Hey, Adora [Complete]

Disclaimer: So that this story fits inside of Patreon’s Community Guidelines, it’s been revised so that it occurs in an AU where all the characters are legal adults. This includes the characters not involved in sexual events. Everybody is an adult, without a single exception. Sorry about the inconvenience.

“Hey, Adora,” she had said with that voice of hers that sometimes felt like claws slowly traveling up my spine, softly and teasingly, but able to draw blood with a careless flick.

“Hey, Adora,” she had said with that lopsided smirk of hers as she walked forward with grace and confidence uniquely hers. With the ease of somebody who didn’t care who was looking, yet still put on a performance.

“Hey, Adora,” she had said, wearing that maroon tuxedo, her bowtie dangling undone from her open collar.

“Hey, Adora,” I imagined she would whisper in my ear as we danced, as she led me through something that was very much her while I remained utterly lost. As she looked at me, stared at me, with those hungry, mismatched eyes of hers.

“Hey, Adora,” I always thought she would breathe against the side of my neck, waking me by lying on top of me, by holding me down on my bed, the bed she had claimed a spot on as soon as I had gotten my own chambers.

“Hey, Adora,” I try to shamefully whisper by myself, hidden beneath the luxuriously soft covers of this monstrous bed Glimmer saddled me with on my first night under Bright Moon’s hospitality.

It… It doesn’t work. It’s not the same. It doesn’t make me feel an ounce of the thrill Catra does whenever she appears out of nowhere, ghosting in and out of my life.

And I should hate her. I should despise her after all the times she’s… She’s been Catra. Selfish, arrogant, careless, and much too free with how she hurts others.

I should hate her.

My best friend. My sister in all but name.

I am angry at her. At every little thing she’s done to me and those I want to protect. I am furious.

But I…

“Hey, Adora,” I mouth the shameful words yet again, thinking about her eyes, her skin, her warmth, her touch.

And my hand is under my pajama top, stretching the white fabric, grasping my breast, making me think about all the ways one of our many spars could’ve turned out if I had just been a bit braver, a bit more impulsive, a bit less… me.

I remember one time… One among many, really, but this one stuck with me. She had just performed one of her carelessly showy leaps, twisting in mid-air, about to land right behind me to tap me on my shoulder like she had the week before, but I was expecting it and dropped down to sweep her legs right as she alighted with my own smirk firmly in place. Except she was more agile than me, and so she tried to react mid-jump.

It ended up with our legs tangled together, both of us tumbling to the floor of the training room, and then she twisted, and was on top of me, her dark mane flaring out around her, blue and amber eyes staring me down, holding me even as her hands were by the sides of my head and our hips touched.

I was sweating after our long training session. Flushed and out of breath. My hands twitched after having held my staff too tightly for too long.

That’s what I told myself.

And she… She looked so…

“Hey, Adora,” she didn’t say back then. Because Kyle had walked in right as I felt the air in my lungs would burst into flames.

Sometimes, I hate Kyle.

And now my lips soften into a brief smile as I think about my clumsy friend, the one I’m sure Lonnie doesn’t dislike half as much as she claims.

But my breath is still short. My cheeks still heated. And my hand still twitches over my breast as I think about the moment right before the interruption and how it could’ve turned out.

“Hey, Adora,” she would’ve said, her smile turning into something sharp as she noticed I wasn’t fighting back. That I couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

“Ca… Catra?” I would’ve stammered. Because I know myself, and I can see it perfectly: me, lying still like a frightened rabbit below her, my thighs closing around the slender leg between them, my lips on the verge of quivering at the passage of her name.

“We never said what the winner would get, did we?” she would purr like she purred on Princess Prom when she teased me through our dance, yet not in the way I wanted her to.

You always had to push, didn’t you, Catra? You couldn’t just…

Just lean back down and rest your forehead on mine, your eyes shining above me, your hips pressing down on mine. You couldn’t just be… what I always wanted you to be.

With me.

Forever.

I close my eyes tightly and flee from the memory, my fingers grasping at my breast, pinching my nipple to distract myself as my other hand traces furtive circles over the side of my neck.

But that only brings to mind me lying below her, my training shirt slit open by her claws, her own hands pushing my breasts together so she could tease both nipples at once with her tongue.

And I would’ve let her. I would’ve moaned like I do now, and thrust my hips up to rub myself against her, for once doing so while meaning to and not due to yet another shameful training accident.

