Chapter Text
Realer than real:
Sometimes, Rose wondered if she had always known the touch of Hawke's lips. Wondered if perhaps her other, less wise and infinitely less successful endeavours had only been to find the shape of his kiss, chipping away at stone to free the sculpture within.
And sometimes, when he buried his face in her neck and made her nearly snort with indelicate laughter, his breath hot and ticklish and damply horrible, she considered that to be an overly poetic consideration for a man who did not deserve it and was trying to cook her alive.
Always, she loved his solidity. His realness. Every scrap of heat and scent that spoke to his vitality that seemed to pale the world around him in comparison.
Perhaps that was it after all. Hawke had made all things before him seem distant in his realness. As if she had always known him, before they had ever met.
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Before the morning:
It is far from dawn, when Blackwall arrives in Thalia's quarters. Lifting her hands, pressing her fingers to his lips in the surest act of affection she's had from him in weeks.
"My lady," he murmurs, loathe to separate himself from the touch of her skin, his heated breath over her knuckles speaking of a strange and sudden urgency. It takes nothing to understand why he's here, a reflection of what she's hoped for. And yet, the suddenness of it shakes her as he murmurs again, inviting, pressing more love to her hands as if it's his last night alive.
Too sudden. Like a balking horse, she pushes him away. And though she does it gently, he looks as though she'd speared him through the chest.
It is closer to dawn, and yet still far from any illumination, when Blackwall disappears, as if he had never been there to begin with.
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From your lips to God's ears:
The Maker has given us eyes that we may see the world and how best to serve it. The Maker has given us hands for that serving, and lips to worship. Nicaise has spent his best effort in worship, and knows in his sleep the shape the Chant makes of his mouth. Knows the cool familiarity of porous stone under his lips, as grounding as the rock under his feet, as he presses his devotion to statuary that attempts to convey a deeper spirit.
A farmer at heart, a farmer he always will be. He knows better than most that hands in the soil create the harvest. For all his scholarly aims, for all that he writes and reads until candle and sun light become one, running his fingers over lines of prayer and history with devotion, he knows that hands and lips are what ground him, that plant his devotion deeper into himself, until the Maker's harvest may come.
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A worship lost:
And once, those lips that pronounced the death of millions had kissed Anora as she cried. Deep in dreaming she might still remember the warmth of her father's love, as one dying in the snow remembers one distant summer's day. Anora has earned and stolen many kisses since then, the taste of them on her lips or the sensation on her cheek a much fresher memory. Her hands kissed by chapped lips mumbling prayers, the poor of her own land giving her gratitude she still did not feel she deserved.
Yet never, not once, has she allowed lips on her forehead, on that strange and abandoned temple that once held an idol. Now lost, now overgrown and thick with the dust of grieving. That echoes still with one distant summer's day.
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Both in breaking:
Every touch of the lips is meant to be an iron hook under his skin, digging to flesh. More and more until Esther can rip him apart. Smearing him in red from her mouth in lieu of the blood she is owed. That she will certainly have.
Certainly. She tells herself again and again that it is only a matter of time, that this is a slow and simmering vengeance, disguised as boiling, hateful lust. That she memorises the map of his back only so she can drive a knife through it, traces the ribs through which she can tear out his heart.
She ignores, completely, how his lips pull at her too, tells herself that is all in the game of pretend to let herself get close. Close enough again and again, to sink another hook.
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To be wanted:
Those who held court were greedy, as if everything did not already belong to them. Those in attendance seemed to revel in that greed, absorbing it for their own, and Miraen had always been one such treasure to covet. Fingertips like unwanted kisses, lips that were too much like searching fingers, seeking their skin like it was something to devour, brought to them on a silver singing platter along with everything else on the groaning tables.
Felassan had taught them gentler wanting.
He graced them with the room to be, to breathe, and the air landed on them like a thousand finer kisses, carrying the taste of him in every little gust across their skin.
One day, they would ask (not take, never take) for the realer touch of his lips. But for now, that space he kissed them with was much more than enough.
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A past, a future:
For all the steps forward they'd taken, it wasn't far enough, not yet, to come out from under the shadows of their past. It lingered often in the way they sat, with clear eyes on clear exits. In the way their hands lay against one another at first, furtive but firm, like they were liable to be caught taking something they had no right to.
Shadows are long, longer than the sins that cast them. And so it had taken time for those hands to understand that this was freely given, and that they had not somehow stolen and tricked their way into their desires. Blackwall's beard scratches and tickles with almost innocent familiarity as he kisses along the brand on Thora's cheek, and for a moment neither of them have known any grief at all.
Not yet out, but on the edge of daylight. No longer looking over shoulders, their faces towards the sun.
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Unwise trysts:
Illario's lips had always lingered, scarring, a dagger across the throat. Amadis should have known better, did know better, did not care. It was the burning of the drink and the burning of the blood (heated whispers in her ear, a grip on her hips in the dark) that made her feel more alive than she could name.
She did not know who she was outside of the darkness. Illario's arms around her seem to sketch a sort of shape, but it was only as sure as his own, and he had given her no certain edges to find him by. All she knew was that the burning in her belly and the heat on her skin reminded her that she was real, not a faded thing that Viago's eyes could cut through and scatter to the winds, leaving nothing behind.
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There is venom in our veins:
Electra is perfect, for Viago has made her with his own hands. Such perfection that is kept in the darkness of private collections, guarded jealously from the eyes of others even as it is repeatedly put on display. Viago chooses when to display her. Every touch of finger and lip, is only and exactly as he allows.
