Chapter Text
“Tell me,” she whispers, nose pressing into his and index finger trailing down his cheek.
“Tell me everything you couldn’t before.”
The hand he has curled over her hip slides further, just over the swell of her ass, and then up, over the bare skin of her back, until he can tangle his fingers in her hair.
“Okay,” he hums against her lips.
He pauses there when she opens her mouth to him. He slides his tongue against hers and he hears her sigh. If he was younger, he thinks he’d get lost in more than just her mouth.
But he’s not and neither is she, and they are both it seems, content to lick and suck, press and slide, touch and tease while tangled in his bedsheets.
They had been frantic earlier.
‘Try again, Elliot,’ she had whispered as she leaned against the side of his refrigerator.
He’d been close. His fingers still damp from the dishes they’d washed together, and he’d just looked at her. His blue eyes trained on her. On the way her shoulders were relaxed. On the lightness in her eyes. On the small, nervous, smile that hung on the edges of her mouth.
He knew; had figured it out as he’d taken her in. But he had to be sure.
His steps were slow, his socked feet silent against the floor as he’d stepped closer and closer. Her eyes had followed him all the way, until she’d had to straighten her back, and tilt her head to keep his gaze.
When he’d brought his right hand up, placing it on the cool metal by her ear, caging her in, he’d asked.
‘Try what, Liv?’
She’d smiled then. Her cheeks lifting with it as she’d leaned in and rubbed her nose against his.
‘Kiss me,’ she’d whispered.
And he did.
Right there in his kitchen, with her back against the refrigerator.
He’d kissed her like he’d wanted to on a cold January night, when her eye was bruised and her heart was too. Like he’d wanted to months later, on concrete steps, a shy smile on her lips and ‘not the right moment,’ on his. Like he’d wanted to in an Ohio urgent care with birdshot freshly dug from her hip and her hand on his chest.
And like he’d wanted to thousands of times before. When he couldn’t.
Now, she is in his bed and he knows more than just her kiss. He knows the curves of her body and the scars on her skin. He knows the freckles on her shoulders and the birthmark on the inside of her thigh.
She knows him now too.
Her leg slides between his and she drags her hands down his back. He jumps when he feels her nails rake over his ribs and his mouth separates from hers with a pop. When he looks at her, she’s grinning and he can’t stop the one he feels blooming over his own face.
“I sat outside your apartment until three a.m. even after you blinked your lights,” he confesses, leaning in and pressing his lips to hers again; chaste this time.
When he pulls back, he watches her eyebrows knit it confusion before evening out again, recognition settling in the upturn of her lips.
“That’s was twenty-five years ago, El,” she chuckles, settling her palm on his cheek.
He uses his hand on her lower back to pull her closer to him, until her face presses into his chest and his lips brush against her forehead.
“You said to tell you everything,” he says, tightening his arms around her, until she sighs into his neck.
“Figured I’d start at the beginning,” he whispers.