Work Text:
His Sophie can be as sharp as brambles and as tart as lime juice, the heat of her glare shrivelling his tongue in his mouth as he begins to utter a slippery excuse. She unmans him with only a glance and the shift of her dainty body beneath her dresses is enough to banish him to an icy bath for hours on end.
But for all her virtues and her qualities, his Sophie is utterly untutored in the arts of desire. Her time as the silent hatmaker did nothing to educate her in the ways of men; her stint as a ninety year old woman had done even less. Sophie is used to people's eyes sliding straight past her, and anyone's gaze for too long is enough to set her fidgeting and twitching. How he would like to look at her for long, uninterrupted spells, drinking her in, the sight of her soothing a many-headed beast within. Yet if his gaze rests on her for more than a moment, she is up, moving about, cleaning and tutting in that sharp familiar voice of her older self. Howl finds himself frustrated and tormented, leaving the castle for longer stretches, returning to find Sophie's little face taut with misery and tighty-leashed fury. She thinks he's going to see other girls, and once he would have.
Heartless Howl in all his cruelty.
Instead he wanders along familiar streets and limitless fields. He walks until not even magic can erase the weariness in his bones and the ache in his muscles. He treads the earth until he finds himself drawing to a stop, limbs trembling with exhaustion. And to return to the castle, to sink into Sophie's fathomless eyes like a well of sorrow - Howl cannot think of which torment he would rather endure.
It is night and rain is falling, and he stumbles up his own steps. Sophie is sitting at the kitchen table, a neatly packed bag on the floor beside her. She glances up when he enters, her body twitching as if to rise and brush the rain from his shoulders, but she knots her hands tightly together and remains seated.
"So you're going, then," Howl says, fighting for indifference, and Sophie's shoulders flinch as though he's struck her. Calcifer is out and the only light comes from the candles she has lit around the room.
"I'll stay with my sister," she says stiffly. "One of them. I'll be out your way as soon as the rain stops."
What Howl wants to say is don't go, never go, don't leave me. His newly restored heart feels fit to burst straight out of his unworthy chest. What he does say is: "You shouldn't travel at night." Sophie cackles her old lady laugh.
"That's the least of my problems, I think," she says tiredly, the light playing tricks over the sweetness of her patient face. When had she gotten so thin? Her old lady body had been well padded, knobbly with age and round like a grandmother's. In comparison, she's almost skeletal. Rather like Howl himself. "The greatest of them would be your utter inability to even attempt to convince me to stay."
With great effort, he heaves himself into the chair beside her. "I recognise a redundancy when I see one," he clips out, and Sophie's cheeks begin to warm with a familiar flush of anger.
"It doesn't mean you shouldn't try," she bites back. "Selfish, slithering man-child."
"Obstinate, bad tempered old woman!" he flings back, and Sophie's hand twitches as though she longs to slap him across the face. It is a mark of his ire that he welcomes the pain, but she does not strike him.
"You just can't conceive of being in the wrong, can you?" she snaps. "Insufferable, careless, haphazard, slapdash -"
"I'm well aware of my faults," Howl rasps. "Sophie, what is this really about?" He doesn't shout because he doesn't like shouting, as a rule, but his voice dips low and beguiling as the serpent's must have in Eden.
Sophie, however, has no such ban on raising her voice, and she slaps a hand down on the table in frustration, to boot. "You never touch me!" she shrieks, and abruptly rises to her feet, her chair smacking the floor with a loud bang. "To hell with the rain. I'm leaving." Somehow Howl gets between her and the door, forcing her to inch closer to him in her attempt to leave. Every nerve of his body is on fire, the aches of the day long forgotten.
"You're not leaving," he tells her, finding her wrists with his hands, holding her in place. Sophie's eyes skitter away, focussing on a point half a metre left of him, and he transfers both wrists to a single fist, dragging her chin up to meet his eyes with his free hand.
"I'll leave if I want to!" she growls, and he loses every inch of self-denial and whatever else was holding him back. He leans down and kisses her, harsh and demanding, and releases Sophie's wrists in surprise when she kisses him back, violent and hard, her arms winding around him and pulling him close.
"Damn fool," Sophie tells him when they break for air, and Howl kisses her again in punishment, lifting her easily into his arms, seating her abruptly on the table. Her legs wrap around his waist and he nearly faints at the sensation. He hadn't known, from the moment he'd seen her beak of a nose and her ancient eyes, that she was that unknown thing his heart had been seeking so long ago. And all those years of seducing girls to fill that empty ache in the left of his chest - they give no illumination to what he is supposed to do now, beyond fall apart in Sophie's arms.
He nips his way down her throat, fists his hands in the silk of her short hair. He's well aware that his experiences in Wales and the customs of Ingary are worlds apart. That his ability to get between the legs of Ingary girls is unparalleled. That they marry young, and that as much as he'd like to take Sophie here on the table, the likelihood of that happening is about as probable as his sister approving of his career choice.
