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The bar is busy when Keyleth walks in, filled with the bustle of people and loud notes of music, the energy washing over her the same way it had all the times she’d been here before, a lifetime ago. It looks the same, and if she leans against the wood paneling of the wall beside the bar, she’s sucked backwards through time, her own little pocket dimension, back into her own body at nineteen and twenty-two, all long limbs and wide-eyed stares and the agonisingly sharp learning curve of growing up.
She’s back, for a moment, in the Before, and it hurts so much when she wrenches her eyes back open again that she almost walks right back out.
But if she does that she’ll have to drive to her lonely little hotel room with no company but her own thoughts. She will fall asleep. And tomorrow will come faster, and she sees herself - in her mind’s eye - taking the highway home with shaking hands, back to the silence.
And the oxygen-sucking pain of the memories is better than that.
The women in front of her - echoes of the person she was the last time she was here - clear away from the bar, and Keyleth steps forward, flags down the bartender she’s never seen before, orders the same cheap beer she spent a hundred weekends nursing right here. The label is different, not the same inky blue she’d find stuck under her fingernails after subconsciously peeling at the edges all night, but the taste is the same. It’s thin and slightly bitter, and the first time she’d tried it her eyes had watered. It tasted twice as bad on the way back up.
Keyleth settles at the bar, pulls up a seat, sips at her drink and tastes sloppy kisses and the first pinch of heartbreak and three a.m with her friends, laughing so much she’d find tear tracks on her cheeks, the way it seemed like it would stretch on forever. How something so solid beneath her feet felt utterly indestructible.
Until it wasn’t.
There’s a jostling beside her, a man stepping back whilst a woman takes his place, a flurry of dark hair and leather, and as she leans beside her, her hair kicks up a scent, sweet and deep, lovely and yet somehow painful. Keyleth’s mind flicks through references, tries desperately to place it, stretches forward to try to catch a glimpse of the woman’s face as she gestures to the bartender.
“Glen Scotia please, James. You know how I like it.”
Keyleth freezes, taking in the woman’s words, the way her honey accent lingers on the consonants. Her mind makes the connection, the hazy scent of the perfume and the leather jacket and the voice, and she’s leaning back a little now, coming into Keyleth’s view, shows the smooth light brown of her skin, the curve of her nose.
Keyleth swallows, hard.
“Vex’ahlia,” she breathes, unable to stop herself. It’s been more years than she can count on one hand since she last laid eyes on her, and now she’s turning, dark eyes looking right at Keyleth. She wonders, fleetingly, if she’s imagined her, if Vex is some kind of ghost, haunting this building or her specifically.
Her cheeks heat under Vex’s gaze, brown eyes widening as they take her in. She looks exactly the same and worlds apart, all at once. Time’s been kind to her, enhanced her features rather than diminishing them, though something has carved dark circles beneath her lash lines, emptied out the brightness of the spark in her eyes.
“Keyleth,” Vex says her name like it’s obvious she’s here. Like it couldn’t have been anybody else sitting beside her. Like she came here tonight just to find her.
They stare at each other for a moment, vibrant green eyes on deep brown, and Keyleth grasps at words, tries them out in her mind, scrambles for something effortlessly cool and nonchalant, the kind of sentence she could only dream about saying to the woman she still sees behind closed eyes far more often than she’d like to admit.
Keyleth’s mouth and brain can’t agree on anything. Or maybe, more realistically, they’re conspiring against her.
“Oh. Yeah! That’s still my name,” she splutters, cheeks warming further. She fights the urge to bury her face in her hands, watches Vex’s eyebrows push up towards her hairline.
There’s a beat of silence, stretching out just long enough for Keyleth to begin to lean down to pick up her bag, preparing to run out of the bar, get into her car, and drive away without looking back.
But then Vex smiles, and something loosens inside Keyleth’s chest.
“You haven’t changed a bit, have you darling?”
You have no idea, Keyleth wants to say, wants to spill it all right now, just because there’s somebody to listen, somebody who she once trusted implicitly, who she would have poured all her problems into over a drink in this very bar.
But the years change people, change things, dig out oceans of difference between then and now, shape people into strangers and shared moments into hazy memories, recalled slightly differently by everybody involved until one day, they seem like they happened in a dream.
So, “I guess not,” is what Keyleth says instead, takes a swig of her drink.
When Vex smiles at her, it doesn’t reach her eyes. When Keyleth smiles back, she assumes hers is a mirror.
Vex accepts her drink from the bartender, swills around the amber liquid and the ice, all distorted within the diamond patterns of the glass. She drinks it in one, barely blinks, throat bobbing with the soft glug of the liquid. It must burn. But Vex has never been one to show weakness.
