#qbwrites

It’s not as casual a touch as is usual with Rieke, who is, almost always, all arms around shoulders and impulsive hugging, lingering warmth even after their touch has retreated. The way their thumb barely brushes against Anais’ skin screams restraint and hesitation.

(It reminds Anais of those first few times, back when they’d agreed to try and be friends. When neither of them knew what was too much, where the boundaries were, so they wove over-cautiously around them until they could finally relax.)

“I’ve been thinking,” they say. “About what you said last week.” Their voice is soft but stilted, and Anais knows right then that they’ve been psyching themself up for this conversation since the start of the evening, probably even longer. That’s what makes her bury down the ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything about it’, the ‘I promise, I promise I’m not expecting anything from you’, the explanations and reassurances and excuses that were threatening to burst out. Anais presses her lips into a line and nods, bracing themself for what they had expected from the beginning.

It’s only the memory of Rieke’s tentative ‘I don’t wanna lose you either’, hesitantly said before she’d left, that keeps her thoughts from spiralling out of control into the idea that she’d fucked up beyond repair.

(And it would have been unfair of her, unfair to them, to carry on feeling the way she does and hide it from them; she has not wavered in that belief.)

Rieke’s fingers twitch but they do not pull their hand away, and they cast their eyes down, avoiding Anais’ gaze. She starts to open her mouth, looking for something to say to make it easier for them, but the thick lump in her throat is impossible to swallow.

“Ugh. How do I even say this?” they start, forcefully exhaling and frowning, scrunching their face, and somehow the expression helps ease the tension a little; they don’t seem upset with her, at least. They finally pull their hand back, throwing a side glance in Anais’ direction before looking away again. “You know I’ve never really been in a relationship, yeah?”

That is… not new knowledge for Anais, but certainly not where they’d expected Rieke to start. She quickly nods and hums her assent, encouraging them to keep going.

“And that you’ll have to guide me through it a lot of the time.” They avoid looking at her still, posture stiff, and bite their lip as soon as the words are out of their mouth.

You’ll have to—?

Anais blinks a few times as the words register.

“Are you trying to talk me out of something?” she tries to tease, tries to match Rieke’s usual casual tone. Rieke quietly chuckles, and there’s no hiding the soft smile on their lips as they recognize the attempt, but they don’t take the bait.

“Nah, I’m just saying. I don’t have the faintest idea how to do any of this.” A pause. “And there are probably a lot of things I can’t give you even if I would want to.”

“Rieke, I’m not expecting you to give me anything.” She hopes that sounds the way she intends it to sound; that they don’t owe her anything, that she only wants from them what they’d readily give.

She thinks it does when they finally meet her eyes, a soft look in them that mirrors the tone of their voice, chestnut brown hiding what looks very much like uncertainty. Over the past year, Anais has gotten closer to uncovering something akin to vulnerability in Rieke; still rare, quieter conversations that leave an aching warmth behind her ribs when they end, moments where they try (and don’t always manage) to find words instead of chasing them away with jokes and quick retorts.

That same aching warmth spreads through Anais’ limbs now, easing away the tension and fear and worry. You’ll have to guide me through.

“But… you’re saying you want to?” she ventures, almost timidly, finding her voice when Rieke doesn’t say anything else.

Syd is half asleep already (and no wonder). It’s the only time they could ever be described as looking peaceful, with their head resting on Rieke’s chest; it’s not cuddling, not exactly—they continue to insist on their dislike of it, thank you very fucking much—but there’s definitely a closeness and a sort of easy… tenderness to it. Somehow.

They look—

Yeah.

Without really thinking—their mind is elsewhere; their eyes on the ceiling, on the void, unformed thoughts swirling around like moths—Rieke runs their fingers through Syd’s hair, dragging their nails lightly along their scalp. Syd doesn’t react to it, but they don’t complain, either, and in Syd language that means it’s definitely not unwelcome.

It goes on for a little while; the quiet and the thinking and the soft touches. Soothing, in a way. But when Rieke slows and then stops, Syd—who seems to have fallen more than half asleep by this point—makes a sound in apparent protest, and Rieke laughs under their breath.

