Nocturne

Author: pratz

Disclaimer: bleargh. Alright, alright. Sunrise.

Notes: ignore me. It’s been quite long since I last wrote, and I was just in one of my strange moods, hence the personality. Don’t ask in case I messed up with their characters or anything, or you get no biscuits. Or cookies. Whatever. Yeah. Bleargh.

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“I was thinking.”

It is her answer for his simple question of whether she has not slept yet. It makes the warm body beside her shift a little, the voice sleepy and throaty. “You were thinking during the sex?”

She rolls her eyes. Bless her for having quite a smart-ass, if not a little sarcastic, man for a bed warmer. “After.”

“Good to hear that.” He shifts again, this time to prop himself on an elbow. Thanks to his advanced genetic, even an hour is sufficient to return his strength after intensely spending that much of rigorous passions. “Because if you were thinking during the sex, I would feel very, very insulted.” Despite the serious line of his mouth, his eyes have good-humored sparks. “So? Is what you’re thinking of very important that you neglect your very much loved sleep tonight?”

“I was thinking,” she says again, “of why you’re here. Why I allow you to be here. Why we can bear to be here together.”

He blinks his sleepiness away. “Here?” He pats the bed at the space between their bodies. “Because we had mad, passionate, wonderful sex about an hour ago. What else?”

“Yeah. And I so want to have your babies,” she replies dryly. “Seriously, you snob. If you’re being more annoying than you already are, I will gladly do the honor of kicking you out right now.”

He laughs softly, sliding down to fold an arm under his head, watching her in the dark, fully knowing that he is always the one who is able to annoy and amuse her at the same time. “Try to think along the line ‘because I love you’ to answer that.”

“I know that.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Wait. I mean, I know I love you, but—”

“Mm-hmmm.”

“Oh shut up.” She jabs at his chest with a finger. “I know that already, if that makes you happy, alright. What I don’t know is whether I’m in love with you or not.”

“What?” In the still of the night, his unlikely hysterical half-yelp sounds so undignified, especially for someone ever so collected like him. “You don’t? You really, really, really don’t? Oh well, let me refresh your mind of how you confess—”

“Blurted out.”

“—confessed to me that fateful day,” he finishes rather stubbornly.

She glares at him. “Turn on the light so you can see me just fine when I beat the life out of you.”

“But it was true, wasn’t it?”

“Out of desperation, yes, it was.” She glares some more for the good meaning. “You were leaving for PLANT with Lacus, who had history with you, for God knew how long. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Confessing your love, of course.”

“I blurted out because my brain was kind of short-circuiting and my man didn’t have even an ounce of decency or manliness to say the magic word first.”

He chuckles softly. “Well, ladies first, they say.”

She rolls her eyes again, but this time she spices it up with pulling him close and kisses him. And that reminds her of how well they work together. He gentles the kiss then, slowing her down by rubbing her back and arm, coaxing her to use her mouth more and her force less. His touch, his kiss, his smell, his everything, simply him everywhere, and she is won over.

The taste of his mouth lingers even when he withdraws. Nurse that addiction, pronto. Geez.

He arranges his head on the pillow again. “Have you found your answer, then?”

“Of why we’re here? Because this is working, my dear monster. Because we work so well together. Because ‘we’ can’t have another meaning but ‘you and I.’

One of his hands finds hers. “And that, my darling hullabaloo, is my history with you.”

“But,” she adds hurriedly, “it still doesn’t explain whether I’m in love with you or not.”

“If you haven’t, you will. Let it be my life’s purpose then to make you fall in love with me.”

“Hello, I’m speaking. Must you always interrupt me every here and then? Don’t you know that your interruption is an infringement of my free will, infiltration of my mind and contamination of my character?”

He is silent for some times, his hand stopping its thumb’s circular stroking on the back of her hand. “This is supposed to make me worried, isn’t this?”

“Who’s the insecure one now?”

“Cagalli.”

“I won’t file a divorce so soon, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Excuse me then for being insecure.” He pulls her toward him and envelops her in a fierce hug. “This takes years, this takes my everything, and I’ll be nothing if this is robbed of me.” He buries his nose among the tresses of her hair, face hidden from her. Only in a time like this he gives up being so mature, she knows, and sometimes even she cannot help wondering if he really has not grown up a bit in the inside. “I know what you think,” he voices out knowingly. “You must think that mentally I’m still that silly little boy trying ridiculously to please his father, to be worthy of his mother’s smile.” His arms tighten. “And I know what you will scold me with. You will say that it’s fine, because people grow up and I’m not that special that I won’t grow up.” He pulls away a little to look at her in the eyes, his face so close, his soul so open. “And I know it’s alright to let my insecurity pop up once in a while, because you will be there to bop me in the head if it gets too much.”

She traces the line of his mouth with her thumb. “Of course.”

The corners of his mouth pull themselves up to form a smile under her thumb. “Of course.”

They confide in each other, and that is one of the whys they work so well together, she knows. And she knows that he knows that, too. “Alright. Now back off, big boy.”

