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They let their guard down a bit over the next few hours on the train. Kala wakes after a while and they chat for a bit, still cuddling and stroking and being perhaps a bit too touchy for a train compartment, but Wolfgang stares the next passive-aggressive cougher into silence and no one bothers them again. They talk about places they've been and where they’d like to go; what they’re looking forward to in Paris and what they’ll miss from back home.
The rest of the cluster drop by in turns, keeping them company occasionally but mostly leaving them to their own devices. They order some food, relax, and take another nap until a voice once comes on over the intercom telling the passengers the train will be arriving in Paris in a few minutes.
Once they arrive at the station, their alert systems come back online. The rest of the cluster appears around Kala and Wolfgang as they disembark, forming an invisible protective barrier around them and looking around the station for any suspicious activity.
“I don’t see any trouble,” says Will from behind Kala, scanning the crowd they’re moving through at a quick pace.
“Nor do I,” says Sun. “But we should get to the flat as soon as possible.”
Capheus gestures to one of the exits. “Taxi pickup is through there.”
They head in that direction, half of them looking over their shoulders as they move. Wolfgang hails a cab once they reach the curb and gestures for Kala to climb in first as he stows their luggage in the trunk. Nomi takes over Kala for a moment to give the driver the address to the flat in some frankly terrible French before Wolfgang climbs in beside her and shuts the cab door, at which point she and the rest of the cluster disappear for the time being.
Despite the agitation back at the station, they both feel their heartbeats slow gradually to a more normal pace, and they sense each other relaxing further into their seats with each kilometer they put behind them as the cab weaves its way through the city streets.
Neither of them says a word for the entire ride. There’s no need. They hold hands over the empty seat between them, and that, for now, is comfort enough. The street lights take turns illuminating the inside of the cab, sending their profiles into and out of stark contrast as they move past them, lending a dream-like quality to the moment. They take this time, these first moments in the city that will be their new home, to take it in, to slowly and quietly begin to mentally settle into their new lives.
The silence breaks a few minutes in when Kala gasps as they drive past the Arc de Triomphe all lit up. She taps Wolfgang’s shoulder to make sure he sees, and when he leans over he only spends a second looking through the window at the landmark, preferring instead to take in the sight of the smile on Kala’s face, absent for far too long over the past couple of weeks. It serves to settle the last of his nerves, his fears, and he wonders how it's possible to feel like he's falling even further in love with this woman.
Kala, of course, senses the directions his thoughts have taken and turns to meet his gaze directly. Lifting her free hand to the underside of Wolfgang’s chin, she pulls him in for a kiss. Soft and strong, gentle and bursting with emotion, still tingling from the true out-of-body experience of kissing each other in real life, they kiss for what feels like hours or minutes, days or seconds; an infinite moment in time.
Eventually they pull apart but not away. Wolfgang, having slid over the seat between them at some point during the kiss, readjusts their position so that Kala can rest her cheek on the curve of his shoulder, his arm coming up around her to rest on hers.
After some time, the cab slows to a stop. They look at each other briefly, small smiles on both their lips as they communicate everything they can’t say out loud right now - a reassurance as well as a flutter of excitement.
They pay and thank the driver, then take their suitcases from the trunk. The two of them, then the eight of them, stand for a few moments looking up at their new home.
It's old, like pretty much all the buildings they drove past to get here, with large windows with flower boxes on some of the sills and large cream cinder blocks making up the façade. The ground floor is taken up by what seems to be a little cafe, or maybe a bakery, but it’s hard to tell through the darkness inside given the late hour. A large door stands next to the cafe, covered in pale blue paint that’s chipping away at the edges of the wooden detailing.
Sun is the first to speak, looking up at the building. “It's so...”
“French,” offers Riley.
They all share a look and tentative smiles, before bursting into chuckles and giggles, a feeling of anticipation rising in all of them.
“Well,” says Lito, clapping a hand on Wolfgang’s shoulder, smiling brightly. “Let’s do this.”
Kala takes a deep breath and steps forward to enter the required pin code in the keypad on the side of the door, then pushes it open.
There’s a long, dimly lit hallway behind the door, then three flights of stairs, and finally a key in a lock and one final push against heavy wood, and they find themselves in their new home.
Kala and Wolfgang are the first to step inside, but the rest of the cluster is close behind.
“Ok, wow,” says Nomi, turning in a circle to take it all in. “This place is amazing.”
They’d decided to find their own place in Paris, and while the one Rajan had picked out for Kala would probably have been ten times bigger and more luxurious than this one, everyone agrees heartily with Nomi’s assessment.
