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The simple fact that Fray didn't ask for this did not mean he was quick to see it crumble.
What a mess she was. She swung a sword like she was chopping rocks, she ran into a fight as if the anger that ebbed within her was going to keep her from taking mortal wounds. As if returning alive was an immaterial worry. If anger was enough to keep sword from piercing flesh and severing bone, well Fray wouldn't have been in this spectacularly deranged and puzzling situation in which he found himself, would he?
If her skill and nonchalance were all that was wrong, he could have worked with that. Sloppy technique could be beaten into refinement with enough repetition—Ompange had taught both he and Sidurgu that well enough—but the shadow of woman he now found himself bound to could not be righted with brute force. Fury knew she'd invite his attempts to do so. Broiling beneath the surface of a face too young to show such things was a need to see herself punished for whatever crime had brought her to the Brume that fateful day. It was an astounding combination of factors about her that should have sent him fleeing in any other direction but toward her. But walking away from a challenge had never been Fray's strong suit.
He couldn't have done so even if it was.
"Just couldn't help yourself, could you, Kit?" He didn't bother concealing his irritation. "A bloody cock's tail of snow flew in your wake, you ran off to your do-gooding so fast."
At least his tongue wasn't bound. By his understanding, no one else could hear him anyway.
"It had to be done." She panted, chest rising and falling in the dark leather coat she'd adopted in her new defining of herself, as if unaware of the way it made him imagine her doing so beneath him. Her fingers caressed the hilt of his sword as if priming him to bury himself in her. She grinned, a darkness burning near her surface that shouldn't have been there, even with what his teachings in these short weeks. "I made it back alive, didn't I?"
"Not the bloody point." He crossed his arms, looking up at her through the slits in his visor. "Are you going to do every minor chore asked of you until you drop dead?"
That look entered her eyes again, sultry and hungry. She sheathed the sword on her back and approached him as if a cord pulled her in. And, Fury help him, he couldn't deny her. He didn't want to. He had yet to work out if those things were related. What distance she didn't close, he did.
"Afraid of going to bed alone?"
Yes. "Not much scares you after surviving being run through several times." She laid her hands on the front of his armor, eyes falling on him. The pink bow holding her hair did nothing to assuage his thoughts that she was possibly too young for any of this. "Not even the Holy See."
But her knowing? Her finding out what she had done… and taking it back? That terrified him.
She moved to say more, stymied only by the gloved finger he pressed to her flush lips. "Listen to my words. Listen to our heart." They beat nearly as one.
Her eyes went far away, glazing over as the darkness wove through and around them, drawn to her as forcefully as her soul pulled his presence if she strayed too far away. Then, she closed those eyes, the nearly black purple of her irises but etched in his memory just as every other detail of her since she'd summoned him back to life.
Her lips kissed the finger of his glove. "I'd like to feel it, too," she murmured, her loneliness striking the shape of him like an iron. "I need you."
"I know." He wouldn't be here otherwise. That much he knew.
He lifted his helm away, the shorter strands of his hair where they had pulled loose of the leather tie haphazard and askew. He grasped her chin—the public space they stood be damned—and tugged her face to his, catching her in a kiss she immediately sank into. He indulged in it. Perhaps she'd bound him to her, linked his will, his wants to her needs, but it felt real enough, good to the depths of his darkened soul. He craved the way her lips tasted, the soft way she hummed before darting her tongue past his. How she molded the whole of herself against him as much as armor allowed, alive and eager, seemingly unaware that he had been dead when she'd found him. He was only so strong in the face of it. Compelled he might have been, but it was the baseline of his reality now. If he couldn't escape it, he may as well partake of it.
He murmured between their mouths, "Kind of a coincidence, then, that I need you, too."
In more ways than he could ever let her know.
She threaded her fingers into his disheveled hair, sparking a twitch in his trousers he felt bloody lucky to be able to appreciate at all.
"Let's take this back to your place." With great effort, he slipped fingers between their mouths to prompt her to give up the kiss. "It's not a good idea for us to be seen together."
"Yours is closer," she insisted. She wound her arms around his neck. "Maybe?"
"It isn't." Because he didn't have a place, and she didn't deserve to be rut on the floor of the Cloud Nine.
She didn't argue, except to assure him the kid who lived with her was elsewhere. Perhaps she deemed it the faster way to get what she wanted—that it was him she wanted was an ache in his chest—he couldn't say, but it coincided with what he suddenly, very desperately wanted.
To want because someone wanted to be wanted… he could live this way. There were worse ways to while away such an existence. Because it meant he could live at all.
And Fray Myste was not finished bloody living.
They breezed through the lobby of her apartment, the man at the desk greeting her, and only her, familiarly.
"I don't know why they are always rude to you," she said by way of apology.
