Chapter 5: White
5. White
a mix of every color at full intensity
Edit: 12.8.2021
Added new scenes.
It's 5 months and 12 days after her parents death that Hillary begins to re-enter his space.
Her touches are back to their gentle, lingering strokes again. Her palms brush his shoulder when she kisses the top of his head. When she hugs him goodbye, she lingers just enough to rub his back in two gentle circles. When they're both watching some black-and-white film on her couch, her legs somehow always find their way into his lap and her head on his shoulders -
In hindsight, Kai thinks this is a trickle down effect from the day he'd put his foot down and asked her to stop her reckless, drunken sexcapades and she had listened without much protest. I'm going to do what you ask only because I know I can't trust myself right now, she had told him. He'd shrugged at her reasoning, and had simply said, Just stop running from yourself, Hils.
And he could tell she had listened to him because the cars in her driveway were becoming less frequent and the number of dinners she skipped with him had become negligent.
Soon enough, she back to the things he knew made her feel normal if not happy - back to the weekly dinners at the Dojo, back to cooking and washing silverware over dinner with him, back to helping Lin with her homework while sporting that gorgeous bright little smile of hers that he loved so much -
He's grateful that she'd listened to him - the bright lights on her face made his days sunny, her touch made the sky more blue, and the laugh lines on her cheeks made the December snow seem more white.
She's re-entering her own world again and effectively his own - and he thanks every god that he prayed to in desperation that some of the storm she'd been hiding from for months has finally passed.
It's 5 months and 22 days after her parents death that Kai notices that her touch is getting downright sexual.
Sometimes when she kisses him goodbye on the cheek, her lips tilt just a little towards his own and her hand travels up his neck and into his hair. Sometimes at the dinner table, she sits just a little closer and their knees touch and her fingers draw patterns up his legs and she doesn't bother with setting her own plate anymore – she eats off of his.
Sometimes she plays with his hair from her bed when he's sleeping on the futon in her room. And then her fingers trace his jaw, then his chin and down his neck and his shoulders and his chest – and he's grateful that the moonlight from the window is too dim and too grey for her to see exactly how much it is affecting him.
He doesn't mind but he wonders if she knows what she's doing.
He doesn't mind but he wonders if it is deliberate.
She's finding neither-here-nor-there colors and patterns and textures in her world. And she's throwing them casually over the boundaries separating him from her – and he finds that he doesn't care.
For the first time in months, he doesn't care.
Because he has missed her so much, so, so much – he doesn't care if she's out of balance, as long as it's him she's falling back on. He doesn't care that he might be fostering unhealthy dependencies, as long as it's him she's depending upon.
He doesn't care that she has stopped her clumsy little dance on the thin, self-drawn lines between friendship and something more – he had wanted those lines destroyed as soon as he had discovered their existence.
All he cares for is that she's bringing her dull sunshine back into his starless sky after months and months of lurking under the grey clouds.
All he cares for is that she's reaching out for the gaps between his fingers, for the warmth of his touch, for the feel of the skin on his thighs and his almost-white-almost-black hair and his ready-to-catch-her-tears shoulders and his love and comfort -
All he knows is that she is reaching out for him.
And it feels like the most natural thing in the world for their vanilla skies and firefly stars and frosty suns and their limbs and their silverware and their sleep-wake schedules and their blues and reds to be twisted together all over again.
So he lets her share his food, and his drinks, and his salad without a word.
He lets her undo the grey barbed wires she'd so decisively laid down between them with her tertiary-colored touches.
He lets their knees commit each other to memory every time they brush together, and her palms draw pathways along his jaw, and her fingers create bridges on his thighs, and her knuckles map out monuments along the back of his neck –
And he finds himself liking the blueprints she's making.
Absolutely fucking loving them.
One starry night, she finally undoes the last of the grey barbed wires between them.
One starry night when they're watching an old movie and he's sat in front of her on her ivory carpet and she's drawing maps on his shoulders from her place on the red burgundy couch again, she says, "I need you to kiss me, Kai."
