The Spider didn’t move when they made it to her room. She just stood there, basking in the thick pool of moonlight. It was an image saved and painted in the deepest recesses of the mind. A moment she knew – even then – that she would never forget. Ash took a step but the sideways glance of sanguine eyes forced her in place.
“We’ve known each other for an hour and a day. No matter the... heat, we can’t truly love each other. Not yet,” Tebea whispered as her delicate hands climbed to the strap of her faux armour. “But for tonight, let’s imagine. Let’s imagine love and let us hold it until it burns and scars. Love me like you love the night. Love me like you’ve never been loved before. Hold me like you hold the world together. Hold me like you’ve never been held before... And for the next thing... well, we probably don’t need to pretend a first for that.”
The buckle quit its resistance and the first strap gave away, though she was yet wrapped in her blood-coloured leathers.
“And, should a point come where you imagine the love slipping, even for a single breath... cling to it. Grasp it like the sharp of a blade, so tight it cuts the vein. Then, if the blade proves too slicked with blood to grip any longer, let it go in silence... and let me live in loveless love for this night alone. You can forget me on the morrow, but please, pretend this night is the first of a million.”
The next buckle came away and Ash could no longer stand to see her alone. She cupped the smaller woman’s cheek in her one true hand. Their hearts beat at the same time, their breath fluttered and clashed in the stagnant room. Ambrosia and sweat, love and lust.
Ash was so brave as to force herself into Tebea’s gaze. The sanguine was not so absolute as it had seemed from even a single pace away. There was a tiny fleck of something hazel. So little, she doubted even Tebea knew it was there, but Ash could see it now, but more than that she could see just how deep her eyes went.
Darkness, consuming and avaricious, that peered out at all who peered within. She couldn’t help but freeze for a moment, her planned words dissolving into the abyss.
“What do you see?” Tebea whispered.
“The ghost that was. The girl that died. There’s a speck of hazel in your eyes, is that what they used to look like?” Ash answered, her voice just as hushed.
“Once, a long time ago.”
“Back when you were Tebea?”
“Back when I was Tabby-cat,” Tebea said with as much of a giggle as a mournful sight.
“Do you want to be her again, even just for tonight?”
“She died. It’s generally considered ill form to exhume dead little girls.”
“Then Tebs it stays,” Ash squeaked. “But I can promise you, Tebs, whatever happens tonight, I won’t be pretending anything.”
“You’ll still hold me in on the morrow?” Tebs pled.
“And the next, and the next.”
“What then? When you realise what I am; what will you do then?”
“I’ll not grip the blade by the sharp, but by the pommel.”
“Easy to say,” Tebea breathed as she wrapped her slender arms around Ash’s neck. “But blade and pommel look the same when we blow out the lights.”
“Then let's leave the curtains open tonight. The stars will light the way.”
The kiss closed and the leathers fell to the floor. Her curves of divine sin shimmered beneath the voyeur moon. A thousand stars sparkled atop her pale flesh as she slowly helped Ash unclip her sparrow-marked cloak. She stepped to Ash’s back and fumbled with her shoulder pad, then with her gauntlet and her sleeve, kissing and loving each inch of exposed flesh as she stripped away her armour.
She took Ash’s left hand in her own and tried to find some seam to split before Ash pulled her hand away. “It doesn’t come off,” Ash admitted, slightly ashamed. “But I can still feel it.”
“Can you?” Tebea smirked, taking the warm steel and stroking it against her cheek.
“I can ‘sheath’ it for a little while, if you want?” Ash offered, though she quickly hushed as Tebea gently bit down on her metal finger.
“Don’t you dare,” she sighed. Her slender hands slipped beneath Ash’s breastplate and in a single motion, it fell to the ground with a thunderous clash. Once Tebea had torn the weight from her shoulders, Ash could draw her first unencumbered breath in weeks.
She pressed her hand into Ash’s chest and gently forced her back into bed.
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Raven hair mixed with ashen as the dark fiend hovered an inch over her heroic counterpart. Ash reached for a kiss, but it barely lasted a moment before Tebea broke it.
“Promise to love me come the dawn?” Tebea whispered.
“I promise to love you till the sun rises no more, then I’ll light a new one and name her Tebea.”
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It was a kiss and a hug and a caress and so much beyond. It was laughter, though nothing was truly funny. It was breathless compliments and silent admissions of things Ash didn’t even know about herself. It was a kind of honesty that couldn’t be brought about by words, only instinct and passion.
Words failed her and thoughts fled. It was not a submission to carnal pleasure, but an active effort to make joy of each other. She could have traced every measure of her partner. Between the stray hairs caught between their increasingly skilful kisses and the tickles of Tebea’s overlong nails; The discoveries of divots and hidden scars within her perfect form; The smudging of makeup and the self-conscious moans of delight. There was more to be learnt between those delicate silk sheets than in a thousand conversations.
