aheroliveshere | [for man_without

He hears the disappointment that she can't quite cover and immediately feels guilty for it.

The whisperings start in the back of his mind that try to tell him this is a sign that this won't work out, but he does his best to ignore them. He lets her fuss with his hair and gives her a smile, hoping that his spending time here with her now makes up a little for his having to leave later.

"I think that sounds great."

"Good." She steals another lingering, gentle kiss, letting the moment stretch.

Telling him in her own way that she's not giving up on him. She meant what she said and she'll stand by it.

And she needs him.

As much as that terrifies her, she needs him.

He lifts a hand to cup her cheek, trailing light fingertips over her skin thru the kiss.

It's enough to reassure him and the part of him that was threatening to slip into doubt quiets, leaving him relaxed with her once more.

"Shall we, then?"

She nods, smiling against his lips. She gingerly pulls away and arches her back, letting a full body shivering stretch take her over. A moment later, she's padding towards the bathroom, humming under her breath, swaying her hips as she goes.

"I'll wash your back if you'll wash mine," she singsongs back to him.

"Deal."

He's slow to follow her, one because it's nice to 'watch' her go, his senses giving him quite a nice impression of her as she sashays towards the bathroom, but also because getting up isn't so easy.

He's bruised in places and sore, and if he weren't here he'd probably be spending this morning chewing aspirin and letting the sting of a very hot shower ease the aches.

Joints creak when he pushes up from the mattress and he takes a moment to arch his own back and neck, the sounds of bones popping accompanying the action. Soon enough though he's standing and trailing after her, that smile returning when he joins her in the bathroom.

She turns to watch him follow, and doesn't miss the way he's creaking a bit. And then she hears the crackle of his joints. By the time he gets there, she's opened the medicine cabinet and fished out some painkillers for him. She fills a small glass with water and presses them into his hand.

"Here, you sound like you might need these. It's just aspirin."

Her actions let him know that despite his best efforts he isn't covering his discomfort so well as he'd like and he flashes her a small, chagrined smile.

"Thanks." He accepts the pills and water, tossing them back with a quick swallow then hands the glass back.

The stiffness will work itself out and the aspirin will help, the only thing he's really worried about is more questions.

She takes the glass and puts it away, and maybe she's biting her tongue a little bit. Last night's argument wasn't really resolved, but they're moving in the same direction now.

She wonders if she shouldn't be the first one to tell him the truth. Her head dips as the weight of it settles around her again.

She takes a deep breath and leans in to turn on the shower. That done, she turns back and steals a slow, soft kiss while they wait for the pipes to stop singing and the water to get warm.

Maybe he should say something, but he can't talk about last night, and if he doesn't anything else he says would too obviously be an attempt to sidestep the subject.

He listens to her as she moves around the small space, waiting, and then rests a hand on her hip and leans down when she returns for a kiss.

The water warms up quick enough and she guides him into the shower enclosure. It's not huge, but there's enough room for both of them. Her hands smooth the water over his chest and she rests her forehead against his.

"We make quite the pair, don't we? All sorts of crazy about one another, and afraid to mess it up somehow."

He stands before her, his hands on her waist, shades of empathy and apology in his expression.

"Maybe that's not such a bad thing," he says after a moment. "It might just be a sign of how much this means to each of us."

It means a whole hell of a lot to him, which is a definite contributor to the fear of ruining it all.

She nods, and even though he's blind, she's glad the shower is beating down on them if it means he can't see the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.

"I think I'm falling in love with you, Matt." There's joy in the confession, but yes, fear, too. It's too soon to even think about such things, but it's been happening for awhile.

And he's not alone. This means more to her than anything else in her life right now.

His mouth starts to open, but he doesn't know what to say.

The falling water does a fair job of washing the scent away, but he can still hear the crack in her voice, the small emotional hitch in her lungs.

Love.

There's elation attached to the word, surprise that she could be feeling such things for him and joy that she might, but hard on the heals of that is a cold dread. Uncertainty and... fear.

Good things don't befall the people he's loved. In his history the people he's cared about the most don't stay. Of all the scars he carries it is the unseen wounds from them that hurt the most.

The knee jerk instinct is to back off, to pull everything in and bow out before this destroys both of them. Only he can't, because despite his trepidation, and the pain of the past, he can't walk away from her. He wants this, he's here because he cares about her; his words to her last night about his feelings were true and they haven't changed any this morning.