And it's hardly a surprise.
And after weeks and weeks of her hands wandering his body way too much and lingering for far too long, and shared silverware and prolonged goodbyes and almost kisses – he's ready to break the last of the stupid annoying little chains separating her from him.
More than absolutely fucking ready.
So he circles his fingers around the pale wrists on his shoulder, and in a swift movement, he pulls her into his lap. The very next second, he pecks her on the forehead, his lips making their own pathway on her skin, lingering almost teasingly as they brush her overgrown brown bangs out of her face.
"No, Kai!" Her voice is an angry fire, demanding and childish - it only makes him smirk, "On my mouth. Kiss me on my mouth."
His lighthearted teasing backfires because the very next moment, she's twisting herself out of his arms and his lap – he forgets the playfulness immediately.
He doesn't realize just how much he aches to be closer to her, until he finds his body moving immediately to close the tiny little distance between them. He doesn't realize how much he needs her arms around him and her hands all over him, until she's pulling them away.
So he circles her waist again and he grabs her wrist tighter and he presses her body to his so that she's awfully, painfully close, and his next words are a whisper.
"I thought you would never ask."
And there, through a mess of tangled limbs and half-curious-half-amused gazes and dim silvery TV lights, he destroys the final boundary separating them from one another and presses his lips to hers.
He presses his lips to her and she tilts her head just a little and when their lips start to move together, it feels like a burst of fireworks against a dark hollow sky – and he's afraid to blink and miss it.
And so his hands start to wander her body in desperation because he feels like she will disappear if he doesn't touch her. And his lips begin to memorize hers with so much pressure he feels like he is drawing the very breath from her mouth and into his own.
And soon enough she's pressed under him, her legs locking themselves around his waist, her soft brown hair spilling against the ivory carpet like wild weeds, and her lips the color of cherries and her cheeks like fresh apples – and she's making such guttural sounds that he's aching down to his core.
He knew that kissing her would start an endless spiral that he won't be able to control but he had no idea that the loss of control would feel so absolutely breathtakingly thrilling. And just when he thinks he's losing himself in the oncoming darkness, Hillary pulls away from him to catch her breath.
It's only then that he realizes that in the heat and passion, both their shirts are halfway unbuttoned, and in that millionth of a second he considers stopping because it's going too fast and she had only asked for a single fucking kiss –
"Kai, hey -"
She grabs him by the chin, forcing him to look down right at her half-closed, fully-hazy, sultry eyes. Eyes that immediately dart towards the half-open bedroom where he's spent waytoomany nights staring up at her while she slides her hands down his back in the white moonlight.
And he's wanted her for so long – so fucking long and she's this close and so willing.
So why is it that he feels a sinking in the pit of his stomach at the sight of her offering herself up to him? And why is it that all that he wants to do right now is button both their shirts backup and bolt for the door to his house instead?
"Hillary, I'm not so sure about…that…"
He exhales, putting some distance between their bodies, the feeling in his stomach deepening at the confusion and a glimmer of hurt in the eyes of the brunette under him.
"Look, I want you – Jesus, Hils, you have no idea how much I've wanted you." His voice is a near inaudible mumble and it takes way too much energy out of him to meet her eye when he continues.
"But I can't treat you like you're a quick fuck - you mean more than that."
He doesn't understand the relief-turned-amusement in her eyes or the upward curve of her lips.
"Don't treat me like a quick fuck, then."
The legs that had loosened around him at his hesitations are now tighter and pulling him down into her again, and her voice is a mischievous, almost sultry whisper when she continues.
"By all means, go as slow as you want."
"Hillary."
His exasperated mumbling becomes nearly breathless at the way she pulls him back into her again and presses her lips to his neck. The knots in his stomach loosen a bit at her lighthearted words and her proximity makes him feel like he took 3 shots of vodka in one go -
And like clockwork, he's lost in her bruising kisses and the warmth of the night on his suddenly naked back and in the way her palms hold her entire weight on his chest when she gets on top of him –
"You're such a sap, Kai."