“How’ve you been, then?” Vex asks, turning properly to face her, jacket sliding open and revealing a low-cut grey t-shirt. Keyleth averts her eyes, finds literally anywhere else in the room to look. Vex was never hers to look at. But if possible, she’s even less so now. “I heard you were somebody important these days. Up north.”
Keyleth frowns, “who told you that?”
“News travels.”
“Oh. Right,” it’s not an answer, and Keyleth can’t help but wonder, or maybe more like hope, whether Vex has been doing her own research. It’s not like Keyleth keeps up with anybody they used to know anymore. It’s not like she should even be here right now. “Yeah, I mean I - I keep busy.”
“Modest,” Vex teases, pushes her glass back towards the bartender with a wink. He takes it, immediately begins to fill it again.
“What about you?” Keyleth asks, steering the subject away from herself. She’s here right now to escape thinking about her life. She definitely doesn’t want to be talking about it with Vex.
Vex doesn’t answer straight away, taking her fresh drink instead, throwing it back in one again, running a fingernail along the little spiral of orange peel at the rim of the glass. Keyleth winces for her this time, wonders if any sort of buzz is starting to build under Vex’s skin yet. She could drink Keyleth under the table when she knew her. But maybe her tolerance has lowered since then.
“I’m still at the university,” Vex says, finally, eyes still stuck on her glass. Keyleth traces Vex’s fingers with her eyes, long and slender, bitten-down nails where they were once perfectly sculpted. “I’m a professor now. I just got tenure, actually.”
“Oh!” Keyleth beams, happy for this Vex and for the grad student she used to know, who projected nothing but confidence, but who worried, in the quiet moments, that her father had been right when he’d told her she’d never make anything of herself. “That’s incredible, Vex! Congratulations!”
Vex’s eyes flicker over to her again, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of her lips, “yeah. Yeah. Thanks Ki - Keyleth.”
Keyleth doesn’t miss it, the way she falters over her name, almost slipping back into her old nickname. It hurts more than she could have known. She lifts the bottle, drinks more of the sour tasting beer, willing away the pure awkwardness of this interaction.
She backtracks, rewinds the years, tries to remember exactly what Vex was doing when she last left her, tries to think of something she can ask her. Because it would be easy, to get up and walk out, leave this weird conversation here. She can’t quite do it, though. Something’s holding her back, and it could be the ghost of her twenty-two year old self, having taken over her body, or maybe just a morbid curiosity.
Engaged. Vex had been engaged when she left town. Only, Keyleth looks down at Vex’s hands nursing the empty glass and finds no ring.
She shouldn’t ask. She thinks that’s probably the etiquette, the polite thing to do. But the bottle in her hands is empty, and the beer’s just starting to hit, and Gods, it’s been years.
“How’s Percy?” She asks, without asking.
Vex blinks. Keyleth regrets bringing it up.
“He’s doing very well for himself. He just bought a new house, in fact. The children love it.” Her eyes are on her glass again, the melting sphere of ice inside, her voice full of faux cheer and a million miles away.
Keyleth could have deduced that they weren’t together from Vex’s blink alone, almost like Keyleth had physically struck Vex. Her words confirm it, without actually doing as much. She didn’t expect it. Vex and Percy seemed unshakable, a solid unit of two. The kind of permanent Keyleth always associated with her friend group. With the way that crumbled, she shouldn’t really be surprised that Vex and Percy didn’t last either.
She chooses not to focus on that. It doesn’t take an expert to tell her that Vex doesn’t want to. She picks out the second part instead - the children. Surely it hasn’t been long enough for them to break up and for Percy to have children with somebody else. So that must mean…
“You have kids?”
Vex laughs, dry and breathy. It’s beautiful in it's own way, the melody of it, and the way she looks at Keyleth when she does it.
“Never did miss a trick, did you?” She teases, and Keyleth ducks her head, peels at the red label, wonders if it will stick under her nails like the blue did, solid evidence that this happened, or if in the morning, this will just feel like a dream. “We had three children, before the divorce. Two girls and a boy. Twins, actually.”
“Oh!” Keyleth smiles, still trying to wrap her head around the idea that Vex is a mom. But then, she always was the fearless, walk in head first type. And Gods, she and Percy loved one another. At least once. So maybe, it makes more sense than she knows. “Of course you’d have twins. Just like you and Vax.”
If Vex had looked like Keyleth had struck her before, this time she looks like she’s been shot, hit by a car, pushed backwards off a cliff. Her eyes slam shut, lips pressed together as she takes a shaky breath in.
