"No more prison talk.", he said decisively, like they had better things to be doing.
He pulled her across the bed towards him and she let herself be pulled. The blue of his eyes looked pregnant with a question once she got up close. She started to feel nervous that he was going to say something significant. She didn't know if that was good-nervous or bad-nervous. She still didn't know if she could trust herself to react the way she truly wanted. She didn't know how to deal with any of this. She was scared and she was a fuck-up and it would have been easier just to go home.
He allowed his fingers to linger in her sweater, loving how it was slightly too big and fell down onto her thighs, covering just enough but not too much. The fibers were so soft against his skin it was like she was wearing a cloud. Sexily dishevelled, wrapped in a cloud of their pheromones, her hair now loose waves framing her face...better than his wildest dreams. He pinched himself to make sure it was all really happening in case he found she was a mirage when he went in for a kiss. His mind had played vivid tricks on him before; he had once hallucinated an entire orchestra whilst in solitary. He had learned always to check first to avoid disappointment. But she was there alright. Her lips were real. He hadn't really meant to start anything, he just didn't want to dwell on the prison thing, but it was rapidly heading that way. She was so hot and sweet and eager and he felt the whole bed crackle static when her tongue glanced his lip.
She hadn't meant to start anything either, he was sat upright against the pillows, her fingers brushed him lightly on his bare chest when she leaned in to kiss him, she registered that the sheets were crumpled dangerously low around his waist and from then on it was irresistible. A small kiss became a bigger kiss, which became two kisses, which became a sumptuous clinch. She found she couldn't help but wind her arms around him again, folding herself around him, drawing him in. Before she knew it, they were entwined in bed linen and each other, stealing one another's breath. This was something else alright.
He broke their embrace and finally got his question out.
"Will you stay here with me tonight?"
She knew it. Dani noted that it was a question, but there was more than a hint that he totally expected her to say yes. She felt uneasy.
"I don't know about that, Crews..."
"Why not? We could go out, take a walk, go get dinner. Or stay here?", he said with a smirk, "I'd have no problem with staying right here."
She was vaguely pissed that he wasn't taking her seriously when she expressed her reservations, maybe he thought she just needed convincing. His invitation to stay contained all those things that couples did; she didn't know if she was ready for any of that. She didn't have a change of clothes. She didn't have a toothbrush. She had laundry to do back at home. She was coming up with trivial reasons why she shouldn't out of sheer panic. Fuck's sake, Dani. She started to withdraw from him immediately, her hands let go of his neck, her arms went slack around him.
"I guess I need some time to think.", she replied.
Here we go. He braced himself for the suckerpunch.
"What's to think about, Dani? It all seems pretty simple to me."
He touched her thigh, which was resting comfortably on top of his above the sheets, to emphasize to her just how simple it was.
"Yeah, it is simple...right here, in this room. But don't you think this is quite surreal? It's not always going to be like this. As soon as we step out of here it's gonna be...I don't know..."
"Who's to say that what happens in here isn't real and what happens out there isn't fake?", he asked.
She ignored his mystic bullshit.
"Like you said, you and me, after all this time? It is pretty weird." He had already admitted as much and he needed reminding.
"I said that earlier today. That was before we..."
"Before we, what?", she wanted to see how he would refer to what they just did, what he thought this whole thing was.
"Before we got busy. For real.", he finished.
"'Got busy'?!' Jesus, Crews. I know you have your reasons but sometimes the shit you say is so...early 1990s...You sound like my mom trying to be hip."
"What can I do?", he shrugged, "They arrested my development. Literally".
He was glad they could still joke during what was a pretty heavy conversation. One that was definitely not going his way. He had to goof around or else he would get mad.
He was right, she thought. For a guy nearly forty, he really did act like an immature twenty-something. She wondered if he was trying to claim back lost time, or whether his development into a rational adult person really had been interrupted and stalled by his incarceration. She wondered if he would ever catch up. Maybe he would always be too young for her.
"So you do feel weird?", he looked into her eyes, concerned.
"A little, yes.", she replied. "And if it feels a little weird in here, just the two of us, then it's gonna feel a lot worse when we're back at work, Crews."
He couldn't help it, he was getting mad.
"It sounds like you've already decided. How come you're calling me 'Crews' again, Dani? I thought we fixed that?", he challenged.
"Because you're my partner and that's what I've always called you."
"Really? Well back there, just a little while ago, you were all 'Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!'. What's up with that?"
Shit. The second he said it he regretted it, he knew she would flip. It sounded too much like he was mocking her, like he was throwing the hard-won intimacy that he had so prized right back in her face. He knew unconsciously that this was something you should never do with Dani Reese.
Sure enough, Dani whipped herself up and away from him, snapped herself backwards half way across the bed before he could even blink.
She was going to get the fuck out of there. Like she always did.
