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Every cornered tile of the floor lured, walls glazed in guileless light, a hand smoothening the dark, crumpled comforter to coffee-brown. Melting honey under his eyelids.

A low, unintelligible sound escapes his mouth as his eyelids fight the urge to fall back into what was possibly the best sleep of his life, before he wrenches them open with sullen reluctance. His mind is blissfully, bafflingly vacant for a few empty seconds, dust motes raining slow under his sleep-heavy gaze, before memory slams headfirst into him, collapsing all misplaced peace. He's scoffing slightly, even before his mouth curls into an entirely too pleased grin, even as his bare arm rises off his stomach to snuff it out.

They'd stayed up late enough to only huddle under the covers—her scoffing with full pretension as he pulled her into him, tangling their legs, trapping their bodies—when the first blots of muted blue threatened the inky dark. He'd fallen asleep watching dawn-blue climb over the pale light of her hair, listening until she was humming in response to his words that were more breath than meaning. Roused only once, out of all the usual restless chops in his sleep, when she was still close enough to count every murmur of her eyelashes, cheek smushed against his bicep. Pink blushing on her cheeks, gold fanning over his arm. She must've shuffled away in sleep to curl up at the very edge of the bed, nose burrowed into the comforter she'd pilfered overnight, all but for one measly calf of his it stayed loyal to.

Propping himself up on his forearm, Xander twists his torso, leaning over the sleeping figure. His fingers trail the curving strands of dove-white splitting up the face of one Reina Aune, following it down the shadowy hollow of her neck.

He watches the bare hints of her face the puffy comforter gives up, five years falling away in this proximity. Long, thin, snowy lashes curling up, a straight nose offset by a bump, the origin of which he'd have to needle out of her, a tiny scar almost perfectly cradled by her Cupid's bow. He toys with the idea of poking her until that serious, sea-eyed gaze would settle to scowl at him, but opts on getting his own head back into his body before attempting anything else. Rolling off the bed in one smooth motion, steps soundless as he picked off his side of evidence of last night from the floor, he heads for the shower.

It's a testament to how thoroughly last night (or she. Mostly she) had knocked every last thought and responsibility out of his head, had damn near literally knocked both of them out against the doorframe in her rush to get him into his bedroom, totalled everything really, besides that moment and the ravine to her next heady gasp, that it takes the odd sight of sun-drenched tiles under his feet, so wholly different from the harsh overhead lighting that greeted him for his everyday early morning training, to quietly hint at the fact that morning might be a little bit of a stretch now, and naturally what follows is that he's inexcusably late for work.

Well.

Whatever. Probably for the best, considering what greeted him in the mirror.

The hair that he'd never had any particular trouble with, demanding nothing more than a casual rake through to be deemed presentable enough, now pointed in ten different directions, pulled apart by her willful hands, shoving him down to exactly where she needed him, wrenching so hard the sting radiated for a few mindless seconds. His eyes are shining, mouth swollen, a slash of deep red over his bottom lip, from where she'd bite down, again and again for every time he refused to move through the night. His body is kissed by red and violet, violent, teeth marks next to his navel shooting a dizzy aftershock.

He could still smell her on his fingers as he raised the toothbrush to his mouth.

She'd backed him against the door the second the deadbolt slid home, mouth seeking his, metal digging into his hip. Prepared, maybe, for retaliation, but not for the sheer force of it, the insistence of his body coming down on her, sending her staggering back into a distortion of a dance they'd once shared, his feet between hers, orchestra of siphoned breaths, his shadowed walls the mutely sighing audience. Waiting, wanting for her to trip up and lose, so that he could pull her up and into him. She never did. He'd expected as much.

Paying no mind to the frenzied frustration with which she'd been trying to yank his shirt off, and equally unbothered by the buttons of her top dancing off his hand as he snapped it open, the haze blew over softly when his shin hit the edge of his bed. He pulled away abruptly, a dull ache resounding.

