Work Text:
Lucienne rests in the alcove that used to be her quarters, watching stars slowly return to the Dreaming sky. She finds indescribable comfort in the heaviness that settles deep in her bones, exhaustion from a century of waiting and toil uncurling with an ache like a long tightened fist.
Dream approaches her door silently. Lucienne doesn’t have to turn to know it’s him, she would know his presence as keenly as a shift in her own heart.
“My Lord,” she says.
“May I come in?”
She turns to smile at him, “Of course.”
He sits down beside her and looks out, the heavens enlivening star by star before his gaze. Lucienne hasn’t seen the milky-way for nearly eighty years, but now it unfurls like silk in black water as though it had been awaiting Dream’s return.
“It missed you,” She says.
Dream looks on a while, quietly. “It will be a long time before I can heal it.”
“Heal yourself first. The Dreaming will regain its strength as you do.”
Lucienne watches her King. His eyes are just the same, glimmering and deep. But his presence does not command like it once did, his serenity is made grim by the hollowness in his face. His usual magnitude is absent leaving just a small and drawn man. Lucienne raises a hand to place on his shoulder, and to her surprise, he takes it, lacing his fingers through her own.
“It’s because of you that there is even a realm to return to,” he says, voice low. A thumb stroking her knuckle.
Lucienne shakes her head, swallowing down a wave of emotion.
When the Library disappeared, she had stood in the empty hall for a very long time, the crumbling corners of the palace drawing ever inward. She had carried on, in a way. She swept the dust. She wrote when she could stand to. She stayed up watching days and nights go by, keeping vigil.
She felt shadows in the corners of her vision, almost as though everything out of her sight was not quite real.
She squeezes Dream’s hand before wrapping both arms around his shoulders, pulling him close to her. He is very real.
She feels his heart beating, he holds her in turn, nested against her body as though he had never been gone. He turns his face against her neck, lips brushing her skin.
Soft and intentional, a question, almost innocuous. She moves against his touch instinctually, heart turning. She holds his face, drawing her fingers down his cheek, and he kisses the inside of her palm.
She asks a question of her own, dragging her thumb softly— bravely— over his lip.
She breathes in when he kisses her. His mouth is soft. He offers her kisses like rain, as though trying to memorize the sensation. When Lucienne pulls away to look at him, his face is so open that she wants to fall inside.
She’s dizzy, kisses him far more deeply than he would dare to, drawing a soft sound out of him when she catches his lip with her teeth. She does it again, nips his jaw, finds his pulse point and tastes it.
He grows pliant under her, breathing heavy. With a shudder she thinks about how long he has gone without sensation, how long they have both gone.
His hand disappears through the front of her coat, and grips her around her middle. Slowly (sneakily) tugging at the hem of her blouse where it’s tucked in. She grins, giddy.
“Are you trying to get up my shirt, my Lord?”
He huffs out a little chuckle, the rarity of the sound sends chills down Lucienne’s spine.
“If I’m allowed,” he says.
“Do you beg my permission?” Lucienne teases.
He nips her earlobe playfully. “Please, Lucienne” he purrs.
His intonation hits her like a most unctuous wave, melting from her chest to deep between her legs. His hands slide under her shirt, warm and strong, goosebumps radiate through her body from every place his palms touch her skin.
Unbuttoning her blouse becomes a slow kind of ritual. Beginning at her collar he presses his lips against every inch of her that he exposes.
His tongue hot against the soft of her throat, and then her sternum. He opens her shirt, an ache shooting through her as he closes his jaw gently against her breast. She hisses as he takes her nipple into his mouth, then soothes with his tongue.
She holds his head against her, threading her fingers through his hair. He moves lower, flashes of cold where his mouth marks her until he reaches the crest of her stomach, only given pause by the high waist of her trousers. He begins working the buttons open and Lucienne chuckles.
“You would take me? Here on the cold floor?”
He gives her what is supposed to be a withering look, but only translates as fondness.
The flagstones beneath them transform almost imperceptibly until they are shrouded in warm darkness, Lucienne pressed into the covers, Dream above her.
“You would not wish away our clothes too, my Lord?” She teases.
He hums with displeasure, and kisses her quiet, before continuing his culinary journey downward, pulling at the waist of her trousers. She lifts her hips eagerly, shimmying them off.
Tremors undulate through her body as air hits her skin, her breathing is unsteady. Dream presses himself between her legs, and she opens for him, held steady by his arms snaked around her thighs.
He takes his time, teasing bruises into the tender skin by her groin. Lucienne cants her hips, whimpering, face warm.
“Enough teasing,” she hisses.
He hums against her, though it sounds broken. She looks down at him, his eyes shut, cheek resting reverently against the inside of her thigh, for just a moment. She feels the warmth of his face, the looseness of his gestures as though he is intoxicated by her, the barest tremor in his hands.
She shuts her eyes, gasping as she feels his tongue draw a slow stripe against her clit. It’s as though she can feel every molecule glance off of her nerves and cascade through her chest.
She luxuriates in the sensation. She pleads. First silently, then keening. Her entire body orbits their point of connection, excruciating pleasure at the slick of his tongue, again again. A delicious ache thrums deep inside her for want of filling.
Her fingers are still wound tightly in his hair. She pulls, knuckles against his scalp, and he moans helplessly, but does not stop. She would give anything to hear him make that sound again many times over.
