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

"I would've brought dessert but I didn't have enough hands for another dish," he murmurs with a slight chuckle before draining his glass of water and wiping the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

He sets his utensils aside and covers his empty plate. He'll take the dishes back downstairs when he leaves in the morning.

Standing up, he stretches, full and satisfied.

"S'all right."

She smiles softly, arranging her empty dishes with his while he stretches. She gives the boys one last handful of handouts, since they've been waiting so patiently by the side of her chair, and wipes her hands.

"I'm still gettin' used t'eatin' so late. Don't think I could manage another bite."

"Well, I can eat anything 'round the clock..."

He gives the cats an amused look.

"And apparently, so can they."

He steps over them (he's careful about it) and crosses the room. With a yawn that's not necessarily sleepy or tired, he flops down into one of the armchairs, adjusting a throw pillow behind his back and propping his feet up on the ottoman.

Her lips twitch.

"Must be a boy thing."

She rubs Goldie's furry head, and gives Roz a scratch behind the ears, all to the sounds of contented purring. Then she gets up, tucks both chairs under the table, and moseys on over to where he is.

She leans against an arm of his chair, and casually combs his hair out of his face.

"Must be."

He smiles lazily, finding himself leaning into her touch like one of her pets.

Eventually he reaches for her hand and gives it a tug-- not too hard, just enough to tip her balance, intending for her to slide onto his lap.

The flop into his lap isn't as silly as it could have been, due solely to the fact that she had been braced on her feet as she leaned. Unfortunately, once he has her off balance, that's all she wrote.

She tumbles into his lap with a snicker, stopping herself from falling any further by wrapping an arm around his neck.

"Did I hurt you?"

Grinning, he curls an arm around her shoulders, his free hand sliding up her thigh to rest on her hip. He holds her close, their foreheads almost touching, and he chuckles against her lips.

"Nah, you'll hafta do more than that to hurt me."

He steals a quick kiss, giving her hip a squeeze.

"Mmm, challenge accepted."

She smiles broadly, the tease no more than a husky purr. Her free hand slides to his heart, while she adjusts her hold on him to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. In the excitement, the necklace he gifted her has slipped from the folds of her linen blouse and rests over her breast pocket.

She chases the peck with another tender kiss.

"Y'tired, sweetheart?"

"Ooh, really." He smirks at that, an eyebrow twitching, before she kisses the twist of his lips away, closing his eyes for a moment at her touch.

When he opens them again, his gaze falls on the glint of silver in the warm light, and there's a sudden tug at something deep inside him. Touched that she's still wearing the necklace. That she has it with her, keeping it against her skin.

He shakes his head a little, eyes still lowered as he leans in to nuzzle her cheek.

"Ain't tired. Just--" He exhales a sigh that sounds more weary than he actually is.

"Just got a lot on my mind, y'know. Same ol' shit that I can't seem to shake."

"Mm."

She understands. They've both been a little worn around the edges the past month. He hasn't mentioned anything out of the ordinary happening back home to put him in the mood he's in, but she can relate in her own small way.

Her thumb carves a soft design around his heart.

"Would y'like me t'read t'you for a time?"

He's quiet for a moment. Just focusing on her thumb on his chest through his t-shirt. As if she's leaving her impression there.

He always did think that he could endlessly listen to her voice, and he flashes back to when she'd read Casey at the Bat to him when he was a dog. The memory makes the corner of his mouth twitch.

"Sure, why not. You pick something."

She presses her lips to his temple.

"All right. I'll hafta get up for a moment."

The corner of her mouth flirts at a smile, anticipating the grumble those words will elicit. She honestly won't tarry longer than she has to, and in fact is up and back with a bound volume in a matter of seconds. She settles back in, and opens to a random page.

"His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once."

She's picked up A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and doesn't too much expect he'll recognize any of it, despite the fact that she gave him a copy as a gift not so long ago. The timely thing about Twain is that his prose is often tempered with sharp humor and unyielding hope.

"But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done ... "

Edited 2013-08-26 04:37 (UTC)

There's just a hint of a pout when he lets her slip from his arms, but soon enough she's back and getting comfortable again. Then, with his head resting against the cushions, he loses himself in the sweet, soothing notes of her voice.

No, he doesn't recognize the passage. But as he peers at the headers on the pages, he sheepishly realizes that it's the book she'd given him. He can't remember getting further than the first chapter.

He might be lulled into a dreamy state, except a significant word or phrase might jump out at him, wedging itself between his thoughts (sometimes very much like grains of sand). Hope. Cheerfulness. Do something for himself.

And he's a little more awake for that. Listening, drawn both by what Twain says, and how Kate says it.

