July 17: Tom/Daria, Cliche Pt. 2

[kinetic_elaboration]

This might be the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written. Saying a lot.

Continuation of yesterday.

T/D, ~640 words, 20 minutes

*

Yes. 

It’s okay.

 

He doesn’t make any more movements, and after the space of a few breaths, she understands that all he wants is to be pressed against her middle just like this. She feels the pressure of his forehead, like he’s leaning against her to hold himself up. If she glances down, she can just make out that his eyes are closed. And she doesn’t move her hand but still holds him steady, yet without so much force that he couldn’t pull away if he wanted, runs the tips of her fingers in circles against his scalp. Like she’s washing his hair but with one hand and no shampoo. A funny image. But the moment isn’t funny.

She could ask why but that seems like it might spoil it. Break a spell of some sort. She’s reminded of when he used to put his head on her lap while they watched TV, of how he called her comfortable and she hadn’t understood it. She sort of does, now. 

Slowly, his arm circles around her legs, and then his hand moves up: not grabbing but with a steady and definite purpose, up the outside of her thigh but, when it reaches the hem of her skirt, up over the fabric instead of underneath. He’s tracing her hip, skirts shy of her ass, settles at last just below her waist. Now she feels the point of his nose rubbing against her belly, over her t-shirt, and then the way he kisses her there against the fabric, still not searching out skin.

He takes a deep breath and she feels the tremor of it, too subtle to be called shaking, but she feels it in every inch of her: the delicate and purposeful expansion of his lungs in his chest. And she realizes she’s been holding her own breath for too long. Hers is much more uneven as she lets it go.

“You okay?” Tom murmurs. He glances up. “I can stop if you want.”

Stop what? He isn’t doing anything. Not really. He’s barely even hugging her, it’s just that every touch feels so intimate, just that she’s never been touched like this before in her life.

“No, don’t. I mean—” She slides her fingers through the short strands of his hair, and his eyes close again. “Do you want—?”

Something more?

Anything?

“I want you,” he answers, and it sounds so simple, apparently even to him, that he smiles a little after in a faint and rueful way. “I know you said you weren’t ready for— For sex like that.”

“Like what?”

“I mean. I guess the traditional way people think of sex. But there are a lot of ways to be close to each other. I just… I know I want to feel you.”

She takes that to mean feel as in touch, like he is, but then he tilts his gaze slightly down, his forehead against her stomach, and she realizes just how close he is to pressing his face somewhere more private than just her middle. And she feels her face grow hot. And it doesn’t feel like hugging anymore. She holds on to him a little tighter. When she realizes she’s probably pulling him forward so he can’t breathe, she loosens her grip again and murmurs, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I—”

She thought he was just trailing off but the word gets caught and nothing follows after it. He’s still got his palm curled around her hip, his thumb rubbing circles there.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

Still nothing, for a time. That’s how she knows he really means it, and it’s hard for him, and it’s a secret from deep down in him, when he says, “I would do anything for you. To make you feel good. If you wanted.”