#but i was 1) pressed for time after obiyukiweek

[sabraeal]

The Noblest Prince the World Hath Known

Written for @onedivinemisfit on the occasion of her birth!! She asked for a little bit of an Scandinavian Lore AU we had tossed back and forth a year ago, with Shirayuki as a huldra and Obi as svartalfar, and I was all too happy to oblige.

When father sat upon Tanbarun’s throne, he loomed head and shoulders over any who approached, a giant among men. Yet Raj sits in the very same chair, and he has to crane his neck to peer over the crowd.

It’s unfair, that’s what it is. He could see the doors if he wanted-- he’s not small, like Clarines’ prince. Or well, their second one. He hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting their king-to-be, but he’s heard rumors. Three whole alen if talk is to be believed; which it never is, and even less so now that he’s seen Zen is only little over two and a fot.

But if it was, the first prince of Clarines would be able to see the doors from the throne-- which he never would, because only the royal line of Tanbarun was allowed to sit upon it. But in this particular thought exercise-- what his tutors liked to call the tedious puzzles they inflicted upon him as training and to increase his moral fiber-- he could and he was, and Izana Wisteria, due to be first of his name, saw easily from one end of the hall to the other.

Unlike Raj, who could not. Or rather, unless he wanted to look like he was trying, which according to various philosophers on the subject of royalty, was a mistake that could only result in tragic consequences. That’s the hardest part of this whole princing business--  trying to look like you’re not trying while you’re really trying quite hard.

“Do you see her?” His neck aches from all this effort. Especially all the effort he’s putting in to make it seem effortless. “Is she here?”

“It does not seem as if she is, Your Highness.” Sakaki shifts beside him, needlessly vigilant and still mild as ever. “Do not strain yourself. I can see quite easily--”

“You don’t need to rub it in,” he mutters, slouching into the red velvet. “You’re an adult after all. If my father is any stick to measure myself by, I’ll be quite tall, Sakaki. Even taller than you. Three alen at least!”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“You might try to sound like you mean it.” He folds his arms across his chest, elegantly sullen. Father might say such a look isn’t becoming of a man of his station, but Raj can name at least three ancestors whose official portraits contained a regal slouch. That seems more than enough to prove his point. “Why isn’t she here yet? Doesn’t she know royalty arrives last? It’s terribly rude to make a prince wait.”

Sakaki clears his throat. “Not for the vette.”

Raj huffs, cross. “I don’t see why not! It’s a simple precedent. One does not keep their betters waiting.”

His aide hums, gaze fixed to the doors. “In the opinion of the vette, they have no betters.”

“No betters?” Raj squawks. “Did not the Lord give man dominion over the land and the animals? And then among them, did he not raise up his chosen as kings?”

The muscle in Sakaki’s cheek twitches. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Raj throws up his hands. “Then what’s the problem?”

His aide clears his throat, so delicate, before he says, “I am afraid they are not much moved by the laws of Christ when so many of them are older than the Lord himself.”

He doesn’t realized his jaw has dropped until it is cushioned by his cravat. “You cannot be serious.”

Shirayuki-- the protector of the wood herself-- hardly looks older than twenty. A damn sight younger, by his count. He’d accept a hundred years for her, give or take, but older than Christ--?

Certainly not. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sakaki,” he scoffs, waving a hand. “You should know better than to believe old wives’ tales. Nothing could live so long.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” His mouth pulls thin. “Still, they do not consider themselves to be subject of any mortal king. They rule themselves.”

“W-well we didn’t tell them they could do that!” Raj sputters. His fingers loop into the grooves of the throne, golden claws dripping down from his fingertips. “Ridiculous! What makes them think they can flout the will of God?”

Saki’s mouth twitches; it is not toward a smile. “What do they need with the Lord’s kingdom when they were once gods themselves?”

He stares, heart beating fast in his chest. “You don’t believe that.”

“No, Your Highness.” Sakaki’s shoulders set in a tense line. “But it doesn’t matter what I believe. It matters what they do.”

