Archive of Our Own

It's the year 2027 when they pull Conrad out of the ice.

He had only so many months of his life spent in a body that was injected into him, to help his country defeat the Nazis. Or so he was told. He knew, as the man of science he had always wanted to be, that it wasn't a singular purpose that got him chosen for this project. If he hadn't plunged that plane into the water, he would have lived to see the allied victory, before being subjected to testing of all sorts. But because he did exactly what he needed to do, what might have been his fate all along, the science of his body was lost.

Until now.

Conrad Beck Fisher was born in 1919, and not expected to live more than a few hours after birth. His heart was not as strong as doctors had hoped, and despite his family's access to the best healthcare of the time, his outlook was still grim. Then the day ended, the sun set, it rose again, and he was still alive. A little boy, fighting with everything he had, in spite of the underdeveloped muscle in his chest, despite what every doctor coming in and out had said. He had lived.

His heart would prove itself, never physically, but in every other way that counted. He stood up for himself, never backing down from a fight, always willing to defend the little guy, which was usually himself. His little brother, Jeremiah, outgrew him early in their teens and could run circles around him, but never took advantage of it.

During the Depression, despite the Fishers' wealth, they were still hit hard by food shortages. Jeremiah never thought twice about giving half his servings to Conrad, knowing his body needed it so much more. By the time it was over, a terrible war had broken out across the ocean, and they would spend their days listening to the gruesome details through their radio.

When the United States got involved, both brothers' names were called, but only Jeremiah was physically fit enough to serve. He got sent to basic training, keeping up correspondence as much as he could.

4F became a very familiar sight to Conrad. He kept trying, lying his way into possibly being chosen. He said he was from all over. Portland, Newport, Albany, Hartford, any place he could think of that might convince a draft officer he could fight.

He didn't want to kill people, anyway. He only wanted to help them. He had hoped that despite his physical fitness, or lack thereof, the standards could be loosened for someone who simply wanted to serve in a medical capacity. Apparently, that was entirely impossible.

On his fifth attempt, trying as a man from Providence, two MPs made their way into his examination room. He wasn't going to put up a fight. He had broken the law more than several times, lying on his forms, just for a chance, and he felt any and all consequences were justified. But instead of handcuffs, he was given an opportunity. Dr. Erskine had given him a chance to prove himself. The details were sparse, but all Conrad saw was a chance to serve.

Prove himself for what, he didn't know yet.

All he knew was that he had been given the smallest fatigues they made for men and sent to basic training. Every other man in his squadron was faster, stronger, a far better soldier than Conrad could ever be.

Late one night, the night he learned he had been chosen to receive the serum, a serum that made mere men into gods, he had asked a simple question.

Why me?

Dr. Erskine had explained it like Conrad should have known all along: the others were better soldiers, but Conrad was the best man. He had shown, time and time again, his willingness to protect others, once even throwing himself onto a — what he would later learn to be a dud — grenade, and that was what had brought the higher ups to choose him. Conrad was a good man, Erskine said, and one who, because of being small and weak his whole life, would never take the strength he was about to gain for granted.

The next morning, Conrad was injected with a serum a color unlike anything he had ever seen, and placed into a too-large machine to complete the transformation. It was bright and loud and he was certain he was going to die. That this would be his life's end, a failed enlistee who had lied his way into a science experiment funded by millionaires and rubber-stamped by generals, neither of whom genuinely cared about him.

He felt like the monster from a novel he had read as a boy. A creature born of hubris, whose purpose had been decided for him. Perhaps the only place he had ever truly belonged was in this form, the one that had taken a machine and a miracle to build.

He didn't die. When he came to, he was surrounded by people who had once been taller than him, now looking up. He was still lean, the serum not necessarily giving him anymore mass, but he could feel the power he had in his body. He was given clothes to cover himself, the ones he'd been wearing now much too small, a simple white t-shirt and standard issue khakis.

It wasn't long, in the midst of celebrating their success, that chaos erupted. In a body entirely too new, one he was nowhere close to accustomed to, he had tried to save Dr. Erskine, but to no avail. Erskine's last act was placing his hand over Conrad's heart, reminding him of what had brought him here in the first place. He chased after the killer then, not for vengeance, not to take a life because one had been so cruelly taken, but to protect others, to keep the serum out of the wrong hands.

His legs, no longer stumpy and frail, carried him through the streets of Boston, streets so familiar from all the fights he had lost in their alleys and on their sidewalks.

He leapt into the frigid Cape Cod Bay without a second thought, his fear abandoned for the greater good. He helped a boy back to safety. He kept up with the killer. The submersible contorted under his grip, and it wasn't long before he was dragging the man back to the surface, but it was too late. The serum had been destroyed, at the cost of a cyanide pill.

He had failed.

Because of that, he became a prop. A symbol of hope, despite the body behind it having little. Between stage shows encouraging people to donate scrap metal, Conrad would be poked and prodded, blood drawn by faceless scientists.

He was given the moniker of Captain America, despite doing nothing to deserve it. Some around him said that he, like many soldiers, had given his body for the cause, but he knew that was a load of bullshit. Men, one of whom was his own flesh and blood, were on the other side of the ocean actually fighting, possibly dying, and here he was, a monkey being given tricks for a show. He signed comic books, posters, did photoshoots, but every camera flash made his soul a little dimmer. Women noticed him, wanted him, and he tried, tried anything to numb the uselessness, but nothing worked.

They gave him a spangly suit and shield, and he couldn't even use them.

In the midst of it, the correspondence from Jeremiah had stopped completely. The last Conrad knew, his brother was in Italy. His letters had reflected the desolate conditions in which he was fighting, his sunny disposition long gone, the words detailing horrors he had witnessed but, at least so far, been spared from experiencing firsthand. At least, that's what he wrote to Conrad. Probably not what he wrote to their parents.

He had the ability to help people, to protect people, and he wasn't being treated as such. They sent him all over the country to rally domestic support, and the more he did it, the more he longed to be in the thick of it.

Conrad managed to snag medical journals and books wherever he could, teaching himself how to tend to the worst wounds seen on battlefields, often using himself as a training tool.

When given the opportunity to cross the Atlantic and raise morale for allied soldiers in Italy, he took it without hesitation. He wanted to be there for the men who had actually been fighting. And there was always the chance of finding his baby brother.

After being pelted with tomatoes in the rain, he thought his trip couldn't get any worse. Soon after, he learned that an entire unit had been captured, a unit whose number Conrad had become all too familiar with.

Jeremiah's.

That was enough to make him break his own rule. He would no longer let himself be told he was too valuable to risk, too irreplaceable to lose, as though he were a weapon kept in a glass case instead of a soldier.

Uniform Code of Military Justice be damned.

He took his idiotic suit and shield, a handgun, and twisted his title just enough to make a pilot drop him over enemy territory. He trekked through the mountainous terrain of Northern Italy until he hit an Axis base, shot at by men too cowardly to show their faces, with ammo that matched the color of the serum running through his veins.

Getting through the fire was the easy part. Conrad had never taken a life before, and he held himself to that standard, even when the only mission of the men firing at him was to take his.

He found cages filled with his countrymen and their allies and freed them all. He asked, in as many languages as he could manage, whether anyone had seen his brother. No one knew. He sent them on their way with exact instructions back to safety, and turned around to find Jeremiah himself.

Those who had captured him had nearly killed him. He was half dead when Conrad found him. Jeremiah, despite his state and clear disorientation, was very confused by his big brother's new body. Conrad didn't have time to explain, only to haul him over his shoulder and go.

They sent Jeremiah home, along with all the other injured they could safely transport.

His brother would make a full recovery. But in the same letter carrying that news, Conrad received word of his mother's ailments. Like at his birth, their means weren't enough to help her.

The news of her death reached him late, delayed because he had been sticking his hand into a fellow soldier's sucking chest wound. The man had lived, and that may have been the only good thing about any of it.

He didn't get to say goodbye. He wrote as much and for as long as he could, but it would never be enough. The words fell short of what he actually wanted, which was to be with her. To spend every remaining day helping her, caring for her, tending to her. What was the use of his new body if he couldn't even help the woman who had been its true creator? He kept all her letters. One of the few belongings that were truly his.

Weeks later, on what he didn't know would be his final mission, he destroyed what was left of the serum. The weaponry, the ammunition, every last trace of it, gone. Except for him. The only remaining piece of all that research and funding was coursing through his veins, and it felt only right to get rid of it too. With his limited piloting experience, he redirected the plane headed for home and drove it, and himself, into the unforgiving arctic ice.

He would wake up in a room all too familiar and all too different. Everything and nothing were off. He would learn, in his escape, that he wasn't in the 1940s anymore. The government explained everything to him as part of the reacclimation process, told him his belongings from his previous life would be waiting at his family's home, and then more or less shut the door in his face. They had gotten what they wanted and didn't need him anymore.

Before any of that, before the explanations and the paperwork and the door in his face, they had subjected him to every vaccine developed in the last eighty years. He had sat in a paper gown on a too-cold examination table while a rotating cast of faceless doctors debated, in front of him as though he weren't there, whether his immune system even needed them. Whether the serum had made him impervious to everything they were about to administer. They gave them to him anyway, all at once, which he thought said less about their concern for his health and more about their desire to get it over with.

Now he was 108 years old, stuck in a 24-year-old's body, with no idea what to do with either.

Being out of the ice was more lonely than being inside it. The agency that had created him dissolved in the seventies, and there was no need for him anymore. His family were all dead. What remained was a too-empty beach house on the Cape he had never been to, their too-large family home in Boston, a trust he didn't want, and nothing else that was his. 

The government had kept his suit, but he burned everything else that had tied him to the military. They had all but erased his public existence, the facing one now kept in Smithsonian archives, so he might as well have destroyed the rest.

The only good the government did for him was the forged documents. His Brown diploma, Biology, class of 1940, now read 2025. His driver's license said he was born in 2003, despite him never having learned to drive. A new birth certificate, a new social security number, because the original one issued to him at eighteen would have been impossible to explain in the modern world.

He had spent an entire year studying, trying to make up for eight decades of medical advances he had missed. He loved the new wealth of knowledge, the good and the bad of it, everything done to make life easier and longer, the mistakes and evils committed along the way. It was hard to know that hubris had never really left science at all. Men with the power to do extraordinary things had always found a way to do terrible ones with it instead. Eighty years hadn't changed that.

He had applied to Harvard Medical School because it was the only thing that made sense to him anymore. To contribute to the good part of science, the side that wanted nothing more than to help and cure. His body had changed, but his brain and his morals hadn't. He knew what it was to feel like a product of someone else's ambition, and he had no intention of letting anyone under his care feel the same. He also thought of his mother, how much pain she must have gone through until her final moments, how little medicine at the time could do to help her, and how he never wanted someone to ever feel the loss he did. 

When the acceptance letter came, he let himself celebrate. He took the train out to the Cape for the first time, to a house that hadn't existed when he did. His father had bought that land in the late twenties, farmland, nothing more, and someone had gone and built a life on it without him. He sat in the sun anyway. He played music spanning decades and continents, made himself what he thought would be too much food but was actually never enough, his hunger for it a close rival to his hunger for knowledge, and tried in vain to accustom himself to the world he was living in. Not far in distance, but obscure in every other sense. 

There were aged photographs of his family, the group shrinking frame by frame. Four members to three, to two. By the time it was two, there was only one photo left, his father and Jeremiah, Conrad guessing it to be sometime in the sixties. His father's hair had gone gray, his brother's not far behind, and their smiles were weighted down in a way Conrad recognized. The matriarchal loss, he figured. Everyone in his family, Jeremiah included, had died believing Conrad was gone too. He hoped that had given them some comfort. That wherever they were going when their lives ended, they had expected to find him there. 

His weeklong self-indulgence concluded, and he returned to Boston. Before medical school, he had more catching up to do. From June to August, he watched films, television, even downloaded social media. He didn't look into the Captain America of it all. He was afraid of what he would find, or worse, what he wouldn't. At this point, no one had recognized him, and he was grateful for that.

He started medical school in mid-August and fell right into his work. He kept his head down, still a little wary of being recognized, talking to as few people as possible. One girl, Agnes, managed to break through all of it anyway. She would invite herself over, helping him study for hours on end, never questioning why a 24-year-old had a house that size to himself. They had tried, more than once, to be something more, but it never quite took. What it settled into instead was better, he thought. Easier. The kind of thing he hadn't known he needed.

