Chapter 38

Black branches snivel around, brambling and intertwining overhead. Wind creaks like old bones through the trees. It's weirdly chilly for a spring night. It's the kind of weird cold snap that normally happens in the fall, when leaves are dumped in earnest to the ground–not on their way up from it. I walk with careful steps, keeping my senses vigilant for any spots to trip up my feet. I don't feel all that great; today's one of the days where there's a dull ache in my chest for no reason other than it just so happens to be my lot in life. But what am I to do? I'm a trainee. The world doesn't stop spinning just for me. The titans won't stop eating away at the island or gouging out our innards just to vomit them back up later.

Still, I'm compelled to crawl out of my bed and sneak away tonight. Just one last time.

One last time.

After three years of this hellish training, I've finally reached the point where I'm experiencing things one last time. It doesn't feel as good as it ought. Instead I'm just about as on guard as I was back in the eastern division. I'm every bit as anxious, like the second I relax and take these fleeting moments for granted, I'll lose them forever, like puffs of wind that vanish the second I turn my head to catch them. Like a song I only half-remember. Like…well, I guess like just about anything. It seems that I'm incapable of keeping much around for long.

I push away my thoughts as I begrudgingly allow myself to wander farther out from the confines of my warm, toasty bed. I imagine myself sprawled out in the densest part of my sleep, lips parted to draw silent air. Hell, maybe I actually snore. Not like I'll ever know unless someone tells me. And my current bunk mate isn't exactly the kind of person who'd be inclined to have that sort of chat with me. Even now, she's probably sound asleep, or decent enough to mind her own business as the other person sharing in her personal space steals off into the dark.

And it is dark: somehow the path has grown increasingly more convoluted, turning near-impossible to navigate even with my eyes long since adjusted. I lament my lack of foresight; I should've tagged along with someone else rather than shuffle off alone. I'll be showing up late to this particular party. It feels better than arriving early and accepting the fact that no one else cared enough about our lives as trainees ending to celebrate the occasion.

Finally, after what feels a hundred year's worth of purgatorial path in front of me, a building on the outskirts of the officer's camp section peeks into view. Taking the trail around the long way has nearly tripled the amount of time it would normally take to get here; creeping forward with steal in mind no doubt added more time onto even that. I pause at the edge of the treeline, surveying the area. It's hard to tell whether or not the lights are even on inside: it takes a quick jerk of laughter, the sudden shift of blinds tacked to a window, to betray the activity lurking within.

Our last secret party.

Straightening my legs, I stride quickly over to the back door of the building. I can't tell if it's ingenious or utterly audacious to hold this whole affair literally right next to the people who supervise our behavior. That, or Jean gave me faulty information.

I much rather prefer the former to the ladder.

Pressing myself against the building's wall, I pause a moment to try and eavesdrop on whatever's going on inside. Sure enough, waiting long enough to hear over the sound of my thumping heart and hollow breaths grants me a window large enough to catch trace conversations slipping through the crack underneath the door. I hear clinking, feet scuffling–even low singing. Not something I'm particularly inclined to partake in, but, at least the voices sound too young to belong to officers.

I rap my knuckles against the wood door softly and wait a moment. It doesn't take long: I've only just begun to question what the hell I'm doing here when the knob glides in rotation and light spills out from inside. An eyeball peeks out; Connie's alert expression morphs into satisfactory relief upon seeing a welcome face. "Hey, 'Liva! C'mon in." The door kicks out in full, Connie's arm sweeping out in a welcoming flourish in tandem with the opening maw of the building. Inside are a few dozen other trainees, nursing small bottles of something that's probably viciously rationed and slipping tongues down fellow ears to be heard privately over the din of phonetic song.

"Hey, Connie. Who all made it?"

"Same old, same old," he shrugs, closing the door behind me before meshing himself to my side. "Let me give you a quick tour before you get lost."

"Thanks," I say, and he tosses a half-grin over the side of his mouth. Rolling his shoulders, Connie bounces nods in quick exchanges as we weave our way around the throng. Pulsing limbs ebb and flow in dizzying staccato. Suddenly I'm lamenting my earlier decision to arrive later than most; I'll have a damn hard time catching up to the general level of revelry soaked into the air. Connie slaps an arm against someone I remember from the eastern division. When he pulls it back, he's got a bottle.

