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. ]
[ That tug pulling like a hook, sensation tangible enough that it catches his breath.
It's a pull in the wrong place, shoulder instead of his belly, where the bloom of arousal should originate. Nikolai's eyes close. He presses his face briefly into her neck, letting the world around them steady again.
So close, Alina's words are a sensation under his mouth set to her throat as much as something he hears from her lips. There is a moment where what she says doesn't fully resolve in his mind, preoccupied as he is. He can feel the dig of her heel at his thigh. And he wants— ]
We can't, [ is a low murmur. Unconvincing, but undeniable repetition of what they'd agreed upon, what is known to them both. ] If something happens, Alina...
[ In Ravka, it would be a blessing. But they are not in Ravka. ]
Alina, [ again, a ragged sigh. He lifts his head from her throat to look at her face, assessing what sort of resolve he finds there. ]
(cw: refs to abortion, sloppy seconds, hypothetical child/pregnancy violence, noncon)
[ ana kuya had told her a thousand times how this exact sort of thinking (or not thinking) could ruin things for her. how it could trap her somewhere, tie her back from actually getting out of a place like keramzin and making herself something.
now, she already is something. the sun summoner. nikolai's queen. a living saint. if they returned to ravka hand-in-hand with their child already in their arms, would it make such a difference? wouldn't the people celebrate? ]
We'll be careful. [ she repeats, voice softer, pleading. ] And if we're not careful enough, I'll ask for Ianthe's help. [ a memory, ianthe eagerly offering to eat semen out of her while she necromantically removed any risk.
alina's chest twists with something strange as she tries to place this needy request, to trace it to its source. it is, on some level, the stubbornness of wanting to take it back for herself. to face part of what had unsettled her about her encounter with aleksander, and to claim it, and to make her body hers again without letting any of that fluttering fear control her.
but there's more than just her, here. and nikolai doesn't just mean the return to ravka, and having to justify themselves. he has other, more immediate concerns than whether or not alina starkov thinks she is ready to add mother to her list of titles. rubilykskoye is not a kind place, not a soft place. there are monsters among them. the kind that would devour a child, if they didn't tear it from her belly first.
she isn't ready to entertain the notion. not really. but even if she were, this isn't the time or place, and not only because only one of them has married the other. it just doesn't seem fair—that they can give all of themselves to ianthe and quentin, but not each other because of this fear. especially when she knows well that it hasn't stopped aleksander from taking it.
she huffs out a breath, drops her gaze to his mouth, to his chest, and then bites down on her lower lip. grappling with the fact that she has to give him room to refuse her, when he's never refused her before. with the need to remind herself that it is not the bones protruding from her shoulders, nor the sight of her naked body, but very real concerns. ] ... Don't you want to?
[ What an easy truth to give her. His whole body telegraphs it. Yes, he wants her. Yes, he wants to give her what she's asking for. There is no diminishing this truth. There are reasons why they shouldn't, can't, but that doesn't change what Nikolai wants.
But saying it aloud feels like it comes along with some buckling of resolve, sped along by Alina's pleas.
They could be careful. Ianthe could help if they weren't careful enough. (Would Nikolai be in the room this time, sitting beside her while Ianthe did her work?)
They've done little more than kiss. He's hardly touched her, and Alina has hardly touched him. But a flush of heat is working its way through his body regardless, spurred on by simply having her beneath him, by the tone of her voice as she puts this possibility to him.
Alina's teeth worry at her bottom lip and he does all he can do: lean down to kiss her, heedless of the dig of bone into his skin as he soothes that lower lip with a swipe of his tongue and soft, slow kisses until they're both gasping for breath. ]
[ she loses herself in him, tangling her legs and arms around him, drawing him down to her, like she doesn't dare let him take a breath lest he realize the mistake he's made in choosing her of all people. her nails bite into the back of his neck, the back of his shoulder, just near the wound that she has never, will never, ask him to explain. it doesn't matter.
she can feel him through his pants, flush against her. knows the shape of him from fumbling with her hands, from pressing him along the heat of her, from so many kinds of aching to take as much as him as she can wring free. ]
Tell me that you're mine. [ she hates the sound of her own begging. hates how desperate and pathetic the demand is in her own ears. but her jealousy is louder than it's ever been. ] No matter who else gets to have you. Promise me you'll stay mine.
