No Greater Flattery [Suikoden V, Lucretia/Lelei, R]
Title: No Greater Flattery
Author:
logistika_nyx
Characters/Pairings: Lucretia/Lelei, Marscal, Cius
Rating/Warnings: R - ish, f/f
Word count: 4000
Prompt: Prison sex, seduction, power dynamics - "She stood out from the other prisoners like an exotic orchid in a field of tulips."
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i: Lelei doesn't know this game
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Lucretia's gold all over. Hair, skin, heart.
You’ve wondered about that before, assessing the white of Lucretia’s eyes against the tan of her skin. Other prisoners, even ones that have windows, don’t ever look anything other than ill-fed and pallid. You assumed gold was just in her blood.
Now you see how she gets her tan, you don’t ever want to un-see, you don’t ever want to stop looking--
Her eyes are closed, her hair spread like a fan of yellow satin instead of white feather. The sun, falling through her unbarred window, bathes her in glory. The rise and fall of her breath has the flesh of her stomach shift with a sensuous softness, shadowed navel, high ribcage, wide hipped. The triangle between her legs tufts with darker gold, not thick enough to hide the edge.
--stop looking
It’s been so long since you’ve seen anything but the spare muscle of a soldier, the poor flesh of a prisoner. The luxury of Lucretia’s softness is dreamlike.
After a moment, Lucretia stirs. Her neck holds a gracious arc so the fall of her hair doesn’t tangle. Without opening her eyes, she turns, presenting buttocks and heels to the sun. Her breasts swing heavy, full, lush; as she lowers herself, heat-kissed, swollen nipples kiss the floor in turn.
Cold stone. Your own nipples tighten; not quite in ‘sympathy’.
--stop looking
You slam the eyehole shut.
“All ok?” Cius asks.
“Of course,” you say.
Your voice is so hoarse it’s a wonder he says nothing in return.
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ii: Lelei wants to play
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Marscal comes and goes, infrequent, then too frequent. With or without Queen Arshtat’s say-so. You don’t ask. It’s not a guard’s duty to ask what passes between a lord and his Queen.
It’s a guard’s duty to keep guard, and that’s everything.
When Lord Godwin visits Lucretia, you all draw straws with the losers taking the duty. This job’s boring enough as it is, and no one wants to suffer through Marscal and Lucretia’s tolerant silences. Even the games they play, tiles, chess, cards, can’t tempt a guard through the boredom. They don’t play the way everyone else does; they don’t gamble on anything that would interest a guard.
You keep a short straw in your pocket like your own little bad luck charm. It doesn’t take you long to work out how to lose. Every time.
Cius stops backing your bets. Apart from that, he wears your losing streak with an easy grin.
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iii: --but Lucretia masters every board
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Marscal sweats, his scalp shining. Glittering in the sun. He’s not comfortable, for all Lucretia is his captive and he is the lord here.
With a lazy curl of her wrist, Lucretia unfolds her fan. Perfume wafts, heavy like purple orchids. The thick scent masks Marscal’s sweat and the prevalent starch of his collar. The feathered fan covers Lucretia’s lips, to hide the triangular smile that lurks there. Her eyes are unveiled, unwavering, bright in the dark of her skin.
“You’re about to lose,” Marscal tells her.
Lucretia inclines her head, gracefully. “Perhaps.”
“No,” Marscal growls, “you’re about to lose, Lucretia. You’ve lost. You’ve lost everything. Everything. Even command over your own life. I could order you killed.”
Her smile’s edge cuts through the softness of her fan. “Perhaps.”
Marscal reaches forward, intemperate, and snaps another piece forward. With a pointed finger, he knocks over Lucretia’s black Ruler.
“You’ve lost.”
“I have,” Lucretia says. She inclines her head, the rhythm of her fan slow, uninterrupted. “A well-played game, Lord Godwin.”
Marscal thrusts back his chair so rapidly it catches you unawares where you stand at his shoulder. The leg collides with your booted shin; the carved back cracks on your less-protected hipbone. Cius’s hand steadies you as you swallow a gasp. Marscal moves to the door, oblivious.
Lucretia catches your eye. Her brief smile seems sympathetic. You limp a little as you walk to the door in Marscal’s wake even though it doesn’t really hurt that much.
