This was an interesting little request from May 30, 2017: one of the naughty commissions that was finished after Eldarya Sin Week May 2017.

The prompt: Ezarel and the Guardian 'destroy each other' during their first night. A later conference with the reader who sent me this clarified that by 'destroy', she really meant 'they roast each other nonstop', but I was feeling just a little literal at the time I received the request.

This is my humble take on how you can combust a fling in the same night.

Antipathy

It wasn't until the first hydrangea bloom whacked him in the chin, the night in front of him scattering in a sudden burst of powder blue petals, that Ezarel started to suspect they were heading in the wrong direction from HQ. And that the Guardian, pulling him through the bushes with a vice grip on his tunic, either didn't know or didn't exactly care. He was in favor of the last theory, judging from the way she was shoving the next towering flower stalk out of her path. The shivering, finger-thick stem was curling at an angle that threatened another floral grenade right where his eyes were going to be in half a second.

Ezarel ducked, as best as he could, and the floral missile went streaking across the top of his head, petals fluttering in its wake. The Guardian—her head bobbing just under his chin- didn't so much as pause her rampage through the bushes.

"Two questions," he called out conversationally, still stooped. Though with the way the mead was filling his eardrums with a low, nonstop drumroll, he had to raise his voice a little louder than usual. Just to be sure. "One. Did you get us lost again? And two. How in the Oracle's Ass did that happen while we're still in the gardens?"

A rich laugh broke out from somewhere in the dark shrubbery ahead, festooned with engorged, cantaloupe-sized domes of lacy blue flowers. "Well I've got two answers for you. One: you chose to follow me, genius. And two: we're not lost. This place is just a lot closer than the barracks and a little more comfortable than the gazebo floor. Sex has been well-practiced in nature before the concept of the bed ever caught on."

He stopped dead on the Pimpel's trail they were following. The Guardian's arm attached to his tunic suddenly stretched, then recoiled like a spring as the small woman was jerked back by his sudden stillness, the leaves around them rustling.

"You have got to be joking!" Ezarel spat out, even as a pit of ice opened in his stomach through the lambent burn of the honey liquor. "Are you trying to put on a free show for everyone?"

The Guardian just turned and arched her eyebrows at him. "For anyone else who'll brave this corner of the gardens at this hour. But what are the chances of that?" Her free hand swatted another hydrangea bloom overhead, bobbing it stiffly in the direction of Ezarel's tight-lipped frown. Then her voice softened into cream. "But… if we're going a little too fast and loose for my little virginal lord, just say the word, and I'll desist. I'll take you back to HQ. Kiss you goodnight at the door of your little room high up in the tower. And you can finally finish that letter to your mother. With a little update on how you were almost assaulted tonight by a filthy human while strolling through the gardens, and that you want to go home."

Like fire sprouting after smoke, Ezarel's ears responded by glowing three shades pinker in the sliver of moonlight that found them. "Frankly, it's unsanitary," he heard his voice shoot back. "But then I just remembered that your people evolved in caves and cow-pat huts. So you'll feel right at home in the dirt. I'm indulging you, in fact."

His friend chuckled from the depths of her throat. "Thank you! I'll try not to soil your tender, virgin elf flesh too much. Not permanently, at least."

He really hated her now for the images she was opening up in his mind's eye. But he let her pull him along through the copse of festive-looking bushes, ducking the whiplash flowers she sent springing his way, the sudden cold shock opening a brief window of lucidity in his brain.

They were both unbelievably drunk tonight, and guaranteed to regret what they were about to do tomorrow morning. But years of trading bad jokes, determined pranks, and something more insidious that lurked warm and unspoken under their skin whenever they jostled each other for elbow-space in the lab, had reached a flashpoint tonight after the Guardian's break-up with Nevra.

