[Fate/stay night] Something Guarded
Title: Something Guarded
Fandom: Fate/stay night
Pairing: Rin/Archer
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 8,195
Notes: Unlimited Blade Works route.
Summary: Some months after the end, Archer can't stay away from Rin's side any longer. It's as simple as that.
It's funny, Rin thinks, because he shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be here, leaning so insolently against the wall of her apartment in London, smirking at her like he never left. She wants to slap him; she wants to stomp on his booted feet, dig her fingers into his hair and pull it rather than tousle it. And she wants to do more than that, but there isn't any time. For once, she can't waste her breath with him on circling around the subject, so she'll just have to do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be said.
"Are you finished making that face, Archer?" she asks, holding her head high, and she realizes that she might have to banter back and forth a little bit first before her courage is intact enough. It's all right, so long as it's only a little.
"No, I don't think so," he says, tilting his head a little to show the smirk off better. "I rather like the face you make when I do it."
Oh, and she's blushing at that. Why would she blush at such a pointless, stupid thing for him to say? She shakes her head furiously and seizes the topic at hand without further delay. "Then you'll like this better! I, Tohsaka Rin--" She swallows. "I've decided that it's acceptable for me to change my mind."
He raises his brows. "Isn't that just a way of saying you're admitting you made a mistake? Wow. I never thought I'd see the day."
"I'm not admitting to any mistakes," she snaps, forcing herself to keep her face from heating up again. "I'm not, so don't get any such ideas in your head. I'm only saying that once, I thought it would be all right if I let you disappear. But now, I've had some more months to think about it, and over time, I've changed my mind. That's all."
He folds his arms over his chest. The smirk is gone; his face is blank now. "Really. What are you going to do about it, Master?"
It hurts. It hurts to hear him call her that again. She pushes past the hurt. "This time, I won't let you disappear. Contract with me again, Archer. That's a command, from Tohsaka Rin, who was your Master."
There's a pause, while her heart threatens to jump out of her chest, and then finally he lets out the smallest of sighs. "Very well--or that's what I'd say if I could. But Rin, the Grail is gone. Saber destroyed it, or don't you remember? There is no way for you to take me back as a Servant."
And there: he's said it. The thing she's been thinking about since the start. She can't help it, but her cheeks are definitely heating up and going red again. "That's where you're wrong, Archer. There may be no way for you to be a Servant again, but I can make you my familiar."
"Oh?" The smirk is back, and she realizes to her great horror that he knows what she's talking about. He's not going to say it, of course. He's going to make her say it. Damn him! "I have no idea what you're talking about, Rin. How is my Master going to take me back?"
She almost yells at him and curses him for his lie. She almost throws something at him. But she refuses to sink that low, and so she merely balls her hands up into fists and glares at him. "You know as well as I do, Archer. We have to connect our magic circuits so we can..." Her tongue fails her. She finds her next words getting weak, becoming almost a whisper. "So we can share prana." Her face must be as red as her shirt now, as red as his coat.
He continues to stare at her with perfect practiced blankness. "And how do we do that, Rin?"
This time, she does punch him. She slams a fist into his stomach--not that it has any effect at all except to make him blink in surprise. "Idiot! You idiot!" She can't possibly blush any harder. "You know perfectly well! So why don't you...?"
But he only looks at her. Her heart's beating in her chest like a furious bird trying to break the cage of her ribs. It's so awful; she needs to do something about it. She needs to start this. She tries to make herself spread the fingers of the hand that punched him to touch him in a gentler fashion, but all she succeeds in doing is pulling it back from him and giving him an intent stare of her own. At least, she wants it to be an intent stare, but she thinks it might come off as embarrassed and quizzical instead. It's been months since she saw him, and she still can barely hold herself together around him. "Fine. I'll show you." And she leans forward--
--but she can't. She can't bring herself to lean up, to grab his shoulders and pull his face down for a kiss to start everything they need to do to be Master and Servant again. The thought makes her ache too hard, right where her ribs meet each other in the center of her chest. That's the worst part. This isn't like it was with the boy who's the person this man once was. This is Archer, and she wants this, even if he had disappeared before she truly realized it. Is that why she can't let him go this time? She can't meet his eyes. For just a moment, for just one terrible moment, Tohsaka Rin realizes she cannot meet the eyes of the man she loves.
And then his hands are on her hips, on her waist. His hands are sliding up her sides until they're just shy of under her breasts, just barely not touching her there, and she has to stifle a gasp. "You did a pretty bad job of showing me," he mutters, and then he lifts her effortlessly so that they're face to face, their eyes level. "Can you do it now, Rin?"
She realizes that the smirk is long gone, and there is the strangest uncertainty in his eyes just as there is in hers. No, just as there was in hers, because it's gone now. Seeing him like this, she knows that she can do it. Rin reaches out one hand and touches his cheek. "Archer," she says softly. His face is as hot as she imagined hers was. He's almost blushing too.
It's all right now. She leans in and presses her lips against his. He doesn't quite yield to her kiss, but she feels him press back a little in the moment before the contact breaks. She looks into his eyes one more time as she draws back, and she can't decipher what's in them. So she doesn't think too much on it. She'll do this. She leans forward against him, throws her arms around his neck, presses her cheek to his, and says into his ear, "You know. We need to have sex."
And he laughs. She feels it ripple faintly through him and bites back simultaneous anger and desire as he speaks. "My Master is such a subtle woman. All right, then, Rin." Is that the slightest hitch in his voice? She's not sure. She imagines that it is. "Let's do it."
He's still holding onto her; her feet still dangle off the ground. There's not much she can do right now except try to remember where you're supposed to kiss at a time like this. It's not like her one experience in the matter so far has exactly prepared her. She could have lain there like a stone then and Shirou would still have seen and felt the girl he was so smitten with, and not cared one bit so long as he could imagine she was happy with what he was doing. Archer's beyond that, and she can't get away with lying in his arms and sulking.
Rin starts to go forward anyway, to kiss the ear she just spoke into and the cheek her face is leaning into, but he breaks the stalemate first. His hand on her right side runs down her body suddenly and slips under her skirt. This time she does gasp, as he takes firm hold of her from behind. "Archer--!"
"What?" He sounds almost annoyed, and she realizes: he doesn't even know how it feels to her, for him to touch her there, to hold her like that. He was just shifting his grip to free his other hand, which now lets go and moves to start undoing the tails in her hair.
She fights through the rush of lust like nothing she's ever felt (maybe once or twice when she looked at Saber--but no, not quite, even then) to scold him, because it has to be done. "You can't...you can't just take hold of a girl there without warning. It's not allowed."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Master." Even as he speaks, he dips his head, and as he pauses in his words, he kisses her throat, then her collarbone. The fingers of his left hand comb through her freed hair. She tightens her arms around his shoulders and struggles with the temptation to bite him. "I wasn't aware that your ass was sacred."
That settles it. She bites down on the side of his chin, hard enough to leave marks, and feels him suppress a shudder. "Mine is. Yours isn't. Hey, Archer...?"
He tenses warily. "What is it, Rin?"
"Girls can wear something called a strap-on, you know." She grins, still leaning against him. "I bet you could project one, if I ordered you to."
"You wouldn't do that, Rin." He's trying to contain himself, so she can't tell if he sounds alarmed or excited at the prospect.
"I would." She finds herself flushing again. "I will, someday, so be prepared for it, all right? But, um...not today. Today--"
He sighs. "Don't even say it."
"What?"
His hand goes still in her hair. "Something like, 'This time I want you inside me.' That'll just be embarrassing."
"But you wanted me to!" she accuses him. "Anyway, I wasn't going to say anything like that! Um, I was just going to say, we need to do it the other way this time to be sure our magic circuits will connect properly. That's all."
"Right." It's her turn to smirk. She's still smirking when he tugs her head back so he can look at her face again, and the flash of irritation that shows in his eyes means he saw it. "What?"
"Nothing. No, not nothing. Just you, Archer." She unwinds her arms from his neck, places her hands around his chin, and pulls him to her for a kiss. This time it lasts, and it deepens: his mouth opens against hers, and before he can beat her to it she puts her tongue in there. His hand underneath her skirt tightens on her, and his other arm drops to wrap tightly around her back. She's flush against him, her breasts pressing tightly into the hard muscle below his shoulders, and it's really starting to trouble her how turned on she is to be this close to him, to be touched by him and to be touching him in these ways.
And something occurs to her. She frees a hand from his face, reaches down, grabs him between his legs, and gives an experimental squeeze.
He breaks the kiss abruptly. In fact, he nearly hits his head against the wall in his alarm. "Rin, you can't--!"
"What? Take hold of a guy there without warning?" She smirks again. Under her fingers, beyond the fabric of his pants, he's hard. It satisfies her, to know he wants this as she does. "I was just checking whether you're--you know, ready yet, Archer. But if you really want me to do more..." She fumbles a bit, but after a moment manages to move her hand to where she's pretty sure what she's cupping is his balls. "I'm sure I could."