He's surprised that he manages to look at her face enough to catch the roll of her eyes because she looks so fucking dazzling while she stradles him with her entirely-unbuttoned shirt hanging loosely around her shoulders.
"You think I'm going to treat you like a quick fuck, don't you?"
That's not what I meant. He wants to tell her that he doesn't want to restart her self-harming spiral of sex. He wants to remind her that it would absolutely crush the both of them if the spiral is with her best friend - of all people. He wants to tell her that it's disrespectful to their relationship to rush into sex without talking about it first.
But he's too drunk from her kisses and the tilts of her torso to talk so much, so he settles for something that would serve the same purpose.
"Well, are you?"
He expects a second glimmer of hurt, maybe even her raging fire, but instead he sees another roll of her eyes, and she's slipping her arms further out of her shirt when she says.
"What do you think, Kai? You know me. You know that I'm in love with you – that I love you. Gods, how many more times will you make me tell you -"
He stares up at his beautiful, blushing, barely-dressed best friend straddling him with her legs on either side of his waist and her heart on her sleeves and her sleeves sliding down her arms, and he thinks, Absolute fucking heaven.
And in that moment, he can only wonder what he has ever done in his life to warrant the confidence of her confession, the steady stride of her love – it never fails to catch him off guard.
"I think…" he starts, propping himself on his elbow, his hand first touches the base of her bare stomach and circles around her back. He pulls her to him so gently that every breath in between them feels like a full minute.
"…that I haven't seen you in a really, really long time. And I've missed you. And –"
And it's like clockwork all over again - he's breathless and nearly lost in the sensations: in the coldness of her body when it melts against his own, the dull grazing of her nose and her cherry lips against his, the sound of the lace around her chest unclasping, and the drips of her hips under his fingers.
Nearly lost. He drags himself out of the haze just enough to mumble against her mouth.
"… I just want to make sure that you're here, Hils."
She tucks his lower lip gently between her teeth, and he can feel her smile against him when she says.
"So dramatic, Kai. Just say that I haven't been myself."
Any retort he has gets caught in his throat at the desperate way her fingers go from gripping his shoulders to the back of his neck and tangle themselves into knots in his hair.
And everything she says afterwards is a huge blur against the beating of her heart against his and his own heart in his ears -
He barely hears her whisper, "I lost myself, not my love for you." She presses her entire weight against his uncovered chest and mumbles, "I know you love me just as much if not more." She tangles her legs in between his and he loses track of his thoughts, "I have a lot of faith in our love for each other." Her fingers catch the hemline of his jeans, "Sex is not going to ruin anything."
And he believes her.
He let's her words chase away all his concerns about her mental well being after they cross the dwindling lines between them.
And with one hand in his hair and another down his stomach and her lips milliseconds from his own and her limbs crisscrossed with his, she whispers the last of her words that night.
"I have no doubts about this. But if you want me to stop, just tell me and I will."
He knows his answer.
She knows it too – he's all but screaming it at her.
There is nothing left to say and they both know it - but he says it to her either way in the form of a slow, dull grind of his hips against hers.
And that's all that it takes for both of them to finally lose track of the conversation and start another one entirely.
Kai thinks he would remember this night for ages to come - not because it's magical and amazing and everything that he's wanted for months. But because he finally feels like he's grabbed Hillary's paintbrush and is drawing his own colors and patterns all over the months and months of dull aches in his bones and cloudy skies and jagged lines on empty canvases.
With every stumble towards the bedroom, he forgets – he forgets a half a year of grief and fucked up coping mechanisms and silent dinners and empty conversations and unfamiliar cars in her driveways and the cancelled plans and a constant world of neither-here-nor-there colors on littered canvases.
With every layer of cloth they discard, he throws aside a memory of her that haunts him – her angry-violent-tsunami of a grief clawing at her skin in the hospital, the blood and smoke and hard black stones on the littered canvases, the lonely and angry and lost stranger beneath her eyes and between her fingers and under her nails.
