[ raleigh's known that he's been in love with naomi since the first time they kissed in her kitchen. but he's also painfully aware of the fact that she's not ready to hear that. so he locks those three little words away inside his heart and tries so show his love in ways other than in words. he does little things for her, snuggles with her randomly, and every night, whether or not he'll be sleeping in the same bed as her, he kisses her and rests his forehead against hers as he murmurs goodnight.
yancy's cottoned on to it. she's seen him do it enough times to know it's ritual. and when he introduces her to the princess bride, she looks over at him with a thoughtful look on her face. when he pours an exhausted naomi into bed that night, having just got back from wherever she was interviewing whoever she was, yancy's waiting for him in the hall. after he shuts naomi's door, he tilts his head at his niece with a questioning look. she just smiles at him and says, as you wish, before skipping off to bed.
tonight, he's actually exhausted enough that he thinks he's going to be able to fall asleep the second his head hits the pillow. that's something he hasn't had in ages. so really, it's understandable that when he kisses naomi and holds her close in the dark, i l--goodnight is what slips out instead of the usual. just blame it on the exhaustion. s'all good.
[ naomi's never actually seen the princess bride. oh, when she was growing up, she'd seen enough of people posting about it on tumblr to have an idea of how good it was as a film, but she never managed to pick it up and actually sit down to watch. maybe if she had, she'd have figured out how raleigh felt about her sooner, but all the same, it's a good thing she didn't because what they have between them feels fragile and new and not because of raleigh, no, but because she's not quite sure how she'll react if she finally admits to herself that she's fallen for him right back.
she's half asleep with her cheek on her pillow watching him step out and close the door when the thought hits her that he's the first guy she's ever shared a bed with. ever. it's not like she's been oblivious to the fact that she hooked up with yancy at the back of a truck, had his baby and then kind of threw herself into her work - it's just that the realization kind of hits and it shakes her to her core.
because after yancy was born, she'd had her hands full with a little girl and she'd hated the pitying looks that went but she was such a smart girl as if getting knocked up somehow equated with her brain getting flushed down the drain. she lost her virginity and had someone contribute to the child in her belly why people would always view that as a gauge of her intelligence never made sense. so no, there was never anyone after yancy becket - oh she'd had friends and a couple of guys seemed to express interest but there was always her daughter to think about and somehow having little yancy as a fixture made boys either careful or careless and while the former gave her really excellent guy friends who thought of her as more than just the token girl, the latter made her wary of letting anyone in romantically.
( not that she could. they had pretty stiff competition from a dead guy which is just sad, really. )
and then came raleigh becket.
when he comes back in and shuts the lights, naomi is grateful that she's she turned the other way because she flushes so easily and raleigh is incredibly perceptive when he wants to be. she's still sorting through the irony of it all when he crawls in beside her, the familiar warmth of his body prompting her to curl up against his side. if she believed in things like fate, she would actually want to punch it in the face because really. really. fated to end up with a becket how is this a thing.
when he slips up, she nearly misses it, actually feels her heart hitch for a second because what was that what were you going to say and while it's dark she can make out the shape of him, hears the way he breathes and she thinks to herself that she's not on the edge of the cliff, she's already slipped and has since plummeted over.
she shifts so that she hovers above him, lets her hand catch his cheek so she can draw him in and murmur goodnight, raleigh against his mouth before she gathers her courage and adds: ] Love you.
[ one second raleigh is sure he's going to fall asleep at any second. the next, he's wide awake. did she really just...? yes. yes, she did. she just said love you to him without any real prompting. yeah, he almost said it to her, but they could very easily have just ignored that it ever happened. she didn't, she said it to him.
she loves him. she loves him.
raleigh gathers naomi close and kisses her for all he's worth. he murmurs a quiet i love you against her lips when he pulls back. he kisses her forehead, whispers it again, and settles back against the pillows. because he really is tired. as much as he would like to spend the next eon pressing his lips to her skin and tattooing the words i love you across every part of her body with his kisses, he really does need sleep. maybe in the morning it'll be a nice way to wake her up. ]
[ she's a little breathless from the kiss, from the way he'd suddenly gathered her close, his mouth covering hers. her heart feels fit to burst with the revelation that this is it, this is what she wants and what she wants is that he now knows how much he means to her. and how much she apparently means to him. it's not that she'd doubted it, really, but when certain things come to mean so much, it's a terrifying thing to hope.
when he murmurs i love you right back, she's shaken - in the best possible way. the words are out there now and whatever hesitation and uncertainty she might have felt about the way their relationship hung in the in-between is just... gone.
