resurrection tastes like iron

felled in the night by the ones you think you love

they will come for you

She steps from him, and his steel eyes shutter just enough, her forehead meeting his – breath raking against her face. And her head tilts up, and for a moment he forgets everything, feeling the ghost of her nose trace along his own, and he tells her that he’s lost her. His tongue through her voice enough to open his eyes and remove part of the trance, part of the spell. And that is when she tells him that he had lost her because she died. He braces against the door just enough to clench his jaw, a mix of loving that flame and wishing he never had been on the receiving end.

It was far more fun to watch the fire of her from a distance.

But he doesn’t blame her – doesn’t find an inch of it in his bones at the accusation, after all. It had been his fault any of it had happened, and he had never gotten the chance to tell her how sorry he was for everything. But again, she is here – he is here, he can begin to. His lips part to tell her, to lean down and speak in her ear. To tell her it has been years and that he’s never stopped. To tell her that his horrible father had him engaged an hour after he had held her still growing cold body, covered and coated in her own blood, spitting venom and shooting daggers.

She will know, eventually.

But she has always been his drug, and he can’t find himself to stray from her, not when she pushes him away. He has half a mind to treat her like he would have with Phoebe had she done the same, he doesn’t realize she might be watching when he does it. Wonders if perhaps it might shock her to see how he truly can be.

But Lusea can handle it, he’s weathered her storms before. He wasn’t the face of the rebellion for nothing.

And he surges back at her in an instant after she’s pushed him away, eyes remaining soft as he looks to her own dark gaze. “Luci.” His voice a mix of a rough demand, trying to keep her reasonable while everything made sense. But gods to see the flame in her eye, whether it was directed at him was as beautiful as a wildfire. Phoebe’s voice pipes up then, and Sunjata doesn’t continue, instead he keeps her there, gentle but strong, a dam in her flood, as Phoebe explains likely the same thing he would have. But he doesn’t turn to look to the midwife, instead, he waits until she’s finished.

“Sy is reg, Luci, dit was al jare.” There’s a tone to his voice that Phoebe likely hasn’t heard once more, as his eyes search Lusea’s face before he steps back – wondering if she’ll revert to an old tactic and spit on him. Eyes drift toward Phoebe, uncertain what to do, not knowing what to say, everything felt wrong and right, and he didn’t know where that left him.

---

Sy is reg, Luci, dit was al jare. - She is right, Luci, it has been years.

SUNJATA

we got that love, the crazy kind

I am his and he is mine

The little blonde angel is suddenly much less of an appealing specimen, her interjection both uninvited and unwelcome. At the end of the day it's not about the Phoebe of it, whether she's part of the picture or not: the issue is that Sunny moved on, forgot me and shacked up with some new little twit.

On a better day, in a better time, perhaps I would have been reasonable. Maybe I could have been made to understand that he had to move on, that it is selfish for me to think he would hold out until my entirely improbable return. That years and years had apparently passed, even though to me it feels like an instant, even though the memory of his face is as keen as the knife that sliced my throat. If I hadn't just come back from the dead I might have been more sympathetic-

Right now, though, it is like trying to make sense of the voices of a thunderstorm, or a foreign language, or a dream. He's back on me, as I knew he would be, because he's a bull-headed idiot who can't leave things alone. There's steel in his eyes, but there's fire in mine: I glare up, defiant, challenging him to dare and push me, hoping that he does. Aggression is our love language, smoke signals cast through battle grounds.

Except usually our enemies are the rest of the world, not each other.

"Years?" I repeat blankly, and for a moment I do consider spitting at him, showing just how unimpressed I am with this excuse. Fuck your years, Sunny, an hour ago I was dead. I glance at the bizarrely friendly girl (it would be so much easier to hate you, if you weren't so damned nice) before turning my blazing eyes back on him. "Ek sou jou nie vergeet het nie, hoe lank ook al." I move to push him away again, my hands on his chest, clinging a little, daring him to prove he hasn't forgotten, that he knows me as well as he did before.

And if not, well... I've already died once. I can't imagine it will hurt as much, for a heart to break the second time.

---

Ek sou jou nie vergeet het nie, hoe lank ook al - I wouldn't have forgotten you, no matter how long.

