Who: Luke & Wren What: Dust and feels, yo. (1/2) Where: Their house. When: During the sandstorm. Warnings/Rating: Foreplay.
A night spent watching the clock and staring out the windows, and Wren was reminded of New York and those early morning hours when she'd been so sure that Luke was lying somewhere in a puddle of his own blood. But it was worse now, because all she could think of was Will, dead through a door and with no warning, his body nothing but ashes in a vase that Evie talked to when she thought no one could hear her. Or, worse, Silver. Who had never come back at all, and who Selina had killed. Too many hours, and she made her decision early, early in the morning, when the sun was just starting to show itself in the sky.
She wasn't nervous when she called Thomas, because she was numb, numb as nothingness, and enough hours had passed that she thought the worst, her heart in her throat and refusing to be swallowed down. And Gus was excited, because anything that meant he didn't have to go to the school he was determined to hate was a very good thing. He liked Amanda and that big building across the country, and the grandfather that thought he could do no wrong, and even planes didn't scare him now. She drove to the airport, the winds buffeting the side of old car, and she smiled vacantly as Gus hugged his stuffed giraffe and told her how to take care of Père, Cygne, Finch and Petti while he was away.
Gus almost missed his flight, one Thomas had paid for and that included someone to fly with the small boy, all because she wouldn't let go of Gus at the gate, her arms wound tight around him like she'd never be able to unwind them. Part of her wanted to keep him with her, to hug him and hold him against her and cry against his cheek. But it wasn't fair to him, she knew, to live out her silent vigil at windows and doors. An adventure was better, even if it hurt her more. Eventually, he told her that it would be okay, like he was the tiny grown-up, and maybe he was a little. After he was gone, she sat and watched the gate, tears in her eyes and so much exhaustion that she hurt from it.
The dust kicked up in earnest that afternoon.
Staring out the front window of the empty house, she couldn't see anything but nothing. It was fitting, she thought, and she didn't worry about Luke out there in the unforgiving sand, because Gotham was scarier than dust, and she really didn't understand how bad it had gotten outside. Inside, it was pitch dark, and she lit candles and watched them flicker as the house got hotter when the power failed. She listened to the news on her phone, and then she put something old and French on through the speakers. She changed then, a camisole of soft white and a cotton-thin skirt in pale yellow that fluttered to her knees. The skirt was thrift-store worn, and the shirt pulled tight across her belly and left a sliver of pale skin uncovered.
The doctor had been right; a few weeks on the insulin and prenatal vitamins, and now she looked five months pregnant. Healthy, eyes bright, noticeably rounded belly and cheeks flush with the house's heat, and it was only the shadows beneath her bright grey eyes that said anything was wrong at all. She rifled through her maman's trunk, and she pulled out the new track of train and bus tickets that she'd started buying once things went bad again in Gotham. It was a route now, instead of just random places that all started in Vegas, and she began stretching them out on the living room floor, end-to-end, and her bare feet padding around the paper tracks.
Luke and Bruce hadn’t spoken since half the JLA had been arrested overnight, since the priority had once again become the fictional city across the door and he was, as usual, expected to forfeit his own life in response. But this time, there was no willing acceptance. Bruce didn’t find the same cooperation as he had before. This time Luke had said no, and when Bruce tried to keep him in Gotham too long he fought back. Their last conversation had been full of anger and loud voices, both verbal and within the confines of their own mind, and what was left was a cold, stony silence that reminded him of how things had deteriorated between himself and Thomas after Wren had left.
Oh, Bruce still took more time than usual, but to an extent. No more being gone for days and days which became weeks, with hours in between. He had nights, and Luke had days. Sometimes time bled over but he always fought, and they were locked in a battle of wills that so exhausted them both that relenting was an inevitability. Bruce was strong, yes, but between Helena’s suicide attempt and the sudden overnight arrest, he wasn’t at his best and Luke took advantage of that. He didn’t cross for work, though; his in with the CIA meant he had an excuse, meant he still got paid despite only coming in a few hours a day at best and never consistently. No, when he fought Bruce for control and stepped through that door, it was for Wren. Part of him felt a little guilty for keeping her out here, where she would have to wait, but he didn’t regret his choice. How could he? Better this than her dying alongside Selina in that prison, or an injury carrying over and causing her to lose the baby. In the back of his mind he knew, since Bruce reminded him, that keeping her out wouldn’t change the fact that she was still in jail, but he ignored that. They weren’t ready to move on the prison yet anyway; there was still time.
