Fighters

I was not feeling entirely generous towards myself at the moment.

But it wasn't my fault I was a cocktease, not really. He wasn't going for me either. And how was I supposed to sleep with Cooper if I was still reliant on him for everything; it was driving me insane. If we weren't equals, how could I ever trust him enough for that?

That last thought pulled me up short. It had come out of the blue, completely fucking random. I tested it for a moment, feeling for edges but there was only the faintest warmth around it, like it was melting into my brain. Trust him was enough to get my attention, but why would I need that in order to sleep with him?

Because you're going to give him more than you've ever given anyone else, something inside me said. Plain and easy. Like it was the most obvious answer in the world. Because he isn't the same as the others, and you won't be able to treat him like he is. This one will mean something. This one will take a little piece of you with him when he leaves.

Huh, I thought, running that over in my head. Realizing everything that it meant. Feeling all the ways that it felt.

Huh.

Then I started walking again. I was heading towards Chad's bar, like always, but somehow this time it felt different.

Somehow everything was becoming different.

***

"If he left, it's because he wants to be gone."

I ignored Bren, grabbing my jacket. He didn't even have shoes, as far as I knew. I knew, for sure, that he didn't have anything warm on. I grabbed up a sweatshirt and moved towards the door only to find Bren blocking my way.

"Move," I hissed. I didn't have time for this. Luka was somewhere out there, cold. Alone. Doing who knows what.

Bren ignored me. "And what the fuck are you going to do when you find him?"

"Bring him back." I had thought that was obvious. "Now move."

"And make him live with you against his will? Cooper, he fucking left." Bren moved, but his eyes stayed on me. Hard. Trying their best to drill more than just grey into my thick fucking skull. "Be prepared for things you don't want."

I paused for just a moment before throwing open the door and heading out, sweatshirt in hand.

I didn't think, not really. My feet knew where to go, my body understanding better than my brain ever could and so I just let myself follow their trajectory, go where they would lead. And when I saw where I had ended up.

I mean, where else would I find him but that fucking, fucking bar?

I walked towards where he was sitting, his figure looking lonely on top of that Golf sitting alone in an empty parking lot. Ash swirled in the air. The whole place still somehow smelled like smoke. Like danger.

"It burnt down," I told him curtly as I drew close.

He didn't even look at me. "I know."

Oh. So not here for a drink, then. I noticed a bag next to him on the roof of the car, recognized the fabric sticking out. "You could have asked me to come back and get your clothes."

He shrugged. There was a stretch of silence.

The bar - or whatever was left of it, the place was seriously fucked up, just blackened supports and the ghosts of tables and stools, bad nights and stupid mistakes - whistled in the winter wind. Shit, I suddenly remembered. He must be fucking freezing. "I brought you a sweatshirt."

He took it, sliding it over his thin frame. The act of giving it to him had brought me close and I found that I couldn't put distance between us again, unwilling to walk away. The small distance between our bodies felt colder than any winter wind.

"Hey." I looked up to where he sat and found him bending down to me. I had just a moment to take in his face, framed in cascading curls, perfect and lovely and everything I wanted before his lips met mine.

This kiss was so different from everything I had come to expect from him, from the way he had kissed me earlier in the week. It was soft, and edged with intention rather than the wild stabs I had come to know. It was so much more. It was just so much.

When he broke away from me I kept my eyes closed. I hadn't wanted that moment to end; I still didn't. If that kiss could have lasted forever, it wouldn't have been long enough.

"Thank you," I heard him say quietly. Actually quietly. I don't think I had ever heard him be quiet until that moment, couldn't conceptualize the idea of Luka being quiet. It was good. It was calm. It sat in my body and made me feel better. "For everything you've done."

Even as my body was becoming better, something inside my chest was seizing. My arms snaked around him, my head finding it's home on his chest. Please don't run, I thought. Don't you dare fucking run, not from this. Not from me.

Fuck, I thought as I felt the rhythm of his breath against my cheek. Luka. I don't think I can live without you.

***

"Why does that sound like goodbye?" His voice was barely a whisper as it traced up from where it had come to rest on my chest.

