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softersinned-arc · 2 years

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@balldwin said: [ HAIR ]: sender slowly reaches out to catch a loose strand of the receiver’s hair and tuck it gently and securely back behind their ear, letting their touch linger afterwards.

He can feel her eyes on him in the dark.

He always seems aware of her in a way that would, from someone else, make her feel surveilled; from him, it simply suggests that he is merely degrees away from omniscience. A more impressionable mind might have made him a new god, but Astoria is, at the moment, taking too much vicious pleasure in the promise of her damnation to cede control of her soul to anyone else.

Something about him suggests that he may take it all the same. She is not so unhappy with the thought as she would have imagined she would be.

Tonight he stands in the gardens below where she sits and he tips his head back as his guest leaves, eyes finding hers through the black of night. For several long moments they are silent and still, and then in the space of one breath to another he's gone, and she can hear the door close from three floors away. It is out of courtesy for her that Baldwin walks slowly and allows himself to be heard—it gives her time, should she wish it, to cover herself more, or prepare for another person's arrival. Were she still a warmblood she would be cold, perhaps even modest, but he has seen her half-mad and hunched over her prey, dripping blood and gore, and she has little enough shame where he is concerned. Her bare feet press firmly against the railing beneath her, and the night's steady breeze lifts the hem of her nightgown a fraction of an inch before letting it settle against her calves again.

"So," he says by way of greeting, and he walks through the room to the balcony where she sits, "you have recovered from—earlier?"

His delicacy, though unnecessary, is appreciated all the same. Astoria waits until he is standing beside her at the railing, his hands set against the stone several inches from where she's laid her feet, before she looks at him. She leans forward, winds her arms around her legs, tightens her hand around the handkerchief she's holding.

To call it a surprise would have been an understatement. She would have imagined he was dead by now—she saw him last fifty years before, and he was only a year or two younger than her, and human. And he had never had enough sense to hold his tongue when he should have, nor enough cowardice to shy away from the urge towards self-sacrifice in the name of patriotism or, worse still, the right thing. And he had seen her, called out her name in disbelief, crossed the wide street to reach her and take her arm with surprising strength for a man of his age.

It was funny, in its own way: once, she had imagined they would spend their lives together, and today, she had spent years without thinking of him once. Far enough from her that she hadn't realized he was still there, Baldwin had paused in surprise at the intrusion, and when Iain Blackwood's wizened hand gripped her arm, his nostrils had flared with a sudden anger. "Astoria," Iain repeated, and when she looked at him she wore a pleasant but confused expression, and she gently detached his hand from her arm.

If she looked closely she could see it then, that beneath the years and the laughter lines, he was the same man who had once told her that, if they simply waited long enough, he could divorce his wife and take her instead—one of the few advantages of Henry's bouts of evangelism, he'd insisted, and fuck the Pope and God Himself, too, but he would have her for his wife. Astoria had laughed at that and told him not to speak nonsense, and that week, Celia told him she was carrying his child, and there was no more talk of marriage. Now, he stared at her in wonder, disbelief, while Astoria patted his hand warmly.

"I'm terribly sorry." She spoke with a perfect English accent, indistinguishable from the native Londoners she had met while she and Baldwin were in the city. "But I think you have mistaken me for someone else."

He shook his head. "Astoria Grim," he insisted adamantly. "I know you."

To deny any connection would have made him doubt her further. She shook her head and squeezed his hand. "My great-aunt died when my father was a boy. He always said I looked like her." And she laughed sympathetically, though her stomach was churning, and she felt rather as though she might be sick, as the son that Iain had crept away from rushed to catch up to them. "Did you know her?"

It felt wrong, to lie to him, but it seemed to work. Iain took a step back, looking dazed, as his son caught his arm again. The Astoria that he remembered would have been his age. She would have spoken with the melodic lilt of her Swedish grandfather's influence. She would never have turned him away. "I did," he answered, and he offered a vague apology before he covered his son's hand with his own and turned away from them.

She waited until they were out of sight to let herself feel it. Now, there is nothing to feel, though she runs her thumb over the fabric of the handkerchief, folded over her index finger, and she looks up at Baldwin and lets the corner of her mouth quirk upward into a crooked smile. "I have," she confirms, and Baldwin looks pointedly at the handkerchief she's holding.

"What is that?" he asks, though he already knows, and Astoria turns her hand and opens it obediently, holding the cloth in her palm. Quietly, she lets out an embarrassed little laugh, and she stretches his hand out for him to reach. When he plucks the handkerchief from her grasp, she clears her throat, eyes flickering away from him.

"I'm sorry. I should have asked."

