Archive of Our Own ^beta

She's like fire, and maybe that makes him the moth, but he's alright with it. Everything valuable comes with risk and danger, otherwise it wouldn't be worth obtaining at all. He's learned, over the years, how to play with fire and not get burnt... and if he gets just a touch too close and feels the heat, it just makes the game all the more fun.

She's like fire. Enters the room and takes it over, licks everything around her with deadly touch, sensual, beautiful, yet untouchable, taking breaths away in the most literal way. He underestimated her once, and it was the best mistake he's ever done.

But these days, when she enters his bedroom, her flame quiets. It never goes out, and he hopes it never will, even when low keeping him warm and the world a little brighter, but it's good to see it shine softer, lighting rather than consuming the world.

There was a time when he imagined a scene like that. The two of them, alone, in this very room. She'd be in his silk robe, and he'd be naked, sprawled out on the sheets. She'd be turned away from him, illuminated by candlelight - he didn't realize she's brighter than them all yet. He thought she'd let the silk slide down her shoulders, fall down to pool at her feet as she strolled towards him seductively. Her lips would taste like cherries, and he'd cherish her, and worship her, and she would be his.

In a way, she is, but maybe it would be more accurate to say that he is hers.

She's fire, and fire can't be controlled.

Now, they're here, and it's so much like it, yet so different. He's naked too, and sprawled out on the sheets, but not because he got to taste her but because she got to destroy him, and it was the best feeling in the world. She's wearing his robe, not planning to take it off, not looking particularly sexy, just... soft and comfortable, wrapped up in the fabric, with her legs folded up under herself and flipping through pages of a book older than either of them, some time they probably shouldn't be leaving oily fingerprints on, if they cared enough. That was a part of what truly connected them. They believed true art didn't belong in a glass case, locked away to never be used, just admired from afar, they believed art was meant to be enjoyed in the way it was intended from the beginning.

She's like art herself.

Lock her up in comfortable chambers and life of luxury and she'd wither away and lose her spark. But allow her to be who she truly was, and she turned into inferno that burned everything in both her own and his path, gave more than he wanted to take in the first place.

He wanted her once, or thought he wanted her, but now he had her and knew what it truly meant to have her. To simply accept for the time being, she chose to let him have her, and to bask in the feeling while it lasted.

He wanted her until he realized she's not a commodity.

Layla El-Faouly cannot be possessed.

And yet of everything in his collection, she is the most precious.