Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

The kiss which followed was clumsy, Fisher losing a great deal of his poise to eagerness, and they pressed together, exploring with hands and mouths, hard erection prodding her. He became urgent, steering her to the bed, fumbling for the box of condoms and tearing it open only to sprinkle packets in every direction. Madeleine opened one and, remembering the thoughtful instruction of many a glossy magazine, tentatively moved to try and put it on him.

He took it off her with a gusty cough of laughter. "You’re seriously overestimating my self-control."

"Sorry."

He smiled, and kissed her, but she had lost some of her certainty, felt tense and nervous as he moved over her. She tried to relax by touching his face and hair, and took small, uncertain breaths as they fumbled themselves into alignment. Fisher was shaking with effort, trying to hold himself to the slowest of paces, checking her reaction as he moved forward. The motion brought a little stinging at the very start, but a surprising lack of pain.

"Velvet," Fisher gasped, and lost his careful restraint entirely, plunging against her, a rushed, spasmodic motion which bounced them on the well-sprung mattress. Overwhelmed, Madeleine clutched at his shoulders, but already he was collapsing, his weight heavy on her, breath hot against her throat.

"Hell." He moved, shifted to lay beside her. "I didn’t – sorry, I didn’t think I’d be quite that pathetic." He propped himself up and looked at her worriedly, his hair ruffled, face flushed. "Did I hurt you?"

"No." Feeling less overcome, Madeleine touched his shoulder. "It’s okay. Though I’d like it if you spent some more time doing things to my breasts. They’ve never felt quite so real before."

He spluttered into laughter, and they held each other and shook, helpless hilarity. That turned to enthusiastic kissing, pressed together, legs tangling, then relaxing back to take a breath.

"I had pictured this very romantic," Fisher said. "Slow, and measured and…well, lasting longer. Magical, not farcical." Chagrin competed with amusement. "I would be very glad to continue to prove the existence of your breasts. And I am, if nothing else, an extremely good study."

Madeleine slid out of the bed and paused to move a couple of condom wrappers from the floor to the bin, adding to the detritus of a night’s diligent practice. Glancing out floor-to-ceiling windows at early morning sun and the grand curve of the Bridge, she picked Tyler’s koi robe off the back of a chair and slipped it on. Her Blue metabolism worked against long, lazy sleep-ins, and she followed the call of her stomach to the plentiful supply of snacks she’d stocked yesterday morning. Once the edge of her hunger had been dulled, and she’d cleaned herself up and managed to unknot her hair a little, she returned to look at the boy sleeping in her bed.

Comets. Stars which streaked across ribs, a bellybutton which glimmered above a trail of dark hair leading down to a thicker swatch. Long arms and legs, their impression of length increased by his overall skinniness. Head resting at an angle, tangled half-curls swept back from the brow, wide mouth relaxed. The position of his hands was somehow graceful, one bony wrist exposed, and she entirely forgot her intention to fetch them a hot breakfast and instead positioned a chair to take advantage of the light, fetched her biggest sketchpad and backing board, and lost herself in capturing him.

She’d moved on from the main figure to work on the fall of the sheeting to the floor when a peaceful voice said: "Is it okay for me to get up?"

"Mm. Try not to mess the line of the sheets."

After he’d carefully rolled off the bed and crossed to look at the sketch, it filtered through to her that this was probably not the most lover-like way to act on their first morning together. Blushing, she looked up, but he kissed her on the forehead and said, "I love the way you are when you draw. And you really should sketch how you look right now because it’s definitely something worth waking up to."

"A little impracticable," she said, but Fisher simply smiled and moved a standing mirror from the far side of the bed, then headed into the bathroom while she studied her reflection.

He was right. Sitting with one foot tucked up, sketchbook balanced on her lap, the gold and black of the koi robe spilling around blue and stars, the slight curve of one breast, a length of glimmering thigh, crinkling brown hair waving loose. She turned to a new page and began outlining, and when Fisher emerged, damp and wrapped in a towel, said: "Can you get the case of coloured pencils from that table?"

He did more, moving the café-style table within her reach, and lifting out the trays of pencils before rescuing his clothes from the pile by the door, hanging up her bathrobe, and heading out to the main room of the suite. She had made a great deal of progress before his return, enough that when a sweet, spicy scent forced itself on her notice she was willing to look at the bowls and cups he was fitting into the gaps of the table. Steaming porridge sprinkled with nuts, dried fruit and brown sugar.

"Did you make this?" Hunger abruptly triumphed over art, and she reached for a bowl.

"With considerable guidance from Noi. I’ve never really had much occasion to cook."

"Was she very entertained?"

"If today wasn’t Pan’s birthday, it probably wouldn’t be safe for us to venture out." He slipped her sketchbook from her lap and studied the picture while she began to eat. "What do you do with your sketches? And the paintings."

"Keep them in my room. I used to scan them and post them on an art site, but I took them all down last year. Being hypercritical. Not wanting to be known for work I no longer considered my best." She sighed, then glanced at his face, absorbed as he continued to study the picture. "You can have that one," she added softly. "When I’ve finished it."

His open pleasure made her feel light-headed, and as soon as she’d finished her meal she took him back to bed. Still plenty to learn. But curled with him afterwards, thirty people crept into her thoughts. This was an interlude which could not last.

"Do you think we should try to get out of the city like Noi wants?"

"Getting out of the city is likely to be considerably harder than Noi wants to believe. More to the point, that dragon’s range and speed means out of the city isn’t any guarantee of safety. But I don’t think we’ll last two years here, either." He hesitated. "I know it seems like we’ve made no progress, but it’s only when we have a full understanding of what we can do that we can hope to mount any kind of attack. I do think I’ve found a third ability, though a practical use for it isn’t immediately obvious."

"A third ability? What?"

He didn’t reply immediately, shifting to lie staring at the ceiling. "Think over what it feels like to feed Nash," he said at last, almost too low for her to hear.

Everyone tended to shy away from discussing the heady warmth Nash could conjure. It wasn’t quite a sexual thing, but it was very pleasurable, like an intangible massage. It usually left Madeleine a little tired, yet feeling good.

"Now think about what it feels like to punch, and to shield. The sensation is not the same. Although Nash is clearly drawing on that punch power reservoir, it is–"

"There’s something else involved." The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was Fisher had a point. "When I feed Nash, I really feel like I’m, well…almost like I’m sitting next to myself. I don’t get that sensation at all when I shield or punch.

"I’ve been focusing on that," Fisher said, still speaking very low. "Isolating the sensation, trying to work with it. This is…" He stopped, frowning fiercely at the ceiling. "Close your eyes."