#The Exile Commander | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

galpalaven · 2 years

Text

“Y-You don’t seem, uhm… upset? By what I said? Were you…” they trail off, biting their lip, eyes flickering between hers as they look for the right words. “Were you going to… do it…?” Kira laughs again. “Before I looked at you and saw the horror and panic on your face, you mean?” They nod. Her eyes drop to their lips again and don’t move back up until after she speaks. “...I was.”

I commissioned @vvakarians / @bloodmaledikt for some art of Vethna and Kira from a fic I wrote, and I'm so pleased with how it came out!!! I love them so much Kira especially is absolutely perfect it's so wild to see her so Right.

Love Mal - commission them if you get a chance!

also, go play @exilethegame :3

from the heart

Vethna/Commander, 2.7k words full fic below the cut and on AO3

It’s strange, they think as they settle a little deeper into Kira’s side, head resting on her shoulder, a blanket pulled around their own shoulders, how comfortable this is. The last few weeks had been a nightmare, and it’s strange that they’re glad to be back on the road—that they’re glad to be sat huddled in front of a campfire again in the middle of nowhere. The nights are growing colder, frost settling on every surface by the time they wake most mornings, their breath coming in little white clouds like the smoke they’ve seen Kira blow just for fun sometimes.

It’s cold tonight as well–one of the coldest yet—but the Commander is warm. Her phoenix blood has her radiating heat like a furnace, even more than the fire, and that combined with the heavy blanket they’d stolen off of her (she’d laughed when they emerged from the shelter they’d been sharing with it wrapped around their shoulders—it had been a parting gift from her sister, but Kira often either didn’t sleep or didn’t use it, so they really didn’t see the harm) has made them a marvelously warm and cozy sorcerer indeed. The others have all gone off to bed by now. The arguments about who would take watch and who could be trusted had only lasted the first week or so of their traveling, and now an easy schedule had been set up leaving the nights almost pleasant as they wound down. Vethna is drifting between the waking world and the world of dreams as they rest against her, body slowly going more and more heavy with the quiet crackling of the fire and Kira’s steady breathing. She’s reading one of their books tonight—a romance book they’d always liked that they hadn’t remembered they’d brought—and they’ve sort of been reading over her shoulder for the past half hour or so. She’d caught on almost immediately, and waits to turn the page until they give her a soft hum of recognition so that she doesn’t cut them off.

It’s disgustingly domestic, and they’re far too warm and content to even have it in them right now to be embarrassed or horrified by it at the moment.

“Veth, sweetness, why don’t you just go to bed? You’re about to pass out on me and you’re not going to be comfortable in the morning if you sleep like this.”

If the low, smooth tone of her voice hadn’t set their stomach aflutter, the unexpected pet name certainly did. Their cheeks burn, and they tilt their head back to find her smiling down at them, golden eyes reflecting the light of the fire, all warmth and softness and affection. She either didn’t notice that she’d called them a pet name, or she’s gained some kind of confidence in the quiet comfort they’d been enjoying that they’ve yet to see from her.

She raises her eyebrows at them when they say nothing, grin widening, and they clear their throat softly, turning away and snuggling further into her side, eyes on the fire.

“Mm. But you’re so warm,” they mumble, fully aware that they sound like a pouting child and for some reason completely okay with it.

Kira just laughs, low and quiet to avoid disturbing their slumbering travel companions, and settles a little lower against the log where they’ve been sitting, letting Vethna’s head fit quite comfortably in the crook of her neck.

“Alright. If you’re sure.”

They wonder if it’s because she’s also warm that she’s so disinclined to argue with them, or if she’s just also enjoying their company as much as they’re enjoying hers. She goes back to reading, and they pretend to do the same, though they peek up at her curiously after a minute.

She’s so close.

It’s the closest they’ve been to her when neither of them are having some kind of crisis. Other than that one night they’d had something that absolutely disagreed with them early in their little guarding arrangement that she’d spent holding their hair back and rubbing their back, cooing soft little words of comfort while their stomach roiled in their gut, she hadn’t really touched them like this since. Or, neither of them had touched each other like this outside of when the other one is having a crisis or a nightmare or something. Up close like this, they can see the delicate spattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose. She has a mole on her cheek on the side not facing them that they’ve always known about, but looking at her now they realize that she has another smaller one just under her right eye. Their eyes follow the curve of her nose—a bit more arched than it looks head on—and finally settle on the plush curve of her lips.