Not even Ezarel—famously described as having all the tenderness of a cactus—believed her barrage of jokes on 'finally being free of the bloodsucker'. So he invited her for drinks, breaking out his carefully-guarded bottle of elderberry mead and shifting their routine night-out at the Pavilion (i.e. their routine 'ceasefire' every weekend) two days ahead of schedule.

Then about five glasses in, the inevitable occurred: he tried to cheer her up by joking about her poor choice in paramours.

He honestly wasn't trying to offend her. In fact, he was hoping to entertain her by directing their fecund sarcasm at a common target: Nevra. Maybe take shots on who could make the worse vampire joke. But the Guardian's eyes had flashed like drill-bits in spin, and she retaliated with some bracing remarks on his 'legendary specialty in doing his own hand'. Which catalyzed Ezarel's elaborate theories on how, in bed, she was probably 'the best thing after garlic in turning-off a vampire'. And then the gloves came off.

The next thing he knew was her thighs slipping over his, then opening as she straddled him on the gazebo bench: her full weight braced upon his member, the teasing warmth of her sex rubbed flush against his, breasts pressed tight and insolent against the plane of his chest. Her fists yanked the collar of his tunic high to his chin, forcing him to look into the cinder-hot gleam of her eyes as she asked, her voice simmering down into the dark, sweet amber of midsummer's honey: "You want to find out for yourself, little boy?"

The immediate thirty seconds after they stopped arguing were a blur. But Ezarel's still-smarting tailbone had a vague memory of being rudely deposed from the bench and pressed against the mud-scraped floorboards of the gazebo, the Guardian grinding hard along his stiffening groin, her knuckles curled under his collar and kneading red divets into his chest. This might have been after she decided that if he wouldn't let her sit in his lap peacefully, without his fingers drilling into her pressure points from breast to inner thigh, then neither of them was going to sit. Cause and effect tended to blur together after a few glasses of mead.

And now here he was, stumbling after her through the riot of hydrangea bushes at night: horny, angry, and deeper down, feeling a lot like a little Crylasm en route to the butcher's block. Still at a loss for rational explanations at why he was doing this when a clearing gaped suddenly before them in the dark, and they nearly fell in one-after-another like dominoes.

Through the nasty lurch of vertigo, Ezarel's eyes adjusted to the shallow gloom and recognized the ancient cypress ahead, with its sprawl of branches choked by the century-old wisteria vine that bloomed in a lurid roof of all shades of moon-washed lavender and dusk violet. Moonlight spotted the ground, slipping through the dripping vines and the matrix of wooden scaffolds that propped up the sinking arms of the tree.

Powder blue petals were tumbling off the Guardian's hair as she reeled on her toes one last time. Saved from falling face-down into the dirt by Ezarel's counterweight, and her fist still locked like grim death around the front of his tunic. There was no way he could iron it back to its former shape after this.

His mouth opened again, judgment still bobbing adrift and ignored somewhere in the sea of honey-liquor-hopefulness. "Wow- look at that flawless grace…! And here I was wondering how far Nevra's standards have dropped this year."

The deepening curl of her fist by his neck spoke of an incoming knee to his tender parts. But instead, her smile flashed like a knife through the dappled dark of the wisteria blooms, and she yanked him forward by the collar to catch his mouth in hers. Her tongue thrust fearless past his lips, past his splutter, and lashed his tongue into submission, the taste of her filling his senses, the edges of her mouth bruising his with the vengeance of her kiss. A sting of teeth nipped his bottom lip when she drew away, in a move that—a flash of precognition told him—was so characteristically Nevra that a cold shiver coursed down his back, warring with the warm throb of desire.

"Oh, the Prince of the Night's standards have hit new lows all right," the Guardian declared airily. "I mean, look who I'm about to screw now. The best thing I'll take away from tonight is knowing how blue you are down there."

Ezarel barely had time to flush to the far edges of his scalp when her hands started on his multi-layered belt, tearing away the first violet cord knotted over the leather straps. At feeling her paw at him down there, another shot of ice filled his back from spinal cord to the curves of his ribs. He winced and promptly caught her wrists, dexterity loaned back to him by a lifetime's worth of aristocratic outrage.

