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Things aren’t beautiful all on their own, beautiful comes from reflection. Beautiful takes a person who makes a connection.
“Beautiful” - Ordinary days
“You should get some sleep.”
Rin peers down and finds Kitay looking at her from the bedroll with his chin resting on his fist. How long had she been lost in thought that she hadn’t noticed he was awake?
“I didn’t realize it was my turn already.”
Kitay shrugs. It looks awkward with him still half-laying down and Rin’s heart pangs with affection.
“I don’t think it is, but what is the point of you staying awake when I am not sleeping shit?”
“But you should sleep a little.”
He rolls his eyes, and Rin wants to throw something at him.
“We both know you are more important than I am,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Don’t say that.”
Rin understands what he is trying to say- she will be the one fighting tomorrow, and both their lives will be hanging on her precision, reflexes, and celerity. But on a more existential level, the statement hangs heavy in her heart. She has not been immune herself to these ideas before- to believe him second, to imagine him as only the tail to her comet- but it is not something she wants to perpetuate.
Definitely not something she wants him to believe.
Kitay concedes and pats the bed roll by his side.
“Lay down with me and whoever doesn’t fall asleep will keep guard.”
Ah, so he is not conceding, he is just spinning a narrative to make it easier for her to swallow her pride and get her to do what he wants, and really, this is how in many ways he is the one who holds the upper hand between them.
“And what if we both fall asleep?” She is fighting him out of sheer instinct: she is already taking off the outer layer of her clothing.
“Then we both would have gotten some sleep for a fucking change before getting killed.”
She slips inside the bed roll and punches him in the shoulder for good measure. Kitay grins like a fool, and opens his arms so she can comfortably scoot closer and press her face against his chest, inhaling hard on the scent of him- the fabric of his shirt, the natural smell of his skin, sweat from their regular work day and smoke from the fires that is still hanging on his hair.
It has taken her two seconds to drop the pretense that they are still focusing on what lies immediately ahead, that the assault they are planning for tomorrow is the only thing on her mind. Maybe they should have been doing this a long time ago; it definitely would have helped them sleep better. At the same time, it is getting easier and easier for her to get lost in him every time, to forget that while they might only need each other, there is so much they still want to do in the real world.
“Copper for your thoughts?”
“Only a copper? I think by now my thoughts are at least worth a silver.”
Kitay chuckles and Rin closes her eyes, letting the sound rumble pleasantly through her body.
“Don’t flatter yourself there, big shot.” He kisses the top of her head and Rin hangs tighter onto his shirt. “Two coppers. Last offer.”
She ponders for a moment over her reply; they don’t lie to each other- he would probably know it even if she tried- but that doesn’t mean they have to tell each other everything. The bond has been eating at their individuality in such a way that they have accepted it without a fight, but for all that Rin loves how it makes them closer, she also loves their differences, loves being able to still surprise and even impress him.
They could talk about Arlong, but they have talked about Arlong for hours on end, and nothing good can come out of worrying about it more; it will either work or it won’t, but their fates are already sealed about it. Instead, they can still treasure a night of each other’s company before they throw their lives once again into a spiral of chaos and work and blood.
“I have been thinking about what Daji said to us.” Kitay tenses at just the mention of the name and she smooths her hand down his ribs to calm him down.
“What?”
It is a bit surprising even for herself that this is where her mind went when she let it roam free away from war business. She can not pretend that it is not something that has popped occasionally into her mind, only to be quashed down every time because she doesn’t need anything else from him: he is her best friend, her partner both in crime and in life, her bridge to the gods, her soulmate, what else there is to ask from another person?
The answer is obvious and Rin has been suppressing it down viciously, but if she can’t voice her deepest desires now, in the dark, close enough to him that their hearts are beating in synch, in which may as well be their last night on Earth, she will never let them out.
So she lets them out.
“That bit about the bond making sleeping together something special.”
