mirrors at 4 a.m.
title and all poetry fragments from the poem by charles simic
1 A.M.
You must come to them sideways
In rooms webbed in shadow,
Sneak a view of their emptiness
Without them catching
A glimpse of you in return.
Olan wakes at some unknown hour of the night, with his hands tied above his head and one fallen quite asleep, and with a quite shocking -- not to mention uncomfortable -- sense of invasion insulting his unsuspecting arse. It is perhaps to his credit either as a gentleman or as a sleeper that he is able to manage this development with relative aplomb: namely, by doing anything other than leaping to his feet yelping like a thrashed hound.
Not that he'd have got far with his hands bound, mind; he tests the tether, in an absent sort of way, and finds it holds quite well. Still, when the insult deepens, it occurs to his dark and bleary mind to attempt to reconstruct some sort of rationale behind it. Is there anything he could have done tonight in particular to deserve buggery? Well, surely, as any number of people would happily tell you, he deserves anything he receives at any given time, but any especial crime eludes him temporarily. A review, perhaps. Seven of the clock, returned sodden, muddy, and cheerful from an enormously successful hunting expedition, and with a gorgeous hank of boar as a gift to the palace larders. On the half hour, bathed, and then eight of the clock, dined with father and brothers, table-wine one of his particular favorites, thus meriting several glasses. Ten of the clock, additional snifter(s) of brandy with Islude over a game of chaturanga in his brother's parlor. Eleven of the clock, repaired to the Lady Yveas's rooms for a few more glasses of wine, followed in reasonably natural succession by an extremely satisfying orgasm at perhaps a few moments lacking of the hour of midnight. Twelve of the clock, fall dead asleep.
...Wait. That last part, back up a bit. The problem in the narrative has perhaps presented itself.
He supposes he can't have been asleep for long; his very reluctance to wake (even as whatever it is that is insulting him seems to now have a few choice words about his mother's breeding -- is that metal?) speaks to that, as does the fact that the state of his head suggests he is still quite drunk. However, he supposes the length of his slumber has come to matter considerably less than its depth, which must have been sufficient not only to allow this matter to creep up on him unawares, but, indeed, to thoroughly infuriate his hostess.
None of which explains --
"Yveas," he begins, quite reasonably if weakly, in an only slightly sleep-muddy voice, "perhaps this isn't the proper time to ask, but -- "
"Hush." Oh, 'tis her, all right, if he ever had any doubt, and with a smirk to her tone that he finds fairly unsettling. "Let the punishment fit the crime, I always say."
"You know, all things considered, I'm not sure I could approve of your becoming Judge Magister any lon -- " But this time he interrupts himself with a deep and heartfelt groan, as the column thrust into his breech (column indeed, at present it feels about the size of one of the support pillars along the courtyard, although noticeably slicker) twists deeper, finding a sensation that is frankly alarming.
"Oh? Surely such qualities as a keen sense of irony and of the dramatic ought recommend one for the position." Oh, he is in deep trouble, and his prick, already restored to sluggish half-life, responds to the danger with great alacrity. Her voice has come over a touch breathless, scarcely covering a few wet sounds somewhere beyond his sight, and he finds he'd sooner not imagine what it is she's doing. "Or don't you agree?"
"My lady, I am scarcely in any position to disagree." That makes her laugh, at least, and she swats him for it -- on his much-maligned arse, no less. He winces, theatrically. "...However, when it comes to your sense of irony, I fear I'd heartily object to its being wielded upon another!"
She pauses, for only a few blessed seconds. "I could wash it first," she offers, and that makes him laugh, which is even worse.
The bed creaks then, and shifts under them in the darkened room; her weight announces its prior presence by his side, only as it moves to rest above him with the smooth inside of a thigh on each outside of his own. He jerks at the bindings of his hands again, but only perfunctorily. Whatever preparations she has been making are now to come to bear... and a second later his eyes do widen a bit, as she lowers her hips, and the enormous weight gripped inside him is shoved tighter by her own. There is really no mistaking the situation, even blind to it as he is, as her slick flesh eases down to clasp tight to his arse. Surely this irony of hers is a sword double-edged, and she now finds herself impaled upon it as well.
