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"Fight me."
Ling looked up from his book in surprise. "Huh?"
"Fight me," Lan Fan repeated. Her hands were quaking with unreleased energy and surprising yet not completely unexpected wrath. If her lord sinned of being too greedy, she sinned of letting fury fester in her chest, feeding it every so often to keep the flame burning just because it made her feel alive in the most wicked and twisted of ways.
"You want… to spar?" Ling scratched his head. "Right now?"
"Yes." She curled her fists around the fabric of her pants. There was a faint throbbing in her knees, maybe from being bent under her weight for so long, but she suspected that wasn't the case. Anger let her breathe for a second, long enough for her to become aware of how disrespectful she was being. "Fight me, my liege."
He hummed, taking his sweet time to close his book and set it on the bench she refused to sit on to read. It was a cool day, early enough into autumn for temperatures to meet that perfect point of not-too-cold and not-too-hot. And yet she was still sweating under her clothes. Every single item stuck to her skin, weighed down on her. Even the mask, usually a welcome wall between her and reality, had become too much. She didn't mutter an apology for her indiscretion as she yanked it off. She was still boiling, the lid of the pot barely holding all the steam she was torturing herself to contain. And Ling was so slow. Forever was shorter than the time he took to untie the silk layers of his robes until he was left in nothing but his black undergarments.
(Sleeveless, like Greed used to wear them. It infuriated her to an insane degree how much the homunculus had rubbed off on him.)
"I take it you're having a bad day, Lan Fan? You look like you could use a break."
"A break will fix nothing, my lord." She forced herself to stand up slowly instead of jumping at his throat. "Rest is the last thing I could use right now."
"Is that why you want to fight? To release pent up energy?"
"I'm afraid I cannot put my reasons into words, my lord."
"Very well." Ling assumed a fighting stance that was too reminiscent of Greed. "Don't hold back."
That was the cue for her rage to get white-hot and blind her. She lunged forward. Every day she missed her left arm, she missed the warmth of her own flesh even if she knew she would make the same choice if given the opportunity to relive that day, but right now, she couldn't be happier to be made of steel and gears. Her fingers creaked when she extended them towards his neck. They couldn't ache yet they did, for violence and destruction and pain.
He dodged swiftly, as he always did, and she landed where he had stood, metal digging into the soft soil, tearing grass off its feeble roots. For a split second, she contemplated the dark dirt covering the shiny plaques of her fingers.
Kindly as ever, he waited for her to get up. It had her seething.
With a frustrated roar, she charged again, this time more precisely. She hit his shoulder even when he shifted. He hissed and parried with his forearm before she could aim for his head. She took half a leap back to catch her breath and give herself more space to kick. Of course, he ducked and her leg flew over him.
"Stop defending," she growled when he retreated a couple steps. "Attack me. Your Highness."
His smirk was dangerous. "Can I just say I love it when you say it like that?"
"Deeply inappropriate, sir." She breathed in, oxygen flaring up her veins and clearing her head just enough to remind her that hitting the target would bring her far more satisfaction than just pointlessly tiring herself out.
"Oh, so you'll beat the shit out of me and I don't even get to enjoy it?" He raised his hands in front of him, ready to block. "Hardly seems fair."
She chose to pounce on him instead of replying. This time, not only did he take the hit, but he also drove his open palm against her jaw, making her head jerk back, a pang she barely felt. She shoved his forearm out of the way and dove her fist into his side, right above his hip bone. He twitched and rammed his shoulder against her, pushing her back until she hit a wall. The air wheezed out of her lungs so hard she was almost too out of it to knee him in the stomach.
Almost.
He grunted. There was something a little too satisfying about his pain. No servant was supposed to enjoy hurting their master like this, but her blood pumped too fast for her to care. She kicked him in the ribs and sent him flying away from her.
Greed came back to life in the way he crouched and slowed down his staggering by clawing the ground. "Lan Fan," he said. "What's wrong?"
His calm tone did nothing but fuel her ire further. A beast howled in her chest, a feral animal that craved the old days, the ones when he wasn't peaceful but playful and infuriatingly persistent in his attempts to make her indulge in a lack of propriety, the ones where she wasn't so fucking angry all the time because everything she had ever wanted was right in front of her and she couldn't take it.
