Title: Hotter Than July
Disclaimer: The ER characters do not belong to me, neither do any products, song lyrics or literary quotations mentioned.
Summary: Warm weather, flirtation and a few lessons to be learned. Luby. Sort of AU, sort of not.
Reviews: Please let me know that you're all still with me after such a long time!! And thankyou for all the input on the last chapter :)
Author's note: Apologies for the two week hiatus, I had two papers to write, such is the life of a lazy final year English student!! But I'm back, and I've put this to an 'R' just as pure precaution, it's not all that 'R' rated at all in my opinion but I don't want to cause any trouble!! So a little non-graphic sexual content in this chapter. But back to PG-13 for the next chapter :)
Early morning was still undecided, it was blue-black, it was grey, it was violet. In a complicitous tangle they laid there against the fevered mass of purple sheets, silent but for peaceful, content breathing and the strands of her hair brushing against his chest, his fingertips idly tracing every fibre, no longer attempting to understand anything. This was not an end, but purely a beginning. Little else mattered anymore, neither East nor West, night nor day. Their fingers were locked tightly, compacted as strongly as hours earlier, a distant memory in this timeless space. Abby adjusted the richly coloured sheet to cover her shoulder, to shroud this intimate moment, to keep it for themselves. She flickered her eyes shut and remembered.
And so she remembered: the tantalising citrus of his aftershave, the coldness of his necklace against her lips, then the feverish warmth of his skin, the mess she made of his hair while teasing the tense cotton of his T-shirt away from his body. The addictive, tender glow in his eyes, his hands tracing every curve of her body, an atonement for his dismissal of her beauty. Her half-smile as she lowered onto him, the fixed totality of their gaze as they found a languorous rhythm, silent, possessed, captivated, as they saw only each other. The bittersweet end; her tendons shivering, her synapses flickering, every nerve bathed in pleasure and affection. The final intimacy: a soft, grazing kiss, her head then resting on his shoulder, turned towards the light, daybreak unfurling against her eyeball while she held him, silent, breathless, complete.
She opened her eyes again, then listened to the slow, erratic but yet perfect sound of Luka's breathing, knowing he was awake, even more aware as he curled the end of her hair with his fingers, toying with it, shaping it like the wasteful filament of a light bulb. He was laying there, eyes wide open, watching imaginary patterns on the ceiling. Closing his eyes, his fingers tangled through her hair, also attempting some reconstruction of the immediate past.
And so he remembered: the dancing light in her eyes, energised with mischief and desire. Her hair brushing against him like a thousand icy needles of silk. The shape of her body as he touched her, every inch a memory. The intoxication, the rush of feeling as he moved within her. His emotional ecstasy as he looked up and watched her, goddess of imperfection, light and dark hair, different shades painting her. She was shapes, she was colours, she was everything. The sweet torture of the final moment, every shiver in his spine, every coil of emotion twisting into his soul, his hands on her hips, her heart his future. An epilogue, a kiss, an affirmation without words, her head bowed on his shoulder, hiss lips delicate on hers. His arms encircling her as he held her, silent, breathless, complete.
Outside, the city was quiet, still, unmoved, unwoken. There was little noise, the occasional rustle of sheets, the infrequent buzz of traffic in the periphery the only hint that any other soul was alive outside of this utopia of emotion.
"What are you thinking about?" Abby was always intrigued by the unreadable secrets of this thoughts, especially in these quiet, almost poignant moments of rare intimacy.
"Tomorrow."
"Don't you mean today?"
"No, I mean tomorrow. No work and all play." In his quiet contentment, Luka was starting to crave one of the things he missed most: the ocean. The thought of a day's lounging on the temperamental shore of Lake Michigan was somehow less appealing, but still mildly pleasant.
"Roll on tomorrow," Abby replied, smiling to herself.
Slowly, still holding his hand, she sat up slightly, turning her attention to the open bedside drawer, which had been abandoned in a half-open state when the search for condoms had been successful.
"What are you doing?" Luka asked, feeling a little confused.
