Late-night assignment

[Ascendancy]

She filled the space beneath him like a perfect cast of how the fates imagined two beings should fit together. Noémi anchored him to slowness simply that he may savor every moment. In that time, Nikolai explored every inch of her skin with a soft trail of his lips. His kiss grazed the lines of her neck then ever downward along the skin of her stomach. He looked up briefly, savoring the view of her enraptured face before sinking lower before savoring the return journey to where he started. The light from palatial windows cast shadows over them both. He drank in the sight of her in his bed.

He thought of many similar instances in the past: times when he deigned himself to recognize the weakness of his own mind and seek comfort in the flesh of mortals when all he wanted was to walk the pattern of the universe far from such torments. He briefly recalled such interludes where their fleeting connections may as well fill a river of souls all of whom were empty of substance and whose faces he cared not to remember anyway. Evelyn broke the mire of that torment somewhat like a briefly shining beacon, but even she was swallowed asunder those gray rapids soon after. They shared one night only when passion tried to bloom between them, but the shades of destiny dimmed it back to cold and darkness. Against those monochrome memories, when he peered into the nighttime colors of Noémi’s eyes, it was with the twist of questions and confusion that riddled his own. He did not understand the breakage of the iron-clad cage of his will nor why he was so desiring to allow the bars to crumble. In the rapid stroke of his breathing and greedy grip upon her body, crumble they did. Noémi summoned a passion from the depths of his soul hidden a lifetime away that surprised him profoundly when it was resurrected. He could not have her enough.

So in the moments that later followed, Nikolai held this priceless creature tight against him, undesiring to release her, but his attachment was with a sadness that knew what was resurrected was soon to return to the unreachable realm, never to return. He spoke quietly, unsure if she was awake or not. “You are already immortal, Noémi because I will remember you forever,” he said as he smoothed her hair, wishing time could be suspended.

He drew a final breath but it did not dispel the ache filling his heart. A moment later, he got up to leave, unable to bear tormenting himself any longer.

[Noémi Jourdain]

In night’s shadows and Nikolai’s embrace, she drifted in the contentment of satiation and safety. For all her melancholy soul, Noémi accepted such fleeting moments with heartfelt and protective cherish. His soft words caressed the edges of sleep as his fingers trailed her hair. Noémi sheltered them somewhere deep, like they might be the only thing to sustain her through a lifetime. Yet it ached bittersweet.

She was aware when he stirred, but did not immediately follow. For all her ability to dream, she accepted reality’s claim when she must. If he left, she had to consider that it was a polite line drawn under discretion. She was an employee, and she had not accepted his invitation without understanding what it meant. Yet in the stir of such strong feeling, neither was she willing to deny her own wants and desires.

The room felt cavernous and empty without him. She pulled the sheet around her, a little uncertain of navigation; her entire apartment might fit in a fraction of his bedroom alone, and she was not confident she really remembered the route here. The soft pad of her footsteps passed through shadows and space. Fortunately she did not find him wandered far. He sat pooled in the light of a desk. A tiny island of solitary.

When she approached her fingers brushed the back of his neck and swept upwards in affection, smoothing the muss of dishevelled hair. It strayed a faint smile to her lips to witness, knowing the likewise tousle of her own. Had she thought the work true and in earnest, she might have left it at that. She was no stranger to restlessness. But a glance at the profile of his expression only strengthened the nurture of her connection. In the spell of night, it was easier to peel back the layers of vulnerability. "La vie est un sommeil, l’amour en est le rêve,” she murmured softly. Her hand reached to still his and claim it, to tug him to his feet. "We may dream a while longer, Nikolai. Do you have a screen, or a tablet, I might borrow? I wish to share something with you.”

[[The French is a quote: “Life is a long sleep and love is its dream.”]]

[Ascendancy]

Night chased away the responsibility of tomorrow. The work was a distraction from feelings left to slumber else the fates may fear the stirring of what should remain undisturbed. The soft pad of footfalls lifted the focus of Nikolai’s expression. Noémi’s procession in the dim light cast rays of softness about her curves. She had donned the shirt he wore that day. It swallowed her frame and something about the open lay of the collar and tease of skin at the hip stole most of his breath. The push of her fingers across his scalp captured the rest.

At her bidding, he leaned away from the desk, twisting the very device on which he worked to face her. There was nothing in view she would not be allowed to glimpse. While drew near enough to enter commands, he wondered at the meaning of the phrase that rolled from her lips.

“I have a confession, Noémi,” he began. Undoubtedly the prelude would steal a glimpse from her, but when she looked, she would find his expression shadowed with rare playfulness. “I don’t speak any French at all. I memorized a few lines just in case the opportunity presented itself. I suppose I owe myself a hundred dollars. There are fines for non-English conversation within the Kremlin.” The admission painted his lips with a morbid mirth that was truly never seen by another soul. He didn't really care about English or non-English, but the rule was a device. He was ultimately a foreigner that occupied the Russian presidential seat thirty years before. Assimilation was necessary, the strategy of it was his though.

"What do you want to show me?" he asked.

