don't wanna love me 'cause it feels too risky

flora

The sound that leaves Flora’s throat is all velvet mischief and sun-warmed indulgence, curling from her lips as she purrs into the space between them, "I could still be so much worse." And oh, how she means it. Her grin is as lazy as it is wicked, the kind of smile that once belonged to goddesses or sirens, born to tempt and ruin with a flutter of lashes and the promise of a sigh.

But beneath it—beneath the smug delight of having stirred him again so easily—there’s something molten. Something honest. Something hot enough to evaporate the steam around them, the flush in her cheeks blooming for reasons that have little to do with the heat of the water. Her breath catches like a sail snapping in a sudden gust as his teeth graze the tender skin behind her ear, and all her cleverness falters with the strength of the shiver that floods down her spine, leaving goosebumps in its wake and her knees aching to misbehave.

He cages her, and Flora doesn’t mind in the slightest. Instead, she leans into it, into him, pressing her bare body against his without apology or restraint. Arms loop lazily around his neck and her lips rise to meet his as though she were born to do just that. Her mouth parts against his, the kiss luxuriant and lingering, like honey slow-poured across summer fruit, like something treasured after too long apart. When he draws back, leaving want painted across her skin like fingerprints in fogged glass, she lingers close enough to steal another breath.

"If we can’t be good examples," she counters, every word a kiss against the shell of his ear, "we might as well be unforgettable bad ones."

And then she releases him—reluctantly, but not without intent—watching with a conspiratorial gleam in her sea-bright eyes as he turns toward the wall. The rivulets of water curve over the ridges of his back, the shadows caught in the valleys between his muscles. She lets him lather soap in slow, distracted strokes, admiring the view with open appreciation.

Then—delicately, deliberately—she reaches for the sponge and squeezes a generous dollop of lather into her hand. "You missed a spot," she announces with mock chastisement, the innocent cadence of her voice at delicious odds with the intent glittering in her eyes. Her soapy fingers glide between them, trailing with agonizing softness down his stomach before coming to rest where he’s already hard again. Her hand wraps around him with reverence and roguery in equal measure, slow and slick and maddeningly gentle as she gives him a look so saccharine it borders on sinful.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

She will be his demise. He's never been more certain of it than now, the temptation of her as endless as the sea. Each carefully placed connection of skin, every curve delightfully displayed, the hum of her words between the curl of her lips—it's all a design for his undoing.

Her idle monitoring does not go unnoticed. One 'brow lifts in silent question, one he's about to put voice to, but she beats him to it with something too sweet to match that canary-eating grin she hasn't relented. "Flo—" Her name catches in his chest, strangled with warning and want alike, although only one wins out in the end when her hand coasts against his erection. A groan breaks free as he arches into the feel, utterly weak-kneed beneath the unhurried grasp.

He turns his face toward her, eyes glazed with the arousal she's coaxed back effortlessly. He leans into her, utterly snared by her, one hand cupping her cheek with more force than before as he struggles for composure that's already slipping like an untied anchor. "This just means I'll have to get even," he threatens with a rasp, his hips twitching into her palm. His other hand grasps her waist with a strong press, holding her to him like he can't manage if she's too distant.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

Flora’s grin could shame the devil himself, all teeth and temptation wrapped in silken satisfaction. "Oh nooo," she drawls, the words drawn out with so much false innocence they might as well be dipped in gold leaf. There’s nothing contrite in her tone, no real fear of retribution—only the delighted thrill of baiting him further, of seeing just how far she can continue to push him.

The slick of soap still clinging to her skin works in her favour as she slips from his grip. Her hands slide down his sides in a featherlight trail, anchoring at his hips before she sinks to her knees in the steam-drenched space between them, water cascading in rivulets around her like a veil. She’s already watching him as she moves, tilting herself just out of the spray with practised ease, angling so the warm stream sluices down over him instead. Then—gods help him—she leans in, eyes locked with his, and lets her tongue trace a slow, deliberate circle around the head of his cock, tasting him like a secret she intends to keep.

