Archive of Our Own

Maddie brings it up on their second date. Which should be mortifying, except once you reach the “survived a stabbing-slash-kidnapping” phase it makes it easier to broach the awkward subjects. It’s like that rule about how couples should go on vacations before they move in together, except much more violent and they’ve done the whole thing out of order anyways, so she figures the rules can be out the window.

They go see a movie (bad, but that makes it more fun) and go out afterwards for frozen yogurt (she has to fend off Howie from eating all the cookie dough bits off of hers) and by the time he’s dropping her off she feels like she’s walking on air.

It’s just — it’s been a long time since she had a date, period, let alone since she had one that felt good, let alone a good one that wasn’t soured by the fifteen-odd years that came after. And Howie has this way of simplifying everything, taking all of the static around them and reducing it into a clear signal, the ropes of noise that wrap around Maddie falling away.

Maddie has workshopped this speech with Josh, and with Carrie from dispatch and Emma from her self-defense lessons, and even with the world’s most reluctant Buck, because he hadn’t had anything better to do than help. Maddie has a whole thing planned out.

Howie puts the car in park. Maddie blurts out, “I’m not ready to have sex yet.”

Yeah, okay, so maybe it’s a little mortifying.

“All right,” Howie says. His eyebrows are up but it doesn’t look like he’s upset. Promising first sign.

“I had a whole thing,” she says, half miserable. “I was going to do it better than that.”

“Do you still want to do the whole thing?”

Maddie opens her mouth to say no, because that’s kind of the long and short of it, the important bit out in the air between them. But she looks at him and realizes: yeah, actually, because he can cut through that noise, because he can help. Because she wants to do the whole thing with him.

“I have not had good sex in a long time,” she begins. It’s the middle of the speech, but whatever. “For obvious reasons.”

Howie inclines his head. “Obvious reasons.”

“And I know we have, like, a million other things to get hung up on and work through.”

“That’s news to me.”

“That’s sweet, but it’s not true.”

He just shrugs. “Hardly a hang-up when it’s you.”

Maddie can’t decide if she wants to burst into tears or shout at him until she loses her voice. She settles for swallowing hard and continuing, “But I know that’s important, sometimes. Not that I think it’s a dealbreaker, I trust you, I know you wouldn’t be an asshole or anything, but I still—”

She breaks off to tug a hand through her hair. It’s fine, it’s literally fine, it’s Howie’s car and it’s her apartment and it’s them. It’s them.

When she chances a look at him, Howie’s smiling at her. It’s a slight thing, but it’s warm and pleased and she can hardly stand to look at it.

(Because that’s the crux, isn’t it, that Howie knows that Maddie’s trust is a heavy thing that she keeps locked up. And here he is, letting her take her sweet time handing it over, holding the weight like it’s not a weight at all. Sometimes she thinks she can’t stand him.)

Maddie takes a breath and forces herself to start over, scrolling back through the Notes app in her head. “Okay. It’s not that I think you’d break up because I wouldn’t put out. But I know that that’s a part of most relationships, and my head isn’t on straight when it comes to that, and I didn’t want you to be left hanging, and this is a terrible conversation but I felt better about… telling you. Just telling you.”

“That you need a minute,” he finishes. Her heart lurches, but it’s like a roller coaster, like a drop where she knows there are safety nets. “Okay. That’s fine. You know it’s fine, but it’s fine with me, specifically.”

“I know,” Maddie says, because holy shit, she does know. “I just also wanted to make it clear when I say I’d like it if you came inside and spent more time with me, it’s not that.”

Not because she doesn’t want it to be, although they’re not having that talk right now. It’s hard enough for Maddie to say true things like “I’m not ready to have sex,” she doesn’t think she has it in her to get into the follow-up of “but I would really, really like to.” That’s something she’s working through on her own time.

“Ahhhh.” Howie leans back in the driver’s seat, grinning at her. “You only want me for my Netflix password.”

Maddie snorts. “Yours? You mean Mrs. Lee’s?”

“What’s hers is mine,” he says earnestly. “And that means what’s hers is yours, too, so congratulations, we can go watch Chilling Adventures of Sabrina as much as your heart desires.”

Maddie has never had a Netflix account, not a password share, nothing at all. It never really felt like she was missing out on anything, but Howie has this way of making it sound like an adventure. Like it’s something she gets to do.

“I don’t know what that is,” she says. Howie scoffs and throws the car door open, like he’s going to storm inside and force her to watch this show, but she catches him with a hand on his shoulder. Not even a hand, just a brush of her fingers, but in a heartbeat he’s turned back towards her, face open, and something seizes in her chest. “Thank you,” she manages to say, barely.

Howie covers her hand with his, not looking away for a second. “You take as long as you want,” he says. “I mean it, Maddie, whatever it takes. As long as you need, and however long you want on top of that.”

Maddie cannot conceive of a world where waiting to have sex with Howard Han is a choice and not, like, a psychological necessity. She leans forward to kiss him anyways, quick and firm and closed-mouthed, feels him smile into it. “Alright, Netflix, let’s get going.”

“That’s what I thought,” Howie grumbles, but it’s undercut by the way he’s grinning. Maddie did that. Maddie put that smile on his face. She’s going to be riding that high for a long time.

#

Josh sits down across from her in the break room and doesn’t say a word, just leans forward. It’s only the two of them, which means nobody else has to see the insane eyebrow gymnastics he starts doing.

“Perfect gentleman,” Maddie says, and Josh nods like he expected it. He probably did. Josh was on standby as her “I need to get the fuck out of here” call, which was another thing she’d told Howie about and he had been completely, stupidly understanding.

“So you want to sleep with him even more,” Josh guesses.

Maddie wants to bang her head against a wall, but she has to settle for slumping over and burying her head in her arms on the tabletop. “Josh,” she sighs. “It’s dire, Josh.”

“It’s been dire this whole time,” Josh says sympathetically. “You didn’t, though?”

“We made out on the couch for a little while.”

And Howie had asked before taking off Maddie’s blazer, before putting his hands on her shoulders, hadn’t let his hands stray below her collarbone. It made her feel like a teenager, in a strange way: too keyed up to do anything but hold his face between her hands and kiss him like that was going to be enough.

“Maddie,” Josh says grimly, “that’s adorable.”

“I like him so much,” Maddie groans. “I hate this. I don’t want to be in the honeymoon phase.”

“Have you talked to Deena about this?”