Again, when he crossed back into the Passages hallway it was with the thick weight of hostility upon his shoulders and pricking the back of his mind like thousands of little needles. But this time, this time he just didn’t care. With Ra’s, he’d cared. With Bane, too, he’d cared. He’d understood that Bruce needed to be there. But now? He didn’t care about Gotham, didn’t care about prisons or oppressive governments, not beyond the effect it had on the people out here, the real people, like Jack. That was all that mattered, because the truth was that they could pack up and leave Gotham far, far behind, and someone else would take their place. Bruce depended on him, but he didn’t depend on Bruce.
He might have made it home in time, before the dust swept in with a vengeance, if he hadn’t stopped at the flower shop first. A few pretty, colorful nice-smelling plants weren’t going to magically fix everything but he wanted to try anyway, he had to try anyway. The wind got worse as he paid, enough to cause some concern, but the dust hit once he’d driven a few blocks and got to the point where he couldn’t see a damn thing and had to pull over. He thought it might fade, thought he could wait it out, but it didn’t pass and the crackling radio told him it wasn’t likely to anytime soon. After a lot of cursing and frustration, Luke tucked the flowers into his jacket, pulled up his hood, and braved the dust on foot.
WayneTech GPS and sheer endurance was what got him to the front door. He had no idea how long it had taken and his eyes stung like a bitch, but he fumbled with his key and managed to stumble inside, coughing and wheezing from the dust. Some blew in behind him, but after a brief struggle with the door he slammed it shut and leaned against the heavy wood with a sigh. “Fuck,” he breathed, trying to rub his eyes clear, though the lack of light didn’t help, and bits of dust fell from his shoulders when he stepped forward. “Wren?”
She looked up from where she was kneeling, setting a ticket for Santa Fe adjacent to a ticket to one for Phoenix, and her expression was momentarily confused, as if she didn't understand why he was there at all. It was that way every time he went through lately, where she began to convince herself he was never, ever coming back, and where she really believed it to be true. And so, when the door opened it was a surprise, and there was just her unblinking grey gaze in the candlelight, which had shrouded her since the dust started, and which didn't feel as dark for her as it did for him.
She watched the dust fall from his shoulders, and she wondered how bad it had gotten outside. She bit her lip, and she stood, and it was with an eerily quiet calm that she moved to the front window and looked outside. There was nothing to see, of course. There was nothing but a wall of sand so thick that it made it seem as if there was nothing else in the world but them, and that felt like a good thing, like a safe thing. He wouldn't be able to leave for a while in this, and that was the first thought that came to her mind as her fingertips pressed against the glass. She didn't mind the darkness, and she didn't mind the sticky heat in the house. The heat reminded her of her childhood, and she didn't fear the dark, not if he was there.
She moved then, belated and quick, and the extra weight didn't do anything to make her graceless or awkward. She didn't care about the sand, and she was all arms around his shoulders and tiptoes on the sand-littered floor. Her grip wasn't desperation, because she'd gone beyond that. She was thankfulness, and she was surprise, and she was a thing beginning to thaw. She pressed her lips to his cheek, despite the sand-scratchiness there, and she muttered incoherent things against his skin. "Alive," and not dead," and are you real?" And there was nothing beyond that. None of the things that should be there. Nothing about Gus, or concern about being stuck inside, food and water and the eventual burning down of the candles. None of it mattered, save the fact that he couldn't leave, and that made her laugh a softly triumphant smile against his cheek.
It hadn’t been days this time, not like before, but that familiar ache in his chest flared up as he looked at her and she looked back. It was the kind of pain that could take hours and turn them into an eternity, and the confusion in her gaze cracked what had already shattered so often inside him to the point where he wondered how many more times he could piece himself back together before it just didn’t stick anymore. He watched her pass as she went to the window, and his gaze was momentarily drawn to the tickets strewn out on the floor, illuminated by the candlelight enough so that he could make out that there was something but not exactly what. His brow furrowed as he turned to look back at her, and it hadn’t yet occurred to him that he should be worried about the dust outside. Surely, he thought, it would stop in a couple of hours. “It’s like some kind of dust blizzard,” he told her. “I had to leave the car, but I’ll go back and get it tomorrow.” He probably would have continued spouting off meaningless, stupid bits of information and talking just to fill the silence if she hadn’t moved. He always rambled when he was nervous, just like his fingers always found the back of his neck and he tugged on his clothing without even realizing it.
