A/N: Trigger warning for extremely brief mention of rape.

Sixteen

In the dream, Kate reached out with her mind towards the Battery on Oa, even as some instinct begged her not to. But when she touched it, it became the Imperium, a gigantic, looming version of it, and broke out of the ground, causing an earthquake. This massive version of the Imperium, waving its building-sized tentacles in the air, began to fight off hoards of Manhunters as Kate stood far, far below on the ground and stared up in awe and fear.

She woke feeling unsettled, but not terrified and gasping for breath like normal. She supposed this was an improvement, though she shuddered at the remembrance of the gigantic Imperium, so large as to be almost incomprehensible.

"Good morning," said a deep, soothing voice beside her.

She shot into a sitting position, crying out, the remnants of sleep ripped from her body like being doused in ice water.

J'onn sat on his side of the bed, blinking at her, one hand raised in a placating gesture. "I'm sorry."

She put a hand to her chest, her heart beating frantically. "It's okay. I… forgot you were in here."

"Clearly."

She took a deep breath, willing herself to calm down, then laughed. "What time is it?"

"Nearly eleven."

Kate blinked at him. "You really did request that I get the day off, didn't you?"

He smiled. "Hawkgirl came to wake you hours ago; I intercepted her at the door, insisting that you needed more sleep. She wasn't happy, but I made it clear that she would have had to go through me to drag you off to training at seven in the morning after everything that happened yesterday."

"Thanks."

J'onn inclined his head.

Kate sighed. "Actually, I have no idea what to do with a day off. I haven't had one since I joined the League."

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

She said the first thing that came to her mind. "I want you to teach me more of your language. You stopped giving me lessons forever ago."

He smiled at her amusedly. "This is supposed to be a day off for you."

"Yes, from physical training. Who says I can't exercise my brain?"

"All right, I'll teach you some more. But eat breakfast first."

Kate's stomach growled at the mention of food; she couldn't actually remember the last time she'd eaten. "That's a great idea."

###

So, she spent the day doing whatever she wished.

The first hour after breakfast—or brunch, more like—was spent learning Martian with J'onn. Afterwards, her head buzzing with new vocabulary and syntax, she decided to go see John Stewart, to ask him how he was doing after everything that had happened yesterday with the trial and all.

"I'm fine," John told her, eyeing her as if wondering if she had some kind of ulterior motive.

Kate put her hands up in front of herself. "I just wanted to check on you is all. You were…" She hesitated, but pressed on. "You were so sure you'd blown up a planet yesterday. And then, you know, we got into a war with a bunch of androids. I just… wanted to make sure you were okay."

Lantern rubbed the back of his head, smiling at her a little, clearly feeling awkward, but grateful. "Yeah, I'm… good now. I wasn't yesterday, but… I am today."

"Good," she said, and meant it, smiling at him.

"What about you?" he asked. "Are you okay?" He chuckled a little, shaking his head. "No one was expecting to go to war yesterday, least of all you, I imagine. That was your first real battle since the invasion."

Kate shrugged, smiling, though it felt sort of plastered to her face. "I'm…" She sighed. "I don't know what happened to me on Oa, but… I barely remember anything once we got there because… I touched the Battery with my powers and apparently lost a huge chunk of time."

Lantern stared at her. "You tried to empathically reach out to the Battery? Why would you do that?"

Kate eyed him, surprised by his tone. "I didn't do it on purpose. I was trying to keep tabs on you guys."

"You're lucky your brain wasn't totally fried. I'm not surprised you lost time."

Kate stood awkwardly for a moment, then asked, "Do you think I'll get my memory back?"

"I dunno. Can't you ask J'onn to do a brain scan or whatever?"

"He did. He said other than a lot of dissociation on my part, he couldn't detect any brain damage."

Lantern shrugged. "Then maybe… you aren't supposed to remember. You were in a war. Maybe it's better that you don't."

"Yeah," Kate said, looking away in thought. "Maybe."

###

Her phone buzzed against her leg a little while later as she wandered the Watchtower.

MOM.

Sighing, she accepted the call and brought it to her ear, wondering vaguely how this place even had cell reception. How did that work? "Hello?"

"You know, I told you to call more often, and you haven't done that," said her mother immediately.

"Sorry," Kate replied, feeling like some misbehaving teenager.

"How have you been?" her mother, Nora, asked.