Because they can't bloody see me, he thought, as she dismissed it and led him to her door. She paused there, strands of lavender hair stuck to her face, and hesitated. "Are you sure? Just because I kissed you doesn't mean—"
"We both know what is going to happen, that we're both squirming in our smalls to get on with it, so let's stop feigning hesitation." He couldn't keep saying more than anything, as it would become a pattern. "So, shut up, Kit, and open the swiving door."
She did.
He remembered the first time this happened, if not who had taken ahold of the matter. Had she responded to the way she made him feel? Was it a spiral? His nature to want her making her feel wanted, then needing him to show that want to her? There was so much he hadn't worked out yet, but wasn't able to stop and put reason to. The haunted expression that had overtaken her when their tryst careened to inevitable? He remembered that, too. She didn't share much of her reasons for coming to Ishgard, for wanting to keep her presence quiet, but a quirk of their situation meant she did not need to.
Grief, deep and consuming, had prompted her to put her hands on his corpse. Anger at the injustice of his fate. It led her to the false hope she had found him in time. Had made her beg and plead and cry over his barely cooled body, dumped unceremoniously in the Brume. A small thing, the lamentation of one single soul, it had been enough. Enough to call to his soul before it left the world. Enough for his anger to grip ahold, and cling to the fount of aether she pressed into the lost cause that had once been Fray Myste. Her confusion, her relief that her efforts had worked had been only the beginning.
When did he first realize what had happened?
The push and pull of her certainty as her thoughts fell back to whomever had broken her. The way he was keenly aware of the uptick of her pulse when he spoke firmly. Even more, the way her pulse seemed aligned with his own, until he realized that, no, it was his which had fallen into sync with hers. The way he could read every hitch of her breath in their first conversation, practically taste her hunger for redemption and someone to help fix her.
It had, of course, given him pause. A heretic he might have been, but he was still a decent man. He'd prepared himself to give an excuse, to make his departure. But her hand had grasped his. A soft, "Please, Fray?" A lean of her weight as invitation.
He knew he should have left, but his feet held firm to the floor, and every reason to say no fell away as her fingers plucked at the straps of his armor. As she chewed a plump lip and backed to sitting upon her bed, a fear in her dark eyes that he might refuse her as she spread her thighs for him. A good number of things had clicked into place—her youth, the remaining dregs of her innocence, the too-disconsolate way she carried herself, how hard she worked to convince him the sex would be meaningless. All of them solid reasons to tell her no. And he found… he couldn't. Could not stop himself kissing her, couldn't stop letting hands wander, eyes rove. Could not stop drawing pleas and whimpers and wails of climax from her.
As then, she rose above him now, straddling his hips, stripped to her underthings, face like a spooked creature turned toward him, afraid he would pursue her or abandon her or both, and poorly concealing it behind false bravado that might have worked had he not had a direct link to the truth of her heart.
"I want you," she whispered now, gulping air like courage and pulling her tank top off, tossing it to the floor. Loosed her hair and let it spill down her back, over her shoulders. Arched her back in a practiced way she rightly guessed would draw his attention to the shape of her. And what a shape it was.
He laughed, his hands sliding up her thighs, cupping her rear, teasing her tail, thumb running along the dip of her hip, a path he already had memorized. "I know." Because he did. That's why he was still here. Even if he wished to—and he certainly did not—he could not leave while that remained true. His fingers traced the obviously fresh scar that told of a recent brush with death. Her smile faltered as he did, and he quickly reached for a distraction. With a smirk, he ordered, "Show me."
She did.
She sank down onto him, dropping her head back and letting her moan run the room freely. She laid her hands over his as if there was any chance he would loosen the grip he had on her hips, her rear. He let her set the pace, watching her face journey through a picture book of emotions as she found the rhythm that suited her, drank of the fountain that was his name from her tongue as she found the angle that hit exactly the way she craved. Moonlight streamed through the window behind then bed, painting silver-white across her expression, adding something ethereal to her large Viera's eyes as they opened and met his own.
He liked to think that even were he not bound thusly, not compelled to think so, he would have still found her utterly enthralling.
She rocked atop him, gaining tempo, tightening around him, each motion a reminder of what life felt like. Cementing the idea that he still had reason for clinging to it, such as it was for him in his current state. The sensation of her sliding over his length made his flesh seem whole, his blood pump with existence. She squeezed him with a flutter of her inner walls, shivering with it as surely as he did. She bit her lower lip, tracing an evocative trail of her fingers down the planes and peaks of herself, teasing her apex to enhance the sensation for them both. She bucked her hips, mewling softly for him to give her more. He slid hands up her body in response, gripping a breast in one and curling the fingers of the other around the back of her neck. For better, or for worse, the circumstance of their tether suited him, and he was unwilling to pull back from it.
