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“There’s something out in the city. Something I’d like to show you.”
You can’t go through the motions anymore. Under the pale moonlight, you are laid bare. Vulnerable, in a way you haven’t been in two hundred years. You can’t go through the motions anymore. You want him, and you want to show him, but age and bile keep the words stuck in your throat. You can’t do that dance anymore. Not much else is clear, besides that.
The grave stands proud and lonely, much like you once must’ve done. You’re crouching, now, knees in the dirt you’d once clawed your way from like a rabid dog. He showed you how to be more than that. You thanked him from your knees. While no longer a dog, you were trained like one, and it’ll take another two centuries to unlearn those tricks.
He’s a drow. He’ll be with you through it, and it both reassures and terrifies you.
Your grave isn’t a pretty thing. The name on it was scratched in messy elvish script– and while you can read it, your surname doesn’t sound like your own anymore. You are no longer bound. And when you cut it into something legible, something that feels more you , complete with a date of un-life. You’re alive, now. Truly alive. And the radiant smile he gives you when you look back at him is proof enough of it.
It’s a ghost making use of your lungs when you say you need to figure out who you are, and what you want. It feels like a breath of fresh air– one you are incapable of. It is you and not you all in one, because it is choice, and that is unfamiliar as breathing.
“And what do you want?” The creature before you is draped in moonlight. He is not tempting, but he is beautiful. And he is asking.
A year ago, you wouldn’t have known what to do with that. But you do now.
You tell him you want him and you pull him down into the grass.
You are on and in your grave as he kisses you, because this being has loved you and damned you. You kiss him back. There is no hunger in it this time– he has fed your body and your soul, and when he reaches for the buttons of your doublet, you do not feel panic. You are present, and beautifully so. When he touches you it is like lightning on your skin.
Still, temptation is no factor. There is no expectation. When he pauses and looks into your eyes, you are there and you meet him halfway.
“You’re sure about this, alurlssrin?” The word is unfamiliar to you, but the sentiment is not. You push yourself up onto your elbows as he has done, your chest bared to the stars. You’re not sure of anything these days. But that’s the beauty of choice, isn’t it? Of freedom? You choose him and he chooses you, over and over, day by day. And this reclamation was born in uncertainty. It was born atop your grave. It’s a lovely thing, you think, to be uncertain. For two hundred years of un-life, your master’s word was law. There was no place for uncertainty there.
You tell him as much, and he smiles again, a bit sadly. It is not out of pity, but true empathy. (He’d told you once he was a lower-class drow. Not a slave, but an entertainer. You could read enough between the lines to know there was little difference. There is little difference between you two now, both choosing, wanting bodies, diffused in the moonlight. You think you like this, this mutual control. You can almost love what you’ve become, through his eyes.) There is empathy because a part of you has known since that very first day near the crash site that you are the same, wounded too many times over and pulling yourselves back together from the wreckage. You are the same and you love him and he loves you, and you still don’t know what to do with that.
He doesn’t need the tadpole to see it in your eyes. You reassure him you want it. You want to pick yourself back together from these fragments, even if they cut.
He’ll be there through it. He will.
You are in your grave and on it, and he finishes the buttons of your doublet. The lightning is there again, striking pale skin over and over but never in the same spot twice. You lean your head back and your body into him, against all reflex. He takes a nipple in his mouth and rolls his tongue over it. You do not offer the performance of a moan. It is no performance, tonight– stilted, messy, and you love him all the more for it. The white of your chest arches towards the moon as he reaches downwards. He palms you through your breeches and then fumbles with the laces. It’s not perfect. It’s everything you wanted.
You make the effort to exhale, to try to calm the pinpricks on your skin. You don’t want it to be exciting. You want it to be easy, even if deep down you know it won’t be for a long, long while. He looks up at you again from where he kneels between your parted thighs. You answer his silent question with a nod. You are still there. You are still with him. It feels nice, like the refreshment you feel from a dip in the river, when he pulls you free of your clothes altogether. You think you could lay there with him like this for decades. In the moment, though, you want more. You want it all. You want his hands and his mouth and his warmth and to be with him until you forget.
You will never forget. This, you know better perhaps than any other. But the feeling of his mouth on you is a close second.
It’s like touching the sun, when he sucks you, eager and messy. Some would call it unskilled. You were skilled and hated every moment of it. No, this is what ascension must be like– pulled taught like a bowstring, blood turned to fire, naked and bare and the best kind of afraid before your lover. His hands press your legs apart, gentle like tomorrow’s bruises, as he licks you tip to base to tip again. You feel yourself lift up into him, chasing the blessing of his tongue. It’s not perfect. The grass has started to itch beneath you and his teeth occasionally scrape you in their enthusiasm.
It’s not perfect, but it’s him, and as he takes you apart beneath the stars, you know it will only get better from here.