It is a lie when men say the Sea is a tempestuous bitch. They speak as if her purpose is to steal bodies from kin indiscriminately, to crack boats in two and have them heaving on the ocean floor, as if to set out on a voyage is asking for death.
The Sea was never a villain. She only ever asked for kindness from her passengers, and when her passengers dug her breast with harpoons and stole her children, her only recourse was revenge. Man’s folly was not eating fish, it was greedily gathering it in their enormous nets until fish knew to fear the hull of a ship. Even Gaara knows this, sheltered as she may be.
Gaara was born dead. Born to be dead. Born with a blue face and tiny curled hands, lips like crushed berries. When Rasa’s doctors finally revived his child, his wife had perished. Her soul was exchanged for the life she created and for that, Gaara owed Death no mortality.
In the belly of the ship, amongst barrels and crates, Gaara huddles in wet clothes and shivers. The Sea is furious tonight. Those on this ship, the barque dubbed ‘The Skirmisher,’ tramp across the deck with thunder in their heels, with murder in their lungs. Foolishly, they grasp harpoons bloodied with the Sea's kin.
“-your ears!” A woman shouts above the rain, deep voiced and panicked, coming to a halt right over Gaara’s head, “Or death’ll be on you faster ’n you can plead for your life!”
A chorus of aye’s follow, shouted so loud the very storm quiets in its wake. Gaara sinks lower, tugs at the short locks of hair over her forehead. She’d shorn it off before leaving Rasa, hoping to pass as a boy and make her way overseas through deception - only, she’d found this ship, bereft of any masculinity beyond a smoker’s cough.
The Captain had not wanted Gaara. This razor-sharp cutlass of a woman, Hatake Kakashi, daughter of the White Fang, had taken one look at Gaara and shaken her head.
“You’ve never even been as far as the port, have you?” The scar on Hatake’s left eye creased. Slashed from hairline to the corner of her lip, taut, pale flesh revealed a sliver of reddish-purple and a milky white lens fixed on nothing. “I don’t take fresh meat.”
Gaara had found herself with the strangest urge to sink to her knees, to press her lips clumsily to Hatake’s boots and beg her to reconsider. She was a beautiful woman - a frightening one too, long and lean, hair white like a sun flare and stuck out from her head at every angle except down.
“I’ve been-“
“You talk like a damn landlubber. Get out of my sight.” Hatake had pointed, and with her head hung low, Gaara left. Then, when the crew was busy imbibing in pleasures of the flesh and more booze than most taverns could offer, Gaara had slunk onto the ship and hidden out in the very spot she now occupied. It’s been three days since then. Her stomach rumbles.
“Look only to the deck!” The same woman shouts, not at all Hatake's soft drawl. This voice is a boom, a crash, not so much thunder as she is the whole storm, the pelt of rain and the scream of a gale. “The wind’s died down so it’ll be slow passage! Wax at the ready, lovelies!”
Gaara clutches her shirt, stolen from Kankuro and far too big for it. It’s loose cotton, draped nearly to her thighs and saggy around her shoulders. Of course Hatake would have seen Gaara in her thieved clothes - the trousers Kankuro wore as a teenager that sit far too short and somehow too baggy; the shirt and vest pooling from her torso; the boots too large on her feet - and knew she did not belong here.
Wax for what?
“Now!”
The ship falls completely silent except the rush of water below them, the occasional drop of a boot on the deck. Even the storm stills.
Just what is-
Somewhere outside, Gaara feels it more than she hears it: a voice like mist. Something she cannot grasp but yearns for nonetheless.
The melody is a palm on her inner thigh. It’s a slow roll, a wave built of honeyed figs. The song calls for Gaara and suddenly she has an itch she has not yet figured out how to scratch. A restlessness in her knees forcing them open, closed, open, closed, forcing her to roll on her behind in a slow circle. She can’t find the itch. Can’t find relief for something only growing more insistent.
