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It’s six weeks to the day when she corners him.
The six-week sex embargo after delivery – which, for the record, wasn’t information from her doctor either one of them had sought out; the woman had given it freely, almost cheerfully at their last appointment, as if expecting them to jump each other’s bones the moment she stepped out of the room. For months they’ve been attending said appointments under the guise of a couple; Frank figures sex is the natural order of things, for couples – even if it isn’t their natural order of things.
Or – at least, he never intended it to be.
He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t think she does, either. They’re physical in other ways, touches and kisses and silent embraces at night, in softer, chaste ways, and in many ways Frank thinks those are more meaningful, after their first, ill-fated shot at a relationship, with all the uncontainable fire and passion and fucking. This is their second go-around, their second chance, and Frank is well aware you don’t get many of those in life, sure as hell doesn’t intend to blow this one – because they’re stronger, now, after those hellish, interminable nine months. They came out stronger, together, and sex or no sex, he’s content. He’s only ever needed her.
Until. Always until.
Laurel sidles into the bedroom with a distinct sort of awkwardness about her, shoulders hunched and body tense, and he notices immediately; by now he knows her body better than even his own, has memorized the play of her muscles, the angle at which she holds her chin, the set of her jaw, every change in her posture when she’s upset, angry, sad, gone away on the inside, retreated into some place he can never hope to follow her to. He’s standing at the mirror above her dresser, in the midst of tugging on a shirt, which he gives up on as soon as he sees her, letting it fall to the ground.
She’s hugging her arms to her body; not folding them, but hugging herself, more self-conscious than standoffish. She’s lingering in the doorway too, watching him with half-wary blue eyes, as if assessing her footing, playing chess and deciding which move to make, which will lose her some imaginary game and put her in checkmate – and she gets in moods, sometimes, still, but none ever like this. She’s just woken up, like him, clad in a loose Middleton t-shirt and athletic shorts, hair all disheveled, and when she steps into the puddle of sunlight beneath the window his breath rockets into his throat, lodges itself there like a stone.
But something is off, and he knows it, and so he gives her a tentative grin. “Hey.”
She takes a step toward him, maintaining what seems like a calculated distance, before relaxing slightly, blinking the sleep out of her eyes, and giving him a muted little smile back; one of those slow-blooming, sad smiles that’ve become her trademark.
“Hey.”
“Want me to start breakfast?”
“No, I, uh-” She shakes her head, fidgets a little. “I’m not really hungry.”
He furrows his brow, pressing lightly, pushing his words toward her gently, like a mother bird nudging its baby out of the nest. “You… okay?”
A beat. Then-
“It’s been six weeks.”
It takes a moment to register, in his sleep-addled brain. Six weeks. Six weeks since the baby was born, that tiny, squalling boy she’d handed off to his adoptive family only hours later; he remembers that day, will remember it until he dies, simply because of how deep and bloody a gash it’d left on her heart, how much it’d gutted him as well, to lose something they’d never really had; something they had no better option than to lose. The significance of the six weeks doesn’t ring a bell, at first, but then-
“Oh, yeah,” he remarks, clearing his throat. “The, uh, the sex thing?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
They lapse into silence. And he can’t lie; it’s an overtly awkward silence. He stares at her and she stares right back, and neither of them know how to fill the gully between them with any suitable words. Frank doesn’t have any words at all, his tongue tied into a million useless knots, his entire vocabulary tangled right up with them. There’s something about Laurel, something flashing in her eyes, dark and deep – something he can’t lie and say that he doesn’t recognize, and it only bewilders him more.
“Yeah, I-” He pauses, blinks. “Guess that’s done with, huh?”
They haven’t had sex since before their breakup, more than a year ago. They’ve been together, these past months, but also not together, not the kind of together that includes sex, anyway, because she’d been afraid of being touched, certain he could never want her, huge and bloated and swollen with a baby that wasn’t his – even if that didn’t matter to him, never has, not even remotely. They’d been on too shaky a ground, anyway, to venture to that level of intimacy again; they’d both needed to heal, known sex was off the table indefinitely. It was unspoken, but implicitly, it was agreed upon.
He’d assumed that implicit agreement was still very much in effect. But Laurel never has lost her ability to surprise him.
She hesitates. Everything about her screams hesitation and nothing eagerness, but she’s loosening up, second by second, opening herself to him like a flower to the sun and moving closer, before finally she sucks in a breath, seems to steel herself, and comes out with it:
“Would you want to?” she breathes, a bit too quickly, like somehow if she speaks fast enough the words will all jumble together and not be real, not be audible at all. She lowers her eyes, then raises them back to his, again a bit too fast, too flighty. “Have sex, I mean?”