We pass it between ourselves, near-empty as it may be, and I do my best to pay attention to the tour he provides rather than wonder how much of what I drink is actually alcohol versus a nauseating swatch of backwash. I shudder imagining collecting the salivated traces of a few particularly unsavory individuals in my mouth. "...And the bathrooms are down this hall," Connie finishes, seemingly satisfied with his ability to masquerade as an impromptu host. "Want the last swig?"

I grimace. "Not particularly, no. Anything unopened?"

Connie shrugs. "Jean went looking for some. Said he hid a few bottles somewhere upstairs."

I take a quick glimpse around. Fresh wine definitely sounds better than something long since opened. I wipe the corner of my lip and nod. "I'll help him look."

At that, he nods sagely, scratching his bald scalp absently. "Holler if you need anything," he decrees, humor snagging his restraint away. "Especially if he tries zipping his balls up again."

"That was–"

"I know, I know; just sayin'," Connie swiftly interjects, hands up to placate long before I can squeeze a word in edgewise. He throws me a sloppy wink and meanders effectively out of sight. "Catch you later!"

Leave it to the youngest elder I've ever seen to try and get cheeky. Honestly, though, as unseemly as his remarks may be, I appreciate his ability to jest with me far more than I care for the people who filter their words around me for fear of incurring the Reaper's wrath. I'm just one girl. One girl with a bit of warmth tinging the perimeter of her throat and a familiar hitch in her breath.

I make my way down the hall, waving at Sasha and Marco as I pass them, asking if they've seen Jean. One says he slipped out a window; the other refutes the former, saying he's somewhere upstairs, trying to drink himself into courage enough to dart out the window again. I thank them–they've got a bottle shared exclusively between the two of them, and Sasha offers me a hearty sip I don't feel particularly motivated to decline accepting–and conclude my business with them so I can go seek out Jean.

The stairs upwards are absurdly steep. I grip the rail with all the determined force of an acrophobe a stone's throw from a cliff edge, careful not to trip myself up before I even get buzzed enough to blame the loss of my faculties on inebriation. There's no light in the stairwell. It's like I've been plunged in a dank storeroom, permeated with that one particular dry-wood stench that only grows more pungent with age. Like cheese, I reason, thinking about Sasha. I should've asked if there was a lamp or something.

Feet probing the steps like blind moles sniffing out new tunnels, I make my way through the dingy blackness up to the second level. It's clear to me now, up in the floor with no foot traffic, that this building hasn't been of any particular use in this camp for awhile. At least for a season or two; at most, I doubt it's seen use since we've been here. Dust motes cling to the air like snow suspended in motion. My nose crinkles like thin paper, like bunched fabric, like flickering flames snapping up bitter branches.

"...Jean? You up here?"

I hear a muffled sort of scuffling from further in. Up here, without any lights on and with the view outside the windows being equally obscure and dark, it's virtually impossible to discern where exactly I'm hearing the noise from. The floorboards don't creak, at least, as I make my way forward. A tawdry runner extends its weary, trampled tongue down the length of what I'm beginning to understand as a vaguely hallway-shaped path. I step over it in soft steps, the sound cushioned through the rug, embraced by the very station it stands poised upon.

A door swings open to my left. My eyes have all but adjusted; before me looms the ever-lankish figure of Jean. Again I'm struck by how peculiar his rapid growth has been to adjust to. Again I'm lulled into a sudden lapse in presence, instead finding myself wondering why exactly, in a building full of trainees, I wanted to see him most. "Oh," Jean says, and I watch him smile. "It's you."

"Me," I say, following where his eyes refocus. He's got a fresh bottle in his hands.

"Wanna split?"

"Please."

He motions inside the room, and I sidestep inside after him. He pops the cork and it thumps its escape into some undivulged corner while we post up on the various seat-like surfaces. I claim the window awning for my own; Jean plops straight down onto the floor in front of me. He takes first drink before passing to me. "Took you awhile to get here," he says conversationally, as I try the wine for myself. This bottle doesn't taste the same as the others. It's a bit cooler, no doubt due to its isolation up here as opposed to time spent heating up in the warm-palmed hands of the trainees downstairs. The flavor lingers. Slightly sweeter. I burn the taste buds on the tip of my tongue, rolling the liquid around in my mouth for a moment before swallowing and sending the bottle back to Jean for another rotation.

"I doubt I missed anything important."

Jean chuckles. "You certainly didn't. Most of the fog has lifted from my head, at any rate."

I raise an eyebrow. "Spacing our drinks out tonight, are we?"

