olesia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
olesia) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
andexplodes2012-01-17 01:37 am
olesia) wrote in andexplodes2012-01-17 01:37 am
game fiction; the shipping adventures of Terra and Zelgadis, take four
WHO: I WONDER
WHAT: A WHOLE LOT OF UST
WHERE: ... FRANCE...?
WHEN: the FUTURE
WARNINGS: SO FUCKING MELODRAMATIC MY GOD /flips self into trash
WORDS: TOO FUCKING MANY
Alright, so it hadn't been the best of dates. Not the worst, not by a long shot, but unabashedly terrible nonetheless. A weak bridge had collapsed beneath him, a bird had gotten tangled in her hair (and nearly skewered on his); the food was lackluster, the weather abysmal, the whole damn city itself awful -- crowded and loud and full of people staring and making comments in a language neither of them understood, but knew to be talking about them. The rain storm, a veritable river falling out of the sky on the crowded streets, only shut them up and made the stares easier to ignore. Obviously, it didn't improve the evening.
By the time they returned to the hotel, they were both soaked through and filthy; it didn't matter as much to Zelgadis, who could not feel cold, or clammy, but Terra was a miserable mess. It looked as though she had been fished out of a storm drain. Her hair, usually wispy and curly, looked like a tangle of seaweed. While Zelgadis futzed with the hanging sign for the doorknob, trying to determine which side was 'go away' (as opposed to 'no, please, come in and vacuum while we're trying to talk about our feelings, we insist; your opinion is very important to us and we'd love your guidance,' as had happened in Spain), Terra made her way into the room, unhooking her cloak. So heavy with water, it squelched as it fell to the floor, scattering droplets of dark water. Her nose scrunched in distaste, but it was a difficult expression to hold mid-shiver. It didn't go unnoticed.
Even as Terra peeled off skin-clinging gloves, Zelgadis was right beside her, taking up the cloak without a word. "Oh, I was going to--" she started to call, but he waved off her words as he headed off toward the bathroom. To hang it over the bathtub, she figured, letting it go. She moved on, and downwards once the second glove was off; her boots were as full and heavy as gravy boats. The stocking was harder to remove than gloves; for starters, her pruned-over fingers kept slipping on the garter belts. The flower print and vines were stiff, resistant to her palms' attempt to roll the nylon down her leg; it stuck too well to her leg for her to easily shimmy it off. The first fell in a dense, damp ring around her ankle; it was as she was unhooking and starting to push down the second that she felt the gentle tug at her hair.
She wanted to turn her head to see what he was doing, but Zelgadis placed a slick, heavy hand on her shoulder. Terra stood still, settling where she stood as he untied her ribbons, carefully extracting her hair from its ponytail. It was a relief to be freed from it, and it was surprising just how gentle he was about it; almost none of her hair was pulled outright. Or, perhaps, it made perfect sense; for how strong he was, and the fact he had no sensitivity in physical matters, Zelgadis had to be delicate, or risk damaging everything he touched.
"Zelgadis, wh--"
"Don't worry about it," he answered, too quick, a guiding hand moving to her shoulder. He led her to one of the cushioned ottoman stools, and when he pressed down on her shoulder for her to sit, it wasn't even pressure enough to pop a soap bubble. There was already a towel laid down. A second one, significantly warmer, was draped over her head like a cowl, and Terra nearly laughed in surprise. Was he--? Yes, she realized when she felt the gentle tugs at her hair through the towel; he was trying to dry her off. It tickled like no other, and she had to keep her cheek pinched between her teeth to keep from laughing.
Well, at first. As the minutes passed, the care he was taking was more relaxing than funny, making her feel almost drowsy. The day had been terrible, but this was nice. Better than, she thought. Though her cold, wet clothing made her shiver, and her skin was covered in bumps, a warmth was pushing its way out from inside her. When he finished, there was still a dampness to her hair, but it wasn't the drenched, soggy monster of before. She would have moved to turn his way then, to ask him why he was doing this, but once again he stopped her. Probably for the best; Zelgadis was a dark shade of purple across his cheeks and up to his ears, and it would only have gotten worse if she were to look.
