[closed] Something happens and I'm head over heels

[a_shadow]

Who: Tex and L
When: The second day after everyone arrives in Thisavrou
Where: A hotel in Kauto R1
What: Tex confesses how she feels about L
Warnings: Cooties, declarations of love, probably some mushy stuff

It's been so long since they've had the ability to enjoy one another's company—freely, fully, completely—not since the Ingress was repaired on the Moira. Since then, they've both been spending the vast majority of their time in armor, and though she never would have known the experience of being touch-starved in her robot body, she knows that's something that she's suffering from now. So when they arrive on Thisavrou and Tex realizes she has the cash to rent a nice, luxurious hotel room for them to share, she doesn't waste time in inviting him to join her there. The room has a balcony, a huge bed, and a whirlpool bath. They order in all of their meals, lingering over the sweets, enjoying alcoholic beverages, and, of course, the pleasures of the flesh. They've kenneled the dog, so they don't have to worry about interruptions. They're free to enjoy one another.

There's so much they could discuss, especially after spending most of the last month patrolling the camp and helping everyone else, but it almost seems like they both find it a shame to broach more serious topics. They've already discussed things like their pasts, and the fact that she intends to head to his home world with him once they find a way to return. So maybe it's all right that those things don't come up at first. Instead they simply enjoy one another physically, then cuddle, speaking of idle things rather than anything of import. The first days go by in a total blur this way—something she finds she doesn't mind at all.

The last time, before this, that they had been physical together had been slower, more contemplative, more...almost worshipful. She had come to a realization then. Something she hasn't given voice to. She has lingered on it, though, and it's been building up within her. Building up to the point where she feels it's something she'll soon have to give voice to—perhaps despite herself.

It's their second night in the room, now. They've been drinking strawberry liqueur and snuggling together, currently too spent to have sex any longer. She's spooning him, and her face is nestled in his hair as she entangles her feet in his. She feels heady, knowing she would be dizzy if she would try to sit up or walk around, and she raises her hand to brush through his hair. As an AI she feels emotions—she always has—but the alcohol and the environment seem to be heightening them now. She knows he's not a heavy sleeper, but he's breathing as though he's sleeping. He's also not usually a heavy drinker, and she knows she's probably more drunk than he is. Yet he does seem to be fully asleep.

She leans her forehead against his hair and inhales. He smells good. It's funny how far they've come now—they've only been an official couple for a couple of months, but with their year on the planet and everything that came after it seems longer. She breathes a long sigh; yes, it's building within her, the words she has come to realize apply in their situation. Even so, she wouldn't do this if she thought he was awake. She probably wouldn't even do this if she were sober. But she whispers the words all the same. Three words, a cliché; soppy, sentimental words. "I love you."

Comments

[ryuuzaki]

He's not asleep.

L arrived on Kauto with mixed emotions. There was wariness: he felt that if the Savrii were going to kill them all, it might have been easier to bring soldiers through the functional Ingress than to meet the Moira refugees with a show of force on the Savrii's own turf, but the fact that they didn't return with soldiers didn't mean that the newcomers were going to be safe on arrival. Then the Moirans had turned out to be safe after all, and his feelings had turned to relief... and then almost immediately curdled into reflexive suspicion of that relief and a slight, contrary internal resentment of any gratitude he felt. In the past few years, between the Tranquility and the Moira, there had been little cause for optimism. Situations that seemed good didn't stay that way for long.

He hid his resentment and skepticism from the functionaries they dealt with early on, merely appearing as if his interest in his new surroundings was at war with his considerable weariness.

The weariness was what made him agree to the hotel stay -- the weariness, and the desire to be away from the other refugees for a while, just for the space and the privacy. He hasn't stayed in a hotel since The Collectives -- not a hotel like this, anyway. They'll have to get out, explore the city, find a place to live, and find some kind of work, but it can wait a few days in lieu of a large bathtub, room service, and a comfortable bed. It amuses him that Tex wants to pay for it, so he lets her, and he's pleased to watch her enjoying herself with the food and the room and him. He drinks the strawberry liqueur she purchases, but not very much of it.

If he hadn't been with her, he probably would have found a bed and slept for eighteen hours almost as soon as they arrived. As it is, he sleeps through the first night, then rests in quiet moments without quite sleeping -- entirely still, entirely relaxed (particularly after sex), breathing deeply. In another ten minutes he might have missed her confession -- he really might have been asleep.

It occurs to him that she wouldn't have said it if she thought he was awake. His impulse is to roll over and kiss her, but he stifles it and instead pretends to stir and struggle with his limbs a little, as if he's too paralyzed by sleep to have much control over his body.

After a long moment, he mumbles, "Did you say something?"

