Chapter Text
He wakes lying in silk sheets, and that alone tells him where he is. That’s confirmed when the warm weight in his arms turns out to be Ma – de Sardet. De Sardet. Best not to get things confused. For a moment, he doesn’t dare move, in case he jostles her. De Sardet, in between defusing wars and taking on matters of national security, rarely gets enough sleep. He can only see brown hair, her face tucked against his neck and an arm across his chest. Though her embrace has loosened somewhat in the night, she’s fallen asleep holding him almost protectively – and now he remembers why.
His arse aches, in the way that tells him it’s been a certain kind of very good night, for the first time in a while. He looks around, to the scattered clothing on her floor, to the silk ropes coiled neatly by her bed. A cabin boy’s idea of neat, but all the same – ropes he brought to her. He imagines explaining that to his former self, who’d just met a noble late to the docks, cousin-less and asking him to smuggle, always with that obstinately cheerful mien. You let her what?
It’s something out of a crewman’s story, the sort of thing told late at night when you’ve been at sea for too long and other crew are a bad idea and you’ve only your own hand for company. Being used by a noble for pleasure, and then they never mention it again – or you become a story for their dinner parties. But those stories ended in cruelty, not a glass of water carefully placed by the bed (one he eyes and considers reaching for, but that would mean taking his fingers from soft, warm skin, or her leaving his arms. It seems an unnecessary gamble).
Those stories weren’t his friend. They never ended in her hands soft on his skin, her eyes bright and pleased as if she couldn’t look away from him. The pleasure of those stories was shameful, and she seems the furthest thing from ashamed when she’s riding him, head thrown back in delight before her eyes meet his, or when she’s tying him up and fucking him with that same startled joy. You were wonderful. He supposes he should be waiting for his own shame, but instead there’s only calm satisfaction, a placid sea that’s easy to sail.
He's never been a follower of the Light. He's a Naut; they tend to believe in the empirical. And the zealous idiocy of the priests didn't help. But she looks at him like he’s something holy, like he reaffirms her belief in the divine.
She makes a soft little sound, and he turns his head – but she doesn't seem to wake, only to press her nose against his neck. He strokes a hand along her shoulderblade, remembering her doing the same for him last night, her soft words.
She didn’t ask him to cuddle her. In fact, he’s damn sure he latched onto her and clung like a limpet. He’d forgotten sex could take him that way, particularly that kind of sex. (He closes his eyes and remembers giving himself to her, out of his mind with it. Her around him, inside him. Her pressing him down and him obeying, the taste of her cunt – )
But last night she was a flame in his arms, and now she’s a banked, smouldering heat: warm skin and softness, every muscle finally untensed. He strokes a hand over that slender, pale arm where it rests over his chest. None of her seems fragile when he’s in her bed; he only sees the strength of her, the way she wraps herself around him and commands him like a storm. Even with all the injuries they’ve helped each other treat and the blades he's deflected from her back, even with her wide-eyed terror at Constantin’s diagnosis… he sees the muscle and the desire in her eyes, not delicate wrists and old scars. But now she’s here, he finds with surprise that all he wants to do is let her soak in his body heat and sleep, before the world asks yet more of her. One more idiot bureaucrat, one more crooked priest.
He should untangle himself and make excuses, apologies – but he’s exhausted, and so is she, and he wants to hold her just a moment longer. He’s always been an early riser, but he knows it’s too early in the morning for this. He closes his eyes…
...And wakes up what seems like a moment later, at the shift of her in his arms and her soft, “Vasco?”
He opens his eyes, and she’s shifted to squint up at him. Her expression would, he’s sure, get her laughed out of the Serene court. She’d say similar. Her hair is a mess, mahogany waves wilder than some he’s sailed on. Her cheek is a little pinkened from where she’s rested against him, her mouth is soft and slack, and she is beautiful, utterly beautiful. He reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.
She says, “Should we discuss this?”
“Do we have to?” he responds.
She laughs, and the brightness of her smile… He’s thought it often, but he doesn’t know how he ever found her face severe. She tucks her face into his shoulder. They're almost of a height, and she fits there well, as if the hollow between collarbone and throat was made for her.