“You like that, then?” Rieke asks, quietly, lips curling into a smile.

“Shut up,” comes the response, because it’s Syd, and there was nothing else Rieke would have expected them to say (except maybe “fuck off” or some variation of that), although there’s hardly any bite to it this time. The smile remains, and they say nothing in return, but resume the motion of running their fingers through Syd’s hair.

And it’s… nice. It’s really, surprisingly nice, actually. Nice to not have to talk, to just be with them like this.

The mission had gone well, yes. Far better than anyone had expected given the circumstances, but there had been that one moment—Eva purses her lips at the memory of it, at the tightness it creates in her chest without her permission. She can’t get it out of her mind, keeps ruminating on it because she doesn’t understand why it’s affecting her so much.

Morgan had been okay. It hadn’t been a particularly dangerous threat to the vampires—the DMB had been too diluted to truly affect them beyond mild disorientation, likely something the trappers had a limited supply of, obtained second- or third-hand—and yet it’s useless to try and push the ‘what if’ thoughts out of her mind.

In the end, she excuses herself (to concerned glances from Nate and Farah, but they don’t say anything—they know by now it’s pointless, and it’s been a long day for everyone). Morgan walks her to her room, as has become her habit.

(At first, she’d always bring up how it was an excuse to try and get her into bed; it likely was, but Morgan hasn’t said anything of the sort in a while. She does it now without explanation because it’s just what they do, a constant Eva finds herself admitting she would miss if it were gone—and there’s that thought again, something just out of reach.)

“Something on your mind?” Morgan asks as they reach the door to her bedroom, almost nonchalantly, almost as if she didn’t care about the answer, though Eva knows better: there’s a kind of intention behind the casualness in her voice that she has come to recognize. One that would usually make her smile, but not today.

Eva shakes her head, avoids Morgan’s eyes—she knows what she would find in them, anyway. “Just tired.”

“You’re lying,” comes the immediate response, almost automatic. There’s no venom in it, but neither is there any willingness to let her get away with what she knows—what they both know—is bullshit.

She should have known Morgan would call her out on it. She always does.

Eva bites her bottom lip. It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk about it (talking about things with Morgan is easy, easier than it has ever been with anyone, mostly because there is so little that needs to actually be said), but she just wouldn’t know where to start.

She dares a glance back at Morgan and oh, that’s a mistake. It’s a mistake because she can’t look away now, drawn into the storm of her grey eyes—it’s a look she’s seen on her sometimes, a look that leaves her both hot and cold at the same time. Morgan is easy to talk to except when she isn’t, when she looks at her like that and leaves her speechless and scrambling for words that all her education and all her languages are not enough to find.

(It’s a mess, Eva’s mind is a mess. Too many feelings just on the edge of understanding and too many thoughts she can’t make sense of.)

And still she can’t give her anything but the truth.

“I was just thinking about what happened. With the DMB. You could’ve gotten hurt.”

Morgan’s eyes widen for a second before they narrow again, and she takes a step closer towards Eva—always in her space, as long as she knows she’s welcome in it (and she is, she is, Eva doesn’t know when it happened but being too far from her feels stranger now than being too close).

“Sweetheart, I’m fine.” Morgan’s voice is softer, lower. She raises her hand to hook a finger under Eva’s chin—she doesn’t have to tilt her face so their eyes meet, they’re the same height, but it’s more about the contact, in the end. “I’m always fine.”

No, that’s not true.

“You weren’t fine when we got Sanja back from the trappers.”

The words come out of Eva’s mouth almost too quickly, almost unconsciously. Morgan immediately frowns.

“Hey.” Her fingers grasp Eva’s face more tightly and her voice becomes a razor that cuts through the air, but Eva knows the sharpness is not directed at her—it’s never at her. “If you’re blaming yourself for that—”

Eva shakes her head before Morgan can finish speaking. “I’m not.”

It’s not guilt that has her flashing back to that moment so often: she did what she had to do, she made the right choice for the mission (and would do it again, is how that sentence should end, but even she is aware that's not true).