"That's entirely all right, Rin," he says, and his breath is awfully short, his expression most definitely alarmed even as it's turned on.
"Is it? Then put me down and take off your pants."
It's like the old command spell is still on him. He all but drops her, and she stumbles and falls against him. For a moment she finds herself captivated: her head lands against his chest, and just above it, his heart beats frantically, just as frantically as hers. Then the sound of his waistband snapping open and falling to the floor brings her back to reality, and she pushes herself off of him and takes a step back.
But there's nothing for her to see yet. He's still undoing the straps of armor on his legs. She crosses her arms over her chest and tries not to show the extent of her eagerness. "Archer, just how complicated is your outfit? This is ridiculous."
"It's armor," he says, suddenly defensive. "Did you expect it to be simple?"
"Of course I did! But I guess I shouldn't have. It's stupid armor for a stupid guy, isn't it? Yes, I should have expected that."
"Careful," he says, his fingers pausing on the straps. "I might just stop this right now and disappear."
Her heart flutters in her throat. "No, don't--" And before she realizes it, she's taken him seriously, and all the fear is showing on her face. Before she can shut it down again and turn it into a glare for his frivolity, he's seen it, and he's stopped.
"It's all right, Master," he says quietly, his arms falling back to his side for the moment. "I won't do that right now."
"You idiot," she still says. "You complete idiot. Take off your clothes faster!" And she reaches up, snaps the fastenings of his jacket open, and yanks it off of him. She means to do more, but the sight of his bare arms and shoulders arrests her, and she feels her face starting to burn again.
He finally undoes the last strap of armor on his pants. "You're forgetting something, Rin," he says as he shrugs out of them.
"What?" She's distracted by the sight of his bare legs, and by the realization that he's wearing nothing but the chestplate of his stupid, stupid armor now. It's hard to focus on what he's saying.
He unfastens that last piece of armor, loosens it, and pulls it off over his head. He's in nothing but shorts now and she feels like her face will catch fire. How is he staying so calm, when she was certain a minute ago he was as captivated by her as she is by him? How is he still talking? Because he is. "You are still fully dressed. When do you intend to take your clothes off?"
If she wasn't blushing as hard as she possibly could a moment ago, she is now. Rin juts out her chin, feels her hair flounce behind her even undone. "I don't! You'll be taking them off for me as soon as you're done with your own." She folds her arms over her chest, struggling against the sudden strange realization that in a minute there will be nothing on that chest to protect her from his sharp eyes. That he'll be able to take in the sight of her breasts, her belly, and what's below--no, how is her head not exploding now? She tries not to stammer. "After all, you'll be my Servant again when this is over, so you should act like it."
"I see." And he grins. But it comes to her that it's a strange expression--there's something unstable at the edge of it. What is it? It takes a moment longer to hit her. Nervousness. He's afraid of something.
"Archer--" She reaches out to him, her own fear gone. She catches his hands as they reach for his shorts. "What are you scared of?" And she's asked it before she can stop herself.
He looks at her with an expression that hurts like she imagines swords might. He's so lost, somewhere inside his own head that only he's been, no matter how many other people he's shown it to in battle. No. She's been there too. The dreams--
"It's okay," she says quickly. "You don't have to tell me. I was just asking to ask, because it's the proper thing to do when you see something like that, isn't it? Like the way you looked at me. I just--" She sounds like such a fool. But she realizes what she has to know. "Archer, are you afraid to be my Servant again?"
He closes his eyes, and before she knows it the grin has gentled into a smile. "You are pretty scary, Rin. But it's all right." He reaches out for her and pulls her into his arms; she has to stop herself from shivering against the warmth of his bare chest. "You must know by now I'm a fool sometimes, so it shouldn't surprise you that I'm not scared to be your Servant again." He doesn't say what it is he was scared of, there when he teased her about her clothes while taking off his own. But she allows that. It will be one thing she won't force him to do.
He kisses the top of her head, and she's not sure what to say. That is, she's not sure, until he reaches down, grabs the bottom of her shirt, and pulls it over her head.
She steps back with a hurried little yelp. "Archer--! I said after you were finished taking off yours. After!"
"It's close enough," he says with a careless shrug, dropping her shirt on the floor. "I guess I've lost the knack of being perfectly obedient."
"What do you mean?" She draws herself up to be as fierce as possible. "Don't delude yourself. You never had such a knack. But I'll beat it into you this time for sure."
He only grins at her as he lowers himself into a kneeling crouch. But as cool as he tries to keep his expression, his eyes are bright and eager; she can see that much. When he reaches a hand out to touch the bottom of her face, his fingers hesitate before stroking her. And his other hand, it moves around to her back--
--and fumbles at the clasp of her bra.
Strange. That's strange. She imagined that he would undo it in a single fluid gesture, that the dark lace would fall from her breasts instantly and expose them to that piercing gaze, and in the space between them, in that instant, something would be slain. But all that happens is his fingers scrabble more and more awkwardly at the strap at her back. "Archer, could it be...?"
He looks down in embarrassment, his free hand pulling away from her face. "What?"
Rin feels herself regaining the upper hand, right when she least expected it. "Could it be you've never taken off a girl's bra before?"
He scowls. "Of course I have. It was simpler than yours."
"'It'? Not 'they'? Only one? Seriously, this isn't at all what I expected!" She's almost laughing at him. But she can't quite, because if she starts to let herself go enough to do so, she's distracted by his bare shoulders again, by the shape his unclothed legs make kneeling on the floor, and she goes silent. Finally, she just smiles. "Look at me, Archer."
He lifts his gaze with little reluctance. She nods, then reaches behind her back, gently pulls his hand away, and undoes the clasp herself. Rin takes a breath and lets her bra fall to the floor. He looks at her, wide-eyed; for a moment; for just that moment, she sees another familiar face. Then he smiles, and it's different enough that the illusion, if it counts as an illusion, is gone.
Archer sets his hands on her shoulders, just next to her neck, and he leans forward. She reaches out to bury her fingers in his hair, and he kisses her breasts. His lips are rougher than she imagined, but every touch from his mouth makes her nearly start to shake. She's achingly aware of his hands now resting on her belly not far from her hips. It's a little embarrassing how she reacts to him; shouldn't she be stoic and tease him more? And yet...
He hesitates too much. She's seen the desire on his face, felt it underneath those shorts that are increasingly annoying her, so why is he holding back? Why does he only brush his mouth over her nipples and kiss the arc of the side of her breasts? She touches her fingers to his cheek, and he's still hot beneath them. If she listens, she can hear a ragged edge to his breathing. So why won't he bite and sigh and grab at her, why won't her pick her up and nearly throw her to the bed before she orders him to stop?
It's intolerable. She'll have to take charge. "This isn't working! Archer, stand up."
He pulls away. "At some point," he complains, "you must wonder if you're the one doing something wrong, Rin. After all, I may not be the expert you for some reason imagined--" She tries not to blush again at that wretched insinuation. "But I do have more experience than you." All the same, he gets to his feet, looking down at her now, and there's definitely lust in his expression even if he's trying to hide it behind nonchalance.
So it's all right, it's all right that she then steps forward, rises onto her toes, and kisses the first place where she feels his throat become soft and vulnerable. She wants to linger there, losing herself in him, not worrying about what's to come, but all the feeling uncurling between her thighs drives her to keep going. Still on tiptoe, still nuzzling around his collarbone, she grabs his shorts and pulls them down before he can protest.
He drags in a startled breath.
"Well, you were doing a bad job of taking them off yourself," she mutters, trying and failing not to blush. She drops back down to her feet, then crouches a little, to pull the pants the rest of the way down. "Ugh! Why did I think it would look better this time? It's still the most terrible thing! How does any boy ever get in bed with a girl?"
She's not looking at his face, but she can still practically feel Archer roll his eyes. "You're really lucky I want to be your Servant again, Rin. That sort of comment makes a guy want to stop doing this."
"Liar," she says, quickly looking up to make sure he is lying--and that he isn't. It was only a joke, right? But still, hearing him say that he wants to be her Servant again--it's gratifying. It makes her feel warm in a different way than touching him does. "You're way too far to stop now. I can tease you however I like and you'll still beg me for it, won't you?"
He smirks. "Don't count on that so much. Are you going to try?"
She doesn't answer. She only grabs his hip with one hand, crouches, leans forward, and wraps her free hand around his shaft. He tenses, but she can't let herself revel in that too much just yet. No, she has bigger plans. She takes a breath, and she pulls the head of his cock into her mouth.
Rin can't see it, but she's sure the smirk vanishes. She can hear it vanishing with the sudden low noise he makes, somewhere between satisfied and still longing, and shocked all the way. It's hard to pay attention to sounds, though, because his cock feels a lot better against her tongue than it looks: heavy and hard and hot, filling the space between her lips that she shapes around it. That's better than she thought. Looks can be deceiving, after all.
