Work Text:
Rerir gets six seconds of blissful shut-eye before the retaliatory smack of a pillow hones down on his face.
There are several reasons he doesn’t frown; one being because the muscles in his face are too weary to muster an expression that isn’t mild dejection, and another being because his lover’s voice promptly follows the vicious offensive.
“Absolutely not,” Tholindis is smiling mid-stride to the mirror on the other side of their bed, tossing the pillow somewhere beside him. “That’s a nice suit, Rerir. And you shouldn’t be falling asleep in stiff clothes like that.”
His lips curl as he huffs and drags himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, his eyes slip shut at the sound of splashing water behind him from where she begins to wipe away her makeup.
“Did you drink too much again?” she cuts through the sound of silence, gently dripping water from her facecloth, and Rerir’s noticeably loud breathing. He busies himself with undressing before she can playfully scold him further.
“You know how I get when Dain boasts about his tolerance like that,” he murmurs, the exhaustion and thrumming beginnings of a headache heavy in his voice, hands slipping beneath the brunet curls over his face to rub his eyes awake.
Tholindis simply clicks her tongue, and Rerir sees her shrug her shoulders when he momentarily turns to glance at her.
“Well, I suppose I’d be more upset if you two hadn’t waited until the ball was almost over,” she wrings the cloth once her face is clean, the sound of splashes ringing through the quiet again. It’s rather counterproductive, really – Rerir has always found the sound of water relaxing. He’s interrupted from his brief trance when Tholindis’s hand meets his bare upper back and urges him to turn to face her. “You two… honestly. You’re grown men, having contests with each other like children–”
“Tholindis–” and there’s a touch more protest in the way Rerir says her name this time as she brings the cloth close to his face.
“Oh it’s still warm, don’t worry,” she chuckles, eventually running the damp cloth beneath his eyes when he doesn’t resist further, holding the side of his face as she does.
And it’s counterproductive again, the tender chartreuse of her eyes on him, the steadying palm of her hand. It all only serves to make him more insistent to skip this stage, so they can sooner drift to sleep in each other’s arms. Rerir’s heart flutters as he melts into it, a wave of energy pools beneath his skin for him to laugh softly at the sensation, to turn her hand over once she’s finished and press it to his lips.
“I take it you’re a little too tired for a bath?” she murmurs, sighing through a smile when he simply nods against her hand. “Me too.”
Rerir raises his head then, and finds himself leaning back to admire her before he can stop himself. Tholindis stands out amidst the other ballgoers; a researcher surrounded by a spectacle of nobility and royalties, yet she’s never been bent on impressing them. So much is reflected in her appearance, her choice of dress; the skirt is short and breezy in comparison to the thick and voluminous things of noble convention. Rerir suspects she just says this to fluster him, but she’s reasoned in the past that she prefers having him close to her while they dance, without worrying about the hindrance of clothing that doesn’t need to be there.
Ah, he smiles, playfully accusing; “You’re still in your dress.”
“But I’ve been productive,” Tholindis points out. “And I was hoping you’d lend me a hand with getting out of it. I know how much you enjoy doing so, after all.”
Something baffled and embarrassed rushes past Rerir’s lips at that. “Be quiet…”
She almost retorts with something crude again before she decides to just turn around, smiling victoriously as she feels his hands against her back, indulging for a moment in allowing his thumbs to trace the edges of her spine before he figures that undoing the clasps will hail a greater reward.
“You didn’t seem to have a problem with putting this on before the ball,” Rerir remarks, deliberately leaning close to her ear, his voice lowering. “I can’t help but wonder, Tholindis, if you have an ulterior motive?”
She simply hums, feigning dismissiveness. “I said I’d let you help, not that I needed it, didn’t I?” her voice is balanced between chalked-up innocence and a slight purr, her mischievous eyes slipping shut as her lover’s lips meet the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “Besides, Rerir, you’ve been drinking.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Oh? You sound very sure of that.”
“I’m not…” he murmurs, his words slightly more distant the more he gets distracted. “I’m not drunk, I mean. You’re doing a real great job of making sure of that.”
Tholindis makes a noise of mock-offense. “You’re saying I’m sobering? Careful now, some women take offense to that.”
“Alcohol compromises focus, yeah?” he defends, speaking between the warm contact of his mouth to the veins in her neck as he pushes the dress from her shoulders. “I’m saying you counter this; you have all my attention. All of it.”
“Mmn, good save~”
“It’s called ‘the truth’–”
Tholindis pretends she doesn’t feel the way Rerir’s breath wavers when he says this.