Ash mapped each spot on her lover that made her writhe and shiver beneath her. She traced each moonbeam and stroked the paths between freckles and spots.
The night grew longer and longer, yet all too short. She could feel Tebea’s pulse on her lips during every slow and teasing kiss.
What Tebea had said was true, it could not be love that bound them in their throws. Love would be a child, forged and nurtured over time and with great effort. It was not love at first sight, though love could come with all sights seen in the gathering years. But this... was heat, passion, infatuation and attraction. This was desire and lust and madness, utter madness. A flame of mind that had drawn a sparrow into the web of a spider. A crazed idiocy that had made a quivering fool of the conquering Champion.
A moment, just a moment, of absolute – inadvisable – ecstasy; cries and screams and the untold agony of knowing it would soon come to an end.
A tryst of heat, sworn to last until the last star burnt cold. A vow in this moment, in her arms, that seemed like the easiest thing in the whole wide world.
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Then came the final temptation of the night. She collapsed into her pillow, and Tebea collapsed into her, where ragged and blissful breaths lulled her off to sleep; off to her dreams. She didn’t want to dream, not tonight. Her dreams hadn’t been her own in so long, but this night belonged to her and she would not let the silent Goden stain or steal away the memory.
And so, she lay there with steady and even breaths. The ever-cold flesh of her Tebea pressed into her breast as the two lay, both unaware that the other lay awake. After an hour, or maybe ten, Ash must have made some subtle motion beneath conscious efforts. Something that had told the other that both lay silent and awake.
Tebea fussed and groaned as she nuzzled deeper into Ash’s chest, but eventually, she relented and – resting her chin against Ash’s collar – she smirked beneath the pale moonlight.
“Scared of sleeping with a spooky Vampris in your room? I promise not to suck you dry,” she whispered.
“What am I even here for, then?” Ash snorted. She ran her hand through Tebea’s thick black mass of hair and stroked an errand loc from her eyes. “What about you? Am I not a comfy pillow?”
“You are luxury in excess, snowangel. But I don’t sleep.”
“You don’t sleep?” Ash dumbly repeated.
“Nor do I eat or drink... or blink or breathe. My muscles don’t ache, my belly doesn’t fill. Hells, my heart doesn’t even beat.”
“Yes, it does,” Ash insisted. “I could feel it while we were...”
“I told you already: Hearts beat and flutter in your presence, Snowangel, no matter how dead the heart.” She took Ash’s hand and pressed it against her neck and, sure enough, she found no pulse.
“Your heart only beats when you’re,” Ash struggled to find the right word, but finally settled on, “heated?”
“Heated?” Tebea laughed. “No amount of ‘heat’ can kickstart a heart, believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Then why could I feel your pulse?”
“I have no idea. It happened back in Maester Veil, too. The first time you looked me in the eyes, I felt a flutter, like my heart skipped over a beat it hadn’t drummed. Since then, I’ve wanted nothing more than to feel again. Anything, a flutter, a fear... anything. I guess I finally got my wish.”
“Was it worth the wait?” Ash timidly asked.
“I’ll tell you in the morning,” Tebs winked. “So, go to sleep. I’ll just... watch you creepily in the dark.”
“You really can’t sleep? Even if you tried?”
“Nope,” she sighed. “But I can just... fade away for a while. I’m still awake, aware, just less so.”
“Well, would you mind if I tried something?” Ash offered.
Tebea smirked straight away and said with a cackle, “I’m here for all of your experimental needs, angel. Try whatever you like on me.”
“N- not like that,” Ash grunted with half a smile. “I can... place people into a dream, or at least I think I can. I’ve only done it three or four times, and three of those weren’t intentional.”
“Place me in a dream? I didn’t take you for a mage? But somnomancy doesn’t work on my kind.”
“I’m no mage, it’s a Champion thing.” Ash sat up slowly and Tebea was forced to follow her up. They wrapped themselves in silk sheets as Ash sat against the headboard and Tebea positioned herself against Ash’s shoulder.
“It probably won’t work, angel, but feel free to give it a go,” Tebea whispered, nuzzling deeper into Ash’s shoulder.
“Alright, close your eyes,” Ash softly ordered. She placed her steel hand atop Tebea’s stone heart as she focused on the feeling she had gathered last time, when she lay abed with Sujin.
She steadied her breath and noticed Tebea mimicking her pace. It didn’t seem intentional but it was obvious. Quietly, almost silently, she whispered into Tebea’s ear, “Sleep.”