"I just...it's so beautiful."

"There is no need to be so histrionic about it."

"It makes me want to cry." I added a sniff to punctuate my sentence.

"Hardly."

"Seeing parts of you and me mixed up together like this."

The voice that answered back was firm, "Andrea."

"Alright, alright," I acquiesced, glancing up front my laptop, "You gotta admit though, we make a pretty good team."

When our eyes met, I could already see the annoyance melting from Miranda's eyes, but she quickly returned her gaze to her sketchbook to hide them. She was trying not to smile.

With a smirk, I looked back down at the screen on my lap. French 101 was finally over, and in a beautiful climax, Miranda and I had conceived and given birth to our final project. Filled with her drawings and my articles (with my French heavily edited by the former), we had constructed a fashion magazine. As ironic as the choice was, turns out we were both pretty good at it. Maybe I wasn't such a bad journalist after all.

I closed my laptop and leaned over the edge of the bed, reaching down to carefully deposit the gadget on the floor. Miranda's room was starting to feel familiar. The past few weeks had been busy with finals, but even my smarty pants girlfriend needed a break here or there. She had whisked me up to her room for a very heated break after one particularly stressful History exam that left me sore and happy for days...

But damn, I was going to miss her with Winter break around the corner. A whole month apart.

I glanced from my perch at the foot of Miranda's bed towards her. She was resting against the headboard, pillows tucked behind her, moving her pencil back and forth on the page before her.

"Can I see?"

She pointedly looked at me, and then returned silently back to her sketching.

I started to crawl up the bed. "Come on, I showed you my poems."

"You irresponsibly left them unattended in a place where I would likely encounter them," she hummed, adjusting the sketchbook to a higher angle to further block my view.

I sat down cross-legged in front of her, nose practically to her book. "Ok. But then I showed you them."

"Only because I asked."

"Well, I'm asking now."

The book lowered slightly so that she could inspect me properly. Her hair was tied back but loose strands were falling across her eyes. The rest of her face was concealed, but her perfume was in full force this close.

I still couldn't really explain what it was that made me tick for Miranda. Even as we grew closer, more intimate, I always ran into questions. Even as I learned her favorite this or that, I couldn't possibly know everything. And even if I somehow did, that knowledge was exhilarating in itself. The secrets of Miranda's soul were not so easily exposed. To be granted access, even to miniscule amounts, was intoxicating.

In my greed, I wanted more. More of her. More of anything she would offer me to show me her world.

She slowly closed the book and lowered it to her lap, not breaking eye contact. God, she was always looking me like that. Like she wanted to cherish me and then devour me in some really hot paradox.

"I suppose it's only fair," she murmured, extending the leather-bound item towards me.

My eyes widened; I couldn't believe it worked. I excitedly grabbed the offering, leaned back next to her on the stack of pillows, and opened the cover to the first page neatly labelled with my girlfriend's name and the calendar year.

I glanced at her one last time, and she nodded. With her final blessing, I jumped in.

Page after page was a delight. A St. Bernard contentedly napping in the sunlight pouring from a window. Beautiful dresses, gowns, flowing skirts. Fabric that looked like it would billow off the page if the right breeze struck the paper. Faces looked out at me on almost every page. Coffee shops inked in the background or busy streets expertly lined like an architect. Nigel even popped up, in a dramatic pose I'm sure was done for practice with Emily also sketching. Still life vases and even fruit. Everything that I would have never bothered to look at in real life, in the flesh, beyond the daily mundane.

"You're so talented. Everything feels so alive," I murmured, turning a page.

And then I was suddenly facing myself. My face, clearly and carefully constructed in vivid and intimate detail. I smiled, thinking this must have been the day I was asked to sit and be sketched.

But I turned the page, and there was another. And another. And another. Some were dream like. Some were like seeing a movie from a different camera; I was donning a familiar jacket or pointing towards the sky. As if she had replayed the same memories we shared just as I had, when we first started entering each other's worlds.

There was even one of me partially tangled in a sheet. The sketch was messy, lazy even. But warm. I felt myself blush at my naked back and thigh in this rendered scene, my hair fanned out from what had clearly been an eventful episode hours, if not minutes, before the image was frozen in time.

"Oh."

When I turned to the final page marked by pencil, I was depicted there as well. It was just my face, looking down at what I guessed to be laptop I was clicking away at for the past hour. Here she focused on details I had never noticed about myself. Long lashes. Pouty lips. Her pencil had taken its time on a particular line on my neck, as if kissing it, and I felt just as flushed as the picture of me post-coital.

"You make me look pretty."

I felt her lean closer against my shoulder.

"You tormented my thoughts for quite awhile," she said softly, her breath brushing against my neck.

I gently closed the book and looked down at her. "You still torment mine. Everyday."

A small smile hinted against her lips as her hand slid against my thigh, and my breathing grew embarrassingly erratic at the little touch. She picked up the sketchbook from my lap and tossed to the floor without looking away. She didn't even flinch when it loudly struck the floor behind her.

Her hand returned to my thigh as she whispered, "What ever shall we do about that?"

I'm not sure who kissed the other first, but I didn't really care. I was on top of her, I was kissing her, and she was already wrapping her legs around my waist.

Miranda. What had I done without her in my life for so long? I was just so damn hungry for her.

