She was always yours; she just didn't know it at first. Not at the middle, either. But she knows now.
All the looks and hidden words weren't in vain, you know that now. She liked to pretend she didn't see, didn't hear, but she did. She loved to make you think you were going crazy, brushing her hand against yours at a performance just to see how you'd react. Looking deep into your eyes at certain parts of songs just to see that you were, indeed, looking back at her.
Someone had to give, some day or the next. You just never knew it would be like this, with a wedding dress thrown haphazardly on the floor, with a bridesmaid dress right next to it on the carpet.
The skin of her back is sweaty beneath your hand, and warm. Hairs are sticking to her temple, and as your hand lifts to brush them away, you wonder if she went outside the chapel looking for you. You never went in; you were smoking on the steps when she appeared behind you, the bewilderment in her eyes clearly visible, clearly pleading to you to take her away.
Had the realization of what she was going to do just dawn upon her at that second? In that chapel? When she saw him in a tuxedo? When you weren't there?
It feels as if you have her memorized, though it's the first time you touch her skin. Her back arches when your hand runs down, her sigh matches your smile. What is going to happen from now on? It'd be so easy to live in this world forever, but the reality that she left her fiancé at the altar is there, behind the closed door of your house.
No one would ever guess what was behind both of your minds, that the speech you gave was both your gratitude and your pleading. For a moment you thought you'd lost her forever. Never brave enough to make the next move; never brave enough to utter the words behind your looks, that hug, those maybes.
You are brave now, you'll fight for her.
"I'll fight for you." You whisper as you steal her lips.
She gives them to you, wraps her arms loosely around your neck and opens her legs to welcome you between them. She lets you control the kiss as her hands wander around you slowly, like a feather. She has control over everything else. She always had a power over you, whether she intended it or not. She knew how to play you, still does, as her legs wrap around you and pull you in.
She could kill you with just one word, one touch, and you'd let her. If she left you, you'd never look back at this town. You're better than here, and you know it. She seems to have forgotten her plans, but you're here now, willing to remind her, to take her to them, to make her dreams come true. And if you win her in the process…
"Stop thinking." She sighs against your lips, turns you around to rest above you.
"Is this right?" You can't help but ask.
"Of course it's not." She kisses your nose. "But we'll make it right."
It's as if everything has fallen into place. You'd never imagine back then, when you couldn't really understand why it hurt so much for the wrong reasons watching Finn cheat on you with Rachel. When you'd said not with her, it was with a possessiveness that startled you. She wasn't his to touch. She wasn't yours, either, but that didn't matter. Finn was yours, and you'd keep him away from her. It wasn't until she turned away from you that day, with her head held high, with that confidence on her straight back that you understood. When it settled in your brain, both of you sitting quietly in the hallway, your ever growing stomach and her skinny legs, your heart raced so fast and the baby kicked. The gasp never left your lips, you pretended it didn't happen. Not with Rachel Berry next to you. Just like it didn't happen when she sang to you. Just like your heart didn't flutter every day in front of her ever since.
"Your heart is racing." Rachel mumbles from her place, head resting against your chest.
"You do that to me." You whisper, fingers going though her hair.
She kisses your breast right below her lips, lingering and brushing against your skin as she speaks.
"We shouldn't have waited so long."
"We took it too far." You sigh.
"I was so scared of us for a very long time." She confesses as she clutches at your ribs.
"I was scared of you." She lifts her head at that, tussled hair falling to tickle your skin as her eyes pierce into you with the utmost attention. "You were so much for me, back then. All that certainty, all your pushes at me to be better and to stop fucking around." Rachel rolls her eyes at the curse, and you smile. "Somehow, I don't think I could have done all of this without you."
"You are strong." The fire in her eyes backs her statement as one of her hands cup your cheek, and somehow you feel more naked that you already are. And that is literally impossible. But your soul is bared in your eyes for her to see, like all those charged looks you give each other so well. "You did this all for yourself and by yourself."
You shake your head with a smile; you're not that girl who needed to prove everyone she could survive on her own without help. You do need people. You need her.
"You've always pulled me from underwater." You move your hands to her hair and stroke your fingers through it again, letting it fall and frame her face. It was always her. "It's always been you."
"Did you need to see me marrying someone else to realize that?"
"Why did you say yes?" You can't help the crack in your voice.
"Because you didn't stop me." She doesn't even let you open your mouth to speak. "Because I thought you'd never have the courage to admit it. Because when I hugged you, you didn't tell me that you loved me."
"I love you."
"I love your boobs." She grins as she kisses the other one. "Now there are some understatements."
"You mean girl." You gasp.
"You fool. I could have never gotten through it. Just turning around and not seeing your face when I was supposed to say yes made me realize it."
"Realize what?"
"That I had to be the strong one for us one more time."
You can't help but to see your soul reflected in the depth of her eyes when you stare at each other. It has always been there. You wish you could have been stronger sooner. But you are now, and now that she's in your arms, it's gonna take a world to pull her away from you.
You tug her up easily, make her legs wrap around your waist as you sit up, cradling her on top of you. It's nice to see her face looking down at you for once. It's wonderful to crane your neck up to kiss her, feel her legs squeeze you as her hands tangle in your hair.
"I won't ever let you go." She whispers into your ear, her hair tickling your neck and the moisture between her legs pressing against your stomach.
Your chest roars at those words and your hands move her hips against you, feeling the wetness of her gasp moisture your ear. She takes it between her lips softly as she rocks along with you, and your hands find the soft skin of her ass and squeeze it, helping you move her with more ease. Soon her hands are clasping your neck as she arches her back as much as she can, her rhythm faltering and her lungs gasping your air. You love to have her at your mercy, even back then you knew. There's a lot of her skin exposed for you to take, and so you move your hand between your bodies to touch her, leaning her back, laying her on your bed and finding the soft skin of her breasts to occupy your mouth. No one but you is going to have her like this ever again. And so you mark your territory until she's pushing your shoulders away from her, bringing your mouth up to her even as she tries to catch her breath.
She's yours. That breath is yours. Just as you have given yourself completely to her. You're hers to break and she's yours to cherish.
She has pulled you from underwater, so many times before. It was time you rescue her, for once.