[At one side of the gallery, they discuss the order of the world in low, purposefully curling tones, ostensibly as much for the benefit of the other scattered guests here in their company as it is for themselves. By the time they reach the opposite side of the gallery, Flint asks as if the question is an incidental one:]
( the pause that it inspires is so brief as to barely merit the description, and yet that it happens at all is noteworthy. )
I do not expect to, ( she settles on, as if the question did not surprise her. ) It is a long way from Hightown to the docks, Commander, and I have no wish to find myself stranded upon the wrong side of the ferry.
( it isn't that she can't think of one single acquaintance in hightown who would put her up for the night, but none of them she presently desires to encourage to think her their particular friend. )
[There is something exceptionally dry in the shape of that; it in combination with the subtle tip of his head act as the smallest tell - the precursor to a flicker of humor which lurks there briefly at the corner of his mouth.]
( there is a trace of humor to be found in the prim way she says, )
It will be most kind of you to escort me.
( there is no call for it, but then there is no call to decline, either, is there? if she were asked—if she were called upon to explain—well, she will not be. it is kind, and suitable, for a division head to escort a diplomat.
if that diplomat is particularly aware of the precise distance that her skirts keep him at, and the late hour, and how quiet the streets are in the cold dark, that is not one of the questions. )
[It's a narrow slip of skin, all things considered. She might have touched him almost any other place and he would have been aware of the nothing but the brush of contact, and no part of the brief suggestion of warmth through the fingertips of her gloves.
He lets her go without comment, lingering there for a moment in the upper gallery to thoughtlessly consider the shape of the floor below with all of its color and light. There is, mercifully (though without it, it doesn't fully occur to him what he's even looking for), no dark haired woman in a green dress down there.
It's early enough that there's no trouble finding a carriage to hire out about the half dozen creeping around the courtyard lying in wait for exactly this - people with money in their pocket and no horse or cab or sedan chair of their own. When the door clicks shut, it could be as if they'd never left that evening when he'd first requested her company. It's only once they've begun moving that he reaches across the narrow distance--] Pardon me, [--takes whichever of her hands is convenient, and draws its glove off finger by finger.]
( throughout the business of being handed up into the carriage, petrana is thinking again of how very long a drive it is from hightown to the docks, and that she ought to say something, and then that perhaps she has misread the situation entirely and if she is to say something the journey will be longer still in the interminable silence following,
and he is removing her glove, so perhaps she didn't. it is a soft thing, chamois, thick enough to dull her anchor-shard without being sufficient or practical to do much more than make her fashionable. it slides easily from her fingers and her hand, and there are inkstains on her index finger and her thumb. )
My pardon, ( she murmurs, dry, ) of course.
( when her glove is loosed entirely, she turns her hand palm to palm with his. )
I don't mistake you for one I might sway by the turn of my head, ( she observes, ) but it has occurred to me, Commander, that we did both very much enjoy pretending.
[He's never had any reason to study the uneven gash of an anchor shard's glow up close, and doesn't feel particularly compelled to do so now. Instead his hand is light in hers, briefly attentive to the dark mark set into her thumb, before shifting to the matter of her second glove. There is something about the process which might be described as businesslike were it any other thing, in any other place. When he is finished, Flint folds one soft slip of fabric over the other and sets the pair idly across his knee.]
Though you should know you're giving me more credit than is really deserved.
( whether she meant to be charming or to keep squarely in view the trouble either of them might cause the other, both are true enough so far as they go. she lays a hand upon his knee, over her gloves: )
You must tell me if you find yourself feeling more sympathetic to my causes,
( and then, because fortune favors the brave, she raises one hand to his neck and kisses him, like a warning shot. )
[She’s a small woman, and though the carriage’s cab is narrow it’s impressive how promptly she makes work of it. It might be surprisingly so, were he not already certain that they’d reached this understand a half hour ago as he’d lingered with one foot proverbially out the door while she made her courteous goodbyes to two dozen members of Hightown society. If he had thought there were a question - if he’d required warning -, it had been in the gallery or while dancing or perhaps in the division office (not during their first or second meeting, but perhaps the eighth or ninth).