"Being mysterious," she replied, beginning to explore the varying textures of the items in the drawer. Her fingertips caught against something cold, smooth and metallic, she wrapped them around it and extracted it from the drawer. Even before a crisp fold of light was defining the shining edges, Luka knew exactly what she was holding, that silver, incongruous talisman that had saved his life: the crucifix.
He watched her eyes with care as she examined the necklace with a mystified and cautious air, the minimal light splitting into a thousand shards against the surface, echoes of a thousand possibilities. He had felt obliged to keep it locked away like a secret, the secret of his very own mortality. An impossible thing to control or understand. She was hanging it in front of his eyes like a hypnotist with a watch.
"That little bit of silver saved my life," he said, quietly, a confession, a confusion.
Puzzlement pushed its way across Abby's eyes in a swift, punishing glaze over her irises.
"I don't understand," she said, plainly.
"I almost got killed in Africa. I didn't get shot through the head because I was wearing that." The bitter irony, the caustic depravity, the unspeakable fear of that moment still haunted him. Evidently, it haunted her imagination with almost the same power, as she unsuccessfully fought away a shiver. She knew what that fear was like, remembering the cold, brittle, repulsive smoothness of a gun's barrel against her head. But it was the past and they had survived. If these harrowing memories were indeed ghosts, then they were temporary ones.
"It's strange. These things seem to happen in threes. They shot every other man, they spared me, then I almost died again."
Abby found no immediate reply, but in an irrational, unguided moment of faultlessness, she looped the shining metal silently around her neck. She fixed him with an intense gaze while tenderly stroking his arm, not missing the significance of his trouble with the number three. Luka risked a glance upward, transfixed by her dangerous beauty with that symbol hanging heavily against her skin. It was a glance that told him just one thing: she was the only thing he needed to believe in. Even though he did not articulate this, she seemed to confirm the thought with a wicked grin, he smiled back, he couldn't help it.
Leaning in just a little closer, she whispered, mischief dancing about in her tone with an air of seriousness.
"Bad things come in threes, but good things always happen twice." With that statement, she covered his body with hers again, while dawn's sleepy eye opened in the perfect arch of a smile.
Disclaimer: The ER characters do not belong to me, neither do any products, song lyrics or literary quotations mentioned.
Summary: Warm weather, flirtation and a few lessons to be learned. Luby. Sort of AU, sort of not.
Reviews: Please let me know that you're all still with me after such a long time!! And thankyou for all the input on the last chapter :)
Author's note: Apologies for the two week hiatus, I had two papers to write, such is the life of a lazy final year English student!! But I'm back, and I've put this to an 'R' just as pure precaution, it's not all that 'R' rated at all in my opinion but I don't want to cause any trouble!! So a little non-graphic sexual content in this chapter. But back to PG-13 for the next chapter :)
Early morning was still undecided, it was blue-black, it was grey, it was violet. In a complicitous tangle they laid there against the fevered mass of purple sheets, silent but for peaceful, content breathing and the strands of her hair brushing against his chest, his fingertips idly tracing every fibre, no longer attempting to understand anything. This was not an end, but purely a beginning. Little else mattered anymore, neither East nor West, night nor day. Their fingers were locked tightly, compacted as strongly as hours earlier, a distant memory in this timeless space. Abby adjusted the richly coloured sheet to cover her shoulder, to shroud this intimate moment, to keep it for themselves. She flickered her eyes shut and remembered.
And so she remembered: the tantalising citrus of his aftershave, the coldness of his necklace against her lips, then the feverish warmth of his skin, the mess she made of his hair while teasing the tense cotton of his T-shirt away from his body. The addictive, tender glow in his eyes, his hands tracing every curve of her body, an atonement for his dismissal of her beauty. Her half-smile as she lowered onto him, the fixed totality of their gaze as they found a languorous rhythm, silent, possessed, captivated, as they saw only each other. The bittersweet end; her tendons shivering, her synapses flickering, every nerve bathed in pleasure and affection. The final intimacy: a soft, grazing kiss, her head then resting on his shoulder, turned towards the light, daybreak unfurling against her eyeball while she held him, silent, breathless, complete.
