Work Text:
The oven hums, outside it is the ceaseless sun of the afternoon; the wind, when it whistles, is almost cheery, though it brings in the cold of a storm somewhere far out to sea.
Sorina leans away from her cutting board and listens. Igraine had planted flowers in autumn, ones Dolores had chosen, in the edge of garden outside the kitchen window; they’ve unfurled, pretty little lavender things, and brought the warm, tireless buzzing of insects with them.
Peaceful. Calming.
She has been home two hours, and Igraine, captivated by her practice, only a quarter of that. She had called in the reasons why, in her tittering way, before sealing herself into the lounge with nothing more than her piano and a glass of water. Sorina steps back from her half-finished work, a flat plain of dough with only half of it cut into strips. The shell, blind baked, cools on the stove with the filling already spooned in.
It’s a tedious thing to make. Tedious and annoying and requiring far too much cutting and kneading and finesse that, even distracted, she can do flawlessly. She doesn’t need to strain to hear the rolling, energetic notes of Igraine’s play. Sorina closes her eyes, leaning on the door frame as the notes catch her ears. She can imagine Igraine so clearly; her hands on the keys, depressing each in careful melody, the tap of her nails during each pause, the scribble of a pencil on the sheet music to note each wanted change. Which notes will linger, which she will cut short. Her hair will be loose, her brows drawn gently together as she plays; she sways into the music in private. Stiff and professional at the company, totally enthralled with her own talent at home.
She doesn’t need the practice. Sorina can tell. Igraine could play it by ear, blindfolded, and it would sound as perfect as it does on stage. Habit drives her, and the simple joy of playing. And it is one of Dolores’ favourites, a Beethoven piece; Igraine never can accept even a fraction of an off-note key for her.
Or for Sorina.
The pie demands attention. Sorina shakes herself free from her reverie, scowling, and takes up the knife again. Careful of each cut, steady hands to steady strips of dough that will form the lattice of her pie shell. The dough yields easily under the sharpened knife. Baking gives Igraine all the more excuse to stay away, as she has all afternoon. It only serves her right that she can’t come home comfortable after all her cavorting.
The knife hisses on the cutting board. Her head hurts from seething. But she had needed it, the time. Spying Igraine’s frivolity at work was never her intention, but nonetheless Sorina was forced to witness it, time and again. Flirting from girls too young to know better and those that should, tender touches from supposed ‘friends’ looking to exploit closeness for professional attention and critique, cheek kisses that linger too long. Igraine insists it is only her French sensibility, and Sorina tells her that she needs to lose it faster than she has.
It can’t be helped, at the company. Sorina has already pushed her luck the past month with Igraine; keeping her from classroom practice, keeping her from other soloists, spiriting her away when she’s meant to be working longer and covering with careful alibi after careful alibi. Everyone is a tick trying to steal what’s hers, but she needs to be mindful of their feelings anyway. And of others. Too many barriers, too little time to work through them to punish Igraine and those things that try to touch what isn’t theirs. It is all a matter of putting things into order again.
At home, Sorina has free reign. Unshakeable and undeniable. If she cannot put things into place, then Igraine will, and if not Igraine, then Dolores, and so their life conforms to some measure of that valuable consistency that has defined them from the beginning. Consistency, and certainty.
There is no one to spy on her, no simpering looks, no wondering, longing gazes that presume she is looking for certain types of company. She has all the company she needs, in the measures she needs, as she needs. Nor is there any quibbling, snorting gossip about Igraine or Dolores at home.
And then Sorina is over at the filled pie; laying stripe after stripe. Sorina lets her annoyance disappear into the lattice work. One strip over another, over another, over another. Careful of the filling. Fold, place, fold, place. Pastry on pastry on filling.
She longs to practice, for at least an hour or more. Dolores is not home to join, and Igraine is too aggravating to tolerate with her sins so close to mind. And still, she thinks of them both as she lays the dough, lifting stripes and setting them back over new ones and filling sticking to the edges of her fingertips. On and on and on. Their insight always proves useful, even if there is none to share other than light-hearted praise and delicate, intimate touches.
