A fairytale usually begins with a princess, awaiting her prince. Not this one. This one begins with an abrupt knock.
The knock interrupts the stony silence of Lesso’s thoughts. She yells, “Go away,” but stiletto heels clack onto Lesso’s dark marble floors anyway.
“Lesso, I need to– What are you doing?”
She takes her sweet time answering. She always does, when Dovey is in the equation. Dovey is clad in a silk gown, unlike the clothing she wears during the school year yet still glowing the way that Good is known to. The silk flows off her body, hinting at curves yet revealing none, and Lesso swallows hard against the inappropriate thoughts she should not have about her resplendent colleague.
“I could ask you the same question, my dearest, most precious Dean for Good. What brings you to the darker side of the bridge?” Her smirk must look like a snarl. She has worked on it before. She hopes it does.
Dovey’s brow crinkles, and she takes another step forward into Lesso’s space. It’s difficult, getting used to that. Dovey has no sense of personal space, and Lesso’s cane lies too far on the other side of the room for her to retrieve it and mark her boundaries. “Are you alright?”
“Never better.” She quips back, drily.
“Do you need me to help you take a look?” Dovey is referring to the bandages covering her back, but Lesso shakes her head. Evil doesn’t get the chance to be healed the way Good does. Evil grits their teeth and sticks it out, because at least pain means that they’re still alive. Pain means that they will heal, they will get better, and they will grow stronger so that next time this same pain will mean nothing.
Lesso’s suddenly exhausted. She’s half-naked, her upper body covered only in bandages and a shirt that she’s opened so she can reach the bandages, and Dovey is looking at her like she cares. It’s discombobulating, to say the least. “What do you want, Dovey?”
Dovey straights almost imperceptibly. “You weren’t at the staff meeting today. I wanted to come and make sure that you knew about the Unity Ball we’re hosting the second week school starts.”
“Unity Ball?” Lesso scoffs. “What are we doing that nonsense for?”
“We’re united, Lesso. Good, Evil, together. This is the perfect opportunity for us to show that we’re a team, a united front dedicated to maintaining the balance.”
Lesso rolls her eyes. “Fucking Readers.” She mumbles, taking a step back and turning away from the scent of jasmine and vanilla that cling to her.
Dovey takes a step forward. Storian above, it’s like the woman can read no social cues at all. “You need to attend the ball, Lesso.”
“So you’re here to coerce me into attending a torture fest. How Good of you, little dove.”
Dovey doesn’t blink at the nickname. “No, it’s Good of me to want to show the students that we are united in friendship and set an example. C’mon, Lesso,” and with that the mask that Lesso knows so well is dropped so Clarissa emerges from the ruins of Dovey. “Please. Come to the ball with me.”
Lesso raises an eyebrow. “Are you asking me on a date, Ever?”
Dovey flushes, and Lesso looks on with satisfaction. “Fine, then, it’s decided. You’re coming.”
She turns and swishes out the room, leaving behind the fragrance of sweetness and Dood, and Lesso yells after her, “Fuck off, Dovey.”
She’ll go, they both know she will. For all she sets herself apart from the students and for all she pretends she doesn’t care, Lesso knows Dovey is well aware of the fact that Lesso cares deeply for the school she runs. She’ll be there, if only for the future villains of the world.
Lesso sighs. Dovey’s going to be even more annoying now than usual. “Fuck.”
Perhaps this shouldn’t be called a fairytale. After all, fairytale creatures certainly don’t swear. But what are fairytales if not stories of love? Somehow this story, with its unorthodox beginning and its unorthodox characters, is exactly that– a story of love.
“Lesso, come to dinner.”
Lesso doesn’t jump, because it’s been some time since someone has been able to sneak up on her, but damn if the woman wasn’t getting on Lesso’s last nerve. “I thought Good was supposed to knock, Dovey.”
“I did knock. You didn’t hear me.”
“Sure, little dove. Sure.”
Dovey continues, undeterred. “C’mon, Lesso. Come to dinner. We’re planning the Unity Ball, and I need you to be there.”
“For what?” Lesso hisses as she dabs an alcohol wipe against her open wound, but glares harder when Dovey’s eyes soften. “In case you haven’t noticed, Dovey, I have students. I need to be here, so that they don’t burn down my school and then head over to yours.”
