Title: Get thee behind me.
Summary: Lucrezia sleeps and Cesare dreams.
Word count: 757
A/N: Always wanted to write a Cesare/Lucrezia/Juan hash, but I thought I would dabble in Cesare/Lucrezia before I got all ballsy. Small attempt at blurring the line between reality and subconscious thought here. Let me know how you like it.
At first he doesn't notice, but eventually as her loose hair curls around the small of her back, as the swell of hips and budding breasts become evident beneath her small-clothes, he begins to notice. More so at night, when she comes to his bedroom. And they hold hands and exchange smiles.
She's got her chin in the crook of his neck, between his shoulder and the bed. Her beaten gold curls tickle his nose and contrast against the dark of his own locks. He can smell her expensive oils. He can feel the warmth of her skin.
He decided, four nights ago, that he might pray. That he might pray to his father's God and the Eastern Gods and to any God. Any God that would hear him. He had never been a desperate man. (Not so desperate as his own body, at least)
He thinks the gold in her hair might be worth more than even the Vatican and all its holy corruption. She is bathing in milk and honey when he catches her. She rises and her skin shines like glittering pale silk. There is a shape to her thighs now. That was the first thing he noticed. Her hair, he had always admired. A rather child-like admiration. "Look at her hair, Mama. It's not like ours. It's yellow!"
But her thighs... she had always been a slip of a thing when they played in the creek bed. Summertime and naked as the day they were born, she would run and run and her alabaster legs would carry her as far as she could go. Eventually he would catch her. (Cesare is okay with pretending not to keep up, because he knows he can catch her no matter what.)
As he sees the hill and slope of her thigh, he begins to realize just what and who she is and that he will never catch her again. She is poised now, she raises up and up and he can't not look.
The small of her back dips and flares and he knows he shouldn't but he can't not look.
He waist is small but her breasts are shapely and kissed with rosy pink as she stretches and cranes her neck and she sees him, she sees him, and he can't not look.
Her eyes, just as her body, have changed, evolved. They widen a fraction. She freezes.
His mind screams at him to run, but even his mother knows Cesare is a sensitive boy and his body knows only his desperate heart.
(That only wants what it doesn't have)
And he can't look away, what's worse the tightness in his codpiece is not subsiding, neither is her gaze; all green and not at all Lucrezia.
Lucrezia smiles, eyes willing him to hear her, voice whisper soft. "Dear brother, sit down beside me." His body wills him to move this time. He floats and suddenly she is draping him, breath fervent in his ear. Pink lips parted soft and warm and so close. (They've always been close.)
Cesare inhales, her hair smells lovely. Just like her skin and she rustles beneath the hair on his jaw line. The sunlight is peering through the thick heavy curtains. Soon they will tell them they should not sleep together. And she will sleep soundly in her own bed chambers, while he is neither dreaming nor sleeping, only wishing to remember the worst part about him.
"Sis..." He murmurs when he is sure she will not feel his hardness, "Sis, the morning light awaits you. That the sun may envy you a day more."
Her eyes open, all green and evolved and so Lucrezia. She laughs and he wholly believes if the people could only wake up to the sound of her laughter instead of a bird's song, the world might have known peace.
"I missed you while I was sleeping, dear brother..."
He kisses her forehead and cherishes these last moments he'll have with her. These last few days before propriety and farce call them by their Borgia blood, far away from each other's grasp.
Soon she will sleep in her own bedchambers, a woman grown. He will sleep alone and pray alone. Though he knows not how much longer he can keep this going. He will pray for his desperate body. Pray for his absolution, but most of all, for Lucrezia. That his dreams might not devour her whole.