Who: Neil and Sam What: Homecoming. (1/2) Where: Their house. When: Before Neil gets stabbed lol. Warnings/Rating: None.
So, it was a few weeks late for Valentine's Day, but whatever. Sam got her marching orders at the rehab place, and she texted Neil as soon as she climbed into the cab.
Time's up.
Her phone got pocketed then, because she wasn't giving him a chance to stall or whatever. He'd had weeks, yeah? And she was stupidly nervous, because she hadn't seen him in that long. After all the bullshit with the nursing home, she'd banned everyone from the fucking place. And, yeah, that even included Neil. And it had been kind of good or whatever, all that time to think. And her therapist had been cool, even though she hadn't managed to do much of anything. Sam understood, even though the woman hadn't said it, that this shit, her memory thing, wasn't just about some brain damage. She remembered shit, just not the bad shit, and wasn't that just too convenient? But, yeah, she'd had time to think, and she'd pieced together some fucked up view of what she thought happened. And maybe it was all wrong, but she thought it was better than denial or something.
And then she'd found all kinds of shit when hunting up the picture of the Murphys online. Shit about Iris, about some fucker named Ian, about Neil and Chloe, about her drug problem and suicide attempts. And, ok, yeah, she'd altered her mental image to make that fit. And she wasn't sure what she believed and what she didn't. But she knew one thing; she really didn't want to fucking remember. If all that shit had really happened, she didn't want to remember what any of it fucking felt like. Right now, she didn't want any drugs, and she didn't flinch when people touched her. None of the shit that TMZ said or whatever. So, yeah? Reality could just stay the fuck over there.
She gave the cabbie the address to the house Neil said they shared, and she tapped her cane against the floor of the cab with a kind of nervous anticipation. She wasn't scared or anything. It was good nervous, or something, and she hadn't been lying when she said she felt more for Neil than she should have, when she only remembered being around him for a few months.
Ok, maybe she was a little scared, but not of him. What if she was completely different than what he was used to or something? No one had actually said she sounded any different, but she wasn't sure anyone would tell her if she did. Either way, yeah, ok, so she was nervous and a little scared. But there wasn't a lot of time for that shit, because the cab pulled into a parking lot, and she gave the driver a few bills that Tess had left for her.
She didn't text to say she was outside or anything, because she wanted to know if he was watching for the car or not. She thought that might be an ok indicator of how into her he was. He hadn't said he loved her or anything, so she assumed this shit was casual? But he had said they weren't fucking anyone else, so, yeah.
Aluminum cane firmly on the driveway concrete, she stepped out and slammed the door behind herself. She made her way to the door steadily, not too shaky on her feet anymore. Her hair was dyed black, and it was loose around her face. It made her look paler, but her cheeks had filled back out, and she looked healthier. The bit of hair that had been shaved behind her ear wasn't visible in the tangle of black, and she wore a pair of jeans and snug white v-neck, also courtesy of Tessy. Her boots were black Docs, and there was a pack of cloves tucked into the pocket of her shirt. Click and click went the cane against the concrete, and she made her way to the door.
Normally, Neil would have procrastinated. He was good at it, and hey, it was what he’d based his entire life around. He’d put off Sam’s Valentine’s Day gift and keep doing so until the last minute when, inevitably, he couldn’t anymore, and then he’d end up rushing around in some half-assed attempt at cobbling something together. But normally and usually didn’t really apply anymore, and he’d started thinking about Sam’s gift way early on. He knew he could ask for all the advice he wanted but in the end he’d still be the one who had to make the decision so yeah, he was going to do this one on his own. Sam still didn’t remember a lot of shit and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell her, so there was that, but he was trying not to dwell on it. Not the bad stuff, at least; the one constant he was dwelling on was that she still didn’t know how he felt about her. He’d probably given her the impression that it was some weird, casual thing that just so happened to be monogamous at the same time.
He kept letting it go, shrugging it off, and he wasn’t stupid. He knew he needed to man up and stop; enough people had told him enough times. So, okay. They had a house, and in the weeks he spent waiting for Sam to be released he actually managed to land himself a fucking job. It wasn’t anything great, and it wouldn’t make him rich, but it was an income. It was money. Enough for regular people to live on, anyway, and that’s what he was now. Regular, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Her present was… well, it was ready, but he didn’t have anything romantic set up aside from some roses he’d gotten a week ago on a whim. They didn’t look as good as they had the day he’d bought them but it was the thought that counted, right? Yeah, right, because when he got her text he realized he didn’t have time for anything else. Maybe Neil paced a little as he waited. The house was quiet, and he’d been toying with getting some kind of pet in the last few days; maybe a dog. Or a cat. But he hadn’t decided on anything and so he was alone, watching out the window like a kid until he saw the cab pull up, but he didn’t go to the door right away. He watched her for a couple seconds, watched her make her way out of the cab and up the driveway. Sometimes he still had to reassure himself that yeah, she was okay, but he worried. He worried about her.
