Under Control.

chapter thirty six.

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After they've caught their breath and put each other back together again, Nora slips into Julian's shirt and disappears for just long enough that, for a brief moment, he's sure that she's changed her mind about him and this and them together, and has run away, never to return.

But then, she does.

And she returns with a pint of Ben and Jerry's in one hand, and an icepack in the other.

Instead of daring to say what he's thinking — 'Fuck, you're perfect' — Julian just laughs and holds out a hand to help, then tries not to melt at the sight of Nora crawling towards him up the length of her undone bed.

There were approximately a thousand things that could be said — and some that needed to be — but rather than pillow talk as a heart to heart the pair of them indulge in the comfortable silence instead, exchanging the odd dazed giggle, the occasional passing glance brimming with wonder, and take turns holding the ice to his knee.

Julian is naked, in more ways than just one, and nervous. But beside him, Nora seems unaffected. Every time he catches her eye she smiles sweetly back at him, and then he lets out a kind of huff of air that's half laugh, and half the sound of his brain short-circuiting.

The truth is that, despite it all and the simmering of his nerves just underneath the surface of himself, Julian is relived. Being near to Nora at all let alone being with her — and in ways that he had been sure he'd never get the chance to be again — had settled something inside of him that'd been roiling ever since he'd first watched her disappear all those long and lonely nights ago in London. But now he'd had a taste of having her back, Julian wasn't sure that he could stand to leave and face the world without knowing that there was a chance he might be able to fix things between them, again.

For now though, all he could do was to take it one step at a time. And the first step, was figuring out what the right thing to say might be.

And so Julian thought about it while he playfully battled with her spoon in the tub that sat between them — the one that was leaving a dewy ring on the sheets — and then he went to try again, only to have all thought fall by the wayside at the sight of Nora's still-flushed face and her wide-eyed gaze.

'You were right, you know,' she says, beating him to it once again. There's a hint of something coy playing behind Nora's eyes, and Julian can see her there — the her that used to be his. 'I do hate it, the job — my job, the office. All of it, really. So, yeah. You were right.'

Nora starts out by meeting his gentle gaze, but then shrinks a little beside him as she goes on. She hasn't admitted any of this outright before, and if he were anyone else, she thinks, she probably wouldn't dare to.

When Nora looks up again, Julian is frowning, and he looks sad. Not mad, just kind of forlorn and adrift.

'Why'd you leave the gallery?' He says after a while, the question slipping from his lips in the shape of a rasping whisper.

Julian is afraid he already knows the answer, but he doesn't like the way it makes him feel. He doesn't like to assume so much of himself to even entertain the possibility that he could have been the reason for Nora's choice. But also, he can't bear the idea, even if it makes him an asshole for considering it as a possibility.

'I just needed a change,' Nora sets the empty pint on the floor and then settles back beside him, letting her head rest on his warm, bare shoulder. 'I think I needed to know that I could do it.'

Julian wants to say what an absurd thing that is — that Nora could do anything she set her mind to, and he's sure about that, because he's seen it. But what he says instead, is that he gets it — that he understands wanting to do the thing you're expected to be able to do, just because sometimes, meeting expectations first is what it takes to be able to break them, later.

It's a sweet thing to say, and Nora can tell by the look in Julian's eyes that he means it. So she nods at him and then smiles, and with that — just that — Julian's heart balloons in his chest.

He presses a daring kiss to the mess of her hair, and then, Nora relaxes a bit where she's pressed into his side. He can feel it, and it's not nothing, he thinks. And the hope that it instills — her, warm and real and calm, right beside him — finally lets Julian be brave.

'I think, maybe...I don't think I trust good things. Like, when they happen to me. I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know? And it's always been that way, kind of. Like, even when I was a kid — I've never really trusted, um, calmness? I guess because it was never really a thing — not for me, not for us. My mom? Not with, you know, my Dad. Anyway, yeah. So, I get it — the swinging for the fences thing. But also, um, with you? That's what it was with you, I think. I just, I could never really believe that you would want this with me, you know? And so it was never — it's not that I don't trust you. I do. Maybe more than anyone, I trust you. I just don't trust me.'

Julian speaks, and while the words are spilling from his lips he can feel them snowballing, but still, he keeps going. It's words on words on words, and all the while Nora is looking at him, and she's listening, and she looks like she cares. And it makes him braver. So he keeps going until he can't anymore, and then he's said everything he's got to say.

And then, Nora kisses him.

She kisses him, and he drinks her in, and he looses track of where her body starts and his ends, and he's never been so glad to be lost before as he is under the warmth of her gaze and in the cradle of her open arms.

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When morning comes, Julian watches Nora wake beside him where she lays under the crook of his arm. And then, he stops thinking.

He stops trying to guess at what's next, and he kisses her instead. He follows her into the shower and ignores the ghost of her tears and his battered self that live by the basin, and he lets her wash his hair. He memorises the sound of her giggles echoing around her funny little bathroom while his fingertips dance down her sudsy sides, and then he helps her cook breakfast.

He manages to make her laugh again over toast and eggs (one of their better traditions), regaling her with tawdry road tales that are mostly at his own expense, but a couple by Al's, as well. He helps her tidy up, and kisses her again while her hands are covered with bubbles.

He's going to leave this place with his hair smelling like her shampoo, his body tinged with her soap, his shirt dotted with lemony-scented remainders from her washing up, and with a mouth that's hungry for her lips that taste like coffee. He wants to take as much of last night and this morning, and of her, with him as he can.

He wants to hold on to how he feels, and the way she's looking at him right now as he hunts around her living room for his missing sock. He's still hopeless on his one good leg and she's got this look on her face that's a combination of what he hopes is endearingly amused, and a little bit worried.

Because, Nora cares, even still. And Julian doesn't know why, but he's not going to question it — not this time. He's just going to kiss her, he decides, again and again, for as long as she'll let him.

He's going to do whatever she wants.

He's not going to make it weird, or harder than it needs to be.

And then, he's going to hope.

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