She even helped him acclimate, unknowingly. She made remarks, nothing ever mean-spirited, more observational, about his wardrobe, or lack thereof. His clothes were "Great Depression core," she said more than once, and that he dressed like her grandfather in old photos. He didn't entirely disagree, though he had no idea what ‘Great Depression core’ meant, and felt it was safer not to ask.

He used an insignificant part of his trust to buy new clothes, Agnes helping him pick them out. She said it was his taste, just modernized, and he agreed. She also told him to learn something new to cook, because there was no way she was putting up with grilled chicken, quinoa, and broccoli for much longer without killing him herself. 

By the end of their first year, they had both been accepted to a prestigious clinic placement, and that was how they spent their summer. With patients, Conrad was unmatched. Medically, he was second only to Agnes in their cohort, and he was fine with that. Dr. Namazy praised him in her own way, and he absorbed every word of it. He asked her to be his professional advisor, and she accepted, not without informing him she had only done it once before. He didn't take that lightly.

The next year flew by in the way that good years do, full enough that there was no room to notice the time passing. At the end of it, Dr. Namazy invited him to a conference in Brussels. He decided to leave a few days early and make something of the trip. The last time he had been to Europe, much of it was war torn, reduced to rubble. He wanted to see what it had become.

He flew into Paris first.

He got on and off and back on the most touristic bus he had ever seen, a translator in his ear and the city of love sprawling out in front of him, more beautiful than he had expected it to be, better than any memory had served him. 

Paris in late June welcomed him with open arms. Being there, not under fire, surrounded by seasonal flora and people who had never known its worst days, nearly broke his heart with how happy it made him. He hadn't lived the life he thought he would. But then again, he had never been one to stick to expectations, even his own. 

He wandered aimlessly, stopping only once to change out of his plane clothes into a dress shirt tucked into khakis, a light jacket thrown over it. 

Conrad continued in his aimlessness, and it was the first time in his life he truly felt free. In the beginning, he had been constrained by his ailments, his frailness, the body that refused to cooperate. Then he got what he wanted, got enlisted, and was turned into something kept on a leash. Then pulled from the ice and told he was free, without ever actually feeling it. But he had made his own path since then, not determined by anyone or anything, not even a super serum, and now he could finally settle into where it had brought him. 

The city sprawled before him, and he hoped it could feel the love he had for it. Less than twelve hours in, and he already knew he would have to come back. There was something about it he couldn't place, maybe some shared history between him and this city that made him feel, for the first time in a long time, like he belonged somewhere. Something made him never want to leave. 

He isn't looking where he's going, which is why he collides directly into something. Or better yet, someone.

"I'm so sorry, uh, desolée," he says, before he gets a look at her.

She turns, and Conrad forgets, for just a moment, everything he knows. He has felt the wind knocked out of him before, more times than he can count, but never like this. Never for a reason like this. She is shorter than him but taller than most, in a short black dress, dark hair to match, and she is looking at him like he is the one who should be apologizing, which, to be fair, he is. Her eyes catch the last of the afternoon light in a way that makes him feel like he has never actually looked at anything before. Her lips are a bright red. He is suddenly very aware that he has been standing in the middle of a Paris street, staring, for what has probably been too long.

He doesn't move anyway.

"It's okay, don't worry about it. No bruise, just slight annoyance," she says, and the smile that comes with it makes clear she doesn't mean a word of it. American accent. He is floored all over again.

Conrad doesn't speak, which he knows is impolite, and tries to scramble together some semblance of the ‘old-school New England charm’ Agnes always claims he has. He falls short. The only thing that may help start to speak is looking away, so he does. 

"I'm sorry," he repeats, and she laughs, and every other sound he has ever heard means nothing.

"It's okay. Seriously. Tourists aren't necessarily known for navigating the streets well."

He wants to say; I've been here. I've fought here. And now, looking at you, I never want to leave.

He says none of it. But something stirs in him, from somewhere he can't identify, and he finds himself saying:

"Tourist? If I'm not mistaken, I hear an American accent coming from you."

She grins. "Thank god, you know more than ‘sorry.’"

"Not much more, though."

He gets another laugh out of her, and he would give anything to hear it for the rest of his life, however long it may be. 

He sticks his hand out.

"Conrad. It's nice to meet you."

She puts her hand in his, and he feels it, a jolt stronger than any serum, reaching into corners no science could ever come close to. From the slight catch in her breath, he wonders if maybe she does too.

"Isabel."

He holds onto the handshake a half second too long, and doesn't entirely mind that she doesn't pull away either. 

"So, Isabel, what's the occasion?"

"A birthday party. Well, a pre-birthday party."

"Yours?"

"Yes. My friends have a philosophy that one day is never enough to celebrate the birth of someone." A beat. "My guess is it's an excuse to drink more."

Conrad laughs. The silence settles between them, and his eyes find their way back to hers, and he doesn't know how much time passes. He doesn't want to. A bike buzzing by pulls them both back. Conrad feels whatever had been building between them deflate just slightly, and he clears his throat.

"I wouldn't want to hold you up. It was nice to meet you, Isabel."

He turns to go, but a hand, small and warm, the same one he shook not moments ago, wraps around his wrist.

"Are you in Paris alone, Conrad?"

He turns back around. "Is anyone ever truly alone?" It comes out more awkward than he intended.

She doesn't seem to mind. "I was thinking, if you don't have any other plans, maybe you could join me."

"I wouldn't want to be an intrusion."

"It's no intrusion. There's plenty of food and drinks to go around, and it would be nice to have a fellow American there to, you know, level the playing field."

They both laugh.

“Sure, Isabel. I would love to. Thank you.”

“I should be thanking you, I hate showing up to parties by myself.” 

They move leisurely through the streets, her steps sure of themselves, and him just lucky enough to follow them. 

He asks about her life, her family, what brought her to Paris. She responds easily, like she has never once had trouble filling a silence, telling him about her friends, her studies, how she always knew she would end up here one way or another. She talks about her brother, her best friend, the on again off again thing between the two of them that she has clearly given up trying to understand. Her mom and her dad, separately, the way people talk about divorced parents, like two distinct chapters of the same book. She had just graduated from undergrad, a small liberal arts school not too far from Brown, one that was definitely not co-ed when he was in college, though he wouldn't mention that. When he congratulates her, she waves it off and tells him she is starting a program at the Sorbonne in the fall. So she is here, at least until that's over.

He gets the sense she might stay longer than that.

She turns the questions on him, and he gives short but not dismissive answers, deflecting where he can. How was he supposed to talk about his life? No one had ever really pried, not even Agnes, not because she didn't care, but because they had an unspoken agreement when it came to details. But something about Isabel made him feel like he could give that up. Like the secrets he had been carrying weren't quite as heavy as they had been an hour ago.

He told her what felt safe. A little brother. Mom and dad. Boston born, Brown for undergrad, just finished his second year of medical school. She didn't need the rest of it. Not yet.

"Wow, a doctor. And a humble one at that."

"Not a doctor. Yet."

"Okay, a halfway doctor." She tilts her head. "Anything else you're hiding from me?"

Yes. A whole life. Well, part of one, a life I never got to see through. But standing here, in front of you, I find I'm not too mad about putting that plane into the arctic all those years ago.

“Nope. I’m a pretty open book.”

She walks up to a restaurant full of people, and he can tell immediately that all of it is for her. She introduces him to the people outside like she has known him her whole life, easy and natural, before a woman in a pink dress squeals and pulls her into a hug. Conrad hangs back, not wanting to disturb her in her element. He’s greeted by the woman in the pink dress, Gemma, and her shakes hands with her partner, Max. A third woman, eccentric in a way that announces itself, makes her way to Isabel with something along the lines of "fuck me sideways, you American slut," and Isabel responds in French, and Conrad decides, quietly, that her speaking French beats out her laugh. That is something he would like to hear for the rest of his life. The third woman introduces herself as Celine, and as Isabel's closest friend in Paris, only to be immediately reminded of her place by Gemma. He sticks his hand out, as he has been doing his whole life, but Celine bypasses it entirely and kisses both his cheeks, once, then twice. He hears Isabel laugh somewhere behind him before a man, shorter and more slender than him, comes up to her, handing her a drink and saying something in Spanish, pulling her into a hug and kissing both her cheeks.

Something ugly erupts in his chest. Something he has never felt before, or at least never felt like this. He doesn't like the way this man touches her, doesn't like that it isn't him. Conrad knew his strengths, his super strengths, all his other serum-induced abilities, and this, this envious, rotting thing in his chest, was definitively one of his weaknesses.

"Benito, this is Conrad. Conrad, Benito."

The rot subsides, mostly, when the hand he shakes is small and slender, just like the body it belongs to. 

He knows his hands and fingers are much more capable, but he makes sure not to break Benito’s hand. 

Those same small hands grab Isabel’s and lead her to a back room of some kind, to her present. 

"So, Conrad, how did you come to meet our Isabel?"

He smiles. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

They all laugh, and Conrad likes the feeling of it. Here he was, in a city familiar and foreign all at once, not trying to be anyone he wasn't, surrounded by people who had welcomed him without a second thought, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, a girl he had known for less than an hour, his feelings for her already stronger than made any reasonable sense. 

Conrad doesn't remember any dreams he's ever had, so much so that at some point he accepted he simply didn't have them. But now they have a face, and a body, a pair of eyes that catch the light like they're keeping it, and a laugh that rings through him long after it's gone.

Celine hands him a glass of wine, overfilled, and he takes it with a thank you, despite the fact that no amount of human-made alcohol could touch him. He overhears Isabel thanking Benito for her gift, him showing it off to everyone. 

Who gets someone a picture of themselves as a birthday gift?

But then, she laughs, and he smiles into his goblet. 

He's seated between Celine and Gemma for dinner, deep in conversation with both of them, and Isabel is at the head of the table, Benito in her ear. He feels her eyes on him more than once, more than enough to be accidental. He isn't innocent either, catching her gaze every time his restraint gives out and the need to look at her becomes something he can't negotiate with. 

"Conrad, what brings you to the city of love?" Apparently it was the question of the night, and a fair one, given that he had appeared out of nowhere and attached himself to this group not an hour ago.

"I have a work thing in Brussels. Decided to do a little tour of Europe first. I haven't been here in a long time."

"Has it changed since you were last here?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

"When is your thing in Brussels?"

"It starts tomorrow afternoon, and I figured, you know, Brussels is so close—"

"It's not that close." Benito cuts in.

Conrad doesn't give him an inch. He’s looked down the barrel of actual evil, saved hundreds of men, helped end a war, this little man with little hands wouldn’t be his maker. "That I'd just hop on the train tomorrow morning."

Isabel smiles into her glass. "Trust me, Conrad, the Eurostar is much faster than the Amtrak Northeast Regional."

They're the only two who understand it, and the laugh they share feels like a secret.

Dinner concludes, and Isabel pulls him to sit with her on a couch a bit too small for his frame. Her friends hand over their gifts one by one, and she thanks them in French and English, switching between the two without thinking about it.

She looks to him.

"So, where's my gift?"

It's so obvious she's joking, given they have known each other for all of a few hours, but he stumbles anyway, reaching for some excuse, any excuse. He would give her the world if he could. He would give her the moon and the stars and not think twice about it. If only the serum had allowed him to fly. She puts her hand on his arm, and he wishes he could have the feeling of her handprint forever ingrained into his skin.

“I’m kidding.” He laughs, relieved, and she smiles. 

There's a moment between them, just the two of them looking at each other, her hand still on his arm. In this dimly lit Parisian restaurant, surrounded by strangers, looking into the eyes of a woman he has known for so little but who feels like something much longer. Something he can't name yet.

The opening notes of Joyeux Anniversaire ring out, and a beautiful croquembouche appears between them. He doesn't know the words, so he just keeps the smile on his face. The candlelight flickers across hers.

The song ends and everyone claps, so Conrad joins in. She goes in once, twice, three times to blow out the candles, stopping herself each time. Twice she opens her eyes and looks at him. Once at her friends. He hopes she gets everything she wished for.

It was her birthday, or close enough to it. She was allowed to want things. She had wished, for as long as she could remember, of a boy who could make her feel electricity. And here was Conrad, empty handed, somehow everything she had meant.