The Guardian blinked at his fingers manacling her, and then laughed again. "If that isn't a chastity belt, I don't know what it is." And then her eyes widened in the violet-laced shadows, her voice dulcet again, lips puckering. "But really… those big buckles and knots look complicated. Wouldn't little Ezzie like some help undressing himself?"

"Fuck you," he shot off immediately, throwing her hands down.

"Now isn't that your job?"

He ignored the bait. "If you try helping me, we'll be at this all night," he retorted, turning his back to her to hide the singular shade of scarlet staining his face. And the way his fingers were slipping on the buckles they knew by heart, trembling even through the liquid haze of alcohol at the prospect that lay before him in the next hour. And potentially more. Here in this open wisteria plot, of all the bloody places in El. With only a bloody patch of hydrangeas screening them from prying eyes down the bloody garden trail.

She wasn't wrong about him being untested. But he would rather cut his toes off right here than admit that she was right.

Although right now, he really hoped she was kidding about inspecting him down there. It would be too dark for her to see much anyway… Wouldn't it?

From somewhere in the shadows under the cypress, the Guardian's laugh broke the panicked circuit of his thoughts. Full, lush, and ominous. "Maybe taking all night's the idea, Ez…"

With his back turned, his eyes still glued onto the nigh-invisible buckles of his belt, he never saw the way her hands dipped. Until those pinpoint fingers flipped up the back of his coat and tunic, and dug like drill-bits into the sensitive flesh below the curve of his buttocks, squeezing him there. Ezarel yelped, his back arching at her touch, but those merciless fingers dove lower still: into the backs of his knees, the insides of his thighs. Dissolving knees and ankles, and bringing his long legs buckling joint-by-joint to the ground once again. Her free arm snaked around his neck, tightening as her warm weight at his back dragged him past the angle of no return.

Feeling sorry for her this afternoon was a capital mistake, clearly. Ezarel grimaced and twisted sharply at the last instant, until he felt the hard turf kiss his side: landing with a bone-shaking thud that rattled both their jaws and drove a surprised squeal from her throat, then a late, breathless 'hah!' from him. Dark spots were still careening through his vision as her arm around his neck loosened. And self-preservation drove him to flip onto her fast, pinning her full-length onto the ground under his weight and inside the tight span of his elbows and knees, those fiendish hands trapped under his chest.

Her body twisted helpless beneath him, thighs scissored through his, hips and breasts rolling to free herself as her muffled voice by his neck cursed him for his oafish weight. And half to his horror, he felt himself stiffening with want again right there.

She couldn't help but feel it too. The Guardian suddenly stilled under him, then tipped her head back against the dirt and laughed, full and lusty. "Well, well! The little virgin boy is coming alive to the task?" One hand wriggled out from under his chest and dove into his hair, raking out his ponytail none-too-gently and pulling another wince from him.

"You should be asking me to go gentle on you," Ezarel gasped through gritted teeth, face and neck on fire, his shuddering breath gusting over her cheekbones as his elbows shifted to try to trap her arms again, to pin her even more securely beneath him. The swell of his arousal pressed into the valley between her thighs, and his hips were already rolling in short, agonized thrusts against her, grinding her against the packed dirt.

She spared him just one chuckle and reached up, her hands escaping again to pull his face close, snagging his sore bottom lip with her teeth and catching him in another rough kiss. Her eyes on his were wide and knowing, darker still than her whisper as she replied, "Poor you. Because I don't want 'gentle' tonight."

So it seemed his fate was sealed.

Her hands released him. Ezarel sucked in a sharp breath through his nose and rose to his knees in the V of her spread thighs, keeping one hand on the narrow plane between her breasts to pin her down. His free fingers- warmed now from their tussle in the dirt, from the shape of her- skipped quickly, one-handed, over the final buckle of his belt. The edges of his mind narrowed to this one task to snuff out all the unspeakable possibilities of what came next.

