Magenta fail.
May. 19th, 2011 07:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eretriaThis is vaguely embarrassing.
I've just discovered a chapter of Magenta on my harddrive that's been finished for an entire year and which I never posted.
Uhm.
So, let's slip this in under the radar, yes? And pretend anyone even remembers that story still.
And hope some people still enjoy Sark being manipulative.
He wakes to the factory vibrating under the sound of rotor blades. A search light, 1000 Watts from the feel of it glances the outside of the building. The light quivers, darts back and forth, throwing Sydney’s features into sharp relief for a brief moment.
Sark pushes himself up from the dusty concrete and into a sitting position.He takes his time, knowing they're far enough away from the window to not be detected. He feels Sydney's gaze follow his every move and it unsettles him. He doesn’t dare move his shoulder yet, but the pain has considerably lessened.
"Thank you," he offers, pointing his chin at his shoulder.
She shrugs. Bites her lower lip. The searchlight shining through the window brushes her face again and she ducks slightly. She prepares for a question, but then stops. Tries again. "If I ask you some questions, will you answer me truthfully?"
"Define truth," he replies.
"The absence of lies," she flings back at him, her jaw suddenly tense from anger.
"Touché," he says, smiling. Then: "Ask."
"My mother once warned me that you wouldn’t hesitate to kill me." She folds her hands, seems tempted to stare at them but then raises her gaze to meet his. "Is that the reason you were at my apartment that night?"
So she hasn’t forgotten as he had hoped. In the on-and-off lights from outside, her face is open and vulnerable, yet determined. Determined to learn the truth.
"You have no reason to trust me, but I need you to believe me now." He locks his gaze with hers, holds her in place, opens up for a fraction of a second. "The answer is no, Sydney. I never had any intention to kill you."
She seems placated by his answer, accepts it with those last shreds of childlike trust that haven’t yet been killed by her line of work. She wants to believe him, he notices, surprised.
"Then why—" she asks as the searchlight hits her face one last time and he’s left with her afterimage burned into his retina. The sound of the helicopter dies down.
"You’re not stupid, Sydney. You know I worked with your mother, and I’m sure you’ve thought about my working for Sloane." He pauses for effect. "Has it ever occurred to you that I might be here for another reason than mere profit?"
She snorts, inelegant. "I find that hard to believe."
"I’m glad my reputation precedes me," he retorts, but his heart’s not in it. He’s tired of the banter. She’ll never believe the truth, but it’s the best way to deflect her attention from his own weakness. A dog looking for a new master? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Irinas leash is made from adamantium. Loyalty has very little to do with it.
He waits for her to draw the inevitable conclusion. Wonders if it’s fatigue that makes it take longer than he thought.
"What reason?" she asks.
He doesn’t want to have to give her the answer. She’s smarter than that. And he’s tired. Aching. Cold. "Think, Sydney."
Her breathing picks up next to him. She tenses, muscles prominent and the fine hair on her bare arm touching his own. Cold electricity. In his mind, he provides the answers to the questions she doesn't ask: Yes, I stepped into your life precisely at the time your mother did. Yes, I got to Sloane just after the CIA almost had her assassinated. Yes, I am still working for your mother. Yes,--
"How much?" It’s barely above a whisper, her jaw locked, the sound of the two words like a hiss through her teeth.
He shakes his head. "Need-to-know."
She wheels around, clutching his injured arm so tight he tastes blood as he bites his tongue against the need to cry out in agony. Her other hand locks around his throat, fingers biting into his skin, making it hard to breathe. "How much, you son-of-a-bitch?"
He's pulled the rug out from under her feet and like a wounded animal, she’s playing dirty now. His windpipe closes under her inexorable grip but he doesn’t fight back. For this to work, she has to open her eyes.
"How much do you know?" She grabs his elbow, presses his arm back. Tendons and half-torn ligaments scream. His head swims, too light.
Suddenly he’s not sure if she will stop. The blood rushes in his ears, drowning out the sound of another train passing by. "You won’t find out if you kill me," he croaks.
She lets go of him as one would of a piece of decaying meat.
His shoulder burns like wildfire. He breathes against the nausea that threatens to overwhelm him.
"I can assure you, Sydney, that my presence here is for your best." His voice is rough. The ghost of her fingers still squeezes his windpipe. "And you played your part well."
She switches the torch back on, unable to resist any longer. "Spit it out. I won’t ask again."
