In honour of Valentines day, and The Indigo Spell week! Be aware, there are spoilers for TIS.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but an intense desire for Adrian Ivaskhov.

It wasn't easy, managing to get away from Amberwood now Zoey was living on campus, but today was one of those rare occasions I'd been able to. As far as Zoey was aware, I was hanging out with Julia and Kristin, a ploy I'd chosen because it was safe to associate myself with humans, and because I knew she had no interest in making friends here. Already, as I'd come to discover in the few short weeks we'd been living together again, she took her Alchemist duties very seriously. The only person she wasn't completely cold towards was me, and although humans were the very thing she was sworn to protect, she assured me she had no time for them unless she was protecting them.

In a way I was proud of her; I could see in her a fight that could save lives, if only she could realise who the real bad guys were. It was useless to hope that she would any time soon though: her tattoo was too strong, her compulsion to obey so fresh. She'd been inked only days before joining me at Amberwood.

I pushed thoughts of Zoey aside as I pulled up outside Adrian's apartment complex, belatedly deciding I should probably park around the corner, just in case. After leaving Latte, back in working condition after the "explosion" that had taken place before everything with Alicia had happened, down a side street, I hurried to Adrian's house, wary of the approaching evening and curfew. I probably couldn't stay until then anyway; Zoey would be expecting me back.

I had a key to his apartment now, so I caught the necklace round my throat that I had attached his key too, pulled it out of my shirt, and opened the door allowing it to closing with a small bang. He was expecting me, but it still felt strange to have a key to his apartment, to be able to come and go as I pleased. And I was pleased, I was ecstatic. I'd finally let my heart want what it wanted. The feeling was glorious.

The living room was empty, but his easel was up and the floor was covered in a white sheet, indicating he was painting. He suddenly appeared at the door to the kitchen, a wide smile alighting his features, paintbrush in hand. His tall body was covered in paint; even his dark shirt and jeans had visible blotches of reds and yellows.

"Sydney," he greeted me. I dropped my bag on the couch and crossed the room to him, hoping the paint had dried, and shivered in delight as the fingers on his free hand slid around my waist and pulled me closer to him, our lips meeting as I stretched up to kiss him hello. I couldn't help but smile into the kiss as we swayed together slightly, more than outrageous happy to see him again, and to be able to kiss him freely. Just when we'd thought things could start becoming easier, something else had sprung up to take the place of the thing we'd be freed of; my fear and misunderstanding. We were still grappling with how to deal with our new circumstances and it had been a difficult way to start a relationship, but we were trying our hardest to manage without one another. Even before we'd become a couple I'd spend most of my time with Adrian because he had become my best friend.

Adrian pulled away, looking down at me with a grin. "Nice to see you too."

I rested my head against his chest and sighed. "I missed you."

"I missed you too, which is why I've been painting nonstop."

"I can see that," I said, looking at the stack of already covered canvases leaning against the wall. "What have you been painting?"

"Mostly you," he shrugged, pulling away and grabbing my hand, leading me back into the living room and to his easel. "Well, actually, all you."

I blushed, still unused to the doting attention he lavished on me. The thing about Adrian was, on the outside, he'd play the role of a party boy with no aspirations, no focus, no interest in anything that could help him achieve something. But if you could see underneath his cover, the very one he'd struggled under for such a long time because of spirit darkness, because no one had properly given him the chance to show them who he was, Adrian was – beautiful. He cared more than anyone I'd ever met, and he dedicated himself to what he believed in, not what he was told to. When I thought about his relationship with his father, I realised how different they were because of that; no doubt Nathan Ivashkov had been forced to become the man he was today in some way; the family were royal, after all, and there was a weight that Adrian must carry because of that ancestry that I couldn't understand yet. But Adrian seemed to take no interest in being called Lord Ivashkov; in fact, just thinking of the title made me smile.

"What's so funny?" he asked, resting the paintbrush on the stand and stepping behind me, resting his chin on my head and hugging my body to his.

"I was just thinking about how technically, I should probably call you Lord Ivashkov," I said, reaching out to touch the lines of the painting before us. It was Hopper, blown up so that he was no longer small but huge and ferocious, baring his teeth.

"Sage, you can call me Lord whenever you like," he replied, and I could hear the suggestiveness in his voice. I shook my head and he laughed freely, lifting his hand to join mine. He ran his finger across the paint, following the path mine had taken.

"You lied, you know. You said all your paintings were of me."

"It's not finished yet," he pointed to the space beneath Hopper, still empty. "You're going to go in there."

"Interesting," I tilted my head, considering what it would look like when it was finished. "Why have you – hey!"

The finger he'd smeared in the paint had suddenly slid down my face, covering me. I pulled away from him in horror. "Adrian!"

"It's only a little paint, Sage," he said with a wicked grin. I narrowed my eyes. "You don't wanna get me back for it?" he wriggled his eyebrows at me and I crossed my arms.

"No," I told him, "that's exactly what you want, and I – ahh!"

I was cut off from speaking again as he swooped towards me and grabbed me, hoisting me up and pressing our bodies together so the paint on his clothes – paint that he'd just covered himself with straight from the tube while I was talking – transferred from him to me. I spluttered and writhed in his grasp while he laughed but placed me securely down on his hardwood floor. I pulled away from him angrily.

"Adrian! I have to go back to Zoey in these clothes! What am I going to tell her? She thinks I'm out with Julia and Kristen!"

He had the decency to look abashed. For about a second.

"You can borrow one of my shirts."

"And how am I going to explain that to her?"

"Say it was a spare you always keep in your car." He stepped forward and slid his arms around me. "I'm sorry, Sage. I was just trying to have a little fun."

