Work Text:
Lappland doesn’t want to kill Texas. At least, not yet.
Back in Siracusa, the Texas name was widely acclaimed by every famiglia from east to west. Her father would scoff at this fact because the Texas famiglia wasn’t even a member of the Hall. Still, their presence was thick among both Columbian and Siracusan mafias, all by a name.
It was then Lappland caught ear of her— the granddaughter of Salvadore Texas, as fleeting as the night, with evening eyes and midnight hair. Lappland wanted her in every way she could have her.
Cellinia Texas’ homecoming was not a silent one. Then again, she has never been afraid of such a confrontation. She will do what it takes to wipe the Texas name off the face of Terra.
Then comes the question of why.
Lappland has been trying to find her place in Siracusan politics for far too long. Banished from the famiglia, exiled by her father — just what had she been doing all this time?
A purpose. She had been looking for a purpose. Texas could give her that.
In hindsight, it is almost hilarious how easy it was to get her, as she sits across the dark-haired Lupo nibbling chocolate. Comical, even.
Rhodes Island’s trading posts are much too small for two, and much less for three. Logistics work never made up for the distance she must keep between Lappland and herself, as the white-haired Lupo leans in close with her tail wagging.
She leans in like she’s about to kiss her, then catches the Pocky stick between her teeth. Texas is content with letting her pull it away from her lips. It was her favorite. Lappland gets off to doing things like this, so perhaps that’s why Texas isn’t at all bothered by it anymore.
“Slacking off now, Texas?” Lappland tilts her head while speaking, eating the rest of the stick whole. Not an ounce of shame is left in her body.
Texas tears her eyes away from her. She stares, instead, at an empty space below the glass window. “It’s your idea. ‘Take a break.’ So I am.”
If it were a couple of years back, Texas would take this as a smoke break. Nicotine only numbed her mind temporarily and she’s had enough of it for the rest of her life. Chocolate offers similar stress-relieving benefits, if only less deadly.
Where she had slowly killed herself with chemicals, Lappland is dying from her organs rotting, her mind encasing on her. Texas wouldn’t know which is the better way to go.
Lappland’s smile hid her true intent, honed over years of practice. “Was it? And you’re content with staring at that wall with daggers for eyes?”
A faker for a friend. Neither of them would know what’s in a friend — they’ve just been lonely for too long.
“Anything else would serve to amuse you, and that’s not what I want to do.” Texas shakes her head. Perhaps her grievances would make themselves more apparent had she gone by her gut to shut Lappland up the hard way, but she doesn’t. She keeps it in.
“I have other ideas too.” Lappland sounds whimsical even when she is suggesting something so mad.
Then comes silence, and the turn of her head is almost painful. “I don’t want to have sex with you,” Texas says bluntly.
Texas is not entirely dense. When Lappland is not actively trying to fight her, she is looking for other forms of physical release. Lappland giggles like a big child with a mind full of crazed thoughts. Texas never once trusted that laugh of hers, with warning signs blaring all about.
She wonders how many layers of Lappland she has come witness to, and how many she has yet to see. And while Texas sits, content with the space between them, Lappland moves closer, back to where they started with her hands propped up on Texas’ sides.
“Aw, so quick to turn me down?” Lappland grins. Texas could be convinced that it’s left a permanent mark on her skin, etched to her lips like a lingering scar, almost mirroring the one over her eye. “You may regret it.”
Texas sighs. She refuses to be moved by someone like Lappland — perfectly still in her seat that’s akin to a prison cell now. “I’m sure I won’t.”
Lappland throws her head back and laughs hysterically. Even when Texas looks at her with pure disgust, she still loves her. Lappland loves her for all her defiance. It only makes her hard to get— and Lappland never backs away from a challenge.
“Fine. I’ll make you, next time.”
When Lappland leaves, she is still smiling.
Texas doesn’t want to be killed. At least, not yet.
