Rating: Just like it says on the tin…R. For Smut. Well, half assed smut, as I prefer to call it. Because that's what it is.

Quick Explanation: Charli, my beta and other half told me to write smut. I've never written anything R rated before, so I giggled a bit, then wrote this.

Things you should know: Is set somewhere around the end of season 7, it really doesn't matter where, put it in where you like. :D Was written as a Carby, although could technically be anyone. But is a Carby.

Author's Note: See end
Gushing Thanks And Unlimited Love: To Kitty for going through this for me. To Charli, who beta-ed this piece, found me a (perfect) song for it, and added some very excellent sentences to make it flow better. Lots of excellent sentences. She's good that girl…

On with the show….

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Give me your lips, the lips you only let me borrow
Love me tonight, devil take tomorrow
I know that I must have your kiss although it kills me
Though it consumes me, your kiss of fire

"Kiss of Fire" Brave Combo

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She doesn't know why she's there. She remembers something about him asking her back for a coffee, and she remembers accepting, but she doesn't remember why and she doesn't think she's there for coffee because his coffee is never strong or bitter enough for her taste.

He's not sure why she came at all, or even why he asked her, he knows she can have coffee at her place, or even at Luka's, or at anywhere other than his place, yet she accepted. Now she's here and he obviously didn't think beyond this moment, was for once stuck in the present and the present alone, because there is no coffee, just a few powdery brown specks lining the inside of a sadly depleted bag. Maybe he drinks too much of it, or maybe not enough.

She paces the length of the room, but not angrily - slowly, purposefully. Thinks he's watching but isn't sure, is never really entirely sure what's going on when he's around, however her stomach is doing nervous little flips, and she thinks that's his fault; his eyes burning into her, his gaze with far too much dangerous energy inside of it. She dares to turn round, but he's busying himself in the kitchen and as she softly treads up behind him, she wonders whether he's scared of her, and 'them', right now.

Because she is.

He looks guilty; which she forgives him for, because she feels the same, though neither are sure what for and why. They stand there for a little while, wonder how they can still notice time, eyes flicking up when they think the other isn't looking, down when they fear being caught. And they both know that this has nothing to do with coffee, everything to do with something else. Something they don't understand, and don't even want to.

It's dark outside, swirling and bitter cold droplets of rain banging on his window, trying to remind them of the world outside this, begging entry but refused each time, left to trickle down the pane relentlessly, each making a tapping sound as it hits the bottom. But it's one routine she likes.

He's not sure they're there; isn't sure what's real about this moment and what's a dream. Can't seem to look anywhere apart from at her, and doesn't dare to connect with her eyes. The only thing he can feel right now is her closeness to him. He's given up trying to understand.

Involuntarily she shivers, though not through the cold. She hasn't noticed that in a while. He, however, seems to think it is the cold, and reaches forward to slide a warm hand up her arm. This time it's unmistakable, to both of them, the fine line of goosebumps; a thousand hot pinpricks racing across her skin, scalding them both. He adds this scar to his collection.

He sees it and steps back. She sees it and steps forward.

Their dance. 1, 2, 3… 1, 2, 3…

She can't decide what dance it is. The tango? The salsa? A waltz? The only thing she knows is that she wasn't taught the steps. She wonders if he perhaps was, or if their movements are as deeply instinctive for him as they are for her.

There's an awkward moment of nothing, then the sudden sounds of matching heavy breathing, his and hers; as if someone's turned a radio up to full volume in the apartment below. He tries to shake his head, and she doesn't let him; there's a soft, cool touch he recognises but has never felt before on one side of his chin, and she's running a small hand up the sleeve of his jacket, to the collar. Rubbing along his neck and to his jaw, glancing slowly upwards at him, brown eyes aglow for what must be the first time in months. He looks into those eyes and sees fire blazing across darkened skies; he looks and sees himself in her.

And he's scared. And she's scared, and they're scared together, but her hand is still on his arm and his hand is still working its way towards her face, brushing back a wisp of hair, moving the only thing left between their gaze.

She thinks the changed voltage of electricity when his hand touches her face is enough to kill them both. She wants to run away now, but her feet don't seem to be there anymore. The jolt of the shock sends him closer to her, toes touching, hot breath reaching the other's cold cheeks.

Then for a long time there's silence.