“I…” Christ, words don’t exist to answer her, even though he just needs one word, one word on the tip of his tongue, dangerously close to the precipice, tipping, tipping, until finally: “I – sure.”
Sure. It sounds noncommittal, though he doesn’t mean for it to; he’s shocked as hell more than anything, but ends up sounding more like he’s reluctantly accepting a toddler that’s been shoved into his arms only because he has no alternative than to let it go crashing to the ground, and Laurel takes note of that, gives a dry, huffing laugh.
“You can tell me if you wouldn’t,” she murmurs, mournfully. “I mean, I wouldn’t blame you.”
All the air rushes out of him. He deflates, right with it. “Why would you think that?”
“Because,” is all she says. “Look at me.”
“I am,” he tells her, simply, and steps forward, bridging the gap between them, smashing through those invisible walls built with invisible bricks. He is looking. She’s all he sees, ever, no matter what else might be occupying his attention. He’s never not looking.
Laurel seems to shrink as he approaches; wilt, retreat back into herself, though she doesn’t take a step away. Before long he’s close, agonizingly close, and they’ve been closer than this, since, but this is a sort of proximity that carries weight; he’s so near her he can feel the distant thumping of her heartbeat like thunder in the distance, drowning out everything, drowning out even his own until all he can hear is that steady, bloody drumbeat. It quickens, stutters, when he moves in, eyes tender, and he sees her swallow, shift her weight from leg to leg once more.
There’s a change, in the air, like a sudden drop in pressure, a sudden surge of heat. There’s no describing it, but they both feel it, and Frank knows it, knows there’s no going back, now, and he doesn’t want to, and judging by the subtle dilation of her pupils, his guess would be that she doesn’t, either.
“You don’t have to lie, it’s fine, I-” Her voice catches. She’s changing course, trying to evade him, wishing desperately she’d never brought any of this up; he can tell. “Down there, trust me… it’s just a bad neighborhood-”
“I want you,” he interrupts her, gently, voice low and rasping with sincerity, and she tenses, her breath hitching in her throat. “Never stopped wantin’ you. I want you all the time.”
She doesn’t speak, for a moment. She seems just as incapable of speech as he is, breathing quickly, cheeks flushing; it’s an inexorable tide of desire that washes over her, head to toe, and he watches the blush creep from her hairline to her neck and inevitably, damningly, lower still.
He’s not lying. He never stopped wanting her, all these months, even if it felt wrong, even if he’d never dreamed of acting on it. Wanting her is his resting state, not something he ever ceases doing; he wants her with every beat of his heart, every breath he takes. She sets the air around him on fire, or simply sucks the air out of his lungs altogether, and looking at her right now, standing before him, flushed and delectable and damn near perfect, he has no clue how she could ever think he’d stop wanting her.
It blows his fucking mind.
Her voice is a whisper, when she finally finds it. “Frank-”
“And if I gotta pin you against this wall and kiss every damn inch of you to prove it,” he rasps, not low or threatening, not predatory, though the deep, rumbling bass of his voice makes her arms break out into a field of goosebumps nonetheless, “I will.”
This is it. This is the brink, the point of no return, the edge of the Rubicon. It’s take it or leave it, here and now, and he’s deferring to her, waiting for her invitation, because he won’t do anything without it, even though his whole body is throbbing one singular beat, all his blood migrating mutinously southward. This is her choice, her decision, taking them back here. It’s all her.
There’s a look, in her eyes. Something snaps decisively; flashes, like a gear slotting into place. She raises her chin.
“Then prove it,” she says, exhaling the words on one breath, licking her lips as if to beckon him. “Fuck me.”
Well. It’s not like he’s going to say no.
If he were a better man he’d insist they talk this through, make sure she’s ready, that she genuinely wants him again – and not just to prove she isn’t unlovable, isn’t hideously scarred by pregnancy, by the fire before. If he were a better man he’d have the mental bandwidth right now to contemplate those things, maybe pull back, but the instant his lips press down on hers all rational thought is lost, and he’s lost with it. He’s so far gone for her, an ocean in over his head, and all he can do is sink further toward the bottom, let her drown him and drag him down to his sweet, sweet doom.