I promise. [ he murmurs, hand lifting to cup her cheek. ] I promise, Alina.
[ He's already made her this promise. They stood together in front of the entire court and made their vows. This is nothing he hasn't already given her. Of course he can say it again, remind her of it again.
Yes, between them he is the only one who has made the vows. What does it matter? It doesn't change anything for him. ]
You have me.
[ As if saying those words doesn't bring with it a kind of wrenching awareness of her thighs at his hips. The question slips from his mind to hers, blooming between them as their noses brush and his thumb slides across her cheek: Are you wet for me, Alina? ]
Yes. Saints, yes. Do you know how I dream of this?
[ she pants out the words. her thighs squeeze him and she rolls her hips up, an eager bucking to feel him, as if she might show him, even while he still has his trousers on.
it isn't a dream, this time. isn't the void deluding her with sweet nothings to keep her frozen and useless. this, too, she wants to reclaim. wants to have him for herself, and not just the paling memory of a life they never lived. ]
Don't take my word for it. [ she draws far enough back to meet his eyes. there's something tentative about her, a holding of her breath, perched at the edge of something. ] I still want your mouth on every inch of me.
[ Yes, Nikolai knows. Because he's dreamed of it too, thought of how it would be if—
She has asked. She is asking.
Nikolai's fingers sweep through her hair, fanning it further out across the pillow. His thumb soothes along her forehead, her temple. Observes how flushed she is, even as he shudders through the clench of her thighs and the shift of her body beneath him. His hips rock down to meet her, as if there were nothing keeping them separate at all.
His breath has gone so shallow, caught up spinning out desperate angles to make it safe to give her all that she's asking. ]
You'll have it.
[ Punctuated with a kiss to the corner of her mouth, a trailing scatter of kisses along her jaw.
Would it be like kissing her, if she took him inside? Would they be as unable to stop then as he is unable to stop kissing her now? ]
Let me take these off first, [ His trousers. A task that will maybe reorient his thoughts around something other than kissing her, than the possibility of broaching other things they'd deemed off-limits. ]
[ she makes a frustrated little sound, then laughs at herself for it. it feels painfully unfair to have to stop touching him, to even loosen her grip, but she does it. she's just so powerfully hungry to feel him, to touch every part of him that she can.
she reaches between them, instead, to help him with his trousers. she's beginning to understand why so many here barely bother with clothes at all, though on some level she knows that the delay caused by fumbling is only stoking that fire. ]
Is this for me? [ she asks, when her palm slips into his pants and finds the stiff underside of his cock. ]
[ Even this relatively slight contact draws an immediate shudder out of him in reaction. He leans back into her, cheek brushing against hers as he reminds Alina— ]
Everything is for you.
[ That's what it had meant when he made her a queen. Sankta Alina, Sol Koroleva. What wouldn't be hers when they returned?
Nikolai nips her earlobe, before he rolls off her onto the side of the bed alongside her. Shimmying off his trousers is easy enough, once he has broken from the distraction Alina and her wandering hands presents to him.
It isn't a hardship to be naked for her. They did that before he was anything to her other than an unknown element in the midst of all this place had to offer. ]
[ she makes a noise when he bites her earlobe that is half laugh, half hunger. and even as he makes space for himself beside her on the bed instead, her hands follow. she rolls onto him once he is free of his pants, her palms on his abdomen, roaming his skin like she needs desperately to remind herself of its shape. ]
Saints, you're ... [ she exhales slow, drinking him in. ] It's just very unfair, you know.
[ that he should be so perfect. generous and patient and kind and noble and magnetically charismatic, and all of that while he also has the audacity to look like he does? he makes it look so easy to be ... good. even when she knows, now, that he struggles too with something inky dark inside of him. ]
What springs to mind most immediately is invoked by Alina's weight over him, her promise that she is wet for him, that she's thought of them together. His hands fall back to her thighs, a brief stop before his palms sweep up the arch of her back. ]
I know, [ He tells her seriously. ] It's hard being so handsome.
