Frankly, though, I’m not worried about the building or how empty it is. I’m worried about my partner, or ex-partner as the case may be. Besides, if this turns into an all-out fight, at least that’ll be less witnesses to worry about.

The landlord glances up from his desk when I go past him. He recognizes me with a smile, waving cheerfully and letting me go without even a question. Christ, so much for security. If he’d seen what we did, seen the bruises we left on him…

Oh, yay. More guilt. Fuck.

Billy hasn’t changed the lock yet. The key he gave me still works, opening the door with a sound that makes me wince. It brings both his cats running at a dead bolt, winding around my ankles and doing their damnedest to trip me. His cats hate me with an almost unholy passion, but here they are anyway, putting their front paws on my knees and meowing pitifully for attention. I scratch the bigger cat between the ears, uncomfortable. It meows again, giving me a dark look that’s way too familiar, then trots off into the kitchen. I follow, trying not to stumble on the tabby still circling my legs.

The apartment is freezing because Billy, the idiot, decided not to turn on the heat, and there are empty beer bottles, too many for comfort, strewn across the counter. Yet the cats are both fed and have water. Figures.

Crossing the room, I turn up the heat and notice the answering machine blinking. There’s about eight messages there. I left seven. Nice to know he hasn’t just been deleting them, even if he hasn’t picked up the phone for the last week. Might not have been here. Hell, I’m not even sure if he’s here now. The apartment is dead silent.

The tabby suddenly moves, an orange streak in the corner of my vision, and skids to a stop in front of the bedroom door. Putting its paws up on the door, it tilts its head back and yowls at me again.

“What? Timmy fell in the well again?” My voice sounds out of place in the quiet. The whole apartment feels wrong somehow, colder and darker, like I’m not supposed to be here. It didn’t used to be like this. It doesn’t have to be like this.

The cat meows again, more forcefully this time, and scratches at the door.

Billy’s in that bedroom, maybe awake, maybe just waiting for me to walk in there so he can beat the hell out of me. I’m not ready to deal with this. This was a mistake, all of it, from trusting him to hitting him to setting foot in this apartment. And if that goddamned cat doesn’t stop scratching the door, Billy’s gonna open it and then I’m completely screwed.

Shit.

“Hey. Cat.” It stops, looking back at me curiously, tail twitching. “You want in there?”

Tilting its head, it meows questioningly, then scratches at the door again.

“All right, I’m going, be quiet.” Opening the door, I wait for it to go in so I can get the hell out of here. The cat doesn’t move, still blinking at me. “What?” I hiss at it. “Go, already.” Poking it with the toe of my shoe, I point into the darkness of the bedroom. “Well?”

It still just sits there, tail moving idly back and forth, and yawns.

“I hate you.”

It gets up at that, pushing the door open wider and making its way through. I start to close the door, then get hit by the cold inside the room and stop. The bedroom is freezing, the kind of cold that comes from leaving your window open during a cold snap. No matter how stubborn, how idiotically macho Billy can get, he’s not a masochist.

Damn it. I’d better check on him. If he was gonna bitch at me, he would have by now. I’m not sure which worries me more, the thought that he could sleep through this cold, or the thought that he’s so pissed off at me he isn’t even going to yell at me anymore. I think it’s the second one that gets to me. If he won’t bother to snap at me anymore, it’s over. I’ve lost him.

Taking a deep breath, I step into the room, bracing myself to see him staring at me in silent accusation, in hatred. What I get instead is almost worse.

Billy’s here, but he’s not conscious. He’s on his stomach on the bed, body half covered by a sheet too thin to keep out the cold, face turned away. He doesn’t even twitch when I close the door behind me. Judging from the tight shivers wracking him and the death grip he has on the sheets, I don’t think it’s a particularly easy sleep. He moves, restless, and the sheet slips just far enough to show that he isn’t wearing anything underneath it.

Time to look away. He’s not mine to look at anymore, not right now. So, I go close the window instead, and stand there for a minute looking out, rubbing my arms, waiting for the room to warm up.

It used to be brighter in here. Hell, even those nights I stayed here were brighter than this gray light. Or maybe it just felt brighter while I could feel his skin under my fingertips, his body under mine…

Shaking myself, I look back at him to see if the shivering has gotten any better. This close, I can see the bruises scattered down his back, dark against the harsh white of the bandage on his shoulder. I reach out and touch the darkest one without thinking, trying to smooth it away, trying to make it better. It doesn’t help.