She mumbles, “You’re… very warm. Can I stay here a minute or two longer? I have a meeting with Constantin soon, but my timetable is...” She sighs against his neck.
He says mildly, “After last night? Anything you ask.”
She huffs a laugh, and the feel of it… It would be easy to lose track of time with her loose in his arms, laughing against his skin. It’s been too long since he’s held someone. Between captaincy and their mission, it’s been some time since he slept with anyone else at all. That’s probably all this is. She says, “We should do that again. You were...” She hums, a dreamy thing, and burrows into his neck.
“I wouldn’t protest.” His words are carefully casual, belying that prickle of pleased heat over his skin, the one that accompanies her praise. He’s never had someone give him so much of it. A good captain, he’s overheard once or twice, with a grunt. Good sailing. He tells his crew when they’re doing something right – how else are they meant to know to do it again?
But then there she was. You’re a wonderful shot! that first week, startled, on the field of battle. You’re a good man, and I’d like to get to know you better.
He thought they were court compliments, that she was trying to woo him as an ally like every other minister she had to deal with, until he heard You’re a wonderful teacher to Kurt and You must have been brilliant as Síora talked about her magic. Until they sat in a pub, exhausted and bruised long past pretence, and she grinned and said, Léandre d’Arcy sounds like a prig. I much prefer Vasco. At parties while nobles looked down their noses at him, where it would have served her better to play him off as a bodyguard: Captain Vasco, a valuable asset in helping us navigate the island and My friend here, do you know he’s one of the youngest captains in the fleet?! (He hadn’t realised she knew that. And then Cabral had mentioned her asking about him. Of course.) It’s just… her way.
He should have considered who he was sleeping with. He should have known that You sound like a fine captain would become You look so beautiful when you come. You’re so good, you’re so lovely, breathed with smoke and desperation and underneath it that almost painful earnestness, as if she can't help herself and needs him to know. It’s a constant tide, and all he can do is try not to be swept under by his surprise, to respond with his own foolish earnestness, thinking that the poets would say it better. He’s spent years telling people Well-tied, now scrub the deck, not You’re beautiful.
He stares at the ceiling, between silk sheets and in the arms of his strangest passenger, until she shifts and sighs. He lets go the moment she does, watches as she levers herself out of his arms and smiles at him. “Thank you,” she says, briefly touching his cheek – and then she’s leaving him in her bed and climbing out: back slim and strong in the sunlight, legs long, her arse a pale curve that’s always a little more generous than he expects, considering the rest of her.
He looks at the gentle dip of her waist, and thinks that perhaps if they had a little more time, he’d map it with his hands again. Kiss her neck, and make her smile. He’s never been one for lazing in bed, but the stolen moments with a lover are – no. She isn’t his lover, not that way. It’s an arrangement, between friends. Just because she did the decent thing and looked after him… He pulls himself back on course.
She looks over her shoulder, still with a smile hovering at the corner of her mouth, and catches his eye. He hopes that what he’s thinking isn’t plain on his face. She holds his gaze just a moment, with the slightest edge of mischief he usually sees when they’re about to displease an Inquisitor – then she looks away, lashes a shy sweep. Pleasure suits her. “There’s no hurry,” she says. “You know my house.”
It’s oddly companionable, him gathering his clothes and her finding new ones, laying them out for after a bath; her putting together the pieces of De Sardet, Legate of the Congregation, while he simply tries to look a little less well-fucked. She smiles and shifts to let him use her looking-glass as if this is all easy habit, while he tries to tame his hair again and wishes he’d brought his hat to jam down on top of it. (But like a fool, he wanted her to… see him.) He spots her giving the occasional curious look while he dresses, and can almost see her thought of So that’s where that goes. This is, after all, de Sardet, a woman so irrepressibly curious it became her profession.
When she’s about to leave to bathe, he takes that as a cue. She turns away, and he opens his mouth. Bites back Marie, and says, “De Sardet. Next week?”
She beams at him. “Of course,” she says. And then she nods and is through the door.