LUSEA

felled in the night by the ones you think you love

they will come for you

She stares at him defiantly, and for a second his lips itch to quirk in that smile of his, but he presses them into a firm line. Her eyes are alight with flame and fury, now, the sharpened flame to his steel, as he grits his teeth, wanting nothing more than to show her that he’s not fucking around. But there’s a part of him that worries with Phoebe nearby that it might come across opposite from how it always has been between them. And so he removes himself, stepping back with grit teeth as she blankly repeats the statement.

“Yes, years.” He answers, sidelong glancing at her, awaiting the retaliation. But the words she gives him, spits at him, pierces him deeper than he knew, and he draws nearer to her with a small sigh as her gaze drifts toward Phoebe and back to him, bronze arms of strength and the power of living as the underdog for so many years reaching up to push him away again – but they linger

– they linger, and he stills himself from sliding away from her again, hands pressed against her shoulders, while she clings to him, and he is searching her face once more until his gut churns at the scarring on her neck. If that wound has healed upon her arrival, then Sunjata believes it’s likely the rest have healed, too. And he mulls it over as he looks at her, trying to decide how to respond, because either way it goes it’s bad, and he’s never been quite equipped to handle that.

Perhaps the pause in responding to her in his native tongue stings far too much, but he bites down hard on his lower lip, harder than ever before here on Caido, a tooth piercing his lip with the grit. His thumbs dig in just enough along her collarbones to keep her there from fighting – he knows she’s not a fleer. She is the opposite of Phoebe, and he wonders deep down if poor Phoebe can spot the difference, why it had been hard for him to explain her to her. It doesn’t matter now.

“Ek het nooit van jou vergeet nie. hoe kon ek? jy is my vlam.” He tells Lusea, a sigh of defeat as his gut churns, and he turns slightly toward Phoebe as he lifts his head to her – a small amount of hidden regret buried deep within. He hadn’t known, he hadn’t known. And he huffs a deep sigh. “Phoebe, I… She is okay, she will be fine.” His voice is laced with that deep accent, and he turns to her in just the right amount of light to spot the hand print along his cheek. He knows she will not respond to Phoebe, and he does it for her so she needn't stay and wait for something that wouldn't happen. “I need to tell her everything that’s happened.” He doesn’t realize how the words might hurt Phoebe, for a man that was awful at explaining himself before, he has no problem explaining it for Lusea.

Likely because of suffocating the flame to put it out, Lusea had a tendency to fan them.

“I will borrow some clothes for her, but I think it’s best if we go. I… I can bring her back if she needs it.” He offers in a moment of peace. As he refers to Phoebe, his voice is the softest it's ever been, but as his steel eyes shift back to Lusea, they harden a small amount, the voice grows demanding, rough, predatory, almost threatening. “Kalmeer, moenie 'n fokken toneel begin nie.” He tells her, a slight bear of his teeth as the corner of his lip swells a small amount, blood rising to the surface. He dares her to try him, knowing the tone of his voice and his actions in this split second would help her see reason. See that he is the same, see that he is not messing around, and that he means it.

---

Ek het nooit van jou vergeet nie. hoe kon ek? jy is my vlam. – I never forgot about you. How could I? You are my flame.
Kalmeer, moenie 'n fokken toneel begin nie. – Calm down, do not start a fucking scene.

SUNJATA

in a world where you can do anything: love

the honeysuckle princess

Phoebe frowned, looking at the ground when Lusea didn't respond at all to her words. She supposed it had been short sighted to think that whatever report she had built with her on the way to the clinic would stand in the face of this revelation. But Jata spoke to her and she glanced up at him. It did hurt. This all hurt. There was nothing he could have done or said really at this point that would have done anything but.

"It's alright, I will go. Everything she needs is here." she said quietly before turning on her heel. She grabbed an extra blanket she could wear as a shawl, and instead of trying to pass between the two, she hurried put the back door. She needed to get away anyways.

---

EXIT PHOEBE

PHOEBE

we got that love, the crazy kind

I am his and he is mine

It hurts where his thumbs push into my collarbone, but I relish it, pushing back my own defiance, watching him bite down on his lip hard enough to bleed. Oh, I'm not going anywhere, not while you still have so many things to explain, not when I have already spent weeks shackled down and unable to fight, unable to do anything but survive (and even that not very well, because I died, I died, and you were there-).

