Chapter 4: Home sweet home
The ride from the hospital to the safe house was unremarkable, both of them were sore but basically held pinky’s until they arrived. After having to come into the building via the back stairwell, Tim and Addie were handed keys and after the guards vanished into the shadows, they headed inside and found two suitcases with a note on top. The note was from Ben, causing Tim to quietly laugh as he read it, “I asked your parents to pack you each a suitcase to be gone for a bit. Both of you now have legally binding reasons to not have to call your parents. Tim your dad says hi, Addie your dad says hi.”
Tim stared at the single key in his hand, then at the lone door at the end of the sterile hallway. Addie shouldered past him, pushing the door open to reveal a single, spartan room with one queen-sized bed. “Ben, you bureaucratic comedian,” she muttered, dropping her suitcase with a thud. The memory of their kiss in the hospital closet hung between them, thick and unignorable in this confined space. Tim finally cleared his throat, running a hand through his tousled hair. “I can take the floor.”
Addie shot him a look that was pure exhaustion laced with disbelief. “Don’t be an idiot, Tim,” she said, her voice flat as she unzipped her suitcase. “The floor’s concrete and we’re both walking wounded.” She pulled out a worn t-shirt and didn’t look at him as she spoke again. “We’re adults, and it’s a big bed.”
He stood there for another moment, the ache in his ribs competing with the sudden, precise memory of her lips against his in the dark. “Right,” he finally said, the word too simple for the chaos in his head. Addie nodded toward a single door. “Bathroom’s all yours, Doctor.” As he moved past her, she busied herself with the lamp, leaving the kiss and everything it meant still trembling, unspoken, in the quiet between them.
The shower steam had barely dissipated when Tim emerged, finding Addie already in sweatpants and carefully examining the fresh bandage on her forearm. "Let me check that," he said, his doctor's voice calm as he knelt before her, his fingers gentle as they peeled back the tape. A sharp, static charge seemed to arc where his skin met hers, making them both fumble with the gauze, their laughter strained and breaths held too tightly. They finished the task in a wordless, mutual retreat, the large bed swallowing them whole as they lay rigidly on opposite sides in the dark. Then, in the fuzzy threshold of sleep, Addie rolled over and her lips brushed his shoulder in a soft, unthinking gesture that froze them both completely.
The accidental contact hung in the dark like a struck bell. After a silence so profound Addie could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, she whispered, “umm.” Tim’s breath caught, and she felt the shift in the mattress as he turned toward her. “Heads or tails?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep and something else, invoking their childhood arbitrator for every impossible choice. She asked him to close his eyes quietly, and when she was certain they were shut, she leaned in and cautiously kissed him, a decision made not by chance but by the unwavering gravity between them.
The kiss was soft, a question mark against the dark, and when Tim’s hand came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb brushing the line of her cheekbone, the answer was a quiet, shuddering exhale. She pulls closer, dissolving the careful distance they’d maintained, her body aligning against his with a familiarity that felt both new and ancient. “Okay,” he murmured against her mouth, the word less agreement and more surrender, as his other arm wrapped around her, bandages and all. The sterile safe house faded, replaced by the slow, mapping heat of hands and the solid truth of his heartbeat under her palm. This was nothing like the desperate, frightened contact in the hospital closet; this was a deliberate, waking choice, and it terrified her more than any gunshot ever had.
Tim’s hand stilled on her back, his breathing uneven against her temple. “Hey,” he whispered, the word a soft vibration in the dark. “We can just… stop.” Addie answered by closing the last inch between them, her mouth finding his with a certainty that dissolved the fear into a low, warm current. This time there was no hesitation, only the slow, deep exploration of a truth they’d spent years meticulously avoiding, his fingers tangling gently in her short hair. When they finally broke apart, foreheads touching, his voice was a ragged whisper. “Okay, that… changes the itinerary.”
His laughter was a warm, shaky thing against her skin, and then his mouth was on hers again, slower now, a deliberate tasting. The first intimate touches were gentle between the two of them, a tentative exploration of known geography made suddenly foreign: his thumb tracing the shell of her ear, her palm sliding beneath his shirt to feel the firm warmth of his back, the catch of his breath as her fingers found the ridge of an old scar. They moved together with a silent, aching slowness, every shift and sigh a confession louder than words. The outside world, with its gunfire and sterile hallways, ceased to exist. There was only this quiet convergence, the rough whisper of cotton being pushed aside, and the devastating simplicity of skin finally meeting skin.
There was only this quiet convergence, the rough whisper of cotton being pushed aside, and the devastating simplicity of skin finally meeting skin. In the grey dawn light, his hands traced the edges of her bandages with a reverence that made her breath catch. Addie playfully adding, “So doc, are you giving me a check up?” as she noticed that Tim was being especially careful around the fresh bandages. He chuckled, “Actually.” His lips met hers once more, panting as they leaned their foreheads together, “yes.”
The world narrowed to the heat of his mouth and the careful pressure of his hands, which learned her body with a focus that felt both clinical and worshipful. “The patient’s vitals are… elevated,” she managed to murmur against his jaw, her own fingers tracing the line of his collarbone. He responded by shifting his weight, a silent question in the dark, and her answering sigh was all the permission he needed. They moved together in a slow, consuming rhythm, where every gasp was a shared secret and every touch dissolved another piece of the wall they’d built. Afterwards, tangled in the sheets and each other, the adrenaline finally spent, their breathing gradually slowed into the same deep, exhausted pattern, and they fell asleep.