HS ancestorfic drabbley thing

[darkluna]

She could no more not reach out to him than she could stop breathing. Mismatched eyes track the motion of her hand as she lifts it, widen when her fingers brush over his cheek, and Dolorosa pulls her hand back as if burned.

"Too much?"

His breath catches, and he seems surprised by the sound it makes. "Am having trouble fitting back in own hardwa-- body."

"Oh, Psii."

"Waxing flushed, DD?" he says, with a ghost of his old cockiness. "Am surprised at you."

She feels her face grow warm, made all the more aware of it by how Psii watches with frank fascination. He echoes her gesture, barest trace of his fingertips along her cheekbone.

"Might not mind, if you were."

Slowly, as if finding the way of it, inventing it for himself (that might not be far from the truth, she thinks), he leans closer, stops. Tilts his head in adjustment. She could almost weep for how uncertain he looks, for the small frownline of concentration that appears between his eyebrows. Almost, if pity and heat weren't mingling to make her pulse pound so hard in her throat that she nearly shivers with it. How can it be so fast, Dolorosa wonders, when she's afraid to breathe?

Whatever Psii reads in her expression, it seems to steady him, and he closes the breath of distance left between them and kisses her.

It's very, very gentle, almost chaste, but it's what it means that shakes her, and she knows she looks dazed when he pulls back.

"Perhaps a little, then." (The vivid green her cheeks surely bear puts the lie to this, and she permits herself a teasing smile.) "As long as you don't mind."