There’s no teasing smirk now. No coy delay. Her lips part and she takes him into her mouth with reverence and hunger braided together, sinking slow and sure along the length of him. Her fingers slide behind to cradle the backs of his thighs, pressing gently enough to encourage him to move against her.

When he does, when he tilts into her grasp and lets her guide him deeper, her hand wraps firm and steady around the base of him, grounding every motion with purpose. She finds a rhythm that’s unhurried but intent, tongue swirling and lips sealing with maddening precision, the curve of her back fluid and feline beneath the water’s caress.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

Over. She can push him over. Walk up and down him if she wants, he's at her mercy and she frequently has none of that to offer.

She shimmies out of his hands with all the eventuality of trying to hold a wave to shore. His fingers trail after her, reluctant to lose the contact, then grasping for anything steady as her touch shivers down him—impossibly faint yet echoing through him like a tremor that might unseat him. He sucks in a breath the moment her knees hit the floor, reverent and defiant, and he aches for her in every way he never knew he could. The water she wears like a halo, the flash of her eyes from the bank of his hips, the heat of her mouth—every part of him braces with anticipation and arousal that strains against her hand.

The first touch of her tongue nearly folds him in half.

He leans back against the wall of the shower to keep himself upright as a guttural noise drags free of his chest. His head tips back against the tile, jaw slack, neck taut with the demand of holding still when every instinct begs him to move. As if understanding, her grip urges him forward, the encouragement tugging all the breath from his chest as he slowly meets her pattern and sinks against her fully.

"Fucks sake, Flora," he breathes, hoarse with want. One hand threads gently into the wet crown of her hair, not to guide, not to control—but to let her know he’s here, undone and unraveling by her whims alone. Every slide of her mouth over him, every flick of her tongue, cracks his composure further. His thighs tremble under her coaxing hands, the tension rising tight and bright and unbearable, until the whole world narrows to the feel of her, the look in her eyes, the pleasure she gifts so freely. He’s barely holding onto the edge of himself, and then she draws him deeper, seals her mouth around him with purpose, and that fragile edge crumbles.

"Flora—I'm gonna cum," his groan breaks open as his body locks. His hips stutter helplessly as he spills into her, every nerve seizing with a final jolt of intense sensation as his climax crashes through him. He slumps against the wall, blissfully wrecked, panting and incoherent for a beat. The hand still buried in her hair slips down to cup her cheek gently, or so he aims, but it flops around a bit boneless, "you're definitely gonna have to carry me out now, I don't think I can move after that." Marking himself a liar, his other hand reaches out for her—to draw her up, to bring her to him where he can cradle all of her. For that, he’ll always find the strength.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

She hums around him as he hisses her name, smugness simmering in every deliberate movement. Her satisfaction is as molten as the water cascading over them, not just in the way his fingers clutch at her hair or the way his thighs tremble, but in the deep, shuddering surrender of it all—the way he unravels because of her. When he warns her, voice fractured with need, she draws in a breath through her nose and holds her rhythm, anchored and sure, staying with him through the final stuttering arc of pleasure until his hips begin to ease and his fingers coax her gently upward.

Her knees glide forward across the slick tile, the rise of her body a seamless, glistening motion until her hands settle against his chest and she purrs, "Good thing I’m strong, then." The words are a warm little laugh against the hollow of his throat, punctuated by the softest kiss—right in that familiar place where his pulse thrums steady and strong, the place she’s kissed before in more innocent times, when being held there had meant safety, not surrender.

She leans back just far enough to reach behind her, fingers finding the valve and twisting it until the water slows, then silences altogether. Her curls cling to her shoulders in damp, golden loops, and as she tilts her chin up to meet his eyes again, her lips brush his with a sweetness made all the more dangerous by the sparkle in her gaze. "After the day you’ve had," she murmurs, all faux concern and silk-draped teasing, "I just wanted to make sure you’d sleep really, really well."

With a flick of her wrist, she tosses a towel at him—one that lands with a satisfyingly damp smack—before snagging one for herself and wrapping it around her hips like a sarong, barely bothering to dry off. She doesn’t wait for permission or pause to see if he’ll follow; she simply reaches back with her free hand and beckons him with a curl of her fingers as she saunters down the hall, still entirely unbothered and gloriously bare beneath the towel.

