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Padmé’s dress is backless. The sleeves hang from her shoulders as if by the will of the Force, never slipping even a millimetre, leaving the smooth skin of her back on display all the way down to just above her ass, where the dress swoops back in to sit seemingly weightlessly. It’s not the Force that keeps it in place, it’s tiny, sticky tabs that Sabé and Dormé had placed with precise care so as not to pull on the light material and ruin the illusion.
It’s a beautiful dress, more beautiful for having Padmé in it and Sabé’s job is to watch, but she’d be unable to look away for long even if that weren’t the case. The city is spread out behind Padmé, the apartment offering a view of Coruscant very few could ever afford and, if not for one thing, it would be perfect.
Padmé’s latest admirer is from the banking clan and has money to spare, but not the eye or hands to make him look half as good.
Clovis moves closer to Padmé, his hand moving to press flat over the bare skin of her back. Sabé rolls her eyes though there’s no one to see and looks away. He touches her like she might break, like she is some small creature in need of protection only he can provide.
“I don’t know what she sees in him,” Cordé says, voice low, mouth barely moving. It wouldn’t matter if they talked louder, Clovis is as fooled by them as everyone else is. He gropes and kisses Padmé on the balcony of her apartment with the unearned boldness of a man unwatched. His eyes slide right off the handmaidens, never acknowledging them, forgetting that they aren’t alone.
Padmé won’t forget, but privacy looks different between them; this is nothing they haven’t seen before.
Clovis’ other hand is doing less chaste things, brushing over Padmé’s exposed side, up to the edge of the dress, so close to one of her breasts and—
Sabé smiles as Padmé moves away, making sure his hand stays over the dress rather than under it. It’s a rush, to see Padmé deny him what he so clearly wants.
Clovis takes the hint, but keeps pressing to find out exactly where the boundary is, squeezing her breast over the dress. He won’t be able to feel her nipples like that; the dress doesn't allow for a bra, but it’s too delicate of a dress not to cover them. That Padmé allows.
“She likes the attention,” Sabé says. It’s more complicated than that, it always has been. A Senator might not be a queen, but both come with expectations, both are as much a role Padmé has to act out as being a handmaiden is for Sabé.
Cordé hums in agreement. “She could get that from other people. I think she likes his assertiveness.” She pauses. “And his manners.”
Sabé’s been playing this game since she was fourteen; she doesn’t laugh at the joke. Clovis turns up to Padmé’s apartments whenever he pleases without so much as a commcall. If it were up to any of the staff, they’d politely inform him that Padmé was busy and send him away, but always Padmé makes excuses for him.
“He may yet be a useful ally,” Sabé says. It had been what Padmé had said very early on in their courtship, when Sabé had expressed her disapproval.
Padmé’s hand is on his thigh. The lighting isn’t good and his trousers dark, but Sabé imagines she can see the outline of an erection there, one begging for attention that Padmé won’t give. Padmé likes people, she likes company and new company at that, and maybe part of her enjoys the way they look at her. But her bed is already taken.
“You’re a cynic,” Cordé says. “She likes him.”
“She’s too kind for her own good,” Sabé says. “She likes everyone.”
“And you dislike everyone.” Cordé says it with such fondness that it’s hard to take offence. It also isn’t true, Sabé just thinks that Padmé’s taste in suitors could use some work.
Padmé and Clovis have stopped kissing just long enough for him to say something in a voice too low to carry. His hand is still groping her chest.
“They make a good looking pair, I suppose,” Cordé says after a moment, because Cordé has always been the nicest of them. “And she certainly is happier of late.”
Sabé hums and doesn’t say anything though there’s plenty that she could say to that. She makes Padmé happy.
Versé comes over to stand next to Sabé as Clovis leaves. She’s perfectly quiet as Clovis lingers by the elevator—he never takes a hint—but her disdain is clear to anyone who knows her as well as the other handmaidens do. She cannot abide rudeness and Clovis has trampled all over her patience. For Padmé they all put up with him.
The doors finally slid shut behind Clovis, and after a beat just to be certain, Sabé relaxes, the other handmaidens along with her.
“He does know that he’ll be seeing you again tomorrow?” Cordé asks, her blank, professional expression, slipping into a teasing smile. “Does every goodbye need to drag as though you’ll never see him again?”
