miya

This… situationship remains a weird constant in your life, almost comfortable if you think too hard about it. She stops to visit when the sun dips, fucks you to tears, then leaves your sheets cold and wrinkled the next morning. If you're lucky, she stays the weekend. And while you both find different meanings in the skinship, the result is the same. It’s satisfaction and pleasure and forgetting, just for a little while.

You pull your legs toward your chest and your gaze follows her hands as she undresses, the reveal of mottled flesh bloomed upon a hipbone, a knee, a deep cut on her bicep. “What, no hello?”

“Not really in the mood.”

A snappy comment surges up your throat, but your teeth bite down just before it escapes: you never are, Ada. That’s not fair of you, really. You know what this is so you have no reason to ask anything of her. Especially not the gift of her thoughts or emotions or… anything at all aside from the shallow depth of orgasm.

She settles into the steaming bath with a sigh then slots her feet on either side of your hips. The water barely covers her chest, dusky nipples peaked from the chill of the air.

You wish so badly to lavish her neck with kisses. Maybe a bruise or two—a part of you that she can take home with her, a marking of flesh not borne from violence.

“Rough day?” you ask, fingers encircling her ankles, thumbs massaging at the bird-small bones you find there.

She says nothing. Simply slips open her eyes to glare at you. A stupid question, then (you already knew).

That’s how this always goes, doesn’t it? A steady tension, the weightlessness before the fall, burning and boiling and settling hot beneath your skin. You tease her and she hates it and she eats you up with her gaze until tension shifts to action.

Your palms smooth along her calves, careful with the bruises that smear over bone like fresh, sore-blue paint. “I wish you’d be more careful.”

She scoffs, elbow perched on the lip of the tub. “Don’t tell me you actually care.”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

She leans forward, water sloshing dangerously close to the edge of the tub. “That’s not what this is about.”

You cross the distance and kiss her, and her lips are plush and soft, and a part of you wonders—with abject, heartbreaking horror—when her lipgloss started to taste a bit like home.

Nothing you say could budge her worldview, a woman foundation-built upon action (you can't trust half the shit she says), but the attitude she once held crumbles as your palm cradles the back of her neck, thumb teasing the wispy hairs at the base of her skull. Her shoulders relax, face tilting to deepen the kiss, tongue teasing as you part her lips.

Here's the thing about Ada: what she thinks she needs and what she really needs are antithesis to each other. She says one thing and acts out the opposite. She is comprised of juxtapositions. And the mystery of her drives you mad in the best, most infuriating way.

You pull away to grin, a thin trail of spit following, and tuck a strand of thick hair behind her ear. “See? You don't have to be an asshole all the time.”

“I beg to differ,” she says, a wrinkle forming between her brows. But you note the relaxation of her posture. The fight against a smile.

You did that. As much as she argues the opposite, she allows her guard to drop around you a little more each time she stops by. You never expect her to bare her belly, to trust you completely, but your pride fogs up your head a bit.

“Ya know, you can admit you don't hate me,” you say, coaxing her back against the edge of the tub. Fingers teasing as they ghost up her outer thigh. Every part of her is silken and soft.

“I'm afraid it might kill me.”

But she leans into you regardless, head tilting to bare the side of her neck and the deep bruise curling up from her shoulder blade.

Just as your lips part to press a messy kiss to her pulse, she mutters something so softly you almost fail to catch it: “You know that if I hated you, I wouldn't be here.”

But you hear it.

God, you hear it.

You reward her for her own ribcage flaying. Her neck remains sensitive as ever, and she sighs as your tongue trails down her pulse, as you press suctioning kisses to the thin skin. The places beneath your lips bloom pink and blotchy.

So soft beneath your mouth. Sweet enough to consume. Your teeth nip at the curve of her shoulder and her thighs part beneath the water, knees widening as much as the tub allows. But the position is awkward, almost painful, and your knees threaten to slip out from under you as bubbles congeal at the bottom of the tub.

“Why don't we go to bed? A bath isn't the best place for this,” you say, hands greedy as they massage the flesh of her thighs and hips and waist. Secretly bracing yourself against her body.

You can hear her eyes roll. “How thoughtful of you.”

“You have no room to talk. I had to throw out that chair we broke.”

She scoffs, leaning forward as you make room to stand. “Which I reimbursed you for.”