Back in the small cabin space, she flutters the sheets back into some kind of order, straightening pillows with a little flair before climbing into bed without ceremony. The towel is discarded at the foot of the mattress with no fanfare. Flora settles into the middle, draping the sheet over her legs before holding out an arm in silent invitation. "Come on, bed time for real."

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

He wants every kiss she will give. The cautious ones, that press in gentle and slow. The teasing ones that skim and entice. The needy ones, that can barely linger before the press in elsewhere. Long, wet, deep, brief—he’ll catalogue them all, each one unique as a snowflake in the snowfall of Flora’s affection.. It's one such kiss now that he's keeping, a lazy smile spreading beneath it as her words land with that familiarly smug taunt. "Making sure I don't wake up is more like it," he chuckles, lighter than usual with all the bliss that's attempting to make him float.

The towel smacks against his chest and he barely catches it in time, still feeble from the haze of her touch. He drags it half-heartedly over himself, more autopilot than an attempt at drying. He holds it around his lower half as he watches her saunter away, still dripping, a trail of steam and devastation left in her wake. He exhales a half-laugh, completely enthralled by her. He follows, her beckoning hardly necessary. He already told her, he'd go wherever she went.

He pauses back at the doorway, taking in the sight of her sprawled on the bed again, and though it's the same night it feels like a lifetime ago that he'd last been here and found security in the drape of her room, the promise of her presence. That's still plenty, for him, but the euphoria of this version, where she's laid bare on the bed, inviting him to her completely, it's undeniable. He tosses the towel aside and sinks in beside her, grabbing her arm and holding it along his as he positions himself behind her. He nestles in against the sheets and pillows, tugging her back to his chest, fitting her in against all the spaces of his body while he take their linked arms and folds them across her front, bracing along her chest.

He exhales against her hair, utterly content—maybe this is already home. He presses one last kiss to her shoulder in goodnight before the quiet closes around them like a second sheet—breath slowing. "Sweet dreams, Flora," he murmurs, stifling a yawn as sleep finally claims him—swift and full, with her warmth tucked into every breath.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

She fits against him without resistance, sliding into place like a piece that was always meant to be there. No hesitation, no second-guessing—just instinct and ease, the kind of seamless closeness that can’t be faked. Her body moulds into his like water into a waiting shape, boneless with affection, her spine curved to match his chest, her legs brushing warm against his. It should feel new—because it is—but somehow it doesn’t. Somehow, it feels like this is just how they sleep. Like they’ve always done this. As if there was never a time when her body didn’t know where to go when night pulled the world quiet.

The thought creeps in as his arms fold around her, protective and sure, and she exhales into the hush with a little sound that’s closer to a sigh than a laugh. She doesn’t fight the exhaustion tugging at her this time despite the fact that she doesn't want to hasten the moring. Morning means thinking. It means implications. Questions. A future with too many sharp edges and not nearly enough soft. But right now, in the cradle of Kais' chest and arms, with their limbs braided together like tide-twisted kelp, it’s just bliss. Pure and uncut.

She tilts her head just enough to press her lips to the forearm banded across her ribs, her kiss more breath than shape. "Love you, Assborn," she mumbles into his skin, the words melting into warmth and sleep and salt-kissed skin.

By the time the sun finds them, it pours through the windows in long, golden ribbons, lighting the room with the gentle hush of a morning that hasn’t quite decided how to be yet. The sheets are tangled around legs and hips, pushed down at some point in the night, but the two of them haven’t untangled at all. If Kai moved, Flora moved with him, pulled in his orbit like a planet too stubborn to fall away. She’s draped half over him now, bare legs tangled with his, one arm tossed across his chest and her face tucked somewhere near the curve of his neck.

