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The first time Amy says I love you during sex, Kirsten comes so hard she nearly blacks out and she briefly, foolishly, blindly believes in the existence of angels and the heavens and whatever else exists outside of her to bring so much good to the world. (Actually, she believes in the fingers inside her and the tongue against her and also, maybe, the woman they're attached to.) She's almost embarrassed, for a second, when she starts to swim back into focus, but then she's very aware of the way that Amy is practically panting against her hipbone and decides that it's probably okay. More than okay.
It's been just over three weeks, since Vigil resurfaced and since “I want us to try” and since the first time, and Amy still doesn't say it as freely as Kirsten does, but she does say it. She's trying, and it's nice and it still feels significant every time but she's never said it like this before. Kirsten thinks it just might be the death of her.
It's unsurprising, because from the very first time she'd been amazed by how much she liked when Amy talked. It wasn't like her, not really, to think it was anything other than cringey and slightly uncomfortable to be told how good she feels and how well she's doing and yet. So, unsurprising, that Amy saying I love you would make her topple like that.
There are teeth scraping at her hip, her stomach, up to her neck and Amy's looking at her and she knows what she's being asked. There's a logical, rational, grown up part of her brain that thinks no way but fuck it, she has no doubt Amy can get more out of her so she kisses her and she's practically gone when Amy smiles into it, before she's even moved a muscle.
These are her favourite moments, if she's telling the truth, when she's catching her breath and Amy is still inside her and delicate with her affection, light kisses over her chest and careful not to move too much. It's always felt like now, like this, is when Amy is at her most honest, even if not out loud.
“What's got in to you today?”
“Well… nothing yet but I'm hop-”
“Absolutely not. Awful. Half a mind to leave you hanging for that.” Amy's breathing out a laugh against her throat while Kirsten pretends to groan and honesty, it's always been honesty. Open and fun and soft mixed in with the loud, sweaty, tangled bedsheets clichés.
“I mean, I'm sure I could manage to sort myself out if needs be.”
It's a few more than she can count, at this point, the times that Amy's said it, but she's building up a small collection of favourites. The first was lovely, but then there's the next morning when Kirsten, completely unable to sleep, had gotten up early and handed her a coffee in bed and it had been accepted with an uncharacteristically shy smile. Last week, when Amy had gone over to Kirsten's and something about her bun and ratty sleeveless band shirt had prompted a “God, I love you”. The one she thinks Amy didn't even really mean to say, when she was running late and said “See you later, love you!” and Kirsten had been left sprinting from the car park to get to her own desk in time. This one, tonight.
It's all part of her dramatic joke, committing to the bit, as if she's really going to touch herself instead, the way she eases out and trails wet fingers up Kirsten's thigh, up her body agonisingly slow. Which is why, she thinks, it's so much fun to intercept, to grab Amy's wrist and bring it to her own mouth before Amy gets the chance. Like some kind of silly performance of defiance or brattiness to deny Amy something, even though they both know how much she loves it. The push and shove, or at least the pretence of it, serves them well. She waits for Amy to close her eyes at the feeling of Kirsten's lips, because she knows she will, and takes the chance to flip them over.
“Don't think you can pull that move out all the time now, by the way. Some sure fire way to seal the deal and finish me off.”
“Oh yeah, you know me. Always eager to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.”
Kirsten slots her thigh, gently at first (too gently, maybe), between Amy's.
“Definitely eager. Don't think we could ever deny that.”
“God, you're annoying.” Maybe a few months ago, maybe before, it would've stung a little on their worst days, and she sees a flash of worry in Amy's eyes that maybe it still will. It doesn't, it fills her chest with something silly and warm that reminds her of good whiskey and bubble baths and early mornings, so she kisses her hard and when she tries to pull away, Amy won't let her.
“Yeah. You seem to love being annoyed though.”
“No, I love you. The rest is all unfortunate side effects.”
“And you're very welcome for those. I love you, too. By the way.”
She worries, in that moment, that Amy is going to say something cheesy and terrible like show me and Kirsten can banter with the rest of them, but now might not be the time. So she's ever so slightly less gentle when she moves her thigh, flexes the muscle there just to shut her up.
There was a time, before Kirsten moved over to Missing Persons, a rare occasion when they'd been out and about interviewing suspects together. It was a thrill really, personally and professionally, to watch Amy work, to watch her brain tick and see her in action. They'd been in a corner shop, finding out what the older woman working the counter had seen, and she'd taken a shine to Kirsten. Charming, she'd called her, and said that surely, surely, everyone who meets her falls a little bit in love with her. And she'd been just about to make a joke in response, just the right amount of thankful but not cocky when Amy had said “Oh of course, I think it's impossible not to” and her mind had gone blank because now what exactly did that mean? She hadn't wanted to ask.
