Chapter Text
On the list of things Sequoia Stellguard would—under no circumstance—ever do, were: Take more than a three-day weekend away from her desk—and even then, she’d always find a reason to sneak past clocking in. Catch a flight using a ticket she bought within the last twenty-four hours on personal business. Or spend Christmas actually relaxing. So, it was a real surprise to everyone on her team when she stormed into the bureau at a crisp nine a.m. as opposed to her usual twenty minutes earlier, asking how to access vacation time on short notice.
“You’re taking off for the holidays?” Wyll, the agency’s beloved charmer, gawked un-princely over the steaming blue coffee mug Jennie slid into his hand. It was his right to act the most surprised out of all of them. In seven years as the red-headed detective’s partner, he’d only seen her take time off once for her grandmother’s funeral. And despite the multiple screensavers that carousel of her and the older woman before her passing, Sequoia had still made it into work the following Monday.
“Has the world caught on fire, and I just haven’t noticed?” Jennie, the most sardonic forensic specialist Baldur County could get their hands on—and whose high school metal band, Shadowheart, still haunts her office birthday cakes—looked flummoxed for perhaps the first time in her straight-faced life.
Sequoia had yet to take a seat since entering the room, favoring gripping the scuffed cafeteria table and glowering at the scorch-ring from one of Wyll’s failed ramen attempts. A permanent installment after five years, and much to the dismay of their analyst, Gale, who petitioned for a new table every quarter. Something about morale and feng shui the budget managers never took to heart.
Jennie set her own mug on the table, aptly avoiding Gale’s coasters, before perching herself on one of the far corners. “Honestly, is something the matter? You look one bad piece of news away from having your mugshot up on Wyll’s cork board.”
The cork board owner in question nodded his firm agreement.
“I think, maybe I just need to go away for a while. Figure things out.” With a densely woven braid spilling over her shoulder, it was the only piece of Sequoia’s standard pressed uniform that remained. Her tie was crooked, only half of her white button-up managed to tuck itself into her belt, and the brown leather jacket she always left draped over her desk chair was being strangled unceremoniously by her anxious hands. Even the twinkling tinsel of the breakroom’s Christmas tree couldn’t lighten the heavy-set bags under her clear green eyes.
“Yeah, no, you’re really starting to sound like a villain,” Wyll goaded in his hearty timbre. “All those cases finally crack you, Stellguard?”
“It’s personal.” Sequoia’s head sunk between tensely set shoulders with a back breaking sigh. “And fucking stupid.”
“Well?”
“Out with it!”
Only Wyll and Jennie could ever get away with making their senior detective writhe. Everyone else was either too scared of her statue astuteness or too pissed about her hoard of career making cases to stand in the same room long enough. On occasion, Gale would lend an ear for her stress induced rambles, but it was always the two arching their brow at her now that squirmed right past her defenses.
“It’s Nick,” she relented. “Turns out he’s been sleeping with his receptionist for some time now and he told me ‘I was the one with the affair first’ because the amount of overtime I rack up is practically fucking someone else anyway.”
With perhaps the longest string of words Sequoia had ever vomited still cha-cha-ing across the burnt cafeteria table, the two sat across from it had to share a wide-eyed acknowledgement before their responses could kick into gear.
As uncharacteristic as the mini monologue preceding it, Jennie crossed the distance with her arms outstretched. Wrapping tightly around the taller's well-built torso, it took a few moments for the rigidness to subside and return with a hug much more robust. Adjusting the emblemed cap on his head, Wyll massaged the deepening burnet creases of his forehead.
After a handful of embellished condemnations and sentiments, Sequoia had finally tucked the unkempt half of her shirt and set her tie to rights. “I’m in between cases right now. And corporate’s been running in circles when it comes to my PTO, so I… have a flight to England.” She took a quick glance at her watch. “In about three hours.”
Busting into a suspect’s house after a warrant approval or rushing back to the scene to sniff down a new trail was the sort of spontaneity the three were used to seeing. Whatever this was, it was certainly out of character. So, it took a few seconds of blank staring before shoving their co-worker down the halls and out the door. All the while explaining how she could contact the right management from her taxi and that they’d put in a good word for her time-off in person.
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It was a small little cottage. At first glance it wasn’t hard to imagine the overall square footage being a fraction of Sequoia’s apartment back in the city. Granted her rental proved more penthouse than dorm room, but that was still saying something.
Two horn-like chimneys on either side of the sagging roof and an evergreen adorned front door of robin’s egg blue, the house was a children’s book vision. Cookie-colored stones of various sizes made up the walls, still supporting frosted dull branches from what was certainly a thriving garden that summer, and snow blanketed each exposed wooden shingle. Standing at its gate after the tumultuous, slippery walk through the wooded country, it all but clenched Sequoia’s chest with the familiarity of stumbling into books her father would read aloud before bed.
