Light Inescapable

by jenn and Sare Liz

Author Notes:

jenn--not my fault. Sare. Sare, being all cute and asking sooo nicely and DAMN I lack anything resembling resistance. How sad.

Sare--You can't blame me, really. I mean, it was this gorgeous new fandom, right? And characters with such *potential*. And we really needed something to freshen ourselves with, to change up our muses and get them thinking in new directions. ::innocently happy smile:: I'm a good girl I am.

Archive: author's sites, list archives, heeroluva's archive. For archiving permission, please contact both authors.

Disclaimer: We don't own. Don't sue.

*****

Sometimes, she dreams.

The night folds her up warm and alone in the privacy of her bed, and she's curled bonelessly in the deep sleep he's only seen in children. He watches with clinical interest and a strange sort of hunger he can't define when she smiles on an indrawn breath and buries her dark head deeper in her pillow. The differences between them are sharply drawn with a window and a brick wall; the cold wind outside, the warmth within.

He wants inside. Always has.

He knows he's never slept like that, and it makes him curious, makes him want to push inside and crouch beside her bed to observe her. Watch the small movements of her feet when she kicks the blankets off and wakes to reach down and tuck them in again. Study the curve of her body because she sleeps on her side and it's unfamiliar this time. Memorize the beat of her heart in the still silence of her apartment, the slow pattern of her breathing, the soft part of her lips.

Even to himself, he can't justify the fascination, and he no longer even bothers to try.

The witchblade flares to sudden smoky life and his breath catches as he tries to ground himself into reality before, before--

--he remembers red silk sliding over her skin and how he could trace her body through it with the tips of his fingers, map it with the lightest brushes that always made her smile. How she slept on her stomach and held the pillow like a weapon. When he'd woken her once, he'd been trapped on his back with her blade pressed to his throat, witchlight dying from blue eyes by inches and even longer before she released him with a line of blood tracing down his chest that she'd licked away with the tip of her tongue.

Raising a hand to his throat, he remembers bruises he's never had.

An easy thing, to press a palm to the window and open it, slip inside with years of skill and centuries of knowledge, gloved hands running down the edge of the windowframe and sliding it shut before the cold air can disturb her. She barely stirs with the breeze that briefly lifts her hair, a hand tangled in the sheet jerking it higher over the t-shirt likely grabbed from the hamper and thrown on before surrendering to her body and falling into bed.

She fights for control of everything in her life, always has.

The warmth of the room settles around him like a cloak and the feel of her, strange-familiar, as he circles her bed on soundless feet to study every angle, every tiny movement of her body, the flare of life from her wrist that stirs her briefly and hold him in place at the foot, inches from her blanket-coated ankle.

Sometimes, she dreams, and he can see the hint of a smile on her lips, the softest sigh that he can hear like a shout in the five feet that separate them. Once, she slept on his chest and screamed through a nightmare, her nails digging into his shoulders and cutting bloody lines across his arms until she woke with a shake and a start, wide green eyes staring into his as an unfamiliar enemy.

Curling silently on the floor beside her bed, he watches as she rolls onto her back, the covers kicked from her feet. Without hesitation, he leans forward and tucks them back down, so quickly she never knows they were bare. A line forms sharp between her brows and the full lips purse, rolling to face him and freezing him in place. Closed eyes, lashes feathered dark over golden skin, moving deep in REM and unaware of the world passing her by, her wrist inches from him on the pillow, spilling a circle of cold soft light that brushes over her eyes.

He's always been fast; he can move before those lashes could lift, but it's a curious thing, that he doesn't want to. If she woke, if she opened her eyes on him--

He closes his eyes.

It was a hot summer in Malta, and he can't be sure he was alone that night before her but she pushed him into the wall and bit his throat, smiling when he didn't pull away. The waterfront was close and he could hear the ocean from his bedroom in the villa. Cold stone against his back through velvet and too-thick cotton that clung to his skin and he could wrap his hands around her waist it's so tiny. He felt the blade against his stomach when she asked him where his loyalties were, and he whispered he'd always been hers.

Always. She didn't believe him then, either.

Sometimes, she dreams and he holds his breath and wonders. It was a warm spring night and he wrapped his hands around her throat and pinned her under him in their bed beneath a red canopy, and there was cold metal between their bodies while she smiled. She raised her arms high above her head and wordlessly surrendered control to fate when they both knew fate owned them, and when he collapsed beside her, she flickered a smile at him before she fell asleep, the long lines of her bare back visible in the faint glow of the moon through the unshuttered window.

"Ian," she whispers, and he freezes, but the brown (green? blue?) eyes are closed and he indulges himself that night. Irons is too distant to be anything but the slightest annoyance on the edge of his consciousness, dismissable for now, free for the moment, if only for the moment.

She whispers his name and he finds himself leaning forward, bracing a hand on the floor and watching her face.

Sometimes, she dreams, and he wants to crawl inside her and touch them all and lose himself in them, the colors faded from centuries of disuse in the recesses of her mind, woken into brilliant life by the blade on her hand only now, only here. He remembers biting his lip when she ran her hands down his chest and asked who he belonged to, and his answer was always the same.

His lips form the words he's said to a hundred different women in a hundred different lives.