As for why he stopped her-- Zelgadis swallowed quietly, taking a small tangle of locks in hand, gently combing through with the other. He could not feel her hair and thus could not feel for knots, which made this whole endeavor a little riskier than for regular couples. He had to stare as he combed, starting near the tips and backtracking once the brush passed through with ease. It was cruel that he could not feel it -- the texture of it, the temperature, just how wet it still was; it was unfair. But perhaps if he could feel those things, he wouldn't be able to stand it. It didn't take much for her to drive him crazy; smiles made him dizzy, laughter made him blush, and even the holding of hands that he couldn't actually feel made his heart feel swollen in his chest. If just those little things were enough, how much would everything together treat him?
She carried a different scent, dampened with rain water and sweat, but her hair still smelled like her; ears as keen as his was, he could hear when her hands grasped and released at the cushion's edge, could hear when her breathing hitched or slowed. It was increasingly harder to focus over the sound of his accelerating heartbeat. Not that Terra would have noticed his nervous condition, even if she had been looking; her eyes had long since closed, relaxed, almost heavy. Steadily her body fought off the rain chill, heat climbing through her like mercury in glass. The minutes continued to pass without word, and continued even after all the tangles had been chased away. Frizzy now, and almost dry, her hair tickled at her back where it lay, and all the gentle tugs and continued loose attention made her drowsy. It was not impossible to count the time, but it might as well have been; it seemed like Terra might have fallen asleep between all that and the moment another fluffy, heated towel was wrapped over her shoulders. Looking up with dazed surprise, Terra was not keen enough to take conscious notice of the purple of his stone-flecked cheeks. He, on the other hand, was very, very aware of it -- and of how red were the high points of her cheeks, how dark her eyes seemed in the well-lit hotel room. How her hair fell in puffy waves around her face, against her neck and the towel draped on her shoulders. If his own heart weren't so loud in his ears, he might have heard hers.
Her dress was still dark, damp (stupid, he thought; why didn't he get her something to change into? All that time spent in love with her hair--); her wrap of shawls around her waist and belts was gone, leaving the contrast between dry and wet fabric more visible. He thought it looked a little drier at the top of her ribs, just below her breasts, but he wasn't about to double check. Just as when he caught her, one damp stocking still clung to her left leg, forgotten; the other leg was bare. She. She probably wanted that taken off, he thought. Right? She wouldn't have taken off the first if she hadn't, and she couldn't have removed it while he kept her sitting upright -- not without yanking her hair out at the roots. Should he... was that... Zelgadis swallowed, heart a bundle of steel wool in his throat.
Terra may have felt a little surprised when Zelgadis suddenly dropped to his knees in front of her, face turned down and flushed purple, but it only showed in the curious bend of her brow; the pressure of her pulse was heavy in her ears.
"You, uh," he rasped, throat dry, and even swallowing didn't help. His hands were shaking. "Here, I can--"
As she watched, Zelgadis took a loud, steading breath (that did a poor job of it); she was sure if he were capable of sweat, his forehead would be shining with that instead of trace spots of rainwater not yet evaporated. With the gentlest of movements, the two forefingers of both his hands touched down just above the top of her unhooked stoking, inches from the hem of her dress. Though his motion was slow, cautious and gentle as he walked his fingers down her leg, rolling the stocking to her knee, Terra had tightened as though he were dragging nails or sharp glass across her skin. Her hands clenched in the cushion; there was a creak of wood shifting inside the ottoman, for how hard she pulled her bare leg back against it. She felt hypersensitive to the nylon moving down her cold leg. Past the curve of her calf, the fabric dropped; Zelgadis hooked it off her clammy foot in one movement.
He stared at her foot, pale, toes curled tight on themselves. No, he couldn't feel her skin, or the heat of it, but it didn't stop his heart from racing, from his thoughts tripping over one another for speed. He'd touched her leg - her thigh, her inner thigh, intentionally, and she was okay with that. Or at least hadn't kicked him in the face. That was good, right? Had he crossed a line? Sure, haptically speaking, he didn't get anything out of it (not even memory-hallucination could tell him what it felt like), but it didn't matter. The idea alone was dizzying. It took more willpower than he wanted to admit, to lift his gaze to Terra's face - and it would take more than he had to look away.