Outside the cell, Marscal leans with his wrist on the wall, his forehead on his wrist.
“You keep her comfortable,” he asks, not a question, addressed to the stone.
“Sir,” Cius says.
“You get her everything she needs.”
“Sir.”
“She’s not permitted to harm herself.”
“We check on the hour,” you say, “every hour. As per your initial instructions. My lord.”
“But you don’t go in there,” he states, “you don’t talk to her.”
“No, sir,” Cius says.
“…except when we deliver her food.”
Marscal’s rage terrifies you, for that you’ve never seen it before. You can’t even see his face, can’t focus. He holds himself so close to you his moustache prickles on your cheek, his breath wine-heavy, redolent. Over his shoulder, you can see Cius has lost his smile. A shame.
“You are not,” Marscal says, softly, “permitted to speak to her. She’s not flesh and blood like the rest of us. She is all mind, a devious mind, plotting, considering. She has no passions of the flesh, no consideration for the flaws that make us mortal. She plays games as though we’re all pieces here for her enjoyment, and win or lose, she thinks herself exempt from consequence. You will not speak with her.”
“Sir,” Cius breathes, “yes sir. Lelei. Lelei.”
Against the weight of Marscal’s regard, you breathe an acknowledgement--
“…sir.”
--but you’ll be damned if you’ll agree with him.
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iv: Lelei wonders why Lucretia plays if she always wins
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You examine the chess board once you get it back into the guard room. You don’t really have the knowledge necessary to analyze the scenario properly. You made sure Cius didn’t knock any of the pieces over when he carried it out of Lucretia’s cell, and your memory’s enough that you can recall the sequence of moves, of quadrants lost and gained, and you know the basics of the game --
Still, it doesn’t make any sense.
Lucretia conceded Marscal the white to begin with, the advantage of the first move. She failed to protect her Ruler. She surrendered control of the centre early on. Her Soldiers never developed the skeletal structure to defend or control even a small amount of the board. She sacrificed Dragon-Knights and Priestesses alike.
Lucretia lost, deliberately.
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v: Lelei doesn't know if she wants to win or lose
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You and Cius have always taken turns at the eyehole. He takes the first hour. You take the next. Then your relief comes, and it’s over until the next day.
It’s a strange insult to have to sneak a peek at a woman who’s as far from the cowardice of suicide as you can imagine, but Marscal won’t let her escape that way. Not now that he has her. Your watch is just another way he seeks to shame a Lady like Lucretia Merces. You try to avoid talking about it.
Usually.
Cius never says if he sees Lucretia sunbathing naked. You haven’t asked. Yet, every time you look, Lucretia’s doing exactly that. Unless it’s night, and even then you find her bathed in silver instead of gold, her breasts arching to the small square of sky permitted her.
Such decadence of curves, that sunlight or star can love alike. A woman like Lucretia has no need for muscle beyond that of the most base of human efficiencies. Lucretia, clad in sun or silver, is all languid grace, of neck to arch of spine, of heels to swell of hips.
--stop looking
It takes longer each time before you can pull yourself away from the eyehole.
You wonder if you’re going mad, surrounded by too many men. The hungry and the hard.
You wonder if maybe Lucretia knows when you’re about to look.
--if she’s doing it deliberately, just like losing to Marscal. Just like her capture. You can’t imagine a woman like her could be captured so easily, could end up in prison unless it was exactly where she wanted to be.
But that’s an even greater madness, to think Lucretia would scurry out of all her layers of formal robes, three undershifts, two layers of contrasting fabric, and the elaborate obi that holds it all together, just to tantalize a prison guard momentarily.
Madness. Maybe.
“Cius…”
“Lelei?”
“When you check on Lady Merces, is she ever…”
Cius’s smile is altogether too wholesome for your question.
“…naked?”
He shrugs, his smirk as embarrassingly wholesome as his smile. “You feeling ok, Lelei?”
“Come on, Cius. It’s just, when I look, she’s--” always-- “often naked.”
“I don’t notice, really.”
“How many other prisoners like her do we have? Of course you’d notice.” It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself. “Could you look-now--“
Compliant, he flicks back the eyehole, glances in, snaps it closed. “She’s reading.”
