Work Text:
her, and the splendour — she shines
It’s late, when Persephone arrives home.
Evening lingers like a stranger in a doorway, blue as a bruise and patiently waiting to be invited in, but inside the apartment lamp light and the flicker from the television screen stretch the end of the day to its very limits. Grace sits sunken, cross-legged, in one of the plush sofas that furnishes Persephone’s living space. In the dip between her legs, a half-eaten bowl of cherries rest in their own gore, the ceramic cool against her thighs where the threadbare gym shorts with her high school’s logo stitched into the leg no longer reach.
Beyond Grace’s view, a purse string rattles, metallic, as it’s hung from a coat-stand, and the soft tread of Persephone’s shoes disappears as they’re removed. Grace closes her eyes to better appreciate the rhythm of the routine that is quickly becoming as familiar to her as her own; keys left on a side table, kitchen light clicked on, hinges protesting as cupboards are opened, and Grace can so plainly see in her mind’s eye Persephone’s search for something satisfying and convenient to graze on. Knows, from her own search not long before, that she won’t find a thing.
“There’s pizza in the fridge,” Grace calls through.
A half-ditched attempt at dinner, picked up on her way over from the nearest takeout from Persephone’s building, but now at least neither of them has to cook. In the kitchen, those cupboard doors close – unspoken gratitude or contempt at the lack of nutrition, Grace wonders, and selects another cherry from the bowl.
She hears Persephone’s bedroom door close and not reopen again until the woman herself appears, several minutes later, fresh-faced without her make-up and jewellery, and draped in black button-up silk pyjamas.
Grace cranes to better see her, but her greeting is halted by the cherry pit inside her mouth— she scrapes her teeth against the textured shell of it to remove as much flesh as will come.
“How was work?”
Persephone clasps the back of her neck with both hands and takes in the scene of her living area with narrowed eyes, then simply closes them. Fingertips press deep into her hairline, massaging aching muscles, until she angles her neck just-so that it makes a satisfying pop, and groans. Grace drops her cherry pit into the bowl and licks the stain from her fingers.
“That bad, huh?”
“It’s been… long,” Persephone agrees, the gravel of her voice laden with a desperate lack of patience.
Grace winces and sets her bowl aside.
In the next moment, she has dimmed the lamp nearest to her and spread her feet all the way to the coffee table, that she has room to rest a cushion in her lap. Persephone arches a single brow at the way Grace pats the spot, like she means for her to follow suit, but it takes her less than a few seconds of internal debate to give in.
The sofa dips as Persephone takes the place beside her, then lowers her head onto Grace’s lap. Grace, immediately content with the new weight of her, adjusts her legs ever so carefully that the angle might better suit Persephone’s comfort. Intimacy comes instinctively between them in the arm that Grace slides around Persephone’s belly, the hand that Persephone rests at the bend of Grace’s elbow, tucking herself closer in to the scent that can only be described as laundry that has been left too long at the back of Grace’s wardrobe – not fresh, per se, but homely.
Persephone’s other hand presses fingers over her own eyes, keeping the light from touching them or the migraine that stabs at their backs.
“Another one?” Grace asks, frowning when she recognises the gesture. She strokes her thumb against the subtle impression of a ribcage through Persephone’s pyjamas. “They’re becoming more frequent.”
Persephone hums quietly. “They come in waves.”
“Colour bursts, you said?”
“Yes.” Her jaw clicks as she forces the muscles to unclench. “It’ll pass in a moment.”
“Can I get you anything? A drink of water, some pills—?”
A quiet groan, and Persephone reveals a single wine dark eye from behind her fingers. “Love me less.”
“Impossible.”
A smile, faint and fleeting before it’s lost in a grimace, warms Grace to her marrow.
She does not argue with her, after that – knows better than to try, for one, but for another: every time Persephone displays some symptom of the very many lives so loud inside her head, it makes the lining of her stomach itch with a fear so primal that Grace sometimes worries she’ll really try to scratch it out one day, just for the satisfaction of not having to feel it for a breath. It is an unavoidable reminder of what is to come, and Grace’s stamina when it comes to ignoring the topic is beginning to wear low.
She has enough left in her for tonight, however, and so she pushes the thought aside in favour of the woman in her lap.
The television hums as it’s turned down to a barely audible mumble, and Grace slips her fingers into Persephone’s hair, drawing her nails from hairline to crown in a lazy circle of repetition until the body in her arms loses its rigidity. By the time Grace’s attention drifts back to the screen, the movement of her fingers is on auto-pilot and Persephone’s breathing is coming long and deep.
And, unnoticed by the both of them, peace slips into the room and lingers there a while.
Grace’s attention wanes somewhere around the next episode of the show that she’s not really watching. She closes the streaming app and flicks through the first five channels that she lands on, humming quietly to herself, until she settles on some almost-over documentary that she might have liked to see from the start, actually. That’s when she realises she’s gained an audience.
