#this was supposed to come out for obiyukiweek

[sabraeal]

In Plain Sight, Chapter 7

[Read on AO3]

Obiyukiweek 2023, Day 4: Rejection

Silence falls so thick over the line that even the fuzz from Obi’s side blots out; a total eclipse of sound. It doesn’t click, not the way it does when a call’s been lost-- or worse, severed completely from the other end-- but Shirayuki’s heart pounds so loud in her ears that she can’t trust whether or not she would have heard it if it did. Maybe she’s just been standing here for minutes, holding onto a call long over while paperwork’s churning to make her into someone else’s problem, someone who knows how to deal with a girl who can’t—

“Sorry, Miss.” The word breathlessly fans into static; she’s so happy to hear him that she forgets to flinch. “Connection must have gotten dropped there. Who is this fiancé of yours?”

“You.”

“Ahh...so I did hear that right,” he mutters wearily. “And you’re sure that it’s...? I mean, your neighbors, they think I’m...?”

“Martha-- Mrs Kino, I mean-- she talked to the movers--” Obi groans, a really, terribly distracting noise-- “and she said that they said that when they were hired, it was a man on the phone. And since I don’t have a job lined up, she assumed...?”

Someone had to be paying for it. Not many people would jump to Uncle Sam.

“Right, right.” A sigh fizzles over the phone. “You’ve got a real nosy neighbor there, Miss.”

“I’m sorry.” The mattress at her back is the perfect firmness, but at times like these she wishes it were enough to swallow her whole. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“No, no. It’s not your fault.” At least this time he sounds amused as well as put out. “That’s just how they make ‘em out here in the greatest state in the union. It’s not like we send you out into the world with top class espionage skills so you can trick the grandma next door.”

No, but she doubts Agent Anda would be pleased to know she tripped right out of the starting gate. “I know, but still. I’ve become a real handful, and I’m sure you’d rather be--”

“Trust me, Miss.” She feels rather than hears the drop in his voice, hitting the register that makes every hair stand up on end. A shiver courses down her spine, and it’s strange that it feels so...good. “Handling you is the highlight of my day. I just always thought I’d be taken out to dinner first. You know, before any marriage proposals.”

“Oh.” She probably shouldn’t be so breathless on what’s, ostensibly, a professional phone call. “Right. Did you want--?”

“Is that all your neighbor knows?”

She blinks. “Um...?”

“That there was a man who hired the movers,” he clarifies, the distant sound of clacking keys filling the silence his voice doesn’t. “I helped you into the house on the first day, did she indicate that I must be your husband, or...?”

“Uh, I don’t...think so?” Though Martha Kino seems like the exact sort of woman who might sit on that sort of information, if only to pull it out as a cute story at a baby shower. “I told them I moved in on my own. You’re supposed to be on a business trip.”

It’s luck and the last shred of her common sense that manages to swallow, and a very good kisser too. It’s bad enough that she can’t forget his stint as Hot Airport Boyfriend, but him knowing she can’t? What pride she has shrivels just thinking about it.

“Right. Right, okay.” His voice gains solid footing now, picking up speed as he tells her, “Don’t worry, Miss. Just let me handle it. I know the perfect husband material.”

*

The sun’s still up when Shirayuki jolts awake, her mouth dry and sticky and tasting like something might have crawled in and died. A terrible beat drums right behind her temples; when she levers up to her elbows, it pounds loud enough her head swims.

Ah, right, water. She needs to hydrate. Because she drank her weight in margaritas at lunch. Aspen may have a face that could be committed to stained glass, radiant halo and all, but those cocktails of hers— well, if any of the folk around here held with the idea that demons could come to you in the guise of an angel, two drinks of that stuff would be proof positive. It’s been years since she’s had anything but a single glass of the fruitiest, most mixed drink at the bar, and yet she’d been tempted into not just one of those margaritas, but—

Shirayuki blinks against the throbbing behind her eyes. Two, wasn’t it? One when she first sat down, another when the sweet tea was just a little too sweet for her tastes. Enough to flirt with her limits, but not dip over-- at least, not at the backyard barbecues back home, or lab happy hours. But maybe now that the humidity could take the Feels Like temperature over three digits, her well-known tipping point has inched itself a little closer to the starting line.

It’d be the best explanation for how terrible her mouth tastes. Shirayuki had never been much of a drinker, not even in her grad school days, but there’s been at least a morning or two where she’s woken up after just one drink too many, and well, it has a flavor just like this. But with only a pre-dinner nap, she can’t have earned this one, not when she couldn’t have possibly had anymore, not after—

Oh god, she told all of them that she had a fiancé. Not just any fiancé, of course, oh not, but a tall, tanned, expert kisser, and she…

Here. Aspen’s angel smile bares teeth. Looks like you might need one of these for the road.

Ah, well. That would definitely explain that. At least it’s nothing a good, carb-heavy dinner couldn’t fix, once the room stopped sloshing at the edges.

With a groan, Shirayuki drags herself upright, wincing at the light leaking through the edges of the blind. Can’t have been sleeping for long if it’s still that bright—

Something slips from the folds of her sheets, clattering onto the floor. Ah, her phone. Of course. Because she’d gotten in the door, and Obi’s sixth sense for trouble must have tingled. He’d called in just to check in, and she…

Shirayuki blinks down at her pillow, at the damp patch where she must have drooled, and— and she doesn’t remember ending the call. Only that one moment she was talking, and the next she was waking up, this foul taste in her mouth. Which could only mean that he— no, that she—

She’d just fallen asleep, mid-call. Like she was some— some small child who wandered off to nap. Oh, she can just imagine the way he’ll grin the next time she sees him, all his long limbs folded over her counter, saying something like, at your size I’m not surprised you need a little nap to make it through the day. And he’ll look at her all sly, all casual, like he wants her to circle the whole of the kitchen to step on his toes, to bunch his shirt in her fists and tell him just what someone her size can do. He’ll look at her like an invitation because—

Oh god, because he’s supposed to. That’s how fiancés look when they’re in their lover’s house. Like they belong.

Her head crashes into the cradle of her palms. Less than a week ago, Shirayuki couldn’t even see the appeal of a kiss, and now here she is, thinking about putting her hands on some— some stranger in hopes he might bend down and let her figure out whether her first try was some fluke, or— or something else. Something almost as terrifying as being hustled out of her home in the dead of night and told that if she wanted to live to see thirty, she’d need to be someone else.

It’s…a lot. Too much. And now he’s her fiancé on top of it all, because she’s never bothered to learn that real life doesn’t give extra credit just for choosing to make it harder.

A sigh slips from her as she crouches, just enough to rescue her phone from where it’s skittered under the bedskirt, and— ah, not the best idea. Not when she’s clearly a few hours out from her last sip of something non-alcoholic. But she’s come too far to turn back now. Oma didn’t raise a quitter.

She didn’t raise a lightweight either, but that’s apparently what she’s got; Shirayuki gets to her knees, trying to get her hand around the edge of the case, and ugh, her stomach rolls up toward her throat, bile burning in the back of her throat, and—

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. The case beats a soft tattoo against her fingers, muffled but where the screen’s pressed to the floor, and when she flips the screen up, Sugar Daddy blazes across her notifications. meet here @ 11

Sitting back on her heels— ugh, bleh, that position’s not much better— Shirayuki squints into the glare. She can’t possibly be reading that right. Eleven? Tonight? It’s about the mission, she’s sure, it’s just—

It would look bad, wouldn’t it? A young woman slipping out of her house that close to midnight while her partner’s out of town? Reads much less like a professional business meeting, and more like a, er, well, booty call.

Gears churn as she thumbs through to her messages, trying to make teeth catch. It just— it doesn’t make sense. Leaving so late will only put grist in the rumor mill, reaching its peak when her prodigal  fiancé arrives, seemingly none the wiser. Unless, of course, he’s relying on that— on the neighbors thinking there’s a third wheel to their bicycle, one that can be disastrously revealed at the most dramatically appropriate moment, and he can go straight back to being her handler, and she can be—

Ah, her messages are finally open. And there’s Obi’s, right at the top— the only, besides a few utilities and some spam— and his latest is already bold in the preview. It unfurls when she swipes over it, mostly just her inquiry into her kitchenware, but the last line is still meet here @ 11. Just that. And, well…

“A link?” Her head tilts, but that does nothing to clarify the context. When she clicks, the map app opens, pointing her straight toward a— “Panera?”

Well, he had said he would like to get taken out to dinner first. She just thought Agent Obi might have higher standard. “Are those even open that late?”

Maybe they are for government employees. Or maybe they keep someone on staff there, just for these sorts of clandestine conversations, the kind that can’t happen over phone lines or during regular business hours. Or—

Her eyes flick up, a reflex more than a conscious thought, catching the time at the corner of the screen. 9:23, it reads, and there’s something about it that makes her take a second glance. The light pouring in from her windows, maybe, too bright for evening, even this far into spring. Or possibly the taste in her mouth, too strong to be from only a few hours of sleep. Whatever it is, her gaze lingers this time, squinting at where the number crouch in the corner, and—

“AM?” she squeaks, stumbling to her feet. “I’ve slept all day?”

With a wild sweep of her arm, she opens the blinds, the bright light of day filtering through, and oh, ah— there’s Mrs Kino, tending her garden. She looks up, a smile wrinkling the corners of her eyes, and waves.

“Haah…” Shirayuki sighs, weakly waving back. “I think…I need to get in the shower.”

*

It’s just lunch.

That’s what she tells herself as the spray pelts her back, water blurring her vision as she hastily scrapes a razor up her leg. It’s just a professional, business lunch at a chain restaurant. Not even a true sit-down experience, but…fast casual, the sort of thing that might make a nice date in undergrad, when you don’t have the time or the resources to do much besides look at each other for an hour.

Certainly nothing that she needs to put herself out for, she thinks as she skims lotion up her thighs, spreading the scent of passionflower and hibiscus far past any decent hemline. Not that she’s worried about that— hemlines and what might go past them. No, it’s just…it had been a while since she shaved, and if you shave, then you have to hydrate, and if she’s going to pamper herself, well, her nicest moisturizer is a good start.

Because it’s not a date. It’s not even coffee. Not that she would have coffee, she reminds herself, flicking through her dresses. Caffeine gives her the jitters, and the last thing she needs is to make her hands any more unsteady, or her stomach any more unsettled. There’s no reason to worry about how so many of her nicer clothes fall more on the work-appropriate side of the fashion scale rather than, er…play appropriate. This is all just a…a preliminary meeting to go over the details of this whole situation. An exchange of information before he commits to this whole…fake engagement.

So there’s no need to look cute, she insists, tugging at her most stubborn flyaways in the rearview mirror. After all, then he might think she’s trying to impress him. And if he thinks she wants to impress him, he might assume that she’s attracted to him. That maybe she’s angling to repeat that kiss in the airport, the one that had sent static through every limb of her body, the one she can’t possibly forget—

And that would be ridiculous. Shirayuki doesn’t do attraction, at least not the way other people do. She doesn’t just look at someone and decide they might be nice to touch, or that maybe she wouldn’t mind if they leaned close enough for her to catch a hint of their natural scent, or quiver just at the idea that he might close the space between them, brushing his lips over hers as gently as he had the first time, swallowing her gasp whole as he coaxes her to—

Ah! She claps a hand to her cheek, glass door jingling shut behind her. Not even the air conditioning helps cool her flush. The last thing she needs is Obi to see her like this, flushed and trembling just from the thought of him. Which is good since, with a quick scan of the shop, Shirayuki knows…

He’s not here.

*

There’s an explanation for this, she’s sure. He could be late, for one; Obi doesn’t strike her as the sort of person who feels the need to be fifteen minutes early to be on time. So it makes sense that he could simply be lagging few minutes behind, caught up in a traffic snarl or running a little after schedule because he wanted to catch the last few minutes of a show. He could even be in his car right now, tangled up in the tail end of a story on NPR, just wanting to hear whether or not the girl on antimalarials ever regained her memory, or if that illegally adopted baby from Korea ever actually found his parents.

There, a half-dozen reasons right off the top of her head for him to be elsewhere. And still, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s been, well, stood up.

“Ah, excuse me?”

She blinks. Oh, she’s standing right in front of the door.

“Sorry,” she blurts out, barely thinking. A shuffle scoots her clear of the vestibule. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

“Hah, no, that’s not…” The man beside her huffs out a laugh, shoving a hand through a mop of blond so pale she’s only ever seen it on kids under three. 

“You must be Shirayuki.”

That gets her attention. “Who…?”

There’s nothing about that boyish face that says mobster, but that doesn’t mean much, when she hasn’t seen any outside of The Departed. Still, there’s no snake tattoo crawling up his wrist— one of the sure signs of one of Umihebi’s men, according to Agent Anda— his nice button down only baring milky pale skin up to the elbow. And there’s no malice in his smile, only teeth so white she swears they sparkle, and eyes that crinkle at the corners, so dark a blue she almost mistakes them for black.

“Sorry, I’m doing this all backwards. I’m Zen.” He thrusts out a hand, palm refreshingly cool against hers. “Zen Wisteria. And I believe I’m your” —his smile hooks up at one side, as bashful as the little bounce he does on his toes— “future husband.”

Shirayuki blinks at him. What had Obi said on the phone yesterday? I know the perfect husband material.

“Excuse me,” she murmurs tightly. “But I think I’d like your badge number.”

[obsidiancorner]

Littlest Lion- Chapter 2

ObiYukiWeek 2019 Pairing: ObiYuki Word count: ~3000 Prompt: Charity

Where Shirayuki is welcomed back into the Mountain Lions with open arms and no expectations.

The moon is high overhead when the carriage rolls to a stop amidst a cacophony of shouting. A surge of panic rolls through Shirayuki before she remembers her driver had decided to push through the night since they were quickly approaching Mountain Lion territory. It’s probably just them being cautious. Shirayuki looks out the window of her compartment but anyone who might be outside is carefully obscured by the natural cover of ancient, wide-trunked trees with lush foliage and deep crevices rain-carved into the rock faces. 

“I was told you would be expecting us,” her driver calls out to people she can’t see. One of the horses whinnies, a cry of nervousness and she feels the carriage shudder as it dances in its harness. 

“And who are we supposed to be expecting?”

The voice was stern, challenging, pitched low as a deterrent against further advancement from an unmarked coach. There is something recognizable in it- some buried undercurrent of the menace is a timbre she recognized from years ago, though she can’t place why it is so familiar to her. 

Moments pass and every so often she hears their voices over the nickering of the unsteady horses, the rattling of trunks, and the groaning of the weighty carriage as the axles struggle to adjust to the constant shifting of weight. The man doesn’t seem to be buying their story, despite it’s truths. When she identifies the reason for somehow knowing such an unfamiliar voice dawns on her, it crashes through her with a flood of relief. 

“Kazuki?” Her shriek-like question is out of her mouth before she could push down the urge to call out. Her excitement is too much. Shirayuki reaches for the door’s handle but sweat and adrenaline from the initial fear makes her fumble. He had been just a boy-- the same age as Ryuu-- all those years ago when he had kidnapped her from Shenezard Palace and they both, in turn, had been kidnapped by The Talons. The door finally clatters open, spilling Shirayuki onto the ground, laughing all the while. 

“Shirayuki,” she hears Kazuki gasp and turns her head to see him dismounting from his horse by throwing one leg up over the neck and hopping down. Unorthodox but quick and so very Kazuki. It sends her back into pealing laughter as all the weight of the week bleeds into the hard ground beneath her. 

She’s already back on her feet when he reaches her, bent over at her knees laughing hard at both her lack of grace and the warm relief of being home washing the tarnish of her last week at the palace off her. 

The only thing missing is Obi. 

A stab of pain goes through her heart but Kazuki is wrapping her up in a hug that is just on the wrong side of too-tight. The need to breathe is a sufficient distraction from thoughts of her vanished friend. She taps his arm, her laughter dying out as she struggles to take in oxygen. 

When he pulls back from her, he is all shiny eyes and bright smile. His hands stay on her shoulders but he has grown so tall in these past few years. He stands nearly as tall as Obi now but he still appears to have the ungainliness of young man not yet accustomed to his long limbs. “It appears the driver was right. We are expecting you. We just figured it would be with an entourage and…” He stops, taking in the rather plain and unassuming state of the carriage and Shirayuki braces for whatever unpleasantness is coming next.  “Under the Wistaria’s banner?” 

That question wasn’t as bad as it could have been. However, it is a story best told in the light of day and to her father as well, not in the hours that fall between midnight and dawn. “Surprise,” she dodges. 

His eyebrow arches at her but he appears content to leave it alone for now. He settles her under his arm and turns her so she can see the small force of tired men from the village. All wearing smiles as wide as Kazuki’s at seeing their General’s daughter but looking far less awake. Even Itoya looks drowsy where he and his mount stand at the head of the pack. He sends her a warm but lethargic wave as he stifles a yawn with his other hand.

Guilt ripples through her. Showing up in the middle of the night was her driver’s decision, not hers but it doesn’t change the fact that their arrival under no banner had wrenched these men away from their wives and children in the middle of the night. It is likely that had they approached during the day, the men that met them would have still greeted them with warriness but at least they wouldn’t have been sleep deprived. Unfortunately, she’d had no way of knowing Clarines wouldn’t send her off with any clear markings on her coach. 

“Let’s get you back to the village,” he says, breaking her from her thoughts and ushering her back up the steps to her compartment. “We’re close to town and we can talk more there.” He closes the door before she can even respond. 

She’s grateful for it, though. With the excitement of an almost-confrontation turned welcoming party wearing off, she feels drained, like she hasn’t slept for a week. Maybe she hadn’t. With how everything from the last week blurs together in her memory, it’s entirely possible she hadn’t since Obi hadn’t been around to pull her out of her thoughts or preoccupations like he used to. 

Another pang of guilt grips at her heart and she feels the warm, wet track of an escaped tear winding down her cheek as she closes her eyes. She never would have thought to even entertain the idea that Obi would some day not be by her side. More than anything else in Clarines, she misses him. 

Shirayuki wakes the next morning, the comfy down of a bed almost the size of the one she left behind at Wistal Palace threatening to lull her back into her first restful sleep since Zen’s proposal. She sinks deeper into the mattress, welcoming the warm embrace of her dreams. She’s almost back to playing with Obi and Ryu in a sunny field of whorled tickseed and lavender when a window-rattling snore wrenches her wide awake.

The last thing she remembers is Kazuki tucking her back into the carriage and her falling asleep mere moments after he closed the door and took the excitement of an almost-encounter with a protective, militant force with him. She had only spent a few days here all those years ago, but coming back and seeing familiar faces on the trail last night felt inexplicably like going home. 

Home, it appears, is what Wistal Palace had ceased to be the moment Izana's word was final and home, it appears, is exactly what she had been needing to get some sleep that was actually rejuvinating. She stretches like a cat, arms and legs bowing out behind her as she curves her back, in the warm mountain sunbeams that dance through the blowing curtains of the open window. The stretch opens her lungs up and allows her to take a deep breath of fresh mountain air. 

A bird outside the window serenades her with a happy tune as her heart, still full of longing for her best friend, keeps time with a sad thumping so contrary to the lilting song of the warbler. As though it senses her mood, it quiets and she catches a flash of yellow as it flies off to sing elsewhere. 

Another snore rolls out from her sleeping companion and she turns over as quietly as she can manage, not wanting to wake whoever guarded her through the night. Sitting beside the fireplace in a lounge chair big enough to swallow small children whole, her father is hunched in a position that will most likely leave him sore for the next week. The hand that had probably once propped his head up hangs uselessly over the arm of the chair and his chin is resting against his chest. 

She muffles a chuckle under the thick blanket wrapped around her. At least it explains the volume of his snoring, otherwise she'd be concerned with the possibility of health issues. It’s good to be back, good to see him again after all these years.  

She tries to get out from under the covers with little success. Whoever had tucked her in had done their job well. There have been newborns less diligently swaddled than she finds herself now- even after a full night of sleep. She is left with worming her way out, inching the fabric down and feeling every bit the butterfly emerging from a caterpillar's chrysalis. In a way, that’s what she is. A prince’s former-lover, cast aside in the name of duty to his country, being reborn as an older, more mature version of the scrappy little girl who grew up under the feet of the patrons of her grandparents’ Tanbarunian bar. 

She looks out the window as a new bird appears, carried away momentarily by its song, much more melancholic than the first. It’s almost haunting and feels more synched to her own emotions but before she can ruminate on why that is, a snore from her father chokes off with a cough and a grunt. 

When she looks back, Mukaze is awake and staring at her. The fissures in her heart left by leaving a place she has called home for so long threaten to burst at the concern and confusion written in the line of his brow and barely-there frown. She would owe them all some answers for last night’s hullabaloo, especially since she hadn’t woken up when they had finally arrived. 

“Good morning, Shirayuki,” Mukaze says, voice gravelly with either sleep or his warring emotions- possibly both. There’s no trace of anger or resentment in his tone but there is a note that is more than mere inquisitiveness. 

She can’t help but flinch away from it. She feels her shame burning a trail across her cheeks. How does she even begin to explain what had happened? But there’s nothing to be done for it except to face whatever he has to say head-on. She pulls in a deep breath, savoring the clean mountain air as it works its way into every muscle.  “Good morning, father.”

“You had us all quite worried last night.” 

It wasn’t an accusation, not really, but she felt as though she was being scolded for her foolishness. Princes don’t marry herbalists. Such is the way of fate and Zen couldn’t escape his. He was bound by duty to the country he serves as a prince and she, in comparison, is a spirit as free as the bird singing outside her window. 

“I’m sor--”

Mukaze held up his hand, abruptly ending any apology she wants to offer. “I wasn’t guilting you, my girl,” he said, smiling. “I’m just curious as to what brought you to visit after all this time and what had caused your driver to insist on arriving in the middle of the night.” 

Shirayuki’s lips pull into a pursed line and she looks back out the window. She lets the long silence thicken between them, not really knowing where to even begin with everything that had happened. So much had changed and so many emotions wore her down like the dunes of a beach during a hurricane. Memories race by in a flash, never staying more than a fleeting second, barely lingering long enough for her to recognize them. 

An awkward ‘I think I love you’ confession to Zen in the palace’s private forest. Obi’s hand so near her cheek as he placed a hair ornament above her ear. Obi’s lament over being separated by a gate and then his sudden appearance in Lyrias. Collapsing with Obi when they finally found the cure to an illness caused by the Olin Maris. Obi leaving to go to battle and the following worry over his safety and simultaneous faith that he would return to her side. Tending to a gash in his side after he had come home to her. An anxiety plagued snow-in at a hotel with Zen, the only time he visited Lyrias while she was stationed there. Precious Little Ryu asking to travel Northern Clarines with she and Obi. Finally, after so many years of hard work, settling in at Wilant with Zen, Obi, Ryu, and Mitsuhide. Kiki leaving the company to marry Hisame. The summons back to Wilant. Zen’s stumbling proposal in the same forest pavilion from the confession so many years earlier and a night spent wrapped in each others’ arms. Then, the morning after, when Izana’s words slapped her harder than any hand ever could and all she wanted was the comfort of Obi’s steadying presence. 

In all that time, she’d never realized…. 

The curse of distance is that it changes perspective, makes everything she left behind feel smaller, like the mountain she had fought so hard to climb was really nothing more than a hill. Izana’s words had stung. Less-so about Zen needing to marry someone else and more that he was turning her away from a country she had been so proud to work for and call her home. 

But, through all of those trials Izana put her through, the one constant was Obi by her side. A man cloaked in shadows she knew better than the one that touched her own feet. Obi is the worst part of it. Shirayuki hadn’t seen him since she and Zen had left Wilant to meet with Izana. The ‘goodbye’ she had left silently behind, sufficing with a letter when words should have been spoken, was the knife that cut the deepest. 

She chuckled bitterly at the thought, still staring unseeing into the tree outside her window. A tree, mocking her with the cold absence of her missing bodyguard with a penchant for lounging amongst the highest branches. 

The mattress dips beside her, breaking her focus as she topples into her father’s chest. “You aren’t just here for a visit, are you, Shirayuki?”

Perceptive old man. 

“No.” She doesn’t look at him. Whatever look her father is giving her, be it worry, sadness, disappointment, or anything else, she doesn’t want to see it. She just wants Obi to appear as suddenly as he had in Lyrias after she arrived for her transfer. 

And that, right there, is the bitter cruelness of it, isn’t it? It took the rapid turnaround from proposal to permanent dismissal for her to realize the true nature of her heart of hearts. She never wanted the glitzy pomp and fanfare of life married to royalty. She never wanted to be any part of a country’s rulership, even by way of pillow talk. She fell in love with a young man who was energetic- lively and seemingly free. She fell out of love with a man trapped in the gilded cage of duty.  

Now? Now, she wants forever cloaked in the shadows of a forest canopy. She wants days of laughter and playful energy as they work side by side. She wants quiet nights, lounging together by the fire as she reads and he maintains his weaponry. She wants a man who was by her side because a prince had willed it so. 

Now, it’s all gone. 

The weight of propriety’s demands and the stress for working with and directly under a royal family melts from her shoulders, as if being in the Mountain Lion’s village is akin to taking a hearty sip from the revitalizing tea she and Ryu had once made Garrack. But, without Obi, the roka fruit that unknowingly sweetens the world around him, it’s a bitter healing. 

“I’m here to stay, if you’ll allow it,” she manages, feeling the anger give way to immeasurable sadness as the fractures on her heart rupture into shards that cut and tear like glass. She hadn’t even been given a chance for a proper goodbye. Obi had had so little in his life before he came to Wistal and became her knight. He surely hadn’t been at the castle in the days leading up to Zen’s proposal and her leaving. She would have seen him. She was always his top priority when he was on castle grounds. 

A goodbye wouldn’t fill the aching void left by a missing piece of one’s heart but it would have been soothing enough to make it bearable. Sure, she can make a new life here but she wants a life with Obi by her side in any capacity, where he was always meant to be.  

“That is excellent news for me, then, I suppose.” Mukaze replies, tapping her blanket covered knee twice before standing to leave. She turns to face him then. “I just figured you’d bring that one boy with you if you were going to be here for an extended period,” he adds, thoughtfully running his hand over the stubble on his chin. 

“Zen and I aren’t together anymore. He’s engaged to a Shenazard,” she says dismissively looking back out the window where the golden rays of the sun dapple the bark of the tree as the leaves blow in the mild wind. 

“Not the prince. The boy that was willing to storm The Sea Talons by himself to get you back. He would kill anyone who stood between him and you.” The door groans on its hinges as Mukaze opens it to leave. “I liked him. Come out when you’re ready. Your belongings are in the closet.”

The door closing echoes in the room like a taunt after the fresh slap of her father’s words. She isn’t ready to face the village yet. They’d be just as kind and welcoming as they were years ago, she knows, but that is little solace for a heart spasming against her grief at losing a person who yet lives.

[sabraeal]

Merry & Bright, Chapter 8

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Finding Gayle’s glasses turns into a production.

“Well, where did you leave them, Mom?” Kelly Ann sighs, long-suffering. By the way both her and Todd look like their souls want to ascend from their bodies, Shirayuki gets the distinct impression this is not a rare occurrence.

Gayle huffs from somewhere out in the hall, accompanied by the sounds of methodical squirreling. “Well, if I knew that, I’d be wearing them by now.”

Obi makes a strangled sound next to her, his arm vibrating against her shoulder. She steals a glance, watching the way his mouth twitches, eyes crinkled at the corner.

Something in her chest loosens, and for the first time in a day, she takes a full breath. When Obi had mentioned this trip, trying to be casual over her morning kelp, she’d known that it would be hard for him, that it would mean going to the site of his biggest regret but --

But she hadn’t expected this, a mix of both hope and hostility, acceptance and rejection. She’d half wondered if they’d get back to their-- his room tonight, and he’d say, I think we ought to go home, but now--

Now he’s relaxed, half-sprawled over the ladder-backed chairs Gayle had told her were vintage, given to her and Bob as a wedding gift, caging in a laugh by the skin of his teeth, and he looks-- good. Better than good. His teeth sink in to the flesh of his lower lips, and she could--

Really not think about that sort of thing at the dinner table, especially not with a four year old digging heartily into her penne and meatballs across from her.

“Have you checked the kitchen?” Todd asks, head tilting back until it hits the top rung of his chair.

There is a dangerous silence from out in the hall. “Now why on earth would they be out there?”

“I dunno.” He shrugs, heedless of the warning look Bob is giving him. “To read a recipe?”

They may be in Virginia, but the chill that enters the dining room when Gayle glares around the corner could be from any Boston winter.

“Todd Michael,” she starts, every bitten syllable of his name so sharp it could cut. “I have been cooking dinner in this house for forty years, and if you think I need a recipe to make--?”