He doesn’t avert his eyes when the light hits them, painfully bright. "Everything, Sydney. Everything. About project Christmas, about your parents, about Rambaldi, even about your pretty boyscout and your warehouse." The torchlight begins to quiver. "I know about Mr Tippin’s involvement with the CIA and Miss Calfo’s fear of the health inspector."
Lightning-quick movement. She pushes, brutal, one metre, two, until he hits the wall and his head connects with the bricks behind him. The muzzle of her gun is cold against his temple. "You lie," she whispers. He smells the fear rolling off her.
"We both know that I don’t." He reaches up, pushes the torch so it doesn’t blind him anymore. Her face, now that he can see it, is carefully blank – only her eyes betray her panic.
"How?" she asks, finally, lowering the gun.
"Research, curiosity. A chance meeting in Madagascar." She flinches. A beat, he’s aiming. "Your mother."
Her gaze snaps to his face, laser-sharp. "What about my mother?"
Bull’s eye.
"When I came to your house that night, it wasn’t a social call." He takes a deep breath. "She had me take your apartment under surveillance."
"What?"
"I put the surveillance up while you were in Geneva. Your entire house is wired."
"What?"
"That night the powercut prevented me from monitoring you. I had to make sure no one had gotten to you." The lie comes so silkily in the shape of a halftruth that it almost disgusts him. "We both know what your mother is capable of. I had no choice."
"I could kill you right now and dump your body in the river. Tell everyone you were killed in action. No one would ask any questions."
"You could."
"Give me a reason why I shouldn’t."
"You’re curious. And you’d be destroying a clue." Before she has time to digest the last sentence, he adds: "You’d never find out whom I told."
She’s back in his face, close enough for him to count her eyelashes were it but any brighter. He envies her the anger, the feeling of betrayal. For years now, his walls have been too strong for anyone to breach them so easily.
"I’ll take that chance," she hisses.
Laughter bubbles up. Oh, Sydney. Righteous Sydney. "No," he answers, smiling. "No, you won’t."
She holds his gaze for a long time until finally her hands sink down. The defences crumble. "Stop toying with me, you bastard," she says, voice tired. "What do you want?"
"Isn’t that a loaded question?" he asks, letting amusement tinge his words. "What do you think I want, Sydney?"
She shrugs. Holds his gaze, unwavering. "What do monsters want?"
And, with that sentence, his house of cards crashes. Monster. He follows the taste of the word on his tongue and it’s bitter as bile. Is that what she thinks? And, most of all, why does it bother him so much? Many others have thought the same thing. Why does it make a difference that she does as well?
He closes his eyes, suddenly unable to look at her. His knees unwilling to support him, he succumbs to the pain he’s pushed to the back of his mind until now. "Sydney—" He trails off. Thinks. Tries to collect himself. Fuck, he hurts everywhere. Then says: "Ask."
And she does.
She asks and he answers and it’s almost a relief to tell the truth for once, even though she likely doesn’t believe a word he says.
"Why did she send you?"
"To watch you." ‘Yes, you bloody fool,’ he thinks, ‘and if Irina finds out just how literally you took her order, she’ll kill you with her own hands.’
The silence lasts a bit longer this time. He thinks that, if he could see her now, she’d be smiling – half disbelief, half uninhibited joy.
"We didn’t see that much of each other in the last few months," she says, clearing her throat. "I’d say you did a spotty job, Sark."
Weak, weak jibe. His lip curls in amusement. She’ll be easy to manipulate once she’s this open. "Do you really want to know every place I saw you?" She gasps as the implication sinks in.
Own-goal, scored. She suspects something now, but the plan wasn’t to get her on his track but to bloody well diffuse her attention. He talks fast, not giving her the chance to ponder any longer:
"General surveillance was on you ever since we first met. It was only after Siberia that I took over personally."
"How?"
"How did you not notice?" He shifts. "I planted the bugs myself," he says, not mentioning the cameras. Continues, deflecting her attention: "Your mother was an excellent teacher."
"What the hell do you know about my mother?"
"I spent more years with her than you did. What do you think I know?"
He knows he has her now, hook, line and sinker, but he doesn’t push. There’s more he can say to ensure maximum impact. "The answer is: Not much more than you do. I only know you at least have a mother who cares about you."
"Mommy issues, Sark?"
It’s hard not to snort. "Hardly. I never knew my mother. She was killed when I was two years old."
"Killed," she repeats, slowly, tasting the word. "How?"
