Work Text:
I Want You…
Monday, April 1st, 2024. 00:37 A.M.
They manage to make it to his car and drive out before the horde of reporters catches up to them. In hindsight he probably should have brought the mech so they could just fly out of here, but it wouldn’t have worked with their fancy outfits and making sure they stayed presentable by the time they got to the party.
Doesn’t matter now. They’re on the road. Driving home. Party’s over.
Robert can’t help his gaze from drifting to Courtney. She’s wearing a big, satisfied smile. Looking at the road ahead with almost dreamy eyes.
“You look happy,” he comments with a helpless smile of his own.
“Yeaaah, cause I am.” She grins.
“The sex was that good?” Robert teases.
She snorts. “Yeah. Uh-huh. The sex was great. Greatest of my life.”
“He sounds like a nice guy. Maybe you should marry him.” His words register in his brain a second too late. Her lack of verbal reaction and the way her eyes pop make his stomach clench. “That was … a joke. I didn’t mean… Not that I wouldn’t consider—” Okay, he’s just digging himself a bigger hole the more he speaks. “I was just trying to be smooth. Funny… Smooth.” He settles on that one.
“Yeah?” Courtney side-eyes him. “How’s that working out for ya?”
“Not good.” He gulps.
“So maybe we should change the subject.”
“Yeah. Let’s change the subject.”
Silence. The awkward kind.
Courtney shifts in her seat, assuming a straighter posture. “You want to marry me?”
“Courtney…” he exhales. “That wasn’t what I—”
“So you don’t want to marry me?”
Fuck. Leave it to him to set up a minefield with his bare fucking hands and still end up blindly running through it like a fucking idiot.
“I mean, eight months is pretty long to be in a relationship by my standards,” she says, “but I still don’t think it’s long enough for me to consider marriage.”
“Yeah. That’s okay,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to… It was a stupid joke.”
“So you think marrying me is stupid? And a joke?”
Oh, she’s having a field day with this one. He sighs, “I can’t win with ya, can I?”
She snickers. “I just wanna figure this out.”
“I don’t know why I said that,” he admits. “It just slipped out.”
“Probably cause of all those suicide shots you had.”
“Yeah, you know what? It’s probably that.”
Hopefully they can stop talking about this now.
“I mean … I’d probably ask me again once it’s been a year at least,” she says.
“Yeah, see, the thing is that I wasn’t—this was not a proposal,” he clarifies—which he’s sure she already knows. She’s just fucking with him right now because she still gets off on fucking with him all the damn time, and he loves that about her. Adores it. “Not to mention if I were gonna propose, I’d make sure I had a ring first.”
“Sure, but I’m just saying,” Courtney continues, “if you were going to propose, now’s probably not the time.”
“Okay. Got it. Loud and clear. Not gonna propose to you now. Ya happy?” He wasn’t thinking about it anyway. But there’s still the smallest twinge of disappointment in his stomach.
“Okay,” she says. “Also if I were you, I probably wouldn’t worry about that ring too much. I don’t think I’d want anything super expensive.”
“Right.” Robert’s hands tighten around the steering wheel. His eyes remain focused on the road. The silence that follows tells him this conversation’s over. But he just can’t help himself. He opened the floodgates, might as well jump into the current. “Do you see us getting married?”
“Robert—”
“Just conceptually,” he explains. “I’m not saying we’re gonna do it for sure. But is it something you considered? Ever? Since we…”
“I-I… Uh…” Courtney stutters. Then she inhales a breath, exhales, as if biding her time to find the right thing to say. She fiddles with her purse on her lap. “Robert, a year ago I thought you were dead—that I killed you. Eight months ago I thought you were gonna kill me after I told you the truth… None of what happened since is something I considered. None of it.”
That twinge of disappointment slowly melts away into something lighter on his stomach. Something more akin to reassurance.
“Yeah. Me neither,” he says. “Sometimes I do wonder if I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“About the stars,” he says with a playful nod upwards and a point with his index finger through the windshield. The sky’s clear tonight. Sparkling. “And fate.”
