[Dejah's room]

[2goodarms]

Time passes. Asleep, half-dazed by the Voice of Barsoom, Curtis has even less sense of how long he stays in Dejah's bed.

(In his dreams, everything's warm and bright, even the smallest spaces of the train; nothing aches, and voices ring all around him.)

When he finally wakes up, utter disorientation smacks into him headlong -- where am I? what the fuck am I sleeping on? -- before he feels the warm body next to him and, like a compass swinging north, reorients around the soft sound of Dejah's breath. Sleep took care of the last side effects: he feels completely steady, awake, his calm returning as he looks over at Dejah.

Comments

[2goodarms]

And like the first time he saw sunlight in eighteen years, a part of Curtis wants to rear back and shield himself: I don't deserve this.

It's not a question of deserving or not-deserving, though, or whether some tail-section hick has a right to something from the Front. He's off the train. He wants this. He can have it; she's offering it freely. Her ferocity and determination warm him just as much as the love and hope.

If Dejah bringing him back to happiness has any kind of catch...he'll willingly take it upon himself.

What they're building is worth it.

He pulls back enough to settle both hands on her hair, gazing into her eyes, feeling the truth of her words -- and then he kisses her, full and warm.

[dejah_thoris]

That shared gaze communicates more than any soliloquy ever could. She returns that kiss, gentle and sure. She remembers not the first time they kissed, but the second. Where he kissed her and it felt like the first time he was opening to the possibilities. If he truly wants this, if he can find it in him to trust her, then she knows whatever the darkness holds, they will face it together.

She sinks into the lush softness of his kiss, telling him in this quiet way how good he feels, how much better her life is with him in it. She will never get tired of telling him that, and it shows, in her breath and in her hands. In the way her body molds to his.

Tomorrow they will walk into the desert together. They will face whatever comes, together.