Archive of Our Own ^beta

You're not sure why you'd expected things to change between Tatterdemalion and yourself, after- well. After. Not that that had even been your biggest problem - there'd been the Duchess, Max, the false-calendar, the Vulgate, bearing down on you, until- 

Until they weren't. The Machine. Summer. Her confession. Her hands, and Tatterdemalion's, dancing easily across the controls.

Tatterdemalion's face, when he'd described wrenching himself away. His incandescence of will. The flash of anger behind his eyes, when she'd spat that cherry pit, the false-flatness of his voice when he'd suggested being rid of her, of the whole calendar, the way his mask had slid back into place before the pair of you had returned, cocksure and sly.

His anger is a rare thing. You almost want to see more of it.

And- Well. That's maybe the most he's told you, about the Dawn Machine, about being part of the New Sequence. Would he answer questions, if you asked them? If you knew what to ask? 

You can't sleep. The insides of your eyelids drip red, violant and wine and blood. A face that isn't your own, that fits like a glove, that is wrong. Storm, howling at the gates. Your head rings. 

You walk. The upper deck clears your head, sometimes. The cold, clean air of the roof in your lungs, the false-stars moving next to you, the dim, barely-visible gleam of London, underneath. 

Tonight, it seems, your pilot can't sleep either. You move your feet silently, watching him lean over the railings, a cigarette tucked between his lips. He's fun to watch, with his nimble fingers, his prematurely-greying hair, the delicate curve of his chin into his neck, dark with stubble. The line of his mouth, curving around the filter of his cigarette. The pink of his mouth, smiling. The scars across his knuckles, the two ropes of collagen where his thumbs are missing from his hands, the curling hair at the nape of his neck. You feel like a shark, circling, waiting to pounce. What must you look like to him, now, with your night-black eyes and your face like the moon, shining? You cannot look human. You have not been human in so long. A human would not have teeth the way you do, would not think about his blood thrumming in his neck the way you do, would not have-

“Captain?” he says, though he hasn't turned around to face you. “Stop skulking. I can feel your eyes on me.”

You allow your feet to make noise on the planks again, heels of your boots clacking. “Sorry,” you say, though you are not. “Habit.”

You want to kiss him again. You want him to kiss you. Nothing has changed between you, since that night. Nothing can. 

“Can't sleep?” he says, and you cannot see where his eyes are pointed, behind his dark glasses. Maybe they flick to your mouth. Maybe they aren't even looking at you, only his face pointing your way, his gaze still over the edge of the deck, off in the far distance.

“Of course not,” you say. “I never can.”

Sleep has been lost to you for so long, now. You barely remember what it felt like to rest, to be truly rested. Even when you do sleep, these days, your head rots with dreams and your eyes flicker discontentedly the whole night. On the surface, you fear the exhaustion would have killed you months ago.

“You look tired,” he says. “No offence.”

“And you look old,” you say, though it's barely true. Everyone looks old, compared to you. 

“Rude,” he says, voice thick with exhaustion, with fondness. 

“Not an insult,” you quip back. “And you called me tired first.”

“Maybe I'm concerned for you, Captain,” he says, and it's only half a joke. You're all concerned for each other, in some ways. The two of you even more so. You're the only ones who are still the people you started this journey as - you have to stick together.

“Don't be,” you say. “Nothing's killed me yet.”

“Just because it hasn't killed you…” he starts. You know roughly the end of that sentence. He's faced enough horrors in his time to know the dangers of things that leave you alive.

There's a pause in the conversation, heavy with expectation, with trepidation. He turns back to face properly over the railings, false-star light picking out the bridge of his nose, the silver streaks in his hair. He exhales a puff of lavender-scented smoke.

“I know,” you say, eventually. “I- You really don't have to worry.” 

He shrugs. “I want to. Or- I'm going to, anyway. I care about you.”

“Pity the poor fool who does,” you say, but you feel your cheeks warm anyway, blue-black blood gathering under your cheeks.

He snorts, and offers you a cigarette. You take it, lighting it with the box of matches you keep tucked between the folds of your skirt. Inhale. Exhale. Smoke escapes your mouth in perfect curls, before it dissipates into the dark night. 

“What was it like?” you ask him, when your cigarette is almost done.

Tatterdemalion cocks an eyebrow at you, obscure in the dark. “What was what like?” 

It's a chance, maybe, to take back your question. Or a confirmation, that you're sure you want to ask it.

“Being part of the Sequence,” you say. It's a night for poor decisions, maybe. Another one.

Eh. The last time hadn't been a poor choice. A little badly timed, maybe, but you stand your decisions. Your words. 

All of your words.

His voice, low in his throat. Je t'aime, aussi.

“Terrible,” he says, on instinct. “In retrospect, at least.”

You raise an eyebrow at him. There's more there. Something he's not saying.

“And at the time?” you ask, when he doesn't give you anything else. 

