But That's a Secret Everybody Knows!
Author’s note:
This chapter takes place immediately following Serpent’s Mouth, Serpent’s Teeth chapter sixteen, “Scenes On the Occasion of a Wedding”
It was nearly two in the morning by the time that the last guests were convinced to make their exit from the Westpfale mansion after the wedding. Magdalena took pity on her servants and whispered into the ear of her butler that, as soon as the guests were gone, everyone could just go— the cleanup of the party did not have to take place until tomorrow. Although the action was altruistic, it was for the strange and selfish motive of wanting the house to herself. After watching the headlights of the cars depart out into the rainy night, she stood in the center of the ballroom, surveying the wreckage of the event. While there had still been guests, the glitz had remained, but now that they were gone, the only things that she could see all around were the dirty dishes that littered the tables, the napkins and trash that had fallen to the ground, the scuffmarks all over the once-bright dancing floor, and all the tablecloths that had been pristine and were now rumpled beyond repair.
Her own footsteps echoed strangely as she walked around with light feet. Her toes ached from dancing so much in her shoes, but that didn’t stop her from still taking a nimble few leaps, now that the dance floor was empty. She watched her own reflection the window as she did. In motion, she still looked good. Her dress, at least, had stayed immaculate, and if her hair had come loose from its structure, that only made it look better as it fluttered behind her.
Hank came back into the ballroom— he had gone out to say his last goodbyes to departing friends, but now he sat back down at one of the empty tables and watched Magdalena jump. He propped his head on his hands, silent, a red flush in his cheeks and a shine in his eyes from tiredness and alcohol.
She was very drunk already, and she knew that, but that didn’t stop her from retrieving half a bottle of wine and two clean glasses from the bar area. The bartender was long gone, but the bottles had been purchased in full ahead of time, so they all remained. She made a fool of herself— balancing the heavy wine bottle on her head and taking delicate little flouncing steps towards Hank. It was the kind of exercise she had done as a child in ballet class. The motions were as embedded into her body as breathing was.
He smiled at her— very indulging. Too indulging, perhaps. She set the glasses down on the table before him, tossing some crumpled napkins out of the way, and poured them both drinks.
“Hello, Maggie,” he said, which was a very funny thing for him to say. But he was very drunk.
“Hello, Hank,” she replied. Saying this felt unreasonably hilarious to her, and she tried to stifle her own giggles as she picked up her wine glass. “Oh, I am drunk.”
“Prosit!” Hank said as he waved his own glass in her general direction.
“Maybe you should stop me from drinking more.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked.
“Are you just going to let me do whatever I want?”
He seemed stymied by this question. “Probably. Shouldn’t I?”
“Hank,” she trilled, drawing out the vowel. “You shouldn’t say that!”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
She laughed again. “If it is, you shouldn’t admit to it. People will think I’ve whipped you like a dog.”
He shook his head and raised his glass towards her again. “Doesn’t matter what anybody thinks.”
This concept swirled around in her mind for a moment, but it was slippery, and so she put it down. Thinking about other people was dangerous to her mood, no matter what Hank said about them not mattering. So, she didn’t think about them, at least not right now. “And do you think that I’m going to let you do whatever you like?”
He put down his glass and propped his chin on his hands, looking at her and smiling. “Maybe,” he said.
“Hmph,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh?”
“Not even in the house all by ourselves,” she said. “I won’t.”
Hank looked around, as if realizing for the first time that he had sent all his friends home. Maybe he was just looking for the servants. “Everyone’s gone?”
“Everyone’s gone.”
“It’s just us?”
“It’s just us.”
“That’s alright, then,” he said with a yawn. “I’ll stop worrying, if it’s just you.” Even though the sentence was phrased with the simplicity that alcohol loaned him, the way that Hank tilted his head at her communicated that he knew what he was saying, and that he meant something else by it.
“Were you worried?”
He smiled at her, and the new tightness in the expression said enough that the question itself wasn’t worth answering. He must feel the same as she did, she realized. Better to not think of anyone else, not right now, not right now.
She tried to change the tone. “Well, I don’t know why you were,” she said. “Of all people, you’d think I can be trusted to throw a great party.” She lifted her glass in a grand gesture towards the ruins of the room, then drank half of it, putting it back down with a thunk.
Hank reached across the table to take her hand. “Of course.”
“Alone in the house all night and all you want to do is hold my hand? For shame, Hank,” she said, and pulled her hand away from his.
“Well, I—”
She stood. Hands on her hips, as much as she could with her dress flowing around her. “If you want something from me, you’ll have to come and get it.” And she took a few skips away from him to illustrate her point.
Hank laughed. He covered his face with his hand, flushing red. “You’re going to make me chase you? I was never any good at tag, or any of the time I had to run in school.”