"For now." Jean's in good spirits–as am I–but for a moment, his tone gets a bit more sincere, less bantery. "Figured I ought to remember this one."

"Mmm." He hands me the wine again, gripping it by the neck. I grab the base with both hands this time, just to do something abnormal, just to break routine, just to prove to myself that cycles can and do end. "Do you think you'll miss all of this?"

He exhales. "Is that even a question? Of course I will. Chances are we'll all get split up, go our separate ways, join our own divisions…it'll never be this easy again."

I wish the moon was out tonight. I wish I could commit every intricacy of Jean's expression to memory tonight, while I still have a chance to, while there's time enough to do just that and absolutely nothing else. A party brought us close; a party closes us out from each other. It breaks and builds my heart all the same.

"I wish we'd done it differently," I tell him, offering truth in tandem with the bottle. He leans forward to accept them both. Our hands brush. "Somewhere private, sometime sober. Not drunk and desperate. Not when we're both looking elsewhere."

Jean's expression is hard to read. He takes a longer dreg, and all I can do is wait for him to swallow, wait for him to come back up for air. The bottle clacks quietly against the floor as he sets it down and stands up, coming towards me in the windowsill. "What about that time in the training fields?" I've no good answer for that. I suspect he doesn't either, though, because he lets the question drop to the side, forgotten and unanswered, in favor of speaking of other things. "I think I'm starting to understand what it might mean to love someone. To love the kind of person who will never look your way."

"Mikasa," I whisper, and there's an immediate, visceral discomfort in knowing that some part of me instinctively knows that it's her, it's always been her, and I have absolutely no clue why I know that when he's never told me himself.

Jean gives me a sadder sort of smile. "Scoot over," he says, and I do. I bend down and grab the wine as I resituate myself. He talks as I press my lips against the cool glass lip, listening. "Eren's a lucky bastard. So is Armin, really. Both of them are so close to her. It makes me feel a thousand miles away, everytime I see them together, like there's something tethering them to each other that I just don't have."

"I get the feeling."

He turns his head, rests it near mine. I drink more. "You grew up with them. You're closer than I'll ever get, I think."

"Funny. Did you forget the arguments you used to have with Eren since it's been so long without me here?"

"No, Aliva," Jean refutes, tone suddenly thicker, more level, "I'm being serious. I've tried not to see it for a long time. But I think in his own weird, convoluted way, Eren's just as invested in you as you are in him. It's like fate binds the two of you or something. Like you'd both run as far away from each other as possible and just wind up smacking face-first after running in a full circle."

To that, I have nothing to say. Frankly I think any thoughts I offer on the matter will be moot. When Jean gets like this it's not exactly easily reversible. So I do the impulsive thing, the sure-fire destructive technique. "You're right, you know. You have no chance of wooing Mikasa if you perform so abysmally in bed."

Jean snorts suddenly–the kind of wild, boisterous sound only produced when truly caught off guard–and he shoves at my shoulder. "I'm not–I mean–it wasn't that bad, was it, if you came back for seconds–" I'm laughing harder than I have any right to be. I lean over, and kiss him stoutly, his breath mingling with mine, tasting wine back and forth between our lips. One kiss and I let him go.

"No," I agree with gentle fondness. "You just need some practice."

"With–"

"No," I say, laughing again. "We're closing this chapter in our lives, remember? Vying for cadet status? Don't court your enemy so close to dueling day."

Jean lets out an animated, overly exaggerated sigh. He hops off the windowsill and gives me a quick peck on the cheek. "Sure, sure." After a moment, he pauses, face turned ever-so-slightly away. "There's rooftop access at the end of the hall. If you go up there, don't go alone. Yeah?"

I offer him our bottle, but he declines, instead stooping low to procure a full one out from under a moth-eaten couch. "You've been good to me," I say, because suddenly that's the only thing that I've really ever wanted to say, because a dense knot in my ribcage tells me to say it now, say it while there's still time to do so. "Thanks, Jean."

My throat is constricted with emotion, but for the first time in a long time, Jean doesn't pick up on that. He just offers a swaggerish, mock salute, and grins his way out of the room. "Same to you. I'm gonna go find the Con man."

He leaves me as I left him: one sitting, alcohol staining our sights, the other retreating with no intent to return.

I clasp the bottle by its neck and head to the roof.