Courtney’s snicker is faint but audible.
Robert catches her lips curling from the corner of his eye. “Whatchu smiling about?”
“Nothing…” She turns her head to him, her voice nostalgic and warm when she murmurs, “This is nice.”
“I’m sensing an I told you so coming.”
“No, just … it’s a big day for me.” Then she holds up her hands and starts counting on her fingers. “Being your plus one. Seeing you jealous. Public sex. Outing ourselves as a couple. A lot of first times in one night…”
When she puts it like that, yeah. Definitely a busy night.
“It’s nice,” she repeats.
“I agree.” He reaches for her hand and links their fingers together. “We’ll figure out this next part together. Okay?”
“Mhm.” She sounds calm and yet, Robert can sense her unease in the way she squeezes his hand.
“No matter what happens, Court,” he assures her.
Courtney rests her head back against the headrest, looking his way still, smiling. She looks so comfortable. So peaceful. And maybe a tad tired. “Yeah.”
***
Once they pick up Beef from the landlords, they head straight for their apartment. Robert unlocks the door and Courtney proceeds inside with Beef in her arms. First thing she does is flick on the small lights and kick off her heels in the middle of the living room. The second she sets Beef down, he immediately runs to his food bowl in the kitchen. That dog’s always hungry for some reason. Robert used to think it was the loneliness but evidently that’s not it at all.
Door closed and locked, Robert throws the keys into the bowl on the end table.
Finally home, thank God. Their home—theirs. As in they’re sharing it. Officially. One apartment. Two bedroom, two bathroom. A kitchen and a decently-sized open living space. Even got room for a dining table. A pretty big upgrade from the studio apartment he occupied before. Courtney says the view’s not as nice as in her old apartment, but he wakes up every morning to her gorgeous face, so she clearly doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.
“Man, I fucking hate high heels…” Courtney throws her purse on the coffee table and crashes on the couch, massaging her feet, curling and uncurling her toes. “Whoever made them was definitely a man, and he definitely hated women.”
“Actually, the first high heels were worn by men. Persian soldiers,” Robert says, kicking off his own loafers. They’re no heels, but they are newly-bought, and that makes them uncomfortable by default.
“You’re fucking with me,” Courtney says.
“Nope.” Robert shakes his head. “You can look it up.”
“Too tired,” she sighs.
“Well, then you’ll just have to trust me.” He smiles. “Need me to carry you?”
“Hey, if you got the energy, be my guest. Cause I wasn’t planning on leaving this couch anytime soon.”
Robert obliges, sliding an arm under her knees and the other behind her back. Courtney holds onto his shoulders while he straightens and lifts her up.
“How much money you think people would pay for a photo of Invisigal being carried bridal style?” Robert teases, then immediately bites his tongue. Clearly he’s still running through that minefield. “That… The bridal part wasn’t… Shit. You know what? I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”
And apparently Courtney elects to do the same. She just clings to him in silence while he carries her to their bedroom, then into their en-suite bathroom.
They moved here a month ago. The landlords instantly adored them—well, they instantly adored Beef. And surprisingly Courtney’s overly vulgar sex jokes endeared her to them. Something that doesn’t happen often with old couples, but Leonard and Dianne Miller are a pair of potty-mouths themselves. They’re still passionately in love with each other, and their excitement about a new young couple moving in together for the first time was very … colorful. That and they probably like making money. Four thousand dollars a month isn’t cheap. Thank God he and Courtney can afford it. And they did luck out with a discount upon disclosing they were Mecha Man and Invisigal, which the couple agreed to keep under a lid. They had to know in order for Robert to secure a spot for his backup suit.
The couple had watched Beef for them while they were at the party—they’d offered on week one to be his babysitters during Courtney’s and Robert’s workshifts. It helps that they have a dog Beef loves to hang out with. A corgi named Latte.
Overall, this has been a nice change so far. Only a month in and it already feels like home.
