the devil in a glass house

by inveniamviam

Chapter 10: the warmth of the sun is in your smile

Notes:

i get so restless here alone, that's why i call you on the phone
i'd do anything that you want, babe, anything at all

i return from birthday / travel / writer's.. not block, but sluggishness. enjoy!

She’s still there, under his half-awake hands. Every morning for the last week he’s been surprised by it, despite holding her as he falls asleep and nearly always throughout the entire night. Since the evening he left that voicemail for her, she’s barely been out of his sight. His apartment feels like it has color running through it. More light, somehow. More life.

For the seventh morning in a row, he weighs up whether he wants to lay there until she stirs, or if he’ll wake her with breakfast. Hunger wins out over the urge to keep his hands on her; fuel will be required regardless of how the morning progresses. Tara jumps off the ottoman to follow him once he’s disentangled himself, her inner supervisor awakening alongside her appetite.

When he returns to the bedroom, pancakes steaming gently on their plates, Mia is no longer in his bed. Panic blooms in his chest at the absence, even though logic tells him he would have heard the front door close. She wouldn’t leave without saying anything. The sound of the shower filters through his spiral, rescuing him from himself, and then he realizes that he’s okay, that the bloom is already fading. The anxiety doesn’t own him.

He doesn’t have to wait long for her to reappear. When she emerges from the bathroom - water beading down her collarbone, smelling like his body wash, hair damp at the ends and already curling up again - he doesn’t need to be told he’s staring. Gale can feel the reluctance of his eyes to go anywhere else. She’s showered here daily the past week, except for the day she washed her hair - something that had prompted him into ordering not just new shampoo and conditioner, but also a hairdryer with a diffuser attachment she approved of, so that she could do that here too. Not that there isn’t already a wealth of product hiding in the bathroom cabinetry; Mia had figured out that low-maintenance Gale is an illusion on her first morning at the apartment, after looking for a spare toothbrush and finding retinol.

“I thought I had longer. I was sure yesterday’s french toast had sparked something in you.” She joins him on the bed, leaning over to kiss him thoroughly. Follows it up with an immediate demolition of the lovingly built pancake stack he offers her. Mia flicks her eyes up at him, catches him watching her. There’s a warmth in him that has nothing to do with the food.

“It did, but the idea of being back in bed with you as soon as possible won out.”

She smiles widely at him. “I derailed your plans, huh?”

“I forgive you, somehow.” The mock-graveness in his tone is severely undercut by his reaction to Mia standing up and dropping her towel.

“Come back to bed,” she requests, and he understands now why Odysseus was tied to the mast.

If she’s going for distraction, it is a perfect one, he has to give her that much. Mia’s eagerness to follow his breathless suggestion of making up for lost time is both flattering and exhausting, but there’s an underlying edge of avoidance to it that he’s wary of letting become unmanageable. She said before that she let him get lost in her - something that admittedly plagued him less than the other things she’d thrown at him that night - and he is trying, in this new age of therapy and communication, to not make the same mistakes twice.

And he is partly to blame, he knows that. Eight months of torturing himself with the memory of how his name sounds when Mia comes - even when he really was trying to put it out of his mind - and the relief of hearing it daily cannot be overstated. He had thought, during that time apart, that there was no comparison that could be made, that it was the best noise he’d ever heard. The last week has repeatedly shown him how wrong he was. The finest sound in existence is the one she makes when she’s being fucked so hard she can’t form words, can’t get a single thing out that isn’t a moan or a caught breath or an almost scream that won’t let itself be contained.

Curling round her now, feeling her melt into him, he knows he just has to move his hand slightly, grip her hip a little tighter than he is right now, and the window for conversation will close for another hour. Does he want it to? Does he need to say anything that badly? When her head falls back against his shoulder, he considers that an hour isn’t that long to wait, not really. Not when he knows she’ll still be there afterwards. Not when he knows that he’s avoiding things, too.

The words are out before he can double check his reasoning. “Like this?”

Mia nods fiercely, damp hair tickling his chest. Gale did know before he asked that this is the path he’d take, knew when he realized she was in the shower, truth be told. His hands, the ones made for her, the ones that spent thirty-five years looking for something worth doing and found it, those hands, they ache to give in. 

Time slips. For a thing that’s normally so bolted down, it slips quite far - from an ache to an action, he’s moved before he’s consciously decided to. Mia’s leg is now hooked over his, his hand sliding up her thigh. Not obedient enough for her teasing, not patient enough to coax out supplication from her, only wanting one thing and needing it immediately. His fingers slide into her with ease - clearly she also needed this without delay - and he’s barely crooked them before she clenches round him, rendering any level of higher thinking unavailable.

He still tries, though, still attempts to force the idea that this is a distraction through. But then he’s lining himself up, and everything else is unimportant. Her hips pull him in, and thinking is something that other people do.

“Do you have any idea how many books I’ve neglected for you, my love? How I’ll likely never read again, if you have your way?”

“Audiobooks,” Mia replies, not missing a beat or a hip roll. “You could multi-task.”

At this, he pulls out completely, pushing Mia on to her front to almost no protest, aside from a small puff of escaping breath. She’s on her hands and knees in moments, as if she knows where Gale is going with this, knows he’s being brave and directing her to do something he’s not tried.

“I have many talents, love, but splitting my attention from this-” he thrusts into her, barely keeping track of his words, “-is not one of them.”

This particular position is very nearly life-changing; he can accept his inexperience, his dry spell, and the fact that Mia is - or seems to be, he can’t say with certainty, only comparison - a singularly responsive woman, but even so. His confidence only grows with her volume. 

Watching himself disappear into her with each slow rock is hypnotic. That he reappears each time coated in slickness should not feel miraculous, and yet it does. It's taken a while for him to stop treating sex as if it was something that would disappear if he moved incorrectly, or suggested something untested. He knows he can afford to take his time a little, now that he’s here.

Gale’s pace remains slow and unhurried until he feels Mia’s heel dig into the back of his thigh, wordlessly encouraging him onward. He considers that the one downside of this positioning is that he isn’t touching her, beyond pulling her towards him with each drive forwards. One hand could be spared to draw further pleasure from her.

His fingertips brush against her, just above where they’re joined, and he knows he made the right choice when Mia jolts against him and frees a groan that he feels under his palms, against his hips. She starts to rock against him faster, forcing him to speed up. Now that her end is in sight, the fact that his looms close by is no longer a concern.

Not since their reunion has he given in and thrown caution to the wind in terms of speed. The romantic in him has cautioned that women - Mia - might not appreciate being fucked so hard they get winded on a regular basis. But intemperate passion has a place in romance, does it not? And she would tell him if she didn’t appreciate it, surely.

When she clenches round every part of him that she can reach, broken little sounds fighting their way out, no longer meeting his pace, he adjusts his perception of how often she might enjoy this from him. Her hair sticks to her back, but when she tips her head forward, enough of it falls away for him to catch sight of the purple bite mark he left two days ago - the last time that she woke him up and he answered by taking her side by side. 

And with the sight of the marks he left, and the latent realization that she’s been avoiding looking at his face during all of the sex she’s been plying him with, he comes so hard his hearing stops working for a moment - just his blood rushing in his ears and nothing else, no words, no Mia, a sensory deprivation tank where there’s just his circulatory system and the knowledge that she’s dodging his gaze. What could she be afraid he’ll see? What could he learn from looking?

Afterwards, when they’re cleaned up and he feels capable of directing himself to the words he wants to share, he curls back round her. Grounds himself with her against him. Gives himself somewhere to hide, just like her, by preparing to disgorge his feelings without having to look and see how they’re received. 

“I know where I went wrong, I think,” he starts, mindful of her reaction.

“With what?”

“You. Us. Everything. Do you feel up to listening?”

When she nods, he continues. “She chose me - to mold, to shape, to crush, ultimately, as it turns out - but it never occurred to me that I could have- should have chosen myself, somewhere along the way. That I had a choice at all? Well, the idea quite stubbornly refused to cross my mind.”

This conversation is decanting with surprising ease - Gale makes a mental note to give his therapist an exceptional tip. “It’s been far too comforting to feel as though everything that transpired between Mystra and I simply happened to me, and so I could therefore be aggrieved, and feel slighted; torment myself with the hand I had been forced to take. But, importantly, there are certain parts of this sorry tale where the blame rests solely with myself, and that took time to accept.”

And it had. Gale’s therapy sessions have made him someone that can have this conversation, albeit only with Mia’s shoulder blade, but the words are coming, at last. He can feel her tensing up, ready to disagree with him. It’s admirable, and he loves her for it, but if he doesn’t say this now, the words might curdle within him. They don’t taste nearly as unpalatable as he expected, and he’s so close to the finish line.