The access he mentioned is really just a rickety, half-bolted ladder to carry someone up to a simple trapdoor. I hold the bottle in my mouth, teeth clamped over the glass ridges at its top, and scurry my way up. I'm not entirely addled by the drink, but the ground seems more fluid, the rungs like bobbing logs down a thin stream. The door isn't locked; after a moment's struggle, I'm able to hoist it up and open.

The sky spills out in an endless canvas overhead, a starched blackness drenched in all-encompassing depth. Looking up without trees to obscure my view makes me wonder if it's really a moonless night so much as it is one of those days with clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, like thread over a loom, a thousand strings pulled taunt to recolor the world. I'm clothed in the obfuscating omnipotence of the land, of the sky, of the places they dance and intertwine. The roof grounds me, the sky untethers me, unbinds me to the rules and laws of human existence. What I wouldn't give to lose all love for gravity, to unmoor from this building, to walk on the heavens and drag fingers through celestial dirt. I can't breathe. I am so inexplicably heavy, so immeasurably rooted in my life. Why? Why can't I fly? Why can't I be upside down, beyond this island, beyond this life? Why is the context of my consciousness situated here, now, of all times, of all places?

I rub at my temple and set the wine bottle down next to the trapdoor.

The roof is pretty straightforward, all things considered: just a few protruding ledges. A chimney top that doesn't really look like smoke has funneled out of it any time in recent history. I shimmy my way onto one of the ledges near the back, one with a sturdy wall around its edges, high enough that I can sit against and prop and rest my arm on it. The ground is cool–as is the air, really–but not unbearably so now that the wind has died down. I sit and rest my head on the ledge. Looking out at the ground below, rotated ninety degrees, is calming in a peculiar way. It's a new perspective, albeit temporary.

As everything ultimately is, I guess.

Thuds sound back in the direction I came. I pick my head up: the swivel glosses my motion perception, making me regret turning back so quickly. Even in the dark, even with my face flushed red and my veins dusted with ethanol, I recognize the head that pops into view. Reiner makes his way up, squinting into the darkness and only recognizing me when I offer him a lazy wave. He makes his way over without a word. The ledge I'm draped on isn't all that large now that there's a second person on it, but when I think about getting up and moving my legs, it seems entirely out of the question. Instead I watch as Reiner situates himself around me, folding into the places where I'm not, carefully avoiding touching me. He watches me carefully, like someone studying a still life, like a purveyor of art. Finally he sets an arm on the wall and glances out at the trees below.

"Figured I'd find you here."

I squint at him. "When have I been known to frolic on rooftops?"

He looks at me briefly, then continues to survey the ground. "I seem to always find you in quiet places."

"How unlike me," I murmur, thinking of all the boisterous exchanges I've had.

"I disagree." This time, it's my turn to look at him. "I think the closest I've been to seeing you for–well, you–has been when it's just us. In the forest, or the cave, or the tent…" He trails off. Reiner doesn't mention the infirmary, but he doesn't have to.

I shift a little more, turning to face him head on. "And what is it, exactly, that you've learned of me?"

He blinks owlishly, eyes wide in the night. And maybe it's just coincidence: maybe there's nothing behind it at all, but as I'm waiting there for his answer, the clouds open up like fruit, segmenting and allowing for brilliant moon and starlight to spill through the gaps. I'm distracted for a moment: the sight is so unexpected, so gorgeous, that the only thing I can do is stop to soak it all in. The stars blend together light windchimes, twinkling their divine musicality above us, reflecting it down into my eyes.

"I know that you're beautiful," he says softly, and if I wasn't so surprised by the answer I might've laughed at it. Instead my silence must have given him courage to continue: Reiner reaches forward, carefully tucks a stray hand behind my ear. I want to know what it is that he sees. I want to know how I look to him; I satisfy myself by listening, as he plucks starshine and cloud thread and weaves it into a quilt called Aliva Moreau. "I know that you're guarded. Cautious. Determined, when it's to your benefit. I know you, but I don't. You're like the warriors. You share our history, our weight, our secrets. But…it's like…" Reiner starts to fumble a little. I watch his brows knit and relax a few times before he clears his throat. "You're like Eren, in a way. Right next to us all, and yet…he's got some fiery quality. Some look in his eye that makes you wonder where else he's looking. Even when all he's looking at is you."

I was touched first, then amused; now I'm just curious. "Where does all of that take you?"