Ever since finding out she was pregnant he’d tried to be more careful, but when her arms went around his shoulders it was incredibly difficult to keep from holding on and never, ever letting go. He tried, he did, but his grip was still a little too tight and he leaned his head against hers, inhaling deeply to breathe in her scent, to breathe her in, as though that could abate his fear of losing her. “I’m real,” he whispered. “I’m here, and I’m real. I’m fine.” It was true; there were no bruises, nothing that indicated physically of problems through the door. Everything Bruce was doing now, recon and information gathering, was leading up to what would likely leave him looking like he’d gotten in one too many bar fights. He pulled back, just a little, fingers sliding beneath her jaw to keep her looking at him. “I’m fine,” he repeated, and once again his gaze was drawn over her shoulder to the floor. “What are those?” And then the silence registered, too, silence that shouldn’t have existed. “Where’s Gus?”
"You can't leave while it's like this," she said quietly, another whisper against his cheek, after he said he would collect the car in the morning. "If it stays dark, you can't go. You could barely open the door," she said, trying to will that into truth with her words. And, no, it hadn't been days and days, but it felt that way, and it always did when he was away. It wasn't just the door, either. It was his job, and it was everything, really, since Will died. Maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was all the old fears about how badly things had gone with Gus, maybe it was MK's miscarriage. Gotham just added to it, and it was a perfect storm of fear and panic, and she hadn't even thought to go hide through the door to make it better, not yet.
She smiled when his grip went too tight, because she'd noticed he'd been holding back. "I like it better this way," she said, disjointed though it was. "You can't break me. The doctor said you can't break me, even if you try to," she reassured him, because she'd asked all kinds of things, and the doctor had been patient in explaining that they could do all the things they normally did. She knew, though, that convincing Luke would be hard, and it had been hard so far. "Don't let go?" she asked instead, her own grip on his shoulders tightening. One of her bare toes slid beneath the leg of his workpants, and she pressed the tip of that toe against the hard warmth of his shin.
When he said he was fine, she reluctantly pulled back a little, and then his fingers were beneath her jaw and she was staring. Time ticked, and it took a few seconds for her to realize he'd asked questions. She turned her cheek to look at the tickets, and then she raised her hand and closed her fingers around his wrist, tugging his hand away from her face. She pulled, but she didn't tug him toward the tickets, and she didn't tug him toward Gus' quiet bedroom, where Finch was obediently waiting for his little master in the doorway. Cygne nipped at Luke's feet, but Wren just pulled him close to one of the candles, so she could get a better look at his face. She looked for bruises and, finding none, she breathed easier. "I thought you weren't coming back," she admitted, as if that was answer enough to both of his questions.
She was worried enough as it was, he knew, and the last thing he wanted to do was make her panic even more by insisting on going out in the middle of a dust storm. If it lasted long enough he knew he might have to anyway, but for now he just nodded, slowly, wanting to appease her as much as he could. “No,” he agreed. “I can’t leave when it’s like this. Better to stay inside until it settles down.” He tipped his head to the side when she said it was better this way, not understanding, but his expression turned sheepish once it clicked and she told him the doctor had said he couldn’t break her. Part of him knew that he didn’t have to treat her like delicate china just because she was pregnant, but he couldn’t help worrying all the same. “I guess-- I guess I know that, but you know me. I always worry too much,” he admitted. It was true, especially when it came to her; when he wasn’t thinking it was easy to forget, but when he was he always worried about unintentionally hurting her. As for letting her go, he shook his head. “Never,” he promised. “I’ll never let you go.” He moved a little closer when her foot slipped beneath his pants, relishing the contact, small as it was.
It didn’t bother him that she didn’t answer his questions right away; he was used to her silence, and he was far more patient now than he’d been in the past. He let her tug him closer to the candle, his gaze never leaving hers as she looked to ensure that he actually was fine for herself. And, really, he already knew the answers to his questions. He’d asked, yes, but he knew, and he nudged at the puppy when she nipped at his feet without looking down. It pained him to hear that she hadn’t thought he was coming back, and he knew that Gus wasn’t there, that he was in New York, and that what was spread all over the floor were tickets, her safety blanket. He wasn’t angry, no, just sad; he felt Gus’ absence whenever the little boy was gone and wished she hadn’t sent him away. But it was his fault, his fault for choosing to tell Selina no and keeping her here, safe but afraid; he should have known she’d send their son to Thomas. How could he be angry at her for simply being scared and doing what, in her mind, made sense?