She had been enjoying an easy life in Lungmen, filled with the occasional thrill of a chase every now and then as she would deliver packages from here to there, feeling the nomadic city breeze in her hair as she drove through the night with her closest people.
Lappland doesn’t quite qualify in that group of people, though. She is a shadow, tailing her from behind where the light finds her, rather than a companion walking beside her in rain or sunshine.
“Lappland…” Texas rasps, half a warning, half a plead, as the other Lupo leans close to her crotch.
“Just lemme do this,” Lappland says in a sing-song voice, resting her head on Texas’ thigh as she looks up at her. “Promise I won’t bite?”
The promise means nothing to her, frankly. It’s what comes after — surging warmth enveloping her cock — that really gets her going. She has not done this for quite some time. Lappland is no better, because she’s bad at head and still, Texas lets her, if only to let her have something.
In the end, she does pity Lappland. And not sure if pity is enough.
Texas fiddles with Lappland’s coat, pushing it off of her shoulders, and Lappland only stares, amused, as Texas pushes her down by her heel.
Their relationship was never an fully amicable one. It’s to be expected when you decide that you want to make a first impression on someone by attempted murder. Or, well, Lappland would claim that she hadn’t really aimed to kill her, only spook her a little... They were young then.
Alas, life in Siracusa was never a peaceful one. That’s why Texas left, and promptly abandoned Lappland on the road of the Texan’s mansion as it burned to ashes.
Lappland could’ve killed her then, but she didn’t. She should’ve. Texas doesn’t want to or intend on dying anymore.
The reality is this: Lappland is her shadow as much as she is Lappland’s, and perhaps she’s been looking to break out of it ever since she left home.
She hasn’t. She doesn’t know if she ever will.
Texas still remembers the crazed look on Lappland’s face when she had swung her blade and stopped just by her throat, splashing blood of their enemies on her cheek. At that time, she looked positively elated to see her. Cellinia Texas, I’ve finally found you.
She didn’t return the gesture. Why would she?
In a society that’s out for your head, you will do what it takes to survive — that was what she thought as she walked away from the fire, straight to Lappland, blankly thoughtful for all but a moment until her signature smile comes on.
It’s the same look that she wears now, as Texas drives her fingers up her cunt. Nothing masks the disgusting squelching sound from below even with the way Lappland gasps when she digs harder.
She could make a mark if she wanted to, she wants, and wants, and wants and doesn’t know how to— not when Lappland is still walking in her shadow, and Texas does nothing to make it go away. It feels somewhat like a companion, because friends may come and go, but your shadow doesn’t, lest you give yourself to darkness.
Lappland gets off from the thrill; the pain, everything that comes in between her and Texas.
Texas, for once, indulges.
With a hand fucking into her, she uses her body weight to keep Lappland pinned as she wraps another around her neck.
The view isn’t half bad. To put such a prideful person at her mercy isn’t an opportunity Texas would claim to have every day. And perhaps she is getting off from this just as much as the other.
Lappland nuzzles her wrist. Lupine instincts. “Harder.”
Texas raises an eyebrow.
“You can do better, can’t you?” Lappland teases, showing fangs in her grin. “You used to be tougher. Rougher.”
She was, but not now, when Lappland looks at her and Texas almost feels tempted enough to admit to her needs.
This isn’t something she wanted to do completely voluntarily. Absolutely not.
Instead, she slows her pace to a full stop, gets off of her to reach down and stroke herself; despite herself, despite the situation, in a cramped storage room that she was not supposed to linger in until Lappland showed up and dragged her nails up Texas’ neck.
So when she shoves her to the cold wall, it would not be her fault.
It is after that she realizes it was exactly what Lappland wanted, and perhaps she wanted it too.
She doesn’t derive pleasure from pain. That’s Lappland’s thing. So she doesn’t bother being gentle, even slicked up with whatever fluids Lappland leaked from her cunt before pushing in, meeting the tiniest restraint before she could bury herself in the tightness.
