They lay together, tangled and damp, and staring up at the ceiling. Although they were utterly spent, their minds raced, running different paths around the same thought – leaving New York and going back to Chicago.

Alicia's breaths grew deep and measured, Will noticed, as if she was trying to calm herself.

He turned gently to her and tried to brush back her bangs from above her right eye, but she winced back from him and he froze in shock.

"You… are you… okay?" his words were long and slow.

"I'm sorry, yes," she said, and she reached for the hand he had extended to her. She held it close to her chest. Then she turned her face away. "I…"

Shame and vulnerability stole the words from her mouth.

"What baby?" he said, to the back of her head, as soft as he could muster. It took all his strength to hold back a hard and angry, "Why the fuck would you recoil from me?"

"I'm scared… I'm going to lose you," she whispered, and her words tumbled out into the dark.

Will anger melted and his chest ached. "My god, baby, you're not… going to lose me, I'm here," he said, desperate to soothe and to reassure.

But he realized, bitterly, that there were eight million ways that she could lose him – all totally out of his control. He had thought from the start that she would find a way out of this, and he had been afraid of that, and of his own powerlessness from the moment they'd walked into the Presidential Suite a few months earlier.

He pulled her back into his body, spooning her and cocooning her into his limbs. He knew that she liked that, that she felt safe when his body contained hers. He felt her heart thudding through her back.

Her silence crashed around him. He knew she was thinking exactly what he had been thinking – that she could lose him even while he was there for her, ready and desperate to love her, to be with her. His jaw clenched.

He thought about Georgetown, and he thought about now, and how much she had hurt him without ever knowing, or meaning to.

"I don't want to go back," she said, a crack in her voice.

"I know, Leesh, this has been… perfect," he said, and breathed in her hair.

But she wasn't pacified. "It's so… hard there…" she stammered, and he heard the tears before he felt them roll from her cheek to his arm, and it killed him for her to be sad but his anger bubbled back up too. It doesn't have to be hard, he thought. It's your cowardice, it's your goddamn pride and stubbornness… I'm here for you, I'll be here for you, if you would just leave him and let us make this our life.

Aloud, he said simply, "I know," and squeezed her tighter.

She wiped at her face and her pain stabbed through him and he hated it and he hated Peter for standing in their way and all he could do was mutter, "Hey, hey, baby, it's going to be ok."

She sniffed.

"I promise," he said, and he knew that somehow, someday, this woman would destroy him.

Already he had completely lost himself in her. Already, his days were determined by what attention and affection she showed him. Already, he woke up each morning burning for her and reaching blindly out in the dark hoping that she was there. Usually she wasn't, but the chest-crushing joy when she was could tide him through days – sometimes weeks – of not getting to wake up next to the warm shape of her.

Suddenly she turned to face him, cheeks still moist, and she kissed him with an urgency that surprised him. He was usually the one to channel his emotional needs into physical ones, not her, and yet here she was, giving him her body instead of her heart, and using sex in place of conversation, instead of laying down the plans that he so badly wanted.

But, ever powerless before her, he kissed her back, and he wasn't sure that she had stopped crying when her hands moved over his chest and lower and god she just had to touch him and he was ready, a third time, as if he was once again 22 years old; the 22 year old that had just met this Alicia Cavanaugh that everyone was talking about – the girl that had corrected Professor Halsberg in a class of 200, and been right. He had wanted her then, and he wanted her now, and he had probably wanted her all through the two intervening decades, and a lifetime with her wouldn't make up for the lost time, and he couldn't even have that because already she was looking for a way out and….

Lust, and need, and anger, and adoration crashed through his veins as he grabbed her and flipped her onto her back.

As he slipped into her, a growl fell from his throat. She felt like a warm bath and the hairs on his neck stood up feeling her heat and wetness envelop the most tender parts of him.

He grabbed onto her shoulders to pull himself more deeply inside her, and his hips bucked deep into her with a need that terrified him, a need that veered frighteningly close to entitlement. His body held hers down beneath him, and he liked the knowledge that at least for now, she couldn't run.

His hips sped up and he was scared he might hurt her – he felt out of control as he faded in and out of awareness, blinded by desire and urgency.

Her nails sunk into his back as she grabbed him into her in encouragement but he felt her fingers like feathers, and heard only the light echoes of her throaty groans.

"Fuck Alicia," he choked, and she loved how he forced her name out through gritted teeth, she loved how his body tightened and tensed, she loved the weight of him and the depth and the speed that made her fight for her breath, and-

"Oh god I'm close," she whimpered as he pumped into her.

"No," he breathed, and he suddenly stilled inside her and she clenched around him in protest while her face scrunched into confusion.

He took his hands out from under her shoulders and held her hands with his, lacing their fingers together.

He stared into her eyes – his face inches from hers and his body still. His hardness pulsed inside her and she stared back into his face.

She felt trapped and he knew it. She knew what he was doing; they both knew he was challenging her with the intimacy of the moment, just like he'd challenged her with his words earlier. She looked searchingly up into his face, overwhelmed by the closeness and the strength of her feelings for him, feelings that she didn't know what to do with, or how to act on. Feelings that she had no choice but to recognize, though, and she nodded at him, a silent, I get it, we are right together, and he felt for just a second that maybe, just maybe, this would all be ok.

He moved his mouth down to hers and she responded hungrily. As he moved once more inside her she moaned into his mouth, grinding her hips against his as they moved together. She pulled her hands free from his and wrapped her arms around his back, holding him as tight as she could, and she never wanted him to stop, and he groaned, gratified, as she sighed, "Oh god, oh god." He felt her start to tighten around him as his strokes pushed her closer to the edge, and she cried out, "I need you Will, god, fuck, I need you," as she came, and her body and her words pulled him over the edge with her, blind and panting.

"I need you too," he moaned, as they came down together. "You're everything," he said, and she smiled. It was not her usual smile, laced with lamentation. It was a smile that said that she heard him, and that she wasn't scared, and that she wanted all of it.

As they settled back into their habitual position, the back of her body curled into the front of his, he felt her form palpably relaxed next to him.

"I've had an amazing weekend," he sighed, not scared of overwhelming her with words, not holding back.

"Me too, babe" she said, and his eyes widened. She'd never called him anything like that before. He grinned behind her.

"It is hard back home. But you're worth it," he said, amazed at how good and free it felt to speak without the fear of her unsure, deafening silences. "This is worth it," he said.

"This is," she concurred.

He took her wrist to look at the watch.

"Oh god," he groaned, "we've gotta be at the airport in five hours, that's gonna be rough."

She shrugged. "Well, this was worth it, too."

He smiled and held her tightly, stamping out the voice inside screaming at him to defend himself, warning that he would get hurt. He felt truly hopeful that their feelings, their… love, would be enough, and that it would all be ok. He believed that it would be, for the first time. And even more so than when he had told her an hour earlier, this really was the happiest he had ever been, and he would give everything that he had to keep it this way.