And yet.
Yet Sophie is in his arms, making the sweetest little noises every time he discovers another delicate little spot, and reason has been abandoned along with the weight of the heartless years. He slips one hand into the simple neckline of Sophie's dress, toying with the lace. "You should tell me to stop," he murmurs.
"Or what?" Sophie asks, stroking his hair back from his face. Howl closes his eyes, leans into the caress. His need for her touch is as involuntary as breathing. Having a heart really does complicate things.
"Or I'll - gods above, Sophie -" She is undoing his buttons one by one, slipping her hands under the sheer fabric and running them over his shoulders, down the length of his spine. "Or I'll be forced to do something indecent."
"Indecent?" she echoes. "How promising." She flings his best shirt to the floor and he narrowly avoids wincing at the careless disposal of his clothes. Of course, she notices. "Clotheshorse," she tells him. "Spendthrift. Vainest of all the vain creatures in the world."
Howl cuts her off with a kiss, and palms the fullness of her breast. Her nipple tightens underneath his touch and she bites his lip when he stops, waiting to gauge her reaction. She presses herself closer and tells him more and he happily obliges. If he died now, he feels certain he would go to the next world without prejudice or rage. This is enough, here and now, with Sophie.
Well, almost enough.
There's one thing he's fantasised about since the moment he saw Sophie's real form, since he knew her for true. If she's going to leave, he'll have this one thing. Howl makes up his mind abruptly and drops to his knees between her legs. Sophie peers down at him, a hint of confusion in her eyes even as she's smiling.
"Are you going to eat my heart?" she asks from where she's perched on the table, eyes dancing. "You're in rather the wrong place, I think." Her body is rigid, yet she doesn't stop him when he lifts her voluminous skirts. Some things never change.
"On the contrary," he retorts, easing his fingers under the softness of her ridiculous Ingary knickers, "I feel I'm in exactly the right place." He brushes against the silk of her thigh, inches his fingers higher to find wetness and heat. Sophie arches her back and makes a noise deep in her throat, both moan and plea for more. With calm precision, he rips the delicate fabric to expose her to him, ignoring her gasp of outrage.
"You'll be putting those right later!" she snaps, and absently he waves a hand over the discarded item. The fabric knits back together as though it had never been torn. "Show off," she grumbles, but anything else she wants to say is lost when he touches his lips to her inner thigh. He smirks against her skin, and swipes his tongue over her slickness. Sophie cries out, wordless and needy, her hands gripping his hair. Anyone else and he'd be outraged at the affront on his beloved locks, but Sophie coming is the sexiest thing he's seen in a long time, and he ignores it.
He lets her get her breath back, resting his head on her thigh as she pets his hair absently. "You're rather good at that," she informs him, and Howl grins up at the sight of her, pink and flushed and utterly his.
"I know," he replies, typically arrogant, and dodges the half-hearted smack she aims at him. "So you're not going to leave, then?"
Sophie considers for a moment. "I think I need further persuasion," she replies. "Come up here." Nimble fingers unlace his trousers, and he rests his hands on her shoulders.
"Sophie," he warns. "There is no going back from this." He examines the curve of her mouth, the stubborn line of her jaw.
"I think we're long past going back," she retorts, and Howl stops trying to be a gentleman. He's never been one before, after all, and he thinks that's what she likes about him.
Even if she pretends not to.
Howl sinks into the sweet, welcoming heat of her and knows he isn't going to last. Lacking a heart had deadened every sensation until he'd been forced to chase the ultimate in sensuality just to feel a glimpse of humanity. Having the wretched thing back causes the opposite effect. He can feel every inch of Sophie, from her hands on his shoulders to the flutter of her body around him. Even virginal, Sophie is forged of steel, and she bites down on his shoulder when the pain hits her. It only makes him love her that bit more.
When he comes, eyes screwed shut but the image of her stamped into his mind regardless, he staggers a little, resting his weight on Sophie's shoulder. "Don't leave," Howl tells her collarbone when he can breathe again, and feels her chuckle against his forehead.
"You beautiful idiot. I never planned on it," she replies, and in surprise Howl lifts his head from her shoulder.
"But -" Freeing himself from her embrace, he relaces his trousers and leans down to lift Sophie's satchel. He has some half-formed idea of shaking it at her in derision, but he never gets around to it.
Her bag is empty. Howl gapes at it for a moment, before turning back to Sophie.
"Why, you conniving little wretch," he says in astonishment, and Sophie's eyes lower wickedly.
"You say the sweetest things," she informs him, pulling him towards the stairs. "I changed your sheets. Let's go mess them up."
It is, he thinks, a rather strange way to say I love you.