And after, Igraine will smile and beckon them closer, to kiss until Sorina pushes her away with an amused smile. Then she will play whatever slow tune comes to mind as they decide on the rest of the day, her fingers dancing along the piano; Dolores will take her time, stretching languidly the lines and muscles of her body, letting the sweat cool on her skin, offering her indulgences for their next outing, and playing at begrudging when they suggest something else as though she has not already made plans for it. Sorina will lean in, the heat of Dolores’ skin will feel cool on her forehead, and everything will feel properly in place once more.
Then dinner, and after that, bathing and readying for night, and after that, if the night hasn’t dragged long, drinks and gossip in the lounge.
But before anything can be done, she must put things back into place. Igraine’s talent, that Sorina adores, invites too many things, like her clever words imprinting from the velvet of her tongue onto ears that shouldn’t be listening so closely, that invite more, less clever suggestions, intimacies never taken but offered too often and a workload intending to interfere with their shared one. Igraine invites, she rejects, and Sorina’s leverage, supposedly, grows. Not that it feels that way.
Not at all.
“Pie?” Igraine asks as she comes into the kitchen.
Sorina relaxes. By force. She hadn’t heard the music stop, or the door open and close. Sorina looks down at her half finished lattice, pretends to move some errant strand of hair, and continues her layering.
Igraine, to her credit, doesn’t even look at it for more than half a second, humming, pleased; she comes closer with all the warmth of spring to kiss beneath Sorina’s ear, trailing up to kiss the lobe, then her cheek. Her lips linger, warm, ghosting from place to place; her breath is warm and familiar, compounded by her easy touch. She is in grey, matching Sorina. A plaid overcoat, sleeves just loose enough to slip, over a turtleneck and a long skirt that drops to her mid-calf. So easy to melt into, matching in so many ways; Sorina refrains, shrugging her off. Igraine rolls her eyes affectionately— always, always affectionately— turning her head to find something to do and wandering over to the sink, collecting dishes as she goes. The scattered ingredients she leaves where they sit; leftover apples on the kitchen island, the flour by the sink, leftover dough near the stove.
“I was in the mood for it.” Sorina says evenly into the silence, watching Igraine work. The water runs, Igraine humming her melody again.
“I hope so. Why else would you make it?” Igraine looks at her, just once, sleeves rolled up and sponge in hand. She works quickly, and thoroughly, “Unless you finally gave in to Dolores.”
Sorina shrugs again, finishing the lattice and cutting off the excess, then sealing the edges with a fork, “She barely ever craves it, so why not?”
“You never make things for my cravings.” Igraine jests.
“What cravings? Kisses?”
“I certainly deserve more.”
Sorina rolls her eyes, but can’t stop a smile from touching her lips.
“Though... it wouldn’t be so terrible to have duck?”
“I know.”
Igraine winks. Sorina wills her face back to flat and succeeds only in getting Igraine to laugh, warm and affectionate.
It’s too easy to get caught in the lovely— if slightly grating, from her lingering accent— way Igraine speaks. It fits the way she talks, curls letters around her tongue to make them lovely or obscene with only a lilt of her tone and the bend of her head. Every other gesture, her hands or how she stands or how close, the way she leans in, the flutter of her eyelashes, is window dressing. It’s her voice, her wagging, flirtatious tongue, that stirs Sorina’s jealousy and interest. Igraine is not shy, something that thrills and annoys in equal measure; how often Sorina has caught the tail end of her long, flirty comments with Rowena, her charming asides to Karolina, her careful, well-put together rebuttals to Yulija whenever she refuses to play for one class or another?
She recognises the tone that flies over their heads. It’s not Igraine’s most convincing flirtation, or the one she puts effort into. Simple, easy, casual. Interest, and nothing more.
But it’s Sorina’s. It’s hers to have, and to covet.