The flat is all pale woods and white walls, with light curtains flanking the windows. The main room is a kitchen and living room in one, with the bedroom visible from between the large double doors to one side.
The cluster spreads and explores the flat, calling out at each other occasionally to come see this or that. They find it’s furnished with the basic things - a small TV and a comfortable-looking sofa in the main room, and a double bed and two small night stands at either end in the bedroom. The bathroom is just off the bedroom and houses a free-standing tub, a toilet, and an ancient vanity mirror over the sink, greying from the edges in.
Once they've roamed every square inch of the flat, which doesn’t take long, Riley finds a little radio and puts on some music as they all help unpack the bags, chatting amongst themselves.
Capheus gasps suddenly and makes his way to one of the windows. “Look at this view! You can see the tip of the Eiffel Tower!"
Kala giggles and goes over to see, and sure enough, there it is - creeping over the buildings, glittering like a disco ball in the far distance. They must have caught it during the hourly light show.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” she croons, resting her temple on Capheus’ shoulder as they both gaze over the city.
The look out for a few more seconds before she feels eyes on the back of her head and looks to see Wolfgang staring at her fondly, folding some of his jeans with Lito next to him yammering on about how they're gonna need to buy a bigger TV screen, but Wolfgang doesn't seem to be taking in a word of what Lito is saying.
Suddenly, somehow, something shifts between them, the look they share tipping from fond and sweet to heated, wanting. Time slows around them and they both feel a tug, a clench, pulling them towards each other. From across the room, Kala can see Wolfgang’s pupils dilate, gradually pushing out most of the blue in his eyes. She’s sure hers do the same.
It’s certainly not the first time something like this has happened, this sudden need, this pull between them wiping out all other thoughts. But it is the first time it has happened when they can actually do something about it.
Nomi, who had been busy with Sun putting Kala and Wolfgang’s toiletries away and is just exiting the bathroom, takes one look at them and seems to immediately pick up on the change of atmosphere between the two.
“Uh, guys?” she calls out to the cluster without taking her eyes off of Kala and Wolfgang, a growing smirk on her lips. “We should probably get going, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?” asks Will. “We’re still...” Nomi tips her head and lifts her eyebrows, prompting Will to look at the pair. “Oh... Oh! Yes! Right, well, we’ll be off then! Come on, everybody, let's let these guys, uh... Rest.”
The heated look between Kala and Wolfgang is momentarily broken, time resuming its normal pace as the rest of the cluster say goodbye, offering hugs and congratulations and even some poorly concealed innuendos (courtesy of Nomi, of course) as they go, one by one.
Eventually, only Riley is left to say goodbye to Kala. She walks over to where Kala still leans against the windowsill and puts her hands on her shoulders, making sure Kala meets her gaze.
“Remember you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” she says, tucking a piece of Kala’s hair behind her ear in an almost motherly gesture.
Kala is surprised by the reminder, her brow furrowing even as a shy smile slides onto her lips. “That’s never been what this is about.” She lifts her gaze from Riley’s to Wolfgang across the room, bent over Kala’s suitcase unpacking the last of her clothes into their proper place in the bedroom closet. “Not with Wolfgang.”
Riley smiles and hugs her close for a moment. “Then go get some,” she whispers in her ear, pulling away and disappearing as Kala's cheeks flush bright red.
She takes a moment to close her eyes and take a deep, slow breath to calm the sudden jitters in her chest, then turns to face Wolfgang, who closes the closet door, pushes the suitcase against the wall, and walks straight toward Kala.
“I think we shou-”
But Wolfgang doesn’t skip a beat once he reaches her - he takes her face in his hands, tilts it up, and presses his lips to hers.
The kiss bypasses any pretense of gentleness altogether. Instantly, they’re both kissing like they hardly ever have before - an edge of desperation and arousal tinting ever push and pull. Wolfgang’s lips, warm and slightly chapped, grind roughly against Kala’s own. The tug in their gut pulls at them harder, and Kala’s tongue ventures out to slide across the seam of Wolfgang’s lips, prompting a soft moan in response that only serves to send Kala higher into this sudden spiral of arousal.
All too soon, Wolfgang starts to gradually slow the pull and push of their lips, relaxes his hands where one grips the base of Kala's head and another the side of her hips, easing them into the softer kissing they’re both more used to sharing. Both their hearts are still pounding in unison when Wolfgang pulls away, putting a few centimeters’ distance between their lips.
“Sorry,” he pants softly.
“For what?”