It’s a beautiful kind of longing. It’s a rope fastened tight to Gaara’s belly, reeling her in. She is no longer deep inside the ship but instead feeling the Sea wash over her, water in her nose, her lips, ears, whispering along her spine, caressing her cheek. It is all around her, inside her, and the longer she sits with a weight in her pelvis, the more frantic the melody grows.
And as she tries to unravel this rope, she understands that the heartbeat between her legs demands she find a source. Unsteadily, still awash with nausea, she stands.
The coals in her belly singe through every remnant of her father's avarice. She would not be what he wanted her to be. She would not do what he wanted her to do. She would die before she allowed him to sell her off to the most suitable husband. Would die before her hips bore seed whose only purpose was legacy.
Gaara watches the deck cautiously as she ascends the stairs. At first, she fears she may be alone. Where she would have expected a humdrum, she finds none. But as she takes her last few steps, she sees them. Every single member of the crew is sat, near hugging the deck with their heads between their knees and their hands over their ears. All, except the Captain and her First Mate.
Hatake Kakashi stands with her hands bound to the wheel, feet wide-set, and a glisten of tears on her cheek. Her First Mate is wrapped around her vulnerable spine, nose buried in her nape and arms bulging around her waist. Even from the side of the deck, Gaara can hear her whisper. The Sea has fallen silent in wait.
“Stay with me, my beloved, please, stay with me.”
As Gaara gets closer, she sees that the First Mate is blinded by cloth tied steadfast around her head, deafened by wax plugged into her ears, but gripping Hatake as if an anchor. Hatake watches the sea furiously, lip white beneath her sharp teeth.
And the song continues. Gaara urges for the source, grips the railings as she searches. There - not too far from the ship, a rock juts from the waves, a gap in the cloud to illuminate her in moonlight. Large eyes, pout of lip, and swathes of dark hair rolling over a long, tanned body. The centre of the rock boasts smoothness amongst jagged edges, an oasis of her own creation. She is beautiful, she is otherworldly, and she sings to Gaara alone.
The warmth between Gaara’s legs rockets into a blaze. An inferno licks at her clothes, burning them right off her skin - and to escape the blisters, she must shuck her shirt, drop her trousers and step from her boots in daze. When she is naked as she was born and twice as alive, she puts one foot on the railing.
She beckons, two crooked fingers held aloft before they traverse a muscled stomach and part a tangle of dark hair to reveal glistening pink. Gaara’s mouth waters before she can convince herself otherwise. The ache between her legs, her heartbeat, is so insistent she can only whine her discomfort. Her thighs are slippery, the obscene sound of them separating and joining unheard behind her song. Gaara’s other foot joins the first, preparing for the fateful plunge.
“No!” The cry comes loud, jerking Gaara’s head to the side where Hatake is attempting to free herself from the wheel. Her First Mate still clings tight and unaware of the nature of her Captain's struggle. “No, don’t jump! It’s -“
Hatake’s jaw trembles with her panic, held closed on one side by her scar. Then she shouts again, “Don’t listen to her!”
Gaara inhales fresh ocean air, salt in her lungs, and dives off the side.
The ship comes late at night when the birds have long since roosted, hidden from the storm in alcoves with dried fish carcasses to pick to bone.
The ones on this ship know better than most and plug their ears. Lee recognises them no further than their faces - the Captain’s obedient dog chained only in nature and following in gormless wonder, the crew cowardly on the deck, and, of course, the Captain still bearing Lee’s talon down her cheek. They believe that to hide every time they seek passage will be their salvation, but Lee only needs to entrance one. Just one at a time, until she’s whittled them to nothing.
She sings twice as loudly tonight, croons so sweetly, so deceptively. One of them is bound to give in, Lee only needs bide her time.
The ship is nearly past entirely when a bright blur steps onto the deck. A scraggly wee mouse, hair like bloodied rose petals cropped close to her head, eyes hollowed. Her clothes are ill-fitting, likely pilfered, and Lee knows that this one doesn’t belong. She is a crack in this teacup wide enough for Lee to dig her teeth into.
Then this delicious, dangerous thing dives. With a great splash she breaches the waves and begins to swim towards Lee's rock. Lee basks in the fine spray as if it is blood sprayed from a carotid.
