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imhereformr · 4 months ago

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rivusa: no ones kissed me like that in a long time

This is part 2 of this oneshot

Musa didn’t know why she’d agreed to let Stella set her up on a blind date. Stella hadn’t even told her what the guy's name was, much less shown her a picture. But Stella had assured her that this guy was one hundred percent Musa’s type – tall, strong, as headstrong as she was – and it was nearing eighteen months since the rupture of her four-year marriage had been finalised. She needed to get back out there the girls kept insisting. And soon enough their words were in her head, and she’d convinced herself she was ready.

She wasn’t so sure anymore.

The restaurant Stella had chosen was unsurprisingly fancy. Musa would’ve preferred somewhere more lowkey, but Stella didn’t do lowkey. Together they had picked out a tight red and black patterned dress that hit Musa just below the knee and showed off the small waist and nice ass she’d been blessed with, and a tasteful amount of the cleavage she hadn’t.

“Hi” Musa said to the hostess, who stared at her in shock for a moment before reverting to complete professionalism. While the people of Magix tended not to care much about celebrity sightings, the fact remained that she’d not been spotted out once since the divorce. “I’m here for a reservation under Stella Saule.”

Her heart thudded loudly in her chest as she followed the hostess through the dimly lit restaurant, past sleek black tables and silver chairs filled with couples and friends who had no idea her stomach was about to summersault out of her body. She hadn’t been on a date in eight, almost nine, years. She had no idea how to act or what to say. Sometimes, especially in the last months of her marriage, she couldn’t even remember who she’d been before she and him became them.

The hostess stopped at a table in a secluded back corner of the restaurant far from windows and relatively isolated from other tables. Perfect for a celebrity that people tended to flip out over, not so perfect if her date turned out to be a psychopath. “Enjoy” the hostess told them, leaving Musa staring slack jawed at the man at the table.

Striking violet eyes returned her stare, their owner just as surprised as she was. His magenta hair was slicked back, ends brushing the collar of his suit jacket. His face looked older, more tired. But then, hers did too. But despite the few greys that speckled his hair, the lines on his face and the more polished clothes, he looked the same as the last time she’d seen him almost thirteen years earlier.

“H-hi” she managed to get out just as her legs failed her and she dropped into the chair.

Riven said nothing as he closed his mouth and swallowed hard, staring at her like she was a ghost. To the untrained eye, he would seem shocked and speechless, but Musa still knew him better than that. She knew from the way his lips hung open and his occasional swallows that he was trying to force out words that wouldn’t let themselves be spoken.

“I guess you agreed to an absurdly blind date too, then?” she chuckled awkwardly, hoping to break some of the tension that had surrounded them.

“Yeah” he choked out, a grateful smile tugging on his lips. “I... I didn’t expect...”

“No, me neither” she admitted. Of all the men Stella could have unearthed, she could never have imagined her date being the boy she’d let get away over a decade ago.

They settled into an uneasy silence as they browsed the menu. Musa contemplated between the fish and steak, and what to say next. The part of her that still thought about him as someone she was close to wanted to divulge her heart’s pains and her innermost thought, the things she’d kept to herself because her friends wouldn’t understand. Her more rational side reminded her that there were years between them, and he was no longer her person.

She chose the fish.

“How have you been?” he asked after the waitress had walked away. The question was genuine, curious. Years apart hadn’t dulled her ears when it came to his tone.

“Getting better” she admitted after mulling over how honestly to answer. “I, well, you already know.”

“Vented to your guitar?” he guessed with a laugh.

“And my piano.” Riven laughed again. She wondered if he was still as hard to make laugh as he used to be or if he’d loosened up some. When they were younger, she had worn it as a badge of honour that she was one of the few people that could make him laugh easily. It was nice to know that she still could.

“Flora suggested I try therapy, but really, who needs that when I could just vent all my feelings into chart-toppers. The payout is much better.”

Riven laughed again. Gods, she still loved his laugh. Surly Riven became a whole new person when he genuinely laughed, more open and approachable.

