The shower was running too hot, but Lila couldn't bring herself to adjust the temperature. Steam clouded the mirror, obscuring her reflection, and for the first time in weeks she felt like she could breathe without the weight of cosmic responsibility pressing against her ribs.
Edmund's voice drifted through the bathroom door, rough with exhaustion as he talked to someone—probably older Lila or James—about establishing diplomatic protocols with the reformed Committee territories. Even bone-tired, he was still thinking three steps ahead, still trying to build bridges instead of walls.
God, she loved that about him. And God, she was tired of sharing him with the universe.
The thought hit her with surprising force, followed immediately by a surge of want so intense it made her knees weak. When had she become the kind of person who resented saving reality? When had she started fantasizing about locking the door, turning off the communicators, and spending a full day doing absolutely nothing but exploring every inch of Edmund's body with her hands and mouth until he forgot his own name?
"Probably around the time you fell in love with a man from 1822 and then proceeded to reshape the fundamental laws of physics," she muttered to herself, turning the water even hotter. The steam was making it hard to see, which was fine. She wasn't sure she wanted to see herself right now anyway.
The shower door slid open behind her, and she didn't need to turn around to know it was Edmund. She could feel him in the quantum network, sure, but more than that—she could feel him in her bones, in the way her body automatically relaxed at his presence.
"You've been in here for forty minutes," he said, stepping into the spray without bothering to test the temperature. He hissed slightly at the heat but didn't complain. "I was starting to think you'd dissolved into the water cycle."
"Maybe I have." She leaned back against his chest, letting him support her weight. "Maybe I'm just a collection of steam and wishful thinking at this point."
His arms came around her, solid and real and exactly what she needed. "You're more solid than wishful thinking," he murmured against her hair. "Though I admit the steam part might be accurate. This water is bloody near boiling."
"I like it hot."
"I've noticed." His hands skimmed down her sides, not demanding anything, just touching. Grounding her. "Want to tell me what's actually wrong? Because it's not the water temperature making you hide in here."
She was quiet for a long moment, letting the water cascade over them both. In the back of her mind, she could sense the quantum network humming with activity—reformed Committee members having their first arguments as couples, the Regulator learning to appreciate the beauty of imperfection, dozens of timelines settling into new patterns of possibility.
Everyone was learning to be human. Everyone was discovering what it meant to choose love.
Everyone except her, apparently, who was standing naked in a shower with the man she adored and thinking about cosmic responsibility instead of the way his hands felt on her skin.
"I want to be selfish," she said finally, the words coming out in a rush. "I want to stop being Dr. Lila Reyes, temporal physicist and accidental universe-saver, and just be... Lila. Your Lila. I want to spend a whole day in bed with you without someone needing us to solve a crisis or mediate a dispute or explain how consensual reality works."
Edmund was quiet for so long that she started to worry she'd said too much, revealed too much of the selfish creature that lived underneath her scientific exterior. But then his hands tightened on her waist, and she felt him press his face against her shoulder.
"Thank Christ," he said, his voice rough with relief. "I thought I was the only one going mad with wanting you."
"What?"
He turned her in his arms, water streaming between them, and the look in his eyes made her stomach flip. "Lila, love, I've been respectful and patient and properly gentlemanly for weeks now, waiting for you to finish saving the universe so I could have you to myself. Do you have any idea what it's been like, watching you be brilliant and brave and absolutely magnificent, knowing that the moment I get you alone someone's going to need us for another crisis?"
She stared at him, processing this revelation. "You've been... waiting for me?"
"Darling," he said with a laugh that was half desperation, half amusement, "I've been thinking about getting you naked and keeping you that way for approximately three days straight. I've catalogued at least seventeen different ways I want to make you fall apart in my hands, and I'm starting to think the quantum network might be picking up on my thoughts because I could swear the walls are blushing when I look at you."
Heat that had nothing to do with the shower water flooded through her. "Seventeen ways?"
"Thirty-seven, actually, but I didn't want to overwhelm you." His thumb traced along her collarbone, and she shivered despite the steam. "I've had a lot of time to think while watching you be heroic from a respectful distance."
"Show me," she said, and her voice came out husky and demanding in a way that surprised them both.
"Which one?"
"All of them. Start with the first one and work your way through the list." She pressed closer to him, feeling the way his body responded to her proximity. "We've saved the universe, Edmund. I think we've earned the right to be selfish for a while."