He takes his ropes and tucks them away in his coat, and his mind whispers, traitorously, Marie. He takes the servants’ entrance past the kitchen so as not to cause any questions, nods to the housekeeper, and his mind whispers, Marie. He walks the backstreets to the docks, and his mind whispers, Marie. He wonders why. Years at sea have taught him not to ignore an instinct, and he’s been wondering more often whether to use her name as casually as she does his, but he doesn’t know…
Marie, he remembers, in his own voice: a desperate groan when she was finally, truly inside him. Her eyes widening above him, a wave of something punched-out passing over her face – and the way she said his name in return. He doubts that was the only time. He knows himself too well. Storms.
Vasco doesn’t let his stride pause. These things happen, especially when he’s tied-down and half out of his mind with pleasure. He just has to remind himself of his bounds. He’s a Naut, and this is just another contract – albeit an unspoken one. He'll be more careful, next time. (Even if some part of him running straight at the rocks wants to say it, to see her eyes light up like that again.)
He knows better.
She tries not to think too much of it – it's just sex, and what someone does in the bedroom often has little bearing on what they do anywhere else – but it surprises her that he'd trust her so much. Yes, they trust each other in a fight, but there the potential for humiliation is much less. And yes, it was a popular game in court circles, pretending at true restraints, but she thought Vasco more serious than that. And so he was. What they shared – what he gave – he was so brave, and so… Funny that she’s paid to find the right words, and when she thinks of him, she can’t. Lovely, or beautiful, or like something sent to advertise sin aren’t enough. She almost forgets to get out of her hasty bath due to thinking that, and then has to grab her papers and all but run to her morning meeting with her cousin.
"You seem cheerful," Constantin tells her, when she sits down at the other side of his desk and pats her paperwork into some kind of order.
Oh. Oh dear. "Do I?" she responds, letting the smile stay at the edges of her mouth because trying to school her expression will just look more suspicious. She gives him the Nothing to see here eyebrows.
"You do," he confirms, slowly, sitting back in his chair and regarding her in that skewering way: the one that makes him look like his father.
"I swear, Angélie let me try some of her work, and those new recipes from Serene are truly something."
He sighs dramatically, and looks to the ceiling. "The umbrella-shaped pastries… truly the work of a genius. Anyhow, who is it?"
She blinks at him. "What?"
“The person who’s made you run here. And made you so… buoyant.”
She tries not to frown at the word choice. She can manage not to blush around him, even if she has to work harder at it than around strangers.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She settles for a half-truth, because it’s easier to tell. “I was just with a friend.” There’s a plate of some sort of fine biscuit on his desk: rings, with the red of… jam? She leans over to steal one – sampling, and to buy herself time. She bites in, and feels her eyebrows raising in an impressed sort of way. She suspects the kitchens have been trying to fatten Constantin up since the diagnosis, as if dough and pressed-in worry will hold off the inevitable. That makes the warm feeling from this morning drain away almost as completely as if she’s been punctured, along with her appetite. A shame. This really is beautiful baking; she’ll have to thank Angélie.
“Ah. Captain Vasco, then,” Constantin says cheerfully, and Marie chokes.
She coughs crumbs onto his desk, and then brushes them off with a hasty hand. “I beg your pardon?” she croaks.
“You are quite fond of him."
"I'm fond of everyone. Including Kurt. And Siora. And you." It seems faintly ridiculous to be having this argument with half a biscuit still in hand, but then, this entire argument is ridiculous.
He presses on, hands steepled on his desk as if this is some plan of attack. "There’s a certain smile you get when you're around the man – Anyhow. Fascinating, that that’s finally happened!” And even with the pallor of his skin and the bags under his eyes, he seems brighter for a moment.
“I – a certain smile?” she echoes, disbelievingly. “We’re friends, Constantin.” Friends who sleep together, both figuratively and apparently, literally. While perhaps cuddling a little. But that part isn't important. (And Vasco’s arms around her were just a one-off, because he needed a bit of comfort after laying himself so bare. She tells herself that firmly.)
His eyebrows raise, and he looks away from her, sighing. "I see. Forgive my assumption."
"Why would you think –?"
He looks back to her and marches on, growing more strident, "Perhaps it's because you seem to spend all of your time together, and you're forever speaking of 'what Captain Vasco said that was so funny,' and trying to buy him things."