She is clay, soft and willing, but he suffers no fingertips but his own. The marks are scrubbed from her again and again until she is once again that perfect, pretty poison that he aches to sample, to feel the numbness in his limbs.
He does not, but it is not for wanting, for all his iron will. He has made her too much his own poison as well.
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For the soil, for the soul:
Thea has been shaped like the land that cradles her clan, by the slow and ever-patient hands of those who have known her, who have loved her. Where the lines of her vallaslin overlap, net-like, she imagines still that she has caught the gentle touch of her father's lips square on her forehead, where it will lie forever. The softest whispers of her mother's breath on the highest point of her cheekbone where the lines branch, a tree filled with fragrant blossom that transports her to old days that she cannot see, but she knows that she feels.
The lines that spread down her throat root her to her family, her clan, those lines that she has had carved on her in their name. Clear streams of care across the landscape of her face, sometimes traced with tears as she thinks of a people so far from her. Even at this distance, she cradles them like the land.
When the land is loved, how true it loves in return.
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Too real in this reality:
It's strange, to know everything about Cullen before he's ever met her. It's the kind of strangeness that worries Marisol at times. How true can anything she feels be, when she knows him back to front already?
It's only when she sits beside him, and feels the shocking warmth of his shoulder, as real as anyone back home, that she realises that she knows him, and doesn't quite know him at all. Back to front, past and present and future. But not exactly the way the muscles in his face shift, scar pulling at the smile he gives her. Not the touch of his lips, not at all, nor the strength with which he pulls her close.
It's the difference between theory and reality. She knows everything, and nothing at all, nothing quite about how real he is, because he's never been real before.
And maybe in this, things can be true.
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The purest sin:
It is blasphemy perhaps, to say that Bewellen would rather kneel at Niiata's feet than at the feet of the Ancestor's statues to pray. Perhaps, but then the casteless were born blaspheming. His first memory is the burning pain of being branded, the screams of a child who does not understand, who will never understand, not being fit for the Stone's embrace.
His best memory is a cooling hand on that same brand, raising him from his knees. Wiping away the brand and the dirt of dust town with only her beautiful breath.
Niaata's braids fall around him as she curls over him, decked in gold. And this, this is the embrace of the Stone, her lips on his, more willingly helpless before her than a thousand deshyrs and their ilk.
It cannot be blasphemy. It is too pure, too beloved. Bewellen is sure, surer than the Memories that shape their world and claim that they cannot be together, that the Stone will understand.
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Hope is the thing:
Hope held Pride's face in her hands, his jaw tight under her palm in such anger, such grief, such running. The world had risen and fallen and risen again, tide-like, and all it had seemed to do was leave him more eroded, more intent on filling those missing parts of him with the shattered pieces of whatever he could grasp.
Pride tried, tried not to melt at Hope's touch. Tried not to listen as she whispered against the skin of his cheek words that he did not, would not, could not believe in years upon years.
"The world is different now," she said, her voice warmer than sun. The barest whisper of her lips against him. "Stop running."
And there, Hope held Pride still, for the first time in centuries.
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A living death:
Long, elegant fingers thread through her hair like the most delicate pages, and Siobhan can feel the chill touch of Emmrich's grave gold against the back of her neck. It sends a shiver all down her spine, which he catches in his other hand, clasped securely behind her as though she might fall.
And perhaps she might, because when his mouth grazes along her jaw, she forgets where she is for a moment, forgets her name and the shape of her her body except where he holds her.
Bodies are transient things in Nevarra. But this? The memory of his hands, so real, so grounding, so alive, she is sure, will stamp itself in the Fade to haunt the Necropolis for years.
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Years lost, a life gained:
Scarlet had been no stranger to kisses, of course. More of them imaginary than real as her imagination flitted, butterfly-like, from crush to crush, colourful fantasy to colourful fantasy.
The touch of her lips to the Joining cup hadn't been much of a kiss at all. It had been full of fire and blood and the worst headache she'd had in years. But later, much later, she'd had the silly thought that Carver's lips had touched it too. The weirdest and most indirect first kiss in history, she'd said to him, and he'd practically snorted mid-kiss as she'd said it.
The Joining had given them a purpose and present at the cost of a future, both their years numbered. But as she swatted at him and kissed the laughter from his lips, she was glad at least that it had bound them together.
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Informed meetings:
Elek's cheeky, crooked smiles gave away nothing, even as they grazed the skin on Orion's shoulder. Even in this he was an informant. Giving away little without taking in kind, and always looking to take more if he could.
Orion did wonder how much Elek had taken, what secrets of his he'd learned in their stolen moments and locked away behind too-clever teeth. He even asked him once, half-jokingly, and Elek laughed and said that would have to stay a secret, unless Orion had something more to offer than himself.
He knew he didn't, the bastard, but that smile slanted like a rooftop, catching the barest hint of sunrise. Warming the edges of their cloaking darkness before they had to part, before the sun found them, and Orion could never find it in himself to care.
~~~~
One perfect moment:
There's three things Cylas remembers about his 20th birthday.
One, the venue. Loud and hot but somehow stimulating enough without being overwhelming, which he had to admit he'd been sceptical about, and would have to apologise for later.
Two, the man on the stage. Appearing out of the past like a vision in between sleeping and waking, blowing him a cheeky kiss that makes his cheeks burn, before disappearing back into the crowded shadows.
Three, the one thing Cylas remembers with such perfect clarity that all the rest is incidental. In a quiet corner where the air is cooler, and the music more pleasant than painful, Zevran finds him. Chooses to find him, his smile surprised. Pleased. And suddenly there is no heat, no noise, no walls around them and no ground under his feet, except the voice, the words:
"It's you."