One thing Nuru knew was that being stealthy was not his forte.
In his white jacket and backpack and lightning-bolt painted sneakers, he found himself in the vicinity of where Stille had claimed to live. He had committed the comment to memory, drawing maps behind his eyelids of how to get there, what the place should look like, of all the twists and turns it took to get there. As the sun began to burn a path of falling to the horizon in the sky, he found himself on the streets, outside a home that looked like the one described and he stared at the skylight-adorned building for about ten minutes.
Part of him was terrified, part of him over-excited. It could be the house or it could be a carefully fabricated lie. He wasn't certain and Nuru hated being wrong, so, he took to walking around the building, around the block, investigating the roofs of the other homes, looking for similar skylights or other things that could line up to what Stille told him, just to be certain. Instead of looking normal, he looked like a burglar, glancing around at a potential target and nothing like a suave young man who had all the directional skill in the world.
She had watched him with those lighted pupils from the skylight, starburst eyes following his skybird shadow as it paced
to and fro, higher and higher
as the lights dropped further and made that shadow long, made it hungry. She wondered what he was looking for, what kind of a marker would signal that this was the place he was looking for.
Did she have to leave a bra on the doorknob? A trail of panties down the alleyway?
Half naked, midriff bare and shirt so thin the night air was ravenous for the curve of her, Stille pushed open her skylight and leaned out, peering at him with those cardinal lips, sinner sweet, curled at their flighted corners.
"Hey there pretty boy, you lookin' to break and enter?"
She was a spectre in the half-dusk, lit by the reflection of the harvest moon along the rooftop.
"Kinda. Just making sure I don't end up in the wrong bedroom." He took a moment, licked his lips and righted his back. "I doubt anyone else around here is as good on the eyes as you."
He made his way closer to her, the house, the skylight she was half-twisted out of and he looked at the door he had stared at for so long.
"I seriously hope you haven't been watching me too long…"
"Ten, fifteen minutes?" She canted her head, resting her elbows on the sill of the skylight, chin on her knuckles in that play at something innocent. "Long enough for the sun to go down, short enough to be accurate without a watch."
The thief got up on her hands and leaned out further, the light wind catching her whisperlight hair, trespassing her shoulders, her neck.
"You can come up if you want, but I understand if you wanna see if my door changes colours or somethin'."
"I don't doubt your ability to be a magician, but, I think I rather come in." Nuru laughed. "Is it open?" He pressed his hand to the door and turned himself awkwardly to look up at her.
She looked beautiful, but, he tried to shove those thoughts to the back of his mind before they got ahead of him.
"Nope." A clipped reply as that devil mouth smirk augmented her voice, even as she disappeared from view. Her shirt fell from the awning soon after with a bell like string of beckoning words.
"But I hear you got wings. So come."
Nuru smirked, looking up at the hollow left by the girl. Of course he had wings, embedded half under his skin in a pair of long, tailored silver-white jet propulsors that were concealed under his white jacket. Instead of looking like he could fly, he looked mostly wide-shouldered. Stretching backwards, he undid a few snaps and let the modifications attached to his body out.
If the window was the only way he was going to get in, he would get in. Under them and flush against his back, he pressed and without a stutter he shifted from floor to air and to sky, following the trail Stille left behind. It didn't take much to get to the window and he slid through, peeking his head in first before the rest of his body followed.
And he found her in her mess of pillows, her bedroom more a nest of creature comforts than anything organized. Jewelry hung from little hooks on the walls, faded scraps of photographs and shreds of preserved glossy magazine pages pasted to the walls of this corner or that. The skylight was angled over the makeshift bedroom, floor covered in pillows and blankets, soft things, warm things, letting the moonlight wash over her skin even as the flickering tongue of candlelight warmed her flesh.
"I was wondering when you were gonna come." She invited him inside with the touch of her hand to his wrist, closing the skylight behind him. Unaffected by her partial nudity, she followed him with her eyes.
She could've been prey but that was a predator look on her face, and she bit her lip to stifle the smile of how happy she was that he kept his promise.
"Thought maybe you forgot about me."
"I have a good memory and an even better sense of duty…" Nuru slunk his body down into the comforts, shrugging the jacket he wore off to be discarded amongst the blankets and cushions. "You don't tell a beautiful girl you'll be somewhere and not show up. I was raised a good boy."
He watched her as she moved, drank in the curve of her shoulders and the way her lips caught under her teeth. The lighting made it better, all shadows dancing over her skin. Under his jacket, Nuru wore a plain black tank top and a thin chain that glittered when the light touched it.
"This place is beautiful." His eyes wandered to the skylight. "And the best view I can imagine, honestly."