He groans, in spite of himself, at the sound of her deep shaking sigh, not to mention the image that inevitably presents itself to mind.
"Console yourself, Olan," she fairly purrs, leaning down over his back. "Bear your sentence well, and you may yet find yourself pardoned for good behaviour."
He grins through gritted teeth. "Then aye, my lady," says he; "every word."
---
2 A.M.
The secret is,
Even the empty bed is a burden to them,
A pretense.
It is possible, Vossler thinks, as his chin strikes the wooden floor and his vision blossoms into dark stars, that in the waters he's found this time, he may be over his head.
His first night with Basch as lovers, the first night when his strength at last failed him, when trespassing he found himself, for a wonder, invited after all, after touch and strange tenderness were done and hunger had all burned itself away -- that first night, as he closed his eyes to sleep he thought exhausted: This is the last. Tomorrow he will change his mind; I'll have him like this no more. I must live a life in every breath of this, for this will be the last. But then the second night; and falling asleep he thought, This, then. It can go no further. So good while it lasted, but now done. The third, he thought the same. It was only after a few weeks of this had passed that he began to dream, in some closed, locked chamber of his heart, that the feared tomorrow might never come; that none of it might ever be the last, until the last indeed.
His new resolve was made in a fervor: he must not fail Basch's faith, nor the great and unexpected gift he had been given. He must fall back on none of his bad habits, the ill tendencies and tomcattings of his youth must be set behind him. His life had changed, and surely it would change him with it. He needed none of that anymore. He even thought of disposing of his collar, but it had been a part of his person so long that he would feel strange indeed without it, and anyway he feared that Basch might notice and inquire as to why. Even with everything changed, he did not think he could bear to explain.
This resolve has lasted a year now: a long, long, strange and terrible year, at that. All was well at first, and then not so well. His passion for Basch did not waver, nor did he cease to want what was between them, but the act itself began, by degrees, to pall; making himself ready was at times a work of concentration, and finishing, at times, demanded thoughts he would have sooner kept out from the bed between them. What he had given up -- so newly found, really -- slowly obsessed him, so that in the end the merest stray thought in that direction brought on a shudder and a sweat, stopped up his throat, sped up his heart. He had dreams, such as he'd not known since boyhood, and at every day's end he found himself closing up his fists against temptation, against the labyrinth of wants that he knew waited out in the city's darkened streets. He found himself weary and snappish at the least provocation, more like he had once been before ever meeting Basch than he should have been upon at last having him. Color drained from his eyes; he drowned inside his skin. For a long time he scarcely even knew what was wrong.
And at last, tonight, with Basch called away on diplomatic matters and time stretching out before him like a pit of spikes, he has surrendered. Failing himself is one thing, perhaps even bearable; but he cannot cling to abstinence if it will fret what he has with Basch to pieces.
Denied too long, however, hunger sours to madness. He found them in a seedy backstreet pub, spilling its light and smoke out into gutters washed with rain and fluids that less bear thinking on: three men, seated drinking 'round a single table, who raised gimlet hooded eyes to his face as he entered and did not speak, not even to one another. He cannot so much as remember their faces from one moment to the next -- cannot even, in truth, remember if there were actually only three at first, nor when the fourth might have joined them, or the fifth, or if it did indeed stop at five. His blood up, raw with jangling nerves and possibility, nonetheless he let the first ones follow him out, let them trail him like his shadow tripled in too many lamp-lights and ask where he was bound, let them at last lead him astray. The dark tumbledown rowhouse smelled of liquor and wet rot. It still does, but now something more than that. Something poison and sweet.