With every movement from over him and under him, he forgets every piece of him that he has torn from his body to stop her bleeding – his time, his restless nights, his trust, his faithless prayers, his calculated emotions, his spirit, his blinding love.
He forgets that he's ripping from himself the last piece that was not merged with hers and throwing it into the dimly lit spaces of a hasty, neurotic, half-best-friend and half-stranger of a brunette who has somehow taken everything he has to offer to her.
And so he surrenders to her the last of himself that night.
He surrenders himself and he can sense her doing the same – it's in the furious movement of her nails down his back, and in her desperate grip under his thighs, and in the fistfuls of his almost-black-almost-white hair, and in her breathy OhmyGod's, and in her eyes shut as tight as her white-knuckles, in the moonlit palms down his chest, and in her cherry lips along his jaw and between the hollows of his neck –
He's consuming her.
He's consuming her and he's absolutely fucking thrilled at the sight and touch and taste of it all.
He thinks he could get addicted to this.
And he wants more, so much more - because this isn't enough.
And so he slides an arm around her waist and under her knees and pulls her into him out of a primal desperation, and says, "I'm in love with you, too." He brushes the bangs clinging to her forehead from sweat and whispers, "I'm sorry I didn't see you for so, so long." He uncurls her knuckle-white hands and holds both of them in his own and he touches her bruised lips with his, and mumbles, "I missed you, so much"– again and again and again and again.
Until he doesn't know where he ends and where she starts.
That night, for the first time in months, there are no inhibitions. There is no cautious skittering, no hushed words and calculated treads, no fragilities or softness or delicacies – it is a complete and utter annihilation of every boundary separating him from her.
And in the newfound boundless abyss, each of their hues muddle together – the harsh greens, the muddy browns, the electric yellows, the passionate magentas, the angry cherry reds, the blotchy greys, the deep purples, all the 50 shades of blue – everything mixes to form a burning scorching white heat.
And he cannot for the life of him understand just why, in the wake of such a destruction, he felt so utterly and wholly complete.
Kai wakes up the next morning in an unfamiliar bed in a very familiar room.
With his eyes still closed, he takes in the bubbling in the tips of his fingers at the recollection of the night before. He takes in the morning sun against his eyelids, his lack of clothing under the thin sheets and the warmth of a body within arm's length.
But what finally makes him open a lazy eye is the familiar bounce in Hillary's voice.
"Sex with you is so different."
When he turns to her, he finds her propped up on her elbow with her brown hair a tangled mess and her cheeks bearing their morning flush and the bed-sheets barely covering her torso. It's enough for his breath to still in his chest and he thinks, I could get used to seeing this every single morning for the rest of my life.
Shaking away his haze, he almost asks her, It's different compared to? But because he doesn't think he'll be able to handle her answer, he settles for a lazier retort, "Is it?"
"It's because I'm in love with you." Her gaze is direct, fierce, "My feelings made the sex so much more…. complex and intense for me."
Any other day, he'd have told her It's 8 AM on a Sunday and Go back to sleep and Can I please have a cup of coffee before we do this. But it's not any other day and she's talking about sleeping with him and being in love with him and how it makes her feel –
And if he is honest, he is looking for some reassurance that she's okay after spinning so fast into his world.
"Does that upset you?"
For a second, she looks confused at his question. And then, her face twists into a look so soft that he thinks he will melt there and then.
"It doesn't upset me, Kai." And then, teasingly, "No one gets upset after fucking someone they're in love with."
He finds his reassurance in the softness of her ruby eyes, in her unfaltering confidence and in the crudeness of her words – she's joking.
So he makes a comment as light as his thoughts suddenly are, "So, 'complex' and 'intense' is good. And, I get five stars for last night."
She's blushing at his words.
She's blushing at his words, and when he touches the warmth flooding into her cheeks, her face darkens – and it is absolutely thrilling for him to watch how her body reacts to his passing comments and the traces of his fingers along her uncovered skin.
