Chapter Text
She woke before dawn with his arms still around her, loosened from sleep but still holding on. Her side ached from sleeping for so long in the same position with his right elbow underneath her, and it occurred to her that this couldn’t still be comfortable for him either. As she wiggled out, he woke, immediately flexing his fingers.
“Sorry,” she muttered raspily.
She sat up, and he rolled to his back, massaging his arm with his left hand.
“Arm fell asleep,” he said with a drowsy smile.
She picked up his watch to check the time. “We slept like that for six hours.”
He sat up in front of her, shook out his arm more vigorously, and yawned.
“I’m going for a run,” she decided.
“Okay. Be careful.”
She kissed him, slipped on her shoes, and headed out into the hazy, predawn darkness.
Her mind was still working the problem, as if there was anything to solve. It was desperate automation, seeking a solution that had to exist, while simultaneously knowing there wasn’t one. Not yet. Patience was not one of her strengths, and mandatory patience was pure agony.
She would have to channel this restless yearning into something else. As she reached the start of the trail and stretched, it occurred to her that she still needed practice on the motorcycle. She suspected Nick’s knee would take a while to heal, even though he wouldn’t complain. So if they did leave any time soon, she wanted to be able to ride for them as much as possible. That was something she could do, an immediate action to take. She would talk to him about it after breakfast.
Her hair had grown just enough over the last two months that it stuck out in waves from underneath her helmet, tangling at her shoulders as she sped around a curve, Nick’s gloved hands clasped comfortably over her stomach. She adjusted her hands inside her own leather gloves, slightly too big for her but helping her regrip the handlebars and throttle.
After two hours of riding on both the highway and beach track, she was beginning to get the feel for it, adapting more naturally to changes in the landscape and wind speed. It was nearly impossible to communicate verbally over their helmets, earplugs, and buffeting wind, but they’d easily established other ways. She clenched and raised her left fist to let him know she was planning to stop, and he gave her a thumbs up to confirm he’d understood. Riding for extended periods of time was more physically and mentally exhausting than she’d expected, and she was unfortunately recalculating how far they could actually get in one day.
As she pulled back into the parking lot and slowed to a stop, she briefly lost her balance, but Nick’s feet came down solidly on either side to steady them. They removed their helmets and earplugs and climbed off as she pushed her hair out of her eyes.
“That was great,” he said enthusiastically as he ran his hand through his own tangled curls. “You’re getting really steady.”
“Feels like my bones are separating from the constant vibration,” she sighed. “Your leg must be killing you.”
“Nah, it’s alright. I’ll ice it again later.”
She studied his face, knowing he was downplaying for her, but she suggested they take a break anyway to eat something. Cheeks burning from the salty air, they walked down to the beach, her mind still racing from adrenaline. She would go back out again later, fighting her body’s request to rest longer, successfully laser focused on distractions, at least for the moment.
Over the next ten days, Nick's bruises healed significantly, and he alternated between repairing the damage to the cars from the Reno escape and riding the bike with June. Sydney had offered to take June with her on scavenging missions, so she’d been splitting her own time between running, riding, and raiding abandoned homes and shops for any supplies they could use.
They’d just returned from a long morning loading the back of Sydney’s truck with gardening tools and old seeds from a storeroom about an hour north, and June walked straight for the cistern to refill her canteen before heading up the slope to the parking lot to see Nick. As he came into view, her pace slowed absently, a softly hitching inhale through her mouth.
He was working alone in bright sunlight, naked from the waist up, a thin sheen of sweat coating his tanned chest and back, a hint of dark stubble dotting his jaw and upper lip. His black jeans were smudged with grease and paint, riding teasingly low on his hips, top button undone. When he lifted the hood of the Camaro, June’s gaze roamed over the thicket of black hairs under his toned right arm.
Without fully realizing it, she’d come to a complete stop and was rubbing the edge of her canteen against her bottom lip. Surfacing for a moment, she took a long sip, then resumed her staring, slowly wiping the pad of her thumb over her chin where a droplet of water had begun to drip down.
Nick reached for a colorful beach towel and swiped it across his face, then his torso, then draped it back up on the open hood. He bent low over the engine, long fingers twisting something.