Deena is Maddie’s personal therapist, not to be confused with Frank, who is Maddie’s work therapist, or Karson, who is Maddie’s advocate at legal meetings. Deena is Maddie’s age, has had three different hair colors in the past three months, and is unerringly patient. Deena has heard more about Howie than Josh has, which is saying something, because Josh tends to be the person she wants to talk with about these things.

“I’ve talked to Deena,” she sighs. “Deena thinks that I should embrace the honeymoon phase.” And she’s recommended a sex therapist, which Maddie is — thinking about. She doesn’t exactly want to add another person to the growing list of professionals that she’s seeing, but the sex thing has been on her mind lately, so it’s a hard maybe.

“Deena’s a smart woman.” Josh shakes a finger at her. “I have that on good authority.”

“Whose authority,” Maddie grumbles, as though it’s not literally hers.

Josh doesn’t dignify that with an answer. “Do you have plans for another date?”

“We have plans for two more.”

“You move fast.”

“Not fast enough,” Maddie says mournfully. She can’t even blame Josh for laughing at her.

#

So, okay, the sex thing is taking up a lot of real estate in Maddie’s brain. More than she realized.

Somewhere between dates five and six Maddie works up the nerve to call Samantha, the sex therapist, who calls it a good thing that she can’t stop thinking about sex. Says it’s a sign that her brain is leaving the fight-or-flight, says that it’s good that she can associate sex with something good.

It’s just that Maddie thinks she might be fixating. She doesn’t know what the normal amount to think about sex is, but it hits her at random moments. When she’s grocery shopping. When she can’t sleep.

And also the non-random moments. Obviously. Because Samantha and Deena both keep saying things about feeling safe, and Howie… is safe. Howie’s apartment, mostly, because that one didn’t get broken into horrifically, but it’s also him. The fact that he doesn’t care when Maddie changes all their plans because one day she needs to be the one driving, just in case she decides she has to leave in the middle. The way he starts keeping a box of her favorite granola bars without asking, just hands her one and doesn’t comment on whatever her face must be doing.

She stays over a couple times. She gets the bed and he insists on taking the couch, even though Maddie thinks she could handle sharing a bed and there’s not a way to find out for sure without road-testing that. And she wakes up in the mornings, in Howie’s bed, and the sheets smell like him and he makes breakfast but gets Starbucks coffee because he’s so particular about it, and—

—and Maddie fucking wants. When he touches her hair and when he presses his knee against hers on the couch (and then pulls it away and Maddie wants to scream and has to settle for pressing hers against his again) and his hands when he’s cutting up food at a restaurant and when he laughs at her jokes and it feels like winning something, because he’s laughing at her. She wants him with a breathlessness that startles her every time.

Maddie hasn’t masturbated in a very long time, because of the obvious reasons. And she didn’t do it much before, either; she had friends who talked about it, knows it’s normal and healthy, but it wasn’t something she cared about much one way or the other.

There’s not a single tipping point, not an event or a dream or a realization. There’s just a morning where Maddie lets herself sleep in, and when she wakes up everything is bright and sun-warm and syrupy, and she feels good. Languid. Relaxed. And she wants to try.

So she does. She takes her time with it, too, because the things that got her off when she was a teenager probably aren’t going to do the same tricks now. She skates her hands up and down her sides, slower, faster, over the fabric of her shirt before she takes it off. Runs her thumb along her collarbone, and the motion brings her palm down on one of her breasts, and she presses her chest up into it.

It feels nice, which is a woefully inadequate word, and also the truest one. Maddie feels like she’s in her own skin, like it’s a victory when she takes a nipple between her fingers and pinches. Like it’s a victory when she decides she doesn’t like that, and it’s easy to go back to doing what feels good.

Waist, hips, thighs. Inner thighs, and she stays there for a while, even as it ignites something under her skin, like an itch that she wants to feel forever and never again. By the time a hand actually makes it between her legs, Maddie is completely unsurprised to discover that she’s soaking wet. When she kicks off her sleep shorts, her underwear is sticking to her.

After a moment’s deliberation, she pulls the underwear off too. Uses one hand to palm at her chest, the way she’s figuring out she likes, and takes two fingers to circle her clit.

And it’s… good, sure, but not electric. Just good. She speeds up, slows down, adds a finger, circles her entrance, all that. It keeps feeling good, but it’s almost a letdown after how long she’s waited, after how simply nice it felt earlier.

Maddie takes a deep breath, trying to stave off the disappointment. This is fine. The point of this is trying things and feeling good, and it doesn’t need to be electric right now. She’s still figuring things out, on this random molasses-thick Wednesday morning, figuring things out with herself so she can figure it out with Howie.

God. With Howie.

She can almost see him there. Shirtless, which she’s only seen a couple times but which is imprinted on her brain anyways. Warm and broad and smiling. Maddie runs her hand along her waist again and imagines it’s his, but his is bigger and rougher, and so gentle.

She has spent a lot of time watching his hands, paramedic’s hands, careful hands, enough to hold the weight of everything Maddie has given him. She knows his hands, his fingers in her hair and cupping the side of her face. Gripping her hips, the last couple of times she’s been at his place. Holding onto her, not like a prize or something breakable. Just to hold.

Her fingers press into her clit. Her breath catches. She can almost imagine that it’s Howie’s fingers, Howie’s hand between her legs, Howie grinning down at her.

It catches her by surprise. All Maddie knows is she’s gasping, the sound strange to her own ears, and then something hooks inside her and pulls, and she grinds her hips up against her hand and comes so hard the world goes quiet around her.

She settles back into bed, dense and floating, grinning at the ceiling. Her hand feels disgusting and it’s a fucking victory.

#

She wants to tell Howie, the way that she tells him about all the victories, but this one feels a little weird to share, given… everything. She settles for telling Samantha at the top of their next session and gets a pretty good high-five for her troubles. So that’s good enough.

#

Maddie’s not sure when she stops counting dates, or when it slips from going onto dates into properly dating. It doesn’t occur to her that things have progressed until a month or two into things when Linda casually makes reference to Maddie’s boyfriend over at the 118 and then Maddie has to excuse herself to have a panic attack in the bathroom.

Because. Boyfriend. It’s a little close to husband, right? Not really, but there’s that label to it, that formality, and Maddie didn’t realize things had to be formal. She likes it when it’s just Maddie and Howie. They don’t need to be dating. Unless she wants to be dating? Oh, god, does Howie want to call her his girlfriend? Does Maddie want to be his girlfriend?

So she does what any good 911 operator would do: she hyperventilates a while, cries a bit, smoothes her hair back, and then gets back to work. Because really, honestly, this can wait. Maybe. Hopefully.

