Noctisardor Bypass Be my rest, be my fantasy

@Figment I’ve made so many assumptions please call me out

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Fig.

He’s in her nose when she awakens, on her tongue when nights draw to close. In her mind as she dreams. And beside her every waking hour.

He jokes and kisses and teases. He hunts for her while she hunts him. There are games and laughter. Silliness. There are moments by the stream, and in it, and under moonlight alone. There’s his closeness, his weight, and the ways he brings her to unknown places. There are his pants and her moans and the colors she sees dappling across closed eyes like stars. There are ways she’s never felt before, and will never have words for. There’s mystery and novelty. There’s trust.

They forget to eat.
They eat too much.

She loathes to sleep and miss any time with him. But when she does it is sound; safe.

She hasn’t thought about tomorrow. But for all this burning, it should be no wonder to her what needs to be returned. When the heat begins to subside, she expects desire to go along with it.

It doesn’t. 

So how to give back what she has taken?

It’s before sunrise and he is not up yet. He is settled in sleep. She resists the urge to awaken him with a kiss, opting to study him, peacefully, in what he does not yet know will be their final day together.

The past few days had been like pages stolen from someone else’s story. Fig had never in his life felt so contented. He hadn’t really known what the picture looked like at the time, but this is what he had been searching for when he’d left his family. His own happiness. His own life. A world revolving around that of his choosing.

And he had chosen her.

Fig was sleeping soundly, unaware that he was being watched until he stirred and sought Tauris the moment he opened his eyes. He spied her then and could only smile with amused curiosity. He rolled towards her then and pulled her close, nuzzling his nose into her neck and breathing in deeply.

”Why are you never close enough…” he murmured roughly, sleep still thick on his voice.

She laughs as she’s pulled closer, wreathing herself comfortably around him.

“I might know a fix for that,” she whispers suggestively before settling a lasting kiss into his fur, what’s become commonplace but sends a little shudder through her each time. She breathes him in. His touch, his scent separates him from anyone else in her memory. Maybe she doesn’t need to go back. Maybe they can just stay this way.

But her mouth begins to hunt for words she knows she has to say, even when speaking them feels so inexplicably wrong.

“I have to return soon,” she finally whispers, staying silent for a stretch of time before continuing, “Whatever happens… I don’t have any expectations, Fig.”

She refused to view this week with him as one long accident, and it was important for him to know this, that he was free of any obligation he might have felt to her when all is said and done. That she cared about him and wanted his happiness- even if that meant letting go.

“And I don’t regret any of it.”

"You have so many great ideas..." Fig growled happily as she reached for him. He shut his eyes to enjoy the moment further, only for them to open once again when she began to say words he had known would come eventually, but that he didn't ever want to hear.

Fig was silent for a moment as he pondered what she'd said. In past experiences, what she offered was what he'd required upfront. No expectations. If something happened, he would not be a father to whatever he helped to create. It had sent most women away from him, which he'd always been perfectly fine with. Tauris had been different. And now, he was realizing she was different in another way too.

"I don't regret it either," Fig murmured as he reached to touch the base of her ear with his snout. He paused another moment, lingering there. It was his last chance to bolt. She had opened the door for him.

But.

"What if... I'm okay with expectations..."

He isn’t leaving. In spite of his objections, the same ones that might have seen her bolt had their roles been reversed. In that moment she is struck with some impossibly deep feeling, an admiration for this stranger she held so close between her arms.

It is naive and impulsive- but hasn’t she always been with him? He creates a seamless space for her, as if it’s where she’s meant to be. She can take risks and say the absurd and as she pulls back to look into his green eyes she feels she’ll always be accepted there.

His whispers kindle against her ear and she hasn’t realized before how desperately she wanted to hear them. She slides her cheek back along his muzzle until their lips meet. Her mouth curls against his.

“You said you wanted to meet new friends. Come to the valley packs. Come home with me.” Her request feels forbidden in how blatantly it reveals her longing.

But she doesn’t care. She only knows one thing: she wants Fig.

The rest… well, they’d figure it out later.

Fig wasn’t sure for a moment how Tauris would take his comment. Perhaps she didn’t want him around? Maybe she wasn’t giving him an out so much as steering him down a particular path. His heart told him he was being silly. After the time they’d spent together, it was impossible that he was the only one feeling this way. And when finally she responded, he was pleased to know his heart had been right.

”Is your pack usually welcoming of strays who follow you home?” Fig asked, planting an affectionate kiss on the tip of her nose as he smiled.

“There’s been so many,” A teasing cadence slips her tongue and content smile shapes her maw.

“But never one so handsome…” she grins and kisses his cheek, “or intelligent…” his chin, “or funny…” his neck, “or sweet…” his mouth, then.

“Did I say handsome?” She finishes with a playful bite to his lip before pulling back to wonder at him.

"They'll... love you," she whispers in assurance.

Fig was entranced by her. There was no simpler way to put it. Even as the alluring scent of her season faded, his enchantment with her didn’t. She was clever, beautiful, and so full of life and spirit. He didn’t know how to look at her without being overtaken.

He brushed his lips against hers with a contented hum. ”And you wonder why so many men want to follow you home…” he murmured into her fur as he trailed his nose along her jawline. He took a breath to calm himself against his baser desires before he asked, ”Tell me about this pack of yours?”

His touch elicits a sigh and all over again she’ll ache to surrender to him in their amorous way. She laughs when he asks about her pack- how can she possibly bring Fig home when she can’t even keep herself off him? That in itself would be a true test of her willpower.