--don’t even think about looking
You look anyway.
Lucretia stands with her back to the door, book discarded on the chair, arms twisted behind her to reach the fold of her obi. She hasn’t had time to undress. Her robe slips, her hair still high on her head, and the naked curve of her neck, the slide of the robe down the long arch of her spine is enough.
No. It isn’t enough. It isn’t ever going to be enough.
Lucretia’s eyes are on the floor, her head tilted so you can read her profile. The robe slides, slides, caressing the graceful curve of her arms, pooling around the slenderness of wrists and waist alike. Lucretia’s eyes are nowhere near looking at the eyehole, nowhere near where your breath is too hot, too cloying, caught between the door and your lips.
Lucretia’s eyes can’t see you, but you know she knows.
Lucretia smiles as her robes fall to pool around her bare feet.
You snap the eyehole shut.
“Hmm?”
“Just reading,” you manage. “Like you said. I’m probably just-unlucky.”
Cius laughs. “You have had a bit of a streak of bad luck lately, Lelei.”
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vi: Lelei thinks she can offer a challenge
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“A strategic goal,” Lucretia says, as she pushes forward a Soldier with her smallest finger, “is achieved by the means of tactics.”
“And tactics in use are based on the previous strategy in play.” You counter with a Priestess, sliding along the diagonal.
“Precisely. Threats lead to exchanges of men or materials, pin attacks are foiled by decoys, discovered attacks are stopped by sacrifices.” Lucretia’s smile is sharper than it should be, almost a little bitter. You’ve threatened one of her Castles, but she ignores it to move a Dragon-Knight instead. “Undermining,” she says, “and interference. The true tactician can predict every variant and counter play.”
“But I don’t see how this game can relate to being a tactician in life, Lady Merces. These are short term actions with clear short term gains. Everything is so limited in its calculation that it’s entirely possibly to play out a game before making a move. Especially after the initial strategy’s been established.”
You realise why she didn’t defend her Castle. If you move to take it, you’ll leave your Ruler wide open.
“Where there’s a multitude of possibilities, tactics, strategic play, they do suffer,” Lucretia says. “In positions where there’s a limited number of variants, yes, I will agree that tactics prove far more effective than on an open, infinite field.”
“But you’ve said-“
“That everything can be predicted.” Lucretia nods a little when you shift your Queen, and promptly takes your Priestess. “It can. In terms of ‘multitudes’ of possibilities, what is a multitude?”
“…a number. A large number.”
“Exactly. And depending on the skill and training of the mind contemplating this tactical puzzle, greater and greater numbers can be considered. A multitude narrows to a mere ‘many,’ with training. Many becomes ‘some’ with experience. Some resolves to ‘just a few,’ when experience, training, learning reaches its peak in the mind of a skilled tactician. The whole world unfurls exactly as predicted to the trained mind. A seemingly endless chain of variants suddenly bound to the predicted sequence of moves.”
Your game shatters then. Lucretia moves her pieces before your hand has even left your own. The carved statues click on stone, as do Lucretia’s nails on the lacquered handle of her fan. She destroys you.
Lucretia studies the board where your forces lie defeated.
“Your opening is quite a sight,” she says. “Well played. An excellent structure. You shift strongly into your middlegame, a tangible connection to the strength of your opening. But where you lack is in resolution.”
Her eyes meet yours. Cerulean sky against gold sand.
“I’m flattered,” you tell her.
“Once you learn,” Lucretia says, “how to simplify the gains of your middlegame into the triumphant climax of an endgame, you’ll start winning.”
“Thank you, Lady Merces. It’s a privilege to play with a tactician as renowned as yourself.”
Cius helps you carry out the board, without even a single comment as to Marscal’s voided word. He’s a good partner, really. Loyal where it matters.
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vii: Lelei can't see the prize
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Strategy and tactics.
There’s a difference, you know, but it’s hard to determine in the dark like this, your knees bent and your hand between. You have to stay silent. Cius sleeps on the bunk below, the rest of your shift snoring, shifting, heaving in the blackness of the room.
