Archive of Our Own

Kabru never takes, never demands anything, just gives, gives, gives, with that smile on his face that annoys her so much it makes her ache.

Though like this, in the dark, Rin can’t even see his face; can barely make out his silhouette on top of her. There’s his breath on her shoulder, warm, steady, just a little bit heavy, leaving her tingling, his fingertips on her thigh, and Kabru never takes, just floats on top of her like a ghost.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, pressing a kiss into the crook of her neck. He keeps saying it, actually, over and over and over, even when he can’t see her, either, even when he can’t possibly tell if she’s beautiful right now, and she squeezes her eyes shut as if that changes anything, as if he’s not already haunting her. “You’re so beautiful, Rinsha.”

Her hands are clenched to fists, lying on top of the sheets as he moves down, down, down, kissing a path from her throat—her pulse—over her breasts—her heart—down to her stomach—her liver. All he ever does is map her out. All he ever does is map everyone out, and she guesses she’s always been part of everyone.

This is her own bedroom, yet Rin feels like she’s somewhere else entirely, somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere that both drags her down and pulls her back in, somewhere so exciting it leaves her a trembling, exhausted mess. Somewhere nerve-wracking, and yet she doesn’t push him away, she never does. Despite everything, she wants this.

Kabru’s breath turns cold somewhere around her thighs, and she can’t see him in the dark, but she knows the map of him blind, too. Knows him better even than she does herself, perhaps, maybe even better than he knows himself. Knows every edge, every ridge of his mask, every part of his face—and his body, too—without it. Even now he’s playing a role. He’s always playing a role these days.

“Rinsha,” he repeats, gently, and she knows exactly how he’s looking at her right now even when she can’t see it. There’s an edge to his tone, something thrumming right underneath it, something only she knows, and it’s nice, in a way, that she’s the only one who knows Kabru like this; but he doesn’t even shed the mask around her anymore, and there’s something thrumming right underneath his skin and she wants to claw it out of him, wants to yell and scream and cry and die, maybe.

“I’m okay.”

Maybe both of them have grown to be good at lying to each other—at accepting the other’s lies, rather, at taking them and taking them and taking them until she feels like she’s going to explode. Does he ever feel like he’s going to explode? Does she ever make him feel like this, too, if only a fraction of it?

A sudden bout of desperation has Rin batting around for his head, has her clawing into his hair to have something to hold on to; to have him to hold on to, and he doesn’t mention it. Simply slips his hand under the back of her knee and lifts it up, up, up, guiding it over his shoulder with a press of his lips to the inside of it. Perfectly nice and gentle. Perfectly rehearsed. A gentleman.

(It didn’t use to be like this. Their first time—both of theirs, like that cancelled it out—wasn’t like this. It was a little fumbly and when he laughed Rin could feel it in her bones and he didn’t really yet know where to put his hands, and she didn’t know either.

She still doesn’t. Kabru has it all figured out, however. He’s always been a quick learner.)

I’m okay, she says, and she knows he knows she’s lying, and his breath on her thigh makes her shiver as he moves up, up, up, makes her head tip back.

“You’re beautiful,” he says again, his voice a little hoarse in the dark, like saying it this often will make it true, like that will make it mean anything. “You smell really good.”

She can’t take it. But finally, after what feels like ages—and it actually hasn’t been all that long since they stumbled into her room with Kabru’s arm around her waist and his lips on hers, warm and almost a little too insistent, alcohol-taste on his tongue even when he had way too little to actually be drunk and she’s not sure if she’s ever seen him drunk at all—his head settles between her legs, and his hair is coarse between her fingers. Idly, his breath fanning over her cunt, making her shiver again, she thinks she should urge him to actually use the hair oil she bought him for his birthday.

It’s all so stupid. All of it is stupid, and Rin’s eyes are burning a little—and she doesn’t really drink at all, so it’s not like she has that excuse—when his warm fingers part her open—always open underneath him—when he flats his tongue against her, that first contact making her hips jump, making a startled gasp slip out of her, making the heel of her foot nudge at his back.

