A/N: I know I have
stories to work on but I had Lady Antebellum's Need You Now stuck in my head and this is the result. I would say R rated, light smut which I normally
don't do so feedback is really appreciated. Also I just started watching OLTL again and I gather John's is with Marty but I have no clue if they are
living together or not so I decided not.
-Becca-
Need You Now
She knew she shouldn't have been there. She knew he shouldn't have been there. It was an old habit, seven digits so easily dialed that even her drunken fingers nimbly recalled the pattern. And there he was.
It was odd; once upon a time it had been their place. A pool table and four feet of oak on which she would
place his drink and try to ignore the butterflies that seem to take flight every time he looked at her with those piercing eyes that always seemed to glimpse
what she was trying to conceal. Now that all seemed so distant and she couldn't help but toy with the ring on her finger, another dead husband, and no
chance for him to come back like Cris, and yet too much like last time for her to be able to swallow it all down; five shots of whiskey not able to bury the
truth. There was new evidence mounting every day, she had married a mirage, a lie. It had been him, and she couldn't help the humorless laugh that tumbled
from her lips. God, what a fool she was.
"Natalie." Her name broke through the din, his
voice causing her to glance up slowly from the tower of shot glasses she was constructing with a wobbly hand. The small glasses so close to falling and that
was life, that was her life, always so close to the edge, broken dreams that came crashing down around her. John couldn't stop the ache in his chest when
he saw the stark honest pain in her eyes.
"Hey." She forced a smile that didn't belong
and she wondered vaguely if she had learned that trick from her husband, if the knowledge had been transferred by osmosis, soaking into her skin, making it
somehow easier to play the part. "You came."
She sounded surprised and he hated that. He hated that they had somehow become this, that she didn't seem to
remember how he could never stay away when she needed him; that even though he told himself to let it ring when her name appeared on his phone, to just block
out the memories of her red hair splashed across his chest or the smell of her body lotion, and yet here he was, a moth to her flame.
"I came." It was insufficient and he knew that but he waited for her to speak, to tell him why, why him, why now, why Jared and not him; a million
questions that he felt entitled to but she just rested her weary head on one propped up hand, fiddling with the shot glasses with her left.
"Natalie…" He realized that he didn't know what to say to her anymore and it broke his heart that she was no longer his world.
"I don't think I can do this again." She spoke in a rushed quiet way. "I can't bury
another man I love, loved." And there was a flash of guilt in John's eyes, his heart catching with her clarification before remembering that she had
chosen Jared, over almost everyone, she had stood by him.
John sat next to her, close, the edge of his jacket brushing against the soft alabaster skin of her arm.
"You're strong." He hoped she knew that was empty platitudes but the truth, she was the strongest woman he had even known.
"And you know what the worse part is?"
He didn't know if he wanted the answer but he asked anyway. "What?"
"It was all a lie. I mean all of it, Jared and Cris and yo-" She stopped herself, his steely blue
eyes boring into her red rim ones. Her faith was slipping; her belief in love, in her ever being enough, misgivings descending upon her like rain.
"Me?" He asked, a bite in his voice he couldn't control, anger that somehow after everything
that all that was left was doubt ringing in her ears, after all the moments that she could somehow lump him with that monster, that she could question the way
they were, the emotions they shared. "You think... You don't know what we had was real?"
Natalie turned away. It was all a battle she couldn't remember why she was fighting. She tried to recall what John and her had had but it was like trying
to touch a memory through brick. She had built those walls, had locked those memories up, moved on, so she had said and now nothing was that clear. She
recalled that they didn't sleep well together, in the intended sense of the word only. She always had one leg thrust out of the blankets for some form of
temperature regulation thing that no one ever understood and he scrunched down under the covers or to her back like warmth was evasive. Or maybe not, maybe he
just craved it. It ended up awkward though, the contortions their bodies assumed, but it mostly worked out. It was nothing concrete and the question seemed to
fall from her lips without her intent. "Was it?"
"Damn it, Natalie!" He had forgotten the frustration when she was near, the constant war within
that made him want to both strangle her and kiss her, infuriating seemed like to common a word for the feeling she stirred within him. And he realized this is
what he had been missing, something lost so that he hadn't even known what it was at first. Hadn't known what unsatisfied really was until months after
the feeling started and he'd been right where he wanted to be in a stable relationship, he told himself, and
wanting to run. And did she know, what it was, to be free and unable to move? To know you were limitless but not know where to start? Compliancy was its own
form of a black hole.
