Everything I write turns into smut - I would apologise but... blame it on Connie and Chip and all that ludicrous chemistry. This was supposed to be angsty, I swear - hopefully it still is.

If it's of any interest, I usually listen to one specific song on repeat while I write, something that makes me feel the way the story does to me (and often then the song takes it somewhere unexpected which is fun too), probably sounds hokey but hey. So this one-shot is brought to you by a song called Greenwoods Bethlehem by Bear's Den, found randomly on Spotify while I was writing the part where it was pouring with rain and I had no idea where things were going to go from there.

This is for my brilliant friend who suggested I delve into Rayna and Deacon writing this song… I give you the gift of smut, which isn't weird at all, right?! Forget it was me who wrote it and just picture Rayna and Deacon getting down and dirty. ;)

The windows are steamed up, the rusted AC unit jacked as high as it will go and yet a thin line of sweat trickles between Rayna's shoulder blades. She lifts her takeaway cup of iced coffee to her lips, swallows and sighs. The ice has mostly melted and she's left with a watered-down cup of caffeine that does nothing to combat the exhaustion threatening to consume her.

She can feel it in her toes, the ache that comes with restless nights she knows too well by now, dread and anger where sleep should be. She presses the tip of her forefinger into the still-chilled plastic and watches beads of condensation scatter away from her touch. If he isn't already dead somewhere she's going to fucking kill him.

"Rayna, you want to go again?"

She nods, signalling half-heartedly to Jasper, the studio manager, that she's ready. She stands and heads back into the booth, snaps the headphones on and tries to remember which song they're tracking. Jasper holds up three fingers, counting her and the band down, and she lifts the sheet up from the stand in front of her. How You See Me. One she'd written with Deacon a couple of months ago while they were on their way back from a show in Arizona.

Except Deacon isn't here. She curses him silently while the opening notes play out. The replacement guitar player is decent, one of the back-ups Bucky has on standby, and probably on fucking speed-dial these days, the amount of times they've needed him. Screw you, Deacon.

She misses her cue and her hiss of frustration resounds around the small glass space, Jasper waving to her that it's fine, they'll go again, just carry on. She looks down at the lyric sheet and it's trembling, except that it isn't, it's her hand that's shaking, and the first line is some shit about love that she wants to ball up and ram down Deacon's throat. She clamps her mouth shut and breathes through her nose until back-up guy is through with the intro - she's not messing up a second time. She's a professional, and no one, not Deacon, not anyone, is going to mess that up for her.

It feels like this album is a thousand songs long. It didn't seem so when she was writing them: they'd poured out, so many feelings, moments, wishes that she'd felt the burning need to get onto paper. The singing them part, though, today at least, is like pulling teeth. She hits her mark the second time around and tries to detach herself to get through the first verse, but she knows it doesn't sound right, devoid of the emotion that it should have, that it does have, that she doesn't want to feel right now because everything hurts.

"Shit," she curses, ripping the headphones off and throwing them down a little too harshly. They fly off the edge of the music stand and dangle on their wire an inch from the floor.

"Rayna?" Bucky starts after her as she strides for the emergency exit at the back of the room. "What… where are you going?" He's polite, as he always is, ever supportive of her ups and downs, and there are a lot of them. More downs than ups, lately.

"I'm goin' for a fuckin' cigarette, Bucky."

She half-registers the look on his face as she grabs her bag and shoves the door open with her hip; it slams closed behind her. She's over the other side of the gravel parking lot before she comes to a stop, a fresh wave of fury propelling her steps.

She's pissed. It's easier, the pain and the worry of it all wrapped up as seething anger, easier than lying in a crumpled ball crying for everything he can't be, everything she wishes he could, but it kills her either way. Her hands shake as she flicks open the novelty lighter she'd picked up on a stopover in Vegas one summer, and lights up the cigarette she jams between her lips. She's not a smoker, she tells herself as she sucks in a lungful and closes her eyes, she's just a non-smoker with a drunk boyfriend.

