Archive of Our Own

Yuri, as some part of him has always expected, is the one to ruin his own life.

It’s inevitable. Sure, he only bets when he can rig the odds in his favor, but he’s still a gambler, and odds-in-favor aren’t the same thing as a guarantee. Even Balthus wins a bet once in a while, after all. Sooner or later, Yuri has to lose.

Even the fatal circumstances are predictable: revealing an injudicious part of his past, telling a lie to someone he cares about. Honesty and dishonesty both have their risks, and it’s a fitting trick of the Goddess to catch him on both.

He just didn’t expect his life to be ruined by Bernadetta von Varley.

“Didn’t her old man beat you half to death one time?” Hapi asks, when Yuri voices this complaint to the echoing vault of the Ashen Wolves ‘classroom.’ She’s perched on one of the battered desks, painting her nails a delicate green and paying Yuri perhaps five percent of her attention, which is not enough for her to react at all when Yuri glares at her.

“First of all, that was hardly a disaster,” he says. “I was healed within the month, and it helped me figure out quickly that I’d need to part ways with Count Rowe.” Count Rowe had not been pleased with either Bernadetta von Varley’s survival or with how close Yuri came to damaging his own pretty face beyond use. It had taken healing magic to save the shape of his nose, but, as Count Rowe said, if Yuri was this useless an assassin then he’d better not lose his other assets. “And, second, that had nothing to do with Bernadetta. Her father is responsible for his own actions; she isn’t. She had no part in it.”

“Kind of had a part in it,” Hapi observes, waving her nails to dry the lacquer.

“She’s not to blame,” Yuri insists. “Believe me, she had no control over what that man did, to me or to anyone else.” His mouth goes thin, remembering. One time, she and Yuri were out in the garden — Yuri weeding, Bernadetta asking him questions about the plants and telling him about a book she’d read — when they heard the sounds of her father’s carriage in the drive out front, and the joy fled from Bernadetta’s face like a rabbit sighting a hawk. Yuri hadn’t asked, because even then he didn’t ask questions when he already knew the answers. Seeing that kind of jumpiness in a noble kid purged one last bit of naivete from his mind, which is another service the Varleys did him. 

“Yeah, but she has control over whatever she’s doing to you now, doesn’t she?” Hapi asks. “What is she doing, anyway?”

“Oh,” Yuri sighs — a little indelicate in front of Hapi, but a sighed word is less of an issue — “I very much doubt it.”

Technically, Yuri does not actually ruin his life by telling Bernadetta the whole truth with a lie tacked on. (He was indeed sent to assassinate her, but Count Varley wouldn’t recognize an assassin if Yuri had it written on his forehead; he beat Yuri black and blue for exactly the reasons Bernadetta believed.) But the explanation doesn’t only dispel Bernadetta’s guilt, it makes her decide that they ought to be friends again, and in the moment it seems like a good decision. It seems like a good decision for almost two months — two months of Bernadetta smiling and talking back when he teases her, two months of sneezing his way through stable duty while they make each other laugh, two months of letting himself pretend to be a sloppy fifteen-year-old again. And then, overcomfortable in it, he goes and ruins his own life. 

Unsurprising as his own culpability is, however, he didn’t ever particularly expect that the ruin of his life would involve a fish sandwich.

It happens like this: Yuri and Bernadetta are eating with the professor, as she likes to do — she’s always with some group of people or other, it seems like. Today’s lunch is the aforesaid fish sandwiches, and Bernadetta is taking hers to pieces and mining it for cabbage.

“Here, Yuri,” she finally says, spearing a particularly large chunk of pickled fish on her fork. (And why do they have forks for sandwiches, anyhow? Nobles.) “Try some of this!” She drops the chunk onto his plate without waiting for an answer, and Yuri rolls his eyes.

“I know you simply dislike pickles, Bernadetta,” he drawls. And usually he doesn’t mind eating what she doesn’t want, but — “There’s a reason there’s no such thing as a cabbage sandwich. Eat your fish.” And here is where he makes his crucial mistake: he picks up the discarded fish between two fingers and holds it out to her, entirely and fatally thoughtless. 

Yuri is very, very familiar with all the different levers that sex can provide on a person, and the range of unexpected places where they can be found. He stays alive by keeping an eye on his own weak points, in this as in all other things, and he knows, he knows that one of his involves — food. Not any nonsense about licking perfectly good sauces off of people, but just… feeding them. Making sure they’re satisfied and full and happy. He can keep himself half-hard by cooking for someone, for the goddess’s sake, if he’s inclined to indulge himself.