Raj’s mouth works uselessly, trying to bid an answer to fall from him lips but--

But he is saves but a stir in the crowd, by the grand doors swinging wide, and there she is--

Shirayuki.

Her hair shines in a burnished halo, reminding him of nothing more than the stain-glass angel in the chapel, her arms thrown open over the altar, blazing in the morning sun. It is no wonder than man used to look upon women like her and call them goddess when even he, Defender of the Faith, the Lord’s most devout champion, sees her and only divinity leaps to mind.

“The vette is here,” Sakaki says.

“I can see that,” he snaps, jutting out a hand. “She’s standing right there!”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The nobles bend to her in awe, but it is her companion that keeps them skirting back, fear in their eyes. Obi may be as formally dressed as any man in this room, but whereas Shirayuki can pass for something more than human, he is something less. His teeth flash sharp and white against the black of his skin, so dark that he seems to consume light rather than repel it.

Svartalfar, some whisper, but on the same breath, demon. Even wearing his master’s livery, Obi cannot escape the suspicions of another, darker one.

“You’re supposed to open the floor with her.”

“I know that!” Raj jolts from his chair, storming down the dais. “I planned it!”

Sakaki lingers a step behind him. “Of course, Your Highness.”

Raj slows his stride as he approaches, taking care not to seem too eager, too hurried. He will be king one day, after all. A king rushes nowhere; the entire world spins at his pace--

“Prince Raj.” A slender hand holds itself out to him, and when he chases the sun-kissed skin, it leads him to Shirayuki’s radiant smile. “You’ll face me?”

He scowls, shoulders itching beneath the wool of his jackets. “Coming from you, Lady Shirayuki, that sounds like an invitation to duel.”

“Then let us set our terms.” There is no malice in her words, no challenge; only the playful sing-song of her kind. “We’ll see if we’ve managed to improve this bond between us.”

Her shadow huffs at that, but it’s good humored, no threat within it. Even Sakaki’s hand doesn’t stray toward his hilt.

“If you have selected the ballroom as your field of honor, and dancing as your weapon--” he takes her hand, guiding her into his arms-- “then your victory is assured.”

Quite dashing all in all, if he does say so himself. A real tour de force

The crowd gasps, though not at his prowess; that is solely the provenance of Shirayuki’s dress-- or rather, what is inside it. He leads her onto the floor, and that they all see what he did that day in the woods outside Tanbarun: a beautiful woman whose back cuts away from her flesh, as hollow inside as a log.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” She grimaces as the orchestra hesitantly plucks out their next piece, eyes still stuck on the huldra in their midst. “I’m not exactly, um...”

“Come now.” He smiles wide, cajoling. “I have seen Zen’s winged vette on the floor. Even with a fraction of her grace, surely you are nothing but a-- OW.”

“I warned you,” she hissed, the cream of her face flushing a rosy pink. “I’m not very skilled in, um...” She bites her lip; less divine presence and more comely young debutante. “My gifts lie in other areas.”

“Ah-haaa,” he groans, resisting the urge to cradle his foot. “Yes. I’m sure I’ll be glad of that later. For now we must...make do.”

She nods, and ah, she makes it so easy to forget is not some pretty mortal girl. That is the way of the huldr; always longing to be human. “Sorry.”

“No, no.” This time the band chooses another, easier tune, upbeat but well-paced. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had a terrible partner, if you can believe it. I mean--” Sakaki glares at him from across the floor-- “not that you’re terrible.”

“It’s fine,” she giggles, stumbling over her feet. “There’s no reason not to call a spade a spade.”

He stares down at her, her cheeks rosy as any maiden’s. “I think you will find very few people think that way.”

Her brow quirks, sly. “Ah, I forget. Mortals are so fragile. Even your feelings are delicate.”

“A funny thing for a vette to say,” he scoffs, leading her into a turn-- one she botches, stumbling over her own feet. “Wasn’t it one of yours that wanted to destroy the world because it bothered him that another was so well loved?”

