Soothe [Baccano!, Chane/Claire, R]
Title: Soothe
Author/Artist: eleni459
Rating: R
Warnings: suggestions of oral; m/f sex; some relived violence outside of a sexual context and not between the couple
Word count: 2504
Summary: It takes time to heal in the aftermath.
Even after all that had happened, he wasn’t worried. He had imagined an infinite number of scenarios for their the big day just in case. Some were the kind of sickening, flowers-and-puppy-strewn fantasies of a person who had yet to be crushed by the realities of love. Others merged love with the knee-deep viscera of his day job. Still others took the middle path and depicted a polite ceremony that was naturally followed by a raucous reception fueled by imported liquor. The most important part, to him at least, was that they all ended happily ever after.
But there had been a few deviations. Even he was capable of not looking far enough ahead to see the return of Ladd Russo. And even he could not have factored in the possibility that he and Chane would be momentarily separated. Still, he wasn’t afraid. He could trust her to take care of herself. Had he any doubts before, she acquitted herself swimmingly during the ceremony. Before they separated, he managed to get her to promise to meet him back at the hotel. He figured that his positive thinking combined with her promise was enough to convince the winds of fate to blow his way.
But that didn’t mean that she would return to him quickly. This, like all good things in life, took time. He tidied up the room to pass that time. A mountain of towels was used to mop up the dried blood and mud. He showered and tossed aside his ruined suit. He watched with an interested eye as the swirl of water gradually turned clear. He dressed in the silk pajamas provided by the hotel. It felt strange to him to wear something so refined but he didn’t feel uncomfortable in the new skin. He half-heartedly luxuriated on the overstuffed bed but did not do so before making (and remaking) it.
He rose to attention when he heard the lock click. Swiftly, he moved toward the door and attempted to prepare himself for whatever would walk through the door. He sighed in quiet relief when red-lacquered fingers slipped through to grab hold of the door. He reached out, grabbed the hand, and carefully led its owner into the room. “Chane,” he whispered, “you’re home.”
It wasn’t apparent to him that she was happy to be there. There was something strangely withdrawn about her wide-eyed stare. Though her body was covered by a purloined trench coat, he could tell that she was tense. Her hair was mussed and her face was specked with blood. He glanced down and noted a series of slashes against her leg through the holes in her dress. “It’s okay. Come on,” he said as he wrapped an arm across her shoulders. “You’ll feel better after a nice, warm shower.” She didn’t resist.
* * *
She didn’t tell him about the last two men. It wasn’t something that she had tried to hide from him. Claire had noticed the copious amounts of blood on her knives and assumed the best. Who was she to lead him to believe otherwise?
And yet she shut him out of the bathroom the moment she got the chance. Something in her knew that it might be one of her last moments to herself. She wanted to enjoy it as best she could.
She undressed with a surprising amount of ease. Whatever damage she had sustained during the ceremony had, so far, failed to make its painful presence known. Then again, she was known for her hardy constitution. Claire himself said it was one of most overlooked but endearing traits. But Claire couldn’t notice everything. This night, he managed to overlook the gash in the back of the trench coat. She had started to cut it off of an injured Russo thug before he realized that the path of least resistance was best when facing off to a knife-wielding woman. He had yelled something about how she had let him live to see Ladd waltz on her corpse. He hadn’t expected him to kick him in the face afterward. He had mistaken her gift to him as an act of feminine weakness.
The state of the dress did distress her. Claire had chosen it with care. She still remembered the huge smile he wore when he presented it to her. Everyone who saw it agreed that it was a work of art. Now the intricate lace was slashed and bloodied. The silk was stiff after being inundated from the sweat. Bits of the skirt broke away when she stepped out of the dress. And yet, of all things, the garter seemed in fine condition. She placed it to the side for later. Claire, she thought, would like to see what had survived the ceremony.
She showered quickly. For her, the sooner the gore was gone, the quicker she could get back to normal. And yet she couldn’t get the two men out of her mind. Why had she let them live? Sure, she had left them badly injured, but they would heal and live to fight another day. She had no predilection against killing. She had killed a man mere minutes before her run in with these particular goons. They weren’t special: neither was particularly young or old, weak or strong. But she let them go.
And she decided to let the memory of them go as the water trickled to a stop. She dried off with one of the remaining towels. Carefully, she replaced the garter and wrapped herself in a plush white robe. As she combed her hair, she heard a light rapping at the door. She crept up to the door and placed her ear to it. “Chane, are you done?” Reflexively, she nodded, remembered that he couldn’t see her, and knocked on the door in reply.
