my masquerade (sw bloodline | carise/leia, varish)

[fiachairecht]

my masquerade (if you're not afraid). star wars bloodline, carise/leia. senatorial balls, ft semi-public sex, costumes, and force-choking. 2.4k words, rated m. for thedevilchicken in femslashafterdark 2018

Leia readjusts the thin band of her mask, settling the silken elastic more firmly underneath the the pins holding the top of her braid in place. The silk of the eyepiece itches at her hairline, feathered edges blending into the wisps that Varish has artfully arranged to frame her face.

"I'm still not sure about the beads," she says, eyeing her reflection with a critical eye. The black and silver interplay of the dress Varish had chosen for her catches the lights of the opulent 'fresher, casting shimmering shadows across the unmasked portion of her face and her bare hands. The beads at her wrists and waist, stylised to resemble core world moons, chime in odd tones as she moves.

"Don't be silly, darling, you look wonderful," Varish says from in front of the other mirror where she's putting the finishing touches on her veil.

"You're only saying that because you dressed me," Leia grumbles.

Varish shrugs languidly, her gleaming fur rippling with the movement.

"One doesn't need to be the architect of beauty to appreciate it," she says. It's not a denial, and Leia laughs despite herself.

"Fishing for compliments, I see," Leia grins, and turns back to the mirror. Objectively, she's sure, it's true: she does look wonderful, because no one can be dressed for a senatorial ball by Varish Vicly and look anything but wonderful. But the longer she studies her reflection, the less she recognises herself. Between the feathered raven's mask sweeping down to kiss the bottom edge of her cheekbones, the scarves drifting across her neck and over her shoulderblades to give the illusion of wings, she looks like a haunted, hunting thing.

Like the one person she swore she'd never become.

But Varish knows none of that, simply sees a dear friend dressed in finery deep and dark enough to put a black hole to shame, and Leia knows she has to be worthy of that tonight.

So she smiles at her reflection, at Varish, and pretends she doesn't feel the reckless pull of something old and tired tugging her forward by the ribs.

 

**

 

The expansive ballroom of the Loneran Senatorial Complex spreads out in front of them like a living thing, as if the room has swallowed up the glittering mass of beings swirling through it, their suits and gowns, drinks and masks, and crushed them together to make something new. The colours and lights are almost dizzyingly overwhelming, even to someone as accustomed to ceremony as Leia.

Then again, Loneran parties operated on an entirely different level than any of the Alderaanian ones that had been a fixture of Leia's youth. She's grateful for Varish's presence at her side as she surveys the room, wondering where to begin.

"The food begins here," Varish says, as if she knew exactly what Leia was wondering. "Dance programmes and speeches are on the screens." She waves to the side walls where, behind the living crowd, Leia can just make out the flickering blue of a holoprojector.

"Good," Leia says, and reminds herself to breathe as she and Varish are swept into the full force of the masquerade.

 

**

 

Leia isn't sure how much time has passed when she finally stumbles into one of the side corridors to catch her breath, the buzz of the masquerade fading to a fuzzy, suffocating hum enveloping her in an odd feeling of security as she tries to focus on her breathing.

Her solitude is short-lived, however. The click of high-heeled boots echoing down the corridor pierces through the momentary security, and Leia sighs, steadying her hand against the instinct to flinch for a blaster. She carefully re-creates her smiling mask and turns to face the intruder, but a hand lands on her waist before she can do more than take a breath.

"Princess," a voice whispers softly against her ear, and Leia freezes, hand stone-still over the one at her waist. Only one person would ever call her that on a night reserved for senators alone, but somehow she can't imagine Carise breaking the masque's anonymity.

Or, more precisely, Leia's fairly certain that Lady Carise Sindian, Senator from Arkanis and Centrist pain in her ass, an annoyance magnified only by the exhausting adoration she always affected in Leia's presence even when they were arguing, would be found dead before she would be found acting contrary to royal protocols. It was worth the ordeal of the event to see her slip even that much.

Not, of course, that Leia would say any of that tonight.

"I'm afraid you must be mistaken," she says, and her voice is only steady due to too many long years of practice.

