Author's Notes: I wrote this story when I was something like 15. It was song fic for the song "Follow You Down" by the Gin Blossoms. I've edited it quite a lot, but it's still just a silly little fluff story. (:
Rosethorn glanced up and caught her companion's eye. Lark was still new to her, at least in certain ways. It was all rather new. Deep down, Rosethorn was frightened she might be getting lost this time, that things wouldn't be right in the end and she'd lose one of her only friends. She hadn't been with a woman in a long, long time and Lark was certainly…unique.
"You're stunning with a frown on your brow and a pout to your lips, but it seems you have something on your mind," Lark murmured, a gentle invitation, and placed her arm carefully over Rosethorn's shoulders. It was comforting.
All the same, words wouldn't come for Rosethorn. She tried. Words, usually so quick to her tongue, did not arise.
"Tongue tied in knots?"
Rosethorn nodded, one eyebrow darting upward in growing exasperation.
"Well, if you want any assistance… I've been told by reputable sources that I'm a reasonable hack with knots."
Another nod and sly smiles on both ends.
When they reached Discipline cottage, Lark steered them toward Rosethorn's garden and sat them both on the bench facing the rich plant life. Lark only sat and stared, with that slow appreciative smile she wore whenever she knew she had all the time in the world and there was something nearby to remind her of gratitude. She lay her hand ever so gently on Rosethorn's and, after a moment, brought both of their hands up into her lap.
"I'm afraid I'm going to botch this up," Rosethorn blurted, to all intents and purposes as if speaking to the sunflowers, but Lark's ear twitched at the sound. Rosethorn threw out the rest before her jaw stuck fast: "And I'll lose you—us—to my temper and insecurities."
The conversation to follow left Rosethorn's face somewhat splotchy from withheld and then spilled tears. She felt bruised inside from the depth of the conversation, and yet it was gentle, as things tended to be with Lark.
Didn't she still get on as well with Crane as they ever had? her new partner had reminded her. Rosethorn had laughed—for yes, they did, yet most would say they didn't get on well at all, when in fact they got on even better. Lark saw through all that with startling clarity, and didn't seem to mind the string of connection that was still strung between the old pair.
Lark admitted that she was not beyond fear herself, for her last tangle had not ended so well either—hadn't Yazmín left with the rest of her troupe?—but that she had hope she could do things differently this time, could do better. It wasn't likely she would ever be left the same way again, and certainly the two Dedicates were vowed to the same gods and the same temple. If anything, they were stuck together!
Lark's eyes had been deep and full of pain when she spoke of the jealousy of what felt like a previous life, with her beautiful lovers and their admirers, and the faithfulness she had sought but never found. Her desires had changed, she said: she wanted comfort and a home, love and lust, but not ownership; she had no desire to leash or be leashed, but to fly free. She only wanted a place to land and a nest to call her own.
The pair turned to look at Discipline—at this life they had started together so recently and the way it had changed them both—and smiled.
Rosethorn decided they weren't so different after all—or that if Lark was a unique woman, perhaps she was not alone in it. Perhaps they were two of a kind, despite their more obvious differences.
A fist of fear unclenched somewhere deep inside Rosethorn's consciousness.
She wouldn't ruin this whatever-it-was, and she wouldn't ruin Lark, and she wouldn't ruin the foundation they had been building together for years. They could change and grow, but they wouldn't break.
Rosethorn took one long and easy breath. She smiled over to the sunflowers and found hints of Lark's appreciative smile in the curve of her own lips; with that thought, she turned to capture the mouth that had come to mind. Lark met her halfway and locked the fingers of their joined hands. It set the sensitive skin between Rosie's fingers to flames and sparks, but for once she turned down such appetites, as a quiet moment in the garden with her new love seemed too great to pass up.
The appreciative smiles met and locked fast for a moment; two breaths mingled into one. The two pulled away and stared for what felt like a glorious eternity, from one earthen hue to another. Lark's cloud of curls stood out before a background of climbing vines and a rich blue sky.
It was all very much a reminder to be grateful.
"I haven't had a conversation like that in years," Rosethorn murmured later into Lark's neck; the woman held her close. "I had to follow you down. I'm not in the habit of going that...that far. With conversation, I mean."
Lark smiled at her and brushed some light auburn hair away from Rosethorn's pale forehead. "Mmm. Some people find darkness down there. I see you're just as stunning through and through, even with your daemons."
