bjorntobemild

He calls for peace, and eyes the thin red line he’d left on the soft, defenceless tissue of your throat with an expression that’s almost rueful. Thick brows knitting, a twist to his mouth. An acknowledgement of his hasty judgement or the loss of precious moisture, you can’t tell. You stay close to his back as bidden while he leads your group through the passages and noise and fury of Sietch Tabr. You stand at a handmaid’s distance while the Naib drinks Lady Jessica’s tears from his fingertips and you look away, the picture of discretion, the cut on your neck stinging as you swallow. 

He’s reasonable with his people, you come to learn, in the days and weeks and months that follow. Days and weeks and months of sand and heat and sunburn and stares and waiting, waiting. He’s patient and receptive, attentive even, to their views, their concerns, their fears. He’s jovial when he wants to be, quick to undercut tension or words of warning with a joke, a broad, curving smile or a clap to the back or shoulder. 

He’s devoted. To his people. To Paul. You see this up close too, the way the startling blue of his eyes sometimes ignites and burns with the light of a fanatic. A believer. A flame that steadily builds and consumes, fanned by the whispers and rumours and the feats of your Lady’s son. Feats that cause a tremor in the foundations of your own beliefs. Feats that occasionally stop you sleeping. 

So, yes, mercurial. His moods seem to rise and fall like the dunes of Arrakis themselves, shifting underfoot until you’re not sure what territory you’re treading in. When your Lady bids you, you retreat from your duties by her side, from fetching her whatever scant water you can lay your hands on and hovering a hand by her elbow as her belly swells and swells. She bids you to go and learn, and you do, while she whispers to the child growing within her. And that occasionally stops you sleeping too. 

You learn at Stilgar’s knee, side by side with Paul, squatting in the sand like children. You learn how to sandwalk, mirroring the Naib’s steps — graceful, almost, for a man who has been sharpened so, for a warrior — the way the point of his foot traces a half moon in the sand to break up your rhythm. You learn how to lie in wait beneath the sands themselves, to tuck yourself away beneath the grains and become invisible to unfriendly eyes. 

You learn how to fight, to fight their way, and try to ignore the feeling that flushes through you each time he bests you, plants you into the sand once more, on your back, his blade tucked against the scar he’d given you. The one you’re not sure if you’ve forgiven yet. You meet his eyes above his crysknife — as you had all those months ago, when he’d promised he’d make it quick — and they’re as blue and endless and unfathomable as the sky that frames him. He delivers a soft swat to the back of your thigh that’s almost playful.

“Your legs, use them,” he tells you, “they are where you hold your strength.”

He whets the blade with his own blood when he sheaths it. Leaves you staring up at the great blue nothing. 

Paul takes to his teachings like a fish to water. Stilgar looks at you strangely when you say as much, so you reshape the phrase, clumsily: like muad’dib to sand, which earns you a small shake of the head and one of those broad, curving smiles, like the crescent of a twin-moon. He’s pleased when you master whatever trick or skill he’s trying to teach you — more so with Paul than with you — and short, bordering exasperated when you falter. Barks and corrects and mutters to himself in Chakobsa. His lessons are neither kind nor unkind, but practical, necessary. 

You go on that way. Some of Stilgar’s teachings, the ways of the Fremen, become second nature to you, the feel and sound and smell of spice-rich sand almost as familiar as the wet, dark, black soil of your homeworld. You go on to become an adequate student, not his best, but adequate. You go on ignoring that pink, flushed feeling you get each time you manage to please him, when that rich, low voice tells you better, better, that was well met, aywa? You go on ignoring the things you feel whenever you find Stilgar and the Lady Jessica standing together, talking quietly. You turn your eyes away demurely, and retreat soundlessly into the caverns of the Sietch, wandering until your feet carry you, exhausted, to the cool stillness of your yali. 

It goes on that way. Lessons and sparring and serving and sand and heat and sunburn and waiting, waiting. Until Paul returns to Sietch Tabr with a familiar figure in tow. You break away from your Lady’s side, from the gathering crowd before you can think. Your feet lighter and quicker in the soft sand than they’ve ever been — short strides, on the balls of your feet, like you’d been taught — all thoughts of decorum forgotten. Gurney Halleck’s stern and storied features break open in a smile. He raises his arms to meet you. You fling your own around his neck, and the warrior-minstrel lifts you clean off your feet, sturdy and familiar even as the smell of smoke and stale sweat stings your nose. So much like before. So much like your time on Caladan you could cry with it. You don’t, careful not to waste the water. 

He puts you down gently. You see Paul’s smile as you bring Gurney’s hand up to your cheek, tuck your face into his dirty palm: a gesture of greeting, friendship, family, that’s as ingrained in you as the wet, dark, black soil of home. A home before Caladan. A home you know you’ll not see again.

“My girl,” Gurney says, voice warm beyond belief. He glances behind you, and you remember your manners. Your place. Bow your head and step smoothly to one side as your Lady sweeps forward to greet her old warmaster. You look down at the sand beneath your feet, not really seeing it, lost for a moment among the shifting, infinite grains. Some instinct in you draws your gaze up — and meeting Stilgar’s eyes in that moment feels the same as when his blade had met your skin. That same all-encompassing, piercing shock. The Fremen Naib does not look away. And something strange burns in your blood at the expression on his face. That bearded jaw not quite set. Those thick brows not quite pinched. 