“Have you checked your head, dear?” Bob offers with a beatific expression she’s only seen on Bernini statues.

“Oh God,” Kelly Ann sighs, but it’s far too late, Gayle’s already stepped back into the dining room, hands on her hips, face as blank and smooth as glass, and for a moment, Shirayuki is just overwhelmed with nostalgia. Instead of auburn she sees burnished gray, all piled up in a tight knot in the back of her head, chin tilted stubbornly, and she just-- just--

(”If you’ve looked everywhere else, Oma,” Opa says with a cheeky cant to his smile. “You might as well look at the top of your head too.”

Shirayuki claps a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking, and Oma draws herself up to full height-- a full two inches shorter than anyone in the house-- and declares, “Jakob, the moment I forget my glasses on my own head is the moment you forget to put yours on your body in the morning.”)

--misses home, at the same time she feels like she’s arrived.

“Robert,” she starts, “I may be two years older than you, but I am far from se--”

“Did you find them, Mom?” Kelly Ann interjects, casual, reaching out to stroke Laila’s hair.

Gayle blinks. “No! I just can’t figure where I left them. I know we’ve been tidying up around the place, but I don’t think they’ve been moved--”

“Have you tried the phone?”

Shirayuki’s barely realized she’s spoken until every eye falls on her, Obi’s brows raised straight up to his hairline. She squirms in her seat, knees knocking into his, and she can feel the heat burning on her cheeks, the way a full blush blooms at her collar.

“Now there’s a thought,” Gayle murmurs, hurrying across the room. There’s only a half wall between the dining room and the kitchen, a phone hooked right in between with an address book and scraps of paper littered beneath, the wall on the kitchen side covered in sticky notes. She only has to reach over, one hand searching, before her eyes open wide.

With a small tug, she holds up her prize: a small cloth envelope, glasses half hanging out.

Bob turns around with a grin so wide, it nearly splits his face in half. “Now that was almost occult.”

Obi slings an arm around the back of her chair, expression all-too similar. “That’s Doc for you.”

“Oh, no! It’s just...” She bites her lip, hesitant. “That’s where my Oma always left hers. Opa used to say that she lived by it, judging by the mess.”

It’s strange how it aches when she says it, both too much and not enough, like a scar that’s faded faster than it should. It’s been years since they died, since she had been left in the middle of her hometown with a debt that made her sick to think about and only one way to make it even, but--

Not enough. Not to talk about them casually. Maybe not ever.

Obi’s arm bands tight around her shoulder, giving her a quick squeeze, and she can’t help but look up, look at how everyone in the room has paused, not awkwardly, but with an air of understanding. There’s no one at this table who doesn’t have their own ghosts that sit with them, and they’re happy to make space for hers as well.

“Well,” Gayle says after a long moment, sliding back into her seat, “clearly she’s a woman of good taste.”

Shirayuki almost corrects her, almost says, she’s not with us anymore, but--

But she doesn’t.

“Now then.” Wide wire-frames perch precariously on Gayle’s nose, but she squints over them to look at the screen on Shirayuki’s phone. “How do I do this?”

“Mom,” Kelly Ann groans, mortified. “You’ve seen a cellphone before.”

Gayle favors her with a stern look. “They’re all different! And the pictures are so small now.”

“Oh, it’s fine!” Shirayuki leans over, breathing in the sweet scent of lilac. She taps the photo icon, skimming through the first few on the roll. “I can just show you a few. Other people’s phones are so confusing. And I take so many pictures, so the gallery’s all cluttered.”

“That’s so nice.” Gayle gives an approving nod. “You’ve always got to take the time to appreciate the little things in life, that’s what I always say.”

“Usually when she’s already running late,” Bob supplies, dangerously.

“It’s not anything, really,” Shirayuki insists, hands fluttering as Gayle shoos her away, swiping across the screen herself. “It’s just some flowers, and a couple of landscapes, and a few pictures of our friends--”

“And they’re memories of moments you’ll always have.” Gayle’s smile is warm, proud. “There’s no need to apologizing for loving the world and your life in it.”

There’s no reason for her eyes to sting, for her throat to prickle, but here Shirayuki is, staring at her hands, trying not to have-- have emotions all over the nice tablecloth.

“Gayle says that,” Bob leans over, peeking over her shoulder, “but she has pictures where she doesn’t remember a dang thing about where they came from.”

She lets out a huff. “Well, when you live a long time, there’s a lot more to forget!”

Obi’s arm quivers around her, and with a cursory glance across the table, Shirayuki can see Kelly Ann isn’t doing much better. It’s too risky to peek at Todd, but by the way no one will look at each other, they’re all just shook soda bottles, ready to burst.

Just in time for Laila to chime in, helpfully, “And Mimi’s really old.”

The table, collectively, loses it.

Shirayuki can only watch with vague horror as Obi bends over double, laughing so hard she’s afraid he might choke, tears streaming down his cheeks. Todd and Kelly Ann aren’t doing any better; he’s only upright by virtue of clutching the table edge, and she’s draped over a chair, face twisted as far away from her daughter as she can manage, trying to stifle the hiccups that shudder out of her.

“What?” Laila pouts, put out. “It’s true!”

Bob suffers from a sudden cough, one he turns his whole head away for, hand slapped right over his mouth.

Gayle lowers the screen, staring at them over the half-moon rims of her glasses, entirely unimpressed. Shirayuki squirms in her seat, biting her lip, letting out a warning whine, one Obi doesn’t manage to hear--

But Gayle’s lips twitch, right at the corner, half a smile before she manages to smooth it out. “Ah, now there we go,” she says, ignoring the chaos around her. “Is this handsome fella the one I’m looking for?”

Shirayuki leans in, catching the untameable mop of dark hair, and she smiles. “Yes, that was just before we left! The lab had a White Elephant, he got stuck with, well...”

Gayle may need glasses, but not to recognize this logo. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?”

“It’s a tradition,” she explains, grinning down at Ryuu’s blank expression, his skin stark white next to the brilliant, baggy green of his shirt. “The lab’s been passing it around at every holiday party for years. This year it was his turn.”

“I got a gift certificate to Christian Mingle,” Obi informs the table. Shirayuki has the pleasure of seeing the exact moment his brain catches up with him, mouth thinning into a grimace. “Uh...”

“Well,” Bob says, settling back with a smile, “I hope you regift that to someone who need it.”

“Great idea.” Obi’s smile sharpens to a point. “Hey, Toddy--”

“Don’t you even think about it, smarta--”

“Todd,” Kelly Ann says, in a tone so harsh and low there’s nothing in it but business, “I will end you.”

“--lec,” he finishes lamely. “I don’t need any help from you.”

“I know it’s hard to tell in the picture,” Shirayuki continues, louder, hoping that any distraction might keep a fight from breaking out over the penne, “but he’s actually--”

“Happy.” Gayle fixes her with a fond smile. “I know the type.” Shirayuki doesn’t miss how her gaze flicks to Obi, watching him. “He’s a serious boy, but they always give it away around the eyes.”

He leans in, oblivious, resting his head on hers. “That’s a good one, but check out this video.”

Obi pulls out his phone, video ready, the sound of Kirito and his friends tinny in the background as Ryuu rolls a skateboard up a ramp and, knock-kneed, guides it back down again.

“Oh, how precious,” Gayle coos, taking it from him, watching as Ryuu approaches the rail, wobbling. “Such a lovely boy, I can tell. Did you see, dear?”

Bob’s got an arm hooked over the ladder-back of her chair, eyes fixed to Ryuu’s first attempt at an ollie. “Look at that boy! Skunned his knees and not even shook.”

He’d actually sworn off the park for a week after that, hiding under his bench when Kirito came looking, but-- Shirayuki takes the praise. He’d gone back, after all, though he hadn’t tried one of those tricks again, yet.

“I wanna see!” Laila announces, kneeling on her seat. “Lemme see!”

“Laila-baby,” Kelly Ann warns, but Gayle waves her off.

“Go ahead, baby girl,” she says, turning the phone to her, “look all you like.”

Laila nearly launches herself over the table, attention rapt upon the screen-- which only lasts as long as it takes for her to get an eyeful of the boy on the screen.

“That’s not a baby,” she complains, “that’s an adult!”

Obi’s eyes round. “Wha--?”

“Where is your baby?” Laila demands, dropping back onto her heels with a huff.

Kelly Ann rubs her back with a long-suffering sigh. “Not everyone has a baby, honey.”

“Why not?” She eyes them both warily. “You’re adults, aren’t you?”

“Um,” Shirayuki manages, desperately looking anywhere but Obi.

“Not everyone is ready for a baby,” Kelly Ann informs her reasonably, accompanied by a pointed glance at her empty ring finger. “It’s a big responsibility.”

Laila heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Right, you gotta be married first.”

“No, no.” Kelly Ann’s mouth twitches at the corners. “You gotta be married first. Everyone else can do what they want.”

Todd snorts into his pasta. “That’s real rich coming from--”

“Todd.” Gayle’s tone leaves no room for misinterpretation.

Obi feigns a gasp. “Toddy, in front of the children?”

“She’s going to learn to count backward at some point,” he grouses, hunching in his chair, “and when whose fault will it be--?”

“Still yours,” Kelly Ann informs him, teeth flashing behind her lips. “And don’t forget, I know where you park that truck at night.”

Todd’s neck swivels, craning to look at Gayle. “Oh, so threats are okay, Mom, but I say one thing--”

“What was that, babe?” Obi asks, theatrically loud. “You’re tired?”

Shirayuki blinks. “But I haven’t finished--?”

“Oh, yep,” he continues with a warning look, standing up from his seat, “better get you up to bed then! Great dinner everyone!”

“But, Obi, we--”

“Goodnight, kids,” Bob says pointedly, raising his voice over the squabbling. “See you in the morning.”

“C’mon, quick,” Obi murmurs, pulling her after him. “Before Gayle notices.”

It is, of course, antithetical to Doc’s belief system to escape anything; there’s no room for flight in the doctrine of someone who thinks flinging themselves out two story windows is a proper punctuation to the end of an unpleasant conversation.

“We didn’t even finish dinner!” she protests with a hushed hiss, dogging his heels. “I didn’t even get to thank Gayle for the meal!”

Obi spins on the first step, pressing a finger his lips. “You’ll thank me later, now shh.”

“But--”

He squeezes her hand. “Quiet, you don’t want the dog to find us.”

Doc’s right on his heels as they mount the stairs, treading on tip-toe, trying not to disturb creaky joints or squeaky dogs. She bumps into him once, when he stills on the landing, stifling a giggle, and it’s just--

This is what kids do in high school, holding hands and giggling as they sneak up to their room, shushing each other so the dog doesn’t wake up the house. He’s done this a dozen times, snuck in after midnight through back doors and bedroom windows, told to stay quiet so no one will know, but-- but it’s never been him inviting a girl up, taking her back to his bed--

“Is the coast clear?” Doc whispers into his side, with an exaggerate look down the hall.

Obi shakes himself. That’s not what’s happening now either, except in the most literal sense. “Yeah, let’s make a break for it.”

He bolts down the hall, Doc tumbling behind him, falling against the door as he closes it. She’s flushed, ruddy-cheeked and chest heaving, eyes still adjusting to the light, and--

And it would be nothing to shift in closer, to bend the arm above her head and loom, her breath lingering on his lips--

“I can’t believe you told them about Christian Mingle,” she laughs, covering her face.

Right. This is...not real. They may make a good couple downstairs, but Doc’s got a boyfriend just a phone call away whose bank account is a logarithmic improvement over his at least twice over. Probably more. God, this is why he did biology, to get away from all the math.

“Well, I couldn’t just leave it out,” he says with a grin, sauntering away. “And besides, it was family friendly, unlike your dice--”

“I can’t believe Izuru put those in there,” she yelps, pale skin heating to pink as she pulls out her phone. “Those were definitely not, um, work appropriate.”

He didn’t think she’d appreciate his first thought, hardly anything in that lab is work appropriate. “She was probably hoping Shidan was going to get them.”

Doc grimaces, hitting the call button. “I can’t even unknow that.”

He grins, tucking his hands behind his head. “You’re welcome.”

“Hello?”

For a minute, Obi stiffens, wondering when Ryuu’s voice got so deep, if two days had already been enough for them to miss something so important as his voice dropping, if when they got back he’d already be taller than Obi himself--

“Ryuu sp--” his voice gives a terrible, staticky crack-- “eaking.”

Doc claps a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle, and manages, “Hi, it’s us!”

There’s a surprised sort of silence on the other side of the line, and Obi’s half tempted to ask who he thought would be calling him from Doc’s number. “Oh! H-how are you?”

“In one piece, no matter what Doc tells you,” Obi informs him, earning himself a puff-cheeked glare.

“We’re just fine, Ryuu,” she says, wry, “we just finished dinner.”

“Oh, right.” He hesitates. “Is there snow there?”

“Absolutely not,” Obi says with a laugh, fingers hooking on the back of his shirt. “We’re not that far n--”

A loud thunk startles him mid-yank, and over Ryuu’s confused grunt, Doc giggle, “Oh, um, sorry, I...dropped the phone.”

“Tsk tsk,” he clucks softly, dropping his shirt on top of their bags. “Gonna cost our boss’s boss a fortune if you keep that up.”

“Oh, hush.”

“But it snows sometimes,” Ryuu insists, “I looked it up.”

“Sure.” Obi reaches for the button of his jeans. “But it doesn’t really stick, and it doesn’t stay cold--”

“How are you?” Doc jumps in, eyes fixed to the screen. “Are you and Kirito doing anything fun?”

She covers the phone’s mic and stare up at him with wide eyes. “What are you doing?”

He stares, confused. “Getting ready for bed. We’re definitely not going back down into that.”

Ryuu sighs, loud on the speaker. “He’s making me do Christmas stuff.”

“Christmas stuff?” Doc asks, mouth curving into a smile. “What sort of Christmas stuff?”

“Tree decorating. Cookie making. Singing, I guess.” He sniffs. “Kirito’s mom wants to put up mistletoe.”

“Impressed her that much?” Obi hums. Doc crosses to where he’s tucked himself into bed, picking up a pillow, and whacking him across the face.

“What?”

Obi swallows his laugh, taking the phone when she offers it. “Never mind. What’s with the--” he loses all all ability to talk as Doc turns her back to him, standing right by her duffel bag, and yanks off her shirt.

“Obi?”

“Ah.” He drops his gaze right down to where Ryuu’s still picture stares back at him. “What’s with the mistletoe, then?”

Ryuu goes silent.

He dares a glance at Doc, who is at least wearing a tank top now, even if her pants are-- distractingly-- missing. She meets it with her own raised brows, bending over to pull a pair of shorts from her bag, and --

Yep, okay. Looking time is over. “Buddy?”

“Kirito is going to have a party,” he mumbles, awkward.

Doc’s face lights up as she trots over to the bathroom, toiletries in hand. “A party?”

“Oooh.” He shouldn’t tease, he knows, but he can’t help himself-- “Will there be girls there?”

“Obi!” Doc protests around a mouth of toothpaste. She pulls the brush out of her mouth, and with exaggerated movements that leave drool dropping at the corners, she mouths, gender neutral pronouns.

Which he is a hint he would take, if Ryuu was not a very particular kind of silent.

“Ryuu.” He tries to make his voice stern, serious, but the way his mouth twitches makes it near impossible. “Do you want to kiss any of them?”

The silence persists, which give Doc plenty of time to spit out her toothpaste and give him the stink eye.

“If you decided to kiss any person,” she interjects, each word too loud and too pointed, “they would be very lucky!”

“I have to go now,” Ryuu says, “forever.”

Obi snorts. “We’ll call you in a few days.”

“Mm.”

Doc slides into next to him, warm against his side. “Have fun!”

“Yeah.” Obi leans into her, nudging her temple with his cheekbone. The scent of red apple hits him strong as his nose brushes above her hair. “I want to hear all about the girl you--”

“OKAY,” Ryuu shrills. “GOODBYE.”

The phone beeps, and Obi pulls back, smile wide. “I think that went well, don’t you?”

Doc rolls her eyes, shoving his shoulder. “Go brush your teeth.”

[sabraeal]

Rarely Pure & Never Simple, Chapter 8

Written for the first day of the Guilty Project challenge! This one was supposed to come out for Obiyukiweek this year-- the free day, as per usual-- but I just had too busy a schedule in August and September to make it happen, especially when it seemed like this part of the fic would grow out of control once again!

[Read on AO3]

Shirayuki should be sleeping.

She had every intention to after Obi murmured his last goodnight. Her whole body hummed through the hang up, savoring the way his voice raked over the gravel in his chest, but it was hardly the first time. There’d been plenty of nights post-rehearsal where she spent the whole walk home thinking about something he said-- no, the way he’d said it in the dark of the backstage, sitting on that couch, conspicuously not touching. Entire hours where she wondered why her fingers trembled and her brain felt numb, running over the precise pitch he said kid.

Sure, the answer’s obvious now, but still-- she’s used to it passing. The whole time she winds her headphones, finding a safe place to put them on the bedside table, dreams seem only a blink away, all this nebulous tension destined poof into the ether like a cartoon cloud once her head hits the pillow.

Yet as she watches the minutes tick past midnight, and the dull ache that he’d left between her legs blossoms into a soaked, trembling need. For what, Shirayuki won’t even let herself contemplate.

You didn’t come, did you? It wasn’t a purr when he asked, but there’s no use telling her head that, not when every neuron is hell-bent on inventing words to put in his mouth too. You want me to handle that for you?

Shirayuki stifles a groan into poly-fil. Maybe he hadn’t said it, but he would have, if she let him. Which she just-- should have. Sure, it might have been mortifying to contemplate, but sandwiched between Senior Day and sexual frustration, the mortifying ordeal of being known (as horny) is a cheap price to pay for a body that can fall asleep on command.

But now she’s stuck; hoping that this terrible frustration might yield to fatigue sometime before night turns into morning. That instead of laying here, trying to distract herself with brain-ticklers from the Mathlete study guide, she dozes off, doomed to unsatisfying dreams filled with fluttering curtains and nondescript bodies rubbing against each other. Fade to black material, Kihal would tease her, even in your own wet dreams.

It’s the only kind of material she has; all her concrete knowledge of Obi is above the waist, and though he’s done some, um, exciting things beneath her skirt, it’s not like she’s ever seen any of it. At least, nothing that isn’t his eyes, peering up from where fabric’s rucked back, meeting hers as his tongue flicks out to--

Haah, that is-- that’s not helping. Not when she can’t just reach down and get herself off with the way Obi does. Instead she’s on her own, waiting until--

The table rattles, and her phone's display shining bright in the dark. Her heart leaps into her throat-- maybe?-- and sinks when she sees 92˚F Sunny/Clear. Ugh. At least she can be consoled by the nice weather when she’s sleep deprived from lack of-- of jacking off. No, jilling off? It would be nice if someone could give her a glossary, so she can at least explain with precision why she’s failing sexy culinary school.

Her hands clap over her eyes, but it’s no use, she can already hear Obi’s playful lilt, the way he’d almost certainly tell her, you know, if you need some help with technique, I’m happy to observe. Maybe provide some hands-on training. Proctor your exam...

She snorts. Little good that does her now, when he’s in bed, and she’s got to deal with this all on her--

Shirayuki blinks, hands dropping to the mattress. Her phone sits silent, screen dark now, but maybe...maybe...

Maybe she doesn’t.

Her fingers hover mere millimeters away from the screen protector, one curled corner tickling her smallest knuckle. She shouldn’t, really. It’s bad enough that she’s suffering, she doesn’t need to drag Obi into it. He’s going to be behind the wheel tomorrow, which requires things like sleep and concentration and not having stayed up until the wee hours talking your hopeless girlfriend through her perfectly normal sexual arousal. It’s not like he can do anything about how all she has is her own, fumbling hands.

That doesn’t stop her from asking, Are you up?

No answer. Not after two seconds, not after ten. Because unlike her, he’s asleep; wrung out and sated from how she-- she--

God. His moan is too vivid to be just in her head. I would have come for you anytime.

I’m stuck, she adds for good measure. Maybe luck will be on her side, and he’ll get up to pee sometime in the night, and she’ll...

She’ll die from waiting that long. Or at least, it’ll feel like it tomorrow morning, when all she has is two hours of vaguely dissatisfying sleep to go off of.

Options, Shirayuki must admit, are limited. Her fingers pluck at the smooth cotton of her waistband, lifting until she sees the barest shadow of auburn. There are plenty of people who can handle their own sexual needs without the use of a partner or, er, other accoutrements. In theory, she could be one of them.

But that’s not what the data says. Her waistband snaps back into place, leaving the barest flush of red across her belly. Without any natural aptitude, her next most obvious recourse is to bring her problems to google, but, er, well-- even if Kihal finally showed her how to clear her cookies, she’d never live down having this in her search history. Sure, all Grandad knows how to do on a computer is play solitaire, and if Nanna knew about search history then she’d know enough to use bookmarks too, which hasn’t happened no matter how many times Shirayuki has begged but--

She can’t risk it. Not unless she wants to be grounded forever. She’ll just have to figure it out on her own, like climbing trees, or reading. Maybe the data doesn’t favor a positive result, but history has shown: if she wants something bad enough, she’ll get it done.

(”God.” It leaves him on a groan, low enough to rumble straight from his chest into hers. Her lips feel swollen, raw from where his stubble’s scraped them, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to draw him back. “And you thought you needed someone to teach you how to kiss?”

Her breath stutters, breasts crushed so close against his chest she nearly has cleavage. “Well, you laughed the first time.”

“Because you were braced for mouth-to-mouth warfare.” The ghost of a grin cants his lips-- her thighs clench tight, flexing against the flare of his hips.“But after that...”

One hand cups her cheek, palm hot against her jaw. It’s hard to look at him when he’s this close, the amber of his eyes shining gold as they drop to her lips. “I-I’m a fast learner. And...” Heat flares painfully under her skin, pinching at her ears. “I had a good tutor.”

“Well, sure.” His smile is positively insufferable; a bold move when he’s already hard against her hip, one squiggle away from incoherence. “But there was definitely some natural talent at play, kid.”

His thumb skates across her skin, only stopping at her lips. They tingle, more from anticipation than touch. If Shirayuki’s being honest-- which she always is, except when Nanna asks if everyone is decent when she comes up the stairs-- the rest of her body isn’t doing much better. “A-aah?”

“I think...” The pad of his thumb catches on her bottom lip, drawing her mouth open, loose-- and emptying her head in the process. “You could have gotten those results with anyone. Guess I’m just lucky you knew I’m easy.”

He laughs when he says it, that quick little wounded chuckle he’s so good at hiding behind. It’s as good as a cold shower. Her hands are trapped beneath his shoulder, but she brings them as far north as the can, gripping his ribs. “That’s not true.”

Obi blinks, the smooth molten honey cooling to a confused amber. “Sure it is, kid. I mean, I’m not mad or anything. Worked out just fine in my opinion.”

“No, I didn’t-- I didn’t pick you because you were easy. I mean, because I thought you were easy. Not that I did!” It’s good she’s already got him in her hands, because otherwise he might feel the way they trembled. “I went to you because I trusted you. Zen laughed when we kissed the first time, and I couldn’t-- I knew--” words have always been her most constant companions, but for some reason, she can’t make them come out in order-- “you wouldn’t.”

“Ah...” he huffs, amused, rolling onto his side. “Well, looks like you were wrong about that.”

There’s far too much space between them. “I wasn’t, not really. You laughed, but it wasn’t...at me.”

He stares at her like she’s started spouting Latin. Or Joyce. “Of course not. I was just nervous as fuck. I really wanted...”

It’s obvious what he wanted, now. But even still he can’t say it, only sit there, tense, as his skin flushes darker. Back then she would have missed it, and now she can’t help but wonder if he’d looked just like this then, flushed and wanting while she’d been too blind to see it.

“I also thought...” Her fingers reach out, toying with the button on his henley. “I thought if I was going to ask anyone, it should be someone who was a good kisser. And I, um, knew you would be.”

“Ah right.” His mouth slinks into a smirk. “Because I’m a slut.”

Her mouth pulls thin. “No. I mean because...” If she thought blushing had been painful before, it’s worse now, heat stinging her cheeks like a slap. “Because I had, ah, thought a lot about what it might be like to kiss you.”

His jaw drops. “Me?”

“Ah...yes.” The whole night churned through her head endlessly these past few months, examined from every angle to determine how she went from practice kissing to dry humping to long-term boyfriend, if only to keep from sliding back to friends and then strangers in the same inexplicable fashion.

It took an embarrassing amount of time to conclude it wasn’t about that night. It wasn’t even about Zen’s kiss. Oh no, it was the tech couch, her bare knee rubbing against his jeans as she leaned too close, wondering about where he bought his body wash. It was how she always found a reason to touch him when she thought his shirt looked soft; how she always volunteered to do sound check just to hear him rumble in her ear, the two of them alone on the headsets. It was how with every hook up the crew dragged out of him, his imaginary partner inched a shade closer to red.

“I liked Zen,” she admits, the safest part of this terrible confession. “But I...I really wanted to kiss you. Just once. I think.”

His mouth is so wide that she can nearly see his tonsils. “So, you...?”

“Not-- not on purpose.” She breathes; something it feels like she hasn’t done in forever. “But I think if you hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have even thought to go to anyone else.”

Obi stares at her, uncomprehending. “So you mean to tell me, you tricked me into kissing you?”

“I didn’t know I was!” she yelps, hiding her face. It’s too late, he’s already laughing; she can see it where she peeks through her fingers. “But...I’m pretty sure, yes.”)

Right. A breath huffs determinedly from her lungs. The only way to make good data is to generate more of it.

It’s easy for her hand to slide down the smooth plane of her belly; both summer heat and suffering makes her skin slick, slick enough that her fingers bang knuckle-first into her waistband. It’s not much of a barrier-- just a cotton drawstring that is more decorative than functional, tied into the cutest bow a youtube tutorial could walk her through after it unraveled in the wash. But it’s enough to pull her up short, blunt nails scraping at stretch cotton.

“It’s not a big deal.” Her fingers pluck at the band, letting it slap softly back against her abdomen. “Anyone can do this.”

And she better be able to, otherwise she’ll be spending Senior Day snoozing behind her sunglasses instead of having fun in the sun. Or whatever is they’re supposed to do.

That’s what decides her; one minute she’s dithering, and the next she thinks about Kihal getting curious about the bags under her eyes. What kept you up? she’d ask, unsuspecting. Shirayuki would love to think she could be vague, that somehow she could dress a lie up in the truth’s costume, but-- she knows herself too well. I got stuck would come out as a reflex, and, well...

Her hand slips beneath her shorts. Between her two options, this is sure to be less mortifying.

Last time, hair had crinkled against her palm, tying painful knots around her fingers like kudzu, but now-- now she’s soaked, everything between her thighs coated in a film of slick, and there’s nothing to stop her sliding down, nothing to stop her opening her lips and dragging fingers through them the way Obi tells her she likes. And she does when it’s his fingers, callused and slender, touch just the perfect pressure, but now--

It’s fine. Fingertips skate along her folds, teasing her slit, and it’s-- it’s okay. Not enough to make her forget it’s her hands touching her, that she’s just fumbling through the dark with nothing more than a guttering match and directions written on a napkin.

Fumbling is apropos; she’s wet but too much so, and one slow swipe careens close to her clit, sending her vision into pixels at the edge but not in a good way. How Obi manages, she’ll never know. It’s her own body and she’s hopeless.

She shifts, back hitting the pillows with a huff. It’s no use; there’s nothing exciting about it being her own hands, not like how it is when Obi touches her, every breath and brush a surprise. There must be some secret to forgetting, something everyone else is born able to do and is broken in her, because short of thinking of Obi--

Wait. Her hands still. Could she?

She’s tried before; nebulous fantasies where she shied from faces, even if every partner spoke in his same elastic voice, laughed with his warm rumble-- well, except for the few times they goaded her with a good, Shirayuki, just the way Kiki did that one time in gym class. 

(She nearly apologized the next day, worrying that Obi would think she wasn’t serious, but she never made it past the first breath on that anxiety. Instead she remembers Kiki looming over her backstage, asking her to help with the billion pearl buttons on the back of her costume so she could get to the bathroom, and Kai breathing into her ear, I’d love to help her take off the dress.

His mortification is instant. She may not be able to see him over the headset, but she doesn’t need to to know he was eight shades of red already. Oh, jeeze, don’t-- don’t tell her I said that. I didn’t mean--

It’s okay, ladykiller, Obi drawls, every syllable smug. I think it’s part of the human experience to want to fuck Kiki Seiran. Or be fucked by her, he adds, thoughtful. Whatever floats your boat.)

