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“Help me out, Nick. C’mon.”
It’s the ‘c’mon’ that gets her; it always does. Morello tips her head to the side and the word purrs out like the start of something that Nicky gets desperate to finish. So she lets the magazine drop slightly, sucking at her teeth as she thinks. “Tell him... tell him that you was out in the yard today listening to the birds.”
Morello doesn’t even wait for Nicky to finish the thought, her pen already scratching down the words. The tip of her tongue peeks out from between her teeth and the magazine drops a little bit more out of Nicky’s fingers. “And you realized that while listening to the birds that they probably sounded the same for him. So even though you wish you was there, with him, listening to the birds outside your apartment...” She trails off, tipping her head back and letting the imaginary bird song in, the imaginary apartment where her arms would wrap around Morello and they would listen to them.
Morello giggles. “Nice one, Nick. He’ll never know I didn’t hear no birds.” She shifts happily on the bunk, pleased with her letter now that Nicky’s written it. Nicky watches, pleased with the way Morello has to move when she’s happy. She raises her magazine slightly so she can keep watching the woman’s body moving against her clothes while pretending to read it, not even bothering to try and tamp down the heat in her eyes. She knows Morello won’t look up. She never does.
Her vision narrows to Morello’s fingers by the time she’s done writing, so that she’s ready to shut it down the instant she sees them begin making the overdone loops of Morello’s ‘fancy’ signature. She looks down at her magazine and turns the page and is reading about penguins in Antarctica by the time those delicate, long fingers finish folding the paper and Morello reaches down to snag the waiting envelope from the sill next to Nicky’s thigh. And then because Nicky can’t fucking control herself, she looks up and watches Morello lick the envelope, her own tongue pushed hard against the back of her teeth, twitchy with the need to do something.
“Pass me my -” The tube of lipstick is in Morello’s hand before she can finish the sentence, and she grins her thanks. Nicky grins back and hopes it doesn’t look as weak as it feels. She holds her breath as Morello applies a fresh coat of lipstick and tips her head forward to press her lips to the seam of the envelope, feeling her lips twitch with the phantom touch. She closes her eyes and is startled when, a few seconds later, she feels a hand land hard against her knee, as Morello uses it to brace herself, jumping down. “Thanks again, Nick,” Morello chirps, bouncing lightly on her toes and grinning so widely that Nicky can see the lipstick smears on her white teeth. “He’s really gonna love this.”
Nicky grits her teeth and smiles, waving off the thanks. Great, she thinks, gnawing at a dry spot on her lips as she watches Morello’s ass sway away towards the mailbox. That’s just great.
And then about a week later, Nicky hears the call for mail and doesn’t bother to acknowledge it, exchanging looks with Red while carefully propping cards against each other, but she’s ready when Morello bounces into their table and knocks her house of cards flat. Nicky’s already pushing down the feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. She gathers up her cards and shakes her head mutely, dismissing Morello’s half-hearted, cheerful apology.
“You got mail?” Red asks expressionlessly. The question is absurd because they can all see the envelope in Morello’s brightly painted fingernails, but as she continues Red shoots Nicky a look of guarded sympathy. “From Christopher?” Nicky feels her chest tighten with the name and feels overwhelmingly grateful to Red for making sure that the first time she hears it, it isn’t in Morello’s voice. It lessens the blow, somehow.
Morello plunks down in the chair closest to Nicky, of course, and rocks back and forth happily, her knee touching Nicky’s thigh every time she sways closer. Nicky knows she should move her leg and start building her card castle again but her hands are shaking too much. Morello rips the letter open and shakes the paper out, her lips pressing together in anticipation. She barely has the letter unfolded before Murphy is pestering her to read it.
“Baby,” Morello obliges, purring out the endearment and fuck, if this doesn’t get harder every week. “I had a dream about you last night. It was our wedding night and we were supposed to be packing our bags for the honeymoon but we just couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We wound up -” Her voice falters and the paper shakes in her hands; she takes a deep breath before continuing. “On the bed on top of all our clothes and I -” Her voice squeaks in a mixture of embarrassment and excitement. Nicky knows that sound, has coaxed it out of her so many times, and her fingers are now clenched so tightly around her deck of cards that she’s pretty sure they’re cutting her. Morello is blushing fiercely and Nicky breathes tightly, feeling so helpless and fucking obvious, and it’s almost a relief to know that Morello is even brighter than Red’s dye job right now, so there’s no way anyone is looking at her.