“I think, after Mystra, I had fallen so far below the water’s surface that I could no longer glimpse the sky. I became accustomed to the gloom, the crushing weight of pressure on my chest. I told myself kicking was futile, and that I was where I deserved to be.”

Flashes of a life that used to haunt him: glass breaking, blood in his eyes, endless sinking stomach and the feeling of the world falling away from under him. Deep inhale, deeper exhale. Mia’s hair flutters across her back. He can hear Tara shuffling about under the bed. He’s safe. He’s where he wants to be.

It’s easier, like this. Breathing her in and holding her there in his lungs. “Meeting you was… transformative, in so many ways that I will thoroughly derail my explanation if I attempt to list them for you now,” he says, nipping at her neck, thrilled to be hearing her laugh at him. “A ray of sunlight that had made it through the depths, beckoning to me. A promise of a life I thought was beyond my grasp. And I reached for it, hungrily, without consideration for- well, for my suitability.”

“Gale-,” she starts, meaning well, being politely hushed anyway.

“In diving, when you rise too quickly from the depths, nitrogen forms in the bloodstream, resulting in what is colloquially referred to as ‘the bends’. An ultimately fatal condition, without intervention. Perhaps this is nothing more than a comfort I soothed myself with while alone, but I think… I think I needed time to slowly make my way up to the sun. I was too focused on redemption to pace myself properly.”

He had originally thought that an explanation might be easier if he wasn’t looking her in the eye as he gave it. He had failed to consider the temptation of her under his hands. He’s definitely considering it now, even as recently spent as he is.

“I wanted you, with no thought to what that entailed. No idea how to make it a reality, beyond wanting it. I planned to resign, find a new job, not speak to her again. And that was fine, in theory. Simple, even. But old habits die screaming, and I became painfully aware that I wasn’t ready for you. But I still wanted, and still tried to have. I couldn’t let you go.”

A lull, when he finishes speaking. Mia rolls over in his arms, until her cheek is against his chest and he can feel how damp it is.

“I’m proud of you, for being able to tell me.” Her words are muffled in his collarbone, squeezing their way out, up to his now working ears.

“And that’s what made you cry?”

“No, that wasn’t it.” There’s a small sniffling sound. “I’m still afraid you’ll figure out I’m not worth all the effort you’ve gone to, that you swam all that way for nothing. You’re going away, and that’s a great time for catching on to things.”

“Is that what your constant diversions have been in aid of? Are you attempting to ruin me for other options, my love?”

“Maybe.” She says it like the admission costs something.

“You could still come with me, you know. I’ll book the plane tickets, and that way you won’t have to worry about any revelations I almost certainly won’t have.”

Her head lifts up, letting the words reach him with ease. “I appreciate it, but I think I need to stay here. It’s not good for me to follow you around, otherwise my next spiral will be that you feel trapped. I need to work through this for myself.”

Her refusal makes sense, just like it did the first time she gave it. Still stings like the first time too, even though he knows it’s unreasonable, and that he always meant to go alone. Mia’s plan to call him every night is more than he ever expected to have on this trip.

“I’ll be as reassuring as you need me to be, as often as required.” Gale gives her forehead a gentle kiss. “Anything you need.”

Mia burrows into his chest further, seemingly in agreement with his proposal.

If he hadn’t been so drunk when he phoned her months ago, if he’d heard what she asked him and called as requested, would she still feel the need to hide her fear from him? Would there be any fear to hide?

Did he do this to her?

And more importantly, if he did, how does he fix it?

—

Saying goodbye to Mia in the airport parking lot is an exercise in self-control. She’s wearing a sundress with more straps than seems strictly necessary - something designed to bewitch him, he’s sure of it - and he watched it ride up her legs the entire drive, all while he thought about how he could get out of being on his flight. If he could book a later one, maybe. 

And she’s doing nothing to help him; pulling him down to her face by the collar, kissing him as if pausing for breath will result in a penalty. His back is against the car as she devours him, and if she said to get back in it, if she said let’s make use of the back seat - if she said anything, truthfully, he’d follow along with it immediately.

The sound of a distant car horn makes her pull back. “I, uh. I guess I got carried away there.”

Should he say it again? Mia clearly feels something for him; if she found his admissions uncomfortable or undesired, she would have told him, he hopes. His therapist tells him that he needs to look at her actions, and those certainly suggest affection. He has to try not to suffocate her under the weight of expectation. As such, he doesn’t say it where it can be heard, but he does rest his chin on her head as he hugs her, cups her face as he kisses her goodbye. The message is conveyed, the best he can do it. 

And then it’s airport security, flying somewhere, being driven to his hotel room, flopping down onto the bed. All the while seeing a dozen things he wants to tell her about. Hands reaching for a woman that isn’t there. Waiting at baggage collection for a case that isn’t coming.

There’s a knock on his hotel room door, interrupting his - frankly alarming - level of yearning for a woman he knows he’s returning home to, and a different woman in the hallway when he opens it. She’s dressed semi-formally, lanyard on, heels high and arms crossed.

“Can I help you?”

“Gale! I was supposed to meet you at the airport but I got caught up in something. I’m Rachel, I’m your assistant for the trip, from the publisher? I know it’s been a long day, but I wanted to make sure you’re set for dinner, and I wasn’t sure if you wanted to get a drink or something? De-stress a little, before things kick off.”

“I’m more than happy to stay in tonight and have room service. I have some calls to make.” Hopefully he’s being more polite than it sounds to his ear.

She’s still smiling at him. Looks as if she might open her mouth and try and persuade him, but he wants to lay down and call his wife. Girlfriend. Call Mia.

“I should get to it, honestly. An early night will set me up well for tomorrow,” he says, in what he hopes is a tone that brooks no argument.

Disappointment replaces the smile. Rachel shifts her weight to her other leg, awkward, as if he’s not following the script properly. “Well, I can’t argue with that, I suppose. I’ll meet you in the lobby at 10am, then.” She starts walking away before the door clicks shut. 

Back on the bed, Rachel already just a fleeting memory, he calls Mia. The phone rings twice, and then she’s there, voice in his ear, untrustworthy sea legs gone now he’s back on dry land. 

“Ask me what I’m wearing,” she says, once the catch up part of the conversation concludes.

“What are you wearing?” He’s hoping she’ll say his t-shirt. He knows she only sleeps in something else if it’s being washed - or if they go to sleep too tired to put clothes back on, a close second favorite - so his odds are good.

“Lip balm.”

There’s a pause, filled with Gale using far too much brain power to figure out what she means. “You’re naked?”

“Smart man. I had to stop at yours to grab my book, so I’m actually on your bed right now too.”

His mouth feels dry. Never has he longed for the power of teleportation more. Her or him, he’s not fussy. “Naked in my bed and I can’t touch you? This feels familiar.” His free hand reaches again for something - someone - that isn’t there.

Her voice in his ear again. “What are you wearing?”

“I’m overdressed. Still wearing what I left the house in,” he admits.

“You know what to do then, don’t you? Start unbuttoning your shirt.”

Gale holds the phone to his ear with his shoulder so he can use both hands, wanting to obey as quickly as possible. “Done. What next?”

“Aren’t you eager to please?” Mia sounds breathless. Excited.

“For you, always. You know that.”

There’s a pause, just long enough for him to say it again, if he wants to. He does want to. Can’t face not hearing it returned. Nobody has ever returned it; nobody that’s not obligated to say it, anyway. He said it to Mystra a few times, and her responses ranged from, ‘good boy’ to, ‘of course you do’, and his personal favorite, ‘so did the last one’. Nothing satisfying. Once he figured out that she liked hearing it, liked knowing he felt it, offering him nothing but more and more dirt to crawl through for any scrap of affection, he stopped saying it. But it would be wonderful to hear it from Mia. And that’s why he can’t say it again yet.

“Take the rest of your clothes off for me,” Mia says, calling him back to her. A long string, from his apartment to this lonely hotel room hundreds of miles away, pulling gently at him. 

He does as he’s asked, and then he’s at a loss. “What now? I’ve never done this before. Do I continue doing as I’m told?”

“If you want to have a good time, yeah. If you want to be good for me, definitely.”

A shiver runs up his spine; anticipation made physical. As if she’s there, running her fingers along it somehow - never mind that he’s on his back, nevermind that she’s too far away to reach him. The shiver is there all the same, skin remembering what he’s too out of range to have.

The idea of her touching him is too much. Gale starts stroking himself, no conscious thought going into the action beyond knowing she’s naked and having her voice dripping into his ear. His breathing must give him away, or he’s predictable, because she knows.

“Have you started without me, handsome? Decided you don’t want to do as you’re told?”

His breath catches. “No, I- I do. I can wait until I’m told. I can be good.”

