A/N: well, this is it, readers- the final chapter. A half-completed version of it has existed ever since I started this shindig and the front-half became the prologue. Over a year later (!), I can't tell you how satisfying it is to finally arrive back here.

There is an epilogue to follow and there FKG will endeth. I know I've put you through the wringer with this story, so, in the meantime, hope you enjoy this... :D

The shadow of a smile crossed Clark's face. He ran one hand through his hair disturbing the spitcurl, causing it to flop onto his forehead and Lois's heart to double-time on a beat before he folded his fingers in his lap again. "I'll mention it to my stylist."

She fussed with the edge of her bed sheet. "It's kind of late. Aren't visiting hours over?"

Clark's eyebrows raised. He inclined his head towards the door. "I talked to Annette."

Dark eyes focused on blue. "Annette?"

"The duty nurse." Clark thumbed backwards, "I told her I was a personal friend of Superman and that I could arrange for a visit to the Pediatric unit."

Lois blinked. "You talked to Annette?"

He looked solemn. "Yes."

Her finger poked in the direction of the door and then back at herself, "You talked to Annette, the duty nurse, offering a personal appearance of Superman in return for coming in to see me?"

This was correct. Clark was nodding. "...Yes."

"You bribed Annette. A healthcare professional. Using sick children as leverage?"

His lips touched together as he mulled that over. "Yes."

Lois glanced to one side, "Damn." She clicked her cheek; "Why didn't I think of that when I wanted a room with cable?"

Clark dipped his head. When he looked up his eyes were shining, an eyebrow was raised, "...I also had to promise her I wasn't going to overexcite you."

Their eyes met and lingered for a second longer than was probably sensible.

"So what happened?" His gaze tracked her body.

Lois shifted to straighten against the headboard a little. "What did Jimmy say?"

"That your car looks like you Evel Knieveled off the Grand Canyon." She watched his eyebrow twitch, "And missed."

She nodded, shrugging it off. "It was just an accident. A teenager- messing with her radio. We both swerved except there was a half-ton truck in my way. I think she's been more traumatized than me." Lois lifted her right hand, to a glass vase brimful of yellow daisies on the window sill. "She came by earlier to see how I was."

Softly, Clark said, "And how are you?"

"I'm fine."

Lois swallowed and rubbed her hand over her elbow. "Where were you, anyway? You look... very," her eyelashes flickered, "...formal. I hope I didn't interrupt anything?"

Clark looked down as if just remembering he was dressed for an occasion. He touched one end of the undone bow tie between his fingers. "Oh, no. I was just...uh. I was just... out. At a thing."

He looked at her. Lois nodded. "Anywhere special?"

"Nah, not really."

Her head tilted sideways, a gesture of dissatisfaction with him that was so familiar, it was hard to believe it had been so long since he'd last seen it.

"It was just... dinner."

Her knees knocked together. She cleared her throat and mumbled, "Because. If you were on a date or something-"

"A date?" He enunciated the word so loudly that it made her wince. Clark would have laughed, but she seemed quite serious. "No, it was just a work thing."

Her forehead creased in frustration while she picked at the sheets. "Clark, you don't have to-. I mean, if you were busy, somewhere..." She sighed. "I don't want to hold you up. I appreciate you coming and everything." She found his eyes. "If you need to go, you should go."

Frowning, he returned her gaze. She lifted one shoulder.

He tried to read her and it unsettled him to find that he couldn't. "Do you want me to go?"

"Do you want to go?"

"I'll go if you want me to?"

She shrugged, raising her arms, they fell back to the bed again, "If you're in the middle of something..."

"I'm not, I wasn't."

"Then why are you dressed like that?" Her voice went up, belying her apparent calm, and she tensed, annoyed, biting it all back down again.

For a moment Clark swayed in his seat. He was forced to admit, "I was collecting an award."

A look of concentration settled itself on Lois's face. "What day is it today?"

She found herself under his scrutiny again. His eyes narrowed, "Sunday. How hard did you hit your head?"

In a quite voice, to herself, Lois muttered, "The United Nations Correspondents Association. The awards ceremony." She gave him a quick look, "That's tonight."

Careful to temper his reaction to a stab of delight, Clark answered, "Right."

"Were you there?"

"Yes."

Her eyes were all over him. "Where is it?"

He nodded at the window, "It's held at the Hotel Royale, in Rio."

In patience, her eyes closed. "Yes. I mean where's your award?"

"I... don't have it on me."

Her suspicions increased. "When did you get here?"