Ah, and see, here's what really pisses me off. How can it be that in the same breath he promises he hasn't forgotten me he is able to say her name, his voice so gentle and soft again, so different from what I know it should be. I glance fire at the little blonde, not really hating her but certainly wishing she would just get the fuck out because there are things that need to be said and done that do not need witnesses outside the sky. My vlam, he calls me, my flame, a pet name, I thing I once thought was only mine.

What does he call her, I wonder? What does she have, that has made him soft? She won't even fight for him, just stands aside and surrenders. If I hadn't come, would she have been so weak? Would she hold back the floodwaters of his rebel's soul?

Would she die for him, with a smile on her face?

At least there is metal in his eyes when he looks back at me, and fire between his teeth. At lease he doesn't try to handle me the way he handles her, with kid gloves and soft statements and an expression as boring as it is kind. It means a little of him is still in there, regardless of the years and years. It means that he isn't broken, just buried beneath dirt and ashes.

It means that something, at least, makes sense.

The girl makes to go, and I glance over at her suddenly, brown eyes glinting as I bite my cheek. "Thank you, Phoebe. For helping me."

And then we are alone.

Pulling my hands back from them, I wrap them across my chest, leaning on the wall in my shift and shawl and not really giving a flying fuck because if I move even an inch I might jump his bones, and where would my righteous indignation be then? "Alright," I say in my native tongue, the words rolling easier off my lips than Common. "Explain."

LUSEA

felled in the night by the ones you think you love

they will come for you

To him, she has never been a bomb needed to be handled with care. For him, she had needed the rough hand, the push, the pull, the tug. And it does not come as a surprise for him as she pushes back against his thumbs that would surely start to sport a bruise as he tells her he could not, would not, ever forget her. He directs his head toward Phoebe, speaking softly and light in comparison to the grating, immovable stone that greets Lusea.

And Phoebe tells him she will go, grabbing a blanket and leaving everything out for Lusea she might require. He spends a moment directing his attention back to Lusea, the strength of him rebuilding through necessity, through love for her. The tone and raise to his voice nothing he ever tried with Phoebe — because the first time he had, when he had been worried and stressed, frustrated, she had cried at first and he had regretted it. Had grown soft, and regretted the flood and the fire that had made him.

She tells Phoebe a quiet thanks for helping her, and Sunjata does nothing other then glance over to watch the midwife leave, eyes shifting back to Lusea once he hears the door click. And he lets her go, stepping back for that taut space between them, hands running up to brush through his hair, to brush his cheek as she crosses her arms over her chest and speaks in their tongue — their tongue.

He does the same, steel eyes reaching her before flitting away, finding if he stares too long she’ll never get the chance to move from the door he’s pinned her to. But she tells him to explain, and he doesn’t know where to start, but he imagines a good place is the day she died.

He grits his teeth, a muscle feathering in his jaw as he sucks in a deep breath. “Three years ago, you were dying, and I raged against the guards, I wanted to take the knife and stick it through the Arbiter, but your guards dropped you and surrounded him.” He begins, a frown deepening. He had stopped calling his father by his true name the day he went into the underground, long forsaken the man behind the Arbiter title. “I couldn’t let you die alone, and I held you for hours before they dragged me away from you. I was still coated in your blood when they dragged me back in, told me in the same breath that you had died and I was to be marrying some girl from Qhayi—” A woman of the house of the mystics. An advantage his father had wanted. “They punished Saartjie too, engaged her to Graasvoel.” The name leaves his tongue with venom, steel hardened eyes drifting back to her. A terrible man of whims and far too flirtatious for his own good, but he was the house of Arms, another advantage.

“I couldn’t let them do that to us, Luci. I knew your father was looking for me, I knew I would be painted the infiltrated spy for the underground, and I couldn’t. Let. Them.” Another muscle feathers. He had been the chosen one, one chosen for nothing but destruction. “I took Saartjie, caused a distraction—” She would know the term, distraction didn’t just mean what it meant for most people. It meant death. “And we fled to Dorobo.” He tells her, jaw clenched, tongue lashing out to wipe away the blood on his lip.

SUNJATA

we got that love, the crazy kind

I am his and he is mine

What a story he has to tell, a woven web he weaves. There is so much that has apparently happened in the minutes (years, it was years) that I was dead, so many big and little adventures, tragedies and travesties and crimes against us all. It's so surreal, to think I blinked and missed his world falling apart. Of course he held me as I died. I can see it now, his slender body soaked in blood, crimson and black, his rage a storm as the Arbiter scoffs and walks away. There is no love or life in the heart of that man: He is made of iron, we used to joke. One day we'll cut him and he'll bleed oil.

