[flashback] death already came and got me. (cy & clem)

[Cyrah]

and when will love ever find me? all my life, all I have craved is to be seen. who cares anyway? when it's over, all that matters is the love you gave away. rosie thomas 30th Day of Fall, 508 A.V. It had been longer this time, longer than any time before, so long that Cyrah couldn't really remember the last time one of them left the other, or why. It all seemed so trivial. When Clement was around, that little apartment under the sands of Ahnatep felt like home, and she hadn't been able to remember what home felt like in, she would have said, lifetimes. Though time was a tricky thing for a kelvic; there wasn't enough of it, more often than not, and it seemed time was always split between one's instincts and one's heart. Ever fulfilling one while trying to protect the other. Her feelings towards Clement changed every single day. At first she hated him, and made sure to tell him as much as often as she could. He smelled funny, and he drank too much, and he was always annoying her. He was just convenient; he was an easy way to get what she wanted. As she got older, though, she began to find the constant smell of him comforting. His bumbling drunken behavior endearing, even companionable. And she began to think to herself, quite without realizing it, that he was a good human. That he might have been the best human that she'd ever known. And he cared about her, in his unconventional way, she was sure of it. It started with little things. Lanterns strung about the one central room they shared, as though to make it homier. Food, that was cooked, left out for him to eat. And bottles of wine, and whiskey, set in plain sight for him to drink. And sometimes money, more than was his share, and sometimes there were fresh sheets on the bed they argued over. And sometimes there wasn't even an argument over it; he would come awake, and she would be curled up on the mat before the hearth, a jackal dozing by the flames, like a guard. On this night, however, he would come awake to a warm, snuggling body against his. Planes of soft, malleable flesh and twining female limbs, and the scents of desert wind and jasmine that seemed to cling impenetrably to the jackal girl's skin. She wedged herself half underneath him and nosed up along his shoulder, cuddling comfortably in beside him like she belonged there.

[Clement Reijnder]

Something was wrong. This fact was slowly getting through to his mind. While he had been pretty drunk when he’d finally passed out, he was more than certain that he’d passed out alone. This wasn’t so much a memory but an understanding he had due to the fact that his pants were still on. A warm body in the bed typically resulted in a pantless state in his experience, which was a good thing since at that exact moment he wasn’t very sure he enjoyed his pants. Maybe he was in Sunberth and Ahnatep had been some sort of dream… Without opening his eyes, and with the tiniest of smirks, his hands reached out to run rough palms along bare skin. His nose buried into her hair. He knew that smell… Remembered it all too well, and had he been sober it would have caused him to pause in what he was doing. But he was drunk, so it seemed like a great idea. “Good morning,” he muttered under his breath, no longer bothering to try to figure out what was going on. Instead he kissed her temple. Her ear lobe. Her shoulder. His fingers reached to find hers before carefully traveling up her arms. No, he was in Ahnatep. But he was still rather sure he was dreaming.

[Cyrah]

Her pulse hastened when his mouth brushed across her shoulder, and she tangled her fingers with his, twisting to press more flush against his side. Clothing, for Cyrah, was always somewhat problematic, but the nightdress she wore afforded him plenty of soft, bare skin to run his hand over, and she shivered a little when his fingertips coasted up her arm. "Hi," she murmured, tentatively lifting a hand to touch his face, his hair. "I thought maybe we could start sharing the bed." Which was her own way of begging him to love her. Her own desperate, needy way of offering herself to him, and all that might entail. Had she been in her right mind -- or what Cyrah herself generally considered her right mind, though in truth that deep-seeded need to be bound to someone was just a facet of her that she tried to deny -- she would have recognized that he was drunk. And then maybe she would have waited, or been more direct. But as it was, he was touching her so gently, and she'd just known he was good, and would be good to her, if she gave him a chance...

[Clement Reijnder]

It caused him to let out a bit of a half-startled laugh. He wrapped an arm about her tightly and buried his face into the crook of her neck as his hand found the small of her back to rub. He breathed her in, savoring the sweetness of her skin. Then he murmured, “I am a terrible blanket thief. I kick from time-to-time. And you’ve complained to me more than once that I sometimes snore…” Despite his reasons for doubting that she would actually want to share the bed with him, he kept her pressed close to his body. She was warm and soft, and he was a man of passions and impulses. He was starting to wake up a little more, though, and he was beginning to process that the female he’d been trying, in his own messed up way, was in bed with him. He was touching her in a manner she’d not allowed before. Petch, he wasn’t sure he’d ever touched anyone like this before. He swallowed hard. His heart started to beat harder and faster. It could have been mistaken for some other emotion, but the thing that was quickly spilling into his being was fear. The problem, in this case, wasn’t that he was a bad man. He was a far cry from a good one, but it wasn’t that… It was… He wasn’t sure. He was so drunk from the night before. This situation was not something he’d expected. Not something he planned. And while his mind told him something was very, very off about it, his body reacted in a manner that couldn’t be stopped. He dragged his mouth up her throat until his lips could find the corner of her lips to kiss. “I smell terrible.”

[Cyrah]

“I don't mind,” she murmured against his lips, sighing a happy little sigh when he pulled her closer. She closed her eyes, as though breathing him in, and leaned her face into his, just a brush of her cheek against the slope of his jaw. The touch so gentle, fond and doting in a way that Cyrah had never really been before. Her fingertips crept along the ridges of his abdomen and upward, her hand curving lightly over his shoulder, and then she did kiss him. Full and unapologetic, hard and sweet at the same time, and even as she tried to steal the very breath from his lungs, she drew up her knee and slid against his hip, rolling atop him. Straddling him without stealing her mouth from his, she pressed him back into the pillow. This was what he liked; she was trying to do what would please him. If her bondmate had been a celibate eunich or something, she would have learned to sing, it didn't matter; what she knew of Clement told her that he wanted her, that he wanted to be close to her like this, and therefore she wanted it too. The only thing she didn't want was to be alone anymore. “Please, Clem,” she sighed, taking her lips from his only so that she could begin wandering over his skin with her mouth, beginning with a whisper across his collar bone, down over the planes of his chest. Her body slid further against his, as her lips traveled lower. “Please have me.”