Suddenly, he wants to consume her all over again – to kiss her senselessly and touch her recklessly, to hear every sound that she makes against his shoulders, to feel every arch of her spine under his palm –
He wants to consume her all over again. His chest is brimming with a newfound intent and he sees the same light twinkling in her ruby eyes - so he leans in to kiss her and is perplexed when she turns her head away.
"Stay still, lover boy." She's teasing but her smile is shy. She turns back to him just as quickly as she'd turned away. "I feel very…emotionally flooded from last night. Slow down a little, this time."
He nearly laughs at the subtle eagerness under her playful words – absolutely loving the uncensored intensity that she's carrying for him, so loud and so proud and so out there.
It's in the way her fingers fill the gaps between his when he pins her arms over her head. It's in the sluggish movement of her lips against his – as if she's slowing down the time so she can fully feel him against her. It's in the tenderness of her gaze when she smiles endearingly at him – as if he's her fucking sun.
He takes her again that morning.
He takes her again and it is nothing like the frenzied destruction from the night before – it's just as slow and gentle and tender as she's asked of him.
He's cautious and careful and hushed - as if she is fragile and delicate and soft.
He kisses every part of her body that he had bruised the night before and she caresses his grey hair out of his face instead of grabbing them in fistfuls. Her thumbs rub gentle circles wherever they touch instead of clawing into his shoulders, and his palms memorize every arch of her body instead of pinning her against the mattress in desperation
Her swollen-from-the-night-before lips create bridges against his mouth and on his chest and along his arms and down his back and in the hollows behind his ears –
His calloused palms discover a new pathway with every lazy drawl that they make against the gaps between her chest and on the underside of her knees and in the spaces where her spine curves downwards –
He takes her again that morning - and she's drowning him this time after setting him on fire the night before.
And he's realizing that he would love absolutely anything – just as long as it is with Hilary Tatibana.
In the afterglow, Hillary can't help her desperately soft kisses and Kai can't help the tightness of his grip on her. When he looks at her, he's overwhelmed by a deep sense of longing; in what feels like a lifetime, he was looking at the embers of her eyes and not seeing a stranger.
So he absolutely hates it when she shuffles herself out of his arms and, instinctively, he stills her next to him.
She giggles, kissing his forehead.
"I'm making myself some omelets. What do you want for breakfast?"
Order in. He wants to tell her, You stay. His fingers itch to loosen her grips on the sheets around her chest, but as he looks at her stupid little smile and her anticipating gaze, he realizes something -
He wants her dreary Sundays.
He has seen Hillary's happy tears and her gentle caresses and her burning passion and her angry storms and her raging fire – he's fucked her senseless and he's fucked her achingly slow.
But he wants more – he wants her humming next to him while they make each other food and she's reaching over his head to grab some spices and sometimes she kisses his shoulders and other times she ruffles his hair and –
He's seen her storms and he's touched her fire and tasted her tears and now he just wants her dreary Sundays.
So instead, he says.
"I'll make the coffee."
Edit: 12.8.2021
Added new scenes.
A/N:
I posted this a couple of days back and then i realized it was missing something so i deleted it - the lack of dialogue in the scenes was bothering me. So I added a few.
also , I thought the entire thing was going too fast but then again they're adults and sex isn't that big of a thing past a certain age - plus, with kai and hil in this story, that was the only boundary left to cross they're already nearly together.
This chapter was so tricky to write - the sexual scenes and the white imagery was more difficult and required way too many intricacies than I expected.
Hint: I've been exploring the concept of love in everyday mundanities - I didn't want the chase and realisations and confessions and getting together parts of a relationship. I wanted to explore what happens after they get together, that love grows and evolves through decades of being together and the dynamics that it comes with. So for this story, the love is already there and they're already together , it's just evolving from friendship to companionship to healthy dependencies to sex and - well, let's find out in the chapters after I guess?
anyways. leave a review. Xoxo.
