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Himeno likes watching Aki sleep.
She likes the sight of his calm face, his hair loose on the pillow, and his resting body, free from the tensions of the day, safe and comfortable in her bed.
It's in these kinds of moments that he actually looks his age, young and uncorrupted as he should be.
But Himeno knows things are very different from that. The world has already broken Aki Hayakawa too many times; it has sharpened his soul and compromised the integrity of its case. Revenge is a cruel lover and has engraved her love marks in a cold and painful way, teasing her jealousy every time she decides to show them off to her gaze.
Himeno reaches out and strokes the raven locks on his forehead. His sleeping eyes, his nose, his neck...
She can't help but linger on this last spot, seduced by the way his blood flows and mixes within him.
She would be a better lover, she tells herself. She would be gentle with that blood. She would caress every artery and vein without breaking any. She would guard, worship, and please his body as it deserves.
She forgets that she's already stained that blood with the nicotine from her cigarettes, and that the alcohol she's poured in his glass has already burned some cells. She forgets that she doesn't really know how to be gentle with what she wants.
So she revels in her lies and pictures herself placing kisses on each and every scar, healing the dryness of his lips with her tongue, and whispering love words to him as she breathes his breath. She ignores the hungry, almost vampiric, desire to suck the lifeblood out of his body to fill the void she feels in her own.
And while fire burns in her belly, Himeno pictures herself as a stream. One that laps the ground following its shape, flowing over the edges and gathering in the recesses. She would restore every fiber of his being in pleasure, instead of burning him.
Oh, how she would like to hear it melt in his voice, to see it swell in his pupils…
Her right hand moves between her legs. Index and middle finger press on the fabric, unconsciously pursuing synchrony with Aki's pulse, on which the other hand still lies.
She wants to kiss him in all the ways she knows, touch him in the most intimate places of his body and soul, and see him fill with life between her hands. She wants to make him feel good. Maybe that would keep him with her. Isn't it a natural instinct? To approach pleasure and avoid pain?
If only he’d give her a chance, to show him what revenge and job and Makima are depriving him of….
The fabric's getting wet and she’s already out of pace, but Himeno keeps holding Aki's pulse. Her fingers push the underwear down and slide inside her; she brushes her lips on his neck: touch of a feather (doesn't risk a kiss for fear of waking him). She breathes in his scent and that of freshly laundered clothes, as she fights the urge to sink her teeth into the flesh.
Gentle, she reminds herself. You have to be gentle...
But deep down she knows she isn't, so she unleashes the urge with a mental image. It's enough to tighten the spiral coiling in her belly.
Her hips rock steady against her hand. A moan escapes her and Aki murmurs in his sleep, but she doesn't notice, impatiently chasing her orgasm while she imagines doing it on his lap.
She lifts to look at him, only to find herself pinned by his gaze. Two deep ocean abysses studying her behind half-closed eyelids.
Himeno freezes.
For a long moment they remain like that, just looking into each other's eyes. She tries to breathe normally again, realizing – with a hint of guilt – that she doesn't feel as ashamed as she should be. Despite being sincerely sorry for waking him up, she welcomes his eyes on her with subtle amusement.
She lets them wander and linger on her fingers, still buried inside her.
"Why did you stop?" he slowly asks her.
His gaze rises to meet hers again.
"Keep going," he says. His voice still weak and sleepy. "I want to see you cum."
It's not the words themselves – he hasn't even put an effort in those – but the thought that they're coming from his mouth. She feels the heat rush to her face, her insides crumbling in a thousand butterflies, and the beating of their wings in her belly, heart, and lungs. No man or woman she's ever shared a bed with was able to give her a feeling even close.
She wonders if he's aware of it, as he looks at her with tired eyes and an expression of placid and hinted curiosity.
Fuck everything.
Let her die now if she doesn't fulfill his request.
Himeno resumes the movements of her fingers slowly, as slowly as possible, enacting a glorious self-torture for his entertainment.
Her idea was that Aki would just watch, so she gasps with surprise when a hand reaches her waist and starts caressing her over the top. He drags the fabric lazily, back and forth, and the friction on her skin is so slight it makes her shiver.
The other hand dips in her hair, strokes her nape for a few seconds, before bringing her closer to meet their lips.
His kisses are feeble and slow like his touches. Himeno parts her lips – a peaceful way to ask for more, replacing the violent desire to bite his lower lip and ravish his mouth with her tongue.
Some unknown god must hate her, because Aki refuses her plea, leaving her moaning and frustrated, his dry lips barely touching hers.
He moves up his thumb to draw circles on her side breast, lips slide down her neckline and give her sternum the same soft, evil treatment he gives her mouth. In Himeno's mind, all the love words she had for him turns into curses.
His hand shifts again from her chest to head downward. He finds her wrist, thumb and little finger enclosing the bone as the others cover her knuckles. He moves his arm softly, complying with her thrusts, and Himeno realizes she's going to come without him having even touched her directly. The thought excites her and is the last push she needs.
Her knees collide with his and, with a sequence of faint moans, she comes undone on her own fingers.
