I do not own "Warrior." It belongs to director Gavin O'Connor.

Just a warning: this chapter contains some strong sexual content. Given that this story holds an 'M' rating and has 'romance' listed as one of its main genres, I was glad to hear that no one would have any objection to strong sexuality, especially since I'd already written this chapter. This is the first chapter involving sex, but will not be the last.

Chapter Twenty: Healing

After a Wednesday morning step-meeting, Jane gets a lift back to her apartment with Dionne, and she says, "I think things with Tommy are going to go farther pretty soon." She looks over at her sponsor, who doesn't even flinch. "I want them to. We've sat down and talked about it; I now know his history and he knows mine, and I'm not terrified this time. I want this."

There's a silence that lasts until they reach a red light. "What are you asking from me, Jane? My permission and blessing? I'm not going to tell you no."

She winces a little. "I'm so going to regret this, but I was wondering if you could…you know…impart any words of wisdom?"

Dionne bursts out laughing as Jane turns multiple shades of red. "Please, Dionne, don't make this any harder than it already is."

"Okay, okay. You want a little advice?" she says as she makes a left. "You might get complaints from your downstairs neighbors, but sex isn't something that should be kept quiet and in the dark. You want to make it real, make sure you're ready? Follow these three rules: No clothes. No covers. And enough light that you can see each other clearly."

Jane doesn't tell her that it's mighty unpleasant to picture her sponsor having sex at all, let alone under those conditions, but does say, "I thought one of the rules would be about condoms or something."

"Everyone knows that rule."

F

'Step four: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,' Jane thinks as she stands naked in front of the full-length mirror in her bathroom, taking a fearless and searching inventory of what she's decided is a lean, evenly proportioned, but not particularly impressive or interesting body.

She's lost somewhere around thirty pounds since the first time she was put into care nearly two years ago, as well as more than a full cup size, and while her curves are existent—she doubts she'd have her job if they weren't—they're not much; they're nothing memorable. At no other time would she particularly care, but she does now. She stands a very good chance of sleeping with someone who possesses a remarkable level of fitness tonight, and the little bit of definition she has comes from a busy schedule, youth, and a job that always keeps her moving. Then there's the face; it could be worse. Her teen years were unspeakably cruel to her skin, but save for a few scars along her cheekbones, her complexion has cleared up immensely to accommodate her freakishly pale skin and the perpetual shadows around her eyes. Dionne once referred to her appearance as "gamine." Her mother once called it, "artfully disheveled androgyny with a baby-doll face." She doesn't know what to call it, except that it's unsatisfactory at the moment.

But that won't do.

Light. No clothes. No covers. It requires full body acceptance.

"Eh, not too shabby," she says, leaving the bathroom to get dressed for the evening.

E

She meets him at Girasole, and he raises his eyebrows when he sees her, grins a little.

"Is that the same dress you wore last time we were here?" he asks.

She grins back, because indeed it is. She's also wearing the same boots, minus the stockings and minus the coat. "Hey, aside from my work uniform, this is the only one I have," she tells him, walks in with him, takes his hand.

This time around, when the waiter comes by rattling off the wine options, Tommy cuts him short, saying, "No wine, thanks. Just water."

And she feels her mouth curve up in a hint of a smile as she orders water for herself.

"Thanks," she murmurs as she picks up her menu.

The conversations are a stark contrast from the last one they had. It's mostly frivolities and bits and pieces of information scattered here and there. Jane makes it her mission to make Tommy laugh, or at least to talk more. This isn't his natural environment, this isn't where he's comfortable, and from his posture to his voice he stands out from the others in the restaurant, and she likes it. If only he weren't so uncomfortable. Granted, she's probably put him on alert about the possibility of a date ending in bed. She's not sure if he knows she'd like it to be this one.

"So you're half Irish-Catholic, half German-Jewish," he says, setting aside his chicken for a moment. "That's one hell of a combination."

"Yeah. Both of them are large, loud, and emotional and the matriarchs of both families like to exercise guilt over their many children. It's just that the religions are different."

"Do you believe in either of them?"

"I was raised celebrating the holidays of both and now I don't really believe in either." She takes a sip of water. "I don't think I ever did."

Tommy, for his part, is fully Irish (no surprises there, between 'Conlon' and 'Riordan') and comes from a Catholic and inexplicably small family. 'Riordan' was his mother's maiden name, which he took as an adult. Jane may be an only child, but she has thirty first cousins. He comes from generations of working-class Rust Belt stock in which he was considered a diamond in the rough for no other reason than his gift for wrestling. She comes from a generally well-educated lower-middle income background in which she faded and fell through the cracks; was a problem child and fully aware of the fact. Was almost defiant about it for a while.

