Archive of Our Own

One

They always did like high places.

Not that the moonstone’s spire is all that high, really. It’s not nearly as tall as their old perch on top of the Fright Zone was, and it’s positively dwarfed by the massive waterfall that looms behind Bright Moon castle. It’s not even as high as the other towers and rooftops of the palace - Catra knows this, because she has spent the last few hours on an unsanctioned, Adora-guided tour of the less official places in her new home, and a thorough exploration of all those spots had been a highlight. 

So, no, this spire in particular is not the tallest spot in Bright Moon, not even close. It makes up for that with the view. 

Which is, of course, a vision of purple cliffs looming high, of a cloud-strewn, moon-scattered sky in a soft blue that reflects itself twofold into the glittering waters below. It’s strange, because Bright Moon is strange, and Catra...she’s getting used to it. That’s what she says, when asked, because she’s trying really hard not to say I hate it, because she doesn’t want to hate it. She doesn’t want to hate the soft pastel colors of it all, or the soft beds, or the good food. She really, especially doesn’t want to hate the good food. She doesn’t want to have a visceral, adverse reaction to the way everyone’s so nice, the way they ask if she’s okay and what she wants and how they can help. She doesn’t want to hate any of it because it’s all not bad and she knows that, even if she can’t always tell that to her gut, the bit of her that still feels an unwilling nostalgia for a nastier place. 

She doesn’t want to hate the way everything is pretty here, and at least right now she doesn’t. Because Catra’s not looking at the mountains, and she’s not looking at Bright Moon castle, either.

She’s looking at Adora.

It’s both an easy and a tough angle, to see all of her right now. Catra’s back is curled into one of the petal-like curves of the moonstone’s spire, legs stretched out wide to make space for her girlfriend between them, her back to Catra’s chest. Adora’s always been pretty, in the ugly jungle of the Fright Zone and the harsh cold of the Northern Reach, screaming at Catra as reality unwinds itself and dying deep in Etheria’s heart. But she’s especially breathtaking like this, safe and pliant and bared, pale skin an easy canvas for the moonstone’s light to tint lavender. 

Catra tells her that, soft and sweet in her ear, even if it means leaning in so her vision of Adora’s body is obscured by the messy blonde of her hair. It’s worth it to whisper, “So, so beautiful, just for me,” and to hear the way Adora’s breath hitches in reply. 

“Cat- Catra—“

“Shh,” Catra soothes, and then, “you’re perfect,” she murmurs, because Adora is. Because Adora should know. Catra’s fingers, wet and warm between Adora’s thighs, give a little flick, playful and quick, just as she digs all five claws of her other hand just slightly into Adora’s breast. The result is a gratifying squeak and a graceless flail, Adora’s leg kicking out and the soft sound of it connecting with cloth - clothing, Adora’s clothing, scattered haphazardly wherever it had landed back when Catra had slid it off, mid-tour when she’d stopped being able to resist.

Unwrapping Adora is always a gift, but especially here in this light, which might take part of the blame for this whole impromptu endeavor. Catra’s used to Adora, glowing with magic, and that will never get old no matter how she sees it. But this is a novel version of it, soft and gentle where She-Ra is dazzling, and Catra can’t possibly get enough. 

Catra can never get enough. 

She slides the fingers of one hand into the back of Adora’s hair, cradling her skull and further mussing the foundation of her ponytail with careful claws. She both feels and hears Adora’s slight gasp at the prick of them, then a louder, sharper one when Catra uses the grip to tug Adora’s head back further sharply, bare the long line of her throat - not to mention the rest of her, now that all that hair is out of the way, spilling behind Catra’s shoulder.

She knows her belt is digging into the bare flesh of Adora’s lower back. She can feel it there between them, and she loves how Adora is too far gone to seem to give a single shit about it, even presses back in for the sharpness and the sensation. Catra is struck all at once with a desire to be on the other side of her, where she could press her ear to Adora’s heartbeat, just to feel it thundering there. It is, for a moment, disappointing, before it is suddenly and viscerally triumphant the way it is every time she remembers that they can do that next time.

This time, she runs her fingers from Adora’s hair down across her shoulder, bicep, forearm, to the thin skin above the pulse at her wrist, she drifts her teeth along the equally thin skin above the pulse of Adora’s neck. She mouths there, presses with both hands and lips to feel the heat of Adora, the pounding under her skin and the hot clench between her legs and the little jerks of her hips because Adora - wonderful, glorious Adora - feels all the ways Catra can tear into her and only ever wants closer, these days. So Catra gives her closer, scrapes her fangs against Adora’s throat without piercing and drags her claws across Adora’s wrist without puncturing and curls her fingers faster and harder and deeper and curls her tail around Adora’s leg - softly, softly, firmly - just to tug it that much wider. And Adora pants her approval into Catra’s ear, clutches it where her fingers twist into the fabric of Catra’s still-clothed thigh, bucks it with her hips again and again and again until—

Adora is quiet, when she comes. Her mouth, open like she’s forgotten how to close it at all, works soundlessly, and Catra - wrapped around her as she is - can feel every one of her muscles go tense. The whole of her is taut, shimmering pale lavender in the light and vibrating ever so minutely like a whip or a bowstring or who the fuckall cares; like Adora fucking coming, which is better and more goddamn specific than any metaphor Catra’s Adora-drunk brain could possibly think up. Catra finds herself holding her breath along with Adora, and it’s not until Adora finally starts to come down - with a whine, high-pitched and involuntary, and a gusting sigh as loud as any sound she’s made since they started - that Catra more quietly lets go of her own breath, too. 

The come-down is short lived. No sooner has she felt Adora catch her breath, then Catra is starting again, sliding her whole hand through the wetness between Adora’s legs just to feel it, before pressing the heel of her palm hard right to her clit. Adora bucks again, keens again, takes in a gasping breath to try, Catra thinks, for a word, for—

“—the absolute fuck do you think you’re doing, throwing around your—"

Shit. Catra’s ears prick at the voice. Usually, if she’d been paying attention to her surroundings, if she’d been paying even half attention, she’d have caught it long, long before Sparkles so much as breathed near them. 

She wasn’t paying attention. Not to that, anyway. 

And anyway, even if she had been, that wouldn’t account for teleportation. 

“—clothes all over my fucking kingdom! I don’t care how nice a day it is, I was walking down there—”

A few things happen at once. 

Sparkles’ eyes focus onto them, then go wide and shocked as she stops dead. Adora’s head snaps up, barely takes in their new companion before she immediately slams her legs closed. She scrambls her way around to hide behind Catra, who slides forward just enough to let Adora in behind her and hisses sharply before she can even think twice. 

“What the fuck!” Sparkles shrieks, turning bright red and chucking the fabric in her hand towards them, only seconds before she disappears in a poof of teleportation magic. Adora’s jacket, Catra thinks, catching it, huh. Now where did Sparkles get that?

“Catra? Catra, where are my clothes?!” Adora hisses, panicked eyes roving the platform to see the same thing Catra does, which is nothing at all. 

Catra blinks once, and then again. In the moment it takes her to remember a pleasure-soaked Adora kicking fabric, Sparkles pops back into existence right where she left. 

“How dare you— ohmyfuck!” Aaaand she’s gone again. 

“Catra?” Adora snarls again, “Clothes!” 

Catra points soundlessly over the side of the parapet. As Adora’s eyes widen, Catra wipes her still-wet hand on the jacket, then holds it out innocently. Adora snatches it, shrugging it on over bare skin just as Catra starts to laugh. 