( she's never letting him go now. couldn't, if she tried which she doesn't want to, and while a laugh stays itself on the tip of her tongue her hand comes up to rest right over his heart and she has the pleasure of watching him succumb to sleep, the words still murmured into the darkness. )
so naomi lies there for what feels like a long, long while before sleep finally comes, the faint knock of his heart beneath her fingertips the only lullaby she could ever need. ]
[ he sleeps through most of the night, but wakes up a few hours before naomi should really be up. that leaves him with a few hours to knock out some chores, take a shower, and start the coffee maker so when she's ready to get out of bed, there'll be hot coffee waiting for her. if this were any other morning, he might get breakfast for her too.
but it's not any other morning. this is the morning after the night she told him she loved him. ( try saying that ten times fast and keeping is straight. ) raleigh's got different plans.
after waving yancy off to the bus stop, he crawls back into bed. carefully, he brushes the hair off naomi's face and presses a soft kiss to her temple. then her shoulder. across her collarbone, down her sternum until he reaches the hem on her collar. slowly, he rucks up the bottom of her shirt until he can press gentle kisses to the skin of her stomach. ] Naomi, babe... [ he kisses her hipbone right above the waistband of her pj pants. ] Time to wake up.
[ she is having the nicest dream. it's hazy and the shapes and whatever else is going on slip away quicker than she can grasp onto them, but the sensations are solid. they make her shift and sigh.
a kiss on her temple, another pressed to her shoulder. a trail across her collarbone and down just a little over her heart. it makes her fingers twitch, prompts her arm to lift just a little before it settles back into the sheets because she wants to say stay, wait, come back. she's still got one foot in dreamland though, and it's not easy to leave. when the kisses move over her stomach, her hips move and she exhales a breath, one more step towards full wakefulness. she's finally aware of the ceiling and the slant of the sun when her ears catch the way raleigh murmurs her name.
oh. is that his mouth pressing against her hipbone?
naomi breathes in deep and angles her head so she's sort of looking down in his direction, teeth catchin on her lower lip. her cheeks feel warm and she quietly thinks so it wasn't a dream and she finds it hard to resist smiling when she murmurs: ] Good morning. [ ( Why did you stop? )
she looks... rumpled. sleepy eyes, one hand trying to smooth out her hair, and maybe just a little bit shy. she hasn't forgotten about last night. but she also wants to pinch herself because after falling asleep on it, she's a bit nervous that it might have been just her imagination. ]
[ he laughs quietly at the tired, shy look on her face. it's really kind of adorable. but he doesn't say that for fear of making her even more embarrassed.
raleigh presses his lips to her hipbone one more time before he kisses his way up her middle. he pauses to nip lightly at her collarbone before he kisses her neck, her jaw, and finally her lips. while he'd like to make it a long, slow thing, his head is still a little preoccupied, so after a moment he pulls back, gently tugging on her lower lip with his teeth. ]
I love you. [ he kisses her again. ] I love you. [ another press of his lips to her throat. ] I love you. [ he can't help another giddy laugh as he looks back up at her. ] And I'm pretty sure you made me the happiest man in the world last night. Just so you know.
[ that stupid, beautiful smile on his face is because of her. the realization makes her light-headed, like the time she hung upside-down from the monkey bars as a child before the fear finally kicked in and she'd cried out for her sister kara, kara i don't know how to get back up.
her hands come up to skim fingers under his jaw then, her mouth fitting snug over his, teeth catching on his lower lip, her tongue dipping into his mouth as she leans her weight onto him until his back is flat against the bed. ]
Love you. [ breathless, maybe a little desperate. ] I love you. [ the words a hush against his mouth. ] I love you so much, Raleigh. [ her heart pounding in her ears, how did this happen. ( help. help, oh god, i don't know how to get back up. ) ]
[ the way she kisses him and says love you makes him think that he could stay in this bed for the rest of his life and be a very happy man. she loves him and she's pressing him into the bed and god he loves her so much.
but as she repeats the words over and over again, he picks up on the anxiety and desperation in her. one of his hands rubs her back in circles as the other pushes her hair away from her face. he kisses her softly and murmurs a quiet, ] It's okay, [ against her lips. ] It's okay, I got you.
[ falling is a terrifying thing - not because of the impact, because you expect that - but because of the fall itself.
she'd gone cliff diving with some friends after graduating university. she would have said no to a roadtrip to virginia because her daughter needed her first, but when a group of ten offers to take turns watching their favorite sunshine girl, how could she say no?
she'd jumped because one of the guys had threatened to pick her up and jump with her in his arms ( he'd been interested, she hadn't, they're still friends and he's getting married in the fall bring your plus one, i know you have one, i've seen pictures on facebook, meems ) and she'd decided that if she was going to fall from fifteen meters up in the air, she wanted to do it of her own volition.
there's a moment in between the leap and the plunge that you actually have time to wonder what's taking the water so long to come rushing up at you. it's plenty terrifying and it's kind of like the way she feels right now, her eyes searching raleigh's. ] How'd you sneak up on me like that?
