Work Text:
It started innocently enough, soft whispers and shared -- but dignified -- chuckles over inside jokes. Annoying, but an ordinary and unfortunately not unexpected dynamic between the two men.
They'd been tangling their fingers together and spent quite some time that way, as though sharing in mutual rapture. They were leaning into one another over their shared armrest and their heads were touching together at the crown, as though the contact might create a convenient bridge for shared thoughts. Occasionally, a sweet hand kiss, or a whispered comment -- tame and almost pure, easy enough to ignore. Tonight, the opera was host to a classic Snezhnayan tale of love, betrayal, duty, and loss. It was a famous story known across the entire continent, and the people of this country took great pride in it -- and so, when the date of its premiere under a new interpretation -- by a renowned company no less -- had been announced, she felt compelled to attend and see all the fuss for herself.
Nestled beside her right, her feet curled up on her chair like a kittenish little dove, Columbina was holding binoculars to her eyes and peering through them with thoughtful consideration. Her sweet and familiar presence was a comfort, considering the company on her left.
But that company was growing more difficult to ignore. She was faintly becoming aware of a series of little purrs and terse, lowly-spoken words whose content she couldn't quite resolve. A particularly disturbing little growl caused Sandrone to flit a gaze sidelong. She saw the regrator biting at the tips of the doctor's gloved fingers, demurely working the fabric up and off those lean fingers, watched as he, with great purpose, licked the back of that newly exposed hand and trail his tongue all the way up to the tip of his middle finger. She hurriedly looked away and fixed her eyes back down at the stage.
"Can you believe this," she whispered under her breath to Columbina, snapping her gaze rightward. To her surprise, her chair was empty. Where did she go? When did she leave? -- she was just there!
The wet, sticky squelch of short and breathy kisses now mingled in the air of the booth, the regrator moving from the hand when the doctor closed their spaces and offered his mouth instead. Sandrone craned around her head with her eyes narrowed in brewing confusion, searching for her companion. In her periphery the two men were melding their lips together, their hands still clasped, tongues rolling between their mouths in some ugly bastardization of a kiss.
She shifted and cleared her throat just loud enough for it to carry over their muffled, approving sounds.
The segment cocked a hand underneath the banker's chin, his fingers squeezing down on the pale expanse of Feofan's cheeks, pinching them together in a moment of separation and mutual regard. The doctor was squeezing him in a grip that looked like it may have even hurt, but if it did, the banker seemed to enjoy it because he was pressing his mouth into his hand and seemed to be fighting to lick it.
There was a terse little reprimanding sound that came from the mint-haired party. He was pinching Pantalone's tongue now, catching the slick muscle between his index and thumb, looking so pleased with himself.
"--hey--" she grunted in a disapproving, hushed tone, prickliness giving way to a full bristling fuzziness. Perhaps they thought she left with Columbina? Surely if she made her presence known, they would stop.
But the doctor was sucking on his tongue now, eliciting sweet and happy little huffs from the black-clad man. There was a sharp noise and an inhale, Pantalone murmuring, "naughty, naughty" between connections.
"Ugh!" Sandrone picked up her spectacles, held them to her face with a rough and irritable sigh, grit her teeth as she made a very concerted effort to take in the sight of the illuminated, dancing figure below. Frankly, she felt a great deal of dismay at her much-anticipated experience now suffering an indelible mark that would carry through into all subsequent memories.
A wet slap interrupted her thoughts. Pantalone's head was cocked at an unusual angle, and it looked like the segment had him by his hair. The visual of the doctor's free hand landing a second measured slap on that pale cheek would probably haunt her in her dreams for weeks to come.
Is this actually happening? -- it wasn't often that she was paralyzed by indecision, but every time she tried to throw her attention down on the performance and desperately will her companion to come back and save her from being alone, she found herself so completely distracted -- so incensed by the ordeal -- that she kept flashing haughty glances their way, as though she might make some eye contact that would stop them in their tracks.
She watched the doctor's pale fingers snake their way to the banker's lips -- an index finger at first, pressing on the pinkened tissue to reveal the gleaming white teeth of the regrator. She watched the gnarled middle finger work its way inside and against the tongue that cocked to meet him, a moist clicking and a hardly audible "mm, mm--" permeating the booth. Feofan was practically fellating him, one gloved hand now clutching the segment's wrist indulgently, the ministrations damp and vulgar.
"Excuse me--" she spoke curtly, lofting her voice above the register of a whisper.
Fellating -- fucking? -- her annoyance, her growing horror of having been dragged into the vortex of what should have been a private moment, gave way to a sudden and explosive, peevish anger that caused her to seethe quietly in her seat. There wasn't even a hint of acknowledgement, but there was absolutely no way they didn't know they weren't alone. And she was furious that she had been abandoned to sit through this spectacle alone.