She wakes up the next morning at five-thirty, on her day off, staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes and trying not to think about it. Which means she’s only thinking about how hard she’s trying not to think about it. Which is basically thinking about it.

Maddie breathes in through her nose and huffs it out, and bites the bullet and texts Chimney: how’s your shift going?

He doesn’t answer straight away, which is a sign that either he’s busy or asleep.

Maddie’s not going to think about it. Maddie’s not thinking about the last time she was someone’s girlfriend. Maddie is just going to lie here and wait until she’s asleep again, because this is a stupid, pointless thing to get hung up on.

Because what’s the goal, if it isn’t this? It’s not casual, she’s certain of that, so why is it such a big deal that it’s becoming something serious? Shouldn’t she want it? Isn’t it supposed to be good, to be important to someone?

She should get out of bed. She has to get out of bed.

She ends up doing a home pilates workout, because Karson’s really into pilates, and Maddie doesn’t completely get it but she’s trying it anyways. And then she goes to sit down, but she finds that she wants to keep moving, so she does. A brisk little walk around the neighborhood. Some yoga, which she hates, but it’s nice to feel in charge of how miserable she feels.

When she checks her phone again there’s a string of texts from Howie that goes exactly how she would’ve guessed: you’re up early, is everything okay, shift is fine, nothing to write home about.

(Maddie considers for about half a second whether she’s the home in this metaphor, and then promptly has to stop considering it, because it makes her want to start doing pilates again just so she’s not doing this.)

And then at the end of the texts: do you want to grab breakfast?

Maddie would love to grab breakfast. She’s kind of pissed about it, to be honest.

She asked Josh recently if he thought it was normal for her to be angry all the time, the way it feels like she is. He had screwed up his face in consideration and confusion before saying slowly, “Probably?” which had actually made her feel better, somehow. She’s not at all sure how.

Howie meets her at a diner not far from the station. She beats him there by a good ten minutes and spends most of it swirling her straw in her orange juice, wishing that she liked mimosas, but she’s not a mimosa girl and never has been, and it feels like forcing the issue to try, and Maddie’s forcing enough issues right now.

The first sign that it’s a hard morning — well, the first sign was waking up in the early hours, and then doing pilates and everything else — but the first sign that Maddie clocks is when the waitress leads her to a table right next to the window, and everything in Maddie shrinks away from it.

Windows mean people seeing her. Windows mean people walking by her, the chance of a friend walking past. Windows mean that she has to perform, be the happy wife in her happy little bubble with her happy husband. Corners and closed doors, she’s not happy but at least she doesn’t have to act happy. Windows aren’t good.

But that’s wrong, because nobody here cares about her. Not in that way. So she can’t bring herself to make a fuss, and ends up sitting at the window table, and stares at her orange juice, and wishes that getting champagne would feel fun and indulgent and anything other than kind of worse.

She knows when Chim gets there because he’s loud. Maddie’s pretty sure that it’s on purpose, although she can’t say for sure. It’s not obnoxious, but he’s obvious about it. Heavy footfalls, big motions, waiting until she looks up to say anything, because one time he met her at a restaurant and called her name and she knocked a full glass of wine onto herself.

“Hey,” Howie says, and waits for Maddie to smile at him before he slides into the seat across from her. He looks tired, but it’s normal post-twenty-four tired, not fatigue, not like a hard call. “It’s nice to see you.”

She keeps waiting for him to ask the question. She’s not completely sure what the question is. It feels like there are a couple of obvious ones, along the lines of “what’s going on” and “is everything okay,” but Howie has that way of cutting to the quick when he wants to, so maybe he’ll know a question that she doesn’t.

He asks about pilates. He asks about how Buck’s leg is doing. He asks how Maddie likes her eggs cooked, as though he doesn’t know, as though he hasn’t cooked her eggs before.

And, when the waitress comes over, after she takes their order, Howie asks her: “Is it okay if we lower the blinds? We can pop ‘em back up when we leave.”

The waitress gives the go-ahead. Howie gets up and lowers the blinds and sits back down and doesn’t say anything else about it. Maddie’s not even sure if she’s ever mentioned the window thing, or if she kept looking out the window, or if he just doesn’t want the sun facing them. All she knows is her shoulders inch down from around her ears, fractionally and then faster, and Howie has to notice. He has to notice.

Maddie feels like a pressure cooker. Like there’s something boiling up inside her and if she doesn’t keep the lid snapped on tight there’s going to be shrapnel.

But this cute diner isn’t the place, and after a shift isn’t the time, and so she swallows around the glass shards in her throat and answers everything. Even offers a story about her favorite diner back in Hershey, a place that closed down before she even graduated high school, which means it’s clear of… of the things she’s not thinking about today.

Chimney knows something’s up. She knows that he knows something’s up. Infuriatingly, she thinks that he knows that she’s onto him. But he’s not bringing it up.

The pressure cooker is boiling away. Maddie is not a fan.

Because the thing is, when she can get out of her head long enough, it’s fun. Howie gets hot chocolate even though it’s a Los Angeles summer, and he steals bites of her home fries, and she lets him even though he complains that she put ketchup on them. He tells her about how Eddie and some guy from C-shift have started a cold war about condiments in the station fridge, and how Howie’s worried it’s going to bubble over and meanwhile Hen has started interfering to make it worse, and Maddie almost chokes on her orange juice laughing at the way he tells the story.

And he keeps just… smiling at her. Like he’s happy to be here. He probably is happy to be here. Maddie wants to be happy to be here, but when she thinks that, it feels like she’s viewing her own thoughts through a microscope, trying to analyze her own reactions and responses, and then it’s not fun.

Maddie’s boyfriend over at the 118. That’s what Linda said.

She looks at Howie during a quiet moment (of which there are plenty, because Maddie keeps forgetting she’s supposed to talk) and narrows her eyes, just a little. Tries to superimpose that word over him. Boyfriend. Howie Han, her boyfriend.

It’s not the right fit. But it’s also not not the right fit.

Howie raises her eyebrows. Maddie raises hers right back. He still doesn’t ask the question.

#

Howie learns how to cook bacon the way she likes it. Even worse, he learns how to make some the way she likes it (still chewy) and time it right so he still gets some the way he likes it (shattering in his mouth). She has a toothbrush at his place, and her second-favorite pair of pajamas live there.

They make out on the couch. A lot. He still asks every time he takes her blazer off, but it’s progressing past that too. Now he asks before sliding a hand under her t-shirt, and it doesn’t get much further than that but Maddie’s brain fuzzes out into the static at the feeling of his fingers against her ribs.