“And he’ll call her again when he arrives back at his apartment,” Versé says, still teasing, but less amused than Cordé.
“You don’t have to listen if I bore you so much,” Padmé points out, but she’s in a good mood and her put upon tone is unconvincing.
“It’s our duty to protect you, my lady,” Sabé says. She holds the empty expression expected of her until after Padmé has laughed, filling Sabé’s chest with warmth after a long evening. Sabé lets herself laugh too.
“I think some of you enjoy your duty too much,” Padmé says dryly. Alone in the ways that matter, she also relaxes, stretching her arms up over head, unconcerned with how much skin the movement reveals. She toes off her shoes, bending to pick them up, before walking away from the elevator, but into the main room. Her make-up hides it, but she’s tired. It’s been a long day and Clovis has made it longer.
Cordé breaks from the group to go meet her, taking the shoes from her hand and sweeping past her to go collect the abandoned wine glasses.
“Clovis doesn’t want me to worry,” Padmé says, moving back in the conversation. “I think it’s very sweet.”
“He has an armoured speeder waiting for him, what is there to worry about?” Sabé asks. The senators fuss over their safety as a matter of flattering their egos. No one cares enough about Clovis for him to take on the protection that he does. Sabé has seen what that threat looks like, has lived it, and finds the senators in the heart of the capital, so far from any danger, playing pretend at it is tiresome at best.
But Padmé is willing to let Clovis act as though he’s as important as he believes.
“Anything for an excuse to bask longer in your company, my lady.” Cordé bats her eyelashes, clasping her hands together.
Padmé throws a cushion at her. It’s a good aim, but she’s across the room and it falls well short. That only makes their laughter harder.
Padmé huffs, folding her arms over her chest. Typho hates it when she does that, but Sabé likes it. It makes her look like a teenager again, already queen but young enough still to sulk when she doesn’t get her way.
Versé collects the thrown cushion, returning it to the couch and smoothing it back down.
“Come help me out of this,” Padmé says, pulling some of the dress away from her and letting it fall back into place. “If you aren’t too busy discussing my love life.”
“Of course, my lady,” Versé says with a curtsy so immaculate it can only be mocking.
Sabé is less subtle. “I’m sure we’re more than skilled enough to multitask.”
Padmé snorts gracelessly, and if Versé hadn’t just righted the cushion, Sabé suspects one would be heading her way too.
They pass through Padmé’s bedroom to her dressing room, a large space, with only marginally smaller walk-in wardrobes to store her clothes. She has fewer now than when she was queen, but a great deal is still expected of her as a senator.
The dress falls off her shoulders to hang at her hips. There’s enough friction to hold it there for a moment before it falls, but Cordé is quicker than gravity, guiding it down so Padmé can step out of it. Her underwear is plain in contrast to the eloquence of the dress, but it’s impossibly soft and far more expensive than it appears. Sabé has licked Padmé through one pair, and stretched out the waist of another, shoving her hand down the front to finger her. Clovis will never see them, or any of the more extravagant sets that Sabé has dressed Padmé in, and helped her out of.
Padmé lifts her hair out of the way as Sabé undoes the clasp of her necklace. Sabé’s hand lingers where Clovis’ wasn’t allowed to, the backs of her fingers brushing over the side of Padmé’s breast, the chain of the necklace tangled between her fingers.
Padmé’s breath catches, the light, near invisible hair along her upper arms going on end. “Sabé can take it from here,” she says. “You may retire.” She remembers herself. “Thank you.”
Versé and Cordé exchange a look, first with each other and then with Sabé. They aren’t matching looks. Cordé worries, but Versé is quietly pleased. They curtsy as professionalism expects, but then Versé leans in and kisses first Padmé and then Sabé’s cheek.
“Goodnight, my lady. Sabé.” Cordé squeezes both of their hands, taking the necklace from Sabé—it’s too valuable to be treated carelessly, and there’s no one but Padmé who can make Sabé careless.
“Goodnight,” Sabé says for both of them, Padmé having already forgotten the others, looking at Sabé with dark eyes.
Padmé expects Sabé to kiss her, it’s there in the way she tilts her head and leans ever so slightly towards Sabé. Sabé doesn’t mirror her. She could, but doesn’t.
