A/N: Um. Things I should not be doing instead of my thesis for eight hundred, Alex. Right, then. Except this is kind of epic and needed doing and, let's face it, I'm not even sure I'm awake at this point. I think all of these are words. Yeah? Well, this one's for Melissa, you tease. I think the Stones references are an all-time record. If you can count 'em all I'll make it a two-parter, the second of which will be all smutty and junk.
This one's not for you, Essy. NONE FOR ESSY. Muahaha! Yeah, I know, I need to lay off the coffee. And diet Rockstar. And No-Doz. 0.o
I'm stuck.
Between a rock and a hard place, as it were. The rock offers her smooth sailing and safety and her in satin swaying down the aisle; the hard place offers her a blind stumble through a minefield with no conception of what lies on the other side.
Except the knowledge that it could be Eden.
More words, quiet and quizzical, and the three that she's had stuck in her throat for twenty years: I love you.
It was dark, the first time she knew. Lying in the grass on the quad in the midst of Michigan spring, skin puckered in the cold as her eyes, fresh and young, scanned the sky for Orion's Belt. His fingers creeping steadily up the bare flesh of her thigh, impatient and insolent and incomprehensibly sweet in that singular moment.
She's never been able to help it.
His lips are dry and tentative and the memory of how his tongue feels on hers directly precedes the reality; and then it's gone along with his heat. He needs to know it won't fade away before it's ever really started and they watch one another, mesmerized, smiles saccharine and sentimental, as the sound of his surrender clatters on the tile.
His thumb hooks over hers and the tips of her fingers rest against the back of his hand; intertwined and for the first time in their lives, on the same page.
She doesn't try to hide it when the tears collecting on the cusp of her lids trickle over and fall in graceful patterns down her cheeks, and he doesn't flinch when they catch in the stubble of his upper lip. He tastes the brine and the bitterness she's shed and lifts his face to follow the rivulets with his mouth until he reaches her eye and exhales, the bridge of his nose barely touching her forehead.
She knows it's the closest he'll come, this inaudible action, to uttering the words; but then, she's spoken for the both of them.
From her vantage she catches his exposed throat and the silver scruff in a caress, soft breath against his Adam's apply urging his eyes to the ceiling. She reaches to her toes and brings their tangled fingers up around his neck in time with the drop of his head and this time the caution is gone from his kiss. His free hand twists in the hem of her top and she stumbles, bringing him with her toward the wall with her lips to cushion his as they make impact. When he's flush against her she knows what he wants but won't vocalize for fear that she won't reciprocate.
Slowly she lets her hands drift in a descent, slow and sloping down his back until they rest on the seam of his jeans, leaving fingerprints in the fine layer of dust.
I need you. The vibrations are too soft to make it even into open air but he can taste them and answers quietly, the last two fingers of his hand curling under the starched salmon fabric and ascending, his middle and index fingers forging a path ahead until he reaches elastic and she inhales sharply not at the feeling but at his hesitation. There is none of the urgency she expected or the angry fumbling to free themselves of clothes that she imagined: it's inquisitive.
She lifts her arms for him and a cloud of chalky grime follows her shirt to the floor. Her hands circle his waistband and trace the line of his sternum and then diverge as she follows his shoulders and the jacket slides easily off him. Her nails descend dark cotton and she feels him tense under the pressure, but only long enough to refocus her mind from the contraction of her diaphragm as his palms lay flat on her midriff, the rough patches of skin smearing dirt, marking her, his, as they round to her hips, pulling the strings.
She's still as they slip past her impractical undergarment, loose and lazy, falling little by little as they stand silent and somber, immune to all other existence but their own, in this moment, the one in which they undress one another languidly and revel in every touch and taste and movement that brings them toward the painstaking pinnacle they've been climbing for years.
The barbs of his beard leave miniscule patterns on her cheek as he rests his there, lost in the knowledge of the impending, inevitable journey. Still in his jeans and shirt, sneakers still tied, he eases her from the wall. Devoid of his crutch she acts in its place and the magnanimity of the motion is not lost on either. Joined in an awkward stumble, he brings her to his bed, and eases her down, the whispered Lisa at last on his lips.
She can almost hear it, not more than a sigh, but there, threading its way over the hair's breadth of space between them and she curls over and on top of him like a cocoon, making the moment last as long as possible before the crest of the hill and whatever lies after.