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Manuela sauntered into Seteth’s office, for the purpose of getting him to sign off on some additional funds for the infirmary. They needed it, what with all the unexpectedly tough student missions this year. With a little flirting, and a little pressure, she was sure he would cave and agree to at least half her demands. Unfortunately, his agreement would probably have more to do with wanting to interact with her as little as possible and less to do with wanting to help her out in any way.
And there were certainly ways in which Manuela wished he would help her out.
She sighed wistfully as she saw him, sitting at his desk with his exemplary posture, his eyes fixed intently on an open tome on his desk, his brow furrowed with deep lines that Manuela itched to run her fingers along. He didn’t even spare her a glance, though the click clack of her heels—not to mention her sigh—should have been more than enough to alert him to her presence.
She cleared her throat.
Seteth looked up.
His face blanched.
“Leave at once!” he yelled, a moment before his eyes flicked down from her face to her outfit and his face somehow managed to pale further.
Well, that hadn’t been the reception she was expecting! She’d dressed up for the occasion and everything!
“Excuse you,” Manuela said, a hand on her hip.
“Why are you here?” Seteth asked, his voice a little calmer but clearly still on edge. “And what are you wearing?”
Manuela smiled at him and did a little twirl, trying to both lighten the mood and show herself off to the best advantage in her new outfit. “It’s summer for the students, so I thought I should take their lead and dress the part. What do you think?”
Seteth’s eyes trailed over her body, encased within a size too small student summer uniform, before he remembered himself and his eyes snapped back up to hers.
His cheeks were definitely a little pinker than usual.
Manuela’s smile grew wider. She had been right. He showed no reaction to her usual, very revealing outfit, which was aggravating beyond belief. But conceal a little with a high necked white blouse, while still wearing a tight, short skirt, and his tastes weren’t all that different from any other red-blooded man’s.
Seteth frowned at her, picking up his quill as if there was something he needed to write immediately and so he couldn’t afford to pay attention to her right now, before realizing that the open tome on his desk was effectively covering all of his parchment and preventing him from doing so. The quill hovered in the air for several seconds, before Seteth decided that returning it to its inkstand was the best course of action.
Really, so flustered! He was much more similar to other men than his ice cold exterior suggested.
“Oh, and as to your first question, I need to discuss infirmary supplies with you,” Manuela said, taking pity on his discombobulation. “It’s urgent. I wouldn’t have bothered you otherwise. I know how… uptight you can be.”
Seteth didn’t admonish her, nor did he ignore her. He winced. “...It’s already too late,” he murmured, as if to himself.
Manuela raised an eyebrow. “Too late? It’s not even lunch yet.”
Was she affecting him so much he needed her out of the room this instant? How marvellous.
“No,” Seteth heaved out the single syllable in the most tired way possible. “The wall,” he said, gesturing in her direction.
The wall? Manuela only realized what he meant when she suddenly felt a solid mass at her back and stumbled forward as it pushed her. She turned and found herself facing a wall. The very same wall that had definitely been a decent distance from her when she had entered the room, safely in its proper location. The wall that clearly should not be where it currently was. The wall that had somehow encroached past the doorway, so there was now no way out of Seteth’s office.
This time, Manuela was watching it carefully when it crept closer and she was left aghast at the knowledge that the wall was somehow moving.
She whirled around to face Seteth. “Why is the wall moving?” she asked, proud of herself for keeping somewhat calm in the face of something that was one of the strangest things she’d ever seen at the monastery (and that was saying something, given the weird occurrences this year).
Seteth sighed. “Constance.”
“Ah.” That was enough for Manuela to know.
Manuela liked the mercenary well enough, Byleth was kind—well, not always, she was definitely a bit too judgemental about the state of Manuela’s room—and could be counted on to listen whenever Manuela had a particularly long day and needed to vent.
For someone who had fallen into a teaching job, Byleth had the makings of a good teacher. Her most important quality (in Manuela’s estimation) was that she had her students’ best interests at heart.