Just one, Lee thinks venomously, aiming it toward the Captain who may as well be bound and gagged there is so little she can do. This will teach you. The Captain may have Lee’s mark but Lee bears hers equally. The scar on her calf is a great puncture wound where feathers grow no longer. Lee could have been so pristine, if not for that stain. This will teach you.
Her mouse is no swimmer. She splutters the Sea from her nose, takes heaving breaths in the short distance between Lee and the Captain's plaintive wailing: “Kid! Stop, she’s going to -“
Lee sings louder, sweeter, deadlier. Concentrates her poison until her little mouse shrieks for an antidote to soothe where she aches.
And the ship passes, unable to turn for danger of tearing its hull with the very rocks Lee seats herself upon.
Lee’s memories of her fruition are sugar glazed, a veneer so cracked it distorts. She knew falling, then she knew nothing, then she knew salt-water as the most gentle caress even as it wicked the oxygen from her lungs. She was woman, flesh and muscle and blood and bone, then she was something else entirely.
So deep under the surface that light failed to reach her, the itch began. It started in her toes and fingertips, spread to her ankles and wrists, then stopped at her knees and elbows. She floated, paralysed, barely more than a sensation. She felt the presence of others slipping past, slimy in the depths.
When it had been too long to fathom, the tickle began in her shoulders. She became aware only of the need to breathe as she rose to the surface, bones feather-light. The Sea’s womb had birthed her at long last.
Or perhaps, Lee had simply been monstrous from the beginning.
Her mouse reaches the rocks, bare skin cut to ribbons when she heaves herself upon them. In the hollows where water pools, blood blooms roses. She’s lovely, soft hips, soft thighs. She’s something that should be captured in thick strokes of oil paint. Lee cannot resist running a finger under her chin, where flesh folds when she looks down, suddenly abashed it seems. Blood wafts, almost a flavour sharp on Lee's tongue.
The ship is gone.
Lee says as much, then, “How will you get home?”
Her mouse is far too busy casting her eyes over every inch of Lee’s body where blue-black feathers protrude from her calves, sprout around her knee and thighs. Lee shifts, settles her taloned feet far apart, crooks her finger, “You are distracted, Mouse.”
“You’re beautiful.” Her mouse speaks with reverence, a side-effect of Lee’s affliction for as long as she can remember. They all say Lee is beautiful, only until they have stepped off their boats, only until it is too late.
“As are you.” This is the part where Lee is supposed to kill her. This is the part where Lee splashes about in viscera and devours delicate morsels. This is the part she has never failed, not once.
“It’s okay if you… well, you know.” Her mouse murmurs, standing right between Lee’s knees. “I only wanted to escape my father and I’ve done that. There's nothing left for me.”
This is the part where Lee’s victims realise what a mistake they have made by leaving their boat. This is the part where they realise they have marooned themselves with a monster. This is where Lee feasts upon entrails and tastes the steeped tannin of fear.
“It would be an honour to die by the hand of someone so breathtaking.”
By biological necessity, Lee knows exactly what she is supposed to do. Usually. Now, biology fails her as she stops, mouth hung slack as if her jaw was broken. This is where they fight. This is where they are supposed to beg for their lives.
There were others once - Lee’s flock. It has been so long since they disappeared that Lee hardly remembers their faces, but knows that they had peeled her feathers free of torn skin and unfurled her wings, cleaned her up. They taught her how to hunt, too.
Lee had been unwilling, perhaps. Is no longer sure. Perhaps she’d dug into her first victim with relish. Perhaps she had dripped fat pearly tears on their flesh, seasoned it before she could dare imbibe. The thought of eating this one makes her sick; without the struggle, what satisfaction can she glean? Lee must earn her meal.
“I will not make this pleasurable for you.” Lee says, runs her palms up her mouse’s knees where the bone runs so fine. She could shatter them with a clench of her fists. “Your screams will taste like the finest wine on my tongue, they will flavour your meat into a delicacy and I will eat you raw. I will eat you whole.”