But she's not sure what to do now. Take more of him into her mouth? What if she starts to gag? That'd ruin everything. Suck at the head and the start of the shaft before her fingers wrap around it? She's not sure what to do about her teeth so as not to hurt him. So carefully, she lowers herself a little more to the floor and tips her head back to search his face for clues.
What she sees there only confuses her more. His eyes are hazy with eager lust, that's to be expected, but why does he still look so surprised? Why does he reach out to stroke her face so tentatively, like he's afraid she's the one who'll vanish if they don't do this right? Why--
Something occurs to her that throws all thoughts of why out of her head: he's looking at her, and he sees her.
It's such an inconsequential thought, or it should be. But months ago when she desperately opened her body up to the boy named Shirou, he looked at her, and he didn't see her. He saw, in his excitement, just the girl he'd been pining for, the more experienced magus he looked up to, the school idol he so admired. She never really blamed him too much. She figured out a while ago how his stupid mess of a mind worked, and she liked him anyway, so what could she expect? And yet--
Archer's looking down at her, with her face flushed and her mouth full of him, and he's actually seeing her.
It's a good thing her mouth is full or she'd do something stupid like thank him. Instead she leans up and pushes his cock further into her mouth, then tries to use her tongue to best effect. Aren't you supposed to wrap it around the shaft or something like that? She can't seem to manage that, so she just licks at the head.
He rests his hand in her hair, surprise still glittering in his eyes, and she wants to take in all of him, makes his body belong to all of her. It's a great body, so she shouldn't need any more explanation than that, but that's not it, it's more the look on his face that's doing her in. Why should he look so shocked that she's enjoying this? Of course she's enjoying it. He's her Archer and it's natural that she'll have fun making him even more hers.
It's a good thing he stops her. It's a good thing that as she tries to lick him more, he curls his fingers into her hair and tugs her head back. It's a good thing that between rough breaths he manages to say, "Rin, enough of that for now." Because she's on the verge of trying to swallow him into her throat by that point, and she knows perfectly well that would only have resulted in gagging and sputtering and thorough awkwardness. But she was almost past resisting, almost past forcing herself not to do things she'd fail at.
Still flushed both with desire and with embarrassment, Rin opens her mouth and lets his cock slide away from her tongue and out from between her lips. She can see him trying to suppress a shiver, and it pleases her. "What? If you're telling me I'm doing something wrong, I'm just going to ignore you, because you've admitted already you don't have much experience either."
"That's not it." He moves his hand to one of her upper arms and tugs gently at her; she rises at his urging. Pulling her to him again, he puts his arms around her and rests them at the small of her back--no, not rests them. His fingers are moving. He undoes the catch of her skirt, this time without trouble, and lets it fall to the floor, so she's standing there, leaning against his naked body, herself in nothing but her socks and her panties. It shouldn't be possible, but her face heats up more.
Silence reigns between them for a few seconds. It's okay. She has her head pressed to his chest, where she can hear the beat of his heart, and it would almost make her cry with happy relief to know that heart might as well belong to her if not for how many other sensations are distracting her from tears. Her chest pushes against the taut muscles of his abdomen, which shift against her as he tries to keep his breath even, and instead of almost crying, she almost laughs at her foolishness earlier, in worrying what would happen when he saw her breasts bared to him. Stupid. She should have worried about how little control she could keep now that they're resting against his skin. She should worry now about how quick her breathing is starting to get, how hard it is to keep herself from shaking, how the strength in his arms around her excites her, how the heat of his cock pressing erect against her belly makes her feel and want to do intolerable things.
In all the worrying about that, she forgets about silence's reign, and she forgets to keep herself from breaking it. Before she's thought about it, words have escaped her mouth. "Who gave you permission to be so attractive? I didn't!"
He grabs her chin, and she's gratified to realize that his hold is firmer this time. She's managed to push him past those hesitations. She's made him desire her as she desires him. But still, he smirks at her maddeningly. "Wow, I'm already being a disobedient Servant again." He's trying to sound smug, but his breath is too uneven. He sounds eager again instead. "Are you sure you still want me, Rin?" And he almost succeeds in making that sound nonchalant. Almost. But then-- "After all that..."
Something breaks inside his voice in the middle of those three words. He's really asking her the question, not just making a stupid joke. He's standing there naked, and her in her socks and her lacy panties, with one hand on her back and the other holding her face. And he still wants to know if she's sure she wants him. "How...?" She means to snap at him angrily, but it comes out full of weary wonder instead. "How is my Archer so stupid?"
"Rin?" He's confused. Good. He should be confused right now. He should be confused as she pulls his hand off her face and strokes her fingers over it, feeling the calluses from the bowstring on his fingers. He shouldn't be prepared at all when she grabs that hand by the wrist and shoves it into her underpants.
He isn't. He stifles a yelp and hurriedly tries to pull his hand away, but he doesn't try very hard when he realizes how firmly she's holding him. Rin has to blink a bit to keep her eyes from misting up with the sudden pleasure of his fingers moving there. "See--see, I told you how stupid you were, but." What was she going to say? It's hard to remember, because he's starting to regain his composure already and his fingers have begun to explore the soft wet folds she's dragged them to. "You didn't listen, so...um. Archer." What was she going to do? She can't remember, so she just pulls her panties down over her thigh-highs and struggles to kick them off, to give him more room to work with those fingers. He holds her steady as she squirms out of that last article of clothing she needs to remove. "Um...the socks can stay, right?"
He laughs, a little shakily. "I wouldn't have it any other way, Rin. Mmm, but I guess I won't be having you any other way."
"You're being stupid again," she manages to chide him. She manages to say it in a firm tone, even though one of his fingers now strokes right up against the slit at the center of all that wetness and heat she's feeling. She's still holding onto his wrist, so it's like she's in control of such things. "I'm the one who'll be having you." That finger carefully parts her and slides inside. She tries to breathe. "And then you'll definitely be mine--"
But he plays dirty, as he always has. Out of nowhere, his thumb moves over to rub hard against her clit. And the word that was simply a word a moment ago, just a comment on how things naturally would be, escapes her lips again as a kind of cry. "Mine--" Her Archer, giving her these feelings now, as it should be, and why did it take her until now to figure that out? Is she stupid too?
It's an unbearable thought.
So Rin pushes him back away from her, into the wall, and stumbles back so that there's space between the two of them again. So that his hand isn't on her like that anymore, so much defter than his mouth was on her breasts. She folds her arms over her chest. "Get onto the bed!"
The hunger in the look he gives her is so obvious now that she almost jumps right back onto him. "Is that a command from my Master?"
She restrains herself, but somehow she's blushing hard again. "Yes! It is a command." And then she holds her breath, suddenly worried that he'll point out that he doesn't have to follow her commands as a Master right now, because she isn't his Master again yet.
But he only grins and pushes off the wall, then walks past her to the bed. He pauses on the way to lean down and kiss her, hard and more awkwardly than he probably thinks. But still, even if it's awkward--her head swims with the press of his mouth to hers, and when she can see clearly again he's sitting on the bed looking up at her. He was smirking when he kissed her, and she almost got mad at him for that, but now she looks at him and she can't be upset.
He's quiet, watching her with serious eyes and a neutral expression. After a moment, he doesn't watch her any longer--he looks away, down at the bed. "You shouldn't command a Servant if you're not planning to use them, Rin."
She knows she should take this opportunity to leap onto him. To pin him to the bed and push him inside of her. But something about his words stops her. "You make it sound really unpleasant. Using you? We both want to reestablish this contract, Archer. Don't we...?"
And he glances back up at her. There's only a moment of surprise in his eyes, so little that she barely knows what to do with it. Then it vanishes, and he's smiling. It's not the true and fearless expression he wore the last time she saw him fading, but nor is it the bitter smirk he's given her so many other times. It's something in between, and strangely kind. "Jeez. It's kind of a pain how you keep asking things like that, Master. I--"
It's probably unkind of her to make him say anything more. She understands now what he's telling her, anyway. She understands that she should stop asking if he really wants this, just as he needed to stop asking her the same thing. So she dashes forward before she can let her own thoughts stop her. She grabs him by the shoulders and shoves him back down to the bed. Rin means to wind up straddling him, his body neatly pinned beneath her hands. But it doesn't work out so tidily. He tries to yield to her, but the timing is off, and she flails and topples all over him instead of vaulting onto him.
Somehow she winds up sprawled out atop his chest, her face burning hot with her shame. "Stop embarrassing me!"
"It's difficult when you're the one doing the embarrassing things, Rin," he complains, and she can tell he means it to sound calm and resigned, but with her on top of him, his voice is finally starting to shake. She likes hearing him like that. And does he have to breathe so much when he talks? He's so close to her now, the heat of the words puffing out of him seems to be setting her on fire when it lands on her chest.
