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The room is…nice. Too nice, Ashton thinks. It has a bed with clean sheets and several pillows, a stack of drawers below a large mirror, a floor length window that leads to a balcony, and the enchanted lights inside are causing his heart to do things it hasn’t done in a long, long time. Even the fucking mattress, despite how soft it is, doesn’t sag when he throws himself on the bed, making everything dirty in less than a second.
Everything hurts like the three biggest motherfuckers in the entire world got together to make one mega motherfucker whose only purpose in life was to break him into tiny shards and then glue him back together with glue that hurt even more than being broken in the first place. Of course, the only reason they are aching all over in the first place is their own stupidity, but it doesn’t mean they can’t complain until the pain dwindles to an acceptable level.
Fucking gods, why did he go ahead and try and take the shard that didn’t belong to him? He told himself it was to protect the rest of the group, and maybe that would be true, if he didn’t spend most of his years trying to keep himself alive, doing things for himself, because he can’t trust anyone else. They’re all idiots who are either too self-sacrificial or too wrapped up in their own thing to ever bother sticking around.
“Ashton, can you help me here?”
Oh. Right.
The whole reason they’re holed up right now is that for all of Ashton’s impulsiveness and stupidity, they’re amazingly good at concealing their pain (maybe because of it — they’ll dwell on that later), so it took several battles, FCG fucking dying, and Dorian coming back for them to stop for a moment and think. Of course, when they stopped, they were forced to listen to their body, and their body hurts.
Fearne, from the looks of it, has been much luckier. Besides the obvious anxiety and a first few days filled with accidentally setting things on fire, she’s been her old self, the one Ashton fell for as soon as they were pickpocketed; impulsive (just like them), with ideas that constantly shake everyone’s perspective of what’s real and what’s right, and the most beautiful, inviting body they have ever seen.
It’s easy enough to get up and walk over to the mirror, where Fearne has plastered herself and is very focused on adjusting a piece of fabric he can’t quite figure out. Where does it start? Where does it end? Why are all her pretty clothes this complicated to make and wear? Why is—
Before he can dwell on his thoughts any longer, a piece of said fabric lands on his hands. “Don’t tug. I’m trying to adjust things here.”
For that, he’ll need to get closer, and titans know what will happen if she keeps giving him parts of herself that no other person could ever even dream of seeing. He might start to think his feelings aren’t unfounded; so there he stays, eyes darting back between a head of flowery green hair and the mirror, where the sweetest deceptive face has a furrowed brow as she concentrates on pinning (?) parts of the dress back together. With a strange, black-clawed hand, the task proves more difficult than expected — he won’t offer to help, though. He will stand right there. He’s good at doing that.
Eventually, the arduous task is completed and Fearne… doesn’t push back. She doesn’t try to get back the piece of fabric that rightfully belongs to her, or move away because she feels trapped with them behind her. No, none of that. Their eyes lock for a brief moment in the mirror — Ashton swears the titans were in their place. Earth hugging fire, containing it, nurturing it and helping it grow; fire holding on tight, preparing to roar its blaze across the land.
“You’re too quiet,” she says. For the second time that night, they’re brought back from dreams back to reality. The material place is nice, though, at least right now.
“Yeah, sorry.” They step just the smallest step forward, letting their chin come to rest atop bare shoulders, out of the way of the most well-decorated horns they’ve ever seen. This has happened before — fleeting touches, a promise, words that will never amount to anything — but here and now, Ashton’s never been more sure of something. “I hope I’m not hurting you.” Their hands snake around a cinched waist, hidden from touch by a simple corset and a belt. Oh, how they want to know how everything looks, how they want to worship everything in its full glory and thank the gods for allowing them to be a part of something so transcendent.
The clawed hand wraps around his own, fingers not digging into the hard stone skin. Sometimes it has its perks, but right now, all he wants is to feel every little touch to the bone; easier said than done, sadly. “You’re not.” Her other hand, uncalloused and as soft as a hand can be in times of strife, hovers not even an inch away from his new arm. Ever since… that , his body has been in a weird temperature state, cooling itself over and over and over, somehow unable to decide whether the burning arm is a blessing or a curse.
He nods. She can. She can do whatever, because she’s Fearne. Because despite her apparent naive nature, she’s one of the smartest people he knows he’ll ever meet in this forsaken life; because she’s headstrong as hell, and wouldn’t let uncertainty get in the way of what she wants.
Seconds later, way after gentle fingers have laid on an active volcano, they wrap around tighter. They get in every nook and cranny, hungry for sometimes no one knows. From experience, when earth and fire collide, it’s tough to say what will happen, or if anything will happen at all. Fire needs air to keep burning, the earth needs air to change.
But here, without space for a single breath, earth and fire collide in an explosion of all that is good and right.
They don’t need anything else.