“I hope so. Tell me what you’re thinking about while you disobey me.” Her voice has the slightest edge to it; he has room to wander from the game, but it’s not limitless. Best to be honest.

“You, in the dress from this morning.”

“Left an impression, did it?” Her smile is audible. “What are we doing in that grand imagination of yours?”

“You pulled over, got on my lap. You let me make you happy.” The act of confession leaves his fingers tingling. It’s easier, in some regards, to reveal things to the phone. As if they’re more ephemeral, less impactful, if he does it this way. “We tried it in your, uh-” Christ, what word to use, “-backside?” Why is it phrased like a question?

Mia whimpers in response anyway, and he knows that that means; she wants him to carry on. The urge to speed his hand movement up is all consuming, but he waits, somehow.

“Is that something you’ve done before, love?”

“No.” Further whimpers. The sound of the bedsheets moving. “Do you want to know what I’m doing, Gale? After hearing what you said?”

“Tell me.” He responds far too quickly. No convincing way of denying his enthusiasm now, not that she’ll ask, not that she wouldn’t be happy that he likes this, that he likes her giving orders and likes following them just as much. 

“I’m thinking about you, underneath me, whining for more.” The sound of Mia’s hand sliding through the slick this conversation has generated is almost louder than her words. 

“I am good at that,” he admits, and it’s a wonder to him that he can speak at all, listening to her, to what he inspires. A somehow greater wonder that his sentences reduce to the bare minimum when he’s doing this with her; many former colleagues and peers would be amazed to find any of his sentences can be five words or less.

“I’m thinking about what you’d do if I didn’t give it to you.”

This time his breath doesn’t so much catch as refuse to follow its designated path. “You were far less trouble in the car.”

Her laugh fizzles into a moan. God, he wants to taste it, feel it move through her.

“Gale, I wanna hear you, will you let me?” She sounds slightly delirious now, and it takes him right back to watching her that night, back arched and fingers coated in her own slick. 

“Can you hear anything over the sound of how wet you are, my love?”

“I’ll listen, I promise, just please-”

She doesn’t need to beg, or even ask nicely - the inevitability of his orgasm transcends instruction. His hand moves faster, his eyes flutter closed. Warmth ripples over the entirety of his body. He can hear his uneven breath, hopes it’s having an effect on her.

She’s rambling now, and he realizes her desperation is because she wants him to do it first, and riding the edge is starting to get harder. “Will you come for me? You’re so far away and I- I need it, I have to hear it, please Gale, just let go for me.”

He does come then, unable to hold out any longer. The image of her on his bed fills his mind and he has no choice but to let go, covering his hand and stomach with the fruits of his labor. A stray droplet or two make it all the way to his chin - a first - and his surprise is only overridden by his pride. A biological inevitability, yes. But still, mostly because she asked him to, and he has the constant need to excel for her.

“Your turn now, Mia. Come for me.” His direction might have had more weight behind it if he could keep the tremor out of his voice.

Her sweet little whines trickle down the phone line to him, but he knows what she sounds like when she comes apart, and this isn’t it. Further encouragement required.

 “Darling, I need you to come.”

 

That does it. Mia’s restraint snaps, her orgasm moving through her with what sounds like some force. She’s panting, the result of one long drawn out moan that will keep him company until he falls asleep. And all the while, he keeps talking to her.

“When I get back, I want to take you to Italy. Show you the art, feed you tiramisu until you start hating it. Would you come away with me? And then when we’re home, I’ll find a new job so I don’t get under your feet too much.”

He has to wait a while for a response.

“Is this something you came up with now, to talk me through it, or did your post-orgasm dopamine trick you into spilling your secrets?”

He smiles. “So I can book the flights when I get home?”

“I guess I’ll let you take me, yeah. If it means so much to you.”

An easy silence settles between them. He thinks she may have drifted off, until she pipes up again, pressing questions cutting through the sleep in her voice.

“Would you let me play with your ‘backside’, smooth talker?”

A splutter from him as he tries to find his words. “I- pardon?” He lets out a shaky laugh. This isn’t anything close to what he expected her to say. “I can’t say I’ve given it much thought. Is this what Italy will cost me?”

“No, no. I just thought you might be curious. You could do it yourself, if you got some lube, you know. Try it out and report back, maybe.”

“Any particular reason this thought came to you now?” 

“I just think you might like it. And I might like hearing about it.” Her earnest request is punctuated by two above average sized yawns.

“I’ll consider it. Now, sleep for you, you sound like you’re already halfway there.”

She sighs at him, exaggeratedly. “You wore me out, but you’re right. Goodnight, handsome. Thank you for indulging me.”

Gale falls asleep almost as soon as he’s cleaned up, and dreams of beaches, gelato. Mia putting on sunscreen. He somehow manages to get through his obligations the next day without drifting too far away in his head, without letting any of his other plates fall. Scrapes together a free ten minutes in Rachel’s carefully constructed itinerary to make his purchase. As he carefully tries to avoid the eye contact of anyone else in the store, he finds himself in front of a rack of postcards, and oh, isn’t that an idea. More personal than an email, something he can surprise her with in a few days. He could do it at every stop.

His incongruous purchases mingle in his jacket pocket all day. One postcard, waiting to be sent, detailing a specific, safe for postal worker eyes thing that he misses about her. One bottle of water-based lube, waiting to be used. The duality of man, he thinks, as he passes the postcard to the front desk worker of the hotel when he gets back, to go out with their morning mail.

On the way up to his room, the lube burns a hole in his pocket. How curious, what he’s willing to do for her, what he wants to do for her. His contentment lasts until the exact moment that he sees Rachel waiting for him.

“Gale, have you eaten?”

“Room service again, I’m afraid. Too tired for company.”

There’s that disappointment again. Does she not get enough of him in the day, shepherding him between events, watching him eat a sandwich with less than the required finesse, thoughts full of Italian art galleries and all the sundresses Mia might wear to walk round them?

“Maybe less time on the phone tonight then.”

“Takes as long as it takes, unfortunately. I’ll be up in time to leave, don’t worry about me.”

She’s hovering, still. As if she’s waiting for him to say something else, or invite her in. His hand is on the doorhandle, and she clears her throat. “Do you want company?”

He shakes his head - maybe with too much vigor, but such is his need to make himself clear. “No. Don’t ask again, Rachel, or this trip is going to become far too awkward to continue with.”

The sound of stilettos being suckered down into thick pile carpet follows. Once she rounds the corner, his shaking hand opens the door, then closes it behind him. He slides down it until he can hide his face in his knees. Hand in his pocket, finding the lube, and then finding the thing he needs right now.

“Hello, my love.”

—

New city, new postcard. That’s the way he’s choosing to mark the time now, sap that he is - how many more postcards there are to send to her. Another one went out this morning; the anticipation of waiting for her to receive one is starting to eat at him.

Rachel is awkward around him today; doubly so when they arrive at their destination and he’s whisked off to the office of someone he hasn’t seen since college for a private conversation. She’s scowling when he returns, muttering about schedules, and politeness, and how interesting it is that he has no problem being alone with women that have PhDs.

The atmosphere is such that he’s relieved to take to the podium and start talking. Forty minutes fly past, and then the Q&A starts, and he isn’t even thinking about Rachel or nerves or how much he wants to be at home.

The next question comes from someone that could be him, fifteen years ago. An air of hunger for more about him, as if there’ll never be enough to learn.

“You worked with your PhD supervisor, Dr Ryl, for decades, until you abruptly resigned.”

“I’m not hearing a question,” Gale says, making a careful effort to remain level. He had considered questions about her might arise, but they hadn’t so far, which has let him get comfortable.

“What happened?”

Heartbreak, resentment, emotional turmoil - nothing he can say in a public forum, nothing he’d want to admit to a room full of strangers. No lessons he can provide without tearing a hole in his life. He can hear himself giving an answer about growing apart, pursuing different areas of study, diverging naturally. Meaningless noise, essentially, but he does provide it until he runs out of breath. He wraps things up as best he can, before darting offstage.

Time slips again, in a far less enjoyable way this time. Something far closer to dissociation, because when he can feel his hands again, he’s kneeling over a toilet. Nothing seems available as an offering; no actual throwing up has occurred. A first, for him. He leans against the side of the bathroom stall, head in his hands, elbows propped on his bent knees, small and contained. Deep breaths, slowly counting them out again. 

There’s a knock on the stall door. “Gale, are you alright? Can I come in?”

“No and no, Rachel.”

“I’m supposed to be looking after you, that’s my job.”

He’s half-listening, too busy trying to pull up an email from his therapist on triggers and how to manage his response to them. His hands are too shaky to get decent results, and so he closes his eyes and starts the counting back up.

“Just get back to the hotel when you’re ready, okay?”