He was tall, handsome, and the way he looked at her was nothing she had ever felt before. Nothing she had a word for yet.

Belly had a feeling about Conrad, deeper than anything she had known. It took over her whole body the way feelings only do when they mean something. No one had ever had this effect on her. Everything was multiplied, louder, fuller, like she could drown in it and not even want to come up for air. Like she would let him pull her through it instead. 

He reminded her of those old movies her and her mom would watch. The dapper gentleman, but somehow even better. He’s like Ryan O’Neal and Robert Redford, or even better, Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina. He does have a brother, after all. 

Conrad seemed like a one of a kind man, the kind she wasn't sure actually existed. Belly was genuinely surprised he was alone in Paris, that there was no mention of a girlfriend or anyone else. She wanted to know everything about him, not just the basics. If there were a library dedicated entirely to the life of Conrad, she would check out every book and keep them well past their return date.

All she knew was that if she had the chance, she would find a way to keep him in her life. She had only ever known summer Conrad, sun warm and unhurried, and she wanted the rest of it. She wanted to know what he looked like in the dead of winter, what autumn did to him, whether spring made him the kind of person who noticed things like that. She wanted all four seasons of him, however long that took.

Belly was willing to do anything.

The night wound down, and Gemma and Max had insisted on taking her gifts back to their apartment. Gemma had pulled her aside to do it, not so subtly, squeezing both her hands and telling her in no uncertain terms to get some with the handsome American. Max, to her credit, had the decency to look slightly embarrassed about it from three feet away, before nodding in agreement anyway.

"Conrad, would you be a dear and walk our Isabel home?" Celine says, reaching up to put an arm around his shoulders.

"I was just about to offer that, actually." He turns to Belly. "Would you like me to walk you home, Isabel?"

She smiles. "Yes, Conrad. That would be lovely."

Belly gathers her things, well, her one thing, her bag, and meets Conrad where he stands, jacket folded over his arm.

"Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

Belly is always surprised by the air, expecting something comparable to a Northeastern summer, thick and relentless, but Paris at night never delivers that. It's cool and easy, and she never quite gets used to how much she loves it. 

Despite the hour, the streets are still alive, people far more drunk and high than she is, blurry smiles and glazed eyes everywhere she looks.

She doesn't mind if the walk takes its usual twenty minutes or two hours. She has the warm presence of him beside her, occasionally bumping into her as they go, a sky full of stars above, and all the time in the world.

"Did you have a good birthday, Isabel?"

"Technically, it was a pre-birthday. I've only been 22 for…" She glances over, and his wrist is right there, leather strapped watch and all. "An hour and a half." She looks back up. "But yeah. It was perfect."

"I'm glad to hear it. And really glad I got to be a part of it. Thank you for including me."

"Come on, how often am I going to run into someone from home?" She means it. "It's no problem, Conrad. Seriously. Thank you for joining us. It made my pre-birthday that much better."

It may have been an insane thing to say, considering she didn't even know his last name yet.

"Oh, I don't know about that…" His words disappear into a breeze that moves through the street, and Belly shivers before she can stop herself. Conrad has his jacket off before she finishes, helping her arms through the sleeves without a word.

"There you go. Better?"

Warmth spreads through her, and it wasn't from the jacket. She can feel her face flush, the last of her Parisian nonchalance carried off with the breeze. As long as she had been here, she had thought she'd grown out of the girl she used to be. The one who invented a prince charming and then wished for him on everything she could find. Shooting stars, birthday candles, dandelions, eyelashes. Every small and superstitious thing the world offered up, she had used. Belly had convinced herself, somewhere between girlhood and now, that those wishes were the province of children, that adulthood was the slow and necessary process of outgrowing them. That real life didn't feel like this. Couldn't.

But walking beside him now, she thinks about that little girl, and for the first time, doesn't have the heart to tell her she was wrong.

Their meandering leads them alongside the Seine, and Belly has an idea. She doesn't want this night to end, doesn't want to wake up from whatever this is.

She can feel it closing in on them anyway, the walk getting shorter with every step, her apartment getting closer whether she wants it to or not. The lights of the city catch on the surface of the water in a way that makes everything look a little unreal.

She stops at the top of the stone steps that lead down to the lower walkway, the water close enough now that she can hear it.

"Come with me," she says, and takes his hand before she's fully decided to. His hand is large and warm and closes around hers without a second thought, like it has done it before, like it intends to do it again.

He doesn't hesitate.

Belly feels like she floats down the steps, Conrad just behind her, her hand still in his. The walkway opens up alongside the water, quieter down here, more tucked away from the city humming above them. They stroll without direction, and Conrad stops just long enough to say a quiet bonsoir to an old man on a bench, a small speaker beside him bleeding something soft into the night air. P

Belly looked out over the water. She could feel Conrad's eyes on her before she even turned.

"Isn't it so pretty?" She watches the light move across the surface of it. "How it shines over the water like that."

He says nothing. She already knows he still isn't looking at the river.

"Isabel?"

Her eyes turn from the water to his face.

"Would you dance with me?"

She laughs. He is completely serious. Her hand finds his shoulder  and the other takes his at her side, and they start swaying to the music gently. His other hand finds her waist, and she tries not to think how much surface area it covers on her body. 

"You know, I haven't told anyone here this, but I didn't go by Isabel growing up."

"Really? What did you go by?"

She giggles. He tilts his head. "Come on, tell me. It can't be that bad."

"I think it can. I'm definitely too old for it."

"Come on."

"Fine. Fine." She would do anything he asked her to. "Growing up, I went by Belly."

"I like that." He says it simply, like it isn't even a question. "Would you want me to call you that?"

"I think I can allow it. But don't tell anyone." She looks up at him. "It's our little secret."

"I promise. I won't tell anyone." He stops their swaying and moves his hand from her waist, pinky extended.

She laughs, but connects hers to his anyway.

His hand finds its way back to her waist, hers to his shoulder, and they fall back into their easy sway. The city hums somewhere above them, the water moves beside them, and the old man's music drifts through it all like it was always meant to be there. She could stay in this moment forever. She thinks she might want to.

The song from the old man's speaker fades, and neither of them move to do anything about the quiet it leaves. Belly looks up at him. He is already looking at her, the way he has been all night, like she is something worth looking at. The water moves beside them and the city hums somewhere above and none of it matters even a little bit. She doesn't know who closes the distance first. She's not sure it matters. She's not sure anything does, except his hand on her waist and the fact that she doesn't want him to move it.

She doesn't particularly care about much else after that.

The kiss felt inevitable. He turned his head, opening up for her, letting her take control. He pulls her by the waist into him, and she wonders how much warmer it would be to live in his skin. She could find space somewhere in his body, set up camp, and never leave. Maybe not here, though. 

She breaks away.

“Come home with me.”

The words tumbled out of her, shaky and breathless. They felt too big for the quiet riverside air, a secret shouted into the dark. She’d meant to sound sure, maybe even a little coy, but all she heard was the raw want in her own voice.

His response was a punch to the gut, low and rough. “Yeah.”

It wasn’t smooth. It was a surrender. That single syllable held everything—the same dizzying disbelief, the same terrifying hope that was turning her own bones to water. His hand tightened around hers, not possessively, but like he was holding on to a lifeline.

She pulled him, not leading so much as stumbling forward with him in tow. Her legs felt unsteady, her mind a blur of streetlight and shadow. She led them back down the walkway, the river a dark ribbon to their left, and up a different set of stone stairs, narrower and steeper than the ones they’d come down. Her heart was a wild, fluttering thing in her throat. At the top, the sounds of the city hit her—a motorbike buzzing past, a distant siren, the murmur of a couple arguing in rapid French on a nearby bench. Reality. She turned, scanning the street for the familiar glow of a taxi light, her free hand already half-raised.

But Conrad stopped her. A gentle tug on her hand, and she spun back to face him. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her for a second, his expression unreadable in the gloom, and then he pulled her into him. She stumbled against his chest, her hands flying up to brace herself against the world tilted, and suddenly she was pressed against the solid warmth of his chest. Her hands came up, flattening against his shirt. She could feel the frantic, galloping rhythm of his heart beneath her palms, a mirror to her own. It was the most honest thing she’d felt all night.

One of his arms slid around her waist, his hand splaying wide and spread across the small of her back, over the thin silk of her dress. His other hand lifted, not to her face, but into the air beside them. A single, decisive gesture. 

He looked down at her then, breathing heavily through his nose. A slow, almost dazed smile touched his lips, softening the intense line of his jaw. He didn’t kiss her. He just held her there, his body a firm bracket against the chill of the night, his gaze locked on hers. He was waiting. The ball was in her court. The next move, the final confirmation, had to be hers. The silence between them stretched, thick with the scent of him—clean cotton, night air, and something warm and uniquely him.

She swayed towards him, her lips parting—

A short, sharp honk. A taxi, rolled to a stop at the curb, its tires crunching on loose gravel. Conrad’s eyes never left hers. He just lowered his arm, reached behind her back, and pulled the door open. The dome light flicked on, a sickly yellow that made her blink.

“After you,” he murmured, his voice scraped raw.

Belly ducked inside, sliding across a seat covered in vaguely sticky synthetic fabric. She automatically moved to the far side, making room. He didn’t take the seat opposite her. He followed her in, his large frame immediately filling the space, and sank down right beside her. His thigh pressed against hers from hip to knee, a solid line of heat that seared through the silk of her dress. The door slammed, shutting them in with a thud that felt final. The light went out, leaving them in a moving cave illuminated only by the dashboard’s greenish glow and the streaking oranges and whites of the passing city.

A wave of heat, sudden and suffocating, washed over her. It was him. His proximity, the intensity radiating from his skin, the sheer thereness of him. With a clumsy shrug, she wrestled his jacket off her shoulders. It was an awkward tangle of sleeves for a second before she managed to shuck it; it landed in a heap somewhere near her feet with a soft whump. She didn’t look. The air on her bare arms was cool, but it did nothing to temper the fire under her skin.

Conrad didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath or her bearings. He turned his body toward hers, his arm sliding around her waist to pull her firmly against his side. There was no more polite distance. Her hand came up of its own accord, fingers fumbling for purchase, finding the starched edge of his shirt collar. She didn’t grab it, just curled her fingers into the fabric, holding on.

His lips found hers.

And any last pretense of gentleness vanished. This kiss wasn’t a question or an exploration. It was a confirmation. A frantic, messy yes. His mouth was hot and insistent, and when hers opened on a gasp that was half-surprise, half-relief, his tongue swept in. The taste of him—the faint bitterness of red wine, a hint of the chocolate dessert, and underneath it all, something warm and salty and human—flooded her senses. It wasn’t elegant. Their noses bumped. Their teeth clicked once, softly. It was all tongue and heat and desperate, panting breaths shared between them. For the third time that night, maybe the hundredth, Belly thought, I want this forever. Just this.

He kissed her like he was trying to memorize the feel of her, mapping the inside of her mouth with a thorough, almost clumsy urgency. He leaned into her, his weight pressing her back.

Her shoulder blades met the cool, hard plane of the taxi window. She had a split-second to think, Oh god, my head— bracing for the awkward, unromantic crack against the glass.

It didn’t come.

His hand—the one not wrapped tightly around her ribs—was already there. His fingers slid into her hair, not grabbing, but cradling. His palm settled perfectly against the curve of her skull, a warm, firm barrier between her and the cold window. He held her there, suspended between the unyielding city and the unyielding strength of him, and kissed her like he was drowning and she was the only air. The taxi driver muttered something at a slow-moving scooter up ahead, the radio played a tinny pop song she didn’t recognize, and Paris blurred past the window in streaks of light. None of it mattered. The only things that were real were the slick slide of his tongue against hers, the invisible scratch of his stubble on her chin, and the safe, steady cradle of his hand.

All the while, a slow, insistent heat was building low in her belly, a pulse of pure want that throbbed in time with the frantic beat of her heart. It was a heavy, liquid feeling, settling deep between her legs, an ache that was both thrilling and maddening. And it made her wonder, with a sharp, focused curiosity that cut through the haze of wine and desire, just how good he was with his hands.

It was more than a passing thought. It was a hypothesis. A theory she was desperate to test. Looking at him—at the new but not unwelcome intensity in his eyes, the careful way he’d held her by the river, the sheer, contained power in his frame—she had a gut-deep certainty. Conrad would make her feel things she hadn’t felt before. He would find places inside her, emotional and physical, that she hadn’t even known were there, waiting to be discovered. The idea was terrifying and so electrifying she felt dizzy with it.