Kitay inhales sharply and his arms drop down from the embrace he was holding her in. She lets him traverse his initial reaction without pressure but doesn’t stop holding onto his waist.
When he talks again, his voice is trembling. Rin strains her senses, trying to understand if it’s because of nerves or distaste, but her heart is pounding too loudly inside her ears to let her hear anything else.
“And what do you think about it?”
Such a Kitay way to respond, to not pronounce himself one way or the other, to wait for her to say what she wants so he can follow along. She doesn’t want this to be like that.
“What do you?” She stresses the pronoun with a gentle press of her good hand on his hip. No fucking way out of this but telling me the truth, Kitay. You know I can handle it.
It takes him a long time to reply. It grates on her nerves, but maybe it is a good thing he forces her to develop her patience. It isn’t easy, but it is good.
“For the longest time,” he finally begins in a low but steady voice. Rin wonders how many iterations he did in record time of this speech in his head before he deemed it good enough to be voiced. “I thought it wasn't something I needed or even wanted. And I definitely don't need it. Could live like this forever.”
Rin can agree with the sentiment; it is not surprising that they agree about this, the same way that they are in synchronicity about many things. But they are far from the lowest stages of existence to need to worry only about what they need. If they are taking over a country, they can decide to live above the barest needs for survival.
“But do you want it?”
“With you? Of course I do.” Rin feels a rush of relief at his words. It is not only the anticipation of the possibilities that might be opening for them; she doesn’t know how she could have dealt with them wanting divergent things. “The bond is always tugging at my soul, feeding my thirst for you. I can only imagine you feel it too. Our souls are as tight as two souls can be. It makes only sense that our bodies would crave each other.”
It takes her only a split second to make her decision; she raises herself a little so their chests are still pressed together, but her eyes can now discern the shadows for the well-known curve of his profile, the slope of his nose, his messy curls, his half-opened mouth.
“I don’t want it to make sense, Kitay. I just want you.”
“Do you now.” It is not a question: it is a doubt.
Oh, so maybe he needs some reassurance. That’s okay; Rin can both understand where he is coming from and fulfill the role he needs. She fists his shirt in her left hand and uses the cloth to pull him down until their faces are just a couple of inches from each other She considers for just a second asking for more explicit permission, but they have given each other plenty of signals, and this is Kitay: there is a point in life in which people have to just trust each other, and they have run circles around it a thousand times.
Rin surges forward and kisses him.
It is a flawed kiss: their lips are chapped from too many months without proper care, they are both clumsy and the position is not ideal.
It is a perfect kiss: an electric jolt surges from the point of contact of their lips to the tip of her toes, and Rin is reminded of when they got reunited in Arabak, how it felt like a new piece of her soul fell perfectly on its slot, filling her to the brim with satisfaction and warmth. It is an addictive sensation, and she rolls sideways so they are both lying on their side and she can hold onto his cheeks, press their lips harder together, and open her mouth hungrily for his tongue.
There is not much Rin knows about kissing; bits and pieces of information she caught here and there from Venka and Niang, and whatever she imagined in fantasies she entertained during rare lonely nights. But it doesn’t seem to matter, because this is not about what a kiss normally is, or about what a kiss should be, this is about a bond of the souls that is expanding towards their bodies, this is about a love she can not measure, a love that she can not even imagine how to measure, and about showing him this universe that blooms inside her chest that is infinite but contains only the two of them.
When they break apart Rin lets out an involuntary whine, but the short distance comes with its own kind of newfound marvels: discovering Kitay’s dilated pupils and his ragged breathing, and seeing reflected on him the rush of desire setting aflame her entire body.
“I just- I need a minute.” Rin can relate. She keeps close to him until both of their breathings steady a bit and she is wondering how she will be able to ever let go of him now when Kitay chuckles and strokes her lower lip with his thumb. “If I had known kissing felt like this, I might have tried it a long time ago.”
She sticks her tongue out at him and what a great thing that they can still be them even after this.
