notes: featherplay! except not really.
i own nothing.

Feathers

He traced cursive loops over her shoulders, into her skin. They were intricate webs of ink, and on a canvas much more unorthodox than simple parchment.

It wasn't something they did often, but Ahiru always felt that it somehow brought them closer together. The young woman lay over her stomach on the bed, bare and humming contently to herself as he loomed over her back. The quill wasn't sharp, but she could still feel every word; not that she could ever hope to decipher them.

Idly kicking her feet against the air behind them, she turned to Fakir, smiling. "What kind of story are you writing this time?"

He leaned back away from her to sigh. "I'll read it to you when I'm done." He had only written several lines across her shoulders and neck so far, but he aimed to have her back decorated in words by that afternoon.

Ahiru puffed her cheeks out in response. "Fiiiine." But she still couldn't resist the impulse to twist her neck around and try to read a few sentences.

Which Fakir quickly caught on to, reaching over to bop her on the head. "Don't move around like that or I'll mess up."

"But I wanna read!"

"You'll read later," he said, lifting the quill from her back. "If you keep moving around, you'll just end up with blotches of ink on your back. So try staying still for a while, you moron."

Ahiru huffed indignantly. "I am not. I'm just curious!"

Fakir closed his eyes, the first hints of annoyance rubbing into his features. Instead of responding, he decided to flip the quill over and hover it over the back of her neck, lightly touching the skin.

The reaction was instantaneous.

"A-wa-wa—?" With a sharp jolt, the redhead practically jumped into the air, bouncing back down to the mattress with her cheeks glowing and eyes wide. Frantic, she whipped her head around to face him. "What was that for?"

Fakir could only idly hold the quill in his fingers, blinking slowly.

She flushed some more, the redness deepening with each awkward second. "W-What?"

"…For someone that used to be covered in feathers, you sure are sensitive to them," Fakir mused, an eyebrow raising slightly in consideration.

Giving him a look, Ahiru shot back, "What—what's that supposed to mean? I wasn't expecting you to do anything like that, so—!"

But she was swiftly interrupted with the stroke of a feather down her back, trailing down the entire length of her spine.

"A-WA-WA—QUA—?" This time, she managed to completely fall off the side of the bed, arms waving about everywhere and landing on the hardwood floor with a loud thud.

It was one of the rare times Fakir didn't mind Ahiru getting the ink of his story smudged all over her back.

End