[ she wants to bottle that. save it, somehow, like a letter stuffed into a drawer. she wants to be able to revisit it and remind herself that at least in this moment, it was true.
no matter how it might change when he sees the awkwardness of her nudity or when they return to ravka and they have to explain the monstrosity that she has made of herself to people who will have opinions on these things, who will think she looks less like a saint or a queen than a witch. ]
I'll bring them.
But I don't intend to use them. Not just now.
[ it leaves a bad taste in her mouth, the thought of him being tied down. like she is forcing the unpleasantness of herself onto him. ]
[ a small, petty part of her thinks that felipe could stand to see what he'd missed out on when he'd spurned her, but —
the larger part of her doesn't want him to see her now, like this. because she is certain he wouldn't see it that way. nikolai may claim his feelings haven't changed, but she's certain felipe's have. certain enough to doggedly avoid him but for sniping over the network.
the result of smothering this is that her response is delayed anyway, so she delays it a little further to think of something that sounds suitably appealing to suggest. a long enough beat to be clearly curated. ]
[ Recall this assertion when next he invites himself over.
But the tangle of emotion it provokes is set aside, for the moment. Too difficult to express in this medium, better held until they occupy the same space. ]
I'll be there shortly.
[ Which he is, more or less.
Yes, the village is not so easy to traverse. But Nikolai takes it at a run, and avoids a handful of apparitions, and so lets himself into Alina's little room unscathed, if out of breath. ]
[ alina's room bears the hallmarks of a reclusive depression. a half-finished cup of tea on the night table, mussed bed linens with journals and sketchbooks caught between the sheets, and half-drawn curtains that lessen the already gray afternoon light of fall.
she'd spent days in it, avoiding people, avoiding the eerie sense of the town while she licked her wounds and felt sorry for herself. when nikolai enters, she's putting some small efforts toward remedying it, starting by tugging open the drapes.
the fact that she can hear his heavy breaths has her glancing over her shoulder. ]
... Are you alright? Did you run across something?
[ she puts her back to the window, considers him. for a moment, it's as if there weren't thorns around her neck or a shadow in his shoulder. as if they were as they'd always been, all levity and charm. ]
Did something have you in a hurry? [ she drifts towards him, though there's a hesitancy to it. like she's trying to pin down exactly how to engage with him, now that she knows the shape and feeling of his lips on hers. now that she is all spines and he is —
whatever he is. there is little trace of it in his face now, but alina is sure she remembers the sharpness of his teeth, and gilded edges. ]
[ The thing that comes first to him: Just you, wife.
But that was a dream and they are far from it in this moment. ]
Something, yes.
[ Said as he reaches to catch hold of her hand. Lace their fingers loosely together. ]
Someone very important granted me an audience.
[ His thumb runs across her knuckles. Nikolai looks into her face, eyes dropping to her mouth. Had she given that to him only because of his transformation? Does it matter that he wants to kiss her now, that he wants to kiss her to mark every moment they meet and part and wake alongside each other? ]
[ she charts the drop of his gaze. fear briefly seizes her, numbing her shoulders, as she wonders if he's looking at the amplifiers, noting the difference, but no. dread turns to warm fondness as she realizes that his attention is focused on her mouth. her own gaze drops then, too, shyly smothering a coy smile. ]
Sounds serious.
[ her other hand comes up to rest on his chest under the guise of adjusting his shirt, the desire to remove it hidden in her mock stoicism.
the gesture summons the memory of a dozen times, a hundred times, that she had done the same thing in a dream life. picking fuzz and loose threads off of delicately embroidered formalwear for public events that they attended and left together. ]
An entire lifetime had been brushed aside like cobwebs when they'd woke, but it hasn't dissipated. The echoes of it live somewhere in the back of his mind, easily stirred at some minor gesture. They come more quickly to hand than what should live in that empty space between Alina's kiss and waking at the Duchess' request.
Nikolai doesn't want to think of that empty space. He never wants to experience it again. ]
Very important, [ he agrees, before catching up her hand to bring it to his mouth. ] I'm going to have to hope she's feeling generous.
[ After all that's happened. After all that's changed. ]
[ kissing her hand feels like a careful avoidance, taking the ghost of what he wants and in so doing side-stepping what he really wants. what they both really want. she can feel it crackling in the air, doubts that it's just her who feels it.
she should have done it sooner. should have done it when she could embrace him without their monstrosity hanging over them. but even as she thinks this, she acknowledges the impossibility of it. like somehow, seeing him that way had made it possible to open herself to him further.
she frees her hand from his to instead cup the side of his face, drawing him nearer, chasing limbs out from between them. ]
Only one way to know for sure.