This up close, his breath is hot again. Heavy over her already too-slick skin, his tongue hot, too, electric to the touch. Making her fingers cramp in his hair, but even then, all she gets from him is a sharp intake of breath, cold, cold, cold. Icy.

Drives her crazy. Like this, in the dark, with nothing but his curls to anchor herself to, Rin is going crazy. I love you, she wants to say, because she’s stupid, because she never ever learns. I love you, I love you, I love you. Kabru’s lips close around her clit, sucking at it gently, and it feels like she’s endlessly falling in some similarly endless void, it always does. Always, always, always, and yet she jumps willingly every single time.

But Kabru doesn’t take, he never does, which means she doesn’t have to give; means she just has to lie there like some sacrifice while he does whatever it is he wants from this. Searching in her for something just like she’s searching for something in him, perhaps. But probably not.

(What is there in her he doesn’t yet know, anyhow? She’s not exciting, she’s never been.)

His tongue nudges at her hole, slipping inside just a little, and when he groans, it rolls through Rin’s entire body like a tidal wave, ready to swallow her whole. You’re beautiful, he says, over and over and over, like it’s not him who’s beautiful. Like she can’t tell that, always, even like this, even in the dark. Like it changes anything when he blows out the last candle, when he climbs over her, her bed creaking underneath him, like she doesn’t know what he looks like at every moment, anyway.

Slowly but surely, her thoughts start to drift off. Start to stretch like syrup, despite everything, and she whispers his name into the safe embrace of the dark when he sucks at her clit again, pretends not to notice how he sucks in a breath, how he moans. Falls, falls, falls, when he prods at her hole again, this time with a finger, when he slips it inside.

(She always wanted to be inside of him, too. He’ll probably never let her.)

It’s easy, it always is. Kabru is as good with his mouth as he is with everything, and he crooks his finger inside of her and grazes her clit ever so slightly with his teeth, and that’s it, because it’s easy, because she’s easy.

He’s humming against her when she comes, vibrating through every cell of her body, crackling like a storm about to break. He doesn’t complain about her fingers tightening in his hair, about the way she yanks him closer, closer, closer, bucks her hips against his face; he never does. Her cry breaks and hangs in the air and the only sound left is their breath, and sometimes, like this, she almost forgets he exists.

His hand is hot on her thigh when it brushes up her skin, and Rin almost flinches. Moans again—her face burning with it, but perhaps that’s one of those things that’s good about the dark; it makes her feel like he doesn’t notice, makes her make a home in that illusion—when he presses one last lingering kiss to her clit, before leaning back, back, back, his heat pulling away, her leg slipping off his shoulder. She lets go instead of pulling him closer.

“Rin,” Kabru says, voice hoarse, hoarse, hoarse, and despite herself, she does search for him again. Claws at his arms and then at his shoulders as he leans closer, closer, closer. “Was that good?”

She frowns into the dark, even when he can’t see her; wraps her arms around his neck like he won’t notice the desperation clawing at the inside of her ribcage. Presses her lips to a thin line.

“You’re an idiot.”

Apparently that’s funny because he laughs, because he nuzzles a kiss to the corner of her mouth—she can’t tell if he was aiming for her lips—and his mouth is slick, and he smells so strongly like her pussy that she almost cringes back. His hand is hot, too, when it cups her face, when he tilts his to kiss her properly this time, lips chapped against hers, tongue pressing against her front teeth until her head is spinning. Despite everything—despite, despite, despite—she pulls him closer. Despite everything, she wants, wants, wants him, even when it’s like this, even when it scrapes all over her skin, even when his mask of a face doesn’t even have the decency to feel cold to the touch.

I love you, she wants to say, but it always ends up twisted and barbed by the time it arrives in her throat, on her tongue, always makes the inside of her mouth bleed. Always comes out mean, because she’s scared, because she’s a coward, and because he already knows all of that, anyway. I love you, I love you, I love you.

