Happy Tuesday, everyone! :)
I'm posting this chapter early, as my week promises to be a busy one. Picking up directly after the fall-out in the last chapter, with Srs Convos (and smut!) being shared between our heroes.
CW: For menstrual blood, and blood-play in general. If that's one of your particular squicks, but you still want to keep up with the plot, you can stop reading after the line, "They sink together into the water, as if into a warm blanket."
Hope y'all enjoy! Also: real talk. I'm curious to know which smut scene was your favorite, since writing sex scenes is one of those areas where improvement through feedback is always a plus. (Kinda like sex itself, tbh... :D)
Review, pretty please!
Itokazu Hospital
1 Chome-28-1 Tomari
Naha-shi
Kai finds Dee in the waiting room.
The hospital is the same one where Adam was admitted. The white-walled corridors are bare, the scents at once antiseptic and stuffy. Dee stands in a red cone of light near the emergency exit. Her face is broken into misshapen squares by the mesh-window at the door. No tears, but her eyes are bleary.
"Dee!"
She rouses at the sight of him. "…You okay?"
"Am I okay?" Kai catches her by the shoulders. "I should be asking you! What the hell happened?"
He'd gotten her message fifty minutes ago. Per the plan, he, Lewis, the twins, their Chevaliers, Saya and Haji had exited Chatan. There were police everywhere; Jordan's body, along with the corpses of their attackers, had been impounded. The newsfeed was full of reports of terrorism. Witness accounts at the boardwalk were fragmented, but it was better to play it safe. The group had split up to avoid detection, agreeing to convene later at Omoro. The twins and their Chevaliers had taken off on foot, and Saya and Haji had ghosted off across the rooftops, leaving Lewis to catch a taxi while Kai hightailed it on his motorcycle.
Halfway, Kai got a message from Dee. An address, followed by a set of symbols. 'X'. '**'. '#'. '^^^'.
It was a warning that something had happened. Something terrible. He'd set a land-speed record racing to the hospital. The rest of the family were already on their way.
"It's Mom and Ezra," Dee says. "They were held hostage at the Naha lab. An old Red Shield agent—Collins?—showed up to take the vial. Things got ugly."
"Are they okay?"
She bites her lip. "Mom has a mild concussion. But Ezra's in bad shape. He was shot twice. A bullet to the thigh, and a punctured lung. They're having trouble stabilizing him."
Kai's fingers tighten on Dee's shoulders. "Shit."
"Dad's inside with Mom. The old man's being stoic, but he's pretty shaken up." She exhales, in that familiar jittery way that signals she's trying not to buckle under the strain herself. "What about you? I heard the op in Chatan went tits-up."
Kai's jaw clenches. "The Chevalier launched an attack. A ten-man hit-team. Lewis' contact was killed in the crossfire."
"Any casualties at our end?"
"Everyone's safe. They're on their way here." Gentler, "How're you holding up?"
Her lips press together, chin dimpling. "Fine."
"Uh-huh."
"I was. Until—"
"What?"
She glares at his hands on her shoulders. Kai lifts them away, holding them up as if at gunpoint.
"Well," he drawls, "I could offer one of my famous bearhugs. But you might respond with one of your more famous right-hooks."
That earns him a right-hook anyway. He catches it, a battlefield reflex. "Still too slow."
Dee scowls, a smile hidden on the inside. "You're not helping."
"How about now?"
He draws her closer to kiss her, softly, on the lips. Dee shivers out a sigh.
"Nope," she whispers. "Not helping at all."
Then her arms pass around him, squeezing tight. He feels the tension inside her relax a notch.
Quieter, she asks, "How'd this happen? First the firefight at Chatan, then the mess at the lab. It can't be a coincidence."
"It's not."
"Huh?"
Kai's eyes narrow. "Lewis' contact. He said the firefight was a diversion. He was there to lure us away, so the enemy went after the toxin."
Dee processes this with alarm. "How'd they know it was at the lab?"
"They tracked Ezra's communications."
Julia emerges at the doorway. She is gray-faced and disheveled, a pinkened swathe of gauze at her forehead. David is beside her, carefully cupping her elbow. His features, tightly-controlled, are nonetheless livid. Kai can't remember the last time he's seen the old man in such an icy paroxysm of rage.
But he understands. It isn't just the senseless attack on his wife and son. It's the teeth-grinding fury of not having been there to rescue them. As of yet, the fury is hidden. But Kai recognizes that it will keep dripping through David's veins until the full extent unleashes itself.
Kai pities Collins—or anyone else at the business-end of David's gun—when it happens.
"Mom!" Dee steps forward. "Why're you out of bed? The doctors said—"
Julia shakes her head. "I need to see Saya."
"Saya?"
"Ezra was… corresponding with her via an unsecured line." She sighs. "I don't think he meant any harm. But his messages let IBM-UAWA track our movements. It's how they learnt of the vial—and where it was being kept."
Dee facepalms. "That bonehead."
"Deidra, please—"
"Well, QED!" Her eyes flash, not with anger but dismay. "Thanks to his dumb ass, IBM-UAWA have a toxin that could kill Otonashi and the twins!"
"Unless we strike first."
The four of them spin around.
Saya and Haji have arrived, tailed by Lewis, the twins, and their Chevaliers. Saya has her phone out. She holds it at an arm's length, as if it is radioactive.
"I received a message," she says. "After the attack in Chatan."
"A message?" Kai asks. "From who?"
"The number's private," Lewis says. "I ran a trace. The closest we could figure out was someplace near Uruma."
"Near Yabuchi Island." A strand of hair has fallen between Saya's eyes, which darken as if with stormclouds. "It's where the victim, Akamine Haru, was found."
David considers this. "You think the message is from a representative of IBM-UAWA?"
Saya passes her phone to David. "Or from Tórir himself."
David squints at the screen. His expression goes from wary to deeply bewildered.