"You're the one embarrassing yourself," she retorts as quickly as she can compose herself once more. "Here you are, with a beautiful girl on top of you like this, completely naked. Um, naked except for the socks! And all you can do is make rude comments? It's terrible."
He doesn't say anything at first, and she starts to get mad. Is he going to back out now? Now, when she's made a fool of herself with how badly she wants him? She'd never forgive him. But finally, he reaches up to run his hands through her hair, and he says quietly, "I had the feeling you were going to do things. Was I wrong?"
"No!" She sneaks a glance at him. His gaze is almost too serious. "You were right. Um--!" There's nothing for it but to live up to his expectations. She straightens herself up and straddles him properly, then reaches down between his legs to take hold of him there. Was he this big the night she did it with Shirou? Maybe not, or maybe she's being silly and exaggerating the difference. It doesn't matter, because as awkward as it is to admit, she wants him more now that he's her Archer. She probably shouldn't, but she can't help it, so she takes a breath and starts to push him inside of her.
His shuddering intake of breath distracts her at first, and she smiles, she almost grins as she watches him react to the head of his cock entering her where she's wet and hot. It's not until a moment later that she realizes that it still hurts a little. She thought that was supposed to stop after the first time, so she's surprised. It's only supposed to be difficult once, so why...? Should she have done it more with Shirou? She was thinking about it, because he's been a good learner now and then and sometimes his smile makes her feel warm in the right way, but she hasn't gotten around to it. That might have been a mistake. She's still tight and new around him, and she's not sure of the right way to do it so that the discomfort stops and the ache gives way completely to pleasure.
It's not that there's no pleasure--that's mixed in with that ache too and it confuses her still.
But Rin is almost too surprised to realize that one of Archer's hands has moved down from her head to caress her side, then curl around her hip. He starts to push her onto him more, and she can't help it. She flinches.
He stops. His grip loosens. "Rin." He can't seem to speak above a murmur. "It hurts, right? Sorry."
"What?" She tries not to bite her lip too hard as she fights the conflict inside her between the faint pain knotted up below her center and the building rush of delight. "Don't apologize for things like that! I told you I would do things. So, I take responsibility for whether it hurts."
"But--" He doesn't get to say anything more, because she covers his mouth with her free hand. And then she rises up a little on him, trying to reposition their bodies, to make him slicker and her more ready. She knows she can do this, so she's not going to worry about whether it will be difficult or hurt a little. Such worries won't be allowed in her world with Archer.
Rin pushes herself farther along his shaft, biting back the flinch this time, and finally releases her hand's grip on his cock to take him fully inside of her. As he should be.
She sees his shoulders shake and his back arch against the bed; the movement pushes the two of them perfectly together. The last of the pain fades without fuss.
Two waves collide inside her before she can prepare herself for the crash.
One comes from between her legs, the raw basic pleasure that she's felt before of being penetrated and filled up, and less tempered now than it was then by pain and uncertainty. She expected this one and was waiting to greet it.
The other sneaks up on her, rolling down through her from above, from her eyes as she looks at her Archer lying beneath her, vulnerable and open and at her mercy, his eyes wide and his mouth a little open. It's enough just to see him like that, but this wave reaches her heart and suddenly explodes out from there as she realizes what it means.
Rin cautiously touches his cheek as she feels a maelstrom threaten to swirl somewhere around her belly. "My Archer's inside me," she says softly.
He's flushed with the feeling of it, though it's hard to see. "Jeez. It sounds like a terrible romance novel when you say it like that, Rin."
"I don't care." That maelstrom is going to drag her down. She'll let it. "My Archer's inside me, and...likes it, right?"
He blinks. "Ah. Yeah--" Archer gives her a hopelessly fragile smile. She'd like to protect it sometime. "I do."
"I really do too." She stops resisting and being surprised. The pleasure of her body runs right into the joy in her spirit, and she stops trying to hold it back. Rin throws herself forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders and kiss him. It lasts--
--a long time. A few minutes.
She remembers to move against him somewhere in those minutes, to rock her hips so she moves slightly up and down on him. She tries at first to match that to the rhythm of his breathing, like she's read you're supposed to, but it's too easy to become enraptured by that rhythm, so she gives up and just does what feels good.
He keeps trying to duck his head away from her, to bury his face in the crook of her neck while he runs his fingers over her breasts, and sometimes she lets him, but she always has to pull his mouth back to hers in the end. He gasps a little when she does it. That's the best part.
Or maybe the best part is the way his eyes search her face when she pulls far enough away from him for it, looking and longing for something. What?
It's finally impossible for her not to ask. "Archer, what are you looking for?" She can feel her magic circuits almost open, almost ready to connect with his. One of her hands sneaks down between her legs and fumbles around for the right place to touch amidst the awkward stickiness of the two of them joining.
That's when she realizes what the best part is: he's too lost in her to lie. His gaze is earnest and open, like that of the boy who fought him so hard. He shrugs one shoulder a little in one last desperate attempt at nonchalance--then he gives up. "I'm waiting for you to smile, Rin." And somehow he says such a thing without shame: only with his hands on her waist, and his hair finally falling in disarray over his face.
"Stupid." And she remembers, at last, to smile. "I was always going to smile for you, Emiya-kun. So..." She spreads her hand out over herself and him. She only needs a couple of fingers to rub at herself, so with the rest she strokes him at his base. "So let go."
He's struggling to regain his cool demeanor. It's not going well, because she won't stop smiling. "That's...a command from my Master, right?"
"If it needs to be, we've done something wrong." She straightens up atop him and tosses her hair. It probably doesn't look anywhere near as casual and nonchalant as she imagines it to be, though. She might be trembling a little. "I blame you."
"I'll take the blame."
"You don't need--"
Too late. Rin cuts herself off with an abrupt cry as his hands grip her harder and he pushes her firmly onto him. Her hand clutches at both of them reflexively. Pleasurable sensation floods through her body, as sudden and sharp as if walls collapsed.
Something releases. Something connects. While she's still shivering, while he's trying not to close his eyes, she feels their magic circuits snap together. "Ah...it's done, Archer."
"You thought you had to tell me?" And he's dismissive again, but she can see the hints of the awkward flush accompanying the attitude.
Rin smiles again. She leans down and cups his chin in her hands. She can feel him still inside of her, and she doesn't want to let go, but more importantly, there's a question she finally has the courage to ask. She brushes his hair back from his face so he looks like her Archer again. "First thing you should do for me as my Servant, Archer! Tell me something."
He blinks.
"Why...why did you come back?" She thought it would come out sounding braver than that. But her voice is small again, even as she lies on top of him like this.
He looks away, but only for a moment. He's smiling now, too. It's a rather rueful expression, though. That satisfies her--he should look rueful when he speaks of this, because he wouldn't have had to come back if he hadn't left, and it was stupid of him to leave. "It's hard to say."
"Say it anyway. Just this much."
He takes a breath and wraps an arm around her shoulders. "It kept bothering me, Rin. That you were looking after me and no one was looking after you. It got so annoying, I had to come back here just to watch over you."
"Ugh." She tries to scowl down at him for saying a thing like that, but it doesn't work, and she finds herself smiling again. "It's a foolish reason, but you came back all the same, so...I--"
I forgive you.
"You should be careful what you say," he cuts in before she can finish the words.
"What?"
"There's one more thing you need to do, Rin."
Uncertainty suddenly poisons her thoughts again. She's having trouble feeling his body against hers. "What? No! I won't! I won't! I won't ever, so don't...!"
* * *
Alone in her bed in her apartment in London, Rin wakes up and stares hard at the ceiling until she no longer feels threatened by tears.
When that's done, she slowly unwraps the tangled sheets from around her body and her legs. She still feels wet and embarrassingly sticky down there even if something in her heart is missing now where it wasn't a few minutes ago. So she goes into the washroom and cleans herself up, because girls have things they need to attend to after such an episode.
Afterwards, she wraps her robe tight around her and walks down the narrow hallway of the apartment. Quietly, she opens the door to the small room that her companion sleeps in.
Shirou doesn't wake up. She watches his sleeping face for a moment in the grey half-darkness. The light of false dawn is just starting to filter in through the room's narrow window, and she can't see if there's anything on his face like the expressions of the man she dreamed of. If there is, she'll have failed. It's what she's sworn to prevent.
The thought hurts terribly. She brushes off the hurt as best she can and makes her way back to her bedroom without waking the boy with the orange hair. "Just a dream," she whispers. "A stupid dream for a stupid girl. You know he can't come back. And he wouldn't--"
She stops. There's another light in her room, on the nightstand next to her bed, casting a red light in place of the dawn that's yet to come. Something pulses and glows within the red pendant, a power she can't quite identify, and then goes back to sleep.
Rin feels a voice ring out in her head.
"It got so annoying, I had to come back here just to watch over you."
She doesn't touch the pendant. She just watches its glow slowly fade.
And like a fool, she trusts him. He wouldn't lie again.
