only if for a night [NSFW]
She turns in a slow circle and notes the thorough recreation of her most cherished space, where none but those dear to her soul have been. She’s not alone, she finds with dream-like surprise: Ardbert stands solid and uncertain by the entrance, tracking his eyes over every inch of the room with a look not unlike hunger. Their eyes meet and she falters in her comfort, reality bleeding in with concern--has he been pulled in alongside her dreams at Feo’s insistence? Has she dreamt him up, too?
Oldroses bud and bloom behind her with the speed of seasons, all coalescing in the blink of an eye and the steady beat of a heart. A rock has appeared in her throat that she swallows past. The waking world pulls at her with its worries and she bats them all away with a thought, a flutter of invisible wings sweeping across her furrowing brow.
“Ardbert,” she calls out his name. Real, she decides stubbornly, with all the insistence of a dreaming, tired hero. “Dream with me.”
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She’s dreaming of home. Pixie laughter echoes in her ears and wings flutter against her cheeks, dusting her skin in glitter. Feo Ul’s comforting voice whispers promises of rest and she lets the King take her away, past flashes of Vylbrand’s coasts and Coerthan snow until she awakens in her own bedroom. Sunlight blesses the room in some indecipherable dawn or noon, the world outside blinding and unknown. Comforting light, familiar light; of sunshine and late spring, so unlike the angry sky she finds herself under day after day.
She turns in a slow circle and notes the thorough recreation of her most cherished space, where none but those dear to her soul have been. She’s not alone, she finds with dream-like surprise: Ardbert stands solid and uncertain by the entrance, tracking his eyes over every inch of the room with a look not unlike hunger. Their eyes meet and she falters in her comfort, reality bleeding in with concern--has he been pulled in alongside her dreams at Feo’s insistence? Has she dreamt him up, too?
Oldroses bud and bloom behind her with the speed of seasons, all coalescing in the blink of an eye and the steady beat of a heart. A rock has appeared in her throat that she swallows past. The waking world pulls at her with its worries and she bats them all away with a thought, a flutter of invisible wings sweeping across her furrowing brow.
“Ardbert,” she calls out his name. Real, she decides stubbornly, with all the insistence of a dreaming, tired hero. “Dream with me.”
She falls into her bed, bedroom meticulously recreated by memory and pixie magic alike. The edges of the room blur into a pleasant hue and the stairs behind Ardbert leading above are hazy, unapproachable. She is happy with her small corner, familiar flowers and lanterns casting her in their pink, soft glow.
She beckons for him to join her and hesitantly he does, armour and all. At her sullen look he removes what he can, fingers stiff over an action not performed in a hundred years. It disappears into air once gone from his body.
“I missed you,” she tells him as he slowly sinks into sheets as soft as spun pixie cotton. Her body seeks out his and she props herself up on one elbow, the other running fingers over the simple shirt on his chest. “Do ghosts dream?” She wonders aloud, but the thought is swept away in the ease of Feo Ul’s affectionate magic. “I wondered how you and yours fared,” she continues, gazing into the ocean of his eyes in a moment of clarity. This conversation between them is a familiar one, gone over many times before in her room at the Pendants--except now he lies beside her, warm to the touch. She wants to cry and marvel at the dream both.
Her palm rests delicately against his throat, thumb lingering over his unsteady heartbeat. “I'm sorry for all that's happened.”
She feels him swallow against her skin. “Is this real?” He asks.
“I don't know,” she tells him. “I don't care,” she affirms and presses herself alongside the line of him, aching in how familiar he is. Time flows rich and heady around them as they gaze at each other, together in a way they haven’t been since he returned back to his world--the world she is on now, whole and physical yet he is nothing but a ghost wandering the realm.
“I don't want you to be so alone,” she murmurs, finding a space for her between his neck and shoulder. “ I don't want to be alone. Please dream with me, Ardbert.”
Slowly, his arms settle around her and she falls into his embrace. Inhales the scent of ash and leather and ocean brine. Her lips find skin and she presses a kiss there, tender and patient; when he trembles beneath her she lets him adjust to the sensation.
When his fingers travel up her arm, she sighs into it; when they curl at the base of her skull into her hair she murmurs in encouragement. It had been only once, before, but she remembers him as well as she knows her own self. Pixie magic or dreamstate, Ardbert or not Ardbert; she wants this, desperately and achingly.
She lets him set the pace, her ghost unseen for such a lonely, tragic century. She allows her head to be tilted up as he leans down and presses his mouth against her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes and at last her lips. It's slow and unsure and she pulls back, one hand cupping the side of his uncertain face.
“It's okay,” she tells him. “We don't have to be alone anymore.”
Her words undo him: relief flashes across his eyes and then he's upon her, body over hers as he flips her to her back and brackets her between his arms. His mouth against her burns as much as it aches, desperate and needy and sweet. She wants him everywhere, needs him like a long sought missing puzzle piece sliding into place.
His mouth leaves bruises on her neck and collarbone. She arches into him with a demand for more and the dreamscape gives her what she wants: her naked chest brushing against the soft cotton of his shirt. The groan he gives at seeing her inflames the inferno building within her. She catches his face in her hands before he can move to skin now unclothed. “It’ll only be what you want,” she tells him. In lieu of answer he turns his face and kisses the flat of her palm. In moments he too is bereft of what's remained of his clothes.
