Fic: Do I Dare to Eat a Peach? Midnight Musings and Mishaps
FFXIII Fanfic
Midnight Musings and Mishaps
an Outtake from Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?
Author: frkmgnt1
Word Count: ~4500
Pairing: Snow/Lightning
Rating: M
Description: Content cut out of DIDDTU? Chapter 16. This is the first of a few outtakes/cut content posts.
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The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye.
-Allen Ginsberg (unpublished)
Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?
Midnight Musings and Mishaps
It never ceases to amaze Lightning how quickly things can go from blissful to bullshit, and tonight is no exception. Why is she awake? Sure, her pillow is too warm, and the room reeks of sex and sweat, but that’s not what dragged her conscious again after such a paltry amount of sleep.
She and Snow had thoroughly ravished one another not two hours before. Three orgasms should’ve earned her at least a half a night of uninterrupted shut eye, but her bodily functions have other ideas, it seems. So, here she is, wrapped in Snow’s arms, wide awake and feeling an entirely different sort of pressure in the lower half of her body. Her bladder is angry at her for not bothering to empty it out before passing out, and it refuses to be ignored for one more moment.
Lightning curses her body for forcing her from both Snow’s and sleep’s embrace. She slips out of Snow’s arms, hoping that she’ll be swift and silent enough to avoid waking her sleeping lover.
Snow - never one to let Lightning get away with a fucking thing - mumbles, “Wha’s wrong? Where you goin’?”
“Go back to sleep,” she whispers, as she gropes around on the floor for…anything to put on as a shield against the chilly night air.
Instead of mollifying him, her words rouse him even further. “Problem?” His fingers slide down the length of her back, raising goosebumps in their wake.
“No. No problem,” she reassures him. “I just need to use the bathroom.” That seems to satisfy him enough to drop his hand to the sheets. Giving up her search, Lightning retreats to the bathroom wearing nothing more than the skin over her bones and a scowl.
Relieved, Lightning stands in front of the running faucet, staring at her image in the mirror over the sink. She’s waiting for the hot water to finally reach the spigot because it’s just too frigging cold to wash up in ice water.
Alright, so she’s stalling, allowing herself a moment of solitude to silently but seriously freak the fuck out. What was she thinking? Lightning’s eyes do a quick sweep of the room, seeking any available escape from this time and place. There is none, obviously. The bathroom doesn’t even have a window, situated as it between her bedroom, and the hall closet off the living room.
Never an eldritch horror around to help a girl out of an uncomfortable situation. Don’t horror movie villains always show up as the idiots are busy fucking each other senseless? What good is a cosmic horror stalker if it doesn’t show up to prevent her having her way with the big blond hero?
She washes her hands, then cups the warm water in them to splash her face.
Lightning takes two deep breaths to calm herself down. What good will running do? When Snow showed up in the middle of the night to confront her about his feelings for her, she sent him home to Serah like a good sister. Then she spent hours in her bed, conjuring the taste of his mouth, fantasizing about the feel of his lips pressed to her skin; imagining the press of his fingers into her arms, her wrists, her back, her hip; imagining the solid strength of his body pressed against her.
Pressing onto her; into her.
And what did she do? She squirreled her life away into a tiny pack, and stole away from her dilapidated house in the middle of a blizzard, like some sort of thief.
Of course, she really is a thief: she stole the heart of her sister's fiancé, and she still has no idea how to live with herself for it.
Lightning still isn't sure how it happened at all, nor why Snow would ever choose her over Serah. Serah is everything Lightning is not: she's warm, and generous, and kindhearted. Serah is beautiful, and intelligent, and so much more than Lightning could ever be. Lightning has no trouble understanding why Snow fell in love with Serah upon meeting her just as she has no trouble understanding why Snow loathed her when they first met. Snow’s willingness to not only forgive and forget, but embrace Lightning as family after the way she treated him still baffles her.
But then, Snow is incomprehensible. Snow is a series of contradictions. On first glance, he's a typical musclebound meathead: all brawn, brash and balls, and no brains. All his babbling about being a hero and getting a happy ending makes him sound both childish and self-absorbed; yet he spends all his time protecting those unable to protect themselves with little thought of the consequences to himself.
Snow’s beautiful, and he knows it, never failing to talk about his good looks and charm. Even though he’s playing when he brings it up, he can’t not know that it’s the truth. Snow turns heads everywhere at all times, but, somehow, he never uses his looks to his advantage in the way most beautiful people do at some point. Especially beautiful young men looking to bed smitten young women.
