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She'd already given him everything he wanted. She was here, and real, and wanted him. She had no idea how much that was worth - his name was a drop in a bucket compared to that. Her fingers were on his forehead, and though they had no physical power to brush away his furrowed brow, her touch soothed him down to his core - which succeeded in the intended effect regardless. She continued to touch him, and he started to feel himself shake from embarrassment and excitement all at once.

She just wanted his name. She wasn't talking about marriage, she really was asking for his name the way he'd figured out. He had to calm down, because he'd pushed boundaries that were leaps beyond where she'd been, and her varied guesses had him second guessing himself.

He'd been moments away from asking her to marry him. Jesus, Robert, he chastised. Use your head.

And even then, the idea still didn't sound as ridiculous as it should. He felt the urge to get down on his knees at the edge of the bed and ask her right there and then. He wanted to. Oh God, he actually wanted to. And she'd even used the word propose, without realizing how it made his heart thump painfully. She looked so absolutely excited. He licked his lips, and they parted, letting out a choked half-formed sound through puckered lips.

And then he froze up, and turned into the biggest coward known to mankind.

"Wuh.. no, I mean, no, no alternative, I want you to take my name. I mean have it. That's perfect. You're perfect. Everything's perfect."

He laughed nervously, and buried his face into her neck as he did it. The sound turned muffled, but no less high pitched.

Robert was not ready for Mimsy's overwhelming need to know, and he experienced first hand what it meant to keep anything from her in that moment. He learned from it, and from the horror that punched through his gut and held a painful grip on his heart. He couldn't keep anything from her, ever again. He couldn't stand the look on her face when she fell away, and accepted defeat.

"You did not ruin anything." He pleaded, rising up into a seated position and collecting her forcefully in his arms until she was all but wrapped up in a ball, settled against his chest. "I didn't change my mind. I'm just embarrassed, because I thought something different, and it's. Not what you were asking. And it's dumb of me to feel this way but I can't help it. I don't want to ruin this." He knew what he had to do, but it killed him to know that he'd lost the perfect moment, and was forced to tell her this way instead, out of his own stupidity.

"You wanted my last name. I thought, you know, maybe I could.. you know." But she didn't know. She had no idea, and it upset her to consider what it could have been. "I was going to give you a reason to take my name. A legal reason. Don't - don't get scared or anything." His arms had tightened as soon as he'd admitted it. "I know it's too soon. Except, it's not, is it."

His last words had been exhaled out in a sigh of release. He let go of his inhibitions, and hated himself for doubting the moment when it had come. "Maybe I just want to do this right. I guess, asking you to marry me while lying on a bed naked the morning after didn't seem very romantic." His head pressed against hers, and he closed his eyes. "You deserve better than that."

He could feel himself relaxing piece by piece, until he melted against her, soaking her presence in. He laughed, because their time together was so unreal, and turned immediately when her lips touched his jaw. He captured them with his own, in a kiss fraught with unabashed hunger. Just as his blood began to heat from the taste of her, she said something so perfect, he felt like he could cry. Just hearing her tell him that he wasn't dumb sounded so sweet, so pristine. His kiss melted into something much softer, and his hands pressed against her skin lovingly.

They were lost together. Truly, truly lost.

It was such a dangerous game they were playing with the concept of marriage. They'd already abandoned any set of social rules or norms typically allotted for relationships, and it would be too easy to simply throw caution to the wind for this one as well. She wanted him to ask her, and his lips parted in that same moment, preparing to do just that. If she hadn't continued to speak, he would have just said it, without hesitation.

But instead, she asked for a story, and he realized she was giving him the chance to do what his heart desired without the shackles of common sense to hold them down. Tell her a story, that was all. A story of how he would ask her to marry him.

"I would take you somewhere, I don't know where yet." He felt himself settling happily into the role of storyteller, and his hands wandered gently across every inch of her as he spoke. "It would have to be somewhere special for the two of us. Maybe the corner I met you. Or maybe there will be somewhere else by then. And I would get down on one knee, and hold out a ring."