Your lips twitch into a grin. “A reimbursement I never asked for.”

She glares at you beneath the overhead light, marblesque in the way water drips from her, falling back into the tub like a drizzle of tiny little dewdrops. A lean body shaped by an active lifestyle, subtle curves that you wish to memorize again and again until you can reconstruct her in your sleep.

She's beautiful, and for tonight, she's yours.

You take the time to dry yourself off, a shoddy job given the drip-wet state of your shoulders, but Ada doesn't care about the water she trails into the bedroom or the damp patches she leaves on the sheets. She spreads out on her back, limbs starfishing, heaving a sigh toward the ceiling.

You kick a towel over each watery footprint and she turns her head to stare, lidded-eyed and pouty. So pretty bathed by warm lamplight, curves and hills and valleys enhanced by shadow.

“Hard few weeks?” you ask, abandoning the towel at the foot of the bed to crawl up beside her, stretching out on your stomach, the sheets soft and cool against your cheek.

“You have no idea.”

After cooing praise about your new set of pillows, you manage to coax her toward the (much more comfortable) head of the bed where you both cuddle up beneath your comforter, sharing tired kisses and lazy touches. Her eyes close shortly before your own.

You wake the next morning confused and hungry. A turn of your head reveals Ada curled up beneath the sheets beside you, a head of dark hair on display. You'll never tell her this since you value your life, but each inhale makes a tiny little snore at the back of her throat.

Well. So much for your usual plan of sex then homemade food then more sex, but she clearly needed the rest. So did you. There's something… comforting about her laying beside you, naked as the day she was born.

A few hours later, she rises, sour-faced and shuffling into the kitchen.

You grin from your place at the sink, drying the dishes from a late breakfast. “Good afternoon, sleepyhead.”

She hums, curling your blanket tighter around her form. The curve of a naked shoulder sticks out. Her hair needs a quick brush, eyeliner smudged over her lids.

With a frown, she leans against the counter a few feet away. “Do I look that bad?”

God, she couldn't look bad if she tried. You've always envied that about her—the kind of beauty that makes men fall to their knees. (Literally. You saw it happen once.)

But it's more than that. She stands before you unkempt, half-asleep, vulnerable. Something stews in your chest, burning hot and bittersweet. So unbearable you force yourself to look away.

“You always look beautiful.” A deep breath fills your lungs, and the exhale calms your heart a few beats. Still, you fail to meet her eyes. “I saved you some leftovers if you're hungry.”

She exhales an almost mocking laugh. “Maybe next time we'll do breakfast in bed.”

Next time. Even she struggles to hide her doubt.

You set aside the drying towel and move to enter the living room, but she stops you with a tender hand on your wrist.

She makes you small, pitiful, puttied up on the inside. Your enamoration evokes shame sometimes, especially during moments like these. Then other times, when you're under or over or bent in half by someone and your thoughts stray to her. A few months ago, you broke up with your last girlfriend after Ada stopped by, then you spent that entire weekend in bed with her. The decision was easy—too fucking easy.

“What is it?” she asks, head tilting, red-painted fingernails sparking gooseflesh along every bit of skin she touches.

Part of you wonders how much of your assumptions are just projection. That she truly means what she says. She's hard to read on her best days, and you aren't sure what sparked this insecurity but it festers and burns marrow-deep.

“Not sure, honestly.” A white lie at worst. You don't know how to explain your feelings or the though process that haunts you.

She sees through it all. Some preternatural sense perfected by the nature of her career (you don't know the specifics, but you know of its danger—the injuries speak words her mouth refuses to).

Because it's Ada, she leads you back to bed then freshens up in the adjoining bathroom. When she returns, her makeup is gone, hair smooth and shiny, mouth tasting like the mint of your toothpaste.

Yes, she has her own toothbrush at your apartment. A matter of convenience, you tell yourself.

She's quick to spread you open, her hips high in the air as she eats you out like she seeks to rip the thoughts from your head. And it works. Her tongue licks long swipes over your clit, slick and wet and soft, fingers digging into the fat of your thighs, and you could die so fucking happy like this. A blistering heat curls just behind your pubic bone, sharp enough that you tilt your hips against her mouth.

Your head presses back against the pillow, hand a loose fist in her hair as she makes a mess of you and herself, and she's noisy about it. Moans into your pussy, the vibrations jolting your legs, and if not for the buffer of her hands you would have absolutely kneed her in the head.