Aurelia, the cottage owner and definitive e-mail sweetheart, had sourced specific directions to be used upon landing at the nearest airport. With the printouts still clenched in the detective’s gloves, she set her suitcase against the powdery stone wall to riffle through the wrinkled pages.
I’ve kept a spare key under the mat. If my brother has misplaced that—as he so often does—there should be another hiding in the cracked terracotta pot around back. Wood is stacked outside the shed, but there should be plenty by the fireplace for when nights get really cold.
There was a full page of heartfelt instructions remaining, even going so far as to give pantry-stocked tea recommendations, but the wind was gaining around the flurry coated weave of Sequoia’s braid. Picking up her suitcase and unlatching the creaking fence at the garden’s front, she beelined for the front porch. Later she’d be sure to message Aurelia in hopes of suggesting a better hiding spot for her spare key. Doormats are the first place anyone looks.
Giving a quick dust to her bags and boots under the cozy overhang, she dispersed her collection of snowflakes as best she could before entering the stranger’s home. An odd feeling for a detective having no cause other than her own holiday to be there. Everything was quiet. Cool and clean despite having left in the hurry of a twenty-four-hour notice. With a quaint kitchen to her right and a patchwork living room to her left, everything any simple living person could need was within a five-foot reach of the next.
A scamper of four paws along worn carpet and the sudden beat of a wagging tail announced the shaggy white lump barreling towards her down the stairs. Scratch, if she remembered correctly. She checked her notes again just to be sure.
“Hey, buddy,” she cooed as the dog licked the melting snow she couldn’t shed from her coat. No small puppy by any means of Aurelia’s description, but nevertheless an absolute doll when it came to being scratched along his snout. “Give me just a second and I’ll get the fire started nice and warm for you.”
Sequoia liked the way the cottage smelled. Woodsmoke, fresh cut evergreens, and countertop tea stains. It smelt like someplace her parents would have liked to live.
Before the cold could completely thaw from her face, or the unearned nostalgia could sink a little further in the unmelting cold of her chest, Sequoia set her bag next to the coat rack and rushed outside to collect the terracotta-hidden key by the back door.
Just to be safe.
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If the walk in was anything to go by, she’d have guessed that a simple fire in the hearth would be cozy and well earned. That listening to its constant crackle would soothe the restless part of her prone to dwell on every reason that brought her to swap homes in the first place. Instead, she just rewound every backhanded compliment, gripe, and strange perfume Nick would come home emanating, all while shivering under a quilt that didn’t belong to her.
It was cold. Sequoia had never been one to gripe about such things as a result of many childhood camping trips and the belief in gritting one’s teeth. A fact Wyll had found hard to stomach when she’d silence the engine during stakeouts in the dead of winter, their breaths turning cloudy in the name of another back-alley veil.
But this was something else entirely. No longer focused on watching for hooded figures to slip from hotel lobbies or following her mother’s crunching hiking boots through the dense forest, it left her mind to recount over and over just how cold she really was.
A trip into town had done little to help. The quickly circulated heat in the tiny yellow car had been nice enough to defrost her fingers. But learning the art of left-road driving down what should have been classified as a one-way street had proven exhilarating for all the wrong reasons.
Enough cheese to feed a metropolis of mice and three bags brimming with chocolates destined for the office break room later, she found herself moping into a giant cottage charcuterie. It had been a great effort to put her pajamas on, and an even greater effort not to crack open a second bottle of wine. She hardly liked alcohol anyways.
She was sad. In a pent up, non-crying display. More unsatisfying than anything. It probably would have felt nice to just spill it out onto the currant jam and crumbly biscuits. No, she just felt sad in an empty, bored, shameful sort of way.
Perpetual moodiness making the oncoming blizzard feel even colder, she let Scratch lick up the last of the expensive goat cheese before bundling every blanket she could find in her arms. It was a dramatic affair of fuzz and fringe. One that collapsed an already teetering stack of wooden ring cross stitches. Linen arts of flowers and phrases, and even one decorated with some strange owl-bear hybrid, whooshed across the floor. Much like the polaroids on the fridge when she’d accidentally slammed its door.
Unable to resist the sleuthing part of her, green eyes glanced across each one. The stitched patterns had been regarded with more astonishment than the pictures, intrigued as to how someone would have the patience to perfect each little hatch of thread. But the polaroids. No, the polaroids caught her attention for a different reason entirely.
Aurelia had starred in many of them. Recognizable from her profile photo, her dark skin and golden-brown eyes were distinguishable as one of the prettiest subjects any instant camera would have the pleasure to photograph. Hair braided in crown-like cascades, she nuzzled against a collection of friends. One of which beckoned Sequoia’s stare with a bold assertiveness.
Far paler than her host, a man of chiseled alabaster and perfectly placed curls snuggled up to Aurelia’s grinning figure. The harsh flash of the camera surely frightening off any color from his water-like eyes, it was hard to look away from the artistic smudge of gold and red makeup adorning both dazzling faces.
Returning the pictures to their rightful place on the fridge was nothing short of a willpower miracle.