[Noémi Jourdain]

Her gaze drew up in surprise at his words. The heart beat deep in her chest, but the sight beheld washed clean that first note of uncertainty into quite something else. Maybe it was only night’s shadows that offered the intimacy; a dream indeed. But a playful light matched in Noémi’s reaction as her fingers momentarily stilled on the device he had handed her. A rare smile blossomed into genuine laughter. “And that is the line you chose to memorise, Nikolai? I am scandalised.”

By the silky sound of her voice, she was anything but. Or maybe she was just remembering the stir of his breath at her ear as he commanded her mother tongue. She had intended to pull him to stand; lead them somewhere more comfortable to sit in the vast sanctuary of his rooms. Instead she chose to perch intimately in his lap, at ease in the moment and the company. “Donne-moi à nouveau mon péché*,” she murmured into his ear, fingers lingering at the back of his neck. The sultry tone did not need translation, nor the tease of her smile against his cheek. “I do not think I will mind being in your debt.”

In answer to his question, she returned the device to his hand. It was not consolation she offered, or even comfort. Noémi’s life had been too harsh for such solace, and it would be an empty distraction, even if it was what he had been seeking when he stole from the bed they had shared. She did not think it was regret now that drove him to distance; not with the way he looked at her. A pause lingered before she added, “I wish to know you, Nikolai. And wish you to know me too.”

The gallery of photographs she shared, taken with her own hand, had never been seen by another soul. There had never been another she wished to share them with. In them was her maman, from the days when one would never have known she was ill, through to the worst as her body slowly failed. The collection was artistic, raw and bittersweet, interspersed with lines of poetry in French; memories happy and hard, and both cherished. Noémi herself featured in some, a teenager then. Though she peered quietly down at the screen, she allowed Nikolai to traverse them at his will; this peek into the layers of her soul. A melancholy glimpse, to be sure. But there were no shallow waters to Noémi.

“Before her diagnosis I had never contemplated a time she would not be here. It is easier to grieve a person before they are gone; to guard against the pain we know will come by pushing away. We spend our lives hiding from that truth, no? That everything ends. And always before we are ready.” Her voice was soft, and if sorrow touched it was the sort that made room for the hurt and accepted its place. She did not seek pity. Nor even understanding. He had lost his own father as a boy, she knew. But the images were not about grief, or loss, or even death, though all those things were there. They were about love, and connection, and living. Noémi had never regretted the time she had spent, or the sacrifices she had made, for the time carved in those few years at her mother’s side.

“‘We must hold tightly to the good things while we have them,’ that is what she told me once.” Noémi’s touch still traced the back of his neck. The heat of skin seeped through the shirt between them. It was Nikolai she watched then, but not for his reaction. She did not mind if he said nothing. Death was something most recoiled from, and if her heart sang a tune of familiarity, they were truly of brief acquaintance. The walls around him were fortress thick. But she would wait an eternity, and longer, for his trust.

“I am curious to know what happened to your arm, to scar you so. But I will not ask tonight, Nikolai.” Another night together was clearly implied, but she did not require a promise; rather, she wanted to impart her own desire, her own want, for more than a solitary passion enthroned to immortal memory. For now she reached to trace the line of his jaw, and spoke soft. “Will you come back to bed?”

—------------------------------------
*Give me my sin again

[Ascendancy]

He studied the pictures for the art they were, but he saw it was not technique that he appreciated most. It was the story behind each frame and the elegant words that accompanied them. When she finished, he shifted a little beneath her weight, settling, and peered through the shadows up at her. “I’m glad you had someone to love,” but did not say more. It wasn’t the topic of mortality that tied his tongue. It was loneliness from one who had nothing to love but power, accomplishment, and the faceless mass. Such an admission was far from gaining the acknowledgment of voice, however. Nikolai knew his fate as he knew her mortal one, and the sacrifice was the price demanded by the turn of his destiny. It was a cold existence, but it was one he had made before, and one he would make again, every time.

It was with a slim smile that considered her then. She was calm and collected, but he knew beneath the cool exterior stirred a beguiling passion that called to him, sure as every time she spoke his name. And he decided he was not quite ready to release it.

When he shifted this time it was while offering a hand to help her up. One that he held all the way back to the comfort of a mattress and blanket. The robe spilled from his shoulders, discarded, before sliding into a place he might court the spell of sleep, and he held his arm open that she might rest in his embrace.

As he lay there, he listened to her breathing, and felt the subtle rise and fall of her body until he could no longer fight it, and despite everything, fell asleep.

The next morning, he was gone before she awoke, but the evidence of his presence was felt in the outline on the pillow and lay of the blankets. She would have access to anything she needed upon stirring: food, toiletries, and the like. As well as discretion.

Later, a Baccarat Crystal rosebud was delivered to her. An invitation to a social event accompanied the gift, along with an open expense account to GUM.

“While we have them.” The words were her mother’s, shared in a moment of vulnerability the previous night, printed upon the card. There was an addition on the back of the invitation, written in Nikolai’s script.

“Donne-moi à nouveau mon péché.”

They couldn’t go together, nor would they be able to steal more than a few passing words, if that, under the scrutiny that was Moscow’s aristocracy, but he desired to see her and know she was nearby.