“You’ll only be a call away. Besides, the wolves are paid to maintain order.”
“Are you asking me out on a date, Ever?”
Dovey flushes, again, “You keep asking me that.”
Lesso shrugs, and hopes Dovey doesn’t catch the way she winces at the way her wound pulls at the motion. “You keep avoiding the question.”
“If I say yes, will you just come to dinner?”
“I’ll consider it.”
“Please, Lesso?”
She rolls her eyes, hard, and pretends that it is entirely of her own volition when she stands, magics away the alcohol wipes, and reaches for her jacket. “There’d better be wine.”
“There is. Straight from Camelot.” Dovey is practically skipping, her grin wide enough that it is almost contagious. Almost, but not quite, because Lesso passes by a wolf guard right then and has to turn her smile (if there was even one, which Lesso is not convinced of) into a snarl.
Dovey leads her straight to the Schoolmaster’s office. “Have you reached out to the remaining students’ parents yet?” She asks as she pushes forward, her golden curls shining in the dim candlelight.
“No.” Lesso shakes her own hair, tucking back a curl that bounces back immediately. “Why would I?”
“That’s how my students are dealt with when their parents don’t come at the end of a term.”
“Villains don’t work that way. Villains reproduce, raise the kids until they’re old enough to come here, and then forget about them. Villainy can’t be attached to children.” It’s an old quote, and Lesso parrots it almost without thinking. She’s grown numb to the students who stay behind, the ones who have hope that diminishes and the ones that never expected anything to begin with.
Dovey is silent until Lesso asks, after a moment, “Where are the others?”
Dovey waves a distracted hand, not looking Lesso in the eye. “They finished. I have the plans we made here.”
“Did they finish, now?” Lesso asks, taunting and just a little pleased.
Dovey is firm, but a slight blush high on her cheekbones reveal the true answer. Lesso throws her head back and cackles just as Dovey replies, “Yes.”
“Well, then, I’d better be heading back, then. Wouldn’t want any of the faculty to think that Evil is taking advantage of Good.” She turns on her heels.
“Leonora.”
She freezes. Her cane clatters to the ground.
Slowly, very slowly, she turns around.
“What?” Her voice is soft. Deadly. Quiet, the way poison is.
“Leonora.” Dovey’s face is paler than usual, belying the slight scent of fear that Lesso smells on her, but she plunges forward nonetheless. “Don’t go yet.”
Lesso stalks forward, stepping up so close to Dovey that she feels Dovey’s skirt pressing against her legs. “You’re pushing it, little dove.” She nearly hisses, her eyes trailing down to full lips slightly parted in what looks like fear. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” words whispered from parted lips and flushed cheeks, “But we really do need to go over the Unity Ball.” Dovey bites her lip. “And your name is beautiful. It suits you.”
Lesso leans even closer, and by some miracle Dovey doesn’t cower. Lesso’s so close she can feel Dovey’s breath on her, and she’s suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that Dovey is pressed against the Schoolmaster’s old desk and she is standing between her legs.
“I am not ‘light’,” she snarls, “Nor am I ‘compassionate’.”
Dovey eyes flicker down to her lips as well and back up. She wets her lips, and Lesso’s eyes follow the motion. “I didn’t say that.”
“Good.”
She steps back from the unbearable heat she suddenly feels radiating off of herself. “Then let’s go over the Ball, since you so insisted.”
She turns and stalks back over to the table, picking up her cane and lowering herself elegantly into a chair. Dovey hasn’t moved, her chest moving up and down with gulps of air, and it takes everything in her for Lesso to drag her eyes up to Dovey’s eyes. She raises an eyebrow. “Well, princess?”
Dovey shivers at the nickname, and Lesso wonders if it has anything to do with the fact that Lesso said the name with enough venom to scare the most rebellious of her students. But she doesn’t comment, just watches Dovey make her way back over.
“The Unity Ball?” She prompts, spearing her fork into the food laid out in front of her.
The flush is still high on Dovey’s cheeks, but she begins speaking, slowly at first, and more and more animated until she looks her normal self again. Lesso drinks a healthy amount of wine.
