#once again i expose my ass as a lesbian who yearns HARD

[veeteeshirt]

💋prompts, 8 for charlie/nat 🥺

This has been sitting in my inbox for a while, but I am getting to them.

pairing: charlotte “charlie” rosewall/nat sewell

words: 535

read it on ao3

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It is with trembling hands that Charlie cups Nat’s face. She shakes not out of nerves and she cannot even say she shakes out of excitement - it is more like her nerves are all standing on end, like a line of soldiers tense with weapons drawn. This openness - Nat’s openness - clashes against her own reticent heart and sings out for the teeny part of her that wants to answer that vulnerability: let me out, let her see. If she trembles, it is like the rattling of a dry leaf clinging to a branch, a teetering thing on the crest of surrender.

She could pull away if she wanted, even now. She could grip onto that safe known of only wondering if her lips would taste of the spicy Assam tea still steaming on Charlie’s desk. Or - and Charlie swallows thickly as Nat slides her hands over both of hers - she could release herself to the brittle snap of the petiole as it falls away from the tree and set to the wind, uncharted but free.

It’s so, so tempting, the idea of where that shivering leaf could land if she could just let go.

Nat waits, her lips parted slightly. She makes no move to tug her in closer, no move to indicate her own restrained desire beyond the barest hint of a twitch along the back of her hands. She wants it, she can feel how much she does by the stutter at her wrist. How many centimeters keep them apart? How many breaths yet taken, how many words could fill this insurmountable chasm?

Thousands, maybe. Hundreds. Tens.

One.

“Fuck.”

Their lips meet in a kiss that sears into Charlie instantly; not like the ravage fire of Bobby’s mouth, but the first rush of light flooding into a darkened room. It is like the sigh of her apartment’s door when she comes home, it is the feeling of knowing she has found her way to home, to safety. Nat does taste faintly of her tea. Spiced, earthy. What is more surprising is the warmth that lingers there and just how easy it is for Charlie to swallow that for herself.

Her heart sings with the glorious revolution of the kiss, her heart cries that she waited so damn long to let herself know. There is promise in Nat angling in closer to the kiss, her fingers curling around the back of her neck: the promise of kisses in gray morning light, under the blanket of stars, small kisses, long kisses, kisses Charlie’s never experienced. Charlie wants to know them all; she wants to know the blueprints of Nat’s mouth better than she knows her own.

Charlie cannot even open her eyes when they part for a breath. One last hold over, she supposes. One crumbling defense. When she does, it's to a delightful flush of pink across Nat's cheeks and to eyes so deep and sparkling she swears that not even the most precious of jewels could rival. Charlie is broken from her tree and she is released, shaking and shivering to the wind, drifting, not plummeting as she had so feared, along the breathless laugh that fills the gap between her and Nat.