It's gotten worse ever since Vince. He's always been a drinker, Deacon, always walking the narrow line between magnetically reckless and downright unhealthy. I don't got a drinkin' problem baby, he'll tell her in the midst of his fourth hangover in a row, winking in that disarmingly handsome way of his, and she'll melt and push away the foreboding that laps at the edges of her stomach. Maybe she'd found it poetic, at first - it fit: the brooding musician, whiskey rasp in his voice, windchime-clink of ice cubes in his glass as he scribbled lyrics on scraps of notepaper. The irony is not lost on Rayna that she craves the sting on his breath when his tongue slides into her mouth - she's been addicted to the taste of him since the first time he kissed her.

And then had come the night he'd ended up wrapped around a tree with Vince in the passenger seat, no seatbelt, no chance. The drinking had fast become less charming on him when he'd shut her out and turned to a bottle, and the bottle had turned into two, three, blackouts, stomach pumpings. Missed rehearsals, missed shows. Missed studio sessions to record the songs that bear his name, their names.

The embers of Rayna's cigarette butt flicker feebly as she stamps them into nothing with the heel of her boot. She looks over at her car, discarded at a careless angle just inside the entrance to the lot, and briefly considers getting into it and driving as many miles as she can in any direction that's away from here, away from him, but she knows the tires would give out long before she could get away from herself.

Some days - today is one - she has no idea why she puts up with it. Maybe she shouldn't. They sure as hell as all tell her she shouldn't, frequently - Coleman, Tandy, her asshole father. Even Bucky, sometimes, though he says it with his eyes and not his words and somehow that hurts more. Rehab helped, until it didn't. Helped the second time around too, until it didn't. They quieted for a while, the self-appointed voices of reason in her life, but they're getting louder again. She sees the worried looks they exchange and she hates the way they clear their throats when they're about to launch into a lecture about how damaging it all is, for her reputation, for her career, for her heart.

She doesn't want to hear it. She already knows.

The studio smells of coffee when she walks back in and Bucky hands her a fresh cup: a peace offering, one to coax her to get through the rest of the song, she knows is what he's hoping. She sips it, takes a deep breath and steps back into the booth.

"Whenever you're ready," she tells Jasper and the band, and she waits for him to swivel his chair back to the mixing desk and count her in.

#

He turns up as the thunder starts. It's a hot summer, even for Nashville, humid and claustrophobic, and the storms have been coming every couple of days at dusk. Rayna is glad. She wants this one to rip the ground to pieces.

"Hey," he says sheepishly, standing just inside the studio door, guitar case in hand. He ignores everyone else and looks only at her.

"Get out."

"Rayna," he starts to protest, but she holds up a single finger and he doesn't come any further into the room. He knows better.

"I said get out, Deacon."

He doesn't. She glares at but tries not to see him, but she can't help it. His chin is thick with scruff - it's been what, three days since he shaved? - and his hair is dishevelled. He's in a clean shirt but the toes of his boots are muddy and the knuckles of his left hand are dusted with dried blood. A bender and a bar fight. And a hangover from hell, judging by the way he winces when she spits his name.

"Go home. We're done here, you missed it."

"Ray," he tries again, and when he takes one step forward the entire room tenses. Rayna can feel their eyes on her, and she doesn't care a damn bit.

"You better not come anywhere near me, or God help you Deacon."

She sounds dangerous and she means it and he doesn't push it. He nods, chewing on his lip and looking at the floor. He gives one more nod before he turns around and opens the door, shoulders slumped in defeat.

Good, she thinks, leave, but the fight drains out of her the instant the door clicks shut and her heart hurts and her chest heaves, and she can't stop staring at the spot where he'd stood.

"I think we should probably call it a day," Bucky says gently, coming up next to her. He fixes her with his trademark kindly look and she tries really hard not to cry. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," she lies.

"Calling it, y'all," he tells the band, and they busy themselves packing up. There's an awkwardness that hangs in the air and Rayna hates it. She hates the whole sorry mess.

"Thanks Buck. I'm sorry, again."

