☈ p o l y c h r o m a t i c .
Title: Polychromatic
Pairing: Shalice Tilman-Sinclair [sisterpsyche] // Rangiku Matsumoto [sakebombshell]
Summary: Sometimes Shalice thinks they use getting drunk as an excuse to touch each other.
Rating: R
Sometimes Shalice thinks they use getting drunk as an excuse to touch each other. They go out together, ostensibly to attract men, but more often than not wake up in her bed.
Shalice always wakes first. She does it slowly, part by part, taking stock of her body and her surroundings before she even opens her eyes. Awake? Good. In bed? Also good. Limbs functional? Great. Head? Throbbing, but not too bad. She smiles softly before she rolls over, because the pleasant ache between her legs has already told her what will be there when she does.
"Hi, Ran."
Rangiku wakes like a cat, back arched and limbs stretched, pawing at the air before rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Mmm," she purrs. "Morning, Psyche."
It's been like this for months, and Shalice is growing uneasy. Rangiku's not the type to put a label on their relationship, she thinks; sex is sex and sex is fun and that's all there is to it. But Shalice likes labels. She likes things to fit into boxes with names and places and some sort of order, because she's kept order all her life. It's the only way she knows how not to fall apart.
But Rangiku defies labels and order. She just does what she does because it feels good at the time, and that's something Shalice can admire, even if sometimes she frowns disapprovingly as Rangiku flirts with anyone that looks her way. It's just how the woman is; a prism. Something to catch the light and make the whole world burst into rainbows.
To Shalice, Rangiku is the difference between technicolor and gray. She just doesn't know what it means.
- - -
They go out again on Friday. Shalice has one glass of wine, and in their unspoken rule of a drink for a drink, Rangiku sticks to nursing one bottle of sake over the course of several hours. They dance with men, flirt and joke and pout coquettishly, but always their eyes find each other across the room and, in a secret Morse code of fluttered lashes and sidelong glances, the decide to head back to the castle.
Shalice leans into Rangiku a little more than necessary to ward off the cold, and Rangiku brushes her lips a little closer to Shalice's ear than needed to be heard over the wailing wind.
"It's still early, hmm, Psyche?" She pulls Shalice closer. "Maybe I can walk you to your room. Can't go neglecting friends now, can I?"
Their lips are locked together before they make it through the door, one of Rangiku's hands down Shalice's shirt as she fumbles with the room key. Her skin burns where Rangiku touches, and she thinks she's never felt so alive. This is what it means. Rangiku brings light and color and love. Everything she does is love.
They fall into bed and Shalice laughs with the sheer wonder of it all, as if she is seeing everything for the first time. Rangiku's hands dance over her breasts, and she doesn't have the presence of mind to wonder how her clothes were removed without her noticing, because there's a warm mouth on her nipple and that sucking is enough to drive her mad.
Shalice arches into Rangiku's mouth, fingers tangled in long blonde hair. She's panting and gasping and Rangiku stops to follow a rivulet of sweat up between her breasts, to the hollow of her throat, lightly nipping. Shalice groans. Rangiku licks along the column of her neck and breathes hotly in her ear.
"You're so pretty like that, Psyche."
It's like a jolt of electricity straight through her. Shalice sits up and pushes Rangiku down, straddling her hips, leaning down. She 's hardly aware of what she's doing, just puts her mouth and her hands on the other woman and moves until Rangiku pants at her to stop.
There's silence for a few heartbeats, but for their ragged breathing and the blood rushing in their ears, before Rangiku's hand slides between Shalice's legs, and does some moving of its own. Shalice's eyes slam shut against the waves of pure feeling.
In the moment before she comes, Shalice's eyes fly open and the breath stops in her lungs. All she sees is Rangiku. Rangiku, smiling.
- - -
In the morning, when Shalice wakes, there is no need to take stock. The only throbbing is the warmth deep in her chest, like embers; a stoked fire. She is acutely aware of Rangiku's hair fanned out along the sheets, liquid rose gold brushing feather light against her skin. She runs her fingers through it. Rangiku hums low in her throat.
Shalice takes a breath. Be brave. "We weren't drunk last night."
There is a long silence. "No."
An exhale. Shalice can feel it come in like a cold front. She shivers. Be brave.
"Ne, Psyche?" Rangiku asks, lifting her head from its resting place above Shalice's thigh. "What does this mean?"
Shalice smiles a languid half-smile and crooks a finger, beckoning. Rangiku obliges, sliding up the bed until their eyes are level. Her expression is serious, though, and Shalice knows that a kiss is not an answer. Not to a question so important. Be brave.