Below her, flushed and with an impression of Grace’s old band tee wrinkled into her cheek, Persephone blinks like a cat showing affection— slow and deliberate.
Grace stops humming immediately and resumes the stroking of fingers through hair.
“Sorry,” she whispers.
Persephone blinks again, gently dismissive, then takes a wakeful breath. She stretches her legs down the couch and adjusts the cushion beneath her head for comfort. Life returns to Grace’s feet in the form of pins and needles, but she scrunches her toes through it like a trooper and does not complain.
“Feeling better?”
“Yes,” Persephone says, and clears the sleep from her throat. “Thank you.”
An easy smile pulls at Grace’s cheeks. “Anytime. My thighs are here for your enjoyment.”
Persephone’s brow arches.
“Yeah,” Grace agrees. “I heard it as soon as I said it. But I’m not taking it back.”
“Good.”
Rumbling laughter follows Persephone as she rises, stretches and yawns with both her chins, into the space by Grace’s side. Grace watches as she pulls all the loose pieces of herself together again with full consciousness, missing her weight, and feels unspeakably grateful that she’s afforded this intimacy. This side-by-side closeness, yes, of course, but most of all, that when Persephone draws a shroud between herself and the rest of the world, she tucks it over Grace’s shoulders, too.
She lets her see her, be with her, share her and the space that she is her most honest self within.
Grace can’t remember a time when another person ever shared as much with her, since Freddie.
“You’re thinking very hard,” Persephone says.
She angles her body to better face Grace, arm on the back of the couch, the other looped around the one leg bent by her side. Casual finesse, centuries earned. There’s yet enough sleep in Persephone’s eyes to give them that glazed and wild look that she wears when Grace is the first of them to wake in the morning, and it is enough to chase the sudden chill from between her shoulders.
“Anything exciting?”
Grace puffs air between her lips. “Nope, just zoning out.”
“Hm,” Persephone says, which means she does not believe her but she will not press it.
“Are you ready to eat now? I could warm you up some food.”
“No, I don’t want any food.”
Persephone unfurls her arm along the back of the sofa, that the very ends of Grace’s hair are within reach. This new position inspires distraction; Persephone watches her own fingers for one quiet moment, preoccupied by the way Grace’s hair catches the light when it’s wrapped around her knuckle. When she meets Grace’s gaze, again, it’s with unavoidable intent. She has woken with a fire in her belly, it seems, and Grace’s skin prickles against the heat.
“No?” she asks, and wets her lips.
Persephone tracks the movement, shakes her head.
“Oh,” Grace says, feeling a loosening of all her limbs. “What is it you… what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking,” Persephone says, invading Grace’s space. She tucks all those distracting little strands of hair over her shoulder and trails fingertips along the column of Grace’s neck, until she feels the bobbing of her throat when she swallows. “I’m thinking that I’ve left you alone in my home all evening, and with nothing to occupy yourself but trashy T.V.”
Caught fast in the corner with nowhere to move, Grace grins at the way her heartbeat jumps, at the misguided frenzy in her veins pushing at her to escape whatever dangerous situation she’s found herself in. Fool heart, she thinks, that it melts for this kind of thing.
“That’s… fairly accurate, yeah.”
Persephone makes a noise of mock-regret, but her smile betrays her. “Then maybe I should take pity and give you something better to do.”
Yes, Grace thinks, but she is cursed with a sense of humour and a mouth that likes to open before she’s had enough time to veto what it’s about to say.
“Oh, so now I’m the pity fuck you come home to, huh?”
She sees the exact moment Persephone has to bite her cheek to keep from smiling.
“You wouldn’t like that?” Persephone asks, and slides a hand up the length of Grace’s thigh, catching her by the hip. With a gentle tug, she pulls her into the space that Persephone is fast closing between them. Grace sucks in a breath and shakes her head, already forgetting the game that she’s started. “Then how do you want me to fuck you, Grace?”
Grace feels her heart like a wild thing inside her chest, like a creature loosed from a snare by the hands of a hunter who had been expecting bigger game. Pupils blown and frenzied, sitting stock-still on the bank of its own mortality, nothing but a breath and the unspoken contract between them that it was always intended for sharper jaws, before it bounds back towards the underbrush and into obscurity. Except, she is both the hunter and the hare. She is the snare. And Grace is running nowhere now, not from Persephone and not from this feeling far too big inside her chest.
She brings a hand to Persephone’s shoulder and eases her away.
For a second, a flicker of something like uncertainty in Persephone’s face, until Grace follows her retreat— until Persephone has her back against the sofa and Grace so perfectly within her lap, hands on her chest, thumbs either side of exposed collarbones, that any concern is gratefully forgotten.
“Like you’re in love with me,” Grace answers, finally, unflinching. “Like I’m your favourite person to do this with. Like I’m your favourite person in the whole world to do anything with.”