“Wren, listen, I’ll always come back,” he promised, and it was a promise he could make. Not even death would keep them apart; he’d made sure of that, regardless of what Eddie said. “Nothing could keep me away from you.” His fingers tightened on her jaw and he leaned in to kiss her, but his lips had barely brushed hers when he remembered, belatedly, about the flowers, and he pulled back reluctantly to unzip his jacket and gingerly pull them out. All the caution in the world, though, couldn’t change the fact that they were now kind of crushed and falling apart, and he made a face as petals cascaded to the ground. “These, uh, were-- are for you. I-- they looked better before,” he explained with a half-hearted shrug, suddenly feeling very, very stupid for thinking such an insignificant gesture could actually do anything.
She was soft kisses to his cheek when he said he couldn't leave, that one little sentence settling her heart back into its place in her chest for the time being, at least until he walked out the door again. She'd begun to take life in tiny increments, all in little blocks that added up to now. It meant that she wasn't doing any planning, really. Christmas was close, and she'd lost the entire first trimester of this pregnancy with fears and maybes, but she just couldn't look out there, not when she didn't know if out there was going to happen. So there was here, and there was now, and he wasn't leaving, and the smile against his jaw was a genuine thing, blindly so, coping, all tied up in the hands of a clock that never switched over to the following day. "Don't worry," she whispered, because that was important, and she smiled a little. "I'll just have to push you harder if you're too careful." And she would, because she trusted him not to go too far, no matter how hard she pushed him. For someone with her background, it was an amazing amount of trust, and she couldn't have found better words to describe how she felt, not if she tried forever and never stopped.
She pressed her fingertips to his lips when he promised he would always come back. "No. Don't- Don't- You're here now. Just be here now," she said, and it was pleading and begging and grey eyes focused on his face. "I don't want to think about later," she admitted. It was unhealthy, but she couldn't help it, and even the tickets strewn across the room weren't really about later. They were about after, but she didn't explain that to him. Instead, she leaned into that kiss with a needy kind of abandon, and she frowned when he pulled back after just a brush of lips. "What-" she began, before her gaze was drawn to the way his fingers tugged down the zipper on the jacket he wore.
She made it through about five seconds of his stammering before she started crying. She tried not to, but she wasn't very good at not crying lately. She cried, and she smiled, and she tried to wipe at the tears with the back of her hand, but they just kept falling. It was a bright smile, despite everything, even in the candlelight, and she took the flowers with the kind of care that was reserved for very, very fragile things. She didn't care that the petals were cascading down onto her bare toes, and she didn't care that they were a mess. "You're the only person who's ever thought to bring me flowers," she told him, caressing his cheek with her fingers when he shrugged the way he did. "They're beautiful," she said, young and more alert than she'd been since he'd walked through the door, and she pressed against him and kissed him without warning, all soft curves and belly and skin gone warm from being inside without the air conditioner running. She kissed and coaxed, wanting his lips parted, whimpering until he gave in, and then becoming even more demanding. She kept the arm holding the flowers to the side, protecting them, even as she tried to melt into him, as if that would keep him here, safe, where she wouldn't ever let anything happen to him.
He would have to leave eventually, as he always did. For the time being it was the door but work drew him away too, albeit temporarily, and he wished he could find a way to really make her believe that he'd always come back and soothe her fear permanently. For now, though, he'd take her smile and the time they did have, just the two of them with the outside world shrouded in blinding dust. He laughed a quiet laugh when she told him not to worry, his voice undeniably fond when he spoke. "I don't think it's possible for me to not worry," he said. He knew he worried too much about everything, even silly little things like how he touched her, and he didn't mind poking fun at himself about it. "Good thing you know just how to push me when I hold back." He could intend to be careful and gentle all he liked, but she could always make him forget all that and get him to stop thinking so much.