June’s gaze followed the curve of his spine, the way his curls fluffed down over his forehead, his slightly purse-lipped concentration. It was astonishing really that every other person in their community wasn’t currently parked on a beach chair lining the edges of the lot to watch this show. This thought amused her so much that she laughed out loud, drawing his attention.
“Oh, hey,” he said in his deep, scratchy, haven’t-spoken-in-hours voice. He smiled at her, and a ripple of pleasure fanned low across her abdomen.
“About done here?” she asked hopefully as he ducked fully out from under the hood and walked towards her.
“I can stop for a while. You okay?”
She nodded, but then she changed her mind and slowly shook her head, smirking. She watched his expression change as he caught on, a wave of lust mingling with that embarrassed, dubious squint she knew so well.
An idea suddenly struck her as she noticed the navy blue Mustang parked to his left with the top down. She nodded toward it.
“Wanna have another date in the convertible?” she asked, and he softly chuckled his agreement.
“Let me just get my shirt.”
“You’re not gonna need that.”
There was that almost imperceptibly self-effacing squint again. She licked her bottom lip.
He led them to the Mustang, pausing for a moment - clearly wondering if she wanted to drive - but she curved to the passenger’s side and climbed inside, turning her head to watch him as he joined her and revved the engine, leaving his tools sprawled across the pavement. He would always leave everything behind for her. It almost made her feel guilty, now that she was honest with herself about it, to sense such longing in such a miraculous thing, to have anyone on earth love her the way he did, much less someone so specifically perfect for her and so profoundly unable to see his own worthiness… and to have the exquisitely rare chance to love him back the same way, to keep showing him that forever. And that had become the goal - to never let him forget that, to make sure he never again doubted that she felt the same way.
She shamelessly kept her head turned to the side against the back of her seat to openly watch him shift the car and steer them out onto the highway, then down the slope to the beachfront track. It was a deliciously warm day, but not aggressively hot, perfect for the feeling of the rushing wind and the mist from the cold sea against her skin as Nick angled the car to skim the edge of the waterline. Her mind transplanted them so effortlessly to a different, enticingly unknown beach in Hawaii, as if they were already there.
He slowed to a stop, looking over at her, and she smiled appreciatively, the sounds of the ocean waves as they lapped the shore mingling with the rumble of the Mustang’s idling engine.
Without a word, she sat up on her knees and climbed into the back seat, shimmying halfway out of her jeans and t-shirt as he turned to look over his shoulder at her. His unreserved gaze roamed her body, and she inhaled deeply as he climbed over to join her. Sitting next to each other, they kicked off their shoes, she tugged her jeans the rest of the way off her legs, and she reached for his right side, running her fingertips over the skin she’d been admiring. His eyes glistened with craving for her, but there was a question there too, one he didn’t have to voice. She’d been running herself wild trying to stave off thoughts of Hannah’s unknown location, days draining away and making the chances of getting on the flight to Hawaii increasingly less likely.
“I don’t want to think,” she told him, understanding what he needed to know. “Just for an hour, I don’t want to think about anything but you.”
He nodded and cupped her neck in his right hand, thumb circling her jaw as he tilted in to kiss her parted lips. She pulled him down on top of her, awkwardly maneuvering to lie half against the door and half wedged into the leather seats, his warm, bare chest colliding with hers and making her regret not removing her bra before changing positions. When he lifted his face and shuffled his knees to find a better spot on the seat between her legs, she let her gaze roam down again, fingertips trailing her eye line.
“You’re getting extra tan,” she commented affectionately.
“You like it?” he asked, without a hint of uncertainty, quirking his left brow. And she was instantly affected by the rare boldness of him daring her to verbally confirm what he could speechlessly read on her face.
“Yeah,” she answered soundly.
His fingertips travelled down her neck, then across her right shoulder.
“You’re getting more freckles,” he said, voice shifting down pitch again to that gravelly lilt that somehow lit up all her senses.
“You like it?”
“Yeah,” he echoed emphatically, and she hadn’t meant to sound unsure, but recalling her own soft voice again, she realized she accidentally had, too distracted by his admiring gaze to speak clearly.
He bent to kiss her shoulder, and her eyes fluttered shut, slicing her fingers through his hair. When he shifted to find a place to balance his right hand, the weight of his torso on her chest made her uncharacteristically wince for a moment, and he whispered an adorable “sorry” before attempting to readjust… then lifting his head again to smile down at her.