She can’t stand it given to anyone outside their triad. The pie needs her attention again. Into the oven, before the lattice gets soggy. Then a timer, just in case. She sets it, and puts it on the bench next to the stove with a click. Igraine is drying the dishes, already. She sets the cutting board down into its place, then grabs the knife, gleaming dully in her hands. The last thing to put away.
She offers Sorina the knife, handle first.
It might as well be a snake. Sorina takes it, watching Igraine’s face all the while; Igraine does not quite smile as their fingers touch. Her eyes flicker from their hands to Sorina’s face before it appears, small, understanding,just for her. Not that anyone but her, and Dolores, are ever on the receiving end of such smiles. But sinning in a place that doesn’t recognise that it is a sin hardly absolves one of it. Her hand lingers, so long that Sorina could, in one heated moment that spurs a bad decision, tilt the knife and slip through the skin, bold as brass down the line of Igraine’s treasured wrist.
Sorina’s treasure. She pulls her eyes away from it reluctantly.
“Right,” Igraine starts, then turns, hand plunging into the water. The sound of the sink draining reaches Sorina’s ears, “You’ll put it where needed, right?”
Arrogant bitch.
Sorina hums her disapproval, going over to the block they store the knives in. She plucks one, already sheathed, up and then drops it again. “You’ve been spending too much time around Yulija, talking like that.”
“Madame Seele talks at me, more than I to her.”
“What did she ask this time?”
Igraine keeps her eyes to the sink, brush in hand to scrub the sides clean, “It’s my decision.”
“Well?”
“What else does she ask for? I said no, of course, and no again when she came at me after you left.”
Sorina stalks closer, keeping the knife behind her. Igraine doesn’t turn. “But that isn’t all.”
“Dolores asked, if you need to know,” Igraine shrugs, “Petty politics. Someone has fractured their wrist tripping down some stairs, god knows how. Can you imagine being accompaniment and injuring yourself mid-season? They’re probably going to let the poor thing go. Regardless, she asked and I said yes.”
“Injuries are so unlike you.” Sorina presses a bruise she knows is on Igraine’s lower back, having put it there herself only three days past.
“My darling,” Igraine sings, “I am very careful. I can’t indulge you and Dolores and work at the same time.”
“You do it already.”
“Not extraneously.”
“Anything more than a walk is too much for you.”
Igraine rams her shoulder into Sorina without looking, “Then, you’ll have to ask nicely for it, won’t you?”
Sorina rolls her eyes, “I’m asking.”
Igraine twirls her right hand behind her back, wiggling her fingers right in front of Sorina’s face. Her sleeve falls down, exposing the jut of her wrist and the smooth unblemished skin before it hides under the sleeve of her shirt. She adds, innocently, “You could stand to add a ‘please’.”
Sorina taps the knife against her own back, itching to twist it into Igraine. Damn her, that it would kill her. If she took something, perhaps, she could easily staunch the flow of blood and keep her... “You could stand to wait for a proper invitation, and place.”
“Hm. Have I ever done that?”
“You will.”
“I will not.”
“Igraine...”
“Say ‘please’.”
The knife would be very quick when slicing through the skin. It would cut through the meat even nicer, as nicely as petals separated from the nexus of a flower. She would need to brace Igraine against something, for even her love of pain wouldn’t keep her legs steady enough for the entirety of what Sorina wants; the counter would be easy, but she would bleed everywhere, collapse, make it difficult and messy. And Igraine would hate not being able to see; she doesn’t deserve the consideration... but Sorina always wants her to look. See what she does to Sorina, the lengths she pushes her to. She loves that. They both do.
A chair then, if she could wrestle one from the dining room. Damn Igraine for making her rush her plans now. It would all be so much easier, she wouldn’t need to worry about being thrown off, and Igraine would be able to look. She would struggle with the bones, for certain. But for just that long second, while Igraine cleans the sink, one handed, and the smell is only that of the baking pie and the running hot water, Sorina pictures it. Igraine, handless, compelled to stay in the house. It would blunt the knife, and then she would have to get rid of it, and there would need to be some story. Hard to be convincing for a pianist to lose her hand like that.
