ikissdhimbck | OOM: Room #100 -- For Tommy Gavin

She runs her thumbs over the heels of his palms.

"Okay."

Tugging his hands to her waist, she gently positions them on her body. With another crooked smirk, she bends to retrieve the half-full drinking glass from the floor, and takes another grateful gulp. The fingers of her free hand follow the soft ridges up his forearm, muscle and vein, breaking at his elbow to ghost along his ribs.

She offers him what's left of her water.

"D'you wanna make out?"

See, she's learning.

He tenses involuntarily when her fingers skate over his ribs. She can touch his sides and he'll be fine -- it's only when she uses her nails that might send him into fits.

But as he takes the glass, he pauses with the rim just at his lips as a grin spreads across his face in reply to her question.

Tossing back the mouthful of water as if it were a shot of liquor, he sets the glass back down on the floor, and slips his hand back around her waist, thumb stroking her skin under the t-shirt. He leans in, and for a moment, his parted lips hover a hair's breadth away from hers, savoring the heat, the hum, the closeness between them. And then he kisses her, warm and tender.

She'll just take that as a yes, then.

The grin on his face inspires a laugh out of her, and she's still snickering when he leans in, arms automatically twining around his neck. She savors him in the same way he does her, and when he finally kisses her she's already leaning in to meet him.

She only breaks the kiss once, and that's because her grin is too broad. She breathes a gentle laugh and stretches out on her back, tugging him down on top of her. Maybe in a moment she'll take the time to peel the covers back.

Her kisses sprinkled with giggles keeps a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. This lightheartedness is infectious.

It doesn't take much effort to pull him down on top of her. Once again they find their bodies pressed against one another. Grasping her more firmly around her waist, he rolls them both over so that he's on his back, and she's the one straddling him.

And if she's been paying attention so far, this is exactly how he likes it.

He grins up at her as her hair falls around their faces in a wavy blonde curtain.

"This time, how 'bout you be on top."

He tilts his head up and kisses her chin, the grin barely leaving his lips.

There may be a quickly disguised wince, but he'll hear no complaints from her. The lightheartedness is new and different, it's intoxicating, and all she can think about is more.

They'll figure everything else out as they go along.

Before she knows it, it's dawn.

She wakes with a start, whether from the advancing position of the star in the sky or a nightmare she can't quite remember (they're all the same anyhow). It's grey light, but she's usually dressed and on her way to the stables by now.

She shifts her hand, and it drags over warm flesh.

She takes a moment to remember last night, smiling up at Tommy, who appears to be fast asleep. The smile vanishes the instant she tries stretching her legs.

Ouch.

Slowly, so as not to wake him, she drags herself out of bed. She pads to the bathroom with one goal in mind: a very long, very hot bath, with lots of Epsom salts.

By the time Tommy wakes, there will be hot coffee on the small table in the corner of the room, and a couple of covered plates.

It's the first deep sleep Tommy's had in a long time.

There may have been dreams -- possibly involving fire, or smoke, or blackness, or the faces of people no longer in his life -- nothing he hasn't seen before. But it all seemed farther away. Less vivid. Less haunting.

So he doesn't feel it when Kate wakes and gets out of bed. And he sleeps right through her bath (dammit!). He even sleeps through the arrival of breakfast.

The coffee, though.

That gets him.

He stirs.

The first thing he notices: an unfamiliar bed.

Sprawled on his belly with the sheets tangled around his waist and legs, he picks his head up, bewildered for a moment.

Did I drink? Was I drunk?

Squinting in the daylight, he rolls over and drags his fingers through his hair.

No hangover. It's just...early.

He manages to prop himself up on his elbows and has a bleary-eyed look around the room.

"Coffee," he croaks. "Awesome."

Kate peeks her head out of the bathroom door when she hears his voice.

"Good mornin'."

She smiles. She's pinning her hair up, dressed in her red silk robe. She doesn't linger at the door long, however.

"Help yourself t'breakfast. I'll be out in jus' a minute."

It takes a few seconds for him to respond.

"'Morning," he grunts out as he gradually starts to wake up.

Slowly rolling out of bed, he checks around him for his clothes. His underwear and jeans are on the floor, and he picks them up and pulls them on. His t-shirt, though, is nowhere to be seen.

Whatever. He'll look for it after his much-needed first cup of coffee.

Kate emerges a few minutes later, hair messily pinned in a Gibson Tuck. She looks vaguely nervous, so that you could almost hear her wondering:

What now?