"It isn't your fault, Rayna. It isn't his, either. He doesn't want to be this way."

She smiles gratefully and it wobbles around the edges. Bucky is the only one who doesn't judge Deacon for his drinking, however much it worries him. "I know. I just wish I knew how to help him."

He squeezes her shoulder and the gesture feels solid, reassuring. "We'll get there. We will."

Rayna is suddenly nauseous with exhaustion, and she presses her fingertips to her temples, closing her eyes briefly. "Thanks for today, Buck." She takes a deep breath, gives him a slightly sturdier smile and heads for the exit, calling her thanks to everyone for their hard work.

The rain is unleashing itself on the ground when she steps outside and she stops, suspended in a moment of indecision: try to resist it and hunch herself up to make a run for her car, or succumb to it without a fight. It's going to soak her through either way.

She drops her shoulders and breathes it in, the taste of the honeysuckle-sweet dusk in her mouth. The rain drenches her in seconds, and it's warm, like a lazy morning shower, so at odds with the tension knotting her stomach. The gravel beneath her feet rumbles and thunder breaks a breath later, making her jump; she lets out a startled laugh and turns her face upwards. Drops pelt her and blur her vision but she doesn't miss the brilliant flash to her left, a little closer than should be comfortable. She feels small, one inconsequential being in the midst of such power.

When she swipes the water out of her eyes she sees him standing by her car. He isn't fighting it either: his wet hair covers half of his face, his shirt clings to him, and he just stands there. She starts walking to him without thinking.

"Why are you still here?" she asks when she reaches him, raising her voice above the roar of the storm.

Deacon shrugs, and he looks so lost that Rayna's heart all but throws itself out of her chest towards him. He stares at her steadily; rain drips off his eyelashes but he barely blinks, and she feels her stomach sear with want. Thunder cracks again and this time she doesn't flinch. Damn you, she thinks. Fucking damn you.

"You can't keep doing this to me."

"I'm sorry," he says, and it's then that he breaks. "I'm sorry, Ray."

She reaches up to push the hair out of his face, to screw up the edges of his shirt collar in her fists. His bloodshot eyes bore into her, desperate with it all, with his pain and his regret and she can't take it. He has her spun around and pressed up against the passenger door the instant her lips are on his and the hot rain bounces off them, steam rising from their clothes and their skin.

It takes the lightning strike to rip them from each other. It's too close and too bright and the thunder that follows is seconds behind it, on top of them and vicious enough to send Rayna hurtling around to the driver's side. She floors it out of the parking lot, and how they get home in one piece between the downpour and their lust is nothing short of a miracle.

They make it inside the door of their little house and not a step further. Puddles form where their clothes land; blindly they peel fabric from damp skin and pull belts from buckles and Rayna feels him hard inside her moments after they drop to the floor. The wood is cool beneath her back and she rocks with him and gasps with him and comes with him and the rainwater drips from them and mixes with their sweat. All her fury and all her love races through her body until breath leaves her and all she can hear is her racing heartbeat thumping against his.

Deacon drops his face into the hollow of her neck and she scrapes her fingers through his hair, feels his tongue lick her skin, his lips suck at her pulse. He softens inside her but she holds him there, unable to bear him separating from her body. He's safe cocooned in her, where she knows he's protected, not somewhere outside where danger can seek him. Or he danger. He murmurs her name, I love you, her name, again. It sounds like a chant, like he's cleansing the nightmares that consume him, driving them away.

When he eventually pulls out of her she feels a tear roll down her cheek and he kisses her for a long time, tenderness and urgency bedfellows in the quiet moments they hold between them. He rolls her with him and lays on his back, tucking her into his arms and kissing her forehead, stroking the grooves of her spine with his fingertips.

"I know I need to sort this out," he says after a while, taking her hand and holding it over his heart.

She lifts her head to prop her chin on his chest. "You do, Deacon. I wish more than anything that I could do this for you, but I can't, no one can."

He nods. "I know."