Honesty as sharp as steel, it comes to Grace clumsy without practice.
The amusement has left Persephone’s face. Her expression, wonder and devastation in equal measure.
“Oh, that’s all?”
Her voice is as tender as Grace has ever heard it. Unspoken questions in the way that it wavers, and Grace would find an answer for them all if she were to only voice them. Yes, she means it. No, of course she cannot comprehend the full magnitude of what that entails. Yes, she means it.
She cups Persephone’s face between both hands and leans in to brush a kiss against her mouth— another, a third, a fourth. Chaste, affectionate. Furtive glances caught between them. Until Persephone’s hands slide up her back and cradle her there, keeping her close, their foreheads together and barely a breath of space between them.
“Yeah,” Grace whispers, “that’s it.”
“Okay.”
Persephone sighs and, bracing both hands beneath Grace’s legs, stands.
Reflex saves Grace from falling. Her arms cling to broad shoulders, legs wrapping around Persephone’s waist. They escape the sofa in one graceful lift, with Persephone’s hands adjusting the full weight of her beneath her thighs. Dazed, Grace tucks her face into the space where Persephone’s neck meets her shoulder and grins into her skin.
“Show off.”
“You’re just easy to impress.”
Grace muffles a scoff against her shirt.
The master bedroom is not far, but Grace finds easy distraction along the way. She nuzzles the crook of Persephone’s neck, peppers kisses along the column of her throat, runs her fingers over the silk shirt to define the broadness and the subtle girth of muscle in Persephone’s upper arms. Losing herself, she sinks her teeth into Persephone’s shoulder, and while it evokes a startled groan in response, Persephone never once threatens to drop her.
She does not even stumble.
A single bedside lamp illuminates the room, casting warm light across the queen-sized bed.
Persephone carries her right up to the edge of it then lowers her on top, and Grace lets herself fall without fear. She’s spent more nights here than she has her own place since becoming the Idols’ Campaign Manager, but her excitement hasn’t dulled any at being allowed through the door. It’s easier, is what she tells herself and anybody else who asks, and it’s the truth in every sense. Persephone’s place already has a freshly made up bed, a fully stocked fridge, and – most importantly – the woman herself inside of it.
Grace’s place has— grief like a blackhole in the shape of a door to a bedroom that she cannot stomach the thought of moving into, even now.
Especially now, when Grace has so much to live for.
Hands over her eyes, Grace squeezes the thoughts away and feels Persephone between her legs, crawling up the bed. The mattress dips with her ascent, warmth and weight on Grace’s belly as she presses near. She feels hands either side of her shoulders and knows, that if she were to look, she’d find Persephone above her. Waiting. Watching, probably. Wondering which thoughts were going through her head.
Gentle fingers touch her wrist, and Grace lets her hands fall away to reveal her and the whole world again, right where she’d left it.
Persephone lingers above her, close but holding back. She slides her hand fully into Grace’s, intertwines them at the fingers, and rests it between them on her chest.
“Where are you going?” Persephone asks.
Grace’s throat turns too tight to answer. The lamp light picks up the sheen in her eyes, and Persephone’s expression softens.
“Stay right here with me,” she tells her, and Grace takes a breath, thankful for the instruction.
“I am. I will.”
Persephone considers her quietly, as though checking for truth, and then sighs.
“Okay,” she says, and kisses her.
And that’s easier.
Easier on Grace’s throat, which has twisted itself into knots. Easier on her heart, which jackhammers for the right reasons inside her chest. Easier to let her mind fall into that loose and languid place away from the edges of her own anxiety, because when Persephone is this close, when Persephone has her right here where she wants her, she can’t help but feel secure.
Grace has never fucked with hard drugs before, but she knows a little something about euphoria.
Then Persephone presses her tongue inside her mouth, and Grace knows nothing.
Her world reduces to warm and wet and the aftertaste of peppermint toothpaste. Sighing against her, Grace sinks a hand into her hair and winds one leg around her hip, urging Persephone nearer, seeking friction. Without breaking the kiss, Persephone slides one thigh between Grace’s and takes their joined hands further up the bed – pins them somewhere above Grace’s head.
And there it is: Grace’s happy place.
Where it does not matter who she is or what she’s done or what she hasn’t.
Where the only thought in Grace’s mind is soft, for how gentle Persephone can be with her when she’s trying.
Persephone kisses her as though she means to keep her here forever, as though there’s no rush in the world and, even if there were, she would not bow to it. She kisses as though she already knows that they have several more lifetimes ahead of them, that she can spend this one right here, between her legs. Divination, divine intervention— Grace does not care, as long as it comes true.
Then Persephone sinks her teeth into her lower lip, and there is nothing sacred in the way Grace moans.
“I thought you were going to be nice to me,” she murmurs, falling back to the bed.
Persephone, undeterred, trails kisses along her neck. “When did I agree to that?”
