Under Control.

chapter twelve.

+

The second time Nora and Julian sleep together, that's still all there is — sleeping.

Daring hands wander under hems and waistbands and lips cover all the places their fingertips don't. But then, they sleep. They sleep coiled around each other, a tangle of bodies that gives into an intrinsic, burgeoning kind of intimacy that their waking selves yet cannot.

Julian wakes with his weary face buried in the fruity waves of Nora's hair, and all he can think when he does, is, 'She's still here.'

Nora stirs slowly, the vague awareness of him seeping in before she fully realises where she is, what's happened, and just who is pressed warmly against the line of her back. Julian has one hand tucked under the ridden up hem of her shirt, his palm hot against the crescent of her ribs. The steady beat of his breath whispers across her nape while his lips track lazy lines along the curve of her shoulder, and all of that is just a small distraction against the solidness of him, his hips, resting pressed into hers.

'Morning,' Nora whispers, unsure if he's ready to be awake yet, and unsure, too, if anything might be enough to shatter the ease of this moment. But Julian just chuckles from his spot behind her, surely awake, the rush of his glee tickling through her messy hair. Nora shifts a bit in the circle of his arms, settling onto her back so that she can watch his sleepy face. There's something there, behind his half-opened eyes. But what it is, she's not quite sure.

'Coffee...' she lets her eyes fall shut again, just for a moment, and at the same time she breathes her silent prayer for caffeine Julian utters something lowly against her neck where he's tucked his face to hide away from the morning light.

'At least you stayed,' she thinks she hears him say. And with it, there's a stab of something deep inside her. I didn't run, she wants to say. You thought I did, but I didn't. But then she realises that all he's really telling her is that he's scared — was then, is now — and, she is too.

So, there's nothing left for her to say.

Or, not about that, anyway.

Julian's flushed face reappears from his hiding place in the hollow of her shoulder, and when he looks at her, the next thing he means to say dies on his lips. He can see that Nora is just as scared about all of this as he is, maybe even more so. And, he can't say he blames her.

So instead of talking, he lets his lips fall back to hers. He revels in the lazy sounds of their bodies coming together, and in the rustle of the tangled sheets beneath them blurring with the quiet bluster of the city outside. And he kisses her, more and more, until he forgets about everything that he's scared he cannot be.

+++

There's things that need be said, and questions to ask.

The world is upside-down, and Julian's life is spinning slowly out of his control. Every new day brings with it some new meeting, a new reality he needs to face. There's the looming threat of leaving creeping up behind him and the band, and he's completely lost with how to know what the end of any given day might look like lately, let alone what tomorrow might hold. And Nora's life wasn't without chaos, either. The show she had been working on was due to open in a matter of days, and if it was a success (and it would be, Julian was sure), then there would be no knowing what her life might look like by the end of it.

But right now, all of that was noise. It was outside, not in here. Not inside the four walls of Nora's little apartment, and not with them were they sat tethered together on her too-small sofa.