That’s also the first time, but not the last, that it ends with Howie getting up and, very politely, leaving to jerk off in the bathroom. Which he doesn’t say, because he would never actually say it without being asked, but Maddie is completely sure that’s what’s happening. The third time it happens she can hear him, and it’s almost enough to have her sliding a hand into her own jeans.

It’s a head rush, honestly. One hand under her shirt did that to him.

She’s also masturbating. Kind of a lot, although she’s not the best judge of how often is a lot. Because one hand under her shirt did the exact same thing to her, and it’s kind of ruining her for her own hands when she could have his.

And he has a drawer at her place, too. He stays the night for the first time and Maddie makes French toast and spends the whole time waiting for the other shoe to drop. And in true Howie fashion, it keeps not fucking dropping.

The pressure cooker ticks and ticks and ticks. Maddie tries not to feel it.

#

(Because the thing is: the coin flips, and sometimes it lands wrong. Sometimes they make out on the couch and Howie grabs her hips and Maddie will elbow him in the chin trying to get away, and he’s never angry about it. Sometimes she cancels dates. She cashes in on Josh as her emergency call once, and Chimney asks Josh about it, because he doesn’t want to upset her by asking her to explain.

And it’s horrible, it’s so horrible. Knowing that Howie’s doing the kind thing, the right thing, the necessary thing. And knowing that she hates it.)

#

It’s just—

It’s just that he has to be lying. He has to be. Maddie blinks and summer’s halfway over and Howie is still there. And, in Maddie’s professional opinion, it doesn’t make sense.

Deena takes to calling Howie her partner and Maddie likes it. Likes it a stupid amount. Even when it makes something in her throat clench tight. Howie has this way of making her feel like a kid, but not like the kid that she used to be. Like a normal, giddy teenager, doing the things that normal, giddy teenagers do.

There’s a bubble about to burst or a pot about to boil or a Maddie Buckley about to lose her mind. Any of those. All of those.

It finally, finally breaks on a sweaty July night. They spend the afternoon at a beach and their evening watching an old romcom in a park under the stars, and the whole time Maddie feels off balance, wrong-footed. And Howie notices, because he always notices, and she doesn’t know what to do with it tonight. With him seeing her.

He drives her home, and she asks if he wants to come in, and he says yes, because asking is mostly a formality at this point, but he won’t come in if she doesn’t ask. So she gets out of the car and goes around to the driver’s side, and he meets her halfway, and he catches her with a hand on the back of her head and kisses her, and it’s good. It’s good, and she kisses him back and half whimpers and closes her eyes and holds on.

And then Howie steps back.

The words fly out of her mouth before she realizes she wants to speak. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Howie freezes in place. His fingers are caught in her hair. “I— you’re right, I should’ve asked, I—”

“No,” Maddie says, and something is splintering and she doesn’t know what. It was a good day, she thinks miserably. It was a good last date if that’s what it comes to. “I don’t mean that, I mean you shouldn’t have.”

If anything, Howie looks more bewildered at that. “Maddie?”

“I am so fucking tired of setting the pace.” She tries to step away, but the backs of her knees bump against the car, and she can see Howie try to reach out and try to stop himself from reaching out at the same time. “It’s so — I want to be normal, Howie, I want to go to a baseball game and put my hand in your back pocket when we’re standing in line, and I want to go home and have sex with you, and I want to throw dinner parties, and I can’t, I can’t do that right now.”

“Maddie,” he says again, a little helpless, a little something that she doesn’t want to look too closely at. “It’s okay.”

“That’s the thing,” Maddie says, feeling borderline manic. She points at him, and then flinches her hand away so he doesn’t grab it, and then remembers he would never, and then hates herself for a second. “It’s not! It’s not okay with me, that I can’t do any of that. I hate it, Howie, I hate it, and the thing is, I think you hate it too, and then you tell me you don’t hate it, and you don’t push, and then I feel insane, because I’m supposed to be happy, it’s supposed to be enough, and it’s—”

Not. She can’t make herself say it.

Not because it’s untrue. But because the thought of looking Howie in the face and telling him he’s not enough is cruel. Is horrific.

She takes a breath as deep as she can manage, which isn’t very deep at all, and says thickly, “I am so tired of it being okay that I’m broken.”

“You are not broken,” Howie says. It’s maybe the sharpest he’s been in weeks, and Maddie is surprised that she doesn’t flinch away. “The rest of it we can talk about, but that’s — Maddie, you’re not broken, come on.”

She shakes her head. “I’m something.”

“You’re a lot of things, but you’re not broken.” His hand twitches, and something complicated flickers across his face. “I want to put my hand on your shoulder, but I have to be honest, I’m not sure if that’s the right move, and I also definitely don’t think I should ask you right now.”

Maddie swallows. “I’m also not sure,” she admits. “I know it’s not fair to you. That I’m like this.”

“Who’s saying that?”

“Are you telling me you think it’s fair to you?” He makes that same complicated face, and Maddie can’t stop herself from pressing at it like it’s a bruise. “I mean it, Howie, if you could flip a switch and live in a perfect world, would it be exactly like this?”

“That’s a loaded question.”

“It’s a simple one.”

Howie shrugs. “Yes.”

Maddie blinks. “Yes, it’s simple, or—”

“Yes, it would be exactly like this.” He must make up his mind, because his hand settles on her arm, fingers curling gently around her bicep. His face has settled into that classic Howie openness, and Maddie would be terrified if she had the brain power for anything right now. “I mean, okay, no, in a perfect world none of that ever happened to you, but the perfect world doesn’t involve me ignoring what you need, or what you want.”

Need and want. Those are different things. They’ve never felt more different than in this moment.

Howie must be able to tell that Maddie can’t say anything right now, because he continues, “I know it’s complicated. And I don’t ever want to make you feel bad. Because if I could take this away from you, I would, but it’s not because you’ve done anything wrong, and it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because I can tell it’s hurting you.”

“I want to believe you,” Maddie says, because she does. She wants to believe that it’s not something wrong with her. She wants to believe that if Howie had the choice between a normal woman, one who doesn’t flinch when he reaches a hand out and one who would have slept with him on the first date like a sane person, and her, then he would choose her, but—

—well. He’s standing in the parking lot with her, isn’t he?

