[SE] There's something warm about the winter when you come around

Kaisel

Heaven help me, the devil wears lace and she can't be tamed

Despite the heat, the moment her hands find his bare skin, he shivers beneath the touch. Sensitive, sure, the ease of tickling him proof of that, but this isn’t a place that tickles. It’s a direct response to the electric hum that transpires anytime they connect, as if his body has become attuned to hers and responds to the slightest signal. ”I had a lot of thoughts,” he defends, snorting at how easy she seems to think being on the other side of her brain is. ”You gave me zero hints,” he accuses. ”All you said was password, and there’s like, a jillion possibilities.”

All the rising clamor of indignation is easily disrupted by the idle trail and spin of her fingers over skin, quieting him back down like he could slip into an easy trance with enough guidance from her hand. Half-lidded eyes soak in the haze of her near him as he mentally follows the path of her tracing shapes, listening all the while. ”Exactly,” he grins back in response, the shape growing wide enough to devour her laughter. ”Ok ok,” he hums, excited for a whole new reason now about passwords and codes. ”Maybe not Sprinkelz, but what aboooout. Hawt Catsuop?” His face ends up contorting in weird ways as he tries to smush or drag out the letters, imagining them in his mind and trying to give them voice without it sounding as it normally would. It all was clearer in his head.

He continues to tease the idea out behind his teeth, not giving it any more air for now, needing all of it to relish this current, unspoken hot ketchup moment where their lips meet. He’d have kept them there too, condiments merging into the night, if only he didn’t need to out the way she’d illegally barred his entry here. ”Oh no?” he wonders, wide-eyed with innocence. ”So threatening to leave my ass on the hard rocks all night was just my imagination?” he teases with a feral tilt to his smile, positive he’s caught her red handed. ”Oh I see,” he drawls out with an impressive eye roll. ”It was punishment for leaving the blueprints in your very capable hands so I could complete the mood lighting?” Firelight is essentially the disco ball of the Climb.

Let me see the good girl you wanted to be. All of my praise, only from me.

flora

Flora snickers, rolling her eyes with theatrical exaggeration as though this is the most predictable revelation in the world. "You always have a lot of thoughts," she informs him primly, as if she has conducted extensive research on the subject. "It is one of your defining characteristics." That, and being a motor mouth, not unlike her. Flora's fingers do not pause in their exploration as she says it, continuing their slow, deliberate cartography over his stomach, mapping every ridge and hollow with the kind of focus usually reserved for rare artefacts or fine art. There is no expense spared in this survey; she traces, presses, drifts back again as if committing the terrain to memory all over, though she knows it already by heart.

When he mangles Hawt Catsuop into existence, her laughter bursts bright and uncontained, delight shaking through her shoulders. "Yes!" she breathes, nodding eagerly as though he has cracked some linguistic code. "You're for sure onto something. And I bet we could absolutely shrink it down even more."She puckers her lips thoughtfully, experimenting aloud. "Há kessup?" The sounds come out exaggerated, tongue scooping and shaping each syllable as if she is tasting it for authenticity. She grins down at him, eyes alight with ridiculous invention. "It sounds very bougie, very mysterious. No one would ever know it is just hot ketchup in disguise."

His wide-eyed innocence earns an equally guileless flutter of her lashes, the performance flawless. "It was not a threat," she corrects sweetly. "I was simply outlining the consequences." Her fingers, taunting now, trail lower, following the sharp line of muscle he so generously revealed earlier, hovering just above the waistband he had tugged down. The V of him guides her touch like an arrow, and she lets her hand drift close enough to promise without granting. "And no," she adds with exaggerated patience, "it was because you were grandstanding about completing an extremely basic task instead of assisting with construction."

i scream for whatever it's worth
"i love you" ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Kaisel

Heaven help me, the devil wears lace and she can't be tamed

Her laughter is contagious, or maybe it’s the delight woven into it that is, both of which are too wild and large to keep to herself. It soaks into him with his own grin leaking out the sound, ribs shaking with the effort to grasp breath in between. They build off one another like this is how all stairs are made, one idea stacking on the other until they’ve each snuck in an assortment of steps that lets the both of them climb easier.From Hawt Catsuop to Há kessup, they ascend steadily.

”That sounds so good!” he exclaims, glee still trying to shake free and settling to hum through him as he tries to wrestle it back to properly hear her and speak. This latest outcry doesn’t help, and he dissolves again into a series of laughs and content sighs. ”Does it sound like a name enough, though?” he says with a tilt of his head towards her, cheeks puffing up with a smile as he fans out ”Flora Há kessup. Kaisel Há kessup.” It’s perhaps a silly question, given the wide variety of names, but after saying it aloud in full, he can pinpoint the remaining struggle.

