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lead by your beating heart.
Sep. 18th, 2013 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smithereensso i wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me
till then my windows ache
--pablo neruda
.
Khalia doesn’t have her head on her pillow more than five minutes before she hears the knock at her balcony door.
She springs to her feet in spite of herself, heart hammering in excitement; there is only one person that comes in through her balcony, though he doesn’t always bother knocking. But she’d locked the door this time, having given him up for a no-show tonight; it was raining earlier, clear through the afternoon and evening, and had only relented scarcely half an hour ago.
“Jas?” she hazards, just in case some other fiane had taken a liking to her. She’s already hurrying to the door, ready to spring the lock. Too bad she’d already removed her makeup, and taken down her hair--
“Open up,” he says, gruff and muffled through the door; when she lets him in, he’s soaked nearly to the bone, even through his thick traveling coat, his hair matted to his forehead and the tips of his wings dripping water on the parquet floors.
Not that Khalia really notices. She’s too busy jumping up and throwing her arms around his neck, not caring at all that he’s wet and chill and slowly dampening her thin chemise, for just that split second. It feels good, great, to have his arms wrap around her again, tightly and readily, after nearly three weeks without.
Not that she’d been counting the days.
“I didn’t think you’d make it tonight--with the rain,” she says, reluctantly letting him go, wiping the moisture from her cheek with the back of her hand.
He shuts the door behind him, then shrugs out of his coat with some struggle. “I was already outside Victoria, so I walked the rest of the way.”
She feels inexplicably warm, in spite of the damp press of her silk chemise against her front, and doesn’t even mind that the puddle of water underneath him is growing exponentially by the second. On impulse, she takes him by the lapel of his shirt and pulls him down for a quick kiss; his lips are icy against hers, prompting her to drag him unceremoniously towards her bathroom.
“So you decided to drip all over my things instead,” she says without heat. “You look like a drowned--bird.”
“I nearly did drown,” he says, shrugging his shoulders in a funny way, as if the muscles were tense. His wings are drooping, the tips dragging on the floor and leaving a wet trail behind them as she leads him into the bathroom, where he can drip onto the marble tile as much as he wants. “I probably would’ve enjoyed it more than the rain,” he adds churlishly.
“And everyone says I’m histrionic. Here,” she says with an imperious sniff, almost forcing him down into the chair at her vanity. He sags visibly, then bends down the remove his boots while Khalia drapes his sodden coat over the edge of the tub to air out.
“They’re right.” He heaves a tired sigh and starts to peel his shirt off; she watches the play of goosebumps across his bare chest in spite of herself, and frowns.
Her reply is to throw a towel at his head. He seems to take it as a matter of course and quietly towels his hair dry, so that it sticks up in messy, endearing tufts that she can’t help but reach out to and smooth down.
“You smell,” she observes, wrinkling her nose in corroboration. “Is this what wet bird smells like?”
“I don’t smell. Do you have a blow dryer?”
“A blow dryer?”
“For my wings.” He looks up at her, but only slightly; to her dismay, his eye level is only just below hers, even though he’s sitting, and she wishes that she had her customary high-heeled shoes. The world is so unfair, allowing him to be so tall.
It’s then that she realizes that his water-laden wings must be heavy, and that’s why he keeps shifting his shoulders in that funny way.
She can’t think of anything to say to that other than I’m glad you came and I missed you more than you know, and so she says nothing. Wordlessly, she picks up her blow dryer and occupies herself in drying his wings for him; for some time, the loud whir is the only sound that echoes against the tiles, until his feathers are less sopping wet and more damp, and her wrist aches too much to go on. She even dries his hair for him, running her fingers through it and flattening any dark, errant strands with her hands.
He’s curiously silent throughout, his eyelids heavy. When she comes back around to his front in order to dry his hair, he rests his hand on the flare of her hip almost absently, thumb circling. She moves into his touch without any conscious thought of it, until they are standing close enough to remind her exactly how long he’d been gone.
When he’s dry enough for her satisfaction, she murmurs a soft “There,” and leans on tiptoes over his shoulder to set down the dryer; she’s rewarded by the warm press of their bodies through the silk of her chemise, and the large hands he splays across the small of her back.
“You walked the rest of the way here, did you?” she baits, now that she has more distance from the exaltation of his return, her smile somewhere between teasing and fond.
He shoots her a withering look. “How else was I supposed to get here?”
“You just couldn’t stand another night without me,” she says triumphantly, and then kisses the scowl right off his face.
He responds without hesitation, deepening the kiss and gathering her into his lap. He responds so enthusiastically, his hands already under the short skirt of her chemise and skimming the back of her thighs, that she laughs with the fullness of her heart and he smiles into their kiss and she wonders if he’s saying I missed you too.
till you will see me again and live in me
till then my windows ache
--pablo neruda
.
