Thank you for being SO PATIENT for this. Much love.
I guess I expected some kind of assault as soon as we entered the apartment but all I got was a soft, sweet sigh and a kiss pressing to my cheek. "Gonna shower."
"Who says you get to go first?" I nudged him with my hip, coaxing his hands to focus there.
He took the bait, pressing me closer, showing off in those eyes that my assumption hadn't been too far off, his mind was certainly elsewhere but he was trying to be a good boy about it for some reason. "You could…" A soft laugh broke from his lips. "Never mind."
"I could what?" I pressed a hand into his shoulder. "Don't chicken out."
"I'm not a chicken," he griped.
"Then?" I lifted my eyebrows, completely smitten with the way his face flushed a bright red.
"We could shower together," he muttered.
That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen! the overactive part of my brain screamed first.
After breaking it down it didn't seem so ridiculous, especially as he took my pause as a prompt for a frantic explanation, "I'm not - not sex in the shower, OK? But, seeing you, touching you might be nice and I know I got some of that last night, but-"
"OK," I shrugged, letting that courage steam through all of the rest of my thoughts.
"OK?" His eyebrows raised as if my reaction was absurd but it quickly melted into a smirk as he started moving me back a step for a step down the hallway.
"You want me to change my mind?" I smirked.
"Definitely not." He kept pulling me down the hallway but his eyes darted over me a few times, testing those waters and seeing where my courage would end.
You should know better, I wanted to chide at him but I let that sit as a smirk on my face as he led me into the bathroom.
"I'm going to put it at human temperature," he grumbled as he turned the knobs and water started to hiss past the curtain.
"Warmer," I cooed as I pressed into him.
"I like my skin intact, thanks," he muttered. I half expected his eyes to come back to me but for a moment he focused on the water, brain working in slow revolutions.
I slid my arms around him, letting my fingers settle on one of the buttons of his shirt. "Tell me what you're thinking," I whispered as I flicked open the first of the closures.
Soul cleared his throat before murmuring, "I meant what I said - I wanna look, touch." He stopped the working of my fingers, turning instead in my arms to face me and catch me off guard with the serious crinkle to his forehead. "I think you're beautiful."
My breath froze and I know my lips did that embarrassing tremble, the one where I'm sure I look utterly, stupidly absent in the head.
That brought a soft snort of a laugh from him. "I guess… I'm asking you not to get too self-conscious. I want to take my time and if you… you get scared or something, tell me."
I nodded pertly but my eyes were still close to saucers as his hands moved to dip under my shirt. He peeled it off me slowly, tossing it to the ground.
"You'll have to do the bra," he chuckled. "Still not good at it."
I could offer at least a huff of air in return that resembled a laugh and as I fiddled with my bra he undressed without a second to waste, none of my air of sheepishness rubbing off on him. Instead, he stepped back, leaving me a clear walk into the shower like the gentleman that he is - either that or I was expected to test the water. Regardless, I edged in and instantly turned up the heat.
"I said human temperature," he hissed behind me.
"You don't have to let the water touch you," I chimed back playfully, letting the stream hit my back as I turned to him.
Tentatively, his hand reached out towards me, fingertips resting on my collarbone. He was somewhere else, not intent at all on my teasing but instead deftly focused on running those pads along the span. Soul hit the middle, tracing downward, leaving me unable to keep a trembling groan from my mouth. That sparked a smirk, bringing him at least partially back to reality. "Feels weird?"
I nodded, my words feeling stolen from me as if he'd pulled them right out of my throat as his hand climbed back up. His hand flexed around my neck, cradling it softly and I took a step forward, closing some of the space. I wondered if he'd take the cue and could only smile when I saw that mind going back to work, his eyes darting from the stream to me. Our shower was barely made for one let alone two, but he let his hand slip to my waist, pressing me sideways so that my back was shocked by the icy tiles. I hissed, tilting my hips to avoid resting on the chill but found them greeted by his to answer my question about closeness.
Soul must have felt the shiver because his hands moved to the small of my back, pressing me against him to avoid close contact with the wall. One hand stayed there to steady me while the other followed the curve all the way down to my thigh. Even though he said he wanted to look, his eyes focused on my face, little trickles of water caressing his cheek and soaking the side of his hair. "What are you looking at?" I murmured.
His smirk reappeared, "You're blushing."
"Your hand-" I wanted to explain the obvious but he cut me off with the run back up, taking its time over the rounded arc of my bottom. "It's the steam," I barely corrected.
