Welcome to Gaia! ::

Detraeus eyed her for some time, but eventually shook his head. “It doesn’t frighten me.” ‘I like watching you.’ His brow furrowed slightly at the thought, but she didn’t seem to notice — likely couldn’t see it, in the minimal light — and she relaxed and smiled instead at his assent.

“It’s strange to me,” she admitted, “…not knowing how to swim, that is. I’ve always known, ever since I was a girl…perhaps I could teach you one day?”

Detraeus’ gaze followed the flick and twist of her body through the water, and his muscles relaxed as he grew accustomed to his position, steady against the ledge. “Perhaps.”

When she returned to him, it was slower than before, her body diving entirely beneath the surface before emerging close and wet directly in front of him. Her eyes glinted with curiosity, and her feet paddled slow, lazy strokes, holding her up.

After an extended pause, he shifted his positioning, flushing under her gaze. “What?”

“You’re purple,” she said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

He squinted, frowning in the darkness and hesitating before answering. “It’s…a ‘color’…isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“No one has told me.” His words felt cool. Private, in the quiet of the cove that was — in this moment — entirely theirs, and the corner of her lips twitched, her expression half pleased and half puzzled — or sad? — as though it was an entirely foreign concept to not ‘know’ one’s appearance. Except, that in his view, he did.

“It’s a nice color,” she said. “A very dark color, in your case. Like rich berries, ripe in the summer season, or the gown of a noble woman…thick, and proud.”

“What color are you?”

Araceli blinked, and seemed to falter on her answer before recovering. “Pale peach. Like the sand in the desert…blue, like the sky at noon, and yellow, like Eowyn’s sun.”

After a pause, Detraeus realized he had relaxed his position again, his attention entirely focussed on her. “It seems fitting,” he said. “Perhaps I can see it one day…”

Detraeus shuddered, his spare hand moving to hover in the water before lingering — hesitant — close to her waist, but barely touching. “Ara…”

He shut his eyes when she pressed in. Her breath teased against his lips, stomach pressed flat to his chest, and body so close he swore he could feel her pulse through his skin. His hand at her waist fell fully, clenching to her skin beneath the water, and his muscles quivered, his hand on the rocks clutching as his breath lodged itself in his throat.

“Ara—” Her lips covered his, and his brow furrowed, but he didn’t withdraw. She was familiar, now, to some extent. He knew her touch. Anticipated it. Enjoyed it, even, but words from not so very long ago flit through his head, and the instant there was a breath of space between them, he said, quiet as a secret: “I promised your mother that I wouldn’t touch you…”

Detraeus held himself absolutely still and had the distinct sense that he was teetering on the edge of a precipice: to stay, or to fall. Every instinct demanded that he cling to what he knew, to stability, to withdraw, to step back, and stay safe. Araceli’s lips, though, were a breath away, a siren’s call inches past his balancing point, out of reach, and he needed to stop this. Now. Instead—

“Maybe so.”

He tugged at her hip, dragging her in, flush to him, and he dipped forward, catching her lips hard with his. He wanted in that moment, so much that it left him dizzy and breathless, but he found his oxygen between her lips and his sanity against her tongue and teeth. His tail pulled through the water, coiling around her like an over-possessive serpent, and he thought, for the first time in that instant, that perhaps it would be lovely to steal her away — somewhere far, far away from everything and everyone — and live without the rest of the world to interfere.

He buried the notion, shoving it beneath his fears and his insecurities and locking it behind a wall of stubbornness and anger. She would never be his. She deserved better. Needed better. Would find better. But that didn’t mean that here, now, in a cove on the shores of Eowyn under the moonlight, that he couldn’t cling to her, hold her to him, and kiss her like never intended to let go.

Detraeus shuddered, fingers clenching at the small of her back, but not yet pulling away. He felt his pulse race when her mouth moved, want mingling with panic, and fear with desperation for something he dare not pin down. Torn, he quivered under her, his body edging back close to the rock as he could manage but hand still dragging her with him and tail — much to his chagrin — crawling up her leg like a curious eel.

He shut his eyes and opened his mouth, but instead of words, only a broken fragment of speech escaped him, indecipherable, and he bit his lip around a frustrated growl.

‘Goddess…Mother, please…’

Detraeus went rigid, freezing at the brush of fingers over the markings at his chest, and his pulse threw itself into his throat, panic tipping into overload as her hand guided his fingers lower. “I—Ara—not—”

He scrambled back, hand jerking away from her so that both were clinging to the rocks behind him, but they slipped in his haste and he yelped, sputtering as his head sank towards the water before he caught his balance. Breathless, and shaking, he shook his head.

“I—I—I—we…” His lashes squeezed shut, wet with water now and body soaked. “Please,” he whispered on a shattered fragment of a breath. “I’ve never—I can’t—I…” When he released another breath, it was shaken as the last leaf in a bitter winter wind, and he withdrew, scrambling towards the shallow rocks to pull himself out of the water. As he made it ashore, water pooling around him and body still aquiver, he scratched at his collarbone, nails dragging over the markings she had touched. His voice was below a whisper. “I disappoint you…”

Detraeus stilled at the touch of her fingers, eyeing her instead. His brow furrowed, tightly pinched, and in that moment, he hated himself for his insecurities. It wasn’t normal and he knew it. Anyone would have touched her, then. Any man would have moved in half a decade ahead of him. She was beautiful and beyond that — more important than that — she was a thousand other things: kind, strong, practiced, dedicated, honest, passionate, courageous, intuitive, adaptive, willful…

He reached out, curling his fingers around her hand as she let it drop away, tugging it back to him, and studying her reaction as he laced their fingers. “I…like…kissing you,” he said. ‘But it terrifies me.’ “I don’t…want to upset you…” His lashes flit low as he eyed her lips, attention catching on the glimmer of moonlight over the full curve of them, and he opened his mouth to ask, but bit back the question.

Detraeus’ blush surged to his eartips, his lips pursing in indignation and voice sputtering. “I didn’t—that—it—” He narrowed his eyes, then huffed as he tugged her forward. Dropping his hands to her hips, he dragged her tight to him and leaned in. Kissing her, he decided, was a work in progress, because it involved so many things.

Not just Araceli’s mouth — which was enough, to begin with, if he included her lips, teeth and tongue and the way they could part or pinch, suckle or n**, lick or purse, catch the light or curve into a smile that made him forget the world’s darkness. There were her fingers, too. The way they touched and where, and how, as well as all of what they got up to. Whether they clinged or brushed or gripped or nudged. And her hips when they rocked and pressed, or her chest when it moved in close, full, warm, and inviting against him.

His tail locked around her ankle, gripping when he bit at her lips and staying even after he withdrew, breathless. “I don’t want you to ‘not mind,’” he said. “I want you to want me to kiss you…”

‘As much as I do. More than I do? If that’s possible…’