Anything more than vague human shapes and some, er, illicit voice sampling has seemed too much, so personal, but maybe, maybe if she did--

Well, it would be nice if this overactive imagination was good for something other than providing the angle of her broken neck if she missed a stair. But if that’s the case, well-- she would definitely need some, um, inspiration, as Obi called it.

The phone slides into her palms easy; she takes a moment to look at the home screen-- No New Notifications, it reads, disappointingly-- before flipping right to the gallery.

Just a splash of tan skin on the thumbnail sets her heart to a gallop, chasing the thrill up and down her spine. Full size, she squirms, staring at his bare chest, the casual way he lounges in his chair. His gym shorts are baggy, hanging off his body without showing anything more, but-- but he was hard beneath them. He’d taken this, and then moments later came whimpering into her ear, because he-- he--

He touched himself. Even with her...reservations, there’s a part of her that’s curious, that wants to know what he looks like with his hands wrapped tight around his-- his thing. Penis. Dick? Cock. That sounded better. More, ah, literary.

She could right now-- know, that is, if she could find the courage to ask. I know its late but I was wondering if you might send me a picture of your erect penis.

No. Cock. Or was that too aggressive? It hardly matters, the second she pictures typing it, her mind stalls out, embarrassment wiping the slate clean. What would he even say to something like that.

are you sure?

Yes, that’s right. He would want to-- he’s sent them to other girls before. Not at their school, but before, when he didn’t have xbox but all the time in the world to get into trouble. At least, that’s how he puts it. He’d want to, but she has rules, and, um, a dickphobia, so he wouldn’t just...whip it out.

No, that’s not quite right. Her eyes screw shut, trying to picture it. He’s conscientious, sure, and if she asked him in person, he’d want to have a whole conversation-- or as much as his head could handle, hard as it would make him. But a picture she has control over; she could ask and just...never look. Not if she didn’t want to.

just gimme a min Smugness would radiate from the screen. If there’s one thing Obi is confident in, it’s his body. gotta make it look good u kno what i mean kid 😘

That’s closer to reality; as close as she can come without actually doing it, but it feels-- right. But also not enough, not what she wants.

u want me 2 call?

That isn’t it either. She squirms, that electric feeling trapped too far beneath her skin, net enough to set her slight. She needs more.

how ab a meet n greet 🍆 

It’s too much, even for him, but she doesn’t care, not when all she imagines trembling fingers replying, yes please

5 minutes His own would have to be shaking, too, if he bothered to type the whole word. keep the window open

Ah, if she’d thought she was soaked before, she’s drenched now, hips bucking hard against the slide of her hand. That’s how he’d find her, his name already half on her lips as he climbed through the window. No, don’t stop on my account, kid...

She whines, every stroke of her fingers sending sparks under her skin. It’s still her touching herself, but he’s beside her now, breath tickling her neck. Fuck. His voice is already a wreck, his hand laying over hers, feeling every flick of her tendons as she works. Fuck, kid, you’re so wet.

He’s shirtless now too, t-shirt decorating her floor and gym shorts riding low, doing nothing to hide how hard he is against her hip. If this were real, her stomach would flip, half-fear half-arousal. She likes knowing he wants her, that his attraction to her isn’t just that she’s the first person who showed him a scrap of kindness but also based in quantifiable chemistry, but--

But there’s a part of her that’s convinced one day he’ll get bored of her being prude. That he’ll reach his limit with her ridiculous dickphobia and just whip it out, no warning at all, and she’ll--

Well, she doesn’t know what she’ll do, but she wouldn’t be coming out of it with a boyfriend, that’s for sure.

She doesn’t think about that now. No, not when all she can think of is the choked-off whimper he gave when she told him how she wanted to see him come, how he whined when he took himself in his hands and-- and--

Every inch of her is static, Obi’s phantom touch setting her to writhe beneath her fingers. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? To touch him? She could take her hand and press it right over filmy material of his shorts, palm raking over the ridges of his cock.

He bucks into her hands, whine tearing from his lips. Kid...

It’d felt good to make him come tonight, to be the one that talked him over the edge. But if she was the one touch him, the one controlling how fast his heart beat in his chest...

Shirayuki doesn’t have any practical knowledge about what a penis feels like, not outside of what she’s felt against her hip as they kissed, but she can imagine. All those pictures on google hadn’t done much for her-- fleshy shafts seemed more ridiculous than arousing-- but it’s Obi. There hasn’t been a single part of him that doesn’t make her salivate, wondering what it would feel like against her. How could this be any different? How could she not want it when he’s panting beside her, name caught in his throat from just the barest touch?

I want to see it, she whines, and Obi wastes no time, yanking down his waistband with a groan that sets thunder rolling in her belly. His cock springs against her hip, and she takes it, looking down--

Only for her mind to go utterly blank. She can’t picture it, not as anything she’s seen in the harsh light of google image search. Her fingers skitter awkwardly, nearly jostling into her clit, but-- but she’s not going to lose this progress, not when she’s so close, when it would take nothing to tip her right over the edge. She screws her eyes shut, focusing on the weight in her hand, the warmth, the way his breath would hiss between his teeth as she moved her hand.

Shirayuki, he groans, hips thrusting up into her palm, don’t stop. Please...

She can’t, not now, not when she’s chasing that elusive height at the apex of her thighs, when she’s made less of flesh and more of nerves firing over and over, so close to her edge--

Please, she breathes. I want you. I want you inside--

It takes her by surprise. One moment he’s curled into her side, hissing in her ear-- you can have me, take me, please, please-- and then she tips over, static sweeping over from her head to her toes and back again, a blinding rush that only Obi’s ever given to her, until--

Until now. Her eyes blink open, fixed on the ceiling. She did it.

It’s not as good as when he touches her; nothing could be. But this...

Well, she’s no longer stuck. But now she’s have to tell Obi, and--

Ooh, kid. The thought of his grin sends a spike of want between her legs, even as she withers under it. How’d that happen?

Shirayuki flops onto her belly and groans. That’s something for Tomorrow-Shirayuki to deal with.

[sabraeal]

All That Remains, Chapter 8: The Flower Garden of the Woman Who Could Conjure [Part 5]

[Read on AO3]

Obiyukiweek 2021, Day 3: Strength Upright: Compassion, Courage, Self-Control Reversed: Weakness, Doubt, Discord

Once upon a time, a troll makes a mirror.

Is that not how we started this story, so long ago? How so many start: a vile creature forges an object. Who and what change in the telling; a troll makes a mirror, a god conjures a box, knowledge grows in a garden. In the end, it is all the same: what is once contained is opened, unwitting. Or lost, foolishly, in a heart so cold and cruel that it becomes bent to another purpose entirely.

But that is merely an allegory, a fiction composed to cover the raw edges we leave when we rub against each other. For that is the truth, is it not? There is no fell creature, no capricious and omnipotent beings to blame for our misery. There is only us, carving our place in our story by smoothing pieces off another. A snow queen is not made from frost and cold but by the blades of others, slicing slivers from her flesh until only ice remains.

That is the truth we cannot bear: the only monsters we face are the ones we have made. The only poisons we drink are those human hands have brewed.

And it starts like this, always: a girl in a garden, remembering the image of a rose, and wondering, how could I have I forgotten?

“You were quiet at dinner tonight.” Shirayuki hasn’t been at court long-- or rather, in court, privy to all its secret signals and capricious undercurrents-- but she knows that this is as close to an “are you all right?” as Haki can come. If confrontation is only allowed the glint of a knife, affection is stifled to a hint of warmth, a fire made in a room one is forbidden to venture. “I hope that the meal agreed with you.”

A flash of pharmacy white flutters at the corner of her vision, frustratingly out of reach. It’s been so long since she’s been there, since she’s thought of anything but silverware and schottische; when she tries it’s like a hundred voices shouting at once, each demanding to be heard. Just like being at Lilias, heads bent over a knotty problem--

“Shirayuki.” The consort does not crouch; it’s best, Lady Mihoko often remind her, to pretend one has no anatomy beneath the waist. But Haki does perch on a cushioned stool, her brows drawn tight over the elegant line of her nose. “You are not...indisposed, I hope?”

A solid shake dispels the fog mired around her. “What? Oh, no! I only...” It would be a mistake to speak of loam between her fingers, of the satisfaction of hearing a pod snap from its stalk. “I didn’t have much to say with my, erm, conversational partners.”

Royal brows raise to stunned arches. “Is that so? I would have thought you’d find much in common with Lord Kazunori and Lord Seiichii.”

They had both been older men, southern lords drawn to court for Seiran’s summit. Kind enough, but they spoke to her as they would their own daughters, which is to say: warmly, but brief. Not of any topics that one might sink their teeth into, lest it leaving lines around her mouth.

“I think they were more interested in talking to each other than to me,” she admits. In part because of her sex, and in part because-- well, her body may have been in that chair, obscuring the twining gods and goddess painted across it, but her mind had been a wing away, wondering if it was yet time to harvest the roku berries, or whether this year’s crop of apprentices knew akegi from yura shigure. “It seems there’s much to discuss before they all meet for, ah...discussion.”

Haki hands her a rueful smile. “There always is.” With a sigh, she sweeps to standing, as statuesque as any marble in Wistal’s halls. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing for it. I’ll have to ask the majordomo to find you some more scintillating seatmates tomorrow.”

“Ah..!” Tomorrow. Never had a day seemed so far away, so much more than a handful of hours between dawn and dusk. At Lilias, the nights had wavered between seasons, some so short she hardly slept between sun set and rise; and others so long that she woke in darkness, only to leave the lab in the same. But still, none seemed so long as this, and for no reason at all.

“Is something wrong?” Haki turns to her again, concern rumpling the curved lines of her mouth. “Do you have plans...?”

“No!” Shirayuki rushes to assure her. “It’s only...you mentioned dinner, and suddenly I felt so...”

“Weary?” Haki offers, when she won’t. Her eyes soften with mouth to match, smile turning her from heavenly to beatific. “I’m not surprised. You have been hard at work these last few months.”

And hardly anything to show for it, in Lady Mihoko’s learned opinion. Shirayuki bites back a groan. She would be sixty before that woman found her approaching passable, and even then, she still wouldn’t be good enough for a prince’s wife. Not when his children might have some chance, no matter how slim, of seating their sullied bloodline on the throne of Clarines.

“Perhaps you have earned a break.” Shirayuki blinks, staring up into the consort’s glowing face. “A private dinner seems in order. A night of no pressure of expectation.”

It sounds too good to be true. “Oh, no! I couldn’t--”

“Give me but a moment.” Haki hesitates at the door to her boudoir, lips lifted in an impish grin. “Perhaps my good brother might find himself available as well?”

Her mouth snaps shut. It’s been ages since she saw Zen, just the two of them. He came to dinner rarely-- understandable, with the summit only weeks away, and entirely under his purview, despite Seiran’s tacit position as host-- and where he went, Mitsuhide and Kiki went too. Haki had been her closest companion these past few weeks, the only friendly face, but Shirayuki longed for someone who didn’t look at her and see a princess, but--

Nervous energy courses through her, jolting her to her feet. Her hands itch, wanting for something to do, and with no plants to hand, they land upon the package on the receiving table. It’s wrapped in humble brown paper, folds clean and crisp, twine tightly tied. Haki’s medication, she realizes, dropping it from her numb hands. Made in the pharmacy. There’s a note on top-- instructions. She’d recognize them anywhere; after all, she’d written more than a few of them herself.

It’s curiosity that makes her pluck it from where it sits. It’s been ages since she’s been in the lab, but her knowledge hasn’t faded; there’s no harm in seeing whether there are any mistakes. An apprentice could have made this, after all. The dose does, as Garack was so fond of saying, make the poison.

She flips open the card, already flushed with the thought of being useful, but--

It’s not some apprentice’s writing at all. Oh no, she knows this spidery scrawl all too well. It was on every jar at her bench, every treatise she read late into the night.

It’s Ryuu’s.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. Always with a laugh, but stewing beneath it is envy and longing in equal measure. A pining for times past, for a childhood never quite as innocent as we remember.

For that is what we miss: innocence. Not the not-knowing, but state of not needing to know. The trust we felt towards those who always knew in our stead, who kept us safe from the dangers that pressed in around us. The ones who protected us with little lies; the small pauses to omit what might scare us, the careful editing to make our worlds the giddy fantasy we dreamed.

But there comes a day where all children must grow up. There is a day we must know these things for ourselves, so that we may see the world with clear eyes. For even innocence can be a cage, should some other hand try to lock you within it.

Ignorance is bliss, they say, but oh, only if they can keep you from knowing what it is you do not know.

May I ask you a question? the little girl asks, her gaze no longer on the garden, but the horizon beyond. It is bent in her vision, the glass made in such a way that each diamond blows out the edges, warping the world around it. She had never noticed when she looked only at the garden so near to it, but now...

Now the imperfection is all she can see.

Anything, the sorceress replies, her fingers wrapping around the caps of her shoulders. They’re cold, as cold as the glass beneath her palms.

The girl looks at their reflection, at the way the wave of the glass make those fingers bleed into talons. Where have the roses gone?

Shirayuki’s hands tremble, her eyes tracing every last loop, every hurried curve. “I didn’t...”

Haki peers around the jamb, letter folded in her hand. “Did you say something, my dear?”

This is the closest she’s been to Ryuu in months; even from where she holds it, the scene of lavender and akegi shigure waft from its paper. Not scented, not on purpose, but just from being left in a desk’s cubbyhole with his hastily tidied samples. His parchment smelt the same in Lilias, fragrant as the hothouses themselves.

Her chest can hardly contain her breath. “I didn’t realize that Ryuu was overseeing your treatment.”

A shadow flickers over the sorceress’s face, her grip painful for but a moment before she is her usual smiling self. A moment that could have been imagined, if only the girl was so sure it was not.

Roses? the sorceress asks airily. I’ve never grown any roses.

“Excuse me?”

“It only makes sense,” Shirayuki hurries to add, placing the card back atop the package. “He’s taken over for Chief Garack, and she always oversaw the royal--”

“Shirayuki.” Her name is firm from Haki’s lips, just shy of a scold. “I’m quite sorry but...who are you talking about?”

So many tales speak of trust as a blade, one that may be used to cut, that breaks when forged from brittle iron. A weapon, wielded and forgotten on the battlefield once the story is done.

But you and I know better: trust is a spell, woven to protect. It is a shield, unseen but always felt; sense by faith and not by fingers. And when it wavers, it does not break, does not shatter like a blade upon a stone; no, nothing so dramatic as that. Instead, it frays, unwoven one thread at a time, unnoticed until--

Until the hole can no longer be ignored.

She doesn’t leave the consort’s chambers meaning to break her curfew; oh no, when the door closes behind her, Shirayuki has every intention to head straight to her own. Her feet drag beneath her, weary from contorting herself into a mold that barely fits. There’s nothing she’d like more than to divest herself of all these courtly trappings and pass effortlessly into oblivion.

But she turns a corner, her mental map of the palace resolving, and she realizes: in one direction is her room, and in the other, the pharmacy. It’s late, but Ryuu would still be there, committing his last-minute thoughts to page while the offices emptied around him. She misses him, a longing so intense it aches.

It would only be a short visit. If Izana brought her before him in the morning, trying to act as both judge and jury-- well, Ryuu would be her physician, once she and Zen finally managed to make it down the aisle hand-in-hand. It only made sense to keep a cordial relationship with the man who would bear the next branch of the Wisteria tree into the world.

And if she missed him, the boy who straddled the line of friend and brother and son both-- there was no need to explain that to the king. It wasn’t as if Izana made a habit of confessing his ulterior motives to her. Though strangely, she thought he might understand that better than anyone.

Or all but one. And he...

Well, if there was a single person who might know where he went besides her, her feet were carrying her to him now/.

Were you to ask the girl, she would say she had not chosen night on purpose. The sorceress had housed her, fed her, loved her in her way; even with the image of the rose burned behind her eyes, she trusted her still, in the desperate way one does when one knows they should not, but cannot bear to contemplate why.

Opportunity chooses for her; the late afternoon sun burns hot, and when they finish their dinner, the sorceress excuses herself to lay down in the dark, to merely rest her eyes-- and does not wake, not even when the door creaks as the girl slips around it. The moon guides her steps when she walks into the garden, bright as the day itself, but she does not need it: her feet carrying her better than memory could.

There is one there, just as there was this morning: a petal, pink and sweet, fragrance so familiar she knew it even without sight.

Come out, she murmurs, digging her hands into the earth. Come out my lovely, my dear. I have been searching just for you.

A tendril spirals up from the ground, tentative. It flips and flaps, and oh, she is too shocked, too awed to help it. Even still, it finds her, wrapping around her finger, and with a single drop of blood the bush emerges, whole and dirt-smeared, from the soil.

What, it murmurs, impatience tinging its words, took you so long?

In the day, the pharmacy is all rush and chaos: apprentices burning tinctures and ushering patients to their rooms; masters emptying drawers as soon as they are filled, only for other herbalists to hurry to replace them. Guards arrive with injuries and nobles with ailments, no moment ever dull while the doors are open.

But at this hour, when the lords and ladies are all tucked in their beds-- or are at least pretending to be-- and the work is done, the pharmacy sleeps. There is no herbalist at the front desk, only the push bell Ryuu despised when she was his apprentice, since it always meant she would be pulled away from him or he away from his project.

A necessary nuisance, he called it once, and Obi had laughed. Just like me, eh, Miss?

She no longer remembers what she said-- it was early enough when he was one still, though she’d like to think she was too kind to say it-- but now she wishes, even if just for a moment, that she could tell him how much of a gift he was to her. How much he had made tedium bearable, even when she hadn’t known it for what it was.

Instead she bites her lips, rubbing at the ache in her breast. It’s hardly the first time she’s forgotten to say what matters, but-- but this won’t be her last chance. Obi might be away now, but he will be found, and she will tell him...

Everything. Every last thought she had since the moment they last spoke; her apologies and her worries, her failures and her triumphs. Because Obi hearing them-- that’s what makes them real.

Her hand wraps around the third door’s knob by habit; even now she expects to open it and see her projects spilled across her desk, to see a curtain closed beneath the other, and a window open between them. To see it waiting for her the way her heart waits for them, empty and waiting to be filled.

But there’s nothing of them there anymore. Nothing besides memories that no longer fit over the space it has become.

Her feet carry her onward, down to the last room, a sliver of light slipping across the hall where it’s been left ajar. She still expects to see a curled mass of blonde hair bent over the desk, long tables sprawled with books and half-finished studies, a bottle of roka medicinally sitting in the corner. But instead--

Instead it is a dark one, a riotous shrubbery of walnut and teak in desperate need of pruning. That had been her job in Lilias, along with Yuzuri’s helpful hands, but is seems no one here has yet talked the Chief Herbalist to task.

Give it a few years, Garack would tell her, and he’ll have herbalists as eager to get into his hair as you three were with me.

She leans against the jamb, a sigh slipping past where her heart clogs her throat. Ryuu had once fit beneath a desk half this size, and now he towers over it even seated, looking more and more like Shidan with each passing day, a man overgrown by time and deadlines.

“Ryuu.” It’s a palpable hit when their eyes meet. Everything else about him might change, but that gaze, so wide and thoughtful-- that never does.

Until now. One moment they spark, a fire lit behind blue glass, and the next...

It gutters, his gaze slipping away.

“Shirayuki.” His voice is so much deeper than in her memory, so much older. And colder too. “Excuse me, Lady Shirayuki. Is there something you need?”

“No.” She clings to the doorway, too aware of how fine her dress is, of how little it belongs in this place, his sanctum sanctorum. How little she belong here, now. “I saw a card you wrote to the consort, and I...wanted to see you.”

“A card?” His eyebrows twitch; she can no longer tell if it’s in surprise or confusion, not on this stranger’s face. “Ah. The powder for her migraines. Did you want some as well?”

“No, I’m-- I’m well.” It feels like a lie, even as she says it. It wouldn’t have, only hours ago. “I just...I’m here for you.”

His knuckles blanch where he grips his pencil. “Well, you’ve seen me. I trust you know your way out.”

You’re too late, too late, the roses say, their sing-song jangling in her ears. I’ve been hidden away for so long, and even now I cannot find him. The betrayal in their voice is thick when they ask, How could you forget us, your flower and your boy, when we have always grown together?

“Ryuu.” It leaves her lips cracked, broken; her mouth no longer knows how to form the shape that calls to him. “I know it’s been...a while, but please don’t think that I didn’t want to-- that I wasn’t thinking about you. I just...”

His pencil pauses on the page, but he does not speak. He just looks at her, the way he would at a stranger, and this room is suddenly a desert and ocean both, too far and deep to go by foot alone.

Still, there is nothing she will not brave, not for him. “It was hard to come,” she admits. “I’m not allowed in the gardens, and I’m not allowed to take patients. Coming here, watching everyone working the way I always have...”

It would have been like watching someone eat a feast while she was starving. 

His eyes soften, even if they don’t precisely thaw. “I know that you’re marrying the prince, and that you don’t have time for m--” his lips press tight-- “this. I’m not upset because you’ve set your career aside.”

“But you are...” Her words limp as she says them, wounded fawns searching of an elusive mother. “You are upset.”

His hands flex as he places them on the wood, utterly silent. “I knew...” he breathes, so harsh it scrapes her own throat too. “I knew you’d have to give things up--important things. But...”

Ryuu had always spoken slowly, thoughtfully. But still, these moments when he meant what he said, when he composed rather than conversed-- it had never taken him to long to tell her what he meant. He trusted her, knew that even if his words came out garbled or his message was lost in a sea of ellipses, she would salvage it, gluing it back together with his intention.

So when he sits silent, it wounds her almost as much as his words.

At last his gaze lifts again from his work, but the glare he fixes on her-- “But I never thought you’d let one of them be Obi.”

Her mouth works, but the well from which she draws her reason is empty, leaving only pain in its wake.

“I didn’t...I didn’t let him leave,” she murmurs, more wind than whisper. “He never told me he was going. He just left without even...”

Saying goodbye. As if all these years had meant nothing at all.

“There’s a guardsman,” she says instead, her voice trembling toward something approaching even. “He said he saw Obi leave with--” a woman-- “someone.”

Ryuu grunts.

“He ran off with Torou, once.” She wants the words to come easy, but each one emerges from her trembling, the way her fingers are against her skirts. “On the way back from Tanbarun. That’s...that’s probably what this is. An old friend that needs help, and then he’ll come right back--.”

“He won’t.”

Each breath is a stab, deep in her chest. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” He stands; a production with how much of him there is now. Cautiously, his hand extends, a fist hovering over the knotted wood of his desk.

It takes all her courage to take the first step, and all of it again to take the next. On and on until she’s crossed the room, hand outstretched, quivering beneath his own.

His palm opens, and into hers falls...a seed. Tiny. Blue. As clear as glass.

“An orbia seed?” Shirayuki lifts it up to the light, the plumule a hazy bead nestled in its luminous cotyledon. It’s impossible to tell by sight, but still, she’s sure-- it would germinate, if she planted it. “I was collecting these before we left.”

“I know.”

“It’s funny,” she murmurs, a smile lifting her mouth. “I never did find a blue one.”

“I know.” His explanation comes in fits and starts, a path never worn in the telling. “I had one. I gave it to Obi.”

“You...?” The thought catches in the light, just like the seed between her fingers. “Oh. Oh. But...” Her mouth curls, a silent question: why?

“I don’t know. I thought he might...” Ryuu’s shoulders twitch, as narrow as Obi’s when he first blew in with the wind. Before he settled into the man he became. “When he was ready...”

Of course. Her hand closes tight around the seed. Obi had what she needed all along. And she’d never known, not until...

Not until he was gone. “Where--?”

“I found it on my desk.” Ryuu’s fingers flex, falling by his side. “The morning after he left.”

Where did he go? the little girl asks, desperation choking her as surely as her tears. Where can I find him?

How should I know? the roses reply, thorns in their words as well as their stems. You are the one who left me buried under the ground. How could I watch him when you let us be trapped together?

“Did you...” Her mouth works, cutting itself against her question. “Did you tell Zen’s men, when they came? Do they know that he...?”

Said goodbye, she cannot say, to someone at least.

“No.” Ryuu blinks, his eyes as round and innocent and blue as ever. “They never did. Come by I mean.”

This is not the first time we have spoken of betrayal, is it? Of the wound that never heals, the jagged cut that scabs over only to be ripped open anew. The injury that teaches one to be wary, lest one be inflicted again.

But that is only after the wound is made. When it is first done...

Well, it is strange how long a heart can bear a blade through it without ever feeling the killing stroke. 

“You are thinking,” Haruka remarks, with no small amount of disapproval. “I can tell.”

Shirayuki blinks down at her place setting, expecting to see broth dripped across the tablecloth, or perhaps the edge of her sleeve dipped in yolk, maybe even her tea dribbling over the edge of her cup--

But there is nothing. The white linen is pristine beneath her gold-rimmed plate, her sleeves and elbows tucked up and off the table, and if anything, her beverages of choice are picturesque in their vessels, juice beading with moisture and tea gently steaming. “What am I doing wrong?”

It, historically, has been the wrong question to ask the marquis, sure to send him into a silent huff that will stretch from first course to fifth, disapproval deepening with each sorbet. In his vaunted opinion, the fact her inexperience might cause her to trespass the unspoken rules of good manners is bad enough, but to not know precisely when and how it was done-- now that was truly unforgivable.

However, today he merely settles back in his seat, rubbing his fingers against the cloth tucked over his lap, and fixes her with his unerring gaze. She doesn’t shrink beneath it; oh no, instead something in her chest shifts, almost as if-- as if it grows.

His lips twitch, just the slightest upward tremor. “Nothing.”

Her mouth opens, then closes, stymied. “Then how did you know?”

A single, noble arch lifts. “Because you have never once stopped.”

It is to the tiger-lily the little girl turns, after the roses. They are a pompous flower, no doubt, as proud and self-important as any big cat, but despite their bluster, they are honest. The noblest flower in this garden, hearty and constant, and though they sniff when she kneels down upon their bed, dirtying her hem, they listen.

Have you seen him? she asks, heart lodged tight in her throat. Have you seen my precious boy?

“So what is it,” Haruka murmurs into his glass, “that has you so engrossed, young lady?”

Her lips press together, teeth plucking at the scar. “You told me once that I should know who is my ally, and who is my-- Zen’s.”

The rim has hardly touched his lips, but Haruka sets down the crystal, hands folding behind his plate. “I did.”

“But those are not the one two options, are they.” It’s not a question, not anymore. “Sometimes they may seem to be one or the other, or both at the same time, but really-- it’s their own, isn’t it? Everyone is just trying to do what they think best.”

“That is...” The marquis takes in a steady breath. “A very mature way to see a frustrating problem.”

“The consort has said that she is my friend,” she says slowly, each word shaken loose from her heart. “But she is also lying to me.”

“Is she?”

Haruka, she had said once, these long skirts tangled around her legs, binding fast as any chain, he’s hard to read.

Is he? Zen’s hand was cold against hers, like touching marble. Izana’s had been the same so many years ago; she wonders if it might be a problem with their circulation, perhaps passed down from a parent, but this doesn’t seem the time to ask about his mother’s medical history. He’s always seemed clear as crystal to me.

Though, he continues, mouth set in a rueful grin. After a childhood of lectures, maybe it’s easier. I can tell how stupid he thinks I am just from the degree of his eyebrows.

His brow is furrowed now, a tight knot over the bridge of his nose. There’s no angle, no lift, and Shirayuki isn’t quite sure what that might say about his perception of her intelligence. If it were anyone else, she might even call it concern.

“Is she lying to you,” he asks, posing it like Lata when he wants to ask something particularly perverse as a rhetorical. “Or are you not asking the right questions?”

Her fingers clench tight on her lap, linen rucking up between her fingers. She likes this far less than Lata’s. “Your Grace...”

Now his brows raise, shock stark on his face, “Yes, Miss Shirayuki?”

“Do you...?” The words stick in her mouth; to ask them is to admit defeat. No-- distrust. That the best interests everyone has been working towards are not her own. “Do you know where Obi is?”

I have seen no precious boy, the tiger lily trumpets, as proud as ever. Only a little girl loved by all who see her. How lucky she is to garner such attention!

I care not for me, the little girls mutters, impatient. Where do you think he has gone?

Away, away. The flower bobs beneath its own self-importance. He has been taken away. Down and gone and buried with the roses. Perhaps you are the better for it.

“No.” It’s the truth; he wouldn’t bother to lie to her. “As of now, his location is unknown, even to the king himself.”

She licks her lips, nails biting into her thigh. The orbia seed burns a hole in her hip. “Are they looking for him?”

A shadow ripples over his face, gone before she can follow it to its source. “Someone might be.”

“I mean Zen,” she clarifies. “Or Izana.”

“I know,” he replies, voice impossibly gentle from such a forbidding mouth. “I think we’re ready for the next course, don’t you?”

