lunchtime sometime the following week. It was acting as a tray for her lunch until she sat down, at which point it was placed to the side in favour of sandwiches.
"You have the book!" Maggie gasped, reaching forward with outstretched fingers. "Glenn's book! Can I see it?"
Tara made as if she was going to hand it over but then hesitated. "He told me not to give it to anyone," she said slowly. "And that he'd kill me if anyone saw what was inside. And Glenn tends to make good on his threats."
"Yeah, well, I'm his girlfriend, I have special rights. Besides, he won't kill you." She made grabby hands at it beseechingly but Tara whisked it away from her grasp.
"Sorry, Mags. I gave Glennjamin my word, and I wouldn't put it past him to seriously wound me," Tara said, very unapologetically and with a shrug.
"What's he got in there?" Andrea asked, popping a crisp into her mouth and examining the exterior of the inconspicuous notebook curiously, elbowing Michonne so she'd glance up from her phone (she was looking at swords again).
"Gotta be porn if he's that protective over it," was Shane's contribution.
Lori rolled her eyes. "I doubt he'd be carrying porn around school with him." Michonne nodded in agreement, forehead creased in thought.
Once again it was Daryl who surprised them all. "It's a sketchbook," he mumbled, busy reading through a textbook and only half-focused on their conversation.
"What?" Maggie asked incredulously. She had no idea that Glenn drew, or did anything art-based at all.
"S'why he has it with him all the time. Has to turn something in for his art project 'nd Miss Espinosa's helping him choose the sketch he's going t'paint. Gotta choose by Friday." He glanced up self-consciously, chewing on the skin around his thumbnail. "Korea left it 'til last week so now he's rushin' t'finish."
"Presumably not porn then," Andrea cut in, rolling her eyes at Shane.
"I had my suspicions too," Rick confessed. He bumped Shane's proffered first reluctantly and dodged the lettuce that Michonne aimed at him indignantly. "Hey, it's always the ones who seem innocent who watch porn, and Glenn qualifies as innocent. He has the puppy dog eyes and everything."
Maggie let their conversation (argument) wash over her like oil on water as she propped her chin on her linked fists and stared at the ebony cover of the sketchbook, contemplating what on earth it was that he was hiding in there.
She didn't see Glenn until the last period of the day and as soon as Ms. Peletier handed out sheets and told them to work in pairs, she pounced.
"Art project, huh?" She opened her copy of Macbeth more forcefully than she intended. She thought she heard the spine creak and calmed down a little. "You do art?"
Glenn flushed, ducking his head. "Yeah, I do art," he mumbled.
"You didn't tell me." She dropped her head to his level, trying to get a good look at his face, but he just kept on going down until they were both molesting the table. He gave in and talked when it was physically impossible to go any lower, but kept his face pressed against the wood anyway.
He muttered something that sounded like "'s serous thing" which after some gentle prodding and nuzzling against him (checking that nobody was watching first), turned out to be "it's embarrassing". After some more cooing and snuggling he finally got the message that she thought it was cute and he didn't need to be ashamed, and then they had to hurry to finish the classwork in the last ten minutes of the lesson so she forgot to ask what it was exactly that he was drawing because she was more focused on extended metaphors than anything else.
At the lockers he pulled out the book but before she could ask, reminded by the sight, he had kissed her cheek and was running off down the corridor, shouting something over his shoulder about meeting Miss Espinosa.
She watched him go with a fond smile and vowed to find out what he was so protective over.
Glenn had rarely been around all week, spending all of his spare time in the art room racing to finish his project, but had called her every night instead to check up on her and ask her about her day. She felt sorry for him; he sounded tired and whenever she caught sight of him around school he looked exhausted. Daryl didn't feel as sympathetic, telling her that they'd had the entire semester to complete the project and Glenn hadn't even decided on what he was going to do until the last minute. Still, as his girlfriend, she was meant to be worried about him when he was stressed so she ignored Daryl and went about fussing over Glenn to anyone who would listen.
About to head home on Friday, she shoved the last of her books into her bag, groaning at the weight (which was roughly equivalent to how much work she had left to do) when Glenn practically tackled her from behind in a massive hug. He apologised profusely for almost knocking her over and carried her bag as far as he could (to the school gates) and happily kissed her goodbye while Beth pretended not to see them and played something on her phone.
