Work Text:
Lately Aloy’s mind is full of stars and fire and tendrils of angry-glowing red. With her eyes closed, she sees the world scoured and swept away, and it makes her lose track of herself.
A burden shared is still a burden. And even with her friends beside her, pressure weighs. The enormity of what they’re up against pulls her in too many directions. Today she’ll take flight for Gideon DynaTech’s testing grounds—one of Londra’s faint hopes, their only leads—in search of some miraculous edge against the obliteration hurtling their way. Another long, exhausting journey that might end with empty hands.
Empty hands. Empty hands and precious time trickling away while she sits on the back of her Sunwing, or deadlocked with tribal leaders brokering conditional alliances and managing the petty details of their endless negotiations. Sometimes all of it’s enough to break the brave face she fights tooth and nail to keep on view.
She has to be strong. Stay strong. Strong is what stands between this world and its annihilation—between life and another desolate wasteland, more ruin where Elisabet’s dying work had flourished, this time with no seed of future hope.
Can’t let it slip through their fingers. Can’t let it slip through her fingers. Can’t let it—
“Aloy.” Her name, a thick and silken whisper, sighed out against the corner of her jaw. Lips press there, then roam lower. “Hey.” Another kiss—and the slightest scrape of teeth—over the point where her pulse is racing. Hoarser, then, and brimming with quiet caution: “Are you here with me?”
I don’t know. The words thunder in from somewhere beyond her reckoning, strangled and frayed. She is always living and dying in so many places at once. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t—
Context. Presence demands context. And context always threads itself together more slowly than it slips away. Aloy feels herself take in a shock of a breath and then—
Quiet morning light. Faint birdsong in the distance.
Meridian, yet undestroyed.
Despite everything, she keeps finding reasons to linger here. Roots bury themselves too easily in this refuge of silk sheets warmed by sleep and early sun. Her body winds back into shape under the feeling of pliant weight softened into her, all naked intimacy, skin against skin.
Other touches, too. Hands. One curved along the hollows of her ribcage, thumb idly tracing the underside of her breast—another, with fingers tangled loose in her hair. All at once Aloy’s staggered awareness pours into the sensation of being held close, and with blind abandon she lurches for it. Latches on. Hopes it’s a tether strong enough to keep her from being swept away.
Another tattered breath dampens her heartbeat, makes the dizziness start to relent. She blinks at the dry-stung ache in her eyes. It fades, and her vision steadies on Talanah lying prone between her legs, propped up on one elbow—hair unbound, face bare and morning-mild, wearing nothing but the mellow streaks of daybreak streaming in through the window.
And Talanah is already looking back at her with a gaze like a heat wave, heavy and hungry, intent and deferential. She’s thrilled through with obvious want—but there’s careful sweetness in her expression, poised to either keep going or pull back. Her eyes catch the drowsy sunlight. Amber shines molten and smolders straight in, shuddering Aloy’s spine.
Here Aloy is: beheld, secure. Made real for being seen. Bound to the present by Talanah’s resonant and patient attention, a bearing she’s not sure she deserves. Her question trembles between them, waiting for a response.
“Yes,” Aloy finally exhales, when she’s sure she means it. “Yeah.”
The reassurance brings a subtle but eager smile flickering across Talanah’s face. With permission given, she strokes her thumb over Aloy’s nipple in a slow, featherlight circle, nuzzling into her neck again. Her lips retake their claim of tender skin that had once, before any of this, only known the touch of a blade.
Aloy arches unbidden into the sensation and tilts her head to bare more of it, shivering as Talanah exhales softly against the crook of her throat. Then her own breath catches and rasps when Talanah shifts against her, a languid surge of pleasant motion. The lengths of their bodies meld together. Closeness, full alignment. No space left between. No room for anything but shared urge and shared hazy heat.
It’s impossible not to dissolve into that kind of unconditional solace.
All of the thorough attention riles the indistinct flutters of pleasure into a steady, whole-body thrum. Talanah’s mouth comes open to suck lightly at the tendon corded beneath it, then follows its taut-flexed path, trailing upward, seeking. Her lips brush and whisper at the corner of Aloy’s mouth before pressing more deliberately—but no less delicately, still prepared to fall back at any hint of hesitation.
There’s none.
