Cho Chang (formerchinadoll) wrote in after_the_bombs, @ 2011-08-03 20:56:00 |
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Tracey woke slowly, lazily. It was a luxury that she rarely afforded herself. There was always too much to do, too many responsibilities, too much weight on slender shoulders to countenance lying in very often. Immediately awake and immediately to work was her creed most days.
But not today. Not even when she realized that the warmth at her back and the weight lying across her waist wasn't wishful thinking.
This wasn't the first time she'd awakened with another body sharing her bed here in her tiny sanctum. Rare was the man allowed past her threshold and none of them ever tempted her to slip back into slumber once that first hint of wakefulness roused her. Even her closest friends were not afforded that degree of trust. She'd learned too early in her life that no one was perfectly trustworthy and that the deepest betrayals came from those closest to your heart.
She walked skittish fingertips across the hand – so much bigger than her fine boned, dainty counterpart – that lay half-curled against itself on the bed at her hip. Her touch wandered higher, tracing lines of power faint and delicate along that masculine forearm until her fingers slipped from warm flesh to the crumpled line of a sleeve cuff. She could feel the rough edge of the surged seam beneath her sleepily curious touch. Tracey smiled at the memory of his clever hands unfastening his white uniform shirt's buttons and rolling up those few turns of once crisp cloth with unthinking grace. Other than the shoes and socks and stockings that had been discarded, that had been the only undressing that had occurred last night.
Last night had been a singular event in her life. They'd talked for hours. Just talked. And laughed. And listened - he'd actually listened to what she had to say without judgment, without her having to shape her opinion to foster or denigrate his. Oh, there had been kisses and the times when they weren't touching in some manner had been few and far between, but for the first time, she'd been willing to let things be as they were and not push things into the physical where there were no surprises for her and where she knew how to control or at least shape the encounter for her advantage and safety.
It wasn't often that a girl had a life changing revelation in the midst of discussing the terror that was the Monster Book of Monsters.
“Tracey?” he whispered with a voice rough from overuse and too few hours of sleep.
“Hmm?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“I will.”
Maybe love wasn't the impossibility for her that she'd always believed it to be.