A/N: A few good snow days, that's all I need... This has been a snow day story from the beginning, so perhaps it's not remarkable that snow days are when I do my best writing on it. I apologize for the delays with these past chapters. Although this has been the planned direction of the story from the beginning, I'm a bit out of my depth when it comes to writing this stuff. Thanks for sticking with me and this story.
Ryou. The voice was Tea's, but not the indistinct, ragged one that drifted through the walls of fog. It reverberated inside of him, filling him with sensations almost too powerful to name. She was calling to him. He didn't know how he knew it, but he knew, bone-deep.
The pulses of pleasure had slowed, but he almost didn't notice, because the feeling of her was so strong. Not the warmth of her flesh, or the scent of her perfume, or the lush curves of her body, but her. The kindness, the joy, the inexhaustible hope that welled up from her very soul. Tea. He loved her. He had known that for such a long time, but the truth of it rushed over him all at once. He loved the way her blue eyes sparkled with excitement or flamed with passion. He loved the way she tossed her head back and forth when she laughed. He loved the way she chewed her lip when she was concentrating. He loved the way her hips swayed when she walked. He loved the intrinsic grace that flowed through her every movement. Her loved her gentleness, the way her eyes got so soft and round, the way she would reach out a hand so naturally, as if without thinking, to offer comfort whenever it was needed.
He couldn't imagine not getting to see another of those melting smiles, never again feeling the gentle touch of her hand. It didn't matter if that hand was stretched out in friendship or in romance. Just to be with her was enough.
The sense of her was overwhelming. It called to him, tugging at his core like a lodestone to iron. He didn't resist. Warmth enveloped him as the mist melted away. Tea's crystal blue eyes stared up at him, blinking. "Ryou?" Her brow crinkled. "Is that…you?" The hopeful note in her voice made his heart leap.
"Yes," he managed to get out before his throat closed tight around the word. Tea was splayed out in front of him, completely bare, her creamy skin stained pink with passion. Her chest heaved with uneven breaths, taut breasts straining towards him. He stared at her, every thought in his head drained completely away.
Tea was not so incapacitated. She pushed herself part of the way up on the old sofa, lean muscles rippling beneath her smooth skin. 'How are you here?" she asked, reaching out and taking his arm. "Did the Spirit just…let you go?"
It took more than a few seconds for her words to sink in and a few more for him to try to formulate an answer. "…I…don't know. There was this…mist…" He couldn't possibly explain it. It was like trying to describe a dream. Things that had seemed perfectly naturally sounded absurd once voiced, and images which had terrified seemed only laughable once shared. Maybe a poet could have explained that space, that place between realities, and what it had been to escape it, but he couldn't. He didn't understand it enough himself. "I thought of you," he said softly. The rest of it didn't matter, not really, but that did.
Her fingers caressed his arm. "I was thinking of you, too."
Heat surged through him at the memory of what he had heard and glimpsed through the veil of mist. His body tensed, and his mouth went dry. "You were?" The words came out as more of squeak than he had intended. Was she implying even a fraction of what he thought she might be? He tried to hold her gaze, but her eyes slipped away from his and landed on the floor. Pink glazed her cheeks.
"Tea." Wanting surged through him so powerful he thought it might knock him clean off his feet. He reached out and cupped her cheek, tenderly lifting her gaze to his. Something in her look smote him to the core. Suddenly, the burning flame of his own desires seemed pale and wan in the light of what she was feeling. He swallowed. "Are you all right?"
She look up sharply, seemingly caught off-guard by the question. For a second, something suspiciously like tears beaded in her eyes. Then, she blinked, and they were gone, although her eyes were still too-bright in the grey dawn and sputtering candlelight. "I'm fine," she whispered. Ryou didn't believe her was about to say so when she squeezed his forearm, pulling him down towards her. He knelt beside the sofa, and she curled against his chest. "I don't want to talk about…It's better just to…not…" Her eyes gleamed with moisture again, and she pulled her head away. She gazed up at the ceiling, where the window threw pale slats of light over the chipping brown paint.
Ryou said nothing. He stayed where he was, his arms wrapped around her body. She didn't pull away, if anything she moved closer against him, as she stared into the distance. She didn't cry, although after a second or two, she swiped at her eyes. Then, without preamble, she pushed herself partially up off the couch.