Taken gladly by the rising tide of desire, Aloy rediscovers her own hands, resting slack on the narrows where Talanah’s waist tapers into her hips. Seeks more. More connection. Something visceral and coalescent, something she can hold. So she reels for a better grasp on Talanah, on herself, on here—finds herself gripping tighter, fingers indenting the supple sinew of her curves—
—pulls.
The sudden insistence makes Talanah gasp into a groan—sharp and surprised, but distinctly pleased. She untwines her hand from Aloy’s hair to cup it beneath her jaw instead, matching her vigor and her purpose alike. The contact is nearly dismantling and Aloy lets herself slip further into the flood. Her mouth concedes, too, falling open in welcome when Talanah slants her chin closer. Tendency provokes tendency like a river’s inexorable ramble and Aloy’s legs splay apart to accommodate the full breadth of Talanah’s frame. Hips slot into hips—friction. Ache. Aloy’s give a reflexive twitch at the brush of Talanah’s pelvis against her inner thigh, a craving distilled and displayed.
Parting, deepening, barely broken for breathing, the kiss coaxes itself along. What was once gentle and yielding becomes swelter-teemed and desperate. Dense and urgent. Starving for solidity, for proof, Aloy’s hands roam. Her palms slide up the bare plane of Talanah’s back and ribs, flattened firm over spine and musclegroove. When she scrapes Talanah’s bottom lip between her teeth, it earns a wordless murmur of approval—Talanah melts against her and answers with her tongue. Sparks rush. Aloy sears, white-hot, boundless.
Hunger sharpens with mounting haste. Every touch, every further kiss becomes an amplification. Talanah rounds forward to palm and grasp Aloy’s breast, catching her sensitive nipple in the space between two fingers. Much less tentative this time—much less of a suggestion and more of a declaration, one that riles every trace of want in Aloy like an ember blown alight. She whines it out into Talanah’s open mouth, all hot breath, firestorm of arousal in her belly, in her ribs, flaring past the limits of physicality alone.
No words to express the scope of what this does to her. What Talanah does to her—being unraveled in safety then woven back together, held close in new calm. Deeper than she ever assumed this act could be: an anchor. A lantern. A signal flame burning bright in the dark.
Falling into cadence, her body remembers the way this started: waking to the ethereal sound of the Sun-Priests’ dawning litany. Lying close, naked from the preceding night, already skin-starved. Reaching, gathering up, becoming entwined without words, slipping into these shapes of need before Aloy’s troubled mind swerved.
But now everything beyond the two of them falls away. The world is every place they’re touching. Uncomplication mouth on mouth, pulse on pulse, every sense full. That wringing feeling low and deep—and the knowing that it’s matched.
Nothing here is collapsing. There’s time to reach for what they want.
The tension steady-seethes. Settles heavy and aching at the crest of Aloy’s thighs, blooms into an impatient throb. Dizzy headrush when Talanah moves in closer still—as if there was distance left to spare—the press and drag of her breasts, a labored little groan, whose, don’t know, doesn’t matter—like soaring up, up, up where the air’s too thin to breathe—the giddy thrill of looking down from that great height, the world sprawled out below you in perfect, stomach-swooping clarity—
Not long until it’s too much and Aloy’s hips start moving with purpose, start seeking relief from all the coiled stirring. When she notices herself rutting clumsily against the leanness of Talanah’s midriff, her ears prickle and burn with raw fluster. Makes her go a little bit shy, how blatant her own want is in the contact, heady and eager and slick-smearing, already abundant enough that Talanah can surely feel it too.
But the flush also follows from the lightning-spark pressure right where her body’s demanding it. Erratic ripples of pleasure radiate outward, thrum through her veins, pulling her heartstrings taut as an overdrawn bow. Impulsive greed ignites—everything within her clamors out: please, more.
So she chases after it. Thick-charged, starved yet teeming over, she wraps her legs around Talanah’s waist and cants upwards again and again, trying to negotiate some kind of satisfying rhythm between her hips, her trembling hands, the thump-strike of her heartbeat. Letting out a breathy noise that only registers on the last verge of Aloy’s awareness, Talanah begins to move with her, rolling in to meet each of Aloy’s quickening little thrusts.
Mutual motion steepens the pleasure. It gathers like a heavy-looming stormcloud begging to break. The long kiss collapses into a messier demand, too distracted for any finesse—mouths slotting and panting and dragging and hovering as Talanah’s hand skims up to cradle Aloy’s neck, a half-measure of balance through the haze.