“But I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

Morgan's hand falls away, and there it is, again, that examining gaze. Again that feeling of burning underneath it, but Eva is nothing if not stubborn, and she stands her ground.

“I can take hits, Eva. I heal.”

It’s meant to be dismissive, Eva knows that. It’s meant to be ‘I’m a vampire, get with the program’. But the warmth underneath the words is unmistakable (to her, at least, now that she has learned to read it), as is the use of her name, something Morgan never does unless she’s being serious.

And yet—

“That’s not the point,” Eva snaps. Of course Morgan can heal, of course she can take hits. This is what she has been trying to tell herself all day, that there’s no reason for her to be worried or for her to feel like this at all, but it doesn’t help the hollowness in her chest.

And instead of arguing, or walking away from the conversation, Morgan just looks—uncertain. Something storm-dark that Eva can’t recognize clouds her eyes and it takes her a moment to ask, in a whisper that seems to stay suspended in the air, “Then what is?”

Well, the point is—the point is—

What even is the point?

The point is so far out of Eva’s reach she can’t begin to look for words to describe it, has no clue where to start: nothing sounds right, nothing sounds like the way she feels. Nothing sounds like the way her throat constricts at the thought of Morgan being hurt again, healing ability be damned, or like the way tension eases out of Eva’s body as soon as they’re touching, like something is off-balance with the world if they’re not.

The point is that words are impossible but the need to say, to do something burns, the urgency and the feeling that this is important and if she doesn’t manage to convey just how important then something, something might break.

The point is that they've drifted so close to each other Eva is suddenly aware of every freckle on Morgan's face, of the way her frown seems to pull at every line on it (she wants to smooth it out, she realizes). Of the way her lips have remained slightly parted after speaking and the heavy, heavy weight of that grey gaze is fully, entirely focused on her.

She’s not sure what does it. It could be any one of a number of things, the warmth of her breath or the look in her eyes or anything, anything. But it's the easiest thing in the world to lean the slightest amount forward, close the few inches of distance between them and it just feels like something she should be doing.

(It's not like she hasn't wondered before what kissing her would be like—it would have been impossible not to, at least in passing, when Morgan had made her physical interest in her so abundantly clear—but the desire to give in has never been as overwhelming as it is now.)

Morgan makes a sound when their lips meet—the contact is soft and it is too much and it is electric, even as it remains gentle. It stirs a fire within Eva she hadn’t realized could ever be there, and before she knows it Morgan’s lips are moving against her own, too, and her hands are buried in the soft, soft strands of Morgan’s hair and how the hell has she gone this long without this—

This, this is how it should feel. This is exactly what she means, what she'd been wanting to say without ever finding the words.

They break apart once, twice, and each time they find each other’s lips again; the warmth of Morgan’s hands has drifted to Eva’s waist and she pulls her closer, closer. Eva can’t imagine wanting this to end—

But eventually, she pulls back for air, air that she needs, still, even if Morgan doesn’t. She rests her forehead against Morgan’s, breathless, lightheaded, and her hand still rests on the back of her neck. “I think that’s the point. Fuck.”

Morgan looks the way Eva feels—her eyes are wide, and her breathing is even heavier. Her hands tighten on Eva’s waist and she swallows, opens her mouth and then closes it again, seemingly lost for words. (Eva knows the feeling.)

Morgan lifts a hand to Eva’s face, the touch featherlight and tentative as she drags her thumb across Eva’s bottom lip, and Eva wants to kiss her again, wants to say so many things she still doesn’t have the words for.

Morgan’s voice is soft and like it’s coming from miles away when she says, “You should get some rest, sweetheart.”

She draws back—and there is hesitation in her when she does, Eva is sure of this, but she herself is too out of it to say anything, do anything. Morgan looks at her as though she doesn’t know what to do, but in the end, she runs a hand through her hair and turns away.

“I’ll see you later.”

It's not a surprise (it shouldn't be a surprise). Their relationship (is that the word for it?) isn't (hasn't been) just about sex, and it's not the first time Morgan has stayed over at Eva's apartment since this (whatever this is, there's no rush to name it, not when it feels good) started between them.