[ her eyes flick down to consider his mouth. the room feels warm, even with the draft of fall coming down the hallway. she blames her racing heart. ]
They can play at being on steady ground, but Nikolai cannot shake the sense that the landscape has shifted around him. He had lost control so quickly. It had slipped through his fingers like sand, and his body had cracked open. He wanted her, he always wanted her, but in that moment it had been distorted and amplified; want turned into something that required teeth and claws, wouldn't be sated by her nearness alone. Nothing had been able to stop it. Alina had kissed him and the softness of her lips had only followed him down into black nothingness, and when he'd risen from it in an ecstasy of pain that memory was one of the few clear pieces he carried with him.
He puts his mouth to her knuckles and thinks of biting her thigh. Recalls the unsettling sensation of his mouth, too full of teeth as wings tore through the fabric of his tunic. ]
Moya tsaritsa, [ comes as his hands find her waist, settle so, so lightly there. ] Sankta Alina.
[ Sol Koroleva is near to hand, not yet invoked. They are only playing. It is easier this way, to come to her playing petitioner to receive her grace. ]
Let me take you to bed.
Edited (crams in extra words) 2023-10-28 05:14 (UTC)
Are you sure this is what you want? [ the words are whisper-soft, spoken to his mouth instead of his eyes. ] If you come into my bed, I might never let you leave.
[ it takes everything in her to hold herself back from him, to keep herself from closing the distance between them, sealing her mouth over his, and tasting him when she can actually savor it. when she can pull away and know that his face will still be there waiting for her, know she won't feel teeth like knives jutting from between his lips.
she can't even miss the possessive curl of his claws, that she had been surprised to find herself so fond of, because his fingers grip her waist just as surely. it makes her want to believe he means it, to believe that he wants her, even changed as she is.
but the need to be sure she's actually wanted is the only thing stronger than her impatience. ]
Why would I ever want to leave your bed? [ breaks slightly from their little play, a flash of something honest shining through.
It's true. It's true here in this little room as it would be true in Ravka. He doesn't attempt to hide that from her anymore; she must know, and there is no undoing that, surely. ]
I promised that I'd spread you out across a better bed, [ whether or not hers qualifies is debatable, but it at least looks as if it might more easily accommodate two people than Nikolai's narrow bed back at the boarding house. ] I promised to give you my mouth.
[ They haven't talked either, about the party. About kneeling between her thighs as Kirigan looked down at him from the curve of her neck. He doesn't care to talk about it now. ]
I want to make you come until you can't anymore, [ he tells her, because whatever else he wants, seeing her come apart and knowing it was for him feels necessary. All else can come after, or alongside it. ] Would you let me?
i'm a monster again BUT alina's room is still in the boarding house shhh it's fine
[ the question yanks the reins of her gaze, forcing her eyes back up to meet his. his bewilderment is so genuine, like he can't imagine in the slightest why she would ask, why that might have changed, even as the proof is there on her shoulders, jutting cruelly from her skin.
as if it makes no difference to him.
her expression trembles, threatened with collapse under the weight of the gesture. instead, she digs one hand into his hair and pulls him by it, presses her mouth to his so that he can drink down her relief in the whimpered sound she makes, all need, all barely restrained hunger that finally breaks loose.
as their bodies come together, alina needy enough to press flush to him all at once, the protrusions of aleksander's bone nudge gently up against his chest. ]
[ The ruin of her shoulders, the wound dug into his chest, the monster just beneath his skin, are these things not all equal? (How easy that monster had come when called; was it only a breath away, even now?) If there are questions, they will come later. And carefully. He should have been there with her then, for the murder and the harvest and the fusing of the stripped bones to her body.
He is here now. And in the present moment, all Nikolai can do is kiss her.
There is nothing tugging at his consciousness now. There is no pain rolling through his body, no cracking of bone or ravenous hunger brewing in his chest. Alina kisses him and Nikolai is free to sink into it, into her. His arms tighten around her waist, cinching her impossibly closer, heedless of the bone digging into his chest as he does.
Is she thinking of him? Nikolai chooses to believe she must be. She has to be.
