Work Text:
Embarrassingly, it starts with a rash.
“I don’t know what it was,” insists Stella, rotating her forearm so Tamala can inspect the angry mottled red mark that winds around her arm and down to her palm, a perfect match for the one on her other arm. “I was just trying to collect some extra tree fibers and bushes are easier to harvest from. Ouch!,” she complains when Tamala pokes one of the weeping sores along her wrist with a stick.
The alchemist cuts her an unimpressed look. “Without something to identify the plant I’m not sure what you want me to do. Kiss and make it better?”
Stella rotates her wrists, finding a weird sort of relief from the intense itching sensation in the burst of pain that radiates from where her skin stretches and pulls tight against the rash. “Anything,” she pleads through gritted teeth. “A cream, an ointment, a poultice. Please, Tamala. Literally anything.” Normally Stella would have gone back to Kilima and sought treatment from Chayne but he’d be home asleep by the time she got back to town and, while sometimes with unintended side effects, Tamala’s experimental remedies worked just as well in a pinch.
The alchemist pokes another weeping sore speculatively, ignoring Stella’s accompanying whine, before moving to her worktable. “I can make you something but without knowing for sure if the plant was poisonous or you’re just having some sort of allergic reaction it’s not going to be as effective.” She retrieves a wide shallow stone bowl and starts rifling through various fat clay pots scattered the room. “Do you have any fresh lake lotuses?”
Stella shakes her head, focused more on flexing each finger to reassure herself she still can. She imagines burying her arms in a large snow drift, up to her elbows, obliterating the painful itch that threatens to drive her insane. Yeah, that’d be good.
“Pity,” hums Tamala. “Fresh blossoms work better with the brightshroom. It’ll still work for what you need. Something to soothe the itch and help you relax.”
The human watches the Majiri take a giant glass jar of dried crystal lake lotus flowers out of a cupboard and count out several large blossoms, inspecting the petals critically before dropping them in the wide stone bowl and grinding them down. She repeats the process with several other ingredients before she’s satisfied by the powder she’s created and uses a fat brush to get every bit of dust into a small black pot.
Stella forgets to pay attention to the rest of the process because she’s begun weighing the pros and cons of scraping the edge of her arms along the rough wooden edge of Tamala’s door frame. The hideously extensive scarring might be worth it, she thinks, absentmindedly bringing up a hand to scratch her cheek before Tamala swats her hand away with a stiff thin reed.
“Not the face, my dear,” chides Tamala. “It’s one I’m rather fond of.”
As always Stella isn’t quite sure if the affectionate words are meant sincerely or not. They’ve been something like friends for a while now but sometimes Stella gets the feeling Tamala isn’t so much interested in cultivating a friendship as she is in keeping a human around to poke and prod. Tamala hands her a small clay pot and Stella is surprised to find it’s cold to the touch. She peers inside to find a blue cream, the exact shade of the lotus flowers she’d seen ground into dust. She takes a cautious whiff and sighs in relief when she only detects a faint earthy smell. Like the beach after a heavy rain.
“The cream base I’ve used needs to stay cold for maximum potency,” warns Tamala, ushering Stella out the door. “And I’d suggest getting home before applying it, the lotus flowers can be temperamental at the best of times but letting the cream get too warm will give you unpredictable side effects.”
“What kind of side effects?,” asks Stella, carefully packing away the pot in her backpack.
Tamala shrugs a shoulder carelessly, “Oh I don’t know, darling, remember I’m an expert on alchemy for Majiri not humans.” She waves her hand in a vaguely dismissive gesture that doesn’t really soothe Stella’s concerns. “Stomach upset, drowsiness or the like I’m sure. Better to be at home to weather the worst of it, what’s the phrase? Sleeping it off?”
“Yeah fine, what do I owe you?”
“On the house, pet, as long as you promise to come back and let me know how it worked for you?” There’s a gleam in Tamala’s eyes that unsettles Stella so she says thanks and waves goodbye.
The remote Outskirts stable is abandoned when Stella finally makes it there and she swears at her bad luck. She can either keep walking to the next stable outpost but it’s getting late and there’s no guarantee anyone will still be there to cart her rashy ass back to Kilima. She swears some more and kicks a pinecone down the dirt road toward the Flooded Fortress.
By the time she stumbles into the dank Pavel mine she is seriously considering the major pros of chewing off her own forearms. “Fuck fuck fuck,” she chants, bracing her hands against the cool stone walls of the adit and breathes in through her nose and out through her clenched teeth. The fabric of her sleeves chafes against the rash so aggressively she wonders if her skin will peel off with her clothes when she gets home. Her stomach turns a little at the thought and she groans, resting her sweaty forehead against the stone.