There will be another night.
Fandom: Fate/stay night
Pairing: Rin/Archer
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 8,195
Notes: Unlimited Blade Works route.
Summary: Some months after the end, Archer can't stay away from Rin's side any longer. It's as simple as that.
It's funny, Rin thinks, because he shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be here, leaning so insolently against the wall of her apartment in London, smirking at her like he never left. She wants to slap him; she wants to stomp on his booted feet, dig her fingers into his hair and pull it rather than tousle it. And she wants to do more than that, but there isn't any time. For once, she can't waste her breath with him on circling around the subject, so she'll just have to do what needs to be done, and say what needs to be said.
"Are you finished making that face, Archer?" she asks, holding her head high, and she realizes that she might have to banter back and forth a little bit first before her courage is intact enough. It's all right, so long as it's only a little.
"No, I don't think so," he says, tilting his head a little to show the smirk off better. "I rather like the face you make when I do it."
Oh, and she's blushing at that. Why would she blush at such a pointless, stupid thing for him to say? She shakes her head furiously and seizes the topic at hand without further delay. "Then you'll like this better! I, Tohsaka Rin--" She swallows. "I've decided that it's acceptable for me to change my mind."
He raises his brows. "Isn't that just a way of saying you're admitting you made a mistake? Wow. I never thought I'd see the day."
"I'm not admitting to any mistakes," she snaps, forcing herself to keep her face from heating up again. "I'm not, so don't get any such ideas in your head. I'm only saying that once, I thought it would be all right if I let you disappear. But now, I've had some more months to think about it, and over time, I've changed my mind. That's all."
He folds his arms over his chest. The smirk is gone; his face is blank now. "Really. What are you going to do about it, Master?"
It hurts. It hurts to hear him call her that again. She pushes past the hurt. "This time, I won't let you disappear. Contract with me again, Archer. That's a command, from Tohsaka Rin, who was your Master."
There's a pause, while her heart threatens to jump out of her chest, and then finally he lets out the smallest of sighs. "Very well--or that's what I'd say if I could. But Rin, the Grail is gone. Saber destroyed it, or don't you remember? There is no way for you to take me back as a Servant."
And there: he's said it. The thing she's been thinking about since the start. She can't help it, but her cheeks are definitely heating up and going red again. "That's where you're wrong, Archer. There may be no way for you to be a Servant again, but I can make you my familiar."
"Oh?" The smirk is back, and she realizes to her great horror that he knows what she's talking about. He's not going to say it, of course. He's going to make her say it. Damn him! "I have no idea what you're talking about, Rin. How is my Master going to take me back?"
She almost yells at him and curses him for his lie. She almost throws something at him. But she refuses to sink that low, and so she merely balls her hands up into fists and glares at him. "You know as well as I do, Archer. We have to connect our magic circuits so we can..." Her tongue fails her. She finds her next words getting weak, becoming almost a whisper. "So we can share prana." Her face must be as red as her shirt now, as red as his coat.
He continues to stare at her with perfect practiced blankness. "And how do we do that, Rin?"
This time, she does punch him. She slams a fist into his stomach--not that it has any effect at all except to make him blink in surprise. "Idiot! You idiot!" She can't possibly blush any harder. "You know perfectly well! So why don't you...?"
But he only looks at her. Her heart's beating in her chest like a furious bird trying to break the cage of her ribs. It's so awful; she needs to do something about it. She needs to start this. She tries to make herself spread the fingers of the hand that punched him to touch him in a gentler fashion, but all she succeeds in doing is pulling it back from him and giving him an intent stare of her own. At least, she wants it to be an intent stare, but she thinks it might come off as embarrassed and quizzical instead. It's been months since she saw him, and she still can barely hold herself together around him. "Fine. I'll show you." And she leans forward--
--but she can't. She can't bring herself to lean up, to grab his shoulders and pull his face down for a kiss to start everything they need to do to be Master and Servant again. The thought makes her ache too hard, right where her ribs meet each other in the center of her chest. That's the worst part. This isn't like it was with the boy who's the person this man once was. This is Archer, and she wants this, even if he had disappeared before she truly realized it. Is that why she can't let him go this time? She can't meet his eyes. For just a moment, for just one terrible moment, Tohsaka Rin realizes she cannot meet the eyes of the man she loves.
And then his hands are on her hips, on her waist. His hands are sliding up her sides until they're just shy of under her breasts, just barely not touching her there, and she has to stifle a gasp. "You did a pretty bad job of showing me," he mutters, and then he lifts her effortlessly so that they're face to face, their eyes level. "Can you do it now, Rin?"
She realizes that the smirk is long gone, and there is the strangest uncertainty in his eyes just as there is in hers. No, just as there was in hers, because it's gone now. Seeing him like this, she knows that she can do it. Rin reaches out one hand and touches his cheek. "Archer," she says softly. His face is as hot as she imagined hers was. He's almost blushing too.
It's all right now. She leans in and presses her lips against his. He doesn't quite yield to her kiss, but she feels him press back a little in the moment before the contact breaks. She looks into his eyes one more time as she draws back, and she can't decipher what's in them. So she doesn't think too much on it. She'll do this. She leans forward against him, throws her arms around his neck, presses her cheek to his, and says into his ear, "You know. We need to have sex."
And he laughs. She feels it ripple faintly through him and bites back simultaneous anger and desire as he speaks. "My Master is such a subtle woman. All right, then, Rin." Is that the slightest hitch in his voice? She's not sure. She imagines that it is. "Let's do it."
He's still holding onto her; her feet still dangle off the ground. There's not much she can do right now except try to remember where you're supposed to kiss at a time like this. It's not like her one experience in the matter so far has exactly prepared her. She could have lain there like a stone then and Shirou would still have seen and felt the girl he was so smitten with, and not cared one bit so long as he could imagine she was happy with what he was doing. Archer's beyond that, and she can't get away with lying in his arms and sulking.
Rin starts to go forward anyway, to kiss the ear she just spoke into and the cheek her face is leaning into, but he breaks the stalemate first. His hand on her right side runs down her body suddenly and slips under her skirt. This time she does gasp, as he takes firm hold of her from behind. "Archer--!"
"What?" He sounds almost annoyed, and she realizes: he doesn't even know how it feels to her, for him to touch her there, to hold her like that. He was just shifting his grip to free his other hand, which now lets go and moves to start undoing the tails in her hair.
She fights through the rush of lust like nothing she's ever felt (maybe once or twice when she looked at Saber--but no, not quite, even then) to scold him, because it has to be done. "You can't...you can't just take hold of a girl there without warning. It's not allowed."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Master." Even as he speaks, he dips his head, and as he pauses in his words, he kisses her throat, then her collarbone. The fingers of his left hand comb through her freed hair. She tightens her arms around his shoulders and struggles with the temptation to bite him. "I wasn't aware that your ass was sacred."
That settles it. She bites down on the side of his chin, hard enough to leave marks, and feels him suppress a shudder. "Mine is. Yours isn't. Hey, Archer...?"
He tenses warily. "What is it, Rin?"
"Girls can wear something called a strap-on, you know." She grins, still leaning against him. "I bet you could project one, if I ordered you to."
"You wouldn't do that, Rin." He's trying to contain himself, so she can't tell if he sounds alarmed or excited at the prospect.
"I would." She finds herself flushing again. "I will, someday, so be prepared for it, all right? But, um...not today. Today--"
He sighs. "Don't even say it."
"What?"
His hand goes still in her hair. "Something like, 'This time I want you inside me.' That'll just be embarrassing."
"But you wanted me to!" she accuses him. "Anyway, I wasn't going to say anything like that! Um, I was just going to say, we need to do it the other way this time to be sure our magic circuits will connect properly. That's all."
"Right." It's her turn to smirk. She's still smirking when he tugs her head back so he can look at her face again, and the flash of irritation that shows in his eyes means he saw it. "What?"
"Nothing. No, not nothing. Just you, Archer." She unwinds her arms from his neck, places her hands around his chin, and pulls him to her for a kiss. This time it lasts, and it deepens: his mouth opens against hers, and before he can beat her to it she puts her tongue in there. His hand underneath her skirt tightens on her, and his other arm drops to wrap tightly around her back. She's flush against him, her breasts pressing tightly into the hard muscle below his shoulders, and it's really starting to trouble her how turned on she is to be this close to him, to be touched by him and to be touching him in these ways.
And something occurs to her. She frees a hand from his face, reaches down, grabs him between his legs, and gives an experimental squeeze.
He breaks the kiss abruptly. In fact, he nearly hits his head against the wall in his alarm. "Rin, you can't--!"
"What? Take hold of a guy there without warning?" She smirks again. Under her fingers, beyond the fabric of his pants, he's hard. It satisfies her, to know he wants this as she does. "I was just checking whether you're--you know, ready yet, Archer. But if you really want me to do more..." She fumbles a bit, but after a moment manages to move her hand to where she's pretty sure what she's cupping is his balls. "I'm sure I could."
