Happy Tuesday guys! This was one of those kisses that I specifically wrote for a very silmil-loving friend ;)
A Kiss Because Time Is Running Out
He kicked the heavy door shut with a roar, anger a palpable, ugly thing in his veins.
He'd never been so angry. It lay like a cloud on his mind and tinted his world in solid rage. The urge to break something, to scream, to run away… it wasn't a new feeling. It was a welcoming venom that crooked its finger and tempted him into the darkest, familiar corners of his mind.
The frame rattled dangerously, the gold hinges groaning and shuddering, and he felt ashamed for a brief moment.
Someone in his chambers had shrieked and jumped and he whirled around, heavy brocade cape barely moving with him. He fully expected a startled chambermaid at this time of day, replacing his sheets and cleaning the floors. Instead, his anger was lifted from his chest, lifting the cloud and clearing his mind for a tunnel of light.
She was wearing a thin cape and hood, inconspicious and simple, the same she'd worn when they'd first met, so many, many moons ago. And when she lifted her startled gaze, he saw her forehead covered in powders and creams, hiding her.
His jaw snapped shut, resettling into his angry scowl and hardened face, and in three broad strokes he was across the room and his thumbs were angrily wiping at the heavy make-up covering her forehead without so much of an utter of a greeting.
She didn't know him like this. He didn't know himself like this. This snarling animal in his chest was new and ugly and so unlike the gentle calm she loved him for, and he hated himself in this moment almost as much as he hated everything but her in this moment.
Her eyes were wide, and she hushed soft protests at him. And while he cradled her face softly, his frown set deeper and deeper with every harsh stroke of his fingers to set her royal insignia free from its camouflage.
He was so frustrated that it wouldn't come free easily that with a snarl he pressed his lips to it and ran his tongue flat and harsh across the skin.
It would have been a laugh that escaped her lips, if it hadn't burst forth from her in a cry, spilling sudden tears that caught on his cheeks and chin.
He rubbed again, using the expensive fabric of his gold-embroidered tunic and probably ruining it forever, and the crescent moon on her forehead was finally free.
When he pressed his lips to it again, it was hot and pulsating, a tingling glimmer beneath his lips, a calming force.
She'd once confessed - in a hush, hidden under his covers and the deepest night, her creamy thighs pressed around his, his hands buried in her soft flesh - that it tickled when he kissed it, but never unpleasantly so.
He didn't move his lips away but sighed and closed his eyes and moved his hands out of her soft hair to cradle her whole form in a hard crush against his frame.
She collapsed against him, hands against his chest, surrendering all her weight to him as she fell against him and let him hold her.
The grief radiated through her in crushing shudders.
"You've heard," he whispered. "How could you have already heard?"
They'd just told him minutes ago.
Her hand curled against his chest.
"They've decided long before you knew," Serenity whispered back. Her hand was shaky. "It was announced in a formal ceremony last night. Along with a strong reprimand that the Moon was not to send a suitor for your hand."
Like a snake writhing, the anger pushed hot and hard and slow through every limb of his, again, hot and hard and coiling.
"We've long known we were running out of time," she whispered into the velvet and he once again felt the need to rip it all off of him.
No. No, they haven't. There was still time.
His hold became desperate and too strong, but Serenity didn't protest. Instead, she raised her hands to his cheeks, and he blinked when her eyes found his.
They were so full of sorrow and regret.
Only when her tender and pale hands started to wipe at his cheeks did he realise they had been wet.
No.
She curled her soft hand around his cheek, the tips of her fingers slipping against his ear and into his hair and she tugged him down with the lightest of pressure that still always would cause him to collapse against her immediately.
His lips found hers like a drowning man his saviour, and he whimpered into her mouth. The kiss was soft and slow and hard and painful all at once.
He wrenched his lips away from hers with a growl, appalled.
She was kissing him in the way she was kissing him every time she attempted to say goodbye – all those times when she insisted she was 'setting him free'.
She was giving him up. Again.
No. He wouldn't let her.
He snarled and this time it was him who emprisioned her face, trapping her cheeks with both his hands and boring into her eyes.
"No," he growled, almost feral. "This is not goodbye."
"Endymion," she breathed, eyes shining and full of pity and remorse and crushing, painful grief - it screamed in his soul; an ugly, crushing sound. "You know they're right. This is wise."
He shook her, ever so softly and yet so very vehemently.
"No," he bit out. He was angry at her and angry at the world and angry at his court and angry at the royal colors in this room and so, so, so angry.
When he kissed her again it was demanding and possessive, his tongue invading and his teeth bruising as he claimed her lips as his. She whimpered, but her hands fisted in his hair and her tongue dove just a deep as his did. Desperate. Hanging on by a thread.
When he released her just as suddenly, eyes blown wide in panic and rush, her face still trapped in his dark hands against her porcelain skin, the adrenaline under his fingertips turned from despair to hope.
"Marry me," he pressed out, his eyes jumping between hers as her forehead crinkled into a pitying frown. "Marry me tonight."
She blinked, her gentle fingers curling around his wrists where he held her face imprisioned.
If he was already married, he could not be married off in this war against his will. Even if they kept it secret, her ring would keep him safe once the day came, so would the laws of Elysion.
He could not lose her if he was already hers.
The hope curled up in his throat and in his chest and in his face and it spilled out in tears that were not at all under his control.
"Please," he sobbed, pulling her face closer and laying his forehead against hers, the glimmering thrum of her insignia against his skin a grounding force, squeezing his eyes shut.
Her hands were so very gentle when they stroked his cheeks.
He nearly swallowed his heart when he heard her soft and shaky "ok."
Obvious Setting Tag: Silver Millennium