Morello shakes her head and folds the letter back up with shaky fingers, and her embarrassment is so painful and adorable that not even Murphy, who lives for this romance novel shit, pushes for her to take it back out. Nicky takes a deep breath and forces a smile onto her face, holding up her cards. “Anyone for poker?”
Morello is shit at cards, but everyone pretends not to notice how Nicky lets her win.
She’s not snooping, not really at all. Honestly, she just goes to Morello’s cube hoping to be there when Morello gets back from work, but once she’s there and alone, and she sees the corner of the envelope underneath Morello’s pillow... well, as if she’s going to resist that temptation.
She makes herself move casually, even though no one is there to see her, plops down on Morello’s bunk like she belongs there and unfolds the letter between her bent knees. She glares at the handwriting, which is tight, neat print, not what she expected, or maybe it was, from a guy named Christopher, who cooks and writes love letters. She scans quickly past what Morello already read, and finds her place.
- I kissed my way down your body. I kissed all the way to your toes and then all the way back up to your lips, and then I kissed you until you couldn’t breathe. I slid inside of you - the handwriting became shaky at that sentence, and Nicky could almost fucking hear Morello’s breath hitching with it - I went real slow because we had all the time in the world. No one was going to stop us and no one was watching us. I could touch you the way I wanted to, which is forever. When you came -
The letter shifts, then suddenly jerks from Nicky’s numb fingers. Nicky isn’t sure if her vision is hazy because she's turned on or she's crying, that’s how fucked up she is, but she would recognize Morello’s face under any circumstance, especially if it was looming so close. “Hey,” she drawls, trying to play it cool. “He’s quite a poet, your man.”
Morello presses her lips together, trying to keep from looking pleased, trying to look angry. “You like that, huh?”
Nicky draws in a deep breath, staring at a dirt spot on her knee, and knows then that the restless feeling in her chest is definitely crying, and she definitely needs to stop. “Sounds like he really loves you.” She licked her lips. “I’m sorry I gave you shit about him, you know, not being -”
“Christopher didn’t write this,” Morello blurts, then claps a hand over her mouth, staring wide eyed at Nicky.
Nicky frowns and reaches for the letter, but Morello scrambles backwards, carrying it out of reach. “But it -”
“I wrote it.” Tears are welling up in Morello’s eyes and Nicky has registered enough to be blindingly angry but she can’t be, not really, not when those big beautiful eyes are so fucking sad and... Nicky guesses she’s silent for too long, because Morello starts speaking again. “I’m sorry, it’s just, you said, and you were right, and I - I wanted you to think that I didn’t - that I had some -” She hiccups miserably and Nicky is on her feet, her arms around the much smaller frame, hugging tightly.
“I didn’t mean to tease,” Nicky murmurs, even though she did and what she really means is, I didn’t mean for it to hurt you. “I just...” She shakes her head and tightens her arms.
“I didn’t know what kind of stuff he would write to me.” Morello sniffles and pushes further into Nicky’s embrace, the letter crinkling against the back of her uniform. They haven’t hugged, not since they ‘broke up,’ and Nicky has missed the feel of her, the fit of her. “So I pretended it was me writing to you,” Morello mutters against the skin of her neck, so quietly Nicky almost thinks she hallucinated it. It might be the most important thing she’s ever heard, though, so she pulls out of the embrace just a little bit, holds Morello’s face in both hands. She pushes at tear tracks with her thumbs and works really hard at not just closing the slight distance and kissing those bright lips.
Morello doesn’t work nearly as hard, surging forward and crashing their mouths together, lips wet, salty and desperately trying to convey a message that Nicky’s brain is too busy short circuiting to receive.
They’ve never kissed before. It sounds incredulous, but they never have, Morello too insistent that their relationship was not a relationship and Nicky too desperate for any opportunity to touch Morello to argue. But Morello kisses her like she owns her, like every inch of Nicky’s mouth is hers to map, and Nicky can feel it all the way to her toes. Her legs go weak like something out of a movie and she stumbles backwards, knees catching on the bunk and then back thumping against the wall. Morello grips the collar of her uniform in both hands and hauls her more upright, yanking her lips away and holding Nicky back when she tries to follow.
“Fuck it, Nick.” Her eyes are still shining with tears and Nicky can’t seem to form a conscious thought. “I don’t know what I’m fuckin’ doin’ anymore.”
“Fuckin’ me,” Nicky cracks, smirking, laughing and ducking when Morello swats at her.
“Yeah,” she finally responds when they stop laughing and play-fighting, lying side by side in the narrow cot. “I guess I am.” But when she tips her head forward, running her nose along Nicky’s before catching her lips again, it doesn’t feel like just fucking. It feels like they have all the time in the world.