notfaking_it | (no subject)

Entry tags:

delta

(no subject)

Nina had been dead for four days.

Again.

There hadn't been a funeral last time, or rather, she was sure there had been, but she hadn't been there to attend. She hadn't even known about it until Nina had come to the island and then left again, leaving Lily behind to watch that film.

There was a funeral this time. For awhile, she'd thought about avoiding it, but it was the artistic director at the company who'd convinced her to go. Think of how it'll look if you don't. You two danced together all the time, you were friends. People know that. It made her sick. That was what Nina's funeral would amount to in the eyes of the public, in the eyes of the media.

But she'd gone anyway. She'd sat in the front row, the one normally reserved for family, but there was no family here. She'd asked Delta not to come with her and she wasn't sure why, but she knew he was waiting for her at her apartment and after a very short appearance at the wake, she'd walked home. Two reporters had tried to get a statement from her, but the look she'd given each of them had silenced them, at least for the time being, though she could sense them still following her.

She suspected they would follow her all the way home. That they might let an hour or two pass before they began buzzing her apartment.

She almost wanted them to. She wanted to let them up, she wanted to open her door and have them ask their heartless questions and she wanted see what Delta might do to them. It wasn't a fair thought and she wanted it all the same.

When she let herself into her apartment and closed the door, she only stood there for a moment, her back pressed to the door.

Nina had been dead for four days and it wasn't the first time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He had never been to a funeral, he realized - or, he very likely had, but not that he could remember. Not yet. Surrounded by death, the agent of death, but he had never been present for this part of it.

He wondered what it felt like. He wondered if it was good that he didn't yet know. He hadn't known Nina well, but he had known her, and now he would never get to know her better.

He was sitting on the couch, and when the door opened and closed again he got up, moving to it, stopping close to Lily but not touching her.

"Are you all right?" But of course she wasn't.

"Some reporters followed me home," she said instead of answering the question as she reached up with one hand and undid some of the pins in her hair. Lily had made a career and a life out of expressing emotion and yet all she wanted to do now was shut off. She didn't want to feel this anymore.

"They want a statement," she said, then laughed as she reached down to take off her shoes. "Like it'll somehow lend their sensationalist stories about how she threw herself in front of a train more credence if they have a statement from someone who knew her."

He wanted to touch her, to hold her, to do whatever she needed to make herself feel better, but he had never seen her like this before. What did she need from him? He stood close, looking for any clue, trying to not be terribly angry with the people outside.

"Do you want me to talk to them?"

"No." She wanted him to hurt them. She wanted to hurt them. "No, it's fine. If they try to buzz up you can talk to them, then." She certainly wouldn't give them a statement. Even if she was able to, she wouldn't. The idea that Nina's death was something that needed to be shared with a bunch of strangers made her furious.

With her shoes in her hand, she smiled a little. "Sorry. I'm so fucking angry."

"It's all right." He paused again, then decided that he couldn't think through this too much or he would never do anything. He had instincts. He could listen to them. He knew how to be kind to someone.

He reached out and gently cupped her cheek. "Tell me what I can do for you."

There was nothing to be done and that was the problem. Delta couldn't tell her why Nina had jumped in front of the train, he couldn't tell her why she'd been seeing things, why she'd thought ending her life would be easier than trying to find help, trying to find a way out. She shook her head a little, reaching up to cover her hand with her own.

"This isn't the first time she died," she said. She hadn't told anyone about the film, she hadn't breathed a word of it except to those few who had seen it on the island. It wasn't something she felt comfortable telling people, especially not with Nina here, but now she was gone again. Now there was no point keeping it a secret. "In New York. She stabbed herself during a hallucination, she thought she was stabbing me."

There was something about it that was so familiar. The pain he heard in her voice, the helplessness in the words. Strange death had been a feature of Rapture, and it had trisected his life - one death, then another... and really, then another. None making all that much sense.

And sometimes people turned on people they loved.