Flush with a sudden excitement, Robert disentangled himself from her in order to hurl himself off of the bed with a thud. He popped back up a moment later, kneeling against the side of it. In his hands was an imaginary box, opening with its imaginary ring exposed.

"And I would say, Mimsy Sigrid Kercher ... Morris?" He giggled and flushed a deep, lively shade of red. "I've been waiting for you my entire life. Now that I know you, I can't live another day without you in my life. Will you please, please complete me, by being my wife?"

He winced. "That rhymed. I probably won't rhyme when I ask you to marry me. That's terrible. Here, let me try again." He closed the box, and opened it again.

"Mimsy, I loved you before I even knew you. You make me feel alive again. Every time you speak, I feel it inside of me. I didn't know what I was missing until you filled it up inside of me, and now I won't ever let you go." He pulled the ring out of the box, reached out for her hand, and held it poised to slip it on her finger. "Will you marry me?"

Without trying, Robert was swept up in the moment until he felt like he was floating inches off of the ground, weightless in delight. She played along perfectly, like an accomplished actress, and he couldn't help but wish that it was all real this time. He knew it wouldn't be long, if he was already this impatient.

God help him, he was falling in love with her even harder as he watched her admiring an imaginary ring. His hands reached up and cupped his face, stifling the sound of a long, content sigh. She was perfect. He couldn't stop thinking that. She was perfect.

When her arms wrapped around him, he leaned in and slid his hands down the length of her body until they met at the small of her back and clasped there loosely. She was right, in every word. With her in his life, the emptiness would always be gone. And he was never going to give her a chance to be alone again, so long as he was still breathing. But the sound of that word, coming from her lips, felt like a slap on his face.

His eyes shaded, and he slowly crawled back up onto the bed with cat-like grace, until he'd towered over her, forcing her back onto the bed and capturing her underneath him. He stared at his prize, and at her lips. He relived that moment two seconds ago, when she'd said she was his wife.

Playtime was over.

"Marry me." There was no romantic interlude. No flowery speech. No ring. No fear. No questions. This was not a game anymore. Robert never wanted Mimsy to call herself anything but his wife ever again, starting right then and there. Because she was. She had to be. It was plain fact, steady and unmovable.

He was going to make her his wife.

Once more, Robert was able to turn from raw, hungry intensity into bubbly amusement with the snap of her fingers - or in this case, a handful of words. Her answer was outstanding, and it made him smile with pride, and joy, and a fair bit of awe. "Oh did you?" He chuckled out, grinning childishly down at her. "Then I guess a wedding will just be a formality. But a great one."

He couldn't fight the urges that sped his heartbeat when she looked at him like that. His body tensed before it bucked under her leg, and the amusement was snuffed out of his expression. It was replaced by warm, needy desire.

"I do. I want to see you walk down the aisle. I want to take your hand and tell the world that I'm yours forever. And I want to - actually, forget the honeymoon part." He bent his head in, and scraped the skin of her neck with his teeth. "Because what I really want right now, is you. I want you." His body punctuated his meaning. "I need you. I'm never going to get enough of you, but that isn't going to stop me."

He suddenly felt the need to apologize. He was insatiable, and she was about to embark on a lifetime of being the sole target of his hunger. He kissed the spot on her neck that he'd bitten, and pulled his head up enough to be face to face with her, close enough to touch noses. "Say it." He whispered. "Tell me you're my wife again. Say it over and over. Tell me you're mine."

His arms stretched out hard over his head, as he rolled his neck and arched his back. He felt loose, but he knew he was going to be sore in the morning. This wouldn't be out of the norm, but it would be nice to feel that soreness and realize that it was her, and not his dancing, that made his body ache when he woke up tomorrow.