[Clement Reijnder]

Have her… She wanted him to have her… Something wasn’t right. However, Clement Reijnder was a man that lived for things to be unbalanced. That was the best time to strike. The moan he let out spoke more than clearly that he was taking a moment to enjoy exactly what it was she was doing to him. His hand went to her thigh, carefully rocking her off of balance until he could roll and look down at her. Blue eyes narrowed. He wasn’t sure he trusted this. In fact, he was sure he didn’t trust this. He had thought her first heat was over, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure. How long was he going to have to put up with this? Then he wondered exactly why he was silently complaining to himself when there had been a warm body writhing on him just a moment before. Apparently he too could be an idiot, even as his teeth were catching a bit of her smooth neck and his hand was seeking the warmth of her body. He was not a gentle man. Even if she’d proved she could be tender, it seemed that he could not – Even if he seemed to be trying. Instead he was pinning one of her wrists down and slipping to press his weight down against her body. As he pushed to find her, he leaned into her ear groaning a slurred whisper, “You don’t want this.”

[Cyrah]

She made a noise when he rolled on top of her, but it wasn't an unpleasant one. Cyrah's natural inclination in the bedroom was to get it over and donewith, or at least it had been before now. She'd never been looking for a permanent mate, just a tumble to take the edge off. Even in heat, she always came stumbling back home when it was done, a sort of glow of satisfaction about her that lingered, lethargy that softened the sharper lines of her personality for a little while. Until it faded, and it always did. This, though, was different. Her body arched into his, golden skin flushing a dusky rose beneath his hands and mouth. Only a modicum of resistance when he pinned her wrist, but what fight she had in her at the moment had nothing at all to do with causing him pain. If he was a little rough, she was a little rough back, wrapping her legs about his waist with a swallowed gasp as he settled his weight against her. It was hard to argue, then, that she didn't want it. Maybe she wouldn't have wanted it, but she wanted him, and she wanted him to love her, and she wanted to protect him, and take care of him, and make him happy, and she could tell from the way his voice lowered that this was making him happy. So it made her happy. And that was where and how the bond began, in the shiver of desire that took her even as she reached her free hand between them to undo the laces of his trousers. “I want it if you want it,” she whispered, utterly sincere, words that Cyrah would never, ever, have said to anyone with that quality of sincerity, unless she'd finally succumbed to that foremost of desires that plagues all kelvics equally: the desire to be wanted. She took him in hand, freeing him from his trousers, so that when next he pushed to find her, he did. And she pushed back, and where the pressure of pleasure built, she wanted to feel the bond build as well, towards blossoming. If he accepted her – she knew he'd accept her – she would feel it, as sure as she felt him inside her, and then they would be together forever. She cried out when it all came to bear, gasping and shaking, and when it was done, she waited still to feel it. To feel the bond. And waited. And waited. “Clem?” she murmured, pale eyes open and searching his face.

[Clement Reijnder]

It had been halfway through that he realized what she was attempting to bring about, what she wanted. He would have stopped, but between the cheap Eypharian ale and his general character, the situation had turned into a boulder rolling down a hill. He had tried, and perhaps that was the tragedy of the situation. He had tried to accept her; in the end he simply couldn’t. If he had… But he couldn’t. He didn’t want to accept that she was Kelvic and that bonding was in her make-up. He didn’t want to share a bond with anyone, and he didn’t want to be served. He wondered if he was the only man on the planet that felt that way. Cyrah was independent and tough this way. So was he. Yet there was that guilt that for once he couldn’t provide for her what she needed and wanted. This was a man that, despite the fact that from time-to-time resorted to hitting her, had taught her how to read – A task made difficult by the very nature of the Kelvic intelligence. This was a man that had picked her up off the ground, carried her home, and never argued when she actually needed him to take care of her. Never ignored her when he preferred to and he never treated her like she came from a line of people meant to serve. Because she was Cyrah. And she wasn’t some slave determined to please him, or so he thought. “Petch off,” he mumbled and closed his eyes.

[Cyrah]

“Clement?” she asked again, even as he turned away from her. The heat of humiliation flushed her skin, and she scrambled off the bed, straightening her dress as far towards her knees as it would go. She stood, arms wrapped about herself, staring down at him with uncomprehending eyes. He wouldn't just... Unless he would, and shame lit her cheeks. She felt sick, but she forced herself to stand there and look down at him. The weight of the rejection settled like lead in her stomach, and she wanted to vomit, but she didn't. Just stood, watching him, memorizing what it looked like, what it felt like, to be used and found wanting, so that she'd know better. So that she wouldn't ever try with him again. So that she'd always run instead of staying long enough to even want him. Tears stood in pale, silver eyes. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to substitute misery for pain. “I hate you,” she murmured, and then turned to leave him.

[Clement Reijnder]

“Good. I hate you too,” he grumbled, pulling the blanket up over his bare shoulder. As she turned, he cracked an eye open to look at her retreating form. He knew it would be the only chance he had with her, and he also knew that ruining it was the safest bet for both of them. He ignored the fact that he’d started to accept the bond. He’d started to think it was okay. Then the fear crept in and brought him down to his knees. He’d pulled into himself so violently that he was still reeling from it. Yes, he wanted to gloss over that part, because he wasn't sure what it meant. The truth was, he didn’t even understand what was going on. “Just keep hating me.” The plan seemed perfect.