And he may not be right of mind, presently, but he does have the good sense to move slowly, deliberately, not go too fast and spook her and send her skittering away like a crab under a rock. He kisses her long and deep and languid before he ventures anywhere close to the bed, offers it up as an option, but Laurel proves surprisingly eager, surging into his kiss, standing on her tiptoes, and letting him bring her down with him onto the mattress. It’s so much of her, so much more than he’s had in ages, and somehow it’s still not enough; he could have all of her and it would still never be enough. He kisses her like he wants to crawl inside her, live there, close with her – forever.
He can’t lose her, again. Lose this. It’d almost killed him once. It’d finish the job if he did, again.
The bed, then. He lays her down, settles her down gently but doesn’t treat her with the caution of a man handling a china doll; she’s never liked that, never liked apprehension, sometimes has even balked at being adored, touched like gold. He moves firm, slow, steady. He lays himself down at her side, curling her leg around his hip, and kisses her until stars are all he can see behind his eyes, until he’s lost all concept of his earthly body at all and exists only to weather the hurricane that is her.
“I want you,” he murmurs in between kisses, fingers dancing around the hem of her shorts but not dipping inside, not daring to, just yet. “Fuck, I want you so bad.”
“Say it,” is her response, choked and desperate, thick with need. “Say that again.”
His words devolve into a chorus, a mantra – I want you, I want you, I want you every fuckin’ day, every fuckin’ hour, every minute. She seems to seek that affirmation; that he does still want her, after everything, when she so steadfastly believes he can’t, and she yields to him more with each one he gives, humming against his mouth as if singing a joyous little song against his lips, a hallelujah.
She should always feel wanted. He doesn’t know how to tell her how much he does want her, doesn’t think the right words exist, and so he settles for that poor man’s prayer instead, recited over and over into her mouth as though, if he says it enough times, he can force her to believe it.
He drifts, for a moment, and when he comes back to earth he finds himself tugging her shirt up and over her head. Laurel doesn’t resist, but she does stiffen, her lips going still against his for the tiniest millisecond, and as soon as he sees the field of flesh that’s been revealed to him, he stops breathing altogether, stops moving, stops thinking. All he can do is look.
He’s seen her naked, in those six weeks since, that day in the hospital when he’d held her in the shower for what had felt like hours, but that was distinctly non-sexual in a way this isn’t; this feels different, somehow. There’s no denying it; she’s different than before, her breasts larger, her hips and stomach littered with stretch marks, little dark pink lines marring her flesh, and he sees those differences, and yet all he sees is her, the woman he loves, the woman he's always loved. She’s different and she’s so much the same, and he’d love her any way, in any universe, any dimension where he is Frank and she is Laurel, because she just is.
She’s been through hell. Her pregnancy ate at her in ways he probably still doesn’t comprehend and can’t possibly understand, and it changed her, and the scars from it only make him love her impossibly more, his chest swelling with affection he can never seem to express. She’s strong, fucking fierce. Really, more than anything, fucking incredible. For a moment Laurel seems to be gauging his reaction, terrified he’ll shrink back in disgust, put a stop to this right now, but the moment he dives back in, kissing her neck and sucking lightly at her pulse point and moaning, she goes loose and pliant beneath him, all the worry flooding out of her.
He said he wants her. That goes for all of her; everything she was, everything she is, her differences, her scars. They're all her. He wants ever single part of her.
He could tell her she’s beautiful. Maybe she’d want the validation. But he pours the words into her through his kisses instead, infusing every single ounce of want he can into them, until she’s squirming beneath him, her nipples hardened into peaks, her mouth betraying her with low, needy whines that gradually grow in pitch and frequency. Her body is slick with sweat between the sheets, and if he had to guess he's sure she’s slick in other places, too, but he refrains from checking, resolves to go slow. This isn’t about release, about holding her down and fucking into her until they come; this isn’t about coming at all. This is just being with her, as close to her as he can possibly get, and so he holds back, decides to kiss her until she’s given him his next cue to move further, move things along. She holds the reins, here, always has and always will.
Her hand registers at the front of his sweatpants, suddenly, and before he even realizes it she’s endeavoring to tug them down, while simultaneously fumbling with her own shorts. He chuckles, and does away with hers, pleasantly surprised to find her wearing nothing beneath, before reaching for his own.
His hand stills at the last moment, though. Because this seems to be a series of points of no returns, Rubicons to cross, and again he’s seeking her consent, her affirmation, nonverbal or verbal or however she chooses to give it, that they can proceed. The language of her body is one he hasn’t spoken in an eternity, but it comes back to him as naturally as any mother tongue, and he reads it, reads her flawlessly, knows this necessitates a time-out; a reassessment.