Terra still had hands crunched into the towel and cushion of her seat, arms tight. Her legs seemed to form a caret, feet far enough apart that Zelgadis could be knelt between them, legs almost touching for the cut of her dress. Her hair, in soft, wispy waves, fell where Zelgadis had left it around her face; the pale green of it only made the red of her face darker. She looked both relaxed and tense, sleepy, alert, but most importantly, staring at him like that. His throat wasn't dry; it was a lifeless and arid desert because, unlike Terra, Zelgadis knew exactly what that look meant. How many times had he imagined it, in the safety of dreams? How many times had he convinced himself that no one would ever look at him like that, disfigured as he was? And from her, the one who told him she couldn't even feel the emotions she now wore. Terra might as well have cast stop for how free to move he felt.
As for her, she might as well have been cursed with slow for her reactions. What she felt now, she wouldn't know how to name, if she gave thought to analyze it. Her heart felt doubled in size, or perhaps in number, for how heavy her pulse felt; she could feel the throb of it all through her chest, in her clenched fingers and curled toes, under the pale skin of her throat, in her temples and legs and arms. If he hadn't been cursed, what would his hair feel like? She wondered, attention unable to stray from him before her. What would his hand have felt like just then, if it were the same yielding flesh as her own skin? Would it be as warm as she felt? If he looked as he was supposed to, would he even be here with a monster like her? Did he understand how important he was? How much she wanted him there with her? She shifted forward, a rolling lean, her hands slipping off the cushion. Her exhale was loud, hitched in the middle; her knuckles and the backs of her fingers pushed that wet clump of wire from his face, and the purple splotching was far more pronounced when she could see both sides. She wound the hair carefully behind his ear. There was little heat to his skin and less yield, the heel of her palm catching against stone. He couldn't feel her hands against his face and they both knew it, but it didn't stop him from tensing up, eyes closing. Terra's heart clenched in her chest, but still she leaned down, forward, noses side by side without touching. His strangled puff of an exhale was hot against her face.
"Terra, I can't--" he rasped, words shaking against her mouth. "I want to-- everything, I want to, but I can't--" he was babbling, lightheaded, dizzy. He couldn't feel her touch, or how close she was, but he could hear the tempo of her breathing, the staccato of her heartbeat in her hands, the shift of fabric where the towel fell off her shoulders. When he put his hands on her knees, it was meant to be for balance - he tried to rise on his knees, straighter so she didn't have to bend as far, or maybe to move away from the taunt of proximity. But even cold and clammy as her legs were, and colder still his hands, beneath the surface of her skin she tingled. Her breath caught surprised in the back of her throat. Though he moved, she followed, and had his skin any pliability her fingers would dig in. Maybe it was pathetic, petulant and selfish, but when he tried denying her again she tilted, covering his open mouth with hers, pressing in past the stone gate of his lips to the soft, warm, yielding flesh of his inner cheeks and his tongue.
That he could feel, almost scalding; as the only truly sensitive part of him left, it was all the more intense, highlighting just how little else he could feel. As if burned he yanked his hands away from her, a pained whine reverberating from his throat to hers. If he'd reacted like he'd wanted, the tightening of his hands would have shattered her kneecaps. Preemptively he curled his empty hands into fists, pressing them against her shoulders. "Stop," he said with a gasp, pushing back. It wasn't fair. The first time he could feel more than her breath, the first and only time she was acting on emotion, on what she felt for him, the only time it counted -- why couldn't have this have been before he'd been cursed once again? Before the grief of losing her had driven him to anger, to lashing out at the demon who had reverted him to a worse state than he'd arrived in this world? Even if it were just the golem taken away, that would be enough. That would be enough to kiss her, to feel her, to to be able to act as he wanted. His hands, restrained upon themselves, still trembled; his throat was tight, nauseous with self-loathing. "I'm going to hurt you if we don't stop." And that was that, wasn't it? She couldn't kiss him like that without him wanting to kiss her back, but kissing with a stone mouth would leave her bruised, holding her with stone hands would break her bones. He wanted to cry.