She waits to be slapped away.
“If you must.” Her mouse drops into a crouch above Lee’s thighs, holds her by the shoulders.
“I will turn your pain into a symphony, Little Mouse. Any ship that passes will know exactly what I have done to you.”
“If you must.” Then her mouse sits fully, shifts Lee’s knees together with her own, and Lee feels with blinding clarity just how much heat wafts from between them. Can feel damp air rush over the hair between her legs, traipsing to her belly button.
Lee’s victims lust only as long as they hear her song. Fear of death rushes their blood to their hearts, away from their extremities and certainly away from… genitalia.
“Little Mouse-“
“Gaara.” Little Mouse says firmly, “You will call me by name if you are going to kill me.”
This one is interesting. There is no hesitation when Gaara presses their torsos together, clung to Lee as if a limpet, each of them half an oyster shell refusing to open to let the pearl free.
“You… you do not want me to kill you, do you?”
“I do. But you don’t want to kill me, do you?” It’s almost mocking.
Of course Lee does. She was rebornto feast, to undertake pest control when men trawled these waters to steal the Sea’s kin. What good is she if she cannot fulfil this role?
The memory bites her lip, holds her head steady: “If She had not found you worthy, you would have sunk to the ocean floor and drowned. Your bones would weigh too heavily.”
Lee doesn’t want to kill Gaara. It unchains an urge in her she has not felt in many years, something as familiar as breathing. As familiar as - as familiar as - The faceless woman with hair so long Lee had needed to hold it out of the way when she dove deep and lapped at her. As familiar as that, even when she no longer knows the woman’s name, knows no more than her hair and the pale of her eyes. Long, beautiful hair that Lee had brushed away from her face when she craned up to kiss her, chin slick and jaw tired.
Lee wants to press her fingers into Gaara, wants her bared completely and utterly. Wants her screaming, still, yes, but screaming her love for Lee. Oh Seas, she wants. Lee’s pelvis is a weight dragged to the ocean floor, dangling precariously as she shifts. Desire traipses wet between her buttocks and upper thigh.
“I do not want to kill you.” Lee shifts again, insides fluttering as if wings have grown there too. “I want - I want -”
She cannot even voice what she wants. It is not what is expected of her. She should kill Gaara - but Gaara has a name now. None of them have ever had names. Gaara has a name and she’s so warm against Lee’s thigh. Pressed down, wet, cheeks flushed so pretty.
“You want what I want.” Gaara says, simply, bluntly, and reaches for Lee’s hand where it still rests on her knee. So forthright, she is, when she brings Lee’s fingers to where she burns. “Tell me, siren, have you ever fucked anyone you’ve lured?”
Wet sticks hot to Lee’s knuckles when she dares touch. “No.” Lee whispers, “No one.” And it has been so long since her touch has been kind that she is sure all she knows now is to be a monster.
“If you are going to kill me, then you could at least give me a little death first.” Gaara rocks her hips and grazes Lee’s knuckle with a wry smile. Decisively, Lee grips her hip, rolls Gaara onto her back in the dip where rock has been smoothed over the course of many years.
Gaara’s legs fall apart and Lee’s mouth waters. Between tangles of copper pubic hair, dark and soaked, pokes a glistening pearl, a shine below to tempt Lee’s hungry fingers. Lee ducks down, kisses Gaara’s soft lips though she isn't sure she should be allowed to.
The Sea no longer rages, either pleased with Gaara's imminent sacrifice or happier more for Lee's mercy. Clouds still blanket them, blocking out light save for single threads, but the rain has stopped, the wind has eased, and the waves only rock with aftershocks. Lee has pleased Her. Somehow.
The Sea watches Lee shake her way through their clumsy kiss, watches Gaara grip onto Lee’s biceps to reel her in until they meld. Lee brings her wings up to hide them both from Her gaze. This must be sacrilege. Gaara is meant to die. The very moment she conceded to Lee’s song she sealed her own fate and yet the winds stay dead and the waves without turmoil. Rain does not fall. Lee wonders just how blasphemous this could be if she has not yet faced punishment.
