RPOV
There's a vibrating under my head. I stir as he sits up and drags his phone out from under the pillow. Sleep is thick around me as he whispers he'll be back and the warmth beside me slips away. I try to cling to consciousness but the dream overwhelms me. When I wake again he's curled around me and his shirt has bunched up around my hips under his arm. I turn over, taking care not to wake him. I wonder what time it is and how long we have left to be like this. Delicately I trace the angle of his cheekbone, his jaw, the curve of his bottom lip, unable to help myself. There's too much time in the day where I couldn't just look.
He is the most attractive man I have ever seen. I wonder briefly how no one realizes it, how it hasn't come up before with the girls before when they talked about how Adrian is considered sexy or how Natalie finds most actors 'hot', but then I think that it's his disposition that hides it. To most people, he comes across as remote and detached. Similarly how Spiridon's voice overshadowed his good looks. Ben is obviously good-looking, with his warm features and friendliness but I hadn't seen that at first either. I had to look past how I saw him more as a friend or reliable presence.
As if sensing my thoughts his eyelids twitch and then pry open.
"Sorry." I murmur.
"Are you okay?" He mumbles and I can't help but grin at how adorable he looks.
Dimitri could be adorable, who Knew? Nobody I hope.
"Just, appreciating."
"Appreciating?"
I grin. "Too much time in the day when I can't."
He rubs his face into the pillow and then rolls onto his back, stretching and causing various joints to pop. His muscles shift and flex under his skin, it's the most interesting thing I've ever seen.
"Go back to sleep." He says thickly.
Well, I might have but now that he's on his back it is a lot easier to appreciate the view. "You first."
He rubs his eyes and they're brighter when they find me. "I can't now I know that you're staring at me."
I smirk. "Oh what, like you're shy?"
"Yes." He says seriously and then pulls the covers up to his chin, laughing when I protest. I wrestle them out of his grip and end up lying on him like a blanket substitute, knees tucked to his hips and my head in the crook of his shoulder.
"There, you're covered." I tell him, breathing in the faint smell of citrus and snow.
His hands run down my back, smoothing out my hair. "Very generous of you."
I feel like one of those bear cubs from a nature programme I watched with Ben. It had been clinging to a tree. I tell him as much and his body shakes with silent laughter. We fall into a comfortable silence and I would think he'd fallen asleep if he wasn't still stroking my hair. I lean back and find his eyes open but in far away thought.
"Am I crushing you?"
His gaze flickers back to the present. "No. You should sleep."
"You should stop telling me to do things that you should."
He huffs. "I would but I have a bear lying on me."
I pinch him and this turns into an all-out war but because he's infuriating skilled I end up pinned to the bed with my wrists above me, again. He raises an eyebrow and I throw my weight into my hips, pushing him off like he'd shown me before.
"Don't hesitate."
"I wanted to make sure you weren't going to crack your head on the drawers."
He grins. "I told you not to be polite about it."
I roll my eyes. There is no way I was going to admit I paused because I'd become very aware he was just in his boxers, basically naked, above me with all those interesting lines of his body. It's difficult, even now, with him lying beside me. I tug the shirt hem down as the memory of his hands pushing my dress up flashes in my mind. His hand curls around my waist and pulls me closer. It's very convenient how warm he is.
My fingertips trace his collarbone. "My hands always used to be cold, did you ever notice that?"
His hand covers mine. "I did."
Of course he did.
I tilt my head up to look at him and ask quietly, "Are you going to Romania?"
He's looking at me from under his eyelashes. "No."
"Doesn't Victor want you to?"
"Yes."
"Then, don't you sort of have to go?"
"I'll find a reason to be more important here." I purse my lips and drop my head onto his shoulder. "Natasha can demonstrate with any decent Guardian teacher. I'm not vital."
"To her you are." I say quietly.
He props himself up on the arm cradling my head, eyes searching my face and it's impossible to hide from him in any way.
He strokes my temple. "Are you unsure about my feelings for you?"