But for all his pleas, Terra didn't move away. Not that she really could, not without climbing backwards over the ottoman; for all his protests, he wasn't retreating either. Releasing her soft bracing of his cheeks, Terra's hands pushed at his arms, taking wrists and guiding them to the cushion, one hand on each side. Hers stayed lightly braced there, holding his in place more by gesture than by effort. "So what?" she asked, quiet, firm; though he had ducked his head away, she followed, more to catch his eyes again than his mouth. "I'll heal. I can recover from anything. Remember? There's... there's no pain I can't erase. I don't care about that. I--" Her hands held tight to his arms, toes curling against the carpet for an attempted anchor. She searched for eyes that wouldn't look her way. "I've never felt like this before." And it was true; for even bespelled into love with Keith, there had been little to no wants greater than to hold hands or be held close. This was something radically different. Her chest felt like something had reached down and twisted her spine, churning everything inside her. "I've never... wanted anything like this..."
Zelgadis's hands uncurled and dug hard into the fabric of the towel, the cushion she sat on. A grimace bent the stone where eyebrows should have resided, and his teeth could have crushed diamonds for the hard grinding clench. Even breathing so close to her was painful, each exhale dragged across rough gravel. Each inhale was laced with her breath, the scent of her skin and her hair and the cruelty of his curse. It wasn't fair. His hands yanked at the ottoman, dragging it toward him as easily as pulling bedsheets. It halted at his knees, braced against him, and his hands held tight enough to prevent ricochet.
His clothing made no difference to him, but his cloak was still cold, soaking wet where it fell against her legs, knees against his the sides of his ribs. She couldn't finish saying his name in that hurt, desperate voice of hers, his surrendering to her will, his mouth covering hers, tongue blocking hers from speaking. He could enjoy the warmth of her lips, the uneven pattern to her breathing, involuntary voiced sounds of no consequence, the way she'd gasp out fragments of his name -- but it was all bittered. He couldn't feel where her arms pressed against his back or his face, or how she combed back his hair so it wouldn't tangle in hers. Couldn't feel the heat of her legs through his clothing, couldn't press his hands against her hips, her back, or tangle fingers through the hair he spent so long tending. Assurances or not, even if he didn't hurt her, he couldn't hold her. Even if he put his arms around her, he wouldn't feel the curve of her body or her weight against him. Just this, desperate, restrained kissing was all he could have.
It wasn't enough, and it wouldn't ever be enough.
WHAT: A WHOLE LOT OF UST
WHERE: ... FRANCE...?
WHEN: the FUTURE
WARNINGS: SO FUCKING MELODRAMATIC MY GOD /flips self into trash
WORDS: TOO FUCKING MANY
Alright, so it hadn't been the best of dates. Not the worst, not by a long shot, but unabashedly terrible nonetheless. A weak bridge had collapsed beneath him, a bird had gotten tangled in her hair (and nearly skewered on his); the food was lackluster, the weather abysmal, the whole damn city itself awful -- crowded and loud and full of people staring and making comments in a language neither of them understood, but knew to be talking about them. The rain storm, a veritable river falling out of the sky on the crowded streets, only shut them up and made the stares easier to ignore. Obviously, it didn't improve the evening.
By the time they returned to the hotel, they were both soaked through and filthy; it didn't matter as much to Zelgadis, who could not feel cold, or clammy, but Terra was a miserable mess. It looked as though she had been fished out of a storm drain. Her hair, usually wispy and curly, looked like a tangle of seaweed. While Zelgadis futzed with the hanging sign for the doorknob, trying to determine which side was 'go away' (as opposed to 'no, please, come in and vacuum while we're trying to talk about our feelings, we insist; your opinion is very important to us and we'd love your guidance,' as had happened in Spain), Terra made her way into the room, unhooking her cloak. So heavy with water, it squelched as it fell to the floor, scattering droplets of dark water. Her nose scrunched in distaste, but it was a difficult expression to hold mid-shiver. It didn't go unnoticed.
Even as Terra peeled off skin-clinging gloves, Zelgadis was right beside her, taking up the cloak without a word. "Oh, I was going to--" she started to call, but he waved off her words as he headed off toward the bathroom. To hang it over the bathtub, she figured, letting it go. She moved on, and downwards once the second glove was off; her boots were as full and heavy as gravy boats. The stocking was harder to remove than gloves; for starters, her pruned-over fingers kept slipping on the garter belts. The flower print and vines were stiff, resistant to her palms' attempt to roll the nylon down her leg; it stuck too well to her leg for her to easily shimmy it off. The first fell in a dense, damp ring around her ankle; it was as she was unhooking and starting to push down the second that she felt the gentle tug at her hair.
