Sometime between the times he had fallen asleep and when he had become aware of himself in his own dream, their bodies had become ensnared. He could feel her awake between his arms, her eyes puncturing his sternum with a distant gaze that he had come to know too well. Her hair had settled chaotically between the both of them; he could feel it on the crook of his good arm even under the impression of sleep. Her arctic blackness pulsed through him like the heartbeat he didn’t have – and he let it without exchanging any blows. Instead he lay there enclosed in dreams as she lay awake without him. It was only when his mind caught an image of her being smothered by a habitual murky creature, spiny and swirling, dense and spitefully intended did his eyes flicker close and then open again slowly, the idea of Judas smothering the Queen fading from view as he found himself pressed against her forehead.
Uncomfortably comfortably close.
The linen smelled freshly of their sex from the previous night, his fingers coated in a thin layer of her crest which he could still feel on his nails and between his tattooed skin. He felt odd being awake next to her, not saying anything to her – a feeling much like a sort of comfort to have her so close. The gaping hole in his chest hadn’t hurt since after their bodies had parted somewhere near dawn, since he had drifted to sleep in a coma of her roiling sinister energy. That same crater ripped open anew as he woke and came to recognize the situation of his being, his naked body embracing hers, a thick blanket of their sex shielding them from the night. Nikolai made no motion to leave her. This crater was different than the one he had faced on his own. It felt completely different yet somehow related to the crater he experienced when he was away from Sonya. The one he felt as she pressed her petite frame to him was somewhat less painful, yet more intense, suffocating and cruel. It felt less like a hole and more related to a ball of tightness in his chest, a fire that smoldered hotly instead of actually burning. And instead of being soothed by her icy glare into his chest, the burning was stoked by it.
The younger vampire shifted slightly, needlessly announcing his wakeful state. He looked down at the woman whose neck lay comfortably between his tattooed arms. Her eyes lifted and her expression seemed to shift as well as they held each other’s stare. The smoldering fire renewed and he exhaled wearily.
He had taken her – carried her(he almost cringed at the thought) – into her own house and brought her to the room that they had unknowingly dubbed “his” room, the same room which she had thrown him out of upon their first encounter a couple of years before. He had placed her on the bed and likewise placed himself on top of her. And she let him, her lips and hands moving over her like the always had, rhythmically and with purpose, but somehow it was different. They’re bodies had moved together like always, her lips pulling something from him he couldn’t place, something he wasn’t accustomed to giving, and yet he gave it to her quite willingly.
Her hands moved over him desperately, cleaving at his shirt in a race for skin. Something about their game had changed; not once did he think of fucking her. As Nikolai looked at the woman he could remember fucking her.
Only he wasn’t fucking her.
The phrase popped up in his mind, attaching itself to the memory, a phrase that made him cringe, made him angry and made him search for another. He wanted to call it fucking her, but there was no blood. There was no lust, no need of fulfillment, no groans aimed towards satisfaction, no frustration. There was nothing of the sort. He didn’t have a name for it.
And when they had finished after hours of – whatever it was – they found each other again, never really parting at all. Moments of silence passed and they breathed harshly, in rhythm again. He didn’t have anything to say to her, but pressed his lips against hers passionately and wrapped himself more tightly around her. He made her no promises, no guarantees of fidelity or love, no suggestions of always being there. He simply held onto her, his nails dug into her flesh healed around his finger tips.
He had found true words somewhere just before their bodies connected and picked them up out of the corners of his mind, pieces of ideas he never allowed himself to assemble. And the words came too easily, without grace or intelligence, tripping over each other before he could hold them back from her. Had he been human, he would have flushed red with embarrassment. The idea was there, the want to move his lips and tell her on a constant basis, an idea that he was better -- that she was better – than some human fuck. As he looked into her eyes, he could recall the exact wording, the look of submission she had given him, the want to make that look linger and to show her the truth of his words – to prove that they were more than just words of the moment. The recollection made him cringe and made a sickened Judas so recently awoken snarl savagely.
“Good morning,” he said with a touch of sarcasm, reluctantly shifting his arm on her neck until it was back at her shoulders. A smirk flitted across his expression, still lined with a touch of that honesty and openness from the night before.