His eyes were still closed, but his expression blossomed into a giant grin when she asked him if her dress was all right. It was a beautiful dress, but it was more beautiful when she wasn't wearing it. He lowered his arms and wrapped them around her, pulling her into a hug as his eyes finally opened.

"It doesn't matter what you wear. What you do. You are always going to be the most beautiful thing my eyes, and heart, have ever laid on. So long as you're clothed, I'm extremely comfortable with showing you off to the world. I'm okay with you being naked too, just, not around other people." He leaned in, and unexpectedly laid his lips on her stomach, blowing a furious raspberry against it.

"Mine now!" He claimed, as if he'd just branded her with his lips. He leapt up from the bed with grace, and disappeared into the bathroom. There were few things that would keep him from her at that moment, but one of them was the absolute need to get to his employment before he was fired on his second day.. and the second was his bladder.

It had been a very long night.

"I'm pretty much late, but if we hurry, they won't notice. They don't get to my part for at least an hour or two of practice." He called out from the bathroom, where he was taking care of the latter.

He'd gotten into the shower for all of thirty seconds. It had been enough to rub down his entire body, and rake hands through his hair, but the door had been open (as had been the shower, not that he'd been hinting) so he'd heard her question. He turned off the water, wrapped a towel around his lower half, and stood at the door with a smaller towel being rubbed into his head. He looked confused.

"Well I don't want to tell you what you can and can't do, but I guess I hope you know I wouldn't be okay with you doing anything touchy feely with another person, you know? Like hugging is fine of course, but, you know." Whether she did or not, Robert felt embarrassed to have to specify, so he didn't. Instead he blushed a bright crimson that traveled the length of his toned body, and he struggled to find his clothing so he could cover himself up. None of it was in the bathroom, however, so he failed horribly.

A phone was held out in front of him, distracting him from his doomed task. He bent in, squinted at it to read, and then bellowed with joy. "You don't waste any time do you Mrs. Morris!" He let the towel drop over his face, smothered himself with it, and giggled in a way he would be ashamed to ever admit.

His life had changed so thoroughly in one night, it left him in hysterics. He didn't care what anyone else thought. This was where he belonged; even if, at first, it did sound like they were both going absolutely insane.

He pulled the towel off of his head and dropped it on the floor. "Get dressed, Mrs. Morris." Oh, how he loved saying it. "We're leaving in 5."

He'd been telling her to get dressed all along, but when she moved towards him with the dress slid up over her shoulders, unzipped and hanging off against her body, it was his turn to lose track of his responsibilities and focus on better priorities. His arms took her when she came to him, and her wrapped her up tight, brushing loving fingertips up and down her exposed spine. Eventually, they slid down to the small of her back, and threatened to go further until they clasped the hook of the zipper. He zipped her dress, but he did it so slowly, so sensually, that he might as well have been ripping it off of her in that moment for all the good it did.

His fingers stopped when she told him he was the most important, and every inch of his skin tingled with excitement. What was this woman doing to him? What kind of spell had she managed to put him under, that had him so bewitched?

It felt too good to worry about, so his fingers returned to their slow climb and he bent in to kiss her cheek. "Every single minute." He responded, finally finishing with the zipper. "You are mine, and I am yours, and now that I found you, I'm going to make every second count." He settled his hands on her hips, and lifted her up as high as he could, holding her reverently in the air. "I'm so glad I found you, Mrs. Morris." He told her, as if that had been her name all along. Slowly he brought her back down to the ground, and grinned a grateful grin. "I never knew how much I was missing without you until I did."

His hands strayed, but before they could undo all the hard work he'd just put into zipping her dress up, he pulled them away and landed one sweet kiss on her lips. Then he started scrambling for his clothes, throwing them on his body as quickly and inefficiently as possible. This included putting his pants on with both legs first, as always.

"The theater's walking distance, but if you don't feel like walking fast in those heels, I can just carry you." He finished hopping around as he threw his socks on, and hopped one last time in order to steal yet another soft kiss. "I'd carry you anywhere if you wanted."