"Duty, he says." That coy drawl twisted in the air on a hook between them as she pulled herself close, the softness of her flesh, the sharpness of her bone stark against him. Pale eyed and wan, she took him in,
eyes like coal with expectation in his hands, nervous fingers & question mouth.
Every spot of skin was punctuation and she read him like braille, felt him like a blind girl to commit him to her memory of body heat, of pores, of breaks in the flesh, of ignition switches, of his machine anatomy.
She found beneath his shirt the body his mother made for him. She found along his back the engine that man pieced together. When she drew him closer, bid him begged him closer, she examined his face with closed eyes, nose and chin and eyelashes the method of study in such close proximity.
But even here, where he couldn't see, the teasing nature of that ibis tongue, curious and sharp, relayed the grin on those lips.
"I bet you tell all the girls how pretty they are."
"I usually spend all my time talking to machines. Let's call this an exception." Nuru's voice slid down, almost a whisper but still maintained it's air of laughter. "A wonderful exception, you feel much greater than a machine."
He worked hard to keep his breath from betraying him, his heart from leaping around inside of him. The whole experience was heavy. The richness of her room, the delight of her body against his. He found her skin in gentle fingertips.
"And you are endlessly more fascinating."
"Not even a nanite," she whispered, almost proud, eyes flitting open to look at, into, through him, as she tugged his shirt up and away from him. "There a lot of girls in your sky, Nuru?"
Her words teased against his mouth as she made the softest of contact, their bodies silhouette in the dimness of the night.
Nuru pressed himself closer. Her skin, against his skin, felt less like electric and more like a current warmed over, consistent and comforting. He looked at her, brought his finger to her cheek and brushed it back and forth.
"There are enough. They're lovely women, but, why spoil the moment and talk about them? I came down to see you and you know by nature I'm not the happiest when closer to the ground."
He kept his hand there, hovering.
"But this is good. I like this."
She kissed him, softly, then-- a far cry from the harsh statement their lips had made in the marketplace, rough and tumbled. That kiss had scraped knees, grass stains, playful and malevolant.
This kiss was lingering, a shared breath, trembling for something, anything,
if only for the body heat.
Just seeing if when you fly, you fly back to someone or if you only take flight for me.
And she knew this was nothing-- she knew he wasn't hers. She didn't belong to anyone, especially not this almost stranger she was straddling on her bedfloor.
But something about the illusion about the lie
silent in her chest
made her body ache for more of him.
"Yeah," she murmured into the hollow of his mouth, straight to his tongue and snaked down to fill his lungs, to fill his belly with the taste of her, the thought of her,
her.
"Perfect."
The breath pulled from him was full, shivery like the way his entire body felt. Nuru refused to pull away, found her hair with his fingers and laced them there. Anything but tight, but, enough to keep her to him, to silently refuse her leaving his side for the moment.
It was a delicious feeling, being wanted by the girl, sinking slowly into the world she had created for herself. In the dizzy haze of her, he could admit to wanting to stay, to never want to find his legs or wings again. He kissed her more times than he could count, feeling his body rock into hers on instinct.
If it felt like flying, he said nothing, but, continued. The romance of it all was endless.
"You are," he mumbled, opening his eyes between kisses to look at her. "And I fear you may have caught me, just like I worried about."
Another kiss, another sigh against her mouth.
"No worries now, though."
None.
She took him to the ground, then, heart fluttering hummingbird fast as it thumped on the inside of her ribcage, wingtips tickling her bones as it thrashed to escape her chest. She stripped herself bare, laid herself open and vulnerable to his perusals.
Enchanted by his mouth, succumbing to his tongue, bound by the taste of him and the threads of saliva that kept her lips parted,
begging to be parted.
When she called his name, shaken and shiverred and wet with the dew of the morning to come, it echoed in the hollow night rolled through that midnight hour mouth empty & barren
envying the heat that clouded those windows.
The widow eventide had nothing on that pale whip of a girl and the grip those moonlight fingers had on Nuru's machine body as he ripped through her sky was nothing compared to the hold of the flesh body he dared to claim
& claim & claim & claim.
Even the softest crack of her voice, the softest shudder under her pale whispers tied a knot in him that tightened
with the flutter of her lashes
and the white heat of those innocent lingering kisses
that rendered their breathing an aggregate function.
Everything felt like it left Nuru, drained of him in spit and sweat, soaked down into the comfortable pillows and blankets. His skin burned with sensation and every part of him either tingled or felt hollow. There was a sweet numbness, a very sweet numbness that followed. A feeling he wasn't completely aware of, in control of.
He was languid but still trying to maintain himself, maintain his grip on the girl he had no interest in letting go of. Her taste echoed in his mouth, like her name, being repeated over and over again.
She was an exhibit he couldn't bear to tear his gaze from and so he took to whispering the chorus again.