"What is it?" Kai asks.
"I want a trouble-maker for a lover," David reads. "Blood spiller, blood drinker, a heart of flame, who quarrels with the sky and fights with fate, who burns like fire on the rushing sea. Below is a postscript that says: There need be no blood spilled if you do not fight your fate. Come see me at our little trove of monsters. Come alone."
Kai frowns. "That's hella creepy."
David hands Saya back her phone. "What makes you so sure it's that Chevalier?"
Saya toys with her engagement ring. The peridot glitters redly in the hospital lights. "The poem. It's by Rumi. Tórir—he recited it to me, the last time we met."
Yumi cocks an eyebrow. "He recited poetry to you?"
"No wonder she wants to kill him," V mutters.
David doesn't share the humor. "What does he mean by 'Our little trove of monsters'? Where is that?"
Saya shakes her head. "I'm not sure. Maybe Yabuchi Island. If I go there—"
"No way in hell!" Dee cuts in. "I'm contacting August. We need troops brought in. Whatever's happening at Yabuchi needs to be shut down. Pronto."
"Jordan called it a petri dish," Lewis recalls. "There's obviously experiments happening there."
David's brow furrows. "Debrief me on everything your contact told you." To Saya: "I agree with Dee. We need manpower. With the toxin in Tórir's hands, you and the twins should have someone watching you round the clock. "
Yumi wrinkles her nose. "You mean, like, bodyguards?"
"You're aware of the toxin's effects," David says. "Neither yourselves nor your Chevaliers would be a match for it."
Yuri lays a palm across her belly, a nervous impulse. "So, what? We're retreating?"
"Until we have a suitable plan."
Kai expects Saya to argue. Instead, she nods. Her face bears a strange, disconnected expression. Her fingers keep twisting around her engagement ring, a self-protective gesture that mimics the way Yuri touches her baby-bump.
"Yo, Saya," Kai prods. "You good?"
She blinks, and the blankness fades from her eyes.
"Yeah," she says. "I'm fine."
Kai doesn't buy it. Nor, he can tell, does Haji.
The Chevalier regards Saya circumspectly: the bone-tired slump of her shoulders, the big eyes full of shadows. She reminds Kai of someone feeling her way around in the dark, with a headful of sharp-edged plans. He wants to ask what's up. But he has Yumi and Yuri to worry about, and Dee. His hands are—literally and metaphorically—full.
Then Haji says, in the quiet voice of foresight, "Even with the troops, we should stay vigilant. Tórir may have infiltrated Red Shield in other ways."
Lewis nods grimly, "If they've breached Ezra's data, they could use it as a breadcrumb trail to access our main servers."
"I'll talk to August," David says. "HQ should multilayer their security—on and offline."
"I'll get the soldiers ready." Dee squares her shoulders, distress burying itself beneath layers of operational resolve. "We should start placing security at the right outposts."
"I'll stay here with Julia and Ezra," Kai offers. "Keep watch in case there's any trouble."
Dee half-smiles, and a glint of something—shock? gratitude?—passes David's eyes. Then he nods curtly and glances away. Since Kai and Dee announced their relationship, interactions are no longer at a point of outright hostility between him and the old man. But this is the first time in months that David has looked Kai straight in the eye without wavering.
"Thank you," he mutters, and it both is and isn't the right response for the moment. Kai understands.
Beside him, the twins exchange meaningful glances of their own, and nod.
"We'll lie low too, I guess." Yumi twines her arm with Yuri's. "It's for the best. This lady's ready to pop any day now."
Yuri doesn't quite smile, but her eyes are darkly-blue and reflective. She cradles her belly with a quiet sense of urgency. Kai wonders what effect the toxin might have on her children—and tries to unthink it. Something savage constricts inside him, a long-held impulse fighting to break free.
I've lost Dad and Riku.
I can't lose Yumi and Yuri.
Saya's gaze is on the twins too. It slews over Yuri's belly, dark in rings of red. Her expression hardens, an echo of Kai's own pledge.
Then Julia murmurs, "Oh."
The others swivel to stare at her.
"What's wrong?" David asks.
"I-I just—"
David maneuvers Julia toward the rooms. "You should lie back down."
"It's not that." Her eyes dart to Saya. "The toxin. Collins didn't take all of it."
Saya stares. "What do you mean?"
"I'd halved the vial's contents, before he arrived. Ezra and I were planning to do a full analysis."
Yumi and Yuri exchange glances. "So there's still some leftovers?" Yumi asks.
Julia manages a wavering nod. "Enough to figure out how it works. Or find an antidote."
"Not just that," says Saya.
Her voice cuts through the space, an edge of raw steel. Before, her face had been strange, but now it is a stranger's. The same features that otherwise hold such irresistible innocence belong to someone much older. Someone with hands drenched in blood.
"Keep an iota in reserve," she tells Julia. "Give the rest to me."
Kai frowns. "For what?"
"For its original purpose." Her eyes darken. "To kill Tórir."
Naminoue Beach
1-25-11 Wakasa
Naha, Okinawa Prefecture
900-0037
At the villa, Saya fetches herself a blood bag. Places it in a mug, not bothering with the IV drip, and lets it heat in the microwave. Once it is done, she carries her drink to the bay window. Looks out at the glittering sweep of the sea, letting the waves crash against her eardrums, wash away the tension in her chest. The heat of the blood she sips is invigorating.
In the war, everything was such a struggle. It knotted itself deep inside her, becoming part of who she was.
She can still feel it inside. Worry for the twins, for Kai, for Haji, for Ezra, for everyone touched by her orbit. But beneath that is a different energy.
Not bottled-up, but rising.
In the bathroom, she undresses. A thumbprint of red stains her panties. She rinses them in the sink. Her yearly bleeding—estrus, as Julia calls it—is untroubling. She'd dealt with it during the war, too. The cramps and headaches never slowed her down.