“Okay,” Howie says. Maddie wants to shrink away, but he’s still anchoring her, a touch so simple that it’s hard to ignore. “And I mean that. It’s okay that you can’t. It’s okay with me.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You don’t have to know how,” he says gently. “It’s okay that you’re not in my head. I’m just asking you to trust me.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Cool,” Howie says, and that’s what makes her burst into tears. Maybe because she’s laughing at him a little bit. Maybe because it’s so honest. Maybe because the pressure has bubbled over and she’s still here, spiderweb cracks and all, and that’s something. That’s something good. “Maddie?”

She sniffles and wipes at her eyes. “Yeah?”

“I want more,” he says, and her breath catches in her chest. It feels like something has been cut loose. Like her lungs can expand for the first time. “But that is never, never the same as you not being enough.”

It’s a kind of absolution. It’s a tidal wave in her chest, crashing, receding, leaving her still standing. It’s exactly what she needed to hear.

Howie is watching her carefully. “Did you still want me to come in?”

“No,” Maddie says, and it is the greatest thing she’s ever said in her life. “Not tonight.”

He smiles at her. “Cool,” he says again, and brushes away some of her tears with the backs of his fingers, and Maddie feels half delirious and entirely alive.

#

It gets better, halfway. Maddie’s not completely sure what to call it; it goes without saying that her standards for “good” are hopelessly haywire, but Chimney takes the feedback. Or at least, he tries really hard to.

“I feel bad about the whole thing,” Maddie admits at brunch one day, swirling her glass of orange juice morosely. “And I think he knows, and I don’t think he knows what to do with it.”

Josh sips his mimosa, because he is a heathen who drinks mimosas, no matter how much he calls her a heathen for not drinking them. “Why not?”

“Because his whole thing is making sure that I’m comfortable, and doing that made me uncomfortable.”

“You’ve invented his own personal hell.”

He clearly means it as a joke, but Maddie groans anyways. “Do you think so? Because I think I might’ve.”

“Maddie,” Josh laughs, “come on, you’ve still been seeing him, right? Clearly he’s not that upset about it.”

“Except that I am.”

“Yes, for some reason, you are.”

“I just wish…” Maddie trails off, frowning. Josh waits her out, leaning back in the booth, and Maddie chews her lip until she can pull the words into the right order. “I wish it didn’t feel like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Honey, he’s not a gift horse, he’s your boyfriend.”

“I know,” Maddie says, because it’s easier than trying to explain. Explain that she’s wasting something good. Explain that she finally found the kind of love she always wanted, someone who can actually read her mind, someone who listens to what she needs, and instead of making her feel taken care of it just makes her hyperaware of everything she needs. Explain that it feels like a mirror held up to her, and maybe she doesn’t like seeing herself in it.

Josh hums, looking unconvinced. “Well, maybe the solution is that both of you start pushing for what you want. Like, if you’re going out of your comfort zone, then Chimney will help you get there, right?”

“I think he and I just have different definitions of pushing, and he doesn’t want to push me.”

“So you push him?”

Maddie snorts. “I think that’d take some doing.”

“Then do it! What’s the worst that could happen?” Josh takes another sip of his mimosa, and then his eyes bulge. “Wait, oh my god, is this about sex?”

“No!” Maddie squawks. “No, it’s— I mean, it’s not not about sex, but it’s not about sex!”

“Maddie,” Josh gasps delightedly. “You should just tell him!”

“I’m not ready for that!”

“For what, telling him you want to have sex?”

“For having sex!”

“So don’t do sex, do something else. Do hand stuff.”

“Josh,” Maddie hisses. “That’s so not the point.”

“There are a lot of ways to have sex,” Josh says, completely unbothered. It’s making Maddie feel hysterical, and at the same time she can feel it leveling her out. The frankness is helping her calm down. “And when it’s my turn in this bitch sesh, you will be hearing about some of the options. Maybe you’ll have ideas.”

Maddie will not get ideas from Josh, because Josh has a very different baseline for what counts as sex, or adventurous sex, or good sex. But she has to admit he has a point. “I’ve been working on that, it’s just so much easier to talk about it than to do it.”

Josh shrugs. “Do it anyways?”

“I hate when you say things like that,” Maddie sighs, because tragically, Josh has a habit of being correct. “Okay, that’s enough from me, you’ve teased me enough, tell me about your weekend.”

“Only if you’re actually done talking and not just changing the subject.”

“Scout’s honor.”

Josh smiles, the way he doesn’t do enough, with his whole face and with his shoulders leaning in, like he’s so happy that it’s spreading through his body. Not for the first time, Maddie thinks she is so outrageously lucky.

“Funny that you mention scouts,” he starts, and Maddie makes a face, and he takes off into a brand new story. Because Josh is good at that too: reminding Maddie that it isn’t just her against the whole world anymore.

#

“I want to do something,” Howie says as soon as Maddie opens the door.

“Cool,” Maddie says, although she can’t help but feel like she’s missing something. “What are we doing?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“A surprise.”

“But I cleared it with Buck,” Howie continues. Maddie blinks. “I wanted to make sure you would enjoy it, so I asked him, and he knows what it is, and where it is. You can ask him if you want.”

Maddie drums her fingers against the door frame. This is a push, she supposes. “Can I have a minute to think about it?”

“Sure. It starts at seven, so we’ve got time.”

“So it’s an event?”

“Sure is.”

Maddie hums and waves Howie in, pulling her phone out as she goes. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Howie, it’s more that she has to think about if she wants the push. “What do we do if I say no?”

“There’s a drive-in showing The Princess Bride, I figure that could be fun.”

She shoots off a text to Evan, just for the purpose of checking the safety net. Within thirty seconds she has half a dozen texts in response, all of them assuring her that Buck knows where they’re going (but won’t tell her), that it’ll be fun (he promises), and that he’s unafraid to wring Chimney’s neck if it comes to it.

Maddie looks at Howie. Howie looks back, face open and undeniably hopeful. “Well?”

“Well, what should I wear? I have to dress for the mystery occasion.”

Howie’s face splits into a grin. And sure, this is a bit of a push, but Maddie’s beginning to realize she’ll push plenty more to see that smile.

#

She figures it out as soon as they get caught in the traffic. “Is this a Dodgers game?”

“It is a Dodgers game,” Howie confirms, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Against the Phillies.”

Maddie’s jaw drops. “So it’s a Phillies game?”

“It’s a Dodgers game, you just said—”

“You’re taking me to a Phillies game,” Maddie says. Delight is spreading warm and low in her chest, taking up space in her shoulders and fingers and wherever there’s room. “How’d you know?”

Howie cuts a glance over at her. “You said something about baseball when you were, uh, yelling at me the other night.”

