Chapter Text
“Is that your blood, or someone else’s?”
Sara’s lips formed a thin line as Yae’s melodic drawl hit her ears. She held quite still, as the priestesses’ long, painted nails grazed the place on her jaw where a drop of crimson glinted in the low light of the Kujou Clanhouse’s guest room.
“Mine,” Sara responded quietly, and then as she forced a composed expression, she asked a question she already knew the answer to.
“Why are you here?”
“Just a hunch, really,” Yae began in a bright song-song voice, “that you might come here, after you finished beating up all those vagrants. Rebuilding Inazuma must be so exhausting.”
And then, Yae’s fingers brushed against Sara’s cheek, and the blood smeared onto the tip of her finger, scarlet atop the pink of her painted nail. Sara could feel heat rising from the depths of her core, reddening her shoulders and neck, giving her away even as she tried to find shelter from Yae’s pointed gaze.
“It looks like I was right,” Yae continued, voice softening and deepening to something clearly more intimate, “to come here. But I do wonder what brought you here. Or maybe I don’t need to wonder at all.”
Sara frowned, golden eyes narrowing as she remembered the terms of their agreement. Her namesake’s Clanhouse had a rather secluded spare room, with a modest bed and a shuttered window. No one had seemed to remember it even existed, and this, Sara had decided, would be the place that she and Yae would meet.
“I thought that…” Sara trailed off, watching as Yae brought the tip of her finger, smeared with Sara’s blood, up to her mouth; she continued to watch as Yae pressed her finger against her full lips, and rolled her tongue along the length of it.
When Yae had finished, and her finger was quite clean, she continued where Sara had left off.
“That I might be here?” She asked sweetly.
Sara’s cheeks burned at the realization of that truth. She refused to nod, even as Yae’s smile grew wider.
“I didn’t think you liked me that much,” Yae breathed, eyes narrowing with satisfaction as she watched Sara quietly burn beneath her gaze.
Sara turned her head sidelong as Yae came closer, showing off her beautifully cut jawline, and the scarlet smear of blood that ran down her neck.
“Or is it more,” Yae murmured musingly, as she raised her hand to trace her fingers down Sara’s jaw, and along the wiry tendons of her neck, “that you like what I can do for you.”
Sara slowly turned her head back towards her, and Yae’s hand lifted to pull her fingers into the dark, messy strands of her hair.
“The latter,” Sara replied with a pitiful grunt as she tried to ignore the way Yae’s sharp nails scratched wonderfully at her scalp.
Yae tilted her head to one side, offering Sara a mockingly confused expression.
“Come again?” Yae simpered teasingly.
Sara grit her teeth.
“Use your words, General,” Yae whispered with an encouraging lilt, “I’m sure all those peace talks must have taught you something.”
Sara’s eyes sizzled with indignation, but Yae could sense a hunger, building deep within her. It was always like this, when they were together.
“P-proceed,” Sara stuttered stoically.
Yae’s brows rose with delight. She loved this part. Coaxing Sara to tell her exactly what she wanted; what she needed.
“You’ll have to give me more to work with than that,” Yae teased, leaning forward so that her chest pressed against Sara’s own.
“Tell me what you need,” Yae encouraged with a heated whisper.
“You know what I need,” Sara confided as she looked at Yae directly, almost pleadingly.
“That’s all you’ll give me?” Yae attempted to sculpt her words into a tease, but the cut of them was rough and sharp and bitter in her throat.
Sara’s eyes widened momentarily as Yae’s hands left her, and for a moment she wondered if this scenario wouldn’t go as it had all those other times before.
It had been Yae’s idea for them to meet like this, after all, and she could break their agreement, just as Sara could.
Neither of them had found the will to do otherwise.
But when Yae pushed gently away, and shifted to settle down to her knees before her, Sara sighed with a mixture of relief and chagrin as the reality of how badly she needed this settled like a weight upon her shoulders.
And after Yae took what she wanted, she would give Sara something more; something Sara could get nowhere else.