Her chocolate-brown hair hung over her face, disheveled. She tossed it back over her shoulder. "I don't want to cry," she announced, a curiously defiant note in her husky voice. She settled back on her on her heels, knees slightly spread. Ryou didn't dare read her pose, provocative as it was, as an invitation, until he caught the look she threw him. Blood roared through his brain, then rushed downward.
He gulped. "Tea?" His pulse was hammering, but he fought to keep his voice level and his mind clear. He was in deep, deep waters now, and he wasn't at all sure he knew how to swim. He didn't know what Tea had experienced while he had been "elsewhere," what she had felt, what she had felt. She didn't have to tell him, not now, not ever, not unless she wanted to. He wasn't certain he wanted to know. He just knew he didn't want there to be any more barriers between them. His chest ached with the intensity of what he felt for the girl in his arms. He wasn't good with words, not the way he'd like to be. Could he ever bring himself to tell her everything she meant to him, how much he would sacrifice just to make her smile? He didn't know. He'd have to show her, then. His body had some definite ideas on how to get on with that. His hands clenched into fists. A lifetime of telling himself no had taught him restraint, and he needed every piece of it in this instant. No matter what had passed between them before the Spirit had interfered, he couldn't expect Tea…after everything that had happened… no matter what he wanted, or how desperately he wanted it.
But if he was going to stick to that, he was really going to need her to put some clothes on.
She moved towards him, candlelight flickering over her soft skin in infinite shades of pink and ivory. She reached out to touch him, and he flinched away from her fingertips. "…You don't have to…"
"Ryou,"she interrupted. "I've been through an awful lot today." He nodded. That was an understatement. For both of them. "Do you know what I want now?" He bit his lips, and then shook his head. "I want to make some memories now, some really good, really right memories." There was a slight catch in her voice, but she shook it away as she continued, "I want you." Her lips curved, and the tightness in his chest eased. After all the hell they had been through, didn't they deserve just a little taste of heaven?
Their lips met with a blazing urgency. There was no deadline to meet, no clock to outrace, but the desperate passion that seared between them drove them on just as relentlessly as if they both had only seconds more to live. There was no clothing to rip off, no preliminaries to dispense with. There was only them, bare skin and smoldering touch, and no more shyness to drive them apart. Ryou's fingers skimmed over the ripe curve of her breasts, drinking in her moan as his mouth slanted deeper over hers. The fumbling awkwardness he had felt before was gone. His body was setting the pace now, instinct driving him unerringly onward. It was if his body knew hers already, the way his fingers slid in just the right places, the way he gripped her with just the right amount of pressure.
Tea felt it too. Ryou's caress was nothing like the Spirit's, yet she felt her body responding with familiarity to his touch. She let out moan after moan without inhibition or shame as Ryou drew pleasure from her aching breasts. Her fingers dug frantically in his scalp, desperate to keep him close. She had to have more. She pulled him down on the sofa, wrapping her legs around his thighs. There was no hesitation from Ryou. He pressed a kiss to her forehead as he slid a hand between them, positioning them both. Then he was inside of her, and there was no pain, no humiliation, just pleasure. The gentleness that was intrinsic to his very nature was still there, but it was wrapped around a passion as fierce and as she could have possibly dreamed.
Pleasure shuddered through her core as he moved against her, rhythm slow at first, and then building inexorably. Tea gasped as he plunged himself deeper into her. He stilled, "Are you al—
She didn't let him finish. "Don't stop," she ordered, grinding her hips against his. "Don't you dare stop."
Her fingernails scrabbled for purchase on Ryou's back as he complied with her demands. Faster. Harder. Deeper. The words spilled from her in heated moans. She didn't know whether or not they were coherent; she barely knew she was saying them at all. Still, Ryou obeyed each one, his breath hot against her skin as he buried himself in her again and again. Tea trembled, hovering on the brink of something she could not find words for. Her breath came in pants. Sweat beaded on Ryou's back, slippery on her fingertips. She dug her nails into his skin as she tensed around him. Ryou convulsed, groaning something incoherent, and then—and then…
All at once, she went rigid. Panic gripped her like a steel vise. She knew even before their eyes met what she would see. Who she would see. . "Y-you!" she choked through frozen lungs.
His eyes gleamed, like a shuttered window had been flung open, revealing the ruddy light within. Liquid fire spiked through her core. His hand clamped on her hip as he quickened the hissed in pain as his fingers dug into her flesh. "Me," he agreed, lips curling in a feral grin.