Kicking a few more logs into the fire and nearly tripping up the stairs with her pile of blankets, Sequoia retreated to bed. Sleep would surely play coy for a few hours. Be it from the cold, or the five hundredth rerun of what brought her here. But it seemed far more comfortable to book her flight home from a cozy mattress as opposed to laying horizontal on the stone floor of the kitchen, desperately trying to shed a tear.
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There was a firm rap at the door come two o’clock in the morning. Scratch leapt from the foot of the bed, tail wagging at such a high velocity it looked bound to propel off. Braving the decision of hobbling out from under the blanket-y mound she’d created in an attempt to stay on the warmer side of an ice-cube, Sequoia floundered down the shallow stairwell as the third chorus of knocks thudded against the fir swag.
Scratch was already standing at full, barking attention with his front paws on the door when she’d dispelled the light haze of sleep at the foot of the stairs. Donning on her so suddenly was the early hour. How she was alone in a stranger’s house, halfway across the world, in her striped Christmas jammies.
She’d have felt much more secure with the camera doorbell and thumbprint locks of her apartment. Some semblances of preparedness that would dispel every sick file she had to read about cases just like this one.
Clenching and releasing a cautious fist at her sides, she dared a few steps closer to decipher the slurry of words coming from the other side of the door.
“Aurelia, the keys are gone. If you don’t let me in soon, I’ll have no choice but to do something egregious to this festive porch of yours.”
Scratch was practically demanding the man be let inside, wide brown eyes looking back at Sequoia with an overflowing excitement.
“Scratch, please stop pawing at the door and go fetch your mom.”
It was that line, swirling with the respect for an animal's better judgment, that emboldened her to open the door. Whoever it was, at least they knew Aurelia. She could deal with the rest of their intentions face to face.
Opening to the bitter cold, a gust of wind drove past the front door and into the living room. On the other side of it stood a man she’d seen before. From the mosaic of photos reverently pinned beneath fridge magnets.
It was almost embarrassing to admit how beautiful she found him within polaroids, let alone shadowing the tiny porch in the dimly lit dark. High cheekbones and a natural quirk to full lips gave his whole appearance a wash of regality. Each pearlescent curl winding around snowflakes and a sharply cut jaw, shined with glittering definition under the lamplight.
Decked head to toe in luxurious black outerwear, he looked worlds away from ever winding up in someplace as homely as this. The wind-popped collar and certainly-cashmere scarf drawing all the more attention to the only note of color in his outfit. Two drops of blue, like diluted pen ink or tear stains on a Victorian love letter shimmered beneath charcoal rimmed lashes.
Eyes like fine cut diamonds on a rich woman’s anniversary necklace acknowledged her in the open doorway, the warm light from within returning human pleasantries to his ivory skin.
“Oh my god. Of course, on the night I show up unannounced she finally has a girl over. Splendid. Guess that explains the keys.” Leaning a little further on the column she discovered him on, he began to rub warm life into his snow-chilled fingers. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but could you fetch my sister for me?”
“Your sister?” Sequoia enunciated warily.
“Yes, I know we don’t look much alike. Bit of a foster care situation, but she does in fact remain my most beloved sibling.” He presented a hand to be shook. Sequoia received it with a reinforced brace on the doorframe—had he the intention to pull her into the storm. Frigid cold, and notably larger than her own, she tried to keep the chill from seeping too far into her own skin.
“Astarion,” he introduced himself, “it’s lovely to meet you.”
“Sequoia.”
“Ah, beautiful.”
They were still shaking one another’s hand, the lack of specification dawning on the pale-haired man the longer its monotonous motion persevered.
“I mean the name! Though, you are also… quite—” Releasing her hand suddenly, Astarion straightened himself into a cosplay of sobriety. “I am very drunk.”
“I can tell.”
“Aurelia usually lets me crash here whenever I run up an inordinate bill at the local pub and can’t fetch a cab—”
“She's not here right now.”
“She’s not?” Concern washed over the stranger's face, his gaze looking a little less crystalline under the warm porchlight. “I mean, she hardly ever ventures out this late at night.”
A gust of wind swirled a freshly fallen swatch of snow around Astarion’s dark leather boots, and he huddled closer still to the grey scarf wound around his neck. The frigid sound of leafless branches whipping against one another, paired with the perpetual arctic leak she’d made by keeping the door cracked for so long, was enough to consider abandoning common sense and continuing the conversation inside. Even Scratch was cowering his way back into the firelit ambience, despite the frantically wagging tail.
“Listen, I don’t have to stay for more than a second. But, if you could spare me the restroom for a turn, I’d be eternally grateful.”
Maybe it was the look in his eyes, or the pretty way his hair curled around a collection of silver earrings, or the simple fact that she was fucking freezing. Sequoia opened the door further and moved aside, gesturing him frantically inward as another biting blow coursed down the farmed valley. Shuffling around each other in the closet-sized foyer, the two managed to shut the door before any more flurries could pile in its open corner.
