London After Midnight

DISCLAIMER: Aaahhh... Nikki got me all freaked out about needing conflict now LOL, because I realized I don't have any planned yet, which is why this chapter took me a little longer than usual. I was spooked. I don't have any good ideas for conflict so feel free to lay suggestions on me. Personally I think it's still a bit too early for more bad stuff anyway. Let's all bask in the Jordan and Nigel goodness until I come up with some juicy conflict to mess around with. :)

RATING CHANGE: Yes, we have finally made the big rating leap from PG-13 to R. If sexual situations upset you then please keep walking and pretend you never stopped to look.

MANY THANKS: To Aesear, for using the phrase "beautiful twistings of words" which I thought was a beautiful twisting of words in and of itself. Thank you HSchuler, I can't believe your first kiss was to Friday I'm In Love. How psychic of me. I think that's really cool. Thank you jtbwriter for pointing out that my Jordan and Nigel do not hem and haw over what should or should not be for about eighty chapters before finally laying it all out on the table, lol. I very much do not like when people (even television writers) have characters completely unable to make a decision for themselves. It's very unrealistic... like, do it or don't. That's just my opinion. I could talk all day about that, specifically in terms of Jordan and Woody and their lame will-they, won't-they chess game on the show, but I won't bore anyone right now. :) And thank you canadianfan for tolerating and appreciating a Jordan and Nigel pairing. I so agree that Nigel needs a little love. And I'd so much rather see him with Jordan than some newbie character created as a love interest for him, because chances are if the writers ever brought someone on like that, they'd totally and completely miss the mark.

Chapter Nine

"Always Jack and Sally, Never Hugh and Elizabeth"

Nigel

The motel room costs thirty dollars to rent, and I hand it over, glad I brought extra cash with me tonight. On the registry, we sign our names as Jack and Sally Skellington, and obviously the clerk has never seen A Nightmare Before Christmas, because she simply hands us our room key and directs us to the lift without even asking for ID.

It's a dive, really. A wretched, awful place, but Jordan and I ride the lift with silent smiles on our faces, our clothes and hair still soaked through from the storm that didn't let up even on the ride here. I drove excruciatingly slow and took turns like an old man in a motorized wheelchair as the rain fell in slanted sheets all around us. It was all in the interest of safety, of course, because of the rain and the quite serious threat of DUI, although admittedly I did enjoy having both of Jordan's twiggy arms wrapped around my waist and perhaps that contributed to me taking my time as well. She held onto me differently than she had when I picked her up at her flat, I don't know how exactly, more deliberately perhaps. Tighter. And she pressed her cheek between my shoulderblades, her front lined up with my back.

The room itself is ugly. The walls are beige and the carpet is a dirty, grubby gray, and the comforter on the bed looks almost... tepid, if it's possible for bedspread to look tepid. It's the only word I could use to describe it, a halfhearted striped pattern of brown and hunter green. But it's a bed, at least, and a rather large bed at that. Jordan hurries into the room and tosses her jacket on an aluminum folding chair set in the corner without the accompaniment of a table, giving the general appearance that the last inhabitant either stole the table or arrived with the chair as part of his luggage and simply decided he didn't need it anymore.

She takes off her boots too, and chucks them at random, not bothering to watch where they land. Then she goes barefoot around the room as comfortably as though it were her own, opening the blinds to see if our view is of the parking lot on the left side of the motel or the dumpster behind the Spanish restaurant on the right.

"I can see your bike." She nods at the glass, satisfied, and closes the blinds again before rounding the bed to the nightstand and pulling out the drawer to check for the Bible. "Now what if I was Buddhist?" she asks rhetorically, but I know she doesn't really care if the Bible is there or not. It's probably something she's said in every hotel room she's ever stayed in, even if it was by herself.

She's in the bathroom then, and I hear her fumbling around with things. "Shampoo. No conditioner. No mouthwash. Bar soap. One towel. Nigel, I'm taking my bra off."