[ sure they've been physical, have been incredibly fond of each other for a long, terrible while now, but love? it's such a loaded word. ]
[ raleigh has always given his heart away fairly easily. maybe a little too easily in some cases. he was always the sweet boy who somehow ended up much more invested in his relationships much quicker than his girlfriend. it ended up with him getting his heart broken a few times, but that didn't keep him from being interested in having a relationship eventually.
that was one of the big differences between him and yancy. raleigh was a relationship guy, yancy preferred flings most of the time. yancy threw an arm around raleigh's shoulder and commiserated when his little brother got his heart broken, raleigh steered clear of their room whenever yancy seemed interested in someone so he'd have some privacy.
so it's easy for raleigh to say i love you and mean it. but he gets why it's not always that easy for other people. he looks up at naomi and everything he feels about her is clear on his face. the love, the amusement, the way he thinks the sun would rise and set at her command if she wanted it to. ]
Guess I'm just stealthy like that, [ he murmurs as he leans in to kiss her against softly. ]
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yancy's cottoned on to it. she's seen him do it enough times to know it's ritual. and when he introduces her to the princess bride, she looks over at him with a thoughtful look on her face. when he pours an exhausted naomi into bed that night, having just got back from wherever she was interviewing whoever she was, yancy's waiting for him in the hall. after he shuts naomi's door, he tilts his head at his niece with a questioning look. she just smiles at him and says, as you wish, before skipping off to bed.
tonight, he's actually exhausted enough that he thinks he's going to be able to fall asleep the second his head hits the pillow. that's something he hasn't had in ages. so really, it's understandable that when he kisses naomi and holds her close in the dark, i l--goodnight is what slips out instead of the usual. just blame it on the exhaustion. s'all good.
... right? ]
u r B E S T ever
she's half asleep with her cheek on her pillow watching him step out and close the door when the thought hits her that he's the first guy she's ever shared a bed with. ever. it's not like she's been oblivious to the fact that she hooked up with yancy at the back of a truck, had his baby and then kind of threw herself into her work - it's just that the realization kind of hits and it shakes her to her core.
because after yancy was born, she'd had her hands full with a little girl and she'd hated the pitying looks that went but she was such a smart girl as if getting knocked up somehow equated with her brain getting flushed down the drain. she lost her virginity and had someone contribute to the child in her belly why people would always view that as a gauge of her intelligence never made sense. so no, there was never anyone after yancy becket - oh she'd had friends and a couple of guys seemed to express interest but there was always her daughter to think about and somehow having little yancy as a fixture made boys either careful or careless and while the former gave her really excellent guy friends who thought of her as more than just the token girl, the latter made her wary of letting anyone in romantically.
( not that she could. they had pretty stiff competition from a dead guy which is just sad, really. )
and then came raleigh becket.
when he comes back in and shuts the lights, naomi is grateful that she's she turned the other way because she flushes so easily and raleigh is incredibly perceptive when he wants to be. she's still sorting through the irony of it all when he crawls in beside her, the familiar warmth of his body prompting her to curl up against his side. if she believed in things like fate, she would actually want to punch it in the face because really. really. fated to end up with a becket how is this a thing.
when he slips up, she nearly misses it, actually feels her heart hitch for a second because what was that what were you going to say and while it's dark she can make out the shape of him, hears the way he breathes and she thinks to herself that she's not on the edge of the cliff, she's already slipped and has since plummeted over.
she shifts so that she hovers above him, lets her hand catch his cheek so she can draw him in and murmur goodnight, raleigh against his mouth before she gathers her courage and adds: ] Love you.
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she loves him. she loves him.
raleigh gathers naomi close and kisses her for all he's worth. he murmurs a quiet i love you against her lips when he pulls back. he kisses her forehead, whispers it again, and settles back against the pillows. because he really is tired. as much as he would like to spend the next eon pressing his lips to her skin and tattooing the words i love you across every part of her body with his kisses, he really does need sleep. maybe in the morning it'll be a nice way to wake her up. ]
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when he murmurs i love you right back, she's shaken - in the best possible way. the words are out there now and whatever hesitation and uncertainty she might have felt about the way their relationship hung in the in-between is just... gone.