“Then I’ll win,” she said. “And you’ll be very sad about it.”
He couldn’t seem to stop laughing, and when he stood, he stumbled, having trouble getting his bearings. It only took half a step for him to blindly start reaching out his hand towards her, but she was lithe, and slipped out of the way.
“Oh, come on, Hank! You can do better than that!” She skipped backwards, trying not to tangle her legs in her dress. It was a heroic act of coordination her her part. Surely, she was drunker than Hank, and he was stumbling over his own clumsy feet trying to reach her, while she was traipsing out of the way, even encumbered by the layers of fabric as she was.
It was half a lap around the ball room before Hank seemed to realize that she really wasn’t going to let him catch her unless he was running, so, in the last dash to the door, he picked up the pace. Magdalena shrieked with laughter as his hands grazed the fabric of her sleeve, but he didn’t want to grasp her dress and risk ripping it, so she slid out from under his touch, and made it out of the ballroom into the dark hallway.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the long gilt mirror on the hallway wall, lit dimly from the golden glow that spilled out from the ballroom. She looked like a ghostly bride, there in the dark, and she sped forwards, trying to outrun the image. Hank was behind her by five meters or so. He had found his footing, but then was slowed by banging his shin on a piece of furniture he had forgotten about, and he let out a yelp and a set of heavier footsteps as he tried to recover.
She led him on a mad dash through the whole first floor of the house, through all the rooms so dark that neither of them could see where they were going except for the feeble light that came in from the windows and the lights tucked into the landscaping outside the house. She was laughing, every time she changed direction to stymie him, but he was too out of breath to do anything but follow her.
Hank, whose legs were longer, gained on her sporadically, but he was always reacting rather than setting the pace, and so it was easy for her to make him fall a few steps behind by taking an unexpected turn into a room and weaving a circuitous path through the furniture, or by letting doors shut in his face. She could have run forever, and maybe he could have, too, and she had no intention of slowing down or stopping. She wouldn’t stop until he caught her. That was just what she decided would have to happen, now that she had started running. Who would she be if she gave up and let him catch her?
“Come on, Hank!” she taunted over her shoulder as she slipped into the library. The room was almost pitch black, but she remembered the location of the armchair, the one she had once pinned Hank to so that she could kiss him. The memory was so funny, she circled the chair and rested her fingertips on the upholstery as she did. Hank, too, knew where the furniture was in this room, and he tried to corner her as she ended up behind the chair, spreading his arms so that she couldn’t pass back out into the hall. But she duked under his arm, and slipped behind him. Hank turned, and took one fumbling step.
His dizzy foot landed directly on the train of her dress, and this stopped them both in their tracks for a single instant as the fabric made a terrible ripping sound, before momentum carried them both down to the ground, hard, Magdalena falling first and Hank ending up on top of her a moment later.
The carpet of the library was soft, and her elbows didn’t take too much of a beating as she landed on her outstretched forearms. Hank was heavy and warm on top of her, though his head only made it up to the small of her back. In the moment of stupefaction after hitting the ground, she could just hear his rapid breathing, and then he started to flail, trying to disentangle himself from the fabric he too was now trapped in.
“Are you alright?” he asked, trying to get off her. “I’m so sorry—”
Magdalena, heedless of her dress now, rolled over, further entangling her legs, but was happy to find Hank on his hands and knees above her. She reached a lazy hand up and grabbed a fistfull of his hair.
“You caught me,” she said.
“Oh, right,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d let me.”
“Don’t say another word, Hank.” She pulled his hair to drag him down, and he seemed to collapse, his whole weight ending up on her intentionally. She kissed him, nipping at his lips before she let him really begin, but she did let him begin.
Unlike the last time she had kissed him in the library, there was no trace of unfamiliarity in his movements. He had told her, once, that her kiss had been his first, and she was pleased enough to have that, even if there was some part of her that was jealous of everything else. And she was pleased enough to have him here now— that was something for her alone.
She cupped his cheeks, and pulled on his earlobes with pinching fingers, which made him stop kissing her in confusion, which made her laugh.
“Oh, come on, Hank!” she said. “I can’t move enough to bite you, so I’m settling.” And she tugged on his ear again.
“You’re not the settling type.”
“No?” she asked. “I married you.”
“I didn’t realize a count and a flag officer was settling,” he mumbled, though he was joking— she knew as well as he did that he had never wanted to be a count or a flag officer, and both titles meant less than nothing to him. He moved to press his lips to her forehead, to litter kisses along her closed eyes.
“It is,” she insisted. She wormed her arm beneath his so that she could get her ice cold hand beneath his uniform shirt, which made him twitch and shiver. “I was sure that a dashing rogue would steal me away. A real scoundrel.”
“I am a scoundrel,” Hank insisted. “I thought you knew that.”