By the time he trusts himself to make it back, half an hour has passed. Thoughts chasing their own tails - that he should have had an articulate answer prepared, that he took too long to calm down from something that arguably could have been handled better. He wonders, bleakly, if Rachel has already told her boss that he’s some kind of unstable. Wonders if it’s true. 

He picks at his room service salad. Struggles to feel like it’s him doing it, not someone else directing his body into familiar movements. Rachel could have vetted the questions, he thinks, before realizing that it’s not her fault he can’t function when reminded of his past.

He recognizes he’s using Mia as a crutch even as he dials her number. Habit forming, this.

“You’re early today.” She sounds concerned. “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” He lets out a sigh. “No. I don’t think I am, honestly.”

He hears her getting comfortable, the creak of her little rattan armchair. Can picture it, as she curls her feet up under her - she has never, to his knowledge, sat in a chair in the way it was designed for - and waits for her to speak again.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“One of the questions I had today was about why I no longer work for Mystra. Asking what happened between us, for that to occur.”

“Ah. Hence the early call, I guess. I’m sorry you got that thrown at you.”

“It caught me off-guard, and I’m not sure I handled it as well as I could have.” He can hear the way his voice cracks slightly on the ‘well’.

“Would you like a distraction?” 

“I’m not entirely in the mood-”

“Not that kind of distraction. You took your tablet with you, right?”

He looks around for it, knows he unpacked it. Reaches over to the shelf that serves as a bedside table as far as this particular hotel is concerned. “What do you have in mind?”

What she has in mind, as it turns out, is chess. Something designed purely to pull his mind away from the hamster wheel of loathing that she knows it longs to be running on. He has the feeling that he could ask for anything, right now. Maybe she’d even get on a plane. Not that he’d put her in that position, but it feels possible.

“Same rules as before?” Mia asks, and he wonders if this was the plan all along, her way of getting to know him while he was away. He has done some of that - as well as learning about himself - so far, especially exactly how fast he can get off while she’s doing nothing more than talking to him. 

“Alright. I am interested to see who wins, now you can’t throw the board off the bed and declare the game a wash.”

“You weren’t too unhappy with the outcome of that, from what I remember.”

Silence, for a couple of minutes, until Gale takes one of Mia’s pawns. He knows more than last time, which cuts off some avenues, but there are still things he longs to hear the answer to. Things he knows better than to ask now, when he’s already feeling unsteady.

“Did you have this whole thing in your back pocket, in case I had a bad day?”

She laughs, a little guilt mingling with the happy sound. “I did plan it a little. Sometimes you need to have your thoughts diverted to a happier destination.”

She’s not wrong. At times it feels as if she sees the very heart of him, knows what he needs before he does. He does an alright job at reciprocating, but it feels more like luck and the fact it’s him, rather than anything intentional a lot of the time.

Mia’s questions to him are decidedly gentler. She learns his favorite color (blue), his zodiac sign (Taurus), his childhood crush (Lucy Lawless). The surface level things she might have learned first, in a normal relationship, rather than what she did learn - that he couldn’t be trusted, that he remained under the thumb of someone that didn’t care about him.

Her streak is over for the time being, it would seem. Gale decides to be a little braver, now that Mia’s pawn sits on his side of the digital table. “Are you really going to come to Italy with me?”

“As long as you still want to take me, yes. Do you not… believe me, when I agree to things?”

No. Not because it’s you, but because I’m me.

And then another piece falls to him. A rook, this time. There’s the distinct impression that Mia is playing exactly well enough to let him win without feeling like he didn’t earn it.

“Is it- is it okay that I love you? You haven’t said anything either way, and it leaves room to wonder, if you’re so inclined. Which we know I am.” He can feel himself flush as the words come out, the shame of needing to know the answer burning him.

“Gale.” 

“Yes?”

“Did it feel like it wasn’t okay with me, the night you said it? Or since then?” Her tone suggests that he has nothing to worry about, but that doesn’t sit entirely right with him.

Well, there’s the fact you haven’t said it back, for one. The feeling of being held at arm’s length, close enough to touch you but never actually learn you, for another.

“You’ve been the same as ever the entire time,” he confirms, hesitantly.

But what does that mean? And how can I learn without asking, if you never give anything away? What are you so afraid of me finding?

Another pawn is claimed by him, nothing he could call a mistake on her part, but an interesting point of data for his theory. “Would you be amenable to meeting my mother at some point soon?”

There’s a pause. “Won’t that be… kind of a rapid succession for her? Having met Izzy recently?”

“She didn’t meet Izzy. It didn’t feel like the right moment, and then I was out of moments.”

“I don’t mind meeting her. I don’t think I’m exactly what she had in mind for you, though,” she says wistfully.

His incredulity bleeds into his tone. “In what regard? How could you not be what she wants for me?”

“This is your last free question, Dekarios, but I mean, c’mon. I’m not steadily employed, I’m covered in tattoos, I don’t exist in the elite bubble of academia. I’m the starter wife, not the one you die married to.”

Gale splutters, disbelief refusing to be contained. The starter wife? Is that how she thinks he views her? “I hardly think any of that will matter to her. You’re an unfathomable upgrade from the last serious partner I had. She’ll be happy that I’m happy.”

Mia doesn’t reply, doesn’t even indicate that she heard him, and he’s stopped being able to plan his moves as many steps ahead as he needs to. She takes a bishop he’s left uncharacteristically helpless, and when she asks him to share a secret, something he’s never told anyone, there’s no filter left.

“I’m not the person I want to be, not fully,” he whispers. There’s not really a wrong answer to a question like that, and yet. Maybe he’s found it.

“Neither am I, if it helps.”

 It does, and it doesn’t. He already knows that no matter what rose tinting he’s applying that Mia has her own unwelcome presence in her head, her own relationship ghosts to exorcise. The creeping feeling that she’ll never let him assist with any of it tempers his relief at a struggle shared. 

When he calls check, when the strange match finishes, he does feel better about his reaction to Mystra. In that regard, Mia’s plan has been effective. What he’s left with is the worry that she’s pulling away from him, even though she’s agreed to do everything he asked of her. What kind of dysfunction is that? He should ask his therapist, he thinks, and then realizes he’s being spoken to.

“-so I’ll give it to you tomorrow, okay?”

“Uh, yes, that’s fine. Usual time?”

“Sure. Goodnight, handsome. Hope the game helped.”

The next night, after a blur of travel and questions and marinating in his self-inflicted terrible fucking mood, he waits for the phone to ring. Wants to ask her why she won’t just give in and tell him what he wants to hear, even though hearing it organically is what he actually wants. When his phone does vibrate against the bedsheets, it’s a request for a video call.

Accepting, he expects to see her face. Tara, maybe, or a new piece she’s working on, at a push. What he’s greeted with instead causes him to fumble the phone, dropping it into the sheets. His camera now points at the bed, presumably sending her a black rectangle.

“Are you still there? I haven’t killed you off, have I?” Mia’s voice calls to him, muffled by his mistake.

“You’ve given it your best shot, love, but I endure.”

When he picks his phone up, Mia is as she was, with the addition of an amused expression. Aside from her jewelry, it’s the only thing she’s wearing. Gale stares at the phone, jaw hanging slightly. Ridiculous, when he’s seen her naked before, enough that it shouldn’t stop him dead like it has. 

She’s kneeling on her bed, having moved her mirror to the end of it. The camera points at the glass, affording him a view of everything, including the look on her face as he openly gapes at her. She’s slightly leaner again - not quite as pronounced as it was two months ago, or even two weeks, but he can see it.

“See something you like?”

“Something that would have me looking up plane tickets, if I could tear my eyes away.”

Mia’s hand snakes down from where it was resting flat against her stomach, and Gale’s eyes follow obediently. 

“This is your prize, by the way. I’m here, taking requests, until you get tired of it. Or until you come for me. Whichever happens first.”

Whatever words he thought he would use die in his throat. The only request he has is that she marries him as soon as he’s through the front door, but this isn’t quite the romantic setting he had in mind for a proposal. A thought he can examine at length later, when Mia isn’t awaiting instructions. Something to torture himself with another time.

“Can you get closer to the mirror?”

Mia shuffles forward obligingly, until she could lean forward and rest her head against the mirror if he asked her to. “Anything else?”

“Start where you’d want me to start.”

Her fingers move to rub firm circles around her clit, whine filtering out of her mouth. Gale has his hand on himself before he has the thought to put it there. If this is to last until his completion, it’ll be a short call unless he masters himself. Mia’s hand movement is hypnotic - if she was a predator, he’d be carrion before he could defend himself - and he lazily pumps himself, determined to last.