I pull my hand back like he burnt me; I don’t even want to look at those bruises anymore. Instead I grab the blanket off the floor, where it’s tangled up in a heap. A bottle of pills falls out and hits the floor with a rattle. I nudge it with my foot until I can read the label. Painkillers. And he’s been drinking, too, the idiot. No wonder he didn’t wake up.

With a sigh, I throw the blanket over him. I manage to hold out against the urge to smooth it out, for an entire five seconds, then break down and do it anyway. The touch makes the shivers finally die down a little. I push the hair out of his eyes, more out of habit that anything else. He looks like hell, gray under his tan, dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept since we turned on him. I’m willing to bet that I don’t look any better.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, looking at him just in time to see him shudder suddenly. Tensing up, he murmurs raggedly in his sleep, “Don’t…”

Nightmares: one of those wonderful side effects of painkillers. Three guesses what this one’s about.

We’re not good for each other, not even close. I don’t remember, don’t want to remember, how many times we’ve done this to each other, attacked and betrayed and snapped and pulled away. But every time it happens, we still come back for more like we need a fix of pain. Yeah, we’re fuck buddies, but if it was just the sex, good as it is, I’d be gone by now. I wouldn’t be sitting here, feeling like my heart is being torn out of my chest when I see the bruises I put on him.

Earlier this year, staring at the ceiling from a cold bed in an otherwise empty hotel room, listening through the wall while Sean tried to forget Hunter by sleeping with Kane, I used to think that I’d feel better if I hurt Billy back like he hurt me. I’m supposed to be feeling good right now. I’m not.

“Tried to stop the count…” He sounds desperate, broken. I fucking hate this. I hate Hunter for throwing the first punch, for being too much of a pussy to cross his precious bitch of a wife. I hate Billy for being able to do this to me. I hate myself.

I don’t break anything, tempting as it is. Instead, I put my hand on his good shoulder, shaking him gently. As much as I don’t want to face him right now, I can’t let him live through that again. Once was bad enough.

He flinches away from my hand, curling into himself. “Please, Jess, m’sorry…”

Shit. I’ve been waiting for nearly a year to hear an apology from him, but not now. I didn’t want it like this.

Laying my hands on his back, trying not to touch any bruises, I try awkwardly, “Wake up.” When he doesn’t stir, I touch his face with my fingertips, stroking lightly. This is painfully familiar, bringing back memories of other nightmares that could be soothed away with a kiss or a few light touches. Even if that would work, I don’t have the right to fix it that way anymore. I swallow tightly, and manage to get out words in a halfway steady voice. “You need to wake up, baby. You’re having a nightmare.”

He jerks awake so abruptly that I don’t have time to pull my hand back. His eyes, disoriented and too wide, fix on me. For a second, he looks almost relieved.

Then memory kicks in, and he wrenches away from me so fast that I’m surprised that he doesn’t hurt himself. Backing up into the headboard to get some distance between us, he snarls, “What the fuck are you doing here?!”

I move off the bed, taking a few steps back so that cornered look leaves his eyes. “Listen-“

“No.” Sitting up straighter, he snaps, “What, you came back for a second shot when I’m even worse off? Go right on ahead. Fuck, you don’t even need Sean and Hunter’s help this time!”

I can’t help wincing. “That isn’t it.”

“Why, then?” When I don’t answer, he gives a cynical half-laugh and slides off the bed. He doesn’t bother covering himself as he goes to get a pair of jeans off the floor. It’s not like we haven’t seen each other naked before. He’s favoring his shoulder, tensing with pain as he jostles it pulling on his jeans. That little wince on his face, the only sign that he’s hurting that I’m likely to get tonight, jolts me out of my silence.

“I’m here to explain what happened a few weeks ago.”

“Oh, allow me. I got hurt. I wasn’t useful anymore. I got up in Hunter’s face. He smacked me around. You helped. All of this about twenty four hours after you told me we should ‘just be friends’ because you couldn’t trust me anymore.” Looking up, he leans against the wall. “It doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out. I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

Oh, no, he’s not just a little bitter.

“Fine, you don’t want to hear it. I’m here to apologize, then. Will you let me?”

