across time & space

[anatural]

WHO: Hei & Korra
WHAT: Hei’s been missing for years.

[Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? As Korra watches Mako walk down the beach path, she kind of regrets telling him she was fine. The air feels a lot chillier without his companionable warmth. But he's no better at comfort sex than Bolin is; they're both too romantic. Of all her friends, Asami's the only one who really understands the occasional need for intimacy without its attendant baggage. Too bad Asami's out of town.

Korra smiles and shakes her head as she opens the front door. It doesn't matter. Nights like this are why she remodeled the house so Naga could come inside. The polar bear dog's warm, solid presence is like a campfire, a soft blanket, and hot tea all in one affectionate package.

Speaking of — Naga pokes her head out of the bedroom door and whines a question.]

I'm sorry, girl. She didn't make it. [Even with Korra to stabilize her wounds and the best vet in Republic City, Cat's injuries from the hit & run accident were too severe.

One by one, everything that connects her to Hei is vanishing. A few months after he was officially declared dead, Yin went missing. Her black cat died, and some guy with a poodlebird from Future Industries took all the computer equipment. She's had to renovate the house a few times, due to storms and other emergencies. And now Cat.

It makes Korra feel sad, but mostly it makes her feel old. The normal bumps and pains that occur over a lifetime have been crammed into less than a decade; she's still a few years shy of thirty, but she feels like she's her mother's age sometimes.

Naga nuzzles her shoulder comfortingly, and Korra takes the invitation to wrap her arms around her and bury her face in the polar bear dog's fur.]

I'm tired of losing people.

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ He doesn't smile, but there's a softening in his expression, something flickering across his eyes, the line of his mouth. Gratitude, maybe. Everything's crumbled around him, in the three years he's been away, but Korra is still here, steadily shining as the moon the caught in a net, warm and solid to the touch. ]

[ He lets his fingers lace with hers, squeezing them gently. ]

Maybe you can use the vines. Narrow out her energy.

[ He hopes Yin is somewhere safe. Hopes the cat is with her, keeping an eye out for her. The alternative is something that he can't bear imagining. He doesn't meet Korra's gaze. But he edges closer, putting no care or ceremony into it. Just closing the gap between them, his hand still knitted with hers, the other coming up to trace its fingertips along her jawline, before palming her face, a slow cradle, letting her decide if the touch is okay. (Maybe telling her I'm sorry but also Thank you, because he can't trust his voice not to betray him on either counts.) ]

[anatural]

I can try. I'm still not really good at it, unless she's in the swamp or somewhere in the spirit world. You'd have more luck with Jinora... [Her voice stutters slowly to a halt as he cups her face. She's missed him so much... She can feel the ache of it deep in her belly. Missed his smell, missed the way his touch could tell her so much. Missed having sex with him and feeling like they were building something.

She hasn't spent three years celibate. In the first few months after she thought he was dead, she made some really stupid sexual choices with people who, fortunately, nobody would ever believe got to fuck the Avatar. After that, she became a bit more discerning, occasionally releasing the tension with an attractive, well-behaved stranger, and — more frequently — Asami, after a late night discussion about Future Industry's foray into sex toys led to a mutual admission of sexual frustration and a mutual willingness to help the other work it off. But that's all it was — good friends helping each other let off steam, like maintenance on a satomobile. They weren't making anything together.

She doesn't want to rush this. She doesn't want to pretend that this three-year wound can be healed with one good fuck. But oh man, does she want to fuck him. Just yank her pants down and pull him inside so she can feel that he's back in her deepest places. She manages not to do that, instead leaning forward to hesitantly kiss him.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Her face, cradled in his palm, feels hot and moist. So much stymied energy fritzing in the air around her. It calls to him the same as ever, with a rush like the Pacific undertow pulling the sand out from beneath his feet. It makes his mind reel. Three years. They've had long separations before, in the City and here. But this situation isn't the sort he can master so easily. There is no war brewing on the fringes, no curse or fresh cataclysm to fling them together, to knit an adrenalized bond of trust between them -- because it is hard to stay distant and petty in the middle of disaster. ]

[ Here there is no enemy to fight. There is nothing he can do at all, really, except endure, and hope that the old spark and warmth between them will resurface from under the layers of tense reserve. ]