Her fingers on his lips silenced him, at least momentarily, and even though he wanted to keep insisting that he'd never not come back it was, as always, so hard to deny her what she wanted. He thought about what Eddie had said about needing Selina, about the Suicide Squad, but he couldn't force the words up past his throat. Not now, when she was pleading, even if he thought they should talk about later. "Okay. We don't have to think about later. I'm here now. It's okay," he reassured her, relenting to what she wanted. He only ever wanted to make her happy, which he thought he'd failed miserably at when she began to cry at least until she smiled and his dismay began to fade. Okay, so maybe this was the good kind of crying he could chalk up to being mostly caused by hormones rather than genuine tears he was responsible for. "You really like them, even though they sort of got crushed?" It was a young question, hopeful, and he shook his head when she said he was the first person to bring her flowers. "I don't think that's true," he teased. "I think--"
Whatever he'd meant to say was cut off mid-sentence when she kissed him, and he made a muffled sound of surprise before overcoming the unexpectedness of it pretty quickly. He didn't need much coaxing to part his lips for her, eager to respond, and her demand was met with equal fervor from him. His hands found her hips, lingered, and then his fingers slid beneath her camisole to find warm skin that felt so good under his fingertips. He didn't think he'd ever get tired of touching her, didn't think it would ever stop being a thrill. "I'm going to get you all dusty," he breathed against her lips, all thoughtless teasing and no actual intention of putting any space between them.
His laugh kept her in the present, and it made her believe the world wasn't some terrible thing that was intent on dragging them down. They were happy, she thought, and maybe the universe had finally noticed. Maybe whatever was after all this, whatever came after skin and bones, had realized that they'd snuck under some radar and found each other. She believed in those things, and she believed in the voodoo her maman had practiced when she was a child, and she believed in candles in church and the smell of incense and wooden pews. She didn't believe in an organized way, no books or dogma, but she believed. And she believed in his laughter, above anything and everything else. "You've always wanted to hold back," she said, the accusation an adoring thing that remember the scared boy he'd been, and how he'd been afraid to look, much less touch her. "I remember being eighteen, and I remember being on the back of your motorcycle, and I remember thinking you'd jump when I slid my arms around your waist." And it seemed so long ago, and it seemed so very, very close.
His assurance that they didn't need to talk about the future, it made the last bit of tension slip from her shoulders. She didn't know he had things he wanted to talk about, admittedly, or she would have let him. But she didn't know, and she was too busy smiling through her tears when he asked that very, very youthful question about liking the flowers. "I love them. I love them even more because they got crushed," and she slid her fingers into the open space in his jacket, where the flowers had been and where the zipper hung open. Her fingers danced there, along his shirt and against his chest, and she kissed him like he'd been gone for days and weeks and months. She licked into his mouth, and she wound one foot around his calf, and she pressed up on tiptoe against the toe of his shoe.
"I don't care," she said about getting dusty, the words muffled and nearly lost against his lips. "Anyway, a cool shower would feel really nice with this heat," she said, and she began to kiss him again, but the mention of the heat made her think of his jacket, and of how warm it was inside, and selflessness took over just a little. She stepped back, and she tugged on the zipper. "You're probably really, really warm," she said, not even realizing she was frowning at the space she'd put between them, and not realizing she'd settled the hand with the flowers against his arm, unwilling to lose all contact now that he was actually there. Even more reluctantly, she stepped further back, warm air between them, and she pulled her flowers to her chest and began carefully navigating the railroad made of tickets, toes and feet and maneuvering to the kitchen, where she filled an empty milk jug with water and set the flowers in the jug, before giving the slightly wilted arrangement the place of honor at the center of the kitchen island.
There wasn’t much he believed in these days, not like he had when he was still young and stupidly idealistic. He’d had more faith in people, then, and he’d believed that they were inherently good, but most of all he’d believed in hope. Hope that good would win out over evil, hope that there was something more than nothingness after death, hope that they could someday be happy and find peace. Now his faith in people was diminished, as was his sense of hope, but there were still people he believed in. He believed in her, first and foremost. He believed in Jack, too, in the few people he knew and trusted, and occasionally he even believed in himself. On his own, though, he didn’t think he’d be capable of it. “I always thought I should,” he admitted, of holding back. “I was worried about hurting you, or doing something wrong.” He still worried about that sometimes, but not nearly as much as he had back then. He smiled at the memory, of being a carefree teenager with a motorcycle, and while he did miss that from time to time he wouldn’t change what they had now, Gus and the baby and being a family, for anything.
