WIP Wednesday, if a little late in my timezone! I've been ricocheting back and forth between smut and angst lately, and thought of the double-hanahaki fic from 2024 this morning just to open it up and, ironically, find myself just before the only "sex scene" of the whole fic. Which is not actually meant to be smutty, but it turns out when I've spent the last week writing explicit sex, wrestling it down to a "T" was difficult. I may have only come down to "M," I'm not quite sure and will have to run it by the Discord when I edit. XD;; Anyway, here's the ~first kiss~ that serves as its prelude.
The burning look vanishes, folded away in the same reserve that Diluc cloaks everything with now. "I said that I meant to court you properly. There's no need to rush." "I know." Fondness helps damp, a little, the anxious trepidation still gnawing at her gut. "But... this did not start that day in the Angel's Share." Or such was her lie, at any rate, trading on those empty youthful fantasies that he knew full well she held. "We have waited long enough. And I...." She trails off there. It would break his heart--and no doubt bring the flowers creeping back--to confess that she is *afraid*, and she can see no way past that fear but to face it head-on. She has always been afraid of this. She has always known that the Gunnhildr lineage would require she take a husband, and always feared that wedding bed. Diluc has proven himself in his attempts at courtship as generous and kind as he was all those years ago, if now more subtly so, and proven himself in the aid he's given Mondstadt to likewise still be as devoted to its welfare and defense. If she must face this fear, at least it will be with someone she can trust. "Yes," Diluc says, something uncertain in the tilt of his head, in his gaze fixed on her face. He raises a hand to cup her cheek, slow and hesitant. "And I left you waiting all that time." "I missed you, but you had your mission, just as I had mine. I understood. And now," Jean forces a smile, "you're home, and we work to the same purpose once again." "We do." Diluc shifts, sudden and decisive, and leans in. His lips are hot and dry and as clumsy as her own. They bump noses twice before they work out an angle, and Jean realizes at once that he's following her lead not out of good manners, but because he has no idea how to kiss. Her own experience is hardly better; still, she does her best to move as she had then, even if she has no more idea than she had the last time of what to do with her tongue. It isn't terrible. No one has a sword drawn this time, either, Jean tells herself as they pull apart, which is a significant improvement, and that thought is enough to let her smile again when Diluc gives her that same intense-yet-uncertain look. "Upstairs," she says, taking his hand and leading him up.