“Oh, thank god,” Astarion huffed as the fireplace set to work defrosting his porcelain skin.
Once the newly met stranger had scurried about his business in his sister’s home, Sequoia made sure to double check the polaroids on the fridge just to be certain. Lighting the gas stove for a replenished kettle, she eyed the same milky curls and frozen, lake-like eyes that had greeted her at the door. It was in fact him posing alongside Aurelia, decked out in their festive best for whatever party they’d surely been the life of.
It was difficult keeping herself from imploding into investigation. The information hound in her already trying to scour locations and recurring faces amongst the poorly lit photos when Astarion turned the slim corner of the kitchen.
“She’s much better with an actual camera, I swear,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the banister. “Every year I complain about how washed out those make me look and yet she refuses to take them down.”
Sequoia’s astute stillness lurched into embarrassed fussing as she slid the whistling kettle off its flame. And what did she have to be embarrassed about? Wanting to be sure the strange man she let into her borrowed home was actually who he said he was? Being naturally curious? Enjoying—perhaps a little too suddenly—the way his maroon shirt flattered him in bygone photos?
“I think they’re very nice,” she murmured.
“Really, darling?” There was something liquid about his voice. Spilling onto the wooden floors and pooling around her fluffy socks, its effortlessness made her feel in a way, underdressed. Like she’d shown up to a masquerade wearing a polo shirt. Or that she was still shivering in her jammies while his lean geometry looked even sharper in the warm glow.
“They seem happy.” Sifting through cabinets trying to remember which one hid Aurelia’s collection of mugs, Sequoia let all her buzzing abandon syphon into the antique handles. Who was she to be boarding planes to different countries and scavenging through someone else’s pantry? She should be going to work tomorrow! Catching the early train to queue her favorite bagel place before the line wrapped outside the door. Rereading fresh files before Wyll even had the chance to clock in, or Jennie brewed the morning’s first pot of coffee.
Routine. It was important to her. Important enough to make her eye twitch when Nick got all dressed to meet his obnoxious coworkers at the bar on a whim, enough to where he stopped inviting her after the second bout of sighs. Important enough to pretend she couldn’t and wouldn’t care about where he snuck off too all those nights she’d tucked white knuckled evidence into bed beside her. Left her bedside lamp on just in case she woke up with a brand-new perspective sometime during the night.
Routine was crashing down around her as Astarion’s cold wool coat brushed against her back and an arm diligently opened the correct cabinet.
“It’s the one with the fancy handle,” he said.
“Thank you.” Grabbing one that looked dented from its turn on the pottery wheel, Sequoia busied herself with decanting some honey into the bottom of her mug. As she followed with a tea bag in turn, there was something nagging at the back of her mind. The same pestering itch that put those plane tickets in her hand, that texted an unprofessional PTO leave from a honking taxi.
“Would you like some tea?” she prompted once the war of routine and spontaneity played in the latter’s favor.
There was a glimmer of surprise on Astarion’s face, followed by an earnest smile. Fetching his own mug—all black with gold painted stars—he set to work with the honey pot at her side. “I’d love nothing more.”
Sequoia poured each mug its own serving of steaming water before clamping her hands around her drink’s dissipating warmth while the bag steeped.
“So, what’s the deal with you and my sister, if you don’t mind me asking?” Astarion questioned, stirring any stuck honey from the bottom of his cup.
“We swapped homes. Sort of a spur of the moment, house sitting arrangement for the holidays.”
“Damn,” he hissed with a slow rub to his temple, “see, the one time I don’t pick up her call she’s gone gallivanting off too…” Waving his hand in Sequoia’s direction he searched for the right location. “Well, I’m assuming it’s across the pond, right? American accent and all that?”
“Yes,” she nodded, “across the pond, quite a ways.”
“I’ll call her back,” he said, more so to himself. “Anyways, I’m glad you decided to come to my drunken aid in her stead. And brewed me tea, no less!”
“Against my better judgment,” she said, worrying her bottom lip. “Nearly ten years in the detective field should have taught me a bit better about opening the door to people I don’t know.”
It could have been considered risky sharing that personal detail. But were there to be some cruel twist of fate, she supposed it was better he knew what messing with her put him up against. If he was smart, he’d keep himself far away from being a suspect in her missing person’s report, lest Jennie catches wind and teaches him why her nickname has more to do with shadows than sunshine.
“A detective?” he applauded, “Even more reason to be thankful, given your first impression of me was threatening to piss on my sister’s stoop. Sorry we were to meet on such unchivalrous terms.”
“Forgiven,” she looked up over the mug casting steam across her densely freckled cheeks. A note of satire dulled what she’d initiated as a warning. “At least for now.”
“For now? Could I be so bold as to assume you’re offering up that couch for the night?” As he looked over his shoulder to the living room, a lurch fluttered through Sequoia’s chest. “I have to say, it’s been calling my name.”