Rosethorn nodded, this time unable to speak due to gratitude. She smiled instead. This felt right: this felt like home, a place where she was safe and yet free to fly and experience unnamed wonders. It was all as Lark had wished—as they had found they both wished.
"This feels right," Rosethorn repeated in a whisper to Lark's collarbone. She gave it a tender kiss. "Feels like home."
It was Lark's turn to nod. She held Rosethorn closer within her gentle but strong arms.
It was different from what she'd experienced before, not only in gender. With her first love from home—the best friend, always the best friend—everything had become guarded. Rosethorn had known she needed to leave… It had been when she was an adolescent, anyway; that was far past.
Crane had been completely different. She had fallen for him over the course of a few months and been with him for years. When he started to change and adopt the more aristocratic ways, she was heartbroken. There was no going back to that, not the way they had been, despite how her body still adored his and her mind found pleasure in their interactions. It was different: it was play and pleasure, friendship with the force of passion.
But this…this was right. The knots weren't coming undone, for once—not the right knots, anyway, the ones that held them together. With Lark at her side, she could feel all the knots tied in all the right places.
"Lost you again," Lark said softly. She chuckled and breathed into Rosethorn's hair. Her breath was warm.
"Memories," Rosethorn responded with a slight smile. When she tilted her head to get a view of Lark's face, the woman was smiling back.
Her eyes offered Rosethorn wonderful, thrilling stories and triumphant adventures through all times and places. Rosethorn's smile widened. She'd follow Lark anywhere, she was sure, and had an exhilarating inclination that the reverse was true as well. Hand in hand, leading together and going places they'd never imagined—or more realistically to where Lark had been and painted pictures against the canvas of Rosethorn's thirsty mind. The thought stirred a youthful, adventurous feeling in her.
For a brief moment Rosethorn wondered when Crane would find this. She wished with all her heart that he would; she wished to see him this happy, this at home, this completely comfortable with himself and another being. Someone who could get him out of that damned glass castle of his.
Rosethorn grinned. Crane would find it someday, she was sure. Behind the sarcastic wit and self-imposed solitude he was an extraordinary human being; it was just hard to find sometimes. He would find someone who could see it more often than not.
She wondered how some ridiculous, addle-brained dimwits could ever believe this sort of love could be wrong, immoral, worthy of going straight to deep, dark pits of doom and despair—a supernatural hell. A little sarcastic curve took to her lips.
"What are you grinning about now?" Lark inquired as she saw the smile transform.
Rosethorn relayed her thoughts. Upon completion, Lark laughed out loud. The sound rang loud and clear, straight from within and right out into the world, unapologetic and unrepentant. Rosethorn loved the sound of it.
"I've lived and loved this way my whole life," Lark announced. She gave an easy shrug and grinned a little rebelliously. "This pit—it's supposed to hold the passions of all us perverts?" she joked. Her grin was lopsided.
Rosethorn chuckled and prodded the woman in the side. "That would have to be one wide pit. I'm sure it defeats the point, too, sending us all down there to mingle."
Lark's eyes took on a hunger Rosethorn knew so well, one her own were no doubt reflecting. Lark leaned back and gazed upon her companion with a fervor that Rosethorn felt all over her body. She pushed Lark down until she was flat on the grass and kissed her softly on one high cheekbone, then the other. Rosethorn hovered over the woman's lips and played at bucking her hips, pretending to perform the private acts of the bedroom right there on the soil.
They both laughed quietly as Rosethorn began to toy with Lark's glossy curls. It was uncharacteristic for her to be so silly, and yet her infatuation with Lark seemed to naturally draw it out of her. Rosethorn could scarcely believe she had mocked such a connection through her lifetime or feared that their intense bond would irrevocably change the person she was.
Well. It wasn't as if she would let anyone else take a gander at this hidden self Lark brought out of her. Then she'd have to string them all up with a thorny vine and make them watch Water Dedicates sew bandages until they forgot what they'd seen. Who had time for that?
When Lark at last lost herself to her natural appetites and pulled Rosethorn into the cottage, the woman was delighted: half because she got to express her gratitude in the most pleasing of fashions and half because, historically, she had always been the one to fall to her appetites first. It seemed she had finally found someone with a libido that matched hers—and that was saying something.
It would be a wide pit indeed to hold their passions, and they were diving deep together, following each other down.