Yet she wonders, as the water runs, why the sight of it feels like a crime-scene.
Downstairs, the alarm signal beeps. She senses Haji come in before she hears him—that familiar thrum of sweetness down her spine. Stares down at the draining water, pink with blood, and thinks:
Oh.
The temptation is small. But the fact that it blossoms at all is troubling.
"Use the føða vial." Nathan's suggestion twists, foxlike, inside her. "Now is the only time."
On reflex, Saya goes to the medicine cabinet. The vial sits alongside a bottle of aspirin, as if it is just as commonplace a cure. She lifts it out. The lights strike the liquid inside, a shimmery violet haze.
Use it.
Unless you prefer that viper's spawn in your belly.
Saya grits her teeth.
Damn Nathan for planting ideas in her head—or, if she admits the awful reality, merely loosening them. Before this, she and Haji had anticipated their second chance at children with joy. Now it's too crazy to even consider. Daughters—even if they delay her Long Sleep—are the last things she needs.
Too much is brewing at the horizon.
In the mirror, her eyes narrow. Resolve feeds motion: she fetches out a pair of scissors. They glint dully in her hands, sparking a long-ago memory. The Zoo, after the Bordeaux Sunday, where she had resolved with ferocity to be the opposite of Diva. To snatch at the unspooling control in her life, and all but embody it herself.
Then, as now, her hair hangs shiny around her shoulders, a crowning glory, a frivolous vanity. During the war, Saya had stopped aspiring to beauty. Why should it be any different now?
And yet, working her hair into a braid, there is a pang. Sense-memory of Haji's cool fingers buried in her hair, tangling and untangling.
"Spoil your best feature?" He kisses the locks wrapped in his palm. "I would not dare."
But she will.
Hair grows back. If they survive this latest disaster... when they do... there will be nothing to spoil their future happiness.
Grabbing the braid, she yanks it forward, like a serpent she has to decapitate or else be poisoned by. The scissors flicker brightly in the mirror. Snip. Snip. Snip. The sound is crisp and satisfying, wisps of hair fluttering in the sink. She looks inside herself for the faintest trace of doubt, but instead finds something darker.
A gust of farewell.
The braid drops heavily into the wastebin. Her fingers trace the chopped-off hair at the nape of her neck. A few tufts are prickly against her palm, others a silky whisper as they curl around her fingers.
She stares at her reflection in the mirror. Greeting her isn't the old Saya, the fighter, but someone else. Someone resurfacing not like the dead and buried, but an animal stirred from winter sleep. A creature built for wild living, creeping in silence, melting in darkness.
Forever at war.
A knock on the door startles her.
"Saya?" Haji's voice is calm. But she hears the wariness in it, because she knows what to listen for. "Are you all right?"
"Y-Yeah. Hold on."
She tosses her underwear in the laundry basket—out, damned spot! The vial sits awkwardly on the counter. Saya starts to return it to the cabinet, then wavers.
My only chance.
The seal uncorks with a plosive pop, like champagne. She gulps it down like something quite the opposite. It is cool and bitter-tasting, tingling as it passes her tongue. Dragging on a robe, she takes a breath before letting Haji in.
Her Chevalier doesn't regard her changed appearance with a frown. That isn't his way. But he doesn't say anything for a long moment, and she feels his thoughts ticking over.
There is an edge of déjà vu there, too. The day at the Zoo, when he'd walked in on her, surrounded by the dark mess of lopped-off hair, her eyes glinting feverishly. I'm not Diva. I never want to be Diva.
This isn't like that, Saya knows. It's more about reminding herself: I'm not Diva.
But I have to stop denying that I'm Saya.
Quietly, Haji says, "Was it a bother?"
He means her hair. Yet the words carry a complex structure, seeded with a hundred different meanings.
Lip bit, Saya nods. Haji's gaze skims her slowly, not missing a single nuance, the way it has never missed a single deflection or white-lie in her life, from the jittery-edged I'm fines, to the plate of noodles left unfinished at dinner, to the tiny indrawn gasp at an old wound, to the furtive tears she sheds in the shower.
He seems, not distressed, but somber as he marks the moment. Saya is not relapsing. She has simply stopped trying to be anyone else.
Without meeting his eyes, she says, "You don't like it?"
"I did not say that."
"You didn't have to. I know you've always liked me better with long hair."
"Saya. I would like you perfectly fine with none."
This makes her smile. "I'm not going that far. I just..."
"It is your choice, Saya. You need not justify it."
From anyone else, it would be a perfunctory remark. From Haji, it is a statement of fact.
Quietly, he plucks the scissors in her fingers. Guides her back to the mirror, where she stares again at her reflection, while Haji smooths out the uneven ends at her nape with a slow and deliberate care. She listens to the muted clicks of the scissors. Feels the cool pads of his fingers at her nape and around her ears.
Her Chevalier doesn't look at her. He is focused on the task at hand. The picture of his face, in its own frame of dark hair, seems at once insouciant and classic. Dark straight eyebrows in a smooth high forehead. Dark stubs of lashes on lowered eyes. All the smoky romanticism of a William Bouguereau painting, blended with the decadent splendor of a line-webbed Mughal artwork.
And when he tilts his head five degrees to the right, he becomes beautiful in the kind of way Saya recognizes the sea is beautiful, and the stars, and snowfall in the twilight.
Full of secrets she wants to know the names of.
"Done."
The clink of scissors on the porcelain sink shakes off her reverie.
She lifts a hand to trace the topography of her skull. The frayed ends of her hair are smoothed out, with a precision that only Haji seems capable of.
Shyly, she meets his eyes in the mirror. "Thank you."
He nods, almost formal. But the way he bows his head to kiss the back of her neck, just where the border of skin meets fine down, is anything but.
Shivering, Saya lets her eyes drift shut. Lets herself melt against him, his body a cool substantial loom of fabric and shadow. God—why hadn't she seen, back then, how simple it could be? Keeping herself apart, through self-denial, and fear, and vengeance, and finally pure perversity from—from just this.