“Someone there?,” calls a familiar voice from deeper in the mine.
Stella squeezes her eyes shut tight, caught between panic and resignation. Fuck fuck fuck! What was he doing here? Not that a part of her didn’t instantly relax to know he was near.
They had exchanged pins scarcely a week ago and things had been going so well between them. They were both still learning so much about each other and not only the silly little surface stuff like how much he hates fish but also how to be together. She’s been learning how to communicate her needs in ways he can understand them and he’s been learning how to compromise. The emotional aspect of their relationship? Ten stars, across the board. They are killing it. The physical aspect of their relationship however.
“Darlin’?” Stella opens her eyes and turns to sag against the mine wall, giving a concerned Hodari a weak smile. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine, just had a long day,” is what decides to come out of her mouth. She smiles wider to better sell it but Hodari knows her well enough by now to see past it.
“You’re wound tighter than a chapaa in spring,” he observes mildly, not reproachfully per se, but with a certain look in his eye that lets Stella know he knows she is full of shit but he’s willing to let her admit it on her own time. It sends a little thrill through her to know she’s got someone in her corner who can read her like a book. Even if sometimes it was a little inconvenient.
She sighs, the confession tumbling from her lips without resistance. “I have a weird rash from falling into some kind of bush, I have medicine for it when I get home, it just,” she flexes her hands and breathes out slowly, “really, really itches. And the guy at the Outskirts stable was already gone by the time I got there so I thought I’d save time cutting through the fortress but it’s a little extra flooded today and a current put me on my ass and now I’m tired and hungry and my clothes are all wet and—!” She breathes in and out harshly, “I itch!”
So gently, like she’s made of glass, he holds one of her hands in his giant gloved ones, turning it this way and that. The cool leather of his gloves feels like a dewdrop of relief on the back of her hand. “Oh, darlin’,” he says tenderly.
The tension bleeds out of her spine. Stella loves that voice. She could carve herself a hole and bury herself alive in that voice. Hodari was getting better at communicating his feelings but sometimes he had a hard time giving her the verbal affirmations of his affection as frequently as she wanted. For those times he would murmur in her ear with that voice and he didn’t have to say the words. It spilled out everywhere in his tone, sending her heart fluttering. That voice was for her.
Even with his liberal use of lantern bugs the tunnel is dimly lit and it makes his cool blue eyes look dark as he inspects her rash for himself. Holding both her palms in his he leans closer and blows a soft puff of cool air over the angry red mark on her hands. Her breath catches.
Sure, they’ve held hands and kissed. She hugged him when he finally gave her his pin which had led to a, frankly, obscene make out session in his workshop. Just the memory of those large hands on her body, tongue down her throat, dark hair threaded between her fingers was enough to have her pressing her thighs together. Since then, however, they had scarcely found two minutes between them to put together.
Hodari releases her hands, straightening and she releases the air that had temporarily lodged itself in her chest with a heavier type of sigh. If her hands tremble a little as she puts them back down at her sides, well, the mines are pretty chilly. “I’m sorry ya day hasn’t been goin’ well, darlin’, I’m familiar with the feelin’. Better get home and take care of those hands of mine,” he drawls, backing away from her but not before darting in and stealing a kiss.
A chaste press of the lips but Stella’s heart thuds all the same and she grins at him, her cheeks warm. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she quips, hoping her face hasn’t gone all silly with love like her insides have.
“I’ll stop by later to check on ya,” he says.
Stella thinks of the ugly weeping sores on her arms that he hasn’t seen yet. “You don’t have to do that,” she insists. The last thing she wants is to put him off before they’ve even done the deed. Or gotten to third base. “Tamala whipped up an ointment that’s supposed to help. She told me to sleep it off.”
“Tamala?” Says Hodari, pulling a face that Stella finds a little insulting coming from a man who was also known to ply the alchemist’s wares. “I’ll stop by later to check on ya,” he repeats more firmly.
“Fine,” nobody could ever accuse her of not knowing how to choose her battles. “Get back to work, miner, I know the owner of this mine and he don’t abide no slackin’.”
Hodari cracks a wry smile and shakes his head, turning back the way he had come. “See ya later, darlin’.”
