Prognostication in Obscurity

It had been her idea.

Not that Bob was complaining. He'd done a lot of things he didn't fully understand since they'd started dating, and most of them had turned out fine. Good, even. This was just… a lot.

"Okay," he gasped, his head tipping back against the pillows. "I need you to know. For the record. That I am dying."

She didn't look up. Her hand kept moving, slow and deliberate, and she had that look on her face. The one that meant she knew exactly what she was doing to him and had zero intention of stopping.

"You're not dying, Bob."

"I might be, though. Like, medically." His voice cracked on the last word. His hips jerked, chasing her grip, and she pulled back just enough to make him groan. "You're gonna have to explain to everyone why I just… combusted. Spontaneous. During sex. They'll put it in the report."

She laughed, low and warm against his neck, and the sound ran through him like a current.

He'd been skeptical when she first brought it up. Edging. He'd blinked at her, repeated the word like he was learning a foreign language, and then immediately spiraled into a string of questions that made her laugh hard enough to snort.

But she'd been so sure about it. So calm. And the way her voice dropped when she told him what she wanted to do to him… that had stuck in his head for days afterward. Showing up at inconvenient moments. Briefings. The shower. Trying to make a sandwich.

So he'd said yes. Because he trusted her. Because she asked like it mattered whether he wanted it too.

And now he was here. Forty-five minutes in, maybe, or maybe it had been three hours… hard to tell. His arms were shaking. His fingers were twisted in the sheets. His cock ached, flushed and desperate, twitching every time she so much as shifted her grip, and she still wouldn't let him have it.

She dragged her nails lightly over his inner thigh and his whole body jerked.

"You're doing so good," she murmured against his skin. Casual. Like she wasn't frying his nervous system.

Bob made a sound. It was not a dignified sound. He was well past dignity at this point, somewhere in the territory of openly whimpering, which was a thing he was apparently capable of now. Good to know.

"That's… that's not fair," he managed. "You can't just say that and then… with the… you know."

She did know. That was the problem.

She kissed the hinge of his jaw. Slow. Open-mouthed. Then lower, dragging her lips along his throat until she found the spot where his pulse hammered hardest… and she stayed there. Breathing him in.

Her hand stilled.

Bob's hips twitched forward, chasing friction that wasn't there anymore, and a sound left his throat that he would deny later under oath.

"You're so pretty like this," she said against his skin. Not teasing now. Softer. Like she meant it.

"I'm not… that's not…" He swallowed. His face was already burning but it found a way to get worse. "You can't just say things."

"I can, actually." She pressed her thumb to the underside of his cock, right at the base, and held it there. Not moving. Just pressure. His thighs tensed, knees drawing up, and she put her free hand flat on his stomach to hold him still. "I can say whatever I want. You're not going anywhere."

He wasn't. He really wasn't.

She started stroking again. Slow. Deliberate. Watching his face the whole time… reading every twitch, every clench in his jaw, every shaky exhale. She knew exactly when he was getting close because she'd spent the last hour learning the tells, cataloguing them, and now she played them like she'd always known.

"Tell me what you want," she murmured. Her teeth grazed his earlobe and his whole body shuddered.

"I want…" His hand found her wrist. Not to stop her. He didn't even have the coordination for that anymore. Just to hold on. "I want you to… keep… fuck." The thought broke apart before he could finish it. She'd twisted her grip and whatever sentence he'd been building was just… gone.

"Try again."

"I can't think when you… with the…"

"That's kind of the point, Bob."

A sound escaped him. Half laugh, half something more desperate. His fingers tightened around her wrist, his hips rocking into her hand in a rhythm he couldn't control anymore… messy and uneven and his.

"Please," he said. Just the one word. Barely a whisper.

She leaned in close enough that her lips brushed the shell of his ear. "Please what?"

He squeezed his eyes shut. His chest heaved. Everything in him was pulled taut, vibrating at a frequency he didn't know he could sustain, and she was right there… steady and sure and not letting him fall.

"Please don't stop." It came out cracked. Raw. "I'm yours, okay? Whatever you want. Just… don't stop."

She pressed a kiss to his temple. Tender. Completely at odds with what her hand was doing.

"Gooooood," she said quietly. "I've got you."

Her pace picked up. Not by much… just enough. She licked along his collarbone, nipped at the soft skin there, and Bob's back arched off the bed.

"Wanna see you make a mess," she told him, voice low and unhurried, like they had all the time in the world. "Can you do that for me?"