Like her sister.
Lightning would be lying if she said that she hadn't assumed that Snow was exactly that sort of beautiful young man when she'd first met him; before that, even. When she'd only just heard about him from Serah. Serah positively gushed about how romantic and attractive Snow was, and Lightning immediately braced herself for Serah's inevitable broken heart.
Hell, she'd gone through it when she was 16. It sucked, but Lightning chalked it up to a learning experience and moved on. She figured Serah had the right to make her own mistakes, and hey, there was always a chance that things would be fine.
Serah was 17 when she first mentioned the 'boy at the beach' to Lightning. Snow is Lightning's age, which, as they age, will mean less and less. But the difference in life experience between Serah and Lightning, both then and now, is massive. Lightning was forced to grow up and become a parent at 15. Lightning joined the military to support herself and her sister, and to make sure that Serah could have the life that their parents wanted them both to have. Because of those choices, Serah at 17 was exactly what she should be: a 17 year old girl on the cusp of womanhood, crushing on a big, blond hunk.
No problem.
No problem, that is, until Lightning found out that the big hunk of burning love that her sister was chasing, was an unemployed local 'hero' with his own entourage of wannabes and groupies panting after him, who just so happened to be Lightning's age.
A man-child playing at being a hero who apparently turned his attention to a vulnerable young woman who couldn't see past the pretty face and banging body to the womanizing heartbreaker beneath.
Lightning hated him immediately, and was determined to get him away from her sister.
(Mission accomplished, she realizes, only increasing her self-loathing.)
Of course, she was wrong about everything. Well, except for the good looks part. Snow's gorgeous. Nearly six and half feet with silky blond hair, blue eyes surrounded by thick, long lashes, a square jaw with pouty lips. He's got a million smiles and they're all devastating. And his body should be classified as a wonder of the fucking world. Acres of warm, golden skin; broad shoulders, well defined, muscular arms, ending in talented, elegant, long-fingered hands that have become Lightning's newest obsession. The things that man can do with his hands…
Wait, what was she doing again? Oh yeah.
So, Snow's gorgeous. Moreover, he knows it. Which was why Lightning didn't trust him at all at first. What would someone like him want with Serah? It's not that Serah isn't beautiful, or wonderful, but for a man with a gaggle of groupies panting after him, she was an odd choice. Lightning had no doubt that he spent most of his summers bed hopping. Meanwhile, her sister was naïve, crushing hard, and -- here's the key to Lightning's previous disdain for Snow -- innocent.
Lightning kept asking herself what Snow wanted from her baby sister, and the answer that kept coming up was her innocence. And Lightning wanted to rip his balls off through his mouth.
Of course, once she was forced to spend some time with Snow, she learned that she was wrong about him. He loved Serah; she knows he loved Serah. He is not, nor has he ever been, a womanizer. He didn’t bed hop. If anything, he’s a serial monogamist. Lightning was more likely to have one night stands than Snow ever was. He's a hopeless romantic, and believes whole-heartedly in true love and soulmates.
So, what the hell happened, exactly? What did Lightning do to steal this man's heart from her sister? She didn't mean to do it. For all that she can see why he fell for Serah, and Serah for him, she can't see why he would fall for Lightning.
Lightning is everything her sister isn't. She's everything Snow isn’t, for that matter. He's an idealist; she's a cynic. He's an optimist; she's a pessimist. He forgives easily; she holds grudges like it's her fucking job. He's a romantic; she thinks romance is for saps and morons.
What does he see in her?
It makes no sense and yet, here she stands, staring at the evidence of his transferred affections all over her flesh, as love bites and bruises scattered from her neck to her knees. Whatever it is, Lightning doesn’t see it.
Even worse: she really doesn’t care, and she hates herself for it. Oh, Lightning knows that she ought to be ashamed of herself for being weak and selfish, but as she examines the myriad marks evidencing their love making, she can’t bring herself to feel anything but lust.
Lightning’s eyes trace the shadow of a bruise at the juncture of neck and shoulder, exactly opposite the bandage covering the still oozing bite she received during her infiltration of the camp. Snow hasn't asked her about the bandage yet, but she knows he will soon, out of idle curiosity if nothing else.