I almost say yes so he'll indulge me. "No. I just know she's not willing to take no for an answer...and I don't think she'll stop."
His gaze doesn't waver and I look away.
"What aren't you telling me?" He asks quietly.
A lot. Too much. Things I can't.
I lick my lips and draw out parts of the truth. "She... spoke to me in the kitchen last night."
I almost said 'cornered' but I refuse to give her any kind of power, even in words between us, of trapping me. I feel him tense and the warm atmosphere of our bubble shifts.
I push on. "She told me to not blame Christian, to not tell Lissa and that...you think I'm delicate so you're not with her because it would hurt my feelings."
Reliving it makes anger bubble like a thick sticky pit in my stomach. How she'd smiled so nicely at me and laughed like I was stupid, as if I didn't know any better than her. It makes me wish I'd said worse.
"She had no right to do that." His voice is low and taut.
I peek at him and all of the playfulness from minutes before has been eclipsed. I try to curb it, worried he'll do what he usually does when frustrated or angry which is to overtrain or run and that would mean leaving the bed.
"I told her she couldn't tell me what to do." I say with a hint of pride even though it sounds almost childish.
He may as well be carved from the same marble as the island counter. His jaw is clenched so tightly I think he might break his teeth. I tentatively try and soften his expression with my fingers.
He relaxes enough to force out, "No, she can't. She had no right to speak to you."
He's talking so quietly it makes me think it might be better if he was yelling. Although that would lead to questions from the other people we lived with who would probably come to investigate. He eases onto his back, eyes on the ceiling.
I sit up, tracing the line of his bicep that had been my pillow. "I'm not telling you to make you angry or angry with her because even though I feel how I do...I understand she's someone to you."
He tilts his head, eyebrows knitting together and I press on before I lose my nerve.
"I just, things like that, and after Alexander, it's like I'm learning to be someone and then they do something and it makes me think I'm wrong and I need to unlearn everything to be right or something will go wrong. There's always this feeling like if I look over my shoulder I'm going to find a shadow waiting to...correct my behaviour. But I know I am right when I don't let someone push me down or pull me in the direction they want. Am I making sense?"
He's just staring at me like I've spoken an undiscovered language. Then he's sitting up and my cheek is cupped in his hand.
"You are right to not allow anyone to undermine you or belittle you. You are right to speak your mind and set your boundaries, and you are right to be angry when those things are not respected. Natasha was not right to confront you and she knows that and do not waste one moment thinking you have made me angry, that standing up for yourself will in some way hurt my relationships. You are not in the wrong."
I don't know if it's hearing the things I've doubted getting validated or the way he's looking at me, or because I'm relieved he's not angry with me for arguing with her but his face blurs and I have to swallow against the pain in my throat.
"You have to put yourself first." I can only nod and he brushes away the wetness under my eyes. "I've told you before there isn't anything you can't tell me. I am on your side, even if we argue, even if I disagree, I will always be on your side."
Then I can't hold it back and have to turn my face away, letting my hair fall forward. It takes me a minute to get myself under control and the entire time his hand has been on my lower back, comforting me and not rushing me, letting me have the time I need to get to grips with that.
I don't entirely believe him. I want to, every part of me strains to, but I don't believe that if I told him she knew about us, that she'd met Eddie, it would be enough for him to see her how I do. I worry he'd believe there's another explanation, one she could give him as she's had enough time to come up with a lie. I don't think I could take him believing her. I don't see how he could do that and still be on my side.
The only way to find out is to tell him but I don't want this to crumble. I meant what I said at the start where I want this to be just between us for as long as possible and I know there will come a point where everything else will push its way in but for as long as we can, I want it to be us.
"So if you disagree with my sugar intake, you're still on my side?" I ask thickly, tucking my hair behind my ear.
He makes a show of sighing. "Yes."
I scoot closer to him. "How does that work?"
"Well if it makes you happy I'm on your side and relatively, you could have worse addictions."
"Like what?"
"No, I am not giving you ideas."
A giggle leaves me and a small smile pulls at his lips but the rest of his face remains tight.