And yet, when Bernadetta sighs and leans obediently forward to eat the fish out of Yuri’s hand — Yuri is entirely, stupidly unprepared for the shock of lightning heat. Goddess, her mouth is warm and wet where it closes briefly over his fingers, and he can feel her tongue brush at his thumb. She pulls back with her face scrunched up in displeasure, but she’s chewing; he can see it, just as he can see the bob of her throat when she swallows. Imagine if he fed her something she actually liked, imagine if he fed her something good enough to make her moan — a whole dish, bite by bite, something messy and so delicious she would lick all the sauce from his fingers — 

“It’s slimy,” Bernadetta says, and drops her elbows onto the table with an impressively gusty sigh. Her cape gaps a bit when she sits like that, falling loose over the perfect handfuls of her breasts. Yuri takes an enormous bite of his own sandwich, looking resolutely forward, and finds the professor looking straight at him. Byleth’s eyes, even goddess-touched and pale, make Yuri think of deep dark water: you see yourself looking back, and you have no idea what lies below.

And thus: the ruin of Yuri’s life.

It’s not that he can’t handle a moment of unexpected desire, of course. He’s human; they happen. And he’s perfectly capable of noticing a comrade is beautiful and carrying on with his life — he fights beside Dorothea Arnault, for the goddess’s sake, who at thirteen was beautiful enough to start a gold rush and who has only grown into her loveliness. It shouldn’t matter in the slightest, for example, that Bernadetta’s combat uniform frames a pale delicate sliver of skin between the edge of her boot and the hem of her tunic. Shamir and Leonie both wear the same uniform, and Yuri himself has worn lingerie that covers more than a brawler’s leathers — and yet Yuri never has to stop himself from studying Balthus’s or Leonie’s legs. Whereas Bernadetta has picked up some sharper muscle from her cavalry lessons lately, and she has a vein that runs soft blue under the thin skin of her inner right thigh, and there is pale sparse fuzz on the back of her legs that catches lilac in certain lights, and Yuri has inexplicably memorized it all.

Even this could almost be fine. Looking is the only thing that’s free, but everything else is worth the cost, he used to hear his mother say — and if Yuri has wondered about that a time or two since, as he wraps people around his finger, well, who is he to question his mother?

And then they’re on their way out to deal with bandits on the Tailtean Plains, and Yuri notices a thumb-sized bruise in that sliver of Bernadetta’s bare skin and nearly drops his sword. 

It’s fine. He can be calm about this. He’s made conversation with city guards with a fortune hidden under his shirt and with a guard’s own wallet tucked in his pocket and with a body hidden under his seat. He’s gambled for more money than his life is worth; literally, gambled for more money than it would take to pay off his own murder. He’s talked his way out of a blade at his throat four times in the last year. One little bruise on someone else’s skin cannot affect him unless he chooses to let it.

He waits until they stop for lunch, until Bernadetta has found a tree to hide behind and Yuri has settled himself in its shade. He uncorks his water bottle, leaning back against the trunk, and his voice is as cool and collected as he could wish when he says, “Hey, Bernadetta. What happened to your leg?”

Well, she’s still one of his people, just like all these other crazy fools who’ve walked next to him into war. And he doesn’t ignore harm to his people, assuming this is harm.

“M-my leg?” Bernadetta asks, predictably, and tucks her calves up underneath her, which works just fine to hide her calves but only hikes her skirt up higher. Someone should let her know that, at some point, but somehow Yuri doubts it’s appropriate for it to be him. Maybe Dorothea — who will probably encourage her to do it more, if she wants to. “Is something wrong with it?”

“You’ve got a bruise, there.” He nods towards the mark — it’s a faint blue-purple, like the shadows in her hair. “Something happen?” Sylvain Gautier has been talking to her, lately. If he’s leaving bruises on her thighs without explicit permission not just to touch her but to mark — or if he’s buying that permission with false promises before he flits on to the next bed — Yuri’s going to do everyone a favor and geld him like a horse.

“No, um, nothing happened,” Bernadetta squeaks. Her gaze skitters over the ground, but she’s not blushing and she’s not shrinking in on herself more than usual. Decent signs. “No, it um — while we were waiting to attack the Great Bridge I was really scared? And I needed to hold on to something, and, I don’t know, my bow wasn’t working so I just grabbed my leg, and I didn’t realize how hard I was holding, and — is that too weird? It’s probably weird, I didn’t mean to!”