"Sweet shag all," I murmur, a little protest of disbelief. Jordan Cavanaugh is taking her bra off and I haven't even passed over the threshold yet. "I... ah... That's nice, love. Do you need help at all?"

I hear her snort in response, a little amused laugh. "No, I think I have it..." Her voice trails off and then she emerges, still wearing her dress but short one brassiere. I try not to look anywhere but at her lovely face, marred only by the foggy clouds of makeup just beneath each eye. "...Under control. Close the door." She reaches out for one of my hands and gives it a gentle, albeit impatient, tug. "Come in, Nige, stop waiting for written invitations."

Her courage astonishes me, as it so often does. My brave dear girl. She doesn't want me to be afraid of her anymore, but I'm so terrified right now I'm nearly shaking, all of my confidence dripping onto the carpet like the rainwater that drips from my clothes. What if I'm not good enough? What if I don't thrill her? What if she changes her mind in the middle of it all? I've been waiting for this moment for so very long, building up to it in my own head. I was always so sure that I would say all the right things and do everything well, that every word and touch and movement would be smooth and natural and passionate without my even having to try very hard to make them so. But right now Jordan is so strikingly beautiful and so incredibly brave and so... so unexpectedly in control that I feel like a lumbering, bumbling teenager standing next to her. My tongue is pasted down in my mouth and I am putty in her hands. I want to touch her but perhaps I should speak first. I want to tell her things but perhaps I should touch her first.

"Hey, Nige." Without much warning she snaps her fingers a few times in front of my face and my focus quickly adjusts. I stop staring through her and resume staring at her, and in this moment of lapsed attention my eyes sink down to where I did not look before. "You're not getting shy on me, are you?"

I can see the outline of her nipples just beneath her soaked through dress. "What? No. No, love, I'm not shy." Bollocks, Townsend. If you weren't shy, you'd have her half-naked underneath the covers already.

"I don't believe you," Jordan retorts, as if she can read my bloody mind. "I think I make you nervous." She gives my hand another tug and I stumble a bit in my quest to get closer to her. She uses that awkwardness as an advantage, spinning me round almost like it was an extension of our waltz from earlier. The backs of my knees knock against the mattress and I fall down to a sit at the edge of the bed.

"I'm n-not nervous." A boldfaced lie. My tongue feels more than ever like it's covered in paste.

"You are." I swear to bleeding Christ it's practically like she purrs it. One of her knees sinks into the mattress beside my hip, and then her other knee does the same to the other side, and then effortlessly Jordan Cavanaugh settles down into my lap. My hands go to her waist instinctively to keep her from toppling backwards. Her hands, meanwhile, are on either side of my neck, making the sensitive skin there tingle beneath her fingers.

"I am," I quietly confess, my gaze locked into hers.

"Don't be," she pleads, and her eyelids lined in smoke and haze slide closed, and her thin little mouth opens fully around mine, taking both of my lips into its warmth. All of the breath I'd been holding in my lungs whooshes past her teeth and it isn't very sexy, I know, but at least I'm not suffocating myself anymore. I use some of my regained control to deepen the kiss, moving one hand up to cradle the base of her skull, just underneath her damp curls. It isn't until I feel her tongue brush softly against mine that I begin to lose myself, my awkwardness melting away, the hand still on her waist beginning to massage the small of her back. She rocks her hips forward very slowly, perhaps even unconsciously, against mine and it takes a moment to realize that the muffled whimper I hear is my own. There isn't any conceivable way she can't feel how much I want her, with our bodies pressed together as they are, but it doesn't seem to frighten her or repulse her like I always thought it might. On the contrary, she grabs fistfuls of my leather jacket and begins tugging it fiercely over my shoulders, stripping the sleeves from my arms so recklessly that they turn inside-out. She nearly topples onto the floor in her effort to whip the ten-ton bloody thing over her head, but I tighten my arm about her so that only the jacket goes sailing through the air, and not my dear girl. No sooner does it land than is she clawing at my t-shirt, completely soaked through and sticking to my skin as she yanks it over my head, raising my arms awkwardly upward like a mother undressing a toddler.