Once they were gone, she had closed her eyes, taken in several deep breaths, but the sheer number of people in the crowded street did nothing to soothe her frayed nerves. From where he stood Baldwin could, no doubt, have seen just how she was beginning to lose control, and it doesn't surprise her that he saw what followed: that she had pulled the handkerchief from where she kept it tucked inside her sleeve and lifted it to her nose, and she breathed in the scent there instead, faint though it was.

"Did it help?" Baldwin asks in the present, and Astoria clears her throat again, cheeks coloring a gentle pink. From what she's seen, it's rare for a wearh to blush, but she always seems to manage it when his eyes are on her.

"It did." She speaks quietly, but she speaks the truth: the moment she'd breathed in his scent of woodfire and leather she had felt safe again, and steady on her own feet. The fear was gone, and when she opened her eyes they were no longer swimming—and she felt, as she so often did at his side, like herself again. She looks at her knees, afraid that if she meets his searching gaze he'll be able to uncover the secrets she has yet to even tell herself.

She knows what this is, or she knows enough: five years with him and they are rarely apart. He has been an excellent teacher and guide, and more patient with her than she would ever have imagined he could be. He does not seem to resent her presence, or that she still cannot hunt entirely on her own, and certainly not without supervision if she does not mean to kill. On the rare occasions that she sleeps, she dreams of him. His scent is her anchor to the world, and her heart, damaged and cold as it is, seems to be utterly, entirely his. How inconvenient, and, at once, how wonderful, to know that her ability to fall so absurdly in love had not died with the rest of her. That to be away from him makes her feel as though there is a knife slipped between her ribs is no doubt the result of being caged so long; who could expect her to come out of it sane? But at its core, she knows what it is, just as she knows that whatever she felt decades ago for the man she saw today, it has not prepared her for this.

Inconvenient, to say the least; she cannot talk herself out of it and so she simply ignores it as often as she can, though in moments like these she wonders if he can smell it on her. Baldwin only watches her, silent in a way that she's learned by now means he wants her to continue without having to be asked, and Astoria lets out a petulant little sigh, though she's smiling (albeit guiltily) when she looks at him again. "Had you been looking for that?" she asks, though she knows that's not the information he's waiting to hear.

"Yes. I had expected an error by our staff, though perhaps I should have anticipated a bit of theft."

"That does seem like an oversight on your part," she says, quite sincerely, though she laughs a moment later and shakes her head. "It's the only one I've taken. I doubted you'd miss it. It helps keep me—" Her voice trails off for a moment, and she reaches back for something to do with her hands. Impatiently, she gathers her braided hair and begins combing it out, fingers working through the tangles there.

Even in the dark she sees Baldwin's gaze shift, settling for a moment on a particular red curl hanging from her finger. It is perhaps the second or third time he's seen her hair loose, and he seems to understand the gravity of such a vulnerability with him—but she has no use for modesty or shame with him, and with his attention diverted she pushes forward. "It keeps me from getting overwhelmed. Usually, you're there, and that helps, but when you're not—it's a poor substitute but it's useful all the same. One scent I know well keeps me from going mad when presented with a thousand."

"I see." He drags his gaze from her hair back to her face, and she feels suddenly and terribly (wonderfully) exposed.

"It reminds me that I am not where I have been. And that as long as I'm with you, I am safe." That seems to surprise him, though she can't be sure, as she looks at his hands after only a moment of meeting his eyes. "Even after years, I'm not quite used to it. I trust you—" And here she laughs again and looks back at him. "—God help me, I trust you with my life and my freedom alike. The reminder that it's you looking after me is a welcome one."

Baldwin grins, suddenly, and she feels all the air being knocked out of her lungs at the sight of it. "Quite a change from the certainty I'd let Father Hubbard drink from you," he points out after a moment, and it prompts yet another laugh. Quickly, so quickly she thinks she imagined it, she could swear she sees him close his eyes as if to savor the sound of her laugh.

"Well, you see, I've learned the truth about you."

"Have you, now?"

"Mm." She leans forward as much as she can without losing her balance on the railing. "You like me."

He chuckles, and the rich rumble of his voice is a song. "Maybe, for the moment, you're of more use to me alive." But he's still grinning, and she can recognize his tone as—teasing. How magnificent, that he'll tease her like that, that he knows her well enough to be certain she'll take it as it's meant. How beautiful, that he seems to enjoy making her laugh.

"Oh, I certainly am, but it's still true. You like me. And you won't let anyone harm me, even myself. It's alright," she adds, and she settles back against the wall with a smug little smile. "I like you, too."

"Do you, now?"

"Very much. There is not another soul in this world who's taken care of me like you have."

The confession is unexpected. Baldwin's expression seems to soften, though perhaps it's the low light.