“Um,” a small voice rustles, summoning a little sense but mostly distracted by his mouth. “Kvarsheim is the oldest pack in the valley. Gunnar and Taktuq are the alphas. Hard-working. Sincere. We used to be small, only four of us. Now we’re growing. Rapidly.”

There’s some distaste with that. The truth is she didn’t like how congested the pack had become, and she wasn’t chummy with all who walked among them, only that didn’t suit her sales pitch so she kept her mouth shut.

Though most importantly, there was Skáld. Someone she couldn’t keep quiet about, even when she had no idea how to broach the subject to a man who hadn’t wanted children, and who could very well be frightened off by the knowledge that… she already has one. Her throat tightens, averting her eyes as she whispers, “I’ve got a kid at home.” Her draping arms stiffen across his shoulders. “He’s been abandoned by his family and everyone he’s ever loved. I’m not going to do that.”

It’s a lot. She knows it is. A week ago they were hardly more than strangers, now they’re trying to figure out the potential of their lives working in tandem and laying plans for a future they had never prepared for. It was bewildering. Terrifying. But she was completely enamored with Fig, and somehow everything felt possible with him. Including being honest.

“Skáld and I, we’re sort of a packaged deal,” her voice quivers, but it’s spoken plainly: he’s a non-negotiable. Anyone who was in her life, would also be in Skáld’s.

She hesitates but raises her eyes to look back into his, searching but unsure what she expects to see there.

The news of Tauris’s child came as a shock, and not a very pleasant one. He did his best not to react visibly as she spoke of him, though his mind raced with a hundred different thoughts. Surprisingly, the first was jealousy, but that quickly settled once he learned the boy was not her own. She did not truly belong to him, and yet already he didn’t like the thought of her with another man, even one before he ever knew her.

The rest was simpler and more straightforward—reluctance.

Eventually he nodded. What else would he do? He didn’t like it, but he respected her for being honest and for her loyalty to the child. ”I understand,” he said simply, though he knew it wasn’t enough. What else could he say? It was too soon to assume she would want him to play some sort of role in the boy’s life. Wasn’t it? He searched her face, hoping she might say more and help him off the hook.

He is quiet; her mirror of him is involuntarily. She will wish at once to rescind her words and  return to the moment before, to whatever version of this daydream had the terms he liked best.

But she knew it would be just that: a fantasy- beautiful yet fleeting.

She isn’t sure what she had hoped for, to be swept up into his arms as he pledged himself to provide for another man’s son? Perhaps… yes. The naive girl in her had wanted this, even when the woman knew it was never going to go that way. And it was the woman who had enough sense not to turn from him then like some wounded animal even when she felt a searing hurt in her chest.

“I don’t know what this looks like, Fig,” she admits and even that much feels scary, to feel her veil of confidence slipping in front of him. “It’s too much change too quickly. But this isn’t a sentence. It’s not a lifetime. Come to Kvarsheim, and if it’s not for you… there’s a lot of world to see.”

That’s the moment when she realizes she’s in too deep. Fig may have concerned himself with the men who had come before. But Tauris knew no man could come after.

Fig could tell right away he’d done wrong. The look on her face and her response seemed riddled with disappointment. He wished he would’ve pulled her close again and said it was fine, committed himself to whatever she wanted. Made her smile. But he couldn’t be dishonest. When it came to parenting, he was hesitant.

”Oh, I’ll follow you home still,” Fig committed with a smile, “I won’t go that easily.” He didn’t know what Kvarsheim would hold for him, if it would all work out in the end. But if he had the choice of being with her or avoiding responsibility for a child, he knew which one he wanted more.

He wont go that easily… but there will come other things, too. Where is his breaking point? Where is her’s?

Her mind will proceed down the ‘what if’s’, and she realizes it’s the type of fear she might have sought to speak with Fig about back when she could call him her therapist instead of what they are now.

The dream of this past week recasts under a new light of reality. She hadn’t thought once about these implications, but they’re there now brimming on the forefront of her mind: the stress a pregnancy could add to the pack, Skáld’s certain belief that he is being replaced, her complete inexperience  with cubs and motherhood and how it would come to affect a child.

“We should head out soon,” She breathes, grazes his lips with her’s, and untangles their limbs to rise. She wanted a drink and to rinse in the creek before the journey.

Fig could sense he still hadn’t eased her anxiety. He wanted to ask her to talk to him about it, open up to him. He would’ve pressed had he been in therapist mode, but their relationship had shifted. He was smart enough to know when to push and when to let it be, and the last thing he wanted was to push her too far and end up losing her.

So, he stood when she did, but hesitated to follow right away. Letting her take the lead a few steps while he simply stood and admired her with a small smile.

fade soon? <3

He says nothing and neither will she. There’s a space growing between them of unsaid things. She realizes she’s never been so fragile before, that somehow a very delicate piece of her had gone. It didn’t belong to her anymore. It was Fig’s. And he could do whatever he wanted with it including smother it. And that was so, so scary.

He looks at her and she holds him back. It’s unfair what sort of power that smile has to undo her. She steps to slip herself against him, luring him to the creek with her.

Maybe this was always going to end in unbearable disaster. But at least, for this short while, she’s never felt more alive.

She moved back to him and he leaned into her appreciatively. He knew there would be much more for them to discover and work out together, but with her so near, Fig had a hard time seeing those struggles mounting in their future. All he saw was her smile, which he reached for them to plant a soft kiss upon. He would follow her to the water, then to Kvarsheim and whatever lay beyond.

wanna start new? Err… old new? Lol