He hesitates. Shifts a little. I can't help but hold my breath for a second, watching him, watching the way he looks at the world around us. "It's gorgeous out here at night. The stars, the sounds; it's…really something. It's made me wonder–just how many more nights like this will we have?"

I think back to my earlier conversation with Jean. "Not many." We'll be launched into the final trainee exam soon. Beyond that…perhaps I'll never see him again.

"No, not many," he agrees. "But it's peaceful out here. It's quiet. And I know it won't be like this forever. I know it won't always be with you. We're soldiers. We're warriors. Eventually, there will be storms and there will be battles."

"Reiner," I say, lifting my head up a little. "Where is this going?"

"I've pushed back for so long because of what we are. But"–Reiner's breath hitches–"I don't deserve this quiet. I don't deserve this peace. And yet, it's here, right above me. Right in front of me, in you. I said I can't do these things and feel nothing, as if I could still stop, as if I could still pull back. I've been yours for longer than I care to admit. Longer than even I realized it. And long after the storms start, long after our missions have diverged, I think I still will be."

His gaze is so open, so vulnerable, so deeply unlike everything I've seen. Reiner's voice is soft. It doesn't carry. I'm drawn in, listening closer, craning to understand him. "That's a hell of a thing to say," I tell him, and he laughs a little. The sound isn't as light as I wish it would be.

"I'm the Armored Titan, Aliva. I won't live forever: I've got a few years left until Marley selects the next wielder. I talked to the others. Annie, Bert…they're in the same boat. We've been idling for too long. I want to go home. I want to see my family. We all do. I can't give you what you deserve. I can't give you priority over my mission. And I can't ask that of you, either. But, at least, while it's silent and still…I want to spend those moments with you. When I'm a warrior, when I'm a soldier, finding comfort in those quiet memories, I want it to be you that I see. It's always been you. I want it to always be you."

Reiner leans forward. His hands, his broad thumbs, cup my cheeks, stroke them lightly. I'm leaning into the touch, steadying myself with it, finding how to speak when he's snatched all coherence straight out of me. "Can I take that as a confession?" I ask, whispering, because suddenly there's this physical tension between the two of us, his bright, honey-hazel eyes soaking every inch of my skin up and into his mind.

"Please," he says back, voice low, one thumb dipping from my cheek to the corner of my lip.

"Can I kiss you?"

"Please," he breathes, and the sky bleeds into the background as we kiss. His hands are soft, warm, coarse and carefully possessive of the way he holds me. His lips are flushed, his breath heady where it spills onto my skin. I can't get close enough. I tilt my head, kiss him fully, lips parted, savoring his tongue, offering my own. One of his hands moves to the back of my neck, gets tangled in my hair in a sudden pinch, makes me gasp into his mouth. Reiner moans lightly, breathily, the kind of sound that's intoxicating, the kind that makes me want more. My hands are on him, stroking his jaw line, brushing fingertips over that delicious array of stubble, running through his hair, caressing the shell of his ear. He groans when my hands run lower, when they find his waist, when my night-chilled fingers slip under his shirt to caress his skin and draw out goosebumps from the line of his ribs to his belly button.

"If I fell in love with you," I murmur, speaking into his mouth, kissing his cheek, his jaw, his neck, anywhere I can get my lips on, "if I said I might alr–"

His mouth swallows my words whole. He devours all I meant to say, all I'd already said, and something tells me it's his way of pleading with me not to say it, not to make this whole thing real, not to give him a kind of hope he can't have.

What else am I to do but kiss him back?

I'm not sure who starts first. All I know is that we're crawling out of our clothes, unzipping unbuttoning unfastening our shirts. It's not all that warm, it's not all that cold, there's heat in between us and cool midnight moonshine everywhere else. With my breasts exposed to the air, the areolas tighten up defensively, goosebumps riddling my flesh just as it first appeared on his. Reiner bends down–practically on hands and knees–to exhale over them, warming each, before he parts his lips and wraps one nipple with his tongue, lapping dutifully, sending echoing pleasure warbling all over my body. The sensitive flesh, assuaged and aroused by his gentle ministrations, begs for more, desires more from me. I reach my hand down–pausing, letting him nod–and explore the area I've previously left untouched, finding his waistband and plunging down beneath it, exploring the firmness, the length of his erection, the form of it seeping through his pants.

