notes: i'm rewatching dino thunder and this kind of just...happened. takes places during and beyond the show, mostly throughout trent's evil arc.
warning for sexual content, though there's nothing overly graphic.
so you were never a saint
this is a state of grace
this is the worthwhile fight
love is a ruthless game
unless you play it good and right
― taylor swift, state of grace
He smiles like sin, wicked and wanting, and she wishes she weren't so weak.
x
It doesn't start out as anything.
That's a lie. It started out as everything. She catches herself looking at his drawing of her, her as a superhero, up on the walls of the café way too often to just be a glance. And then she catches herself looking at him, him as a supervillain, even after she told herself to stop, to forget about him, to ignore him, to fight him.
It's not like he even shows up often. But his absence almost stings more than his presence. At least when he's here, wandering the halls of the school, he's human. Normal. Alive.
Until he smiles.
x
"I think they called this…the original sin," he murmurs against her throat, his smile teasing and dirty and arrogant as he presses kisses into her skin, his touch as gentle as the wall behind her back is hard. "Eve trusting the snake above God."
The Bible reference makes her angry. She tangles a hand in his hair and pulls, maybe a bit too viciously, until his head comes back up, his lips crashing messily against hers.
"I don't trust you," she whispers when they part, satisfied to see him just as breathless as she is, his eyes wide and dark with desire. "Don't mistake this for weakness."
Oh, but it is, it is. And he knows it, too.
x
When he's gone, though, she finds herself itching. Fidgeting. Wishing for something she knows isn't even real. Waiting. Wanting.
She doesn't want him, she tells herself, after every battle, every day at school, every time she sees a new waiter at the café. He's the last person on Earth she wants.
But once, he'd been the only person on Earth she wanted.
If she's being honest, he still is.
x
"So, what do you call this, if not trust?" he asks her, a smirk in his voice and his kisses hot on her bare skin. "I could kill you right now."
The thought had occurred to her, in fleeting moments in between touches and kisses and the moans he managed to draw out of her with only his fingers. She hadn't spent much time on it, though.
"But you won't," she counters, more confident than she feels. The truth is, every touch of his hands to her skin is a rush of danger, her body always in high alert around him. Always ready to fight. Somehow, the adrenaline makes it even better. "You would have done it by now."
"Would I?" he challenges, looking up at her with an amused, lazy grin. His hands are braced on her hips as he kneels on the ground. It affords her a sensation of power, having him on his knees in front of her. "Maybe I'm just playing with you. Like animals play with their food."
An ironic simile, she finds herself thinking despite the heat of fury mingled with desire that flares up inside her as he pushes her skirt down and lowers his mouth. He knows exactly what he's doing, and it's annoying, more than anything else.
"I could kill you, too," she reminds him, but the effect is dampened by the sound she makes when his lips start moving. "I could – what's stopping me?"
He grins against her skin, but doesn't ask, so she doesn't answer.
x
Kira isn't in the habit of being honest, anyway, not around him. Not about him. Not when he's a liar. She doesn't owe him the truth. She doesn't owe anybody the truth.
So if his fingers brush her bare leg under the table in chemistry class maybe too deliberately to be an accident, she doesn't say anything. He limits their interactions to one smirk, tipped with secrets and maybe something more, but leaves her alone when she crosses her legs, away from his touch.
The next time he does it, though, she doesn't move.
x
"You can pull away, you know," he tells her, his mouth brushing the shell of her ear, lost in the bustle of chemistry class. Nobody notices, but she almost wishes they would. "I'm not such a monster that I wouldn't respect a lady's wishes."
His hand is halfway up her skirt by now, treading into dangerous territory. He never manages to get far enough up her thighs to cause a problem, not in the time allotted for class, but every day, he gets closer.
And she lets him. If she's being honest, she likes it, more than she should
"If I didn't want your hand there, it wouldn't be there," she informs him instead, bending her head over their vials and test tubes instead of looking at him. His thumb swipes the inside of her thigh, maybe out of surprise, maybe as a test. She shifts in her seat, but otherwise manages to stay still. "You're not the only one who knows how to play games."
He grins, looking almost delighted by her boldness. It's a malicious sort of delight, but it makes her heart flip anyway. He almost looks normal when he smiles.
If she's being totally honest, she misses his smiles more than she likes his touches.
But she's not being honest here.
x
What's she going to say, anyway? Hey, guys, Trent's flirting with me in chem class? She can already hear their response: Stay away from him, Kira, he's bad news.
As if she doesn't know that. As if she can't see how much the gem has corrupted him, how his entire physicality has changed to match its evil, how different he is.
He used to be soft around the edges, soft smiles and soft eyes and soft heart. Now he's jagged, hard smirks and rough hands and steel heart. He used to look at her like she was a light; now she looks at him and all she sees is darkness.
