#zisra

She dresses, fixes the curtain so it covers the window properly, and then slips out of the room.

The morning is still cold, so she braids her hair and makes tea for herself. Faust, who had slept in the living room, lets out a wordless cloud of pleasant, welcoming feelings before slipping out of her luxurious nest of pillows and blankets. Ziah scoops her up and helps her onto her shoulder with a smile, and then takes her tea outside.

She’d seen plenty of work to do as they stumbled in the door last night—and though she’d allowed Asra to distract her, and done her fair amount of distracting in turn, there are dead plants to pull, and the water pump out back to fix so that they don’t have to turn sand to water every time they want to drink.

Faust has to be talked into helping with the water pump. The clog is… difficult to remove without being able to see it.

The sun has fully risen by the time Ziah manages to reward (or placate) Faust with enough chin-scritches to make her stop complaining. But they have water for their efforts, though she pumps out four buckets of mud and sludge before it runs clear.

She takes two buckets full of clear, clean water inside with her, Faust hanging loosely around her neck like a scarf. When Ziah puts the buckets down, Faust slithers down her arm, and back into her blanket pile.

Tired! She exclaims.

“I’m the one carrying you around,” Ziah teases.

Faust, however, doesn’t listen. She vanishes under the blankets, radiating self-satisfaction until she falls back to sleep.

She shakes her head at the little snake, but her thoughts have already turned to a nice, cold bath after all her labour. She stoops down to take up the buckets again—but the joints in her left hand aches when she closes her fingers around the handles.

Ziah hisses. She stands upright and massages her knuckles, glaring down at the buckets as if they are the source of her trouble.

She is more than a little tempted to try lifting them with magic—but the last time she’d tried that, she’d thrown a basket of laundry into the ceiling, and she’s honestly not in the mood to clean up all that water, or to wake Asra with the noise that would make.

She means only to go retrieve her ointment. She means to leave Asra sleeping—neither of them have done much of that lately, though with Lucio finally, finally gone, she’s hoped that at least he will start to get the rest they have both so desperately needed, of late.

She does not think he will be awake—or that he will be lying on his back, one arm thrown over his face, the blankets lying on the floor, and his hand on his cock, pumping it slowly in time with his breaths.

Oh.

Oh.

He is. Hm. Painting a very appealing picture, one knee bent, the other leg stretched out, his head rolled back and his neck bared. All of him bared, really. Lips parted, his mouth barely moving—as if he is thinking about kissing someone who isn’t there.

His breath pitches higher, and his lips tremble on his exhale before he bites his lower lip, as if whatever he’s picturing is too much for him.

Ziah whimpers, and Asra stills. He starts to move his arm, and she covers her burning face.

She… should not be watching. This is private, she never asked…

“There you are,” comes Asra’s breathless, sleepy remark.

She moves her hands, slowly. Asra is peering at her with one half-closed eye, and his cheeks are very flushed but he is smiling at her, standing in the doorway.

His hand is still on his cock.

She swallows. “And… there you are.”

He shifts on the bed—arching his back a little, and then settling slightly more on his side, so she gets a better view of him. Dropping his arm from his face so he can rest his head on it, instead.

A little high-pitched noise escapes her throat.

“Would you like to watch?” he asks.

“Yes,” she answers, breathless and immediate. “Yes I would.”

He laughs, soft and breathy. He watches her with half-lidded eyes as his hand begins to move again, dragging up and down his cock in slow, deliberate motions.

She exhales. “So,” she says, trying to figure out where to look because all of him is just too appealing, right now, “what brought this on?”

He hums. His breath hitches halfway through, and she watches his back arch, watches a shiver run through him as his hand stalls on the tip of his cock, and his lips part as he gasps, just a little. “’S dreaming of you,” he says, his voice breathy. “Woke up. Hard. You weren’t here.”

She tries to remember to breathe. “Sorry,” she replies, though it doesn’t sound as breezy and casual as it did in her head. “Fixing the water.”

“Ah.” His gaze wanders down, a while—all the way down her body, meandering and slow, and she can feel it everywhere it lingers like a hot, burning coal a hair’s breadth from her skin. The dirt on her hands, her elbows where she’s rolled up her sleeves, her collar where her shirt is falling loose over her shoulder.

