Chapter Text
Belly takes Conrad back to her apartment. It’s late afternoon, and the apartment gets good light. Everything’s golden. She watches him walk from room to room, his gaze lingering over all the details, swinging the door hinges as if checking for creaks, stopping at her bookshelf where she has started to acquire nicknacks: ticket stubs from the cine, a weirdly shaped rock from the edge of the Seine, a pretty wood-carved sheep she’d found at a flea market.
“Sorry there’s no AC,” she tells him.
“It’s not so bad.”
She laughs at that, because it is that bad, and gets to work on the windows. They’re old school hand crank, sticky, even after a season’s use. “Let me,” he says, stepping up behind her. He’s close suddenly, closer than he’s been since…he’d kissed her on the forehead and told her goodbye.
One year ago.
She steps backward. “And I have wine. Or um tea and maybe some cookies, let me…”
He’s watching her as she backtracks into the tiny kitchen, she can feel that he is. But obediently, he returns to the windows, and when she comes back with the bottle and two glasses, they’re all open, and he’s standing over the table, one finger to the wood, as if he’s contemplating all the nights she’s sat there, like if he just thinks hard enough he can see it.
I like picturing it, he’d said in that first letter. You happy.
Throughout her life, Belly has tried to picture Conrad in all kinds of locations. But she’s never tried it here. The only person she’s ever pictured here is herself. The only part of him she’d allowed in was his letters. And now here’s the rest of him.
He looks up at her, and she brings the wine forward.
“It’s French,” she tells him.
“I assumed.”
It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. But she doesn’t care. She pours it and they both sit at the table, still looking at each other. There’s so much to say that Belly doesn’t know where to start. Maybe just with wine.
“It suits you,” he says.
Belly raises her hand to her hair, still a bit self-conscious of the length. “What does?”
He shrugs. “All of it.”
“Paris Belly.”
He smiles, a little, still sort of tentative. “I’m glad I get to meet her.”
“She’s not so different.”
“No?”
She shakes her head, though she’s not sure that’s entirely true. She feels settled in a way she doesn’t recognize in herself. Like when she catches sight of her smile in a passing reflection it could belong to a stranger. It’s odd to see such a thing on yourself, but she’s growing used to it. She’s growing used to all of it.
A wound gone to scar gone to just skin.
He’s different, too, she thinks. Not the sunkissed boy of childhood or the angry youth, maybe not even the desperate man of last summer. She’d like to meet this new Conrad, the one who signed his letters with love.
“I’m glad you came, too,” she says.
“Yeah? I wasn’t sure you’d want me to. Even when I got the postcard I still…wasn’t sure.”
She wasn’t sure either, to be honest.
She tries to think what to say. “I didn’t want to…need you,” she says, eventually. “Or for you to need me.”
“I’ve never thought that you needed me.”
Belly exhales. “I know,” she says. “But I thought I did. Maybe always.”
“And now?”
Belly stands from the chair. She takes two steps forward. Touching distance. “I’m happy to see you.”
There’s never been a time when she hasn’t been happy to see him. He brightens the world. He always has. She wants to tell him that, to say, “For so long, you were so bright for me that I couldn’t see anything else. I thought you’d be enough, enough for always.”
She’d needed to prove to herself that there was more to life than Conrad Fisher.
She doesn’t know if it’s a compliment or an insult. She doesn’t know if he’d understand, but she wants to explain it to him anyway. She thinks maybe she’s been making a mental list for the last five years of everything she wants to say to him and couldn’t. It’s grown long.
His hair is falling forward into his eyes, and she brushes it back behind his ear. He shudders, full-bodied, and his gaze latches to her.
Another step forward and she’s between his legs. One of his hands is on the table, the other on his thigh.
She touches the top of his head, one gentle stroke, and something in him completely untenses. His head falls to her stomach. She can feel his breath there, almost harsh.
“Baby,” she says. She’s never called him that before.
He presses his face further into her, just a press at first, and then she feels his mouth against her stomach. It’s almost too intense to be a kiss, wetter, more desperate. And then another one just to the left.
Her hand curls into his hair, and he touches her hips, pulls her closer so she’s almost in his lap.
“Conrad,” she says.
She can feel his breath, the heat of him, the spread of his hands, wide along her hipbones. He feels strung tight, like if she were to cut the wire he’d go boneless.
The fragility is new to her. Though maybe not. She’d seen him like this once before, standing on a beach at night, like he was offering his soul up on a platter to her.
She couldn’t take it then.
“I have a bed,” she tells him.
He tilts his face up at her. His eyes have gone black and glossy. It’s a bit devastating.
She touches his cheek, and those eyes flicker closed. “Belly…”
“Come on,” she says, gently.
She takes one step backwards, disconnecting them, and then another. He rises after her, like a flower chasing sun, hand reaching for her.
She walks him into the bedroom.
He’d opened the windows in here, too, and it’s still warm and bright out and noisy with the sounds of the city and none of that matters. She sits down on the bed. Not suggestively, just sitting.
He lingers in the doorway.
“I won’t bite,” she says.
His lips quirk. But he doesn't make the joke.
