Huzzaah! My internet stopped being crap long enough for me to post!
Smut ahead. All minors beware. I should also note it's the least 'vanilla' smut I've written for this pairing - but nothing truly traumatic or transgressive (and hilariously it's in missionary position). I always laugh at labels like 'vanilla' and 'kink' because of the implication that there is 1) something either aberrant/exciting to the latter and subsequently default/boring about the former, and 2) the idea that power dynamics, and their corollaries of domination and submission, are somehow absent from 'normal' sex, and recognizable only through use of whips, chains, other paraphernalia, which: lmfao.
Tirade aside, I hope y'all enjoy! Feedback is the engine that powers this fic, so if there's something you like/dislike, don't hesitate to let me know!
Now on with the smut!
Saya had never gone swimming with Diva.
Of course, there were a thousand things she had never done with Diva, beyond chasing her sister every waking moment of her life, the way a drowner chases for air.
She had certainly never imagined doing what they are doing now: running hand-in-hand along the glittering lip of the lake, their bare feet kicking up swirls of snow. A fog hangs across the gleaming sheet of the water, deepening into milky groundmist at the tree line. The forest is a winter dreamland, dusted as if with powdered sugar.
But Saya isn't cold.
"Come on, sister!" Diva coaxes. "Jump into the water with me!"
"It'll be freezing!"
"So? We'll feel right at home!"
Next they both are running—quick as quicksilver—through the lacing of snow, to dive into the heart of the lake.
Saya gasps at the blinding shock of it. The water shoots straight up her nose. Fills her lungs like an icy radiance, a sweet mineral tang spreading in the back of her throat. Then she and Diva are cresting the surface, spitting out water, sinuses throbbing and laughter resonant.
"See?" Diva giggles. "There's nothing to it! Just remember the trick. All the way in—without stopping."
"I-I didn't know," Saya says. "I didn't think I could."
"If you keep thinking, you never will at all."
Diva smiles. She smells electric and alluringly cool. But her arms are hot as they pass around Saya.
The waning moon makes a zigzag path across the water. Their two bodies, breaking the glittering surface, are like something from a fairytale. Mermaids basking in the night-glow.
"I wanted to swim with you," Diva says. "After you set me free from my tower. Eat with you. Dance with you. But I never could."
Saya's throat cramps. She has to wring the words out from deep in her muscles. "I'm sorry. It was all messed up in those days. We... were all messed up."
"I know."
Diva floats back, facing her, tethered by nothing but their interlaced fingers. The moonlight makes the tips of her bare shoulders glow, turning her skin into the pure white of a marble bust.
"Things are always messed up, though," she says. "I remember. Every time I opened my eyes, there was a war. Among the humans. Between us. So much noise everywhere. But that didn't mean I had to be lost in it. It was better to make a quiet space inside myself. That way, I would never lose me."
Saya nods, letting the words lap at her like the coolness of the lake.
In her waking hours, remembering Diva, her mind is full of perils. But in this moment everything is pure and simple. The night is theirs, and the lake is theirs, with their two dark heads drifting side by side on its shimmery surface, nothing to stop their joy from going forward.
"You need to make a space inside yourself too, Saya," Diva says. "It mustn't be a locked box. Otherwise you'll become trapped by it. Yours should be like music. Something you carry with you everywhere, keeping the notes deep inside. You can let it sweeten or slow or speed up to suit your needs. But the center should always be yours."
"Always... mine?"
"That way you'll always know yourself. When your Chevalier is inside you, and you're afraid you'll break to pieces instead of being made whole. When the battle rages around you, and you can't tell yourself apart from the screaming and the blood and that sharp, sharp sword you secretly love more than sleep or sunlight or sex."
Saya's cheeks burn. She tries to dip her gaze away. But Diva is smiling at her, soft and enigmatic, her words like riddles that can only be unraveled here.
"To know yourself is to know exactly what you're giving, and what you stand to lose, Saya. That way you'll never disappear, or be shaped by someone else's dreams of you." Diva gazes unfocusedly at the overlapping ripples of moonlight across the lake. "My Chevaliers tried to shape me to their dreams. I never let them. I held tight to my own."
"Your daughters."
The words fall from Saya's lips. It is as if she is absorbing something that she hadn't before. Old knowledge transmuting into new wisdom, something enormous and powerful and mysterious. Something more than rivalries or wars or betrayals, but the endless stretch of time that spreads beyond them like the lake and the stars.
"My daughters," Diva agrees. "All I ever wanted. I'm sad I couldn't watch them grow. But I'm happy they'll never grow into we became."
"Never." Saya's fingers tighten on her sister's. "I'll make sure of it."
"I know you will."
"I won't let anyone shape their lives, either. They'll be free the way neither of us could be."