"I need you to get well again, babe. I need you to." She starts to cry, and his face crumples. "You make me worry so much I feel like I'm gonna break into pieces. I just want you to be okay, I don't want you to suffer like this."

"I'm so sorry, baby, I'm so sorry." Sobs grip him and she wraps herself around his body, trying to sink into his skin, to keep out everything that hurts.

They lay together on the hard floor until their grief subsides. The storm dissolves sometime after it grows dark and there's a hush that falls, suspending them in time only they seem to exist within. When Rayna starts to shiver, Deacon stirs and sits them both up.

"It looks like it rained in the house," she says, looking around at the mess they've made and picking up the shirt she'd been wearing. It drips onto her toes, and she flicks it at Deacon. He protests and laughs with her and she feels relief rush through her bones at the sound they make together. Too often these days she hears their tears; she relishes laughter in their place, the crinkle of his weary eyes.

His hand slides around her waist and he leans in and breathes into her ear. "You were pretty wet when we got in here," he rasps, and her laughter stops as quickly as it started. She feels the throb start up again between her legs and bites her lip, looking at him.

"I don't know how you do that to me." She slides her hands through his hair to the nape of his neck, and he dips his head to kiss her; her skin flushes with heat.

"What?" he asks, amused.

"I don't think normal people are like this. I don't think they fight and have sex in a puddle on the floor and get hot all over again ten minutes later." She looks down at him, and sure enough he's growing hard. He never can help himself around her. "And that," she says, smirking at him as desire jolts through her, "that does not happen with most people."

"We're not most people."

Her skin feels clammy, the warmth inside her clashing with the chill outside and making her head spin. She closes her eyes. "I gotta go take a shower," she tells Deacon, "I'm freezin'." She looks down at his crotch. "Save that for me."

He nods, and Rayna pulls back a couple of inches and tilts her head, stroking his cheek and taking in the features of his face, memorising him, maybe, scared as she is all the time these days that he'll slip out of her grasp.

"I love you," she says.

Deacon traces her lips with his thumb. "You shouldn't," he whispers.

She leans back into him, both hands on his face now. "But I do," she whispers back, kissing him slowly. "I do."

#

The shower is more welcome than she could have dreamed. Steam fogs up the mirror and creeps down the tiles and she stands under the hot spray, letting it soothe her bunched up muscles. It trails down her back, over her shoulders, the pink patches of her flesh Deacon has sucked and bitten, the tingles she still feels from where his hands have adored her, from where his body joined with hers.

She wonders if it's possible to age twenty years in just two. It's never been easy, their life together - the love, the love is easy, more so than anything she's ever known, but everything else... It feels as though there's a mountain stacked against them, and not for the first time her throat thickens at the unfairness of it all. So much has been thrown at them - it's part of what brought them so close together, the shift from dealing with their trauma alone to having each other, the only person who could ever understand, but she can feel him shutting her out now, turning away from her so he doesn't pull her down with him into the hole he's hurtling towards.

She feels her breath leave her for a moment, a hot flash of fear claw at her chest, and she pushes a hand against the tiles and tries to steady herself, eyes closed tightly. Tears sting hot under her eyelids and she sobs in silence, her other hand shaking as she muffles her mouth with it.

Deacon is all she has, truly, in the whole world. It's not that her life would be empty without him, it's that she would be empty without him. There is no life she could conceive of that wouldn't have him in it, that would see her walk away from him, no matter how much he's breaking her. She knows he doesn't mean to, that it kills him, and the people in her life who tell her she should be thinking of herself, of what's best for her, they don't understand. They never could. However far he goes into the dark, she'll be right there next to him.

When she twists the tap off she can hear his guitar, muted notes carrying down the hallway. She sits on the edge of the tub and listens, letting it wash over her, until she gets cold. Her hair drips down her shoulders and she pulls a towel from the rail and tugs it around her body, noticing in the mirror that she appears thinner than usual, her cheeks hollow, worry framing the edges of her features. She leans on the sink staring at a face that looks like a fading photograph of her own, and sighs.

