storypaint (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
storypaint) wrote2010-08-30 10:21 pm
storypaint) wrote2010-08-30 10:21 pm
[Magic Knight Rayearth] our souls a little off-kilter (Clef/Emeraude)
Title: our souls a little off-kilter
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Length: 1388
Prompt: may we all be considered then straight on delivered for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chibidl's birthdayfic
Pairing: Clef/Emeraude; hints of Zagato/Emeraude
Other: NC-17 for sex between two characters who appear (but are not) underage, rather dubious consent, power issues, general creepiness etc etc etc. Also AU.
Excerpt: Her fingers slip beneath his silks and he realizes he's holding his breath. He lifts his hand and her movements still as he tips her chin up and meets her eyes. He's uncertain, gaze piercing, and she's smiling.
Her fingers slip beneath his silks and he realizes he's holding his breath. He lifts his hand and her movements still as he tips her chin up and meets her eyes. He's uncertain, gaze piercing, and she's smiling.
With a tinkle of a laugh, Emeraude unfastens the ties of his robes. "Don't worry, Guru Clef," she says, "I will never fall in love with you."
He looks away. He can't say no to the Pillar. Who can?
He's not as strong as everyone thinks he is. He's loved her since she was born.
*
Everyone thinks that the Guru doesn't like babies. They are the antithesis to his personal philosophy, loud and messy and inexplicable. He's never expressed interest over all these centuries in having any of his own. Given his appearance, it is probably not even possible.
He isn't present at the birth, choosing instead to spend the seven hours of the princess's labor in menial tasks that must be done, no matter if the next princess is being born or not. They send a runner from the palace to his cottage, and he nods, looking up from his paperwork, and hands the boy a note on which he's etched a polite message of congratulations. He doesn't come to see the new princess until a week later, for the naming ceremony.
And when he comes, he has his most important things in a satchel on his shoulder. He sleeps in a cot in his office for a week before they can prepare an apartment befitting his position.
"The princess will need a teacher," he says to her mother. His gaze is focused on the baby in his arms. He's holding her carefully, hand supporting her neck, just like he has been taught. She stares at him without seeing him, but he still offers her just a hint of a smile.
They name her Emeraude, which means "ocean pearl" in the primary language of Cephiro. The name is a romantic notion from the princess; her husband comes from a settlement near the sea.
Both of Emeraude's parents are distant from her, like the tide going out, like they will have to be Pillar someday (they are both second-born children from different branches of the royal family, so it isn't entirely impossible). The whole world glows when Emeraude is born, and the flower outside her window blooms, even though it's mid-winter. Her parents know she will be Pillar: their little pearl will not be theirs, but everyone's. Perhaps they stay unattached so that she will be able to.
Emeraude's raising falls primarily to nannies, servants, babysitters, and Clef. He spends more time with her than anyone except her maidservants, educating her in the manner befitting her station. She grows up, despite her parents' silence, as a cheerful child, always laughing. Clef instills in her a love for Cephiro that nearly matches his own. (She tells him all the time that he ought to be Pillar, given the depth of his devotion; he just smiles and changes the subject. He wouldn't be Pillar - not because he isn't royal, but because he knows how to love, and maybe he will not have a family again like he did when he was young, but he remembers enough to want one, sometimes.)
She grows up, but she never grows taller than him. Maybe that is the first sign.
*
Her hands are small, but big enough. She ghosts her fingers over his skin and the hairs on his arms stand up. Gently she presses a kiss into his shoulder. Her manner is at once subservient and demanding - she is so gentle, but will not stop. She strips slowly, her gaze coy, her body language demure.
And then she pushes him onto the bed, and he cups her hips in his hands. He has an odd heady feeling that this is a game, that he'll shut his eyes and open them and she'll be teasing him again with flower crowns and court gossip. She gasps and it is not innocent at all. It brings him back to ground and the woman in his arms.
He kisses her on the temple, gently. She smiles.
*
He teaches her to dance on a summer afternoon when neither of them can concentrate on schoolwork. They move in slow circles across the palace lawn, and ignore the amusement of passing staff.
It isn't just the dancing. He has artwork in his office signed in her child's hand; he has waited up all night for her fever to break; he has been her friend and father and confidant.
He loves her, and asks nothing back, says nothing about it. She gives anyway.
*
She sighs every time his fingers move over her skin, pressing into him with encouragement that quite frankly unnerves him. He'd never expected to do this with someone after he'd chosen to become short again (he fits his position, no matter what the snickers say).
"Please, Clef," she breathes, "please," and still he cannot say no. Her hand traces down his chest, lower, lower, and he grabs it, makes her stop.
But when she lowers herself onto him, he gasps, and lets her. He's captured by the wonder on her face.
