A/N: You're not imagining things this update is REAL! It's only been three months yahoo! All standard messaging rates apply. Or whatever. Dedicated to my fav lobsters, Rachel, Laura & Shanna! THX for responding to my snippets the way you do!

VIII

it's better to feel pain than nothing at all

the opposite of love's indifference

The day Finn is due to arrive in New York, she puts on her favorite pair of jeans. She's growing up, you see. After all, she's been in New York since August and it's almost December now, and she finally feels like she belongs somewhere.

She trips when she puts them on and slams onto the ground, which is really so very embarrassing and Santana pops her head in the door with her eyebrows raised.

"Do I even wanna ask?"

Rachel glares from her newly vacuumed rug and manages to get her jeans over her hips and this blouse Finn likes over her shoulders. She's not – she's not dressing for him. She's not. She just…knows what he likes. The parts of her body that tempt him, and okay, maybe she wants to tempt him a little but they've been in an on again off again relationship since she was fifteen and so what if she wants to tempt him a little?

She steps out of her bedroom and into the kitchen, brews a pot of tea and leans against the counter. Santana's working today but not until ten thirty, so it doesn't really surprise Rachel when she steps into the kitchen and pours a glass of milk and starts ribbing Rachel.

"What, you dressing up for the giant?"

"Santana…"

"I mean, hey, I can't really stop you from letting him walk all over you." Rachel closes her eyes tight, tries not to say something mean or stupid. "I mean, you haven't seen him since…your birthday? Last year? And you invite him to stay here?"

"I asked you first," Rachel says, sort of softly. "I made sure before I told him he could."

"Hey, like I care if there's a third person to split this rent with, I just don't know why you're so insistent on always letting him back in your bed when he keeps breaking your heart."

She drinks a little angrily from her cup of tea and it scalds her tongue and she's so dumb sometimes and she's going to be late picking up Finn if she doesn't get going. "I know you're just being protective, I get it, and I love you for it, but – I love Finn. I tried to stop. I dated other people. We hurt each other but we fix each other, too."

"Fine," Santana mutters and Rachel's pulling a jacket on when she continues, "if he's a dick again, though, he needs to find somewhere to live."

She's nervous, standing by the escalators. He isn't her boyfriend but he's going to stay in her bed because their couch, well. It's small and uncomfortable and there's no way Santana wants him in her bed so naturally, hers is the only option. It's surprisingly big, her bed, a queen, and most nights she feels extraordinarily lonely in it all by herself.

Anyway. The nerves. They make her stomach feel all funny and full even though all she's had today is a cup of black tea. She can still feel the bitterness on her tongue and she wishes she had gum. Abruptly, she remembers Finn fishing a pack of gum out of his pockets in the hallway after class one day, the mint on his tongue in his bedroom, her foot knocking a stack of books on the floor. They'd barely even noticed, at the time, too caught up in those stolen moments together.

She looks at her watch, at the escalator, back at her watch. Finn messages her and says he's arrived so she waits near the mouth of the escalator, puts her hands in the pockets of her coat and then in back pockets of her jeans. Crosses them, uncrosses them, thinks of the papers she has due on Monday that she hasn't quite started, thinks of Finn kissing her, of him ignoring her calls, their game of break and mend they've been playing since he moved to California.

And then she looks up and sees Finn before he sees her, the expanse of his chest and shoulders. He's wearing a collared shirt beneath a sweater and a jacket she's never seen and it sort of hurts, missing these integral facets that develop, all his little idiosyncrasies that she used to have memorized that she might not know anymore.

She watches him look around nervously, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. There's another one in his hand, and it sends this little thrill down her spine, his luggage. He's staying.

When he spots her, he smile probably the most beautiful smile ever smiled by any person in the history of smiling, and that makes her feel all warm, too. She just loves him, so much, still, after all this time and months of not seeing each other beyond a random Skype video call that she spent most of crying into her hands because he was being too perfect and too sweet. (Santana had walked in and thought she was crying for real, like, sad crying.)

Finn pushes his way through the crowd to her and then he drops his duffel bag at her feet and she absolutely leaps at him. He's not even surprised, barely stumbles, catches her and his arms are stronger than she remembers when they wrap around her.

He doesn't kiss her but he breathes, his words their own sigh of relief, every syllable, "I missed you," like he's been waiting to say it since her last birthday.