"My parents are going out for a work conference this weekend," he murmured, stroking her hair back from her face so she could see him and then immediately letting it drop right back again. "I need to catch up on sleep tonight but do you want to do something on Saturday or Sunday? It's okay if you're busy, I just thought because we hadn't seen each other much you might want to—"
She cut off his rambling with a quick kiss. "I'd love to. Text me?"
"Course."
As she was walking away, Glenn heard, very distinctly, Beth saying, "He is so grossly in love with you."
Less distinct but still clear was Maggie's reply. "Good thing I'm grossly in love with him too."
To: Tara, 5:37pm
Hey, you know Glenn's address?
From: Tara, 5:38pm
yes
From: Tara, 5:38pm
why
From: Tara, 5:38pm
u gonna
From: Tara, 5:38pm
u know
From: Tara, 5:39pm
have fun
To: Tara, 5:53pm
Not in the way you think Miss Gutter Brain
From: Tara, 5:54pm
wait
From: Tara, 5:54pm
why didnt Glennjamin give u his address
To: Tara, 5:56pm
I'm surprising him
To: Tara, 5:56pm
Don't tell him
From: Tara, 5:56pm
no worries my man
From: Tara, 5:57pm
woman
From: Tara, 5:58pm
i'll just send him a series of winky face emojis
To: Tara, 6:02pm
Look I'm planning to watch movies + eat popcorn + snuggle
To: Tara, 6:02pm
No winky face emojis involved
From: Tara, 6:03pm
ooooh watching movies + snuggling…
From: Tara, 6:03pm
hmmmmmm….
From: Tara, 6:03pm
netflix and chill?
From: Tara, 6:03pm
interesting…
To: Tara, 6:17pm
Give me the fucking address you nerd
Glenn's house was nice, a bit bigger than hers (which was reasonable considering his array of sisters) with a front garden that was on just the right side of overgrown to look nice and an empty driveway that looked like it would normally hold three cars at least.
And damn was it domestic.
Maggie swung open the freshly-painted white gate, which was situated within the freshly-painted white picket fence, and walked up the weed-free driveway to knock on the wooden door with a stained glass panel. She looked down; she was standing on a doormat that read 'Everyone is a friend here!' Slightly cheesy but cute.
She knocked again, waited a few minutes and then pulled out her phone.
To: Tara, 9:17am
I think he's out
To: Tara, 9:17am
Nobody's answering the door
From: Tara, 9:18am
oh honey
From: Tara, 9:18am
its not noon yet
From: Tara, 9:18am
and u think g will b awake?
From: Tara, 9:19am
u r so young & naive
From: Tara, 9:19am
oh my child
To: Tara, 9:20am
How do I wake him up
From: Tara, 9:21am
one cannot wake up mr tai chi on a weekend w/out slapping the shit out of him
From: Tara, 9:21am
trust me
From: Tara, 9:21am
we have had some eventful sleepovers
To: Tara, 9:21am
So what do I do
From: Tara, 9:23am
there r 7 plant pots on the porch
From: Tara, 9:23am
only 1 holds orchids
From: Tara, 9:24am
underneath this pot: a key. how marvellous
To: Tara, 9:26am
Thank
Maggie crouched down and pulled the orchid pot up cautiously. True to Tara's word, there was a silver key underneath, slightly damp and covered in a few speckles of dirt. She wiped it off on her jeans.
It slotted into the door's lock easily, and she turned it the wrong way four times straight before realising her mistake and finally swinging the door open to be greeted by a mass of golden fur and slobbery tongue licking.
"Hey, Toto." She patted the Golden Retriever as it danced around her and texted Tara to find out the name. 'Katie or alternately Lil Miss Doggo if ur me but everyone else says thats a stupid name'. "Well then, Katie," she mused. The dog's tail wagged when she heard her name, panting happily. Maggie loved dogs. All they needed was the slightest attention and they were the happiest creatures on earth. "Let's go find Glenn."
