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It should be simple, really. A soft touch, Lae'zel said. Gentleness.
Shadowheart has been thinking about it all day, the sound of the word in Lae'zel's mouth. It was strange, incongruous in that harsh rasping voice, and yet the gith's eyes were soft as she spoke, cautious, questioning. Soon, I would know you again - not to claw you, but to caress you.
The thought awoke a kind of strange, aching longing in Shadowheart's soul, one that she does not know entirely how to account for. They have not looked for softness from each other before. Even though they have left the Shadowlands behind at last, both of them are still lost in the dark, set adrift from their goddesses and left with only each other. They have sought solace in rough touches, frantic heat, and it has helped keep the pain of their losses at bay.
And yet… gentleness, Lae'zel said.
What does it mean? Where does it begin? They sit on the bedroll in Shadowheart's tent, facing each other, and the strained, uncertain silence stretches out, longer and longer.
With the air of someone taking a step off the edge of a cliff, Lae'zel lifts one long-fingered hand and rests it on Shadowheart's thigh. Then, spooked by her own motion, she goes still and looks at Shadowheart, questioning. Like this?
Her expression is so earnest, so indicative of sincere effort, that Shadowheart can't help a soft laugh. At once, Lae'zel stiffens, her head snapping back and her shoulders hunching. Her hand withdraws and clenches into a fist at her side.
"You mock me," she mutters.
"No," Shadowheart says, shaking her head, the smile fading from her lips as quickly as it came.
"You think me foolish, to ask for softness where there has been only ferocity." Lae'zel's catlike eyes flash, indignant, proud. "You would have things remain as they are-- you would remain only the source of my bruises and no more."
She turns her head, and Shadowheart is startled to see the sincere pain drawn in the lines of the gith's face. "So be it," Lae'zel mutters. "I require no--"
Shadowheart kisses her.
It is not the fierce kiss, all teeth and tongue, that usually opens their assignations. It is a touch that, for once, demands nothing. Shadowheart simply presses her lips to Lae'zel's softly, slowly, cupping her hand to the back of Lae’zel’s neck to deepen the contact.
Lae'zel goes silent, her eyes fluttering closed, and Shadowheart can feel the hitch of her breath in surprise-- and then again in pleasure.
" Istik..." she murmurs, and there is suddenly no asperity in the word. It is whispered with an air of wonder that Shadowheart has never heard in the gith’s voice before.
Cautiously, Lae'zel comes up on her knees to press her wiry frame against Shadowheart's. This time she drives the kiss, softly, softly - light, tantalizing brushes of lips on lips.
"Where--?" she mumbles breathlessly, with that same earnest intensity. For a moment Shadowheart can see past the veneer of the dedicated warrior that Lae’zel presents at all times; instead she sees a flash of the scholar that stood in Creche Kliir and studied the githyanki tomes, drinking in knowledge like water. Lae’zel’s eyebrows are knitted together in fervent concentration. "Where do you like to be touched?" she asks.
Shadowheart has to take a moment to think about that. If anyone has ever asked her that before, it is lost to the mists of memory that Shar wiped away from her, but she suspects it has never been part of her arrangements. The rough and violent lovemaking felt too easy and familiar for it to be unusual. It is the gentleness that is strange.
"Everywhere," she breathes, her heart suddenly thumping too loudly in her ears.
Lae'zel pushes forward, letting her weight slowly force Shadowheart onto her back. Shadowheart moves with her easily, stretching out on the bedroll until Lae'zel can straddle her. Lae'zel bends, her abdomen flexing as she leans down for another kiss, capturing one of Shadowheart's hands in each of hers as she goes.
" Zhak vo'n'ash duj..." Lae'zel murmurs. Her voice still trembles with wonder, the air of an explorer sighting new land for the first time.
But their closeness is having its own effect as well, and in spite of their best efforts, Shadowheart can feel that rougher instinct calling to them both. Lae'zel's fingers tighten around her wrists; her thighs squeeze to hold Shadowheart immobile against the tent floor, and she hisses soft githyanki profanity under her breath.