With open eyes Rin stares up into the void that is Kabru’s silhouette as he kisses her, as he brushes his thumb over her cheekbone, nudges his tongue against hers, sucks her bottom lip between his teeth. With open eyes she brushes her hands down his shoulders, feeling his muscles shift underneath his warm skin. He’s never liked her touching him much, because he never takes.

(Except he takes everything. Except he always takes everything. Except she’ll always give it to him. Except things will never change. Except they’ll stay like this forever, won’t they?)

“Kabru,” she gasps into his mouth as his hand sneaks back down her stomach, giving her breast a small squeeze on the way, and between her legs to cup her cunt, squeezing just a little there, too, making her eyes roll back. “Kabru…!”

There’s something that needs to be said, she thinks. There’s always something that needs to be said between them, something like glass shards in her throat, but he presses his mouth back over hers and nudges fingertips over her clit and that shuts her up, makes whatever thought formed vaguely in her head disappear into nothing all over.

She wants to feel him. Wants to see him, too, but most of all, she just wants to feel him, wants to run her hands all over his body, wants to look him in the eyes like she did that very first time once he pried her hands off hers. She wants to reach between his legs, too, wants to wrap her hand around his cock, wants to see how hard he is already, if he is hard already. Wants to kiss him, maybe. Wants to kiss him even as she’s kissing him.

Her eyes are burning again, and Kabru circles the pad of his thumb around her clit until her head tips back, her mouth slipping off his, a choked noise spilling out of her.

“Rin,” he says, breathless, like she’s doing anything but lying there and letting him toy with her, lying there with her arms wrapped around his neck, her fingers in his hair. Like she’s doing something breathtaking. “Rin. Rin, Rin, Rin.”

Rushes like honey through Rin’s veins, despite—despite, despite, despite—everything, tugs her hips up, up, up against his touch like she’s a marionette and he’s holding her strings. Two of his fingers slip inside of her again, and this is what dying feels like, she thinks. She’d know; she’s died quite a few times. This is what dying feels like, and it’s always been nice. It’s always been something she craves. It’s always been—

Just as she’s about to crash again, Kabru’s rough fingertip slips off her clit, his hand stilling, and she whines, drawn out, pulled out of her by surprise; his quiet laugh rushing through her, tingling in her fingertips. He presses a kiss to her cheek, breath hot and sticky on her skin, and he smells like her pussy and like Kabru, Kabru, Kabru still. Sea-salt and spice, and alcohol, ever so faintly. Gives her a headache even like this.

“Sorry,” he whispers. And, “I like it when you’re like this.”

It feels good, of course. All of it feels good, even if what he says annoys her, and this time, it’s Rin who tilts her face to brush her lips against his, Rin who kisses him. He kisses her back, placatingly rubs the pad of his thumb in little circles over the inside of her thigh, before slowly creeping back to her clit.

“Rin,” he says again, breathing it into her mouth in one hot breath, one syllable. Rin, Rin, Rin. His other hand still on her face is starting to make her feel feverish, lightheaded, dizzy. He always does. “Rin, you’re so beautiful.”

This time, she can’t bite back the frustrated noise coming from the back of her throat. Part of her wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake, wants to yell at him about something, wants to beg him to finally fuck her already, wants to ask him if he can just hold her like this forever. Wants to ask, beg, plead for something much more than that, much deeper than that, much more visceral, but it gets stuck in her throat like it always does and Kabru already knows, anyway, because he always knows everything about her.

About everything, maybe, but she’d only think that if she fell for his act; but doesn’t she? Doesn’t she do exactly that? Even as she knows it, knows him, as what it is?

The pad of his thumb presses back over Rin’s clit, steady, nudging at her in a way that makes her spine twitch, her hips buck into his touch uselessly, her mind white out. It’s desperate, too desperate, embarrassingly so, especially with a man on top of her who’s so decidedly not her best friend that it aches, aches, aches in her ribcage, that it throbs between her legs, right at her clit with his thumb pressing to it, in tune with her heartbeat. She’s almost too out of it to be particularly embarrassed about the slick noises his fingers make against her cunt, inside of her.