“You’re laughing! Stop laughing!” Adora is bright fucking red - which is just an awful thing under the purple moonstone light - and Catra should really, really, really stop laughing. But she can’t seem to, and Adora is grinning, too, though she looks like she’s trying not to laugh, though she still hits Catra’s arm and shouts her name with an thin attempt at admonishment.

“—better be decent! You can’t just— is she laughing?” Sparkles shouts, back again. Catra laughs harder. “Why is she laughing? Stop— Adora, pants!” 

Catra meets Adora’s eyes as Adora meets her back, and then the concept of oh right, pants hits both of them at the same time, and then suddenly they’re both frantically looking around the spire as if they’d be able to find something they both know isn’t there. The sheer amount they’re both giggling hamper the effort, as does Adora’s attempts at modesty, and it’s not long before Adora gives up, plops down, and tugs Catra into her lap instead. 

“That does not count as pants, Adora!” Sparkles snarls.

“Huh. I didn’t know her voice went that high,” Catra says, as Adora turns even redder. 

“Forthehonorofgrayskull,” Adora rushes out, and then Catra is cackling madly again because, well, smart thinking. But also, She-Ra is there, sitting on her - fully clothed, gigantic - ass and pouting, and Catra’s still in her lap and honestly?

Honestly, she thinks - with She-Ra solid around her, and Sparkles’ angry face framed by the mountains, and Bow’s voice filtering up from the castle to ask if everyone’s okay - Bright Moon might not be so bad. 

Two

“You sure...you’re okay...with being...here?” Adora presses the words into Catra’s mouth, suddenly nervous but not enough to pull away. 

Catra huffs a breathy noise, tipping her head further into the mossy surface of the bulkhead at her back. It sends Adora’s nose sliding across Catra’s cheek, her jaw. She presses a kiss there, while Catra replies with a distracted, questioning hum. 

Adora spends a long moment at the place where Catra’s jaw goes sharp before she murmurs, now travelling upwards towards the softness of her hairline, “Y’know…the uh,” she giggles a little, because it is a funny name, “The Velvet Glove. Is it,'' another kiss, and another, and another, “...weird?”

“Ha,” Catra gives a half-laugh half-exclamation, and Adora doesn’t know or care if it’s a reaction to her words or to her hands, one sliding through the tufts of lighter hair at the side of Catra’s head and the other working one-handed at the waist of her pants. Catra’s hips make it tough, pressing forward and trapping Adora’s fingers without space to move. 

Adora shoves back, pressing Catra’s hips back into the wall - partially for the space to maneuver, but mostly to hear Catra gasp. And she does gasp, which is nice, and she kisses Adora, which is even nicer. She also retaliates by shoving even harder back, which is slightly annoying until it means they’re walking away from the wall, Adora doing a deeply slipshod job of walking backwards while also thrusting her hand down Catra’s pants while also stumbling into another wall of vines, except that turns out to just be a curtain of vines and on the plus side Adora’s fingers do manage to blindly slide along the thatch of thick hair between Catra’s legs but on the minus side now they’re totally tripping and falling onto a narrow, moss-covered window ledge. 

“Ow!” Adora complains while Catra snickers, her descent having been cushioned by Adora going down first. Adora rubs at the place where she hit her head on the ledge - with the hand not down Catra’s pants, obviously, that one’s important and not going anywhere. Actually…

She crooks her fingers experimentally, and while it’s definitely less than elegant - her hand is at a weird angle, and she mostly gets the skin of Catra’s thigh and an intimation of wet warmth she can’t quite squirm her touch to the source of - it makes Catra stop snickering, which is pretty satisfying. It’s even more satisfying when Catra rallies, rolling them over and pulling Adora firmly on top of her - and then less satisfying as the motion tangles them in an unforeseen vine, the surprise of which has them dumping each other on the floor this time. This finally does dislodge Adora’s hand from Catra’s pants, which isn’t good at all.

Adora goes to remedy the situation, because she’s nothing if not determined. 

She doesn’t know now long they’re at it. She’s counting not by time but by Catra’s satisfied trills (seven), by brightly-flowering vines they stumble into (five, one of which has them entangled for a full, ridiculous minute of laughter and struggling, first away from it and then out of their clothes), and orgasms (three, between them). The last one leaves Adora panting hard, her damp forehead pressed firmly between Catra’s absolutely delightfully heaving breasts. 

Adora’s not sure how much time passes there, either. 

“...it’s not, you know,” Catra says eventually. 

Adora rolls her head to the side, effectively transferring her girlfriend from lover to pillow, then tilts her eyes upwards to watch Catra’s pensive face. As she idly traces the freckles there with her eyes, Adora’s brain tries equally idly to connect the words to anything at all. But they’re either actively nonsensical or else Adora’s too fucked out to find a tether, and she gives up quickly in favor of a mumbled, cozy, “Huh?” 

“Weird,” Catra says, tipping her head to look out the window. It’s criss-crossed with leaves and flowers, but beyond it can still be seen the broad expanse of Etheria, all lush green and bright colors. “It’s not weird, being here. I didn’t even know where in the ship we were, at first. It’s all a maze in here, and I wasn’t allowed to see most of it...before. And anyway, it’s all so…” there’s a pink flower blooming in the bit of moss beside her head; she twirls it around her finger, staring at it just as mesmerized as Adora is staring at her, “different.”

Catra plucks the little pink flower from its stem, tucks it into Adora’s hair with gentle fingers. She smiles a smile that’s soft and yet still full of teeth, wide and content, and Adora lets this moment gently press aside another in her mind, a ruined Thaymor and another flower and a younger Catra’s gaze. That one matters, it always will, but this one’s better. 

Catra starts to laugh. 

“What?” Adora asks, jolting to attention. She sits up a little, patting at her face for what she’s suddenly sure must be stuck to it, but Catra catches her searching hand before it can do more than brush her cheek. She guides their joined hands instead over Catra’s own shoulder, to the place where she’d just removed the only visible flower.

Except now there’s another one there, just where the last had been. It’s red, this time, and where the one in Adora’s hair had been full in bloom, the one on the stem is still half-furled, glowing gold around the edges with the aftershocks of the magic that presumably just now called it into being.

“Oh,” Adora says, blushing as she lets Catra take her fingers along the soft petals. 

Catra’s looking at her with mischief in her eyes. She curls her fingers around this new flower, pressing claws so very carefully into the petals there. “So,” she asks, a challenge, “if I pick this one too, will you make another?”

“Yes,” Adora breathes, and a pair of yellow flowers burst forth with the words. Catra laughs, and a turquoise one starts to bud. In a distracted, here-and-there burst of epiphany, Adora wonders how many of those vines had existed before the moment they’d tumbled their way inconveniently into her and Catra’s makeshift bed. “I could make you gardens,” Adora says without thinking, then flushes redder at Catra’s snort. But it’s a snort accompanied by Catra’s own blush, and so Adora presses on around the embarrassment. “I could make you—“

“I don’t want gardens, Adora,” Catra says, voice low and rough and wonderful, “I suck with plants. Remember the therapy cactus?” 

“Rest in peace, Spike. Who was a succulent, by the way.” Adora lowers her head back to Catra’s chest, rests there. “I’m not sure you have a choice,” she adds, still running her finger along the petals of the flower that Catra has stopped even pretending to threaten. “I’m not sure I can stop them. The gardens.” Catra’s looking at her with wide, slightly shocky eyes, and Adora can’t read them, and she knows her voice is just a little bit too quiet when she adds, tentative, “Is that okay?”

Catra blinks, eyes even bigger and more shocked but also so very bright. “Yeah, Adora,” she says hoarsely, and there’s something in it that makes Adora feel like she’s flying, “That’s...yeah, Adora, that’s okay.” 