"That's entirely all right, Rin," he says, and his breath is awfully short, his expression most definitely alarmed even as it's turned on.
"Is it? Then put me down and take off your pants."
It's like the old command spell is still on him. He all but drops her, and she stumbles and falls against him. For a moment she finds herself captivated: her head lands against his chest, and just above it, his heart beats frantically, just as frantically as hers. Then the sound of his waistband snapping open and falling to the floor brings her back to reality, and she pushes herself off of him and takes a step back.
But there's nothing for her to see yet. He's still undoing the straps of armor on his legs. She crosses her arms over her chest and tries not to show the extent of her eagerness. "Archer, just how complicated is your outfit? This is ridiculous."
"It's armor," he says, suddenly defensive. "Did you expect it to be simple?"
"Of course I did! But I guess I shouldn't have. It's stupid armor for a stupid guy, isn't it? Yes, I should have expected that."
"Careful," he says, his fingers pausing on the straps. "I might just stop this right now and disappear."
Her heart flutters in her throat. "No, don't--" And before she realizes it, she's taken him seriously, and all the fear is showing on her face. Before she can shut it down again and turn it into a glare for his frivolity, he's seen it, and he's stopped.
"It's all right, Master," he says quietly, his arms falling back to his side for the moment. "I won't do that right now."
"You idiot," she still says. "You complete idiot. Take off your clothes faster!" And she reaches up, snaps the fastenings of his jacket open, and yanks it off of him. She means to do more, but the sight of his bare arms and shoulders arrests her, and she feels her face starting to burn again.
He finally undoes the last strap of armor on his pants. "You're forgetting something, Rin," he says as he shrugs out of them.
"What?" She's distracted by the sight of his bare legs, and by the realization that he's wearing nothing but the chestplate of his stupid, stupid armor now. It's hard to focus on what he's saying.
He unfastens that last piece of armor, loosens it, and pulls it off over his head. He's in nothing but shorts now and she feels like her face will catch fire. How is he staying so calm, when she was certain a minute ago he was as captivated by her as she is by him? How is he still talking? Because he is. "You are still fully dressed. When do you intend to take your clothes off?"
If she wasn't blushing as hard as she possibly could a moment ago, she is now. Rin juts out her chin, feels her hair flounce behind her even undone. "I don't! You'll be taking them off for me as soon as you're done with your own." She folds her arms over her chest, struggling against the sudden strange realization that in a minute there will be nothing on that chest to protect her from his sharp eyes. That he'll be able to take in the sight of her breasts, her belly, and what's below--no, how is her head not exploding now? She tries not to stammer. "After all, you'll be my Servant again when this is over, so you should act like it."
"I see." And he grins. But it comes to her that it's a strange expression--there's something unstable at the edge of it. What is it? It takes a moment longer to hit her. Nervousness. He's afraid of something.
"Archer--" She reaches out to him, her own fear gone. She catches his hands as they reach for his shorts. "What are you scared of?" And she's asked it before she can stop herself.
He looks at her with an expression that hurts like she imagines swords might. He's so lost, somewhere inside his own head that only he's been, no matter how many other people he's shown it to in battle. No. She's been there too. The dreams--
"It's okay," she says quickly. "You don't have to tell me. I was just asking to ask, because it's the proper thing to do when you see something like that, isn't it? Like the way you looked at me. I just--" She sounds like such a fool. But she realizes what she has to know. "Archer, are you afraid to be my Servant again?"
He closes his eyes, and before she knows it the grin has gentled into a smile. "You are pretty scary, Rin. But it's all right." He reaches out for her and pulls her into his arms; she has to stop herself from shivering against the warmth of his bare chest. "You must know by now I'm a fool sometimes, so it shouldn't surprise you that I'm not scared to be your Servant again." He doesn't say what it is he was scared of, there when he teased her about her clothes while taking off his own. But she allows that. It will be one thing she won't force him to do.
He kisses the top of her head, and she's not sure what to say. That is, she's not sure, until he reaches down, grabs the bottom of her shirt, and pulls it over her head.
She steps back with a hurried little yelp. "Archer--! I said after you were finished taking off yours. After!"
"It's close enough," he says with a careless shrug, dropping her shirt on the floor. "I guess I've lost the knack of being perfectly obedient."
"What do you mean?" She draws herself up to be as fierce as possible. "Don't delude yourself. You never had such a knack. But I'll beat it into you this time for sure."
He only grins at her as he lowers himself into a kneeling crouch. But as cool as he tries to keep his expression, his eyes are bright and eager; she can see that much. When he reaches a hand out to touch the bottom of her face, his fingers hesitate before stroking her. And his other hand, it moves around to her back--
--and fumbles at the clasp of her bra.
Strange. That's strange. She imagined that he would undo it in a single fluid gesture, that the dark lace would fall from her breasts instantly and expose them to that piercing gaze, and in the space between them, in that instant, something would be slain. But all that happens is his fingers scrabble more and more awkwardly at the strap at her back. "Archer, could it be...?"
He looks down in embarrassment, his free hand pulling away from her face. "What?"
Rin feels herself regaining the upper hand, right when she least expected it. "Could it be you've never taken off a girl's bra before?"
He scowls. "Of course I have. It was simpler than yours."
"'It'? Not 'they'? Only one? Seriously, this isn't at all what I expected!" She's almost laughing at him. But she can't quite, because if she starts to let herself go enough to do so, she's distracted by his bare shoulders again, by the shape his unclothed legs make kneeling on the floor, and she goes silent. Finally, she just smiles. "Look at me, Archer."
He lifts his gaze with little reluctance. She nods, then reaches behind her back, gently pulls his hand away, and undoes the clasp herself. Rin takes a breath and lets her bra fall to the floor. He looks at her, wide-eyed; for a moment; for just that moment, she sees another familiar face. Then he smiles, and it's different enough that the illusion, if it counts as an illusion, is gone.
Archer sets his hands on her shoulders, just next to her neck, and he leans forward. She reaches out to bury her fingers in his hair, and he kisses her breasts. His lips are rougher than she imagined, but every touch from his mouth makes her nearly start to shake. She's achingly aware of his hands now resting on her belly not far from her hips. It's a little embarrassing how she reacts to him; shouldn't she be stoic and tease him more? And yet...
He hesitates too much. She's seen the desire on his face, felt it underneath those shorts that are increasingly annoying her, so why is he holding back? Why does he only brush his mouth over her nipples and kiss the arc of the side of her breasts? She touches her fingers to his cheek, and he's still hot beneath them. If she listens, she can hear a ragged edge to his breathing. So why won't he bite and sigh and grab at her, why won't her pick her up and nearly throw her to the bed before she orders him to stop?
It's intolerable. She'll have to take charge. "This isn't working! Archer, stand up."
He pulls away. "At some point," he complains, "you must wonder if you're the one doing something wrong, Rin. After all, I may not be the expert you for some reason imagined--" She tries not to blush again at that wretched insinuation. "But I do have more experience than you." All the same, he gets to his feet, looking down at her now, and there's definitely lust in his expression even if he's trying to hide it behind nonchalance.
So it's all right, it's all right that she then steps forward, rises onto her toes, and kisses the first place where she feels his throat become soft and vulnerable. She wants to linger there, losing herself in him, not worrying about what's to come, but all the feeling uncurling between her thighs drives her to keep going. Still on tiptoe, still nuzzling around his collarbone, she grabs his shorts and pulls them down before he can protest.
He drags in a startled breath.
"Well, you were doing a bad job of taking them off yourself," she mutters, trying and failing not to blush. She drops back down to her feet, then crouches a little, to pull the pants the rest of the way down. "Ugh! Why did I think it would look better this time? It's still the most terrible thing! How does any boy ever get in bed with a girl?"
She's not looking at his face, but she can still practically feel Archer roll his eyes. "You're really lucky I want to be your Servant again, Rin. That sort of comment makes a guy want to stop doing this."
"Liar," she says, quickly looking up to make sure he is lying--and that he isn't. It was only a joke, right? But still, hearing him say that he wants to be her Servant again--it's gratifying. It makes her feel warm in a different way than touching him does. "You're way too far to stop now. I can tease you however I like and you'll still beg me for it, won't you?"
He smirks. "Don't count on that so much. Are you going to try?"
She doesn't answer. She only grabs his hip with one hand, crouches, leans forward, and wraps her free hand around his shaft. He tenses, but she can't let herself revel in that too much just yet. No, she has bigger plans. She takes a breath, and she pulls the head of his cock into her mouth.
Rin can't see it, but she's sure the smirk vanishes. She can hear it vanishing with the sudden low noise he makes, somewhere between satisfied and still longing, and shocked all the way. It's hard to pay attention to sounds, though, because his cock feels a lot better against her tongue than it looks: heavy and hard and hot, filling the space between her lips that she shapes around it. That's better than she thought. Looks can be deceiving, after all.
