hold back the melancholy, it's a crime (succession | gerri/shiv)

[fiachairecht]

hold back the melancholy, it's a crime. succession, gerri/shiv. shiv makes good on a threat (because she doesn't actually hate gerri). 530w, rated m. for elasticella in femflash feb exchange 2020.

"You know," Shiv says, chin propped on Gerri's thigh and lips still slick with Gerri's orgasm, "I don't hate you."

"Thanks," Gerri says dryly, shifting to ease her leg off Shiv's shoulder. She's getting too old for this, or, at the very least, she's magnificently improperly dressed for this. "I think I figured that one out when you offered to eat me out under my desk."

Shiv smirks, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and her hand on the carpet. "It was really more of a threat."

Shiv's very good at lying, when she wants to be, and Gerri doesn't even need to have spent the better part of forty years with the Roys to know that this lie is more out of habit than anything. Whether Shiv's noticed — well. 

Gerri's an asshole, but she tries not to be that kind of asshole unless it's really necessary, so she doesn't point it out. "And how does it feel, having carried it out?"

Shiv shrugs, one-shouldered, and her hair ripples with the movement, redder than ever in the sunset light filtering through the mostly-closed blinds. Fifty floors up, Gerri still knows from discretion, even though Shiv hadn't given the open ones a glance when she first sank between Gerri's knees like a weapon.

And Gerri would be lying herself if she said she didn't feel a little more reckless around Shiv, a little more free of Waystar and a little thrilled by the possibilities.

"Really, a shrug?" Gerri peers over the top of her glasses and Shiv purses her lips, suddenly looking five years younger.

"It feels good," she says, finally and a little reluctantly. "Obviously," and Gerri's not sure what shred of professionalism Shiv's still clinging on to to not roll her eyes with the words, but she appreciates it.

"Long live small mercies," Gerri says, with less malice than Shiv probably deserves, and, "Fuck you," Shiv rejoins with absolutely no heat behind it, because deserving hasn't meant a thing to either of them in decades, if it ever had to Shiv.

Gerri reaches down, covers Shiv's mouth with a hand and gets a bite for her trouble. It's good, sharp — a distraction from the leather of her chair still sticky against her bare cunt and the blush high across Shiv's cheekbones that's setting her eyes to sparkling. "Watch your mouth, missy."

Shiv prises Gerri's hand away, her fingers still warm and damp and Gerri fights the urge to close her eyes against the sensation. The reminder of what they've done. "Or you'll watch it for me? Is that what fairy godmothers do, these days?"

"Deliberate obtuseness doesn't look good on you, Siobhan." And then, because she's apparently constitutionally incapable of following her own good advice when it comes to the Roys, adds, "What did you get out of this, anyway?"

Shiv gets to her feet, a smile that almost looks real pulling at the corner of her mouth as Gerri has to tip her head back to look her in the eye. "Like I said. I don't hate you."

She leaves Gerri with that, and it feels, Gerri thinks, like it means more than it should.