“Vex?” Keyleth can’t help but reach out and touch her as she desperately tries to think about what she could have said wrong. She lays one hand softly on Vex’s atop the bar, gently enough to offer some pressure, but not so firm that Vex can’t pull her hand away if she wants. “Is everything ok?”
Vex takes another breath, opens her eyes, tugs her hand out of Keyleth’s grasp. “Everything’s fine, darling.”
“Are you sure? Because-”
“Vax died, Keyleth. Vax died. A few years ago.”
Keyleth freezes, air stolen from her lungs, ice gripping at her heart. It takes her a moment to absorb the words, take them in, translate them from sound to meaning, to understand, properly, what Vex means. That her brother, so real and full of life in Keyleth’s mind, is gone. Years ago, already. Keyleth’s been living her life assuming they still shared the world. She should have felt it, she thinks, if any of them passed. She should have felt the world ripple, felt an empty space open up where there once was none. She wonders if she did, if that day everything felt off, but she could never put a finger on why.
She wonders how it’s possible she’s gone this long without knowing.
“W-what? Vex, I - I-”
“It’s alright. It’s alright. You couldn’t have known.”
“Shit, Vex. Shit, I didn’t - I’m so sorry-”
“It’s alright,” Vex says again, more final this time, but not angrily. “Maybe I didn’t want everybody to know,” she admits, quietly, barely audible across the din of the bar. “Maybe I liked the thought that he was still alive, at least in the minds of some of the people who loved him.”
“He was,” Keyleth admits, the gravity of the situation still washing over.
Vex smiles again, and this time it seems a little more genuine. Like whatever barrier time built between them is corroding, muscle memory remembering what it felt like to be friends.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Vex asks, flagging down the bartender again, ordering refills for herself and Keyleth.
“Just passing through.”
“Bit out of the way to just pass through, isn’t it?”
Keyleth bites at her lip, thanks the bartender when he passes her another bottle. “It was only an hour out of my way. And I…” she considers lying, thinks about making her life seem like sunshine and rainbows. Maybe five minutes ago she would have. Now, though, it would surely be cruel. “I didn’t want to go home. So I came here.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
Keyleth huffs out a laugh, feels the weight of all of it, a culmination of the past several years, shift on her shoulders. It’s not lessening, not really. It just feels lighter now that she’s sharing a little bit of it. “Something like that, yeah.”
Vex swallows her third drink, scratches at the orange peel again. The music on the jukebox shifts from something rocky to something slower, higher pitched, older. Keyleth can’t quite place it, but she’s pretty sure it came out right before she started college, pretty sure this night is an exact duplicate of others she had here. This seat, this woman, this song. Exactly the same and whole worlds apart.
“It’s good to see you,” Vex tells her quietly, looking at her with such softness that Keyleth wants to cry.
“It’s good to see you too, Vex.”
Vex looks at her then, properly, eyes darkened a little, and it’s a look Keyleth’s been met with a handful of times before, each one of them burned into her brain. The time in Vex’s office, late at night and surrounded by stacks of papers, New Years Eve on the freezing cold porch of Pike’s house, the day before Keyleth drove away from this town forever.
They never talked about them. Maybe there was nothing to be said.
All Keyleth knows is that from the first time she saw her, when their professor stood aside in a lecture and introduced Vex as the PhD candidate who would be leading their next module, Keyleth has felt something for her. It was a stupid crush, and then something stronger, and then maybe too much. And then there were the empty years, where Keyleth told herself she’d left this all behind.
“You said you didn’t want to go home,” Vex says, when the silence between them starts to stretch into too long, “do you have anywhere else to be? Somebody waiting for you?”
Keyleth swallows, heart jumping to her throat. She’s reading between the lines of Vex’s words, unsure if she’s looking too hard, unsure if this is anything at all. She shouldn’t dare hope. She shouldn’t do any of this, should apologise and walk out and leave Vex where she left her before - in the past.
But Gods, Vex seems lonely. She never seemed lonely before. She was usually surrounded by people who loved her. For a while, Keyleth was one of them. She doesn’t think they’ve ever been more similar than they are right now. Keyleth wants this, wants Vex, and if Vex wants this too, even just as a one night thing, no strings attached, then why shouldn’t they?
“There’s nobody waiting for me, Vex.”
Vex nods, once, reaches out like she’s about to touch Keyleth, pulls back at the last moment.
“Alright,” she clears her throat, “do you want to get out of here then, darling?”
Keyleth’s heart stutters. She lifts the bottle to her lips and drains it. And then she tells Vex yes.
The cab ride through the streets of the town is quiet, the route unfamiliar, though the scenes outside the window are filled with little ghosts - places Keyleth could retrace with her eyes closed, could sink into a memory like it happened yesterday.