She looked out the window. Past its frost encrusted panes to the pitch winter beyond, with its uninviting swirl of snow dancing along the meager light from neighboring houses. “Well, I could hardly call myself compassionate if I were to send you back out into that.”
Astarion didn’t need to follow her eyes to feel the memory of its blistering cold, his cheeks still tinged pink from crystals born of his nighttime trek. Taking a sip of his tea, he waited for Scratch to finish curling up by the radiator beneath the dining room table. “I’d think you were very kind if you didn’t.”
“I’ve taken all the blankets from downstairs; It’ll just take a minute for me to sort some out for you.” There was a sudden urge to scamper up the narrow stairs and never crawl back down again. To leave the man drinking peppermint tea in her adopted kitchen there until morning when she could actually form a cohesive thought. To push him back into the snow from whence he came before repacking her suitcase for the third time. Maybe she could get a head start by walking to the airport right then and there.
“Have you found the ones in the game console?” he asked, setting his mug on the counter behind.
“Game console?” Sequoia mouthed.
“I’ll take that as a 'no.'” Pulling at the sleeves of his coat, Astarion made his way into the living room, eventually scattering winter wear across the floral reading chair in its furthest corner. “Sister dearest has a habit of buying too many throws, so she has to come up with some inventive ways of keeping them all in order. This is my little cupboard.” He opened the wooden doors beneath the small box television. “Ah look, two new ones just this month.”
“Your sister really looks out for you.” She didn’t know why she said it. Every step towards the living room was like walking in a dream where you feel like you’re going somewhere but the floor is just a treadmill beneath you. “You hole up here often?”
Astarion grinned, placing his pile of mismatched blankets on the corner of the couch. “Only when I’m in town visiting friends. Or when she gets bored of those never-ending needlepoints she tries to convince herself into liking.”
“She made those?”
“So, you found the stash,” he chuckled. “Yes, she did. Cursing and huffing the whole way.”
“They’re nice,” she said absentmindedly. Gale had been encouraging her to pick up a similar hobby whenever she’d overstay his welcome, pulling her hair out on his office ottoman. He was very fond of crochet if she remembered correctly. She wound up getting one of his scarves during a company white elephant and applauded her last-minute decision to pack it before her flight that morning.
“You’ll have to be sure to tell her that, I bet she’d even let you pick your favorites to take home as a souvenir.”
“That sounds lovely but…”
“But?”
It was easier to say it once his back was turned, hands busy laying out a patchwork quilt. “Well, I’ll be leaving on a noon plane tomorrow, so I doubt I’ll be able to get ahold of her in time to ask.”
“Tomorrow? We’ve certainly left quite the impression on you.”
Clutching the mug closer to her chest, the words she’d spent so long trying to ignore, words she could hardly deliver to what she’d label her two closest confidants, began to tumble from her mouth.
“I’m here on a whim. Calling it a whim doesn’t even do it justice.” A shiver ran down her back from the ever present cold. “This is by far the rashest, most spontaneous, idiotic thing I’ve ever done and I… I shouldn’t be here right now.”
“Running from something, darling?” He fixed her with those smoke lined eyes and something unrelated to the cold coursed Sequoia’s spine.
What the hell. It’s not like he knew her.
“A breakup. Long time coming, honestly.”
Astarion tsked while adjusting the embroidered cushions. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Do give whatever bastard who spurred this wanderlust in you my sourest regards.” Lengthening to his full height, it was hard not to notice the rounded muscle of shoulders beneath his cream-colored sweater. “Though he did do me a favor, casting you across the sea to be my knight in shining armor.”
He eyed the candy cane stripes of her pajamas with a devious little smirk. All at once Sequoia wished to still her racing heart, avoiding the urge to cross her arms like a scandalized maiden before bolting. Stacking holly patterned socks one over the other in a distilled dance of embarrassment, it was all she could do to keep from analyzing the look of endearment he cast upon them before relenting.
“I’ll be out before you even think to notice.”
Part of her wanted to know when he was leaving in the morning. A strange sentiment to see him one more time before both of them never saw each other again. But that’s what's supposed to happen on vacations, right? Meeting people as instant memories.
Astarion’s mug was sitting on the low coffee table between her and the couch. Just like whenever Jennie purposefully avoided coasters and Sequoia set herself to brace Gale’s perturbed sigh, she noticed right away what was missing. Be it her analyst’s disembodied nagging or the politeness of wanting to keep Aurelia’s home tidy even at the correction of her own brother, she rushed down to save the wood from a tea-induced ring.
“Quick thinking.”
“Lots of practice.”
Standing up before retrieving her own mug set beside the corrected coaster, Sequoia came face to face with Astarion’s chest. Much closer before her descent for his mug, both of them had subconsciously—or perhaps purposefully—paralleled the other. She had to look up to meet his gaze.
“I have a friend with a similar habit,” she swallowed.
