[ She doesn't need to ask if she's played a hand in that misery. On some days, his proposal looms like an axe above their heads, waiting to drop and sever that tenuous, precarious connection she feels they've formed. On others, she can sense the strain her silence has created, incapable of easily granting him the answer he must want to hear.
Still, she understands it. That clawing, desperate need to prove one's self beyond titles and recognition and power. That pounding ache of a heart, wishing it was wanted for every scar and wound and virtue. Misery loves company, she had jested, but maybe there's an ugly scrap of truth in it she hadn't realized. In the end, she is just as miserable, just as keen to fight for her right to be wanted as she is: Sun Summoner and Alina Starkov and everything in-between. ]
We're at war because I'm very difficult to coerce.
[ But she doesn't want to consider their common enemy, doesn't want to invite her mind to remind her he had once brushed his lips against the same hidden, delicate skin of her throat. That his hands have once roamed where Nikolai's have. His fingers brush that unwelcome ghost away, driving away the poisonous reminder of what he had planned for her. Alina sighs into it, the bright red mark already beginning to flower along pale skin.
An entirely different brand, without the same possessiveness of Morozova's collar shining at her throat, reflecting the morning sunlight haloing around them. Her head tilts, spilling her hair over her shoulder like a stream, as she considers him through a half-lidded gaze that gives far too much of her wanting away.
She leans forward, her breath a whisper against the shell of his ear. ]
Be a little less miserable with me.
[ If only for awhile. If only for now. She nuzzles into the column of his throat, tracing her lips down its column, letting her exhales heat the wet trail she leaves behind as if it's her own argument to convince him. It's there she buries the sudden sting of her self-consciousness when she grinds down against the bend of his knee, breath hitching against the crook of his neck, the silk of her nightgown hitching higher to tangle around her thighs. The friction is hardly enough, could never be enough, but it's her own proposal left in his hands.
Even as she waits, a little agonized, and blindly reaches across the sheets to grapple for his hand. As if convinced that without that anchor, no matter how often he has thrown himself into the fire, he might very well flee from her. ]
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Still, she understands it. That clawing, desperate need to prove one's self beyond titles and recognition and power. That pounding ache of a heart, wishing it was wanted for every scar and wound and virtue. Misery loves company, she had jested, but maybe there's an ugly scrap of truth in it she hadn't realized. In the end, she is just as miserable, just as keen to fight for her right to be wanted as she is: Sun Summoner and Alina Starkov and everything in-between. ]
We're at war because I'm very difficult to coerce.
[ But she doesn't want to consider their common enemy, doesn't want to invite her mind to remind her he had once brushed his lips against the same hidden, delicate skin of her throat. That his hands have once roamed where Nikolai's have. His fingers brush that unwelcome ghost away, driving away the poisonous reminder of what he had planned for her. Alina sighs into it, the bright red mark already beginning to flower along pale skin.
An entirely different brand, without the same possessiveness of Morozova's collar shining at her throat, reflecting the morning sunlight haloing around them. Her head tilts, spilling her hair over her shoulder like a stream, as she considers him through a half-lidded gaze that gives far too much of her wanting away.
She leans forward, her breath a whisper against the shell of his ear. ]
Be a little less miserable with me.
[ If only for awhile. If only for now. She nuzzles into the column of his throat, tracing her lips down its column, letting her exhales heat the wet trail she leaves behind as if it's her own argument to convince him. It's there she buries the sudden sting of her self-consciousness when she grinds down against the bend of his knee, breath hitching against the crook of his neck, the silk of her nightgown hitching higher to tangle around her thighs. The friction is hardly enough, could never be enough, but it's her own proposal left in his hands.
Even as she waits, a little agonized, and blindly reaches across the sheets to grapple for his hand. As if convinced that without that anchor, no matter how often he has thrown himself into the fire, he might very well flee from her. ]