Naturally...

"Beth... I..." She cuts you off by grabbing your shaggy mop of hair and pulling your face close to hers, and then engages in a kiss unlike any you've ever experienced. This isn't the raw animal passion that you've been experiencing, none of the frantic tongue battles, none of the urgency. This is just... Love. It's like Beth is sharing her very soul with you, and the two of you are the only things in existence.

It's always been difficult for you to understand what love is. You're not exactly wired like other people, and emotions are as difficult for you as forming interpersonal attachments are. You're very good at simulating them, but it's only ever been a surface thing. Intellectually you've researched all of the emotions you could comprehend, but it's like handing someone all the component parts of a firearm and then telling them they have to assemble it and use it. With training and practice they can, but it doesn't come naturally; you've learned how to weaponize emotions pretty well over the years, but they don't come naturally. Heinlein described love as "...that condition in which another's happiness is essential to your own." and in this moment you finally understand. You really meant it when you said you loved Beth. It made you want to be a better person for her.

This is scary as fuck.

It wasn't as if you suddenly decided to go and be a normal civilian and get a nine-to-five job. You just understand that you need to continue to prove that you're worthy of her and anyone else with whom you share your newfound ability to give all of yourself to, because that's something else Uncle Bob talked about. "The more you love, the more you can love -- and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had enough time, he could love all of that majority that are decent and just." You know now that although you love Beth intensely and with every fiber of your being, and that she feels the same about you, you would be crippling both her and yourself if you didn't spread this around somehow. Everyone should feel this great. But you need to be one of those decent and just.

Also as good as this feels, you're still uncomfortably wet.

All of these things flash through your thoughts in what's either the thirty seconds or a hundred years that Beth kisses you, and you're brought back to reality by her drawing away and gazing up at you, tears still filling her eyes. "Thank you, Jimmy. I love you too," her eyes suddenly grow concerned, "You're turning blue, Big Brother. Let's get you dried off."

The two of you spend the next few minutes gently ministering to each other, drying each other off with the occasional appreciative grope or tender kiss. You help her into the bathrobe and draw the flannel lounging pants up your own legs, then plop down on the bed. She snuggles up next to you and you pick up the remote for the TV and grin at her. "Good night for bingeing. Wanna pick something?"

Her lips flutter against your throat as she whispers, "I have all I need here." Her hand caresses your chest gently and she nuzzles into the cleft of you clavicle.