But she's not sure what to do now. Take more of him into her mouth? What if she starts to gag? That'd ruin everything. Suck at the head and the start of the shaft before her fingers wrap around it? She's not sure what to do about her teeth so as not to hurt him. So carefully, she lowers herself a little more to the floor and tips her head back to search his face for clues.
What she sees there only confuses her more. His eyes are hazy with eager lust, that's to be expected, but why does he still look so surprised? Why does he reach out to stroke her face so tentatively, like he's afraid she's the one who'll vanish if they don't do this right? Why--
Something occurs to her that throws all thoughts of why out of her head: he's looking at her, and he sees her.
It's such an inconsequential thought, or it should be. But months ago when she desperately opened her body up to the boy named Shirou, he looked at her, and he didn't see her. He saw, in his excitement, just the girl he'd been pining for, the more experienced magus he looked up to, the school idol he so admired. She never really blamed him too much. She figured out a while ago how his stupid mess of a mind worked, and she liked him anyway, so what could she expect? And yet--
Archer's looking down at her, with her face flushed and her mouth full of him, and he's actually seeing her.
It's a good thing her mouth is full or she'd do something stupid like thank him. Instead she leans up and pushes his cock further into her mouth, then tries to use her tongue to best effect. Aren't you supposed to wrap it around the shaft or something like that? She can't seem to manage that, so she just licks at the head.
He rests his hand in her hair, surprise still glittering in his eyes, and she wants to take in all of him, makes his body belong to all of her. It's a great body, so she shouldn't need any more explanation than that, but that's not it, it's more the look on his face that's doing her in. Why should he look so shocked that she's enjoying this? Of course she's enjoying it. He's her Archer and it's natural that she'll have fun making him even more hers.
It's a good thing he stops her. It's a good thing that as she tries to lick him more, he curls his fingers into her hair and tugs her head back. It's a good thing that between rough breaths he manages to say, "Rin, enough of that for now." Because she's on the verge of trying to swallow him into her throat by that point, and she knows perfectly well that would only have resulted in gagging and sputtering and thorough awkwardness. But she was almost past resisting, almost past forcing herself not to do things she'd fail at.
Still flushed both with desire and with embarrassment, Rin opens her mouth and lets his cock slide away from her tongue and out from between her lips. She can see him trying to suppress a shiver, and it pleases her. "What? If you're telling me I'm doing something wrong, I'm just going to ignore you, because you've admitted already you don't have much experience either."
"That's not it." He moves his hand to one of her upper arms and tugs gently at her; she rises at his urging. Pulling her to him again, he puts his arms around her and rests them at the small of her back--no, not rests them. His fingers are moving. He undoes the catch of her skirt, this time without trouble, and lets it fall to the floor, so she's standing there, leaning against his naked body, herself in nothing but her socks and her panties. It shouldn't be possible, but her face heats up more.
Silence reigns between them for a few seconds. It's okay. She has her head pressed to his chest, where she can hear the beat of his heart, and it would almost make her cry with happy relief to know that heart might as well belong to her if not for how many other sensations are distracting her from tears. Her chest pushes against the taut muscles of his abdomen, which shift against her as he tries to keep his breath even, and instead of almost crying, she almost laughs at her foolishness earlier, in worrying what would happen when he saw her breasts bared to him. Stupid. She should have worried about how little control she could keep now that they're resting against his skin. She should worry now about how quick her breathing is starting to get, how hard it is to keep herself from shaking, how the strength in his arms around her excites her, how the heat of his cock pressing erect against her belly makes her feel and want to do intolerable things.
In all the worrying about that, she forgets about silence's reign, and she forgets to keep herself from breaking it. Before she's thought about it, words have escaped her mouth. "Who gave you permission to be so attractive? I didn't!"
He grabs her chin, and she's gratified to realize that his hold is firmer this time. She's managed to push him past those hesitations. She's made him desire her as she desires him. But still, he smirks at her maddeningly. "Wow, I'm already being a disobedient Servant again." He's trying to sound smug, but his breath is too uneven. He sounds eager again instead. "Are you sure you still want me, Rin?" And he almost succeeds in making that sound nonchalant. Almost. But then-- "After all that..."
Something breaks inside his voice in the middle of those three words. He's really asking her the question, not just making a stupid joke. He's standing there naked, and her in her socks and her lacy panties, with one hand on her back and the other holding her face. And he still wants to know if she's sure she wants him. "How...?" She means to snap at him angrily, but it comes out full of weary wonder instead. "How is my Archer so stupid?"
"Rin?" He's confused. Good. He should be confused right now. He should be confused as she pulls his hand off her face and strokes her fingers over it, feeling the calluses from the bowstring on his fingers. He shouldn't be prepared at all when she grabs that hand by the wrist and shoves it into her underpants.
He isn't. He stifles a yelp and hurriedly tries to pull his hand away, but he doesn't try very hard when he realizes how firmly she's holding him. Rin has to blink a bit to keep her eyes from misting up with the sudden pleasure of his fingers moving there. "See--see, I told you how stupid you were, but." What was she going to say? It's hard to remember, because he's starting to regain his composure already and his fingers have begun to explore the soft wet folds she's dragged them to. "You didn't listen, so...um. Archer." What was she going to do? She can't remember, so she just pulls her panties down over her thigh-highs and struggles to kick them off, to give him more room to work with those fingers. He holds her steady as she squirms out of that last article of clothing she needs to remove. "Um...the socks can stay, right?"
He laughs, a little shakily. "I wouldn't have it any other way, Rin. Mmm, but I guess I won't be having you any other way."
"You're being stupid again," she manages to chide him. She manages to say it in a firm tone, even though one of his fingers now strokes right up against the slit at the center of all that wetness and heat she's feeling. She's still holding onto his wrist, so it's like she's in control of such things. "I'm the one who'll be having you." That finger carefully parts her and slides inside. She tries to breathe. "And then you'll definitely be mine--"
But he plays dirty, as he always has. Out of nowhere, his thumb moves over to rub hard against her clit. And the word that was simply a word a moment ago, just a comment on how things naturally would be, escapes her lips again as a kind of cry. "Mine--" Her Archer, giving her these feelings now, as it should be, and why did it take her until now to figure that out? Is she stupid too?
It's an unbearable thought.
So Rin pushes him back away from her, into the wall, and stumbles back so that there's space between the two of them again. So that his hand isn't on her like that anymore, so much defter than his mouth was on her breasts. She folds her arms over her chest. "Get onto the bed!"
The hunger in the look he gives her is so obvious now that she almost jumps right back onto him. "Is that a command from my Master?"
She restrains herself, but somehow she's blushing hard again. "Yes! It is a command." And then she holds her breath, suddenly worried that he'll point out that he doesn't have to follow her commands as a Master right now, because she isn't his Master again yet.
But he only grins and pushes off the wall, then walks past her to the bed. He pauses on the way to lean down and kiss her, hard and more awkwardly than he probably thinks. But still, even if it's awkward--her head swims with the press of his mouth to hers, and when she can see clearly again he's sitting on the bed looking up at her. He was smirking when he kissed her, and she almost got mad at him for that, but now she looks at him and she can't be upset.
He's quiet, watching her with serious eyes and a neutral expression. After a moment, he doesn't watch her any longer--he looks away, down at the bed. "You shouldn't command a Servant if you're not planning to use them, Rin."
She knows she should take this opportunity to leap onto him. To pin him to the bed and push him inside of her. But something about his words stops her. "You make it sound really unpleasant. Using you? We both want to reestablish this contract, Archer. Don't we...?"
And he glances back up at her. There's only a moment of surprise in his eyes, so little that she barely knows what to do with it. Then it vanishes, and he's smiling. It's not the true and fearless expression he wore the last time she saw him fading, but nor is it the bitter smirk he's given her so many other times. It's something in between, and strangely kind. "Jeez. It's kind of a pain how you keep asking things like that, Master. I--"
It's probably unkind of her to make him say anything more. She understands now what he's telling her, anyway. She understands that she should stop asking if he really wants this, just as he needed to stop asking her the same thing. So she dashes forward before she can let her own thoughts stop her. She grabs him by the shoulders and shoves him back down to the bed. Rin means to wind up straddling him, his body neatly pinned beneath her hands. But it doesn't work out so tidily. He tries to yield to her, but the timing is off, and she flails and topples all over him instead of vaulting onto him.
Somehow she winds up sprawled out atop his chest, her face burning hot with her shame. "Stop embarrassing me!"
"It's difficult when you're the one doing the embarrassing things, Rin," he complains, and she can tell he means it to sound calm and resigned, but with her on top of him, his voice is finally starting to shake. She likes hearing him like that. And does he have to breathe so much when he talks? He's so close to her now, the heat of the words puffing out of him seems to be setting her on fire when it lands on her chest.
