[ There is a rustle of cloth as she shifts back so she can look up at him.
Alexandrie is not at her most beautiful. She wears none of her customary cosmetic to go to battle; it is replaced by the dust of combat, that dust cut through by the tracks of those tears that rimmed her eyes with red. Although the braid remains largely intact, the hair closest to her face is a muss of escaped tendrils, pulled half-free by his hand in them.
But in her eyes, what of them he can see in the gathering darkness, is the tranquility of a lake at sunrise. A kind of surety that can be no more denied than rain. ]
Loki.
[ It is soft, her voice a match to her eyes. The hand that traces his back withdraws, returns again as a whisper of a touch against his cheek. ]
Loving you is the easiest thing I have ever done.
It is like breath. It comes without thought; with thought it makes me calm and still. Stifled, I struggle. Taken, I die.
[ Dramatic, perhaps; but she is calm and still in saying it, as if it is something she knows as simple truth. Like rain.
Her thumb strokes along his cheekbone. ]
It is not the same, no. I would not wish it so. What is his is his.
[ And what is mine? He thinks, in the same tone as a child who has been told that not everything is. Her love, apparently, and it is either trusting that, believing her words and her eyes and the weight of her in his arms, or perish.
What does he have to give her in return? A fallen god, from another world far away, and yet not even the first to his name here. His heart feels like such a small thing, a fruit that was left in the sun for too long, sweetnesses all gone bitter. She deserves something whole and hale and open for her, but it's all he has to offer.
His thumb comes up to rub across the plane of her cheekbone, a perfect echo of her gesture.
Loki opens his mouth to say something and then has to shut it again when the noise he makes isn't words but a small sob.
Shutting his eyes does nothing to stop the tears, but they're going to happen anyway. ]
Alright.
[ Does he even know what, exactly, he's agreeing to?
[ One heartbeat, two, and there is the gentle press of lips on his cheek. The pass of thumb across the other as she finds the tears and takes them. The taste of salt when her lips find his with a terrible tenderness.
There is quiet in her heart, finally quiet, and it beats into her body and makes her settle again against him like a sigh.
And then, on an inhale through her nose, that kiss has parted lips and asks for more. ]
[ That she captures his tears, that he can taste them on her lips, that he'd planned to cause the same to her is not lost on him at this moment. He witnesses it with a sort of detached awe.
She knows him and loves him and is very much like him and the dagger settling between his ribs turns.
It is not a shock, the tonal shift; her body is warm in his arms and his body still half remembers the feel of her around him. Besides which he's mentally somewhere beyond shock in the moment, somewhere that reminds him very much of falling through the Void. Yet Lexie's parting lips bring him solidly back into his body and into the moment. He kisses back, open and passionate and wanting all over again, pulling her close just in order to roll them further in his direction. This means that she ends up on top of his chest as he lays on his back, kissing her throughout. ]
[ At the end of the roll her knees quickly find their place on either side of him again. Her teeth tug at his lower lip, fingers splay to sink into his hair, to cradle the back of his head and exchange her ardor for his in equal measure.
At some point she pulls back to let free her hair. To rake quick fingers through the braid to turn it to a tumble of loose copper curls that curtain them in that scent of woody roses when she bends again to kiss him, dragging their soft tickle over his chest when she tracks her kisses from mouth to jaw, to shoulder; to nip at his collarbone and smooth the spot with her tongue before she is drawn upwards again by instinct memory to fasten her mouth and draw at the place where his pulse beats just below his ear that had always made her husband gasp. ]
[ When she pulls back his hands settle on either side of her hips, taking in the shape of her before he becomes distracted by the waterfall of hair suddenly available to him. The smell is heady and fills the space between them as they kiss, and Loki can't avoid gently pulling his fingers through those curls.
She bites his collarbone and he chuckles. She bites his throat and he gasps, closing his eyes and turning his head to expose more of his neck to her. Lexie could mark him from from head to toe and he thinks he would thank her for the opportunity. One hand moves to settle against the back of her neck, before drawing thin spirals along her spine. Loki is incredibly hard again and near breathless by the time Lexie moves on from his pulse point. ]
It is too much again, but not in the way it was; it is not too much because she cannot handle the tangled onslaught of grief and joy, present and memory, every nerve alive to him, everything meaning so much more than she can understand. It is that there is too much she wants next.
Years of intimacies beg to be played again, discovered and re-discovered, distilled to bring him to where she is in time. To somehow be slow and explore the whole of him, to hear what he sounds like with her mouth around him, to mark the bared skin of his throat with lips and teeth and gentle him with murmured praise when he gasps and whines. To make him helpless and then hold him. To tease and requite at once. Everything. She wants everything.
