FicWad

I was awoken from a peaceful sleep by loud whispers coming from the adjoining bathroom. I sat up from the mountain of blankets I was buried under and looked around me. The neon numbers on the clock showed it to be 4.30, and judging by the lack of light, it wasn't the afternoon.

I sighed and fell back, wanting to get lost in sleep again. But my ears picked out Ryan's end of a phone conversation.

"-your fault Anson! I hired you to take care of this and you fucked up! Where exactly is he now?" He was quiet for a moment and I sat up to hear better. "Fucking hell! Do you have any idea what this means!? You've put us in danger. You put HER in danger. You better hope to God you fix this or else I’ll fucking fix you myself! I have to sort shit out because of this fucking mess you’ve created. You stay with him. Don’t call me. I’ll contact you."

I layed back down, pretending to be asleep, and I heard the door open. I felt him climb back into bed beside me and he draped one arm around my still body.

"What are we going to do?" he whispered brokenly, almost scared. He moved the hair away from my neck and kissed me tenderly. "Will this ever be over? Will you ever be safe?" He was whispering next to my ear, but I knew he was talking to himself. "I can only do so much and it's not enough." I felt a vibration and he groaned as he pulled away from me. This time he left the room altogether, so I heard nothing of this conversation. the last one I heard should have worried me. Many things he said to me should have scared me, but I never felt such an emotion when I was with him. I believed that he would take care of me.

More peaceful and calm than I should have been, I fell back to sleep. Ryan shook me awake a few hours later and he seemed apprehensive.

"Morning," he said gently, sitting down beside me. His tone was cautious when he spoke. "How are you feeling?"

The revelations of yesterday, which he assumed would be on my mind, seemed long gone, a lifetime ago. I didn't feel sadness, or anger, or even hate any more; all I Felt was an overwhelming sense of love towards the man who looked afraid to even touch me.

"I feel great," I whispered, reaching my hand up to run it through his hair. He smiled, but it was only half there.

"I think we need to get away from here for a bit," he said. "California just holds bad memories for me because of what happened. I just wanna take you somewhere. Will you let me?"

"Only if it’s Paris." I pulled him down and wrapped the blankets around him. He laughed and then rolled over to look at me.

"Maybe for our honeymoon someday."

My lips twitched into a smile as he looked at me, appearing to be scared of my response because my last response to the subject of marriage was less than satisfying. "Promise?"

He broke out into a grin. "Promise."

"I'm holding you to that." I slid over and moved my legs so that they were in between his. "So then where are we going?"

His pink lips turned up into a sly smile. "Gotham."

"Gotham?" I crinkled my nose. "Where the hell is that?"

He chuckled like an adult laughing at something silly a child would say. "When we were younger you'd come watch the Batman cartoons with me on Sundays. You were a bit of a tom boy back then." He laughed lightly. "You always said that you wanted to go to Gotham City when you were older and you made me promise to take you there. I told you it didn't actually exist, that it was only New York City, but you wouldn't listen and pestered me until I promised. So I'm keeping my promise to you. I'm taking you to New York."

"I've always wanted to see it in the winter!" I said excitedly.

"Yea, I remember that too. Do you remember the first day we spent together? You told me you'd never seen snow and that you wanted to see New York during Christmas because of a movie you once saw."

"I love you," I said, adjusting my position so that I was lying on top of him. "If only you knew how much."

His hand gently rubbed the nape of my neck, and his eyes bore into my own. "After everything I've been through for you, I think I know."

One minute, I was fully dressed and on top of him, the next, I was naked underneath him and we were making love. I didn't miss the sex we had at the beginning of everything. It was meaningless and nothing compared to what had developed. Ryan had memorized every curve of my body. He knew how to please me and drive me to that point. But more importantly, he loved me, and I loved him, and everything felt like it was right, the way it was always meant to be.

As both Ryan and I orgasmed, just seconds apart, tears spurted from my eyes. Ryan seemed horrified as he embraced me, begging me to tell him what was wrong, but nothing was wrong. It was just that I felt so whole. Despite everything he had told me, I was suddenly happier than I ever remembered being, and that wasn't an exaggeration.

"Nothing’s wrong," I reassured him with tears still falling down my face.

"Then why are you crying?"

"Because I'm happy."

He let out a sigh of relief and held me even tighter against his naked chest. I felt our hearts beat in unison as we lay together, and silently made a decision that had already seemed to have been made for me before that night Ryan and I got together at the club. A decision that, had I known back then that I was going to make, would have made me run the other way.