"You're angry" I state, noting every tell there is. Everything is so subtle with him and his emotions but reading people is what I've had to learn to do all my life even if he is the biggest challenge.
"Yes."
"Are you going to speak to her about it?"
"Yes."
I take his hand and I remember the first time I had he'd been helping me out from under the bed. It had been so painfully delicate looking in his. It isn't now. "Please don't"
His fingers tighten on mine. "Rose, she overstepped and there's no way for that to be out as a mistake on her part. She and Christian have asked me, repeatedly, if they can talk to you and I've told them no. I should have brought that to you, it is your choice, but I thought you wouldn't want -"
"I don't."
He nods. "It's for you to decide, should ever want to hear what they have to say."
He brushes my hair off my shoulder, his hand following the length and curling his fingers into the ends.
"Do you think I should?" I ask quietly, watching how the lock shines in his grasp.
He lets it unravel. "Only you can decide that."
"Why not no? Or yes?" I can hear him thinking. "What would you do?"
He looks thoughtful, jaw working before he speaks. "I'm not arrogant enough to try and conceptualize how you feel about them, how you feel about a lot of things, so it's hard for me to answer you. 'No' because what apology or explanation could matter to you or serve you? And then maybe 'yes' because an apology or explanation could bring you answers, and I...I have a biased against holding the sins of a father against a son."
He says the last part so quietly I have to lean closer to hear him.
"You don't...you think Christian…"
He looks at a bit of a loss. "I don't defend them and it was wrong of me before to think that you should find it easier to be around them. Natasha being here all those weeks and Christian being estranged from his parents, I thought it would set them apart but I understand it doesn't. I do, I understand. I know that Christian is young and I know he didn't know any better until he started to spend more time with Tasha and it was her that went to Victor and chose to destroy her relationship with her brother and sister-in-law. And when I say 'didn't know any better' it's not an excuse, but I'm saying that Christian is now operating like someone who does know better, he's living aware and not ignorant to these things, and whilst he might not be able to be forgiven by you because that is your choice, only yours and no one can tell you how to make it, he carries himself as someone who is burdened by being at fault. I think that it's worth...considering."
He watches me with apprehension as I chew that over. I can't swallow it. "He should feel bad."
"Yes. That's the difference between him and his parents." His thumb moves in circles on my hand. "But it doesn't mean it's enough. It doesn't mean he deserves your time. I just think it's worth knowing all details, no matter how small but that's me."
I turn that over, the comment about father and son pulling at me but instead, I say, "I think he only cares because of Lissa."
"Perhaps. Would it matter to you if it wasn't because of her?"
"No."
"Then if giving him your time won't serve you then it's not worth it."
I study him, trying to see if there's some tell of him holding back, that he's not being entirely truthful. His expression softens. "It is your choice and I am on your side no matter what it is."
"Why don't you think he knew any better?" I try to keep the accusation out of my voice but I don't think I succeed.
"Christian boards at the Academy and from what we've learned he spent very little time in Arizona. Holidays spent in various resorts, trips away and the only in the past few years have Moroi and Lucas spent more and more time in Arizona. Which was probably to throw off the suspicion of them being involved with Strigoi, living in the desert did do that. I don't think Christian experienced a true home or knowing how other households were run. I don't think he started to realise something wasn't right until the last two years. Had you seen or spoken to him before that night?"
"No." I say slowly.
He brings my knuckles to his lips. "Tell me what you're thinking."
"I find it difficult to believe he didn't know. I don't think it's worth anything to me that Natasha no longer speaks to them as if that's some great loss because it's not. I don't want it to be a 'choice' about ever speaking to them, I won't. I don't want to ever have to be around them when I don't have to be." I take a deep breath and allow myself to say it. "I understand that she is someone to you but I also hate it. I don't want you to talk to her about last night because I don't it to look like your proving her right and that I'm delicate. That you having to fight that kinda battle is the reason you're not with her because you are being protective. I know she's your friend but I can't-"
The words are cut off by the breath that seems crucial to draw in, to shut me up, or to steady me I don't know. Gently he pulls me into his lap and part of me wants to resist because I'm panicking he's going to try and convince me of her goodness, that there is part of her that I should understand and try to see.
