The cave was completely, deathly quiet.
The roar of the Crushing had finally faded into a distant, hollow rumble, leaving behind nothing but the harsh sound of their breathing and the faint, irregular drip of water somewhere deep in the island. The air in the narrow opening hung heavy and thick, smelling of the undeniable, raw musk of what they had just done to each other.
Sunny lay sprawled against the jagged rock wall, his chest heaving like he had just sprinted across the entire dream realm without taking a single breath.
Every single muscle in his body was screaming in protest. His skin was slick with a mixture of sweat and dust, scratched raw in places where her nails had desperately, fiercely held onto him. Bruises were already blooming across his shoulders, hips, and collarbone, throbbing with a dull heat that served as a visceral, highly distracting reminder of her absolute lack of restraint.
He tilted his head slightly, wincing as a particularly sharp sting flared on the side of his neck. He didn't need a mirror to know she had left a brutal, dark purple bite mark right over his neck. In fact, if he took a quick mental inventory, he was pretty sure he looked like he had been mauled by an incredibly aggressive, highly affectionate dire wolf.
His hair was a matted disaster, his lips were swollen and stinging from her bites, and his mind…
His mind was a burning building.
'What the fuck!' Sunny thought, staring blankly at the dark ceiling of the cave. 'What the actual fuck just happened. I just had sex. With Cielle. With an angel. In a death-trap cave. After the Crushing nearly turned us into paste! Calm down Sunny, calm down! I am calm, I'm super calm, I'm the calmest one!!'
He dragged a shaky hand down his face, letting out a ragged, breathless laugh that bordered on complete hysteria. His paranoid, calculated, utterly cynical life plan, a plan built entirely on surviving the nightmare and avoiding emotional entanglement, had just been completely derailed.
But beneath the sheer panic, beneath the 'what the fuck' and the screaming alarms in his head about the Shadow Bond and the sheer recklessness of it all, there was something else.
A quiet, terrifyingly warm feeling blooming deep in his chest.
He was internally, overwhelmingly cheerful.
He didn't just survive the Crushing; he had won. Out of everything and everyone in this godforsaken world, when the adrenaline crashed and the fear receded, she had looked at him with those big green eyes and practically demanded him. She had chosen him as her anchor.
'Good job, Sunny,' a traitorous, highly satisfied voice whispered in the back of his mind.
"Void take me," Sunny whispered to the dark, a helpless, stupid grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "You're going to be the death of me. I am completely ruined. Stealing the innocence of such a helpless boy"
Cielle was currently curled against his chest, an absolute picture of blissed-out contentment. Her head rested heavily on his bruised collarbone, her soft brown hair fanning out across his sweat-damp skin. Her green eyes were half-lidded and dreamy, and a tiny, incredibly rare smile curved her swollen lips.
Her body had melted entirely against him, her curves were plush, heavy, and warm, her bare skin still carrying a faint, ethereal glow . Her broken wings draped loosely over his legs, the feathers twitching occasionally as her soul slowly began to mend them. She was entirely unbothered by their lack of clothing or the cold stone beneath them. To her, this was just the logical, highly efficient conclusion to feeling safe.
She nuzzled closer, her nose burrowing into the crook of his neck, directly over the bite mark she had left. She inhaled his scent with a small, pleased hum. Her fingers, which had been clawing his back into ribbons minutes ago, were now tracing lazy, gentle circles on his stomach.
"Good," she murmured, her voice husky and slow. She pressed a soft kiss to his collarbone, entirely nonchalant. "That was very pleasant. You feel warm inside."
Sunny's brain immediately blue-screened again.
He choked on another laugh, a flush of pure heat rushing to his face. He coughed awkwardly, his arm tightening automatically around her bare shoulders to pull her closer.
"You're a complete menace, you know that?" Sunny rasped, trying to sound grumpy but failing miserably as his thumb began stroking her hair in slow, soothing passes.
She lifted her head just enough to look at him, blinking slowly. Her eyes drifted down his torso, casually admiring the scratches and marks she had left, before meeting his gaze. The cute, dangerous little smile widened just a fraction. "A menace? Why?"
"Because," Sunny said, his other hand coming up to cup her cheek, his thumb gently brushing a smear of dirt from her skin. "You just attacked me. In a cave that literally tried to kill us. After nearly getting pulverized . Who does that?"
Cielle tilted her head in that bird-like way she had, considering his words with perfect, deadpan seriousness. "The Crushing tried to kill us," she stated matter-of-factly. "You stopped it. Then I wanted you. So I took you."
Blunt. Direct. Utterly her.
Sunny groaned, dropping his forehead against hers with a soft thud, hiding his furiously blushing face. "Took me. Yeah, you really did." His fingers tangled lightly in her hair, massaging her scalp in a way that drew another deep, vibrating purr from her chest. "And you left me looking like a chew toy."