Billy laughs, a short and harsh sound. “You’re a little late, Jess. It’s been weeks. I gave up on an apology after the surgery, when I was sitting here staring at the ceiling for hours on end and Sunny, a woman I haven’t even talked to in three years, had to show up to take me home with her.” Noticing the stunned look that has to be on my face, he shrugged painfully. “What were you expecting, for me to sit here and pine for you and your apologies while you’re off fucking the kid every night? I’m not that naïve.”

And here I thought him bitching at me would be a good thing. With a sigh, I lean against the headboard. “I didn’t know,” I explain without really expecting him to pay attention, “how badly I’d screwed things up until last night.”

“Kid wouldn’t sleep with you, huh?” Crossing the room again, he pulls the window open and sits on the ledge, one knee drawn up to his chest as he listens to me. That pose is way too familiar. I kissed him once there, both of us sitting on that ledge with only the fire escape on the other side between us and three stories of open air. The curtain was open, anybody could have seen, and we were too distracted to care. Too innocent to care.

Forcing my attention back to now, I reply, “Actually, I saw what happened at No Way Out. What really happened.”

That gets his attention. Anger fading, he asks, “What?”

I look down at the sheets with a shrug. I’m not entirely up to seeing his face now that his anger slipped. If he tosses me out, I don’t want the memory of what I can’t have anymore haunting me. “Look, Stephanie and Hunter made sure I never saw any of the replays or got a hold of a tape of our match that night. I didn’t know what happened until Sean finally broke down and showed me. God knows Hunter’s too fucking whipped now to cross the bitch.”

Billy blinks, leaning back against the window frame. “What did they tell you?”

I wince, then tilt my face down, letting a few braids fall forward to hide behind. There are some distinct advantages to having dreads. “Stephanie said you didn’t try to stop the pin. Said you just stood there and let it happen.”

There’s silence for a long while after that. When Billy finally responds, his voice is dangerously quiet. “And you believed her over me.”

I shrug again, fidgeting with the corner of the bedspread. “Things were so bad I didn’t know who to believe anymore. I just… I don’t know. Sometimes I thought the belts were the only things keeping us from killing each other, and when we lost those…” I risk a look up at him, only to find him pointedly not looking at me, instead scratching behind his cat’s ears with an unreadable expression on his face. With another sigh, I add helplessly, “What else do you want me to say? I’m sorry.”

Billy doesn’t answer, still scratching the tabby behind its ears like the soft purr it gets him is the only thing keeping him grounded. After a long moment, he nudges the cat on to the floor and looks at me. “If you’re waiting for me to jump in your arms, crying with gratitude, don’t hold your breath. It isn’t gonna happen.”

That said, he ducks out on the fire escape, without even a glance back at me. I don’t really have a choice. I follow him.

When I climb through the window, he’s leaning against the railing, staring down into traffic. He doesn’t raise his head when I ask, sitting on the sill, “So what is gonna happen?”

He shrugs, not looking at me. “Don’t know. But we’ve done this to each other too many times already. It’s not even that you hit me, because God knows I’ve hurt you worse. But… we just can’t keep coming back to each other anymore. We’ve let an apology fix everything too damned many times.”

I swear, I can actually feel the knife twisting in my stomach a little more with every word. I can hear the edge of desperation in my voice when I swallow and manage to ask, “So what are you telling me, baby?”

“I’m telling you don’t call me ‘baby’.” His voice is absolutely dead, no emotion in it at all. “I’m telling you to let it go this time. Just get the hell out of here, go marry a nice girl your mom’ll approve of, have too damned many kids, live a long, happy life and forget that we happened. We’re done.”

I didn’t think anything short of dying could hurt this much. I can’t move, can’t look up at him, can’t do what he’s telling me to do and just go. Somehow, though, I get words out in a flat voice I can barely recognize as mine. Too bad they aren’t the words I want to say. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I should go.” Putting my hand on his good shoulder, I try, “I-“

“Go, Jess.”

It’d be easier if he was angry. I could fight that. I don’t have any defense against the hurt, tired note to his voice. So I just grip his shoulder lightly, like you’d comfort a stranger, then let my hand drop. He flinches as my hand trails down his back, and I pause as I notice something I couldn’t before.

There are scratches on his back. Not the kind that cats leave, but the ugly, deep kind that are left when you get into a fight with a woman in fake nails, and lose. The sight is enough to stop me cold.

“What the hell?” I ask, half to myself, as I touch the longest mark. “What happened to your back?”

He tenses up at that, realizing that I see the marks. “A woman,” he replies shortly, tersely. He doesn’t want me asking questions. Tough shit.

