Work Text:
If there’s one thing Derek likes (likes, craves--its always some one syllable understatement--needs and wants and fifty-three synonyms for takes-delight-in, inked paper and definitions and one big fat thesaurus later), it’s his palms on her stomach. His fingers stretched open on top of plains of white, so soft to the touch that if he had calluses, he’d probably hurt her. Like wax paper or thin glass, Derek thinks this says a lot about the way things are, the way everything is so fragile.
[fra-gile / adjective: easily broken, shattered or damaged; vulnerably delicate].
He strokes his thumb across her hip, up to her navel, and closes his eyes.
There’s sun warm against them, bleeding orange and yellow through the pale sheets, fabric that rasps against the hair on his legs when he shifts. Derek breathes out, lets the air dissipate between them, escaped past dry lips. When he presses his nose against her ribcage, the side of his face remains hidden, hidden from the morning, from the light, hidden against her soft skin.
Jen grabs the corner of the sheet and pulls it over their bodies, over their faces, encasing them in a sort of pseudo-protection. Like little children playing hide and go seek, if they can’t see out, no one else can see in. This probably says a lot about them too, how they are.
Things are fragile.
His hips fit snug against her thigh and his finger dips into her belly button and out again, the tiny translucent hair there tickling. He traces a circle against the skin directly below, draws it backwards, strikes a line through it. Her chest rises up and falls.
“You have nice hands.” It’s what she had said, afterwards, the first time, intertwining their fingers until their palms had touched as well.
“Big. Sure. They’re nice.” She had smiled at him too, her cheeks still slightly rosy and her hair a dark halo around her face. She had taken her other hand and tapped him lightly on the nose with her finger. He had wrinkled it in response and she’d laughed, ran the backs of her knuckles along his jawline.
“Your face on the other hand—” He’d buried it into her neck and slid his palms under her back, never quite hearing what she had been planning on saying--her words drifting off as she dropped her hand onto the nape of his neck and squeezed. Derek had closed his eyes.
“Come back to me.”
It’s what she says now.
Derek glances up from his hands. Jen’s looking down at him past her jaw, her eyelashes long and dark. She reaches forward and touches his cheek with her palm, so softly, lightly—fragile, like she thinks he’s fragile.
[joke / noun: a punch line]
“Come back to me.”
The most common synonym of run is break.
“Never left,” he says, the words thick on his tongue.
The corner of her mouth lifts.
“You had the look,” she says.
“It’s the one you get when you read books,” she says.
Jen presses her finger to the space between his eyebrows. “Makes your eyebrows get stuck, stop working. Like maybe they’ve fallen asleep.” Her hand falls.
Derek’s eyebrows draw together and she smiles again.
“Are you telling me I have a funny face?” He asks.
Yeses have become implications.
He digs his thumb into her ribs in retaliation and she jerks, makes a surprised noise.
“You sure about that?”
Jen tries to dodge his hands, her body rolling towards the left, but he’s moving, covering her and kneading her stomach. She arches her neck back, her mouth open and soundless as she tries to draw in air.
Derek briefly wonders if anyone’s ever died from tickling, some sick joke gone wrong. He takes pity, lets his fingers still and she comes down, eyes shining.
“You’re the worst,” she says.
“I’ve got great hands,” he says.
He strokes one down the side of her neck, not just to prove his point but also because Derek has a hard time not touching her (wants to touch her all the time, actually, everywhere—thread his fingers through her hair and haul her closer to him so he can run his nose along her cheek and breather her in, deep--smell the things he hadn’t even known he’d been missing. You can’t put things like saltwater and lavender on the back of a milk carton). He spreads his fingers when they reach the base of her throat, and lets the warmth from them seep into her. She hums, eyes closing.
“Mm, yeah,” she says, “Big. Sure—”
“They’re nice,” he finishes.
She pops an eye back open.
“Do I say that a lot?”
He shrugs, thumbing her clavicle. She looks at him like that for a moment before sighing and running her hand down her face.
“I say that a lot. Fuck.”
“I don’t mind,” he tells her, amused.
He stretches himself above her, pushing off the mattress until he’s straddling her waist, all the weight on his knees. The sheets slide off them and pool around their legs. He rests his hands flat against her stomach.
Reports say a knife to the small intestine can take anywhere from 45 minutes to a few days to kill you. Unsurprisingly, they say nothing about lead pipes.
“That’s not really the point,” she says.
“No?”
She extends her arms behind her head, letting them fall lazily to sheets with her palms turned upwards and her fingers curled gently. It makes the line from her shoulders to her chest deeper, makes her breasts rounder, lifted higher.
