[P] dirty valentine

[Marisol]

For all their fighting, training - a planned-ahead kind of violence -Mari thinks they might not have ever been so reckless with each other as they are now.

At least their spars are familiar. Semi-choreographed, even. Marisol knows what to expect from her cadets - that they’ll show up on time, that they’ll battle each other before moving onto her, what blows are off-limits and the situations when they won’t be. It is a dance that every one of them knows well.

But this, what they’re doing now, is uncharted territory. It is a continent wild and untamed - a natural disaster waiting to  be unfurled. It makes Mari’s gaze soft, her jaw clench, her heart sputter in her chest like a half-starved flame. It consumes her. And that consumnation is ten times easier than it should be in the soft darkness of the bar, where every reaction, every sparking nerve, every brush of skin, echoes louder and louder and louder with each passing moment until it echoes in her throat like an Ilati drumbeat.

When they finally do touch, Marisol almost falters.

She feels it electric-shock on every inch of skin, a whirlpool in the pit of her stomach, heat burning a wildfire path under that dark, dark skin, burning even hotter when she feels Theo’s tail against her leg.   Everything is  dark and warm and overwhelming, and loss of control comes over her like a tsunami washes over the beach. (It might be the weakest the Commander’s ever felt.)

When she inhales, the breath almost rattles. But not quite.

Then you should ask for it, Marisol points out, matter-of-fact as ever; her gaze is still fixed casually on the scene in front of them, and it doesn’t move to Theo even as she leans easily into the cadet’s shoulder, brushes the edge of a freckled wing against her side. Her tongue is loose and rough with the influence of alcohol, so loose she almost doesn’t hear the words as they escape her - but when she does the realization is ice-cold, a shock to her entire nervous system. Ask for it. Ask for it - 

And what is she to do if Theo really does ask her for something? Something she shouldn’t be so willing to give?

@Theodosia