for Zora | set the morning after l-o-v-e

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Light hit their eyes, making them come to all at once. Blissfully, they hadn't dreamt. It would've been wild if they did. Her ill-advised cave excursion had been just the night before, and they'd promptly slept all through the following afternoon and well into the night, only stirring with the sunrise.

It felt much like a bad dream, one that wakes you up, gasping, but fades away and becomes difficult to recall in the light. She couldn't... remember much at all about the day before, actually. There was a cave, and then there wasn't, and then there was—

Gladiator's eyes flew open. Oh. Yep, they remembered now.

There was a noticeable chill in the air, but her body was hot as she jerked awake and buried her face in her paws with a muffled groan bordering on anguished. God, I really said that, didn't I? She'd told Zora she loved her. She told Zora she loved her and she said it back. She told Zorasdfghjkl.

She hadn't slept the entire time - an initial nap had eventually allowed Zora to rouse sometimes near dusk's descent across the land.

She most certainly had not moved, though, quite determined to let Dia get some proper rest. And just laying there, listening to them breathe, their body tucked into the valleys and hills of her own bones and flesh, had been a kind of rest that no sleep could truly replace.

She loved her. And Zora was loved in kind; not desired (although she was) and not coveted (although she was) and loved for all the masks she wore and the monster she was beneath.

Zora had killed and ruined everything she'd ever tried to build, but not even death had taken what she and Gladiator had away. Eventually, despite Zora's wants, sleep took her yet again. Morning's light was only a pale warmth on her dark fur, against the furnace that was Dia Zora was cuddled up to. She peeled a bleary eye open, one and then the other, to stare at their face. One cheek's fur was mushed out of shape, and dark dusky-rust underfur speckled her chin from Zora's pelt.

Bliss. That, she realized, was what this was, warm as sunlight, electric like a thunderstorm, bundled in Zora's chest. She was lucky she only had one lung - she wasn't sure she'd have room for it all otherwise.

The Mercer jerked back, burying their face in blonde paws.

I really said that, didn't I?

Zora's blood went cold, the sunlight in her chest blotted out by a cold front, her heart stuttering as it turned to ice. Old insecurities awoke within her, and Zora's mind was a cacophony of alarm and shame and quietly, quickly building rage to mask the sting of the pain.

She had assumed if there was going to be a 'morning-after regret' phase, it would have happened sometime while they were having sex - to think it had come after I love you was a kind of hurt that defied description. Childbirth had been easier, by far.

She dropped her gaze away, tucking her tail over her hind legs and one of her front paws curling demurely under her chest like a cat.

It doesn't have to mean anything. Zora lied, convincingly as she ever did - breathed some aspect of truth into it so it formed a heartbeat even when crafted out of malice and falsehood. I know you had a hard day yesterday.

D'oh shit! Dia flinched, having fully forgotten in the haze of her post-traumatic experience coma and subsequent crippling wave of embarrassment that Zora was literally right next to her and she'd just said the quiet part out loud.

Her head shot up as Zora's turned away, her limbs pulled close and her tail tucked around them, struck by how... cold it suddenly felt.

Ah.

No! Gladiator blurted out, eyes wide. I mean— fuck, not no. Yes. It does. Mean something. Her heart danced a little jig in her chest and her gut twisted nauseatingly, admitting it, and she hung her head to curl a paw over her eyes in frustration at being embarrassed — even now — to fucking spit it out. Sorry, she groaned, the anger directed purely at herself as she let out a heavy sigh. I've just... I've never actually told anyone that and it's a little, her voice dropped to a low murmur, embarrassing,,, how much I mean it.

Zora had always been the better one with words, but Dia was trying. For Zora, she would try. She dropped her paw, eyes still closed as she drew in a long, steadying breath. They looked at Zora, their face a mask of complete seriousness, absolutely no nonsense, not a shit-eating grin in sight, as they said, definitively, I love you, Zora Dusk. It was a fight to keep her voice from wavering and her face from crumpling immediately with the weight of an entire lifetime spent never giving voice to her emotions or allowing herself to truly be vulnerable, but somehow Gladiator managed. I mean it. She stretched her neck out, gently poking her nose into Zora's shoulder, brows raised expectantly. Okay?

Zora held herself perfectly still. Like a snake poised to strike, she struck a pose of pristine, demure elegance. Her face was regal marble, her body coiled into a delicate pile of limbs and fur with her tail draped like decoration over her hind legs, and her front paws crossed politely. It was a defense mechanism, mostly abandoned these days but never forgotten, from her days as a princess.

From her days cutting bits of herself off, piece by piece, to fit the molds she had to to reach the heights she coveted. Only her eyes still flickered with emotion, wariness but hope still warm within their depths.

Dia stuttered through an explanation. Zora, ever the thespian, was mentally halfway through cutting each and every tie to emotionally protect herself. It took a long few seconds of Dia's talking to actually get through to her. That they'd been as surprised by their own admission as Zora. That they were still surprised by it, but surprised by the truth of it - not the fact it had happened at all.