Maybe…
Maybe that’s where the marriage thing came from. It’s not something he thought about before. Not something he ever considered for himself. Ever. Not even when he and Courtney started dating. Granted, growing up, Robert didn’t have big role models in that department. His dad had a lot of … what one might call “commitment issues.” The kind you don’t notice as a kid because you’re more busy blaming your mother for leaving you in the first place. But then you become an adult and reflect on certain fond memories you had with your dad, and you start to realize maybe your mom had a good reason to leave a man who spent all his time at parties flirting with a bunch of different women, some of whom were married. It makes Robert wonder how he even came to existence. If maybe, from the start, he was only there to carry the Mecha Man legacy. Nothing but an heirloom.
But there’s something about coming home every night to this lovely old couple who have been married for fifty three years, waiting for them with their adorable small dog, that makes Robert’s heart melt. That puts this unfamiliarly warm feeling in his chest and makes him think: I’d like to have that. It makes him think: I’d like to have that with Courtney.
Is it too soon to be thinking about it? Probably. It hasn’t even been a year since they got together. And judging by how quiet she is, he probably shouldn’t have said anything about it, not even as a joke. But also … it’s important to establish what it is they both expect of their relationship. And … probably equally as important to discuss if something about those expectations changes. Which … it might be. For him at least.
He flicks the light on with his nose, then sets Courtney down by the bathtub. She’s hesitant to let go of him, so he gives her a quick kiss to soothe their separation.
“So, on a scale from one to ten, how fucking boring was that party?” he asks.
“Oh, I think I’d put it at almost blew my brains out but you fucked them instead.”
“So not bad? Would do again?”
“The fucking? Sure.” She shrugs. “The party? I dunno… I guess we’ll have to wait and … see. What happens.”
Meaning with the headlines tomorrow and how much unwanted attention they’ll be garnering in the coming weeks. Fair.
“Thank you for coming anyway.” Robert shrugs off his suit jacket and tosses it into the laundry basket.
“Mhm.”
He catches her eyes in the mirror above the sink while working on his tie next. “I mean it.”
“And I said mhm.” Courtney pushes off the sliding glass door of the bathtub and walks up behind him. Her arms surround his waist. Smooth hands slide up his front. She pulls his half-undone tie loose and lets it fall on the countertop of the sink.
Robert places a hand on top of hers while she plants a kiss to the back of his shoulder. “You okay?”
She’s usually chattier, no matter how long a day they’ve had. But all she gives him in response is another shoulder kiss. Her fingers then move to the buttons of his waist coat, undoing them top to bottom, using their reflection in the mirror to guide her motions. Despite how delicate she’s being, Robert has more than one reason to think he may or may not have killed the mood and she’s just looking for a distraction. Also he’s gonna lose his mind if they don’t clear the air about it.
“Courtney, what I said earlier … about, uh…” How you should marry me, he doesn’t add. Because, wait, what if bringing it back up will make it way more serious than he intended for it to be?
She’s holding his eyes while she slips the unbuttoned waist coat off his shoulders. Robert momentarily loses his train of thought with the intentional dragging of her hands down his arms, and once the waist coat’s off, to his sides, then up his torso. His muscles twitch, her touch now more pronounced with the removed layer of fabric. He didn’t get to feel her as much as he wanted earlier, and that fact is dawning on him fast.
He swallows the lump forming in his throat. “I just want you to know I wouldn’t have said that if I knew it’d make you uncomfortable…”
“Who said I was uncomfortable?” Half of her face is hidden behind him, but enough of it is there to see the way her brows arch in challenge.
Robert forgets whatever he planned to say when she caresses his chest. One of her hands slides higher to undo the first button of his shirt in a fast flick. With every button undone, his pulse jumps, eyes desperately tracking her fingers as they go lower and lower.
“You gonna answer the question?” she breathes against the back of his neck. Hot and chilling at the same time, triggering a shiver in response.
Ah, fuck…
“You’ve been…” He tries to stand still as she untucks his shirt from under his pants, all the while running a finger along the waistband. “You’ve just been quiet…”
“I’m sure we can fix that,” she murmurs and plants a kiss close to his ear this time. Soft lips against his skin, slowly wrapping around his earlobe. Robert jolts at the contact. His hands fly to the countertop for support.
