dejah_thoris | [milliways] Lost for you, I'm so lost for you

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[milliways] Lost for you, I'm so lost for you

[ cont'd from here ]

'More private' to her right now simply means away from people. She takes his hand and leads him into the shadows, moving down the beach away from the music and the flickering light of the bonfire. The white sand beach is flat here, gently sloping down to the waterline. The quiet envelopes them, the susurration of the waves the only sound save for the occasional distant laughter.

Her blood still sings with the heat of his kiss, her breath ragged and shallow even as she attempts to calm herself. She can feel him, deeper now than ever before. If she is like fire to him, then he is red hot metal, radiating strength and something more. Something raw. Powerful. She's almost afraid to look too closely, terrified she'll see what she wants to see and not the truth.

But this doesn't feel like simple lust to her. They've skirted around that for months now. But this is different. This feels real.

"Curtis..." So many words crowd up behind her teeth, catching in the back of her throat. She glances at him, watching the distant firelight catch in his eyelashes. When she speaks, all that comes out is,

"I love you."

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She draws her teeth over her lower lip, grinning down at him. Her hand returns to his cheek, and she just gazes into his eyes.

"My beloved," she says. "Thank you."

He's still smiling, but his eyebrows tug together. "For what?"

"For this. For this evening. For..." Her voice tapers off as she tries to find the words.

"For being patient with me. For -- not running the other way when you found out who I am and what I represent. For letting me be here to see you heal. Or begin healing, I mean. For being open to the idea of coming to visit Helium. For staying with me. Here. In this room. For sleeping with me. Just -- sleeping. With me."

Again, her ramble kind of tapers off and her smile takes on a hint of awe and perhaps an echo of that old sadness again.

Curtis's smile shifts. It adopts Dejah's awe, layered with a deep fondness and deeper love. (Dare the narration say it, that smile looks downright sappy.)

He brings their clasped hands to his lips so he can kiss her fingertips. "You're welcome," he whispers. "You deserve it."

His chest rises and falls on a deep breath.

"And thanks for, y'know, sticking it out with me too. I know you probably could've had it a lot easier with somebody else on Barsoom, but...you picked me. Sometimes I don't get it but I'm so, so glad. I love you."

...Curtis also loves everyone else in this bar right now, but that doesn't make the sentiment any less true.

She closes her eyes, serene and smiling, mirroring that sentiment back to him with a radiant warmth. Her fingertips draw idle circles on his chest.

"You are most welcome. I love you, too. If you know anything about me, you should know that 'easier' is not in my nature."

If she's honest, he reminds her of John. He is not John, and that's all right. No one could ever replace John. But Curtis doesn't have to. He has given her a chance she thought she'd never have again. To be happy. To be alive. She can never truly express the depth of her gratitude for that.

Her brow furrows for a moment as she contemplates. "It's funny, I always question everything. But I've never really wanted to question this. I don't understand it. I don't know if I ever will. But it doesn't matter. It's what I want. And that's enough."

"Yeah." Softly. "Same."

Sometimes, he imagines what Tanya or Andrew might say, if they knew Curtis was shacking up with somebody from the Front. (Well. A Front. Not their Front. Still.) The more time passes, though, the more he finds he doesn't care. If they ever turn up at Milliways, Curtis will explain; until then, there's no point in worrying.

He draws his thumb back and forth across her hand. Thoughtful, "I think last time I was this drunk I was out in a field somewhere."

She hums, drifting on the pleasant sensations in her head and rolling off of him. "A field with grass?"

"Yeah," he murmurs. His eyes drift closed as he remembers. "Big view of the sky. Big bonfire going. We were passing around a bottle of Jack."

It's so vivid, more than the quick bursts of memory that strike him every so often. Maybe because he's too relaxed to bother pushing it away; it's sustained. Bright. Happy.

It doesn't hurt to remember, for once.