This year she gets to celebrate it with him again, and perhaps not with him, but at least he'll be near. She doesn't tell him she missed him too even though she did (does). She thinks he knows.

"It's weird, you know?" He's being conversational, after he's put her back on her feet and she's swiped away the moisture beneath her eyes before he can see. He takes her hand.

"What's weird?"

"Like, this. New York." He shrugs, looks around. "I dunno. You're gonna get, like, mad at me, or think I'm being a weird old guy, but I still feel like you're my sixteen year old girlfriend sometimes. Like I need to protect you, still. And you don't need that anymore. Because you're an adult."

She wrinkles her nose and swings their hands. "I don't feel like an adult."

He kisses the top of her head and they're stopped at a crosswalk it. "You look like it."

"Really?"

He nods, closes his eyes, yawns. She supposes it does feel early for him. "I'm taking a nap in your bed as soon as we get back," he says. Yawns again.

She would kiss him if it didn't feel wrong, even though he must be somewhat her boyfriend. Santana is gone when they get back and Finn falls asleep in her bed and she unpacks his things for him, pretends she doesn't notice the box of condoms she puts in the night stand on the other side of her bed even though her cheeks are hot for hours after. He wants to have sex. More than likely with her.

They've done it before, of course, but it's been awhile. She's starting to think maybe she doesn't know Finn as well as she'd thought. She's unpacking all these shirts she doesn't recognize, random band (she thinks) tee shirts and all these books she's never even heard of. He uses weird razors now but still uses the cologne she bought him for his birthday when they were really dating.

She's putting it beside his shaving cream in her bathroom and she just takes a breath of it, remembers kissing the part of his neck where the smell was most concentrated, remembers him pulling her into his chest in the hallways, laughing, inundated by the smell of his cologne in his shirt.

And then, she thinks, maybe it's a bit silly, thinking about his cologne so much when he wants to have sex with her and she climbs onto her bed beside him.

In the afternoon, fresh from a nap, she leads him around her campus by the hand, stumbling a little, walking backwards and they laugh together in that familiar way that you laugh with someone who watched you grow up, who you watched grow up.

He's wearing a hat and the way his fingers fold around hers is different and she remembers that their hands don't quite match up. "You're still so fucking small," he murmurs. She thinks it might be an insult, like how her dance teacher calls her a dwarf fairy sometimes, but he's smiling and she remembers that at one point in her life and their shared history, he couldn't get enough of her.

"I don't have an unlimited supply of steroids available to me like you do out in California," she teases and he wrinkles his nose.

They're at Starbucks, now, and he orders his usual and begins to order her a tea but she stops him and orders a skinny vanilla latte and she ignores the little exhale he releases when she orders and then pays for the both of them.

"When did you start liking coffee?"

"Um," she squints and the barista calls her name and she pretends she doesn't see his flirtatious smile or the heart left on the bottom of the cup and Finn puts his arm around her shoulders and it takes her a moment, by now unfamiliar with the weight of his arm, to allow her muscles to relax, to curl into him as best she can. "Junior year."

"Oh," he says and they sit in this corner and drink their coffee and don't look at each other.

Finally, she asks, "when did you change your major?"

"Uh, I don't really remember. Beginning of sophomore year? I think."

"Why?"

"I wanted to help people like my—and teaching just…felt…right." He closes his eyes. "Like, when I try and picture ten years in the future, that's what I see. Me, teaching."

"What else do you see?" She wonders if there's an older version of herself beside him in those dreams but he opens his eyes and scrunches his nose.

"I'll tell you another time. 'Kay?"

She nods and they finish their coffees and chat idly and when they get back it's almost seven and she's exhausted but Santana's getting ready to go out and she invites them but Rachel says no expecting Finn to stay at the apartment with her, but instead he nods and agrees to go out with Santana.

"Are you, like, mad?"

She's lying on her bed and reading the next chapter in her book for school and she looks up and shakes her head once. He's just wearing this gray tee shirt and jeans and he lowers himself onto the bed beside her.

"I feel like I should hang out with Santana. She's my friend, too, you know?"

"You're allowed to go out, Finn, I don't really care that much what you do."

She doesn't know what comes over her, but suddenly she wants to hurt him, in that moment and she immediately regrets it because he frowns and nods. "Okay. Cool. As long as you don't mind."

