shiegra (shiegra) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2008-06-13 12:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 2008 twelve characters challenge, author: shiegra, fandom: baccano!, pairing: chane/claire |
Baccano!, Claire/Chane
Title: The Edge of the Map
Author/Artist: shiegra
Fandom: Baccano!
Pairing/characters: Claire/Chane
Rating: PG13/R
A/N: Part of that Baccano! pirate AU laylah prompted me with a while back.
Prompt/challenge you're answering: * Chane and Claire Stanfield with the title, "The Edge of the Map."
The captain’s cabin was a mess.
They’d locked her in, of course, but Chane had expected nothing less. And because of this—because they’d pulled her away from the small stinking hold and Eve’s wide fragile eyes—she felt not the slightest hesitation in busily rifling through the contents of the crowded desk, toeing through drifts of paper. Her foot bumped cloth—deep red smeared with subtle patterns of gold, a flamboyant performer’s costume—and she blushed and jerked away for no reason. It had to be his; she could easy picture him wearing it with that mystifying arrogance.
Tight over his shoulders and chest and—
The knife was a steadying weight against her thigh and she turned hurriedly away, pushed through scribbled notes and a list of words in at least three languages scribbled over the deft sketch of a tiger.
Underneath it, a map spread out over the table.
Chane caught her breath and forgot her informal mission, forgot about information and bargaining material and survival. Instead she gently worked it loose of weight, drawing it up, and leaned over it. Worn but still jewel-rich colors traces across its worn surface; blue, thin dark marks of roads, curling elaborate letters and the shaded faux-bumps of rising mountain ranges, whispering across the world in charcoal.
She tracked the rise of the ocean, map’s material soft beneath her fingers, and sighed as her fingers landed on the traditional mark in the corner, beyond where the mapmakers had ventured. It was so beautiful. She wondered what it would....what it would be like to be there, on the shore of some beach colored gentle golden rather than gray stone and gravel. There with Huey, and their comfortable beyond-silence, and all the world she’d ever need.
Red hair flashed in front of her eyes as she pictured it, and a slightly-too-wild grin, and she jolted and dropped it just before hands slid around her waist. “Here be dragons.” The captain purred in her ear. She could smell salt and wind and warm sweat, and he sounded inordinately delighted with himself. “Do you like it?”
She didn’t say anything, of course, but reached out a hand and swept the papers over the map’s surface in a messy spill.
He made a sound of chagrin, a thoughtful hum, and kept his hands on her hips, very gentle. The touches had, so far, not ventured beyond the realm of improper and into frightening, but he was warm, breath whispering across the back of her neck, and his hands warm and solid.
If she had had a voice—if she had had a voice, she would have told him to stop. She would have. It was only that she didn’t, and to fight him would be revealing a secret she was planning on holding close to her.
“Isn’t it beautiful, though?” He asked. His voice was very gentle. “I like to look at it, but the ocean is better. Freer. The map stops.” Then he laughed. “My dreaming doesn’t.”
She could see the delicately drawn arches of waves in the corner, if she looked down. Unwillingly, Chane reached out to trace them.
He made a low, curious sound in her ear.
No words. But the map was soft under her fingertips, and his heat was a living presence against her back. Then his hands dropped, fingertips grazing her skin through her skirts, and began to gather it up.
His voice, low and hypnotic in her ear. “It’s very warm there, you know. Down south. I burn—” Sly, delighted amusement in his voice, “maybe you’d go golden. I’d like to see.” His hand rose, briefly, to trace across her collarbone and she gasped soundlessly, shuddered in his arms like a startled animal. It dipped, almost reaching the soft skin between her breasts, before dropping to tug at her skirt again. “Lovely, there.” He murmured. “Dangerous, but lovely. Have to play nice, most of the time, if you want to get cargo without bloodshed.” Then he laughed, like something in what he’d said amused him vastly, a private joke.
Chane thought maybe it was the ‘wanting to avoid bloodshed’ part.
His hand slid up her thigh, gentle on sensitive skin, and then stopped abruptly on the weight of the sheath. He made a sound, deep and rasping in his throat, and laughed. The sound was almost amazed.
“You’re incredible.” He whispered, childishly jubilant and awed. “We could go anywhere. I could take you anywhere. Off the edge of the map. Off the edge of the world.”
Chane tasted temptation.