“Later,” she calls back softly, aware that her face has gone all silly in love but not really having the energy to care. Who’s gonna tell on her for going all sappy eyed? The centipedes? Anyway, who could blame her, she thought to herself, running the tips of her fingers across her lips absently, the man was sex on legs
It takes about three hours to get home and the sun has long since set when she hits the edge of her property. She immediately starts drawing a warm bath and strips out of all her clothes. The skin of her arms does not peel away with her shirt to her immense relief but the red mottled marks do have the tell tale signs of infection.
Bathing is a tedious, painful affair. The warm water burns against the rash and she washes the sweat, dirt, and stink of her day off as quickly as she can. She tries to wash her hair but the shampoo burns against the rash on her palms so badly she immediately gives up completely. Sniffling pathetically and hating herself a tiny bit for it she rinses off the shampoo in the lukewarm bathwater. She empties the tub and sprays off the suds with a cool mist of water that calms the inferno of her rash but sends the rest of her body shivering miserably.
When she’s finally sitting on her bed, wearing fresh pajamas, sleeves rolled up over her elbows, she opens the little clay pot from Tamala. The pot is no longer cool to the touch but the cream is when she swipes a dollop with her finger. It reminds Stella of dipping your finger in a cold pond in winter, when it’s not quite iced over yet. She slides the blue cream over the ugly dark red marks winding around her forearms and wrists, dabbing it carefully to cover every edge.
The relief is instantaneous. Stella marvels at all the muscles she never knew she had when she feels them all, one by one, spontaneously unclench. The cream is greasier than she thought it would be considering she didn’t remember Tamala using any oil but she had been pretty preoccupied at the time. The blue had faded away instantly once it touched her skin but the cooling effect remained. It didn’t just ease her suffering, the itching and constant throbbing pain was completely gone. She stretched out on her bed, head muzzy and limbs limp. Her arms feel so completely inverse of the agony from before it almost feels like she has no arms at all. She keeps lifting them up to stare at her hands while her fingers curl and flex painlessly.
It is in this state that Hodari finds her an hour later. At some point she had relocated herself to her couch and she blinks at him owlishly from across a Chezuu board she doesn’t remember owning. She curls and flexes her fingers.
“Did I win?” She asks him, confused by the ludicrous positions of the game pieces. Curl. Flex.
Hodari huffs an amused laugh, “No.” Her smile falls. Curl. “But it’s bedtime anyway,” says Hodari. Well, that’s alright then, thinks Stella, entranced by the way the lights in this room seem to sway and pulse. Flex.
“Sorry about this,” mutters Hodari a moment before Stella’s vision does a fun swishy thing and it feels like she’s weightless, floating away. Curl. That’s not quite right either, she puzzles, there’s something keeping her from floating away. Flex. It’s like she’s being wrapped in a warm blanket. She runs her hands along the edge, testing the softness, delighted to discover it’s not a blanket at all. Her miner has wrapped her in his arms and is carrying her away.
“You never have to apologize for holding me, you know,” she says conversationally, staring up at the edge of his jaw, with her eyes tracing the five o’clock shadow down his throat to the edge of his coat. “In fact, for future reference, you can touch absolutely anywhere.” He swallows and her finger bobs with the motion. “Oh, sorry,” she begins to tug her hand away, embarrassed at finding her own finger boldly tracing the column of his throat.
He covers her hand with his own and holds it against his lips for a long moment before pulling it away and placing it in her lap. “Bedtime,” he reminds her. Curl. Flex.
“Yes,” she says agreeably, turning to wrap an arm around his neck. “I have to slide off the sleep effects.” She feels wobbly like a bowl of soupy noodles and that any minute she might spill all over the floor or else float away back to…wherever she came from. That’s a slightly terrifying thought and it grabs hold of her. She runs a finger across the seam of Hodari’s lips sadly, hoping that he knows that while she was human she loved him very much.
“I love you too,” says Hodari in his secret tender voice that was just for her.
“Don’t forget me when I’m gone,” she tells him sadly.
“Where are you going?” he asks, voice so soft it sends all her nerve endings aching with how deeply she feels it in her heart.
“Noodles,” she says gravely. Preparing to weather the storm of his grief she is a little offended when she hears his quiet chuckle. Warm lips graze her head and she pries open an eye she doesn’t remember closing and glares at him from the encompassing warmth of her comforter. She can feel it starting, her vision is murky, her limbs have all floated away. “Don’t leave me,” she begs, wondering whose voice is talking and why she sounds so desperately sad.
“Never,” says a wonderful voice she recognizes. It wraps around her, soothing away her worries about what kind of broth she’ll be.