"Yeah." The word was barely there. "Yeah, I can… I can do that."

His free hand came up and tangled in her hair. Not pulling. Holding. Like she was the only real thing in the room and he needed proof she was still there.

Don't let go. Don't let go. Don't let go.

She didn't.

She could feel it in him. The trembling had changed… gone from something restless to something inevitable, his whole body pulled tight like a wire about to snap. His breathing was ragged, shallow, his fingers flexing in her hair without rhythm.

She pulled back just enough to look at him.

Flushed from his chest to his ears. Lips parted. Eyes glassy and unfocused. Wrecked. He looked absolutely wrecked, and he'd let her do it. Had asked her to.

Her hand kept its pace. Steady. Sure.

"There you go," she said softly. Her lips brushed the corner of his mouth. "Good boy. Cum for me."

Bob broke.

His back arched, his hand fisting in her hair, the other gripping her fingers so tight it almost hurt. The sound that tore out of him was raw, graceless… her name caught somewhere in the middle of it and not quite making it out whole. His hips stuttered into her grip, desperate and uncoordinated, and she worked him through it. Every pulse. Every aftershock. Until he collapsed back against the pillows like someone had cut his strings.

For a long moment the only sound in the room was his breathing. Harsh. Gasping…. Then slowing.

He blinked. Blinked again. Stared at the ceiling like he was trying to remember what planet he was on.

Then he turned his head and looked at her. Dazed. That lopsided smile already forming, because of course it was. Of course humor was the first thing to come back online.

"…Hi."

She laughed. She couldn't help it.

"Hi, Bob."

"That was…" He exhaled, long and shaky. His thumb moved against the back of her hand… slow and aimless, like his body was still running on autopilot. "I don't have a word for that. I had words earlier. They're gone now. You killed them."

She kissed him. Soft, unhurried… the kind of kiss that wasn't going anywhere. He melted into it, boneless, too spent to do anything but let her.

She reached for the towel she'd left on the nightstand and cleaned them both up while Bob lay there like a man who'd recently been deboned. His eyes tracked her… half-lidded and warm.

"That was so hot," she said, pressing her lips to his jaw. His cheek. The bridge of his nose. "You were incredible."

"Mm." He caught her hand, brought it to his mouth, kissed her knuckles. Missed one. Got it on the second try. "You're just saying that 'cause I made the sounds you like."

"The sounds were a highlight, yeah."

"Great. Cool. That's gonna haunt me."

She laughed and pushed him flat, settling her head on his chest. His arm came around her without thinking… pulling her in. And she felt the long slow breath that moved through him. Not a sigh. Something older than that. Something he'd been carrying.

She reached for the blanket and tugged it over them both. His fingers found her hair, threading through it… lazy and absent. Like he couldn't help it.

They were quiet for a while. The room settled around them. His heartbeat slowed under her ear, steady and solid, and his hand kept moving through her hair in that same aimless rhythm.

"Hey," he said eventually. Quiet.

"Hey."

A pause. His chest rose and fell.

"I don't… I don't really let people see me like that." He said it to the ceiling. "All… you know. Messy."

She didn't say anything. Just pressed closer.

"But with you it's…" He trailed off. His fingers stilled in her hair for a second, then started again. "I don't know. It's not scary. Which is kind of terrifying, actually, if you think about it. Don't think about it."

She tilted her head up to look at him. He was staring at the ceiling, jaw working… the way it did when he was deciding whether to say the real thing or make a joke instead.

He looked down at her. Held her gaze for a beat.

"You make me feel like just being Bob is enough," he said. Short. Precise. Then he stopped talking, like he'd used up everything he had on that one sentence.

She pressed her lips to the skin above his heart.

"It is," she said. "That's the whole point."

His arm tightened around her. He kissed the top of her head… stayed there, his mouth against her hair, breathing her in.

"Can we just…" He shifted, pulling her closer, tangling their legs together under the blanket. "Can we stay like this for a bit? Not ready to… you know."

"Wasn't planning on going anywhere."

"Good." A beat. "'Cause I can't feel my legs, so you'd have to carry me, and that would be embarrassing for both of us."

She laughed against his chest. He smiled into her hair.

They stayed.

She texted him a lot. That was something she did now….a lot. For a while.

Bob didn't think about it too hard. Thinking about it too hard meant thinking about why she texted him, and why it was more than she texted anyone else (he'd noticed, not that he was going to do anything with that information, but he'd noticed), and why every time his phone buzzed and it was her name his whole chest went warm like a pilot light catching.

