Under Control.

chapter sixty seven.

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Once Nora is gone from him again — first, to go home, and then away — Julian calls almost every day, usually of a night. And almost every day, he seems okay.

Whenever he appears, a jolt in the night shaped like a thrumming chime, he is sleepy and serene, a divine familiarity trickling down the line from faraway. And while they talk about nothing and everything and check in with the other without saying as much in so many words, Nora can't help but to wonder if it's true that, sometimes, it can take a shock to resettle a person.

When Nora arrives home, again — gone from the winter that's not one in Miami, at least not in comparison to the icy stretch she's grown used to in New York — she spends the day before Julian is due back cleaning and tidying and trying to recreate for them a fresh start here, just like they had made together before she'd had to leave him.

Nora buys flowers and food, and she bakes bread in their tiny, shitty little oven. She makes a stew — one of her mother's recipes that she knows he likes, and then she sets it in the fridge to wait. She goes to the gym and buys fruit juice and mineral water instead of wine. She changes the bed and folds her clothes leftover from being gone, and then she washes her hair and sets out new towels. She hangs one of the paintings she's bought home with her from work — a miniature of a bunch of forget-me-nots that she likes, just because — and then she welcomes Cat in and listens patiently while she talks and worries, and then talks some more.

And then, after it all, she sits up in bed and waits for Julian to call, just like he always does, and lets their meandering, dozy conversation paper over the one they'd had when last she was here. And once they're done, this time, she leaves it all behind.

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Julian arrives late in the morning, and he creeps in the door just so that he might catch Nora like she is, puttering about the place, her hair a wild mess piled atop her head and her sock-clad feet tucked beneath her where she sits at her desk, a giant steaming mug settled by her side. The coffee table is laden with catalogues and portfolios and paperwork he can't quite make out. But she's here, and this is home, and everything is just the way it is meant to be — easy and simple, like a bolthole at the centre of the universe.

Just as he's creeping up behind her, Julian realises that he might startle her if he's not mindful and so he lets out a hum that sounds like, 'Hey,' and sets his hands, always chilly, against her shoulders to warm up before he slips them alongside her neck. He drops a kiss onto her hair and Nora leans back with a lazy smile, and so he steals her lips for his own, and then, finally, he is home.

'Hey,' Nora coos back, and Julian's heart squeezes. 'You want a coffee?'

Julian shakes his head 'no,' but Nora knows what that means, so she says, 'Tea,' like it's a fact and not a question.

Nora unfolds herself and stands, and it's then, before she can escape into the kitchen, that Julian draws her into a hug. He's smiling and he's not sure why but she can feel the shape of it pressed against the nape of her neck, so Nora smiles back, another happy secret tangled up in their woven limbs, and then she waits, and enjoys the feeling of having him so near after being so far.

'Missed you,' Julian tosses it out like it's nothing even though it's everything, and then he lets her go and follows her into the kitchen, hovering lovingly.

'I missed you, too.' Nora boils the kettle — the one she'd insisted on bringing with her when she'd moved in, and that he enjoys even if he won't admit as much — and fetches a mug. Then, she looks back at him with wide open eyes, honest and all seeing. 'How was your flight?'

'Good,' Julian smiles again, still not able to help his own face, and then he takes the mug right as they both glance downwards, peering into the invisible racket that is Albert arriving home. 'I could use a shower, probably.'

Julian takes a sip and tries to push down the want in himself to lure Nora into the warm rush of the bathroom with him just so he can have her all to himself. But he knows what's due, under their feet in the apartment below them, so he finishes his drink then sneaks up behind Nora at the sink to steal another kiss before he lugs himself off to the shower alone.

'You wanna go grab something to eat, when I'm done?' Julian and Nora aren't typically daytime adventurers, but the chance to escape the looming storm below them, even with the brewing threat of snow, was an appealing one. 'I should probably get a start on some Christmas stuff too, I guess. Unless you're busy?'

Sometimes, Julian forgets — and especially so of Nora — that other people have real jobs that play out in the hours when he's usually free. But as well as that, Julian is determined to spend this time he has at home proving to Nora that their topsy turvy life could be something like normal, and that he'd meant every little thing he'd said on those dark, hotel-room days they'd spent putting each other back together, again.

'That sounds nice,' Nora turns in Julian's arms and then casts a warm glance over his tired, determined face. 'We're pretty light-on until January. Nothing much we can get done until then, anyway.'

Her fingertips dance over his lips, the shadows smudged under his doe eyes, the patchy scruff adorning his jaw. And then Nora kisses his grinning mouth and sends him on his way with a giggle, and waits for him to be done so that they can plunge head first together, back into life.

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'We could go to France,' Julian and Nora are tucked up on the couch, their sleepy faces flickering under the muted light of the movie that neither of them are watching playing out across the tv. 'If you want? Soon, or, one day?'

Nora's socked feet are in Julian's lap beneath the blanket he'd dragged over them both after dinner, with the two of them having crashed satiated and full onto the cushions, exhausted from the day which they'd capped off with Nora's stew and the bread they'd bought too on their way back from their very domesticated afternoon outing.

'You just want all the good food, straight from the source.' Nora's hand was carding though Julian's hair while his were pressing soothing circles into the arch of her foot. 'Which, you know, fair enough.'

Julian laughs, even though he's serious. This was an attempt at testing the waters and trying to tick some the boxes of conventionality that people who weren't him so often, did. He wasn't the best with tradition when it came to family, or expectations — they made him nervous, the navigating of it all. But such was his love for Nora that he was more than willing to try.

'Very funny,' He chuckles as he says it, teasing Nora back. But then she looks at him and sees the weight lurking behind his eyes, and then the relief that floods them when she realises without him needing to spell out what it was he's been trying to say.

'I'd like that, Jules.'

It lingers, what she's just said and everything that it means, hanging in the air between them like a promise they haven't quite yet made. Until, that is, Nora finds the levity again and pulls at it, rambling on in sharply accented French about how much she wants to hear him make his way over there with his halting sentences and curiously, perfectly shaped vowels.

She keeps on, chattering away and knowing fully that he understands at least every other word she's saying, the smile on her face growing the longer she goes on, until finally Julian pounces on her from the other end of the sofa, trying but failing to quell the gallic torrent pouring from her mouth with his hungry lips.

'You'll just have to teach me,' He croons between kisses, his fingertips tickling up her sides and threatening the soft warm skin he's just discovered under the hem of her sweater.

'Oh, I can teach you,' Nora slips back into English, her eyes swirling with unshed laughter. 'I can teach you all kinds of things.'

Julian nods sagely, serious until he can't hold it anymore, and then he kisses her again before whispering, 'You already have,' into her waiting mouth.

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Six to go.

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