It feels almost difficult to remember now, but she knows she needs to sometimes. She knows they can't act like none of it ever happened, or they're doomed to make the same mistakes. They need to talk, and they need to listen, that's what they'd agreed.
Now, though, now isn't a time for worrying about any of that. Now is for revelling in the way Amy stops mid-laugh when Kirsten's tongue swipes her nipple, for enjoying the enthusiastic way she squirms beneath her. Now is for all the things Amy says silently, the way she always has.
This moment, here, is for the feeling of Amy's skin against hers, and the way Amy half-heartedly, jokingly, tries to push her away when she bites softly at her ribcage, for the way Amy brushes hair out of Kirsten's face but never moves her hand away. It's like a promise, like Kirsten knows that hand will, if she plays her cards right, be gripping her hair soon enough.
And it is, of course it is, because Amy is tactile in all the most glorious of ways and fingernails scraping at her scalp while she keens and arches always make Kirsten preen while she fills with pride and joy and a sense of satisfaction that she didn't really ever know was possible. She's always been someone who cares deeply about making her partners feel good, been called a giver by more than one ex, but with Amy it's different. Not least because it finally feels, she thinks, reciprocal. Amy likes this just as much as she does, cares about what Kirsten likes and wants and, in her own way, needs to show it. It's, as cheesy as she even feels thinking it, it's about love in a way that Kirsten had never really considered before. It's also, truly, about Amy and about what they've been building between them since that first hot chocolate. First and foremost, before anything else, when they were friends, it was all about that, about making each other smile and laugh and making each other happy even when everything else felt well and truly fucked and terrible.
So it felt, it feels, like a natural extension of that really. The way that getting to make Amy laugh turned into getting to make her moan and the way it all went from hot chocolate on the roof to drinks after work to evenings and weekends on the sofa, in bed, fundamentally and undeniably entangled in each other's lives. And this, from the very first time, getting to touch her and kiss her and leave her mark, literally and figuratively, on Amy's body, felt right. Felt inevitable, really, that they would be together like this.
Like this, with Kirsten relishing the way Amy is surrounding her and filling every single one of her senses. The way she can feel and taste her, hear her, can see Amy's chest heaving and knows, from the whines and the tug on her hair, that Amy's close. It would be too much, she thinks, to say she loves her, too much and too corny and she thinks about before, about tapping it out on her back and about spelling it with her tongue and how maybe she didn't need to do that anyway because she wouldn't touch her like this if she wasn't completely, completely in love with her. She couldn't.
And after Amy comes, when Kirsten's wiped her fingers on Amy's inner thigh, and she's busy kissing that same spot over and over, she looks up expecting eye contact, but Amy's wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
She knows her, knows that even a post-Vigil Amy is too delicate for her to just ask outright, so she moves her way up slowly, pausing for small kisses right up until she reaches Amy's jawline.
“Y'okay?”
“Yeah, love. I'm fine. Sorry.”
And if Kirsten told her, now, there's no need to apologise, she'd only do it more. So that's not what Kirsten does.
“It's fine, you know, if you're a bit overwhelmed by just how good I am at that. You wouldn't be the first and well-”
“The rest of that sentence better not be you won't be the last.”
“Yeah, that's fair enough. I promise you that I will be absolutely terrible at that with whoever comes next. Or doesn't, actually.” She smiles into Amy's collarbone while she laughs and swats her arm.
“Thank you. You'd better be. I want them cruelly disappointed.”
They're quiet, for a while, and Kirsten thinks maybe that's it. Maybe they're going to lie here in silence while Amy plays with her hair and eventually they both get hungry or tired or just restless and make moves toward food or sleep or, most likely, more of how they've spent the day so far. But then, she remembers, as she feels a kiss on the top of her head, honesty.
“Seriously, though, you know this is it for me. You're it for me. I know I've been shit at showing it and I know we've got so much work to do and I want to do it, I'm not saying it's going to be easy or anything but this. Yeah, this is it.”
“So I definitely shouldn't go shagging anyone else, is what you're saying.”
“Ideally, yeah.”
“Noted.” Sometimes the only thing Kirsten can do is kiss her. The same way she sometimes looks at her and doesn't know how to say or think anything other than I love you. “You either, by the way. Ideally.”
“Yeah, alright. I can manage that.”
“You've been it since the beginning, you know. Not that I ever really kept that quiet.”
“Perfect. Shall we just keep doing this then, yeah? I'll be honest, I've done the without you thing for a bit and believe it or not, I actually hated it way more than I hated having to be a human being who talks about my feelings?”
“Christ, it must've been pretty shit then.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“It was.”