A perfect moment never lasts. It is fundamentally impossible, because 'perfection' is impossible in the presence of flaws. And human perception is always flawed.
A moment of perfect contentment and understanding...it didn't fix anything. And no less than ten minutes later she found her confusion stirring, like a great sleeping beast that felt the sun pressing against its eyelids.
She wanted to cling to this sweet accordance, but things never remain static. And the eye of the storm always passes into more storm. Her shoulders stiffened as she felt him stir, felt him turn his face so that his cheek rested soft against their hands, and she was breathing deep and even against his temple. Her fingers twitched within his, and his tightened, his hold on her becoming more firm.
If she tried, she knew he'd let her go. Did she want to try?
Did she want to fully break this moment?
And even in this there was danger, it wasn't immediate, but the realization did come to her. About the same time that she felt him shift again, felt him turn his head and draw her hand up. She sat slowly back as he lifted his head, as his weight against her knees became heavier. His movements were almost lazy, almost trance-like as he brought her hand to his lips and pressed a chaste kiss in the cup of her palm.
Then he just rested there a long moment, and filled her hand with a sigh.
She closed her eyes slowly, and pushed away her mind. She just as steadily pulled close her emotions. Her desire for comfort, for closeness. She left her hand limply in his, and let him guide her movements in uncharacteristic passivity.
Meeting no resistance in this small boundary crossed, he drew her hand closer, and pressed a moist kiss to the heel of her palm, breathing against it for a moment before slowly repeating the kiss, this time opening his mount and tasting her skin.
Her chin tilted down and her hair fell in sections around her face, her eyelashes remained soft, golden crescents on her cheeks. She wanted to curl up. She wanted to drift to sleep while he ran his fingers through her hair.
His path altered then, and he turned his head slightly right, soft lips against the base of her thumb, the join of her the knuckle, a whispered word against the tip of her thumb. Then a gentle closing of teeth on the very edge, where nail met skin. He held just that much of her between his teeth, and slowly, lazily drug his tongue across it.
Another hesitation, another breath, and he relaxed his jaw, turning his head and sliding her thumb further into his mouth.
All of this was done with such warmth, breath, and reverence, with such careful, yet natural affection, that she could hardly think beyond it. Her right hand returned to his hair, and she slid her fingers deep into those silken gold locks, twining them through her grasp and kneading into the warmth of his scalp.
He shuddered, making a soft sound in his throat, and it was such a sweet jolt of heat to her stomach. She shifted slightly in the chair, squeezing her thighs together and feeling how he shifted in reaction to her.
If she opened her eyes, she wondered if she would see the world shrouded in a soft, pink haze. She felt as if she were floating in that haze, drifting...
He shifted again, but everything was moving so slowly, like she might instead see a succession of frames, rather than a finished product. Or an echo of air passing rather than actual movement. He drew his teeth along her thumb, then slowly lifted his head, slowly opened sleepy eyes.
And she knew this because she had opened her own eyes, she was gazing down at him, because 'gaze' was the only appropriate word. Too involved for 'look', too gentle for 'stare'. This expression conveyed words she didn't quite understand yet, but he seemed to catch them, understand them, because he gave a slow, leisured blink of affection mixed with true pleasure, then rose up on his knees, pressing against her legs and stretching his neck up to her.
She didn't lower her head, at least, she didn't think she did, but his mouth still slid tenderly across hers all the same. Fingers combed gently back through her hair, tilted her head, parted her lips on a soft sigh.
Maybe it was some spell. It had to be a spell. Because it was several moments later that she found herself on the edge of her chair, her arms around his neck and her tongue tangled wetly with his...and it was then that she remembered that he was her brother, and she had decided they weren't going to do this anymore. For some reason it was so hard to hold that decision centre in her mind...
"Mmm, Aki...no..." barely a breath against his lips, which she then thoughtlessly contradicted as her fingers tightened in the material of his shirt and she opened her mouth to him once more when his tongue licked over the edge of her teeth.
Kisses...how had she lived so long without this feeling?
His hands weaved gently through her hair, flexing and kneading and seemingly drinking up sensation as his fingers tangled in her long gold locks.
He drew his mouth back from hers a margin, but the kiss didn't end, he breathed along her cheek, marking a procession of small, wet kisses at the corner of her mouth, the line of her jaw.
He kissed her throat, right below her ear, and she shuddered helplessly, making a soft, desperate sound deep in her throat as he followed that path down. The upper edge of her collarbone, the space between her shoulder and throat, where he nudged her collar aside and bit softly down. It was like a string snapped, and her head fell back, her breath deepening into a moan as her whole body shook.
One hand smoothed from her hair, feathered gently over her cheek, then slid down. Fingertips teased at the top button of her pajama top, then slowly pushed it through its eye. Then the next, exposing a shallow 'V' of cleavage. It was when his fingertips left cloth and kissed skin that she felt another jolt of awareness. The press and working of a hot mouth at the base of her throat, the tickle of fingers across the tops of her breasts...again the realization came...
You're kissing your brother...
"No," she whispered, her fingers clenching in reaction, though she didn't push or pull away from him. she hung in that moment on the boundary between panic and passion, and both of them seemed deeper because of it.
You are. You're kissing Aki.
"No," she whispered, feeling ardor begin its blind shift into guilt, feeling her emotions being taken along while her body still seemed to be caught in the throes of desire, and strangely...disconnected because of it.
Teeth pressed against her throat and she jerked, her hands scrambled at his shoulders, then she was shoving him desperately away. "Aki! No!" she was panting, her chest rising and falling hard, her fingers clenched in his shoulders. They shook, but held him firmly back at arm's length.
