40the taste of your name ~ Adam/Seven
Extra Notes: If I've written Adam OOC, then I'm sorry. I've written his character judged on Adam's wiki page and some other stories. I've read. Oh, and sorry for any spelling mistakes. This was typed on my IPad.
After Eight's death, Marina guards herself against the emotion that almost destroys her. She takes the broken pieces of her heart and melds them together with ice. The seventh of the loric does not plan to love again.
But then, he comes into the picture - the mog who betrayed his own people to support their cause.
Adamus Sutekh ("Or, as. I like to call him, One 2.0," Nine says, indifferent or oblivious to the way that Adam's eyes lower and his hands twitch)
His name tastes strange on her tongue, and she finds herself whispering it to her pillow late at night, Adamus, Adamus, Adamus.
In the morning, she simply calls him Adam. With him, she acts like she normally does with all of the boys these days - distant, cold. She cannot afford to break again.
In turn, Adam treats her like he treats all the girls he has in his life - he trips over his feet and babbles awkwardly every time he sees her looking at him. As opposed to the way everyone else treats her, like she is a carefully made porcelain statue that can break at any given moment, Marina prefers it.
Without realizing it, she begins to fall into a friendship with Adam. During their spare time, they sit together in his room or hers, doing their own thing (Marina is usually reading one of the books left behind by the last owner of the apartment, while Adam watches the internet for news, and - as Marina catches him doing one day - spying on the IM and Email accounts of the mogs), they train together in the abandoned track area that is behind the apartment building (Marina certainly kicks his butt more than he likes to admit), and, sometimes, when the weather is sunny and Marina is in the mood, they sit on the track and talk - well, Adam talks, and she listens, giving her input every now and then.
She likes that the only Marina he knows is the new version, because it means that he doesn't look at her with nostalgia in his eyes. The darker version of herself is the one that he falls for.
It's been a few months since he met her when he realizes that his simple nervousness around girls is completely different from the butterflies that take flight when she talks to him - looks at him, even.
"That's a tough catch you're trying for, Adam," Sam tells him one day when he catches Adam staring at her as she prepares dinner (the apartment that they bought as a HQ isn't half as lavish as Nine's penthouse, but Marina makes sure to try her best to make everyone at home with the food she cooks).
"Huh?" Adam asks, his concentration broken.
Sam smiles, turning his head. "You know what I mean. Marina - she's as tough a catch as Loric girls get."
Sam knows what he's talking about. He is, after all, Six's boyfriemd.
Adam cannot find it in him to deny it (he's grown weary of pretending) so he says, "Tell me about it."
Marina doesn't like the fact that her heart runs a faster course whenever he catches him staring at her. She doesn't like the fact that, somehow, Adam has wriggled through her walls of ice and tickles her heart with her warm fingers.
It's been so long since she's felt that feeling, the feeling of warmth brushing her heart, and she doesn't want to like it, even though she does.
Still, she breathes his name against her pillow, Adamus, Adamus, Adamus, and the taste is beginning to become more familiar.
She tries to avoid him, of course she does, but she always finds herself pacing to his room by instinct or need, maybe both, and seating herself down by his side with no sounds but the creak of his bed, and the opening of her chosen book.
It is a week after she realizes that she likes him when she finds out that their is more than one taste to his name.
It tastes dark, like rich chocolate, it tastes sweet, like cool milk, it tastes sour, like unripened fruit.
It tastes salty, like bitter tears.
She spills it over her pillow like a song, or a sin, or maybe even a prayer. Adamus, Adamus, Adamus.
It's not really the kind of awkward, experimental first love that they shared with One and Eight, respectively, but that doesn't mean it isn't love at all.
They share their first kiss on the balcony of the apartment, below the watchful eyes of the moon and the stars, when Adam finds her standing by the railing, releasing a pigeon that was dying on the floor when she found it. It's at least one in the morning, and Adam only really got up because he was thirsty.
It starts off as just him tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear, and before they know it, their lips are joined and her hands are fisted in his hair.
Marina's kisses are rough and dark, just as the rest of her is, but Adam can taste a touch of warmth in there.
She wraps her legs around his waist and he raises her to sit on the cold, metal railing. His side is slightly awkward (his first kiss was One, and that didn't leave him with the most experience), but hers is too, so it balances it out.
Her teeth sink into his bottom lip, deep enough to break skin, and there's blood and Marina's tongue, and heat in his mouth. Her hands are intwined in his hair, and its such a heated mess.
Sure, he never got the water that he wanted, but that doesn't mean that he didn't get something better.
"Adamus," she sighs against his lips, and for once his name tastes like blood. Hot, metallic blood.
(She sleeps in his bed that night, face buried in Adam's neck as the ice in her heart melts and seeps from her tear ducts.)