Beginning Notes: So, I've been absent. Obviously. I know I need to post something to 'Live a Little' and I need to start posting on AO3. I wrote this up really quick to test the writing waters, and hopefully I can get myself back in the grove before I go back to writing the real stuff. Like Live a Little. And requests.

Stopping the Inevitable

On the night Nero's broad shoulders fill the doorway of the house she shared with a man she didn't love, brown eyes haunted by ghosts of a past she would never dare ask about, she thinks of him.

Laying in the darkness of early morning, eyes wide open and thoughts running rampant. She thinks of him. And as her hand slips between the hem of her silk night pants - pants, not shorts or nighties or anything else sexy because that was reserved for someone with enough love to soothe a war torn nation but not this nation and the man sound asleep beside her was not that someone - and into her cotton panties, she does not think of it as the hand of the man she love- no, not 'loves'. Is supposed to love.

Because she loved Clay, once upon a time, but knuckles crunching against bone has changed all of that and now she has to take showers so hot they burn the memories of his hands on her body at night from her mind.

She arches her back into her hand and tries so desperately to be still. To be quiet. To be invisible, for once in her life.

And she thinks of him. Of callused brown hands that are still soft, but only with her. Tender, but only on her skin. Loving, but only when they encase her hands within them. She thinks of a large cross tattoo that she drags her nails across and soft lips that press against hers. She thinks of the name Lucius carved permanently into a neck that she bites at, marks, burns herself into because she wants him to know that just as she is his, he is hers.

"I love you," she whispers into the darkness of early morning, eyes squeezed shut and thoughts at a halt. And she wants to be still and quiet and invisible but goddamnit, she has a voice too and it needs to be heard.

"I love you, too," Clay mutters, and she bites her tongue not to whimper - because if she whimpers, she'll cry. And if she cries, he'll know. He'll know that she isn't here of her own accord and something is wrong and oh god, Gemma, what the hell is wrong with you?

And that can't happen. Because she may be a lover but that'll always come second and she loves her grandsons too much not to follow through with this.

So when her husband slides her pants the rest of the way down and mounts her, she keeps her eyes closed. She doesn't need to see him. Because if she looks at him, she won't see Nero and if she doesn't see Nero she won't want it anymore. Because if she looks at him, it'll become rape and she's so tired of being a victim that she can't… she can't…

Gemma is a great actress but not that great.

"I love you," she whispers, when the world drops out of view and her husbands - Nero's, Nero's, Nero's… - hips stop moving. When there are fireworks behind her eyelids and her nails drag down a back that is not marred - no, painted, because his skin is a beautiful canvas that is fit only for artwork - by a cross but nothing. Emptiness.

And he says it back. Or he doesn't. Because he couldn't possibly say it back if she didn't say it to him in the first place.