He viewed her for a time. No doubt mentally tallying each second she let that awkward tension mature. “Seems like they and I were cut from the same cloth.”
Expressionless relief flooded her. “Maybe.”
A beat.
Another.
“Well, goodnight,” she said, fighting the urge to pick at her nails. It already felt like she was giving too much of her nervousness away by lingering.
“Sleep well,” he smiled, leaning down to kiss her.
It was like snapping a fortune cookie. Clear and crisp and crumbling in your hands. Sequoia’s stomach fell to her feet, her heart setting into a gallop as Astarion’s eyes widened on her ajar expression.
He hastily stepped backward. “Shit, I’m so sorry I—”
“Try again.” Sequoia’s common sense was flying out the chimney with the woodsmoke, never to return as a fire all her own cracked to life within her. For the first time in twenty-four hours, she felt warm. Shielded from the whipping cold and growing dread. For the first time in six years of kissing Nick, she felt—and there really was no better way of putting it—hot.
Suddenly the space between them felt like the pressurized poles of two magnets, a force her determined hands were frantically fighting to connect. A swirling, repelling, mischievous energy that had never before coursed through her body, an energy that felt fucking good.
“I—” Placing a hand on his chest she could feel the point of his collarbone rise and fall with an increasing depth as she dared a step in his direction. “I’d like to try again, if you would.”
There were no words. Just two large hands engulfing the sides of her freckled face and drawing her in. Where Astarion’s drunken slip had been chaste and gentlemanly, the one that followed it was something deeper. A kiss that lingered long enough to heat the blood pounding through her neck. A kiss dotted with panting breaths, cooling the sheen of collected hunger across her bottom lip.
Astarion parted for a status check. “Thoughts?”
“Not a one,” Sequoia gasped. Gripping the dense knit of his sweater, she wrenched him back down to meet her, eliciting a gravely approval. “I mean what am I even doing?” She’d said it giggling. But suddenly the giggling became worrying, and the thoughtlessness felt as dumb as it sounded. “What am I doing?”
“Chasing a good feeling, I hope,” Astarion hummed against her mouth. It took an exorbitant amount of will to push him another inch from her flushed skin, the fire now roaring in her stomach. He let himself be repositioned, diligently noting the stages of horror playing out on Sequoia’s pretty face as she held him at a respectable distance.
“I think it’s a good feeling.” Who was she kidding? She knew damn well she hadn’t felt this good in a long time. And what was kissing strangers in the grand scheme of scandalous acts? She could name half of her office that was practicing that ritual every Friday after work. Surely, it couldn’t be so bad for her to chase a high once in a while. To revel in a scrap of that young-blooded foolishness she so sorely missed out on growing up. “Try me again.”
Astarion’s chest rumbled with amusement as he laid the silvery lashes on heavy. “Close your eyes for me, love.”
Following his command, Sequoia was rewarded with a tender kiss to each lid, and another on the tip of her nose. Once every inch of blush was covered in his wandering flame, he retethered their mouths for a kiss that consumed any remaining trepidation in the form of a heavy sigh.
“Good?” he whispered.
“Good.”
“Shall we keep this going for a while longer?”
Sequoia wanted more. For once she couldn’t swallow the urge in the name of being polite. To sit quietly and watch each tick and falter in her surroundings, waiting for something bigger or better to give her attention to. For once she wanted to take something just for herself. To be rewarded for so many years of being a teacher’s perfect classroom example.
Coaxing Astarion onto the couch behind she dared so far as to crawl after him. Strong set thighs on either side of his dizzyingly trim waist, she perched herself to look down at him with arms draped over his shoulders. Stray pieces of hair loosened from her braid ghosted along his cheek as he delightedly observed.
Allowed to anchor on the dip of her hips, Astarion thumbed the hem of her button up shirt, forging a new trail of buzzing carresses along her pulse. “Being a man of some moral standing, I would benefit greatly from a verbal declaration.”
“Yes,” Sequoia’s voice peaked at an expertly placed graze of teeth along her collar. “Sorry, I have a habit of getting—” The introduction of tongue amidst playful nibbles was all at once launching her ability to form sentences into the stratosphere. “A little lost in thought up there.”
“No need to apologize,” he said. “Analyze as much as you’d like, just be so kind as to come back down for a spell every now and again. I’m rapidly discovering how much I enjoy your unadulterated attention.”
An open mouth kiss against her thudding heartbeat and a tightening grip at her waist was enough to send her grinding down against his lap. Sputtering a sudden whimper, she did her best to cover all the bases before the verbal part of her brain completely shut down to keening factory settings.
“I’ve been told that habit of mine makes me not very… exciting when it comes to things like this,” she expounded shyly. “Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
Astarion’s brow furrowed into an accordion of lines. “What blithering idiot told you that?!” Before she could scramble around any explanation, he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Having you answer that door and crawl into my lap has been one of the most exciting things to happen to me all year.”
Sequoia couldn’t help it. She giggled past the wall of self-deprecation that had been a constant installment within her meager sex life.
