A/N: Thanks for persevering, you guys! And thanks for reviewing bappled and silversurf4 and lipamo. And huddy! Hi! So glad that I tempted you out of hiding. And all you other silent guys - thanks. I hope I can continue to hold your attention.
Charlie exhaled beneath the hot water and directed one jet to massage a tight knot in his shoulder while allowing the main cascade to run over his head. Showering and being mindful of his own body under the hotel-scented foam only led him to think about hers again.
It had been dark in her room save for a slit of window where the blind wasn't fully pulled. The moon illuminated just enough, his hands had figured out the rest. He remembered them working together to uncover her fevered skin. His shirt was history, his pants undone and slipping over his hips. Only her jeans to go. But instead of pushing them down, she had backed up, was kneeling just out of his reach on the bed and had slipped her hand inside the front of them. His mind bent in that moment. Too much and she had to know it. Her finally letting him touch her was one thing, her touching herself in front of him was just about enough to kill him. Charlie felt his switch flip and surged forward, snapped her onto her back and crawled after her up the bed. He heard her give a satisfied half-laugh which he sucked away once he gained on her, pulling at the denim ravenously until she deigned to cooperate and wriggled free. But she wouldn't be held; she wanted to rule him, to be on top. Typical Dani, he thought. He let her scramble from under him and gain the position she wanted on his lap but fought against the pressure she applied to the center of his chest to hold him down; she wasn't going to get it all her own way. Charlie snatched her wrists and sat up, rising to meet her, roughly kissing away her competitive smile. He stilled her. For that moment at least she was docile, the nails that had scratched him raw now tickling his scalp gently as she played with his hair and melted into him. He was anything but relaxed, both hands sunk inside her underwear, clasping the roundness he had secretly tracked around the office for months, his heart jackhammering and in serious danger of stopping entirely.
"Shit...Crews...", she opened her eyes and whispered against his lips, breathing hard.
"I know. I know.", he sighed in response.
He had lied. He didn't know anything. As he stood there massaging the shampoo into his hair, he tried to recreate the way her fingers had touched him and wondered what that exchange had meant. He realized that this was the closest they had got to talking about it. He knew what he had meant. He was expressing wonder. He meant that being there like that with her was even better than he had ever imagined and it made him so happy he could die. He meant that he was in love with her and even though he had known it for a while, the intensity of it now that it was stirred up with such heady lust astonished him. That's what he meant. But what had she meant? Whatever it was, she obviously felt the lust thing the same way he had, of that much he was sure.
After they were done and he had slept the immediate nap of the sated lover, he stared into the dark and replayed over and over her words and intonation and expression at that moment they had paused, the calm before the storm, interpreting them in different ways each time, allowing those interpretations to grow ever more paranoid and pessimistic. This was the kind of thing he used to do in solitary. As if there weren't enough people in there out to get him, his chief torturer was always himself, a special type of misery was his side of the walls even if he was the only soul in the cell. He concluded that Dani had been trying to express her trepidation that what they had done, what they had still been about to do at that point, was going to cause them real trouble. But that they were going to do it anyway. And she was right because they had both been way too far gone to exercise any prudence by that point.
He lay there and stared at the planes of her body illuminated by what little light there was, her back exposed, having rolled away from him to sleep. In a little while, she was going to turn over to face him and suggest that all this didn't mean that anything had to change between them. He wondered what he would do with his face when she said the words. His eyes would betray that he wouldn't be able to just shrug this off. She was wrong, things had changed. As far as he was concerned the world already looked very different. So he decided to leave. If they were going to have that conversation then fine, he would be ready for it, but he just didn't want to face it right now. Not with the feel of her still so recent. He didn't want to see her disappointment in him when she read how disappointed he was.
So he had gathered his clothes and crept away, limbs throbbing with the hum of the lovelorn, cursing when he stood on a shard of the lamp as he retrieved his tie from the couch.
He emerged pink from the steam ten minutes later, plush hotel towel secured about his waist, flopping down on the bed aimlessly. He picked up his phone again.
Missed call Dani Reese (2).
"Oh boy.", he sighed.
He knew he had to face the music, and quicker than he thought. Far from having had time to get his head straight, he had only managed to stir himself up further. With the air of a condemned man, he pulled out a gray t-shirt and a pair of linen pants from his bag, dressed and took his phone out onto the balcony.
"Hello? Hi. It's me."