She can sense he needs an invitation, so Belly raises her hand out to him. He steps forward automatically to take it, like he can’t help himself. His beautiful hands. She’s always loved them. She takes his other one, him standing over her now, her looking up.
She doesn’t think he slept at all on the plane. He looks pale and drawn and nervous and she still wants him more than she’s ever wanted anyone else. It hasn’t faded. Not even a little.
She uses his hands to pull him down on top of her. He makes a sound when they’re slotted together, part sigh, part moan, and she arches into him so there is no space between them. Her hands go across his back, and her legs hook with his.
But although his breathing is unsteady, she can feel the tension still coiled tight in him. He’s holding himself so carefully against her, still trying to be polite. “Conrad,” she says. She rolls her hips into him a little bit, to encourage him. Once and then twice.
He makes a small sound, low in his throat, and then he comes unglued.
His hands press to the small of her back, a fast, hard grab, and then they move up, pushing underneath her top, and then down again, like there’s no amount of skin he could cover that would satisfy. His mouth is against her jawline, soft, almost vulnerable. Belly squirms into his touch. It’s too much, too fast, the rush of desire startling.
But then he is startling. To her anyway.
His hands pull at her thighs as he grinds into her, still mouthing at her neck. It feels good. So good. He’s murmuring something under his breath, too fast and low to catch what he’s saying.
She runs her hands along the small of his back where she can feel the coiling muscle, how it responds sharply to her touch. She moves her hands lower, pulls him into her while she arches upwards.
“Jesus, fuck, Belly, oh my god, Belly, I—”
He’s babbling. Affection swells in her chest, just as sharp and potent as the desire.
She swivels with her hips. He gets what she wants, and helps her roll them so she’s on top of him. He looks good there, spread out on her sheets beneath her, his hair mussed, his eyes wide. She puts her hand to the center of his chest, still clothed, and it could be almost innocent, if not for the feel of him, hard and hot between her spread legs.
Against her hand, she can feel his heart pounding, fast and loud and beautiful.
“I dreamed about this,” he says, his voice raw. “So many times.”
Her gaze goes back to his face. Soul on a platter, she thinks again.
She leans down over him. Her hair falls between them. “The first time we kissed,” she tells him. “I thought I’d blacked out. I couldn’t believe it was real. Do you remember what you told me?”
He’s watching her approach, almost warily. In its own way, it’s gratifying.
“I want you,” he says, obediently.
That isn’t what she’d meant. Still, she touches his cheek, just like he’d done to her all those years ago, and then carefully brushes his lips with hers.
When he kisses her back, it’s less careful.
Fuck, but she hasn’t kissed this man nearly enough. There’s a finite number, of kisses, of minutes, and it’s too small.
She opens her mouth wider, flicks her tongue into his mouth, and he makes an immensely dirty sound that goes right through her.
His hands are running along the waistband of her shorts, seeking skin. But Belly doesn’t even want to disconnect from him long enough to engage in the business of getting them both out of their clothes.
She thinks she could be happy just kissing him, feeling him beneath her, desperate for it. It’s like it’s own kind of aphrodisiac. She feels powerful, as if he’s ceded all the control into her hands.
It had never been like that before. He had always, she realized, been shielding himself from her. The fact that he wasn’t, that she could feel how ravenous he was?
Fuck.
His hips jerk into hers and she makes a sound in response.
She mouths at his face and then kisses him behind his ear. A chaste kiss and then a dirtier one, lathing at the skin hard enough she knows it’ll leave a mark.
His breathing increases. “Fuck, baby,” he says. “Fuck, I—”
“Hmm?”
“Feels good,” he pants.
“Tell me,” she says. “What do you want?”
“You,” he says, automatically. “Whatever. Whatever you want.”
Belly hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what she wants. With Conrad, those first few times, it had all been so new that she wouldn’t have been able to articulate it. And really, she’d liked everything he’d done to her. With Jeremiah, it had sometimes felt as if there were a preordained list of steps, like choreography. She hadn’t minded the predictability of it, and she had always liked how afterwards they felt so close to each other. She would have done anything to simulate that feeling. And while Benito had been more experimental, she had always pretty much been game to do what he wanted.
What did Belly want?
“Stay still,” she tells him.
Everything about him freezes.
She leans backwards and pulls her top off. She watches hunger steal across his face. But he stays where she told him to. She steps off him so she can shimmy her shorts down next, and her underwear with them, crawling back atop him with only her bra on.
He looks a bit like a man parched of thirst. But his hands stay flat against the bed. This causes pleasure to trickle down Belly’s spine. She wants him to touch her, but not as much as she wants him like this. Trying so hard to please her. She thinks that could become an addiction.
She puts her hand beneath his shirt, right at his stomach, rigid with tension, pressing the fabric upward, but not removing it. She puts her lips to the uncovered skin, and he makes a very high pitched noise, and then his hands move and cover his face.
She leans back to look at him, pleased.
“Please pretend I didn’t do that,” he says.
“Do what?” she asks him, and then laughs at his aggrieved expression.
She kinda can’t believe she’s laughing right now. She kinda can’t believe he’s actually here. In Paris. In her apartment. In her bed.