"We're finally free too, sister. In our own ways."
They both drift together across the lake. Saya can feel Diva's pulse beating in her palms. It matches the rhythmic stirring of the water, and the slow sawing of hers and Diva's breaths. Two people in the same place, at the same time. Sharing the same heart.
Beneath the surface, something roughly swishes along her flank.
Saya jerks. "What was that—?"
"Oh? It's just her." The snake, Saya realizes. "She's waiting for you."
"What?"
Diva shrugs prettily, her hair dripping in inky tangles around her face. "Forget about it. It's not time yet."
"Not time for what?"
Diva doesn't answer.
In graceful strokes, she swims to the middle of the lake. Glowing and amorphous, her body seems a part of the moonlit water, and as unfathomable as it.
But her warm fingers are still threaded with Saya's. Her eyes are blue blossoms of pure love.
"Don't worry, big sister," she says. "I won't let go. Not until you're ready."
Saya's eyes flutter open.
Dregs of the dream cling to her. Her body is a languid starfish across the rug. Haji is plucking a book from her fingers.
She'd drifted off by the grand piano, reading Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved. The villa, long-emptied of company, holds an unnatural echo. Decades of coasting continents, just her and Haji—yet their privacy always feels strangely decadent.
Haji is a dark shape limned in the brightness of the moon. He stirs through the book's pages with a fingertip.
"In the driest whitest stretch/of pain's infinite desert," he says. "I lost my sanity/and found/this rose."
It sounds like a quote.
"I, um. Didn't get that far." She tries to read his mood in the dark, fails, and whispers, "Are you still angry?"
"Angry?"
"About before?" She reaches for him, her hands like two quinquefoliate night-flowers. "Tórir is just someone I met. I'm sorry if I—"
"Saya."
"Mm?"
"You know I cannot stay angry with you beyond a moment."
Tenderness shows in his gaze, and in the easy way he melts across her, going from a looming pillar of darkness to a heavy spill of coolness.
Relief gusts through Saya. She circles him in, and sighs as he drops a kiss to her forehead.
It is still stunning, how effortless the fit of their bodies is. She's never known before that she would like a physique composed of pure ivory and bone, or that the scent of rosin overlaying the musk of clean skin would hold such a visceral pull for her, or that the hands she'd want on her body would be so specific: one ghostly pale and sword-grip strong, the other monstrously mismatched yet exquisitely gentle.
Haji's mouth, on hers, is cool as water. But his tongue, tracing past her lips, tastes of something else. Dark and hot and seeping desire into her extremities like a welling of blood.
"Mmmm. Haji?"
"Hm?"
"I am sorry. About before. Yelling at you about Victoire. Running away after the concert. Then the... thing at the market. I shouldn't have—"
"Ssh." He kisses her eyelids. "That is nothing to be sorry for."
"No?"
"The issue is mine. Not yours." Regret sloughs through the dark river of his voice. "I should have the patience to let you grow, Saya. Let you experience what you could not in the war. Right now you may think I am enough. But I want you to know that—"
Saya touches a hand to his mouth. "Don't."
He kisses her fingers, wistful, wanting. "Forgive me. But we should discuss it. I do not know how long I can make you happy. But I will never keep you against your will, either." His eyes are darkly luminous. "I want you to live, Saya. If that means with another man, then—"
Saya stops him again. "I told you not to bring that up. Another man won't 'fix' me. And I'm not with you just until I'm 'fixed.' I'm here because I chose you."
Sighing, Haji drops his forehead to hers. His cool breath fans across her face. "I cannot tell you... how grateful that makes me. But I do not want secrets building between us, because you want someone new. Your happiness is what matters. With or without me."
Her lips tic—either up or down, she isn't sure. "Do you think I'd leave you that easily?"
"I think you deserve the freedom to choose."
Saya's eyes fizzle with tears. It is maddening when he gets this way. But that is how Haji is. Always placing his own needs second to hers. Always taking any crumb she manages to offer him, and giving himself to it like a starved man to a feast. Having such a wellspring of love at her fingertips... it's made her careless, the way people become when something so rare is so effortlessly given.
But it also reminds her what truly matters. Solomon, Tórir... they are lessons in the fact that she'll meet men whom she's attracted to. Wildfire crushes, childish fantasies—but not reliable partners. Not like Haji, who fits an indefinable niche in her life. A space between thrill and trust that stirs in her longings far beyond her long sexual deprivation.
No one else has that sense of rightness. He's become, for her, the touchstone of life.
Threading her arms around his neck, she traces his lips with hers. "You're wrong."
"Hm?"
"You're wrong if you think I'd choose anyone else. No one suits me like you do. No one's so patient. Even when I know it can't be easy."