The memory flashed, unbidden: earlier, at the restaurant, when he’d shaken Benito’s hand. A simple, polite gesture. But she hadn’t been able to look away. Conrad’s hand had engulfed Benito’s. His fingers were long, the knuckles pronounced, his palm broad. There was a assertive strength in that grasp, but not a show of force, simply a fact of his being. Benito’s hands were… fine. Nice. Capable. But seeing them swallowed up by Conrad’s had sent a jolt through her so sudden and inappropriate she’d had to take a very unladylike, near-gulping swig of her Kir Royale just to keep from laughing out loud at the sheer, visceral comparison. It wasn’t a laugh at Benito. It was a laugh of stunned, secret recognition. Oh, she’d thought. Oh, my.

Sex with Benito had been good. Fun. Uncomplicated. He was enthusiastic, attentive, knew what buttons to push to get her there. It was like a well-choreographed dance where everyone knew the steps. Satisfying. Pleasant. Nothing revolutionary.

But this… this man currently exploring her mouth as if it held the secrets of the universe, his large, capable hand cradling her head with such devastating gentleness… this felt like the potential for a revolution. It felt like the map was about to be redrawn. The hypothesis burned in her veins: those hands wouldn’t just know the steps. They would rewrite the entire dance.

The taxi jolted to a stop, the engine idling with a rough, grumbling purr. The abrupt cessation of motion broke the spell of the moving darkness, leaving them stranded in a pool of yellow light from a streetlamp just outside. Belly blinked, disoriented, her lips still tingling, her mind still halfway in that heated, breathless space they’d created in the backseat. She fumbled automatically for her small clutch, her fingers numb.

But Conrad was already moving. Before she could even locate the strap, he leaned forward, his arm brushing against her. She caught a glimpse of him pulling a folded wad of euros from his pocket—no careful counting, no checking the meter. He just handed it all to the driver, a thick stack of notes that was sure to be double the fare. A hefty, silent tip for the man’s discretion, for not clearing his throat or pulling over the minute their kiss had turned from polite to consuming. The driver, an older man with a weary face in the rearview, merely grunted, took the money, and gave a curt nod. The transaction was wordless, efficient, a bribe for privacy paid in full.

She finally got her bag over her shoulder, the silky material slipping twice in her unsteady hands. Conrad grabbed his discarded jacket from the floor in one swift motion, shaking it out once. He was out of the car in a fluid movement, holding the door open. The night air rushed in, cool and shocking against her heated skin. He didn’t speak. He just held his hand out to her, palm up, fingers slightly curled. An offer. 

She placed her hand in his. His fingers closed around hers, not with crushing force, but with a completeness that made her breath catch. His grip was warm, dry and utterly sure. He pulled, not with a yank, but with a steady, gentle pressure that drew her from the cab’s interior as if she were weightless. Her heels hit the pavement with a soft click. He released her hand only to shut the taxi door with a solid thunk. The car pulled away, its taillights bleeding into the stream of traffic, leaving them standing on the quiet, tree-lined street in front of her building.

The facade was classic Parisian Haussmann: pale stone, wrought-iron balconies, dark green shutters behind which other lives, unconcerned with theirs, were being lived. She walked the few steps to the heavy wooden door, feeling his presence behind her like a change in atmospheric pressure. She dug her keys from her bag, the metal jangling loudly in the quiet. She slotted the key into the buzzer lock, turned it, and pushed.

The door swung inward with a groan of old hinges. She stepped into the dim, tiled foyer, scented with faint lavender floor polish and the ghost of a thousand past meals. She was acutely aware of him following her in, so close she could feel the heat of his body against her back. The main door sighed shut behind them, cutting off the sounds of the city, and the silence that descended was profound and intimate.

It felt like a game then, as she made for the staircase. A cat and mouse game played out on worn marble steps under the faint, flickering glow of a timed light. She started up, her heels echoing sharply. He was close on her tail, his footsteps a quieter, heavier rhythm behind hers. She didn’t look back. She could feel him there, his gaze on the line of her spine, on the swing of her hips, on the backs of her thighs where her dress had ridden up slightly. He was stalking her, step for step, a silent, potent predator in the shadowy stairwell.

And she, the mouse, had no desire to find a hole to hide in. Every nerve in her body was alight, not with fear, but with a desperate, thrilling anticipation. She wanted to be caught. The tension was a live wire strung between each step. The space between them crackled with it. With every turn on the landing, she half-expected his hand on her waist, his breath on her neck. But he held back, maintaining that charged distance, letting the suspense build until the air itself felt thick and hard to breathe.

She felt held already—not by his hands, but by his attention, which was as tangible as a touch. Held captive by the promise in his silence, by the sheer gravitational pull of him behind her. In that moment, climbing through the dimness, she knew with absolute clarity that she was yielding. She had yielded on the street, in the taxi, at the door. She was yielding now. Her will had softened, melted into a pliant readiness. Held in the unrelenting jaws of this want—his and her own—she knew she would yield to anything he wanted her to do. The game wasn't about escape. It was about the exquisite tension of the chase, and the certain, glorious surrender at its end.

Just before the landing of her floor, on the final half-flight of stairs, his hand shot out and wrapped around her wrist. 

It wasn’t a violent grab. It was a sudden, definitive cessation. A command made flesh. Her forward momentum halted, her breath catching in her throat. He didn’t yank her back; he simply stopped her, his fingers a firm, warm band against the delicate bones of her wrist. In the next heartbeat, he was there, having closed the distance between them in one long stride. His body crowded hers, not with brute force, but with an undeniable, overwhelming presence that pushed her back until the cool, unforgiving iron of the stair railing bit into the small of her back through the thin silk of her dress.

He didn’t pause. He bent her over it.

It was a single, fluid motion. One arm sliding around her waist, his hand splayed possessively against her spine, and he leveraged her weight, arching her backwards over the wrought-iron bar. The building yawned below them—a five-story drop into a narrow, shadowed courtyard, a dizzying void of darkness and distant, muffled sounds. The railing pressed hard against the backs of her thighs. For a split second, the world tilted, gravity tugging at her, a thrill of pure vertigo shooting up her spine.

But she wasn’t afraid. Not even a flicker. His grip on her was absolute, an anchor in the sudden tilt of the universe. The arm around her waist was like a steel band, holding her secure. The hand that had caught her wrist now braced against the railing beside her head, his body caging her in. She was suspended between his strength and the abyss, and she felt utterly, terrifyingly safe. He had her. Completely.

He kissed her then, leaning down into the space he’d created. This kiss was different. It was a claiming. Deep, hungry, a raw exchange of breath and heat that tasted of wine and desperation and the metallic tang of the night air. It was a kiss that said mine, and for a glorious moment, she melted into it, her free hand coming up to clutch at the front of his shirt.

But something shifted in her then, a spark of rebellion fanned by the danger of their position and the sheer intensity of his possession. She didn’t just want to be taken. She wanted to take. She wanted control of this precipice they were dancing on. She wanted to steer the avalanche.

As he kissed her, his other hand—the one not bracing them—found her right hand, still loosely held in his grip from when he’d stopped her. He pinned it to the cold iron railing above her head, his fingers lacing through hers, pressing her palm flat against the metal. A show of dominance. A silent stay.

For a heartbeat, she let him. She felt the cool rail under her hand, the heat of his hand over hers. She felt the thrilling submission of it.

Then she moved.

With a twist of her wrist that was more insistent than forceful, she broke his grip. Not to pull away, but to turn the tables. Her fingers slid against his, searching, and then she had his hand in hers. His large, warm, capable hand. The one she’d been hypothesizing about all night.

She didn’t hesitate. She brought it down, down between their tightly pressed bodies, down to the heated apex of her thighs. The silk of her dress whispered in protest as she pushed his hand against herself, right where the ache was a pounding, insistent throb.

The moan was ripped from her throat the instant his fingers, even through the damp lace of her panties, brushed against her cunt. It was a raw, unfiltered sound that echoed softly in the stairwell, a confession of need so profound it left her trembling.

He didn’t freeze. He didn’t ask for permission. He understood the assignment. His fingers, those long, halfway-doctor precise fingers, hooked into the side of her panties and pulled the delicate fabric aside, a rough, efficient motion that tore a gasp from her lips. The cool air of the stairwell hit her exposed flesh, a shocking contrast to the furnace within.

And then his fingertips found her.

Not a tentative exploration. Not a gentle caress. They went straight for the epicenter, finding her swollen, throbbing clit with unerring accuracy. And he pinched.

It wasn’t cruel. It was exact. A firm, rolling pressure applied with the perfect amount of force, right on the hypersensitive bundle of nerves. The sensation was so sharp, so blindingly perfect, so right, that her vision whited out for a second. Her back arched off the railing, a silent scream locked in her throat. It was as if he’d plugged her directly into the city’s power grid.

Just as suddenly, the squeezing pressure let up, transforming into something else. His fingertips began to rub, not in circles, but in a deliberate, almost palpating motion, as if he were reading the texture of her, mapping the ridges and folds, learning the rhythm of her pulse from the inside out. It was clinical in its focus, yet devastatingly intimate. He wasn’t just trying to get her off. He was studying her response, calibrating his touch to the minute tremors that wracked her body, his gaze locked on her face, watching every flinch, every gasp, every shuddering breath.

And Belly, held over a five-story drop, pinned by his body and his will, could only cling to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, completely at the mercy of his devastating, knowing hands. The hypothesis was being proven, point by exquisite point.

Conrad was a solid wall of heat at her back as she finally, with fumbling fingers, shoved her key into the apartment door lock. His breath was warm on the nape of her neck, his body crowding her so completely she could feel every hard line of him through their clothes. Before she could even turn the key, his hands were on her again. He spun her around to face him, and in one fluid, impossibly easy motion, his hands slid under her thighs and he lifted her.

The ease of it was breathtaking, superhuman. She was weightless in his grasp, her body folding against his as if she were made of air. He held her pinned against him with one arm while his other hand finished the task, turning her key in the lock with a decisive click. Both her arms instinctively roved around the strong column of his neck and the broad planes of his shoulders, finding their home there, holding on as he pushed the door open with his shoulder.

He barely had the door closed behind them, the latch clicking softly, before he was moving. Her back connected with the nearest wall of the dim entryway with a soft thud, the impact shuddering through her. Plaster and muscle—she was sandwiched between the unyielding flatness of the wall and the living, breathing hardness of him. All she could feel was him. The heat of his torso against hers, and, even through the frustrating layers of their clothing, the slow, deliberate, maddening drag of his cock against the damp center of her.

His kisses were different now. They were teasing, a maddening series of soft, biting nips and deep, fleeting tastes. He’d capture her mouth, his tongue sliding against hers in a promise of what was to come, only to pull away, leaving her gasping. Each time he broke the kiss, he didn’t speak. He just looked at her, his eyes dark and intense in the shadows, studying her flushed face, her parted lips, as if memorizing the effect he was having.

He adjusted his grip, rucking her up higher against the wall with a slight shift of his hips. The force of it made her legs instinctively wrap tighter around him, and her dangling heels knocked softly against the opposite wall. One of his hands cradled the back of her head again, his fingers tangling in her hair, protective, possessive. In that position, with her head tipped back against his palm and her body open to him, a vivid, filthy image flashed through her mind. She imagined that same hand, not cradling, but guiding. Imagined herself on her knees, him standing over her, those same fingers twisted in her hair as he fucked her face with that same slow, deliberate intensity. The thought was a lightning strike of pure, wanton heat, coiling tight in her belly, making her squirm against the relentless, teasing friction of him.

“Oh god, Conrad, please, fuck me, please.” The plea was a raw, ragged thing, torn from a place of pure, aching need. Her voice was thick, strained, every syllable vibrating with the tension coiling in her core.

He pressed a hard, swift kiss to her mouth, a brief seal of promise. “Just a second, baby,” he murmured against her lips, his own breath coming short. “I’ll make you feel good, but I want it to last.” The words were a low, guttural rasp, a testament to his own straining control. It wasn’t a denial; it was a vow of delayed, deeper gratification.