Training accidents that let me learn her body. That let me memorize how her slender, agile form feels when pressed against mine. That allowed me to compare our curves and how hers feel when they flatten against… against…

Her bust is smaller, her hips narrower.

But that only makes her legs feel longer than they are, and she looks like an artist’s rendition of herself. She looks like every detail has been carefully balanced against everything else.

She looks like harmony in motion.

So I grab one of my plentiful pillows and bite down on it before I moan as loudly as my imagined self is doing as she abandons herself to Catra’s touch and caresses. To her tongue exploring my helpless self. To her eyes devouring me.

I can see it. I can see how each and every time I would open my eyes, it would be to find her staring up at me, learning how she could make me react, how to best play with me.

I can see her lopsided grin mixed with that blush she sometimes had that managed to cross the bridge of her nose.

And I can hear her:

“Hey, Adora,” she would whisper as she slithered down my body to spread my legs open before her claws would tear my drenched underwear apart.

So I let go of the pillow and trace the path she would’ve taken, my belly trembling for a heartbeat as I go past it and to my… my sex.

Then I plunge a single finger inside of me as I think about Catra’s tongue doing precisely the same, and I bite down harder on my pillow, the air beneath my covers almost suffocatingly warm with my arousal and shame.

Then the heel of my palm presses down on my clitoris, and I let go of the pillow with a surprised gasp.

“Catra,” I say.

And I clench my teeth as I continue hurting myself.

***

“Hey, Adora,” she had said with a voice that echoed with static as darkness and cold light crackled across her.

And I had been in too much of a panic to properly stare in horror at what she had done to herself. At what she had wrought with her… her attempt to break the world.

“I would rather destroy the world than see you win!” she told me as we fought, and I tried to gather the resolve to end it, to at last be done with it.

With her.

“I didn’t make you do anything!” I yelled as I finally fought back.

As I threw her around like she had thrown me, like she had slammed me against the remains of a reality crumbling around us.

As I matched her fury with my own.

“You made your choice,” I told her. “Now live with it!”

And I knocked her out.

And then she was unconscious, draped on the cracked floor below me.

Lifeless.

And I had turned away from her, toward wherever I should go to in that nonsensical place that kept turning into something else when I more desperately wanted it not to, but I…

I turned around, just my head, not even my feet, to look at her. At how much she looked like she often did when she slept at the foot of my bed in those rare moments where Catra was still and motionless yet not lying in ambush.

And my anger burned out, leaving me… not empty. I wish it had left me empty.

Because I am lying in my bed under Glimmer’s roof as my best friend mourns her lost mother. The hero who died in my place. Who made the sacrifice that should’ve been mine.

And I’m ashamed to even think that…

That what I am mourning is finally letting Catra go.

***

“Hello, Adora,” she says, her voice sweet and kind. Tender in a way it’s never been.

And my blood runs cold.

Horde Prime is behind me, his… his perennial smirktaunting me into rage, but I can only stare in shock at what he has done to her. At her wild mane cut short and tamed. At her meek movements deprived of all that is Catra, of all her defiance and fierceness.

Then she steps toward him, grasps his hands, and looks adoringly up into his monstrous, mocking eyes, and something that I didn’t want to admit I was still clinging to rages.

***

The magic of She-Ra burns around me, blazing in directions I know I am not in control of.

Toward Catra.

In my arms.

Limp. Lifeless.

Tears stream down my eyes as I look at her, at what Horde Prime did to her. At how she hasn’t so much as moved since he forced her to jump off that dais we dueled in as he puppeteered Catra to hurt me in ways different than all those she’s already hurt me again and again.

Until she regained enough of her self to defy him, and he snuffed her out.

But I am She-Ra. I am her, once again, and if all this magic has a purpose, if all this power has a meaning, and it has to, then… then I…

I close my eyes, pushing the tears out forcefully as I hug Catra’s body to me, begging for something, for a…

For magic.

And it doesn’t roar. It doesn’t pour out of me in violent streams.

It just… swirls around us in light, and warmth, and hope.

Then it’s over, and I open my eyes to see her weakly opening her mismatched ones, looking up at me with a tired smile I haven’t seen in a long, long time.

“Hey, Adora…” she whispers weakly and almost inaudible, her lips turned up into a hint of relief.

And my heart soars.

***

“Hey, Adora,” she says with a rueful smile as she keeps petting her magic panther.

I return the smile and sit beside her, beside my oldest friend, on the steel floor of this spaceship we’re riding on.

“So… made a new friend?” I tell her with a teasing tone that masks all the hurt hope behind the question.