Innocence and ignorance, truth and illusion, trust and betrayal-- we have meditated upon each, as if they are but separate concepts that can be held to the light and have each facet revealed in turn. But surely you seen that they have all brought us here, to this part, to this singular place: a knife buried in a breast, a garden made into a cage. A girl in each, who has finally seen the truth beneath the illusion.

We should rejoice, should we not? For these girls who might free themselves, might heal themselves? But yet you do not, do you? For you know the trick of it:

A wound does not truly begin to bleed until the blade is removed. And a girl like this--

Ah, her hand is already at the hilt.

For once, Shirayuki is relieved that it is her round-faced guard that awaits her and not a more experienced one. Or worse yet, Kiki, who would anticipate her before she could get a word in edgewise.

But luck is on her side; this dear boy springs from his place on the wall, every muscle tense with anticipation, quivering to do his duty, and she-- she is ready to take advantage of it.

“Ready, my lady?” he asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet, a hound eager to be given his leash. “It’s off to the ballroom next, isn’t it? With Master--?”

“Not today,” Shirayuki informs him swiftly. “I need you to take me to the king.”

The color leaches from his face. “The...the k-king?”

She nods, tight, officious. The sort Lady Mihoko gave her maids; the sort that belonged alongside a command obeyed.

“But, my lady...” He shuffles on his feet, loath to disappoint her. “Don’t you need an appointment to see His Majesty? I don’t think you can just go right in and--”

She’s already walked past him, chin held high. “He’ll see me.”

It may seem humble before the dawn, its petals as rumpled as bedsheets, drawn over its head like a child-- but when the sun casts its fiery crown over the garden, it is the convolvulus that is ascendant. It needs no dazzling pattern, no fanciful pinwheel of petal and sepal to make itself stand above its floral brethren, but only purity of color. For there is no other here that is so purely white, that has a color so simply blue. The tiger lily might roar among the plots, but it is to the convolvulus it bends, when it rises from its nightly slumber.

The little girl watches as the sleep falls from its petals, witness to its splendor. What, it asks, ruffling its delicate mane, could have made you seek me out, girl?

There is a not-insignificant portion of her life that has been spent waiting; not in the way of most of her colleagues-- for water to boil, or a titration to drip, or even for a letter of acceptance to arrive-- but for men with nothing else to recommend them but birth to decide they’re bored enough to receive the royal pharmacist. Shidan had called it fundraising and Kazaha glad-handing, but Shirayuki can admit now, as she flies past Izana’s steward, leaving him and her guard in her wake, what it really is:

Insulting.

The view always arrests her when she enters the royal solar, and this morning is no different; the sun setting, finishing its bright arc through the sky, but the angle of it, with the windows as they are-- it sets the king’s hair alight, a halo burning.

A target, she names grimly; and she the arrow. With his steward calling her name behind her, she takes a determined step toward him.

“Have you not heard then?” Izana asks, hardly bothering to look up from his papers. “I already approved your request to be excused from dinner.”

Shirayuki hauls up short, skirts swishing around her ankles. “Dinner?”

“Yes.” His brows raise, as does his gaze, already bored. “My brother already spoke about at length this morning. So if you seek to move me as well, please note that I have already stepped aside.”

“I...” She blinks. “I wasn’t here for that.”

Interest sparks in his eyes, quick as a struck match. “Then by all means, scold away. At least--” his mouth quirks, too amused-- “I assume that is your intention, marching into my office unannounced as you are.”

“Forgive me.” The steward presses a hand to his heaving breast. “Mistress Shirayuki--”

“It a force of nature,” his master replies, mouth curling like parchment corners. “So I have often had occasion to find out. You may leave us.”

“Your Majesty--” Izana merely lifts his brows, and the man stutters to a stop. “Of course. As you wish.”

“Now,” he hums as the doors close. “Just which wind sent this storm spinning into my office?”

Bound here you might be, but I know the trick of this place, the girl says, kneeing at the bed’s edge. What roots grow here touch the roots of all the morning’s glory. And you who wake with the sun-- you keep the closest watch on the horizon.

If there are any in the garden who know of my precious boy, she continues, the breeze rippling the convolvulus’s ruff. It would be you. So tell me, please...have you see him?

“It’s Obi,” she admits, heat stinging her cheeks. “I want to know the, er, status of the search.”

Izana blinks.

Oh, how kind it would be if this confusion was feigned, if it were all just a show to drag out her loyalties; to force her to admit that even if Zen was her heart, she could not turn her back on her home. That this was simply another moment where she would show him that friendship was strength, and the walls he erected himself were merely a folly.

But there is no smug satisfaction buoying his words when he asks, “The search? Didn’t Sir Obi leave my brother’s employ months ago? The beginning of the summer, I believe--”

“He didn’t quit,” Shirayuki insists, even as the seed weighs heavy between her skirts. “He disappeared, and Zen said he had put men out to search for him.”

A flower has no face, but the girl need no smile, no hooded eyes to discern the sorrowful bent of its stem.

I am but the morning’s glory, the convolvulus sighs, and when the night comes, I fold myself tight. Your boy does not pass me in my waking hours, so perhaps it is that he travels in the night.

But what does that mean? asks the girl. Why would he only travel at night? He is but a boy, a boy, and he walks in day.

The convolvulus is quiet, swaying in the garden’s eternal summer. I do not know, he admits. I do not know at all.

“Ah.” His eyes soften, no longer the unrelenting velvet of the night, but the waves of deep water, and Shirayuki finally has cause to find out: to experience Izana’s pity is a thousand times worse than his disdain. “I am not privy to the movement of my brother’s men, so long as I do not need them in attendance. He must not have put in his last report...”

“Please.” Her hand flies up between them, earning her an incredulous lift of a brow. “It only makes it worse that you are being decent about it.”

His laugh surprises her. “So you’d like me to gloat?”

“No.” Her breath saws out of her, great heaves that shake her shoulders. “I want you to grant me leave to find him.”

“You?” His brows raise, even his eyes widen, but to his credit, he does not ask, but what could you do? Instead his mask settles back over his face without a ripple, the king staring out from behind it. “It would be a waste. I have heard from your tutors that you are making good progress. Lady Mihoko even ventured to say you might make a passable princess, if you pushed out an heir fast enough.”

Her mouth twitches. Only yesterday, she would have nearly fainted with relief, but today-- “What praise.”

There’s a stern tilt to his mouth, a forbidding set to his eyebrows; if she didn’t know any better, Shirayuki would call it concern. “As I recall, our agreement did address this.”

“Then you mean...?”

“Yes.” He nods, splaying his palms across his desk, almost as if he were bracing himself. “If you leave the palace grounds, you forfeit your chance to be the one at my brother’s side. A princess leaves such things in the hands of her guardsmen--” his mouth twitches-- “and her husband.”

You want her to go, do you not? Even now you quiver at the edge of your seat, begging this little girl to open her eyes, to keep them open, to see through the illusion and run as fast as she can. You want her to leave the garden, to break through the last of this enchantment and leave safety behind.

But tell me, what would you do, with the knife quivering it in your chest? To forget it is to live with the pain. To remove it is to be free.

An easy choice, you might say. Who could live with a blade in their breast? Ah, but do not forget:

There is no way to know if the wound is fatal until the knife is removed.

“There is something I wonder, Mistress Shirayuki.”

His musings shatter the brittle silence between them; that fragile bulwark that has kept her in his skin. Now that it’s gone, she trembles, every muscle in her body fighting the urge to cross the king’s study and shake him until decency falls it.

A hopeless quest if there ever was one. “Is there something else you could possibly say to me?”

She says it sweetly; most would hear only that-- the tone rather than the content. But Izana has not sat so long on his father’s throne by being that sort of man; no, his mouth curls, amused.

“No. It’s only...” he hums, gaze lifting from his paper. “I wonder when you started to think Obi left.”

Then what do you know? the girl says, anger and bile rising in her tone. What good are you?

A flower cannot smile, but she feels teeth when it replies, I know that it will cost you, and cost you dear.

Izana might as well have struck her. Shirayuki rocks back on her heels, only just catching herself before she trips over her own hem. “I-I...what do you...?”

“When you came in here, you first talked as you had before.” Long fingers knit beneath his chin, though he does not deign to rest on them, not alert as he is. A cat before a kill, still toying with with the prey between his paws. “You insisted on his disappearance-- the implication being, of course, that you deny his own agency in his departure. Kidnapping or coercion, one might say.”

She cannot see its teeth, but Shirayuki isn’t so foolish to believe there is no trap. “Y-yes..”

“But now you come to me and ask after my men.” His mouth quirks. “You ask for my permission.”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?” she asks, fingers clenching in her skirts. “A princess wouldn’t depart without the approval of her liege.”

“Of course.” He waves a hand, as if all those rules she spent late nights learning mean nothing at all, as if they were worth less than the paper on which they had been printed. “A princess would. But you, Miss Shirayuki, you--” his eyes spark, the way she only saw that night in Lilias as he closed the gates-- “you jump from windows. You follow a flower into a cave. If you truly believed your companion in danger, I doubt there is a single promise that would keep you by my side.”

She cannot breathe, let alone hazard an answer. Not when even a flutter of an eyelash could give her away.

“Which begs the question, doesn’t it?” His gaze fixes her to where she stand, pins through a moth’s wings. “Just what reason would make him leave?”

Me? the girl cries, already thinking of her lovely red shoes, of the boat they bought her down the river. Why me?

Because my dear, the convolulus hums. It is your fault that he has left.

The doors swing open, and the steward steps inside, sparing her an infuriatingly smug glance. “Sir Lowen, Your Majesty.”

“A moment,” the king tells him, “Mistress Shirayuki and I are nearly done her.”

The man nods. “I will tell him to await your will.”

Shirayuki blinks. “What--?” It’s trial to catch her breath, to make her heart stop pounding in her breast. “What is Mitsuhide doing here?”

“You need an escort to your dinner, do you not? I thought he would be the most palatable option for you.” Izana fixes her with a meaningful look. “I do hope you find your answers, Mistress Shirayuki.”

You don’t know me. Obi’s gaze is raw in her memory, too gold. You don’t know anything about me.

You know how he is. Zen’s smile curls at the edges, brittle, like parchment pasted to vellum. Obi has always come back on his own before.

Zen will take care of it. Mitsuhide won’t meet her gaze. I’m sure Obi will be back any day now.

“Don’t worry.” It’s a miracle that the words don’t catch between her teeth, the way she’s clenching them. “I will.”

A hand wraps around a hilt. A breath shudders. And with one, swift tug--

The blade moves but an inch.

[sabraeal]

Sic Semper Monstrum, Chapter 6

[Read on AO3]

Obiyukiweek 2021, Day 2: Death Upright: Change, Ending, Release Reversed: Refusal to Change, Unfulfillment, Stagnation

A seam strains along a well-worn shoulder, so stretched he can actually hear it creak over the din of the canteen. That clinches is: that asshole’s got to be picking out too-small fatigues from the GI bin.

There’s no other way for him to look like that, biceps testing the tensile strength of cotton every time he takes a sip of his coffee. Sure, this guy’s jacked the way all the active rangers are, ready to heave 750 tons of metal onto their backs at a moment’s notice, but he’s not Mitsuhide. It makes sense when he pops buttons off his coverall, or stretches out one of their dingy cotton tees. But that’s not this asshole.

He’s lean, the kind that telegraphs that taking an elbow from him might be career limiting. There’s no reason the general issue tee should cling to his back like it’s painted on, his coverall hanging off his hips like he’s got an occupation other than freeloading. Shirayuki leans over, fingertips brushing over his sleeve with a laugh--

“Just punch him already,” Kiki drawls, “get it out of your system.”

Zen blinks, suddenly aware there’s still some Taco Tuesday left in his mouth. “What?”

“Kiki.” Dark bruises circle the skin beneath Mitsuhide’s eyes, underscoring the weary strain in his voices. “We shouldn’t be encouraging that sort of behavior.”

“Why not?” Her elbows dig into formica as she leans over her plate, shoveling rice into her mouth. At her father’s table, Kiki knows the use of every spoon, the name of every fork, but this deep in the dome, Ranger Seiran’s never met a meal she can’t inhale in five minutes flat. “I did it.”

Air hisses right through his perfect teeth, the only sign he’s annoyed besides the tense bar of his shoulders. “And you’re lucky you didn’t get caught.”

Kiki hums around the lip of her mug. “You mean like you did with Lugis?”

Mitsuhide doesn’t have skin like his, the sort that flares up like flash paper at the barest hint of sun or taunting. But still his neck flushes red as a burn, so bright Zen’s half tempted to slap it, just so he knows what it’s like.

“T-that was an accident,” he insists, even as his mouth settles into a satisfied smile. “Even the inquiry said so.”

It’s a struggle to keep his own from curling at the edges. “Only because Lugis didn’t want to press charges.”

“Only because he didn’t want it getting out that a girl ran circles around him on the mat,” Kiki corrects, each word a scalpel’s slice, excising those particulars from that shitshow with surgical precision. They can talk about this; Lugis’s challenge and the way Kiki swept him; that he was hardly on his feet when Mitsuhide somehow mislaid his fist and found it in his face, but everything else, the whys of it--

Those are all off the record. Forever. Or at least they would be, if Lugis wasn’t crawling through the dome like a stoat that’s caught whiff of an egg.

But that’s not what this is about. “And you want me to do that with that asshole?” Zen mutters. “Since it made Mitsuhide such good friends with Lugis, after all.”

“Obi isn’t Hisame,” Kiki informs him with the kind of steel in her tone that suggests she won’t be taking critique on that particular assessment. “All your issues with him are external.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he snaps, teeth gritting down.

It’s a mistake, a rookie one at that: never ask a Seiran a question you don’t want the answer to. “He’s got Shirayuki’s attention and you don’t.”

Mitsuhide clears his throat, shoulders set like Zen better plan to shelter in place. This particular storm isn’t about to hit its usual conversational breakwall. “Attention you’d have, if you hadn’t skipped out on your session.”

Zen grips the table to take that hit. But it’s not nearly the last; the stare Kiki turns to him is wide-eyed, half-betrayed. “You didn’t say anything about that.”

���It’s none of your business.” Even as the words fly from him, he knows it’s not fair, that he’s spitting nails into the wind so that they’ll hurt someone else instead of him. It doesn’t stop him, it never does, but a guilty knot settles in his gut. “The sessions are voluntary. They always have been. I don’t need--”

“Someone to keep your head on straight?” Every syllable snaps like ice, her eyes twice as cold. “That was the whole point, wasn’t it? So if something happens to us, you’d have--”

He can’t listen to this, not another word. “That was never the plan! I would never plan for you guys...”

Not coming back. For Redwood Dancer to be left a ruin on the sea floor, their bodies strapped in, hermetically sealed until the ocean wore the jaeger down to parts.

“Nothing is happening to you guys,” he grits out. “Shirayuki was always an addition, not a-- a replacement, because you’ll never--”

“No one can promise that.” Mitsuhide’s never one to throw a first punch, but oh, does he know how to end a fight. All the breath’s knocked clean out of him, and there’s Dancer’s right hand, shoveling down another bite of rice like it’s nothing. “Every time we go out there it’s a flip of a coin. It doesn’t matter how good we are, one day there’s going to be a kaiju that kicks us clean off our feet.”

He shakes his head, wishing the words would fall right out of them. “No. That’s not--”

“Zen.” He’s never heard a siren’s call, but it can’t be as inexorable as Mitsuhide saying his name in that tone, both firm and pitying and mournful all at once. “You know better than anyone. Rangers don’t grow old.”

There’s no thought when he levers himself up from the table, just up with away chasing its heels. He just can’t be here listening to this, not now, not after they just barely crawled home from another kaiju clawing its way across Korea’s shoreline. Not when he knows he should be fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with them-- that he would be if they stopped trying to saddle him with every rookie that rolled out of the simulator and finally put him with the only person that could fill that brace beside him.

“Zen!”

It’s easy to ignore Mitsuhide’s shout over the dinner rush; it’s just part of the noise, a buzz at the edge of his senses. Something to goad him, to push him out of there before either of them think to follow after. Their pity’s the last thing he needs, the last thing he wants. After all, it’s not him that won’t climb in the Conn-Pod, but his--

“Boss!”

Zen blinks, the empty corridor resolving around him. He’d let his feet carry him, their only imperative away-- and now he’s all turned around, every bulkhead the same. He’s heard about this happening to rangers when they lived in the dome too long; chasing the Minotaur, a ranger called it, three drinks down at the local hangar. And no fine little princess to give you string to find your way out.

Except he did have one of those. A person to help him through the labyrinth, even if she couldn’t show him the way. He’d been avoiding her.

That seems stupid now. It’s not like she’s on that asshole’s--

“Hey! Hey, boss.”

Speak of the devil. Zen turns, and there he is, too-tight t-shirt and all: his own personal problem. “What do you want?”

“Nothing.” He holds out his hands, as if that’s proof enough to clear him of ulterior motives. “I just...saw you head out and it looked like...”

Zen’s shoulders square, body braced like they’re back on the mat. “Looked like what?”

Obi’s breath rushes out of him. “It looked like you shouldn’t be alone.”

It’s not until he lifts his hand that he realizes it’s trembling, barely able to push his bangs back where he needs them. “Yeah? And you thought-- what? I’d want to see you?” Even to his own ears, his laugh is bitter, wrong, like it came from someone else’s mouth. “You, the guy who won’t get out of my way?”

Something ripples across this asshole’s face, too fast for him to catch more than its wake. “You think I’m the stick stuck in the mud here?” When those strange cat’s eyes stare at him, it’s out of placid waters, but that grin on his face-- it doesn’t reach them. “Rock, meet hard place.”

Zen’s hands clench, so hard his knuckles creak. “You think this is a joke? You’re trying to shove your ass in a seat that isn’t for you, and you--”

“You think I want to be out there?” He lets out a bark somewhere between pitying and derisive, arms folding over his chest. Zen takes special care not to check how stressed his seams are. “I did my time, Your Highness. I got out. I got told no one would ever look for me again.”

“Then why are you here?” Zen spits. “No one wants you.”

“You don’t know how true I wish that was.” A hand pulls at his shoulder, long fingers digging in around the blade. “But your brother dragged me down the coast because I’m not done. I’ll never be done, because I can’t sit on the sidelines and watch Snotju or Head Banger or whatever cosmic asshole crawls out of the rift wreck another wall.”

His hand lifts, scrubbing through the bristle of his hair, just a shade too shaggy to be regulation. “It’s fucked up, isn’t it, Master? I’m the one who doesn’t want to be here, but I’m the one who’s got the balls to get back in that jaeger. And you--” a cold gaze rakes over him-- “you’re content to sit there and watch the world burn just because I’m not--”

“Shut up.” He’s trembling, every muscle straining against his self-control. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know a goddamn thing--”

“I’ve been in your head,” that asshole reminds him. “I know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“You don’t.” He can’t. “You don’t fucking know a thing about me.”

He cocks a hip, grin loaded like a bullet. “The prove it.”

Kiki’s right: in the instant where his knuckles hit that cut-glass cheekbone, Zen feels great.

Shirayuki’s office has always put him at ease; he stepped in here the first time before she’d even properly covered the walls, the tension seeping right out of him into the push carpet under his boots. There’s just something about how she fills a space-- something that has nothing to do with furniture or wall hangings or motivational posters-- that makes his brain put out whatever chemical that means safe. He’d never understood why the other rangers avoided her, not when they could have forty minutes in the room equivalent of a warm hug.

But it’s different this time.

“Izana made you call me here.” He’s ramrod straight on her worn couch, hands clenched in his lap. Or rather, right over the throw pillow he moved to sit. “Didn’t he?”

“The Marshal’s personal feelings have nothing to do with this.” Her words snap like a window on a sill, closing on that topic with a sense of finality he expected from the top brass, not their therapist. “The PPDC’s code of conduct is quite clear on the procedure to be followed after a non-sanctioned physical altercation between personnel.”

There’s a loose thread right by the fringe; he’d noticed it months ago, but never dared to tug it. Every time he’d felt the urge, he’d think of dominoes and load-bearing pillars, of the whole edge unraveling in his hands right as she looked at him.

Today, he pulls. It comes right off with a snap. “And that’s the only reason you brought me in?“

Shirayuki turns to him, one incredulous brow raised. “You were the one who cancelled our last session--” her mouth twitches as she twists the knife-- “last minute.”

Well, he deserves that one. Sure, he’s had his reasons, but Shirayuki-- well, she deserved more than one step up from ghosting. If the thought of having to look anyone in the eye after all that hadn’t made his stomach turn for three days, maybe he would have come to that conclusion before Kiki ripped him a new one over it.

“Sorry about that,” he mutters, aware with every word that it’s not enough, that there’s not enough apologies to patch up the trust he broke. “I wasn’t...ready to talk.”

He expects the clap back; yeah I got the message, or but you were ready to take a swing? But he should have known: that’s not how Shirayuki works. She’s a professional, whether that’s what he wants from her or not.

Instead he face softens, right back into his friend. “I know. What happened in the drift can be...intense.” She hesitates, teeth sinking into the plush bow of her lip. “I just wish that you had felt comfortable conveying that to me. As my patient, you’re supposed to be able to control--”

“I don’t want to be your patient.”

Her mouth closes with a grunt, hand pressed to her stomach as if he hit her. “O-oh,” she murmurs, breathless. “I hadn’t realized that you, ah, wanted to terminate our sessions--”

“No!” God, it would be nice to be able to say this all smooth like he’s sure that jacked asshole can, leaning against a wall with his hand right by her head, sexual tension rocking the Richter scale. “I just meant--” his teeth try to grind down his thoughts into something palatable-- “Shirayuki, I don’t want to just be your patient.”

He could fall into her eyes they’re so wide, rounded ‘o’s that match her mouth’s geometry. “Ah, Zen, that’s...”

“I don’t mean because I-I like you.” Even though he does, but there’s rules for that. The kind the PPDC will look the other way on, but not Shirayuki. She’s not from under the dome; she still worries about what people might think outside of it. “I just...wish you were on my side.”

“I am on your side.” Her shoulders pull straight against the back of her chair, her soft look hardening into resolve. “Which is different from telling you want you want to hear.”

He jerks back, cheeks stinging like he’d been slapped. “I didn’t say I wanted that,” he mumbles, hands clenching over his lap. “But I don’t need you to tell me to do whatever it is Izana wants me to either.”

“I wasn’t going to.” The notebooks in her lap closes with a snap, and with trembling fingers, she sets aside her shield. “Izana wants you back in a jeager for the legacy. For the unbroken line of Wisterias standing between humanity and the rift. But I...”

Her eyes lift to his, and they’re no longer the lush, leafy green of a forest, but the hard glint of emerald. “If you get back in that cockpit, you need to do it for yourself.”

It’s an effort not to say, I don’t see the difference.

“I saw you when the siren went off.”

Zen scrubs a hand over his face; he remembers. Their eyes had met over that seething mass of fear and competence, and-- and he’d been so sure that if he saw her, something more than that glimpse of red in the corner of his vision, he’d forget every inch of his resolve and go to her. That he’d just take her in his arms and tell her all the thoughts roiling in the sea of his mind, but--

But he hadn’t. He’s taken one look at her and, without even a pang of guilt, left her there. A real hero.

“Zen.” She says his name so firmly, so seriously, that his head jerks up, gaze tangling with hers. “You don’t want to be on the sidelines. You don’t want to be the general hiding being his troops. You want to be out there, Rex Tyrannis shoulder-to-shoulder with Redwood Dancer. And you could be.”

It’s his breath that’s rasping, the death rattle of the man he’s let himself be these past few years. “How?”

There’s not an ounce of hesitation in her when she says. “You have to choose to move forward.”

And cozy up in the cockpit with that asshole. He thinks about that grin, cocked with a confidence he’s never been in the neighborhood of having, and...

It’s so familiar that his double vision makes his head pound. “I can’t work with that-- Obi. I won’t.”

“I know that...” Her lips press together, bursting apart with a pop. “I know there’s no limit to the amount of people a ranger could potentially drift with, but there’s something...special when you find the right one. That there’s something right about it than can’t ever be replaced.”

He stares, head galloping in his chest. She shouldn’t know that-- there’s no way she could. Most rookies out of the academy just drift successfully once, and that’s it-- that’s their partner, for better or worse, like marrying the first kid you kiss. There’s exceptions-- emergencies, injury, irreconcilable differences-- but even though this job has a high turnover...rangers rarely die alone. There’s not enough people for a paper.

“Yeah, I’ve...heard that too.” Probably from the same mouth she did, though it seems Mitsuhide’s polished the speech since he last gave it. To him, at least.

“I understand that you have a vision of who you want beside you in the pod,” Shirayuki presses, voice growing tighter, more tense with every word. “But Atri’s gone.”

Every drop of blood in him turns to ice. “Atri?”

Her breath hisses out through her teeth, relief slumping her shoulders. “I know no one can be him, but--”

���You think this is about Atri?” A giggle bubbles up from him, bitter on his tongue. “I’ve been sitting here for weeks-- no, months! And you think all this, the whole reason I won’t climb in a jaeger with just anyone off the street is because of Atri?”

Every corner of her face lost. “Isn’t it?”

“No, I...” He pinches the bridge of his nose, like it might stem the pounding of his heart behind his brow. This whole time he’d been so careful, trying to be understood for once, to let someone see him instead of his mistakes--

But he should have known; as long as his brother is obsessed with sending him an endless parade of nobodies which he sits behind a desk, it’ll only be his hang ups hung out for everyone to rifle through.

“I should go,” he finally manages, levering himself to his feet. The room spins, his heartbeat thrumming in his ears, but he can’t stay here, not when she thinks-- when she’s always thought--

“Zen,” she murmurs, voice muffled by distance. “Are you all right?”

--That he’s pathetic. “Yeah.” He stumbles to the door, swinging it open. “I just need to--”

And of course, standing right there is that asshole, hand half-raised to knock.

“Boss,” he breathes, clearly stunned. “I, uh, didn’t think you’d be...”

The awkwardness in the office is palpable, so thick that he might as well be moving through molasses. Before this guy showed up, he’d though he had half a chance; he was practically the only one outside of K-Science that would even look at her, and his sessions always felt like more, but now--

Well, it’s no wonder he didn’t stand half a chance next to him, if she thought he was waiting for Atri.

“Don’t worry about it.” Zen pushes back him, shoulder clipping his. Or at least near enough to claim the feat. “I’d hate to keep you two from your--” date-- “dinner plans.”

Shirayuki’s breath gasps from her. “Zen, wait, we’re not--”

“It’s fine,” he lies, every muscle tense where he stands, fighting the urge to look back. “A couple of things are clearer now.”

It’s not just her. They all think he’s waiting for him, that one day he might stroll back in here like nothing happened, and Zen--

“Please.” Shirayuki’s voice trembles, and even if he’s not looking, he knows she’s at the door, vibrating in its frame. “Let’s just finish the session.”

-- and Zen’s been giving them nothing else to work with. All these years, looking like a kid stood up on prom night.

“No, I just remembered there’s something I’ve got to do.” He forces a smile on his face, giving her a bare hint of it as he peeks over his shoulder. “I’ll see you next week.”

It kills him how much hope lights in her eyes. “Next week?”

“That our appointment, isn’t it?” he says, light tone limping. “Unless I see you around the dome before then.”

“Right,” she breathes, cheeks flushed at both corners of her smile. Obi’s watching her, concern writ large in his eyes, and well-- maybe he’s not as much of an asshole as Zen wanted to believe. “Until then.”

He gets halfway down the hall, before Obi calls out, “Hey, boss...”

It’s clear when he looks back that Obi hadn’t meant to speak, but now that he has, he clear his throat, giving himself a visible shake.

“You could come with us,” he says, hesitant. “If you wanted.”

It’s an olive branch, one he doesn’t deserve. One he should take, if he wants all this to heal over without a scar. But he’s not ready for that, not yet.

“No.” He shakes head. “I wasn’t joking about having something I got to do. Go enjoy yourselves.”

This is a terrible idea.

He knows it the entire time he’s walking, the anxiety cresting the second he sees the plate on the door, engraved and letters painted black: IZANA WISTERIA. MARSHAL.

“Well,” Izana hums from his desk. “Are you going pace outside my office all day, or are you planning to come in?”

Zen lets out a rush of breath and pushes the door open the rest of the way.

“You win,” he says, all in a rush. “I’ll do it. I’ll give him another chance.”

“I think at this point, he’s giving you another chance,” Izana tells him, barely glancing up from his pile of papers. “But...I’ll arrange it.”

He nearly says, I figured you’d have it all arranged already, but bites it back. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure. And Zen.” His brother looks up, capping his pen calmly before he folds his hands over the desk. “It’s not me who wins. It’s humanity.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, meeting that steely gaze. “But I’m not doing it for them.”