"It is not a matter of easy or difficult. You are my reason to go on."
"Even when I'm…" Crazy, "weird?"
"You are doing the best you can."
Is she? Or is she simply wasting this second chance Diva would've killed for?
Scratch that.
This second chance I killed Diva for.
She flinches. Beneath her blouse, the necklace with Diva's rock absorbs the cached flutter of her heart. She wants to tell him about her meeting with the yuta. About Diva, and the dreams. But some instinct tightens its grip on the secret. It's not because she doesn't trust him. It's because she needs him to trust her. To believe that she is fine. That the changes inside her aren't a lapse into insanity—but the first signs of healing.
Aren't they?
Then Haji kisses that spot beneath her ear, that seems connected straight to her groin. She shivers. "I'm... I'm not..."
"Hm?"
"I'm not doing my best. You deserve more. Better."
"Saya..."
"I mean it." She darkens, her eyes measuring his own. "I'm figuring things out. Same as you. But the least I can do is give you the benefit of the doubt. You do it for me often enough. Sometimes, it makes me wonder if—"
Misgiving dogs her. Haji has been bolstering her since the war. Keeping her strong until she completes her duty. But what does he want? It never seems to go beyond her happiness. But whatever makes him happy... is that in her power to give?
Peace. Purpose. Place.
Something beyond the superficial pleasures that music and travel and sex can offer.
Shyly, she says, "If things were different, you could have had an ordinary life. Maybe even a family. Instead you're stuck with me, waiting decades on end. And I can't even—"
"Saya. Please." He gathers her closer, face burrowed in her hair. "My life means far more, struggling by your side, than solitary and stagnant without you."
"You say that now..."
"Always."
"But what if—?"
He kisses her again, taking the small bubble of sound from her mouth. Kisses as cool and distinct as snowflakes. Each one imparting paragraphs of meaning.
Sighing, Saya folds him closer. God—to touch him. She can't even describe what it is getting to be like. Each time is more... more.
Strange, that she'd first pictured Haji as a passive lover. Not that she'd ever fantasized sleeping with him when they were teenagers. But you'd have to be blind not to notice how attractive he is. Or to watch him in the eye of a fight—bright as a blade slicing the battlefield—and not be, well. Curious.
Except that his usual manner, somber in a way that cut frivolity off at the root, lent the impression that he might be, if not disconnected from physicality, at least diffident.
Except Saya is learning that there are things, beyond cello or battle, that awaken his quiet ferocity.
"Haji." It is a waver of sound. "Do you want to...?"
"No. Sssh." He sucks hotly at the line of her neck. Inhales, then nuzzles her with a more familiar softness. "Not unless you wish to."
"I-I do. I just—"
Dizzily inarticulate, she renews the kiss. Haji returns it with startling fervor. Then, as if remembering himself, softens those edges before they cut her.
It's always like this. Always a variation of their first time: passion sheathed in tendresse. And it's been wonderful. Honest and natural and sweet, and he always leaves her afterward in a lassitude of sighs, like a stanza from a decadent poem after the flowers and mythology are stripped away.
But always holding back, too.
When they began, it was a necessity. But now...
Make a space inside.
It reverberates in her skull. The dream is gone: she can place Diva's voice but not the context. Yet the words fall through her. Not a promise but... a possibility.
"Saya?" Haji's eyes are a soft blue query. "What's wrong?"
"N-Nothing." She wraps herself around him. Traces the sharp point of his scarred cheekbone. "I just want to know... if there is something you'd like us to do?"
"Anything you wish."
"We always do that. But maybe... there is something you'd like from me instead?" Goosebumps bloom across her skin: need, uncertainty. "Something you want to do to me. Or for me to do with you."
They'd argued beneath the cherry tree. Disconnecting versus letting go. The dangers—and differences—of each. Tonight, she is ready to reach a compromise. Something they both can enjoy, without straying too far from the safety of the basics.
Haji's gaze, meeting hers, is puzzled but patient. "What is this about?"
"Nothing. Just... remember I said we should be partners? That includes me taking care of you the same way you do for me."
He lifts one of her hands to his mouth. Drops a cool kiss to the palm that makes her shiver. "You cannot possibly believe I make love to you out of duty."
Blushing, she fumbles free. "I know you don't. But I also don't want to be a—" A phrase Yumi used pops into her mind. "—Pillow Queen?"
"What?"
His laugh is mystified and delightfully boyish. The sound stuns Saya's entire central nervous system with the urge to make him repeat it. His expression reminds her what a young man he'd been before becoming her Chevalier, witty and wry-tempered.
"I-I just mean that I want to meet you halfway."
"Halfway in what?"
"Um." Her eyes flicker to his. "Our relationship."