Maddie frowns, trying to go back in her memory. It’s admittedly a bit of a haze. “I did?”

“You did. Said something about going to a baseball game and putting your hand in my back pocket. Not that I’m expecting that, specifically, but you hadn’t mentioned baseball before, so I got curious.”

“And you asked Buck.”

“And he told me you went to minor league games a lot when you were younger.”

“All the time,” Maddie murmurs. There was a team in Harrisburg, and once Maddie was old enough to drive, she took Evan constantly. It was a way for them to spend time together, and to keep him out of trouble, and to get out of the house. A couple times a month, for years. The two of them would huddle in the stands together, Maddie showing him how to keep score, Buck complaining that it wasn’t football and then paying rapt attention anyways.

(And then, for his thirteenth birthday, Maddie had saved and saved money from odd jobs and came home from Boston to take her brother to an Eagles game, a real football game in Philly. He’d been over the moon, and Maddie had, too. It was one of the last times she’d made it home.)

Howie’s smiling at her, whatever look is on her face. “So, y’know. I haven’t been in a few years, and I’m assuming you haven’t been at all, and it seemed like a fun idea.”

Maddie has been thinking about Dodgers games with Evan for years. It was one of those sunshiney dreams that she’d held onto with bloody knuckles and broken fingernails, back before she’d clawed her way to Los Angeles: maybe one day she’d get to go to another baseball game with her little brother.

She’d forgotten it, wrapped up in the reality of having a life. And this isn’t that, and she’ll have to come back with Buck some other time, when he’s not breaking his back trying to get recertified. But it’s still — it’s something she couldn’t have imagined, back then. Something she forgot how to want.

“It’s going to be fun,” she says, so sure that her chest is heavy with it. “It’s going to be amazing, Howie, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Howie mutters. “LA traffic is killer. We have to actually get to the stadium first.”

“Did you get tickets yet?”

“I wasn’t sure where you’d want to sit.”

“The good seats.”

“No, I wasn’t sure if you’d want to find a section that didn’t have a lot of people.”

Maddie hadn’t considered that. She’s not sure she needs to, honestly, but it’s making something inside her melt anyways. “We’ll get them at the box office.”

“Great, more lines to wait in!”

“It was your idea.”

“I know,” Howie sighs, put-upon, and Maddie knows he doesn’t mean it, and Maddie knows he wants her here, and she’s melting into a puddle on the floor of Howie’s car and she’s doing it with the certainty that he will scoop her up and put her back together. “It’ll be worth it.”

#

(She can’t bring herself to slide a hand in his back pocket, but when they’re waiting in the concessions line she slings her arm around his waist, and when he grins at her she grins back, wide enough to crack her face in two.)

#

The Phillies win. Pretty soundly, actually, with a home run in the top of the first and a lead that never quite closes.

That liquid feeling doesn’t leave Maddie. Not in the concessions line, not when the Dodgers lose, not when Howie spends the whole drive home groaning about defensive plays and coaching staff. She feels like something inside her has been loosened, or opened up, and it’s threatening to spill out, and she wants it to, this time.

They get back to Maddie’s apartment. “Come in,” she says breathlessly, less question and more request.

She gets them both glasses of water, because she knows how to host people, even with this river current thrumming just beneath the surface of her skin. She brings them back to the living room and sets them on the coffee table, and Howie looks up at her and grins, and the river breaks.

“Hey,” Maddie says, and settles herself in Howie’s lap, swinging one leg over his thighs to straddle him. It’s familiar at this point; through trial and error and more trial, she’s figured out that she can’t be under him, which was enough for her, but Howie figured out that she actively likes being on top of him. And she does. She likes him underneath her, warm and solid.

“Hi,” Howie breathes, and tilts his head up.

And Maddie likes this, too: leaning down, her hair brushing against Howie’s cheekbones. The way he smiles when she kisses him, every time, just for a second before he kisses back. The way that he knows what she likes, but never does the same thing twice. Today one of his hands settles on her thigh and the other on her chest, heavy on her collarbone, thumb swiping back and forth near the neckline of her t-shirt.

They stay like that for a long, long while, slow and languid. Maddie curls her fingers against the short hair at the nape of his neck and rests her other hand on Howie’s waist, near his ribs. They stay on the couch, trading easy kisses, until Maddie shifts and that river of want flares to life again.

Right. Pushing it.

She wants to start slow, so she does. Tugs Howie’s head a little closer, lets her hand trail down the side of his neck until she can squeeze his shoulder. Kisses a little harder, opens her mouth a little wider when he kisses back.

She’s making little sounds, bitten-off and half-aborted, but it’s all she can hear. When it’s her by herself, she’s almost always silent. She should tell Howie that sometime. Tell him the ways he cuts through the silence to bring her to life.

The next step, which is a little more of a push, involves hitching her thigh up a little higher. Howie takes the weight with the hand already on her thigh, and so Maddie leans forward, forward, gentle and not even really afraid, until most of her weight is bearing down on Howie.

He shifts beneath her, eyes fluttering open. “Maddie,” he says, a little dazed, and she thinks of one hand under her shirt and his fingers at her bra band and about Howie going to jerk off in the bathroom again after this, and thinks, clear as a bell: fuck that.

“I want to try something,” she says, and watches Howie blink back to himself, a little more alert. “I’ve been talking to Samantha.”

“Remind me who Samantha is.”

“My sex therapist.”

Howie’s mouth falls open. “Your — you have one of those?”

Maddie frowns. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned Samantha.”

“Maddie,” Howie says, a little strangled, “I’m completely sure I would remember if you mentioned your sex therapist. Why do you have a sex therapist?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Howie’s hand shifts from her shoulder so it’s cupping her face. One thumb sweeps across her cheekbone, and he doesn’t say anything.

“There are a lot of things that I can’t do,” Maddie says, partly as a warning, mostly because Samantha and Deena and the entire rest of her fleet are always telling her to say honest things, and this one’s pretty important to get right. “Like, penetration is a pretty hard no right now, but I also don’t — I’m probably not going to touch you at all. But we can still—”

“Maddie, we don’t have to do anything.”

“Let me try again,” Maddie says, suddenly desperate. Because she sees the problem now, sees the mirror held up to her own actions, sees what she needs to do. “Howie, I want to do this. I’ve been going crazy with how badly I want to sleep with you, because I’m kind of obsessed with you, and I’ve been masturbating more in the past couple months than I did in the entire rest of my life combined, and can you say something, please, because I think I’m losing my mind.”

“Me too,” Howie says, still gazing up at her.