She wants everything and doesnโt know how much time she has to have it. She had kissed her husband when he left expecting thousands more. Believing they were already hers, it was only that she had yet to spend their years together collecting them one by one like bright little flowers growing wild in the vast fields of the life they had promised one another.
The simplest want wins, urged on by the way he strains against her taut and hard: to be as close as she can, to hold him inside her.
She reaches down for him by feel alone, continuing to nip and kiss at the stretch of his neck he had offered her all the while. Gently wraps her fingers around the heated velvet of his cock as she positions herself against the tip and rocks slightly against itโ a skimming almost dip into her own heatโ and waits, as he had, for him to somehow tell her she can. ]
[ Loki's breath comes out a sharp exhalation as she touches him and brings his cock so close to her only to wait; it takes a great deal of self-control to keep his hips still at that moment. His heels press into the blankets and bedding as his fingers draw across the skin of her back. Her face is still against the skin of his neck so he can't signal his acquiescence with a look, a nod. Instead, he has to swallow, and murmur roughly: ]
Please.
[ He is not a man particularly built for begging on the surface of things, though matters of the bedroom make it changeable in that regard along with almost all others. Still. He would like to believe he will have at least a few more opportunities to prove to her just how much he is hers, if only she'll have him. ]
You have my... [ another noise, low in his throat, a quiet growl as her teeth skim some place earlier worried into a bruise blossoming beneath the skin, ] imprimatur, as it were.
[ If she pulls her mouth away from his throat he'll watch her face; otherwise, he will let his eyes shut, and his hands drift towards her hips as he remembers how to breathe all over again. ]
[ He pleads and it makes her breath catch, stolen by the way he wants her.
And then, slowly, she presses back onto him.
The moment he is seated enough in her that there is no more need for guide, her hands are seeking for his to twine with them and draw them the rest of the way to her hips as she moves.
If she has her way it will be slow; so much she wants to feel every moment of the way she fills herself with him. To show him what it does to herโ what he does to herโ with the way her head tips back as she sinks down, lips parting on panted breath that becomes half-voiced moan. She flutters around him, quick moments of her body gripping at him that she cannot help and does not want to. Nor can she help the tiny movement that rocks her hips against his when finally they meet, or the way it makes her softly whine each time she does. ]
[ She has her way; it's a slow entry, almost achingly so, and Loki's fingers entwined with hers at her hips squeeze and then relax as she settles, only for him to grasp again as her body tightens around him. Lexie looks stunning above him with her head tilted back and red hair cascading around her shoulders, making small noises that Loki wishes to memorize each note of.
The hedonist in him wants more, immediately, and he can't really help the way his hips lift off the bed to meet her as she's coming down, nor the groan of satisfaction that escapes his lips in the next moment. He is, at least, able to restrain himself enough not to start off too fast or move too harshly against her, but keeping still is simply not in the cards.
Really, he's showing remarkable discipline at this moment in time.
Loki's hands disentangle themselves from hers. One remains at her hip while the other takes a lazy path toward her navel and then down, reaching between them, thumb searching for her clit in order to rub against the sensitive skin and nerve endings he'll find there. ]
[ She knows the ways their bodies fit together, shows him with her hand on his where he can settle fingers into the crease of her hip, gives breathy murmurs of direction for the placement of his thumb until heโs rewarded with a sharp intake of breath, the slight arch of her back, another tight clench of her cunt around him when itโs right.
For all that there are shades of this that are familiar, some near identical, itโs different. They do not know each otherโs rhythms yet, the sounds that had become better than words at speaking of what is wanted, needed. What he needs, perhaps, is different. What she finds she needs may be so as well.
But Alexandrie trusts theyโll find it, something of their own. That he is so much like her husband had laid the paths of her open; that he is not her husband means she does not know what will be found along them. For the moment she is reaching back to brace her hands on his thighs, breasts lifting as she curves her back like a bow. Spreading her knees wider to lay herself open to the press of his thumb and meeting each lift of his hips with a sinuous roll of her own, letting all the little breaths and gasps and moans born from how he angles in her, how she drags against his hand, fall readily from her lips as they are made. ]
[ She has overwhelmed him, more than once, in a variety of ways during the scant few hours since their meeting on the battlefield; he's fairly interested in returning the favor, now, but there's a precarious line between overwhelm and taking the lead. He's less interested in the latter, still feeling a little emotionally raw and exposed but doing his level best to set that aside in favor of the physical. It's not difficult. Her sounds, the feel of her around his cock, the press of her hands against his thighs all push aside the emotional memory of both their tears.
It's good, like this. To be beneath her, watch her body open to him in a myriad of ways.