[ When she kisses him, something lurches dizzily inside his chest. His lips feel so cold against hers. He imagines it must be like kissing snow. Except there is a deep flare inside him -- a hot hunger for Korra -- that doesn't stop burning. His doubts unshackle slowly, one by one, just as the splintering stiffness in his spine dissolves, vertebra by vertebra. When he kisses back, it's not chaste. But there is something tender in the way he gathers her closer, smoothing the fine hairs along her brow, lips parting against hers to chase the ghosts of their breakfast inside her mouth. ]

[ Surreal, doing this, but so natural. Especially with how long it's been. He's mostly kept to himself the whole year on Enterprise -- except for a few blindish, heated fumbles in a dark corner of the shuttle carousel, with a sweet snub-nosed engineer who'd smelled incongruously of old-fashioned lily talcum powder, and who had hastily pulled away and the next morning requested a transfer; or that blowjob in the hangar high-bay when he'd made desultory talk with that pretty tac officer scheduled to go on leave in a few hours, who had touched his shoulder and so he had angled his body towards her, and something fleeting and prickly-hot had passed between them; and just that once with that gristly operations manager in her plain little room, trying -- and failing -- to feel some enthusiasm about her wan stick-insect's body. ]

[ None of it was like this -- the white-hot greed of pressing close to Korra -- tasting her mouth over and over. ]

[anatural]

[His lips are cold — and dry, and a little thinner than she's gotten used to. But they feel so good, and she wraps her arms around his neck, almost wanting to cry at how perfect everything is.

Well, except for how gross her teeth feel. And the lingering remnants of breakfast, which never used to gross her out until Asami got her into the habit of cleaning thoroughly before sex. She smiles a little wryly as she breaks the kiss, pulling back just far enough to speak.]

We should probably brush our teeth.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's off-balance, breathless, when she pulls away. With a blink, he tries to process her words. Teeth? He's never known her to be particularly fastidious. She tastes fine to him -- better than fine. She tastes good, like something he could gorge endlessly on -- tea and crunchy fried food and echoes of spice. He'd expected, from prior experience, that she'd press for sex; she'd always been so constantly revved up when he'd lived with her, cheerfully, innocently seductive that he'd always ended up succumbing to her and never been able to stop. Even in City, every time he saw her, she'd tried sweetly, cheekily, for whatever she could get. ]

[ But it's been three years. Maybe they've reshaped her patterns? Maybe her reluctance has to do as much with keeping a measured pace to this strange reunion, not rushing interactions that contain within them so much tension and articulated loss, as with a quiet fear? Maybe, even as she yearns for the sameness as before, she can't let herself believe it's there, because they're so out of sync after so much time apart? ]

[ He doesn't know. Instead he leans in and kisses her. Once, and then again. His own mouth still tastes like toothpaste, even under the salty detritus of breakfast: he's always taken obsessive care of his teeth, as if to avoid the risk of evil dentists and medical notice in general. The third kiss is deeper; he falls into it, what his mouth has longed for, but doesn't linger enough to be pushy. ]

[ Drawing back, he breathes, ]

I guess so.

[ It's curious but humoring. Like this is an unexpected new tic, but one he's ready to indulge. ]

wow i thought i had posted this oops

[anatural]

[She'd explain, but it's oddly embarrassing to say I’ve picked up a few new habits having sex with other people. Even if he's the last person in the world with any right to judge. She settles for a quick peck to his lips.]

Might as well grab a shower while I'm at it.

<33

[mortemscintilla]

[ You can shower when I'm done with you. Hei almost says it aloud. But he lightly bites his tongue and clasps her closer. Nuzzles the feathery heap of her hair, inhaling her scent, as his hands slide along her waist, the sweet solidity of her hips, the skin-warmed fabric tingling across his palms and suffusing him with a drugged, lax wine of bittersweet happiness. But also a desire that seems to transcend simple arousal and satiety. ]

[ He's waited almost a year, drifting like a cosmic dust-mote through space, to be near her again. Now that he is, fifteen minutes or fifteen hours of waiting don't make a difference. Not as long as they culminate with her being close to him, so he can greedily sink into all of her deliciousness that his throbbing body now demands, hopefully with nothing of their usual insecurities and grief to cloud the experience. ]

[ He kisses the soft rim of her ear, before detaching, ]

Whatever you need.