“Perfect,” he says. The word spills from his lips without the involvement of his brain. “It was- There is a reason so few people manage to tear themselves away. Everything- Imagine seeing everything in gold, knowing that everything you do is right, having such purpose, singular and defined and-” 

“Do you miss it?” you ask, your voice low, sultry, smoky. You've moved. Your hand is on his elbow, like the last time you danced. You can feel his arm trembling. This time-

This time it's going to be a bad idea.

“Yes,” he says, the word tearing out of him like a sob, like a rotten tooth. “I will never forgive her for it.”

It'd be an awful thing, for you to kiss him right now. Your hand slides up his arm anyway. His breath shakes in his chest, and your thumb comes to rest on his pulse point, fingers splayed out against his shoulder. You pause there, for a second. He leans into your touch, the most minute of movements. You move your hand to cup the side of his face, thumb on his cheekbone, fingers tracing the soft hair on his jaw. He melts into your touch, his cheek pressing into your palm. You slide a finger of the other hand under the arm of his glasses. He doesn't object, not even when you slide the lenses off, revealing his golden pupils, shining and wide.

You tuck the glasses into the front of your shirt. His eyes track the movement, and then linger, just a second, before folding shut.

“What do you miss, my pilot?” you say, in the lowest of whispers. Something coils warmly in your stomach, at the relaxed set of his mouth, at the twitch of his eyelids. 

“Knowing what to do,” he says, desperate and exhausted and with his black eyelashes fluttering over his cheek. You want to kiss him. You want to wrap your fist in his hair and pull him around like a puppet. You want to put him flat on his back and touch him until he cries, desperate and finally, finally out of control.

“On your knees,” you say, even though where you are, anyone could see you, if they just looked out. 

Tatterdemalion drops to the deck, sat back on his haunches. He looks up at you, eyes wide, mouth just slightly open. His tongue flicks out over his bottom lip, leaving it damp with saliva. You're not quite sure what to make him do next. You want him to touch you, maybe, but you've already done that, and you're more than aware that the last time you did this, you didn't get to touch him. 

Your boots gleam in the low light, black and shining. You pick one foot off the floor, and press your toe into the flesh of his inner thigh. His legs part further, and you slide the foot further up, towards-

Towards. 

A flush rises in his cheeks. His pupils blow wider, not dark the way you'd expect from this situation, but golden and coruscating instead. He inhales, sharply, as you press the tip of your boot into the top of his thigh. You hear the click of his swallow, as you swivel your ankle, rest your heel above his groin.

“You'll tell me to stop,” you say, all command and no question, “If you need to.”

“Keep going,” he says. He's barely audible, the words mostly exhalation.

You grind the heel of your boot into him, and those beautiful, golden eyes flutter shut.

“Eyes on me, Pilot,” you say, even as you push a little harder into him, admire the flicker of his eyelids, the wrecked little gasp that spills from his mouth.

“Yes, Captain,” he says, and that golden gaze is fixed on you again.

You bend forward, take his chin in your hand, lean in as if to kiss him, your lips millimetres from his skin. 

“Good boy,” you whisper, and slide your foot down, digging the sole of your boot into the front of his trousers.

A mangled whine escapes his throat, his mouth dropping open, his eyelids fluttering half-shut before he fixes his gaze back on you. His cheeks are flushed, half cold wind and half arousal. “Fuck,” he says, and then he looks almost guilty. You hadn't told him he could speak. 

You hadn't told him not to, either, and you rather like his voice like this. You press a little harder, twist your ankle just enough to provide movement. The soles of your boots are too thick for you to feel him, really, but it's too cold to take them off. 

“Good?” you ask, because- 

Because you want to. You want this to be good. For him. Don't think about it too hard. 

“Yes,” he gasps, and you grind your foot down again, into the minute twitches of his hips. 

“Did you think about this?” you follow up. “About me?” It's desperate. It's needy. You have to ask him. Too late to take it back now.

“Of course,” he says. “Captain.”

You drop to your knees in front of him, kneeling up to be a little taller, and this time when you lean in you actually kiss him, tangling the hair at the base of his neck around your fingers, tugging it until he whines, pleasure and pain and whatever else it is you give him falling from his mouth.

“What did you think of?” you ask, your lips brushing his as your free hand untucks his shirt, dips fingers below the waistband of his trousers. His fists clench atop his thighs as you work his top button open.

“You,” he says. “All of you, fuck, the way you smell, the way you taste, the way you sound. I-” he cuts off with a gasp, as you wrap a hand around him, just firm enough to feel, not so firm as to give him any chance of getting off.

You kiss him again, because you can, and because you want to, and because when you swipe your thumb over the head of his cock he gasps into your mouth and because you are hungry for him, for the air that he exhales and the sounds of his sighs and the beads of sweat collecting on his forehead, on his chest. 

“Did you-” did you do this, while thinking of me, you want to ask. It feels almost too desperate. Too needy. Too much, as if you haven't already said that you love him.

“I dreamt about you,” he says. “When I wasn't- Between the red. Never- Never lasted- fuck, Captain -Never lasted long enough, always woke up before- shit, this is, this is- so embarrassing, you're so-” 

His cock twitches in your hand, and you tighten your grip on him, pumping your hand as you push him onto his back, kneeling over his thighs.