Carise laughs, a low, amused sound that resonates through Leia's bones as she sways closer. Her other hand settles on Leia's other hip. The slightest tug, the slightest shift on either of their parts, and Leia would be pressed flush against her, and no one would know.

The thought is as unexpected as it is thrilling, and Leia tells herself it's just the residual adrenaline that makes her press her thighs tight together.

"I see," Carise says. "My apologies, Senator. If you truly were who I had thought, you would have thrown me off before I had laid a hand on you."

Her apology is as false as Leia suspects most of her friendship is, and yet, constructed as their bubble of pretended isolation might be, the idea that for one night not even Carise in all her finery and surety truly has eyes on her, on Senator Leia Organa, is intoxicating. All at once she understands why Varish was so insistent she come tonight, in black and moons and raven's wings. Carise's hand is cold through the thin fabric of her dress, too cold for her to have come from the dance floor. Leia knows without turning around that Cairse is wearing white, a white that Leia herself hasn't worn in decades.

Well-meaning Varish, who's given Leia neither friend nor ally but something else that she hadn't even known Leia had wanted.

Leia holds her breath, eyes fixed on the ballroom entrance at the other end of the hall. The control she fought so hard for earlier in the night slips as Carise's arms slide fully around her waist, fingers interlocking at the base of Leia's breastbone. "I believe you owe me an explanation for those wandering hands either way, Senator."

"There are certain proprieties one must observe, when they have reached our station," Carise says, and oh: she knows, she knows, and all this is a undeniably adult version of child's play. "Only certain people one must ever deign to be caught with. Will you join me?"

"Depends." Leia licks her lips, feels the waxy slide of her lipstick against her tongue and imagines what Carise's would taste like. What Carise would taste like. "Join you for what?"

Carise pulls at her, harder than Leia had expected, and Carise's breasts crush against her back, soft under the carefully arranged layers of fabric. The collision knocks the air from her lungs, displaces all her thoughts just long enough that Carise's mouth is a surprise too, wet and hot as she bites softly at Leia's earlobe. It's a nearly unbearable contrast to the chill of her hands pressed not quite hard enough to bruise; a balance that speaks to more experience than Leia had expected. Leia swallows a groan with effort, wondering how much her body has already given away.

"That's — oh — very forward of you, Senator," she says, cursing the tremor in her voice. It's been too long since someone touched her. That this is Carise — not quite dilettante, not quite enemy, not quite avoidable — seems to only heighten every sensation.

This was nothing like the adventures she sometimes imagined during the tedium of endless meetings that accomplished nothing, but there's an undeniable thrill all the same.

"I don't hear an objection," Carise points out. Her left hand drifts back up Leia's body, rubs a teasing thumb across Leia's nipple before pressing down hard over her heart. "In fact, I rather think you're in agreement."

Leia swallows hard, trying to gague the distance between Carise and the wall behind her. The whole corridor seems to be moving slowly, inexorably inwards around them, enclosing them in their own personal galaxy. "I wouldn't be entirely sure," she says.

Carise must be wearing a crown, or something else metal, because she makes the most wonderful noise as Leia shoves her back into the wall, an echoing chime fit to shatter all illusions between them.

"No," Carise says, and as Leia finally turns around to take in her appearance, she sees, for the first time, the ill-hidden hunger in Carise's silver-rimmed eyes. Pretenses fallen, indeed. "I'm very sure."

She has the height advantage over Leia, but her silver and white gown with its billowing sleeves and pearl-stitched bodice give her an incongruous softness. The matte white paint of her lips lends the hint of a smile that almost isn't cruel. Even the metal in her hair, which Leia sees now is multiple pieces of intricately carved spirals interspersed through her elaborately curled hair, seems more malleable in the light than in imagination.

Too soft to be allowed to continue unscathed, Leia thinks with a flash of bitterness. Game this might be, but she knows how to win, especially against an ambitious young woman who knows better than to brag about who she's bedding.