“What now?” Her voice is breathy, and she’s swaying on her knees a little, such is the pressure she’s using. Honestly, this alone would be enough to get him there, and he’s not wondering about her feelings for him anymore, that’s for damn sure.

“I want you to slide your index finger inside yourself. Can you do that for me?”

She nods, before immediately complying. When her head tips back, he can see the remnants of his bite mark, mottled yellow against her pale skin. It’ll be gone before he gets home, he realizes. His hand tightens its grip on his cock; replacing her faded engraving is too powerful an idea to ignore. He needs more.

“Lay down for me. Close to the mirror, let me see it all properly.” The tightness in his voice translates; he sees Mia’s eyes light up.

“I won’t be able to see you from here. You’ll have to use your words, and all your wonderful noises.”

Not a tall order, now he can see her finger disappearing into her. Swollen and slick, he aches to be there, to lure the noises of pleasure and lubrication from her himself. Knowing they’re for him, that he’s on her mind, that his hand ghosts over her own, directing her is very nearly as good. 

“Another finger, Mia.”

Hearing his name bubble up out of her when she obliges confirms two things for him, simultaneously. One, he’ll be incredibly lucky to last until she finishes, because inexorably, he is edging closer and closer to his own release. And two, this is an act of love, whether she calls it that or not, whether the word is spoken or just known to him. He needs to try and remember this feeling, for whenever gloom next enquires if he’s at home.

Maybe circumstances are in his favor though, because he can see Mia arch off the bed, can see her shudder as the force of what he’s inspired ripples through her. The sound of a long desired orgasm fills the phone line, and suddenly he can only see the ceiling, because her arm has fallen flat against the bed - no further energy to hold it aloft.

The absence of her face twists his stomach - he needs her to come back to him. Not just because his imminent spill feels as though it requires it, but because he’s suddenly, painfully reminded of the half-formed theory of disengagement when it comes to her.

“If you’re still conscious, will you suck your fingers clean for me, my love?

The phone is pointed at the action once more. Mia props herself up on her elbows, and makes direct eye contact with the mirror before her index and middle finger disappear into her mouth. Her cheeks hollow, and Gale can see her tongue peeking out, working to clean between them.

“So thorough.” He says it approvingly, honeyed tones straddling the line between praise and fawning.

Something in him, some core molecule, knows that with her, there will never be enough words. He weighs up a multitude and finds them wanting. Borrows from someone else. “Find what you love, and then let it kill you,” he murmurs, astounded to be able to recall anything worthy of saying this close to the edge.

She hums in response, before removing her fingers, leaning forward to rub them on the glass. The squeak of it should not be the thing that gets him to come; it’s quietly mortifying that it is, after everything he’s seen this evening. When his eyes re-open - closed during his extended moment of rapture - she’s in his t-shirt, camera pointing at her face, not the recently smeared mirror version of it, but her directly.

Mia’s taking in the scene. Gale’s rapid breathing; the stickiness that coats his hand, stomach, reaching as far as his sternum, in some places; the presumably dazed look on his face.

“Looks like you had a good time,” she says, eyebrow raised, looking proud of herself.

“I need to start losing at chess, you’re going to be the death of me.”

“Find what you love, right?”

Gale is blushing again, he knows he is, pink and in dire need of a clean up and with no words at his disposal, not even further borrowed ones. The words play in his head after the call ends, through his shower, while he stares at the ceiling and tries to sleep. God, he’s deep in it. Even hearing her say the word, not directed at him, prickles his nerves with hope.

Cutting through the haze of post-orgasm bliss is the idea that she’s clearly not eating properly without him there. If he has to go away again, he’ll have to make sure the fridge is stocked with easy to cook options. Though, of course, the problem may not be lack of food, or even preparation time. It could be that, as before, his absence is causing this effect on her. The idea is uncomfortable, despite its implications; she loses his company and her appetite all at once. That has to mean something, even if the results are undesirable.

At the airport the next morning, Rachel takes a good look at him before declaring that he looks better than he did yesterday.

“I slept a lot better. Thinking of upgrading my room at the next place to make sure it continues.”

“That’s a good idea. I might see if I can do the same.”

He can’t tell if Rachel really enjoys a challenge - if she can’t tell that what she’s doing is falling flat - or if she’s forging ahead regardless. Does it matter, hugely, if nothing will ever happen? It sits uncomfortably on his shoulders all the same, that he can’t talk about anything trivial with her while they travel without it becoming a sign of interest. A sign that one night she can knock on his door and he’ll invite her inside.

Tonight will be an early night, he thinks.

—

The pillow of his penultimate evening is encased in soft cotton - incredible threadcount, as befits splurging on a hotel room he only ever planned on sleeping in alone. The sheets are of a similar luxury, and the mattress is the divine ratio of firmness : comfort that all beds should be. All things considered, one might assume that he would be able to drift off with ease, and yet. There’s too much empty bed.

He’d upgraded his room with good intentions - he longed for a decently sized bath to lounge around in, and he had, luxuriating until his fingertips pruned and his travel weary muscles had unsnarled themselves - but now Rachel is next door, through the universe’s sense of humor or her own efforts. She’s young, and he can understand her feelings, even if he doesn’t return them, but now she’s sharing a wall with him. He’s very aware of the proximity, and the activity it precludes.

No call from Mia tonight though - she’s at book club, discussing a different set of strangely flexible knights, no doubt - and he’s ashamed to be at this much of a loose end because of it. He’ll be without her voice in his ear, telling him exactly how to stroke himself. Will have to endure a night without her getting off on how much she likes that he does what she asks. No slow unwinding at the end of his day. And that’s a good thing, now that he has neighbors he can’t buy an escape from if needed, but the idea persists. As does a far less savory one.

The entire trip, he’s been wrestling with the idea that she’ll like the space, like that he’s kept at arm’s length by circumstance, realize there are easier people to have in love with her. Gale has no evidence to support that, which means he needs to accept that he’s looking for things that aren’t there to find. Letting fear overrule facts. He needs to take his mind off it.

And distraction works so well when she does it, doesn’t it? He’ll keep himself awake for hours if he tries things his way, and his hand is already under the sheets, hovering by his thigh. He hears her voice in his ear, telling him that she wants to watch. There’s the need to put on a good show. Make her proud.

The lube is right there on the bedside table, like he knew what he’d be doing as soon as he unpacked, even with his unwelcome Rachel abutment. He’s curious - that spark never died within him, for better or worse - and Mia had said she thought he might like it. That she’d want to hear about it. He’s carried it from hotel to hotel after all, never using it for the purpose intended, turning over the idea she planted in him that first night. His back is arching a little, feet planted flat against the mattress, cock in hand and ideas blossoming. Tonight could be the night. He rolls over to grab the bottle, leaving it resting on his chest.

Images float up to him in his suddenly dedicated state, and they’re all of her. Kneeling over him and riding him until he really thought - hoped - something might break, and carrying on anyway. Hair tickling his legs as she tips her head back. The way that she seems like she’s lit from within, even in the pitch dark. 

Not all thoughts of her are sordid, he contends. Some are almost mundane in their normalcy - looking up from his book to find her watching him from the armchair she’s claimed, legs folded under her in a way that suggests she doesn’t care if they’ll reliably hold her weight again; watching the morning sunlight play across her face as she sleeps against his chest, warm breath puffing out over his sternum - but tonight does not help his argument. 

A groan inches out of him, unexpectedly heated. The idea of having Mia within arm’s reach, not even for anything traditionally masturbatory in nature - just the domesticity of hearing her move round his apartment, talking to Tara, listening to the sound of her newest book club reading being put down on the kitchen counter, the sound of her rings gently clinking against her coffee cup - is too alluring to ignore. Any fear of finding constant company stifling swiftly set aside by waking up to find he’s still holding her.

The idea of sharing his home with her is more compelling to him right now than any other way he could picture her, and the second groan that leaves him is definitely louder, more likely to be heard by anyone wandering the corridors or occupying the room next door. His free hand reaches out for one of the pillows on the other side of the bed, and without considering if there’s a better option, promptly shoves it over his face.

Gale’s hold on the pillow tightens, trying to contain the next groan attempting to elbow its way out of him, doing a better job than he expected to. He’ll come like this, no problem, sweaty and breathing heavily, thinking about Mia’s head resting on his lap, wrapped in one of his blankets, always there. But it’s not the goal, is it?

He needs to see what he’s doing, as he prepares for the unknown. Props his silencer up above his head, lubricates his index finger until he’s confident it can perform as required. A moment of stillness, while he waits for the heat of his hand to raise the temperature of the lube to something more tolerable. His lip stings; he’s bitten down on it so hard he can taste metal.