They could kiss her, if they wanted.

The thought doesn’t surprise them as much as they feel like it should as they let it linger. They watch her throat bob as she swallows, and her tongue peeks out to wet her lips as she turns a page, and the thought gets a little louder, a little bolder. An itch to move builds in their chest and–they could do it. And they think, if they’ve been reading her right, maybe she’d let them. Maybe–maybe she’d let them reach up and tilt her head towards them, let them lean in and see if her lips taste like flames, or if they’ll taste more like the berries she’d been eating on periodically all night. Maybe… maybe she’d even just kiss them herself, if they just asked. If they just looked up at her and said, “Kiss me,” maybe she would—

Kira blinks rapidly a few times, tensing a little beneath them, and their heart drops into their stomach.

O-Oh gods. I didn’t… did I?

Her lips curl into a grin as she looks over at them, and the look on her face is…

Oh, they definitely said that out loud.

Fuck.

“I– Uh– Uhm– Sorry, I’m… think I need to sleep more than I thought I did?”

Her eyes are soft as she looks at them, eyes darting across their face, golden depths glittering with amusement and… something that almost looks like disappointment. She huffs a little laugh, sighing a little as she says, “Don’t apologize, please? It’s okay. You can take it back if you want.”

They laugh nervously. “S-So I did… say that out loud, then…”

Kira nods, eyes dropping rather obviously to their mouth in a way that has a wave of heat washing over their skin in a way that has them fighting to keep from squirming, from the crown of their head and all the way down to their toes as if someone had just dumped a bucket of hot water over them. Their eyes dart to her lips as well–they’re parted slightly, and they have to look away before the yearning in their gut can make them do something foolish.

“You don’t seem…” they start, forcing themselves to look back up at her eyes. She looks back at them calmly, though up this close it’s easy to see the way her pupils have dilated as she looks at them. The air between them, which had been so warm and calm only a moment ago, feels charged with something different now.

Something… electric.

Kira laughs again. “Before I looked at you and saw the horror and panic on your face, you mean?”

They nod.

Her eyes drop to their lips again and don’t move back up until after she speaks.

“...I was.”

Their breath leaves them in a shaky whoosh, and they know that if they’d been standing that their knees would probably have given out from under them. They shift against her, turning to face her more, eyes on her mouth again, their own mouth running dry.

They—they want this.

They want her.

“Kira, I…” their voice is hoarse, and they can barely hear over the rushing of their own pulse in their ears as she gently closes her book and sets it on the ground beside her, not looking away from them for a second. She reaches up and gently—so, so gently—brushes the backs of her knuckles against their cheek before letting her hand come to rest there, cupping their cheek. Her thumb presses at their lower lip, talon digging in just enough that it sends something foreign shooting down their spine, before they’re reaching up to grab her hand, squeezing her fingers and running their thumb across her knuckles.

No one has ever looked at them like this. No one has ever touched them like this.

Kira smiles, fingers curling around theirs as she closes the distance between them, though she pauses just before she seals the deal, letting their lips drag against each other’s for a brief, heartstopping moment. Her breath is hot in their mouth as she sighs their name in a low, yearning voice that has goosebumps prickling across their flesh despite how warm they feel right now.

“Vethna…”

Their name has never tasted so sweet.

When she kisses them, the first thing they notice is that a flash of color pops behind their closed eyes. Their breath hitches, and so does hers, as they press in harder, inhaling sharply against her mouth as the same color flashes like fireworks.

Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink.

Her aura is pink.

Vethna’s hand releases hers, reaching up to cup her jaw, tilting their head and deepening the kiss. There’s a desperation behind the way they’re kissing her that even they don’t understand fully, a need that grips them so tightly that it’s hard to breathe around it. All she does is laugh, though, as they raise up on their knees and their tongue slips past her lips, one of her hands grasping at their wrist as their other hand comes up to cup the other side of her face and her other hand settles on the curve of their lower back. They have half a mind to climb into her lap at this rate, tilting their head the other direction and reveling in the way she meets them with her mouth open wide, fingers digging into their back, pulling them closer.

Fuck it.