“But you’re respectable in society,” she said. “It cancels out.”
He buried his head in the crook of her neck and kissed her there through his muffled huff of laughter.
“I’m glad you settled for me, then,” he said.
Her fingers trailed over his stomach, the little of him that she could reach in their uncomfortable position on the floor, until she wiggled to sit up. He rolled off of her, laying on his back, just looking up at her while she stood. While it would have been very funny to step on him (she had the childish impulse), she just said, “Are you trying to peek underneath my dress down there, Hank?”
He laughed and threw his arm over his face, hiding his eyes in his elbow. Magdalena leaned down, grabbed his hand, and hauled him up to stand. He went up willingly, though he swayed on his feet, and leaned far too much of his weight onto her, almost dragging her back down to the ground. She was not going to spend her wedding night on the floor of the library, so, even drunk, they would both have to make it to bed. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him backwards, back out of the library, down the hall, towards the central staircase.
He went willingly, not even looking behind himself, trusting her not to bump him into anything. She took the opportunity to start pulling his shirt off as she directed him through the house, which she tossed away onto the floor to be dealt with later. On the stairs they stopped halfway up so she could undo his belt, and he had lost his pants by the time they were at the top step. Outside the bedroom, she stepped on his toes to get him to remove his shoes, which he took a lot of effort to do without untying them— he couldn’t bend down or move at all, since she had embraced him to stick her hands down the back of his briefs.
She was surprised at how unselfconscious he was. For some reason, she had expected him to be nervous or shy. She didn’t know why she had that feeling, but she supposed that she was pleased to find it had been incorrect. He didn’t mind her touches, and snuck in a few of his own, stroking her neck or her side, or brushing her hair from her face when she gave him the brief opportunity.
When they finally made it into the bedroom, he was completely naked before her— he had interpreted her roving hands as a signal to shimmy out of his underwear, and had done so, though she hadn’t exactly intended it. She found it very funny that she was fully dressed and he didn’t have a stitch of clothing left on him, and she had a momentary temptation to keep it that way, to have him fuck her in the ruins of her wedding dress. But as she ran her hands with feather-light touches all down his chest, trailing her fingers through the sparse hair that grew below his navel, he was touching her shoulders, and she suddenly wanted all of the fabric out of the way, as quickly as possible.
“Hank, if you do not get me out of this dress this instant —”
It was unfortunate that he was so drunk and the garment was so complicated. It took significantly more than an instant for him to figure out the ties that cinched the bodice tightly to her frame, and for every inch of string that loosened and let a little more air into her chest, she grew more and more impatient and hungry. All her tiredness had fallen away, and she was frustrated by Hank being behind her now— nothing for her to touch, nothing for her to look at. She made some kind of stupidly, wretchedly needy sound, and he hurried, to get the dress in a state that it could be removed.
When he judged it loose enough, he surprised her by hiking up the skirt and slipping both his hands beneath, sliding them up her sides as he tugged and lifted the dress over her head. It was incredible that he could coordinate such a slick move with how drunk he was, but Magdalena quickly stopped thinking about how smooth he was being, and just reveled in the feeling of his warm and broad hands on her skin, so different from the inhuman sensation of her dress’ fabric that it was like being touched for the first time.
It was cold in the bedroom— the kind of chill that came with the intermittent use of the furnace in spring, not quite warm enough to leave it off, not quite cold enough to run it all the time. She shivered as the dress fell to the floor, and she leaned back against Hank’s warm chest, reaching behind herself to pull him closer. He cupped her breasts in his hands, which felt so good that Magdalena had to stop him so that she could turn around and kiss him again.
“Hank,” she said again, and pulled him back to fall onto the bed, situating herself on the warm red duvet. He followed her, and for a minute she luxuriated in kissing him, letting her hands wander as they may, breathing heavily whenever she broke away, tangling their legs together and pressing as closely into his skin as she could. His movements were gentle but steady, and when she eventually whined into his mouth to get him to move further, he obeyed without hesitation.
She rolled onto her back, and though she expected him to fuck her immediately— it wasn’t like she wasn’t ready for it! — he kissed his way down her body and marked her thighs until she took a handful of his hair and pulled so that he would hurry up and get where he was going. He laughed at her. Presumably, he pulled his hair so much on his own time that her mild frustrations had no effect on him. But then she felt his warm and heavy breathing move between her legs, and his head settled there.
What he lacked in technique, he made up for in enthusiasm. She knew what thoughts were probably going through his head— they were certainly thinking the same thing— it was difficult to know what to do when faced with unfamiliar territory. It had always felt very natural and instinctual for her to touch Ingrid, or any other woman, but it was the memory of herself between Ingrid’s legs that flashed through her mind now— so long ago. And Hank— if she had a dick— but she didn’t, and they would have to make do. And it didn’t really matter if he was clumsy— it felt so good even if it left her wanting more.