All he can hear is her telling him how good he’s being for her; that phrase will make his blood take a staggering detour to his groin for the rest of his life. Achingly hard, leaking already, pillow back in place and clamped against his face with his entire left forearm. His right hand slides back under the sheets, and even in what he considers to be his decrepit condition, he finds he can reach where he’s needed with relative ease - his already prepped index finger begins massaging his hole. 

Even that is enough to provoke something coarse and unrefined from his throat; something he wishes Mia was next to him to hear, because he wants her to tell him what beautiful little noises he makes. The pillowcase fills his open mouth in its attempt to stifle him, thin and gauzy in its luxury, and as soon as it brushes against his lips he’s reminded again of Mia. Of diving under her skirt and licking her through her underwear, too eager to bother removing the obstacles. The taste of her filters through, like honey passing through cheesecloth, and the memory, the idea of doing it again, combines to set his finger loosening him up, getting him closer and closer to the point where he could accommodate it.

There’s a moment - brief, exhilarating, disappointing - where he thinks his reach may have exceeded his grasp, where he has to shuffle and contort himself slightly, but it does work. Plenty of room to operate, now that he’s certain he wants to. As his finger slips inside, the stretch and the heat advance his concurrent fantasies: the wet spot he’s made on the pillow grows, wanting it to be Mia, a desire happening alongside the wish she was here, watching what he’s doing, praising him. Encouraging him. Getting off on watching him.

Another groan, louder and definitely escaping the confines of the pillow, but by now he doesn’t care. Can’t care, honestly, because what he’s doing to himself is too good to stop, even if Rachel starts thumping on the wall. Fucking himself the way he thinks Mia would do it, with consideration, as if he really is under her patient instruction. And the dual streams of fantasy continue; he still hears the praise, that he’s doing such a good job; still licking the pillow like it’ll orgasm at some point. He doesn’t have enough hands.

Sweat trickles down his temple. His hair is damp with it, and he’s sure if he looks, his stomach will have the sheen of a good workout about it. He’s close, so close that he risks moving his left hand to where it will best serve him, letting it pump him indulgently, tight grip and yearning for someone else’s palm. The noises he’s making now, God help him, not even the pillowcase sticking to his mouth is enough, he’s moaning her name and seeing her face and it just… it just tips him over the edge, finger working and come painting his torso in thick, eager stripes. Soft, palindromic noises of pleasure continue to filter their way out into the plush gag he chose for himself.

For what feels like an extended moment, he lays there, catching his breath. Winding down from the undiscovered heights he’s summited within the last twenty minutes or so. His legs ache, and his heart and head are pounding with equal fervor. Gale’s thoughts run wild; a rush of affection hits him. Nobody else could have talked him into what he did tonight, and she didn’t even ask - only suggested, only implied that he might have a good time. No stakes, no punishments. No expectations of obedience.

It’s not until he’s towel drying his hair that he realizes. It’s something he should have already known, and maybe he did and just never put all the words together in the right order; maybe he really is just discovering it now. His hands never feel more alive than when Mia’s underneath them. There isn’t anything on Earth he wouldn’t give up if it meant keeping her in his life, as he has her now. He loves her. He’ll marry her.

There’s nobody else, and there can’t be again. She’s home. And God, does he want to go home.

His phone vibrates, cutting through the revelation, and for a second he’s afraid that it’s a (presumably fairly justified) noise complaint from Rachel.

> Mia: I just checked the mail. I miss your mouth too.

There’s a picture of her attached, holding up her postcard and beaming. Her hair is piled up dandelion style again, and the combination can only be described as radiant. Another buzz from the phone; Mia again.

> Mia: On a scale of 1-10, how much longing is on your face right now?

> The usual amount, I’m sure. Only two nights left, my love. Don’t clean the mirror.

After a pause, he sends a second message.

> I made use of your suggestion this evening. You were right.

—

The hotel restaurant is surprisingly quiet for seven in the morning. So quiet that Rachel finds him at his table with ease, and approaches bearing three cups of coffee. Gale stares at them, confusion managing to break through fatigue. Before he can comment, she’s taking a seat across from him. Fixing him with some kind of knowing look.

“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend. Or that she was flying out. Makes sense why you’d want a nicer room now, if she was joining you.” Her eyes flick down to his lip, swollen and slightly bruised from where he’d bitten down on it hard the night before.

“I didn’t, uh- she’s not here.” What else can he say? The only reason she’d mention his girlfriend is if she heard something. Heard everything, possibly.

“Wait. Someone else?” Rachel starts buttering her toast, looking incredibly focused on her task. “Like an open relationship?”

Gale chokes on his unasked for coffee. “No, it’s perfectly monogamous, thank you. I was alone last night.” The spluttering undercuts his abhorrence somewhat, but enough of it seems to come across. There’s coffee on his shirt. He’s too insulted to care.

Rachel’s turn to choke, as the implication of what he’s said settles in. “You certainly managed to have a good time, regardless.”

Silence from him, as the third coffee sits ignored, and Rachel refuses to look him in the eye as she burbles on about their remaining plans. The words wash over him, largely, until she mentions that tomorrow’s event isn’t mandatory. That means that if Gale can get a plane ticket, he can go home today - coffee splattered and eager as he is - and surprise Mia. The idea takes hold, and now sitting in Rachel’s company is tolerable, so tolerable that he smiles, despite himself.

He excuses himself as soon as he finishes his drink, unable to sit still now he’s got a plan in mind. Packs in a way that would make his mother cringe - everything thrown into the case in a jumble, toiletries sitting piled on socks, clothes creased and books tossed in on top. Doesn’t even change his shirt, just throws a jacket over it. 

As soon as Rachel said the final day’s events were optional, she should have foreseen Gale finding the next flight - any flight - home. When she catches him in the lobby, suitcase and weekend bag in tow, freshly checked out, she blanches.

“Gale, what the hell are you doing?”

“Going home, quite clearly. You already confirmed you don’t need me tomorrow, and I have someone I need to get back to.”

“But-”

His cab is here though, thankfully, so he doesn’t have to listen to any other rebuttals to his plans. He’s going home to his wife - girlfriend, Mia - whether Rachel approves of the idea or not. The thought buoys him through the middle seat of a packed flight, the wait for his bag, the absurdly long ride home from the airport in another, far chattier cab. And then he’s outside her house, noticing her bedroom light is still on. The key she gave him sits warm and clammy in his hand from where he’s been using it to ground himself. If he pressed his palm into a bar of soap right now, a reasonable cast of the key could be made, such is the grip he’s been keeping on the damn thing.

Opening the door, three things are immediately apparent. One is Tara, napping on the couch in what looks to be one of Mia’s sweaters, covered in cat fur after what has to amount to two week’s worth of nesting. Two, a pile of delivered postcards on her coffee table, clearly thumbed over regularly despite them not being here for any great length of time.

Three is by far the most interesting to him right now. Mia is calling his name, despite him being almost certain that she doesn’t yet know he’s there, in the house. The use of his name is punctuated by the kind of long, throaty moans he’s heard a lot of over the phone lately. Whatever she’s doing up there, he’s clearly on her mind as she does it, and the curiosity to see what it is for himself is an almost physical throb in his chest. He starts to climb the stairs.

There are a dozen ways - if not more - that Gale could have announced his unexpected arrival, explained his appearance here with his hair dishevelled and his sleeves rolled up and his eyes full of longing. The one he chooses is to lean against the door frame of Mia’s room, letting his bag slide from his shoulder to the floor with a solid thwump noise that makes her head shoot up from the pillow in alarm, before her expression melts.

“Did I come so hard I conjured you?” Mia asks shakily, looking at him and clearly not fully believing what she’s seeing.

“I can prove I’m real with ease if you let me.” Gale is now at the foot of the bed, one hand gently tracing circles up and down her calf. “Just say the word.”

“Prove it then,” she whispers. “Haven’t you had enough of watching lately?”

Gale has already realized there are few things he will not do if Mia is the one asking him to do them - case in point, the hotel room of exploration - and so as he crawls up the bed toward her, he is very willing to prove exactly how real he is. This takes the form of gentle (and then not so gentle) bites, starting at just above her knee and ending at the soft flesh of her inner thigh. The idea that by tomorrow, he will be able to view his favored path made vivid by his teeth makes him ache.

Mia waits for him to ask, because she knows he will. “Do you believe it now?”

She shakes her head, and the game continues. His mouth finds the swollen nub that he’s so intimately acquainted with; old friends reunited after a too long absence. When he gently drags his teeth along it, Mia’s entire pelvis arches into his face. Her hand shoots out to grip his hair, and his answering groan is what he’s sure prompts her to pull a little harder the second time. 

When his fingers slide into her, that’s when he finally feels like he’s made it home. Not the airport, not opening the front door, not even hearing her call his name - no mast to be tethered to now, not that he’d allow it. Mia is writhing, in a way that he’s not really seen before, even at their reunion, and it ignites something within him, to see it now.

