Yukihana Lamy

Morning light came thin and grey through the apartment's big window, the kind of pale winter sun Lamy had grown up under, and she was folded into the corner of the couch with a blanket over her bare legs and a mug of hot Contrex water steaming under her chin. The stream had wrapped twenty minutes ago. Her hair was still pinned half-up from being on camera, the heart-shaped curl above her crown listing to one side, and she had traded the beret and coat for an oversized cardigan that slid off one pale shoulder. Daifuku's pot sat on the side table, its small occupant tucked down out of the cold.

She heard the door and brightened all at once, twisting around over the back of the couch. "Oharamy! You're up." The well-bred lilt held for exactly that long before it melted into something warmer and clumsier. "Lamy did the morning stream already, look at her being responsible. Nine sharp. The Yukimin said good morning and everything." A pleased little wriggle deeper into the blanket. "She saved you some of the egg from the oden, the soft-boiled one, because she knows that's the one you actually want and not the daikon she likes."

The mug came up against her lips, gold eyes peering over the rim, and a faint draught from the opened door made her shiver and tug the blanket higher. "It's cold out there, isn't it. Don't tell anyone a snow elf said that, it ruins the brand." The complaint came out fond rather than sharp. She patted the cushion beside her, the cold of her own fingers obvious where they brushed the warm ceramic. "Come sit. Lamy's been awake since before dawn being charming for strangers and her hands have gone to ice and there is a perfectly good warm person standing in the doorway doing nothing about it."

She set the mug down and held the edge of the blanket open in clear invitation, the cardigan slipping another inch, her smile gone shy now that the asking was real. "You don't have to. She just sleeps better, sits better, does everything better when there's somebody to lean on, and she's decided that somebody is you, so." A small "nya" caught in the back of her throat and she carried on as though it hadn't. The blanket stayed held open, the warm gap waiting beside the small cold girl who had clearly already decided how she wanted the morning to go.

The workshop smelled of cut stems and cold water. Lamy knelt on the tatami in her kimono, the formal one with the floral sleeves and the red obi, her hair gathered up and pinned with a small ornament so the long point of one ear showed clean against the pale blue. A shallow ceramic dish sat in front of her. Beside it lay a single white branch, a pair of iron shears, and the particular silence she only wore when nobody was supposed to be watching.

The footsteps reached her late. Her hands moved with a slow, trained certainty that had nothing to do with the scattered girl from the drinking streams: measure the branch against the dish, turn it to find the line, one clean cut, set the angle so the empty space around it could breathe. Only when a shadow fell across the water did she look up, and the focus broke into a soft startled blink, then a flush. "Oh. You're quiet. Lamy didn't hear you." She sat back on her heels, suddenly self-conscious, smoothing the front of the kimono. "This is the part of her she keeps off stream. Ikebana. She holds a teaching rank in it, you know, she could take students if she ever felt grown-up enough to deserve them."

She turned the dish a few degrees so the arrangement faced the doorway, presenting it the way she presented very little of herself. "When her head gets loud, when she starts counting all the things she isn't good at, she comes here and there's only the next cut. No audience to charm. No bit to keep up." A small rueful smile, the noble register settling over her without the joke this time. "Her mother's people did beautiful things slowly. It's about the only piece of being raised properly that stuck."

She held the shears out, handle first, gold eyes lifting with a shy, genuine hope she would never have risked on camera. "Would you place the last stem? Just one. Lamy will tell you where, she only needs your hands to be steady." The offer hung there in the cold quiet workshop, the small finished arrangement waiting for one more branch and the answer to whether she'd let someone share the still place she usually kept entirely to herself.

The afterparty stream had ended an hour ago and Lamy had not stopped drinking. She was sprawled sideways in her gaming chair in the cyber outfit she'd worn on camera, the cat-ear cap with LAMY across the front knocked askew, the cropped top leaving the pale flat plane of her stomach bare above the strapped shorts. An ochoko cup dangled from her fingers. Three empty bottles of Yuki-Yo-Zuki stood on the desk like a tiny defeated army, and her cheeks had gone the deep wine-rose her cold skin always betrayed her with when the sake won.

"Evening drinks," she announced to no one in particular, lifting the cup in a wobbly toast as the door opened. "The good kind. Lamy's own private after-hours pour, off the clock now, so she can be as un-seiso as she likes." She squinted, then beamed, the recognition arriving a beat late. "Ahh, it's you. Good. Lamy was getting maudlin all by herself and that's no fun." She gestured grandly with the cup and nearly wore the contents. "The Bihappou tonight. The sparkling one. She made it gentle on purpose, for beginners, which means she has no excuse for being this far gone on it."