Padmé’s breasts are small but still bigger than hers; she has to put padding in her bra when she’s being the decoy. It used to bother her, she used to stand in front of a mirror and press her fingers into her own chest. What if someone had noticed the swap because of her breasts? Or because of the way Sabé had grown a little taller after Padmé had stopped, or—
Sabé lets her hand fall from Padmé’s breast. Padmé could kiss her, instead of waiting to be kissed, but neither of them move.
When Sabé does move, it’s away, back towards the dresser. There’s an entire routine to removing Padmé’s make-up, but unlike when she was queen, corners can be cut.
Padmé tilts her face automatically when Sabé returns, sweeping make-up from Padmé’s face with a wipe. She starts with her eyes, the dark mascara leaving black marks on the white of the wipe. Her eyes look smaller without the make-up to line them. Padmé is beautiful, but skill and the wealth to employ it are tools that enhance it. This is how Sabé thinks of her most often, with her face bare.
She tosses the dirtied wipe to the side, drawing out a fresh one.
“He was eager tonight,” Sabé says. He’ll never have what she has.
Padmé flushes, though the blush Sabé had added to her cheeks when she’d done Padmé’s make-up for the evening almost hides it. Sabé, wipes the blush away, but the colour remains.
“Almost burst those expensive trousers of his.” Expensive, but rapidly falling out of fashion.
“Sabé,” Padmé warns, but it’s with that politician's tone, that masks her real meaning. Sabé knows it anyway, knows Padmé better than anyone else ever could.
Sabé steps closer, and Padmé’s hands find her hips, pulling her closer still. Padmé should wash her face now that the bulk of the make-up is removed.
“It’s terribly cruel to lead him on like this. You should put him out of his misery.”
“Am I such a misery?” she asks; her smile hasn’t changed since she was a teenager.
Sabé kisses her.
She lets it be a soft, tender thing at first. Lets Padmé’s eyelashes flutter against her skin, lets her hands tighten and her chest rise as she pulls in a breath. She lets it stay that way until Padmé is almost ready to do something about it.
Sabé steps forward, catching Padmé off balance, but not letting her fall. She pushes until Padmé’s back hits the door to one of the wardrobes, pinning her there, hands coming up to hold her face. Padmé’s pulse thrums in her throat under Sabé’s hands. This is what Padmé wants, and Sabé willingly bends to her every whim.
Is that not enough?
“Did he ask to stay the night?” Sabé asks.
Padmé’s open, but her lips remain parted. There’s still some paint there, leaving half of them a darker, but still natural looking pink. It’s resistant stuff, Sabé knows intimately how much it can withstand. Padmé and Clovis will have kissed for long enough that some of it will have been transferred to his lips.
“We were too far away to hear the sweet nothings you were whispering. Did he beg you to let him touch you?”
Padmé’s silence says as much as any words could have. He’d have talked around it, pointed out that it was late, suggested plans for the early morning and Padmé would have skillfully out manoeuvred the line of questioning, saying neither yes nor no and still ending up with precisely what she wanted.
“Would you like me to touch you?” Clovis would have fucked her on that balcony while Sabé and Dormé watched if Padmé had let him.
Padmé’s mouth softens into a smile. “You know I do.” The difference is that she would get to. Sabé takes the corner of one of the pasties on Padmé’s nipple, teasing the edge until her nail slides under. She lets it fall to the floor, the other quickly following it.
“Will you fuck me?” Sabé asks. Padmé’s expression doesn’t shift, but she also hesitates. There’s an easy solution to that. “Or, I could fuck you.”
“Please, Sabé,” Padmé says, smile like the sunrise.
Sabé leads her back through to Padmé’s bedroom by her hand, but they split just through the door, Padmé moving to the bed, and Sabé to a chest of drawers. The toy she selects isn’t Padmé’s favourite, but it is one of her favourites to wear.
Her own dress isn’t as fine as Padmé’s, but is still worth more than many in Coruscant would make in a month. It doesn’t get the same care as Padmé’s dress. She lets it pool on the floor, leaving it there as she steps out of it to climb onto the bed. Padmé is waiting for her, her underwear, the only remaining thing between her and nakedness, discarded. Padmé parts her legs without prompting, and Sabé settles there like she’s done hundreds of times before, Padmé staring up at her with gentle eyes and a poorly concealed eagerness.