They’ve decided that the Ball will be held in the School of Evil (“A change to showcase how we’re one school now, Lesso.”), and that the theme will simply Union (“I am not hosting a summer ball, Dovey. Nor am I getting my lot to wear bright, flowery clothing because you decided summer is somehow the right theme for a ball hosted in August.”). Lesso drinks enough of the wine that she feels the revolting warmth of the wine spread down to her fingertips, and Dovey has begun to giggle at the most absurd of things.
“You know, we’ve never spent time together like this before.” Dovey says, playing mindlessly with a piece of her hair. “Especially before. We were always supposed to be on opposite sides.”
“Don’t get used to it, princess.” Lesso replies, taking another sip of the wine. It really was good wine, and she makes note of the winery it came from in her mind.
“But I enjoy spending time with you, Lesso.”
And maybe it’s the wine, maybe it’s the feeling of Dovey’s breath on her lips, but Lesso tilts her head back and looks up at the ceiling before drawing out a long groan. She's going to regret what she says next, she's almost certain. It almost pains her to get out, but she says, quietly, “You can call me Leonora.”
Dovey’s hand flies to her mouth in Lesso’s peripheral vision. “Really?”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
Dovey promises, reaching over to touch Lesso’s hand so that she looks at her. “I won’t.”
She doesn’t withdraw her hand. Neither does Lesso.
But love doesn’t come without its obstacles, and the obstacles came hurtling towards our heroes on the night of the Unity Ball.
Lesso strides into the ballroom, as happy as she allows herself to be in front of her students. The School for Evil saw an increase in student numbers this year, with more students entering than leaving.
“Lady Lesso,” Anemone slides up next to her.
“What do you want, beauty teacher?”
The two teachers had established a rapport somewhere between planning the color of the banners for the ball and bickering about the placement of said banners.
“Oh, calm yourself, Red. I just wanted to know if you’ve seen Clarissa.”
“I haven’t seen Dovey yet.”
Anemone’s dark brown eyes turn to her in confusion. “Aren’t you here with her?”
“Good and Evil are here together, so I suppose I am.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Lesso mock gasps. “Cursing from a Good teacher? Whatever has this world become?”
“Shut up.” Anemone rolls her eyes, and leaves Lesso with a, “If you see Clarissa, tell her from me that I need to see her about course schedules.”
“We’ll see.”
“Do it, Red.”
“We’ll see.” Lesso cackles at the look of indignant frustration on Anemone’s face, and turns her attention back to the dance floor. The Nevers looked confused when she first ushered them into the room (she tells them Evil doesn’t dance, but Evil does writhe to the sound of music, and they are less reluctant to enter the never used Evil ballroom after that), but beside the prank or two she unfortunately had to stop, everyone seemed to be getting along. Dovey would be proud.
Speak of the devil, “Lady Lesso!”
She turns, an eyebrow raised, ready with some quip about Good being on time and Dovey being late that dies on her lips the moment she lays eyes on the woman in front of her. Dovey wears an uncharacteristic shade of white, the soft color gleaming against her golden locks. The dress is cut modestly, but rather than flaring out at the hips, flares slightly at the bottom, outlining the contours of her body.
She recovers quickly, hoping that the flash of cold she draws to herself using her magic is enough to convince her body to stop the embarrassing flushing. “I thought Good was always on time.” Her voice comes out more strangled than sardonic, and she clears her throat.
Dovey, however, doesn’t seem to notice the difference, if only because she too is flushing and biting down hard on her lip. It’s almost comical, the way that Dovey is so clearly running her eyes over and over Lesso’s body, and Lesso would have laughed if she wasn’t also preoccupied with the way the woman next to her looked.
Lesso recovers first, thankfully. “My eyes are up here, Dovey.”
Dovey’s eyes snap up to hers, but rather than looking admonished Dovey just looks…
Well, she just looks like she’s about to jump Lesso right there and then.
Lesso’s finger trail down to her collar, fingering one of the silver buttons, and watches as Dovey’s eyes follow the motion. Dovey steps forward, suddenly, crowding Lesso and nearly pressing the entire length of her body against her. Suddenly, the violet jacket that Lesso chose seems to suffocate her, and Lesso tugs on that as well.
“You look delightful, Leonora,” Dovey whispers, quiet enough that no one would hear them. Lesso tries (and fails) to control the blush she knows is spreading across her cheeks.
Dovey steps back, and Lesso can breathe again. She regrets this, because the next thing she breathes out is, “You look beautiful.”