But Eva is still surprised. She's surprised because, well, they didn't even have sex last night, for one. She was too tired, too tired after an endless day at the station and the warehouse and dealing with Rebecca and a million other things, but Morgan had walked her home and offered to stay anyway, offered to stay even when Eva had told her she was only going to sleep.

She's surprised because Morgan is lying there awake, next to her in bed, looking up at the ceiling. Eva has just woken up and she has no idea what time it is (if she had to guess, if she absolutely had to guess, she would say 3am) and it's clear Morgan hasn't slept at all (she never does) and there's something uniquely beautiful about the way the moonlight outlines her features, cool silver light like her eyes.

Eva's hand rests on the bare skin of Morgan's stomach and it's warm, warm, warm.

A hum of assent is the only answer, not that Eva had been expecting a different one. It hadn't been a question, just an observation. But there's still something nagging at her mind because it's, just, well—

“Aren't you bored like this?” A pause. “You didn't have to stay.”

Because yeah, it all might not just be about sex but surely, surely lying awake all night staring at the ceiling with nothing but a sleeping woman for company can't be too enthusing.

Morgan takes so long to answer that Eva is almost sure she won't say anything at all, and she's almost lulled back to sleep by Morgan's rhythmic breathing and the pulse of her steady heartbeat under her hand.

“It's all so loud,” Morgan finally says, eyes still fixed on the ceiling—almost purposefully, one would say. “Everything, all the fucking time. But you're—” She shakes her head, sighs in frustration. “With you, it's quiet. Even when you're sleeping. It doesn't… hurt, or bother me.”

Another sigh, and she runs a hand through her hair: a common gesture (one Eva has found herself replicating more and more) and Eva knows what it means: how the fuck do I say this? 

“You just calm me,” she finishes.

Eva blinks. And then she blinks again. And there's something caught in her throat, there must be, because she's sure she can't breathe. The thoughts whirling in her mind are impossible to grasp; she just stares blankly at Morgan, breathing growing heavier, until she finally turns her gaze away from the ceiling. When she does, when Morgan's eyes meet hers, Eva sees them widen and that's the same moment she realizes there are tears in her own. 

“Shit,” Morgan says, quickly shifting, lifting herself up on an elbow. “Shit, did I say something wrong? Did I—” 

It's not the nicest thing to do, but Eva laughs then—and even if the sound is half a sob, Morgan relaxes at it. Even more so when Eva shakes her head.

“You didn't. It's just…” It's Eva's turn to look away now, gaze fixed on a corner of the bed and decidedly not on Morgan. The words feel like syrup on her tongue and she won't be able to get them out if she's looking at her. She forces a laugh. “You have to be the first person who's ever thought that about me. You know I'm not… I'm not like that. You said it yourself, I'm only a people person if it's about dissecting them.” Another little laugh. “Making people feel at ease isn't really my thing.”

But you, you, you—

God, she'd known. She'd known the effect she had on Morgan before this, of course, but she'd had no idea hearing her say it like this would have this effect on her.

“Sweetheart.” Morgan's voice cutting through her thoughts, firm and unwavering. The warmth of her palm on her cheek (her cheek that is wet with tears now), and then she's bringing her in for a kiss. A kiss that is soft and loving and needy and warm and has anyone, anyone ever kissed her like this? Like she's something soft, like she's something precious?

Has she ever wanted to be soft for anyone?

And none of that matters because all that matters is that she's crying and Morgan is kissing her and she's warm, warm, warm.

When they part, her cheeks are still wet and she buries her face against Morgan's neck, the woodsmoke scent in her hair comforting and overwhelming and the way their limbs wrap around each other almost like a blanket of soothing, warm darkness. It's raw and unsettling but for a while, there's only the sound of their breathing, and nothing else is needed. 

Later, later, much later (or perhaps barely a few seconds later)—

“Morgan?” Eva murmurs, and what she's going to say is terrifying, and she doesn't want to say it, but everything in her is going to burst if she doesn't. Morgan hums in question, and that's the only push she needs. “I think I'm in love with you.”