[ Space. Slowness. She seems jittery, clearly excited, but full of apprehension too -- and it makes him cautious in turn. ]

[anatural]

[She squeezes his hand and heads into the bathroom. She feels tingly and aware of her body in a way she hasn't been for awhile as she strips out of her clothes. Excitement. Not just need, not just tension, but actual excitement. And nervousness. She hasn't been nervous about sex in a long time. It's been perfunctory and utilitarian.

She resists the urge to touch herself, more out of self-consciousness than any kind of plan or necessity. Hesitates when she gets out of the shower — towel or clothes back on? Back on.

Clean, tingly, re-dressed, she heads back out.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ What Hei feels isn't nervousness. But he's aware of his body humming with a zitzing energy like before a fight, a thrum just below the surface of his skin. They've rarely done this, he and Korra. Never let events unfold at such a sweet and decorous pace. Every encounter has been fed by a propulsive physical hunger that's always escalated quickly, giving way to messy kisses, incoherent words, torn clothes, bruises and rattling furniture ]

[ This ... is more like Civilian Dating 101. It is so far away from anything he's ever remotely done, yet the anticipation, the refusal to jump headlong into disaster, is so very near to what he simply, burstingly, feels. ]

[ While she showers, he doesn't wait in the bedroom. He prowls through the house as if on a reconnaissance run, gauging changes in the layout, any structural or tactical weakpoints, any hint that the house is less than the foolproof vault it was when he'd first layered it with security systems, special proofing for the windows, state of the art locks, meticulously-placed alarms. In his absence, Korra hasn't kept up the maintenance. But that's no surprise. She's never been as paranoid as he is. ]

[ If anything, the lax security is a sign. Even if she's seen plenty of danger these three years, it hasn't followed her home. ]

[ When Korra comes back out, he isn't in bed. He's sitting next to the worktable where he'd usually tinkered on new weapons -- cross-legged on a chair in the way that only a bendy, limber man can achieve, facing the door, reading a dusty volume of Airbender koans. The blinds are drawn, and the room takes on an underwater grayness, carved here and there by glittery impossibly thin threads of sunlight. ]

[ In the moment Korra drifts in, Hei looks up from the parchment-fine page to capture a perfect, heightened vision of her in which the familiar and unfamiliar mixes: hair a short fluffy tumble, the cut of her face sleeker, but with those same burning-blue eyes. It may eventually be possible for him to look at Korra and see her only as she is in the present moment. But right now he sees all the Korras. The whole history of her, playing out in the semi-darkness, around the woman breathing softly in front of him. ]

[ There's a blink, his gaze unfocused, almost rueful. Then, with a surge of something like collapsed restraint he reaches out for her hand, desperate to keep hold of her this time. ]

[anatural]

[It's for a cute moment, snuggling up on his lap after he tugs her hand. But she stops when her legs press against against his (though she won't resist if he tugs her down).]

It's kind of surreal. I didn't think I'd see you at this table again.

[mortemscintilla]

[ He doesn't tug her. But he puts the book down and his feet on the floor, opening himself up to her, his body swaying against her warmth as if magnetized on a deep and nuclear level. It's not much of an embrace; his free arm is a loose curl around her waist, his head slumped against her torso the way he might slump against a wall, forehead to breastbone, eyes shut and stomach fluttering. Yet it's so familiar, so uncannily good, he feels as if he's opened some long unseen Portuguese book, and can parse out the complex text without a dictionary. ]

[ At her words, he swallows dryly, lips tracing the slope of her belly, the fabric hot from her skin. ]

For you, it's been a while. But ... not so much for me. Time's supposed to dilate when you're in space. It's faster when you're away from a large mass, like a planet. Not slower. Except that's what's happened to me. [ Temporal anomalies. He'sure the bright minds on the Enterprise would be piqued. Chekov especially. He wonders what the kid is up to right now. ]

[ Quieter, an almost imperceptible catch in his words, like he's unused to the honesty, ]

Everything is so strange. How can ... you even want this anymore?

[anatural]

[Korra blinks, arousal muffled by confusion. It's been awhile, Hei, but you should really know better than to hit her with weird confusing science information and then ask her deeply emotional questions. Particularly while touching her.]