"My father told me it had been a car-crash." It’s a bizarre parallel to Sydney’s own story. A lie, just like her own mother’s accident. He shrugs, has no memory of the woman who gave birth to him. "After she found me, Irina told me the truth."
"Which truth is that?"
"Rambaldi. The prophecy. Sloane."
"There is no truth where Arvin Sloane is involved."
"I couldn’t agree more."
She switches the torch back on, points it at his face without directly shining the light in his eyes. "You collaborate with him. Work with him."
"So do you," he replies.
"I don’t know why I’m asking this, but I hope for your own sake that you’ll tell me the truth: Did you tell Sloane I'm a double agent?"
"No," he states, simply.
"And the surveillance? Did you tell Sloane about that?"
"Sydney, I know you find it hard to believe but I despise the man as much as you do. The answer is no, again. No one but me knows."
She shifts, looking at him with a mixture of disbelief and wariness. "Why?"
He shrugs. "Call it late retribution."
"For what? Making you miss lunch at the boarding school for assassins?"
For a moment, he feels like slapping her, balls his hands into fists. "For killing my mother before I had a chance to even remember her face," he says. "For pushing me into a life I never would have had without him."
The seconds trickle by. Turn into minutes. He closes his eyes and rests his head against the brick wall behind him, painfully aware of the bruise Sydney left there earlier. He's tired. His words will have greater impact in the silence that follows them, anyway.
All he can hear is her breathing. He tries for meditation to stop the pain radiating from his back, his shoulder and his head. Fails when she shifts and he hears her running a hand through her damp hair. Tries again. Fails again. He doesn’t know how much time passes.
A lot of what he’s said was calculating, but he doesn’t expect what she does now. Doesn’t expect the warm hand on his arm. The apology that sings from her every pore. The subtle change in current – the chance he knows he has to seize now, quietly.
His heart beats against his ribcage, dull and painfully strong. He opens his eyes again, wipes all pretext from his face and just lets her see. The fatigue. The emptiness. The pain.
She shifts. Closer to him. The hand is still on his arm. And all of a sudden, she’s so like Irina that it almost hurts. He remembers moments like these, when the strong hands turned gentle and drill turned into something maternal and protective. Moments that weren’t about killing or teaching but just about skin hunger and the need for another human being to care for him outside of his value for the prophecy or the next mission. It was all pretend, of course. Sydney's mother was a brilliant actress. He hopes Sydney will be, too, because he’s tired, so tired. Allows his body to sag and sink to the side. Rests his head in her lap.
She goes rigid, and he counts the seconds. Hopes against hope.
Showing her he’s vulnerable, telling her the truth — he’s put her on the defensive. Willingly. Knowingly. He hasn’t expected this, though. Envies her the ability to forgive.
This is her Achilles’ heel. Her heart is in each and every one of her decisions. In this one, too. He knows that only a day ago, she would have shot him rather than allowing him to get this close to her. And she should by all means.
But she can’t do that now. Not anymore.
Almost as though she thinks along the same lines, she relaxes slightly.
He exhales, unsteady, his head settling more comfortably into her lap, fitting more closely against her. His breath glances off her bare legs. He’s aware of her shiver. She’s warmer than he would have expected. Her scent is heady, blended softly with the smell of the river-water in her wet hair. Her flat stomach is close to the back of his head and he feels cocooned in her warmth. Safe.
He fights a shiver as his defences quietly, softly dissolve into nothingness. This is unwise. And dangerous. And he’s craving every single second of it, like a man dying of thirst longing for a glass of water.
Should she decide to end this now, he would reach out for her and the thought alone scares him. Not even her mother has so much power over him.
He hides his face in the smooth silk whispering over her legs. Just a little while. He just wants, just needs this now.
"Bastard." The word is ever so slightly jarring. He fights the urge to tense. But there is an undercurrent to her voice, it’s lacking the usual scorn.
And then she does something he never would have expected: She lifts a hand and puts it carefully against his head. It’s clumsy, and uncertain, and maybe all the sweeter because of that.
"Manipulative bastard."
The words are soft, and though admonishing, they’re almost … fond.
He doesn’t answer. Pretends to have fallen asleep. Feels something painful rush into his heart, something he can’t place.
Her touch turns into a tentative caress; she’s threading her warm fingers through his damp hair as though she can’t quite believe what she’s doing.
He doesn’t care.
As long as she doesn’t stop.