When they are driven to break, to draw in ragged breaths against each others mouths, Nikolai murmurs, ] Does that mean my request is granted?
[ she cannot draw her face far from his, cannot stand to be separated from him more than mere inches. they are so close that her eyes can only focus on the curve of his brow or the darker flecks of blue in his eyes or the bow of his lip. she nudges her nose lightly against his. ]
Take me to bed, Nikolai. [ she winds her arms solidly around his shoulders rather than separating from him, in tacit expectation that he'll carry her the last few feet across the room.
it had already been too easy to dream of a hundred languid mornings spent languidly learning every inch of each other. the duchess' dinner and the morning after had given them ample opportunity for exploration. but the void had made it more and less real — an abstracted fantasy, constructed without their permission. she wants to reclaim it, make it hers again. make him hers again. ]
But Nikolai kisses her first, a brief brush of lips borrowed from a dream where they had kissed over and over again, so much so that it was habit rather than something forbidden and new. His body reminds him of that newness, how it is still something like a transgression.
Then he hoists her, hands grasping her thighs, lifting Alina up so he might cross the room and deposit her onto the bed. Bend to set his forehead to hers, his hands onto her thighs. ]
I want to take these off, [ he tells her, as Nikolai rucks up the fabric beneath his hands. Amends, ] I want to see you. All of you.
[ Even what he only knows as sensation, as points digging into his chest. ]
(cw: body dysmorphia / body image issues / vague misogyny refs)
[ the collar of her dress exposes the worst horrors that her body has to offer, but still the thought of stripping down, entirely exposed to him, sends a chill through her. it doesn't matter how she tells herself it's foolish.
she thinks of lottie's party, and how she had thrown her naked body at felipe only for him to look at her with such disappointment and disdain that he walked away rather than take her. how it had driven her into aleksander's arms, and nikolai's, in some twisted predecessor to the visions in the void. they hadn't looked at her like she was just some stick. they had made her radiant.
it still requires a great deal of trust, believing that he won't see her nakedness and turn around and leave. her hands curl into fists in his shirt. she focuses, for a breathless, uneasy moment, on unbuttoning it. the task is half-finished before she finds words. ]
There's not much to see. [ her voice is small, like instead what she really wants to say is only if you promise not to leave after. despite this, she assents, releasing his shirt so she can instead reach down to help him remove her dress and the shift beneath it. ]
[ The dress comes off first, carefully, guided up and over so it doesn't snag on those bones. They jut from her skin like wounds, and part of Nikolai wants to put a hand there, over the place where the skin has been torn and fused.
But Alina would shrink from that, he thinks.
So his hands stop, letting the dress fall to the floor as he straightens. ]
Would it be easier if I went first?
[ A question so similar to others he's put to her.
Would it be easier if he were tied down? If he touched her like so? If he put his mouth to her and closed his eyes?
His hands lift to the ties on his tunic, tugging them loose. Is it easier if he were naked already? Alina has already seen him that way, covered him in wax, touched him as she pleased. It can't be remarkable to see him laid bare in front of her again. ]
[ the question makes her realize the extent to which he has, already, gone first. in the duchess' castle, and again the next morning. even in the woods, when he showed her the monster that lived inside of him before he caught her outside the void and she had no choice but to reveal the monstrous things she too was capable of. is that not its own kind of nakedness?
he is always the one to make himself vulnerable, first. a gesture of trust, of good will, and she needs it, she does. but will she ever stop needing it, if he never stops giving it?
she lifts her hands, stays his where they unlace his tunic. ]
No. It's alright.
[ she can feel her heartbeat in her skin. the heat that climbs up her throat is made worse by the way she can feel him navigate around her weird wounds.
she separates from him slightly, enough to more easily and comfortably pull off her shift. she is less careful with the protruding bones, letting the straps and collar tangle briefly. she'd been ginger the first few days, but she'd learned quickly that it's no more sensitive than the joint of a finger—fine, as long as she isn't wrenching too hard.
she drops the white shift between them, meets his gaze breathlessly in her panties. her arms briefly, awkwardly sway in front of her, at a loss for what to do with themselves. she pushes her underwear down in one stark motion, like she's setting a bone. these, too, are kicked away, lost under a dresser. ]
[ The first impulse is not dissimilar to what had come at the party: wanting to touch her everywhere, all at once in a great rush of attention.
It has been so long since then that he knows the bite marks he put on her thigh will have gone. And if he dwells on it, the tangle of miserable, irritated feeling will come back, what he felt looking up to see Kirigan with his mouth at her throat.
