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Twilight has never had any qualms about labeling himself as 'weird.' There are more precise and erudite descriptors, but that was the term used by the boys in his orphanage when he refused to indulge in any of their juvenile pastimes save in attempts to understand them.
He finds value in understanding people.
They used to form into little roving packs, circling prey under the direction of the older boys who had experience with grift and scams and scrapes with contingents of children from other orphanages or tenement houses that likewise banded together, casting about the streets because their parents worked late in the factories that supported the ongoing war effort, or were off in the field, or were widows with two jobs.
While a gaggle of boys distracted shop owners so that their compatriots could stuff chocolate bars and adult magazines under their jackets and shirts, or scrounged up loose coins or busked to slink off to peep shows, Twilight typically took the time to read, making the hour-long walk to a distant library in another district of the city. Sometimes, when he saw a family, but never a lone man, he hitchhiked, insisting, as he clambered into a back seat, that a bully had stolen the money his mother had given him for the trolley. He was a good liar, even then, and pretending was always a game he could enjoy.
Only once had Twilight slipped a hard-earned quarter into one of those machines in a darkened room, clasped hold of the view piece and gazed inside to watch a middle aged woman flag her rear to the sound of shuffling, chairs scraping and flesh being scratched through heavy clothing from other booths.
There was cool sense of detachment to the scene, as if he was was hunkered down in a duck-blind, scent masked by the pungent odour of flesh and carnality that had soaked into the walls, observing not the woman, but wild deer preparing to rut just so that he could catalogue their behaviours.
Perhaps that was where his entire career as a spy began, given that he relies on clinical and dispassionate dissection of mannerisms and quirks to forge his disguises.
Dispassionate is the key, though. No libido.
It wasn't any different when he'd been forced to perform for various missions prior to Operation: Strix. Twilight has experienced the sensation of arousal, even orgasm, on occasion, when called upon to copulate with a woman whom he wanted to flatter by allowing her to think that she had power over him. Particularly when she used her mouth and he indulged her infantile desire by begging .
Such dalliances were akin to his calisthenics and resistance training regimens: unavoidable realities and responsibilities. Tasks to be executed with resolve and focus because they were necessary.
Allure and desire, though, are entirely different matters.
Even his wife provokes nothing, though she is objectively attractive if the side-glances offered by unattached men they pass on the street are any indication. They confirm his analysis. There are subjective, socially-constructed criteria for attractiveness as well as hold-overs from evolution, a deep pull to seek out mates who have the potential to produce healthy, genetically fit offspring and care for them well. Fringes, manes, a peacock's tail-feathers, regal antlers, clean, parasite free skin, height, size, weight, myriad indicators of intelligence. All the factors are taken into consideration by a simplistic algebra equation that he can parse out and solve effortlessly.
Yor is a prime catch. If he felt such things, he would be attracted to her, but he doesn't, so all that he notices is the way that she sings Anya to sleep, her melodious voice like the waves lapping at the shore, inexorable, changeless. The waters come in and they go out, the surf frothing, and there's a stability to it as you shut your eyes and get swept away in the primal force of it – of her.
There is no attraction or adoration or concupiscence.
But her.
Oh, her !
He has heard of the famed assassin, her name whispered among his fellow intelligence agents, members of the criminal underworld that he has had cause to infiltrate on occasion, and even the elite who speak it fearfully despite all their political clout and exorbitantly expensive security officials, mostly ex-military.
The Thorn Princess.
Presumably his reputation proceeds him as well.
They meet for the first time in the midst of a human trafficking ring that has been feeding kickbacks to a certain member of Ostania's ruling party, the identity of whom is as yet unknown to WISE. Blackmail and political opportunism are always in season, so he adopts a disguise as a low-level grunt who can pass through their security unnoticed. Interrogation of their leader is a last resort, but he would gladly be sloppy when he sees what these things have done. Some sights do not bear repeating or reporting, save in the most oblique of fashions because they have been scoured away. Twilight enjoys housekeeping. Leaving everything immaculate.
Apparently whomever it was that had been receiving kickbacks from this organization felt similarly.
An agent is sent and where Twilight is cautious and meticulous in his planning, she... she is glorious in her abandon.
Under other circumstances, he would do more to conceal his identity and maintain anonymity, but when he intercepts a gunman who was poised to accost the Thorn Princess, his disguise is rent in the ensuing scuffle.
