Darker Than Black, Amber/Hei, before I get any younger, 1/2
Hei never sees her coming. He never has - Amber has always been the one person whose actions he couldn't predict, whom he suspected he'd never understand. So he's surprised rather than shocked when she snatches him off the street, grabbing his hand and tugging him into a building he'd never given a second glance.
He didn't fight her then, not when he was deep in character, the killer lost beneath Li's harmless, passive demeanor. No, he let her pull him, following along. Only when they were alone did he let the mask drop, reaching for her with a purpose not even remotely gentle. "Where's -"
She cuts him off, shrugging out of his grip as though she were water, something impossible to hold no matter how tight the grip, and presses her lips to his.
It isn't a gentle kiss - it's hungry, almost desperate - demanding in a way he's never seen, at least not from Amber, who always appeared as harmless as Li, even to those who knew what she was. Maybe that's why he doesn't push her away, why he just stares when she finally releases him.
"Please," she says, her voice soft. "While I still have time left." Her smile is sweet, but her eyes are so sad that all his protests vanish, blown away on the wind that is Amber. She's always made a mess of his intentions; he shouldn't be surprised that this time is no exception.
Hei knows that anyone else would tell him the sadness isn't real, that it must be a lie, at best a mere echo, a memory of something she'd once felt. Contractors don't have emotions, after all. But he doesn't believe that. Never believed it before and now he knows the truth of it, knows he wasn't just fooling himself all along. He's a Contractor now himself - who would know better than he?
So he doesn't help her, but he doesn't resist when Amber unbuttons his shirt, doesn't push her hands away when he feels them cool on his skin. Funny - he should feel tainted somehow, soiled by the touch of a traitor, but he doesn't.
Amber unfastens his pants, slides to her knees in front of him, and even then Hei does nothing, just leans back, eyes half-closed as he watches her, pink lips wrapped around him and eyes that always saw too much drifting shut, blond lashes nearly invisible against her pale cheeks. He stares, drinking in the sight, oddly detached even as the movements of her mouth and tongue evoke the pleasure he so rarely feels.
"Amber," he breathes, the name more than half a groan, and she stands, pressing a finger over his lips and shaking her head, denying him even this word, this name that isn't really hers, yet is the only one he knows.
She didn't look any younger to him, no difference that he can see, but when he finally touches her, he can feel it, sense the lessening of years in the deceptive slenderness of the body he bares to the touch of the dusty sunlight that makes her hair gleam like gold in the dimness.
There's nowhere in this abandoned building to lay her down, nowhere but the hard, dirty floor, so he opts for the wall instead, lifting her slight weight easily and pushing her against it in one decisive move. As she clings to him, as he thrusts into her hard and fast, shoving her roughly into a surface no less grimy and uncomfortable than the one he rejected, Hei can feel the expression on his face change, the mask he wears as his face finally shed as though it were something as easily removed as the more tangible one he wears as the Black Reaper. Here, now, between the two of them, there is no more need for secrets, no need to pretend. He knows the expression he wears now even though he has never seen it, knows it for the one he wears when he kills, when no one can see his true face.
If Amber knows, and he's sure she must, she gives no sign, pushing back into him eagerly, her breath hot against his neck as she pants. But then she has never been afraid of him, never had that edge of barely-concealed fear in her eyes that so many had when they looked at the face of the man who had killed so many without even the gift of a Contract.