"That's friendship."
"And you've come to my office both frazzled and smug."
"I'm not smug."
Constantin leans forwards in his chair and says, “You are. In exactly the same same way as when you were sneaking about with, what was her name from that minor house, Nath – ”
“I’m. It’s.” She takes a fierce bite of biscuit and finishes it off. She doesn’t think she’s ever managed to eat jam quite so furiously before. She says, when she swallows, “This is different.”
“So you are sleeping with him!” Constantin says, pointing triumphantly. Honestly, it’s the most energy he’s shown in weeks, and she’ll take a bit of embarrassment just for that, the glimpses of him from before the malichor. Vasco’s a fine man; there are worse to be associated with. It’s not as if her taste is bad. Constantin says, “How is he different, exactly?”
“I… don’t know.”
His brow furrows. “Is it because he’s a man? I know it’s been some time since you were courting the Florentines’ son, but I hear there are some very informative texts – ”
“Constantin.” And she’s sliding down in her chair, like she used to when they were foolish adolescents. “I. No.”
“Because he’s a Naut?”
“No.” She squints, and feels a rising of… something. He’s almost right. “Not… the way you think.”
He leans forwards, a hand under his chin. “Do tell.”
“I… I’ve always… He’s not a noble.” She frowns at her lap. “Not that that’s a bad thing. I just – we should never have met. And yet, we did. And friends, the people I courted – they were like us, and we were whiling away time, and it was… easy. They weren’t people I trusted with my life, people who’ve been on the battlefield with me. I’m… not entirely sure how to do this.” She can feel a lock of hair tickling her forehead, and attempts to put it behind her ear, with middling-fair results at best. She looks up at the highly unusual silence emanating from Constantin. His eyebrows have climbed up his forehead.
“I… see,” he says.
“It’s a good sort of different,” she reassures him, swiftly, raising a hand. “He’s a good friend. I’m just… uncertain.”
Constantin says, after a long, long moment, “Well, as said, I can refer you to some very useful texts – “
“Constantin!”
“Marie. Cousin. Does this… arrangement make you happy?” He looks at her over steepled fingers as if the answer matters to him, possibly more than anything else. In another world, he would have made a fine Prince of the Congregation.
She swallows. “I enjoy it.”
“There, then.” And he falls back in his chair, all the intensity gone. “Have you ever considered simply… worrying a little less, and letting yourself be happy?” He spreads his hand, leaning back so far in his chair it’s a miracle he doesn’t tip onto the floor; it’s some sort of technique he’s had since they were children. “Revolutionary, I know. But believe me, life is short." He gives her a rueful smile.
She wants to say It shouldn’t be so short, to rail some more, but that will just send him down painful avenues, and she isn’t here to hurt him. And… she feels better, somehow. It’s selfish of her, perhaps, but Constantin has always managed to remove the weight from her chest when she’s upset – through stubborn kindness, concentrated absurdity, or both. The malichor is far from solvable, as it stands; her embarrassment is a tiny thing in comparison.
“And now,” he says, “from the sublime to the ridiculous. We should move onto the delegation from San-Matheus. We’ve made plans for when they arrive, yes?”
She’s still blushing, but she says, “Yes.” And if her mind is reeling slightly, no-one has to know.
(And if after their meeting, she pops down to the kitchens and asks Angélie if next week, she may take a box of those marvellous jam biscuits with her – because, she doesn’t say, she can lay some out with tea when Vasco visits, and it’s good to keep your strength up after the sorts of things they do – and, even if he seems a little wary of them, he deserves nice things – well. No-one has to know that, either.)
They manage a few more times, sneaking those nights to bask in each other's bodies, each other's company. Vasco supposes it's not so different from when they'd have the odd drink together, except now rather than sea stories and climbing the palace walls, it's other kinds of discoveries, too. She loves it when he strokes a slow hand up her spine; she finds, with fiendish delight, that he's ticklish around the lower belly. He manages to squirm his way out from under her and ends up on top of her, holding her wrists to stop the torture. She just beams at him and says, "You have such a good laugh," and he can't stop himself from kissing her, the tops of his ears warming.
