Chapter Text
Alfred seems to be having some trouble.
Our brave Hunter finds him in the church’s white-tiled bath house, lit by many large candles, bent in front of a mirror, half of his clothes discarded messily over a bench. He’s only wearing that godawful high-necked shirt from under his robes and his trousers, and the embroidery from his discarded shawl glitters in the candlelight.
Every so often he releases a small noise, a groan, a wince, and tilts his hips into the sink for a better angle at the mirror. His boots squeak on the floor with his frustrated fidgeting, and the sound of the running water does little to disguise his whines.
The Hunter stares at him as she passes, on her way to one of the larger basins, and has to stifle a laugh.
Alfred is shaving. And doing spectacularly badly at it.
Before this night of the hunt, he must have had someone shave his face for him, a servant or a barber, maybe a wife? No, Alfred was never married. The man in question turns, then, and catches his audience in his sights. His face shunts closed, and the tips of his ears turn the lightest shade of pink underneath his blond curls.
Hiding a laugh behind her hand at such a silly sight, the Hunter keeps moving. She makes her way over to the larger basin she was aiming for, and strips off her gloves, hat, and coat. She washes off the ends of her hair, face, and neck, dons her clothing once more, and makes to leave.
As she passes Alfred again, she’s pulling her fingers back into her gloves. Alfred hisses, and the Hunter glances over, pausing. A trickle of blood is seeping from a shallow cut on his lip, and Alfred is placing the knife on the edge of the sink, face screwed up in defeat.
The Hunter sighs.
It’s time to take off the gloves again, it seems. She peels one off after the other, dropping them onto the floor. They hit with a wet slap, still dripping from being cleaned, and Alfred looks up in surprise.
“What are you –”
“Old gods be damned, just let me do it,” the Hunter interrupts him, doffing her hat and placing it on the nearby counter.
Alfred stands stock-still as the Hunter walks up to him, glancing just slightly up into his blank face while removing the straight razor from his hand.
“It’s pathetic watching you spend hours on one square inch,” she says, reaching down to let the blade rinse off in the running sink, then moving it back up to his jaw. He’d been straining his eyes, she can tell, to lean back and get his chin well enough. The shaving there is patchy at best, tufts of quarter-inch strands sticking out proudly from the skin just next to his neck.
There’s enough later there to clean up what he’s done wrong, and he very obligingly tilts his head to allow her access. His entire body is tense as she draws close, whipping back a corner of her coat before putting a finger to the tip of his chin, and holding it still. The absurd facsimile of trust here… but is it? It’s trust, surely, enough to let her hold a sharp knife to his most vulnerable places and trust her not to cut him.
Alfred was never the wisest of men.
The razor draws a careful line up the side of Alfred’s neck, curving expertly around his jaw.
“Where did you learn this skill?” he asks of her, letting his gaze float to the ceiling. His eyes are no longer on her reflection. So that is the amount of trust they have. How much trust do they need, when neither have tried to kill the other? They can afford enough for each other, at least, as he gives her information and she, in return, gives some back.
“Nevermind that,” the Hunter says absently. The truth is unimportant. For all he knows, she’s simply good at wielding a knife.
Alfred hums. The lack of his complaining in the echoing space makes for thick silence that settles over the room in a blanket. The silence is fine with the Hunter. It’s almost impossible to get a space to hear nothing; the air is full of the yowls of the cursed and half-living. It’s incredibly annoying.
The Hunter’s finger moves from Alfred’s chin, and goes around to slide along the now clean left side of Alfred’s neck, instead. The knife makes a barely-there metallic sound when she swipes it up under Alfred’s ear, and she hears a short gasp that piques her interest. Again, however, she doesn’t pay it mind.
After a few swipes, the angle, with how tall he is, makes the Hunter’s arm uncomfortable. The stretching of her shoulder in her jacket is tight and a little painful after a short while. Frowning, she pulls over a nearby chair. It scrapes the floor as she drags it, and so do Alfred’s boots when she pushes him down.