Hard to discern the difference between those two, strategy and tactics. Harder to discern what you crave more, the thrust of your fingers or the grind of your palm against thick crinkled hair.
Neither. Neither. You want her. You don’t know why you want her, how you want her. To have her on her knees, giving you pleasure would be giving her control. A man would probably think the opposite, but you’re sure she’d see it that way too. She’s tempting you, teasing you already with her nakedness; it would be the last play of dominance for her to make you lose control like that. To admit she owns you, tongue, touch, talk.
Two fingers slide, slick. You can’t get the right angle. Can’t get deep enough. Your hips arch up, despite yourself. You have to bring your other hand to bear, a licked thumb, the press of the heel of your palm into the flesh above the bone.
You could take her. That’s what guards do with prisoners. You’ve heard of others doing the same. A miserable thing. A power play. Like a beast mounting another, for humiliation. Not pleasure.
You want to give her pleasure.
You want to surprise her.
The air under the blanket smells thick, heavy with your lust. You breathe through your mouth, nose against the fabric. Steady. Slow. Shallow. Lightly, light-headed. You don’t do this often, can’t in a barracks mostly full of men, because it tempts, it acknowledges who you are, female, it gives them too much advantage. Another power play there, as bad as guard versus prisoner.
To make her curl, that’s what you want to do. To make her see you as something more than just another guard. To make her yours. To mark her. To claim her. All her lushness. Her brilliance. Yours. Broken, breaking, crying for you.
Strategy consists of a long term goal. Tactics concentrate on the next immediate maneuver. You know she’s playing some sort of game with you. Flaunting herself, but still being so sharp with her speech, where languid words would have you fall. Two signals there.
She wants.
You.
Wants you to come to her.
For her.
What do you want? What you want, the immediate satiation of this, of your heat flaring against your fingers, the flex of muscle contracting around your fingers, the tips barely against that hard place inside; the way your orgasm shakes you, thighs, stomach, unrelenting-
You pant into the thick silence.
Strategy and tactics can’t be separated. If you want her, her, not just to bed her, you can’t just surrender. Surely she expects that. Is provoking that.
You roll over, settle on your side. A sigh, at last, fills your lungs properly after the scarce breaths you permitted yourself.
Lucretia Merces is nothing like a prisoner. A Lady. Better than you. So much more than you could ever be. Here by choice, a deliberate sacrifice on her part for something you don’t understand. You can’t treat her like a prisoner, you don’t want to. You want her.
Even if you have to play her game. She’s the only one who knows the rules.
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viii: Lelei changes the rules
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Lucretia laughs when the kitten claws at your shoulder, climbing higher, out of your arms. It proves slippery for all its white fur, clawing at your neck above the collar.
“For me?” Lucretia asks, with a voice so surprised she must be mocking. “Allow me to rescue you.”
The kitten is especially fond of the fan, dropping from Lucretia’s arms to her lap, all four sets of claws kicking at the ticklish temptation across its stomach. Whatever beast shed those feathers, they’re more durable than you expected. The kitten sneezes, startles itself, and then purrs loudly enough that you can hear it even from the door.
“Thank you,” Lucretia says, her fingertips tracing the shape of the kitten’s skull.
“One of the kitchenhands gave it to me,” you attempt, hesitant. “Found it scavenging. I thought, you might…seeing as you’re alone most of the time.”
“But,” Lucretia says, “whatever shall I offer in return?”
“It’s a gift, Lady Merces. It’s offered in good faith.”
Her eyes are as blue as the kitten’s, the depth of a summer’s sky.
“Mmm, in good faith. You have no greater motivation than to…assuage my solitude.”
Your throat tightens, aching. “…not everyone thinks like a tactician. Not everyone has a hidden motivation.”
“Not hidden, no. No man can hide his intent, under analysis.”
“I’m not a man, milady.”
Lucretia’s eyes are too intense. “When I say men, understand I mean us all. For we are all alike, men and women. Can you honestly tell me that your motivations now are anything other than what would motivate a man?”
The kitten cries for want of attention. You move closer, kneel down, to bury your hand in its fur. You have to look up to meet Lucretia’s gaze; unusual, for you’re used to being taller than everyone.