His grin was pure sin and promise. "Are you certain? Because once I start, I'm not planning to stop until you're completely thoroughly ruined for anyone else in any timeline."
"I've been ruined for anyone else since the moment you stepped out of that temporal rift," she said honestly. "I just haven't had time to properly appreciate the implications."
"Then let me show you the implications," he murmured, backing her against the shower wall. The contact made her gasp—not from the cold, but from the way he looked at her, like she was the most precious thing in any universe.
The first way he chose to make her fall apart was with his mouth—slow, patient, thoroughly Edmund in his attention to detail. He kissed her like he had all the time in the world, like there wasn't a universe outside this shower waiting for their guidance. He kissed her like the only thing that mattered was the way she sighed against his lips, the way her hands tangled in his hair when he found that spot just below her ear that made her knees go weak.
"You taste like possibility," he murmured against her throat, and she would have laughed at the ridiculously romantic thing to say if she could form coherent thoughts. But his hands were mapping her body with the same meticulous care he'd once used to navigate by the stars, and coherent thought was becoming increasingly difficult.
"Edmund," she gasped when he found a particularly sensitive spot, her back arching against the wall.
"That's one," he said with satisfaction. "Thirty-six more to go."
"You're going to kill me."
"I'm going to love you," he corrected, and the words carried the weight of promise and threat and absolute certainty. "I'm going to love you until you remember that you're not just a cosmic force or a temporal physicist or a universe-saver. You're Lila, and you're mine, and right now that's the only thing that matters."
The second way involved his hands and a thorough exploration of exactly how sensitive her skin had become since their bond deepened. The third way made her cry out loud enough that she was grateful for the sound-dampening properties of running water. By the fifth way, she was pretty sure she was going to spontaneously combust from sheer sensation.
"You're beautiful when you let go," he said, watching her face with an intensity that made her feel naked in ways that had nothing to do with their lack of clothing. "You spend so much time thinking, analyzing, worrying about consequences. But like this..." His thumb traced patterns on her skin that made her shiver. "Like this, you're just present. Just here, with me."
"I'm always here with you," she managed to say, though her voice was breathless and shaky.
"Yes," he agreed, shifting his position in a way that made her gasp and grip his shoulders for support. "But usually you're here with me and three different timeline calculations and at least two potential disaster scenarios. Right now, you're just... you."
He was right. For the first time in weeks, her mind wasn't racing ahead to potential problems or calculating quantum probabilities. She wasn't Dr. Reyes solving the universe's problems. She was just Lila, drowning in sensation and completely, utterly present in her own body.
"I love your mind," he continued, his voice low and intimate as he continued his methodical assault on her sanity. "I love watching you work, seeing the way you light up when you solve an impossible equation. But I also love this—watching you stop thinking and just feel."
The water was starting to run cold, but neither of them cared. Time seemed to have taken on the same fluid quality as the Convergence's reality—expanding and contracting based on need rather than physics. They could have been in the shower for minutes or hours; the universe waited patiently for them to remember it existed.
"Bed," Lila gasped eventually, when standing became more of a challenge than a given. "I need... bed. Horizontal surfaces. Somewhere I can return the favor properly."
Edmund's smile was devastating. "Planning to catalogue a few approaches of your own?"
"Oh, I've been planning," she said, surprising herself with the heat in her voice. "You think you're the only one who's been fantasizing during all those respectful, patient weeks? I know exactly how I want to make you come apart, Edmund Hartley."
The look that crossed his face was pure hunger. "Show me."
They barely made it to the bed, leaving a trail of water and half-formed quantum fluctuations in their wake. The ship's walls were definitely blushing now—soft pink hues flowing along the corridors as if the Convergence itself was embarrassed by the intensity of what it was witnessing.
"Even the ship knows we're being indecent," Lila laughed, tumbling onto the bed with Edmund close behind her.
"The ship can look away," he said firmly, pulling her against him. "This is between us and no one else."
But as it turned out, privacy was more complicated when you were quantum-entangled with multiple versions of yourself and connected to a network of consciousness that spanned timelines. The first time Lila cried out Edmund's name, she felt an echo of embarrassment from older Lila, followed immediately by amusement and something that felt suspiciously like pride.
"About bloody time," came the thought, distinctly older-Lila-flavored. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten you were allowed to be happy."
"Privacy, please," Lila sent back, but without any real annoyance. It was hard to be genuinely upset when she was currently discovering exactly how thoroughly Edmund had been planning for this moment.
