Rules of Etiquette

I hate my bed.

Alright, that’s probably being unfair to my bed. Really, it’s a perfectly fine bed if one were to consider it objectively. It’s a king-size, pencil-poster bed whose posts I generally find myself hanging far too many of my worn clothes on after long days, short days, or simply days where I can’t be bothered.

My laundry would be a state of emergency by itself were it not for Good Form, I think.

Honestly, my bed has been perfectly adequate for the three years I’ve owned it and yet, looking at it now, I absolutely hate the thing solely because it doesn’t have Adagio in it.

“Octavia you’re being completely childish,” I muttered angrily to myself. “You are perfectly capable of sleeping alone for a single night.”

Not even a month together and I’m already begrudging every evening that our schedules fail to align enough for us to go to bed together. I suppose this is part and parcel of being with a woman whose livelihood is a late-night establishment, but I claim it as my prerogative to be huffy about it anyway.

“Mister Form?” I turned, smoothing my nightgown as I did, and a moment later my butler was at my bedroom door.

“Yes, Miss Melody?”

“Bring me a whiskey and my cello please, I’m feeling restless.” I wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon so I may as well practice. “Oh, and my music stand and folder number one.”

“As you say,” Form bobbed his head slightly and strode away.

There were times where I felt as though I really didn’t appreciate Form enough, but the last time I’d offered him time off and a paid vacation he’d taken it personally. It was, I think, his greater pleasure to see me taken care of, and the idea of taking a vacation from that duty would have only caused him undo stress and worry.

For certain he doesn’t trust anyone else to drive me except, for some reason, Adagio, and I’m still unclear as to how she got on his good side so quickly. I eventually chalked it up as one of those things about Adagio that normal people simply can’t achieve.

I adjusted the large reading chair I had in my room and sat down just as Good Form returned with my cello case in one hand, a silver platter with a glass of whiskey in the other, and the folder and collapsed music stand under his arm.

The whiskey went onto the nightstand to my right as I took the cello and began setting up. Form settled the stand in front of me and placed the folder on, then silently bowed himself out of the room.

“Now what to play…” I mused aloud as I opened the folder.

It was thick and old with several dozen compositions tucked neatly into it. Folder One had my favorites in it, ones I knew by heart if I were being honest but playing without the sheet in front of me felt wrong somehow.

Perhaps I’m just a creature of habit.

I had barely opened the folder when I stopped, staring down at the very first composition within. It had been some time since I’d played that one, but all of sudden it felt quite nostalgic.

‘Unnamed’, composed by Serenata Dazzle.

The very piece I had learned under Adagio’s tutelage fifteen years ago, when I had known her by her pseudonym.

As promised I’d never performed it for any but my parents and some of the house staff. Despite my desire to do so, I had never performed it at any of my recitals over the years, and kept it solely to myself.

“Yes… this one, I think,” I said, feeling more pleased about the evening already.

I set the rest of the folder aside on the nightstand and laid out the sheets of music, settling each page in place with care. Then I took a sip of my whiskey, aligned my bow, and began to play.

It had been nearly a year since I’d played the piece, but my fingers found their marks as if it had been only yesterday. The tune, as always, had an odd almost haunting quality to it… a feeling of something like melancholy and longing.

It made me miss Adagio all the more.

Maybe it was because she had been absent for so many years of my life, and because I’d spent so much of that keeping an ear to the ground for her, but when she was away it felt far worse than I thought it ought to.

I reached the end of the composition, frowned, and found the beginning again, repeating it as my reclaimed my lost train of thought.

How many years had I spent pining for this woman? Perhaps a better question was: was I pining for the woman I thought she was? Or for the woman she is?

That was an unpleasant station for my train of thought to have a layover at. And yet, now that I was here, I couldn’t just ignore the notion.

Was I in love with Serenata? Or Adagio? Was Adagio a stand-in for Serenata? Never mind that the woman never existed in the first place and that Adagio was, factually speaking, my old teacher.

The end of the composition crept up again and I started over once more.

I was in love with Adagio, I was certain. I truly adored her… she was as forceful as she was gentle, and open as she was enigmatic… and she loved me with all her heart.

But at the same time a part of me was afraid I was conflating the Serenata I borderline worshipped and the Adagio who exists in the real world. It wouldn’t do to idolize the person you were in a relationship with, that was an unhealthy habit to be in.

And Adagio deserved to be appreciated for who she truly was, not for who I imagined her to be.

