Chapter Text
A bright stripe of sun peeks in through the slotted wood of the cabin window, stirring Richter from sleep.
Strange. The bed seems warmer than usual and there seems to be another set of limbs — ah, yes. He smiles, even before he opens his eyes to confirm that indeed, he is lying next to Annette.
His heart skips a beat. He bites his lip to suppress his excitement and to keep from grinning too wide. Act normal, he demands of himself — pretending as though, in fact, waking up in the arms of a beautiful woman is not a completely new experience to him because of course he’s kissed a few girls before and of course he’s taken a few of them to bed before. Right?
No. He cannot pretend. He is exhilarated — no, ecstatic — in bed aside Annette, who he just kissed the very night before. And not just once; they kissed many times. So many times that they fell asleep to each other’s lips. And even as he dreamed, he was certain he woke several times, if even just for a few seconds of consciousness, to kiss her again — perhaps as many times as she did the same.
No, this is not normal for him at all. But this can be his new normal from now on, and that thought makes him so giddy he can barely contain it.
Calm down, he tells himself regardless. Annette is still sleeping, and he wants to savor this moment — savor her — as long as he can. He studies her face: her gently sloping nose and the baby hairs that sprout along the frame of her face. There’s a loc of her hair tickling her cheek, and impulsively, he lifts his hand to tuck it behind her ear when her eyes suddenly open.
He snaps his eyes shut and tucks his hand behind his body, pretending to still be asleep. He holds his breath, attempting to slow his pounding heart.
“I know you’re awake, Richter,” she says, after a long moment.
Out of defiance, or perhaps out of habit, he wants to prove her wrong. He keeps his eyes closed and relaxes the tension in his face so as not to give away the fact that he indeed is very much awake, just as she says.
“Richter,” she repeats, and this time, she punctuates his name with a poke to his forehead.
“What?” he drawls, fluttering his eyes open, as to keep up the act.
Nevertheless, he is happy to meet her eyes.
She squints her eyes at him, quizzically. “Why were you pretending to sleep?”
“I was sleeping!” he retorts. “We went to sleep so late, you know, and—"
“I know you were watching me sleep,” she says decidedly, ending the nonsense.
“Well,” he sputters, “so what if I want to watch you sleep? You… you look at peace. It’s nice.” He averts his eyes, feeling his cheeks warm. She giggles, covering her mouth, and his eyes flick back to her. “And I can ask the same of you! How else would you know I was pretending unless you weren’t asleep yourself?”
She grins. “I was not asleep, nor was I pretending to be. I was waiting for you to wake up,” she replies, not missing a beat.
“So you were watching me sleep too!”
“Yes,” she affirms. “So that as soon as you wake up, I can do this.” And then she pushes her face forward and kisses him.
And what a way to start the morning. Richter thought he had kissed her enough to last him until the next evening, but once their lips touch, a fire sparks in him and he feels like he can kiss her for hours again. Her arms wrap around his neck to bring him closer – god, he loves when she does this – and his hands fall to her waist, pulling her body into his.
They kiss, again and again. The sunlight that shimmers into their cabin grows yellow and impatient.
Annette pulls away, her hands cradling his face. “How late do you think it must be?” she asks him.
“Suspiciously late,” Richter replies.
They trade glances, watching each other’s eyes. Neither of them make a single motion to get out of bed.
“I suppose a few extra minutes wouldn’t matter,” he says, bringing her in for another round of kisses.
“No, no, we must get up,” she laughs then, pulling herself away. Disappointed, but conceding, he lets her slip from his arms and she leaves bed, her feet making a small thump as they hit the floor.
“Always so responsible,” he says.
“One of us has to be,” she quips. She looks down at herself. “Can’t believe we fell asleep in our day clothes.” She starts to smooths out the wrinkles over her dress.
This dress. He’s never seen anything like it. It’s simple yet elegant and looks so fucking good on her. He’s never seen so much… shoulder and waist. And as much as he loves to see her with this dress on, he also wonders how she would look with the dress off.
As if she can sense his indecent thoughts, she turns back to look at him then, eyes pointed. “Get up, Richter,” she says. “It’s not good to stay in bed this long.”
He frowns. “But I just want to keep kissing you.”
The words surprise him as much as they do her. Her eyes widen and she blinks fast a few times. Her cheeks must feel as hot as his do. He sees her bite back a smile, and she steps back to bed and bends down to kiss him on the forehead.
“Come,” she urges him. “The faster we get through this day, the faster we get back in bed.”
She’s not wrong. And so, with a loud and prolonged groan, Richter finally awakens.
…
This is what young love must feel like, Richter realizes. Like not being able to keep his eyes off her and resisting every urge to walk across the ship to scoop her up in his arms and just waiting until the sun sets and the stars are out so they can return to their cabin and be together alone.
Finally, he brings her back to bed. Finally, he takes her waist and sits her on his lap. Finally, he kisses her until she squeals and his shirt disappears and her legs wrap around him and his hand squeezes her breast and she makes a sound that makes him halt.
He looks at her then, as does she. The cabin is dark now, the moon giving him just enough light to see her fast breath and tousled hair and blown pupils and there’s a glint of spit on the bottom of her lip and fuck, he is hard.