“Ah, good.” He opened the door. She looked down to see her knives cleaned and resting on a small pillow. “I thought I’d save you the trouble. Is this good?”
She smiled and nodded.
“Great,” he said, smiling. He took her hand and said, “You should go to the bed. I’ll fix you up.”
* * *
There were bruises. He would catalogue them later, tucking that information away for another date. He would find the lousy bastards who did this - if they had managed to live through the ceremony - and peel their skins away with his fingers. But they, for the moment, were gone and she was here. And she was the one who needed to be tended to.
He had Chane prop herself up on the bed. He smiled at the sight of her white robed form floating on a sea of cream-colored fluff. Cloth in hand, he took a seat at the edge of the bed. Gently, he pushed back the edge of her robe. The scratches looked different in another light, fainter and less heinous. Yet he decided to wrap them anyway. Just in case.
“You know, you don’t have worry about anyone back at the mansion,” he said. “I called over a little while ago. Everyone’s fine.” He looked up into her quizzical expression. “Well, not too fine,” he clarified before turning back to her leg, “but they were all up and walking. And your friend Jacuzzi was still crying. He got to take out three guys before his friend blew the other two up. I don’t see what he has to cry about. Your other friend agreed…not that that means anything.”
He looked up again to see her hide a smile behind her hand. Grinning, he added, “And it was a good thing to use the Genoard girl’s house. It’s not like she’ll tell. The Gandor’s will send their cleaners in and everything will be as good as new. So everything turned out okay.”
As he tied off the cloth, he added, “It sounded like they had managed to bust out the champagne. Good for them but…but that should have been ours.” He ran his hand across the bandage and asked, “You’re fine with this, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“I mean, you’re fine with all of this? It’s not what anyone would have wanted.”
Her eyes momentarily rolled up as she seemingly contemplated his question. Slowly, she shook her head from side to side. She pulled herself up from her pillow mound and leaned forward. Her hand reached out and lightly ruffled his hair before falling back into the pillows.
“I guess it’ll have to do,” he said with a sigh. He leaned down toward her leg and, by chance, noticed something strange just inside the robe. He pushed it back further to reveal the wedding garter. The only issues with it that he could detect were the stray flecks of blood that dotted the lace. He leaned in closer, letting the tip of his nose touch the outer bands as his eyes scanned for further imperfections. “Great save, Chane! Absolutely great!”
He glanced up toward her blushing face and said, “I think the rest of the night might not be so bad.”
* * *
It was a strange sensation. His breath trailed gently up her thigh as his hands held firm near her knees. She knew where this was heading. She had heard Nice make various jokes about something like this before. They were always sort of vague and caused every man within a certain area to blush. Even though she knew what was coming, no one had told her what to expect.
She would have been on pins and needles regardless. Each haltingly cold breath sent a shiver throughout her body. Each slip of his fingers against her leg sent every nerve into overdrive. It was almost overwhelming. And yet she couldn’t pull away. She would have sunk deeper into his caresses had he not held her so securely in place. All she could do was sit and wait.
The first flick of his tongue left her gasping for air. While her hands had occasionally traveled to that area, the sensation he brought forth was entirely different. And yet each resulting touch didn’t elicit that same feeling. Each following caress seemed softer and less calculated. At the same time, it was really no less pleasurable. She could feel a steady, low throbbing hum building up throughout her body.
She couldn’t keep still. She wanted to squirm, shift, or reach out and grab whatever was there. Claire’s stunningly steady hands squelched each act of bodily defiance. But his touch here was not so welcome. The hum was building within her and she wanted it to culminate. Each grab from him kept her building at the same slow pace that she found to be unbearable. It had to be changed.
Quickly, she shifted up to her elbows. Claire’s hands jutted out but didn’t find her own on hands in the suspected spots. She sat up and, as over-stimulated as she was, pulled her legs in. He sat up and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Was it…?” he began to ask. She lurched forward and crashed her mouth into his before any other words could come forth.
He gave her a comically confused expression once the kissed released. She smiled. He didn’t know what was in store for him.
* * *
It was a challenge to remove his clothes. Fingers that had once been so deft and sure fumbled when they were forced to untie strings or unbutton buttons. And Chane, despite being so helpful in other ways, was no help at this. She had already moved to the front. She knocked his hand away from his pants. She placed her own hand in front of his half unbuttoned shirt and pushed him into the mound of pillows on which she had once resided. She removed her robe and tossed it to the floor. With a small amount of tugging, she pulled his pants to his knees.