Dovey murmurs a thank you, and Lesso turns and flees to the other side of the room.
For the rest of the night, she tries her best to forget and growl at everyone. She achieves the latter, and her students scurry away from her even as they come close to her. The former, not so much. Instead, she spends her time not scaring students watching Dovey from afar. She’s gleaming in the bright lights of the ball, laughing as a student speaks to her. The student lays an innocent hand on Dovey’s arm, and she sees Dovey shift almost imperceptibly to the side, moving a bit further from the student, and she wants to cackle at the irony of Dovey moving away from someone’s personal space.
Another one of the professors, a Good one that Lesso’s only just met and forgot the name of (does he teach Princely Etiquette or does he teach Buffoonery 101?) approaches Dovey. He also speaks to her, almost intimately, and though Lesso sees Dovey shift away from him as well, smiling as she moves her arm away from under his hand, Lesso suddenly feels like the room is stifling.
She’s in an abandoned room before she knows it, trying to clear her mind, trying to forget the feeling of Dovey’s body pressed into hers, when someone pushes the door open and walks in. “Get out,” she barks.
The person doesn’t move. With a sigh, she turns, spinning her cane with one hand. “Don’t make me repeat–”
It’s Dovey.
Of course it is.
She heaves a sigh. “What is it?”
Dovey steps closer, into the moonlit room, and her eyes are large and brown and so incredibly tender. “Are you okay, Leonora?”
Lesso scoffs. “Of course I am. Why would I not be.” The question comes out as a statement, and Lesso is aggravated again.
Dovey steps even closer, so that if she moved forward even more she would be once again pressed flush against Lesso. Lesso’s breath catches embarrassingly. “Why did you leave?”
“I didn’t.”
“I looked for you.”
“You found me.”
Something replaces the black fire burning in Dovey’s eyes, and instead of looking like a siren about to lead Lesso into destruction, she just looks sad. “Did I?”
She’s just a hair’s width away. So close, so tangible, but for a second Lesso wonders if she’s about to lose the tenderness reserved for her. It’s a terrifying thought. So instead, she hesitantly places her hand on Dovey’s waist. It’s the first time she’s ever touched Dovey on her own, and suddenly she never wants to stop touching the Dean for Good.
“You have, Clarissa.”
Something shifts in Dovey’s eyes again, and suddenly she’s surging forward and Lesso is stunned, frozen, as soft lips touch hers. Her lips are light, slickly covered with gloss. She tastes like fireworks exploding inside of Lesso’s eyelids.
Clarissa draws back, her face frozen in a mask of terror. “Oh Storian, I’m so sorry. I- Leonora- I,” she turns, likely to flee, and Lesso is suddenly unfrozen as she wretches out and grabs Clarissa’s wrist. She spins her around, and locks her lips back with the warm, full lips that have teased and flirted with her all evening.
The kiss deepens, this time, and Clarissa’s hands roam up to find traction in Lesso’s hair. Clarissa moans into the kiss, and her hands fisting around copper curls, and Lesso’s mind is completely lost. She presses back and flips Clarissa behind her so that she is pressed against the wall that Lesso had stood in front of, never breaking the kiss. The kiss is all consuming, fighting and dangerous yet soft and kind at the same time, bruising and healing. Lesso hears sounds of pleasure and for a moment she is unsure who is making them until she feels Clarissa’s legs parting. She wretches the dress Clarissa wears off of her, slicing it with a flick of her magic, and breaks their kiss for just long enough to pull back and see her.
Clarissa is gasping, her chest flushed and moving up and down to the movement of the beating of Lesso’s heart in her ears. She’s blushing, too, her cheeks sprinkled with shades of pink, and her lips are wet and her hair is disheveled and her tiara is nowhere to be found and everything about her is salacious. Lesso licks her lips.
“Leonora,” Clarissa gasps, her fingers making quick work of Lesso’s button up. Lesso shrugs out of the shirt, hears the groan Clarissa makes at seeing her without a bra, and rids Clarissa of her undergarments. She looks on, worshipful, and her hands rise to thumb a dark nipple. Clarissa shivers under her, and pulls her in again for a kiss that threatens to destroy Lesso. They break apart long enough for Lesso to move her lips to Clarissa’s neck, to feel the tremors of her neck when Clarissa whispers to her, “You’re perfect.”