They sit in the backseat across from one another, quiet, not touching or looking at each other, and Keyleth wonders, at least once every five seconds, whether she’s making a mistake. There’s still time to correct this, to ask the cab driver to turn around and take her to her hotel once he’s dropped Vex off at home. She draws in breath to say it on three separate occasions, but each time, it’s impossible to get the words out.
They pull up in front of a weathered brownstone - the last on the row - entirely too quickly, Keyleth’s feet half numb in her shoes, hands shaking as she stuffs them into her pockets. They’re quiet as they walk up the steps to the front door, as Vex slides her key into the lock, pushes open the door. And then Keyleth is standing on one side of the threshold, Vex on the other, bathed in golden light and looking every bit as delectable as she does in Keyleth’s memories.
“Are you coming in?” Vex asks, standing aside, slipping her boots off and lining them up on the mosaic patterned tile.
“Right. Yeah, of course,” Keyleth shakes herself, takes one final deep breath, fills her lungs like she’s about to plunge into the ocean. And then she’s stepping inside and the door is shutting behind her, a click of finality.
When Keyleth knew Vex before, in a time worlds apart from this one, she lived in a one bedroom apartment two blocks north of the college campus. It was a fifth floor walk up, the hot water would only work for one hour a day, and she shared the only bedroom with her brother, curtains strung up to split the room in two.
It doesn’t take much for Keyleth to see that Vex has gone up in the world.
This house has three stories, three bathrooms, a velvet couch, and antique pieces around every corner which Keyleth would never have thought to place together, but now that they are, she can’t picture them any other way.
“Can I get you a drink?” Vex aks, leading Keyleth through the first floor into the large kitchen, all granite and gleaming appliances.
“Please,” Keyleth half squeaks, needing something to hold onto, more than anything, to stop her hands from shaking so much.
“Is wine ok? I know you were never much of a wine drinker, but I think it’s all I’ve got for now.”
“Wine is great,” Keyleth nods, leans against one of the shiny countertops as Vex strides to the fridge.
She looks around the room whilst Vex fixes their drinks, finds a collection of photos on the far wall. It’s a little too far for her to make out the details, but she can see children, the three of them. The little girl with pale hair and the round-cheeked twins, a few baby photos, Percy and the three of them. Below, larger than the rest, is another photo of twins - only, this one is older, the children’s faces thinner, hair longer and straighter. This one has to be of Vex and Vax, and Keyleth’s heart breaks all over again.
“Here you go,” Vex steps in front of her, blocking her view, holds up a glass of deep red.
“Oh! Thank you,” Keyleth takes it, sips it immediately. It’s rich and dark and just a little too acidic for her tastes, but it’s strong, and that’s what she needs right now - a taste of liquid courage.
Vex settles against the island across from Keyleth, sipping her drink, and if she reached out with her hand, stretched out across the open space the smallest amount, Keyleth could reach her. She doesn’t though, afraid to break this strange limbo state they have going on between them, the silence of the house.
Vex breaks it first. It’s only right that she should, given their history.
“What happened between you and that boy? The broody one?”
“Nothing good,” Keyleth laughs, humourless, drinks more wine. “He was sweet, but… things happen. Life happens.”
It’s Vex’s turn to laugh now, “it certainly does.”
“What, um… what about you and Percy?”
Vex swallows her wine, lips painted blood red. “We’re still very dear friends. Some people are just better off apart.”
Keyleth knows that all too well, has seen it too many times; the agony of loving somebody but being better people separately, being divided by geography or ideals or family differences. She can’t help but wonder whether her and Vex fall into that category. Whether whatever this is will end by dawn. Whether it’ll be better that way.
Keyleth clears her throat, the silence wrapping around her again, scrambling for words. “This is a lovely home.”
“Yes, it - oh, fuck it,” Vex growls, draining her wine, slamming it onto the island behind her, taking one big step into Keyleth’s space, and then all at once she is engulfed in her, lips firm on her own, hands on her waist and tangled in her hair, Vex’s body pressed against her own.
Keyleth squeaks as Vex pounces on her, momentarily shocked before her mind catches up, body melting into the kiss, senses filled up with Vex, Vex, Vex.
Vex deepens the kiss now that Keyleth is eagerly kissing back, slipping one knee between Keyleth’s, hand gripping tighter at her waist as Keyleth’s own hands wrap around Vex’s back, pull her closer, a tiny moan escaping her as Vex’s tongue traces Keyleth’s lower lip.
“This was what you wanted, wasn’t it, darling?” Vex asks, pulling back a tiny amount, eyes dark as she looks up at Keyleth.