But that is Igraine’s way, reckless and without a plan; Sorina won’t play along. She sets the rules in their house.
She takes Igraine’s hand in hers instead, just before she gets fed up with waiting, twists it the wrong way and tangles their fingers together. Igraine squeezes her hand, even through her grunt of surprise.
They have the same sized hands. Igraine’s fingers might be longer, Sorina’s palm slightly wider. Sorina squares her nails at the tip, Igraine keeps them to a point. Her palm is slightly scratchy, the sort that comes from frivolous absentminded use; rough, spontaneous activity; their garden that she attends so diligently, always bare-handed because she forgets where she’s put her gloves, trimming each flower and weed like a woman possessed to keep it clean, conforming, to her vision. Piano practice to keep her wrists flexible. Looking after their house plants... that is where their differences end. Otherwise, Igraine’s hands are exactly like Sorina’s.
Yes, it is like that. Has always been like that. Worth every sacrifice to keep.
She brings Igraine’s hand to her mouth, bends to kiss each fingertip. She moves the knife at the same time her face up, kisses along the hidden knobs of her spine that Sorina knows as surely as her own, until she can press her face into Igraine’s neck and breathe her in; the knife follows, along her arm, over her chest until it rests against Igraine’s throat. She smells like herself, perfume and resin and the faintest hint of sweat.
They stay like that a long while. Sorina, hand steady and her nose to Igraine’s pulse, finds this the most compelling point of keeping her intact. Sorina can only think about how much she’s looking forward to their usual nightly routine. She can wash away everything that is bothering her, scrape away the marks of the day, peel off every layer that is stained by others and burn them in the fireplace before leaving her own again. New nail polish, shared lotion, kisses and touches and skin to skin. Until they smell the same. All of them.
“Manners is a hard thing to ask for, after all you’ve done,” Sorina says, pressing the knife to Igraine’s neck, her chin on Igraine’s shoulder, “It’s stupid, obtuse, and deliberately belligerent.”
“Don’t tire out your vocabulary.”
“How lucky that there are always new words being made to describe your stupidity.”
Igraine looks at her like she’s gone mad, “Mine? I am not the one holding a knife to another’s throat over an imagined offense.”
“Yours.” Sorina affirms.
“And what were you planning, my love, to do?”
“I had considered cutting off your hand,” Sorina confesses, ignoring Igraine’s amused look to focus on the nerves in Igraine’s hand, her fingers straining against Sorina’s. She presses her thumb to the bulging muscle, feeling each jump and contraction, “would you like that?”
“Did I say to cut it?”
“Like you get a say. I don’t care what you say.”
“Don’t I?” Igraine sniffs, haughty. “Don’t you?”
Sorina thumbs the handle of the knife, then flicks, suddenly, so the blade swings forward and nicks Igraine’s neck, just enough to bleed, “You have other qualities, darling, that matter more. Why else do I put up with you?”
Her French is soft, “Tu m'aimes.”
Sorina lifts her head to avoid Igraine’s headbutt, then shoves forward, “This is born from that.”
“Sorina,” Igraine sneers, steadying them with her other hand on the side of the sink, “did that little greeting at noon really upset you?”
“What could possibly imply I am not perfectly happy?” Sorina asks sarcastically.
“You want to know?”
Sorina presses on, sinking her weight into Igraine, “Do I seem more downturned than usual? Am I not still here, with you?”
“A number of reasons imply, if you must know,” Igraine dismisses and turns, heedless of the blade. Her eyes are clear, burning with indignation, and gleaming with understanding. Sorina relishes the chance to press their cheeks together, nuzzle away where Igraine had been given a kiss of greeting from someone else that morning for her help. It made Sorina’s skin crawl just thinking about it, knowing that her interruption would be more conspicuous, untenable, unable to be done, that Igraine had accepted the near-romance as her due!
They lean together. Sorina kisses her cheek roughly, nips when Igraine tries to move away and feels some of her skin come off on her teeth, “You did leave me there, Rina.”
