The Little Hours

Chapter 1 - Vespers

Nell Voss had catalogued a splinter of the true cross that was almost certainly oak from Ohio. She was not a credulous woman. She still stood at Mercy’s bar with her pulse in her throat like a liar.

Hedge Pell was drying a glass. Forty-five, salt in the dark hair, a leather vest that had earned its creases, a mouth that looked like it had told better people than Nell to spit or swallow.

“You’re the archives girl,” Hedge said. “You tip well and you watch the back-room door like it owes you rent. Speak or drink.”

“I want a teacher,” Nell said. “Not a scene partner who will let me hide. I want to learn to hold someone who knows more than I do. I’ve been told that’s backwards.”

Hedge set the glass down. “It’s backwards if you think topping is a hat size. Who told you you looked like a bottom.”

“Everyone.” Nell’s ears went hot. “Including me.”

“Mm.” Hedge’s gaze was a physical thing, down and up, not unkind. “I kneel. I take a beating that would make a priest write a letter. I also don’t train tourists. What’s your word going to be.”

“The house word is fine. Nones.”

“Limits.”

Nell listed them, too fast, then slower when Hedge raised two fingers. No blood for show. No slurs dressed as heat. No public scene until Nell could throw a flogger without flinching at her own shadow. Sex on the table if the hour earned it.

Hedge nodded once. “Upstairs tomorrow, ten a.m. Locksmith’s out on Fridays. You bring coffee that isn’t church-basement swill. You do not bring a speech about Kushiel or whoever you’ve been using as a permission slip. Pain can be holy. It can also just be Tuesday. I like both. I hate being a metaphor before I’ve had caffeine.”

Nell laughed, startled. “Yes.”

“Yes, Hedge, when we’re in hours. Nell can stay Nell. I don’t need a throne name to get wet.” Hedge leaned on the bar. “Last thing. If you freeze, you say so. If you try to protect me from a stroke I asked for by going soft and calling it respect, I will laugh you out of the room. I have knees. I know what I want on them.”

Nell slept that night with the library’s dust still in her nose and the word hours stuck under her tongue like a host nobody had offered her.

Chapter 2 - Prime

The room above the locksmith held a bench, a hook, a radiator, and a window onto a brick well. Hedge unlocked it with a key on a rubber band. She drank the coffee, grunted approval, and stripped to boots and a harness belt with no performance anxiety at all.

“I will kneel when you tell me to,” Hedge said. “I will not kneel to help you start. Say what you want.”

Nell’s voice came out thinner than the archives whisper. She tried again.

“Kneel. Hands on your thighs. I want to look before I touch.”

Hedge went down. The sound of one knee and then the other was ordinary and therefore enormous. Marks already lived on her - old cane ghosts, a small tattoo of a hedge-rose that had not been meant to be cute. Nell walked around her and did not apologize to the air.

“May I touch your shoulder.”

“In here you may, unless I say Nones. Standing yes for hands, mouth, cunt, ass, impact as we discussed. Ask anyway if your brain needs the ramp. Then get on with it.”

Nell set her palm on warm skin. Hedge’s breath changed a fraction.

“Flogger,” Nell said. “Over the bench. Twelve. I will count. You will color if I drift.”

Hedge folded over the leather with a grunt of familiarity. Nell oiled the falls because she had read that you oiled the falls. Her first throws were tidy and timid. Hedge’s back pinked like a polite sunset.

“Harder or we are doing cardio,” Hedge said, dry. “I am not glass. I am also not your martyr. Hit the meat, skip the kidneys, and stop looking at me like I might sue God.”

Nell laughed once, which loosened her shoulder. The next strokes landed. Hedge made a low sound that was not a joke. Nell felt it in her own cunt, uninvited and very invited. She finished twelve with her arm humming.

“Color.”

“Green as cheap chartreuse. Come here.”

Nell came to the head of the bench. Hedge, still draped, turned her face enough to mouth Nell’s hip through her jeans, a rude blessing.

“That’s Prime,” Hedge said. “You stayed. You got less dainty. Write it down if you must. Then take your jeans off or don’t, but don’t stand there leaking and calling it research.”

Chapter 3 - Terce

They did Terce two days later with the radiator knocking like an impatient deacon.

Nell had Hedge strip fully and stand facing the brick, hands on the sill. She used an open palm until Hedge’s ass was hot and her own palm stung. Then she dropped to her knees - the green top on the floor - and put her mouth between Hedge’s legs from behind because she wanted it and because wanting it was part of holding the room.

Hedge swore, fond. “There you are. That’s not apology. That’s appetite. Stay.”

Nell stayed. Hedge was already wet, taste of skin and soap and a bar that never quite left her. Nell licked until Hedge’s thigh trembled against her cheek. When Hedge said now like an order from below, Nell did not argue the hierarchy. She sucked and used her hand and let Hedge come on her mouth with a broken laugh.

Hedge hauled her up by the shirt and kissed her own taste into Nell’s mouth.

“Your turn to stand,” Hedge said. “You don’t come yet. You put me on the bench and you fuck me with the toy you brought and hid in the tote like a contraband relic.”

Nell’s ears burned. She got the harness on with clumsy hands. Hedge watched, amused, then helped buckle without taking the hour away.

“Good girl is a joke I will make later,” Hedge said. “Right now you are the one with the hips. Use them.”