The night they're both twitchy from a battle that never materialised and Marie demands, "Harder, harder," he finally gets to fuck her into the mattress. She laughs under her breath in what seems like delight, and then gasps, "Oh, yes." The long, pale line of her throat when she throws her head back – that he thinks about on colder nights.
"You know when we were sneaking into that warehouse this week, and we had to head through the window?" she confesses afterwards, her hair fanned out on the pillow and breathing slowing.
He frowns. "You went last."
"Yes. And I was keeping a lookout. But that… wasn't entirely where my eyes were."
He calls on a captain's severity. "De Sardet, were you looking at my arse?"
"I can only apologise," she says, in grave diplomat's tones.
He half-grins at her, and she looks delighted, as if she'd make all kinds of concessions to amuse him. Delighted, and lecherous.
Despite such moments, they keep things to the bedroom. Their friends have enough to deal with without them trying to fuck each other over the worktable. (Even if that is a daydream he's had, staring at it while sitting next to her, stuck in camp on what would be their rendezvous night. She caught his eye with a sort of shared, amiable frustration and smiled at him.)
Those nights – they're the only time he ever gets to touch her, kiss her, like a release valve for the week's stresses, for the itch under his skin. And patient, kind de Sardet, who compromises in every way for everyone else, is a force of nature. He rides her out like a storm, just trying to hang on under the consuming power of her, electrified and awed and alive in the way such things make him. He thinks again of that damn poem, and thinks with a kind of terrified longing that he'd run the risk of a wreck just to feel her, to be with her in the daylight. But this is what he has, and it is beautiful. He gives himself to her, and she takes him apart in her bed with such careful hands. Puts him back together afterwards, telling him thank you, that he's wonderful and lovely and she's so glad to have him – those lean, strong arms around him, her hands stroking his face, his hair.
Even the sex with those he loved was in bunkhouses or tavern rooms, and involved splinters far more often than it should have. He doesn't think he was prepared for silk sheets, and the shine of chestnut hair, and the smell of rosewater on her skin, softened by exertion. Or for the put-together legate of the Congregation to smile at him dreamily, flushed and well-fucked and seeming so… happy. He knows the line between her brows, the way she looks over her shoulder for a knife or for gossip, and what it looks like when those things are gone, the two of them sitting in camp and discussing weapons – but now he knows what it looks like when she's truly comfortable in her skin. It makes him struggle not to stare, sometimes.
"Hammocks," she sighs, after they finally find time for another bout of morning sex. She stretches out, putting her arms over her head; it does fascinating things to her breasts. Vasco's not subtle about observing them.
"Hammocks," he echoes carefully, leaning on an elbow and struggling to keep the amusement off his face. It's not the first time he's had this question from a passenger. He'd have less patience for it, except she actually means it, and isn't being snide. She's just that relentlessly curious. Especially, it seems, when relaxed after a good climax.
"I remember swaying about."
"They're not that bad," he says, reflexively.
"They're not, but you're used to them. How does one –?"
"How does one what?" he asks, knowing full well, but he's going to make her work for it.
"How does one… make love in a hammock?" she says, her mouth twitching under his steady, pointed gaze.
"Carefully." He doesn't elaborate at her pause, just watches her, dry.
She huffs a laugh, shaking her head. "I don't know what I expected."
He looks at her a moment longer, then rolls to lean over her. He says, "You keep them close." He slides his hand under her and gathers her in.
"Mm." She watches him with a prurient gleam in her eye.
He breathes into her ear, "You try to move with the ship."
"Mm," she says, arching against him.
"And then you hope the second mate doesn't come looking because someone got drunk and pissed on the deck."
She snorts, and shifts back to give him the look he knows well from their meandering conversations traipsing across wildernesses. It's a strange sort of reassurance: he feared this might make their friendship awkward, and yet… some things have stayed the same. "Thank you, Vasco."
"My pleasure." And his eyes stray to her mouth. He wants for a moment to kiss her, not for sex but for the sheer pleasure of kissing – to spend a few minutes holding her close, mapping her mouth and finding out what else makes her moan, to enjoy the feel of her in his arms before the world calls them away again. She might be amenable, but it feels like… too much, somehow. Instead he says, "How do you not get lost in these beds? I hear the ones in the Palace are even bigger."