She’ll have to wait a little longer.
The toy is temporarily abandoned on the bed by Padmé’s hip. It’s a huge bed, with more space that two people really need but she doesn’t stretch far, and the dip from their weight has the toy rolling back towards Padmé. Sitting back on her haunches, Sabé reaches behind her back, undoing the clips of her bra, letting it fall off her shoulders.
Padmé touches with the same certainty she does all things. She starts at Sabé’s hips and moves upwards, guiding Sabé down the higher they go until Sabé has to put her hands on the bed to balance herself. Padmé’s thighs spread wider to make space for her, hips pressed together in a promise of what’s to come.
There’s a scar on Sabé’s side that’s almost as old as their relationship; a blaster bolt intended for the queen but finding only her decoy. Padmé avoids touching it, avoids the guilt tangled up in it.
Padmé pulls Sabé the rest of the way down, arms wrapping around her neck, pressing their mouths together. They’ve spent evenings like that, kissing and soft, intimate touches and nothing more, but Sabé intends to finish what Clovis wasn’t allowed to.
Padmé’s body is more familiar than her own; it’s the template she was compared against. She vowed to serve but her ability to do so was bound to how closely she could resemble the queen. Padmé’s body was perfect by nature of being Padmé’s. It tormented her in so many ways, ways that it’s far too late to untangle.
Sabé breaks the kiss, but only to kiss Padmé’s neck instead, and then down her collarbone, over the swell of her breasts and flat belly until she’s kissing the crease where her hip meets her groin.
Padmé’s skin is almost as soft as the sheets under Sabé’s knees.
Padmé sinks deeper into the soft mattress, one hand flat on the bed next to her, the other squeezing her chest. She holds her legs open and Sabé is looking at parts of Padmé that Padmé herself will never have seen.
Sabé’s purpose was to look like Padmé, but there were flaws that no one had expected Sabé to mimic—tiny insignificant things that Padmé might not even know about herself.
Her labia are asymmetrical, one lip larger than the other. Her hair was recently waxed, only just enough time having passed that there’s the hint of new hair growth over the mound above her cunt. It scratches against Sabé’s lips. Even with this little growth, the odd bare batch where no hair grows in the middle of the mound is clear.
Sabé has no such irregularity and no one has ever suggested she should mimic it. No one else knows Padmé well enough to realise that in this way she and Sabé don’t match.
Sabé puts her face between Padmé’s legs and licks, up over her cunt up to her clit. Padmé gasps, thighs tensing, her cunt twitching.
Padmé’s perfumes are shipped from Naboo, each bottle costing a small fortune. They smell like someone managed to bottle the fields of wildflowers near where Padmé grew up. It’s subtle and delicate and Sabé has seen Clovis turn his head to Padmé’s neck to smell her.
Between her legs there’s no perfume to chase away the natural scent and Sabé inhales, and then licks Padmé again to enjoy the taste as well.
Padmé isn’t going to move, but Sabé holds her anyway, uses hands on hips to pull her closer, allowing her to drag her tongue up between Padmé’s folds to flick over her clit. She can’t see Padmé’s face if she looks up, just the line of her abdomen and the two peaks of her breasts. It’s not a bad view, and she doesn’t need to see to know the effect she’s having.
Padmé clutches at her hair, fingers twisting between it, pulling strands out from Sabé’s neat bun. She moans, bucking against Sabé’s hands chasing more.
Sabé obliges her, opening her mouth wide, pressing her tongue as deep into Padmé’s cunt as she can, flooding her mouth with tangy slick. Her familiarity makes this simple, Padmé responding enthusiastically to every whisper of Sabé’s breath over her clit. Sabé loves having her like this, loves how it breaks down all of Padmé’s control and leaves her desperation for Sabé out in the open.
She shifts Padmé’s thighs up onto her shoulders, wanting the heat and press of them around her head and pushes her face back between Padmé’s legs. The short hair scratches at her lips and tongue, a sharp contrast to between Padmé’s folds which is all soft, smooth skin.
“Sabé!” Padmé gasps, gripping her with hands in her hair and her thighs around her head. “Please, I—!”