I've just discovered a chapter of Magenta on my harddrive that's been finished for an entire year and which I never posted.
Uhm.
So, let's slip this in under the radar, yes? And pretend anyone even remembers that story still.
And hope some people still enjoy Sark being manipulative.
XIV
Diminuendo, sostenuto
Diminuendo, sostenuto
He wakes to the factory vibrating under the sound of rotor blades. A search light, 1000 Watts from the feel of it glances the outside of the building. The light quivers, darts back and forth, throwing Sydney’s features into sharp relief for a brief moment.
Sark pushes himself up from the dusty concrete and into a sitting position.He takes his time, knowing they're far enough away from the window to not be detected. He feels Sydney's gaze follow his every move and it unsettles him. He doesn’t dare move his shoulder yet, but the pain has considerably lessened.
"Thank you," he offers, pointing his chin at his shoulder.
She shrugs. Bites her lower lip. The searchlight shining through the window brushes her face again and she ducks slightly. She prepares for a question, but then stops. Tries again. "If I ask you some questions, will you answer me truthfully?"
"Define truth," he replies.
"The absence of lies," she flings back at him, her jaw suddenly tense from anger.
"Touché," he says, smiling. Then: "Ask."
"My mother once warned me that you wouldn’t hesitate to kill me." She folds her hands, seems tempted to stare at them but then raises her gaze to meet his. "Is that the reason you were at my apartment that night?"
So she hasn’t forgotten as he had hoped. In the on-and-off lights from outside, her face is open and vulnerable, yet determined. Determined to learn the truth.
"You have no reason to trust me, but I need you to believe me now." He locks his gaze with hers, holds her in place, opens up for a fraction of a second. "The answer is no, Sydney. I never had any intention to kill you."
She seems placated by his answer, accepts it with those last shreds of childlike trust that haven’t yet been killed by her line of work. She wants to believe him, he notices, surprised.
"Then why—" she asks as the searchlight hits her face one last time and he’s left with her afterimage burned into his retina. The sound of the helicopter dies down.
"You’re not stupid, Sydney. You know I worked with your mother, and I’m sure you’ve thought about my working for Sloane." He pauses for effect. "Has it ever occurred to you that I might be here for another reason than mere profit?"
She snorts, inelegant. "I find that hard to believe."
"I’m glad my reputation precedes me," he retorts, but his heart’s not in it. He’s tired of the banter. She’ll never believe the truth, but it’s the best way to deflect her attention from his own weakness. A dog looking for a new master? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Irinas leash is made from adamantium. Loyalty has very little to do with it.
He waits for her to draw the inevitable conclusion. Wonders if it’s fatigue that makes it take longer than he thought.
"What reason?" she asks.
He doesn’t want to have to give her the answer. She’s smarter than that. And he’s tired. Aching. Cold. "Think, Sydney."
Her breathing picks up next to him. She tenses, muscles prominent and the fine hair on her bare arm touching his own. Cold electricity. In his mind, he provides the answers to the questions she doesn't ask: Yes, I stepped into your life precisely at the time your mother did. Yes, I got to Sloane just after the CIA almost had her assassinated. Yes, I am still working for your mother. Yes,--
"How much?" It’s barely above a whisper, her jaw locked, the sound of the two words like a hiss through her teeth.
He shakes his head. "Need-to-know."
She wheels around, clutching his injured arm so tight he tastes blood as he bites his tongue against the need to cry out in agony. Her other hand locks around his throat, fingers biting into his skin, making it hard to breathe. "How much, you son-of-a-bitch?"
He's pulled the rug out from under her feet and like a wounded animal, she’s playing dirty now. His windpipe closes under her inexorable grip but he doesn’t fight back. For this to work, she has to open her eyes.
"How much do you know?" She grabs his elbow, presses his arm back. Tendons and half-torn ligaments scream. His head swims, too light.
Suddenly he’s not sure if she will stop. The blood rushes in his ears, drowning out the sound of another train passing by. "You won’t find out if you kill me," he croaks.
She lets go of him as one would of a piece of decaying meat.
His shoulder burns like wildfire. He breathes against the nausea that threatens to overwhelm him.
"I can assure you, Sydney, that my presence here is for your best." His voice is rough. The ghost of her fingers still squeezes his windpipe. "And you played your part well."
She switches the torch back on, unable to resist any longer. "Spit it out. I won’t ask again."
