“Ryn?”

Grace’s voice fluttered pleasantly through my sleeping mind, causing a smile grow through the those bleary first moments of almost-consciousness.

As I slipped from sleep to waking, I gently pressed my face further into her shoulder. “Grace,” I said, breathing her in. I’d never been happier than right in that moment, her arms around me, protecting me.

“Ryn!” Grace said a little more urgently, shaking me slightly.

I groaned and opened my eyes, leaning back from her. I wanted to stay like that, in the uncomplicated world right after waking, where memory and worry hadn’t asserted themselves yet. Unfortunately, complicated was exactly the look she was giving me right now. It was a look that was really a whole lot of different looks. Confusion, worry, and… happiness?

“What… what happened?” she asked, gesturing around us at the… oh dear.

Apparently when I’d fallen asleep, the growth energy I’d been producing with Grace’s help had gotten… side tracked. I had gone full plant, bursting into dark magenta flower, and a few small green vines were wrapped around my friend as if to hold on to her all the better.

“Sorry!” I squeaked, quickly pulling all my personal vegetation back into me.

Except I wasn’t thinking and went to far, completely resuming human form. The instant I did, I received the full force of our body length physical contact. Pleasure exploded through me, searing every nerve with dancing sensation and I let out a high, trilling moan.

It was several seconds before I could get myself under control enough to bring my plant body back to the surface again, and during that time Grace wrapped me worriedly in her arms, inadvertently making the the problem worse. I was now massively aroused too, and still pressed up against the woman who’d caused that arousal. Crap, I wanted her so badly.

“What was that?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

“It’s… a long story,” I mumbled into her arm, where my face had ended up, my body still twitching slightly with need for her. “What do you remember?”

“The glass thing… it broke and the magic… it got out,” she said slowly, her voice pained as she tried to remember.

“Yeah… it bounced off me and into you. It’s all inside you now,” I told her slowly, pushing back so I could see her face. “You keep making more and more now, I don’t know how.”

“I have magic in me? That magic?” she asked, her voice rising in pitch with every word. “How did we go from me getting contaminated with unknown magic, to us cuddling in our room, which is now also a jungle, on two alien couches, surrounded by a ring of bunnies?”

“Wait what?” I asked in alarm, sitting up to look around the bed.

Each of my buns was flopped in a loose circle on the floor around us, a floor that now had a thick layer of the most luscious grass I’d ever seen. Plants of all types were sprouting directly from the wood of the floor too, ferns, berry bushes, you name it. The walls had erupted into a jungle of glowing leaves, flowers and even fruits, each one wild and unique. It was like the room had gone into a plant riot while we were asleep.

“Okay, that’s new,” I said slowly, feeling my cheeks heating as I realised my mistake. It appears I needed to be awake for my growth energy to remain strictly on task.

“Ryn, please,” she whispered, almost begging. “What’s wrong with me? What’s happening?”

“Right, sorry… after you got hit, all the magic was just… sucked into you, knocking you unconscious. Since then it’s been, uh… reproducing. Then I noticed that if I absorbed it from you, you seemed to feel better… except it’s also very hard to handle that energy and it makes me feel um, weird. So I swapped to plant mode and that seemed to help,” I told her hesitantly, avoiding the whole sexual side of things for now.

She puffed out her cheeks in a big, weary sigh. “Okay… that’s a lot. So we’re cuddling because you’re siphoning energy off me to help me?”

“Um, something like that, yeah, sorry,” I nodded, blushing furiously now. “You uh, did kinda wake up for a second last night and pull me in really close though. You said I was nice and cold.”

“You are nice and cold… and you don’t need to be sorry,” she told me, her voice edged with strange emotion. “You’ve helped me, obviously… but it’s not like I mind cuddling up to you.”

“What?” I asked, breath rapidly escaping my lungs as I dared to hope for a second. “What do you mean?”

My heart was thundering in my chest now as I watched her. Was she maybe going to say that she might be interested in me? Romantically? Surely not… she hadn’t given much of an indication that she was… right? Except now she was staring at me with wide, almost yearning eyes, her own cheeks erupting in a blush.

“I’m sorry,” she cringed. “That was me being weird again, I just… you… I… um. Damn, I don’t know. Cuddles are nice.”

“They are,” I said, my heart so full to bursting now that my words were too quiet, I had to repeat myself. “They are… and I liked this one a lot.”

“You did?” she asked, confusion settling into her expression. “But you were siphoning the magic off me right? Like, that’s why?”

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“Kinda,” I said, dropping eye contact. It was too hard, looking into those wonderful, expressive green eyes of hers. If I didn’t look away I might try and kiss her again or something. “Mostly I just didn’t think about it…”

Her face fell. “Oh… I guess I won’t think about it either?”

“No, no!” I exclaimed, shuffling closer again into her arms. “I mean, I wasn’t thinking too hard about why I was cuddling you. I just liked it, you needed it, so I did it!”

“Oh…” she breathed, and then we were just staring at each other again, faces close, bodies closer.

My eyes roamed over her face, enjoying the proximity where I could just… visually explore her like this. She was so pretty, and it was like every day she got prettier in my eyes. She’d been glowing to me even before she got a magical star trapped inside her body. Her personality, protective, caring, gentle and wonderful had drawn me in from the moment I met her back on Earth.

I couldn’t really deny it anymore, I was falling in love with her, emphasis on the falling. Like, really hard, as hard as it would be to fall off my tree. How do you even resist falling for someone like Grace, with her bright mind, that amazing body and gorgeous face, especially since I’d been spending most of my waking and sleeping moments with her. I didn’t resist it, I couldn’t, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to.