“I don’t know…” Grace sighs and cranes her neck, allowing her better access. “I thought you were meant to have some, oh… some kind of good influence on me or something.”
Persephone hums, amused, and the bass and brass of it vibrates along Grace’s throat, causing her toes to curl. Those languid kisses turn decidedly sharper as Persephone makes her way down to Grace’s collarbones, one hand beginning to snake beneath her t-shirt, to the soft and supple of her belly.
“Mm, my memory must be fuzzy… I thought we all knew I was only going to corrupt your delicate,” nails on Grace’s skin, “moral,” tongue against her collarbones, “sensibilities,” skin between her teeth.
“Fuck.” Grace almost sobs from the sensation. “I hope you do. I hope you ruin me. I don’t want to be anybody else’s after you.”
A breath winces past Persephone’s lips.
She presses her forehead to Grace’s chest and closes her eyes, dizzy.
“Don’t say that,” she whispers.
“Why? It’s true.”
“I know.”
Sick with longing, Persephone turns her cheek into the thump of Grace’s heartbeat, and listens. Recalls, with stabbing clarity, the last time she felt like this and with who and how close she is, if Persephone thinks about it, and she is thinking about it now. Can think of nothing else. The muse in Grace’s veins. Her thoughts teeter towards the edge of anguish; Grace’s belly is tender beneath her nails. She could dig them in. She could tear her way right down to the bone and being of her. She could find all that’s left of Calliope in her marrow and she could—
Persephone winces, pain sharp like a whipcrack.
Turns her eyes into Grace’s chest. Hand freezes. Breath shaking.
Nausea like a noose around her throat.
Beneath her, feeling the shift, Grace untangles their hands and wraps both arms around Persephone’s shoulders, tightens that leg she has still hooked around her hip.
“What is it?” she asks, and presses her lips to Persephone’s temple. “Did the migraine come back?”
“No.”
Grace does not relax. “What’s wrong?”
What have I done?
Persephone can only shake her head, so Grace changes tactics.
“What can I do?”
A beat.
When Persephone lifts her head, the look in her eyes is— Grace’s heart seizes with its own propensity to comfort.
“Please,” Persephone says, rough with pain, “ground me.”
Grace hesitates, caught between that need to bury herself right into the heart of a matter and expose it so that she can try to fix it, but the emotion in Persephone’s face is red raw and desperate. She does not need more exposure, now, but Grace thinks she can still help. With one hand, Grace tucks back the few loose strands of hair that have fallen in front of Persephone’s eyes. With the other, she draws Persephone in by the back of her neck, nodding.
“Okay,” she says against her lips, and Persephone melts into her. “It’s okay. Let me have you, baby.”
There is nothing overpowering in the way that Grace rolls them, so that she’s the one on top.
If Persephone did not want to submit, she would not have, and Grace feels no less powerful when she’s straddling her hips.
Above her, Persephone’s hands on her thighs, Grace draws herself up to her full height and lifts the band tee over her head to reveal the nothing that she’s wearing underneath. Persephone releases a sound that can only be inferred as desperate relief; her hands slide up Grace’s hips, the soft of her belly, indentations from the ribcage barely visible through her pale skin— her touch, warm and wanting.
Grace places her hands over Persephone’s and guides them even higher.
“Touch me,” she pleads, cupping her own chest with Persephone’s hands. “Right here, please touch me. Make me feel good.”
Persephone’s grip immediately firms.
Her hands move beneath Grace’s, who keeps her own grip loose, powerful and capable as she squeezes Grace’s breasts. Here, she is present. She is focused. She is not falling into dangerous memories. Persephone watches Grace’s face as she touches her, the way her eyelids turn heavy, the way her jaw loosens, lips part, the flush that burns so deliciously pink from the tips of her ears to the base of her neck.
(Yes, she could spend at least one lifetime here.)
Persephone loses herself to quiet moans and the subtle rolling of Grace’s hips against her.
And she is content to stay right where she is, until Grace releases a frustrated groan and whines out, “‘Seph—”
Persephone’s mouth waters. Burning need to sink her teeth into something supple.
Before Grace can register anything past the sudden tensing of the body beneath her, the whole world spins upon its axis. By the time she reorients herself, there is a pillow beneath her head and Persephone’s body above her, and she laughs even as she moans when a hot mouth closes around her nipple.
“Who’s eager, now?”
Persephone growls in response.
Against her affection, Grace’s body softens, shakes. She sinks fingers into Persephone’s shoulders and feels the full strain of the tension beneath their grip – the way that Persephone holds her weight up, holds herself back. The teeth that scrape and pinch and bite just so, that tears fill Grace’s eyes. Life has not prepared her for love this tender; it hurts near as much as it sustains her.
Questing fingers stroke Grace’s belly, trailing fingernails to the drawstring in her shorts.
A questioning tug, permission requested.
“I thought you wanted me to take care of you,” Grace breathes.
