well behaved women

Title: A Fair Distance
Fandom: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Nuada/Nuala
5 – Hellboy – Nuada/Nuala – UST pre-pairing, must be mutual

A/N: I'm always iffy about my ability to create UST, but I did try my best. Critique welcome.



He found her neither in the arching halls nor heady revels of their people, but walking the leaf-scattered paths that were once majestic and alive with the magic of the earth, and now fallen into the beautiful decay that marked human encroachment of the land.

Nuala knew the moment he approached, her skin coming alive with his presence. He wore armor when she turned to him, moving without sound across the ground, and she went to meet him under the heavy boughs.

"You have left their company, sister," he said softly. He did not touch her, dipping only in a courteous bow, but he did not need to. His very presence sang under her skin, a deep golden heat that was a precursor to touch, recognizable from childhood.

When they were young, it was second nature to turn to each other; to reach out. There was nothing more natural than the other's touch. They rarely slept without each other.

It was only as they grew, older and away from each other, that this warmth became not the precursor of touch but the substitute for it. Nuala bent her own head, felt his dark eyes heavy on her as she rose. "I have," she said softly. "As have you, my brother. Do not tell me you bore of our celebrations."

A thin smile, too grim. "Perhaps not."

"Will you walk with me, then?" She did not need to ask, and she saw it in the flicker of his eyes. The illusion of distance, she thought, but stepped back, her skirts moving with a sound like the sighing wind. He followed her with the silent, animal grace he had grown into after beginning to train in the arts of war, tracking her footsteps with wordless focus.

She could feel the earth beneath her. Days like these, heady with dying summer, she didn't even need to reach out, to open herself, to feel it like a golden heartbeat echoing up through her feet, making her skin feel a thin sheath for such life. She did not realize she had made a sound until Nuada reached for her the way he always had when they were young, stopping his fingers a hairsbreadth from her face.

She saw the hesitation in him before he spoke. When they were children he had often spent the whole day and night pressed against her; it was only through their bond that he could feel the earth so intensely, and it made the energy echo between them two-fold. But how long had it been since they had touched with so little hesitation--with so much innocence?

Nuala leaned into his touch, letting her own smaller hands curl around his wrist, fingers curving against the smooth press of skin over bone, feeling the shift of muscles as he turned his hand to cup her jaw.

The sensation ricocheted between them and she made a small, helpless sound and shivered, opening herself and allowing the heartbeat of the world to draw up through her. Through them for the first time in years.

He caught her when her knees might have buckled, her skirts folding around both their legs, his hand against the small of her back. Her fingers caught against his armor, it pressed hard against her belly as the contact filled them both with something neither of them will name.

Nuala did not know how long they stood their together before she stepped back, drawing away from him, almost hesitating to look him in the eye. "I should...return." She finally said quietly.

"Perhaps you should." Before she could turn and walk away from him he reached out and his fingers caught her hair, sliding a long section over his palm. Nuala stopped breathing, her eyes almost ghosting shut, and swayed toward the touch.

In the end, it was he who turned and vanished into the trees. Nuala did not fool herself that he left her completely, and she stood there in the path for long moments with her hands pressed to her stomach and her eyes closed, feeling his eyes on her, before she moved to return to the others.