He blinks back the darkness and doubling from his eyes, struggles to pull himself back to his knees -- a task almost impossible with his hands bound behind him slick and aching, where nor could they stop his fall to begin with, with his back parts now throbbing with a sick black pain. A boot shoves into the flowering bruise beneath his chin, making him grunt out breath through his gritted teeth as it hauls his head upright. The prick standing out to meet him there, curving and ringed in a gingery patch of hair, is not exactly a surprise. It never exactly is.
"To it, then, mongrel," snarls or purrs its presumable owner, somewhere miles above his sight; "to it, cur, or do you think you've had your fill this night?" Someone laughs, in the watching shadows, a hyena's cry. There is an odd deadly quiet in this room, for all the music of rhythm and slaps of flesh that have filled it thus far. A hand heavy with rings knots in his hair, hauls his head back. "Nay, you look like the hungry sort to me."
It's true, of course, but that's neither here nor there.
Slick at the tip, the knob of the man's prick prods at his mouth, and he opens for it mainly to defend himself; it is only experience that saves him now, however, as a jut of hips thrusts it too deep too fast, forcing battering entry to his throat. He flinches but accepts. His lips have been swelled and split with abuse, and the stinging heat of the man's organ on that injury is of greater concern, for the moment, than the dull gagging ache in any case. One thing at a time, always, one thing at a time.
He cannot remember if he's had this one before, or been had by, their faces all one angry smear in memory, but it doesn't matter; they are many enough and fit that by the time the last finished, the first was ready again, and so on and on. He has lost count of the injuries as well, apart from that some of the stripes on his back are still bleeding, and the eye is beginning to black. He wishes he could claim he has not spent himself already, or at least that he has not stiffened again, but it would be a lie. And why would he wish it otherwise? Is this not what he came for? All this and more?
Another pair of hands -- surely not this one's, for those are both knotted in his hair, hard enough to draw water from his uninjured eye -- locks under his hips, hauling them up and back, forcing him to hands and knees to keep from losing his balance entire and plowing headfirst into he to whom he gives suck. The damage to his breech he has thus far not dared try to calculate, but what recourse does he have? The one above him laughs when he cries out, his member muffling the sound in his throat -- the entry is slick but cannot be slick enough, he is all scorched earth where this new prick slams inside him, and yet the pain is a dazzle-bright constellation that unmans him in a way that such as these cannot with their mere derision, their games of torture and conquest. His desire is his master, not they. The second man thrusts inside him, building too fast to a hard rhythm, and he can only shut his eyes and lave and draw the prick inside his mouth, trussed like game for the table, full at either end.
The man who fucks his mouth calling him mongrel, calling him dog, and the fingers coming to rest in the collar at his throat, then to haul back on it savagely. The other hands brusing on his hips, cock battering inside him, perfect in its wretchedness. Time, losing all meaning, and if he thought he would have to wait for the end of his life to see damnation, he was very much mistaken. Hell follows him everywhere, it seems; and the worse for how he seeks it out, and for its very sweetness.
Some other lifts his boot, now, and presses its hard leather toe into Vossler's cock, where it hangs in a pleading throb below his belly. Too hard, the tip digging against his bollocks and making dull dim pain flare at his base. It matters not, at least not enough to prevent his stifled bursting moan, and this villain laughs as well. "Aye, like it, don't you?" this one says, and flicks his foot in a careless scrape of hard sole and hard flesh; somewhere in him Vossler can find it to be amazed that he can keep his balance on one leg for such complex machinations. "Naught but a whore under all that metal, I judge." He cannot help himself; he juts himself into that unforgiving touch, whatever filth such vermin as this walks through from day to day, just craving more and harder. If they all laugh at him then -- he is scarcely aware of such trivialities by now -- then it only serves to swell his passion all the more.
Closer at both ends, and he serves as he may, with the distraction of hard cobbler's leather kneading him against his groin. Reduced to mouth and arse and prick, throbbing with how good it is and how terrible. Taken apart into pieces.