Sabé sucks Padmé’s clit into her mouth, smearing slick all across her chin. She flicks her tongue over the sensitive tip and it’s easy—so much easier than anyone would ever suspect—Padmé collapses into orgasm after barely a minute.
She’ll be nice and wet for the dildo now. Sabé licks at her dripping cunt certain. Padmé twitches and sighs and strokes Sabé’s hair, her hold gone lax now she’s been satisfied.
Sabé kisses the inside of Padmé’s thigh and slides Padmé’s legs off her shoulders. She sits back up, licking slick from around her mouth, but not wiping it away with her hand.
“Do you think he’d do that for you?” Sabé hadn’t been planning to say it, but the thought had verbalised without her permission. She doesn’t like bringing Padmé’s admirers into their bed and Padmé likes it even less.
Padmé sighs, shifting her leg, so she’s less on display, or as less on display as she can be. For a moment it looks like Padmé might allow it to go unacknowledged.
“You don’t know him,” she says, and moves her leg again, so her knee bumps up against Sabé’s hip. She’s still wet between her legs, her skin shining from it.
“I know his type.” They’re all a particular type.
“Oh?” Padmé’s tone goes teasing. It’s not as good as dropping the topic, but it’s a start. “Then tell me, what will he be like?”
That’s easy.
The dildo is still by Padmé’s hip. Without moving from between Padmé’s legs Sabé grabs it, bringing it to her lips, pausing only long enough to wet her lips with her tongue. She lets her mouth fall open, lapping once at the end and then sliding the toy into her mouth.
She holds Padmé’s eye, watches them darken even as she frowns. Even with her pulse throbbing between her legs, Sabé has perfect control of her face, lets her eyes go big and meek, like how Clovis sees Padmé.
Men like him like that, like that they can pretend that the firebrand politician would be different in her private life, a naive little girl desperate to be taken care of.
Sabé sees Padmé for what she is, certain and glorious.
Padmé laughs, going up on her elbows, her hair spilling in dark waves over her shoulders. She reaches up and takes one of Sabé’s hands off the toy, bringing it to her chest instead, holding it against one of her breasts as she holds Sabé’s eye. Sabé smiles around the dildo, sucking it on like Clovis would expect of Padmé. Padmé’s breast is so warm under her hand.
“Is that such a crime?” Padmé asks. “Or did I just ask too much of you just now?”
It’s not the same. It’s not the act, but the imbalance.
Sabé slides the toy out of her mouth, licking saliva from her lips.
“I’m here to serve you, my lady,” she says demurely.
Padmé laughs again, as fond and familiar as every other part of her. She nudges Sabé’s side with her knee and sits up even further, enough to kiss Sabé again, the toy held between them.
Her mouth is soft under Sabé’s, yielding easily—like she rarely yields elsewhere—as Sabé slips her tongue into her mouth. Padmé hadn’t been Sabé’s first kiss, but she’d been Padmé’s, both of them fourteen, Padmé waiting to know how it would feel.
Padmé sinks back down into the bed. She’s still smiling, but the shape of it has changed in a way that Sabé doesn’t like.
“He really cares about me,” Padmé says, with a softness that feels almost apologetic.
Sabé doesn’t doubt that he cares, she doubts that the Padmé he cares for is the Padmé Sabé knows.
“We’re taking things slow.”
“Would you like us to go slow, my lady?” she asks. They’re long past slow, crashed through slow while Padmé was still queen, and they were still teenagers. She’s loved Padmé since before she really understood what loving someone meant.
Padmé’s eyes flutter closed, her chest rising and falling as she takes a great breath. “I’d like you to go very slow.”
Sabé goes up on her knees, spreading her legs open, pressing her end of the strapless dildo against her cunt. She’s aroused and wet from it, but her body still resists, though not for long. The toy sides into her, bulb sitting up against her g-spot. The rest of the toy is still outside of her, extending from her cunt, and when she sits back down on her thighs, it rests in the valley between Padmé’s thigh and her groin. It’s an expensive thing, like everything Padmé owns, but still simple to look at. It’s black and smooth with subtle waves to the shape of that will stretch Padmé perfectly as Sabé fucks her.
