Chapter 44: Passion

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Despite the early hour, Tsukishima Kei was awake, and liking it.

Nakano was still sound asleep, strawberry blonde hair splayed out across his chest.  Somehow, he'd rolled onto his back, dragging the girl partially across him.  When he'd first opened his eyes, he'd been momentarily panicked, not recognizing the ceiling, the bed, the room he was in.

But then the soft, rose-smelling hair draped across him caught his eye, and he knew everything was alright.  She was here, nothing else really mattered.

They'd finished their schoolwork and suddenly both crashed.  Exhaustion had swept them both under, sucking at their legs like a rip current.  Nakano had tried to get Kei to forget about massaging her legs, but he'd insisted, so wanting to do something special for the girl after everything she'd done for him.  Plus, he'd been learning new massage techniques, and really wanted to try them out before he forgot what he'd learned.

Every other time he'd ever massaged her legs, it had always left him in various stages of wanting, overwrought and hungry to touch and to kiss, sometimes even downright hard and desperate.  But last night's massage had been different.  Instead of the usual slow build to passion, this one had been an almost sleepy, soft thing, all gentle touches and tender kisses.  Quiet words and half-shut eyes.  When he'd finished with his ministrations, he'd washed up, only half awake himself, and then crawled into bed beside Nakano, wrapping his body around hers as he so loved to do.  She'd greeted him with little kisses and tiny touches anywhere she could reach.  He fell asleep to her mumbled words of thanks and love and praise.  It felt so warm, and so good.  He liked it.  

Would it be like this, he wondered, when they moved in together some day?  He could see them, years from now, attending college, sharing an apartment, living lives as tangled together as their limbs became when they slept in the same bed.  The simple domesticity of it pleased him, somehow.  The passion they shared was amazing, and he was looking forward to exploring all it had to offer.  But this, this felt just as good, in its own quiet way.

He set about waking the girl, stroking her arms and her hair and her face, kissing her repeatedly until she opened her eyes for him.  She immediately smiled.  "Well, good morning.  Someone seems eager to greet the day," she quipped, kissing his nose.

"It's real, isn't it?  Not just a dream.  We're really here, together.  Part of me still can't believe it."

"Kei, what do you mean?  We've slept in the same bed together for days now..."  She looked a little perplexed, he laughed aloud.  

"No, no, I mean here.  In Katsuyama.  I mean, that too, I kind of always feel a little amazed when I get to wake up next to you like this," he blushed, still overwhelmed by just how sappy this girl could make him feel, "but this is really a dream come true.  I mean, did we really touch a Fukuiraptor yesterday?  For real?"

She giggled, struck once again by the tenderness inside the sassy blonde.  "We did, love.  We touched it.  136 million years in the past.  It was pretty damn awesome, wasn't it?"

"Beyond awesome.  The most incredible thing ever." 

"And there's more.  Today, the museum.  And the field station!"  She propped herself up on her elbow to look more properly at him.  "I'm sorry we can't stay longer.  There were so many things I wanted to do for you for this birthday - mmmph."  Kei swallowed the rest of her sentence in a kiss.  

"Roses," he said as the girl giggled after he released her lips, "you're exempt from doing anything for my birthday again until I turn twenty at least."  He grinned at her.  "Seriously, if the goal here was to give me the most incredible birthday I've ever had, well, congratulations.  You've done it.  By several miles.  Thank you.  Thank you, thank you, thank you."  He kissed her between each 'thank you,' making the both of them laugh.

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