“Relax, Bernadetta,” Yuri cuts her off. A sign of their new equilibrium: Bernadetta actually does, or at least, she cuts off her panicked babble and takes a deep breath in and out. Yuri does not put his hand on her head and tell her good girl, just like that, because that would be a completely stupid and unreasonable thing to do. “If you need to hold on to something, hold on to something, but I’d recommend something other than your leg. Maybe a hand. I’d offer mine, but I do kind of need my fingers.” He has years of skill stored up in his fingers; they can trip their way through cooking a meal or picking a lock with barely a thought from him. He flexes his hand, considering. “Maybe I’ll find a gauntlet.”

“I don’t think that would be very comforting to hold, though…”

“If you prefer the bruises, well, I’m hardly going to judge you for it,” Yuri says. “But it’s your choice.”

His tongue is trained to silver as much as his hands are trained to thievery. He’s not flirting with Bernadetta any more than he ever has, any more than he flirts with everyone. He can compare it, even, to his conversations with Ingrid, with Balthus, with Hapi, running it back and forth: yes, he would have said the same.

He just wouldn’t have felt the need to justify it, with them. 

Bernadetta does not hold his hand before the next battle. She almost gets her hands burned off, instead.

There’s a mage, a damned quick one — one Yuri might’ve been able to silence, if he’d stuck with magic instead of taking up the bow. Instead his arrow whistles over the mage’s right shoulder, and the mage turns around and flings a doubled blast of fire not at Yuri but at Bernadetta. She flinches, and it saves her life; it’s her forearms and her hands that take the brunt of the fire, not her face. Yuri can just see her eyes through the smoke, the wild shock of pain in the gray. 

Linhardt does his best, but his best…. could be better. (That’s unreasonable. Linhardt, for all his quirks, is a good healer, and Yuri isn’t so stupid as to doubt Linhardt’s desire to stop pain. Hapi sure couldn’t do better, even with the way the professor has been teaching her; Mercedes couldn’t do better, from what Yuri has seen of her. But Linhardt’s best still leaves Bernadetta covered in bandages and flinching every time she moves her arms, and Yuri is bitter.)

“Manuela will be able to help, once we’re back at the monastery,” Byleth says, her hand gentle on the small of Bernadetta’s back. Bernadetta nods miserably. Yuri has no reason to be part of this conversation, not really, but he’s slouched at the edge of it anyway. “This is more her area, by now. In the meantime, be careful, and try not to use your hands. I’ll keep you out of any further fighting until you’re in better shape.” 

“Thank you, professor,” Bernadetta squeaks, and lets out one long, slow sigh. Because she’d be terrified and she’d complain and she’d protest — she’d be right to — but if the professor asked, Bernadetta would try to fight like this. She’d walk into battle and try to draw a bow with fingers that would barely curl before she started to cry with the pain of it. 

Stupid, pointless train of thought. Byleth is too smart to ask anyone to fight with that kind of injury, especially not an archer. Yuri shakes it out of his head and goes to rescue dinner from Raphael’s good intentions. It’s only going to be traveler’s stew tonight, whatever they can find plus a few dried vegetables and a fistful of salt, but Raphael will find a way to ruin it if left alone. And if Yuri pays the stew more attention than stew is supposed to need, well, it’s easy to burn things over an open fire and Petra worked hard to hunt their dinner.

He eats with Bernadetta often, especially when his Wolves are back at the monastery. And Bernadetta eats in private, so Yuri eats a lot of meals with a bush catching at his hair or a damp rock at his back. Tonight it’s a spreading tree, rustling steadily with the breeze and their movement, and not nearly loud enough to cover Bernadetta’s little “Ow! Ow! Ow!” every time she picks up her spoon. Yuri’s command over his body is too good for him to twitch, but… he has to work at it.

“Do I really need to eat? I mean, it’s only another day back to the monastery…” Bernadetta mumbles, staring down at her bowl, and Yuri cracks.

“Bernadetta, for the goddess’s sake, of course you need to eat. Just ask someone for help.”

“AAHHH you were listening to me!” It’s fairly token. “I can’t just ask someone to help me eat! That’d be weird, right? I mean — that’d be too weird.”

“Not when your hands are too badly burned to hold your cutlery,” Yuri says wearily, and sets his own bowl aside. “Here, let me.” He’s usually smart enough not to make the same mistake twice, but Bernadetta continues to be the ruin of him.