[a_shadow]

When he stirs, she immediately withdraws, pulling away, shamefaced. She starts to roll on her back, but then pulls a face of frustration and stubbornness. Yes, she said it; yes, she meant it. Why be ashamed? She presses against him again, against his back, and brings her lips to his ear. "I said I love you, Daniel," she says, wrapping her arm around his chest. What's yet to be seen is how he'll react, how he'll feel about this admission, and she presses her lips into a line and nuzzles against his hair and breathes for a moment, waiting for what he'll say.

[ryuuzaki]

Well, he'd given her an out and she hadn't taken it -- and now he has to carry through with his feigned sleepiness. He curls his arm and presses her hand against his chest affectionately, then crushes his eyelids together a few times, leaning his head back towards her in a show of drowsy affection, and continues to try to roll over so that he's facing her.

Kissing her sounds like the best next step.

[a_shadow]

She brushes a stray lock of hair off his forehead as he turns—he still needs that haircut, but she doesn't give a damn about that now. Not one single damn. The feeling for him comes to a crest within her and she waits until he's turned to capture his mouth with hers. She throws her leg over his side and grabs him, pulls herself closer as they kiss. This isn't a sexual overture. It's pure, unadulterated love, welling up inside of her. She's never felt this way about anyone, not even about Church, and it occurs to her she's heard someone say that every time you fall in love it's different from the other times. Yet...what she had with Church was programmed into her, wasn't it? This is organic. This has grown, fed and watered by his affection for her and the way he'd helped her during that time when she needed it. The fact that things are continuing to work out now that she's well only caused the feeling to come to flower. Her hand drifts to his cheek and she caresses his face, opening her eyes and trying to drink him in, the feel and the sight and the smell of him.

[ryuuzaki]

Once he turns, the way she's kissing him pushes through some of his tiredness. It feels different from most of her kisses, which are not perfunctory so much as a means to an end -- from her, this would normally be a direct sexual overture, which he would normally take her up on as soon as possible.

But the look in her eyes when she opens them and the way she touches his face makes it apparent that this is something else. It's softer and more affectionate than usual.

He pulls her into his arms.

"That last time in the tent... was this...?"

[a_shadow]

She smiles ruefully. "I guess it was pretty obvious, wasn't it?" She runs her fingers down his cheek. "I'm not usually..." She trails off. It's not that she's usually not so transparent, it's that she usually pushes the feelings away so thoroughly. She shoves emotions down, locks them up, and doesn't let them out. But there's no reason to hide how she feels now. There is nothing interfering in all the ways it had done at home when she had to hide her feelings. "...Well," she finishes. "That doesn't matter, does it?"

[ryuuzaki]

"No," he says, still somewhat sleepily, then kisses her again. "Doesn't matter. I wouldn't say it was obvious, but it was... it was one of a few possibilities."

[a_shadow]

"You noticed it," she says. "You thought about it, too. Otherwise, you wouldn't have brought it up." She rolls onto her back, pulling him along with her, to cover her body with his. "What else were you thinking it could be?"

[ryuuzaki]

He allows himself to be pulled, but once he's settled, he seems to consider her question, developing a slight frown.

He speaks slowly. "I wouldn't say that I thought about it, only that I noticed it. The circumstances weren't very good and hadn't been in some time... it could have been the result of fear, it could have been... you could have been making a decision about whether or not you wanted to continue. But then, it wasn't the last time... it wasn't even the last time that morning. So that wasn't it."

[a_shadow]

"No," she mutters, "that wasn't it." She wraps one arm around his back and sets the other on his shoulder. "I wasn't thinking about ending things. I've never thought about that."

[ryuuzaki]

"Good," he says, then turns his head and rests it against her shoulder. "Don't think about it."

It's still strange to him sometimes that he's reached this level of physical intimacy with another person; that he lets her roll his body over with hers, just like that, or move his hands, or touch him while he's asleep. Part of him still thinks that he should run from things like this, but her confession didn't make him want to do anything more than kiss her -- that, and question whether or not she'd been drinking too much.

But would he call his own feelings "love"? He has them, and can't see himself willingly letting the relationship end.

Past that, there's a sexual connection that goes beyond compatibility or the release of stress; sometimes his feelings for her are extraordinarily strong then.

He'd be jealous and probably emotionally distressed if her attentions strayed to someone else.

He'd want to deal a devastating blow to anyone who might hurt her.

Is that all there is to it -- all you need for love?

"You know... I'm kind of in the mood for dessert."

[a_shadow]

It doesn't escape her notice that he hasn't answered her in kind. But he's shown enough affection over the last few months that she's unconcerned about this—besides the fact that his reaction to the words themselves seemed fairly favorable. If he had jumped up, avoided her touch and her gaze, that would be something else. But he didn't. She's willing to wait, if he doesn't feel he can say the words back at this point.