”Close, but I bet we could hide even more of it. The Há is perfect.” The rest, he tries to quickly run over, testing what needs to stay and what needs to drop to sound right, not wanting it to drift so far they themselves forget what it all stands for. ”Háktsòp. Hácesp. Hákzp.” Letters start to lose meaning the more he tries, and his tongue fights with his volume, as if some could only work if shouted breathlessly. ”Maybe?” he huffs.

It’s certainly true that Flora’s perfected feigning innocence enough that he still has a hard time catching her when she’s clearly gaslighting him. It’s why it’s so easy for him to believe her when she says utter nonsense like don’t you wish you were athletic? That, and his TRUST in her, which is clearly misplaced at times, although admittedly only the times that don’t really count (they all count in the moment). Even now, he is fully sus of that lash play. ”That sounds exactly like a threat, but with more letters,” he scoffs, the sound drawing short as the drift of her hands takes the rest of his breath. Nothing but a tease, but a line he’d gladly have her walk across in case she tips over it. In fact, his hips lift up, offering even less distance. ”I’m sure I could do something to make it up to you now.” The offer buried there is sly and wanting, as evidenced by the trail of his eyes as they dip from her face to the remaining fabric clutching her chest. One of his hands skims up her arm, tugging at a strap in test.

Let me see the good girl you wanted to be. All of my praise, only from me.

flora

Flora wrinkles her nose immediately as Kaisel tries their experimental surname on for size, the expression exaggerated and thoughtful all at once, as though she is a critic tasting a new vintage and finding it almost—but not quite—there. "Mmm," she hums, tilting her head side to side as he declares Flora Há kessup and Kaisel Há kessup with a hopeful flourish. "No," she decides, lips pursing. "It's close though."

As he descends into increasingly chaotic iterations—Háktsòp, Hácesp, Hákzp—the word itself begins to dissolve into nothing more than sound, buzzing and sputtering through his mouth until meaning evaporates entirely. Flora lasts precisely three seconds before laughter fizzes out of her, bright and unstoppable, shoulders shaking as she leans forward slightly over him. "You're just making noises now," she teases him between giggles, closing one eye as if trying very hard to picture it carved into coral stone somewhere official. "I'm trying to imagine how we would even spell that."

She taps her chin thoughtfully, recovering just enough to offer, "What about Hacésop?" The accent feels important, she decides. Then, reconsidering, "Or Hák­sop." She enunciates it carefully, testing the balance of it on her tongue before dissolving again into a grin.

When he so rudely implies she is threatening him in disguise, she straightens with dramatic offense, shaking her head as though wounded by the audacity. "I cannot believe you would doubt my integrity like this," she says, the innocence laid on thick enough to frost a cake. "Well. Maybe if you spent less time counting letters and more time assisting with structural development, you would not have found yourself outside the château in the first place."

His hips lifting earns a slow raise of her brows, and she glances at him over her shoulder with scandalized disapproval that is only slightly undercut by the warmth in her gaze. His hand testing the strap of her bra does not go unnoticed, and neither does the way his eyes travel, though of course she doesn't stop him. Instead, the tips of her fingers press deliberately beneath the line of his pants, just enough to promise contact without fully granting it, her touch feather-light but intentional. "That," she says coolly, leaning closer, "is a bold claim." Her eyes flick down, then back up to his with wicked amusement. "To assume your dick can help you negotiate your way out of this."

i scream for whatever it's worth
"i love you" ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Kaisel

Heaven help me, the devil wears lace and she can't be tamed

He’s half forgotten about the need to spell all the mash ups he’d just thrown out. The reality of that hits him square with a burst of a laugh and a helpless wag of his head back and forth. ”Ok, true, buuuut imagine—we devise this name that’s not spelled how it sounds and get so upset any time someone misspells it.” She could throw some royal weight around with that, make everyone terrified of slighting the queen and proving their poor attention to detail.

His chin tips up to watch her as thoughts brew across her features. It starts with the drifting focus of her eyes, still here, but he can tell she slips into the folds of her mind, no doubt letters marching out and rearranging. Her eyes darken when it happens, like she’s gone deeper, and instead of the sunlit surface of the sea glinting off like glass on a calm day, she takes on the look of grabbing a great breath and diving down as far as you can, kicking and reaching for shadows that continue to stay out of reach in the fathomless depths of the sea. Next her brow pinches in. It’s subtle, one of the few things about her that is, and there are plenty of times when it shows up stronger, when she bends it on purpose to accentuate a performance. This one is honest though, lost to truth instead of stage, and for that she seems of the mind to dodge wrinkle lines by only creasing minorly. His favorite though is the way her upper lip stiffens, causing her nose to crinkle up just so. He reaches up to deliver a faint boop to the tip of it now.