"Why did she want to stab you?"

"Because she thought I was trying to take over her life," Lily answered with a faint, sad smile before she set her shoes down near and door and walked toward the living room, keeping one hand in Delta's, leading him with her. She wasn't sure how to explain what had happened with Nina, especially when she understood so little of it herself.

"She was sick," she said, sinking onto the couch. "And I thought I could pretend she was better because she was here, she was alive again. In New York she was seeing things and she was imagining things and because I was so much of what Thomas wanted her to be, she thought I was doing them to her."

He listened, mulling over what she was saying. There were the words she was using, and then there were the words beneath them, unspoken, but he could feel them.

He sat down beside her and laid a hand on her back, feeling her body shift slightly with her breathing. "Do you feel like any of it was your fault?"

"No," she says, which isn't true. She smiles again and shakes her head, hair falling across her face before she reaches up to push it back. "Yes. I didn't know what was going on with her, I know it wasn't my fault, but at the same time it feels like it was. I didn't have to push her as hard as I did."

She thought she'd been helping, she really did, but looking back she knows she should have backed off. "She was under a lot of pressure, I knew that. I should have let her be."

"You couldn't have known that she would do this." He pulled her a little closer, still gentle. "I didn't see what happened before this place, but here... I think you were a good friend. I think... Sometimes people are hurting and you can't help them. No matter how much you want to."

It wasn't unusual for Lily to seek comfort in others, but this was the first time she's found comfort like this. It wasn't going to a club, finding someone she'd never met before and taking them home, it was going home to someone who was already there, someone familiar. Even now, even with everything else that had happened, she found she liked it.

Leaning against him, she shook her head again. "She was sick. I should have said something."

He didn't know what to say to that. But he wasn't a stranger to regret. There were so many things he could have done differently, so many things he would never get the chance to change.

"I've killed so many people," he said quietly. "Splicers, yes, and they were attacking me, but there were so many. And they were just people, in the end. Sick people. Maybe I could have helped them somehow. Maybe killing them was a mercy. I'll never know, and I can never go back and do things another way. So I just... You have to go on. You have to do the best you can do."

That was the problem, she thought. She'd had a second chance, she'd had the ability to offer help, she'd had the knowledge of what had happened in the past and she'd done nothing with it. Not knowing what to do wasn't an excuse. Knowing Nina might have hated her wasn't an excuse either. At least Nina might have still been alive to hate her.

But Delta was right. It couldn't be changed now.

She opened her mouth to say something when the sound of the buzzer from downstairs came and she almost laughed. "I guess they figured that was enough peace."

"Just ignore them. They aren't even there." He combed a hand through her hair, leaning in to press a kiss to her temple. "You're with me. I know I can't fix anything, I can't make it go away... But I want to do whatever I can for you."

Lily wasn't used to not knowing what she needed any more than she was used to relying on someone, having someone to come home to. She wished she could tell Delta what would make it better, just list off all the things he could do that could fix it, but there was nothing.

"If they keep trying to get up here, I might ask you to get rid of them," she said, smiling faintly as she leaned into him. She could do it herself, but she was exhausted. She didn't want to do anything.

"I would," he said seriously. He knew that she was mostly kidding - or was pretty sure - but he was also unprepared to put up with much.

"I don't understand why they can't just leave you alone."

"Because they want a story," she answered, brushing some hair back from her face. "They want details. They think... Nina was sort of famous, at least in Darrow." And so was she, though she'd never thought of it as such. "There are people who follow the ballet like other people follow TV shows or movies. They think people deserve to know more about her and what happened."

And they thought she could give that to them.

He shook his head at that. On some level he supposed he understood it, but on a deeper level it made no sense. It wasn't any business of theirs. Lily was definitely no business of theirs.

"Eventually they'll have to go away. If they don't..." He shrugged. One way or another, they would.

"Why don't you come and lie down with me? If you're tired."