He licks his lips. “You were on your way to clean up,” he surmises, the pupils of his lepidolite eyes blown so delightfully wide. “I’m… distracting you.”

His hand keeps moving, pumping, a maddeningly steady pace that she can feel in her blood, even across the room. “Maybe you can join me,” she offers, and his eyes go wide. “After you’re finished.”

He gives her a sleepy half-smile, but it lights up his face all the same. “Okay,” he says, “but I was going to take my time…”

He actually lets go of his cock, then—and she can’t help the high-pitched whine that escapes her as his hand runs up and down his leg, instead, though his cock is hard and swollen and erect and so, so ready to be touched.

Her hands are filthy. She wants so badly to touch him—but she wants, ever so badly, to watch him come. To stand here with him on display for her, watching her with those beautiful eyes—calling her name—

“Asra,” she says, her voice thick. “Asra, sweet, I want…”

His hand stills. He watches her, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths—oh, how he loves to put it off, to delay it, it seems cruel to ask—

“Mizi,” he calls back. “I can’t give you what you want if you don’t tell me.”

She exhales. “I want to watch you. Like this.”

He smile at her—beaming, a proper smile, cheek dimples, eyes sparkling and all. “Was that so hard?” he wonders, and his hand goes back to his cock.

She has to lean on the doorway after a moment—after he resumes, admittedly with more urgency than before. He doesn’t seem to have it in him to tease her any longer—bless him, she doesn’t think she can stand here much longer, especially not when he starts making noises.

“What was your dream about?” she asks, as his breaths begin to sound more like groans.

“Ah—you,” he answers, his hips starting to jerk a little into his hand. “You, lying—lying behind me, and you—Oh, Mizi, your hand was on mine. Your hand was on mine, and you were so good. So good, Mizi, you said all—ah—all the nicest things. And I could—your breasts rubbed against my back every—ngh—every time I—”

He curses. His head rolls back and he closes his eyes, and his hips jerk harder, and harder, until he is all but thrusting into his hand.

“Asra,” she calls, clutching the doorframe with one hand. To hold herself up, or to stop herself from going to him, she doesn’t know. “Asra, my sweet, look at me.”

It takes him a moment, but he does. Chest heaving, lips parted, all of him quivering, as if he’s straining, as if—as if—

He rolls onto his back, unable to support himself with his arm any longer. It hangs off the bed, now, reaching for her. “Mizi,” he calls, “Mizi. I’m—”

She can’t stop herself, now. She nearly trips over herself crossing the distance between them—to kneel at the side of the bed and hold his hand, to twine her fingers in his and kiss every one of his knuckles, once, twice, and then to grab a fistful of his hair and kiss his lips, so desperately that their teeth clack together, a little.

His mouth drags across hers, his breath floods her and fills her. His aura flares, and hers rises in response—and for a moment, she feels as he does, every nerve on fire, every inch of her awash in a white wave of pleasure that builds, and builds, and it will crash soon but for now all she can feel is a glorious, ever-rising precipice before the plunge—

He breaks the kiss with a cry—and she rests her head against his, turning her gaze to watch as he thrusts his hips off the bed and into his rapidly pumping hand once, twice, and a third time, before his whole body stiffens and he comes onto his stomach in thick, pale ribbons.

As his body falls back to the bed, as he trembles and his hips attempt a few more erratic thrusts, she buries her hands in his hair and kisses him, desperately, kisses his mouth and his forehead and his cheeks, and tells him, “You’re so good, Asra, my sweet, look at you, you’re so perfect, I love you. I love you.”

His hand almost falls to her back—but he raises it to her hair instead, to lazily twine his fingers in its strands. He looks up at her with such tenderness, such softness that it could break her heart all over again—as he does every time she says I love you, now that it’s all over.

So she says it again. “I love you.”

He manages a small, overwhelmed smile. “Love you,” he replies, as his breath slowly begins to even out.

She kisses him, and he kisses her back. Languid and slow, though the heat under her skin has not yet abated. Asra can feel her urgency, and laughs into her lips before pulling away, a twinkle in his eye.

“Shall I watch you now?” he suggests, a coy smile on his face. “Or in the bath?”