Instead, he takes her face in his hands again. Kisses her softly, coaxing her closer as the kiss deepens. Close so he might say against her mouth, ] You are so beautiful.
[ It is true. That Nikolai senses she needs to hear it doesn't change that. ]
Moya tsaritsa, [ is followed by a second kiss. ] I never wanted to leave you.
[ But the monster had swallowed him anyway. Did it matter how sated he kept it, if it could simply break loose that easily? ]
Let me atone, [ is a little playful, bittersweet. ]
[ that little whisper of assurance makes her grab fistfuls of his tunic, clinging to him, dragging him closer to her and slipping more comfortably back into the passion of the moment. forgetting the way her own nakedness feels like an ill-fit corset, constricting and chafing.
she has never thought he had anything to atone for, but his appeal has a quality of desperation about it. like it is less about her perception of his sins and more about needing to return to himself, to feel himself again.
how nice it must be, she thinks, to even know what that is.
so she doesn't refuse him. doesn't assuage him, when it would only be empty. she kisses him again, drawing him back towards her bed. ]
I did like the look of you on your knees, moi tsar. [ she sits on the edge of the bed, then scoots further back onto it. she keeps her hold on his shirt, tugging him onto it with her. it's a wide space, with both of the room's beds shoved together now, no longer an untouched monument to her missing friend. ]
Nikolai lets her draw him with her, chases her back up to the pillows where he can cover her body with his own. Press his smile into her shoulder. Doesn't think of how when he'd knelt, it hadn't been only for Alina as he might have wanted it to be. It had, inevitably, been for the shadow at her back. ]
What else did you like?
[ A soft prompt, as Nikolai braces one hand on the mattress so he might tug the fabric of his shirt up and over his own head. The wound is laid bare, but Alina has already seen this too. (The Darkling's veiled threat is held at bay too, given no space in which to intrude.)
He puts his mouth to the underside of her jaw. The points of those bones graze his chest. ]
Do you want my mouth, Alina?
(cw: talk of pregnancy & brief grooming/noncon/csa refs)
[ she lays back, hair a messy black halo as she considers his exposed chest. her hands run up the dips of pale muscle. he's solid, her tsar. more than any boy of such privilege has any right to be. but she will never tire of admiring it.
there's a tug of something hard to pin down as her fingers skim the wound. so brief, but as if it were calling to something that makes her skin prickle. static electricity, she thinks. just a jolt from the bedding in the dry chill that's sweeping through chill. ]
Your sweet, perfect mouth. [ she agrees, tilting her head up, giving him room to keep kissing her, craning her head so he can get at her neck, if he's willing to brave the points of bone jutting up threateningly under his chin to do it. ] And so much more. I want everything. All of you.
[ alina's legs curl around his waist and she hears, from some far off lectern in the back of her mind, the voice of her tutors at the little palace: what is infinite? ]
Please. I'll be careful. Genya taught me what to do. [ it feels like an act of violence to evoke her name now, here, when she's talking about how to avoid falling pregnant with the king of ravka's bastard son, when they both know precisely why young genya had cultivated these skills, learned these remedies. ]
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no subject
no matter how it might change when he sees the awkwardness of her nudity or when they return to ravka and they have to explain the monstrosity that she has made of herself to people who will have opinions on these things, who will think she looks less like a saint or a queen than a witch. ]
I'll bring them.
But I don't intend to use them. Not just now.
[ it leaves a bad taste in her mouth, the thought of him being tied down. like she is forcing the unpleasantness of herself onto him. ]
I trust you.
no subject
[ Whatever his opinions on the absence of restraints, they're laid aside.
She's voiced an opinion. Nikolai isn't inclined to press her on it, not when she has followed it with that declaration. ]
no subject
the larger part of her doesn't want him to see her now, like this. because she is certain he wouldn't see it that way. nikolai may claim his feelings haven't changed, but she's certain felipe's have. certain enough to doggedly avoid him but for sniping over the network.
the result of smothering this is that her response is delayed anyway, so she delays it a little further to think of something that sounds suitably appealing to suggest. a long enough beat to be clearly curated. ]
You're always welcome in my bed.
no subject
But the tangle of emotion it provokes is set aside, for the moment. Too difficult to express in this medium, better held until they occupy the same space. ]
I'll be there shortly.
[ Which he is, more or less.