The light catches her curls, turning the messy halo into a riot of spun gold and salt, wild from drying in sleep and catching every sunbeam like a net. His darker hair is equally dishevelled, thick and unbothered in a way that makes him look younger, more vulnerable than he ever lets himself be. The light traces the lines of his jaw and shoulder, the long stretch of her thigh flung across his hip, the soft scatter of freckles across her back. They look like something unfinished and holy, like some artist started drawing a prayer and never put the pencil down.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

He wakes slowly, blinking into the golden glow that spreads across the surfaces she’s collected in her room, the light ricocheting gently from edge to edge like a game of tag. He hadn’t slept enough, but the dregs of it dissolve like cotton candy in water—and despite the short supply, he feels more rested than he has in ages.

He stretches against the length of her, body rolling without escaping, and he hopes he manages it without disturbing her. It’s his one last lingering moment to hold her like this. As his, even if only in the hush between night and reality. Unlike the last time, when the dawn light had shielded all the prior night's slips, this morning's golden spill highlights them. He exhales deeply at the recognition of that, at the things that have shifted under the weight of holding her. If it could be easy, if it could just be them, he'd lay here beside her all into the next night, and love her all over again.

It's not just them though, and nothing is simple enough to defeat by staying in bed.

He doesn’t consider it a mistake. He could never regret her, but there's no denying the choice he made and the ripples that sends through to the other people he cares about. "You awake?" he asks softly, barely able to say it, not really wanting to. Couldn't they stretch this longer? This hardly feels like long enough.

His arm slides down the one she's tossed over him, fingers trailing against the underside of it and across her ribs, tender and cautious. The certainty of last night—the surety of her, of them—begins to retreat beneath something shakier. Something afraid to reach for more than what was already given. Last night, it had felt like enough. Today? It feels far too little, and equally entirely too much.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

As Kaisel stretches against her, Flora grumbles—a low, muffled sound that bubbles against his skin before she stubbornly cuddles in tighter, her arm cinching around him as though sheer determination might keep the morning at bay. Her nose finds the hollow beneath his jaw like she means to hide there, burrowing further into the cradle of his warmth, chasing dreams that are already slipping through her fingers.

But his voice—soft, hesitant, real—breaks through her sleep-fogged defenses like sunlight through a stormcloud, and consciousness crashes down on her in a dizzying wave. The moment shifts. The weight of reality settles across her like a new blanket, itchy and unavoidable. Despite the featherlight touch of his fingers trailing along her ribs—a path that draws a quiet shiver from her spine—she stiffens, the boneless contentment of her sleep replaced by something warier, more alert. This isn’t the night that it happened anymore.

This is the morning after.

"Nooo," she mumbles against him, voice thick with sleep and protest, as if saying it might somehow rewind time. But the sun has risen, and neither of them are the same people they were in the dark. Still, she lets the silence stretch a few heartbeats longer before pushing herself back just far enough to look at him. Her blue eyes are sleep-soft and open, unguarded in a way that she rarely lets them be. There’s no teasing glint, no mask of charm. Just Flora. "I don’t regret it," she says quietly, the words small but sure. "And I know it both does and doesn’t change things." But gods, does it ever change things.

It changes the way she feels curled up beside him, as if every nerve in her body has been rewired to respond to the shape of him. It changes the way her heart stutters under his touch, the way her affection has rooted deeper—feral and aching and impossible to uproot now. It changes how close she feels to him, like there’s no distance between them at all, not even the kind that lives in the mind.

But it also doesn’t stop time. Doesn’t unmake the rest of their lives. Doesn’t dissolve the truths they’re tangled in: the flames flickering elsewhere for other people, the friends and family caught in the ripples of this closeness. The history, the hurt, the hunger for more than the space between two people in a bed.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// Start a tiny riot //

The feel of her tucking in tighter—really, just the feel of her at all—makes him selfishly want to sink right back into this reality they made. He could seal her in his arms and pretend the sun has no business with them at all, but he doesn’t have the ability to vanquish daylight or draw dreams out in perpetuity. So instead, he meets her eyes as she shifts back, the space she’d just been now achingly empty despite the remaining tangle of them elsewhere.