"Fine," said Kate, unsure what to say. She couldn't tell her mother the truth about what she'd been doing for the past month and a half. Couldn't tell her that she'd been partially responsible for stopping the invasion, couldn't tell her she now had PTSD from being tortured by a giant tentacled alien. Couldn't tell her she had a massive crush on a completely different alien.

Nora paused. "Do you want to give me anymore information?"

Kate sighed in frustration, rubbing her face for a moment, thinking. "There's nothing to tell. I go to work, I come home, I sleep, I get up, I go to work."

"You work too hard," Nora said, tutting. "You always have. Ever since you learned to control your powers—"

"We've had this discussion a hundred times," Kate complained. "I'm twenty-nine years old. Let me overwork myself if I want to."

"Fine."

"Fine."

There was a pause in the conversation.

"How's Dad?" Kate asked.

"Oh, he's fine—uh—good. He's good. He's happy. But he misses you."

Kate closed her eyes, remembering for a moment the day she'd asked her father if she had his permission to attempt to heal him. He'd looked at her for a long time, his expression carefully neutral. Then he'd asked if she was sure.

"I've been practicing for years, Dad," Kate told her father that blustery autumn day. "I've never hurt anyone. I've gotten good at it, I think. I… I just…" She cut herself off, returning her father's stare, her eyes watering. "I need to fix you."

"I'm not broken," Charles Stanton told his daughter quietly.

"You know that's not what I mean," Kate said, glancing at her father's walker, with two glide skis on the back feet. "If I heal you, you won't need the walker anymore. You won't get tired so easily. You'll…" You'll be my dad again, she thought, but didn't dare say that out loud.

Charles took a deep breath, releasing it in a sigh. "All right, Katie," he murmured. "You can try."

"Katie?" Nora asked. "I lost you."

"Sorry. Lost in thought."

"Why don't you come to visit us," Nora suggested hopefully. "We haven't seen you in… God, it must be since last Thanksgiving."

Kate dragged her eyes to the ceiling. "I'm really busy at work, Mom."

"Oh, what, like you can't take some time off?" Nora sighed. "I know you think it's your job to save everyone, but please don't forget you have a family who loves you. It would do your father good to see you. And me too, for Christ's sake."

Kate tried to imagine sitting in her parents' living room, visiting them, and dodging every single question they threw her way because what could she possibly tell them? And what would she do with J'onn? Leave him in the Watchtower? Bring him with her but make him shapeshift into a human form? Both options seemed cruel.

"Just think about it, okay?" Nora asked, a horrible pleading note in her voice that twisted Kate's stomach into a guilty knot.

"Okay," she whispered.

"I love you," said her mother.

"I love you too," said Kate, and meant it, although she hadn't shown it in years.

###

J'onn came to her after her phone call, and, though he said nothing, she could sense an outpouring of sympathy and a silent question in his mind: Did she want to talk about it?

She sighed. "Not particularly."

"I notice you avoid speaking about your parents," he murmured.

"My relationship with them is… strained."

"Yes."

Kate looked away, out of one of the massive windows that showed off space. She rubbed her arms, as if she were cold. Actually, she'd gotten so used to wearing the suit that when she wasn't wearing it, she felt strange. "My mother hated me for years after I… after what happened to my father. She didn't mean to hate me, but she did. We effectively didn't have a relationship until… nine years ago? When I healed my dad and gave him back his ability to walk. Then, all of a sudden it was like my entire childhood never happened, like… like she had reverted back to how she was before he ever got sick."

J'onn said nothing.

"I'm still angry about it. If she can hold a grudge about something I did on accident as a kid when I didn't know any better, then I can hold a grudge about something she did as a willing adult to her own child."

"You know, anger… holding it inside yourself doesn't hurt the person you're angry with. It only hurts you."

"Oh, I don't need the lecture!" Kate snapped. "You think I don't know that?"

He fell silent again.

She sighed. "I'm sorry."

"So am I. I am sorry for your childhood, and for what you did to your father, and for how you must have felt about yourself afterwards." He came to stand beside her and looked out the window, too.

His knuckles brushed her own and she took his proffered hand silently, grateful for it.

Your mother is reaching out to you, he told her telepathically. No one can tell you whether it is right for you to reach back, but… I would give anything just to see my mother again.

I know. You don't want me to waste precious time holding a grudge because my family could die at any time. But what would I even say to them? 'Hey mom and dad, don't freak out, but I've become a superhero'?

J'onn smiled.