He’s deft to distract her anyway, just in case. Her dress has fallen around her upper-thighs from where she’s kneeling on the bed, and he finds there’s too many places he wants to touch. He presses his body further against Tholindis’s back as compensation for how he wants his hands all over her. One arm drifts around her waist, and he angles it for the small gasp she emits when his hand cups one of her breasts, and his other arm traces waves up the insides of her thighs.
He’s about to muffle the way his breathing begins to turn ragged against her skin again before she reaches up and guides him into a kiss, and he understands then what she had meant about being offended by his sobriety comment. Perhaps he’s attentive to her now, yes, but overwhelmingly so. The way his head buzzes and lungs grow shallow as he dizzyingly drinks her in are all akin to the effects of drunkenness, and she’s a sweeter taste to his lips and his tongue. There’s a definite absence of clear-headedness as he touches her there. Tholindis has always been a welcome challenge for him to keep up with, so he moves now just as fast as she does, steered by the sharp breath against his own greedy mouth, urging her to balance herself on her hands and knees when she arches against him. Tholindis’s ballgown slips down further, a heavy forgotten thing draped over her calves that evokes the image of a goddess rising from a sunlit lake, and Rerir fills the aching space between them with a tangible assurance of his own arousal.
“Rerir–” her voice is near-broken, and she’s so wet. He’d tell her as much if he weren’t so busy groaning into her hair like a drunkard, mindlessly lifting and pressing his thinly-clothed length against her rear.
She moans his name again when his teasing fingers press inside her, and Tholindis drops the weight of her upper body from her stilted hands to her elbows. Rerir’s arm around her follows, as does the rest of his position as she adjusts her hips. It seems like flustered squirming at first, an attempt for her to bashfully close her legs – but she coincidentally stills, save for some small shudders, when he’s practically mounted on her.
“Rushing, are we?” the natural low coarseness of Rerir’s voice saves him somewhat from his evident, audible absentmindedness. He’s too entranced by the soft, tight sensation of her around his fingers, pistoning shallow and gentle, for now.
“That depends–” Tholindis sighs, her hands chasing the uneclipsed sheets in front of her. “If you mean I’m rushing for this to be over, or to have you inside me…”
Rerir’s following curse is rough and dull, like his desire flings his mind from his body. “You’d be more careful saying things like that if you knew what it did to me–”
She laughs as her eyes slowly close, her following strings of teasing words repeatedly failing on a jolt when he purposefully presses against her sweet spot. Rerir’s hands are notably large, not even just in proportion to her own, so had her mind been clearer Tholindis might’ve pouted at the way he uses them to navigate her so expertly; his fingers scissor apart with each outwards drag before they plunge back inside, deeper, pressing her nerves again as she constricts around him. Over and over until she’s trembling within the confines of the shadow he casts.
“At least…” she manages. “Let me feel you, too.”
And she whimpers quietly when Rerir obliges, releasing her waist to pull his stiffness from its remaining confines. Tholindis gasps as she feels it slip hastily between her legs, thick and damp at the tip and demanding, nudging against his own occupying ministrations on her cunt.
“Who’s rushing now?”
Rerir sheepishly laughs in reply.
She blindly reaches for him over her shoulder. “Kiss me again…”
And he obliges more eagerly to this request, his digits slipping out to caress the syrupy folds of her entrance as he spoils his love with his mouth against hers. He pulls away only to turn Tholindis on her back, pressing her into the mattress as she outstretches her arms to him to urge him closer again.
The mere sight of her like this – peachy skin flushed pink and bright lidded eyes gazing up at him with intent to eradicate any doubt of her desire – Rerir almost begs her on the spot to say yes. To marry him.
“Are you going to make love to me now?”
“I will,” he throbs. “You just– well…” sometimes it worries him; how long they’ve been together and she still manages to make him stumble over his words so effortlessly. “Can’t blame a man so deeply in love with you to enjoy being asked, now.”
Tholindis pinches Rerir’s cheek before she lays back and arches, a heady seduction seeping into the playfulness of her tone and gaze. The parting of her legs is slow, and follows through to the way her ankles cross around his waist. It’s a ploy to make him lose his composure, of course.
“Rerir…” she pulls him close to kiss his cheek, and he finds himself already obediently lining up before she gets the rest of it out. “I want you to make love to me.”
