Work Text:
Her hair is the blackness of the deep-dark sea where light never shines, and while you move with the weight of all the stars and galaxies on your shoulders, she glides with the serpentine grace of one who need not obey even gravity. While she is only princess of the seas, everywhere is her domain, and you’ve no doubt that if she were stranded on land, she’d command the world to give her legs, and you’ve no doubt the world would listen.
You love her when she’s curled around you on the beach, tyrian dolphin-skin tail twined between your legs. The cold metal of her tiara bites into your skin when she presses her forehead to yours and you trace your hand up her ribs, thumbing the edges of her gills until they tremble and she’s laughing, delicate lamellae fluttering against your hand. You hate her when she curls around you underwater, dragging you down, down, down until you see dots behind your closed eyelids and start clawing at her arms in panic. She’s strong, far stronger than you and no matter how much you struggle you can’t beat her, but she always knows when to let you go. You hate her hate her hate her as you sputter and choke, red-faced in her arms. They held you down a moment prior, and now they’re your only support.
She talks of being a kind and forgiving empress, of changing the way things work, of being better than her forbearer but she’s so cruel, so cruel and harsh, exploiting your weaknesses and pushing your body to the edge (you live for that live for the adrenaline thump-thump thump-thumping through your veins and she’s too good she’s perfect she knows exactly how far to push and how to get under your skin). “Things will be different when I rule, you’ll SEA!” she says, and grins.
You sneer and grab her by her tangle of oily black hair, thicker and stronger than any human’s and smooth as silk under your touch. “Do you really think you’ll make it till then?” you ask smugly, anger thrumming, thrumming, thrumming under your skin (she brings out the best in you and she brings out the worst and around her you feel like you’ve never felt before) and she looks at you and laughs.
When she kisses you, you bite down hard on her tough flesh. It’s like chewing on rubber. Metal oozes over your tongue when you finally crack her skin and she only presses closer, taking all that she can and you resist, keep your passion and your anger and your love under lock but you both know she’ll emerge the victor. She always does, and you don’t mind half as much as you say you do. It’s the fight that makes it fun.
She takes. She takes your light and she takes your breath and she worms her way into your mind until there’s nothing left but herherher. You are made of stardust and gunfire and sunlight soaks into your bones, moonlight burns into your blood like a persistent itch but even that is nothing compared to how she gets under your skin. She has no need for light; her domain is in the shadows and every time you touch her black hair or her ashen skin you feel less and less like yourself.
The night is bright and the stars are out and salt smears are drying on the parts of you exposed to the warm air. The moon is half full and everything is painted silver and like this you two are almost alike. She lays her tail over your legs and traces sharp claws over your neck, ending above the hemline of your wet shirt. “I’ll break you,” she says, and she sounds almost happy about it. “You’ve never been loved by a mermaid.”
There she goes again, all smug condescension, and you bristle, turning to face her. “Yeah?” You say, slapping her hand away and pinning her wrists to the soft sand. The ocean accepts you with a splash. “Well you’ve never been loved by a human.” She could struggle, she could break free, she could turn the tides on you and push you under but she doesn’t, she just lets you hold her down as the water washes over both your hands and buries her wrists deeper, deeper, deeper.
Try to break me, you think. Try your best. She watches you with a bemused expression and your fingers tighten around her wrists, digging into skin and sand. Her pulse beats a slow thrummm, thrummm, thrummm under your palm. “You think you can break me?” you hiss into her ear. ”I don’t think you can. I think you’re full of empty boasts and broken promises and maybe half as capable as you think you are!”
You yelp when you’re splashed from behind. Quick as lightning, she grabs your wrists, and you’re in the same position you were in before except this time it’s her holding you down. “You shoald know better than to talk like that to an empress,” the princess says, flashing you her shark-toothed grin, and she is Feferi Peixes, empress to be, scion of the sea, and of course she’ll win, you know she will, you know she knows you know. The world won’t hand itself to her on a silver platter. She’ll take it and it’ll have no choice but to surrender, just like you had no choice but to give in to her thrall, and she’ll destroy you, of course she will, that’s what the sea does, it beats upon the land and breaks it to smaller and smaller bits and consumes it for its own taking.
“You’re not my empress,” you say even as you press closer to her. Closer and closer and closer and saltbrine runs through her veins while you are full of sunlight and sand. She is the ocean and you are the land and she takes and takes and takes but you can adapt, you can change and she’ll never take more than you can give. Saltwater can’t wash the grass stains from your knees.