Lesso kisses down her breast, the sensation of soft skin against her and the prickling pain of Clarissa’s hands tugging at her hair somehow sending the room into more detail than she thought possible. She kisses the small mound of freckles underneath one breast, maps the contours of the other with her fingers, commits to memory the sounds Clarissa makes as she kisses everywhere she can reach, as she bites down and licks. She memorizes everything about Clarissa’s body, memorizes the notes for her to play, and she stands in awe at the symphony that she draws from Clarissa’s mouth.
“Leonora,” Clarissa’s voice is wretched, a moan ripping out of her when Lesso’s other hand finds its way between the skirts that Clarissa still has on to feel the soft skin on a firm thigh, “Leonora, please.”
Lesso kisses her way back up to Clarissa’s mouth, catches and swallows the moans that rip out of the blonde as her fingers trace circles higher and higher on a thigh. Her other hand places itself on the slim neck bared in front of her and she squeezes, softly, enough that Clarissa makes a choking noise, before releasing. “Please what, little dove?”
Clarissa throws a leg over Lesso’s waist, one of her hands staying in Lesso’s hair and the other clawing at Lesso’s now bare back. “Touch me.” The words fall from her open, swollen lips. “Touch me.”
Lesso complies. She bends her head down, moves her other hand to steady Clarissa against the wall, and slowly lets her fingers dance to where Clarissa is emitting heat. She gasps when she feels the wet, solid proof of Clarissa’s arousal clumping coarse curls together, and she thinks she might be drunk on this feeling for the rest of her life. She parts Clarissa’s folds, slowly, hearing the keening sound that Clarissa makes, feels the way her hips buck up, desperate for friction, but still she moves slowly.
“Who would’ve thought, huh?” Lesso murmurs into Clarissa’s ear, still pressing her against the wall, still teasingly staying away from what Clarissa needs. “Who would’ve thought that the Dean for Good would be so willing, splayed open under the Dean of Evil?”
Clarissa’s head is thrown back, her eyes closed, but still she answers, her voice breathy, “I knew you would be good to me,” she gasps back, Lesso’s fingers finally touching her, making soft, soft circles on her sensitive flesh. Lesso watches as Clarissa bites down on her lip, hard, “I’ve been thinking of you since the moment I walked into the Ball.” A moan interrupts her words.
Lesso groans in her ear, and whispers, her own arousal pulsing hard, “Keep talking.”
Clarissa’s eyes open, and they are dark with lust and still, in the darkness, shining with tenderness. “I saw you in that violet blazer and the leather and,” she breaks off, because Lesso presses the pads of her finger against her clit now and rubs hard, pants and continues, “And I had to have- have you.”
“Have me?” Lesso’s voice is deep, hoarse. “And what do you think of having me, little dove?” She moves her fingers, hoists Clarissa just a little higher, and pushes a finger into her. Clarissa’s eyes roll back in her head.
Clarissa tenses for a moment until Lesso moves her fingers, adding another and beginning to pump into her in earnest, releasing with a high keen. “I- I,” she pants, “Oh Storian, Leonora, I-”
“You?” Lesso’s having a hard time keeping her own arousal under control, so she twists her wrist and with each thrust her palm rubs against Clarissa’s clit. She can feel Clarissa tensing, can feel the buildup to her crescent of pleasure, and so still she pushes harder even as she feels her arms getting sore from holding Clarissa up.
Clarissa opens her mouth, but instead of speaking she pulls Lesso closer and kisses her, her kiss like a tsunami, like a life raft thrown to Lesso, like a game of cat and mouse, chasing her and then running from her as Lesso moans. Lesso’s head spins from the kiss, and still she thrusts harder and harder until she feels Clarissa clenching around her fingers and with a gasp Clarissa breaks the kiss.
She throws her head back, leaning against the wall, her chest heaving and her neck covered with lipstick, and Lesso grinds down hard on her clit and suddenly Clarissa is coming apart, Lesso’s name on her lips, her hands digging into Lesso’s bare back. She’s arching up, her pleasure hitting her so hard its shape is nearly palpable to Lesso, and entranced, Lesso leans in and kisses her hard, swallowing all of her sounds and the sweet, beautiful sound of the name Lesso has hated for so long on her lips.