Still, she refused to make it easy. Those hands leapt through the dark and yanked the loosed strap of his belt from around his waist. Pulling it free as it whisked once, twice, three times from above his hips, and then tossing it past her head in a long, crazy arc. A dull jingle and thump sounded somewhere amidst the gnarled roots of the cypress; her laugh rang with victory.

And Ezarel's instincts brought his hands forward to pinch her hard around the buds of her breasts.

The Guardian gasped, thighs snapping tight around his waist, her body jack-knifing and curling convulsively forward into him, shivering lips just shy of kissing his collarbone.

"Well, well… It seems like I'm not the only one getting excited tonight," he grinned in the dark, warmth leaping between his legs, his thumbs pressing eagerly into her nipples through her shirt and the flimsy barricade of her brassiere, kneading them in tight circles.

"Fuck you, too," she breathed, her voice tight with pain and want, shoulders and spine spasming from the electric jolt of each mischievous circle of his fingers. But she didn't resist as he pushed her back onto the ground. Her thighs were still locked around his waist as he snatched her shirt up, shoved her brassiere high to her collarbone to free her breasts, nipples flushed dark and swollen from where he had pinched her. Pulse throbbing thick in his throat, Ezarel bent low to that hallowed skin, hungrily kissing the velvet tip of one nipple that stiffened under his lips, drawing a tight, pleased mewl from the back of the Guardian's throat. Her fingers raked through his hair once again to hold him there. When his mouth lifted, his eyes were close enough to see the flushed bud pucker and shiver from the hot gust of his breath. And a sudden spark of mischief bade him to purse his lips and blow soft and light against her nipple, tickling it.

The Guardian's breath hitched again, her body curling tighter still around him, knees cocked all the way up to his shoulders before laughter shook her, her breasts bouncing. Ezarel grinned from the valley of her chest, then blew again over the second nipple—for symmetry's sake— teasing and trembling it anew, before his hands suddenly, greedily cupped the mounds of her breasts. A groan caught in his throat as he savored their softness, the smoothness of her warm, dewy skin, kneading her breasts in circles outside to in, with the tiny, taut buds of her nipples pinched between two fingers each and rubbed teasingly with every pulse-quick flutter of his digits.

And once again, her restless hands joined his: folding over them, directing them to squeeze into the hidden pressure points around the swells of her breasts, to caress the outer curves, to press his knuckles into her nipples once again and circle them. Ezarel followed her direction, until her laughter dissolved and smoothed into a low, liquid moan, her hips shuddering into his, her back arching from the ground to thrust herself deeper still into his grasp with every teasing stroke, every possessive swivel of his hands below hers, adoring the skin of her breasts.

Engrossed, he never noticed the way her boots slyly kicked up the flaps of his coat and tunic, and descended on the waistband of his pants. Not until he felt the sharp twin digs into his sides. And the raw scrape of his skin from waist to hips to further below as her boots roughly shoved his pants down at alarming speed.

There were some facts about women that never surfaced until it was too late: like how nimble their feet were. Ezarel jolted back upright to his knees, swore, and caught the back hem of his pants just as it started to whisper over that perilous gap below his tailbone. And without missing a beat, the Guardian's freed hands reached up lightning-quick to snap open the clasps at the front of his pants, pulling it all down with a brisk jerk and exposing his sex to the night air.

Correction: there were many, many devious tricks a woman knew that never revealed themselves until a man was down.

Ezarel froze immediately, fingers still clenched improbably on the back of his pants, his face lit like a torch as her warm hands wrapped around his shaft, the treacherous thing already stiff with want at her touch. She giggled gleefully, measured him in the cup of her palms. "Huh…! That's two theories laid to rest." Her eyes flicked up, winked at him. "You do know how to use what you have?"

