#this is the One insofar as my exarch-postings go....

[crystalsexarch]

the little-death - crystal exarch - e

The Warrior blinks her eyes open, though she’s still but half awake. The light of the First dances through her window onto bits of dust, and she makes of it a certain haze, a mist, like the Pendants exist somewhere outside of time and place. Everything is blue. Everything is so, so quiet.

Twenty-nine - free day

Crystal Exarch. This became explicit, but it's really about pain and character growth. Ambiguous female WoL wakes to find her partner already up and troubled by the nature of his own survival.

More writing and sinning available here.

Don’t forget to submit your own request...bb

It must be early. She can already tell her lover has risen, but she suspects he hasn’t traveled far. She considers going back to sleep - rolling over into G’raha’s space and enjoying the ghost-warmth he’d left behind - but when she finds the spot cold, she lowers her brow.

At first she doesn’t catch him in the far corner of the room, standing robeless before the mirror. Likewise, he is oblivious to her awakening. His own body occupies him well enough; his own body and its flaws. No dream or disturbance brought him from the Warrior’s embrace. There had come a point in the early morning where his eyes simply opened, and in his head he found thoughts of G’raha Tia of the Source, of young muscle and mismatched eyes.

Gazing at his naked flesh, he tries to decide whether he is proud of having been that man or ashamed to have become somebody else.

The Warrior eyes him through her sleep-haze. If she cocks her head just right she catches his face reflected back at her, ignorant still of her gaze. He looks instead into his own eyes and drags his fingers down his cheeks, lets his left hand catch at the cut of crystal carved into him. And as it catches, his lips tremble.

She shuffles at his pain, not meaning to attract his attention - but his eyes shift to her reflection nonetheless. Before she can speak, he chokes a gasp and collapses to his knees.

“Raha - “

She’s out of bed soon enough, her own legs awake enough to bring her to him.

He hides his face in his hands and grits his teeth. The sudden rush of her body at his back, of the warmth of her arms around his neck only reinforce the idea that she comforts him more than he could ever comfort her. He and his body of crystal. He and his plague of guilt. He and his falsehoods, misfortunes, and fronts. For all his years, he has grown only better at wasting time.

“I...meant not to wake you,” he says.

“You didn’t.” Her voice floats to his ears.

Even in angst, he leans into her, cranes his neck to her embrace. “There is poison in my thinking. Poisoning me.”

“Let me take it from you.”

He sobs once and holds his elbows to keep his arms from shaking. “I would not have you likewise afflicted…”

“Then let me help.” She starts to rub his shoulders, but he twists his crystal arm away and buckles forward until his forehead is mere ilms from the wooden panels of the floor. Surprised, she lets her hands fall away. The muscles of his back surge with his heavy breaths. Only when he has breathed several cycles, does she set her fingers on his shoulder blade. “You are...hurting.”

There’s little he thinks he can do to keep himself from whipping the pace of his breaths to a frenzy. Between gasps, he exclaims something he hadn’t put into words before speaking them aloud:

“I’m so afraid!”

The room, nay the world is quiet, but for the Exarch’s ragged breaths. Not even the Warrior has words for him in those moments.

But she is yet thinking. She has been this same coil of pain and grief and burden. She has bled air onto the floor and gasped. She has rocked herself into exhaustion and sought comfort from the cold earth. She has needed as he needs, but - the cure eludes her.

Getting it out - whatever it was supposed to be - gives him a reprieve. He is able to keep his eyes open and process the wooden knots of the floor before him for a moment. Too soon, the lines warp with the return of his tears. His arms come forward in impulse, and he knows his body wants to hide itself, but she’s got him - she’s got him for better or for worse - she’s got her fingers wrapped around his forearms -

And she kisses the back of his neck thinking it is what she would have wished for in her darker moments - for affection and companionship.

But he thinks of fear. My life is ruled by fear even as I lie with the greatest force known to any reflection.

A reflection, as it happens, sits before him.

He raises his head and looks mirroward with eyes now tinged red. Though the Warrior’s eyes are closed, he sees somehow that their faces are not so dissimilar as he once may have thought. Tears have trailed down her cheeks as well, and stress has knit her eyebrows high.

She feels him raise his head and opens one eye. Her lover stares at her through the mirror, and she stares back at him until blush paints her cheeks instead of pain. “Look at us,” she laughs through her tears.

His own laugh dies in his throat. “I…”

“It is far too early to have shed so many tears.”

He swallows and uses the mirror to find her fingers with his own. “I am…”

“Don’t you say you’re sorry.” She presses her face into his back, unapologetically serious. He can feel it on his skin. “The only time you’ll be sorry is if you try to keep your suffering from me again.”