“Therapy really helped when I got divorced” he told her, chuckling at the way her eyes opened in surprise. “Well, that and a lot of time in the gym trying to work out any residual frustration. Nabu told me not to say that cause my date might think I’m a gym-rat...”

“You are. I know you are. You always have been. You’ve been to therapy?”

Riven told her that his ex-wife had insisted they try couples therapy when things had started going south. During the process, Riven realised that maybe he had more issues to work through than he’d let himself believe, so he asked if the therapist would be willing to take him on as an individual patient and that had been that. He’d been going ever since. Therapy, he admitted, had probably expedited the divorce process, but in realising that they were no longer romantically suited, they broke up amicably.

“Lucky you” Musa responded bitterly. Her own divorce had been cemented with arguments, both over the phone and in person the few times they saw each other, and many late nights crying to the girls, her guitar or a glass of wine.

“Well, in our case, it really is for the best that we be on good terms.” At this, he stiffened and scratched the back of his neck in a habit Musa knew all too well as his nervous tick. “We, uh... I... Well, no, we -”

“Spit it out, Riven.”

He had a daughter. She was eight. Her name was Victoria. She was in third grade and played soccer. She had an emotional intelligence that occasionally made him question if she was his daughter, but when he showed Musa a picture of her there was no denying that she was. She shared his strong jawline and violet eyes, and pink hair that was lighter than his but only by a shade or two.

Musa tried to take in the information as Riven stopped talking, apologizing for rambling on. “Don’t” Musa insisted. “It sounds like you really love her.”

“I do.”

He turned the subject over to her, listening to her attentively as she told him about the places she’d been and the things she’d tried. He admitted that he’d followed her career closely, bought every album and, during the earlier years of her career, tried to figure out which songs were about him.

“You must’ve had a blast with my second album then.”

“Yeah... It was really sad.”

“I was really sad” she shrugged. “I missed you and, well, you know what I do when I feel things.”

The album had come out a mere four months after their breakup. She had spent hours, nights and sometimes entire weekends writing and recording what would end up being her first major award-winning album. Touring that album had been bittersweet, though. Having to relive her greatest heartbreak every night for six straight months had been hell. Still, that album was one of her favourites because of how raw and emotional it was, and because it had made her wildest dreams come true.

“It actually helped a lot, knowing that you were going through it with me even if we were apart.”

Musa smiled sadly, reaching across the table to rest her hand on his. He dropped his fork and flipped his hand over to hold hers, gently stroking the top of her hand with his thumb. “Do you ever...” she started, “I don’t know... wonder?”

“Wonder? What would’ve happened if we hadn’t broken up?”

“Yeah.” She’d thought of him many times over the years, where he was, where they might be if there was still a them to speak of. They would have broken up eventually, she assumed. The Elite Forces required the utmost secrecy, and they had been Riven’s goal since he’d started working towards Red Fountain. Musa’s goals took her directly into the public eye, along with everyone in her life, especially her partner. Neither was willing to forfeit their dream, nor would they have wanted the other to.

“Sometimes. But, hey, we’re here now. You have your career, and I’m retired from mine.”

“You retired from the Elites?”

“Yeah. I got what I wanted, and it cost me my marriage. Besides, the bureaucracy of it is complete bullshit. I teach combat at Red Fountain now.”

“So you get to trash talk the students all day.”

“Yeah, it’s fantastic. If only I’d realised years ago that I could get paid to do what I used to do for free.”

“If only” she laughed along with him.

“Too bad we’ll never know what would’ve happened. But, like I said, we’re here now.”

Musa put down the fork she held and gently pulled away the hand that had been in Riven’s. She looked at him, trying to decipher if he was suggesting what she thought he was. A second chance, a do-over? Did he want that as much as she did? Was she even ready to give her heart again? “Do you mean...”

“It can be slow, if you need time” he started, speaking slowly and choosing his words carefully. “I’m okay being friends to start, but I feel like I’d be doing myself a disservice if I denied that I’ve missed you so many times through the years. I don’t think I ever really... got over you. Not entirely anyways.”