She wasn’t calling every night purely for the good it did you - she wanted your voice in her ear. Needed it.

Once Mia is riding him in earnest, using him and his face to chase her orgasm, holding him in place with her thighs and her grip on his hair, an idea strikes. He continues to slip his fingers in and out of her with ease, wet as he’s made her - him, he did this to her, nobody else ever will - and he can tell she’s close before the moan comes, he can read her easier than any book he’s ever encountered. Gale crooks his fingers, knowing that will get a further moan out of her, more music to his ears, more proof of a job well done. His wife grips him tightly everywhere she’s touching him; scalp stinging, the hand she’s grasping on to likely to have her finger prints on it forever, cunt clenching as if his knuckles being ground to dust is their natural form, and she’s just helping him achieve it.

Thank God there was a flight today. He pulls away, sits back on his heels, watching Mia’s eyelids flutter and the afterglow settle over her. His hands smooth along her thighs, tattoo ink and pale skin, and he’ll never regret skipping whatever party Rachel had planned. “I missed you,” he says, redundant but true, pressing a kiss to her inner knee.

“I missed you too.” She takes him in, fully. “Why do you have coffee all over you? And what happened to your lip?” 

“I may have tried too hard to stifle myself while following your advice.” He winks at her, and then flushes immediately. “As for the coffee stains, I was in a rush to get home, my love.”

Mia looks down at herself, looking self-conscious. “For this?”

“For all of you.” He presses a kiss to her other knee. “This, of course, but this is only one part of what I’ve longed for these last two weeks.”

She flushes, from her freckled cheeks down to her chest. Pink is the color of knowing his love, he thinks, wildly. The way she looks at him right now, it warps his perception of reality. Everything is tinted by being home again, being in the position to kiss his way along her leg, starting at her ankle, biting at the inky shapes that reside there, licking his way back to her hip.

As soon as he arrives there, Mia pulls him up to her face, kissing him softly. Very much at odds with his mouth’s hungry path along her. “I missed all of you too. I- I feel better, with you home. Nobody has complained about me eating directly out of the fridge instead of having an actual meal for weeks. I hated it.”

There’s a lull, filled with his indulgent smile and his bliss at having his face so close to hers. He can feel her breath on his face when she speaks again. “I know what your pauses mean. I know what you want to say in them instead.”

A pause, not dissimilar from the ones she described. He shuffles back from her, trying to escape being known, because it’s historically been dangerous, and avoiding it is a reflex, even now, even with her. What surprises him is that she follows; shifting on the bed to kneel in front of him, a mirror image. Gale’s breath catches. She winds his already loosened tie round her hand, holding him in place, running her eyes over him again, without the fog of orgasm clouding her eyes. 

“Messy hair, stained shirt, tie woefully undone. You really were in a rush to get home to me, handsome.” Mia’s hands are directing him back, a strange kind of backwards shuffle until he reaches the end of the bed and stands there, confused and alarmingly aroused, while she kneels in front of him. She pulls him closer, back down to her mouth, close enough for him to hear her instructions.

“Follow me down, love. Do you remember how to be good for me?”

Gale complies without much conscious effort. Without even knowing he’s doing it for the most part; a lethal combination of wanting to please and her using his term of endearment has him whimpering, making the kind of noises only she can inspire in him. The pull on his tie gets stronger as Mia reclines on the bed, and suddenly he knows where his face is supposed to be. 

He hopes it bruises. Hopes it leaves a mark that’s visible for days, raises questions and eyebrows, lets everyone know there’s someone that wants him enough to yank him around by his clothes in their quest to have him. Back on his knees, with Mia’s legs over his shoulder; familiar yet exhilarating, waiting for his next instructions, desperate to be good.

The tie runs from his neck flat along Mia’s stomach, all the way up into the hand that holds him. One gentle tug is all it takes, and he begins, lapping at the temple of benediction with a fervor that would make the most pious of priests look lacking. His efforts are rewarded with her divine favor; it takes the form of her heels pressing into his back, urging him to keep praying to her. The hand on his leash tugs harder.

It’s been at most, ten minutes since he was last here, and yet… the taste is richer. Deeper, ambrosial - it does leave him feeling healed and unkillable, Homer was right about that - and his head spins with it, that the use of the word ‘love’ can influence him in such a way. If pink is the color of knowing his love, knowing hers is the pale peach of her cunt, shining from his attentions; an altar most cared for.

When she comes - because it’s inevitable, because it’s his life’s sole purpose, because she told him what to do and how to be good and by God will he deliver - his nose is crushed against her clit, breathing a distant concern. His tongue and hand continue to fuck her through it, draining her of every moan, every murmur of his name, every soft whisper of ‘fuck’ that she’s capable of.

She’s not speechless, which at first he seesy as a failing, before realizing it’s essential to his interests.

“You’re so very good for me, aren’t you?”

He nods, because he’s fumbled lesser things than this by speaking, and he’ll be damned if he upsets her now. Her fingers reach under his chin, tie pulled so gently in contrast to her earlier direction.

“Suddenly quiet, aren’t we? Were you not just moaning like a sweet little harlot directly into me?”

There’s no memory of moaning, but he’d readily admit he’s perhaps not the most reliable witness. He has been, after all, rather lost in the task at hand. No attention paid to any noises he may or may not have been making directly into the love of his life.

“Very likely that I was, my love. Dedicated to my work as ever, even after a short, involuntary break.”

Mia smiles at him, rises up so that she’s close enough to kiss him, licking the taste of herself out of his mouth. Moaning into him now, roles reversed, hungry for more and more and more until Gale has to pull back, breathless and light-headed.

Against his chest, he hears her ask if he knows what he’d like to do next. The reigns are uncomfortable in his hands, suddenly. Two weeks of being the one on stage, the one talking, the one that’s switched on and charming and interesting, and he’s exhausted.

“I’d quite like to carry on doing as I’m told, if I can. I know I’m safe in your hands.” He hadn’t realized how true those words are until they’re out, but handing over control, being told what to do and getting praised for doing it - it sounds positively restorative.

“Wish granted, sweetheart. Take your clothes off.” Gale is already complying when there’s an addendum. “Leave the tie.”

As he’s doing as he’s told, he can’t keep his eyes off of Mia. Propped on her elbows, watching him with unhidden interest, the way someone might watch their favorite meal land on the table in a restaurant. Once he’s naked - tie still in place, brushing against his stomach in a somewhat loaded capacity - she directs him to lay down on the bed, head on the soft pillows. Comfortable in the anticipation. 

“You are the most beautiful blank canvas for me,” Mia says, as her knees settle in their bracket round his hips. Her fingertips run up and down his chest, muscles twitching in her wake. “I could make so many swirling purples on you.”

She hums as her fingers continue their trail. Gale’s hands are on her thighs, running a similar path, feeling the wet of her against him and tempering the urge to seat her properly and drive himself up. The control isn’t his; Mia is in charge, and that means any slow preamble is hers to dispense. 

And dispense she does, biting at his neck until some of that purple is definitely painted on him. Kissing her way up and down his chest, swirling his nipples in her mouth in turn, teeth scraping just to watch him jerk under her, he’s sure. Mouthing at his jawline as if she wants him to disobey, and he might. Everything she does breathes further life into him.

Eventually, she raises herself up, ready to begin at last, ready to give him what he’s longed for since they parted. As soon as she’s settled, moved perhaps an inch into fucking him, his traitorous mouth spills his soul.

“I love you, Mia.”

She stills. He knows she won’t respond in kind; waits anyway. “Noted, my wayward little canvas.”

Mia starts to roll her hips, hands resting on his chest, nails digging into him slightly, reminding him - as if he could forget - that he belongs to her, that every rise and fall of her against him is a gift extended, that his repentance is what got him here and the love she won’t verbalize is what keeps him in place. Her actions are yelling at him, even if her words are hidden away somewhere, still refusing to come out and greet him. 

His hands move to her biceps, tugging her down lower, where he can kiss her, feel her breath, the way her moan starts out low in her chest before the cup holding it overflows, pouring over him. He wants to feel her against him, needs to. The way her stomach lays flat against his, her chest pressed to his, her face in his neck whispering that he’s so good - how did he get so good, is it because he loves her? Mia’s voice catches as she talks, a halting pace to her words that thrills and infuriates him; no delay to his praise is preferable, but then again, knowing his cock is pleasurable enough to disrupt her chain of thought is merely a different, wordless kind of praise, is it not?

How many nights like this await him? Returning home from something or other, into her arms - or better yet, returning home with her, before falling into bed together. Held so close that their sweat mingles, their breath is shared; thumping heartbeats indistinguishable from one another. She must be able to taste the communion wine with each time she kisses him - God knows he can, every moment his tongue swipes against his lips, chasing her to the last. 

