Chapter Text
Vasco’s awoken by a quiet click of fingers; blinking, he sees the lamp lighting on its own. Mages. He doubts he'll ever truly be used to that. Marie burrows further into his chest despite having lit the lamp, the bony ridge of her nose briefly pressing against his skin before it relents. Long legs are tangled with his under the sheets, and one of her toes runs along his calf as she shifts – as she rearranges herself to find her place with him.
Strange to have her in his arms, even now. He thought it might be a brief visitation to scratch an itch, or perhaps that fear and his own libido had caused a hallucination, like sailors at sea too long who jump into the water thinking it land. An empty bed, thinking it the arms of a woman – this woman. Marie. For a moment, he glances at the ceiling and listens to the faint sound of gulls through a window someone's left open somewhere. The faint murmur and shift of cargo. He tries to put that together with de Sardet here, with him. These are not silk sheets. There are no servants here. This mattress must cause her aches, after the one in her home. And yet she's warm and alive against him, everything he wanted when he was given doleful looks and all but thrown out of her house. The light throws gold into the dark strands of her hair, and she… has looked up at him, eyebrows rising, probably wondering why he's staring like a fish.
He squints at her, knowing the angle and the morning are probably far from flattering. But she only smiles in return and says, "I'm not used to seeing you without all your..." She waves a hand at her own face, to indicate his kohl.
"Disappointed?" he says. His voice is dry, but probably too sleep-rough for the jest to be obvious. He half-waits for No cap'n, forgive me saying anything, or You were always ugly.
"Oh, no. Never." Her voice is cheerful. Implacable. It feels frighteningly like expecting a drop, and being gently lowered to a bed of silk instead. She seems, so utterly, to mean it. He has no idea what to do with that. He squints at the pool of lamplight by the bed; Marie spots him. Rather than looking caught-out, she only smiles. There’s something apologetic in it.
He knows what this is, now. “The back door opens out to a route that’s only used by the odd fishing boat,” he says softly.
“I really do have an early meeting."
"And you can't be seen to have any favouritism for the Nauts." This he knows, has watched her balance the scales again and again while a step behind her; he can't bear her any ill will for it.
She shifts closer, and cups his cheek. "I do have a favourite Naut. Does that count?"
"And who is this Naut?" he murmurs, leaning into her touch.
"He's a kind man. One of my dearest friends. I'm very glad to know him."
Startled again by the softness of the silk, he swallows. All he feels threatens to choke him, for a moment. For all she guts bandits and confronts governors and wields her name like a mace, he's never had a friend quite so… gentle. It should bother him, make him feel coddled, but it's too well-meant for that. It warms him like whiskey on a soaked, cold night crossing; the slow burn that he knows won't last forever, and too much of it will make him slow and stupid, and yet. And yet. He feels it in his chest, his fingers.
She adds, "Also fiendishly handsome. And far too good with his tongue."
He almost sighs in relief. This part he can play. He smiles now, with a sweep of his lashes, a little roguishly. "This fellow sounds insufferable. You'd best show me to him so I can take him off your hands."
And she's laughing, her hand drifting from his wrist and sliding up his forearm, over tattoos and fine hairs. She says, "I'm sorry, did you just offer to seduce… yourself?"
He tilts his head, mouth a moue of thought. "Who hasn't, on a long shore leave morning with his right hand for company?"
"Are you a candles and wine sort of man?" she says, mouth twitching.
"And rose petals," he says flatly, already recognising that spark of mischief in her eye.
"I want to see that," she breathes, smiling.
"Roses?"
"You and your right hand." She wriggles against him: cheerfully girlish, miles from the sharp, self-controlled de Sardet with her court smile and her appropriate court jokes, as if she's dainty rather than strong and sharp-cheekboned. It's not that heat doesn't rise in him at the suggestion, or that he doesn't viscerally appreciate the shift of her hips against his. And yet.
She grins, a little fiendish, eyelashes long and pinkness in the apples of her cheeks – vivid, bright in this room he's carefully made himself of darkwood and regulation. He wants to offer her his hand, and for her to take it; he wants to pull her on top of him and spend the day there in his bed, feeling her skin on his, listening to her laugh. It surprises him; he's never been one to lie idle. It's probably too long having to snatch moments for sex.
As if reading his mind, she sighs, "I wish I could stay."
And before he can stop himself, he's pressing his forehead to her temple and saying, "So do I." He wants to recall the words the moment he's said them; to shove them back into his throat and strangle them. Too much, wrong for this sort of arrangement. Her eyes widen, startled and green and very beautiful, in the way a shipwreck is. He swallows, and recovers himself: "A little longer and I could show you my left hand, too." It's weak, but better than nothing.