She wanted to turn her head to see what he was doing, but Zelgadis placed a slick, heavy hand on her shoulder. Terra stood still, settling where she stood as he untied her ribbons, carefully extracting her hair from its ponytail. It was a relief to be freed from it, and it was surprising just how gentle he was about it; almost none of her hair was pulled outright. Or, perhaps, it made perfect sense; for how strong he was, and the fact he had no sensitivity in physical matters, Zelgadis had to be delicate, or risk damaging everything he touched.
"Zelgadis, wh--"
"Don't worry about it," he answered, too quick, a guiding hand moving to her shoulder. He led her to one of the cushioned ottoman stools, and when he pressed down on her shoulder for her to sit, it wasn't even pressure enough to pop a soap bubble. There was already a towel laid down. A second one, significantly warmer, was draped over her head like a cowl, and Terra nearly laughed in surprise. Was he--? Yes, she realized when she felt the gentle tugs at her hair through the towel; he was trying to dry her off. It tickled like no other, and she had to keep her cheek pinched between her teeth to keep from laughing.
Well, at first. As the minutes passed, the care he was taking was more relaxing than funny, making her feel almost drowsy. The day had been terrible, but this was nice. Better than, she thought. Though her cold, wet clothing made her shiver, and her skin was covered in bumps, a warmth was pushing its way out from inside her. When he finished, there was still a dampness to her hair, but it wasn't the drenched, soggy monster of before. She would have moved to turn his way then, to ask him why he was doing this, but once again he stopped her. Probably for the best; Zelgadis was a dark shade of purple across his cheeks and up to his ears, and it would only have gotten worse if she were to look.
As for why he stopped her-- Zelgadis swallowed quietly, taking a small tangle of locks in hand, gently combing through with the other. He could not feel her hair and thus could not feel for knots, which made this whole endeavor a little riskier than for regular couples. He had to stare as he combed, starting near the tips and backtracking once the brush passed through with ease. It was cruel that he could not feel it -- the texture of it, the temperature, just how wet it still was; it was unfair. But perhaps if he could feel those things, he wouldn't be able to stand it. It didn't take much for her to drive him crazy; smiles made him dizzy, laughter made him blush, and even the holding of hands that he couldn't actually feel made his heart feel swollen in his chest. If just those little things were enough, how much would everything together treat him?
She carried a different scent, dampened with rain water and sweat, but her hair still smelled like her; ears as keen as his was, he could hear when her hands grasped and released at the cushion's edge, could hear when her breathing hitched or slowed. It was increasingly harder to focus over the sound of his accelerating heartbeat. Not that Terra would have noticed his nervous condition, even if she had been looking; her eyes had long since closed, relaxed, almost heavy. Steadily her body fought off the rain chill, heat climbing through her like mercury in glass. The minutes continued to pass without word, and continued even after all the tangles had been chased away. Frizzy now, and almost dry, her hair tickled at her back where it lay, and all the gentle tugs and continued loose attention made her drowsy. It was not impossible to count the time, but it might as well have been; it seemed like Terra might have fallen asleep between all that and the moment another fluffy, heated towel was wrapped over her shoulders. Looking up with dazed surprise, Terra was not keen enough to take conscious notice of the purple of his stone-flecked cheeks. He, on the other hand, was very, very aware of it -- and of how red were the high points of her cheeks, how dark her eyes seemed in the well-lit hotel room. How her hair fell in puffy waves around her face, against her neck and the towel draped on her shoulders. If his own heart weren't so loud in his ears, he might have heard hers.
Her dress was still dark, damp (stupid, he thought; why didn't he get her something to change into? All that time spent in love with her hair--); her wrap of shawls around her waist and belts was gone, leaving the contrast between dry and wet fabric more visible. He thought it looked a little drier at the top of her ribs, just below her breasts, but he wasn't about to double check. Just as when he caught her, one damp stocking still clung to her left leg, forgotten; the other leg was bare. She. She probably wanted that taken off, he thought. Right? She wouldn't have taken off the first if she hadn't, and she couldn't have removed it while he kept her sitting upright -- not without yanking her hair out at the roots. Should he... was that... Zelgadis swallowed, heart a bundle of steel wool in his throat.
