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[solmate]

[ Sleepless and tangled in her sheets, she's too hot. Or too cold. Or too restless with a pillow shoved between her legs that doesn't really offer any relief.

She squints at her phone when it lights up. Two words that she sneers at. She doesn't want to give it the dignity of an answer, not worth the two letters that are top of mind. And then another message follows. Her head tips back against her pillow, looking at it.

Is that the truth? Or a carefully manufactured vulnerability meant to lure her like bait. She wishes she wasn't foolish enough to bite. ]

Give me half an hour.

[ Because she doesn't want to be alone either. ]

[underage]

( well, wasn't that shockingly easy. he had been feeling some significant amount of pathetic, and he still does, but he feels soothed, too. comforted. half an hour and alina will be here, and he won't have to think about anything else at all. just her. lately, his favorite subject of reflection.

in fact, it wasn't so terrible to bow to her. still — he doesn't need that to go to her head, for her to get used to it. some amount of time he comes to answer a knocking at his door, dressed in a pair of low hanging sweatpants. only a pair of low hanging sweatpants. )

Thank you for coming.

( as if this is some cordial appointment. business, full of a certain etiquette. what's the point? they both know what brought them here together, what's going to occur, what always occurs between them when they're alone behind closed doors. why fight it? why pretend? after a tense beat of silence, aleksander bends down, pressing his mouth over hers — he bends, hands cupping under alina's thighs, to lift her up and wind her legs around his waist. )

[solmate]

[ For others, the chill of a midnight walk may be enough to get them to turn around. The might heed the eerie howl of the wind tunneling through the streets like a warning. But Alina? The so-called-saint with the heat of the sun pulsing in her veins? Alina the Foolish who let men dangle half-told stories for her to bat at in useless and futile attempts, laughing like she's a kitten jumping after a string they've yanked just out of reach? No. No, not Alina whose head and body refuse to be soothed by the icy bite of the air.

Tonight she is a wildcat that sees the snare and knowingly presses her foot into the center, determined. Perhaps because she might get the chance to sink her fangs into the trapper, or maybe it's just that the dance is one familiar and rehearsed, and she has started finally learn that the acute stabs of a painful truth are better than lies that will eventually gnaw away at her like a disease.

She has little time to react, a smart remark swept away by the slide of his tongue, by the grip of his hands through thick sweatpants. Her legs wrap around him like instinct. Her hands, icy cold, find their places on his neck and back, clawing like they're digging for the warmth of his body. He shouldn't be so warm, she thinks, as a man hidden in shadows. ]

You asked nicely. [ Something that still seems to surprise her, something she seems almost to begrudge. Like a streak of vulnerability from him is interrupting their usual pattern. Part of her wants to leave it at that. Let it be silent, a strange misstep or discordant note.

But a greater part of her wants to poke at it, pick at this scab, see if it's a place where she really fits and know the things he won't say out loud. ] It seemed true.

[underage]

( the door kicks closed behind them, alina's weight as little more than a coddled blanket in his arms, bold hands cupping warmly on the backs of her thighs. being with her, at times, is like seeing the world through the iridescent wing of an insect — easy to forget every reason she hates him when their mouths are glued together, to see the bond between them as gleaming and light and covered in every color of the rainbow. not just black and white and right and wrong and the surety of one's own ambition. he could get lost kissing alina, holding her firm body against his, imagining a life where he's allowed to have — this.

they break away as aleksander comes to sit on his couch, alina kept in the enclosure of his arms, on his lap with parted thighs. he could live an eternity just listening to her words, full of fangs and poison, but when she speaks up now he only wants to crush their mouths back together again, press her cherry lips into wine. he manages not to, tilting his head on the back of the couch, hands taking hold on either of her curvy hips. )

It is true.