*
She looks at Zagato a little too long, batting her lashes until Clef asks her politely if she's something in her eye.
"Not exactly," she answers with a giggle. After a pause, he continues the lesson.
Later, she asks him to explain what love is. He looks at her for a long moment, nods, and says that it's the feeling that she has for Cephiro, and all of Cephiro has for her.
"Even you, Guru Clef?" she asks him.
"Of course," he answers, and in the silent moment after his response, she turns her head, but Zagato isn't there anymore.
*
She isn't silent as she rides him. She prompts him to move, guides his fingers, sighs and gasps and mewls. It doesn't take long before she's coming with a half-swallowed squeak. He has a moment of what are we doing as she climbs off of him, but then she's between his knees and her mouth is so warm and he shudders.
She swallows and then creeps up his body to lie in the cradle of his arm as he tries to remember how to breathe.
"See?" she says, snuggling into his shoulder. "It's just the same."
He stares at her, but can't meet her eyes from this angle. His look is incredulous.
"It will all be the same," she repeats firmly, lacing their fingers together. She falls asleep long before he does, but she is still gone before he wakes, leaving him to wonder if he'd imagined it.
*
Zagato and Lantis disappear from Cephiro, literally overnight. Zagato is thoughtful enough to leave a terse note. Even though Clef has had his suspicions, he has trouble reading all that the Sol has left unwritten.
But if he hadn't been able to fill it in himself, Emeraude would have done the rest. She is quiet, a shadow of her usual self, for a whole week before she returns to normalcy. Clef sighs in relief, feeling as if a crisis has somehow been averted. Sure, he has to find and train a new Sol and a new Cail, but it could be worse, he suspects.
Another week passes quietly, with hardly a rustle of wind. In fact, the summer has been almost too dry. (And surely if Emeraude was crying, the country would be too.)
But then she knocks at his door late one night. He wouldn't have even heard her, but he is sitting at his (smaller though still cluttered) desk, reading a report, and he says, "Come in," voice rising in question. The door is unlocked; there really is no reason to seal it when he is here. He isn't entirely sure he's heard someone until she opens the door and shuts it firmly behind him.
"Princess," he says, smiling. "What do you need?"
She pulls at his sleeve, prompting him to rise. And then her mouth is on his and he can't respond, can't breathe. When they separate he exhales loudly in disbelief and need for breath.
"Princess Emeraude," he begins, not knowing how to finish the sentence. "Princess," he repeats. "I'm not - I don't -"
She's still reaching for him.
"Don't worry, Guru Clef," she says, giggles.
(He worries.)
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Length: 1388
Prompt: may we all be considered then straight on delivered for
chibidl's birthdayficPairing: Clef/Emeraude; hints of Zagato/Emeraude
Other: NC-17 for sex between two characters who appear (but are not) underage, rather dubious consent, power issues, general creepiness etc etc etc. Also AU.
Excerpt: Her fingers slip beneath his silks and he realizes he's holding his breath. He lifts his hand and her movements still as he tips her chin up and meets her eyes. He's uncertain, gaze piercing, and she's smiling.
Her fingers slip beneath his silks and he realizes he's holding his breath. He lifts his hand and her movements still as he tips her chin up and meets her eyes. He's uncertain, gaze piercing, and she's smiling.
With a tinkle of a laugh, Emeraude unfastens the ties of his robes. "Don't worry, Guru Clef," she says, "I will never fall in love with you."
He looks away. He can't say no to the Pillar. Who can?
He's not as strong as everyone thinks he is. He's loved her since she was born.
*
Everyone thinks that the Guru doesn't like babies. They are the antithesis to his personal philosophy, loud and messy and inexplicable. He's never expressed interest over all these centuries in having any of his own. Given his appearance, it is probably not even possible.
He isn't present at the birth, choosing instead to spend the seven hours of the princess's labor in menial tasks that must be done, no matter if the next princess is being born or not. They send a runner from the palace to his cottage, and he nods, looking up from his paperwork, and hands the boy a note on which he's etched a polite message of congratulations. He doesn't come to see the new princess until a week later, for the naming ceremony.
And when he comes, he has his most important things in a satchel on his shoulder. He sleeps in a cot in his office for a week before they can prepare an apartment befitting his position.
"The princess will need a teacher," he says to her mother. His gaze is focused on the baby in his arms. He's holding her carefully, hand supporting her neck, just like he has been taught. She stares at him without seeing him, but he still offers her just a hint of a smile.
They name her Emeraude, which means "ocean pearl" in the primary language of Cephiro. The name is a romantic notion from the princess; her husband comes from a settlement near the sea.
Both of Emeraude's parents are distant from her, like the tide going out, like they will have to be Pillar someday (they are both second-born children from different branches of the royal family, so it isn't entirely impossible). The whole world glows when Emeraude is born, and the flower outside her window blooms, even though it's mid-winter. Her parents know she will be Pillar: their little pearl will not be theirs, but everyone's. Perhaps they stay unattached so that she will be able to.
