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There’s nothing subtle about the way that Sylens and Beta make themselves very, very scarce every time Talanah visits the base.
It’s not that the avoidance itself is a bad thing, Aloy guesses. Or that it’s totally out of the ordinary. Both of them prefer to keep their work independent, and are more productive when left to themselves—Beta immersed in her projects nearly to the point of compulsion, Sylens still infuriatingly aloof (and damned effective, either because of or despite it). But there’s a fine-drawn shade of difference between their typical habits and the deliberate staying-away that follows after Aloy mentions so, Talanah is coming by for a few days…
Their silent presumption is obvious, but entirely mistaken. And awkward. And frustrating, too, because denying it with the truth would be a futile effort. When Aloy considers trying, her face burns too hot and her throat flusters thick so she just—concedes. Doesn’t put up a fight, does her best to ignore it. Handling it with omission is probably more convincing than sputtering out some tongue-tied argument while her ears turn red as the receding blight.
Still. She and Talanah aren’t even doing anything that begs discretion or a wide berth. They just—they hunt. A lot. Lots and lots of hunting. Hunting and talking—talking about hunting. And about not-hunting, maybe: this and that, that and this, plenty more, all the rest. Breathless things they probably should have said sooner, things they can’t and don’t take back—things Aloy has never said or thought to say before, tumbling out reckless and new into the waiting spaces between heartbeats, into this sense of comfort with each other after too much war with themselves.
(Things like: you kept the flower alive. I guess that bunk has always been yours. Your eyes are beautiful—in the sunset, in the starlight, wherever else. What would happen if I said that I would choose you?)
All very ordinary, very inoffensive and non-irritating things. Hunt, talk. Smile, laugh, think, craft, plan, share. Be.
…alright. Fine. Sure, yeah. They kiss, too. But only ever in private, hidden away behind the closed (and holo-locked) door of Aloy’s room.
Definitely not worth anyone else making a big deal about it. It’s just something that’s become a sort of routine during Talanah’s stays. When the night runs empty of words after a long-hunt, hot-sun day, they lie close and comfortable together on Aloy’s pallet, spending time trading slow and lazy kisses—until Talanah eases off with a gentle grin, stroking Aloy’s cheek and wishing her a good night before she heads to her own bunk, leaving Aloy drowsy and boneless and blissed-out enough to sleep straight through to daylight.
And that’s—that’s it. No matter what else Beta and Sylens might assume, that’s all there is to it.
Tonight loosens down into more of the same. Low-flickering candlelight, hazed-over quiet. Armor discarded for softness. Their bodies settled together, threaded with the pleasant soreness of a tough but successful hunt—learning to share space and heat, touch and breath. Talanah presses in close, bringing them flush from shoulders to hips with all pretense aside, chests rising and falling against one another’s. Aloy likes it a lot more than she thought she would, being drawn in and enveloped like this. Talanah’s steady weight planed against her is soothing enough to distract her from the weight of everything else, and that helps the rest happen more easily—like meeting her halfway again and again for those calm, lingering kisses. Talanah’s lower lip slots between Aloy’s and she cradles her jaw with both hands, fingertips grazing over her nape. Eyes drooping closed, Aloy lets her hand splay out over the small of Talanah’s back, just above the hem of her silk sleep shorts. Bare skin, warm and smooth, all new motions to practice.
And Aloy’s starting to think that she might be getting better at this. She doesn’t fumble or second-guess as much anymore, doesn’t have to focus so intently on what she’s doing or how she’s doing it. She just does it—delicate work becoming something intuitive, like fletching an arrow. It also seems like Talanah might agree. There’s a stirring of approval in her responses—contented little sighs, a twist of Aloy’s hair between her fingers, a quick flutter of her lashes as she angles in for more. All of it sends Aloy’s head spinning with surprise and eager pride and a kick of something else she hasn’t figured out how to name.
It’s easy to drift into a calm haze of togetherness, simmering through to the marrow. Makes it seem a lot more abrupt than it actually is when the normal pattern follows through. Talanah brings them to a gradual pause and then edges away, only far enough to speak.