When Clarissa has finished, her body calmed down, Lesso carefully extracts her fingers, still sticky, from under Clarissa’s dress. Clarissa’s eyes are still closed, and she’s still panting heavily as she leans into the wall, her lips glistening in the moonlight streaming in from the windows.
She’s the picture of obscenity and Lesso wants to have her again, and again, and again until forever.
She freezes at the thought.
Clarissa’s eyes open, and they look at her with so much kindness and sweetness and Lesso isn’t quite sure she could bear it. “You’re perfect.”
Clarissa’s hands are reaching for her when Lesso grabs her shirt and jacket, slides them on without fanfare, and runs.
All heroes, though, must find ways to overcome their obstacles before they are allowed to be with their true loves. So perhaps the flip side of obstacles and difficulties is courage and bravery, and one does not come without the other.
She can’t look at Clarissa. She can’t even go over to the School for Good, because every time she does she sees the picture of how she left her: sprawled, beautiful, and alone against the wall of an abandoned classroom in her own school. Storian above, how could she ever be so stupid? How could she have been so foolish?
Her skittishness rubs off on her students, though none of them seem to know something is wrong. It’s the third time this week that she’s had to deal with a student coming within an inch of their life because of a prank and she’s getting tired. At least classes were over for the day. She doesn’t think she could deal with a bunch of newly villainous villains for another class period without losing her mind.
“Slow down,” she barks, “Tell me again.”
In the end, she has one kid sent over to the School of Good for the old beautification lessons (torture, for any Never), and sends the other to the Doom Room for them to clean up the blood splatters. “With a toothbrush,” she adds, glowering at the both of them. They squeak, and both leave without a word of dissent.
She rubs a hand over her eyes, and is about to get up to go do something, anywhere else, when a pink shadow comes into her office. For a moment, she thinks it might be Clarissa, and her mind is overtaken by fear and panic. She gets a hold of herself, but her panic is so unbecoming that she is scowling mightily as she lifts her head to find Anemone standing in front of her.
“Beauty teacher,” she says, sneering. “What brings you to the castle of uglification?”
Anemone looks furious. “What the hell did you do to Clarissa?”
She blinks.
She blinks again. “What?”
“You heard me, you copper-headed witch. What the hell did you do to Clarissa?”
“Nothing.” The lie falls smoothly off her tongue. She’s had plenty of practice lying, after all. She’s a villain.
“Nothing? Then why the hell has she been so pissed at everyone since the Unity Ball?”
Lesso blinks again. ‘Pissed’ and ‘Clarissa’ don’t go together in her mind. “Well, how the fuck am I supposed to know?”
Anemone groans in frustration and looks as though she’s about to throw a blow at Lesso. Honestly, it’s one of the reasons why Anemone is one of the few Good teachers Lesso tolerates. “I don’t care what happened between you two. I just need her to stop being angry about everything with everyone. Aren’t you friends? Even if you didn’t do anything, shouldn’t you be at least mildly concerned?”
“Friends?” She splutters. “We’re not friends.”
“Sure. Tell that to all the students who saw her leave the Ball shortly after you did. Honestly, Lesso, do you think I’m stupid?”
She’s about to say why yes, yes she does think that, when she realizes something. “Shit.”
“Yes, shit,” Anemone has no idea the million of terrible, murderous thoughts that begin to run through Lesso’s mind but she’s beyond frustrated at the two Deans at this point. “I don’t care what you have to do, but I need her to be normal again.”
Lesso’s mind, though, is full of the room and how none of them bothered to magically sound insulate it before… “Shit. I need to find Dovey.”
She doesn’t wait for Anemone to respond before lighting her finger glow and whisking herself away to Clarissa’s chambers.
She’s never been in there before, she realizes, and the soft, pastel colors should hurt her eyes. Instead, they make her almost want to smile. She misses Clarissa, she realizes. It’s been a week since she’s even seen her, having been avoiding her, and she misses the bickering they used to do. She misses the feeling of Clarissa brushing up against her absently, disregarding her personal space entirely, misses the feeling of quiet comfort that comes with simply sitting next to her.
“What are you doing here?” Clarissa’s voice is tired, drained, as she speaks from behind Lesso.
Lesso freezes for a moment, before gathering up the courage to turn and look at Clarissa. She instantly wishes she hadn’t, because Clarissa’s eyes are looking at her as though she’s a stranger. She’s rebuilt the Professor Dovey mask that Lesso thought she had shattered long ago.