She was moving before I realised it, her hand drifting to my waist, her face moving close, her lips parting… and then she was kissing me.

I shorted out, mind going white with shock even as my heart burst into a breathless, overwhelming surge of affection. My body reacted too, shockwaves of warmth rippling through me that had me moving almost without thought. My legs tangled urgently with hers, locking us in place, my hands rushed to hold her, fingers splayed out across the supple muscles of her back.

Her lips were so gentle on mine at first, hesitant and caring, ready to back away in a moment, but when I pulled us closer together, the kiss deepened. My world shrank, just the feel of our mouths moving oh so slowly, oh so tantalisingly together. Each brush of soft lip on soft lip had my mind spinning off madly into space, and it was the most incredible thing I’d ever experienced.

I was being kissed by Grace, by the girl I had literally just admitted to having fallen for, and what’s more… she seemed really into it. Her hands had slid up the back of my shirt now, fingers running a line of hot sensation up my spine. She felt so good, I never wanted to stop kissing her.

So obviously, with that thought… that’s what she did, pulling back from the kiss quickly. “I’m sorry!” she blurted, eyes going wide with panic.

“Don’t be! I loved it, it was amazing, and with the way your magic effects me right now, I’m definitely not complaining,” I said quickly, trying to placate her. Why was she freaking out? I was obviously kissing her back!

Shit, and she had kissed me! Did that mean she was like.. into me? Or just like, horny or something?

“What do you mean, the way my magic effects you?” she asked, each word heavy with worry.

If I hadn’t already been completely red in the face, I would have blushed some more. “Your magic… it turns me on, like… a lot. It’s worse when I’m in full human mode too.”

“What?!” she blurted, almost angrily, pushing back from me entirely. “Was that what this was just now?”

“No! No way!” I said, raw fear piercing my heart. “No! That was something… I’ve been wanting.”

“How can you be sure?” she asked, shaking her head. She looked wild eyed, freaked out by the revelation, far more freaked out than she should be. “How can either of us be sure that you were acting without… you just got a huge dose from me. If you wanted… that, but it didn’t happen until now, you must have been holding back for a reason.”

This could not be happening, this could seriously not be happening. Right when I find out she might be interested in me, right when we actually end up kissing, not just kissing, but my first kiss... now she’s doubting?! It was like a bad dream, a nightmare come to tease me with what I wanted, only to violently yank the rug out from under me.

“I was holding back all this time because I didn’t think you’d want to kiss me back!” I cried with frustration and misery, already expecting the worst from this conversation.

“I did!” she said, her tone lamenting. “But now I don’t know if I’m messing with your head or not when… you know. Shit! Why… why is this. God fuck damn. We can’t know if what you’re feeling is genuine while I have this magic in me!”

“Why are you trying to dictate to me what I am and am not feeling, Grace?” I asked her, almost angry now. “I know what I’ve been feeling, what’s been building within me. I’m falling for you damn it!”

“I can’t do this Ryn, I need to be sure. I can’t… I can’t put my heart out on the line again, I don’t want to hurt again,” she said sadly, getting up and shakily moving out of the bed. “I need to be sure, I need to know… I need to have that undeniable trust in anything that might happen, Ryn. I can’t be crushed again.”

I opened my mouth to protest, to try and convince her, but… she was sort of right. No matter how sure of my own feelings I was, I needed her to be sure too. With that element of uncertainty hanging in her mind, nothing would work.

Although I wasn't entirely sure what "something" would look like. She hadn't outright stated that she was romantically interested… just that she'd enjoyed the kiss. Well, and the heart on the line thing. Maybe she was? Love was so much harder than stories made it out to be.

“Okay…” I said, tears welling in my eyes. “Okay. That makes sense… I wish I could convince you that I’m sincere, but until then… you’re right.”

“Thank you,” she sighed, stepping back towards me and reaching up as if to wipe a tear from my face, although she seemed to think better of it. Stepping back again, she swallowed hard. “I’m going to go to the toilet and find food… I’ll see you down—“

“Wait!” I blurted, remembering something monumentally important. “Wait! You can’t just go off on your own, okay? You’re generating huge amounts of unknown magical energy, so much that it was hurting you, probably doing damage to your body.”

“Oh, shit,” she said, then shook her head in disbelief. “So that means you’re going to need to be practically glued to me doesn’t it?”

“Yes, even… like we were sleeping last night,” I said awkwardly. “I have no idea how often I’ll need to drain you, but we’ll definitely need to be sleeping like that, to make sure you don’t explode or whatever.”

“Explode?!” she asked, alarmed.

“Grace,” I said, a little exasperated. “I don’t think you fully realise what’s happening inside you. You’re… you’re like the sun, you’re a perpetual explosion of wild magic right now. Last night when you were full up, there were arcs of the stuff exploding off your body. Troy tried to pick you up, but the moment he touched you it was like he was hit by lightning!”

“Jesus, really? Okay, okay… so we have to be cuddly, even if it’s… awkward,” she murmured, conflict warring across her expression.

“Basically,” I nodded, too worried about her wellbeing to really pay much mind to the awkward part. “Look, I’m sorry… I just care way too much about you to let this hurt you.”

She let out a long, drawn out sigh and sat down on the arm of the couch. She stayed like that for a few moments before she bonelessly flopped down next to me, her arms snaking around me. She pulled me over to her, then wearily placed her head on my stomach.

“Damn,” she groaned. “This magic shit really doesn’t live up to the hype.”

Tentatively, I reached my hand out, brushing my fingers through her blonde hair. It had grown out since Earth, and the sun had run bright highlights through it. “We’ll figure it out,” I reassured her. “We’ll figure it out.”