If it keeps going like this—if she keeps going like this—already, she’ll—
And then Talanah halts. Bears down against Aloy with intention, drawing a helpless groan from her throat and swallowing it whole.
Half-delirious anticipation simmering, around and between and within. Talanah’s heart hammering under her breastbone just as hard as her own. The tight-twisted stillness lingers for what feels like forever before Aloy feels the easy curve of Talanah’s smile against her fallen-slack mouth.
“Okay,” Talanah husks, pulling back just far enough to stroke the pad of her thumb along Aloy’s lower lip. Aloy’s eyes flutter open to find her gaze—gentle but loaded, dreamlike, gleaming. An invitation: come here, burn sweet. “Let me take care of you.”
A fleeting instant of sharpshot lucidity, the request a catalyst. Aloy’s throat goes tight. She still isn’t used to letting herself wanting that, much less accepting it. Maybe she never will be.
But right now surrendering to it might be what saves her. Afford distraction, even for a moment—forget the foreboding and the fatigue and weight of the wearying world. One word and all she’ll have to do is follow. This, and nothing else. Only burnished morning glow strewn across this bed and Talanah’s hands, Talanah’s mouth, Talanah.
So many ways Aloy could respond and all of them true—okay or right now I need that or you always do.
Blinking away the sudden, unexpected prickling behind her eyes, she settles for a simple whisper: “Please.”
Talanah doesn’t push for more. Just nods in close. Lets the tips of their noses brush together before kissing her again, delicate as a new bloom, quiet affirmation and adoration. Aloy basks in it like parched soil offered rain.
Then Talanah’s lips are moving again, hunting dapples of sunlight down the slender column of Aloy’s neck. When she nips at a sensitive spot above the hollow of her collarbone, then soothes it with a wet, open-mouthed kiss, arousal comes flooding back in like spring’s meltwater-swell, its urgency redoubled. Aloy’s hips give an unsteady jerk and she nearly cries out. Manages to bite it off right at the end, blushing even bolder at the desperate sound of herself.
But the same wave is sweeping over Talanah. She moans an inarticulate agreement—an airy, heated noise that peals up and down the length of Aloy’s backbone—before continuing her descent.
Any last shred of inhibition recedes as Talanah dips down to draw Aloy’s nipple into her mouth. Her lips seal around it and she sucks, not hard but hungrily, tongue sliding, circling, teasing. Might as well be a static shock, a tidal crash—Aloy writhes beneath her at the torrent of pleasure that races fever-hot to her core, and this time she does cry out, the rest of her senses drowned by the electrifying touch.
Talanah answers her again, muffled satisfaction. She slips her hand from Aloy’s jaw to caress her other breast. The thoroughness of her attention is almost enough to overwhelm—focused, diligent in reading detail and signals, hunter-keen. But it’s also tender and reverent. Like she’s handling something valuable, something prized and understood. Something she wants to keep.
Aloy didn’t realize she could be offered those sentiments in combination, before she knew Talanah. Now she looks for them everywhere. Wants to let them find her again and again and again.
Now, now, Aloy shudders under the weight of affection and attachment and fierce arousal, gripping Talanah’s shoulders and grinding into her with shallow little gasps. Fumbles for better leverage, better purchase. Anything to temper the hum of expectation worked up in the pit of her belly—which only smolders stronger when Talanah mouths a messy path across Aloy’s sternum to switch sides, sucking harder at her other breast, fingertips rolling the slick nipple she just left. Her eyes, darkened, flicker up to peer at Aloy through her lashes. Taking in the sight of each reaction.
And Aloy is throbbing like a drumbeat, pinpricked all over, sticky between her thighs. Spun out. Lost for this. Whines, a caught-halfway mix of pleasure and frustration.
Mercifully, Talanah takes the hint. She works her hand into the space between their bodies. Presses it first against Aloy’s breastbone. Then drags her flattened palm down the plane of her abdomen, a possessive splay over the tense musculature. Slides farther, gradual, prolonging the motion—Aloy wracks with a shiver as she follows the wispy line of hair beneath her navel and slowly cards her fingers through the coarser, thicker thatch below.
And then her mouth is falling open around a hitched groan of Talanah’s name as her hand eases into place, cradled into the apex of Aloy’s thighs, resting against the heat of her. Talanah parts her with her fingers but doesn’t probe into the heavy wetness she finds there—only slides them through, shallow and with undisguised admiration, just feeling her for the sake of it alone.
