elliewood | Fic: Companion, Chapter 43: Nyota (7)

"May I take your coat?"

I turn my back to him and shrug it off into his hands; I think I'm finally getting used to his manners. Like the way he holds doors open for me, not unusual since most people who weren't raised in a barn would do the same, but as I walk through, he places his hand very lightly on the small of my back as if to guide me. That strikes me as very old-fashioned, almost courtly.

I make tea for both of us and we take the cups out to the living room, curling up on the couch together and sipping as we watch the lights outside dim one by one. My mind is only a little muddled; I didn't go the route of Pavel or, God forbid, Scotty, who looked like he'd gotten an hours-long head start on us, by imbibing too much tonight. But I suspect he might have. I hate to say I counted his drinks, all of them neat whiskey, but I did, and he'd had enough for me to be fairly uncertain as to his state of mind. Which matters because I have some explaining to do, an apology to make, and it might be easier to do tomorrow, in the sensible light of morning when we're both clear-headed and rational rather than now, when I'm afraid I'm not and he probably isn't either.

But he doesn't address it, choosing a different tack instead.

"It looks like you told him."

I have to take a sip of tea before I can answer, a moment to recall the afternoon that Spock and Leonard left us to give their statements, and I started to tell him what he deserved to know, and I can see it again, now, blue eyes widening and jaw dropping in surprise, then curving up at the corners, an open-mouthed grin of delight, until I finish what I had started to say and the smile slowly, painfully, fades, those eyes clouding over and falling before mine to look at the floor.

I nodded and echoed my own thought. "He deserved to know."

This evening was just what we had all needed, a restoring of normalcy -- however much of that there could be, given everything that's happened. I'd noticed that Jim seemed a little reserved and that Leonard was doing everything he could to bring him out and keep him entertained -- he actually had all of us in stitches all night long with blackly funny horror stories from his youth and his med school days. But there was something else behind his jokes, something I could see hints of, just bits and pieces, that pulled at me. I felt it but didn't know what it was or how to respond to it, and it ate at me all evening long, the idea that I should do something for him without a clue what that something should be. So naturally I did the exact wrong thing.

It was at one point late in the evening, while we were laughing about Pavel's unusual seating arrangement, when Leonard leaned over, put his arm around me, and said, "I wonder if he knows what his sleeping arrangements are going to be tonight."

My immediate response was to growl suggestively in his ear, something friendly and playful and not too out of line in such a crowded social situation. But then I found myself nuzzling his ear, kissing it and the skin of his neck below it, moving downward until I ran into his collar and couldn't kiss any further without changing direction and moving back up along the pulse of his throat to his jaw. I felt his sudden intake of breath as he froze, his arm involuntary tightening around my shoulders. That's when I stopped, looked away, took a sip of wine, and wondered just what the hell it was I was up to.

Because the last thing in the world I want to do is mess things up with Leonard. He's been my rock through all of this, and if I push us down that road and things don't work out, if I end up driving him away, I don't think I could live with that. I know I would survive it, and the possibility that I would be hurt doesn't scare me nearly as much -- I mean, I'm not staying on the shelf forever, and breaking up with someone I'm not even involved with isn't on my immediate list of Things to Worry About. But I'm not willing to do anything that would hurt him, and I might already have done just that.

He knows -- he's not that drunk after all. "What else is on your mind'?"

I stare at the contents of my cooling cup, like the answer is written there, wishing it were. But it's not, so I silently rehearse what I know I should say before I put it down on the side table and look up at him.

And the second I do, the statement I was planning on making dissolves, leaving me with nothing but the truth.

"I'm sorry. I want to be with you. But I don't want to lose you."

He sets his cup down as well and moves closer to me so that I can move into his arms, then leans back, pulling me with him until he's half-lying underneath me, propped up by throw pillows and the arm of the couch. I inhale the scent of his shirt, of him, the scent I've detected around the apartment several times over the past few weeks that makes me freeze and sniff the air like a desert animal catching a hint of water on the wind, and I think how easy it would be to let my hands come up to his hair, to run through it with my fingers while my mouth renews the trek it started in the hotel bar, from his ear down his neck to his collar and back upward to his jaw, but now I would continue up to his mouth and it would be waiting for me, open and warm and tasting of whiskey, ready for my kiss. But it's too soon, and I know that he knows it too; we're still groping around in the dark of this new landscape in which my love and his orbit each other like twin stars while we observe the gravity that binds them to each other and wonder where our own places in the universe are. I feel ridiculously close to tears.

His heartbeat is steady in my ear, his next words reverberating through his chest under my head.

"You're not gonna lose me. But you need to know that I'm gonna take it very seriously if we decide to go there, that I'd do my damnedest to make it work out."

I do kiss him then, a chaste, sisterly touch on the lips before I settle back down on him to watch the sky outside lighten, to feel his breathing slow beneath me and the funny little jerks a body makes as it slides into sleep. And even though it's too soon, I know the want is there, and I selfishly trail my fingers over his sleeping chest, daring to skim down his side to his belt, imagining him inside me, his lips gentle on me, the stuttering of his thrusts and his throaty groans in my ear, the smooth skin of his back moistening under my hands as his climax comes upon him, the tiny goosebumps erupting beneath my fingertips, his cry of release muffled by the warm thumping skin of my neck.

And I think, if I ever have the chance to love this man, I should take it; if I can make him happy, even if it's not for the rest of our lives, even if it's just for a short time, surely whatever follows will be worth it.

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