Chapter Text
“What are you doing here?”
It’s a stupid question with an obvious answer—Zofia is right, Maria is so dense it’s dangerous—but still Maria asks it every time she opens the well oiled door of her little Rhode’s Island dorm room and finds Platinum on the other side with her bow missing and the high collar of her jacket riding just a little less high. The first time she showed up Maria lunged for her sword—tucked underneath her bed within reach of her dominant hand. It didn’t matter. Platinum had Maria unarmed and on her back within twenty seconds.
Turns out, Platinum has a talent for getting Maria on her back. Hardly has to use force any more.
Her tail, same color as her name, swishes. “I’m, like, here to kill you.”
“Really?” She tries to play it cool, tries to lean against the doorway with an easy smirk but she’s not an actress—or assassin—and she wears the truth on her face and her tail, raised in excitement. “How are you going to do it tonight?”
It’s a game they play—Maria really hopes it’s a game. The assassin stops by, tells the not-a-knight her time is up and they pretend it’s true until Platinum grows tired of games.
“Honey pot scheme.” She sounds almost bored. “I’m going to kill you in the afterglow.”
“I see,” Maria considers. “Out with a bang then?”
The assassin rolls her eyes violently enough to kill and grabs Maria by the collar of her grease stained t-shirt. “Shut up,” She commands, before doing the deed herself and forcing their lips together in a crushing kiss. The door clicks behind her.
The muscles in Maria’s arms tense as Platinum pushes her back into the room, wondering if they should take over and push back. But appealing as the idea of Platinum up against a wall is she knows the assassin wouldn’t go for it. She has to be in charge and Maria isn’t about to change their status quo. Not yet. Not when Platinum’s lips on hers feel like the only reliable thing she can’t take a wrench to.
It wasn’t a particularly hard transition from the slowly collapsing antiquity of the Nearl estate to the hard steel modernity that made up Rhode’s Island. But sometimes… sometimes…
Platinum helps her forget the sometimes with teeth on her lower lip and fingernails digging into her hips. She makes her presence felt in every deliberate stroke of her tongue and press of her body. It seems impossible that she could ever blend into the shadows when Maria feels her as loudly as the cheer of a crowd. She pushes and Maria happily falls onto her back once again.
The Rhode’s Island beds aren’t as soft as the ones back home but it feels perfect with Platinum’s weight pressing her into it. Maria sighs as Platinum’s lips leave hers to attack her throat. Sometimes Platinum leaves her speckled in purple—Maria likes the way it makes Zofia spit out her breakfast and makes Margaret send a stern look at every potential suitor. They have no idea how close Maria comes to burning herself every night.
“Are you really just gonna lay there?” Platinum rises over Maria’s hips, her tail brushing over Maria’s knees. “At least put up a fight.”
Maria can’t keep away the smile, not when Platinum’s jacket’s come undone and her small breasts are begging to fall out of her smaller bra. “You wouldn’t tell me if you were assigned to kill me.”
“You don’t know that.” Platinum forces a hand under Maria’s shirt, rubbing the slick scar tissue on her abs. “Maybe I’m trying to lure you into a false sense of security so I can see that smile rubbed off your face for good.”
Maria curls towards her hand. She’s not sure when she became so sure Platinum wasn’t that sort of person but she feels a trust in her bones just as strongly as she feels the knightly virtues Kazmierz forgot. The little Zofia in her head yells that she’s a complete idiot but Maria shuts her up with a reach around Platinum’s waist and a kiss to her belly button.
Another annoyed swish of the tail sweeps over Maria’s legs as Platinum shoves her back down. “One day they’re going to call me.” The armorless union—the knight killers. “You’re too good at annoying the wrong people.” Her hand pushes up Maria’s chest with discomforting pleasure—bundling up her shirt like stroking a cat the wrong way. “Brrrng Brrrng. ‘It’s time to kill Maria Nearl’.” She presses a small hand to the hollow of Maria’s throat. “Or maybe I wasn’t lying earlier.” The pressure increases. “Maybe they already have.”
She can’t breathe.
Her instincts tell her to knee Platinum in the gut and grab the sword stored carefully under her bed. But Maria stays in place, trying not to gasp and waste the last of her air in their little game of chicken. “Alright.”
The pressure relents. Platinum pulls away her hand and eyes Maria with a furrowed brow and a furiously sweeping tail. “Seriously? You’d just let me kill you?”
“I’m sort of getting used to it, I guess?” She laughs in that ‘can’t be helped’ sort of way Zofia scolds her for as she shifts upright. “No matter what I do someone wants to kill me for it.” Maria reaches out and caresses Platinum’s cheek with the back of her hand—a ghost’s touch. “I’d rather it be you—owowowowowowow.”
Maria’s flushed sincerity is immediately, violently interrupted with a brutal pinch to her cheek. “You really have, like, no self-respect.”
“Whaddya mean?” The elastic cheeked knight slurs.
Finally, after a long withering look, she releases Maria’s cheek with a quick followup slap. “Dying is so not cute.”