That he was engaged a minute later makes me laugh quite suddenly, an outburst of entertainment and something like pity for the fate of that poor little thing. "A Qhayi," I repeat, raising an eyebrow. "You could have had a magic bride, more interested in fucking with spirits than fucking you."

But all that amusement quickly fades as he reveals the true injury. "Graasvoel?" I repeat with distaste, my tone almost as venomous as his. Saartjie deserved better than a playboy with the emotional intelligence of a bowl of grain.

By now my hands are back on his chest, my thumbs dipping over his clavicle while my fingers slip up to his shoulders, resting easily on his skin. I may be angry, but I have won, and there is no way I'm letting him get away again. Not now, not ever, not if I can help it. The only one to kill him will be me.

His story ends the way I'd expect it, and a feral grin strikes across my face. Caused a distraction. Killed some fucks. My hand runs over his cheekbones, the face I would know by touch alone, stubbled and older now but still the same. "Good. I hope you burned the whole place down, my flood."

LUSEA

felled in the night by the ones you think you love

they will come for you

She laughs, laughs – and the sound is like chime-like bells to his ears, his steeled eyes drifting back to her, as the woman’s home hits her lips – a raised eyebrow, and she mentions something that relieves all the previous tension he feels momentarily as his eyes linger on her and her lips just a bit longer than before. “What a pity that would have been.” His voice is rough, husky momentarily, until she repeats his own spitted words – like a viper. She knows how important Saar had been to him, how important they both had been.

He nods to her in response, Graasvoel. They had been friends with Gaal’s half-brother, had ran some rings with him once before, and Sunjata finds a moment where he misses the taste of the cigarettes the man would roll under the light of the street lamps. But he pushes the thought aside, eyes lingering on her as her hands meet his chest. Eyes alight with steel and a sharpness that she can tame. And her fingers, those dangerous hands he had kissed over and over again – a memory, the burn from a barrel of a gun, a curse, a tease, solved with a kiss. They find their way onto him, resting easily but finding their places, as though in the few years since he had seen her, the amount of training and work he had put into himself and running away had always left the perfect imprint for her.

But as he ends his story, a feral delight crosses Lusea’s face, one that he finds relieving amongst the events of the night. And he steps closer to her, her hands running over his cheekbones, caressing the sharp reddened skin on the one side, a purple bruise beginning to form beneath it. But he doesn’t mind, he’s never minded. And where once he had remained cleanshaven, he no longer is. A more rugged look, but still the same him, just with a bit more tension, a bit more muscle. The tattoos she seeks out, adjusted from whence she last saw them. His scars a bit more vibrant – no longer does his neck seep with a nonfatal cut to his neck, but it is scarred beneath her fingers, a long scar from the top of his ear that snakes down under his shirt.

For her. Like his adjusted tattoos.

The inked wings are there, but a compass is placed on the top of his shoulder, an arrow forever pointing the same direction, the direction he had picked for her, done in Dorobi. It was the least he thought he could do. And he nearly, so nearly comes undone at her praise, the fan to his flame, the rainstorms to his floods. She had always been his flame, and he had always been her flood. And yet wherever they met, whoever crossed them, had hell to pay.

His hands find her again, and he realizes shortly after he can’t stop himself from the drug she is to him. One hand snakes to her lower back, head tilting as his other hand reaches to cup her cheek, his thumb resting on her chin as he angles her head and searches her flint gaze. “I did it all for you.” He tells her, quiet, rough, a brutal sentence in their native tongue, guttural despite the bright smile that crosses his lips.

His fingers tangle in her hair, and he pulls her to him finally – his missing puzzle piece. “Let’s just say the Arbiter shouldn’t need to worry about successors any longer, your father made sure of that.” He hums thoughtfully before he angles his head down and presses his nose gently against her, breathing her in – the salt, the smoke, the iron, and how much he craves her. And he gives in, despite the blood that still traces his lower lip, pressing his lips to hers with the ferocity of his name's translation, a hungry lion.

SUNJATA

we got that love, the crazy kind

I am his and he is mine

It's a strange thing, to be dead one minute and alive the next.

Stranger still when the place you now live is, supposedly, a different world.

Shockingly strange to learn that years have passed, when to you it has been moments.

Strangest of all to find your lover waiting for you, in another world, in another house, with another scar- but still hopelessly, wonderfully mine.