Quite the opposite.
With a firm hand, he pulled her down to him, not giving her a chance to protest. If this was the way between them, then he would find the freedom within the confines of her desire. He caught her in a kiss, greedy, needy, in more ways than she likely realized. She whimpered at the shift of angle, groaned into his mouth as he jerked his hips upward, then again much harder.
Her fingers slid into his hair, cupped the back of his head, loosed the tie holding his hair back. The sounds she made ground in her throat, echoed through him like he was hollow save what she put into him. Her hips moved with increasing tempo, his impending release rising in him much sooner than he liked as her muscles tightened around him.
That was unacceptable.
He stilled her hips with bruising fingers, firm hands, grinning against her mouth when she whined a protest, wriggling for the sensation he was denying her. "Careful, Kit, or it'll be over too soon."
"We have all night," she tried, voice pleading, strained with urgency that threatened to undo him. "I need to feel…" No elaboration, just an open desire to feel anything.
It should have given him pause, but the hunger was already gnawing him, and his whole purpose seemed to be to grant her every wish.
"Feel what?" He ran lips over her throat, winding fingers around the base of her ears. "Feel what?" He tugged, forcing her to expose her throat further so he could run his teeth across the skin there.
"Anything," she breathed.
"Not good enough," he scolded. But he didn't need her to say it; the ache beat within his own reanimated heart, chained with hers by a darkness in her he could not explain. Still, he meant to make her give voice to the thing she refused to say. "Tell me the truth."
"Loved," she whispered, his own lips moving against her skin. "I miss being loved." The pain in her confession cracked his ribs open. The unspoken story of that desolate tone seized his focus. What broke her? And why had she decided he could fix it?
More importantly, how could show her she did not need fixing?
"Is that all?" He pulled out of her, ignored the way she objected, and turned them over. "Nothing could be easier."
If she stopped and thought about it, he knew she would realize that the scant two weeks they'd spent together was insufficient for what she wanted, for what he gave. She would know the wrongness of what had them entangled. She might even learn to accept what she had done in bringing him back to life, or seek to undo it in the name of freeing him.
That could not happen.
He bent her nearly in half beneath his weight, one long leg against his shoulder as he entered her again with an intentionally rough thrust. The other leg he caught on his forearm and used to spread her wide enough for his hips to meet hers. Sharp and fast. As her body called to him, he could not help but fall into her. Deeper he pressed, louder her cries came, harder he brought their their bodies together, again and again. And again. His fingers slipped over the sheen of sweat that covered her, dampened her hair. Eyes held hers as a thought that upset her momentarily clouded her deep, purple gaze. There and gone, but not to him. Her hurt reverberated through him, her loss a heavy thing, taking her attention away from him in a way that bruised his very soul.
"Stay with me, Kit," he demanded. Harsh and without quarter. The sound of her name brought her eyes back to focus, and she made a throaty sound of compliance.
"Yes," she rasped. "Anything." She arched, rolling her eyes. "Anything you want. Just don't stop." She grabbed fistfuls of the bedding to anchor herself against his increasing force.
Ravenous hunger called him. The first time it happened, he'd tried to ignore it, fought against it. The more he tried, the sharper it grew, the more he felt himself slipping away from the world. The anger over the injustice of his death, over the abuses of the Holy See, and what they sought to take, were not sufficient to keep him anchored. And she had so much anger of her own. So much aether, delicious and already dark. A little skim of it hadn't hurt then—it never took much—and didn't seem an unfair trade now. Not if it kept him alive, and them together the way she seemed to want.
Besides, she was so vocally willing to let him have his way with her… the need for life wasn't the only hunger that gnawed at him.
He closed his mouth over hers, plunging his tongue past hers and indulging in the pleased groan she rewarded him with. An act as simple as breathing, as getting her to gasp out with the impact of his hips against hers, he knew what to do. In he breathed, as if he required such a thing anymore. A draw of her aether, the room in his vision rimming in red as his eyes took on a bright glow. If she noticed, she did not say. Instead, she made a faintly pained sound, one that made his heart ache, but also his cock twitch. The thread of her life force ebbed between them. Immediately he felt closer. To her. To life. To everything and everyone he'd given up and left behind when he'd walked to what he knew would be his death. More solid. More hers. More like she was his. The rush was headier than any fight, any orgasm, and as heavy as fresh blood upon new snow.
To take this from her weighed as it should, he knew.
Her chest stopped, her whole body stilled, and for one horrifying moment, his brutal pace faltered. His revived heart stuttered. Before he could check her pulse with a conjurer's fingers, she blissfully gasped out, breaking the kiss, ending his feed. "Fray?"
