(A/N: Hey look! Romance! :D
Btw they totally banged after Solomon's Mines. If you glance back at Ch 1, aka the namesake of this entire fic, the post-Solomon's Mines is pretty much what it's alluding to.
But yeah this one isn't about that steamier encounter. It's about the morning after, in a way.
Cheers mates!)
First Kiss
Dante remembered the first time Zhalia kissed him. How could he forget?
It was after Solomon's Mines. The Foundation's combined safehouse and clinic in town was only big enough to hold two in the safehouse rooms and four in the medical area. As the medical area was reserved for sick and wounded only, and Sophie and Cherit refused to leave Lok, everyone else had agreed to room in a hotel until they could leave.
Instead of going in to her own room, Zhalia had quietly followed Dante to his. She had been tense ever since they had gotten back to the city, more snappy and jumpy than usual. But instead of leaving with a gruff explanation of 'taking a walk,' she had stuck close to Dante's side.
To be honest, he was relieved when she slipped into his room after him. They both needed this. They both needed each other.
They had kissed plenty of times that night. But Dante didn't truly count any of them as being their first.
No, their first real kiss came the morning after.
Dante had lain in bed with his eyes closed, refusing to open them for fear that the pillow beside him would be empty and the sheets cold. He had never needed a woman like this before. He had never felt so deeply and utterly fallen, so head over heels with not just a woman's body and mind but he swore he had begun to love Zhalia's broken soul.
He loved her sharp wit and dark humor, her vicious combat forms and particular bond with her Titans. He thought he had everything in life figured out until she appeared in his world, and now she had finally shown him a bit of hers through the heated actions the night before.
And though they had reached a new level of intimacy the previous night…Dante was convinced that somehow, he had scared her away. That Zhalia would curl back in on herself and put up her old barriers, that she wasn't ready to truly love the man she had set out to kill all those months ago.
And then, as he lay in the quiet of the early morning with his childlike anxieties swelling to the surface…he felt a body nuzzle closer to his, a slim hand ghosting over his chest.
He opened his eyes and there she was. Zhalia was still there, soft sheets pooled around her waist, and seemed just as marveling at the previous night as he.
They didn't say anything. They didn't have to. They just smiled.
It wasn't long afterwards that Dante and Zhalia were both dressed and ready to check on Lok so they could plan the next stage of their ongoing mission. Dante already had his hand on the doorknob when, in almost coy shyness, Zhalia tugged on the sleeve of his coat.
When he turned to her, eyebrow raised in silent question, she rose on her toes and kissed him full on the lips. Her hands tangled in his hair as his arms wrapped around her, and if he didn't have the wall at his back to support him Dante would have melted into her touch like an inexperienced schoolboy.
All his fears fled.
She was his. And he was hers.
That was their first kiss.
(A/N: Judging by the adorably nervous look on Dante's face before the almost kiss in episode 20, Zhalia wasn't the only one with butterflies about their relationship. And honestly I kinda love nervous!Dante. In the canon he does seem a bit more in touch with his feelings, which is sooooo refreshing.)