From letting him hold her. Letting him love her.
Love is what kept her strong in the war. Helped her survive it.
She'd realized that so late, and nearly lost him.
Never again.
Without opening her eyes, she whispers, "Haji?"
"Hm?"
"Whatever happens later... I want you to know how grateful I am to you."
"Grateful?"
"I know I don't say it often. But I appreciate strong you've kept me. How safe."
"I plan to keep you safe yet awhile, Saya." It isn't Don't talk that way, but close. His arms pass around her. "For now, it's better if you rest."
"I don't think resting is on tonight's brochure."
"We can train, if you wish."
"Later."
"What would you prefer, then?"
Her eyes flutter open. She half-turns to regard him. His arms are still clasped around her, his eyes wistful, waiting, wondering. And she wishes she could give him something worthwhile to clutch at in the inevitable disaster that will follow.
Bashfully, she tugs his arm. "I want to take a bath. Come join me."
He nods, his face smoothed of expression, except for the pale fingers threading tightly through hers. Like her, she senses there is so much he wants to say, words a banked pressure in his chest, a gathering darkness in his eyes. But like her, he is too accustomed to silence, and to keeping the heart of himself hidden.
But, unlike her, he has a gift for saying it a different way.
With the cool curl of his fingers at her jaw, and the cool touch of his lips on hers. The kiss makes a familiar dizziness pluck at the edges of her consciousness. Clutching at fistfuls of his shirt, she goes up on tiptoe, and her mouth opens with a sighing tremor against his.
In ordinary circumstances, on her period, lovemaking would be out of the question.
Tonight's circumstances are far from ordinary.
The bathroom is designed in the typical Japanese style, the ofuroba separate from the sink and toilet. It is tiled in black onyx, in contrast to the dazzling white marble outside. The wide stone tub, lined in fragrant cedar, is meant for soaking, not bathing. There is a frosted-glass shower space alongside it, to wash up before getting into the tub—something Saya knows Haji appreciates. At the Zoo, he'd always told her that he didn't understand the appeal of soaking in tubs. It was like a soup of your own grime.
The tiles are cool beneath Saya's bare feet. But Haji's mouth, questing hers for kisses, burns like a hot sip of glögg. It is an effort to disentangle themselves and undress. A greater effort still, not to succumb to the temptations of bare skin before the steaming water.
Saya turns the showerhead on. The spray is first cold as a slap, then deliciously hot. For a moment, she stays there, luxuriating in the hot needles of water, the way they warm Haji's skin to the same temperature as hers. In the dark tiles and steamy air, their paired bodies are milk and honey—his skin so flawlessly pale it glows, tinged in pink only at the dip of the throat and the head of the penis, hers tawny and golden and striped in tan-lines across the arms and breasts and hips and thighs.
Haji reaches for the charcoal soap. Saya beats him to it.
"Let me," she breathes, an implicit bidding to take control. Take their time, while it is still theirs to take.
Her hands tremble as she lathers herself up, then rinses off. It is hard to ignore the possessive way Haji watches her. In the clouded air, his eyes glow like blue chips of phosphorus. But his hands remain at his sides—patient, quiescent.
Once it is his turn, he lets her touch him everywhere with soapy hands. Up his throat and around his ears. Along the pebbles of his spine, the wings of his shoulderblades, the slope of chest, then down to his thighs and feet. He even lets her, with hitching breaths, stroke him between the thighs, along that soft stripe of skin between his most vulnerable regions. Runnels of foam flow everywhere, swept away by the water.
She doesn't settle her attention where she knows he wants it most. A pity. He is curved so pale and achingly lovely up towards his belly. Proof of her power over his body, and over the circuitous river of his blood.
Yet it is more thrilling about to ghost her fingertips over him. Down and up and away. To drag him closer by the neck and take his ragged gasp into her mouth.
"Saya." He sounds so keyed up, ready to pop like a soap bubble. "Please do not tease me."
"And if I want to?"
"That would be cruel. But—"
"But what?"
The look in his eyes makes her shiver. "If that is your wish, I will not stop you."
She drops her gaze, embarrassed by her own flushing gratitude, and the way his obedience always licks at her imperious streak.
"I don't want to be cruel." Gently, she coaxes him to settle on the wooden bath stool. Puts her fingers in his damp hair, drawing it back from his face, a caress in the guise of soaking it under the spray. "I have been cruel to you. It wasn't on purpose, but that doesn't excuse it. I'm trying to do better."
"Saya—"
"Ssh. Stay still."
She kneels before him. Drops a kiss to his brow, warm and soft in the dripping water. With his wet hair plastered to his scalp, droplets clustered in his eyelashes, he looks so young. Nearly as young as when he'd first arrived at the Zoo—a child snatched away from his family, then thrust into a strange place where he was treated less as a person than merchandise.
She remembers the first and only time she had seen him cry. How she'd wondered, cradling him in her arms, what sort of life he must've led, to learn to bite back tears, to suffer without sound. How she'd promised, in her own fickle and foolish way, to make everything all right.
Instead, she'd drank his youth, his time, his freedom, like the vampire she was.
Her eyes burn. She blinks hard, and cups his face. Kisses him. Once, again, and says, "I meant what I said. That I'm grateful to you. You've been everything a person can be for someone else. My family. My friend. In the war, you were my touchstone as much as my sword. I can't imagine being with anyone else."
"Saya—"
"Sssh."
She can't focus anywhere except his eyes. So blue, so perfectly alive and untouched by the filth of their past. Gently, she kisses them shut. Feels the orbs beneath the cool eyelids, the flutter of lashes across her lips.