"That sounds pretty," she says when she walks in socked feet back into the living room where he's sat on the floor by the couch, cross-legged in a clean pair of boxers. She's swapped the towel for one of his T-shirts, one she wears more than he does these days, much to his teasing, and he gives her an appreciative smile when he looks up.

"It's for you," he tells her, and she drops down beside him.

"You wrote this just now?" She picks up an open notebook, his handwriting scrawled across the page.

"Mmhmm. Started it, anyway." He kisses her cheek and presses his nose against her temple, breathing in the smell of her still-damp hair. "Needs finishin'."

"Sing it for me," she asks of him, and he obliges.

She watches him intently, everything outside their small house fading away. His lips as he sings, his fingers on the strings, how instinctively they know their way. She feels his eyes on her and locks hers with them, his milkshake voice rumbling its way into her bones, calming her, temporary though she knows it will be.

The song is about him: he sings as though from her perspective, of his failings, of the distress he causes her. How she shouldn't forgive him, should be free of him. She lets the lump in her throat grow, but it doesn't overwhelm her - nothing can while he sings. She drinks him in, imploring him with her eyes to never stop. They'll be okay if he just keeps singing, if they stay forever this way, in a song.

He makes it to the end of the chorus before she jumps to her feet and pulls him up with her. "Bring your guitar," she tells him breathlessly, pushing the boxers off his hips and taking him in her hand, desperate for him.

She snags his notebook as she starts, backwards, for their bedroom. Deacon moans into her mouth and takes her ass in his other hand, and somehow they make it to the bed without knocking anything over. She turns him and pushes him down, and he grunts loudly when she straddles his legs, slides down and swallows him, taking him to the back of her throat and pumping him with both of her hands as she lifts her head up and down.

"Oh shit, baby," he calls out, his fingers knotting in her hair as she sucks him intently. She lets go with her hands and moves with only her mouth, grabbing the sheets on either side of him and rubbing her breasts against his thighs. On a deep moan she moves a hand between her legs and pushes her fingers inside herself, and Deacon curses over and over, pulling on her hair. It isn't rough, but it sends thrills through Rayna's whole body and she scrapes her teeth over him, giving him one last hard suck and letting him drop from her mouth with a wet pop.

"Rayna," Deacon growls, and she moves up his body quickly and rubs against his penis, dripping her wetness on him, to his extreme enjoyment. Before she can push down on him, he surges forward and flips her sideways across the bed, and opens her legs wide, his hands gripping her inner thighs; he enters her in one hard, sure thrust and she swears loudly, grabbing anywhere she can to hold onto him.

"Yeah, that's it," she cries, "that's it," and she comes in moments, the orgasm ripping through her body in seering pulses. She lets go of him and moves her arms up on the bed, and he knows what she wants - he laces their fingers and stretches them high above her head, holding them down while he fucks her. She lifts her knees and rests them against his back so he can press himself into her as deep as she can take him; he's so big and so very hard that she feels like she could split in two and how she loves it, the pressure and the pleasure of it.

Deacon's hair sticks to his forehead, and she can't help but moan at the sight of him and what he's doing to her. He lifts himself up a little and drops his head, biting on her nipples, sucking them hard into his mouth, his tongue sandpaper to their sensitivity. The action pulls his dick almost all the way out of her, and it throbs powerfully as the tip rests in her entrance, soaked with them both. With one of his hands he finds her clit and rubs it just how she likes, between two of his fingers. The friction of his callouses makes her whimper, and he strokes his penis into her and all the way out while he rubs, groaning at the suction sound it makes. He does it again, slowly, listening to her ragged breathing.

"You like that baby?" he asks, voice low in her ear.

In answer she smiles wickedly up at him, enjoying being under him, legs spread for him, at the mercy of all the ways he knows he can make her come. She slips her hands down to take his balls in them, and he thrusts into her just a little as she massages them, cursing as he does so; she knows he loves when she strokes him while he's inside her.