He expects her to frown, to show him the same gentle disappointment he’d come to expect from her these last few months, but--

“They did.” Her mouth curves, mischievous. “Perhaps you should take that as a warning, Prince Raj. It could take so little to displease me.”

She’s teasing; the humor lights her face like the sun does the dawn. But his heart sinks even still, hand tightening on her waist.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did want to demand satisfaction,” he admits, sullen. “It was my duty to keep you safe, and I’ve done a terrible job of it.”

She laughs softly, like the babbling of a brook. “Prince Raj--”

“No, it’s true,” he insists. “What good is a prince who can’t even keep a woman from being kidnapped in his own castle? Name your second.” He winces. “I suppose it is Obi, and I have no chance at all.”

She shakes her head, mouth curved in a rueful smile. “You’re not the first to blame himself for my troubles, and it’s no more your fault that his. Besides, you aren’t Zen,” she reminds him, “you have only men at your disposal. And no man is a match for a vette.”

He bites his cheek. It had only taken him, the useless prince of Tanbarun, to chase her away from her place of power. Whatever the vette had been, they were it no longer.

That wasn’t a point to bring up on the dance floor, however.

“I’m glad you wore the dress,” he says instead, and this time when he spins her out, she comes back gracefully into his arms. “I was afraid you might not like it.”

“Ah, yes.” She blinks down at the gown, missing a step he quickly compensates for. “It is quite...revealing.”

“I thought it made a point.” His fingers twitch on the silk. “Though I must admit, I wasn’t quite sure where to hold you.”

Shirayuki laughs, bell-like and clear. “I’m just like anyone else.”

Raj glances at her from the corner of his eyes. “Far from it.” He coughs. “I’m glad to see that you’ve recovered from the last time I saw you.”

He nods at the buds that stud the line of her back, the moss growing lush along the edges of it. None of the brown lingered, nor the bare patches.

“Ah.” Her gaze tangles with his, his heart beating faster. “What withers only grows back stronger. I will bloom again.”

“Lady Shirayuki, when it does...” His heart pounds, words choking him with their earnestness. “I would like to see it.”

Her feet still entirely beneath her. “If you are asking me as a friend, Prince Raj...” Her mouth breaks into a wide smile. “The sure. Happily.”

[sabraeal]

Get Up Eight, Chapter 8

[Read on AO3]

Obiyukiweek 2021, Day 1: The Fool Upright: Beginnings, Innocence, Fearlessness Reversed: Recklessness, Folly, Risk 

Pine presses around the road to Oiso, jostling with the hackberry like meddling neighbors, eager to see misfortune. Their branches chatter in the breeze, gossiping behind needled hands, and oh, what misfortune Obi has for them to gnaw their toothy mouths upon, traveling with this sorry lot.

This stretch of road is meant to be the shortest; less than the length between bells, but each minute sweats to an hour, the natural flow of time no longer a given but a whim. Maybe they met with some accident, doomed to wander the same stretch of barren road over and over until some monk came to exorcise them-- or else all the priests are wrong, and the road to Meido is no mountainous path, but a road that winds around one barely deserving of the name. And with them but a day into their journey--

No. Not even he can believe such a story. For no matter how red his hands or black his spirit, he could not have earned such miserable oni on his chuuin as the monkey and his merry band. Besides, there is too much light here. Even the virtuous must navigate the dark with but a candle’s light to guide them, lit by the ones they left in life, and he, well--

He wouldn’t even have that.

Ojou-san hobbles in front of him, pretending her mincing steps have to do with the wrap of her kimono rather than the bindings on her feet. A creditable trick, in the right hands-- too bad his mistress was no actress. A man would have to be worse than a fool to believe it.

With every limping step, she jingles; her pack clanking against the swell of her hip. A wounded deer, gingerly testing each spindly leg to see if it would bear her yet another breath further. The monkey’s men circle her like crows waiting for carrion, though the scent they follow is not death but gold.