"I don't," she says, "and I hope you have fun. Please be safe."

He smiles at her and kisses her forehead. "I'll see you later. Don't, like, wait up, okay?" She nods. She does have an early shift at the music store she's working at and she needs rest.

She watches him leave and Santana calls out and she spends her night alone, writes her papers, drinks tea, watches some silly romantic comedy on the television and goes to sleep before midnight.

Finn and Santana are exorbitantly loud when they arrive home, much past one in the morning, and when Finn tiptoes in her room, she knows he's trying to be quiet so not to wake her. But he bangs his knee quite loudly into something and curses in this loud hushed whisper and she hears the zipper on his jeans and his rustling through his bags because he hasn't unpacked yet.

He smells like cigarette smoke and alcohol when he slides into bed beside her and curves his body around hers. "Hi," she murmurs, turning her head to look at his face. He's smiling. "How was the bar with Santana?"

"Woulda been better if you came," he says and nuzzles his face into the crook of her neck. She turns and lets him kiss her even though his mouth tastes like beer and he smells like a bar and they aren't really dating but it's a short kiss, a goodnight kiss, and she pulls away after a minute and closes her eyes and in the morning when he wakes up with a pounding headache and a spotty memory, she doesn't mention it, that clandestine kiss. She wants to keep it simply hers.

Finn is a very considerate roommate. He always makes sure her alarm is set and cleans his plates and empties the dishwasher when it's his night on the chore cycle. And he's always willing to finish his shower early if she needs to pee – because even if they dated and are friends and sharing a bed now, she can't just walk in on him showering. They may be extraordinarily close but they aren't that close.

He always walks her home from the subway and always texts her his estimated arrival time. When she has a late rehearsal for whatever student directed play she's volunteering in, he comes to campus and they eat late dinners together and walk back to the apartment.

There are unforeseen obstacles. He likes to cuddle when he sleeps, for instance, and she always wakes up spooned against him and feels him hard against her. And she wants to kiss him because he's attractive and she knows exactly what it's like to feel his body on hers.

It's dating without the messy parts. The better parts and the harder parts and she feels almost like nothing to him and she can't decide if this is better or worse than that strange pending stage they were in at the beginning of her junior year, when every phone call from him felt like hours and the time away from him hurt more than anything. It was harder being in a relationship than not, it hurt more. Conceivably, being his friend should hurt less—but she thinks this hurts more than anything.

She needs certainty.

"So, wait," Santana says, licks her yogurt spoon, "it sucks more being, like, roommates and bedmates with him than being an entire country apart from him?"

"Yes," she responds, folds one of Finn's shirts that found its way into her laundry. "Is that bizarre?"

"I'm sorry, is my tone not sarcastic enough? Yes. Totally bizarre. If it sucks so much, why don't you, like, do something about it?"

She squints and piles her folded laundry in a laundry basket. "I think I'm scared. He scares me."

"It would've been easier to, like, move beyond this if you'd taken my advice and allowed yourself to get over him when he first left."

"I don't want to get over him—"

"Get over who?"

"Finn!" She and Santana share a worried glance and she turns and looks at him, standing in the doorway, unwinding a scarf from around his neck. "How long have you been there?"

"Not long," he shrugs and toes off his boots and falls onto the couch beside her. "Who don't you want to get over?"

She wonders if his curiosity is more than that of a nosy roommate and if he's jealous. "No one," she says.

"You can tell me," he insists, "I'm one of the girls."

"Nice try, Hudson," Santana says and stands, crosses into the kitchen and tosses her yogurt cup away. "But I don't think that's gonna work."

Finn sighs and she won't look at him. "C'mon, Rach," he murmurs in this smooth and charming voice she knows is trying to coerce her, "I'll give you a foot massage if you tell me."

She raises her eyebrows and looks at him. "You'll do it anyway."

"Will I? What if I withhold them forever?"

She stands up and balances her laundry basket against her hip. "You're being quite overdramatic today, Finn Hudson."

He follows her into her room—their room—and he flops onto his side of the bed and watches her put away laundry. "We're friends, aren't we?"

She pauses. Then, "yes."

"Okay. So, like…friends tell friends secrets."

"No, they do not, but I applaud your attempt."

"You tell Santana everything!"

"Santana is my soul sister." He rolls his eyes. "Finn, telling you things is…complicated."

"How?"