They both can only stand it for a minute or so, and Rayna grasps his hips and takes his entire length as he drops a kiss on her lips and speeds up, the time for teasing done. She comes as he pulses against her, again when he shoots himself inside her, silky and hot and sending her eyes rolling back in her head. He falls on top of her, trembling, neither of them able to speak.

It's a long time before they can move. Rayna's legs go numb, Deacon's weak as he tries to lift himself and manages only a couple of inches, just enough to pull himself out of her and fall onto the sweat-damp mattress. The lay side by side, spent, her hand in his, heads turned toward each other.

"Holy shit, Ray," Deacon says eventually, and Rayna laughs, a thick, decadent sound.

"Uh huh," she agrees. They know how to fight, there is no doubt about that, but they know how to make up tenfold.

When she manages to sit up her limbs are shaky, and she rolls to the edge of the bed to pick up the notebook and his guitar. Deacon follows her lead, reaching for a pen on the nightstand and joining her in the middle of the mattress.

She sits before him, legs tangling with his, sheets a mess all around them. "I think I know how to finish this song," she says. Her hair is mussed around her face, sex hair if ever he's seen it, and Deacon's eyes rake over her naked body, nodding with his mouth open, still stunned from their sex.

She takes the pen from his hand, and he clears his throat, trying to look away from her to focus, the little smirk on his lips adorable. "What you got?"

"This girl," Rayna says, tapping the pen on the page where he's written the first verse and chorus, "she's singing about how her love has let her down, how he doesn't deserve her." She deliberately puts it into third person, wanting him to hear her without emotions flaring. Deacon nods, listening.

This is what they do. A million words they don't know how to speak, to themselves or to each other - and lately that's been the case more than ever - but no matter how tumultuous, no matter how strained, they can cut through it all to write together, to get to the truest of their truths. Everything they can't say is black ink on white paper, blood spilled onto a page.

"That isn't true," Rayna continues. "It is painful for her, very much so, and she doesn't know how to handle it. But it isn't about him not deserving her - he does. He deserves better, for himself and for her. It isn't his fault, these things he does that hurt her - he doesn't want to be this way." She pauses, watching the conflict twisting Deacon's face, knowing he wants so badly to believe her but is so conditioned to blame himself for all of his struggles. It's the way his daddy made him, after all.

She shifts closer to him. "So, yes, to anyone standing outside, she probably shouldn't love him. And maybe if he were anyone else to her, she wouldn't. But she's not standing outside, and he isn't anyone else." She looks him straight in the eyes. "I'm standing right here Deacon." He breathes heavily as he looks at her, and from somewhere he manages to pull a semblance of a nod. He hears her, and she slides his guitar towards him without breaking away from his eyes. "Play it for me again."

#

The rain continues to fall through the night. Their bedroom is hot, sweaty, but neither of them get up to switch on the AC. There is no pausing for anything when they're like this; the bubble they enter into when they write consumes them, insistent as it is fragile, and it demands that a song must be born.

Rayna scribbles and Deacon plays. He takes the pen from her and adds words, picks out a line he thinks they should repeat; she moves another around and strikes a phrasing that doesn't work. They sing it over, taste it on their tongues, adrenaline rushing through and between them, their veins livewires travelling through their still-naked bodies.

Their lust is a distraction and a fuel, their process incomplete without it, and the temptation balances in the air between them. It's a careful space, one only they could ever understand. They steal glances, let their eyes linger, dig fingertips into already-crinkled sheets as they resist, and it's all - it always is - building to a crescendo they know they won't be able to hold themselves back from the moment the last word hits the page.

"You're beautiful," Deacon says, dark and quiet, and Rayna looks up. She's sucking the end of her pen, deep in thought, and he's been watching intently, his eyes fixed on the purse of her pink lips.

Her stomach clenches with heat and she sucks a little harder; Deacon clears his throat, the guitar slipping in his hands.

She pulls the pen out and chuckles at him. "Lost your train of thought there, babe?"

