A/N: I got slightly drunk, wrote something really bad and decided to post it; I guess that is life. XD Do no recommend.
"can't let a cold heart be free."
"You kissed me back, you know." "What? What do you mean?" It only takes two people, two hearts and a few stubborn, shiny stars for a night to go to hell and back.
You can try to resist
Try to hide from my kiss
But you know
But you know that you can't fight the moonlight
Deep in the dark
You'll surrender your heart
But you know
But you know that you can't fight the moonlight
No, you can't fight it
It's gonna get to your heart
"You kissed me back, you know."
"What? What do you mean?"
"I may not be the smoothest, but I know what I felt. You did."
It was a weird night, as far as she was concerned. They were both sitting on the edge of their usual rooftop, only inches apart and Leo's cheeks were puffed. The sky was a pitch black as they let their feet sway, pretending they didn't brush together.
"You're an idiot, do you know that?" she said, and immediately pressed her lips to cover the hesitation over the sharpness of her voice her mouth might betrayed. She felt hot in her armor, like firecrackers danced across her skin in a litany of guilt.
It was perhaps the first time they met and her clothes were still on.
Leo gripped his knee pad and sighed. It was a tired sound, the kind of someone did when they were annoyed, as if they were trying to explain something to a two-year-old. For a moment, she thought as though he would turn his head and finally meet her eyes, but he didn't. He kept his head low.
Well. She was okay with that. Whatever.
"I don't do this. I can't do this anymore, Karai," his shoulders were tensed but his tone was soft, a pleading thing slowly dripping around it like old, stale, well-known honey. "I can't play the game where we both don't talk about it."
Karai's eyes travelled around the people walking down the street. She kept them focused on a particular couple, two friends walking and eating pretzels in amicable laughter. It was easier to lie when her voice was absent of any emotion. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Leo made an ambiguous sound in his throat, but finally turned around. She felt his eyes closely examining her face, the portrait of her at least, relenting as his hand moved to simply cover hers. He didn't push further and she didn't press – no matter the urge drumming in her chest.
"I just thought," she head him swallow, but refused to take a glance at him, because she might as well be a lost cause, then. "I thought last night – I thought it was different."
"Why?" She turned her head sharply, trying to stare boldly in his eyes. He looked pretty beneath the moonlight, and his face was wide, so open and earnest – as if he had just given her his heart with a smile – knowing its destiny and being at peace with the idea.
"Because we – we kissed?" her voice wavered and she almost wished the locks of hair hid her face. Her cheeks were flushed, a mottled red that most often adorned his green ones during their rendezvous. She hated the way her tongue ran over the sentence, tentatively, with a silent edge to it – like it was a crime, an illegal act of the heart.
Leo's eyes narrowed and his lips formed a frown. "So you do admit we kissed?" He didn't sound accusing, wasn't rubbing her silence in her face the way she would have done in his shoes. He only tilted his head ever so slightly, shoulders hunching like a tiny bird cowering.
His voice trailed to nothing, eye ridges furrowing in cute green and she fought the need to caress his face.
She didn't want to believe that the fullness of his eyes was shimmering with hope, because she was well aware she was about to crush it. She drew her hand from where it lay motionless underneath his, like it burnt. "That is not the point!" she snarled, and when Leo shook his head, chuckling harshly, her chest dropped.
Her face numbed like she had just been slapped. It was beyond maddening – how she wasn't able to read him in times like this, when the upper hand was nobody's.
He tipped his head back, rolling his eyes roundly, in that manner that he damn knew she found endearing, but followed the action with a rough whisper, palms resting on his knees. "Then what is the point, Karai? Because you jump at every opportunity to make me hate you," his gaze fell as his hand found his way back to hers, thumbing gently her knuckles, "but then we kiss and …"
When he looked back up, he smiled sadly, features turning tender, dull and faraway altogether and her breath stuck between her nose. "And I don't know what to do about us."
"There isn't an us," she snapped promptly, before she could help herself, and it sounded cracked, like the lie it was.
"If you say so," he said, softly, with so much sincerity it was impossible for a human being. "Whatever you want," he added, smiling and her heart thudded inside of her, goosebumps prickling pleasantly her skin – because she never got what she wanted.
Her head faced the street below again, but Leo tightened the grip on her hand, scooting closer, till every part of them was meeting, the places where their bodies greeted each other longingly warm.
He nodded against her hair, muttering something incomprehensible, but the tone of it was soft enough for her knees to buckle, her limbs tensing, and he must have felt it, because he sighed in her ear, the tremor of his war-torn hands easing. His thumb rubbed circles against the hollow of his wrist, the touch more soothing and grounding than Karai expected.
The silence that followed was weighted, turning Karai's stomach to angles. Her eyes peered from where her face was pressed in the crook of his neck and her heart hammered, her hand slowly reaching and palming her face – as though she couldn't bear to look at him – at them.
The sky above was decorated with no more than three stars, but those were enough to drill into her. She remembered the stars being there when she jumped with Leo from rooftop to rooftop, muscles aching as their fists bruised, tongues sliding wetly against each other.
The stars were brightly shining when Karai sent swift kicks to his brothers, broke into buildings and painted their walls with her reputation, smiled each time she dug her nails, leaving marks to Leo's arms after their trysts, flipped him off and lied, taking his sentimental pieces and burning them to ashes.
