Reflexively
by Cryptographic DeLurk
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AN: Hiyo! I wrote most of this directly on the heels of playing the game a year ago. I remember having trouble figuring out its exact placement in canon, between all the kidnappings and the logistics of Colette's angel disease. And if I was having trouble figuring it out at the time, know it's hopelessly lost to me now.
The fic itself is inexplicit but, regardless, Content Warning for underage sexual content with regards to Colette, and related undertones of objectification, sexism, and predation. Also Content Warning for Zelos saying 'yes' to things he'd rather say 'no' to. What can I say? Those Chosen Kiddos sure have a lot of issues with ppl infringing on their autonomy and cope with it poorly.
If it suits, please Read & Relax.
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"Are you going to stop giggling anytime soon?"
He pressed himself up onto his knees, watched where they made indents in the mattress. He sounded more upset than he'd meant to.
Colette didn't seem to notice. She kept laughing.
"It tickles though." She rubbed a hand over where he'd been kissing her neck. Another over where he'd been brushing a hand over her stomach. "I can't help it." She shifted, snuggling into the sheets. "Well… I'm sorry. I guess it is also kind of funny…"
"Oh?" Zelos forced a smile. "What's funny, my cute little Colette?"
"Oh, I don't know." Colette flushed. She seemed embarrassed, but still happy enough to be giddy. Whenever she got like this, her voice would ebb and falter and then rush out all at once. "I just never thought I'd be here – in a fancy hotel, in a resort in another world!" She brushed her hand over her left shoulder, smoothed the skin in small circles. "I don't know what will happen from here on out… But I never thought I'd be able to come this far. Or that I'd be here like this with you."
She had a point. He never could have predicted things would end up like this, and he wasn't even an anxious blushing virgin. He was taking this too seriously. Letting the situation get to him in all the ways he'd promised himself it wouldn't.
He wouldn't usually take something it so personally. Had been with too many women to be put off by a little laughter. Sex was great because it didn't matter what happened. It could be silly or embarrassing, even humiliating, but it never mattered in the end, so long as you kept a good humour about yourself. It happened behind closed doors and you walked away in the end and so long as everyone had fun it didn't matter.
Whatever, Zelos could do funny.
He stood up and walked over to pick up his pink waistcoat. He swung his arms through it, let its cape flap with a flourish, and fastened only one of its golden claps. He strutted across the hotel's honeymoon suite, like a peacock, to retrieve the champagne bottle over by the counter. And he was sure he looked ridiculous, naked as the day he was born save for the flamboyant waistcoat.
Colette over in the bed, obliged him with a fond look and more giggling.
Zelos made to tip his imaginary hat to her, and busied himself with the ice bucket and the champagne bottle and flutes. Tried to make the fizzy laughter of the bubbles seem pleasant and not just suffocating.
He swiped up a glass in each hand and sauntered back over to Colette.
"C'mon, dear Collete!" he urged, and she hurried up and scooted over to sit on the edge of the mattress.
He handed her the champagne flute. And, for a split second, she seemed to have a firm grip on it, before she fumbled, almost caught the glass once, twice, before she slumped against her own lap and the thing tumbled to the floor and shattered in a fizzy sparkly mess.
Zelos watched blankly. Trying to figure out where everything had gone so wrong.
"Oh no…" Hunched over on herself, Colette buried her face in her hands. She sniffled, and then burst again into a fit of giggles. "I'm so sorry," she got out between the laughter. "Just let me-" She started to get up.
"No, no~ You'll cut your feet on the glass that way." Zelos tapped her knobby knee, looked down to her bare feet. "Here, you can have mine," he offered her his glass.
"Oh, no, I couldn't," Colette flushed. "I- I guess it's a sign. I'm a bit young to be drinking anyhow. So it's okay."
This put a bit of a damper on things. Zelos wasn't about to drink a bottle of champagne by himself. Avoiding the pile of wet carpet and glass, he set his champagne flute down on the nightstand. Then flopped down, and sat cross-legged on the bed across from Colette, the coattails of his waistcoat spread out behind him like the train of a wedding gown.
"Alright, dear Colette. Well, what is it you'd like to happen? Got any dirty fantasies to share with the great Zelos?"
Colette turned very pink, and rubbed her hand anxiously over her left shoulder. "Oh… I don't know…" she said very smally. "You're the expert, right? You're the one that's supposed to be showing me what to do."
Her smile was guileless, like she really would have been fine with anything he wanted. And it should have been easy. To kiss and touch Colette here and there and everywhere, trying to find where she liked best. It was how he always was with virgins – only considerate enough to keep them relaxed, and only pushy enough to keep them guessing. It didn't have to be the best, it only had to be fun while they learned how to make it better next time.
But it was one thing to be someone's first. And it was another thing to be someone's first, last, and everything imbetween. And to be the reason that Colette wouldn't be getting many more chances on top of that.
He could have been with someone else in this suite. He'd been chatting up one of Altamira's hunnies, one who'd seemed rather keen on meeting up with him after her shift, when Colette had come up and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Aah, give me a second, lovely," he had brushed off his latest conquest. It seemed strange to him that Colette would search him out, of all people, only the day after they'd retrieved her from Rodyle.
