Hmmm... Just wrote this at 12 AM, because that's when I seem to get the writing bug... Hope it's not too bad. (:
Season 2 starts this week! EEEP! :D
She smiled.
She didn't want to smile. She didn't feel like smiling. Inside, she felt pain and hurt and sickness and it was like hell and it didn't make smiling easy for her. But she did it anyways because he was watching her.
Watching her like he used to watch her. Before Jenny. Before that kiss. Before playful banter turned into an all out shitstorm of emotion. He was watching intently over her shoulder as she slid her manicured fingertip across the spines of books, searching for the one that would help him- or help Harvey, she should say. Everything seemed so damn quiet when his attention was focused on her. She could hear a the faint scratch of her fingernails across the leather of the books, hear the whistle of the air conditioning system working through a six-by-six inch vent behind them, hear the steady in, out of his breathing. She could only pray that he couldn't hear the pace of her heart picking up as he moved closer behind her to get a better look.
"Stop."
It was his voice, his breath, hot on the back of her neck. His hand gripped her wrist. Gently. His touch was feather light against her skin and she craved more.
She felt her eyebrow arch involuntarily at her confusion. "Why, what's wrong?"
His touch was gone and it made her shiver. He stepped backward to lean against a table. "I was hoping you'd tell me that." He wasn't smiling, so she smiled. She didn't want to smile. She didn't feel like smiling. But she did it anyways. And he was watching her. Gazing, almost, though it could have been her wild fantasies playing tricks on her. He wouldn't gaze at her. He had Jenny for that.
Yet there was that peculiar look in his gentle blue eyes, and Rachel could have sworn he was gazing at her. Albeit a concerning gaze, but a gaze nonetheless.
He must have taken her silence as another bout of confusion and he was speaking now. Slowly, softly, caringly. Rachel focused hard to listen to the words he was saying, but that look- that look! - made it increasingly difficult.
"You act like nothing's wrong," he said quietly. "That you're fine. But you're not. I can see it in your eyes. I know you. I know you don't think I know you, that I don't care, and you probably don't want you to. That would make this whole thing easier, wouldn't it?"
Rachel swallowed, unsure of how to respond. But he didn't make time for her to respond. Mike Ross just kept talking in that sensitive voice that made her head spin, and it was for the better, she assumed. His voice, his gaze, his touch- it was intoxicating. She couldn't think straight, much less put together an intelligent, coherent sentence.
"Problem is," he stood up, "I do know you. I do care." He was moving toward her now, and she found herself backed up against the bookcase and helpless to do anything about it. Not that she necessarily wanted to.
His hand was on her waist. She felt his touch send tingling sensations across her body, and bit back every urge to throw herself at him right then and there. His other hand was on her cheek, his thumb absentmindedly tracing patterns that were driving her crazy. She clutched his tie tightly in order to maintain self control.
"And dammit, Rachel," his breath was warm on her lips now, and her breathing became shaky at breath. "I can't go back."
His lips were on hers in that instant, and Rachel felt surprised and blissful and ecstatic and nervous and everything else all at once. Her grip on his tie tightened even further as she yanked him fully forward, feeling his arms wrap around her waist and finally, after agonizing months of waiting, pull her to him. And she smiled against his lips. Because she wanted to smile. Because she felt like smiling. And he gazed at her.