Now two fingers were going. Pantalone was closing his eyes and almost crooning with indulgence, wet, sharp 'thwaps' coming from their direction. The banker's head was bobbing against the movements of those fingers -- were there three of them, now? -- until Dottore released his wet hand and grasped Pantalone by the mandible. The man's head snapped backward. The mint-haired man loomed forwards in his chair and planted his mouth firmly on apple of the banker's throat, more clammy, breathy sounds destroying the sanctity of the public space.
She got the obscene impression that if they could have somehow simultaneously crawled up into each other's orifices, they would have. The visual made her nauseated. Although she wasn't making a conscious effort to look their way -- quite the opposite, really -- the heinous sounds coming from their direction kept hampering her efforts.
She looked away again, fidgeted with her binoculars, allowed a mental curse that Columbina still hadn't come back. Where was she?
Beside her, the squeak of a chair's internal spring being depressed under shifting weight. The sick sound of spit dribbling over lips and squelching between hot, throbbing skin. A whispered, "yes, like that."
The Sumeran's pale, greenish hair was parted with the black of the other man's glove, his head nuzzling deep, a '--fwp-' of suction disconnecting while the banker bristled lecherously. There was a brief flurry of movement as Dottore lurched against him almost chest to chest, fastening his mouth to the regrator's neck, holding him back against his chair like a predator delivering a kill bite. The back of his head bobbed violently with kisses, sucks, and bites, while Pantalone rolled underneath him greedily, stifled sounds against those fingers back in his mouth.
A gagging noise that sounded suspiciously like a raspy cough, followed by a lusty laugh and an admonishing -- "so insatiable." Then another wet slap, Dottore's bare hand on Feofan's pinkening cheek. The lustful, growling hitch of growing arousal. Pantalone veered forward as though trying to bite his lips, but that wet hand caught him by the throat and slammed him back against the chair. More hissing, more squeaking from the chair. More sticky, animalistic kissing, quiet grunts of increasing intensity.
Sandrone scarcely made a conscious effort to jump to her feet. She had rounded to the narrow aisle between their groups by the time she registered that she'd abandoned her seat. She was so very uncomfortable. There was no end to it, not an end she wanted to be around to witness, anyway. No end, no Columbina, just her alone, stranded in some sick private hell. She would never forgive Bina for abandoning her like this. Yes, everyone knew they did this in the booth -- it was a topic that had come up in conversation once or twice -- but nobody had ever managed to describe just how awful it was.
"Since I own the symphony," she remembered that smug chirp from the regrator one evening months ago as he addressed the gathering of Harbingers. "I'm willing to rent a private booth for the use of all Harbingers, at a reasonable fee."
Pantalone had to be the most punchable person she'd ever met.
As her heels noisily clicked on the floor she heard a faint, "you gluttonous whore--" that almost caused her to trip over her own feet. She was scrambling now.
And then, "--I do hope you're leaving to finish your proposal, Sandrone. I won't tolerate another ill-conceived, substandard draft."
Clear and cocksure as ever, as if she hadn't just witnessed him getting his face fucked by his companion's fingers, hadn't witnessed him being strangled or slapped, hadn't become far too privy of the fact that he seemed to crave every second of it. "Tch-" she sucked her lips between her teeth. She would have been biting back choice words if she wasn't completely speechless.
Outside of the booth's entrance, she came face to face with a slight and pale form, almost collided with her as she rounded a corner. The form had a flower clasped tenderly in her fingers, as if it was an orphan she might bring home and care for. A flower? "Where were you?" the Marionette almost shouted, her cheeks red and blotchy.
"...ahh... well, I saw this little white trillium, all alone in a bouquet of--"
"BINA," she raised her voice, exasperated by the entire situation. "You left me!" -- there was an unspoken 'with them in there.
Columbina fell silent, an innocent confusion swimming in her visage, causing the smile on her lips to falter. She was deliberating, trying to understand the sudden and unexplained anger in her friend. She finally tilted her head, finally offered out the flower to Sandrone as a present, as though this may help her to feel a bit better.
"It's for you, then."
The Marionette took the flower in her hands, finding that they were trembling with rage. She inhaled, then sighed, slow and measured, her first concerted effort to release a valve damming up a considerable hoard of sentiments. "What happened?" Columbina was murmuring, but Sandrone just shook her head, almost convulsively, and steeled herself to mentally will away the sights -- the sounds -- of what she'd just witnessed.
"Never mind, Bina. I never want to talk about this again. Let's go."