The last thing he thinks of before spilling himself, before bringing off his two at either end with him, is Basch: Basch offering him his guileless, affecting smile, the strange honey-golden color of his hair, his gentle hands and ready mouth as they lie together in the easy love of comrades. Basch, who will notice his injuries and ask after them once he returns home, and to whom Vossler will lie almost as easily, speaking of carelessness at practice and shrugging the matter aside. Basch who will laugh good-naturedly at his foolishness, and buy him a round, and lie in his bed at night with a hundred kisses and not a single bruise nor scar, and never know that what makes Vossler most grateful is also that which damns him, and how easily he can resent what he has longed for most. At the last, he thinks of Basch, bringing him clearer than anything in this moment in the eye of his mind; and the shame is more than enough to bring him over the edge, and away, and gone.
After that, it hardly seems worth it to defend himself.
He cannot count the time before they leave, in a half-laughing, ragged parade; by then he only lies in a dim muddle of bleeding semi-wakefulness, sprawled on the empty floor. At great distance, he hears the thickly Bhujerban-accented voice of a man out in the street hail the men who have left him -- "Good sirs, any further entertainment tonight, good sirs? I can provide -- " -- and their ungracious, shouted brushings-off. It means little to him other than to prove that they draw away.
Some time later -- both too long and too broken, in his present state, for much connection to be made -- there is the faint creak of the door, and then in his dimness he feels human warmth touch his battered skin. He flinches back by reflex, but not before he can sense its unexpected gentleness.
"You must rise, bhadra," says a soft voice -- the man's voice he heard earlier, it occurs thickly. "Rise, and clothe yourself. I am to take you to the bosom of a friend, and would not shame you in the taking."
He is in no fit state to question, of course; nor to clothe himself, if truth be told. Still, between the two of them, they make a fair showing of it. Likely as he staggers along with his arm slung around the man's slim shoulders (but he is strong for all of that; Vossler could swear later that he lost consciousness no less than twice in the course of that journey, and each time he awoke found himself further along), he looks like nothing so much as just another drunkard in Rabanastre's low places, hauled home from an evening's revelry by grace of a gracious friend. Nor can he say how long it takes them. The streets are cool with night, though still bustling with life, and they pass through crowds and bump shoulders he can scarcely feel, with his head hanging low, and his faceless savior making soft apologies beneath his breath in his lilting, lovely tongue.
He finds himself at length in a dim place, let down in a heap of soft rugs, breathing sweetly-scented smoke. Curtains of diaphanous silk blow past his vision, and somewhere just beyond his reach women pass from time to time, talking of nothing he can make out. He can see very little through his wounded eyes, and mostly he keeps them closed, drifting from dark to semi-dark and back again. Cool water bathes his face at one point, his bared back at another, the sounds of a sponge dipped and wrung out and dipped again near his ear. He hears chimes, music. Laughter and dancing.
He is not quite surprised when he comes a little more to himself, and finds a blurry vision of Dalan sitting a few feet off on a heap of cushions, drawing on the tip of his hookah, the little king of this part of the city. The old man smiles to see Vossler awake, showing teeth white and strong for all their age, and blows a perfect trembling ring of smoke into the already heavy air.
"I hope this liberty I have taken does not offend," he says in his strong, cracking voice. "But I could never bear to lose my custom."
Vossler tries to speak, and fails, for want of water in his throat. It is difficult for him to imagine, bare seconds later, what he would have said in any case; perhaps he only meant to speak his thanks, or even rain his curses. In the end, he closes his eyes, instead. The darkness comes for him, too ready, a beast of hungry pale eyes and rending teeth.
"I think you need take greater care, Captain," he hears Dalan's voice, nonetheless, even though it recedes down long tunnels into nothing. "Of such things men die all too easily."
Not easily enough, he has time to think; and then the smells of incense and perfume, and the sounds of distant dancing, again take him up and ferry him away.
---
3 A.M.
They are more themselves keeping
The company of a blank wall,
The company of time and eternity.