"Carefully," she responds, and grins at him; it widens at his own answering half-smile. "If we'd done this when we met, I could have snuck you into one." Her smile falls a little, her thumb stroking over his arm. "You do so much for me, and your crew. You deserve a good down mattress."
He swallows, and then manages, "Another captain’s crew, now." Terrible sadness crosses her face, and he knows she's about to try and comfort him, his land-dweller friend who's never had a ship, or the family of crew; her kindness really might be unbearable. So he says, changing tack, "...And there are so many forks." She frowns at him a moment and then he feels her shift with laughter against him, and he says, "When I ate with passengers, I used three."
"Oh, I remember," she says softly. "Dinner at the captain's table. You were terribly well-put-together and polite, and you must have been miserable."
It was only once or twice. He raises a brow. "Your cousin loudly started wondering whether gulls mated in the air. It actually wasn't bad."
This is like every one of their aimless conversations on long journeys, but they aren't tramping up a hillside and usually when they speak like this, she isn't curling into him with laughter, all naked soft strength and unbound hair on silk pillows. "The problem you have with us is our cutlery."
"Amongst other things," he says.
She peers at him. "Is this because of when you arrived?"
He says, drily, "'No, no, Cécile, a replacement cake fork, please.'"
"I dropped it because you smiled at me and you were very – " She sighs. "It's to slice. You know." She makes a cutting gesture in the limited space between them. "It has a little sharp edge."
He grimaces. "Good cake shouldn't need the help."
"That's just because yours gets all soggy," she says, as if they eat such things on deck, and he's opening his mouth to protest when she adds, "And what about a traditional Theleme brandy cake?" She pauses in a fond cake-based reverie, one so entirely his friend that he wants to kiss her. She returns to reality and says, gravely, "It could be worse. At Constantin's last dinner, there were six."
"...Six forks." He examines her in dread, to see if she's joking.
"Six," she says, with a sharp nod. "And if you'd been raised like I was, you'd have had to learn how to use all of them."
That thought catches in his throat. She blinks, all at once looking worried, and he knows it must have shown in his face. He says, quietly, "Do you ever… think about it? If we'd met like that?"
She frowns, and for a moment, she's silent. She darts a careful glance at him, under her lashes. "You're brilliant, and good with your hands. I'm sure you'd have managed however many forks you wanted."
He tries to smile. "I want to think I'd have been like you. Kind." At the widening of her eyes, the way something almost pained crosses her face, he adds, "But from what I've seen of Bastien d'Arcy… I doubt that." He ducks his head.
She shakes her head, and cups his cheek. But she does him right by being honest with him. "I considered it once or twice," she admits, "when we'd just found your file. But Vasco… I don't really think about it, no. Whoever that man could have been, I prefer you."
He stares at her, trying to find the words. She's good at easy compliments. When he tries, every elegant phrase floats away from him, cargo in a rapid wreck.
She wraps a leg around his waist. Rather than anything sexual, it feels like an embrace. "I'm so glad to have my friend," she says, softly.
He manages, "Thank you, de Sardet." He wants to kiss her, to say, I'm glad too, Marie. He aches with it. Instead he puts his face against her neck and adds, "But you've already got me into bed."
Her smile is audible. "He's very brave, you know, my friend. He captains ships in storms. He earned every rank he's had, and he can shoot an ulg between the eyes at fifty paces! And he makes me laugh."
"De Sardet."
"He has such lovely strong shoulders. And he fucks like…"
"De Sardet." He shoots her a fond, pained glance, and she puts a hand over her mouth and laughs.
Vasco comes to her one night and de Sardet all but drags him across the threshold, kicking the door closed and pulling him in for a hungry kiss. “I’ve been in meetings all day,” she whispers against his lips. “I’ve been going mad with impatience.” Her hands are in his hair, her forehead pressed to his.
“You survived, I see,” he says, trying for wry and just sounding breathless.
“Barely.” She kisses him deeply, and Vasco meets her with equal passion, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Come on,” she says.