(Faintly, like a whisper of ocean waves from very far away, she wonders how fast his heart is beating. Remembers when they were kids, so small in a world so big, when they’d sit in the grass and stare at the open sea, when she’d claw her hand around his wrist to feel his pulse, to make sure he’s still there, that she’s not all alone in the world. How he’d put his head on her chest when they were lying down to do the very same thing.

She does feel a little alone, right now.)

There’s something she wants to say—please, maybe, or just his name—there’s always something she wants to say, but his lips are back on hers, warm to the touch, brushing over hers in a rhythm that makes her see stars. She twitches underneath him when he nips at her bottom lip, when he starts slowly fucking his fingers into her again, and slowly but surely, despite—despite, despite, despite, and when is she going to admit that it’s actually because, anyway?—everything, she melts into the mattress again.

Sometimes, she wonders how any of this can possibly be good for Kabru. Why he wants a girl whom he’s only allowing to lie back and take it, anyway. If he even wants her at all. Things like that.

Right now, she’s not wondering much at all. And that’s the thing: Rin knows what’s coming, knows it like she does the ridges of his palm, knows he won’t be satisfied until he’s wrung her dry, but she surrenders herself to it, anyway. Lets herself believe, for one treacherous second, that maybe he’ll be kind to her tonight.

When she’s just about to come, hips bucking against his touch with small little grunts muffled by his mouth making it out of her, he pulls his hand away completely this time; fingers slipping out of her cunt no matter how she clenches down on him to keep him there, no matter how she tries to trap him with her thighs, how her back arches, how she whines. Embarrassing.

It feels like ice water over her head. Feels like something scalding and sticky at the back of her mind, turning it all to mush, until she’s squirming, tears burning in her eyes, until she pries her mouth off his again.

“Kabru,” she gasps. “You—why—you—”

Even in the dark, Rin knows Kabru is smiling. Maybe he needs this. Maybe he needs this, but either way, it’s not like she’s ever going to stop giving it to him, so does she really have the right to complain about any of it? To have it boil in the pit of her belly like coffee grounds, sinking there like resentment, like something ugly and desperate?

“It’s okay,” he coos, and it rushes through her like liquid gold just as much as it makes her feel crazy, as much as she hates it, as much as it makes her feel completely deranged. She always feels like a madwoman when he’s fucking her. “It’s okay, Rin. I have you.”

And she does know what he wants, of course she does. But despite everything, that part still feels like betrayal—to herself, perhaps, to her dignity, if she even has any still—that part still only comes out of her when her head’s full with cotton, when he’s pushed and pushed and pushed at her until she’s floating, until she’s falling.

Even then, it always comes.

“I have you,” he repeats, sounding like he’s saying it more to himself than to her, palm rough and warm as it rubs back up Rin’s thigh, gentle, gentle, gentle. Despite the way she feels after every time—wrung dry, ribs aching, throat tight—he’s always gentle. He’s never rough to her, with her, even when perhaps she wants him to. Even when perhaps that’d be easier to take.

(I have you, Kabru says, not I got you. She’s not sure what the difference is, anymore.)

He nuzzles his cheek against hers, and her hands slide over his bare skin uselessly, clawing and grabbing at every part she can reach, slippery with sweat. It’s dark, and she can’t see anything except his vague silhouette on top of her, but it still feels like her vision is blurring when he cups her pussy again, squeezing her in the whole of his palm, tongue hot on her jaw, teeth grazing over her skin, scraping over her bone.

“Kabru,” she says again, desperate, breathless, so high-pitched she doesn’t recognize her own voice, thinks for a moment there’s another woman in the room, another woman he’s fucking. He doesn’t bite but she knows he wants to. “Kab—Kabru.”

She pretends not to hear his faint growl because she knows he doesn’t want her to. It’s a dance, and Rin has never been a particularly good dancer, but it’s dark and no one will notice her stumbling, anyway. Or at least she can believe that. At least he’s letting her believe that.

