Work Text:
Alāe is somewhat grateful that her unique circumstances have allowed her a degree of flexibility in regards to her Mask training. The actual work is interesting – the cunning, the charm, the layers of intrigues she gets to delve in – but the training itself leaves something to be desired. For the most monotonous lessons she leverages her Alluvion duties, spending her days performing research rather than learning the driest analogies of Gha’alian history meant to teach recruits the importance of obeying orders.
Some lessons, however, should not be avoided. Combat lessons for one – learning the intricacies of hiding weapons and using them – and poisons, for another. These are the most straightforward. In many spars, her opponent is Haron, all-to-happy to help advance her skills and see her in “most glorious action”. If the rules allow for the use of the trahyan, she is often the winner. If not, it is Haron. Once the exceptions were rare, but they are becoming more common – a testament to both of their growths.
The other essentials focus on learning to analyze a person’s behavior and body language, on telling lies and being able to recognize them in turn. These are done privately with the Mask Commander. Often, Axsix invites her to sit in his office and they talk, mixing truths with lies. At the end each of them outlines the lies and explains how they knew. He has detected nearly all of hers, save for a few times she half-lied. On Alāe’s end, whenever she seems to be better at reading him, he changes his behavior. Too often she has had to answer that she “just knew”, which earns her an impassive nod each time. She likes to think there’s disappointment in his eyes when he does.
Her tells are clearer. At first, he told her about the things that were easier to control – hints of a smile, increased blinking, shifting in her chair – but as time goes on, it verges into the unconscious, as it does in this particular lesson. They are in his office, as always, seated at a small table. At first, they used his desk, but over time, he began to guide her to sit here. His reasoning was that it was easier to shift into a conversational mindset, which she could not argue with entirely.
“Lie to me,” he tells her, and she’s halfway through telling him about her torrid romance with a pirate when he reaches out and presses his fingers against the side of her neck. “Do you feel that?”
Alāe blinks, feeling only her fluttering pulse against the light pressure. When she tells him that he gives her a cool smile. “How can I control my heart?”
“Practice,” he tells her, and he takes her hand, pressing her fingers against his pulse point. “I’m married.”
It’s the boldest lie he’s ever told, considering that he’s a known bachelor, but Alāe finds herself shocked at the steady rhythm of his heart.
“My father is dead,” he continues. The truth this time, the pulse unchanged. Then, “I have several secret children.”
He allows her hand to fall and looks at her expectantly. Alāe blinks again, feeling as though she’s been asked to read a wall. “Truth?”
Another smile, entirely obscure. He assigns her meditative exercises. As she is about to leave his office, something occurs to her, and she looks back at him. “How could you tell my pulse from merely looking at me?”
His eyes seem to darken, his smile taking on the hint of a predator. “Subtle visual cues. You will pick up on them in time.”
“But in this case?”
His gaze drags down briefly, then returns to her face. “You can tell much about a person from their neck, such as their tension.”
Alāe quirks a brow at that, not entirely believing him. Perhaps he could hear it. There was little she could do about that, so he may have told her it was visual to let her down gently. “What else?”
Ever the teacher, Axsix stands and approaches her. Not even his patient, level-headed demeanor can disguise the sheer power in his physical form. She feels her pulse quicken again and the knowledge that he knows it only makes it worse.
This time, he uses both hands, his touch almost feather-light. “The knot of the throat,” he explains, his voice… darker. Pleased. One thumb sweeps over it while the other hand braces her head in place. “The most obvious sign is when you swallow, usually from nerves. The tendons,” he uses one hand to tilt up her chin and traces the muscles with his fingers, “can be physically taut. It is usually an indication of stress.”
She swallows.
“Just so.” He smiles, and it is almost hypnotic. For not the first time, Alāe is reminded of how dangerous this man is.
His hands move to where her neck meets her shoulders, never breaking contact with her body. The drag leaves her skin pebbling. He presses firmly now on the muscles there. “You can learn much here,” he continues. “The level of development can indicate a person’s muscular development. The same applies to the shoulders.” He shifts his touch accordingly, now resting his hands on her clothed shoulders. “An archer’s will be broad. A person who is tense will often raise them unconsciously. Injuries in the back, legs, or feet may result in one of them being raised.”
He steps away. Alāe exhales a breath as quietly as she can manage. “All that from the neck and shoulders?” she asks, her smile the very image of mirth, trying to cover for her hammering heart.
“From a visual inspection, yes. Touch reveals more, as it often does.”
