Chapter Text
“This isn’t ever going to be anything serious,” Taylor warns him as she strips off her shirt in the middle of the living room the first time that he comes to New York.
It was going to be the only time. She was taking a break from relationships, enjoying her long-sought independence from the British and boyfriends in general. Plus, she had greater things to do in life than dating a boy on a football team.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have some summer fun along the way. Plus, maybe she’d finally be able to get Keleigh to shut up if she granted him one date.
So she allowed him one date, and then they had a few too many glasses of wine, and then he kept staring at her with those crinkly green eyes, and the next thing she knew, she was taking her shirt off while straddling him on her couch.
He doesn’t seem bothered as he runs his hands up her sides and tilts his head up to look at her. “Good thing I’m not looking for serious,” he says before pulling her back down into another kiss.
Every time he kisses her, she stops thinking about the future. She loses sight of everything apart from his hot breath mixing with hers, his hands—huge hands—covering the entire span of her back and then her ass, gripping her like she’s the only thing in the world that matters. He undoes her bra while his lips latch onto a spot just underneath her ear that sends sparks through every part of her body.
“This okay?” He murmurs, and she barely hears him but nods as the bra loosens and his hands slip over her breasts before she even pulls her arms out of the straps. He sighs into her mouth, and he’s not even kissing her, just ghosting his lips over hers as he rubs his thumb over her nipples.
She doesn’t think or plot or plan the way she usually does. With other guys, she thinks the whole way through it, decides where they’ll fuck, who will be on top, whether they’ll spend the night or leave, how much foreplay she’ll allow, which lube—if any—they’ll use. She thinks her whole way through sex the way she plots out the bridge of a song, and it works, it always works as long as she thinks through it this way.
But she doesn’t think with Travis. Not when he picks her up and carries her into what he thinks is a bedroom but instead is an office. Not when he tries to apologize and reverse paths, determined to find an actual bed (“I’m not fucking Taylor Swift on a random desk,” he insists, even though it’s not random, it’s her desk, and she’d be perfectly happy to get fucked on it). She doesn’t think or protest or voice any opinion at all when he gives up and lays her out on the rug back in the living room where she lost her shirt.
“Good enough,” he mumbles, so endearing, as he pushes up her skirt and pulls down her panties. Then she’s moaning as his tongue finds her clit for the very first time.
It turns out that her living room rug is a very good place to get fucked after all. And it turns out maybe she doesn’t have to think her way through sex to orgasm. It’s fascinating to her, a new experiment to conduct. Is this a one-time thing, the novelty of it allowing her to stop having to manage every little detail? How long can that novelty last?
And so the one date she was going to allow solely for the sake of shutting up Keleigh turns into more than one date.
It’s for science, after all.
That’s why she asks Travis to stay that night, no other reason.
He’s the other half of a hypothesis about sex that she’s testing out, not her next boyfriend.
******
The problem with not seriously seeing someone who lives a half a country away is that they can’t really keep it as just sex. When he comes to visit, it’s for a few days, and it’s not like they can go out and do anything while he’s there, because she needs the world to think she turned him down. She does not need anyone to know she’s repeatedly seeing this new man so soon after her last fling.
What they’re doing is steadfastly nothing serious. After just a few more visits, she’ll complete her research on thoughtless (but very good, amazing, best-she’s-ever-had) sex, and his football season will begin, and this will all have been a fun summer nothing of a fling that they both move past and the world never knows about.
So yes, they have a lot of sex, but they also hang out. They hang out a lot.
She cooks while he does his best to distract her. She learns he’s a picky eater, and she makes it her personal mission to introduce him to new types of cuisine that he’ll enjoy.
He, in turn, introduces her to all of her favorite movies, films like Austin Powers and Happy Gilmore and American Pie that she previously dismissed as frat boy nonsense but ends up enjoying way more than she’d ever expect.
She’s delighted to learn he loves fashion, and he gives opinions on all of the new ensembles her stylist has sent over ahead of the fall season. He’s even willing to let her pick out a few for him, and he chooses a few things for her to try out.
