Never Been Kissed
Apr. 9th, 2012 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enlivenedaltruist
When Cheriour kisses her, it is as near to perfect as possible. It is every cliché ever written, a kiss that has sprung straight from the pages of a fairytale. When he kisses her, full of desperation and hope and helplessness on her Quest Bed, aching for her to live, one way or another, she can feel her heart stutter to a stop.
And then, just like a storybook princess, surrounded by glittering lights and a swaying cloud of fireflies, she wakes up. After her eyes flutter open again he goes limp for a moment, sagging against her in relief before pulling her up and crushing her to him. He kisses her, again and again and again, all over her cheeks and forehead, peppering garbled French that she only half-understands in between. He’s driven by the heat of the moment, a small, logical part of her knows, and soon enough he will come back to himself and sputter out apologies, blushing furiously in the way that only a redhead can.
But for the moment…
For the moment, Chrysi can pretend. Black and charcoal grey aren’t exactly the trademark colors of a Princess, and a Knight isn’t exactly a Prince but he tastes like apples and magic and promises, and right now that’s enough for her. For the moment, she can pretend that she’s gotten her happy ending.
2. you have a way of moving me a force of nature your energy
When she gets her first kiss, from a girl no less, it isn’t so much a matter of cherry-flavored fireworks, like pop-culture media would lead her to believe, as it is a bolt of lightning crackling straight from where their mouths are joined to the base of Chrysi’s spine. She doesn’t even so much as twitch when Gwen pulls back, all but paralyzed by the sudden contact.
CA: you know chrysi’s place is actually really nice.
CA: the couches are good for making out.
CA: and stuff.
AM: …you bitch.
3. I kissed your lips you pulled my hair it was the craziest thing
When she kisses Donovan, it happens in the middle of an argument—though perhaps that isn’t quite the right word for it. It’s a debate, perhaps; a spirited debate the likes of which none of their other conversations have reached since their first contact. Perhaps it has even surpassed that infamous train wreck of a pesterlog, because it’s different when it’s just words on a screen. It’s different, so very different, when it’s a person in front of you and voices are raised, and you could see the other person’s face.
That’s actually what makes her realize that there are tears dripping down her cheeks: Donovan’s face. He goes pale and his shoulders shift like he wants to back away from her, wants to backpedal until he can swallow those words right back down, but he’s Donovan. So he can’t. A bitter, self-loathing look roils in his eyes before he clenches his jaw and glares at the floor, and something inside Chrysi snaps because that look in his eyes, in strong, protective, amazing Donovan’s eyes, hurts her a thousand times more than any caustic or nihilistic remark about humanity’s true nature ever could.
Her body moves on autopilot; one, moment she’s frozen and the next she’s right in front of him, a hand fisted in his collar and hair respectively and yanking him down. It is by no means a graceful or suave maneuver; at first their noses bang together painfully, their teeth clack, and he accidentally bites her lower lip. After a moment they seem to click together, however, and if it’s still a bit sloppy then Chrysi does her best to make up for it with enthusiasm. She tries to transmit just how much he matters, how much she would never hold anything against him, and how he shouldn’t, either.
She pulls back a little too late, and for a few minutes the only sound is the heavy gasping of two kids who really have no clue what they are doing. Words aren’t coming to Chrysi, her mouth seared blank by the feel of Donovan’s, so she just leans against him, wrapping him up in a gentle hug. After a moment, she feels a strong arm wrap around her waist and a chin settle on top of her head, and she smiles.
They’re going to be okay.
4. let’s hear it for America’s Suitehearts
Sparks kisses like there’s a panel of judges hiding somewhere just out of sight—and oh God, maybe there is, the twins never specified how often they checked on her—like he’s studied kissing for his whole life, like she’s about to whip out a scorecard and tear his technique apart, piece by piece, and Chrysi damn near melts, her toes curling against the penthouse’s duvet, the bowl of fruit by her head long since forgotten. He pulls back, just slow enough to seem natural and props himself up on one arm, using the other to flick through his hair, all but preening at the dazed, dizzy looking girl beneath him.
“That,” he tells her, stopping just short of sounding even more smug than usual. “Is the benefit of dexteri—mmph!”
Sparks is good with a script, with preparation and training and rehearsal, but Grandmamma always said that Chrysi had a true gift for improvisation. She isn’t thinking of Grandmamma right now, though, focusing mostly on being thankful, for once, that Sparks is so elfishly thin and easy enough to flip over and straddle. She slides her hands over his cheeks and slowly bends down to seal their mouths together again. She thinks that this time he’s actually the one who melts a little; because Chrysi may not have experience or expertise, but she kisses him like he’s the only thing in her universe, like he’s the most amazing thing she’ll ever touch; the only thing she’ll ever want.
She thinks Sparks will like that much more than a kiss with somebody who can tie a stupid knot in a stupid cherry stem.
5. and we’ll have ourselves a little mixer
In a way, it’s the twins’ fault. Chrysi’s, too; she should have known better than to let them rifle through the Hotel’s kitchens, no matter how endearingly eager they were to make up for their earlier misadventures with the building’s infrastructure. But she does, distracted with the buttons and flouncy layers of the costume they alchemized for her, and so instead of sugar syrup they end up using a delicate, deceptively light liqueur to sweeten the tea at their Mad Frog Party. Cheriour might have noticed something amiss earlier than the rest of them, but she is still half-avoiding him, even in the midst of their joint-Quest.