I should tell him why that's not possible.
He doesn't let me resist. He holds my jaw and those dark eyes draw mine. "I am on your side. I have been from the start."
I try to pull away but he sits forward, arms drawing around me so I can't. "No, no. You don't get to think you have only a piece of me and she another, you don't get to think that I am judging your decisions whilst trying to placate hers. I support your choices and I am for you. You are not delicate and you are not between me and her. Her choices are coming between our friendship and straining it, hers. And when I speak to her I will make that clear."
It had been instinctual to push away, a form of self-preservation, as he says the things I needed to hear, that are so close to the response I would need if he knew the whole truth. To him, she is not between us but she is, not out of her feelings for him but because of what she's done and as much I want to keep her out I don't think it changes the fact she can't be. The truth about her is always going to be in the corner festering until I can't take it.
But what he's said, those words are so important and overwhelming I can't ignore them.
"You are for me?" I whisper.
"Yes." His tone set in that quiet and calm determination.
Relief spreads through me like wine which is probably I ask, "Why?"
He holds my gaze, looking for something there before saying, "There is no explanation. It just is."
My fingers wind into the hair at the nape of his neck as it washes over me. Did I have an explanation as to why I felt the way I did? I couldn't think of anything that did it justice. I pull on the small things that aren't small but to say them as an explanation as to why he's important to me makes them seem dull. I feel his steady heartbeat against my chest. That same rhythm I focused on when he placed my hand there in the woods months ago. Something to focus on, something to trust. I place it there now and kiss his neck savouring this, the warmth, the closeness, and his words.
"Thank you." He leans back in question and I brush his tousled out of his eyes. "For... a lot of things."
I hope he can see just how much I mean it, glimpse all the things I can't bring myself to say because the list might just go on and on. He begins to say something but stalls and shuts his mouth, deciding instead to bring mine to his and kiss me softly.
This is why I can't sleep. I want all of this. It's easier to believe I'll wake up and he'll be gone, this will be gone and everything he's said has been part of some wild and elaborate dream after reading. He pulls us back down onto the bed and kisses me slowly as if he doesn't have the same fear, as if we have all the time in the world.
"Dimitri."
"Mhm?"
"What is it that happens between us?" His lips pause on my jaw. I had to ask because that urgency and impatience had crept in, causing my thighs to clench and taunting me to be impatient. "When you touch me."
I brace myself for his reaction, a small part of me dreading he'll be amused or sceptical, but I should know better. Instead, he looks thoughtful for a moment. "Pleasure."
"Pleasure?"
He hums and then speaks softly. "Sexual attraction. You refer to it as a craving, which I prefer too, and when we touch each other like that it becomes pleasure."
Sexual attraction.
The boundary carves itself inside me, demanding to be noticed and no longer ignored. "Do you want to have sex with me?"
The gentle strokes on my hip stop. He shifts so we're both on our side facing each other and for the first time he looks uncertain. I find that relieving.
"No." He finally says and then sighs when I raise my eyebrows. He runs a hand through his hair. "When we've been together you've wanted me to touch you and I've wanted that too, that pleasure has gone both ways. We share that." He pauses to gauge me. I nod to show I agree and relief touches his face. "Sex should be the same."
That doesn't quite fit properly in my head. "I...should enjoy it?"
I remember what Natalie and Lissa had said about it but at the time I hadn't applied it to myself, it was just out of curiosity really because my old normal was starting to make less sense. Sex was this dark thing lurking over my shoulder, it was her lying beside me and staring with dead eyes at the ceiling, how Alec had forced me to the ground and my terror hadn't phased him and yesterday, that headmaster, he had assumed that was what I was there to provide and everybody else had come to a standstill about it. Lissa had hit him – Lissa who is so kind and stands up for what she believes in, to the point she's ready to fight with her family.