Then her back was off the wall. He lifted her again, that same effortless, superhuman strength carrying her through the dark space. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t fumble. He navigated the familiar clutter of her life—the faint outline of furniture, the soft obstacles of a lived-in room—with an uncanny ease, as if his body had already mapped the terrain in the few moments he’d been inside. The thought flashed through her hazy mind: He moves like he’s been here before. And a deeper, more desperate hope followed, clinging to the feverish heat of the moment: Please, don’t let it be the last time.

In two long, sure strides, he was at the bed. He lowered her onto the very edge of the mattress, her legs still loosely wrapped around his hips. The box spring groaned softly.

The moment her weight settled, her hands were in motion. They flew to his belt, fingers fumbling only for a second with the loop before finding the buckle. The metallic sound of it coming undone was obscenely loud. She was single-minded, a woman on a mission, her focus narrowed to the hard line of him straining against his trousers. She needed to get her hands on him, her mouth on him, to taste and claim the source of the relentless, teasing friction that was driving her insane.

Above her, Conrad was a study in efficient, frantic motion. While her hands worked his belt, his own were flying down the front of his shirt, undoing the buttons with a coordination and speed that was almost unnerving in its precision. It was the economy of motion of a man who understood exactly how much force was needed, who wasted nothing—not a twitch, not a second. The crisp cotton parted under his fingers, each button yielding with a soft pop. The fabric fell open, revealing not bulk, but a lean, formidable architecture of muscle. His chest was smooth, pale in the dim light, the planes of his abdomen cut and defined, shifting with a fluid, contained power as he moved. He wasn’t sculpted from stone; he was flesh and blood, but flesh and blood forged into something startlingly efficient. He shrugged the shirt off his shoulders, letting it fall into the darkness without a sound, his eyes never leaving hers—dark and hungry pools that held hers captive, promising everything.

Belly’s fingers found the cool metal of the side zipper on her dress, the tiny pull-tab smooth under her touch. She was about to tug it down, to shed the last barrier of the evening, when Conrad’s voice cut through the heavy, breathless silence. It was low, a little rough, and it held a command that was both a request and a statement of fact.

“No,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers as he spoke. “I wanna do it.”

His hands, which had been cradling her face with a tenderness that belied the raw hunger in his eyes, slid away. One palm settled firmly on the curve of her hip, a warm, possessive anchor. The other went to the hem of her short black dress, his fingers gathering the soft cotton fabric. He didn’t yank. He drew it upward with a deliberate, agonizing slowness that made her breath catch. The material whispered as it glided over her skin—over the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, past the delicate lace bands, over the swell of her hips. Cool air followed the retreating fabric, raising goosebumps in its wake. He lifted it higher, revealing the sleek black satin of her strapless bra, the matching underwear. Finally, he drew the dress up and over her head, carefully pulling it free from where it tangled in her dark, tousled hair. He tossed it aside without a glance, a flutter of black swallowed by the shadows of the room. His gaze was fixed on her, dark and intense, drinking in the sight of her laid bare before him.

She felt a thrilling rush of exposure, but under his watchful eyes, it felt like being unveiled, not stripped. It felt like a revelation.

She shifted back, bracing her weight on her elbows at the very edge of the mattress. This new angle gave her a perfect view of the artwork she’d painted across his face with her mouth. Her dark red lipstick was smeared in a glorious, messy map of their collision: a bold slash across his sharp cheekbone, a blurred, passionate imprint along the strong line of his jaw, a perfect, crimson crescent at the corner of his kiss-swollen lips. He was marked, claimed in the most visceral way. A slow, deeply satisfied smile curved her own lips at the sight—a silent, primal declaration. He saw it and mirrored it back instantly, a quick, breathless flash of white teeth that crinkled the skin beside his eyes and smudged the lipstick there even more.

Still holding that shared, intimate smile, he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers and pushed them down in one smooth motion, stepping out of them and leaving them in a puddle on the worn floorboards. The black cotton of his boxer briefs was all that remained, hugging the hard planes of his hips and thighs, the prominent, straining outline at their center leaving nothing to the imagination. He moved onto the bed, the old springs groaning softly in protest under his weight, and held himself over her, his arms caging her in. Their lips met again, and the kiss was immediately different. Deeper, wetter, more consuming. It was the kiss of people who had crossed a final threshold. His mouth was hot and demanding, his tongue sweeping against hers with a possessive intensity that made her toes curl. She could feel the hard, relentless press of him against her inner thigh, a heated promise through the thin layers separating them.

He stayed over her just long enough for her to wrap her legs around his waist, to arch up and savor the delicious, full-body weight of him pinning her to the bed. Then, with that fluid, superhuman grace that still startled her, he moved. He slid one powerful arm beneath the small of her back, his hand splayed wide for support, and in one effortless motion, he flipped them. The world tilted, and suddenly she was on top, straddling his hips. The rough texture of his cotton underwear was a stark contrast to the slick, sensitive silk between her own thighs. The new position seated him directly against her core, and a sharp, sweet bolt of pure sensation shot through her, drawing a soft gasp from her lips.

Conrad’s head fell back against her pillow with a soft thud. He took a moment, his throat working as he swallowed a deep, unsteady breath. His eyes, wide and impossibly dark, roamed over her—her face flushed with desire, her dark hair framing her face, her body displayed above him. He stared up at her with a look of pure, stunned reverence. Belly had never felt so worshipped, so utterly deified. His gaze wasn’t one of conquest; it was that of a suppliant granted an audience with a divinity made manifest solely for him. The raw awe in his expression was a tangible thing, wrapping around her like a cloak.

That look, combined with the potent feeling of control from her position astride him, sent a surge of fierce, molten power straight to her core. She was the center of his universe in this moment, the object of this man’s complete and utter devotion.

And then his hands began to move. They started at her hips, his palms like brands of heat on her skin. They slid upward along her torso with an agonizing, worshipful slowness, tracing the subtle indent of her waist, mapping the gentle ridges of her ribs. His touch was a reverent exploration, as if he were committing every curve and dip to eternal memory. His thumbs swept inwards, stroking the soft, quivering skin of her abdomen, before his large hands finally came to rest, cupping the space just beneath the full, covered swells of her breasts. He didn’t grab, didn’t knead. He simply held them there, his fingertips resting lightly on the satin underwire, the incredible heat of his palms seeping through the fabric. It was an exquisite, almost unbearable pause, thick with anticipation.

Driven by that devastating look and the coil of electric tension tightening low in her belly, she leaned down to capture his mouth again. Her hands came up to frame his jaw, her thumbs gently brushing over the smudged evidence of her lipstick, before her fingers slid into his hair and then down, finding purchase on the hard curves of his ears, holding him steady for her descent. He met her halfway, surging up off the pillow so their mouths crashed together in a renewed, desperate frenzy. His arms banded around her, one hand sinking into the hair at her nape to angle her head just so, the other splaying possessively across the bare skin of her lower back, pressing her down firmly against the hard ridge of his arousal. The kiss was deep, messy, and perfect—a wordless, gasping vow sealed in the quiet dark of her Parisian apartment.

He didn't need to ask her to move. Her hips, on some instinct deeper than thought, began to rock against him. A slow, deliberate grind, her damp silk-clad core sliding over the thick, cotton-wrapped ridge of his cock. A low, guttural groan was torn from his throat, vibrating into her mouth. His hands moved up her back, his fingers scrambling for purchase on the satin of her bra. He found the clasp, a cool metal hook, and with a deft flick of his thumb, released it. The garment fell open, held in place only by the pressure of their bodies. He pushed it aside, the garment falling somewhere he didn’t care to remember, and finally, his hands were on her bare breasts. His palms were hot and slightly rough, his thumbs sweeping over her tightened nipples in slow, maddening circles. The sensation was so sharp, so perfect, it made her gasp and break the kiss, her head falling back.

He took the opportunity to surge upward, shifting his weight. In one fluid, powerful motion, he rolled them again, pinning her back beneath him. The bra was now an annoyance. He reached between them, his fingers tangling in the satin, and pulled it completely free, tossing it away into the darkness. His mouth left hers, trailing a line of hot, open-mouthed kisses down her jaw, her neck, the sensitive hollow of her throat. He lingered at the delicate line of her collarbone, sucking a mark into the pale skin there that would surely bruise. She didn't care. She wanted to be marked by him, claimed in every way possible.

His mouth moved lower, his tongue tracing a wet path between her breasts before he took one tight peak into his mouth. He sucked, hard, his tongue swirling around the sensitive bud, his teeth grazing it with just enough pressure to make her cry out and arch off the bed. His hand came up to knead and worship the other breast, his touch rough and reverent all at once. He switched his attention, giving the same devastating treatment to her other nipple until she was writhing beneath him, her hands fisted in the sheets, a litany of "Conrad, please, oh god," spilling from her lips.

He released her breast with a soft, wet pop, his breath coming in ragged pants against her overheated skin. His lips traveled lower, over the quivering plane of her stomach, his tongue dipping into her navel. He hooked his fingers into the sides of her black lace underwear. This time, he didn't pull them aside. He peeled them down her thighs in one slow, deliberate motion, his eyes locked on the journey of the fabric as it revealed her. The air was cool on her newly bared skin, but it was nothing compared to the heat of his gaze. He tossed the underwear aside and moved, sliding down the bed until he was kneeling between her spread thighs.

For a long, breathtaking moment, he just looked. His eyes were dark, his expression one of such intense, focused hunger it stole the air from her lungs. He placed his hands on the insides of her knees, his thumbs stroking the sensitive skin there. "You’re fucking beautiful," he breathed, the words a raw scrape of sound. "Every part of you."

Then he leaned in.

He didn't start with her clit. He started lower, with a slow, languid lick from her entrance all the way up to the swollen, aching nub at the top. The sensation was so shockingly intimate, so wet and hot and perfect, that a broken sob escaped her. He did it again, and again, establishing a slow, torturous rhythm, his tongue flat and broad, coating her in her own slickness.

"Conrad," she whimpered, her hands flying to his hair, her fingers tangling in the strands. She didn't pull, just held on, an anchor in the storm of sensation he was unleashing.

He hummed against her, the vibration shooting straight to her core. Then he focused. His mouth closed over her clit, sucking gently, his tongue flicking over the sensitive peak with a rapid, precise cadence that made her thighs tremble. One of his hands slid from her knee, his fingers sliding through her wet folds to find her entrance. He pushed one thick finger inside her, curling it instantly to find that perfect, deep spot. He added a second, stretching her, filling her, his fingers moving in a slow, counter-rhythm to the devastating work of his mouth.

Belly was lost. The world narrowed to the wet, sucking heat of his mouth, the deep, curling pressure of his fingers, the rough scrape of his stubble on her inner thighs. Her hips began to move of their own accord, rocking against his face, seeking more, deeper, harder. He gave it to her. His fingers plunged deeper, his thumb finding her clit to rub firm, dizzying circles as his mouth continued its relentless assault. The dual stimulation was overwhelming, a coil of pure, white-hot pleasure winding tighter and tighter in her belly.

He pulled his mouth away, breathing heavily. "That's it, baby," he rasped, his voice thick with her taste. "Come on my fingers. Let me feel you."

His words, filthy and desperate, were the final straw. The coil snapped. A sharp, keening cry was ripped from her throat as the orgasm detonated, wave after wave of blinding, shattering pleasure rolling through her. Her back arched off the bed, her inner muscles clamping down rhythmically, frantically around his thrusting fingers. She chanted his name, a broken, sobbing litany, as he worked her through it, his touch unrelenting, drawing out every last shuddering pulse until she collapsed, boneless and trembling, against the mattress.

He slowly withdrew his fingers, bringing them to his mouth and sucking them clean with a low, appreciative groan that made her clench all over again. He crawled back up her body, his weight settling over her, his cock—still trapped in his briefs—a hard, insistent pressure against her thigh. He kissed her, deep and slow, letting her taste herself on his tongue. It was possessive, primal, and it sent a fresh, shocking jolt of desire straight through her spent body.

"Fuck," he breathed against her lips, his own body trembling with the effort of his restraint. "You have no idea... the way you taste... the way you feel..."

He rocked his hips against her, the rough cotton a delicious friction against her sensitive, oversensitive flesh. She could feel how hard he was, how much he needed her. The power of it, of reducing this man to a state of raw, trembling need, was intoxicating.