All her efforts prove worthwhile though, because what she lays out for them is an immediate improvement, another step taken up. ”Hmm, I like Hacésop,” he admits, settling into the lean of his shoulders on the ground. ”Feels like that’s the wrong point to stress the sound though,” he admits, saying it under his breath a few times. When she says Hák­sop though, he stiffens, eyes flaring wider as he captures her with them. ”Say that one again!?” Excitement rises, and as it always would, he knew the moment they finally stumbled over it and said it aloud, the name would be known, like something glimmering just waiting to be plucked and placed. ”Hák­sop,” he repeats over and over aloud, rolling it out slow, fast, long, harsh. ”I think,” he starts with a slow spread of hope. ”Flo-ro, I think, I think that’s our name!”

The celebration twists into a smirk at her continued attempts at shrugging off any nefarious responsibility about the club security. ”You aren’t wrong,” he offers with a subtle hum of yielding to the logic that he could have better played a hand in their arrangement here. ”Although, one could argue, you’re just so capable and successful at setting this place up I had no time to offer help,” he tries to twist, albeit with less mastery than her.

A chuckle, low and knowing, escapes with a drawn out effect, lingering long in his lungs and off his lips as she looks him over. ”Oh no,” he amends, reaching out with his other hand for her, drawing himself closer into the fold of her, bringing her hand deeper into his pants unless she moves it. ”Not to negotiate,” he croons with something half-smug rapidly melting into a beg. ”To serve. He’s grabbing for her hand while his fingers tug down her bra strap, coiling the excess around his fingers. ”All of me, to serve you.”[/i]

Let me see the good girl you wanted to be. All of my praise, only from me.

flora

Flora’s grin turns downright villainous at the suggestion of an unreasonably difficult surname, eyes lighting with wicked possibility. "Oooh,”"she says slowly, savouring it, "do you think I could ignore letters or political nonsense if they spell my name wrong?" Her smirk sharpens. "Pretend I don't know who it was for, send it back unopened." The sheer tyranny of it delights her, and she looks entirely prepared to abuse the privilege.

When he boops her nose, she blinks at him flatly, pulled abruptly from the depths of phonetic engineering. For one suspended second she simply stares, then shoves him lightly in the shoulder, nose wrinkling in affront. "Excuse you," she mutters, as though he has violated her sacred concentration.

She sighs when he agrees the stress is wrong in Hacésop, nodding with resigned disappointment. "Yeeeah, I kinda thought so too." But then his excitement shifts, quick and electric, and she feels it in herself like a current jumping circuits. She sits up a little straighter, shoulders drawing back, his enthusiasm bleeding into her until she is nearly vibrating with it. When he demands she say it again, she doesn't hesitate. "Hák­sop," she purrs, careful and deliberate, letting the final p land with a crisp pop of her lips.

The sound of it hangs between them, new and perfect.

"Hák­sop," she whispers again, softer this time, like she is trying it on in private. For a moment she just looks at him, firelight catching in her lashes, something almost girlish stealing into her expression. Hot Ketchup had been theirs when they were only friends pretending not to orbit each other too closely, when every inside joke had felt like borrowed time that they'd steal and steal again. Now here they are, secretly married, and Hák­sop feels like a bridge between those beginnings and this, this reckless, chosen forever.

"Gods, I love you," she breathes, barely louder than the fire. Then she straightens, remembering herself. Tutting sharply under her breath, she shakes her head at his attempted logic. "No. No, absolutely not. No husband of mine is going to weaponize incompetence against me." Her tone is firm, scandalized, entirely theatrical.

When he moves, drawing her hand deeper into his pants, she has to bite hard at the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing outright. She glares down at him, trying for severity, but affection and heat keep bleeding through the cracks. "You are the woooorst," she informs him with a defeated huff, before letting her head loll to the side. "Well," she concedes at last, voice lowering as her fingers press further, wrapping around his shaft with deliberate certainty, "I suppose your wristband does grant you the VIP package..."

She leans closer, his fingers tangled in the strap of her bra, her lips brushing his as she whispers, "And yes, that does stand for very impressive penis." Then she kisses him hard, laughter and heat and victory all braided together, the campfire crackling merrily beside them as the rest of the world narrows to warmth, whispered nonsense, and the kind of shenanigans only they could ever fully translate.


~FIN

i scream for whatever it's worth
"i love you" ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!