She's an unknown version, this early morning Flora caught in the afterglow of them—he has never considered her delicate, but right now he is careful with her, because she's soft in a way he's not used to, a way he doesn't want to bruise. He'd give anything to never hurt her.

Her words slip against all the uncertain air with the precision of her best daggers, cutting away until relief, or as close as they might get to it, drifts between them instead. She says what he’s thinking, which makes this easier, but only barely. "I don’t regret it either," he answers, the words steady even as his voice nearly cracks with the effort, to be here drawing lines again after erasing every one of them. "Not even a little."

His thumb rubs lightly along her side and he feels the newness of them, the way her skin seems to burn brighter against his now, the way he reaches unknowingly for contact with her because it's something stable. There is no going back, no unlearning this closeness, and he wouldn’t. "Whatever happens next," he murmurs, voice barely enough to make the short distance to her.

"Even if we can’t have this," he concedes, the honesty catching roughly in his throat. His other hand rises to cradle her cheek, thumb brushing gently beneath her eye where sleep still clings. "You won't be rid of me." He doesn't get into the why, since she already seems to know, might even know this too, but he wants to be certain. "So you better stock up on gummy worms, because I'm gonna come bother you, a lot." Just maybe…no more sleepovers, since he can’t seem to handle himself around her once the lights get low.

He forces a smile on, a little splash of sprinkles. "Besides, I still owe you a dance, and we are definitely going on that sky ship adventure still, so you better not make this weird Flo-ro or I'll be forced to take drastic measures." Behind his teeth he holds back the strain rising in his chest—the part of him that isn’t so confident he can pretend to just be her friend again, even with all his practice doing so all this time (look how that turned out), especially now that he knows what it’s like for her to be more. Given there's no alternative though, he'll put his all into it.

Kaisel

// Stop being so goddamn quiet //

flora

For a moment, it all lingers—the warmth between them, the hush of the room still draped in gold, the way her breath matches the rise and fall of his chest as if they’re part of the same tide. Everything is soft. Still. Suspended in that trembling hush just before the shatter. And then he says it: Even if we can’t have this.

It’s not a maybe. It’s a quiet goodbye dressed in hopeful tones, a gentle untethering masked as reassurance. Flora doesn’t flinch, but she feels it deep in the marrow of bones, a splintering note struck somewhere just beneath the ribs. She feels the moment everything shifts back into place and yet not quite the same, like a vase glued back together too quickly, lines invisible only if you don’t know where to look, except that she does, and now those lines suddenly feel like the sort of thing that were she to cross them again, someone would get hurt.

So, she smiles.

Not because she wants to lie—never with him—but because if she doesn't, if she lets the truth show on her face, she’s afraid of the position it'll put him in. So when his thumb brushes beneath her eye, she tilts into it with sunlit affection, her smile gentle and warm and threaded with something bittersweet.

She thinks—only briefly—of leaning in again. Of stealing one last kiss in the golden spill of morning, of dragging even a sliver of the night’s wonder into daylight. But thoughts of Koa and Caly flicker like a candle caught in wind; some things, no matter how beautiful, can’t be carried forward without crushing something else beneath their weight.

So she lets the moment go.

He tosses a splash of humour over the ache like confetti over a funeral pyre, and it makes her stomach clench with affection and grief both. Of course, he would. Of course he’d be the one to try and paint the end in bright colours, to cushion her fall with candy-sweet banter. And gods, does she love him for it, which is why she plays her part too.

Rolling her eyes with all the exaggerated flair she can summon, she exhales a sigh and pushes herself up, letting her body unspool from the tangle of sheets and skin like the act itself doesn’t feel like peeling herself away from something sacred. She twists away with purpose, not because she wants distance but because it’s the only way she’ll keep her footing. The shirt she pulls over her head still smells faintly like salt and sea and him, and she fluffs out her curls with the kind of showy flourish that belongs to someone perfectly fine and unbothered.

Over her shoulder, without looking, she calls, "The day you learn to spell desperate measures is the day I start worrying, Assborn. Now get dressed—" her voice lilts, just a little too bright "—I’m craving fish tacos for breakfast."

~FIN

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!