“No,” she says. Her face is open and Derek thinks she looks, as she often does, beautiful like this (more welcoming than anything Derek’s experienced in a long time—stuck in a world so closed in on itself, even its pupils are shuttered).“Because I like the rest of your body too.”
You’re going to grow into yourself. And you’ll be gorgeous. Not that you aren’t good looking now of course. I mean, Derek, don’t get me wrong, you’re adorable. But just, wait. A couple years, a couple pounds of muscle and girls will be throwing themselves at you like rabid animals. Hah. Seems fitting, yeah?
He snorts.
“I’m serious,” she says, her mouth curving up in a small smile. “I like all of you, equally. Even your toes.”
Derek blinks, and then wiggles them against the sides of her calves in response.
Her smile grows wider.
“Yeah, even… even those.”
It’s soft, the way her voice just sort of tapers off. She’s staring at him now, studying his face like she’s lost something in it—in the dips and valleys of skin and bone and hair. Her eyes are warm in a way that doesn’t seem possible with irises that color. Derek thinks he could probably drown himself in them if he concentrated hard enough. The way he’s drowned hundreds of times, melted and solidified and melted once again.
Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent.
Sometimes, Derek likes to lie with his chin propped up against the curl of his fists and watch her eyes flit back and forth across lines and paragraphs—absently licking her thumb to turn a page in a book. And when she sits with her back to the far wall, and to the left of the large window, when it’s sunny and bright instead of the usual gloom and doom, if she turns her head just so, the light from outside hits her just right: highlights her delicate bone structure and forces her eyes to shine so brightly, it looks like she’s crying.
Jen looks welcoming then too, welcoming to the countless characters in her stories and to the thick black letters printed on the page in front of her. Derek isn’t sure if it’s an insult or compliment that she’s looking at him the same way she does when reading Mark Twain.
“I could say the same about you,” Derek says.
“You like my toes?”
He smiles at her, cocks his head like he’s sharing a secret.
“I like everything about you.”
“How noble of you—not playing favorites.”
Derek glances down to where his thumbs are making little half moons against her hip bones, then back up at her face. He shrugs, the movement minute.
“No,” he says, “I’ve just got a lot of favorites.”
Jen catches a lock of hair between her fingers, squinting.
“Like, how many favorites?” She spreads her fingers and wiggles them. “Like, this many?”
Derek smirks, sinking down onto her, sliding his palms up the insides of her forearms. He threads their fingers together.
“More,” he says.
The tip of his nose brushes along the bridge of hers, his bottom lip catches the side of her mouth. Her breath is warm on his skin and she arches against his chest, chasing his lips, but he’s moving (constantly and always moving--running, he’s running), dipping his head and mouthing at the place behind her ear.
“Like, the number of times we’ve fucked in this bed?” She counters, and Derek can tell without looking at her that she’s grinning.
He drags his tongue in a slow line up the underside of her jaw.
“Mmm,” he says, contemplatively, “More.”
“Right,” she says, her voice high and reedy as he kisses his way across her collarbone and down between her breasts, his stubble leaving her skin pink and sensitive.
He gets his teeth on the side of her breast and then his lips around her nipple, sucking it softly into his mouth and curling his tongue around it. She makes a sound at that, just as light as the pressure he’s applying to her wrists, his thumb stroking back and forth across the delicate and transparent skin.
“The number of times you’ve made me come on your fingers?” Jen says.
Derek untangles his right hand, sliding it down over her ribs until he reaches her pelvis. He grinds the heel of his palm against her clit in a slow circle and she gasps, her eyes squeezing shut and her knee jerking.
Derek’s throat feels dry.
“More,” he says.
She bucks up against him, searching blindly for more pressure, more friction. He lifts up off her, scooting down the bed and maneuvering himself so he’s inside the v of her legs instead. His head by her knee, he slides his palms up her inner thighs, his thumbs digging in along the way.
He drags her closer by her hips and lowers his upper body back down in two (impressively smooth, if he gives himself any credit) moves, his forehead resting on the right dip of her pelvic bone, rubbing against the thin band of her panties. He hooks his thumb around it, stretching the material up, watching as it molds to her shape.
Fuck.
“The number of times you made me come with your mouth?” Her voice isn’t much louder than a whisper.
He turns his head, his lips meeting cotton as he hums, “More,” into the center of her. The sound of air whistling through her nose accompanies the slow slide of his tongue and then a whimper when he sucks on her clit, the fabric under his mouth dampening.