“Genuinely,” Astarion chuckled alongside her, “top three, by far.”
He was kissing her again. Winding a hand around the nape of her neck to nestle in the weaves of braid tossed over her shoulder. Without knowing how, her back hit the overstuffed cushions.
“I mean, honestly, what’s not to like?” he mused. “With the blazing red hair and lovely green eyes. Sweetheart, you look like an absolute Christmas carol.”
There was an instinct to twit back, but it was impossible for anything solid to come to mind. Not with those cutting diamond eyes devouring every shred of her disintegrating constitution. “And you’re like… Jack Frost?” Was the best she could come up with in the moment.
Astarion beat a full belly laugh into submission before regaining his suave composure. Could Sequoia evaporate out from beneath his caged arms and gloriously broad chest, she would have. In romps of old, it was easier to hush up, to let the only spoken words between bodies result in generic exposition. Or simply to utter nothing at all. Hone all her focus into chasing a high that would at times never come, resulting in another lack-luster performance for her bedmate.
Not that Nick ever seemed to mind outside of his post-orgasm review of her efforts. She couldn’t remember the last time he called her pretty, let alone had the patience to sit and listen to small talk when the shedding of her clothes was on the line. Every time with him had seemed transactional. The only benefit of being labeled as belonging to one another. God knows the conversation outside of the bedroom never resulted in either of them feeling fulfilled.
And then there was this stranger. Blown in on some foreign winter wind to sweep her off into the storm. To actually look her in the eye when she had something to say. To pull back from her mouth and listen to her stumble around every newly expressed emotion, where Nick would have been far too busy trying to undress her to pay attention.
The most beautiful man she’d ever met actually seemed to care about what she had to say. It was terrifying and beyond that, it was thrilling.
Noticing her deepening flush he brushed a fly away from the creases of her nose. “Hey, maybe you’re not so good with the nickname thing right away. But never fret,” he let his words dance across her lips as he delivered the final blow, “it’s cute.”
Sequoia. The woman who sussed out, chased down, and handcuffed every criminal she’d ever set out to find. Who wore the same leather jacket passed down from her father for the past fifteen years and could knot a tie with her eyes closed. Whose morning sudoku was the closest thing she had to a hobby outside of beating a punching bag into submission. The same woman who couldn’t shed a tear at the admittance of her long-time boyfriend having sex with his receptionist and demanded the bastard leave without collecting all his clothes first… Had hardly been called cute before.
She wouldn’t have to ask him to say it again. Nor did she think she could, given the ruckus of his hunger at her mouth or the churning in her stomach. But Astarion heard each floundering breath and rewarded it in kind. Noting the adorable widening of her eyes, so nearly consumed by pupils their clear forest color was reduced to rims. Praising the way her hips bucked into him at each graze of palm across her arching back. She let the endearment sink further into the untouched reservoir of her chest.
“Because we’re, well, strangers…” Astarion began, slithering down to kiss the exposed band of skin above her candy-cane pajama bottoms. “Anything I should take note of before we continue? Preferences? Dealbreakers? Any embarrassing tattoos you want to warn me of before meeting them face to face?”
“No tattoos.” Chewing the inside of her cheek, Sequoia hesitated to determine if the jagged skin beneath her shirt would fit the dealbreaker category. For him. Or for her. It’s gotten its fair share of worried looks before, people who looked at it like her past pain could spread to their own bodies if they touched it the wrong way.
“I have a scar,” she blurted out just as Astarion peppered kisses mere centimeters away from the subject of her worry. “On my stomach.” As his trail discontinued and those ever-watching baby blues waited with bated breath, she felt the bashfulness crash against her statue visage like a foaming wave.
“I promise it’s not contagious,” she aimed to jest.
A puff of exhalation, and the hum-like lilt of Astarion’s chuckle warmed Sequoia’s face as he returned to his prior alignment. Bumping foreheads as he shifted, he collected smaller hands that had been burrowing between cushions and repositioned them at the hem of his shirt. Encouraging her beneath the woolen sweater, his face contorted into a determined impassivity.
“I know a thing or two about those pesky marks.” Inching further up his spine—attached muscles rolling and tensing under her callused touch—she began to feel them. Ridges and grooves of puckered skin spanned the entire canvas of his back. There were several breaths of following a line with her fingers before reaching the end and starting in on another one. Each time he looked like he was ready to flinch, like her tracing had undone all his skin had hardened to protect, his breath seeped through clenched teeth.
“I normally don’t let people get this up close and personal after twenty minutes, but…” his voice trailed off with a sputter as Sequoia’s right hand resurfaced at his tense shoulder and squeezed. She knew what hours of staring at manilla envelopes and call histories could do to her own neck and was feeling it in kind as he hovered over her. From working out knots born of wrapped knuckles and imagining the gym's sandbags represented every ounce of wrong in the world, she knew how to effectively relax the strain that had taken hold.