He pulls me to him and I let it happen, tracing the new scars that dot his hide, visible above the collar is his shirt. He never had this mark, that tattoo; it's like looking at a painting in your house, but the colors have changed just a little and you're not sure if it's just your imagination, if you're the one who's wrong. His hand on my back feels the same, but his cheek is stubbled, and his jaw is a little bit harder than the boxer who would have been a king.

His eyes are still steel, through, as surely as mine are flint, and the sparks that ignite when I meet his stare are still as hot and dangerous as ever. He mentions my father and my breath catches, hard. "Is he okay? He's well?" The old man had blood of iron and the stubbornness of rain. It wouldn't surprise me to know that he's gone, too, but...

Well. You know.

He smells like smoke and cigarettes and blood. I close my eyes as his face presses against me, grinning, growling low in my throat. Fighting and fucking: they're the things we're best at, and I'm ready to sharpen up my skills. It's not the first time I'm tasting his blood; I wrap my lips around the wound, biting down gently before kissing him back, hungry and eager and holding nothing back. He tastes like he's alive, and I love it.

My hands slip up to tangle in his hair, and I jump up, legs wrapping around his waist, knowing he will catch me. "Sunny," I moan against his mouth, pulling at his shirt, trying to get him undressed, to see the scars and stains and markings he's gained since my demise.

LUSEA

felled in the night by the ones you think you love

they will come for you

She traces the scars, and his breath pauses with the feeling, wondering how many more new ones she’ll be finding and feeling, questioning and kissing. His hand meets the small of her back like she was made for him, molded to him, and he smiles as she reaches for his stubbled chin — fingers tracing over him like a statue she’s created. But she asks of her father, and he exhales slightly, smoldering steel softening a touch before he hums a mixed sound between pride and a touch of apprehension. “I did not see him before I left. He had a bounty on my head when word spread.” He tells her, honesty beneath the face of him. “But I saw the grams of him when I reached Dorobo—” He pauses, remembering the small broadcasts of sorts the countries had. “Howling like wolves from the rooftops while the world burned.” He finally says after a moment, edges of his lips quirking in a smirk.

He doesn’t know when the last time he had a cigarette was, having stopped sometime between Dorobo and here, but he craves them like no tomorrow as her eyes meet his — smoldering dark hues, momentarily wondering where he can get some to indulge, for nostalgia with all the pieces in his board back into place.

His lips find hers, hungry and territorial, and she returns it — not before biting down on his lip enough to open the wound a small amount more, and he hums a soft growling sound to her as she does it, strong arms holding and roaming and touching. And he grins against her when her hands find his hair, his neck, catching her when she jumps onto him. Just like before.

Of course he catches her, he always does, and he presses her against the wall just enough to pin her there while she moans his name and he breaks away from the kiss long enough to remove his hands from her — begrudgingly — calloused hands reaching for his shirt, lifting it over his head and dropping it to the ground before he regards her, showing off a small amount, a tease. His body still has the same scars from before, but there are new ones too. She’ll find the scar above his hip that she had stitched up when someone had brought a knife to the boxing ring. She’ll find the edges of his tattoos along the tops of his shoulders, with a compass aimed directly at her in this present moment. She’ll find the small scar above his heart, that she had given him. “You are mine — don’t you ever fucking forget it.” She had said, and he wonders if the tiny blue mark still remains on her flesh too.

But ah, she has so many more scars than the last time he’d seen her, where once they were wounds they have now healed, and instead of soaking himself to the pale confines of his bones with her life’s blood, he finds her whole and well — his blood the war paint between them, however minimal it may be. He looks her over for a moment, wondering if he dares, if he’ll let her reach for the shift, for the coat, not caring they are in Phoebe’s home where he’d loved and caressed and fucked her. He has tunnel vision, and he finds his smoldering eyes lingering on her — hands strong and testing along her thighs as his head nears hers again.

“My flame.” He rumbles in return, hands slipping to cup her ass and tug at her own shirt, lips and teeth meeting her neck where he first kisses the scar that had taken her from him softly and gently, before growing deeper and hungrier the further he strays, biting hard in the space her shoulder and neck meet, he claims her, marking her. I am hers, she is mine. He leaves a small amount of blood on her, but the iron only adds to the sulfur of her body to him, igniting him deep within. His tongue slips out to caress the bite, to trail along her neck until he reaches her ear, playful bites along her earlobe. “God’s, how I’ve missed you.” A husky rumble, but the words hold so much more than they seem.

