outfields | open post : picture prompt

It's a bad time to second guess their arrangement, now that he's buttoned her into a dress that fits like another skin. His hand slipped beneath it would feel fumbling, unprofessional. As if they aren't childish together already.

"I have the utmost confidence in you, as always...but I hope you won't lose interest by the time you've finished."

Satsuki falls silent. The emptiness where the banter had been is palpable. She runs her tongue between her teeth once, nervously, walking that fine line between safety and danger. For a time, there's nothing but the soft, buzzing sounds of the room alive around them.

"Do you remember the last time we were in a place such as this one?"

There's much more she could say, more that could prolong their torment. Has she made him suffer enough? Satsuki is a master of speeches, but there's likely not much she could say that would burn him down faster than whatever his imagination can conjure. Satsuki hums low in her throat, ghosts her fingers against the back of his head (only when she's certain the pin has pierced fabric). Then she resumes her bombproof stillness.

He lets the silence ring. As if he would - or could - lose interest in her, after all this time. His work distracts him, draws him into a courtship nearly as long as the one he's involved in with the woman inside the dress, until she breaks the silence, and with it, his concentration.

He certainly remembers. He squeezes his eyes shut, lips pressed together, and follows the feather-light touch of her fingers to turn his face toward her. "How could I not," he asks, and he lets the fabric in his fingers slip free, traces a line down her thigh with his knuckles instead. "You are a very difficult person to forget."

"So that's what you remember," she teases, as if it isn't the point of the memory. They'd spent so much of that time wrapped around each other - what else was there to pay attention to? Even for Satsuki, whose mind is prone to never softening, it's almost all she can recall. Her hand follows his, almost startled, the reflex sharp - but she stops before she can touch him through the fabric. "Even memories have to be earned."

The touch is too deliberate; whatever work he's needed to complete, he's as near to done with it as he'll ever be. Satsuki's stoic in the face of so many challenges; it can only be on purpose that she drops her eyes down towards where she knows his hand rests, daring him to do something with it. She knows him too well, knows his movements. There are some things that are just predictable, even for their nonsense species. Satsuki knows he has his ways of responding to challenges. As soon as he rises, there's unlikely to be any more playing.

Her footfall is muffled on the floor beneath her. "Put away your needle and thread." It's no order when he's already finished sewing, just the feeling of their old, familiar paths. She brings a hand around to begin unfastening the top clasp sealing her into his latest project, pausing only to see if he needs to take final measurements.

She made that trip remarkable. His record-keeping takes care of the facts of those days, but his memory had filed all of that away as unimportant, keeping instead the way her hair fell around her shoulders and the curve of her mouth against his.

His expression, still but warm, doesn't change as his fingers uncurl, or even as he draws back entirely to gather the loose end of the thread and tie it off. He'll complete it later - when he isn't looking for something more satisfying than beadwork. He ties the knot off and offers his palm for the pincushion.

"As you wish, Lady Satsuki," he answers, light with teasing.

When she hears - or feels - the thread sever, Satsuki slips the hook from the eye, letting the dress start to fall open. Undressing has a different meaning for them, but she won't deprive him of having his hand in it if he wants to help.

Satsuki turns and drops the pincushion into his waiting hand, pushing his fingers closed around it. The dress, half-unfastened, drops loosely around her shoulders, exposing her collar bones, the old scars.

"It looks nice." Leave it to her to measure the success of his fashion. A triumph, even by your hands."

She's careful not to disrupt his handiwork, even as she stands astride him, one foot on either side of his knee. She's close enough to bring his face against her stomach if she pulled him there. Instead, she drops her hand to his elbow, bracing him so he can pull himself to his feet - and just maybe into her mouth.

She's always one step ahead of him, and especially so when it comes to something he stitched her into, translating the movements of his fingers into sentiments. He squeezes the pinchushion, once, and transfers it from one palm to the other to set it aside, looking up at her all the while.

The movements are rote and familiar, but looking at her is always finding something new, past the scars of childhood stripped too young. "If you like it, then my work here is done," he says, because he wouldn't put a dress he's unsatisfied with on Satsuki's skin. Nothing but the best of his best for the lady of the manor.

The heat of her is distracting, over him as it is, but he sets his hand to her arm and rises, to his feet, to her embrace. His hand curves at her cheek, and he kisses her with the satisfaction of a man impatient.

Satsuki's always shy when they kiss like this, a completely different side of herself from what others see - what she lets them see. It's in the subtle way she tucks her head, the way her hand hesitates on the way up to cover his. She's not a timid or submissive person, but the intimacy disarms her and leaves her soft.

She leans her head to the side, the right side of her neck straightening into a tight, sloping line. As the kiss breaks, she touches her cheekbone to his.

"How could I not?" Satsuki has her high standards. Her expectations have always been cloud-buried, insurmountable to all but a select few. Putting down her false life that came with her dictatorial mantle hasn't changed that. Anything Iori makes, he makes with skill and care. She doesn't have to weigh its value: She'd love anything. As if in confirmation, she drops her free hand low on his back to pull him flush against her.

