Summary: Every time you kiss her, you feel – well, pretty much the same. And you never want to stop.
Note: Short fluffy addendum, because they did not kiss in the previous chapter, and I regret that.
You kiss her for the first time beneath the palm of a dysfunctional ship, and it's not exactly remarkable, and not exactly on purpose.
It starts like this: first, she hugs you again, and you grip one hand at her opposite hip, press the other under her shoulder blade, asymmetrical and ridiculously comfortable. Then you nose up her throat, acting on inexplicable instinct, until you bump the underside of her jaw. She makes a noise and you draw back, squinting at her, immediately contrite. But she laughs, that breathy, half-silent sound that is your life's mission to elicit, and she holds the back of your neck and your eyes close of their own accord.
Her lips are dry and cracked, and they chafe slightly against yours. You lean helplessly in; you could be kissing sandpaper, and if that sandpaper was her, you'd be happy. You move your mouth, you stay still, you swallow unnecessarily, you dip your fingers in her hair. You don't know what to do, but everything you do, you like.
Blue makes another noise. You're less worried now, but you still stop. She doesn't laugh this time; just gives a frustrated huff and pulls you back in.
You never thought you'd like this. You never thought you'd try this. But you do, you are, and maybe, probably, she does too, and you've never felt so uncertain and so safe.
She stops kissing you and huffs-laughs again, and you love her.
"So this, um, this isn't something we're supposed to do," you mumble, numb and buzzing simultaneously.
"No," she agrees, and leans forward again.
She tastes like clarity (finally).
.
You don't get to kiss her again for many cycles. She's off to some half dead sun doing important work for the betterment of the empire (you pitched your voice like Blue Diamond's and she snorted and shook her head), and you are still in your excruciatingly monotonous probationary period.
You're painstakingly proper and prompt and courteous, observing all the most tedious niceties, following directions to the letter, politely averting your eyes in ways you've never done before; an exemplary pearl.
And in your every solitary moment, you think about Blue's lips, and about ways to make surplus emergency spacecraft smoothly disappear from the records.
.
The fifteenth time you kiss her, there's an alien type of weed beneath your feet, and everything underneath and around you is very very green.
"One sun," you comment, squinting up at it, distractedly rubbing your toes into the ground. Stiff, scratchy leaves give way to reveal soft, crumbly brown earth. "Modest, but workable."
"Without interference, it would probably last a few billion more Earth cycles," Blue tells you quietly.
"Is that the kind of lifespan these creatures have?" you ask, running your hands over the coarse, intricate outer shell of a tree.
She shakes her head. "Less than a millionth of that, usually, I think."
"So young," you murmur, stroking the shell until your palms tingle, giving it a push and feeling no give. "They seem so sure of themself."
You turn around, your side grazing against the brittle ridges of the tree, their fascinating texture imprinting onto the skin of your shoulders and upper back. Blue presses close, fixing you between them. You hope they don't mind.
She kisses you, and all you can smell is the strange nitrogen-rich Earth air, and the mild, salty scent of her hair; all you can feel are the unfamiliar edges of the weeds and the clingy warmth of the earth and the complex curvature of the tree, and the soft dry changeable shape of her lips and the jittery pressure of her fingers and the firm comforting nearness of her body; and all you can think is that all this is so new, and exactly as it should be.
.
The six thousandth time you kiss her – nah, you're just bluffing. You've lost count a long while ago. Actually, you've never really counted. It's a waste of time. Time that could be spent doing something more interesting. Like kissing Blue.
Anyway, the such-and-such time you kiss her, her lips are still chapped, and your head is still cottony, and the world around you is still very green, and you still love her, like constellations and mountains and your own erratic, glittering core.
You're a bit okay with this permanence.
.
("I love you," she tells you, now, and later, and after that. "Even though you're not very cool or mysterious."
"That's kind of backhanded," you reply, sometimes. Other times, you just kiss her, instead.)