Yep. He should have known she’d seize the opportunity. Fluster him even more than he already is. She doesn’t get the chance to do that often because he’s usually always got the upper hand in that department. And as much as he loves that. As much he loves making her fold and squirm and beg under his touch, he’s equally weak to being on the receiving end. The fact she’s so quick to jump on the chance to flip the tables is a bonus turn-on.
Courtney keeps one hand on his waistband and pulls at his unbuttoned shirt with the other. The chill that consumes him when her body parts from his is merciless, but he uses the chance to get rid of the shirt for her. She tosses it back and it lands somewhere near the tub.
Her finger trails along his waist, and that’s pretty much all it takes to have him throbbing in his pants. Aching for her hand. Her lips. Fuck. Anything she’ll give him, really. He’s never been picky.
“What were you thinking about?” she asks. “At the party. When you saw me with Sweetalker?”
“Seriously?” Robert catches her eyes through the mirror. To say he’s mildly disturbed is an understatement. “That’s what you want to hear? You want me to talk about some other guy while you’re—”
“What were you thinking?” she insists, and the emphasis isn’t lost on him.
Jesus. Fuck. Okay. Robert can’t really protest, not when he’s at her mercy here. “I was thinking…” he breathes, “I didn’t like it…”
“Mmm, might need more detail than that. Paint me a vivid picture,” she says, fingers fiddling with the buckle of his belt, tortuously slow.
“I didn’t like … watching someone else make you laugh like that.” He inhales through gritted teeth. Every word puts up a fight against a sigh before it comes out of his mouth. “I was thinking … I didn’t know if I ever made you laugh that much.”
Robert watches her every move in the reflection before him. She takes her sweet time pulling the belt tip through the loop. Prolongs the process of freeing the prong for no other reason than to fucking torture him, he’s sure. And it feels like an eternity before the belt slips through the buckle and takes away half of the pressure on him. But he can tell from the way she’s circling the button of his pants that she wants to hear more before setting him free.
“I didn’t like the way he looked at you whenever you got distracted with your phone,” he says, “I didn’t like the way he looked at you when you got up and came to me.”
“How did he look at me?” She undoes the button, and Robert exhales with the removal of yet another source of pressure. But still not enough. Not nearly enough. He wants everything else to come off too.
“Like … he wanted you. The same way I want you.” He strains for a breath, watching her fingers as they find the zipper. Please. “No. Not the same way. He just wanted to fuck you.”
“So what way do you want me?” Courtney drags the zipper down nice and slow, like she’s savoring every bit of torment she’s subjecting him to.
“I want…” he tries, throat working up and down, brain half-caught between forming words and focusing on her touch. “I want—fuck, Court, can you…”
“I can,” she says. “But I still want you to answer the question.”
He’s trying. He’s really fucking trying. But it’s very fucking hard to do with the way she’s teasing him with the tip of her finger, dragging a nail along him over the fly of his pants. Making him twitch and shake with burning anticipation.
“I want … all of you,” he mutters. As if she doesn’t already know this. But he’ll tell her as many times as she wants to hear it. He’ll remind her if that’s what she needs. His fists curl tight against the countertop, head falling so he can watch what she’s doing directly now. “The full package. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I want … everything we’ve had these past months and more.”
His breath catches when Courtney momentarily abandons him. But then she’s urging him to turn around—so he complies—and yanking his undershirt over his shoulders, which he’s more than eager to discard.
“I want to be a part of every moment.” He looks straight into her eyes, and she into his. “Not just the ones when you’re looking at me the way you are right now.” She’s tugging at his pants and boxers simultaneously and oh it feels both good and horrendous to finally be free of all that pressure. She brings the pants past his thighs and lets them fall the rest of the way, collecting at his feet. He steps out of them and kicks them aside. “I want to be with you, whether you’re happy or sad or angry or nervous… I want …” She peppers his neck in wet kisses and it takes everything to keep his hands to himself. “I want to be there for you at every milestone. I want to take care of you when you’re sick and tired and—Jesus fucking Christ, Courtney…”
He almost chokes on his words at the feel of her fingers wrapping around his length. A stream of curses falls out of his mouth when she gives him slow, gentle strokes. His brain all but seizes to function at the abrupt stop. His hips move on their own, pushing back and forth against her palm, desperate to recreate that friction.
