A/N These one-shots and drabbles were written as submissions for Goldenlake's SMACKDOWN. It is an ongoing competition where pairings are matched against each other in a (quite epic) battle of which side can produce the most fiction featuring that couple. I have posted the other selection of stories I wrote for the Aly/Taybur pairing under the title 'Two Spies are Better than One'. This group of stories are based off the idea of a romance between them, and follows a basic chronology. However, I think my liking of canon and Nawat have shown through and the pairing is remarkably morose. More cheerful canon-based friendship fics are over in my other story! However, I do enjoy some of these, they're based heavily off various Damien Rice songs, and I hope you read them.
This first one takes place some time after the rebellion, perhaps two years or so after the events of Trickster's Queen.
It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this? It was only a kiss... it was only a kiss. Mr. Brightside, The Killers.
They laughed uproariously, Taybur falling back into the arm of his chair as he held a stitch in his side. As Aly continued to go through the disastrous meeting Dove had had with the Tyran ambassador, Taybur suspected she was getting pleasure out of the fact that they were all suffering pain from the amount of laughter she had been inducing.
"Oh, no," Eyun gasped. "He couldn't have possibly..."
"Yes, he did. Thenthat trollop from Maren that he keeps as a mistress, she comes up to him in the middle of the meeting and I thought... but, no, you'll never guess it." Aly jumped up, still steady on her feet, although Taybur noted that she had drank nearly as much of the wine as he had, and he was feeling distinctly light headed.
She walked over to Taybur and draped herself across his chair. Her pack and the few men Taybur had brought to this informal welcome-home tried unsuccessfully to smother their laughter as she linked her arms around Taybur's neck and pulled him in close.
"Good morning, my darling," she said in a Marenite accent and a twitch of her hips against his leg. She leaned forward, pressing herself against him and kissing him directly on the mouth. She was gone again before he could react, and he heard the group howl with laughter, but it was muddled by a buzz in his head.
"In the middle of the meeting! You should have seen Dove's face."
It had been less than a minute that she was pressed against him and the kiss had lasted only a second, but Taybur had to force himself to keep the smile on his face as he listened to her recounted Dove's reaction. It was only part of her story, it meant nothing...
But the kiss lingered, tingling on his lips for the rest of the evening. And when he walked back to his rooms, alone, all he could feel was the warm press of her body against his.