There was something strange to him about watching his naked wife stare down at his nearly naked form. But she dissipated this fear with a shrug of her shoulders. She stepped onto the bed and hovered over him. A hand reached out and grabbed his swollen member. He shut his eyes and let the movement overtake him. He didn’t want to bother with what she was actually doing. The sensation was enough.
Yet he did not miss when she stopped to try and move the action forward. “Are you sure that you’re ready?” he asked hoarsely.
She nodded.
That was all he needed. He watched her bite her lip as it broke the threshold. That, in and of itself, was almost enough to keep him going. He didn’t expect her to rock so swiftly against him. He reached out and grabbed onto her hips. Carefully, he guided them to a rhythm that they both could sustain. He hissed and moaned against the grinding of her body. She was calm throughout as she rocked against him. Her hands rolled forward and grasped at his stomach. Her nails trailed red scratches as the rubbed up and down his body.
He reached out and cupped her breast. In a flash, they were nearly face-to-face. He moved just a hair closer and lightly licked the tip of her chin. She gritted hard and began to buck against him. He met her fervor instantly. He loved to watch her move.
He was completely transfixed by the image of her climax. He felt her slightly shudder into their last thrust. He looked up to see her silent mouth opened and her body rigid against his own. He felt her move inside and quickly urge him on to his own climax.
By the time he finished, she had crumbled to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his side. It was, in the end, all that he needed. They were for each other.
* * *
She was entangled in his arms. At some point Claire had taken off his shirt after complaining about an itchy discomfort. But that was nearly an hour earlier. By this point, she wasn’t even sure if he was still awake. And yet it was good to just lie there, however sweaty or awkward she might be, and be together.
She nuzzled underneath his chin and felt him stir. She wrapped an arm across his body and hugged him tightly.
“Chane?” he asked. She nodded.
“Next year, let’s chase those bastards down,” he said. “They made the first hit. We’ll make the second. Or third. Or fourth. Until there aren’t anymore of them. Sound like a plan?” She nodded.
“And next time,” he said softly, “maybe I can lead. Not that I minded. But I could always use the practice.”
She smiled and nodded. He hugged her closer and planted a kiss on top of her head. Despite it all, Chane knew that this was as good as it would get.
It was best to enjoy it while it lasted.
Author/Artist: eleni459
Rating: R
Warnings: suggestions of oral; m/f sex; some relived violence outside of a sexual context and not between the couple
Word count: 2504
Summary: It takes time to heal in the aftermath.
Even after all that had happened, he wasn’t worried. He had imagined an infinite number of scenarios for their the big day just in case. Some were the kind of sickening, flowers-and-puppy-strewn fantasies of a person who had yet to be crushed by the realities of love. Others merged love with the knee-deep viscera of his day job. Still others took the middle path and depicted a polite ceremony that was naturally followed by a raucous reception fueled by imported liquor. The most important part, to him at least, was that they all ended happily ever after.
But there had been a few deviations. Even he was capable of not looking far enough ahead to see the return of Ladd Russo. And even he could not have factored in the possibility that he and Chane would be momentarily separated. Still, he wasn’t afraid. He could trust her to take care of herself. Had he any doubts before, she acquitted herself swimmingly during the ceremony. Before they separated, he managed to get her to promise to meet him back at the hotel. He figured that his positive thinking combined with her promise was enough to convince the winds of fate to blow his way.
But that didn’t mean that she would return to him quickly. This, like all good things in life, took time. He tidied up the room to pass that time. A mountain of towels was used to mop up the dried blood and mud. He showered and tossed aside his ruined suit. He watched with an interested eye as the swirl of water gradually turned clear. He dressed in the silk pajamas provided by the hotel. It felt strange to him to wear something so refined but he didn’t feel uncomfortable in the new skin. He half-heartedly luxuriated on the overstuffed bed but did not do so before making (and remaking) it.
He rose to attention when he heard the lock click. Swiftly, he moved toward the door and attempted to prepare himself for whatever would walk through the door. He sighed in quiet relief when red-lacquered fingers slipped through to grab hold of the door. He reached out, grabbed the hand, and carefully led its owner into the room. “Chane,” he whispered, “you’re home.”
It wasn’t apparent to him that she was happy to be there. There was something strangely withdrawn about her wide-eyed stare. Though her body was covered by a purloined trench coat, he could tell that she was tense. Her hair was mussed and her face was specked with blood. He glanced down and noted a series of slashes against her leg through the holes in her dress. “It’s okay. Come on,” he said as he wrapped an arm across her shoulders. “You’ll feel better after a nice, warm shower.” She didn’t resist.