The edge of Kabru’s teeth quickly gets replaced by the soft, plush feeling of his lips as the mask slips back on with a snap, his hand disappearing from her cunt to brush back down, fingertips digging into the flesh of her thigh like he’s massaging her as his hand creeps back up, pushes her thighs apart further, breath hot, hot, hot on her throat.

I love you, she thinks even as she kind of wants to strangle him right now; I love you, she thinks as his fingers—now three of them, and she has no idea what he’s counting—slip back inside of her, down to the knuckles, making her whine again.

“I have you,” he repeats, and it doesn’t sound all that soothing this time, and she loves, loves, loves him. Pinches her brows together and squeezes her eyes shut as his thumb rubs over her clit again, twitching at every brush of rough skin over hers; that’s how sensitive she is already. “Rin. Rin. Rin.”

(You’re beautiful, he tells her, over and over and over, and Rin doesn’t know if he’s saying it because he thinks it’s what she wants to hear, or if he actually thinks that. Or both. Or neither.)

“You—”

But she doesn’t get any further than that, because he doesn’t let her come this time, either, because it’s starting to feel like agony, starting to feel like cramping in her belly, and he doesn’t move his hand no matter how much she squirms underneath him, hissing under her breath. Pulls his fingers out of her and brushes them up and down her labia slowly, slowly, slowly, like he knows her body better than she does (he does, probably; she’s always felt a little stupid about touching herself), like he knows she’ll come if he does anything else, and by now, she’s sobbing, choking.

“Shhh,” Kabru says, even when she didn’t say anything at all; even when her brain is leaking out her ear, so it’s not like she could even if she tried. “It’s okay.”

It’s not, though. It’s never okay.

And still Rin spreads her legs wider when he circles around her hole with his middle finger, index and ring finger digging into her labia, and still she gasps and tips her head back and bares her throat, because she wants, wants, wants it, because this is all she’s getting, because she can never stop letting him.

“You’re beautiful.”

Part of her wants to hit him, wants to tell him to shut up, wants to nag at him like she usually does, wants to complain, wants to play with her hair, twist it around, around, around, but that’s when he brushes his thumb over her clit again, with such a feather-light touch that it makes her ache, and the only thing she can do is gasp hoarsely and claw at the skin of his back.

“Please,” spills out of her at last, before she can bite it back. “Please, please, please, Kabru, puh—lease—”

Kabru hums a mhm-hm sound that rushes down her spine, prickling in her belly, and presses his thumb over her clit tight, and really, that’s all she ever needs.

Coming feels like tumbling off a steep cliff, bones hitting and snagging and breaking like twigs on the rocks, only to be swallowed up by the endless ocean at the very bottom, drowning, drowning, drowning. Rips through her body and presses all air out of her lungs until the black void that is her vision is sparkling faintly, and all the while he presses chaste little kisses up her throat and down to her shoulder, leaning his cheek against her, his chest ghosting over hers like this. Rin wishes he’d put his whole weight on her, wishes he’d crush her.

“There you go,” he whispers in her ear once she’s only panting, her hips giving little twitches, his fingers rubbing circles into her labia again. There’s a lilt to his tone that makes her grope for him again, hands slipping on his skin, nails scratching. His sharp intake of breath is icy on her skin. “There you go. That’s my girl.”

My girl. Her eyes are still burning, and she’s still achingly empty. My girl, he says. She never feels less that than in moments like these.

“Fuck me,” she says anyway, voice wrecked, ignoring the way he shifts on top of her, fingers digging into his arms. “Please.”

He hums again after a moment of hesitation hanging in the air, mhm-hm scraping over her skin rougher this time, leans down to kiss her, brushing his hand into her hair to cup the base of her skull. Shifts again, until there’s something nudging at her pussy, slipping down, down, down, until she tilts her hips, until the head of his cock brushes over her hole.

“Yeah?”

God. He’s so—

“Yes,” she hisses out through her teeth, squeezing at his arm when he laughs. “Hurry up.”