The buzzer went again and Lily rubbed her fingers against her temple before she nodded. They'd have to go away eventually, he was right, and if they didn't, she was sure there was a way they could make them go away.

"Yeah," she agreed, getting up from the couch, holding her hand out for Delta to take. She knew she was off, that she wasn't acting like herself at all, and it was just one more reason she'd kept her distance for so long. Ducking her head before he stood, she kissed him, threading her fingers in his hair. "That's a good idea. I'm ready for this day to be finished."

"We can order some food later," he murmured, closing his hands around her waist. He wanted her, of course he did, but even more than that he realized that he wanted to simply be there. However she needed him.

He began to gently tug her back toward the bedroom. "Maybe they'll even have gone away by then."

They might leave, but they would be back the next day. They would follow her to the studio and wait outside. There would be dancers who would give quotes, excited to have their names in the media. The reporters would take anything, but they would want Lily and she had nothing to give them.

Delta, though, was different, and she smiled at him finally, following him down the hall. "It'll be awhile before they really lose interest, but something else will happen," she agrees, sliding her hands up to rest against his chest. "As awful as it sounds, they'll find someone else's misfortune to focus on and then they'll forget all about Nina."

"Until then, you shouldn't think about them anymore." He combed one large hand through her hair, settled it against the side of her neck. He could feel the tension there, the same tension that had worked its way into all of her muscles. Not the kind of tension that came from the normal, healthy use of her body but instead from somewhere deeper.

"Would you like me to rub your back?"

He was so sweet to her, even at a time when she felt empty, like she had almost nothing left, and she smiled at him before nodding. "That would be nice," she said. She wasn't used to feeling this way, had always been so comfortable in her body, graceful in ways other dancers couldn't be simply because she was at ease with herself, but nothing about the past few days had been easy and she was wearing it now. She could feel it creeping into her muscles and she couldn't have that. She still had to dance, she still had to work.

In her bedroom she paused for a moment, then reached for the hem of her dark dress, pulling it up and over her head, discarding it on the floor. She'd worry about it in the morning. Right now all she wanted was Delta's hands on her again.

He watched her body coming into view, feeling himself slip into that sense of rapt attention that still came over him whenever she undressed. It wasn't strange anymore, and yet it wasn't any less intense, that feeling. He stepped closer to her and reached out, curving his arms around her, his fingers tracing the band of her bra until he reached the hooks.

He couldn't bring Nina back to life. He couldn't make the rest of the world go away. But maybe he could help her to forget it for a while. Maybe he could do that much for her.

She hadn't known it until that moment, but having him touch her was exactly what she needed. Not to forget, there was no forgetting, but to remember why she'd begun to let people in at all. The loss was undeniable, it was wrenching, it was everything she wanted to avoid and yet she could say it was worth it. For something like this.

It had been a long time since she'd loved someone like she loved him, long enough that she still couldn't say it, but it was there. As undeniable as the pain of the day. She smiled up at him, pushed both her hands under the material of his shirt and spread her hands against his skin. "I want you," she murmured, pushing his shirt up further, ducking her head to brush her lips against his skin.

He made a quiet noise as he unhooked her bra and pushed the straps slowly down over her shoulders. "I want you too," he said softly, letting the bra fall away and running his hands carefully over her sides, up over her ribs, cupping her breasts.

This was more about her than it was him, about doing whatever he could for her. But he did want her. He wanted her for himself, for the way he knew she would make him feel. He tipped his head back, letting her go where she wanted, already hard and eager.

She had felt desired before, that in itself was nothing new, but never like this. Never like it had been with Delta and she paused to let her bra drop to the floor, then pushed his shirt up further, higher over his chest before she was on her toes to pull it up and over his head completely. Her hands smoothed over his chest, over his skin and the scars she had gotten so familiar with she no longer even noticed them. Still on her toes, she pressed close to him, wrapping her arms around him as best she could, leaning up to kiss him and he was warm against her body and she could feel him hard against her hip and it did something to her, knowing that he wanted her, too.