“I...” He swallows, clenching his jaw. The sight makes Kala’s abdomen clench in response. “I didn’t ask you if I could-”
Kala rolls her eyes and huffs out a giggle. “I appreciate what you’re trying to say, but please know you always have permission to kiss me.”
Wolfgang quirks an eyebrow and gives her a cheeky smirk, his blue eyes bright with the flirtation. “Oh, is that so?”
“Mhmm,” she nods, throwing back a smirk of her own. “You might even have permission to do more than that.”
Wolfgang smiles at that and tilts in for another kiss.
After a few seconds, Kala breaks the kiss to whisper breathlessly against Wolfgang’s lips. “Bed?”
The answering chuckle huffs softly over her face. “How about a bath first?”
Kala pulls Wolfgang’s head forward so his forehead touches hers, closing her eyes against the thumping of her heart. Something inside her is trying to pull her towards the bed, craving what she knows will happen once they reach it, but another, more grounded part of her is thinking that a bath honestly does sound great after such a long day.
So she nods and opens her eyes again, brown meeting blue, and pulls Wolfgang by the hand towards the bathroom.
Kala flips the lights on and sits on the edge of the bathtub, fiddling with the taps and watching Wolfgang move towards the single window.
Once the water is flowing at a slightly higher temperature than she likes so it can cool down gradually, Kala rises and moves over to stand behind Wolfgang, wrapping her arms under his and around his torso and resting the side of her head on his back. Wolfgang’s hands come up to cover hers over his abdomen.
“What are you thinking?” she asks. She can feel the general direction of his thoughts, but right now, she wants to hear him say it. She wants to be sure.
Wolfgang take a deep breath, the sound of it lost over the rush of the water filling the tub. He turns in her arms so that they're facing each other and lifts one hand to brush away the strands of hair that have fallen over her face.
“That I believe in miracles. And that I’m grateful to any God that’s responsible for us getting to have this.”
Kala’s eyes had been roaming his face as he spoke, but they snap to his at this pronouncement. She doesn't know whether to smile or cry, so she does neither and pulls him in for a kiss instead.
His hands slide down from their spot high on her ribs, gliding over the fabric of her denim jacket to fall at her hips. Kala shivers at the sensation, goose-flesh rising up and down her arms. She reaches one hand up to thread into his hair and readjusts their positions just so to deepen the kiss.
What began as a gentle press of lips suddenly makes its way into something fiercer, more urgent. Wolfgang’s hands tighten on Kala’s hips, pulling her closer, and Kala takes the hand that isn't threaded in the hair at the nape of his neck to rub up and down his chest, feeling his muscles through the soft fabric of his shirt.
Suddenly Wolfgang’s lips pull apart, his hands gradually relaxing at her hips. They pant softly into each other, their heartbeats pounding as one.
Wolfgang chuckles and dips in for another quick peck. “Bathtub’s nearly full. Should probably use it.”
Kala bites her bottom lip and smiles, nodding as she untangles her arms from around Wolfie’s neck.
Wolfgang takes his shirt off in one graceful motion, but when he moves to undo the button on his jeans, he stops himself, as if remembering something important. He looks up and meets Kala’s gaze, lifts his eyebrows in a silent question. Kala takes a brief second to appreciate the confirmation of consent and nods. Wolfgang holds her gaze for a moment longer, as if making sure she’s not changing her mind, before undoing the button and zip and pulling his jeans off along with his underwear.
It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before - she’s seen it multiple times, even. But Kala still blushes at the sight of a fully naked Wolfgang, standing tall and unashamed in front of her. She feels an instinctive urge to look away, to duck her head demurely or even turn around, but she forces herself to resist it. Instead, she makes the conscious decision to look, to lean into that ingrained sense of discomfort at nudity in order to overcome it. Because by God, does she want to overcome it.
Wolfgang smirks and spreads his arms as if to say, Well, here I am. Take a look. She bites her bottom lip in a shy smile and does just that. Her gaze wanders over his body - his bright blue eyes, teasing but also kind, patient; the strong muscles on the curve of his shoulders and neck; his strong pecs and abdomen, littered with a few silvery scars here and there, years’ worth of fights and dumb accidents and reckless behavior.
She feels a flutter in her stomach as her gaze glides over the dents at the sides of Wolfgang’s hips, leading down to a light thatch of dark blonde hair, and just nestled beneath that, his cock, still soft, though Wolfgang’s interest in their earlier proceedings is beginning to seem evident.
She tries to hide her giggle behind her hand, but doesn’t entirely succeed.