“You too, what?”

“The masturbating.”

“I’ve noticed,” Maddie admits. “Although you weren’t the most subtle.”

Howie shrugs, eyes sparkling. “You give me a lot to think about,” he murmurs, and his fingers curl underneath her ear, simple points of pressure, a simple smile on his face. “And I don’t just mean the sex.”

The dam shatters.

Maddie couldn’t stop herself even if she wanted to. There’s no delicacy in how she surges forward, hard enough that their noses smash together awkwardly. She fists her fingers in the longest part of his hair and pulls, not because she cares about his hair but because she needs him closer right the fuck now, needs to yank at him until he’s a part of her.

Howie, for his part, leans into the surge. He moves his hand away from her face, and she mourns the contact until both of his hands are settled on her ass, pulling her forward until she’s settled properly on top of him. She has to wind one arm around his shoulders to settle, keeping the other caught up in his hair, and she can’t pull her mouth away from his. She needs him the way she needs air and the way she needed space and like she’s never needed anything before.

And it feels so good, the friction and the weight of his hands on hers, that it’s not a conscious decision at all. She just needs pressure, and so she shifts to one side and grinds her hips down on his thigh, hard, and gasps at the sensation.

“Oh my god,” Howie says thickly. “Maddie, can we go to bed, please tell me we can do this in bed.”

“In bed,” Maddie repeats, except she’s just discovered a brand new addiction, and it’s rolling her hips against Howie’s thigh. She can’t seem to stop herself from doing it again. “You’re the hottest person I’ve ever met, you know that?”

Howie groans, low and deep, and Maddie’s so flush against him that she can feel it, the way it starts low and rumbles up through his chest.

But she can also feel the bulge in his jeans, straining up and nudging against her thigh, and it’s enough to pull her back down to earth a little bit. Because, and she’s talked about this with every therapist she’s seen, sometimes there’s a difference between wanting and having, and she wasn’t kidding when she said she wasn’t sure about touching Howie.

“Bed,” she repeats, more grounded. “And we can talk a little.”

Howie beams at her and leans up to press one more kiss to her mouth, close-mouthed but deep and long. When he pulls away it’s like the nervous energy goes with him. “I’d love that.”

Maddie’s not sure how she manages to get up, or how she manages to pull Maddie upright. They leave the water glasses behind on the coffee table, and halfway stumble to the bedroom, hands tangled together like they’ve done this a thousand times before.

When they get to the bedroom, Maddie perches on the edge of her bed, and Howie follows suit. He’s flushed and his lips are pink and his hand is warm when he takes hers. “What did you have in mind?”

“So I probably won’t touch you,” Maddie starts again. She feels oddly shy about the whole thing, but Howie is looking at her, enough to keep her steady. “And I’m not sure if I want you to touch me either. But I figure instead of you leaving the room to take care of what you’re feeling…”

“...we can take care of it together,” Howie finishes. He’s looking at her with something approaching awe, even though Maddie’s stumbling over her words and about ready to sweat through her shirt. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, how do you want to do this? Do you want to lie down?”

Maddie takes the time to think it through. She knows that she doesn’t want to be backed against a wall, or underneath Howie, but that pretty severely limits their options.

“There’s room for us to be side by side,” she offers hesitantly. “And still, you know, be close enough for it to be fun.”

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Howie says, and just like that, Maddie believes him. “Are you — uh, how naked are we getting here?”

There’s a flush creeping up the back of Maddie’s neck. She is definitely in over her head and she also can’t bring herself to give a damn. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Howie waits her out, squeezing her hand gently as she thinks about that, too. That frantic, frenetic need is still there, but Maddie doesn’t feel like it’s at risk of disappearing. Not when he’s looking at her like that.

“Completely naked,” she decides. “But I should grab a blanket in case I change my mind.”

“What’s the blanket going to do?”

“I can throw it over whatever’s making me uncomfortable.”

“My face,” Howie guesses solemnly, and Maddie laughs, a high giggle that explodes out of her unexpectedly. His smile crinkles at the corners. “I’ll grab the blanket. You get comfortable.”

He squeezes his hand and gets up, quick enough that Maddie’s certain that he’s trying to spare her some amount of vulnerability. And she appreciates it, not that it’s something she would’ve thought of. It’s much easier to peel off her jeans and shirt when it’s her, alone, with a thrum of anticipation that almost feels the same as ever.

She strips down to her underwear and, after a moment’s hesitation, unclasps her bra. She’s not ready to take it off, but she’s ready to think about it, and so she settles on the bed with her bra half-off and something electric dancing under her skin.

“Alright,” Howie says from the hallway, a nice, clear warning that he’s coming in. “Got a blanket, are you decent?”

“Barely.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” He stops in the doorway, holding a throw blanket that Maddie is pretty sure was buried in the back of a closet, one that she doesn’t care about getting dirty. She feels warm head to toe. “You still good?”

“Still good,” Maddie says breathlessly. “Come here?”

Howie sets the blanket at the foot of the bed and then kneels, crawling up towards her. He stops when he gets close to pull his shirt off, and Maddie’s mouth goes dry.

He settles near her, propped up on one side, all lean muscle and practically glowing. Maddie leans in to kiss him, molten and slow, as he fumbles with the button on his jeans. It’s a new angle for them, to have them both horizontal like this. All sorts of new things for Maddie to catalogue.

Eventually, Howie kicks off his jeans, leaving him in just boxers. He casts a questioning look at Maddie, and she takes a deep breath. Nods. Busies herself with shrugging off her bra the rest of the way so that she’s not just staring.

Not that that actually stops her from staring, because Howie is naked in her bed.

His dick is… it’s definitely a dick. Maddie’s got some hang-ups about that right now, and she’s not surprised that the hang-ups extend to this particular moment. She doesn’t want to touch it, doesn’t even really want to look at it.

But then she drags her eyes up to Howie’s face, and oh, she could look at that. His eyes are dark, and his lips are parted, and he’s visibly doing the same thing, looking at her all over.

“Maddie Buckley,” he says, voice low, and Maddie shivers with it. “You’re unbelievable.”

Maddie can’t remember how words work, so she settles a hand on Howie’s chest, just above his pecs. His eyes drop down, and Maddie isn’t sure what to do for this part, it’s been so long. She runs her hand down his side, down his abs, stopping near his navel, and then back up. This time she makes a point of her palm running across his nipple, and Howie beams at her, like — like she doesn’t know what.