She doesn't wait for Carise to bend before she fists a hand in the long dark waves of her hair, dragging her down to meet her mouth as her bracelets chime against Carise's decorations. Carise kisses her back eagerly, sharp and sure, tongue prodding at Leia's lips without a hint of tentativeness, like this is all going according to some secret, inevitable plan.

It's electric, Leia thinks, kissing someone who has no interest in treating her like something precious to be protected. Carise kisses like the memory of war, in a way that would terrify Leia if this was anything else, anything but two people who needed to be touched and needed their secrets kept. So she opens her mouth to Carise's searching tongue, bares her teeth into the kiss, and refuses to be bested even as she can feel the wetness gathering between her thighs.

"This isn't how I planned to spend my night," Leia says when she pulls back, breathless again for a far more pleasurable reason. She had begun the night feeling reckless, and Carise with her sharp nails dragging neat red lines up Leia's thigh as slides her hand under her skirt is exactly what she needs. Someone she can fight with no consequences, someone who doesn't know the history behind her raven mask.

"You should plan for it more often," Carise murmurs, turning her head to graze her teeth against Leia's throat. "Certain alliances are natural."

"Certain alliances don't leave this corridor." She's not sure what Carise wants from tonight and she's sure they shouldn't be doing this, but she can also feel her heartbeat at the base of her skull, in the tips of her fingers, the night's restless energy expanding into the Force. "Certain alliances..." she trails off, trying to suppress a moan as Carise's fingers find the damp shimmersilk of her underwear. "Certain alliances don't have to mean anything more than silence."

She brings the hand not in Carise's hair up to her throat, hovers a centimetre away from her skin. A threat, or maybe a question, but a small dark part of her knows that Carise would let her either way.

"Do it," Carise whispers, and vindication tips Leia closer, so close to the edge. "Do it and no mask will hide you, Princess."

She almost pauses, at the use of her title. Almost wonders what anyone else stepping out of the dance would make of them pressed faceless and wanting against the wall.

But no one else would know who they were.

"You've already broken the masque," Leia points out. "Haven't you? My Lady." You know. I know. No one else matters.

If Carise notices the mockery Leia laces through her own formal title she doesn't, can't protest it as her head once more hits the wall, helpless against the invisible surge of Leia's power. She makes a tiny, choked noise, and Leia hardly has time to wish to hear it again before Carise retaliates by yanking aside the silk and roughly shoving two fingers inside her.

Leia gasps, trying to spread her legs and keep her balance all at once, falling further into Carise as she does. It's too much, too soon, and Carise's fingers are so cold — and yet it's the only thing Leia wants in the moment, shivering uncontrollably as clenches around Carise's fingers. The already tiny world of the corridor narrows around her, everything compressed down to the stretch and the chill as Carise twists her fingers that might be the only things preventing her from losing control utterly.

Still her hand presses against Carise's throat, purposeful now, and her hands might be cold but the heat of her throat, of her mouth when Leia leans in to brush her lips teasingly across Carise's, is nearly overwhelming. Carise moans against Leia's lips, a breathless, wanting, nearly pitiful thing as she chokes.

But when Leia tilts her head up from where she's braced against Carise and the wall in equal measure, she can see that the pride in Carise's eyes doesn't dim even as the blood vessels bloom bright and desperate across the whites.

It's the only colour in her face, save the light pink flush across her cheekbones, and Leia thinks for a wild moment that it becomes her, that she would wish Carise to look like this always.

Leia tightens her grip, watches the red spread and deepen, watches Carise's eyelids flutter desperately, unable to hide the truth that her voice has already betrayed. "See, now?" she murmurs, arms trembling with the strain of holding herself upright as Carise fucks her, of keeping her hold on Carise's throat tight enough to hurt but not tight enough to push her over the edge into unconsciousness. "Silence."

Carise laughs anyway, as much as she can, drags her thumb over Leia's clit and fits her other hand over Leia's at her throat. "This time," she says, hoarse and almost unrecognisable. "Maybe." Leia shudders around her fingers at that half-promise of a future and wishes she wasn't so close to coming, that she didn't want this so badly.

Wishes that she, too, didn't want to do this again.