The Wood is restless. Fran need not hear her every green word to know this truth; she has other senses by which to scent it on the wind, taste it in the water, feel the cool air stir and prickle up the insides of her limbs. The Wood does not sleep. She hovers in her own cast shadows, thinking long thoughts her lost daughter cannot share.
She sits awake with her back on a fallen branch, as she has all through as the hours first grew small, then slowly larger once more. Her partner has taken for his pillow her one thigh, with as little regard as ever, and she lays an absent hand upon his hair. 'Round their camp the rest are sleeping: the no longer captive knight seated by where his princess curls, against a tumble of stone steps, the meddlesome Archadian boy flanked on each side by the Dalmascan children, close beside the fire. Her bow and quiver sit against the tree behind her seat, and a curving slender sword she has come to quite like, also, she has rested drawn across her unoccupied leg. The little clearing where they have bedded down is silent, but for the rustling of leaves; things lurk out in the night, no doubt, better not seen nor thought, but for now they pass by, frightened perhaps by the dwindling fire. She said that she would sit first watch, but has not woke another to spell her. It is a task she would entrust to none's sole care but hers, and if she remained watchful alongside her relief, there would be questions -- always questions, humes are full of questions, most of them pointless as the silly boy's as they left Eruyt. No matter, for none of them will notice come the morn.
She twines her fingers in his hair, mindful of her claws. For all the boy-lord's efforts with his supply of potions, there are scrapes and bruises yet under her hand -- scant enough sign of how he has suffered for coming to her home. She has not trod far from him since they came under the canopy, and has heard his complaints that every coeurl and malboro seems in earnest to make free with him, and for once he does not exaggerate nor even boast. Even the insects have left more bites welling on his bare hands and face than on any other's. He has treated this as no more than an annoyance, and she has held her peace throughout, and only kept him close. Stood guard of his back as she ever has, and if a bit more so, no comment has he made.
His noisy outrage left aside, she knows she alone knows the truth of it: it is as Jote warned her, which she brushed aside so easily in daylight but came to know truer in midnight's gloom. The Wood lusts for his blood. He has never come this far inside with her before, not here, nor stayed so long, and she fears what reprisal may await him in this place no longer her home. The rest of them are perhaps in no great danger, or no greater than ordinary, but the Wood does not suffer pirates to steal away her treasure -- even when her treasure has long since stolen away itself.
Leaves rustle across the clearing, and her eyes flick that way: watching, measuring, at last finding nothing. Good. The Wood's voice, she may not hear, but neither will she be as a child, lost in her depths. She's come too far for that.
So she will sit, all through the night, until the morning wakes the humes with whom she travels and they all travel on; she will keep her sword and bow close by, and she will watch, and listen, not with a viera's eyes and ears but with the duller senses of one of they short-lived creatures, and all the better in her mind. She will keep watch until dawn, and if tomorrow she will be unrested and cross, and drag her feet, and fall to every sleep spell tossed her way, then no matter. If he notices at all he will tease her for her sloth, and she cast him one of her expressionless looks, and he will never be the wiser to her vigil of this night, of these longest smallest hours. She would have it no other way. It would only make him wholly insufferable, to know what she would do for his sake; she thinks it and then smiles. His face is slightly pinched in dreams, his breath warm and even now on her metal and skin. He never looks so much like the child he was when first she met him as he does now, all his bluster and jest sunk in sleep's still pool.
Come then, she thinks, most deliberately in that harsh speech of theirs, which so flattened back her sister's ears to hear. Her hand clutched all the while around the hilt of the sword at her side. If some response comes she cannot know it, and perhaps she speaks only to herself, but it is no matter: still she will have her say. Searches out words she knows mainly from him, that have amused her from his lips in the ship's misbehaving engines or on some frustrating hunt: Come, jealous strumpet; come, you mad, covetous bitch. Do the worst you may. You'll not have what you wish this night, though you throw every beast from its burrow.
And even more deliberate, leaning on each word: I hear a new voice now.