He makes a small shout, indignant, and she just goes right back to holding his neck, and finishing the right side. The shout turns into a lower noise, more breathy, and the Hunter ignores it. Just tension from her having the blade back at his jugular, most likely.
But… just in case.
The Hunter swipes the razor up the same line, again, and receives the same reaction.
Oh.
When she pulls further back to examine his face fully, she finds him with this grimace of the most discomfort she’s seen since she last pulled her hand from the chest of one of the crying witches in Hemwick. He’s determinedly staring over her right shoulder, and when she moves to the right, he switches to stare over the left. His face is so red.
She lets her thumb trace a line over the apple of his throat, and he gasps, again.
Well.
The Hunter thinks. There are several things she could do with this distraction.
Several very, very nice things.
What? A girl can have her… needs. On the long night.
There are also things like… yes. That. Definitely that. There is no passion in her thoughts anymore, except for her desire to do it.
To rid this handsome, handsome man of two somethings that have been bothering her for quite some time. She’ll do the world a service, with this one.
So she moves closer, unnecessarily close. And breathes, deliberate.
As her sigh caresses his warm skin, Alfred shivers. There is a reverent delicacy to how she handles the razor in her hand, next, drawing her thumb back up along his laryngeal prominence, and into the soft flesh on the bottom of his chin. He breathes hard, eyes fluttering shut as she easily takes off two inches of mutton chop on his left cheek.
Alfred doesn’t notice, too lost in how her thumbnail digs just barely into his skin. Oh, this is too easy. There are still four inches left of the unsightly hair, but at least it looks somewhat like a nice sideburn now, instead of like a feral cat had attached itself to his jaw.
“Why don’t you open those pretty green eyes?” The Hunter murmurs, and moves behind him. Alfred, already staring at the ceiling, does just as she asks. His eyes are lovely in candlelight. He frowns at her, seeming to sense something amiss, and starts to move his left hand from where it rests on his lap, to touch his jaw.
With her unoccupied hand, the Hunter slaps his hand out of the way.
“Let me work,” she scolds, and, cowed, he places his palm back in his lap, fingers flexing on his thigh.
It’s a little warm in the room, of course, so the Hunter removes her coat, draping it across the Executioner’s vestments on the bench. She rolls up her sleeves so as not to get soap stains on the clean white of her shirt.
The foam on his face has deflated, some, so the Hunter reaches over to the brush, swirls it on the soap cake, and then coats Alfred’s cheeks and chin. He sits quietly through it, head tilted back, as she works. Very purposefully, she presses the swell of her breasts through her shirt to the back of his head as she leans over. This seems to distract him effectively enough. She swipes off all of the remaining facial hair on his left side.
She draws the fingers of her left hand slowly up his neck again, curving hard behind his ear, now-bare forearm tingling with the brush of his hair. Alfred shivers again, like earlier, and the Hunter can see him shifting in his seat. Another pass of the tips of her fingers just under his left ear, grazing the uncut lobe there, and he shifts again.
The Hunter quickly draws the razor down along his philtrum, then a few strokes along the front of his chin to clear the remaining stubble there, before getting curious at how his breathing has quickened. His heartbeat is visibly faster in his neck. Leaning over his shoulder, the Hunter sees a tightness in his trousers that wasn’t there before.
She gets another idea.
The Hunter moves around, before he can protest, and sits herself down in Alfred’s lap. Careful of the blade in her hand, of course.
A long, low curse breezes out from between Alfred’s lips, like blowing air over the top of a bottle. The Hunter watches him carefully, noting the changes in his closed-eyed expression as she gets comfortable. Agony and sweet tension war on his mouth and between his eyes as the tendons seize in his neck. She examines it with amusement, and makes to move closer.
She moves close, adjusts until her belly touches his, and reaches over and sluices the straight razor in the running water in the sink, cleaning it once again. Alfred chokes at the movements, his arms no longer in his lap, but gripping the seat of the chair with white-knuckled concentration.
As if checking to make sure she got everything, the Good Hunter holds his chin in three fingers, turning it slowly this way and that, tracing the lines of his features physically, lazily. Methodical.
It’s time for the other one.