Reina blinked, dazed, rising above water, eyes shaking rapidly when they catch onto his. Standing there in a faded black bra and washed jeans low on her hips, standing close enough to get drunk off his body heat alone, without his hands touching and teasing and taking… Her eyes narrowed sharply. Xander's smirk widened.

Palm flat against his bare chest, she shoved him back experimentally, brow creasing when he fell back onto the bed readily, catching himself on his hands. A frown that didn't cease when his ankles bent behind hers, nudging her forward between the cage of his legs. His hands banded around her hips, greedy and helpless, transfixed by the sight of his fingers too hot even to himself, stark against her bare stomach. He heard himself whisper in a low, luring tone. ‘So? What now?’

Eyes drawn to the faint mole beside her navel his fingertips were just barely grazing, he continued talking. ‘Mm, Reina, don't tell me you were too overcome to plan ahead…’

He tilted his head up, forcing her burning, warring gaze down on him, catching the forceful swallow of her throat, as his fingers dipped under the waistband of her jeans, pulling back and snapping the thin material of her underwear against her skin, savouring her minute jolt.

He couldn't help the ease of his smile. To know him well enough to sense any illusion of acquiescence was only burying her deeper, but still helpless to how. And isn't that why she was still here?

‘-never not taking it, or else you wouldn't have ended up here in the first pla- ah!’

His low laugh was cut short by his own hiss as she climbed onto his lap, neither aiding nor easing the mounting pressure tugging low at his abdomen. Only for his body to go limp in relief, leash knotted around those cool fingers roving over his shoulders. He liked her solidness, the feral tenacity with which she sought her weight against him, the heedless spill of her breasts out of that low bra, to grope and to bruise. He liked how she touched him like she already owned him, sliding her palms down his chest with that same immovable will he’s been chafing at for years now, with no hesitation, as if she'd mapped out the contours of his body in her mind so many times all that was left was for her hands to follow.

But oh, then she'd pause. Look up through her lashes, meet his eyes, watch his reaction. Only for him to level a slow, half-lidded smirk at her, through the blood rush thundering in his ear, making a languid, magnanimous gesture. ‘Don't hold back on my account. Go on, sweetheart. I know you can touch me harder than that.’

Her hips had rolled harshly, punishingly against him for that, whether in response or reward, his groan that shot up couldn't say. As her hand slid up his neck, palm clamping so tight over his mouth, it tugged his head back with the sheer pressure of her hold, she muffled her own whimper by sucking a mean mark into the base of his throat. He'd bit the fingers held over his mouth because he could.

Tongue hot as it trailed higher up his neck, Reina shook free of the hard grip he'd been clenching into her hair, and leaned forward her entire body weight over him, forcing him back down, flat.

Xander had taken the chance to shift his knee between her legs, watching for the flush lining her cheeks, sweat blooming at her temples as her hips rocked slowly against him, biting harshly at her lip to keep quiet. When her panting broke words, she fell forward, her hands curving around his jaw only almost tenderly, pale hair veiling them and blurring the edges of light so all that he saw and knew was Reina, Reina, Reina. Her nail caught the edge of his scar, winding over his eye and cheek, tracing, trailing, decidedly possessive. Marking the last moment either of them had their senses about them.

Hovering above him with half-lidded eyes and kiss-bruised lips, Reina gazed at him a moment with a curiously inscrutable expression. And then leaned down, tilting his head, forcing his jaw open, to spit clean onto his tongue. He'd lost the last of his coherent thoughts after that.

It was impulse after impulse then, Xander muses, as he fiddles with the shower knobs. All the images he'd hoarded over five years, strung together to light a hazy appetite. The strip of bare skin peeking from under her blouse, from how low she (and he, while the honesty lasts) liked her jeans on her hips, rising to hint at how soft her stomach would be, how easy to put his teeth to. Sunlight rousing through his office window to clasp her thighs, long legs crossed loosely, ankles tapping restlessly. She'd had to hold back her gaze at the gala, when the chandeliers were glaring at each other like a prism nightmare, which served a double purpose from watching the line of her neck, the silver-lit trail down her cleavage, to feeling her skin heat helplessly as he'd pushed for closer, more.