Quietly: "I'll tell you a secret. I hate the color blue. I always have—unless it's on you. Then it's the only color worth looking at." He tries to speak, but she stops his mouth with hers. Kisses him, and bites at the softness of his lower lip. Whispers, "I love your mouth. I love when it speaks to me. I love when it doesn't. I love that you know when I need a quiet word. And when I need to hear nothing at all."
Haji swallows with a click of Adam's apple. She isn't sure if it's from what she's saying, or the way her widespread hands travel down his body.
Her mouth takes its own path. Kissing his lips, the whorls of his ears, before nuzzling where his jaw melts into neck. She gnaws at the vein there, pale blue as a dying streak of electricity, and as hot. He lets off a shaky gasp.
"I love how I can touch you in places you'd snap anyone else's neck for trying to." She exhales a giggle. "It makes me feel like the rabbit on the moon. Being so close to what everyone else thinks is unreachable."
Her lips trace the curve of his throat, the tempting bowl above the collarbone. She bites there, too, and is rewarded with a harsher sound—not a gasp but a growling sibilation. When she draws back, his eyes are on her, a focus at once predatory and tender.
Shivering, she drops her gaze. Takes his Chiropteran claw in hers. She kisses the rough-scaled palm. Laps helplessly at the fingers, each one sharp as a broken edge of bone. A tremor passes through Haji; he tries to tug the hand away. She holds on fast, and goes on with her small caresses.
"I love this hand as much as your scars," she says. "It reminds me how terrible I can be. How my mistakes can't be undone. But it reminds me of other things too. How forgiving you are. How loyal." She kisses the row of knuckles, dark as bullets. "I never apologized for what I did to you in Vietnam, did I?"
The cool fingers of Haji's human hand touch her chin, tipping her head up. His expression is haunted with shared memory. "You were not yourself that night, Saya. As far as I am concerned, that absolves you of blame."
Her throat aches, tears boiling hotly. She wipes at them with the heel of her hand. The other threads with Haji's claw, palm molding itself to the rake of bones.
"I-I want to believe you. But believing it won't make up for those who are gone."
"Nor will tormenting yourself with the reminders."
"Please. Let's not talk about that."
He hesitates, then nods. Draws her in to kiss her, raining dark hair around her burning face. She tries to keep it slow. But he gorges on her mouth hungrily, until desire pulses hot and sweet down her body. She can feel the energy racing beneath his skin, intense yet intensely controlled. Knows he is holding back for her, letting her take the lead because it is what she needs tonight. Because being compelled to give instead of receive steadies her the way ballast does a sailboat. Makes her sane, sure, stable.
It wouldn't be possible, she thinks, with anyone but Haji. Who else would have the quiet strength to let her be strong?
Breaking off, she presses her lips to his clavicle. Whispers, "Have I told you how wonderful you are?"
"Not that I recall."
She smiles into his skin. "Well. You are. I love your constancy. Your honesty. You're still one of the few people who can look me in the eye and tell me what I'm doing wrong, not what I need to hear. I don't... always appreciate that. But I respect it."
She splays her palms along his wide shoulders. Smooths them down his back, along his flanks to his ribs. Her lips follow, planting open-mouthed kisses. The measured cadence of Haji's inhale-exhale doesn't change. But his breathing deepens as her touches wander lower. She nuzzles at his sternum like a kitten, basking in the warmth. Bites at the laddered ribcage, where the lats flare like a cobra's hood.
He has always been thin. The body of a rockstar or an ascetic, depending on his diet. But never a twig. She can feel muscles throbbing everywhere, the strands as tight-woven as wicker.
"I love your body," she murmurs. "I love how you're so hard and sharp all over. But when I touch you, you go all melty like ice cream in a bowl. You always know when to be gentle with me. And when not to. Some nights, I can't decide which side of you I like best." A blush clings to her moistened cheeks. "I love the way you look at me when we're alone together. The way you touch me like I'm the sharpest sword you've ever handled. But also the juiciest fruit you can't wait to sink your teeth into. You think I don't notice. I do."
With both thumbs, she traces the jut of his hipbones. Darts her tongue, playfully, down the groove of his stomach. Haji's breath catches on a short, desperate noise. His eyes are half-lidded and darkly intrigued.
Waiting for her next move. Begging for it, whatever it might be.
She blushes fiercer, the heat overlaying the shower steam. From this angle, there is no avoiding the way the wet crown of his erection slides along her jaw, tickled by her short dripping hair.
She's had more than enough time to acquaint herself with that part of him. Yet curiosity always tugs at her, the pale curvature of him stirring phantom sensations. How it feels when he buries himself inside her with jittery gasps and that wild burn in his eyes. How he transforms her body into uncharted territory, dragging her to a place at the edge of everything, yet so shudderingly, agonizingly close.
She wants to return the favor.
"I love the way you never hide how much you want me." She giggles. "Such a gentleman, really. Always standing up whenever I'm in the room." Her hand traces down the hard slope of his abdomen. Haji twitches; an anxious elation. "I love your eyes on me, and your hands. I love how you wear your clothes like a second skin, so it feels almost... impertinent to undress you. Until you take them off, and then you're like something Frederic Leighton would sculpt and stretch out."
"The Sluggard?" he asks dryly.
"I was thinking more of 'An Athlete Wrestling with a Python.' "
"I do not remember that one. Oh—"
Her fingers curl around him. She gives a light squeeze. Haji sucks in a breath, hard, his body jerking before he can stop himself.
"Saya—"
"Ssh. Don't distract me."
Her chiding voice belies the tremor of her fingers. He radiates such glowing warmth against her palm. Fills her small hands to overflowing.
"Is this—" she licks her lips, dry despite the pattering water, "Is this good?"
Haji nuzzles her hair. "Good enough—to kill me."
"Ssh. Don't talk like that."
Her hands wander up and down the length of him. Not an exploration, but an acquisition. The rasp of his breathing tells her what to do. Working him with one hand, she slides the other hand down to grip the base. Squeezes until he growls.