What do you mean?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei squeezes his eyes shut tighter. Hugs her waist closer, cradling soft handfuls of her weight, and rubs his cheek against her belly. Something hot scalds the back of his eyes, even as his throat briefly closes up against words, against breath. How can he explain, that after three years apart, at least for Korra, he's incredulous that she still wants this. That whatever she felt for him before he'd been snatched away, is still inside her. Still real. Comprehension of other people's emotions is always fleeting -- he'd figured that out a while ago -- but with those you love most -- and he loves her terribly -- it ought to be possible to, if not know one another, at least get a good glimpse. ]

[ Except he can't feel anything beyond his own gut-clenching anxiety. Korra is so close, right up against him. So familiar. Yet the sensory vividness is so strong it's almost unreal. Or too real. Does that make any sense? ]

[ Fuck, he has to stop overthinking this. Shouldn't think at all. Nothing good comes of it. ]

[ He glances up at her then, his palms sliding up, resting looped around her neck, one hand threading through her hair. ]

[ Softly, ]

I guess ... it's just a surprise. That I'd turn up in three years to find you're still thinking about me after all this time. I worry it's just you being surprised to see me. Like ... nostalgia.

[anatural]

...you're an idiot. [Said with mild disbelief and affection.] We were together for what, eight years? You don't just forget that.

[She tugs him up and towards the bedroom.] Come on.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Eight years. He can feel his thoughts galloping inside. Resistance and uncertainty, making a united stand, poising him to break and run, or collapse. He's quite for a long moment, his hand lax but somehow heavy as she tugs. ]

[ But then a sound escapes him, halfway between a huff and chuckle -- a release of tension even as he gathers his self-possession. She hasn't changed. To her, the extraneous details don't matter. As if a leap through the space-time continuum is nothing between them. As if they're fused, from their years spent together, the atoms and molecules between them sustaining a private current of intimacy during their time apart. ]

[ He wouldn't credit it. But the way she's drawing him toward the bedroom feels like a lifesaving handhold, stopping his decent into utter desolation. His mind is percolating with worries and what-ifs. That's how it's designed: it won't stop. But as long as he has her attention, some sort of attention, he knows he'll be all right. ]

[ He follows her into the bedroom, awkward but unfaltering. Even before he's crossed the threshold, he's right up tight behind her, feet on either side of her, the cool length of him pressing close with his hands on her shoulders, hungrily mouthing her nape through the fluffy heap of her hair. He yearns to go slowly, but after so much cautious postponement and rationalization, he can't surf the wave of his want. He's drowning in it, submerging inch by inch. ]

[anatural]

[It's not nothing. It's crazy. Surreal. Disorienting. It's changed everything. But it doesn't make them strangers. (Even if it did... she's had sex with a few total strangers.)

She's regretting pretty hard the decision to put her clothes back on after the shower as they awkwardly waltz onto the bed. She's wearing her getaway underwear at least (the kind that doesn't involve a lot of unwrapping to get off, courtesy of Asami). Still, it would be really nice if they could skip the whole awkward getting-your-clothes-off stage and jump right into skin-on-skin. He's making it awfully hard to take this slow & sweet.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei can't pretend at slow and sweet, even as everything in him struggles for the anchor of control, so as to be able to remember later his first glimpse of Korra's nakedness, Korra who will be changed by three years, no doubt, but who is still Korra - his first whiff of her long-remembered aromas, the exact first touch of his mouth to her radiant uncovered skin. He can't afford to botch this up. Especially not after that awful time in the City, when he'd -- ]

[ His mind shies from the memory as if from a jarring blow. She has one knee on the mattress, and he's so close to her he's amazed she can't feel him on every upraised hair of her nape. He clasps her tight, fevery-hot with impatience, face buried in her hair. With one hand, he gathers it off her neck, laying moist kisses in a tracery along her hairline, to her jaw, her cheek, nudging and then connecting to her mouth. He's fully-dressed but he feels naked, his erection obvious through his old jeans. ]

[ When he breaks away and turns her, it's with unsteady hands. Wordlessly, he guides her warm fingers, threaded with his cold ones, to hook into the hot space between his shirt and waistband. Inviting her to encroach his territory, familiar and non-hostile, to undress him before he gets too caught up in stripping every morsel of fabric off her. To take as much time as she -- they -- need to, because he can't trust himself to navigate this successfully on his own. ]

[anatural]

[Invitation accepted! Korra smiles and quickly unbuttons his shirt — as quickly as she can, anyway, considering this shirt is one of his leftovers from the City and there are many shirts with buttons like it in Republic City.]