“How’d that happen?”

“Look, I don’t know.” At my incredulous noise, he snaps, “I was kind of otherwise occupied at the moment!”

“Otherwise occupi-…” The words freeze in my throat as I realize. “My God.”

Grabbing his shoulder, I force him to turn around and face me. When he starts to protest, I slam him back into the railing hard enough that it creaks and he shuts up.

Leaning into him, I ask in a low voice, “’Otherwise occupied’? So that’s where you been all week, baby?” I touch the mark on his throat that I only wish was a bruise, then demand, “Since when has ‘otherwise occupied’ meant ‘fucking anything that moves’?”
-
He goes pale, eyes widening, and for a second he looks almost guilty. Then the anger is back in a sudden flare and he bristles. “Like you have any right to get angry! How many times have you slept with the kid since I left, Jesse? Every night?”

I can’t help flinching when I realize that he’s right. We did sleep together, every night, Sean trying to help me and me trying to patch over this sudden gaping hole in my heart with a few good lays. “This isn’t about me,” is all I can manage, and weakly at that.

“Oh, this is so about you!” Pushing me away, he tries for the window. I block his way, and he snarls at me. He always lashes out, every time I don’t let him run. It’s no different this time. “You left me,” he tells me harshly, “you smacked me around, and you’ve been fucking the kid. This is about you. How long did you wait until you jumped him? Hell, was I even gone yet?”

Now that was low. “Stop it,” I tell him, almost calm. “I didn’t come here to get into a fight with you over my sex life.”

He laughs, harsh and bitter. “Don’t start with me. Up until about two weeks ago, I was your sex life. And I don’t care about what you came here for, or about-“

The words catch in his throat, but we both know what he couldn’t say. He wanted to say that he didn’t care about me. Too bad I already know how much of a lie that is. He only wishes that he didn’t care. I know the feeling; I spent most of last year trying to convince myself of the same thing in reverse.

Leaning against the wall, I ask with a tired smile, “Can’t even say it, can you, baby?”

“Told you not to call me that.” For a second, he sounds exasperated, fond. Shaking it away as he recovers, he asks in a low voice, “How long have you been sleeping with Sean?”

From the tone of his voice, he’s expecting me to answer that it’s been months, maybe even years, just waiting for me to hurt him. Nice to know he trusts me so goddamned much. Swallowing against the hurt and pulling a hand through my hair, I shrug. “A week. Maybe two.”

“You’re full of shit.”

I shrug again. It’s weird, the disconnected calm I’m feeling. This is kind of an either/or thing, trying to coax him back. If I manage to do it, we’re stuck with each other. If not, it’s over. All of it. I really don’t want to think about the second possibility, and not thinking about it is making me reckless as hell. He wants to keep pulling away from me? Fine. I’ll just keep following. After three years, he’s not getting rid of me that easily.

Touching his jaw, turning his face towards me, I ask too-gently, “How long did you wait? How old are those scratches?”

Gentle makes him edgy. Still not meeting my eyes, he leans his head away from my hand. If I wasn’t in the way of both the window and the stairs, he’d be gone by now. “A week.”

For every wild note to his voice, every short and desperate look he shoots to the two escape routes that I’m blocking, I’m getting calmer. “What did you think you were doing?”

That finally makes him look at me, eyes wide. “Gee, Jess,” he drawls with a bitter smirk, “I think I was having sex.”

“Why?” When he starts to make some smartass comment so far from the truth that I’m supposed to let it go, I cut him off. “You were on painkillers, had one good arm and were completely bruised up after we turned on you. Doesn’t sound like much of a turn on.”

Billy looks away, backing up into the railing. “You don’t know anything,” he mutters, resentful, panicked. I’m hitting too close for home. “It was just sex.”

I touch the long scratches on his chest, feeling him flinch. “Why’d you let them scratch you up like this, then?”

“It doesn’t mean anything-“

“Like hell.”

That finally does it. “Jesus, Jesse!” Pushing my hand away, he backs even further up. “What the hell do you want to hear? That I was so desperate I went out and screwed a ring rat? That I couldn’t sleep alone when my sheets still smelled like you? You want to hear how pathetic I’m getting? I looked in the mirror the night after you hurt me and saw the bruises, and all I could think was that it meant I was still your bitch even if you didn’t want me. So I told them to scratch me up, mark me so that I could at least pretend…” His voice fades out. Swallowing tightly, he looks back up at me and gives a laugh that’s crazed and razor sharp on the edges when he sees the look on my face. “Yeah, I know. I’m losing it. Want to know why, Jess? Will that make you leave?! Because you hurt me, and I’m still fucking stupid enough to love you!”