A flicker of a thought passes between them through the tadpole bond. I wish the gentleness, vo’n’fynh… I know that I do. But I do not know how to find it, when this fierceness is everything that we are…
Shadowheart can feel Lae'zel's confusion, her eagerness, her frustration and her hunger. The gith's hips rock gently, and Shadowheart whimpers, answering hunger starting to bloom in her core where their bodies press together. Whatever plans they may have made, her body knows this, knows Lae'zel's body on hers. It knows what it wants, what it likes, and her fingers flex into fists in Lae'zel's grip.
"Lae'zel..." she mumbles breathlessly. "Want to... feel you..."
Lae'zel kisses her again. The kiss is fiercer this time, accompanied by a soft groan against Shadowheart's mouth. She pushes Shadowheart's hands upward until they are pinned over her head, holding her in place. "Touch me, then," she murmurs, a subtle, playful taunt in the words.
Shadowheart's eyes narrow and her jaw juts out. She pushes upward against Lae'zel's implacable strength; the weight of the other woman's body holds her in place, but that restraint cannot hold her any more tonight than it ever has. She knows, by now, the angle at which to arch up into Lae'zel's frame, to push her sideways so she goes over onto her back, now with Shadowheart on top.
In the same motion, Shadowheart rips her hands free of Lae'zel's grip, cups both palms to Lae'zel's cheeks, and kisses her fierce and hard and rough, hard enough that her teeth score open a line in Lae'zel's lip and the metallic taste of gith blood fills her mouth.
Lae'zel hisses against her. " Tsk'va--"
" Shhh..." Shadowheart draws her head back, breaking the kiss.
The taste of blood is heady in her mouth, the flavor of their past violence. It would be so easy to surrender to it, forget everything else for tonight - but it is not everything they want anymore. Perhaps it never was.
She presses her fingertips against Lae'zel's lips in a long, slow caress. Blue light pulses from her skin to Lae'zel's, and where it travels, the blood fades, the small wound seals itself over softly as if it was never there.
Lae'zel goes still. Her heart begins to hammer under Shadowheart's other hand on her chest. Her eyes are wide, her mouth slightly open. " Istik... " she whispers.
"Gentleness..." Shadowheart murmurs.
She can feel Lae'zel suddenly begin to tremble; she grips Shadowheart's hips with both hands, pulling their bodies tight and flush against each other. "Again..."
Shadowheart kisses her again. This time as their lips press together, as Lae'zel arches up into her, she wraps her arms fully around Lae'zel's body, grips her tightly, drags her fingernails in long harsh lines along the bare skin of Lae'zel's back. Lae'zel groans into her mouth, then shivers violently as Shadowheart caresses the marks with healing magic, soothing the pain as quickly as it came.
"Shadowheart..." Lae'zel whispers. " Zhak vo'n'ash duj... e' vo'n'fynh duj... " There is no need to ask what it means. The understanding flashes between them like lightning. Source of my bruises... and of my joy...
Shadowheart feels a strange tightness in her throat, at the corners of her eyes. It was always going to be like this. Whatever is between them was always going to have its edge of ferocity; it is too much a part of them both, too much a part of what they have lost, of the lives they lived where pain was as natural as breathing. But the gentleness is there too, and that is the thing that is theirs, that they are building together.
She nips a fierce mark into Lae'zel's neck, feels the answering sting of pain as Lae'zel sinks pointed teeth into her shoulder. And then the healing magic bursts up around them, soothing the pain from both of them, driving back the dark.
“ Sha va zai, vo’n’fynh…” Lae’zel’s voice sounds so strange, like a sob, like a plea. “Do not let me go…”
A nameless, longing ache rises in Shadowheart’s chest, something far deeper and sweeter than any magic can touch. “Never…” she whispers. “I won’t… not ever again…”