Her hands, which had been clinging to his shoulders, slid down his sweat-slicked back. She traced the hard ridges of muscle along his spine, down to the waistband of his briefs. Her fingers slipped beneath the elastic, digging into the firm globes of his ass, pulling him tighter against her. A ragged groan tore from his throat.

"Belly," he gasped, his forehead dropping to hers. "I need... I need to be inside you. Now. Please."

The "please" did it. That raw, shattered plea from a man who held superhuman strength in his hands. She nodded, unable to form words, her own need roaring back to life, a fresh, hungry flame. 

She nodded, just barely, a faint dip of her chin that was all the permission she could muster. The air between them was thick, charged with the scent of her arousal and his sweat. Conrad shifted, rising from the bed in one fluid, powerful motion. The dim light from the window carved the hard lines of his torso and the taut V of his hips as he stood beside the bed. His fingers hooked into the waistband of his boxers, and he pushed them down in a single, deliberate motion, kicking them aside.

Whatever she had been imagining in the hazy, hungry dark was a far cry from the stark reality now presented to her. He was fully erect, and the sight was profoundly, almost intimidatingly, visceral. He was long and thick, the shaft a smooth, pale column of flesh that curved with a slight, natural arc to the left. The head was a startling, vivid red—a deep, flushed crimson that rivaled the smudged scarlet of her lipstick still staining his jaw and mouth. The color was so intense it seemed to pulse in the low light. A raw, unbidden thought sliced through her: she wondered, with a crude clarity, if that particular shade of red would look better smeared across her own lips. The tip glistened, a perfect, swollen bead of clear precum welling at the slit, catching what little light there was. It looked painfully ready, primed and on the very edge.

His eyes, dark and intent, left her face. He began to look around, his gaze scanning the shadowed floor near their discarded clothes, the nightstand’s dim surface. She knew instantly what he was seeking. And she doesn’t want him to find what she knows he’s looking for.

“Conrad.” Her voice was a scrape, firmer than she felt. “I want you to fuck me.”

He glanced back at her, his expression softening even as his body remained a study in tense readiness. “I’m planning on it, baby,” he said, his voice low and honeyed, too gentle for the carnality of the moment. That incongruous sweetness, that care amidst the desperation, sent a fresh, hot rush of wetness between her thighs. “I just need to find a condom.”

“No.” The word was absolute. She held his gaze, letting him see the stark need there. “Conrad, I want to feel you.”

He stilled completely. His searching stopped. He looked her in the eyes, his gaze searching hers, soft yet piercing in the gloom. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she breathed, the affirmation tumbling out. “Yeah. I want it.”

He watched her for a heartbeat longer—a silent calculus of concern and desire flickering behind his eyes—before it settled into resigned, heated acceptance. “Okay, baby.” His voice was a murmur, a surrender. “Whatever you want.”

He was back on top of her in an instant, his weight a welcome anchor. He didn’t just settle between her thighs. He moved with a focused, efficient grace. Reaching across her, he grabbed the pillow her head wasn’t resting on. In one smooth, effortless motion, he slid one broad hand beneath the small of her back, his fingers splaying against her spine, and lifted her hips with terrifying ease. With his other hand, he shoved the plump pillow firmly underneath her, tilting her pelvis up to a new, open angle. The gesture was so strong, so knowing, it stole her breath. He was positioning her, crafting the perfect alignment for what was to come.

He knelt right up against her, the heat of his body a palpable force. The blunt, silken head of his cock finally, finally, made contact with her cunt, and the sensation was so immediate, so electric, that a white-hot shockwave shot up her spine. The world tilted, the edges of her vision blurring for a dizzying second—she nearly passed out from the sheer, overwhelming rightness of it.

He shifted his weight slightly, a minute adjustment of his hips, and the movement caused him to inadvertently slip through her slick folds. The broad, smooth crown of him glided along her soaked flesh, a hot, tantalizing promise. Then it caught, just for a fraction of a second, on the very edge of her entrance. It wasn’t penetration, not yet, but the slight resistance, the sudden, focused pressure on that most sensitive rim, sent a jolt through her system more potent than any pill or powder she’d experimented with since arriving in Paris. It was a pure, undiluted hit of anticipation, a chemical scream in her blood.

Her jaw fell slack on a silent gasp. Her head craned back of its own volition, her neck arching, exposing the long, vulnerable line of her throat to the shadowed ceiling.

Conrad noticed. Of course he did. His eyes, dark and hungry, tracked the movement. His free hand—the one not bracing him above her—left her hip. It traveled in a slow, possessive path up the quivering plane of her stomach, over the dip of her navel. It slid between her breasts, a warm, rough palm skimming the soft swells, not lingering but claiming. It moved higher, over the frantic pulse at the base of her throat, pausing there for a heartbeat where he could surely feel the wild hammering of her heart. Then his fingers settled under her chin, firm and unyielding. He applied gentle pressure, forcing her head back down from its abandoned angle until her gaze was locked helplessly with his.

“You like that, baby?” His voice was a low, taunting rumble, thick with smug satisfaction and barely-leashed need. A wicked smirk played on his lips, the ones still stained with her lipstick. “I’m not even in you yet.”

To emphasize his point, he drew his hips back slightly, then pressed forward again, this time with deliberate intent. He rubbed the weeping, red head of his cock more purposely over her swollen cunt, painting her with his precum and her own wetness in a slow, torturous glide. The friction was exquisite agony, a teasing promise of the stretch and burn and fullness to come, and it drew a broken, wanting sound from deep in her chest.

He sat back on his heels, the sudden, cool absence of his cock and the anchoring warmth of his hand a shocking void against her overheated skin. Belly couldn't stop the sharp, pathetic whine that escaped her lips—a raw, involuntary sound of loss that seemed to echo in the charged quiet of the room.

He chuckled, a low, dark rumble of pure masculine satisfaction that vibrated through the mattress. "You can wait a bit more, baby," he murmured, his voice a gravelly promise that slithered over her nerves. "I promise, I'll make it worth it."

His hands, large and impossibly sure, slid down to grip her shins. His touch was firm, commanding, as he guided her legs up and around his waist. She obeyed instantly, locking her ankles at the small of his back, her calves squeezing tight. The position arched her back deeper into the pillow, opening her to him completely. She clung with her limbs, a silent, desperate prayer that the strength of her hold might be enough to keep him there, fused to her, forever.

One of his hands released her leg. She heard the soft, wet sound before she saw it—the slick slide of his own fist over his cock. He gave himself a few rough, slow strokes, his knuckles white with tension, running from the root to that gleaming, ruddy tip, spreading the moisture that had gathered there. The visual was obscene, hypnotic. Then he positioned himself, the blunt, heated crown nudging insistently against her soaked, waiting entrance.

"You ready, baby?" His voice was strained, fraying at the edges.

She nodded, a frantic jerk of her chin. In that moment, she wished fervently that she could be outside her own body, a ghost in the corner, just to watch this—to see the way his muscles corded with restraint, to witness the exact moment he claimed her, to observe the wreckage they were making together.

He entered her slowly.

It was an excruciating, perfect invasion. An infinite second of stretching, burning fullness as he pushed inward, millimeter by millimeter, until his hips were nearly flush against the backs of her thighs, buried to the hilt. He stopped there, fully sheathed, and a shattered, guttural groan was torn from his chest. He held perfectly still, trembling with the effort, letting them both feel the devastating completeness of the join.

"Fuck, darling," he breathed, the words raw and reverent. "You feel so good."

Then he began to move.

It was a deep, rolling withdrawal followed by a smooth, powerful surge back home. The hand not bracing his weight settled on her hip, his fingers digging in possessively, holding her in place for his thrusts. His other hand found its way back to her face, his thumb stroking her jaw before his fingers curled under her chin once more, tilting her face up to his. He was a study in controlled force: pulling her body against his with the hand on her chin while driving into her with the relentless piston of his hips.

Both her hands flew up, wrapping around the thick forearm of the hand that held her face. She didn't push him away. She pulled, guiding his hand closer to her mouth. Her eyes locked on his, she captured the pad of his thumb between her lips, sucking it gently, her tongue swirling over the calloused skin.

It wasn't his cock, but it might as well have been. A ragged, broken moan ripped from his throat at the sensation, his hips stuttering in their rhythm. "You're so good to me, baby," he gasped, his control visibly fraying. "Taking me so well."

The hand on her hip shifted. His touch left its imprint on her skin as his fingers trailed down, over her mound, and found her clit again. He cycled between pinching and rubbing and the combination of it brought her close to the edge yet again. As if sensing this, Conrad pulled his hand away. 

“Not so fast, baby.”

His voice was a low, dark murmur, thick with a possessive amusement that sent a fresh shiver through her. The rhythmic, circling pressure of his thumb on her clit ceased, leaving the swollen bud throbbing with unmet need.

“You’ve had a few before I’ve even had one.” He stated it as a simple, undeniable fact, his hips never stilling in their deep, driving rhythm. “You’re getting a little greedy, aren’t you?”

He used the thumb that was still captive in her mouth to force a small, deliberate nod from her. The pressure against her tongue, the way he manipulated her agreement, flooded her with a wave of pure, degrading heat. She loved how utterly pathetic it made her feel—a puppet on his string, aching and compliant.

A single, hot tear welled in the corner of her eye, born of overwhelming sensation and that delicious humiliation. It traced a slow path down her temple and cheek, finally landing on the back of his finger where it rested against her skin.

“Don’t cry, darling.” His tone softened by a fraction, though the relentless pace of his thrusts did not. “You’ll get the attention you want soon. But right now,” he punctuated the words with a particularly deep, grinding surge that stole her breath, “I’m taking what I want.”

True to his word, the speed of his thrusts picked up. The earlier, measured cadence shattered into something more urgent, more punishing. The force of it drove her body deeper into the mattress with every impact. She felt the frame groan beneath them, the headboard tapping a frantic rhythm against the wall. The thought flashed, bright and unbidden: he might just put her straight through the mattress. And a secret, wild part of her wanted him to.

He pulled his thumb from her mouth with a soft, wet pop. A thin, glistening strand of her saliva followed the movement, stretching and then breaking, as if begging his digit to return. Freed, his hand moved. It shot out, grasping the wrought-iron bar of the headboard just above her shoulder. As his grip tightened, she heard it—a faint, almost imperceptible crunch of metal yielding under impossible pressure.

She must be imagining it. The sound was lost in the slap of skin, their ragged breaths, the creak of the bed. It had to be her imagination, a phantom noise conjured by the sheer, overwhelming force of him. But the image was seared into her mind: his knuckles white, the ancient iron bending infinitesimally, driving into her with a pace that felt less like making love and more like claiming territory.

His free hand moved with predatory purpose, sliding up the slick plane of her stomach to claim her tits. His touch wasn’t gentle or exploratory now; it was proprietary, demanding. His palm was hot and rough as it cupped the full weight of one breast, his fingers splaying wide before closing around the soft flesh. He squeezed, not enough to hurt, but with a firm, undeniable pressure that made her gasp. Then his thumb and forefinger found her nipple—already a hard, pebbled peak—and twisted.

A sharp, electric jolt of sensation shot straight to her core, mingling with the deep, rhythmic pounding of his thrusts. He pinched, rolling the sensitive bud between his fingers with the same deliberate, cruel-teasing pressure he’d just used on her clit. It was a dual assault, a synchronized torture that had her arching off the bed, a broken sound catching in her throat.

His thrusts, impossibly, got even faster. Harder. Each drive of his hips was a piston-stroke, a claim staked so deep inside her it felt like he was reaching her spine. The wet, rhythmic slap of skin-on-skin filled the room, a primal drumbeat to their ragged breathing.

“Gonna come in you, baby.” The declaration was guttural, stripped of all pretense.

Belly whined again, the sound high and pitiful and utterly wanton, torn from her by the overwhelming convergence of sensations—the piercing pleasure-pain in her nipple, the brutal fullness of his cock, the dizzying promise of his words.

“You like that, yeah?” he snarled, his voice fraying at the edges. His hips hammered into her, a relentless, driving rhythm that stole the air from her lungs. “You like me filling you, stuffing you full then leaving something behind, huh?”

She could only nod, a frantic, jerky motion of her head. Words were beyond her. Her hands, which had been clutching at the sheets, flew up, reaching for him piteously, needing to anchor herself to the source of this beautiful ruin. They found safe harbor on the thick, corded muscles of his arms—one braced beside her head, the other still occupied with her breast. Her fingers dug into the sweat-slicked skin, holding on as he drove them both toward the edge.