Idiots, every last one of them. They are too busy salivating over the meal in her pack to notice she does not tremble as she walks, that even if each step is a labor, she does not shy from taking it. Lame deer she may be, but Obi is not fooled-- more than once he has stopped at the shine at Nara, and found his netsuke noticeably lighter. His mistress is like that; so tame and docile at first glance that no one watches where those small hands go, nor notices the lies that tip from her lips.

Because they do; not with the ease of a practiced liar, but the earnest determination of a survivor. Cousin there may be in Kyoto, but Obi would bet what remains of his ryo that he didn’t know about the books in her pack. A good little ojou-san might know some remedies-- a salve to stave off infection or a powder to quell a fever, the kind a mother would use to treat her child-- but they certainly didn’t read about rampo in the original Dutch.

No, if Obi had his guess, this cousin-dono knew nothing about the sweet visitor that traveled toward him. They’d arrive at his doorstep in Kyoto, and he’d have the same view he has now, standing three respectful steps behind her as she faces the future with a strong back, and standing on two--

Ojou-san stumbles. One moment she is upright, and the next he’s surged forward, hand clasped around an elbow to steady her. It’s just like her wrist; narrow and delicate, like it might break under his grasp. His breath catches, his eyes meeting her wide ones--

“Careful, ‘Nee-san.”

Obi blinks, and there it is-- the monkey’s mocking grin, one paw wrapped around her other arm. “It’d be easy to turn an ankle on these old roads.”

Every word cants with careful concern, but the glint in his eye is three hairs away from anything more than hunger. This ronin can pretend to be samurai all he likes, but desperation drips from him like water in a kappa’s dish, and it’s Obi’s job to see his ojou-san does not get soaked.

With a firm tug, Obi settles her on her feet-- and out of the monkey’s reach. “Don’t worry, we’ll reach Oiso-juku soon, Ojou-san.”

She sends one of her thoughtful looks down the road, brow furrowed and lip jutting in a pout. “They really aren’t all that far apart at all, are they? If we hadn’t been slowed by--” my blistered feet, she doesn’t say, jaw taking an even more determined set-- “circumstance, we would be there by now.”

Obi nods, watching as she takes a single, mincing step. “Shortest leg of the journey.”

“I wonder why that is.” In any other mouth, those words would be idle, a way to fill the air. But not in his ojou-san’s; oh no, her gaze has already sharpened, scouring the shrubbery as if it might hold answers.

“Hard to say.” Keeping pace with her is a trial; he’s used to long strides, using every last inch of his leg to put ri between him and what he left behind, but between her blisters and her curiosity, Ojou-san moves as slow as a snail’s crawl. “If I had a guess, it would be the mountain?”

“Mountain?” Ojou-san should be hiding those eye of hers with a convincing demure, but instead she turns them to him, wide and wondrous. Not that he’d be caught complaining, not when all her attention is bent on him, as if he’s her next puzzle to solve.

The monkey scoffs, insinuating himself a branch too close for comfort. “Mount Koma? It’s barely more than a hill, and we’re walking around it, not up.”

Obi’s lips peel back from his teeth, a wolf’s grin. “I never said we were. But if you look down the road from Hiratsuka, what would you see?”

“A mountain,” Ojou-san murmurs, sending a speculative glance toward where Koma rose beside them. “And if you do not often travel the road, it would be easy to mistake this for running through it.”

“Well said, Ojou-san. Hakone is nearby, too.” Obi lets his lips soften from animal to man. “And its reputation marks it as the hardest climb. Even a thinking man might take this stretch as much the same.”

“Absurd.” The monkey scowls, hands hooking over his hips. “That might explain the shukuba at Oiso, but on the other side they would know the road’s ease.”

“That’s the funny thing about roads.” He casts the monkey a cagey smile, enjoying the way his fur stands on end. “They run both ways.”

The pines thin as they walk, the air taking on its first taste of salt, so thick and stinging that a man doesn’t even need to be Ojou-san’s kind of polite to think so. Oiso is close then; its bay must be the scent of the sea on the breeze. Good. He’ll be glad of the chance to shuck himself of their escort and his easy manners.

