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Contrary to popular belief, Billy has never fucked Daisy. Which is not to say their relationship had ever been virginal. Everything between them, from their performances to the screaming and fighting to the kissing and writing together, had always been loaded with desire.
However, he's never been here before, sprawled under her and covered in cold sweat, a dizzy smile tugging at his lips as his heart stutters in his chest... And yet, it feels so familiar that it's painful.
Daisy collapses on top of him, a breathless chuckle escaping her and her chin meets his sternum almost in a painful manner. She's panting too as she presses a kiss on the freshly created little bruise and Billy lowers an uncoordinated hand and cups the back of her head, fingers curling in her hair.
He's twenty years too late and her bed is far more comfortable than the bus bunkers where he had pictured fucking her a lifetime before... Everything is different, they're different people entirely, so it's charming how he knows exactly what her first words are going to be.
"I imagined you better," she teases him, the insult losing steam on the fact she barely has air to deliver it. Billy rolls his eyes, lets his hand fall from the back of her head, fingers combing through her messy hair.
"Funny," he says, lazily, "I imagined you just like this."
"Bet you imagined it a lot," she rolls off of him and he can't keep his eyes away from her. Daisy is a magnetic field of a woman, she's always been. It was infuriating back then, it's intoxicating now. He groans, scoots up on the bed and rolls on his side, elbow hitting her two hundred dollars pillow.
"You don't know the half of it," he reaches in, pushes a strand of hair away from her sweaty forehead and chuckles as she, predictably, reaches on her bedside table and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, "oh you fucking walking cliche of a woman-"
He barely manages to finish the sentence before Daisy is shoving his arm with all her force, almost tipping him out of her king sized bed.
"Shut up, Billy," she scoffs, her cheeks red, eyes sparkling. She looks dazed, almost high and he feels a jolt of pride go through his chest and down his groin at the thought that she's painfully sober and this is all him.
"How did I know you smoked after sex?" he rolls his eyes, taking the cigarette from her fingers when she brings it to her mouth and wrapping his lips around it, taking a drag "and menthols too. Ew, Daisy."
She leans in, plants her mouth over his and kisses the smoke out of his mouth, "don't start," Daisy hits his nose with hers, leans her forehead on his and retrieves the cigarette. She doesn't say anything else and Billy doesn't mind it, breathing in, inhaling her. He runs his hand up her naked back, up and down over the valley of her spine and she squirms, goosebumps appearing on her arms as she takes another drag and blows the smoke back in his parted lips.
There's so much he wants to tell her. Twenty years of dreams and desires and anger and history. He wants to ask her why she picked that horrible wallpaper to the other side of the room. He wants to ask her why does she straighten her hair now. He wants to apologize for that night, three years before, when he had called her in the middle of the night - he wants to ask her why she hadn't called back in the morning. He knows why, the funeral, of course. Still.
"Stop," Daisy whispers, moves up on the bed and presses a kiss to his temple, combs her fingers through his hair, "stop thinking so much. Scaring yourself out of your mind."
"No," Billy shakes his head, smiling. It's the first time since he walked through her door that she assumed something wrong about what he was thinking, "I wasn't scaring myself out of this."
"No?" Daisy pulls back so she can meet his eyes. She's got that guarded expression on that he knows so well: chin tilted up, eyes unblinking, a smile that doesn't match her eyes pulling the corner of her lips up. He knows what it means, if she doesn't show it to him how much of her heart he has in his hands, then it's fine. Then she can pretend. He's always been able to see through that face, from day one.
"No," He shakes his head, "I spent twenty years talking myself out of looking for you, Daisy. There's not a single argument I can come up with now that will have me bolting out of the door."
She blinks, doesn't smile, doesn't emote at all, safe for pulling back and turning so she can tap her cigarette on the glass ashtray. As if he can't tell she's breathing in deeply by the way her shoulders rise.
Billy rolls his eyes, leans in and plants a kiss on her naked shoulder, "I'm not the one scared," he says, keeping his voice gentle, because it's not an invitation to fight. A fact that she misses, snapping her head like a snake.
"I'm not fucking sca-" Daisy starts to say and he eats up the rest of her words, kissing her.
"Hey," Billy grabs her chin, opens his eyes mid kiss and relishes on the fact he managed to do so half a second before she did. He loves her face when it's caught in bliss. All that yearning Daisy keeps tightly locked, "it's okay."