The Hunter rolls her hips decidedly, with murderous intent for the facial monstrosity. Alfred’s hands grip her waist, hard, and she grins, placing the blade at his skin once more. Gasping at the softness with which she traces his long nose with her pinky finger, Alfred seems stunned. The Hunter shaves off another inch of hair from his chin.
He notices this time, his eyes open and searching her face.
Suddenly, with a spark of anger in his shock, he rears back from her touch on his cheek. “What are you–”
She rolls her hips again, grinding down, shivering on the protuberance in his lap, and he forgets his words. Relishing in the fact that her plan was successful, the Hunter hums happily in her throat. Alfred grinds up into her, then, pulling her down onto where he needs the pressure most, and she hums again.
He grinds again, the Hunter bracing her forearms on his shoulders, waiting out the moment of his lack of self-control, the blade dangerously close to cutting his face, for all his excitement. When he ceases moving, she takes off another inch, pushing past the follicles with decided determination. The true shape of the gentle slope of his chin is coming into plain view, and he looks even more handsome.
Of course, he definitely noticed that bit of shaving, and frowns at her, hands loosening. The noise of fabric shifting together, and the drip of water in the sink are the only sound.
Alfred surely knows what the Hunter is doing, now, and he doesn’t seem very happy about it. Can’t have that.
She grips the back his neck, then, pushes fingers into the hair at his nape. Alfred moans softly, leaning his head back as she guides his skull to rest in her hand with gentle presses to his scalp. With that, his fingers massage into her waist, tracing a pattern just under the waistcoat about her, surprisingly gentle.
The hunter swivels her hips one more time, carefully holding the blade to his skin as she does so, and he groans fiercely as the last of that horrid hair comes off. How long it must have taken to grow out that hair on his jawline, and now it’s gone. What a loss. Truly. One of his hands comes up to feel his face, and this time, the Hunter doesn’t stop it. She watches with some of the same amusement from earlier as he touches the left side of his face, now clean-shaven and smooth.
Even Alfred must realize that his chops are gone, and yet he doesn’t… get angry. The Hunter expected anger, yelling, maybe, but not… firm silence, of all things. He probably wants her to finish the job. How ironic that he trusted her to not kill him, and she broke his trust in another way. It should be leaving her on the ground, with the taste of sweet, sweet iron in her mouth, but he doesn’t seem to be protesting.
He doesn’t seem to be protesting one bit. He’s very much not protesting when he grinds up yet again, relentless. The war of agony in his eyes has ended, and the only thing left is desire. Did the hair shaving… did that arouse him, truly? Not the touches, or the breaths on his neck, but… the shaving?
Gods.
The Hunter definitely isn’t complaining, however.
She reaches for the towel over Alfred’s shoulder, and wipes his face clean of the lather.
“Finally you’re acceptable,” she murmurs, admiring her handiwork. It started as a simple shave, but even the old masters didn’t necessarily find their true calling with their original intentions.
The Hunter examines his face for a moment, and is entranced by the handsomeness she had been distracted away from before. His high cheekbones, his sloping, long, nose, his full lips and strong jaw. All framed by a halo of blond that shines so wonderfully in the candlelight. Now, it can be time for using this opportunity for… other things. She gets close to his clear neck and inhales, breathing in the scent of his musk, the soap, sweat…
The Hunter drops the razor in the sink, job done, and they sit there in silence for more than five minutes before she starts to get the feeling that maybe she was wrong, her place here is done, and she makes to get up. But his mouth is there, on her neck, panting into her, within seconds of her trying to move.
It gets her to notice the lingering ache between her legs, as he pulls her close, pushing her shirt up out of her slacks. The Hunter shivers at the feeling of his hot hands against her skin, and thinks that maybe she wouldn’t mind staying. At all. As if it was ever a doubt.
“You fucking tease,” Alfred growls, and she has to sigh in return.
“They had to go,” she replies wistfully, taking the opportunity to shove her fingers under the hem of his shirt, and yank it up. She won’t be the only one disrobing at this party. “Or we might not be in such a precarious position.”