But now, in this new normal, in the right normal, sex didn't seem completely evil. I could see it now it was a way of demonstrating power, greed and it is a way of being evil when used against someone. Someone whose right to choose was taken away.
Dimitri would never take the choice away from me. He would never hurt me like that. Even when we were together he would remind me of my choices, that I had to tell him if I wanted to stop and I know he would. When I had gone to him and stood there wearing the barest bit of material he'd stared at the ceiling and I had to almost beg him to come to me. I knew he wanted me but he didn't assume how much I was willing to give, he asked me to tell him and I got to set the boundaries. Even when he knelt at the edge of the bed he paused and looked to me for permission. I'd had power in that situation whereas I'd always thought before that it meant no power at all.
So much has changed in such a short time and when I get caught up in him I never feel afraid but what if suddenly I did? I don't want that to ever happen, I don't want to ever have the terror I'd felt kneeling in front of Alec so I had to ask questions. I had to know more about it and if I can't talk to Dimitri about this then, well it didn't make any sense to not be able to. It's between us and I trust him.
"Yes. It's not something to be done to you, it is something to be done together because we both want to. I know you don't want to so then I don't either. It would be terrible otherwise."
I frown. "Sex with me would be terrible?"
He takes a deep breath and I know he's searching for the right words, worried about using the wrong ones. "If you only want to do it to please me or feel like it's something to give me, yes, it would be terrible. I don't want that, Rose. That's not - that's not what I want. Sex should be about intimacy, desire, pleasure, trust, and feeling close to someone more than physically. It should be about strengthening a bond. I don't want to ever harm what we have. I have never wanted to take anything from you."
He's looking at me like he does sometimes like I'm the sunrise over the mountains and I feel that drunk relief rushing through me. It would be so easy to just bathe in this moment but I need to keep asking, I need to understand as much as possible.
"So, you are sexually attracted to me but you don't want to have sex with me?"
"No, I don't. Not when it stands to harm us. It doesn't diminish my desiring you and it isn't something I'm waiting for to happen. I really don't want you to think that's an expectation."
"But isn't it? Isn't that where it all leads to?"
"There are no rules." He repeats the words from the night I cried and thought I'd ruined things. "What we have is between us and not determined by anything or anyone else. We just need to be honest with each other, always."
"But you said you don't want to because I don't want to, which must mean you do? Be honest."
His gaze holds mine. "I desire you. I have thought about us like that but it doesn't change my answer."
My face heats and I feel wriggly. He'd thought about it which prompts images to run through my head of all our clothes coming off. That first night he'd shown me how pleasure could come from your body but in my head now I'm not wearing anything and neither is he. But then it comes back to what I'd asked him before and how would he fit inside me and surely that would be painful so how could it feel good? He'd told me before it wasn't a stupid question but he hadn't answered me. He'd been too distracted.
That question's in my mouth ready to leave but he's looking at me intently and my face is too hot and so is his skin.
"Tell me." He coaxes and when I don't say anything because I'm suddenly a coward he adds, "There's no rush for anything, Rose."
He may look at me like I'm the sun but there is no mistaking that he is. He brought the light into my life when all it had was fear and darkness. The night he collided with me in the woods had been the beginning when I thought it was the end. Victor or not he wouldn't have left me there, if this thing between us didn't exist it wouldn't change that he trains and encourages me, it wouldn't mean he'd be less angry about Alec or Alexander because he was my first ally. He was the first person to show me differently and challenge what was wrong. I couldn't have dreamt of more, I couldn't have allowed myself to.
"I don't how I got you." The wonder is in my voice, the tail end of my thoughts leaving me astonished.
He raises an eyebrow and smiles. "Got me?"
"I think is all too good to be real sometimes but I could never have imagined you. I could never ask for more." His expression becomes a mix of surprise and something else and I realise I've never, not once, told him how much this means to me. I have never once told him how important he is to me. "Dimitri I…"
He kisses me and it both infuriates me and thrills me. I needed to tell him but I didn't know what the words are. I don't know if there would ever be the right words. I push him back and his head hits the pillow. I keep him placed there, my palms firmly on his chest.