Wind skirls past her, in a heady gust, tearing through her hair and up her armored legs and belly, tousling her ears; it buffets him in passing, along its path, and he stirs, frowning, in his sleep. It could be mere coincidence. She shivers, but she smiles also, closing her eyes against the frisson of its breath. Smiles with all her teeth.
She leans back on the branch, and opens again her gaze to look up upon the darkened canopy, still stroking his hair with an absent hand. At last the other she opens from around its sword-hilt, and sinks it instead into the damp rich soil beside her hip.
There are many ways of knowing. She has never been lost.
---
4 A.M.
Which, begging your pardon,
Cast no image
As they admire themselves in the mirror,
While you stand to the side
Pulling a hanky out
To wipe your brow surreptitiously.
Larsa cannot honestly remember ever having told Vaan and Penelo the date of his birthday, but it seems they've learned from some source nonetheless; for early on the eve of his fifteenth, Basch in his Judge Magister's armour strode into the room with the somber announcement that he had captured two intruders in the palace and brought them to his emperor for review -- followed by a piling-on of blond hilarity into the sort of embrace Larsa has never entirely grown accustomed to.
"Happy birthday, Larsa!" Penelo laughed nearly in his ear, and kissed his cheek before drawing back to let Vaan have his cheerful back-slapping say. "Well, early, I guess, but still. We got you something, but it's still back on the ship."
Vaan, who had withdrawn by then as well, scowled at her with hands on hips. "'We'?" She rolled her eyes in Larsa's direction. She'd taken, it seemed, to wearing stacks of jewelry such that she jingled whenever she moved, and they both looked tanned and extremely well.
"Okay, Vaan got you something. Vaan stole you something, actually, out of an ancient tomb of somebody-or-other, so if it's cursed, you can blame him."
"It's not stealing if it's from an ancient tomb!" Vaan protested, and Larsa guarded his growing smile with half of his gloved hand. "Dead guys and zombies don't own property, last I heard." He turned to Larsa in appeal. "She's just being like this 'cause she didn't get you anything."
"I'm waiting to find a gift that really means something," Penelo said with perfect dignity; and from the doorway Basch then interrupted Vaan's indignance before it could get truly underway.
"I await your command as to their punishment, my lord," he said, and Larsa was certain he could guess the reason Basch had not taken off his helm. He gave up on his own equivalent, however, taking the hand off from his smile and quirking his brow toward Basch.
"I think there is nothing for it," he said; "they shall have to join me for dinner, and may the gods have mercy on their souls."
"That doesn't sound like much of a punishment," Vaan interrupted himself, grinning, from his attempt to throw his struggling and laughing partner over his shoulder. Larsa shook his head.
"Ah, but you have never dined at the emperor's high table. I assure you it is dreadful enough." He allowed his smile to break into a grin at last, the sort of gesture he normally avoids for knowing how much his true age it makes him look. "Basch, if you would be so kind -- ask the head housekeeper to have a suite of two guest rooms prepared, and to send a maid and valet to fetch appropriate attire?"
"Attire?" Vaan said as Basch was nodding his understanding; at least the two of them had ceased wrestling. "We gotta dress up? Oh, man, this is a punishment."
Penelo elbowed him in the side, in between dusting herself off. "Yes, Vaan, you might even have to wear actual clothes."
"Oh, look who's talking."
Larsa cleared his throat, attempting not to look discomfited, and finally bowed a little himself to both of them, his hand pressed to the top of his chest. "Thank you both so much for coming," he said, finally serious, his smile full and true. "It is always a pleasure."
At the touch on his cheek, he looked up, surprised, into Penelo's smiling eyes. "We don't get to do this often enough," she said.
