A/N: This was published a while back on LJ, but I'm finally posting it here. Sometimes I'm much too lazy...


When it's just the two of them – on the couch in her apartment, her legs propped up on the coffee table while he lies completely stretched out, legs resting over her lap – Rachel likes to trace patterns on the palm of Nico's hand and up his arm, patterns so intricate and precise that swirl around in her head and leave a burning sensation on his skin. It is an intimate gesture between the two, and the closest they allow themselves to get. Because anything would lead to things- forbidden, clothes-on-the-floor-can't-tell-where-she-ends-and-he-begins-tangled-in-the-sheets kinds of things. They just know it.

(And they both like not being brutally burned to a crisp by the god of the sun, thank you very much.)

During those times, (as cheesy, cliché, straight out of Rachel's harlequin novels as it is) everything else merely fades away, a low buzzing sound in the back of their minds that is oh so easily ignored. No monsters, no mayhem – just two people dangerously close to love, and nothing more.

And for now, it is more than enough.