With every moment, Lucienne feels herself becoming more lost, more tightly wound, tortured as his hands become vices pressing her in place.
It rises in her, a sweetness drips through her body, sharp like honey, too much.
She drags Dream up to kiss her. Swallows his tongue, pulls his hips against hers. Her whole body vibrates with desire. White behind her eyes as he grinds a still clothed thigh against her.
Breathless, but not without couth, she tsks and asks him to undress. He hesitates for only a moment. He hadn’t explained many details of his capture, but Lucienne understands his unease. There’s a new pleasure, though, in watching him.
Shoulders revealed first, sharp as wings, then chest and navel. Then the curve of his hips, the thatch of his groin.
He watches her looking and decides she’s seen enough, pinning her again and taking her mouth.
Lucienne murmurs against him, relief as his fingers work against her clit. She holds him close to her, his face pressed beside hers. Unable to keep from moaning as he murmurs his intentions in her ear, finding the spot and circling it firmly then gently, maddeningly. Gold builds in her chest.
She asks, voice broken, and he nods. Yes, yes.
He works himself between her legs and enters her, languidly.
She feels every fraction. Not tight, no pain, just sensation. The fullness. He moves in her, fucking her slowly.
Lucienne’s face tucks into the slender curve of his shoulder, and she bites, mind going white when he growls, snapping his hips against her so hard she nearly sobs.
The angle changes as he rises, holding her legs around his waist. He fucks her mercilessly, quickly and deeply. Lucienne arcs, sound caught deep in the back of her throat, face contorted into a silent cry. She covers her face with her hands.
Dream moves them away, crowds over her, kisses her, only slowing for a moment, she feels where they are joined. In this frame of mind she cannot differentiate between his body and her own.
He presses his hand against her hip, drags it down her body, licks his thumb, slides it over her clit where she is swollen and overstimulated.
Scarcely a touch, but the gentleness, in consort with the overwhelming pace is enough to tip her beyond.
She doesn’t last long, the orgasm rolls through her body, impossibly bright. He strokes her until she finishes.
Lucienne basks, feeling her heartbeat slow from its rabbit’s pace. Everything is sensitive, completely new as though she had been given new skin.
Dream stretches out beside her and they are quiet together for a moment.
She turns to look at him, resting on his side like a goddess rendered in quartz. She trails her fingers along the line of his body, from the crest of his hip to his shoulder, bringing it back to rest on his thigh. It’s not long before she feels his breathing shift.
Her entire body is languid, still hazy from climax. His beauty touches somewhere deep within her. She pushes against him, and he lies on his back, eagerly accepting her kisses.
Her touch is heavy. No part of him is left un-caressed. She cradles her mouth behind his ear, kissing. He moves under her, moaning softly.
She sits above him, drawing her hands down the sides of his face, to his throat, watching his eyes shut in bliss as she massages.
She closes her hands, slow and deep, watching Dream’s face change. His hands smooth up the sides of her arms, over and over, tracing the strength of her under his palms.
He’s flushed, a line in his brow, his low, pleasured sounds reverberate under her fingers.
Lucienne releases him, the rush of air sending blood racing down his body.
She kisses him again, and he opens for her completely. A pleasant thrum in her chest as she draws his legs up to bracket her hips, stroking the interior line of his thigh, finding him hard and alive in her hand, slick beneath her thumb.
As though dreaming, she gazes down at him, his lips parted. She wets her fingers with his own eager tongue, and sinks them into him, watching his face empty with pleasure as she fucks him.
Her whole body buzzes. She lowers herself, holding her weight on an elbow so she can listen to him moan, feel him arc against her body, looking for friction. Feel him loosen.
She’s dizzy with him, the impossible softness of his interior, caressed and caressed.
He moves, pulling away from the overwhelming pleasure, and Lucienne follows, holding his hips down with hers, belly pressing his cock between them.
She does not let him move, kisses the side of his face as he looses himself completely.
He’s silent as he comes, body arced, devastated.
Lucienne does not withdraw from him until she feels him relax. She embraces him, kissing his chest and his neck and his lips. He holds her almost as tightly, breathing ragged, still whimpering. They huddle close like this, embraced in trembling, stunned silence.
.
Lucienne awakens to Dream’s very soft touch. She keeps her eyes shut, feeling him stroke her forehead, her eyelids, her cheek, in a slow cycle. Everything returns to her in phases.
She focuses on the sensation of his fingers. He traces a line between her eyebrows.
“How do you feel?” He asks.
Lucienne stays still, searching for an answer. Her mind feels very full, and yet nothing comes to her.
She peels herself away from him gently, and opens her eyes. The air around her is cold and familiar.
“It’s been a long time… since…” She smiles at the absurdity of the statement.
Dream is completely in shadow. Lucienne barely catches the glimmer of his eyes, and the imperceptible shift of his head as he nods. The pale form of his hand resting between them.
If she looks too long he seems to vanish into the dark.
She moves closer again, pulling him against her. He folds an arm around her shoulders.
The warmth is familiar too, old and bright feeling.
She stays quiet, feels the swell of his breath, listens to his heart. Worries a lock of his hair at the nape of his neck. She feels him tracing the line of her back.
For the first time in a while she thinks back to her mortal life. A distant memory of a night not unlike this, hazy from thousands of years of distance. A memory of a memory of someone carrying her to bed.
He traces circles in her back and Lucienne feels every single star returning to the heavens.
She had long forgotten this kind of love.