"Stille, Stille, Stille…"
The slightest hints of daylight had begun to creep into the horizon, cooling the heat of their combined skins as the candles burned out. The slightest of murmurs, the softest of movements rustled the girl, to stir her till she was as close as she could be to her refrain, the softly repeating utterance of her name.
He tasted of salt now. She could taste him. All of him. Through her entire body, taste him. And as she nuzzled into the hollow of his throat, pressed the bridge of her nose into the sharp angle below his jaw,
she exhaled (a silent prayer that this moment could last past the sound of the rising sun).
"I'd say we could watch the sunrise," she mumbled, dry, with a laugh and the tuck of her chin. "But all I wanna do is watch you breathe."
"I'm okay without the sunrise for one day." Nuru licked his lips, reminiscent of her, but didn't say a word of it. "I can always describe it to you in painful detail." He reached up to put his hand in her hair for the fiftieth time and it still brought a silent thrill to his receptors.
"You must think I'm cute if you're willing to do something so monotonous…"
"Maybe you wore me out and now I don't even have the strength to lift my head." Her teasing words were honey slow, peppered with those inadvertant word kisses along his temple, along his cheek. She could feel his heartbeat in her belly.
This was clarity.
Hardly the reaction she had to her typical one night stands.
"You can stay. Lay with me if you want. Sleep. Or just watch." Her fingers played against his lips as she studied the way they came together, studied the shape of his teeth when he breathed in. She still found her body tangled with his and she made no effort to release the knots. "I think you're beautiful."
"I had no plans on going anywhere."
The machines can wait was a secondary statement not spoken but were an understood undercurrent to the way he held her. His smile was soft and he took the compliment with ease.
"Tell me a secret. Just one. Nothing I can tell by looking around." He grinned at her, his whole face showing it. "Because I can already see you're a packrat with a fascination for the shining things."
"Packrat?" she repeated, mock indignant. "I prefer magpie."
The little thief shifted until she rested atop the mechanic, fingers finding his and lacing with them.
"I don't keep many secrets." Quiet words, darkened in the morning. She was usually all playful whispers, boastful words. But he'd asked-- and there was no shame in what she did, what she always did.
"You're not the first I've invited into my bed," she murmured, staring him down with those bright blue eyes as she kissed him. "But you are the first I didn't want to go."
It might have been two secrets. It might not have been a secret at all.
"You've gotta gimme one too, you know."
"Oh, do I?" Nuru kissed her back, but, smiled as he pulled away from her. "I guess that's fair." His eyes closed in thought, and partially in pleasure of the moment. The girl's light weight atop him felt good.
"Normally, I only like things that feel like flying. Speeding things. Fast things…" He ran his hands down her side, smiled as he kept them tethered to her waist. "But, you know, I'm the kind of boy who can admit to being wrong about those things sometimes…"
The girl sat up, straddled across his hips with her hands on his chest.
"I don't know a whole lot about flying," she said, energy roused with the briskness of her laugh. "But I know a lot about running-- mostly getting chased, usually getting away."
She leaned down again, nose to nose with the boy she had trapped.
"I don't think I'd mind if you decided to catch me."
"I think you're the one doing the catching here…" Nuru said, shifting his eyes from hers to her hands and back up again. "And you're doing a good job of it." He took a moment, a deep breath all for himself. "I don't want to go. In case you were wondering…"
It was all word games, sweetness coming in with the light, but, somewhere inside of him, it glimmered true. Instead of saying anything, though, he smiled. Kept smiling.
"I can tell," she confessed, scrunching up her nose. She wiggled her hips with a laugh before she slid down next to him once more, legs twined with his.
She stifled a yawn in his shoulder. Always, she was prepared to sprint, ready to hit the ground outside her window running if she so much as heard the floor creak under her. She was a light sleeper, high strung, always flighty, always prepared,
always afraid.
Sleepy lashes stole another gaze at the mechanic, the lover, the boy who said he wouldn't go. For a girl who didn't have the advantage of high ground, trust was a valuable commodity.
And for her to close her eyes in the arms of an almost stranger (much less a stranger now than an entire evening prior) was a gift.
"Are you tired?"
"Quite." Nuru admitted, leaning into her hair, smelling her as he breathed in. "Sleep a little with me?" His voice was low, gentle.
It was a question, but a question he already knew the answer to. Nuru figured it was worth saying anyway. Just to hear the answer, to hear the words. Something about it was nice.
"Mm," she murmured as she settled against him, closing her eyes trusting he would be there when she woke.
Another yawn.
"Yes."
A nuzzle.
"...yes."
And the usual itch of Nuru's wings died down as he settled. Disappeared into nothingness. A light kiss to her was a silent promise.