"Finn, we dated for almost three years on and off and you broke my heart. I can't just tell you everything like we don't have a past."

He doesn't say anything for a long time and she finishes tidying up their room and when she finally turns to look at him he's just lying on the bed staring at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry," she offers and sits daintily on the edge of the couch. "I shouldn't have been so blunt."

"No," he says and his voice is soft in a very contrite way. "I was really an idiot. I really am an idiot."

"You aren't." She wants to take his hand.

"I still—I still want you," he whispers and his face sort of relaxes and softens and he looks at her just like he did after the first time they kissed. He repeats, "I want you."

He leans up and he's going to kiss her, she knows it, and if she lets him, she won't have time to heal and she'll lose him again so just when his mouth is a centimeter from pressed against hers, she pushes at his shoulders, lightly, of course, and he moves away. His cheeks are red and now he won't look at her.

"Finn," she says, and her heart is pounding a little from his proximity. She presses her palm against his shoulder. "Please. It's not—it's not that I don't…"

"Don't what?"

She tilts her head and folds her legs and sits beside him, his body on the edge of the bed, turned towards the door, hers facing his side, her fingers curving around his forearm. "It's not that I don't love you, Finn. I just…you need…to give me time. To be certain."

He flops onto his back and stares at the ceiling. "I feel like time is running out but really, we've got all the time in the world." He props himself up on one elbow and looks and looks and looks at her. "I can wait for you. I—I will. Wait for you."

"I can't ask you to do that," she murmurs and trails her fingers up and down his forearm.

"You're not asking. I'm—I'm telling." He kisses her on the forehead and lingers for a very long time. "I know things with us have been tumultuous. But I wanna be with you. And I'm ready, now, and I know I wasn't here for you before, but I'm ready and I want this, you, and I'll wait until you want me, too."

"Even if it takes twenty years and we probably won't be able to have babies together?" she whispers and he makes this little groaning noise and presses his forehead against

"Even if we can't have a family," he reiterates and she wants him to kiss her. But he doesn't and he pulls away and squeezes her shoulder. "I think I'm gonna go for a walk. If you need me, just call, all right?"

She watches him go and she pulls her knees to her chest and leans against the headboard and thinks.

"So, tonight," Finn says, flops onto her (their) bed with his shoes still on and she turns from where she's applying eyeliner in the vanity and pulls off his shoes for him. "Thanks, sweetheart. Anyway. Tonight. We marathon—"

"I can't," she interrupts and meets his eyes in the mirror. "I'm…I'm going out."

"Out? Like, with Santana?"

She shakes her head. "This boy, Brody, from my dance class. I'm sure I've mentioned him before."

"Rachel…" She can hear it in his voice. She's breaking his heart.

Her breath feels like it's too shallow or something and she puts down her eyeliner and looks him in the eye. "It's not…I don't like him. Brody. I mean, I like him. He's nice, and he likes me, and he flirts with me, but—but I. I don't know how to say this without sounding horrible and making you hate me."

"I won't," he says it, with his eyes all earnest and beautiful like morning, "I won't hate you."

"If I want to be…sure…of us. Of this. I need to—to date other people." He squints at her. "Please don't look at me like that. Brody's been asking me out for weeks, Finn, it's—it's one date. I just want to be sure. I'm not marrying him."

Her thoughts feel very convoluted and she puts her hand on his shoulder and slips her feet into her high heels and Brody knocks on the door ten minutes late and she ignores Finn's scoff from the living room and the date is nice. He's nice. He calls her sexy and pays for her dinner and walks her home and it's a very nice date but when she's at her door she doesn't ask to see him again and she doesn't kiss him and she tilts her cheek when he leans in so his mouth presses there instead of her lips.

"I don't think I can," she says when he asks for another date.

"We'll see," he responds and kisses her mouth anyway and she's frowning when she walks in. The lights are mostly off because it's after midnight and Santana's working early tomorrow and she toes off her heels and just stands in the cool dark of the kitchen.

"Hey," a familiarly soft voice says and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

"Finn Hudson," she exclaims, "don't sneak up on me!"

"Sorry," he apologizes, flicking the dim kitchen light on. He's wearing just his plaid flannel pajama pants and she thinks about feeling the fabric between her bare legs when she goes to sleep tonight. "How was the date with Brady?"