“Maybe we should get some sleep,” she whispers, her gaze lidded heavy to match Aloy’s. Her mouth moves, their lips brush. The pad of her thumb finds the blade-thin, healed-numb scar on Aloy’s neck. She traces over it with careful affection, tempts out a shudder. “Gotta say—you wore me out today, Thrush.”
Aloy answers with a noncommittal hum, already moving in for another kiss. She’s probably right. But it feels too good tonight to let it end. It feels…safe, after an entire day of battle-thrill, of fighting side-by-side. Watching each other’s back like that is a kind of tenderness that Aloy understands—one that can be given and known without words to make it all complicated.
Turns out, so is this. And Aloy doesn’t want to stop.
No objections. Talanah tilts her head in invitation, guiding Aloy’s chin with her thumb and first knuckle. Her lips twitch into a pleased little grin at the press of Aloy’s mouth—and Aloy imagines what she might say right now, how that smile would make her voice sound. A quiet breath, a glimmer of a laugh, low-murmured and bright, meant for her alone: okay then. Come here, Aloy. Tell me what you need.
Needs more of this, just a bit longer. Needs something for the heat blooming in her chest and spreading across her skin like a dry-season blaze. Doesn’t really know what she needs when it seems like each kiss and grasp and leap of her pulse is leading her nearer to somewhere she’s never been.
This closeness is a good start, though. And even if she doesn’t know what to do with it, her body does. Her arm slips around Talanah’s waist to shift them into fuller alignment, legs entwined, hips slotted together. Talanah follows gladly, with a subtle arch to her back that sends Aloy reeling. Touch like this is—unreal. Heady, overwhelming. Not the kind that sets off the need to jerk away and shrivel up until it fades, but the kind that makes you feel like you could grab and grab and keep on grabbing and your hands would still never be full enough.
That’s not for lack of trying. Because for once Aloy lets hers roam, palming up the length of Talanah’s spine and then back down to fit curved behind her thigh. Maps her own margins close against the lines of Talanah’s body—shaped firm but yielding, strong and soft and real and whole and here—then feels them go blurry again when Talanah teases her tongue along her lower lip. Aloy invites her inside, breath hitching, shivering like a bowstring plucked by a restless finger.
As the kiss deepens, barely broken for breathing, it immerses Aloy headlong in a haze of sensations. They come over her in staggering flashes, in waves of prickling heat—the taste of Talanah’s mouth, touch of tongue and slightest scrape of teeth, the delicate sounds of satisfaction that rise from her throat with each closer-please roll of her hips, the honey and sweet-spice scent of the Carja soap that stays in the shower pod even after Talanah leaves—until it’s impossible for her heart not to soar. Until Aloy can’t tell where she begins, and it doesn’t matter where she ends.
This is—it’s new, and wild. Instead of the easy contentment that heavied her before, Aloy is swelter-drenched, desperate, chasing. Wanting to finally hold onto something that won’t go anywhere. She can feel herself unraveling and coiling tight at the same time, aching in some places and softening in others. And Talanah softens with her, following, allowing herself to be chased and to be held. Her other thigh drifts to fit snug between Aloy’s in the thick of another kiss. Aloy swallows a noise—half a whimper, half a groan—that sounds far too needy for a small moment like this.
There’s a thrumming deep in her bones, in her belly, overfull and crackling like the air around a Stormbird’s beating wings. It teems with a sense of momentum that’s been building and building since she caught herself staring at Talanah during their hunt—the leanness rippling under her sweat-sheened skin, the graceful arc of her sword amidst a shower of sparks, the almost-shy smile that crooked her mouth when she turned from the felled Spikesnout and noticed Aloy’s gaze. All of it mounting up to this high and clear tension, this seething rush of togetherness. Some inevitability with their bodies, always separated too soon and too long, tangled closer than ever before.