So…. He didn't think about it too hard.

Tuesday. Kitchen. Sandwich. He was building something involving turkey and an ambitious amount of mustard when her name lit up his screen. A photo of the sunset from the roof. Then a complaint about Yelena that was mostly exclamation points. Then a link to a golden retriever falling off a dock, no comment attached, because she knew he'd click it and she knew it would fix whatever needed fixing.

(It did.)

He was smiling. Standing in an empty kitchen, smiling at his phone, mustard knife in one hand. He clocked this about himself and moved on.

Does this work? I can't tell if it's too much.

Another photo incoming. She was getting dressed and she was asking him. That was... she wanted to know what he thought. About how she looked. She was standing in front of a mirror somewhere in this building right now, thinking about him while deciding what to wear, and his neck was already warm and she hadn't even sent it yet.

He typed back one-handed. For what?

Three dots.

Just out. Drinks maybe. Is it too much?

He could feel the reply building. Something easy. Something that was almost flirting if you tilted your head, but deniable, always deniable, because that was the game and he was very good at it and very tired of it and… not brave enough to stop.

Her next message came through.

He opened it the way he'd opened every message she'd ever sent. Thumb on the screen, no thought, the same muscle memory as breathing.

It wasn't the outfit. in fact it was… no outfit at all

His brain didn't catch up. There was a gap... half a second, maybe less... where he was just seeing her. Taking in information.

Oh.

Warm light, from the lamp on her desk. Her mirror was filthy which under different circumstances might have been funny or ironic. And she was...

Oh no.

The phone was face-down on the counter. Both of his hands were flat on the granite. The mustard knife was on the floor.

His heart was beating so fast, in a medical context, it would involve someone using the word event.

The phone buzzed against the counter. And again. And again and again and again, her panic arriving in pieces he could feel.

He didn't turn it over. He didn't need to. The texts lit up the edges of the screen, fragments he caught sideways without meaning to.

WAIT

BOB

WRONG PHOTO

OH MY GOD

THAT WASN'T

BOB PLEASE TELL ME YOU DIDN'T OPEN THAT

He looked at the ceiling. The ceiling was fine. The ceiling had never made him feel like his skeleton was trying to leave his body.

He left the kitchen. Didn't clean up the sandwich. Didn't grab the mustard knife. Walked to his room at a speed that he was going to call "brisk" because the alternative was admitting he was fleeing and that's a bit embarrassing.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

His room. Door shut. Phone in his hand because somewhere between the kitchen and here his body had made that call for him.

He put it face-down on the nightstand. Sat on the edge of the bed.

Stood up.

Sat back down.

Okay.

He had seen her. Not the way he normally saw her, the way that already made his hands stupid and his thoughts go sideways. Not the across-the-kitchen way. Not the she-just-laughed-and-now-he-couldn't-remember-what-year-it-was way, which was already more than he could handle on a given Tuesday.

He had seen her the way you see someone when there is nothing in the way.

And his brain had... it had just...

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. His face was still hot. It had been hot since the kitchen. It was possible his face was going to be hot for the rest of his life, maybe he would develop some sort of cool face melting powers… Oh God

The phone buzzed on the nightstand. Her messages were still coming. He could feel the shape of them without looking... the apologies stacking on top of each other, building a tower of mortification he recognized.

I'm so sorry. I was sending you the outfit one and I grabbed the wrong photo. Please delete it. I want to die. Like actually die. Bob are you there?

He needed to reply. She was panicking and it was because of him. Because he hadn't said anything. Because he was sitting on his bed like a malfunctioning appliance instead of being a normal person who could type normal words with his normal hands. Normal…normal…normal

He could do this. He could type a response. Something easy and reassuring. Something that said hey, no big deal, accidents happen, already deleted it, we never have to speak of this again.

His thumbs hovered over the keyboard.

The problem was that he… hadn't deleted it.

The problem was that his thumb was already on the screen, already opening it, before the responsible part of his brain could file an objection.

Don't.

He looked.