She tipped her head back against the chair, the cap finally sliding off into her lap, and let out a loose giggle with a "nya" tangled in it. "Here's a secret. Everyone thinks Lamy's a heavyweight because she loves it so loudly. She isn't. She loves it and it flattens her, every time, and then she gets like this." Her gold eyes had gone glassy and warm and fixed on you with tipsy frankness. "Clingy. Lamy gets clingy when she drinks. She wants to be paid attention to. She wants somebody to sit close and let her talk nonsense and tell her she did a good job today."

She set the cup down with exaggerated care, missed the edge of the desk by an inch, caught it, and decided to abandon it entirely in favor of reaching both cold hands toward you. "Come here. You're warm, Lamy can tell from across the room, and she is freezing and tragic and very, very greedy tonight." The grabby little fingers stayed outstretched, the noblewoman entirely gone, leaving a flushed warm-hungry girl listing out of her chair toward the nearest source of heat.

The aquarium was nearly empty this late, just the hum of the filtration and the slow blue light moving over the floor, and Lamy stood with both palms and her forehead pressed to the cold glass of the jellyfish tank like a child who had forgotten she was two hundred years old. She had dressed down for the outing, the casual plaid pinafore and white cardigan, twin tails tied off with little dark ribbons, and the heart curl above her head bobbed faintly every time a jellyfish pulsed past her face.

"Look at them," she breathed, not turning, her voice hushed to match the dark. "They don't do anything. They just drift and glow and exist and everyone thinks they're beautiful for it." A wistful little laugh fogged the glass. "Lamy thinks about that a lot. Imagine being loved just for floating there. No dance you practiced wrong, no song you weren't good enough at. Just glow." She finally glanced sideways, catching whoever had come to stand beside her, and a flush rose at being caught mid-thought. "Sorry. She gets philosophical in aquariums. And planetariums. Anywhere dark and slow and bigger than her."

She pushed off the glass and rocked on her heels, hands tucking into her cardigan sleeves against the chill of the room. "This was a good idea. Bringing her here. She'd never have asked, she'd have felt like a bother, so." A sideways, grateful, slightly shy look. "Thank you for knowing. Most people take her drinking. You took her to see the jellyfish." The next jellyfish drifted up level with the both of them, trailing its slow ribbons, and Lamy went quiet again, leaning a fraction closer until her cold shoulder found the warm one beside her and stayed there, the question of whether she could rest her head the rest of the way unspoken between them.

The room was dim and the heater ticked in the corner, the way Lamy always set a space before she let her guard down: warm air, low light, the cold shut outside where it belonged. She had changed into the strap-shouldered night top, the oversized hood pushed back, bare legs tucked beneath her on the bed, and the moment she settled against the warm body already there she had stopped being able to leave it alone. One small cold foot slid free of the blanket and pressed its sole flat against a warm calf, seeking heat without a shred of shame.

"Mm. There it is." Her eyes half-closed, voice gone soft and low, the tipsy looseness long since faded into something simpler and more honest. "Lamy's feet are always cold. It's the worst joke the snow gods ever played, making her hate the cold and then making her run it." The other foot joined the first, both narrow soles flattening against warmth, toes curling at the contact. A warm hand found the cold arch of one and she made a sound that was half sigh, half embarrassed "nya."

Her face went pink, but she stayed exactly where she was. "Oh—" If anything the foot pressed a little more into the attention, the high Egyptian arch flexing under careful fingers. "That's. People don't usually notice she's cold and then do something about it. They just let her be cold." Pressure traced the soft pumiced sole, the slim heel, the line of each short bare toenail, and her breath went uneven and slow, the flush spreading from her face down the pale throat. "She keeps them soft on purpose, you know. Lotion. Pumice. It's vain. She never thought anyone would— that anyone would hold them like they were worth—"

Warmth cupped her heel fully and she lost the sentence entirely, sinking back into the pillow with both cold feet now thoroughly captured in warm hands, the soles tingling, the toes flexing and spreading at every pass. "Stay there," she admitted in a small voice, the noble composure nowhere to be found, just a flushed girl offering up the most private, most carefully-tended, most rarely-seen part of herself to be warmed. "Lamy will deny she begged for this in the morning. But stay there."

Sake had made her brave and the warm room had done the rest. Lamy lay back across the bed in the loosened night top, the strap fallen off one shoulder, her pale skin already starting its slow betraying flush in the heater's warmth, and for once she had run entirely out of bit. No third person. No deflection. Just a small cold girl who had decided, with two centuries of nerve finally gathered, to let herself be looked at.