And Aloy is dizzy, lost in the sound of mingling breath as it spills out from between them into the candlelight, her awareness heightened every place they’re pressed. Carja silk seems a lot thinner when you’re this tight against it and Aloy can feel—everything. Every lithe contour of Talanah’s frame, every bit of heat her skin throws off, the soft swell of her unbound breasts. Her nipples are hard through the delicate material. Aloy bites back a dazed whine when she realizes it, and her head swims at the idea of seeing them. Touching them, knowing them and knowing more. The thought of it brings on a shudder of want, and she throbs heavy in her fingers, in her throat, between her legs.
Impatient, mindless, her body seeks relief. Aloy tilts her hips forward against Talanah’s thigh, and the new-angled pressure draws something fierce out of her—a clench, a hard quiver, a jolt of pleasure racing bright as a fever up her spine. And in that instant it’s good, so good, but it’s also not enough. So she screws her eyes shut and rocks into Talanah again, clumsy and pulsing, face prickling at the feeling of friction right where she needs it. Can’t stop herself from moaning into Talanah’s open mouth—never knew anything could make her voice sound like that.
Without breaking the kiss, Talanah lets out a soft-sigh murmur: Aloy. It’s low and raw, simple and tender, hungry like a brushfire.
Aloy has always liked the way Talanah says her name.
Another timid roll. Another shower of sparks. She trembles as they settle, all sharp-edged and gleaming.
Every slightest shift and touch feels so steep, so exaggerated. Like being slowly unreeled, made bare and drawn apart, piece by piece, overcome and vulnerable but more than willing. As Talanah catches Aloy’s bottom lip between her teeth, her hand travels from Aloy’s jaw, over her shoulder and her ribs to her upturned hip. Grips it, firm but cautious. Rubs her thumb over the jut of bone there, then sweeps it lightly across the groove of muscle angling down to her groin. It riles up more of that greedy throbbing, a rush of that nameless need—so Aloy grinds into Talanah’s thigh again, blindly chasing some ease for the tension. This time, Talanah guides her, using her hand and her own hips to lead her through steady swaying pressure. Back, and forth, away, and in, and again, and again. Repetition only stokes the urgency. Aloy lets out a shaky breath, and Talanah echoes her almost immediately.
And shit, that’s a noise that could make Aloy surrender.
It doesn’t take long for their rhythm to change from something tentative to something sharper, quicker. Something impulsive and uncontrolled. Talanah meets the sudden heightened pace, steering the movement in halved-time tandem with the hammerstrike of Aloy’s heartbeat. And Aloy is lightheaded with hunger, brimming with an intensity that comes rushing in faster than she can make sense of it. Aching, clenching, she fights to get her trembling hands full. Arches her back and grasps for greater purchase, for further contact in the tangle of their bodies. She finds it and takes it, bites down and bears into it, holding her breath while a torrent of static convulsing drenching heat rolls over her, sweeps her up, carries her towards some sheer precipice, the fulfillment of that inevitability. She closes her eyes and sees nothing but Talanah, feels nothing but Talanah, all coursing through her, taken by rise and crash.
And the pleasure rising low in her belly starts to swell, ravenous and demanding. Swells more, swells too much, makes itself fragile, fragile enough that it could buckle— fragile enough that it could—burst—
Oh—oh. Shit oh shit Talanah wait Talanah—
“Whoa,” Aloy babbles, her voice a helpless crack, right as she careens over the edge.
Her orgasm shatters in like a thunderclap, and the world blurs and narrows around the blinding sensation blooming in ripples from between her legs throughout the rest of her body. She keeps moving through its peak at the detached and reflexive will of her hips—ruts hard once, twice more, then gives a few shallower bucks, determined to gather as much of this newfound release as possible from the contact. Then she quivers to a rigid, straining halt.
It lasts only moments. Bare seconds, maybe. But it feels endless—a full aggregate of attraction and longing and need, clamoring for relief, tearing through her like a scorching-bright desert gust.
And then it’s gone. All at once, quick as it surged in, the tension floods out. Her body sags back into the bed-pelt, resting heavy and slack against Talanah, the last lingering spark of her energy siphoned into a racing pulse and ragged panting.
The daze clings like woodsmoke through the relentless fluttering of little aftershocks. She lies there long enough for her flushed face, buried against Talanah’s collarbone, to go clammy with cooling sweat. Breathing grows deeper, slower—her body’s instinct to find steadiness. In the drowsy edges of closeness there’s salt, honey, sweet-spice. Soft bare skin and fine Carja silk and the sunflare memory of that low-searing smile.