Watching unexpected relief fluttering his charcoal lined lashes was enough encouragement to keep going. Both hands set to work massaging the tension stored between his shoulder blades, the elegant slope of his neck to tapered waist. It wasn’t long before his conscious effort of remaining unphased morphed into syrupy sighs and rising to meet comforting touches. “Fuck, you’re wonderful.”
The heat of satisfaction bloomed in Sequoia’s chest. It felt good providing some scrap of ease to someone else. That feeling alone had spurred the dedication to her chosen field. Sent her hounding down the monsters of others simply because she was strong enough to fight them.
“I could stay here all night, darling. So, if I’m going to be of any use, you’ll have to cut it out at some point. God knows I won’t be the one to stop you.” A reedy moan punctuated his sentence as Sequoia’s mouth graced the column of his throat. “Shit, sweetheart, why don’t you let me know where that pretty mark of yours is, so I don’t peep somewhere you don’t want me to and—” A returned bite. No more than a nibble along the shallow cup of his clavicle. An act so out of character for the detective her past lovers would surely look upon it and gasp.
“On my stomach,” she indulged. “But don’t worry. Seems we’re well matched.”
“Seems so.” Reduced to propping himself up with an elbow, his husky accent descended even closer, sending a buzzing sensation along her ears. “Any kryptonite hiding behind that stoic smirk of yours, or are you just determined to deconstruct mine?”
Regarding it for a moment and deciding with another dragging palm along the fissures of his back, Sequoia came to the conclusion that she wasn’t in tune with what she liked. Sex was just, sex. In the short span of knowing her, Astarion had managed to reduce all her defenses to rubble and coiled a devilish spring tight within her stomach. She’d say he’d have a better chance of knowing her preferences than she herself did.
“I’m not really sure,” she admitted.
There was a fond recognition behind his eyes. Like he knew the exact progression of thoughts within her own mind, or that he’d confessed something of the like before. “Well alright, darling. We can take time figuring it out together.”
An ounce of trepidation.
“What, do you have somewhere you ought to be?” He lifted a mirthful chin to the surrounding cabin.
“No. Do you?”
“I’ve got time.”
It was nothing and then all at once. First the only motion between them was synchronized breaths, a static field crackling with anticipation. Then those crystal pools were looking up at her between framing thighs, undressed of their Christmas-y best to invite the heat of his breath rolling over her navel. Legs bent over his lowered shoulders, all that was expected of her was to lie back and watch. It made that wound coil constrict even further.
Astarion’s gaze was dangerous. His encouragement well past being labeled addictive. Viewing him positioned as such, rubbing comforting circles into the imperceptible shivers goose bumping her skin, was enough to undo her before he’d even begun. Sequoia found herself in the shameful predicament of wanting to give him everything he could ask for.
“We can start with the basics. Simple yes and no. Red light, green light.” Pressing firmer with fingers no longer circling was enough to elicit a writhing whimper. One, given the burning flush and eager buck upwards into his sturdy grip, was enough to satisfy any apprehension. “Yes, I’ll even take that response,” he purred.
Kisses on her neck was one thing. Kissing her thighs was another. Muscles haphazardly in and out of flex while Astarion marked all the soft parts of them, it was enough to drive the sanest person mad. Fingers and tongue and damp heat, there was only one thing she noticed the lack of. One thing she sorely and shamefully missed.
She hardly had it in her to form the words, far too embarrassed by her own inkling to say it aloud. If dragging her fingers along his exposed canines—grinning up at her between teasing licks—could get the message across, she would. An urge to claw through pearly curls and deliver his face to the plush of her thigh until the sick wish came to fruition.
“Personal request, sweetheart?” he moaned against the tug of his hair.
“Teeth,” was all she could get out. The smirk spanning the lower half of Astarion’s face was knowing and far, far from gracious. Finding an unmarked patch of skin nearing the peak of her thighs, he bit down, and Sequoia saw stars.
It was like your knees buckling beneath you. Like reaching the top of a rollercoaster and your seat dropping out from below before the telltale count of three. Like Sequoia needed far more room to process this than the love-seat-wannabe provided.
“Maybe we should take this somewhere more comfortable,” she managed through strains of improperly censored cursing.
As content as he looked to remain where he was planted on the sinking cushions, Astarion made no objections as he allowed her to rise from his forgiving shackles. “Anywhere to hear this pretty carol sing.”
“Alright, now you’re getting out of hand.” Standing above him, she gave a beckoning tug to his dense woolen collar.
“What? No love for a double entendre?”
“Cool it, Shakespeare.”
“See! Better nicknames already! I knew you could manage.”
“Not so cute anymore?”
“Darling, I have the strange feeling you could do any number of things, and I’d still find it gut wrenchingly endearing.”
That familiar pang. The same feeling of wanting to do anything he asked. And then some. So, it was with shaking hands and a ravenous pressure between her legs that Sequoia wrenched him from off the couch and up the stairs to bed.