#lizzledpink

Fire likes kissing Brigan. More than she would have expected.

She had indulged in plenty of kisses in her time, with Archer, and with others, stolen, fumbling attempts with girls who looked her way a little more often than the others, but not quite as cuttingly as the men. Kissing was, on the whole, putting aside a large list of qualifiers, nice. But it took work. There were walls that had to be held and checked always, the worry of slipping too far one way or another. Of giving too much, or taking too much.

She moves to Brigan’s mouth slowly, and there is none of the magnetism that had sucked her in with the others, no threshold to step over. Every part of it belongs to her, and she likes perching herself on the feeling of not touching him. He never pushes past the distance, though sometimes he starts to laugh as she closes in on him. He smiles and tip his face down, and she laughs as well and kisses him, less passionate and more enjoying the simple happiness of it.

That was what made it different, maybe. Before, passion had felt like the only way to communicate, one body to another. Like it was the only language she spoke. But she likes him running his fingers through her hair, likes leaning shoulder to shoulder, and especially likes when he lays her down and kneads circles into every stiff part of her back. Fire luxuriates in holding hands with him, casually, standing in the garden and watching Hanna go to battle against an army of invisible enemies.

The first night they fight, really fight, enough that Fire stomps back to her own rooms and the freedom of her own thoughts, she wakes in the early dawn and this is all she can think of, the way it feels to kiss him. It’s joy that bubbles up with that though, not fear, not doubt, and she lets some of it leak out to Brigan, when she feels him wake a little later. They have an understanding, these days, like a secret passage dug under the heavy walls he puts up around his mind.

Either way, she can tell the feeling reaches him, and he eases something like a response back, fuzzy with sleep and confusion. It is like the hopeful look that Small gives her when he knows she has brought treats, ears tilted forward and nose snuffling towards her. Brigan’s thoughts are more hesitant and reserved, of course, but Fire sends the image back regardless, too elated, and too amused, to resist.

Brigan knocks on her door a few minutes later, somehow already dressed, if not carefully, quite presentably. He hangs in her doorway, not meeting her eyes, and Fire feels briefly out of place in her nightgown, still tangled in bedsheets. Then Musa claps him briefly on the shoulder, shuffling past, and then the door closes on the two of them.

The distance takes some time to close. Eventually he drags a chair over, seemingly hesitant to breach her boundaries.

“I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.”

“Are you still mad?”

It doesn’t need an answer, because the truth was neither of them had been truly angry. It was a cocktail of concern and doubt and frustration, but Fire couldn’t help but compare it to the sharpness that Archer’s jealousy cut with, and she knows that there is a difference here, too, between the ties that bind her to Brigan and those that she had once though to be tied so tightly between Archer and herself.

He doesn’t get a chance to answer, in any case, because Fire swings her legs out of bed and slides over so she is sitting in front of him.

“I’d say, for a first fight, it was fairly well done.”

And that, oh, that might be her favorite expression to see on Brigan’s face. She loves to take him by surprise.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are quite a strange woman?”

Fire thinks on this for a moment. “I don’t believe so. As a woman, I am beautiful, or lovely, or beyond compare. Usually by the time the insults start, I am a creature, or a monster, or something more foul.”

“I did not mean it as an insult.”

“I noticed. And besides, I don’t mind when you call me odd things, Brigan. It means I am taking you by surprise. I like doing that.”

“So does that mean that we are done fighting?”

“Probably not. I still worry about the danger you put yourself in, and you still worry about the danger I put myself in, and we both detest people who try and tell us what we cannot do. But, Brigan,” she makes sure to catch his eyes, for all that she can read them. “When I woke up, all I could think about was how nice it was to be able to argue with you and not feel as if the world was caving in on me. You are incredibly stubborn, and I suspect that will make my life difficult in a multitude of ways, but I also suspect that it means you will not treat every disagreement as a sign of my straying heart.”

Reading him is almost as difficult as ever, but Fire has learned the shape his eyes take when he softens from pity, to respect, to affection.

“So let’s put aside the argument, for now at least, can we? There are so many nicer things to do, and there is always time for disagreeing later.”

“And when exactly would later be, Fire?”

“When you have realized I’m right, of course.”

Fire doubts very much that there are many people in the world that have seen Brigan’s eyes twinkle, and his face tilt, almost unwillingly, into a smile, the way it does now. He moves off of the chair, taking one of her hands in his as he sits beside her, and raising it to his mouth to press a kiss into her palm. “Nicer things, you say?”

“Yes, I’ve heard that Clara has a new-”

“With all due respect, Lady Fire,” Brigan starts, kissing her wrist now, head bent only just low enough that he can still peer up at her, “my sister can wait.”