Satsuki, as Shiro knows her, is a sharp blade and surprisingly soft eyes, beautiful and radiant. In the moments between the quieter warfare that is business and the noisy warmth that is her - their - family, the moments they have for themselves, she's... cute, in her way. His fingers flutter under hers when she touches him, and when they break he sighs breath out.

He leans into her without protest or second-guessing, familiar as stitching a seam, pleasant as a freshly-pressed coat. "Your confidence makes it impossible to rest on my laurels, you know," he says, gently pleasant, and skims his fingers down her arm. "We should hang this up," he says, and it's not just because he doesn't want it to wrinkle.

Satsuki's acquiescence is in a soft mm, punctuated by a squeeze of her hand low on his back. It would be cheeky coming from anyone else; from her, it's...cheeky. "As you say." She turns her head once more, to get one final, full look at the dress in the mirror. Her blind eye to any shortcomings in his handiwork aside, it really is beautiful.

Deftly, but handling the dress as though it's the powdery membrane of a moth's wings, she reaches behind her to continue working open the closure, needling at his impatience with her steady, unhurried hand, and knowing he has two of his own, if he has such a problem with it. And, in truth, the process doesn't need her leading to make it any more arduous. Hung and bagged, the bag looped, the bag tied, his kit pushed safely back beneath the work desk they've been using half as studio, half as office. She stops moving so slowly, then.

Less a testament to her capacity for multitasking and more a testament to her capacity for eyefucking, Satsuki holds his gaze while her fingers work, forfeiting another kiss for this.

The woman who was content to tease him through chiffon moments ago has been left behind with such swiftness he's very nearly surprised. Very nearly isn't certainty, though, and his hands duck around her to start from the bottom of the row of closures. Satsuki is the master of eyefucking in this relationship, her intensity narrowed down to live hot under his skin, but Shiro has been making board meetings more exciting with his fingers on a pen and half-lidded eyes for years. This dress, born of his hands, is a child's six-piece puzzle, solved with ease, and when it lays open he finds her skin.

He brushes the pads of his fingers in a loose arc across her back just before he curls his grip closed, and he gently begins to draw the fabric forward, drawing his lower lip between his teeth and barely catching more skin revealing itself in the corner of his eyes.

She can't stand when he bites his lip like that. It's enough motivation to draw her into retaliating; Satsuki ducks her head, not all shyness this time, but vigor. Her nose just touches his; their mouths and the rest of them, she keeps separate.

"Frightened?" she asks, even the word a challenge, as if she might bait him him into slipping from the game. (And why not? Why play when they're this close together?)

One of Satsuki's arms slopes across her ribs, collecting the dress before it can fall too far from her body or hit the floor...but it's low enough. Satsuki handles this disrobing with a care she rarely shows for clothing. She's nearly tender with the way she helps it fall. She touches the back of his neck, then his chest, then her own waist. For a moment, it seems she might let their mouths touch again, but it's a ruse - a trick to rouse his teeth from his bitten lip in pursuit og her.

He knows the shape of her reaction the moment his lip moves. She's not predictable, but she is fond of a challenge, and he won't give her the empty satisfaction of a victory barely won. His eyebrows rise, and he blinks, long. This quickening is anything but fear.

His fingers draw free of fabric, finding the dip of her spine, and he lays his palm there with enough pressure it can't be immediately dismissed. He draws in a breath, eyes flicking toward her mouth - and he knows she won't miss it, because when has she ever? Her trap is confident, and there's a thought of resisting for a moment longer, but hasn't he waited enough? He leans up to close the space between them. If she doesn't like his lip between his teeth, perhaps she'll like hers there better.

The moan that leaves her mouth is earnest, her lips parting as soon as they brush back against Iori's. She lets him draw her into his mouth without resistance. It's what she wanted, the unbridled crush of his body against hers. The slight pain from his teeth in her lip is a thrill, and she finds herself pulling back just enough to make it sting her. She won't forget it soon; he'll be bitten back soon enough, not retaliation but escalation.

She's been holding up the dress so diligently that it's almost compromised the minute she pushes back into his kiss. Satsuki is a woman of resolve and will, and it's will and resolve that keeps her from trashing his handiwork. His firm hand on her back keeps her still, and it's in this stillness that her stomach shivers, twitches against his, an alien, but too familiar fire lighting in it. She's short-sighted with the heat of want, and she fidgets her hands and body anxiously, the way only she can.

Now her hands won't stay away from him. They travel back up his chest and into his hair and stay there this time, thumb tickling the back of his ear. But, oh, the dress - and, her tongue touching his upper lip, Satsuki grunts again, impatiently. She lets it drop, purposefully, neatly, letting it piled soft on the floor. They'll kiss without end if left to it; she's happy to move the action to a more comfortable place.

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she's not cute...she's manly as hell.

she's both.

a woman of many trades

and master of all of them

brows emote