Yes, the village is not so easy to traverse. But Nikolai takes it at a run, and avoids a handful of apparitions, and so lets himself into Alina's little room unscathed, if out of breath. ]
no subject
the already gray afternoon light of fall.
she'd spent days in it, avoiding people, avoiding the eerie sense of the town while she licked her wounds and felt sorry for herself. when nikolai enters, she's putting some small efforts toward remedying it, starting by tugging open the drapes.
the fact that she can hear his heavy breaths has her glancing over her shoulder. ]
... Are you alright? Did you run across something?
no subject
[ And may well be someone else's problem by now. ]
But I didn't care for the delay.
[ Easy enough banter, there to fall into as if there is nothing else in the room along with them. ]
no subject
[ she puts her back to the window, considers him. for a moment, it's as if there weren't thorns around her neck or a shadow in his shoulder. as if they were as they'd always been, all levity and charm. ]
Did something have you in a hurry? [ she drifts towards him, though there's a hesitancy to it. like she's trying to pin down exactly how to engage with him, now that she knows the shape and feeling of his lips on hers. now that she is all spines and he is —
whatever he is. there is little trace of it in his face now, but alina is sure she remembers the sharpness of his teeth, and gilded edges. ]
no subject
But that was a dream and they are far from it in this moment. ]
Something, yes.
[ Said as he reaches to catch hold of her hand. Lace their fingers loosely together. ]
Someone very important granted me an audience.
[ His thumb runs across her knuckles. Nikolai looks into her face, eyes dropping to her mouth. Had she given that to him only because of his transformation? Does it matter that he wants to kiss her now, that he wants to kiss her to mark every moment they meet and part and wake alongside each other? ]
no subject
Sounds serious.
[ her other hand comes up to rest on his chest under the guise of adjusting his shirt, the desire to remove it hidden in her mock stoicism.
the gesture summons the memory of a dozen times, a hundred times, that she had done the same thing in a dream life. picking fuzz and loose threads off of delicately embroidered formalwear for public events that they attended and left together. ]
You must have an important request to make.
no subject
An entire lifetime had been brushed aside like cobwebs when they'd woke, but it hasn't dissipated. The echoes of it live somewhere in the back of his mind, easily stirred at some minor gesture. They come more quickly to hand than what should live in that empty space between Alina's kiss and waking at the Duchess' request.
Nikolai doesn't want to think of that empty space. He never wants to experience it again. ]
Very important, [ he agrees, before catching up her hand to bring it to his mouth. ] I'm going to have to hope she's feeling generous.
[ After all that's happened. After all that's changed. ]
i'm trapping your html here like this
she should have done it sooner. should have done it when she could embrace him without their monstrosity hanging over them. but even as she thinks this, she acknowledges the impossibility of it. like somehow, seeing him that way had made it possible to open herself to him further.
she frees her hand from his to instead cup the side of his face, drawing him nearer, chasing limbs out from between them. ]
Only one way to know for sure.
[ her eyes flick down to consider his mouth. the room feels warm, even with the draft of fall coming down the hallway. she blames her racing heart. ]
Ask anything of me.
oppression (also cw for implications of violence)
What a dangerous offer.
They can play at being on steady ground, but Nikolai cannot shake the sense that the landscape has shifted around him. He had lost control so quickly. It had slipped through his fingers like sand, and his body had cracked open. He wanted her, he always wanted her, but in that moment it had been distorted and amplified; want turned into something that required teeth and claws, wouldn't be sated by her nearness alone. Nothing had been able to stop it. Alina had kissed him and the softness of her lips had only followed him down into black nothingness, and when he'd risen from it in an ecstasy of pain that memory was one of the few clear pieces he carried with him.
He puts his mouth to her knuckles and thinks of biting her thigh. Recalls the unsettling sensation of his mouth, too full of teeth as wings tore through the fabric of his tunic. ]
Moya tsaritsa, [ comes as his hands find her waist, settle so, so lightly there. ] Sankta Alina.