The word drops like onyx into a pool, spreading ripples everywhere.
Relationship.
Not something she has applied to them before. It doesn't encompass the depth and nuance of what flows between her and Haji. But maybe it doesn't have to, because everything she needs to say is underneath the word.
In the gloom, Haji's face reforms into a tender enigma.
Then he drags her against him, a rough splay of claw and a rougher press of lips, and his kiss isn't tender at all. His thumb fits against the killing-point of her jaw, tipping her face up to claim her mouth. His tongue glides past her parted lips as a prerogative. A startled noise rises and dies in Saya's throat. In answer, Haji folds their bodies closer, wielding the kiss without mercy. A bite, a bruise, a breakage.
He's never yet kissed her like this. Always, even in the furor of lovemaking, there is a layer of control like a glass wall between them. Safe and sanitary: keeping the dark mess of emotions in.
The wall is cracking.
Haji's other hand steals up beneath the hem of her dress. Fingertips coasting cool along her thigh. Saya shivers, and he breaks the kiss. His eyes are on her, burning-blue and strangely opaque.
"Do you want to go upstairs?" he asks.
"N-No. Do you—?"
He shakes his head.
"Haji, I meant what I said. If there's something you'd like us to do—"
"Ssh." He breathes a cool kiss across her lips. "Sit up for me."
"I—"
He draws back, releasing her. For a second she is disoriented, bereft. Then Haji's arms slide under her shoulders. He coaxes her to her knees. She lets him move her around, lifting her arms up to have her sundress stripped off, her underthings peeled away.
The cool air raises goosebumps on her bare skin; she shivers. It always feels weirdly illicit, being uncovered before him. In the war, it was pure expedience: his gaze lowered with half-detachment, half-deference. Here, that same unblinking gaze licks her from head to toe, like she is a ripe peach of blessing.
A hot little thrill runs up Saya's spine. By habit, she half-covers her chest with one arm, legs modestly pressed together. "Aren't you going to, um—?"
Undress, she means to say. But Haji has snatched her close again. The cloth of his jacket is cool and rough against her belly and bare breasts. His kiss is the same: talking hungrily to her as if there is so much bottled up inside him that he cannot say except like this.
Maybe he can't.
She keeps expecting him to urge her back across the rug. To cover her and take command. Keeps expecting force, or filth, or something sharper than the slow sweet ways he always takes her. She is willing to try it, whatever it might be. Curious to uncover what lurks beneath that unflappable wrapping of his, a Matryoshka doll of secrets folded into secrets.
Because hasn't Haji been unfolding her, quietly, patiently, inexorably, since the war? Showing her strange and startling aspects of herself, a symphony played to different styles, while still keeping her recognizably whole?
She doesn't yet know the structure of herself. But with Haji, she will never lose the theme.
Her breath flutters in her chest. But Haji keeps the kisses going. Slow, exquisitely slow. Almost breathing the wordless story of himself into her mouth. He won't touch her: not anywhere that isn't perfectly proper. Hands combing through her hair. Tracing the shape of her neck, her shoulders, her arms.
Saya hears herself mewing, low pleading noises as that familiar desire begins to creep through her: the quivering muscles, the breath-held tension, the blackout edging on desperation.
But Haji senses it and breaks away.
Unbalanced, Saya clutches handfuls of his clothes. It feels like he's kissed the breath out of her lungs. Haji is trembling barely perceptibly himself, the vibrations of his heart palpable through the fabric of his clothes. Tiny messages that a stranger might mistake for stillness.
"Saya."
Just one word, and she flushes all over.
Always, he obtains her permission before they make love. This time, it is a thrilling promise.
Slowly, he shifts so he is at her back. The cool clothed length of him presses close, her hair cascading down his chest. He gathers it out of the way, tracing the row of graduated pebbles up her spine with his finger. Saya shivers.
"Haji—what're you—?"
"Sssh."
Holding her against him with his clawed arm, he caresses her body with the other hand. His touch is so light it seems a flirtation. Just a skritch of fingernails, up and down, shoulders to breasts, breasts to hipbones, hipbones to thighs. But as he keeps on, Saya's skin begins to buzz, the elusiveness a strange thrill. More thrilling is being held this way—safe, steady, still—in his arms and against his body.
By degrees, the high-strung static inside her subsides, only to rebuild in a different way. She gasps when he finally cups her breasts in both hands. He squeezes them hard. Catches the nipples in his fingers, tugging until her breaths come on shocky cries. The necklace with Diva's rock trembles against her ribs. He doesn't remove it. He admires the cool chain between cooler fingertips. Strokes down her trembling belly the same way, his palm-span covering the better part. Caressing her legs, kneading the long muscles, before his hand curls between her widespread thighs.