“You are not my Riven. My Riven would never have been so forward about his feelings.”

“Therapy” he shrugged bashfully. “Is that a no?”

“I cried for a whole week when Flora told me you were getting married” she admitted, “I was in a relationship at the time with someone I thought I loved, but when I found out I felt like someone had ripped my heart out and sewn it back in damaged and wrong.” She had broken up with that boyfriend the next time she saw him and met her husband a mere month later. She’d fallen fast and hard. At the time, she felt so much she thought it must have been true love, but in the later years of their mariage she questioned if she’d really fallen that fast or if she’d just been so heartbroken that she convinced herself she’d moved on to try to stop the pain.

“So, yes?”

“Slow would be nice. I gave in to this date because I felt pressured into it, and I don’t know if I’m a hundred percent ready to jump into something just quite yet.”

...

And it was, in a way, slow. Three months passed and they’d seen each other almost two dozen times. They used any moment to see each other: dinner, lunch, bowling, shopping, walks around the city, not to mention just hanging out or getting a quick coffee when they both had a few minutes to spare. In all the times they’d seen each other, though, they hadn’t once done more than hold hands. A real feat for the couple who had had sex the day they’d become an official couple and had dropped their first I love yous within three months.

With Riven’s birthday coming up, she had offered to make him dinner. He would come over on the Friday night and spend Saturday – his actual birthday – with his daughter. She spent all day cooking and cleaning. Not that it mattered since Riven knew she wasn’t the spotless home kind of person, but she wanted to make a good impression.

“How much time did you spend cleaning?” he teased as she led him through her apartment to the kitchen. He stopped at the shelf that stood by her piano, the one that held most of the awards that she’d won throughout her career. “You even dusted” he laughed, picking up the Album of the Year trophy she’d won for her second album.

She took her award out of his hands and returned it to its place on the shelf, ignoring his commentary that he should be allowed to hold their award. “You know, since I was your muse for it” he argued.

Musa rolled her eyes and pushed him towards the kitchen. “You can claim ten percent of the award.”

“Ten percent?!”

Musa barely contained her laughter at his outraged tone. She pulled a bottle of white wine out of her fridge and poured two glasses. “Yeah, well, I wrote it, composed it and performed it. All you did was exist.”

“And I was great at that.”

“You were alright.”

While she finished making supper, Riven sat at the table, nursing his glass and telling her how one of his students had nearly flipped his classmate through a window earlier that day. He was a strict teacher, she had learned over the weeks. According to the politics professor, he was one of the teachers that students strove to impress in the same way the boys in Riven’s day strove to impress Codatorta.

Musa plated the food with her heart in her stomach. When they were younger, she would make this for him regularly, especially during their time on Earth when they’d had to cook for themselves. His favourites of the things she knew how to make – fried rice with sauteed veggies and garlic shrimp – and his favourite foods – loaded baked potatoes and strawberry cake. She hoped it was stuff he still liked.

Riven’s face lit up with the million-watt smile she’d found herself dreaming of more frequently – almost every night – in the last few months. She’d barely taken her seat before he dug in, sighing contentedly with every bite. “You know, I’ve never found garlic shrimp as good as yours. What’s your secret?”

“I’m not telling you that” she laughed.

Riven ate with vigor, forcing himself to slow down multiple times. It’d be a shame to get sick the first time I have this in over a decade he’d laughed as he forced himself to put his fork down for the third time. “I can’t believe you remembered all of this” he said as she brought out dessert. “Right down to the four-cheese mix on the baked potato and the candied strawberries on top of the cake.”

“How could I forget? I made this so many times while we were on Earth. Not to mention that I made this meal for your birthday six years in a row. It was tradition. I could do this with my eyes closed.”

“...We were only together for five birthdays?” Riven questioned, calculating aloud that they’d been together for his eighteenth to twenty-second birthdays. “Yeah, five” he reaffirmed.