She doesn’t even wait to get all of his clothes off. Once she’s divested him of his coat and trews, she bends him over her desk and fucks him, first with her fingers, then with her cock, working him open slowly, gently, ruthlessly, until he’s gasping out incoherent pleas against the varnished wood of her desktop. It’s a struggle not to shout when she finally takes him. (After all these weeks of fucking, M – de Sardet has gotten devastatingly good at pleasuring him.) So Vasco arches and groans and meets her thrust for thrust, trying to get her deeper, and the legs of the damn fine desk are squeaking – not enough of a scrape to alert the servants, but just enough to be obscene. And in between is her voice, rough and dark with lust. The wanting in her words is like a good whisky; it traces fingers down his spine, burns in his belly.
“I’ve been thinking of this all day,” she pants. “Hard to, oh, concentrate. This was – covered with paperwork – and I – I could’ve had you – spread out for me instead – oh – ”
He fails to bite back a noise at that, and she makes one in response, a sigh or half a moan. She breathes, hand stroking briefly over his hip and then gripping, "You're much lovelier." She's still too careful with him, but she likes doing this so much more than he dared to hope for. And today she likes telling him about it. Storms.
She gets her other hand on his cock and Vasco groans helplessly, pleasure darting through him. Marie catches a breath at that and then strokes him, keeping a rhythm, and he pushes into her touch from both directions, burning up in desperation for it, for her on him, around him, in him. If her cock were real, he'd swear she was nearly as far gone as he is; he can hear her panting, and she gasps out, "Oh, Vasco." Her hand tightens enough for him to get that perfect friction – hot skin and sword-callouses and the slick of his own arousal. "Beautiful," she breathes. The cold wood against his cheek, his palms, and the heat of her at his back, the way she fills him again and again, her hand strong and soft and sure on his cock, her hips against his, her soft panting… He's taut, closer to the edge with every thrust, and it feels like falling – like slipping under, into her voice and her touch and the way she takes him. He wants to come. He never wants it to end.
He's white-knuckled, with his fingers curling against the mahogany for purchase, when suddenly her free hand isn't on his hip anymore and there are fingers threading through his, holding on as if she isn't going to let him go, as if he's hers and she's going to have him, going to look after him… he comes desperately biting back Marie, clutching her hand tightly. And then he slumps, belatedly glad for the rag that means he's not getting spend all over her engraved mahogany. He feels like he does in the aftermath of a good fight: panting, sweating, well and truly in his body, mind free of any fears. He'd forgotten how this could feel. Sometimes he thinks he must be exaggerating in his memories, but then he'll come back to her and no, it's still that good. Not as startling as that first time, but still the best thing he's felt in months.
She draws in a breath and then lets herself fall forwards, too, and he feels her chest against his back, damp skin and the swell of her breasts and hard nipples. "Light, the sight of you," she says breathlessly. "We should do this every day. Maybe every hour." She kisses his spine.
Vasco huffs a laugh, forehead against the wood, and rests there, catching his breath, looking at that elegant hand on top of his. He turns his hand over, lacing their fingers together and tracing a gentle, grateful thumb over her palm, her wrist… She tenses, just slightly, as if remembering herself. Then, just for a moment, her hand wraps around his and squeezes – as if she needed to hold onto him too. And then it's gone.
After she comes sitting on that same desk, clenching around his fingers with his thumb stroking her steadily, they clean up and she pulls him into bed with her. He lies there, half-dozing, still thinking of her touch like an anchor. Her head's on his shoulder, her hand's on his chest, and he considers wrapping his fingers around hers. Wonders why he worries that might be too much, when being bent over her desk and told I can feel how tight you are isn't. It's nothing new for them, but before, she put a reassuring hand on his in a tavern or when they shared grief, not...
"I can hear your mind working," she says, fondly. "What is it?"
"How sturdy that desk is. Never transported it thinking I'd be fucked on it."
She chuckles. “I must confess, I never expected to fuck you on it, either.”
“Worked out well for the both of us then, didn’t it?” He didn't mean it to sound quite so fond. No, he can’t take her hand. It’s too… forward.
“Perhaps not so much for the desk,” she jokes.