A cool fingertip dabbles in her moisture, then slips gently in. Saya mewls, her hips a wanton twist.
"Ha-Haji—"
"Not yet."
"Mm?"
Her hair stirs where he burrows his cool nose into it, to drop kisses against her ear, along her neck. "Tell me. Who has control?'
"Wh-What?" The word flickers in the expanding darkness of her mind. "You do."
"Do I?"
His lips are a cool flutter on her cheek. The pad of his thumb is cool too, tracing through the wet curls at her mons, giving her clitoris a soft flicking that makes her ripple. It is too much: she tries to cancel the sensation out. To stay aware of everything she is doing, instead of dissolving into skin and strain and pure need.
Oh.
The understanding sparks inside her. Her eyes flutter open.
"I do. I have control."
"Yes." He enfolds himself around her. She feels the hot preternatural energy singing beneath his skin. "I want you to give it to me."
"What?" She rocks restlessly against him. "I-I don't—understand. I told you to take it."
"Taking and giving aren't the same, Saya."
Not the same?
She wants to ask what he means. But with the question mid-bloom on her lips, she understands. She is giving him the power to break her to pieces—giving, not letting him take it, because it will never be his—and he is showing her without words that he isn't insensible of the gift.
But he is also reminding her, because she can't differentiate, that submission isn't the same as surrender.
Surrender.
Is that what he wants from her?
"I—"
He catches both her hands in his. Gently squeezes her fingers, bringing them to the grand piano before her. Her fingers touch the keys with airy tinklings. He presses himself tighter against her, a gathering heat trapped between their bodies, his arms laid over hers, cool face alongside her burning one. Her whole body is simmering for him now; her heartbeat practically pulsates through the air.
"Haji—what're you doing—?"
"I want you to play for me."
"Wha—?"
"Your stalker, Tórir... he liked the Fantaisie Impromptu, did he not? Which means there is no accounting for taste." His voice seeps through her like black liqueur. "I've always found Chopin more palatable in your hands than mine."
"This isn't—the time for Chopin."
"I disagree." He licks her ear, before whispering, "Do you remember when I was a boy, and you'd teach me how to play the Fantaisie Impromptu on the piano?"
"Y-Yes..."
"And when I kept getting it wrong, you'd hit my knuckles with a wooden tawse. Remember that, too?"
"Mmm." A wild fear blooms. "Oh God. You're not—g-going to punish me, are you?" For some reason, the idea is both frightening and shamefully titillating.
"No." His voice is a low rasp in her ear. "I want you play the melody. From your memory."
"It's been ages. I can't—"
"You can. Trust your own control." His right hand, which had been clasping her wrist, now slides down her belly, between her thighs again. Two fingers circle her entrance before curling wetly, delicately inside, a soft inexorable pressure where he knows she feels it most. She jerks against him.
"Ah-ah—!"
He keeps stroking her. The lightest swirl of his fingertips, again and again, as if stirring wine in a chalice. The sensation twists through her in high-pitched jolts. Behind her, Haji stays motionless. Languid. He cups her jaw in his clawed hand. Turns it to gnaw hungrily at her pulsepoint.
"Play for me, Saya. Let me see how far you get."
"I—"
Is this a sexual fantasy? Or a revenge fantasy? Impossible to tell.
Whimpering, she tries to stop his tormenting hand. But Haji catches her wrist mid-air. He brings her hand back to the keys. A lonely tinkle rings out. Her heart pounds; she is sweaty, overheating. Past the point of arousal. If he strips off his clothes and takes her now, she will surely fly out of her skin.
But Haji keeps her still. His right hand carries on strumming, light, tantalizing, until she has to bite her lip not to sob.
"Please—"
"Ssh. Play for me, Saya. You were always as good at the piano as at the cello."
A cry escapes her. Beneath her knees, the rug is hard and scratchy. She can feel the flesh reddening. And behind her, Haji. Cool and still, his hand making slow seductions that leave her frantic. Reminding her that this need, wild and insatiable, is a fraction of what he'd endured all those decades. When she'd kept him at a distance, hurt and used him, refused his closeness as a friend or his attentions as a lover, he'd stayed because there was already nothing of him that wasn't hers.
That capitulation, terrifying and entire, that she cannot summon in return.
Because you're still afraid to know yourself.
Shakily, she poises her fingers over the keys. Wrists at level with the whites. Her thoughts race wildly. The Fantaisie Impromptu, never her favorite, was complicated even when she'd practiced daily. She is going to butcher it now. Her whole body is quivering from the cool fingers teasing between her thighs, the cool breadth of Haji behind her and his cool breath tickling her ear.
Clumsily, she begins. Stumbling through the opening tempo, the glittery notes swirling through the heavy air. One hand dancing through the single notes, the other caught in repetition. Simple time against compound.