Colette was bring red, and she glanced furtively to the sides, and then flitted up on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. "Um, what you said outside of Meltokio? A-about how you don't get home after dark… Would you still show me?" And then, "Sex," she said firmly, like she was proving she knew the word.
And though he'd never really expected her to take him up on the offer, he couldn't say no either. Maybe because he had a reputation to uphold. Or maybe because he didn't know how to make rejection sound as eloquent as acquiescence. Or maybe just because he owed her this much. This much at least.
So he gave her instructions on where to meet him and when to be there, and had gone straight back to chatting up the resort hunny once Colette gave him a determined nod and skipped off to enjoy the amusement park with the others. And he wished he'd just done the cruel thing – let her walk in on him with someone else when she came up to meet him in the honeymoon suite, let her be hurt and tear up and run off. But he hadn't and it was too late now, with her sitting naked across from him on the bed.
He reached out a hand, and she startled a bit when he brushed a thumb under her left nipple, but she allowed it. She had a very petite frame, but he liked soft boyish women. The same way he also liked hefty voluptuous women, and everything imbetween, with all kinds of blemishes. He lifted his hand higher, and repeated the gesture, pressing his thumb into her neck just under where her exsphere rested.
He should have expected it when she mirrored the gesture, reached up to ghost her fingers around his exsphere. But it was too much, too intimate. She wasn't just doing it for the thrill and taboo of touching the Chosen's exsphere. She knew what it meant.
She pulled back when he did, but he caught her hand before she could rub at her left shoulder again.
"What's this?" he pre-empted her. Urged her to turn her shoulder towards him. It was a spot, only a few centimetres around, but shiny. When he rubbed his thumb over it, it felt like polished stone.
"Just a dry patch of skin," Colette said, though she sounded sad. "Sorry, it's been bothering me. Please don't pay attention to it."
"I don't think they make dry patches of skin that colour." Bright turquoise. He traced around it, over and over.
Colette winced. "Please don't pay attention to it," she repeated, in a voice almost too quiet to hear. It seemed like she might cry.
It was cute, Zelos thought, that women could get so shy and self conscious about such small deformities. But who was he to refuse a lady's request in bed? He turned his attention away from her shoulder and turned her hand up in his to kiss the back of it. Dropped it to cup her face in his hands, and leaned in to kiss her lips.
He couldn't stop thinking though. He thought about how much he enjoyed watching women transform under his repeated attentions – open in front of him and become completely confident in themselves and their bodies. Would Colette get to do that? Would Zelos be around to see it?
He didn't want to die. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to hand her over to Cruxis or the Renegades. But he didn't want to die more. And could anything he did save him?
He kissed completely mechanically, and became aroused completely mechanically, and spoke completely mechanically. Dropped a sweet nothing every time he came up for air.
Oh, Colette~ Oh, my sweet angel~ Precious hunny. There's no one else like you. You're the only one for me. Number one in my heart~
And it wasn't until Colette craned her head and pushed him back that he realised how badly he'd misspoken.
"You can't say that!" she said with a fierce pout.
Zelos blinked stupidly. They were the kind of lies he always said, to all the women of the world that liked to feel special – chosen. Most of them knew better than to believe him, but most of them liked to hear it anyhow.
"You can't say things like that," Colette said again, clutching her hands to her chest. "If they're true, then it doesn't mean anything when you say the things you do to Sheena and the Professor." She puffed her cheeks and batted her fists lightly against him. "You wouldn't lie to them, would you?! They're important to you, right?!"
"O- Of course they are!" Zelos said, just to stop Colette from being upset. Only, after he'd said it, he'd realised Colette had caught him in a rare half-truth. His words were worth less than dust. His flirtations as vapid and meaningless as his suffering. There were too many people in the world to care about, and so he didn't care about any of them. But Raine was not 'any of them'. Sheena was not 'any of them'. Sheena had never been 'any of them'.
"Good," Colette nodded firmly. "I can't be the only one for you. Not when I-" She took a deep breath. "I can't," she pleaded.
He felt stupid and dumb. He sat there with his legs crossed on the bed. The cool sea breeze drifted across the balcony and rustled the sheer curtains – too hot, too cold – and Zelos felt stupid. This was meant to be fun, and he didn't know what to do or say to make it fun if none of what he usually said would work.
Colette was a quick study though. She pressed up onto her knees and leaned forward to cup his face in the same way he'd cupped hers moments before. A mirror of him as she lulled him with overly mechanical kisses.
And, oddly enough, it worked to be on the receiving end of it. To let her lead him with the same technique he'd shown her, and do nothing but feel her tongue press in against his. To let her climb onto his lap and fill his hands with her waist and thighs. He let her do the thinking for both of them. And his body responded without him.
Another kiss. And another. Another. Until they were both relaxed, and Colette was laughing again.
And it was her that pulled away and asked the question that he really should have asked her.
"Are you ready?"
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