And then Aloy wants to cling, too, touch-drunk and drained. Something safe, a place of warmth. A shade of haven in the dim and the silence.
But.
Before she can, reality spirals back in—and the first coherent thought that wells up is just—
Shit.
It comes with a feeling like a slap of cold water, an abrupt shock of shame. That—she shouldn’t have—she didn’t mean—
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Too soon, she’s aware of Talanah’s hands hovering stiffly over her back—confused, hesitant to touch. Makes her cringe as hard as her spent body will allow.
“Aloy,” Talanah says softly into the strained air. She clears her throat, her voice gone rough. Aloy can feel the stilted movements of her chin against the crown of her head. “Was that—did you just…?”
As the question trails off, Talanah gives a restless stir, adjusting her hips. The motion is small, but the shifting pressure of her thigh makes Aloy gasp aloud and go tense, nearly jumping out of her skin at the unfamiliar oversensitivity. And maybe if it wasn’t for that; if she hadn’t just grunted out something as unfortunately and unbelievably stupid as whoa; if it wasn’t for the uncomfortable sticky-slick situation in her shorts that she’s almost certain Talanah can feel soaked through them; then maybe Aloy could have kept it hidden. Dealt with it after Talanah left for her bunk, avoided this impending conversation for a bit longer.
But, here they are. And lying isn’t a reasonable option, because she’s realizing that Talanah’s question wasn’t exactly a question after all.
She forces the truth through a clenched jaw—a weak and reluctant mutter, still a little lost for breath. “I—I think so.”
There’s a pause that lasts half a beat too long. Aloy can almost hear her answer turning over and over in Talanah’s head while she tries to work out a response. She hasn’t let her hands come back to rest yet, and their absence is becoming harder and harder to sit with.
“You think so?” she finally prompts, each word measured carefully. Not angry, though. Not offended. Just the gentleness Aloy’s come to crave, tinged with uneasy confusion.
Still, Aloy bristles. If she could, she’d pull back and turn away. Gain some semblance of safety in distance. But her limbs feel like they’re made of wet sand and stickpaste, so the best she can do is to hide her face. She tucks her chin into her shoulder, grimacing, and growls out a wordless complaint.
The Old Ones had a saying, some caution about loose lips. Right now Aloy’s in no state of clarity to remember the exact phrase, let alone if it actually applies here—but however the warning goes, her fickle mouth definitely doesn’t heed it.
“I mean—yes. Yeah.” Her stomach twists, her cheeks burn. “I’m sorry, I should’ve—I didn’t mean to. I just—haven’t, before.” A beat. “Ever. Until now.”
She hates the vulnerability in the admission more than she hates the admission itself. It hangs over them, graceless and sore—and now that it’s out in the open, there’s no taking it back. Aloy lies there beneath its weight and glares into the low-light middle distance, breathing fast and uncontrolled against the harsh-edged heat lodged under her sternum.
“Oh,” Talanah says, quietly. There’s a waver in her breath. At least she seems less puzzled now. Tender and light, her hands settle on Aloy’s back again—one at her shoulder blades, the other finding the dip in her spine. It feels almost dangerous, Aloy thinks, how quickly it affects her. How it makes her want to curl in for more. “Oh, Aloy.” Even quieter. “I’m—I see. Are you—are you okay?”
Teeth gritted hard, Aloy snaps.
“I’m fine.”
It’s terse and caustic and hostile like cornered prey. Talanah flinches—a slight one, just a twitch of her grip—but doesn’t pull away. A pang of regret flares sharp in Aloy's throat, tense across her brow. Because this feels so close, so raw and intimate. And when something like that is offered to her she has no idea how to hold it. Her hands become clumsy and clueless, either gripping tightly enough to smother—or balking at it, letting it slip through her fingers. Always failing in one way in fear of failing in the other. Maybe she doesn’t deserve it. Hasn’t earned it. Maybe Talanah should let go.
