Author's Note: Just Bobby this time.
And this is why my eyes are closed… It's just as well for all I've seen… And so it goes, and so it goes… And you're the only one who knows
Bobby's breath was coming in short gasps. He was holding Lucy against him, her breasts pressed against his chest, kissing her with so much longing he thought his heart was going to stop in his chest. However, he realized with incredible remorse that his ribs felt like they were going to crack the rest of the way in half if he kept holding her against him. He sucked up the pain for as long as he could, but in the end, he had to softly release her. He held her in his arms, looking into her eyes and reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear. She was looking up at him, her full lips still wet and slightly bruised from the kiss. He went to take a breath, and again, kind of found himself gasping a bit.
"Oh my god, oh my god." She said, rather suddently jumping backward out of his arms, looking at him, looking at the deep bruises across his ribs. "Oh my god Bobby, what were you thinking?" She said, her hands outstretched, as if she physically needed to do that to keep herself away. It was clear to him that she had suddenly realized that he was in a great deal of pain.
"Lucy…" He tried to say her name, but he realized he was actually winded. So, he paused, and concentrated on breathing in.
"Bobby." She said his name, the shock evident in her voice. "That must have hurt like hell." She said, she was shaking, not just her hands, but he could see her entire body trembling. In truth, resisting the urge to take her into his arms and kiss the air out of her had been hurting him like hell all week. But, he kept himself from mentioning that.
"You're shaking." Was how he finally replied. She looked down at herself, as if she hadn't realized she was shaking. He watched her take a deep breath and close her eyes. He thought she looked incredibly sexy, her mouth open slightly, her eyes closed, kind of expanding her chest. He watched her run her hands across her hair, she was trying to compose herself a bit, and he noticed that her trembling slowly subsided. All he could think about was taking her into his arms and making her tremble like that again. He realized she was looking at him.
"I'm so sorry." She offered. He closed his eyes, realizing that he was actually a bit dizzy. "You should sit down." She said, and she took a step toward him.
"That's um…" He started to say that her coming close to him wasn't actually helping. He found, at the moment, he couldn't concentrate on breathing, with her close to him. He could only concentrate on what it would feel like to kiss her again. So, he closed his eyes, and tried his best to breathe -breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out… and in a moment he could feel the dizziness subsiding.
When he opened his eyes she was standing in front of him, studying him, as if trying to gauge if he was going to fall over. Concern was ethched in all of her featuers. He took her hands in his and kissed the backs of her hands, holding her eyes with his. He could feel her coming closer to him, drawn magnetically to his touch. But he kept a hold of her hands, thinking that if they starting kissing like that again, that would lead to something else, and he would probably faint from the pain in his ribs.
"Oh my god." She murmured to herself again, laughing softly. She took her hands from his, looking at him. "Could my timing be any worse?" He listened to her ask herself that question and he was strangely relieved to hear her phrase it like that. She had just revealed to him that she was feeling the same thing, that it wasn't simply his timing, that her feelings were in a similar place as his.
"Um, I…" He hated the fact that he was starting to feel light headed again, but this time it was also out of exhaustion. He closed his eyes, trying to shake it off, but he couldn't.
"You need to lie down." She observed, her voice was soft, distant. He moved toward the family room, toward the couch. But she redirected him toward the bedroom. For a moment he paused, but he let her have her way. He didn't have the energy to refocus her, and he knew he probably wouldn't be successful. He didn't really even have the chance to wonder how it would feel to be in her room, in her bed, because he was asleep before he hit the pillows. He could feel her kind of wedge more pillows behind his back, to keep him on his side for a little while, so he could take more complete breaths into his lungs.
As he slept, he breathed in the scent of her from her sheets. He dreamed of kissing her, of holding her, of the softness of her skin against his. But after a while, his dreams shifted. He was standing in the stairwell at 1PP, gun in hand, aimed at Justin Kemp. He was aware he was dreaming, but he couldn't seem to wake himself. He'd had this nightmare before, several times before. Slow down, just slow down, he was saying to Kemp, his eyes on Lucy, on Kemp. His thoughts were moving fast, assessing the situation, searching for information, trying to figure out a way to slow things down. Before he could say or do anything else, Kemp's gun exploded, but in his dream it was Lucy who dropped to the stairs, it was Lucy's blood on him. He had done all the wrong things, or maybe he hadn't done enough, and he had lost her.
He woke with a gasp, covered in sweat. From the light outside he could see that even though he felt like he had only been asleep a few moments, he had been asleep more like a few hours. He lay there for a moment, breath uneven, pain in his ribs, in his head, in his heart. He was terrified of loving her, of losing her. He closed his eyes and realized that by kissing her he had already set things in motion, his heart was moving forwrad, and there was no way he could turn his heart around.