As she peels off the bandage to get a look at the messy wound, Lightning knows that she won't be able to avoid the discussion indefinitely, as much as she may wish she could. There are many reasons that she'd prefer to never think about what did and didn't happen on the floor of that disgusting room, and what she tolerated in order to infiltrate the camp, but none of them have to do with Snow being anything but wonderful about it.
Except…
Snow is both big, and very strong, two traits of which he is well aware, and which he uses to his advantage most of the time. The problem is, Snow worries that he might accidentally hurt someone (read: women), and so he's extremely careful in everything he does. That's all well and fine, except…well, Lightning likes Snow's rougher kisses. She likes the bruises as much as she likes the gentle touches. His bruising grips, and the hint of teeth she'd felt in some of his more desperate moments turned her on; made her feel like he wanted her with the same ferocity that she felt and she doesn’t want him to associate any of the marks he sucked into her skin with the mess on her neck, and take extra care to avoid them. To gentle his touches, and soften his kisses.
Make him ashamed of his strength and passion. Change the way he treats her; the way he fucks her.
Make him someone other than himself.
Lightning wants Snow to cling just that little bit too hard, because that's how she wants to cling to him. She loves the tremble in her muscles from being held down, brought to the edge over and over, then jerked away from it, just to have him push and pull her to that edge all over again. The soreness in the muscles of her lower back and thighs from being held open make her hotter than she’d ever dreamed. Lightning loves the ache inside her, an echo of the reality of his presence after so long without. She wants her opportunity to master his body the same way; to press and suck bruises into his skin; to worship him the way he did to her last night.
The idea of Snow holding her down, spreading her across the bed and using that perfect body to wring scream after scream from her turns her on almost as much as the reality of his hands and mouth on her body had.
She doesn't want him to look at her and see a victim. She doesn't want him to look at the marks his fingers and mouth have pressed and painted in reds, blues and purples onto the milky canvas of her flesh, and feel anything but sexy and proud. Because she loves them. She wants more. Wants him to weave a tapestry of the story of their love and need out of her blood and skin with his fingers, and lips, and teeth, and cock.
Lightning worries that Snow will get one look at this bite mark, and shut down; he'll rein himself in, and that fucking pig will have managed to take something from her after all.
No. She's a warrior, and Snow is her warrior lover. If there's one thing she knows that she can give him that most people cannot and wouldn't, it's that. The part of him that scares most people, including himself? The berserker, that flies into rages and pummels attackers into jelly for daring to take a shot at her, or Hope?
Lightning loves that part of him. She revels in it. That’s the Snow that first caught her attention back during the war, and had starred in several of her fantasies. She wants to take that Snow to bed, just as much as she wants the romantic, who curled around her and whispered his devotion into her hair.
More, even.
She wants the warrior in Snow, finds his skill on the battlefield as sexy as his skill in the bedroom. She's obsessed with getting his hands on her body, not just because he can use them to take her apart for hours, but because those same hands have demolished their shared enemies. While Lightning can and has acknowledged the aesthetic beauty of Snow's body, it is not that conventional attractiveness that holds Lightning's attention, or makes her want to trace every line of muscle with her fingers, lips and tongue. It's the strength and power concealed behind the acres of golden skin and well-tended muscles that occupies Lightning's every thought.
This is who they are. The bruises he pressed into her flesh are tokens of his affection far preferable and more welcome than flowers, or jewelry could ever be. They are proof of his trust in her, just as they are proof of her trust in him. And that trust? That's why she isn't giving him up, the world be damned.
She slaps a bandage over the messy bite and walks back into the bedroom. Lightning can tell from Snow's breathing that he's not asleep. Dozing, probably. She'd woken him when she left the bed, and he stayed awake, likely because he was afraid she'd run again.
He knows her too well. At any other point in time, she absolutely would’ve bolted by now.
But after everything that happened over the past two weeks, she just doesn’t have it in her to run from him; to run from herself or her feelings.
Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to leave Snow to deal with this mess by himself. Running away from him won’t erase the hours she’d spent wrapped around him, or uncross every line she’d ever drawn. She can never unknow the taste of the skin around his navel, or the sound of her name on his lips as she makes him come. There’s no place she can go, no way to run far or fast enough to erase from her memory the feeling of being stretched full to bursting by him. There’s nowhere she can go to unsee the look in his eyes as he made love to her.
