Every year it amazed Cacopheny how much fun snow could be. As long as the sun wasn't out to make it blindingly bright-- he had to wear his sunglasses even when the sun wasn't out, just because it was so white-- he loved being out in it. He liked the crunch of the snow underfoot, the whitened boughs of the trees, the chill-- which he discovered he felt much more keenly without all his hair-- and the way his breath fogged up.

As long as there's a nice, warm house, hot coffee, and kitten to cuddle after freezing your ass off, Tiger interjected contentedly into his thoughts.

Well, yes, he did have a nice, warm house, hot coffee, and... well, a daemon to cuddle, to chase away said chill. He wouldn't go so far as to call Akija a kitten. Various shadows had various nicknames for her, though, and Tiger usually called her anything that came to mind whenever he felt like talking about her, with no real pattern or favorites. Today it was apparently "kitten".

They were nestled in front of the fire, now, Akija wrapped in her quilt and his arms and settled mostly in his lap, leaning back against his chest as they soaked up heat from the fireplace, eyes shut and her hair unbraided. It was... was... nice. Nicer, too, that Flash and Tiger hadn't yet given him any ideas to make the moment uncomfortable, though they were both pestering him about such things with more frequent regularity now that Akija no longer looked like a shadow of herself and he was actually feeling up to doing something other than sleep and make sure she was all right, himself.

That she'd finally let go of his left-behind shadow-magic, no longer letting her thoughts be open to him, disappointed him, but of course he said nothing. He didn't want to say or do anything to ruin her happiness, not now that she'd found it again and was living it every day. It was like he'd found his, too, as long as she had hers.

They'd spent the entire afternoon outside, getting their asses frozen off, as Tiger had said, but having quite a bit of fun in the process. He still wasn't, and probably never would be, as fit and energetic about playing in it as Chario and Akija were, but he didn't mind. He could still pack snow, whether for a snow sculpture or a snowball, throw a snowball and attempt-- and usually fail-- to dodge ones thrown at him. That Sentio and Chario had a rather amusing tendency to run to his aid whenever Akija decided to focus on him with her vicious and rather unerring aim with her own snowballs amused him to no end. Right then, they were alone: Chario had gone upstairs for a long, hot soak; Sentio had also retreated upstairs with a book, stating to have worn out his socialness and that he needed to recharge; Kenjista had fled back outside and was now attempting another snow sculpture beside the one of Sentio Akija had begun and he'd attempted to help with. It didn't look much like a dragon, but Kenjista's yellow feather on top for his horn was, he had to admit, a nice touch.

Life was getting back into a sort of routine, now. Cacopheny liked routine. He liked, too, that it wasn't quite the same routine. Much of it was, but the combination of Akija being not quite recovered and their seemingly mutual desires not to be particularly far from each other made their routines much more connected than they had been. He liked that.

He also liked that he could cuddle her, now. That was a definite improvement.

"So it occurs t'me," Akija spoke up after a long and comfortable period of silence, sounding lazily content, "that I owe you somethin'."

Mildly puzzled, but content enough, himself, that he didn't really think about it, he answered absently, "Hmmm? Vat?"

Akija twisted a little in his arms, and he opened his eyes to look back down at her. She considered him a moment before answering, then freed a hand from her quilt to beckon him down to her level with a finger. Smiling a bit at her usual conspiratory gesture-- there was no one around to keep something quiet from, but that didn't matter; it was something she would do, anyway-- he obediently leaned over so she could murmur whatever her little secret was, this time.

"It goes a little like this," she said, and leaned up to put her lips, not to his ear, but to his cheek. They were, he noted, furry. How he'd missed that months before when he'd kissed her, he didn't know.

Wait, wait, wait.

What?

Exactly. What? Akija was not a person for kissing, or anything else that came after kissing. He knew that. He'd learned that the hard way, and he'd accepted it, no matter how uncomfortable or disappointing it might be. So having her kiss him-- chastely on the cheek or not-- didn't make sense. He blinked down at her uncertainly. "Er. You owed me ssat?"

"Something like that," she agreed with a little smirk that was nothing like anything he'd have expected-- almost like she was... he didn't even know. Thinking she'd made some kind of mistake. "Since I really messed up the first time."

The first time. The first time? What first-- oh. When he'd-- oh. Uncertainty slid rapidly into pure shock, and it was Tiger who wound up answering, because he was speechless and the shadow was never speechless. "Wait just a minute here. You 'messed up' the first time? Like, how?" he demanded irritably. "That whole... 'oh, no, I don't like this' thing was a mess up?"

Akija's ears flicked back unhappily and she looked suddenly uncertain, herself. She didn't pull back, though, and even put a hand on his arm, as if making a point of not pulling back. "I can't-- I don't know how else to put it," she stammered, talking dragon-tongue rather than switching, too. "If it wasn't a mess-up, what was it? Not the right way to react, that's for sure."

There was a brief internal scuffle as a couple other shadows-- Cacopheny included-- mentally hauled Tiger back from spitting something rude at her. In the meantime, Tek got out for a moment to ask anxiously, "Right or not-- was it honest?"

Again there was a pause as this time Akija tried and failed a couple times to find something to say. Tiger listened suspiciously from the mental grip of of Almadir, Araski, Genner, and Cacopheny himself, and the rest of them waited with varying levels of patience and impatience. She finally settled on a very quiet, "No," her eyes sliding away from his. "I only thought it was."