Unfortunately, Byleth had decided that her students extended not just to the class she had been assigned, but to the four ex-students she had found somewhere underground. Manuela wasn’t sure about them. Yuri was far too knowing, Hapi was sarcasm personified, Balthus was… it was flattering, Manuela could admit that. But of them all, Constance was the thorn in Manuela’s side.
She was a Hanneman in the making, except instead of having the decency to focus on one test subject, a poor victim thrown to the wolves, Constance’s enthusiasm had led her experimental potions and spells to be cast at anyone who encountered her, which meant almost a third of the monastery’s population had experienced that particular horror.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t Manuela’s first time. She shuddered just thinking about the hideous sack of a dress she’d been forced to wear for a whole week, even to bed.
Still, that didn’t quite explain why this particular spell seemed more pointed than most of Constance’s were, almost as if pleasure had been taken in the casting of it.
“Seteth… What did you do?” Manuela asked, expecting a vociferous denial of having done anything at all.
Seteth pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “I called her into my office to tell her the experiments are getting out of hand and must cease for the good of everyone.”
Manuela rolled her eyes. Well, wasn’t that the worst possible thing to say to a mage whose sole passion was those very experiments and their purpose in rebuilding her former House? No wonder she had Seteth trapped in his office to teach him a lesson about what she could do to him if he tried to stop her.
“And you thought that she would agree with you?” Manuela asked incredulously.
Seteth slumped in his chair, and his sudden lack of proper posture caused Manuela far more worry than a moving wall could ever inspire.
“What are the bounds of the spell?” Manuela asked, taking the lead when she saw he wasn’t going to. Someone had to fix this problem. Besides, she couldn’t deny that being Seteth’s saviour had a nice ring to it.
“My desk. I believe,” Seteth said. “That’s the object she cast the spell on.”
“Hm. Not the wall. Good.” Manuela moved forward with purpose, until she reached Seteth’s desk and leaned forward, laying her palms flat on the wooden surface.
Seteth jumped back, his chair hitting the wall behind him with a sharp thud, as if it too was closer than he had expected it to be.
“Am I scarier than a moving wall?” Manuela asked, one eyebrow arched.
“No…” Seteth said unconvincingly.
“You can’t even see down this blouse!” Manuela said. “Unless you’d like me to undo some buttons?” She ran her hands teasingly over her (covered) decolletage.
“No!” Seteth’s denial was far stronger this time.
Too bad, thought Manuela. She wouldn’t have minded showing him.
“But,” Seteth said, clearing his throat, “I believe, for your safety, you shouldn’t stay in that position.”
“For my safety? Why, are you going to attack me?” Manuela tried throwing him a seductive smile.
“No,” Seteth said, shutting down her attempt at flirting completely. “The wall is.”
Something hit her backside, jostling her uncomfortably against the edge of the desk.
“I think it would be safer next to me,” Seteth said, gesturing at his side of the desk. “I believe the chair might also be within the bounds of the spell.”
Manuela nodded. Yes, that would make sense. Constance, while volatile, wouldn’t have cast a spell that would result in certain death.
Seteth stood, squeezing out from between the chair and his desk, breathing a sigh of relief after doing so and leaning against the mercifully now still back wall of his office. Manuela joined him there, her own path impeded by the lessening gap between the wall and the front of Seteth’s desk, forced to acknowledge that thick thighs might not always save lives.
“Manuela,” Seteth said lowly, his voice almost a growl, as she reached him.
She shivered, pressed up against him in the small space.
“There was space on the other side of the chair for you,” he said.
“Yes. I noticed. But I chose this, oh well.” She looked to the side to see the wall there had also closed in on them and then looked over her shoulder at the wall which had now reached the desk and stopped. “It seems we’re trapped in this position. I can’t possibly get around to the other side now. Unless you’d like me to attempt to climb over your chair to do so. In this tight skirt. That could rip due to excessive movement.”
Seteth sighed, causing his chest to heave and press against Manuela’s own.