"Jordan, slow down," I admonish her, grinning at her eagerness but squeezing my eyes shut so the collar of my shirt doesn't rip them out of their sockets.

"I don't want to," she replies, tossing away the t-shirt, too, with a flick of her wrist. It lands with a sodden plop on the nightstand and knocks the telephone off the hook as it sinks to the floor.

"Bulls-eye, love," I compliment her accuracy. In response, she slams her palms into my chest. "Oof." My back hits the mattress and she holds me down with her fingers curled around my knobby elbows, keeping my arms above my head. Her hips move in tantalizingly slow adjustments as she settles herself on top of me, her sweet-smelling ash brown hair tumbling over her shoulders and nearly touching my skin. I try to arch myself up to meet her, but she's got me pinned, and to be pinned underneath Jordan Cavanaugh is really not half bad. Not half bad indeed.

"I didn't bring any feathers," she says, her voice a husky growl. I don't understand what she bloody means at first, but then I remember that day she blindfolded me and took me to that horrible chain supermarket. I've forgotten the name of it, now. What was it? Oh yes, Total Mart. To help her pick out a present for her father. I hadn't really thought she'd brought me to a motel, because I never thought I could possibly be that lucky, but I remember making some slight joke about it, and I did ask her if she brought any feathers. My grin spreads a bit wider across my features and I feel a blush fall over my cheeks. I can't bloody believe she remembers that.

"It's all right," I reply, gazing up at her in what I'm sure must pass for complete and total bliss. We could stay like this all night and never go any further and I would still die a happy man. The expression on Jordan's face seems sort of serious and even a bit intimidating, like being trapped underneath a wild tiger. But I know she's probably just calculating her next move, wondering if she should be in control or if she should let me take over, if she should be sweet or saucy or scary or a combination of the three. She's just as nervous as I am, I can tell. Suddenly I want nothing more than to wrap her up against me and snuggle under the covers with her, to just forget the whole bloody thing. We don't have to do this tonight, we can wait a day or a week or the rest of our lives if we so choose.

But then I feel her hips jolt forwards against me once more, and I gasp, a pang of desire causing my stomach to clench up. No. Now. Now, it has to be now. I want it now.

"You're so pale, Nigel," she whispers, her tone leaning more towards appreciation than anything else, or maybe even awe. "Like the moon." She loosens one hand from one of my elbows and presses it against the center of my chest, then sets her fingertips upright against my skin and lets them dance along the surface of it, touching my collar and my ribs and my hipbones and my stomach, poking her little pinkie finger playfully into my belly button. "I've never seen you without your shirt off. Sometimes I think you look like a painting. You know? I can't explain how. I was thinking about it after you called. I thought you looked like something else, too. Like a picture, or something. A really old one, like the Victorian ones you see sometimes hanging in historical places, of black-and-white people with top hats and very formal suits and those vacant, kind of depressed looks on their faces. You look like that. Not vacant and depressed, just... I don't know. Old-fashioned, somehow. Dignified. Classic. Timeless, that's the word I thought of. You look timeless... ageless. You act that way, too. Like your spirit is hundreds and hundreds of years old and you've seen so much and you've been through so much and you know the secret of happiness already, so everything in your life right now is just gravy. The icing on the cake. And that's why no matter what goes wrong you have a handle on things, and you make people feel better because it always seems like no matter how bad things are, as long as Nigel Townsend is smiling then everything is going to be okay."