A bridge crests ahead of them, little more than some boards patched over the sluggish stream that runs beneath. Nothing like the great wooden arcs in Edo, made for palanquins to pass, great processions crawling over both sides like ships passing in the night. So it’s no surprise Ojou-san falters at its edge, blinking down at the lazy waters below. A deer again, hesitant and shy.

A warmth kindles where his kimono gaps too much to cover, a tightness that he cannot swallow away. Obi raises a hand to scratch, coughs to clear it, but stubbornly it stays, lodged right in his breast. An inconvenience, one that should be smothered as a seed rather than allowed to grow like kudzu on the shore. Ojou-san paid for his skill and what loyalty gold could buy, not...this. She is his duty, not a pleasure.

Even if he sees that bead dripping down her back when he closes his eyes still. Obi grips at his shoulder and stifles a groan. Twenty days. Three weeks until he is six ryo richer, and this girl is in the hands of her cousin instead of dancing out of the grip of his.

He steps up, hand outstretched. It’s his job to see her over, safe and sound, and it would be just like her to bend over a hair too far and let herself be swept away by the current, small as it is. But his hand clasps around air instead of elbow, and when he looks--

The monkey has her, guiding her along at a leisurely stroll. She stumbles to keep up even still, only getting her feet beneath her when he stops, staring up at the maples swaying overhead.

“Known to me who had denied joy and sorrow of this world,” he intones, every syllable rolling with the cultured tones of Edo. “Is the autumn scene of the rivulet where sandpipers walk at dusk.”

Obi lifts a brow, peering down at the water’s edge. Salt might be on the air, but there’s not a sandpiper to be seen this far from the shore.

Ojou-san is too kind, as always, nearly turning those wide doe eyes to him before remembering herself. They skitter downwards instead, to where leaves skim the stream’s surface. “What is that?”

The monkey’s heavenly gaze drops to her, smiling within unearned satisfaction. “I’m surprised you don’t know, onee-san. I thought you well read.”

Ojou-san stiffens, hands curling over the rough-hewn rail. “Well enough. Though I must admit, I never spent much time on poets.”

His eyes blink wide. “Not even Saigyo?”

“No.” She ducks her chin, the very picture of a demure young lady, but Obi knows-- her rosy cheeks are not from a docile temper. “But he was...a monk, was he not?”

His mouth curls wide, the self-satisfied smile of a master with a well-taught pupil. Obi’s hands itch watching it unfurl, tempted to give monkey-sensei a lesson he won’t soon forget.

“Yes,” he hums, chin lifted with a lord’s poise. “Of the Heian era. The story goes that he used to be one of the Emperor’s personal guards, but one day he shed himself of his worldly desires to dedicate himself to the temple.”

Obi stifles a snort. He’s had clients that made him feel the same more than once.

“He lived here, after, in a little hut just upstream, hidden away from the world, writing waka, meditating on the loneliness of change.” The monkey stares down the length of the stream. “A haikai dojo stands there now, built hundred of years later in his honor. Even Basho was inspired by his writings...”

Obi peers over the bridge’s edge, letting the monkey’s babble roll over him like a ceaseless river. The stream does much the same below, curving gently into the distance, disappearing into a cloud of summer green maple. Even with his sharp eyes, he cannot see this dojo, nor any hut where a monk might sit and spend his life thinking in verse.

Probably because Shigitatsu-an sits on another rivulet entirely, further toward the sea. Something this monkey might know, if he traveled this road; the stone in the middle of town proclaims it, bright as day. Still, Obi holds his tongue. A dagger to the chest might miss, but given enough rope, an idiot always hangs himself.

“For all his shedding of worldly trappings,” Obi hums, sauntering up to where the pair of them stand, “looks like this Saigyo was fond of them.”

Sweet as his words were, the monkey’s mouth turns sour fast enough. “He lived his life in quiet contemplation of nature, dwelling upon the sadness of seasons passing--”

Obi lifts an infuriating eyebrow. “Which he couldn’t do at a temple?”