The real thing which unfurled on his tongue so much sweeter, with so much more savour: the skin of her inner thigh so sensitive, his fingers trailing up had made her jerk so sharply, he'd had to hold them open with a bruising grip to angle his mouth, thigh trembling and jerking violently in his grasp. The muscles of her stomach tensing, contracting, breathing for his barest touch. The vivid, wet flush over her chest, rising up her neck, ear, higher, higher. Taking him so well, eyes glazed and eyelids slipping, lips swollen and mouth slack, neck arching back into the pillow. Such a welcome change from her usual tense features.

His hand around her jaw, thumb cutting into her incisor, his fingers slick with spit as the other dug into her hip, chasing a clutched gasp for every hard drive of his hips. Feeling her leg kick out. Savoring every time he got her so good a loud, startled moan loosed free. Discovering what made Reina tick went to his head in a way nothing else but she did. He could barely remember what he'd been babbling into her ear, stoppered by a groan or a grunt he couldn't rein in, only that he couldn't stop, control abandoning him so terrifyingly, dizzyingly, deliciously.

Xander hisses when the hot stream of water unfurls from the showerhead and rushes down to meet his back. The deep scratches she'd raked in last night radiate a pleasurable sting, as he closes his eyes and leans forward to rest his forehead against the wall.

She'd been clawing at his back, features folded into an expression he'd never seen before but now served as a great incentive—teeth clutching at her lower lip to hold back a frustrated growl, eyes so sweetly sulky and threatening every time they met his, as if still holding out hope they could sway him to her will.

Ignoring his own gnawing need to just fucking move, Xander had paced himself agonizingly slow, leaning over her with his sweat-raked hair falling into his eyes, shallow thrusts that served no purpose beyond torment for either of them, only to follow it up with a bout of quick, sharp rutting that left her gasping, quiet ah-ah-ahs, nails piercing the back of his neck, eyes fluttering up and then rolling back entirely.

He'd grabbed her jaw then, tilting her head back down, forcing her dazed eyes to his, making a disapproving little noise from the back of his throat. ‘I thought I'd asked you to keep your eyes on me, doll.’

Reina smiled dimly, a glint in her eye through the damp strands pinned to her face by sweat. ‘Then do something.’

He matched it for a moment, a gentle smirk as his hand trailed up her knee, then smacking her thigh hard, giving no reprieve as he brought his hips down deeper, talking through her strangled noise. ‘That feel good?’

She hesitated for a second. Before curling her hands over the nape of his neck and pulling him closer. ‘You feel good,’ she mumbled drunkenly.

A current up his spine, and then he was leaning down, slotting his mouth so sloppily against hers it was more spit than real kissing.

Xander could hardly remember the last time he slept with somebody, odd scrappy flashes from an unmemorable gala, the gleaming smile the woman he'd shared a dance with had thrown him by the end of the night, to the unsurveilled corner they'd landed up in. Someone who'd been just as eager to wipe his existence along with the evidence, cold rushing in as the harsh buzz of her zipper cut through the night with finality.

That'd been a lifetime ago; the person who'd emerged out of the wildlands with an eye forfeited for a fate in the air, with a saviour sunken in unfathomably murky depths was someone who would scrape the edges of the mold he'd once built himself into raw.

Another body turned to far too much trouble for its worth. (Moreover, he'd been a little preoccupied with a different kind of bodies.) Not when he could deal with it himself, without the messy ordeal unpredictability brought like a lit match to his fuse. Neatly allocated to the shower, so that he could move onto other matters. With the occasional… help. It snuck up on him, when he'd never particularly balanced a certain image in his head before. Long, slender fingers, clenched tight in anxiety, curled around a glass, the firmness of their grip… He let himself go until the image of her hands were superimposed over his, squeezing with exactly the pressure he liked, and only that modestly far, not missing whatever pile of problems picturing her wet and naked and gazing up at him would unleash on his head. (He wouldn't say he was afraid.)