Persephone releases her breast and lifts her head so that she can meet her gaze. “I do.”
And Grace understands.
Ground me. Literally. Persephone with all that tension, that restraint— the emotion bright and bursting in her eyes and nowhere for it to go. She needs somewhere to put it. She needs somebody to give it to. Sighing, Grace takes her face between both hands and draws Persephone down towards her mouth.
“Give it to me,” she whispers, and Persephone deepens the kiss.
At the same time, that seeking hand slips the waistband on Grace’s shorts, fingers firm and familiar as they slide into her underwear. Grace gasps as she’s entered, and Persephone groans into her mouth.
There is nothing rough about the way Persephone fucks, when she’s like this. If Grace wanted her to hurt her, she would have to ask. Never the less, she is overwhelming. She is all-consuming. She is two fingers to the knuckle deep inside of Grace – press, press, pressing – and the tongue inside her mouth. Stolen breath and muffled moans. She is too much pressure between Grace’s thighs, and the sob when she feels her own undoing.
Stuttering breath, Grace parts from the kiss. Presses cheek-to-cheek with Persephone and tries to find her voice, high-pitched in warning.
“I can’t— I’m not going to—”
“Shh,” Persephone says, bringing their foreheads together. “Give it to me, Grace. Like you said you would. Let me see it— let me feel you come apart.”
With a sob, Grace gives in.
Lets go.
Feels the fire of her own arousal burning up from her heels, flames that grow and grow and grow until all she can see is the red of them from behind her own eyelids.
Persephone eats every moan that leaves her lips. Inside of Grace, her fingers wring the climax out of her, until every last little twitch of arousal fades and allows Grace to fall back into the bed. Finally, Persephone releases her. Stills the fingers inside of her. She is panting almost just as hard as Grace is, as though, of the two of them, she’d reaped the most reward.
Trembling, Grace presses a hand to her own face and groans. “Oh, my god…”
Above her, smiling satisfaction, Persephone presses a kiss against her chin.
“That has to be a record,” she mutters, and Grace groans again until it makes her laugh.
When she peels that hand away, however, Persephone is no longer laughing. She is smiling so fondly down at her, so sincerely grateful, that the first wise crack that tries to leave Grace’s lips falls away, forgotten. She stumbles quickly for another.
“What do you want me to say? You know exactly what you’re doing.”
Persephone’s smile sharpens. “Yes, I do.”
She is gentle when she slides her fingers out of Grace, who sighs and closes her eyes and misses the fullness almost as soon as it’s left her. When she recovers, Persephone already has those fingers in her mouth. Distracted, Grace sees the exact moment the next thought forms inside her mind – the way Persephone hesitates, like she’s in some way reluctant to let go of the taste.
“Can you handle more?” she asks, sincerely.
“Are you trying to kill me?”
But she’s already wriggling out of her shorts.
Grinning, Persephone pushes herself back onto her knees and bats Grace’s hands away. She enjoys this part— the unwrapping. The undressing. The fuck and the mind fuck, in equal measure. The black silk of her pyjamas stands out all the more prominently against her skin, for how pale Grace’s is in comparison once she’s completely bare. Persephone adjusts her position between her legs, and Grace grips the bedsheets with both hands, already trembling.
Between her legs, Persephone wraps both hands around her thighs and parts them, wets her lips.
She takes in the full view of her, flushed and pink, and Grace tries not to squirm.
“Oh, look at that,” Persephone hums, almost distracted. “I’ve gone and made a mess of you.”
So gently, she draws the pad of her thumb between her legs, just barely touching her. Then her gaze lifts, meets Grace’s from the top of the bed, the way she strains herself up on both elbows to be able to see, and the expression on Persephone’s face, once loose and lost in thought, sharpens with her smile.
When she next speaks, her voice is several octaves lower.
“I should really clean that up.”
Already holding her breath, Graces tries not to choke.
For all that she can see exactly what Persephone is doing to her, there is no preparing for the heat of her mouth when Persephone finally lowers it between her legs. First, the full flat of her tongue, and tandem moans chorus between them, then oscillating focus between her entrance and her clit. Grace’s stomach strains from keeping herself held up, but she’s not yet ready to look away.
When Persephone had first taken her to her bed like this, she had surprised her.
For all they knew of each other, Grace had not expected to leave her without bruises – physical, mental, and the rest. Had, in some quiet way, been hoping for it. She had been hurting even as she’d healed, celebrating a double-edged victory that could not be shared with the people who were no longer closest to her. She had wanted punishment, and Persephone had refused her in the gentlest way that she knew how.
Still refuses her, when she refuses Grace near nothing else. But tenderness that sharp cuts almost just as deep.
Persephone is a thorough lover, but then what had Grace expected?
(Not this. Not this compassion. Not this acceptance. Not this all-consuming love.)
Teeth graze against her clit, and Grace gasps so loudly, she almost cries.