"Saya—"
Heat surges through her, electric. She never gets tired of making him sound like that. Edging closer, she lets Haji curl his widespread hands in her hair. Cradling the shape of her skull with the Chiropteran claw, while the human hand caresses her cheek, thumb tracing her lips.
Not pressuring, but giving her full reign.
Leisurely, she toys with him, until the head darkens and gives off a tear of wetness. Lowers her lips to breathe out a stream of air, watching him jerk and quiver.
"Saya—please—"
God, he is so vulnerable like this. So hers. The buzz of power is intoxicating.
"Well," she says, "since you said 'Please'."
He gasps as she lowers her head, licking delicately at the slick tip. Hot. Salty. She opens her mouth and takes him in, suckling gently. Haji bites back a raw, edge-of-breath noise that dissolves into a moan. His hands tighten in fistfuls into her hair, then drop.
She dares a glance. He is breathing in that rhythm that always reminds her of when she readies herself for a high jump. Disciplining himself, muscle by muscle. Gathering his control. Except his face is closed-up and unsteady in a way that telegraphs his terror at making the leap.
She lets him slip from her lips, to say, "Don't hold back tonight." Taking her hands, she unfolds them as if metamorphosing dead spiders into blossoms. Drops a kiss to each palm, human and Chiropteran, before returning them to her hair. "Please, Haji. Whatever you want."
He exhales a low noise of torment. A blush stains his cheekbones, the dip of his throat. Her Haji—shy. It is always as endearing as it is astonishing.
Leaning in, she presses wet kisses up and down the heavy vein, licking all around the head. His skin feels as soft as her inner thigh, the pulse a secret thrum. Sighing, Haji threads his fingers tighter through her hair. Not tentative anymore; he shoves himself inside without prelude, a deliciously heavy slide across her tongue, and she lets him, raw breathy sounds catching in her throat.
This is hardly unexplored territory for her anymore. She's mapped out a successful blueprint, so well-practiced it is second nature. She lets it take over, savoring and suckling, building an inexorable rhythm. Slow and then fast and then slow again, her tongue arrowing itself and flickering beneath the head. The water gets in her eyes, and her knees grow sore on the tiles. But she loves stringing this out to torment him. Loves the lewd wet noises of her throat as Haji jerks deeper into her mouth. Loves taking him in, past halfway, and feeling him quiver on the precipice of restraint. Loves hooking her entire arm around the crux of his body, fingers clutching at his hip, denting muscle, and luring him in deeper as her efforts grow progressively hungrier, more purposeful.
Gradually, Haji begins to shake. He breathes in thready gasps. Letting her know what she is doing right, how close he is. She steals a glance up at his face. He is miles always and yet pinned in place: messy-haired and openmouthed, cheeks high with heat. A beautiful prisoner. More beautiful is the wicked rock-and-roll of his hips, and those throaty uncensored sounds as he edges closer, a symphony of pure raunch that jellies her knees and scorches her skin until she is moaning around her mouthful, handfasted to him like a starveling, a succubus. Like she needs him to come just as badly as he does.
His climax is sudden. A titillating possibility one moment—everywhere the next.
Saya swallows as much as she can. The rest drips from her mouth, washed by the shower-spray. Salty, heavy, good.
Panting, she licks her lips. She is thrumming all over, especially between her thighs. It is an effort to focus on Haji instead of her own begging body. "Are you oka—?"
She can't finish. He has swooped in for a kiss, without prelude or primness. Not squeamish, her Haji. Never about this.
They stay that way for a moment, the water raining down on them, swirling across the tiles. Haji's kisses melt, as the moments pass, from sloppy, to tender, to worshipful. Then he draws back, finally, to turn off the faucet. Scoops her into his arms, breathless and half-sudsy, and carries her into the tub.
They sink together into the water, as if into a warm blanket. Sighing, Saya sprawls against his chest, giving herself with hungry languor to his kisses. Beneath the surface, his hands roam over her body, tracing the dip of her spine, the curve of her bottom, the lines of her thighs, before delving between them.
It shocks a gasp out of her. She tries to warn him that she is bleeding. Because they may be Chiropterans, and they may have eroded every other boundary, but she's always drawn the line at this type of play.
Too late; Haji's fingers ghost over her mons, stirring the curls, then slipping down and into her. The slick crooking pressure makes her mewl, fingers knotted in his hair. Her whole body throbs in every particle. She can feel the blood seeping out, turning the water a demure shade of rose.
Haji inhales sharply and breaks the kiss.
"Saya?"
"S-Sorry." She flushes all over: need and chagrin. "I should have told you sooner. Do you want to stop?"
He doesn't answer. His eyes, blinking into hers, are dark yet intensely unreadable. Black and blue.
After a beat, he shakes his head.
"You're sure? Because if it's an issue—" She is unsure what Issue to choose from. "I don't want you to be uncomfortable. If you'd rather do something els—"
It ends on a scream—a thin ragged scrape of sound in her throat as he drags her closer, until she is nearly straddling him. Between her thighs, he sinks two fingers deeper into her, while his thumb finds her clitoris and begins a slick circling, until the world goes red, then hazily black.
Unbalanced by hot water and slippery skin, she clutches tighter at his hair. It feels as if her entire body is trying to leap upwards, away from that exquisitely shrill pitch of sensation. Haji anchors her with the cool splay of his Chiropteran claw across her back, and with the sharpness of his teeth sinking into her breast, tugging on the nipple, greedily suckling.
Saya's breath catches on another cry. Her hips are doing a lewd, helpless jig against his hand, and he's working his fingers inside her with a cadence that is less Come, come to me and more the way a cellist performs the vibrato motion on the strings, a fluid articulation of wrist and knuckles and fingertips.
When her climax collides with her, it isn't a crescendo but one cadenza of a dozen blossoming and dying inside her. Haji feels it, and his hand jitters for the smallest iota of a second, with a hitch-and-gasp of his own that gusts icy cold across her nipple, before he sucks harder, urges her higher. No longer a cadenza but a carnage of heat and friction.
