A/N: Thank you, Chibs_87, for being my beta for on this one. I wrote this quite a long time ago, but my muse won't cooperate and allow me to write a S10 fic in time for the premiere (squee!), so here's the compromise. And it's smutty! Smut makes everyone happy and everyone wins, yes/yes?
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A Lesson in Romantics
It's funny, the things she can hear when he doesn't speak.
All he needs is to give her is a sideway glance, and she can feel her heart pound in her chest. A tiny smile and a glint of blue eyes, and she knows that she's the only one he can see in the room.
And every time they fall onto cool, smooth sheets together, he doesn't need to say the words to reaffirm what she knows. It's there, in the calm touch of his hand that settles on her breast. She can hear it, when he's inside her and she can feel his warm breath on her ear. She knows it when he finally loses control and the word spills from his lips in time to the heat inside her.
It's four letters, and common.
S-A-R-A, not L-O-V-E.
One month.
Sara, Sara, Sara!
Three months.
There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom, he says abruptly at the breakfast table, handing her a cup of green tea.
Five months.
I carry your heart with me, I carry it in my heart; I am never without it, he murmurs, unclasping her thin bra, his fingerprints burning into her already-flushed flesh.
Anywhere I go you go, my dear Sara, and he has one palm pressed on her bony hip, the other descends down to the edge between her thighs.
And whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling, he says in a whisper as his fingers rub against her clit in a maddeningly reverent way. It's the contrast of contrasts: she's there, on her arched back moaning his name wantonly whilst he quotes e. e. cunnings.
Ten months.
Love you, she says as they lie on a bed of messy sheets, her heart thumping for all the wrong reasons.
He just looks at her and breathes, Sara.
She wonders why, because even though she can hear what he doesn't speak, there's some irrational, needy part of her that needs to hear it, to hear four letters arranged in a short little line.
--
It's an ordinary night, and it starts with a kiss, hard and full against her smooth lips.
He moves his lips to her pulse point as his hands start to roam and her voice hitches; a half-moan, half growl that trips over an escaped word. She had always said it after the sheets are damp with sweat, not when they're still crisp and smooth.
The delicious pressure eases from her neck as he just looks at her; there's a way he looks at her, right before they make love (or fuck, depending on what they need), that is enough to bring her to her knees, sometimes literally. He's leaning over her, one palm cupping a breast, and in the dim light his eyes are smothering.
She holds his gaze as steadily as her trembling body can, and in that one look, they speak chapter and verse – it's something he's perfected and a language she's fluent in.
Love you, her eyes say calmly. I love you. Can you lose the control, just enough to say it?
I know you do, his eyes reply, his blue irises murky. And I you.
She closes her eyes, severing their telecommunication. "I love you," she says aloud, and she can't see him flinch.
Her eyes reopen, and when she meets them, another shiver runs down the length of her body.
I'll show you.
A palm slips down past the waistband of her thin cotton underwear and she bites her lip, causing the words stop and more to die on her tongue. She's infuriated with his attitude; why can't he just fucking say it? Another part of her is infuriated with herself; why is this such a big deal? Just because little girls got their lunches with a handwritten note scrawled with I love you! PS: eat your veggies, and all she got was a brown paper bag with a book doesn't mean she needs the validation twenty six years after the fact (she does).
On top of all that swirling fury is her carnal need for his skin on hers, the warmth of him inside her. His hand is curved around her ass, pressing lightly, and there's no point in fighting: biology trumps psychology.
He dips his head down, moving lower than her neck. His tongue travels southbound, navigating her body as though the blood vessels under her diaphanous skin reveal a map of an invisible world.
It's a fine, fine torture as he lingers around the most sensitive parts of her body: the smattering of freckles around her collarbone, the patch of skin right beneath her breasts, the smooth curve of her hipbones.
She groans, locking her knees together as he breathes out warm air right above the expanse of skin around her navel. When he eases her thighs apart and pulls down her wet underwear, she almost wants to scream his name in thanksgiving.
Warm, familiar fingers slide into her and her eyes snap shut as her lips curl into a moan. She's wet and needy and tired of thinking, of being at odds with herself. Thinking is good during logical circumstances. Love is illogical, therefore the less thinking, the better.
Yes.
Oh god, yes.
Slick strokes, unlike anything he's ever done to her, and heavy breaths on her shoulder tempt her closer to ecstasy and it takes her clouded mind several seconds to realise exactly what he's doing.
I L-O-V-E
When he starts to traces 'Y' inside her, she comes, muscles tightening around his apology and her tongue slips fluidly over a well-worn syllable.
–O-U.
He pulls out while she rides out her orgasm, and she opens her eyes to deep blue leaning over her. They're swirled dark with desire, and a dim lamp by their side catches a sheen of unmasked love.
"I know," she says, replacing his name on her lips as her body recalibrates itself from desire to something a lot like guilt. "I know you do, but there's just some part of me that needs to hear it."
"The words evade me whenever I'm with you," he whispers, "but it has always been there."
"I know," she says, and it's her mantra for the night.
He's trying to say something else but she just shakes her head. I know. He's quiet as he rests his head in the crook of her neck, almost as sweaty and spent as she is, his breaths cooling her flushed skin.
It's the end of a perfectly ordinary night, except not. "I love you," he says softly into her salty skin.
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END
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A/N2: My first (real) smut piece, over and done with. Thanks for reading!