every february, you'll be my valentine, valentine
don't bite; i'm baiting you
Borja Theatrical Studios AU, Lucrezia/Cesare, NC-17. I wasn't intending porn, but it happened. Bless. Happy Valentine's Day to Emma, my valentine, plus candy hearts for disco_vendetta who wanted more of them anyway, and much love to all. No better way to express.
“I come bearing chocolates.”
Lucrezia rolls over and squints up at her brother, looming over her bed shadow-high with an enormous red cellophane heart in his hands. She rolls her eyes and reaches out. “Really? You felt compelled to make the day up to me by way of Duane Reade?”
“I’d’ve gotten you nicer ones, but it wouldn’t have had the same-”
“Pageantry. I know.” Her smile cuts into her cheek, crooked, wry. I know you. You’re a better parade float than any of us at heart. “You really are our father’s son.”
“No need to be mean about it.”
“No?” She raises her eyebrows and turns back around, a petulant parenthetical with her back to him. The bedsprings squeak as he sits down, as he lowers himself slowly next to her: his head on her shoulder, his elbow on her hip. He’s wearing a suit; he smells like the office. She flips a page in her script, pulls the top off the chocolate box. Funny, she thinks, sticking out the tip of her tongue. Just because it’s February and she’s not playing a romantic lead. That was a choice, and he knows it-she’s on break from ingenues for the foreseeable future. About time.
“See,” he says into her ear, hand on her waist, fingers wrinkling the silk of her bathrobe. “Perfect pageant. Right out of old Hollywood. Be careful, or Dad’ll send in a paparazzo. Even better than the last shoot.”
Aesthetic blackmail. Arse. She wrinkles her nose. “If he does, I’ll go old-Hollywood on him. Complete with miniature pistol. If he tries to get a reporter into my bedroom, I solemnly swear to gun the idiot down.”
“Dad?”
“No, the reporter. They’re bad enough already.”
“I think that’d be shooting the messenger.”
“So long as they don’t take the message outside.”
“Vicious.”
“You mind now?”
“Hardly. Can’t wait til they channel it sufficiently onstage. Whenever you get your day as Lady Macbeth, I’ll expect real blood.” She feels him smile into the crook of her neck, rare and lazy and easy, and she offers him a chocolate-covered cherry without looking. He bites her fingertips.
“Ow.”
“Keep talking bloodlust.”
She sighs, shifts her hips, better fitting into the crook of him. “I’m not going to talk about murdering our brother, if that’s what you want. That’s your do.”
“Now that you mention it-”
“It’s all you mention.” She bites back the urge to grin, amused as much as she’s annoyed. Bites that grin into a coconut cream that sticks her jaws together until it goes away. She swallows. “So you didn’t come here to make up, you came here to vent.” He shrugs into her, and she picks up a paper from her script to swat at him over her shoulder. “You’re a shit.”
“At least I’m a shit in private.” His hand lolls over her waist, loose over her stomach. “If he wasn’t being such a public waste, Dad wouldn’t be talking you up to film execs.”
“Oh, I know he wanted to keep me pure,” she spits out with an amount of venom that surprises her when she hears it. “Juan’s the spectacle, I’m the craft. And you’re the money. He does miss the point, our dad, sometimes.”
“The point’s flexible.” His mouth is on her neck, where her hair’s pulled up, the curve at the base of her skull. She shivers in spite of herself, a shiver she can’t chalk up to February air. The apartment is warm, her room the warmest, swathed in quilts; the sensation ripples, coolly acute, beneath too-warm skin. Thematic flexibility is one of their family’s strong points.
Their father will come around. She’s not really worried, no more than she is about her brothers, about the family. It’s a cold day in winter, but it’d be a cold day in hell before they managed to fracture for good. For good or for ill, they’re stuck together-glued by stage-dust and flashbulbs as much as by blood. And there’s plenty of blood. Blood and tradition, and the script that comes with tradition, the push-pull of ritual that became a disingenuous script a good while back.
“Tell him no,” she says, indulging the script. No reason to skip to the ending just because they see it coming. “Warm him up to the no before he asks me and I tell him myself.”
He just laughs. Fair enough. He stopped telling their father anything long ago-a little after he stopped asking. He’s never been much for keeping the family’s script, has Cesare. Insists on going off and writing his own-the relentless dramatist. Peacock and playwright, and stuck in an office. She’s laughed at it before, the way one learns to laugh at tragedy; she does hope he’d be too practical to be Hamlet regardless, even without her.