So he bends rather easily to her hand at his neck, and lets her kiss him (let seems like a strange word, but)
as if he’s been expecting her to. And when he kisses her in return, something premeditated in the way his hand goes to her side, it’s like he’s been waiting for the invitation. Sympathetic is one word for it.]
( he is whiskery, which she had known but which she has never had cause to investigate so closely as to know the touch of, and she is still holding onto him not to fall back across the carriage when she laughs against his mouth, rueful, turning her cheek against the scratch, )
I don't know what I was expecting.
( she doesn't wait for him to find an answer to that moderately obscure remark before kissing him again, and it is. decisive. she has decided and so she proceeds, and this is hardly the first or the seventh time that she's thought of being so near to him as this. she tastes of wine, but only faintly; lilac-water that has hung familiarly in the air of his office in her wake thick in the air and her hair. )
[Now there, he is caught out - she must feel the way his mouth goes briefly crooked against her cheek, how he is a half a beat away from exhaling a surprised laugh when she kisses him again. Yes, he supposes he is.
It lightens something in the close quarters of the carriage - makes real the part of this that is good humor and some sly joke between them rather than simply further sharpening the parts of this which are pointed and thoughtful, deliberate as a measured weight is. It makes kissing her easier than it shouldn’t be. It makes taking her by her small waist and fetching her rather neatly (for all the awkwardness of the carriage and her voluminous skirts) across the cab and into his lap in a flurry of blue and gold seem perfectly reasonable, or at least in keeping with the fiction. So: that.
How awfully industrious and terribly sturdy, that glowering captain apparently can be.]
( from the outside of the carriage, there is a brief flash of cream golden lace and blue velvet slapping aside the small curtain of the window, fabric splashing across glass and dragging down, and the darker velvet obscuring them from prying eyes falling back into place. she lands in his lap, which doesn't feel inevitable because inevitability might suggest—
some force of nature. something other than that she wanted to, and so she is, and it is warmer than she might have expected. for a moment, it isn't the edge of every conversation but the sidelong glances exchanged in company and every time that she had pressed her mouth upon a smile and looked out of a window rather than laugh. it is the laugh, instead, and how absurd it is that he is now lost within a sea of her skirts, and she would rather like to feel the scrape of his beard in places hidden within them, too.
she is no longer certain where her gloves are. her hands are at his face, her thumbs at his jaw, and she is kissing a crooked smile. )
Yet to be seen, Madame. [Is his over dry answer, as if she is not presently on his knee and he isn't warm under her thumbs.] But you'll be the first to know should my position change.
[In the meantime, they might as well take some mutual advantage of the situation, and there are some parts he finds more willingness in himself to play than others. So by the next time she kisses him, one of his hands has found its way to the set lightly on her neck - fingers strangely cognizant and mindful of the edge of her hair with all its pin neatness (someone knows how to mind his manners around a lady's coiffure as well as he is familiar with dancing) - so he might encourage her to deepen it.]
( that coiffure had come at cost, considering that petrana does not typically engage a lady's maid and wears her hair in equally tight but simpler styles in that absence; better it not be taken to pieces until she is not going to at some point be expected to get out of this carriage. it is instinct learned elsewhere that her hand follows his back there, and when a pause breathes in between them at the realisation it is quite unnecessary she fills it instead with her teeth, pressed to his lip, ahead of a ready acceptance of that invitation into his mouth.
her fingers she folds over his, slides between, drops away. not far: to his jacket, just beneath. wherever she had gone, she's here and now and how wonderful to find him the same.
[How long is the winding trip to the ferry slip? The streets are very narrow, and it's early yet so the closer ones may be clogged with enough foot traffic the farther they wind down through the city. Long enough to assure the trip across the water is distinctly uncomfortable, he thinks, some part of him (the part she doesn't have her teeth to being motivated by the ones which do) mentally calculating whether it wouldn't be better to simply stick his head out the window and ask to be driven round Hightown for an hour first.
