Work Text:
In every tired night’s late hours, defenses fade. They lie raveled in moonlight-dappled quiet and Aloy is all hands, all mouth, no pretense or restraint. She leaves nothing in reserve. Touches like an unfed flame offered kindling. Clings, so much lost time made up through insatiable contact—callus-drag and full-palm press, soft clothing and warm skin-scent, lips that claim and roam and claim again. It’s overwhelming in the perfect hypnotic way. Never lust so much as it is bliss. Desire as a need to be with, to meld and stir. Talanah lets herself be swept along in unfading sensation, taken whole and taken alive.
Most times it feels too delicate to address head-on. Look too closely and it’ll crumble—she’ll withdraw, stilted by the glare of exposure. Talanah knows: make no sudden moves. Don’t let these sweet moments collapse.
Tonight, though—as Aloy arches closer and her fingers fist slow in Talanah’s shirt and her mouth wanders over the sensitive plane of Talanah’s neck, along the line of her upturned shoulder—words are an unintentional impulse.
“Love when you’re like this.” Her voice is a husked sigh, a sound she hardly recognizes.
Aloy halts and pulls back, but only just—only far enough for Talanah to see her lips, how they’re parted and damp. Half-lidded eyes flicker up. Shy caution stirs beneath hazed golden-green.
“Like what?” Aloy rasps in a messy, drowsed whisper. Tension threads through her gripping hands, but she does not withdraw. She waits instead, her breath hot at the hollow of Talanah’s throat. Talanah’s heart leaps to reach it.
Through the starlit dark, bare honesty bleeds into the place where they’ve made their bed.
“Affectionate,” Talanah answers after a tentative pause. The word meets the air heavy, singular. “Physical. Makes me feel—”
Wanted? Needed? Like something Aloy would turn back for at the end of the world?
Oh, those assertions could buckle under their own weight. With no lack of struggle, Talanah chokes them back and settles for: “Makes me—feel.”
A furrow breaks across Aloy’s brow as she tucks her face into the crook of Talanah’s neck. It hides her expression, but Talanah can see a deep crimson flush bloom across the bridge of her cheek to the tip of her ear. Still she holds firm, and Talanah returns the embrace, swallowing her trepidation.
Maybe it’ll be fine to leave things at that. Ride out the vulnerable shift in balance, adjust warily into this further-step.
To not lose her to unspoken fear would be enough.
And Talanah is about to give voice to this, too—you don’t have to say anything—when Aloy answers.
“I’m not—” A jagged pause, bitten off, as though Aloy is just as surprised at herself. She glances sidelong at Talanah and in her eyes there is a battle: push and pull. The old need for distance, the new need for its lack. “I’m not good at—uh, saying how I feel.” Each word costs effort to shape, the kind of rough scrape Talanah can feel in the tight seam of their bodies. “Guess I just—want to make sure you know anyway.”
The admission hangs like sun-scorched smoke. They are tangled close enough for Talanah to feel each quick breath Aloy draws, to feel their heartbeats reverberate chest-to-chest.
All at once Talanah realizes—she has been waiting for this.
And she is ready for it. So ready. There is a fierceness to this certainty that blazes along her backbone.
It’s time to leap.
Drowning in breathless relief, she frames Aloy’s face with tender hands. The gentle-coaxed joining of their gazes is raw and bold and wide open. Talanah leans in to kiss away the creases crimped across Aloy’s forehead, to rest her own against it. When their noses nudge together, the corners of Aloy’s mouth twitch upward.
Against that tiny crooked smile, Talanah murmurs, “Then keep showing me.”