Three

In the place that used to be the Fright Zone, all is quiet. It’s mid-transformation, the debris of battles between tacit partners and brainwashed friends gone, carted away or repurposed or repaired, their replacement still just the signs of a long-term project mid-stream. It’s all tool boxes and hard hats scattered about; raw materials and ladders, a jacket where someone keeps their spare and a deck of cards where someone else left it forgotten.

The construction crew goes home at night, so it’s quiet, right now. It’s empty. 

Well, almost empty.

The renovation effort won’t make it to the Throne Room until tomorrow, and so tonight in the after-hours quiet Catra lounges on the throne, arch, one leg crossed over the other. She hates herself a little for not hating it at all, how powerful this place still makes her feel. 

“Well?” she asks, a little more sharp than she means to. 

“Well what?” Adora asks from across the room, where she’s just finished shucking her jacket. She folds it neatly before placing it down by the door, then stands and turns, and her eyes go wide when they catch on Catra, poised and expectant. Adora’s mouth moves but no sound comes out, and Catra grins. 

(Catra grins, thirteen planets and three months later, as she pushes Adora in the center of her chest. The lights on Darla are dim with ship’s evening, her engines humming quietly as the starry darkness of space whips past. Adora trips back to sit on the edge of Darla’s command chair, and lets out a winded laugh, there, blonde hair already falling in haphazard tendrils around her face. 

Catra keeps the high ground for all of a moment. She doesn’t even notice the whole-handed grip her girlfriend has on her belt before, all at once, Adora yanks sharply.)

Adora yanks sharply at her shirt, pulling it over her head and discarding it without nearly the same level of care she’d given her jacket. She’s already halfway to Catra when she does it, so the shirt ends up on the floor there at the center of the room, and her pants at the bottom of the stairs, and her underwear on various steps, and her absolutely mesmerizingly naked self on the dais before Catra, leaning down to brace a hand on each armrest, fingers just a hair’s breadth from Catra’s own. 

“Well what?” Adora asks again, but Catra’s too busy tracking the swing of her bare breasts, which makes Adora laugh. 

(Adora laughs again as Catra stumbles into her lap, and now it’s Catra’s turn to make a winded noise. She settles there quickly, though, pressing kiss after kiss to Adora’s mouth even as Adora’s hands squirm their way under Catra’s shirt. They paint a broad, warm path, pressing big palms and blunt nails to Catra’s hips and then her sides, then up her sides with the kind of firm intent that makes Catra feel cared for and breakable and utterly invincible all at once. 

And then all she’s feeling is Adora’s hands rough where they grip her breasts and Adora’s mouth wet where she bites at the underside of her chin, and it doesn’t even matter that her whole shirt is bunched up uncomfortably at the top of her chest because Adora is fucking everywhere and everything she does has a direct fucking line of neon colored light to the place between Catra’s unfortunately still-clothed legs, and that’s what has Catra gasping out a pathetically desperate, “Pants!”) 

“Huh?” Catra asks mindlessly, only tearing her eyes away from Adora’s really fucking lovely nipples when a finger under her chin tips her head up. She’s only disappointed for a moment, because then Adora’s eyes are there, and her stupid poof and her blushing cheeks, and that’s all really fucking lovely too. 

“Pants, Catra. In the absence of other orders,” she gives Catra a smug look, and Catra’s too enamored with it to fully muster a glare back, “I’ve decided we’re going to take off your pants.” 

“Pants…” Catra says, a little dazed, but Adora’s already gone to work on her self-imposed instructions, and Catra gamely lifts her hips to let Adora arrange her.

(Adora arranges Catra back on her lap, straddling one of Adora’s legs while they go back to kissing and kissing and kissing. There are times, kissing Adora, when Catra is nearly overwhelmed by unparsable sensation - this is not one of those. Right now, it’s the other way to experience Adora, the one where Catra can feel every single bit of it in painstaking, meticulous, brilliant detail: Adora’s one hand dug in at the small of Catra’s back, the other toying almost idly with one of her nipples, sending a totally new jolt through her every time a nail passes bluntly over the stiff peak. Catra’s own hands, gripped tight on Adora’s shoulders, and her tail around the thigh Catra isn’t straddling, and her own wetness smeared on the one she is. The way sweat pools in the backs of Catra’s knees and the dip between her breasts, the way the cool, recycled air of the spaceship contrasts with the heat of Adora’s skin, the way Adora smells - like soap and sweat and sex and the sandwich she ate earlier but mostly like Adora, and the way she tastes like Adora, and the way she is Adora, everywhere and also very precisely right here, up against Catra in these incredibly specific ways.

Catra hears noises, too - sharp, bitten-out, semi-stifled yelps and sighs and gasps that threaten to fill the space, ones she knows are coming from her own throat, and Adora says—)

—“Shh,” from between Catra’s thighs, pressing a soft kiss to the inside of the left one, “you gotta be quiet.” 

She doesn’t, of course - no one’s here and no one’s going to be here, and a detached part of Catra remembers that. It’s the same part that remembers that this was, theoretically, her show to control, her, uh, power-trip-seat and everything, but honestly she couldn’t give a fuck as long as Adora keeps doing that.

And anyway, it’s easy enough to forget that they’re alone here, whenever she tears her eyes from Adora’s working head to look up. The throne room was never a busy place, and now it’s all too easy to imagine a soldier wandering in through where the entry gapes wide, open like Catra’s legs where Adora’s pressed her broad shoulders between them. 

Adora’s kisses turn to bites, teeth sinking just barely into the place where Catra’s leg meets her body. Catra growls at the surprise of it, hands flying down to wind in the undone mess of Adora’s hair and yank her upwards. Adora obeys, pulling off with a lingering suck and surging up high on her knees, grabbing at the collar of Catra’s jacket to meet her mouth in a short, vehement kiss. And then Adora presses her lips to one of Catra’s twitching, oversensitive ears, breath wafting warm over it she murmurs, “I said, you gotta be—“

(“—loud for me,” Adora grins up at her, sliding Catra more firmly against her bare thigh. Catra grinds against it, letting her whine go high and reedy, knowing she’s making more punched-out noises but this time not even caring, not when Adora keeps encouraging her louder and louder and louder in the beeping stillness of Darla’s bridge. 

There’s something heady to that, Catra knows, in the part of her that can know anything at all right now besides the sensation of Adora. Something that ratchets her even tighter when she thinks about how the ship really is empty but for them, locked not just with a password but with magic controllable by only one person in the whole universe, and that person is here, in motion under Catra’s hands, under Catra’s hips, looking awestruck up at her. There’s something that gets Catra so high about knowing this, this woman who is so sweetly delighted by a naked Catra smearing herself all over her leg, all this power—)

—that Adora has, here on her knees, against a backdrop Catra used to crave and then hate herself for and now just thinks is so fucking goddamn pale in comparison to Adora’s hand on her ankle and finally - finally - Adora’s mouth where she wants it. Catra fucking keens, the anticipation as much as the feel of it shattering through her already disjointed thoughts. Her hands clench tight in Adora’s hair, pressing Adora’s head mindlessly down as she shoves her hips up against Adora’s fiercely working tongue, and—

(—Adora pulls her down against her thigh again and again, shifting to tangle her hands in Catra’s hair or brush her lips on Catra’s collarbone or bite at the inside of Catra’s elbow, even, baring her teeth there, hitching Catra higher up in her lap and—)

—pushing Catra’s leg up onto the chair, urging it over the wide armrest in a split almost too goddamn wide, and then Adora pulls away for a moment, ignoring Catra’s whine in favor of replacing her slick mouth with her quick fingers, moving in small, tight, slick little circles, and—

(—Adora grins up at her, and Catra grins down, and—)

(—Catra grinds down, and—)

—Adora presses firm, and—

(—“I love you,” someone says. It doesn’t much matter who.)