Perhaps She has simply not yet seen.
Or, worse, She is waiting for Lee to wade into truly treacherous waters, just for the pleasure of watching her drown.
“Don’t you dare stop.” Gaara whispers into Lee’s ear, whereupon Lee realises she has turned to the side, is staring at her own wing where it curls against the rock. Lee's wingtips touch, forming a halo around her head through which the Moon can peer through. She, at least, is not as strict as her lover, though when the Moon is unhappy, so too is the Sea.
But at least the Moon tells no tales.
“I have no intention of doing so.” Lee presses her lips to the join between Gaara’s neck and shoulder where the flesh is supple, dents with pressure. She kisses, dares not bite for fear she may be incapable of stopping. Gaara coils under Lee’s touch, peach fuzz a caress as her movements grow shaky, jerky. When Lee’s thumb traces her collarbone, she arcs up to push the soft mound of her breast against Lee’s forearm.
Lee is a quick study. Each shift punctuated and encouraged by Gaara’s ragged sighs, Lee winds her way down to brush over her nipple, aching for the humanity she’s holding so dearly. Gaara’s humanity is a scar, a welt, a demarcation Lee can only tongue desperately in hopes that she would taste even the salt of it.
Feast on her.
For Lee could only ever be ignorant. Of course, She has noticed. It is Her hands that wrap around Lee’s throat, Her hands that drag Lee’s lips over the jut of collarbone, over rose petal skin in search of a perfect, not yet bloomed bud.
Feast on her.
Lee takes Gaara’s nipple between her lips, rolls her tongue over it. Finds that this makes Gaara bite back a whine, sharp and nasal, and that sucking gently gifts something throatier. Needier.
Feast on her.
Her Sea demands she search for treasure. For guilt. For promises. For anything. Lee must have been commanded, otherwise this… This is sacrilegious. It is not her fingers that part sweetly dripping folds, not her fingers that traverse flesh twitching. It is Her Will that allows Lee to brush the pad of her middle finger over the gleaming pearl lurking below rust-bitten seaweed.
Gaara sighs, cants her hips towards Lee’s wrist, looks right into her soul when she whispers, “Yes.”
Desire to taste is overwhelming, lurking too as Lee’s ancient desire to have her crewmate’s thighs wrapped around her ears. Her fingers come back glistening in the moonlight, the ocean tangible when Lee brings them to her lips, sucks them clean. She tastes Her Will and finds it insufficient.
Feast on her.
Lee mouths over Gaara’s hips, bones craggy rocks she must smooth down, and with time, she will. With time, for she does not know how she could kill her little mouse, but neither could she bear to let her go. Hair curls like seaweed, parted to reveal the lovely blush of Gaara’s cunt. Inside, a pearl beckons. If Lee cannot hunt, she will gather. If she cannot offer blood, she will offer trinkets.
When first she tastes Gaara, Gaara makes a sound Lee has not heard in some time. Lee draws her tongue over Gaara’s hole, where she grows all the more slippery, intoxicating. Drags it over the give of her pearl. This, where intimacy is otherwise foreign, is familiar. Screams rent of pain and pleasure are similar enough, at least, and for a moment Lee allows herself to wonder whether she should have been doing this from the beginning. She could have lived as carrion does, picking dead fish to bone.
Liar. Her appetite requires far more than meagre portions of old meat.
But perhaps she could have survived on this; nourishment in every moan that spills from Gaara’s throat; the tremble in her every muscle as she studiously attempts to hold herself still; the sharp, nearly panicked gasps heaving her chest. Perhaps, Lee could have found sustenance in this alone, in another existence. Her Gods know she would have preferred to.
“Do you like this, Little Mouse? Do you like it when I touch you this way?” Lee’s cheeks, nose, chin, are soaking, practically dripping. She draws back enough to see the way Gaara glares, one hand a claw that settles on Lee’s shoulder, the other wrapping tight around the fragile, fragile bones of Lee’s wing.