The people of Khaenri’ah do not bend to the will of gods of convention, and there is only one thing, one entity, one person, that Rerir would ever worship like this. Tholindis welcomes his devotion with parted pink lips and fluttering lashes, an open hand that trembles for Rerir to fit his fingers between. He’s gasping as she blesses him back, a palpable connection of warmth and bliss where he’s convinced for just a moment that he could tell her anything and be forgiven.
Anything.
“You feel…” he moans this almost every time, only to fall short of words that express sufficiently how infatuated he is without frightening her. His eyes just close and he pants against the space beside her like a mutt.
“Tholindis…”
She tips her head back and raises her hips. She’s ready.
Rerir is considerably larger than Tholindis is – tall and broad-shouldered – he bathes her body in a tender darkness as his free arm holds her closer and he begins to gently move his hips. Their fingers remain entwined some distance to the side; the second dance of tonight, only the sounds of slick and snapping rounds of colliding skin substitutes the grand strings and brasses from mere hours before.
Tholindis’s other hand weaves through his brunet waves, a flimsy anchor point as they both grow more desperate. It’s astounding how a presence she seeks for serenity can make her heart race like this, can make her burning and shallow intakes of breath feel so hypnotic. She finds herself pulling her legs further back, inviting him deeper, and the distant and dull, blissful ache wrangles a mindless declaration of love to the tip of her tongue.
“Rerir–!”
“You’re perfect–” and his words are shoved from his throat as if it takes effort to speak. Sobbed-out like she’s temporary. Like uttering anything else might lose her.
Her voice is silk against the roughness of his beating heart. “Don’t stop–” A gasp. “I love you. Even if I–” haven’t said yes yet.
Rerir softly hushes her, trailing his lips tenderly against her temple as he thrusts deeper. Harder. Gets high on the way she tightens in response to his intensity. He’d tell her it’s alright, he understands, this isn’t the same as marriage.
Marriage, Tholindis thinks, implies upfront honesty.
She wishes the depth he reaches inside her didn’t feel so right; a heady blend of ecstasy and dread that Rerir might spot telltale diagonal crosses in their child’s eyes.
They’ve never discussed children before, not directly. It’s never gone beyond offhand exchanges of names they find pretty, or features on the other that they prefer over their own. An idea that should be wonderful for two people so in love more truthfully is chilling. Rerir almost sounds distressed when he feels his cock twitch at the crux of a particularly firm thrust, and Tholindis’s eyes snap open perhaps too wide. He barely stalls, and she barely stills, for no more than a thread of a second, and they return to the comfortable throes of pleasure once Rerir’s assured that he hadn’t climaxed.
Children? They can’t. No matter how badly they want to, they can’t.
Another beloved to lie to.
“I love you, too,” he simply tells her back – promises – with a dripping sweet affection in his voice more befitting at an altar. He lets go of her hand to bring it between her legs and she cries out his name again.
“Rerir, I’m– I’m so–” and he grunts as he dutifully brings Tholindis to release, his eyes rolling at the mere sound of her as she cums. An impossibly hot sensation floods through her veins that could rival the sun of Teyvat, her hands claw blindly for him as if hanging from string off the edge of a cliff. She takes mouthful after mouthful of sobering air, rendered little more than a trembling lamb during the fleeting moments Rerir chases his own climax. He moans brokenly, breath louder than the obscenity of their bodies, and he pulls out roughly and spills against her folds. Tholindis shudders at the sensation, hot thick rounds of his seed pulsing against her clit. Rerir heaves against her neck, seeking the scent of her over the chill that settles slowly around them.
The illusion is gone, replaced by the disconnect their tales force between them.
–
“Those eyes…” Tholindis is either attempting to soothe the slight tense in Rerir’s expression, or she truly is staring at something that captivates her. The way the palm of her hand refinds the side of his face makes it harder for him to tell.
“It’s a little frustrating, sometimes,” she continues softly, a sigh drifting from her when he holds her cheek in return. Her voice flutters over the pillows beneath them like gentle breezes across the sea. “I can never innocuously look at them without being caught, you know what I mean?”
A smile. “You’re allowed to just ask, if you want.”
Tholindis hums, brushing layers of brunet from Rerir’s face. “Oh, I shouldn’t flatter you too much, now~” Rerir makes a show of kissing her again to quiet her. “Just never change them, is all. They’re too pretty.”
He scoffs. It’s always a victory when Tholindis offers him an opening to tease her back. “I’ll make a point to avoid any situations in which my eyes may suddenly change.”
“Don’t give me that,” she defensively protests as he grins. “With all the talk about these alchemical breakthroughs lately, you never know what might happen.”
Rerir leans towards her again, replacing his hand with his lips.
“You have my word.”