It’s probably not nice to tease him just now. Cruel even, when she can feel how hard he is beneath her, as if they’ve just been waiting all this time to slot back together.
She reaches between them for his zipper, and then reaches her hand into his pants, and he makes a different, very interesting noise. “Belly, please,” he tells her. “Please, please, honey, please.”
“Okay,” she says, gently, and then just like that, she guides him inside her.
The breath rushes out of him. She’s watching his face very closely. There’s nothing like it.
God, but he’s a perfect fit.
“Christ,” he says, no throttle behind it. “You’re so…”
She rocks down on him. “So what?”
His eyes are flickering. It’s pretty much enrapturing.
It’s not going to take her long to come, she thinks. She’s good at this part, and it’s better when it’s him. When he’s looking at her like something very spiritual is happening to him.
I did that, she wants to brag. I made you like this.
Funny, but the only person she wants to tell that to is him.
“Let me,” he says. “Please.”
“Let you what?”
He tries to give her a stern look, and fails miserably. Bizarrely, Belly feels totally delighted. God, but it’s him she wants to say. His cock, yes, but it’s more than that. So much more than that.
It’s Conrad Beck Fisher.
He was right. It feels like a total dream.
I love you, she wants to say. Out of the blue. No prompting.
She’s not going to, because it’s too soon and too late and this is the first time she’s seen him in a year and within thirty minutes she’s already riding his cock, so, the timing seems off. She does though. She likes him, too. Which feels more surprising, though she always, always has. Even when she hated him, she still liked him.
She doesn’t think it’s something that stops. Like it’s just engrained in her.
She reaches up and unhooks her bra, and then takes his hand and guides it to her breast. The feeling of it is acute, but not as much as when he surges upwards and takes her other breast in his mouth, wide and hungry and—
Her rhythm falters and she makes a sort of cut off sound. He pulls back just a bit to give her a little pleased look.
Christ, but he’s so fucking competitive.
Belly laughs and strokes the back of his head, and he makes a low sound again against the flesh.
He likes her touching him, she can tell. She tugs on his ear and watches him shiver and thinks maybe she is cruel. She’s not going to stop though.
He’s switched breasts and her hips are moving in small little motions against him, and then, almost with no thought behind it, she’s coming. It sort of surprises the both of them. Conrad stills, pressed against her, and Belly is gasping, out of breath and shaking and a little embarrassed. She falls forward, her head to his shoulder. “Sorry,” she says. “Oh my god.”
His hand is now at her lower back and he’s still rocking into her a little bit like he can’t help it, which feels great and also a lot in maybe the best sort of way.
“It feels good,” he says. She’s not sure if it’s a question or not, but she nods anyway. It does. He always does.
He’s still wearing his shirt and his shorts, which feels silly. The whole thing has been a bit silly, and suddenly Belly is laughing.
It’s laughter instead of tears.
“Christ,” she says. “Conrad, please fuck me now.”
He really doesn’t need to be told twice.
He rolls them so it’s him pressing her into the mattress, and starts filling her in long, deep strokes, kinda unsteady like he’s still figuring out the rhythm.
“I’m not going to last long,” he tells her. His face is quite close to hers, and he’s looking at her, just at her eyes, and it’s very overwhelming and also familiar, and she does want to cry, too, as well as laugh.
She’s not sure if they’re happy tears or sad ones.
“It’s fine,” she tells him. There’s a gentleness to her voice that surprises her. The same way saying baby had. “I want you to.”
He kisses her again, as if in answer. She feels flooded with him. Filled to the brim. It’s frightening the way he has always frightened her. Like a person wasn’t meant to feel so much, so deeply for someone else.
She runs her foot along the back of his bare calf and he makes a sort of choked noise against her mouth. She wants to tease him for that, too. She’s going to, later. She’s going to also figure out all the places to touch him, because she’s going to touch all of them.
That’s frightening, too. The certainty of that. Also, a little exhilarating.
She licks a stripe up his neck, and he shudders, hard, and then, with a choked apology, pulls out of her, spilling all over her thighs.
He breathes heavily against her neck for a moment, and then rolls off her.
They both stare at the ceiling. In addition to lacking AC, the apartment lacks a ceiling fan. Belly is hot and sweaty and not entirely in a sexy way.
She turns over onto her side so she can look at him. He’s already doing that.
It was, she thinks, an objectively pretty weird lay. And Belly would really like to take a shower, go get some takeout, and then come back and try it all over again. This next time she’ll get his clothes off.
She reaches out and touches his forehead. He doesn’t stop her. She’s not sure he would stop her from doing anything. The knowledge of that is heady as a drug.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi.”
“There’s a Vietnamese restaurant three blocks from here. It’ll change your life. What do you say?”
Conrad smiles, a little less tentative, and Belly thinks of herself at sixteen, kissing a boy for the first time on a beach. How it had felt like the world had opened itself as wide as it would go. She’d had no idea what all was in store for her.
Still, there’s nothing better than a Conrad Fisher smile. She honestly believes that.
“I’m amenable to having my life changed,” he says.