well behaved women

Title: Wanderer
Fandom: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Author: shiegra
Rating: PG13/R
Pairing: Nuada/Nuala

Prompt: 30. Body calligraphy/painting



The marks that his battles left carved on her skin fascinated him.

They always had, reaching back to the days when they walked in the same halls with impunity. Now there was an illicit quality to each touch that had nothing to do with their shared blood.

Nonetheless, Nuala left her father's halls sometimes in shadows and sometimes in the broad daylight. This day she abandoned her well-worn halls in the warmth of dying afternoon, wearing a heavy cloak drawn about her shoulders and hair, her head lowered.

When she reached for him on days like that, she felt him like a brand against her skin, tugging her closer. And so she left her people's diminishing trails for the grimy concrete and stone of human cities, feeling the pulse of their transient lives against her heart, closing herself firmly off from a mirror of his hatred for them.

Down under the city, away from the smell of choking smog and into the smell of corrosion and secrets, the scent of chill and danger. It had taken her too long to be able to walk again; she wondered if he had healed faster. Maybe he had simply been more determined to find his feet.

She recognized faces in the shadows, the monstrous and the rejected, those that hunted the outskirts of society by choice or chance. And they knew her, as well; Wink turned his head to track her movements when she lifted one hand mutely, passing on.

Distantly aware of her own resentment, as unjust and childlike as it may have been. He abandoned me for this.

He waited for her in the dark hollow of his rooms, with his weapons laid out before him, standing with his back to her. Nuala watched the curve of his shoulderblades for a long moment, her hands still at her sides. She did not need to say his name.

She did anyway, her voice a soft echoing murmur in the room's hush, and he turned too deliberately to her, watching her with dark inscrutable eyes. "Sister," he answered, each word like small stones dropped into a still dark pool, spreading through and around them. "What brings you here?"

"You have not been well," Nuala said quietly.

His smile was an eerie twist, and he swept a low bow. "Shall I apologize?"

She walked across the cool damp stone and his eyes flickered to her feet--they were hidden behind the cloak, and he must be wide open to feel even the faint bite of rough chill at her soles.

"I feared for you," she said softly, and he slowly lifted one hand, eyes returning to her face with a consuming intensity, and cupped her face.

This was the moment she could take, but her fingers hesitated for a long moment. Then she drew in a harsh breath, jerked her chin up, and unfastened the cloak.

He made a sound low in his throat and something passed through him, almost like a shiver. "Nuala..." he said, and his voice drew out her name, turning it into a caress.

She'd drawn each scar in ash-dark accentuation, a paint that glazed her skin with darkness, and cast her in midnight shadows. And she wore nothing to hide it. His fingers traced, so briefly, the line of her ribs, gracing up to the underside of her breast--she shuddered--and tracing over her collarbone.

Her lips parted and he mirrored her, eyes brilliant on her face.

"What did you come here for, Nuala?" His voice was a whisper and he caressed her face, fingers sliding against her skin. "Why have you done this?"

She lifted her hands to take his, trembling fanning out over her skin from somewhere inconquerably deep inside, and brought them down her body again, to rest against the newest scar; the one that cupped the curve of her hip and trailed up over her belly. The skin was still exquisitely sensitive and the faintest flicker of pain was drowned out by the pleasure of contact.

Nuala closed her eyes. She did not need them to see him. "Once you asked me no questions, for you possessed all of my answers."

His breath sighed out on a ragged exhale.

"Brother," she whispered, eyes fluttering open, "what between us has changed?"

He kissed her, hands skimming up her body to slide into her hair, and she stepped into his body, the roughness of his clothing and remnants of armor digging into her thighs, breasts and shoulders. "Nuala," he murmured, and pulled her against him until she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist.

He took her to his mess of blankets under the shadows, and the paint spread into abstract lines, as though he brought the night over her skin.