A/N--I really didn't need another fandom in which to write stories, but this was instigated by awesome Kryss LaBryn, who sent me a story prompt (Kiss Prompt 15, Passionately). It may end up as more than one chapter, and assumes some background familiarity with the anime/manga series. I hope you enjoy it!

College Concerns

2018 Riene

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Morning sun slanted through the window, creeping over the sill and into her eyes. Chise turned over, but the gradual lighting of the room persistently followed and finally, she opened her eyes and sat up. Ruth was gone, off early doing whatever he did outside in the first hours of the day. Probably chasing hares or rooting out trouble before it could get to Silver's garden.

One week. One week to the day now.

Elias crossed a leg over the other, and turned a page in the book he wasn't really focused on. Upstairs he'd heard the soft padding of feet, from bedroom to bathroom, and back. Soon, she would be downstairs and his day would truly begin. Ruth came trotting in, muddy and looking pleased with himself, ducking behind the sofa to avoid the Silky's disapproving stare.

He barely caught a glimpse of her, slipping out the front door.

Elias glanced at Ruth, unconcernedly stretched out on the cool floor. "Where is she going?"

"Out."

"I am aware of that. Why are you not with her?"

Ruth raised his head. "She wished to go alone, and the way is safe. She wished to walk before the heat of the day." He cocked his head, feathery black fur flowing. "Why are you worried?"

"I am not worried," he rumbled.

"You are." Ruth rested his head down on his paws. "If you sense something, you should go after her. I do not."

Elias hesitated. Chise was on his land, under his veil of protection. Nothing could harm her here. But he felt an unusual disquiet, a sensation in his chest he did not know how to define. Perhaps he would go after the girl. Perhaps she could explain it. He set the book aside and rose.

The wooden bridge over the stream was one of her favorite places on the grounds, planks worn smooth from many years of feet and hands sliding along the rails. It was a shady spot, with trees overhanging the little valley, flowers nodding their sleepy heads, and the bright splash of water flowing over smooth stones.

Autumn would be here soon, with the myriad changes of the season. Already a few stray leaves had fallen. She reached for one, dropping it into the flow below, watching as it slowly meandered away, a tiny boat on an equally tiny river.

She sensed him before seeing him, a shadow darker than the shade of the trees. "Elias?" and he rose, flowing up from between the cracks of the boards to stand beside her.

"You left the house." It was not a question.

Chise nodded. "I just...wanted to walk."

"Am I disturbing you?" She heard the worry under the rumble of his voice.

"No, of course not, sit down."

The Thorn Mage eased himself down, mimicking her position, legs awkwardly dangling over the edge of the bridge, his posture as stiff and formal as always. Chise sighed and leaned forward onto the lower railing, watching the birds flit among the trees. He said nothing, content to be with her, and after a moment Chise picked up a scrap of bark and a sprig of wood, wedging the twig like a tiny mast on her makeshift boat, and worked a leaf along it as a sail. She dropped it in the water, watching it disappear downstream.

"I have never understood the allure of sailing," Elias admitted, watching it float away.

Chise leaned her head on her arms again. "I think it's the thrill of exploring, the chance of finding the unknown. New lands, new experiences," she said absently.

"Like going away to college?"

She shut her eyes. "Yes. Like going away to college."

One week. In one week she'd take her trunk and board the train, heading an hour or more away into the city, to live again among strangers and have to find her place, alone.

"You do not have to leave, you know this."

She leaned against him, solid and reassuring. "I know. But I need to. I left school so young; I just feel like I'm behind everyone else. I don't know how I'd even have been accepted, if you and Simon hadn't helped me prepare for the exams."

"That has never mattered, here. You do not need their college to be valued," he scoffed.

"I know. But I need to do it for me. I think I need to stand on my own feet, for once. Maybe to prove myself."

Elias huffed, tightening one arm around her. One week, and he would lose her to the humans, and he would be alone again. How he dreaded the silence, the emptiness.

Once again, the taunting voices of the fairies and forest-dwellers, of Ashen Eyes and Cartaphilus echoed in his ears. she'll leave you, find someone better, not some half-finished failure…

His arms involuntarily tightened about her and Chise looked up, but he would not meet her eyes. She turned slightly in his arms, putting one hand against his chest. "Are you worried that I will not return, Elias? Of course I will! I'm your bride, remember?"

He looked away. "I...Chise…" He took a deep breath. "I have since learned many things, since that time I did not know. We are not...legally wed, by the laws of your land or mine. Nor should I have bought you. It is not allowable in this land of England or in your own Japan to purchase humans. Oh, it is done, but it is not legal. And you are of age now. There is no real tie between us, save for that of master and apprentice, truly. You would be free to go." His deep voice was nearly inaudible.

Chise stared at Elias, appalled. Did he no longer want her? But surely not; there was an undercurrent of grief and pain in his words. "But we're engaged, Elias." She held up her hand, the golden ring glinting in the dappled sunlight.

But the Thorn Mage shook his head. "Not really. I did not know what that meant, either, when I sought you. I did not know the meaning of bride, or love, or honeymoon. Forgive me, Chise...I spoke to you in ignorance."

She pulled away from him, kneeling to look up into the skull that served as his bony face. "What did you think it meant, then?"

He glanced down at her. "To be together forever, that I would care for you, protect you, that we would be neither one alone again."

She nodded. "It does mean all of those things, but it means love as well."

"Love."

"Yes." She tried to catch his eyes, but he was resolutely looking downstream. "Do you...do you love me, Elias?"

"What is love?" he evaded. "You seem to love many things. Your books, your friends, Silver's sticky buns, and Ruth."