"You're the one embarrassing yourself," she retorts as quickly as she can compose herself once more. "Here you are, with a beautiful girl on top of you like this, completely naked. Um, naked except for the socks! And all you can do is make rude comments? It's terrible."
He doesn't say anything at first, and she starts to get mad. Is he going to back out now? Now, when she's made a fool of herself with how badly she wants him? She'd never forgive him. But finally, he reaches up to run his hands through her hair, and he says quietly, "I had the feeling you were going to do things. Was I wrong?"
"No!" She sneaks a glance at him. His gaze is almost too serious. "You were right. Um--!" There's nothing for it but to live up to his expectations. She straightens herself up and straddles him properly, then reaches down between his legs to take hold of him there. Was he this big the night she did it with Shirou? Maybe not, or maybe she's being silly and exaggerating the difference. It doesn't matter, because as awkward as it is to admit, she wants him more now that he's her Archer. She probably shouldn't, but she can't help it, so she takes a breath and starts to push him inside of her.
His shuddering intake of breath distracts her at first, and she smiles, she almost grins as she watches him react to the head of his cock entering her where she's wet and hot. It's not until a moment later that she realizes that it still hurts a little. She thought that was supposed to stop after the first time, so she's surprised. It's only supposed to be difficult once, so why...? Should she have done it more with Shirou? She was thinking about it, because he's been a good learner now and then and sometimes his smile makes her feel warm in the right way, but she hasn't gotten around to it. That might have been a mistake. She's still tight and new around him, and she's not sure of the right way to do it so that the discomfort stops and the ache gives way completely to pleasure.
It's not that there's no pleasure--that's mixed in with that ache too and it confuses her still.
But Rin is almost too surprised to realize that one of Archer's hands has moved down from her head to caress her side, then curl around her hip. He starts to push her onto him more, and she can't help it. She flinches.
He stops. His grip loosens. "Rin." He can't seem to speak above a murmur. "It hurts, right? Sorry."
"What?" She tries not to bite her lip too hard as she fights the conflict inside her between the faint pain knotted up below her center and the building rush of delight. "Don't apologize for things like that! I told you I would do things. So, I take responsibility for whether it hurts."
"But--" He doesn't get to say anything more, because she covers his mouth with her free hand. And then she rises up a little on him, trying to reposition their bodies, to make him slicker and her more ready. She knows she can do this, so she's not going to worry about whether it will be difficult or hurt a little. Such worries won't be allowed in her world with Archer.
Rin pushes herself farther along his shaft, biting back the flinch this time, and finally releases her hand's grip on his cock to take him fully inside of her. As he should be.
She sees his shoulders shake and his back arch against the bed; the movement pushes the two of them perfectly together. The last of the pain fades without fuss.
Two waves collide inside her before she can prepare herself for the crash.
One comes from between her legs, the raw basic pleasure that she's felt before of being penetrated and filled up, and less tempered now than it was then by pain and uncertainty. She expected this one and was waiting to greet it.
The other sneaks up on her, rolling down through her from above, from her eyes as she looks at her Archer lying beneath her, vulnerable and open and at her mercy, his eyes wide and his mouth a little open. It's enough just to see him like that, but this wave reaches her heart and suddenly explodes out from there as she realizes what it means.
Rin cautiously touches his cheek as she feels a maelstrom threaten to swirl somewhere around her belly. "My Archer's inside me," she says softly.
He's flushed with the feeling of it, though it's hard to see. "Jeez. It sounds like a terrible romance novel when you say it like that, Rin."
"I don't care." That maelstrom is going to drag her down. She'll let it. "My Archer's inside me, and...likes it, right?"
He blinks. "Ah. Yeah--" Archer gives her a hopelessly fragile smile. She'd like to protect it sometime. "I do."
"I really do too." She stops resisting and being surprised. The pleasure of her body runs right into the joy in her spirit, and she stops trying to hold it back. Rin throws herself forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders and kiss him. It lasts--
--a long time. A few minutes.
She remembers to move against him somewhere in those minutes, to rock her hips so she moves slightly up and down on him. She tries at first to match that to the rhythm of his breathing, like she's read you're supposed to, but it's too easy to become enraptured by that rhythm, so she gives up and just does what feels good.
He keeps trying to duck his head away from her, to bury his face in the crook of her neck while he runs his fingers over her breasts, and sometimes she lets him, but she always has to pull his mouth back to hers in the end. He gasps a little when she does it. That's the best part.
Or maybe the best part is the way his eyes search her face when she pulls far enough away from him for it, looking and longing for something. What?
It's finally impossible for her not to ask. "Archer, what are you looking for?" She can feel her magic circuits almost open, almost ready to connect with his. One of her hands sneaks down between her legs and fumbles around for the right place to touch amidst the awkward stickiness of the two of them joining.
That's when she realizes what the best part is: he's too lost in her to lie. His gaze is earnest and open, like that of the boy who fought him so hard. He shrugs one shoulder a little in one last desperate attempt at nonchalance--then he gives up. "I'm waiting for you to smile, Rin." And somehow he says such a thing without shame: only with his hands on her waist, and his hair finally falling in disarray over his face.
"Stupid." And she remembers, at last, to smile. "I was always going to smile for you, Emiya-kun. So..." She spreads her hand out over herself and him. She only needs a couple of fingers to rub at herself, so with the rest she strokes him at his base. "So let go."
He's struggling to regain his cool demeanor. It's not going well, because she won't stop smiling. "That's...a command from my Master, right?"
"If it needs to be, we've done something wrong." She straightens up atop him and tosses her hair. It probably doesn't look anywhere near as casual and nonchalant as she imagines it to be, though. She might be trembling a little. "I blame you."
"I'll take the blame."
"You don't need--"
Too late. Rin cuts herself off with an abrupt cry as his hands grip her harder and he pushes her firmly onto him. Her hand clutches at both of them reflexively. Pleasurable sensation floods through her body, as sudden and sharp as if walls collapsed.
Something releases. Something connects. While she's still shivering, while he's trying not to close his eyes, she feels their magic circuits snap together. "Ah...it's done, Archer."
"You thought you had to tell me?" And he's dismissive again, but she can see the hints of the awkward flush accompanying the attitude.
Rin smiles again. She leans down and cups his chin in her hands. She can feel him still inside of her, and she doesn't want to let go, but more importantly, there's a question she finally has the courage to ask. She brushes his hair back from his face so he looks like her Archer again. "First thing you should do for me as my Servant, Archer! Tell me something."
He blinks.
"Why...why did you come back?" She thought it would come out sounding braver than that. But her voice is small again, even as she lies on top of him like this.
He looks away, but only for a moment. He's smiling now, too. It's a rather rueful expression, though. That satisfies her--he should look rueful when he speaks of this, because he wouldn't have had to come back if he hadn't left, and it was stupid of him to leave. "It's hard to say."
"Say it anyway. Just this much."
He takes a breath and wraps an arm around her shoulders. "It kept bothering me, Rin. That you were looking after me and no one was looking after you. It got so annoying, I had to come back here just to watch over you."
"Ugh." She tries to scowl down at him for saying a thing like that, but it doesn't work, and she finds herself smiling again. "It's a foolish reason, but you came back all the same, so...I--"
I forgive you.
"You should be careful what you say," he cuts in before she can finish the words.
"What?"
"There's one more thing you need to do, Rin."
Uncertainty suddenly poisons her thoughts again. She's having trouble feeling his body against hers. "What? No! I won't! I won't! I won't ever, so don't...!"
* * *
Alone in her bed in her apartment in London, Rin wakes up and stares hard at the ceiling until she no longer feels threatened by tears.
When that's done, she slowly unwraps the tangled sheets from around her body and her legs. She still feels wet and embarrassingly sticky down there even if something in her heart is missing now where it wasn't a few minutes ago. So she goes into the washroom and cleans herself up, because girls have things they need to attend to after such an episode.
Afterwards, she wraps her robe tight around her and walks down the narrow hallway of the apartment. Quietly, she opens the door to the small room that her companion sleeps in.
Shirou doesn't wake up. She watches his sleeping face for a moment in the grey half-darkness. The light of false dawn is just starting to filter in through the room's narrow window, and she can't see if there's anything on his face like the expressions of the man she dreamed of. If there is, she'll have failed. It's what she's sworn to prevent.
The thought hurts terribly. She brushes off the hurt as best she can and makes her way back to her bedroom without waking the boy with the orange hair. "Just a dream," she whispers. "A stupid dream for a stupid girl. You know he can't come back. And he wouldn't--"
She stops. There's another light in her room, on the nightstand next to her bed, casting a red light in place of the dawn that's yet to come. Something pulses and glows within the red pendant, a power she can't quite identify, and then goes back to sleep.
Rin feels a voice ring out in her head.
"It got so annoying, I had to come back here just to watch over you."
She doesn't touch the pendant. She just watches its glow slowly fade.
And like a fool, she trusts him. He wouldn't lie again.
There will be another night.