At his name Katie's ears perked up and her head tilted to one side; when Maggie repeated what she had said, the dog bounded towards the stairs, glancing back to check that Maggie was following (she wasn't but she started to at that inquisitive gaze) and then vaulted straight up in a few leaps. She went straight to the door furthest from the stairs, the only one that had been left ajar, and nudged it open with her nose and trotted inside.
As quietly as she could, Maggie pushed the door open more and padded inside, grinning when she saw Glenn still in bed, covers halfway down his body and half his face hidden in the mountain of pillows. He was wearing an old oversized grey T-shirt and some sweatpants of the same colour, and on the small table next to his bed was a pair of glasses. Interesting.
Katie scrabbled around in a pile of mismatched blankets and cushions that was in the middle of the floor and then settled down, going straight to sleep after sending Maggie one more adoring glance. Maggie guessed that the Rhees hadn't got her for her guard dog skills.
Glenn's room was minimalist: he had a wardrobe with drawers in one corner of his room, his bed in another, with a long, tall bookshelf taking up another wall. All the practicalities and no personality, which was a little odd. Then she remembered him saying his parents were strict; maybe they didn't let him or his sisters put anything personal in their rooms. What a sad childhood Glenn must have led.
Maggie skimmed the titles on his bookcase, not surprised to see that most of them were sci-fi and fantasy novels and smiled at an entire shelf full of pictures of his family. Maybe Mr and Mrs Rhee did allow some personality after all. She picked up a framed photo that was right at the front, obviously of Glenn's sisters – they all looked strikingly similar and like feminine versions of Glenn, same eyes, same face shape, same colouring. They were smiling at whoever was behind the camera, arms looped around each other. It looked natural and happy, a photo taken when they were genuinely laughing and having a good time rather than when they were posing.
She put it back carefully and stepped back, bumping into his desk. Whirling around, she checked she hadn't disturbed anything – not that there was much to disturb. There was a total of four items: a decent-sized TV with some kind of games console plugged into it, a laptop and…
Oh. My. God.
The sketchbook.
Checking that Glenn was still asleep (and drooling slightly, aw) she very gently picked it up, cradling it in her hands like some kind of quadrilateral new-born child. She would have liked to say that she felt a twinge of guilt but actually she just felt elated at this opportunity that probably would never come again.
She carefully flipped open the front cover.
It was her.
A series of pencil lines converged together to make up her face, the curve of her nose and her wide grin, her hair falling over her face.
Nearly the entire book was filled, and each page with something on contained her face or some part of her face. There was a double-spread dedicated to her nose, and page after page of her eyes, some coloured in but some only shaded, with others abandoned halfway through and started again.
With a soft sigh she reclosed the book and laid it back down reverently. She had no idea why Glenn was embarrassed of his talent; the drawings were brilliant and had so much care etched into them. And drawing her was one of the cutest things she could think of, and him being so flustered about it just made it even better.
She toed off her shoes and shoved her phone into one of them, checking it was on silent, and then tiptoed across the room, very gradually peeling back his covers and sidling onto the mattress next to him, curling up against his warm body.
She dozed off, satiated by his nearness and body heat, and only came to when he began to shift against her.
"Oh, hey, Maggie," he mumbled, kissing the top of her head then the back of her neck, and wrapping his arms around her to tug her close to him and then drifting back off to sleep.
This time it was her giggling that woke him.
"Wait…Maggie?"
"Yep."
"You're in my bed."
"I came round to watch movies but you were still asleep."
"Oh. Okay. Um. Well…I need to pee."
"Go ahead. I'm not going anywhere." She laughed as he clambered over her, so careful not to accidentally knee her that he ended up falling on the floor and receiving an enthusiastic licking from Katie much to his loudly-voiced annoyance.
When he was out of the room Katie settled herself back down and Maggie rolled out of the bed (with a little more grace, but then again she wasn't trying to avoid causing someone injury) to inspect Glenn's DVD collection. Again she was unsurprised when the majority of them turned out to be of the same ilk as The Matrix or Inception, but much to her delight he also owned a copy of Mean Girls (she should probably be thanking his sisters for that), which she put on just as Glenn came back in, looking remarkably more awake and smelling faintly of toothpaste. He watched her as she tried to navigate his remote. Maggie wondered if he was thinking about how inept she was with technology.