Your shirts take too much work. [It's a half-hearted complaint as she reaches the last button and slides it off his shoulders. He's changed so little in three years (his whole spiel about time and gravity and whatever being not understood and therefore completely forgotten). She kisses her way down his chest as her hands then get to work on his pants.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei lets her tackle the buttons. When the shirt gapes, he shrugs it off and lets it fall to the floor. Echoes of the familiar weave with the strange -- her usual girlish banter, the spicysweet impatience vibrating off her, and his own dry-mouthed anxiety. His expression is calm but inside his nerves are chewing themselves to pieces. ]

[ Soft hair brushes against the underside of his chin and jaw; when she kisses her way down his chest, he sucks in his breath, fighting to keep from grabbing Korra with the bruising bite of his desire. It's true, he hasn't changed much in his year on the Enterprise. His body has just fleshed out a few degrees: thicker striations across the chest and marbling on the delts, lats flaring in a noticeable cobra's hood. There was so little to do on the ship -- he'd either spent his time swimming or pounding through newly-learnt katas in the gym until every joint rolled smooth in its socket -- at least when he wasn't poring over the shimmering multi-dimensional charts of the universe with Chekov, or stewing in a corner at the bridge, part uneasy guest, part dangerous prisoner, the entire atmosphere like a noisy grinding machine gnawing at his nerves, until Spock would stiltedly ask if he wanted to play kal-toh. ]

[ The memory nearly uncurls a smile from him now. He drops his hands, fingers furling around Korra's wrists, re-directing her efforts away from the catch of his trousers. He kisses her palms, one then the other, exploring the fingers that are still like peachy quinquefoliate petals, but that have also evolved into unpretentious weapons, smooth and slender, but toughened by years of use, delicately callused. ]

[ He lets them go, with a lingering kiss on their fingertips. Drops his own hands to disclose himself, shedding his jeans, the belt buckle clanking on the floor, and stepping out of them to circle her close, letting her feel the sharp outline of his cock in the boxers. His fingers -- his whole body -- feel so cold. Hellish cold, as if the time in space has turned his inner temperature wonky. He's half certain she'll cry out in pain if he touches her -- but he can't bear to wrench away. ]

[anatural]

[It's like a reversal of the first night together in the shed. Except while his skin feels almost worryingly cold, his cock feels like it's burning a hole through his boxers.]

Don't stop there. [She pulls her top over her head, a little embarrassed as she notices just how far her nipples are poking out through the thin fabric. she starts to fold her shirt and set it neatly aside – something which Hei used to do, but the habit of which she picked up from Asami.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ There's a stirring of curiosity when she folds her shirt -- Where did she pick that up? But the sight of her, in gorgeous, bright-eyed disarray, rolls up his spine and ignites in his brain like fire racing across a rope, so it's impossible to care. He pushes out of his boxers, kicks them away in a gesture that's both gauche and antsy. His cock feels beestung, stiffly upright and tucked against his belly; he is breathing in slow, jittery-edged inhales, like something hurts under the surface of his skin, and he needs -- oh fuck. ]

[ He reaches out, his hand seizing the fluffy spill of Korra's hair, clasping the curve of her skull to jerk her nearer. She still has too many layers of clothes on; her thin underwear -- not a sarashi, thank god for small favors -- clings like a kiss and tantalizingly empurples her nipples, her breasts seeming to heave into the filling fabric, the tips puckered as though to slip between the tug of his lips. ]

[ Passing his arms around her, he finds the clasp, at her back, and undoes it with shaky but unfaltering fingers. Peels the slip up and overhead, her hair clinging to the soft fabric, before bowing his head to bury his face between her breasts, openmouthed, his hands coming up to cradle them. They overfill his palms, hot, heavy, as delicious as ever. He kneads them gently before coasting his hands lower, fingers hooking into her waistband to wrench down her trousers. He lets them puddle at her feet, holding her by the hips. Lips the edge of her panties, tugging them down far enough to reveal her pubic patch, of which he takes a deep appreciative inhalation -- before pressing his mouth into the cleft of her thighs with a hungry vibrating groan. ]

[ The scent of her, the taste, races through him in a tidal wave of recollection. He'd been achingly hard since shucking his clothes, but all of a sudden he is steel. ]

[anatural]

[He's moving almost dizzyingly fast, and Korra's not sure whether it's more flattering or overwhelming. It's certainly a stark contrast to the careful pace she's taken with everyone else she's bedded in the past three years.]