When she was a few steps away from the front door, Neil managed to stop watching long enough to open the door and step outside. “Hey,” he greeted, and despite everything he couldn’t help grinning. “Welcome home.”
Sam was looking up at the house, and then the door swung open, and she took her time looking down at the open doorway. So, yeah, this was how normal people lived. Sam hadn't ever had normal people. She'd had shithole, and she'd had nicer shithole, and she'd had impersonal richass hotel. This was completely fucking different, and all the talking in the world hadn't really prepared her for how normal it felt or whatever. Normal, and kind of real, and maybe that shit was a little scary. She remembered Aria, and that hadn't ever felt like a home. It was a hotel, yeah? And hotels never felt like anything you could just wake up and lose one day. And Sam had never cared about losing anything. She'd lived a casual, free kind of life since she left her husband. And before that shit had been his and never hers, which was kind of weird, maybe. But she'd been a kid, and he'd been her pops' age, and maybe that had something to do with it.
"You did good," she finally said, looking at him. And, ok, so maybe she stared a little, but it had been forever or something. And she was looking for changes, maybe. Things that were different from what she remembered. Things to fill in all those gaps that were all over her brain like swiss cheese. But he looked just like she expected him to look, and she wondered if that's because he hadn't changed, or if it just meant her brain knew more than she did or something.
Either way she leaned on the cane as she closed the gap between them, her fingers shaky on the knob. But her gait was pretty fucking steady, and she was confident the cane wouldn't be around much longer at all. She stopped right in front of him, and there was no lingering panic and no catch of breath at being so close to a guy. She didn't even know those reactions were supposed to be there, that they'd become so normal she didn't even notice them. But, yeah, no, she didn't show any hint of fear or discomfort, and she grinned up at him with the sort of gap-toothed confidence that had bailed about a year earlier.
"So, I get a tour, yeah?" she asked, grin and Jersey-thick, close enough that the fabric of her jeans brushed against his legs when she shifted a little, innocently.
Normalcy hadn’t exactly been something he was raised with either, albeit in a different way. Neil had only ever known endless wealth and luxury until recently, and even his relationship with Sam had been complicated from the start, ups and downs (a lot of downs) and nothing steady. It definitely hadn’t been what people would be called normal. And now that he was trying it, even though he had no idea what he was doing, it seemed just as much of a struggle as most things in his life were. He was pretty sure a lot of people didn’t think he could pull it off. Hell, before all this bullshit with the Murphys, he didn’t think Sam had had much faith in him either. He was hoping, if nothing else, that could be different now.
“Thanks,” he teased, trying not to dwell on the fact that she obviously didn’t remember the house. She remembered him, though, despite missing time, and for that he was grateful. He knew she was staring but he was too, a little, the realization of how long it had actually been sinking in and catching him off guard. He let her move closer, let her determine how much space she did or didn’t want between them, and he noticed that there was no hesitation or reaction to being so close to him. Maybe, he reflected, her loss of memories affected that part of her, and if that was true he had a hard time thinking of it as a bad thing.
He tipped his head to the side and smiled down at her when she asked for a tour. “Of course. C’mon.” Having her this close was new, but he hadn’t forgotten the days when it hadn’t been a big deal, and he held out his arm with mock gallantry. “I’ll refresh your memory.”
Yeah, no, no panic, and she grinned when he tipped his head. She didn't realize that he wasn't used to even this normal closeness. They were both dressed or whatever, and it wasn't like they were getting it on in the front yard or something. She remembered a time when she was all over him, yeah? Ok, so maybe she never owned up to it being anything more that something physical, but she hadn't been squeamish about touching him. Since she'd left her husband, she'd had lots of sex, and she'd never had a fucked up or bad experience. Ok, so maybe she was impatient, and maybe she hadn't made it around to anything more than quickies or whatever, but she had time. So, yeah, she didn't get that this was anything weird. And she even remembered them fucking, kind of, through some hazy fog that she could never brush aside. But she knew they'd fucked. Yeah, no, no clue that she was supposed to be keeping him at arm's length.