“Sex in a sports car’s kind of impractical,” he pointed out through a chuckle.
“Make it work,” she demanded, daring and flirty, and his smile morphed into a determined smirk.
They shared a hypnotic, sun-drenched stare for a moment, his dark curls surrounded by the cloudless blue sky overhead. And then he moved all the way off of her, wedging his right knee into the floorboard behind the passenger’s seat, reaching toward the front to clasp the door handle and open it. Shoving it the rest of the way ajar with his foot, he slid fully out of the car, bare feet sinking into the sand.
With more space available, she tucked her t-shirt between her back and the warm leather underneath her and shifted down flat, bending her knees up so her heels were planted on the edge of the seat by the open door. And as he turned back around to face her, running his hand through his hair, he blatantly drank in the sight of her full body. Without him covering her, the brightness of the day was nearly blinding, and she had to squint to look up at him. But she could still see how physically affected he was by her presence and appearance, and it rapidly heightened her impatience.
He took a deep breath that stretched his taut chest muscles, then reached for the lever by the front passenger’s seat, lowering it forward, giving him room to press his right knee into the slanted back and reach for her hips, wrapping his fingers around the waistband of her underwear on either side. He roughly pulled them down her legs while she reached back to unclasp her bra. As he tossed her underwear to the front seat, she slid her right foot up his chest, and he ducked further forward, hips between her legs, her left foot dropping off the seat, toes arching into the floorboard.
She shoved her bra off her arms and hooked her right leg over his shoulder as he buried her again underneath the shadow of his smooth torso, holding her knee in place with one hand while the other brushed her hair back from her cheek and kissed her, quickly growing ravenous. The friction of rugged denim against her inner thighs in contrast to the heat of their joined mouths as he ran his tongue over hers elicited a throaty moan from her, clutching his neck with both hands and angling her thumbs up along his jaw joints, in front of his ears.
She felt wild and reckless and fully, blissfully, out of her own head, yet completely inside her own body in that way that often clicked into place with him but always bordered on transcendent. To be present in her sense of touch to such a heightened degree and not wonder for even a moment if she should change anything - to not even contemplate the lack of that instinct - was absolutely the most weightless force, as if all the atoms and synapses that made her up had been magically unburdened.
She ran her fingers down his collarbones, then his sternum and onward to his stomach, grazing her own inner thigh as she continued her breathless search for his jeans’ zipper, eyes shut, the curtain of his curls tickling her forehead, his thumb extending under their joined mouths to tip down the plump middle of her bottom lip, deepening the way they fit together. She could feel the vibrations of his unguarded moans as if they were being trickled directly down her spine, and she somehow managed to get his zipper down, rubbing her left knee against his empty belt loops to shift his jeans off his hips. Without removing his mouth even a half inch from hers, he reached down to help, his knuckles grazing through her soaked center in the process, then pressing in with hard angles as he tugged down his boxer briefs.
“Wait,” he suddenly panted into her mouth, adorably more to himself than to her, separating from her lips to duck further to the side and suck her neck, the deep stretch along the back of her right thigh from her leg still bent over his shoulder adding to both the urgency she felt and the familiar desire to prolong it.
Her heart was beating madly, sure he could somehow hear it, her hands smoothing up his shoulder blades, into his hair, down the back of his neck, while the hard length of him pressed tantalizingly along her pelvis, making her hips roll up automatically to increase the almost painful pressure. Her left hand worked lower, arching her back to accommodate as her palm glided over the curve of his bare ass, softly gasping from the dizzying feel of his skin and flesh in her hands while he bit her neck, then scooped his lips up to her jaw.
His right hand stroked up her side, long fingers spreading over her ribs and the edge of her left breast. She shivered happily, her parted lips tilting into a smile, eyes closed against the sharp heatwaves from the sun overhead.
He moaned into her skin again, then lifted his face until their noses were almost touching. Staring at her for a beat, he gently shook his head.
“You’re so perfect,” he slurred in that deep, gravelly tone. “God, I want you.”
“Please,” she whispered, still smiling and staring into the gorgeous darkness of his eyes.
“It’s crazy,” he continued, barely a whisper, brushing his thumb over her cheek. “I’m so fucking in love with you.”
“Me too,” she echoed earnestly, tearing up a bit from a combination of his raw emotion and her own joy of being there with him.