The monkey’s mouth opens, then closes. “Some people,” he sniff haughtily, “do not understand the artistic process.”

Thatched roofs peek above the shukuba’s gates as they round the bend, hazy in the distance, like close-clinging clouds above Sagami Bay. Salt coats Obi’s mouth as they tread closer, stinging his nose, but today the taste savors of relief-- only mere moments now until Ojou-san can take her rest, and he can shuck these unwanted pests.

The monkey strolls beside Ojou-san, his voice smugly pitched for all to hear: “It’s too bad it isn’t raining.”

Oh, the hour cannot come soon enough. “Really?” Obi slides an easy grin onto his face. “I didn’t think monkeys liked to get their feet wet.”

“M-monkey?!” If looks could smell, the one this Mihaya levels at him would reek; growing even more rank with every giggle Ojou-san stifles. “Funny words coming from a stray cat!”

Obi shrugs, a production of shoulder and head worthy of the stage. “It was not my lips that begged the kami for rains.”

“Not mine either!” The monkey turns to Ojou-san with his mild, scholar stare. “I only meant it would be fitting. Hiroshige drew rains when he made his print of Oiso, falling on the travelers as they entered the shukuba. A light drizzle, of course, nothing to get--” he cuts a pointed glare over his shoulder-- “any paws wet.”

“Ah!” Ojou-san brightens, fingers fluttering joyfully before her. “I have seen that. Ojii-san...”

It’s as if the name were a spell; invoked, it steals the words from her lips, leaving only air to part them. They round again, forming the shape of ojii-san, before pressing tight once more. Obi has only known her mere days, but her grandfather’s legacy seems only to be the knuckles that blanch around her bag’s strap at the barest mention of his name.

A subtlety lost on the monkey prancing next to her. “He called it Tora’s Rain, after the lover of Soga no Juro. Do you know that story, onee-san?”

Obi restrains a roll of his eyes; it’s more of an effort than any of the monkey’s men bother to make. There’s not a child alive who isn’t raised upon the Soga Monogatari, even if the details blend in the telling, each domain vying to put their stamp upon a piece of history.

“Ah...” Ojou-san blinks, her spell disappearing in the bat of an eye. “Oiso no Tora, you mean? The courtesan?”

Again, the monkey-sensei puffs with a teacher’s pride. “The very same. She was raised here, it’s said, after her father prayed to Benzaiten for a child, and she gave to him a stone--”

“He asked for a child and she gave him a stone?” Obi smothers a smile to a twitch. “Seems he got the better end of the bargain.”

“--And she gave to him a stone as a sign the child would be born,” the monkey continues, voice pitched above his. “As O-Tora grew, so did the stone. When the Soga brothers sheltered at her home, it shielded them from--”

“Is this before or after they ambushed a man in his sleep?” Obi asks, deadpan.

That is, it seems, the final straw. The idiot rounds on him, voice dropping into a growl as common as the gutter he grew up in. “A tyrant, for revenge. Kuto-sama murdered their father and took his lands. No honorable man-- no, no bushi-- could let such an insult stand.” Something dark moves beneath the eyes of monkey-dono when he adds, “even if it took years.”

With only a breath, his face smooths back into the scholar’s, the samurai’s learned son. “That rock is still here, should you want to see it.”

Ojou-san smiles, eyes soft with understanding. “You must like this story quite a bit, Mihaya-dono, if you want to see O-Tora’s stone.”

“Me?” His brows raise, two neat little arches. They’re meant to be surprised, but it’s almost as if the angle of them is wrong, a degree off from being sincere. “I meant for you, onee-san. It’s a talisman for fertility.”

Her eyes round. “Oh--!”

“After all, you are now on the way to your husband.” There is a razor’s edge to his smile when he says, “Surely he is looking forward to being so blessed.”