So, she took his arm without hesitation, dumping the cane on the way through the door. "If you let me fall, I am so suing," she joked, even as she looked up at the high ceiling and the visible stairs and landing. "Wow, this is nothing like cramped New Jersey. It's nothing like the hotel either, yeah?" She asked that last question with honest curiosity in her inky blue eyes. "You liked that kind of transient thing, yeah?" She always assumed he hated roots, commitment, anything that felt permanent. Why else would someone live in a hotel? Even with the suite, it wasn't his, and the shit inside was like interior designer selected. It made her wonder about other stuff, too, and she pointed toward the stairs as she thought, indicating that she wanted to go upstairs before she tired herself out; it would be easier to do downstairs after, yeah? "Unless showing me around gets in the way of whatever impressive Valentine's plans you have, baby." She was a shiteating grin, because however much they'd changed, well, she was pretty sure getting something together for Valentine's was still totally not his thing.
The closeness might have been new (or new-ish) but that didn’t mean it was unwelcome; no, just the opposite. Neil didn’t actually want her to remember some things, as selfish as that might be, but it was partly for her sake too. She was much happier not knowing, wasn’t she? In a strange, twisted way, it was almost like a second chance, even though he’d have done just about anything to stop her from ever getting shot if it was possible. And, of course, there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t remember, but he figured they’d cross that bridge when (and if) they came to it.
“I’d never let you fall,” he protested. “I can’t afford to be sued, remember?” He grinned at his own joke, but he was careful as he led her inside. The house was nothing amazing especially compared to what he was accustomed to, but he understood how it must have looked through her eyes. “It’s somewhere in between, I guess,” he agreed. “I don’t know if I liked the transient thing as much as I was just used to it. But hey, we’re doing the normal thing now. I wouldn’t go back for anything.” Which was true, and yeah, maybe feeling that way about someone was a little daunting considering how shitty things with Chloe had turned out, but Sam was different. He didn’t doubt that. Going upstairs was fine by him, and his expression turned sheepish when she teased him about Valentine’s plans. “No, there’s time to show you around. Dinner is going to be really good takeout,” he admitted, “but I did get you flowers. And a present. I’d say I’m making progress, huh?” His smile was a little fonder, and his arm went around her waist as they approached the stairs. “Lean on me. It’s okay, I can handle it. What room do you want to see first?”
"Such a fucking romantic," she said with a laugh that was all brightness, despite the rapidly fading black of the dye in her hair, and despite how pale that black made her. "You're supposed to say you won't let me fall because you like my ass or something. Or maybe you like some other part of me." Her smile was gapped youth and, yeah, there weren't any shadows in the inky blue of her eyes. And maybe all this shit was temporary, and she knew that. The things she'd forgotten were too convenient, and it was too neatly wrapped up in a bow. But whatever; she was willing to take it one day at a time, and today was a good day, yeah? Fuck all the rumors and doubts that kept welling up whenever she talked to anybody but him.
"Don't make normal sound so boring," she teased, finger pointed at his chest. "It's not like you're fifty and in a rocker or something." She gave him a playfully quizzical look, pretend curiosity and a smile that just wouldn't fucking quit. "Are you fifty?" She was joking, sure, but she didn't mind acknowledging the age difference between them. It was one of the things she'd liked about him, even way back at the beginning. She remembered sitting at a table with him, Liam and Aiden, and he'd seemed so different from the other two guys. So, yeah, no, she didn't mind the age thing, not even a little. She might be messed up about some things, but not about that. "And are you telling me you got tired of being a player?" she joked, but her expression became a little more serious as his arm circled her waist. "So, you know it's cool to tell me you only got this house because of shit with Chloe going bad, yeah? I mean, you don't have to keep shit from me," she suggested, testing the water with her tone. She wasn't actually sure if that was the case, but he'd never seemed the settle-down type to her. Sure, maybe shit had changed significantly, and maybe she just didn't remember. But that transient lifestyle, he'd never seemed to mind it.
"Our bedroom," she said a second later, as she carefully watched the steps as she climbed them, her weight heavy against his side. Step and step, "and then my present or whatever," she added, looking up from him and grinning.