* * *
She didn’t tell him about the last two men. It wasn’t something that she had tried to hide from him. Claire had noticed the copious amounts of blood on her knives and assumed the best. Who was she to lead him to believe otherwise?
And yet she shut him out of the bathroom the moment she got the chance. Something in her knew that it might be one of her last moments to herself. She wanted to enjoy it as best she could.
She undressed with a surprising amount of ease. Whatever damage she had sustained during the ceremony had, so far, failed to make its painful presence known. Then again, she was known for her hardy constitution. Claire himself said it was one of most overlooked but endearing traits. But Claire couldn’t notice everything. This night, he managed to overlook the gash in the back of the trench coat. She had started to cut it off of an injured Russo thug before he realized that the path of least resistance was best when facing off to a knife-wielding woman. He had yelled something about how she had let him live to see Ladd waltz on her corpse. He hadn’t expected him to kick him in the face afterward. He had mistaken her gift to him as an act of feminine weakness.
The state of the dress did distress her. Claire had chosen it with care. She still remembered the huge smile he wore when he presented it to her. Everyone who saw it agreed that it was a work of art. Now the intricate lace was slashed and bloodied. The silk was stiff after being inundated from the sweat. Bits of the skirt broke away when she stepped out of the dress. And yet, of all things, the garter seemed in fine condition. She placed it to the side for later. Claire, she thought, would like to see what had survived the ceremony.
She showered quickly. For her, the sooner the gore was gone, the quicker she could get back to normal. And yet she couldn’t get the two men out of her mind. Why had she let them live? Sure, she had left them badly injured, but they would heal and live to fight another day. She had no predilection against killing. She had killed a man mere minutes before her run in with these particular goons. They weren’t special: neither was particularly young or old, weak or strong. But she let them go.
And she decided to let the memory of them go as the water trickled to a stop. She dried off with one of the remaining towels. Carefully, she replaced the garter and wrapped herself in a plush white robe. As she combed her hair, she heard a light rapping at the door. She crept up to the door and placed her ear to it. “Chane, are you done?” Reflexively, she nodded, remembered that he couldn’t see her, and knocked on the door in reply.
“Ah, good.” He opened the door. She looked down to see her knives cleaned and resting on a small pillow. “I thought I’d save you the trouble. Is this good?”
She smiled and nodded.
“Great,” he said, smiling. He took her hand and said, “You should go to the bed. I’ll fix you up.”
* * *
There were bruises. He would catalogue them later, tucking that information away for another date. He would find the lousy bastards who did this - if they had managed to live through the ceremony - and peel their skins away with his fingers. But they, for the moment, were gone and she was here. And she was the one who needed to be tended to.
He had Chane prop herself up on the bed. He smiled at the sight of her white robed form floating on a sea of cream-colored fluff. Cloth in hand, he took a seat at the edge of the bed. Gently, he pushed back the edge of her robe. The scratches looked different in another light, fainter and less heinous. Yet he decided to wrap them anyway. Just in case.
“You know, you don’t have worry about anyone back at the mansion,” he said. “I called over a little while ago. Everyone’s fine.” He looked up into her quizzical expression. “Well, not too fine,” he clarified before turning back to her leg, “but they were all up and walking. And your friend Jacuzzi was still crying. He got to take out three guys before his friend blew the other two up. I don’t see what he has to cry about. Your other friend agreed…not that that means anything.”
He looked up again to see her hide a smile behind her hand. Grinning, he added, “And it was a good thing to use the Genoard girl’s house. It’s not like she’ll tell. The Gandor’s will send their cleaners in and everything will be as good as new. So everything turned out okay.”
As he tied off the cloth, he added, “It sounded like they had managed to bust out the champagne. Good for them but…but that should have been ours.” He ran his hand across the bandage and asked, “You’re fine with this, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“I mean, you’re fine with all of this? It’s not what anyone would have wanted.”
Her eyes momentarily rolled up as she seemingly contemplated his question. Slowly, she shook her head from side to side. She pulled herself up from her pillow mound and leaned forward. Her hand reached out and lightly ruffled his hair before falling back into the pillows.
“I guess it’ll have to do,” he said with a sigh. He leaned down toward her leg and, by chance, noticed something strange just inside the robe. He pushed it back further to reveal the wedding garter. The only issues with it that he could detect were the stray flecks of blood that dotted the lace. He leaned in closer, letting the tip of his nose touch the outer bands as his eyes scanned for further imperfections. “Great save, Chane! Absolutely great!”