After all, Aloy has destroyed just as much as she’s built. And now she’s ruined this, too.
What’s worse? It shouldn’t be complicated, the way this is supposed to go. She’s not—she’s not oblivious to attraction or lust, or the physicality of expressing them. Years ago, during her first mothers’ blood, Rost had explained all of it to her with dutiful and diligent care—preparing her to embrace the tribe, hoping that the tribe would embrace her in return. Everything her own mother would have told her, if.
About sex, and its purposes. How it works and the many things it can mean. Sex for mating, sex for pleasure and connection. How simple it is both because and in spite of its power to spark life and to nurture other bonds.
How human it is.
Aloy learned. Aloy knows. Even if she’s only touched herself to relieve pent-up tension while she winds down for sleep, always drifting off before reaching release—even if she’s only ever felt weaker shadows of what happened here in indistinct, unremembered dreams. Even if fulfilling it with another person has frankly been the least of her concerns, let alone an option.
But now it is. It’s both. And the want for it blisters Aloy in warm shades of amber. She wants Talanah, has wanted her. Her smile, her hands, her skin in glimpses. The way a sigh of Aloy takes shape in her mouth. The ache to sink into her and just stay feels daunting, bottomless, casting itself into stars behind her closed eyes.
But for all she has learned or knows or wants—turns out, it’s not simple. For her, nothing is. Nothing ever has been, not even the reality of her own existence—a person by technicality, the child of a dying plea. And every single self-conscious moment like this one is a reminder of what she has lacked, of how some of the most natural things are like a riddle she can’t solve. For all she’s done, for all she’s seen and endured and overcome, she still falls behind.
When is any of that going to actually change?
Old habits rise with the fuss of frustration. Without meaning to, Aloy thinks about Elisabet. Wonders if she was better at figuring this out so long ago—an answer she can only guess from a more-than-untrustworthy view. Salt in the wound, salt stinging her eyes.
But now it’s been quiet for too long. Talanah is still holding her, either lost for words or offering Aloy more steady patience than she should be given. Aloy heaves a half-bitten sigh into the intrusive silence, screwing her eyes shut and trying to sort through the mess inside her mind.
“I’m sorry,” is all she manages. Her voice comes out wrong—strangled, clinched close around itself. She winces at the sound of it, chewing at her lip.
“Hey.” Talanah’s hand moves in soothing circles until Aloy relents like a reflex, coming unwound once more. “Aloy, please, it’s alright. I’m sorry if I made it seem like it wasn’t. I was just, ah—surprised. But it’s a natural reaction—”
Aloy cuts her off. “But I am sorry.” Self-contempt deteriorates into knotted-up remorse, and it comes with a sudden and surprising flood of words. “I am. It’s embarrassing and we haven’t even talked about—sex, yet, and I—I don’t know what I’m doing. Obviously,” she can’t help but add, tone bitter. “Look, I just—I know I messed this up, okay? And I don’t want to—do this wrong. I don’t want to mess up.” The last of it rushes out in an unplanned, hurried whisper. “Especially not with you.”
It’s a small confession, but she’s a little scared of the truth behind it. Her fist starts to tighten in body-warm silk until she hastily corrects herself.
Talanah breathes in, exhales slow, and shifts through their tangle. For a dismayed half-second, Aloy braces for Talanah to draw back—resigned to the loss of contact, steeled for the first chill of absence.
But the rejection doesn’t come. Talanah doesn’t go. She settles in again, chest pressed flush with Aloy’s, encircling her and bringing their foreheads together with a gentle nod. Despite the doubt gnawing sour at her gut, the touch coaxes Aloy to finally glance up. She finds Talanah waiting for their eyes to meet, ready with a gaze that’s calm and intent, pointed and earnest, rimmed with gold in the naked candlelight. Tiny reflections of clustered flames glitter in her blown-wide pupils. Aloy thinks of stars flickering through a clear night sky—fireflies, hovering gracefully above tall grass—the full moon’s glow scattered over the boundless ocean, beckoning her to come and drown in its depths.
It makes her feel too many daunting things, and she has to look away before they swallow her whole.