Curl.
Flex.
A large warm hand, threading their fingers with hers.
She sleeps.
Stella wakes with fire in her veins, thighs slick with desire.
“Wha–?” She twists, confused, turned on, and desperate for something to quell the heat of her lust. A strong arm encircling her waist tightens and she realizes Hodari’s body is entwined with hers, both of them wedged together on her sofa. The miner’s face is buried in her hair intimately while he sleeps and his warm breath puffs against her neck hotly, sending fireworks zipping down her spine.
She puts a cautious hand on the arm locked around her belly. He burns hot against her hand, feeding the frenzy growing like an itch under her skin. Greedily running the tips of her fingers along his forearm she slides the flat of her palm over his shoulder to his exposed neck. She indulges herself in mapping out his throat by hand, the edge of his jaw, the rough stubble that she strokes with her thumb.
When she sinks her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck he shifts, pressing his face into her throat and dragging his lips across her skin. Heat pools in her belly and she bites back a moan as her hips rock helplessly, desperate for friction.
“Hodari,” she says, voice hoarse. Her thoughts are cloudy with desire, every nerve ending buzzing in anticipation. The graze of his scratchy face drags against the sensitive skin under her jaw and she breathes out shallowly, a threadbare grasp on her sanity. “Hodari, wake up.”
It feels like she’s in heat, she thinks muzzily. But even that observation doesn’t distract her from the encompassing hunger that has her reaching down to palm at the semi in her boyfriend’s pants.
“Darlin’,” he murmurs, pulling back to look at her sleepily. The fringe of his hair hangs in his face adorably and she cards her fingers through it. His eyes slide shut when she drags the edge of her nails across his scalp and she feels herself smile as he leans in to kiss her.
It starts out softly, the firm press of his lips against hers both warm and familiar. When he licks a hot wet strip across the seam of her lips with his tongue Stella gasps, surging up to slide her tongue past his lips. “Sit up,” she says breathlessly when they pull apart for air.
While he rearranges himself into a sitting position, she stands and tugs off her shirt. His hands are on her the second she’s in reach, pulling her down to straddle his hips. His left hand slides from her thigh to cup her ass while the right glides smoothly up her bare back, unsnapping her bra and flinging it away. The steel blue of his eyes is a tiny ring around pupils blown wide in lust as he rakes his gaze over her. She blushes at the intensity of his stare, a dusty rose color that stains the pale expanse of her skin from her cheeks, down her neck, and across her chest. “Touch me,” she commands, drunk on the undisguised admiration in his expression.
“Fuck, Stella,” breathes Hodari, cupping both her breasts in his hands and rubbing the rough calloused pads of his thumbs across each aching nipple. She twists her fingers in his hair, dizzy with how much she wants him. “You’re so fuckin’ gorgeous, darlin’.” He leans forward to slant his mouth against her chest, kissing between her breasts, licking a path around each tight areola.
Lust thunders in her veins as she holds his head to her breast, sucking in a sharp breath when he finally sucks a pert nipple into his mouth. Her pussy throbs in sync with her heartbeat and she tightens her hold in his hair, shamelessly grinding her hips into his. Hodari twists the other nipple between his finger and thumb and Stella feels the structure of her thoughts tumble away.
“Shit,” she pants, tugging at his shirt. “Off, take it off.”
Putting one hand behind his head to grasp the collar of his shirt he pulls it off in one smooth motion. Stella runs the palms of her hands over his chest, his shoulders, marveling at the thick muscle that shifts and flexes under her touch. Bending down she licks across his right nipple pulling back to blow on it till it pebbles into a tight bud before repeating it on his other side. She watches his face while dragging her nails down the middle of his chest and across his abdomen.
Hodari makes a strangled noise deep in his throat, hips jerking. With one hand he pulls down the front of her pajama shorts, sliding his other hand between her thighs. Before she can begin to feel embarrassed at how damp her underwear is, a thick finger slides through her folds, and her chest heaves. “You’re so wet,” he marvels, sinking his finger into her tight, wet heat and out again. Another finger quickly joins the first and he presses hot, open mouthed kissed across her chest as she wantonly fucks herself on his hand.
It’s not enough. Her blood roars in her ears, every nerve ending thrumming with an unquenchable lust and she wants –needs– “More,” she gasps urgently, pulling back, disengaging his hand. “Take off your pants,” standing to shove her shorts and underwear to the floor and kicking them away. He’s barely shoved his own pants down past his knees when she climbs on top of him again, grasping his rigid dick. Sliding the head through her wet folds, once then twice, lightning skirts up her spine when she nudges her swollen clit with it.