For once, his brother doesn’t have anything to say.

It’s Obi who’s locked in first this time.

His cheeky smile is already waiting when Zen steps on deck, body gripped by Rex Tyrannis’s hydraulics when he throws him a wink. “Second time’s the charm, right Your Highness?”

“Third time,” Zen mutters, keying in his code. “It’s third time’s the charm.”

“Right, but you were top of your class.” A guy like Obi shouldn’t be so comfortable when he’s got twenty tons pinning him in place, not when he’s got a face just asking to be hit. “So we can shave one of those off, right?”

“Depends.” His mouth twitches. “Where did you rank?”

Obi’s grin grows stiff enough to float. “I think you’d say I’m a natural talent.”

“That bad huh?”

A laugh saws out of him, raw in the loud silence of the pod. “You have no idea.”

“I think I could take a guess.” The hydraulics hug Zen tight; even lifting to his arm to the panel is a chore. “Ready?”

“For you?” Obi’s mouth stretches into a leer.  For once, he feels like he’s in on the joke. “Any time.”

Don’t chase the rabbit. It’s Obi’s voice that says it; not the way he had before, serious and concerned, a scolding and a reminder. No, this one is a laugh restrained, sing-song. One pill makes you big and one makes you small.

There’s a faint riff of guitar, and Zen’s about to tell him to can it, that putting trash in the drift just clogged up the flow, but--

But between one breath-- one blink and the next, he’s lost in the tide, rolling through his memories rudderless. When a hand grips his shoulder and--

“I’m ready.” Zen’s always too honest, too eager but he’s young here, younger than he ever remembers being wearing the badge. “To pick up the legacy. To be what father meant us to be.”

The memory runs true, his younger self still chatting away with Shidnote, unaware that his whole world’s about to be cut off at the knees. But he’s not watching that now, he’s watching the way shadows crawl across his brother’s face, a storm front that appears and vanishes in the moments no one looks.

“About that.” Izana settles his hand on the desk, but the drumming is no longer bored but...nervous. An asynchronous beat that runs at the speed of his thoughts. “I meant to tell you. I’m being promoted.”

“Promoted” The word still kicks his legs out from under him, still knocks the wind out of his lungs as efficiently as any punch to the gut. “But I thought we would--”

“They want me in a command capacity now that Mother’s taking over Anchorage.” Izana won’t look at him. The man who has built his career on being able to stare down Orochi in Sagami Bay can’t bear to look him in the eye. “I’m being taken off active duty.”

“But--” He looks between them. “But--”

“But--”

“But--”

The memory stutters. It’s him, he’s the one who’s pushing away. He’d always thought he couldn’t give this to someone, to some guy right off the street, someone who might pity him, but it’s-- it’s him. He can’t look at this. He can’t face failure another time.

And he doesn’t know how to stop.

Hey. Obi’s voice is too close, but he’s just an outline in the drift, blues and grays fuzzing between misfiring synapses. Hey, we don’t have to watch this.

They do. They have to, if he’s going to get through this.

Right. There’s no way for Obi to sigh here, where there’s no air, but he does, long and loud. It sounds...different. Almost...feminine. I have worse. Want to see me wet the bed when I was--?

The words fuzz before they can continue. Go ahead, Obi says, sounding like himself. Take as much time as you need. It’s not like we have clocks here.

Zen can’t nod here, not without a body, but he breathes, one solid in and out--

“It’s supposed to be us.” Even with the distance of time, every word is carves straight from his flesh, laid out on a platter for his brother to see. “We’re supposed to carry on the legacy.”

“Shidnote will continue on in his current capacity,” Izana explains, bored, as if he didn’t even speak. “He’s served me well. I’m sure you’ll both be sufficiently compatible.”

“But--” Zen grits his teeth. “It’s supposed to be us. Why are you giving me an excuse--?

He blinks. He never said that. He’d been thinking it the whole way to his bunk, but in the moment it had only been a yes sir. I understand, sir.

Then why--

“It’s an excuse.” The shine’s all worn off Atri’s grin, baring the raw edge beneath. “That’s all I’ve ever been to you.”

Scrap litters the floor at his feet; he’s never known what jaeger-grade parts sold for on the black market, but he knows it’s not pocket money. This is a small fortune if someone knew where to sell it.

Which clearly Atri does.

“You’re going to blame me?” Zen’s laugh limps with bitterness. “I catch you with stolen goods, and it’s my--?”

“It’s not stolen, it’s salvage,” Atri snaps, snatching a length of steel from his hands. “It’s not like they’re using it.”

A lie-- there’s not a shred of steel or wire that’s wasted in the dome. Jaegars come with a price tag that only governments can pay, and any corner that can be safely cut on maintenance is considered savings passed onto tax payers. There’s no way he can’t know it, not after six months, but--

He doesn’t care. He never did.

“This is why you agreed to be my copilot.” Every word aches as he births them from his lips, a truth that cuts even as he speaks it. “You didn’t care about protecting your friends. You just wanted access to parts.”

Atri shrugs, the barest twitch of his shoulders. “I never said I gave a single fuck about all that hero shit. You just assumed I did, because you do.”

“But the drift...” His breath wheezes, the way it did when he was a kid, before his dad paid for all that to be fixed. “How did you...?”

“I just thought about the stuff you cared about. Friends. Kaiju. Me.” Atri’s grin turns smug. “Some of us don’t wear our heart on our sleeves, Wisteria.”

Wow. Obi’s outline fuzzes as he circles behind Atri, a single brow raised. He’s a real fucknut, huh?

His memories are jumbles, him-now and him-then all tumbled together until his first instinct is to jump to Atri’s defense. He may not be an academy-trained ranger, someone who has a lifetime worth of experience in a simulator, but put him in Rex Tyrannis and he’ll--

Steal the toilet cover? Obi offers, mouth canting into that insufferable grin. The one that always reminded him of--

Ah.

Obi darts a glance to where Atri stands frozen beside him. Jeeze, you really know how to hit a guy where he lives. You think I look like this asshole?

Just the grin, really. He’s almost a head taller, broader in the shoulders, and Asian besides. Better looking too--

Obi’s smile stretches into a leer. You don’t say, bossman?

Maybe Atri’s right. He’s got to get better about what he thinks about in the drift. Especially with someone this insufferable around.

If anything, Obi’s more amused. So it’s this guy though, he’s whole hold up you have with me? It’s not--

Against his will, Atri springs to life, mouth curled into his nastiest sneer when he says “I don’t know why you’re acting so betrayed. After all, you only wanted me to get back at the Marshal, and I played my part, didn’t I? I’m sure he’d jump in the pod if that meant he could be rid of me.”

“That’s not--” true, he should say. He can’t though, not when he’s not this-Zen, when he’s just looking out from his eyes, straight into Obi’s.

“Yeah.” There’s no spit to swallow in the drift, but he does anyway, a force of habit. “It is.”

The memory fuzzes away from him, and it’s just them now, two men braced in the Conn-pod, staring at each other through their visors.

“Right hemisphere, calibrated.” Zen blinks, watching as his hand opens and closes, the robotic voice’s dulcet tones washing over him.

“I never wanted this, you know,” he murmurs, “not if it wasn’t with my brother. That’s how it was supposed to be, me and him versus the kaiju.”

“Left hemisphere, calibrated.” His arms seem to move on his own, and it’s strange how he can’t keep the smile off his face this time. It feels good, moving like this again.

“No,” he breathes. “It was supposed to be me and him versus the world.”

“Ready to activate the jeager.“

Obi’s arms lift, a fighting stance to mirror his. It’s easy, so easy. Easier than he ever thought it could be. “What changed?”

He’d shrug, if the hydraulics would let him, but this isn’t Redwood Dancer. “Seemed like a shitty reason not to save the world.”

“Calibration complete.”

Obi grins, teeth shining bright under the lights of his visor. “Doc tell you that?”

Zen laughs. “Pretty much.”

“She’s got a gift,” Obi agrees, hands moving in sync with his. “And it’s making you feel like an asshole.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Looks like you jokers are getting along,” Kiki deadpans through their helmets. “How do you feel about taking Rex out for a drag?”

“After being cramped under this dome for months, Princess?” Obi drawls, tossing him a conspiratorial wink. “It’d be my pleasure.”

“Just give us a sec!” It’s been a long time since Zen’s talked much with the crew in CIC, but he recognizes that voice-- Yuzuri, one of Shirayuki’s friends. The peppy one with the cute accessories. The one that told him she’d give him cement shoes if he made her cry. “Let’s see if we can get you off your leash.”

He’d always liked her. Hopefully the feeling’s mutual, since she’s right next to the plug.

“Hey, boss.”

Zen blinks, glancing across the cockpit. “Yeah?”

“I know Atri was supposed to be a big fuck you to His Majesty, but...” He hesitates, thoughtful. “You drifted with the Big Guy for a while after that. Why?”

“Ah--”

It’s impossible not to think of it, the siren rising in the air, the men running past them, voices drowned out by the drone.

“I’ll do it,” he says, glaring up at the man across from him. “At least you know you’re just a seat warmer.”

“Zen--”

He blinks, the memory stuttering beneath him. That’s not what Mitsuhide called him then, that wasn’t until after--

“Zen.”

That’s not inside the memory, that’s inside his helmet. “Mitsuhide?”

“You’re out of alignment.”

He shakes his head, uncomprehending. “What do you--?”

“You’re out of alignment.” He repeats, each words strained. “You both chased the rabbit, and...Obi went straight down the rabbit hole.”

It doesn’t make any sense. “But I--”

“You have to go get him,” Mitsuhide says, dire. “He’s pointing the plasma cannon at Mission Control.”

[sabraeal]

Rarely Pure & Never Simple, Chapter 7

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Obiyukiweek 2020, Day 4: Free Day

The air still smells like freesia and vanilla as Shirayuki returns from her shower, scrubbed clean and with the thinnest pajamas she can muster. Even now the heat’s starting to settle on her skin, turning her post-shower dew into regular summer sweat, and oh, she needs to get that fan oscillating stat, before she stews in her own juices like some Shirayuki-flavored pulled pork.

She settles on the bed, flapping out a hand to turn it on and--

Ugh, it’s just...pushing hot air around, at this point. Maybe if she’s sweats through another set of pajamas tonight, she’ll be able to convince Nanna she needs an AC unit in her window.

(Her room-- back when it was her mother’s-- had a unit, but after an unfortunate incident that involved her father, a thwarted clandestine encounter, and a hole in the garage roof, the replacement instead went into the kitchen, where it’s lived every summer until it malfunctioned and froze to the sill. Grandad’s replaced it since, but still-- it’s never returned to her window. Of all the sins of her mother Shirayuki’s had to answer for, this one is hands down the worst.

“Really?” Obi laughs, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the hem of his shirt. She sees the barest hint of abdominals and suddenly, the orientation packet isn’t half as engaging as it was before. “Not the whole...’grandparents convinced their first great grandchild will pop out before graduation’ thing?”

“To be fair,” she manages, breath thin as the worn fabric drops back over her current distraction. “The point was pretty much moot until, um...”

Oh, that-- that grin is trouble. “Until you climbed on top of me and made me come hard enough to go blind?”

He really, really doesn’t need to say it like-- like that. “S-something like that.”)

She’s ready to just call it a day at this point-- and nearly does. Rolling up onto her side, she reaches for the cord to her lamp--

Buzz. Buzz.

Shirayuki blinks. That’s...that’s her phone.

She’s tempted to ignore it-- she does not need Kihal speculating about what her and Obi could get up to in the woods “all unsupervised” tomorrow, and Obi should still--

 9:12, her phone reads. His shift at the club is over, and by now he’s probably--

Home. Texting her. 

Shirayuki nearly drops her phone straight down the crack between her bed and nightstand, and oh jeez, it would be nice if she could just...calm down for once. Be cool.

It buzzes again. She yelps, trying to flick the screen on with a wild shake. She can save being cool for another day. One where she’s seen him more than once in two weeks.

hey, the text reads, nestled in its innocuous gray bubble, we should talk

Shirayuki experiences something that could medically be called an event. Is he upset? Has she done something--?

not a bad talk, he clarifies, just miss you

She rolls onto her back with a smile, thumbs poking at the screen to say, i miss you t--

mebbe a sexy talk tho ;3 i *rlly* miss u

:|

is that for the sexy or the bad grammar

Both.

She catches the call on the first ring, barely having time for a breath before Obi drawls, “You weren’t complaining about sexy things two weeks ago.”

With all the dignity of a mathlete champion, Shirayuki replies, “Hnn?”

(”Eek!” She yanks the controller up, to the side, anywhere that might help move her character away from giant beetle on the screen. “How do I--? Where do I--?”

Obi’s chest makes a hollow thunk when she rams into it. He coughs; it takes her a full, frantic second to realize it’s to cover a laugh.

“You know,” he murmurs, plucking the controller out of her hands, “joycons don’t have motion sensors.”

“I don’t know,” she returns primly, folding her legs back down over the edge of the bed. “And also you told me this game was easy.”

“Rune Factory is easy.” His mouth twitches. “Half the game is farming.”

“And the other half is fighting...whatever those things are.” She waves at the screen, scowling at the RETRY? stamped across it. “Which is hard.”

“It’s not,” He leans back, setting the controller on his nightstand. “You could even say...”

His arm hooks around her waist, dragging her on top of him. “...It’s as easy as I am.”

Her breath rasps out of her, and oh god, she can feel his dick pressing up against her thigh, so hard already. “You’re not making me feel very accomplished.”

“Well,” his fingernails scrape up the back of her legs, “we can fix that.”)

“You were very enthusiastic,” he remarks casually, “from what I remember.”

“Mm, well.” Two could play at this game...maybe. “It was two weeks ago.”

She may not be able to see him, but she can feel his grimace through the wire. Or well, the air? Wifi? Shirayuki wasn’t really up on how phones worked past the Edison era. It’s not like they ask how cell phones work on the SATs.

“Sorry,” he sighs, pillow audibly whumping over the receiver. “I know I warned you, but I really thought we’d have had more time to talk.”

“It’s okay.” She squirms against her sheets, fighting a shrug he can’t see. “I...I missed you, but I know how much the hours mean to you.”

“I missed you too.” His voice is so soft, so vulnerable, so unlike the boy who made her miss auditions a year ago. “I’m glad we’ll see each other tomorrow.”

“Me too,” she breathes, and oh, it doesn’t seem soon enough. Not when she wants to wrap her arms around him, lay her head on his chest and just listen to him breathe. “You could--”

Come over. Her teeth snap down on the offer. Sure, it’d be nothing for him to hop up to the garage roof, for her to leave the window open--

But that’s how she got here, and nope, no. Not happening.

“--come pick me up tomorrow?” she squeaks out instead, cheeks burning. There’s no way he won’t know she meant something else, that she was avoiding--

“What? Don’t want to be smooshed in the backseat of Big Guy’s swagger wagon?” She can hear the smirk on his lips. “I thought you were looking forward to it.”

“I don’t think Mitsuhide would appreciate you calling his minivan that,” she informs him primly, not a laugh in sight. It’s a feat only achieved by the judicious application of her teeth to her cheeks. “And I was! I mean, I am. It’s just...”

“Big Guy gives priority seating based on height?”

Well, that’s definitely part of it. With all five of them, she’s always left in the back seat, alone, and Obi--

“Gotta say, looking forward to all that leg room,” he drawls, “and getting an airbag all to myself. You think he’ll let me at the aux cable?”

“Never.”

“Aww.” Shirayuki knows he’s pouting; a full-on, little kid lip wibble. “You’re my girlfriend, you’re supposed to be on my side.”

“You know what you did.” A two hour meme mix on the way to Laxdo. “Besides, I just thought it would be better if we, um, had some time to ourselves. Before.”

“Oh?” he hums, so curious, and-- oh, it doesn’t usually take him this long to pick up on when she’s trying to, um, tell him something. “I figured you wouldn’t mind since we’d have all day-- oh.” There it is. “You mean alone.”

“W-well, it’s been two weeks,” she hedges nervously. “And I’m not saying I couldn’t, um, behave--”

“Yeah, I’ll pick you up.” The words come out fast, pinched. Maybe she’s being too pushy; Obi likes to tease, but that doesn’t mean he’s always in the mood to-- “I’m definitely not going to be able to keep my hands to myself.”

“O-oh.” Well. That’s hitting different tonight. Maybe because it’s already over ninety, and her temp is climbing with it. Or maybe because she’s only wrapped up in the thinnest, most barely-there clothes she has; the kind he could rip like tissue paper--

Or maybe because it’s been two weeks, and despite going eighteen years without needing any sexual contact, she’s as tragically hard up as a teen comedy protagonist.

“I didn’t know you were...in a bind.” His voice drops to a rumble, and ah, that is not helping the situation. Her thighs slip against each other, trying to dull the ache. “You know I’m always happen to lend a hand when you need it, kid.”

“It not that bad,” she murmurs, but it’s starting to get there the longer he talks. The more she thinks about him showing up tomorrow, just them alone in her house-- “And you didn’t have time to come over.”

“I don’t need to come over.” He’s laughing, but there’s something in it that’s more, that’s almost a purr. “Come on, kid, I gave you those earphones for a reason. Hands free.”

“O-oh.” She’s all too aware of them now, clipped over her ears. Her hand’s only holding the screen out of habit. Hands free.

“I mean, if you’re really hard up,” he hums, “we could do something about it now. Take the edge off.”

She-- she shouldn’t. “Obi! You don’t really mean...?”

“Absolutely. I’d really like to--” his voice cracks,and oh, oh-- “it’s been so long since I made you come, babe.”

(”Well, that’s the last vote for Dreamiest Hair,” Shirayuki sighs, her flyaways dancing at the edge of her vision. “What’s the next category?”

Kihal glances down and grins. “Sexiest Voice.”

She gapes. “Is Mrs Gazalt really going to let us give out an award for that?”

“Mrs Gazalt takes her position of club supervisor very seriously,” Kihal informs her, “and by that I mean, she sits in the corner playing Words with Friends and just lets us do what we want, as long as it isn’t dangerous. Or illegal.”

“Still.” Her mouth pulls tight, a grim line across her face. If the rest of the club could see her now, her Cutest Smile win would be revoked. “That seems, I don’t know...”

“Like it wouldn’t be a contest? I know.” Kihal shrugs. “But that’s what the freshmen picked. I guess they’re just really hoping Obi will growl through his whole acceptance speech.”

“No, I-- wait, Obi?” Her mouth is dry suddenly. She crosses her legs beneath the table. “Why would--? Obi?”

Kihal rolls her eyes. “Oh come on, you’ve heard him over the headset. He’s got that whole like, gravel thing going on. And when he gets heated with someone, like that time with Raj, hoo--” she fans herself-- “I know you have a thing for Zen, but like, I still don’t know how you didn’t jump him.”

Her cheeks burn, painfully. “I-I don’t-- that’s not--”

“Come on, Shirayuki,” she clucks, rolling her eyes. “You have ears. That couldn’t have done nothing for you.”

At the time she’d been so mortified that Raj had not only followed her to the place that was supposed to be her escape, but that he’d brought up what happened, like it didn’t even bother him--

Well, sex had been the last thing on her mind. At least the actual, arousing kind. But now, now--

Listen, I’m sure you have a lot to say but I really can’t-- his voice breaks, and the phantom pressure of his fingers weighs on her lips-- I was supposed to have your back, and I fucked up. I know it doesn’t make up for what happen but I-- his breath rasps from his throat, so raw that hers hurts in sympathy-- I’m sorry.

--she gets it.

“Right, um--” it’s hard to think with her face so hot-- “we should still count the votes anyway.”)

(He wins in a landslide. His acceptance speech at the drama banquet is so suggestive that he ends up with half a dozen panties shoved into his pockets. They tumble out of his jacket when he leans over the console to kiss her, right over the stick shift and onto her lap.

What am I gonna do with a bunch of ladies underwear? he’d murmured against her lips, fingers toying at the strap of her gown, earning her own personal vote. You need any, kid?)

“O-okay.”

“Wha-what?” She winces at the loud bang over the speakers, followed by a softer, more distant “Fuck.”

“Ah, is everything--?”

“Fine,” Obi assures her, sounding like maybe some of his limbs are out of order. “Just...dropped my phone. I didn’t...are you sure?”

Her fingers clench in her sheets. “Yes. I just...don’t really know how to start.”

“Well.” His voice drops playfully low. “Are you in the position?”

“Is the position laying down?” she asks, nervous. “Because I’m laying down.”

He tries to smother it, but she would know his laugh anywhere. “Yeah, great. Good. You’re ready?”

Shirayuki squirms against her pillow, legs rubbing together so hard they should chirp, like some sort of horny cricket. “I guess...”

Obi doesn’t hide his laugh now, just lets it rumble out from his chest in a way that is...not helping. Or maybe it is, considering the whole...situation. “You guess?”

“I just--” am terrified-- “don’t understand.”

He grunts, and by the sound of rustling in her ears, gets comfortable. “What’s holding you up?”

Everything. “It’s better if we just wait isn’t it? I mean to do this, um...”

In person. With someone who knows how to touch her, instead of her fumbling around and showing just how bad at all this sexy stuff she can be.

“This involves sexy talking, doesn’t it?” If distress is a destination, then she’s already laid out a lawn chair and ordered a drink from the cabana. She’s hopeless when her speeches are planned and PG, let alone when she’s trying to improv and it’s about-- about-- “Do I have to talk about penises?”

He makes an ungodly noise. “Kid.”

“I just don’t think I have the experience to talk about them with any sort of authority,” she presses on, brain undaunted by how ridiculous she sounds. “Especially if I’m also supposed to be doing...other things. It’s really--”

“Shirayuki--” he says her name so soft, so fond, and she knows, she knows-- “you should learn how to do it yourself, too.”

--that he’s seen right through her.

“I don’t see why,” she mumbles stubbornly, fidgeting with the hem of her shorts. “You’re going to Lyrias too. Your room is in the building next door, and it’s connected to mine! I don’t really think I need to learn how to-- to--” she whines, the words sticking in her throat-- “this!”

“Kid.” He heaves a sigh, and even though she’s dying from the mortification of Being Known, it sends shivers right through her. “Just because you’re subscribed to Sexy Culinary School Weekly with Obi doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know how to cook on your own.”

“You magazine needs to work on its name.”

“Yeah, let me just go workshop it with Princess Prettymane and Calico Dog.”

“It’s duchess.”

“You know that doesn’t make it better, right?” he deadpans. “Princess Prettymane at least has alliteration. Also,” his voice lilts, playful, “you’re trying to change the subject. Which is cute, and really makes me want to kiss you until you worry that we’re going to ruin another pair of tights, but--”

“I’m not wearing tights right now.”

His jaw snaps shut.

“See,” he manages after a long moment, hoarse, “that is a very distracting thing to say.”

The gravel in his voice scrapes at an itch she didn’t know she had, heat painting a searing line down her spine. She’s already slick from sweat, but this adds another texture to it, one that’s growing more insistent by the second.

“And very confusing.” She doesn’t know what it says that even his complaints are doing it for her. “Since a few seconds ago, you weren’t sure if you could talk sexy, and now you’re telling me all sorts of things.”

“I was just...informing you. Of the situation.” Her nails pluck nervously at her waistband. “It’s summer, so, um, no tights.”

“Oh right,” he breathes, wry, “just setting the scene.”

“You know,” she tries again, too shrill, “I’m really fine with how you do it. I don’t really think-- I mean, is it really necessary that I have to--?”

“Kid, you’re the one that said okay,” he reminds her. “You don’t have to do anything. It’s just better for you if you know what you like. That way if you...”

His breath rasps from his throat. “...You should know what you like, separate from, ah, someone else.”

It’s a nice wrapping job he’s done on this baggage, but even with only a year under her belt, she knows what the tag on this one says. “I’m not going to go to college and suddenly not want you anymore, Obi.”

“I know that,” he says, but he doesn’t, not really. Obi doesn’t really talk much about before, about all the girls he’s snuck into his room or met at a party or whatever, but he thinks that all this, this whole wanting to put Tab A into Slot B thing, is the default. That you meet someone and maybe you talk a little and then bingo-bango-bongo, you know if you want to get on a horizontal surface with them.

He doesn’t get that this, for her, isn’t her normal. If Zen hadn’t been kind to her that first day, if he hadn’t helped Kihal with her Brecker problem, if the rumors surrounding them hadn’t whipped up to a fevered pitch so even she couldn’t ignore them-- well, Shirayuki wouldn’t have even been thinking about romance.

So the fact that she can look at him and feel like she’s walked into the country club’s sauna with her school clothes on-- that different. That’s special. That’s not going to just happen with someone she meets in an 8AM lecture.

If only she were as good with word things as her English grades suggested she should be, she’d be to tell him that.

“This isn’t about...” Obi lets out a disgruntled huff. “Listen, I know I definitely had some inspired ideas about what you would like from...before--”

(She’s still panting as she comes down, tremors zipping up and down her spine, “How did you...?”

Obi smiles, a wide Cheshire Cat grin. Fitting, since she definitely feels like she’s been dragged down the rabbit hole. “How did I what, kid?”

“Know to do that. With my hips,” She smooths her palms over where he’d grabbed them. They ache; it wouldn’t surprise her if she had hand-shaped bruises slapped across them tomorrow.

“Oh, I thought you’d like that.” Obi curls into her side, too pleased. He’s hard against her hip, but-- she likes it. “When I caught you coming off that ladder, you made that little hiccuppy noise, so I figured...pretty sensitive right?”

She stares.

He blinks. “What, did I say something--?”

“Obi” she manages, “that was four months ago.”)

“But if you knew what you liked...” She doesn’t need to see him to know there’s a feral smile stretching across his face. “I could do much better.”

Oh, that sounds...nice. She shifts, and she-- she leaks, thick slick coating the tops of her thighs.

“Besides, if we’re going to bring toys into the equation,” he continues, as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb in the middle of the conversation, “you should know what makes you feel good without any electronic intervention, if you know what I mean.”

Ah, she-- she definitely does.

“Toys?” she squeaks. “I don’t-- I don’t remember any, um, toy talk.”

Obi hums, amused. “Well, I did promise you a good graduation gift.”

“You--you already gave me one!” Her hand skips up to run over the smooth plastic. “I’m using it right now!”

“Mm.” He’s too pleased with himself, like he’s caught her scent on the air from all the way across town. “But you won’t need them much at school. So...”

“I won’t need t-that at school either!” She’s glad she’s got these headphones; her cheeks would be making her phone’s screen go haywire. “I’ll have you, and I’m very, um, happy with your performance. I don’t think we need to add, um, props.”

“As chuffed as I am to have you appreciating my prowess, kid--” oh he’s going to be unlivable after this, she can just tell-- “that’s all the more reason to have something in the wings to mix it up. Especially since we’re waiting t-to--” he stumbles, voice dropping to a murmur-- “I mean, since we both want to, um...”

He’s so tortured trying to talk about it without actually talking about it that she takes pity on him. “Since I’m afraid of penises, but we both like to touch each other.”

“I mean, since we’re waiting to have sex,” he manages, pained. “Or at least, the kind that involves dicks and, ah, going places.”

She’s been around him too long, because without even missing a beat, she claps back, “Oh, I didn’t realize yours was having its own hero journey.”

“It has certainly felt a Call to Adventure,” he mumbles, “and a Woman as a Temptress.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, a Meeting with the Goddess,” he amends, quick enough that she grins. “And once again, you’re trying to distract me. Though I thought it would more like ‘clothes I am missing’ instead of ‘Campell’s seventeen stages thesis.’“

“I’m sticking to what I know,” she tells him primly. “But I suppose I could tell you that, um, I’m not wearing a bra?”

He grunts, gutted. “Ohh, you are really just trying to make this difficult.” He adds, a little waspish, “All this trouble better be working for you, because it’s definitely working for me.”

“Oh, are you--” she swallows, hoping he can’t hear it-- “did you really want to try that?”

“Ah, I mean...” His breath comes sharp, short. “Yeah. If you would like to.”

Her breath catches. “I haven’t really, um...”

Done this. Ever. It would be so easy to say it, but it’s just-- belaboring the point. He knows. He just...thinks she’s a much better student than she is. At least about things like this.

“Listen, I haven’t...” He hesitates, and she realizes-- he’s embarrassed. “This isn’t something I’ve done with anyone before. You know I’m not really anyone’s...long term option.”

Grandad always says that she shoots from the cuff-- a nice way of saying doesn’t think before talking-- but she doesn’t regret it, not one bit, when she blurts out, “You’re mine.”

Obi’s breath rasps into the speaker. “Y-yeah. I know.” With a swallow, he adds, “And I know you think I have a lot of experience, but there’s a lot out there to try, and I haven’t even brushed the surface of it, you know? And I just thought, knowing you, knowing how curious you are...”