“Stop being you,” she says with an eye roll and a twitch of her ears.

“Don’t be mean. Your magic animal companion is at an impressionable age,” I answer, my grin broadening.

“Melog is not—!”

Melog lifts his head off her lap and looks at her with a head tilt I have seen Catra pull a thousand times before mewling inquisitively.

Catra… blinks down at it.

And then she slumps and leans her back on the cold steel of the wall behind her.

“It’s… It’s sobering, you know?” she says. “Knowing all these emotions and how they feel from the outside, how they are when affecting… another person.”

She looks at the purple panther before scratching it beneath its chin, the feline purring with a close-eyed smile at the gentle contact.

And then she looks at me from the side of her eye. Briefly. Furtively.

“I… I never thought it was your emotions that were wrong, Catra. If you… If you felt hurt, that was… That was all right? And… And I hurt you, even if I didn’t mean to, but you—I am sorry. I don’t even know what I’m saying—”

“You are sorry?” she says, mocking incredulity in her tone.

“I mean, I didn’t try to, you know, destroy the worldor anything like that,” I answer with a teasing elbow against the side of her left arm that may, or not, be hard enough to break training boards.

She glares at me.

So does Melog.

It’s somewhat more mollifying coming from him.

“Sore subject?” I ask in my most sheepish ‘Child Soldier Without Social Skills’ tone.

“Gee, you think?” she doesn’t quite ask.

And…

And I extend my arm over her shoulder and pull her closer to me in a gesture that shouldn’t feel this awkward after the hundreds of times we’ve shared a bed.

“It… It also was. For me. That world you… made? The world in which I never found the sword, I never left? I—”

“Adora, don’t—”

“Shut up. Shut up and listen, for once in your life,” I tell her, not quite angry and not quite desperate.

She turns to fully face me, her mismatched eyes right in front of me, close enough I can feel her breath on my lips.

I stare.

At… At my oldest friend.

My first love.

The girl I let go of.

And the one I came back for.

“You hurt a lot of people. You did terrible things. And the only reason I can forgive you is that I know that the one you hurt more than anybody else was yourself,” I tell her, lying with that last line.

“I never asked you to forgive me,” she murmurs.

And I hug her, a startled Melog jumping out of her lap as he’s suddenly pressed between the two of us.

“You don’t get a choice,” I heatedly whisper in her twitching ear.

And her arms surround me, her claws lightly resting over my spine. Over where she cut me when Horde Prime made her taunt me with a mockery of this very same tenderness.

But she’s here.

Right now.

With me.

Alive.

And so, this time, the tears feel very different.

***

The Heart of Etheria burns through me, turning me into a piece of it, of the weapon that will destroy everything I have fought for, everything I’ve sworn to protect.

And there’s… a fever dream. A beautiful glimpse into a future that will never be. With Catra and me.

Older.

Together.

Happy.

But Horde Prime’s there, and he takes it away like he will take everything else, and I can feel my mind unraveling, my thoughts drifting away, burning in the flames of the magic of an entire world.

My world.

The one that will end with me.

But… But there was a dream. A beautiful dream, and I can feel traces of it. Of Catra. Catra talking to me, pleading with me. Begging me.

“Stay!” she cries, her voice reaching me despite the maelstrom of power drowning everything else.

“Stay…” she whispers, breaking down in a way I should’ve understood many times before, when all this started. When I first left her, even if I didn’t ever mean to.

And…

And something beats in me. Something other than the magic and the power. Something other than a weapon crafted millennia ago with me at its heart.

I do.

And She-Ra… Arrives.

My sword blinks into my hand, turning into a shield for Catra and me, and I can feel my body. Can feel slender arms holding me close. Can feel the shuddering breaths of a girl terrified for me.

And… And I dare hope that not everything was a dream.

“You… love me?” I ask up into mismatched eyes that soften like I always hoped they one day would.

“You are such an idiot…” she tells me with a soft smile that feels more right than any teasing glint.

And I…

My hand lies lifelessly on her back. My body limp in her arms.

And I have never felt more powerful.

“I love you too,” I say, everything forgotten other than toned arms, tender, slitted eyes, and…

And Catra leans down.

And kisses me.

Her lips are softer than I ever hoped. Her touch as subtle as any of her graceful movements, with none of the exuberance.

And I… I am whole.

So She-Ra comes back. Fully. Because I am She-Ra. Because I am the Princess of Power.

Because the Heart of Etheria beats in my chest.

***

The victory party is over.