Silence. Not oppressive: understanding.

A kiss to her temple, a whisper at her ear. “So that's what this is.”

A laugh that is half a sob: a held breath released. “Yeah, I suppose so. Is that okay?” 

Not that there’s anything to hide, certainly not from Nate.

It’s just not a topic she finds herself coming to often. It’s tied to certain things she’d rather avoid.

And yet she keeps going, and Nate lets her. Lets her talk as much as she wants to. Needs to.

“Mostly as a way to be out of the house, you know? Rebecca wasn’t around except on weekends”—she pretends not to notice the way Nate winces at the mention—“and I was too old for nannies already. It was just me. So I just… found other things to do. Had school, joined a lot of clubs. And, well, dating. Fooling around a bit. Didn’t really know what I was doing.”

It hadn’t been so bad, though. She’d never dated anyone for long, but she’d never had bad experiences.

Bobby had been the worst, and that had been much later. Even that hadn’t really left much of a mark, except for the one on her career.

“I came out at sixteen,” she adds. “It wasn’t hard, not really. People here didn’t care too much. I thought they would—I thought it was the end of the world. But it was fine. Rebecca didn’t care, either. She was alright about that. But it still felt… weird. You know? Like you have something to prove to yourself.”

She shakes her head, lets it go.

But then a thought that has been nagging at her for a while makes its way up her throat before she can stop it.

It’s just, well, Nate.

Nate with his brown skin that seems to glow in the light of her open-plan apartment. Nate with his tumbler of expensive whiskey that he brought here himself (she wouldn’t have known what to buy, would probably not have had the budget for it); Nate with his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him, always.

Gorgeous, sweet, wonderful Nate—whom she’s very nearly in love with—whom she can’t get out of her mind and who is three hundred years old.

Three hundred.

She can’t wrap her head around it.

So, she asks.

“What was it like for you?”

She’s still talking to the glass. Still frowning.

“You’ve been alive so long, I can’t even imagine—back then, it must have been—”

It must have been so tough.

It’s one thing for her to be out in the twenty-first century and another very different thing for Nate to have been born in the sixteen hundreds. And she knows he’s had lovers before, knows he must have navigated it all somehow, and still—

But then rational thought catches up with her words, and she stops herself.

She shakes her head. “You don’t have to tell me,” she says immediately.

She means it.

She’s seen the way Nate looks whenever family comes up, even her own. Whenever his past comes up, and from the few things she’s pieced together—the carnival mirror, the few comments he’s made, him being in the Navy—she can’t blame him, wouldn’t even dream of pushing him to talk about it.

It must all be so raw. Her questions aren’t worth that.

“I’m just… curious about you,” she adds by way of explanation, echoing something he’d said to her once. “But if it’s too much, I really don’t need to know. I promise.”

She’s made that clear to him (at least, she hopes she’s made that clear). Whatever happened to him only needs to come out when he’s ready to talk about it. If he’s ready to talk about it.

Before she can lose herself in her thoughts, however, Nate tightens his arm around her.

“It’s okay. You can ask.” He smiles down at her and it’s strained, yes, but she can tell it’s sincere. (It’s there, in the way it reaches his eyes, warm and soft and sweet and she’s never had anyone look at her like that before). “I just… try not to think about it too much these days, about how it was. When you’ve lived this long…” He trails off.

“But it wasn’t easy at first, no. Not when I was in the Navy. I believe that’s when I first realized.” He gives a soft laugh, but there isn’t much humor in it. “It would have been difficult not to.”

“I tried to—” He shakes his head, as though thinking better of what he was about to say. She doesn’t press. “It didn’t matter so much after I joined the Agency, as long as I kept to interactions with other supernaturals.”

Something, something in the way he says that makes Eva think that’s not how it always was. She couldn’t imagine Nate forgoing human interaction entirely, Agency or not.

There’s a question on the tip of her tongue, but she knows it’s not the time to ask it.

Still, she wonders.