I looked down at him, surprised. "It's not." Then I revisited that thought. "Or maybe it is, but not for you." His face pressed into me. I could feel his breath against my skin, even through the warmth of the sweatshirt. "Unless you want it to be."

More warm breath puffed against me, but whatever he was trying to say was lost in cloth and proximity. "I can't hear you."

He sighed and turned his head to the side. I was surprised to find how much colder I felt without his breath on my ribs. "I don't want you to go." When he looked up to me, I swear his eyes were almost shy through his lashes, those jade irises as shocking as ever in their intensity but somehow soft, somehow. Was he the one melting for me?

"Okay," I let him know, finding the word through all the things those words had made me feel. His eyes brought out in me. My hand landed on his back and I watched his eyes flutter closed. "Okay."

We stayed like that, pressed together in front of the shell of the building I had destroyed, the past I had so violently left behind. Shit, I thought. I've had a crazy fucking week.

I've had a crazy fucking few years.

"You gonna drive us back?" I heard him ask.

My fingers skipped over his broad shoulders. He'd carried me so far, literally and figuratively. It was time I learned how to take some weight.

But I couldn't, not today. "Out of gas," I admitted. "Also, technically, I don't have a license."

His eyes flicked up to me at that. I saw the question in them and shrugged. "My sister shredded it." The last time she'd caught me at a bar, after I'd told her I was finished. It wasn't like I'd had anywhere else to go after our family kicked me out when my nagy died, when no else else stepped up to protect me. It wasn't like she'd offered to take me in, even as she screamed and told me I should be better.

"You have a sister?"

I shrugged again. Not really, not anymore.

The bar sat before me, blackened and looking like it should be bleeding. Empty. I'd never seen it empty before. I'd seen it nearly unoccupied, but never empty. The memory of the man who always occupied that space rose unbidden in my mind, but I didn't really mind. I'd already taken my power back from him. I'd already put him where he should be.

But I didn't know where that was, really. "I wonder what Chad's up to these days," I heard myself ask.

In my arms, Cooper stiffened. "Nothing."

I frowned, processing that. "What's that mean? He's dead?"

He stiffened further. That hadn't been what I'd wanted. I slid my hand over his back, waiting for his body to return to calm in my arms before I pressed the matter. Chad and his possible state of being was shit. Cooper was everything.

"You okay?" I asked him quietly. He nodded into my chest.

"He's in a coma."

A coma. I thought about that, running my fingers up and down the top of Cooper's spine. Chad in a coma tasted like metal in my mouth. It tasted like blood. Like fate, a fight well fought. At least on one side.

"Good," I decided out loud. I ignored the look that Cooper gave me, choosing instead to stare out into the skeleton of the bar. The wind brought ash to my nose and I breathed it in deep. "Good."

Things were good.

We stayed there, Cooper resting his head on my chest, me watching the ash of my past swirl through the air.

"Hey." I looked down to Cooper at the sound of his voice. He loosened his arms so that he could grab my bag of clothes. "It's cold. Let's go home."

Home. I stared into his green eyes for a long time, just taking that in. Home.

"Yeah," I finally said as I scooted down from the car. I didn't even hesitate, and he caught me before I hit the ground, my feet just inches from the pavement. He would always catch me. I knew that now. How had I ever not understood that?

"Home," I whispered against his jacket as he slid me the rest of the way down, so softly, so gently.

"Home," he agreed. His arm wrapped around my shoulders as we began to walk. I, in turn, put my arm around his waist.

We'd only walked a few steps when I felt him turn around. "Fuck that place." His voice was as cold as the air around us. I leaned into his arms, looking for warmth and was surprised to be not surprised to find it. "I always hated it anyway."

"Yeah," I said quietly. I took a moment to feel the way agreement sat in my chest. It felt right against all the things that bar had turned me into, had made me be without asking my consent. All the pain. I walked quietly, listening to the slither of what might be called truth as the ways I had learned to think about myself slowly slid over my body, over my soul, and settled on that fucking bar.

"Me too," I told Cooper, relishing his warmth at my side. My truth in my bones. "I always hated it too."

And this time, I meant every fucking word.