Khalia doesn’t have her head on her pillow more than five minutes before she hears the knock at her balcony door.
She springs to her feet in spite of herself, heart hammering in excitement; there is only one person that comes in through her balcony, though he doesn’t always bother knocking. But she’d locked the door this time, having given him up for a no-show tonight; it was raining earlier, clear through the afternoon and evening, and had only relented scarcely half an hour ago.
“Jas?” she hazards, just in case some other fiane had taken a liking to her. She’s already hurrying to the door, ready to spring the lock. Too bad she’d already removed her makeup, and taken down her hair--
“Open up,” he says, gruff and muffled through the door; when she lets him in, he’s soaked nearly to the bone, even through his thick traveling coat, his hair matted to his forehead and the tips of his wings dripping water on the parquet floors.
Not that Khalia really notices. She’s too busy jumping up and throwing her arms around his neck, not caring at all that he’s wet and chill and slowly dampening her thin chemise, for just that split second. It feels good, great, to have his arms wrap around her again, tightly and readily, after nearly three weeks without.
Not that she’d been counting the days.
“I didn’t think you’d make it tonight--with the rain,” she says, reluctantly letting him go, wiping the moisture from her cheek with the back of her hand.
He shuts the door behind him, then shrugs out of his coat with some struggle. “I was already outside Victoria, so I walked the rest of the way.”
She feels inexplicably warm, in spite of the damp press of her silk chemise against her front, and doesn’t even mind that the puddle of water underneath him is growing exponentially by the second. On impulse, she takes him by the lapel of his shirt and pulls him down for a quick kiss; his lips are icy against hers, prompting her to drag him unceremoniously towards her bathroom.
“So you decided to drip all over my things instead,” she says without heat. “You look like a drowned--bird.”
“I nearly did drown,” he says, shrugging his shoulders in a funny way, as if the muscles were tense. His wings are drooping, the tips dragging on the floor and leaving a wet trail behind them as she leads him into the bathroom, where he can drip onto the marble tile as much as he wants. “I probably would’ve enjoyed it more than the rain,” he adds churlishly.
“And everyone says I’m histrionic. Here,” she says with an imperious sniff, almost forcing him down into the chair at her vanity. He sags visibly, then bends down the remove his boots while Khalia drapes his sodden coat over the edge of the tub to air out.
“They’re right.” He heaves a tired sigh and starts to peel his shirt off; she watches the play of goosebumps across his bare chest in spite of herself, and frowns.
Her reply is to throw a towel at his head. He seems to take it as a matter of course and quietly towels his hair dry, so that it sticks up in messy, endearing tufts that she can’t help but reach out to and smooth down.
“You smell,” she observes, wrinkling her nose in corroboration. “Is this what wet bird smells like?”
“I don’t smell. Do you have a blow dryer?”
“A blow dryer?”
“For my wings.” He looks up at her, but only slightly; to her dismay, his eye level is only just below hers, even though he’s sitting, and she wishes that she had her customary high-heeled shoes. The world is so unfair, allowing him to be so tall.
It’s then that she realizes that his water-laden wings must be heavy, and that’s why he keeps shifting his shoulders in that funny way.
She can’t think of anything to say to that other than I’m glad you came and I missed you more than you know, and so she says nothing. Wordlessly, she picks up her blow dryer and occupies herself in drying his wings for him; for some time, the loud whir is the only sound that echoes against the tiles, until his feathers are less sopping wet and more damp, and her wrist aches too much to go on. She even dries his hair for him, running her fingers through it and flattening any dark, errant strands with her hands.
He’s curiously silent throughout, his eyelids heavy. When she comes back around to his front in order to dry his hair, he rests his hand on the flare of her hip almost absently, thumb circling. She moves into his touch without any conscious thought of it, until they are standing close enough to remind her exactly how long he’d been gone.
When he’s dry enough for her satisfaction, she murmurs a soft “There,” and leans on tiptoes over his shoulder to set down the dryer; she’s rewarded by the warm press of their bodies through the silk of her chemise, and the large hands he splays across the small of her back.
“You walked the rest of the way here, did you?” she baits, now that she has more distance from the exaltation of his return, her smile somewhere between teasing and fond.
He shoots her a withering look. “How else was I supposed to get here?”
“You just couldn’t stand another night without me,” she says triumphantly, and then kisses the scowl right off his face.
He responds without hesitation, deepening the kiss and gathering her into his lap. He responds so enthusiastically, his hands already under the short skirt of her chemise and skimming the back of her thighs, that she laughs with the fullness of her heart and he smiles into their kiss and she wonders if he’s saying I missed you too.