Four

Planet Bzzzantium’s Ceremonial Reconciliation Ritual, Adora has decided, is a fucking waste of time. 

Also, she’s pretty sure, a scam.

“Work out your differences,” she mutters, voice a mock of the alien leader’s humming voice, “by the twentieth blossom you’ll surely be able to find each other again. No, really, we insist, most honored guest. ‘Honored guest,’ pfft - how about hostage labor, here for the ceremonial pruning ritual when I should be— Ah!” She shrieks a little in surprise, then coughs, waving her hand in front of her face as the flower-petal-pod-thing she’s supposed to be collecting lets out yet another sparkly cloud of yellow dust. She pulls it free of its stem with far more force than strictly necessary, then glares at it while she stomps it over to the edge of the wide, sturdy branch she’s standing on. 

She grabs onto a more spindly one above her - spindly meaning the width of her torso, in this case; this tree is fucking huge - then closes one eye and sticks out her tongue as she tries to aim the petal-pod. The goal is for it to fall all thirty feet down and land in the big basket at the bottom, and she’s just about got it lined up in an open spot between branches, ready to drop in three, two, one—

A shape comes in from around the trunk of the tree, jostling her just as she lets go. It’s a hard, painful shoulder-to-shoulder move paired with a flash of fang in a vicious smirk, followed by a smug linger of tail around Adora’s hips that only heightens Adora’s frustration when she watches the petal spiral down and down and down, thoroughly off course. She lets out a small scream of frustration and turns, shouting, “Catra—!”

“Oh, I must have gotten in your way. I do that sometimes; get in the way.” Catra’s response drips with insincerity - the malicious kind, not the teases Adora’s grown more used to, these days. She keeps her back to Adora as she continues to saunter past, and Adora’s eyes trace the too-tense line of her slim shoulders, her tail whipping angrily behind her.

Adora opens her mouth to retort, but Catra’s already gone before she can, disappeared into the branches above. Adora forces herself to breathe a few times, to not rise to Catra’s bait  - because it is bait, and it’s meant to make Adora feel guilty and say something nice and she’s not going to. She stomps back to the petal pods instead, but that turns out to also be an exercise in frustration because she can’t even reach the next one. She could if she used magic, but instead she grits her teeth and reaches out her hand and strains on her tip-toes, knowing her balance is precarious but absolutely refusing to—

“Can’t handle it without She-Ra?” Catra’s voice startles her into a wobble, and she pinwheels her arms wildly as Catra drawls, “Hate to say I told you so.” 

Adora finds a steady stance on the branch, and immediately uses it to whirl. Catra is positively lounging on the branch above her; stretched out faux-languidly, plucking easily at a petal-pod and effortlessly dodging the majority of the yellow sparkle-cloud it emits. She’d look casual and nonchalant if her mouth weren’t pressed so tight and her eyes weren’t so seriously narrowed and her ears weren’t pinned flat back. 

“What is your problem, Catra!?” Adora shouts, even though she knows exactly what Catra’s problem is.

“You know exactly what my problem is,” Catra replies, dropping down to Adora’s branch, a line of coiled elegance first crouching and then rolling up to full height. 

Adora tracks the movement; she can’t stop herself. Catra in motion is always a pleasure to look at, but something about her right now, right like that...Adora shakes her head to clear it. “Look,” she says, taking a step forward and crossing her arms with a huff, “I don’t have to include you in every plan I make. I can do some things by myself!”

“Yeah, you’re right, Adora,” Catra replies, stepping forward herself as she snarls a nasty, “you don’t have to include me on any plan you make, actually.” She’s closer, now, so close that Adora can see the yellow petal-dust on her cheek and smell her shampoo and watch the bright vividness of her eyes, which seem fixated down below Adora’s nose before skittering, wide and a little shocky, up to her eyes. Then they narrow, and a moment later she’s turning away again, saying acidly, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to—”

“No! No, you don’t get to run away,” Adora snarls, but Catra keeps going and it’s the easiest thing not to let her, to grab at Catra’s hips - she likes the feel of them, more caught up than usual in the solid and sharp and deceptively delicate strength of Catra’s body - and pull her back to her spot in front of Adora. 

Except it’s not easy, because, “Don’t you dare,” Catra hisses, retaliating with a shove, and Adora stumbles back and her foot misses a step and - oh, right, she remembers. Tree. They’re in a tree. And then there’s open air beneath her and she thinks for a split second that she’s going to have to go She-Ra real, real fast before she plummets but of course she doesn’t because there’s Catra, one hand fisted in Adora’s jacket and the other in the cloth at her waist. Those hands, Adora knows, are the only thing between her and a thirty-foot drop.

Catra looks livid in front of her. She opens her mouth. Adora cuts her off.

“You’re being unreasonable!” Adora shouts, flailing her arms dramatically to emphasize the point. 

“Oh, I’m unreasonable!?” Catra snarls back. She shakes Adora, which would make her nervous if she was worried about the whole multi-story fall thing, but Catra’s not letting go and won’t be letting go so it’s just annoying and a little insulting. It doesn’t matter anyway, because Catra yanks her back onto the branch then, hissing in her face, “You know, some people take backup to attack a giant bear monster—“

“It wasn’t that big!” Adora shouts, “I went after a medium sized,” Her flailing hand grips the sleeve of Catra’s jacket, uses it to pull their faces close, “completely manageable bear monster,“ Catra’s eyes are wide and her pupils are wider, and when she licks her lip Adora tracks the motion, ”that I didn’t even know was there!”

“You knew something was there,” Catra shouts back, shoving Adora into the wider place where the branch meets the trunk of the tree, then following Adora’s body with her own. There must have been a petal-pod hidden under a spray of leaves there, because the impact of her back on the bark lets up another big puff of sparkling yellow. Adora watches it settle on Catra’s eyelashes and in the place where her stupid little jacket and her stupid little top show far too little of her chest.

“I wasn’t going to wait!” Adora says, hands skimming up Catra’s hips to divest her of that jacket. “The villagers were frightened! They’re bees! ” 

A leg slides between Adora’s thighs. “Giant bees!” Catra snaps in her ear, then licks at the shell of it, then snarls over Adora’s responding moan, “They were fine! You don’t have to be responsible for everyone all the time!”

It’s the same old complaint, and this is one of the times that it boils Adora’s blood - though that may also have something to do with the attention Catra is still lavishing on, of all places, her left ear. “That’s not what this is about!” Adora says, tipping her head to the right. 

Catra’s nose skims down the newly bared skin, jaw to neck to collar, and she hisses, “And what is it about, Adora?”

“I don’t need supervision,” Adora hisses back, shoving her hands down the back of Catra’s pants.  

“Don’t you?” It’s not clear if Catra’s voice is a snarl or a purr; what is clear is that she has become fixated on the place right above Adora’s shirt collar, and Adora pants at the full assault of biting-sucking-licking she’s decided to pursue. 

“I’m...I can do…can do things... myself,” like string together a full sentence, even, maybe. Adora tries to focus, tries not to let her whole world narrow down to Catra’s hands on her hips and one spot on her neck.  “I don’t always...have to...check in with you! I’m not...I’m not stupid.”

“No,” Catra grinds out without letting up, “No you’re not. You’re annoying. You’re reckless. You’re impatient. You’re an idiot,” she leaves off Adora’s neck, shifting to to press an open-mouthed kiss to her jaw, “but you’re not stupid.” 