His hand moved down from her tortured breast, abandoning the peaked nipple that still throbbed with the memory of his pinch. It slid over her damp skin, through the slick valley between her hip bones, and found its target once more: her swollen, oversensitive clit.

This time, his touch was different. It was no longer a teasing exploration or a cruel withholding. It was a direct, purposeful assault, perfectly synchronized with the brutal, driving rhythm of his thrusts. His thumb circled the engorged bud with firm, relentless pressure, then pinched it lightly just as he buried himself to the hilt inside her. The dual sensations—the deep, stretching fullness and the sharp, focused spark at her apex—collided.

Her vision whited out.

It wasn't a slow fade or a dimming of the lights. It was a supernova detonating behind her eyes, a silent, blinding explosion of pure, unadulterated pleasure that erased everything else. For a timeless moment, she existed in a void of sensation. She couldn't tell if she was floating, weightless and untethered, or if she’d been driven fifty feet underground, buried under the sheer, crushing weight of her climax.

A profound, all-encompassing warmth spread through her, from the very core he was pounding into, radiating outwards until she was glowing with it, inside and out. She could feel him—every thick, veined inch of his cock filling her, pulsing within her as her own muscles clenched and fluttered around him in endless, rhythmic waves. Her whole body went lax, a boneless surrender, every muscle unclenching at once.

And with that surrender came a security so profound it felt alien. In this tangled, sweat-slicked aftermath of raw, mind-shattering sex, Belly felt safer than she ever had in her life. It was insane. It was ridiculous. The feeling was a warm, heavy blanket wrapped around her soul. No matter what chaos reigned outside these walls—hell or high water, war or peace—in this moment, pinned beneath him, filled by him, she was perfectly, utterly fine. She’d never felt this way. Not with anyone. Not ever. The thought was crazy, and she felt crazy for having it, but it was an undeniable truth that settled into her spent bones.

Slowly, the blinding white haze began to clear, receding like a tide and leaving her beached in reality. Conrad hadn’t moved. He was still above her, still buried deep inside her, his weight braced on his forearms. A small, tender, utterly satisfied smile played across his kiss-swollen lips as he watched her return to herself.

She wished, with a sudden, fierce ache, that he could leave a physical part of himself inside her. Something permanent to mark this feeling.

“There you are,” he murmured, his voice rough but soft. “Welcome back, baby.”

Then, with a slow, deliberate withdrawal that made her acutely aware of every inch of him, he slid out of her. The sudden, empty coldness was a shock. A greedy, pathetic whine escaped her throat before she could stop it, her hips lifting off the mattress in a weak, instinctive chase for his warmth.

“I have to get you cleaned up, yeah?” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument.

She felt herself nod, a sluggish, obedient motion, though her pleasure-fogged brain couldn’t quite grasp the reason. Cleaning up was the last thing she cared about.

He moved then, extracting himself from the tangle of her limbs with a fluid, effortless grace that belied his size. He got off the bed, and with the unthinking confidence of a man who’d lived in her apartment as long as she had, he walked naked to her bathroom. She watched the powerful play of muscles in his back and legs until he disappeared through the doorway, then let her eyes drift shut.

She must have dozed off, but for less than a minute. Her eyes fluttered open when she felt the first gentle, warm pass of the cloth over her forehead. Conrad was back, perched on the edge of the bed. In his hand was a damp washcloth, steam rising faintly from it. He was cleaning her face with a focus that was almost devout, wiping away the smeared remnants of her red lipstick, the sweat at her temples, the single, dried tear track.

It felt like an absolution. For what sin, Belly was unclear. For her greed? For the sheer, wanton filth of what they’d just done? For existing and making him feel this?

His movements were impossibly delicate, a stark, breathtaking counterpoint to the animalistic force of his actions just minutes before. This tenderness was almost more disorienting than the sex had been. He worked his way down her neck, over her collarbones, the cloth warm and soothing.

Then his touch landed between her legs.

He dabbed gently with the warm cloth, cleaning away the evidence of their joining—his release mixed with hers. Her thighs quivered involuntarily at the intimate contact, a weak aftershock of her massive climax. He laughed lightly, a soft, warm sound that held no mockery, only a kind of awed affection.

“Still sensitive, huh?” he murmured, his touch becoming even softer, almost apologetic, as he continued his ministrations.

He made his way carefully, wiping and absolving until he reached the soles of her feet. The washcloth disappears somewhere she can't see and doesn't care to. He pulls his boxers back on and moves her gently, the way he seems to do everything, until she is under the covers, and then he slips in beside her. Her body finds his before he's even fully settled, like it already knows where it belongs.

Belly lays her head on his chest, both hands folding around his where it rests on his stomach. His other hand finds her back, moving slowly up and down, his palm wide and warm against her shoulder.

Somewhere in the apartment, likely wherever her bag had landed in the midst of everything, her phone dings. Then again. Then again.

"You have a lot of people who want to wish you a happy birthday."

"Yeah." She tucks herself further into him. "They can wait."

She feels his hand smooth down her hair, his face coming to rest against the top of her head. She wonders if he is committing this to memory. She hopes so, because she already is.

"Thank you for letting me spend some of it with you."

She nods, hoping everything she can't say comes through in the simple motion.

"You have a lovely apartment, by the way. I didn't mention it earlier." A beat. "I was a little preoccupied."

He laughs, and the feeling of his chest rumbling beneath her ear is one of many things from tonight she already knows she'll keep.

"That's the Sacré-Coeur, right?"

"Yeah." Her voice comes back to her all at once. "I see it every time I look out my window and I never get tired of it. I feel like I'm in Sabrina."

"A classic."

"It is. And looking at it, day or night, it always reminds me that I belong here. That I made the right choice coming. Sometimes, at certain times of day, the windows catch the light in a way I can't even describe."

"You know, those windows aren't the original. They were destroyed during the liberation of Paris in 1944. Bombed. Weren't replaced until 1946."

She turns to look at him. "Let me guess. World War Two nerd? Know anything and everything there is to know?"

"Something like that. Though I only know the European theater well. Couldn't tell you much after February 1945."

"That's an oddly specific cutoff."

"Yeah, well. Everyone has a niche."

She laughs, and it dissolves into quiet. His hand finds its way back to her spine, moving slowly, and her breathing evens out without her meaning it to, falling into the rhythm of his without her permission. She doesn't fight it. The Sacré-Coeur sits in the window, and Paris hums below, and somewhere between one breath and the next, she is gone.

Conrad has no idea what to do. Here he was, a beautiful woman in his arms, and he couldn't even be present in it the way he wanted to. His dreams had come true and he feels like he's standing at the edge of a nightmare. She hadn't caught onto his slip, the closest he has ever come to revealing it, his true self, or whatever those scientists made him into in 1943. He had to be more careful.

He never should have come home with her. He hasn't had this problem before. He has friends in medical school, a best friend in Agnes, and has never once come close to revealing himself to any of them. But with Belly it was different. With her, he almost felt like he could. Like if he told her, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

It's not like he was under any directive to keep quiet, because when it came down to it, who would believe him anyway? There are no records of any Conrad Fisher existing beyond some old photographs in a house on the Cape, and he's been able to pass those off as a great grandfather when anyone asks. No trace of any top secret military project, no paper trail of a serum made from something otherworldly to turn men into something closer to gods. If he told anyone, especially his peers, he would be laughed off, or worse, looked at the way people look at someone they've decided is crazy, and sent somewhere that would make him feel as such.

There was no governmental agency or military threat to her life, but there was still one. Him. He was, after all, a creature formed in a lab, a rat made to do another's bidding, when all he had ever truly wanted was to cure. To help. He had been built for destruction under the guise of victory and had spent every day since trying to be the opposite of that, but the building blocks were still there, underneath everything, underneath the white coat he was working toward and the hands he was learning to heal with. He was still what they had made him. He wasn't sure that ever went away.

There was no governmental agency or military threat to her life, but there was still one. Him. He was, after all, a creature formed in a lab. He had been a good man going in, Erskine had said so himself, and maybe that was still true. But a good man with the ability to level a building with his bare hands was still a dangerous one. The serum hadn't changed who he was, it had only made more of it, the good and the capability alike, and capability in the wrong hands, even hands that meant well, was its own kind of threat. He had been lucky, he knew that. Lucky that the side he was fighting for happened to be the right one, lucky that his own moral compass and his country's had pointed in the same direction, at least for a while. But luck wasn't a virtue. It wasn't something he had earned. And Belly, warm and trusting and her hands folded around his like he was something safe, deserved more than luck.

He has a conference. A train to catch. A life to return to. The comfort of secrecy wasn't something he was excited about, but it was something he needed. In a different universe, maybe this would end differently. One where he had known her longer, or one where he didn't carry what he carried, where he was just a man and she was just a woman and Paris was just Paris. He would wake up, kiss her goodbye, go to Brussels, come back to her for a few days of bliss before returning to Boston, promising to return again. He would mean it.

But he couldn't do that. 

He had about two hours until the first train to Brussels departed. That meant he had just about an hour to savor this.

Did he deserve to? His greed was undeserved, he knew that. But would it be so bad, staying just a little longer? He could spend a lifetime here. Watching her sleep, listening to the city go quiet and distant while their breathing stayed close. This apartment, this window, this woman. He already knew he would be measuring every moment for the rest of his life against this one.

He was stuck between everything he was and everything that could be. Conrad had never been in love before, had never been still long enough in his own life to even consider it. But meeting Belly tonight, just tonight, he was beginning to understand what people had always meant by it. All those songs, all those poems, all that writing he had read across two lifetimes. It had always seemed like an exaggeration. It wasn't. The fall wasn't into an abyss of unknown. He could feel exactly how he would land.

She was such a precious person. Of all the horrible things he had seen in his life, she was such a contrast to all of it. He now, more than ever, could not understand how men with nothing better to do would start wars. How many people had been in this exact situation, exactly like this, only to be ripped apart by those who deemed their lives and their love less worthy of existing? 

Conrad felt her stir, and her mouth fell open, a small snore passing her lips. He couldn't help but laugh, quiet enough not to wake her. That ridiculous sound would probably ring through his ears for the rest of his life.

He wouldn't mind at all.

He would allow himself this. Tonight, this morning, whatever nebulous frame of time he had left in it. He would go to his conference and go back home.

Maybe in another eighty years he could come back, looking twenty or thirty years older at most. That was the other thing, the thing underneath all the other things. He could feel love, but he could never really act on it. His life wasn't endless, but he aged so slowly that it might as well be, measured against everyone else alive.

Conrad didn't want to outlive Belly. He didn't want to outlive anyone, but especially not her, and especially not by decades. Here he was, already thinking about her death, because he knew that his life would go on regardless. She had just turned twenty-two and he was already mourning her. The cruelty of it sat heavy on his chest, right next to her head, right next to her hands folded around his.

He pressed his face into her hair, took a deep breath in, and for the first time in a long time, maybe the first time since before the ice, let himself have something without already grieving the loss of it. He closed his eyes, and let sleep take him.

The sun woke him, or maybe the movement in the small apartment did. He opens his eyes, and without even looking toward the window, he finds what might as well be the sun anyway. Belly, in his dress shirt, in her kitchen, a mug in one hand and a spatula in the other.

He had learned about something called eidetic memory from a British infantryman, once. The man had explained it simply: a temporary ability to vividly recall an image even after it is no longer in sight. Conrad wishes to god it were real. He wishes it weren't temporary. He wishes, more than anything, that he could do it.

If he could, he would do it right now. He would commit this exact image to memory, erasing anything else just to make room for it.

He knows, as a medical student, how memory actually works. That it isn't stored in one place but scattered across the brain like light through a window, each region keeping its own piece of the whole. The hippocampus would index her, file her away as something that happened, something real. The neocortex would hold her long term, the kind of storage that outlasts almost everything else. But it was the amygdala that concerned him most, the part that attached emotional weight to what the brain decided was worth keeping. The part that ensured that the things which moved you the most were the hardest to lose.

He already knew, without any science to confirm it, that every region was working overtime. That she was being written into all of it at once. Episodic, semantic, emotional. The way she looked standing in his dress shirt in the early morning light was already the kind of memory that doesn't fade. The kind that stays, whether you want it to or not.

He wanted it to.