She lets out a high, startled little laugh that he feels lift his heart. She's not leaving his bed, never to return. She trails her hand over his abdomen, his hip, the start of a tease – and then she shifts away swiftly. She shoots him an apologetic look. "Before I can't." And then she climbs out of his bed.
Her feet hit the floor and she draws in a breath, hops a little, once, twice before she stills. Looking over her shoulder at his raised eyebrow, she says, "No carpets. I'd forgotten." And she looks… sheepish, of all things, as if she's the problem here, rather than a Naut's lack of amenities. Then, miraculously, she looks around and adds, "I like your room."
He says, shifting to sit against the headboard and watching her, "I… thank you, de Sardet." His bemusement must be obvious, from the lopsided, fond twitch of her mouth in response.
Yet it makes an odd kind of sense that she should like it here. She wears it well, his lamplight, his room; her hair is mahogany against the dark wood panelling of the walls, her mark like the swirling forests of a map. Shadows move and flicker as she raises her hand to check her hair, caressing the contours of her, making her look like some undiscovered land: the hollows under her arms, the slightest dip under her ribs, the dark peaks of her nipples. The pink clawmarks from the mess yesterday. He can't help himself – he's a navigator. He maps her with his eyes, looking for the places that are becoming more familiar to him, the ones he has yet to truly discover and wants to, quite passionately…It might be he just likes looking at her. He's a simple man.
As if sensing that thought, she gives him an amused raise of her brows as she fishes her hair queue from the floor, and he just half-smiles in response: and that, the bright, sharp curve of her grin, he knows well. She shouldn't fit here, and yet… and yet. It's as if she were made for it.
She drifts towards her pile of clothes, but not before she pauses at his small, overly populated bookshelf, his sword in its scabbard leaning against it. Next to it, the bag of things he uses to clean his pistol and his spare, which are currently resting on the table. He'd meant to attend to them, before she arrived and he swiftly found himself between her thighs. She says, softly, with a tone of explanation, "It feels like you."
Oh.
Despite the fact he managed to keep his trews on – against her express mumbled wishes – and the only fabric she has on her is the scrap of ribbon in her hand, he feels terribly naked, all of a sudden. It should be far more surreal than it is: the Duchess de Sardet, Legate of the Congregation, naked in his quarters and examining his books. And yet.
Marie pauses, head tilting before she bends to look. "Is this… poetry?"
Embarrassment is a tide that threatens to drown him. Still, he perseveres. "Some of it. And not all of it's read." Most of it, however, is. Some, careful as he's been, waterlogged. He swallows. "There aren't many opportunities for carting around books when you're on a ship."
She's still tilting her body to examine, and he's so caught up in that that he barely sneaks a look at her arse. "I like your taste," she says, after a moment. "Oh… Renard! De la Tour!" Her voice is low, delighted, distracted in the way that tells him she's mentally comparing her own collection. She always seems so pleased when they have something in common, so curious where they're different. She runs her hand gently over the spines, and he tries not to remember how those fingers felt on his skin. "I used to like poems of… great journeys, and great romances. Constantin always thinks my taste dreadfully soppy. He usually wants something to recite standing on a table. With a drink in hand."
"I have those too," he says, trying for lightness. Those, however, are passed between crew, and they aren't here; they aren't the ones he leafs through when the cold creeps in.
She looks at him now; and she has the kind of eyes that would make a good captain. "But they aren't your favourites, I suspect." Only the warmth, the quiet kind of understanding, in her face takes the sharpness from it. She still looks like his friend.
He half-grimaces, half-smiles, ducking his head, and watches as her eyes soften. He says, "You shouldn't let me distract you from your meeting."
She nods, reaching for her smalls. "As wonderful a distraction as you are." As she's pulling them on, she says, more quietly, "I can stop, if you like." She looks up, and when he tilts his head, explains, "Your things. I can leave well enough alone."
He blinks. "I… no. You don't have to do that." He'd… rather she didn't, he realises, in surprise, even if it feels like leaving his back open. He's not been seen in such a manner for some time.
She leans on his excuse for a table to put on her trews, leg by leg – a sight that simply makes him want to take them off her again, leg by leg – before examining the book he left on it. "The Thorn and the Dagger. I thought it was rather good. I was thinking that last night."
He says drily, "You were thinking of… my taste in books."
"And the rest of you. Is that so strange?" And she looks over her shoulder at him, her smile bright, a smudge of colour in the half-dark of his room.
Maybe that's what makes him roll out of bed as she's pulling on her clothes. He passes her her waistcoat, and then lingers there behind her as she buttons it, hands smoothing down her arms. He noses into her neck, tentatively – and then stills, wondering if that's too much. Surely she must want to be far from him, after the closeness of the last two days, him all but clinging to her like a limpet. But she lets out a happy kind of breath. She tilts her head to help him, and then leans back into his arms as if she trusts him to hold her up. Something squeezes and lightens in his chest.