"It means," she says, reaching over and laying a palm flat against Rangiku's neck, "that I like to touch you." She trails a finger down, taking the same path of lustful deviation her mouth had done the night before, swirling patterns to mimic those her tongue had made. She stops between Rangiku's breasts for a moment to admire her work, taking perverse pleasure in the sight of the red marks blooming against her pale skin.
Rangiku's heart beats beneath her hand. Shalice thinks she could almost hold it. Be brave.
"It means I don't want to pretend that I don't love you, anymore." And then it's there, laid bare and fragile between them. Words spun into glass.
"Oh." And that's all Rangiku says before she slides out of bed and throws on a robe. All she says before she walks out the door.
"Oh," Shalice whispers to herself. "Oh."
And the world is gray again.
- - -
Rangiku returns a little over an hour later. She's still in her haphazard robes and her hair's a mess. She holds her hands behind her back, nervously, Shalice thinks through the fog, and smiles.
"You came back," Shalice says, and it's an answer to a question Shalice didn't even know she was asking. It is not What does this mean? or What are we doing? It's What did you do? And the answer is always the same. "You came back." Rangiku is always leaving, always. She blazes ahead, lighting the way for Shalice's cautious shadow to follow; to feel left behind. What Shalice hasn't realized until this very moment, is that Rangiku always comes back.
"Of course," Rangiku says, and her face is genuinely puzzled, smile faltering.
"You always do." Shalice rises, doesn't bother throwing on a robe as she walks toward Rangiku, toward the crystal at the center of her universe. And Shalice finally understands that she has viewed everything through the colorlessness of her own filter. She remembers years ago, days and days of endless white and black and gray, and she remembers the first time a beam of sunlight shone down and sparkled off that girl who refused to leave her alone. Rangiku, who was intent on leading her out of the shadows. Rangiku, who wanted to take her from familiar melancholy to comfortable pleasure. Shalice, who was too afraid to try.
It's been her fear this whole time. It's all right to hold the prism for a moment, to see the colors dance across the walls and through the room. But only for a moment. A crystal is like a hundred thousand blades waiting to shatter. The monochrome won't make her feel alive, but it won't kill her either.
Rangiku pulls a bouquet of roses from behind her back, holds them out like a shield and an offering. She is incandescent. Shalice can't look away.
"I brought these for you."
The roses are crystals. Shalice takes hold with both hands.
Pairing: Shalice Tilman-Sinclair [sisterpsyche] // Rangiku Matsumoto [sakebombshell]
Summary: Sometimes Shalice thinks they use getting drunk as an excuse to touch each other.
Rating: R
Sometimes Shalice thinks they use getting drunk as an excuse to touch each other. They go out together, ostensibly to attract men, but more often than not wake up in her bed.
Shalice always wakes first. She does it slowly, part by part, taking stock of her body and her surroundings before she even opens her eyes. Awake? Good. In bed? Also good. Limbs functional? Great. Head? Throbbing, but not too bad. She smiles softly before she rolls over, because the pleasant ache between her legs has already told her what will be there when she does.
"Hi, Ran."
Rangiku wakes like a cat, back arched and limbs stretched, pawing at the air before rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Mmm," she purrs. "Morning, Psyche."
It's been like this for months, and Shalice is growing uneasy. Rangiku's not the type to put a label on their relationship, she thinks; sex is sex and sex is fun and that's all there is to it. But Shalice likes labels. She likes things to fit into boxes with names and places and some sort of order, because she's kept order all her life. It's the only way she knows how not to fall apart.
But Rangiku defies labels and order. She just does what she does because it feels good at the time, and that's something Shalice can admire, even if sometimes she frowns disapprovingly as Rangiku flirts with anyone that looks her way. It's just how the woman is; a prism. Something to catch the light and make the whole world burst into rainbows.
To Shalice, Rangiku is the difference between technicolor and gray. She just doesn't know what it means.
- - -
They go out again on Friday. Shalice has one glass of wine, and in their unspoken rule of a drink for a drink, Rangiku sticks to nursing one bottle of sake over the course of several hours. They dance with men, flirt and joke and pout coquettishly, but always their eyes find each other across the room and, in a secret Morse code of fluttered lashes and sidelong glances, the decide to head back to the castle.
Shalice leans into Rangiku a little more than necessary to ward off the cold, and Rangiku brushes her lips a little closer to Shalice's ear than needed to be heard over the wailing wind.
"It's still early, hmm, Psyche?" She pulls Shalice closer. "Maybe I can walk you to your room. Can't go neglecting friends now, can I?"