Still kissing him, her hands dropped again to the waist of his pants, undoing them as quickly as she could before she slipped her hand inside. Her heel of her palm rubbed against him once before she circled her hand around his cock, stroking as she continued to kiss him, continued to lead him back toward her bed.

He dropped his head back further, letting out a loose, needy sound. He could be weak with her, let go of how much his size and strength usually mattered, feel the power she had. When she gripped him he felt himself unraveling a little, and followed her to the bed without a second's hesitation, pressing her slowly down onto it.

"Tell me what I can do for you," he murmured against her neck, nudging her legs apart with his knee. "I'll do anything."

"I just want you," she answered, her head tipped back against the bed as she felt his lips brush her neck. "I just want you inside me. I need it." Anything else was secondary to having him inside her right now, it was the only thing she could think to want, the best kind of reminder of why she'd begun to let people get close, why she'd let down walls. And being with Delta was about so much more than just sex, but she hadn't been with anyone else in over a year, longer than she'd ever given herself to one single person before, and it mattered to her. It mattered a lot.

He breathed out a quiet laugh, half in wonder, because he always felt that, a little. Wonder at how she made him feel, wonder at how much pleasure he could give her. He slid a hand between her thighs and pushed her panties aside, fingers stroking her, pushing into her with his thumb against her clit.

He was even harder, straining to take her, but he could wait. Wanted to wait. To give her every last second he could.

With a soft groan, she arched up against him, toward his fingers as her lips parted and a drew in a deep breath. "God," she breathed, dragging her hands down his back, her fingers curving under, trying to pull him closer to her even though they were already as close as they could be.

Lifting her body, she found his mouth again with hers, kissing him deeply before she let out a shuddering breath against his lips. "Delta, please," she murmured, her hips moving against his fingers and it felt so good, but she wanted more than that, she wanted all of him.

"I will." He laughed softly and pulled back just long enough to shed the last of his clothes, his cock bobbing free. It was a relief, in a way, but it was also a sense of need that was edging toward frustration, though he had never hated how that felt.

He gripped her hips and pushed her further up onto the bed, dragging her panties down her thighs. "Get a condom."

She liked the way he could move her, that he was so much bigger and stronger than she was, yet if she pushed him back, tried to guide him, he would move easily under her hands. With a grin, she turned toward the bedside table, reaching into the drawer for a condom before she turned back again, pulling one knee up and then the other to help him with her underwear. "Come here," she said, reaching for him again, her hand lifted and curling around the back of his neck. She wanted his weight on her, she wanted to feel pinned under him and she couldn't have put into words why she needed that, only knew it made her feel secure.

Edited 2014-03-21 12:59 (UTC)

He was kissing her as he settled back over her again, careful but firm, rocking slightly between her legs with his cock pressing against the inside of her thigh. He was still kissing her when he took her other hand and guided it between them, drawing in a breath when her fingers brushed against taut skin.

"Put it on me," he murmured, and let out another laugh, quiet. "I like it when you do."

She smiled against Delta's mouth, taking him in hand for a moment, enjoying the weight of him in her palm before she tore open the wrapper. They'd come so far since the first time they'd slept together and she liked that he was telling her what he liked, that he was comfortable enough with her to feel free to say anything. She had to break the kiss to glance down between them, holding him firmly as she rolled the condom down, taking her time with it.

But she was impatient, too, and her hips rolled up as she finished, already guiding him toward her, brushing the head of his cock against her clit. "Fuck, Delta," she breathed, hooking one leg around his, her hips arching up hopefully again.

He moaned when she curled her hand around him, pushing into the circle of her fist, and moaned again, louder, when she pulled him closer. He might be pressing her down, might be much larger than her, but he felt weak as she showed him with her body what she wanted, and there was pleasure in that. He had been made to give himself to someone else.

That could work more than one way.

He made a hard, helpless noise as he thrust into her, his lips sliding down the line of her jaw. "Lily," he gasped. "Ah, God."