"Aliva," he groans, hips involuntarily bucking into my hand, causing my heart to jump, the eagerness to spike. I want him. I take both hands to unfasten his pants, and Reiner briefly pulls back from my breasts to watch, breath haggard, eyes husked. I attempt to tug them down his hips and he sits back on his knees to help me, dropping them down all the way down his toned thighs. I press my lips together. Very different from Jean's. I watch his cock throb for a second, that twitching motion that makes it seem like it's got a life of its own. Reiner tugs his pants the rest of the way off and lays them with our shirts, like he's trying to make a blanket out of it. He caresses every inch of my arms, my breasts, as I lean forward, as I kiss down his v-line and breathe deeply, inhaling musk and that scent of his, that salty, liquor-stained wood kind of smell I remember from his jacket.

I taste the skin around his groin and he lets out a low exhale, a hum almost, hands fumbling for a hold that'll steady him. I touch him, first, feel the softness of his head and the vein on the front of his shaft, the way it pulses under my fingertips, the way he lets little sounds out as I explore him. I wrap my hand, trace my nose from base to tip, part my lips to lap at the bead of precum at its slit. It's like thick water, sort of. I listen to the way he moans, the way his hips jut up, the way his dick twitches against my lips. I can't help but kiss my way up and down his length, pop it into my mouth, savor, suck, feel my lips draw taunt and stretch over the head of his penis, over its rim, its girth.

"Aliva," he moans, and I hum a little. I feel his penis jerk inside my mouth at the vibrations. The whole thing makes my jaw ache, so I pull back, and he's right there, holding me to his chest, kissing my forehead. "You didn't need to…"

"I wanted to. Like you did."

His breath is ragged, low and heated, husky like smoked whiskey, warm and delicious. "I want to do that again. I want to taste you."

My body heats at his bluntness; I feel shy, or surprised, or aroused out of my mind. Probably all three. I go to lean back, to lay down like I did back in the infirmary. "Okay–"

"Wait," he interjects, catching me before I can lay down against the roof. His hand is splayed against my spine in a way that reminds me how delectably large his palms are. "You shouldn't. Let me."

Reiner carefully untangles our legs, laying down over his little clothing pile, eyes large as they look up to me. Realization dawns a moment later. "You want me to–"

"The roof is cold," he says, and I swear there's a flush to his cheeks and ears. "And dirty. Better me than you."

Maybe it's the wine. Maybe it's the way I feel, knowing what he said earlier about me. I'm bolstered and full of bravado. Full of the kind of intimate confidence that comes only with pursuing lewd acts on top of a rooftop. I drop low, prowling my way over Reiner, lowering my voice until it's a bit sultry, a bit seductive. "Alright. You'll let me take things from here?" He nods. I notice his bottom lip tuck inward for a second as his teeth draw it in, bite, and release the plump flesh. It's endearing, that little gesture. I reach out and stroke the side of his face. He leans into the touch, but I don't grant it to him for long.

Pulling back, I stand up enough to pull down my pants and underwear. I set my underwear with my brasserie. With my pants, though, I take them and scoop Reiner's hands up above his head.

"Care if I tie you?"

"As you please." Reiner closes his eyes, relaxed and at ease, yet one glance at his groin shows me he's still in rapt attention. I guide his wrists together, using the pant legs to bind them as one, tying it securely enough to feel the restraint and simply enough to free him in a pinch. I sit back, satisfied with my work, and finally move one leg over to the other side of his head. Reiner's eyes are two dark moons, riveted on me now. My knees are on both sides of his head. His hair against the roof. I lower myself, experimenting, letting the two of us grow familiar with this mutual plan of ours.

Reiner's tongue slips between my labia and the warmth of it makes my clit pulse, fiery pleasure snaking out from the contact and all throughout my body. He pulses the wet muscle up and down my slit, falling into a few different strokes, varying the way that he laps at my clit and the way he circles it. He's limited by the positioning of his head: I'm in charge of our motions, of how much of his tongue can possibly touch me. I let him get into a rhythm, listening to the way he moans to himself as he licks between my thighs, and then I pull up to just barely put myself out of reach. Reiner looks a little lost, a little dismayed, that I've pulled back so soon.

I stroke his hair back from his forehead. His lips are wet, glossy in the starlight. He looks at me like I am god herself. "More?"

"Yes," he pants, and a second later, adds, "you can…put your weight down."

I can't help but raise an eyebrow. "You want me to ride your face, don't you, Reiner? You want me to sit on it?" It's hard not to smirk in earnest when he averts his eyes and tilts his head ever-so-slightly away. It's such a teasable behavior. It makes me want to guide his chin back, have him look me in the eyes while he tells me what he wants. I lean forward and whisper his name. That does the trick. "How badly do you want it?"