“It seems to have weathered the storm well enough,” Vasco replies.
She strokes his sternum with her fingertips. “Do you think so?”
“I was just talking about its sturdiness, wasn’t I? You really ought to listen to me, de Sardet.”
She breathes a laugh at that and he looks down, into sparkling green eyes. He can't help himself: he puts his hand over hers, and when she smiles at him instead of protesting, he leaves it there.
The next time Vasco visits, she holds him down and rides him until he sees stars, until he can hear the roaring of the sea in his ears – or perhaps it’s her quiet, “Oh, Vasco, look at you, if you could – oh – see yourself…”
That seems like the highest irony, he thinks, staring at the lamplight around her head like a halo.
She’s still in her closet, the water running, when there’s a knock at her front door. He’s already shifting out of that too-comfortable bed – grabbing his sword and gun and then his clothes – when she all but runs back into the room. Downstairs, the servants murmur to her unknown visitor.
She says, brow creasing in worry as she pulls her trews up over her hips, “Vasco, I can find someone else, you don’t have to – “
“I’m already here. Might be I’m not needed at all.”
She just looks at him for a moment. “I hope not. You deserve the rest.”
He passes her her swordbelt and says, too softly, “So do you.”
Which is how he ends up a room away, leaning against a wall and pretending not to be in her house at all, listening to a hushed discussion about how the man who was meant to be the city’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer was set upon by bandits during the journey, even after travelling late to avoid a commotion. And now, as protocol and good sense dictate, they’ll have to look into it to make sure it was just a random instance of highwaymen.
Damn it.
He grits his teeth, and makes his way quietly back upstairs, tucking his knife into his boot and grabbing his poisons. When he returns, he hears Marie asking her housekeeper, “My guest, where is – oh,” she says, as she comes through the door. “I’m afraid you’re needed.” And she smiles ruefully.
Some time later they're standing in an alley, exhausted after two more fights to the death, with the first strands of dawn beginning to spin themselves across the sky. She's looking in faint dismay at her half-destroyed pair of boots (a mage in the gang, and she'd been a moment too slow with the counter-spell; a swift moment of utter fear until they ascertained the flames hadn't got further than the leather's outside coating.) He's not much better, having come out of the fight fine but with the ache of exhaustion weighing him down; the adrenaline's worn off swift.
Ma – de Sardet says, with that brittle cheer he recognises from long days on the road, "Well. I thought things were going rather well until the bandits." Her hair is beginning to escape its neat tie. She smells like singed leather, and she's dark under the eyes. Those strong cheekbones and fine features look, suddenly, like porcelain – terribly breakable. She tries to smile, and fails.
He's tired enough it's made him stupid. Because suddenly, all he wants to do is shuffle back to that fine bed and – do nothing more than hold her. Let her sleep, and let the soft weight of her against him lull him, too. The thought of making his way back to the docks alone is a bitterly cold ache. One he'll have to get used to. Perhaps a taste of silk sheets has spoiled him.
"That they were," he sighs.
"You'll be all right?" she asks, looking at him worriedly. She takes his arm, a soft grip for a woman in so much armour, as if she fears hurting him. She looks at him, her eyes wide. If the light was right, they'd be green as forests.
He nods. "Of course." And he nearly adds, de Sardet, but tonight, here, he can't make himself.
"Then I'll see you tomorrow. We can present what little we found." Her voice is soft. "Be careful." And her weight shifts, her eyes softening as she leans in to –
– to kiss him goodbye –
– to take a scrap of what must be leather from his shoulder. She holds the singed thing and says, "That was from them, not me." She sighs. "Yours is such a fine coat, too." She lets go of his arm, slowly, and if she seems a little regretful, he tells himself it's his imagination.
He breathes out, slowly, trying to expel whatever it is that has built up in his chest. Regret at more expensive repairs, probably. "I'll speak to the quartermaster in the morning." He looks up. "Later in the morning." He could escort her to her door, but they both know the safe routes. He adds, clean and swift because there's no reason to linger, "Goodnight, de Sardet."
"Goodnight, Vasco." Her voice is quiet.
He leaves her there, and makes his way back to the docks.