Your Love Is A Waiting Game

I'll Look After You

"Here," he said as helped her sit up a little. He grabbed the damp towel she had wrapped around her and tossed it across the room towards the bathroom. He slipped the shirt over her head and pulled her hair from the collar, his fingers running down her arms and to the tops of her thighs light as a feather. He kissed her thoroughly and a few moments later scoots down in the bed pulling her with him and pulling the covers up and over them. His arm wraps around her back and she settled her head into her favorite place; the crook of his neck. She pressed a kiss to the hallow in his throat before nuzzling her cheek back into his warm skin. His hands ran up her vertebrae making the last of the tension in her body flee allowing her to fully relax.

"Sleep," he murmured into her hair.

She sighed. "Mmm'kay." And she did, wrapped in her favorite set of arms.

No worry dared to entered peaceful slumber, not with him there to scare them away.

>>------->

A nap was an amazing thing. When she was little she would cry when her mother told her to take one. When high school came around it became a precious thing, something she looked forward to on the weekends, along with immersing herself in code surrounded with junk food. When she went to college she barely got enough asleep at night due to her highly advanced courses and the workload of assignments and her part time job, a nap was unheard of, only a distant memory of the old days. When she had graduated she had slept for almost a solid week and had thought that it couldn't get any better than that. Fast forward five years and she proved herself wrong by waking up in Oliver's arms. If only she knew then what she knew now.

She stretched and Oliver's hand around her belly tightened. She smiled and turned her head to peer at him, marveling at what she saw. He really was handsome, with his cheeks flushed from sleep, his stubble giving him that gruff lumberjack look and his long blonde lashes laying softly against his cheeks. She ran a finger down his jaw and he shivered, his eyes fluttering open.

"Mmmm...that's a nice way to wake up." He placed kiss a kiss on her forehead. She turned over in his arms and pressed her cheek over his heart, listened to it beat under her ear, proving to her that he was alive and really there with her.

"Now you know how I feel every morning." She told him while wrapping an arm around his ribs and flattening her palm against his back. "I can't remember what it feels like to wake up alone, and I never want too."

"When I was...on the island," he hesitated a moment before continuing on, his voice rough with emotion. "It was always so cold. Even when I was next to a fire. It took me a while to realize that it wasn't so much the weather but...me. I was the one who was turning cold, ice was building in my veins and I never thought that it was possible for it to thaw. Until I met you." He looked down at her, his eyes shining. He shook his head and smiled at the memory. "My whole universe changed that day and I wasn't so cold anymore."

He was slowly opening up to her and she didn't want to push him so she ran her fingers over his back, tracing his scars.

"Every time I go to sleep I'm half convinced this is all a dream and that I'm going to wake up back on that cold island floor....so every morning when I wake up next to you, I have to tell myself that this is all real. That this is my life and waking up warm and curled against you is a normal thing."

She pulled back just enough to see his face. His hand moved up to cup her cheek and run through her hair.

"When I'm touching you, I can almost forget every bad thing that's ever happened to me." Her heart stuttered in her chest at the openness in his eyes. His soul was laid bare for her to see and she was speechless. So she did the only thing she could think to do. She pressed a kiss to his palm.