We’re all exhausted, both from the battle and from how long the celebration ran for, yet it’s a happy exhaustion. A fulfillment.

Victory.

At last. After so many struggles. After so many setbacks and tragedies, little and small, victory.

“So, am I the only one whose mind went to a filthy, filthyplace when Mermista insisted Sea Hawk was just ‘her ride?’” Catra says with an impish smirk.

And I blush up to my ear tips.

“I… may or not have had some thoughts about that,” I admit, sheepishly rubbing the back of my neck and avoiding merry mismatched eyes to focus on one of the stained glass windows in Bright Moon’s corridors.

This one has a winged horse.

Swift Wind must never know.

Catra snorts in her own kind of amusement at my enduring blush, and then we keep walking, falling into a shared silence that feels comfortably familiar.

And then I am in front of my bedroom.

“I…” My blush is back, and I don’t even know how to continue.

“I…” Catra’s own is… is crossing the bridge of her nose.

She’s grabbing her arm above her elbow, looking away from me, the tip of her right ear twitching twice before she meets my eyes.

“It would be weird if we didn’t, wouldn’t it?” I say, my throat refusing to cooperate.

“Wha—weird?” she asks, her eyes suddenly wide and her pupils rounder.

Which seems like a bit of an overreaction, so I think back on what I just said.

And my face explodes. Or, at least, it feels like it does.

“If we didn’t sleep together! It would be weird! We should be in the same bed, but unconscious, and clothed, and, and—we’ve already done this!”

“I certainly haven’t!”

“You have slept with me! A lot! You forced me to!”

“Wha—I have never—”

“Since we were kids!”

“Since we—are you talking about actually sleeping?!”

“Yes!” I shout with utter relief.

And she facepalms.

Loudly.

… That sounded kinda painful.

“Adora… I can’t believe I am about to tell you this, but you need to work on your communication skills,” she says, utterly unfairly and without any kind of self-awareness.

“I’m not going to take that from somebody who thinks biting is a legitimate way of showing mild displeasure.”

“I’m not going to take that from somebody who thinks punching is a greeting.”

She glares at me. I blink at her.

Then at where she keeps rubbing the side of her arm.

“Uh… You never complained?” I tell her.

She half sighs, half snorts, and completely ignores me as she walks around me and throws the gates to my bedroom open.

I stare at her, framed by soft starlight, her skintight clothes turning her profile into a slender dream come to tease me with swaying hips and a cinched waist.

“Well?” she asks. “You coming?”

I blink at her until she looks at me over her shoulder and notices my once again burning cheeks.

“To bed! I asked if you were coming to bed—oh, for… You’re contagious!” she says, throwing her hands up and walking to the pillow-laden monstrosity that came back from the dead after I first murdered it.

“I mean… We’ve kinda swapped saliva?” I say as I finally walk in and close the double doors behind me.

“Such a romantic,” she mutters as she…

Throws herself into my bed.

And I stare.

At her. At Catra. At her lounging, almost liquid grace as she drapes herself over the pillows, barely disturbing them before looking back at me with mismatched eyes that shine in the dark room with amber and sapphire.

“Well? It would be weird if we didn’t, wouldn’t it?” she says, the sarcasm utterly hers even as her cheeks darken.

And I…

I take off my boots. Then my jacket, even if far more slowly than I usually would as my fingers become clumsy under her gaze until I finally drop the red cloth over my chair’s back.

And then I slide into the enormous bed. Right beside her.

And Catra…

She looks at me without saying anything and for long enough that I can feel my heartbeat pounding harder and harder with every second.

And then she turns over, her back brushing my left arm, her head resting on her hands, and I am left completely disoriented.

“Good night,” she mutters.

I blink.

Then I gather all of my courage, and…

And gently caress the side of her arm, right over where she was complaining about my sometimes punched greetings.

“Good night… My love,” I say.

And immediately drop back on my pillow, grab its errant sibling to smoother myself with, and forcefully close my eyes as I try very, very hard not to die due to sheer mortification as Catra remains stiffly silent by my side.

***

“Hey, Adora,” she says.

And my eyes fly open.

It takes me a moment to recognize my bedroom in Bright Moon, still covered in darkness and far too many pillows for anyone sane to relax in.

What I recognize immediately is Catra. Catra and her voice, her low, rumbling tone. Her slow cadence.

Her eyes shining down on me, brighter than they should be with mere starlight to reflect off them.

“Ca… Catra?” I stammer out like I always imagined I would.