Tek cocked his head at her, surprised by the answer, then let go and receded again. Cacopheny blinked at her, thankfully without resistance this time. He went back to her language, too. "You... really mean ssat? You tchang'd your mind about--" He paused, considered. "Arr ov it? Or jzust ssat?" He touched his cheek with a finger, indicating the kiss. A kiss on the cheek was a far cry from a bed.

She took a breath before continuing, and managed to sound a little less awkward when she did. "Coffee, I don't even remember exactly what I said anymore." Cacopheny refrained from saying he remembered exactly; he'd been a bit obsessed with it, before he left, after all. But saying that probably wouldn't help matters, and he didn't want to interrupt. "I just know you went away, and I missed you. Even though I got so sick, all I did was miss you. And I think... that told me a lot more than I'd been telling myself, before that."

Again she paused to gather her thoughts, and he kept his mouth firmly shut, trying to work all that out in his own mind.

It definitely sounds like she changed her mind, though, Almadir muttered thoughtfully.

Claws, I hope so, Flash said fervently.

Mind out of the gutter, Flash, Araski scolded, but remarkably gently, for her.

Changing her mind doesn't mean she's ready for whatever's in your thoughts, Tek agreed.

Dammit.

"What I mean," Akija finally continued, "is I think, if you want to give me a second chance, I'll figure out how to just be me, and not get all stuck on... 'it's not what daemons do' or whatever. Because when I think about just me, I always wind up back at-- at kevazka."

Beloved, in the plural. Again and still. Before she'd dropped the shadow-magic, he'd caught her using that now and then, in unguarded moments, as if it was a reassurance that he was still there, or a reminder of her return back to happiness. It didn't exactly translate in her shadow, it just meant-- him. Them. He still loved hearing it, especially coming out of her mouth rather than her shadow, because that meant she wanted to say it, not just that she was thinking it in the semi-privacy of her own head. That she wasn't afraid to admit that she thought it, and wanted him to know.

Like now. Like this. If she really did mean it, and didn't just want to make him happy.

He lifted a hand to brush back her shaggy hair gently, curling his fingers around her turned-back ear-- it flicked and relaxed up a little-- and trailing them down the side of her neck, not sure exactly how to respond. Everything he could think of to say felt wrong, and the shadows weren't helping at all, as all of their suggestions felt even more wrong. Tiger was the only one who, oddly, had nothing to say.

Perhaps, actually, he had the right idea. After a moment of looking down at her, embarrassed and awkward and trying to hard to be honest with him and wanting another chance-- or maybe just trying to be better for him; he didn't know-- he quietly told everyone to shut up, and leaned down to kiss her. Not too strongly, not the way Rao would kiss him, not even the way he'd tried to kiss her before-- just lightly, warmly, something she could back out of if, again, she found she didn't like it. Not any way he'd really experienced himself, but it felt much more right than anything he had experienced, at least for right then.

Except this time she didn't back out of it or pull away, or even get all stiff and uncomfortable-feeling. Instead, she closed her eyes and relaxed, leaning up to meet him as much as just letting his lips touch hers. The tension in her back and tightly-folded wings was seeping away, and she didn't resist when he cupped his hand to her cheek, tilting her mouth up into his more comfortably.

Neither of them really knew what they were doing-- Cacopheny's experience hadn't really covered this sort of thing, given Rao's penchant for the painful rather than the tender, and Akija, he expected, had no experience except his single attempt before-- but it wasn't exactly difficult. Mouths moving together, tender and gentle, his thumb brushing her cheekbone and wishing he had another hand so he could hold her and hold her face at the same time. The only real difficulty was keeping it from turning into something more like what he was used to. Tek's gentle matra in his head of slow, slow, slow, slow, drowning out Flash's hungry growling, helped. Even so, he didn't want to stop, didn't want to let the moment go, because even if it wasn't like what he was used to, it was still so good. Watching and feeling Akija kissing him back, her eyes shut and trusting, her un-quilted hand tucked up against his neck as if she wanted him closer-- as if she wanted him-- wanted him-- was like-- like he was dreaming, because he'd never thought it would happen, not after the first time.

When she did pull away, he tried for a breath to go with her, leaning down in an attempt to catch her mouth again, then blinked at her as she burst into giggles. "Geez," she said, a little breathlessly, "when's a person supposed to breathe?"

It took him a minute to come up with an answer, to break himself out of the focus he'd had on her and her mouth and her hand and her back against his arm and body up against his. But then he managed a grin-- a little breathless, himself, but quite likely for different reasons. "You do ssat," he answered succinctly, "ssrough your nose. Ssen you do not have to stop, you see."

She snorted more laughter at him. "Give him an inch," she announced to no one, or maybe the variety of shadows listening in, "and he walks all over me."

Tell 'er to get her magic back, and then we'll see who's walking on who. I've got a few things I could say--

This is my moment, thank you very much, he told Flash. Go away.

"Ve are not valking anyvere," he answered her innocently, perfectly aware of the metaphorical meaning and purposefully ignoring it. "You are kissing me, and I rike it."

"Vell ssen, ssat makes it mutual," she answered, mimicking his accent and making him chuckle, wrapping her currently-unwound braid around a finger, pleased that she didn't seem to just be humoring him.

Tiger coughed quietly in the back of his mind, his first comment since they'd subdued him. Since he was pointedly drawing his attention to the fact that Akija was leaning back up in obvious invitation, Cacopheny had no qualms about following the unspoken suggestion from the both of them to continue. He met her halfway, slid his arm more snugly around her, and quite happily did so.