Why does he care so much? Why would anyone, after everything he’s been through? She hasn’t been through a fraction of that and she barely cares at all.

“Nate…”

“It’s just how it was. But I wasn’t always unhappy. I was lucky, for the most part; luckier than I could have been.”

There it is. She’s learned to read this, too—she wouldn’t call it deflection, and she knows he’s not lying, but it’s a very clear indicator that the topic is over.

It’s that tension in his smile.

He knows exactly when to stop, down to the second—he knows when to slow down, when to withdraw entirely. He takes her as close to the edge as he can (and when she thinks she couldn’t get any closer without falling, he proves her wrong, again and again), hips held down by his arm, building her pleasure higher, higher—she wants to scream—

Nate Nate Nate

Nate you feel so good

don’t stop I’m so close

—and then he does, he stops again, leaves her teetering dangerously, dangerously close but still not close enough to fall.

It has been—not hours, it can’t have been hours, but it feels like it, and Eva has lost track of how many times he has done this (has lost track of everything now, isn’t sure she remembers even her own name, anything that isn’t the feeling of Nate’s tongue, his mouth and the way he devours her).

She’s gasping for air, dizzy with heat, in a daze of both pleasure and frustration. A sheen of sweat covers her body and every thought in her mind is scrambled beyond coherence, beyond recognition—she groans, huffs out a breath and runs a hand through her hair (the one that isn’t helplessly running through his, moving and gently tugging on it).

“Nate, please.”

She finds herself nearly whining, though she doesn’t particularly care. Doesn't care how desperate she sounds, how needy. Not anymore.

Nate, of course, has other ideas.

“Please what, my love?”

His tone is all feigned innocence, honey-sweet, though the illusion of it is completely shattered by the smile he gives her from his place between her legs—the place he has claimed and made his as he has made her his, as she has made him hers.

That smile will kill her, sure as anything—she tightens her grip on his hair, not enough to pull but enough that she’s sure he feels it.

“Please,” she repeats, slowly, still trying to make the words sound like something recognizable, something that isn’t a helpless moan or a sigh. “I want to come for you.”

She’s more than willing to give in to the teasing, like this, to tell him what he wants to hear without hesitation—she is too wound up to do anything else, and she needs to feel him again, feel his mouth on her again.

An exhale of hot breath against her thigh and his grip on her legs tightens, but that is the only indication he gives that he is affected by her words. The smile is still in place as he dips his head to press a kiss on her inner thigh, close to where she wants him, yes, but not close enough.

“I know,” he says against her skin. “You will, I promise.”

She throws her head back in frustration, a sharp breath leaving her—he will be the death of her one day, smug tease that he is.

He never fails to fulfill his promises, and has never once left her hanging—he makes her come often and hard and it is never anything less than pure ecstasy—but god how he enjoys torturing her.

(Though for as many times as he has left her a shaking, gasping mess, she has done the same to him—and he is beautiful like that, pleasure and desire coursing wild through him, unbridled, unrestrained).

“Eva.” The gentle strength in his voice cuts through the haze, brings her focus back to him from wherever it had drifted. “Keep your eyes on me.”

And something in the way he says her name makes her comply without question, a shiver running through her body and a strangled sound catching in her throat.

She meets his eyes, then—pure, warm brown darkened to near black and the thought comes to mind, not for the first time (and it won’t be the last), that she wishes she could feel him the way he feels her. Hear his accelerated heartbeat, feel the heat of his flushed skin. Know, know what she does to him, how he desires her; sense it, drown in it.

What she can sense, human as she is, makes her hold her breath (and she understands then, as she has before, what he means by anticipation: this too he has turned into an art). She draws her bottom lip between her teeth, waiting, waiting.

His gaze locked with hers, he runs his tongue against her, slow this time, torturous—a low, shuddering moan leaves her lips and she wants to close her eyes, she wants to, but the sight of him is entrancing, intoxicating.

(He has called her intoxicating before, but if anybody is worthy of the word, it’s certainly him.)

“The taste of you,” he murmurs, depriving her of the feeling of his mouth on her again, but he is still so close that the warmth of his breath lingers. “I have never known anything so sweet, so sublime.”