She was sitting on her bed, legs folded under her, her weight settled back on her heels. The light was warm and low and it caught the curve of her waist, the soft dip where it met her hip, the way her stomach rounded just slightly below her navel. Soft. Everything about her was soft. The fullness of her thighs pressed together, the way her breasts sat heavy and natural without anything holding them, the slope of her shoulders where the light ran out and her skin disappeared into shadow. Fuck shes so beautiful

She wasn't posing. That was the part that was going to kill him. She was just looking at herself. Her chin was tilted up, her lips barely parted, her eyes on her own reflection with an expression he had never once seen on her face. Not for him. Not for anyone in any room he'd been in. Like she had caught herself in a private moment and captured it. So soft and very naked and…. Dont Look…

Bob's mouth was dry. His hands were shaking. He could feel his pulse in places that had no business having a pulse right now, and he was very aware, that he was hard. From a photo. On his phone. That she hadn't even meant to send him.

He closed it. Pressed his palms into his eyes so hard he saw colors. Maybe if he pressed hard enough he could erase the image from his brain. Dont want to erase it

She took that photo for herself. Not for him. She'd been alone and she'd felt good and she'd wanted proof. And she'd been texting him. About an outfit. Because what he thought mattered enough to ask. Both of those things lived in the same phone and neither of them had anything to do with each other except that they were both her and she was...

perfect

He wasn't sorry. He felt a lot of things right now... panicked, overwhelmed, hot in the face, something big and unnamed living behind his ribs... but sorry was not in there. He'd looked and he'd looked again and the worst part, the part that the cold voice in him would use later, was that given the chance he'd look again.

He did not know what to do with that.

He picked the phone up. Put it down. Picked it up again.

He started typing.

He typed no worries and stared at it.

No worries. Like she'd bumped into him in a hallway. Like she'd accidentally taken his coffee. No worries. Two words so aggressively casual they were practically wearing sunglasses.

He deleted it. Tried again.

Hey. Don't worry about it. Seriously. These things happen

These things happen. To who? To who did these things happen? In what universe was he drawing on a wealth of experience where beautiful women accidentally sent him photos that should be hung in museums? These things happen. He was going to throw his phone into the sun.

Delete.

Haha no big deal! Already forgot about it 👍

The exclamation point alone was a felony. The thumbs up was a war crime. And "already forgot about it" was the most transparent lie he had ever constructed, which was saying something, because he'd once told Bucky his chili was "amazing" before purposefully knocking the pot over for everyones sake.

Delete. Delete. Delete.

He went with: Hey. It's okay. Don't worry about it. Happens to the best of us

Sent it. Read it back. Wanted to die. Happens to the best of us. What did that even mean? What was he referencing? His extensive history of accidentally sending nudes? The time he didn't do that because he had never done that because he had never in his life...

She was typing.

Oh my god Bob I'm SO sorry. I was trying to send you the outfit pic and I grabbed the wrong one from my camera roll. I'm literally going to move to another country. I'm going to learn Portuguese and start a new life and never look anyone in the eye again

Something in his chest loosened. She was funny when she was panicking. It got him every single time.

You don't have to learn Portuguese

I'm already looking up flights

I hear the language isn't that hard actually

Bob…I'm serious I'm so embarrassed I could die

He typed back too fast, the way he always did when she was spiraling and he needed her to stop. Hey. Seriously. It's fine. I'm not weird about it. You're fine.

He was so weird about it. He had never been more weird about anything in his life.

You swear?

I swear

You deleted it?

His thumb stopped moving.

The cursor blinked. He watched it blink. It blinked like it had all the time in the world, like this wasn't a yes-or-no question that was going to determine the entire trajectory of his evening and possibly his life.

Yeah, he typed. And then sat there. Looking at the word. Not pressing send.

Because he still hadn't.

He switched to his photos. The image was still there, in his recently saved, sitting between a screenshot of a recipe Ava had sent him and a blurry photo of a pigeon he'd taken for no reason.

Her. The warm light on her skin. The soft curve of her stomach, the fullness of her thighs. That expression. The one that wasn't for him.

He stared at it for three seconds. Four. Five.

He deleted it.

It felt like pulling out something that had only just started growing roots, and his chest ached in a way that was completely disproportionate to what had actually happened, which was deleting a photo from his phone, which people did every day, all the time, without feeling like they'd given something back they weren't finished holding.

He sent the yeah.

Thank you, she replied. Can we just... pretend this didn't happen?

And there it was.

The thing that was worse than the photo. Worse than the panic, worse than the guilt, worse than the little commentary in the back of his skull. She wanted him to pretend. She wanted to put this back in the box where it was before, the easy, deniable, just friends who text a lot box, and he was supposed to help her close the lid.

Pretend this didn't happen.