He nodded to himself, inhaling a breath, "As soon as physically possible after I hung up on Jimmy."

"And when was that?"

"Uh..." he blew out the breath, checked his watch, bobbled his head, "about eight minutes ago, now." A look of uncomplicated satisfaction crossed his face as the thought came to him- "I think I must've broken my transcontinental record, actually." Then his eyebrows lowered to form one continuous line and he hit his fist flat against his chest, "And I'm pretty sure I swallowed a bug."

Lois folded her arms. "You ran out on the UNCA awards, didn't you?"

With his palm he rubbed at the back of his neck. "...I wouldn't ...put it like that, exactly."

Lois seemed to realize what she was saying. She whispered, "Oh my God. You ran out on the UNCA awards."

"You know what? These kind of events- they're way overrated."

"What did you tell them?"

Clark looked at his hands. "I told the concierge there was a family emergency." A rueful smile twisted his lips, "You know, I hardly ever get the chance to say that."

For a moment, they were quiet. "You should get back."

They looked at each other. Hardness had returned to her face. She was unreadable again.

"Really, I mean it. Thanks for stopping by, but as you can see, I'm fine."

Clark said nothing. She swallowed. "It's just a bit of whiplash, a strained wrist, a slight concussion," her left hand wafted vaguely above the cast, "a ...small ...compound fracture..."

He stared, blue eyes shining, full of disbelief with her.

She stared back and there was an unmistakable note of defiance, of pride, in her tone when she added, "Oh, and my little toenail fell off with the bruising."

"Do you have any idea how lucky you are?"

The toes of her unbroken leg wiggled, "Not that lucky; I'd only just had a pedicure."

He gave her a stern look. "When Jimmy called. The scenarios going through my mind." His voice dropped, he was softly shaking his head, "If anything had happened to you..."

"Then what, Clark?" She snapped suddenly, tired with this line of conversation. His coming here and this show of concern was all well and good- but it didn't actually change anything. "Stuff happens to me every day. It's just that ninety-nine percent of it isn't potentially life-threatening."

Under his reproving glare, she was forced to amend, "Eighty percent."

His eyebrow raised.

"...Sixty-five." She blinked, "...Evens."

They huffed disgustedly at each other. She said, "It's nothing to do with you. You don't need to worry." She spoke into her lap where she was worrying at the plastic tag on her left wrist. "You better get back to Rio. They'll be waiting."

His voice was strained with impatience, "No one's waiting."

Her hand flickered in the air, "Your date,"

"-I wasn't on a date."

"-she's probably wondering where the hell you are..."

"I was there on my own, I wasn't on a date! I was on my own."

Both of her fists came down hard against the mattress as frustration pulsed through her; "I hate it when you do this." She scowled, "I'm a big girl, Clark! You don't need to protect me."

Clark's lips moved without sound before he found his voice, "I'm not protecting you from anything."

"Yes, you are."

"Protecting you from what?"

Lois phffed, impotently. "The truth!"

He was baffled. "What truth?"

"That you've got a life, a new life, away from me."

Weakly, Clark protested, "I-"

"I'm not interested in your pity!"

The room prickled into silence. Clark watched heat and anger simmer in her eyes. Her face was flushed. "I don't need it." Her voice caught on the words, "It's the last thing I need from you."

Clark was not sure whether he was more relieved it was clear she didn't want him to leave simply because she didn't care about him anymore, or hurt, by the implicit lack of faith. "Lois. I'm not here out of pity."

She was not looking at him. "Whatever you want to call it."

His voice was steady but insistent. "It's not because of pity."

She turned on him, "Do you have any idea what it feels like to have to sit across from you like this? To have to pretend it's okay that I've not seen you? In years, I've not seen you?" Her face was strained tight with emotion, "But here I am, broken and bruised, and lying in the hospital and you can't resist it. The clarion call." She ignored the pain in his eyes. "I would've given anything anything to be this close to you again. Do you have any idea how small that makes me feel?" Tears were choked away. "Do you have any idea how much it hurts?"

It was too much. "Hurts?" Clark breathed, "You want to talk to me about how much it hurts?" The expression of disbelief and then indignation writing itself across his face took Lois by surprise- "Let me tell you something, Lois. I'm not here because it's fun for me to see you like this, and I'm not here out of some warped sense of duty to you that only applies when you wind up in emergency care, AND, I'm absolutely not here out of pity." He spat the word in contempt. "There isn't anyone waiting for me in Rio, or Bali, or anywhere else. And yes," he continued without taking a breath, "I would say I DO know how much it hurts. I would say I have a pretty good idea. I would say it hurts about as much as it did when I turned up at your apartment two nights ago only to be told by your sister that you were off having dinner with Richard White!"

