Page 60 of Hercules

Trusting.

Was that what she still wanted to call it?

And why?

What did Natasha Korra know about her? Or want to know? Or anyone else she’d met—and, if the grin was enough like Swayze’s, slept with—in the years since she’d put most of her actual self in boxes that were gathering dust in a Northridge storage unit?

Trust.

It had to mean more.

She almost said it aloud but stopped the words before they left her chest. It was already the declaration of her heart and the truth in Herc’s eyes. The flight clearance, waving her to take wing in his endless spring sky. But now there were other flecks of color. Cobalt summer waves, guiding her to his constant shore. Deeper navy, like the bolstering autumn wind she’d find there—and at last, the blue silver core of her protective winter fire.

All her seasons. The hues she really could trust.

Here went nothing.

Or perhaps…everything.

“Okay…I wasn’t crying because of what you did. What we did.” It wasn’t exactly where she planned to start things, but the patent rise of his focus confirmed it’d been the best choice. “I—it was—”

“What?” His husk was tender, his touch a command. Exactly the combination she needed but never knew—until now.

“It was…what you said.” And here, at last, was a beginning. The start of things she’d never revealed to anyone beyond that stupid therapy couch. “The words,” she tried to clarify. “Your words.”

“Okay.” The syllable was slow on Herc’s lips. Though the seasons continued to cycle through his eyes, they were a little darker. “Which ones?”

Lo pulled in air through her nostrils. This was the part where using her mouth for those things started getting hard.

“The part where you asked me…to show myself to you,” she practically whispered. “Not in that way, of course. I mean, by that point, you were already looking at a lot, so—”

He scooped in and tugged on her hand, taunting the rails beneath on her runaway babbling train. “Stay with me, Erastís. What words, exactly?”

Unbelievably, a giddy sigh erupted between her lips. The matching reply sang in her heart. Those ones. Exactly those.

Stay. With. Me.

But because of them, he deserved the real ones. The truth he was so patient about waiting for.

Another long breath. She permitted herself that much, certain she could grab another, but found she didn’t need it. She was ready now.

This was what trust felt like.

Strength to believe in. Openness to embrace. A path to follow. A Hercules to lean on.

Her Hercules.

Even if just for now. It would be enough. She’d make it count. Every second.

“You said ‘show me all your beautiful things’.” She only made it halfway before her voice wobbled again, but she gulped and willed the waterworks back, at least for now. “And it…did things to me. Not in the sexy-times ways.” She hurried to clarify, “In other ways. At deeper levels.”

There was more. So much more. But even all that, less than thirty words in total, felt as if she’d served him a soul sandwich with extra dorky melted cheese. But the man wasn’t biting. Or for that matter, moving. Lo wasn’t even certain he’d added breathing back onto the list.

It was kind of unearthly.

A hundred percent unnerving.

Until she ordered herself to check on his four seasons again.