For a second she thinks he is going to demonstrate again. For a second it looks as though he is considering it. But then he gives her another cool smile, the heat in his gaze gone. “You mentioned earlier having some correspondence to attend to. I suggest you do, before it grows too late.”
She swallows again and nods. There’s a twinge of disappointment in her chest, which she dismisses as being rooted in her desire to better herself as a Mask. Thankfully she need not be convinced when she lies to herself.
From that lesson on, brief moments of contact with Axsix stretch out into something longer. Less immaterial, more effective… whatever the goal was. Or perhaps they had always been this way. That lesson may have opened Alāe’s eyes to the way he treated her. The thought is a disturbing one. How could she have not felt his hand on her shoulder, his thumb brushing up her neck as he passes by her desk? How could she not have heard the rich darkness of his voice as he whispers in her ear during meetings? How could she have missed the promise in the way his hand braces the small of her back on the rare occasions he dances at Lonre’s parties?
It is infinitely frustrating to not know the cause. It could be the buildup to another lesson – layering hints in incomprehensible behavior – or it could be as simple as lust. Maybe he wants her.
When she thinks of that possibility, it twists her core something terrible. For all her attempts to disguise it, she cannot deny the effect his touch has on her. And his voice – that voice, even, unaffected, with only hints of the man’s true nature – often goes straight from her ears to her thighs. And yet he is the Mask Commander. Alāe would be a fool to deny that he could have schemes within schemes, and she likes to think she is better than that. What little she can read in him is because he allows it.
(That alone haunts her dreams. If he does want her – the most potent if she’s ever known – what kind of passion does he keep shaded from the world? What would it be like to witness its unmasking?)
There is the other thing, as well, the more practical side. For all her status as a Mask, as Alluvion, she is human. Some elves seem not to care – Haron is the most obvious example – but there are others whose attractions do not lie that way. Or if they do, it is not something they wish to have openly known. As a nation, Gha’alia values strength and talent. In its ideal state those things are rewarded. If she became secretly involved with the Mask Commander, all it would take to topple her public standing would be a few well-placed rumors that she had slept her way to her current position.
While all these thoughts swirl in her mind, she acts as she had before. Alāe practices her combat, tests her poisons, sits in Axsix’s office late into the night. But then the routine broke with a lie a little closer to the Mask headquarters than the rest.
It may have been unwise to test him.
That morning, she had sparred with Haron without use of the trahyan, and at one point managed to knock him to the ground. Her brief moment of victory, straddling his chest, was interrupted by the realization that in addition to the usual audience, Axsix was there, watching her with his usual placid expression. Haron took the opportunity to throw her off him. After the match, while she attended to her bruises, he glowed with pride about how his madralee was improving.
Later, in Axsix’s office, the memory sparks something in her. The commander had told her before to allow a person’s assumptions to do half the work. When it is her turn to share, she smiles and leans towards him. “Haron and I are lovers.”
She draws out each syllable, trying to give the impressing she is savoring being able to speak the truth at last. “We are keeping it discreet for now – things are still quite new. The last thing either of us wants is for our relationship to be leveraged against our careers.”
Axsix stares. The seconds drag on into what feels like minutes as he reads her, or pretends to, and when he settles in his seat she nearly congratulates herself. But she has to wait until the end of the conversation to know if she succeeded in her lie… or so she thought.
“A lie,” he replies, a small smile on his lips. He tilts his head. “However, I am glad that you have taken my advice to heart.”
Alāe fights to keep her expression neutral, though she knows he can read her disappointment anyway. “What gave it away?”
It is his turn to lean in, close enough that her mind fills with the scent of herbs and ink. “Your choice of partner, for one. Haron is not the kind of man who would keep his feelings secret… and I imagine, should someone threaten the woman he loved, he would act against that person.” His voice drops as he speaks those words, making no attempt to disguise what form that action would take. It promises many things, danger and power, and not for the first time she finds herself warming.
What would Axsix do if someone attempted the same? The thought almost has her shifting in her seat, but she remembers herself, remembers where she is. Her mouth suddenly feels dry. After taking a sip of her lukewarm tea, she quirks a brow. “Is that all?”
His eyes are suddenly light, joking. “No. Even if he did agree to such secrecy, my nephews are easy to read. His fondness for you apparent enough. At his current level of skill, he could not disguise his joy at having his feelings reciprocated.” She appreciates the pointed exclusion of her own skill from the discussion.
“I suppose not,” she replies, with a mirthful smile of her own. For a moment, she thinks his shift in mood means they have navigated out of the more dangerous parts of this conversation, and she relaxes somewhat. “Do you have any other observations?”