Lois shrank back, blindsided by his outburst.

Wishing he could rewind and take it all back, immediately, Clark's bottom jaw twitched. Eventually, he set it, teeth clenching in sheer frustration with himself.

Lois's face changed. Darkness left it, and the hurt and accusation in her eyes was replaced by that open look of intrigue and possibility that shone there whenever she caught the slightest hint of a story. Lightly, in wonder, she said, "It was you. You told Lucy your name was Ralph."

For a half-second Clark thought about demurring, but his heart wasn't in it. He ducked and sheepishly admitted, "It's always the first thing that ever pops into my head."

One eyebrow arched. Carefully, she said, "You need a new go-to name."

He managed to expel a breath and smile- "Yes."

Lois stared at him. She felt like she was on the edge of something, like she was tantalizingly close. It was simply a matter of pressing the right buttons. And she had had it with the subtle approach. "Why were you at my apartment on Friday night?"

With its invocation, the dark presence of Richard had lodged itself firmly and uncomfortably at the back edges of Clark's mind. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"You came back? Why?"

"It was nothing important."

"Tell me why."

"It was a stupid mistake."

With more patience than she felt, Lois insisted; "Look at me and tell me why."

He did look at her, even though it was hard. He knew that to be honest with her in this moment, to be open and truthful, was to die an agonizing death in the silence that would follow. He steeled himself for it. "I guess I was hoping for a second chance. I guess I was too late." In a small act of heroism, he compelled a polite, wry smile that said, 'hey, no hard feelings' onto his face, and made it stay there while he waited for the axe to fall.

But there was no uneasy fidgeting, no tell tale pause or awkward preamble to the hard truth that Clark was anticipating; that he was too late. That it was over.

Instead Lois said, "Are you back for good?"

She was watching him, judging whether or not she could trust her source- Clark recognized the look. He nodded. "I spoke to Perry. Norm's not doing too well, apparently."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

The flatness of her tone forced him to confront the reality of their relationship with the same clear-eyed focus. "I won't make things weird for you. You and Richard. I'll stay out of your way."

She waited. She made him wait. Not because she wanted to but because she could feel hope straining in her heart and her hold on herself was tenuous. She needed to think straight and she couldn't trust herself to do that without taking her time.

She asked again, this time with more strength, "Is that a yes or a no?"

"Yes." Clark watched her eyes flutter closed.

She said, "You don't have to worry about staying out of our way. That won't be necessary. Richard's leaving town. Conrad Francis offered him Dep. Editor in Chicago."

"Wow."

"Yeah." She chuckled at his reaction, the mirror-image of her own. She touched her lips together to wet them. "He asked me if I would like to go with him."

Because it was what they had become accustomed to when dealing with each other, Lois could see that Clark was already preparing himself for the worst. He bowed his head and in full stoic-mode, he nodded, "Right. Right."

It reminded her that she was sick of it. Of all of it.

As if it was the most obvious thing in the world, she shrugged, "I said 'No'."

He looked back up and she held him there with her eyes. "He wanted to talk to me about it. That's the only reason we were out together on Friday night." With the smallest of movements she shook her head. "There's nothing between me and Richard White. There never has been. Ever since you've been gone-"

"Lois-" he cut her off, feeling keenly the same abhorrence for commiseration and pity that had so exorcised her, "You don't owe me an explanation..."

"It's not an explanation," she bit back. "You need to listen to me for once. You need to know that you're wrong." To stop her voice from quivering she took a breath; be calm, think straight. "If you mean what you say, you weren't too late. You're not too late." She swallowed, "For a second chance."

He was staring at her. She was aware that she felt physically sick with anxiety and with hope. Finally, he said, "Do you mean that?"

"The question is are we going to be honest with each other?"

"Honest?" He repeated, as if acquainting himself with the word for the first time.

"It means telling the truth- saying how we really feel instead of second guessing what we think the other person needs to hear." Maintaining a straight face, she added, "I've heard people mention it on Oprah and things, I think we should try it."

"Being honest?" A smile crept into his eyes.

"Worth a shot, right?"

The smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. He nudged his head at her broken leg. "That's a double compound fracture."

She couldn't stop a slow, hard won, grin, "You're such a cheater."

"I came back for you."

They looked at each other, smiles gone. She wanted to give in but he had been right all along, she was the strongest person he had ever met.