He grinned and shook his head when she said she loved the flowers more because they’d been crushed, but kissing her was more important than words and he didn’t want her to stop. Beneath her camisole his fingers slid higher along her back, warmth and pressure against her skin, and he deepened the kiss with a moan that was muffled enough to be rendered near inaudible. He smiled against her mouth when she said she didn’t care, and he began to tease that a shower sounded like a really good idea when she pulled back, and it took him a second to register the loss of her lips under his. “No,” he said, a belated protest about being warm, even though it was a little uncomfortable being in so many layers of clothing. “I’m fine, honest,” but by then it was too late, and he watched her make her way into the kitchen with a stifled sigh. He shrugged off his jacket, more dust swirling with the movement, and kicked off his shoes before following her in time to see her place the flower-filled jug on the island. As stupid as he’d thought his gesture was, he still felt good about having made her smile and came up behind her quietly, chest against her back and his arms circling around her upper body, just above her belly. “Hi,” he whispered against her ear, before pressing a kiss to the underside of her jaw, the start of a trail that led down along the side of her neck.
"I'm really, really resilient," she said truthfully. Maybe it didn't look that way, and maybe her mind was nothing but shattered things and slivers of a whole but, physically, he wouldn't break her. Too many people had tried in her lifetime, and she knew what she could handle. "You can't hurt me," she promised him, reassuring. "No matter what, you couldn't." And it wasn't that he didn't have the strength, because he did, it was just that he wouldn't. No matter what, and she knew that. Then his smile, the one brought on by the memory, made her smile back, just before that kiss and his muffled moan. And then he was trailing behind her into the kitchen, and she could hear his approach as he shrugged off the jacket and took off his shoes. She wanted to call out, to tell him not to disrupt the bus route, or she wouldn't be able to get back, but she didn't. She swallowed back the warning, aware that maybe he wouldn't understand, and not wanting to make him upset, not when everything was quiet and safe and dark and them.
She closed her eyes when she felt his warmth at her back, and she immediately and trustingly leaned against him when his arms circled above her belly. She smiled at the greeting, returning it with a whispered "hey," that was more his than hers, and she tipped her head to give him better access to her neck. "When I close my eyes," she said, nearly a whisper and the words thick and thoughtful, "it's almost like all the times I pretend you're here, but then it's not like that at all," she admitted, because imagining the warm, solid feel of him against her back was nothing, nothing like the real thing. She lifted her arms, and she reached back and dragged fingers through his hair, messing and mussing the dusty strands without care, and then slipping her fingers along his cheeks and to his jaw. The quiet music in the living room changed to something old and jazzy, slow and almost as sticky as the heat in the house, and she hummed and swayed her hips slowly to the melody, an almost lazy swish of movement against his body, and her fingers trailed down along the side of his neck, where her reach gave out, and she couldn't go any lower without turning around, which she was reluctant to do. It was so very, very seldom that he took the lead, and she wasn't about to wrest it from him.
“I know you are,” he told her, because despite his worry and his caution he did know that she could handle more than most people could. She’d been through so much and she was still here, still in once piece, even though he wasn’t sure either of their mental states were really all that sound after what they’d both experienced. But for the most part she, like him, was still sane, still okay; he just didn’t like the prospect of him hurting her at all, even if it was just hypothetical. “I’m not as scared of hurting you as I used to be,” he admitted. When he was younger it had been a constant fear, that he’d accidentally cross a line, enough to make him hesitant to touch her in a way that he wasn’t now. “I’d never want to, and I never would, but I just--” He shrugged. “Sometimes I still worry. You’re good at making me forget, though.” He tried to be careful of her tickets, splayed out in a pattern he didn’t understand, not because he realized their significance but because he suspected she had them out for a reason and he didn’t want to kick them all over the place like it didn’t matter. Maybe part of him was afraid that she might actually use them, and that part of him wanted to throw them all out, but he tried to reassure himself that she’d never actually leave him. Not after New York, not after Gus and the baby. She was scared, yeah, but she’d never leave.
He smiled at her whispered greeting and pressed more of himself against her back so he could reach her throat as she spoke, each slow, lingering kiss like an unspoken claim on her skin. “You don’t have to pretend,” he said, quiet reassurance in each word. “I’m here.” He leaned into her touch as her fingers slid from his hair along his cheek and jaw, and his breathing changed from steady and even to heavier, thicker, when the music changed and she swayed against him. His arms tightened around her, just for a moment, before he let go, but he didn’t step back or move around her. He lifted his hands instead, toying with the straps of her camisole before tugging them down over her shoulders and letting them fall. He brought his lips to her skin immediately afterward, savoring in a way he rarely had the patience for, mouthing along her shoulder, the back of her neck, and then the other side, while his fingers slipped beneath the waist of her skirt.