Except it is torture to get the timing right. With every arpeggio, her breath hitches. Haji's fingers keep whispering slickly down below. He kisses her ear, gnaws at her neck. Not permitting her to break away. Not stroking fast enough to totally shatter her concentration, nor slow enough that she can fully retain it.
By some miracle, she trips through the eighteenth bar. The music, sweet and sparkling, fills the room. She can almost feel it sinking into her skin. Stirring past memories of the Zoo; recombining them with this torturous, delicious sensation now.
Chills rise on her arms. She hears herself making tiny moans that are drowned by the rich notes.
"Haji." Her head lolls on his shoulder. "Please."
"Ssh. Don't stop now, Saya."
It is an entreaty. Music is such an inextricable part of Haji's life. She feels like he is recombining it with his obsession for her. Fusing them into a single exalting leitmotif.
Gasping, she struggles into the twentieth bar. Her fingers are clumsy but sure. She no longer cares about her cramped knees or the scratchy rugs. All she feels is the warm ache of her arousal, Haji's cool body curved over hers, and the music cascading around them.
She is near the thirty-eighth bar when her concentration slips. Haji's hand seals tight between her thighs. Rubbing, rubbing, the exquisite friction driving her insane. Her fingers skid on the keys with a sharp cling-clang. Sobbing, she presses back against him.
"Oh—Oh God."
Haji catches her chin, turning her head. And suddenly they are kissing, lost in the heated conversation of mouths and tongues. The music ebbs, forgotten. Frantic, she rocks against his hand. Each sensation is a burst of color behind her tight-shut eyes. His stroking palm is a dull flash of orange. The caressing fingers are sparks of red and green. And the climax is bright hot pulses of white, black, white...
He withdraws his hand before she is finished. She nearly screams with frustration.
"Wait—please!"
Kissing her hard, Haji spills her back across the rugs. Their lips break; she pants feverishly into his mouth. She's never felt like this before. Melted into excruciating arousal, on the verge of crying, yet so deliriously free.
Haji gasps as she begins wrenching off his clothes—coat, shirt, belt, trousers. In the gloaming, his body is pure art, sharply-cut and smooth as glass, the scars like scrollwork. She drags him closer, her hands greedy and urging, thighs fanning open to align their groins just so.
"Now. Now."
When he enters her, her hips caught tight in the cradle of his hands, bright spots explode everywhere, too stark to be beautiful. She cries out. Then they are gone, and there is just Haji, his burning eyes on her, his gritted teeth and seething gasp as he fills her, heavy and possessive.
"Saya." She hears the jitter in his voice. Gratitude and awe. "Saya."
She exhales a sob. He's never taken her this way—so fully and fiercely. Yet it is everything she craves: the saw of their hot gasps and the pulsing fit of their bodies and her legs curling tight against his flanks. Her hips rock against his, once, twice, a burning stretch. It feels good, the way his hugs feel good, and his kisses, and the damp drag of his bare skin.
Good to make space in herself. Good to feel him.
Who has control?
It is not a revelation but a reminder.
When he begins, it isn't gentle. He takes her in a rhythm of deep savored strokes, each one resonating through her body, like he can't bear to withdraw too far. Gasping, she holds onto him. Her feet skim down his calves, hands splayed against the sweaty hollow of his lower-back. Letting him work her in this rolling downbeat, the pleasure gathering hotter and hotter until her mind sizzles at the edges.
Lovemaking, she's learning, has different variations. It can be like playing cello, or sparring, or dancing, or a dozen poetic clichés meant to hide from the tactile reality. This is new. The closest she can compare it to—and, god, it's so stupidly obvious—is having conversations with Haji. Learning the language between their bodies, a secret dialogue encoded through skin and pulse and heat. Yet more intense and intimate than any other flow of communication.
Talking to Haji always carries an effortless simplicity not possible with anyone else. Making love to him is the same.
She'd tell him that. But it is impossible for her to cohere the sensations into words. For once, her mind is emptied of anything except a monosyllabic fugue. Yes. Like that. Harder. So good.
She doesn't need to think. She finds relief in stirring her hips; agitated circles under his maddening weight. The smallest shift blossoms into gorgeous friction, makes her slick and tender and exquisitely sensitive. She hears her ragged little gasps dissolve into shaky sighs—and then, as Haji grunts and sinks in deeper—a single shocked cry, soprano darkening into contralto.
Her climax flutters unexpectedly through her, tremors brushing her skin like moth-wings, bringing relief but no respite. Her palms catch at his hips. He rocks in place, playing the pressures inside her body, nearly triggering another precipitous fall, yet stringing the tension in her groin to an unbearable high. She doesn't even realize her eyes have rolled back until he calls her name—raw and raspy-edged. The most haunting sound in the world.