By itself the touch would already be enough to send her staggering. But when Talanah’s eyes flutter with satisfaction—when she takes in a shuddering breath and pulls her bottom lip between her teeth—Aloy’s mouth goes dry. Every last nerve, humming wild like a live Sparker.
“Oh, Aloy.” Her voice is a soft ache, hungering. She draws her hand away and Aloy is ready to put up a babbling, needy protest—until she’s halted by the sight of her own slick glistening on Talanah’s slender fingers.
And before she can comprehend that, Talanah brings them to her mouth to suck them clean.
Aloy’s head spins.
Talanah licks the rest from between her fingers with a quiet, indulgent hum. Eyes hooded, her gaze connects with Aloy’s—and dimly, Aloy’s aware that she must be making some kind of amusing dumbfounded face, because Talanah smiles unprompted, sniffs a delicate laugh.
“Can I use my mouth?” Her hand lowers again, stroking idly through the patch of curls between Aloy’s legs. “I want to taste more of you.”
The simple, straightforward way Talanah speaks that intimate request only deepens Aloy’s daze. All she can do is nod, breathless, nearly frantic.
In any other circumstance that kind of desperation might embarrass her. But right now there’s no room to be self-conscious—no room for much of anything besides this mess of emotion and sensation in the totality of her desire, the urge to become affixed and brought to willing collapse, the bold-seizing jump of her heart.
She needs this. Needs Talanah. And she’s not ashamed.
Wasting no time, Talanah bows. Her open mouth finds Aloy’s clavicle and glides slowly downward—between her breasts and over her middle, skimming ticklish skin and silvery scars and the scatter of sun-blazoned freckles. Dizzy, cording up with anticipatory motive, Aloy watches past the quick rise and fall of her chest as Talanah settles in the bracket of her hips.
Talanah’s shoulders nudge Aloy’s legs wider—and just like that she’s open, exposed. Thought makes her tremble. Makes her tremble even more when Talanah turns her head to strew intentional kisses and the lightest of teasing bites along her inner thigh, so close to where she’s clamoring for contact. She bucks unsteadily, straining into it, her body drawn rigid—hands clasp the sheets and bunch tight, white to the knuckles, the same way she grabs for her weapon when machine-sound rings near.
But in the escalating tension, Talanah pauses. Inches back, only just. When Aloy blinks down at her, panting out some incoherent noise of confusion, she smiles. Small. Warm. No falter in the intensity, just a faint twinge at the corners of her mouth.
“Relax for me,” she says in a throaty tone that makes Aloy throb all over. One of her hands finds Aloy’s fist clenched in the bedding, and she coaxes it open to lace their fingers together instead. “I want you to enjoy this.”
It takes a moment for Aloy’s addled mind to make sense of her words. Enjoy, she thinks in a dizzy echo. Swallows hard. She can still do that, here. She’s still allowed to do that. Even if it’s just for now. One slow breath—another—composure, an endeavor. Talanah’s thumb sweeps along her own. It tempts the strain out of Aloy’s muscles, rendering her compliant. Enkindled.
Ready.
Waiting, with every edge lit from within.
Their gazes are locked. Aloy’s backbone, liquid. Everything narrows to that one point of contact. An axis, a fulcrum.
Then Talanah finally presses the flat of her tongue against Aloy’s clit, and Aloy sees stars.
From the very first touch, it’s overpowering. The swift onrush of pent-up bliss is almost unbearable—like standing too close to a roiling fire and only wanting to reach for it, take it right into your hands. Her hips jerk into it of their own accord and she must make some sound, a curse or a cry or a call of Talanah’s name, but she can’t hear herself over the roar of her own heartbeat.
Every broad, slow, devastatingly deliberate stroke of Talanah’s tongue sends pleasure arrowing throughout her whole body, permeating every withheld depth, burning through all the stress and exhaustion and fear and doubt that lurk hidden from the light. And while her mind is a dense-bright blear—hard to think or find insight when her head’s whirling with a frenzy of sensation and half-eloquent impulses, just so sensitive and right there and more and please don’t stop—she’s already distantly aware that she won’t last long. Can’t. Never does. Not like this.