“You were so very busy,” Sorina drawls, “throwing yourself at others.”
“You’re being hysterical,” Igraine smile is more a snarl, only the knife keeping her from pressing their foreheads together. She has the unmoving face of a predator eager to see another flinch, even as the blade slides deeper, nearly lethally so, “I have to talk to people for my job and that does include polite greetings.”
“Polite greetings,” Sorina saws the blade the other way, to make a perfect bleeding line nearly pulse point to pulse point, “You love to delude yourself. You need to be smarter with that mouth of yours.”
Igraine retorts, “I am plenty clever.”
“But never smart,” Sorina says, dragging the knife over Igraine’s vulnerable, eager throat and leaving another cut under the first, “You just can’t help it.”
“Is this how you tell me to leave?”
“The only time you’ll leave this house permanently is in a casket.”
Igraine titters, “From a knife?”
“That does depend on if I get tired of you.”
“You could never get tired of me.”
“I wake up tired of you.”
“After biting me all over in your sleep? Sure.”
Sorina doesn’t answer, but twists Igraine’s wrist harder, forces her to contort more, bites her lip. Sorina will ruin her hand for the coming weeks. They will have to keep Igraine on, it’d hardly be the first time, but what better way to make her an annoyance than needing frequent breaks? Each finger shaped ache in Igraine’s bones will be a daily reminder.
But feeling Igraine struggle against her... it doesn’t seem enough.
She has a need to open her mouth still, stick more words into an already sore spot. Igraine says, over a bleeding lip, “All the pageantry for this, Rina?”
That irritating mouth. Nothing will be normal until Sorina has it back under control.
Igraine gives a whoop of surprise when Sorina spins her, forces her back against the sink then grabs her by the head and throws her down; until she falls, flipping, her head hitting the bottom with a thud. She looks stupid, pinning one hand behind her head and the other looking for purchase on the counter, hips hanging on the edge, half her body in the air, blinking.
“Your tongue.” Sorina demands, seizing her jaw. She slides between her legs as easily as ever, and pushes them down, flatter.
Igraine shows her teeth. Blood beads down her neck into the sink, and for a long, wonderful moment it is all Sorina can appreciate; the blood slipping, like a fallen nightgown and hitting the bottom with a delicate tink, the awkward bow of Igraine’s body, the pressure of her pointed nails against the meat of Sorina’s arm, the bruise along her fingers. Sorina swings the handle of her knife down on Igraine’s hand to a vibrant curse.
Igraine opens her stupid mouth, “You think everything is something to get jealous over.”
Sorina squeezes.
“Hello or even goodbye...”
Squeezes.
“Dolores will be disappointed, you think she’ll understand this fit over nothing?”
Squeezes.
“You’ve gone off the deep end again and she is nowhere near—”
Squeezes!
Igraine winces— her face screws up, the deepening of her smile lines and her crows feet and every other wrinkle that telegraphs her worry more than her pain— and shuts her mouth.
Her shoulder relaxes, but Sorina keeps her wrist muscle tight, laden with effort, not letting an inch of her satisfaction leak out; her voice is as smooth and calm as ever, “I am perfectly measured, Igraine. I’m always measured about you.”
The pressure starts to radiates up her arm, her muscles aching, the beds of her nails sore and burning, but after another beat of silence, Igraine’s slightly frantic movement of her eyes from knife to the tense muscle on Sorina’s arm, she opens her mouth and sticks her tongue out.
Sorina grabs the tip and pulls it out as far as Igraine’s tongue can comfortably stretch, and then an inch further than that; it is a deeper pink than is natural, or seems normal, and even in her punishment Igraine caresses. Her tongue curls to touch the pad of Sorina’s finger. Her hand, unresisting, grabs Sorina’s elbow to steady her. Sorina does not need to see her eyes; she knows, in her bones, that Igraine is adoring and annoyed.