Again, he watches her. She can practically feel his gaze on her face, at her neck, her shoulders, and her body reacts to the thought of him drinking in the sight of her. “Yes,” he says, just as she thinks she is going to burst aflame from the tension. “You did not touch like lovers.”
“Like –“ she nearly chokes on the word. “We were sparring.” In her sudden surprise, she remembers too late that combat in Gha’alia practically serves as a courting ritual and foreplay. He must have read the recognition on her face, as he does not remind her.
“Sparring does not merely determine who is superior in strength or skill. It carries with it a question of dominance.” Again, his voice lowers, pronouncing each letter of the word as an executioner would pronounce a death sentence. Dampness pools in her smallclothes. Alāe rubs her thighs, trying to relieve some of that want without alerting him to her state. The knowledge that he probably knows anyway only makes it more intense. As if blind to her current condition, Axsix continues, “Physical desire can overcome both strength and skill. Does it matter who is the better fighter between them, if one is so clearly in control while the other falls to their lust?”
He pauses, then laughs, all that dark promise in his voice gone. “There is a reason, after all, that it can be unwise to enter the sparring ring at night. Some enjoy the contest more than the culmination.”
“I…” her voices breaks and she takes another sip of her tea, regrettably gone cold. How can she respond without making it utterly plain the impact his words have had on her? Her brain urges her to excuse herself and leave – better to make him think he offended her than to subject herself to this any longer. Her heart, the primal side of her, anchors her to her chair.
Axsix stands, stretching, and turns to look down at her. The promise of more that had left his voice lurks behind his pale eyes as he takes in the sight of her. At this angle, he can see how she has crossed her legs, how deeply she is breathing. “Perhaps you need a demonstration to better understand.”
Alāe’s tongue is heavy in her mouth, but she raises her chin and meets his gaze. “Your explanation was clear; what more is there for me to learn?”
“The opportunities your would-be lover missed.”
Shock doesn’t fit how she feels in that moment. Half of her was expecting he would dodge the question; the other half hoped he wouldn’t. That hope flares deep in her folds. Nodding, she adds, “I think that would wise.”
There’s mirth in his eyes as he guides her to stand. His movements are methodical, almost seeming rehearsed, but there is a grace to them that makes it seem natural as he positions her with his back to him.
Even expecting it, she cannot help but tense when she feels the heat of his body at her back. Gently, he takes her wrists in one hand, pulling them away from her. “The first opportunity,” he says, and she feels a rush at the sound of his voice so close to her ear, a hair’s breadth away from being able to kiss it. Haron had managed to grab her wrists and had stood behind her, but with Axsix, it feels… different.
“You knocked your head into his nose,” he states. His breath ghosts the area where her neck and shoulders meet. “This angle makes that more difficult.”
At first she thinks she imagines the touch of his lips on her skin… until she feels a small sting, followed by another gentle kiss. The gasp that rises in her throat is stopped only by her biting her lower lip. “It is important to give incentives to submit,” he continues, and he creates a path up her neck, alternating lips and teeth and tongue with dizzying unpredictability. When he presses his mouth just below her ear, Alāe can no longer hold back her sounds. She whines.
“Good,” he murmurs, “you understand.”
The next thing she knows is the cool air of the room as he steps away from her. His hands turn her to face him; his pale green gaze darting from the flush of her cheeks to her parted lips. Then he looks lower still, to where she is struggling not to squirm.
“Perhaps not completely,” he muses. Alāe’s joy and frustration twist in her chest, anchoring her to the spot as she anticipates his next move. She very nearly darts out of the room when he draws two daggers from his belt, handing one to her. “They’re not poisoned,” he assures her, with a kind of half-smile.
Yet he does not approach her. After a beat Alāe realizes that after this escalation, he is waiting for… something. Approval. Consent. The implications in the word sends her heart fluttering. She closes the distance between them and tilts her face back to look up at him, making no effort to hide the effect he is having on her.
There is something like relief in his eyes as he moves, positioning her hand to hold the dagger at his waist. “You need not press in; this is merely to remind you of the circumstance.” With that he takes up his own, pressing it lightly under her chin. This is another facsimile of her spar with Haron… yet she was not breathing nearly so heavily in the ring. Then, they had acknowledged they reached an impasse, and broke apart to start again.