[ Confidence like a shield, though it's long since been rendered transparent. Alina knows him too well. She saw what he became in the forest. He'd woken with the sense memory of her mouth on his and the recollection of wanting his teeth sunk into her skin.
If something is unfair, it's that, isn't it? How close he'd come to hurting her, how powerless he'd been to stop himself. ]
Alina, [comes as a murmur. His hands come up to sweep her hair back over her shoulders, fingers trailing the line of her jaw. ] What do you want?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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. ]
no subject
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)
It's a pull in the wrong place, shoulder instead of his belly, where the bloom of arousal should originate. Nikolai's eyes close. He presses his face briefly into her neck, letting the world around them steady again.
So close, Alina's words are a sensation under his mouth set to her throat as much as something he hears from her lips. There is a moment where what she says doesn't fully resolve in his mind, preoccupied as he is. He can feel the dig of her heel at his thigh. And he wants— ]
We can't, [ is a low murmur. Unconvincing, but undeniable repetition of what they'd agreed upon, what is known to them both. ] If something happens, Alina...
[ In Ravka, it would be a blessing. But they are not in Ravka. ]
Alina, [ again, a ragged sigh. He lifts his head from her throat to look at her face, assessing what sort of resolve he finds there. ]
(cw: refs to abortion, sloppy seconds, hypothetical child/pregnancy violence, noncon)
now, she already is something. the sun summoner. nikolai's queen. a living saint. if they returned to ravka hand-in-hand with their child already in their arms, would it make such a difference? wouldn't the people celebrate? ]
We'll be careful. [ she repeats, voice softer, pleading. ] And if we're not careful enough, I'll ask for Ianthe's help. [ a memory, ianthe eagerly offering to eat semen out of her while she necromantically removed any risk.
alina's chest twists with something strange as she tries to place this needy request, to trace it to its source. it is, on some level, the stubbornness of wanting to take it back for herself. to face part of what had unsettled her about her encounter with aleksander, and to claim it, and to make her body hers again without letting any of that fluttering fear control her.
but there's more than just her, here. and nikolai doesn't just mean the return to ravka, and having to justify themselves. he has other, more immediate concerns than whether or not alina starkov thinks she is ready to add mother to her list of titles. rubilykskoye is not a kind place, not a soft place. there are monsters among them. the kind that would devour a child, if they didn't tear it from her belly first.
she isn't ready to entertain the notion. not really. but even if she were, this isn't the time or place, and not only because only one of them has married the other. it just doesn't seem fair—that they can give all of themselves to ianthe and quentin, but not each other because of this fear. especially when she knows well that it hasn't stopped aleksander from taking it.
she huffs out a breath, drops her gaze to his mouth, to his chest, and then bites down on her lower lip. grappling with the fact that she has to give him room to refuse her, when he's never refused her before. with the need to remind herself that it is not the bones protruding from her shoulders, nor the sight of her naked body, but very real concerns. ] ... Don't you want to?
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[ What an easy truth to give her. His whole body telegraphs it. Yes, he wants her. Yes, he wants to give her what she's asking for. There is no diminishing this truth. There are reasons why they shouldn't, can't, but that doesn't change what Nikolai wants.
But saying it aloud feels like it comes along with some buckling of resolve, sped along by Alina's pleas.
They could be careful. Ianthe could help if they weren't careful enough. (Would Nikolai be in the room this time, sitting beside her while Ianthe did her work?)
They've done little more than kiss. He's hardly touched her, and Alina has hardly touched him. But a flush of heat is working its way through his body regardless, spurred on by simply having her beneath him, by the tone of her voice as she puts this possibility to him.