***

Ch 19

***

Bren was gone when we got back. I'd texted him and asked him to clear out, if we could have the apartment. Mostly I hadn't wanted to see him; I'm quite sure he understood that, and respected that I would want space. Orin had just gotten back in town from one of his business trips anyway, and Bren liked spending the night with him after so long apart.

I don't know what I expected from Luka once we'd reached the apartment. We had passed a blissful walk in proximity, closer than I had been allowed to him since that night he had arrived at my doorstep feverish and dripping words and need. No, since that night I had pulled him to me and held him so tight as he...

I swallowed. I couldn't think about that, not now. I didn't want him to think I wanted anything more than this.

Because there was a this. And it was the kind of this that would let Luka know if I was thinking about any of that.

I stared down at the mess of hair, the only visible part of him with the way he was wrapped around me, his head buried in my chest. I had barely gotten my shoes off when he had walked back into me, his arms sliding under mine, his grip tightening until it was apparent that I was going nowhere and neither was he.

He wasn't going anywhere. I stopped a shiver dead before it startled him. "Luka?" I asked softly, unsure what was expected of me.

"If I tell you something, will you promise to make it." Those arms tightened. "Will you just hear something I say? Just listen, or let me." He seemed to run out of words, his head burying further into my chest.

I nodded, then realized he wouldn't be able to see me. "Of course," I told him, kicking myself for the way my voice came out anything but smooth.

He shifted, then, shifted so I could see those eyes of his, and I watched his dark curls tilt back and fall from his face and there was something in his expression, something about the way he was looking at me through his lashes and then he licked his lips and fuck, fuck, yeah there was no way of hiding how I was reacting to that but even as I did he shifted and I could feel how hard he was too.

I let my hand drift up to settle in his hair. I could feel how fast his heart was beating against my skin; how had I missed that before? What else was I missing? "Luka?" I asked, and I tried to make it soft, but there was an edge there I couldn't, wouldn't disguise.

He shifted, grinding against me and I nearly fucking lost it. A soft moan entered the space between us and I have no fucking clue who voice it, me or Luka, but I know I moaned when he ground against me again, harder.

"Fuck," I muttered. He was staring up at me with those eyes. He bit his bottom lip - I wanted to bite that lip, I wanted to suck that lip into my mouth and - as he ground against me a third time, and that was it.

But I needed to make sure. "You don't. If you don't want to, you don't. You know?" I managed, inbetween gyrations. My fingers were beginning to ache from keeping them soft in his hair, my other hand flexing and clenching against his back as I tried to remain as I should, rather than becoming what I wanted to be. "I don't want you to feel - "

"Cooper." He pulled away and I gasped at the sudden loss of contact. Fuck, if this was what he wanted, not to touch me. I could live with that. I would have to live with that, but my soul was panicking as much as my body was to find him so far away.

"Cooper," he said again, a little more insistently. I looked down to see him staring up at me with an intensity that took what little breath I had left away. "I know all that shit. But this is what I'm trying to tell you, that I do want it, that. Fucking. Cooper." He sighed; it tickled my skin and made me shiver. "You're so fucking good; it drives me insane, it's one of the things I love the most about you, but right now I need you to just fucking -"

Both of our bodies froze as his words made their way between us. Sat there, heavy. Impossible to ignore.

***

Oh, fuck.

I had made my decision on the way back to the apartment, his arm around my shoulder, his warmth at my side. I wanted him. If he took what I gave him and left, so be it. If he was nothing like what I wanted, and all my expectations fell flat. So be it. If this... trust... or whatever. If it was wrong. If the blooming thing in my stomach was too fragile, if he killed it, if I had misjudged him. If I had misjudged myself.

Then so be it.

But I had to know. And I figured it was better to know now, before he knew, before he understood all the things he did to me. While I still had an out.

I had just totally fucked my out.

"Oh, shit," I whispered. I knew he would catch me, he's gonna catch me, he had to catch me but I had just spent years falling in front of people for their enjoyment and I hadn't, couldn't let myself fully believe that this man was any different. I backed up a step. "Oh fuck."

"Luka," he said, and he said it so fucking softly that I just.

I didn't run.

I stood there, feeling my body begin to shake as I prepared to bolt but I never got around to it. Just stood there, ready, shaking. Senseless. Stupified.