It's been too long , some waking part of her worries: how to move, where to touch her partner, how to watch for their telltale signs of pleasure. The dream sweeps it all away as she moves her arms over his body, cataloguing scars and muscle familiar from so long ago. His tongue swirls around her nipple and then the other and she arches off the bed, a cry at her lips. He travels further down, pressing reverent kisses between her breasts and down the tight skin of her stomach, until he's settled between her legs and she is the one left trembling. There is no time for fear anymore; only anticipation. He places a kiss at the juncture of her thighs and then his tongue finds her folds. Slowly, as if they have all the time in the world--in this dream we do, we do she murmurs to him, hands buried in his hair--he drags his tongue up towards her aching clit. Her moan of pleasure is piercing and she feels such relief as he continues working her, as if she's waited all this time since the last for him to come back to her. As if she's known the feeling of him all her life and can't imagine ever going without.
She comes against his mouth faster than ever before, shaking as he slows and waits for her body to settle. When her breathing evens out he glances up to meet her eyes, the air between them electric, and slides two fingers deep into her.
His name spills from her lips. “Ardbert,” she begs, worships, aware of his gaze devouring her as he moves inside of her. It's too much but not nearly enough. When he presses his tongue again against her she's lost once more, clenching around his fingers as they find the spot that aches so sweetly for him and press up against it. His name is a broken mantra on her lips. It's so good, he's so good to her as if he knows her as intimately as she knows him--tears slip from her eyes as she recognizes this fact, remembers the last time she had been able to touch him and how she cannot now. She chases them away, determined to enjoy this dream, this gift, whatever it is, to its fullest.
His eyes are intense on her as she comes down from her orgasm, and in them she sees that same knowledge, the same desire to forget. So she beckons him up against her body again and rises up to kiss him. She tastes herself in his mouth, chases his tongue with hers and bumps teeth against teeth. The feeling of him is hot and heavy against her, chest to chest and thigh to thigh; when her hand wanders down to wrap around him the groan he gives against her lips is world shattering.
He murmurs her name and then drops his head against her as she begins to move, breath wet and comforting against her breast. She wants him in a way so heartbreaking that it pulls at her, this image of them together in bliss in her own bed. Her bookshelves are familiar--the scent of ever blooming oldroses--a novel open and dog eared the way she'd left it--
She presses against him and they turn. Beneath her, he lies flushed and wanting. His eyes trace her body in the dim glow of her room, over every curve and scar; she does the same to him, drinking him deep with her eyes. She does not want this dream to end.
“Ella,” he says her name--in reverence, in heartache, in knowing . The truth hangs like a sword poised above them. She sets her jaw and leans down to kiss him behind his ear, the way she remembers he’d enjoyed. Down the column of his neck, continuing her descent. Her tongue lingers over the dusky nipples catching her attention. All the while her hand sweeps over him delicately, from head to base and over his thighs. Her fingers are wet with pre-cum. She wants to taste him, take him in her mouth and watch him come undone before her the way he had, but when she moves lower he catches her chin and shakes his head.
She bites her bottom lip. Next time , she promises herself, determined that there will be one. Settling back on her thighs she watches him take her in: her legs bracketing his, the rise and fall of her breasts as she guides herself onto him. At the first feeling of him she can't hold her composure any longer and moans, breath hitching as she sinks deeper.
“I missed you,” tumbles out of her mouth. Her eyes are shut and it feels like coming home. “It wasn't the same--not after you--”
Warm, calloused hands grip at her waist and her eyes flutter open to meet his. He looks as debauched as she feels: mouth open in pleasure, red flushing his cheeks and pupils so blown she can no longer see the ocean blue of his eyes. She trembles over him, waiting as the moment settles over them.
“I missed you,” she repeats herself softly and then moves. The slide of him is heavenly within her, and the sound he makes with his eyes still focused on hers is even more so. She sets the pace as she talks, a slow and teasing rhythm as she edges them both close to completion. “I'd look at the ocean and think of you. I took up an axe and thought of you. I’d study the stars and think of you.”
Her voice breaks as his hands spasm at her waist, gripping her tighter. She stops her tenuous movements over him and leans forward to link her arms behind his neck, her breath fluttering against his earlobe. “I’d touch myself and think of you,” the confession is whispered. He twitches within her and she presses her face against his hair, loving and sad as her fingers run through the short strand at his neck. “I'd have these dreams and it was always you. So please, Ardbert--” she pulls back to gaze into his eyes. “Make me yours again.”
The words are barely in the air between them before his mouth is against hers once more, hungry and teeth bumping as he surges up into her, hips snapping against hers enough to make her cry. Her breasts press up against his chest and drag against it, catching a moan from deep within them both as he drives further and further into her. She meets his rhythm with her own body, meeting him thrust for thrust and bruise for bruise as his hands press into her waist and she clutches at his neck, his shoulders; she feels one hand leave her skin only to settle in the infinitely small space between them and press into her tender clit, drawing her cries even higher. He finds that space inside of her he'd had earlier with his fingers and ruts up into it, so deep and filling her just so until she knows nothing but him and the taste of his mouth, the sound of her name on his lips as he tells her how good she is, how warm and tight and how he'd missed her too and how he doesn't want anyone but her--
She comes with her cries swallowed by his chasing mouth, walls clenching around him and she feels the groan he lets out, feels the reverberation of it into deep into her own bones. She's still caught in the thrall of it as he pumps into her, all rhythm broken as he chases after his own release; once, twice, brushing against her tender body and making her sob in pleasure and pain both. On the third time he stills with a cry and she feels him finish inside of her, hot and trembling and so heart achingly familiar.
The both of them sit pressed together for a time, catching their breath, before at last she pulls away. “Don't go,” she tells him sleepily as they untangle and fall into bed properly, arms winding around each other as if refusing to let go for even one moment. “Don't leave me alone again,” she murmurs, eyes already drifting shut--to further sleep? To awaken in bed alone?--as she whispers her selfish request. Her head finds purchase on his shoulder, his arms and legs entwining her. She feels his lips brush the top of her head.
“I can't,” he says.
She already knows.