But he’d never be without her. Even when he is being an arse, and the rest of their family’s wilfully erased in the background. This is a given. They’re both rude enough to take it for granted-she knows this, doesn’t absolve herself. The presumption belongs to both of them. Bred in the blood. She rolls over, finally, a strawberry cream in her hands, and she stuffs it into his laughing mouth and rolls a leg over his hip. They’re entitled to each other.
Her mouth slips in against his neck so she can feel him swallow, a twice-over swallow. Traces her tongue up the column of his throat, up to the curve of his mouth. The kiss is hot, sticky, and slow. He tastes like cheap chocolate, unthreatening, and he bites his teeth slowly into her lip, not. Traces the line his teeth made with his tongue. Her hands sink deep into his hair as she pulls him on top of her, feeling her bathrobe peel back, her slip slide up, as she wraps her legs around his waist. He is hardening under his suit already, and she writhes beneath him, pushing his jacket back from the collar. He helps. Clumsy, but it comes off. She isn’t watching. Her eyes are closed, lazy. She doesn’t have to watch to know what his face looks like, or the way his body moves under his suit, the way his cock stretches the zipper of his pants. He is shaped against her, made for the spaces she leaves open; they could write each other in the lines of their own body without being asked. There is no asking when he slides his hand over her breast, fingers clenching slowly through the satin; no telling when she unzips his pants. No questions in the thick rise and fall of their breath.
His hand slips between her legs, two fingers against her underwear, and she gasps, a sound sticking in her throat-and she laughs as he pushes aside the edge.
“Still threatening to let in the paparazzi?”
“Still threatening to take a gun to them?”
“Try me,” she says, and he flicks at her clit and she yelps- “Jesus,” she gasps, and he laughs, hoarsely, mouth sliding down her neck to her neckline.
“Prayer, Crezia?” His eyes glint, amused, and she looks down scoldingly, she can preempt the joke-Wouldn’t father be proud?-and she swats at his head.
“Yes." Don't do that. Do that. "Voice of God. Listen to God, he’s telling you to-shut up,” she says, half-ragged already, and he ducks in his head and bites, languidly, delicately against her thigh. Bites and sucks sequentially up between her legs until she’s whimpering; she can hear the sound like it’s outside her body.
Wretch. She never asked for adulation, no more than she asked for chocolates. But she knows, as he holds her hips down-she hardly has to ask.
Borja Theatrical Studios AU, Lucrezia/Cesare, NC-17. I wasn't intending porn, but it happened. Bless. Happy Valentine's Day to Emma, my valentine, plus candy hearts for disco_vendetta who wanted more of them anyway, and much love to all. No better way to express.
“I come bearing chocolates.”
Lucrezia rolls over and squints up at her brother, looming over her bed shadow-high with an enormous red cellophane heart in his hands. She rolls her eyes and reaches out. “Really? You felt compelled to make the day up to me by way of Duane Reade?”
“I’d’ve gotten you nicer ones, but it wouldn’t have had the same-”
“Pageantry. I know.” Her smile cuts into her cheek, crooked, wry. I know you. You’re a better parade float than any of us at heart. “You really are our father’s son.”
“No need to be mean about it.”
“No?” She raises her eyebrows and turns back around, a petulant parenthetical with her back to him. The bedsprings squeak as he sits down, as he lowers himself slowly next to her: his head on her shoulder, his elbow on her hip. He’s wearing a suit; he smells like the office. She flips a page in her script, pulls the top off the chocolate box. Funny, she thinks, sticking out the tip of her tongue. Just because it’s February and she’s not playing a romantic lead. That was a choice, and he knows it-she’s on break from ingenues for the foreseeable future. About time.
“See,” he says into her ear, hand on her waist, fingers wrinkling the silk of her bathrobe. “Perfect pageant. Right out of old Hollywood. Be careful, or Dad’ll send in a paparazzo. Even better than the last shoot.”
Aesthetic blackmail. Arse. She wrinkles her nose. “If he does, I’ll go old-Hollywood on him. Complete with miniature pistol. If he tries to get a reporter into my bedroom, I solemnly swear to gun the idiot down.”
“Dad?”
“No, the reporter. They’re bad enough already.”
“I think that’d be shooting the messenger.”
“So long as they don’t take the message outside.”
“Vicious.”
“You mind now?”
“Hardly. Can’t wait til they channel it sufficiently onstage. Whenever you get your day as Lady Macbeth, I’ll expect real blood.” She feels him smile into the crook of her neck, rare and lazy and easy, and she offers him a chocolate-covered cherry without looking. He bites her fingertips.