Padmé looks up at her, laid out for the taking. Sabé spreads her legs apart, pushing them far enough that Padmé will feel the stretch of it, guiding the tip of the dildo up between her folds. The smallest shift of her hips has it smearing through the slick there, rubbing between her labia, nudging up towards her clit and then back down to tease at her entrance.
Padmé inhales, eyelids fluttering.
The toy goes into Padmé even easier than Sabé had expected; she’s so wet.
Sabé does what Padmé asked of her, and goes slow.
The first slow push is enough to have Padmé gasping, arching up away from the bed, towards Sabé. Sabé likes it better when it’s her fingers, when she can feel the intimate heat of Padmé around her, and there’s no need to imagine how she squeezes as Sabé pushes deeper. The toy has its own advantages. As Padmé moves, Sabé’s end moves within her too.
She pulls back out, as achingly slowly as she’d pushed in and Padmé’s mouth opens in a breathless moan.
Sabé’s heart hammers in her chest, her cunt throbbing around the toy. This is all she’s ever wanted. This is why she stayed after Padmé’s term as queen ended. This is what she’s dedicated her life to.
Padmé shudders out a breath, pushing up to meet Sabé, fumbling blindly for handfuls of the bed sheets. She draws her feet up towards her ass, tilting her hips up to give Sabé an even sweeter angle and Sabé can take the hint. She slips her arms under Padmé’s knees and legs, bending her back on herself. The toy shifts minutely deeper. They shift impossibly closer.
She draws them apart just to thrust back in.
Padmé is beautiful and that beauty has never belonged to Sabé. Her beauty has been acknowledged and admired and craved since the moment the public first set eyes on her. It’s a controlled, powerful thing, impossible but to the women who helped her achieve it.
Padmé’s hair sticks to her forehead, her face twists with need, mouth too open, eye too wide, her body bent into unflattering shapes. She’s still beautiful, but this wild, non-deliberate beauty is all Sabé’s, caused by her and for her.
She doesn’t have to share this part of Padmé with anyone.
“What would he think about this?” Sabé asks.
“He’ll never find out.” It’s sharp in that way Padmé can be, the way she’s good at letting people forget she can be. She saved her planet with that sharpness at fourteen, she’s used that sharpness to serve her planet numerous times since.
“He won’t,” Sabé agrees; certainly never from her. She holds Padmé’s secrets as closely as she holds Padmé herself.
Sabé thrusts back into Padmé, the slowness that Padmé requested slipping as Sabé’s own desire grows. She loves her more than Clovis could ever pretend to.
Padmé’s chest heaves, her breasts bounce with each thrust, the veins in her hand stand out against her skin as she—
Padmé’s climax is louder this time, her groan starting out as Sabé’s name and then being slowed by wordless sound. She throws back her head, writhing under Sabé. Sabé doesn’t stop, and Padmé takes everything Sabé can give her.
Sabé can draw more out of her—enough that they’ll both lose count—as many as Padmé wants.
Padmé goes lax as the orgasm releases her. Her eyes stay squeezed shut, panting as she comes down. If Sabé were fingering she’d be able to feel the flutter of her cunt, experience how tightly she’d clenched as she’d come. She has to make do with feeling it through the toy.
It’s a glorious feeling.
Padmé fucked until she’s sweaty and unkempt is something Sabé can never tire of. She snaps her hips forward, with a roughness that she feels on her end, pleasure sparking between her legs.
“He can’t tell us apart. He spoke to Cordé without realising it wasn’t you.” He’d fuck her just as eagerly as he’d fuck Padmé.
“That’s a credit to your skills, not his failing,” Padmé says through laboured breathing. “Gently, Sabé.”
Sabé doesn’t want to be gentle. She wants to kiss dark bruises into Padmé’s flawless skin, she wants Padmé to feel her the next day, she wants to hold her so tightly there’s marks to line her fingers up with later. She wants to bite and fuck like they did years earlier when they’d first succumb to the inevitable.
She can be gentle. Sabé pushes the dildo as deep into Padmé it will go, until they’re pressed up against each other, each stretched open around their own end of the toy.
Padmé’s fingers twist in the sheets over her head, chin tilted back, showing the long line of her neck. Bending to kiss Padmé’s throat, folds Padmé even more in half, grinding deeper into her.
Sabé has never mistaken any of the handmaidens for each other, not even in those first days.
Padmé hadn’t either. Not once.