Axsix allows his hand to lower, lightly dragging the blade down. The feeling – the risk – is akin to the press of a fingernail, no real danger. Perhaps reading her thoughts, he chuckles. “It is not a threat… a promise of what could be,” he explains, turning the dagger as he resumes his course. It dips down her waist to the bone of her hip, then turns, skirting upwards across her abdomen. It takes some effort to steady her hand as she feels her nipples firming, breaths shortening as he grows closer to her breasts.
The knife glances over one of those hardening peaks. Her dagger drops with a clatter to the ground and she opens her eyes – when had she closed them? – to the sight of Axsix watching her, mouth open just so, a flush high on his cheeks. Noticing her gaze, he smiles. “Perfection.”
The intensity of the scene dips as he collects her dagger from the floor and sets the pair on his desk. She can feel him taking in the sight of her entirely as he returns to her side. There is another twist of something within her, maybe panic, as she contemplates the idea that he might end the lesson here.
“Perhaps one more example,” she asks, “so I can truly understand?”
The smile she receives is sun after the rain. “I was thinking the same.”
With no more warning he guides her down to the floor. Lying back, he gestures for her to straddle him. Alāe obeys with her own smile, pressing down on him. Her blush darkens as she registers a prodding warmth at her rear.
“He threw you off,” Axsix says, though she is certain he knows she doesn’t need the reminder. “Such a waste.”
Before she can reply, the body beneath her lifts and turns, a sudden display of strength and control she had not been expecting. Her back hits the floor as he grabs her hips, dragging them up to meet his as he presses against the junction between her legs. The direct touch, obscured as it is by layers of clothing, is enough to elicit a long-suppressed moan.
Axsix’s only response is to grind against her, keeping one hand anchored on her hip while he drapes his body over hers. Their chests just barely drag against one another. That and the continued pressure at her core pull more sounds from her reluctant mouth. With his other arm braced above her head, all Alāe can see, feel, think is Axsix, and she stutters out his name as a strangled plea.
“Yes,” he hisses, and finally she feels the touch of teeth at her ear, earning the mask commander another cry of his name. “You understand perfectly.”
With that he pulls away, the air feeling cold against her poor, trembling body. The look she sends him is murderous, or would be, if she weren’t so damn worked up. His laugh is warmth down her spine. “That ends the lesson,” he says, but he doesn’t release her hip. For a moment, he seems to be focusing on her core. Then he looks up, gaze heavy, pupils blown wide. His face is that of a starving man. “But it does not need to end this.”
After so long, Alāe can recognize when Axsix has left something unsaid, and so she waits for him to speak again. It takes another few moments before his mouth moves, though at first it is near-silent. The knot in his throat bobs as he swallows. “If… if we are to continue… I would not wish for this to be just one night. I could not see you with – “ he stops again, brows furrowing.
I could not see you with someone else, her mind completes, and Alāe crosses her legs behind his back to urge him closer. Cautiously, he gives in, and she wraps her arms around his neck with a smile. “Nor would I,” she whispers into his ear, “nor could I.”
She feels, rather than hears, his breath catch. “I would not let you go,” he replies, his voice carrying all the intent of a lethal warning.
“I would not want you to.”
Alāe is not sure what comes first – his kissing her or his tearing open her shirt. All she knows is that the answering moan from one melds into the other. Axsix briefly lifts her to remove the remnants, then focuses on removing her pants, but his lips never leave hers. Her smalls are done away with as well, the sound of ripping fabric barely audible over her blood pumping in her ears.
His hands stop at the backs of her knees, pushing her legs upwards and apart. Completely exposed to his gaze, Alāe smiles a second time, brushing her hair from her eyes with one hand. The other trails downwards to her clit, Axsix’s gaze following it like a beacon. The relief that washes through her at the bare touch is a pure high, mind flooding with pleasure, amplified by the awareness that he is watching her, moaning with her.
Then he shifts, allowing her legs to brace behind him as he undoes the ties of his pants, then his own undergarments. His cock falls out, as well-proportioned as the rest of him, a line of precome glistening from his lower stomach to the tip. It is Alāe’s turn to watch as he palms himself a few times, his head falling back as he breathes her name.
“Axsix,” she whispers, clenching around nothing as she watches more pre trail from his length. He answers with a quiet laugh, adjusting their bodies so that his tip could press against the heat of her core, her legs settled against his shoulders.
“Alāe…” he sighs and guides himself in. Alāe goes from feeling mournfully empty to blissfully full as he continues to press, inch by inch. His shoulders tense from the slow pace, but he keeps his movements steady, predictable, until their hips are flush. “Perfection.”