“Don't come,” you tell him. He whines. “Did you- What about when you were awake? Did you think of me then?”

“Yes,” he says, hips bucking up into your hand, and you bend down to kiss him. He whines into your mouth when you twist your wrist, speed your hand up, bring him ever-closer to the edge. “Captain- I'm- Fuck-”

You squeeze your hand around the base of him, stopping your movements completely. “Don't,” you say, only a little warning in your voice. His cock twitches in your hand, hard and red and dripping, but he doesn't spill over, not even when his eyes roll back and his head hits the floor. 

You kiss him, again, on the mouth, the cheek, the corner of his jaw, and you take your hand off, running it up under his shirt instead, over the hair on his abdomen and the scarred skin of his side. His skin tastes like sea-salt and like sweat and like clean soap, and all you can think about is how he must have looked, with your name on his tongue and his hand on himself and-

“What were you thinking about?” you ask.

He snorts. “Before or after?”

“You thought about me before?” you ask, your mental footing unsteady. “Before I- Before we-”

“‘Course,” he says, as if you hadn't had him whining under your hands half a minute ago. “How could I not?”

You wrap your hand around him again, and you kiss him. “Tell me,” you command.

Tatterdemalion rolls his head to the side, somehow embarrassed now, as if you don't have him spread out and whining on the deck for all to see. “I wanted- I- I want to take you for dinner,” he says. That's… not what you expected. You drag your hand up his length. “Wine, and- and steak, bloody, and, and- shit, tiramisu for dessert, or panna cotta, or- holy shit, Captain, don't- please- don't stop-” 

“Keep talking,” you say. “After dinner?”

“I'd- shit, I just- You, looking at me, whatever, letting me- touch you, touching me, how you'd smell, taste, sound, feel, I just- you, I just wanted, want, want you, please, please, fuck, just-”

“Did you- Did you touch yourself? Thinking of me?” There's not much point to asking. You're going to let him come, anyway, just so you can lick it off your fingers.

He swallows a breath, grits his teeth against your ministrations, trying to stave off his impending orgasm. “Only- Only after,” he says. “Wouldn't- Couldn't- not going to do that to my, my Captain-” his voice cuts into a whine, the n sound at the end of the word drawing out into wordless noise.

“Come on, my pilot,” you say. “Come for me.”

You kiss him, long and sharp and more than a little desperate. He kisses you back just the same, his mouth hungry against yours, and he spills all over himself, over your hand, over both of your clothes. 

You sit back, still over his thighs, your clean hand resting in his waist, and you lick his spend from your fingers as he tucks himself away. His eyes track the movement of your tongue over your fingers, across your palm, half-lidded with tiredness, with affection, with something you're a little scared to name. He tastes almost exactly how you'd expect him to, just a little off. Engine oil. Smoke. Iron. Just hints, mixed in with the human salt and musk and sweetness, the reminder that he's been a little more machine than most men.

“Good?” you ask.

“Very,” he says, half-smiling. 

You hand him back his glasses. He doesn't put them on. At your quizzical eyebrow, he shrugs. “You already know what I was. I'll put them on tomorrow. Might need to clean ‘em up, though.”

You laugh. “I didn't- I wasn't quite expecting that much.” 

The grin he gives you, then, is nothing short of salacious. “I wasn't expecting any of this,” he says. “Not that- I'm not complaining.”

You shake your head, fondly. “I've not done that, before,” you say. “The- the being in charge. Normally- ugh.” 

He pats his jacket, draws out two cigarettes, one for each of you. “Let me up,” he says, and then he's sitting beside you, your shoulders pressed together, your head leaning into the crook of his neck. He tucks the filter between your lips, lights it off of his own match. This, somehow, feels more intimate than all the rest of it, the two of you curled together, smoking in the small hours of the sleepless morning. “Same,” he says, after a drag of his cigarette. “Or- opposite. Normally- I don't- fuck. Decisions. I tend towards making them. I don't- Giving up control-” He sighs, cuts himself off. “You know what I'm saying.” 

You nod. “I do.” Maybe you should talk about it more. 

You won't, not yet, not now. The feeling is there, though. You might not survive long enough to talk about it, the way things seem to be going.

He turns his head, just enough to look at you. You lean up and kiss him, slow and chaste and nothing like earlier, just the press of lips against each other, the soft sounds of mouths moving together. 

“We should sleep,” he says. “Or at least pretend to.”

You know how this goes. You part ways. You don't talk about it. You make sure one of the two of you is on laundry duty, so no questions arise from the state of your clothes.

“Captain's quarters have a double bed,” you say anyway, desperate for him to stay with you, for five more minutes by his side. “Might help the nightmares. Having company.”

The excuse is flimsy as anything. You don't care. 

He doesn't, either.

“It might. Be less awful to wake up alone after them, too.”

You smile. Maybe you won't talk about it. That doesn't seem to matter, now.