Besides, aren't I supposed to be keeping the whole superhero thing a secret? In case a bad guy finds out who I am and tries to use my family's safety against me?

That is a concern, he conceded, then frowned in thought. When next he spoke, it was out loud. "It may be a good idea to try and think of a name for yourself, something we could all call you in public."

"A superhero name?"

"Yes."

Kate pursed her lips, staring harder out the window. "Give me a few days. I never thought I'd have to think of something like this."

"Of course."

She turned to look at the Martian. "In the meantime, I'd like to go back to Earth for a while. I… I want to go to Met Gen, see how everyone's getting on at the hospital." The guilt of quitting her nursing job had been eating her alive since she'd done it even though she knew that her new job also involved saving lives. It was more the lying that was getting to her, and having to omit the truth while speaking to her mother a few minutes ago hadn't done anything to alleviate that guilt.

J'onn cupped her face in one hand.

Surprised, she stilled and stared up at him, eyes wide. They touched each other constantly, but this kind of touch still felt so intimate.

He held her face for a few more moments, running his thumb along her cheek, then dropped his hand. "Come. I'll take you down to Metropolis."

###

Kate wandered the halls of Metropolis General Hospital, reaching out with her empathy to sense people's illnesses and injuries. There were so many, but, of course, that was to be expected. J'onn followed in her wake, transformed into an elderly Asian gentleman, the first human form he'd thought of before exiting the Javelin. It freaked her out to see him with a full head of hair (and eyebrows) and she had to keep stopping herself from reaching up and touching it.

What am I doing here? she kept asking herself. She'd gone to her boss before moving into the Watchtower and told the woman she'd gotten a great job opportunity at another hospital. It was the only thing she could come up with that made any kind of sense; everyone here knew she wouldn't simply abandon her patients. Except she had. Except… she hadn't. The whole city was her patient if she thought about it, so becoming a superhero was still helping to heal, in a way. To keep the bad guys off the streets, to hopefully prevent more people from ending up in the hospital at all.

She was stronger than she'd ever been, her arms and legs and stomach toned with the beginnings of lean muscle. She found satisfaction in her training, she had more energy during the day. She had stopped one alien invasion and prevented an innocent man from being killed for crimes he hadn't committed. And yet, she missed it here. She missed these hallways, stark as they were. She missed laying hands on people and taking away their pain. She missed the old routine.

"Kate?" someone called, a woman's voice.

Kate turned to see one of the nurses she used to work with. The woman approached and gave her a hug.

"What are you doing here? Your new job not work out?" The woman had a teasing glint in her eye, but there was something harder underneath.

"No, no, it's been great," Kate told her, trying to sound genuine. Because it had been great, if terrifying. "I really feel like I'm making a difference at this new—hospital."

The woman glanced behind Kate. "Who's your friend?"

"Ahh, friend of the family," she said quickly. "His name is—"

— "Jutaro," said J'onn in his strange old man voice, taking the nurse's hand.

Jutaro? Kate asked.

Longevity, he told her, his internal voice unchanged by his shapeshifting, still deep and rich as ever.

She blinked and almost laughed, but held it in. Why longevity? Because you're so old?

Jutaro said nothing.

How do you even know what it means? You speak Japanese?

I know several Earthly languages. All I need do is touch someone who knows the language. One of the scientists at the military base I was held at was Japanese-American.

The old Japanese man and the nurse carried a polite if distant conversation for a few minutes, then she insisted she had to get back to work and left him and Kate behind.

Kate watched her go, feeling a pang of longing, wishing that she, too, could disappear into the busyness of the hospital and go about healing people.

You do good work in the League, J'onn said, standing beside her in his old man form.

You all could get along perfectly well without me, she replied.

I couldn't, he said simply.

She stared up at him and he turned his head to look down at her, and she could almost see his regular form underneath, could almost see his true Martian form. Behind those dark brown eyes, she swore she caught a flash of orange. Tell me more about Mars, she begged him.

He smiled.

###

"On Mars, we had no money. Everyone traded for what they needed, or did extra work for it."

"How did you convince people to work if it wasn't for money?" Kate asked, shaking her head. "There's no way that would fly in America."

"Mars was much more collectivist than America. We valued the group above the individual—though we were encouraged to find hobbies we enjoyed personally and show off our skills."

Kate smiled, looking at J'onn out of the corner of her eye. "And what was your hobby?"

