Chapter Text
She held his hand, squeezed it for a moment, and then with a simple flex of her wrist, pulled him into her space, leaned into him, and kissed him again.
Far, far less uncertainly this time.
“Wait, don’t,” he breathed. His fingers gently but noticeably dug into her hips. Juliet’s lips leaving his felt like being deprived of oxygen. “Don’t go.”
“Sooner or later we’ll have to,” she replied. But she made no move to leave, one hand still gripping his tightly, the other resting on his collar.
“I know. In a minute. Just…not yet,” he said, and kissed her again. It was dizzying; somehow he managed to be insistent, and possessive, and welcoming, and leave room for her to press in and do as she wanted. Which she exploited, and lost track of everything else. She could’ve been standing on a hospital balcony in Honolulu or a promenade in Helsinki for all she knew.
Eventually the responsible switch in her brain threw itself and she reluctantly, very reluctantly, pulled away. Just a matter of inches though; she liked the closeness. Liked being in his space. Everything’s right, her mind told her. Oh God, what do I do now?
“We should go back,” she mumbled, then looked up at his eyes with a plea. “But we can…” We can what? The right words matter. “Revisit this later?” she chose. It sounded as promising but guardedly noncommittal as she wanted to seem. Mainly because, while she was growing ever more certain what she wanted, her natural prudence wanted more clarity on what Magnum wanted out of this.
From his wide eyes and how tightly he held her, he apparently at least wanted more than a clandestine rooftop experiment in getting something out of their systems. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the comical energy with which his head bobbed up and down; he looked like one of those cheap giveaways at American sporting events.
“Okay,” she told him. “See you back there. Try not to be too obvious.” She smirked, that Higgy smirk he’d always loved but that had felt more and more like a cattle prod to the heart lately, pecked him on the lips once more, and left. She looked a lot steadier on her feet than he felt.
He stood on the balcony and watched the sun sink into the ocean, using the techniques he’d learned in the frigid waters off Coronado to bring his heart rate back under control. After what he hoped was a respectable interval, he wandered back down the hall, pausing at a vending machine. His eyes saw nothing but Juliet’s face. He shoved coins in, randomly punched buttons, and pulled out whatever dropped in the bin. When he strolled back into Suzy’s hospital room, he was loudly smacking on a Snickers. Everyone looked up from cooing over Joy and Higgins rolled her eyes at him.
“Honestly, Magnum. Did you bring some for everybody?” He pulled a half-melted candy bar out of his pocket and tried to hand it to her. Her eyes rolled harder, but whatever she was about to say was cut off by the hospital PA announcing that visiting hours were over. Not a restriction that had ever stopped the ohana before, but Thomas could see the fatigue on Rick and Suzy’s faces.
“Hey, we can head to La Mariana. Dinner and drinks on me!”
“Thomas, dinner and drinks on you always means dinner and drinks on me, and I got a family to support now,” Rick protested. It gave Higgins the cover she was looking for.
“Actually, it’s been a bit of a day. I think I’d rather just head home.” Her voice made it sound as though her plans and Magnum’s might be independent; her eyes told him they’d better not be.
“Okay.” He tried to sound casual. “I’ll take you.”
Magnum ordinarily loved everything about driving the Ferrari. Today was the first time he’d ever cursed the need to shift, and wondered what it meant that he’d never once been this painfully desperate to hold anyone else’s hand. He fretted silently about how to achieve his goal, worrying it’d be weird to constantly be grabbing for and then dropping Higgy’s hand. She solved his problem for him, resting her hand on his thigh, and while he relished the feel of it, he mourned his decision not to wear shorts this morning.
He was much more judicious than usual on the drive, only speeding and weaving a little. Sure, he was in a hurry to get home and find out what she’d meant by ‘revisit.’ And while he’d never given a great deal of thought to how he wanted to die, he knew for sure it wasn’t in a car wreck thirty minutes after Juliet told him she had feelings for him, twenty-seven minutes after he’d kissed her, and before he got to kiss her again or hear what was really on her mind. He glanced at her repeatedly, but her eyes were closed, a small smile on her face. The glow from each passing streetlight pulsed into a series of halos off her hair. She looked over at him when he parked in Robin’s driveway and cut the ignition.
“Uh…do you want to come downforabeerorsomething?” He immediately regretted the ‘or something’; he didn’t want Higgins to think he had untoward designs. Don’t you? his inner voice chided him. Hopes, he admitted to himself. I have hopes. Her lips pursed and she made a why not? face.
“Sure,” she said. He clocked the careful effort that had gone into the seemingly casual look and tone, though she wasn’t the only one trying to be careful. Higgy looked at him oddly when he tried to race around the car and offer her a hand before she stood all the way up, but she took it and held it all the way down the path to the guest house.
“I think I have some snacks—oof!” Thomas tried to be a good host, but the moment the door clicked shut she jerked his body against hers and crushed her lips into his. She kissed him like a woman in relentless pursuit of something she’d apparently been tormented about for some time. He could get lost in that world and never come out, but eventually she stopped and looked at him.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” she confessed. He couldn’t think; Juliet Higgins had the ability to kiss men stupid. Him, anyway.
“Not as long as I have,” he finally croaked.
“It’s not a competition, Magnum.” The scolding tone in her voice and gleam in her eye told him that, like so much else they did, something about it very much was.
“Uh…beer! Beer?” His voice was still strangled; he knew she could hear it from the smirk on her face. Enchantress, he thought. Possibly evil.
“I didn’t come down here for a beer.”
“Water? Wine?” He was desperate. Don’t leave. Please don’t leave. Higgins shook her head.
“I didn’t come down here for a drink.”