Startled, all her focus returns between her legs— to those two sharp eyes, meeting her, compelling her not to look away.
(Stay right here with me, she’d said.)
Redoubling her efforts, Persephone draws her clit between her lips until Grace whimpers. Until she has one hand scrambling to reach for Persephone’s, who immediately indulges her. Fingers intertwine, Grace’s knuckles turning white and shaking as she watches the exact moment Persephone licks her tongue inside of her, only for the bridge of her nose, heroic, to press against her clit.
Grace almost comes on the spot.
Manages to claw it back, at the last second. Controls her breathing, even if she whimpers on every other exhale.
“Per—sephone—”
“Mmh…?”
Grace can see how badly Persephone needs to work this tension out. She is trying to be so good for her, to last for her, but she is scrambling against her own restraint and knows it will not take her long to lose her grasp on it completely. Between her legs, as though she can see the exact dilemma written, strained, across Grace’s face, Persephone vows to destroy it.
Her tongue returns to Grace’s clit with pressing, circling focus, firm and unrelenting.
Breath shudders past Grace’s lips, a string of incoherent noises.
She grips Persephone’s hand, and Persephone grips hers back, and, gasping, Grace reaches climax.
When Grace comes to, again, she feels her body boneless.
Her heart still thumps inside her chest, and every muscles quivers, over-exerted. The bed is soft and firm beneath her, the pillow over-warm against her head, and there between her legs— Grace moans quietly, leg twitching, and dips her chin to better see the kisses that Persephone is pressing into her thighs. When she catches Grace looking, Persephone rests her cheek against the same place she was just kissing, and smiles.
“Hello, darling.”
Grace fumbles for her voice. “Hi. Whoa. Give me a second, I’m still dizzy. What’s my name, again?”
Persephone snorts, amused, and releases Grace’s thigh.
She is careful when she crawls back up the bed, mindful of just how she lays her body as she covers Grace’s with it. Grace welcome her, silk and warm, until Persephone is tucked just so against her chest, within kissing distance. Dipping her head, Grace parts her lips and encourages her closer. Persephone does not make her ask – kisses her, and kisses her, until Grace tastes herself against her tongue. She is languid and lazy. She is barely conscious, and so alive.
When they part, Grace presses a hand to Persephone’s cheek and sighs, “You’re incredible, you know that?”
“Sweet girl,” Persephone tells her, and it could be condescending but for the fondness in her voice.
“Do you feel better now?”
“Very much so.”
Grace runs her fingers through short, red hair, enjoying the way Persephone closes her eyes on reflex.
“So does that mean I can touch you?”
Persephone’s eyes open, curious and amused. “I thought you said you were still dizzy.”
“I recover fast.”
Smirking, Persephone kisses her again – chased, closed-mouthed. “Maybe not toni—”
“Please,” Grace says, cupping her face. “Please, if you’ll let me. I want to make you feel like this.”
Persephone… hesitates, but Grace can see the loosening of her jaw, the long and distant look in her eyes, the hunger barely satisfied.
“I don’t need you to—” she starts to say, but Grace quickly cuts her off.
“I know. This isn’t transactional.” She brushes her nose against Persephone’s, kisses the corner of her mouth. “You make me feel so good, baby. Won’t you let me do that for you?”
And Persephone melts. Frustration and affection in the sigh that she tries to disguise, head turned to one side, lips pursing, until Grace turns her ever so gently back to face her again. A don’t hide from me, unspoken plea, accepted when Persephone lets Grace see her naked longing.
“Okay.”
Grace kisses her, grateful. “Then lie down for me.”
A beat, and Persephone concedes, sliding off from Grace and into the space between her. Grace follows without asking, sliding into Persephone’s lap and kneeling there, that she can better access the buttons in her pyjama shirt. The silk brushes against her knuckles as she pops the first button, a second, Grace so focused on her task that when Persephone reaches up to tuck hair back behind her ear, she almost startles, smiling.
“Why you need this many buttons in the first place,” she mutters to herself.
“Anticipation, my love,” Persephone jokes, relaxing against the pillows. “Half the pleasure is in the pain of denial.”
Grace is so caught off guard by the term of endearment, that her fingers fumble their next button.
Persephone, noticing, smiles deeper.
“I don’t like denial,” Grace says, but even as the words leave her mouth, she reaches the last button in the set.
Persephone’s pyjama shirt hangs limply open, when she’s finished, revealing just a slip of toned, brown skin beneath. Grace brings both hands to either half of the shirt and peels it open, sighing. Persephone has no right to look this good. Her build is naturally lean and athletic, helped much by her gym subscription, but she is soft in places, too. Unable to help herself, Grace cups small breasts in both her hands, thumbing at brown nipples.
Persephone studies the look on her face with quiet intensity. “You’d like the way I do it.”
And Grace, remembering what she’d last said— stalls. Hums, and shakes her head.