Nate, Nate and his words and his poetry and how—how is someone like this even real—she has to laugh and it is maybe a little hysterical, comes out as a huff of breath, desperate and wanting.

She swears she sees his smile grow wider. He knows the state he has her in, even if he couldn’t sense it he has to know (of course he knows) and yet he moves lower, kissing her thighs—softly, slowly, taking his time.

When he speaks again—still between kisses to her inner thighs, open-mouthed and tender and achingly slow—it sounds like an answer to something she hasn’t voiced.

“I am selfish, joonam. I never want to stop tasting you.”

His hands have moved, trailing down the outside of her thighs. Burning, brands of fire.

(Selfish, it sounds almost laughable—oh, but he is: Nate is a terribly selfish lover in this way, and in this way only. Drawing out her pleasure until it turns unbearable, wanting to see her fall apart little by little under his hands. Selfish, yes.)

“I never want to stop listening to you, to your moans, to the way you say my name again and again.”

She sighs—restless, tense, she has come down from the edge he held her on (for now, at least; for now) but the desire, the need for release still burns scorching hot and the need for him even more so.

And Nate does have the timing down to an art: he will tease her and drive her insane with desire until she feels she is about to break, until it is almost too much, maddening, too much—and she loves this too, the unrelenting siege to her senses, the delicious overwhelm that is him—but never, never past that point.

(Never, unless she asks him to.)

In the haze she feels that smile against her skin again, hot kisses to her thighs and then he is once again moving higher and she knows nothing else, nothing but the heat of his mouth. It doesn't take long (it doesn’t take long at all) before she is gasping again, before the pleasure becomes blinding and searing and god, Nate, Nate—

“Nate, I want—”

He makes a sound against her, an encouraging hum that vibrates through her entire body.

Anything, my love.

I will give you anything you ask me for.

He has said it so many times and she knows it can only ever be true, it has only ever been true—fuck, she needs—

“Your fingers,” she manages to say. “Inside me. I'm so close, mi vida, please.”

She feels more than hears his answering groan (though in truth she couldn’t tell one sense from the other, not now, not like this) and she wants to know, she wants to know how this feels for him—but the question, the thought, shapeless and unformulated as it was, leaves her mind along with every other when he slides one, two fingers in—she is so wet—curls them inside her—

And she is lost, lost to him, lost to the fire he stokes in her, the pleasure that he gives her, blinding and overwhelming—and this time he does take her over that edge, willingly, fervently, with as much devotion as she feels for him.

The knowledge that it is her extensor muscles that are making her want to die does not seem very useful at the moment.

And it lingers. They told her many things about how it would feel, how it would hurt, but they did not tell her how it would linger, like a phantom limb does. Like the ghost of her humanity manifesting as a sort of pain that is not pain, but something that has settled deep in the marrow of her bones.

After the pain has faded, after she has stopped screaming and wanting to tear her skin apart with her own nails—and she has the strength for it now, could do it if she tried, though she wonders if her own instincts would stop her from doing so—after all of it has subsided, she is… restless.

She hasn’t been allowed to see anyone yet. Still under supervision, watching for signs of anything that might have gone wrong. It has been—she pauses to consider—six days, she thinks. It’s not easy to tell the passage of time here, but this is what she has gathered from what the doctors and nurses have said. Have told her.

She has so many questions.

Some of them are answered, like when the time for her first feeding comes. She has spent enough time with the doctors and the techs—some of them she knows from her own focus on biology and medicine research—that they are willing to discuss things with her, treat her as one of their own. Talk to her about blood types and sources, about how her body will absorb the needed nutrients.

Most of her questions, though, they go unanswered. She spends most of her time alone.

There isn’t much in the room she has been assigned, and she knows that must be intentional. Low light. Noiseless. A slight clinical smell, faint enough to not grate on her raw senses. The fabric of the bedsheets feels rough and coarse on her skin but she hasn’t needed to sleep for the past three days, so she just… sits. Paces. There isn’t much else to do.