"That's for you to find out, harlot," Ezarel ground out between the walls of his teeth, through a throat locked tight with mortification. A bead of sweat trickled down the nape of his neck. "Now you'll let go this instant."

Not a flinch in those eyes. "How strange. Are you telling me you're not enjoying this, Ez?" Her fingers swept down to brush him feather-light up and down the underside of his shaft, and then spiraled. Within moments, his member rose to full attention. A storm of sparks surged up from the crux of his thighs through his navel, bringing Ezarel down again with a pitched moan, his elbows hitting the dirt on either side of her, fists clenched shut, his long body arched and trembling helpless overs hers as she continued stroking his sex, their faces hidden under the wash of his long hair. When those merciless hands squeezed hard around the base of his shaft, one sly finger pressing into the perilous nerve at the back of his balls, he gasped into her hair like a struck taper, his hips jerking convulsively, thighs clenched and quivering as the first hints of precum warmed the head of his member.

Her laughter filled his chest and the night around him, starting from deep in her belly and petering off in a girlish lilt, as she slicked the precum down and around his shaft and pumped him mercilessly, lips fusing into the lean angle of his jaw, burning the skin there with the print of her mouth. Through the heat pounding through his ears, in the dangerous swell of his member and every wire-taut muscle of his legs as his hips jerked under the puppeteer pull of her hands, Ezarel started to fear that she was going to make him come right there. And that in the breathless aftermath, he would have to grasp again for the nerve to properly enter her. Or was that something else she wanted him to endure tonight?

The world around him was already narrowing into a white-hot pinpoint when Ezarel forced one elbow to unbend, the other to sink, and with a sudden explosive jerk, rolled off the Guardian. Her surprised hands slipped from around his member, and the earth jarred his side again, then his back. And he lay there: breathless and electrified, limbs spreadeagled and sweat-slicked hair cast across the carpet of dried wisteria petals, summoning wintry thoughts as he stared up at the surreal shadow play of dripping vines and age-blackened beams, reeling from his narrow escape. The night air kissed cool his throbbing flesh, still erect from the ghost-touch of her hands, the moonlight slipping through the matrix of wooden beams and violet-washed vine to freckle the open skin of his middle with motes of paler light.

From the still-formless shadows on the edge of his vision, there was a flurry of movement. The soft, resigned thump of clothes hitting the dirt. And suddenly the Guardian was mounting him again, her hands bracing his arms open, eyes alight with unapologetic desire. The bare skin of her thighs and buttocks glided over his legs, before the damp, steaming warmth of her sex kissed one thigh, searing through his trousers, grinding insistently against him with a sinful speed that made his knees, ankles, toes clench. One hand reached down to pin him by the breastbone; the other closed possessively around his member again, pumping it to painful fullness, snatching a short, desperate groan from his throat.

"You don't have to worry, Ez," she whispered, her eyes locked on his. "For all those jokes you made, you're actually in very good hands tonight. I'm indulging you."

And with that, her thighs shifted, opened, and she pushed herself over the tall swell of his member with a taut cry, the ferocious warmth of her womanhood closing tight around him, drawing him inside her with such suddenness that Ezarel's eyes snapped wide open, his back convulsing into an arch that pushed them both from the earth as he cried out with her.

The living roof above resolved into definite shapes again as she angled herself around him, eyes closed, hips and thighs flexing in and out of the slivers of moonlight that found them, moving him around the pulsing warmth of her depths in a rolling dance that drove him wild as he watched. Intentionally or otherwise, it just didn't matter anymore. Then a smile flicked across her face as she found that elusive spot inside herself, and without warning, she rose, knees digging into the dirt, the velvety folds of her womanhood sliding up around him, the slick, flushed skin of his member slipping out of her inch by perilous inch before his eyes. Ezarel winced in panic, grasped her hips to keep her from leaving, until she suddenly drove back down onto him, her full weight colliding into his pelvis with a dull smack, the walls of her sex spasming once as she slid down the length of his member, drawing him deep inside her core in a bright, dizzying rush of sensation that made the back of his head hit the dirt again, eyes snapping shut, a noise that was half-groan, half strangled shout erupting from his lips.

