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Carson wakes up first, and she stretches as best she can while wrapped up tight in Greta’s embrace. She smiles, her face pressed against Greta’s neck, her scent so warm and sweet in Carson’s nose. She thinks she could stay here forever. She wants to.
Without thinking, she snuggles closer, tangling their legs, trying to get comfortable, when Greta stirs with a low, rough laugh that makes Carson shiver a little.
“Good morning,” she greets her with a squeeze to her shoulder. “Are you always this restless? Because if you are, we’re going to have to work on that for next time.”
Next time.
Still half-asleep with her eyes closed, it’s obvious Greta doesn’t even realize what she just said, but Carson did, knows immediately how much it means, and her whole body flushes. Greta wants to do this again. Greta wants to wake up next to her, wants to hold her through the night, wants to do all of the things they did before they drifted off, lips still pressed together, breathing each other in until sleep overtook them.
“Not usually,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to Greta’s pulse. “I just slept really good.”
Greta finally cracks an eye open, looking down at her playfully. “Did you now?”
Carson presses her lips together around a smile at the amusement in Greta’s features, nodding. “Mhm.” She hums, looking back at her, eyes glimmering.
God, Greta looks so pretty in this light, soft sunshine peeking in through the blinds, bathing her gently in morning glow. In the silence, she looks like a dream, but Carson knows this is real. Greta is real. They’re real, and there’s proof of it: the gentle heat under the covers, Carson’s hand that she didn’t even realize was thumbing over Greta’s bare hip, the knowledge that Greta has freckles.
Carson could never get close enough in the day to see them before. But now, propping herself up on her elbow and looking down at Greta, she studies them again, how they dot Greta’s nose, frame her smile, and Carson’s heart skips at the thought that she wants to kiss each one. She doesn’t even recognize herself, doesn’t recognize this uncontrollable desire within her to know every inch of Greta, how she breathes, how she sleeps, how she moves, and for Greta to know those things about her too. It’s a kind of need she’s never possessed before – the need to know another in her bones.
Even after just one night, everything feels different. There’s no way it couldn’t. Greta seems softer, looks softer, her hair loose around her shoulders, bare-faced, bleary-eyed and a little bashful, nothing like the bombshell that walks out onto the field. She’s undeniably beautiful, of course. But somehow, in this moment, it feels different to Carson. More private. More real. More true.
Here, Greta is just a woman. And that’s what makes her extraordinary to Carson – how she turns on her side and relaxes into the pillow, how she looks at Carson, so openly adoring. Nobody else has ever looked at her that way, and Carson doesn’t want them to. It feels like something that should be only Greta’s.
“Hey,” Greta says gently, tilting her head to catch Carson’s eye.
“Hi,” she responds with a shy smile, hair falling to curtain her face. She’s gotten in the habit of hiding behind it.
“Hey,” Greta repeats, and like she knows it, she reaches out to tuck the soft strands behind Carson’s ear. She holds her hand steady, cupping Carson’s jaw.
“Hello,” she teases, pressing her hand over Greta’s, pressing a kiss to her pulsepoint at her wrist.
They replay this conversation sometimes, and it gets more and more familiar as the weeks and months pass. Their rhythm is easy at this point, full of soft, pleasant tension and sweetness. It’s ever-so-slightly different each time depending where they are, who’s around, but now, it’s only for them.
Carson gets a little lost in the idea of it – in having something that’s only theirs and no one else’s.
“Hey,” Greta starts again, and this time, Carson leans down to cut her off with a kiss.
“Hi,” Carson whispers into her mouth, grinning when Greta’s fingers tug at her hair, when she kisses her back easily. “We have some time before we have to learn if nuns like breakfast.” She gestures to the clock. “If you want.”
She bites at her lip nervously, uncertain and hopeful, and Greta presses her lips together around a smile, shaking her head a little affectionately.
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, Shaw?” she asks, raising an eyebrow, soft and teasing with her hair fanned out against the pillow under her head. God, she’s gorgeous.
“Is it so surprising that I want you?” Carson replies gently, but it comes off stronger than she meant, but she knows her own mind when it comes to Greta. She always has, even when she didn’t want to admit it. “That I think you’re beautiful?”
“Carson, you don’t have to say that,” Greta deflects quickly, flushing.
“Even if I mean it?” she breathes, looking down at her with dark eyes, lips parted a little. “Even if I want you?”
“Don’t say that,” Greta begs, gaze bright, pricking with tears. “Please.” Don’t say it unless you mean it.
