She gets tactile when she drinks, and it takes a little time to find him – the contours of this house are still unfamiliar to her, and the world has a certain blur – but he’s conveniently in their bedroom and it is very, very fun to yank him down for a decent kiss.

It’s not amazing. Nothing they could do right now would be. She’s just buzzing inside, like she needs skin on skin, like she needs-

“That kind of night,” he murmurs when they break for air, not the question it should be. His voice is heavy, and she knows he copes differently than she does but maybe he needs to get out f his head too, maybe-

Lucy nods. Words aren’t happening right now, not until this is over, not until morning. She just… needs, right now, and there’s something primal about it, something she’s accepted, this is the worst of her and it hasn’t gone away and maybe it never does and-

It would be easier to be what she is under other circumstances. She’s making the best of these. She’s lucky, she thinks, she has a partner who isn't questioning her behavior too much, who knows-

They are one and the same, she thinks as hands start wandering. Both determined to burn whenever they get the chance. She’s worse, right now, but she can feel the tension in the way he touches her, the way he’s always on the knife’s edge of disaster. Too much, too much-

She makes a desperate sound as she ends up on her back on the bed. They won't talk about this. They don't need to talk about it. She’ll wake up in the morning with the vaguest idea what happened, and that vague idea will be enough. The details can blur for all she cares.

He straddles her, murmuring something probably but not definitely in a language she doesn't speak. At this point, she isn’t sure she can tell the difference. He’s sober, she’s pretty sure, and going with this the same way he goes with the rest of her bullshit, because this is who they are to each other and there’s no point pretending otherwise and they won't talk about this, she keeps thinking, they won't talk about this, they won't-

She can barely feel their collision. She knows it’s happening, and this isn’t what dissociation feels like – her brain and her body are perfectly tethered, she’s pretty sure, but the volume of the universe has been turned down a few notches. This is something happening to her, not something she is a particularly active participant in. Different from what she’s usually like, but not wrong. She wants, let that be enough, she wants-

She’s had weirder orgasms. She’s surprised when it hits, but she’s had weirder. This wasn’t even the goal, more of a nice surprise, and she lets herself be vocal because what does she even have to lose, and-

That’s the last bit she remembers.

{She can piece together what happens, later. Nothing she didn’t want. Nothing new. Nothing that mattered.}

She’s sprawled on a couch next to her partner, a scenario that has played out hundreds of times before and she has to remind herself that their current circumstances are different. This is a couch built within her lifetime, for starters, and-

“What are you thinking right now?”

Her head on his shoulder, his fingertips in her hair, glasses of water on the coffee table in front of them. Lucy has never seen herself as a domestic type, but who is she to question the cards she’s been dealt when it all feels so peaceful and earned and-

“I keep waiting to wake up. To find out this isn’t real.”

She didn’t have nightmares, before. She still doesn't. He has enough for the both of them, and all the scary almosts weigh just as heavy on him as the things that did happen, and she’s well aware that she has to be the strong one for a long time yet to come and how does that mesh with trying to have a quiet life she’s not even sure she wants and-

“It’s real.”

“Prove it.”

“I don't know how.”

Everything around her is right – better than right, really. She has a mundane job about to start that believes she spent the past five years doing secret government-contract work, which is close enough that it isn’t a lie and vague enough that she’ll never have to explain. She has a partner who loves her. Somewhere she can’t quite hear, a cat is meowing. Her period is late enough that she should be worried but she hasn’t given that potential crisis the energy it deserves yet. This is as real as anything she’s ever experienced.

But is it enough? Could anything quiet ever be enough? She doesn't know anymore.

She isn’t in the mood to burden her partner with an existential crisis she knows he can’t talk her down from, so cuddling is the next best thing. It’s easy to get their limbs entwined, play with the size difference between them until she’s not sure where she ends and he begins, not going anywhere with this just wanting to get lost, just wanting-

She doesn't have to figure this out right now. Maybe she never will. Maybe she never has to.

“You would say, if there was anything…”

“I would."

Nothing he could fix for her, she justifies. Just things she has to handle for herself.

She can’t fix this yet either. She can turn her head and feather kisses on his neck and do everything she can to forget there’s even a problem.

Is there a difference, really? Does it matter?

“Anything,” he repeats like he doesn't believe her.