The nights were starry when their meet-ups had turned to wet dreams gone wrong for her – to dates with soft laughter and crinkled gazes – when Leo would play in the rain with the purity of a child and he'd invite her to jump juvenilely through the puddles, when she would take off her leather jacket and throw around him so as not to get cold –
– when they would watch the fireworks burst at the start of the season and Karai's heart had sunk to her stomach once she realized the fond gazes she tossed to Leo's face, flashed with colors, pooled her with something that crossed the line of lust.
She remembered the same face sobering when she had cornered a new Foot recruit to his back in an alley and kissed him soundly with tongue, keeping her eyes open, because she knew it was the time he patrolled, the route he usually took – because she knew he'd see her and she desperately wanted to look back in his eyes, stare at him as broke and fury took place in his heart.
And when he had cornered her, too, and she had spit in his face, telling him to suck it up and leveling him with baleful eyes, he had simply wrapped an arm around her, pushing their foreheads together impossibly gently, cupping her face and kissing her, breaking their non-spoken rule with lips so full of passion, with more feeling than she had ever thought she could actually feel.
And when she had kissed back, because she'd had, just as sincere, too sweet to think of it as anything else but a love-drunk confession, she didn't have to open her eyes to know there were stars.
The Leo next to her now remained there, smoothed one hand through her hair, carding it delicately, while the other was painfully slowly tanging his fingers in hers, but she felt mad, face mildly reddening.
So mad at herself for trying to hold a starring role without being in the play, for getting a taste of what she had pushed so deep inside and loving every minute of the pleasant suffocation that sought through her.
So mad that Leo stood solid and steady, always there and with no hint of giving up. She wanted him to be angry, to yell at her, to look at her and scowl, pin her to this roof, play every dirty card and hurt her to feel like herself again.
She pushed him off, grunting, and when the blue of his eyes turned dark in question, she got up, biting back a shout. "What are you doing?" she asked instead, hands on her hips, meaner than she intended to, but not regretting in the slightest.
Not when his features hardened, and the expression in his face turned as sour as she wanted it to be. "Holding you?"
"That… This is not the plan, not at all, Leo!" Her body shook with her heart, and her own voice boomed loud in her ears, tearing her apart. Leo's eyes widened, but he recovered in time, mouth parted.
"What are you talking about? What plan?" he ragged, but she was already shaking her head, because she knew how easily the innocent things turned bad, now hand holding could rip a part of her heart that was not even whole.
When she bore holes into him, giving him a tanged look and his face fell, she almost beamed, with pride bubbling in her chest.
That's right. Go the hell away. Go while you can.
She held her gaze fixed on the floor beneath her, and resisted the urge to look up when he spoke deep and ever so low, "Okay, Karai," he said, accompanied with that rumbling sound, which indicated that he meant it.
"You don't have to tell me anything, anything you don't want. That's not what I want. I'm not gonna plead you all night for something like that," he murmured, in the same manner his voice got the texture of a feather when he spoke to his brothers – soft and reassuring, quiet and understanding.
Her heart jerked like a clap of thunder in her chest.
Her mouth chewed on the first thing it stumbled upon to press whatever thing she threatened to say, as she stated playfully, lowering to slight disdain, "Too bad. You usually look so good on your knees, begging for me."
She knew she had messed up when he sighed, a long-suffering sound, and as she took a small peek, his cheeks weren't as rosy with coupling embarrassment as much as hollow.
He turned his shell at her lightly, the way he did only a handful of times, when a few of their quickies would turn intense and some tears would slip beneath his mask. But when he talked again, as he picked his swords, he didn't sound like he was crying.
"Well," she heard the tension in his shoulders before she saw it, "of course. It's like – like you do everything you can that you know will push me away from you," he retorted, so plainly she almost thought the night and time went as still as he was.
"But guess what, your plan is bull," he said, bluntly. "Because I'm not walking out."
Her ears rang as she watched him move, the tails of his bandanna whipping against his neck. "I'm not leaving you," he admitted curtly, indulging in a small smile, before jumping to the rooftop in front of him, firm as a promise, lingering with truthfulness that oozed like a scratch, "because you're scared of what more we could be."
He hopped from roof to roof and a weight settled inside her as she recognized his tone – frank and affectionate, too loving to mistake it for pushy and unreal.
Too much of everything rushed through her head, heady with feeling, because it was the first time she was the one watching him go away – and with no intention of leaving.
Sometimes Leo let her do what she wanted, and she longed for it as much as she longed for him – and other times, he gave her what she needed, and she hated him for that – as much as she loved him.
Karai stayed on the roof for awhile, alone and under the painful watch of the stars that had been witnesses.
Her limbs were trembling, something clenching deep inside her chest, so deep it hurt, but she held her tanto for a minute, firmly in her grip, like an anchor, desperately willing her heart to slow down.
It beat furiously, hammering against her throat and pounding in her ears, but had she the ability to erase his blue gaze from where it had left a footprint on her soul, she'd blame the rate on the damp heat of the spring nighttime, without a stutter.
And if someone asked about the wetness of her eyes, and the way tears were slowly leaking down her cheeks, she'd blame the weather again, too.