“Keep going.” She presses one more kiss to his neck, then draws a trail with her mouth down his torso as she descends, lower and lower, until she’s sitting on her knees in front of him. Her mouth is just an inch away from him, lips parted and he so badly wants to shove himself between them. But he resists. “How else do you want me? Or do you need a break to collect your thoughts?”
“No!” The desperation in that plea is uncontrollable. Her devious eyes meet him with a smirk, and her breath tickles his sensitive skin when she snorts. Yeah. She’s enjoying herself. A couple more strokes with her fingers and his mind almost goes blank.
“So go on then,” she says.
Robert curses under his breath. “I want you for me. Is that what you wanna hear?”
Her persisting smile tells him yes. It’s exactly what she wants to hear.
“I want you for only me.” He reaches a hand to the top of her head, but just to stroke her hair. He doesn’t apply any pressure. Doesn’t try to bring her closer. Nor does he move. “I want to be the only one who gets to see you from this angle. How pretty you look. Fucking gorgeous.”
Her lips press the lightest kiss to the head and his hips jolt instantly. She traces a path down his length with light kisses that have his head spinning and legs shaking. Then she retraces that same path back up with her tongue. Robert clutches the edge of the countertop behind him. He needs that support. He needs to keep himself balanced.
“I want to be the only one… The only one you do that to,” he breathes. “The only one who knows what it feels like to have your mouth there.”
She looks up at him with a raised brow and a cheeky smile, expectant.
“Please…” he breathes out.
Then she opens her mouth and takes him in and holy fucking shit he’s seeing stars. Her hands grab his sides to keep him in place while she buries him deeper and deeper into her mouth. Tongue curling around him. And his legs almost cave when she moves her head back, slowly, then forth again, and repeat. The way she moans against him sends vibrations through the rest of his body. His muscles tense, resisting the urge to thrust forward when she almost brings his length back out with one final drag. Almost. But she keeps just enough of him between her lips. Wet, slick tongue flicking against him in quick, teasing strokes. Shit.
His other hand flies to her hair, grabbing firmly and pulling her away. Robert takes a much-needed moment to catch his breath. “You’re the worst, you know that?”
“Payback, asshole.” She rises to her feet with a proud smile, teeth tugging at her lip. “Do you want me to fuck you now?”
He lets out a mildly infuriated yet simultaneously playful sigh. “Yes, if you would be so kind, I would appreciate that a lot.”
Courtney steals his mouth in a rough kiss, tongue and all, which he’s more than happy to return. Then she pulls away. “Grab a condom, then.”
He obliges, turning to the sink again to fetch a condom from the first drawer—almost every drawer in their entire apartment has a handful of wrappers in store just in case. Because they have a lot of in-cases. Not one corner in their old apartments was spared from their … activities. Not even her ex-roommate’s bedroom, which he still feels bad about. But that’s not important now.
Through the mirror, Robert watches her undress, peeling clothes off her body layer by layer while he tears the package open and rolls the latex down on him.
The second he turns around to admire her bare figure, she pushes him toward the toilet and down on the seat. Wastes no time to climb on top of him. Okay. Fair. He’s frankly just as eager if not more so. Robert helps guide her by the hips until he feels himself pressing against her entrance. Then Courtney takes it from there, sinking into him slowly while his head falls back with a heavy sigh of pleasure and an unfortunate realization.
“Court…” his voice shakes, “I don’t think I’m gonna…”
“Don’t move,” she instructs. Fucking impossible instruction but fine. He’s always up for a challenge.