[ Sol Koroleva is near to hand, not yet invoked. They are only playing. It is easier this way, to come to her playing petitioner to receive her grace. ]
Let me take you to bed.
i'm a monster
[ it takes everything in her to hold herself back from him, to keep herself from closing the distance between them, sealing her mouth over his, and tasting him when she can actually savor it. when she can pull away and know that his face will still be there waiting for her, know she won't feel teeth like knives jutting from between his lips.
she can't even miss the possessive curl of his claws, that she had been surprised to find herself so fond of, because his fingers grip her waist just as surely. it makes her want to believe he means it, to believe that he wants her, even changed as she is.
but the need to be sure she's actually wanted is the only thing stronger than her impatience. ]
this is true
It's true. It's true here in this little room as it would be true in Ravka. He doesn't attempt to hide that from her anymore; she must know, and there is no undoing that, surely. ]
I promised that I'd spread you out across a better bed, [ whether or not hers qualifies is debatable, but it at least looks as if it might more easily accommodate two people than Nikolai's narrow bed back at the boarding house. ] I promised to give you my mouth.
[ They haven't talked either, about the party. About kneeling between her thighs as Kirigan looked down at him from the curve of her neck. He doesn't care to talk about it now. ]
I want to make you come until you can't anymore, [ he tells her, because whatever else he wants, seeing her come apart and knowing it was for him feels necessary. All else can come after, or alongside it. ] Would you let me?
i'm a monster again BUT alina's room is still in the boarding house shhh it's fine
as if it makes no difference to him.
her expression trembles, threatened with collapse under the weight of the gesture. instead, she digs one hand into his hair and pulls him by it, presses her mouth to his so that he can drink down her relief in the whimpered sound she makes, all need, all barely restrained hunger that finally breaks loose.
as their bodies come together, alina needy enough to press flush to him all at once, the protrusions of aleksander's bone nudge gently up against his chest. ]
i can't beLIEVE you've done this
He is here now. And in the present moment, all Nikolai can do is kiss her.
There is nothing tugging at his consciousness now. There is no pain rolling through his body, no cracking of bone or ravenous hunger brewing in his chest. Alina kisses him and Nikolai is free to sink into it, into her. His arms tighten around her waist, cinching her impossibly closer, heedless of the bone digging into his chest as he does.
Is she thinking of him? Nikolai chooses to believe she must be. She has to be.
When they are driven to break, to draw in ragged breaths against each others mouths, Nikolai murmurs, ] Does that mean my request is granted?
don't kinkshame me
I thought it was obvious.
[ she cannot draw her face far from his, cannot stand to be separated from him more than mere inches. they are so close that her eyes can only focus on the curve of his brow or the darker flecks of blue in his eyes or the bow of his lip. she nudges her nose lightly against his. ]
Take me to bed, Nikolai. [ she winds her arms solidly around his shoulders rather than separating from him, in tacit expectation that he'll carry her the last few feet across the room.
it had already been too easy to dream of a hundred languid mornings spent languidly learning every inch of each other. the duchess' dinner and the morning after had given them ample opportunity for exploration. but the void had made it more and less real — an abstracted fantasy, constructed without their permission. she wants to reclaim it, make it hers again. make him hers again. ]
😔
But Nikolai kisses her first, a brief brush of lips borrowed from a dream where they had kissed over and over again, so much so that it was habit rather than something forbidden and new. His body reminds him of that newness, how it is still something like a transgression.
Then he hoists her, hands grasping her thighs, lifting Alina up so he might cross the room and deposit her onto the bed. Bend to set his forehead to hers, his hands onto her thighs. ]
I want to take these off, [ he tells her, as Nikolai rucks up the fabric beneath his hands. Amends, ] I want to see you. All of you.
[ Even what he only knows as sensation, as points digging into his chest. ]
(cw: body dysmorphia / body image issues / vague misogyny refs)
she thinks of lottie's party, and how she had thrown her naked body at felipe only for him to look at her with such disappointment and disdain that he walked away rather than take her. how it had driven her into aleksander's arms, and nikolai's, in some twisted predecessor to the visions in the void. they hadn't looked at her like she was just some stick. they had made her radiant.
it still requires a great deal of trust, believing that he won't see her nakedness and turn around and leave. her hands curl into fists in his shirt. she focuses, for a breathless, uneasy moment, on unbuttoning it. the task is half-finished before she finds words. ]
There's not much to see. [ her voice is small, like instead what she really wants to say is only if you promise not to leave after. despite this, she assents, releasing his shirt so she can instead reach down to help him remove her dress and the shift beneath it. ]
no subject
But Alina would shrink from that, he thinks.
So his hands stop, letting the dress fall to the floor as he straightens. ]
Would it be easier if I went first?
[ A question so similar to others he's put to her.