So, yeah: once upon a time she might have been halfway across the planet by now; but now, she has no intention of going anywhere.
She sits on the bed, and Snow's eyes crack open.
"Ev'rythin' 'kay?" he mumbles, reaching for her. She takes his hand in both of hers, and he tries to draw her to him. "Come back to bed. S'cold," he complains.
"I have a favor to ask."
That gets his attention. He props himself up against the pillows and headboard, sheet pooling in his lap. The dim light from the bathroom paints shadows in the sharply defined muscles of Snow's arms and torso. He looks like he's been chiseled by an artist.
The pretty bastard.
"Anything."
/I would do anything for you, Lightning. Anything!/
He looks concerned, and she almost feels bad for worrying him, even though she'd intended no such thing.
Lightning kneels on the bed, and it's like he's only just noticed that she's completely naked. His gaze goes from concerned to heated, and he reaches out to touch, but stops himself from making contact. She takes the hand again, and presses it against the love bite on her breast. Snow gasps as she asks, "See this?"
"I sure feel it,” he growls.
She clicks on the lamp and he flinches from the light and swears, before looking at her again. Snow spots the mark beneath his fingers. "Ah, I'm sorry-"
"I was wondering," she interrupts, "If you'd be willing to make it bigger? And darker? Maybe give me a matched set. I mean, if you don't mind."
The worried look melts away, first into a smile, then into a lascivious grin. The hand on her breast hooks behind her neck to draw her to him. "Anything for you, baby."
Impatient now, Lightning straddles Snow, opening his mouth with her tongue. He groans, bringing his knees up behind her, allowing her to lean back and offer up the pale skin of her throat for his attention. Snow needs no further prompting, it seems, as he bends toward the mark on her neck and latches onto it. He nibbles, licks, and sucks on her throat, left hand cupping her right breast, thumb tracing circles over and around her nipple, before pinching and rolling it between his thumb and index finger.
Snow is nothing if not dedicated; he spends long moments working on her neck before licking his way downward to worry the bruise he’d left on her breast. All the while, his hands skims over her body, igniting trails of fire across her flesh with every touch. He backs off, admires the result of his attentions and turns his head to go to work on the other breast.
Lightning sighs into his ear, murmurs her approval and appreciation as she combs her fingers through his hair, fingertips tracing the long lines of his muscles, mapping the expanse of his back, before she finally allows her right hand to settle on his hipbone. She traces small circles on his abs with her thumb, feeling the tremors beneath his skin turn to twitches as he gets more and more excited.
Lightning mouths the bruise she’d bitten into his shoulder, finally taking him in hand. Snow huffs a curse into her neck when her thumb rubs tiny circles just beneath the head of his cock.
When Snow’s hips twitch, Lightning decides the time for teasing is over; she lifts up onto her knees, wraps her hand around the base of his cock to guide him inside her.
"Insatiable," Snow gasps. "Challenge accepted." He takes hold of her waist to brace her while she works herself down onto his cock.
Her hands are on his shoulders, hold just south of brutal, and Lightning makes a conscious effort not to dig her nails into him. She closes her eyes, let’s her head fall back and just enjoys the feeling of him inside her. It’s been so long, and even then, it’s never been like this. No one has ever made her feel the way Snow does. She feels filled and stretched in all the best possible ways. No one has ever satisfied her while somehow leaving her desperate for more.
Lightning has never been in love before, and certainly never shared her bed and body with anyone who matters the way Snow does. She wants to memorize every second of their lovemaking tonight. She doesn’t want to think about tomorrow. She doesn’t know how she’ll live without him now that she’s had him, but she isn’t going to think about that right now. Not while his hands trace over every curve, while he worships her body with his mouth.
Snow’s trembles under the effort to hold still and allow her to lead. The slow buildup has only wound the tension inside her even tighter, and she picks up the pace, clamps down on him until he curses and thrusts up into her. Hard.
"Sorry," he mutters, and she laughs at the absurdity of him apologizing to her for making her see stars. "You're so beautiful. You feel so fucking good."
She takes her time there, memorizing the feel of his lips against hers, the taste of his tongue and sweat, the feel of him moving inside her. When he’s panting into her neck, shuddering on every down stroke, she decides to up the ante. Lightning lifts up, letting him slip from her body. They both groan at the interruption, but Lightning has a goal in mind here and will not be deterred. She climbs off him, braces her arms on the headboard bends over and asks him, "so, what are you waiting for, hero?"