Her smile widens enough that I can see a glint of pointed fangs, and then Catra nuzzles against the side of my neck.

And I, as shamefully as I have far too many times on this very bed, moan.

“So… I didn’t expect you to fall asleep so quickly,” she comments almost conversationally as her nose presses against the shallow hollow behind my ear.

“I… I was kind of exhausted. Saving the world, channeling all of its magic. You know. Tiring stuff,” I let my mouth talk without quite knowing what it is that it’s saying.

It’s always worked so well in the past…

“Right. It sounds like it is,” she says.

“It really, really was,” I tell her.

“So I should let you sleep. And rest,” she tells me as she shifts around and over me, her hands by the side of my shoulders, her eyes in front of mine.

“I… think so?” I tell her, my lips trembling.

“Right.”

“Right?”

And she kisses me.

Her lips are softer than when she first did it as I laid dying in her arms and our kiss became something salty and mournful even as jubilation tried to erase all that came before.

Her hand leaves my side and traces lines of soothing fire over and across my temple.

And, finally, after an eternity, Catra leans back, and my eyes have adjusted to our darkness enough for me to see her soft smile and her flushed cheeks.

“You always looked so much better with your hair down. I never understood why you insisted on that weird poofy thing.”

“Why does everyone gang up on my hair?” I ask with what’s definitely not a confused whine.

“Because you’re beautiful, and we want you to know it,” she says, taking my breath away.

And, well, it’s not fair if it’s only me who’s breathless.

So my arms surge up and wrap around her neck before pulling her down to me. Our chests press against one another, and my right leg bends between hers as I take her lips with my own for the very first time as her eyes fly open in surprise, shock, and, I hope, something else.

Then I press the tip of my tongue between them until she lets me in. Until Catra lets me in, and I could shout with joy and triumph in a way I didn’t after purging Horde Prime. Because that was necessary, something that had to be done, but this?

This is right.

My hand cradles her nape, fingers splayed through her soft hair, through short tresses that are so much easier to pet than her old mane, even if I am thoroughly confused as to what I would prefer. If grabbing a handful of shoulder-length hair and pulling would be even better as I forced her to bare her throat for me just so I could kiss her in yet another way.

Her tongue meets mine, and we both moan before they tangle around one another, chasing and being chased from my mouth to hers as her back arches and her breasts rub against mine in a way that sends twin jolts through my nipples.

Then I pull back, my head sinking deeper into the pillows below me, and I just stare at her. At how she immediately tries to chase me only to stop when she feels my fingers taking precarious hold of her short, black hair.

“A… Adora?” she asks, something meek in her tone.

And I remember seeing her tamed by Prime. I remember the… the rage, the grief, the loss.

And so I decide to erase all of it.

“I love you,” I tell her as I press my thigh up into the heat between her legs in a way I know would have made me whimper. “I love you, and I won’t let you go. I will drag you away with me wherever I go, Catra, and you’ll never again be allowed to stay behind.”

“I… I asked you to stay,” she says, her eyes briefly closing after the words as I yet again press upward and the last of her voice turns into something keening that makes fire roar in my ears.

“I begged you to come,” I tell her. And then, after a brief burst of something that I hope won’t end with laughing embarrassment at my expense, I add: “And now I’ll force you to.”

Sapphire and amber flash wider than ever, and I pull Catra down to me, silencing any (hopefully non-mocking) answer with hungry lips and a prodding tongue before I abuse my superior expertise in navigating Bright Moon’s furniture to switch our positions and have Catra below me.

Open.

Defenseless.

I never thought this would be what would make my control snap. I always thought of Catra prowling, jumping down on me, taking me.

I never dared imagine what it would be like for me to take Catra.

Maybe if I had, I would’ve done this sooner.

“What’s—what’s gotten into you?” she asks with a hint of panic when I leave her mouth to trace the side of her neck with my tongue, replicating on her what my fingers often did when I shamefully thought of her.

“Wrong question,” I murmur right into her twitching ear with a tone I’ve never used before, but that makes her shiver. “You should be worried about what’s going to get into you.”

Her breath hitches. And I smirk.

Then I dip down to the diamond window over her cleavage and kiss right on top of it, between her slender breasts, as I cup them with both hands, pressing them up and together until the soft flesh presses on the sides of my jaw.

Then I turn to my left and kiss the gentle curve, peppering the slight mound with brief caresses until I reach the line of stretched fabric hiding more from me.

And I pull.

“Adora?!” she asks with outright panic.

I turn my head over her breasts to look up at her with a grin I can’t contain.

