When Gwen glows and becomes more than chemicals and proteins and all the little spaces between solid molecules, she reads the world around her like a book, each colour swirling out into a new word. That may not sound like much, but most humans with working eyeballs are limited by the liquid that swirls inside, and that optic nerve, that thread of flesh, she is sure could shudder and snap and never read the pulse of energy she sees spiralling off the stem of a plant like a sentence.

They will never see the looping white trail that bumbles and drops when a bee floats past, lowercase letters rambling after the emphasis of a capitalised word, nor will they see how that intermingles with the paths of the million other life forms that jostle for their space in the sky in run-on sentences that blot out the page. Even dandelion seeds spread a sort of hum through the air, the bustle of ready-to-spread green mana inside glinting like a tiny gem in a precious new font to Gwen's pupil-less eyes.

Even planes leave a trail, though it's like a klaxon in comparison and looks a little less beautiful, all blurry capitalisation in italics as the brown and grey energy they expel is made muted and bearable by the jostle of living people inside, softening the mechanical discharge that keeps it afloat. They run beneath and around everything, their pink and purple mana blaring out like the speech marks locked round a quote, trapped by the rest of the page. They're a neon sign, going look, look, see how far we've come, while the animals that sneak through invisible paths and tug on the mana of small plants as seeds catch on fur, carting them around like lit candles...their movements spread and sew themselves into a handcrafted treasure, into a nest of lights that can't quite diffuse their lantern-like haze.

She sees it all and, oh, when she pulses, when she glows, and there is nothing inside her chest, no flesh-and-blood formed heartbeat to hold her steady, she thinks that maybe this is what Grandma Verdona wanted to show her. And maybe, just maybe she could understand a little better if her mana merged with everything, if she immersed herself inside it the way she does with a good story, so that if she sees a little closer, just a little-

'Come back, baby.'

Kevin's voice catches on her, tugs at her attention even without the low blue light that illuminates from inside him. It exists just by him breathing but only she can appreciate him doubling up as a low-wattage light-bulb when she is like this, unbelievably pink and a neon club sign in her own right. And he is...well, a really good story. For he glints, doesn't glow, maybe more akin to the filament inside a light-bulb than the light-bulb itself, but still she could read paragraphs from it, from the way his mana coils and flares with worry.

He looks at her and even without the mana, by the furrow on his forehead she can tell that he is serious. It's just...a little harder to tell when she leaves her human skin behind; she can still read basic expressions, make out a smile or a frown by the simple lines the muscles help pull apart or force together, but it's harder somehow, like staring through water or trying to make the chipped pieces of a mosaic fit.

'C'mon...' Now his tone is wheedling, like he's about to coax Zed back into her basket. Gwen doesn't particularly mind though. At least he hasn't grabbed her arm like a caveman.

'Fine, fine,' she sighs and makes her feet settle back down in the grass, drawing her shoes back round her feet and wrapping them perfectly over her newly grown human skin. Eat that, Dorothy from Kansas. Honestly, though, it takes less than a second to bend light into muscle, to transform energy into flesh and remember, with the weirdest form of muscle memory that she supposes isn't really muscle memory at all, to push the sensation of fabric back against her skin.

Kevin is quiet for a moment. Then: 'you forgot your glasses,' he says abruptly, taping his finger against the bridge of his nose.

Gwen blinks. 'Oh,' she says quietly. Then she closes her eyes and concentrates, imagines wire frames springing out to form curves over her ears and to place rectangular planes of glass over her face.

'I didn't realise going full-on Anodite makes you so forgetful about a fashion accessory,' Kevin mutters.

Gwen frowns at him. 'I thought we agreed you'd stop badgering me about the little stuff. You know I haven't fully transformed in a while, and that transitional stage I take on as Lucky Girl isn't quite the same. The energy...it just feels duller.'

Kevin raises an eyebrow. 'Or it just makes you feel more human and less like a superhero.'

If Gwen were Ben she would open her mouth, then close it again, before pouting and turning away. Thankfully, she knows better to be drawn into a verbal trap.

'Don't you mean superheroine, Kevin?' she asks him archly, and it is only after she has reminded him of this, that she growls to herself and turns away.

Kevin doesn't worry about Gwen losing herself. Much. Okay, maybe in his nightmares and when they've facing some enemy that outclasses them both and yeah, there have been a few brushes at college without the comforting balance of Ben to help even out the odds when he's wondered, no worried, that Gwen's Lucky Girl costume will slip and fall and her mask will flutter away to be lost to a sudden surge of energy, and then only the Anodite will be left behind. It haunts him, a little.

Because he knows how quickly just a little jolt of energy can change things.

And Gwen has got more than a little inside her, running like a live-wire under her skin. If she were a car, she would be turbo-charged, one of those race-cars that go from zero to fifty in under a second, all prim and proper with their aerodynamic shape. But she's not a car and Kevin values his remaining sanity too much to actually tell her about any internal metaphors he's got going on in his head.

