Summer Heat

Notes: Set post-TV. Mildly angstish fluff.
The past two weeks have been nearly unbearable.

She's always loved the summer, loved the heady warmth and the smell of sun-baked earth and grasses, even loved the intense, drowsy heat of a mid-summer heat wave and staying out in the sun until she could barely keep her eyes open and then coming back in to take a nice long nap under the pretence of a good book.

But this is something else entirely. The heat that would normally wrap comfortingly around her like a favourite old blanket or a warm bath is now stifling, and she wonders if she's been breathing at all since summer began.

Far worse than the heat is the restlessness. It might not be so bad, if she could escape, during the worst of it, to outdoors. But this sort of intense heat always gives him a headache, and she learned very quickly that if she's gone too long, he'll be angry. Far more than she would have expected. Whether out of any absurd attachment or just because misery loves company, she can never really tell, but either way, she hates to leave him alone while she goes outside to play.

That's why the one and only time she really yelled at him was when he tried to order her to leave, go accept her little penalty for following a madman with the rest of the Special Operations unit, and get on with her life.

That was also the only time that joy, or pride, or gratitude, or anything other than anger and unwilling guilt has flashed into his eyes in the entire time they've been here.

But he's still never brought it up again, and she's glad.

Even though it's been far more of a shock than it should, just how difficult it's been, in a house with a man currently deeply in hate with the entire world and taking it out on anyone who happened to be nearby. Particularly when she's the only person nearby.

Of course, he has every reason to be moody and angry and hopelessly bleak most of his time. She could easily list all the reasons that their failure was for the best after all, but she knows that telling him the plain and simple truth will not make him think that she is bold and fascinating.

Even if she suspects that something in what he's been through has made him realize the truth for himself.

Instead, he'll close in on himself even more tightly, and she'll be as alone as she was at first, back before he began responding to the stream of incessant chatter she kept up to break the silence. And she's so desperately, unbelievably, pitifully happy that he's responding now that she wouldn't risk the privilege of being all that he has now for anything.

Just because he's suffered the worst of it, though, doesn't mean that she hasn't gone through it too. Lucky him, able to forget that.

Or that this weather isn't still absolutely unbearable. Lucky him, able to forget that, too.

It seems that his patience with complaints about the heat is no greater than his patience with her wide-eyed terror and hesitation with him when he first came back to her and he finally had to threaten sharply to hit her if she didn't stop scurrying around like that.

He lifts his eyes from the page of something heavy, dusty, and yellowed with age, and thanks her coldly for her constant and helpful weather updates. But before she can annoy him further with a flustered apology that she feels no desire to give right now anyway, his expression changes as his eyes move over the thin, nearly transparent white cotton clinging to her and the lacy little underthings she's paired it with to just barely keep from taking him up on his earlier invitation to roam around naked, if it'll make you happy and keep you quiet.

"Why," he asks slowly and with a hint of a smile after three months of seeing his mouth drawn and frowning, "are you wearing my undershirt?"

Cheeks already pink from the heat and damp with sweat blush more brightly, and she draws her knees to her chest, overwhelmed by a silly, girlish delight at his eyes fixed in fascination on long, dusky, satinsmooth legs, even though she's broken one of his fastidious house rules. Don't put your feet up on the sofa, please.

She gives him an exaggerated pout.

"It's too hot for anything I have with me – they're all winter things. I didn't think you'd mind if I borrowed this."

His smile grows and turns just wicked enough to make her knees feel a little shaky – in the good way for the first time in ages.

"Didn't I say to roam around naked if the heat was too much for you?"

She toys with the hem of his undershirt and focuses on making her expression serenely angelic, since she's no good at sultry.

"If you want, I could…"

He laughs; she nearly faints, but feels strangely composed when he leans over the couch and moves to kiss her, stopping just as their lips brush together.

"I think I'll need that shirt back immediately."