"The network will learn to give lovers space," the Regulator's voice joined the mental conversation, carrying new harmonics of understanding. "I begin to see why boundaries are necessary. Some experiences are meant to be... individual."
"Everyone out of our heads," Edmund's mental voice was amused but firm. "This is a private moment between my wife and me."
"Wife?" Lila's eyes flew open, meeting his gaze. The word hung between them, carrying implications neither of them had discussed but both somehow understood.
"Yes," he said simply, his hand cupping her face with infinite tenderness. "If you'll have me. Properly this time, with vows and promises and all the ceremony you want. But Lila..." His voice grew serious. "I've been yours since the moment you pulled me through time. Everything else is just paperwork."
"Yes," she whispered, and the word seemed to rewrite reality around them. Not the dramatic, universe-reshaping changes they'd been dealing with for weeks, but something smaller and more profound—the simple recognition that they belonged to each other, completely and irrevocably.
The quantum network hummed with approval, and then, blessedly, gave them the privacy they needed.
What followed was tender and desperate and occasionally ridiculous—they were both out of practice with anything that didn't involve saving the universe, and there were moments of awkward elbows and nervous laughter. But it was also perfect in its imperfection, human in the best possible way.
"I love you," Edmund murmured against her skin as they moved together, finding a rhythm that felt like coming home. "I love all of you—your brilliant mind and your impossible courage and the way you snore just slightly when you're truly exhausted."
"I don't snore," she protested breathlessly.
"You absolutely snore. It's adorable." He kissed the spot where her pulse fluttered wildly in her throat. "I love that you talk in your sleep about equations. I love that you cry at sad movies and documentaries about extinct animals. I love that you're brave enough to reshape reality but still ask me to kill spiders."
"They have too many legs," she said, then lost track of the conversation entirely as he shifted position in a way that made her see stars.
Time became meaningless. The universe waited. And for the first time since pulling Edmund through the temporal rift, Lila let herself be completely, utterly selfish—thinking of nothing but the way he felt against her, the way he said her name like a prayer, the way they fit together as if they'd been designed for this moment.
When they finally collapsed together, breathless and thoroughly exhausted, the walls of their quarters had settled into a warm golden glow that felt suspiciously like contentment.
"The ship is pleased with us," Edmund observed, tracing lazy patterns on her shoulder.
"The ship has opinions about our sex life. That's not weird at all." But Lila was smiling as she said it, too sated and happy to care about the metaphysical implications of living inside a sentient vessel.
"Do you regret it?" he asked quietly. "Choosing this? Choosing me? The responsibility we've taken on?"
She considered the question seriously, thinking about everything they'd gained and lost. The weight of cosmic responsibility, yes, but also the joy of watching Gabriel and Elena discover love. The pressure of being examples for the universe, but also the privilege of helping write the rules for how consciousness and love could coexist.
"I regret that it took us this long to have proper privacy," she said finally. "I regret that we've spent weeks being noble and selfless when we could have been doing this instead. But choosing you? Never."
"Good," he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Because I have thirty-two more ways to make you fall apart, and I intend to try every single one."
"Now?"
"Eventually. First, I think we should sleep. And then eat something that isn't replicated. And then possibly shower again, though this time with an actual focus on getting clean."
"And then thirty-two more ways to ruin me for anyone else in any timeline?"
"And then thirty-two more ways to love you," he corrected gently. "There's a difference."
As they drifted toward sleep, wrapped around each other in the glow of a sentient ship that had learned to appreciate privacy, Lila felt the quantum network humming softly in the background—not intruding, just present. Like a heartbeat or breathing, natural and constant.
Somewhere in the network, she could sense Gabriel and Elena having their first fight—something about whether flowers growing spontaneously from strong emotions was romantic or alarming. The Regulator was experimenting with the concept of favorite colors, cycling through different preferences and trying to understand why choice could make something more beautiful. Reformed Committee members were writing their first poetry, crafting their first love letters, attempting their first marriages.
The universe was learning to love, one messy, beautiful, perfectly imperfect moment at a time.
And at the center of it all, two people who'd found each other across impossible odds held each other close and dreamed of tomorrow—not the cosmic, universe-defining tomorrow that awaited them, but the simple, human tomorrow where they would wake up together and remember that they were allowed to be happy.
The real adventure was just beginning. But this—this moment of perfect, selfish intimacy—this was the foundation everything else would be built on.
Love, in all its forms, started here.