Fucking stupid.

He reached out a hand and I, me, the perpetual loner and someone who knew better than to ever trust such an obvious motion of entrapment. I reached back. I took his hand.

"You alright?" he asked. His body moved closer and I let it. I even wanted it to.

"I'm scared." Was that my voice? So small, so tenuous. I tried to anchor it in something but it just floated away, floated right over to Cooper where he heard it. Heard it and just took it in.

"I know." He came even closer. "Me too." Those strong arms wrapped around my body, steadying me. Strengthening me. "I've got you," he told me, like he had been for weeks. Like he had been for months.

And his words were soft. And they were good. And maybe, maybe this thing could be good too, this person could be good, I could be good again and he could make me that or bring me to that but that was a little too much to think about so I did the only thing I could think to do at the time.

I let myself fall for him.

***

I watched him, concerned, as he went nearly completely limp in my arms. "I've got you," I told him again, feeling how literal that statement was this time. How much of his weight I was supporting in with my arms.

His face found it's way into the crook of my neck, so gently. So natural. I corded my fingers through his thick hair and shuddered as his lips made contact with my skin. Teeth bit and my fingers tightened.

"Cooper." His arms came up around my neck; I shuddered again as fingers traced their way down the back of my neck. My body instinctively responded to the pressure he was putting on me, my arms reaching down to gather his small body into my arms. As I lifted him up his legs wrapped around my waist, his arms around the back of my head. "Take me to bed."

I didn't have to be asked twice.

Carrying him like that was natural, so natural, and yet it was the hardest thing I had done in my life. He was so distracting, his smell, his skin just below my fingers, his cock rubbing up against mine. His fingers making their way through the short strands of my hair. I wished the walk to my bedroom was miles long. I wished it was only steps.

It was neither, instead some mix of the two but I could not tell you what that was. I was too focused on Luka, his breathing, his heart beating so fast in his chest. The way he kept gathering small bits of my skin up in his teeth only to release so gently.

By the time I got us to the bed he had already gotten my shirt up over my head and one arm. I laid him down on the sheet, kissing his forehead gently, then pulled back to finish the job. Shirtless, I turned back to him.

I nearly lost myself. He had also stripped, but had done it so much faster and so much more efficiently than me and so he was waiting for me, naked, there in my bed. It was in my mind to remove my pants and boxers as quickly as possible, to be there with him, to run to him. But I wanted this to be right. I wanted this to be special. So I made myself take some semblance of time. It was a good decision; Luka couldn't take his eyes off of me as I moved to reach his state of dress, my motions deliberate if not entirely slow, and his eyes grew hungrier and hungrier with each passing moment.

Finally I matched him skin for skin. I heard his intake of breath as he took me in; I had forgotten that, while I had seen him naked, he had never seen me like this. I made my way over to him as slowly as I could, shaking from the effort of holding back. I wanted him to be able to see his fill. Needed him to have time to stop me if he wanted.

He didn't want, thank god. When I reached the bed I kneeled over him. I felt him twitch as our cocks touched and I choked back a moan. My fingers skipped up his sides, skipping scars and landing instead on unmarked skin, then sliding over his collarbone, up his neck - so sensitive, he arched and moaned beneath me and I wanted to stay there, wanted to play with that neck forever but I had somewhere to be - up below his ear until my hand was anchored in his hair and I took a moment to smile down at him before I kissed him.

Finally, finally, to kiss him like this. I poured everything I had ever wanted to tell him into this kiss; all the love, all the lust, the months of waiting and need and desire and I was terrified I was going to overwhelm him but fuck, I could not hold back anymore. Not from him. Not from this. And so I let my teeth bite at his lips, my tongue flicking over the sensitive spots I made, my lips pressing to his as I told him all the things I had been too afraid to say with my voice alone.

He took my love, my lust. He swallowed it up and responded twofold, and I was stunned, then turned on, then needy and responding in kind. I kissed him harder, then harder still. We kissed like the world was ending; it was, I think. At least for me it was. I didn't want to live in a world without him in it, and so I let that world die with that kiss. My only universe, my only reality going forward would be one with him. Otherwise.