(A/N - fun fact - I drew the above image something like... 20 years ago? lol I could probably do a bit better now, but this still works.)

Despite his statement before you fell asleep, you didn't talk to Crocodile for the next few days. You didn't even see him for a few days. You were left in your room, provided food, and clothes by the staff. Within reason they brought you whatever you asked for so you could clean the room and put it back to how it had been. Aside from going a little stir crazy, you got into a good routine.

The days had given you a chance to think things through. Cleaning and organizing, you could do most of it without really focusing on it, so it gave your mind a chance to wander. You thought about the conversations you had with him during the two months on the dating website, going over each word again and again. The first meeting, the feeling of nerves and attraction and concern.

You had let your fears win out when you didn't really want to leave. You had allowed your own feelings of powerlessness convince you that he wasn't someone you could stand beside.

You were going to have to live with the consequences of that regret for the rest of your days, but you weren't blaming yourself. You did what you thought you had to, even when it was something you didn't want to do, and there was merit in that. Regardless of how it had all turned out.

But now you were concerned that the only reason you were struggling was foolish pride. An emotion no more or less useful than the fear that drove you away from him last time.

You didn't hate him. Your fear of him was only because you had been trying to escape him, once that was gone there wasn't anything else there. He was desperately gentle, as though he knew full well how much he could hurt you. His feelings toward you, obsessive though they provably were, weren't detrimental to you. He wasn't breaking your body in order to break your spirit. He wasn't even really hurting you at all.

Even his attempt to punish you had drowned you in pleasure more than anything else. Even the guilty feeling that welled up in you when he talked about his own feelings were legitimate. You don't doubt that the two of you had traded emotional wounds during this.

You mulled the thoughts through your head over and over. Sometimes you argued with yourself and tried to lay out how you could leave, but no matter how good the idea was there was always a tightening in your chest, a pain in your heart, at the idea of it.

For you, for now, that was good enough. Proof enough. If you didn't want to leave, then it shouldn't matter whether or not you should leave.

You wanted to stay.

When Crocodile arrived in your room, you were reading. The knock at the door prompted an automatic "Come in!" from you, as lately it was always someone from the staff bringing you something.

"Ah... hello." You aren't entirely sure how to feel. On the one hand you had been expecting to talk to him long before now, on the other hand, you never seemed to manage to keep a hold of yourself when he was around.

"May I sit?" He asks, nodding to the couch across from you.

"Yeah, yes. You can, um, sit." You pull your legs up onto the couch you're sitting on as Crocodile seats himself across from you.

"I've heard from the staff that you are doing well." He says, looking around the room a little. "I hadn't intended to leave you on your own for so long, but urgent matters needed to be dealt with. My apologies."

"No, um... it's okay." You can feel his eyes on you and it's not uncomfortable, but you can't bring yourself to meet his gaze.

"It also was not my intent to cage you." He says, and this does get you to meet his eyes. "I've spoken with Alvida and Buggy, and if you're up for it, I'd like you to return to work."

"Spoken with them... how?"

"I told them of our relationship, and how you're settling into your new home." He says matter of factly. "Also, that our agreement was that the relationship wouldn't negatively or positively affect your job." He looks at you for a moment, before he manages to catch your eyes again. "I only need one thing from you, before it can happen."

"A promise." You say quietly.

"Indeed. Promise-."

"I won't run." You interrupt, getting up and stepping toward him. "I... it might take me some time to g-give you all of me, but I promise, I won't run."

He holds his hand out and you take it, and he guides you into his lap. Hiking up the nightgown you were wearing a little, you put a knee on either side of his waist and lean against him. You're short enough, and he's tall enough that you can rest your head against his chest as his arms hug you close.

After a moment you can feel him relax, his right-hand brushes through your hair slowly, and his prosthetic shifts against your back gently. The relief in his body and his actions is palpable, and not for the first time you wish you had just stayed in the hotel room with him that night.

If you hadn't run.

If you had let him talk you back into bed.

If. If. If.

"Su... Suwani." You say after a few long moments.

"Yes, desert flower?"

"Kiss me." You request, leaning back to look up at him. His eyes widen a little before he hands shift, one braced against your lower back, the other caressing your cheek softly. He makes no immediate move to pull you in, seeming to take a moment to simply admire you. Your face turns beet red, and after a moment you have to avert your eyes. "Please."

"As you command." He murmurs softly, turning your face back toward him with a single finger, capturing your lips softly. The small escape of air, a sigh of relief and a feeling of it as well. Cupping his face with your hands you return the kiss, desperate and almost forceful.

You have control only for a breath, and when you lean back to catch yours there's a surreal shift in everything. Crocodile becomes sand, and the realization is barely registering in your mind as the shifting sands lay you down on the couch and reform over you.

"S-sand." Your eyes are wide. He's over you, one leg on the floor, his knee on the other side of your legs against the back of the couch. His right hand on the back of the couch, his prosthetic on the cushions by your face. His expression is neutral as your mind swirls.

