It wasn't often that she was awake and letting space in the bed cool before he'd already drawn from it. He'd slid away from her more often than the reverse but he was still half hazed in sleep, eyes stinging up as he tugged his pants along his hips and followed the sounds of her in the kitchen.
He found her frowning adorably in just his t-shirt and a pair of bright white socks, her cell phone pressed to her ear by the lift of her shoulder as she blearily tried to pull apart coffee filters. He quirked an amused glance over how difficult it seemed to be as she rubbed them between her thumb and forefinger, blowing off annoyance as he reached to tug them away from her. Chibs broke a kiss against her temple as he leaned to her side and stuck one of them into the basket and handed the rest of them back. He turned another amused glance over the way she was pressing up on socked toes so that she could ride against the high counter, levering her weight back so that she didn't have to necessarily hold herself up yet. The filters already dumped forgotten to the counter as she groaned into the phone.
"Y'know what else you can do for me?" she muttered sleepily to the side as she continued to listen to her voicemail, her fingers idly looping against the back of his belt and tugging playfully as he started dumping coffee into the filter. "Have Munson check in with his PO. Stockton Corrections is three miles up my ass and I can't keep shrugging them off."
She didn't notice the pause in his hand at first, didn't catch the way he set the cannister of grounds softly to the counter and stalled up. The catching in his shoulders as he palmed along the counter with both hands and pressed his upper body forward on a sighed sway. She didn't notice any of it until she hung up the phone and rattled it onto the counter, fingers still teasing on him as she turned into his side.
She did, however, notice the brash biting down of his jaw as he stared over the coffee pot unblinking.
"What?" her voice was an intentionally cautious venture.
"He won't be callin' anyone, Althea." He recovered carefully but quietly, hands moving once again so that he could jam the basket into the coffee maker, still completely avoiding her glance.
She swallowed the instantaneous reaction, tasting the sickened swill of it in her throat as her fingers reflexively curled tight onto his belt, fisting around it as she leaned into the stillness of him, "When?"
"Doesn't matter." The defensive grit of his voice crackled a little.
"When?" she repeated into the bare skin of his arm, her hand so tightly clutched against him that her forearm flicked a tensing wince.
"Bit ago." It was the only answer she was getting and she knew it by the way he lifted his jaw in assertion.
"I'm sorry." She offered up clean sincerity, letting her fingers fall from him as he blinked her a pained acknowledgment and nodded, already shifting away from her.
"I'm gonna shower." He let off softly, avoiding a look back into her sympathy. "Need to wake up, darlin'."
"I could have helped you." The long curling of her body into the hallway bathroom's doorframe seemed surprisingly vulnerable and there was no teasing in her tone, just forthright surety. "If you'd just told me. I could have - "
"It wasn't your goddamn place." He couldn't save himself from snapping at her as he jerked the smaller towel off the rack and scrubbed it against his face, wiping the dampness off his jaw before tossing it to the front of the sink. "It was ours."
Her eyes scattered over the way he turned his hands onto the sink, back stretching a tight line as his toweled hips flared back. She thought for a moment he would actually let the tension that was thrumming his arms flare into breaking something but he just gripped long fingers around the ceramic before stretching back up straight, avoiding his own reflection.
"I'm not talkin' about this." His jaw angled slowly toward her, an apology raking his tone just before it hardened. "We're not havin' this discussion."
"How many discussions are we not going to have before you disappear again?" The twist in her voice dropped coolly despondent before she leaned off the frame, "Maybe we can schedule some non-discussions for the next time you decide to come around."
He banked her a sharpened up glare, just staring her down in a visceral quiet.
"Yeah. More silence." She nodded as she turned, already heading toward her bedroom on strongly muscled steps. "That'll help."
"I need my shirt, Ally." He snapped after her as his palm slapped down onto the sink.
"Good fucking luck getting it." The responding slap of her door closing brought his shoulders down slagged after the arched crack of her voice.
"And my fucking cut." He sighed his head forward while letting his jaw drop, not doubting that she'd locked the bedroom door on him as he finally looked into his reflection in the mirror. "She's bloody insane."
She'd let him knock his knuckles into the door a solid minute before finally swinging it open. He lifted his head from his hand as it parted, his arm angled into the frame and lungs blowing out a breath into the way she lifted leather directly into his chest in an otherwise blaring silence. His opposite hand caught into it as he cocked a glance over the way she was still wearing his t-shirt, running his tongue along his teeth in a sort of pride that she was still holding onto a little bit of vitriol. She was right insane with fury sometimes. And it looked riotously pretty on her. Made his lungs strangle.
"Y'done now, love?" He asked quietly and tried not to grin into the flashing pale of anger that lightened her features. "Or do I have to take it off you?"
"Don't you touch me." She threatened into him before turning and snagging the button down from the mattress.
He tested in his head how serious she'd been about it. Didn't matter much, really.
He wanted to touch her. And she wasn't generally one to stop him.
She was tense muscle and scrapping hands as he reached for her, but all warm laughter and lithe leaning touches by the time he'd gotten the shirt off her.
"Quiet for awhile." Ally agreed from the kiss he was drawing away from, dragging the body warmed cotton of his t-shirt over his head and shoulders before her hands finished off the movement.
Chibs angled her a smile as he lifted the button down back up and slung it on slowly, shoulders lowering relaxed as she took over buttoning it. "Y'know how to find me if you need me."
Her nod was made of saddened acceptance as she curled into him for a shade of warmth, shoulders tensing on a chill. "I do."
His palms scrubbed heat against her arms before he stepped backwards, catching up his cut from the bed as he let his eyes travel the naked length of her. "Y'can keep the shirt next time."
She pouted him a disbelieving frown, "Liar."