“What’s so funny?” Wolfgang asks with a questioning smirk.
“Oh, nothing,” she says once her giggles subside a bit, “just remembering the time I talked to Lord Ganesha about your ‘very large trunk’ in the temple.”
They bubble of relative silence they’d been standing in as Kala looked at Wolfgang breaks as they both burst into laughter. It feels good to laugh - it eases the flutter in Kala’s stomach and chest, reminds her of who she’s here with.
“God, I love you,” Wolfgang says between fading chuckles, stepping closer to Kala and bringing her head forward so he can place a kiss on the top of it.
The flutter comes back at the words, but Kala has no time to say anything back just yet - Wolfgang turns to turn the taps off and climb into the tub behind him, giving her a delightful glimpse of the view she missed standing in front of him before. She takes an appreciative look before he lowers himself into the tub and settles in, gazing up at her through the thin steam rising from the water.
“Your turn,” he says, flicking his eyebrows up playfully.
But the flutter stops being a flutter and turns into a straight up clench of nerves.
Right. Her turn. To undress and climb into the bath. Because that’s why they’re here, right? To take a bath. Can’t take a bath without undressing. Obviously. She knew that logically, of course, barely paid it any thought when Wolfgang suggested the bath in the first place.
She’s always known, always wanted, to be with Wolfgang, in every sense of the word. Including this one, and including the doors this will open for them. But now that the reality of it is staring her in the face, despite how very much she wants to join Wolfgang, it seems like an insurmountable obstacle to have to undress in order to do so.
“If you want.” Wolfgang’s eyes are wide, his eyebrows raised. “Only ever if you want.”
The words seem to carry an even deeper meaning than what lies on the surface, and Kala finds she couldn’t look away from the intensity of his gaze even if she wanted to.
He’s willing her to understand something important here, something big. Something he doesn’t know how to put into words without losing the strength with which he means it. She’s not sure if it's the openness in Wolfgang’s expression or if it's their connection helping her understand every meaning behind it, but somehow she knows exactly what Wolfgang is trying to tell her with those five words.
She doesn't have to undress for the bath, yes. But he’s also telling her she doesn’t have to undress in front of him, ever, if she doesn’t want to. That she doesn’t have to kiss him or have sex or do anything that would cause her the least bit of discomfort. He is making sure she knows, beyond all doubt, that he only ever wants to do what she wants to do, what she’s comfortable with. Anything less than that, he’s not interested in.
He wants to love her in any way she needs. Any way she wants.
Somehow, it’s this moment that makes the last of her nerves, her worries, her fear (the good kind, the kind you feel just before jumping into the next great adventure - but fear all the same), melt away. For the first time in the days since Wolfgang was captured by BPO, Kala feels a complete sense of calm wash over her, a certainty in what she’s about to do.
She takes a slow, deep breath, and, still holding Wolfgang’s gaze, slowly slips the denim jacket off her shoulders and drops it to the ground. She toes her shoes off, kicking them off to one side before grabbing the hem of her shirt and pulling it off over her head, discarding it as well.
She reaches for the button on her pants, undoing it and the zip below, shimmying them down and stepping out once the fabric hits her ankles.
Wolfgang’s eyes are wide, not leaving hers for a second. He dips his chin a bit, his eyebrows raising infinitesimally, and the message is clear - Only ever if you want.
Kala nods back slowly in understanding. She reaches back, tucks her fingers under the band of her bra, and unhooks it. The tension keeping the garment in place loosens, and she takes the straps on either side and slides them down her arms until the bra joins the rest of her discarded clothes on the floor.
Her heart is pounding. She’s sure Wolfgang could see it if only he’d lift his gaze from hers.
One last step, then - she hooks her thumbs into her panties at either side of her hips and pulls them down before she has a chance to back out. Then she straightens up to look at Wolfgang head on.
He holds her gaze a few moments more, then allows his eyes to move slowly down her body.
She hates comparing, doesn’t feel like it’s fair to Wolfgang, but Kala can’t help but think how different this feels from when Rajan saw her naked on the few occasions it happened over their months of marriage. Rajan looked at her like her body was a treat, a prize - something he’d earned for being a good boy. Like her appearance and her mind, her personality, her self, was separate from the body in front of him.
Wolfgang’s face, on the other hand, is... reverent. His wide eyes circle over her body, lingering a few seconds on her hips, the curve of her waist, her breasts, but it never feels leering or dehumanizing.