(It was more along the lines of 'I'm so glad I didn't wake up with morning wood because these sweatpants are very loose and Maggie would definitely have noticed'.)
Mean Girls was abandoned thirty minutes in (an act of sacrilege in any other situation) when Maggie changed position slightly and her thigh brushed against his groin, because even if Maggie had done that accidentally the beautiful way his breath hitched would have led to her straddling his lap anyway and doing whatever she could to hear that noise again.
He really didn't want to come in his pants but Maggie seemed determined to make it happen with the dirty kisses and the deliberate changing tempo of her grinding down against the hardness in his lap.
The groans and gasps coming from his mouth where it was plastered against her neck combined with his wandering hands were more than enough for her but Glenn was the type of guy who would enjoy pleasuring her as much as she enjoyed doing the same to him, so when he'd climaxed with his head buried in her neck and his entire body shuddering while he panted and his cheeks flushed a beautiful red, she kissed him and looked into his eyes and then pulled her top off, chucking it somewhere on the floor.
He stared for a minute, transfixed, before swallowing and asking hoarsely, "You sure?"
Maggie nodded and guided his hands to the clasp of her bra and grinned as he struggled with it, eventually taking pity on him and telling him what to do, and then letting him take his time in peeling it from her skin because she could see how nervous he was.
His anxiety made him hesitant at first, trembling hands that barely dared to touch her, but he listened to her directions on what felt good, and she gladly let him lay them both down when he gained more confidence, throwing her head back and whimpering when he brought his mouth down to her soft breasts and slotted one of his legs between her, his hands gripping her hips just tightly enough to be hot.
She had her first orgasm there on Glenn's bed and the pleasure that rushed through her made her toes curl and some kind of strange whiny howl erupt from her throat that Glenn seemed to interpret as pain until she kissed him hard and frantic and he finally understood that she had loved it, and they spent another hour rolling over each on his bed until she came three more times without shedding her jeans.
Maggie came up for air sometime after orgasm number four and ran her fingers through Glenn's hair while they both gasped for breath. "You know," she whispered against his now bare chest (that she had peppered with kisses and sucked several red marks onto the tawny skin), "I think it's sweet that you draw me."
He tensed for a fraction of a second before resuming running his hand down her spine lightly. "I was worried you'd think it was creepy," he admitted.
"It's sweet," she told him truthfully. "Does this mean that your final project is one of those drawings in there? Daryl mentioned it."
"Uh, yeah. Only me and Miss Espinosa see it, though. And you can if you want when I get it back from marking."
"Please." She stretched a little, then grinned as she thought of something. "You have any other sketching paper? Like loose stuff."
"Um, yeah. The second drawer in my desk, where I keep all my art supplies."
Without a word she slipped down from the bed, fussing Katie a little when she raised her head hopefully, and fished out an A3 pad and a few pencils. "Draw me now," she instructed, settling herself at the opposite end of the bed to him.
Glenn swallowed and he was obviously trying so hard not to just outright stare at her chest, bless him. "Do you wanna, uh, put something on or…?"
"Nah." Feeling remarkably confident, Maggie leant back on her elbows, crossing one leg over the other, and shook her head so it fell over her face, something which Glenn was always trying to get it to do in whatever situation they were in. "Just don't take this into school, babe." It was the first time the pet-name slipped out but it felt right.
Glenn picked up a pencil and began making a few dashes across the page. "One word about French girls and I'm stopping," he warned her, so focused on his drawing that he began frowning slightly.
Maggie just laughed. "I'm not a big fan of Titanic," she admitted. "Fan of Leo though."
"Careful, you'll hurt my feelings."
"You know you're the only one for me."
Glenn looked up at her and smiled and oh that smile would stop her from breathing one day. "Would it be unromantic to say 'ditto'?"
"Very."
"Hmm. Right back atcha, then."
She poked him with her toe, pouting, but inside her heart was about to explode from the love she felt for him, and her stomach felt warm and her entire body just tingled with the adoration he constantly showered her with and she really hoped he felt the same things, because she really did love him and she needed him to know.
(He did.)
guys you have no idea how long I have spent on word and on this site's editor trying to do the formatting for the texting parts like i'm legit about to cry
anyway i love you all, thanks for so many lovely reviews already and maybe some more? 3