"You."

*****

It was the Rialto theatre and she'd been there at some point but she couldn't remember now and it didn't seem important at all, really. She was backstage and it was completely silent, empty save herself and her thoughts.

He was there too, of course, but he was silent and she knew that. He was always silent.

He was behind her and she could feel his presence as his hands ran over her shoulders, a fraction of an inch away from her coat but he was so close, his lips hovering over her ear, whispering to her in his soft clipped tones.

"You know how this goes, Sara."

She could only smile and moan in response because she knew exactly how things happened in the past - she'd seen the dreams so clearly and she could remember them now, so clearly it was like pieces of crystal glinting in the sunlight. Some things just always *were*.

She turned around and touched his face, gratified to feel him nuzzle into her palm as she held it to his cheek. When his lashes slowly revealed his eyes she almost gasped his name because it was all right there, answering any lingering doubt. All of the loyalty, all of the love, all of the devotion was right there in his brown eyes and she desperately wanted to stay right there with him, staring into his eyes, she wanted to stay there forever.

She didn't, of course, but it was worth the cessation to feel his lips tentatively touch hers, to feel his tongue curl around hers, to feel his body pressed hard against hers.

His lips trailed down to her neck and she arched it, giving him as much room as he needed, his name falling from her lips so easily, over and over. Their heavy winter layers were quickly shed, his overcoat, her leather jacket, hats and gloves until she could sink her fingers into his hair and breathe out his name again.

It was difficult to continue kissing as she wanted to, with her complete attention paid to his lips, while trying to disrobe so they went through those motions as quickly as possible, and sinking down onto his overcoat he pulled her to him and she gladly slid her legs around him, momentarily shivering at the glorious contact - her flesh on his - before impaling herself smoothly and marveling that it felt like home.

It was beautiful, beyond anything the poets had ever tried to express and she paused and gasped his name, wanting so badly to share it with him but having the one word as the entire extent of what her mind could vocalize. He knew, she realized, as she opened her eyes to him and saw the mirrored rapture in his narrowed eyes. He whispered her name reverently and groaned as she rocked on him harder and harder still. He groaned as she called out his name over and over, and called her name as she milked him, as he drained himself into her, as she lay spent on his chest, panting.

*****

"Ian."

He leans forward until they are a breath apart, holding himself still as the images wash through him, insubstantial as fog in the recesses of his mind. He's always been protector and defender, lover and confidante, the words interchangeable, the meanings never the same from one breath to another, one life to the next.

The soul of the words though--they always stay the same. It knows and he lets the glow touch him, just once, just a little--

In Rome, he'd slogged through mud that coated his ankles and rain pounded into his cloak and found her flattened against the chapel walls, soaking wet and blood washing away from her hands. When she put her arms around him, it smeared into his hair, he could smell it all over her skin, and her head tilted back when he kissed her throat and lifted her off the ground. She'd been beautiful and wild and wet in wool and silk and they'd dropped into the mud and his fingers twisted through hers, the metal cold against his wrist when he pushed inside her and breathed her name in her ear.

"God, yes."

With one finger, he traces the air just above her lips, trembling as if waiting to be touched, her hands restless and pushing the blanket to her waist. A fisted hand digs into the pillow beside her head, and he closes his eyes and breathes in.

For a moment, just a moment, the Rialto raises itself around them and he can see the delicate slope of her shoulders beneath her coat, close enough to touch, his breath against her ear.

"You know how this goes, Sara."

Sometimes, she dreams, and he knows she dreams of him, and it's a little thing, to lean forward and brush his lips over hers, quick and light and for no reason at all except it's now and he wants to feel inside. Warm. She leans into it, and then it's more than a touch, it's more than a breath or anything he can justify when her mouth opens and her tongue is tracing within his mouth--

--God, it's familiar, a taste he knows from a thousand memories that aren't his. The familiar nip on his lip that he's never had, and he knows to press a hand against the back of her neck just so, her fingers on his cheek, nails scratching lightly into his flesh as if she's marking him. They share an indrawn breath and she's standing in front of him; the glow in her eyes has nothing to do with the blade on her wrist, just for him. He has a knee on her bed and her arms are sliding around him and her hands are pressed into his back, etched into memory.

"Ian," she whispers, her breath warm on his face and waking too many thoughts, too many feelings, too warm and too fast and God, too much, too much by far.

It might be fear. He's not sure--he's never felt it before.

When he pulls away, he can't breathe, and she rolls onto her stomach, gripping the pillow like a weapon and a sharp line drawn between her brows. But her face is turned toward him, and he watches the lines smooth away, tongue brushing over her lips as if she can still taste him when she smiles.

When her eyes open, he's outside, back pressed against cold brick, his fingers against his mouth.

He can still taste her, and he lets himself, dawn rising inescapably on the horizon. The vague images wash away and the witchblade dulls on her wrist when she rolls over to find sleep again, hands curled up against her chest as if to hold the dream just a little longer before light can snatch it away.

He can taste her, and the ghost of his blood lingering on his tongue while the sounds of the new day begin to intrude, fading everything and returning to the hard reality of winter.

"Always yours, Sara."

Sometimes, Ian dreams too.

The End