Work Text:
Cold Hands; Warm Heart
She lounges against the door to their bedroom, watching him for a moment, letting herself indulge in him without him ever knowing how her eyes drink in every line and curve and scar that makes up his beautiful body. How he’d gloat if he could read her thoughts right now - insufferable, yet..Justified, she has to admit as she watches the muscles of his chest expand and contract in time with his breathing.
Peeling herself from the doorway she pads noiselessly towards him, stripping down to her underwear before she crawls into the bed behind him. Moulding her slim form around him, twining their legs together. He stirs in response to the feel of her body against his and shifts enough to let himself peer over a shoulder at her.
“You’re late,” he husks, his voice thick with tiredness.
She huffs at the faint indignation in his tone and leans forwards to kiss him but stops short, her lips tantalizing inches from his so that he can feel the heat of her breath on them but not the softness of her mouth on his as she replies, “You told me you’d wait up.”
“I tried,” he grumbles irritably, shifting again and clipping her with his wing making her scowl, “But you were late and I was exhausted, and the bed was so warm and-”
“Pathetic” she murmurs, her words tinged with a low growl, kissing him to both shut him up and prevent him from protesting her assessment of his woeful willpower, “Completely pathetic” she says, brushing her lips against his once more with a tenderness at odds with her grumbling, telling him it's more playful than anything else.
She feels his hot, hungry mouth part in invitation for her tongue - one she chooses not to respond to, not yet. It’s no fun unless she teases him first, lets him wait always just a little longer, makes him beg her.
“I missed you,” he rumbles, his voice deepening, the rich sound of it vibrating through her chest and damn him if he doesn’t know just how to get a response from her as a faint tingle of pleasure shivers along her spine at his words, at the look in his rich hazel eyes, eyes she can't quite remember when she got so familiar with, so fond of, when they lock with hers. Fire-hardened iron meeting ice tipped steel.
“Mm,” is all she mumbles in response but she dips down to kiss him once more, a little harder and deeper than before and this time she offers him a taste of tongue so he knows that she shares his sentiments, even if she still can't quite put them all into words. He's patient and he doesn't need her to to understand her, understand them.
After another long, lazy moment spent indulging entirely in one another and several long, slow kisses, their fingers in each other's hair, she nudges him with her knee and, chuckling in a way that makes her whole body shake with the reverberations that pulse through her, he takes the hint and settles himself in his earlier position, allowing her to coil herself around him, a tender serpent, lethal grace and poisoned promise to all those she deems unworthy, but to him an embrace, an oath of a different sort that her body makes to his as it draws him in.
Her hands graze absently along the length of his spine, between the two wings he keeps carefully tucked into him to allow her to nestle in against him, the feel of her body pressed into them almost too much for him to bare and his body sings its pleasure at her nearness, at her simple presence here with him. Where she belongs some deep, instinctual part of him howls. Her fingers carefully caress the curve of his wing, not meant to tease or arouse, simply marvelling at the shape and feel of him, wanting to touch him and explore the body she knows so well but can never quite have enough of.
He shudders. She pauses. He can feel her question burning through her, though she doesn’t give voice to it. Rolling his shoulders to stop himself squirming too much he snarls lightly, “You’re hands are freezing, sweetheart.”
She growls at the sardonic pet name tacked on to the end of his sentence, designed to rile and ruffle her and leans in to nip at his neck with her teeth. He yelps in surprise and a rough, low laugh that makes his blood pulse hot and thick with her scent and touch emanates from her in response.
“Don’t be such a baby,” she croons, a wicked smile tugging her lips, her fingers grazing almost lovingly along the curving edge of his wing, knowing how sensitive he is to her still cold skin.
“Don’t be such a tease,” he shoots back, another shudder rippling through his body at her light, tender touch.
She smiles and softly kisses his neck, “But you love it,” she huffs against her skin, her breath so deliciously hot and inviting as it snakes around him.
“I love you,” he breathes, reaching up to twine his fingers through her hair and coax her down to kiss him. She obliges him with another smile, softer and warmer than the feral little smirks she’s worn so far tonight. He inhales her scent deep into his lungs, his eyes closing, his wings fluttering lightly against her, urging her in closer. She obliges him in that too.
She doesn’t say it back to him. Not yet. She’s not ready for it. But he can see it in his eyes, the feeling that she tries to bury deep that always gets dragged to the surface whenever her eyes meet his, when he looks into her, to a place that not even she can hide herself from him, that place where their souls meet and brush and they have no secrets from themselves or from each other.
He kisses her gently, on the nose this time and she blinks, half surprised, half outraged at this gesture and the look on her face is just so achingly Nesta that he can’t help the bark of rich laughter that escapes him. Grudgingly, she smiles softly again and nestles in to him, warmth radiating from her for him.
“You’re an idiot,” she mutters sleepily against his skin as she wraps her arms around his chest, her head on his shoulder, their legs tangled together, the sheets woven between them.
“You love it,” he smirks to her, closing his eyes, unable to see her expression but he can picture the way she rolls her eyes with such achingly clarity that it teases another huffing laugh from him, “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, Nesta Archeron,” he tells her sternly, fighting to contain his smile.
She digs her elbow into his ribs, “I will if I please,” she snarls in his ear and he can’t contain the laugh this time.
He opens his eyes to meet her blue-gray ones, blazing with the intensity of a Winter storm, a hurricane that can just as easy sweep him away as cradle him in its calm centre, shutting out the world with roaring violence, refusing to let them get close to him.
“I know you will,” he says, his tone almost reverent, his eyes bright.
He reaches up a hand and grazes it so tenderly against her cheek, revelling in the way she bows to his touch, closes her eyes and savours it, accepts him, welcomes him. Cassian knows in that instant that he could spend another five centuries on this earth - with this woman, this steel wildfire with the capacity to make gods tremble and bow before her, and some part of him would still remain awed that she has chosen him to spend her burning eternity with, that of all those she could have had with her will and with her beauty: anyone, in truth, it was him. She chose him. And always would. For her, it would always be him in the end.
A low, contended hum flutters to him from her as she closes her eyes and nuzzles in against him once more, her face buried into his back, her hands clasped protectively, resting just over his heart where her sensitive fingertips can feel its beats through his skin. He closes his eyes, settling himself down and drags a blanket up to cover the two of them as they drift off to sleep entwined together.