It feels... loving. The tilt of wolfgang’s eyebrows over his clear blue eyes, his body language, his very thoughts seeping into Kala’s mind through the strength of their connection, makes Kala feel more admired and respected and desired and loved than she ever has in her life. The wave of this realization sends shivers up and down her body despite the warm steam filling up the room.
Wolfgang’s eyes finish their circuit over her body and meet her eyes once more. He extracts one hand from under the water and extends it towards her, dripping over the tiled floor.
Kala reaches forward and takes it, his strong grip serving as support as she climbs into the bath. She can feel him taking the same appreciative view she did when he climbed in as she lowers herself into the warm water and settles in between his legs. His arms come up around her abdomen, pulling her against his chest. She suppresses the urge to giggle when she feels his not completely soft cock nestle into the small of her back.
She rests her head back on his shoulder and looks up at him, smiling.
“What?” he asks with a smirk.
“Nothing just... I believe in miracles too. More so now than ever, I think.”
A second passes as the words sink into the silent air around them, and then both their smiles tip into soft giggles at the same time.
Wolfgang looks up and around at the room as his laughter peters away into the occasional chuckle. “Yeah. This isn’t half bad. We could get used to this, right?”
“Mm. You know what I think?” Kala asks, tilting and twisting her head around a bit to look up at Wolfgang.
"What?"
“I think,” she says before reaching up to press a kiss at the corner of Wolfgang’s lips, “that we are going to be very happy here.”
Wolfgang looks into her eyes, a sudden intensity appearing behind his own. He nods slowly, then simultaneously tightens his arms around her stomach and leans down to press their lips together once more.
They break apart after a few moments. Wolfgang reaches for the body wash on the built-in ledge over the tub and pours some into one hand, then rubs his palms together to form a lather.
He gestures towards Kala and raises his eyebrows in question. “Can I?”
Kala nods.
He starts with her arms, taking one of her wrists in each hand and rubbing the product into her soft skin. He makes his way up to her forearms, her elbows, her upper arms, and up onto her shoulders, where his hands change their previous superficial stroking into a slower, deeper massage.
Kala’s head rolls back onto Wolfgang’s chest, eyes closing in the mildly painful pleasure of his fingers pressing into the tension of her muscles. His hands move closer to her neck, digging into just the right spot, and a soft moan escapes her lips before she can help it.
His hands pause at the sound, and there is a stillness in the room for just a moment. The sexual energy that has been surrounding them since the rest of the cluster left (though, really, it has been thrumming between them since this whole thing started, since the moment they first locked eyes as she looked down at him from the balcony in Bombay and he looked up at her from a restaurant in Berlin) had lowered to a silent hum between them while they’d been in the tub, but now it comes back in full force. Kala can feel it in herself but also in him, this need to get impossibly closer, to dig impossibly deeper, to be together the way they never have before.
Wolfgang’s hands resume their task with just a bit more force than before. They move from her shoulders onto her upper back, descending slowly until they arrive at the midway point of of her back and stopping there for a moment.
Kala can feel what he wants to do. Can feel him hesitating, debating whether she wants it too.
She does.
So Kala leans back fully against his chest, pushing his hands out from between them and onto her sides. The movement is apparently enough to eliminate the doubt in Wolfgang’s mind, because he slides his hands forward and up to cup her breasts.
She can feel his breathing turning heavy as he holds them, massages them, pinches her nipples and makes her own breath catch in her throat. Another moan escapes Kala’s lips at the sensation, and the sound seems to drive Wolfgang higher into this energy. Kala curls her hands around the muscular thighs on either side of her in order to brace herself against the onslaught of sensations.
Wolfgang’s cock, which had softened completely over the past few minutes, is now showing even more of an interest than before. Kala can feel Wolfgang’s restraint through their connection, but he still can’t entirely stop his hips from gyrating slightly, his cock rubbing over the small of her back. The water sloshes gently against the sides of the tub with their movement.
His right hand lowers as his left continues massaging her, slides across her stomach slow-slow-slowly until his fingertips reach the very top of the neatly trimmed patch of hair at the juncture of her thighs, then waits.
Kala takes a deep breath, her heart pounding as she hears the harsh breathing from behind her. She quickly makes a decision, and uncurls one hand from around Wolfgang’s thigh and lays it over his.
She readjusts her head so she is looking directly up into Wolfgang’s eyes, sees the dark pupils reducing the blue to thin rings around them.
“Wolfgang?”
He pants softly for a moment before responding in a whisper. “Yes?”
The same sense of calm that took over her before undressing flows through her again, allowing her to feel certain of what she’s about to say.
“Take me to bed.”