Adagio was… powerful, graceful, and brilliant. She was not, however, flawless… the events of the Battle of the Bands proved that. But no one is, really, and if I kept that image of Serenata in my mind, that perfected ideal, then one day…

One day Adagio would disappoint me, and it would be no one’s fault but my own.

I sighed as I reached the end of the composition yet again and this time I lowered the bow. For some reason my entire body ached and I couldn’t account for why that was. I’d felt fine a few moments ago but now I felt… stiff.

“Done already?”

I let out a squeak of surprise as I realized Adagio was sitting at the end of my bed, her ankles crossed demurely and a soft smile on her face. She was watching me, and presumably had been for a little while.

How had I not noticed her?

“Darling? I… I thought you worked tonight,” I stammered as I clumsily packed my cello away. My fingers were damnably numb. “Not that I’m complaining, obviously.”

Adagio raised an eyebrow.

“What time do you think it is?” She asked playfully.

“What?” I cocked my head and then thought about it. “I… started playing less than an hour ago, I think, so perhaps… close to midnight?”

“According to your butler you’ve been playing the same piece on repeat for close to four hours,” Adagio said wryly. “It’s three in the morning, the Note closed about an hour ago.”

Oh.

“Well,” I coughed and cleared my throat as my cheeks reddened. “I suppose that would explain why I feel so awful all of a sudden.”

“I rather suppose it would,” Adagio agreed, but her smile became a little worried.

She shifted invitingly on the bed, patting the spot next to her, and I got up, stiffly, walking over to sit down beside her.

“Lost in thought, my love?” Adagio queried as she moved behind me and her hands began gently kneading at my shoulders.

I sighed blissfully as her talented hands rolled the tension out of the muscles wherever she touched.

“Did you used to work in a spa, my dear? Because you're far too good at this,” I groaned as I felt all the tightness leaving me.

“We owned an onsen in Neighpon, in the Owari province, once upon a time,” Adagio replied quietly. “My sisters and I, I mean.”

“I thought you didn’t stay in one place for too long,” I replied as my eyes fluttered closed.

Adagio hummed thoughtfully as her hands moved down to my lower back, and I melted a little as she worked away the tension there as easily as she had above.

“Well, this was the better part of, oh, five hundred years ago,” She continued, her voice still low. “We hadn’t really established all the rules we began living by later on, we were a lot more ‘devil-may-care’ back then.”

“What happened?”

At some point I’d turned into a vaguely Octavia-shaped pile of slurry, and my head was now resting in Adagio’s lap.

“It was burned down by a brute named Nobuneighga,” Adagio replied, and her voice carried a faint tightness to it. “My sisters and I lost many friends that day.”

“I’m so- wait…” I narrowed my eyes for a moment, then glanced up at her. “Oda? Nobuneighga Oda?”

“Something like that, yes,” Adagio replied dismissively. “He ended up some kind of a warlord, at least until we got our revenge,” Adagio chuckled wickedly. “I seem to recall Aria convincing one of his retainers that Oda was going to betray him, give away the man’s fiefdom to his boytoy or some such, it was all very dramatic at the time.”

“You… that…” I stammered, lost for words. “A-are you aware of the larger… historical implications of your actions?”

“Not really,” Adagio replied with a vague shrug. “We were wanderers, we try not to affect things too much, but that one was personal.”

“Oda Nobuneighga was pivotal in the restructuring of Neighpon,” I replied uneasily. “His death, and the resulting power vacuum, left the country in turmoil for… over two centuries, I think.”

“Really?” Adagio looked genuinely surprised at that, then tapped her lips thoughtfully. “I suppose he was doing a fair job at conquering everything prior to our little intervention.”

“If I recall my world history correctly,” I said dryly, “he had very nearly unified Neighpon when his subordinate mysteriously turned on him.”

Adagio shrugged.

“If he wanted to rule the country he should have left us alone,” Adagio said with a short wave of her hand. “We put a lot of work into that hot spring, and we ran it for nearly a century. Aria was furious, and Sonata was inconsolable when he destroyed it.”

“And you?” I asked quietly, turning over to lay on my back and look up at her. “How did you feel?”

“I was utterly livid, but not over the onsen,” Adagio replied in a toneless voice. “I had a lover… she was beautiful, gentle, and the soul of kindness… and she was killed mercilessly.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied quietly.

