Over too fast, too soon, but lingering long after; how she was warm, soft, small enough that he could hold her and steady enough to ground himself against even as the instant ended. As the fun ended, and all he could do was clear his throat and watch her beneath thick lashes, his face feeling scarlet and scalded everywhere she’d touched all at once.
Like he was new to this – and – he was, wasn’t he? He could acknowledge that much as the sound of her voice broke the bubble of his thoughts.
‘It was fun, or, no? It’s something else too–’
He wracked his brain with the thought and immediately he wanted another word for it, a better word, wanted to dig through a litany of thick literature until he was calling it something in dead languages and tongues. It was too different to simply be ‘fun’ – too deep – for all that it was so chaste it could’ve been virginal.
Fun would have to do for now, the way the word sounded crystalline from her, the way her laugh echoed back clear as a glass chime. But the fun had a timer on it; back of his mind and steadily ticking down, down, down. Its passage buffered by the dim fluorescents of the cave walls. All the ways the environment alluded to some idyllic, hidden safety—-
That they were safe, that any of this was safe? A very convenient lie he could tell himself for only so long before he felt the hard, cold reality of it all. Jagged where he sat, a warning in his arms, softly giggling, blushing in the faintest peachy hues.
He got it now, at least. Saw each side of a separate man’s coin, carved the face of one of his own. Had kissed a girl. The one. And knew very well he’d never likely kiss another— not like this — in a way so chaste yet decidedly unplatonic that the lingering press of what had to be a petal's touch, seared the space her smile left behind.
“You’ll let me know what he says, won’t you?” and a part of him wanted to see her jump, one more time, wanted to leave her waiting, breathless, confused and *happy*. He pressed the words beneath a sprightly pink curl, spoke them across the shell of her ear. Hinted that she needed to move -- lest they both freeze to the rock as they were and play at being statues for another millennia -- or, at least, until the people who wanted to find them would inevitably *find them* -- the universe was large, but Destiny City was not the whole of the universe.
"You'll send me letters too? Out of fairness--" Because maybe he wanted letters too. Would continue to play telephone tag this way. If he could send Fulgurite things to send Nectaris. If she could send things to send to Fulgurite. It felt very much like spy games, the sort that could cost them all their lives, but a game nonetheless! "Because as much as I'd love to sit and see the outcome? Absence does wonders for an aching heart, and something about the mystery of it all makes the waiting worth it -- heh -- leaving him on read, so to speak."
And though his tone was teasingly clear, he did have to go.
stari_maga
Seiana_ZI