She liked making him forget. She liked that she could make him forget, because he could do the same thing for her. No matter what happened, how bad it was outside, or what the hotel did, being around him always made everything okay, even if just for a little bit. Maybe it wasn't the same as being afraid of hurting him, but it was important. And she was afraid of hurting him, just not in the same way. When she left New York all those years ago, she hadn't realized she could hurt him. Now she knew, though, and it was the reason those tickets hadn't been handed in at booths across the country yet. She didn't understand it, how someone who wasn't good for him could make things worse by going, but she believed it, and maybe that was all that mattered. And she didn't think going would solve anything. They'd both left. They'd gone to New York and back, and she knew other people who had gone farther. Evie had gone far away, and so had MK. Silver had traveled out of the country, and Max had been gone for months. Leaving hadn't fixed the hotel, and it hadn't made it go away, and she knew Selina could drag her back if she wanted to. She didn't see running as a way to fix the hotel. It wasn't about that. It was about the process itself, about watching the world pass by, about the appearance of distance.
She made a soft sound when he reminded her that he was there, and that she didn't need to pretend. She'd spent so much time while they were apart pretending that he was there, and it was so easy to slip back into that old daydream. It was safe there, and it was scary in the real world, where he could be gone at any moment. But the pleasure of having him there was better than any make-believe, and the way his breathing changed just made it all more real, more grounded. She moved against him with a little more pressure, knowing he would keep from stumbling back from it, but whatever game she'd intended to play flitted from her mind when he tugged down the straps on the camisole. The flimsy fabric caught at her elbows, and she lost her fingers in his hair as he mouthed her shoulder. She almost had enough time to wonder if it was the heat that made him slower, more patient than he normally was, but his fingers slid beneath the loose waist of the skirt, where the panties she wore were thin and soft, before she had a chance to really focus on anything at all. She whimpered, the sound a thing made of need and want, and it was all she could do not too tug too sharply on his hair. The camisole slipped lower, nothing beneath it, and she turned her face and kissed his cheek, his jaw, whatever she could reach.
Maybe it was the wall of dust outside and the darkness, both of which made it feel like they had an endless amount of time stretched out before him, and the exclusivity of it just being the two of them in the house that made it easier to be patient when he usually had such a hard time holding himself back. Maybe, like she’d wondered, the heat had something to do with it too. But whatever the reason, he wasn’t all that concerned with trying to figure it out. That required thinking, and he didn’t want to think just then. He hooked his thumbs in the fabric of her panties and pulled, tugging her skirt down with them, starting off slow and becoming a little more impatient when she whimpered. “I love it when you do that,” he whispered, disjointed as it was, because he’d always liked being able to make her sound like that, like she didn’t just want him but needed him too. He made a muffled sound against her skin when her lips brushed his cheek, and he let her kiss where she could reach for a few seconds before his fingers found her jaw and turned her head just a little more, enough for him to kiss her without having to turn her around entirely. His other hand slid up her thigh, over her hip, and tugged on her camisole, easing it down further over her belly. The kiss was nothing chaste, open-mouthed and heat and his body still pressed against hers.
She dragged in a jagged breath when his thumb hooked in the panties and skirt, and she repeated that drag of oxygen when his touch became impatient. She wanted to turn so very, very badly, and every single muscle in her body tensed with the effort to stay. Fabric pooled at her feet, and she pressed back against him with more insistence now that there wasn't as much clothing between them. The curve of her hip swayed back against his thigh, and she breathed a short little breath. "When I do what?" she asked, not actually knowing what she'd done, and wanting to know, because that meant she could make him sound like that again. The whisper chased along her spine, and it made her toes curl, and the muffled sound he made against her skin made her forget about dust and tickets and hotels. When he turned her cheek more, she took advantage of it to give him a desperate kiss, one that was all hormones and demand and nothing soft, despite the fact that it retained that heat-lazy pace he'd set. When he tugged on the hem of the camisole, the slinky fabric gave, and it made her impatient in a way nothing had before then. She let the camisole join the fabric already at her feet, and her fingers tightened in his hair, demanding and twisting, and yet she didn't turn in his arms. "Your shirt? Please? Je t'en prie," she begged, not caring that the pleading was thick and obvious against his mouth. "Please?"