She pauses then, as if realizing that she only meant to say a word or two to pass the time, or perhaps comment on what my shallow, starving rockstar chest looks like in comparison to what she's used to, but instead she's said more than she's ever admitted to herself. She doesn't look me in the eye. I never thought any of those things about myself and it certainly never even occurred to me that Jordan Cavanaugh might think them. I'm completely speechless and so, it seems, is she. We're both silent for a handful of comfortable moments, and then Jordan bows lithely over me and I feel the soft damp tickle of her lips pressing against my nipple in a kiss. The shocking innocence of the act touches me so greatly that it sends a ripple of emotion shooting through my veins and for the briefest of seconds my vision actually clouds over as my eyes well up with tears. I swallow heavily to make them go away. I don't know what it is that I did to finally deserve this.

"May I undress you, love?" My voice is deeper than it was a few moments ago.

"Yes," she whispers, and I feel her body go limp over mine, her legs stretching all the way out. Her toes barely touch the tops of my boots and I realize that no matter how long and lanky Jordan is, she's still so very much smaller than I am. And delicate, and fragile, yes, Jordan Cavanaugh is fragile, no matter how strong and brave and capable she seems. I have to be careful with her, I don't want to break her or hurt her in any way. My arms link around her waist and I cradle her as I roll her onto her back, careful not to crush her in the process. I reach around her wild mess of curls and pull a too-flat, too-soft hotel pillow from beneath the tucked-in tepid comforter, slapping it with my palm a few times to fluff it up a bit before slipping it under her head.

"There we are," I whisper, encouraged by her smile. My fingers are wedged beneath her frame and they fumble around a bit for the zipper, finding it only when Jordan arches her back to give them more room. I can feel them trembling as they pull the little bit of metal down its narrow track, very slowly until they reach the end. Then her body relaxes against the mattress again.

I'm almost loathe to rid her of the beautiful violet dress, because I'm certain now, although I can't say quite why, that I'm the first person to ever see her wear it. That makes it special to me, and I'm incredibly cautious as I pluck at its straps, watching them fall away from her little shoulders and watching still as she gracefully slips each willowy arm out of them. My hands go timidly to her breasts, cupping just the sides of them through the thinly spun wet cotton of the loosened dress. My eyes don't waver from Jordan's as I gently peel away the bodice and replace it with both palms. Her eyes slide closed and a barely audible sound passes her lips, some amalgam of a whisper and a whimper and a sigh. Her skin is freezing, arctic, and my palms are boiling hot and regrettably a bit sweaty, but Jordan doesn't seem to mind the contrast. Her breasts are small and round and perfect, each fitting in one hand, her nipples hard against my lifelines. Jordan's breasts. How many times have I wanted to touch them through those little t-shirts she wears? And now she's letting me, she wants me to. She wants a lot more than that, I can tell by the way she reaches between us and tugs at the waistband of my jeans, her fingers working to unlatch my belt buckle. Her eyes are open again and they're an almost transparent chestnut beneath the glow of the dim bedside lamp. Mine must look the same.

"Love," I whisper, for no particular reason at all. My belt is sliding through its denim loops around my waist, tugged away by Jordan's nimble fingers. The little metal button is plucked out of its hole. The zipper slides down its track. "Love." That word again. I wonder if she knows now that every single time I called her that word in the past nine and a half years, I meant it. Really, truly meant it. My hands glide over her breasts and down the milky smooth valley of her stomach, and only then do I allow myself one definite, lingering look, admiring her skin which is not unlike mine in its paleness. Her nipples are like little pink roses and the lavender veins just visible beneath her skin are like faintly drawn vines. Beautiful. Beautiful.

"You're breathtaking," I say when I've managed to find my voice again, although it's so quiet that perhaps she can't hear me at all. "If either of us look like a painting, Jordan, it's you. I would if I could. Paint you, I mean. I would."

As I'm speaking, I become aware that her thighs have parted and I'm settled between them, the both of us still fully clothed from the waist down. "Keep going, Nigel," she whispers through a smile, five of her slender fingers just brushing over my cheek and then falling back to their place on the bed. "Don't get shy again. You're almost there."