You break first, looking down at the sand and letting the curtain of your hair hide the heat in your cheeks, as pink and glowing as sunburn. You’ve done nothing wrong, but you feel as if you have. 

Later, you sit with Gurney and Paul as night falls on the sun-warm Sietch. Gurney reaches out occasionally as he speaks, to touch Paul’s shoulder or your own. You resist the urge to curl into him, as warm and content as a cub, or a pup as he would say. Though you know the old warmaster would not mind, you also know how the gesture might be misconstrued. You can still feel Stilgar’s eyes on you. From the corners of your perception, you see his figure moving through the common ground. That quick, straight-backed warrior’s stride, moving without pause to speak low into the ear of the Lady Jessica, her hand passing in slow rhythmic movements over the swell of her stomach. You keep your eyes on the sand, tracing tiny patterns into its surface. Stilgar withdraws, and you give into that sick hollow ache behind your ribs, tipping your head to the side, forehead coming to rest on the solid ledge of Gurney’s shoulder. You close your eyes and let the contact warm you even as the chill of being watched prickles over your skin. 

Stilgar is nowhere near jovial when you face him at your next sparring lesson. There are no quips. No light remarks. He’s relentless, joyless as he pushes you to the very brink of your endurance. Your muscles burn. You drip with sweat. You pant as his blows become increasingly difficult to parry, suddenly as close to tears as you have been since you arrived at the Sietch and unsure why. You blink the moisture away furiously — and it’s a mistake. Stilgar sweeps your legs clean out from underneath you. You land hard, a sharp sound knocked free from your lungs. He’s over you again in the next breath, bullying his way between your legs, all solid heat and ragged breath and strength. You kick, you thrash, you flinch, he holds, and all the blue in his eyes blurs as tears boil over your lashline, sliding down your temples, into your hair. 

You don’t see the crysknife being unsheathed, but you feel it, pressed down once again over the neat little scar on your throat. You swallow a sob, and the motion tightens the press of the blade. Almost enough to cut. More tears fall and your vision clears just a little, enough to see Stilgar’s expression tighten, full mouth twisting and parting as he tchs at you. “Ai, tears now? You waste my teaching, and now you would waste your water too?” 

It would have hurt less if he’d have opened your throat again. And suddenly you’re so angry, angry beyond belief. It comes from a deeper place than you knew your anger could go. Not since before. Not since you’d been ripped from your home. You drive your feet into the sand, pressing and twisting with all your strength. It’s enough to unbalance him, and in that split second his eyes grow wide and round. It would be comical if not for the circumstances. If you weren’t grasping for his wrist as he throws his arm out to try and steady himself, the arm holding his crysknife. You lash your body around with the movement, teeth gritted in a snarl as you roll and grapple, sand sawing in the air. You wrench the hilt of the crysknife from his grip. Press your body down with all your might. You place the blade as he had done, right above that soft, defenceless hollow of the neck, where the sweat collects. 

For a moment all you do is stare at each other. You’re acutely aware of the breadth of him between your legs. Those strong, dark features. The blunt, broad curve of his nose. The creases around his mouth. The moment trembles on along the edge of the blade, sharp and thin and deadly in your hand.

“Aywa, aywa, you see?,” Stilgar wheezes. He delivers another swat, weaker this time, or perhaps gentler, to the back of your thigh. “This is where you hold your strength.” 

The silver in his beard. The scruff of his hair. The startling blue of his eyes, pupils blown and burning with… something. 

Your can still feel the tears on your face. You swallow furiously, painfully, and watch him track the way your throat works. A stray droplet slips down to your jawline, and you stifle a flinch as Stilgar’s hand comes up to catch it. The feel of his bare skin on yours, rough and warm, even for a moment, is… 

Stilgar brings his fingers to his lips and in an instant, you’re back in the quiet brown shadows of the Sietch, all those moons ago, standing at that discreet handmaid’s distance while the Fremen drinks your Lady’s tears. Only now, beneath you, the Naib’s expression is different. Somehow softer and darker all at once. You can only wonder what your own face is doing. You can only wonder what he’s thinking as he drinks your tears in. Stilgar lingers, seemingly savouring the taste, holding it in his mouth, holding your gaze, and after several long, heavy moments, he draws his hand away and lets it hover between you. Like an offering. Your lips part of their own accord. 

The urge to taste the salt, of his skin and your own frustration, is so keen that it feels like thirst, throat and stomach and chest, all of them, aching. Your grip on the crysknife tightens and softens, tightens and softens. You feel your head drop slightly on the hinge of your neck, mouth dipping close to the moisture he offers like you’re about to take a sip from a cup. Stilgar watches you all the while, eyes burning, burning. 

“To share your water,” he tells you, voice rumbling low and smooth, you feel it as much as you hear it, “this is no small thing.” 