"When I need to remember that I am alive, and still myself, I think of you." She looks out over the gardens again, but she's drawn back to him, the beautiful line of his jaw in the dark. "Cuore mio. You are my sanity and my safety." His eyebrows raise at the Italian, and she laughs low in her throat. "That's what you are, isn't it? If you had turned us away that day, I would be dead, or mad. That I am still myself, that I still exist at all, is because of you." And if I were to be separated from you now, I'm not certain I would know how to remain myself. She swings her legs around and shifts so that her feet are on the stone floor of the balcony, and she looks up at Baldwin and smiles. "Will you take me out? I'd like to hunt."

For a long, long moment, he is silent, watching her. Slowly, as though he was reaching out to soothe a frightened animal, he reaches for her, and he tips her chin up, brushes that same errant curl he'd been watching before behind her ear, as if to grant himself an unimpeded view of her face. His fingers brush against her cheek, and his expression seems almost tender, but he says nothing. After a beat, he drags his finger along her jaw before he lowers his hand.

"Do you want to dress, first?" he asks, and she stands, shaking her head.

"If anyone sees me, they'll assume I'm some restless spirit," she says with a little laugh, and she tries not to think about how gentle his touch was against her skin, or how badly she wanted to lean into it, or that she feels oddly, impossibly cold now that he's released her. (She glides across the floor quickly enough that she has to wait for him at the door. She does not see him lift the handkerchief, still in his hand, to his nose and breathe her in.)

She wakes the next morning after an hour or two of sound sleep, soothed by having drunk her fill mere hours before. When she opens her eyes the first thing she sees is an unfamiliar scrap of fabric on the bed beside her—and when she breathes in his scent on the cloth it is almost as if he is there with her.

#balldwin #i. here's the truth from my red lips. ( answers )#iii. the rest of you (the best of you) belongs to me. ( baldwin x astoria )#(it's 1578 and james vi is just now ruling on his own so they're briefly in scotland for ~political purposes~ that)#(i am too sleepy to figure out)#(i did in fact look up handkerchiefs to make sure they existed then and they super did)#(i figure he has a few for appearances' sake. i do not think vampires blow their noses)#(and i figure it's early enough on that they're probably not as absurdly tactile as usual but also early enough that she thinks she's just)#(in love with him like an insane but otherwise normal person and not yet fully bananas. give it time buddy. she'll be insane soon.)#(anyway i love them so much it makes me dizzy they are everything 2 me they are my whole entire heart)#(and i have MISSED them)

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yawnderu · 3 months

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Ex-husband Simon never truly goes away.

Simon’s stomach twisted into a knot as he heard your muffled sobs, your warm tears seeping through the thin fabric of his shirt, holding onto him for dear life even if he’s the one responsible for your pain.

“I hate you, Simon.” Empty words that still send an unfamiliar ache to his chest, his soul hurting for you.

“I know, baby, I know.” He managed to croak out, his voice hoarse. The sight of the gold wedding band on his finger stabbed at something deep within him, reigniting the flicker of emotions he always tried to push aside for an amicable divorce.

Ten years down the drain, your whole life reduced to nothing but ink and paper. Simon’s duty to the SAS and the 141 took up so much of his time, often only managing to be home for a few months out of the year. Missed holidays and celebrations, broken promises of trying to be more present. As understanding as you tried to be, everyone reaches their breaking point.

“Give me some time, love. I’ll retire. Y’can get anythin’.” Perhaps it is selfish to ask you to wait, yet how is a broken man expected to give up on the only beacon of light he has amidst all the darkness and shadows? His highschool sweetheart, his beloved wife.

“How long?” Your whispered question hit Simon like a blow to the gut, so much trust and fear held in only two simple words. He closed his eyes for a moment, his hands tightening around your waist as you still straddle him, nearly cuddling him up even if all you could do was cry.

“After we scatter Johnny’s ashes. S’ gonna be a quick trip to Scotland, and then I’m all yours.” He paused for a moment, his rough fingers tracing over the band on his ring finger, his touch always gentle in your presence. Despite the ring being a constant reminder of your love and broken promises, it was always safely tucked under the thick material of his gloves. Simon’s way of keeping you with him, of having something that made him cling to his sanity no matter how much bloodshed those same hands spill.

“Half a month.” He’s more explicit this time, his warm hand running up and down the length of your back, not daring to go lower despite how much his entire soul craves you. It’s a tender moment that gives him an inner sanctity, and he’s not looking into ruining it.

His eyes flutter shut as your delicate arms encircle his shoulders, hugging his body closer to yours, the smell of tobacco invading your nose. Despite it all, you’re placing all your trust in Simon one last time.

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