It's good--teasing her--one of his favorite things to do, actually (to drive her to the edge slowly and pull her back when she begins to tip, and to do that over and over again until she's begging for it. Derek has a certain, uh, appreciation for begging). But he misses the taste of her, the warmth against his mouth. He's stupid for it and they both know it.
Jen lifts up her hips in clear indication and Derek obliges, sliding her panties down over her ankles and tossing them behind him. He thinks they hit the floor, but he’s not paying much attention. Her legs spread wide but lax--one knee bent and the other lying flat--it has to be one of the best invitations Derek’s ever received, though that’s not exactly awarding much credit considering he doesn’t actually receive many invitations, well, ever (it figures death is too rude for niceties like RSVPs or plus ones).
It’s with that probably less than comforting thought that he delves in back between her thighs and his mouth meets her cunt again. Like riding a bicycle or stepping out into the middle of a busy street without looking both ways, it’s something you don’t really forget--forget how to do or forget what it’s like. The smell of her thick in his nose, but her taste on his tongue lighter than he could possibly imagine. It’s heady, intoxicating in a way he’d originally never thought of, before, way before, but also not.
Derek sometimes clenches his fingers and can see them smaller, less rough on the shoulders of someone young and innocent and he remembers overwhelming; he remembers soft kisses passed in hallway corners and how the touching of fingertips could feel like tiny little sparks traveling up tendons and into wrist bones. He’s not--you don’t forget the definition of a word. You just make up new synonyms. You make them up with new people.
There’s a hand in his hair.
“Did I lose you again?”
Derek flicks his eyes upward and locks his gaze with hers, takes in the flush rounding her cheeks and the dark brush of her lashes against them. He opens his mouth as an answer and his bottom lip touches her folds. One second, two, a third passes. The world seems small, minuscule. Just them. This. Here. Derek shuts his eyes for an instant and the universe expands again.
His tongue travels up through heat and wetness as he flicks it up and down, reaching only the shallowest parts of her. He does it again and again until the hand in his hair is tangled tightly in the roots, balancing on that line of too much. His own hands slide up the flatness of her stomach, fingertips brushing ribs and coming right back down again.
Jen makes a noise caught between pleasure and frustration and digs her heel into Derek’s back. God, Derek’s missed this (always misses this--could probably miss it while experiencing it, actually), the heat of her skin and her insistent sounds, so alive (so fucking alive) he can taste it. There’s something to be said about the beauty of pleasure and pain and how they can both land you on your back, helpless and writhing.
Jump to Derek with his hands on Jen’s ass as her thigh muscles work strenuously, riding his face and jaw, his nose bumping against her clit, tongue fucking almost cruelly into her until her legs quiver and she’s coming, shaking warm and happy around him.
Jump to 5 o’clock in the morning, Derek waking up to a dim light coming from the corner of the loft, Jen’s hair piled on top of her head, chewing a pen anxiously between her teeth as she grades papers from kids whose problems have only just begun to start.
Jump to that time Derek asks about her therapist and she says no.
Jump to warm, sunny days and dark, cloudy ones, her and Derek wrapped up in sheets and blankets, 37 different books for the choosing and cartons of take out sitting on the nightstand.
Jump to questions and considerations and how many of them Derek’s swept under the rug (things like doubts, denials, and distracting, stomach gnawing fears).
You’re running. And once you start, you don’t stop. You’ll always be running.
Jump to now, right now, as Derek slides two fingers inside of Jen and curls them, rubs the pads of his fingertips earnestly against her inner walls. She moans as he parts them, slips his tongue between the webbing and curls that too.
Derek does the math and figures he could probably live on this, survive on the way her cheeks turn redder with each press of his mouth and twisting of his wrist. He could fill his days with the small gasps from her lips and the rapid undulation of her chest.
Derek’s learned a few things from Kate. Some of those things have turned into neurotic tendencies and others have landed Derek on a bed, between the legs of a beautiful woman. And while it’s hard to be grateful for a person who set your home and family on fire, Derek knows that life has always been made up of circumstances, of action and consequence.
After mistake, after mistake, after mistake, Derek’s started to stop looking at them as mistakes and more as inevitabilities. So maybe it’s an inevitability that landed Derek here. Maybe it’s inevitability that has him sucking on Jen’s clit until she’s being dragged under the water, under waves and waves of pleasure.
Mistake, fate, bullshit--Derek’s stopped looking up synonyms in thesauruses long ago.
“Great hands,” tumbles out of Jen’s mouth when she can breathe again. She smiles tiredly down at him. He grabs one of hers and threads their fingers together, squeezing.
“Big. Sure,” they say.
They’re nice.