"You have nightmares, don't you?"
He looks at her as he pulls on a sock, but he says nothing. He looks back down at his feet and pulls on the other. She's getting strangely personal. Hadn't she refused to tell him what she'd done for a living when she was younger because that would mean he knew too much about her?
"That's why you don't sleep," she concludes, almost sounding like she's accusing him.
Raphael carefully, calmy laces up his left boot, focusing on the task in an attempt to keep his mind from wandering to the usual set of images that haunt his nights.
"Aren't you going to say something?"
On his hands and knees, digging in the mud, rain pounding relentlessly into the exposed parts of his flesh–skin of his arms and back of his neck and backs of his hands numb, fingers numb from curling around the cold earth and pulling it away, knees sore–
She laughs. "You know, I always used to think you were so different from the rest of us mortals; things just didn't get to you. Now I know you're human like the rest of us."
"Is there a reason why you're ambushing me like this?" he says coolly, pulling on his other boot. He pulls his laces taut. "Last night was nice. I don't know–"
Raphael stops mid-sentence as he remembers how Mai had pulled back last night, trying her damnedest to make it seem like she was letting him spend the night out of her newfound generosity and not because she could possibly want him to stick around.
Right.
He looks at her over his shoulder. She stares back at him, tensed. Raphael swallows as he tugs the knot in his laces into place.
"Sorry for using your shower, Mai," he mutters before standing up and starting to walk away.
She sighs behind him. "Wait."
He pauses with his hand on the doorknob as he looks back at her. She's barefoot, her coiffure less than perfect after sleeping on it for a few hours.
She still makes him feel like a brute in his tank top and sweatpants.
She walks up to him and stares up into his eyes. Her lips are pursed in a straight line, bare of that trademark lipstick of hers that he'd been so fixated on when he first came here. Her hands are hanging limply by her sides. She was already much shorter than him with her heels, but the gap is now even more striking to him.
Mai holds her hand up, tentatively reaching out and grabbing his hand. She turns his arm over so the inside of his wrist is exposed, and she presses a kiss into the vein, coating his skin in the light gel she'd smoothed onto her lips before going to sleep. A nighttime mask, she'd called it.
Raphael studies her, saying nothing, the skin on his pulse tingling after her lips had touched it.
"I don't want you to leave," she murmurs, still holding onto his hand. She looks up at him and pulls him towards the bed. "At least not yet."
He follows her, his irritation replaced by intrigue.
"I'm doing that thing again," she says.
"What thing?" he asks.
"Pushing someone away because it's starting to feel real," she tells him, walking to her side of the bed. She reaches for the box of tissues on her nightstand and pulls one out, wiping the night mask off her lips.
"It doesn't have to be," he says, stooping down and unlacing his boots.
She looks off to side, staring at the slats on the blinds covering her enormous windows. "But you're… It's not like you're just some stranger." She plays with the crumpled wad of tissue in her hand for a moment before tossing it into the nearby trash can.
"Aren't I?" he asks, toeing his socks off. He crosses his arms as he grabs at the hem of his tank top and removes the shirt. "What do you know about me other than my name and my old job?"
"I lost my soul in a duel against you; I know plenty," she counters sharply, looking at him.
"Perhaps," he admits, stepping out of his sweatpants. "But other than that… I'm no one to you, Mai."
"You're–you're not no one!" she snaps. "Why do you think I let you spend the night?"
"I was just wondering that myself."
Mai stares at him wordlessly. Inhaling slowly, she circles the bed before coming to a stop in front of him. She places her hands on his bare chest, lightly pushing him in the direction of the bed. He sits down. She straddles his lap. "I…" she looks off to the side, hands on his shoulders. "I–I like having you around."
"Obviously," he says dryly, unable to stop himself smirking as his hands find their way to her waist.
She sends him a withering stare. "For more than just that."
With his grasp holding her securely in place, she looks off to the side again, chewing the inside of her cheek. She sighs delicately. "Maybe I… Maybe I've been awake for an hour longer than you have," she admits. "Maybe my first instinct was to hit you with a pillow and kick you out, but I just saw you sleeping there, and suddenly I couldn't do it."
Mai goes quiet after explaining herself. Raphael stares at her as he realizes that Mai has been awake long enough to allow herself the time to think, with him merely inches away from her. They'd never allowed themselves such an opportunity before; the routine had been for the both of them to get what they wanted, and then the visiting party left before pillow talk had been allowed to present itself. Oh, there was talking–quips, jabs, the like–but that was before the clothes came off.
She finally looks into his eyes, her face colored red, and she grabs his face and attacks his mouth, eyes squeezed shut. And his body responds with the ease and familiarity that comes from doing the same thing enough times over–hands roaming and gripping, mouth moving along with hers, breath hitching along with hers–but his mind keeps replaying how she looked right before she kissed him: face tensed, eyes squeezed shut. He's reminded of when he did the same when jumping into the ocean once he was brave enough to face the waters again.
Huh.