Work Text:
The door closes behind them and Reid reaches for her hand.
She sighs, softly, smiling, as he pulls her toward him. She feels, as she presses her body against her, the weight of indecision lift. It feels right, to have him gently removing her flight jacket, and for it to be soundlessly falling to the floor.
They’re both wearing formal wear for their dinner with the senator and Jared, jeans and flight jackets, and she removes his just as easily, over his shoulders and slipping down off his arms.
They sigh as Reid's hand comes up to her face. He watches her, and she can see there is disbelief there, wonder.
“I'll never get used to how you look at me now, Christina,” he says. “Since we got back. It’s so soft, so happy. Content and just—” He shakes his head.
She smiles. “I'm happy when I'm with you. Not just happy, Reid — at peace. What do you think that means?”
His other hand comes up to frame her face. His eyes scan her features, as if memorizing them. His thumbs graze her cheeks, her lips.
“I think it means we’re doing the right thing here tonight,” he says.
Slowly, carefully, she nods her head.
“Christina, I need you to be sure, because—” His words are shaky at this point, and her hands are at his hips, her fingers on the bare, tender skin of his waist beneath his shirt, and she can feel him shiver as she caresses the warm flesh “—once we get started, after all this time—”
“I know,” she says. “But, listen. I’ve been wrestling with what to do about my marriage for a long time. But this weekend I realized — at the tournament. Carolyn, my friend — the one I did the dance video with? Her husband Jameson died a few years ago. She’s already married again, and that’s great, but I guess I feel guilty about it. She keeps asking me to do another video. She keeps—” She shakes her head. “Bob knows I don't like it. I told him. I told him, way back when she had us do that FaceTime call that she posted, that I didn't want to be in another one of her videos. But he wanted to do whatever she asked. He was already drunk by midday and he loved it, loved acting silly in front of her camera, knowing that a lot of people were going to see it. He didn't defend me, didn't ask her to leave me out of it. He didn't tell her to back off when she kept going on and on about another dance video.”
She sighs. She shakes her head.
“Come on, babe, you have to do it,” she says, imitating Bob, and Reid laughs. “Jamo would want you to,” She rolls her eyes.
“Would he?” Reid asks, his thumb on her cheek.
She shrugs. “He was a nice guy. Respectful. I don’t think he would’ve made me do anything I didn't want to do. Meanwhile, Bob is—”
Reid nods.
“That and how drunk he got, how little time we spent together and how little time I wanted to spend with him. I just kept thinking about this. You and me, here.” Reid’s eyebrows quirk upwards and he nods. “I can't be around those friends of his anymore. I don't want to be. I felt so tense the whole time. I have my friends and I like them. I don't like Bob's friends. I want—something else for this part of my life. I've achieved some things. I just want to be comfortable. At peace. To be with people who want me for me. Who know my worth and knew it before I was an astronaut and aren’t trying to use me for anything.”
Reid smiles. “I knew you when you were just a little baby astro, Christina, with long hair and glasses, always with Victor and Anne and Jess. Before anyone knew who you were. While you were learning, asking questions. Before the ISS. All those versions of you—I want them.”
She sighs, her breath hitching. “Reid—”
He kisses her. Not just kisses — he devours her, turning her and pressing her back against the door, his hips pressing insistently against hers, grinning against her mouth as he hears the moan deep in her throat.
“Reid—” she whispers, and Reid groans with barely-suppressed sexual frustration.
His hands are up under her shirt, hers are at his belt buckle, deftly unbuckling it while he unbuttons her blouse. They smile, as her shirt comes off, fluttering down to the floor, and she attends to the buttons on his while he unhooks her bra with the nimble hands of a pilot.
And then they come together again, bare skin on bare skin, her breasts pressed up against his chest, and she doesn’t recognize the groan that comes from deep in her throat at the sensation of her and Reid finally as close as she’s wanted them for years.