Lifting a hand he cups her cheek, his touch firm so that she won't feel the tremor underneath.

"Karen, I... " He has to stop, taking a steadying breath before going on, hoping the words are right. "I don't know, but I can't say that I'm not falling for you, too."

So it might be that he is.

She laughs through her tears, because he isn't pulling away. She doesn't know what she expected to come from that kind of confession, but him bolting out of the apartment was at the top of the list. The convoluted double negative makes her giddy. Lawyers.

"It's okay. We're okay." She breathes the words against his lips. "Just gotta trust each other, okay? Little bit at a time. We got this."

He nods, a smile cracking through the anxiety and her laugh brushes away the dread.

She's right, they're okay.

"Okay," he agrees, tilting her face up to kiss her before letting his hand drop and nodding against her again. "Okay."

Later, after they'd taken their time in the shower together (and Karen's thighs had stopped feeling like jelly), she withdrew to let him get dressed. She threw on a robe to make breakfast for them both.

Eggs, bacon, toast, orange juice and the ubiquitous coffee. She'd started out humming under her breath, but the shadows loomed and stilled that quiet joy. She had to tell him. She needed to tell him. She really didn't want to tell him.

But this was how trust worked. And if she wanted to know why his nights were occupied with things that left him battered and bruised, instead of in her arms, then she had to be willing to open that door and invite him in.

She was pouring them two mugs of coffee when he emerged.

He's smiling to himself as he dresses, listening to her humming in the kitchen while he pulls on his clothes. For a moment it's a perfectly blissful domestic moment.

And then he pulls on his shirt, and the stiff fabric is scratchy against his shoulder and reminds him of the blood stain that's there and now dried. Pulling the article off he frowns at it, feeling the rough spot out with the pad of his thumb.

It makes him wonder if this is even possible. What happens if he doesn't tell her everything? And what happens if he does?

There's nothing to do for it right now, and so he puts on the shirt, doing up the buttons and straightening out the wrinkles as best he can, and wearing it like it's fresh and there's nothing wrong.

The first thing he notices when he enters the kitchen is that her humming has stopped. Still he puts on a smile, lifting his nose in an exaggeration of smelling the air.

"Coffee?"

"You know, sometimes it's uncanny what you can deduce by your nose alone." You may be amazing in bed, Matt, but she's not above being snarky at you first thing in the morning.

She takes the mugs over to the tiny kitchen table and sets one down for him. Only then does she turn and see that he's wearing the blood-stained shirt from the night before. She lets out a quiet little sigh of exasperation.

"Here. Take that off. I can get that stain out for you, and it'll be dry by the time you need to leave. You can wear one of my tshirts if you want."

He gives her a bemused expression and seeks out a chair. His hand falls on a chair back just as she turns to cluck at him.

"It's alright," he says, then adds jokingly, "Besides, I really don't know if your clothes would fit."

His coffee is already doctored to his liking. She's made it for him in the office enough times.

"Okay, point. So maybe it's just a ploy to get you to walk around without a shirt on so I can ogle you. So gimme."

"Is that the plan?" he asks, amused and smirking.

He doesn't want her having to clean the shirt for him, but he recognizes that there isn't much he can do to stop her. If he protests any more, even playfully, she'll more than likely set her feet and insist.

Smart enough not to enter a battle he isn't going to win, Matt sets to undoing buttons and soon hands the shirt over to her.

"Thank you."

She takes it from him and bends to nuzzle his cheek, leaning in to whisper in his ear.

"Thank you."

When she pulls back, her hand lingers on his cheek.

"How do you like your eggs?"

His resulting smile causes his stubble to rasp against her skin.

"Over-medium, please," he answers.

"Done and done."

A few minutes later, she sets a plate in front of him and slides into the seat beside him.

"I could get used to this," she murmurs, though there's a hint of melancholy to her voice. Like merely saying the words out loud are tempting fate.

He takes a moment to organize his place setting (plate, fork, juice glass, coffee... ), the ghost of a frown crossing his features at the sad tone under her voice.

"So could I." Or he'd like to, if fate and all the other workings of the world will allow. "It's nice."

Nice isn't really the right word, but he's a little afraid to tempt things himself.

[for man_without_fear]

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