"It's okay." There was too much at stake to risk her questions, and he redoubled his efforts into her. Pressed her thighs to her chest and drove her into the mattress beneath them. He yanked her ears, shifted his angle to hit the spot he knew well, and grunted, "Cum, Kit."
She wailed out, wrapping her arms around his neck and demanding another kiss. Her tongue swept his mouth, she cried out, and whether she realized it or not, released aether he didn't chase as she clenched around him. Her lips sealed over his, her own life draining into him as she trembled with her climax. The bliss of it, of having her like this, pulled his lower muscles tight. Fury take him, he couldn't stop it. He drank deep as he spilled inside her. His fingers digging into her thighs, hers the muscles of his back. He felt truly alive, entire body vibrating with the thrill, the energy. He took fully of what she offered, heedless of anything but the living rush of his blood and the grip of her inner muscles squeezing him through her peak.
Then, everything went still. Silent. Their hearts beat in sync. Slower. Slower. Slower hers led them both until it pained his ribs, and he grasped her jaw firmly in one hand, noting for the first time her eyes were closed, her lips parted and pale.
"Hey, Kit? Wake up." He shook her head with no response, gripped his fingers tighter until he felt teeth on the other side of her flesh. "Wake up."
Nothing.
A violent sinking gripped the deepest pit of Fray's stomach. He was… mostly certain she wasn't dead. There was no way to know what would become of him if she were to die, but he had a guess. His own re-mortality staring him in the face was not the only thing which sent panic closing his throat. Of he'd unwittingly taken her too-short life…
The pang that gripped his heart was artificial, he knew, an effect of whatever unknown act she'd accidentally used to bring him back. But it felt real. Real enough that fear shook his hands as he pushed up and supported himself on them, pulling out of her and letting her legs drop heavily to the bed.
"Shite." He slid arms under her, lifting her chest to chest and cradling her close. Her head flopped against his shoulder. "Shite. Kit, wake up." He pressed his face into her hair, swearing again under his breath. He shrugged a shoulder and tipped her head into his hand. "Listen, I am not bloody asking."
He kissed her. Frantic. The idea that it could be the least thing he did overrode all else as his fingers gripped her hair in his fist. When that had no result, he grabbed her shoulders, giving her a rough shake.
"You will wake up. Right now." He growled, cursed. The slow thud of their aligned pulse could not keep up with the knowledge that he had very likely killed her, or close enough to it. His voice rose to a pitch. "Listen to my voice, Kit. Listen to our hearts."
For too long she lay still, silent, nearly gone. And then…
"Elidibus," she murmured, barely more than a breath. The longing sliced him open, laid her bare and raw. Spoken like a want, long unfulfilled, finally bearing fruit.
Fray had no idea who or what an Elidibus was. Relief at the sound of her voice warred with the hot flash of jealousy he knew was unreasonable, born of a state of emotions she'd trapped him within. He could not explain how he knew, but that name was the source of her—their— pain.
"He's not here," he said, perhaps more harshly than was kind. He gathered her up again, the brown of his hand darker than that of her brow in the spilled moonlight, and smoothed hair back from sticking to her face.
"I killed him," she managed, thin and reedy.
"I know." Because somehow, he did. He hugged her tight, his nose burying in her hair as the slow thump of their hearts climbed back to a pace that ached less. Relief flooded him, and he wound her arms around himself one at a time, lying them back, entangled. "But I'm here. You can't go to him yet."
Her arms tightened around him, strength returning, if only fractionally. The wash of her need for someone to hold her to the world transcended their separate bodies through the tether she'd unknowingly created. Her grip eased his fears, dimmed his fury to a warm, steady burn. Whether he willed it or not, he was wanted by her need to be wanted. Want to be needed. Her desperation to feel anything good. For someone to comfort her in the absence of someone else. And… it felt good.
Her eyes cracked open, seeking his face through the narrowesr slits of lids. "Because I saved you," she said, a resoluteness in her voice saying she still did not know. "I couldn't save him, but I saved you."
The truth would not bring her peace. Serve no purpose other than an easing of his conscience. But he could deliver those things to her. Surety of purpose. Certainty of belonging. All the things being a dark knight could give her. Including the steadiness of being loved for all that she was—secrets that made her want to give up, the blood on her soul, the loss of her lover, and all.
He smoothed a hand up and down her back until her ears drooped with impending sleep, and their heartbeats evened ooutas one once more.
"Yes, Kit. You did." He pressed lips to the space between her ears. "And because of that, I love you."
Even if he was able to stop, he knew he did not want to. Trapped he was, bound he might be—a dead man walking—but tethered to the world with a chance to return to those he left behind was better than oblivion, and worth the cost.
Besides, being loved by the gilded cage? He could do worse.