Especially not when Talanah steadily builds up the pace, licking quicker and deeper, relentless, leaving Aloy incandescent on her way to the looming precipice. Closer and closer to careening over, falling apart. Holding it off is a battle she can feel herself losing with every ragged breath.
So in a burst of thrillingly, frighteningly blind freedom, she gives in. Doesn’t try to fight it off and doesn’t try to chase it—tired of always fighting, tired of always chasing—just lets herself be led. Surrender means allowing her hips to move in earnest, grinding into Talanah’s mouth the way it feels best. Her free hand tangles in Talanah’s silky hair and grasps, tugs her in, holds her where she needs her to be. She’s rewarded with the vibration of a low, delighted groan—for just an instant Talanah breaks pace to dip her tongue inside. When she establishes it again, fixated and insatiable, gripping Aloy’s hip to urge her on, Aloy all but buckles.
Pooling heat cloys. The air ripples, charged on the upward rush. It’s steep, this peak, and Aloy climbs it to the very brink. Finds herself arched like a bow’s limb, head tipped back against her pillow, breath hitching and breaking off into a strangled whine. Every muscle quivers tense on the edge—her body’s impatient plea for more even though it can barely handle what’s already being given.
This time Talanah doesn’t encourage her to wind herself down. Instead she squeezes Aloy’s hand back and guides her onward, guides her over and through and beyond.
The feeling cracks and pulses like a lightning strike, bright and brilliant, and the thunder booming after—Aloy comes apart at the seams, crying out her climax with raw, rasping abandon.
All around her the world shatters into gleaming pieces, then goes beautifully quiet.
And in the potent-seething stillness, Aloy is alight and alive, not ending but beginning, blossoming, under Talanah’s hands.
Her orgasm ebbs away, leaving her panting out weak, ragged moans and sagging back against the bed cushion. Talanah eases her through the aftershocks, licking and kissing her clean. It’s slow, and it’s soothing, and the languid sensitivity makes Aloy’s eyes grow heavy even as she shivers. Feels nice to drift for an unguarded moment—no worry and no consequence—unheavy, stateless.
And then Talanah’s mouth is ascending again, working lazily over Aloy’s tingling skin from navel to neck. Aloy blinks open unbidden as she moves into view. There’s a small grin on her face, a tender expression that looks gorgeous on her. In the slants of sunlight her eyes glitter dark bronze-gold, pupils wide, bottomless.
The kiss that follows is slow and emphatic. A wordless profession. The taste of her own come in Talanah’s mouth is enough to make Aloy groan aloud again, stirred like coals.
“Good,” Talanah whispers against her lips. It’s more breath than voice, trembling and thick. “So good.”
She settles atop Aloy and nestles into the angle of her jaw, reaching up to brush sweat-clagged hair back from her temple. Beyond content, Aloy knows, to leave things here.
Aloy isn’t.
She’s sated, but not satisfied. Not completely. Through the fading haze there’s another clawing hunger to feed, one for reciprocity.
If for this alone, she has more left to give.
So much more.
“Come here.” Her voice gravels like rust on old metal. One hand finds Talanah’s hip while the other squeezes at her shoulder, nudging her to lift her head. “Let me…?”
Talanah regards her with a curious smile. Their foreheads touch as she rolls a thumb over the scarlet-tinged arch of Aloy’s cheekbone. “You don’t have to.”
“Please,” Aloy says, the plain truth of her want like cinders in her throat.
Doesn’t take more convincing than that. Talanah’s smile glimmers warmer, all coy appreciation. She shifts to straddle Aloy’s lap, knees pressed to either side of her hips—and oh, there’s this dizzy jolt of yearning to flex them, to press firm up into her.
But Aloy holds still and waits. Breathes, watches Talanah straighten upright, drinks in the strong, lean-hewn soft-curve form of her body. A little bit lightheaded, she pores over every naked detail she’s been too awestruck to memorize so far: sunlines marked between tan and pale. Her breasts, small-shaped fullness tipped with dusky nipples, the bold birthmark on the left’s underside. The furrows of muscle running from her hips to her groin, framing the smooth bare skin right above her—
Gentle but assertive, Talanah breaks Aloy’s outright stare by tilting her chin up with the first knuckle of her forefinger. When their gazes meet, Aloy’s ears go hot at the smirk on Talanah’s face, the playful lift of her eyebrow. She takes Aloy by the wrists and guides her hands to her waist, then drags them to her breasts, letting them fill her palms.