He teaches her a little bit about football and discovers she already knows his coach and one of his teammates.
They talk endlessly about anything and everything. Because this isn’t serious—isn’t ever going to be serious—she can tell him all about her last real relationship (not the post-relationship disaster of a fling from May, but the six-year one that should still be painful to talk about). Somehow it’s not painful to talk about with him. He also just got out of a long relationship with a partner he thought was the one. He gets it.
They analyze together what went wrong for each of them in those relationships, a post-mortem for both. They discuss what they learned, what they want for next time. She steadfastly doesn’t think about how similar their future hopes are.
He tells her about how he’s nearing the end of his shelf life for an NFL career and how he has no idea what he’s supposed to do next. She tells him she’s nearing the same point.
She starts to think about him constantly, whether he’s laying in bed next to her or off at practice half a country away. She’s the first person he calls when he hurts his knee right before the season. They FaceTime and her heart sinks at the sight of the fear in his face.
She surprises him in Kansas City the next morning. It’s meant to cheer him up, but she realizes shortly after landing at the airport that the gesture might seem like a little much, especially given that he’s not even her boyfriend. She offers to stay at a hotel, an offer he refuses before she can even finish the sentence.
He has a few of his best friends staying at his house, and while she’s heard all about them previously, it’s an unexpected pleasure to actually meet them. They promise her they’ll keep the visit secret, and they keep their promise.
When he comes to New York the next time, she introduces him to a couple of her closest friends. They’ve also already heard about him anyway—she can’t keep it inside, this nothing serious fling she’s having. It’s so bright, so invigorating that she wants to shout about it from the rooftops.
That’s how she ends up agreeing to go to his game. She can’t restrain herself anymore. She has to see him in person on that field, experience the crowd he tells her so much about, see her wild boy in all his wild joy.
So she agrees to spill their secret and let the world in, and in doing so, she starts to suspect her nothing serious fling could potentially be a nothing serious relationship.
But at least that’s nothing serious, right?
******
What she never saw coming was that something switches in Travis after the first game. Once they get to the after party, away from the general public, he’s so touchy, never letting go of her for a second. His hand skims her lower back while she introduces herself to his teammates and their wives. His thigh rubs against hers while they eat. When they dance, he nestles into her from behind, resting his chin into the crook of her neck, his hand splayed across her stomach, his breathing synced with hers. When they take a break, he pulls her into his lap when he sits on a barstool away from the dance floor.
But he’s uncharacteristically quiet, absent from most conversations and fiddling with his phone. He’s not even doing anything on it. She glances down a few times and sees he’s just tapping the screen aimlessly, not in any app.
They’re among the first people to leave that night, and nobody comes back to Travis’s house with them. It’s the first time it’s truly just the two of them at his house. Even her security seems to stay away, although she assumes they’re at least parked somewhere nearby.
She half expects Travis to fuck her right up against the wall of the mud room. She imagines it will be desperate and rushed, the pent up energy from not seeing each other for a week and then not being able to touch in front of the cameras seeping out.
But he doesn’t do that. Instead he takes her coat and bag and hangs it for her in the closet by the door. He pours them both a glass of water and says nothing as he heads to the bedroom. He starts to get ready for bed, washes his face, brushes his teeth, tosses his clothes in his hamper.
She follows suit tentatively, copying him like they’re playing a game of monkey see, monkey do. The butterflies flutter in her belly, but these ones aren’t as pleasant as the ones she usually gets around him.
Maybe he’s finally realized this is all too much, that the circus she brings everywhere with her won’t work with his NFL schedule. Maybe it’s distracting for him on a game day. Maybe she’s too out of place here in this sports world around a game she knows nothing about. She’s so unlike any of the people here.
She stands next to him in this unfamiliar bathroom, and her hands are shaky as she starts to remove her jewelry.
“Let me help you,” he says, and she lets him take over. He takes off her necklace and kisses the spot on the back of her neck where the clasp had previously rested. It sends shivers down her spine.