And it's not enough to make him worry when they kiss or when they're tongues slip and slide against each other, or even when his hand tucks in underneath her shirt. Because they've done that and more. And there's something very engaging about that hum, that crackle of mana that crawls beneath her skin like the rumble of life inside an engine. Because something jump-starts inside him at the feel, at the tingle of a touch, with the violent crash and splash of a hunger that bounces against the inner coils of his brain and spills out into his hands. It makes him want to pull her into him, to bunch up all her girl parts against every part of him that isn't well, a girl part, and focus on the purely physical. There's nothing sexy about trying to eat your girlfriend's energy, after all. And boy, doesn't he wish that that was the only energy frizzle between them. He doesn't much like feeling like a black hole.

So he copes by getting handsy when they're both into it. Well, usually. Right now, Gwen is pouting.

'C'mon,' he says, 'I think Merlin's scrolls can cope without you fondling them every two seconds.'

Gwen's back stiffens at the emphasis he gives the word 'fondling' (score! He thinks jubilantly) but her spine remains locked in an arch, hunched over the desk she's currently sitting at.

'They're Morgan le Fay's notes, not Merlin's,' she mutters. 'I need to get this done; Kai sounded kinda urgent when she asked me to see if there was any truth to the idea that Morgan had a hand in helping craft Excalibur. She may have thrown a temper tantrum about the sheath and thrown that away, but her autobiography here seems to indicate that she was actually fond of Arthur and Merlin at one time so it's certainly possible...' Gwen trails off, wrinkling her nose at whatever new sentence she's attempting to struggle through. 'Aaaand she's just written out a spell for 'child discipline' involving turning a kid into a fox and then making him hallucinate the, and I quote, 'ravenous baying of bloodthirsty hounds between the paling of the afternoon and the darkening of evening.' Urgh. Never mind, she was a terrible person through and through.'

'No wonder Mordred was so screwed up in the head.'

Gwen's lips twitch and she softens slightly at this remark and Kevin watches, hope in his expression as she unfurls from her seat.

'Yeah, well the icky incest factor probably didn't help.'

Kevin nods. 'Yeah, way to 'Game of Thrones' it all up, ancient history.'

But Gwen simply clucks her tongue. 'The situations were different; Arthur didn't willingly embark on screwing up his genetic family lineage while those two, um, lion people? Yeah, they got on-'

'Lannisters, Gwen, they're Lannisters.'

'Please, like it's really important-'

'Hey now, I know you would get all huffy with me if I couldn't remember the names of your favourite characters from that Inheritance System-'

'The Inheritance trilogy, Kevin, not system, it's not a car series.'

'No, just more books.'

Gwen screwed up her face. 'What is with you? You're starting to sound like Ben.'

That brings him up short. But not enough to prevent the anger from escaping. 'I guess I'm just tired of you acting all sulky because I went out and stopped you from becoming one with nature,' he says rather loudly. His voice trembles at the end though, almost a yell. And Gwen is thankfully quiet.

But Kevin, Kevin is hungry. Stupidly, suddenly, he remembers the way she looked yesterday, how even though she didn't have the softness of her orange hair or the familiar constellations of her freckles for his hands to cover, to create cracks in the web of their formation with his fingers, he had wanted her, no, he had wanted what was inside her, then so proudly unveiled. The energy of her, it had crackled all around him, the flavour of her ozone skin and cold, cold eyes, smelling cheap, like the smoky after-burn of fireworks and the charred stump of barbeque coals. But what it had promised, all that heat and light and life, calling to a sense that was not quite smell...it frightens him. Because it made him, for just the flicker of a second, want to go back to a mindset that was simpler, easier, all consuming. Just the constant want, want, want and never to be fulfilled urge of sucking everything dry.

He wonders if being a fully-powered up Anodite is anything close to being like that. Finally and insatiably full.

But Gwen sighs and steps forward, right into his space. Right where she shouldn't. Yet...

'Relax,' she tells him, before shoving a finger against his lips and it's good, it's sexy in a school-matron kinda way, which doesn't make sense because Kevin has never actually gone to school, except maybe to the school of life, ha ha-

'Quit it, you're thinking too much,' Gwen tells him sternly and just like that, his thoughts stutter and halt. 'That,' she continues with a rather pointed look, 'or you're thinking something stupid.'

Beneath the light press of her finger, Kevin shrugs. Because hey, she's never been wrong when it counts.

Gwen sighs, lifting the weight from his lips and Kevin suppresses the urge to follow its departure with his tongue.

'Let me try something,' she says gently and then, because she's Gwen, she pulls out a book.

'Oooh,' Kevin intones, 'sexy.'

'Hush,' she tells him with a mock glare and then she plops down into his lap, stretching herself out like a cat. She doesn't say a word about the line of Kevin's erection, about how it's poking against her hip, but she does give it a few companionable taps and a small, soft knead with her fingers, as though she's sorry for the unwelcome delay.

And then there's a mutter from her, a spell of some kind, not that she's ever needed words to work her particular brand of magic on him, but then there's a soft flutter of paper and Kevin peers forward slightly as the pages spill open and the words blur into geometric waves of black.

