◆ Show me. Do not try be smart. I will get angry.
This was tricky. How do you handle the core of a sun? Do you try and cool it? Throw all the oceans onto the fire and hope for the best? Or do you merely walk proudly towards the heat, and bare all to your makers? He was sitting down, shiny shoes and black suit and so, so, pulled together. Back straight, shoulders broad. Her hair was a mess, and she'd forgotten to wear shoes but it didn't matter because the Russian had told her to do something. Nothing else mattered when you were dealing with the core of a thousand suns.
Walking towards him she shrugged off her coat, she wasn't wearing much beneath; a thin black dress that made her look paler than she was, no tights- never any tights. Everyone was so large to her, all their limbs and organs seeming so out of place to someone who was so small. Show me. That's what he'd said, in between the ciggarette and the sharp looks that warranted no nonsense. In between the large hands and the unfolding of the legs. There seemed no other option than to sit on his lap, facing him of course. One little bird on the precipice of wild fire. Her legs curled around his midsection and she gripped his arms, heavier perhaps with sheer will and brute strength than her entire body, and placed them around her. "There," she mused, "Our own little bubble of fire and ice."
Her breaths had become labored, as if the effort of getting to the core of each and every sun had shaven years off her life. He was still so frightening, this man without a name who saw her. How did he see her? How did he burn the flesh off her bones and see her? Her hands rose of their own accord- satisfied that he had pressed his against her back, that beneath the fear she was undeniably safe within his hold- a finger tracing along his bottom lip. Rough and smooth. Cold and hot. All at the same time. Always at the same time.
Leaning forward she went for his neck, cupping one side with her hand, lips placing gentle kisses along his jugular. She would show him. She would let him see. Just this once. She kissed him the way she might kiss a lover- the way she might have kissed him if she could. If she was allowed to. Working a trail up to his lips she hesitated. Nose to nose their breath mingled together, heat to heat. One burning sun to another. "I'm human." She whispered, eyes locking with his, showing him. Giving him something. Something old and innocent and childlike. And her voice was so pleading. As if she had to convince not just him- the stranger with the gruff voice- but herself, that she was still human. Still had a beating heart and two ears and a nose. She swallowed, eyes snapping shut as she pressed her lips to his, and showed him. He burned, as she knew he would, all the way down to her toes and through every vein and every atom that made Aoife her, he burned. He tasted like tobacco and life and sadness, was that his or hers? Theirs? No. Never theirs.
Eventually she pulled away, cheeks wet with tears- last ditch efforts to save a dying woman from the core of a sun. Placing her head into the crook of his neck she allowed herself to breath in his scent, allowed her fingers to stroke his skin. Allowed herself to burn.