I realize it’s unfair and unhealthy to be jealous of a woman many hundreds of years dead, especially given her fate, and yet I still was.

A little.

“That’s quite a length to go to, to avenge the woman you loved,” I said with a small laugh as I reached up and playfully stroked her cheek. “That bodes well for me, at least.”

Adagio raised an eyebrow.

“Loved? My dear Melody you mistake me,” she said in a low voice. “I… cared for her, after a fashion, but more in the way one cares for a favorite pet.”

“You… what?” I stared up at her, my mouth hanging slightly open in surprise.

“Is it so hard to believe?” Adagio asked, glancing down at me. “She would live a fraction of my own lifespan, and she was beautiful, but not especially formidable.” She began idly running her hands through my hair as she spoke. “I didn’t have Nobuneighga killed out of rage at a lost loved one, I did it in a fit of pique.”

A terrible thought settled into my mind before dropping down to my chest to curl around my heart like a stone serpent. Was this all I was to her too? A beloved pet? Was I nothing more than-

“Unlike you, she didn’t have my love,” Adagio continued, unaware of my brief existential crisis. “I would do orders of magnitude worse than simply destabilize a country if I ever lost you, my darling Melody.”

I stared up at her, lost for words as she idly stroked my hair. I felt like that moment ought to have been marked somehow, as something important. Adagio had just declared that she would rattle the foundations of the world for my sake with all the gravitas of a woman trying to decide if today was a blue-lipstick kind of day or not.

“Why?” The question came out in a quiet breath, and Adagio looked at me as though I were being silly.

“Because I love you, Octavia,” Adagio replied, a faint expression of concern on her face that she somehow managed to make look like a pout.

I reached up and slid my arms around her shoulders, pulling myself up until I was almost in her lap, and stared into those wonderful raspberry eyes of hers.

“That’s not what I mean.”

I kissed her, hard and fast, and as tired as I was the love I felt there was so intense it energized me.

“Why would you go so far for me?” I asked as I pulled away, slowly, still savoring the taste of her lips on mine. “Why am I worth so much to you? Why was I so important to you, all those years ago?”

“Why shouldn’t you have been?” Adagio countered, her gaze sharpening at my words. “Was supposed to look into your eyes back then, see that total and completely guileless trust and admiration there, the brilliance and the devotion and raw desire to create music, and not love you?” She pulled me into another kiss, just as passionately before pulling back and continuing. “Was I not supposed to mourn that I had lost that when I left you? Or be ashamed that the last thing I had told you before leaving had been a lie so I wouldn’t have to see you cry as I left?”

“The bow tie…” I murmured, looking over at my end table where it sat, clean and waiting. “I had quite forgotten… you told me it was magical.”

Adagio nodded.

“Had you cried out for me, back then,” Adagio said, her voice tight, “I’m not sure I’d have had the heart to leave at all… even knowing what it would bring down.”

“I understand why you did it,” I said softly, leaning into her.

Adagio wrapped her arms around me, and I heard her let out a quiet sob as she held onto me.

“When I finally recognized you in the Note,” she continued, still holding onto me with desperate strength, “I was so happy… happier than I had been in years!”

“And I was rather indelicate, if I recall,” I said weakly.

“That fire and passion was what I loved about you, though,” Adagio spoke gently, her fingers trailing along my sides and raising goosebumps under my nightgown. “I saw the tinder when you were a child and witnessed the full flame when you found me as a woman grown… and as tragically despondent as it had left me after you were gone… I was grateful.”

“Grateful that I’d shouted you down in front of your entire staff?” I asked with a wry smile.

“Grateful that I got to see that flame with my own eyes,” Adagio replied evenly. “Grateful that, even if you hated me from that moment on, I got to see you one last time.”

She kissed me again, and I fell in love, again. Her lips were so soft, and her hands were too, and she held me so gently.

“I was afraid, you know,” Adagio said quietly as she cradled me. “When you confronted me in my room at the Note what I feared most was falling in love with who you were now, today, and having you throw it back in my face.”

“Never,” I whispered harshly. “I would never.”

“And yet I was afraid,” Adagio hissed. “You’re so strong, and so good… and I am a monster among monsters.” She looked up at me with eyes wet with tears. “Nodens oath, when you asked if I still loved you, carved straight into the heart of that fear, I almost lied and said no… just to spare myself the heartache.”