He doesn’t avert his eyes when the light hits them, painfully bright. "Everything, Sydney. Everything. About project Christmas, about your parents, about Rambaldi, even about your pretty boyscout and your warehouse." The torchlight begins to quiver. "I know about Mr Tippin’s involvement with the CIA and Miss Calfo’s fear of the health inspector."
Lightning-quick movement. She pushes, brutal, one metre, two, until he hits the wall and his head connects with the bricks behind him. The muzzle of her gun is cold against his temple. "You lie," she whispers. He smells the fear rolling off her.
"We both know that I don’t." He reaches up, pushes the torch so it doesn’t blind him anymore. Her face, now that he can see it, is carefully blank – only her eyes betray her panic.
"How?" she asks, finally, lowering the gun.
"Research, curiosity. A chance meeting in Madagascar." She flinches. A beat, he’s aiming. "Your mother."
Her gaze snaps to his face, laser-sharp. "What about my mother?"
Bull’s eye.
"When I came to your house that night, it wasn’t a social call." He takes a deep breath. "She had me take your apartment under surveillance."
"What?"
"I put the surveillance up while you were in Geneva. Your entire house is wired."
"What?"
"That night the powercut prevented me from monitoring you. I had to make sure no one had gotten to you." The lie comes so silkily in the shape of a halftruth that it almost disgusts him. "We both know what your mother is capable of. I had no choice."
"I could kill you right now and dump your body in the river. Tell everyone you were killed in action. No one would ask any questions."
"You could."
"Give me a reason why I shouldn’t."
"You’re curious. And you’d be destroying a clue." Before she has time to digest the last sentence, he adds: "You’d never find out whom I told."
She’s back in his face, close enough for him to count her eyelashes were it but any brighter. He envies her the anger, the feeling of betrayal. For years now, his walls have been too strong for anyone to breach them so easily.
"I’ll take that chance," she hisses.
Laughter bubbles up. Oh, Sydney. Righteous Sydney. "No," he answers, smiling. "No, you won’t."
She holds his gaze for a long time until finally her hands sink down. The defences crumble. "Stop toying with me, you bastard," she says, voice tired. "What do you want?"
"Isn’t that a loaded question?" he asks, letting amusement tinge his words. "What do you think I want, Sydney?"
She shrugs. Holds his gaze, unwavering. "What do monsters want?"
And, with that sentence, his house of cards crashes. Monster. He follows the taste of the word on his tongue and it’s bitter as bile. Is that what she thinks? And, most of all, why does it bother him so much? Many others have thought the same thing. Why does it make a difference that she does as well?
He closes his eyes, suddenly unable to look at her. His knees unwilling to support him, he succumbs to the pain he’s pushed to the back of his mind until now. "Sydney—" He trails off. Thinks. Tries to collect himself. Fuck, he hurts everywhere. Then says: "Ask."
And she does.
She asks and he answers and it’s almost a relief to tell the truth for once, even though she likely doesn’t believe a word he says.
"Why did she send you?"
"To watch you." ‘Yes, you bloody fool,’ he thinks, ‘and if Irina finds out just how literally you took her order, she’ll kill you with her own hands.’
The silence lasts a bit longer this time. He thinks that, if he could see her now, she’d be smiling – half disbelief, half uninhibited joy.
"We didn’t see that much of each other in the last few months," she says, clearing her throat. "I’d say you did a spotty job, Sark."
Weak, weak jibe. His lip curls in amusement. She’ll be easy to manipulate once she’s this open. "Do you really want to know every place I saw you?" She gasps as the implication sinks in.
Own-goal, scored. She suspects something now, but the plan wasn’t to get her on his track but to bloody well diffuse her attention. He talks fast, not giving her the chance to ponder any longer:
"General surveillance was on you ever since we first met. It was only after Siberia that I took over personally."
"How?"
"How did you not notice?" He shifts. "I planted the bugs myself," he says, not mentioning the cameras. Continues, deflecting her attention: "Your mother was an excellent teacher."
"What the hell do you know about my mother?"
"I spent more years with her than you did. What do you think I know?"
He knows he has her now, hook, line and sinker, but he doesn’t push. There’s more he can say to ensure maximum impact. "The answer is: Not much more than you do. I only know you at least have a mother who cares about you."
"Mommy issues, Sark?"
It’s hard not to snort. "Hardly. I never knew my mother. She was killed when I was two years old."
"Killed," she repeats, slowly, tasting the word. "How?"