When her eyes flutter open, he is watching her. A strange expression on his face—a wax and wane of undefinable emotion she sees everytime they make love.
Now, she recognizes it as surrender.
"Still with me?" he whispers.
"Ye-es." She is and she isn't. As if something in herself she'd never known before has broken wide open, and he is filling it. Not just inside her—everywhere—pouring himself into her. Sharing her skin. "Please. Don't stop."
"Sssh. I've got you."
It is a wavering sigh. Hitching in sync with hers as he increases the pace. A rapid rocking, deep, deep, deeper, until another spark unrolls itself up her body, igniting from the core of herself in slow-motion. Haji gasps, and she mews: louder, softer, a song that matches that movements of her body, an undulation of hips and belly that keeps building, and building, until—
"Oh!"
His mouth catches hers. It's not a kiss so much as a wet delving bite. She hears herself sobbing, words jerked out of her by desperation—oh, dieu, je t'en prie, je n'en peux plus—and yet her body is eel-slippery, on the exquisite tip of overflow, Haji's hitched growls echoing in her ears—oui, vous pouvez, encore une fois—and then it happens again, the climax rolling through her, a clenching, twisting tidal wave of over-sensitivity, the movements of her pelvis spasmodic as if trying to feed on him.
She wails, and it should be terrifying, but it is good. Hot and frantic and free, just another means to express this fizzing stretch of connection between them. And he is so close; she can see the blue map of veins across the sweep of his neck, where the skin is translucently-pale as rice paper. Her fangs itch to sink in. She finds herself sucking on his jaw, his throat, a mimicry of vampirism. Haji's face goes dreamy and as he tips his head back, lips parted, the sight pierces her with a possessiveness that is nearly feral.
Then she can't help herself anymore. The fangs break skin, blood surging up over her lips. Mindlessly, she swallows, and the more she swallows the more she needs, like water, like air, like—
"Saya."
Haji's clawed hand cups her skull. Thumb stroking her cheekbone: beneficence, begging. The seal of her mouth breaks from his neck. Blood drips between them, and they are kissing, close, hot, coppery. She wants to apologize for hurting him. But his mouth opens hungrily against her, expelling growls that are the opposite of pain. His rhythm is intensifying—ruthless, rutting pulses of hips that he's never dared before. Yet each one catches inside her just right, shivering spasms from head to toe, so her breaths dissolve into incoherent Oh Oh Ohs—
The fourth orgasm nearly shakes her apart. Sweat-soaked, heat-soaked, blood-soaked.
She doesn't care. There is power in taking him so deep. In tearing into him again, hard and insatiable, with her teeth. In letting her fingers skitter across his arms, sinking into the brachial veins rising down his biceps, until moon-slices of red stamp against his skin and rim her fingernails. Haji's hiss is one of laconic approval. His whole body has become a knotted frieze against hers, muscles quaking and movements intensifying, torturous, relentless, rapturous—but with a restraint that signals his effort to prolong this exquisite punishing ride.
Trembling, Saya rolls her hips, squeezes with her thighs. There is an entire universe of pent-up tension in her, rising and falling, expanding and contracting, faster and faster. Her eyes are squeezed shut and her mouth is open against Haji's, hoarse cries cutting through her ears with an unmusical jangle, two animals caught in a trap.
Until it happens.
A helpless rushing convulsion, all the world dropping away so there is no sound left but her own cries escalating into a scream. The echo bursts from her tripwired heart, its beats filling a space in which nothing moves. Nothing matters.
A nucleus of pure emptiness.
And blossoming from the emptiness, the rough scrape of Haji's groan. Drawn from his body, which rapidly coheres from a scattershot of separate sensations: the fullness of him buried impossibly deep; the sporadic shudders across his frame; the unusual mottling of pink across his throat and face.
Then he dissolves on her, inside her. Still closed in heavy, face buried in her hair. She can feel the juddery beats of his heart through his skin, racing at the same tempo as hers. Their gasps, filling the darkness, are a discourse on exhausted serenity.
"Oh." Spots of delirium dance before her eyes. She lets them slip shut. "Oh God."
For a long moment they stay close: sweat-sticky and feverish. Against her forehead, Haji's throat works as he swallows. Straightening on shaky elbows, he is a pale strange moon hanging over Saya's world. A gravitational force luring the tides of her body, her blood, but always tangible.
Hers.
"Are you all right?" he rasps.
"Mmmm. You?"
A kiss, slow and worshipful. She lets her sensorium close to nothing but that hot touch, and the hot shape of him in her arms. The edges of Diva's rock dig bitingly between them.
