A/N: I just can't help myself. I think my Quil/Claire Twilight fic (yes, I'm slightly embarrassed) needs more chapters, as does my Draco/Hermione, as does my Lily/James, as does my His Dark Materials. Instead, I'm of twiddling my thumbs reading Tangled fanfic and The Hunger Games stuff and writing about this epic movie. Also, Rock of Ages was incred. just saying. Not really the kind of thing I would fanfic about, but maybe... I'm still stewing on some Iron Man and Hulk (Edward Norton version, of course) stuff but that could take forever to come out. Hope you guys like this, it was a quick write and should be a quick read. Just for fun, because that movie needed a hell of a lot more romance.
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She burns for him.
Late at night she lies awake, and memories of his hands caress her skin, her arms, their heat burning through the thin fabric of her nightdress.
Again and again she relives their kiss, the chaste brush of his lips on hers. She feels the roughness of his beard and the smooth softness of his lips, promising more, much more. She tortures herself, tossing and turning until she is no longer certain what is a dream, what is real, what her memory holds.
Certain memories seem almost inaccessible—the time after queen died, when he held her close and took her somewhere. Since she has been crowned time has begun to blur, the moments when she encounters his face standing out with sharp clarity, contrasting those in which she merely yearns for him.
She expected him to try to leave. And every day he remains is agonizing, as she hopes and despairs at the thought of seeing him next.
For how can a Queen love a Huntsman, even one so noble as to rescue her?
She knows his story, she knows his past. He had a love, and how realistic is it for him to have a second one?
But sometimes he smiles at her, a strange, knowing penetrating smile. And she thinks that her eyes mirror his own, in an understanding she is still trying to grasp.
"Your Majesty," the herald announces. "The Huntsman."
He walks the length of the hall and it seems to take forever. She lives and dies a thousand times in the space of those heartbeats, her breath pounding against her lungs like her pulse against her skull.
He bows. "Milady." His tone is deep and warm, the thick accent a familiar touch. She feels his hands against her skin, thumb tracing her collarbone and lingering on the pulse in the hollow of her throat.
She swallows. "Huntsman," she murmurs, inclining her head. In her mind's eye she touches his hair, feeling her fingers run through the golden strands, untangling, soothing, caressing.
She burns for him.
She nods at the herald, who departs, and they are alone in the hollowly echoing chamber, Snow White and her Hunstman. He is before her, feet apart, arms by his sides. At ease. She sits uncomfortably on her throne, wishing she could run to him as she has in the past.
The ceilings are so high she feels as though she will be swallowed up.
"Snow," he says, and it comes out as a sigh. The familiar contraction of her body, every muscle tightening, hanging on his word, comes as a shock. She knows that this tone, this speech, is what she has been dreading. "This is not my life."
She lets out a breath, and feels her shoulders collapse, just the tiniest bit. "It's not mine, either," she whispers.
"I can't do this," he says, but she is suddenly no longer sure what he is referring to. Her eyes shoot up.
He is looking at her, and sees her eyes widen in shock. He seems to realize his mistake—a slip of the tongue, revealing too much, but it is too late to swallow the words. Too late to take them back, and they know each other too well for frivolities, for excuses, for justifications about what exactly is meant by this.
It's almost laughable, the tension that suddenly hangs between them, and she finds herself wishing the herald would return. Perhaps his presence would staunch the flow of thoughts, images, ideas, words. The consumptive nature of the Huntsman's presence. He consumes her, he is the flame to her kindling, and by god, she burns for him.
And suddenly everything is simple.
She is brave, admittedly brave, a proven-in-action type of brave. She has never shied away from doing what is necessary, never hesitated or gasped or fainted. She has fought wars and men, killed and stabbed with the best of them, saved children from fire. She squares her shoulders.
No words are necessary as she steps down from her throne, too ostentatious for her tastes, anyways. He watches her, the movements of her feet slow and almost stately, now. She is clad in a beautiful, ornate gown, a rich crimson with gold embroidery. But her headdress lies somewhere, forgotten, and her black hair is tumbled around her face in disarray, probably mussed to the despair of her hairdressers when she absentmindedly pulled off her crown. The ends closest to her, her notes, look distinctly chewed-on, and he suppresses a smile.
The smile sneaks out when he notices that, protruding from her fashionable, elegant dress are a worn pair of boots, soft and patched and silent, as she glides towards him.
He cannot do this. So she changes things.
They are almost nose-to-nose before he realizes her exact intentions, and then it is too late for words as her lips take him by surprise.
They softly brush his own and it is their warmth that most surprises him, as, he remembers much later, the first time they kissed she was technically dead, so she was probably a little chilly.
It's chaste at first, just as the other, but as she remains in front of him his hands betray him, running up to grasp her waist, pulling her more firmly against him as he deepens the kiss. He can almost feel the temperature between them rising as his breath speeds up to match the pace of hers, and when he finally pulls away they're both breathing hard.