She says it smugly, like somehow calling Adora not stupid is the world’s best insult, and it’s the fucking superciliousness of it that drives Adora especially wild. So Adora says, “Fuck you,” in return, and then in something like a bid at the upper hand she tucks both hands under Catra’s thighs, crouching just slightly to lift her fully and spin to put Catra’s back against the trunk of the tree. The branch they’re on is only barely big enough to support the motion of it all, and they only avoid going over the edge through a combination of Adora’s last-second footwork and Catra grabbing hold of two of the branches above her. 

It’s worth it, though, for Catra’s breathless, shocked laugh - okay, wait, no, that wasn’t the goal, but she likes it anyway. Adora takes her turn to give Catra a smug look, bringing one arm up just to rest it on the tree above Catra’s head while she leans in close. She waits - patiently, thank-you-very-much - for Catra to open her mouth to say something snarky, then takes that moment to pull on just a little bit of her positively brimming pool of deeply enthusiastic magic, using it to hitch Catra unreasonably high against the tree’s trunk and pin her there.

Catra yelps, which is very satisfying, and grabs at the branches above her so frantically that her claws swipe clean through one of them, sending a whole tree limb crashing down through the leaves beside them. Adora ignores it, burying her face in the top of Catra’s shirt in an attempt to drag it down. It doesn’t work, but the movement has all the benefits of bumping her teeth and nose and giggling mouth up against Catra’s chest, which seems to be popular with her audience of exactly one. Until, at least, Catra starts to say something else, which is when Adora uses the hand that’s not currently supporting Catra’s ass to yank the shirt down, latching onto a nipple immediately with her teeth while she palms the other breast.

Catra gasps, but still speaks through it. “Are you using,” she yelps, “fucking She-Ra power,” another little noise Adora couldn’t begin to name but really fucking likes, “without changing,” she makes it again, “your form?” 

“No,” Adora lies, squeezing with both her grips.

“You are!” Catra squeaks, sounding delighted. “You cheater!” 

By the time Adora realizes what Catra’s doing - bracing herself against the tree with clawed fingers dug hard into the bark, using that leverage plus the push of her hips to slam all her weight forward - it’s already too late. She has no time to brace at all, and they both go down in a sprawling heap and a cloud of disturbed yellow dust. There’s another mad, momentary scramble for both of them to keep themselves and each other from falling off the edge of the giant tree branch, and Adora has just enough time to be grateful it is big enough for her to sprawl out on her back with room to spare on either side before Catra is using that room to pin her hands next to her head.

“You said,” Catra says, tossing her head back in a way that makes her mane of hair catch the light, haloing wildly around her face, “you weren’t gonna use She-Ra,” a flash of fang as Catra grinds down on Adora’s abdomen just once - Adora feels the movement through her whole body, “in the tree.”

“I don’t think,” Adora gasps as Catra shoves her shirt up and then rakes her hands down, unsheathed claws barely pushed into skin - just enough to sting but not enough to cut, a seemingly careless move so full of meticulous control that it makes Adora’s head spin from more than just physical sensation. Adora squirms, bucking upwards, and then again when Catra follows it with kisses, pressed open-mouthed and sharp-toothed to the valley between Adora’s breasts, the top of her abdomen, then right above her belly button. “I don’t think this is what we meant.” 

“Sure it was,” Catra purrs, raking with her claws again, though this time at the outside of Adora’s upper thighs. 

It takes Adora a dazed moment to realize what’s different this time, but when she does she jackknifes into sitting. “Catra, my pants!”

Catra shoves her back down with exactly no gentleness. “You’ll live,” she says roughly. Her one hand remains splayed at Adora’s throat while the other joins her mouth in trailing back down Adora’s body, and when she nips at the suddenly-exposed juncture between Adora’s groin and thigh Adora decides that yeah, you know what, she’ll live. Then there are teeth by her cunt and claws at her neck and Catra’s hair against her thigh and nose first against the hair-covered skin above her slit and then the wetness right at it, and she changes her mind because actually this might kill her. 

Can people overload? Is that a thing? Robots can, of course, and Entrapta and Bow always talk about it for all the tech , and if people can overload maybe they also kind of burst into an explosive mess of sparks and fire and—

“Ah!” Adora shouts, bucking wildly again, this time at a swipe of Catra’s tongue paired with a pointed - literally and figuratively - press of claws to the tender skin of her thighs. 

“Are you ignoring me?!” Catra growls against her cunt, then sputters at the hair that gets in her mouth.

It has the twin effect of making Catra look ridiculous - point to Adora, Adora decides - and also feeling fucking fantastic, which is why Adora pants out, “Yeah, totally.” She throws her head back with a gasp at another long, single-minded lick at her cunt, “Were you doing something...ah...worth my attention?” 

This time the growl she gets is wordless and long and vibrating, and that’s pretty much it for Adora. She comes clutching at the tree bark under her, scrabbling for purchase; her fingers are scraped raw and maybe even bloody by the time they catch and dig into the claw-grooves Catra must have left at some point earlier. She wonders wildly, afterwards, if she’s come at all - not because she didn’t tumble over the edge of pleasure, she definitely did, but because the experience seems to ramp her even higher. There’s no languid, post-orgasm haze she’s used to; it’s replaced by a live-wire, electric urgency that has her grabbing onto whatever parts of Catra she reaches first - a handful of hair-and-ear, her jaw - and dragging her up into a kiss. 

“You done?” Catra asks against her mouth, and it’s not clear at all if the question is goading or tender, which makes Adora certain it’s both. 

She bares her teeth in a way she probably learned from Catra herself. “Not even close.” 

—

Knock knock

“Uh, Bow? Glimmer? You in there? We, uh. We lost our keys?” 

There’s another knock on the guest-hive entry, and Bow scrambles for the door, sharing a wide-eyed, nervous glance with Glimmer. They do an eyes-only discussion of you-talk-no-you-talk while he fumbles with the lock - he forgot these even had locks, they’re beehives! Why locks?! - and he’s already talking when he wrenches the door open.

“Ohthankgoodness weweresoworried we promise promise we didn’t know! And then we went to go get you but you were so far up the tree already and you know Glimmer can’t teleport here and the elders wouldn’t let me use my arrows on the tree even though I have those climbing ones that don’t usually explode because they said the tree was active and we couldn’t approach without being influenced and you can believe after that we had a long long conversation about consent and ethics and full disclosure of mind-altering alien substances and whatever else Glimmer put in that memo I was kind of busy being so worried because you were out all day but Melog seemed fine - well I say fine but actually they were acting kind of weird but not bad weird and—“

“Hey, hey Arrow Boy. Slow down. What the fuck are you talking about?” 

Bow takes in a deep breath, then takes in his friends for the first time. As he does, he realizes that Glimmer’s been staring gape-mouthed while he’s been talking, and he realizes why. 

Adora and Catra are - well, a mess would be an understatement. Catra is wearing just her strapless top and tights, both of which are covered in rips and tears and dirt. The rest of her is also covered with dirt, along with hickies everywhere except for the places that sport non-hickey bruises and - is that blood? - smeared across her cheek and jaw and throat. Adora’s even worse off, her now midriff-less shirt looking like something out of Bow’s grunge phase and her pants - if they can be called pants anymore - held both together and up using a combination of her wing pin, two belts, and what appears to be the remnants of both Catra’s and Adora’s jackets. Her exposed skin is covered in thin, raised red lines and what are so clearly bite marks that Bow can’t even pretend not to recognize them. Both their hair looks like something tried to live in it - Catra’s even wilder than normal and Adora’s a tangled, dirty, loose mess - and they’re both streaked in yellow, sparkling dust. Pollen, Bow thinks, already making frantic plans to air out the room.