She doesn’t move to stop him when he takes her mess kit from her lap, careful not to let his fingers brush the bare skin of her thighs. Seiros have mercy, she’s barely gotten three bites into her mouth. That won’t do at all. Yuri focuses very, very deliberately on the necessity of this, and the ragged edges of the rabbit meat, as he spoons up a decent helping of stew and holds it up to Bernadetta’s mouth.

“Um… okay…” Her voice wavers, but her movement is sure as she leans forward and sucks the stew off the spoon, and a shiver rolls along the entire length of Yuri’s spine.

“Good,” he says, while his voice tries to turn the word into a caress. Good girl, just like that. “You need to eat.” Another spoonful, and she opens her mouth in soft compliance, waiting for him. Her face screws up slightly in concentration as she chews; she sighs, just a little, when she’s done. “See, isn’t this easier?” It’s a reasonable thing to say. He’s not sure she eats enough normally, and she needs it more than ever now. Hungry people don’t heal. It’s only sense.

Another spoonful. The stew smudges against her mouth, and her tongue darts out to lick it away. Ordinary enough. Another spoonful, and she smacks her lips in quiet appreciation, and Yuri’s cock is not invited to have an opinion on the matter. She needs this.

Yuri is a warped and twisted bastard, because that only makes him harder.

“Bernadetta.” He drops the spoon into the bowl and closes his eyes. “I think you should ask someone else to do this.”

“I told you it was weird!” she whisper-wails, but there’s petulance in it too, a hint of vindication under the fear. 

“That’s not the problem.” He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. It’s one thing to cook for Ingrid because he wanted to watch her eat it — that was a dance together, a shared swim, an easy pleasure that gained a little extra gloss if you found your partner beautiful. This is Yuri sweaty-palmed and panting like any creep from the opera house, and he’s not going to do that to a friend. “How about Dorothea? She’d be happy to help.” 

“I think she’s with Ferdinand…” Bernadetta mumbles, which is actually quite interesting — Yuri had noticed them going off together lately, but he hadn’t realized they were obvious enough for Bernadetta to notice. Or maybe Dorothea tells her these things. Either way, this isn’t the time. “Anyway, it’s fine! Really! I can just, um…”

“If you say not eat until you get back to the monastery, I’m going to murder your pitcher plants,” Yuri says.

“No, leave them alone! They didn’t do anything wrong!” Bernadetta protests. Despite himself, and despite this frankly appalling situation he’s landed himself in, Yuri is smiling. “Are you sure you can’t do it? Did I do something wrong? I can stop doing it! Or, I mean, I guess I can just….” She turns her hands back and forth, wincing, and Yuri sighs.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Bernadetta,” he says, and does not reach out to stroke her hair or cup her face. Instead he sets the bowl in his lap and drags his hands down over his face. It’s been a long, long time since he found himself in a situation he can’t charm nor lie his way out of, but if he meant to lie his way out of this he should have started ten minutes ago, and all his charm seems to have deserted him in the face of Bernadetta von Varley, an extremely movable object who always circles back to the same point. “I just don’t think I’m the right person to do this.”

“Did you do something to your hands too?” She reaches for him, tugs at his wrist and immediately whimpers and snatches her hand back. He pulls his hands away before she can try again, but, of course, that means lifting his head.

“Don’t grab things right now, for the goddess’s sake. What did you think was going to happen? And, no, I didn’t do anything to my hands. I’m fine. It’s just…” Nothing for it but the truth. Damn her; damn him. “I’m enjoying it too much. More than I should.”

“Oh.” Bernadetta frowns. It makes her face look very little and still leaves her eyes haunting and huge. “Um. Okay, I guess? Or, I mean, not, or — aaah! I don’t understand, what do you mean?”

Goddess, I’d rather live, but if you’re going to kill me in this war at some point anyway then now would be an excellent moment to do it… “I mean, Bernadetta, that I keep thinking about all the things besides food that I could put in your mouth.” In the name of clarity (oh, who is he kidding), he reaches out and sets his thumb very deliberately against her mouth. Strokes along the little curve of her lower lip, and then drags downwards just enough to wet the very tip of his thumb. “I’m thinking about it vividly.”

“Oh?!” He can feel the motion of her mouth. Her eyes flick back, forth, back again, startled-mouse quick. Her indrawn breath rushes past his skin: drawn in deep, slow, like a singer about to step onstage.

Bernadetta turns her head and sucks his fingertips into her mouth.

“Bernadetta.” His traitor voice is battle-rough. “You don’t have to —” And then he stops, because, yes, Bernadetta is desperate to please and terror-ridden, but her fear always, always starts with the belief that she is unwanted. She runs away from imagined threats (and only the imagined ones); she doesn’t offer bits of herself up to them.