I think that was the moment that Serenata, the one I remember, vanished from my mind. That brief moment where Adagio held onto me like flotsam in a hurricane. She wept, openly, pressing her face to me shoulder and soaking my nightgown with tears. I stroked her mane of sunrise golden hair, savoring its softness and whispering calming words into her ear.

How could I love Serenata in the face of this beautiful creature? A woman who was little more than a graven image in my own mind? She was elegant, graceful, perfect and… cold. ‘Serenata’ was still and unmoving, just a memory, while Adagio was alive and soft in my arms, and her tears were hot on my skin.

Slowly, I laid Adagio down on my bed, wiping away her tears before letting my hands slip down along her marvelous body to slide her form-hugging dress from her curves. I kissed the bare skin left behind and I felt Adagio gasp, with my lips pressed to her navel, as much as I heard it.

More often than not it was Adagio who insisted on… ah… doting on me in the bedroom, as it were.

That was not going to happen tonight.

This morning.

Whatever.

Adagio gasped as I pulled off her dress and threw it off the side of the bed, and I made quicker work of her lacy underthings, but not so quick that I didn’t notice how they were grey lace over black silk.

My colors.

I didn’t rip them, but I came damn close. I was tempted, I’ll admit, because I wanted Adagio naked and I wanted her naked now.

I shrugged off my nightgown, throwing it over to join Adagio’s dress in the floor, and before she could say a word I was between Adagio’s thighs, her knees draped crudely over my shoulders I ran my tongue roughly along her slit.

Once upon a time, I considered myself quite learned in the musical arts. As it turns out I was mistaken, because I’m damnably certain I had never heard music before until the moment I heard Adagio cry out my name like she did.

It sent a shiver like lightning down my spine. That sound lit a blazing inferno in my gut and between my legs as I pushed my tongue deeper, and I groaned softly as I felt her fingers find a firm grip on my hair.

Adagio bucked wildly against my mouth, and I tasted her as she came, and I swear I nearly climaxed, myself.

Now, obviously, Adagio and I have spent many nights together, during which we’ve made love, had sex, lain together, and all those fancy phrases, etcetera, etcetera…

I’m not sure if I’m adequately able to convey that tonight was not one of those nights.

Tonight I had stripped my girlfriend naked, pinned her to the bed, and was furiously intent on roundly fucking her brains out.

She writhed beneath me, the firm muscles of her legs all but convulsing as I lashed my tongue up and down, teasing and licking her, tasting her, then fixing my lips around her sensitive button and focusing all of my attention there.

Her cries of ecstasy rang in my ears, but they only drove me forward harder. Adagio’s fingers had a deathgrip on my hair, and I'm at least passingly certain that I didn’t get all of it back. Her legs were locked around my head and I’m absolutely certain that only her phenomenal willpower kept my head in one piece.

Then the final climax came, Adagio let out a high, keening cry as her back arched and her soaked cunt pressed hard against my mouth. She drenched me from chin to neck, leaving me gasping as she sagged out of my grip, spent and panting on the sheets of my bed.

But I wasn’t done.

I did not rip her underwear. I didn’t because, as much as I wanted to I abhor damaging other people’s belongings.

It’s simply not polite.

With that said: my own underwear could rot in Tartarus for getting in my way.

I gripped them by the elastic band and tore them off with a single, harsh yank, then threw them to the side in the general direction of my trash bin.

The sound of ripping fabric brought Adagio’s dazed eyes up in vague surprise as I crawled over and mounted her, pressing my dripping cunt to her own sensitive and soaked nethers. She let out a squeak of surprise that turned into a low, drawn out moan as I lifted one of her legs up and over my shoulder, turning her roughly onto her side, and began rutting myself against her as she held herself up.

Adagio cried out my name over and over, and it drove me into a frenzy as harsh, ragged gasps of my own fell raw from my panting lips.

“I… I love you!” I gasped, grinding myself against her, and I reveled in the feeling of her body. “Ah… fuck!”

“O-Octavia!” Adagio cried out my name again, her voice almost delirious. “I… I love… you… oh shit, I-!”

Adagio’s voice burst out from her in an incoherent cry as she came, before promptly collapsing in exhaustion. Her body shook and shivered as I rode her, and a moment later I hit my own peak, climaxing against her cunt so hard stars seemed to burst behind my eyes.

My body started to go slack as my arms fell to my sides, and Adagio’s leg dropped gracelessly from where I’d kept it braced at the knee over my shoulder.

I took a breath.