“Yet you,” you say, heavily, “Lady Merces, stand so far above us all. You think you are more than us…”
“How charming,” Lucretia says, as though your words were flattery and not insult. “But ultimately false. Anyone could do what I would do if they would but apply their mind efficiently.”
“So why do you stand so alone then, so peerless, if everyone holds the potential to be as you?”
“People don’t like to admit that everything they do is predictable, that every pattern of behavior is just another consequence in a chain of consequence. People think they are…”
“Unpredictable. Surprising.”
Lucretia’s hand finds the kitten again, fingers next to yours. A moment later the purring starts, a rumble forceful enough that it vibrates through you. Her fingers are warm, dry. Her skin feels like feathers.
“There’s nothing surprising left in this world,” Lucretia tells you, “nothing left to surprise me. I know everything, and in some ways this prison is the best kind of freedom I have ever enjoyed. I still know everything, what will happen, how things will unfold.”
“How can you consider that freedom-“
“Here,” Lucretia murmurs, “I don’t have to care about any of it, no scheme, no tactic, no method, none of it. All I have to contemplate is my own flesh, my own mortality.”
“Your own - enjoyment.”
“Here,” Lucretia tells the kitten, your hand, her hand, “I have no master. I cannot win or lose. The consequence of my own actions affects only myself.”
“My lady-“
“My lady guard,” Lucretia asks, and she smiles when she finds your eyes. “Tell me who is free to act here without consequence: you, or I?”
The kitten purrs between the two of you, pinned and contented.
“I --”
You stutter. Surrender. And kiss her.
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ix: this isn't a game
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Her skin is not as you dreamed, not that imagined cool silk and surreal smoothness. Each touch discovers such texture that she puts the petals on tulips to shame, texture that taunts your tongue, your fingertips with richness. Each part of her reads like a story, distinct, unfolding as you venture to discover --
-- her anklebone, curved, hard against your lips, smooth; her wrist, delicate in parts, then rough with sun. Her neck, arched, warm, so heavy with the scent of orchids, exotic. Her eyelids that wrinkle when she closes them, tight; the kiss of her lash on your cheek, a butterfly’s kiss, fluttering. The surprising weight of her hair, each strand a different color to its neighbor but all gold, solid gold; you could lose your face, your voice to that mass of gold.
Her eyes. You love her eyes. Closed. Open. It doesn’t matter.
Her waist meets your own narrowness, soft gold against your tensioned white; you line up your navels, matched indents that kiss as you lower yourself onto her. Her hips are wider, to span you; her thighs sleek and soft, encompassing, a pillow for your sinew. Your hand catches between the two of you, pinned, and you cannot judge if the heat there is yours or hers, but it’s wet on your fingers, on crinkled hair blonde on dark, slick with brine, boldness, brilliance.
Her nipple fills your mouth, her breast such that it needs your hand to span its weight. Even that, even there, the roll of her nipple against your teeth, your tongue, is another saga written in the texture of her skin, unfolding when you suck, tightening when you bite, and Lucretia gasps -
Such a small sound from her lips, when queens and lords alike have waited on her word.
-- your name.
An admittance. It doesn’t matter either.
You breathe into her, inhale as you pass down the curve of her stomach, scenting orchid and Lucretia and lust.
Your name. Her name. No battle, won or lost. Just you. Just her. Shared breath. Enough.
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x: but for Lucretia, all life is a game
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The flurried haste of the match calms. Usually, you stall; this time the pause is all at Lucretia’s direction.
She contemplates the board with a soft smile.
“A brilliant combination. Intriguing. A sacrifice, here. And here, a tangible gain. And here, I can do nothing but comply. You force my hand.”
The flush creeps across your cheeks. You can feel it. You’re too pale compared to Lucretia. Her blushes, if she has any, never show. No matter what you do to her.
“Who taught you this?”
Your blush burns.
“You did, Lady Merces.”
She smiles. “Then I’ve achieved more than I had hoped.”
“Have I surprised you, then, Lady?”
The kitten yowls, plaintive, reminding you of your own hunger. It’s long past feeding time. Lucretia bats it absently with her fan until the creature subsides, distracted.
“A little,” she admits, at last.
There is no greater flattery to be had from her lips.
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