He backs them up toward the bed, and they fall artlessly to the mattress, laughing as Christina hitches a leg over his hips, leaning down to kiss him, the feeling of skin on skin so intoxicating that she sighs into his mouth. She presses her groin against his, against the hardening length she feels beneath his jeans.
“Christ, Christina,” he breathes, and she smiles.
But then she feels it — dull pain in her hip. She forgot, with her surgery two months prior, that kneeling was off her list of approved positions. So was sex—but then she’s willing to pay the price for that indiscretion later.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” she says. “My hip. I forgot. We might need to be a little more — horizontal.”
Reid laughs. “At this point, I'd do it on the floor if I had to.”
She laughs, shaking her head, as he helps her off of him, and as she stands next to the bed momentarily, she takes that opportunity to ruck his jeans and underwear off his hips and pull them down off his legs.
She gasps as he springs free, approaching the bed again, her eyes on his cock.
“Huh,” she says, as she looks up at him, sitting down next to him. He's got a smug look on his face as his hand closes around his length. He's bigger than she thought.
But with this distraction, Reid sits up and takes her in his arms gently, moving her up toward the head of the bed and laying her down, his fingers deftly undoing her jeans removing them almost reverently until they’re both bare and exposed, and they look at each other for a second or two, and she tries to reach for him.
“Reid,” she whines. “I want to—”
“In a minute,” he breathes, as he situates himself between her legs, kneeling.
“Reid,” she whispers, as he rubs her thighs and looks up at her.
“Leave your legs down,” he says, gently spreading her legs but pressing down on her thighs. “I think that's better for your hip.”
And then his mouth is on her, insistently and accurately, and she cries out so loud she knows their neighbors are going to be glaring at them tomorrow morning.
“Christ, Reid,” she breathes, her hands in his hair, mussing it, pulling it as he works with just the right amount of pressure, the right amount of movement. The steady attention he applies to everything, and the determination, as her breathing speeds up, to do the best job he can.
She breathes steadily, letting out little cries as he nips and sucks, and then she feels his fingers at her entrance and she opens her legs instinctively for him as two fingers enter with very little resistance. She whimpers as he curls them up inside her toward his mouth, pressing from both sides, moving and sucking until she knows she's close — she can feel it building, feels her breath quickening, feels the pressure in her belly and the wave threaten to break free.
“Reid, I'm—” she breathes, and then he presses from both sides, and she comes, her body curling up around his head, contracting around his fingers, and the pleasure runs through her like electricity, from her head to her toes, white-hot and paralyzing, leaving her boneless, breathless and speechless against the pillows, one hand still gripping his hair, the other gently carding her fingers through it.
“Jesus, Reid,” she says, once she can speak, as he joins her against the pillows with a smug look on her face.
He laughs, filthy and low, and smiles at the satisfaction she sees there.
The impressive length of him is pressing against her thigh and she reaches down for it, her cool fingers closing around it before he can react.
He lets out a sound and breathes out, his eyes closing as she slowly begins to move her hand. She watches his face begin to fall apart as she moves slowly and firmly, up and down the shaft, and he moans, his forehead pressing against hers.
It’s raw and completely unmasked—he is not performing here, he is completely coming undone, and she's not sure she's ever heard or seen anything sexier as he pulses in her hand, hot and hard and alive.
He's breathless and flushed, flat against the mattress when she gently turns her body so that her mouth replaces her hand, her legs dangling off the side of the bed.
“Oh my God, Christina,” he groans, as her mouth descends over his length, down as far as she can go. A deep, guttural moan coming from his throat.
It’s the hottest things she’s ever seen, and she's so aroused, again, that she feels the wetness begin to pool beneath her on the comforter. She continues, slowly, languidly, and his hands grip the bed, his head back against the pillows, his body taut.
“Christina—” he chokes out, finally, as she begins to feel him twitch in his mouth, and his hand alights on her shoulder. “I'm not — I'm not going to last much longer if—”
She laughs against him, making him shiver, and she lifts her head, turning to look at him.
“I want you,” he says. “I don't want you to have to wait. I'm not a young guy anymore. I've got another one in me, but it might take a while.”