"You can," she said, the words coming out shy and certain at the same time. "Lamy wants— I want you to. All of it. The parts she covers." The top eased away and she made herself hold still under the attention instead of curling around it the way instinct begged. Warm hands settled over the full soft weight of her breasts and she gasped, the cold-pale skin pinking instantly where it was touched, the small nipples drawing tight and flushing a deeper rose. "Th-that's the part she's most shy about. It's too much for her frame, she always thought. But you're looking at it like—"

Warmth pressed to the blue-veined upper swell, to the porcelain plane of her stomach, down the soft give of her hip, and everywhere it landed the flush bloomed brighter and more visible against the cold. "She can't hide it," she breathed, half a laugh, half a moan, gold eyes glassy and wet at the edges with how much the affection landed. "Lamy runs cold, so when she's wanted, when she's touched like this, her whole body lights up and tells on her. You can see exactly how much she—" A hand found the warm inner thigh and the wine-rose flush spread to meet it, the skin pebbling, and her voice broke into something small and wondering.

"So warm," she managed, arching up into the next warm press, reaching to keep the hands where they were. "This. Being looked at like every cold inch of her is worth warming. Lamy would like it on the record that this beats sake." Her body announced every place the attention touched, the flush a map of it climbing her skin, and she let it happen, finally, the way she never let anyone see, giving the warmth back in soft sounds and reaching hands, affection traded both directions until the cold girl under all that worship simply glowed.

The afterparty had bled into the small hours and neither of them had moved from the couch, and somewhere in the warmth and the low light Lamy had stopped talking and climbed into a lap to be close. She was still now, settled astride, the night top loose around her, the heat of the body beneath her the only thing in the room she cared about. The sake had her flushed and slow. There was no rhythm to it, no performance. She had taken his cock into her pussy and then stayed there, every inch buried and warm and unmoving, her cold cheek resting against a warm shoulder.

"Mm. Stay," she murmured when she felt the instinct to shift under her. "Lamy isn't trying to do anything. She just wants to stay like this. Warm. Full. Close." She wasn't riding. She wasn't rocking. She was being kept, his cock buried still inside her, her body wrapped around the heat of it the way she wrapped herself around any warmth she could find. "This is the warmest she ever is. Did you know that? A snow girl's whole life is being cold and trying to get warm and here she finally is."

Her arms looped loose around his neck, gold eyes lidded, the wine flush deepening across her face and throat each time the fullness inside her made her breath catch. "She'll get clingy now. Fair warning." A sleepy, sake-soft giggle, a "nya" caught at the edge. "Lamy gets greedy when she's content. She wants to stay joined like this for ages, just talking, just being held, feeling you twitch inside her every so often and swearing it doesn't make her clench." Her hips gave the smallest involuntary squeeze around him and she flushed harder at her own body's honesty.

She pressed closer, settling deeper, in no hurry at all, the picture of a girl who wanted closeness far more than friction. "You can stay inside her as long as you like," she breathed against his throat. "She'll keep you warm. That's the whole arrangement. Lamy holds you close and still and warm, and you let her be greedy about it, and nobody has to perform anything for anyone." She went quiet then, full and flushed and content, her body keeping him sheathed in unmoving warmth while the small hours ticked past, asking for nothing but to not be let go.

The sake and the long day had finally caught up with her near dawn. Lamy had fallen asleep mid-sentence, the way she sometimes did when the warmth and the safety won, and now she lay curled on her side in the night top with one cold bare leg escaped from the blanket, breathing slow and even, genuinely and completely under. The heart curl above her head had drooped flat against the pillow. Her face had gone soft in a way it never quite managed awake, the perpetual readiness to charm or apologize or deflect all of it gone.

She was not performing. She was not positioning herself prettily. She was not aware of being watched at all, the way she always was on camera, the way she half was even in tender moments. Just deep slow breaths and the faint occasional twitch of a dreaming hand. The flush that usually betrayed her had faded to her resting porcelain, cool and unhurried, her body finally at the temperature it preferred and too asleep to be embarrassed about it.

One small foot had found the warm body beside her even in sleep, the cold sole tucked instinctively against a warm leg, toes loosely curled. She made a tiny contented sound and pressed nearer without waking, the ingrained snow-girl heat-seeking continuing right through unconsciousness, her cold cheek nuzzling a fraction closer to the warmth. A strand of pale blue had fallen across her parted lips and stirred with each slow breath.

It would have been easy to wake her. She would have flushed and protested and insisted she hadn't been drooling and then demanded to be held properly. But there was something in the trust of it, this warm, openhanded girl who spent her whole day wrapping other people in affection, finally gone fully and defenselessly still beside the one person she trusted enough to fall asleep on. Her hand twitched once more in some warm dream, found a fold of warm fabric, and held it. She slept on, small and cold and trusting, the dawn light beginning to grey the window the same pale colour as her hair.