You know that. You know what he’s offering. And you lift the crysknife from his skin and watch his eyes widen and settle once more, taking you in, something almost like satisfaction in his face when you whet the blade with blood from your own wrist and return it to its sheath for him. Your hand lingers on the firm span of his abdomen. It feels indecent. Unbecoming of a handmaiden of House Atreides. You don’t care. 

You don’t look away either, and in an eternity that fits between three ragged breaths his fingers find your mouth, that warm broad palm briefly cupping your jaw. Your open for him, slow and hesitant as he slips two fingertips over the swell of your bottom lip. Fighting a shudder, you curl your tongue over the intrusion, done so gently it barely feels like an intrusion at all. Stilgar makes a soft low noise, a half-sigh at the back of his throat. You taste salt, you taste saliva, rich in a way that’s distinctly not your own, and you’re deliciously conscious of the feel of your own mouth, soft and plush and wet around the flesh and bone of him. You see the furrow deepen between those thick brows, the blue of those eyes swimming in front of your own like a desert mirage. You give his fingertips a soft suck. Then — 

The world flips, you land back in the sand, and for one heart-stopping second you think you’re about to feel the sting of his crysknife again — but no, you just feel him, his fingers slipping free as he presses you into the sand once more. Blue eyes, blue sky. They’re the last things you know before that inevitable, invisible pull takes hold and he meets your mouth with his own. 

It’s a mess at first. A sound slips its way free of your chest, right into Stilgar’s open mouth. He kisses you hard and deep, kisses you like a man dying of thirst. If you weren’t crushed between him and the sand, you’d reel at the sensations — each hot, damp press, the scrape of his beard, the smell of his skin. So much sensation you could keen with it. On sheer reflex, you reach out with your tongue — he meets you with his own, and you revel in it: the stark, warm reality of this man’s weight on top of you, the taste of him, that you wanted one another in the same senseless way — the so much of it. It burns in your chest like a breath held for too long. 

It occurs you, in some dim muddled way, how exposed you both are. That anyone could walk by and find you both tangled in the sand this way. You wrench your head to the side to say as much, manage to pull in one delirious gasp of air, only for Stilgar to immediately guide your mouth back to his with his fingers on your jaw — still damp with your own spit. You want to be revolted but can’t be. A part of you wants to cling on to the anger you’d felt earlier. The painful sting that he’d raised. Only you cant find it. Can’t grasp it. Soothed to some distant nothing by every soft, slick, measured sweep of his mouth on yours. 

It’s still a mess. And wet too. Stilgar seems to be making it deliberately so: you swallow saliva — your own and everything that he’s determinedly sweeping in with his tongue. An overflow of moisture, so sacred. So scarce. Your hands, which at that point had been clutching uselessly at his shoulders, slide up to take two handfuls of thick dark hair. You just want to hold on, to feel it, keep him close. When that’s not enough you tangle a leg around his own. You use your grip to steer him deeper into the kiss, and Stilgar’s low grunt of satisfaction rumbles right through you. His hand slips from your jaw to cradle the back of your arched neck, shifting restlessly between your thighs. It feels so good you ache from it. Want to whine for it. 

With one final searing kiss, Stilgar pulls away, but he doesn't go too far — not when you’re gripping his hair to keep him close. You drink in dizzy little sips of dry, hot air as he presses his forehead against yours, shudders against your mouth. Close like this, you can’t see his expression, just the finer details of his skin, smell the desert-earth and salt of him, feel his breath and the thud of his heart. Close like this, you can see the slick state you’ve made of his mouth — and want more of it. Close like this, his silhouette is backlit by the merciless burn of Arrakis’ sun. He withdraws a fraction more, far enough that he can look you in the eye but close enough that you feel his breath as he huffs.

“I thought you might cut my throat,” he tells you. 

It’s almost a shock, having his voice close enough to taste. For a moment, all you can think of is dragging him back in for another kiss. The urge to arch up into his weight. 

“I still haven’t ruled it out,” you murmur, knowing the softness in your gaze, in your tone, says otherwise. 

“Aywa, and I would deserve it too,” he hums, amused. Then abruptly, he’s all serious eyes and focus once more. Mercurial, you think again with something dangerously close to fondness. 

“Gurney Halleck,” he says. It’s a question, even if it doesn’t sound like one. You stifle a smile. 

“He’s my friend. And my mentor,” you say. 

“Mm,” Stilgar leans in close. Noses at a soft spot of skin beneath your ear. “Your protector?” Your thighs clench. 

“Only when necessary,” you manage. 

Stilgar grunts. “No longer,” he says. 

You find his hand and coax it up to your face, holding it there for a moment before you tuck a kiss into the centre of his palm. Another gesture. Another offering. Stilgar’s face doesn’t shift a millimetre, but you think you can detect the subtle shift of light in his eyes. With a visible effort, he extracts himself. Draws himself back to his feet, to full height, suddenly looking less like the man who had been rolling in the sand with you and every inch the stoic Fremen Naib. He stands straight-backed, shading you from the sun, the sky bringing out all the searing blue of his eyes. A god to you, for half a moment. 

“I will come to you tonight,” he tells you.