Aki holds her wrist until she's finished, watching her in a way that makes her bones tremble. She's flattered that he prefers to focus on her face rather than on what's happening between her legs. She's even more so when he brings a hand behind her head, unties the eye patch, and places a kiss on her sealed eyelids.
Aki is the only one she's ever allowed to see her exposed like this. The irrational thought is rooted in her: that the void in her right orbit is the emblem of all her cracks, all her faults, everything she lacks in… The spot where you realize the doll is broken and you don't want to play with it anymore.
His act does what she would've liked to do to him. It heals her.
She rubs her shiny eye, while Aki takes a tissue from the nightstand and begins to clean her fingers one by one. When he's done, he throws the paper in the bin and hangs her eye patch on the headboard.
"C'mon…"
He turns on the other side and breaks eye contact.
"Sleep now," he whispers to her, as if she were a child who needs to be calmed down and put to bed on time.
Himeno stares at his back, dazed by everything that just happened.
As soon as she realize there's a new gap separating them, she bends an arm in the crook of his side and closes it. She can still hear his heartbeat like this, with her ear between his shoulder blades. Sleeping doesn't sound so bad, actually...
Until her hand inadvertently drops lower and Aki stiffens. Himeno bites her lip.
She goes further experimentally, meeting what is clearly the consequence of her little performance. The chance is too tempting to pass up. She starts with casual strokes: fingers going up and down from the hip bone to the groin, tender touches alternating with more daring ones.
When she starts to deliberately map out his length, Aki lets out a first sigh.
"Himeno..."
There's a new fever in his voice, and damn, she wants more.
"You're tired," he says. Definitely not one of his best arguments. He could've opted for 'I'm tired', and maybe she would've shown some mercy.
"I've got enough energy for this," she reassures.
Her hand finds its way under the pants and exposes his arousal to the night air.
"Let me return the favor," she says, attempting the saving mission of her fantasies. "Would you?"
Aki huffs in the pillow and greets her attention with a simple 'okay.' And Himeno really tries, with all of herself, to be gentle, to become flowing and healing water, a wave that cradles softly…
She bends her legs to better fit his body, kisses his ear, jaw, and cheek, working him in her hand with the same delicacy of a clay molder.
However, she wants him to know that there's love in her missteps too: in the moments when her mouth greedily assaults his neck, and those when her hips hit harder against his buttocks. There's love in every single shared cigarette, as well as in every request to leave Public Safety. There's love in every single can of beer she offers, as well as in every ban on summoning the Curse devil.
And as Aki's ecstatic notes delight her eardrums, the words escape her lips before she can stop them.
"I love you..."
It's barely a whisper, and easily gets lost among the incoherent swearing and creaking slats. Just a few moments later, Aki comes.
Himeno lets him jerk off in her hold a little more, savoring the extension of his climax as if it were her own. It takes a while before they both get quieter and slow down to the point of stillness. In the time he catches his breath, her lips make amends on his neck for the marks she previously left, resignation attending every kiss.
She ended up breaking more blood vessels... she wonders if she at least did something for his soul.
Aki pulls away from her kisses and sits up.
She watches him repeat the cleaning process, throw another couple of tissues in the bin, and finally lie back down in the same position. With their bodies now still on the bed, silence falls in the room – her last words still trapped in it like in a spider's web. Himeno doesn't really expect an answer, she's not even sure he heard her.
But the fact that he keeps turning his back to her and depriving her of his gaze causes a dull ache in her chest. Maybe he heard her, and that's why he's doing it. Maybe he's saving her a rejection…
Maybe it's her fault and she just messed it all up.
She turns on the other side, laying her back against his. She doesn't break physical contact, afraid that, like a keystone, her whole being would fall apart without it.
She has never uttered those words to any of her one-night stand lovers, not even once, not even drunk. It's disarming, the ease with which Aki took them out of her mouth.
And now here she is, facing the circular window on the wall along with the consequences of her actions.
She curls up in a fetal position. The room's space gets twisted, folds on itself and compresses her ribs. She's about to give in to a long and sleepless night, when suddenly she hears a rustle of sheets and a weight shifting on the mattress.
Then everything disappears.
The pressure on her chest, the webs, the pain… everything except for Aki and the way his body surrounds her.
His chin rests on her shoulder, his ankles touch her heels and an arm wraps around her waist, bringing her closer as she did with him before. He doesn't say anything; he just holds her like this, occasionally adjusting himself to keep his hair from tickling her face.
No kiss, no desolate words of rejection... just a hug. An Aki's one: nothing out of boundaries. Yet, somehow, it feels more intimate than anything they've done before.
Himeno knows how rare it is to see him seek physical contact first, and that awareness makes the gesture even more precious.
Suddenly there's more air in the room and more warmth in her body. Himeno melts into reassurance, a hidden smile curves her lips at the same moment they taste a tear.
Ah… him and his damned ability to turn her into an emotional mess.
Maybe she did manage to heal a little piece somewhere in there, after all.
Maybe that's enough for now.
Enough to keep him with her.