He tries to remain still while she grabs onto his shoulders, shifts a bit until she finds a comfortable position, then she starts moving. Robert’s vision blurs in an instant, eyes rolling to the back of his head, but he fights against the urge to keep them closed so he can focus back on her. Take the chance, now that he has it, to bask in her figure and how fucking breathtakingly perfect she looks seated on top of him.
He could get drunk on the way her hips move around him, all needy and desperate to find those good spots. The ones that force all those hot noises out of her mouth. His hands hover over her sides, fingertips lightly brushing over her. Not guiding or controlling. Just to feel a sliver of her skin. How hot and sweaty it is. He studies every bit of her. From her face with her shut eyes and open mouth, down to her shoulder—where the scar of her bullet is hiding in the pistil of a flower amongst a whole sleeve tattoo of colorful flowers. His jaw hardens at the way her breasts bounce up and down with every move. His eyes barely graze the scarring where her augments used to be, then continue all the way to where their bodies connect.
There’s nothing more satisfying than watching her immerse herself in him. Use him to make herself feel good. Knowing he could make her feel this good without even trying.
His mouth falls every time she slides up only to sink back down and take him in again. And the longer it goes on, the harder it becomes to control himself. The more impossible it is to resist thrusting up to meet her movements.
“I said don’t—” she protests.
Robert fights against every bit of him that’s telling him to ignore her, collecting shattered pieces of self-restraint. He knows it’ll be worth his while if he listens. If he just lets her enjoy herself for the time being. He trusts her to let him know the moment she needs him to take over. All he has to be now is patient. Sounds fucking simple, but it’s not.
Courtney moves one hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck, brings his head to her chest while her back arches forward for him. He tilts his head to the side, presses a wet kiss to her nipple, followed by a couple licks until it hardens, then he takes it in his mouth and starts sucking and teasing with his teeth. The way her moans grow louder and her fingers pull at his hair tell him he’s doing good. So good. So he keeps at it until she decides it’s time to move to her other breast.
“You’re right, by the way…” she pants. “I never noticed anyone looking at me like that, and I don’t really care either.” Back straightening. Bleary eyes finding his. She holds his face with both hands and plucks her breast away from his mouth. Between heavy breaths, she murmurs, “because I only care how you see me. I only care how you’re looking at me.”
He leans into her touch and meets her gaze intently, drinking up her flushed face and pretty half-lidded brown eyes. The erased layer of dark lipstick she previously had on. And the way her teeth sink into her bottom lip to muffle the sounds he wants to hear. She’s fucking gorgeous. Beautiful.
“Yeah…” She rolls her hips into his, hard, again and again. “Just like that…”
So he keeps looking at her just like that. Want and lust melt his brain and burn his skin and pour out of his mouth in rugged breaths. He holds her eyes until she can no longer hold his. Until her head falls on his shoulder and his hits the tile wall behind him. Until her form is flickering in and out of sight while she relentlessly grinds against him, but he feels her all the same. Tightening and releasing and tightening around him, rhythm falling apart by the second.
“Robert…” her voice cracks. There it is. The signal he was waiting for.
“What do you want?” He’s already holding her firmly to him, ready to move.
“Up…” she gasps. “Hold me up.”
“Okay. Hang on.” Robert peppers her mouth in kisses before he reluctantly urges her to get up, and they part from each other with dissatisfied groans. Just until he’s back on his feet, finding his balance, then he’s pressing her against the sliding door of the tub enclosure and hooking one arm under her knee, lifting her leg, does the same with the other one, before he straightens and pins her up against the glass. Courtney drapes one arm over his shoulder and throws the other above her head, reaching for the top of the glass door to grab onto it. With a grunt, he parts her legs as much as he can and feels his way against her until—there. He pushes back inside her in a beat, now pinning her with his hips and—Jesus Christ. This is gonna be quick.
Robert looks up from where their bodies connect to her face. “Look at me…” he urges her. She doesn’t. “Court. Look at me.”