No warning, before she sits up a little, peeling his hands from her and putting them above his head, one either side. Before he can protest, her hands join his, holding him in place. At her mercy fully, now. What a vaunted place to be, underneath her, pinned and willing, as her hips continue to roll and her mouth continues to nibble at him. Biting at his jaw, neck, shoulder - anywhere she can reach. Anywhere she can’t reach too, at times; Gale can hear her mouth close around nothing as her aim fails her. His one solitary whine of protest is met with a raised eyebrow.

Her hands push down harder on his. “Didn’t you say you wanted to do as you’re told? Didn't you tell me on the phone that you can do that?”

Again, he nods. Not from fear of upset this time, but because this side of her cannot be interrupted by his paltry words.

“I think doing what you’re told extends a bit further than whining at the conditions you asked for.” Her hips snap against him this time, and Gale’s eyes roll back, a groan stretching out of him from his toes to his mouth. “I think that you need to learn some self-control. Some discipline.”

When he remains staring at her, she continues. “Don’t come until I tell you to, love.”

Underhanded, to give him an order like that, and then use the one word most likely to make it happen immediately, unbidden. Mia nibbles his ear, teeth on cartilage; Gale is reminded what willing prey he is. She’s bolder, gets bolder each time they do this, slowly turning up the heat to make sure she doesn’t frighten him. How could he not love her, when being loved by her is to be cared for, to be made comfortable, to be missed when he isn’t nearby?

And she does know what she’s done to him. He can tell as soon as she finishes speaking, yes - but then she sits back up, watching him for any sign of wayward behavior. When she sees none, his tie is pulled once again. He’d follow anyway, even if it wasn’t expected or asked of him, helplessly drawn to her like a tiny iron filing under the call of a magnet. Now they’re face to face and her teeth are in his bottom lip, pinning him in a different way, reigniting the pain of his own teeth biting through that same lip. Realizing he doesn’t care.

Giving himself over to her, being her pliant tool, exorcising the last of the phantoms that clutch at his enjoyment of being with her with surprisingly powerful fingers - it’s liberating. A contrast, and the idea prompts the thought that knowing the color of what Mystra wouldn’t quite have called love is yellow and brown, the shade of a bruise that was clearly severe but is now healing.

Gale’s hands cradle Mia’s back, thumbs smoothing over her ink covered spine. Head resting against her sternum, jostled with every roll against him, not caring at all. Makeshift pillow slick with sweat, still shared and mingling, her nipples hard and pressing into him, temptation manifest. He could make quick work of her, if he was allowed to put his mouth to them. In contrast to his defiant thoughts, her hands are playing with his hair. They graze against the back of his neck, helping ground him against the fast rising urge to spill without permission.

Finally - although still far too soon for his liking - he feels the tells, the way Mia tightens round him, nails digging in to him, whimpers getting more frequent, more desperate. “Come, my love, let it go for me,” he murmurs into her damp collarbone.

Please, please let me go with you.

His words are the key, it seems. Mia’s head tips forward to his shoulder, letting him hear every squeak and whine and choked noise of pleasure perfectly. He throbs inside her, each squeeze of her muscles taking him closer and closer. She can see it, even with the post-orgasm fog back in her eyes - just as he can see that she’s flagging, tired and still wanting to keep going regardless. Head remaining on his shoulder, and a very earnest attempt at continuing her earlier pace.

“Mia, we don’t have to keep at this.”

“We do! I’m supposed to be making coming home worth it, I shouldn’t have done all this while I was tired. You’re being short-changed, you still haven’t-”

“The work of a moment, my love. Come on.” Gale rolls her onto her back, boneless and deceptively heavy.

“If I never touched you again, coming home to you would still be worth it. I’m not owed any level of intimacy for walking through the front door, and I won’t let you think that I am.” 

Mia opens her mouth to argue, but nothing makes itself heard. He kisses her forehead, realizes he’s still inside her - only when he moves to change this, she comes alive again. Reaches out to stop him. 

“Wait,” she says. He does, because she’s the one asking. “Use me.”

The request hangs in the air. Tempting and ruinous, easy to give in to. Far harder to resist than he’d like. “What did I just say? You owe me nothing, however appealing you make it sound.”

“But it’s what I want. You, talking to me, and using me, and holding me afterwards.” She uses his tie to pull his mouth to hers. “Use me,” she says against his mouth.

He means what he said, he does, but he is still him, and she’s still her, and he can’t not give her what she asks for. Not if it’s within his power to provide. And this is, this is something he can do. The excitement of it, the way this is something he’s truly never been offered before - yellow-brown had limitations that peach is not bound by. Mia’s arm winds under his, palm on his back, waiting for his lead. Urging him on. 

The first thrust is tentative, no wish to hurt her while fulfilling her desire. Mind consciously trying to restrain him. His body seems to operate under different rules, however; after that first loving stroke, his hips disobey, slamming into her in a way that punches her breath from her chest. Guilt flares, the idea that he might have hurt her chokes him, but he looks down and sees her eyes are alive and her smile is wide and he knows he’s inadvertently given her exactly what she was hoping for.

“Keep going. Please, please, don’t stop.”

At her urging, he keeps the pace. Remembers he’s supposed to be talking to her, lets all his jumbled affection for her fall out. “Coming home to you makes leaving tolerable, you know. Your company is worth any amount of travel.”

Mia’s whines sound worn out, but she keeps her right hand on his cheek, cupping his face, wordlessly encouraging him to continue, so he does. “You feel like home. This, but everything else too.” His hair has come loose; in his eyes and sticking to her hand, his neck. Sweat runs down his nose, threatening to drip down into her hair, mingling further. “I could give this up, if I had to. But not you, not again.”

He’s close, so close, but he needs her to come once more, with him preferably, squeezing him while he pours himself into her. “Do you think you can come again, if I keep this up?”

A nod; her turn to be reduced to that. “You’re so good, letting me use you like this, aren’t you? Letting me take what I want, paying for it by telling you things I’d say anyway. A steal.” His words are punctuated by his heavy breathing, his burning desire to spill inside her, the need and want and craving he’s had for two weeks, sating it with her voice and her body from a distance, and now she’s here and holdable and telling him to fuck her like he owns her, and maybe he does, if this is what she offers. Maybe she is his, like he wants. 

Mia’s hand leaves his cheek, moves to what must be an aching clit and begins to rub. He glances down to observe, pace faltering momentarily, watching her tend to herself. “What are you thinking about?” Gale asks, voice stretched thin.

“How I want you to keep using me. How much I missed you.” Her whisper is followed by a small whimper - perhaps all she’s now capable of - and the slap of his body into hers. 

A few things happen, seemingly at once: first, with a mewl and an almost sob, she comes. Barely any energy to put behind it, but the orgasm still arrives as ordered. The sound of that, combined with what she’d just said and the clamp of her muscles round him, makes him follow after her, pouring into her just like he wanted. And then he speaks, without thought or knowledge of if it’s audible to her.

“Such a good wife for me, love.”

He comes for far longer than he would have imagined possible; so long that he wonders if it’ll ever end. It does, at last, allowing him to roll on to his back and nurse the stitch he’s given himself in his quest to use Mia to her fullest. She herself doesn’t move, her body pressed into the mattress and legs shaking. A fine job of following orders on his part. “Are you still with me, my love?”

A slow raise of her hand, a thumbs up. Her eyes are closed, her chest rises and falls rapidly; the hand flops back on to the bed. Spent entirely.

“Do you need help cleaning up?”

“Mhmm.”

Cleaning her up as she floats between waking and unconsciousness feels more intimate than walking in on her masturbating over him, he considers. Sliding into bed next to her afterwards, having her seek him out like perhaps now, he is the magnet; there aren’t words, just a feeling. Named it, spoken it, waits for it to echo back to him. Her head rests on his chest, and when she speaks, he feels each syllable against him.

“I feel safe with you.” Mia sounds as if she’s on the very edge of sleep, which isn’t surprising after everything they’ve done tonight. He wonders if she knows he can hear her, if she’s choosing what to say or if whatever it is that holds her back when waking is washed away by her current weariness. “I don’t think I’ve had that before. It’s good.”

There’s silence, as he processes. Lets what is being said and unsaid mingle in his mind. Takes a little too long, as the soft sounds of sleeping start.

“I love you too,” he says into the dark.

 

Notes:

thank you to sorcy for helping me bat ideas around / encouraging me to keep everything <3

Notes:

thank you again to willingtofight and tociminna, for excellent notes, pushing me to post this, and calling me a pleb when needed. this wouldn't be here without you <3

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of the miaverse