It was easy to slip back into good-natured humor, and he did just that. “Oh, right. Oops,” he teased. “Can I say I won’t let you fall because I like all of you? Is that better?” It was no secret that Neil had never been very good at expressing how he felt in any sense of the word, but he’d decided that he was really going to try this time. It was all about progress. He widened his eyes in mock innocence when she accused him of making normal sound boring, shaking his head as though to say who, me?, but then his expression became one of playful outrage when she asked if he was fifty. “Do I look fifty, huh? I’m still in my thirties, thank you very much.” He’d never minded the age difference, not even in the beginning. It had been something he’d thought about every now and then, maybe, but eventually he’d just stopped thinking about it. Out of all their issues, all their problems, her age and his had never really come up. As for being a player, he’d never really thought of himself as one, and that showed in his expression. Okay, so he’d never been one for long-term commitment but players were jerks, guys who dated one girl after the other and kicked them all to the curb like a heartless bastard; in his mind, that had never been him.
“I was a player?” It wasn’t clear if he was asking her or asking himself, but he didn’t dwell on it too long. “No, Chloe wasn’t why I got the house,” he explained. “Sure, I couldn’t afford Aria after she called my parents, but I could’ve gotten an apartment. Or a cheaper hotel. I didn’t want to. I wanted us to, you know, have a house. Something a little more permanent.” No, Chloe didn’t get the credit for this. She didn’t have that kind of power over his life; he wouldn’t let her.
He was careful to keep a firm hold on her waist, to ensure that he was ready should she trip or stumble. “Okay,” he agreed, “but don’t get too excited. It’s kind of just a bedroom.”
"Yeah, ok, saying you like all of me is better, baby," she assured him, grin and observation, because maybe he was different, yeah? She still had this impression of him like he'd been that night they'd gotten wasted off their asses and rubbed against each other on his couch. Ok, sure, so he'd been bantery then, but it was different than now. She couldn't put her finger on what was different, though, which annoyed her a little. Normally, she didn't mind the missing pieces, but sometimes she just wanted them all back, however bad they fucking were. This was one of those sometimes, and only his teasing about not being fifty drew her back into the moment. She gave him a playfully skeptical look. "You? In your thirties? No fucking way," she teased, looking at him long and hard, as if she was trying to figure that shit out. Which she wasn't, of course, and her grin came back a second later as she kept staring at him. Yeah, ok, there were differences, nuanced shit, and it made her want to get him upstairs and sit his ass down on the bed, so that she could look longer. It made her want a fucking paint brush and some new linen, too, but her hands weren't good enough to do him justice, not yet.
She laughed at his repetition of being a player, because she couldn't tell if he was asking or just saying the words to hear them aloud. "Yeah, you know, going out and picking up chicks for one-night stands. Totally your thing, baby." Which was such bullshit that she couldn't even keep her expression serious. Well, until he started talking about Chloe. And then he was talking about permanence, and she realized she really had missed something. She was quiet until they got upstairs, and then she yanked him toward the double doors that looked like they headed into the master bedroom.
Inside the room, she pointed at the bed. "Sit your ass down, yeah?"
“See? I’m learning.” There was a lot of pride in his voice, most of it exaggerated, but as difficult as it had been Neil did think he’d come pretty far from when they’d first met. They’d been through a lot of shit, too, from crazy door people to booze to psychopaths, and even if she didn’t remember all of it he thought it was kind of impressive that they’d actually made it as far as they had without calling it quits. Step by step they made it up the stairs, and he chuckled when she continued to tease him about his age. “I’m not that old,” he protested, and okay, maybe there was a little bit of pretentiousness in knowing that he looked good for his age, but whatever. He realized that, at first, she was only staring to tease him, but then she kept staring and he wondered what she was looking for. The missing pieces, maybe. Things she couldn’t remember that had, somewhere along the line, changed him.
No, that whole one-night pickup thing definitely wasn’t his style and the few flings he had in-between weren’t like that at all. He wrinkled his nose and frowned. “Totally not, baby,” he teased. He didn’t pick up on her quiet, and it took him by surprise when she yanked him into the bedroom and demanded that he sit.
Surprised enough that he did so without protest, finding words only moments later. “What? What’d I do?”
"Yeah," said thoughtfully, "you're learning." And she fucking meant it. There wasn't a hint of teasing in her voice. If anything, there was something like surprise. She was confused about a lot of shit. And, maybe, she was realizing that she was even confused about the shit she hadn't realized she was confused about. Either way, that pride in his voice made her kind of warm all over, which was completely high school stupid, but whatever. And she liked that cocky tone to his voice when he assured her he wasn't that old. Because, yeah, no, he wasn't. And she liked how he looked. She took that opportunity to glance over at him, and she gave him an inky once over that was better suited to shitty night clubs than a house and a committed relationship, but whatever. It's not like she could change her stripes. So, yeah, there was heat in her gaze, and she didn't realize that hadn't been around for ages either.