He couldn't. He could delete the photo and he could swear he'd deleted it and he could type yeah of course and send a laughing emoji and go back to being the version of himself that functioned. But he could not un-know what she looked like when she was alone and felt good about being alive. That was in him now. Underneath the panic, in the place where the jokes ran out and there was just the want. The big, stupid, undeniable want that he had been folding into smaller and smaller shapes for months so it would fit inside the deniable box.

It didn't fit anymore.

He put the phone down. Picked it up. Put it down.

Picked it up.

Yeah, he typed. Of course. Already forgotten.

He sent it. Read it back. He hated it.

He put the phone on the nightstand. Stared at the ceiling. The ceiling looked back, unhelpful as ever.

Something was building in his chest. Steady…rising…

He sat with it for thirty seconds. A minute.

He put his shoes on.

He didn't remember the walk. Hallway, stairs, another hallway. His shoes were on and then he was standing in front of her door before he had the chance to talk himself out of it.

His hand was raised to knock.

He could still leave. He could turn around, go back to his room, text her something funny in the morning, and they could both pretend that the last hour hadn't cracked something open that was never going to close on its own. He could do that. He was good at that. He had been doing that for months.

He knocked.

Silence. Then footsteps, soft and quick.

The door opened.

She'd changed. Oversized shirt, sleep shorts, her hair pushed back like she'd been running her hands through it. Her eyes were red in a way that could've been crying or could've been the specific exhaustion of wanting to disappear and not being able to. She looked at him, and whatever crossed her face was too fast for him to catch.

"Bob?" Quiet. Confused. A little afraid, like she wasn't sure which version of this conversation he was here to have.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

All the way here. All the way down the hallway with something building in his chest that felt like the truth, and now he was standing in front of her with his hands at his sides and absolutely nothing to offer except the fact that he'd shown up. That he'd chosen to be here instead of somewhere easier. That the phone in his pocket was empty but the image was still in him, warm and close, and he didn't want to pretend.

"I cant forget," he said. Quiet. To the doorframe, not to her. "I tried. I can't."

She stared at him. He made himself look at her.

Whatever was on his face, she saw it. All of it. The want and the guilt and the terrified, no-jokes-left thing underneath both of them. Her hand tightened on the edge of the door.

Her lips parted. She didn't say anything.

He didn't say anything else.

The hallway was very quiet.

She stepped back. Opened the door wider.

He went in.

The door clicked shut behind him.

Her room was dim. One lamp. She'd wrapped her arms around herself, standing in the middle of the floor like she didn't know what to do with her own body, and he recognized that, because he didn't know what to do with his either.

"You weren't supposed to see it," she said.

"I know."

"It wasn't for you. It wasn't for anyone. I just..."

"I know." He looked at the lamp. Made himself look at her instead. "That's the part I can't forget."

Her arms tightened.

"You looked..." He stopped. Started over. "You looked like you'd caught yourself being happy. Just you, by yourself, happy. And I deleted it. I swear I deleted it. But I couldn't delete that I saw it, and I didn't want to lie to you about that. I've been lying about a lot of... adjacent stuff. For months. I'm very tired."

Silence.

"Months?" she said.

"So many months."

Something in her face came loose. Not the mortification. Underneath it. And there it was... the expression from the photo, or the beginning of it, aimed at him this time.

She laughed then. Wet and sudden, like it got out before she could check it. Then she crossed the room and put her forehead against his chest, and his arms went around her without checking with him first.

"Maybe we just stop pretending then," she said into his shirt.

"Okay." A breath. "Okay."

They stood there. Behind his rib cage, the pilot light had ignited. It wasn't going out. TagList: @my-name-is-baby

He woke up slow.

Not the way he usually did… startled, disoriented, blinking into the light… This was different. This was warm sheets, and soft ligh… a particular kind of quiet that meant someone else was breathing nearby. Shes here… she stayed…

She was on her stomach. One arm tucked under the pillow, the other stretched out toward his side of the bed like she'd been reaching for him in her sleep. The blanket had slipped to her waist sometime in the night… and the early light caught the line of her back, the curve of her shoulder, the place where her hair had fallen across the pillow in a way that made here look… well.. . like a fucking angel honestly …

Bob stayed very still.

Not because he was afraid. Because he was trying to memorize all of her. The way the light hit her. The way she breathed. The fact that she was here…in his bed, and she chose to be, and she hadn't left in the middle of the night….and she was still here.