“Yes. Gods, Vex, you have no idea,” Keyleth admits, voice verging on desperation.
“Good,” Vex whispers, closing in again, lips crashing together, her body pressing up against Keyleth’s.
Keyleth breathes her in, something igniting in her chest and her stomach, and it’s everything, everything she had wanted. It’s all of the middle of the night thoughts and the dreams that had her waking up gasping, the little interactions Keyleth overanalysed for hours, the stolen moments in Vex’s office where Keyleth wondered whether, in another life, they could have been something wonderful.
Vex breaks the kiss, forehead resting against Keyleth’s, “would you like to come upstairs?”
“Yes.” She can’t get the word out fast enough, heart beating out of her chest.
Vex smirks, draws back, twines her fingers with Keyleth’s and leads the way out of the kitchen. Keyleth follows, almost tripping over herself in her eagerness. She focuses on foot in front of the other and her hand in Vex’s, and they make it through black and white tiles and polished wood and the creaky top stair, and then Vex is pushing open the first door on the left and they’re standing together in her bedroom, light from the street lamp and the moon pouring in, bathing everything orange-white.
Vex drops her hand to close the door, and Keyleth takes in the room, all bay windows and forest green and tasteful antiques.
“Alright, darling?” Vex asks, reappearing in front of Keyleth.
“Mmhmm!” Keyleth squeaks, “I just… I can’t believe this is really happening. I…I maybe thought about this a lot,” she admits, tugging her lower lip between her teeth.
Vex looks pensive, closes the gap between them and cups Keyleth’s cheek with one hand, soft and gentle and calming.
“You aren’t the only one to have thought about it,” Vex whispers, and Keyleth’s pretty sure the wiring in her brain short circuits.
“I - you… you th - what?”
Vex laughs softly, works her hand down Keyleth’s jawline, her neck, her collarbones, slides a finger under the collar of Keyleth’s shirt. “We can go as slow as you like, alright? Just talk to me.” Keyleth nods mutely, wonders if she might implode if Vex doesn’t start this soon, properly. “How about we start by taking this off?” Vex asks, tugging at the soft cotton of her t-shirt.
Keyleth swallows, hard, “mmhmm. Yep,” she struggles, fumbling for the hem of the shirt, pulling it up and halfway over her head, getting it stuck somehow in her hair. “Um-”
“Come here,” Vex laughs again, and in a flash of cool hands, tugging her free and smoothing back her hair, Keyleth is free.
And then she’s blinking down at Vex, who is once again very, very close.
Keyleth leans in first this time, presses her lips against Vex’s, feels her draw closer, one hand coming to rest on the bare skin of her waist, and it’s dizzying. Keyleth realises, properly, that she’s allowed to touch Vex too, lifts one hand to the small of her back to pull her closer, tangles one in the floral softness of her hair. Vex groans into her mouth, the tiniest sound, and it sends a jolt through Keyleth, wetness beginning to flood her cunt as she deepens the kiss.
The touching is wonderful, but it isn’t enough, she needs more, and it doesn’t seem fair that Vex still has her shirt on, so Keyleth tries not to overthink it, breaks the kiss just to grasp at the bottom of Vex’s shirt, asks permission with her eyes and pulls it off of her when she receives it.
Keyleth drops it on the ground and then has to take a moment. The sight in front of her is beautiful, a hundred times better than the ones in her dreams, than anything twenty-two year old Keyleth could have pictured. Vex’s hair is mussed, eyes hooded, lips swollen, and Keyleth did that. Vex is looking at her like she could devour her, like she wants to ruin her. Keyleth is going to let her.
Vex lurches forward to restart the kiss, and Keyleth lets her hands wander, one tracing across the bare skin of Vex’s back, the other starting at the soft curve of her hips, carving higher, playing at the pretty lace of her bra, fingers skimming just underneath.
“Do you want to touch me, Keyleth?” Vex asks, as they break for air.
“Please,” Keyleth begs, too far gone to worry about seeming cool, whole body thrumming with want.
Vex smirks, reaches down to shimmy out of her jeans, keeping eye contact with Keyleth the whole time. Keyleth is powerless, lips parting, taking in the sight of Vex’s toned legs, her black underwear clinging to her hips. Vex takes it a step further, slowly pulling the thin bra straps off of her shoulders, undoing the clasp at the back, and - as if in slow motion - finally letting her bra fall to the ground.
“Oh,” Keyleth gasps, met with the sight of Vex’s perfectly rounded breasts, nipples hard and pebbled.