"You…before you I have never known what it's like to trust someone so completely with myself or the thoughts in my head. I have never known what it's like to feel completely safe or wanted, to not be a burden. I didn't know what it was like to be proud of myself in my skin or that I mattered. I'd tried so hard for so long to not be seen but with you I wanted you to see me and know me, and now that you do, to go back to being invisible would kill me."
His dark eyes are trained on my face and it encourages me to keep going.
"If I went missing or disappeared I know you'd look for me and not because you had to because I'm leverage but because you'd miss me. I used to think it would be easier to be dead and sometimes I wanted to be gone. If you hadn't followed me that night I would be. Ever since you've helped me adapt, become someone I wasn't allowed to be and I really like her. I often thought that being a woman was the problem and that's why I'd be hurt but it was me, I couldn't follow the rules. I felt like I was suffocating all the time. I had to hold in so much of myself and every time a part of me would come out it made me a failure. Then I met you and that became the opposite, it was a failure to not allow more of myself out. You'd ask me questions and I hated that I couldn't bring myself to answer you or I'd flinch because that thing inside me, that thing I thought would surely get me killed, recognised you and I think it's because you have it too." I take a deep breath and remove one hand from his chest to bring his knuckles to my lips. "I could never have imagined you and when you said you're for me – it feels like you are, and it's selfish because I haven't done nearly as much for you but I want to. I want to be for you too."
His throat bobs and his lips part, trying to process everything that's come spilling out of my mouth but then his expression settles. I take my weight off my hand pressing him down and he pushes himself up until we're level again. I hold my breath, fighting to keep myself still and vulnerable, to not pull away and hide. I didn't want to hide.
"You are everything to me." He says with quiet conviction. "You are the warmth I've always sought and the kindness that's scarcely anywhere. You have a strength that can't be willed but if everyone possessed the world would be a better place. You are far more than I am worthy of."
I inhale, everything inside me starting to tremble as the words spread through like light, and the part of my heart that has always been desolate, that has been straining toward a hopeful ray is now bathed in the beauty of it. A lifelong ache being soothed and nurtured, allowed to flourish.
I try to talk around the unfolding feelings inside me, spreading rapidly and changing me. "Promise me you won't push me away when you're hurt or when people find out and say what they say. Because you can't tell me things like this and then leave."
"There is no going back." He says with certainty. He pulls me to him, my arms going around those strong shoulders as I tuck my heels against his lower back. He holds me like he understands the weight of the feeling like he wants to carry it too. "I've told you, you have me until you send me away."
I don't think I ever could and the thought makes my grip tighten, clasping my elbows around his shoulders. If he changed his mind it would rip me apart but for as long as we have this, it'll be worth it. I find his lips and kiss him with such force it borders on pain but we aren't delicate, we aren't two people who want to be meek in this, and I pour every bit of want and appreciation into it until I can't catch my breath.
"I am for you." He breathes against my throat, hands on my hips where his shirt has bunched up and I shudder.
"You are." I claim, knowing it's true.
I pull at his hair, turning him back to me and pressing him back down onto the bed. Right now I'm losing myself to him, to us. My fingers are not gentle in tracing the planes of his chest and lines of his abdomen. I feel him wanting me but he doesn't do anything to show me and it makes me restless, powerful, and giddy. Everything he's said he's already shown me but now that he has said it was all so starkly clear, he doesn't expect.
The boundary shallows, no longer critical.
We kiss until I can't fight off the drowsiness and our lips are swollen. I settle into my space, one of his arms pillowing my head and the other around my waist. In between slower kisses, I ask how long before evening approaches and he has to leave.
There's a faint brush of pink on his cheekbones and his heart's pounding under my palm. "A few hours. Everyone will lie in."
I place lazy kisses on his shoulder, floating. Somewhere between awake and dreaming his voice finds me, "Roza."
"Mhm?"
"You have done more for me than you know." He kisses behind my ear and I sink into dreams.