Terra may have felt a little surprised when Zelgadis suddenly dropped to his knees in front of her, face turned down and flushed purple, but it only showed in the curious bend of her brow; the pressure of her pulse was heavy in her ears.
"You, uh," he rasped, throat dry, and even swallowing didn't help. His hands were shaking. "Here, I can--"
As she watched, Zelgadis took a loud, steading breath (that did a poor job of it); she was sure if he were capable of sweat, his forehead would be shining with that instead of trace spots of rainwater not yet evaporated. With the gentlest of movements, the two forefingers of both his hands touched down just above the top of her unhooked stoking, inches from the hem of her dress. Though his motion was slow, cautious and gentle as he walked his fingers down her leg, rolling the stocking to her knee, Terra had tightened as though he were dragging nails or sharp glass across her skin. Her hands clenched in the cushion; there was a creak of wood shifting inside the ottoman, for how hard she pulled her bare leg back against it. She felt hypersensitive to the nylon moving down her cold leg. Past the curve of her calf, the fabric dropped; Zelgadis hooked it off her clammy foot in one movement.
He stared at her foot, pale, toes curled tight on themselves. No, he couldn't feel her skin, or the heat of it, but it didn't stop his heart from racing, from his thoughts tripping over one another for speed. He'd touched her leg - her thigh, her inner thigh, intentionally, and she was okay with that. Or at least hadn't kicked him in the face. That was good, right? Had he crossed a line? Sure, haptically speaking, he didn't get anything out of it (not even memory-hallucination could tell him what it felt like), but it didn't matter. The idea alone was dizzying. It took more willpower than he wanted to admit, to lift his gaze to Terra's face - and it would take more than he had to look away.
Terra still had hands crunched into the towel and cushion of her seat, arms tight. Her legs seemed to form a caret, feet far enough apart that Zelgadis could be knelt between them, legs almost touching for the cut of her dress. Her hair, in soft, wispy waves, fell where Zelgadis had left it around her face; the pale green of it only made the red of her face darker. She looked both relaxed and tense, sleepy, alert, but most importantly, staring at him like that. His throat wasn't dry; it was a lifeless and arid desert because, unlike Terra, Zelgadis knew exactly what that look meant. How many times had he imagined it, in the safety of dreams? How many times had he convinced himself that no one would ever look at him like that, disfigured as he was? And from her, the one who told him she couldn't even feel the emotions she now wore. Terra might as well have cast stop for how free to move he felt.
As for her, she might as well have been cursed with slow for her reactions. What she felt now, she wouldn't know how to name, if she gave thought to analyze it. Her heart felt doubled in size, or perhaps in number, for how heavy her pulse felt; she could feel the throb of it all through her chest, in her clenched fingers and curled toes, under the pale skin of her throat, in her temples and legs and arms. If he hadn't been cursed, what would his hair feel like? She wondered, attention unable to stray from him before her. What would his hand have felt like just then, if it were the same yielding flesh as her own skin? Would it be as warm as she felt? If he looked as he was supposed to, would he even be here with a monster like her? Did he understand how important he was? How much she wanted him there with her? She shifted forward, a rolling lean, her hands slipping off the cushion. Her exhale was loud, hitched in the middle; her knuckles and the backs of her fingers pushed that wet clump of wire from his face, and the purple splotching was far more pronounced when she could see both sides. She wound the hair carefully behind his ear. There was little heat to his skin and less yield, the heel of her palm catching against stone. He couldn't feel her hands against his face and they both knew it, but it didn't stop him from tensing up, eyes closing. Terra's heart clenched in her chest, but still she leaned down, forward, noses side by side without touching. His strangled puff of an exhale was hot against her face.