"I…" He seemed to look past her, thinking, as if he were having trouble remembering what he had ever done before the war. "I enjoyed gardening. Sometimes I'd go out into the garden and sit among the plantlife and talk to them for hours."

Kate blinked curiously. "Did they talk back?"

He smiled. "In a way. Most humans can't sense it, but plants are alive, and they do feel things. They don't think like we do—they're not… quite conscious in the same way. But they have… something like a soul within, something that responds to you if you reach out to it." He lifted a hand, as if to caress the leaves of some hanging vine that wasn't there, then dropped his hand back into his lap.

They sat on her couch in the living room of her apartment. Since Kate didn't need to pay rent on this place, she hadn't had to give it up when she'd moved into to the Watchtower. She'd come back here to check on things, to get her mail. Now the two of them sat cross-legged, facing each other on the couch like they had on those long days right after the incident with the Imperium. Kate studied him fondly, tracing her eyes up his very tall head, down to his face, down his neck to his chest, noting the ridges raised along his skin. He'd shifted back to his natural form the moment he'd stepped into her apartment, as if this space gave him the permission he needed to be himself. It had made her feel tingly inside, butterflies in her stomach.

She had a sudden urge to crawl toward him and sit in his lap and—

He turned his head from looking out the window and looked at her instead.

She blushed hot.

He was silent for a time, long enough to give her the courage to look away from him. "Your desires don't disgust me," he said softly. "Touching you does not frighten me."

"It's… not that," she whispered.

"What is it?"

She closed her eyes against the image of his wife's face in her mind. "M'yri'ah." Kate felt the stab of pain to his heart as she spoke his wife's name, felt that old familiar depression creep in around his thoughts. She didn't dare speak the names of his daughters as well, though she thought of them too. "There," she said. "That pain. That's why I don't… why we can't…"

"That pain will always be there," he said slowly. "I will never stop loving M'yri'ah, my daughters, but I spent five hundred years alone on my planet, alone with my grief, and I will not spend another five hundred alone with my grief here."

She shook her head, pulling into herself now that he was giving her permission to… "J'onn, I can't."

"I would never make you do anything."

"I can't—"

"I know."

"My whole life, I—"

"Your whole life, you've been terrified to touch anyone, because of what happened to your father, because your mother hated you for it, and it made you hate yourself. I know."

She stared at him, wide-eyed.

"Your mother's hate for you was wrong, and you know that. You made one mistake as a young girl, unaware of your powers. You shouldn't let that dictate your entire life." His eyes bore into her, his mental touch light as a feather, caressing, trying to shore her up.

She leaned toward him, lost in those eyes.

Forget right and wrong, he said into her mind, his voice echoing around her so that she wanted to fall into it like a swirling pool. Forget duty, forget your parents. What do you want?

You, she said, without hesitation, and allowed herself to feel it, to feel the ache in her heart for him, to feel the desire to touch him, to hold him, to kiss him. A warm, wet, throbbing ache emerged between her legs, and she let herself feel that as well. Aloud, she whispered, "Please…"

He leaned down and pressed his forehead to hers and they sat, breathing each other in. "You never need to beg," he murmured.

"But why me?" she asked him, feeling… unworthy. Small. Childish for all the lack of romantic relationships she'd had. A few one-night stands here and there, but never anything permanent for the fear of growing attached, only to hurt them. It wasn't that she was afraid she couldn't heal them afterwards; it was the fear of how they would look at her, how they might cower from her, or demand never to see her again.

"Because I was trapped there in that horrible place for two years, trying to reach out to anyone who would hear me. What I never told you is that I did manage to reach a few other people before you and Superman."

Kate pulled away to look at him, horrified. "What?"

"Yes," he said. "I reached three others over the span of those two years before I reached you and him. You two were the only ones who got to me. I don't know if the other three tried and failed or if they simply never tried at all, but you were the only ones who came."

Kate laughed a little; it sounded strange to her ears in this moment. "So why aren't you in love with Superman?"

J'onn smirked. "He's not my type."

"Batman was there too."

"Not for me. He came because he wanted to know what Superman was up to."

Kate tried to think of something else that was funny to say but her sense of humor failed her. Witty banter had never been her strong suit; she was far too anxious a creature for that. And in her mind, all she could think was: Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

He did not kiss her—yet. Instead, he pulled back from her and began to transform into his superhero body.

"Why are you—"

"My natural form would not be comfortable for you to kiss, I don't think. My skin is much harder than yours."

"I really don't think I'd care," she said, laughing a little.