This could be awkward, clumsy. It’s been so long they might as well be strangers – but they can never be strangers to each other, no matter how long they’ve been parted. And Frank doesn’t particularly subscribe to the idea of fate, destiny, predetermination of his life like a movie in which he’s merely a player following a script, but he does believe in her.
In this. Them. It’s the only thing he believes in.
“I need you,” he says, the words half choked on a moan; a desperate, almost pathetic sound. He doesn’t bother to be embarrassed by how bad he needs her, how hard he is for her. He wants her. He needs her, needs her so bad he burns for it, flame scorching through his veins like they’ve been pumped full of gasoline. “Laurel…”
“Well,” she laughs, cocking her head to one side as if in a challenge. Something falters in her smile, though it disappears as quick as it comes. “Better hurry up, then.”
He gives her a roguish grin, tugging off his sweatpants and making his way atop her, which is something he’s been careful not to do, thus far, unsure if his weight would be too much for her, too overwhelming. He thinks about rolling them over, putting her on top, to let her have total, unfettered control, and is just about to do that very thing when-
It stops.
It all grinds to a halt, a train on the tracks jamming on its brakes, sparks shooting everywhere, all screeching metal and hissing steam and chaos, that’s how it feels. He feels Laurel tense, inexplicably, go as rigid and cold as a corpse beneath him. He can’t say what it is that triggers it, in particular – the weight of him or the brush of his cock on her thigh, or maybe a combination of both, or something else entirely – but all at once she’s shutting down, wriggling her way out from underneath him frantically, as though scared he’ll drag her back, hold her down if she can’t get away fast enough.
“No.” The word comes out in a ragged burst. “Stop, stop, I… I can’t – I-”
He fucked something up. He’s done something wrong, made a misstep, and he doesn’t know what, and it’s such a dramatic change of pace he finds his head reeling, watching her recoil from his touch like she’s been burned, scamper over to the side of the bed and tug the sheets around her for cover. She’s breathing hard, trembling faintly, and turns her back to him where he lays, trying to steady his breath, bewildered. She shuts down in mere seconds, closes herself off, goes from giving everything to giving nothing, like some internal switch has been flipped and she’s gone dark on the inside.
Idiot. He’s a fucking idiot. He fucked this up. He should’ve known it’d be too much. Too soon. He’s always such an idiot.
He always hurts her, in the end.
There’s no sound in the room but for their labored breathing, for a while; minutes, maybe five, ten. She sits with her back turned to him, and he lays there, naked, in disarray, his cock thick and insistent between his legs; a burden, now, maybe even menacing for her, he doesn’t know. It’s quite fucking clear he doesn’t know anything; he’s too stupid even to ask her what’s wrong. He doesn’t know what’s wrong. He’d gone plodding his way carelessly over a field of landmines like a damn fool, somehow expecting none of them would trigger.
He went too far. He let them go too far and now he’s fucked up, and maybe it’s beyond repair, this time, no going back, no repairing this house of theirs when the foundation on which it’s been built is so hopelessly fragmented. Maybe he was stupid to think they could go back to how things were, before; stupid to think they could ever heal. Maybe there’s no coming back.
“I can’t,” Laurel says, finally. The words make his heart lock up, like a little malfunctioning, useless motor. There are no tears in her voice, but she’s shaken, that much is clear. “I… I thought I could, I thought-”
He sits up, reaching out to touch her. “Hey, ‘s okay-”
“No it’s not,” she shoots back, shrinking away from his touch, and he lets his hand fall down to the sheets with a soft, defeated thump. “I thought…” She isn’t finishing her sentences, isn’t making any sense. Every word she speaks kills him, laden with a hollow, empty sort of sorrow. “I don’t know. I thought I was ready.”
She sounds so despondent, but there’s something lurking farther beneath; frustration, maybe, at herself, for being broken, for not being whole, for him – and the thought breaks him, the idea that she could feel that way, think that he could ever be angry at her, for this. He doesn’t know what it is that makes her so hesitant about sex, again; painful memories, perhaps, of the last person she shared a bed with, or hesitation because of what’d happened the last time she slept with anyone, one traitorous broken condom and nine months later. He doesn’t know. Can probably never hope to know.