“You didn’t mess up,” Talanah tells her, hushed and steady with conviction, “and you did nothing wrong.” Her lips curve into a small, encouraging smile as she uses her fingertips to smooth down the tousled hair at Aloy’s sweat-damp brow. “Look, I understand. Trust me. I meant it when I said that all of this is—not easy.”
It’s genuine, and it’s kind. But it’s also the echo of a context Aloy really doesn’t need to be presented with right now. And maybe that’s what yanks at the sullen knot in her ribs.
“Yeah, well.” A brittle-edged, humorless laugh. “I’m sure you’ve at least—”
“Come?” Talanah keeps smiling. Aloy’s ears burn at the word, spoken plain. “Never with someone else involved.” She goes on without waiting to be asked to explain, idly stroking her thumb along the flush-freckled arch of Aloy’s cheekbone. The elaboration comes out paced and breathy, a thoughtfully-weighed disclosure. “There have been—others. Men, just two of them, altogether fewer times than I can count on one hand. I never came with them. And it never felt good—at all—when they would—ah, come for me.”
Aloy isn’t sure what it is, but something about that is surprising enough to disrupt her humiliated inhibition. Her gaze springs back to Talanah’s and she blurts, “Never any women?”
There’s a lapse. Talanah meets the question with sudden and unexpected uncertainty. Her smile fades like a passing shadow into something tentative, more contemplative—eyebrows drawn together, lips pressed thin. Aloy’s stomach flips when she catches the hesitation tightening the corners of her eyes. It’s a tell, for her. Because it’s not like Talanah to falter in responding like this, or to struggle to hold someone’s glance. Especially not Aloy’s.
“No,” Talanah admits. It’s quick and clipped and almost apologetic, so quiet that Aloy barely hears the syllable. With a restless shallow breath, she huddles further into their embrace, tucking her forehead against the bridge of Aloy’s nose. In the crowding, Aloy thinks again about solace. About the strangeness of needing and providing at the same time. Talanah’s hand trails downward until she flattens her palm against Aloy’s breastbone. Aloy can feel its warmth through her linen shirt—can feel the clamor of her own heartbeat reverberating through the touch. After a moment, Talanah’s gaze flickers up through her lashes—raw, glinting unguarded against the soft light. “And I think that’s—been the problem.”
Reciprocity. Vulnerable truth for vulnerable truth. Another chance for Aloy to practice holding what she’s been given, and to try and believe that all the same-shape brokenness she’s bared will be held in return. Talanah has good hands, capable. Steady and delicate, nimble and strong, bowstring-scarred. Warm and only getting warmer through Aloy’s shirt. They’re the kind of hands Aloy could keep relying on, if she would let herself. Hands she could reach for in the dark.
With her doubt coming loose, falling away scrap by scrap, Aloy nudges Talanah’s chin upward. The graze and press of their lips is so faint that it should hardly be called a kiss. But Talanah comes open for it all the same, full of raw trust and bright relief, and Aloy latches onto the fevered feeling it sends surging through her bones.
“Was I—uh,” she starts, throat husked and scratchy, still trying to decide what to say as she’s saying it. “Was this any…different?”
Aloy’s pulse pounds against her ribs at the shades of hope unfolding eager in her voice.
In that moment, the coy smirk that forms on Talanah’s face could be enough to turn her inside-out.
“Yeah. I’d definitely say it was,” Talanah replies with the lilt of a laugh, running her first finger along the uncovered line of Aloy’s collarbone. It makes Aloy feel a little shy, and more than a little pleased with herself. That’s good, she decides, as she leans into the wispy contact. “I promise, I liked it. A lot.” A quick pause, and then— “You felt even better than I’ve imagined.”
And, well. That causes Aloy’s mind to stutter.
“You’ve—imagined?”
But Talanah doesn’t expand on the thought, because of course she doesn’t. And that’s probably a good thing, actually, because Aloy’s pretty sure hearing those details might set off another—yeah. The answer is just a swift flash of Aloy’s imagination and the loaded gleam in Talanah’s eyes, unspoken, moved-on.