Maybe it had always been like this. But she had never wanted it as badly as she did now, never had fate dangled it in front of her like a treat offered to a dog. Because she was young and stupid and thought her love would make her happy as long as she could stay close to him. How could she had been so naive? Her love, her selfish, selfish love needed so much more than just sacrifice and distance. It required skin against skin, reciprocation and closeness. Luxuries she would never be able to afford.
Such was the way of a king and his companion.
Thoughtlessly, she attacked him again and again and again. She couldn't even pinpoint her moves, but she knew she was aiming to kill, even if his was the only throat she could never slash. At some point, his eyes went wide, and belatedly, she realized she had unsheathed her automail blade.
All the better.
He took it more seriously then. He hit harder, he moved faster, he stopped waiting. He was stronger than her, but she was better. Of that much, she was sure. So no matter what he did, she'd have him.
Since she couldn't have him in her arms, she'd have him trapped under her iron clutch.
But in the end, brute force did win. Ling pinned her down, her blade nailed in the soil, her wrists under his hands. He dug his knees into her thighs and let his weight drag her down and immobilize her completely. He was too much for her when she couldn't lift him properly. Their hearts raced, pressed together.
"Lan Fan, tell me what's wrong."
All she could muster was a furious scream. What was wrong? Nothing. Everything. He touched her like it didn't matter. It was all he knew how to do, caress and destroy. Every spot where they came into contact felt premeditated, like he feared touching her wrong. He made holy ground out of the places where he laid his hands on. He loved her. He loved to wreck her. Wasn't that how Emperors loved? By undoing?
"If you won't tell me, fine." He leaned his forehead against hers. "But breathe."
She gasped sharply, in splotches of air that sufficed no one.
"No, not like that. Breathe."
"Get off of me," she spat. "Let me go. Fight—"
"Breathe with me, Lan Fan. Breathe."
He inhaled slowly, deliberately letting the air linger in his windpipe before it travelled down to his lungs. His chest guided hers in the motion. She reluctantly followed, shutting her eyes tight to avoid the tenderness and concern in his. His body's heat became a kinder sort of warmth, his weight more familiar and comforting with each aspiration. Every so often, he repeated the instructions.
Breathe.
And she breathed in, and out, and in and out for as long as he told her to. That was what she did best, after all: obey his every wish. He desired her well-being far too often, but for once, she didn't find it in herself to complain.
"Lan Fan," he whispered after a few minutes. "Open your eyes."
She did.
"Are you alright?"
"I apologize for my outburst, my liege." She tilted her chin down. "I understand how deeply upsetting and disappointing it must have been for you to see your allegedly most loyal warrior—"
"That's not what I asked."
Of course he had to go and ask the difficult questions, the one she had no answers to. It was better than it had been when he held her, more loosely than before, but still containing her, holding her demons inside her body and calming them down with his respiration.
"I'm alright, sir."
"And next time, when the answer becomes a no, will you tell me?"
"I wish not to burden you."
"Will you tell me?" He insisted, leaning in closer until the tip of their noses brushed against each other.
"My liege…"
"I beg you to tell me." He was desperate in his request. "You are not alone, Lan Fan, and curse me and my descendents if you ever are while I live."
How could he love her so much? So dearly? How could he let himself be damned for her sake? It had never been meant for her love to go both ways, but it did.
She thanked the heavens for that. She thanked every single deity she'd heard of that he pressed his open lips to hers with the gentleness of a feather after she nodded. She thanked them for how close he was, how his hands seemingly couldn't keep themselves from her, that their little garden was for their amenities and their amenities only, so no one ever walked into him setting his crown and empire to the side just to love her for a while.
It was good to let her fingers find their own way to all the places they'd always wanted to roam to: his nape, his hair, his chest, his cheeks. For the first time ever, loving him was free and easy, it wasn't pain and sacrifice. She gave nothing of herself except her heart, because it was borrowed anyways —it had always belonged to him, and it beat on her chest only to let her love keep her alive.
And after they left the grass and he donned his robes again, he made sure to tighten her mask himself, on her hair and not on her face, to settle her scarf back into place and to kiss her once more because he simply could.
Tomorrow, it would ache again, but today, it was more than good enough.