His lips press together. "Pretty damn badly."

I don't know what comes over me–some wild thing, some pent up libido–but I'm dragging a finger down my slit, puncturing it and wetting the tip of my finger in the slicked-up entrance of my vagina. I pull back, show him the moisture, drag my pointer from his top to bottom lip, parting them and almost smiling as he chases the finger by raising his head. I give it to him, sitting it gently in his mouth, feeling him suck the juice straight off of it. It's downright erotic; that devious little twisting of pleasurous nerves send all their electrical impulses to lower my inhibitions even further. I want him. I want to suffocate this man's face with my thighs. I want to render him breathless, render him mine.

Even if just for one night.

I lower myself to straddle his face in full, and I've only just started when it hits me how good doing it like this feels. I writhe my hips over his tongue, planting it where I want it, feeling my entire lower half tense and coil with every heated spark his licking and sucking gives me. And his nose–it rubs up against my clit every time I shift forward, to the point where I start losing all semblance of sensibility and start grinding against him, listening to him moan against my cunt and hearing my own filthy sounds of pleasure spew out from my mouth. But I can't stop. I'm severely out of breath, panting from the exertion of it all, lungs tight and pussy spasming around his lips because it's so good, so good, so–

"Just like that," I gasp, and suddenly there's stars and they're spinning twirling orbiting around me, and I'm crescendoing, climaxing, cumming, "Reiner, oh, I'm–ah–"

All the tension leaves me in an explosion, a rupturing of the moon and a shattering of the stars. I go slack and it's all I can do to at least sit back, resting my ass against his chest while we both catch our breath. His entire lower face is soaked. I glance behind us dizzily to find that he's slathered himself in a fine slew of his precum just from this whole affair.

Finally, after ages, I gather enough air to speak. I lean forward and untie his wrists before using the pants to wipe down his face. "Did you suffocate?"

"Yes. It was nice."

I laugh softly. My mouth feels so dry after panting like crazy. I'm still soaked like crazy. Still–the reason itself is far beyond me–high in my drive to pursue things with him, to keep going. I pull myself up off of him and stand up, granting him room enough to stand as well. In full nude it's easy to see his musculature, his hefty build and bulking upper body. I tilt my head back to look at him. He kisses me, and I can taste myself on him, but I don't care. The taste melds away after a moment or so, and I'm left with him, him and I, the spaces where we join, our bodies flush against each other. His erection digs into my gut, the heat of his blood-flushed dick hot against my cooled skin. I divert a hand to cup his balls, to fondle them gently, the movement of his skin and patchy hairs against my fingers causing him to make more of those little sounds into my mouth.

"Aliva," he whimpers, as if he's almost begging, as if he's waiting for me, for my decision.

So I break our kiss. I look him square in the eyes. "Fuck me," I tell him.

And so help me god, he does.

Reiner is quick to kiss me again, this time with more passion, more drive, until I'm entirely incapable of thinking about anything other than him. He picks me up in a split second. My legs instinctually wrap around him, pinning his dick between us, to where he can press it against me in a way that drives me crazy. I wrap my arms around his neck and he keeps kissing me, one hand gripping my ass to keep me up and the second one moving over my breast, teasing at my nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger for a moment before he drags his hand down between my legs and slides a finger inside of me.

I let out a low exhale as he finger fucks me, beckoning his index finger in that little motion he tried last time, fumbling for a moment to find the exact tilt and depth that makes my find go fuzzy around the corners. He kisses up and down the length of my neck, letting me let sounds out in earnest as he coaxes a second finger into my squelching hole, a third soon to follow. I'm wet, I'm adjusted, I'm aching with need and burning with desire.

Reiner, finally, pulls his head back far enough to see what he's doing. He stops fingering me, my pussyjuice drenching his digits, to lather the tip of his cock with what I've dripped onto him. He lines himself up, folds parted, runs the tip up and down first, letting it press up against my clit in all the right ways before teasing its way back down to my entrance.