"You couldn't drink 'til you were twenty-one where I was, so, I dunno, I think somebody stole it from their parents or a big brother or something."

She knows his memory is a treacherous place, and there's a flutter of worry, but he seems fine with it.

"I take it you weren't worried about a bonfire drawing predators?"

"Oh, no, no no no, nothing like that," he laughs. "No predators. Up north close to a city you didn't get anything like that."

He catches the very edge of her worry, but can't grasp why she's feeling it. Curtis squeezes her hand in a brief reassurance anyway.

"Anything bigger than a dog didn't like being around humans."

"Really," she says, that worry quickly washed away by her curiosity. "It must have been beautiful. How far north were you? Was there snow?"

He nods. (Carefully.)

"Not all the time," he says. "But we got some in the winter. A lot of it sometimes, I remember that."

The scene shifts in his mind: away from the field, toward freshly-plowed roads with piles of snow lining their path. Even then, a feeling of warmth envelops the memory. Snow used to mean curling up under a blanket with hot cocoa, or getting in snowball fights with other kids. It used to mean that hot prickly feeling you'd get on your ears and the tip of your nose when you came back inside.

Wistfulness curls around his next words. "It all melted by spring."

Her voice drops to an almost conspiratorial whisper.

"What was it called? The place where you were from?"

His smile fades a little, toward something more thoughtful. It's right on the tip of his tongue, like he's trying to find another word to describe the scene. Like cold, or city, or home.

And then the fog clears, and, unexpectedly, Curtis finds he's blinking hard, his vision blurring beyond what the champagne's done to him. The smile comes back, small and sweet and only a little trembly.

"Boston," he whispers. "I remember."

"Boston," she echoes. His memories have been so fleeting, so devastating for him, and for the first time, he's sharing those memories with her. She leans down and presses her lips soft against his forehead. Her fingers lace through his and she holds onto him.

"You all right?"

"...Yeah." He sounds faintly surprised by that fact. A few more blinks, and he comes back to himself, to her presence, to the room around them. "I'm good. I promise."

His forehead creases.

"You good, too?"

She beams down at him and gives the tiniest nod.

"I am. You just be sure to tell me if I get too nosy, all right?"

"You're not nosy," he says, tripping over the words in his eagerness to reassure her. "You're fine, you're just...asking stuff. I don't talk about that shit a lot but it's not like it's bad most of the time."

It only stings compared to what happened on the train. And here, where he can forget the train even happened -- and where the barriers he put up around those memories have weakened, because champagne is the best -- it's no problem.

"It's just stuff I forgot about."

"I know. I know." He can feel a warm pulse of the same gratitude, amplified by his reassurance. She feels blessed that he trusts her enough to open up. It's another milestone in an evening overflowing with miracles.

"And now it's all right to remember. It's safe to remember, hmm?"

"Maybe, yeah," he murmurs. Curtis settles his other hand atop their clasped hands. "Sometimes. Right now anyway."

That's better than he ever expected.

And then he brightens. "Hey, you wanna break into the chocolate?"

She waggles her eyebrows at him.

"Which chocolate? Because I'm curious about the hot chocolate, myself."

"You should definitely have the hot chocolate," he declares. Waving a wobbly hand toward the basket, "It's all yours, I'm good for now. Oh and try it with the marshmallows, too, there's marshmallows in there isn't there?"

"What are marshmallows? And you're coming back here, aren't you? I rather like your head in my lap."

"Marshmallows are the puffy white things. Here, yeah, I'm coming back -- "

He heaves himself to sitting, then makes a wild grab for the back of the couch as the room lurches. "Whoa. Shit."

Yeah, that's enough to spark another round of giggling from Curtis. Give him a second to compose himself.

She reaches a hand to catch him. She's never heard him laugh so much. The sound alone is just as intoxicating as the champagne.

"Now, now. No falling off the couch. I'd have to join you on the floor and we both know where that leads."

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