“That’s because it was me, you asshole!”
“I know.”
There has always been something about the way he looks at her like she holds the moon and the stars behind her eyelids. Rin has accepted it like she has accepted his unwavering loyalty and the sacrifices he is willing to make for her: there was no point in questioning them because she never had something like it, and she was famished for it. Now, here, that they are Rin and her Kitay, but also a man and a woman, she can’t help blushing at seeing the same captivation in his eyes.
“It's my first kiss too,” she confesses in a whisper, a little to try to match his honesty and a little because she needs a distraction from the well of emotions piling in between her ribs.
“Yeah? You and Nezha never-?”
“No.” She suppresses the memory of the sole time her lips touched Nezha’s while she was drowning. Not accepting that as a kiss doesn’t erase the fact that she wanted Nezha to kiss her (especially that fateful time that only ended with his knife kissing her back), something she is sure Kitay knows. That is a fact that doesn’t need to be erased, because that desire doesn’t take away from this experience at all. “You would know if I had.”
“Good.” He moves closer and kisses her again.
She lets him take the reins of this kiss, his hands curling around her hip and her shoulder, his teeth sharp against the tender insides of her lips. It is odd to see him being somewhat possessive when he is usually calm, collected, sometimes even infuriatingly composed. Rin finds that she likes it.
She breaks them apart and feels somewhat disappointed by the darkness because she can not see his face clearly, though she can imagine it.
“Yeah? Why is it good?” She is prodding him, looking for something though she is not sure exactly what.
“Because we have shared everything. And now we can share this too.” The tenderness is all-encompassing; it is in his voice, in his words, in his fingers that are drawing circles around her hip.
“And what is this you want to share, exactly?” She is not that naive, she is teasing him, wanting to hear the answer from his lips. Make sure that, as it usually happens, what is in his mind is the same thing that she wants. Kitay doesn't seem to mind.
“Anything you want.” It is not a dodgy answer, like before when he was trying to elude the responsibility of choosing to put her desires first; this is an expression of his desire, it is an offering without restrictions, and Rin feels herself choking on the immensity of it.
“I love you,” she says, because it’s true, because there is not much else she can say. She doesn’t stop to wonder if something has shifted, if this statement is somehow different from the handful of times she has told him before or the many times she has thought it. It doesn’t really matter.
“I know.” There is a smile in his voice, this way he talks sometimes like there is a sun shining from inside his throat, and Rin has always wanted to absorb it inside her skin. Now she can, so she does, her lips insistent against his but also her hand slipping under his shirt, hungry for his skin.
In the last five years, they have touched each other innumerable times, they have slept together, they have seen each other naked, both in matter and in spirit, and they have witnessed each other growing up and maturing into themselves. But now everything is charged, and Rin can sympathize when Kitay moans inside the kiss when her fingers stroke around his navel. She is aware that it is a vicious circle, touching him is pleasurable both because she is touching him and because she can vaguely feel what it’s like for him to be touched. It is more like the echo of a sensation than a sensation itself, but it feeds into her own senses and overwhelms her all the same.
It becomes a feverish necessity to keep on raising those stimuli, and Rin breaks apart from his mouth to move down his neck and his sternum with kisses, the heat of the moment going rapidly to her head. For all that she has vaguely thought about going through this experience before, nothing can compare with the real thing.
Kitay trembles under her ministrations and Rin can only think about how much more responsive he would be to bolder actions on her part. She pushes his shirt upwards until he gets the hint and messily takes it off, one of the sleeves catching on his thumb. It could be a little silly, but it is not: it is a testament to his want for her, to the very real way she can have power over his body, and it sets aflame a new hunger in her gut, different but similar to the one she sometimes gets for ashes and destruction and blood.