Alina's teeth worry at her bottom lip and he does all he can do: lean down to kiss her, heedless of the dig of bone into his skin as he soothes that lower lip with a swipe of his tongue and soft, slow kisses until they're both gasping for breath. ]
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she can feel him through his pants, flush against her. knows the shape of him from fumbling with her hands, from pressing him along the heat of her, from so many kinds of aching to take as much as him as she can wring free. ]
Tell me that you're mine. [ she hates the sound of her own begging. hates how desperate and pathetic the demand is in her own ears. but her jealousy is louder than it's ever been. ] No matter who else gets to have you. Promise me you'll stay mine.
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[ He's already made her this promise. They stood together in front of the entire court and made their vows. This is nothing he hasn't already given her. Of course he can say it again, remind her of it again.
Yes, between them he is the only one who has made the vows. What does it matter? It doesn't change anything for him. ]
You have me.
[ As if saying those words doesn't bring with it a kind of wrenching awareness of her thighs at his hips. The question slips from his mind to hers, blooming between them as their noses brush and his thumb slides across her cheek: Are you wet for me, Alina? ]
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[ she pants out the words. her thighs squeeze him and she rolls her hips up, an eager bucking to feel him, as if she might show him, even while he still has his trousers on.
it isn't a dream, this time. isn't the void deluding her with sweet nothings to keep her frozen and useless. this, too, she wants to reclaim. wants to have him for herself, and not just the paling memory of a life they never lived. ]
Don't take my word for it. [ she draws far enough back to meet his eyes. there's something tentative about her, a holding of her breath, perched at the edge of something. ] I still want your mouth on every inch of me.
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She has asked. She is asking.
Nikolai's fingers sweep through her hair, fanning it further out across the pillow. His thumb soothes along her forehead, her temple. Observes how flushed she is, even as he shudders through the clench of her thighs and the shift of her body beneath him. His hips rock down to meet her, as if there were nothing keeping them separate at all.
His breath has gone so shallow, caught up spinning out desperate angles to make it safe to give her all that she's asking. ]
You'll have it.
[ Punctuated with a kiss to the corner of her mouth, a trailing scatter of kisses along her jaw.
Would it be like kissing her, if she took him inside? Would they be as unable to stop then as he is unable to stop kissing her now? ]
Let me take these off first, [ His trousers. A task that will maybe reorient his thoughts around something other than kissing her, than the possibility of broaching other things they'd deemed off-limits. ]
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she reaches between them, instead, to help him with his trousers. she's beginning to understand why so many here barely bother with clothes at all, though on some level she knows that the delay caused by fumbling is only stoking that fire. ]
Is this for me? [ she asks, when her palm slips into his pants and finds the stiff underside of his cock. ]
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Everything is for you.
[ That's what it had meant when he made her a queen. Sankta Alina, Sol Koroleva. What wouldn't be hers when they returned?
Nikolai nips her earlobe, before he rolls off her onto the side of the bed alongside her. Shimmying off his trousers is easy enough, once he has broken from the distraction Alina and her wandering hands presents to him.
It isn't a hardship to be naked for her. They did that before he was anything to her other than an unknown element in the midst of all this place had to offer. ]
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Saints, you're ... [ she exhales slow, drinking him in. ] It's just very unfair, you know.
[ that he should be so perfect. generous and patient and kind and noble and magnetically charismatic, and all of that while he also has the audacity to look like he does? he makes it look so easy to be ... good. even when she knows, now, that he struggles too with something inky dark inside of him. ]
(cw implied violence)
What springs to mind most immediately is invoked by Alina's weight over him, her promise that she is wet for him, that she's thought of them together. His hands fall back to her thighs, a brief stop before his palms sweep up the arch of her back. ]
I know, [ He tells her seriously. ] It's hard being so handsome.
[ Confidence like a shield, though it's long since been rendered transparent. Alina knows him too well. She saw what he became in the forest. He'd woken with the sense memory of her mouth on his and the recollection of wanting his teeth sunk into her skin.
If something is unfair, it's that, isn't it? How close he'd come to hurting her, how powerless he'd been to stop himself. ]
Alina, [comes as a murmur. His hands come up to sweep her hair back over her shoulders, fingers trailing the line of her jaw. ] What do you want?
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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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