“I-” Lesso stutters. She’s never stuttered in her life, but she suddenly realizes she's completely forgotten what she came to say.
Clarissa waits for her, patiently, until it’s obvious Lesso has no idea what she wants to say. Then Clarissa runs a hand over her eyes, lays down her fairy godmother wand, and gestures towards the door, “If you have nothing urgent, Lady Lesso, I have had a long day.”
“I came to say I’m sorry,” Lesso blurts out. She thinks distantly that she had some reason for being here, some reason that has to do with Anemone yelling at her in her office, but she can’t remember and she doesn't care about anything except that Clarissa isn’t seeing her. She bites her lip, doesn’t dare look at Clarissa, and says it again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t- I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s alright,” Clarissa replies, and Lesso is so shocked she snaps her head up so quickly she thinks she might’ve snapped something. But Clarissa’s still looking at her like she’s a stranger. “Our little… Incident has no bearing on our work, nor our relationship. Thank you for your apology, Lady Lesso. I look forward to seeing you at our faculty meeting tomorrow. Have a nice day.”
Lesso hears the dismissal, but she can’t bring herself to leave. “Please, little dove. I- I just…” She trails off. She doesn’t know why she left, but she does know, she sees in Clarissa’s eyes that she is so close to losing her and she is so desperate she isn’t sure she’s ever felt like this before. “Nevers can’t love.”
Clarissa raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “I don’t see how that–”
Lesso interrupts her, “Nevers can’t love, Clarissa. Evil can’t love. You- I- You deserve someone who can love you. I can’t be that. Even if I wanted- I- I’m sorry.”
“Nevers can’t love?” Clarissa’s voice is incredulous. “What about Sophie? What about Agatha and Sophie and what they taught us? Have you learned absolutely nothing-” Clarissa cuts herself off. She takes a deep breath, as though calming herself. “I understand your reasoning now, Lady Lesso. Thank you for explaining to me. I think, however, for the sake of the school–”
“Don’t you dare say it.” Lesso’s suddenly stepping closer, until she’s in Clarissa’s space, and she’s so frightened and fierce that she’s whispering. “Don’t say it, Clarissa. Please. Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not the one who left.” Clarissa’s voice cracks, and Lesso pounces on it like she’s drowning and Clarissa is her last lifeline.
“I know that. And I’m so sorry, Clarissa.”
Clarissa shakes her head, and the tears are flowing from her eyes freely. “I can’t do this. I can’t put my heart in your hands when you won’t even try to not stomp on it. I’m sorry, Leonora. I’m sorry.”
Something clicks.
“You… You love me?”
Clarissa is fully sobbing now. “How could I not, Leonora?”
Lesso’s mouth is completely dry. “Wh- Why?”
“I don’t know.” Clarissa’s turned her head, pressing her face into her hands, her shoulders racked with sobs. “I don’t know. Why do I love you, Leonora? Why do I love you, when you push me away again and again, when you kiss me like I’m your one true love and then leave me?”
Lesso’s head is spinning, the desire to pull Clarissa in her arms clashing with the voice, eating and whispering to her, to run, run as far away as possible. “But Nevers... I- I can’t be loved. I can’t love.”
Clarissa chuckles, a broken, watery sound. “Here I am, flaying myself open for you, and yet you still cling to that.” Clarissa takes a deep breath, shakes herself, and straightens. “I can’t do this, Lady Lesso. Have a good-”
“Wait!” Lesso’s hand shoots out, grabs Clarissa’s wrists, and pulls her into her arms. It’s the feel of Clarissa’s skin pressed against her that silences the voice inside of her, so similar to Rafal’s, screaming that she can’t be loved. But Clarissa is frozen in her arms, frozen as though she’s afraid Lesso will disappear at any moment, and Lesso feels something crack in her chest. She hugs Clarissa harder. “I’m so sorry, little dove,” she whispers into golden curls. “I’m afraid, you see. I- I don’t know what to do.”
It takes moments, minutes, hours, days before she feels Clarissa’s arms coming up to encircle her, lightly, and she relaxes a little in her arms. “I am, too. But I can’t change what I feel.”
“Will you,” Lesso swallows, hard. “Will you let me try? Please, Clarissa, let me learn how to love. Let me love you.”
