How Could I Fall

Written for brella, February 2026.

Content warning: explicit sexual content.

It seems counter-intuitive, but you can’t eat an enormous meal on a starving stomach. Real starving, not metaphorical, not the ‘really, really hungry’ kind of starving. Deprivation changes the body. You can’t make up for all the lack in one go. You have to ease in slowly, a little bit at a time, gradually increasing.

The mind knows this, but the body wants. Every cell moves mindlessly towards the solution to its problems. If I am hungry, it says, I must eat. If I am cold, I must find warmth. If I am aching, I must find relief.

In the Labyrinth, Icarus lacked. It’s unnecessary to specify what he lacked; if he needed it, he lacked it. Becoming a shade was hardly a change in his state of being. But oh, the moments between. They had been few, granted, but—to have everything, all at once. The sun, the wind, the heat, the sea. To feel, finally, as if he was a real man, as if he existed—as if he felt.

Far beyond the reach of the sun’s intoxicating caress, rain insistently beats down into the Crossroads, drumming on the roof of Melinoë’s tent. Blood thrums in his ears and he can feel—he can feel the unsteady rhythm of his heart beating at the walls of his chest. How often he’s stood outside her tent, uselessly yearning for what lies within. How often he’s lulled himself to sleep with the cold comfort of knowing that even if she loved him back, he had no body with which to act. Years, decades, centuries, aeons of being locked away in the workshop, the Labyrinth, the Crossroads, starving for things that were not in reach. Patience implies waiting for something to arrive; Icarus was not patient. He simply did not believe an existence of consistently having what he needed would come to him.

And of course, it never did. He can have it all, but only for a moment. And his father told him to wait, to be cautious, and Melinoë told him to wait, to be patient, but the body—but the body.

So here he stands: living, but only for a moment. Warm, for a moment. Loved, for a moment. Wanted, for a moment.

“Meli,” he breathes. He savours the rumble of his voice in his throat, the honey-sweet taste of her name in his mouth.

She smiles, mismatched eyes blown wide and hungry. “Come here.”

Every nerve in his body crackles in the lightning strikes of her fingertips. He kisses her, too hard, too eager, too hungry, wondering if he’ll be able to bruise. Struggling to remove her belt, he nicks his finger on the sharp point of a crescent moon. Sharp, fleeting pain, gone as soon as he recognises it, but he whines reflexively at the absence. Mischief glints in Melinoë’s eye.

He touches every inch of her he can, kissing her neck, her collarbone, caressing her arms, her waist, the small of her back. His fingers skim the braided garter on her thigh and his legs go weak. Dropping to his knees, he runs his fingers along the twisted threads, pressing his lips to the soft, warm skin of her thighs. She hums approvingly, burying her good hand in his hair.

There will never again be a moment in which Icarus can touch her, never again a moment that he will have this, have her. There will never be another night on which Melinoë loves him, never another night filled with sensation and blood and life. He is, just for this moment, a body in want of all he’s never had. And so, Icarus reaches for the sun.

It takes little work to hike her skirt over her hips, and he falls into her, licking the length of her cunt before turning his focus to her clit. Distantly, as if from underwater, he hears her soft moans. Her grip tightens, and the sharp tug at his hair pulls a moan from him into her. He points his tongue and runs it purposefully over her clit, each of her gasps driving him on, faster, harder. Rocking her hips into his face, she widens her stance. A numbness grows in his cheeks and he tries to ignore it, tries not to think about whether time is running out already. He thrusts his tongue inside her, heat and wetness coating his face, shivers running up and down his spine.

“I-Icarus,” Melinoë stutters.

He barely pauses long enough to say, “Please, not yet,” even as he brings her closer. He wants it to last but knows it cannot, wants to pace himself but knows there isn’t time.

Melinoë convulses, gripping the table with her ghostly hand as the hand in Icarus’s hair tightens again. He holds the back of her thighs, pressing her to him as she rides out her orgasm on his tongue.

Her hold on him eases, and Icarus leans back on his heels, downcast. Melinoë chuckles, panting. “What’s wrong?”

He looks up at her. He can’t tell her one night isn’t enough. He can’t tell her he wants more than she’s willing to give him.

“Icarus…” She lifts his chin, looking at him with sympathy, with care. As if reading his mind, she murmurs, “I want this. I want you.”

He half-smiles. “You don’t have to do me any favours.”

“I’d say the same goes for you, but I think you just did.”

“It wasn’t–”

She cuts him off with a raised eyebrow. “See?” Extending a hand to him, she helps him to his feet, and starts leading him towards the bed. “Come on, Icarus. The night is young.”

Tomorrow, he might be starving again, but for tonight, he can feast. He needs little encouragement to forget the admonishments of the mind, the reminders that he should not gorge on his starvation-addled stomach. When his body wants, he obeys. Morning will come, but until then, Icarus is alive.