It’s confusing. She feels like she knows this Travis, the one who helps her with her jewelry and kisses her any chance he gets, but she doesn’t know him to be this quiet. He’s almost shy. She spins around in his arms so they’re face to face and looks up at him.
She’s not quite ready for this to be over yet. She still has research left to do. But she can’t just force him to keep participating in this project solely for her sake.
“Hey,” she says, looking at a spot just past his face. “I, uh, know that there’s a lot that comes along with being in public with, well, me, and if it’s too much during the season, then…”
She trails off as she notices he’s frowning at her now, his eyes serious in a way they never usually are. He looks her over once, twice, and her heart starts to crack as she stands there in the red negligee she bought specifically for him right before she left New York.
“Too much?” he asks. “Fuck no. C’mere girl,” and then he’s pulling her closer and his lips are on hers before she can say anything else.
His kisses are desperate, sure, but slow somehow too. Deep and thorough and the only thought in her brain is how she needs more. His lips slot so perfectly between hers, but he’s not close enough. He’s never close enough. She wants to live inside his skin, and she scratches at him to get closer.
“Baby,” he says between kisses. “You’re fucking amazing. You’re always amazing. You could never be too much.”
She’s not sure how they make it to his bed, or how he has the forethought to pull back the covers before he lays her out underneath him. He’s only wearing boxer briefs, and she can’t help herself but to run her fingers through the hair covering his stomach and chest. She never thought she’d love the feeling of a hairy man. Her previous boyfriends and lovers were nothing like this, all of them skinny and hairless.
But Travis is all muscle, huge and thick and so much a man. She feels tiny in his arms, protected in a way she never has been before.
He slows the pace from the urgent kisses in the bathroom and takes his time with her instead. He kisses every inch of her, her lips and her breasts but also her collarbones, her belly button, her fingertips. She’s entranced by him, laying there like a helpless pile of mush as he worships her body. He is, in that moment, her entire world. All she can see is him, all she smells is his aftershave and a hint of sweat, all she tastes is his minty tongue against her own.
He looks her in the eye as he slips first one finger into her, then two, studying her reaction. She wants to tell him how good it feels, but he hits a spot in her that lights everything up before she can get a word out. He’s smiling as ripples of pleasure start to roll through her hips and up into her belly.
“That’s good,” he says, not asking, but telling. It’s as if his fingers can read the sensations they create inside her body.
He doesn’t stop long enough to let her think of a response other than “mmm.”
Instead he lifts her leg so he can fit in against her better without taking his eyes off her face. “You have no idea what you do to me,” he murmurs as he adds a third finger. “Just walking into my stadium through the front door like everyone else.”
She doesn’t remember that part of her day, not with her body heating up all over and an urgency building between her hips. She locks eyes with him for just a moment before he curls his fingers inside her again. Her eyes shut of their own accord, her hips rocking up against him.
“Babe, fuck me,” she says.
He shakes his head, his nose nudging against hers in the process. “I want to watch you a little bit longer.”
Taylor isn’t really sure what to do with the way that sends heat right to her core the same way his fingers are doing. She tries to kiss him but he shakes his head. “I want to watch,” he insists.
And he does, watches the whole time while he works her up to a panting, sweaty mess in his sheets. Her world is reduced to the feeling of his fingers urging her on, the pull of her own body tightening with every stroke. He doesn’t take his eyes off her while she scratches down his back, definitely leaving marks, and tilts her hips into his hand, grinding against his palm while she comes all over her fingers.
“So fucking beautiful,” he says as he grabs a condom from his nightstand. He rolls it on while she catches her breath, then simply watches her until her breathing starts to even out. He gives her a small nod, as if he’s asking if she’s ready, and she gives a small nod back.
That’s a little bit serious, she thinks, the way they’ve started to communicate without words.
But then he slides into her and she doesn’t think anymore, doesn’t fully register the impact of the words he keeps whispering into her ear on each thrust. “Mine, you’re mine,” he pledges. “Just so fucking perfect. All mine.”
And then, after, right as she’s drifting off to sleep, he says the most damning thing yet, so quietly she’s not sure he means for her to hear it.
“I think I’m falling for you.”