It stings almost as sharp as one of those arrows Maria keeps finding around her room—hidden between the mattress and the frame, stored in her desk, occasionally tucked just under her sword like a very deadly cuddle. She can’t be sure if they’re meant for her someday or those who might disturb them. Maria holds back the urge to soothe her sore cheek with her arts. “Sorry?” She’s still not sure what she’s done to offend.
Apologizing is not what Platinum wants. She smashes their lips together with that performative anger Maria’s come to adore. For everything that’s been done to Maria, to her family, to her country, she can’t bear to be as mad as she needs but the words come so easily to Platinum—damn those nobles, fuck the knights, corporate can suck it, even if they pay her checks.
Platinum pulls away with Maria’s lower lip between her teeth. “Stupid noble idiot. Dying when you can live is just… stupid.”
“You said stupid twice.”
“Crazy.” She stares holes in Maria’s chest.
Maria ducks to meet her soft brown eyes—the beautiful ones that stunned her that day long ago in their shared homeland. “Everyday I fall a little more for this woman who won’t even tell me her real name. So yeah, I guess I am a little crazy—owowowwowow!” The other cheek gets the pinch this time.
“Save the nobility for someone who doesn’t find it boring.” She takes advantage of the extra few millimeters she gets sitting on Maria’s lap and blows hotly into the perked ears on Maria’s head. “Don’t fall for me Maria Nearl, I sure as hell won’t fall for you.”
Maria thrashes against the bed, the heat on her ears is too much to bear upright so she falls back down. “Am I really so bad?” She laughs through her gasps.
Something serious and unplaceable falls over Platinum’s face. “The last Platinum…”
She’s never talked about her predecessor before—the Kuranta who died so she could take his title. Maria tries to listen without comment.
“The last Platinum was decommissioned—”
She fails. “Is that how you say killed?”
Platinum ignores the question. “—after he fell for his target.”
“Oh.” Maria’s eyebrows pop along with her ears, lingering in surprise before settling back in their places. “Oh.”
She hesitates. She twitches. And then, the realization hits Maria so suddenly she struggles not to gasp— “so it’s, like, lucky I can’t say the same” —she lies.
Maria’s mouth opens and closes like a drowning fish. There are so many promises she wants to make at once but Platinum isn’t a maiden she’s saved from a tower and her bosses made sure Maria can never be the knight to save her.
But Platinum isn’t one to let a moment linger. “Besides, Kazimierz is way more likely to tell me to kill the Radiant Knight.”
Maria jerks back. A fear, a real fear not the idle sort on the battlefield where the only real stake is her life, grips Maria. “Margaret…”
“But if they told me to do that I’d probably go running~.” Platinum’s voice goes light and airy, placating.
Maria relaxes.
Platinum’s fingers trace her hard jawline before softly replacing her touch with her lips—over and over until just above her lips. “Or maybe I was so won over by your cause I quit and ran into the protective embrace of Rhode’s Island. Maybe you convinced me there’s something in the world worth more than money.”
She’s trembling. On instinct Maria’s hands stroke the slope of her shoulders just before soothing her spirits with a soft, almost languid kiss. It’s an acknowledgement of a truth—maybe not the truth, but a truth Maria likes to hear. Then she offers an out. “That’s exactly what you’d say before you kill me.”
“You’re catching on.” Platinum shoves the heavy knight away before rolling off Maria’s hips and attaching to her side. If Maria didn’t know better she’d think Platinum was cuddling up to her. She throws an arm around Platinum’s shoulder anyway. “I’m not going to have sex with you tonight Nearl.”
It’s an odd declaration but the directness is appreciated even if it’s a bit of a swerve. “Okay?”
The woman in her arm shifts, her focus falls from Maria’s face. “Aren’t you, like, gonna kick me out?”
Maria tightens her grip on Platinum’s shoulders, she doesn’t struggle—if anything she relaxes. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t want to have sex tonight but I still showed up so like… why am I here?” She asks into Maria, hiding her face in the knight’s breast.
Maria rolls onto her side, reaches under Platinum’s chin and pulls her face up, greeting Platinum’s confused grimace with an easy smile. “To kill me in my sleep, of course.”
“What.” She can’t pull away but like a cat caught in a hug Platinum tries her flailing best.
“We’re going to fall asleep—hopefully in something comfier than my work clothes—and sometime in the night you’re going to kill me.” Maria kisses her again, chastely like the courtly knight she can’t be. “Or not. I’d prefer not but it’s up to you.”
“I…” The facade falls for a moment.
“You can just sleep with me Plat,” Maria murmurs into her hair.
She doesn’t move, only grumbles. “Don’t call me that.”
“But it’s weird to call my girlfriend by a title.”
“Not your girlfriend,” Platinum grumbles.
“You don’t want to be?" Maria pauses and adds in the silence. "As a cover. For killing me obviously.”
A moment passes, then another before finally, muffled by Maria’s chest, Platinum says. “…maybe your girlfriend.”
“I’ll take it.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m not going to kill you. Someday.”
Maria breaths in deep, watching Platinum shift with the rise of her chest and lets a powerful, unstoppable burn wash over her heart at the sight. She trusts too easy, she always has. “I know.”
And she hopes she always will.