@wizofwaterdeep inquired: [ final ] sender and receiver share a kiss for the very last time, and they know it's their last / different kinds of kisses
The city burns, crumbles, falls. The screams of the fighting, the dying — the copper of blood, smoke, the foul reek of something indescribable from the netherbrain and the extraplanar incursion. It's every battlefield he's been on, bloody and horrible.
And this kiss is unlike any other — something desperate, something fierce, something wanting and hungry but hungry for something else aside from passion. It’s wanting for life, wanting for love, wanting for something that feels like it’s on the very precipice of being lost forever.
His blade drops, clatters to the stone, and roughened fingers crawl up the other’s chest, to his neck, to the back of his head —— tangle in hair lightly, and he breaks the kiss with a rough gasp. " Don’t you dare, " he says, foreheads pressed together. " I know what this is. Don’t you fucking dare. "
It’s been years, decades since he’s allowed himself to feel this way —— and it swells, burns, clots in his throat in an agony that goes far beyond any battle wound he’s taken, tears at him worse than having his oath ripped away. Tears burn, hot and heavy, but he’s fierce: oh, he’s fierce.
" We do this together. We find any other way. Every other way. Do you understand me? " A leveling breath, shivering in his throat. Distantly, a building crumbles, falls, crashes; he can feel the echo of it under his feet. " Please. "