Edited 2014-03-27 01:22 (UTC)

This was why she'd started to let people in. This was what she needed to remember. The connection to someone, the way she felt when he thrust inside her and it wasn't only about fucking him, not just about getting off because she could find that anywhere and she had for years. This was more. It was bigger than what she'd known for so long. It hurt to lose people, but it could be worth it. She had to remember that.

"Delta, god," she groaned, her hands sliding down the expanse of his back. Her fingers curled under, trying to drag him closer, deeper inside her as her head fell back against the bed.

"You feel so good," he breathed, which he had told her, which she knew, but it was one of those things that was so true that it had to be said, the pleasure welling inside him pressing it out through his lips. He thrust again, deeper and with a little more force, finding a rhythm. Maybe once he would have been afraid of hurting her, but he learned better a long time ago.

Her hips arched up as he thrust into her and she groaned, her arms tightening around his body. He was so big on top of her, strong and heavy, but she needed the weight behind him right now, she needed to feel him pinning her down. The fingers on his back curled under, blunt edges of her nails pressing into his skin as she pressing up against him. "Fuck," she breathes, pressing her lips against the rise of his cheek, breathing out hard against his skin.

With one hand he braced himself up, with the other he cupped her cheek as he rocked into her, slow and hard, a helpless smile spreading across his face. He leaned his forehead against hers and let a wave of fiercely happy dizziness wash over him.

Nina was dead, but they were alive, and they were together.

He kissed her, as slow and hard as he was fucking her, and urged himself into a faster rhythm, gasping against her mouth.

She loved him, she realized, when she noticed he was smiling. It was that easy and not as much of a surprise as she would have expected it to be. She had loved him for longer than she realized and it wasn't that she'd never loved anyone before, that she didn't love others now, but it had been a very long time since she'd had anything remotely close to this.

When he kissed her, she wrapped her arms around him tighter, one hand sliding down over the curve of his ass, gripping him, urging him deeper into her. She loved him. She had lost something tonight, but found something entirely new.

He wanted to last, he wanted to last as long as she wanted him like this, but he knew that he wasn't going to be able to, not as long as she was holding onto him like that, pulling him into her. He lifted his head again because he had to look at her, he needed to see her face.

Her beautiful face.

"I don't think I can... hold on," he groaned. "Lily..."

"Don't," she gasped, pressing up against him with her hips, urging him on. She wanted him to come, she wanted to see his face when he did, wanted to know she had done that to him. A part of her wanted to bury her face against the curve of his shoulder, breathe him in, feel his body shudder as he came, but she wanted to see him, too, she wanted to watch the changing expressions cross his face.

"Delta, please," she begged, not knowing what she was asking him for except himself.

It was like she had given him permission. She had, that was exactly what she had done, and he moved inside her, hard and fast and beginning to stutter in the rhythm, and then tensed, muscles wrenching as he came with a rough, broken sound, something that sounded like pain but was pleasure so intense he felt it tingling in the tips of his fingers.

And still he kept moving, because he didn't want it to stop, and he wanted her to feel it. That she was alive, and she was with him, and he would do anything for her.

"Oh, god," she breathed, lifting her hips against him, her fingers digging into his shoulder as she buried her face against his shoulder, her eyes closed. Her legs tightened around him and she pressed her lips to his skin, kissing his shoulder, before she dropped her head back to the bed to look up at him. This was exactly what she had needed without even knowing, but she'd asked him to wait for her, she'd asked him to be here and now she knew why.

He was everything she'd needed tonight.

Still shaking with faint aftershocks, he lifted his head, staring down at her - her flushed skin, the slightest sheen of sweat on her face. He wanted to say something, then - maybe tell her how beautiful she was like this, maybe something else - but though it pressed against the back of his throat and he almost had it, it wouldn't come.

So instead he kissed her again, very slow and very deep, his hips still rocking against her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only