She blinks. “You mean...you’ve never been with someone long enough to, um, explore?”

“Ah, plenty of people would pick up Sexy Culinary Weekly up off the rack, but um--” he huffs out a laugh, soft and self-deprecating-- “you’d be the first to pick up a subscription.”

Shirayuki doesn’t like to pry, but for a good long moment, she considers asking for a list with some names. Just to talk, of course.

She takes a deep breath instead, trying to focus. “So you want to-- to explore with me?”

“If you want to,” he’s quick to say. “I know all of this is...new. I just thought since we won’t be doing a, ah, traditional progression here--”

“Traditional?”

He sighs. “You know, the uh, porn formula. Fingering, hand job, blow job, eating--”

“OKAY,” she yelps, clapping a hand to her face. “I get it!”

“Right, well, there’s a lot between what we’re doing and PIV.” She nearly giggles at how he says it, piv, like it’s a word and not an acronym. It's almost...cute. Like an adorable monster she could get a plushie of, instead of something that involved penises and could make her pregnant.

“And since we’re not doing any of that soon,” he continues, “we could, ah...take the scenic route. And maybe that would be a little less intimidating for you, since we’d both be new at...whatever we’re doing, instead of feeling like you had to catch up.”

Her heart flutters, and the warmth in her gut spreads up to her chest. “I think you’re mixing metaphors.”

“Sorry, I can’t think of cooking puns for everything,” he deadpans. “Think of it as not having to rush to read back issues, I guess.”

She hums. “I think you’re asking me to help with recipe development.”

“Well, if we’re going to embark on culinary adventures together--” he presses, voice bubbling like he’s trying to keep down a laugh. Several, if she’s anything to go by-- “then you should be comfortable with what your body likes before we add any...additional ingredients. You have to learn to do it the right way before we do it the easy way.”

“Oh,” she breathes. Obi was definitely starting to have a point about doing all this now. “Like New Math.”

“Wow, kid,” he deadpans, “really getting right down to the dirty talk.”

She flushes. Good thing he can’t see her. “I-I thought that was your job.”

He laughs, a rumble she feels right down to her bones. “You’re right. What are you wearing?”

She coughs. “Really?”

“I’m trying to set the scene,” he informs her, far too innocent. “This is a delicate shared fantasy we’re making. Wouldn’t want you to get thrown out of it because I mention panties and you’re wearing boyshorts.”

“I’m not wearing underwear,” she blurts out. “Wearing it overnight increasing the chance of yeast infections.”

Ah, there it is: the regret. It would be nice if she could just...not be like this. If she could just think through what she says when she’s nervous, instead of talking about diseased vaginas with her boyfriend while he’s trying to...make love at her, or whatever.

Now she has to contend with this endless silence, wishing that her mortification would at least dampen her desire even a little. Heaven knows they wouldn’t doing any recipe development tonight, after that. “O-obi?”

“Sorry, I just--” his throat makes a hollow thunk that echoes over the line-- “I got distracted.”

She blinks. “By what?”

“Thinking about how much I want to be there,” he admits, “and what I’d do to you if I was.”

“O-oh.” Maybe some culinary adventure wasn’t...so off the table as she thought. “A-and what would that be?”

A strangled groan tears between them. “I want to eat you out so bad.”

That-- that was not what she’d thought he’d say. “Really?”

“Yeah.” His sigh is strained. “You make such good noises.”

“You like it?” Her thighs clench, and oh, she wishes she knew what to do about it. “I figured it would taste...weird.”

Not that she’s ever tried. But she’s tasted blood (too coppery, bad texture), and well, boogers (too salty; thanks, childhood), and she can’t imagine that can taste much better.

“No,” he hums. “You taste just right. Are you touching yourself yet?”

There’s no way to explain she’s just been rating bodily fluids on a scale of most to least appetizing, so she settles with, “N-no.”

Now that he’s mentioned it, now that he’s reminded her that her body isn’t just some inconvenient appendage for her brain, Shirayuki can’t forget that it’s there. And she certainly can’t ignore the heat between her legs, or the way her skin feels as sensitive as flash paper, ready to burn up at a moment’s notice.

“You should do that,” he tells her, just short of a command, and ah, yeah, that’s sounding like a better and better idea every second. “What are you wearing?”

She’s out of cutesy stalling tactics. Or at least, she can’t think of any, not when her vagina seems to have a pulse of its own. “A tank top. And pajama shorts.”

“Sounds cute,” he breathes. “Put your hand down them.”

He doesn’t have to ask twice. Pubic hair crinkles under the tips of her fingers, scratchy against her palm. It’s wet too, tangling when she tries to slide further down so she just..doesn’t. “What now?”

“What do you usually do?”

He’s panting just the barest bit, and the sound of him already so undone is what spurs her to admit, “I, um, usually don’t do anything.”

“But you’ve tried before.” She should have never told him that. “What did you do then?”

“I, um--” she licks her lips, nervous-- “put my fingers inside?”

“Right away?” He laughs, and it’s fond, gentle. “No wonder you’ve never gotten much of anywhere. How about you just cup yourself now.”

She does. Little hairs wrap themselves around her fingers, coming loose, and oh, those always refuse to wash off later, clinging to her with the same tenacity as glitter. It’s comforting to feel weight there, at least, even if it clearly isn’t Obi’s. Still, it’s...vaguely unpleasant.

“I don’t feel much,” she reports, trying not to let her frustration leak through. Maybe she just isn’t cut out for masturbation.

“You wouldn’t,” he confirms, “you need to part your lips first.”

She nearly does, until she thinks better of it. “What does that have to do with--?”

“Not your mouth.” He’s barely covering a laugh. “Your other lips.”

“O-oh.” Of course. That makes...more sense.

Her fingers splay, parting her flesh, and ahh, there is...a lot more of her than she remembers. She’s read about lips blooming like flowers before-- mostly in the books Nanna likes to read-- but nothing had ever...blossomed down there for her before. But it’s definitely all petals and sepals now, if things like that were made out of flesh. She saw something like that once, on one of those Syfy shows her grans liked to watch when she was a kid--

She jolts as something slaps her hard, right on the breast, and oh, she’s-- she’s forgotten she’s still holding the phone. Or at least, she was. Now her hand is boneless, empty, and her screen has belly-flopped right onto her boob.

“Oh, um, wait.” She fumbles with it, one-handed, trying to find some place to put it. “I need to--I need to put down my phone.”

He hums, bemused. “Two hands would help.”

Shirayuki’s definitely struggling with one, that’s for sure. Her bedside table is too far for her headphones to reach without tugging; the bed itself is just asking for her to squirm her way to an End Call. She’s stuck discovering all this with one hand plastered in between her thighs, dipping between her vulva in a way that can only be termed distracting.

By the time she settles it on her pillow, far enough away to avoid any mishap via cheek smooshing, she’s practically panting. Maybe she needs to take up a sport at Lyrias; Mathletes clearly isn’t cutting it.

“Okay,” she sighs, dropping back onto her bed. “Now I’m ready. I am parting my...myself. What’s next?”

“Are you wet?”

Well, if she wasn’t before, she certainly is now. “I, um, think so?”

“All right.” His bed groans, like he’s shifting on it, and oh, how she wishes she knew what he looked like now. “Just start sliding your fingers around. You know where your clit is, right?”

“Yes,” she manages, squirming as she rubs at her folds. “I’ve seen a diagram before.”

He laughs, a low rumbling chuckle that sends a shiver down her spine, and yeah, she can take a real good guess at where her clit might be. “Don’t touch it.”

Her fingers still. “Why not?”

“You’re sensitive,” he tells her, so casual. “You get squirmy when I touch it directly. I mean, feel free to try...maybe you’re a lighter touch than I am. You could like it.”

She’s about to balk-- if it doesn’t feel good when he does it, she’s not going to do any better-- when his voice drops and he adds, “Tell me if you do.”

Well, let it not be said that Shirayuki doesn’t believe in science. Which is the reason she’s doing this. Hypothesis testing. Not because her boyfriend asked in a ridiculously sexy way.

With a steeling breath, she swipes her clit with the pad of her finger and-- y i k e s.

She grits her teeth, nerves still jangling. “Um, yeah, that didn’t feel great.”

“Too bad.”

With a sigh, she stretches her neck, hoping to get that raised-hackles feel out of it and-- oh.

Rum Tum stares down at her with his glassy black eyes, mouth stitched into its permanent smile. That’s really...not helping.

“Um.” Duchess Prettymane is next to him, head tilted in question. Calico Dog is definitely just...judging her. “Give me one second.”

With her free hand, she turns each of her stuffies around, placing them in a line on her window sill. They don’t need to see any of this.

“Okay.” She settles back into her pillows. “So I definitely don’t touch that. I just...touch around it?”

“Yeah,” he huffs out, amused. “But no rubbing! Long strokes, just barely brushing it, both fingers, one on either side.” She can hear his grin when he adds, “You like to be teased.”

She wants to protest that; she nearly does, but--

Her fingers skid over her folds, tracing just around the lip of her slit, stopping just shy of her clit, and-- mm, all right, he, ah, definitely has a point. This feels much better.

Still, she’s so used to Obi’s touch; he lingers in all the right places, calluses catching on her clit in a way that makes her writhe. Her own fingers are too tiny and her movements too awkward. She’s too wet too; as much as it’s definitely helping with the, um, sensations she’s feeling, controlling her fingers makes her feel like a contestants on one of those Japanese game shows. Just when she thinks she’s gotten it, when she’s starting to build to something interesting if not good--

“How is it?”

She nearly nicks herself with a nail. “Better when you do it.”

“Ah, I see,” he hums. “A pillow princess--”

Shirayuki has absolutely no idea what that means, but she knows she’s being teased. “No--!”

A thunk stops her mid-thought. Her hand snaps away from her shorts. “Did you hear that?”

“Kid--”

She eyes the door warily. “Do you think it’s Nanna?”

Obi smothers a chuckle. “I’m pretty sure that was just your phone.”

“No, I put it behind my--” she looks down, and oh yes, there it is, right on the floor.

“Oh,” she breathes, mortified. “Oh. Right. Just, um, give me a minute.”

It’s a tricky proposition trying to fish it off the floor. For one, her bed is high and her arms are short-- oh, she was so committed to the whole fairy bower aesthetic of lofting her bed when she was twelve, but now it’s really inconvenient-- and for another, one hand is contaminated with, um, juices, and though she doesn’t want to smear any of that all over her phone--

Well, wiping it on the sheets is a bad decision. Nanna’s nose is sharp, and if there’s one conversation she doesn’t want to happen, it’s why does you bed smell like sex, Shirayuki? She’s done well not getting grounded so far, despite the number of times Obi’s been caught shirtless in her room, but she knows better than to try to test her grandmother’s patience on it.

Shirayuki drops to her belly, elbow digging into the mattress to ground her. Her finger are just long enough to brush the screen--

“Hey kid,” Obi sighs, “do you actually want to do this?”

She yelps. Only a quickly placed hand keeps her from meeting her carpet face first. She does have her phone though. “What?”

“I thought that this was going to be fun and sexy, but now...” He grunts, uneasy. “It seems like I might forcing you, and that’s really not what I wanted to happen. If you don’t want--”

“NO! I mean,” she manages, throwing herself back on her bed, “you have a point. Even though I prefer you touching me by lot--”

Obi hums, too smug.

“--we can’t always make the time to, um, do that.” It’s be nice if the bed could just swallow her whole right now, put her out of her misery, but-- she wants this. She wants him, and part of that is having terrible conversations that make her feel like a five alarm fire in a fireworks factory. “And if we’re having trouble just a few houses away, I’m sure we’ll find a way to have it when you’re only a few doors down too. Which is fine, it’s not like I have to, um...”

He makes a noise, intrigued, and oh, she really hates how badly she does want to keep this boyfriend. If only she liked him less, then she wouldn’t have to talk about any of this at all.

“I just mean, sometimes I think about you when we can’t be together--”

“Sometimes?”

“You know what I mean,” she snips, annoyed. “Sometimes I think about you in a specific way and I get a little, um, stuck. And that can be frustrating. So it’s probably better that I learn this now, than--

“Wait.” He’s breathless, unfocused. “Are you telling me you’ve been all...stuck lately?”

“N-no!” That is really not what she wants to be talking about right now. “I mean, a-a little? Kind of.”

She can hear the rush of his breath through his nose, his long thoughtful pause--

“Do you need some inspiration?” He’s eager, voice tight and nearly winded. “Purely above the waist, of course.”

It occurs to her that he means pictures; pictures of the adult variety. The yes leaps to her lips, but oh, what if Nanna saw it, and--

“Here, one sec.”

He’s not joking; barely a second later her phone buzzes, snapchat informing her that Obi has a new photo. She frowns, flicking open the app, and -- oh. Yes. That was. Definitely not there a few moments ago.

He’s naked from the waist up, lounging in a pair of gym shorts, his legs spread wide where he sits, and-- “Are you, um...?”

“Hot?” he growls playfully. “For you, yeah.”

“Hard,” she blurts out, since she never misses an opportunity to make a fool of herself. It would be nice if her curiosity could take a vacation for a day or two. Give her skin a break.

“Oh. Um. Yeah,” he grunts. “I mean, I’m trying to get you off, and I’m think about touching you. Sort of...a natural response.”

“But you aren’t touching yourself?”

“We hadn’t really talked about that,” he murmurs shyly. “This is supposed to be about you. I didn’t want to get distracted.”

“Ah...” That place between her legs throbs. She snakes a hand under her waistband, and oh, they’ve barely lost any ground at all. “You should.”

“W-what?”

“Touch yourself,” she tells him, running her fingers over her folds. “I think it would help.”

“Oh.” She might as well have hit him for the way that bursts out of him. “I didn’t--”

“I can give you inspiration too.” She whips off her tank before she can think better of it, struggling when she realizes, no, one hand will definitely not be enough to get the job done--

And then it’s nothing to take a picture, or to send it. A few taps and he’s choking, “Did-- did you mean to send this to me?”

It’s then that it strikes her: she just sent a naked picture to her boyfriend. Well, a half naked picture, but for what he could see she might as well have done the whole thing.

“Oh, is that-- is that okay?” She drags her safe hand over her face, sweat clinging to her palm. “I should have checked--”

“Yes!” he pants, half wild. “Yes, this is okay, Very, very okay. I just...you really want me to use this? For, uh, jacking off?”

“Could you?”

“Haah,” he breathes. “Yes. God, your breasts are so good, babe. And your face...”

“Then yes.” She licks her lips, nervous. “Please.”

“I don’t really need the help,” he warns, “I’m a real pro at this.”

“I want you to.” She doesn’t know how she says it without even a stutter. The thought of him touching himself like that, knowing that he’s thinking of her, just her-- “I want you to touch your-- you--”

“Really, kid, you don’t have to--”

“Cock.”

Just saying it shakes her up like a soda can, ready to burst, and she almost wishes she could take it back, that she could unsay half this conversation-- until he groans; the frantic slide of clothes loud from his end of the phone.

“What do you-- what should I--?”

He sounds so lost, his words hardly above a whine, and that’s the only reason she’s able to say, “I want you to, um, stroke it?”

“Yeah, I am-- I am already there, babe,” he assures her, voice throaty and strained. “You’re touching yourself too, right? You’re wet?”

“Y-yeah.” She slides her hand under the band, and ah, she hadn’t know it was possible to be wetter, that her thighs could be slick nearly to the edge of her shorts, but here she is. “I like hearing you. I-I mean...after graduation, when we went to the field, I--” she licks her lips, mouth so dry-- “I really wanted to hear you come again.”

“Jesus. Fuck.” His mattress creaks, distressed. “That was-- that was two months ago. You could have just--” he hisses, so sensitive-- “god, I would have come for you anytime.”

“Could you?” It comes out coyer than she expects, far too confident to sound like her, and she nearly apologizes, until he-- he--

He whimpers.

“If I asked really nice,” she hums, fingers skating along her folds, clit pulsing with how much she wants this, wants him. “Could you come for me again?”

He groans, pained. “Y-yeah. I could definitely arrange something.”

“Now?”

“Shit. Fuck.” He moans, but it trails off into a laugh. “Definitely won’t take long if you keep this up.”

“Good,” she sighs, pace quickening, her fingers daring to loop ever closer to the crux of her problem. “I want to hear you. It’s been so long...”

She hesitates. Obi is always the one to tease, and her the one that squirms away, the one that needs to be cajoled back into the scene, but now--

Well, the shoe is on the other foot isn’t it. “It’s been so long,” she says again, only this time she lets her voice go breathy, lets it linger on the cusp of whine. “Don’t make me wait, Obi...”

He doesn’t.

“Fuck,” is the only word he manages before he’s groaning, whimpering, making every sexy sound he can at once as he comes hard.

“Haah,” he moans, breath heaving. “That was-- that was definitely not how I expected this call to go.”

Shirayuki stills her fingers, mouth slanting into a smirk. She’d always wondered how Obi could watch her orgasm and not want to do it himself, not need to do it when she’s dying every time, but-- now she gets it. She may not have come, but there’s something supremely satisfying in watching-- no, listening to him fall apart instead.

“Oh?” She still sounds coy. Like Obi does every time she goes half-blind from the force of her own climax.

“You didn’t come, did you?” He’s put out, and she can tell his eyebrows are drawn, that his jaw is set. “I could--”

“No, no, don’t worry about me,” she assures him. “I’m fine. Besides, we have to get up tomorrow.”

“Ah, fuck, right. Senior Day.” He sighs. “All right, fine. But next time--”

“Next time,” she agrees. “Though I really enjoyed this time too.”

He makes a noise that sounds like dying. “Yeah, well, that’s great, but I’m not the one who needs to learn how to get off like a champ. But whatever,” he sighs, “we have all the time in the world for you to get it.”

Her chest warms, and she smiles against her pillow. “Right. I’ll see you tomorrow? Bright an early?”

He groans. “Yeah, yeah. Bright and early. Good night, kid.”

[sabraeal]

The Lone Wolf Survives, Part 2

Part 1

Obiyukiweek 2020, Day 5: Honor Always keep one’s word. Always maintain one’s principles. Never betray a confidence or comrade. Avoid deception. Respect life.

“Your cloak, Alpha?”

The footman bends, neck bared and arms outstretched, as if he might become a coat rack himself if he tried hard enough. On his knees, he would be the perfect tableau of submission, the sort only seen on faded frescoes, hidden behind curtains and left to molder. These Clarinese were civilized now, after all, not the barbaric alphas of their forebears.

Obi takes one look over the hall and stifles a laugh. Looks like all that was just a bit of varnish over some old paint.

“Alpha?”

He turns, cloak in hand, mouth open to say something properly awful, as any alpha would, and--

And his hand clenches, locked tight around the wool. He shouldn’t be able to smell anything over the stifling stench of alpha, the musk so thick in the room they might as well be on top of each other, but--

Berries burst brightly on his tongue, fresh from the vine. It’s so vivid, so strong, that the summer sun warms his back, his fingers reaching out to pick another plump berry for his bounty.

“Alpha?”

He recoils, nearly biting his tongue. “Take it,” he manages, tossing the garment to him. Anything to keep him from coming closer, to keep him from catching that tantalizing scent again. “Tell them to keep it for the fox.”

He taps his mask, white porcelain slippery against his gloves. And the footman nods. “As you wish, Alpha.”

Obi watches him go, a grimace hidden behind a fox’s leer. An omega amongst the footmen. What was the over-under of that being a feature rather than a coincidence?

He catches his breath between his teeth, gaze lingering on his miss as Tsuruba helps her down the stair.

Ah, he doesn’t like these odds, not one bit.

The manor’s corridors confound her the further she presses into the bowels of the house. The foyer and gallery had given every indication that it was built in the same style as its southern cousins, with wide halls to accommodate to the broad skirts ladies had worn in years past and well-lit chambers for open discourse, but the further she travels the older it becomes, the walls closing in and sconces becoming scare.

Good hunting, Eisetsu had said, but oh, with these walls so close, she is the one who has become the hunted.

The people are fewer here as well-- at least, so she assumes. An ill-placed table sends her stumbling, jittering a door on its hinges, and she could swear she hears a gasp behind it, followed by a soft, rumbling shh.

Ah. Heat floods her cheeks. It seems she has found where the shadows end for the embraces that start in them.

Alliances don’t always happen over a table, Miss, Obi had warned her he hooked the last eyes on her dress. There’s plenty of other flat surfaces that will do as well.

She knows all too well what he meant now. It would be funny if he were here with her, giggling nervously as he led her away, scolding him when he said, oh, but wouldn’t it be a good cover, Miss? No one would suspect a thing--

But he’s not. He’s alone, lost in this labyrinth of corridors as the candles burn, each inch deepening his confusion.

Fear chills her, her fingers nearly numb with it as she traces them along the wall. A prince was lost in a maze once; she’d read it as a child, pulling down books from the top shelf. He’d kept his left hand to the wall and wound his way out.

It’s a child’s tale, little better than superstition, but it’s something to cling to as the halls grow ever darker, and the din of the party fades. Something to keep her putting one foot in front of the other when doubt would halt her in her tracks. The foil paper beneath her fingers is the only thing that grounds her, that keeps her fluttering heart fast in her chest.

It does not escape her that this would be the perfect place to hide an exiled duke. Or to make an inconvenient knight disappear.

Her fingers scrape along a door, and she would think nothing of it, nothing at all, had it not creaked open beneath them, just enough for light to shine into the hall. She makes out two bodies inside, both dressed in black, a woman hovering over a man, and she nearly looks away except--

Except, at the last moment, she sees the mask, white and crimson and fox’s leer, fall onto the floor.

“Rugilia.” Tsuruba settles back in his chair, fingers tapping gently at his chin. The invitation sits between them, sealed, untouched. Or at least, it would seem so, if they both didn’t know different. “You sure have made yourself a strange pack, Sir Obi.”

“A man like me follows a pack, not makes one.” Obi lifts his cup to his lips, savoring the floral bouquet that blooms on his tongue. That’s one nice thing about being above stairs; you drink the same fancy tea the lords do. “But you know of him?”

“Of course I do. Rugilia is one of the oldest houses of the north. More than a few Bergatt brides came from their nest.” Tsuruba’s gaze is intent, fixed to his hands as he picks up a scone and butters it. “You might advise your master to make his friends carefully.”

“My mistress,” he corrects, swallowing his bite before he continues, “do you have reason to think she’s not?”

Tsuruba waves a hand, vague, before pressing it to the table. “None to hand. Eisetsu Rugilia ran with a fast pack while my brother held this seat.”

“Ah.” His mouth twitches at a corner. “A mistress in the opera? Unruly house parties? Plotting treason?”

“More the second than the other two.” Tsuruba taps his fingers, slow and steady, the beat of a drum in the night. “He came to all the soirees, but never participated in anything besides the entertainment. I can’t say what his true politics are, if he has any.”

“He was in your brother’s circle?” Hard to imagine an alpha like Touka Bergatt suffering a beta like that, right on the cusp of a coup. “Rugilia?”

Tsuruba lifts a shoulder. “His house is large enough to be a concern to anyone who wants to hold the North. And if Eisetsu truly painted himself an idiot, all the better.” His mouth tics up at a corner, bitterly amused. “After all, there is nothing my brother loves more than a beta he can easily control.”

Obi sips thoughtfully at his cup. “Do you think he was involved with his plans?”

“Perhaps,” the lord allows, unconvinced. “He thought he had his support, at least. Or could get it in short order.”

From Sir’s estimate, more the latter than the former. His mouth twists, wry over the rim of his demitasse. “Ah, how like an alpha.”

Tsuruba arches a single, aristocratic brow. “Spoken like an omega. Still,” his mouth turns thoughtful, “strange that he would ask for your help.”

“Is it?” He shrugs. “After that business at Sereg, he would be looking for a new alpha.”

“A good point,” he concedes, “if Prince Zen wasn’t a well-known beta.”

“But he has the ear of the most powerful alpha in the country.” His lips spread in a sharp grin. “And he is known for taking in traitors with a heart of gold.”

“Ha! Maybe, maybe.” The lord lifts his gaze. “Rugilia has always liked to be on the winning side.”

The fox grins up at her, mouth stretched so wide it seems ready to jump up, ready to say, I came in with the snow--

She takes a small step into the room, just enough to push open the door with her hip, to see--

To see Obi, his head tilted back against the chair, mouth open and wanting. To see this woman straddle him, mouth pressed to the long column of his neck. To hear noises wrung from him that make the room thick with musk. She has no alpha’s nose, but between that and the gloved hand clenched in a black silk gown, she has two instincts: one to flee, to run back to the gallery and forget she saw anything at all; and one--

One to throw the woman off and bare her teeth. To growl a warning about what happens to those who tried to take advantage of her omega.

The impulse is gone as quickly as it came. She has no claim to him, and she’s no alpha to cry one. Obi is a grown man, able to make his own decisions. Still...he could have chosen a better time.

He takes in a shallow breath, whimpering underneath this woman’s teeth. His fingers flex in her hair, twisted up its complex web, clutching her closer, urging her on, and--

And she doesn’t realize she’s opened her mouth until she calls out, “Obi?”

“Oh,” the woman purrs against his throat, her voice as rich as the silk she wears. “You didn’t tell me that you came with someone. Naughty, naughty.”

Eyelashes flutter, and she makes out the thinnest rim of gold as he slurs, “Miss?”

“She’s a pretty one.” The woman’s nails claw through the bristle of his hair; she grins when he rises up into her touch. “Shall we ask her to join us?”

Obi’s body jolts under hers, gripping the chair like he’s woken up from the edge of sleep. “Miss,” he breathes, head lolling along his shoulders, rolling to meet her gaze and--

And his eyes are black, pupils blown until his iris is just a thin wire of gold wrapped around them. Shirayuki has never been looked at with desire, not like this, but even still-- that’s not what this is.

“I think he’s had too much.” The words must come from somewhere inside her, but she can’t fathom where. All of her is focused on where Obi clutches at the chair, nails biting into the wood, body too sluggish to do more than pull away. “I’ll take him outside.”

Crimson lips plump into a pout. “Oh, but we were just starting to have fun. Weren’t we, darling?”

She reaches out a hand, coming to stroke his cheek, but Obi snaps his teeth, a growl rumbling up from his chest.

“I think we better be going,” Shirayuki says, steel in every word. “Sorry to ruin your...fun.”

The woman sighs, sliding from Obi’s lap with an elegance Shirayuki has only seen on a ballroom floor. “I suppose. If you must.”

She plucks at the golden applique on his coat as he shakily gets to his feet, a sultry smirk titling her lips. “Too bad. I think we could have had a good time.”

Shirayuki slips an arm around Obi’s waist, steadying him, and he has just enough presence of mind to turn, all charming smile and say, “I’m sure it would have been a night I could never remember.”

She laughs, low and throaty. Even with her mask obscuring her eyes, it’s easy to see the lingering look she gives him. “Oh yes, a very good time.”

He’s supposed to stay with her; an idea Obi likes if only because it means she’s not alone with an unknown quantity. As much as his miss trusts these northern lords, as any beta would, he isn’t so quick to forget that one aided a coup-- against his will, but still-- and the other very recently held her as a hostage to his own good behavior.

And that’s where Miss’s plans fall to pieces: they rely on Rugilia and Tsuruba being where they need to be with no supervision aside from each other. And so when he catches a glimpse of Eisetsu across the gallery, conspicuously missing his escort, Obi only lets out a huff and a shake of his head.

They might all be running as a single pack now, but Obi’s known far too many lords. Not everyone is as dedicated to fairness as Master, even other betas.

He glances at Miss, watching her weave through the throng, head held high and oozing alpha confidence with every step, and makes his choice. Plunging into the dark, Obi doesn’t even risk a glance back. He’ll only be a minute, after all; just a quick peek to see where Eisetsu is hiding himself, and he’ll be back at her side with no one the wiser.

Or at least he would be, if this place were not a warren of corridors, each growing increasingly dark, increasingly isolated. The perfect place to have a scandalous assignation.

Or to hide an exiled duke.

Eisetsu winds through the halls with a practiced ease. Obi smothers a knowing huff. So much for being just a casual reveler.

“Ah, Lord Eisetsu.” A woman emerges from the shadow of a doorway, silk gown rippling down her like a waterfall over a cliffside. “There you are.”

His breath catches, displeased. “You!”

“Tsk,” she clucks, sashaying closer. Her mask, pearlescent and glimmering in the lamplight, casts an eerie pallor over her expression. “Is that how you greet an old friend?”

He swallows hard, loud enough for Obi to hear it where he hides in the shadows. “Madame Liera. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

He can’t see much of her expression, not with her mask to hide it, but there’s no missing the way her gaze roves over him. “The feeling, my dear count, is mutual.”