"What else is new?" she teases when he mentions dessert, kissing his ear. Then she blows out a sigh. They've eaten a lot of sweets the last day or so; she's normally not one to indulge so much. "How about some mousse?" she suggests. Mousse is whipped and light, and not as filling as some other options.

[ryuuzaki]

He shakes his head slowly against her shoulder -- a small movement.

"No, the thing with the berries that taste like raspberries." Taste like it, but aren't: they looked more like currants, only bigger.

Has she ever had a real raspberry before, or a real currant? Asking doesn't seem like a good idea; he can pin someone else down if he wants to talk about what it's like to not be human in the formal sense. Even so, there are plenty of humans from his own world and time who haven't tasted those things. Arrival at Thisavrou means another layer of challenging his own assumptions.

[a_shadow]

He's made no move to get off of her; she smirks and rubs his back. "All right," she says. "You order those for yourself, and get me some mousse. And get some sparkling water."

[ryuuzaki]

He rests for a moment, then heaves a heavy sigh and rolls over to reach for the contact pad on the table near the bed.

Mousse, the berry confection, sparkling water... coffee, if he's going to continue to be awake. At least they have coffee here.

"We're going to have to find a place to live. Have you put any thought into what you want?"

[a_shadow]

Once he's placed the order and placed the pad back down, she snuggles up to his side. "Is that your way of asking me to live with you?" she teases. They had practically been there already, on the ship, and there had almost been no discussion of it after the crash when they started sharing a tent. So it's only logical now that it had gone without saying. Almost, anyway. "I want some place nice," she says. "Nothing cheap. I mean, quality-wise."

[ryuuzaki]

He hadn't intended to ask; he merely operated under the assumption that they probably would, and that there wouldn't be much point in renting separate places if they intended to live together sooner or later.

"I think we can agree on that. It'll cost us, however."

They'd been offered generous trades and compensation upon arrival, but in his experience, the price of getting set up for business in a new location could also be considerable.

[a_shadow]

"I know." She drops a gentle kiss on his chin and sits up—one of them will have to be up and dressed when room service arrives. She finds his shirt and pulls it on, pushing the cuffs of the long sleeves up to her elbows. She remains there, for now, sitting with her knees bent and toes pointed in his direction. "This was the only indulgence I was going to take until we found ourselves a place. We ought to check out in the morning and stay somewhere a little cheaper until we get a house lined up." She runs her fingers along his side as she speaks. "A two-bedroom is probably best. For an office, or gym, or whatever we'll decide to use the second room for."

[ryuuzaki]

"We can stay back at the Ingress Complex for the time being. It isn't somewhere I'd want to live permanently, but we have a few weeks there."

The truth is that he probably could live there permanently -- but there are better ideas.

She's wearing his shirt now, facing him and sitting on the bed. There's something very charming about it, something that causes his expression to brighten and soften a little.

"Are you sure you want to leave tomorrow?"

[a_shadow]

"I think so. I don't want to spend all my money on this room. As nice as it is staying here. Though if we are going to stay somewhere for free..." She runs a fingertip along his belly, tracing the separation of the muscles there. "...Maybe one more night. We haven't gotten my money's worth out of that hot tub yet."

[ryuuzaki]

The stomach muscles that she traces tense in response to her touch. The sheet itself is slung very low.

"Oh -- well. As long as we're concerned about the economics of the hot tub." He presses his eyelids together again and yawns. "I feel like I've finished a case. Only there's no sense of achievement, just relief that it's over for the time being."

[a_shadow]

She studies him for a moment, then rises to find her sweatpants and put them on. It won't be long before someone knocks. "Does it also feel like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop?" she asks. "Because I think after everything we've been through it's going to be hard for us to really relax for a while."

[ryuuzaki]

He lets one of his arms drop to the side, landing extended on the bed with his open hand facing upwards.

It would be easy to lie to her here, but what's the point? He stares at the ceiling, speaking to the air above him, sounding mildly exasperated.

"I don't think I'll ever feel any other way again... because the other shoe always does drop. I'm not talking about at home, where I had some agency in terms of events or what I would involve myself in. I mean since I was on the Tranquility... conditions never stayed favorable for long. The Moira was better in almost every way, but that was still essentially true."

[a_shadow]

She's still mildly inebriated, and she has to hang on to the edge of the bed to get the pants on, but she manages it, and then remains seated there, perched on the edge of the bed, facing the door. "If everything is the way they say it'll be, here," she says, "you won't have that problem. You'll be able to decide what you do and when."

[ryuuzaki]

"Yes." A beat -- he looks over at her. Her back is to him, and his tone becomes momentarily dark. "For how long, though?"