I am. I am almost there. My destination lies only a few inches south and I continue to peel the dress over her hips and thighs until I've turned it completely inside out and from there I don't know where it goes because Jordan has kicked it away and I am too engrossed in my newest discovery to mark where the fabric lands.

Panties. Mint green. Mint green panties, little tiny briefs that blend wonderfully against the milky whiteness of her hips and add a whole new shade of femininity to the Jordan I already know. They're thin, and dry, untouched by the storm. I'm instantly fascinated with them; they should be in a museum under glass somewhere. I would never even think of touching them, perish the thought. But Jordan takes my hand in her hand and places it there, right there, directly in the center, and then all of the breath escapes both of our lungs.

"Touch me," she directs, and I do sense more than a hint of impatience in her voice. I'm going far too slowly. It's funny, really, I always thought it would be the other way round for me. "Take them off. Touch me. Do something."

"I... I couldn't," I stammer, still dazzled by the sight of Jordan's panties, and now by the sight of my hand on Jordan's panties. More than ever do I feel like a teenager in high school, chaste and inexperienced and dumbfounded.

"Yes you can," she insists, her voice verging on hysteria, now. I feel the apex of her knee nudging the center of my back. "It's easy. Watch." And then she slips her hand into the opened fly of my jeans and touches me through the cotton of my briefs.

"Oh Christ, love," I cry, my brow bowing down between her breasts in worship. My lips stumble numbly in circles over every inch of skin there, all around the pale little hills and the lavender veins and then finally the roses in the middle; I take one in my mouth and Jordan lets out a little cry and touches me again, and then I let out a little cry and grab the elastic band of her panties in all ten fingers and before I even know it they're gone, they've vanished, I have decreed it so.

"See, that wasn't so bad, Nige," Jordan declares, her voice breathless and jumpy with the nerves that she manages to contain otherwise. She's naked underneath me now, completely naked, and I'm torn between wanting to look at her and wanting to touch her and wanting to take my clothes off, too, so that she doesn't have to be naked alone.

"Not a'tall," I agree, nearly feverish with desire for her. In the end, Jordan makes my decision for me, taking my hand and slipping it between her thighs. Every other part of her body is icy cold but this one, however she's just as damp here as she is everyplace else. I find what I'm looking for automatically, and I straighten up to see the flush bloom over her cheeks, deep crimson, long curls beginning to stick to her neck and her forehead. A sudden determination drives through me; I want to give her pleasure, the greatest pleasure. I want nothing more in this moment than to make Jordan Cavanaugh happy.

Time passes slowly for us, each second lingering, and though sometimes I bow my lips to her neck or her breast or her mouth, my eyes return always to hers, and by watching them I discover what she likes and what feels good to her, what makes her gasp and bite her lower lip. I don't rush and I don't take my hand away until I feel her shift beneath me and she cries out.

I'm smiling as I press my lips against her brow, damp with perspiration and smelling as musky-sweet as her hair. Both of her arms are around me and her legs, too, folded over my lower back, and I stay like that, pressed tightly to her, until her breathing returns to normal.

"Nigel," I hear her whisper, and there are terms of endearment laced throughout it, as though she's really saying a million other things and not just my name. Again I kiss her forehead and she continues to speak, sounding mildly stunned by what's just occurred. "Take your boots off, Nigel."

Until this very moment I'd forgotten I was still wearing the bloody things. I'd forgotten about everything except Jordan, pleasing Jordan. I'm loathe to leave her side for even just one minute, but her legs are already slipping lackadaisically from my hips and stretching out flat against the mattress again. I crawl reluctantly away from her and maneuver myself to sit at the edge of the bed, crossing one long leg over the other. Thankfully I don't have to mess about with the bootlaces; these Docs have been broken in for a number of years so I can just pull them right off. My socks, too, and then I stand, my back facing her.

"Only my boots, love?" I ask. My voice is rough; it feels like it's been a long time since I've said anything.

"No," I hear her reply. "Everything, love."