Her thoughts were incoherent and jumbled, and she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to grid herself into Hank’s face. Use teeth , she thought, but she had lost the ability to form words to make the request aloud. Hank circled her entrance with a finger, asking permission with his slowness, and when she made a noise that couldn’t have possibly meant anything, he slipped it in. Her fist in his hair tightened.
The thing about lying there on her back, it wasn’t really the vulnerability of it, she didn’t mind that at all, but she found herself frustrated at the chill and empty feeling of her upper body. She felt like her torso was too loose, and would float up to the sky if there was nothing to hold it down. She needed something heavier than air, or she would lose her mind.
“Hank—” she finally managed. “I need you on top of me.”
It took a moment for her words to register for him, and he pulled back and sat up. “Are you sure?” he asked. His tone made it clear that this was a practical ask, not one that was concerned about her feelings. That made it better. “I wouldn’t want to get you pregnant— I mean—”
His hand still rested in the slickness between her legs distractingly, his index finger idly swiping up and down. She realized that he would be perfectly happy not fucking her in the usual style— it occurred to her now that probably with Oscar he would rarely go that far, just out of convenience. He was undemanding, and accustomed to other things. It was endearing, in its way.
“It’s taken care of,” she said, and closed her eyes. “You should know that being noble and having money does have its perks. You can get what you need.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “I didn’t think—”
It was a mood killer of a discussion, and so she sat up and kissed him again, tasting herself on the corners of his mouth. When she reached for his dick, it was his turn to make a needy little noise, which she appreciated more than she thought she would. She was sure that she was fumbling it just as clumsily as he had touched her, but he clearly didn’t mind.
She leaned back after a minute, tugging him down with her. He knelt between her knees, and she wrapped her legs around him. “Come on, Hank,” she said, playfully, now.
It didn’t take too much encouragement. He positioned himself and entered her, so slowly that she had to resist the urge to try to drag him forward— she let him take his time. And she was glad she did, because watching his face and his expression change from one of concentration to a look of total overwhelm was very rewarding. She tightened her legs around him, and he sank to his elbows on the bed, their chests together.
It felt wonderful to have his weight atop her. He wasn’t particularly rhythmic, and this wasn’t a position that suited too much speed anyway, but that was okay. They didn’t say much— she mumbled his name incoherently a few times, and he let out something that might have been a laugh, and kissed her forehead, nuzzling her sweaty hair away from her face. He told her when he was close, and she guided his hand down to stroke her clit— the positioning was awkward, but just a little of his touch was enough to get her off at this point, and she came, tensing around him and clutching his back, holding him even tighter, trying to meld their skins together.
It stopped him from pulling out immediately, which he made motion to do. She kept him pinned with her legs. “Don’t you dare,” she said.
“Alright,” he said gamely, and smiled at her. How he could be so coherent, she didn’t know.
His flow had been thrown off, so it took a minute or so more for him to come. She knew when it happened by the way he went stiff and jerky, and then still, letting himself drop down onto her with his whole weight. She kissed his neck and ran her hand through his hair, gently this time.
“That was really good,” she said. “Thank you, Hank.”
He nodded, but was quiet, perhaps still just recovering. She knew she should get up and go clean herself up in the bathroom, but she liked having him in her arms. By the time that he rolled off of her, she had given up any intention of getting out of bed, and she just clumsily tried to move the sheets so that they could be under them, rather than atop them. Hank helped after a moment of realizing what she was doing, or at least didn’t lay there flat blocking any attempts for her to unpin the fabric beneath him.
They settled down quietly in the dark bedroom, with his back against her chest, her arms wrapped around him. It was quiet and peaceful. Even after some time, she could tell by his somewhat irregular breathing that he wasn’t asleep yet. She stroked his side.
“You know that’s not my name, right?” he said after a while. “Hank.”
“I know,” she said. “I guessed that as soon as I met you. I’m sure pretty much everyone knows that.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Well.” She pressed her forehead to the back of his neck, the bridge of her nose along his spine. “Even if they don’t— it is your name now.”
“Oh.” There was so much contained in that syllable, and none of it was something that she could fully grasp. He was silent for a while. “You’re not going to ask what my real name is?”
She kissed his shoulder. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could feel the tension in his frame, the way he held his arms, the way the muscles in his back were stiff with it. She wanted his looseness back, for him to not worry about her.
“Did you tell it to Oskar before or after you fucked him?” she asked, which made him laugh a little. That was her goal.
“Before, I’m afraid.”
“He can keep your secret, Hank,” she said. “I’m not jealous of it.”
He let out a shuddering breath, and she realized that maybe he was crying. In the dark, she tried to reach for his face, but he took her hand and squeezed it.