She lets her hand and her lips roam freely over his chest, his abdomen, his arms, both relishing all the things she knows about his body by heart- many being scars that are twinned to hers- and treasuring the new things she is getting to learn: his skin filled with goosebumps, how he moans when she strokes his sensitive ribs, how she is only now realizing that he might be lean and skinny, but he is still bigger than her.
“Rin, stop.”
“Why?” She snaps at the request, a bit testy. She had just discovered that he pants when she swirls his nipples with her tongue, and a pause was not anywhere on her plan.
“Come here.” He pulls her upwards until they are again chest to chest, his hands soft but sure on her back. “I want to see you too.”
“Okay.”
For the first time, she is glad for the darkness surrounding them. She wants to give him everything and also wants, selfishly, for him to touch her everywhere, but being naked under scrutiny doesn’t rank high on her list of things that sound remotely pleasurable. She takes off her shirt before the second thoughts hit, and looks away to not be confronted even with the possibility of disappointment on his face.
He has seen it all already, the logical part of her brain tries to tell her.
Yes, but not like this, responds a scared part that she likes to pretend she left stranded in Tikany.
The internal struggle means she misses when Kitay does something unexpected: he stretches his arm towards the flap of the tent and yanks it open.
Rin lets out an undignified squeal when the cold breeze hits her bare skin.
“Kitay, anyone could walk on us!”
“Who cares.” His face is now half hidden in darker shadows, half bathed in soft moonlight, and what she can see on it makes her breath catch despite the shame over her nudity. He strokes reverent fingers up and down her sides and Rin doesn’t feel ticklish exactly but like that simple touch is bringing her to a heightened state of being. “You are so beautiful.”
“I am not.”
She is not fishing for more compliments or faking modesty. She knows what beautiful means: it means Nezha under the moonlight, Altan surrounded in flames, Venka biting down on her lip while she aims her bow. It can even mean Kitay made of pure light during the bonding of their souls. It definitely doesn’t mean this poor thing that is her scarred, battered, dark body.
Kitay uses his elbows to push them both upwards, and now they are both sitting, her over his lap, their legs circling each other, bare skin against bare skin, and Rin almost melts with how strong it feels. He is holding her close, his arms around her waist, his gruff cheeks against hers. The position leaves no space between them, nothing left to the imagination and just feeling his erection snuggled against the curve of her ass is enough to make her want to catch fire.
She is also glad he is not looking at her anymore, but she should have known better than to think Kitay would let her self-deprecating comment go.
“To me, you are.” His voice is soft, his words sweet as honey, but his touch is rougher than before, his hands heavier.
It takes Rin a moment to understand what he is trying to do: he is mapping all the skin at his disposition with his fingers, full of reverence but also full of desire, the scars, the bumps, the ridges, the parts where it hurts and the parts where the phantom pain is worse than the physical one. He is making her anew with his hands and his love, allowing her to feel herself the way he sees her.
It feels like being born again, perfect not because she is different but because he loves her just the way she is.
It is too much, too big of a feeling to be contained inside her body, and like she always does when she is confronted with something bigger than she can handle, she lashes out with the first thing she can find. Kitay is lucky she doesn’t pummel him into the ground, because how dares he, this is a feeling that could make her resort to violence just to be able to escape it. Instead, she pulls him into a rough kiss, licking at the inside of his mouth, biting at his lips, her nails leaving angry marks on his back, the background pain echoing from him helping soothe her rampant heart.
She knows he can handle pain, and she is also not surprised that he doesn’t complain about her roughness. They are the same in a lot of ways, and they have not talked about it, but Rin is sure that using pain as a way to calm the mind and even as a gateway to pleasure is one of them.
He matches the pace she is setting and soon her head is spinning from the teeth marks he is leaving on her breasts and the grace of his cheeks against the sensitive skin of her chest; if she gets beard rash from Kitay she is going fucking insane.
They might be past the point of no return for that.
Rin rocks back and forth almost instinctively against him and feels rewarded when Kitay drops his head and curses.
“Fuck, Rin.”