"Let me do it this way first," he replied.

"Of course. Any way you want to." She heard the words as they came out of her mouth and blushed at them. "I mean—"

He pressed his forehead to hers again.

Her heart skipped a beat, the breath caught in her throat.

"I find you quite attractive when you're flustered," he murmured.

Feeling idiotic, she said, "I thought humans were ugly to you."

He sighed. "I should never have told you that—and that's not what I said. I told you that Martians don't sexualize the body the way humans do."

"Is that not the same thing?"

"Not at all. The longer I've been on Earth, the more I have… noticed you, your body, and the changes to it over time, as you've trained. You've grown stronger, leaner, more muscular."

"Barely muscular."

"It's only been a month. Give it time."

She shook her head, still pressed to his. "I'm sorry, are you hitting on me right now?"

"I was under the impression this is what human men are supposed to do before they kiss women."

She laughed. "Please just… be yourself. Don't… Don't ever do anything you read about in those stupid erotica books."

"Nothing?"

"No. Those aren't accurate to real life."

"You… don't want me to do any of those things?" he asked slowly, and in his mind, he spread her legs apart with his hands and dipped his head—

She pulled away from him, heart hammering.

He looked concerned. "I'm sorry. I was only…" He glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck. "I was only teasing you. I won't—"

She launched herself at him before she lost her nerve and pressed her mouth to his, steadying herself on her hands and knees on the couch, placing both hands on his thighs where he sat, still cross-legged. His mouth was warm and inviting and he responded to her eagerness in kind, though slowly. He sucked in a breath at first, surprised, then relaxed, and she felt his fingers grazing her cheeks, her shoulders, her arms, then back up to bury themselves in her hair. She wondered if that instinct was ingrained into every humanoid being in the universe, even ones without hair themselves, or if he did that because he'd read about it somewhere.

She did not think about accidentally killing him in a moment of passion. Of all those she had touched in her life, she was least afraid of hurting him, because he was big and strong and a superhero, and she was sure he could take it, could take her if he needed to, even if she started to do something on accident. He felt solid under her hands and she moved them from his thighs up to his chest, pressing hard, as if trying to leave an imprint of herself there.

He captured her hands, squeezing them gently, lovingly. But, No, she thought, wanting his fingers twined in her hair again, pulling, insistent. He groaned into her mouth at the thought and slid one hand up the back of her neck. It was only then that she remembered she had cut her hair so that it would fit beneath the helmet, and it was too short to pull like that. She felt a pang of annoyance and longing.

His hand felt strange against the back of her head then, seemed to wriggle like snakes in her hair, or… no, more like worms, much smaller than snakes. And then he was somehow pulling her hair and she gasped at the feel of it, staring at him as he released her mouth from his own and looked at her.

"Is this okay?" he asked her.

She opened her mouth to speak aloud, but lust had overtaken her brain, robbing her of speech. How are you doing that?

He released her hair and pulled his hand away from her head to show her. Growing from the palm of his hand were several—much more than five—vine-like objects, small and thin enough to wind through even her short hair. She looked at them and immediately closed her eyes, a jolt of horror running through her. They looked like tentacles.

J'onn made a sound in the back of his throat, his mind filling with horror now, as well. "I'm so sorry, Kate. I didn't—"

"Stop," she said.

He was quiet.

"Put your hand back in my hair."

He did not move.

She opened her eyes. "Put it back. I liked it."

Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to move his hand back to her head.

"J'onn," she deadpanned, annoyed, staring at him.

He placed the palm of his hand against the back of her head again.

She closed her eyes at the feel of it, trying not to let her mind be overrun by thoughts of the Imperium. This is J'onn. He won't hurt me. J'onn is safe. He's always been safe. This is good. You liked it. It just looks a little spooky.

They sat there for a time without moving as Kate got used to the feel of his strange hand.

Kiss me again, she begged.

He did, softly, gently, as if she were a porcelain doll, prone to break.

Do not infantilize me, she said. Kiss me.

He kissed her, passionately, fervently, his mouth hot and open, those vines tangling into her hair, pulling.

For a while, as she returned his kiss, half of her remained taut and uncomfortable, remembering the Imperium and the pain of those tentacles breaking through her body. And then, as nothing bad continued to happen, as her body grew hotter and looser with lust, she forgot to be uncomfortable, forgot about the Imperium, only enjoyed the feel of him beneath her hands, her scalp tingling pleasantly as he pulled her hair.