( she's never letting him go now. couldn't, if she tried which she doesn't want to, and while a laugh stays itself on the tip of her tongue her hand comes up to rest right over his heart and she has the pleasure of watching him succumb to sleep, the words still murmured into the darkness. )
so naomi lies there for what feels like a long, long while before sleep finally comes, the faint knock of his heart beneath her fingertips the only lullaby she could ever need. ]
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but it's not any other morning. this is the morning after the night she told him she loved him. ( try saying that ten times fast and keeping is straight. ) raleigh's got different plans.
after waving yancy off to the bus stop, he crawls back into bed. carefully, he brushes the hair off naomi's face and presses a soft kiss to her temple. then her shoulder. across her collarbone, down her sternum until he reaches the hem on her collar. slowly, he rucks up the bottom of her shirt until he can press gentle kisses to the skin of her stomach. ] Naomi, babe... [ he kisses her hipbone right above the waistband of her pj pants. ] Time to wake up.
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a kiss on her temple, another pressed to her shoulder. a trail across her collarbone and down just a little over her heart. it makes her fingers twitch, prompts her arm to lift just a little before it settles back into the sheets because she wants to say stay, wait, come back. she's still got one foot in dreamland though, and it's not easy to leave. when the kisses move over her stomach, her hips move and she exhales a breath, one more step towards full wakefulness. she's finally aware of the ceiling and the slant of the sun when her ears catch the way raleigh murmurs her name.
oh. is that his mouth pressing against her hipbone?
naomi breathes in deep and angles her head so she's sort of looking down in his direction, teeth catchin on her lower lip. her cheeks feel warm and she quietly thinks so it wasn't a dream and she finds it hard to resist smiling when she murmurs: ] Good morning. [ ( Why did you stop? )
she looks... rumpled. sleepy eyes, one hand trying to smooth out her hair, and maybe just a little bit shy. she hasn't forgotten about last night. but she also wants to pinch herself because after falling asleep on it, she's a bit nervous that it might have been just her imagination. ]
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raleigh presses his lips to her hipbone one more time before he kisses his way up her middle. he pauses to nip lightly at her collarbone before he kisses her neck, her jaw, and finally her lips. while he'd like to make it a long, slow thing, his head is still a little preoccupied, so after a moment he pulls back, gently tugging on her lower lip with his teeth. ]
I love you. [ he kisses her again. ] I love you. [ another press of his lips to her throat. ] I love you. [ he can't help another giddy laugh as he looks back up at her. ] And I'm pretty sure you made me the happiest man in the world last night. Just so you know.
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her hands come up to skim fingers under his jaw then, her mouth fitting snug over his, teeth catching on his lower lip, her tongue dipping into his mouth as she leans her weight onto him until his back is flat against the bed. ]
Love you. [ breathless, maybe a little desperate. ] I love you. [ the words a hush against his mouth. ] I love you so much, Raleigh. [ her heart pounding in her ears, how did this happen. ( help. help, oh god, i don't know how to get back up. ) ]
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but as she repeats the words over and over again, he picks up on the anxiety and desperation in her. one of his hands rubs her back in circles as the other pushes her hair away from her face. he kisses her softly and murmurs a quiet, ] It's okay, [ against her lips. ] It's okay, I got you.
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she'd gone cliff diving with some friends after graduating university. she would have said no to a roadtrip to virginia because her daughter needed her first, but when a group of ten offers to take turns watching their favorite sunshine girl, how could she say no?
she'd jumped because one of the guys had threatened to pick her up and jump with her in his arms ( he'd been interested, she hadn't, they're still friends and he's getting married in the fall bring your plus one, i know you have one, i've seen pictures on facebook, meems ) and she'd decided that if she was going to fall from fifteen meters up in the air, she wanted to do it of her own volition.
there's a moment in between the leap and the plunge that you actually have time to wonder what's taking the water so long to come rushing up at you. it's plenty terrifying and it's kind of like the way she feels right now, her eyes searching raleigh's. ] How'd you sneak up on me like that?
[ sure they've been physical, have been incredibly fond of each other for a long, terrible while now, but love? it's such a loaded word. ]
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that was one of the big differences between him and yancy. raleigh was a relationship guy, yancy preferred flings most of the time. yancy threw an arm around raleigh's shoulder and commiserated when his little brother got his heart broken, raleigh steered clear of their room whenever yancy seemed interested in someone so he'd have some privacy.
so it's easy for raleigh to say i love you and mean it. but he gets why it's not always that easy for other people. he looks up at naomi and everything he feels about her is clear on his face. the love, the amusement, the way he thinks the sun would rise and set at her command if she wanted it to. ]
Guess I'm just stealthy like that, [ he murmurs as he leans in to kiss her against softly. ]