He laughs with her and takes her hand, lifting it to his lips. "You kill me," he tells her, and she rises to her knees to kiss him, her fingers smoothing his hair as she looks down at his beloved face.

She sits back, and he plucks some random tune for a moment. She listens, eyes closed. "I think we should put this one on the album," she says, and when she opens them he's looking at her.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It's a great song, Deacon. And it fits with where we're at musically right now, and personally. It makes sense in the context of the rest of the tracks we've picked."

"It is a great song." He smiles. "And hell, when we take this album on the road, every time we sing it you'll know I'm thinkin' back to writin' it with you like this." His eyes trail over her, as though he can't quite believe what a lucky sonofabitch he is, and Rayna tosses the pen at him, giving him a dirty laugh.

They run through what they have, and it's not there yet but they're getting closer. They work on the bridge, Deacon playing about with a lick she really likes, and he gets so into it that she can't look away from him: his strong, lean legs, the guitar laid across them, the muscles in his arms and how they ripple as his fingers move across the strings.

She drops her head to one side to stretch out a kink, a hand on the mattress to balance, and it's a deliberate bait - she hears his muffled grunt, catches him watching her breasts sway gently as she sits straight again. She indulges him, the ache between her legs so strong it clouds all other thoughts, and leans back nonchalantly. She pushes her breasts upwards, tantalisingly closer to him, and sighs, parting her legs just enough to reel him all the way in.

His fingers falter and a dud note rings through the bedroom as his eyes drop to her entrance. He breathes heavily - she knows he can see that she's wet for him, turned on under his gaze. His eyes flit between her moisture and her breasts, unable to decide which he wants to look at more, and she chuckles, breaking her faux-obliviousness.

"Rayna," he warns, and she tips her head, flirting with him.

"What?" she asks with a heavy blink.

He can't resist. He gets to his knees, his chest rising rapidly. "Tease," he breathes, crawling towards her.

"I would never."

His penis springs before him, and Rayna starts to pant, anticipation making her limbs heavy. His eyes are dark and he puts his hands on either side of her hips, pushing her back onto her elbows. His tongue flicks out as he does so and laps at hers, disappearing when she meets it. He's going to toy with her, she knows, and she throbs everywhere at the thought.

He presses her back until her head drops onto the mattress and kisses her deeply for another brief moment, pulling his lips away when she chases him, until she hisses his name. He smirks at her and holds eye contact when two of his fingers dip inside her, swirling around and pushing in deep. When he pulls them out he lifts them to his lips and, head held above her, he sucks them into his mouth, licking the taste of her from them. Rayna bites hard on her bottom lip and squirms underneath him, and he repeats the action, dipping back into her for more.

"Damn, baby," he says, "you taste so fuckin' good. I can't get enough."

She can't speak to answer him, and he's on her breasts a moment later, one hand rubbing while he sucks the other nipple relentlessly. She pushes herself into his face and he sucks until she sees stars, and then he's between her legs, his hands on the insides of her thighs, his tongue pushing firmly into her. He laps over and over, drinking her, the scruff on his chin brushing against her soft skin and adding to her pleasure. She calls his name and arches her back, rubs against his face, grabs at his hair, pants and pants.

He sucks at her clit, but each time she's about to come he pulls back, watching her thrash about in the sheets and growl at him, his mouth wet where she's been, and when she comes back down he starts all over again. She knows she's done for when he holds her open with his fingertips and licks her as deep as he can, his thumb hooked inside her. She comes so hard she almost bolts right off the bed, but he keeps suckling at her until he's as satisfied as she is, full with her.

"Deacon," she whimpers in astonishment, spent and sprawled on the bed, her legs and arms wide. He moves up her body and kisses her cheeks, lays next to her and strokes her belly until she calms. When slowly the feeling comes back to her fingers and toes, she shakes her head at him.

"This is how the best songs get written, baby," he tells her, and he's damn right.

They settle, noses together, swapping soft kisses until they can think clearly again. Deacon pulls her into his body and holds her for a while, relishing the quiet of the night, the secret hours while everyone else sleeps.