Her arms trembled as she continued to hold herself up. She wanted to straddle his lap, grind against him…

He vibrated. She would've thought she hallucinated it, except that her mouth and hands tingled afterwards where she was touching him.

She pulled away from his kiss, concerned. "A-Are you okay?"

His eyes were closed, his nonexistent eyebrows furrowed. "Yes," he said, sounding frustrated.

Confused, curious, she probed his mind, searching for the reason for his sudden… vibration.

He did it again, his whole body blurring from the force of it. Her hands tingled and warmed against his chest.

"J'onn," she said.

"This is… my body's natural arousal response," he told her, eyes still closed. "I'm trying to… control it."

All arousal on Kate's end stopped—well, almost all of it—to be replaced with abject curiosity. "Why does your body vibrate when you're aroused?"

He sighed and smiled and opened his eyes, and sent her into his mind, giving her something that was half memory and half made-up for tutorial's sake.

There he and M'yri'ah stood, facing one another, and they began to kiss. And as they kissed, and grew aroused, their bodies vibrated, and vibrated, and… began to sort of… pull apart, as if they were vibrating so quickly that they became something less than solid. And as they came apart, they pushed into one another, their whole bodies joining slowly, becoming two people in one body. The process was slow, but it felt like sex the way Kate understood it. It was exciting and pleasurable and ended in mutual orgasm for both involved—here, J'onn interjected to let Kate know that this process could be done to oneself alone, or with two, or with three or five or twenty, or however many wanted to join in.

If the partners, however many there were, wished to have children, then one Martian was deemed the egg-layer before intercourse. As each partner vibrated at higher and higher speed and, as came apart, they tore off tiny bits of their own DNA strands and wove them together to create the blueprint of offspring. These tiny bits of interwoven DNA were left behind in the egg-layer's body when each partner returned to themselves. These bits of DNA grew inside the body for three days, then they were lain as eggs and continued to grow for a year before hatching.

Kate opened her eyes, blinking back into reality after this educational explanation. "So… if you vibrate too hard, you'll… fall apart?"

"I might," he said.

"It doesn't hurt you, I assume…"

"No. It feels good. It is something like the way you… become wet, or a man of your species becomes erect."

Kate opened her mouth to ask more questions, but she was becoming aroused again at the thought of his own arousal.

He simply looked at her, his body vibrating in short bursts as he tried to stop it.

If you keep doing that, and you fall apart… if I were sitting in your lap, would I… I don't know—sink into you?

Yes.

Would it hurt me?

He was silent, thinking. I don't think so. I cannot see how. As long as I maintained a form that was only partially solid, it would be all right. If I went fully solid again and you were still inside my body, that might hurt, but I would never do that.

She remembered tentacles in his body—in hers—forcing their way under his skin, tearing through muscle, breaking bone. Her eyes watered. "Oh my god," she whispered, feeling suddenly sick. "Does that mean… Did the Imperium—"

"The Imperium did not rape me," J'onn said, all vestiges of his own arousal now gone. He placed a thumb at the corner of her eye and rubbed away a tear before it fell. "It wasn't… It was a being capable of great evil, but it never did that. I don't… think it would've ever thought to do that. Any snatches of thought I gained from its mind led me to believe that whatever it was, it… wasn't a sexual being. In any capacity."

"It had to have been created somehow," she argued. "Its species—"

"Yes. But it was very old, at least as old as I am, and I think it was… different when it was born. It wasn't born as that, as what you and I witnessed. Something… changed it. Made it… no longer a… person."

Kate's face twisted. "That's horrible."

"Yes."

She closed her eyes, smiling tightly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to start talking about this."

"You apologize far too often."

She opened her eyes again, looking at him.

He put his other hand on her face as well. "Your body, your touch, your desires… they don't frighten me. And neither does your tendency to ask what you deem to be strange questions at inappropriate times."

She blushed.

"I enjoy our conversations," he said. "No matter what you wish to discuss. You have a curious, intelligent mind. You want to know things, to understand things, beyond a simple black and white explanation. You want details and subtlety. Nuance." He pulled her slowly into his lap. "Your mind arouses me."

"Even when I'm anxious and panicked and overthinking?" she asked, her face pressed to his shoulder, arms wrapped around him.

"Even then," he murmured, and kissed her temple.

She turned her head and brought her face close to his, invitingly, questioningly.

He kissed her again.

And kissed her.

And kissed her.