“Not tonight, thank you, but I’ll be willing to listen later…” She tugs on one sleeve of Persephone’s shirt. “Let me take this off?”
With neither hesitation nor effort, Persephone lifts herself into a sitting position.
Still straddling her, Grace can feel the tensing of her abdomen against her, and gnaws on the inside of her cheek. She’s always thought of Persephone as graceful, but it’s the kind of grace that comes from power, like a jungle cat— the full broad and brawn of her, subtly disguised beneath the lipstick and the tailor-fitted suits. Without any of that, Persephone is a marvel.
The shirt slips from her back like the silk that it is spun from, and Grace appreciates being the one to discard it – she does not want to see it again, tonight.
Face to face, now, and with all that naked skin close to hand, Grace does not deny herself.
She presses her hands, first, against the full width of Persephone’s chest – then over her shoulders, her upper arms. For her part, Persephone remains patient as Grace’s touch feathers down to her elbows, her wrists, into her palms. She places Persephone’s hands onto her own hips as though to say, hold onto this a sec.
“Lie down,” Grace whispers, and Persephone acquiesces without struggle. From her position, with perfect view of Persephone’s body splayed out beneath her the way that it is, Grace stares in slack-jawed admiration. She will never tire of this. She presses palms to Persephone’s belly and feels the muscles underneath, contracting and expanding with each breath. “You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that?”
Persephone hums, amused, and does not disagree.
It takes little effort more to remove her pyjama bottoms, but it does require that Grace move from where she’s sitting. Instead of resuming the position, Grace slips between Persephone’s legs, belly to belly with her, and kisses her languidly on the mouth. It is slow, it is chaste. It is so obviously not enough. When Persephone attempts to lead the kiss, to deepen it, Grace pulls away, diverting her attention to the column of her throat, instead.
“Relax,” Grace murmurs against her skin. “Let me play with you a while.”
A quiet sigh above her is the only indication of frustration, but even that sounds far too pleased.
Appeased, Grace takes her time.
She trails her kisses down to Persephone’s shoulders, her collarbones, the space between her breasts. Her own arousal is a slow-burning fire below her belly, but the last two orgasms have her mostly sated, that she can do this without completely losing her mind. And she wants to— wants to spend the rest of the night right here, in worship.
As Grace kisses her, she studies her, learns her.
She recounts every area that has ever drawn a sigh, and lathes her kisses there.
When Grace runs her tongue along her ribcage, she knows already to expect the way that Persephone’s body jumps beneath her— the draw of breath, the way those hands tense around her hips. Grace has yet to verbally acknowledge how ticklish she is; whenever she gets this near, Persephone’s fingers tend to dig in somewhere soft, warning.
Right on cue, low and breathy: “Careful.”
One day, Grace will explore further. Find the exact spot that makes Persephone banish her to the couch to sleep.
Leaving the area, and acknowledging the grateful breath that Persephone releases, Grace turns her attention elsewhere. She kisses Persephone’s belly, licks into her navel, teases the skin just above the waistband of her underwear with both her tongue and her teeth, until Persephone’s hips begin to arch off the bed, then Grace pulls away.
Above her, Persephone shivers as she groans.
“Relax,” Grace repeats, grinning, and returns to her chest.
Beneath her, Persephone trembles. Arousal and annoyance in equal measure, fingers sinking into Grace’s hips, her own straining so tightly against the urge to roll up and into Grace— to roll her over, entirely, and have her way with her. She is trying, Grace understands. She is trying to give Grace what she wants.
The acknowledgement makes her dizzy, the same way certain heights do, that teasing Persephone loses all appeal.
She does not want to drag this out.
She does not want to make her wait.
She wants to give Persephone everything she has. She wants to spill her chest open above her. She wants to bury herself inside her skin.
With a sudden flush of feeling, Grace wraps her mouth around Persephone’s breast, and delights in the noise of startled exultation that comes sputtered past Persephone’s lips now that she’s no longer teasing. She is most sensitive here, and Grace knows it. Loves it. She rolls her tongue against the dusky brown nipple in her mouth and moans, until Persephone is hands-deep in her hair and panting.
It’s almost too much, but Grace doesn’t know how to slow down, now.
When Persephone begins to rut her hips against her, Grace tears herself away but she does not go far. She moves down Persephone’s body, right into the crook between her legs, and without warning wets the full length of her tongue between her legs. Persephone’s hips jump delightfully beneath her, and she does not muffle her cry of surprise.
Grace can taste her through her underwear, can feel her arousal already wet and warm, the slick and salt of her. She barely refrains from sinking her teeth in, too, until Persephone gives an insistent tug on her hair.
Drawing on every last thread of her composure, Grace pulls herself away just far enough to lift her head, and catch the look of desperate need on Persephone’s face. Her pupils are blown, a ring of reddish-brown around them, and the colour has deepened in her cheeks. Seeing her like this, Grace almost forgets what she’s doing.