Soul hummed out a playful affirmative.
"Is this what you always do in the shower?" My voice warbled slightly as his hand kept up the gentle search.
"Think about touching you?" The realization of what he said made his eyes pop, the cool finally fading as his cheeks matched mine.
That brought with it some steady relief, the idea finally hitting me that he'd reached the maximum too. "I hope you pay a little more attention to washing." I reached to the side, grabbing the washcloth that hung over one of the knobs and the soap from the dish. I frothed up the tiny towel and tossed back the soap. "Here."
His throat juggled through a swallow and instead of grabbing it from me his hand wrapped around mine and guided it to his chest.
"Lazy," I murmured.
That loosed a tight chuckle from his mouth but no words to follow, just soft eyes watching the movement of my hand.
I dipped across to his shoulder, my finger trailing over a pock-mark of a scar. "This was in Cairo, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," he grunted.
I drifted down to one just below his ribs, a jagged v. "Madrid."
"You really remember that," he wasn't questioning but there was a bit of wonder to it.
"That's easy," I offered a small shrug before continuing my trail. "Maybe the smaller ones I don't remember but the big ones, the ones that scared me…"
His palm pressed warmly to my stomach, covering a curled c that moved away from my belly button. "Belize."
We made maps across each other, the washcloth making its way between the two of us to complete its secondary purpose, attention more spent on the memories etched into skin. Maybe it was more about the ones that we were making at that moment, too, because with each swipe of his hand I seemed to forget a little more of the nervousness. While the idea of someone exploring my body had been alien, Soul being the one doing the searching was right, made my skin feel whole instead of stripped of anything.
By the time the water was off, Soul was throwing a fluffy towel around me, massaging away enough droplets in my hair before using the cushiony crown to hide our mouths as they met. I couldn't tell if the trembling was the cold of being out of the shower or the way he seemed to caress every last nerve in my lips but he was quick to respond by slipping the towel down around me. Soul started to push me back out into the hallway, taking my weight with a tight arm around my waist to keep my steps from stumbling as he brought us back to my room.
He paused just at the edge of the bed, grip around my waist clenching while the one on my lips let us part. "Maka…"
He didn't need to spell out what else my name meant, the sweet worry that laced it and the way his soul latched protectively to mine making his reasoning entirely clear. "The condoms are in the nightstand drawer."
His open hand dug into the skin of my back, threatening to bring our lips back together. "You're sure?"
"Entirely." It was my last push, the last bit necessary to break whatever spell had ever held him at arm's length from me.
While last night had been all mouths and hands, frantic and needy, this came with that still cautious slowness that appeared along with loving Soul. Even with those eager jumps in the electricity of our connection, his hands moved at a worshipping pace, attention paid to every curve and crevice as he dipped me into the bed. He was so warm I was sweating, or maybe it was the way my body needed to move under him, needed to feel the friction of skin and his muscles tensing against mine. I just know that by the time he was rubbing up against me again, teasing at my opening, I felt feverish, my face definitely in a full blush as he pulled away from my lips.
He held my eyes in silence for another heaving breath before he broke his attention from me and honed in on the drawer, opening it slowly to find the box that I hadn't done much to hide. He brought it with him as he settled back on his haunches, ripping the cardboard before fiddling with the wrapper. "I don't-" he cut off his mutter with a huff.
"It's alright." I sat up slowly and attempted to guide his hands through the motions even though much of it was just as foreign to me. A shuddering sigh broke his lips as I slipped the condom over him. "Um, just… slow, OK?"
"Yeah," he let out breathily. I went to lay back down but he caught me, hands cupping my cheeks and forcing my back to his lips. "You mean everything to me," shook up from his throat and into his fingers.
"I know," I soothed back as I pulled him into the sheets with me.
Having him with me, tucked between my legs as there was finally no more flirting with that edge, just the two of us as close as we could get, was one of those moments that taught me that pleasure was relative. Not that it hurt, or that I hated it - completely the opposite - but it wasn't necessarily my body that was yearning for that touch. Sure, as Soul stroked, trying to find a tempo and a position while he tested my face with every thrust, I was feeling a level of physical contentment but it was more the utter tangle of the two of us.
There was no boundary, no walls that either of us could bother to put up because we'd both finally accepted that the closeness was what we had wanted all along. All that pulling, pushing along the way, how stupid both of us had been, all of it stripped away to just him and me, finally us.