She opened her eyes again, then listened to the slow, erratic but yet perfect sound of Luka's breathing, knowing he was awake, even more aware as he curled the end of her hair with his fingers, toying with it, shaping it like the wasteful filament of a light bulb. He was laying there, eyes wide open, watching imaginary patterns on the ceiling. Closing his eyes, his fingers tangled through her hair, also attempting some reconstruction of the immediate past.
And so he remembered: the dancing light in her eyes, energised with mischief and desire. Her hair brushing against him like a thousand icy needles of silk. The shape of her body as he touched her, every inch a memory. The intoxication, the rush of feeling as he moved within her. His emotional ecstasy as he looked up and watched her, goddess of imperfection, light and dark hair, different shades painting her. She was shapes, she was colours, she was everything. The sweet torture of the final moment, every shiver in his spine, every coil of emotion twisting into his soul, his hands on her hips, her heart his future. An epilogue, a kiss, an affirmation without words, her head bowed on his shoulder, hiss lips delicate on hers. His arms encircling her as he held her, silent, breathless, complete.
Outside, the city was quiet, still, unmoved, unwoken. There was little noise, the occasional rustle of sheets, the infrequent buzz of traffic in the periphery the only hint that any other soul was alive outside of this utopia of emotion.
"What are you thinking about?" Abby was always intrigued by the unreadable secrets of this thoughts, especially in these quiet, almost poignant moments of rare intimacy.
"Tomorrow."
"Don't you mean today?"
"No, I mean tomorrow. No work and all play." In his quiet contentment, Luka was starting to crave one of the things he missed most: the ocean. The thought of a day's lounging on the temperamental shore of Lake Michigan was somehow less appealing, but still mildly pleasant.
"Roll on tomorrow," Abby replied, smiling to herself.
Slowly, still holding his hand, she sat up slightly, turning her attention to the open bedside drawer, which had been abandoned in a half-open state when the search for condoms had been successful.
"What are you doing?" Luka asked, feeling a little confused.
"Being mysterious," she replied, beginning to explore the varying textures of the items in the drawer. Her fingertips caught against something cold, smooth and metallic, she wrapped them around it and extracted it from the drawer. Even before a crisp fold of light was defining the shining edges, Luka knew exactly what she was holding, that silver, incongruous talisman that had saved his life: the crucifix.
He watched her eyes with care as she examined the necklace with a mystified and cautious air, the minimal light splitting into a thousand shards against the surface, echoes of a thousand possibilities. He had felt obliged to keep it locked away like a secret, the secret of his very own mortality. An impossible thing to control or understand. She was hanging it in front of his eyes like a hypnotist with a watch.
"That little bit of silver saved my life," he said, quietly, a confession, a confusion.
Puzzlement pushed its way across Abby's eyes in a swift, punishing glaze over her irises.
"I don't understand," she said, plainly.
"I almost got killed in Africa. I didn't get shot through the head because I was wearing that." The bitter irony, the caustic depravity, the unspeakable fear of that moment still haunted him. Evidently, it haunted her imagination with almost the same power, as she unsuccessfully fought away a shiver. She knew what that fear was like, remembering the cold, brittle, repulsive smoothness of a gun's barrel against her head. But it was the past and they had survived. If these harrowing memories were indeed ghosts, then they were temporary ones.
"It's strange. These things seem to happen in threes. They shot every other man, they spared me, then I almost died again."
Abby found no immediate reply, but in an irrational, unguided moment of faultlessness, she looped the shining metal silently around her neck. She fixed him with an intense gaze while tenderly stroking his arm, not missing the significance of his trouble with the number three. Luka risked a glance upward, transfixed by her dangerous beauty with that symbol hanging heavily against her skin. It was a glance that told him just one thing: she was the only thing he needed to believe in. Even though he did not articulate this, she seemed to confirm the thought with a wicked grin, he smiled back, he couldn't help it.
Leaning in just a little closer, she whispered, mischief dancing about in her tone with an air of seriousness.
"Bad things come in threes, but good things always happen twice." With that statement, she covered his body with hers again, while dawn's sleepy eye opened in the perfect arch of a smile.