I felt bad then, because I knew he was telling the truth, and I was being uptight. He didn't deserve my anger. I sighed. "I'm sorry, Adrian. This is just really… a stress I didn't need."

"I know," he kissed my forehead. "I wish I could visit you in your dreams and take some tension away from you."

"You can't use spirit like that," I told him. "I'm already worried about how much you've been using lately."

"I can take care of myself, Sage," he said. "Let me take care of you."

In the past, if he'd said something like that to me, I probably would have frozen up, or worse, ran. But now I only pressed myself against him, happy to be with him.

We stood there for a while, content just to be with one another again, before I decided a little retaliation was in order. I could see the tube of paint sitting on the ledge of the easel and I tried to move as little as possible, reaching my arm out slowly towards it. I grabbed it before he could turn to look and see what I was doing, and squirted the tube at him, covering him in red paint.

His mouth was wide as he looked at the paint dripping onto his shirt, and then down at me with narrowed eyes.

"Oh, Sage," he said, his voice unexpectedly calm, "now it's on."

He grabbed another tube of paint from the easel and aimed it at me, hitting me with the yellow before I could duck. I yelped and turned to run, darting around the painting and putting space between us. Armed with only my nearly empty tube, I knew there wasn't much hope of getting him back unless I chose the perfect moment.

I wiped the yellow off my cheek, wondering if it had covered my lily. The irony in Adrian being able to remove it from me, physically and mentally, was not lost on me.

A sudden weight hitting my body brought my attention back to the current moment; the current moment being my boyfriend chasing me around his apartment with a tube of paint. It was so normal, so unbelievably normal that I didn't struggle at all as we fell backwards, landing on his sofa, me beneath him. Both our faces were streaked in the colours he'd been using for his art, and he was panting a little as he held his weight above me, looking down at me with a mischievous smile.

"There's gonna be paint all over your sofa," I warned him, even as he dipped his head down to my neck and began kissing me softly. My breath caught in my throat as he began to suck gently in the spot underneath my ear and I moaned, embarrassing myself but barely caring; the feeling of his body against mine was all consuming, and I slid my fingers into his hair, my body, as usual with him, taking over. Our lips soon made their way together and he kissed me gently at first, varying the pressure and driving me close to desperation – just kiss me properly, I thought wildly, my fingers clawing at his back. He grinned against my mouth, completely aware of what he was doing to me, and put me out of the exquisite torture; his tongue slid along my bottom lip and I opened my mouth to him immediately. All I could feel was Adrian and I all I could hear was the thudding of our hearts; his was loud enough that I could hear it as well as feel it against me. I was swimming in an indescribable bliss, one that I could only ever associate with Adrian.

Before long, I was pulling at his shirt and slipping it over his head. I pushed him back so I could run my hands over his stomach and this time he fell back, allowing me to climb on top of him. I leant down and kissed him before pulling my own shirt off. The paint on us was beginning to harden as it dried but we ignored the slight pulling sensations on our skin when we reached out for each other blindly and pressed our bare bodies closer.

"Sydney," Adrian panted as I pulled away from his mouth and began to kiss down his throat. My chest was heaving too, and I pulled away, my hair creating a canopy for us in which only the pair of us existed. "Stay?"

I bit my lip. I knew what he was asking me – to stay the night – but… how could I? Zoey would be waiting up for me, and part of me was afraid of what might happen if I did stay with him. He'd called me out on how I didn't like it that he was better at something that I was, and while that wasn't the case, it was true that I worried about how his previous experiences with the opposite sex vastly outnumbered any experiences I'd ever had. What if I wasn't any good at it? What if I couldn't compare to the girls he'd been with before? Was I even ready to do anything like that?

There were too many thoughts swirling in my head to think straight, so I had to pull away from him and scuttle back until I was off his body and on the couch instead of him. He sat up, looking confused.

"Are you alright, Sage?"

"I'm fine," I said, shaking my head, allowing him to slip his arm around me and pull me against him as he slid over so he was next to me. "I just, uh – I don't know if it's a good idea for me to stay."

His forehead creased. "I didn't mean – Sage I wasn't suggesting that, although if you're interested, I am totally willing." he grinned at me and I smiled weakly. He dropped the smile and a concerned look replaced it. "Sydney, you know I'd never, ever ask you to do anything you're not comfortable with, right? We can take it slow if that's what you want, do things on your terms. I don't care if it takes a really long time; I love you, and I want you to feel completely happy and safe when we do do that. Otherwise, I won't be happy."

I snuggled closer to him and looked up into his eyes. "I know you'd never hurt me. You love me." It was not a question; the certainty of it made my stomach feel as if it was somersaulting.

"I do," he said. He leaned down and we kissed for a moment, before I pulled back and looked down.

"It's not just that. Zoey…"

"We could ask Jill to go speak to her," he said, and then a look crossed his face. "Or, maybe not. But you could call her and tell her you decided to sleep in your friends' room. Girly sleepover."

"Adrian," I raised an eyebrow. "I've never been to a girly sleepover in my life."

"Well Zoey doesn't know that," he shrugged. "And technically, you will be at a kind of sleepover…"

I laughed. "You're dangerous, you know that? You're making it seem almost possible."

"Anything is possible, Sage," he said, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "We have each other. Cheesy, I know," he grinned and stood up. "Call your sister. I'll be in the bedroom."

He left and I sat very still for a moment, before deciding to be brave. I fumbled for my phone in the pocket of my trousers. I called Zoey and, after judging that she was suitably convinced – she said something about doing homework and it being easier if no one else was around anyway – I stood up and grabbed my shirt and slipped it back on. Then, I took a deep breath, and made my way to Adrian's bedroom.