“Grace,” Persephone says, and she is pleading. She is wanting. “I need—”
She stutters on the words, struggles. Frowns and groans at herself, frustrated.
Grace splays a palm over her belly, wants to kiss there next, but cannot bring herself away.
“I know,” she says, instead, and hooks her fingers beneath Persephone’s underwear to pull them off. “I got you, baby.”
Persephone growls low in the back of her throat, falls back to the bed. She throws one wrist over her face while the other sinks into Grace’s hair, fingers trembling. Overstimulated. Grace’s mouth waters. There is sick delight in seeing her like this, in seeing her undone, struggling, suffering, needing her. For every divine power in her arsenal, nothing will make her feel more powerful than this, right here.
She does not make Persephone wait, after that. Lowers her mouth to her and takes her in, in, nose buried in Persephone’s pubic hair and her mouth full with the sweet and tart of her.
Grace cannot stand to tease her, not when she’s like this. She needs her full— she needs her sated and spent and satisfied.
And in barely any time at all, Grace has her there, on the knife-edge precipice of her own oblivion, back taught and muscles straining.
Persephone comes quietly, for as vocal as she’s been thus far.
With Grace’s mouth on her, she falls so spectacularly apart.
The bedroom is quiet, when Persephone next stirs.
Peace is a welcome bedfellow, heavy in her limbs, pressing her body down into the mattress. Then she removes the wrist from over her eyes, and finds it’s not just post-coital exhaustion that’s weighing her down. Grace has settled on her belly, cheek against her ribs, like she’s listening for something. From this angle, Persephone can see that her eyes are open and vaguely focused somewhere across the room, but there is no tension in her expression.
When Persephone strokes a hand through her hair, Grace yawns and lifts her head.
She has the bright eyes of someone close to sleep.
“Go and clean your teeth,” Persephone tells her. “I’ll change the sheets.”
Reluctance strains at Grace’s muscles, but she does as she is told – takes herself away into the en suite bathroom, and cleans herself up until she’s fresh for bed. By the time she’s finished, Persephone has already stripped and fitted the mattress with fresh sheets. She is frighteningly efficient, Grace thinks, as she clambers around for her band tee and a pair of underwear to wear to bed.
Persephone waits for her, inside the sheets.
The robe that she sometimes wears for breakfast peeks up from beneath the covers, her body seemingly tantalisingly bare underneath. Grace does not hesitate a second, when Persephone beckons her into the space beside her. The fresh sheets are cool and welcome against her legs; Persephone’s body, even more so, when Grace curls herself against it. The move brings them face to face, eye-level, over-tired and comfortable.
“Can I stay here tonight?” Grace whispers.
Some pitifully tender emotion turns over inside Persephone’s chest.
“Where else are you going to go?”
For a second, Grace almost just drops it, but she has been exposed tonight and there are few places left for her to hide.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I thought you might ask me to go home.”
The word rings hollow, without its meaning. Without its heart.
Persephone studies her in silence, then releases a heavy breath. She breaches the space between them with one hand, places it against Grace’s cheek, tucks hair behind her ear, and aches for how Grace relaxes into her touch— for the trust that she places in her, that they can bring these sharpest of emotions out to play, when she’s already vulnerable.
“You can stay here for as long as you like,” Persephone tells her, and that’s all it is. No grand gesture, no ring with a key. “You’re always welcome, Grace. When you’re ready, I’ll help you go back there. But I want you to be comfortable, here. It would make me very happy, if you were.”
Grace stares at her, unspeaking.
Fighting with herself, and somehow winning, because she will not spoil this moment.
She feels that snare, growing ever tighter. Feels her own hands tremble as she loosens it from around her throat.
There are ugly emotions in her chest, dark and sticky emotions that she’s carried with her for too long, but Persephone has this way of making them so much easier to bear. And maybe she will work through them, one day. Maybe she’ll fix every shattered piece of herself into something stronger.
“It’d make me happy, too,” she manages, even as her throat turns tight.
Persephone blinks at her, and smiles. “More and more, that’s all I really want for you.”
And that’s— almost too much for Grace to acknowledge, honestly.
She gnaws on her bottom lip and nods her head, and tries to pretend that her eyes are not stinging with unshed tears. Persephone is not so kind, and then she’s more so. Acknowledges the tears and then abates them. She rolls onto her back and gently encourages Grace closer, who does not hesitate a second to curl into her chest.
When Persephone drapes the blanket over her shoulders, Grace tucks her face into her neck. She is welcome here, she knows. Feels it, even, in the way that Persephone’s arms immediately encircle her – in the hand that she sinks into Grace’s hair.
Her throat has turned the kind of tight that repels speaking, but when Grace presses a kiss against her skin, she hopes Persephone knows that it means thank you. I love you. I feel so safe when I’m with you.
I never want to leave.