“Getting there.”
It is a jab, a tongue-in-cheek defiance, but it gives them both pause. She has let her panic and her fear of inadequacy take the reins of this situation, but this is not about that at all. She looks at him and she is glad now that he opened the flap of the tent to let the moonlight in because she can see his lovely freckles, his lips puffed by her own doing, his loving eyes.
This is Kitay, she can not forget that, and that he can make her feel emotions well beyond the capacity of her heart has always been a blessing and not a curse.
He peppers her face with soft kisses. Rin closes her eyes, basking in the attention, in being able to feel her heartbeat slowing down to match his.
“Thank you.”
“What for?”
For giving me half of your soul and all of your body. For following me into treason and into hell. For making me believe that I can be beautiful. For wanting me the same way I want you.
“For everything.”
“Always.” He could have said you are welcome or it is nothing . But he said always, and how can she not love him when he is the only constant her life has had besides rage and pain? “Always, Rin.”
It is her name on his lips that is the final straw for her. She disentangles herself from him, not without sorrow- Kitay agrees if his groan is anything to go by- and stands up. Without ceremony and without pause, she takes off all her remaining clothes. She is fully exposed to him now, her stump, her chopped hair, her mud-colored skin. The revenge of her body for the contempt she has used against it all her life written in scars and discolored patches. The gifts in branding pain that men have used as payback for her love.
Kitay has seen into her mind and has experienced her shame, her hatred, her rage. He has pulled her back from the edge of madness. And yet, this is the thing that Rin fears might make him leave.
This time she is looking at him intently, and how is it possible that for the first time she can not tell what is going on inside his mind?
Kitay moves to his knees and Rin trembles in anticipation even before he touches her.
“I once read a book,” he begins after pushing her closer so his face is almost hidden against her belly. She almost can’t believe that he is talking about a book when she is naked in front of him, his lips are on her skin and her hands are on his hair, but it is Kitay, so of course she can believe it, “about mugenese art history.” Rin can’t help but tense; Mugen has always been a sore topic between them, and if anything could heighten her shame right now, it is that memory. Kitay, obviously foreseeing her reaction, prevents her from recoiling apart by holding onto her thighs, and keeps interspersing the talking with kisses all over her belly and her hips until Rin accepts that he didn't bring it up to hurt her, but that he is trying to get to a different point. “There is this technique called kintsugi that is used to repair broken pottery.”
“Pottery, Kitay? Really?” He is moving down his kisses to her inner thighs, his breathing warm on her sex, and it is getting harder for Rin to stand upright, let alone understand what kind of fucking metaphor he is trying to tell her.
He keeps on going like she has not spoken, leaving kisses like butterflies on her folds, slick and warm and so incredibly needy, and Rin has to grab onto his shoulders when her knees threaten to give out.
“When a piece gets broken, they use a lacquer mixed with gold dust to fill in the cracks. The breaks become something beautiful, a part of the history of the object to be celebrated, not a shameful mistake to be hidden.”
Why does he do this?
(She knows exactly why.)
Couldn’t they have sex and be done with it instead of him trying to mend her fucking soul in the process?
(This is exactly why she is having sex with him.)
“Are you calling me a broken fucking vase?”
He looks up at her from his knees, and Rin’s breath catches in her throat: his pupils are overblown, his cheeks flushed dark enough to hide his freckles, and his lips are shiny- she doesn’t know if from their earlier kisses or from her own wetness, and the sight is enough to light a fire between her legs.
“I called you beautiful and you backtalked me like a fucking child, Runin, so I thought a more detailed explanation of how I see you was in order.”
She runs her fingers through his overgrown curls and he closes his eyes, leaning into the touch. She needs him to know that she appreciates what he is doing, but also that she needs something else from him now.
“That’s pretty and all, but do you think you could lick me before the sun comes out?”