Entry made both of them quiet. Nell held Hedge’s shoulder and moved, learning angle by the sounds Hedge did not bother to pretty up. The bench creaked. Rain hit the brick well. Nell felt the old library instinct - classify this - and let it go. She fucked Hedge until her arms shook, reached around, and rubbed her clit with a rhythm that was almost scholarly and then not at all.

“Come,” Nell said, surprising herself with the lack of question mark.

Hedge did, cursing saints Nell actually knew. Nell followed from friction and the sight, sloppy, forehead on Hedge’s spine.

After, on the floor, Hedge patted Nell’s ass with a welted hand.

“Terce is the hour nobody respects,” Hedge said. “Good. Neither do we. Water. Then you go catalog a bone fragment and try not to blush at the martyrs.”

Chapter 4 - Sext

Sext went wrong by going pretty.

Nell had read too much the night before. She lit a candle. She tried to talk about offering, about pain as a rose, about Hedge’s back as a page. Hedge let it ride for four strokes of the cane and then stood up in the middle of a count.

“No.”

Nell froze, cane hanging.

“That wasn’t Nones,” Hedge said. “That was me refusing to be your stained glass. You disappeared into a sermon. My body was still here wanting a cane, not a thesis. If you need God in the room, fine - but look at me while you invite Her. I am not a stand-in for a book you love.”

Nell’s eyes went wet. She hated that. “I was trying to be worthy of you.”

“Be accurate of me.” Hedge took the cane, set it down, and put Nell’s hand on her own sternum. Heart, blunt, beating. “I like a little church in my sex. I do not like being promoted to symbol mid-stroke. Can you finish the set without the poetry.”

“Yes, Hedge.”

“Color.”

“Green. Embarrassed. Green.”

Hedge went back over the bench. Nell gave her the last six clean, present, no rose window. Hedge’s sounds came back, raw. At the end Nell pressed her mouth to a welt and stayed there, not as apology, as tending.

“Better,” Hedge said into the leather. “That’s Sext: the hour where you find out if you meant it. You meant it. Don’t light a candle next time unless I ask. The radiator is altar enough.”

Chapter 5 - Nones

Nones arrived on a Thursday because Nell’s boss had quoted a psalm at her in the stacks and something in her had flinched toward the workroom with the wrong hunger.

She said so, to her credit, before the first strike.

Hedge listened, then shook her head. “Not tonight. You want to hit a psalm. I am not a psalm. We can fuck. We can drink. We do not cane a mood that came from your boss.”

Nell’s jaw tightened. “I can separate it.”

“Prove it next week.” Hedge’s voice stayed kind and immovable. “Say Nones for the impact plan. Keep the rest if you want my mouth.”

Nell stood in the little room and felt the word like a splinter.

“Nones,” she said. “For the cane. Not for you.”

“Heard.” Hedge sat on the bench like a bartender on a barrel and pulled Nell in by the belt loops. “Good stop. That’s the hour named for it. Come here.”

They made out like teenagers who paid rent. Hedge ate Nell on the bench until Nell cried in the ordinary way, hands in gray-streaked hair, no liturgy required. After, Nell said, small, “I thought stopping meant I failed the calling.”

Hedge snorted. “Calling is just a word for the thing you keep doing after it stops being impressive. You stopped because I asked you to want me and not your boss’s God. That’s competence.” She kissed Nell’s knee. “Also your face when you come is extremely unscholarly. I like it.”

Chapter 6 - Compline

They kept the hours.

Mercy got used to seeing Nell at the end of the bar with a closed face that opened when Hedge’s shift ended. Once, and only once, they did a short public scene in the back room: Hedge on a kneeler somebody had bought as a joke, Nell with a strap, ten measured blows, Hedge grinning through them like a woman at her own feast. A regular crossed herself ironically. Hedge told her to tip better.

Mostly it was the locksmith’s Fridays. Coffee. Bench. The radiator. Nell’s arm getting sure. Hedge’s voice teaching without taking the top away.

On a night they started calling Compline without checking a breviary, Nell had Hedge on her back on a mattress they had finally dragged up the stairs. She pushed two fingers into her, then three, slow, watching. Hedge looked up at the soft-mouthed archivist and did not see a mistake.

“What are you,” Hedge asked, echoing nothing but the room.

“Your top. For this hour. For the next if you keep opening the door.”

“And the library.”

“The library is bones in boxes. You’re not.”

Hedge pulled her down, kissed her like a stamp, and said, “Then fuck me like you mean the hours and not the poster.”

Nell did. The toy, her mouth, Hedge’s boot still on because neither of them wanted the whole religion of nakedness. When they came it was close together and a little ugly and very awake.

After, in the brick-well dark, Hedge said, “I don’t need you to look like me. I need you to keep seeing me when the language gets grand. Do that and I’ll kneel until the radiator dies.”

Nell tucked her face against Hedge’s shoulder, where sweat and old leather and cheap coffee lived.

“Nones if I drift,” she said.

“Nones if I need the ladder,” Hedge said. “Green otherwise. Lock up. I open the bar at four, and I would like to do it with your teeth still printed on my mind.”

They went down the stairs into rain. Mercy’s sign hummed. Somewhere a church rang an actual hour and was, for once, not the point.

Nell walked Hedge to the basement door, kissed her in view of nobody important, and went home to dust and saints.

The saints stayed in their drawers.

The hours stayed on her hands.