And so they allowed themselves to be whisked off in turn, to be scrubbed and dressed until presentable by Archadian standards; Penelo in particular professed her great longing for a lengthy engagement with the bathtub, at which Larsa again found himself clearing his throat. He busied himself until the late hour for which state dinners were always set, and then went in his own most formal informal -- robes given over gladly for fine shirt and vest and breeches under an ornate thigh-length coat, hair pulled back into a short tail, all of which had rather startlingly begun to suit him as he grew older -- to retrieve his guests. Vaan awaited him in the hall, looking quite presentable if thoroughly disgruntled, and exchanging dark looks with his exiting valet. At the disorder into which he had already put his cravat Larsa could not help but laugh, before gently taking the loose ends and helping set him to rights, which Vaan bore with extremes of patience.
"You'd better be glad we like you," Vaan grumbled, as Larsa was finishing, as they were interrupted by the timely sound of the other door also opening and closing. He turned, satisfied -- and his breath only stuttered for a moment, but it was enough to make him wish he had something to clear his throat over again.
Penelo was no particular revelation; she looked like nothing so much as herself, albeit in a shimmering summer-weight Archadian gown of deep turquoise, her hair pinned up behind her head in a twist with her short fringe brushed to one side of her forehead. The dress plunged at the neck and deeper at the back, its skirt split to show its inner tiers, with her waist and bare arms ringed with even more bands of gold than she wore normally, interrupting the patterns of ink that traced down her shoulders and arms. Perhaps no revelation, but it did suit her very well, at least -- and she was something of a revelation in her own right, all the same.
"Well, here we are, I guess," she said, with a showy little turn to prove her point -- only slightly marred by how she nearly tripped up in the high heels of her matching sandals. "Do I look Archadian?"
"That tattoos kinda give it away," Vaan remarked, and then with a true smile Larsa found rather touching: "You look great." He paused to consider. "You're gonna kill yourself in those shoes, though."
"I know." She made a face quite at odds with the rest of her appearance, and lifted her skirts slightly to waggle a foot in front of her. "No offense, Larsa, but these are silly. Maybe I'll get a chance to ditch them under the table or something."
"I take none, I assure you. Shall we?"
She did trip descending the stairs, nearly going down in a tumble of limbs quite unlike her usual grace -- before as naturally as breathing Larsa caught her arm in a firm grip, and after aiding her back to balance tucked it firmly into his own for the remainder of the journey. He caught her looking at him sidelong, a hint of an uptilt at the corners of her mouth, and though he had meant the gesture only as a kind camouflage for his help in keeping her balance, the import was not lost on him. Vaan wandered along ahead of them, cheerful in spite of his irksome layers, and he had made of himself in a single gesture Penelo's escort of the evening, and she his. He was forced to focus upon the chandeliers of the great hall to prevent himself from blushing.
Dinner itself was not as unremarkable as he had threatened, but nearly so, though improved greatly by their presence. The emperor's eccentricities were taken most satisfyingly amiss, and for a rarity he actually had pleasant dining companions, on an evening in which he had neither taken some excuse to dine alone with Basch, nor coerced the former Judge Magister Zargabaath and current Chairman Nomis to the high table. Vaan managed to offend no less than three separate senators, and rather to intrigue a younger and more attractive specimen of nobility, which perhaps accounted for his mysterious absence later in the evening. In any case, Larsa found himself and Penelo left alone by midnight, when the long dinner gradually transformed itself into various post-prandials and dance, and found it came quite naturally indeed to ask her to join him in both. He was amused to note, in passing, that she had taken the latter as an excuse to shed her troublesome footwear at last.
And now, at the end of all, it is very late, later than he has ever really exerted himself to keep awake, until lured by such sweet and friendly company; he has said good night to Basch, as his guardian finally quit the occasion with him, and promised to be to his own bed soon, after he has escorted back his guests -- or the one who has remained accounted for, at any rate. Penelo still holds his arm as he walks her back to the suite, although she has no need for balance now -- her feet remain bare on the plush carpets and marble floors, and without their interference he is startled to find he is nearly her same height -- and he is dizzy with pleasure and weariness.
"Could you do me a favor?" she asks him, when they reach her door. She has let go his arm, so they stand face-to-face. A few spills of her hair have come down, tickling past her ears and cheeks, and he smiles.