Musa admitted to him that the year they broke up, she still made the meal for herself on his birthday. It had felt wrong for his birthday to pass without making his favourite foods. She had almost sent leftovers to him via one of their friends, but she had stopped herself. “If I had sent them, they would’ve been accompanied by a message that said something like I love you, I can’t do this and then where would we be?”

“Probably not here right now.”

“No, probably not. I’m happy we are, though” she smiled. It felt nice smiling so freely and genuinely again. Most of the times she’d smiled or laughed in the last months of her marriage, and especially in the months following a messy divorce, had been forced or faked. The desire to smile had gotten more frequent while she healed, but it had reached a full peak with Riven. Sometimes, when he smiled at her, she felt like she’d never had her heartbroken at all.

“Me too” he agreed, returning her smile and sending her heart soaring. “I’m especially happy to be having this fucking cake again. You know, my ex-wife never went all out for my birthday the way you used to.”

“Oh?”

Riven caught her expression and shook his head. “That’s not a complaint against her, just a fact. She never had the reason to; by the time I met her, you had already convinced me that my birthday was worth enjoying.”

Gods, she could have cried tears of joy at that statement. Musa hadn’t even known it was his birthday that first year. What she knew was that he’d aced an exam he had been stressed about, so she had scraped together what little money she had and rented them a room that came with a full kitchen. She made supper, they made love, then they spent the rest of the night watching true crime documentaries and complaining about stupid criminals or stupid cops. It was only as they were getting ready for bed, when she got a text from Stella about Bloom’s birthday (in almost two whole months), that she realised she didn’t know when his was. Today he’d admitted quietly, insisting it wasn’t a big deal when she flipped out because why hadn’t she known that. No one had ever celebrated his birthday she would learn a few months later, so she made a point of going all out for it.

Musa reached out her hand and took his. He looked at her so softly and lovingly. She had fallen in love with him again, she knew it. She’d been clued off by the fact that she was constantly searching for reasons to text or call him, or finding little things that reminded her of him, or imagining him and his smile and his eyes and his body. The hundred-odd love songs she’d written in the last two months confirmed it for her.

“Dance with me?” he asked her suddenly, breaking the easy silence that had fallen between them and the string of lyrics that had been forming in her mind. She couldn’t even be mad; they’d come back to her eventually.

Riven stood up, pulling her forward by their still-interlocked fingers. “There’s no music” she pointed out, ignoring that she was literally the fairy of music.

“When has that ever stopped you?”

Musa assented, letting him pull her up and towards the open space in the living room where he spun her around and caught her effortlessly. His ex-wife had made him take dance lessons before the wedding, he’d admitted when pressed about how he’d become so smooth. Riven, who had apologised profusely when he stepped on her toes the first time they’d danced together, pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her waist as they swayed slowly in place. “Despite the dance classes,” he chuckled, “this is still significantly more my speed.”

“At least you won’t step on my feet this time.”

“No guarantees” he laughed again.

Musa leaned into him, placing her head against his chest. They hadn’t hugged at all since they had reconnected, and Musa quickly figured out why. She never wanted to let him go. She wanted to stay here, listening to his heartbeat, warm in his arms. Riven rested his cheek on the top of her head, pulling her in closer – if that was possible – as they continued to sway.

“Muse?”

She felt herself melt at the nickname. He hadn’t called her that since they’d broken up – no one had. “Hmm?”

“I know we said slow – and I’m still okay going slow if that’s what you need – but I’d... I’d really like to kiss you right now if that’s okay.”

Her heart leaped out of her body, running around in circles screaming at the top of its lungs in excitement at the thought of his lips. She’d found herself (day)dreaming of them lately, wondering if they were still as soft and if his kisses would still be as hungry.

Musa tilted her head to look at him, locking eyes with him as he watched attentively for her reaction. She nodded mutely, weakly, as she drowned in his eyes, drowned in the look she recognised all too well. Soft and sparkling; he was falling as hard as she was. It was the way he’d looked at her for three years – maybe even before that if Flora was to be believed – when things were good between them. “Y-yeah” she managed.