His hand moves up her body, from her hips along the side of her torso, fingertips spreading against muscle and ribs, before settling to cup one breast as she leans back, rolling her nipple between two fingers. His thumb continues its ministrations; Loki's goal is to bring her to orgasm, to experience that collapse of control while within her, and then see if he can't do it again. ]
[ She wants to let go. Wants to let him help her fall into herself so she can pull him along with her, but even though she can feel the low warm buzz of the building of her breaking, her body balks and turns it away in equal measure. Alexandrie, too, is still raw and needs more than skillful fingers to make her safe to shatter the way she needs to. Joined as they are, he is too far from her; she wants to press her chest to his, to have his arms around her, to feel his breath as much as hear it.
Her hands lift to take hold of the hand at her breast and pull it to her mouth so she can kiss his palm and then each finger. To press it to her cheek and turn her face into it, closing her teeth around the heel of his hand with a choked groan and squeezing her eyes shut when he moves his thumb just so and pleasure spikes sharply through her.
From there they move to splay their fingers across his chest to support her as she curves down to attempt to fasten her mouth insistently to his, finding only the corner before she pleads soft and desperate there: ]
[ There is a beauty in watching her kiss his hands, his fingers. In feeling her teeth sink into the muscle of his palm, muffling her sounds.
His hand falls away from her face as she leans in, turning his head to capture her mouth so much that he almost misses her words against his lips. Almost.
It's an easy enough thing, to do as she asks; to wrap an arm around her body and press her close, chest to chest. He imagines he can feel the beating of Lexie's heart through her skin and perhaps it is just the echo of his own he's feeling and yet. For a little while it is just their breathing and their bodies moving against one another, the twin sensation of her hair against his skin and the blankets at his back, the sound of her breath in his ear while his own turns ragged at the edges; and then he moves his thumb from it's place against her clit in order to extend an arm outward and haul the both of them upright, still chest to chest but now gravity is helping to drive her down into his lap. ]
Like this? [ He asks, hand at her back, teeth at the shell of her ear. He kisses her cheek, her temple, the corner of her eye, and then pulls his face away enough to look her in the eye, ever watchful, ever curious about her expression and her wants and her body. The movement of his hips becomes sharper as he does this, and he presses his forehead to hers as his blood pumps in his ears. ]
[ She wraps her arms around him with wild abandon as soon as he lifts the two of them free of the bed and her whisper is breathless and hoarse with passion: ]
Yes.
[ Held like thisโ his lips gentle on her, the slide of his chest against hers, the rough shallow huffs of his breath on her skin, his arm tight around herโ what had limited her falls away, lets the rising tide of sensation build and keep building until she shudders with the intensity of it, hips feverishly seeking after the more that will push her over the edge.
When she says it again, it is more prayer than answer. ]
Yes.
[ Alexandrie presses her nose hard against his, is beginning to lean to kiss him when of a sudden he hits just right and her eyes widen in surprise as she gasps sharply and breaks with a rough full-voiced cry, head snapping backward, fingers digging numbly into Loki's back as she spasms around and against him. ]
[ It takes him a little by surprise, the force of her orgasm, the look of her head back and wild, the noise she makes. A very pleasant sort of surprise, certainly, even as he knows the moment she's finished he'll be a hair's breadth away from his own.
There are worse things.
Loki watches her for as long as he can tolerate it before he buries his face in her exposed neck and breathes in deeply. He's surrounded by the smell of her perfume, by the smell of their bodies together, by the fainter scents of blood and dirt on their skin, and finds he doesn't mind any of it. He moves his face so that his forehead is resting on her shoulder as he withstands a shudder along his spine, warning him he doesn't have much time before his own nerve endings give up the ghost.
One arm remains wrapped around her while his free hand comes up to her cheek and he tilts his head again to kiss her, sweet yet devouring, as his body begins to shake. ]
[ Alexandrie doesnโt know if she believes in the Maker, but she believes in this. Wonders, as she tries to revive muscles gone weak with release so she can hold him through his own, if he has temples in his world. If there are fires lit for the God of Tricksters, if they sing him songs, murmur prayers, shake open sure and settled hearts in his name.
Wonders in her own shaken heart, as she seeks to sate the urgent hunger in his kisses with the press of open mouth and tongue and shaky hand pulling at the back of his head, if she had called him from the Fade with all the nights sheโd wept alone, with her sighs of longing. It had not rung in the four corners of the world, not been any voice but hers; but Andraste once had sung her lover back to her. Andraste once alone had been enough.