Sure enough, she pulls her head back and says, “Was that wrong? I’m sorry!”

It should be a trap, except for how he’s too smart to believe that of Bernadetta. “No,” he says. “No, Bernadetta, that was perfect.” He’s always liked the shape of her name in his mouth, and he lets himself savor it now. “You’re sure that this is what you want?”

“Well — um — I mean, no, I’m not sure about anything! I don’t even know what’s happening, exactly, I mean… this is weird, right? I thought it was just me being weird until you said that! But I trust you, and I like it, and if you want to put your hands in my mouth, or, um, something else, that would be fine, I think I would like it. I mean, not if you put a dead lizard in my mouth or something! You might be able to make a dead lizard taste good, but —”

Yuri puts his fingers back to her lips as an act of mercy to them both. “I’m not going to feed you a lizard, Bernadetta,” he says. “Not unless our supplies get a whole lot worse off than they are.”

“O-ay,” she says, moving her mouth as little as possible. “Aaa’s guh.”

“Good girl.” He strokes his thumb along her cheek — and, Seiros, he’s doing this, isn’t he. Well. “Listen to me, Bernadetta. If you stop liking it, if I do anything you don’t like, you tell me, all right? I won’t be angry with you, never, and it doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing the things you do like. If you know you don’t like something, and you hide it from me, that will upset me. But telling me won’t. You got that?”

“‘Ess. Yes.”

“Good.” His voice is soft. “If — hm. Normally, if your mouth is full, I’d tell you to tap me three times to tell me there’s a problem, but that’s not a great solution right now, is it?” They’re not arranged well for her to tap him with her foot, or for her to make noise that way either. That would be difficult anyway, on the soft ground.

“I could bump you with my elbow?” she offers. For some mysterious Bernadetta reason, this is what makes her blush soft pink under the sundown light. Yuri nods slowly.

“That won’t hurt you?”

“Nnnnoo, I don’t think so,” she says. The hesitation sounds like genuine thought. “No, it -- it should be fine. I can do that.”

“Good. And if you can speak, just tell me whatever you want to tell me.” They should talk, at some point, about codewords and play-refusals, about what she knows about these games and what she might or might not like, but today she’s borne more pain than he’d ever want to give her and he just wants to feed her while the sun sinks over the battlefield. “You ready for me to start again?”

“I think so,” she says. “Um. Yes.”

“Good.” Yuri takes another piece of meat messily in his fingers and holds it again up to her mouth. “Go on.” 

“Mmm.” She takes it, then, unprompted, licks the stew-sauce from his fingers. Yuri doesn’t try to restrain the hitch in his breath.

“Perfect,” he says. “Here, have another.” He picks up a chunk of turnip.

“Yessir.” Oh, she’s found some juicy novels. Her voice is all nervousness and daring, and Yuri leans in to kiss her hair in reward.

“That’s a good girl,” he breathes. This time she sucks vegetable and sauce from his fingers at once, sloppy-thorough, and Yuri’s cock pulses hard. He’s coming to regret the close fit of an assassin’s gear; he doubts he’ll regret much else tonight. Another piece of meat, and she makes a soft appreciative noise as he presses it into the wet living heat of her mouth. “See,” he says, feeding her a chunk of carrot this time, “isn’t this better than starving until we get back to Garreg Mach?”

“Mmm-hm,” she says. “I mean, um, yes, it is. I mean, yes sir?”

“Any of those are fine,” he says, as gentle as the Edmund girl with a frightened horse. “Open up, now.” This time he has a few soft little pieces of vegetable, stewed to sameness and savory with dripping fat.

“Mmm.” Her tongue curls along his skin. She chews twice, swallows. “It tastes good.” 

“It better.” He curls his free hand over the back of her neck, traces her downy hair while he roots around in the bowl. “Here.” 

“Mmm.”

Bite by bite, he feeds her dinner. Her eyes start to dip half-closed; she leans more against his hand, until she’s halfway on his shoulder. Some of the showy enjoyment drops away, replaced by something quieter. Yuri doesn’t mind. He knows the difference between artifice and emphasis; if anything, he’s impressed by the effort she dared to put in. And, goddess, but surrender looks good on her, at least when it’s done in trust. Goddess knows that she deserves it; deserves to place herself in careful hands, deserves a warm meal and a comforting hand. Deserves peace, or at least the absence of war. Yuri can carve that out for her, in this little space of treeshadow, and she melts in his hands like far finer meals melt in the mouth. 