"That was..." A jitter overrides her words. "Guh."
"'Guh'?"
"Can't—do sentences." She smiles, still breathing in ragged wonderment. "Too dead."
"Or alive."
"Tell my legs that. I'm—not sure they work anymore."
Haji smiles. In the semi-dark of the room, hair in disarray and dribbles of blood on his neck, he looks both debauched and dreamy. A masterpiece in chiaroscuro.
Sighing, he rolls off her by degrees. Gathers her in the padlocked curve of his arm, the other sliding down her body, palm nestling between her thighs. Saya shivers, her body welted with rug burns. Shivers again when he kisses her, warm like a mouthful of Syrah in winter. There is a surreal comfort in being held this way: sexual, yet beyond sex. A flutter in her chest—happiness or its opposite?—leaves her enormously shaken.
Then she crumbles into tears.
Haji tenses, "Saya, what's wrong?"
"N-Nothing."
"Sssh. What is it? Did I hurt you?"
"No, I just—" Mortified, she swipes at her face. God, why does this keep happening? "I'm okay. I promise."
"What's the matter?" His eyes hold that familiar glint of alarm. "Was it too much?"
"Sssh. It was perfect." Perfect—and terrifying. No limits. No regrets. No threat that the pleasure would leave her mad, unstable, monstrous. She is still whole.
Her smile, reassuring, wobbles. "I'm—surprised. You've been holding out on me."
"Me?" His cooling lips touch her temple. "You."
"What?"
He is soft-eyed, stunned. "I have never seen you that way. So absorbed. So wild. You lost yourself in it."
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of. Losing myself. What if I—"
"Ssh." He kisses the pulse at her hairline, the dampness of her cheeks. "One lapse is not a regression. Least of all here."
"A lapse can become a habit."
"I hope so." There is adoration in every lineament of his face. "I would not want to forgo that again. Not give you that again."
"Haji..."
"Saya, if you lose control, it will not be here. Pleasure is not degeneration. And control is not existence. You know the difference."
"You say that now—"
"Because I have faith in you." His words thrum through her, a string of pure love. "I hope, someday, you will allow the same for yourself."
She bites her lip. It is overwhelming sometimes, his patience with her. His matter-of-fact acceptance. Every time she thinks she's grasped the extent of it, it opens up to whole new seascapes of devotion.
It is so much more than she deserves.
Tipping her head up, she kisses him again. There is still blood in their mouths, coppery-warm. It reminds her of an old Russian wedding tradition. How the bride and groom kiss after a toast of vodka, to symbolize the shared sweetness of their future.
Or shared suffering?
"I'm sorry, Haji."
"For what?"
"Back there. I-I didn't mean to bite you."
"Ssh. It has already healed."
"Yes. But—" Thinking of the war, the ordeal he'd suffered, during battles and at her hands, shame stirs. "Tearing into your throat... it shouldn't be a part of what we do together. I've hurt you enough."
"Please let me be the judge of that."
"But what if—"
He traces the shape of her mouth with his fingertips. They come away red-smeared. Without taking his eyes from hers, he lifts them to his lips. The quiet intimacy of the gesture shocks her past anything they've just shared.
"It needn't happen again," Haji whispers. "Not unless you wish it. But if it does... It can be whatever we want it to be."
Whatever we want.
It carries the same resonance as Relationship.
Saya bites her lip around a smile. Her eyes burn; she wants so badly to tell him she loves him. Just blurt it out. Except it's like in a dream where the words are formless, spelled out in a language you cannot speak. She doesn't trust her own fluency, or have enough confidence to make it up as she goes along.
The words that do tumble off her tongue are ghosts of what she truly feels.
"Kiss me again?"
He obeys. A kiss that isn't like snowfall or Syrah, but scorching droughts and thirst. Her whole body throbs achingly: lips and skin and between her thighs. She doesn't care. She wants total contact, the echo of want still resonating through her, his weight a silky blanket, tinged now with welcome coolness.
The kisses he gives her are the same. A cool reverb of sensation, so it feels like the possibility of another time, another her, are just on the tip of her tongue. Like they'll come back to her any minute.
A becoming into the girl she could've been, if the war hadn't broken her to pieces.
"Saya?" Haji's rasp makes her nerves flare. Licks of fire leaping up her spine. "Are you—?"
"Mnm?"
"Are you in the mood for butchering more Chopin?"
Saya can't answer. The tears have cleared, yet something is bubbling from her depths again. Leaping and spangling like music into the air, the Fantaisie Impromptu in reverse.
Laughter.
Jokes aside, the Fantaisie Impromptu is nothing short of a melodious torture box. I'll stick with baby tunes like Scarborough Fair 8'|
Hope you guys enjoyed! Review, pretty please! :3