"Sometimes I wish we could disappear," she whispers, her head on his chest.

He kisses her hair. "So let's. Let's go to the cabin - it's easier there. Just you and me, Ray. I can be better there, with you."

She looks up at him, sadness in her eyes. "I wish it was that easy."

"Maybe it is."

They know they need to take on the verse that touches on his rehab stays, the one they're both skirting around. There's a peppering of words on the page that smart to look at and they need to be made sense of, to be infused with sweet melancholy notes that make them easier, somehow, to swallow.

It was two months the first time, three the second. Neither stuck. He's back to drinking again, and he tells her he has it under control but they both know he doesn't. Rayna fears where it will lead this time, how bad it will get before he admits he needs more help. She hated taking him there, hated sitting in the back seat of Bucky's car with him the first time, wincing at every one of the harsh words he'd spit out. He'd had to be assigned a sponsor as a condition of release, and they'd let her set him up with Coleman, someone she knew would be good for him. It had helped, until it hadn't, and Coleman had been the one to drive them back to the facility for a second time after Deacon had fallen - pretty spectacularly - off the wagon.

She wonders if it will be Coleman the next time too, if he'll give her the same reassuring look as he strongarms Deacon out of the car and tells her to stay in it. She can still remember the scent of the air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, the rain on the roof as she'd sobbed and stared out of the window while they'd taken him away, out of her arms and out of her sight, all fists and curses and terror on his lovely face.

"I didn't want them to lock me in that place," Deacon tells her, and she looks up at him, part of her in the bed with him, part of her still in that car; maybe part of her will always be in that car. "It was like sharin' a prison cell with all my damn demons. The only thing got me through was knowin' you were waitin' for me out here, that I'd be able to breathe again once I got to hold you." She lifts herself upright, writes it down, shifts the words around, adds a couple. She tries not to run from the pain, to stay with it, to keep him there with her and turn it into words.

They'd stayed at the cabin for a week when he'd gotten out this time. Rayna had longed for him to come home so badly she'd made herself throw up more than once, and he'd written to her every day, letter after letter that he hadn't been allowed to send, had given to her in a bundle when she'd picked him up. Just her, she'd insisted - no Coleman, no Bucky. She'd set off to drive him home, one hand on the wheel and the other gripping his arm so tightly she'd thought she might break her fingers. She'd sped down the neverending driveway, desperate to get him away from there before they came out and claimed him back again, but when they'd made it onto the highway he'd begged her not to take him home, not yet. She'd changed direction without needing to ask where he wanted to go and they'd driven until the cabin had come into view.

He struggles to hold himself together as she sings the verse through, and she stops, the need to ease off clear. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and rests her forehead against his, breathing with him, in and out, her own heart aching brutally. Save us, she pleads to anyone who will hear her silence, save him.

And it's a release, in the end, an apology and a promise that have needed to meet, the song a conversation they've been not-having for far too long.

#

The air is cooler when Rayna wakes, the storm having temporarily chased some of the humidity away. She stirs before Deacon does, her limbs heavy, her head a little lighter than it's been in a while. They drive to the studio together, quiet most of the way, and when they walk through the door hand in hand, heads turn just as they knew they would, but Bucky and the band keep any thoughts unspoken.

It isn't fixed, Rayna knows - there is nothing that can magically solve their problems, no matter how pretty a melody, how earnest a vow. She sits on a stool opposite Deacon, restless with the anticipation of sharing a new song; he plays the opening notes and she starts to sing, the band gathered close to hear the run-through before they learn it.

He'll drink again, maybe not tonight, maybe not the next, but the one after that, and everything will fall apart once more. He'll miss rehearsals, she'll tell him he's fired, he'll beg her to forgive him. She'll tell him it's the last time she will, but it won't be. He'll tell her it's the last time he'll need her to, but it won't be. They have a long road ahead.

They lock eyes as they sing their words to each other, all their truth and all their pain pouring out, a cavern between them and yet no distance at all. They have no answers, but they have a song, and for now, it's enough.