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Have you read Swordspoint? It’s a terrific novel by Ellie Kushner. Swords, romance, intrigue, plots, conspiracies, a fantastical world and hot gay men. What more could you want?
Here’s my take on it: Title: Those Eternal Seconds
Author: heartofslash
Fandom: Swordspoint
Pairing: Richard/Alec
Rating: Mild. Bittersweet. Would go down well with a nice Cabernet Sauvignon, or so the interwebs tells me.
Disclaimer: Playing with the swords of others. It's a no-no, but not necessarily deadly. No infringement intended. Ellen Kushner rocks my world.
Note: Written after my second reading of Swordspoint, but before my first reading of The Privilege of the Sword, but it still manages to stay canon. Imagine that.
New Year Present for: elfscribe5
Those Eternal Seconds
Richard stood at the window, lit by the dusty moon, still as the night, still as only Richard could stand, as if petty things like time and gravity and the world did not exist.
It took an hour, a day, for Alec to cross the room, to wade through the night air, wading through that stillness, ripples spreading. No creaking floorboards announced his approach but Richard knew. St. Vier always knew.
Alec did not know. He never did. He never knew exactly why Richard had these moments of unreserved withdrawal, brief in duration on one plane, eternal on the next. The life of a swordsman required that a part of Richard surface only in the safest and most private of times. Alec had never had much respect for privacy that was not his own, but then, there were those other moments when everything else of Richard's felt like his and his alone, not even Richard could keep hold of those. So they were even.
An almost imperceptible tilt of the head, acknowledgement of Alec's presence, caused a glitter from the most exquisite jewel, high on Richard's cheek, catching the moonlight and magnifying it for another of those eternal seconds.
Alec reached for it instinctively. Richard's stillness was broken by a flinch so controlled that the single tear was transferred whole to the tip of Alex's extended finger. It was wet on his skin, but it held together in a sphere, a perfect, self-contained, shining fraction of Richard's soul.
They both stared at it.
Alec tried to imagine it there forever, to imagine going through life with this tiny fragile drop - droplet, really - attached to him, an extension of himself, of Richard. He would cradle it with his other hand to protect it from passers-by and inclement weather, shield it from view lest any potential enemy interpret it as a weakness. Cherish it.
An impossibility. The air itself would reclaim this droplet before Alec's own skin could absorb it. So Alec placed his fingertip in his mouth.
There wasn't enough to truly taste. A little water, perhaps some salt, flavoured with imagination. Sorrow, regret, blame, love, but in such small quantity Alec could barely conceive of it, let alone perceive it. But it was his now. It was Alec's forever, and
Richard's eyes were trained on the fingertip, where it disappeared into Alec's mouth.
Some past experience, bitter betrayal or humiliation - an off balance lunge, a squandered opportunity, the subtle nick of a well-placed blade, or perhaps the memory of Alec entering his life, altering it, forging something new, honing it to a brightness unimagined - Alec swallowed it down and made it even more his own, its passage aided by the caress of Richard's gaze on his throat as the muscles there rippled, swallowed, claimed. Claimed, not knowing why.
"It happens," Richard explained of the tear.
Not of his doing, no volition required. It had escaped its tight confines and tasted freedom on the smooth curve of Richard's cheek, bathed itself in the glow of the moon, and had its moment, until Alec cruelly deprived it of its liberty.
It happens.
"So does this," Alec said, and touched his lips to Richard's.
Richard stabbed inside, the quick, fatal blow to the heart that kills at once.
Alec curled his tongue around it, ignoring the sharpness of the blade, which was, after all, only a tongue. He wondered if Richard could taste his own tear, or if Alec overwhelmed it. Richard gave no sign. His hands moved with their usual precision, and Alec gave himself up to them as graciously as Richard's mouth had given up to Alec's. Stretched out on the bed, long and lean as a sword but deadlier, Alec shone from within. More pliable than steel, heating to the touch, Alec kept Richard deep inside him, absorbed him, kept him safe.
It happened, and the tear was forgotten.
For a while.
End.
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