She is about to reply when he kisses her again, lips giving way to tongue as he gives a few experimental thrusts. The drag of his cock has her walls tightening – after everything, she can feel herself balanced on a razor’s edge – and he responds with a buck of his hips. “I – “Alāe gasps, fingers working again, caught between the urge to come and the desire to stay in that precarious high, “Axsix, I need-“
This time when he kisses her, it’s half bite, and then he’s driving his length back into her, all gentleness gone. Each of his movements is sharp, precise. Each thrust has him bottoming out against her, his sack gently slapping against the curve of her ass. One of his hands fists in her hair, angling her head to the side.
There’s another sharp bite to her ear and she flies past orgasm into oblivion, her moans choking out as she screams. Her thighs tense, toes curing, and she knows he knows she’s coming but she tries to tell him anyway, tries and fails to say anything other than his name and strangled praise. The hand in her hair tightens, tilting her to meet his gaze, and there’s a sob in her voice and tears in her eyes as the thought of Axsix wipes her mind.
His thrusts are gentler now, guiding her through the haze with praise murmured between light kisses. The first thing Alāe notices when she comes down from her high is her body’s trembling. The second thing she notices is his expression. She never thought his peridot eyes could be so warm, but there it was, paired with a lazy, self-satisfied smile. Smiling back, she lowers her legs to wrap around his waist, pulling him back in to the hilt.
“M’okay.”
“Good.” His head drops to her neck and he sighs. “I’m close.”
Alāe can’t help but laugh, enjoying the feeling of the unconscious tightening around his length. “I’m glad I didn’t miss it.”
He laughs as well, speeding up his pace. His gaze sweeps over her once more, but she is too blissed-out to even think about being self-conscious. There’s approval in his eyes, humming, “You are beautiful, but especially like this.”
“Fucked out beneath you, you mean?” He groans at her words, his eyes finally closing as the slap of skin-against-skin fills the room.
“Yes.” Rather than say more, he angles his hips, and there’s something like pride in his eyes as she gasps at the feeling of her arousal coming back with a vengeance. One of his hands lands near where they are joined, thumb circling her clit, while the other returns to her hair, gentler, reassuring. The new angle – the new depth – had her whimpering as he brushed that spot within her folds, tightening with each slide of his cock. Above her, she can hear the faint sounds of muttered Gha’alian, mixed with groans of her name.
“Axsix –“ she gasps, feeling his teeth once again teasing her skin. “Please, please come – please, commander –“
Axsix snarls, his pace going feral and his hold on her tightening as he slammed within her. He rides out the high of his own pleasure with a muffled groan against her neck, grinding against her hips with each instinctual thrust. Alāe can feel his heart hammering through his clothed chest as he stills to catch his breath. She gives him a teasing squeeze of her depths and smiles as he groans.
They lie like that a moment longer, then he shifts, drawing out of her almost as slowly as he had entered. Though some primal part of her is disappointed, Alāe feels bliss from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, and she would not ask him to –
That thought wings out of her brain as two of his fingers enter her, replacing his cock and crooking to find that spot again, thumb working her clit as his other hand grips one of her thighs. Intensity hangs over Axsix like a shroud as he fucks her with his hand, his eyes never leaving her, and it does not take long for her to come again, this time skipping past sobbing for incoherent cries. As before, he works her through it, his touch growing gentler but never leaving her wanting. He eases her off her pleasure with all the attention of a lover – which, she realizes perhaps a little late, he is. A moment later he withdraws his fingers, then offers them to her wordlessly.
Eyes falling shut, she takes them into her mouth and cleans them. She is too tired to answer his moan, but is pleased to be pleasing him all the same. He follows that with a kiss, then lifts her from the floor. Boneless, she allows him to carry her through one of the doors adjoining his office, revealing a well-furnished bedroom. Alāe sighs as he sets her down on the bed.
He steps away only to properly disrobe, then joins her, pulling her close beneath the sheets. Her head falls against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him – of them. A thought occurs to her, swirling in the general haze of sleep and satisfaction.
“When did you know?”
One of his hands trails down her spine. “You’ve… you’ve shown signs of a deeper attraction for some time. I could not tell the extent.”
A laugh bubbles up from her chest. “So you thought to drive me mad?”
“I thought to show you what it could be like.” He sighs, tangling his legs with hers. “I thought to help you determine where – with whom, if anyone – you wished to be.”
Alāe pulls back just enough to look him in the eye. “And where is that?”
The answer sits behind her eyes, in the curve of her spine, in the twist of her lips as she smiles at him. His answer is another sigh, his body relaxing, arms tightening to pull her flush against him.
Here, together.