Saya's head tosses back, short licks of hair pasted to her face. Her cry echoes off the tiles, a broken sobbing song that shortens, softens, and finally subsides as Haji takes his hand away.
"Oh God."
Hot-cold, trembling on gasps, Saya lets her eyes fall shut. Her body slumps against Haji's, damp hair plastered to his breastbone. She can feel his heart thudding nearly as fast as hers.
Daring a glance, she finds him lifting red fingers to his lips. He licks them idly, his face softening in open curiosity, then something else. Dark and dreamy. Heavy with secrets.
Flushing, Saya drops her gaze. It's embarrassing enough right now. In the full clarity of daylight, it will be absolutely mortifying.
But instead of wrenching away, she takes his head in her hands and kisses him. His lips are salted with copper. His tongue too—probing past her lips, turning her radiant in his arms. She shuts her eyes tight against what they are doing. Yet their uneven breaths, the wet thirsty friction of lips and tongues as their tastes mingle, are a testament to the impossibility of holding back any longer.
It is futile to try.
Still kissing, she folds their wet bodies together in the span of her arms and thighs. Bites the hem of his lower-lip, and begins to rock her hips under the waterline, the tick-tock of a pendulum clock, savoring the dreamy diffusion of pleasure between them. Haji drags in a gasp—too-sensitivity darkening into something else as the seconds pass, the burn of resurgent hunger. Between their bodies, he stirs, filling again.
She wants to tease, You're insatiable. Except she is the one shifting to guide him in.
"Saya—"
"Ssh."
As she sinks down, she breaks the kiss, eyes fluttering open on Haji's. Loving how the tension slips like water from his blissed-out face. The way his arms pass around her, enveloping, possessive, so her breasts and belly mold themselves to the hard plane of his torso.
And with one long hot slide and two short gaspy cries, they fit.
Yes.
Dizzied, she steadies herself with one hand on his shoulder, the other tangled in his wet hair. It's almost uncomfortable; the water has washed away some of her natural lubrication. Except she wants him right here and now. In the drifts of steam, a slippery film of heat coats their bodies, a delicious coolness. Her throat is full of emotions she can't name.
Tentatively, she squeezes around Haji. His groan resonates up and down the tiled space, up and down her body. Trembling, she drops her forehead against his, glowing rings of red locked on a nucleus of arctic blue. Squeezes again, harder, and begins a tidal roll of her hips.
Their breaths wash in and out, a raw and heavy cadence. She smells water and cedar and soap and sex, overlaying the bite of blood. The pale swoop of his throat seems to call to her. Her fangs ache to descend. But when their eyes meet, it is Haji's fangs that fill her line of sight, a bright afterimage like after a lightning strike at sea.
Before she can jerk away, he burrows his mouth against her neck, teeth on skin.
Saya shudders—shock? pleasure?—and grabs his hair.
"Don't—!"
He freezes.
In that moment of inaction, full of him, enfolded by him, no movement but their thudding heartbeats, she hears the words bounce off the tiles.
She can always subdue him with a single command.
Haji breaks off on a shaky inhale. His hand gently clasps her neck, smoothing the vein with his thumb. She forces herself to meet his eyes. His gaze is no longer burning blue, but smoky with regret.
"Forgive me. I-I did not ..."
"It's okay." It's my blood that did it. Always, my blood. "I should have been—more careful."
Careful of what? Of breaking taboos? Or allowing their Chiropteran impulses to override the human?
Haji keeps on caressing her jaw, a touch so light she barely feels it, except that it races across her spine. Leaves her at once melty and vibrating. It hits her then: what is she so afraid of? Haji? The one person who has proven, over and over, that she can trust him in any state, under any circumstances. The one who'd rip his own throat out before daring to touch hers.
Absurd.
Her failure to open herself to him, even now, speaks of the meager trust she has in her own self, not him.
"Haji?" Her pulse races in the steamy air. Anxiety. Want. "Do you—want to feed from me?"
"Saya."
He looks as if she's suggested treason, or blasphemy. Maybe to a Chevalier, it is both?
Gently, he takes her weight in his hands, lifting her off him. It isn't a withdrawal but a repudiation. Shuddering, she resists.
"Haji, it's all right. I take blood from you all the time."
"That is different." It is a rasp of distress. "Having you like that—even a taste—would be overwhelming for me. To offer me your throat—"
"Haji. I don't believe for a second you'd hurt me."
"Saya—"
"I trust you. I'll tell you when to stop."
He is silent for a moment. She feels him fighting, not her offer itself, but his own yearning for the gift.
This quells her own misgivings. Suddenly, she is awash in tenderness, and wildly aroused. Gently, she catches his face in her hands. Sinks down, not onto his erection but into his gathering arms. The kiss she gives him is loving, languid, luscious. Haji trembles, and she does too—for different reasons. When she breaks off, his eyes are shiny as if with unwept tears, and she can see a tiny Saya reflected in each pupil.
"Please." She kisses his mouth again, and draws it to her neck. He nuzzles it feverishly. "Go on. I want this."
"You are certain?"
"Oh God. Yes."
Then she is locked in the cage of his arms, his fangs in her throat. The bite is deep, and deliberate, and dizzying. She has never felt anything like it before. It is different from the battle with the Phantom. That had hurt, a twisted wire of agony from the point where his teeth had sunk in, down to her sinews, and her bones, and her whole essence that was being yanked like ichor out of her neck and into his swallowing mouth.
It had felt like renunciation, and defeat, and death.
A thought flashes—was this how Haji had planned to kill her, at the Met? Cradle her in his arms? Kiss her goodbye? Drain her dry?
There is no way to ask.