Hold up. [The words come out more like a cry as he mouths between her legs. If he wanted to give her oral while she remained standing, he could at least give her a wall to lean against. She falls back on the bed with a thud and rocks her hips encouragingly... Yet there's also a shyness in how narrowly she spreads her legs. She's not quite the same girl who would fall open for him at a single look; she needs a little coaxing.] 

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei lets her spill back across the bed. Nudges the discarded heap of their clothes with his foot, before kneeling at the edge of the bed. His expression is Sphinxish: half-lidded and intent, no trace of self-consciousness remaining. Trepidation had tamped down his desire. But that's gone now, his skin tingling, a fire ignited beneath the surface by Korra's touch and taste, her helpless wavering words that feel like kisses to his ear. ]

[ For a moment, drawing in slow scoops of air, he regards her, reveling in the smooth hot expanse of dark skin, the sweet lushness of her body, cataloging subtle differences, taking note of the fresh scars littered here and there, as if something hot has tumbled from the sky and scalded her faintly -- her entire body like the stirring pages of an illustrated storybook. All told, it's not a terrible tale. She's seen some action in his absence, but she isn't battle-marked and overwrought from terrible tension piling up everywhere. Nor is she anhedonically thin, the thinness he didn't like, that when she got that way during her illness, he'd started cooking slathers of heavy dishes for her, everything sweet and fatty and fried. ]

[ The surface changes are ignorable. It's her body-language that's different -- inviting, yet so shy, like the kind of bride he'd always imagined, disbelievingly, that men had in a different century, before hemlines had gone from instep to kneecap to thigh to absolute nonexistence. It's hard to tell if the diffidence is something she's acquired during his absence -- or if it's exclusive to him. ]

[ Hei doesn't know. His brain boils, a stew of lust and tenderness. He doesn't force her knees wide. Still holding her hips, he dips instead between her legs to kiss her belly, tonguing her navel, teasing her sensitive inner thighs. ]

[ Mouthing the hard knobble of her hipbone, he meets her gaze across the line of her body, his eyes an unflinching soft blue. ]

Tell me, [ he murmurs. ] If you want me to stop, or slow down. Or whatever. Just tell me.

[ Because the last thing he wants is a repeat of that ugly night in the City -- full of misconstrual and force and destructive flames of impulse. ]

[anatural]

[She sits up a little, just enough to stroke his hair.] Just take it slow. We've got time. [She'd been ready to go hard, fast, & quick earlier, but now... now she wants to take their time. Having him back, being together like this, is wonderful but surreal.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ We've got time. ]

[ Do they? Three years, swallowed up into the ether. He's amazed she still wants him, amazed his presence doesn't make her memories careen in a way that skirts the sickening. It does for him. Everything is so fucking precarious. He wants to show her how much he's missed her, but he's afraid of regressing to his usual flash-bang pace, unable to sort out his feelings from the numbness he's laid over them in order to endure the long journey in space. It's too much like right after he'd first hooked up with Korra. When going thorough the motions of living made his psyche blur into nothingness for him -- and he needed a sharp edge of violence and sex to throw himself against in order to keep the outlines alive. ]

[ Now, here, he's wary of doing the same thing. Wary of being unable to express that, You make me feel something hard and big and solid and real. It's ripping me apart so fast I need to cast it off onto you. ]

[ Forcibly, he smooths out his inhales and exhales. Take it slow. He tries. Crawling across her, a heap of fast-twitch muscle and damp weight, he catches her head, cradling it in widespread fingers to kiss her. Heat spikes low in the pit of his belly; he forces the desire to soften. ]

Maybe ... I should've waited ... when I got back. [ Words spoken between kisses, as soft and strangely shy as the warm nuzzle of his lips. ] Given you time to decide what you wanted. Only I missed you. So much.