“It don’t matter,” Frank tells her, words simple and low and truthful. He dares to inch toward her, but doesn’t reach out, again. “We… we don’t need to, you know we don’t-”
“Would you stop being so fucking self-sacrificing all the time?” There’s venom behind her words, and it makes him flinch, and immediately Laurel sags, her shoulders slumping, her whole body seeming to collapse under the weight of the words. “I’m sorry. I’m just-” She finally looks back at him, all defeated and worn down, torn to bits by grief, so much of it layered on her shoulders he doesn’t know how the hell she’s still standing. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care,” he tells her, more forcefully than he means to. He moves closer, and this time she doesn’t shrink away, eyes wide, deep blue and full of fear, guilt, the threat of a tide of tears rising. “I don’t need that, not if you’re not ready. We don’t gotta – now, ever. Even if-” He pauses, shaking his head. “Even if you never wanna do it again, I don’t care. Don't matter to me-”
“You say that now,” she scoffs, “but it would.”
“No it wouldn’t.” Fuck, he doesn’t know how to make her believe him, wishes he were better with words; he’s always been shit with words when he needs them most. He settles himself down behind her, not touching her but for the brush of his bare chest against her back, painfully aware of their mutual nudity and her flightiness, the delicacy of this situation. “You ‘n me… we’re more than that, now. We did all that stuff before.” He cracks a grin, trying desperately to inject some levity into this conversation. “More than our fair share, believe me.”
“I want to,” she remarks, eyes lowered but still facing him, not turning away. “I do. But I just… I can't.”
“So? We wait. We wait ‘til… you’re ready. However long that is. I can wait.” He smiles, a bit sadly. “I’m good at waitin’.”
Good at waiting. He’s waited for her for months, waited for her to let down her defenses, let him in. Waited for her to invite him back into her life, pregnant and alone and distrustful of everyone around her as she was. He waited, then. He can wait, now.
What’s a year. Two. Ten. What’s an eternity, really, when it comes to her.
“I’m here. I’m not leavin’,” he promises, and finally takes her hand, breathing an internal sigh of relief when she lets him. “And I’m down to be celibate. Just lemme…” He drifts off. “Lemme be here. ‘S all I need.”
That wears down the last of her resistance, and Laurel melts, leaning into him, rolling her eyes playfully. “You’re ridiculous. You’re – God, you’re impossible.”
He smirks. “In a good way?”
“In a good way,” she affirms, giving a shaky laugh.
He’s covered himself with the sheets, mostly, but they slip to the side when he shifts forward, and it’s then that Laurel’s eyes fall on his cock, still hard, wanting, insisting on making its presence known. There’s something like guilt, again, flickering behind her eyes, which she averts quickly, unsure what to do.
“I, uh… if you want I can-”
“No. Nah, no way,” he chides, softly, perplexed by her, by her willingness to do something she doesn’t want for him, for something as base and as ultimately meaningless as pleasure. “I’ll live. Just c’mere.”
There’s no hesitation, this time, when he lays back down, crawling beneath the sheets, and urges her to do the same. Laurel tucks herself in at his side without a word, fitting there effortlessly, like she was sculpted to do so, like he was hollowed out for her to be there; woman from man’s rib, the first two people on earth, created for each other.
He thinks they were.
They don’t say anything. There’s nothing that needs to be said. He holds her – only, no, that isn’t right. He isn’t holding her; if anything, she’s the one holding him like a child, cradling his head, pressing in close. He's still hard, trapped against her belly, aching for her because he never stops aching for her, yet somehow the fact is almost irrelevant, and he barely feels it at all. He’s so utterly entangled in her he can’t bring himself to care, wrapped in her arms, buried in the subtle peppermint scent of her hair and lost in the landscape of her body, and he never wants to be found.
He still wants her. He’s never stopped, never will. But that wanting is for another time and place, and he can settle for this, even though it doesn’t feel much like settling at all. He’d rather have this than anything in the world.
They don’t fuck. He doesn’t need that. She doesn’t, either. They had that, once, an abundance of that, of fucking out their feelings, talking only with their bodies with so many lies muddying the water around them, and they’ve moved past that point, put down roots that run so much deeper.
So instead of fucking her, he kisses every inch of her; kisses her all over, everywhere he can reach, until they're both sleepy and sated in a way that runs as deep as the marrow in his bones, beyond that superficial pleasure of their bodies that once had ruled them. He covers her with kisses, and with each one gives a silent I love you – because they're beyond saying that, too. Now, it's something they just have to know.
He does. He does know it. And right then, he knows she does, too.