She knows she isn’t being fair or thinking clearly—less and less so with each successive cup of tea—but something, be it her pride or her heart or both, still twinges painfully every time she remembers how exuberant he was when they found out that they were siblings through ectobiological shenanigans. The thought nearly knocks the smile right off her face, and she’s so muddled by the tea and worried about ruining everybody else’s good time that she does the first thing she can think of to keep it on, turning to the nearest twin—Ira—and pressing their mouths together in order to keep the smile fastened in place.
It works well—surprisingly well, with the benefit of a small, pleasantly fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach—so well, in fact, that she leans over the table and kisses Ria as well, dropping back down in her seat with a fresh, shiny new grin that not even Cheriour's flustered babbling can dent. She’s a little confused as to what happens next, as a few more cups of extra-sweet tea may have been poured, but the twins return the favor and somehow it devolves into a three-way war of hugs and kisses and breathless, helpless giggles.
6. she makes me come out of hiding and find something decent to wear
Since the Game started, Chrysi has gotten used to Faye touching her, tugging her this way and that and clucking over her choice of wardrobe. She’s used to having her shirt pulled tight in order to get an estimate of her sizes, to fingers that comb her hair free of it’s customary braids and twist it into some breathtaking style that she never even would have considered possible. It’s only natural, she rationalizes. Faye must have been so frustrated, being miles and miles away with only a web camera and measurements submitted through Pesterchum to tweak her designs, instead of a full-out fitting.
It’s more than a bit like being a life-sized doll, sometimes, but Chrysi doesn’t mind at all. Faye always makes her feel beautiful, like something out of a painting or a magazine. She makes Chrysi feel elegant and delicate, like a lady instead of a busy little worker tumbling around from place to place. It’s like magic, like Faye is her own special fairy. Except Faye’s magic never wears off until Chrysi makes it, and even then the older girl always flutters about at the earliest opportunity with a freshly stitched spell and a set of silver pins at the ready for a fitting.
When Faye kisses her in the middle of one such fitting, as gentle and perfunctory as sliding one of those pins through a section of loose cloth, Chrysi feels like the Queen of the world.
7. I’ll be your best friend and you’ll be my valentine
With Eric, everything is an adventure. From strifing to getting from point A to point B to even just talking, Eric breathes a sense of excitement and enthusiasm into it. More than that, she has a way of charming anyone in the general vicinity into coming along with her, and she does it so well that they become the Robin to her Batman, instead of the Sancho to her Quixote.
Chrysi is far from immune to this magnetism; if anything, she’s even more susceptible to it. When Eric floods her screen with a pink deluge of excitement over an amazing find, she only has to include the coordinates and Chrysi races off to join her, devoid of any other pressing duties for the time being. They meet at a landmark that looks like nothing less than a giant, natural playground, and soon enough they rope some nearby consorts into their game of fantasy as well.
Ten minutes sees the intrepid, dashing hero pursuing a pack of kidnappers, leaping nimbly to-and-fro. She triumphs, of course, as nothing can keep a good hero like Eric down for long, and carefully helps the liberated hostage to her feet, still gasping for breath after the last round of tickle torture. Chrysi never broke, though, and still protected the hero’s secrets with all she had. Eric, apparently touched and still as deeply entrenched in character as ever, seems to think this loyalty deserves a truly stunning reward, and promptly dips the other, very surprised girl into a dramatic kiss.
8. luck and intuition play the card with Spades to start
Even is a quiet guy, except when he’s not. Then he’s like a whirlwind of emotion, ranging from highs to lows to everything in between, once he’s gone and worked up a decent steam. Chrysi likes him both ways; it’s always inspiring, to watch him express himself so liberally, but at the same time there’s just something so elegant about the still, determined Even who focuses his attention on one little deck of cards and ends up producing something amazing.
It’s when they’re together, sitting close as he walks her through a simple trick, that it happens. He turns to make sure that she’s paying attention to the way that he angles his wrist just as she leans up over his shoulder for a better look. It’s not a full kiss, really, half her mouth brushing against and catching on half of his, but it’s enough. He tumbles back, cards flying everywhere, red-faced and speechless. As Chrysi blinks and raises a hand to her mouth curiously, she can practically see the explosion building, and has to hide a smile.
For all that Calm Even is nice to see, Emotional Even is definitely cuter.
9. we got the sweetest love in the whole wide world
Chrysi would be the first person to admit that she is definitely a girl with a sweet tooth. She loves pies, loves cookies and cakes and tortes. She learned to bake from one of the finest pastry chefs in the world, and ate his most decadent creations for going on sixteen years. She loves sweets, loves everything from maple syrup to butterscotch toffees to Twizzlers, from Tootsie Rolls to Starbursts to the rolls of over-sugared bubblegum tape that her Grandmamma swore would give her cavities some day.
Elle, Chrysi muses as she pulls back, cheeks flushed and mouth tingling, doesn’t taste like bubblegum, the way one might think she would. She doesn’t taste sugary at all; if anything, she tastes like bubbles, the small zinging ones in soda and seltzer water that make your tongue twitch long after they’re gone. She tastes, Chrysi decides, like excitement and opportunity and a little like the mint gum they had been chewing in order to stay awake until the stars came out. But that’s perfectly fine.
Chrysi bites back a giggle, her eyes picking out the spread of dark pink over tanned skin even in the dim light of the lantern. Elle is more than sweet enough without sugar.
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Date: 2012-04-10 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-10 05:25 am (UTC)