A chill runs through him. “My love...I just...Iam loathe to burden you with anything more than I already have.”

She shakes her head. “No. No burden.”

“I - “

“You are allowed to be afraid. You are allowed to need.” She pulls away and forces him to look at her true face instead of her reflection. “So tell me what you need.”

The whole of his body, the strength of the Tower even, can do nothing to stop the surge of emotion that flushes from his chest throughout the rest of his body. He can barely relay his next found truth. “I confess,” he says. “I know not what I need...but what I want is…”

Lips part. Hearts beat. The Warrior looks to the side in prescient bliss. “Take it…”

When he presses his mouth upon hers, he leaves little room for escalation. They twist until he has found his way on top of her. If lust hadn’t riddled his mind, he may have felt ridiculous for crying in one moment and straddling her the next, but his arousal was greater than his inhibition. As they had woken, they lie already naked on the floor, with no robes, armor, or smallclothes to remove. Already they had locked together in one space - now longing for an additional connection.

“Is this all right?” he hisses, drawing his hand to her slit. “The floor?”

She bites back a moan to answer. “Anywhere. Here, now.” She winces as he pushes a finger inside. “Take me. Take me all.”

The idea was to warm her up, but as her hands find his member he grows increasingly impatient - increasingly willing to be as impolite as she - but he holds back until he can slot another finger in her heat and press at an angle he knows will weaken her vitality.

“Ah! Raha!”

He fingers her and leans so he can feel her nipples on his chest. She loves the kiss of crystal on her, inside her. What he curses, she relishes and craves. She arches her back to get more of it, and more of him.

When he withholds a few motions longer, she bites his tongue, and he pulls away gasping and red hot. “Very well,” he says. “If...if you insist.”

“I do.” She’s melting beneath him, begging him to bring her back together. “I do, Raha.”

He feels his lower lip tremble. There is so much power in fear. So much ambiguity. So much that drives and resists, propels and prevents. Fear wages and wins wars, makes martyrs and cowards alike.

G’raha sets his forehead upon her neck and pushes himself inside, inhaling sharply. When he can go no farther, he breathes out into her hair.

“Gods…”

“My...Warrior…”

And when he starts to move, she twitches her hips up. It’s always that first push that frenzies. From now on, she knows she will fight only for pleasure: her own and his. She can see his tail lashing and stiffening with his thrusts. Though she can’t quite reach its base, she knows she can please him just as well by rubbing either of his ears.

He groans when she reaches the tip and pauses so he doesn’t embarrass himself. “Do you want me to - to touch you?” he says.

“Should it...please you…”

“It would…” He raises himself on his right arm and sets his left at her clit, but she pushes it away.

“The other is not lesser.”

He looks to the side, face as red as his hair, and readjusts so his clumsy crystal fingers can rub at her center.

“Just...like that…”

The words…excite him...

Deeply he moves, hoping he can survive another wave each time. When she squirms at his touch, he feels release building, and each time it grows too strong, he looks away so the sight of her lustful form beneath him begets not an early climax.

Soon, she gets tired of him trying to delay the inevitable. As long as she’d like to have him inside her, she is ravenous and knows he’s holding back. She wraps one arm and one leg around him, forcing him down onto one elbow. Knowing he wants to mark her, she shifts her head to press against her shoulder.

The idea that she wants his teeth on her skin makes his eyes water. The last of his courtesy is gone. Muscle memory propels his crystal fingers to work, but he can no longer focus on anything but chasing the thrust that will send him over the edge.

She’s pulsing by the time he clamps down on her neck, hoping the rhythm of her orgasm will intensify his. He holds and holds and holds her with his teeth until his tongue lolls onto her skin to the tune of a savage groan. Even after she’s certain he’s pumped as much seed into her as either of them can manage, he continues thrusting until his grunts become whimpers and he lets fall his body onto her chest.

Time has passed since the blue morning that brought them together, awakened.

The sun shines into the room and hits the mirror so it half-lights their connected, sweat-covered bodies. But neither of them sees. They have closed their eyes. Anything they could think of saying has already been said - or is instead already known through the heat they share. The sun they make between themselves.

But eventually, he is the one to rise, only to kiss her forehead and brush the wet hairs from her face. He smiles, for he knows through her he can become someone new, not quite G’raha nor Exarch. Something better. Something that can follow her forever, or as long as she’d have him. This is the weight he will bear, the one to keep him burning himself away. From burning her away. From burning.

He closes his eyes.

“I love you.”