“Why? Feeling claustrophobic all so sudden?”

“I want to finish, okay?”

“Oh.” He shifts to make more space, but even that, he never really lets go of her. “Yes. Please.”

“Fine.” She takes a deep breath. “I was thinking of that, and I found that I don’t need a reason—”

“To fall in love with me?”

“—because I can list a hundred reasons for that, and even that won’t be enough.”

“Make it a thousand,” he responds vehemently. “Make it a thousand, and it still won’t come close to why I fall in love with you.”

Ha! See? A confession! her mind supplies waywardly, but she does not voice it out. “Interrupt me once again, husband, and you’re sleeping on the sofa for the next whole week.”

“Alright. I’m as silent as a rock now.”

“Hard rock?”

“Well, yeah. I’m hard.”

“Innuendos are strictly not accepted this time.”

“Hey, you ask for it.”

“Now I really wonder why I put up with you,” she grumbles under her breath. “Alright. Where was I? Oh. Right. I’m with you because of reasons, a hundred of reasons, a thousand of reasons. We humans are inquisitive beings, and we demand for explanations for all we do. I accept that just fine.” Her feet are rubbing against his calves, one of her insteps nestling itself comfortably behind the back of his left knee. His skin feels so cool. God, is there any part of him that she does not love? Oh well. Time to get back on track. “But I don’t need a reason to love you. Giving love a reason will belittle the measure of love itself, don’t you think so? Not that I’m saying that love is illogical or unreasonable, no, not like that. Love is just... it is. Love is you. And me. We.”

His hands cup her face so achingly, tenderly loving that it hurts. In a good way. Who has ever wondered that his calloused palms, his rough fingers growing old with guns and knives amidst battles and wars, will know how to love something other than all the death and destruction? Perhaps even he himself has never thought he can. “You must be the most beautiful soul I’ve ever rested my eyes upon,” he whispers.

She can see his eyes grow teary, but it must be some kind of trick that the dull light in the room plays. It has been long since he last shed a tear, after all. “Athrun the poet,” she says.

“And you must be the worst enemy a rationalist can get.”

“I didn’t say that love is irrational either,” she verifies.

“I know,” he says gently. “I know.”

“Do you?”

He nods.

“Good.” She snuggles deeper into his arms. His shoulders sag further against the bed, leaving the right one directly under her left cheek. She can feel an ugly-shaped scar there, courtesy of his father’s bullet. Unconsciously, her right hand snakes between their bodies to find another faint scar on his side, the one that she made in their first-time beleaguered meeting. “It heals.”

“It does,” he confirms. “I do, too.”

Silence for a while, then she says, “Why are we having this conversation?”

“Because it’s nighttime, and nighttime tends to bring out the best of us?”

“No implied meaning, right?”

“In a contemplative way, no, nothing.”

And it is at that time that her stomach, her mutinous and tactless stomach decides to make an ill-timed interruption.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asks, already failing at hiding his laughter.

“This is a coup d’état,” she growls venomously, torn between embarrassment and giddiness.

His amused laughter is muffled against her neck as she groans and groans some more, and she finds the will to punch him in the stomach. Not hard enough, unfortunately. She just does not have the heart to, really. He squeals (squeals!) loudly between laughter as she starts tickling him, kicking his shins, wrestling to free herself from his arms.

She ends up straddling him. “You are not allowed to join in the subversive action of humiliating the legal person in charge of this house.” More tickles will do the justice, she is sure. And they will be enough of fair revenge, too. At least for now.

His mirthful laugh gradually dies as he winds his arms around her lithe waist and uses the leverage to depose her back onto the bed. This time, he hovers above her. “Then I humbly ask for an armistice.”

“I’m listening.”

“I offer you,” he arranges her hair against the pillow, fingers threading suavely, sometimes brushing against her cheeks and jaw, “a comfortable bed with an all-ears bed partner, midnight conversation at no cost, happy feeding with delicious midnight snacks...”

She raises her eyebrows.

“Innocent midnight snacks.”

“Somehow, I have a sense that your definition of innocence doesn’t sit well with me.”

Chuckling, he bends down to brush his lips against her forehead, a soft kiss of understanding and acceptance. “Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll show you what innocence I mean.”

“Mmm.” She pulls him down for a lingering kiss, his lips cool and so damn familiar against hers. She will never get tired of his kisses, his nearness, him, him, him, beautiful man he. She watches him move to get a pair of jogging pants from the wardrobe. Maybe later she will tell him how domestic he looks with that tousled hair and loose pants, doing what exactly it means to be a perfect househusband. Or maybe later she can tell him how she cannot ask for more. “Hurry back. The bed is cold already.”

He bends at the waist and steps backward. “At your service, wife.”

She listens to the sound of his shuffling in the kitchen, preparing cooking utensils and ingredients. He makes the best snack in the world, but he’d better be quick. He moves at ease because this is his home, the one place he has grown to love and get used to. He is staying, she knows, and he has no plan to leave so soon. And that is enough for her, for them.

She pulls the blanket over her and waits for him.

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