It’s like nothing Aloy ever could have imagined on her own, being permitted to give touch so intimate, so sensual. So full of intoxicating trust and thrill. Suddenly—this. Needed and wanted.
With a steadying swallow and another quick breath she recenters, concentrates. Fingers soften and mold to the swell of Talanah’s breasts, cradling their weight. She begins to knead them, and Talanah’s hands fall away from her wrists—instead she braces herself just above Aloy’s shoulders, halving the distance.
The shift in position causes Aloy’s thumbs to brush over Talanah’s stiff nipples—a motion she catches and keeps up with purpose, circling, pressing, each slow pass bringing Talanah to fine little trembles. When she goes on to tweak them more firmly, rolling them between her fingertips, Talanah arches into the sensation and makes a strained noise high in her throat.
“Keep going,” she sighs, shallow-pitched, two steps from a plea. Then she clutches Aloy’s nape and tugs her up into a greedy kiss.
Aloy yields to her pull with an open mouth, kissing back without restraint. Their tongues meet and slide and tease, and the heat swirling between them flares anew, assumes another steady escalation. Neither aims to quell it. Together they let it become a force that devours.
Talanah’s loose hair falling forward all around them is a shroud for their building momentum. Spurred on by the wispy murmurs of pleasure and need escaping the kiss, Aloy lets her hands rove over Talanah’s torso, everywhere, full-palmed and enthralled. Angles, contours, softness and sinew—running drunk on the physicality, Aloy lays claim to every bit of it she can reach. She slides them over the mottled scar at Talanah’s left flank, around her hips and up to her shoulders, then down the valley of her spine to the divots at the small of her back, pausing there to scratch light circles with her blunt fingernails.
And Talanah must like that, because she hums low and lifts her chin, offering her neck in place of her mouth. Wasting no time, Aloy sways closer. She trails wet kisses over the thewline leading to her pulse point—where she latches, sucking at the delicate skin just hard enough to bruise.
Talanah’s answering moan is clear and unstifled, loosed with the inflection of an unseen smile. Aloy wants to etch that sound into her mind—wants to earn it again and again and again. Anything to be the one who drives Talanah wild like this, a newfound ability she hadn’t realized she could hold.
She chases that powerful gratification with nipping teeth and soothing tongue. More marks, more proof. Tangibility. Reaction. Each pull makes Talanah gasp, sharp and shuddery, drowning Aloy’s veins with warmth like the honeyed Carja wine they shared last night.
For a slow-trance moment, it feels good enough just to be aimless. Their bodies move together without mind or purpose or method, adrift in the simple act of being shared. Disjointed awareness, all sense-immersed—the tang of sweat-salt in the hollow of Talanah’s collarbone, the clean scent of sweetspice oil clinging to her skin, the supple press of her belly and breasts. Aloy could stay right here like this for a long while. Let the world hang on until it really, really needs her.
But the world isn’t all that’s waiting for her. Eventually Talanah’s movements turn deliberate and restless, a pursuit in place of an amble.
“Aloy,” she huffs hot against the shell of her ear, composure worn to threadbare pieces, “fuck, I need…”
It trails off into a taut, unvoiced suggestion. Aloy’s response—she balks. A sudden and unwelcome wave of lingering insecurity washes over her, stalling her for a heartbeat. This is still new for both of them, separately and together, and Aloy is still working out the finer details. She learned her own body in rushed, sporadic fits and starts, enough for her to form a cursory idea of what she likes, what feels good and what doesn’t, what makes her come. But applying all of that to someone else hasn’t been so perfectly straightforward. Not so much that she doesn’t know what to do—it’s just—different. Different enough to make her think about it and second-guess. If Aloy is going to give, she wants to give well and give right.
Gently, she urges Talanah to sit back on her heels, looking for a hint in her expression. Her nervous tongue darts out against her lower lip before she asks, croaking, genuine, “What do you need?”
Talanah smiles down at her, eyes shining vibrant under heavy lids. She takes Aloy’s hand and lifts it to her mouth, pressing a feathersoft kiss against her fingertips. Heart twisting, Aloy nearly chokes on the sudden and daunting urge to tell her that she’s beautiful.
“You,” Talanah says. “Just you.”
Aloy wants to believe that so badly she could break.