She hummed, tracing one of the scratches on his chest with a delicate fingernail. "I apologize. But I like them. They show you survived."
"Let's just leave them for now," Sunny muttered, entirely too flustered to argue with her logic.
She sighed contentedly, her body going even more boneless as she hooked one bare leg casually over his thigh. "It was different," she admitted after a long moment, her voice dropping into a quieter, more thoughtful register. "It didn't hurt. It felt… good. Safe."
Sunny stilled. His thumb paused its gentle tracing on her cheek.
Hurt? he echoed in his mind. He didn't push her to explain, but he filed the word away with a sudden, dark intensity. Images flashed unbidden in his mind, the silver, methodical scars on her back that he had seen in his house. His jaw clenched briefly, a fierce flare igniting low in his gut.
'Hurt….'
He pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead. "You can be always warm," he promised, his voice rough with something much deeper than exhaustion. "Always safe. With me."
Cielle hummed in agreement, snuggling impossibly closer until there wasn't a millimeter of space between them. "ok," she mumbled sleepily, her eyes finally drifting shut as the exhaustion of the day claimed her.
Sunny watched her drift off, his heart doing that strange, unfamiliar flip again. She was curled against him like he was the safest place in the world. He looked down at her bare back, at the curve of her waist, and swallowed hard, pointedly looking at the ceiling to give his blood pressure a break.
He shifted carefully, adjusting his position so she was more comfortably cradled against him, wincing as his bruised muscles protested. He commanded his shadows, letting them scout around the cave entrance to ward off any lingering monsters.
"Saint," Sunny whispered into the darkness.
Stone Saint materialized in the dim light. The towering stone knight stood at the mouth of the cave, her ruby eyes glowing softly. She looked down at the two of them tangled on the floor, taking in the absolute state of her master.
Saint didn't speak. She couldn't. But Sunny could have sworn there was a profound aura of judgment, and perhaps a hint of absolute pity for his inevitable doom, radiating from the Echo. Then, she slowly turned away, shaking her head slightly, becoming a silent, immovable sentinel.
Sunny smirked faintly, his face burning all over again. He pulled a cloak from his backpack and draped it over Cielle's sleeping form, his hand resuming its soothing strokes through her hair. He stayed awake for a long time, watching over her, feeling a strange, solid peace amid the chaos.
***
Several Hours Later - The Real World
The heavy steel lids of the sleeping pods hissed open in tandem.
Sunny sat up in the basement of his house, every joint in his body protesting the sudden return to physicality. His real body wasn't bruised like his soul, he was free of the scratches and bite marks, but the phantom ache of the Crushing, and the intense exertion that followed, still lingered heavily in his bones.
Cielle stirred in the other pod a moment later. She sat up, stretching her arms above her head. Her wings flexed behind her, completely whole and pristine again. She did a little shimmy, testing them. "Better," she assessed bluntly.
Ten minutes later, the routine had settled into place, though the atmosphere was undeniably, electrically different.
Sunny was in the kitchen, aggressively chopping vegetables for a stew, trying to burn off his nervous energy. Cielle had migrated to the living room couch. She had immediately claimed his oversized black shirt again, her bare legs tucked beneath her.
Sunny plated two large bowls of stew and carried them to the coffee table. He sat down next to her, their thighs brushing.
"Eat," Sunny ordered, handing her a spoon. He tried to summon his usual grumpy, commanding tone to regain some control over his life. "And listen to me. What you did today was incredibly reckless. You cannot just dive into a dead Transcendent beast's guts without checking for risks, and you certainly cannot try to fly us out of a Crushing cycle when the air is—"
Sunny stopped talking.
Cielle had taken a bite of the stew, but she wasn't looking at the bowl. She was looking at him. Her green eyes were fixed intently on his mouth, dark and entirely focused, clearly remembering exactly what they had been doing in the cave a few hours ago.
Sunny's brain immediately supplied a vivid, high-definition memory of her straddling his hips, her hair wild, pinning his wrists to the stone while entirely naked.
He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly completely dry. The lecture died a miserable death on his tongue. "And… uh… the air…"
Cielle set her spoon down. She leaned forward, invading his personal space with her usual terrifying lack of hesitation. She turned her head slightly, and before Sunny could react, she slowly, deliberately dragged her tongue up the shell of his ear.
Sunny physically jolted, a strangled, embarrassing noise escaping his throat as a shiver ran violently down his spine.
Cielle pulled back, giving him a completely innocent, blank look. "The stew is very good," she stated flatly.
Then, she picked up her bowl and hurried away toward the other end of the couch, tucking her wings in and eating her food like she hadn't just short-circuited his entire nervous system.
Sunny sat frozen on the couch, his face burning with the heat of a thousand suns, his shadow rolling on the floor in silent, mocking laughter. He gripped his spoon tightly, completely flustered and utterly defeated.