He has a G.E.D. in place of a high school diploma, and never at any point in his life was he interested in going to college, nor was he ever encouraged to. She had to repeat sophomore year of high school, and despite teachers telling her early on that she was a bright girl, could do very well if she applied herself, she gave up on that eventually.

Though he doesn't say it, she guesses he found his calling in the military, just as she guesses he changed his last name as an act of defiance against his father. Guessing is the best she can do in that area of his life. They skirt over the darker stuff. They've either addressed the darker stuff or can let it wait for another time. A proposition finds its way to the tip of her tongue several times through the evening, and is persistent towards the end, and it causes a kind of tightness in her body, turns her organs in a knot, and makes her heart go faster. It would be unseemly to talk about it during the meal; to say, "So, would you like to come over to my place now that the prospect of being intimate with you is no longer terrifying and test out the sturdiness of my mattress?"

No, she waits until the bill is paid and they step out into the warm late-spring night.

A

When he stops outside her apartment she mostly just wants to pull him in without a word.

"You want to come up?" she asks.

His eyes widen slightly and he nods, wraps an arm around her and uses the other to open the door for her. Her heartbeat grows more and more rapid as they ascend the stairs and reach her apartment, and somehow she has the dexterity while her mind's on entirely different things to unlock and open her apartment, pulling Tommy in by the hand, closing the door behind him and locking it again in one swift movement while he kisses her, full and wanting and somehow giving.

"Tommy," she murmurs, hand sliding down to the buttons on his shirt after removing his jacket, letting it fall to the floor.

"Yeah?"

"I've wanted this since long before I knew how to ask for it." She kisses him again, unbuttons his shirt as swiftly as she can, thinking that this is the first time she's ever undressed a man, leading him to the bed, the small but sufficient twin bed, dropping her purse, slipping out of her boots, pulling his shirt from his body and tossing it to the floor, obsessed with what she finds under it. She kisses his left shoulder, the ball-and-socket that had been injured all those months ago, moves onto his chest, bringing her mouth to the tattoo of the masks, dragging her tongue along the outline, bringing her teeth over the most sensitive skin, hears a groan and feels a hand slide up under her dress and over her ass, feels him start pulling the dress's hem up. She turns on the light switch next to the bed.

"I want to be able to see you," she tells him, murmurs it against his lips. "I want to see all of you." Based on his reaction, it's a more effective line than she would have expected.

And she backs him up against the bed until his calves hit the mattress and she coaxes him onto his back. She imagines he'd prefer to be in the dominant position but for now she still needs to explore what she's seen only glimpses of. She needs to be in control, however briefly. She gets rid of his boots because they don't belong on her bed, returns, for a moment, to his mouth and progresses downwards, kissing, licking, sucking and biting a trail down his body, down the muscles in his chest and abdomen, savoring the heat of his skin under her mouth and the muscles that contract at her touch, thinking, 'This man's body is unreal.' And she reaches the tattoo lowest on his body, one close to the lip of his pants, sits up, enjoying the position of power and the view she has of him from here, and as she undoes the buttons and moves to unzip the front Tommy sits up, stopping her, grabbing her hips so he can pull her dress off of her, holds his arm out over the side of the bed and drops it to the floor.

"We needed to get rid of that," is all he says, and slides his hands once more along bared skin that pricks up at the sensation and unhooks her bra, pulling it from her body and discarding it along with the dress. She freezes and looks down at him as he falls back and watches her for a moment, his lips parted as he takes her in, and she wonders if something's wrong. Right now he sees more of her body than anyone else ever has, and between his gaze and her eyes growing wider as for that same space of time she blanks out, has no idea what to do; it takes the unmistakable sensation of his arousal pressing up against her to remind her that his staring is not a bad thing.

Her hands go back to work, shifting her body as she pulls down his pants, at which point Tommy gives up the submissive-lover position, flipping them over with a swiftness that barely registers until he's leaning over her. After he's lain her down he brings his lips and tongue to sensitive skin, teasing her just as she was teasing him, licks the underside of her breast and trails his mouth over the tip, his hand doing something similar with the other, and she mewls, the sound unbidden with nothing to be done about it, as all the nerve endings in her breasts she wasn't fully aware existed go into overdrive. She loses her breath and her control early on, unused to any of this kind of affection. She's been fucked, not ever really been touched, and since he's fully aware of it he makes sure she knows that he's not one of the guys she's been with, that he's not going to treat her like she's been treated before.

She pulls his head up to hers, tangles fingers in his hair as she kisses him, gasping into his mouth as his right hand trails down and slides under a pair of cotton panties, escalating into a groan, a little of it pain, most of it shocked pleasure, her other hand now grappling at his back, as he readies her, and she finds herself arching, rocking her hips against working fingers, body more sure than her mind and her mind reduced to obscenities and exclamation points. And she wants this. She knows she does. Wouldn't have been able to let things go this far if she didn't.