He missed her left hook, he missed the eyes that could sink ships, he missed the wildfire she had become, he missed her marks and her teasing, he missed her addictive kisses, her body he could rarely keep himself from, the fan to his flame — igniting, igniting, igniting. And like always, he was prepared to burn.

SUNJATA

we got that love, the crazy kind

I am his and he is mine

He's so obliging, my feisty flood, stripping off his shirt and giving me a taste. I lean back against the wall, my hips still pressed into his as my fingers explore the changes, lingering on new stains, new scars. It's another bizarre thing, to look at him and see things I know as well as things I don't. It makes me a little uneasy, if we're being honest, because what else has changed while I've been dead?

It makes me territorial, too- not that I ever haven't been. Growing up at the bottom of the ladder you have to learn that most things can be taken from you, and fight tooth and nail for the things you want. I remember late nights of stitching up his wounds, resisting those steel eyes and charming words until he wore me down, surrounded me in pouring rain until I had nothing but him to bask in. I remember the scar atop his chest, the one I made that matches mine. "My storm," I growl, meeting his eyes, a wild grin upon my lips.

I feel so wonderfully, terribly alive.

His mouth is on my neck and his hands are on my ass, exactly where they should be. I moan against his bite, letting my fingers claw against his shoulder blades, posessive red welts rising beneath the swiftly slicing nails. Head thrown back, I close my eyes, reveling in the feeling of his body, the stupidly skillful ways he can use his mouth. I never thought I'd feel this again, and gods, but it's good. Again I wonder if I'm dead, but if this is hell I'll take it, so long as he is here.

He tells he he missed me, and I bite back the retort that rises on my mouth: you'd fucking better have. Instead I reach down to the hem of the shift, glad to have the damned thing off, pulling it up over my head. If he's a slashed canvas then I'm a fucking jigsaw puzzle, scars upon scars that I'm not going to look at now because it's already been too much. He'll see them, though; on my wrists where the shackles wore away skin, on my chest where the guards put their cigarettes out, on my back where the whip sliced a game of 5D tic tac toe.

On my neck, but we already know about that one.

Naked, defiant, I drop my hands, staring up at him through eyes like smoke, letting him see the familiar and strange. He missed me, did he? Let's see how much. "Show me."

LUSEA

felled in the night by the ones you think you love

they will come for you

“My storm.” She growls to him, and a positively wicked smirk crosses his face in response to her wild grin. His lips and teeth meet her bronze skin, and her fingernails scrape against the tattooed skin of his back and a growl leaves him at the feel of the welts rising. There’s goosebumps that rise on his skin, but he tempers himself — tempers himself like he has many times before to pull away and let her remove her shift.

His eyes linger as she stays there, pinned by him against the wall, looking over the marks he had seen them give her and yet it does nothing to remove the regret he feels deep down. The only one fully visible before, the fatal one, but now? Now he can see the circular burns, the lingering of the whips peeking and cresting above her shoulders. He had done this, not by the hand, but by the association. And he realizes shortly that he’s proud to have burned the fucking place to the ground.

But his eyes still roam, mimicking her as calloused fingertips trace her scars, drifting from her thigh to her chest — slow and teasing, testing, waiting for her to grow bored of his lingering. But his fingertips slip from her stomach, caressing and careful while his steel eyes follow the tiptoe of his fingers until he reaches the burns, sliding up to her collarbones, and then her neck. “I am sorry, my flame.” He tells her a small amount mournfully. But he chooses to show her just how sorry he is in other ways.

She tells him to show her, and his fingers still momentarily on her jaw, lifting it up to look into her stormy flint eyes, recalling a similar look late at night, drenched in the downpour, when he had finally gotten her to say yes. Only this time, he has no bloody knuckles, no bruising to his chest, not enough body heat to steam the sweat and rain from his tattooed skin. He had looked a storm, smoke and rain and blood and destruction, a cigarette hanging from his lips, and she had looked like hell — and gods how he fell for her.

He was gone, in that instant. The pining, the waiting, the game she played — and he had thought he had been the master of them. But then he met her, and she gave him a run for his money, a run for his life, the ability to drop what he was bred and raised to be for the opposite. He had taken it for her. Done everything for her. Would have died for her, if he could have. And yet she had been the one to pay the price, his anarchy queen who would howl from the rooftops with a gun in her hand, hair tied back, blood and smoke an inherent war paint streaked along her face.