No reason to—because this isn't death. This is pure life. Her heart blooms in her chest, a flowering heat that spreads everywhere. He holds her snug against him, clawed hand splayed at her hip, the other cradling her skull. His lips make a seal on her neck. No waste, no mess; he is locked in on the exact spot her blood flows, betraying both practice and practicality.
It would shock her, except her thoughts are bright red, rolling in and out of her skull in waves. Shivering, she encompasses him in her arms. Listens to the sounds he makes as he feeds, hypnotized hums and sighing swallows. His body radiates an astonishing warmth, and begins pulsing everywhere. His strength is not merely replenished, but redoubled.
The implication stuns Saya.
This isn't about nourishment, like when she feeds on Haji. Her pleasure at being bitten doesn't stem from the abject gratitude of being bittersweetly taken.
It is a Chevalier's duty to give. His be-all and end-all. Whereas this is her gift. Bestowed, not as a sacrifice, but a balancing act in blood.
Too soon, he stops.
A trickle of blood spills from her neck. He licks it off reverently. Lifts his head, sharp-fanged and red-mouthed, to fix her with glowing blue eyes. The room reels; she sways drunkenly in his arms.
"Are you all right?" he whispers.
She smiles drowsily.
"Forgive me. I should not have taken so much."
"You didn't take enough. You can have more."
"Sssh."
He combs her wet hair with both hands. Kisses her—a hot tang of blood, a sweet tremor of thanksgiving. She has never seen him so profoundly shaken before. Her body throbs all over from his bite, and its aftermath.
"Was it good, Haji?"
Eyes closed, he nods.
"What did it taste like?"
"Sssh," he repeats, as if refusing to utter a sacred incantation.
Her smile widens. Straddling his lap, she feels tipsy, satisfied, voluptuous. Her hands slip between their bodies. She takes his erection—glowing-hot—in both palms, her thumbs imparting a slow caress.
Haji groans darkly, and opens his eyes. She decides she likes him best this way: at once debauched and elegant, curlicues of dark hair fallen around the pale angles of his face, his eyes both heavy-lidded and aglow.
Usually, the fathomless hunger of that look embarrasses her. But for once, she feels equal to it, because she has given him something worthwhile.
"Haji." It is both invitation and imperative. "Weren't we in the middle of something?"
The next moment she is caught back against the tiled wall, to a shrill cry and the splatter of bathwater. Cradling her weight in his widespread hands, Haji shimmies down her body. She gasps as he dips his head between her parted thighs, licking her delicately with the tip of his tongue. She is seeping-red and aching-hot. He closes his mouth over her and suckles on a purling growl, his tongue lapping at her, then stabbing her open, drinking and devouring her, sometimes slowly, sometimes with savagery, until the last of her equilibrium shatters.
Her scream is a blast of red, shudders sluicing down her body in one long exclamation point. Then Haji's fangs glint in the gloom, tracing the inside of her thigh, a split-second before he bites.
"Ah!"
Humming, he takes a hot sucking kiss there, the tips of fangs piercing skin. Blood wells from each isolated point. Saya tenses, then teeters, her eyes fluttering shut. An ethereal euphoria seems to spread to each meridian in her body—adrenaline crowded out by endorphins.
Haji's own body melts into heaviness. Eyelids drooping; breaths slurring. The heat of her blood—its flavor—seems to narcotize him.
In different circumstances, she would never permit any of this. He would never dare it. Except tonight is about breaking boundaries as much as rebuilding them.
Too soon, he lets go. Thumb pressed tight where his mouth was, sealing the wound. Then he is surging up to kiss her, the aftertaste of blood and arousal as sharp as sea-salt. Hanging from his shoulders, in the grip of gooseflesh and a thrilling lassitude, she lets him pin her with the full force of his body. Her toes curl when he hooks her thighs over his arms, opening her wide. She lets off a hissing sigh as he fills her: she is exquisitely sensitive and he is so hard.
He drives into her with force, so she slides up and down the tiled wall, slick-skinned and overheated. She hears herself crying out, short rhythmic cries that transmute into something wilder. Each of his thrusts flares up and down her body, tipping her to the brink but not past it, again and again. Her nails scrabble at his back, sketching a net of red streaks.
And then he takes all her weight in his Chiropteran claw, wedging the other hand between their bodies. Coaxes her toward the edge, once, twice, again, with a ruthless insistence; her climax coming with high spasming wails, as if in shock.
Colors flash before her eyes. Fade, slowly, into the blur of onyx tiles and milky steam, so she feels like she is floating down into darkness and up into light, again and again, by Haji's mouth and hands and the dragging heaviness of him inside her. The pleasure is no longer sparking; it resonates through her slackening limbs and thubbing pulse.
Dizzily, she tangles shaky fingers in his hair.
"Haji—I want—"
Understanding alights his glassy eyes. He tips his head back to present his neck. "Saya—"
She senses his abject Please.
Her mouth slips to his throat. The crunch of fangs on skin, the spicysweet taste of his blood, his shuddering cry as he is bitten, spangles through her. A glad offering.
As she drinks, Haji's face opens in her line of sight, glowing as a moonrise. He is moving now for his own release. Pace and desperation building, her whole body jolting across the damp tiles. Stroking his hair, crossing her ankles at the small of his back, she breathes his name as he climbs. When he reaches his snapping crest, biting down a harsh groan, she feels powerful, complete.
Subsiding on gasps, Haji slumps down the wall, taking her with him. They collapse into the tub with a massive splash.
Drenched and wobbly, Saya combs up his hair in wet tufts, tracing his hot skin beneath her palms. Licks at the seeping wound on his neck, sealing it. He is everywhere solid and shielding. Yet she senses his helpless gratitude. As if he is under her protection, as much as she is under his.
Mutually pledged.
It's a good thing they took this to the bathtub, and not the bedroom. I can't even imagine laundry day for whoever would have to wash the carnage off their sheets.
Hope you guys enjoyed! Review, pretty please! :)