Kabru is shaking his head in amusement, Rin can tell with the way his hair brushes over her cheek, back and then forth and then all over again. Cheek warm where it’s close to hers, his heat radiating off him, ready to burn her up. He doesn’t complain at her fingernails still digging into his back, because he never complains, just tilts his head with that smile and says c’mon, Rin, don’t be mad, like that’ll fix everything.

And maybe it does, because she’s still in bed with him, because she tilts her hips further as his push against hers, as the head of his cock slips inside, and she’s so obscenely wet that the slide is easy, making her cheeks burn instead. It doesn’t hurt. It never hurts these days, because he’s gentle with it, like she’s going to break otherwise; like she’s made out of porcelain, or glass.

(Sometimes, his hips are trembling with how he’s holding back and Rin is staring at the ceiling with blank eyes and wonders if he’ll ever stop being like this. I don’t like seeing women hurt, he’d told her one time with that smile that always breaks her heart for him.)

Something is crumbling, because Kabru grunts when his hips press flush against hers, when he bottoms out inside of her, and she’s tingling all over, limp underneath him, pressing hips and fingertips against him. Something is crumbling, because he’s a little rougher when he mouths at her neck again, because she can feel the edge of his teeth linger for a moment longer.

“You okay?” he gasps, hoarse, always, always holding back. Rin wants to pull him so close their ribs interlock together, criss-crossing. Rin wants to push him away.

“Yeah,” she breathes, instead, nudging at him like anything she could do could make him lie down on top of her. “Hurry—”

Which makes him laugh again, sucking at her skin like there aren’t already enough of his invisible marks all over her, grinding his hips against her nice and soft and slow, and she wants to turn him inside out, wants to—

“Kab—”

He presses his mouth back over hers to shut her up, tongue still tasting like her when he brushes it against her own, swallowing up her frustrated whine, fingers tightening ever so slightly at the base of her skull, in her hair, sending just the slightest pricks over her scalp. Kabru never takes, he never grabs or yanks or pulls like perhaps she’d want him to, but he’s not kind, either.

Rin is whining again, scratching at his back in something like protest, echoing between their lips next to his laugh, next to his sigh, and he palms at her breast—the one over her heart, of course, it’s always been his favorite cut of meat, of fat and flesh of hers—squeezing like he needs something to hold on to, as well, rolling his hips against hers. There’s a hoarse noise at the back of his throat, something guttural, something he forces inside of her, even when it’s the only thing he does.

“You’re beautiful,” he pants like a broken record, mouth slipping off hers, and he doesn’t bite but she knows he wants to. Knows burying his face between her legs and in her cunt is the next best thing; knows that’s why he keeps doing that. “You’re—oh—you’re so beautiful, Rinsha.”

I like it when you’re like this, he’d said earlier, and she thinks she likes it when he’s like this, too. When he’s breathless, irregular, when he gets a little grabby as opposed to the calm and cool collectedness he has whenever he makes her come with his mouth or his fingers, when his breath bursts hot over her skin, when he presses closer, closer, closer. When he moans quietly, grunting under his breath, when he starts sweating, too, when his speech stutters.

It reminds her of that first time, though all of it is just an echo. Though she’s just relentlessly chasing after a ghost, anyway.

“Rin,” Kabru says again, insisting and insisting and insisting, hips rocking against hers a little rougher now, grinding until he brushes her clit, until her head tips back and her eyes roll back into her skull, fingers clawing at him desperately, and there’s a tone in his voice that scrapes over her bones. A tone in his voice that feels like looking into the mirror, perhaps. “Rin. Ri—Rin. Rin.”

She’s not the only woman—and she’s pretty sure there’s been a few men, too—he sleeps with, Rin is well aware of that. Kabru is Kabru is Kabru, and he’s not her boyfriend, not a playboy, either, not really; he simply knows how to get what he wants, and what he has to do to get it.