Her eyes were shining. In a low voice she said, "I went through hell for you."

"I want you back."

"You can't have me," she so much wanted to give in, but she was damned if it wasn't going to be on her terms, "not if it's like it was before."

He leant forward, his head bent away from her. He pressed his hands against his knees and stood up. Unsure, Lois watched him walk away to the window.

Looking out over the city, he said, "You know. I've not been doing so well without you."

While his back was turned, quickly, she wiped at the corners of her eyes, "Come on," she scoffed, "I've read your articles, Clark. I've read every single one." She paused. "What about your award?"

He laughed humorlessly, shaking his head, "I don't mean for work. I throw myself into work. I mean. As Superman."

Lines creased her forehead. "What are you talking about?"

He faced her, leaning against the sill. "The earthquake in Bolivia last week. Did you see that? The mudslides."

"I saw it."

"I nearly didn't make it. It was this close."

They gazed at each other. "I saw it."

"I gave you up. To be better at this."

Her heart pitched and ached for him. "You can't make it every time, Clark. Not even you."

His focus was somewhere else. It was not clear whether he was listening to her. "I was stuck in a meeting. I would've been there sooner, I would've been there like this," his fingers snapped, "but I was stuck in a meeting." His eyes flicked back to hers, "If I had been with you, I could've made an excuse, you would've backed me up- and I would've been there sooner."

"Or, we would have been fooling around, making," she threw up a hand dismissively, "cheesecake- and you would not have been there at all."

"So what was it all for? If nothing changed?" Clark moved forward from the window sill, feeling for the back of the chair and pulling it across the floor so he was sat opposite her again, but this time there was no safety zone, no distance between them. She noticed his left arm was touching the bed frame. She recalled the last time she had been this close to him. He had left her, bereft and alone. She remembered how he had looked that night. So sad, and so empty. She looked into his eyes now and they burned.

His hands moved back and forth, "Whether I'm right here, or over there, or if I'm with you, or not with you-" Desperation colored his voice, "the reason why is different but the result's still the same; I can't make it every time. You just said it yourself." He shook his head at her. "I gave you up, and the one thing that changed- the only thing-" he placed his hands over his chest, "is that I stopped enjoying doing this. I stopped enjoying being me."

Moved, Lois was speechless. She pleaded with him, "I don't know what you want me to say?"

"I thought that being apart, I thought it was the right thing to do."

Tearfully, she told him, "I know you did."

"Then why does it feel so wrong?" He shook his head. On a whisper, he said, "I'm so tired of pretending I'm not in love with you."

She gasped involuntarily. Her eyes closed as she felt the press on her heart. "I wish you wouldn't say things like that."

"I mean it," he hissed. "I'm tired of pretending that I don't spend every single minute of every single day thinking about you."

Lois looked up at the ceiling, blinking quickly in an effort to diffuse the tears. Her voice wobbled- "It's not fair..."

He continued, "What you're doing? How you are? What you think about... stupid things- everything, topical things;" one hand waved in the air as he named them at random, "global warming, ...the energy crisis, ...stem cells, skinny jeans, the new Philip Roth novel, ...manbags?"

She gave him a weak, sincere, smile. "Manbags?"

He exhaled a despairing breath. "You're in my day dreams, you're with me all the time. At night- I fantasize about you."

She shook her head crossly, "Don't-"

"I've had enough."

"-Don't start something you can't finish." They eyed each other. Her jaw was set.

He let his head drop, the spitcurl unfurling again. For a few moments he was quiet. "Lois," she heard. "There's something I've been wanting to say to you. Something I've been wanting to say ever since I left." He lifted his chin to meet her eyes.

Her breath hitched, "What?"

"Do you remember Franz Kafka's girlfriend?"

She looked lost. "What?"

"The night of the Summer Ball; do you remember telling me about Franz Kafka's girlfriend? His fiancé?"

"Yes."

"How, after everything, she ended up marrying someone else?"

Her throat worked. "Yes."

"She always kept his letters."

Lois frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"Even though she married someone else, she always kept his letters."

Lois's shoulders raised- "She probably realized they were going to be worth a fortune-"

He cut in, "-She never let him go."

Lois squinted at Clark. He was staring at her. She sized him up. "I see what you're doing;"

"I can't let you go. I won't." A look of determination closed in on his face- a look that was pure Superman, "Not again."

"you're using my literary break-up technique against me..."

"Marry me."

Believing she must have misheard, Lois's eyes scrunched and she shook her head to free herself of the fuzziness. "I... What?"