( of all things she could doubt in him, his loneliness comes as a surprise. still, he can't deny that there are more reasons than just the forlorn, romantically pining for his calling her — there's a debt to settle between them, a score to even. alina had the upper hand in their last joining, which is surely a note of contention that must be corrected.

in a moment. for now, he enjoys her windswept hair and winter kissed skin, the frost from outside meeting into the heat of his hands. )

You don't believe that?

[solmate]

[ She fits so perfectly in his lap, like light creeping through the window and across the floor to fill all the spaces it can, slotted together. Her hands travel over his skin, slowly but purposefully like she's a mapmaker charting her course, like she's an artist studying her subject. Blood and bones and skin, no different than any other man except for all the ways he is. Just like she is any other girl until the day she wasn't.

She almost has to laugh, a warm huff across his lips. She shakes her head. ]

You always tell me pretty stories— [ Does he say them to himself too? So many times until they become true. He's certainly had enough time. ] And then call me naive for wanting to believe them.

I don't think you trust me with your truth. [ She dips her head, tracing the path of his collar bone with her lips, tasting the salt of sweat that's collected, breathing in the scent of his skin. Men and their masks. Maybe she could take hers off if they ever deigned her of worthy of seeing back. Hadn't he told her that Nikolai would use her if he got the chance? ] You didn't even give me your name until now. [ She hovers, eyes flicking from his mouth to his eyes. ] Is it even Aleksander?

[underage]

( he lets her touch. the roaming wandering of a nomad charting land left unexplored, untouched for hundreds of years. has he ever let anyone touch him like this, affectionate and calm, without the needy heat of implication? maybe it's just that no one reaches as deep as she does, her little fingers having all the strength of a fist coiled in the strings of his heart, playing a tune she knows the rhythm to, but never completes, never fully. is it too late to strike the final cord? is all of this really lost forever?

nothing has ever satisfied him — at least not before alina and her fleeting, wayward kisses. not before the sun came into his life and turned him from the mark of a silhouette on a backdrop back into a real person, with her hands and light alone. that's how he feels, here and like this, under the weight of her wanting — tangible, like he is a person who exists in time, not some relic of an eternity passed. present, like they're the sole centers of the universe.

he shivers against her, his name on her lips having all the effect of an earthquake rattling graveyard stones. the wake of the dead turning against nature, or nature itself resetting the terms of an agreement. you stay dead until i want you, he imagines alina saying. you live when you have permission. )

Yes. Aleksander. ( light fingertips lift up her waist, knuckles brushing her nipples before he cups her face, watching them rise to peaks under her shirt. he takes a breath, thumb rubbing across her mouth. ) Aleksander Morozova. What truth would you like from me, Alina?

( he makes no promises about giving it. but her mind is always fascinating — the places it goes, what it wants. )

[solmate]

[ She spent so long being blind. To herself, to him. Now she watches him so carefully, leaning into the way he shivers. The way she makes him shiver, the wind finally knocking loose bricks from the old church. He reaches for her like a plant aching towards the sun but stuck rooted between stones.

Parted lips capture his thumb, soft and testing. She tastes his history, his hands that bear his eternity as callouses, roughened hands that have slaughtered countless and summon death. He can change his name, change his face, but his hands will never lie. Her teeth press into the flesh, not to bite or even to hold, just to drag her claim in his flesh because he can. If her own treacherous body bows to him like he plucks strings masterfully, she will own his in turn. Or at least try.

Her throat thrums with uncertainty. She has as many questions as stars in the sky. She knows their ending. A victorious one, good triumphing over evil as the stories always should end. But a victorious one is not always a happy one. But it is inevitable and necessary. ]

Have you ever loved anyone?

[ She picks at her own wound. Nikolai had told her that he loved her, and she had said it back. Now, she's not sure it's something she deserves. It's easier when the answer is conditional anyway, when she is a pet to be collared, than an equal to sit at his side. Easier to think that he can cut her out the moment she stops being useful. Those are the rules she understands, truer than like to like. ]