Their lips met, soft and sweet. She melted into him – almost literally this time – letting her body drape against his so he had to hold her closer. There was a tenderness that was new to her, a caring and gentility that made her smile into the kiss. Riven pulled away, breaking the kiss when she felt him start to deepen it the way she wanted.

Her arms around his neck stopped him from getting too far, and he didn’t fight them. Riven smiled sweetly, and, Gods, she couldn’t help herself. She pulled him back to her, kissing him with all the fervor she could muster. His arms tightened around her, lifting her so she had her legs firmly wrapped around his waist, as he deepened the kiss until she felt the desire in her core.

He was magic, sparking up her entire body, sending her reeling, and making her breathless. Musa thought their kisses had been heaven before, but it turned out she’d never even experienced heaven until now. No matter what happened, she was never letting this go. She was never letting him go. Not again.

“No one’s kissed me like that in a long time – maybe ever” she whispered as they finally, reluctantly, pulled apart, and she leaned her forehead against his.

“I’ll make it my life’s mission to make sure you never have to live without being kissed like that again.”

Musa chuckled, tapping him lightly on the shoulder as he moved to seat her on the back of the couch. “Stop it with the knight in shining armour thing.”

“You used to get mad at me for not being the knight in shining armour!” he argued half-heartedly. He placed a kiss on her forehead and smiled at her. Musa beamed in return; her heart felt like it was soaring. "Besides” he continued, eyes shining at her in adoration, “it’s already a known fact that I would go to war for you and die for you.”

“It used to be” she countered, her soaring heart skipping a beat as she remembered the flash of magenta as he jumped in front of her, and the panic she felt when she realised what he’d done. She wondered if the scar on his chest – the one he’d refused to have healed so that anyone who saw it would know how much he loved her, an admission he’d made in the dark of night two years after the scar had healed – was still there.

“I’m having lunch with our friends Sunday” he told her abruptly.

“You are?” she questioned with a raised eyebrow. Of course they wouldn’t have invited her. They had had to plan activities separately for years for fear that things would be as awkward between Musa and Riven as they had been during the post-breakup days. Stella – who presumably hadn’t told anyone about her brilliant blind date idea – wouldn't have invited her, not after they had lied to the Solarian queen about Musa standing Riven up.

“I’d like to surprise them with my new girlfriend.”

“You mean your old girlfriend?” Musa assumed he meant her. Their friends would be happy they were on speaking terms again.

“I mean... both, I guess. My old new girlfriend.”

Musa leaned back slightly, taking in his bashful smile and blushing cheeks. She smiled, leaning into him teasingly as she spoke: “Is this you asking me to be your girlfriend?”

“Yes” he mumbled, so like teenage Riven who hated acknowledging his feelings. Unlike teenage Riven, though, he met her eyes when he spoke.

"Yes” she smiled, pulling him back into a kiss so deep it had her tumbling backwards onto the couch. Riven tried to catch her as she fell, but he couldn’t stop laughing at her long enough to make a proper attempt. Musa sat up and pulled him towards her, not caring that he had to climb ungracefully over the back of the couch to join her on the cushions or that she was laughing so hard that her cheeks hurt.

Safely placed on the couch, he kissed her again.

She felt like a teenager. Between the love-struck way Riven had her feeling, and the fact that they spent the night alternating between watching true crime documentaries, making out and talking, she swore she was still nineteen. It was nearing midnight when Riven reluctantly told her that he should be heading home.

“Don’t go just yet...” she begged, wanting to hold him just a little bit longer. She knew that this feeling would last for hours after he was gone, and that he would only be gone for a short while, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to be in his arms, in his presence, for just a few more minutes.

“We’ll see each other Sunday” he laughed, kissing her on the forehead when she gave him pouty eyes she knew he wouldn’t say no to. “Okay. I’ll stay, but just a little bit longer.”

Musa smiled and kissed him again, reveling in the smile she felt on his lips when she kissed him.

#winx club #winx #winx musa #winx riven #fanfiction #rivusa #oneshot #getting back together

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