[SE] Scares me half to death

When the reaper comes knocking at my door, we'll be going twelve rounds

"Haven't I?" he challenges gently, copper glinting boldly against the sea glass trying to recapture a shine amid a storm. "You've dismantled one of your original rooms, for me." Once, he'd feared that he'd have no place in her life except as another fixture in her long hallway of friends and orante doors keeping long and deep relationships. He thought himself too freshly made, newly added among such proof of history and detail that there'd be no hope that she'd keep finding a reason to come to his door when she had so many others. She had a mansion, after all, when he'd only ever had a room. He'd diligently closed off his worry. He tried to edge around it and keep from opening it, but it'd rattle in the wind or whenever too many of the other rooms open and shut, pressure shaking the frame.

When she'd finally opened up Jack's room and cleared it out, letting the space become something new, it'd done something similar for him and his lock. The single action hadn't been the only thing, but the proof of it, among so many other layers of reassurance and opportunities to wander the hallways with her, it slid neatly into place like a key he hadn't realized he needed. What felt like tiptoing through her house, her life, quickly proved to be as much his as he'd dare to make it. "Although I still think we should turn it into a bathroom," he says with just a touch of humor. They've no need for a bathroom, but it would undoubtedly be satisfying to piss in a place that'd once been reserved for her past lover.

The mention of Floratopolis earns a swift laugh. It's absurd in the best way. "Well, Floratopolis is definitely all yours, and that's how it's meant to be. Anyone who disagrees with that can get the fuck out. That place is not meant to be changed by others." His grin dims. She's doing it again. She's shouldering all this damn blame. "Wildering house, Torchline, they are not Floratopolis." A pause, then he tacks on. "The Sugar Tide comes close. If only because you've run out of room to fit anything else. Which is smart, to make Floratopolis able to exist in international spaces. Strengthens your position, really."

He tries to keep it light, framing what he says with the silliness of a longstanding joke, and that doesn't remove any of its meaning. She's drawing in again, though. Her fingers rub against his hand like there's a rough spot there she can smooth out. He lets her, hoping she'll discover it's already polished smooth. It's always better to feel it for yourself than be told. What she says next, tucked into the creases of his hand and the friction she puts there, thickens his throat for just a moment. She means it, he knows she does. Every offer isn't one extended carelessly, no matter the cost. She'd do any of it. All of it. She'd give up Floratopolis, if it came down to it, because it's never what she's actually wanted.

A smile flares out, more sad than delighted, but it fills the shape of his mouth as it parts around a huff of disbelief. Abruptly, he flops back, the top of his head hanging perilously off the safety zone of the bed. Her feet squish in the bow of his lower back, though she'll be adjusted momentarily, because his hands stay locked in hers. He pulls her along with him firmly, uncaring of the spill of snacks and the skew of sheets as legs and bodies shift about. Nothing matters beyond pulling her close to him. He practically wants to crush her against him, see if it'd break these doubts into pieces that could be blown away. Around them, the walls leap to life in a display of Wildering house. They show a roaming through the different areas, because it's all too grand to display on just the few walls here. In every space, he lets the familiar come through, though they aren't exact. "I promise," he says with a fierceness that scarcely requires volume to fill the space between them, "to always leave marks on your life." One hand struggles to free itself, reaching up beneath the curtain of golden curls. It brushes roughly across her cheek, the force of conviction unable to gentle even for this, then sinks into a sharp grip within the depths of her hair. "You better do the same for me." He doesn't ask, he demands. There is little more he could want than constant reminders of her being part of his life. It's why the walls show their home imperfectly from what it is now. It shows wear and tear of time, of them. Artwork they don't own yet, hung up. Books that haven't been written put up on the shelves. New plants sprawling out, grown from the smaller versions of them now. She's painting the house like a grave, but he's never known living before those halls.

Kaisel

I ain't afraid to bleed, there ain't a casket strong enough for me

it ain't no crime, it's just dreams we're stealin'

Flora’s mouth softens around Kai's insistence, around the way he pushes back not with dismissal but with something steadier, something that doesn’t waver even when she does, and still she feels that small, stubborn pull in her chest, that quiet, unreasonable urge to keep picking at it until there’s nothing left to doubt, even if it means unravelling something that doesn’t actually need fixing. "Yeah, but like.." she murmurs, her voice gentler now, threaded through with something almost apologetic as her gaze flickers across the shifting images of Wildering House, too full, too vast, too hers in ways she can’t quite unsee, "what’s one room in the big scheme of things?" Her fingers press faintly into his hands, like she’s trying to hold onto something that keeps slipping just out of reach. "I want them all to feel like your rooms. Not just one you had to be given."

There’s a breath of laughter at his suggestion, soft and fleeting, her nose wrinkling as she tilts her head at him, the fondness in it immediate even if it doesn’t quite root itself deeply enough to stay. "You could turn it into a room just for garbage if you wanted," she says, her tone lightening for a second, offering him that half-smile like a small, steadying thing between them before it fades again into something quieter, more thoughtful. Because even as he talks, even as he reframes it and hands it back to her in a shape that should settle easily, she can’t quite let it go, not fully, not when she’s spent so long building everything outward from herself, not when she knows how easy it would be to take up all the space without meaning to. Her smile lingers, patient and soft, but there’s something searching behind it still, something that doesn’t quite believe she’s done enough, hasn’t made enough room, hasn’t noticed soon enough, and it presses at her even as she listens, even as she nods faintly along with him like she’s trying to convince herself she understands.