Her use of the word causes goosebumps to break out along every inch of skin that is exposed to the stale motel room air, and it prompts me to gather up the waistbands of my jeans and my underwear and perform the world's fastest striptease, stepping out of the terribly constricting fabric in under five seconds flat. Hastily I turn around, wanting to get under the covers with her as quickly as possible before she has a chance to see what I look like naked and run the other way. But I stop short at the sight of her, all of her, all of what I didn't get to look at before.

"You really are some sort of goddess, Jordan," I decide, my eyes fixated on the little triangle of dark brown curls just below her milky white stomach. Self-consciously she bends her knees and folds her arms over her lap to cover herself up, and it is this action that reminds me how stark raving naked I am as well. "Bloody hell," I mutter, grabbing for the edge of the blanket nearest to me and wrapping it partially around my waist like a bath towel. "I don't know why you're covering up. You aren't the one that looks like an underfed cartoon character."

She laughs at that, one extremely loud, unavoidable guffaw. "Don't be an asshole, Nige, I love the way you look." To illustrate this point, she grabs the blanket in both fists and yanks it away, causing my privates to give a little jump at the sudden exposure. That makes her laugh even more. "I'm not laughing at you," she cries between giggles. "I'm not. I'm not, I swear. You're beautiful, Nigel. You're so... so... beautiful." She laughs even as she says it, but somehow I know she's not making fun of me. It's probably just the shock of seeing me like this for the first time. She probably just doesn't know any other way to react to... My eyes flicker downward. To that. My chest swells a bit with pride and then deflates with shame for being proud, and just the general embarrassment of standing in front of a girl I've secretly loved for years in nothing but my birthday suit. I have to admit I feel slightly like an ogre, that if I got under the covers with her now I'd terrify her, and that I have to try to do everything I can to make myself appear unthreatening. I've felt that way with nearly every woman I've ever slept with, completely inadequate. A monster.

"Well, thank you, then, love," I stammer, watching as she tries to put a muzzle on her amusement. "Although I don't quite see what's so beautiful about me. I hate the way I look. It isn't good for much except scaring the shit out of people. Even the birds that hang around the club find me intimidating, and they're freaks in their own rite. There is the whole English thing I suppose, but it doesn't help much. I should be smaller. You know. Wispier. More normal and proper looking. Like Hugh Grant. You American birds just love Hugh Grant. The perfect British specimen, an absolute church mouse. Personally I think he's revolting. What a horrible stereotype. But if I did look more like him, at least I'd be approachable to women. As a matter of fact, love, you're just about the only woman I've ever known who actually seems to respect me for who I really am. Despite the fact that you're laughing at my tallywhacker, of course."

This sends Jordan near to an epileptic fit, and she launches herself up to a stand, forgetting all about her own self-consciousness in order to assuage mine. She wobbles unsteadily across the huge mattress to me and then throws both arms around my neck, gathering me close and laughing so hard that it isn't even making an audible sound anymore. I press my cheek against hers and laugh a bit as well, wrapping my arms about her waist.

"I'm sorry," she finally manages, after she's finished laughing. "If it makes you feel any better I think you're much sexier than Hugh Grant. He doesn't even compare to you, and anyone who would sleep with Elizabeth fucking Hurley isn't worth an ounce of my respect anyway."

That's so Jordan, it's such a Jordan thing to say. I bow my head and press my grin against her neck. "I personally would never sleep with Elizabeth Hurley, love," I say.

"See, now that makes me like you even more." She pulls away slightly and looks at me, her expression suddenly serious. "You don't scare me, Nige. The last thing I'd ever want is for you to look normal and proper. If you did, you just wouldn't be my Nigel." Her hands are on my cheeks and she leans forward until the tip of her nose touches mine. I award her with a brief Eskimo kiss, shaking my head slowly from side to side so that our noses rub together.