Beneath the jacket is a wine dark waistcoat. It is possibly the only one he owns, though the dark stitching is needlessly elaborate under her fingers and its blacked buttons stamped with some pattern indecipherable in this light. In answer, to her hands or the taste of that lilac and tannin tang, his thumb sets very light at base of her throat as if contemplating the potential of his hand roving lower in kind.]
Where are we going?
[Is a very honest question when set next to all the other things they've said to each other this evening. But it's at least as practical as it is about the shifting of his thigh under her and his touch at her waist securing her near.]
( this carriage is altogether too small for the two of them and the entirety of her dress, and there is certainly a part of petra that wishes this conclusion had been reached on any other day, wearing any other far more sensible thing with fewer architectural undergarments and elaborate hairstyle and witnesses who had seen the latter and would have questions about her emerging with something different and simpler. she sets that aside to consider, and finally, )
To your quarters.
( —decisively. it'd be even better if by some miracle there could be any other possible explanation for her emerging from the walrus tomorrow morning, but she is not an unfamiliar face in the central tower and his quarters do not have a dog the size of a pony who has missed her these past hours and will be ready to interrupt. there are favours she might call with the maids; perhaps she and commander flint simply had a very early meeting. )
[It doesn’t solve the trip through Hightown and a fucking boat to follow, but that’s an issue of impatience at best and there is a difference between playing this game and being it. All things being equal, he’d rather take her there than whatever questionable room might be found between this point and that one that might appeal to some pirate without scruples.
He kisses her as agreement, and then his hands have moved to her heavy skirts.] We should find your gloves, [is the one hundred percent legitimate explanation, hummed low at the corner of her mouth, behind beginning to shift the fabric.
That, ( an arch murmur delivered almost directly into his whiskers, following the line of his jaw with interest (and teeth), ) is my garter, Commander.
( but it sounds rather like he's getting points for effort. )
[Which sounds suitably chagrined under her teeth. Is it? His mistake. The texture is so similar to the blind eye. His hand, all work rough, roves most obediently elsewhere.]
( that bedamned boat ride is going to be interminable.
she follows the line of his jaw to his ear, and to the stud in it, and tests this, too, with her tongue; his clothing less convenient for her to slide beneath within the carriage, and her hands inclined to search out fastenings regardless. reconnaissance. familiarizing herself with the sort of men's clothes she has become unaccustomed to navigating, or taking apart, and the firmness of him underneath them.
it is a careful balance. if she parts her knees incautiously, she may tumble from his lap at the next corner. on the other hand, has she truly lived if she doesn't. )
[He had thought he might set simply find his way through the ocean of her skirts and under the edge of her chemise to set his hand high on the top of her thigh for the duration of the time left to them. It would be easier to keep her cinched in close with such a convenient hand hold, and the blatant suggestion inherent in wandering hands is meant to have been suitably interesting.
But she has a habit of doing small things which compel him unexpectedly into commitment. Maybe it is her tongue and how warm her breath is, or the pleasant prickle of small hairs at the back of his neck in reply to the opening line of her thigh, or simply the appeal of how no part of this has been difficult and there is no reason to insist on being contrary now.
So he moves to take advantage of the slight space, and there he does set an anchor to keep her secure in his lap: taking a full hold of the very inside of her thigh, the side of his hand and the line of his thumb pressed firmly against the shocking heat of her. The temperamental jerk of the carriage encourages decisiveness. It also bumps his hand against her at small, irregular intervals.]
( the first time his knuckles press against her is a small thing, notable only that she might not have meant to bite him. the prospect of a comfortable roll down to the docks in his lap is a pleasant one, and she doesn't dislike the particular way she's held steady,
by the eighth time, her thighs are tense either side of his hand. she casts about for a diversion, something less obvious than repeatedly clearing her throat, settles on, )
[Somewhere between one and eight, he's gone back to a hand at her waist as well. There is something rational in that touch; were it not for the hand between her clenched thighs doing the work, it might otherwise be the point of anchor by which she is kept in his lap. As it is, a sailor of all people should know the benefit of a fail safe.]
I've heard a new dog does best when kept to heel, [Which might be perfectly conversational, even so near skin, and is clearly meant as the precursor to some further throwaway remark. But what occurs to him is—] And the Enchanter's? How long is his line?