He’s barely touched his own dinner. It doesn’t feel especially important right now, but he’ll need that strength for morning. He takes a bite while Bernadetta swallows. “There’s a little too much salt in this,” he observes. “I bet it’s making you thirsty, huh?”

“Mmm…” She blinks dreamily at him. “A little?”

“Well, that’s easily solved, hmm?” He has a hip flask of water. He takes a quick drink for himself, then fills his mouth with water and leans in to press his lips to Bernadetta’s. Traditionally he does this with alcohol, not water, but he’s always liked it. She makes a startled noise in the back of her throat, but her mouth opens for him in this too, lets him push the liquid in. He curls his fingers against the side of her throat and feels her swallow. “More?”

“Yesplease,” she whispers, blurring together and eager, and Yuri shivers like a virgin.

“All right then,” he says, and picks up his waterskin again. This time he brushes his fingers against her jaw as she swallows, and lets the kiss linger. “You’re doing wonderfully, Bernadetta. Just like that.” His lips brush hers; he can feel her sigh. 

“I’m doing good?”

“You’re doing perfectly. Here, keep eating.” 

Bite by bite, he feeds her. He wants — it would be asking for far too much too quickly, but he wants to bring her down to Abyss and feed her in the middle of the Blooming Rose, feed her just like this. Let everyone see that she’s one of his people, that he’ll look after her as such. He takes care of his own, and Bernadetta von Varley — she’s his own. At least for tonight. 

Her stew is gone too damn soon, and if he supplements it with a few bites of his own, that’s his business. There’s plenty of kinds of hunger in the world. But eventually their dinner is done, and Bernadetta is heavy-eyed and contented, and Yuri is so hard he aches. Gently, he curls one arm around Bernadetta’s back and draws her in to rest her head on his shoulder. “Come here, sweetheart, come on now.”

“Mmmm.” She nuzzles into his hair, smiling. He kisses the top of her head and starts working his trousers open with his other hand, because goddess have mercy but he needs to come.

“Mmm?” Bernadetta says, tilting her head up to him, and Yuri pauses.

“Do you want me to stop, Bernadetta?” He keeps his voice calm, steady, like he isn’t drawn tight as a bowstring and like it won’t hurt him to stop. But Bernadetta shakes her head. “You remember what I said, about telling me?”

“Mmm.” She nods.

“All right, then.” He kisses her and finally, finally fumbles his cock out of his too-damned-tight pants. Bernadetta pulls back just enough to look and makes a noise somewhere between surprise and appreciation. Yuri laughs, squeezing himself. “That sounded flattering, hm? That’s all you, Bernadetta, getting me this worked up. Good work.”

She smiles, tiny and pink and pleased with herself, and Yuri’s heart turns over. And then, to his surprise, she bends herself over his lap.

“Hey now, hey.” He lets go of his cock to catch her shoulder. She makes a low pouty noise of objection, scowling, and tries to shrug off his arm. Her hands paw vaguely at the air, still bandage-wrapped. Seiros help him, she’s adorable, and he did not expect her to get this far under. “Bernadetta. Can you talk to me, right now? Just shake your head if you can’t, it’s fine.”

“Mmm… hm?” she says, very slowly. “Yeah, I… I can talk.” She blinks at him. Her eyes look like mist on a dark river. “You, you said. In my… my mouth, right? Don’t you want...” Her frown goes fretful, shoulders hunching, and he catches her jaw.

“Hey, shhh. You’re fine, baby. All else aside, you’re going to have a hell of a time bending over like that without bracing yourself on your hands, and I feel like that’s maybe not the best idea right now.”

“Oh.” She frowns at her hands, turning them back and forth in slow inspection, and looks at him. “So what do I do?”

Oh, Yuri is not a good man. She probably deserves a good man, but she deserves not to be a soldier either, and here they both are.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asks her, stroking the curve of her cheek gently. He means it to be soothing, and she turns her head and wraps her mouth around his thumb. Her eyes fall closed. He can feel her sigh.

“Mmm-hm.”

Well, fuck. All right then.

“Kneel up for me.”

She scrabbles to do it; he catches her arm to help her brace her weight. Her skirt is briefly askew, baring a broader stretch of thigh, and the look on her face is all pleased expectant hope. “Good girl.” That makes her smile. “Now put your hands behind your back, or at your sides if that’s easier. But wherever you put them, keep them there.” She goes with half-curled fists at her sides, her shoulders stiff with deliberate stillness. He pets her hair and double-checks the tree behind them — yep, it should hide this. There are advantages to being slight and short. His pants are still open; he’s still achingly hard. He doesn’t break touch with Bernadetta as he draws himself to his feet. 