Deeming the steam fogging his eyes as more than enough to put off work anymore, he shuts off the water, tucking a towel around his hips as he sought out his usual ensemble of a black shirt and cargo pants.

Buckling the belt he'd found looped over the arm of his desk chair, he strides back to his living room to hopefully be greeted by the sight of the uniform jacket he'd overlooked the first time. It's quiet as ever, even the sunlight unobtrusive as it washes over the plain dark edges of the furniture with warmth. A sight natural enough to pass by without notice, but for the minute disruptions his eyes seek out like a compulsion. A glass out by the sink, joined by another. The bar stool off its mark by a few inches. The messenger bag nestled into a black trenchcoat strewn by the door.

The woman still dead asleep in his room.

Five years, he thinks, marveling at the time eaten up in a flash, as he bends to pick it off the floor. Disappearing so blamelessly, nothing but natural to let her sleep in on a weekday. To imagine a time where he didn't know the feel of her skin, the taste of her gasping, even if only yesterday, seemed like a walking into a world where something familiar was misplaced and misconstructed, buildings plucked out of streets and screwed into others, an off kilter city.

Reina… he'd been thinking of her for so long. Was it unconscious wanting all this time?

The more he submerges into thought, the more unreal it seems to grow, fleeing from his hands like the end of a dream. He wants to touch her again. Over and over, until he had her memorized, until he could get whatever he wanted out of her. His hands to know before his mind could catch up.

He's always been a quick study, but especially when what was doled out to him if he did good was the promise of her desperate keening. Not that she'd demurred either, shoving him down to where she needed him, guiding him when she was too pent up to tease, fingers hard on his head, yanking harshly with no regard when she was close, gasping and squirming.

He knows enough, sure, but he wants to learn more, do better. See what could make her twinge, longer, harder, faster. If she'd be louder. He's never once been content with mediocrity, and he's not about to start now, not when there's such a prize to it.

With all this whirling lazily in his head, the prospect of sitting at his desk and going through those damn reports while she was lazing around in his shirt, on his bed, when the alternative is sliding his shirt down lower on her shoulder and seeing how fast he could have her making that noise again—carelessly tossing the towel he'd been running through his hair over the back of a chair, he drops himself down on the side of the bed—is insanity.

His pretty, pretty Reina. Angelic, with the sun combing through her hair.

He traces the slant of sunlight through her hair with the barest touch, contemplating waking her. It would be so easy to slide his hand under the blanket, slide his hand up her thigh. His fingers twitch, already mapping the softness of her skin, how much pressure he'd have to dip into the bruises his teeth kissed for her to hiss out a noise, and higher still for her head thrown back.

Surprising himself (a little? surprising himself in how it doesn't surprise him), he does none of that. Only studies her for a slow minute.

Reina has slept under his eye so unthinkingly only once before. (The car ride with her head leaning against the window frame, wind tangling in her hair as she dozed, cap slung low over her face to block the sunlight doesn't count when she'd pushed herself as far from him as possible.) In the half-light of the bunker, curled up with her arm against her face, claiming the bed across the one she'd tossed him in. On the rare occasions the agony let up enough for him to attempt at consciousness, he'd blinked his good eye open and watched the light play over her hair. Thought of her, wild animal eyes. Warning… luring… He remembered thinking nonsensically he should be careful as the pain swiftly pulled him under.

She'd always slept facing him, as if she could still keep watch with her eyes closed, mind so far away he couldn't guess at it. Had it been weeks? Months? Farther than that, he didn't want to guess. He was either dozing or biting out nonsense through the undulating pain, but she still looked at him like a spectre. She didn't seem very impressed, but she watched him anyway.

Xander smoothens a thumb over the ghost of a tense furrow between her brows, and watches her back.