She lets out a huff, then nods "I know," calmer, more measured than the Daisy that he used to know, who'd have slapped him for daring to comfort her, for daring to imply she was scared shitless even if it was a fact.
He likes this version of her, even if it's a little alien. The woman that he's loved for decades, except put a little to the left. He wants to learn her all over again, be on the same page about everything.
"So," Daisy pulls back and falls against her pillows, looking at the ceiling, "how did you know I'd even-"
Let him in? Allow him to visit? Allow him back into her life as if he had never left?
"I didn't'," Billy falls back down too, but looking at her, "of course I didn't Daisy, it was a gamble."
She scoffs, "please, Billy."
He grins, "what? Do you think I knew already? Give yourself some credit, Daisy."
She rolls her eyes, "of course you knew. You've always known."
Part of him, yes. Back when he got to see her daily, when he could tell the effect he had on her, of course he knew then that he was it ... But there was a lifetime between then and now. She had remained, firmly and irrevocably the one for him , but that was part of the issue entirely. He had spent many hours listening to her new albums, trying to decode if any of the songs were about him. Hating himself for thinking the ballad she put out ten years after they had last seen each other was about him .
He could never say this out loud. To his therapist? It sounded self centered even to Billy himself.
"I listened to your songs," Billy says and Daisy moves on the bed, her breath catching.
"And?"
"They're amazing."
It isn't what she wants to hear, of course. Daisy waits, then lets out a frustrated sigh.
"Billy," she turns on the bed, slaps his elbow and he grins.
"I liked your fourth album best. Didn't love the last one... I... I missed your voice," it comes up choked and Daisy raises her eyebrows, amused.
"Yeah?"
"The last one had too many collabs," he scoffs in distaste and she's still smiling, staring at him. It's always been a battle of egos, of course, when it came to them. Billy knows it, so he concedes, "I used to listen to your songs and wonder if they were about me."
Daisy's eyes drop to his lips and she shrugs, "and?"
"I counted seventeen," he says, cringing at his own answer. She shrugs again, playing with his chest hair.
"Twenty three," her voice is incredibly soft. He wants to die, to drown in her.
"Twenty three?" Billy echoes and she nods, still refusing to meet his eyes. Her ears are red, "not bad. Out of a hundred and thirteen."
She snorts, then finally looks up, "they're all about you, Billy," Daisy says, "even when they're not about you, they're all about you. I... It's stupid, how much us -" she gestures between the two of them, at loss of words, "how much it shaped me. Even when I spent years not thinking about you, I... In the back of my mind-"
She can't finish a sentence and he doesn't need her to. His eyes are burning and Billy clears his throat, takes a deep breath, "I stopped singing, but I didn't stop writing," he says, "I liked composing, even if it was never the same without you... It was therapeutic. I wrote, I think, over five hundred songs in the last twenty years."
"I know," she nods eagerly, "the other day I was driving and the- The fucking Verve came on the radio and I knew... I knew-"
He smiles and his chest hurts . "More than half of them are about you," Billy admits, "and the ones that aren't about you... Well," there's a knot in his throat and his voice comes out strangled, "they're about you all the same."
Daisy's forehead creases and he can tell she's trying hard not to cry, "I'm so pissed," she whispers, "I'm so angry. At you, myself, at- Twenty years ."
"You know it wouldn't-"
"I know," she licks her lips and they're redder than they were due to all the kissing, "I know all the reasonings and the whys, I know, Billy- But I'm still furious."
"Oh baby," he sighs, leans in and cups her face, kissing her, "I know."
It burns him, that they were such messes that it took twenty years to get them here. It's an open wound, one that hasn't healed and hasn't closed, even when they were both distracted and in love with other people. It demands attention, a fever that has been burning for so long.
Daisy wraps her arm around his neck, rolls them on the bed and pins him down, burying her face in his neck. His chest heaves, heart aching with how fast it's beating. He turns his face, presses a kiss to the top of her head and feels Daisy relax, melt against him as it all pieces together.
It won't be easy or intuitive. It's going to hurt like hell, but nothing has ever been easy for them and he loves her. He's been loving her since the first minute she walked in the room, since she rewrote his song, since she said she loved his voice and then called him an asshole the next day.
Billy breathes out and Daisy chuckles, "we should definitely fuck again," she says, voice muffled against his shoulder, "like before my kid gets home... You have a lot of time to make up for."