No, Rin’s not the only woman he sleeps with or has ever slept with, she knows that, but what she knows, too, is that she’s the only one—men included—who ever gets to have him like this. Despite, despite, despite it all, it manages to feel like satisfaction (even when it’s the sick sort, just a little bit) in the pit of her stomach, where she’s boiling. Where she’s always boiling.

She bucks her hips up against his and moans at the sharp intake of breath at her ear, at the way his hand tightens on her breast momentarily until it almost hurts—what she’s striving for, what she needs, needs, needs, what he’ll never give her, because Kabru doesn’t take or yank or grab, he just drinks her dry every time—mind blurring when he finally, finally starts moving faster. When his words break off, when she doesn’t have to hear about how she’s beautiful anymore, because she truly cannot take it any longer.

When it’s just this: his warm body on top of hers in her bed, his breath on her skin and his cock inside of her, her cunt so wet it makes obscene noises that fill the room, together with hips slapping against each other. When it’s just this: Rin and the man she loves in her bed, with her fingers brushing into his hair and him pleading quietly so she doesn’t make out his nonsensical babbling into the crook of her neck. When it’s just this: her pulling Kabru closer, closer, closer, until she feels like she’s almost cradling him.

“Fu—uuuck,” he curses when she lifts her thighs to wrap her legs around his waist. “Rin—”

Even now, even like this, even with pleasure pounding through her veins like she’s touching lightning, even with everything overheating, even with how she’s squirming underneath him, panting, holding on to him for dear life in the void that is her bedroom, she doesn’t know why it always gets him so bad. Why it makes him slip. Why he buries his face at the crook of her neck and his thrusts grow sloppy. Why he says her name like that.

There’s a strange feeling gripping her, flooding through her, and it almost feels like serenity. She angles her hips against his so he grinds over her clit and her head is weirdly clear when she runs her hand through his curls, when she tilts her head to press a kiss to his temple.

Kabru curses again, hissing sharply, hips jerking, pulling out of Rin so abruptly her legs slide off his hips uselessly, that something in her head pops. Grinds against her—his weight suddenly very present on top of her, pressing all air out of her, kicking her mind right back into blurring—once, twice, before she can feel something hot and sticky spurting over her stomach, before she can hear the low grunt rolling out of him.

It takes a moment until she understands he came. That it’s his seed over her stomach, dripping down her waist, his hot breath bursting in pants over her neck, chest wracking against hers. Right. Right, right, right.

(He always pulls out. There’s a contraception spell she knows that she’s gotten quite good at, but Kabru always pulls out, even when she never asks him to. He’s on top of her, skin hot against hers, but Rin feels vaguely, weirdly cold.)

“Sorry,” he mumbles from very far away, like he’s under water or she’s under water or they’re both drowning. “I’m sorry, Rin. Hey. Are you okay?”

Her vision doesn’t really clear because it’s so dark there’s nothing to see, but it feels like that, anyway, because the ringing in her ears stops. Because his voice is clear now, because they’re still panting a little, because she knows the exact worried expression he’s looking at her with by heart. She leans into his hand on her cheek and wonders when he put it there; how long she spaced out for.

“Yes,” she says. Thinks, I love you, but it always comes out barbed so she shoves at his shoulder instead, brows pinching together even when he can’t see her right now. “Get off me; you’re too warm.”

He does get off her; moves to wipe at her stomach with something—and it’s probably his own shirt or something like that, which is a thought that almost makes her smile more than it disgusts her, because no one would expect something like that from Kabru, would they, but most people haven’t been to his room, or have seen him when he hasn’t bathed in weeks or eaten for days—lingers, hovers there for a moment more, like there’s something he’s not quite sure about doing before retreating again.

Rin sits up, stretching a little, turning her body to dangle her legs off the side of her bed. She’s still throbbing all over, and she knows Kabru is sitting somewhere next to her and he can’t see her, anyway, but she still can’t make herself look at him. Or lie down with him again so soon, for that matter.

“Can I stay the night?” Kabru asks, and despite everything, she never has been very good at saying no to him.