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There are ways he doesn't like to be touched. They discover this, a little bit, together when Marta first stretches her fingers tentatively across his arm. She catches his elbow, and his guard is down enough or she's grown to know him well enough to recognize the flinch.
"I'm sorry, sorry." She draws back fast as though she burned him.
Aaron's voice catches her first. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay. Come here." He draws her gently into him with one arm, and it's the first they've been this close without it being all battle and adrenaline and something other than this.
She swallows.
His hand slides an inch down her back over her shirt. There is nothing suggestive in the gesture. It makes heat curl in the bottom of her belly.
He can't bring himself to touch her neck. He kisses her softly, hand sliding to her shoulder, then fingers curl upward before freezing. He stiffens, pulls away.
"Aaron," she calls softly.
But Marta's voice cannot catch him. There's that hangdog look, the misery in his eyes, and it slaps her that there's a tiny wounded part of them that is still the doctor and the participant, and if she made him stay now, it would be wrong.
The nightmares don't start until later, much later, when the only thing chasing them are ghosts and memories of blood on his hands. He tells her, hands shaking as he sits so far on the edge of the bed, it's a wonder he has not fallen off. He tells her about the blood, how it's red over his hands.
"I snapped her neck. She was— Dark hair. I don't even know what she did wrong. Made it look she hanged herself."
Marta aches at the pain in his eyes, the way he kneads his fingers, staring at them like they are horror. He sold his soul for a mind that worked because he didn't have the understanding to know what he would lose.
They sleep together before they sleep together. They navigate the dragon of her thrashing in the bed and Aaron learning to hush and wake her, not respond with reflexes programmed for war. They slay the dragon of his nightmares, her arms wrapped tenderly around him, her kiss on the back of his neck as he shudders because he cannot touch her there but it is one place he likes to be touched. They soothe the dragons under the skin of her wrists and the skin of his elbows where they were held down and restrained by those who sought to kill them.
He kisses her, and it is not soft. Her hands are urgent on his chest and scrabbling against his back and shoulders as he lifts her gently and traps her between himself and the wall. She thought this would start gently, in a bed, hesitantly, but they have already walked cautiously over the map of each other's bodies and posted signs around the pitfalls.
"Marta," he rasps against her shoulder, and she presses her head down instead of back, protects her throat, tastes his.
She's still hushing him, not even thinking about it, and they are silent as they press together, hot and hard and frantic into the unforgiving wall. She'll have bruises, and she doesn't even care.
"Aaron," she whispers, softly, barely it's own sound over the wetness of her whimper. "Please."
His hand slides lower and presses into her more roughly. He finds her clit and teases as he finds a better angle, and she nearly bites through her tongue when she comes a moment later.
"Please," then, he whispers, the prayer coming back at her, and she wraps her legs tighter around him, intensifies the rhythm until he's groaning against her, pressing her into the wall.
They breathe long, broken breaths together until they can pull apart and stay on their feet without the wall to hold them up.
He looks her a long moment, questioning. "Doc?"
Marta doesn't like to hear it, the word bringing memory rearing out of the dark. She rubs her finger over his lips, shakes her head as she watches him shudder with something not unpleasant. "Shh," she says. It's all she says.
Aaron doesn't touch her wrist, just tugs her gently by the shoulder to the bed so he can curl around her protectively. "G'night, Marta."
"Good night, Aaron." She smiles.