“You can touch me anywhere you like,” Vex says, voice low, “but I rather think it’s your turn first,” she gestures at Keyleth’s jeans.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Keyleth is wishing she’d thought to put on matching underwear today. In her defense, she wasn’t planning on bumping into an old friend at the bar, or for said friend to invite her back to her place for this. Keyleth shoves the thought away, decides Vex isn’t going to care, and tugs her jeans off to reveal dark blue cotton. Her bra goes too, for good measure, though she doesn’t have anywhere near the patience Vex does, everything inside of her begging for touch.
It’s Vex’s turn to look, eyes roaming Keyleth’s body, “oh, Keyleth. Good girl,” she whispers, and all Keyleth can do is whimper, cunt throbbing. Vex raises her eyebrows, “you like that.” It isn’t a question. Keyleth nods anyway.
Vex takes Keyleth’s hands, moves her over to the edge of the bed and gently sits her down, slides her arms around Keyleth’s neck and straddles her, thighs pressing into her hips. And then Vex is kissing her again, one hand cupping her breast, thumb rubbing circles over her nipple, slow at first and then faster, Vex’s hips rolling, agonizingly slowly against Keyleth. Her lips ghost lower, nip at her jawline, and then she’s whispering into her ear, stirring something deep in Keyleth’s belly.
“I’m going to mark you now, darling,” she whispers, “so that for days, everyone who looks at you will know you’ve been claimed. That you’re mine.”
It’s not true, not really, because tomorrow Keyleth knows she’ll have to drive back home, two hundred miles away, where nobody’s ever even heard the name Vex’ahlia. But right now none of that matters, and it’s all Keyleth wants, all she’s ever wanted, perhaps, and she tilts her head back with a groan at the back of her throat, lets Vex kiss lower, bite down at the exposed skin of her throat, suck marks into her whilst Keyleth pushes up with her hips, craving friction.
Vex had told her she could touch, and she thinks she has to, will perish if she doesn’t, waits for Vex to finish marking her - supernovas on the soft sting of her skin - and then makes her own path of kisses, plots a constellation out over Vex’s body, down her neck and shoulders and chest, kissing over her nipple and pulling it into her mouth with her teeth. Vex gasps, arches into Keyleth, and she sucks hard, swirls her tongue around her nipple, experiments with teeth and lips and tongue to see which elicit the best sounds from Vex.
Keyleth’s getting wetter the whole time, cunt aching to be filled, underwear soaked through, and a particularly guttural groan of her name from Vex, she isn’t sure she can stand any more of this without some kind of friction.
“Vex,” Keyleth whimpers, pulling off of her nipple with an obscene pop.
“Keyleth. Did I say you could stop?”
Keyleth whimpers again, two pitches higher, eyes falling closed as she leans forward into Vex. “N-no. I’m sorry, Vex, I just - I need you to touch me,” she begs, almost crying with want, every cell in her body begging for this, for her, for Vex.
“Oh,” Vex laughs again, as Keyleth rolls her hips upwards, seeking anything she can get, “that would be too easy, Kiki.” Kiki. The old familiar nickname makes something entirely new stir up in her stomach.
“Please. Haven’t I waited long enough? Don’t you think the better part of a decade is-”
“No,” Vex stops her, pushing her thumb against Keyleth’s lips. Keyleth draws in a sharp intake of breath, parting her lips obediently as Vex pushes at them, slides her thumb into Keyleth’s mouth. Keyleth sucks at it hungrily. Vex always did have great hands. “I’ve been waiting a long time too,” Vex hisses, “and when I make you come, Keyleth Ashari, you’re going to have earned it. And I’m going to make you scream.”
Keyleth groans around Vex’s thumb, sucks harder, bucks her hips again.If she’d have known that sex with Vex was going to be like this, maybe she’d have acted on this thing years ago, kept tabs on Vex and pounced the second the divorce was finalised.
“Now. Do you want to be a very good girl for me?” Vex asks, withdrawing her thumb.
“Yes, Vex. Please, please let me be a good girl for you.”
“Since you asked so nicely, darling,” Vex winks, and pushes at Keyleth gently with one hand. Keyleth understands what she wants, lays back, head hitting the moss green of the blanket below.
Vex climbs off of her lap, and Keyleth whines at the loss, follows her with her eyes, watches as she steps out of her underwear.
“Gods, Vex,” Keyleth curses, taking in all of her, every beautiful, glorious inch.
Vex has a scar under her jaw and one across her belly, some pale stretch marks winding their way over her hips, a wide purple bruise across one knee. Her body is a map of the places she’s been, and Keyleth intends to show her the devotion she deserves.