Their lips are locked together before they make it through the door, one of Rangiku's hands down Shalice's shirt as she fumbles with the room key. Her skin burns where Rangiku touches, and she thinks she's never felt so alive. This is what it means. Rangiku brings light and color and love. Everything she does is love.
They fall into bed and Shalice laughs with the sheer wonder of it all, as if she is seeing everything for the first time. Rangiku's hands dance over her breasts, and she doesn't have the presence of mind to wonder how her clothes were removed without her noticing, because there's a warm mouth on her nipple and that sucking is enough to drive her mad.
Shalice arches into Rangiku's mouth, fingers tangled in long blonde hair. She's panting and gasping and Rangiku stops to follow a rivulet of sweat up between her breasts, to the hollow of her throat, lightly nipping. Shalice groans. Rangiku licks along the column of her neck and breathes hotly in her ear.
"You're so pretty like that, Psyche."
It's like a jolt of electricity straight through her. Shalice sits up and pushes Rangiku down, straddling her hips, leaning down. She 's hardly aware of what she's doing, just puts her mouth and her hands on the other woman and moves until Rangiku pants at her to stop.
There's silence for a few heartbeats, but for their ragged breathing and the blood rushing in their ears, before Rangiku's hand slides between Shalice's legs, and does some moving of its own. Shalice's eyes slam shut against the waves of pure feeling.
In the moment before she comes, Shalice's eyes fly open and the breath stops in her lungs. All she sees is Rangiku. Rangiku, smiling.
- - -
In the morning, when Shalice wakes, there is no need to take stock. The only throbbing is the warmth deep in her chest, like embers; a stoked fire. She is acutely aware of Rangiku's hair fanned out along the sheets, liquid rose gold brushing feather light against her skin. She runs her fingers through it. Rangiku hums low in her throat.
Shalice takes a breath. Be brave. "We weren't drunk last night."
There is a long silence. "No."
An exhale. Shalice can feel it come in like a cold front. She shivers. Be brave.
"Ne, Psyche?" Rangiku asks, lifting her head from its resting place above Shalice's thigh. "What does this mean?"
Shalice smiles a languid half-smile and crooks a finger, beckoning. Rangiku obliges, sliding up the bed until their eyes are level. Her expression is serious, though, and Shalice knows that a kiss is not an answer. Not to a question so important. Be brave.
"It means," she says, reaching over and laying a palm flat against Rangiku's neck, "that I like to touch you." She trails a finger down, taking the same path of lustful deviation her mouth had done the night before, swirling patterns to mimic those her tongue had made. She stops between Rangiku's breasts for a moment to admire her work, taking perverse pleasure in the sight of the red marks blooming against her pale skin.
Rangiku's heart beats beneath her hand. Shalice thinks she could almost hold it. Be brave.
"It means I don't want to pretend that I don't love you, anymore." And then it's there, laid bare and fragile between them. Words spun into glass.
"Oh." And that's all Rangiku says before she slides out of bed and throws on a robe. All she says before she walks out the door.
"Oh," Shalice whispers to herself. "Oh."
And the world is gray again.
- - -
Rangiku returns a little over an hour later. She's still in her haphazard robes and her hair's a mess. She holds her hands behind her back, nervously, Shalice thinks through the fog, and smiles.
"You came back," Shalice says, and it's an answer to a question Shalice didn't even know she was asking. It is not What does this mean? or What are we doing? It's What did you do? And the answer is always the same. "You came back." Rangiku is always leaving, always. She blazes ahead, lighting the way for Shalice's cautious shadow to follow; to feel left behind. What Shalice hasn't realized until this very moment, is that Rangiku always comes back.
"Of course," Rangiku says, and her face is genuinely puzzled, smile faltering.
"You always do." Shalice rises, doesn't bother throwing on a robe as she walks toward Rangiku, toward the crystal at the center of her universe. And Shalice finally understands that she has viewed everything through the colorlessness of her own filter. She remembers years ago, days and days of endless white and black and gray, and she remembers the first time a beam of sunlight shone down and sparkled off that girl who refused to leave her alone. Rangiku, who was intent on leading her out of the shadows. Rangiku, who wanted to take her from familiar melancholy to comfortable pleasure. Shalice, who was too afraid to try.
It's been her fear this whole time. It's all right to hold the prism for a moment, to see the colors dance across the walls and through the room. But only for a moment. A crystal is like a hundred thousand blades waiting to shatter. The monochrome won't make her feel alive, but it won't kill her either.
Rangiku pulls a bouquet of roses from behind her back, holds them out like a shield and an offering. She is incandescent. Shalice can't look away.
"I brought these for you."
The roses are crystals. Shalice takes hold with both hands.