prompt: forehead kiss

Title from Ed Sheeran's "Give Me Love."

It unnerves him when it's her kick and not the alarm or the smell of coffee (or even her mouth on various parts of him) that wakes him, and for the first time in a little over ten months, he wakes with a frenzied staccato for a heartbeat and a sense of panic rising out of short, shallow breaths. He puzzles over the discomfort for a minute before looking down at the tiny titan next to him, taking a moment to wonder at the idea that she could change so many fundamental things about him with a steady hand and an even surer heart, until he realizes her brow is not only furrowed in her restless sleep, but that there are also beads of sweat collecting in the ridges.

He takes her hand in his and finds her skin clammy, then presses his lips to her forehead. She stirs beneath both touches and her eyes flutter open as he registers her fever.

She groans, kicking the sheet off her and tries to adjust the tank top and boy shorts she wears as pajamas, and presses the heel of her palm to her head after she pulls the sweaty fabric away from the small of her back. "I feel awful," she rasps, turning momentarily into him.

He runs a hand over her head and to her neck before she pulls away, his body heat frustratingly uncomfortable, a soft look of concern donning his features. He starts to say something, but then shuts it when she opens one eye to look at him. "And if you tell me 'I told you so,' I will breathe on you and infect you with this plague."

He chuckles, sweeping another kiss across her temple and running his thumb across the pulse point on her wrist in silent acquiescence and apology. She'd reported a nasty bug was making its way through the IT Department of Kord Enterprises, and for all the battles they've raged and the front lines they've crossed, even her steadfast determination at first trying to avoid catching it, and then once she started feeling unwell, willing herself to believe it was just a cold, seems to have left her as less than Braveheart in its wake.

(Not that he doesn't believe in that determination, that heart, her bravery, because he does. Somehow, he always has, and knows he always will, because it was she who got him believing in "always" again and, more significantly, in the first place.)

She starts to cough, and he winces at how deep it sounds. She'd been going through cough drops like he goes through tennis balls, but clearly to no avail. The hand on the back of her neck dips to the small stripe of skin showing on her abdomen, and he rubs his thumb soothingly against it. He tries to anchor her in that comfort, the one similar to that which she's given him time and again, but that he still worries over. For all the things he's good at, he wants to be the best when it comes to Felicity.

(He uses a bow and she commands code, but the most important thing he wields is his love for her, and even though the weight of it tires his hands sometimes, he knows it's that arsenal that proves him most powerful.

In the end, he didn't need all the king's horses or all the king's men — or even those of a Queen variety — to put him back together again.

He just needed her hand in his, and his heart with her.)

He kisses her shoulder and finally moves out of bed, going to check the medicine cabinet for something that might help, frowning when he sees nothing. He quickly brushes his teeth, moving back into their bedroom to pull out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

They have a silent but easy conversation, her brow arching in questioning and he hooking a thumb over his shoulder and then slashing his hand across the air, motioning that they had nothing in the house to alleviate her symptoms. She sighs, settling back against the pillows again, and he returns to rinse, throwing his clothes on before padding barefoot to his sock drawer.

(He remembers when she bought the dresser, how she'd left a few drawers open for him without fanfare or even a question as to its necessity. It was somehow just breathed into both existence and acceptance; it was like she is, was, and, he knew, forever would be: just there and just right.

Home had been as wayward a definition as he's ever been, but he'd realized that night as he wrapped his arms around her, pressing kisses to the triangle of freckles on her right shoulder, that she was his safe haven, his true north; elemental and for all seasons.

Anything and everything.

It's fitting, then, that he'd hidden her engagement ring in the very same drawer before moving it to his safety deposit box, lest she stumble across it while putting laundry away.)

She chuckles as he tries to walk and put his socks on at the same time, and shakes his head even as a smile turns up the corner of his mouth, knowing she's thinking of their first night together, when in his haste, he'd basically tripped over his own two feet while carrying her to the bed and bruised the crap out of his side as he banged into the doorjamb.

(He prefers to remember the sound of her headboard banging into the wall, but lets it slide since she's not feeling well.)

He kneels next to her, running a hand through her hair. "What hurts?"

She puts a hand on her chest, which he delicately moves and replaces with his mouth. She cups his cheek and smiles when he looks back up at her, and then says, "My throat."

He repeats the movement, kissing the underside of her chin, and he feels more than hears when she continues, "My ears."

She laughs beneath his mouth that time, his stubble tickling her sensitive skin, and even though it's hoarse, he finds himself relaxing ever so slightly in the idea that he might be her best medicine.

(He used to count his time in minutes, hours, maybe days once in a while. And for as much as she's made him believe in years again, it's the seconds he treasures most, these little moments that don't feel so small anymore.)

"Head," she says, and when he kisses her forehead, the cycle is complete, back to where he began — and also where he ended: with her, not in a life he leads, but the one they're building together, because for the first time, it's not a tale told in "I" or "me"; it's "us" and "we" and feeling more like himself in those than he ever did on his own.

He runs a thumb over her mouth and teases softly, "How about here?"

She smiles again, sitting up to finish the connection, and he presses all he can into the embrace before standing back up and preparing to head out. "You want Popsicles for your throat?"

She nods. "And maybe some orange juice?"

He nods, then turns and unplugs his cell phone from its charger before leaning back down and kissing her gently once more. "Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of," she says. "Thank you."

"Always," he says, no longer scared of that permanence. And really, it's the least he can do; she has cared for him more times and in more ways than he remembers or deserves, but the one thing she's shown him — encouraged him in, even, to his eternal amazement — is how to love someone through something. He has always borne things on crumbling shoulders, but standing on hers, being able to share that burden, has made him stronger than all the training in the world. It lifts him past the places he was too afraid to approach, innocuously darkens the things he worried might dull her brilliance, shores the fault lines he still finds in himself; all the things he was too scared to be with her.

But now that he's with her, truly and unequivocally in this, arguably more than he ever has been with anything else, the only uncertainty is a welcome one: how much more he could love her, and it's there that her love of mysteries has taken hold of him just as she's taken hold of his mind, body and soul – and, most importantly, his heart – because for once in his life, he can't wait to charge headlong and evermore into the breach.

(It's not the cashier's sympathetic cluck of her tongue he smiles at as he finishes up at the grocery store.

It's the fact that when she deems him a good husband – despite his lack of ring and his own disbelief in a future when he always seemed to be two steps behind trying to outrun his past – he doesn't correct her, because he finally, truly believes.)

fin