Her tension dropped, and the Dusk tilted her head to indicate that she was listening carefully now. A softened, curious expression smoothed her deer-in-the-headlights look from before. Oh. She breathed. A paw reached out, gently pawing at the limb that was draped over Dia's eyes.

Zora loved their eyes.

Sorry, I...this is new for me too. She murmured, placating but fond. This kind of softness was foreign to her, unmapped terrain she found to be more rocky than expected. How did everyone else make it look so natural, so simple? Loving Dia was the easiest thing in the world. Showing it, in the right way - was Zora ever going to feel like she measured up to this kind of adoration? The serpent queen could wrap her fangs around the world, conquer everything she touched if she put enough of her mind to it - but a part of her would know she didn't deserve it, and this....

The wolf she was curled around meant more to her than any of that imagined dynasty, and Zora didn't know how to express that nor even contain it.

I love you, Zora Dusk. Her ears wilted, a fierce and unexpected blush tingeing her cheeks as Zora's chin tucked shyly to her throat. Her heart skipped, but didn't wait to start beating again. Gods, you... She supposed Dia did, in fact, know exactly what they did to her. Zora huffed out a fond sigh. I love you too, Gladiator Mercer. Okay? And she moved her muzzle to plant a kiss to the redhead's forehead.

OH. Gladiator hadn't known what she'd expected but it certainly wasn't OH. Her skin crawled, itchy, agonizing, feeling Zora's gaze, the paw wrapped around her soul gently batted away. They met her gaze, waveringly, blue and silver, mirroring their own.

Her tone eased the burning, embarrassing in its own right the sheer effect her voice alone had on them. It was wonderful, awful, agonizing. Gladiator wouldn't trade it for the world. She'd die a thousand deaths before she let it go.

Zora blushed and like an idiot, Dia's tail began to thump lightly against the ground. Her ears pricked forward, her lips curling further back from her teeth in a dizzingly idiotic grin with every word. She kissed her forehead and Dia's tail smacked the ground harder, faster, her ears instinctively flicking back for easier access. This was new to the both of them. Of course it was. Wolves as fucked up as them didn't fall in love, didn't get happy endings.

But incredibly, impossibly, miraculously, they did.

They'd died and came back to life. They'd been murdered, brutally and efficiently, and said a big ol' "fuck you" to the fates, the universe, the wolf who'd wanted them dead and come back. Maybe it had been purely out of spite. Maybe it had been sheer coincidence. Maybe it had been for each other. Okay, they murmured, eyes half-lidded, heart embarrassingly aflutter. Don't you forget it, either. Not in life, not even in death.

Then they reached out, slowly, tentatively — her eyes glued to Zora's face, ready to stop and pitch herself off the nearest cliff at even the slightest crinkle of the brow — to rasp her tongue ever so gently across the scars at her throat.

Gladiator damn near melted beneath the heat of Zora's easy, thoughtless affections. The power was a thrill she never got sick of feeling, but the trust was a sobering and precious thing that Zora hardly knew what to do with.

She wouldn't break it.

She betrayed so easily, she lied like breathing, but this was one bond she was never going to twist into a noose with which to strangle them both.

She knew it went against her nature. Zora had crafted herself into a cursed queen, a serpent and a death-blossom since her youth, but she knew she wanted to make space in herself for something different. Even if it was awkward sometimes and stung a little, she was willing to fight for it. She knew Gladiator would do the same. They'd already died to prove it.

She was mulling over how to respond when Dia moved. Zora's expression was soft, open - nothing left to hide behind, she'd tried all her masks and Dia had enjoyed each and asked for another. Zora had worried there was nothing of herself beneath all the falsehoods she wore, but she knew now this fondness in her heart, this love at her very center, was truer to herself than anything else.

Zora didn't stop them, letting Dia's tongue sweep across those awful scars, half of a matching pair.

It felt odd. A little numb, a little oversensitive, and the fur split strangely around the gnarled flesh. But Zora didn't flinch, and didn't see her death play out in Technicolor around her.

She wished she was brave enough to ask for Dia to mark her there, right on top of the already-healed marks - to leave a physical sign of who Zora wanted written over the top of the evidence of her death.

She could only offer a sultry gaze, silver and blue sizzling hot as she searched for Dia's own.

They were greeted with no such crinkle, only a look that left her hot and buzzing, aching for more. They marveled at the ease with which Zora opened herself up to them, left herself exposed and vulnerable, revealed a side of herself that she'd never shown to any other soul. They thought about how easy it would be to wrap her jaws around those old, awful scars and squeeze. They withered from the guilt, always, at how they'd hidden theirs from her.

Their reunion felt like a lifetime ago — so much had happened since then. Champ, their date, the cave, a breathless I love you. Since then, Gladiator had vowed that nothing would take Zora from them again. No one would ever touch hide nor hair on her pretty little head. She'd give up lifetime after lifetime to hunt down and destroy any beast who dared to so much as bare their fangs at her. They—

I love you, they breathed into her fur, low and husky and dripping with desire. They rose on eager paws, tracing a hot, heavy line of barely restrained nibbles and kisses down her neck.