Sara lifted her hand, brushing her fingers on Yae’s bare shoulders, and Yae smiled, turning her head to give Sara’s fingers a few scant kisses.
Sara’s fingers twitched beneath her soft, full lips. Sara swallowed thickly and fell back against the wood panelling of the wall behind her as Yae pushed past her robes and pulled her underthings down past her muscular thighs.
“You’re still not used to this, are you?” Yae breathed in awe, warm and hot against Sara’s exposed skin, “even after all this time.”
Sara shivered and bit her tongue to hold back a moan as Yae trailed her sharp fingernails up her tender inner thigh.
“Remarkable,” Yae nearly whispered, lips curving into a delighted smirk as she watched Sara’s eyes narrow reactively to her teasing words, “that you would still feel nervous, even now.”
“It’s not nervousness,” Sara countered breathily as Yae’s amethyst-hued eyes pulled up towards her; the intensity of them making her press harder against the wall behind her even as some base desire twisted in her gut.
“You say that,” Yae murmured, leaning her head forward so that her nose pressed up against Sara’s skin, and her lips rested right atop where Sara absolutely needed her.
“But I can feel your heart racing, even from down here.”
Yae’s lips pressed deliciously against Sara as she spoke, and Sara sucked in a shuddering breath as she tried to hold herself steady and still.
The general’s violent heart continued to race, driving harder and faster towards an edge. It wasn’t the edge of a cliff’s so much as the edge of a knife, and bruised and bloody she pressed herself into the sharp of the blade, choking out her moans as Yae’s lips brought her down against release after shattering release.
After that, Sara groaned, breathless, as she made to pull her underthings back up her trembling thighs.
A silence washed over the both of them, as Yae ran her delicate fingers along her own lips.
Sara breathed broken breaths, like a bird crushed within one’s palm might. Yae’s heart stilled like a frozen lake’s surface before splitting asunder.
The wire of the moment, pulled taut and tight, snapped; the moment disappeared, and life continued on.
“Well?” Sara asked between breaths.
Yae pushed herself up to standing, and a sigh escaped her.
“I’ve reprogrammed her. Full factory reset. That should help, but it’s only a matter of time before it happens all over again.”
Sara’s golden eyes went distant. Yae watched as her mind worked furiously beneath the sweat-slicked dark strands of hair atop her head.
“I owe you one,” Sara’s words were hollow and robotic in a painfully ironic way.
A perfect smile curved onto Yae’s lips. Her teeth, sharp and white, present just beneath.
“You owe me nothing,” the Priestess replied simply as she waved a hand idly at the room, “that’s the whole point of all of this.”
Sara finally drew her eyes back to Yae’s own. She gave her a short, swift nod.
“Thank you, Guuji Yae.”
Those words seemed, somehow, to hurt the worst of all.
Yae pulled in a harsh, sudden breath. The air in the room was too stuffy; hot in a way that had been delectable before it transformed into something both overwhelming and overpowering.
She realized that instinct was beginning to kick in. If she didn’t leave now she would be digging her nails into Sara’s idiotic shoulders; sinking her teeth into the General’s stupid neck.
Instead, she turned away. She heard Sara, behind her, shift her weight; she heard the sound of fabric rustling. Would it be wishful thinking, to imagine that Sara’s lips were parting, and that the General had more to say?
It wouldn’t matter either way. Yae was already gone, and she refused to imagine what Sara might look like, standing there alone in that empty room.
Because that line of thinking would only remind her of Ei.
Ei, who had been similarly alone, and similarly foolish, and who had never bothered to stop and look at what she had.
Ei, who had only looked back on what was already gone; who looked only towards what could be preserved and maintained.
Yae grit her teeth and slammed her eyes shut as cherry blossoms stormed to the ground all around her. She cringed against their beautifully sweet perfume.
Sara and Ei had only continued to make the same mistakes, again and again, even after all this time.
Yae took in a shuddering breath.
And so have I.
That final thought dropped from her throat and sank into her stomach like a curse. She smiled against it, and raised her head high.
“And so have I,” Yae Miko said aloud, to no one.