Everyone sees Loid Forger, including her, dark and refined brows raising above blood-red eyes that match the streaks and splotches sullying her dress and that have splattered her forearms, cheeks, and chest.
Of course, everyone but her is going to die, so she's the only one who matters.
She is the only one who matters – the only one he can see as they cleave together, smooth and fluid mastery. How two strangers can slot together with such subtle grace is simply astonishing. There isn't even any thought or speech – just the mercurial flow of her and him and them.
When they are done, they stand amid two-dozen bodies.
There is an awkward beat of silence so they can breathe. It’s like what he’s experienced vicariously through a well-satisfied heiress, sweat-slick and panting after he’s fornicated with her. Is that what it feels like? He doesn’t know, but he wants to find out as she cleans blood from the edges of her knives with precise jerks of her handkerchief and he reloads his semiautomatic pistol, the clap and clack of the magazine causing him to shiver without knowing why.
"Anya's with the sitter?" she asks as if they are on their way home from work and find themselves, sadly, stuck in traffic, needing to take the next exit so they can find a pay phone to inform Eden Academy of their delayed arrival.
"Already paid, with a bonus to be collected, and instructions on what to do, if I was late coming home," he responds as she saunters up to him. The flare of her dress, slits running up to her thighs – so improper; so daring, but not at all since no one who saw her like this was likely to live – exposes creamy skin and fine muscle, and he wants to judge the heft and weight of them in his hands. The atmosphere is thick with sulfur and copper - gunpowder smoke and blood – a gentle acrid bite that spices the air and has him tingling. Alive. This is what it is to be alive, controlled terror, a slip and twist to confound death again even though he may be dancing with her.
Dust and ash from the explosion and the fires swirling up into his nose as he heaves down breath, and it tastes like life.
“Of course.” Her mouth is a taut line, eyes cool and smugly half-lidded and he realizes that he cannot read her. She's beyond his skill.
There's nothing there to parse out and ... vivisect . God, does he want to spread her open, break her down, explore every crevice and thought and impulse.
Is this the carnal thrill those boys had sought, brave enough to slip by the bouncer in some of those tawdry little sex shops, but far too cowardly for this?
But she smells of honeysuckle perfume and clean sweat while blood-dripping knives twirl around her fingers. The motion stops, blade in her palm and the cool steel finger hole drags up his throat to tilt his chin backwards. Twilight knows how to control his breathing, can hold it for up to three minutes if necessary and suppress the oxygen deprivation, but his breath catches in his throat.
“I think that we are going to have to have a long conversation over our evening tea.” Pink and nimble, her tongue sweeps over her lips, drawing his eyes and conjuring such thoughts that would leave him stiff if he wasn't already weeping hard. His condition is obvious to her, would be even if she wasn't reaching out, grinning in a way that no one else but him would perceive as a smile, as her free hand cups him between his legs, and he hisses in a breath that he needs quite desperately.
The clash without possibility of retreat is a fascinating thing as they entwine. A frenetic fumble ensues that's too much of a blur for Twilight to describe or understand because all plans and plots and knotting, tangled thoughts and machinations are wiped away in her blitzkrieg, and they're somewhere else. An apartment. A bathroom. A shower. Everything slips through mental fingers so that he can’t classify or categorize or parse out. Details are lost when it's in the finer points of things that Twilight lives.
Twilight and the Thorn Princess are really rather fucked up animals. This he realizes when he's torn through her undergarments and has her pinned to the shower wall, her legs hooked around his ass as he lunges up into her and tepid water pours down all around them. Streams catch her lustrous hair, plaster it everywhere. His world is warm and wet and tight and her as he holds and spreads her cheeks, hefting her off the ground – nothing more. Her lips seal and scald over his, no breath, pause, or reprieve. It's not a kiss. It's a branding, and they're both seared from lips to lungs.
Even though he has her hefted up, her nails gouging bloody, stinging furrows along his upper back and shoulders, and is in control, he's not.
Never is.
And Twilight begs as blood and water is sluiced from their bodies.
Milquetoast and asexual, the prim and proper Loid and Yor Briar Forger return home to tip their babysitter and check in on their daughter before settling in for tea and a rather lengthy chat.
Twilight and the Thorn princess, however, are certain to meet again.
'Weird' still applies.
Just not in quite the way that Twilight had believed.
Considering to whom he's married, a little weirdness, now and then, seems a blessing.