“I have a clarifying question,” he starts, voice low and gruff like she’s never heard it before. Maddie still isn’t really speaking, so she nods at him to continue. “When you said you weren’t interested in touching, did that mean all the normal things are off-limits? From when we’ve done this before?”

“Very much on-limits,” Maddie croaks, even though she’s pretty sure Howie’s hand on her bare chest will kill her. “Above the waist is fine, I know that much.”

Howie’s eyes go dark. “Show me how you like it?”

Her breath hitches in her chest. Howie keeps looking at her, and she knows that if she said the word, this would end, or he’d keep his hands to himself, or they’d figure out something else.

But Maddie’s feeling brave and delirious. So she grabs Howie’s hand, hears his breath hitch, places it high on her chest. “Slow,” she murmurs, “and light. Long, and smooth. The nipples don’t really do much for me, but everything else does.”

“Long and smooth, slow and light,” Howie repeats, and then his hand starts moving, and Maddie’s eyes roll back in her head. It’s been so long since it felt good, since it was anything but her on her own, and Howie’s eyebrows are furrowed like he’s focusing, like the most important thing in the world is making her feel good.

Maddie’s breath is catching in her chest on every other exhale. Howie’s fingers are tracing along her, the shape of her ribs and the swell of her breasts, and it’s his hands, she knows these hands, wrapped around a karaoke microphone, a beer bottle dangling from them, saving lives and cradling her like she’s the only important thing in the world.

Tonight, she is. Important.

Howie’s thumb sweeps up her breastbone, heel of his palm barely settling against her nipple. Maddie arches up into it with a gasp, something crackling up her spine, and then the fact that she’s not touching herself is frankly unacceptable.

It takes some doing, kicking her underwear off without kicking Howie in the shins (or somewhere, uh, more sensitive), but she manages it. Howie leans in to kiss her at the moment her fingers make contact with her clit, and Maddie moans into it. She’s so wet that it’s hard to get friction, hips bucking a couple times before she settles into a rhythm.

“Maddie,” Howie sighs against her mouth, and she wants to swallow it, bottle it, drink it every morning for breakfast. “You’re so— Maddie. ”

He adjusts how he’s lying on the bed to free up his other hand, and Maddie whimpers with the sensation of it curling around the back of her neck. He’s not doing much, but it feels like the only thing holding her upright. Like she’s cradled between both of his hands and one of hers.

Her fingers speed up on her clit. “Howie,” she whines, and then she realizes. This isn’t going to be enough. She knows what will be.

“I trust you,” she says, and before he can ask any questions she takes his wrist and guides it down, gently, between her legs.

Howie goes still for a long moment, searching her face, and then settles the heel of his hand against her pubic bone. His fingers are hovering, so close to her clit. “Maddie,” he whispers, and nothing else.

“Hard and fast, just my clit,” Maddie says, and then grabs the back of his head to haul him in. She kisses him open-mouthed and hard, more of a meeting of the mouths than a kiss, and waits.

He doesn’t make her wait long. She can tell that he’s making his own decision too, thinking about what to do, and then she feels two fingers against her clit, making firm, fast circles.

Howie’s fingers. Howie’s mouth.

Maddie’s hips jerk into it. “Howie,” she sobs against his mouth, “Howie, Howie—”

“Fuck,” Howie says fervently, nearly biting Maddie’s bottom lip on the F. “You’re a dream, Maddie, you’re so amazing, you’re unbelievable.”

His hand speeds up. Maddie’s eyes squeeze shut. “That,” she gasps breathlessly, “that, right there, right there, I’m so close, Howie.”

“I’ve got you,” Howie murmurs. Maddie’s mouth opens around a whine, and he leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of her lips. “I’ve got you.”

Maddie’s world explodes.

Because — wow. If she thought that coming felt good when it was just her, that’s nothing compared to this.

She feels some of it like it’s happening to someone else. The way Howie presses his cheek against hers and kisses the corner of her jaw. His hand, still firm against the back of her neck. His other hand, not moving anymore but still between her legs, something firm and steady for her to grind against as she comes.

Because that’s the part she really feels: she comes, and comes, and comes. White hot and wet and impossibly warm all over. Shuddering and lovely and deep.

Dimly she’s aware of saying Howie’s name over and over, shaking in his arms. It takes a minute for her to gather herself, for her to gasp and feel it fill her lungs.

“Shit,” she says finally, and has to stifle a giggle. “That was— you’re amazing.”

“Maddie,” Howie sighs against her neck. His hand moves against her, and she gasps with the sensitivity, so he pulls away. “Is it okay if I—”

“God, you’d better.” She forces herself to adjust, pulling herself up onto hands and knees so she can lean over him. “I’m going to kiss you.”

Howie doesn’t answer, just lunges in, and Maddie catches him, and lets herself feel the simple joy of catching him. She kisses him, wet and messy, working her tongue into his mouth. He pants against her, strangled and warm. One of his hands drifts down. She thinks it might’ve been the one that he was touching her with.

Maddie doesn’t want to watch, not really, but she wants to touch, at least a bit. So she smoothes one of her hands along the plane of his pec, lets the other tangle in the length of his hair. “Honey,” she sighs against his mouth.

Howie goes still underneath her, and then groans, drawn-out and deep. She doesn’t have to see to know what that means.

She kisses him as he comes, pressing her lips against his open mouth. Part of her wants to draw back and watch his face, but the rest of her doesn’t. She thinks on some level she knows she’ll see it again. She’ll have all the time in the world.

At last, Howie goes boneless, melting into the mattress. Maddie lies on top of him at a careful angle, body oriented away from any mess and wet spots on the bed, and buries her face in the side of his neck.

“We should get cleaned up,” Howie says eventually. Maddie hums noncommittally. “Mostly because I want you to lie on top of me properly.”

“Yeah,” Maddie sighs, because honestly? That sounds pretty nice. “I guess.”

“Can I be honest with you, though?”

That doesn’t sound great. Reluctantly, she picks up her head to look at him, eyebrows drawing together. “Of course.”

“That was incredible and I’d be happy to do it for the rest of time if that’s what you wanted.” Howie’s face breaks into a smile, one that Maddie can feel in every inch of her body. “But if it’s that good when we’re barely touching each other, I can’t wait to actually have sex.”

He wants to do it again. He wants to do more. He wants to talk about it with her.

Maddie wants to talk about it with him, too.

She breathes deep, and lets the contentment settle across her, blanket-heavy and soft. “Me neither,” she admits, and Howie’s gaze softens, and she has to kiss him, she just has to.

They make it out of bed eventually. It’s hardly important.