And then Gwen starts to read.

'Unlike the combustion engines that run the streets of earth, the ones placed inside space-craft must be much neater; the high pressure and temperature of gases burned off and produced by fossil fuels is simply not compatible with the more delicate fine-tuning that must render a spacecraft capable of traveling at warp-speed.'

Gently, Kevin begins to laugh. 'What...I know all this. It's so far beneath me that it's not even funny.'

Gwen turns her head, enough for him to catch the angle of her smirk. 'I know. It's kinda like reading a kid a nursery rhyme. They know all the words but the familiarity helps relax them.'

'...Are you saying I'm at the same level as a little kid?'

'I don't know, are you?' Gwen asks and Kevin frowns because she only sounds slightly sarcastic.

'Not cool,' he tells her finally and she giggles before shrieking as his fingers begin to dig into her sides and wriggle. Thankfully she's enough of a good sport not to transform into an Anodite when they're engaged in a tickle war.

From the doorway Charmcaster peers in, a blank look on her face.

'Okay,' she says dully, 'now I'm officially scared for life. Juvenile detention had nothing on this.'

They are not perfect. They are, in a way, very Twilight-y.

We're fucked, he wants to say sometimes. But he never does. Because he has, they have, faced worse.

'Wait, no, please, Gwen, baby, don't,' he spits out, rambles next Tuesday when she purposely sheds her shin and lets her hair whirl out with all the white shine of a star, her eyes loosing the hard focus only human pupils can give them. And she looks at him hard and stiff and it makes him want to curl up and die. Because he's naked and she stares at him, distanced, because she can't feel the burn of pheromones and hormones and all that should make her want to rub up against him to cure that heat. And he feels bad, a different kind of burn crawling up through his gut when she's like this, all X-files on his ass and the smell of her making him hungry, but not in the way that will help bring down his erection.

'You need to build up an immunity,' she tells him as though it's that simple, and proceeds to drag her nail-less fingers down his skin, stroking over his spine as she twists in and leans. And her hair, it flickers over his forehead as they touch instead of brushing, changing, morphing so that it becomes more water and stardust than a strand of protein or keratin poking his pale, clammy skin.

'..Dangerous,' he manages, wheezing out the word in a gasp.

And she laughs, the monster, and bends in close, her lips, though not flesh, trailing a cold softness against his own like a dew-flecked railing.

'So am I,' she whispers. And proceeds to kiss him senseless.

And the hunger roars, it shifts and Gwen, some part of her more alien than human, pours in to stir whatever part of his heritage demands her blood. Or, really, her energy. She, it, her mana like water, pours down his throat, or it fills like it, coaxes something warm and deep and softly stirred into his veins. And he opens his eyes, sees the room erupt into a violet glow and stares down, transfixed at his limbs, the blood vessels beneath them blinding. His skin, dappled with their hue, reflects blue. And Gwen's hands, her arms, rubs against his own, causing the light inside to flicker.

'This is what I see when I'm like this,' she says. 'To me, you're incredibly blue.'

He stares at her for a moment. 'So I'm depressed?' he asks, lips twisting as Gwen huffs.

She smacks his chest lightly and oh, that sends something else racing away inside him, energy jostling against a twist in his gut.

'Be serious, Kevin!'

'I was,' he states, 'earlier when I was asking you to stop. God, Gwen-' he risks a peek at her, her face now as placid as an unknowable god's – 'why not lay yourself out on a platter? It would have been easier.'

She looks a little sorry and strokes his brow.

'We have to get better at this. All of it.' She hesitates. 'Or do you want to fight the urge to chow down on our possible kids one day?'

His blood runs cold at the thought.

'Didn't think so,' she says, sounding a little too satisfied as the blue inside his limbs, his stomach, twirls and plays twister with itself. 'We go slow. Or we don't end up going anywhere at all.'

He tries to stop her, with words, with touch, with a snarl on his face arranged by the way his muscles bend and press down, carving mountains out of his scalp, the valleys edging into his brow.

'Babe, c'mon...'

But no, like this Gwen sees, she reads, and the blue inside reels up in little flurries, striking out her with all the exuberant fury of exclamation marks, though there's a soft haze of inaction beneath every flicker, like a hyphen's been used to break apart a speech. And it says there's more than panic here, there's hesitance as well, an urge to do better. There always is, with Kevin.

'We'll go slow,' she repeats, 'and we'll go together.'

There's a power in giving she finds, as long as the one she feeds is strained and gentle and waits, despite the turmoil inside.

That's all that matters. And as long as she remembers that there are worse things than the drug-like crawl to belong, to mingle with a world not her own, she doesn't need to fear losing herself at all.

But after, he finds he's only a little full, now that she's poured light and heat and probably the stuff of the stars themselves down inside him. And it will never be quite enough.

Good thing then, that he's got a brain and personality to go with it.

Notes: Never again. These guys work better for me as a side-line feature, than as a main one.