Would it be easier if he were tied down? If he touched her like so? If he put his mouth to her and closed his eyes?
His hands lift to the ties on his tunic, tugging them loose. Is it easier if he were naked already? Alina has already seen him that way, covered him in wax, touched him as she pleased. It can't be remarkable to see him laid bare in front of her again. ]
no subject
he is always the one to make himself vulnerable, first. a gesture of trust, of good will, and she needs it, she does. but will she ever stop needing it, if he never stops giving it?
she lifts her hands, stays his where they unlace his tunic. ]
No. It's alright.
[ she can feel her heartbeat in her skin. the heat that climbs up her throat is made worse by the way she can feel him navigate around her weird wounds.
she separates from him slightly, enough to more easily and comfortably pull off her shift. she is less careful with the protruding bones, letting the straps and collar tangle briefly. she'd been ginger the first few days, but she'd learned quickly that it's no more sensitive than the joint of a finger—fine, as long as she isn't wrenching too hard.
she drops the white shift between them, meets his gaze breathlessly in her panties. her arms briefly, awkwardly sway in front of her, at a loss for what to do with themselves. she pushes her underwear down in one stark motion, like she's setting a bone. these, too, are kicked away, lost under a dresser. ]
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It has been so long since then that he knows the bite marks he put on her thigh will have gone. And if he dwells on it, the tangle of miserable, irritated feeling will come back, what he felt looking up to see Kirigan with his mouth at her throat.
Instead, he takes her face in his hands again. Kisses her softly, coaxing her closer as the kiss deepens. Close so he might say against her mouth, ] You are so beautiful.
[ It is true. That Nikolai senses she needs to hear it doesn't change that. ]
Moya tsaritsa, [ is followed by a second kiss. ] I never wanted to leave you.
[ But the monster had swallowed him anyway. Did it matter how sated he kept it, if it could simply break loose that easily? ]
Let me atone, [ is a little playful, bittersweet. ]
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she has never thought he had anything to atone for, but his appeal has a quality of desperation about it. like it is less about her perception of his sins and more about needing to return to himself, to feel himself again.
how nice it must be, she thinks, to even know what that is.
so she doesn't refuse him. doesn't assuage him, when it would only be empty. she kisses him again, drawing him back towards her bed. ]
I did like the look of you on your knees, moi tsar. [ she sits on the edge of the bed, then scoots further back onto it. she keeps her hold on his shirt, tugging him onto it with her. it's a wide space, with both of the room's beds shoved together now, no longer an untouched monument to her missing friend. ]
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Nikolai lets her draw him with her, chases her back up to the pillows where he can cover her body with his own. Press his smile into her shoulder. Doesn't think of how when he'd knelt, it hadn't been only for Alina as he might have wanted it to be. It had, inevitably, been for the shadow at her back. ]
What else did you like?
[ A soft prompt, as Nikolai braces one hand on the mattress so he might tug the fabric of his shirt up and over his own head. The wound is laid bare, but Alina has already seen this too. (The Darkling's veiled threat is held at bay too, given no space in which to intrude.)
He puts his mouth to the underside of her jaw. The points of those bones graze his chest. ]
Do you want my mouth, Alina?
(cw: talk of pregnancy & brief grooming/noncon/csa refs)
there's a tug of something hard to pin down as her fingers skim the wound. so brief, but as if it were calling to something that makes her skin prickle. static electricity, she thinks. just a jolt from the bedding in the dry chill that's sweeping through chill. ]
Your sweet, perfect mouth. [ she agrees, tilting her head up, giving him room to keep kissing her, craning her head so he can get at her neck, if he's willing to brave the points of bone jutting up threateningly under his chin to do it. ] And so much more. I want everything. All of you.
[ alina's legs curl around his waist and she hears, from some far off lectern in the back of her mind, the voice of her tutors at the little palace: what is infinite? ]
Please. I'll be careful. Genya taught me what to do. [ it feels like an act of violence to evoke her name now, here, when she's talking about how to avoid falling pregnant with the king of ravka's bastard son, when they both know precisely why young genya had cultivated these skills, learned these remedies. ]
(cw talk of pregnancy)
(cw: refs to abortion, sloppy seconds, hypothetical child/pregnancy violence, noncon)
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(cw implied violence)
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(cw: refs to misogynistic military culture, some internalized male gaze)
i'm back
yes good
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(cw: emeto jokes)
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(cw: dubcon re: unsafe sex)
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