"You're not making this easy, you know," she sighs.
"I can stop," he says, offhand, returning her words to her.
"Oh, no." She's smiling, eyes half-closed, with that surprised sort of pleasure.
And so he runs his hands over her sides, pressing silk to her skin, as she ties her cravat; he remembers wanting to touch her this way that second morning. He helps her shrug on her doublet, running his hands over her shoulders rather more than he needs to, and then passes her her hat.
"Thank you," she says quietly, and he's uncertain whether she just means for the second pair of hands. She turns in his arms and half-smiles, though there's a wanness to it. "I look forward to seeing you again, captain." She tips her hat.
And then she waits, eyes widening just slightly. On the precipice of something. She tilts forward as if unable to help herself, and then she's cupping his face again and kissing him. It's a slow, soft thing, her hand drifting to cup the back of his neck and pull him closer, as if to have him just a little longer. She inhales with it, breathes him in. (He suddenly suspects that moment in the alley wasn't his imagination. She wanted to kiss him goodbye.)
She pulls back swiftly, and only the knowledge that she has somewhere to be stops him chasing the kiss. Her eyes are still just slightly wide, watchful, uncertain.
He tries not to look surprised, only nods to her. "De Sardet."
She leaves as quietly as she arrived. And with the fading warmth of a kiss on his lips, he looks around his ordinary docks room, seeing it just for a moment through her eyes. The gift of a diplomat.
It was only a slight miscalculation, she tells herself – if it was one at all. It certainly didn't seem to bother him too much. Perhaps it didn't. She just… couldn't help herself. She remembers his bed and in it, him, pensive and fond. Having let her lean on him the whole walk home, getting blood on that fine lieutenant's coat he must have worked so hard to earn. Having held her and warmed her. Having done terrifyingly good things with his mouth and gently put her to bed, and then watching her, somewhere between wary and touched, while she looked through his books. His books of stories and history, of sea poetry and… love poetry, the longing sort.
She wondered how often he'd felt lonely on his ships; whether he'd ever dreamt of some man or woman to share favourite verses with. She still wonders. Honestly, if not for that sharp focus on his sailing, she's sure he'd have someone. He'd make someone a fine lover, if ever he wanted to. Her proud friend, with his sharp wit and his stubborn competence and his kind heart. The kiss was simply a thank-you for his kindness; it felt wrong to leave him there without. And he kissed back, after all. She remembers Cecile looking at her incredulously as she set off to the docks – but she had to see him, to thank him, to… touch him. And she's glad she did.
"You're all right?" Kurt says, when she and Síora collect him from the barracks, after she's been hovering making conversation with the quartermaster.
She smiles at him as they make their way through the streets. "Should I not be?"
With a raise of his eyebrow that nearly shifts his hat, he says, "You're awfully chipper for someone who nearly bled to death on a battlefield yesterday."
Sobering, she says, "You're right. I'm sorry for frightening you."
Síora looks at her incredulously, the way that means, Is this a Continent thing? "You're… sorry?"
"I mean… it does ache slightly, when I reach for a high shelf or if I'm wriggling my way out of trousers, but it's closed. Your healing is very good. And Vasco saw me home all right." More than all right.
Kurt snorts. "I should hope so. You should've seen the state of him. For a moment I thought I'd have to carry him, too."
Worry catches fast and burns through her. "Why, was he hurt?"
"No, he just had you nearly bleed out all over him. He's good at hiding it, but I've seen enough captains. That was a bad one. You should've seen his eyes."
She did. Wide against the kohl and darkened by trees to a colour like whiskey, terrified even while his face was carefully impassive. He was so pale, under the ink. She wanted to touch his face, to tell him it would be all right, but she was cold and tired and her thoughts were hard to hold onto, and just focusing on getting any words out was more and more difficult. His hand, tight but shaking round hers, and she remembers thinking nonsensically that that was strange, it would throw off his aim…
Her chest clenches. She tries not to think of it too much. Not just because it frightens her, how close she came. The thought of hurting him, even by accident – it bothers her. It brought her to the docks last night, to make sure he was all right.
Kurt finishes, "I figured he was heading home to get drunk on a ship's worth of rum."
She blames relief and desperate distraction for the stupid thought: I rather think he got drunk on me instead. She carefully doesn't blush. "Ah. Well, he was a great help. And I've already apologised to him for scaring him, too."
Kurt's gaze, and voice, is flat. "You made a joke about it, didn't you."
"Only one!" She raises a desperate finger to fend him off. "And he doesn't seem too scarred. Ask him yourself."
"Oh, I will. I'm buying him a drink, after that."
She puts a hand on his arm, and the other on Síora's. Squeezes slightly. "I'm glad I have such good friends."
Síora smiles at her. "And I am glad you're still with us, carants."