Emeraude's raising falls primarily to nannies, servants, babysitters, and Clef. He spends more time with her than anyone except her maidservants, educating her in the manner befitting her station. She grows up, despite her parents' silence, as a cheerful child, always laughing. Clef instills in her a love for Cephiro that nearly matches his own. (She tells him all the time that he ought to be Pillar, given the depth of his devotion; he just smiles and changes the subject. He wouldn't be Pillar - not because he isn't royal, but because he knows how to love, and maybe he will not have a family again like he did when he was young, but he remembers enough to want one, sometimes.)
She grows up, but she never grows taller than him. Maybe that is the first sign.
*
Her hands are small, but big enough. She ghosts her fingers over his skin and the hairs on his arms stand up. Gently she presses a kiss into his shoulder. Her manner is at once subservient and demanding - she is so gentle, but will not stop. She strips slowly, her gaze coy, her body language demure.
And then she pushes him onto the bed, and he cups her hips in his hands. He has an odd heady feeling that this is a game, that he'll shut his eyes and open them and she'll be teasing him again with flower crowns and court gossip. She gasps and it is not innocent at all. It brings him back to ground and the woman in his arms.
He kisses her on the temple, gently. She smiles.
*
He teaches her to dance on a summer afternoon when neither of them can concentrate on schoolwork. They move in slow circles across the palace lawn, and ignore the amusement of passing staff.
It isn't just the dancing. He has artwork in his office signed in her child's hand; he has waited up all night for her fever to break; he has been her friend and father and confidant.
He loves her, and asks nothing back, says nothing about it. She gives anyway.
*
She sighs every time his fingers move over her skin, pressing into him with encouragement that quite frankly unnerves him. He'd never expected to do this with someone after he'd chosen to become short again (he fits his position, no matter what the snickers say).
"Please, Clef," she breathes, "please," and still he cannot say no. Her hand traces down his chest, lower, lower, and he grabs it, makes her stop.
But when she lowers herself onto him, he gasps, and lets her. He's captured by the wonder on her face.
*
She looks at Zagato a little too long, batting her lashes until Clef asks her politely if she's something in her eye.
"Not exactly," she answers with a giggle. After a pause, he continues the lesson.
Later, she asks him to explain what love is. He looks at her for a long moment, nods, and says that it's the feeling that she has for Cephiro, and all of Cephiro has for her.
"Even you, Guru Clef?" she asks him.
"Of course," he answers, and in the silent moment after his response, she turns her head, but Zagato isn't there anymore.
*
She isn't silent as she rides him. She prompts him to move, guides his fingers, sighs and gasps and mewls. It doesn't take long before she's coming with a half-swallowed squeak. He has a moment of what are we doing as she climbs off of him, but then she's between his knees and her mouth is so warm and he shudders.
She swallows and then creeps up his body to lie in the cradle of his arm as he tries to remember how to breathe.
"See?" she says, snuggling into his shoulder. "It's just the same."
He stares at her, but can't meet her eyes from this angle. His look is incredulous.
"It will all be the same," she repeats firmly, lacing their fingers together. She falls asleep long before he does, but she is still gone before he wakes, leaving him to wonder if he'd imagined it.
*
Zagato and Lantis disappear from Cephiro, literally overnight. Zagato is thoughtful enough to leave a terse note. Even though Clef has had his suspicions, he has trouble reading all that the Sol has left unwritten.
But if he hadn't been able to fill it in himself, Emeraude would have done the rest. She is quiet, a shadow of her usual self, for a whole week before she returns to normalcy. Clef sighs in relief, feeling as if a crisis has somehow been averted. Sure, he has to find and train a new Sol and a new Cail, but it could be worse, he suspects.
Another week passes quietly, with hardly a rustle of wind. In fact, the summer has been almost too dry. (And surely if Emeraude was crying, the country would be too.)
But then she knocks at his door late one night. He wouldn't have even heard her, but he is sitting at his (smaller though still cluttered) desk, reading a report, and he says, "Come in," voice rising in question. The door is unlocked; there really is no reason to seal it when he is here. He isn't entirely sure he's heard someone until she opens the door and shuts it firmly behind him.
"Princess," he says, smiling. "What do you need?"
She pulls at his sleeve, prompting him to rise. And then her mouth is on his and he can't respond, can't breathe. When they separate he exhales loudly in disbelief and need for breath.
"Princess Emeraude," he begins, not knowing how to finish the sentence. "Princess," he repeats. "I'm not - I don't -"
She's still reaching for him.
"Don't worry, Guru Clef," she says, giggles.
(He worries.)