“Ow.”
“Keep talking bloodlust.”
She sighs, shifts her hips, better fitting into the crook of him. “I’m not going to talk about murdering our brother, if that’s what you want. That’s your do.”
“Now that you mention it-”
“It’s all you mention.” She bites back the urge to grin, amused as much as she’s annoyed. Bites that grin into a coconut cream that sticks her jaws together until it goes away. She swallows. “So you didn’t come here to make up, you came here to vent.” He shrugs into her, and she picks up a paper from her script to swat at him over her shoulder. “You’re a shit.”
“At least I’m a shit in private.” His hand lolls over her waist, loose over her stomach. “If he wasn’t being such a public waste, Dad wouldn’t be talking you up to film execs.”
“Oh, I know he wanted to keep me pure,” she spits out with an amount of venom that surprises her when she hears it. “Juan’s the spectacle, I’m the craft. And you’re the money. He does miss the point, our dad, sometimes.”
“The point’s flexible.” His mouth is on her neck, where her hair’s pulled up, the curve at the base of her skull. She shivers in spite of herself, a shiver she can’t chalk up to February air. The apartment is warm, her room the warmest, swathed in quilts; the sensation ripples, coolly acute, beneath too-warm skin. Thematic flexibility is one of their family’s strong points.
Their father will come around. She’s not really worried, no more than she is about her brothers, about the family. It’s a cold day in winter, but it’d be a cold day in hell before they managed to fracture for good. For good or for ill, they’re stuck together-glued by stage-dust and flashbulbs as much as by blood. And there’s plenty of blood. Blood and tradition, and the script that comes with tradition, the push-pull of ritual that became a disingenuous script a good while back.
“Tell him no,” she says, indulging the script. No reason to skip to the ending just because they see it coming. “Warm him up to the no before he asks me and I tell him myself.”
He just laughs. Fair enough. He stopped telling their father anything long ago-a little after he stopped asking. He’s never been much for keeping the family’s script, has Cesare. Insists on going off and writing his own-the relentless dramatist. Peacock and playwright, and stuck in an office. She’s laughed at it before, the way one learns to laugh at tragedy; she does hope he’d be too practical to be Hamlet regardless, even without her.
But he’d never be without her. Even when he is being an arse, and the rest of their family’s wilfully erased in the background. This is a given. They’re both rude enough to take it for granted-she knows this, doesn’t absolve herself. The presumption belongs to both of them. Bred in the blood. She rolls over, finally, a strawberry cream in her hands, and she stuffs it into his laughing mouth and rolls a leg over his hip. They’re entitled to each other.
Her mouth slips in against his neck so she can feel him swallow, a twice-over swallow. Traces her tongue up the column of his throat, up to the curve of his mouth. The kiss is hot, sticky, and slow. He tastes like cheap chocolate, unthreatening, and he bites his teeth slowly into her lip, not. Traces the line his teeth made with his tongue. Her hands sink deep into his hair as she pulls him on top of her, feeling her bathrobe peel back, her slip slide up, as she wraps her legs around his waist. He is hardening under his suit already, and she writhes beneath him, pushing his jacket back from the collar. He helps. Clumsy, but it comes off. She isn’t watching. Her eyes are closed, lazy. She doesn’t have to watch to know what his face looks like, or the way his body moves under his suit, the way his cock stretches the zipper of his pants. He is shaped against her, made for the spaces she leaves open; they could write each other in the lines of their own body without being asked. There is no asking when he slides his hand over her breast, fingers clenching slowly through the satin; no telling when she unzips his pants. No questions in the thick rise and fall of their breath.
His hand slips between her legs, two fingers against her underwear, and she gasps, a sound sticking in her throat-and she laughs as he pushes aside the edge.
“Still threatening to let in the paparazzi?”
“Still threatening to take a gun to them?”
“Try me,” she says, and he flicks at her clit and she yelps- “Jesus,” she gasps, and he laughs, hoarsely, mouth sliding down her neck to her neckline.
“Prayer, Crezia?” His eyes glint, amused, and she looks down scoldingly, she can preempt the joke-Wouldn’t father be proud?-and she swats at his head.
“Yes." Don't do that. Do that. "Voice of God. Listen to God, he’s telling you to-shut up,” she says, half-ragged already, and he ducks in his head and bites, languidly, delicately against her thigh. Bites and sucks sequentially up between her legs until she’s whimpering; she can hear the sound like it’s outside her body.
Wretch. She never asked for adulation, no more than she asked for chocolates. But she knows, as he holds her hips down-she hardly has to ask.