This is how her visits go, not that basking in each other's presence, non-sexual intimacy bullshit you pulled last night. Maybe the stark one-eighty in routine threw you off, made you think too hard about this little arrangement. You know your place and so does she. Nothing more to think about, nothing left to dissect. You make each other cum and that's all this needs to be.

She slides one finger then two into the slick velvet of your cunt (poor baby, she says, I don't think one will be enough), and you can't bring yourself to care about yearning anymore. You're just fine with keeping things as they are if the wet heat of her mouth and the plush of her lips is your reward.

A long suckle to your clit leaves colors dancing behind squeezed-shut eyes and you exhale a pitiful whine, hips grinding against the flick of her tongue, insides clenching. The hand on your thigh shifts before her forearm presses you down, a silent warning to stay put. She pins you further with a white-hot glare, dark eyes the only feature still visible on her face, makes you pause your panting in exchange for a smile. Teasing, a bit vengeful at the edges.

She pulls away with a slick pop, the skin around her lips shiny, hair messy from the grounding plight of your hands.

“Don't be a brat,” she says, though her tone holds no malice. Neither does her touch, the warm palms that she smooths up and down your belly (you say nothing about the wetness she spreads, growing sticky as it dries). Your muscles twitch, rejoicing in response.

Just beneath the skin, she simmers with her own brand of want.

“Can't help it. You bring it out of me.”

She scoffs, a pitiful display of defiance when her eyes burn so warm, and she leans forward to curl her tongue around a nipple. Your hands find her hair again, combing through the strands as she hums and suckles and presses closer to you. She smells of lavender from last night's bath, the bite of wind from her trip here, the detergent you use on your sheets, and you could drown in it.

“Fuck.” The word leaves your lips breathy, more heaving sigh than syllable, as she straddles one of your thighs and—god, yeah, she’s wet. Hot and slippery between the legs, the thatch of hair on her mound a neatly-trimmed triangle. Perfect juxtaposition to velvety skin.

You bend your knee just enough to grind against her, a steady pressure that leaves her pulling away to catch a breath.

“Not fair,” she says, voice tipping toward a whine, and your heartbeat staccatos in triumph.

“I can do better,” you reply, pressing a hand to her side before she rolls onto her back.

She's a little breathless, eager to spread her legs to make room for your head. All of her is beautiful, here especially. Smooth as silk, so wet her thighs glisten beneath the lamplight, a deep blushing shade when you spread her open with two fingers. Your mouth waters at the smell of her, an earthy tang that melts in your mouth when you lick a long stripe between her labia. She hisses, thighs closing around your ears.

“Been a while?” you ask, voice muffled against her, and she presses your face closer with a hand to the back of your head. You voice your complaint with a whine that shudders through her, makes her tip her chin toward the ceiling.

“That's better.”

A bone-deep need settles at the base of your spine, blooming out to burn white-hot between your hips. She traps you in place, grinds against your mouth and—

She's never been this wet before. You could drown in it and, god, what a fine death that would be. Surrounded by her taste, her smell, your hearing muffled by her thighs. You find the swollen bud of her clit and circle it with the flat of your tongue, a slow rhythm that twitches the muscles of her legs.

You don't mean to tease, but Ada has no patience when it comes to sex. Too proactive, determined. She hates all the frills and the intimacy, and you know that if you ever referred to it as lovemaking her head might explode. But sometimes you wish to take your time, to map out her body, to become acquainted with erogenous zones and freckles and scars.

But that's not who she is.

She grinds against your tongue and hisses a breath through clenched teeth when you slide two fingers into her, cunt fluttering around the stretch. It's heaven. A direct portal to the throne of god.

This is what worship feels like.

Once you find the perfect rhythm, she's quick to cum, muscles clenching tight around your fingers, thighs squeezing at your head, lungs frozen on a held breath. Pride licks a solid stripe up your spine, and you smile against her when she melts into the bed with a heaving sigh. Against your ear, her femoral artery pulses fast and heavy on the comedown.

She's less… volatile post-orgasm. Smiles at you with rose-dusted cheeks, tells you how good you were, that there's a reason she keeps coming back. She always kisses you slow and deep afterward to taste herself on your tongue—a possessive type of behavior that strokes your hindbrain to purring.