Kitay snorts but, always obliging, also pushes her closer until his nose is so close to her clitoris that just the body warmth is enough to make her writhe. He starts small, tentative, his tongue exploring her while he holds her open with his fingers, and in true Kitay’s fashion when he gets familiarized with a subject, he quickly grows enthusiastic and overachieving. He knows the rest of her body better than anyone else, he can’t be blamed for trying to pass this last exam with flying colors.
Rin notices him shaking under her hands, and if just a tiny fraction of her pleasure is reverberating on him through the bond, she can only commend him for how much in control he still is.
There is the physical stimulation, there is the newness of it all, there are all the months of building tension and stress being condensed into a tight knot inside of her. There is the fact that is him touching her, and Rin can’t even find it within herself to feel embarrassed when after a long time of kissing and touching and sharing new and old intimacy, the heat builds inside of her like fireworks and she comes on his tongue after only a handful of minutes.
She collapses on top of him, and Kitay catches her in his arms despite his respiration being so hectic that his whole ribcage is trembling. Gods, there is sweat running down his temples and the blush has completely overtaken his chest and his ears and he hasn’t even taken off his trousers yet. Rin runs a lazy, appreciative hand down his face and he catches the palm with a kiss.
“I am gonna fuck you up so bad.”
Kitay laughs, a full belly laugh that Rin doesn’t remember hearing from him… gods, maybe since Sinegard? His eyes are gleaming with mirth and she awfully wants for things tomorrow to go well, but if they don’t maybe it will be okay, too.
“You are welcome.” She rolls her eyes at his teasing and snakes her hand between them looking for the waistband of his trousers, but Kitay quickly slaps it away. “Let's enjoy this for a moment, please.”
If she let the more selfish part of her take over, she would be fine with it: she is coming down from a mindblowing orgasm, she feels relaxed and even optimistic about tomorrow, his chest is warm against her naked skin, his arms reassuring around her. She could fall asleep like this.
But it's not only the giving part of her that makes her uneasy; she wants to make him feel good, sure, but she also doesn’t think she could take it if he rejected her now.
“Don’t you want me to touch you?”
Kitay groans, and Rin takes advantage of him dropping his head to interlace her arms behind his head and pepper his collarbones with kisses. “I do. Fuck, of course I do.” He is trying to get his breathing under control, and for the first time this night Rin realizes that there may be reasons why this is hard for him too, not only for her. “I just need a second to not fuck up whatever comes up next.”
Maybe she should ask him what he means, let him talk about his fears and his anxieties. But she chooses to believe they will have time for that later, that the better course of action right now is showing him that there is no way anything between them can get fucked up, focus on all the ways she wants him and bring back up their easy-going banter.
“Good, because if you didn’t let me pay back my debts, I would murder you.”
He pokes her belly and Rin gasps, outraged. “Good thing we are bonded then.” The reminder of their mortality, of their tied mortality nonetheless, always unsettles her, how does he manage to be so calm about it? He turns the poking into a gentle stroking that moves down her navel to between her legs, and his voice turns gentler, “There are no debts between us, Rin.”
She disagrees. It is shocking, but that can still happen sometimes and Rin puts it down as another thing to discuss and settle once this night is over, once this war is over even. Instead of arguing, she goes back to her initial intentions and slips her hand inside his trousers.
They both moan when her fingers find his cock. It doesn’t surprise her that it’s hot and hard, but it is silkier than she imagined, and it slips inside her fist with ease. She gives it a few experimental strokes, pushing his pants further down in the process, and she can’t blame Kitay when he starts trembling again, his hips bucking up by reflex, because her heart is fluttering inside her chest and she is already feeling lightheaded just by the distant phantom of his pleasure.
“Tell me what you want,” she breathes in his ear.
Kitay tightens his hold on her waist, and Rin almost feels like bursting into tears, overwhelmed by their closeness and the shared pleasure. “I want you as close as you can be.”