He didn't have to see her to know she was smirking. And he answered, eyes still shut, with a sharp upward thrust of his hips that buried his hard cock still deeper inside her, jerking her above him, catching her breath and sending an electric shiver coursing down the arch of her neck and spine, down to her thighs pinching his waist.

"Getting braver, I see?" the Guardian gasped from above him as his eyes fluttered open. Her gaze was alight, hips rolling faster, grinding him hard into the earth and pulling his member in and out of her depths in short, rapid jerks. Her fingernails bit sharp through his tunic, pinching the hard buds of his nipples in twin pinpricks of pain that bloomed on his chest. "Let's see if you can keep that up, virgin boy."

"Trust me: I'm not like any of the men you're used to," he shot back, fingers digging into her hips, still fighting for breath as he speared her from below in each sliver of a moment that her pace dropped, the rhythm of his hips warring with hers.

She was laughing still—in derision, challenge, acknowledgment, or thrill, he couldn't tell any longer—as she rode him hard and fierce in the dappled shadows, hands braced on his chest, her hips snapping like a piston, grinding his tensed body up and down along the summer-warmed earth under the eaves of the century-old wisteria. The maddening smell of her- twining with the tart of tangerine and baked honey- seared permanently into his nose as she plunged his sex fast into and out of the mouth of her womanhood. And with every sharp thrust from him that pierced through her rhythm, her body and voice seized up in the dark in a rictus of electric pleasure, her neck arching back, her eyes lost. Until her hands pushed down onto his chest and those dangerous hips rose and fell, pounding her full weight back down onto his hips, sinking his member sudden and deep through the flexing folds of her womanhood until his breathless laugh was broken into a moan caught wordless behind his lips, the muscles of his neck seizing, jaw clamping tight so he wouldn't call out her name.

When a low, lush strain entered her voice, the dark perfumed with the pale musk of her sweat, one hand suddenly slipped from his chest, grazing down his navel to the spot where they were joined, to roll and tease those wet folds at the apex of her womanhood. And the moment her weight shifted above him, that low groan stretching, reverberating like plucked viol string through the dark between them, instinct turned to lust, and to vengeance. Ezarel, the heat building in his head like a summer storm, drew his shoulders up, then jerked himself hard backwards onto the ground. Bucking into her with a single explosive thrust that rolled through his body from neck to sternum, ramming into that mysterious spot inside her and loosing a high, glass-sharp pitch to her cry as her breasts and shoulders shook like broken water and the walls of her sex flexed tight around him. Climax came suddenly upon her; a bright, shivering, incandescent tremor that passed through her and into him with every shuddering, pulse-quick clench of her hot sex around his, pulling him past that final threshold into her depths. Possessing his hips and snapping them hard, fast, graceless up into the splay of her thighs as her trembling body finally fell flush against his, his cock driving into her slicked depths in frantic, furious thrusts as that tremor shook him, filled him, spasmed his back, drowning out the sounds, smells, shapes of the night around him until there was only the weightless black that split and fractured into brilliant shards of nothingness.

Slowly, piece-by-piece, the world settled back around Ezarel. First the damp musk of her hair tangled with his. Then the stillness of the earth under his back that ached with low fire. Then the shuddering of her heart across from his, beating against his ribs through the press of her bare breasts as their harried breaths steamed the air. And beneath it all, the furnace warmth of her core, brimming with his seed; a place that— he realized with strange, bemused clarity, like a thousand-maana idea in a dream—he couldn't imagine leaving now that he knew it.

Her hands were still clinging onto his shoulders, lips printing lazy kisses up the span of his neck, tasting his sweat from skin lit alive with flush. "Not bad for a virgin," she drawled from under his ear. "Or is it ex-virgin now? I'll have to start coming up with new insults for you from here on."