She thinks she can feel the ‘no’ she’s sure will come out of Clarissa’s mouth, so before she can say it Lesso is pushing Clarissa away and leaning down to capture her mouth. She swallows whatever Clarissa is about to say, and pulls away when it’s clear Clarissa isn’t reciprocating.
Lesso tries for a smile, a smirk, anything, but she isn’t sure she is convincing anyone. “Don’t say anything. I understand. I-”
And she’s interrupted again, because Clarissa is surging up and pressing her lips onto hers. With a flick of her finger, Lesso’s clothing falls to the floor, and Clarissa’s hands are on her in an instant, squeezing and moving and touching with a possessive anger that wasn’t there the night of the Ball. Lesso groans into Clarissa’s mouth, and her hands move to help Clarissa out of her dress when Clarissa pulls back with a glare. Lesso whines at the cold that replaces the warm lips.
“Don’t touch me.”
Lesso’s mouth goes dry. “Clarissa, I-”
“No. You left me there. You will take what I give and you won’t complain.”
Something about the way Clarissa spoke to her made heat flood from her center, and Lesso nods, timidly. “I’m sorry.”
“You will be. When I’m done with you.”
Clarissa tugs Lesso to the bed, and summons a belt that she ties Lesso’s hands to the bedpost with. When Lesso looks at her, questioningly, Clarissa just presses a kiss to her lips and bites down hard on her lip, almost drawing blood, and pulls away to say: “Red, yellow, green. You tell me red at any point, and we stop. Alright, Leonora?” There is the old tenderness in the way Clarissa asks her this, perhaps sensing the fear and the uncertainty Lesso has about being tied up at the disposal of someone else. The tenderness comforts her, so Lesso nods, and surges up to press a kiss to Clarissa’s lips as though promising.
“Now.” Clarissa moves to straddle Lesso, removing her own outer skirts when they get annoying but keeping her undergarments on. Her fingers trace over the scars that mark Lesso’s skin, her mouth licks all the way down the valley of skin, and she pauses just as she reaches where Lesso needs her. Lesso arches up, keens, asking silently for Clarissa to relieve the pressure.
“No. Beg me, Leonora. Use your mouth. Beg me to touch you.” Her fingers roam as she speaks, twisting a nipple here, flicking her clit there, and Lesso is already so wet she can feel herself dripping. The smallest touch from Clarissa could send her vaulting off the bed.
“Please, Clarissa,” she says, after another five minutes of Clarissa teasing, playing with her. “Please, Clarissa, please touch me.”
“Why should I?” Clarissa murmurs. “Why should I give you that pleasure, Lady Lesso?”
“Please, Clarissa.”
“Why should I?” Clarissa repeats.
“Because,” Lesso’s mind scrambles through a million responses until she lands on one that feels right. “Because I’m yours.”
She knows she chose the right response when Clarissa’s eyes go nearly black, and her hand falls down to right where Lesso needs it.
Lesso comes with Clarissa’s name on her mouth and the certainty that whether or not Evil or Nevers could love does not change the way that Clarissa is the love of her life.
And so our fairytale ends. Lesso did eventually come to tell Dovey about the students who could have overheard them. Luckily, it turned out to be nothing. And so the ending, of course, is happy. But the path there was not always, and perhaps that is the true meaning behind each fairytale, because just as good is nothing without evil, so is love without hardship.
Our two heroes lived happily ever after.
The end.
Lesso closed the book. “Well. The Storian certainly has a way of filling in the blanks, doesn’t it?”
Clarissa smiled up at her. “Is that really how you felt when you saw me at the Ball, Leonora?”
“What? Of course not.”
“Really?”
“Of course not. I felt no such thing.”
“Oh, so you felt nothing for me. I see.”
“No. That’s not what I said.”
“Oh, so you did feel something.”
Lesso rolled her eyes. “If you count wanting to fuck you senseless as something, then yes. Yes, I did feel something.”
“Aw,” Clarissa had long since gotten used to Lesso’s snark. “I love you too.” She poked the motionless pen. “How do you think the Storian got so many details about our… Escapades?” She cleared her throat and blushed.
It was hilarious to Lesso. After so long, her Good little fairy godmother still blushed at the mere mention of sex. “I don’t know. Would you like to give it a demonstration now?”
“Leonora!”
She smirked. “I love you too.”