Vex comes back to the bed, encourages Keyleth to move higher up, head on the soft pillow. She stops for a second, kneeling beside her, runs a hand through her hair, looks down at her with such an aching tenderness that it makes Keyleth’s chest hurt.
“I’m going to sit on your face now. Ok?”
“Fuck.”
Keyleth nods, scrabbles for Vex’s thighs, helps her lift one leg over her, grips Vex’s hip with one hand and thigh with the other, helps her get nice and open, ready for Keyleth to fuck. And then Vex is sinking lower, and everything else in the world ceases to matter.
Keyleth knows she’s supposed to start slow, and any other time, she would. But they’ve been teasing each other all night, and this is Vex, and honestly - Keyleth is so amped up and desperate that she isn’t sure she could hold herself back if she tried.
She pulls Vex in as close as she can get, starts by drawing lines through her folds with her tongue, faster with each one, skirting around her clit every time in a way that turns Vex’s breath ragged above her. She moves to her entrance next, tongue lapping at the outside, tasting Vex’s wetness, pushing inside only when Vex starts to grind down on her mouth properly, and it’s breathtaking, having Vex - of all people - at her mercy like this. Keyleth thinks that she could die here, quite happily, right now or in a hundred years, stay lapping at her cunt forever, listening to her breathing getting faster, to the little moans she’s letting out with each exhale.
Keyleth pushes further inside, feels Vex’s walls contracting around her, pulls out and back in again, fucking her with her tongue. Vex’s legs are starting to shake around her, slick dripping onto Keyleth’s chin, and she can tell that she’s close. Half of her wants to draw this out longer, and she swears to herself that if this isn’t a one time thing, the next time they fuck she’s going to edge Vex until she’s begging, until she forgets every language she knows. But right now, Keyleth wants to be a good girl.
So she pulls her tongue away, laves up and down her cunt a few more times before focusing in on her clit. Keyleth flattens her tongue, pressing it against the sensitive bundle of nerves, and with fingernails digging into the backs of Vex’s thighs, Keyleth gives her everything she has.
She looks up, seconds before she’s certain Vex is about to meet her peak, finds an image she knows she’s going to store in her mind for the rest of the days. It’s Vex, head thrown back, hair a mess, eyes scrunched shut, teeth digging into her bottom lip so hard that Keyleth’s certain there will be blood there, when she removes them.
Vex comes with a shout, legs quaking, a gush of wetness painting Keyleth’s chin and neck, and she holds her tight and lets her ride it out, lapping slower and slower at her clit as Vex stills.
There’s silence for a moment after, punctuated only by Vex’s slowing breathing, and then she’s moving, edging down to Keyleth’s chest, stomach, hips, leaning down to kiss her, slow and deep. She must taste herself, Keyleth knows, and that knowledge is enough to restart the fire in her belly after an interlude, cunt pulsing again.
“Vex,” Keyleth moans, as Vex’s fingers tease at the edge of Keyleth’s underwear.
“Good girl, Kiki. You were such a good girl for me. Such a pretty little slut,” she whispers, sounding ruined. She leans back, slides off of Keyleth, appraises her like she’s something she wants to devour. “Get on your knees for me. Hands on the headboard.”
Keyleth hurries to do as she’s told, rolling onto her front, pushing herself up, hands closing around the headboard. Her breathing has picked up, heart fluttering in anticipation as she hears the brush of fabric behind her - Vex moving around.
“Good. So eager to please, aren’t you?” Vex crows, as one finger makes contact with Keyleth’s calf, swirls a line up to the sensitive spot at the back of her knee, traces the inside of her calf. “Let’s get these off of you. No,” Vex bats at her hand as Keyleth tries to reach down to help, “hands stay on the headboard.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Vex,” Keyleth pants.
“Don’t do it again, darling. Or there’ll be repercussions,” Vex warns, before tearing Keyleth’s underwear off in seconds. Once she’s bare, Vex’s hands are back at Keyleth’s knees, nails pressing crescent moons into her skin as she pushes at them. “Spread your legs for me. I want you nice and open.”
Keyleth lets out a strangled sound, somewhere from the back of her throat, and then she’s inching her knees apart, wetness beginning to drip down the inside of her thighs as she stretches herself open.
“That’s it. So good for me,” Vex plants a kiss between Keyleth’s shoulder blades, moves closer, her front almost flush with Keyleth’s back.
Vex begins to touch her then, and Keyleth is lost. Vex’s hands are soft, fingertips brushing over her shoulders in tandem, following the lines of her collarbones, circling her nipples before cupping her breasts. She squeezes, teasing at the line between pleasure and pain, rolls one nipple between thumb and forefinger as her other hand sinks lower. Vex brushes across her stomach, Keyleth’s muscles tightening beneath her hand, pulls her closer, and then dances between her hipbones, dips lower, and finally, finally, Vex’s fingers find Keyleth’s cunt.