But she doesn’t get that chance. Talanah is already moving her hand again—downward. She guides it to the apex of her thighs, nestling it into the narrow space where she wants it. The ample arousal gathered there coats Aloy’s fingers at the very first touch, and she reels at it so hard that the edges of her vision blur.
“You’re so wet,” she blurts before she can recover, realizing too late that she’s speaking her shock out loud.
Talanah just laughs, throaty and fond, tinged with the husk of a moan. Her amusement doesn’t feel bad or shaming or unkind. Not in the least. “Of course I am.”
She rocks against Aloy’s open hand for emphasis—full, slow, slick-drenched contact, every bit of it aimed to tempt her deeper. Too mesmerized to hesitate, Aloy slides her bowstring fingers inside to the last knuckle, strong and curved. Talanah’s hips buck as she cries out her delight, voice fraught and cracking with obvious relief.
All at once, no warning, that sound—and the flutter of clinging heat around her buried fingers—sends Aloy hurtling over a verge she hadn’t even realized she was approaching, out of control. Her untouched clit throbs frantically and she comes again looking into Talanah’s glassy eyes, clenching around nothing, toes and thighs twitching, mouth open in silent surprise.
It doesn’t last long, but it still leaves her rapid-pulsed and trembling. She tries to even out her breathing, flustered, going crimson at her body’s unruly display.
Talanah, though—her gaze is rapt and piercing, her lip bitten. The notch grooved between her eyebrows is identical to the one that twinges there every time her shot finds its quarry.
Takes Aloy a stunned second to fathom: she noticed, and she liked it.
Too breathless for it to sound like a command, she says, “Now fuck me.”
When she squeezes around Aloy’s fingers again—deliberately, this time—everything falls to best intuition.
Motion, swift and fluid and natural, connection unbroken, the axis unchanged. Aloy rolls on top, pinning Talanah with her body and a fervent, searing kiss. Bears in even deeper where they’re joined so the heel of her palm presses firm against the crest of Talanah’s sex. Watches Talanah’s eyes flutter open and roll back, hears her high-pitched keen at the stretching fullness. Her hands scrabble for purchase at Aloy’s shoulders and her legs fall open wider in welcome. One hooks fast around Aloy’s hip, tugging her closer.
Approval like that is blatant even through the whirlwind of lust. So Aloy levers her weight up on her free elbow and starts thrusting in earnest. Slow, at first, steady, leaving room to mount tempo, but with no lack of purpose or intensity. Talanah cleaves tighter, intent on matching, on escalating. Tiny gasps catch in her throat each time she drives her hips up to meet Aloy’s hand. Aloy can’t help but let out a heady groan of her own when another rush of slick wets her nearly to the wrist.
Their rhythm builds. Swelter grows twofold skin against skin. The recursive cascade of action and reaction wheels faster, faster, faster until each separate beat becomes indistinguishable. Everything distills to a sense of tandem with heavy breath mingled, foreheads pressed. So many sensations but one of them eclipses the others—a thrumming song in Aloy’s marrow, a summons, a rallying cry. She imagines Talanah’s energy melding with her own, together entwined into something stronger, something that can and will withstand whatever comes.
They can. They will. She’ll make sure of it.
Talanah grabs at her, desperation and determination combined. Her thighs flex and tense with every stroke. “Another,” she manages to grit out through the urgency of pleasure.
On the next thrust Aloy adds a third finger, and Talanah buries a clipped shout of gratitude into the crook of her neck. A brief moment of shared stillness, of adjustment—Talanah’s body strains taut around the stretch until she gives a shuddery breath and a brisk, leaping nod, Aloy’s signal to carry on.
And Aloy gives her what she’s seeking. With a grunt of effort, she braces against the bed cushion and keeps working into her, rutting hard against her own hand, no longer withdrawing but bearing in again and again and again with her palm held to Talanah's swollen clit. Bows in to kiss her just as deep as she’s fucking her—when she finds Talanah too far gone to kiss back, she clasps her teeth around her lower lip, pulls away with it.
Soon Talanah is panting out Aloy’s name with every heave of her chest, the sound of it clamoring like a second heartbeat. Close. So close. Aloy can tell by her manner, rough and euphoric, far beyond lucid thought. Her nails rake down Aloy’s back, possessive hands grasping the backs of her thighs to clinch away the last seams of space between them. There’s no relenting now, no distant dream of it—Aloy hunches into the narrowed angle, making the most of the lack of room with the flex of her wrist and a rhythmic crook of her fingers.
