whump part 2 prompts, #7: “I can’t exactly help you if you won’t let me.” for ahri/evelynn
i want you to know i wrote about three different scenarios for this before i settled on this lmao, this is such a juicy line for these two!!! thank you!! <3
“What makes you think I need your help.”
It’s sharper than Evelynn intends for it to sound, but it achieves its goal immediately; Ahri pauses a foot away from her, hand still outstretched and hanging in the air between them, before she forces it back down to her side. Her eyes are the kind of hurt that Evelynn’s never been able to stand to see, so she turns her back on them and pretends to be busy clearing her vanity table.
Behind her, Ahri waits in silence.
It’s the kind of silence that presses in close against Evelynn’s back, tucks its chin over her shoulder, mouth against her ear. She can feel it breathing. It turns every hair up at the base of her neck with how hard she’s trying to ignore it.
Finally, quietly, Ahri speaks again.
“I know you don’t need it, Eve,” she says, still unmoving. Evelynn fiddles with a perfume bottle with focused interest. “That wasn’t why I offered it.”
“Then I don’t understand why you did.”
Evelynn turns in time to see Ahri’s expression change – see the anger distinguish itself from the hurt – and sets her jaw.
“Don’t you?”
There’s a look on Ahri’s face that Evelynn supposes she should recognise, something defiant and daring, but when she attempts to divine the intention beneath it, her stomach twists itself into knots. She’s spent too many years beneath a camera lens that it’s easy to scoff and pull on her poker face, dismiss Ahri with a flick of one hand, and step past her.
But Ahri does not let her get far.
Before Eve can process more than the hands that catch her by her upper arms, she’s being shoved backwards. Her body connects with the vanity in a rattle of clinking glass, all those perfume bottles clattering into each other, and Ahri crowds in close to her front, pinning her in place. Evelynn thinks she will kiss her, and prepares for it, but Ahri simply stares. Her hands have left Evelynn’s arms but have fixed themselves to her hips, like she means to hold her there, like Evelynn could not turn her body to liquid smoke and slip away as easily as the breath that leaves her lungs.
(She doesn’t.)
“Don’t you,” Ahri presses, “really?”
Evelynn wets her lips.
“Because I’ve been working very hard to make you see that I’m your friend.”
Humming, Evelynn calculates how little she would have to move for their noses to be touching. Takes note of Ahri’s grip around her hips. The bubblegum sweet of her lipgloss, close enough to taste. Maybe she’s just out of touch, maybe this is how friends react when you turn away their help, either way she is not asking for clarification.
“I wasn’t offering because I don’t think you can take care of it on your own,” Ahri continues, pressing closer into the space between them. “I offered because I could. Because I see how I can make your life the tiniest, slightest bit easier, and gods above, Eve, we both know you could use that much at least.”
There’s barely a gap between their bodies, now, barely space for Evelynn to drag her attention away from the way that Ahri has nestled herself so snugly between her legs, from the perfect honey of her eyes, from the fact that she still has not kissed her.
“And so the next time I offer to help,” Ahri says, “whether it’s to fix your hair, or pick up your laundry, or”— pressing a hand against Evelynn’s cheek —“to help you feed that insatiable appetite that’s threatening to destroy your career, what do you say?”
Evelynn does not realise how dry her mouth has turned until she tries to swallow.
Ahri’s hand is warm against her cheek. Inside her chest, her phantom heart beats faster than she’s ever allowed it.
“Yes.”
It’s conceding. It’s giving in. It’s giving herself over in a way that Evelynn would never— baring her throat, feeling hot breath against it just before the bite. It’s agony. It’s delirium. It’s perfection.
Ahri studies her expression knowingly and draws her thumb along her cheek, soothing, tender, far too soft.
“Thank you,” she says, then eases up.
Evelynn is still leaning against the wrecked vanity table when the door closes behind her.
Dazed, trembling, breathing hard.
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