A/N: Written for the Femslash Fridays Competition, round 6: Write a story inspired by the following lines: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on - Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn
Warm Love
She is perfectly carved: a porcelain face for a doll, except she's soft like the water that's her medium and tender like the heart of the man who owns her – and she's lucky, because she has a good owner that takes care of her. After all, Dolls aren't human anymore, and Contractors even less so.
But he's an unusual Contractor and that's what Amber counts on. That's what Yin counts on too – since she's an unusual Doll just like her owner is an unusual Contractor. She can pretend she's alive instead of just a medium that reads the world and translates it. She can pretend her skin is not always cold and dry like a doll's porcelain skin but warm and moist and pliable under the other's lips and exploring tongue. She can pretend the warmth spreads like a tingling sensation down her body, to her toes. She can pretend that the heart protected by her chest can find the illusion of love that only humans entertained.
She hadn't entertained it when she was human – another rarity, because most Dolls did not remember their humanity. But Yin did, and Amber was a Contractor and most of those remembered, if they wanted to. And she wanted to, because she'd been young and innocent back then and looking for a peaceful life filled with love she'd never got. Because the Gates had appeared: she'd become a Contractor, lost her humanity before she'd found a person to love.
And now she was older in spirit, younger in form and growing younger still whenever she froze time with her prowess. But that wasn't important; she still believed she was capable of love, capable of drowning in the sensation of a song she'd never before sung, a dance she'd never done.
And Yin could bask in that illusion along with her, and they could pretend the stolen time they spent together was love, that they were capable of it, and other emotions. That, deep down, they were still humans and alive instead of just weapons for the world to be used and destroyed or tossed aside.
Maybe if either of them had loved before, it would be different. But because neither had felt heartbreak they could drown in the illusion of a warm love together.