And then he was pulling her to him, lips crashing against each other before sliding back into a habit that
was akin to breathing, something needed. Both of his hands were in her hair just a bit too desperate, mess of red strands in his palms as if she might vanish,
and hers roamed all over, still restless and unsure how long this could go for. He tasted of coffee and cigarettes, and something so old she'd forgotten
it. She liked that he hadn't stopped smoking, didn't want too much of him to be new.
"John." She pulled away, his name a breathless whisper on her lips.
She expected an apology, or a hasty retreat, for those walls that he had to come up but he shocked her with
a simple statement, three words that helped to restore her faith in something, even the past. "It was real."
He reached across and covered her hand with his, giving off one of those warm glow smiles that brightened
his eyes, crinkling the corners. His hand was so hot. Afterwards, when they had descended into a stillness of silence that was comfortable and vast, they
walked around the corner and down three blocks to his hotel. His room was just that, his. She had instinctively looked for something that belonged to her, something
to remind her why none of it should be happening but there was nothing, no earrings on his dresser, no forgotten jackets, just him. And she felt herself relax,
this had been their home once upon a time. He was watching her.
They relaxed into the kisses, setting her simmering until the itch changed into a yearning to touch all of
his skin, and all over and now. It was only once he'd broken the clinch that she realized he'd had the same thought, his shirt gone and then shoes so
he was standing there in months-worn jeans and nothing more.
Her shirt went next, just over the head with no thought to buttons or whatever else composed it. Once she
was in the mode she didn't even bother to stop, stripping off skirt and shoes and all her underwear until there was nothing to keep her from him.
He watched her rather than helped which was unexpected.
"You're so beautiful." And in the moment she believed him.
He nudged her back towards the bed until she lay boldly before him.
"You angry?"
"No." She wasn't sure if it was a lie or not. She knew she shouldn't be there but she had never been able to resist him, somewhere in the
back of her mind there was a nagging fear of tomorrow and what it would bring.
He raised an amused eyebrow, challenged her. "Do you want to be?"
"Only if you persist in staying over there with your clothes on."
With a laugh, he decided to be sexy. Put on a prowl and crawled over her, rough denim against tender parts.
"I've long since been immune to that," she lied.
"Really? This too?"
Oh, fuck no. Because that was him, rocking against her with hands all over and teeth and tongue waging battle against the column of her throat. He was doing
that on purpose, sucking and bruising and being able to mark her with no one to immediately question it.
Her threshold for play was much lower than his and had decreased since the last she'd had him; he could drag this out for hours unless begged. She pushed,
pushed, pushed, and tugged at his mouth, his chin, the scythe of his cheekbone with her teeth until at last he was inside her. It was intensely satisfying,
immediately, in a way she had never gotten used to.
Her sweat-slick chest rose against his, hoarse cries in her throat that escaped as needy gasps. Strong palms glided over her outer thighs, guiding her legs up
and around his back, deeper than she remembered. She locked her ankles there, to keep him in.
It caused him to slow, to focus on her lips then eyes. "You good?"
"Yes." Couldn't explain it beyond that though, couldn't reassure him in that way he needed. She captured his mouth instead, tried to urge him
on when she was so close already, was whenever he began touching her.
There was an expansion of time, infinite moments squeezed into this one. She had no idea what it meant that they were together again, and couldn't attempt
to even answer those questions which had started arriving quickly, like trains shunted into a holding station.
Oh, what it meant to her that it was him, and he was here, now. It was too much.
She cradled him afterwards, savoring the indolent feeling of his heavy body on hers, the impression of warmth that was left there. There was no hurry to move,
to shake themselves out of the evening's comfort. Her hands palmed his shoulder blades with enough force to discourage movement and his forehead fit
against her neck under the angle of her jawbone, as if it were made to. Didn't want to indulge thoughts like that but her self-discipline which normally
banished them was as pliant as the rest of her. She loved the hot sultry breaths on her skin that he made as he came down, loved the velvet scrape of his hair
against her chin.
When he eventually moved it was just a slide to the right, rolling her onto her side so he could curl around behind, one of her legs escaping out of the
not-soft-enough sheets but resting atop his with the covers in-between. Natalie sighed and finally felt that she was right where she was supposed to
be.
-The End-