"Oh, fuck yeah," he whispers, kneels behind her and slides back in.
The first stroke hits just right. And of course, controlling his body is one of Snow's many, many, many talents. Once he does something right, muscle memory apparently kicks in, and allows him to repeat that exact same action over and over again. Snow holds onto Lightning’s waist and hips as he pounds himself into her, hitting her sweet spot with every thrust. Lightning's arms start to buckle under the onslaught, too distracted and too close to the edge to concentrate on bracing herself.
Snow sits back on his haunches and pulls her back with him, spreads her across his lap, presses her back against his chest. She lets her head fall back on his shoulder. His left arm is across her chest, palm cupping her cheek to turn her into his kiss. The other hand is over her belly, holding her in place to rock up into her. She can feel the tension threatening to shatter and she sounds off with his every movement inside her. Snow slides his hand down, sending her sailing over the edge with tiny, tight circles around and over her.
"That's my girl," he whispers as she shakes apart in a dissolving universe.
The next thing she knows, she's laying on her side, Snow still inside her, but barely moving.
"You back with me?" Snow asks, sounding pretty fucking smug. Lightning’s leg is over his, his knee holding her open. Snow’s fingers trace patterns on the soft, sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. She turns her head and looks into his eyes, puts her hand on his face. He kisses her palm, nods once and then swivels his hips, picking up the pace. “Gonna make you come again for me, Light,” he promises her, and she has no doubt he’ll keep his word.
She loses herself in the press of his fingers and cock, the feeling and taste of his lips and breath.
Lightning drowses, basking in the feeling of Snow’s mouth working another bruise into her flesh, when she hears him say, “Damn. You’re bleeding right through your bandage.”
“Huh?” It takes a few seconds for his words to connect to something tangible in her mind. When the do, her sleepy afterglow disappears, and she shivers like she’s been splashed with a bucket of ice water.
“What the hell happened, anyway? Here, I’ll get the medkit.”
“No, it’s fine.” She grabs his hand before he stands from the bed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What’s the problem?” Snow asks. He knows her too fucking well. “You need the bandage changed before you bleed all over the sheets. I’m going to help you.” He gets up before she can formulate another argument and he returns to the bed with the medkit.
Snow sits behind her, rifling through the contents of the medkit to find fresh bandages. “I didn’t miss the fact that you didn’t tell me what happened,” he prompts. “What is it?”
So much for a pleasant, peaceful afterglow.
“It’s nothing.”
Snow tilts his head at her, eyeing her with alarm and…is that disappointment she sees?
Damn it.
Lightning knows that Snow has an advanced degree in spotting and calling out her evasions and bullshit, and she’ll admit that ‘it’s nothing’ is introductory level stuff. Lightning can see his eyes hardening in anticipation of an argument.
Fuck. Why is it that she can’t manage to avoid drama or an argument, no matter what she does?
“’Nothing’ doesn’t bleed through three layers of fucking gauze after five days, Light. ‘Nothing’ doesn’t bleed at all.”
“All right, it’s not literally nothing. But it’s no big deal.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be bobbing and weaving instead of telling me.”
“You’re being absurd. It’s just a bite.”
The tense anger that Snow had been radiating morphs into total confusion. “A bite? What the hell b-“
Lightning watches the realization hit Snow like a crowbar to the cranium. He closes his eyes, exhaling a long, calming breath out his nose. Once he’s steady, he opens his eyes and continues rooting around in the medkit.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” she tells him. That doesn’t help. He clenches his teeth harder, turns redder.
After a long moment, where Lightning worries that Snow might just stroke out, Snow clears his throat and says, “Wanna clue me in on what I need from this kit to take care of that mess?”
He’s wonderful. And amazing. The fact that he hasn’t pushed her to talk about any of this shit hasn’t slipped past her notice, and she knows exactly how difficult it is for him to let things sit. His willingness just to do what she needs without asking for the information that he’s obviously desperate for just makes her love him all more. It also convinces her that she should tell him. Eventually.
Not now. She needs some time and distance, just as she imagines he does.
“The wound care instructions from the infirmary were next to the medkit in the bathroom.” Snow moves to retrieve the instructions, but she stops him. There’s so much she wants to say to him, but she just says, “Thank you.”
Snow relaxes a bit, smiles, and winks at her. “Anything for you, baby.”