"Whatever I may." He lifts her hand gravely to his lips and kisses it, and she laughs, dipping him a flourishing curtsy that can only make him grin, and answer with his deepest bow.
"Come in for a second? I need some help with all this stuff." She gestures vaguely at the back of her dress, where complex fittings and eyelets hold the belts together, the straps to the gold collar at her throat. His laughter dries rather abruptly, although he is yet able to produce a weak smile as he nods.
"Of course."
The room is dim; the fireplaces are empty, the season being warm, and the other lights set around are low and pleasant. He closes the door behind them and is flustered briefly by her small, knowing smile, before she turns her back and lifts her fallen hair up from her neck. This time he can only swallow, and take the few necessary steps to her, to stand close behind her back in the cool and quiet semi-dark. The fineness of the work at hand demands he have his gloves off, and he pulls first one free, then the other, setting them in his belt.
She smells of sweet things, warm things: amber, cinnamon, honeyed roses. He fumbles with the choker and its intricacies, and she makes a small, startled sound, amused at its own startlement, at the touch of his bare fingertips on the nape of her neck. He frees the clasps and pulls the collar away from around her neck to the front, and then the straps startle him quite badly by being unfastened to anything, including themselves, without it. They tumble free, letting the heavy silk they have supported melt toward her waist -- but she is ready with a hand clasping the fabric against her chest, and then he can breathe again, with a small nervous puff that is almost laughter. Her bare back and shoulders, however, rich with colored ink, rob the sound of any strength.
Next the belts, and those are easier -- probably little trouble for her, had she simply rotated their clasps to the front, although he refrains from saying so for any number of reasons. He draws them away, trying not to linger too obviously on the feel of his arms and hands curled around her waist, and sets them aside with the collar. Thus undone, the dress hangs smoothly apart from the creases left by the long night, a sheath of silk with no shape but her shape, not quite hidden inside it. An easy job from here, he thinks; he fights not to close his eyes.
Penelo turns around, back to him, taking his smooth bare hand in hers and holding it to the side as though they would have one more dance, even as her other still holds its grip in the center of her chest. She is smiling, if never quite meeting of his eyes. "Thank you," she murmurs, close enough that he can feel her breath on his neck. He must needs look at something else, anything else.
"You are welcome."
His voice sounds like a joke, a dry creaking whisper, but neither of them laughs. "It's way past midnight now," she says instead, abandoning his hand now to again cup his cheek. "Happy birthday."
Yes; she's right. Fifteen years old. It can seem like nothing more than a dream just now, however: now, when he has never felt so young.
Thank you, he tries to say, or something like, but the words never find their way into his mouth or out to his lips, and it matters little anyway because then his lips are against hers. Soft, and smooth, they press together, just barely touching enough to feel. In basic fact he has kissed like this any number of times, as would have any Archadian gentleman of a sociable disposition and with favour for his servants and kin, but in truth no such kiss has ever been quite like this one: this kiss like a touch of butterfly wings, but only just a little open, a little wet.
She keeps her hand on his cheek when she draws away, and smiles at him, both calmly certain and perhaps a little shy. They stand a little too long, looking like that, before at last bidding one another good night.
He has no memory, when at last he finds his own rooms again, of the path he has taken to them, no real sense of having walked at all. He disentangles himself from his own outer layer on his way through his parlor and study, letting Basch hear that he is back if the man still lies wakeful, his thoughts a strange windy whirl of candle-light and shadow. Reaching his bed, he collapses upon it in an ungainly adolescent sprawl, in his breeches and shirtsleeves, and stares at the ceiling in a lengthy silence; but there is still music somewhere, no doubt, and dancing, and men and women in hollow lovely rooms, passing through the darkest hours.
His lips still taste of her mouth, and he brushes them over with the tips of his fingers.
In time, he turns over on his side, and looks out the uncurtained windows at the purpled darkness of the city sky. It will be dawn in only a matter of hours, he thinks; if he wanted, he could just stay awake, until the light comes streaming in.