And then he pulls his hand back out from under that fabric and sits up, looks at her.

"You ready?"

Her first response is to sit up and reach for the waistband of his boxers to pull them off of him. He stops her and repeats the question. "Are you ready?"

She meets his eyes and nods. "Yeah. Ready." She's not a frail, sickly, seventy-five pound virginal wraith who will shatter into a million pieces. Her body can handle his.

He slides her panties down; she helps pull them off of her legs. He manages to keep his eyes on her as he reaches for his pants on the floor beside them, takes his wallet out, and from that pulls a condom, sets it beside him as he pulls off his boxers, and for a moment all she can do is stare. He looks larger than most of the boys she's been with.

He leans forward, leans over her and kisses her, trying to ease her into it, bring her back, but he's helpless against his own arousal, and fumbles with the condom wrapper. Whether it's the fact that the condom's a little bit old, that condoms wear down much more easily inside of a wallet, or simply that he's impatient with putting it on, the latex tears and against their breath there's a silence that overtakes them. He looks at her and the message is loud and clear: 'It's up to you. I'm clean. You're clean and infertile. But this is more your decision than mine.'

She pulls him to her, dropping the wrapping and the ruined latex to the floor, pulls him on top of her, and lets one hand find purchase in his hair, the other against the space between his shoulder blades. He's definitely grateful for that.

A

This is the first time he's ever had sex without a condom. The nerve endings in his dick aren't closed off by a latex barrier and between that, the fact that it's been a long time for him, and the keening whimper Jane gives when he enters her, her body tensing and fingernails digging into his shoulders, he has to still himself for several seconds, several lifetimes, and he brings his mouth to the crux of her neck, breathes against the skin during that time, and when he starts moving again, tries very hard to keep his rhythm, well, a rhythm as opposed to uncontrolled thrusting. And he manages; he finds a better release in a soft, slim, so very warm body that he's wanted for so long.

R

At first it's painful; she's fully sober, fully alive, nearly two years celibate, and far more sensitive to touch than she'd thought. And when he first pushes into her, she gives an involuntary whimper. And the anxiety starts to fade as Tommy stills his movements, waits for her to give him a signal to start moving again. It's something no one else has ever done for her. And it's another reminder that this is different. What she experienced before was not sex. It was assault, and it is an old story that cannot be rewritten but now is overwritten. She slowly rocks her hips up against his, gives him the okay to keep moving again, hands moving a little when he keeps going; he grips her outer right thigh inches below her second tattoo, pulls it to him for leverage, wonders if she's okay when he goes deeper, and she's definitely okay. When he goes deeper, when he later starts to speed up—she neither knows nor cares how long it goes-she responds in kind, not caring about the sweat and the noise and the moans that are new to her lips. She's too lost to care about any of that, breath getting harsher, body getting impossibly hotter, and the only real coherent thought she has is that she's very, very happy she did a fourth step for this.

He finishes hard, body at that point out of his control. He comes when she is close, nerve-endings blaring and body still pulsing, both breathing hard and both responsible for the sweat on the bed. It takes him a few moments to recover, catching his breath against her throat, until he pulls out of her. And then he does something that takes her by surprise. He slides a hand between her legs and takes her the rest of the way, relentless until she has to shut her eyes against the blaring in her ears, the intensity behind her eyes and in her sex, and when she cries out in a volume that will later get her a complaint from the downstairs neighbor she is completely unaware of it, locking, contracting, tensing, arching against his hand until finally letting go. When she finally opens her eyes she pulls him down to her, and since the dimensions on the bed are less than roomy, they both settle onto their sides, facing each other.

This is the same man who showed an insatiable thirst for violence in MMA matches and harbors a great deal of rage, who cursed her out when she admitted to an addiction that had nothing to do with him. And right now she doesn't care about that part. She cups the side of his face with a warm hand, smiling to herself, laughing to herself because with all the endorphins that have been released, she feels like she could float, soreness, sweat and all. She kisses him again and again, and he pulls her in close to him.

Tommy is a man of contradictions; one thing will negate another; a fighter, a soldier, a protector, a friend, a lover. She's crazy about him, about all these pieces that contradict and somehow complement one another.

Chin just above his shoulder, breasts against his chest, Jane murmurs, "Promise you'll stay the night?"

"I promise." He kisses her, softer than before.

She doesn't get how this could feel natural. But it does. She can feel his heart beat against hers, and it's a rhythm that falls into synch. Eventually they pull the sheets on and turn off the light, because there's not much to be said, nothing to be done now about the clothes on the floor. Nothing they feel like doing, anyway.

It's late and it's peaceful this time of night, and, feeling like they're caught in a dream though things couldn't be more real, they drift into sleep.