Rin understands the urge, a necessity that has been growing between them ever since the bonding, and she struggles to pull down his trousers all the way with just her one hand. Kitay tugs on them to help her and they make a bit of a messy tangle that she is sure they will laugh about in the future, but not right now that their feverish need overshadows everything else.
There will also be time in the future, she hopes, for her to get a good look at him, but right now she can only think about doing as he asked, for both of their sakes.
They work in tandem wordlessly, shifting her weight and adjusting their position until, finally, after hours of buildup, she sinks into him with a gasp.
Besides being a bit uncomfortable at first, it doesn’t feel like anything she imagined or anything she has ever been told. She is holding onto his back, using the leverage to move slightly up and down, and every time he enters her again it doesn’t feel like an invasion. It is like calling on her fire and becoming one with it; she has known for a long time how it is to carry him inside her heart and inside her soul, welcoming him inside her body is only a natural extension. Everything is him, the sounds he makes, the scent of his skin, his cock moving inside of her, his chest flush against hers, his thumbs stroking her cheeks, his pleasure feeding into hers and vice versa in an infinite loop of fervor.
Rin can’t imagine anything more beautiful.
“Rin, I-, Rin.” Tears are running down his cheeks and Rin doesn’t need words to understand that he is feeling all the same she is feeling, and it shouldn’t be possible for a sentiment to be this strong, this all-encompassing, this absolut.
“I know, I know.” She leans closer to kiss his tears away, and he holds onto her head to not let her move her face away. “You can let go, dearest.” She doesn’t know if it is the name of endearment that is the last straw for him or if he just needed her permission, but his hips stutter one, two, three times and with a moan he tries to muffle biting on her shoulder, he spills inside of her in a rush of relief so intense that it triggers another orgasm out of her almost out of nowhere.
They stay just like that for a long time, Rin sitting on his lap with her face hidden on his shoulder, even after their bodies have gone cold and sticky, their muscles sore from the exertion and the lack of sleep.
When she finally looks at him, he is positively debauched, pale skin marked with bites and reminders of her fingertips, his hair in complete disarray, his cheeks flushed and tear-streaked, his mouth kiss-swollen. She wonders if she looks about the same, and thinks it is a messed up look she could embrace. She kisses him on the lips one more time before stretching her legs to stand up with a groan.
They work in efficient silence, her closing up the tent again and him picking up a rag to rub softly over the mess running down her legs. She would bet an entire squadron of soldiers that at least half the officers know already what has just happened between them, but Rin cannot be bothered to give a fuck about it. They might not know that Kitay is her anchor and her soulmate (that better stay that way), but they know already that they love each other. This shouldn't be too much of a stretch for them.
They will never hear the end of it from Venka, though.
They put back on some of their clothes to bear the night air that already feels cold on her skin, and they slip inside the bedroll together once again.
“We are such fuckers,” Kitay whispers in her hair after pulling her into an embrace. Rin, tired and sated, chuckles. “We couldn't have chosen any other night, it had to be the night before the fucking bigger chance to end this war.”
“What difference does it make? Yes, we will be tired, but we have fought in worse conditions before.”
“I just-,” he hesitates and Rin squeezes his shoulders to encourage him to speak, “I just wish we could have more time.”
Ah, there they are again, his fears and his anxieties. In other circumstances, maybe she would get mad that he is somehow doubting her odds, but right now she can only sympathize.
“It's good then that I will not allow us to get killed tomorrow. I will give us more time, I promise you.”
Her voice is fervent, but the promise itself is empty: they both decided to walk into this assault knowing full well that there were several chances it could go wrong and embracing the risks. But the sentiment still rings true. She already had a thousand reasons to want to protect him before. Now she has a thousand and one.
“Good,” he says, sounding sleepy, and Rin is also getting lulled to sleep by his calm, steady heartbeat. “You know you always need to come back to me.”
She places a last kiss on his jaw while his eyes are fluttering closed, and makes the promise only to herself with her lips against his skin.
“I will.”