Clark took her left hand from where it rested on the bed and placed it between the warmth of both of his hands. A shiver ran up her spine and prickled the nape of her neck as she watched him. Without removing his eyes from hers he came forward off the chair and knelt before her. "Lois Lane." She had never seen him look so serious or so worried. "Please agree to be my wife."

Lois stared back at him, then at her hand in his, and then at him again. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

Clark's eyebrows quirked. "No." Of the many ways he had imagined this moment, this was not a response he had anticipated. He found himself letting go of her hand, explaining, "I. I did have a ring..."

Lois rolled her lips. They were going to have this out, once and for all. "'A responsibility to mankind'? 'A duty to the world'? 'The danger of choosing one above everyone else'?" She squinted at him, swaying her head, "Any of these phrases sound familiar? I've been walking around with a gaping hole where my heart used to be ever since you've been gone because of them."

"Choosing one above everyone else? Doesn't everybody do that? Doesn't everybody have the right to do that? Don't I have the right?"

His earnestness annoyed her. "You tell me, Clark; I was the one asking you to marry me three years ago, and you were the one saying no."

He frowned, "I didn't think that I could have both. You and Superman. I thought I couldn't have one without compromising the other."

"Well, that's too bad," she answered honestly and hotly and without thinking too much about what it was she was saying. "Superman is who you are- I don't want some watered down version of you that's ...more convenient." She shrugged at him. "I don't want you back, Clark. Not unless I get all of you. Everything. Spit curl and cape included." As punctuation, there was the tiniest lift of her chin.

Still kneeling on the floor like a knight-errant, he regarded her. She was so goddamn infuriatingly stubborn and singular and wonderful that it was all Clark could do not to get to his feet, take her head into his hands and kiss her into oblivion there and then. Steadily, he said, "That's pretty lucky because it's all I'm offering. Superman needs you. Clark needs you. All of me needs you."

She digested this news. "That is pretty lucky."

He swallowed a breath. "Will you have me?"

She scrutinized him, barely able to believe they were having this conversation. "Do you know what you're saying? This isn't going to be easy."

He ducked his head, clenching his fists, "I know. I know it will be hard. I know it's not always going to be romantic night flights over the city, and moonlit walks on a deserted island, and last minute trips to Paris- I know that. I know I'll make mistakes, and sometimes- even when you are there- I'll be stuck in a meeting and I'll be too late, and good people will get hurt." He looked up at the ceiling, sighing, "And I know that when that isn't happening, then I'll be shooting off at a moment's notice, with barely any warning, leaving you high and dry- in the middle of office parties, or lunch dates, or, or, I don't know," he blew out a small breath, allowing himself the tiniest smile, "...birthdays, anniversaries..." Her heart throbbed. His eyes closed briefly, "And I know, I just know that the exact moment the kids are about to say their first word, or take their first step, that will be the moment some homicidal megalomaniac decides to set loose a giant killer robot..."

She felt herself melting as she smiled uncertainly at him, "Kids?"

Adorably, she thought, he squirmed. "Someday. If we're lucky."

Pulling herself together, she studied him, "This glimpse into the future, this little speech. You've put alot of thought into it."

"If you don't think I've been making some version of it to you in my head since the first day I met you," he blinked, "then you're crazy."

She laughed softly, although it didn't help ease the fear and excitement.

"I want to come home to you, Lois. Every night."

Choked with emotion, she told him, "I don't know what to say?"

He swallowed. "I've missed you so much. Just please tell me that I don't have to spend another second of my life missing you." He whispered, "Marry me. Please."

There was genuine worry in his eyes. She saw that but she said nothing. Instead she reached across to place her palms against his shoulders. Slowly, she ran her hands down the front of his lapels to curl her fingers beneath the material and pull him to her. He came easily, rising from the floor and settling on the bed next to her. Now they were level, with no more than a breath separating them. Tilting her face up to his, she closed her eyes. Very gently, she opened her mouth on his lips.

It was intended to be a short kiss. A welcome home kiss, a slow-burning 'So, we haven't done this in a while and we better take it easy' kiss, and it started out that way. But very quickly, it got hotter and more urgent and as her arms wrapped around his neck, and as she felt his hands move up along her body to cup her face, and as they pressed the kiss against the other, she found that she wouldn't mind at all if this kiss never ended.

When they broke apart, they rested their foreheads together. She stroked her fingernails down his throat to the white edge of his shirt collar while he braced his hands either side of her. In a low voice, in between breaths, she murmured, "You realize, don't you, that I'm already figuring out ways we can have sex around this cast?"