I gasp when he first starts to slide it in. The girth of his cock pulls my vagina wider than his fingers, wider than I'm used to, and what was already fuzzy in my vision goes pure static. I'm buzzing, electrified, body suddenly burning up as he enters me slowly, groaning and gasping in his own right. "Fuck," he moans, "it's so warm." Frankly, I could say the same of him: his dick slides in like coals into water, boiling me raw, burning me alive with copious swaths of pleasure. It's all I can do to cling onto him. He continues to press his cock into me, going further, farther in, exploring the depths of my vagina, my walls clenching with every pulse of near-orgasmic sensation that ripples through me.

It takes a minute for me to get used to the sensation of his dick all the way in me, and just when I think I've managed, he starts to pump in and out. I can feel every time he buries himself to the hilt, balls smacking against my ass, the head of his dick ramming with a kind of ferocious, almost overwhelming pleasure that makes me feel he's kissing up against my cervix. I'm gasping out, loudly moaning, lips parted in full and eyes locked on Reiner as he fucks me, as he holds me, as our bodies mesh and meld and become one. He adjusts his grip–a hand to either hip–and starts fucking me in earnest. My hands scrape out against his back as everything tenses and explodes, moon and stars and clouds flurrying themselves in celestial eddies about my senses. His dick rams into me, dodging upwards, pressing against that spot that drives me wild, till I'm practically drooling from the exhilaration of it all, till I've practically forgotten my own name.

"Aliva," he moans, and I swear I nearly cum just from hearing that.

"Do you feel how wet I am for you?" I gasp, and his head lolls back as he groans, as his hands clench around my hips. I feel his penis slide back up to rearrange my guts and can't help but pant a little. "You won't break me, Reiner. So fuck me harder."

He obeys, and though the tempo stays the same, he does exactly as I've demanded: harder, deeper strokes, the kind that make me cry out and clamp my teeth against his neck to avoid screaming out in ecstasy. I feel everything tighten as I gear up to finish and suddenly his voice is in my ear, rasping, "I'm close," and all I want just then is for him to unravel. My fingernails dig into his skin and my breathing picks up, and I can feel the way he starts to slip and tumble down the slope towards his own orgasm just as I'm going for mine.

I hit mine and it quivers out of me in electric throes, the kind that strike me silly and suffocate me in sensation. But I don't want to be the only one; not when he's so near to his own. I bite his earlobe, suck on his helix. "Cum for me, Reiner." That does the trick: all at once he's pulling out with sporadic urgency, angling the head of his penis out and away just in time for him to release. I'm too busy catching my own breath and clinging to him to watch, but after a few moments I feel his free hand return to my back, idly spreading soothing circles against my skin as we both calm down from the heat of our exchange. When I feel like I can stand without my knees going boneless I detach my legs from around Reiner's waist and step down to reclaim my clothes. Without the arousal that heated me, blinding me to everything but sex, it's painfully obvious to me now how uncomfortable it is to wander around in the nude when the spring temperatures aren't around at night.

"Let me," Reiner says, stooping to pick up my clothes. It's not exactly the request I'd expect, but I let him help me dress, using his shoulder as a steadying point to slip back into my pants and allowing him to button my shirt back up. I don't offer my services in return as he slips on underwear and pants, but I do flick the roof grim off his shirt before handing it to him, and button it up after it's on. In all this he watches me, a soft set to his eyes that stays gentle regardless of the angle it's presented in. "We should go inside, where it's warm."

I can't help but agree. "There's a couch on the second floor."

"Perfect."

Together we make our way off the roof–I, with one lingering glance at the sky before I duck through the trapdoor. It's only until after he closes it up that I remember the bottle I neglected to carry back through to the inside. I say nothing of it. There's something calming about knowing that it'll stay up there until someone happens to find it. By then, it'll no doubt be empty, its contents long since evaporated. Dust will coat its glass like skin meshed over bones. The rain will have soaked away at the label, rotted its corners and peeled at the upper adhesives.

When the bottle is found again, it will be long after Reiner and I have gone down our separate paths, as we both know we one day will. It will be long after the night we shared here; long after the strangely shaped liquid smear dries without a stain and the clothes-shaped outline in the roof's grime gets erased. When the bottle is found we will be forced to acknowledge that our past is well and truly behind us.

But, for now, there is a half-empty container of pilfered red wine nestled up on a Paradis rooftop, and there is a sky stemming with stars, and there is a fragile tenderness in my heart.


A/N: Happy Kinktober 2023!

Apologies for the sheer lack of uploads this month. I've become a ridiculously busy person of late. I'm too tired to even bother fleshing out the author's note, so I'll keep it simple: love you all and goodnight!