My eyes meet hers.

And I tear her shirt open.

She gasps as I feel it give, as I feel the flesh pressing against my face flow down after I break its container.

And then she gasps louder when I turn to my right and catch a dark nipple between my lips, pressing down on it as hard as I can as my tongue circles and prods the hard flesh.

“Adora!” she yells as her hips buckle up against me, the bed quivering beneath us as her hands fly to my hair, and she…

She pulls me closer.

And, if there was any way for me to stop myself? Any way for me to slow down, talk things out?

There no longer is.

So I palm her right breast and pinch her nipple as I keep suckling her left one. And then my free hand dives between our bodies, forcefully pushing past our bellies.

Reaching her pants.

She mewls in something very close to suffering when I trace the V-shaped hemline of her dark, form-fitting, tight clothes, and my palm resting on her belly lets me know of her quivering. Of her anticipation.

Of something I know entirely too well.

So I push my fingers underneath the fabric, stretching it out like I so often did to my shirts while thinking of her doing to me what I am about to do to her.

It has a certain tang of justice. But maybe that’s just the smell of her skin beaded with sweat and slathered with my saliva.

I will take either.

“You… You don’t have to—” she says.

And I slither my tongue out from between my tightly closed lips before reversing the motion into a long, slow lick upward that ends with me flicking her nipple against my upper lip and her breast almost rippling beneath me.

Then I lean back to stare into her eyes.

“I want to,” I tell her, my voice burning with something I can barely hold back.

“But… But… I should be the one… servicing you. I should be the one making up for—”

I kiss her.

My tongue doesn’t tangle with hers: it pushes her down. Dominates her. Conquers her.

And only when she moans into my mouth as her arms fall limply by her sides do I stop and let her swallow desperate mouthfuls of air.

My pulse is racing. My cheeks burning. My throat tight.

But… But I still lean on that hungry, burning part of me. And I let it speak.

“You will never make up for anything. You will be by my side, you will be happy, and you will let me be happy with knowing that. And I will accept nothing else from you.

“Because everything else is forbidden.”

She looks at me, astonished.

And I bite on the side of her neck.

“Adora! Adora, this is crazy; I am—I am broken. I can’t be—”

“You will be mine,” I tell her. And then I bite her pointed ear.

And, right as her back arches yet again, as her breasts seem to point up at the night sky above this magical palace, I plunge my entire hand down her pants, under her underwear, and my fingers finally meet burning lips as wet as I hoped they would be.

“Ah!” she lets out, mouth open to the far ceiling above us.

And I…

I try not to think about Mara’s disapproving frown as I allow a tiny trickle of She-Ra’s power to flow down my arm, pouring from my heart to my wet fingers as my wrist pulls up, lifting Catra’s hips off the mattress as the band of her pants stretches and I find the freedom to move, to search.

To find.

Two fingers alight on something small and round at the apex of her lips, and Catra gasps yet again as my smirk widens. As I remember all the times I did this to myself on my very bed and how helpless and vulnerable I felt.

I can feel it. I can sense how Catra goes limp as she hangs from her pants, as her feet and head sink into the pillows beneath her, and, right as she relaxes utterly while under my power, I pinch the nipple I was still lightly caressing, increasing the pressure until she hisses and tilts her head to look up at me.

“Adora… You’re going to—”

“To make you come? Yes, I just told you,” I tell her with my old smug smile briefly flashing over my lips.

“… You’re such a dork,” she says.

And that could break the moment. The fantasy.

But she says it while turning aside, fleeing my eyes as her cheeks darken. She says it with a panting whisper.

And, after I briefly pinch her harder?

Her breath hitches, she bites her lip, and something hot that has very little to do with She-Ra and everything with me flows down my belly.

My strength flickers, and I’m forced to let her drop down, to suddenly sink beneath me as my hand inside her clothes follows her.

She groans as I reposition my hand, as I look for her clitoris once again, and suddenly amber and sapphire glare up at me defiantly.

Catra, without saying anything, unsheathes her claws in that way of hers that’s far too flashy. Unpractical. That she once confessed she practiced in front of the mirror for, flicking her fingers this way and that until it looked like she was throwing her claws out like an extendable baton, just because she liked the effect.

She does all that, eyes never wavering from mine, and then she brings both hands to mine.

And cuts her pants and underwear open.

My wrist is free. My fingers fully capable of exploring her body.

And Catra looks shyly away from me as her lips part in a small gasp.

“There. Don’t threaten me with something you can’t do,” she says.