The knife is too large; not the paring knife but the bigger, more versatile chef’s knife. Too big not to be awkward. It will suffice, though Sorina wished she had grabbed something more smaller, more manoeuvrable. Pity for Igraine, that she’ll have a longer, messier injury to nurse. She pulls Igraine’s tongue out more, until she nearly loses her grip. Then the end of the blade she nudges, carefully, to the middle of the plane of her tongue.
The blade pierces; Igraine grunts like she is surprised to find it painful or unpleasant. Her frown deepens at her brows, and her lip curls with tongue; she moves, shifting, her calves squeeze tight around Sorina’s hips, her knees bullying the skin below her ribs. Sorina refuses to give in to her bullying. Igraine’s tongue is so soft, curls up when Sorina brings more of her weight down and the knife with it, saliva and blood coating along the gleaming metal. Sorina’s hand doesn’t wobble, but almost, she wants to pretend it does, introduce a bit more mess. Igraine would make a terrible fuss, and Sorina might then tip her hand just a fraction more.
Careful, careful, careful.
The point of the knife is through Igraine’s tongue, no longer than the tip of her finger to the first knuckle, thin as the knife can make it. Careful not to split the tip. Right through the middle. Carefully, carefully; the buzzing of insects gives way to Igraine’s stilted, angry swallows, the garbled grunting of protest, the slide of blood down Sorina’s thumb, her own shallow inhaling.
Pierce, wait, push, wait for Igraine to whine, wait, push deeper, push deeper, Igraine whines, deeper, careful of her lips.
Careful!
They’d have to cancel dinner, if she slips now, and there would be too many questions from all sorts of angles. Sorina savours, leans down to capture every detail; the blood, the twinge of fear in Igraine’s fluttering eyes, the heft of the knife against her palm, before relenting. Retreating. She moves back a step, let’s Igraine sit up a fraction; only when her head is out of the sink does Sorina drop the knife into it, launching a cacophony of metal hitting metal.
Igraine manages to sit up, but then her hips slide back, into the sink. She grimaces around her fingers, touching her tongue, the other holding tight to Sorina’s shirt; Sorina smothers her smile.
“Don’t wallow.” She murmurs and reaches over to take Igraine’s tongue from her.
The wound is smaller without the knife through it, rasping against the pad of her thumb, the feeling of the split taste buds and muscle the same as steak cut incorrectly, along the grain. Her nail slips into the hole, warm and bleeding; Igraine scrambles to her, sitting up awkwardly with her hips still in the sink, her legs swung over the side, to stop Sorina from ripping it from her mouth. She holds it for a moment, winking, before she let’s go.
Igraine flicks her finger, then, swatting Sorina’s hand away from her face, “I do not wallow.”
“Don’t you?”
“It’s called resting, understanding, dear, something you should learn,” Igraine retorts, her words lisping; she’s moving her tongue in her mouth, rolling it over her teeth, the roof, then, “When you get time. I know you’re busy fixing your atrocious footing.”
“I slipped, once.”
Igraine gives her a look.
“Once,” Sorina reiterates, sliding her hand down to Igraine’s, “Don’t go on about it.”
“I’ll go on as long as I like. You put a hole in my tongue!”
“You’ve been asking for it,” Sorina says, sweetly, dragging her fingertip along the line of one of Igraine’s fingers. From the nail, down to each knuckle in turn, down the back of her hand until she can slide her palm around Igraine’s wrist and the other on Igraine’s hip and pull her up onto the edge of the sink again, “It should help you think before speaking.”
Igraine huffs on the counter edge, swaying, shaking her head and sending the water trapped in her hair sprinkling like rain during a sun shower. Her face twists into a smile all the same, her tongue, the hole in it, running along her top lip, “So you hope.”
Sorina steps up to her, finding her chest wonderfully light. “So I know.”
Igraine tilts her head, Sorina following, and just as their lips touch, she feels Igraine’s hand— holding flour— slip down her shirt and open.
Sorina gasps on her lips, pulling back by a hair, “You’re a witch!”
Igraine smiles, and pulls her back in for another, longer kiss.