He holds her close, pressing into her, eyes shuddering every time she touches him — he can take her there, but he knows he wants to draw it out, to relish in the blankets and pillows and the sheer softness of them compared to the scratchy fabric from home. She deserves it, after all, and he braces her against him to hold her tight, carrying her over to the nearest bed, and laying her down upon it. He presses a kiss to her lips, hungry with need and want, but the feeling of him restraining himself are there. His kisses delve lower, to her chin, to her neck where he kisses every inch of the scar with gentle tenderness much unlike him, until he drifts lower from it to her collarbones where he gets more rough — claiming, claiming, claiming again and again.

Arms are braced on either side of her head, fingers trailing and tangling into her long hair, waiting for her to demand, to tell him as she always did that he takes too long. But he can’t help it if he wants to devour her more, savoring, loving. He slips down from her further, arms sliding with him as his hands reach for her chest to play and tease as he swoops dragging kisses and claiming marks lower and lower — and agonizingly slowly begins to show her.

SUNJATA

we got that love, the crazy kind

I am his and he is mine

I flinch as his hands run over my scars, expecting them to sting and ache where he touches, the flesh to still be raw. But it doesn't hurt, except internally, except in my mind where the blood still races and roars. The bite of the whip, the roar of the burns, the chains on my wrists - I don't think I'll be forgetting those particular sensations anytime soon, and the last thing I want right now is to be reminded of the weeks I spent in that fucking hell. Apologies are nothing, get you nowhere, and will not change the past. "Shut up and fuck me," I practically snarl, bucking my hips to grind against him, taking his lips to shut him up.

He hoists me against him and carries me somewhere, and I can't help but moan my displeasure with it because goddamn, the delay is aggravating as hell. I want you now. I want to feel alive. I want to scream and howl, but I cannot let him see me beg. I promised myself I would never beg again after the first day of the torture, when my tears led to nothing but laughs and more pain, when I learned that kings and guards and princes are just as impervious to human suffering as the lowest waifs in the slums of Korofi. Begging has never gotten me anywhere, and I will not do it, even for him.

One day, I vowed in those long cold nights without a bed, I will make them beg to me.

I will not beg, but I can order. "More," I demand as he travels downward, pushing my fingers in his hair. He's always so slow, so savoring and teasing; it's torture of the sweetest kind, but not what I need right now. He was a storm the day I met him, and I need that storm to come back today. I need my traumas doused, his indiscretions flooded; I need to lose the horror I lived in the depths of his flinty eyes. Tomorrow, tomorrow, we can howl on the rooftops, if I don't wake up to it all gone away.

Hooking my leg over his shoulder I push my heel into his back, drawing him closer, into my core, while my hands clutch the remarkably soft sheets and my spine arcs off the bed. There is no propriety to my moans, no subduing the gasps of pleasure, the groans that I know he thrives on. I am not a dainty blonde, a little sweet thing that runs away at the first sign of trouble. I am wild, and I will fight (with him and for him as the case requires), and I am ready to take what I want, to have control for the first time in weeks.

LUSEA

felled in the night by the ones you think you love

they will come for you

For a second, he wants to growl at the quickness of it all, of her demands. But he pauses just enough to let the love and lust dissipate from his mind as he follows her wishes. He soon realizes that she is here, with no apparent threats to their lives, where he could spend his time soaking in her sunlight, absorbing and loving and relishing in her like they had planned that one fateful day atop the rooftops. So instead of growling in protest, he does so in agreement, steadying her as she bucks against him.

He brings her to the bed now, wanting nothing more than to give in. He had always been bad at following instructions, and when he believes he’s about to stray, her heel is to his back, pressing him to her; connecting and loving and savoring the moans she gives him. But the demand is new, a new kind of change that almost takes him off guard. She had always been assertive, and the more he thinks about what happened before she arrived here, the more he begins to realize the change.

And gods does he love it.

He obliges her, aiming to bring the flame alive, to show her deftly how much he’s missed her, how she’s the drug he’s always craved and how starved he’s been in his life without her. He only hopes it’s a decent apology, their dance.

He would do anything for her.

He would give in, bend, break, change for her if he has to.

And he gives in to his rebel queen.

{FIN <3}

SUNJATA