Chise drew her knees up under her chin, wrapping her arms around them. In so many ways the Thorn Mage was still like a child; inexperienced, unable to define the alien world of human feelings. "There are different kinds of love," she began. "Sometimes it's casual, like when I say I love afternoon tea, or Silver's cooking, or a good book. There's a stronger love for my friends, for Simon and Stella, for Ruth and Alice, for Lindel and the dragons and Angelica. There's the love I have for my parents, too."

"But they left you," he argued.

"I can still love them," she said quietly. "And then there's...the love I have for you."

The wind sent leaves skittering across the planks of the bridge, and blew the crimson silk cover across his face. Chise pushed her hair back, but Elias did not remove the veil.

"I do not know 'love'," he said heavily, at last. "I have never been loved. Feared, yes. Shunned. But not loved. I do not know what it is." He stared ahead, his body stiff.

Chise put a gentle hand on his arm and he touched it briefly. She caught his hand, stroking his gloved fingers. "It feels very sweet and tender, protective. Like you want to be with that person forever."

He was silent, staring across the valley, and she pressed further. "Do you love anyone, Elias?"

"Sometimes when we are together, I feel a warmth in my chest. It is like a surge, and it is very strong. Is that love?"

"It could be. That's what it feels like for me, when I think of you."

"But there is also...I feel warmth elsewhere, like I want to...to eat you...but not that...as if I want to blend the two of us together somehow."

Chise blushed. "That is a type of love. It's desire, a type of...wanting. It happens between married people, people who love each other."

He turned his great head. "Do you also feel this type of love, Chise? This wanting? For me?"

"Yes? Sometimes?" Better to be honest with him. "I dream of you, and me, and sometimes I dream of us together."

"With me." There was an odd rumble in his chest that she could not place. "I have researched this, in my studies." Chise stared at him, surprised and a little jealous. "I do not see how this act could be accomplished, even if you truly wanted to...do that with me." He looked down, tilting his head. "I could be human?" Suddenly he was looking at her with Simon's eyes and face, and she recoiled.

"No! It would be like kissing Simon!"

"But you love him," Elias pointed out.

"Not like that! And he's a priest!"

The glamor shifted and he returned to his Fae form. "He might not mind."

"Elias, that is NOT the point!"

His earlier words came back to her. "Elias...do you still want to...to marry me? Now that you know what it means?"

He became so still she wondered if he'd even stopped breathing. "Yes."

"Good." Chise felt an overwhelming wave of relief, fighting a swell of emotion.

Elias swept back the crimson veil and pulled her into his arms. "Why are you crying?"

She burrowed against him. "Because I thought you maybe didn't...want to be bound to me in that way, now that you really know what it means."

"I do. If you still want me."

"Of course!"

"Even if it means the...physicality? We do not have to do that part."

Chise reached up, stroking his jaw, her fingers gently caressing the back of one orbital, where his red eye gleamed. "But I want to do that, too. With you. I want to kiss you, and...do other things as well."

"I am afraid I would disgust you," Elias said slowly. "I am not pleasing to look upon."

She looked at his broad torso and long, muscular body, shaking her head, bemused. "That's so not true. Nothing you do makes me afraid or disgusted."

"Do you think I am...attractive?"

"Oh yes." She paused. "Elias, may I...touch you?"

"Yes." He eyed her speculatively.

Chise slid both hands across his ribs and out across his chest, stroking and smoothing the rich brocade fabric of his black waistcoat, then carefully across the thinner fabric of his white shirt, feeling the ridges of unfamiliar muscle and hard bone under her hands. Elias watched her silently, sucking in a long breath as her questing hands rose to caress his neck.

His dark purple skin was soft, like the skin of a lizard, slightly scaly and yet smooth, warm to the touch. She stroked his neck shyly, then slowly up along the back of his skull, scratching around the base of his twisting horns, and rubbed gently at the leathery lines of his skull. Warmth pooled in her stomach. She held his head in her hands.

"Elias...I want to kiss you."

"I have no proper mouth," he murmured. His eyes were fearful and yet eager.

"We could try it," she breathed.

He froze and she leaned forward, pressing her lips to the top of his skull where she'd kissed him before, then around to his cheek, and pulled back, staring into his watchful eyes, then leaned in again, touching her lips to his muzzle, running her tongue experimentally over the thin ridge of membrane along the ridge where teeth met jaw.

Elias growled deep in his chest, surging forward, arms tightening around her, his tongue flickering out to slide across her lips and she opened to him, slanting sideways so that their mouths could meet. Chise's hands rant up his back, her short nails raking along his spine, under his coat.

The Mage's large hands spanned her body and cautiously moved further around to her chest, his palms warm against her breasts, fingers brushing carefully across her curves as he pushed up her shirt. Chise gasped, arching against his hands as he slowly rubbed circles around the lacy surface of her bra with his thumbs, feeling a surge of desire. "Elias!"

She was warm and soft against him, and there was a tightness and pressure in his body he'd never experienced. The edges of his form blurred, feathers sprouting along his back and long thorny tendrils growing, thrashing as control slipped from his mind.

He pulled back, panting, then closed his mouth over her shoulder, biting down gently, and Chise reached up, caressing the sensitive area where his skull met his neck, and he growled.

"We should stop," he muttered.

"Why?" Chise breathed, rubbing her cheek along the length of his bony head, and turning her body so that he cupped her breast again, shivering in pleasure.

"Because I don't want to stop. I want more. This feeling..." He groaned and pulled her tightly against him, shuddering.

"I want more, too," she admitted. "But perhaps you're right." She wiggled against him and looked up with a shy grin. "But I think we've just proven that "physicality" isn't going to be an issue."

"No." His red eyes gleamed down at her. "But now the waiting until you return will be much harder."

She leaned her head against his chest, pulling down her shirt. "I'll be home soon, Elias."

"Not soon enough." He lifted her in his arms, and began the walk back to their house.

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