"You're the Queen," he reminds her, and it is distinctly unhelpful.
"I'm aware," she says drily, head still spinning, stepping back so she can try to regain her senses. He is intoxicating.
"I enjoyed that." He pauses, looks at her, his eyes searching her face. "I—"
"I don't want you to leave," she gasps out in a rush, the words burning her mouth and throat. She feels tears building behind her eyes, panic clouding her brain. "Please." The word hurts, and she hurts too. The pain is immediate and immense, and she is crushed beneath the unexpected weight.
And then he is there, he can resist no longer, and so he wraps his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. "Then I won't," he murmurs, and she can feel the vibrations of his voice where her head as pressed to his chest. Thankfully he is not wearing armor today, and the position is quite comfortable.
He sinks to the floor as she continues to tremble, leaning his back against a pillar and running a hand through her hair. "I won't," he repeats, and she burrows against him, suddenly feeling small, and tired, and very much like the child that she was, overburdened by the responsibilities of running a country.
"What you said," she takes a deep breath, "that night." His hand pauses in its stroking, and she feels him stiffen. Neither of them has broached the subject of that night yet, the night when he kissed her and everything changed. Up until now it has been taboo, and untouchable subject, a secret pact between them both, where he asked her no questions and she offered no answers.
She had returned to him, for him, with him, and that was all that had really mattered.
Until now, until a second kiss, and a second night, and a second shift of everything they knew.
"Did you mean it?" She whispers.
He lets the words hang between them for a moment, but every second he leaves it unanswered is like a blade in his stomach, a twisting, wrenching, tearing feeling in his gut, and so he reluctantly exposes himself. It is the last thing a hunter will ever do, surrender, and to be vulnerable is to be dead. And he is not just a hunter he is The Huntsman, and so his Snow White asks a great deal.
But she knows all this. She has hunted with him before, and knows how it feels as the lines begin to blur between hunter and hunted.
"Yes," he replies. She turns her face up towards him, eyes searching. They are together, bodies compacted in a hug, but they are so far apart, the distance stretching into enormity, infinity, as he gazes into her deep brown eyes that are ages and eons away.
With the confession comes no sense of relief, but a tightening, an ache that penetrates deeper than a mere belly wound. It is a poison, spreading through him, and if she doesn't say something soon, he will die, or explode, or maybe both.
"I think I love you."
His entire body relaxes so quickly it's almost explosive. She can feel every point of their contact, his tight stomach muscles under her head, his thighs tightening and then relaxing under hers where she has wrapped her legs around him.
She imagines him brushing his hand from her earlobe to her cheek, lips following in its wake, cool fire followed by hot.
She burns for him.
"I—When the Queen wanted my heart. I told her she couldn't have it—" She falters, and he pulls her more tightly to him, forgetting that they are sitting on the stone floor of her reception hall, in a position so ludicrously inappropriate for a Queen that the only thing more shocking she could do would be to suck the youth out of young girls and demand the heart of certain beautiful ones.
"Damn straight she couldn't have it," he growls, and she hiccups a little.
"No, let me finish," she mumbles, pushing him away slightly. "I told her she couldn't have it, because, because," he fights a glare at the thought that there is only one reason the Queen couldn't have her heart, whereas even if he hadn't been in love with her he was sure he could summon a multitude, "well, I told her that because I think you've already got it."
He stares at her, unblinking, and then throws back his head and laughs, a deep, rich, throaty, inherently masculine laugh, and she shivers deliciously. She smiles, a little, but mostly she is memorizing how the motion highlights his muscular neck, the line of his jaw, the crinkle around his eyes.
He doesn't laugh enough, and she basks in the glorious sound. He doesn't realize what he does to her: how could he? But she can almost feel his breath on her lips, his eyes digging in to her own as his fingers trace her hips, learning her outline.
And then he shifts, shifts so that she is straddling him, and all other thoughts are flung bodily from her mind. They are moving again and her world is tilting, as she realizes belatedly that her legs are wrapped around his waist and he has lowered her so that her back is against the floor and he is on top of her; her skirts are hiked up far enough to show the end of her boots, near the knee.
Her face is blazing, the pale skin must be lighting up like a beacon, and every part of her body trembles in readiness. His lips touch her cheekbone, just below his eye, and they feel like water to a dying man, both quenching and igniting the blaze as he traces the path she has traced so many times in her mind's eye.
When he reaches her lips he pauses, drawing back, and she hopes he won't stop, prays he won't stop. It doesn't matter where they are, or where they're going. Marriage, she imagines, will factor in at some point. As will beds, and other normal things, as events further progress. But for now, she has all she wants, her mind is consumed with him, her huntsman, Snow White and Her Huntsman, and all is right in the world. He has her heart, and she his, and it is enough.
And so when he hesitates she quivers, a chant in her brain demanding that his attentions become ceaseless. She is dying, burning, suffocating. She burns for him, and it is exquisite torture.
He pauses, and looks at her. "I burn for you," he whispers, and his lips slam down.
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