“Are we—? Can we—?” He struggles to find the words, and his voice, croaked with disuse, doesn’t help.
She grips his shoulders harder and nods. “Yes,” she says, just above a whisper. “Yes. Please.”
“Fuck,” he says, the word caught between their lips as she slots her mouth back over his.
Eyes closed, he runs his hands over her bare midriff, his fingers tracing under the hem of her top. He searches for any buttons, any clasps to undo but he finds his hands running over the same seams again and again to no avail. He settles in his frustration to try once more but as his impatience exceeds his embarrassment, he opens his eyes and looks at her top — which is still irritatingly on her body despite all his fumbling.
“What even… What even is this dress?” he asks, exasperated. “I mean, not that I don’t like it – it actually looks really good on you, honestly a little too good if you ask me—”
She places her hands over his, stopping his rambling, and chuckles. “It’s a karabela,” she tells him. “And it’s actually much easier to put on compared to all these buttoned things you Europeans wear.”
“Karabela,” he repeats. The word is melodic and light on his tongue.
“I sewed it myself out of scrap fabric I found in Paris,” she says, reaching behind her to undo her top. “So many red, blue, and white pieces from all the new flags they were fashioning – a lovely coincidence for the colors of this dress, isn’t it?”
“You sew?” he asks, without thinking, before answering his own question. “Of course, you sew.” How can he expect Annette to be any less resourceful?
“This is what we wear back home, so I wanted to make sure I’d be wearing a karabela when we land on Saint-Domingue,” she explains. But then she grins cheekily at him. “But we have not landed there yet.”
And with this, she drops her top to the floor. He licks his lips when he sees the wraps around her chest.
“Now this,” he declares. “This, I know how to undo.”
She giggles. “I’m impressed, choir boy.”
He snorts, finding the tucked end of the wrap and then unraveling until her skin is bared to him. He takes a moment to relish the view, surprised that his attention is concentrated on — actually not her breasts — but of the curve of her broad shoulders tapering into her waist. Her figure is accentuated as she is sitting on his lap and as her dress rides up her leg, her hips flaring outwards and her thighs blossoming against his. At first opportunity, he would run his mouth over the full silhouette of her body. But of course, yes, her breasts — he would never deny their beauty nor his desire to mold them in his hands.
He takes in a deep breath and scoops her further into his lap, bracing her to him with one arm and taking one of her breasts with the other hand. He leans into the crook of her neck and kisses her in the soft crevice, feeling the vibration of her moan on his lips. She adjusts her hips to angle against him, and his body rocks in time with hers, and wow, how naturally and how instinctually he does this.
He sucks her skin before releasing with a small pop, then ducks down to take her breast into his mouth. She shudders to this, sighing what sounds like syllables of his name but is otherwise unintelligible. He’s proud to have rendered her speechless and with that, he lifts her off his lap and onto the firm mattress.
It’s all too bad that their first fuck would be on a ship bed, but he thinks it would be worse to deny a fuck at all for the next several weeks to wait for a more comfortable surface.
She stands on her knees to match his height, waiting expectantly for him to unclothe her. He looks cautiously at her dress. He starts to undo the clasps on the side, taking care to not pull anything too hard lest he ruin her handiwork. Truly, how much more complicated can women’s clothing be? The dress can’t possibly be that difficult to—
Once undone, the dress falls aside, billowing to the ground.
“Oh, thank god,” he mutters under his breath.
She raises an eyebrow. “Did I hear you thank the lord?” she asks. “In that you were able to get my dress off?”
“What? No, I was just thinking to myself how beautiful you are, that’s all,” he chuckles. His voice fades as he watches her pull her chemise down, her final piece of garment. When she looks back up at him, he snaps his eyes back to hers.
“Your voice trails when you lie,” she says simply. She watches his eyes for a moment before her attention turns to his pants. “Clothing is not as difficult as saving the world from the Vampire Messiah.”
“Oh yeah? Well, then I want to see you get these off me,” he challenges her.
This is a deflection, of course, of him not admitting that actually, no, he’s never had to… take any girl’s clothing off before.
“That’s what I’m doing,” she replies. His belt unbuckles in her next motion, and her nimble fingers pop off the buttons of his sans-culottes one by one without issue. Then suddenly in the next moment, Richter finds himself in only his drawers, wishing he had thought to bring fresher undergarments on board.
“Oh, wow,” he remarks, “you did that so… so quickly.” Maybe she’s done this before? He shakes the thought from his head because that’s Annette’s business alone, and if he thinks a little too hard, he gets a little… a little envious. No, he reframes, she’s just… very good at everything she does. Because she’s Annette.
Annette straightens up to kiss him. “Richter,” she murmurs. “Are you nervous?” Between their bodies, her hand starts to run over his length. Despite the thin cloth of his drawers, the remaining layer leaves much to be desired.
“I’m not nervous,” he starts, at first defensive, but then lets down his guard. “I just… I don’t want to rush through this,” he admits. “I want to savor this. Savor you.”
She looks at him for a long moment, then smiles. Her eyes never leave his as she lies back.
“All right,” she coaxes him. And her legs fall apart. “Then savor me.”
He inhales sharply.
“Oh, I will.”