He was panting, too. His lips parted and swollen red with kisses. His eyes slitted open and still so glazed with desire that he looked half-dazed. His fingers held onto her shoulders as well, but loosely-he seemed to be a moment behind her.
"No," she murmured again, not sure what she really meant any more.
He took a deep breath, and then another. Then he slowly sank back to sit on his heels. His hands fell to her knees, and then to his own. Another breath, and he slowly slumped, slowly inclined his forehead to rest against her knees.
She didn't stop him, she didn't even want to. Her emotions were a tangled knot, and each action was another loop around, and her every attempt to unravel them only seemed to pull the strings tighter.
The separation of love from being 'in love'. The dividing of emotions from propriety. She loved Aki, but that only seemed to make everything harder.
He sighed, she didn't hear it, but felt it, felt his ribs expand deep and slow against her legs. Her hands clenched in her lap with the instinctive urge to reach out to him. To soothe and comfort.
"Aya," so much emotion in one word, she couldn't figure out what it meant. "I love you, and I won't push you any farther than you want me to."
Such strange words-what?
"But don't misunderstand," his voice was gaining strength with each syllable. "I'm not going to back down." Again, he looked up at her, and she stared down at him, and the dark, serious light to his eyes told her that he meant every word. The trouble was, she didn't quite understand them. He was making a promise here, but she couldn't figure out what it was.
"Aki...what?"
He frowned at her question, his hands sliding up to her knees and tightening. "I can't tell if you're really that innocent, or if you are purposefully misunderstanding me," he said offhandedly, with a faint sense of aggravation. "I'm leaning more towards the latter, because I know you better than that. But either way, I will spell it out for you, Aya. I will keep telling you until you have no choice but to understand."
Ominous words, she wished, suddenly, that she had kept her mouth shut. That she hadn't opened this Pandora's box of questions. She wished that she could back away, but she was trapped between him and the chair.
"I. love. You." Each word was clear and firm, strangely separated from the previous and following words with sharp punctuation and emphasis. "I want you. But more importantly..." his fingers tightened slightly on her knees, not yet causing pain, but holding on, maybe holding her in place. "More importantly...You love me. You want me."
A softening of his voice did not soften the blow of such destructive words. She jerked back, leaned back in the chair, but his hands and body held her firmly in place. In unsurprising contrast to her pulling back, he pushed forward, rose up on his knees and leaned against her legs once more. His face was nearly level to hers.
"No," he said firmly, "Don't retreat. It won't make it any less true. You want me, Aya. And that makes all the difference."
Tell him 'no'. Instead she opened her mouth and said, "It doesn't change anything." And as he knelt at her feet and seemed to brighten with triumph, rather than darken with frustration, she too late realized how badly she had misspoken. In her rebuff she had offered confirmation, rather than firm denial.
'It doesn't change anything'-implying the dangerous prefix of 'That is true, but...'
Why did she say it like that? Was it just a case of her being persistently clumsy with her words? He opened his mouth, and she hurried on to speak, knowing it was too late to take such a damning statement back, but hoping she may be able to salvage something. "It doesn't change the fact that you are my brother. No matter what feelings either of us have, or don't-that will never change."
It always came back to that argument, that hurdle. Part of her still couldn't really believe that this was happening.
Whatever 'this' was.
He didn't react like she expected. He didn't react like she would have. He tilted his head just slightly to one side and observed her calmly. "I know that," he said. "And what's more, I don't even want it to. I am glad to be Aya's brother." His hands loosened again, and for a strange moment she thought about how curious it was, that the body had a language all its own, and how tellingly expressive his was in particular.
Even when she didn't want to understand what it was saying.
"But you can't use that defense with me and actually expect it to push me away. My emotions are too strong for that." And then he sat back on his heels again, and whatever intense aura he had been using to fill his words with such forceful conviction, it seemed to pull back within him. "I'm not saying I didn't struggle with that in the beginning..." his hands dropped, and he splayed them palm-up and open on his own thighs. She wasn't sure what he saw there, but he stared for a long, long moment. "For the longest time I felt like I was being torn apart."
A plaintive statement. She hated it. Hated the subtle taste of pain and dim flavor of defeat. Nothing should ever make him feel that way. "I loved you. I knew it, I felt it. But my conscience said 'no'. Over and over again, it was always 'no'. I tried to listen, I tried to not feel this way, and when that failed, I tried to move past my emotions. And when that failed..." he shook his head, not a negation, but some sort of emphasis she couldn't quite interpret.
Then again, he looked up at her. "Understand, Aya, that it was not a matter of defeat. I did not conquer my conscience, and it did not conquer me. I still understand 'right' and 'wrong'. But...I understand beyond that now. Maybe I'm making excuses, I don't even know...but I don't feel 'wrong' when I say I love you. I don't feel 'wrong' when you are close to me. Knowing you love me, too...I can't just ignore that. I'm sorry, Aya, but I can't..."
Where does that leave us, she wanted to ask. Because he couldn't let go, and she couldn't give in, so what common ground could they even hope to find? This wasn't like their other, few-and-far-between arguments, where neither of them gave in, and both decided to just shrug and ignore their point of difference. Deciding it unimportant until they bumped heads on it again in the near-future. They hadn't met an argument yet, that they couldn't resolve and climb over in this way.
Until now.
This was too large to ignore. Too large to climb over. And she couldn't put it out of her mind while he refused to let it go. One of them was going to have to give, there had to be a giving point somewhere, otherwise the both of them would keep pushing and pulling at the issue until they tore themselves apart.
tbc...