If the time comes that he cannot kiss for gasping, she will press her cheek to his and make his name a sacred sound when she calls it hoarse and quiet at his ear; if not, then she will answer kiss for kiss and let it pound in her heart and hope he hears it in her skin, in the way she tries to hold all of his body now with hers. ]
[ When he's finished shaking and falling apart to the sound of his own moans and her voice echoing his name in his ears, the feel of her around him and fingers tangled in his hair, Loki leans back with his arms behind him to keep himself upright. His body would like nothing more than to lay down, curl her into his arms and sleep that way; his mind is terrified that she'll disappear the moment he allows his eyes to close.
So instead he watches her, breathing hard in the aftermath that has left him a little lightheaded. It could just be whatever has changed about him, after falling through a hole in reality from this world's place of dreams, dreamers, magic, and gods, but he's just fine placing the blame squarely at Alexandrie's feet, thanks.
If she told him that she might have summoned him from beyond the Fade he wouldn't laugh at her. Considering he's laughed at just about anyone else who has told him that he is a figment, a matter of dreams, that's perhaps saying something.
One hand comes up to cup her cheek. He's still at a loss for words, something that happens so rarely it should probably be marked on calendars like an eclipse of the sun. ]
[ The hand that had tangled his hair is putting it to rights now, slow and languid motions that match with the weight of Alexandrie's boneless collapse against his chest. She tilts her head up to look at him when he touches her cheek and lifts her other hand to cover his.
She isโ
She doesn't know what she is. A creature with a body that wants to be curled into his arms and slept with that way; with a mind that thinks if she does she'll open her eyes in Hightown, the body curled with hers will be Gwenaรซlle's, and she will wake her dearest friend with the kind of wretched convulsive sobbing that leaves her empty and raw.
She cannot tell if the dampness beneath the cheek that rests on him is only mingled sweat or if she is crying again until a distinct drop rolls from the corner of her eye and across the bridge of her nose. She closes her eyes and curls her fingers into his hair, around the edges of his hand. Tries to listen only to the sound of his heartbeat, the slowing rise and fall of his breath beneath her. Turns her head for a moment to kiss his chest to ward away any thoughts he might have of her unhappiness. ]
[ She remains on his chest and even though she kisses his skin she won't look at him and his mind begins to spiral. In order to attempt to cut that off instead of silently falling through all the worst cases he can conceive of, he sighs and leans all the way back until his spine is flush with the bedding again, and just holds her.
Breathes in, out. Listens to the sound of the two of them there, the muffled sounds of the camp around them. Nighttime is falling and he wonders idly if someone will come and reclaim this tent or if circumstance will leave them be. His fingers go back to spirals and runic patterns on her spine.
He wants to ask if she's also afraid that this isn't real, that something terrible is going to happen, but the possibility exists that she isn't and won't be until the idea is introduced, and so he keeps quiet. ]
Even if this is real, even if she sleeps in his arms and wakes in his arms, what happens then? What happens when they have to dress, have to leave the tent, have to part?
For all that they had sharedโ the waking dream of it, the intensity, the look in his eyes, his claim that she was stuck with himโ this man is not bound to her the way she cannot help but feel she is to him, sewn to him with thread spun of fear and loneliness and wishes and love. She does love him. This him. And he isn't hers. It doesn't matter that so much is the same, he isn't hers. They have only just met. She cannot possibly mean to him what he means to her and it makes her limbs tighten around him again in her anticipation of loss.
That is the same too. The old fear that still has roots around her bones. She had shrieked at her husband long ago because of it. Now it is soft when she speaks it. ]
I am afraid that I mean little to you. That I am only the grieving wife of someone very like you and you feel no such tie to me and will not stay. Or that I have dreamed this, and you are not real at all.
[ He feels real, but so did the dream shared by the Gallows. The loss, the rebellion. Her children.
Even softer, then: ]
Do you think me a weak and foolish woman? To admit so soon, so readily, I could not bear your loss?
[ Loki's fingers on her back still their movements before he moves it to settle, palm wide, between her shoulderblades. ]
If I have any control over it, I will stay by your side. I will strive to grant you the forever you've asked of me.
[ That is easier to say he knows because he feels very little control over anything at this point in time. That doesn't feel good, exactly, but he can recognize the truth of it. ]
I don't know how to convince you of my reality. [ It feels like a heavy, impossible thing in his chest. In a world where dreams walk into reality, how does one convince another that they're not just a dream? Especially when they're unsure of themselves? ] Or of what even the possibility of you would mean to me. [ That someone loved him, once, a version of him and then himself in turn. It would warm and haunt him by turns to know that and to be removed from it. ]
But know this: I could never think you weak or foolish.
[ The Loki she married is so often circuitous. He plays with words, turns them in his hands. Builds castles of them with secret corridors for truth to dart through out of sight. Shines oblique light across his meanings, winds through the land of conversation like a meandering river with tricks and turns, delights in the cleverness of it all.