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Do you intend to stay much later, Madame?
[—though it's entirely selfish.]
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I do not expect to, ( she settles on, as if the question did not surprise her. ) It is a long way from Hightown to the docks, Commander, and I have no wish to find myself stranded upon the wrong side of the ferry.
( it isn't that she can't think of one single acquaintance in hightown who would put her up for the night, but none of them she presently desires to encourage to think her their particular friend. )
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We may as well leave in eachother's company then.
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It will be most kind of you to escort me.
( there is no call for it, but then there is no call to decline, either, is there? if she were asked—if she were called upon to explain—well, she will not be. it is kind, and suitable, for a division head to escort a diplomat.
if that diplomat is particularly aware of the precise distance that her skirts keep him at, and the late hour, and how quiet the streets are in the cold dark, that is not one of the questions. )
Is your own business tended to your satisfaction?
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[Innuendo as business, business as-- well. Something.]
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( the silence is not a pause; it is merely silence.
then, with her fingertips to his wrist as she steps away, )
I shall make my farewells downstairs, then.
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He lets her go without comment, lingering there for a moment in the upper gallery to thoughtlessly consider the shape of the floor below with all of its color and light. There is, mercifully (though without it, it doesn't fully occur to him what he's even looking for), no dark haired woman in a green dress down there.
It's early enough that there's no trouble finding a carriage to hire out about the half dozen creeping around the courtyard lying in wait for exactly this - people with money in their pocket and no horse or cab or sedan chair of their own. When the door clicks shut, it could be as if they'd never left that evening when he'd first requested her company. It's only once they've begun moving that he reaches across the narrow distance--] Pardon me, [--takes whichever of her hands is convenient, and draws its glove off finger by finger.]
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and he is removing her glove, so perhaps she didn't. it is a soft thing, chamois, thick enough to dull her anchor-shard without being sufficient or practical to do much more than make her fashionable. it slides easily from her fingers and her hand, and there are inkstains on her index finger and her thumb. )
My pardon, ( she murmurs, dry, ) of course.
( when her glove is loosed entirely, she turns her hand palm to palm with his. )
I don't mistake you for one I might sway by the turn of my head, ( she observes, ) but it has occurred to me, Commander, that we did both very much enjoy pretending.
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[He's never had any reason to study the uneven gash of an anchor shard's glow up close, and doesn't feel particularly compelled to do so now. Instead his hand is light in hers, briefly attentive to the dark mark set into her thumb, before shifting to the matter of her second glove. There is something about the process which might be described as businesslike were it any other thing, in any other place. When he is finished, Flint folds one soft slip of fabric over the other and sets the pair idly across his knee.]
Though you should know you're giving me more credit than is really deserved.
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And it is most charming of me to do.
( whether she meant to be charming or to keep squarely in view the trouble either of them might cause the other, both are true enough so far as they go. she lays a hand upon his knee, over her gloves: )
You must tell me if you find yourself feeling more sympathetic to my causes,
( and then, because fortune favors the brave, she raises one hand to his neck and kisses him, like a warning shot. )
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So he bends rather easily to her hand at his neck, and lets her kiss him (let seems like a strange word, but)
as if he’s been expecting her to. And when he kisses her in return, something premeditated in the way his hand goes to her side, it’s like he’s been waiting for the invitation. Sympathetic is one word for it.]
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I don't know what I was expecting.
( she doesn't wait for him to find an answer to that moderately obscure remark before kissing him again, and it is. decisive. she has decided and so she proceeds, and this is hardly the first or the seventh time that she's thought of being so near to him as this. she tastes of wine, but only faintly; lilac-water that has hung familiarly in the air of his office in her wake thick in the air and her hair. )
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It lightens something in the close quarters of the carriage - makes real the part of this that is good humor and some sly joke between them rather than simply further sharpening the parts of this which are pointed and thoughtful, deliberate as a measured weight is. It makes kissing her easier than it shouldn’t be. It makes taking her by her small waist and fetching her rather neatly (for all the awkwardness of the carriage and her voluminous skirts) across the cab and into his lap in a flurry of blue and gold seem perfectly reasonable, or at least in keeping with the fiction. So: that.