“Are you…” he starts, then tries to rephrase for, ah. Delicacy. “Are you, uh. How are you...feeling?”

Catra gives a long, full-bodied stretch, one that looks so satisfying that Bow’s spine almost feels refreshed from watching it. She takes a moment to give a wide, theatrical yawn. “Great,” she says, voice throaty and eyes hooded, “maybe a little...tired out.” 

Bow tries to trade a glance with Glimmer, but finds her riveted to the sight before them. Which is...fair, he supposes. Not his thing, but fair. 

““Cool. Coolcoolcool.” He turns back to Catra, who’s already tugging Adora away towards their rooms, and asks her, “So like...nothing...out of the ordinary? No, uh...weird...feelings?”

Catra cocks her head to the side; a leaf falls out of it to the floor. “Nope,” she says, then, “oh, well - Adora apologized for going off alone against the bear monster, so that’s new.” 

“I did not!” Adora turns from where she’s made it to the doorway of their guest room, eyeing Catra appreciatively even though disgruntled huff. “No, you apologized for hovering!” 

“What?!” Catra rounds on her, hands going to her hips while her tail whips with agitation. Her eyes ostentatiously sweep Adora head to toe. 

Adora crosses her arms. “Well, you did agree I wasn’t stupid, and—“

“That is not what I said.” Catra stalks to their room’s door and yanks it open, brushing against Adora way more than necessary on the way. “What I said was—“

The door slams closed behind them.

They leave a silent room in their wake, all quiet save for the muffled sound of voices from behind their door. After a moment of thought, Bow walks back into his and Glimmer’s room. He’s almost done shoving cloth into a pair of bags when Glimmer, barely recovered, appears in the doorway.

“Uh, so. The elders did say that the tree, uh...what was the phrase?”

“Enhances existing sexual urges for the purpose of mediating disputes, extended as a gift to our honored guests in the hopes of providing a gentler resolution strategy, yeah.” Bow replies, digging through his suitcase for water bottles and granola bars. 

“They’re uh,” Glimmer glances back at the closed door on the other side of the common space, from whence comes a series of thumping sounds Bow has no interest in investigating. “They’re not acting that different. Or, uh. Different at all, really. Well, except for the, uh...”  

“Yup, nope, yeah. They are not.” 

Silence, as Glimmer thinks. Bow spends the time jotting a quick note on a spare bit of paper, then finding some tape to paste it to the kitchenette counter. 

Finally, Glimmer says, “So...do we still think—“

“Yes it’s still unethical.”

“Oh.” She says, and when he looks up he finds her glancing coyly at him from under her lashes in a way that makes him warm all over. “So...you don’t think we should…check it out?”

He tosses her a bag, then gestures for her to follow him as he walks through the common room.

“Uh, Bow? What’s in here?” 

“Water, snacks,” He hitches his own bag onto his shoulder, and is already halfway out the door calls back, “and a change of clothes!”

Five

“This is a bad idea. Is this a bad idea? Catra, is this a bad idea?”

“Adora, this is literally your idea.” 

“Well, yeah. Okay. True.”

“We don’t have to, though. There’s a perfectly nice command chair right there, we could fuck in it again. If you’re not a hundred percent here for this, let’s just call it off.”

“Oh, uh…okay. Okay, we can. We can do that.” 

“...”

“...”

“You’re disappointed, aren’t you?”

“...Yeah. Hey! Don’t laugh at me!”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m not making fun of you, princess. But it is kind of funny. What are you thinking about in that big dumb poof of yours?” 

“My brain is not in my hair, Catra. I’m just thinking about...how it’s going to...work.” 

“Oh, so you’re fantasizing.”

“No!...Maybe. I just wanna be...good.”

“Of course you’ll be good, we’re always good, even when we’re crap. Here, just...think of it like pool sex.” 

“Catra, you hated pool sex.”

“Like pool sex but without the water.”

“Fine. Okay fine. Like pool sex.”

“Anyway, what are you worried about? You’re not the one who needs a whole dumbass suit.”

“Catra, without that suit you will die.”

“Pfft. As if you would let me die.” 

“...I mean, I wouldn’t. But let’s...let’s keep the spacesuit on. Okay?”

—

“This is gonna be great. Now are you coming out or not?”

“I knew some quality time with a checklist would be good for you, you giant nerd. And gimme a minute, would you? This is...ah...complicated.” 

“Ugh fine. Just so you know, everything is ready but you.”

“Ship’s all anchored?”

“Yup!” 

“Cheerful Idiot Squad knows not to contact us?”

“Best Friends Squad, Catra, how many times do I have to—“

“And I just checked - my suit is at full oxygen.”

“Mhm, and I brought snacks!”

“You brought…what?”

“Snacks! I have chocolate cake and crackers and cheese and chips and water bottles and wine and—“

“Adora. We can’t carry...snacks.”

“Sure we can! I brought a basket. Oh good, you’re here!”

“Yeah, you can stop shouting. That, uh...that sure is...a picnic basket. A gold one. It’s very...you. Adora, are you going to...hold onto the picnic basket? The whole time we have sex?” 

“Oh, no, of course not.”

“So you know it’s gonna float away, right?” 

“Nope!” 

“Yes.”

“Nope!”

“Yes.”

“It won’t float away, Catra, because magic.”

“What kind of magi— ...Hey Adora, did you turn the Sword of Protection into a picnic basket?”

“...maaaaybe.”

“...Adora, I love you.”

“Sure hope so! Anyway, I also got chocolate covered strawberries, which I thought might be overkill with the cake, but really with chocolate it’s not like—“

“Adora.”

“What?”

“Spacesuit.”

“Yeah, you look good in it. I forgot just how cute those ears—“

“No, Adora. I mean I can’t eat, I’m in a spacesuit.”

“...Oh. Whoops! More for me?”

“Ugh. Well, I’m ready when you are, I guess.” 

“Great! Just gotta check one more thing.”

“You’ve just spent an hour with that checklist, what do you— Adora, what are you— oh! Ah…”

“Hmm, yeah. So I see you remembered to put the vibrator in the suit.”

“I...could have told you...oh…oh shit...that…”

“Mm, yeah. But this is much more fun, don’t you think?”

“I think…I think...oh, yeah, just a little high— Hey! Hey, where are you going?” 

“Space, right? Let’s go, then!” 

“You suck.”

“Hold on, just...one more kiss before the helmet goes on…”

“I’m not sure you deserve i— mph.” 

—

“FOR THE HONOR OF GRAYSKULL!”

“Great, now take off your clothes.” 

“What?!”

“...take your clothes off?” 

“I...I didn’t think...”

“Adora, how did you expect to do this? With your whole She-Ra getup on?”

“I thought…”

“Oh, you’re blushing, I love when you’re blushing. Please tell me what you thought we were gonna do.”

“You’re going to laugh.” 

“Am not!...Well, no, I probably will, but I will be really annoying if you don’t tell me, so you should probably just give in.”

“I thought...you were gonna...ripopenmypantswithyourclaws.”

“...I’m gonna need you to repeat that, princess.”

“I thought. You were going. To rip. My pants. Withyourclaws.”

“Ha! Okay, that’s awesome. We need to do that. How have we not done that?” 

“Well, we did—“

“I mean with She-Ra. Oh, but that’ll be fun. Ha! But no, because one: spacesuits and claws do not mix—“

“Oooh, right.”

“—and two, Adora. You are the only being we have met - other than certain sentient eldritch voids that shall remain nameless - that can survive being naked. In space. So.”

“...oooh.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m gonna take off my clothes.” 