Then, sometimes, strikingly direct. Unadorned and unwavering with no back corridors for her fears to hide in; words that she can lean against with the full weight of her uncertainty and know they will not move.
This is almost of a voice, and so she trusts him. Nods where she rests against him and becomes heavy and loose again, free to let her hand go back to slowly carding through the hair that is not pressed against the pillow. To let it wander to trace the shell of his ear, find the corner of his jaw, run down the length of his nose. To touch him merely for the sake of touching him. Because she wants to. Because she can.
It is the blue of evening now, and she tries to wriggle slightly closer, reach to find the blanket and pull it more snugly around them to ward off the chill that is coming to touch the sweat on her skin and take the warmth they'd made.
[ Her touch is so gently, so exploratory, that it brings a soft sort of smile to Loki's face. When is the last time he allowed anyone to be gentle with him? When was the last time he thought he deserved it?
He's not sure he does right now, honestly. ]
It's... it doesn't bother me, exactly.
[ He sighs, settling underneath her and the blankets. It's a complicated thing, isn't it? But she's asking and he feels no particular need to lie to her about it. A strange thing, that, and one he will turn over in his mind... later, maybe. ]
It is a reminder. That I am not what I was raised to believe I was. That I'm not Asgardian but Jotun, an ice giant. [ A scoff. ] Not a particularly large one, however.
[ There is a kind of gratitude in Alexandrie, for the dark.
She misses seeing himโ the shifting beauty of his eyes with their blues and greens and sharpness and innocence, self-satisfaction and confidence and hesitance and wonder; the little private game of new-and-old she is playing with the shapes of his body, the way his hair curls, all the little fleeting expressions and the ones that form and stay.
But she likes the way it draws them close and makes speech softer, as if they were being mindful of the resting sun. The way difficult words come easier, spoken into the small space without worrying about what they might see in the other upon the hearing. And she likes the other ways it makes her see; how it means she learns him with fingertips and breath. The curve of his collarbone, of throat, of chin, of shoulder. The places where she can find the beat of his heart. Untangling the scent of him from battle and blood and leather and the ones she knows as her own and trying to breathe only that.
She will miss, she thinks when he replies, the blankets in summer. The way her husband's comfort was far too warm, and the way it became hers because all of her comfort was him. ]
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no subject
Alexandrie is not at her most beautiful. She wears none of her customary cosmetic to go to battle; it is replaced by the dust of combat, that dust cut through by the tracks of those tears that rimmed her eyes with red. Although the braid remains largely intact, the hair closest to her face is a muss of escaped tendrils, pulled half-free by his hand in them.
But in her eyes, what of them he can see in the gathering darkness, is the tranquility of a lake at sunrise. A kind of surety that can be no more denied than rain. ]
Loki.
[ It is soft, her voice a match to her eyes. The hand that traces his back withdraws, returns again as a whisper of a touch against his cheek. ]
Loving you is the easiest thing I have ever done.
It is like breath. It comes without thought; with thought it makes me calm and still. Stifled, I struggle. Taken, I die.
[ Dramatic, perhaps; but she is calm and still in saying it, as if it is something she knows as simple truth. Like rain.
Her thumb strokes along his cheekbone. ]
It is not the same, no. I would not wish it so. What is his is his.
[ A breath. ]
And what is yours is yours.
no subject
What does he have to give her in return? A fallen god, from another world far away, and yet not even the first to his name here. His heart feels like such a small thing, a fruit that was left in the sun for too long, sweetnesses all gone bitter. She deserves something whole and hale and open for her, but it's all he has to offer.
His thumb comes up to rub across the plane of her cheekbone, a perfect echo of her gesture.
Loki opens his mouth to say something and then has to shut it again when the noise he makes isn't words but a small sob.
Shutting his eyes does nothing to stop the tears, but they're going to happen anyway. ]
Alright.
[ Does he even know what, exactly, he's agreeing to?
It doesn't matter. ]
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There is quiet in her heart, finally quiet, and it beats into her body and makes her settle again against him like a sigh.
And then, on an inhale through her nose, that kiss has parted lips and asks for more. ]
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She knows him and loves him and is very much like him and the dagger settling between his ribs turns.