She fucks Padmé as slowly as she can stand, pushing down her own pulsing arousal in favour of Padmé’s. It’s easy to work her back up to the edge, gentleness rewarded with Padmé writhing like she’s being tortured. Her chest is as flushed as her face, red dipping down between her breasts, muscles straining under her skin.
There’s nothing Padmé could ever do to be unrecognisable to her, and she’d take no substitution.
Sabé’s too hot, her need too great. She wants more—faster, harder, rougher. She wants to feed the hunger that Padmé sparks in her. She forces herself to be tender. It’ll get her there just the same.
Padmé comes apart under her efforts, as slow as Sabé’s thrusts but just as irrevocably. Her whole body clenches tighter by the moment, squeezing around the toy, hands in the sheet, her legs pressing hard into Sabé. There’s a line of tension to her neck, trembling with the strain.
It snaps all at once and this time the sight is enough to pull Sabé down with her.
Sabé’s climax hits her like a wave. She scrambles for any part of Padmé she can reach. Her mouth misses Padmé’s, but finds it on the second attempt, gasping into the messy kiss. For the moment stretches and in the high it’s just the pair of them, the reality of Padmé’s responsibilities tumbling away. Sabé grinds down onto the toy, pushes it deeper into both of them, extending the moment, clinging to it, chasing it. It slips out of reach and the rest of the world creeps back in.
Sabé lets Padmé’s legs fall back to the bed. She needs a second to breathe. The toy slips out of Padmé and Sabé minds where it sticks when she flops down onto Padmé’s chest. Padmé holds her with both arms, both of them gasping, both of them sticky and tired.
Padmé drags her hands over Sabé’s back, nails pressed into her skin enough to be felt, but soft enough not to leave a mark; they’re both so careful about marks.
He doesn’t deserve her even if he ever had a real chance. Sabé doesn’t tell Padmé that, letting the moment last. Overwhelming the lingering scent of the perfume, Padmé smells so perfectly human. Sabé kisses her neck—she tastes it too.
“I lo—”
Padmé’s comm sounds from the receiver on her bedside table. Neither of them need to look to know who it is. Padmé raises an unnecessary finger to her lips and Sabé rolls off her, onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. The sheets on this side of the bed are cool against her heated skin, but she’d rather be sweating up against Padmé.
“Rush,” Padmé says. She pulls her panting into line as easily as she controls every other aspect of her presentation. “Was traffic bad?”
It’s Coruscant, the traffic is always bad.
Clovis groans. “Terrible. I hope you weren’t worried?”
Sabé bends her leg, giving herself just enough space to reach down and pull the toy out of herself. Her hand slips over it, but she was expecting it and it slides out. It’s slick with both of their efforts.
“No, but I was just thinking that you should have been home by now and I hadn’t heard from you.” Padmé closes her legs, folding one half up over the other, with an air of chaste dignity that doesn’t match what they’ve just done.
“I do apologise. I hope you weren’t waiting up.” He sounds like he very much hopes she was waiting up for him.
He’s boring. It’s not his greatest flaw, but the one that Sabé finds the most frustrating. He makes her boring too.
Sabé gets out of the bed and takes the dildo with her. Padmé’s eyes follow her, but she doesn’t call her back, couldn’t even if she wanted to. She cleans the toy in the en-suite fresher, and it’s far enough that she can’t pick up what Padmé and Clovis are saying, but close enough that she can still hear unintelligible voices, his carrying louder than hers.
Sabé eyes herself over in the mirror, pulling the hair still nobly clinging to the shape of her bun free, letting it all fall around her shoulders. Padmé’s growing her hair out, and Sabé has been following suit out of habit.
Sometimes Sabé used to catch sight of her reflection in the corner of her eye and mistake herself for Padmé. It happens less and less these days.
Cordé is Padmé’s primary decoy now anyway.
Sabé should cut her hair.
The light in the fresher turns off automatically as she leaves. Clovis is still prattling on.
Padmé’s eyes follow her across the room as she opens up the drawer and puts the toy back away. It would be easy to show off, to bend in ways that give the best view. Sabé closes the drawer with more force than is necessary.
“I was hoping you would accompa—” Clovis stops talking abruptly. “Is there someone with you?”