“My name is Gaara.” She hisses, fury dampened by the wildness in her pale eyes. It’s hard for her to truly appear vengeful when even now her hips drive upwards in search of Lee’s touch. To placate her, Lee shifts one hand up to better part her, the other turning over in a deferent palm. The middle and ring fingers of this hand slip between gleaming folds with ease, swallowed to the knuckle in warm embrace.
“Of course, Little Mouse.”
“You will call - ahhh -“ Gaara’s head flails back, cushioned by Lee’s feathers whilst her jaw drops open in staggered, reluctant moans when Lee’s mouth meets her once more. She wants so badly to retain control of herself enough to retain control of Lee, but Lee has never been caged. Or, at least, never will be again.
On one side of Lee’s head, Gaara’s thigh trembles where it hooks over her shoulder. The other, pinned by Lee’s elbow while she draws her fingers in and out, cannot move. This embrace, tender as it may be, has Lee’s breasts dragged over smooth stone. Saltwater stings fresh cuts forming where the stone has not yet been smoothed enough, jagged edges splitting skin as if under a knife.
Lee’s talons, her once legs, where feathers protrude and her nails sharpen, dangle over the edge. Her thighs will be bleeding thick ocean water well before she pulls back. She was changed by her Sea in more ways than one.
“Please-“ Gaara struggles to sit up, only manages to get up on one elbow with the other hand digging into Lee’s shoulder. It’s comical, how close to a tussle this could appear. A flash - Lee is on her beloved ship (not beloved) with her crewmate, the one with long hair and divine flesh between her legs. Wrestling on the deck. Catching her with one knee curved around her throat, choking her to unconsciousness against the bone of her hip. Winning, perhaps for the first time. Finding that it made Lee’s undergarments cling with how sodden they grew, simply at having Neji so close.
Neji. Not Neji. Neji’s name is a curse, thrust upon her now when she had thought it long gone.
Lee’s humanity is dead. Her humanity sunk to the ocean floor and with it, these memories should have been waterlogged into nonexistence. Viciously, she twists her fingers whilst her mouth sucks, sucks, sucks, tastes a live oyster fresh from the ocean and Lee is furious. Gaara’s moan stalls, her eyes folding skyward.
“Ow.” She says, pinching Lee’s flesh between forefinger and thumb. “Hurts.”
“Did I not tell you I would hurt you, Little Mouse?” Lee says, right before she dives back in, laps with a vendetta. Her fingers search upward, curl, toward Gaara’s very heart where she knows she must tear it clean from her ribs. It should already be between her teeth.
“And did I - ha - not t-tell… tell you - to use m-my name?” Gaara’s voice is strangled, ripped from her, and when she speaks her hips jump skyward with such force Lee must hold her down. Inside, she flutters like wings the second before they fail. She’s close. So dangerously close. Flopping like a beached fish, seconds before a sharp beak plucks its eyes.
Lee’s cunt has a throbbing, aching mind of its own. She grinds downward to nothing, wants nothing more than to slide atop Gaara’s thigh and slick the downy hair there to her skin. Oh, Seas, it is blasphemous to ask of her own pleasure when even Gaara’s pleasure is surely to spit in the face of Lee’s Gods. Even the press of her own thighs together is enough to have Lee’s nerves going haywire.
When Gaara’s back arches, when she presses herself so desperately to Lee’s lips that Lee fears she may be unable to breathe, when she goes from words to garbled profanity, Lee licks her as if to stop is to die. Licks her until Gaara shouts and bucks.
Her body writhes without reason, her hips rolling against Lee’s nose, her lips, her chin, and inside she holds Lee’s fingers captive. Her walls jerk in rhythmic pulses around Lee, refuses to let her free of their overwhelming heat. Lee’s mouth drips wet and glossy, smears of Gaara spread far. The stone beneath the curve of Gaara’s rear pools liquid.
Around them, the night sky has stilled. Stars poke from clouds and the Moon watches, twinkle in Her eye. No one is furious with Lee - with them tonight. How far do they tempt revenge?