"I don't think the birthday girl should be cooking."

"Yeah, well, it's pancakes, and they're super easy, so I'd hardly call it cooking." She doesn't turn to look at him.

He stands, pulls his boxers on, and makes his way to her kitchen. She turns then, smiles big, and hands him a cup of black coffee.

"I didn't know what you liked, so I left it black, but I have plenty of cream and sugar—"

He takes a sip.

"Oh, so you're insane."

"What do you mean?"

"You drink black coffee?"

"Yeah, I like my coffee untouched. Is that so bad?"

"Okay, grandpa." She looks him up and down. "You know, if you didn't have such a youthful glow, I'd think you were like, a hundred."

He smiles into his mug. "Something like that."

She laughs and plates two pancakes, hands them to him, and then serves herself. They sit in a silence that doesn't need filling, and eat. Conrad looks down at his plate and then back up at her, and lets himself imagine it, just for a moment. Waking up to this every day. Him making breakfast next time, something healthier, and her making a face about it. Sitting across from her like this, in the morning light, in a city that had already given him more than he deserved.

Could he have it? Not the Paris of it, not even the her of it specifically, but the ordinariness of it. The sitting and the eating and the silence that didn't need filling. He had spent so long existing in the extraordinary that he had forgotten to want the small things. Or maybe he had never let himself want them in the first place.

He looked at her over his coffee.

He wanted them now.

"Listen, I know you have to leave, but I thought, since you were doing a tour of Europe anyway…" She turns her mug in her hands. "I mean, you don't have to, obviously. But if you ever wanted to come back to Paris, I could show you around. A real tour, an updated one. Since it's been a while. For you."

He opens his mouth.

"Um, maybe. I do have to get back to Boston, Step 1 prep, and I was trying to see as much as I could before—"

"Uh, yeah, totally." She smiles, and it doesn't quite reach. "That sounds really fun."

He watches her deflate, just slightly, just enough, and he never wants to see it again.

He should leave it there. He knows he should. He picks up his plate, brings it to the sink, and stands there for a moment with his back to her, his hands on the edge of the counter.

He turns around.

"Do you think it's possible to know someone, really know them, in less than a day?"

She considers it. "I think you can never fully know a person, even if you've known them a lifetime."

"But know them enough. Enough to see yourself in their life, or them in yours?"

"I guess it depends. I'd want to know the important things, and if I did, yeah, I think that would be enough to let someone in." She tilts her head. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. Just a random thought."

"Yeah?" The big smile is back. "You hiding something, Conrad?"

He doesn't return it, and hers drops.

"Okay, your silence is starting to concern me—"

"Belly, I have to tell you something." He can't look at her when he says it. "There's no easy way to say it. I've never told anyone, not once, but since last night I've come close more times than I can count, and I think you should know."

The smile is gone completely now. She sits back in her chair, putting a little more distance between them. Maybe she should be.

"Conrad." Her voice is careful. "What's going on?"

"I wasn't born in 2003. I was born in 1919, and I was part of a military project that turned me into a superhuman."

He says it like ripping off a bandage, and then can't stop.

"I grew up in Boston, which I told you, that part was true. I had a bad heart, I was small, I kept trying to enlist and they kept turning me away, and then someone gave me a chance and I took it because I just wanted to help people, I've always just wanted to help people, and they injected me with something and put me in a machine and I came out like this." He gestures vaguely at himself. "And then I crashed a plane into the arctic in 1945 because I didn't know what else to do with myself, and they pulled me out last year, and gave me forged documents and my family left me a trust fund and they told me to figure it out. So I applied to medical school, because it's the only thing that has ever made any sense to me, and I got on a plane to Europe, and I wasn't looking where I was going, and I ran into you."

He stops. Looks at her for the first time since he started talking.

"And I think you deserved to know that."

Of all the reactions Conrad had been bracing for, most of them negative, laughter was not in the top five. Not even in the ballpark.

"What?" Her hands come up to cover her face, and she is shaking with it. "How do you even come up with that?" He would love the image in front of him if it weren't this exact moment.

He doesn't say anything. Doesn't defend it, doesn't scramble to prove it, just sits there and lets her laugh until she notices he isn't. He watches the stillness of him register on her face. She lowers her hands, and the laughter tapers off, and she looks at him. Really looks at him. In a way she hadn't yet, or maybe in a way she had been trying not to.

He holds her gaze and waits.

"So what, I'm just supposed to believe you? Like fuck I am. Of all the things to say, you make up some bullshit straight out of a comic book. The government just, what, injected you with something and you said yes? And it worked, just like that, and then you crashed a plane, on purpose, into the arctic, and they just left you there for eighty years, and then pulled you out and sent you on your way? And you've just been walking around this whole time, going to medical school, and no one knows? Not a single person? And you decided to tell me, someone you met yesterday, a complete stranger, over pancakes in Paris?" She laughs, but there's nothing funny in it. "Why am I even entertaining this? Is this what you do? Make something like this up so people can't get close to you? You couldn't find a simpler way to say you didn't want to come back?"

She crosses the distance between them and puts a finger in his face. He doesn't flinch.

"I don't know what kind of person makes something like this up, but you need help. Genuinely. I can't believe I, and you just let me, all of last night, knowing you were going to sit here and say this, what is wrong with you, what is actually wrong with you—"

She shoves him, both hands flat against his chest, and he takes a step back. Just one. He lets her have it.

"I want you to get out. Go to Brussels, if that's even real, or go back to Boston, I don't care." She takes off his shirt and pushes it into his chest. "You have five minutes before I call the police."

"Okay." Quietly. He's not going to fight it. 

He gets dressed in silence, Belly all but locking herself in the bathroom after grabbing clothes that weren't his. She comes out right as he finishes tying his shoes.

"I'm really sorry, Belly."

"For what? Being completely insane? Making me think something could happen between us? That you didn't even get to prove it?" He thinks about the bed frame. Decides not to bring it up. "Sorry doesn't really cover it."

"I know." He means it. "I hope you have a really good birthday."

She doesn't say anything. Thinks it’s for the best. 

Brussels was uneventful. He had been excited for the conference, to be there with Dr. Namazy, but he never found it in him to be fully present. Part of him, maybe permanently, was still in an apartment in Paris, with a woman he could never do enough to make up to, if she even let him try. He went through with his self-guided tour anyway, taking in the sights, but feeling the absence of the warm body that could have been right next to him. The poppy fields in the Netherlands, stretching red as far as he could see. The Amalfi Coast in Italy, clinging to the cliffs above the water like it was daring itself not to fall. The Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, so still and so blue they looked painted, and he wondered if she had ever been, if she even liked swimming. The Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, rising out of the trees like something from a story, the kind of place that made you feel like you had wandered into someone else's dream.

His flight was out of Brussels, but he decided he could squeeze one last day in Paris. He doesn't spend it walking, taking in any of the usual tourist traps, but instead in a quaint coffee shop, writing until his hand aches. He has written harder letters than this one. He has written to his mother from a warzone, to his brother from a stage show he wanted no part of, letters that had to carry things words were never built to hold. He tells himself this is no different.

He keeps all his attempts, folding them together, hoping that something comes across when she reads them. The first, he wrote about his heart, the intricacies of the cardiovascular system, what his outlook had been the morning he was born, and then he stopped. The second, his family, his need to be something bigger than himself, the desperate want to help people, to be more than the fragile boy he had always been, and then he stopped. The third, about feeling like a bird in a cage, fed and kept but never allowed to fly, and how what he had always wanted, alongside helping people, was freedom. Freedom held from him first by his ailments, and then, when those were fixed, by who he needed to be and what he needed to represent. He wrote about the plane, about how the moment he felt most free in his entire life was flying it into the ice. Waking up in a new century, a new world, with nothing owed to anyone. No country, no duty, no heart condition. Just himself.

The fourth, he wrote about her. About knowing his heart now, maybe for the first time, and what it wants, even after only a handful of hours. He folds all four together before he can stop himself.

He collects them all together, some wet with tears, some stained with espresso that has no effect on him, and folds them into an envelope that barely closes around everything inside it. All his feelings, everything there is to say, made impossible by the fact that it is only pen on paper when what he wants is to say it to her face. He finds his way back to her apartment, his navigating skills better than he wants them to be right now, and leaves it for her.

He meanders down to the Seine, down the steps she had led him, and sits on the bench where the old man and the music had been, and he doesn't know how much time passes. The city moves around him the way it always does, indifferent and beautiful, and he lets it.

At some point, he feels tears on his face. He doesn't stop them, doesn't sniffle or stifle. Just lets them fall, wiping occasionally with the back of his hand. The sun is setting behind him, and he knows that if he doesn't leave now, he never will.

Conrad stands, collects himself and his bag, and begins his trek.

He's almost to the stairs when he hears it.

"Conrad!"

He stops walking. The city doesn't. The traffic keeps moving, the river keeps going, and somewhere in the middle of all of it is her voice, cutting through everything like it was always meant to find him. He tells himself he's imagining it. That he sat on that bench long enough and wanted it badly enough that his mind conjured her out of the noise. That there is no version of events in which she read what he wrote, believed any of it, and came after him. He doesn't deserve that version. He knows he doesn't.

But his imagination has never said his name like that before.

He turns.

She's there. She's really there, in whatever she grabbed on her way out the door, something thrown on quick, chosen for speed and nothing else, and he doesn't care, he wouldn't care if she were wearing anything, he wouldn't care about anything, because she came. The tears fall "Belly?" He knows how pathetic his voice sounds and doesn't care.

She's still catching her breath, cheeks flushed, and she looks at him the way she had the night before, like she's made a decision and has stopped negotiating with herself about it.

"I do think it's possible," she says. "To know someone in less than a day. Enough to want them in your life, maybe forever. I think it's possible because of me. Because of us." She takes a breath. "Yeah, it's a lot, what you told me. It's a lot to drop on someone you've known for less than a day, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't. But so be it." She shakes her head, like she's still catching up to herself. "You bumped into me, and I felt something shift. Not just in me, in everything. I had this guy in college who used to go on and on about parallel universes, all the possible versions of everything that could exist, and I used to tune him out completely, but I keep thinking about it now. All those universes. Every single version of everything. And Conrad, I think in all of them, every last one, I would want this. I would want you."

She takes a step closer.

"I have wished for a prince charming on every birthday I can remember. On every shooting star, every eyelash, every dandelion I ever got my hands on. And then I met you, the night before my birthday, which is so on the nose that I almost don't believe it, and I threw you out anyway because I was scared, and I spent the whole week telling myself I was right to. And then I read your letter." She stops. "Conrad, I know you. Maybe not everything, maybe not yet, but enough. And I want you. That's what I came here to say."

Conrad is at a loss for words, so he drops his bag instead. They stand there for a moment, both of them breathing, both of them arriving at the same place from very different directions. He looks at her, really looks at her, the way he has been doing since the moment he wasn't watching where he was going, and he leans down slowly. Before he does anything else, he finds her eyes one last time. She nods, hers wet, and that's enough.

He kisses her.

And he feels it, all of it, every universe she had been talking about colliding into something he doesn't have the scientific language for, something that exists outside of every discipline he has ever studied, outside of every book he has read across two lifetimes. He has felt extraordinary things in his life. He has been made extraordinary, against all odds. But nothing, not one single thing, compares to this. To her.

He pulls away just enough to look at her. Her face is more splotchy than before and more perfect than anything he has ever seen, and she laughs through a sob, which he decides immediately is his favorite sound, displacing the laugh that has been living in his chest since last night. He leans back down, his hand finding its home at the back of her head, and she pulls him in by the back of his neck like she has done it a thousand times before. Like they have done this a thousand times before. Like they will do it a thousand more.

Below them, the Seine moves the way it always has, ambivalent and ancient. Above them, Paris does what Paris does, humming and golden in the last of the evening light. And on the lower walkway, on the bench where an old man once sat with a small speaker bleeding music into the night, Conrad Fisher holds onto something he has wanted his whole life, across two centuries and an ocean and a war and eighty years of ice.

She pulls away one last time, her hands still on his face, his forehead dropping against hers. They stay like that for a moment, just breathing, just being, the city carrying on around them like it has no idea what just happened on its riverbank.

Then she laughs. The one that lives in his chest.

"Besides." She pulls back just enough to look at him, eyes still wet, smile enormous. "You owe me a new bed frame."