Work Text:
One last tug, and the bandage wrap is fixed tight.
"There. Done," Talanah says from behind her. "I think you'll survive."
Even though Aloy can't see her face, she knows Talanah is smiling. A small one, from the way her voice drops low over the last word as she says it, glimmers like the first point of light in the evening sky. A smirk, curved warm. Aloy's been able to picture this one for longer than she'd admit. She pictures it now, too, before she responds.
"Can't say I was worried." Her voice isn't as bitter as the berry she just finished chewing and forced down, but there's an edge to it. Not especially in the mood for playing along. Yes—she knows she'll be fine. The wound is a foolish one in a foolish place. It was a good clean kill, but a failed escape—a mistimed dodge after puncturing a Longleg's concussion sac, and a particularly sharp piece of the ensuing shrapnel slicing heavy along the inside of her shoulder blade, just above the line of her breastband. It's deep, sure, and right after she took the hit she bled like a stuck boar. But it never really hurt. It stung, maybe. Stung a lot, all salty-skin heat—until Talanah soothed away the sweat and blood with palmfuls of water from her own canteen.
Even with the task complete, Talanah stays behind her, kneeling close, hands settling easily where Aloy's thighs crease into her sitting hips. Aloy doesn't look back. She keeps her eyes fixed on the smoldering remnants of someone else's campfire and sighs as thoroughly as she can, ribs constricted by the linen wrapped at an awkward angle around her opposite shoulder. Every slow-down is a frustration, especially when the slow-down is nothing more than a sting. The healing herbs packed under the bandage burn against the wound. Means they're working. Drawing out what could make it all worse.
"Someone's sullen," Talanah murmurs, steady and smooth, breath caressing the bare and wiped-clean skin of Aloy's back. It's a sunburnt feeling—blistering warmness and grave risk, all at once—to be known like this, too. Known with only a sound.
So Aloy admits, gravel in her tone, "Stupid mistake."
When she goes to break away, to stand and dress and fume and carry on, Talanah halts her by moving closer.
"Hey. Stop." It's hard not to abide when her voice is like this, soft and hard at once, a slow command wrapped in silk. Pliable, but still something to lean on. To rest against, when she can. When she wants. "You heal quick."
Before Aloy can argue further, Talanah presses her lips gently over where the wound would be. The feeling of it is muted by the dressing, strange and half-numb and somewhere else, but it rattles sweet up Aloy's spine all the same. Knowing holds here, too—she can sense Talanah’s smile, the way her mouth is set, just like she can sense the way Talanah's sweat-damp hair is stuck to the back of her neck.
"Talanah," Aloy says, heat creeping to her cheeks as Talanah's arms encircle her waist more fully, fingertips light and reverent, "you don't—have to do that."
Talanah laughs. Raspy, tender, close to Aloy's ear. Enough to make her shiver and pull her lower lip between her teeth.
"Come on, Thrush." Her lips roam to Aloy's naked shoulder, press, and then to the sensitive angle where her jaw meets her throat. "You really think I only feel like kissing you because you're injured?"
Her mouth again. This time, on Aloy's, drawing out what makes it all worse. The bitter taste fades into something better, something bright.