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Aseah had long since detached himself from the notion of desire.
Perhaps his tenure with the League was the last time he felt that fleeting arrogance, that belief that he could afford to paint over the canvas of his world with the ever-selfish urges of his ego.
What is paint if not fuel for combustion? What is desire, if not a raging fire?
The fire that consumed the League, after all, what drove them to self-destruction. So when the Ring came for him, when they dragged him into one of their sites and told him to work, he posed no objections—it’s better this way, he told himself. If he could not want, he needed not self-immolate.
And as others’ eyes saw right through him, past the glass of his invisible self, he watched them do exactly that, to ruin themselves in the search of some self-serving goal because they lacked the ability to accept reality as it was. Even Gubo, with all his virtues, fell prey to that allure when he came back for him, when he tried to convince him that it meant something. Like he wasn’t a poor replacement for someone who was not there.
Aseah just smiled and followed. He could indulge the desires of others—it was easy to do what he was told, to follow along with lazy strides and the ghost of a smile playing across his lips, like this was all one big joke and he was just waiting for the punchline.
And now, covered in sweat under unfamiliar sheets, he learns that the joke is on him.
He laughs. It’s kind of funny.
“What’s the matter?”
She sounds almost on edge, like he may change his mind and walk out at a moment’s notice. As if he could. As if she didn’t look utterly breathtaking in her messy bareness, hair locks falling every which way and skin covered in demonstrations of his reverence. Her blush spreads gorgeously down her neck, though whether he or the alcohol is to blame, he doesn’t know. In his newfound arrogance, he chooses to think it’s all him that’s done this to her.
“Nothing, Nelly dear,” he purrs against her inner thigh, and all tension in her melts. “Just… reminiscing. Though, admittedly, perhaps this isn’t the best time for that.”
Her auburn eyes scan his face with mild amusement. “You’re a very odd man.”
“Fair enough.”
He lowers his head, inching closer, teasing her, and oh, he so loves the way her breathing quickens in anticipation. A selfish thought, the first in a long time. But he can’t help it; he wants to see more of that, more of her composure shedding, more of her desperate eyes on him.
More of her desire.
To desire someone’s desire. Is this what love is? That ugly, all-consuming feeling wars have been fought over?
The question is irrelevant. For Aseah, at least, that is what love feels like when he descends to lap at where she needs him most, when the hands that have been avoiding his touch all evening finally card his hair and curl around a fistful, and oh, she wants him so much.
He wants her so much.
His form is sloppy, he knows that much, for he’s not had the chance to practice the art of love beforehand, though judging by her reactions—messy, ragged, utterly desperate—she could not care less. The feeling of her thighs around her, of her hand playing roughly with his hair, are enough to set the pace of his love, self-indulgent and clumsy as it may be, and though his own body screams at him to tend to it, he can’t really bother right now.
All of him is Nelly now. Her moans, her touch, the way she shivers against him.
With each playful motion of his tongue he unlearns from her another layer of practiced, artificial demureness. It started much earlier, he now realizes, in their long walks across the courtyard during downtime, when he realized she was worth a conversation. He doesn’t know who sought out who, who indulged first in that unspoken magnetism, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it had been all him.
They kept getting riskier, more playful. Her wariness of him never quite faded, but she turned bolder as he peeled away the layers of her self-perception, as he showed her what freedom looked like.
They talked about friendship and partners. About sex. About just how many layers that dress of hers was made of, and why he insisted on skin-tight spandex and how distracting that was. About what was to happen to Hindley’s alcohol cabinet once the deed was done, and the reasons why they should not do what they were both thinking of doing.
“Aseah…”
Not enough reasons, he thinks. Not compelling enough, at least, in the face of conflagration.
When she comes, she’s as unapologetic as she’s been all night, and maybe a bit too loud. No matter, he thinks, because the sight of her fucked-out and pleased is worth it. Because if she’s heard by anyone, Ring or N Corp. or Wuthering Heights, they’ll know it’s for him that her desire paints the stained sheets of the master bedroom.
They’ll know it’s for her that he’d rather go out in flames than remain as he is.
“My dearest Nelly…” he drawls, voice draped in fondness.
She’s wrecked, her breathing a mess, and her grip on his hair weakens with the rest of her as he delivers the last of his ministrations. Still, her hand remains curled against his scalp, and while her eyes avoid him out of shame or exhaustion, he can feel in that touch the ghost of the affection she’s not prepared to put in words.
The same affection he gives her in full when he comes up to cup her jaw, when her perfect eyes stop drifting every which way to look at the man that has made her a woman reborn.
“I see you,” he mutters, though that may have no meaning for her. “I see you, Ellen Dean. Do you see me?”
It’s a desperate plea, and he knows it. He fully expects another teasing remark about how strange he is, and loads up a flirt about how she keeps coming back anyway. Instead, he’s met with her gaze, searing in spite of her exhaustion, and for the first time, Aseah knows she’s looking at him.
Not through him, not past him.
At him. At Aseah.
And that’s all he needs to know that, damn it all, he’d happily help kindle his own funeral pyre if it meant seeing her desires realized.