Her pretty eyes flutter open and hesitantly meet his. He touches their foreheads together and holds her gaze. Feeling her breaths blow against his sweat-covered face. Watching the way she fights to keep her eyes on him instead of letting them roll to the back of her head. Then he starts moving, sliding his length out, slowly, letting her feel every inch of him drag across her walls before pushing back in. He keeps the slow pace going until her own hips start impatiently rocking against his, then picks it up. Only seconds before her form is blinking in and out again as her breathing becomes increasingly erratic. As she starts to tighten around him and his own composure wavers.
“I want you…” Robert strains to get words out of his mouth rather than moans. “I want you … to finish.”
Courtney’s only response is a gasp at the thrust he punctuates the sentence with.
“I want you to finish first,” he pleads, because he can barely hold himself together anymore. Can barely contain himself. At this rate… “Court, come for me, please.”
And there, his next three thrusts have her muscles clenching tightly around him while a stream of moans and swears bursts out of her mouth. He doesn’t relent. Keeps going, working her through it and helping himself in the process.
“I love you,” he breathes hard against her mouth.
Despite her mind clearly swimming elsewhere, she still manages to say, “I-I love … y-you too…” amidst heavy breaths.
One last thrust buries him as deep as he can go, then his pleasure finally explodes. Robert’s head falls to her shoulder with a loud groan. He keeps moving, riding it out, until he’s completely spent. Then he comes to a slow, gradual stop, stays inside her for a few blissful seconds before withdrawing.
Robert gently lowers her down and sets her on the floor. Her legs are as shaky as his, balance lost, so he holds her steady until she can retrieve her footing.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m gonna pass out…” Courtney leans into him, head against his chest.
“Guess we’re saving the shower for after sleep?”
“Please.”
He smiles. With what little strength remains in his body, he throws away the condom and carries her out of the bathroom, back to the bedroom, resists the urge to throw both of them straight on the bed in favor of gently laying her down. A kiss to her forehead, then her mouth. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
She makes a noise of acknowledgment while she tries to pull the blanket from under her. When Robert returns a couple minutes later—with a glass of water to hydrate and her phone, all lights turned off—she seems to have given up on getting under the blanket altogether.
Robert sits beside her, forces her to sit and drink until she’s satisfied. He finishes what remains in the glass and leaves it on the bedside table before finally climbing into bed with her.
And holy fuck the way he instantly sinks into the mattress is heavenly. He gives himself a few seconds of lying still, letting that tension in his muscles ease, before he picks up the blanket fight where she left it off until he’s able to drapes it over both of them.
“I think we’re gonna be fine…” She scoots closer to him, eyes barely open. “With this whole going public thing.”
“Yeah. Of course we’re gonna be fine. We got through so much worse already,” he says. “And it helps that we both got years of experience with bad press under our belts. This is gonna be a piece of fucking cake.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and he thinks maybe she’s already asleep. But then she says, in a low, almost muffled voice, “I did consider it…”
“What?” He leans close to make sure he hears the next part.
“Marrying you,” she says. His heart skips a beat. “I don’t think I’m marriage material yet, but—”
“Courtney…” He frowns, brows pinched. He rests a hand on her face and urges her to look at him. “First of all, that’s not true, alright? There’s no such thing as marriage material because there is no one size fits all in relationships. There’s only what works for the people involved, which, in this case, that’d be you and me. Second of all… Don’t worry about it. I’m not proposing unless I know we’re both ready.”
“Okay,” she murmurs. “I’m just letting you know that I did think about it.”
“And thank you for telling me that,” he says, sincerely. But this is probably not a topic for their sleepy brains to delve too deep into. It’s enough for him now just to know she did consider it. That it’s not completely off the table. “Why don’t we check in on this after our one-year anniversary? How’s that sound?”
“Good.” She smiles.
“Good.” He pulls her into an embrace and kisses the top of her head. “Let’s get some sleep. We still got work tomorrow.”
“Ugh,” Courtney grumbles. “That fucking sucks.”
“It does. You’d think they’d give us the day off given the occasion, but nope…” Robert buries his nose in her hair. One more kiss. “Goodnight, Court.”
Her breath is warm and light against his chest. Soothing. “Goodnight.”