“Fuck. Vex,” Keyleth squeaks, almost too far gone to speak.
“You’ve been waiting for this all night, haven’t you?” Vex whispers, chin hooked over Keyleth’s shoulder. Her fingers are doodling loose circles around her clit, so close and yet painfully far away from where Keyleth’s craving touch. “Did you go to that bar, hoping I’d be there, by chance, after all these years? That I’d invite you home, that this would happen?” She asks, beginning to edge closer to Keyleth’s entrance, other hand still pinching at her nipple.
All Keyleth can do is whine in response, the tight coil in her stomach only growing tighter, sinking lower, all of the sensation in her body concentrated on her cunt, and the sharp pinching at her pebbled nipple.
“Or perhaps it wasn’t about me,” Vex muses, “maybe you just wanted to stop somewhere, and this was the first place you knew. Maybe you just wanted to get fucked by the first person to look your way.” She punctuates the end of her sentence by pressing one finger easily inside of Keyleth, slowly, crooking it when she’s all the way inside. Keyleth gasps, bucks her hips backwards into Vex. “I think that was it,” she continues, starting to pump her finger, “you were being all needy and desperate. And I just happened to walk in.”
“N-no,” Keyleth stammers, but Vex is adding a second finger, pleasure building and building as she scissors her fingers inside of her.
“I think it was your lucky day. And mine. Especially mine, because now you’re naked in my bed, and begging all pretty for me.”
Her whispers are ragged, and they go straight to Keyleth’s cunt, more wetness trickling out of her. When she twitches one knee, she’s vaguely aware of a pool forming underneath it, her slick trailing down her legs and gathering there.
Vex releases Keyleth’s nipple with a final pinch, slides her left hand down to meet her right at her cunt, this time moving straight to her clit as she pumps two fingers in and out of her. Keyleth can feel her climax building, muscles beginning to tense as Vex’s fingers lave against her inner walls.
“Do you want more?”
“Hn - please,” Keyleth whispers, and Vex pulls her fingers almost all of the way out, Keyleth’s muscles protesting, cunt empty, but then she’s pushing back in with a third finger.
It slides in with no friction, just the delightful stretch of being full, and Vex begins to work up the pace again, reaching deep inside of her with one hand, rubbing at her sensitive clit with the other.
“You’re so wet for me, Keyleth. Can you feel how easy it is for me to fill you up?”
“Yes.”
Vex leans back a little, latches her lips at Keyleth’s exposed neck, her hair a curtain on her other side, and tugs her skin between her teeth once more, peppering more marks along pale white. Her fingers curl inside, finding the most sensitive spot of her inner walls, rubbing along it in time with her clit.
“That’s it. Good girl. Good girl, darling. You’ve been so good for me,” Vex whispers against her neck, turning her fingers inside of Keyleth and hitting someplace magical with her knuckles. “Come for me, pretty girl. Come for me. Let go.”
It’s so much, pure sensation tearing through her already worked up body, nearly ten years of dreams and daydreams and almosts and what ifs, and after everything, Vex makes Keyleth come with the nip of her teeth beneath her jaw, the press of her finger against her clit. It happens suddenly, washing over like an explosion, muscles going rigid, head tipped back, and Keyleth keens as the hot buzz of pleasure fills her veins, spreads to the rest of her body, turns her inside out and back again, stars clouding her vision.
Keyleth comes back to her body with Vex pressing soft kisses into her temple, one arm wrapped softly around her middle, helping her lean back against her. Her whole body is jelly, chest still heaving, sore and hazy and afloat and incredible.
“Are you alright, dear?” Vex asks softly, moments later, holding her tight against her. She’s rocking them both back and forth the tiniest amount, and Keyleth feels safer that she has in a long, long time.
“Mmhmm,” she nods against Vex’s chest, “that was… thank you.”
Vex laughs softly, “you don’t need to thank me. I was telling the truth before. A little part of me… maybe bigger than I allowed myself to realise, has wanted to do that for a very long time.”
The warmth is back in Keyleth’s chest, and at that admission she’s a culmination of a lifetime of romance, or attempts at it. She is a blushing twelve-year-old and a giggly sixteen-year-old, heartbroken at eighteen, and at nineteen, learning much too fast about what it means to navigate the world by herself. She is twenty-two and she is packing her things to leave this town for the very last time. She knows already that she will leave a piece of herself here with it.
She’s reclaimed it today. And this time, she’s going to keep it safe, so that she never again has to walk away without it.