Hungry eyes fixated on the juncture of her thighs, Hodari replaces her grip on his cock and lines himself up. She grips the back of the couch for balance with white knuckles while he uses his other large hand on her hip to slowly sheath himself deep within her, inch by agonizing inch. Sinking until he bottoms out and she imagines she’s still sinking, falling, a collapsing star. A blazing ember. He slouches further down on the cushion of the couch, feet planting against the floor. She has a split second of wondering what he’s doing before the grip on her hips become bruisingly tight and he lifts her up. In her surprise time seems to slow as they stare at each other before he buries himself in her, a look of intense concentration on his face.
“Hodari,” it’s a chant, a prayer, a plea, a command. He repeats the motion, and again, setting a fast pace, snapping his hips up as she grinds down onto him, over and over. The stretch of him ripping her apart, the heady scent of their arousal heavy in the air, and Stella feels a scream of frustration building because it’s Still. Not. Enough! Her back arches, her muscles flex, her desire rages through her like an inferno and she thinks she could burn to ashes in it. Reaching one hand between their crashing bodies, brushing her fingers against the bundle of throbbing nerves there she is undone.
Stella startles awake, the dream sizzling along the edges of her awareness as she slams back to reality.
“What the fuck was that?,” she rasps, struggling against the sheets and comforter twisted around her body before violently shoving the whole mess to the floor.
Curiously, her joints feel stiff and her muscles ache like she just did a three day shift at The Cakery. Remembering the rash she pushes her sleeves up to her elbows, relieved to find bare smooth skin that shows no sign of the previous day’s trauma.
“You’re awake,” says a warm, familiar voice and she feels her jaw drop open when Hodari walks through the door holding a plate.
“You’re in my bedroom,” she says dumbly while he eyeballs the bundle of blankets on the floor before just stepping over it and setting the plate in her lap, giving her a peck on the lips. She really hopes she’s not flushed from the dream she just woke up from.
“I am,” he agrees, walking back out the way he had come.
“Is this breakfast?” she calls out to his retreating back. It looks like breakfast. Eggs and toast slathered in butter. A handful of blueberries roll around, threatening to abandon ship. She smiles, feeling warm and special.
He returns a moment later with two of her mugs and the inviting smell of freshly brewed coffee. “Ain’t dinner.”
Stella rolls her eyes even though she’s smiling and stuffs a slice of toast in her mouth, suddenly ravenous. She’s never this hungry in the morning, she thinks. “Ok, smart guy,” she says after washing it down with a sip of bitter coffee. “Why are you in my bedroom serving me not-dinner in bed?”
She realizes after a weird lull that he’s not just looking at her, he’s scrutinizing her. “How much d’ya remember?”
Thinking back she shrugs, perplexed and a little unnerved by the question. “Spent the morning helping Ashura at the Inn, went to Thorny Thicket in the late afternoon to gather some plant fibers, was brutally attacked by a feral bush, got a rash, Tamala gave me something for it, saw you at the mine, came home, had bath, “ she shrugs again. “Put the cream on and passed out, I guess.” She very pointedly does not think about the vividly hot sweaty dream sex with her boyfriend.
Hodari nods like that’s what he was expecting her to say but adds, “That was the day before yesterday, darlin’, you’ve been sleeping ever since.”
She gapes at him. A whole day? She’s been sleeping for a whole day? “What, why? How?”
So Hodari takes a bite of her toast and explains. Stella tries not to get too distracted by the way his calloused thumb feels brushing over her knuckles when he holds her hand while he talks. From previous experience he knew Tamala’s remedies could tend to pack a punch so he’d come by to check on her. When he put her to bed and she didn’t wake in the morning he’d fetched Chayne who had suspected the cream had put her in a dream state that would wear off on its own. After examining her rash the priest had whipped up a quick poultice and her skin had cleared by early evening.
“Wow,” she says when he’s done. They both finish their coffee in silence and Stella tries to imagine a scenario where Tamala has only accidentally given her sex dream coma cream. “Well now what? Am I cleared for duty, boss?”
“Chayne said as long as you’re not experiencing any lingering side effects from the cream you should be officially fully recovered now.”
“Nice,” says Stella, swinging her legs over the edge of her bed and making a beeline for her wardrobe. “Cause I have to see an alchemist about a dream! Um! Cream!”