He glanced up toward her blushing face and said, “I think the rest of the night might not be so bad.”
* * *
It was a strange sensation. His breath trailed gently up her thigh as his hands held firm near her knees. She knew where this was heading. She had heard Nice make various jokes about something like this before. They were always sort of vague and caused every man within a certain area to blush. Even though she knew what was coming, no one had told her what to expect.
She would have been on pins and needles regardless. Each haltingly cold breath sent a shiver throughout her body. Each slip of his fingers against her leg sent every nerve into overdrive. It was almost overwhelming. And yet she couldn’t pull away. She would have sunk deeper into his caresses had he not held her so securely in place. All she could do was sit and wait.
The first flick of his tongue left her gasping for air. While her hands had occasionally traveled to that area, the sensation he brought forth was entirely different. And yet each resulting touch didn’t elicit that same feeling. Each following caress seemed softer and less calculated. At the same time, it was really no less pleasurable. She could feel a steady, low throbbing hum building up throughout her body.
She couldn’t keep still. She wanted to squirm, shift, or reach out and grab whatever was there. Claire’s stunningly steady hands squelched each act of bodily defiance. But his touch here was not so welcome. The hum was building within her and she wanted it to culminate. Each grab from him kept her building at the same slow pace that she found to be unbearable. It had to be changed.
Quickly, she shifted up to her elbows. Claire’s hands jutted out but didn’t find her own on hands in the suspected spots. She sat up and, as over-stimulated as she was, pulled her legs in. He sat up and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Was it…?” he began to ask. She lurched forward and crashed her mouth into his before any other words could come forth.
He gave her a comically confused expression once the kissed released. She smiled. He didn’t know what was in store for him.
* * *
It was a challenge to remove his clothes. Fingers that had once been so deft and sure fumbled when they were forced to untie strings or unbutton buttons. And Chane, despite being so helpful in other ways, was no help at this. She had already moved to the front. She knocked his hand away from his pants. She placed her own hand in front of his half unbuttoned shirt and pushed him into the mound of pillows on which she had once resided. She removed her robe and tossed it to the floor. With a small amount of tugging, she pulled his pants to his knees.
There was something strange to him about watching his naked wife stare down at his nearly naked form. But she dissipated this fear with a shrug of her shoulders. She stepped onto the bed and hovered over him. A hand reached out and grabbed his swollen member. He shut his eyes and let the movement overtake him. He didn’t want to bother with what she was actually doing. The sensation was enough.
Yet he did not miss when she stopped to try and move the action forward. “Are you sure that you’re ready?” he asked hoarsely.
She nodded.
That was all he needed. He watched her bite her lip as it broke the threshold. That, in and of itself, was almost enough to keep him going. He didn’t expect her to rock so swiftly against him. He reached out and grabbed onto her hips. Carefully, he guided them to a rhythm that they both could sustain. He hissed and moaned against the grinding of her body. She was calm throughout as she rocked against him. Her hands rolled forward and grasped at his stomach. Her nails trailed red scratches as the rubbed up and down his body.
He reached out and cupped her breast. In a flash, they were nearly face-to-face. He moved just a hair closer and lightly licked the tip of her chin. She gritted hard and began to buck against him. He met her fervor instantly. He loved to watch her move.
He was completely transfixed by the image of her climax. He felt her slightly shudder into their last thrust. He looked up to see her silent mouth opened and her body rigid against his own. He felt her move inside and quickly urge him on to his own climax.
By the time he finished, she had crumbled to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his side. It was, in the end, all that he needed. They were for each other.
* * *
She was entangled in his arms. At some point Claire had taken off his shirt after complaining about an itchy discomfort. But that was nearly an hour earlier. By this point, she wasn’t even sure if he was still awake. And yet it was good to just lie there, however sweaty or awkward she might be, and be together.
She nuzzled underneath his chin and felt him stir. She wrapped an arm across his body and hugged him tightly.
“Chane?” he asked. She nodded.
“Next year, let’s chase those bastards down,” he said. “They made the first hit. We’ll make the second. Or third. Or fourth. Until there aren’t anymore of them. Sound like a plan?” She nodded.
“And next time,” he said softly, “maybe I can lead. Not that I minded. But I could always use the practice.”
She smiled and nodded. He hugged her closer and planted a kiss on top of her head. Despite it all, Chane knew that this was as good as it would get.
It was best to enjoy it while it lasted.