How awfully industrious and terribly sturdy, that glowering captain apparently can be.]
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some force of nature. something other than that she wanted to, and so she is, and it is warmer than she might have expected. for a moment, it isn't the edge of every conversation but the sidelong glances exchanged in company and every time that she had pressed her mouth upon a smile and looked out of a window rather than laugh. it is the laugh, instead, and how absurd it is that he is now lost within a sea of her skirts, and she would rather like to feel the scrape of his beard in places hidden within them, too.
she is no longer certain where her gloves are. her hands are at his face, her thumbs at his jaw, and she is kissing a crooked smile. )
Am I swaying you?
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[In the meantime, they might as well take some mutual advantage of the situation, and there are some parts he finds more willingness in himself to play than others. So by the next time she kisses him, one of his hands has found its way to the set lightly on her neck - fingers strangely cognizant and mindful of the edge of her hair with all its pin neatness (someone knows how to mind his manners around a lady's coiffure as well as he is familiar with dancing) - so he might encourage her to deepen it.]
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her fingers she folds over his, slides between, drops away. not far: to his jacket, just beneath. wherever she had gone, she's here and now and how wonderful to find him the same.
the beard, she decides, is growing on her. )
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Beneath the jacket is a wine dark waistcoat. It is possibly the only one he owns, though the dark stitching is needlessly elaborate under her fingers and its blacked buttons stamped with some pattern indecipherable in this light. In answer, to her hands or the taste of that lilac and tannin tang, his thumb sets very light at base of her throat as if contemplating the potential of his hand roving lower in kind.]
Where are we going?
[Is a very honest question when set next to all the other things they've said to each other this evening. But it's at least as practical as it is about the shifting of his thigh under her and his touch at her waist securing her near.]
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To your quarters.
( —decisively. it'd be even better if by some miracle there could be any other possible explanation for her emerging from the walrus tomorrow morning, but she is not an unfamiliar face in the central tower and his quarters do not have a dog the size of a pony who has missed her these past hours and will be ready to interrupt. there are favours she might call with the maids; perhaps she and commander flint simply had a very early meeting. )
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He kisses her as agreement, and then his hands have moved to her heavy skirts.] We should find your gloves, [is the one hundred percent legitimate explanation, hummed low at the corner of her mouth, behind beginning to shift the fabric.
Well, they should.
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( but it sounds rather like he's getting points for effort. )
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[Which sounds suitably chagrined under her teeth. Is it? His mistake. The texture is so similar to the blind eye. His hand, all work rough, roves most obediently elsewhere.]
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she follows the line of his jaw to his ear, and to the stud in it, and tests this, too, with her tongue; his clothing less convenient for her to slide beneath within the carriage, and her hands inclined to search out fastenings regardless. reconnaissance. familiarizing herself with the sort of men's clothes she has become unaccustomed to navigating, or taking apart, and the firmness of him underneath them.
it is a careful balance. if she parts her knees incautiously, she may tumble from his lap at the next corner. on the other hand, has she truly lived if she doesn't. )
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But she has a habit of doing small things which compel him unexpectedly into commitment. Maybe it is her tongue and how warm her breath is, or the pleasant prickle of small hairs at the back of his neck in reply to the opening line of her thigh, or simply the appeal of how no part of this has been difficult and there is no reason to insist on being contrary now.
So he moves to take advantage of the slight space, and there he does set an anchor to keep her secure in his lap: taking a full hold of the very inside of her thigh, the side of his hand and the line of his thumb pressed firmly against the shocking heat of her. The temperamental jerk of the carriage encourages decisiveness. It also bumps his hand against her at small, irregular intervals.]
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by the eighth time, her thighs are tense either side of his hand. she casts about for a diversion, something less obvious than repeatedly clearing her throat, settles on, )
A short leash, I think,
( which is not much of one at all. )
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I've heard a new dog does best when kept to heel, [Which might be perfectly conversational, even so near skin, and is clearly meant as the precursor to some further throwaway remark. But what occurs to him is—] And the Enchanter's? How long is his line?
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