Eisetsu steps forward, seizing her arm. “What are you up to?”

“Oh dear,” she hums, mouth canting into a sultry smirk. “We have so much to catch up on.”

She’s utterly lost; the din of the party is far away in every direction, and no matter which way she heads, it never seems to get any closer. Obi pants heavily in her ear, his weight making her feet stagger underneath her as she tries to steer his limp, stumbling body away from the room, toward the safety of numbers.

It’s useless, she realizes. He’s as vacant as the omegas in the gallery, just putting one foot in front of the other to keep her from dragging him.

With a sigh, she stops, propping him up against the nearest wall. He sags against the wallpaper, miraculously upright, and-- well, beggars can’t be choosers.

She steps close, skirts sweeping over his boots, and he stiffens. “What are you doing?”

“Let me look at you.” She raises her hands to his face, using her thumbs to pull down the skin around his eyes. His flesh burns beneath her palms.

“No!” He jerks back from her touch, plastering himself to the wall. “Don’t touch me.”

She stares, uncomprehending. His pupils are wide, two endless pits in the dark of the hall, his face tense with fear, and--

Ah, he’s scared. Of course-- the candles are burning a deliriant, known to cause confusion. He must not recognize her, even now.

“Obi.” She bends closer, hoping he can smell her beneath the alpha musk. “It’s all right, it’s just me.”

He recoils, pressing against the wall so tight he might as well be a part of it. “Miss, please,” he pants, voice hardly above a whine. “I can’t...”

Something’s wrong. More than just the drugged air-- his fingers stretch and curl, scrabbling against the wainscotting, breath coming so shallow he’s swaying on his feet.

“Are you hurt?” Her hand splays on his chest, trying to keep him upright--

And he bucks right up into her touch, a groan rattling out of his throat. “Don’t,” he whimpers. “Please, Miss. You can’t-- I can’t--”

His heart beats a frantic tattoo against her palm, and she frowns. The deliriant Eisetsu described should have been lulling him into complacency, not sending him into an anxious spiral. Unless--

“Can you breathe?” If this is an adverse reaction--

“You can’t be so close...” he murmurs, too still beneath her touch, his only movement the tremble of his chest with each labored breath. “I can’t...”

Her hand darts between them, gripping his chin hard enough to feel the bones of his jaw cut into her palms. With a tug, she’s staring into his eyes, only seeing black. “Obi--?”

Her back hits the wall, driving the breath from her. Obi looms above her, a shadow in the dim light of the hall.

“I said,” he rumbles, hands clawed into the wall above her. “You can’t be so close to me.”

She blink, opening her mouth to-- to protest, to ask why, and she-- she breathes in.

Alpha musk lingers in the air, but it’s not the woodsy muddle she distilled at Eisetsu’s, oh no, it’s thicker, full of smoke and spice, and--

“You’re an alpha,” she breathes, the word trembling through her. “You’ve been an alpha this whole time.”

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Eisetsu?” Every move Leira makes is a suggestion, one meant to be taken lying down. Rugilia sways on his feet as she sashays closer, nail plucking at the embroidery on his coat. “What has it been? Half a year already? What could you have been up to, I wonder.”

Half a year. That’s how long it’s been since Sereg, since Bergatt failed to launch a coup. Obi steps further into the shadow. So Tsuruba hadn’t been so far off with his guess.

With a steeling breath Rugilia leans back, teeth bared. “What are you doing here, Kageya? Is he...?”

“Tsk, tsk,” she clucks, “good boys eat when their alpha leaves them scraps. Loyal boys.”

“This isn’t a game.” He’s never heard Rugilia speak in anything but that affable lilt of his, but it’s gone now, a beta playing at an alpha’s growl. “Touka--”

“It was never a game,” Leira growls back, “not for the rest of us. My lord alpha--”

The scent hits him, a delicate bouquet of almonds and rose, cloying. It’s too sweet, he huffs, trying to get it out of his nose, but--

A jolt of heat slugs him right in the gut, unavoidable, inevitable, and he-- he stumbles, hands scrabbling at the wall. His vision blurs, just for a moment; the next he sees everything with crystal clarity. The mumble of the party behind him is so crisp he can pick out individual voices, and he scents--

Almond. He’s dizzy with it, salivating at the thought, thinking about burying his nose in the crook of her shoulders and breathing it down--

“Ohh, well,” a voice purrs, too close and not close enough. “It looks like you brought a friend, Eisetsu.”

Obi’s shoulders stretch across her vision, and it’s not until now, not until he’s her whole horizon that she realizes how broad he’s become, how tall he is. Obi’s always made himself small, an omega, a puppy eager to play, but now--

Now he’s every inch the alpha he’s no longer trying to hide.

“Why didn’t you...?” She licks her lips-- a mistake, since his eyes track it like a rabbit in the brush. “Why wouldn’t you tell us?”

A laugh huffs out of him low and deep, shuddering through her. “What kind of alpha would consent to be beneath another?”

Eisetsu’s words ring in her ears, coated in Obi’s bitterness. “Still. Zen wouldn’t have turned you away.”

The words ring hollow, even to her own ears. To have a born alpha bend to a beta, well-- she’s never heard of it. Not until now, at least.

“When the lone wolf dies, the pack survives.” His mouth sharpens into a grin. “And if there’s one thing I’m good at, Miss, it’s surviving.”

He breathes in, slow and controlled. She should run; take this moment to put space between them. Instead, she puts her hands to his chest and meets his gaze. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

His eyes pulse wide, and-- there it is, the thinnest disk of gold, wrapped around the abyss of his pupils.

“Miss...” His arms shake and give just slightly, a subtle lean. His chest expands with his inhale, long and deep, gaze hooded-- “You need to go.”

“No, Obi...” He trembles under her palms, chin brushing her jaw as he leans in, as he buries his nose in her hair. “I’m not leaving you. Not when you’re...”

In a rut. His scent is thick in the air now, surrounding her, and oh, she’s never been this close to an alpha in rut, never known how distracting the scent would be. It’s hard to keep herself still, to keep herself from tilting into the warmth of his skin.

“I’ll find someone else,” he says, as if that isn’t exactly the problem, as if that won’t lead to more complications for them to untangle. “It wouldn’t be hard--”

“No.” She startles, surprised by her own vehemence. “I mean, you, um...you don’t need to.”

“Ah...” His hand fists in the waist of her dress, so hot even through the fabric. “But I do, Miss.”

She takes in a shuddering breath, and oh, this would be so much easier if his nose wasn’t tracing a distracting path down the column of her neck. “I have-- I have the antidote, but you’ll-- eek!”

“Sorry, sorry,” he murmurs, hands running down her sides, mouth pressing where his teeth pricked at her. “I can’t-- you need to-- go, please.”

“N-no.” She shakes her head, pushing him away, trying to put the barest amount of space between them. “We’re leaving. Now.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that Tsuruba was coming.” Obi tugs at the cuff of his boot, trying to get it to sit right with his trousers. What he wouldn’t give to be able to wear his uniform for once.

“Hm?” Rugilia’s gaze lifts from his costume, bemused. “Oh. It’s fine.”

He hesitates, hands wrapped around his belt. “Ha, it’s strange isn’t it. All we do is apologize.”

“You aren’t wrong.” Obi flashes him a grin that’s only mostly teeth. “Let’s make that the last one.”

“Agreed.” The lord hesitates again, fingers clenched tight in the fabric of his cloak. “Or perhaps...just one more.”

He glances up, brow furrowed. “What was that?”

“Haah,” Rugilia sighs, shaking his head. “Never mind.”

She ducks under his arm, capturing his hand in hers. “Come on. We should, um... work fast.”

Two arm lengths seems to be enough for Obi’s head to clear, for him to ask, “What about Tsuruba and--?”

“They’ll have to catch another right home.” She looks back, squeezing his hand. “I’m sure they’ll understand.”

His brow furrows. “I...”

“Is something wrong?” She steps closer. “Do you--?”

“Ah, haah.” He takes a step back. “I think...we should go. Now.”

His world tilts when lips meet his. Her scent’s all wrong, roses and rotten, but it doesn’t matter, not when he feels like this, when his body can finally release--

“Oh, you fool.”

It’s hardly more than a breath, but it’s not just an alpha’s scent that is sharp. He turns his head, meeting a pitying gaze. He can hardly hold it, not when her mouth suck right beneath his ear--

“I’m sorry.” A man turns to a shadow, retreating into the hall. “I’m so, so sorry.”

[sabraeal]

Desert & Reward, Chapter 9

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Obiyukiweek 2020, Day 6: Courtesy Exhibit manners. Be polite and attentive. Be respectful of host, authority, and women.

Unlike the other fancy soirees Obi has attended in Wistal, his stag night is not in the grand ballroom. Too informal an occasion, Yori had said, and for a moment, he lets himself believe this might be all right. It wouldn’t be a boisterous night of hot toddies followed by a morning of hangovers like Hiro’s, or even a quiet affair-- as much as the brothers Lowen would allow-- held by the hearth like Sir’s, but humble enough that he didn’t feel like a thief wearing an imposter’s crown.

One look at the crowd teaming on the veranda and he knows: he’s an idiot.

Every man attending your nuptials will be there, Kiki had warned him, Izana has shown you the guest list, hasn’t he?

Oh no, that had been a detail that slipped through the iron trap of His Majesty’s memory. Last he’d heard, the plan was discreet, but befitting your station. He’d assumed that meant small; there was no way a knight-- even one who answered to the prince himself-- merited a grand fete for his wedding.

He’d forgotten: a marquis did.

“Ah,” His Majesty’s lips curl as he catches sight of him, plucking a flute of champagne off a passing tray. “If it isn’t the man of the hour.”

Obi stares at the glass pressed into his hand, and with the barest hesitation, downs it entirely.

“Ha ha.” The king’s eyebrows rise with his smile. “Do try for temperance tonight, my dear marquis. It wouldn’t do to start a marriage with a scolding, after all.”

Or, as his wife as so delicately put it, limp groom. Not that he’d have to worry about any of that.

The empty flute disappears from his hand, replaced by another. “Mine, or yours?”

His Majesty’s smile loses its shine, but the shadows give it sincerity. “Oh, who is to say she’d only stop at one?”

His mouth curls behind a crystal rim. “Oh, my miss would have us both to rights.”

If he didn’t know better-- and at this point, Obi’s not certain he does-- he could swear the king looks fond as he says, “She would at that.”

The moment doesn’t last; in a breath His Majesty’s mask settles back in place, smile wide and utterly insincere. “This may not be what you thought it would,” he murmurs, tone pitched low to obscure his words but bright enough to conceal his meaning, “but do try to make the best of it.”

Obi’s fingers clench tight around his flute. “A funny thing to say to a man on his wedding night.”

“Maybe on a different night. Maybe to a different groom.” The kings turns from him with a meaningful glance. “Enjoy yourself. My brother labored over this to make it so you could.”

He glances at the passed trays, filled with tiny canapes, at the endless parade of footmen carrying champagne, at the endless press of lords and their knights, and tries to picture the time in which he’d find any of this enjoyable. He fails before he’s even begun.

“Well,” His Majesty hums, lips twitching at a corner as he strolls away, “I never said he did it particularly well.”

A lifetime ago, he’d spent the night in a barrel.

A boy his age should have been too big to fit, but he’d always been small, underfed and overworked, and on that night he’d been lucky, too. With the scent of rotting fruit pressed all around him, he’d held his breath for minutes at a time, hoping that he could stay quiet enough to live until morning. And now--

Now the king of Clarines was eating finger foods at his stag night.

Lata had told him once, the longer you live, the more absurd life becomes. He’d thought that was some stuffy noble thing, but--

“Lord Obi!” An unremarkable blond man breaks through the crowd, clasping his wrist. “What a pleasure to finally meet!”

--He was starting to see his point. “Ah, I...wish I could agree.”

The lord laughs, open and friendly, and Obi is entirely certain he’s never seen this man in his life. “Ah, of course. I know you by reputation only. My name is Asanagi Sui.”

Sui; a name he knows all too well. Its last lord was on of the first casualties of His Majesty’s campaign to cut away the corruption in Clarines. Which would mean this man--

“We are neighbors, are we not?” Sui asks, a guileless smile on his face as he snatches a scallop from a tray. “Not quite next door, but a few manors down, one might say.”

--An ally of His Majesty’s. A trusted one, if he’d made it onto the king’s short list of conspirators.

“Ah, yes.” A map of Clarines unfurls in his mind’s eye; after all this business with Conti, it’s practically tattooed on the back of his eyelids. “You’re next to Forenzo.”

“Just so.” He casts a curious glance around the veranda. “I’m surprised to see that none of them have come to celebrate your nuptials. I was under the impression that you were quite close with your neighbors.”

“Ah, well...” Obi grimaces, rubbing at the back of his head. “Lata isn’t so fond of this kind of thing. Takes him away from his work too much, he says. Last time we lured him out to one, it was with a grant.”

“Ah, yes,” Sui says, stilted, that wide smile faltering. “I do, hm, remember him saying something similar to me.”

He tries to picture Lata exchanging more than two words with this ray of sunshine and fails. “You talked to him?”

“Yes, a handful of times,” he admits, taking a delicate sip of champagne. “That one was at my wedding...”

Obi chokes on a laugh, just barely keeping the corners of his mouth schooled. “Well that...sounds just about right.”

“His father’s much the same,” Sui confides, voice trembling with a laugh, “loath to leave his manor for any reason that isn’t shooting season.”

“Not really?” Obi can’t wait to pitch that particular morsel at the professor once he’s back at Lyrias. He’ll be so pleased to be reminded how much he resembles his father. “That does explain a bit about Lata, though.”

“Doesn’t it just?” Sui glances over his shoulder before stepping close, mouth rounded in a conspiratorial curve. “You know, I met your bride once.”

Out of any other man, the words would have been pointed, a prelude to an insult. From Sui’s lips it is an anecdote, not a cut; a way of making more pleasant conversation.

“Oh?” Six years by Miss’s side has him sure he’s never seen him save in passing; just another pleasant face in a glittering crowd.

“Yes! Years ago, now.” His face brightens with the memory, and ah, he has met her. “His Majesty introduced us.”

His hand tightens, only the brittle sway of crystal reminding him not to crush it. “You don’t say.”

“It’s true,” Sui continues blithely, “a funny story, really. He told me she was his new secretary. One of his little games, you know.”

“Little games.” Oh, he knew all about those. “Of course.”

“Yes! Though at the time, I had thought it must be about--” Sui’s teeth snap shut with a click. “Ah...never mind.”

“No, go ahead,” he manages, tone deceptively light. “I haven’t heard this story before.”

“Ah...” Sui glances at his flute, mouth settling into a pale grimace. “It’s really...”

“Please,” he murmurs pleasantly, “I insist.”

“A-ah, well, I has been under the impression that she, ah--” he swallows, finger pulling at the knot of his cravat-- “had been a particular companion of His Highness. But,” he quickly amends, “I must have been mistaken.”

“Perhaps.” Obi lets his mouth stretch into a particularly pointed grin. “That was years ago now. Before I met her. And things do have a way of...changing.”

“Right, yes.” Sui’s smile fades paper thin. “Change.”

“Ah, Lord Obi,” a snake hisses in his ear. “The man of the hour--” oh, how quickly he’s becoming tired of that phrase-- “let me congratulate you on your accomplishment.”

Sui recoils as Luigis slithers between them; Obi’s growing fond of the man already. “Hisame Luigis,” he says, like a man curses a stone in his boot, “I would have never thought to find you here.”

His tone implies his sentence is incomplete, and that the other half of it is instead of in a gaol cell. The snake bares his fangs, so polite, so polished. “I could hardly miss such an opportunity. Not when Sir Obi and I have so much in common.”

Sui’s gaze darts dubiously between them. “Do you?”

Obi’s mouth hooks into a sneer. “We share a master.”

One of his worse ideas, just below trusting the Bergatts, and a little above hiring Obi himself.

“A lord,” Luigis corrects tightly. “Not all of us are dogs needing a master to hold our leash.”

“Funny.” He takes a long drag of his champagne. “You never gave me the impression of knowing when to heel.”

Luigis grins, no humor in him. “And yet you always gave me the impression of a mutt waiting for his turn.”

It would be the height of impropriety to commit homicide at a stag night-- he wouldn’t be the first, and at least it would be at his own, unlike certain knights he knew-- but oh, this snake is just asking to be defanged, permanently--

“But that is neither here nor there,” Luigis drawls, as if his impending death bores him. “I must admit I wandered over this way to inform his lordship that I found something that might interest him.”

Sui nearly sags in relief. “Ah, well, then I suppose I should leave you gentlemen to it,” he says, his smile struggling to stay on his face. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way of confidences between colleagues.”

Colleagues. The man could have slapped him and he’d be less offended. “We’re not--”

“You’re too kind,” the snake simpers, and oh, he could ring his bandy neck if he wasn’t-- “If you would come this way, Lord Obi.”

“If I must,” he manages.

“You must,” Luigis informs him, none of that noble politesse lingering on his face. “Now get over here.”

Luigis leads him on a circuitous path around the veranda, winding down to a lower balcony a staircase away from the main party. Not so far that he has left the crowd, but quiet, at least. Isolated.

The former Knight Captain clucks his tongue when he drags his feet, mouth drawn in annoyance.

“It would be just as easy to poison you in there as out here,” he chides, impatient, “and you know it.”

“We both know you would never stoop to a poisoning. That’s much more Touka Bergatt’s style.” He arches a narrow brow. “I think you’re much more of a dagger-in-the-ribs kind of murderer, or maybe even a garrote--”

“Dramatics do not become you, Lord Obi,” the snake rattles.

“Really?” he drawls, flouncing down the stairs with as much feeling as he can conjure. “But I learned from the best.”

Luigis stares at him, blank. “I do not know how Prince Zen put up with you.”

“I’m very pretty.”

“You’re obnoxious.”

“Now, now, Sir Hisame,” Obi drawls, wallowing in the hollow ring of his title, “is that how a knight speaks to his betters?”

The snake’s skin sheds, and Obi fears no man-- besides the marquis, of course-- but he’d be a lot more comfortable if Hisame wasn’t looking at him like that.

“Get down here,” he mutters, turning his back to him. “I thought a bridegroom would be more eager to see his beloved.”

“What--” his voice is a whip crack, cutting into the night-- “do you mean by that?”

Luigis huffs, patience worn thin. “You’d know already if you’d stop dawdling.”

“I’m not dawdling,” Obi grumbles, hurrying down the rest of the steps, “I’m making an entrance.”

“You’re being a nuisance,” he corrects, as peevish as always. “Do you want to see her or not?”

Ah, now there was a threat to get him moving. “What have you done to my mistress?

Luigis clucks his tongue. “I haven’t done anything to her. Though you might want to get accustomed another pet name if you want to convince the rest of these heels of your love-match.”

He grits his teeth. Sloppy, dropping his guard in front of the snake.

Obi sidles up to the balustrade; a cursory inspection reveals that it’s just a little too high for a man to conveniently fall from. Not that decent reasoning has ever stopped a terrible accident from happening, but it would be a cold day in hell before Obi let a man like Luigis get the drop on him.

“So,” he drawls, leaning an arm on the rail. The garden spills out below them, though it’s not Miss’s stomping grounds. This is the decorative one, complete with useless fountains and a laughably easy hedge maze. “Is there some reason I should be im--?”

A giggle bubbles into the air, wafting up to the balcony on the wind. He’d know that sound anywhere.

His heart surges at the flash of red flitting between the hedges, quick as a bird. But it’s not, not with the crowd of blonde and brown and black following along behind it. His vantage is made clear as the red scurries further into the maze, and-- ah, there she is, too far away to make out more than the burnished glow of her hair and the shimmering fabric of her gown.

So this is what the ladies were up to tonight. He knew he should have made Kiki his best man.

“Ah, see? We’re not so different after all,” the snake murmurs. “We both like to bask in what was never meant to be ours.”

Kiki saunters after the press, and oh, when the moonlight hits her, she could be one of those goddesses Master is always on about. The kind that hunted by moonlight and turned men into tree for looking at them naked.

Obi had always thought something like that might appeal to her; Miss Kiki would certainly be itching to try if she caught Hisame Luigis looking at her the way he is now.

He turns a feral smile towards the former Knight Captain. “At least some of us didn’t use lies to get it.”

Luigis stares back, impassive. “Oh, did we not?”

My name is Obi, Miss, he’d said, the second lie he’d ever told her, and I have many aliases and many secrets.

He clenches his jaw. “Well, some of us didn’t go on to commit treason.”

Against all expectation, the snake grins. “You have me there.”

“It seems as if all the south is here at your wedding,” Luigis remarks after a long moment, crossing his arms over the balustrade. He may play at a casual pose, but oh, Obi knows his gaze hasn’t strayed, not one inch. “What a lucky man you must be to inspire such a press.”

Obi’s mouth twists into a rueful grin. “I think we both know none of this is for me.”

“Of course not.” Strange how much more palatable this snake was when he wasn’t trying to hide his scales. “His Majesty only invited lords he could trust. Ones that toe his line.”

He huffs out a laugh. “And somehow you still made the short list.”

Luigis favors him with a brittle smile. “Only due to the magnanimity of our mutual master. And yet...” He casts a wary glance back toward the veranda. “No northern lord has merited an invite.”

Obi frowns, following his gaze. “Or maybe they refused. It is a long trip. Short notice.”

“Perhaps,” he hums, mouth pulled into a grim line. “Perhaps. You all never did catch Conti, did you?”

His gaze darts up to his. “What do you--?”

“Sir Hisame.”

The both start, a fact that does not escape the crystal trap of His Majesty’s eyes. His mouth curls, threatening the sort of good humor a cat has when the canary’s between its paws. “I hate to interrupt, but I do believe you are hogging the groom.”

The snake’s smile fades to harmlessness. “Apologies, Your Majesty. Sir Obi and I have so much in common now that we both are in Prince Zen’s service.”

“Of course,” His Majesty agrees, utterly insincere. “I’m sure the marquis has much wisdom to impart about my brother’s idiosyncrasies. Still...I do hope you’ll spare me a few minutes to have a word with my vassal.”

“As you wish, Your Majesty.” The snake flashes his fangs at Obi. “He’s all yours.”

The king of Clarines is still as he watches Luigis disappear into the press, his polite smile firmly in place as he says, “Kiki dodged an inconvenient accident with that one.”

Obi coughs. “Your Majesty?”

Master always threatens to tie bells to him, but it’s His Majesty that moves silently, sweeping in beside him with little more than a whisper of his cape over the stone. “I trust you are finishing your engagement agreeable.”

“As little of it as there is,” Obi replies, guarded. Miss still bobs through the hedges, obvious to his keen eye, but oh, how he hopes it is not the same for the king.

“What can I say? You are a passionate man,” he remarks dryly, peering out over the gardens. “Once you discovered your love, it took you mere days to marry. Unless, of course, you rather a longer courtship? It’s not too late to change history.”

Obi’s mouth pulls flat. “I suppose that depends on how much Tanbarun know about Master and Miss, doesn’t it?”

“Ah, how very reasonable of you.” The king lifts a brow, impressed. “I should be grateful for it. If you had shared my brother’s temperament, I would have had to do quite the dance to explain that swap of wives.”

He shouldn’t rise to the bait. Izana Wisteria, first of his name, never mentions anything off-hand; each turn of conversation is planned, a gambit he has weighed and measured before placing his bet. He is not the sort of man who asks a question unless he has already devised the answer to it.

He knows all that and still, still-- “Really? I would have thought one up-jumped common girl would look the same as any other in this court.”

His Majesty’s smile sharpens, and oh, he’s some kind of idiot leaving an opening like that against a master swordsman. “I would commend you for that observation, my lord, had not the engagement party taken place. Months ago now.”

Months ago. Yesterday he had asked since when, and Miss would not meet his eyes, but now-- now--

His knuckles blanch on the balustrade. “How long?”

His Majesty’s eyes alight, and oh, he’s falling right into his trap, but it’s hard to care when the answer is, “Oh, half a year ago, now? Perhaps more. Not long after you’d left to go north. Your title was part of the marriage agreement.”

Obi blinks. “Excuse me?”

“The title to Conti,” His Majesty repeats, “Countess Yuris was quite clear that as part of her reward for liberating it from its last lord, the march should go to a man that would be sympathetic to her island’s struggles. When we offered your name, she agreed. Quite quickly, if I may say so”

His thoughts are a storm, a hurricane, and oh, there are a thousand more important things whipping through his skull, but the only one that surfaces is, “Kihal?”

Doesn’t a marquis outrank a countess, he’d teased, only hours ago, and she’d rolled her eyes, but-- but--

She chose this. Chose him. Ha, he knew she liked him, no matter how much she complained.

“So you can see what sort of trouble I would be in had you decided to be as belligerent as my brother,” the king continues, watching him carefully. “Perhaps if we committed to the deception, I could convince them that she dyed her hair, but losing two inches, hm...” He lifts a shoulder. “A hard proposition. And I doubt Marquise Conti would have be any less of a firebrand than Countess Yuris.”

The king laughs, but his smile is an invitation to think of all the things he has left unsaid, all the slights from which a countess would never recover from. There was no way to exchange Miss and Kihal, no way to pretend confusion when they had already presented her as Master’s consort-to-be. Everyone would have known she was put aside, shunted off to a loyal retainer to smooth over ruffled feelings. A consolation prize and a reward all wrapped into one.

Fine enough, if she was just some lord’s daughter. But Kihal was Countess Yuris, a lord in her own right with a seat on the council, and to insult her in such a way--

Well, Master’s reputation would recover, but hers never would. And Miss--

Miss would be a party to it. All because Master could not resist the chance to have what he gave up willing. Months ago.

“You look quite thoughtful, Conti,” His Majesty observes pointedly. “Perhaps--”

“That’s not my name,” he says, because it is rote, it is safe, and nothing else that roils inside him is.

The king’s mouth curves, pleased. “Ah, my apologies--”

“Brother.”

Master stands at the top of the stairs, all billowing cape and shining hair like an illumination of a folk tale’s prince-- but it is soured by the grim set of his mouth and the hard gleam in his eye. “I see you’re both taking in the evening.”

“Can you blame us?” His Majesty sweeps a hand toward the garden below. “We have have such a pleasant view.”

Master’s brows take a dubious slant as he approaches the balustrade, peering over as if he suspects His Majesty might take the opportunity to become an only sibling. “What--?”

A flash of red darts through the hedge again, and Master’s mouth pulls thin, skin pale in the moonlight.

“Well then.” The king smiles, all teeth. “I see you’ve become as enchanted as we have.”

“I’d like to speak to Obi,” Master grits out, never pulling his gaze from Miss. “Alone.”

“Of course.” His Majesty floats away, too pleased. “A lord does have his duty on the night of his vassal’s wedding, after all.”

He should say something. It always been his job to break the tension; it would be too easy to do it now. Don’t worry, Master, he would say, you don’t need to explain to me how a lord does his duty.

But he can’t. Not when he remembers how proudly Master had worn Kihal on his arm. Not when he knows how easily he would have scuttled her reputation, her entire island’s hope for safety, if only to have what he wanted. Still, given the same choice, could he say he would have done any different?

Yes. He would have married her when his damn knight asked him on his knees to do it.

“I was thinking.” Master drags his gaze from the maze, finally meeting his.

“Funny,” Obi grits out, hands flexing at his side. “So was I.”

He takes in a breath, lets it out. This is fine. It’s practically tradition for the groom to punch his best man the night before the wedding, isn’t it?

“I don’t hold your reins.”

His head jerks up. “Master--?”

“Not anymore,” Master continues, the words solemn, his shoulders rolled in a rueful curve. “You’re a lord in a your own right now, Obi. Your earned that. Ten times over.”

He stares. “Ma--?”

“No, don’t. I...I think--” Master steps forward, pained smile parting his lips--“it’s time you called me Zen.”

“I--” His hands are trembling now, but not from anger. “I can’t. I couldn’t. Master--”

Pale hands reach up to clasp his shoulders. “You’re a marquis. And beyond that, a personal friend.” He laughs, bitter. “I should have told you that a long time ago. It’s not like I make Mitsuhide stand on tradition. And Kiki...”

Obi lets out an inhuman wheeze. “They’d never find the body.”

“That’s putting it lightly.” He slings an around around him. Obi staggers under the weight. “ Come on. I think it’s high time we got you respectably drunk.”

 “I...” Obi swallows, throat so tight it nearly chokes him. “I think I don’t know who Miss will scold more.”

He laughs, mouth widening into a grin. “What, and miss the chance to get both of us at once?”

The world lurches into place as Obi says, “You know, your Honorable Brother said the same thing...”

His jaw drops. “No! He didn’t, take that back.”

Obi grins, sauntering beside him. “Miss says I may joke, but I never lie.”

