Post by Imogen on Jun 19, 2009 9:27:07 GMT 10
Title: Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Food (#4)
Summary: If you want a do right all day woman / You've gotta be a do right all night man
WARNING: het!fic ahead. It's as explicit as the Alanna books, so not very. Title and lyrics are from a classic soul song that I first heard on the soundtrack for The Commitments. Thanks to Sally and Fenella for all their advice.
Jon finds her in the Great Hall wrapped in a scarlet silk dressing gown, black hair falling loose down her back, feet bare.
“What are you doing, darling?” he says, picking his way carefully around sticky spills and trodden-on foodstuffs. His voice echoes, loud and muffled, around the empty space, off the high ceiling. Only a few live torches of the many fixtures lining the walls interrupt the quiet dark. It smells like sweet, stale liquor and old smoke.
Thayet startles. “Oh, it’s you.”
“So it is.” He can’t stop a huge yawn, jaw cracking. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” She’s speaking, distracted, at last night’s banquet. There are long, polished wooden tables, evenly spaced; plush-lined chairs in haphazard disarray; cutlery and cups stained and strewn about; partly-demolished platters of meats and cakes and breads.
“So many of our people are hungry,” she says, “their crops ruined by the strain that the Jewel's magic has placed on the land. And we hold feasts as though nothing is wrong. As though we can afford to throw food away. I told the servants to save the leftovers to hand out in the Lower City.”
Jon stops in front of her. “This is why I married you,” he says reasonably. “So that you could fix all the things we do wrong.”
She frowns past him at the empty room. “Where are Beulah and Larson?”
“I told them to go wake Raoul to detail a few of the Own. They’ll help distribute the food at dawn and protect the servants. I don’t want any riots.”
She nods in absent agreement.
“The servants will be back in an hour for the food. Also,” Jon says, “I locked the doors.”
That gets her attention. Thayet holds his gaze; her eyes flash. A long moment draws out like a taut thread. The silence pools and spreads until it is louder than their soft breaths. Then, she places her hand, palm flat, on his white cotton nightshirt and presses against his chest.
Jon backs up slowly, lets her push him into the nearest table. He sits when the backs of his thighs hit the edge, lowers himself to his elbows, to his back, all the while watching her as she watches him: the light catches one high cheekbone, the hollow between two collarbones, her outstretched arm, while the rest of her is shadowed. His head hits something light on the way down. It goes flying off the table, clatters to the floor. Several hundred little candies spill off a wooden stand in a hissing fountain and skitter into the darkness, the clicks of shiny sugar against polished stone ringing out loudly, long after they are out of sight.
Thayet is laughing and Jon’s smirk bursts through his beard as she hikes up her dressing gown and climbs on top of him.
In the morning, the cleaning staff spends a long time grumbling about the nuisance. They keep finding more and more of the red sugared hearts to pick up, scattered all over the floor of the Great Hall.
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Food (#4)
Summary: If you want a do right all day woman / You've gotta be a do right all night man
WARNING: het!fic ahead. It's as explicit as the Alanna books, so not very. Title and lyrics are from a classic soul song that I first heard on the soundtrack for The Commitments. Thanks to Sally and Fenella for all their advice.
Jon finds her in the Great Hall wrapped in a scarlet silk dressing gown, black hair falling loose down her back, feet bare.
“What are you doing, darling?” he says, picking his way carefully around sticky spills and trodden-on foodstuffs. His voice echoes, loud and muffled, around the empty space, off the high ceiling. Only a few live torches of the many fixtures lining the walls interrupt the quiet dark. It smells like sweet, stale liquor and old smoke.
Thayet startles. “Oh, it’s you.”
“So it is.” He can’t stop a huge yawn, jaw cracking. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” She’s speaking, distracted, at last night’s banquet. There are long, polished wooden tables, evenly spaced; plush-lined chairs in haphazard disarray; cutlery and cups stained and strewn about; partly-demolished platters of meats and cakes and breads.
“So many of our people are hungry,” she says, “their crops ruined by the strain that the Jewel's magic has placed on the land. And we hold feasts as though nothing is wrong. As though we can afford to throw food away. I told the servants to save the leftovers to hand out in the Lower City.”
Jon stops in front of her. “This is why I married you,” he says reasonably. “So that you could fix all the things we do wrong.”
She frowns past him at the empty room. “Where are Beulah and Larson?”
“I told them to go wake Raoul to detail a few of the Own. They’ll help distribute the food at dawn and protect the servants. I don’t want any riots.”
She nods in absent agreement.
“The servants will be back in an hour for the food. Also,” Jon says, “I locked the doors.”
That gets her attention. Thayet holds his gaze; her eyes flash. A long moment draws out like a taut thread. The silence pools and spreads until it is louder than their soft breaths. Then, she places her hand, palm flat, on his white cotton nightshirt and presses against his chest.
Jon backs up slowly, lets her push him into the nearest table. He sits when the backs of his thighs hit the edge, lowers himself to his elbows, to his back, all the while watching her as she watches him: the light catches one high cheekbone, the hollow between two collarbones, her outstretched arm, while the rest of her is shadowed. His head hits something light on the way down. It goes flying off the table, clatters to the floor. Several hundred little candies spill off a wooden stand in a hissing fountain and skitter into the darkness, the clicks of shiny sugar against polished stone ringing out loudly, long after they are out of sight.
Thayet is laughing and Jon’s smirk bursts through his beard as she hikes up her dressing gown and climbs on top of him.
In the morning, the cleaning staff spends a long time grumbling about the nuisance. They keep finding more and more of the red sugared hearts to pick up, scattered all over the floor of the Great Hall.
These beautiful, beautiful people. Of course, put together they only make more beautiful 
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!