It is not a shock, the tonal shift; her body is warm in his arms and his body still half remembers the feel of her around him. Besides which he's mentally somewhere beyond shock in the moment, somewhere that reminds him very much of falling through the Void. Yet Lexie's parting lips bring him solidly back into his body and into the moment. He kisses back, open and passionate and wanting all over again, pulling her close just in order to roll them further in his direction. This means that she ends up on top of his chest as he lays on his back, kissing her throughout. ]
no subject
At some point she pulls back to let free her hair. To rake quick fingers through the braid to turn it to a tumble of loose copper curls that curtain them in that scent of woody roses when she bends again to kiss him, dragging their soft tickle over his chest when she tracks her kisses from mouth to jaw, to shoulder; to nip at his collarbone and smooth the spot with her tongue before she is drawn upwards again by instinct memory to fasten her mouth and draw at the place where his pulse beats just below his ear that had always made her husband gasp. ]
no subject
She bites his collarbone and he chuckles. She bites his throat and he gasps, closing his eyes and turning his head to expose more of his neck to her. Lexie could mark him from from head to toe and he thinks he would thank her for the opportunity. One hand moves to settle against the back of her neck, before drawing thin spirals along her spine. Loki is incredibly hard again and near breathless by the time Lexie moves on from his pulse point. ]
no subject
It is too much again, but not in the way it was; it is not too much because she cannot handle the tangled onslaught of grief and joy, present and memory, every nerve alive to him, everything meaning so much more than she can understand. It is that there is too much she wants next.
Years of intimacies beg to be played again, discovered and re-discovered, distilled to bring him to where she is in time. To somehow be slow and explore the whole of him, to hear what he sounds like with her mouth around him, to mark the bared skin of his throat with lips and teeth and gentle him with murmured praise when he gasps and whines. To make him helpless and then hold him. To tease and requite at once. Everything. She wants everything.
She wants everything and doesnโt know how much time she has to have it. She had kissed her husband when he left expecting thousands more. Believing they were already hers, it was only that she had yet to spend their years together collecting them one by one like bright little flowers growing wild in the vast fields of the life they had promised one another.
The simplest want wins, urged on by the way he strains against her taut and hard: to be as close as she can, to hold him inside her.
She reaches down for him by feel alone, continuing to nip and kiss at the stretch of his neck he had offered her all the while. Gently wraps her fingers around the heated velvet of his cock as she positions herself against the tip and rocks slightly against itโ a skimming almost dip into her own heatโ and waits, as he had, for him to somehow tell her she can. ]
no subject
Please.
[ He is not a man particularly built for begging on the surface of things, though matters of the bedroom make it changeable in that regard along with almost all others. Still. He would like to believe he will have at least a few more opportunities to prove to her just how much he is hers, if only she'll have him. ]
You have my... [ another noise, low in his throat, a quiet growl as her teeth skim some place earlier worried into a bruise blossoming beneath the skin, ] imprimatur, as it were.
[ If she pulls her mouth away from his throat he'll watch her face; otherwise, he will let his eyes shut, and his hands drift towards her hips as he remembers how to breathe all over again. ]
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And then, slowly, she presses back onto him.
The moment he is seated enough in her that there is no more need for guide, her hands are seeking for his to twine with them and draw them the rest of the way to her hips as she moves.
If she has her way it will be slow; so much she wants to feel every moment of the way she fills herself with him. To show him what it does to herโ what he does to herโ with the way her head tips back as she sinks down, lips parting on panted breath that becomes half-voiced moan. She flutters around him, quick moments of her body gripping at him that she cannot help and does not want to. Nor can she help the tiny movement that rocks her hips against his when finally they meet, or the way it makes her softly whine each time she does. ]
no subject
The hedonist in him wants more, immediately, and he can't really help the way his hips lift off the bed to meet her as she's coming down, nor the groan of satisfaction that escapes his lips in the next moment. He is, at least, able to restrain himself enough not to start off too fast or move too harshly against her, but keeping still is simply not in the cards.
Really, he's showing remarkable discipline at this moment in time.
Loki's hands disentangle themselves from hers. One remains at her hip while the other takes a lazy path toward her navel and then down, reaching between them, thumb searching for her clit in order to rub against the sensitive skin and nerve endings he'll find there. ]
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For all that there are shades of this that are familiar, some near identical, itโs different. They do not know each otherโs rhythms yet, the sounds that had become better than words at speaking of what is wanted, needed. What he needs, perhaps, is different. What she finds she needs may be so as well.
But Alexandrie trusts theyโll find it, something of their own. That he is so much like her husband had laid the paths of her open; that he is not her husband means she does not know what will be found along them. For the moment she is reaching back to brace her hands on his thighs, breasts lifting as she curves her back like a bow. Spreading her knees wider to lay herself open to the press of his thumb and meeting each lift of his hips with a sinuous roll of her own, letting all the little breaths and gasps and moans born from how he angles in her, how she drags against his hand, fall readily from her lips as they are made. ]
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It's good, like this. To be beneath her, watch her body open to him in a myriad of ways.