He was aware, distantly, that this was the kind of thing normal people probably didn't have to remind themselves of. That waking up next to someone shouldn't feel like some sort of possible crime.

Any yet…..

His fingers found her spine without deciding to. Just… tracing. Lazy and aimless, down the knobs of her vertebrae to the small of her back.

Her skin was warm.

She made a small sound, not awake..not quite….and shifted closer to his hand.

Just this. Just stay like this for a second…

His thumb brushed her hip.

He felt it before he saw it. A tenderness under his touch, a faint swell where the skin was different. He shifted. Looked down.

Purple. Blue at the edges. Four distinct points of pressure, curving around the bone.

Fingerprints.

His fingerprints.

Bob's hand jerked away from her skin like he'd touched a burner.

He was out of the bed before she was awake.

Not gracefully. He moved like the sheets were on fire, pulling his hand against his chest, and the sudden absence of warmth was what woke her.

She blinked up at him. Sleep-soft, confused. "Bob?"

He was standing at the side of the bed. Shirtless. His hand still held against his chest, fingers curled in, and all the color had gone out of his face.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She pushed up on her elbow. "What?"

"I'm sorry. I'm… god, I'm so sorry. I didn't…" He gestured at her. At her hip. At the bruise she hadn't looked at yet. "I did that. That's… those are my… that's from me."

She looked down. Twisted enough to see the purple marks curving around her hipbone. Looked back at him.

"Bob…"

"No, I know. I know. I should've been more careful. I should've… I knew I was too strong for this. I knew it…. and now you're…" He waved his hand again, a panicked little circle in her direction. "You're bruised. I bruised you. That's… that's not…"

"Bob, it's fine."

"It's not fine. That's… no. That's the opposite of fine. That's, like……" His voice climbed. "I could've really hurt you. Like, really hurt you. I'm… I don't even know my own… I can bench press a building, and I just… I just grabbed you like it was…"

He tried to laugh, but it came out wrong.

"Cool. Great. Super-soldier serum, and I can't even…" He ran both hands through his hair. Held them there. "What if it was worse? What if next time I don't just… what if I actually…"

He couldn't finish that one.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. Not near her. As far from her as the mattress allowed. His hands were in his lap, palms up, and he was staring at them like they belonged to someone he didn't trust. Chest tight and aching.

She sat up. The blanket pooled at her waist. She didn't reach for him yet.

"Bob. Look at me."

He looked at the window instead.

She waited.

He was still looking at his hands. His thumb kept dragging across the opposite palm, back and forth, slow and repetitive.

"My dad used to…" He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "Yep. So when I was a kid, there were always… my mom had bruises. I had bruises. And it was just… that was just what hands were for, you know? That's what they did. They left marks on people. With the…" He trailed off. His thumb kept moving across his palm.

"I told myself I wasn't gonna be… I wasn't like that. I'm not like that." He looked up at her. His jaw was working, his eyes wet. "But you've got…. so I'm just…"

He stopped. Looked back at his hands.

She didn't answer right away.

Not because she didn't know….Because the answer mattered too much to rush.

"Bob." Quiet. "Come here."

He shook his head. Small, barely a movement. "I don't think I should… I don't wanna…"

"Come here."

His eyes went to her, then the door, then her again.

He moved towards her.

Slow. Careful. The shame of the situation thick in his throat. He sat close enough that their knees almost touched, and he kept his hands in his own lap.

She reached for his hand. He flinched.

She took it anyway.

He let her….which was something at least. His fingers stayed limp, curled slightly inward. She held his wrist and turned his hand over. Opened it. Pressed his palm flat against hers.

"These hands were shaking the first time you touched me," she said. "Because you were so scared of getting it wrong. Do you remember that?"

He was quiet. His jaw tighten…. He looked away.

"I left marks on you," he said. Almost a whisper.

"Yeah." She brought his hand to her hip. Pressed it there, right over the bruise. Held it. "I'm not scared of you, Bob."

His hand was rigid against her skin for a long moment.

Then his fingers softened. Spread. Settled against her hip before trailing agsint her skin.

There you go.

She leaned in and kissed him. Soft. Unhurried.

He kissed her back. Barely. Checking whether it was safe.

She kissed him again. Slower. Her hand came up to the side of his face, and she felt the tension in his jaw, the way he was holding himself so carefully, so she stayed anyway.

His forehead dropped against hers.

"I'm sorry," he said. One more time. Quieter than all the others.