"Brody," she corrects, smiling a little, her back to him as she pours water into her electronic kettle and sets it to boil.

"Brody," he repeats. He steps closer and she can feel his body behind her. "How was it?"

"It was…" She pauses and her back is still to him but he's stepping close so that he's pressed right against her. "Illuminating."

He hums and presses his hands over her hips and she doesn't want to do this, here, when she can still taste another boy's mouth on hers, can still feel eyeliner painted like acrylic on her face. He turns her gently and she thinks about how familiarly his hands move over her body, a potter with his clay; when they kiss, finally, she won't be able stop.

"I don't want to do this here," she says, "not now."

"Did he kiss you?" He presses his thumb against her bottom lip where her lipstick is smudged and automatically her tongue swipes across the surface.

"Yes."

"Did you kiss him back?" She slips out of his grasp and walks down the hall to their bedroom and he watches her unbutton her blouse and slip it off her shoulders and he's all tucked in bed when she emerges from the bathroom, dressed in her favorite pair of pajamas. He repeats his question.

"No," she says softly, shuts the bedside lamp off. She hears his breath lurch, feels his body meet in the middle with hers, curved like two parentheses. "I didn't."

It's dark and she can hear his breathing even and not sleep heavy quite yet and his fingers brush against hers. "Why?"

She blinks and she blushes and she's glad for the cloak of darkness when she tells him, "He wasn't...you. He wasn't you. And I only ever want to kiss you."

His breath hitches and they don't kiss, but they will, and soon, because she's more than halfway ready.

He takes her to dinner, just the two of them, and he doesn't try to hold her hand or kiss her when they get back to the apartment. Nonetheless, it feels remarkably date-like, especially when he insists on paying for her and when they're back at the apartment, in their bedroom, and he's undressed and just in his pajamas and is reading some book and she's brushing her hair out at her vanity, she decides,

"I really like you here."

He glances up from the book and smiles a little. "Here? Like in your bed?"

"No," she insists quickly, cheeks warming, "here, like, in New York." And then, placing the brush down and rising from her seat, "With me."

She curls beneath the blankets and he's smiling and he looks back to his book. "Your birthday is next week."

"Indeed it is."

"You're gonna be nineteen."

"And you are going to be twenty-one, soon."

"That's besides the point." He puts his book on the nightstand and looks at her. "What do you want to do?"

"Something that I've never done before."

"Okay." She expects him to say something more but he doesn't say anything. "Mind if I turn the light out? Are you ready for bed?"

"Wait," she says, putting her hand on his wrist, "what was tonight about?"

"Huh?"

"I mean…" Her cheeks feel pink. "You know."

"It was just dinner, Rach," he says, but he puts his hand on her cheek and the mirth on his face dissolves. "We're getting there, right?"

She scoots closer to him and slips her leg between his. And she won't kiss him even though she could. "Yes, we are. We're almost."

"Almost," he repeats and he leans in and she thinks it'll happen here, the kiss that reunites them. Instead, he kisses her cheek and she falls asleep curled into his chest.

"Wake up, sleepyhead," Finn murmurs, pressing his mouth against her cheek, her temple. "C'mon. It's your birthday! Wake up!"

She blinks sleepily and squints at him. "I don't have class till two," she groans, tries burrowing under the pillows, but he presses his palm against her back.

"I made you breakfast in bed, you idiot," he says, laughing, and she cracks one eye open to see a tray balanced on top of her dresser. "All your favorites, or, well, Santana said they were your favorites."

She doesn't know what to do other than sit up and stare at him and smile at him. It's snowing outside and the light in their bedroom (because it really has become theirs, Finn's things littered with hers, and she's dreading this summer when he'll invariably leave her) is gray and Finn's body is warm when it slides beneath the covers beside her after balancing the tray over her lap.

"You didn't have to do this," she says, taking a long sip of her tea. "Finn."

"I wanna make your birthday special." He sighs. "All your birthdays."

They're quiet while she eats and he even takes the plates and cleans them for her while she takes a bath and he walks her all the way to the subway and even rides the subway with her to NYADA.

"I'm gonna be here when you get out," he says. "Promise."

He's there and he takes her to dinner and she finally feels like she's ready, like she's had her month to heal, and he puts her hand on his elbow when he walks them back to their apartment and she tells him about this dog she saw last week and she's not sure, really, why it feels relevant but he's laughing and she's laughing and they stop in front of the apartment door and he puts both his hands on her shoulders.

