InsaneJournal

[Fic] Masks, Cristo/Mara

Title:Masks
Fandom: Dragon Quest IV
Character/Pairing: Cristo/Mara
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Word count: 346
Written For: kinkfest (Prompt: Cristo/Mara: temptation/dancing girl - tempted by the fruit of another)

He pretends not to see, not to watch, not to be entranced by the gleam of sunlight on oiled skin, the sleek play of muscles beneath. He imagines how that skin would feel beneath his hands, impossibly smooth against his sword-callused palms, slick and hot from exertion. He imagines the slicker, hotter softness of her body welcoming him inside.

He hides it all behind the stoic mask he has perfected over years, a lifetime, of wanting what he cannot have.

But never before has the object of his desire danced before him in swirls of night-dark hair and spring-bright silk, every movement pure seduction. She whirls past, the scent of oil carried on the breeze of her passing; he wonders if it tastes as spicy as it smells, if it would mask the taste of her flesh, or merely enhance it.

He feels disloyal for such thoughts, but does not try overhard to turn his mind away. He knows full well that the temptress he watches is as much a mask as the disinterest he hides behind; the woman beneath it does not dance for him. She does not dance for the crowd which presses close to watch, held at bay by Ragnar's stern countenance and his own frown, his hand close and ready by his sword. Possibly, she dances for her mirror image, perched serenely on the back of  their wagon, watching.

Mostly, he thinks, she dances for the dance. The knowledge does nothing to cool his lust.

A final spin, a leap, and Mara folds gracefully to the ground, silk drifting down around her like flower petals. Her spell holds a heartbeat longer, two, then shatters in thunderous applause and a shower of coins.

Cristo watches her. After the crowd begins to disperse, after Taloon comes out to gather the coins, he watches. When she rises and walks back to the wagon, an exaggerated sway to her hips, he watches.

Only when her sister's arms go around her and her mask falls away does he turn.

His own mask is still firmly in place.