Jordan likes me just the way I am, and that's more than I could ever hope for. She's a bit of an odd duck, this girl of mine. She could have any man she wants, especially a certain all-around conventionally handsome police detective. Woodrow Hoyt is wholesome and noble, a blue-eyed, blue-collar boy with solid tanned biceps, who could give her a big white wedding with a big white cake and a big white dress in a good old fashioned Irish Catholic cathedral and have her pregnant within the year. He could give her that happy ending and the vapid, sedated bliss of normalcy. All she has to do is say the word. But instead she's here with me, the longshot, the oddball, the underdog who is completely and totally unused to getting the girl. Perhaps I underestimated Jordan Cavanaugh. Perhaps she isn't like other women, perhaps she would truly rather hop on the back of a motorcycle and take the road less traveled instead of packing up the minivan to run errands on main street. Perhaps we can be Jack and Sally for a very long time; weird and content in our weirdness.

We sink down to the bed together, each of us pulling the comforter from its tucked-in corners and wrapping it around our bodies. Every movement is liquid and dream-like and reminds me of our midnight waltz. My hands are on her breasts and then her hands are in my hair and then I am inside her. I am inside of Jordan, her legs twined high around my back, my arms beneath her shoulders, cradling her as we move together, meeting and parting like the ocean and the shore. I cannot speak or think, I can only feel, my ears relishing each one of her gasps, her cries, her whispered words. My eyes are closed for long intervals, concentrating on the slow symphonic rhythm of our contact and the way it feels to be completely surrounded by Jordan, how warm she is, how smooth, how wet. Everything is exactly as I always imagined it and yet completely different. Tender and emotional and intense. And slow, always slow, and every time I open my eyes she is there, and her eyes always seem to be a slightly different color than they were the last time I looked. My fingers are tangled in her hair and hers are on my face, touching my eyes and my nose and my lips and I kiss them one by one. Deeper, so much deeper with every gentle nudge of my hips, until I feel that if I put my hand to her chest it would become transparent and I could reach right through her skin and touch her very soul.

I don't know how much time passes, maybe twenty minutes, maybe an hour, maybe a lifetime or anywhere in-between. Time seems to stand still for us, and I don't mind at all. I could stay like this forever with Jordan. But after a while our movements grow faster and more deliberate, and Jordan gets more vocal and I get more vocal, and then I reach between our bodies to touch her and she tightens all around me until I can't breathe properly and then... and then...

Everything. Everything happens all at once, she's crying out sharply and I'm saying her name - all I hear is Jordan, Jordan, Jordan over and over again in a voice that doesn't sound like mine, it's too harsh, it's too desperate, I almost sound like I'm sobbing it. The bed sways like a boat in open water and my lips are on hers and I smell rain and sweat and Jordan's shampoo and all of my insides have exploded and left me weak and defenseless in the wreckage.

However long it was that we made love, we stay motionless for even longer, the both of us too exhausted to try to do anything but regain our normal pulse. After a while, I pull away from her and curl up by her side instead. Jordan remains on her back with her eyes closed; perhaps she fell asleep. I slip both arms around her and rest my head on the lone flat motel pillow, my nose pressed against her cheek. I close my eyes to prepare for sleep.

"Nigel, promise me something," I hear Jordan whisper. She's awake, after all.

"Anything, love," I reply, and I mean it. She could ask me to move to Zaire or kill myself or kill her or never speak to her again and I would do it all without consequence or doubt.

"Promise me you'll wake me up before you leave for work."

"Ah, love," I whisper, bowing my head and nuzzling a kiss against her jaw. "That's an easy one. Of course I will, I promise. I was going to anyway, so pick something else as well. It's a two for one special on promises tonight. Make it a hard one."

"Okay," she replies, and she takes a few silent seconds to decide. "Promise me that we'll always be Jack and Sally, and never Hugh and Elizabeth."

My laugh is light and my smile is sleepy. Underneath the covers I find one of her hands and intertwine our fingers nice and tight.

"I promise."