"Terra, I can't--" he rasped, words shaking against her mouth. "I want to-- everything, I want to, but I can't--" he was babbling, lightheaded, dizzy. He couldn't feel her touch, or how close she was, but he could hear the tempo of her breathing, the staccato of her heartbeat in her hands, the shift of fabric where the towel fell off her shoulders. When he put his hands on her knees, it was meant to be for balance - he tried to rise on his knees, straighter so she didn't have to bend as far, or maybe to move away from the taunt of proximity. But even cold and clammy as her legs were, and colder still his hands, beneath the surface of her skin she tingled. Her breath caught surprised in the back of her throat. Though he moved, she followed, and had his skin any pliability her fingers would dig in. Maybe it was pathetic, petulant and selfish, but when he tried denying her again she tilted, covering his open mouth with hers, pressing in past the stone gate of his lips to the soft, warm, yielding flesh of his inner cheeks and his tongue.
That he could feel, almost scalding; as the only truly sensitive part of him left, it was all the more intense, highlighting just how little else he could feel. As if burned he yanked his hands away from her, a pained whine reverberating from his throat to hers. If he'd reacted like he'd wanted, the tightening of his hands would have shattered her kneecaps. Preemptively he curled his empty hands into fists, pressing them against her shoulders. "Stop," he said with a gasp, pushing back. It wasn't fair. The first time he could feel more than her breath, the first and only time she was acting on emotion, on what she felt for him, the only time it counted -- why couldn't have this have been before he'd been cursed once again? Before the grief of losing her had driven him to anger, to lashing out at the demon who had reverted him to a worse state than he'd arrived in this world? Even if it were just the golem taken away, that would be enough. That would be enough to kiss her, to feel her, to to be able to act as he wanted. His hands, restrained upon themselves, still trembled; his throat was tight, nauseous with self-loathing. "I'm going to hurt you if we don't stop." And that was that, wasn't it? She couldn't kiss him like that without him wanting to kiss her back, but kissing with a stone mouth would leave her bruised, holding her with stone hands would break her bones. He wanted to cry.
But for all his pleas, Terra didn't move away. Not that she really could, not without climbing backwards over the ottoman; for all his protests, he wasn't retreating either. Releasing her soft bracing of his cheeks, Terra's hands pushed at his arms, taking wrists and guiding them to the cushion, one hand on each side. Hers stayed lightly braced there, holding his in place more by gesture than by effort. "So what?" she asked, quiet, firm; though he had ducked his head away, she followed, more to catch his eyes again than his mouth. "I'll heal. I can recover from anything. Remember? There's... there's no pain I can't erase. I don't care about that. I--" Her hands held tight to his arms, toes curling against the carpet for an attempted anchor. She searched for eyes that wouldn't look her way. "I've never felt like this before." And it was true; for even bespelled into love with Keith, there had been little to no wants greater than to hold hands or be held close. This was something radically different. Her chest felt like something had reached down and twisted her spine, churning everything inside her. "I've never... wanted anything like this..."
Zelgadis's hands uncurled and dug hard into the fabric of the towel, the cushion she sat on. A grimace bent the stone where eyebrows should have resided, and his teeth could have crushed diamonds for the hard grinding clench. Even breathing so close to her was painful, each exhale dragged across rough gravel. Each inhale was laced with her breath, the scent of her skin and her hair and the cruelty of his curse. It wasn't fair. His hands yanked at the ottoman, dragging it toward him as easily as pulling bedsheets. It halted at his knees, braced against him, and his hands held tight enough to prevent ricochet.
His clothing made no difference to him, but his cloak was still cold, soaking wet where it fell against her legs, knees against his the sides of his ribs. She couldn't finish saying his name in that hurt, desperate voice of hers, his surrendering to her will, his mouth covering hers, tongue blocking hers from speaking. He could enjoy the warmth of her lips, the uneven pattern to her breathing, involuntary voiced sounds of no consequence, the way she'd gasp out fragments of his name -- but it was all bittered. He couldn't feel where her arms pressed against his back or his face, or how she combed back his hair so it wouldn't tangle in hers. Couldn't feel the heat of her legs through his clothing, couldn't press his hands against her hips, her back, or tangle fingers through the hair he spent so long tending. Assurances or not, even if he didn't hurt her, he couldn't hold her. Even if he put his arms around her, he wouldn't feel the curve of her body or her weight against him. Just this, desperate, restrained kissing was all he could have.
It wasn't enough, and it wouldn't ever be enough.