Reina has always been classified under unfinished business in his head, mind circling, striving for a way in or out. Pulling at him endlessly, obsessively. A spool from which the more he tugged at, the more aware he was of the lack, the gap. She refused to leave his mind, and even he himself couldn't tell what the hell he wanted out of her, only more, again. Closer.

A realization which is a little more difficult to toss to the back of his head when it is quite literally staring him in the face, that no matter where she goes or what shatters between their feet, he's not capable of letting her go.

Nothing seems enough. Even now, having had her in some tangible way, proof of possession painted stark over her body needing only one firm tug of his hand to unveil, something inside him keeps twitching, pacing. Watching her sleep so peacefully, he has the urge to knock his teeth into hers and pull her under all over again.

‘Reina, Reina…’ he calls softly, hand dipping to brush her cheekbone. ‘What do you think you're doing to me?’

His mouth curls at the lack of response. ‘Still so sleepy…’

He leans down, mindless, thoughtful, brushing his lips lightly over the soft skin at her ear where baby hairs curled. She doesn't stir an inch. Jerking aside the comforter none too lightly, he reimburses with a chaste kiss dropped to her collarbone. No response. His finger hooks into the neckline of his shirt, tugging low, lower, until the softly bruised swell of her chest comes to view. His lips ghost over the erratic red marks let slip, gently dragging the tip of his tongue along. A hand slides into his damp hair, and he muffles a smile against her skin.

Pulling back slightly, he reaches for a kiss smugly, murmuring, ‘Woke you right up, hmm?’ to a sleep-mussed Reina, whose first order of business was to stretch languorous as a cat, tipping her head back at the last moment, and leaving his face mushing against her neck. She's warmer than ever, freshly delivered from a cocoon of blankets, and his eyes slip shut as he nuzzles into the sweet curve lazily, hazy under her scent.

Before he could be tempted down a very different path for his afternoon to take (and by virtue tempt her down), he draws away to his original seat, narrowing his eyes at her playfully, mock-affronted. ‘What, no kiss? I'll have to work harder to impress an expert like you, huh?’

Reina doesn't bother replying, concerned with languidly pulling herself up instead. His shirt slides down her shoulder as she sits up, muffling an incoming yawn with the back of her hand, and accepting her glasses from his hand with the other. A dusky violet bruise stars the pale edge of her shoulder, from when she'd slammed her arm against the doorframe in the dark, too busy shoving him back in to remember warning. She slips on her glasses, and patting down errant strands on her head, a wispy white wildfire through the sun, squints at him through the thin silver frame. And her first words are: ‘Why are you dressed?’

Predictably, his first response is to burst out laughing.

She scowls, rolling her eyes, surely the only superpower he's seen manifest in her, looking like she was already regretting waking up. ‘You know what I meant-’

‘Yeah, yeah. Duty calls. Reports to go through. If you'd expected breakfast in bed, then sorry to disappoint, darling.’ A familiar smirk lightens his features. ‘Although I’m sure I can think of something you'd like…’

His tongue peeks out to wet the cut on his lower lip, watching her eyes track the movement, looking like she was contemplating splitting it open again. A beat, and then he waves a hand carelessly, kicking them both out of their reverie. ‘I’ll drop you off, and we can get whatever you like on the way. My treat.’

Whatever else he isn't sure of, this he knows: she's not going to just simply agree so easily. But he wasn't exactly expecting the mirthless, almost cruel smile that touches her mouth faintly, before dying to a grim line.

‘Eager to get me out of your house, aren't you? Finally worrying about that bullet in your head?’ Her voice lacks all the venom the question hoards, drawn out quiet and soft by the morning.