Her hands slid under my shirt and she was humming, almost purring, while her fingers traced patterns on my back.

A piercing, high-pitched, digitized bell blared next to us. Miranda turned to where my phone sat on the table. I ignored it, instead reaching for Miranda's hair to brush aside. Her brief distraction had given access to her slender neck that I was eager to start decorating with kisses. Her moans told me the phone was left forgotten.

I was gliding past her collar bone when my phone when off again. With a huff, I was pushed onto my back and the warmth that enveloped me was gone. I whined, but Miranda reached over to her nightstand where my phone continued chirping.

"I'm assuming 'Birth Giver' is your mother."

Oh my god, Mom. Worst. Timing. Ever.

"Shit, let me just make sure it's nothing important, then we can ignore it," I grunted as a sat up in the bed.

When Miranda handed me the phone, I instead grabbed her wrist, pulling her in for a kiss.

"Quick pause, promise."

She rolled her eyes but seemed content nonetheless. I took it as a good sign she understood when she laid back down in bed rather than getting up.

My cell phone screen flashed four new text messages from Birth Giver. Jesus, why couldn't she just send one long text? I quickly scanned through her texts. Once I had safely deduced there wasn't an emergency, the message before me almost made me smile.

"Mom actually wants to know if you'd like to come to Ohio during Winter break."

While the whole Sapphic activity thing had surprised them during Thanksgiving, they had handled it well enough. They had done that for Nate, asking to meet over break. I was pretty impressed they were down for the same thing with Miranda.

I looked down at the woman laying beside me.

A beat passed before she deadpanned, "Is your mother the only one that would like to invite me or did you have an opinion on the matter?"

I chuckled as I laid down on my side next to her. "I want the entire world to know I managed to convince you to be my girlfriend. I want to show this off," I explained, reaching out to hold her hand, "Of course I want you to meet my parents. But I wasn't sure if that was too fast or too weird for you."

I had expected an immediate response; Miranda typically had her mind solidly made up about the state of the world and her affairs. However, I was met with the slight tilt of the head.

She looked off at the opposite wall before asking, "Do you ever fear growing old?"

"That was a bit random."

She rolled her eyes and continued, "My aim has almost always been a future career. A successful one. I knew it would require sacrifices. I had already started preparing for that life, limiting my contact with others and immersing myself in my work."

"Okay," I said slowly, "I'll bite. That made you freak out about getting older?"

She shook her head. "Not at all. But it does now."

Leave it to Miranda to have a mid-life crisis before age twenty-two about taking over the world.

"I don't think I'm following," I replied, laying my hand on hers.

"I believe I would have accepted any cost to attain that position of power. I would not have cared how lonely or despised it left me," she explained, her voice almost hollow. Cold. I hadn't heard that voice since I first met her.

"And now?"

'Whether it's too fast or too weird, or whatever other adjectives you'd like to assign to it," she explained, turning now to look at me fully with a small smile, "Your presence has changed me."

Swoon.

"Miranda."

She shrugged. "Let's proceed with the stereotypical milestones of a new relationship and begin introductions with our families. This connection we have with one another is the one thing in my life beyond my career aspirations I wish to simply embrace," she stated as her hand tightened around mine.

Swoon times a thousand.

"I could embrace you all day." My eyebrows began wiggling before I could stop them.

Her body went limp with what I'm sure was disappointment at having decided to date such a dork.

"That was absolutely dreadful."

"Come on, you've missed me with both of us being so busy with finals," I said, gently swinging my leg over to straddle her lap. She seemed unphased as I know hovered above her.

"Possibly."

"You're no fun," I whispered leaning down closer.

She scoffed, "I can be fun."

I barked a laugh and grabbed her wrists to better pin her down. Our noses brushed at the proximity.

"Debatable," I murmured against her lips.

She huffed and wiggled against me. "Are you going to shut up and kiss me or are you going to continue to move at a glacial pace? Because you know how much that just thrills me."

I tilted my head in mock surprise; I could play this game.

"You think this is glacial? I could show you glacial."

I moved my leg between hers and heard her inhale sharply.

"Andrea."

At least I was a dork with a few tricks.

"Hmm?"

I started to kiss her neck while slowly moving my hips against her.

"Andrea." Her voice was more desperate this time.

I breathed against her ear, and I swear I heard her whine.
"Say please."

She halfheartedly pushed against the grip of my hands. I pulled back and looked at her expectantly.

She was flushed, her cheeks sporting a very healthy shade of pink that trailed down her neck. Her chest moved with the effort of breathing. Her eyes were searching mine.

"I'm yours," she breathed.

I snapped. That animalistic part of my body that just wanted her so bad completely took over, and I immediately went to work making it my sole focus to pleasure her and have her moaning in bliss. I was hers. And she wanted to be mine. There was an us. And she wanted to show that to everyone else as much as I did. Our bodies formed an us, a single unit, and my heart was swelling as it inched more and more to her soul each day. Us.

But, damn her, she never did say please.

A/N: Sorry it took so long, folks. I'm a fake grown up with a job and life happens. But I hope you know how much it means to me every time I get a review or a fav or just anything from you guys. I feel the love! I'd like to keep writing more and I'm gonna try to keep chipping away at this one. If anything just to give you some much needed fluff here or there. XOXO