“Look at you,” he murmurs. Her eyes are half-lidded, looking up at him; the twilight is soft on her hair, on the hollow of her neck. She licks her lips and opens her mouth, waiting. “Fuck.”

He’s hardly going to fuck her throat, under the circumstances. Another time, maybe. But he’s certainly going to take himself in hand and feed his cock between her lips, into the warm wet heat of her mouth. He sighs, letting his other hand settle on her shoulder; he doesn’t have anything to lean on. “Good girl. Mind your teeth, now.” She makes a soft mmm in the back of her throat, and the vibration of it shivers through him. “Close your mouth, hmm? Yeah, perfect, like that. Can you try sucking for me? Nnngh, yeah, that’s right. Now pull back and lick me. Nothing fancy, just a lick.” A tiny, wet little flicker sends lightning down his spine. “Good start. Now try it a little longer. Don’t worry if it’s messy, messy is fine. Mmm, yeah, you’re getting it.” He curls his free hand into her hair, cradling her skull, and she makes a soft noise that’s almost a purr and bumps her head briefly against his palm. Her eyes are closed; her hands are perfectly still at her sides. Yuri’s heart cracks like a stiff joint, and, fuck, okay, this is not going to be a lingering pleasure. No more teasing. 

“Open your mouth for me again, Bernadetta.” His voice is rough. She obeys; her mouth is perfect. He rubs his cock against her tongue and groans, quiet in the night. “When I come right here, will you be able to swallow it for me? Just nod or shake your head, gentle now.” Her eyelids flutter briefly for a moment; then she nods. Yuri lets out a ragged sigh. “That’s my good girl. Now. Close your lips, and slide your head down until you hit my — my fingers, yeah, like that. And suck — yeah. And now pull back —” he tugs gently on her hair — “and then do it all again. I’ll guide you. Yeah, just like that, that’s perfect, that’s exactly what I wanted, just like that — fuck, yeah, that’s great — fuck, you’re doing so well, fuck!” 

He loses track of what he’s saying, after that. 

She swallows every drop with a fixed eagerness he’s never been able to fake. 

Afterwards, he half-falls to the ground and pulls her into his lap, as close as if he’d just pulled her out of a killing frost. Her hair is a soft fluff against his face, as wild as it was back when she was just a student and he wasn’t trying to bring his people alive through a war. She’s boneless and content, not squirming and desperate, so he keeps his hands outside of her clothes as he strokes up and down her back. It might be better, anyway, to leave that threshold untested while she’s still this deep in the trance of compliance. Yuri’s good enough in bed that he expects another chance.

Though this wasn’t exactly his usual kind of performance.

“You smell nice,” Bernadetta mumbles into his shoulder, before he can get too far along that line of thought. Yuri smiles, resettling her weight.

“Probably the oil I use on the leather,” he says, quiet. “How’re you doing?”

“Good, I think?” He can see the edge of her face furrowing up, thoughtful. “I don’t really know what just happened. I mean, obviously I know what just happened, I remember it, just — it was kind of weird! Did you put some kind of spell on me or something?”

“What?” He jerks enough to bump her hands; she winces, and he forces himself to relax. “Sorry. What? No, Bernadetta, I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t do that to just about anyone.”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” she protests. “I didn’t mean it like a bad thing. I wouldn’t have been angry if you had — oof!”

Yuri loosens his grip on her waist with some effort. “No, you should care about that, Bernadetta,” he says, carefully not speaking through his teeth. “If someone made you want something, or made you willing when you wouldn’t have been...”

“But that’s not what happened!” she protests, a furious puff of indignation. Goddess, but even in the middle of this conversation, it’s good to see her angry. Good to see her still capable of it. Yuri’s always had a fondness for people the world couldn’t quite break. “You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want! You just made me stop being scared about it. Or, I guess, that’s all the spell would have done, if there was one? I was kind of hoping there would be one, I mean, it was nice, but — ahhh stop being mad!”

“I’m not mad, sweetheart.” He breathes out, carefully, and buries his face in her hair. “I’m just…” Protective? Worried? Memory-stung? (Which is ridiculous — he’s not even sure a spell like that exists, or could exist.) 

“No magic,” he says at last. “It’s just something that happens for some people, when they’re following orders they like. Intimate orders, I mean, I don’t know anyone who goes under when they’re hearing about troop movements.” 