It shouldn’t be revolutionary — sex is as carnal as it comes, even with your rival. This is probably the happiest moment in Lappland’s life, and all Texas can see is red as the hands of her desires drag her under.
It feels better than she would admit to. Lappland probably enjoys it more than she does. They don’t last for very long when Texas starts fucking her, not particularly savoring the moment, but the image of Lappland bent under her is already imprinting itself on her mind.
Lappland smirks at her like saying, you’re just a control freak, aren’t you?
Maybe she is, but Texas doesn’t deny her want for power, beneath the want for a peaceful life away from her roots — just enough strength to make her feel sure in her own body, unchained from her past — taking form in Lappland.
Texas wrings her neck just for the fleeting satisfaction as she comes down.
“I regret not keeping you,” Lappland says after. It’s more of an afterthought than anything,
“You never had me in the first place,” Texas corrects, not entirely true.
The truth is that she has been ensnared in Lappland’s den for a very long time. And what would that say of their relationship? Texas doesn’t think about it, because she doesn’t think about unnecessary things.
Lappland imagines herself a hunter, and Texas, her prey, who escapes her by an inch of her life at every window of opportunity to devour. Except that Lappland does not chase her with claws and fangs, but an obsession; a craving. “But— I could’ve.”
Texas has a pitiful semblance of a smile on her lips when she leaves, as kept and tidy as before. “You couldn’t.”
Cellinia Texas doesn’t belong to anyone, and Lappland Saluzzo could not claim her even if she wanted to.
“Oripathy has driven you mad,” Texas says, one rainy night. It’s nothing more than a voiced observation. Texas prefers not to speak of the past, but it doesn’t mean her mind is entirely rid of musings.
They were never quite friends even when they were younger, but Texas thinks they could’ve been, perhaps if things were just... different. As it went, their childhood was filled with constant strife from both of their families, and Texas does wish, for what it’s worth, that she could’ve gotten to know Lappland more beyond her blades.
It mattered not that Texas usually won their duels, or how Lappland managed to knock her down one rainy day in Siracusa, what should’ve been Texas’ end—
She chuckles cynically.
Meanwhile, Lappland looks at her and tilts her head, tethering on a sneer. “If you told my father that, he would laugh.”
“Maybe,” Texas pauses. “But I’m telling you.”
The rain is reminiscent of that of Siracusa’s. The only thing missing is the scent of blood and tobacco mingling in the air. Through it all, Lappland feels ever present with her, a constant reminder of her blood debt. Up until the Volsinii conspiracy, she has been reaping her history, no thanks to Lappland.
But she would follow her, even then, even after; the only remnant of her past that would follow her forevermore, the one who could truly know the visage behind the Texas name.
Does Texas think she is only like this because she is sick? Oh, she could laugh. This game between them has tipped towards a different road altogether, one exempt from overt violence and the intent to kill— a mere curious one: of how much Lappland wants Texas; of how far she would go just to have her.
“What’s wrong with that?” Lappland asks, only slightly cynical. “Isn’t it thrilling to be on the edge of death? It sets you free from the chains of hesitation — to do whatever you want in life.”
Texas exhales slowly. “I don’t need to be dying to get what I want.”
But Lappland does. They’ve known that for a long time. So what happens when Lappland dies?
Two lone wolves, minus one, and that’s it. Texas would live the same life she always has, being a delivery girl and eating out in bars with her new family.
Lappland never had that.
Perhaps it’s because she noticed the sudden sadness in Lappland’s face, a stark contrast to the grin she usually has, but Texas turns away and straightens her back, a burning resolve lit anew. “I’m not here for your comfort— or your obsession,” she says. “You can take those with you to the grave.”
Lappland knows. Texas does not love her, but she could believe that she would, if things between them were better.
“That’s so cruel,” Lappland says, a smile returning to her.
When Texas leaves, so does Lappland.