Chapter 48 Stay
POV: Carly
She changed with her back to him and he changed with his back to her and neither of them made it weird which somehow made it weirder in the best possible way.
He handed her a burgundy Henley and a pair of boxers without making a thing of it and she took them without making a thing of it and when she had them on and turned around he was already sitting on the bed with his back to her giving her the space she had not asked for but he had given anyway.
She stood in the middle of the room in his clothes and pushed her damp hair back and thought about how she had never in her life worn a boy's clothes before and how she had expected it to feel strange and it did not feel strange at all.
"You can turn around." She said.
He turned around.
His eyes moved over her once and then he looked at her face and said nothing and she felt the compliment in the silence more than she would have in any words.
She looked down at herself. "It looks better on you." She said preemptively.
"It really doesn't." He said quietly.
She felt the heat in her face and looked at the bookshelf.
He moved back on the bed to make room and she climbed on and pulled the covers up and lay on her side facing away from him and closed her eyes and told herself to sleep.
She was not going to sleep.
Her brain was too loud and the room smelled like him and she was acutely aware of exactly how much space there was between them on the mattress and exactly how much space there was not.
The bed dipped.
His arm came around her waist.
She tensed for half a second and then his hold tightened slightly and pulled her back against his chest and something in her just. Let go. Like a knot she had been carrying in her shoulders for weeks finally coming undone all at once.
She settled into him.
He exhaled.
She felt it against the back of her neck and closed her eyes properly this time.
His nose brushed the back of her neck and she shivered and his lips followed, a soft trail of kisses along the skin there that made her forget entirely what she had been planning to think about.
She turned over.
Not dramatically. Just turning to face him the way you turned toward something you had stopped pretending you did not want.
He was right there. Close enough that she could see the individual curls still damp at his temples and the faint scruff along his jaw and those eyes that were doing the thing she had stopped trying to name.
He looked at her like she was something he had not expected and was still deciding what to do with.
She reached up and pressed her lips to his cheek.
He went very still.
She pulled back and looked at him.
Something had shifted in his face. Softer than usual. More open than she had seen it outside of very specific moments in very specific places.
"Carly." He said. Just her name. Quiet and careful.
She reached up and put her hand against his jaw and kissed him properly.
He kissed her back the way he always did when the performance was gone and it was just the two of them. Slow and deliberate and like he had nowhere else to be and no interest in being anywhere else.
She curled closer and his arm tightened around her and the kiss deepened and she felt herself stop thinking entirely which almost never happened to her and she decided not to examine it.
His hands were careful with her. Moving over her slowly the way they had in the shower, like he was learning something rather than taking something, and she felt none of the anxiety she had been bracing for. Just warmth and the specific safety of being with someone who already knew the parts of her she usually kept hidden and had not used any of them against her.
She pulled back slightly to breathe.
He rested his forehead against hers.
Both of them breathing in the small space between them.
"You okay." He said. Low and close.
"Yes." She said. And meant it in a way she had not meant it in weeks.
He pulled her closer and she tucked herself against him and his lips found her forehead and stayed there for a moment like a period at the end of a sentence.
She felt his hands moving gently. Unhurried. Like the whole night was just this and there was nothing after it that needed to be accounted for yet.
She gasped quietly at his touch and pressed closer and let herself be entirely here. Not thinking about Tommy or her coven or her mother or the rules or any of the hundred reasons she had been handing herself for weeks. Just here. Just him. Just this.
Whatever this was.
Whatever it was going to become.
She was done running from it.
She moaned softly against his neck and felt him respond and pulled him closer by the back of his neck and let the night take them somewhere warm and slow and entirely their own.
After.
She lay against his chest with her eyes closed and his heartbeat surprisingly steady under her ear and the room quiet and dark around them.
His fingers moved slowly through her hair.
She felt sleep finally pulling at the edges of her mind the way it had been refusing to for hours.
"I'm really glad you're here." He said. Sleepy and soft and completely unguarded.
She pressed her lips to his chest and closed her eyes.
"I'm glad I'm here too." She said.
She meant that too.
She meant everything tonight.
For the first time in as long as she could remember she was not performing anything for anyone. Not managing her image or her reputation or other people's expectations of who she was supposed to be. Not being the supreme witch or the cheer captain or the student council president or Tommy's girlfriend or Leona McPherson's legacy.
Just Carly.
Just here.
She tucked herself more under his arm and let the warmth of him and the quiet of the room and the soft static of the record player that had started spinning again somewhere pull her under.
She was asleep before she could think of a single reason not to be.
POV: Niko
He did not sleep.
He lay in the dark with her against his chest and her breathing slow and even and her hair spread across the pillow beside him and he stared at the ceiling and felt something he did not have a name for sitting in his chest where the anger usually lived.
It was not a bad feeling.
That was what was strange about it.
He was used to the things that lived in his chest being difficult. Complicated. Things that required managing and containing and keeping behind the wall he had built specifically to keep them from getting out where people could see them.
This was not like that.
This was quiet and warm and slightly terrifying in the way that things were terrifying when you realized you were not prepared to lose them.
He looked at the ceiling.
He thought about the sketchbook. About opening it and watching her face move through everything she saw. The way she had not made it strange or pulled back. The way she had just sat with it and asked how long and listened to the answer.
He thought about her saying I was afraid of you. Not I hated you.
He thought about a lot of things.
Her breathing shifted slightly and she tucked herself closer against him in her sleep and he felt her hand curl against his chest and he closed his eyes.
He had spent almost two centuries building a life that did not require him to feel things he could not control. Had gotten very good at it. Had mistaken the absence of feeling for strength for so long it had become indistinguishable from who he actually was.
Then this girl had walked into his classroom and shoved him in the shoulder and laughed at something he said and he had drawn her face in the margins of his sketchbook without realizing he was doing it and here they were.
He exhaled slowly.
He was not going to think about what happened after the alarm went off. About the campus and the rules and Tommy Lancaster and all the things that existed outside this room that had not stopped existing just because they were choosing not to look at them tonight.
He was going to think about those things later.
Right now he was going to lie here in the dark with this extraordinary complicated infuriating girl asleep against his chest and let himself have this one thing without immediately calculating the cost of it.
He could count the things he had allowed himself without immediately calculating the cost on one hand.
He thought that probably said something.
He closed his eyes.
He was almost asleep when his phone buzzed on the desk.
He ignored it.
It buzzed again.
He ignored it again.
Then it buzzed a third time and something in the quality of it made him open his eyes.
He reached carefully across without waking her and turned the screen toward him.
Three messages. All from the same number.
Reba.
Reba: I need to talk to you.
Reba: It's important.
Reba: Niko I'm serious. Tomorrow. Before class.
He stared at the screen for a moment.
Then he set it face down on the desk and looked at the ceiling and thought about his sister's face the last time he had seen it. The way she had looked at him and then at the space Carly had been standing in and filed something away behind her eyes without saying it.
He thought about that for a while.
Then he closed his eyes again and told himself it could wait until morning.
It could wait until morning.
Author's Note:
He lay awake holding her and almost let himself have something good and then Reba texted. REBA TEXTED. I need to talk to you it's important and I need everyone to take a breath because something is coming and Niko knows it and is choosing not to look at it until morning. Drop a like and tell me in the comments what you think Reba knows because I have a feeling you already know and you are not ready.