Throat hoarse, Gaara beckons lazily, “C’mere.” Her thumb rolls around Lee’s chin, collecting diamonds that she sucks free with nary a thought. “C’mere.”
Lee obeys, brackets Gaara’s hips with her knees. It only takes the barest rub against her swollen clit to have her dripping, have her keening out in a pleasure so long-forgotten she could not name it. This part of her has stayed untouched except for her Sea’s caress for many, many years. And as such, this wave crests far sooner than she knew possible.
She ducks down, ocean smell still lingering in her nostrils and breath, kisses Gaara. Presses their lips together so clumsily, so sweetly, the barest peck.
“Little M-“
“Gaara.” She reminds, fingers stilling and Lee shudders, unable to keep herself from grinding down.
“Gaara! Please - I - This - It feels -“
Gaara says not a word, but only strokes so gently that Lee's eyes burn with tears. It is desperation at its crux, forcing Lee’s only thought to her, Gaara, to the lovely thing underneath her so focussed on destruction. Lee’s a thick cotton sail, tied to masts with effort to restrain but flapping in the wind so helplessly. She judders atop Gaara, drooping low to leave a shiny streak on Gaara’s soft belly.
If Gaara’s movements suggest a beckon, they do anything but. They drag Lee toward the cliff, a rope around her waist and a boulder on the other end, dropping, dropping, dropping, the higher she climbs the lower it falls into churning waves.
“I need -“ It escapes Lee in a sigh. She does not know what she needs, but she knows there is an absence in her as real as any wound. Gaara’s fingers leave her, slip further back and inside her. Cradling Lee in her palm, her thumb strokes her clit slow and gentle, her fingers smooth, and Lee’s mind blanks itself.
She is nothing but the place where the pads of Gaara’s fingers are separated. So close yet held at bay.
“Be with me.” Gaara gasps, eyes drawn downward where she disappears, “Come for me.”
Lee is up there with the Moon, draped over her as sunbeams warm her skin and stars twinkle in her lungs. She’s somewhere else entirely, no longer her body. Then, she’s coming all in a rush of fire through her hips and elbows where feathers make knives. The top of her head burns and tingles with it.
Soundlessly, her jaw works where her face has buried itself in Gaara’s collar, shuddering with such ferocity her nose bumps the bone several times. With each wave rocking through her, she sinks, until her weight rests entirely on Gaara’s torso. Pleasure fizzles, burns through her again and again, despite Gaara having stilled her touch.
Lee tenses uselessly, over and over, around Gaara’s hand. It feels too good, too much, another crest shuddering a helpless plea from her clenched teeth. Gaara withdraws with an obscenely wet sound and wriggles her hand from between their pressed stomachs, her fingers pruny when she grips Lee’s cheek to better kiss it.
It takes an hour before either of them can bear to stand. Lee’s wings fall to display a sea so calm, so bereft of wind, no ship could gain distance in it. In the horizon, the Sun rises golden with assurances she will beat down on their backs, nip at their shoulders. The Moon may tell no tales, but her oppressive sister gossips even when she knows no truth rings. Lee shields her eyes from the brunt of Her, searches for streaks of copper in the sunrise.
No blood this morning, in a sunrise so full of appeasement it twinkles.
Perhaps the Sun has offered her blessing off the tawdry tales the Moon may have tempted her with, but Lee knows she cannot hold Gaara forever.
“You must hail the next ship that passes.” Lee says.
“I want to stay with you.” Gaara’s jaw trembles but she looks at Lee with such a defiant slash in her hairless brow that Lee knows in an instant what she must do.
Lee nods and folds her to her chest in the sweetest embrace she knows how to give. Her wings, speckled with flecks of stone, fold around them both as a shield from prying eyes. “Okay.” She murmurs, and with a bracing breath, picks Gaara up and throws her into the cool womb of Lee’s God.
When the Sea deems Gaara worthy, She will return her to Lee with weightless bones and spiderlily feathers tearing her skin. Lee will peel them free, kiss her wounds. When Gaara returns, the two of them will make Man sorry they ever thought to touch waters that were never theirs to begin with.