My knees go out from under me, and I fall back against the wall. If there was anything I expected to hear from him, I wasn’t that. After three years, I’d given up on hearing it, especially when he’s tired and angry and hurting. But he said it anyway, and that knocks the words out of me. Judging from the stunned look on his face, he wasn’t expecting it any more than I was. We just stand there, staring at each other, for a long moment.

“What the hell did you just say?” I ask finally, my voice shaking. Without thinking, I reach out and lay a hand on his chest, feeling his heart racing under my palm. I can sympathize. My pulse is going too fast as an odd feeling that is somewhere between sweetness and pain sparks to life.

He jerks awake, eyes going wide, and pulls away from me. “I… oh, Christ.” Turning away, gripping the railing until his knuckles turn white, he stares down into the street. “Shit,” he mutters, desperate. “I didn’t mean that, Jess.”

Neither of us are buying it. I touch his good shoulder lightly. “Turn around and look at me.”

My voice sounds like iron, cold and hard, even while that feeling is spreading, leaving behind a warm sort of glow. When he doesn’t move, I force him around, pinning him against the railing with my body. God, he’s shaking. We both are.

Reaching up, I cup his face between my hands, urging his head up until he looks at me and not the ground. He blinks at me, wary, trying to read my expression. I’m not helping him any by demanding in a low voice, “Say that again.”

“Jess?”

“Shh. Just say it.”

Searching my face, unsure of what to do to avoid getting beaten down again, he says haltingly, “I love you.”

The feeling rushes through me in a flood. I close my eyes on a shaky breath, savoring it. When he starts to tense up, I open my eyes again and offer him a real, hopefully encouraging smile.

Leaning up, I slide a hand around to the back of his neck and urge him down a little, ignoring his attempt to edge back into safer territory. With a short, shaky laugh, I give him my answer. “Thank God.”

Then I pull him down into a kiss.
-
This feels so incredibly right. It feels like something finally falling into place, the soft warmth of his lips, his body solid and tense against me, his scent, his taste…

He finally relaxes all of a sudden, realizing that there’s no trap here. Melting up against me, he cautiously puts his good arm around me and starts kissing back, softly at first and then harder. I press up against him, getting as close as we’re going to without me being inside him. Which has its own good points, come to think of it.

The thought makes me laugh, and for the first time in a while it’s a happy sound. I didn’t even realize how much I missed this, feel the hollowness not having it left inside, until now. I can’t seem to let go of him, even if we are standing out in the open and there’s still enough daylight for us to be seen. Let anybody see, I don’t care right now. I need to touch him.

Running my fingers up his spine, I can feel him shiver and kiss me back harder. His hands span my hips, thumbs rubbing over my hipbones, and even through a layer of denim the touch makes me whimper. Breaking off the kiss, I nuzzle his throat.

“Jess…” His voice sounds shaky, amused, “I don’t think we ought to be doing this out on the fire escape.”

“Too bad. We are.” Nipping his throat lightly when he chuckles, I mock-glare at him. “Hold still, would you?”

He does, leaning back against the railing while I lick a path from his ear to his jaw. We both need this, too much to care about public decency laws. It might be an issue later, but for now neither of us want to break apart long enough to go inside. So it’s not that concern that makes me freeze.

It’s the soft, involuntary hiss of pain that he gives when I brush against the edge of the bandage on his shoulder.

Raising my head, I look at him again, taking in the bruises and the dark circles under his eyes, and curse softly. “Shit. Billy, we can’t do this now.” When his eyes widen, I explain quickly, “It’s not that. I want you, baby.” With a rueful smirk, I glance down. “Believe me, I want you.” Looking up again, I add, “But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Jesse, you’re not gonna hurt-“ His words cut off on another wince as I touch the bandage again.

“Painkillers wear off?” When he finally nods, looking resentful, I sigh. “Thought so.” Stepping back, I tug on his good arm. “C’mon. Inside.”

“They’re just gonna knock me out,” he protests, still letting me drag him through the window into the darkness of the apartment.