"Mon ange," he whispered, "I would love nothing more than to lay naked with you for the rest of our lives, but we have a plane to catch. We need to shower and be ready to leave in an hour."

I let out a small noise in response but made no move to get out of bed.

"I'm serious," he said against my skin as his lips grazed my jaw bone.

"A few more minutes, please?” We can save time if we shower together," I mumbled.

"That's my girl," he laughed, sweeping me into his arms and carrying me to the master bathroom.

-----

"That's actual snow!" I said incredulously to Ryan, who was watching me with a smile as we walked towards the exit doors of JFK airport. "Like, white fluffy snow!" I hurried forward and stepped out into the winter wonderland, feeling all giddy as the snowflakes hit my face. I looked up at the countless flakes that fell so gracefully around us, and I started laughing. People around me looked at me as if I were a lunatic, but I continued laughing as the snow hit me and melted against my warm Skin. "This is incredible!"

I reached for Ryan's hand as I stared up at the sky, in complete awe of the beautiful scene above me. My view was disrupted by Ryan's smiling face, moving in to kiss me.

"Just when I think I can't love you anymore," he breathed in between kisses, "You show me a new side of you and it’s like I fall in love all over again."

I reddened and hugged him, hiding my face in the crook of his neck.

"Mon ange, one thing you should remember about me is that I do not hold my feelings back." He pulled away to look me in the eye. "Life is too short to hold anything back. You should always tell people how you feel, no matter where or when."

I opened my mouth to tell him the decision I had arrived at earlier that day, but realized it was still too soon. I just shook my head and smiled.

"Tell me," he urged, taking my hands.

"Not yet."

"Mon ange," he sighed, throwing his arm around my shoulder as we started walking towards a waiting black sedan, "You can be so stubborn at times.

"I'm not being stubborn, it's just too soon to say what I want to say."

"Well I waited years for you. I guess I can wait awhile longer."

"Can I ask you something about that?" A memory flashed before me and I wanted to clear the confusion I suddenly had.

"Of course." He held the car door open for me. Once we were inside, I turned to him.

"You said that you've waited for me, but then you also told me that you were engaged."

He sighed and sat back.

"I waited. It was fucking excruciating but like I said before, I couldn't come back until you were 18. It was naïve of me to think that you wouldn't find someone else, because you did. I had been sleeping with this girl because she wanted me, and I needed that feeling. But when I found out that you were engaged to Tyler, in my frustration I proposed to her. I thought it would make me forget about you. But as soon as I heard about what happened to him, I broke it off and waited again. And here we are now."

I nodded. "Did you love her?"

"No. Definitely not. But it was nice to know that someone loved me, even if it wasn't the one I wanted." He leaned over and pulled me into a deep kiss before saying "Believe me when I tell you that you are the only one I've ever loved, and the only one I ever plan on loving."

"How do you know all the right things to say?" I pulled him back and we lost ourselves in another long kiss, and then we sat back in silence as I sat mesmerized by the beautiful snow and all the lights in the New York night.

We arrived at our hotel sometime later, another extravagant suite with its own hot tub and bar. I wasn't surprised by anything anymore, but it didn't mean that it was less exciting. I rushed over to the large glass windows and stared down at the city that never sleeps, and whispered "This is so perfect."

"No," Ryan said coming up behind me and started unbuttoning my shirt dress. Our eyes met in the glass, and neither of us looked away as my dress dropped to the floor. His hands glided along my back for a glorious moment before he unhooked my bra and slid it down my arms. We finally broke eye contact when he lowered his head and kissed the backs of my shoulders and moved down my back, along my spine. He gently pulled down my lace underwear, and then stood back up, running his hands up along my sides and over my breasts.

"There," he whispered, kissing behind my ear while his hands rested on my soft breasts. "Now it's perfect."

"Ryan." My hand snaked behind me to grab his hair.

"Yes?"

Caught up in the moment, I resolved to tell him what I had decided, but only half of it, the half I was ready to hear aloud.

I turned my head sideways and caught his lips. "I'm not going to go back to Vegas."

He pulled back, stunned by the 180 I had pulled in 24 hours.

"You're not?"

I shook my head and tried not to cry. "I want to be with you, and I can't do that if I'm there."

Ryan was all over me in an instant, shedding his clothes as we stumbled through the suite, but we didn't make it passed the soft rug in the sitting space, where we had sex for the second time that day, and I fell asleep next to the man I would be falling asleep with for the foreseeable future.