He tries to breath. His mouth is stale, dry, and he gulps it down but it's painful. She stutters a breath, unsteady but certain, moves closer, and he can't stop her, knows he wouldn't want to. He doesn't dare because the only time he feels alive these days is when he's around her, his body chemistry needs her more than he ever needed any narcotic. And he wants that too badly to let go.

His head leans down towards hers without his mind's approval, and this close to her he can smell the stale ash and vanilla, the light and the dark. Her. And he wants it all.

Her senses are clogged by something, she doesn't know or care what anymore; all she can feel is him almost touching her, her head swim, her spine burn, her arms shiver.

Making one last and grudging effort to stop, he shifts back, but she's quicker than that and catches his tingling lips with her own swollen ones, barely touching but painfully there. She lost her own mind a few seconds back; his flees him now. A glance at the wall and he sees their shadows against it in the half light, watches the white between two bodies close as they move together, sees their faces meeting with one half open eye. And if this is the road to Hell he knows he can deal with that, so he takes her face in two warm hands and kisses her 'til she can't breath.

She gasps without meaning too, sucks his tongue further into her mouth, taking his oxygen because she needs it and uses her grip on his arm to throw off his jacket, each hand dealing with one side and meeting back in the middle, behind his neck, kneading the flesh, making him hers. He groans into her mouth and the shudder returns to her spine.

They break apart, senses reeling, and everything stops, even the raindrops, still falling but suddenly mute. There's a steady gaze, and sweat and want and need between them, and suddenly she can't handle not kissing him, so that's what she does. Kisses, and bites at his warm bottom lip whilst he licks at hers, pace slow at first but faster and more urgently compelling with each step she makes backwards, towards the bedroom she's never seen.

She's moving fluidly, feet in reverse, hands roaming through mussed up hair and he's stumbling a little behind her until a sudden pain shoots through her leg, and then they're no longer in control, they're falling backwards and further so until they hit the couch together with a thud, and a small burst of laughter.

He wants to know if she's okay, wants to check he hasn't hurt her with their unexpected fall, but she's more concerned with the little fingers trying to undo the knot worked into his tie, although she knows that if push comes to shove she'll just leave it on or rip it because this tension is painful.

It's an ache across her breasts, down her stomach and along her thighs, becoming more so with each gentle and slow exploration his hands make, over rough and smooth landscapes of denim and silk, wool and skin, and down the contours of her abdomen, over hip bones which eagerly rise to meet him.

And she doesn't understand why he won't rip all her clothes off already.

One by one the buttons of his shirt jump free, and the instigator of this little revolt lies under him, vulnerable but insistent, trembling but free. She smiles the smallest of her smiles up at him, and a glance through his own private picture library, the panoramas that reassure him she exists, tells him she's never looked more beautiful.

Kneading the flesh around her stomach, he feels the marks he's leaving on her, and he thinks he's glad to at last have made any impact on her. The sigh she mumbles into him shoots him back into the present, and he nods to an unspoken question. He rises and she looks shocked, sad. He shakes his head, still smiling at her and lifts her up, motioning to the door they'd been aiming for before their impromptu freefall.

And she hates him for making her look like she needed him. Hates herself because she does.

His hands now freely roam her back and hers creep under his open shirt, along the mapped out lines of his chest. She knows his breath is quicker because she can feel it in short bursts along her neck, shallower and harsher, and he knows she's becoming impatient because her head has manoeuvred itself to his ear, where she's sucking and whispering into it. He presumes alternately but it seems simultaneous, overwhelming.

They're drowning. She understands what people mean when they say it's a peaceful way to go in the final moments. No control, no worry. The calming of mental storms by submerging them beneath even stronger waves.

They make it all the way across the room before he gives in, and slides his hands up and under her top, thumbs brushing circles along the edges of still aching breasts.

Another guilty thought shifts into his head, along with a mental picture of his rival, which is too creepy to contemplate further. He brushes this away, finds it scarily easy to do so when his hands cup her, and it feels like they should stay there indefinitely.

She's done with his shirt, never wanted it there in the first place, it's discarded and left on the floor, making a puddle with her top, which he somehow managed to remove without her noticing, and she moves on to the stubborn belt buckle around his waist. She'd like to rename the buckle 'timing', for being in the way like it always is, for so vindictively screwing things up, but figures renaming parts of him is more of a fifth date activity. And then she's sad for a moment, because she knows they'll never get there.

He feels her stop suddenly, and ceases the concentrated pattern of kisses he's trailing down her neck and between the furrows of her breasts. He looks back at her sadly, because he thinks she's changed her mind, feels her grief in an aching moment.