“Exactly why we can’t do this now.” Grabbing the bottle of pills off the floor, I toss it to him. “Take them. Or I hold you down and make you take them, and I don’t think you’d enjoy that much.”

“I don’t know, the holding down part sounds promising…” With a sigh, he downs two without water and sits down on the edge of the bed. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic.”

“Great.” There’s no color to his voice now, just a tired sort of resignation. Looking down, he studies the knee of his jeans. “So. I guess I’ll see you-“

“And you think I’m going where, exactly?”

His head snaps up. “You’re staying?” There’s a note of hope under the startled tone, making something protective stir in my chest. Now I think I’d have to be dragged out the door to get me to leave him.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?” Pulling my shirt over my head, I drop it to the floor and start to unbutton my jeans. “Let’s see. I can go home and sit around my house alone for the next three days, or I can stay here, wrap myself around you and know that you’re okay. Not exactly a hard choice, Billy.” I look up at him, almost smiling when I see how wide his eyes are, and ask, “Do you want me to stay?”

His breath goes out in a sudden rush, and he smirks. “Gee, y’think?” Leaning back, he held out his hand. “C’mere.”

This time I do smile. Sliding off my jeans, I climb on to the bed and nudge his side gently. “Turn over on your side, baby.”

He doesn’t argue for once, only complies, sighing when I curl up against his back and slip my arms around him. I nearly purr, pressing my cheek against the back of his neck. God, he feels good against me…

We stay like that for several long minutes, half afraid to speak or breathe in case this is just a particularly vivid dream. The silence stretches on so long that it startles me when he speaks up.

“Jess?” His voice is low, soft enough that I almost miss it.

Kissing the back of his neck, I murmur, “Hmm?”

“You don’t have to do this.” It’s killing him to make the offer. Pain shimmers just under the surface of his voice, making me hold him just a little tighter as if that’s gonna help.

“I know that. I want to be here. Missed holding you.” There are other things I missed doing with him, but I’m not bringing that up until I’m sure that we can do something without hurting him even worse than he is. Besides, selfish as this sounds, I want the scratches and bruises gone before I touch him. I want the bite marks that Sean left on me, in some interesting places, to be faded by then. I don’t want reminders of other people to be there. It should be about us. Just us.

“Okay. Just checking.” After a moment, he curls both arms over mine. Toying with one of my fingers, he adds finally, “I’m not sure if we ought to be doing this.”

My heart skips a few times, but I manage not to tense up. “Yeah?” I ask, shaky.

“You deserve better.” When I try to argue, he cuts me off, turning to look at me. “Let me talk.” Cupping my cheek, he explains almost gently despite the words and the pain in his eyes, “I’m not worth this. I’m not gorgeous like the kid. I can’t give you what you want. Not white picket fences or 2.5 kids, or a ring. You’re risking too much and not getting anything back. Your family’ll be pissed. If this goes public we’re both screwed. I can’t give you even half of what you should have-“

“And I don’t give a damn about any of that.” Tangling my hand in his hair when he tries to keep going, I pull him close for a kiss to shut him up. After a moment, I lean back and tell him fiercely, “Damn it, I never expected an easy ride, here. I don’t want white picket fences; I’d go crazy trying to live around them anyway. I don’t want flowers or any of that shit from the back of romance novels, because frankly I don’t need them. I want you. Not kids, not rings, just you.”

He goes still, just staring at me in a state of shock. I can see an old pain fracturing behind his eyes, before he closes them and says simply, sounding overwhelmed, “Oh.”

Stroking my thumb over his lower lip, I tell him gently, “You’re shaking.”

His voice sounds oddly weak when he lies, “Painkillers are kicking in.”

I nod, even though he can’t see it and I seriously doubt that the shudders working their way through him have anything to do with painkillers. There’s not much I can do about them, except stay. So, urging him around, I press myself against his back again, nuzzling until I’m comfortable. He shivers, leaning back into me.

Now that I’m lying down in a dark room, him in my arms again, I’m really feeling all those missed hours of sleep from the last two weeks. I’m suddenly so tired that it’s dizzying. For all my concern about Billy shaking, I’m not steady myself. I can feel my hands shaking as I stroke little patterns on his stomach, and it’s not all from being tired.

God, I finally told him, went out and laid myself open, and meant every word of it. He could have so easily ripped me to pieces, but he didn’t. This feeling is somewhere between fear and one hell of a high, like standing on the edge of a cliff and nearly falling off. On the one side, you just almost died. On the other, you suddenly so aware of every breath, every heartbeat, every sign that you’re still alive…

“Move in with me.” The words come so abruptly that they take me by surprise.