She’d always wondered just what he was hiding underneath that far too loose cassock. Now she knew that his chest felt rock hard, nicely chiselled. She licked her lips, imagining what his bare chest would look like. Green chest hair perhaps? That would certainly be a new experience for her.
Manuela realized she might have played herself more than him by her decision to stand here, so close that they couldn’t move without touching, so close that every inhale and exhale made her feel more and more excited.
“So, how long until the spell wears off, do you think?” Manuela asked, trying to distract herself before she unintentionally let her hands wander all over his chest. Or somewhere else.
“It does not matter. I have a meeting with the Archbishop at noon and when she finds me absent, she will come here looking for me and free us.”
Manuela nodded. That made sense. It wasn’t that much longer to wait and Archbishop Rhea was certainly the most adept person at dispelling magic close by.
“Are you sure you don’t mind her finding us together in a compromising position?” Manuela asked.
Seteth gave her a look. “Why would I?”
It hurt. The easy dismissal, not seeing her as a woman but instead as a nuisance. Why did she always have to fall for the unavailable ones? What had seemed like great fortune only moments before now felt like it was suffocating her.
“Why don’t we just yell?” Manuela asked, through a pained smile. “The sooner she’s alerted, the sooner we can leave, and I’m a soprano for a reason, darling.”
She prepared herself by taking a deep breath, making the split second decision to deliver the highest pitch note she could hit, just to make this as excruciatingly painful for Seteth as possible.
Before she could deliver on that promise, her mouth was forcefully covered by Seteth’s hand.
“No,” he hissed.
Manuela blinked in confusion, staring at him.
He blushed a little again, almost imperceptibly, as he gently removed his hand from her mouth. “I— It’s better if it’s the Archbishop. A high note could send anyone here.”
“Oh.” A disbelieving huff of laughter escaped Manuela’s throat. “Couldn’t have Flayn seeing this and misunderstanding.”
She knew she wasn’t anyone’s idea of a perfect paramour, one you’d want to introduce to your family, but it still hurt.
She pushed herself back, as far as the desk would allow her. It wasn’t far enough.
“Manuela,” Seteth said, almost pleading with her.
He didn’t need to. She knew what their relationship was. She flirted with him because she liked him despite his (obvious) shortcomings, and he (barely) tolerated it for the sake of work.
“Manuela,” Seteth repeated, reaching forward to brush her hair back from the side of her face.
He was being nice. He was never nice. Why was he playing with her feelings like this? Because they were trapped here? Because he didn’t want things to be uncomfortable?
“You’re the one who’s misunderstanding,” he whispered.
Oh.
Oh.
He looked soft, like the years she’d spent trying to break down his resistance with seemingly nothing to show for it, had in fact all been leading up to this point where she’d finally broken through to reach his heart.
Manuela’s heart thumped so loudly in her chest that she was sure he must hear it.
She was in so much trouble.
Hidden depths, indeed.
That was her last thought before Seteth cupped her cheek and closed the miniscule distance between them to kiss her.
She’d always imagined that if they ever kissed it would be because she had taken the lead. She’d always imagined that if he kissed her, it would be sweet and soft and tender.
Instead, it was hungry.
He devoured her, like he’d been waiting for years for this moment, waiting for as long as she had. His hands, oh Goddess, the feel of his hands, calloused and strong and roaming, pulling her even closer to him as if he needed more.
She certainly did. Her hands reached around his body, down to his ass, and squeezed, pleased to find he was firm to her liking there, too. And she was sure she could feel something pressing against her, something large.
Manuela moaned.
Someone in the distance coughed.
Seteth disentangled himself from her, breathing heavily and looking in the direction of the doorway.
Rhea stood there, elegant as always.
“Am I interrupting? Or should I remove this spell for you, Seteth?”
Manuela couldn’t help but rue the interruption, even as they were saved, even as Seteth looked so adorable, clearly blushing at nearly being caught. The problem was, this would give him time to think, time to decide that this wasn’t a good idea.
She wouldn’t let him.
She’d never let him rebuild the walls he’d put up against her again.