"What?" his voice is a soft whisper, and her stomach flips again. In the quiet and the moonlight, the beauty the lack of colour brings, she wants to pretend at happy; she wants to know, believe she's loved, and if she can't be loved with him now she knows that when the night crumbles into day she's already dead.

"Nothing," she whispers back, succeeding with the belt this time. He hears the tightness in her voice, the chains holding her back, but knows that they're not going to be cut, not tonight, that they're there to stop them from breaking and cracking.

He stares harder. Everything's slower, less panicked. More purposeful. A smoother path to a more certain destination. She stares back and slides her jeans over her hips, flares of delicate ivory illuminated in the solitary moonlight. He matches her move for move, and it's too late for anything else.

Or maybe it'll always be too early.

"I want you." It's a broken whisper in the dark of his bedroom, and he's not sure who said it, he just knows the voice is too low and husky to be hers, but too high and quiet to be his.

He lays her on the bed, feels suddenly in control, in awe that she lets him, and  watches her hair splay outwards, cappuccino dark against the milk white sheets, kisses a line across her collarbone. She paints a timelessly haunting melody for him, of dark and troubled beauty. Feels her arms kneading up and down his back, and thinks he's going to go mad after tonight, after she leaves, but he can't not feel it. Not now they're here.

She stops along a jagged line to his side, lower on the back and he breathes in sharply, freezing. Shakes her head, runs a hand along his damp brow for reassurance and follows the line she can't see, the line nobody sees. All the time watching him. He holds her gaze electric, and she holds his, continuing the line until she sees his eyes wet in the dark, and he descends dry lips back to her breasts. And she closes her eyes against their pain, pleads with him to block it out.

Her shortened breaths come in time with the ticking of the clock and the dripping of the rain, their horizontal shadows dance along the wall brokenly, twisting and disappearing into each other, and he commits this to memory because he needs to.

She stops his ministrations, holding his face between her hands and silently begs him. He's more than glad for this because he doesn't think he can wait any longer for her, not when he's been waiting for so many months and lonely nights already. Catalyses a reaction into the explosion. Foreheads touch, and he strains through the shadows to see all of her, not just the parts that contrast with the dark where the light has touched. The simplest things come down to black and white, the more complex left to the shades of grey found in between.

Her and him. Shades of monotone.

Without a word he lifts up her hips, sliding a path gently and waiting for a moment, taking in the smile on her face and the sound of her sharp gasp, stroking back more dark hair before commencing a more definite rhythm.

She kisses along his jaw like it's the last place she'll ever kiss, needs him to remember her, and everything becomes a little more feverish with each stroke, her nails digging into his back and the feel of him buckling slightly. She opens up to allow him in, closes slightly to protect him. Cries little salty tears when he can't see them, and smiles when he can, eyes shimmering human in the dark.

She likes the way he watches her, reverently, worships her faults, the way he looks after her like she could break. He watches her now, eyes deeper than she's ever seen them, watches the way she balls his sheets up into her fist when she moans, loves everything he can see, adores everything he can feel, the white paper of her skin hardly distinguishable from soft folds of cotton, rippling with their bodies.

And he knows he loves her, and that she doesn't love him, but he knows she needs him, and he lies to himself that that's nearly the same.

He hears her humming approval in his ear and moves faster, earning himself a surprised gasp and more fingernail treads across his back. Red grooves for red roses. And he pushes and she grabs until there's nothing more they can do, so they crash together, screams of release mingled in the guilty air around them, glistening droplets of sweat drying already on tired bodies.

She wants to cry, finds that the relief she craved from him is as distant and as close as it ever was. She wishes she was allowed to grieve for all they had lost; for all that they could never gain. Prays for a breakdown, for the world to stop so she can get off and start it all over again. And end up here once more.

He expects her to move away, dreads losing the warmth, but she doesn't, she curls up beside him and holds him like the world just ended, lips still against his jaw and chest moving against his, grasping terrified at her only remaining anchor until his breaths drift into snores and it's just her and the rain again. And she remembers this moment, and she tries to remember the feeling, but it's gone too soon.

Remembers that everything's wrong, everything's lying, but maybe that's the way it is meant to be.

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Author's Note: Ok, so this is the first R rated piece I've written, apologies if it's bad, but God loves a trier. Feedback is greatly appreciated, particularly constructive criticism, and may or may not be paid back in chocolate and cake. Review if you liked it, review if you didn't, but let me know what you think! :o)