All This and Heaven Too

[selenias]

All This and Heaven Too 



When Rita woke upon the floor that morning, face glued to the pages of a book and back stiff with that all too familiar feeling that came with sleeping in the worst positions known to man, everything felt normal.

When Rita stretched, arms reaching for the blue-stained walls and toes for the bookshelves, clothes resisting uncomfortably beneath her and the weight of a heavy palm upon the crook of her waist pressing down in a sweet but utterly absurd gesture of tenderness, that felt normal, too.

When Rita rolled over, joints cracking and letting out a breath between her teeth that made her whole frame shake with the force of it and coming face to face instantly afterwords with a clump of ungroomed brown hair, thick and draped evenly over the only pillow between her and it that rose and fell as if it were entitled to a a life of it's own... that felt bizarrely normal as well.

So one would have assumed, when the palm upon her waist squeezed lightly and drew her torso closer to his own, an uneven gasp rustling the bangs against her brow like a breeze and cyan eyes glancing up to meet her own still bleary-eyed ones, that definitely should have felt perfectly normal, too.

But even now, after ten years, it was still difficult to shake the feeling that something should have been out of place. From her view on the floorboards, everything was out of focus. And it wasn't the fact that his hair was in her eyes again. As it seemed to be every morning.

“Mornin', darlin,” he muttered, and everything shifted back into clarity. Warm breath, warm face, warm eyes, warm hands... he really was all warmth and goodness, and she temporarily wondered if this was what it was like to wake up and automatically know what it felt like to be complete.

She knew it was funny that she should have still been asking herself that after all the late nights and afternoon exchanges and stolen moments that had taken place for so long between them, but the question still nagged at her, and it was impossible to settle upon a single conclusion when there was no reliable answer to be found.

“Morning,” she murmured back, tongue-in-cheek, though she didn't know why she did. Maybe it was to offer a comfort she didn't even know she needed.

“Rita?” His breath was another downy feather caressing her face, and she closed her eyes to make it last. A hand massaged circles into her side lightly, and she blearily wondered if she should have been uttering a few choice words by now. To tell him to stop.

If she should have been put off by this... this contentedness that followed whenever his finger-tips lingered for too long in a tender spot, that made her feel like putty in his hands... if she should have been put off by this, than she surely should have been put off by every other feeling in the book, too.

This is normal, she told herself. Like any other day.

“...Hmm?” It was a soft utterance, a low noise in the back of her throat that could have been mistaken for a purr.

The familiar sound of shuffling clothes reached her ears, and then there was something soft being slipped under head, warm and smooth and worn and...

“Ya really shouldn't fall asleep on the floor like that all the time, darlin'. Yer gonna catch a cold.”

She cracked open an eyelid and it was easy to pretend—no, acknowledge, that this was indeed a commonality by now. Sighing, she tucked her head against her chest, picked at the fabric on his, and tried to enjoy how the floor was pleasantly cool against her face. “...Why are you even here anyway? I thought you were leaving yesterday evening.”

“Well, I was, see—but... there was a last minute change of plans.”

“Did those plans involve coming back to be a nuisance?”

There was a low laugh, “Nuisance, darlin'?”, and then she was firmly shlepped into his arms, cocooned like she was a bundle of something precious. His words were warm in her ear: “Hon, I have no idea what yer thinkin'. I am anythin' but a nuisance, and if you recall from last night when I dropped by, you said so yerself.”

She immediately felt the need to be cautious. Squirming in his grip, she slipped around to glare at him, and both his arms settled against her hips almost instantaneously when her nose bumped his chin. Another commonality, it seemed; he just couldn't keep those hands of his to himself.

But it was hardly worth complaining about, really...

“What was that?” She tried to sound angry, but a yawn ended that train of thought abruptly, and she cursed the stupidity that was morning and inhibited her speech.

He grinned amiably, smile slow to grow, and she imagined running her hands down his cheeks, along his jaw, over the coarse stubble that never seemed to grow in length, and then slapping him silly because she could and it struck her as a likeable idea at the time with him looking at her like that. It's what happens when ya die, sweetheart. Not much growin' to be done... not much shavin' to be done, either, ya know?

“Ya told me ya thought I was helpful to have 'round...”

“It's your imagination acting up again,” she muttered, but he ignored her, continuing on.

“...And charmin'... and yer favorite person to be around... and handsome... and...” Here, he leaned in close, and she was immediately struck by the realization that this was another agonizingly normal trait about him. “...Sexy.”

She immediately made a strangled noise in the back of her throat. “...I don't know what drunken state you were in last night,” the drunken state that comes with sweet mutterings, “but I didn't say any of those things. Especially not to you, old man.”

After a seemingly thoughtful moment and his hands running up her back like a tickle, eyes glowing with a knowing look that was easy enough to ignore when she pressed her face to his collarbone, he spoke:

“Sweetheart, ya didn't have to say anythin'. I know all.”


Then in that suave but chivalric manner that always made her feel jelly-limbed and irritated simultaneously, he tilted her head back and planted a kiss on her brow. On her eyelid. The edge of her jaw that made her gasp every time he did it and feel the inane desire to beat him senseless.

And that thought struck her again, as natural as the chiming of a clock when noon rolled about or waking up with her face planted firmly in a book every morning on the floor or opening her front door only to find him on the other side with a cup of coffee in hand and an unhurried crooked smile: he was a normal commonality in her life now, and yet she was still looking to all the wrong reasons to say otherwise.

Because there were none, and she simply couldn't bring herself to admit it.

“R-raven?” It was hard to speak when his lips were over hers, soft and slow and annoyingly thorough, but one thought failed to escape her, lying there, one of his calloused palm rough against her cheekbone, and the wooden floor below the only foundations she felt truly steady on in that moment.

“...Yes, Rita?”

“...You lied about the sexy part.”

“Darlin' that was the only thing.”