“Mm.” She tilts her head against his shoulder. Her eyes are a glint in the dimming light. “Does it happen for you?”

“No.” Yuri unclenches his jaw. “No, I don’t… I don’t enjoy taking orders. But when I’m giving them like that, with someone who trusts me, when it’s for fun… things get very simple. Very straightforward. It’s similar, in a way.”

“That makes sense.” She resettles herself, her arms resting carefully between them. “That’s probably good.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t think I could do that,” she says, thoughtful and soft. “Be like you were. I mean, I’d try!” she adds, sticking her chin out. “I would. But I don’t think I’d be very good at it, so it’s probably better — why are you looking at me like that?”

Yuri has no idea how he’s looking at her, which is a little like having no idea how he’s holding his sword. He leans in and kisses her forehead, closing his eyes.

“You,” he says, “are something else, Bernadetta.”

“Is that good?!”

The only answer he has is to kiss her mouth.

“Okay,” she says squeakily, when he pulls back. “Okay, I guess that’s good! So, um… what now? It’s not like I’ve ever had a lover before.”

Yuri goes very, very still.

“A lover,” he says. “Is that what you…”

“Is it not?” she yelps, voice rising. “What was that kiss, then?!”

“It’s not — breathe, Bernadetta.” His voice catches. “It’s not you. It’s just…” A lover. Goddess. One Adrestian lord called Yuri his boy-mistress, once. Other than that… “You know how I live my life. I’ve got people depending on me. Sometimes that means I have to play every card that I have in my hand. You get what I’m saying here, right?”

“Okaaaay,” she says slowly. “But, I mean, that’s different, isn’t it? It’s not like you’re doing that for fun!”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.” He sighs, pushing his hair back from his face. “I don’t — I use what I have going for me, but I try to keep myself out of situations where I’ll have to do something I hate. I’m done with that.” He bites the inside of his cheek. “I could stop messing around with the other Wolves, I guess. But beyond that… I couldn’t promise you fidelity, Bernadetta. I won’t lie to you about that.”

“Oookay? But…” Her face looks so little when it’s furrowed up like this, all fretful-stubborn. “Maybe I don’t care about any of that! I don’t — I mean — why does it have to matter what you’re doing with other people? Unless you like them better or something! I don’t care. You’re my friend and that felt really good and I want to do it again and — can’t it just be simple? Can’t we just… do this if we want to? And hold hands sometimes?”

 “I —” Yuri clears his throat. “Goddess,” he says lightly, “and it’s not even my birthday.” It’s not the most polished joke of his life, but it makes Bernadetta blush halfway down her neck. Which she knows perfectly well he tried to slit in the night, way back. “Bed games and holding hands. Yeah, guess there’s no reason we can’t do that.”

“Could we maybe get tea sometimes, too?” she blurts. “And — and stuff like that?”

“I could probably make time for some tea,” he allows. 

“So.... that’s pretty much the same thing, right? Except that you do some of it with other people sometimes?”

“But —” He rubs his forehead. “People want their lovers to be faithful, Bernadetta.”

“Yeah, well, people want their wives to be obedient and stay still, too!”

Silence puffs out from the words. Somewhere in the trees a nightjar calls, indifferent to all their boring human wars and problems. They just lay eggs, the little bastards.

“You know if I ever get near that man again I’m going to pull his guts out through his throat,” Yuri says.

“Hehe, thanks.” Bernadetta hides her face in his shoulder, then lifts her head enough to say, “He’s under house arrest right now anyway. So… does that mean we can try it?”

“I think I just got out-negotiated,” Yuri observes to the deepening night. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

“Heheh,” Bernadetta says. “Bernie’s a natural.”

“A natural something,” Yuri agrees, pulling her close. “All right, well. Lovers it is, then. ...I’m not calling you that in public.”

“That’s fine,” she says. “I don’t want to do anything in public. Okay, maybe the holding hands part.”

“That seems fair enough,” Yuri muses. “That said, right now I suspect someone’s going to come looking for us very soon.”

“Oh. ...We should go back, huh.”

“Probably. But first —” He catches her chin. “I want to make sure — are you feeling all right? It can hit you strangely, after.”

“I feel good, I think,” she says. “I feel… better than I’ve felt in a long time, actually.”

“Oh.” Yuri blinks, twice. “Good. That’s… good.” He licks his lips. “I’m glad I could give you that.”

“Mmm.” She nuzzles his neck. “You give me a lot of things.”

“I’m going to give you a reputation if we don’t get ourselves put back together,” he says. “Come on, let’s get up.”