And I, yet again, smile the smuggest thing I can come up with.

“So… does that mean you like me?” I tell her, remembering plenty of childish arguments, some of them in life-threatening situations that shouldn’t have borne witness to our clumsy fumbling with feelings and how to express them.

“No,” she says, as stubborn as ever. “I don’t likeyou. You’re an overbearing, bossy blonde that can’t keep her nose out of my business. You’re always there, even when you aren’t, and I can’t catch a break from the entire world revolving around Adora. Well, guess what? I ampart of the world, so I do revolve around you. But I don’t like you. Can’t make me like you. Because I love you.”

I… blink down at her.

And she looks up at me.

Her face is a mess of swirling emotions, eyes unsteady beneath mine, lips twitching between a frown and a soft smile, and something utterly lost and vulnerable.

But she’s still looking up at me.

And both her hands are grabbing my wrist.

“Then…” I stop at her look. At her silent begging for me not to mess this up. “Then I guess we have a bit of an issue because… Because I love you. And my life has always revolved around you.”

I silently beg her to accept the words, to believe me. To be happy with them.

“You are such a liar,” she says with what should be a bitter smile.

And then slender arms wrap around my neck and gently pull me down toward lidded eyes and the most sincere smile I’ve ever seen from her that wasn’t a grin.

Our lips brush, her pelvis tilts up, and she lets out a single gasp that washes over me.

And then, taking advantage of the literal opening she offered me, I plunge down, and our tongues tangle together yet again as I softly roll her nipple in time with my middle and forefinger tracing exploratory circles around her clitoris.

A purr rumbles in her throat, and it travels across her chest and lips toward me, the vibrations of her enjoyment of my touch rumbling and pulsing against the trickle of magic I maintain as I try to make my fingers as dexterous as those of She-Ra when wielding a sword with supernatural grace Adora could never replicate.

Except I am She-Ra.

And so I can.

Soft light blooms between us, and I…

I can’t stop it.

No, I won’t stop it.

Not when it comes like this: unbidden, warm, and gentle.

My clothes melt into shimmering light as I grow taller, stronger, and my touch over Catra shifts enough that she opens her eyes to watch, mesmerized, as I become my other self, as I turn into what she so often fought, yet ultimately saved.

Because, if it hadn’t been for her love…

I would’ve died.

Etheria’s Heart would’ve beaten a last time, She-Ra out of my grasp as I failed to connect with her in that last moment of need. And I would’ve burned.

But I didn’t.

Because Catra was there, calling to me, holding me together, pushing the pieces back in place. And, at the moment when I thought everything was lost, she gave me a last thing worth living for, worth fighting for.

And She-Ra, ever the warrior, came to defend it.

“You… You still look like you,” she says, gentle fingers with hidden claws tracing my cheekbone in marvel and awe.

“You… made us whole,” I tell her.

And my hair falls around us as I kiss her once more.

Then Catra twists and turns beneath me as my fingers keep teasing her in all the ways I dreamed she would one day tease me. Her eyes go from open with shock to tightly closed in overwhelming sensation, and back again.

My right hand slides lower, my heel pressing down on her clitoris, my middle finger exploring and prodding at her entrance, at the wet opening between her lips that clings to me with every back and forth motion, and, finally, Catra’s eyes open in lidded, unmitigated desire.

I’m still muting her with a prolonged kiss, with her tongue all but limp under my assault as the sides of her fangs brush me in what almost feels like a cool caress. Her hip keeps twitching up against me every time I discover a new way to touch her, and her heart makes her breast almost vibrate against a palm that is now big enough to cover all of it.

Her fingers thread through my longer hair, and then they glide down my neck to trace my collarbones, and only then do I realize that this time She-Ra made me naked.

A brief burst of embarrassment pulses in my chest, but… But Catra is worse than naked. She’s writhing in ways I couldn’t without my spine protesting, her torn shirt hanging open from her shoulders, her sex and the front of her thighs exposed after she cut her own pants. She’s… She feels more naked than I am.

And that takes the shame away and replaces it with warmth, and excitement, and a joy that is far too innocent for what I’m doing to my girlfriend.

Then she cups my breasts, her fingers sinking into my flesh as she explores me, and I have to close my eyes as I suppress the kind of moan that I never let out without feeling the very shame that’s no longer there.

“Hey, Adora…” she murmurs, her lips ghosting across my cheek as she leans up to bite on my earlobe.