Instead, Talanah finds Aloy’s hand and brings it palm to palm with her own. She takes a moment to stroke over the calluses at the base of Aloy’s fingers before coaxing them open. Slowly, then, she closes her fist, slipping into the spaces she makes—and it’s nearly impossible for Aloy not to notice how surely her fingers fit into the valleys between her knuckles. Shouldn’t come as a surprise that her own seam in just as well when she lays them down. Like new flesh knitting over a wound. Her heart leaps right into her throat.
“I think it’s okay to be overwhelmed,” Talanah says. “I like to believe I know you pretty well, Aloy. You hold yourself to lofty standards, and you don’t like being caught without your bow.”
Aloy’s mouth twitches, tentatively playful. “Hah. Who, me? No way.”
Talanah feigns a roll of her eyes, but the smile on her face is bolder. “You don’t have to worry about being perfect, though. I don’t expect that from you.” She gives Aloy’s hand a featherlight squeeze. “This is new for me, too. But I hope it’s clear that I want it. And if it’s what you want, too—we can work on figuring it out together.”
Aloy isn’t used to her insecurities being taken as bids for comfort rather than a litany of failings, or weapons to be used against her. Maybe it’s okay to want that—to want the weightlessness it brings shattering through all the uncertainty. Maybe it can be safe to let yourself bloom from where you’re planted, to ache and to grow. And to not dread things ending so much that you never give them a chance to begin.
“Yeah. Okay,” she agrees, hoarse and simple, meaning it. Then, thick with that runaway honesty: “It did feel—really, really good.”
“And I’m glad it did. I could sort of tell,” Talanah says. Her grin is equal parts tender and teasing, and Aloy feels herself blush furiously. The shame is all spent, though. It’s only the heat, only that blistering want. Slow as a summer rainstorm and twice as persuasive, Talanah frees Aloy’s hand in favor of her wrist and guides it back to her waist. “The fact that it happened doesn’t need to change anything about—this. Or take it any further. Alright? You know enough pressure as it is. And by the Sun, I don’t want to add to it.”
All the reassurance has left Aloy with nothing left but this deep, tempting sleepiness, and there’s no way her answer will come out even halfway articulate or direct. So she stops struggling to shape it and lets it go as is, fighting to hold Talanah’s intense amber gaze and hoping she understands.
“Yes. No, I mean—I’m not saying that I—I mean, I do want—I don’t not want to—”
Mercifully, Talanah hushes her with another casual kiss.
“Another time,” she murmurs. Aloy takes a steadying breath and nods at the promise made against her lips as Talanah brushes a lock of hair behind her ear. “For now, though—I can go to my bunk, if you’d like. Give you some space. Whatever you need.”
Come here, Aloy. Tell me what you need.
And just like that, Aloy realizes she’s clinging. This time she doesn’t make herself stop. There’s bravery in that. Something human to recognize.
What’s a little more newness, after everything else? At this point, let Beta and Sylens think whatever they will.
“Will you—stay?” She buries her face in the crook of Talanah’s neck without waiting for an answer. Feels like she could melt into the furs and pass out for days. Wants to wake up at the end of it fresh and ready for anything and with Talanah still right there with her. “Sleep here instead?”
For a moment, the request lingers in stillness. Aloy can feel the tiniest soundless hitch in Talanah’s breath—like she wasn’t expecting Aloy to ask, or to want it in the first place. But then she’s wrapping Aloy up in her arms and entwining their legs, anchoring them together, answering with her body before her words.
When she speaks, it’s full of quiet reverence and tempered eagerness. No sudden moves, but nothing half-meant.
“Yes.” A contented smile quivers through. She presses her lips to Aloy’s brow and whispers, “You know I will.”
Drowsy, boneless, blissed-out, they curl close in the fading candleglow. Aloy drifts off counting the steady rhythm of Talanah’s pulse. Her awareness tapers down to Talanah’s slow and even breath against her temple, Talanah’s fingers tangled loose in the hair at her nape. Soft bare skin, fine Carja silk. Honey and sweet-spice. Shared space. The ache that follows growing. The haven of a reaching hand, found and held in the dark.