Thanks to Nick and Carla finally getting their act together, it seems my ability to write has returned! This is just a short follow on from their last scene in Friday's episode, which I don't think I'm going to get over. Like, ever.
Enough
"I will hurt you in the end, you know."
"I'll take my chances."
She sighs and he feels it. He feels it where she lay her head against his chest in the early hours of the morning, when no words were spoken, lips too busy to give promises a chance. She feels warm against him, and this comes as no surprise, for she isn't as cold as she makes herself out to be, though her feet were when they woke him, colder than he had imagined; and of course he had done just that. Of course he had gone and imagined everything.
And of course his imaginings had paled in comparison to the real thing.
Carla's eyes burn. She can't see, but she doesn't panic. She blinks until the sensation is gone; her cheeks wet, her heart heavy. She breathes deeply. He is holding her in his arms, swaying her from one side to the other, calming her insides in a way that makes her never want to let go of him. And it's like he knows, because the embrace tightens and his breath is against her hair, and it's like last night all over again except he doesn't have to leave her in the morning, and this time she doesn't even want him to.
His lips ghost over her ear and it takes all the strength she has left within herself not to fall apart there and then.
Relief swells in her chest until her throat closes up and speech is something that is truly unattainable to her – but not to Nick.
"We should go inside."
They've been holding each other for a matter of minutes, but it could so easily have been hours. Days, weeks.
He pulls away from her so slowly that she almost doesn't let him. She manages a small smile that is as genuine as the way his eyes are all over her face; checking, searching. Making sure this is what she wants, not realising it is what she needs. Shaking fingers brush away her tears and he doesn't make a thing of it. He doesn't embarrass her like that, he wouldn't even dare. They just look at each other, the silence stretching on for perhaps a moment too long before it is broken by the sound of her lips against his. A lingering kiss.
Their fingers find each other and hold on tightly.
"Come on, then," she whispers.
They take their time as they walk up to her flat. They pass his door on the way and Carla almost stops in front of it. She almost begs him to leave her whilst he still can, to go home and forget about whatever this is before it gets given a name and a place in an organ that should only be used to pump blood and they'll be no going back for either of them.
But she doesn't. Because she can't, because she fears it is already too late.
It is Nick who opens the door to her flat. Her keys are in his hand, taken from the left pocket of her coat where he knows they are always kept, and there is something really comforting about the way he drops them down onto her coffee table, about the way he shuts her door behind her, watching as she slumps herself against it, his expression wondrous as he bends down to remove his shoes.
She is so heavy – but when he touches her, she's light.
"You don't have to do that," she says to him.
But he has already taken them off.
"Tea? Coffee?"
It takes her a moment to realise that he has moved into the kitchen.
"Nick, don't."
She follows him, taking his hands from the kettle and placing them on her hips instead. She leans into him again. Her eyes are closed and her breathing is shallow. She rests her head against his shoulder and lets him kiss the top of her head; his fingers sliding around her waist to meet at the small of her back.
She wants her coat off and she wants it off now.
She opens her eyes to boxes. Her life is in boxes at their feet and Nick must know what she is thinking because he has taken her over to the couch where they are no longer in view, the couch upon which they first made love. And it wasn't slow. And it wasn't what she had been expecting. But as they lay together afterwards – her body limp, her eyes drooping, and he kissed each of her fingers like they meant more to him than her entire existence means to her – something inside her snapped. What was only a dull ache before became an open wound that no amount of LA sunshine would ever have been able to fix.
No amount of LA sunshine would ever have been able to fix her problems, but that knowledge doesn't hurt her now as much as it did an hour ago.
God, she wasn't lying when she said she was tired.
"Then sleep," Nick whispers.
His lips are at her ear again and her legs are on top of his. They are holding each other so tightly that Carla is finding it difficult to breathe because it's too much and it's too little, but it feels like enough. He feels like enough.
She wants him to take her to bed. She wants him to make her forget herself, to make her feel like she's worth something to someone, someone who has come to be worth more to her than she could ever have imagined.
And imagine she has.
Instead, he lets her sleep.
And when she wakes, he is there with her.
He has moved her to her bed. He has removed her bag and her coat and her shoes, placing her underneath the duvet and himself on top of it. She aches for him. She aches for his fingers to touch her skin instead of her hair, for his eyes to open and tell her what he can't yet say.
He shifts beside her. She knows he is awake.
"I'm sorry about this morning."
Why does her voice sound so broken?
"No, I'm sorry."
He turns to face her. His eyes. God, his eyes make her heart jump. He is looking at her so intently, so apologetically that she very nearly whimpers. She feels his gaze everywhere at once. She wants to feel him everywhere at once.
"I was expecting too much," he tells her, his words quiet in the half-darkness of the room. It doesn't feel like summer, neither inside or out; it feels like spring. Carla stares at the drawn curtains in the far corner, just so she doesn't have to look at the pained expression on his face as he admits to her, "I shouldn't have pushed you."
"Yeah, well. I shouldn't have pushed you away." I was scared. I'm still scared. How are you not scared? "Come here." Carla pulls back the duvet and Nick doesn't need telling twice. He places his next to hers on the same pillow she is resting on. His fingers slip beneath the hem of her shirt and her lips graze his cheek. "I didn't want to, you know. I just... Nick, I don't want to hurt you."
"You've said."
"But I don't."
You don't deserve it.
Nick sighs against her, and she finds herself sighing back. She reaches for his tie, loosens it until it comes off in her hands, and climbs on top of him, her fingers in search of skin, in search of what she came so close to leaving behind. What she knows she could still lose; and probably will.
When he speaks, she has to strain to hear him.
"You are going to hurt me, Carla. And I am going to hurt you." He is stroking her hair, his eyes never leaving hers. "But you know what?"
Her stomach flips.
"What?" she asks.
"I don't care."
He pulls her down for a kiss and they say no more about it.