Talanah’s hips move of their own accord—writhing, rocking with every bit of force left to muster—and it’s enough to carry her over that visceral threshold. She arches up high and tight, straining and quivering, all but sobbing out her release into Aloy’s ear. Her cry ripples through Aloy’s bones, condenses at the base of her spine, making it tingle with impossible heat.
Maybe Aloy comes again too—can’t really tell through the overload. It’s unimportant anyway. All that matters is the unfettered feel of Talanah’s orgasm. The shape of it and the depth of it, the way the light of it scatters and ricochets, how she moves through that blade-edge moment between desperation and satiety. It’s a bliss Aloy is learning to reach for. One she’ll never tire of.
It’s comfort offered whole and intact and weightless. Rest for the weary, aglow in her arms.
Carefully she brings Talanah down from her peak. The gentler, shallower movements earn her a series of much softer moans before they finally collapse together against the bedding, slack and spent, molding into one another without pretense. Talanah lets out an airy, contented noise as she settles, both a sigh and a laugh at once. Too worn out to fuss, Aloy slips her fingers free and wipes them on her own thigh before draping her arm across Talanah’s waist, tucking her face into the side of her neck.
Breathing is easier with the slowing rise and fall of Talanah’s chest to guide her. Calm in, calm out. Matching motion and matching time. Current of a steady-thudding heartbeat beneath. Talanah finds her arm, follows it to her hand. Laces their fingers together.
Can’t say how long they linger, tangled up. Long enough for Aloy to float drowsily, but not long enough to drift all the way back to sleep. When Talanah nuzzles at her hairline, Aloy’s heavy eyes blink open. In the spreading sunlight everything seems strangely clear and beautiful. It washes the bedroom in gold, melting the shadows away.
With all of this warmth radiating into her skin, it feels like she can face the world again.
“I’ll miss this while you’re gone,” Talanah murmurs against her temple. “Miss you.”
Her voice is still husked thick. But it’s also wound with a thread of accustomed resignation, of somber acceptance.
Aloy is leaving. She is staying. And neither can change it.
It’s a circumstance from which Talanah could easily distance herself—and in a bitterer moment Aloy might wonder why she doesn’t. Why she keeps on tolerating it, arms open and waiting and reaching, keeps letting their lines bleed together.
In this calm, though, that inward-turned anger has no foothold. Instead Aloy shifts closer and holds tighter, hand curving around the swell of Talanah’s opposite shoulder. Her restless gaze flickers up through her lashes, seeking amber.
“I’ll miss you too.” Then, wavering just above a whisper: “I’m sorry.”
Talanah takes the apology with a soft look and mentions it no further. Caressing Aloy’s face, she asks, “Are you alright?”
Aloy hums. “I am now.” There’s an unspoken side to the answer. Its symmetrical opposite: I wasn’t before. No brave faces. Not the kind of admission Aloy would make often, or without a fight. But she’s burned through everything besides raw honesty, and—beyond that—Talanah sees things in her that nobody else can. “Thank you.”
Talanah watches her quietly for a long moment. A reticent seriousness ghosts across her features, the silhouette of some deeper sorrow. Its sudden gravity catches Aloy unprepared. Thrown off-balance. Before she can figure out how to react, Talanah nods in to rest their foreheads together. Eyes meet and lock, burning, earnest, vulnerable.
“I wish I could take it all from you.” Her tone carries a new trace of longing glimmering in its cadence. “Hold it for you while you catch your breath. Give you the peace you deserve and make sure you feel it, always.”
Her words sink in with the disarming sincerity of revelation—and there’s a sudden and brutal-sweet tug in Aloy’s chest, one that drives the air out of her. Something primed to burst as it claws its way to the surface. A truth yet to be spoken, a mark of things yet to start, should time and the world and her own strength allow. So much yet to come. Her jaw aches with the effort of keeping it inside.
Not yet. Not yet.
Maybe soon.
(She wonders how much longer she can hold it back without bruising.)
Until then—another offering, alike in meaning and purpose. Heart racing, Aloy reaches up to lay a hand on Talanah’s cheek (steady, steady) and kisses her like a promise. Like she can make her understand everything, everything, from it alone.
When she feels Talanah smile against her mouth, she smiles back.