A/N: I love the phrase "unearthly hour" because for me, it insinuates some kind of magic that only makes sense in that moment; that's beautiful and raw and almost unreal. In my first attempt at life after the S6 finale, that's the theme I'm going with. I know that the finale was pretty beautiful, raw and unreal for me!
Enjoy, guys. And please don't forget to review.
Mood music: "Collide," by Howie Day (incidentally my favorite song in the world)
at this unearthly hour
By: Zayz
Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills your mind
You finally find
You and I collide
- Howie Day
It's the heat that wakes her.
That's her first thought, as she suddenly finds herself in twilight-consciousness – heavily sleepy, not quite ready to open her eyes, but distinctly aware of her surroundings. It's hot in here. She swears she put the air conditioning on last night, but maybe she didn't. That would certainly explain the suffocating humidity under these covers – despite the fact that she's not wearing anything.
She lies still a few moments more, her brain slowly beginning to start up, her eyes slowly beginning to flicker open. Her inner clock – as well as the clock on her bedside table – tells her it's obscenely early: three forty-six AM. But now she's awake and she knows she's not going to go back to sleep. Damn.
Groaning slightly, she turns over from her left side to her back, her eyes on the dark ceiling above her. As she feels proper consciousness dawning on her, she hears for the first time that it's raining. Not thunderstorm-hard, but significantly, pitter-pattering steadily on the window, the droplets obscuring the gray universe outside her insulated little room. She listens in silence for a while, letting the rhythmic sound of falling water fill her up, until she knows she is fully awake.
Only at this point of absolute awareness does she turn to her right, and gazes upon the man lying beside her.
But, to her profound astonishment, he is as awake as she is.
He is lying on his back, his chest gently rising and falling, rising and falling. He is completely relaxed, his arms like butterfly wings around his head, his hands warm underneath his hair. The only things that distinguish him from slumber are his eyes, brilliantly blue under his furrowed brows and focused on the ceiling with some single-minded solemnity she cannot decipher. Vaguely, she wonders how long he has laid like that, so quiet.
"Hey," she says softly, catching his attention. "What are you doing awake?"
"Nothing," he responds, low and gruff. "Just thinking." He pauses, and then turns to look at her, his eyes somehow bluer when contrasted with the rest of the darkened room. "What about you?"
"It's hot in here," she says. "My eye just…opened."
He gives her a slight, barely perceptible nod and turns his head back to where it was, his gaze focused back on the ceiling.
She shifts to her right side and faces him. Her movement rustles the covers and reveals a glimpse of his chest, bare in the gray light. Her alert slate-blue eyes behold the image of him, serious and faraway, and she is struck by the aloof concentration seeming to radiate off his body.
"What are you thinking about?" she asks him, genuinely curious.
The words seem to make their way into his ear one by one, because it takes him a few moments to process and turn his head to look at her. He seems unwilling to reveal his thought process to her, weighing the two options – to speak or not to speak – in his head. But, to his credit, he chooses the former.
"I don't know," he says, as honestly as he ever has. "Just…things."
She half-considers making a joke – something about how she is currently thinking about the fact that she will have to get ready for work soon, or be on the alert for Rachel's screams from the next room over – but there is something about the way he looks at her that makes her hesitate.
He has this look on rare, unguarded occasions – scarily intense, his blue eyes piercing, but with such humanity, empathy, vulnerability – that takes her off-guard, that makes her dearly wish she was a mind-reader. He gives it to her now and she marvels at it, marvels at the sheer depth of emotion suddenly available on his face.
Normally, she would meet his gaze and hold it for a moment and then change the dynamic – touch his hand, or his face, make him snap out of it. But now, at this bizarre time out of time, the raindrops trickling down the window, she bravely asks him, "I mean it; what are you thinking about?"
And looking at her there, her hair undone and wild around her face, her irises bright against the backdrop of the gray-tinted room, the comforter tucked modestly over her breasts, he bravely responds, "You."
It's a loaded word, and she knows that any other moment, he would never have said it; but something about the rawness of this stolen moment makes it okay for the word to spill out of his mouth unchecked.
Warmth floods through her like pure sunshine, and she finds herself smiling in spite of herself, aflutter with pleasure.
"Really?"
Something cautious begins to cloud his vivid irises, as though he is a forest critter caught under a spotlight. He doesn't answer, but she knows this is his version of 'yes.' Her smile widens and she leans into him, the covers rustling like leaves on a tree. The pure scent of her, free from artificial perfume – a strange, exotic sweetness uniquely hers – fills the immediate air around his nose.
She parts her lips, as though she is about to speak, but she finds no words at her disposal. There is nothing to say. So she presses her mouth gently against his, the taste of him wonderfully familiar, and she feels him apply his own pressure back to her.
They spend their days bickering and bantering, their words often abrasive and insulting with love restrained behind the scenes, between the lines. That is what they know. That is what they revel in. But there are still these snatches out of time, when the unguarded tenderness that does exist somewhere within them reveals itself to the light of day.
His hand lands on the valley of her bare waist and he finds, to his slight amusement, that her skin is indeed a little warm there: she hadn't lied about feeling hot.
And somehow, it hits him then that no matter what they do or where they go in life, they find themselves just like this, matching up exactly, her awake because of the heat and him because of his racing thoughts.
So, because it's almost four in the morning and they still have time before life will demand of them another day, his hand flies upward and cups her breast, squeezing it gently, sensuously, and she instantly feels the arousal begin somewhere deep inside her. She kisses him again and his other hand lies on the small of her back, firmly bringing her in closer. The events of the previous nights begin to unfold again, but slower this time, more indulgent.
And at this unearthly hour, when nothing feels quite real and the world falls away and it's somehow okay to be the person you wish you can be rather the one you are everyday, he draws a ragged breath and whispers into her lips for the very first time, "I love you."
And he knows instinctually, as her back arches and her kiss crashes down on him like high tide, she feels the same.
A/N: Oh, the cuteness! Oh, the adorableness! Oh, the Zay-are-you-out-of-your-mind-this-is-too-ridiculously-cute-to-exist-ness! Let's applaud, people, because this is the first time I have ever written anything even vaguely smutty for the House universe, due to my fear of turning up with something stupid, useless and out of character.
Not to say this isn't stupid, useless and out of character…but I don't hate it quite as much as I do other things I write, so it'll have to do.
Please remember to review on your way out, even if you loathed it, yeah?