Not unless her cousin has plans for her that he hasn’t seen fit to inform her of. Not an unlikely, knowing the way men think of their women-- though the idea has never occurred to Ojou-san, by the way she gapes.

“Ah!” She glances back at him, helpless. “N-no. That definitely won’t be...necessary.”

Another shadow passes over the monkey’s face, leaving behind a grin that glints as cold as coin. “You don’t say, onee-san...”

Ojou-san tucks into his side as they pass through the sekisho, her head and heart bowed demurely while the doshin glance at her papers. It’s cursory; this is no Hakone to demand papers so spotless they gleam. Still, she shivers when Kino’s permissions leave his hands, and doesn’t stop until they’re tucked back into his sleeves.

The monkey casts her a speculative look when he strolls through, the kind he’s been giving her more and more of as the day wears on. That’s fine enough; he can ponder Ojou-san’s mystery while he and his men wander down the rest of the route, alone.

That brings a smile to Obi’s lips. “Well, we’ll be leaving first.”

The wide eyes monkey-dono turn to him are only rivaled by the ones his ojou-san does. “Obi-dono, what do you mean?”

“We’re stopping here for the night.” He jerks his chin toward a particularly clean looking hatago. “How about that one, Ojou-san? Does it meet your expectations?”

“Yes, b-but...” Her mouth works, searching for the shape of the words that rattle between her teeth. “But why?”

“Ojou-san...” His gaze drops to where her tabi peek out from beneath her kimono’s hem, pink with her blood even through the bandages. “You’re in no condition to continue. Our best course is to rest. But I’m sure--” he can’t help the smug sneer he turns the monkey’s way-- “these men are eager to make good time. It’s a long journey to the capital, and time is money.”

The monkey’s mouth purses, trapped. Unless he wants to admit that he has no business besides following Ojou-san and her purse, making a lie of his casual coincidence-- well, there is no way to graciously decline.

Lucky for him, Ojou-san spares him the footwork. “We’ve barely walked an hour since Hiratsuka.” Her shoulders set like a shogun bent on battle. “You said you wanted to reach Odawara tonight.”

He inhales sharply, annoyed. “That was before--” we collected men better left in the gutter.

True as it is, it will not please his ojou-san. Not when she is so determined to see samurai in every ronin she meets. A different tack is needed if he wants to convince her.

“Ojou-san,” he soothes. “There is no shame in stopping. You should take care of yourself, or else we will have to spend more time waiting for you to recover later.”

The set of her jaw informed him this is not it.

“I can make it,” she insists, because of course she would, this young woman of quality who carried her heaviest pack on her back. “I won’t be the one to slow us down.”

“Plenty of travelers stop at every station.” He gestures to the crowd around them, to their leisurely pace. “Perhaps we should consider it, if--”

“And spend fifty-three days to get to Kyoto?” She arches a brow, a reflection of his own. “I’m not paying you near enough for that, Obi-dono.”

His jaw clenches. He only needs to convince her of one night extra, enough to be rid of these knives at their throat, but... “Ojou-san...”

“I don’t mean to pry,” the monkey says, insinuating himself between them. “But there is plenty of daylight left. If jou-chan wants to move on we should. There are better places to rest, if she needs it.” His teeth flash as he suggests, “Hakone, for one. It’s said that their hot springs are healing indeed.”

“Ah, see?” Ojou-san brightens, a quelling hand laid on his sleeve. “Hot springs! That seems like a fine place to take an extra day.”

Obi glares as the monkey hops around behind her, too elated for him to trust. “I don’t think--”

“And it’s better to travel in groups,” the monkey offers, pressing his advantage. “Six people is certainly safer than two.”

Obi frowns. “That depends on who the other four are.”

“It’s decided then,” Ojou-san says brightly, hands clapping together. “We’ll push on to Odawara. And when we reach Hakone, we can rest as long as you like.”

Obi takes in a deep breath, boiling as the monkey grins at him, triumphant. “If that’s what you want, Ojou-san.”

“You heard jou-chan,” the monkey mutters as he prances past, victorious. “It is.”

[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.”