He groans. “Let’s just get you drunk already.”

Obi snickers. “Sounds like a good idea, M--” he bites down on the word. “...Zen.”

In the lamplight, Obi is sober as a schoolmarm, hoofing down the hall with a spring in his step and a song on his lips. A song he can’t quite remember with lyrics that seemed clearer in his head, but-- sober. No tipping or slurring whatsoever. Sir would be proud.

It’s when he gets to his room, the lights extinguished-- don’t know why, it’s not like Yori didn’t know where he was going-- that things start to fall apart.

Namely the lamp. That falls right to pieces when it hits the floor. Oil soaks straight into the carpet. The king will probably bill him for that. One (1) Viandese carpet, stained. One (1) priceless antique oil lamp, smashed. Oh, to see Morel’s face when he gets that letter. Won’t be attending any more weddings, that’s for certain.

Not a problem. Wouldn’t be attending this one either, if he wasn’t the groom.

Ooh, the groom. The groom that would need to be upright and art--- art-- able to use words. Things. And stuff. For the...word things. Important word things.

He bends down, trying to pick up the lamp. Ouch. Nope. Leaving that for Yori. Miss will scold him if he draws any more blood tonight.

Miss. Miss, who he’s going to marry tomorrow. Who will be very put out if he can’t word good. Talk good. WORD THINGS.

Or would she? He’s just got to make it through the ceremony. Doesn’t need him after that. No worries about a limp groom, no matter what Her Majessy says. Majosty. Mejesty. Whatever. Him not being able to perform would probably be a relief, if Miss--

Knock knock knock.

He blinks. That’s not at his door.

Knock knock.

It’s on his wall. Can’t open that.

Knock knock knock, it persists, after a bit of a pause. Knock knock.

OH. It’s Miss. She’s talking to him. Through the wall. How nice.

She’s started a third round by the time he stumbles close, picking out the same pattern on the paper.

Knock knock knock, he replies. I’m here.

Miss, never one for subtlety, breaks into a run. He stands there, brow knitted. Why a ru--?

Her balcony door swings open.

Oh, she wants to see him. Now. Right now. How he is.

He stares down at his costume, and well, all right, it’s seen better days. Better hours at least. But Miss Kiki-- Mrs Kiki now? -- knows what she’s doing. He looks presentable.

He takes off the cravat anyway. And the jacket. He’d be out of the waistcoat too, if there were any less steps for him to take.

“Obi,” she breathes, cheeks flushed. “You’re back.”

“Miss.” He’s not prepared to see her, not when she’s in her nightgown already, shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders. Might as well be back in Tanbarun with a set up like this. “Would have made it hard to knock if I wasn’t.”

A laugh bubbles out of her, her eyes wide. “Yeah,” she agrees, hiccuping up another. “I guess so.”

“You know...” He saunters toward the balustrade with a swagger. Or maybe swaggering with a saunter? Eh, a saucy walk. That’s the thing. Reminding her he’s got some hips and he’s not afraid to use ‘em. “It’s bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the wedding.”

“Good thing our wedding happened two months ago.” Her mouth curves into a little smirk he’d love to put his mouth on. Which he won’t, because they aren’t like that. Mouth friends. “So there’s nothing to ruin.”

Sound logic. That’s what he likes about her. And everything else, too.

“I saw you tonight.” She wrinkles her nose, like she’s only just hearing her own words. “On the balcony, I mean. At your stag night. It looked like fun.”

A laugh heaves from him, unbidden. “I promise you were having more at yours.”

At least until Honorable Brother opened up the good stuff. One for the road, he’d said. Or wait, no. Didn’t say that. But well, something like it. Close enough.

“I wish I was with you,” she sighs, voice thick with longing.

“You would have been very, very bored,” he promises. “I'd like to have been running around that maze instead.”

He’d caught more than a few pairs unaware in there. He would have liked to catch Miss unaware too. Maybe even been caught by--

“But I would have been with you,” she insists, and she must mean something more for the way she frowns, as if even her own words weren’t working properly. “I mean--” she sighs, frustrated. “Obi...”

Miss hesitates, gaze flicking up to catch his, and with no more warning than a clench of her jaw, she crawls over the balustrade and leaps onto his balcony. She stumbles over the lip of his own rail, but he’s already there, arms out to catch her.

“Miss,” he laughs, breathless. “My heart almost stopped.”

She laughs too, but it stills as her hand curls into his shirt. She lays it flat against his chest. “But it didn’t.”

It didn’t. It hasn’t. It never has. That’s all he can think as he stares down into her eyes. Her mouth goes slack, breath coming out of her in tiny, labored bursts, and on any other woman, he’d know what that meant.

No, a lie. Not the last thing, but before. He’s also thinking, months ago. Six months ago. A letter in hand before he left Lyrias. And she’d said nothing at all.

Nothing at all, but told him she’d missed his body. Had answered every hopeless flirtation in kind.

It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t mean anything. But... “Miss--”

“Obi,” she breathes, gaze fixed to his. “you would...you would tell me. If this wasn’t what you wanted. If I...” She licks her lips, an utterly distracting technique. “If you wanted something else.”

He blinks, arms loosening. “Miss. I’m happy to do whatever you need--”

“No.” She squeezes him tighter, as if that might wring the truth from him. “I’m asking if this is what you want.”

His breath rasps out of his chest. He’s never wanted anything more. No, never wanted anything to be real more.

But that’s not what she’s asking. “Yes,” he breathes, “I want this.”

Her gaze drops, straight to his lips, and oh, she must think he’s coming down with something the way he’s wheezing.

“I guess it’s time for all good grooms to go to bed,” he tells her, setting her down on her feet. “I think I might have had too much.”

She blinks, flushing as she looks away. “O-oh, right. Yes, me-- me too, I think.”

“I should get you in bed then,” he says, because oh, he’s far too stupid to use words right. “I mean, put you in bed. Your own bed. Over...over there.”

She nods. “Right. Yes. It would be good to, ah, have someone to lean on I think.”

She stumbles on her first step, and he laughs. “I think in the interest of you making it down the aisle under your own power, you need a little more than that.”

Her eyes widen, curious. “What do you-- oh!”

He grins, swinging her up onto his back. “Come on, Miss. Let’s take the quick way.”

[sabraeal]

Family, Duty, Honor [Part 3]

Part 1 | Part 2

Obiyukiweek 2020, Day 7: Loyalty To sovereign, country, and the code of chivalry

Obi was no stranger to a good fuck, not even among silk sheets. He’d worn a different face then-- so many had crossed over him, before he’d earn the warning over his brow-- but the body remembered, no matter what shape it bore. His hands may be deft with a blade, but they were even more cunning with a woman; he’d had every girl between Asshai and Estermont screaming whatever name he’d borne before moonrise on a summer night.

So there’s no godsdamned reason for him to have two fucking left hands now.

One hooks behind her head, the other round her slip of a waist, and-- and he means to scare her, just a little, to show her what a man could do if she gave herself to him-- but she softens instead of struggles, and oh, he hadn’t counted on her being pliant in his arms. This is supposed to be leap from a tower, not a surrender.

His mouth meets hers, and for a sweet moment, everything fades away, paling in comparison to the softness of her lips. To how they nestle so perfectly against his. It’s no longer about silencing the question he doesn’t dare to answer, or a calculated feint to make her retreat, but instead--

He wants this. All of it. There has never been a sweeter nectar than her gasp against his lips, a more arousing touch than her fingers clutching at his shirt, a more heady brew than the way she flows into him as his desire drags him under. There’s a free fall in his heart, and--

And it ends as his back hits the mattress. Their teeth clack together, hard enough to leave his rattling as they rebound from the fall. Father above, at least they’d only gone as far as the pillows.

Miss pulls back, hand over her mouth, eyes stark with betrayal. “I thought you said there would be no pain at all with you?”

He gives her a flat look. “If only I’d known you’d be so eager, Miss, I’d have braced myself better.” He arches a brow. “Are you sure there’s no Mormont in you? I’ve hear they like to give their men a good mauling--”

“You were the one who grabbed me.” She’s far too prim for a girl who just asked for him to put his get in her.

“And you were the one who asked me to.” His hand flexes at her waist, smooth linen tickling his palm as he rounds it over the curve of her hip. “Unless you’ve changed your mind, Miss. After all, you--”

Her fingers tangle in the bristle of his hair, dragging him down. This time it’s him who gasps against her lips, who lets her drink him down. Ah, he’d thought that first kiss had been the height of pleasure, but oh, he hadn’t known what her lips seeking his would do to him.

“Haah.” He tries to think past the blood rushing through his ears, racing to make it to his cock. “Miss.”

“Obi.” Her bright eyes flutter open, piercing him as well as any Tully spear. “Please.”

This is not the sort of begging he’s used to in bed; his lovers beg for his cock, but Miss-- Miss asks so much more. More than he ever planned to give.

He rolls her-- an impressive trick, he knows; hard to master but child’s play when a man knows the knack. She certainly seems impressed, jaw slack and chest heaving, the forest in her eyes half lost to night. He catches her hands in one of his, pinning them to the plump pillows above her head.

“I’m no lord, Miss,” he warns her, “there’s no wolf or stag or fish stamped on my shield to remind me to be gentle with a maiden.”

No dragon either, he nearly adds, but oh the line between kindness and cruelty is too thin for him to dance. He means to rattle, not wound, and that shaves a hair too close.

Her mouth pulls thin, eyes distant, and oh, she’s not here in this room with him when she says, “A man may wear a flower but still crush another in the taking.” Her chin lifts, and she meets his gaze squarely, no fear lingering in her eyes. “I trust you, Obi. I always have.”

His cock gives a traitorous twitch. Fuck him for being such a soft touch.

“And what was it you said?” she continues with a wry smile. “With me there’d be no pain at all--”

He tugs on her hands, cutting off the rest of that mortifying impression. “There won’t be. But that,” he leans in, letting her take in the full horror of his predator’s smile, “doesn’t mean I won’t fuck you hard. I’ll leave you wanting. Ruin you for other--”

“You’re stalling,” she says, blinking. “Are you nerv--?”

His mouth latches to her neck, nipping at the soft hollow behind her ear. With a moan that goes straight to his cock, she arches into him, every piece of her misaligned with his own body. She’s a giant in his mind, a true she-bear of Mormont, but in practice-- she’s a mouse. Her ribs grate against the top of his stomach, her lips straining to brush his chin, and he-- he grabs her hips with a bruising force, yanking her into him.

“Does it feel like I’m nervous to you, Miss?” His shaft grinds into the useless mound of her skirts. “Do I seem like a blushing boy, needing your hand to hold?”

He might as well be with how hard he is. But Miss knows nothing of men, not out of her books and diagrams. She doesn’t know he could have the Black Pearl herself writhing against him, naked as the day she was born, and never twitch. Yet with her he’s counting faces to keep himself from spilling on her like an untouched boy.

He expects his Miss to blush and stutter, to bolt upright and call the whole thing off. Instead she reaches out, fingers curling in the bristle of his hair, and drags him back to her neck.

Obi might be a fool, but oh, she does not need to ask him twice.

His teeth sink into her, tongue lashing the soft skin of her neck. She jolts beneath him, her hands flying to his shoulders, nails pricking him through the soft film of his shirt.

That gives him no little pause. Another woman might mean to goad him on, but Miss has plenty of reason to use tooth and claw against a man, and none of it for pleasure.

He lifts himself the barest breath away-- an effort worthy of song, the way he wants her-- opening his mouth to ask--

And she moans in protest, long and wanting. Oh, there’s no mistaking that, nor the way she pulls him closer.

Her pulse hammers hard against his lips, not a rabbit’s flutter but the strong beat of an entirely larger animal. Elder Highness-- ah, the False Dragon now-- had always said she was not one of them, not a dragon-born, but oh, if he could feel how she moved beneath him, how she writhed into his hands, blood boiling beneath her skin--

Some dragons are hatched, but some, some are born of fire.

He trails biting kisses down the column of her neck, each gasp and groan making him harder, hotter, burning him from the inside. Oh, a Red Woman she must be for her to ignite such fires in him and still remain unburnt.

At least, so it seems, until flesh turns to silk and damask. Obi pulls back, ardor cooled by his annoyance.

Her eyes, screwed up in pleasure, peek open. “I didn’t say to stop.”

“No.” He tugs at the sloping neckline of her gown. “But your damned dress did.”

She has the grace to flush; though it only highlights just how much of her eye has gone to pupil, green forest charred by the force of her desire. “It’s not as if I meant to-- that I came here to--”

“Ah but Miss--” his finger flips the first clasp on her robe, toying with the second-- “you did come here to. Quite specifically.”

Pink spreads to the top of her stays, perhaps beyond. His cock twitches. He’ll find out soon enough.

“I suppose I did.” Her gaze fixes to his fingers, following every minute shift. “You can take it off then.”

His stills, numb. “W-what?”

Her cheeks blow out, so red she might make it part of her device: red trout, desperate to spawn. “You’ll have to anyway if you mean to--” she licks her lips, and oh, he does not need to be reminded of how deliciously pink they are, like shells found on the shore-- “fuck me.”

Beyond the wall, they would call her kissed by fire, and Stranger take him, she must be to ignite him like this, to make his hips buck into her as if were she and not he who commanded them. Obi reins them, barely, and she--

She presses back against him, eyes entirely guileless, as if it were just instinct to meet him.

Obi may be no virgin, but by the gods, he is a man, and he cannot, he cannot--

He grits his teeth. He must.

“Not necessarily,” he manages, with less pain than he feels. “A creative man--”

“I want you to.” There’s not a coy bone in Miss’s body, but Mother fuck him, he never thought she’d put it to use like this. “Please, take it off.”

Never has he been more pleased to take a command.

He flips the last clasp, damask and silk falling aside, revealing the simple stays beneath. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before; she’d been down to less after her dip in the Blackwater, still flushed with victory and clutching Kihal’s case to her chest, but still-- it’s different, knowing all this is for him, that this is an invitation for him to touch.

So he does.

“Oh!” Her hand tangles in the bristle of his hair, but she does nothing to pry his mouth from her breast. If anything, she holds him more firmly against her, urging him on, making the sorts of noises that give men like him ideas.

“You should,” she pants, drawing his mouth up to hers. She loses her train of though for a moment-- he makes sure of it-- before trying, “You should get this over with.”

He jerks back, eyes wide. He’s had a hundred women from here to Essos, and not a single once has told him to get it over with. “Miss?”

She stares back, mouth slack and eyes dark, the very picture of a maid eager to be debauched. “Can’t you just...put it in now?”

“Some men might,” he admits, gritting his teeth as she squirms under him, his cock jumping at the attention. “If they didn’t care about the cu-- the woman they lay with.” He lifts a hand, running a thumb along the delicate ridge of her cheekbone. “But I promised you no pain. I mean to keep it.”

The round of her cheek heats under his palm. “But back in Oldtown, you said it was simple enough. Just stick them with the pointy end.”

Oh, he remembers that vividly enough. Stuck on an endless watch with second sons and guttersnipes, the boy called Hero fretting over one of the whores who haunted his patrol. He’d said it as a joke, as a way to ease the kid’s worries, but--

But if he’d known Miss was skulking about instead of snug in her bed, he wouldn’t have said it at all. Fuck, what a fool he is.

“Miss,” he groans, pinching her cheek. “You know better than to take a man’s word when he talks about fucking. Especially if he’s saying it to another man.”

She blinks, utterly guileless. “Not even yours?”

He barks out a laugh. “Especially not mine.”

It’s a mistake to say, pure and simple, especially when he’s got a girl pinned beneath him, hot and begging for his cock. Or, well, inquiring politely about its availability. And to say it to this girl, well--

It makes her entirely too thoughtful. “So everything you have said of lovemaking I’m to assume is...false?”

“W-well now.” He’s surprised he can still blush with the way his cock presses into her. “That’s not what I said, Miss.”

Her brows rise, and oh, she may play a sweet maid, but she’s the daughter of a bar at heart. “But isn’t it?”

Obi heaves a harried sigh, but beneath the cage of his ribs, his heart races. You only like the chase, Torou teased him once, that’s why you never keep what you’ve caught. She’s right, she’s right, but oh, he could chase Miss like this every night, letting her lead him into his own traps and liking her all the more.

“I may joke,” he quotes, leaning close enough to tap her nose with his. “But I never lie.”

Her mouth rounds listening to her words on his lips, eyes growing darker. “Which ones were jokes?”

Her breath is shallow now, matching his. He does not imagine her hunger when he murmurs, “I’m sure my lady could guess.”

Her hips buck beneath his, an accident, but still his eyes roll back in his head. He has to clutch the covers to keep himself upright.

“You once said men would put their mouths, ah--” her gaze flickers down between them, her cheeks pink-- “there.”

He lets his weight press into her, reveling in the way her head tips back with a sigh. “That is what you find far-fetched?”

A giggle bubbles out of her with a gasp. “Why would a man want to put his face down-- down there, when it yields him neither heirs nor pleasure?”

His mouth tilts, wicked. “Are you so sure of that, Miss?”

“I--” he presses a kiss to the slope of her breast, grinning as her back arches, breath leaving her on a sigh-- “oh.”

She licks her lips, eyes fixed to the beams above them. He knows the air she holds is to speak, to compose her next argument. There are two pieces of wisdom the maesters cling to in Oldtown: never interfere when dragons dance and do not get entrenched in a debate with Mistress Shirayuki. Both always lead to ruin.

Little do they know, there’s one way to win against Miss: never let her start.

Her mouth opens, argument at the ready, and Obi takes the tip of her breast into his mouth and sucks.

The noise he draws from her threatens to end this whole affair before it’s even begun. With a hiss, his cock grinds down into the mattress, but feathers are far from what he needs. He rears back, hands gripping her knees where they bracket his hips, long skirts rucked up around them, and he kneads them down her thighs, bringing heavy damask with him. She trembles beneath his touch, eyes dark as she watches him, but he has barely begun to enjoy that look before he catches a sight that captivates him more.

He’d known her cunt would be a pretty thing, flushed and pink, pale flesh framed by deep auburn curls-- ah, how that would end a few bets at the garrison, if he hadn’t seen to it already. Still, he wasn’t prepared to see her fully flowered before him, wet and weeping for his cock though they’ve hardly startled.

“Obi?” His gaze jerks up, taking in the painful flush of her cheeks. “Is there...is there something wrong?”

With me, she means. His Miss is fearless, a woman to throw herself from a tower rather than be held captive, but here she is, shy before his eyes.

“Not at all, Miss.” He lets his mouth cant, cock twitching at the breath that hitches in her chest. “Just thinking about how well I’m about to feast tonight.”

Her eyes pulse wide. “Oh, you don’t have to--”

“Please, Miss.” He drops to his elbows, not missing the way she flutters as his breath ghosts over her folds. “I’m famished.”

Palms settle against the dewy skin of her thighs, pushing them open, pushing them up, and then he licks a long stripe up the length of her slit.

She strangles a squeal, hips bucking, but he’s ready for her. His hands keep her still, keep her steady, pressing her thighs further back as his tongue dips between her lips, taking his first draught of the nectar within.

No woman is sweet; that’s a bard’s song, meant to flatter noble women who dream of a man with a silver tongue as their lover. But Miss is something close to it; clean and fresh and earthy still, untainted. No acrid perfume to mask her scent, just thick and musky and her, the salt heavy on his tongue.

“Obi.” It’s nothing more than a gasp, a prelude to the way her nails drag against his scalp. Her fingers knit in his hair, drawing him closer, and when his lips close around that small bud at the center of her--

Well, it’s a good thing he thought to hold her down. She could break a man’s neck with those legs.

His traitorous cock jumps. Ah yes, of course it likes the idea.

His tongue traces her, once, twice, before he closes in on that place again, using just the barest hint of teeth. She’s whimpering now, so close she’s dripping, staining the silk beneath them. Smart of her to choose his bed; the lord won’t be looking here for her sins.

She strains against him, hips seeking more. He knows what she wants, knows what her cunt is craving, and there’s nothing he’d like to do more than to give it to her; to unlace his trousers and bury his cock to the hilt, but, oh--

He has a point to make. And he knows better than to cede the floor once he has it.

One hand slips down her thigh, her wet curls tangling round his fingers as they trace down, down, past the crease of her leg. She squirms as he brushes her folds, but oh, he slides right to the knuckle, her sheath tight around the blade of his fingers. Her keen splits the air, and he should tell her to hush, tell her that this plan requires some discretion, but--

He doesn’t care, not when with every stroke of his fingers she clenches tighter, so close, body bent back like a bow--

She releases on a sigh, every bit of tension leaving her as she comes around him, his fingers drenched with her. He pulls back, pressing a kiss to her cunt for good measure, and smiles.

“Now tell me, Miss.” He takes her hand in his and puts it right over his aching cock. “Does that feel like nothing to you?”

Her jaw goes slack, eyes dark, and he nearly grins to see her so thoroughly routed, to finally see her bereft of her words--

And then she rubs him. Gentle, testing, and then-- then very much not.

“Miss.” He only just stops himself from rutting against her palm. It’s been far, far too long for her to be touching him like that. Not when he’s already-- when she’s already--

Gods, when she looks like that.

With no warning, she grabs his shirt, dragging him down to slot her mouth against his. He expects her to pulls back, to grimace at the taste of her on his lips, but-- she doesn’t. Instead she rolls her hips into him, only the weave of his trousers between him and her sweet cunt, and--

“We need to--” she gasps for breath against his mouth, ceaselessly moving against him-- “need to-- to--” his teeth graze her bottom lip-- “the baby.”

He springs back, gaze meeting hers. She can’t--

Her hand snakes between them, tugging at his laces. “Now.”

He’d be a liar to say he’d never thought of this, that he’d never dreamed of her reaching for him with hunger in her eyes, but oh, this is-- this is so much more than that. His own fingers fumble at familiar laces, lost, and it’s only Miss that manages to undo the knot there, pulling out his cock. Oh, he’s ready to have her now, to do the duty she has set for him--

“No,” she says, stopping his heart in his chest. She must feel it, since she’s ever held it in her hands. “Obi,” she murmurs, plucking at his shirt, “I want to see you.”

“Miss.” His heart aches more than his cock ever could. “There’s no point. None of this-- none of me is real.”

He does not say, but I am more real than I have ever been before. He cannot say so much, not even to her.

Her eyes are so wide, so wild, so green when she looks up at him. “Then show me the man you want me to see.”

Obi needs no more provocation than that; he whips off his shirt, the filmy material slumping to the floor. Miss’s clever fingers are already at his laces, scrambling to work him free, but he slaps them aside.

“You too,” he pants, pulling wildly at his waistband, “I want to see you too.”

In a flurry of movement, they are left bare, save for the stays his miss struggles with. Her finger scrabble at the stiffened cloth, trying to find purchase, and Obi rumbles out a laugh, shaking his head.

“No, no, Miss,” he purrs, drawing her to the bed, gathering her up on his lap. “Allow me.”

His hand slides beneath his pillow, and with a quick flick of the wrist, her lacing parts beneath the keen edge of his blade. She stares, mouth round and eyes wide, and lets out a laugh.

“I should have known,” she says as the boning falls away, “even naked you are armed.”

“Armed I may be,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her shoulder, “but against you, I am defenseless.”

Her mouth softens. “Obi...”

He does not know what she means to say, but anything she might do is dangerous. He wraps her up in his arms instead, falling to the bed and catching her mouth. He’s prepared for the drop this time; there’s no jittering of teeth or unpleasant landing, just his hands in her hair, his fingers trailing down her spine, the whole of her radiant atop him.

Though not for long. A single squirm of her hips reminds him of his duty, and in a single, fluid roll, she is beneath him, breathless.

“You’re sure?” he asks, rubbing his cock against her, soaking himself. “You don’t--”

She tilts her hips up, just right, and Mother, Maiden, and Stranger, she better be, because he sinks in with nothing put the smoothest, hottest slide.

“Fuck,” he moans, teeth biting into the pillow. “Fuck. Are you--”

“Just a moment,” she pipes, strained. “I-- there’s so much of you.”

“Yes,” he gasps. “You’ve taken all of me. Fuck, but you’ve taken all of me.”

Her breath hitches, pained. “Is that-- bad?”

He laughs, somewhere between a honk and huff. “Maybe if you were with a lord, and he thought you a-- haah, fuck, but give me a moment, Miss-- light skirt.”

Her hips move so slightly against his, testing the motion. “Should I be-- ahh, that’s good, oh-- tighter?”

“If you were--” he thrusts into her, so gentle, and grits his teeth when she rises to meet him-- “I’d have embarrassed myself by now.”

“We’ve hardly-- haah, Mother--” her head tips back onto the pillow, baring her throat, and oh, who is he to refuse that invitation-- “started.”

“I know, I know, but, fuck--” he closes his eyes, starting a gentle rock that still threatens to ruin him-- “you’re perfect.”

Ah, he did not mean to say that. That’s-- that’s giving away far too many of his secrets.

Her arms wrap around him, legs clamping around his hips. Oh, that he does not pin her to the mattress and fuck her like her cunt’s begging him to should earn him a white cloak.

“Ah!” Her gasp is sweet in his ear, and if every noise she made was not already hurtling him to the edge, then--

“So are you,” she moans, nipping at his ear, “you-- you’re--”

“I’m close,” he admits, “I’m close. Are you sure you want-- should I--?”

“W-wait.” she pulls back, and Father’s cock, it is torture when she leaves him soaked an cold, no cunt to keep him warm. “I’ve heard-- the women say this is, um, the position. The best one. For conceiving.”

She rolls onto her belly, ass tilted into the air as she rises on her knees. Gods, it would take a better man that him not to bury his cock straight into the glistening pink shell of her cunt. She’ barely arranged herself before he’s on her, arms twined with hers.

“Is that what you want?” he says with more clarity than he’s managed since she put her hand to his chest and asked for just this. He sinks into her by inches, and gods, if she isn’t making every sweet noise known to man. “You want me to spill in you?”

“Y-yes,” she whines, “please.”

“You want me to come?” His hand drags down between her breasts, settling on the soft cushion of her stomach. “You want me to put a child in you, mistress?”

“Yours,” she pants, “I want yours. Please.”

It takes no more than that; the edge he’s dancing on falls away beneath him, and he’s only vaguely aware of how he pounds into her, relentless. All he knows is the feel of her clenching around him, so tight, too tight, and the heavenly pitch of her keening, and then-- then--

He follows. As he always has. As he always will.

It should be awkward, after.

They separate with the usual noises; her wetness and his come making a mess of them both, not to mention the sweat they’re drenched in. How he’ll ever sleep in the muddle they’ve made, Obi can’t begin to guess.

He rolls off her, spent. The sheets are damp beneath him.

Ah, but now he’s done it. There’s no going back, not after this. If Master were to find out--

Well, if all goes to Miss’s plan, he’s certain to. Obi scrubs a hand down his face. Ah, Stranger fuck him sideways, what a fool he is.

Still, the work’s not done. He rolls up, hobbling over to the basin. It’s no hardship at all to clean his cock; it’s hardly flagged even after a fucking like that, though it’s only a matter of time before nature takes its course. He soaks the cloth again, cleaning it of his mess, and then wrings it out, turning--

To see Miss on her back, knees folded against her chest, wet cunt making his cock twitch.

“Mother, have mercy,” he laughs, prowling toward the bed, “I’ve already fucked you.”

She blinks, head twisting to follow him as he crawls upon the bed. “Oh, no! This is-- to help it catch.”

He hums, gently taking the cloth to her. She gasps, ball tightening, before relaxing into his touch. “I see. My miss knows all the tricks.”

“I know enough,” she murmurs, cagey. “We will, ah...have to do it more than once, you know. For a babe to catch.”

He hesitates, cloth stilling against her cunt. He did know; he hadn’t been sure she did. “You really mean to do this, then?”

Her gaze meets his, and oh, he knows that set to her chin, that defiant glint in her eye. “It’s the only way,” she says, barely more than a whisper. “Zen needs Riverrun.”

His heart clenches hard in his chest, but it’s nothing he didn’t already know. With one last stroke-- she gasps, and ha, if only his cock would accept there is no encore that would not disappoint-- he sets the cloth aside, laying with his back to her.

“O-Obi?” Her fingers lightly graze his back. “You aren’t--?”

“Wake me up in an hour,” he rumbles, curling into himself. “I’ll be ready for you then.”

She huffs, indignant. “We don’t have to do it all right now.”

“I know.” He turns his head over his shoulder, grin wide and knowing. “But you want to, don’t you?”

She flushes, and oh, he know she would be like this, insatiable. It would be exciting, if it wasn’t for such a limited time.

“Take your nap.” Miss flashes a look at him that can only be called trouble. “You’ll be needing all that stamina, if you want to keep up with your promises.”