“What?” Billy sounds only about half awake, not even bothering to raise his head. He’s out of it on painkillers. I really ought to leave him alone. Ought to.

“Move in with me.” That same reckless feeling is back, born on adrenaline and not enough sleep. “At least for a while, just a few months. I don’t want to come home to an empty house anymore.” I’m not going to add that I like the idea of him in my bed, even when I’m not there. That’s a little weird, even for me. Nuzzling his throat, I add plaintively, “I want you there.”

He laughs, and this time, there’s no edge to it. Tilting his head back, he smiles at me. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m serious.” I kiss his forehead, making him blink. “It can hold two people. Think about it, baby, do you really want to hang around an empty apartment for six months?”

That makes him wince. “No.”

I loosen my grip on him, feeling slightly guilty for a reason I can’t quite define. “You want to stay at my place?” When he doesn’t reply right away, I add, running my knuckles down his cheek, “You’re allowed to say no.”

He considers just long enough to make me edgy, then leans his head back against my throat, looking at me upside down. “Actually… that sounds good.” Sounding kind of startled, he murmurs, “Really good.”

A breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding rushes out. “Okay,” I murmur, half to myself. Then a smile takes me off guard, and I repeat a little louder, “Okay. Then will you come home with me?”

Blinking, he looks at me, still upside down, then cautiously smiles back. “Yeah, if you want.”

“Believe me, darlin. I want.” I press another kiss to his temple, then rub my cheek against the top of his head. “Thank you.”

“Hmm.” Closing his eyes, he lets his head drop back to rest on my shoulder. “No problem. You just never wanted me there before.”

“Hey. I wanted you there, we were just never serious enough that I could ask.”

He tenses up a little at that. After a long moment, which I spend with a lot of kicking myself for pushing it, he sighs. “We’re serious now.”

It’s not a question, just a statement of fact that makes my stomach tighten. Letting out a long breath, I finally nod against the back of his neck. “Yeah. We are.”

“I can live with that.” There’s no hesitation this time. He doesn’t even stop to consider it first, to second guess himself, just trusts me like there’s no reason not to. It’s probably the lack of sleep and the painkillers talking, but damn, that makes me feel better.

Smiling like an idiot, I nuzzle the place behind his ear. “Good thing,” I tell him in a soft tone I only use with him. “I think you’re stuck with me.”

Sleepily, he corrects me, “We’re stuck with each other. Especially right now. You try to get up and I think I’ll have to kill you.”

I brush the hair out of his eyes, ignoring the exasperated sound it gets me. “Painkillers are working?”

“I can’t open my eyes to save my life, so, yeah. I’d say the pain’s been killed.” Nudging his head the place between my shoulder and my throat, he asks faintly, “I already said that I hate this, right?”

“Yeah.” I kiss the curve of one ear, because it’s in reach. I’d tell him that he’s cute like this, so tired that he gets warm and sleepy and pliable, but he’s not too tired to kick me for it, so I keep it to myself. “Go to sleep. I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

He ignores that for a second, reaching down to search for my hand, then tangling his fingers with mine. The death grip he’s got on my hand tells me better than anything else how much it’s costing him to trust me. I stroke my thumb across the back of his hand, trying to be reassuring, and his grip eases a little. Sighing, he nods. “Right. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

It takes less than a minute for his breathing to deepen out into sleep. I wait long enough to be sure that it’s not going to jolt him awake, then lean back a little to look at the scratch that’s been right at my eye level the whole time. It’s kind of startling, the possessive surge that I get when I look at the mark some woman who didn’t even care left on him. On my lover.

Mine. Just like I’m his.

I can’t help a rueful smirk, before I move close enough that my lips brush the scratch. Touching the edge, I watch him sleep for a moment, then repeat the word quietly, trying it out. “Mine.”

It doesn’t come out possessive, but fond. This probably should worry me. It doesn’t.

It doesn’t really matter what marks she, whoever the hell she is, left on him. She isn’t the one here, making sure he takes the painkillers and actually sleeps for once. She isn’t holding him. He’s still mine.

Letting out another sigh, I smirk at the supreme weirdness that is my life, then lay my head back down.

“Yeah,” I murmur against his shoulder, closing my eyes. “You’ll see me in the morning.”