She doesn’t protest when he pulls her down, doesn’t try to steady the spill of things around them, because none of it matters in the face of the way he gathers her, the way he insists on closeness like distance is something he simply won’t tolerate, and the breath she lets out is soft and heavy all at once as she settles against him, her legs shifting to bracket him, her body folding into his like it’s the easiest, most natural answer there’s ever been.

Even pressed like this, even half-crushed by the pull of him and the insistence of his hold, something in her loosens, slots back into place with a quiet, almost audible certainty, like everything that had been slightly off-centre finds its alignment again simply by virtue of being here, of being held like this, of being his in the same way he’s so certain he’s hers.

The roughness of his hand against her cheek doesn’t bother her, and indeed he'll feel her lean into it, into the pressure and the certainty behind it, her eyes lifting to his, searching with a kind of quiet desperation she doesn’t bother to hide , combing through every flicker of his expression for hesitation, for doubt, for anything that might confirm the fear she’d built for herself, and finding none. It undoes her a little, that absence.

Her breath catches, just slightly, the sting of it rising unexpectedly at the back of her eyes, and she blinks it away only to have it return, softer this time, less sharp and more like something loosening rather than breaking. "I want all of your marks," she says, and her voice wavers despite her best effort, her fingers slipping free just long enough to thread into his hair, curling there like she’s anchoring herself in the same way he is, "all over everything."

The grip he has in her hair, the pull of it, the certainty of it, only makes her smile grow, uneven and a little shaky but real in a way that steadies something fragile inside her, her head dipping forward just slightly as she nods, quick and fervent, like she’s agreeing to something that matters far more than the moment itself. "I will," she whispers, the promise soft but unhesitating, her thumb brushing once along his jaw as if sealing it there, as if making sure it stays.

anything to get more of this feeling

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

When the reaper comes knocking at my door, we'll be going twelve rounds

The world is instantly better the closer to him she is. It rights in a way he didn't realize had been wrong, not until the fit of her body against his reminds him that this is how it ought to feel. He'd stay like this, if he could, draped in the slopes of her, limbs tangled. Forever has begun to feel less like a destination or a passage of time when they're like this. Instead, he's more and more certain they've reached it, that it's obtained in every moment shared with her, loving her.

She never resisted the pull or the hold, but the feel of her softening is there just the same. It's not a defense giving way; she'd already thoroughly stripped herself of those with the way her worries spilled out into the open. It's her finding trust again. The same way sleep reshapes a body that's already submitted, this belief arrives and transforms her in degrees. That reassures him before she's even spoken, although the clasp of her fingers in his hair, the fight of her voice to stay even keel through the toss of doubt, that lands surefooted in his chest.

His grip does not loosen, not yet. He'd weaponized his insistence to spar with her fears, and though he feels victorious, he'd not be so hasty as to skip off the battlefield. Double-tapping is always a good call, even without zombies. His expression does start to unwind from the tension of furious assurance, and a "good," breathes out with enough gust to shift some of the hair against her face. Still, the force of it lifts him up to her, leaning past the pressure of her thumb along him, tugging her faintly down to meet him with the fist of her hair. His kiss sets against her mouth with no hesitation or delicacy, pressed more like a brand, as if he means to mark her exactly as they've discussed. He doesn't content himself with one, intent to steal every bit of her breath and lingering carefulness until they've both softened like the worn edges of a story well told, the folds and creases proof they they've got each other forever and then some.

Kaisel

I ain't afraid to bleed, there ain't a casket strong enough for me

it ain't no crime, it's just dreams we're stealin'

It isn’t that Flora suddenly believes everything is perfect or that the doubts vanish cleanly, but they loosen, they slip their grip just enough that she can breathe around them instead of inside them.

"Get back on the bed," she whispers, her lips ghosting against his as she speaks, "I don’t want the monsters to get you." She shifts over him as he settles, not content with the angle he’s taken, nudging and pressing until he’s properly back on the bed, her body draping over his in a way that feels both playful and deliberate, her knees sliding along his sides, her hands finding his shoulders and then his chest as though mapping him out again in real time, reacquainting herself with something she never actually forgets.

There’s a smile in it, a flicker of that earlier humour returning not as armour but as something gentler, something that belongs to this space they’ve made between them, and then she’s kissing him back, not tentative, not uncertain, but not rushed either, like she’s settling into something that’s always been waiting for her to stop overthinking it. His grip in her hair anchors her, the pull of it sending a small, electric line down her spine that makes her lean in rather than away.

The kiss deepens without sharp edges, without urgency, but with a kind of fullness that fills in the spaces she’d been worrying at moments before, the press of his mouth against hers warm and steady. And for a moment, everything else—the house, the questions, the too-big spaces and the too-small fears—fades into something distant and unimportant, because this, this is theirs in a way that doesn’t need defining, doesn’t need carving out or proving or questioning, it simply is, held in the warmth of his hands and the certainty of his voice and the way she answers him not with words now but with the steady, undeniable press of herself against him, as if leaving marks can be as simple as this, as inevitable as breath.

~FIN

anything to get more of this feeling

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3