His eyes closed, he shuddered, "God, I hope that's a yes."

She laughed, "Yes!"

When they broke apart again, Lois pulled away to look at him. Her eyes clouded. "Are you sure about this?" Gently she tugged at the edges of his jacket, she shook her head, "Because I don't think I could handle losing you twice."

He put his palm to her cheek and held it there, smoothing his thumb over the skin. So unbelievably soft. She placed her own hand over his. His eyes traced every inch of her face. "Lois. I've flown through fire, I've lifted a rocket into space, I've moved entire mountains. Walking away from you was the hardest thing I've ever done." His eyebrows twitched, "I'm never letting you go again."

She sighed deeply, allowing that to sink in. It was a glorious feeling. Matching his seriousness, she said, "That's extraordinarily good to hear."

They leaned in again to exchange slow, soft, quiet kisses. She spoke into his mouth, "Is there really a ring?"

He sat back up. "I brought it to your apartment on Friday."

Her eyes danced. She bit her bottom lip. "Oh, no."

"Oh yeah," he said. "I was this close to asking for your sister's hand in marriage."

Lois struggled to contain a smile.

"I brought flowers, I was in my best suit, my glasses were off- the whole thing. Lucy opened the door and I was practically on bended knee."

Enjoying such an early opportunity to tease him, she kissed him deeply on the mouth before informing him, "That'll teach you for just showing up at random and assuming I'd be there to be proposed to."

"I was assuming nothing;" he kissed her back. "I thought it was time for a grand gesture."

"You got that right." Her hands moved up over his chest and framed his face. She rubbed the end of her nose against his. "I don't want a grand gesture, I just want you."

"I'm yours." He whispered, "You're so beautiful."

That made her laugh. "My leg is in plaster, I have stitches in my face, and I have two day-old blood caked in my hair?"

Seriously, he told her, "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"And you look really hot in a tuxedo." To underscore the point, she angled in for another kiss. "Stupidly hot." Remembering, she groaned. "You really should get back to the ceremony. I don't mind." She smiled, "I'm not going anywhere."

"Neither am I."

They nodded at each other. He reached out to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. He did it slowly and delicately, with the ends of his fingertips, as if afraid that if he wasn't careful, if he disturbed the spell, she would melt away and disappear like she always did in his dreams.

She was reading his mind. She rubbed her face into his hand. "This better not be the drugs."

An expression of guilt settled on his face. "You should get some sleep."

She placed a row of kisses along the heel of his palm, "I'm not tired."

"You were switching off the light when I came in."

She reconsidered. "I'm not tired anymore."

He shook his head lightly at her, "Oh, I'm going to be in so much trouble with Annette."

She chuckled. "I feel fine." Fingering his shirt at the open collar, she pulled him to her, "I feel fine for more kissing." Their mouths met, making her sigh.

Finally, he managed, "You need to rest."

"Because, you know. We already have a lot of kissing-time to catch up on." Her voice took on a scholarly, bank teller tone, "There's a serious kissing-deficit we need to re-balance."

His eyes sparkled with intent, "I'm never going to stop kissing you." Her eyelids fluttered closed as he leaned forward and placed a kiss on her cheek, then one against the line of her jaw, and then one against her neck. Against her skin, he said, "I love you."

She sighed as contentment washed over her. "I love you, too," she hummed. "So much." She ran her hands lazily up over his shoulder blades and pushed her fingers through the hair at the back of his head, "I like saying that out loud. To your face." She pressed a kiss into his ear, "I mean as opposed to just thinking it when I see you on the evening news."

She felt him smile against the crook of her neck before he tenderly kissed her there again.

When he sat back, there was a marvelled expression on his face. "I can't believe it's been almost an entire conversation and no one's robbed a bank yet."

A wry smile broke across her cheeks, "I guess the world owes us this one."

An eyebrow quirked, "I've probably just jinxed it."

She frowned, "If you need to go, just go, not back to Rio, I mean- but if someone calls." Her eyes darted across both of his, "I mean it."

A sensation of warmth and an overwhelming feeling of thankfulness just for the fact that this woman existed and that he had found her, not once but twice, saturated his heart and continued expanding outwards. In a soft, sure voice, he said, "If I need to go, I'll go. Otherwise, I'll be right here," he paused, "with you."

Her bottom lip rolled and she nodded her head in thought. "That sounds like a pretty good set-up to me. For life."

A crooked grin dimpled his face. "Me too."