"You were at Rain Dinners that night." You say, unsure how to think or react. "Th-that wasn't a dream."

"It was." He says softly, his right hand coming down and caressing your cheek again. "I only answered the sounds you made on your own."

"... I talk in my sleep?" Your quick gamut of emotions, from surprise as he turned to sand, to you weren't even sure what at the idea that he had messed with you in your sleep, settling heavily into mortification as Crocodile simply raised his brows a little in response.

Your hands go over your face. "D-Don't listen to me!"

"Even if I could somehow selectively not hear you, I have to apologize that I must refuse such a request." He replies as his hand takes both of yours in it and pulls your hands away from your face. "Don't do that." His voice sinks into your chest just before he leans down and kisses you again.

His hand pins yours a little more forcefully when you begin to squirm, his prosthetic sliding down the side of your body causing you to moan into the kiss. The cool glass fingers move past your hip and against your bare thigh, causing your moan to turn into more of a squeak. You break the kiss, turning your head and gasping for air as pleasure shivers through your body at the gentle touch.

It had been too long since you had been caught in the unbreakable gentleness he employed.

"S-s-s-suwani..." Your voice shivers with your body as his fingers trail down the back of your thigh, shifting along the curve of your leg smoothly as hungry lips pressed against your neck and collarbone.

"This isn't a punishment, desert flower, you can ask me to stop." He admits, voice sinking into you before he leans back. He hasn't let go of your hands, and you squirm a little under him, vaguely aware of your legs on either side of his, completely lost at how they got there when you know you started the kiss with your legs closed.

You're quiet for a moment. You didn't want him to stop, but you weren't ready to ask him to continue, and you were unsure of what to say. After another moment of silence, your face turning more and more red as you could feel his eyes on you, he lifted the leg he'd been caressing with his prosthetic. The slow motion causes you to look at him, and those eyes trap you in their gaze, keeping you from looking away and watching you for the smallest signs. In a way he seems to be daring you to speak.

Leaning down, still holding your hands over your head, he kisses against your calf. It sends a jolt down your leg and straight to your core, and you make a strangled moan as his lips and tongue leave a hot trail from your calf to your ankle. A strange ticklish feeling begins to build alongside side the pleasure, and he holds your ankle more securely.

Having his gaze hold yours as his tongue presses against your foot sends a strange mix of pleasure and embarrassment through you. You wanted to squirm away from the strange sensation, but the pleasure that followed on the fringes of it, and the hold of his hands and gaze, kept you in place as pleasure panted from your lips.

"Puh-please, Sssssuuuwani!" Your mumbled words turned into a euphoric cry as his tongue moved over the ball of your foot and between your toes.

"Mm, now there's a sound." He muses, and his voice rumbling against your foot makes your whole-body tense.

"N-not my feet-haa." You beg, squirming more.

"Is it unpleasant?" He asks, and you can hear the doubt in his voice given your earlier noise.

"It's just... embarrassing." You admit trying to twist your leg free to no avail.

"Embarrassment isn't much of a deterrent when it turns you on." His smirk makes you whimper before his hips push against you. As the desire between his thighs presses into your soaking panties his tongue teases your foot more.

"N-no-no-HNNNGH!" Your body tenses, the sudden orgasm tearing through your body and causing your toes to flex.

"Did you just cum from that, desert flower?"

You don't answer him directly, hiding your face in your arm as you work to catch your breath. He hums deviously, shifting the hard bulge straining against his pants into you. The sensation against your flushed body causes you to gasp and squirm.

"Your sensitive little body that melts beneath me," he muses, moving your leg aside and leaning down to practically purr into your ear as he pushes into you. "I would make you sing for me for hours. Every. Single. Day." He accents each word with a shift of his hips, prying airy gasps of pleasure from you.

"I'd b-break," you gasp, but despite your words, your legs are curled around his hips, keeping him close.

"And yet your body begs for it so sweetly, doesn't it?" He asks, hand sliding down the leg locked around his waist. "But don't worry." He promises, releasing your hands and leaning back. "I won't do anything like that until your lips beg for it even more sweetly."

You sink into the couch, half relieved, half wanting more. Rushing things would work against the both of you, perhaps even him more than you, but you had time.

The routine of work came back to you easily, and Buggy and Alvida were glad to have you back. Days tracked to weeks, and you found that work kept you and Suwani separated often. He was the CEO after all, and there was always much to be done.

After a few weeks you even drove yourself to and from work. You were sure he had his eyes on you in more ways than one, your phone, your car, you wouldn't be surprised to know there was a tracker in your uniform. But there was neither jealously nor tension in your evenings together, and after a while you began to share the same bed.

You weren't sure how much time had passed when you finally told him you loved him, but you did miss a couple days of work recovering from the celebration of it. You yourself weren't even sure if love was the right word for it, or if you had simply given up. The words sat on your heart like words of survival, and not necessarily ones of affection.

But his happiness was your comfort, so you had accepted your fate.

~ Fin...?