She makes a confused noise when they growl a little under their breath, shoving her knees down from where she’d been curled up. Her hands move away from them, bewildered, but then they’re throwing their leg over her hips and she laughs, hands settling on their thighs– and they’re so glad for the warmth of her mythosi blood as her fingers come into contact with their bare skin. They go to lean back in, but she turns away, and they frown until she reaches over and pulls the blanket off the ground beside them, wrapping it around their shoulders again with a quiet, content little hum.

Gods…

When she finishes, she looks up at them with a smile so sweet and full of affection that it has their heart racing in their chest. She uses her grip on the blanket to nudge them closer again, chin tilted and eyes half closed expectantly—and they oblige her. Of course, they do. How could they not? Their lips sink back into hers and they pick up where they left off, and it quickly devolves yet again from something soft and sweet into something desperate and hungry. They realize that they’ve been thinking about this for a while—been thinking about the way her talons would feel digging into their hips, dragging down their back. Been thinking about the way her tongue would feel sliding against theirs, the heat of her breath on their skin, the way her hips would feel between their thighs. Vethna rakes a hand through her dark hair—makes a pleased hum when it’s far silkier than they’d been expecting—before they tangle their fingers at the back of her head and pull.

Kira’s sigh almost sounds like a moan, and both of them pause just to grin into the kiss. They open their eyes to look down at her, finding her already looking up at them with a calculating look in her eyes, glowing gold despite the shadow Vethna is casting on her face. They feel her hand slide up the side of their neck, towards the back of their head and–

They laugh, a little louder than she had, when she tugs gently on their hair as well. They lean back into it, grinning as they let their arms slide around her shoulders as she leans in close and lets her lips drag against their bared throat.

Oh. Oh, they love that.

They hum, pretending that it doesn’t sound quite as much like a moan as it does, and they can feel her smile as she lets her teeth drag against the sensitive skin on their neck. Kira starts to drop hot, open-mouthed kisses in a line down the column of their throat, and they sigh, curling into her. She releases their hair in favor of wrapping both arms tight around their back as she continues to mouth at their neck, and for a moment—wrapped up in a heavy blanket, with the crackling firelight behind them, warm and content, senses overwhelmed with her—for a moment, all they can think is that they have never felt so safe in their life.

It’s all they can think as they tilt their head and bring their mouth back to hers. She makes them feel safe in a way that they don’t think they’ve ever felt when they’ve been this close with anyone before. Like they know if they wanted to say no, if they wanted to stop and never do this again, they could, and she’d just smile and thank them for kissing her at all.

They’ve never had that before.

Against their lips, Kira grins, breath hot and heavy as she breathes one sentence that makes them feel like they might just start floating into the air at any moment.

“You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

Vethna laughs, because it’s really the only thing they can do, resting their forehead against hers and squeezing their eyes shut in a desperate attempt to ground themself.

“Flatterer,” they murmur, but they’re grinning and she giggles as she squeezes her arms around them again. “You can’t just—say something so sincere like that out of nowhere.”

“Is it still out of nowhere if you’re sitting in my lap and have had your tongue in my mouth for the past ten minutes?”

They snort, pinching the back of her neck gently and laughing when she squirms beneath them. “I don’t know, is it?”

When they open their eyes to look down at her, she’s grinning up at them with a look on her face like she is looking at everything she’s ever wanted. They can’t help but lean in and kiss her again—not when she’s looking at them like that.

They’re just starting to really get back into it when a shuffling sound nearby startles them apart, though they don’t go far, turning their heads towards the sound to find Amelia ducking out of one of the tents. She’s gone still at the sight of the two of them, Vethna straddling Kira’s hips, arms around her neck, with her mouth clearly smeared with Vethna’s lipstick.

A beat.

Kira breaks the silence first, snorting and burying her face in Vethna’s neck to stifle the giggles that follow. Vethan laughs, too, pleased that she doesn’t seem to be embarrassed to be seen by any of their companions.

“I, uh… I’ll take watch now, if you two want to… you know… go to bed,” Amelia says after a moment, grinning at them both.

“Sounds good to me,” Vethna murmurs, running their hand through Kira’s hair. “Good for you?”

She nods, eyes on their lips again. “Perfect.”

-----------

They don’t get nearly as much sleep as they probably should have, but that’s alright. If anything, the look on Sabir’s face the next morning when they both step out with bruising on their necks, is more than enough to put some pep back into their step.

#the exile #exile the game #vethna mevnrael #vethna x commander #the exile commander #my writing

190 notes · View notes