“I want you,” Carson whispers, tilting her head back a little when Greta’s palm slides down against her jaw, full of desperate affection. Carson licks the pad of her thumb as she presses it against Carson’s lips, sucks her into her mouth, and Greta swallows hard. “Let me want you.”
“Carson,” she murmurs, and Carson releases her thumb with a pop, reaching to tilt her head back, thumb against the line of her jaw. She gasps when Carson kisses her neck, tipping her head back further on instinct, reaching to tangle her hands in soft brown hair. When Carson’s teeth scrape against her skin, just light enough that she won’t leave a mark, Greta spreads her legs before she can stop herself.
“Do you want me to stop?” Carson’s hands rest gently on Greta’s hips under her robe, calluses rough against her skin. It makes her shiver.
Greta shakes her head, swallowing. “No. Please don’t stop.”
“So I can do this?” Carson murmurs, kissing her collarbone, sliding her robe off of her shoulders, reverent. Her mouth moves lower, over her heart, along the slope of Greta’s chest.
When lips close around Greta’s nipple, she whines, arches. “Yes,” she answers without thinking. “Carson, please–”
Carson swirls her tongue, smiling, and her hands are everywhere, warm and strong, and Greta can hear the steady pulse of I want you, I want you, please believe me, filling the room. And for once, she tells herself to believe, finds the strength to allow herself to.
Carson is different. She can be different for Carson.
“I’ve got you,” Carson tells her, kissing her stomach, guiding her legs further apart with both hands, and before Greta can say anything, before she knows what’s happening, Carson’s moving lower, down, down, under the covers, and her mouth is on her.
“Fuck,” Greta whimpers when Carson spreads her with her thumbs like she didn’t learn how to do this just yesterday, when Carson moans softly, tasting her. “Fuck, baby–”
Quickly, Carson hushes her, pulling back to kiss at the inside of her thigh. “Hand over your mouth,” she tells her, voice a little muffled under the comforter. It’s obvious she’s remembering last night: Greta’s hand sliding up her throat, her palm against her lips. “I wish I could hear you, but–”
“I know,” Greta says quickly, and she complies, pressing her hand over her mouth, and then Carson’s tongue is on her again and her eyes roll back; it’s hard to breathe, hard to think, and she has to bite at the joint of her thumb, shoving it in her mouth to keep quiet.
Her vision swims as her head tips against her pillow, and she catches a glimpse of the cross above the bed. The bed that she and Carson slept in together, and unspeakably, inexplicably, she thinks that this must be what consecration feels like: Carson’s hands pinning her hips to the bed now, Carson sucking her clit into her mouth, the trembling heat that rushes up her spine.
“Carson,” she manages to whimper, just quiet enough, jerking her hips. “Carson, please, faster.”
In answer, she only complies, and Greta’s hand shoots to grip at one of the slats of the headboard, knuckles turning white. Her body curves up against Carson’s mouth, and fuck, she’s so close, so, so close–
When Carson slips two fingers inside of her, Greta can’t help it as she comes, moaning softly as she curls her fingers until she sees stars, whines, thinks God, God, God, please and wonders if she choked it out under her palm, too. She comes with the morning sun on her face where it’s streaming in through the window now. She comes with Carson grinning against her, kissing up the soft skin of her thighs, holding her fingers inside for a moment while Greta tightens around them and whines before she pulls back gently, sucking them into her mouth as she emerges from under the covers.
Greta blushes at the sight.
“Hi,” Carson greets, hair messy now, lips shiny. She looks proud of herself. Greta’s heart flips as she pulls her up by the collar of her sleep shirt and into a kiss.
“Hi,” she murmurs, kissing her once, twice, three times.
“I want you,” Carson tells her again, like she knows that Greta will believe her more now. And she does. Her words fall into Greta’s mouth. “I’m always going to want you.”
It feels like a promise. It’s been so long since Greta has let anybody promise her anything. But she reminds herself that this is Carson, that however scary it is, she’s starting to feel safe. And so she tells herself to believe, to believe in Carson, even though she hasn’t believed so much in anybody in years.
In a way, she feels like she’s just woken up, like she’s been sleeping all this time, and she’s finally seeing the world again and the world is seeing her, too. It feels like the first day of something new.
“I want you too,” she admits softly, a little weak, a little tender.
Carson kisses her again, and this time, it’s only soft, pure and chaste. “I like hearing that.”
Greta steels her resolve before she looks up at Carson and smiles shyly, confesses, “I like saying it.”
And she does. She really does.