“I’m not,” she started, broke off, dragged in a sharp breath. She tried again. “‘m not sure what you’re winning here?” She arched her neck, leaning back on the car. Another faint shiver racked her body.
“Your lips, I think.” He pulls back with a grin, his eyes sparkling with a happiness that hasn’t been there in ages. “So, what’d I miss?”
It takes her a moment to parse his question coherently. “Not very much? Just the usual sort of thing, nothing that sticks out in my mind … Thanos kidnaped me, there’s been natural disasters to help at … ” She shrugs, dismissively. “Nothing we can’t handle.”
One hand catches at the neck of his shirt, pulling him a little closer. “What about you?” she murmurs. “Where’ve you been?”
Swallowing hard at her touch, his eyes darken and no longer match his ever-present crooked smile. “Another dimension, it was decidedly… not awesome. You ever read any Lovecraft, hun?” He shut down his memory as quick as he could, but not quick enough — a montage of nameless gibbering mounds of flesh and mouths, human visages rigor frozen in nameless screams, barbed tentacles, and things that should never have been flashed through his head, and he couldn’t help but shudder. Too real. Too wrong. Too close to being devoured by Ithaqua, to falling into the clutches of the King in Yellow.
“I know better,” she soothes. She lets him go to slide both arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug. “Shhhh. You’re safe now.” She shies back from looking too deeply, but she’s always done that with him. There’s too much history, and way too much depth of feeling, for her to be able to look into him for long. She presses a kiss to his ear and another to his throat. “Don’t think about it,” she murmurs. “Think about me.”