"Hi."

She comes up beside him.

After a few gulps of coffee, he feels somewhat human again. Not enough to sense Kate's vague apprehension, but he turns to her and drops an almost automatic kiss to the top of her head, her hair still damp from her bath.

"Hey."

Another gulp of coffee.

"I'll just be a sec."

And he plods off into the bathroom.

His voice and manner are gruff, but that's just Tommy in the morning.

"All right."

None of the men in Kate's life have ever been morning people. She doesn't think much of it.

While he's off, she pours herself a fresh cup of coffee and finds the dish with the tea cakes.

He washes his face with icy cold water, gasping and shivering as his senses fully awaken and the previous night comes back to him in a flood. And at that, his lips twitch and a low chuckle to himself echoes off the porcelain sink. Combing his fingers through his hair, he regards his dripping reflection in the mirror for a moment before noticing a small red welt on the side of his throat.

Well. At least the guys at the firehouse will know he got some without having to ask.

After drying off his face, he emerges from the bathroom. He goes to the bed and shakes out the rumpled sheets in search of his t-shirt, eventually fishing it out from between the folds, before he approaches Kate at the table.

"How're you doin'?"

She sits with her legs tucked under her chair. Crossing them just isn't comfortable this morning.

"M'all right."

She eyes him from over the rim of her cup.

"I meant t'have that laundered for you before y'woke up. M'sorry."

"Ah, 's fine. No need."

He pulls the shirt on (it smells like her, too) and sits down at the table.

"Rough night, huh?" he then says, cracking a devilish smile up at her as he refills his cup of coffee.

She's completely nonchalant when she answers.

"It was all right."

The ho-hum is implied.

He sets down the pot of coffee with a soft thunk and levels her a Look.

"It was all right?" he scoffs with a short laugh.

"Well, it was wonderful until this obnoxious fella showed up at my door."

She spears a bite of jelly-filled pastry and brings it to her lips, making eye contact with him. That wicked spark is dancing in her eyes.

"An' he kept me up all night long."

"Is that so?" he says dryly, as he takes a sip of coffee. "You should've called me, I could've kicked him out for ya and showed you a much better time."

Her lips linger around her fork. She pulls it away, chewing slowly.

(And masking a grin.)

"Is that a promise?"

"Of course," he murmurs into his cup, meeting her eyes, before his gaze flicks down to her lips as she chews.

Suddenly overwhelmed with an appetite, he removes the lid from his plate and uncovers an omelet with a side of bacon, and immediately tucks in.

"So, what're you up to today?"

She pretends not to notice when his eyes sink to her mouth.

(But she almost always does — eyes on her mouth, on her chest, on her legs — and it always gives her a little thrill.)

"Mm, I'll probably check in on the stables at some point, but I might reserve this as a leisure day."

She cuts a biscuit in half, letting a pat of butter melt between the two halves.

"What about you?"

He crunches on some bacon.

"I'm just gonna go home, get a few more hours sleep before I have to go back to work again, since I'm pulling another double-shift. I'll have a couple days off after that, though, but I might hafta spend that time with my old man. Oh yeah, did I mention that yet? My dad moved in with me." He doesn't sound too thrilled as he shovels a forkful of eggs into his mouth.

"Really? That's wonderful."

So says the young woman who had the close relationship with her father. She doesn't notice his lackluster look until after the fact.

"That's not wonderful?"

A slight eyebrow twitch.

"Nah-uh. Not wonderful."

Cup of coffee in hand, he leans back in his chair. "You wanna know why it's not wonderful? Lemme tell you why. Take me on my worst day -- the boozing, the swearing, the carousing, basically all the seven deadly sins -- age that by eighty-two years, add incontinence, and that's what my dad's like. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy, and yeah, he was a war hero, yeah, he was a firefighter, but goddamn, he's a son of a bitch."

She eats quietly, eyebrow slowly, slowly arching. She takes in everything he says with the utmost solemnity, taking time to recall all seven sins, noting that his father was a firefighter as well.

"So what you're sayin' is — it's like bein' married to yourself?"

She stabs a bite of sausage, once more using her fork to mask her burgeoning smirk. Well, at least he's honest. And he knows what to expect in the next thirty or forty years.

She brushes his leg with her own.

"At two-and-eighty, I'd say he's earned the right t'be a bit of a sonnovabitch."

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