—

“You know, it’s amazing how much space there is in space.”

“Adora, just pick, like. A meteor or astroturf or whatever the fuck you call those large rocks in space. Should we have used the scanner for this? Because we could always go ba— huh. That’s. That’s a glowing disc of rainbow magic.”

“Will that work?”

“...Yes, Adora. That will work.” 

—

“Catra, you did remember to bring—“

“Yes! Yes, I have the...thing. Y’think I should have put this on in the ship? I mean, it does go over the suit...at least, it better...”

“The thing? Catra, it has a name.”

“It’s a stupid name.”

“You remember that whole thing about how if we can’t talk about it we shouldn’t do—“

“I can talk about sex, Adora! I’m just not calling it that, because it’s stupid.”

“You’re making the Space Strap feel bad.”

“It’s a dildo it doesn’t have feelings.”

—

“...I should have put this on in the ship.”

—

“Oh, oh, oh, that feels— Catra, Catra that feels so good, right...right—”

“You like that, don’t you? And if I…?”

“Oh!”

“Yeah. Yeah, just like that. Just…”

“Catra...Catra, please. Please, I want it.”

“O...okay. Okay. You feel that?”

“Oh...oh, fuck, yeah. Yeah, just— In, I want it—” 

“And you’re...sure...this won’t hurt you. Right?”

“Now. Now you want to...worry about this?”

“It’s just, Entrapta had this whole thing about how the vacuum of space would interact with—“

“You asked Entrapta about this?”

“I— No!”

“You did! Oh, Catra, that’s so sweet— “

“Don’t call me sweet!”

“—because I know it’s really hard for you to share about vulnerable topics—“

“You should not be allowed to talk to Bow.”

“—or to let other people know about the personal details of your life—“

“Or Perfuma.”

“—and I’m just so proud of you— ah!”

“Aaand that’s enough talking from you. You get to just— oh, oh.”

“Forgot about the vibrator, huh?”

“Fuck you.” 

“Please.”

—

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’tstopdon’tstopdon’tstop—”

“Hold on to me, Adora.”

“Yes. Yes, Catra, oh, yes, I’ve got you.”

“Don’t let me go.”

“Never.”

“Adora, you’re my gravity.”

“Oh, oh yes, Catra, you’re my gravity too. Oh... ”

“No, Adora, you are the only force of gravity right now and if your hips keep doing that and you do not hold onto me I am going to float the fuck away.”

“Wha— oh! Oh, shit. CATRA—!” 

—

…

…

“...Okay, so. Not exactly like pool sex.”

“Not at all like pool sex.”

…

…

… 

“Hey Adora?”

“Yeah?”

“You are my gravity, you know.”

“I love you too, Catra.”

…

…

… 

“Hey Catra?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you pass me a strawberry?”

“...Yeah, Adora. I can pass you a strawberry.” 

One, again

Home is a lot of places. Home is Etheria and the Whispering Woods, is their room onboard Darla and the small house they keep in Erelandia, the one they only visit when they need a break because everyone there is polite enough to pretend they don’t know anything about the ladies that live on Lamella Lane. Home is even, in its way, the Fright Zone, or what once was the Fright Zone, though it doesn’t look anything like it used to and they don’t call it that anymore. Mostly, though, home is Bright Moon castle. It hasn’t always been, and it may not always be, but it is right now, and so that’s where today finds them. Adora likes the rooms they keep - rooms, multiple, a small apartment filled with knick knacks from trips beyond the stars and years of gifts from friends and their own tacked-up doodles, with a sunny little deck and a small garden that’s always in bloom and what might be the world’s biggest bed. Adora likes all of it - no, Adora loves all of it - but what she loves most is Catra in it, every way she ever is but right now laid out naked on her back while Adora stretches out beside her, propped up on one elbow and two fingers deep in Catra’s cunt. 

There’s something to the give of her there that sends Adora reeling like she’s the one being touched. It’s the softness of her, the way Catra - pointy, sharp-edged Catra, with her claws and her fangs and even her spiky hair and certainly her barbed words - the way that Catra lets Adora in, to her heart and her bed and the places of her body that are bare and vulnerable and—

“Please…” Catra pants, the word pleading and breathless and as annoyed as she can make it right now, which isn’t very at all, “please...stop calling it…squishy.” 

Adora cocks an eyebrow at her, uses the tips of her fingers to press into the skin around Catra’s clit, then slide the whole set of them downward, still pressing. Catra gasps, and Adora says - because she can be an asshole too, okay? - “Feels pretty squishy to me.”

Catra makes a noise that’s half disgust and half a laugh and all pleasure. “That is…” another gasp, as Adora plays her fingers teasingly through Catra’s wetness, “...not a sexy word…”

“Mm,” Adora agrees, though she privately thinks that anything’s a sexy word, if Catra’s involved. Moonstone. Pants. Spaghetti? Adora abandons that thought process entirely in favor of Catra on display before her, though she abandons Catra, too, for a certain value of abandonment. She pulls her fingers away, at least, and Catra lets out first a groan of frustration and then a more wanton one as she opens her eyes to see Adora licking her own fingers clean. 

“Adora,” she whines. 

Adora grins down at her wickedly. “Super sorry,” she says, neither sounding nor feeling sorry at all, “but you know the rules. You stop listing, I stop touching.” 

“You suck.” 

“Mm, no, not right now. We could do that later, though. Anyway: where else?”

Catra groans again, throwing an arm over her eyes and squirming. She doesn’t move to touch herself, though, and after a moment she says, “That...that big tree in Plumeria.”

Adora brings her fingers back to Catra’s cunt, and wants to live in the full-bodied sigh Catra lets out when she even just barely brushes the slickness she finds there. “Already did a tree,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Plus, Perfuma would be way too cool with it.”

She runs her fingers lightly along Catra’s folds, smearing the already soaking mess aimlessly. 

“Adora.”

“List.”

“Uh...the uh.”

“I’m waiting.”

“Skiffs! The, the new, fancy ones…” 

“Hmm,” Adora pretends to think about it, sliding her fingers back to Catra’s clit to watch her squirm, watch her tail thrash and her hands clench in the sheets. “You know, the last time we stole a skiff, you crashed it into a tree.”

“I—” Adora dips her fingers down inside of her, just a little, just enough to make Catra arch and whine. She knows she could touch Catra more than this, and she even loses herself in the fantasy of it, for a moment - imagines pressing her close, chest-to-chest and hips-to-hips and thighs-to-thighs, running hands along Catra’s hair and back and ass and kissing her slow and thorough, licking into her mouth to tongue at the points of her teeth. 

It’s indulgent, in a way, an unexpected, languorous kind of decadence for Adora to hold herself at bay the same way she holds Catra. To watch and to limit herself to just the one hand, though she does let that hand roam, now, dragging it through Catra’s soaking cunt and then trailing that wetness up her torso, circling light, wet fingers around her belly button and her ribs and her breasts. 

Catra makes a bereft little noise at the teasing, lashes fluttering as she gives up on keeping her eyes open entirely. Adora pauses, touching her only with the tips of two damp fingers, poised at the top of Catra’s sternum.

“Sparkles’ room,” Catra grinds out on a groan, and Adora smiles, moving again to trace the dip in her throat. 

“We agreed on adventurous, Catra. Not suicidal.”

“Beach, then.” 

“I’m not sure that counts. I’m pretty sure sex on the beach is, like, a thing people do.”

“Yeah, but,” an urgent, almost stressed purr rumbles under the words as Adora makes it to Catra’s ears, rubbing the downy silk of one and then the other between her fingers, “you wanna do it and I always— ah…” 

“Complain about the water, yeah. And the salt. And the wind. And sand in your fur. And literally anything that isn’t sitting in a chair in the sun and hoping you don’t get any beach on you.” 