"My father told me it had been a car-crash." It’s a bizarre parallel to Sydney’s own story. A lie, just like her own mother’s accident. He shrugs, has no memory of the woman who gave birth to him. "After she found me, Irina told me the truth."
"Which truth is that?"
"Rambaldi. The prophecy. Sloane."
"There is no truth where Arvin Sloane is involved."
"I couldn’t agree more."
She switches the torch back on, points it at his face without directly shining the light in his eyes. "You collaborate with him. Work with him."
"So do you," he replies.
"I don’t know why I’m asking this, but I hope for your own sake that you’ll tell me the truth: Did you tell Sloane I'm a double agent?"
"No," he states, simply.
"And the surveillance? Did you tell Sloane about that?"
"Sydney, I know you find it hard to believe but I despise the man as much as you do. The answer is no, again. No one but me knows."
She shifts, looking at him with a mixture of disbelief and wariness. "Why?"
He shrugs. "Call it late retribution."
"For what? Making you miss lunch at the boarding school for assassins?"
For a moment, he feels like slapping her, balls his hands into fists. "For killing my mother before I had a chance to even remember her face," he says. "For pushing me into a life I never would have had without him."
The seconds trickle by. Turn into minutes. He closes his eyes and rests his head against the brick wall behind him, painfully aware of the bruise Sydney left there earlier. He's tired. His words will have greater impact in the silence that follows them, anyway.
All he can hear is her breathing. He tries for meditation to stop the pain radiating from his back, his shoulder and his head. Fails when she shifts and he hears her running a hand through her damp hair. Tries again. Fails again. He doesn’t know how much time passes.
A lot of what he’s said was calculating, but he doesn’t expect what she does now. Doesn’t expect the warm hand on his arm. The apology that sings from her every pore. The subtle change in current – the chance he knows he has to seize now, quietly.
His heart beats against his ribcage, dull and painfully strong. He opens his eyes again, wipes all pretext from his face and just lets her see. The fatigue. The emptiness. The pain.
She shifts. Closer to him. The hand is still on his arm. And all of a sudden, she’s so like Irina that it almost hurts. He remembers moments like these, when the strong hands turned gentle and drill turned into something maternal and protective. Moments that weren’t about killing or teaching but just about skin hunger and the need for another human being to care for him outside of his value for the prophecy or the next mission. It was all pretend, of course. Sydney's mother was a brilliant actress. He hopes Sydney will be, too, because he’s tired, so tired. Allows his body to sag and sink to the side. Rests his head in her lap.
She goes rigid, and he counts the seconds. Hopes against hope.
Showing her he’s vulnerable, telling her the truth — he’s put her on the defensive. Willingly. Knowingly. He hasn’t expected this, though. Envies her the ability to forgive.
This is her Achilles’ heel. Her heart is in each and every one of her decisions. In this one, too. He knows that only a day ago, she would have shot him rather than allowing him to get this close to her. And she should by all means.
But she can’t do that now. Not anymore.
Almost as though she thinks along the same lines, she relaxes slightly.
He exhales, unsteady, his head settling more comfortably into her lap, fitting more closely against her. His breath glances off her bare legs. He’s aware of her shiver. She’s warmer than he would have expected. Her scent is heady, blended softly with the smell of the river-water in her wet hair. Her flat stomach is close to the back of his head and he feels cocooned in her warmth. Safe.
He fights a shiver as his defences quietly, softly dissolve into nothingness. This is unwise. And dangerous. And he’s craving every single second of it, like a man dying of thirst longing for a glass of water.
Should she decide to end this now, he would reach out for her and the thought alone scares him. Not even her mother has so much power over him.
He hides his face in the smooth silk whispering over her legs. Just a little while. He just wants, just needs this now.
"Bastard." The word is ever so slightly jarring. He fights the urge to tense. But there is an undercurrent to her voice, it’s lacking the usual scorn.
And then she does something he never would have expected: She lifts a hand and puts it carefully against his head. It’s clumsy, and uncertain, and maybe all the sweeter because of that.
"Manipulative bastard."
The words are soft, and though admonishing, they’re almost … fond.
He doesn’t answer. Pretends to have fallen asleep. Feels something painful rush into his heart, something he can’t place.
Her touch turns into a tentative caress; she’s threading her warm fingers through his damp hair as though she can’t quite believe what she’s doing.
He doesn’t care.
As long as she doesn’t stop.