His hand moves up her body, from her hips along the side of her torso, fingertips spreading against muscle and ribs, before settling to cup one breast as she leans back, rolling her nipple between two fingers. His thumb continues its ministrations; Loki's goal is to bring her to orgasm, to experience that collapse of control while within her, and then see if he can't do it again. ]
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Her hands lift to take hold of the hand at her breast and pull it to her mouth so she can kiss his palm and then each finger. To press it to her cheek and turn her face into it, closing her teeth around the heel of his hand with a choked groan and squeezing her eyes shut when he moves his thumb just so and pleasure spikes sharply through her.
From there they move to splay their fingers across his chest to support her as she curves down to attempt to fasten her mouth insistently to his, finding only the corner before she pleads soft and desperate there: ]
Hold me.
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His hand falls away from her face as she leans in, turning his head to capture her mouth so much that he almost misses her words against his lips. Almost.
It's an easy enough thing, to do as she asks; to wrap an arm around her body and press her close, chest to chest. He imagines he can feel the beating of Lexie's heart through her skin and perhaps it is just the echo of his own he's feeling and yet. For a little while it is just their breathing and their bodies moving against one another, the twin sensation of her hair against his skin and the blankets at his back, the sound of her breath in his ear while his own turns ragged at the edges; and then he moves his thumb from it's place against her clit in order to extend an arm outward and haul the both of them upright, still chest to chest but now gravity is helping to drive her down into his lap. ]
Like this? [ He asks, hand at her back, teeth at the shell of her ear. He kisses her cheek, her temple, the corner of her eye, and then pulls his face away enough to look her in the eye, ever watchful, ever curious about her expression and her wants and her body. The movement of his hips becomes sharper as he does this, and he presses his forehead to hers as his blood pumps in his ears. ]
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Yes.
[ Held like thisโ his lips gentle on her, the slide of his chest against hers, the rough shallow huffs of his breath on her skin, his arm tight around herโ what had limited her falls away, lets the rising tide of sensation build and keep building until she shudders with the intensity of it, hips feverishly seeking after the more that will push her over the edge.
When she says it again, it is more prayer than answer. ]
Yes.
[ Alexandrie presses her nose hard against his, is beginning to lean to kiss him when of a sudden he hits just right and her eyes widen in surprise as she gasps sharply and breaks with a rough full-voiced cry, head snapping backward, fingers digging numbly into Loki's back as she spasms around and against him. ]
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There are worse things.
Loki watches her for as long as he can tolerate it before he buries his face in her exposed neck and breathes in deeply. He's surrounded by the smell of her perfume, by the smell of their bodies together, by the fainter scents of blood and dirt on their skin, and finds he doesn't mind any of it. He moves his face so that his forehead is resting on her shoulder as he withstands a shudder along his spine, warning him he doesn't have much time before his own nerve endings give up the ghost.
One arm remains wrapped around her while his free hand comes up to her cheek and he tilts his head again to kiss her, sweet yet devouring, as his body begins to shake. ]
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Wonders in her own shaken heart, as she seeks to sate the urgent hunger in his kisses with the press of open mouth and tongue and shaky hand pulling at the back of his head, if she had called him from the Fade with all the nights sheโd wept alone, with her sighs of longing. It had not rung in the four corners of the world, not been any voice but hers; but Andraste once had sung her lover back to her. Andraste once alone had been enough.
If the time comes that he cannot kiss for gasping, she will press her cheek to his and make his name a sacred sound when she calls it hoarse and quiet at his ear; if not, then she will answer kiss for kiss and let it pound in her heart and hope he hears it in her skin, in the way she tries to hold all of his body now with hers. ]
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So instead he watches her, breathing hard in the aftermath that has left him a little lightheaded. It could just be whatever has changed about him, after falling through a hole in reality from this world's place of dreams, dreamers, magic, and gods, but he's just fine placing the blame squarely at Alexandrie's feet, thanks.
If she told him that she might have summoned him from beyond the Fade he wouldn't laugh at her. Considering he's laughed at just about anyone else who has told him that he is a figment, a matter of dreams, that's perhaps saying something.
One hand comes up to cup her cheek. He's still at a loss for words, something that happens so rarely it should probably be marked on calendars like an eclipse of the sun. ]
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She isโ
She doesn't know what she is. A creature with a body that wants to be curled into his arms and slept with that way; with a mind that thinks if she does she'll open her eyes in Hightown, the body curled with hers will be Gwenaรซlle's, and she will wake her dearest friend with the kind of wretched convulsive sobbing that leaves her empty and raw.