And yet – and yet –
x
"Kira," he breathes, her name hot and wet on his lips, his back arching under her touch. There's nothing else, no taunt, no smirk, just her name, whispered on the edge of reverence. The next sound that comes out of his mouth is a moan.
She has to admit, she enjoys the power, enjoys watching him react to her touch, unable to do anything to her except what she wants him to do. It's trivial, in light of everything he puts them through on the battlefield, the fact that his strength overpowers them during daylight, but it's not nothing.
It's something. When he collapses onto his bed, every muscle in his body shaking, he looks at her with eyes blown wide, utterly at her mercy.
"You enjoy this," he murmurs, almost accusingly, when she leans down to kiss him. His hands run up and down her back, the heat of his fingers pronounced against the chill of the air conditioner in his bedroom.
"Probably not as much as you," she says, and he actually laughs, the sound deep and amused in his chest.
"Probably not," he admits, but his hands are soft when he combs them through her hair. It probably doesn't mean anything, but maybe it does.
x
Her only small measure of comfort is that he seems just as unable to stay away from her, and just as unwilling to bring up their time together during battles or when he faces her, flanked by the others, in real life.
In fact, if she didn't already know their secret, she never would have guessed.
But he sends her a smirk when he catches her eye in the hallways, lets his hand linger on her bare thigh when she wears a short skirt to chemistry class, grins when he catches her wearing a scarf to cover the marks his mouth left on her skin the night before.
She hates it, the sneaking around, the lying, the feeling dirty in the aftermath, when he leaves her alone to put on her clothes and go back to being his enemy in the morning.
But she doesn't hate it enough to stop.
x
"You were off your game today," he remarks after a battle, not with him, for once, as he backs her up against the wall behind the café and kisses her until she sees stars.
It amazes her how gently he can kiss when he wants to. How gently he can touch her. She's not sure if it's Trent, the old Trent, underneath him, guiding him, or if it's just another mind game. Just another way to mess with her head until she's too caught up in him to be able to fight him on the battlefield.
"Shut up," she says instead of responding, nearly ripping his shirt as she takes it off, too annoyed and too full of wanting to be gentle herself. "You weren't even there – "
He chuckles, low and deep in his throat, the sound vibrating over the skin of her collarbone. "Would you have preferred it if I was?"
Kira grits her teeth and shoves him back. For a second, his eyes flicker with genuine upset and confusion, and the presence of actual human emotions on his face sends a shiver of self-satisfaction through her.
"Do you want to talk battle or do you want to have sex?" she demands. He blinks twice and nods and leans back in for a kiss, something subdued about his motions now. Like he was actually caught off guard. Surprised by her.
The thought is enough to buoy her through the next battle. If the White Ranger can still be surprised, they stand a chance.
She stands a chance.
x
The way he looks at her after the spell breaks feels like a dam breaking, the pressure exploding, every secret lifted from her skin and suspended in the air between them.
He smiles, ducking his head, and she relaxes. The secrets fall down and melt into the floor. Normal is a relative term, but she thinks it can be applied here, with the two of them shifting gears back into easy friendship.
He doesn't mention it, not in the lab that day, so she doesn't, either. But it itches at her skin that night, sticky and messy and wanting.
x
He hasn't brought it up first, so she does. Dancing around secrets is tiring, and she doesn't have time for games anymore.
"Do you remember…?" The words don't come easy, but she forces them out. "When you were evil, we – "
He runs his tongue over his lips. She wonders if his mouth is as dry as hers. "I remember."
"Right," she says, because he's giving her nothing else. "Well, I – I wanted to apologize."
His brow furrows. "For what?"
"You weren't yourself. I shouldn't have taken advantage of you like that."
The truth is, it's easier to pretend it wasn't really him in there, that he doesn't really have the memories of everything they did now that he's no longer under the spell. That he can't remember the way she kissed him, rough and desperate and full of desire, or the way she moaned under his hands, the things she let him do, the things she did.
One corner of his mouth quirks, just enough to tell her that it's wishful thinking. He remembers everything.
"You didn't," he tells her, half a smile sending her insides somersaulting. "I wanted it, too."
x
Wanting is a funny thing, she's found. It wears masks, the way they do, but different ones – some days, it tastes like sin, and other days, like heaven. There were nights she spent with him that were so filled with the feeling that she'd thought she would burst. It's poisonous, but it's also freeing.
It takes him months to kiss her again, months lost in battles and school and waiting for the end of the world. Months with his secrets and her feelings, caught in the crossfire of their lives. She's not sure if it's an absence of courage or time that prevents him from taking the first step again.
When he does, though, it's after the fight. After everything, after the end. After prom, after high school.
She's kind of glad, because after means new – a new start, a new story. A new him, a new her.
He tastes sweet this time around, his hands soft and his touches slow, but his smile – his smile is real. It's him, it's kind and nervous and charming without being corrupted.
It's everything she's ever wanted. She kisses him back and it feels like flying.
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