The wrinkle-nose frown was endearing, and she leaned against the doorframe and gave him a shove toward the bed. And her expression was fond, which she knew was totally sappy. "That was so the right answer," she said of his totally not, and then she tried not to laugh at his surprised question about what he'd done. And maybe she wanted to make him suffer a little, because she didn't answer right away. She stood in the doorway, the frame for support, and she looked around the bedroom that they apparently shared. It was hard to even wrap her head around that shit, because she'd never expected to actually get with him. And this domestic thing was so outside of the expected scope.
She looked around a few seconds longer, and then she approached the bed. Her gait was slow and unsteady, but it was a short distance, and she crossed it without needing help. She immediately propped a knee on the bed, beside his thigh, and she put her hands on his shoulders to help her straddle his lap. And once she was off her feet, she was fine. Her movement was normal, and even her hands did ok. So, she sat back against his knees, and she went back to looking at his face. Her expression was serious youth, and there were questions in the blue of her eyes. "Ok, so explain to me how I got you from rubbing against me on a couch, to this. Because, baby, I swear to fucking god, I thought you would never do the commitment thing."
Her surprise was something he expected, because he knew even before the shooting she hadn’t exactly understood his turnaround. And, honestly, sometimes he didn’t understand it either. Neil could still remember a time when commitment had been the last thing he’d wanted, and his feelings for Sam hadn’t always been what they were now. Once, he was okay with no labels, no clear definitions. She was cute, it was fun, but a relationship hadn’t necessarily been on the horizon. And then things had changed, and it had taken him a while to actually realize it, even longer for him to realize that maybe his cynical views on love and relationships weren’t quite true. Chloe had fucked him over but he’d clung for that for too long, and he’d never met anyone who’d made him actually care. Not until Sam. He thought about her leaving, about her hooking up with fucking Daniel, and it made him angry. Very few things ever made him angry, because being angry meant giving a damn, and he’d started doing that more in the past year or so than he had for most of his life. He thought about those things a lot, and he thought about them then, too, but the way she looked at him was a pretty good distraction. She’d had issues with closeness for a while, even before Ian (though they’d only gotten worse afterward) and he’d gotten used to giving her space. But she wasn’t looking at him like she wanted space now, and that heat caught him by surprise. He smiled, a little uncertain, but it definitely wasn’t a bad thing.
He mock-stumbled when she shoved him, a teasing thing because there wasn’t much force behind it, and he watched her expectantly once he’d sat down as per her instructions. He thought about telling her that she hadn’t even seen her present yet, but she was looking around the room and for some reason he didn’t want to interrupt that. It was hard, though, to keep still when she limped towards him, but he managed to let her do it on her own. When she straddled him, his hands went to her hips automatically, and he couldn’t help a small laugh at her question. It was, admittedly, a perfectly valid one. “Shit happened, I guess,” he said with a shrug. “Things that made me wake up and realize what I wanted. And who.”
She would have laughed her ass off if he tried to tell her he was jealous of Daniel. Come on, yeah? Neil never got pissed or jealous or anything. He was the chillest person she'd ever fucking met. Nothing had ever ruffled him, not that she could remember. She could remember trying to make him freak out by getting him kicked out of place, and making him climb up to dangerous spots, and the man never lost it about anything. She didn't have a hardon for challenges, but he totally would hit the spot with someone with that kind of kink. But she'd never been particularly kinky and yeah, ok, so maybe she wasn't very experienced either, but whatever. Maybe she'd learned tons of shit in the past few years, yeah? And if not, she could always fucking learn. "What's our sex life like?" she asked bluntly, because she was always direct. She'd grown up in a world where pussyfooting around shit meant you lost absolutely fucking everything. And as a girl, she'd needed to work twice as hard to get herself heard. So, yeah, blunt. "And don't fucking use romance novel words, yeah? Give me the truth."
She wiggled when his hands settled on her hips, testing the feel of his fingers. She looked down at one of his hands, and then she looked at the other, and she looked back up and grinned and wiggled again. "That feels kind of nice," she admitted. And "shit happened" sounded about right for how he'd end up in a relationship. It wasn't very telling, but at least he was into her, and she was getting a better idea what they were like together. And, really, it wasn't very fucking different from what he remembered. Sure, he talked about monogamy and living together, but this wasn't some romantic drama or anything. He was still him, which was actually reassuring in some weird way that maybe made no sense. "You're totally not going to clarify what happened, and you're not going to tell me what made you have a fucking epiphany and decide you wanted me instead of that Chloe chick that walked on water when you two were in college, are you?" So he hadn't turned into Shakespeare during one of those swiss-cheese memory holes in her brains. Check. "Ok, does my present require clothes, or can we try that thing with your hands on my hips while we're naked?" Blunt, and another wiggle for emphasis.