She cannot tell if the dampness beneath the cheek that rests on him is only mingled sweat or if she is crying again until a distinct drop rolls from the corner of her eye and across the bridge of her nose. She closes her eyes and curls her fingers into his hair, around the edges of his hand. Tries to listen only to the sound of his heartbeat, the slowing rise and fall of his breath beneath her. Turns her head for a moment to kiss his chest to ward away any thoughts he might have of her unhappiness. ]
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Breathes in, out. Listens to the sound of the two of them there, the muffled sounds of the camp around them. Nighttime is falling and he wonders idly if someone will come and reclaim this tent or if circumstance will leave them be. His fingers go back to spirals and runic patterns on her spine.
He wants to ask if she's also afraid that this isn't real, that something terrible is going to happen, but the possibility exists that she isn't and won't be until the idea is introduced, and so he keeps quiet. ]
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Even if this is real, even if she sleeps in his arms and wakes in his arms, what happens then? What happens when they have to dress, have to leave the tent, have to part?
For all that they had sharedโ the waking dream of it, the intensity, the look in his eyes, his claim that she was stuck with himโ this man is not bound to her the way she cannot help but feel she is to him, sewn to him with thread spun of fear and loneliness and wishes and love. She does love him. This him. And he isn't hers. It doesn't matter that so much is the same, he isn't hers. They have only just met. She cannot possibly mean to him what he means to her and it makes her limbs tighten around him again in her anticipation of loss.
That is the same too. The old fear that still has roots around her bones. She had shrieked at her husband long ago because of it. Now it is soft when she speaks it. ]
I am afraid that I mean little to you. That I am only the grieving wife of someone very like you and you feel no such tie to me and will not stay. Or that I have dreamed this, and you are not real at all.
[ He feels real, but so did the dream shared by the Gallows. The loss, the rebellion. Her children.
Even softer, then: ]
Do you think me a weak and foolish woman? To admit so soon, so readily, I could not bear your loss?
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If I have any control over it, I will stay by your side. I will strive to grant you the forever you've asked of me.
[ That is easier to say he knows because he feels very little control over anything at this point in time. That doesn't feel good, exactly, but he can recognize the truth of it. ]
I don't know how to convince you of my reality. [ It feels like a heavy, impossible thing in his chest. In a world where dreams walk into reality, how does one convince another that they're not just a dream? Especially when they're unsure of themselves? ] Or of what even the possibility of you would mean to me. [ That someone loved him, once, a version of him and then himself in turn. It would warm and haunt him by turns to know that and to be removed from it. ]
But know this: I could never think you weak or foolish.
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Then, sometimes, strikingly direct. Unadorned and unwavering with no back corridors for her fears to hide in; words that she can lean against with the full weight of her uncertainty and know they will not move.
This is almost of a voice, and so she trusts him. Nods where she rests against him and becomes heavy and loose again, free to let her hand go back to slowly carding through the hair that is not pressed against the pillow. To let it wander to trace the shell of his ear, find the corner of his jaw, run down the length of his nose. To touch him merely for the sake of touching him. Because she wants to. Because she can.
It is the blue of evening now, and she tries to wriggle slightly closer, reach to find the blanket and pull it more snugly around them to ward off the chill that is coming to touch the sweat on her skin and take the warmth they'd made.
After she does so, with a quiet curiosity: ]
Do you hate to be cold?
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He's not sure he does right now, honestly. ]
It's... it doesn't bother me, exactly.
[ He sighs, settling underneath her and the blankets. It's a complicated thing, isn't it? But she's asking and he feels no particular need to lie to her about it. A strange thing, that, and one he will turn over in his mind... later, maybe. ]
It is a reminder. That I am not what I was raised to believe I was. That I'm not Asgardian but Jotun, an ice giant. [ A scoff. ] Not a particularly large one, however.
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She misses seeing himโ the shifting beauty of his eyes with their blues and greens and sharpness and innocence, self-satisfaction and confidence and hesitance and wonder; the little private game of new-and-old she is playing with the shapes of his body, the way his hair curls, all the little fleeting expressions and the ones that form and stay.
But she likes the way it draws them close and makes speech softer, as if they were being mindful of the resting sun. The way difficult words come easier, spoken into the small space without worrying about what they might see in the other upon the hearing. And she likes the other ways it makes her see; how it means she learns him with fingertips and breath. The curve of his collarbone, of throat, of chin, of shoulder. The places where she can find the beat of his heart. Untangling the scent of him from battle and blood and leather and the ones she knows as her own and trying to breathe only that.
She will miss, she thinks when he replies, the blankets in summer. The way her husband's comfort was far too warm, and the way it became hers because all of her comfort was him. ]
Does that matter? [ Clarification: ] The last.
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