She laughs, and nods.
“Okay,” she says.
She lets him pull her up toward him, lets him lay her on her back, lets him nudge her legs open gently, situate himself between them. Then he kisses her deeply, leaning back to look at her, and the look that passes between them is that of two people completely aware that the thing they’d been imagining for years was about to happen.
She feels him pressing insistently against her entrance as he kisses her again, and then he presses inside, and she cries out against his mouth as he buries himself to the hilt.
“Reid—” she breathes. “Oh my God—”
He smiles, laughing deep in his throat. “You like that?” he asks.
She nods, their foreheads pressed together, eyes watching each other.
“Bigger than you're used to?” he asks, tongue-in-cheek.
She hates him for it, but it's true. “Yeah,” she breathes, nodding.
He kisses her.
She pulls back and gives him a look. “Not like I think that ego of yours needs to be inflated any more,” she says, and he laughs, gently pulling his hips back, and she sighs into his mouth.
“Faster,” she says, nodding. “I'll tell you if it hurts.”
He nods, too, eyes never leaving hers. He braces himself, pressing into her again, and then out, and she wraps her arms around him, pressing their chests together, their lips together as he thrusts in and out of her, building up a rhythm. It's been so long for her. Months. And this is — this is Reid. It's all too much.
She loses herself in the sensation—the friction inside her, the waves of pleasure, the heat of his skin on hers, his smell—so familiar to her—right next to her. She loses herself in him, reaching up to cup his cheek, and she sees him watching her and then suddenly—tears are streaming down her face. He reaches up, his hips not missing a beat, and wipes them away, but she can see—he’s crying, too. She holds his face, their foreheads pressing together.
The pressure builds again, the heat, the pleasure of the friction just too much for her to stand. She’s not going to last much longer, especially when she feels his fingers make their way down again, pressing his thumb against her clit. She cries out as he pumps in and out of her, pressing inside and outside—
“Reid, I'm going to come,” she breathes against his mouth.
“Let it happen, Christina,” he says, breathless, and it’s all she needs.
He kisses her and thrusts into her and presses against her and she cries out, loudly, waves of pleasure passing through her, clenching around him, clinging to him as it passes through her again and again.
And then he groans, his hips stuttering, pressing his face into her shoulder. He says “God,” sounding broken and completely undone. And then he tenses, and she reaches for his face, kissing him as he twitches inside her, his warmth spilling into her.
There is a second or two where they don’t move, but then he collapses onto her, the sweat slippery on their skin on this warm Kansas night, languid and pressed together and unable to breathe or talk.
After what feels like a minute, she feels his hand slowly rub her shoulder. Her fingers draw patterns in the sweat on his back.
Finally, he speaks, his face against her chest, and she can feel the words vibrate on her skin.
“That was — absolutely—”
“I know,” she says, breathlessly.
It goes without saying. It's unlike anything either of them has ever had. The connection, the pleasure, the trust, the consummation of thirteen years of attraction and love and grief and work and achievement and loss.
“I love you,” she says.
His breath stutters and he lifts his head to look at her, and she'll never forget the expression she sees there — the hope, the relief, the validation. She reaches out and threads her fingers through his hair. He moves and lifts himself off her, moving his head toward hers to kiss her.
“I love you too,” he says, touching his nose to hers. “I'm sorry it took me so long to say it.”
She laughs. “You may not have said it, hon, but you showed it. Every day. I'm sorry I didn't walk away sooner. We could've had—”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “But let's not. We're going to have a life, Christina.”
She nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Come on, let's head to bed.”
He pulls the covers down, and she climbs in, hip aching, but she barely feels it. Her body is humming, every nerve ending alive. He climbs in beside her and she curls up against him, her arm across his waist.
“This is just the first day,” he says. She laughs, softly, imagining the rest of her years next to this man, imagining marriage and maybe children, and working together and growing old together.
“Yeah, it is,” she says. She buries her head in his neck and he kisses her temple.
She falls asleep.