Maybe, logically, he had no reason to be jealous of Daniel. Hell, he knew better than anyone that sometimes sex was just sex. But there was something about the guy that just rubbed him the wrong way and he couldn’t help his jealousy, couldn’t help believing that the guy had a thing for her that she just couldn’t see. And he’d thought, once, that she had a thing for him too. He hadn’t always been so sure that she didn’t want both of them, or maybe she felt more for fucking Daniel than she did for him. Those doubts had faded a lot, and even though he still hated the guy he didn’t think she wanted him anymore. Well, most of the time. He was still damn sure Daniel wanted her, though.
But that wasn’t something he was thinking about just then, or something he wanted to think about. He had no idea how to answer her question about their sex life; romance novel words hadn’t even crossed his mind. “Uh, well,” he began, but then she was wiggling and looking down at his hands and he completely forgot what he was going to attempt to say. “Kind of nice is one way to put it,” he grinned, before coming back around to the topic of their sex life. Right. “We haven’t, uh, actually had sex in a few months,” he explained. “It’s not because we-- not because I didn’t want to, or you didn’t want to, really, but… that stuff you don’t remember? Yeah, that played a part.” And it was a shit explanation, but what was he supposed to say? He was trying to let her memories come back naturally. “But before that, it was… healthy, I guess? I don’t know. I liked sex with you. You liked sex with me.” He shrugged, and god, he was dying here, but he’d never talked about his sex life. His parents were so not interested and he was close to his siblings but not that close; not on his end, anyway.
“Do I need to clarify?” He was edging around the question, maybe, but whatever. “I realized Chloe was a psycho bitch and I want nothing more than to have her out of my life. You’re the one I want. It took me a while, and I’ve fucked up a lot, but hey, it happened,” he grinned. So maybe he wasn’t much of a romantic, but he’d come a long way regardless. And as for whether or not her present required clothes, that made him laugh. “No, not really. It’s… I think it might take some time for you to be able to use. Sort of. But once we’re naked, I’m going to forget about it completely, just to let you know.”
Sam remembered Daniel. She might not remember everything, yeah? But she remembered enough. And ok, so the fucker was really good in bed, but it was just fucking. She wasn't the kind to fall in love, and she wasn't in love with the reclusive drunk. Anyway, he was with Lin or whatever, even though that seemed like the most fucked up relationship she'd ever heard about. And Lou was involved in it somehow; she knew that too. But, ok, yeah, maybe she was sure that Daniel would fuck her if she let him, but it wasn't like she was issuing an invitation. Sure, she believed in open relationships, but she'd never cheated on her husband. If she said she wasn't going to fuck around, then she didn't fuck around.
And she was waiting for his answer, yeah? The non-paperback version of their sex life. But that grin of his distracted her for a second, and that was so not playing far. "You have a better description than kind of nice?" she asked cheekily, another wiggle of her hips accompanying the question. And it was hard, but she forced herself to be a little slower about it this time, less playful and more sex. But then he was saying they hadn't fucked in months, and hello frown. Ok, the stuff she didn't remember, sure, whatever. "But what the fuck do you do to get off then?" she asked, and, ok, so maybe her view on shit was a little colored by the fact that she'd gotten married to a very controlling man when she was only a kid. But, yeah, she couldn't imagine a guy not getting any for months. She almost asked if that was why people thought he was fucking Iris, if they had some arrangement or something so he wouldn't be so hard-up. But something about his shrug-stammer explanation made her put the idea aside. He couldn't even talk about fucking; she doubted he had it in him to work out a backup plan or anything.
She nodded when he asked if he needed to clarify, because she kind of felt like she wanted everything clarified lately, and that warred with all the shit she didn't really want to know about. But what he said about Chloe was good. It was petty to want him to hate her, but she really wanted him to fucking hate her. And that was just another indicator that she felt more for him than she'd expected when she woke up. And she was grinning like a stupid fucking virgin when he said she was the one he wanted, and it took another wiggle or two to get back on track. "Ok, so present first and naked next." But she didn't move. Fuck, no; let him do some of the work.