“One of my handmaidens. I’m getting ready for bed.” Sabé glances over at her, spread naked on top of her sheets and raises her eyebrows. Padmé’s mouth turns thin as she tries not to laugh.
“Ah,” he says, easily sated. He jumps back into inviting her to the opera, content that they’re alone in the ways that matter to him.
Handmaiden is an easy role to slide back into. Sabé picks up her clothes, and Padmé’s underwear, tidying up the mess they’ve made. There’s no escaping Clovis—the man loves the sound of his own voice—but the further away she is the fewer actual words she picks up. She could go back through to her own room, but she won’t allow Clovis to chase her away.
She left make-up wipes on the floor of the dressing room. Those go in the bin. She checks Padmé’s schedule for the following day and checks Dormé has already selected appropriate clothes.
Clovis is still talking.
She’s already let him chase her from the bed.
They’d become distracted before finishing Padmé’s skincare routine. She won’t do all of it now, but a cursory effort will make Versé’s frown the next morning a little less severe.
Padmé’s sitting up in her bed, finally managing to get a word in as she corrects him on a bill she’s a signatory on. He tries to interrupt, but Padmé can't be talked over when she has something to say.
Sabé climbs into the bed next to Padmé, sitting crossed legged and shuffling until she’s close enough to touch her without straining. The moisturiser is as luxury as everything else. Sabé squeezes some out onto her fingers. Her hands are the softest part of her, mimicking the softness of Padmé’s face from shared products. Padmé turns her face with the lightest touch to prompt her. She smiles under Sabé’s hands as Sabé rubs moisturiser into her face and down her neck.
She doesn’t stop talking throughout. They’ll go to the opera next week. Sabé will add it to her schedule.
Cordé enjoys the opera more than Padmé does. She could go in Padmé’s place.
Sabé’s professional hands turn into something tender, caressing her cheek with her thumb. Padmé smiles, looking up from the comm and then back down.
Padmé’s interest in Clovis will be fleeting; it always is. Her interest in Sabé hasn’t faltered in the years they’ve known each other.
Sabé places the moisturiser down on the bedside table. It clicks on the surface of it, but this time Clovis doesn’t comment.
Padmé makes space for Sabé to lie down against her side as naturally as she'd turned to let Sabé moisturise her face. Sabé sets herself into Padmé’s side, warm skin pressing all up her front, her head on Padmé’s shoulder. She puts one leg over Padmé’s and guides it back, opening them just a little, denting the air of respectability though no one but them are there to see it.
Padmé warps an armour around her back, hand landing in her hair, fingers combing through stands.
“I’m sorry, I should let you rest. I’m interrupting your evening. I’m sure your staff are waiting on you,” Clovis says, finally showing an inkling of self-awareness.
“My handmaidens think it’s sweet,” Padmé says.
Sabé doesn’t let her response shape her affect in so much as a twitch of an eyebrow. Sweet . There’s still a shine to Padmé’s skin and her nipples still pebbled. Sabé draws a line up Padmé’s side, just on the edge of too light. Padmé is ticklish in some places—if she laughs she’ll give up the game.
Padmé squirms away, mouth pressed tight, eyes creased in a smile.
“Goodnight, Rush,” she says, eyes locked on Sabé.
“Goodnight. Sleep well.”
The comm beeps and they’re alone.
Sabé doesn’t say what she might like to say.
“Versé would never forgive you if she knew you were lying like that,” Sabé says, and she must get the tone right because Padmé laughs, turning to kiss her temple.
“Versé holds him to very high standards. She forgets that he’s new to much of this.”
“Versé thinks he’s rude.” She lets the fact that she agrees be louder by not verbalising it.
Padmé looks down at the comm in her hand, her thumb dragging up and down along the edge, matching the hand in Sabé’s hair.
“You should give him a chance,” she says. “It’s nice to have another senator my age to talk to.”
Sabé puts her hand over the point on Padmé’s side where the blaster bolt scar is on her own body. “Yes, my lady,” she says, so sincerely that not even Padmé could doubt her.
She won’t. There’s no need. Clovis will be gone from their lives as quickly as he arrived. Padmé might have a role to play, might even enjoy the way men like Clovis look at her, but they never last. Sabé has seen a dozen of them come and go while Sabé has remained at her Padmé’s side.