She reads on for many long minutes. The strange thing is her voice loses some of its twang, her 'g's a little more rounded, and her vowels a little softer. She could almost be that innocent, cultured schoolmarm again, hands chalky from writing on a blackboard rather than calloused from steel and rope.

Once she reaches the end of the chapter, she glances up at his face to see if he's awake.

Edited 2013-08-27 04:44 (UTC)

After a while, his attention drifts from the words to just the sound of them. The shift in her voice is there, he just can't figure out exactly how it's somehow become sweeter and softer, as if that were even possible. With a languid gaze he watches her lips, every flicker of her eyelashes, the clear blue of her irises as they follow every line of text.

She's beautiful in the outdoors where she loves to be; she's beautiful when she's curled up with a good book in her lap.

And suddenly her lips have stopped moving, and the room is silent, and he realizes that she's reached the end of a chapter. Their eyes meet, and he looks a little sheepish again. But the corner of his mouth twitches in a small smile, and cupping her cheek, he kisses her, warm and lingering.

They break, and he smooths her hair over her ear.

"Seriously, honey, I could listen to you all night. But then you'd only get a sore throat."

There are moments when she lets herself let go, though they're few and far between. When she catches him looking at her like that, it makes her think for one fleeting moment that this really is something special. That she's special to him. And a kiss like that can be more alluring than a hundred passionate ones.

She smiles softly as he combs through her hair, chin tipping down ever so slightly in that shy way she can't shake.

"Now that I know how much y'like it, I could always keep a carafe of tea handy."

Back to teasing, spark in her eye and smirk tugging at her mouth. She kisses the tip of his nose, and keeps her finger in the book to mark their place.

"I don't mind, y'know. If it helps get your mind off things."

As much as her shyness endears her to him, he enjoys her teasing smirks just as much.

"It helps, I guess. I just seem to end up paying more attention to the reader than what's bein' read. But then again, that helps, too."

He grins, giving her a squeeze.

"You're like my very own kind of therapy."

A laugh bubbles up from within her.

"Ain't sure how I feel 'bout that."

'Therapy', as she's come to know it, is far less soothing. It's work, and effort. However, she likes knowing she helps put him at ease, so she tips her forehead against his jaw, nuzzling up under his chin.

Her voice, and her laugh, and her little snickers and giggles. They just get under his skin and make him want to take her home with him.

"Well, whatever therapeutic stuff you got goin' on, it's working," he chuckles.

At her kittenish nuzzle, he tilts his head back against the cushions and presses her head to his shoulder, his fingers curling through her hair.

"How 'bout you? You still doin' that actual-- therapy thing? With that doctor-- Guppy, right?"

She's mentioned him in passing before, and he's seen and heard his name around the bar. The guy seems to be a reputable, trusted type.

"Mm? No, Guppy's a medical doc."

She settles in against his shoulder, a soft hum escaping when he starts running his fingers through her hair. She closes her eyes, concentrating on the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.

"He recommended me t'a Dr. Lecter. Well, I met Dr. Lecter first, but the two consulted an' decided I should talk t'him. He's a nice man."

To be fair, Kate would call just about anyone a 'nice man' to be polite. Dr. Lecter puts her through her paces, but he seems to have her best interests at heart.

"Oh."

Though a slight furrow forms between his brows, it passes, but his concerns remain. He'd only thought she was talking to someone she already knew well.

"You trust him?"

"I trust Guppy."

Tommy knows her trust is hard won. There are folk she's known for years that she don't trust, not because of any fault on their part.

"I dunno if it's doin' any good, but I do know it's what Guppy wants me t'do. So I'm tryin'."

The furrow comes back, and he purses his lips, turning his head slightly to bury his nose in her hair. He has a protective streak a mile wide, and given that he hates psychiatrists to begin with, he's wary of what this shrink might be putting her through.

"You don't think it's helping?"

There's a long pause before she moves; either she's just getting more comfortable, or she's trying to shrug. Either way, she's not picking her head up from his shoulder.

"M'not sure. S'only been a couple'a weeks, an' the biggest thing I notice is feelin' more tired than normal. Talkin' 'bout things don't come easy."

The tips of her fingers start drawing lazy designs in his t-shirt. She suddenly longs for the feel of his bare skin.

"I don't like bein' vulnerable."

He has no intention of loosening his embrace, his palm now laid flat against her hair.

"I know you don't."

He doesn't like feeling vulnerable either. But at least when he and Kate talk, they're there to catch each other, patch up all the open wounds, and take refuge in one another's arms.

"You ever get too tired, you can come to me and we don't hafta talk about a damn thing."

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