"Good birthday?"

"The best," she says and he presses his thumb against the little pink pendant he gave her for her fifteenth birthday, which still might be the very best birthday gift she's ever gotten. It would be perfect, right now, for him to kiss her, for them to reunite, to meet in the middle, because he's already opened himself and offered his heart in his hands and she knows, okay? She knows it's her turn. "You make every birthday amazing."

His hand curves over her shoulder and his thumb runs along her collarbone. "I missed one," he murmurs. "Seventeen."

"It's okay," she says. "It's okay."

He meets her eyes and she puts her hands on the lapels of his coat and she's going to do it. She's going to stretch onto her tiptoes and kiss him but his lips curl into this smile and he pushes open the door of the apartment and it's black and he switches the light on and she hears, "Surprise!"

"You planned me a surprise party?"

All of her friends are there and everyone's hugging her and there's wine and people are shoe-less and sock-footed and she kicks off her high heels and Santana pours her a glass of wine and kisses her cheek and pours her a glass of wine that splashes all over the hardwood floor.

She's never, ever had a surprise party in her life and she can't stop squealing and she finishes her glass of wine and the plum liquid splashes over the edge of her customized, thanks to Santana, wine glass when she pours a second glass and Finn puts his hand on her waist.

"Having fun?"

"This is the best," she says already feeling a little dizzy from the wine and he laughs and he kisses her forehead. "You are the best."

He has a beer in his hand and she drinks her wine staring straight at him and he's smiling and he doesn't say anything.

"Tonight," she murmurs, presses her palm against his and hooks her arm around Kurt's—Kurt's—neck because he flew in from California because he decided New York wasn't the place for him and he's here for her birthday and they dance to this random Flaming Lips song that Finn's been, like, obsessed with since it was in Friday Night Lights and the plum of her wine splashes onto Kurt's white sleeve and she apologizes for, like, three hours but he says it's fine and twirls her and she laughs and it's the best birthday ever.

"Finn looks like he's going to eat you," Santana says, her words a little slurred and Rachel gasps.

"Do you really think he's going to try?"

Some song is thumping bass with a dance beat and she doesn't really know the song beyond Finn playing it around the apartment when they cook dinner together on Sundays and she realizes as she jumps up and down in her living room between her friends from NYADA and her best friend from high school that she's been dating Finn without kissing and having sex and being and acknowledging how much they love each other and quite frankly that is stupid so she stumbles out of the cluster of dancing friends and finds Finn in the corner of the living room near the fire escape and he's standing with Kurt who she pecks on the cheek for the four hundredth time tonight and he disappears when he sees Rachel reach for Finn.

"Hi, baby," Finn says when she puts her arms around his neck and he laughs when she guides them, stumbling ever so slightly, onto the fire escape. "What're you doing?"

"Remember," she breathes, spreading her fingers out on his shoulders, "remember I said I needed to be certain?"

"No," he murmurs.

"That's okay," she assures him and leans onto his tiptoes and kisses his jaw. "I don't think I said it to you, out loud. But—I'm certain. I am ready, Finn."

"Really?"

"I want you," she whispers, her mouth right against his ear. "I love you."

She kisses him, then. Finally. And he tastes just like beer and smells just like Finn and cologne and a little like a party and the air is cold on her bare shoulders and he wraps his arms all around her, crushing her a little against his chest and he's so warm and his skin is so familiar against her palm as she presses it against her cheek and she learns to breathe through her nose to kiss him differently.

Eventually, she pulls away and when she pulls in one shallow breath, he kisses her again. The party is still going on inside and the music is still playing and he leads her inside and she pours herself a third and final glass of wine, for the both of them to share, and he laces their fingers together and takes her into their—their —room and he presses her onto the bed and kisses her and kisses her and just before her dress is off, he kisses the nape of her neck.

"I love you," he says, hooking his thumbs on the waistband of her tights, tugging them off her legs. "Are you sure?"

She puts her hand on his cheek. "This is the best birthday ever. And I love you. And I will always, probably, certainly, love you."

"We need to—to talk."

She kisses him and it goes on almost forever, she thinks, this one kiss stretched into her entire lifetime with him and his mouth is on her neck when she tells him, "We'll talk in the morning. Promise."

tbc