So I…

I let go of her breast and hold back a moan of disappointment at the loss as I wrap the now free arm around her waist, pulling her up against me as I sit back on my bed. On my knees, with my legs spread open so that Catra can fit between them.

… One of these pillows just became much too familiar with places I never thought the fiend would find itself in.

“Adora?” she asks, her chin right on top of my cleavage.

I do my very best to ignore the pleased blush that causes as I lean down to kiss her forehead right beneath that lock of dark hair that I keep having the irrepressible urge to tuck in place.

And then…

“Wha—hey!”

Then I lift Catra up and turn her around before sitting her with her back against me, her head resting between my breasts.

And, before she can even think to reorient herself so she can do anything to me I would’ve begged her to do at any other time, I tilt her head to the left and back so I can go back to silencing her with my kiss as I once more cup her breast and sex.

She moans, her thighs spreading over mine, her ankles resting on top of my knees, and both hands atop mine.

So I move once again, and she…

She doesn’t let me.

No, she encourages me.

The next time I tease her opening with my middle finger, she pushes me down, and I take the hint to enter her as she shudders, her back suddenly straightening against me. Her nipple is as hard as ever, but her fingers prod me to pinch it once again, rougher than I thought she would enjoy, and her tongue tries to duel with mine, only going limp when I go harder than before. When I do everything harder than before.

When I play with Catra’s body, kneading her breast and sex, plunging my finger in and out faster and faster until her back goes from ramrod straight to bonelessly draped against me.

I hold her. And she abandons herself to me.

And so it’s no surprise when she finally comes. When her heart beats even harder and faster beneath my palm, her breath escapes a brief separation between our lips, and her thighs close tightly against my wrist.

Yet her hand prods me to continue. Even as her body contorts under my touch and her opening clenches against my finger, she tugs at me to keep moving, to keep…

To keep making love to her.

I lean back to look at her even as my finger slides wetly in and out and my other hand rolls her nipple, faster yet gentler than before she erupted, but Catra is still coming, and her lidded eyes let me know as they lose focus despite her fighting to keep them on me.

“Love… you…” she breathes out.

And then I brush against something inside of her, a patch of skin on the roof of her canal, and she closes her eyes and screams.

So, maybe, she doesn’t hear me when I answer, “I love you too.”

But, given her satisfied smile as she drops limply against my arm, her back all but wrapped around my elbow… I would like to think she did.

***

“Are you… Are you sure you don’t want me to…?” she says, lying on her side but, this time, facing me.

I brush her hair behind her petulantly twitching ear, looking at her with all the love I can gather, and I let She-Ra go.

My form shifts on the bed. I am still taller than Catra, but we’re closer now.

My hand’s still on her face, my palm cradling her cheek.

My eyes on hers.

“Not tonight. I just… I feel good. I feel really good about this being… about you,” I tell her.

She grabs my wrist with both hands and closes her eyes as she nuzzles against my captive palm.

“It’s about you. If it’s about me, it’s about you,” she whispers.

So I take advantage of a gap between the otherwise closed ranks of ambushing pillows to slide my other arm under her waist and pull her to me until her face is nuzzled between my breasts.

“That doesn’t sound healthy,” I tell her.

“It’s something I’m working on…” she says with a sleepy tone right before she kisses the top of my right breast.

I giggle at both the sensation and the sight of her. Of Catra being so… so at peace.

And… And there’s still a lot to process. People to mourn whom I never thought should be mourned, a leaderless army to dismantle, a former enemy to give the shovel talk to, because I swear if he hurts Entrapta—

But Catra, eyes closed, does that thing she does when asleep, with her nose twitching side to side, and…

And I guess Bow would be shocked to discover that I can, in fact, decide to take a break.

***

The hateful rays of the Sun filter through my window and stab me through my eyelids.

It’s far too early, and I should’ve remembered to pull the curtains closed because my body is telling me in no uncertain terms that it’s not ready to face the day ahead, and—

“Hey, Adora…” a voice roughened by sleep murmurs.

I blink my eyes open despite the weight seemingly holding them down, and I see amber and sapphire looking up at me through narrow slits.

And Catra, my Catra, smiles softly before nuzzling back against my bare breasts as she closes her eyes and goes back to sleep.

And I…

I ignore the warning tingles coming from the arm she slept on and reach behind her with the free one to grab a few pillows with which to construct a makeshift tent to protect us from the harsh glare of a star that should learn some tact.

Then, soothing darkness secured, a ceiling of multi-colored, down-stuffed silk above us, I hug Catra tighter against me.

And I, for the first time in years, relax.