“Or that uh…do that again,” Adora indulges her, giving another light twist of the nipple she’s drifted down to before heading lower again. Catra’s still purring and arching and squirming, but she also knows to keep talking, voice hoarse and more than a little breathy as she fights her way through saying, “That, uh, the big tower...on that one planet. The one with all the...the floating cities…”

“The super high one? I don’t know, Catra, that place was pretty touristy. Lots of people.” Adora lets her fingers tease just above the thatch of dark, wiry curls between Catra’s legs.

“Uh...um...Melog could...Melog would hide…” Catra’s words are thready and thin and distracted. She slits her eyes open to throw Adora a pleading look.

It just about works. Adora leans in close until her own bare breasts are pressed against Catra’s side, their faces so close she can feel the warm wash of Catra’s breath when she turns her face to the side. Adora lets her hand shift down, too, cupping the whole of Catra’s cunt and pressing to make her gasp. It takes every bit of control Adora has not to gasp herself at just how fucking wet she is. 

“You just like feeling tall, don’t you?” She murmurs, lips barely brushing Catra’s with the movement. Catra’s eyes flutter open and closed again, head rolling as she tries to remember the context.

She rallies, just a little. She wouldn’t be Catra if she didn’t, and Adora loves her all the more when she starts, “Look who’s ta—” and all at once Adora presses two fingers in, in a smooth, slick slide. Catra keens at both the fullness and the surprise of it, voice going astoundingly high around her wordless sounds even as her hips stutter frantically, mindlessly up, fast and rhythmless for just a moment. Her legs thrash with the movement, trying to twitch involuntarily closed but thwarted on one side by the way her Adora’s ankle hooks quickly now around hers, on the other side by nothing except Adora’s words.

Because: “No, no,” Adora says gently, firmly, “keep them open. All the way, Catra.” She hears her own voice on Catra’s name, low and honeyed like it’s its own endearment - because it is, because the hottest thing she can think to do right now is to remind Catra who she is and remind Adora who she is, too, remind herself just exactly and precisely who is letting herself come apart all over Adora’s hands and bed and life.

Well, that and to twist her fingers a little, where they’re knuckles deep in the heat of Catra’s cunt. That’s pretty hot, too. Adora watches Catra’s legs go tense in a barely cognizant bid to keep them fully spread, just because Adora wants her to, and that might be the hottest thing of all. 

She has to catch her own breath before she can speak, so very taken as she is by Catra open and panting and mindless. She gathers herself to say, in an absolute failure at casual: “Next?” 

“You’re evil,” Catra pants, even as she moves her hips to the pace of Adora’s fingers. “How...you’ve fooled...the alliance...for so long, I’ll never know.”

Adora could point out that she can’t be that evil if she’s completely abandoned her own rules. Which she has, because she couldn’t imagine stopping her fingers inside Catra or the palm of her hand pressing into Catra’s clit on each downstroke, couldn’t imagine resisting the urge to press her mouth to Catra’s throat and cheek and chin. “It helps,” she gasps instead, “...that I’m not…in bed with them.”

“You better...not—“

Adora kisses her, fast and hard and thorough, tonguing at her teeth while Catra, keyed up from so much teasing, participates mostly by mouthing at Adora’s lips and making the universe’s best sounds - throaty, unselfconscious grunts and moans and yelps. They don’t talk, after that, busy with hips moving and fingers thrusting and mouths kissing. Adora runs the hand that isn’t busy between Catra’s legs along her thighs and hips and chest, finally using it to coax one of Catra’s hands from its deathgrip on the sheets and thread their fingers together, keeping their shared grip flat to the bed. 

When Catra’s sounds get even higher and her hips all but spasm, Adora stops kissing her. She pulls back to watch Catra fall apart piece by gorgeous piece: her eyes screwed shut and her lips bitten raw, her freckles standing out on the sweaty flush of her cheeks and her ears crushed against the pillow where her head’s thrown back. Her chest heaves against Adora’s and her tail lashes and her back arches, her hips press up one more time and her cunt clenches around Adora’s fingers and Adora watches it and feels it and soaks it in, every bit of it. It’s worth the wait. 

—

“So?” Catra asks some time later, a languid, pleasure-wrung puddle on the bed, “What’s your pick?”

“My pick?”

“Locations.” There’s a lascivious curl to her lips, to the lazy lash of her tail, to her sprawl, even if she doesn’t bother to open her eyes. “I’m vetoing the beach. Other than that - whatever you want.”  

“Oh, you can choose.” Adora says, leaning up on her elbow to take a long look at Catra’s body, then back to her face. “I’m just happy as long as I’m with you.”

If they were open, Catra would be rolling her eyes, Adora knows. “That’s not helpful,” she says around a purr. 

“But it’s true,” Adora says, smile growing wider. 

“Adora,” Catra groans. 

“I’m just saying, you can pick anywhere at all you want, and I’ll be perfectly happy to have you there because I love you so much. That’s very helpful! You have so many options now!” 

“It is not! I can’t even argue because that’s very fucking sweet, but it still doesn’t help me—“ she cuts off, a turquoise eye cracking open to take in Adora, who is smiling just as big and earnest as she can. “Oh, you asshole.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do! You’re doing it on purpose!”

“Doing what? All I’m saying is I love yo—“

Catra tries to smush a hand into her face, without really opening her eyes or turning her body, too sated and cozy to bother. The result is an awkward, easily dodged sweep of soft, claw-retracted fingers. Adora catches the searching hand in her own, shows Catra where her face is by holding it to her cheek, turning to press a kiss into the palm. Catra makes an annoyed noise, but still rolls over, curling her body around Adora’s and sliding her hand around the back of Adora’s neck. Adora lets herself be pulled down, head bumping into Catra’s as the purrs shake through her and Catra’s tail slides around her waist. 

At length, Catra - who honestly Adora thought was asleep - slurs out into her neck, “‘Dun c’re.”

Adora smiles into the mass of hair tickling her nose. “What’s that?” She asks. 

“Don’ care, if I’m w’th you,” Catra mutters, only marginally more intelligible. Her breath ghosts over Adora’s pulse with just a hint of unintentional fang. “Wh’re we go. ‘S always a. Whatsit. Thing y’r friend says.” 

Adora holds back a chuckle, amused and perplexed. “My...friend?” 

“Fire friend. Dumb wat’r man. Boat.”

“...Sea Hawk? ” At Catra’s satisfied hum-and-nuzzle, Adora really can’t stop a laugh from bubbling forth. It gains her a displeased harrumph as Catra grabs sleepily at her to get her shoulders to stop bouncing, pulls them back to where they can be less active of a pillow. Adora goes where she’s put, and once Catra’s all content purrs and snuggles again she says, “He’s your friend too, you know.” 

“Sure ‘e is,” Catra’s voice is getting softer and softer, in addition to the sleepy slur. She yawns into Adora’s shoulder, a wide, squeaky thing full of fangs and scrunched-closed eyes. Those fangs scrape gently over the ball of Adora’s shoulder as her mouth closes, and when Adora pets down her back she gives a long, happy shiver that slides up through her whole body and out her mouth as a soft, involuntary trill. “Adv’nture…” the word slides onto Adora’s collarbone, an orgasm-stupid, sleep-delirious mock of Sea Hawk’s cadence even as Catra’s purrs peter out into genuine slumber.

Adora snorts just a little into Catra’s hair, then yawns too, curling herself into Catra's warmth. She thinks, yeah, that, and lets herself fall asleep, and looks forward to waking up.