She tries to test her new sensory abilities, but it’s difficult to tell how different things are when her surroundings are so very plain.

She waits.

She waits and waits. Someone tells her she will be able to receive visitors soon; she nods. She waits until—

She frowns. She has started to recognize everyone who comes to see her before they walk into the room, the cadence of their steps, their voices, the heartbeats. But this time there’s another one. She turns her head, a little too sharply, a little too fast, in the direction of the door—it’s further away, but it is unmistakable. It takes her a moment to recognize it, to know why it catches her attention so immediately, but a second later she is sure. That easy stride, that speeding heartbeat. She knows before she knows.

Her own heart beats faster in her chest and this time she can not only feel it in her temples but hear it, too. And fuck, she is holding her breath; she has been holding it for far longer than she’d realized, and how odd to notice that she has not needed to breathe at all, how odd now to experience what she already knew, what she had been expecting.

Her mind continues to race at a thousand miles per hour until it goes quiet, dead silent, because a moment later—as soon as the door opens—the only thing she can feel is him.

She wants to say the first thing that hits her (though in reality it all hits her at the same time) is the scent, both familiar and unfamiliar—familiar in that she could never mistake it for anything, for anyone else; unfamiliar in that it is so much more, richer and deeper and just more than she had ever noticed before. The scents of mint and tea and petrichor, now underlined and made stronger with hints of jasmine and of things Eva does not know the name of.

If she were counting, she would then say the second thing that hits her is the way he looks. She hasn’t seen him in… over a week—who’s counting anymore?—and the sight of him is like a shot of adrenaline straight into her system, like a jolt of electricity that stirs her alive, sends her into overdrive.

If she were counting, she would lose count at that point, because then, Nate speaks.

“Eva,” he whispers, breathlessly, the sound of her name in his mouth—the feeling of it, she does not know how to describe it except that she feels it—as welcome as it has ever been. His heart skips a beat when he says it and she knows this because she can hear it. She can feel the worry radiating from him, somehow, though what exactly makes her notice it she would not be able to say, not for a long, long time.

“Hi,” is all she manages in return, just as breathless, but smiling so wide her cheeks hurt. Nate’s concern eases at that and he returns the expression, though his heart still beats like a hammer in his chest, the vibrations of it landing on Eva’s skin. Her eyes flutter closed for a second at the sensation.

When she opens them again, she takes a step closer towards him and then—the third, or fourth or fifth, thing she notices—oh. The angle is different. She’s, she’s taller, now. She’d noticed that, could not have failed to notice that, but it is now, here in front of him, that it really registers.

Well, it’s not that different, except that she’s not wearing heels—she’s not wearing any kind of shoes—and yet it feels like she is.

An adjustment, yes, but not a terribly difficult one. She just needs a moment.

She blinks, once, twice, and a chuckle escapes him when he realizes what’s going through her mind (even that sound is different, deeper, richer. She wants to hear it again). She returns the laughter, though. It’s okay.

She stands in front of him, motionless, for a beat longer.

And it takes a moment, it takes conscious effort—her heart beats faster at the thought of touching him, now, as it had once a long time ago—but eventually she reaches out and brushes the tips of her fingers down his arm, trailing down until she reaches his hand.

The effect is both instant and overwhelming: it is only Nate. Nate, the warmth of his skin and, and—and so many things she cannot even begin to describe, senses she is not used to, she does not know if it is touch or smell or hearing but what she does know is that it is him and she is drowning in it. The room they are in is gone. The sounds outside are gone, the clinical smell, the voices of everyone around them.

It’s just Nate.

And before she loses herself to it—she wants to, oh how badly she wants to—she has to ask. She has to. She has to know.

She is breathless when the words leave her, her eyes wide and holding his gaze, “Is—is this how it feels for you?”

Nate doesn’t answer; instead, he twines his fingers with hers and there’s a soft look in his eyes when he asks a question in turn. “How does it feel?”

“Just… you,” is all Eva can say. “Everywhere. I can hear you and feel you and I don’t, I don’t have the words for it. I don’t know where it’s coming from. It’s just you.”