He didn't move at first. He just stayed, deep, hands on either side of her head, arms straight, spine long, eyes on hers as if they were standing in a field instead of lying on a blanket by a hot spring under lanterns.
Her hands went to his wrists. She didn't squeeze. She held, like checking he was real.
"Here," he said again, softer now, and shifted enough to draw a sound out of her that went straight through him like the first time he had taken a city's gate off its hinge.
He moved.
No tricks. No clever changes to show he could.
He kept a pace that belonged to them and no one else, a clean, even stroke that walked them together across a distance that felt both short and endless.
He let his weight settle when she tried to climb into him.
He lifted when she needed space to breathe. He found the angle that made her mouth lose its shape and held it, held it, held it, until her nails bit into his shoulders and her eyes went soft and wild in the same second.
