Chains, Hellboy II, Nuala/Nuada
Title: Chains Author/Artist: shiegra Rating: PG13/R Prompt: Hellboy 2 - Nuada/Nuala - jealousy and possessiveness - Nuala gains attention from other men and kind of enjoys being noticed. Nuada gets furious. Word count: (optional for authors) 491
Interest is a dance.
At court it is all delicacy, intricate and soft spoken, to the rhythms of their careful world. Outside of those safer halls--in the market, for instance, tucked away in the careful guise of humans streets--it is a little more visceral, closer, bolder--glances hotter and sharper, because outside of the safety of court instincts run a little closer to the skin.
Outside of the court, sometimes Nuala smiles back. She is no stranger to instinct, and no child. It is not their eagerness that wins her nor their hands that may touch her skin, but something in her stretches, feline against the inside of her skin, a flexing thoughtful inquiry.
It has been too long since she's been touched.
She strokes her fingers thoughtfully down the curve of a golden cage, touching the delicate chains, strung here and there with blood-bright jewels, that cradles the arch of the bars. She is delicately feeling out the magic and smiling at the shopkeeper--who smiles back, slanted eyes sloe-back and full of sparks--when she feels his presence like a finger stroked down her spine.
Even after all the years between them, her eyes seek him out where exile decrees he should not be; in the middle of the market, crouched like a cat on a tall stone wall, midnight-dark. His gaze a thorny thing, the throb of his attention low at the base of her throat. Oh, how his eyes burned.
He says nothing, and her fingers snag in the chain, tightening under her knuckles whiten. The world narrows; down to him and no one else, and the pressure of his eyes. Her lips part.
And then he stands and is gone, like a shadow, and might never have been there. Lost to her yet one more time.
The shopkeeper says nothing, but she had cut her hand on the edge of a jewel. She purchases the cage, and knows she will dream of him tonight.
She dreams he sits at her bedside, eyes gleaming like a big cat's, and strokes her hair in long, possessive touches.
"You cannot continue this madness," she murmurs, and his mouth curves in a hard line.
"Watch me," he breathes, and his hand fists in her hair, tugging her head back to bare the pale line of her throat.
"I'll fight you," she says simply, even as her hands rise to skid restlessly over cool black armor, and she shivers and arches off the soft tangled sheets. ""I'll stop you."
"Sister," he tells her, his teeth closing on her throat, "I will never stop."
It lays between them like a tragedy, this promise, but she closes her eyes nonetheless.
She wakes in the morning and finds the imprint of his mouth on her skin like a brand.
She wears it as finer jewelry than--but sharply akin to--golden chains with red gems sharp enough to cut the unwary open.