She shoves you by the shoulder, and you roll over onto your back. She's mean when she gets between your legs. Mocks you for being so wet for her, so needy and sensitive when she slides two fingers into you and your hips tilt off the bed. But you can't help it. Gorged yourself on her pleasure, got all sensitive between the legs at the sound of her moans.

Her teasing from earlier sends you to an early peak, a staccato burst of heat that tenses up your body. That arches your back and seizes up your lungs. You cry out as she hums against your pussy, doubling her efforts to prolong your pleasure.

The heat in your belly slowly dissipates, and she parts from you.

She wastes no time getting dressed, before the afterglow of your orgasm even wears off. Your thighs still twitch, ears still muffled with cotton, and yet you’re alone once more.

You aren’t sure why you keep doing this. Why you let her in—to your house, your body, your heart. Maybe because there’s a part of her, however deep it may reside, that craves the skinship and the affection and the care. Waking up to a warm body, a readied breakfast, a hug.

But she refuses to acknowledge it. The world has been unkind to her, and in turn, she rejects the things that keep her grounded. The things that remind her she’s still a person, with feelings and wants and needs.

She leaves through your window (an endless lover of the dramatic) without so much as a glance in your direction. She couldn't even be bothered to tie the ribbon on the back of her dress.

You roll your eyes.

Next time, you're bolting your doors and windows shut.

(You know that's not true.)

.

.

.

The past few weeks at your job have been grueling. Impossible hours, a new insufferable coworker, and a manager hell-bent on making your life as horrible as possible have led you to a breaking point. When you aren't working, you're sleeping, and between those two activities you're lucky to catch a quick bite and a bathroom break, and between those, you manage a shower.

Your final straw is walking in to your apartment to find the front door unlocked and the balcony door wide-fucking-open. A windy chill suffocates the living room, and you look around for signs of a break-in. Anything out of place, missing money, knocked-over furniture.

You cannot afford a fucking break-in.

What you don't expect (probably at the bottom of your possibilities list) is Ada Wong stumbling out of the bathroom, furrow-browed and pallid. Dressed more for a dinner party than her usual work: red cocktail dress, golden jewelry, stilettos.

Two emotions swirl through you: relief and frustration. On one hand, thank fuck it's just her and you're so glad she's okay, but also? Rude. Rude as hell.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

She brushes past, heading for your dresser on the opposite side of the room. “I left the front door open for you.”

Your face contorts into a simmering rage, and while you realize that most of it stems from unrelated circumstances, she's effectively broken something within your glass-fragile psyche. Just a little. “That's not what I asked. Ada, I thought somebody broke into my apartment. You can't do this when I'm not home.”

“And you can yell at me later. For now, I just want to sleep.” And she sounds exhausted, fragile at the edges.

You blink as she finds a worn shirt, oversized for her frame, and proceeds to strip in the middle of your bedroom. The three concealed knives she lines up on the nightstand peak your interest.

“Don't touch those,” she says, stretching out beneath your sheets. “They're sharp.”

Before you can think up a reply, she's fast asleep.

Once the confusion wears off, you ready for bed. A snack, your bathroom routine, a change of clothes. You turn off lights as you weave through the rooms then close your balcony door.

Okay. Another shift in routine. Her visit is… god, months early. Stopped in just to sleep. But why? Why here? She must have a house she lives in.

Maybe you were the most convenient stop on the way home. Maybe she—

No. Ada doesn't miss people, especially people like you: forgettable and boring.

You slide in next to her beneath the sheets, air already warm from her body heat, and she cracks open a tired eye. Stretches out a hand for you to take.

Unless that's your appeal. A reliable contact, stable and safe. Direct opposition to her lifestyle.

Maybe that stability is what brings her back. She always knows you'll welcome her no matter how angry she makes you, no matter how many times she pushes you away. At first, it was the fantastic sex, but now? Now, you aren’t so sure.

You're a fucking idiot, but so is she—your souls woven together by this infeasible search for connection. Two sides of the same dilemma-coin.

Her palm fits nicely against yours, and you try not to think too hard about it. Her warmth, the half-asleep squeeze she gives to your fingers. Don't think you can handle anymore disappointment this week when you wake tomorrow to an empty bed.

Then she gives you a small, lazy smile. Mutters, “I sleep better when I'm here.”