Her inexperienced taunt takes a second to land. His mouth twists sharply when it does, the untouched bliss of the morning shot through by the conflicting whirlwind of emotions the Lang incident always dredged up. An outcome he should've foreseen, a man he shouldn't have written off, or himself he shouldn't have overaccounted his genius for. He'd run every possible thread frayed, ripped into every scenario and possibility in the days that followed, trying to reconstruct it into something that made sense, to touch base again—what he always did. Running everything front to back, back to side, shaping a loop to slip through. Except this time…

Irritated at being reminded of his colossal fuckup, much less by the woman who lost him both his business and herself, he tamps it down slow, slowly. Levels his temper enough to scoff at her, rolling his eyes. ‘Oh, come on, Reina. You can't still be mad about that when I’m being so sweet. What about how I’m making it up to you, hmm?’

‘Waffles for half a decade of blackmailing might be a bit of a loss on my side.’ She rolls her eyes, then sighs quietly, shoulders slumping as the fight seeps out of her quick as rain. Lowering her eyes to the creased sheets, she thumbs an old cut on her hand absently. ‘I just want to go back to sleep.’

Xander pauses (shame. He would've loved to needle her at a worn diner booth), watching her a moment, before brushing a quick kiss over the wrist he lifts and drops in a single breath. ‘Sure. It's well deserved rest after yesterday.’ He continues, ‘There's leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry. Heat it up, though I believe it's my responsibility to mention if you try setting my kitchen on fire, there's a good chance of you meeting the same fate.’

‘I'll make sure to remember that,’ she replies drily.

He makes no move to get up. Maybe even leans in slightly. ‘Now aren't you honoured? Spending the night and morning with me, in my bed, personally fed by me… not many can brag about that, you know.’

‘I don't think that's what personally- many?’ Her nose wrinkles. Suddenly much more awake, she throws him a nasty once over. ‘Pick a better lie.’

‘You never know,’ he replies sweetly.

She falls quiet, eyes unfocusing behind those glasses. Oddly alluring, somehow…

Knee-deep into scheming how to get her into them while she's out of everything else (his office desk of some use finally?), he jerks imperceptibly when he feels her calf drag slowly against the side of his thigh. Higher… just enough pause for his mouth to ready into a slow smirk as her foot is shoved firmly into his chest.

Reina leans back against the headboard, fingers raking through the tangles in her hair, eyes fixed, as she presses down harder, dragging slowly, firmly over his abdomen, lower… before shifting to lay gently side by side against his hip.

Xander catches it in motion, hand curling deliberately loose around her ankle, thumb stroking the jut of bone. He drawls slowly, ‘You're winning, Reina.’

He looks up, hand gliding over her calf, the junction between her knee, that tendon… Her thigh tenses as his hand slides higher, pausing close and far, searing into her skin, meeting her eye. ‘Isn't that what you like hearing?’

He tilts his head. She matches it, brow quirking ever so slightly in challenge.

He could push her leg up so easily. So easily. One move. Push her leg up to her chest and bury his face between her legs, make her cry out, keen, yank on his hair, lose herself. He could hear that strangled little whimper again. His fingertips dig into giving flesh… and he rises abruptly to his feet.

Reina almost snaps her head from how sharply she cants it to his side, eyes following him like a whip. His palm is on her neck before she could speak, savouring the frantic pickup of her pulse as it curves slowly around her jaw, tilting her head up. She goes, not yielding, but willing, so smoothly and completely in tune with his body, his stomach drops slightly in sheer pleasure. Her lips part, he knows to bite into his thumb if not for the pressure he was holding her face so carefully with, so preciously... A beat. And then she yelps, pulling back from his hand sharply as he ruffles the hair she'd been painstakingly smoothening from the moment she'd woken up roughly.

With the cadence of her scathing swearing in an unfamiliar language a background hum to the lacing of his boots, he manages to actually make it out the door for work.

Swinging his keys around his finger, he calls out a ‘Don't miss me too much’ as goodbye as the door slams shut.

The sun lands an immediate, direct assault on his eyes as he traces the usual path to his car. But there's no consolation to sell himself in his head today, for the hours bleeding drop by drop in that dump of an office, no need for it. He wants to see her again already. Be with her. The day will drift by then.