"That's what I do: take all the hot air out of people," Ezarel quipped, automatically. He felt the scowl more than he saw it, and he pressed a feather-light kiss onto the top of her hair, shrugging his shoulders in that universal gesture of 'come on'. "But… your truce is accepted."

The Guardian just curled against him, hips flexing as she drew herself away, his member slipping out of her to a little noise of protest from him. But she ignored him, rolling onto the ground alongside him and tapping the very tip of his nose with one finger. "Here's a tip for the future: remember to not get too cocky. Women grow bored easily. They like to see constant improvement from their partners, not just a one-night extravaganza."

He was grinning as his arm curled around her shoulder again, two fingers flicking back a stray strand of hair from her forehead. "Well since you asked… I can think of one or two nasty things we can try with a honey drizzler. Indoors this time, at my place. Tomorrow night?" When she didn't so much as raise an eyebrow at him, but only met his eye flatly, his smile evaporated. "…Or we can keep it relatively clean. That works for me too."

For several long heartbeats, her expression remained perfectly still. And then the corners of her eyes sagged, in a way that opened a new door at the bottom of his stomach, the beads of sweat standing along his neck. "…I'm sure there are one or two girls who'll enjoy that."

Sometimes, there were no good comebacks to be had. Ezarel withdrew his arm from around her shoulder.

But the Guardian lingered on the grass next to him. Her eyes flickered down once, the laughing, defiant light he had seen all night winking out without a trace. "Thanks for the drinks tonight. And… well, everything else that came with it." Those eyes rose, flinched into a faint smile in his direction. "You can forget about every other thing I said tonight. You were great."

"You're welcome," he intoned flatly. And he peeled himself off the grass before he could catch her expression.

For him, it was only a matter of collecting the different layers of his belt, smoothing out his tunic and coat into a more or less dignified rumple, and dragging his fingers through the dirt and the dead flowers in vain for his long-vanished hair-tie, until the Guardian lent him a strip of cotton from her sleeve. For her, it was simpler still: just a matter of tracking down her pants again, and rolling her damp underwear into a tiny wad, tucked matter-of-factly into her back pocket.

All in all, there was no logical reason why he had to stay for longer: lingering under the lolling tongues of wisteria that barely masked the musk of their sweat, mingled together on his clothes and along the turf. But her silence weighed heavy on the air. And despite all that was said tonight, from beginning to end, Ezarel found himself turning to her instead of disappearing through that narrow crevice in the hydrangea bushes like a sane man.

"If you want me to walk you back to the barracks, I could."

That look he caught, in the split-instant before the corners of her lips and eyebrows rose to assume that signature, saucy smile, told him all that he needed to know.

"Thanks, Ez. But I think I'll stay out here for a bit longer tonight. Don't want to waste the night air. Or stink up the foyer with my 'drunk human' reek. Heard it's pretty offensive for a lot of faeries."

"Some of us got used to it," he answered, quietly. "Take care of yourself."

And he turned away to slip back through the bushes alone, pushing aside the blue, spring-loaded flowers with hands that felt years older, forging on until there was only the rustling of his passage closing in around him.

FIN

Disclaimers:

- Ezarel definitely isn't a virgin, but this one-shot was written before the release of Episode 16 (when the fandom was still cracking jokes about his reluctant purity). So let's call this one-shot an alternate scenario before he got involved with Ewelein... and first lost his innocence to a Guardian who gave him a few early lessons on how to guard his heart during sex.

- There are no hydrangea or wisteria plots in HQ's gardens (that we know of, at least). But the symbolism of those two ornamental flowers is too good to pass up, especially given Ezarel's (hazardous) relationship with this Guardian. To find out more, check out the little treatise on flower symbolism on my blog, under the 'Extras' page.

If you enjoyed this piece, and even if you didn't (which I will never blame you for), feel free to leave a review. I'm always happy to hear from you readers.