Then another.

And damn it all, I passed out again.

Sunlight was filtering in through the drawn curtains of my bedroom window just enough that it fell over my eyes and woke me up from what was a blissfully restful sleep. I’ve always considered myself a peaceful sort of person but in that instant I found myself briefly regretting devoting my life to the world of music rather than delving into advanced sciences that would have given me the ability to blow up the sun.

My entire body hurt; from my neck down to my calves, it all ached like every joint had been popped out of place and then rudely slammed back in by a back-alley chiropractic quack with a ball-peen hammer.

All things considered, my sole consolation was that I was currently resting in in most comfortable position on the planet: splayed out and draped bodily over Adagio.

“Good afternoon, darling,” Adagio’s dulcet voice trickled into my ears and dragged me further into damnable wakefulness.

In my defense, very few things can wake me up like Adagio’s lustily smug, after-sex contralto. It’s the purr of a sex kitten who’s gotten exactly what she wanted.

“Hush,” I grumbled, “at least until I’m awake and willing to stay that way.”

Her laughter was like rich, dark coffee, and I couldn’t help a grin from forming on my face. I shivered as one of her fingers trailed delicately up and down my spine, tickling my back infuriatingly and sending yet more shivers to other, much sorer places.

“Adagio Dazzle don’t you dare rile me up right now,” I snarled playfully, my eyes still determinedly shut. “I am far too sore but I will follow through if only in principle.”

“Promise?” Adagio cooed in a teasing voice.

“By every god above and below, including whichever one you keep swearing by,” I hissed, cracking open one bloodshot eye, “if you keep going then I will plow your orange ass under the table, so don’t test me, Dazzle.”

Adagio laughed again and I shivered before cuddling up against her. I felt her pull the covers more snugly around us as she wrapped her arms around me and began gently stroking my hair.

“So… last night was something else,” Adagio began, her tone was more curious than anything. “I hope I don’t have to burst into tears to make that happen again.”

“God, no,” I replied, chuckling as I blushed heavily. “I just… realized something, I suppose.”

“What’s that, my love?”

“That you’re not Serenata,” I said quietly. “And I know that sounds bloody idiotic but I think, somewhere in the back of my mind, I still had that image of you and her overlapped.”

“And this realisation drove you into a frenzy of lust?” Adagio asked, one eyebrow crooked up and a wry smile on her face.

“No!” I replied testily. “I… I just realised that I wanted to be with you… not Serenata, not my vision of you, but you.” I turned in Adagio’s embrace and brought my hand up to lay it softly over her cheek. “Adagio Dazzle, the woman, the Siren, the flawed and beautiful person that I’m desperately in love with.”

This time it was Adagio’s turn to blush, and her smile was radiant as she traced her fingers lightly over my face, brushing my now-wild hair from my eyes as she did.

“A~nd I think, maybe,” I continued, laughing slightly, “that on the heels of that realisation I somewhat… lost myself.”

“Mm, remind me to make you lose yourself a little more often,” Adagio said with a low, husky chuckle. “Because last night was… ooh, shall we say, memorable.”

“What can I say, my dear, you drive me quite mad,” I teased, pulling myself up to lay a warm kiss on her cheek. “Now hold me so I can go back to sleep.”

“You’re aware that it’s almost one in the afternoon, yes?” Adagio asked, her voice dry but good-humored.

I noted, however, that even as she asked she turned slightly onto her side so we were both lying on the bed and her broader shoulders and back were now angled to shade me from the sun as she curled her arms around me.

“Methinks the besotted Siren doth protest too much,” I replied impishly, snuggling closer to her as I did.

“Mm, I’m indulging you only because you’re so tempting,” Adagio’s lips were curled into a smile as she closed her eyes and settled in against me. “What of your schedule?”

“The Orchestra can survive without me at rehearsals for one day,” I stifled a yawn as I replied. “A woman needs her beauty sleep, after all.”

“As if you needed to be more beautiful,” Adagio trailed her fingers down my side as if to emphasize her point. “You’re already intoxicating, my dear Melody.”

I slowly opened my eyes again, peering up at her in what I thought was an appropriately sultry manner. It must have worked because I saw the breath catch her throat and her eyes widen perceptibly.

“Am I now?” I asked, and I barely recognised the husky tone that came out of me. “How about we fit in a little day-drinking then?”

“That was awful,” Adagio said flatly.

“Oh just shut up and kiss me.”