She was close enough that he could feel the tension in her body, and as much as he wanted her to turn he relished the fact that this time she was the one fighting to hold back, rather than the other way around as it normally was. His breath caught in his throat and thickened when she pressed back against him and he couldn’t help a slow rock of his hips forward, against her, and then a second time once he decided he liked the feeling. “When you make that sound,” he breathed, trying to focus on the question long enough to think properly. “You whimper. I like it.” Anything else was swallowed up by the kiss, and now that the fabric pooled around her feet his hands were free to roam, warm skin under his fingers now that there was no fabric in the way. He hissed when her fingers tightened in his hair but it was a pleased sound, nothing pained, and he added bite to the kiss in response before she started pleading against his mouth. He’d never been able to last very long when she asked him things and now was no different. Reluctant to stop touching her but helpless to say no, he let out an impatient whine as he pulled his hands back and fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. He growled against her mouth, and the kiss turned hard and demanding as he managed to work through every last button, practically yanking his shirt off in his haste and letting it fall to the floor. “Better?” It was a muffled, teasing thing, and he rocked against her again, liking the way her bare skin felt against his. It was nothing he hadn’t felt before and yet it felt new all over again, like it did every time they were together.
The slow rock of his hips made her moan, quiet at first, then louder the second time, and she had trouble focusing on his voice or his words. No, not his voice. She focused on that fine, but it was the thick sound of it that she heard, and it made her whimper without even realizing that he was talking about her whimpering. His hands made her repeat the sound, and she pressed against wherever he touched, a sway of hips, a turn of shoulders, a rock against his fingertips. Her fingers tightened when he hissed, because she loved the way that sounded, like restraint and lack of control all wound up in one tiny thing. She bit when he bit, not caring that they would both end up with teeth-swollen lips, and she licked when she inadvertently drew blood, the slip of her tongue into his mouth just making her want more of that. When he pulled back with that impatient whine, she was almost sorry she'd begged him to take off his shirt, and she tried to watch over her shoulder as best as she could in the candlelight, something about the way he yanked at the buttons making it hard for her to stay still. She gripped the counter with one hand in a tactile attempt to remain still, her back to him, and then he was growling against her mouth and kissing her with that tangible demand, and she didn't even notice when his shirt joined the other clothing on the floor. She nodded when he asked if it was better, the movement coming with something like oui against his mouth, and she pressed back against that heat and skin. When he rocked against her, she moaned again, and she rocked back against him with even more demand, before he had a chance to do it again. She pressed against him after, rock and sway and no space between them at all, the fabric of his work pants hard and scratchy against her bare skin.
“Don’t stop,” he begged when she moaned, because he liked the sounds she made and he liked the reminder that she wanted him, that he could make her feel like no one else could. It came out muffled and disjointed, though, since he couldn’t bring himself to pull away long enough to get the words out, but maybe it didn’t matter. He liked the tightness of her fingers in his hair, and he liked that the more he fought the tighter her hold became. After his shirt was gone he wondered, distantly, how long she would be able to keep her back to him, and he wondered how long he would be able to restrain himself from just turning her around himself. He had the strength for it, he knew, but he wanted to see if he could hold out long enough for her to break first. And, really, he wasn’t in any particular hurry. The dust outside wouldn’t abate anytime soon and there was no chance of interruption, not when it was just the two of them. All that rocking against her had made him feel like he was in control, but then she rocked back against him and he was the one whimpering, wanting more, torn between getting his work pants off and never, ever moving. He tried to hold back out of a lingering fear that, despite what she said, he might hurt her, but it was hard to think clearly enough to exhibit restraint and one arm was already around her upper body, keeping her against him, and his free hand was on her thigh, fingers pressing bruises into her skin. He didn’t want to move, and the kiss turned harder, more desperate, in his frustration, but all that rocking against her and her rocking back into him just made him want so badly he couldn’t think.
He pulled back little by little, making the kiss something slower, lingering, his lips brushing against her chin, her jaw, and her cheek before he reluctantly unwound himself from her and stepped back. “I love you,” was a whisper that grazed her ear as he put space between them, moving back into the living room, towards the couch. His fingers fumbled with his belt and then, once that had been tossed carelessly aside, tugged his zipper down. He didn’t say anything, didn’t tell her to come or coax her forward; his breaths, shallow and heavy, were the only sounds he made as he waited.