Provinces.

570 words. Dollhouse. Priya/Tony.

They take the first motel off the highway, some old, broken place that Echo can't stop reaching out for, touching the walls and tables, chairs, closets like she remembers it somehow, like she can't quite put her finger on the hows or the whys. Like she's not sure it matters.

Priya doesn't quite understand why they couldn't have found somewhere with more than two beds, but Tony volunteers for the floor like he'd prefer it, drops like a sack of whatever, as Echo and Priya find their way to the beds.

The mattress is too hard, the pillow coarse beneath her neck, and she spends the night dreaming of things she doesn't remember. There are gaps in her memory now, here, lapses that leave her falling and starting like a stalling car, but the need to kiss and touch and have are as steadfast in the pit of her stomach as if they've been there a lifetime. On some level, she supposes they have.

She can hear Tony breathing on the floor, the hitches and inhales echoing in her head like a soundtrack, a score to the film of her life, and she drops her head over the edge of the bed to see him sitting up, watching her from the floor, eyes open and lips wet and parted. When she catches his eye, he looks away, embarrassed.

"This is just—" Tony stops, halts, like a car in reverse, "Sorry. I—" he can't finish, shakes his head before he drops it in his hands, and Priya memorises every nuance, every twitch of muscle under fine skin and all the places he looks broken. She wants to fill the gaps in his armor like a mould or a skin, like a sin for him to take apart. She's never felt as whole as she does here with him, in some beat up motel room, with Echo asleep in the other bed.

"I get it," she says, hums, pushing her hair back to stop herself from reaching out and pushing his. "We barely know each other."

He looks up at that, eyes wide and unblinking like he's back in uniform, wherever it was that he was based, and that she's an enemy or a victim, she's not sure. He shakes his head, and it's violent, hard. "That's not –fuck."

It's quiet after that, too much, and she waits for him to say something else, but instead he hisses like an animal, lies back down with his back to her. She can see the way he shakes, hits the floor with the palm of his hand and she can imagine it already, his eyes clenched shut and his mouth a tight line that she wants to kiss back open, neck taut and waiting for her fingers, and she has to shake the thought from her head.

She doesn't remember falling asleep after that, but she remembers dreaming of him, sprawled out beneath her like a model, a doll, of dripping paint across his skin and making art of him, on him, of kissing him until they're a part of the same painting, hung up in some gallery for forever. It's dumb, and it's perfect, and she'll wake up on the floor with him, his breath on the back of her neck and his arm around her waist and it'll feel right. Safe. She figures that's probably all that matters right now.