He nodded once, a gesture she often equated with sad resignation but recognized less commonly as him accepting her obvious sincerity, like the time she’d run back to him on the way to the Magdalene colony she’d never reached, just to kiss him one last time and tell him she loved him. The moment the words had left her, he’d nodded the same way, and she’d felt their souls meshing again, the thing that had given them impossible strength so many times before. No one had ever responded with such awe and gratitude, just to be loved by her.
Then, their hands were everywhere, adjusting, reaching between their bodies, his eyebrows slanting as he slowly pushed inside her, deeper as she clutched his neck and drew their foreheads together again. The position of her right leg opened space for his hips to settle in harder, and the staccato of her breathing syncopated the leisurely building rhythm of his perfectly tight thrusts.
He braced his left arm on the back of the seat, right arm curving above her head, and she felt an aching desire to be closer, skin to skin all the way along the front of her body, unmanageable in their position. Though the current angle was making her gasp with sparks of pleasure, the trade off suddenly wasn’t worth it.
“Nick,” she whispered, gazing into his eyes, so close. And it was miraculous that he could always sense the difference between a prayer and a question, simply in the way she said his name.
His fingers combed through her hair as he lifted his head enough to see her expression properly, stalling his movements. She smiled, then shifted ineffectively underneath him until he caught on and moved to help, pushing back on his knees and kissing her leg before sliding it off his shoulder. Hugging it around his waist, trapped between his skin and the seat back, he lowered his body to hers, much closer now, his chest brushing her hardened nipples as he kissed her. Moaning with contentment, she pressed up to encourage him to continue, and they resumed a languid pace together, the sounds of crunching leather punctuating every thrust.
She felt time vanish, her hands sliding up and down his body, touching everything she could reach, a word rising up through the fog of love and lust, the mere thought of it making her whimper into his mouth. Mine.
As her back gently arched off the seat, she realized how close the top of her head was to the closed car door behind her, but his forearm was protecting her. She reached up to pull his arm down, preferring his hand on her body. And as his lips skipped briefly off of hers, she bent her own elbow over her head instead, pushing her palm against the door, both keeping her safe from collision and adding to the force she could produce in joining him with each firm roll of their hips.
She felt him notice the change immediately, his open mouth hungrily colliding with hers, a rumbling groan reverberating in his chest. She clenched her fist in his hair, her clit rubbing hard against his pelvis, electric wires in her veins, the all-encompassing feeling of fullness lighting fires deep inside her body.
Unknown minutes later, she felt her nerves climbing the last steps, building closer, closer, her senses travelling through space - the ocean on the other side of the door above her head, Nick’s sultry moans weaving into hers, the white noise rumble of the Mustang’s engine, the salty air and musky sheen of sweat on their skin, an echo of fresh leather, his solid body on top of her, her greedy hands squeezing his flesh, the sun glowing red behind her closed eyelids.
She wanted them to come together, gripping him inside her to encourage it, her tongue in his mouth, then his in hers with a breathless grunt in the back of his throat. She inhaled sharply through her nose, thighs beginning to shake, and then they were sighing in unison, his hand wrapping underneath her, around the curve of her ass, guiding the way they rubbed together in the last seconds, her teeth sinking into his bottom lip as their bodies ignited in overwhelming pleasure.
She stroked his back weakly as their mouths finally parted, his face falling against the side of her neck.
“Jesus,” he exhaled, slowing his movements until they softly stopped, the perfect sway, coming down, easing into quiet happiness.
The hypnotic feeling of his chest expanding as he caught his breath and the pleasant ache in her thighs made her drop heavily into contented drowsiness. But a few seconds later, he peeled himself off of her, and they shared an adoring smile before lazily redressing in only their underwear.
She tugged his hand, and he moved to sit cuddled up to her in the backseat, their heads together as they silently, cozily watched the lulling waves of the foamy sea cutting patterns across the sand.
Later, Nick returned to the lot to finish working on the Camaro, then went to take a shower as the sun was setting. He was walking back to their tent when the burner phone buzzed in his pocket. They’d been calling Walter every night at midnight - when it was safest for him - and he’d had no updates regarding the MacKenzies’ whereabouts so far. But no one else aside from Luke and Moira had their new number, so Nick answered quickly, heart rate increasing anxiously.
Walter’s baritone spoke immediately.
“Blaine, they’re back.”