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(Closed) Deceuer Catch All
Who: Asura + Plotted CR
When: Deceuer
Where: Various locations in Aefenglom, the Outer City, and the Wilde.
What: Quest and event threads, along with a healthy dose of clowning. I'm always down for building new CR, so if you'd like a thread starter, feel free to hmu @ the Dec plotting post!
Warnings: Light violence.
When: Deceuer
Where: Various locations in Aefenglom, the Outer City, and the Wilde.
What: Quest and event threads, along with a healthy dose of clowning. I'm always down for building new CR, so if you'd like a thread starter, feel free to hmu @ the Dec plotting post!
Warnings: Light violence.
nsfw allusions ahead!
Answer: when Sokie takes his hand, he follows her pull, his kajal-smudged eyes wickedly agleam and bright with both the promise of imminent pleasure and sheer fucking delight with their shared gall; their bold-faced temerity which surfaces in moments like this one, when they're both tired beyond belief but still spoiling for another hit of adrenaline before all is said and done.
And really, it's no different than the aftermath of their first raid—except for the part where they move hard, fast, and way beyond a single kiss (even if the electricity of that first exchange lingers with the King still, and will be a fond remembrance until the end of his days).
It's afterward, when they've made camp with the supplies in their packs, that Asura (energized and all aglow from their physicality, the feel of Sokie against his skin and her scent which he remains enveloped in) cards a hand through his unruly mane of hair, and feeds kindling to the campfire that's currently heating whatever it is that the mage brought along for a meal. ]
...think you already know what it is that I want to say to you. [ That truth from before which had always been destined to follow their fun; the bout of divination which Sokie had suspected but never confirmed. ] The first thing is: I'm sorry.
[ Which is an apology for— ]
The second thing is: when I picked up your ring, I got an impression without casting a spell. I saw the guy, whoever it was that you shared the band with. And judging by how you felt before, [ that surge of ice-cold anger the sight of the jewelry piece had inspired in her. recalling it now, Asura can still taste it upon his tongue. ] he's someone best forgotten. So I'm going to do my damndest to do just that. Forget.
[ Unless Sokie herself prompts him otherwise. ]
just a few more nsfw allusions /coughs
Like a firework, it is quick, exciting, and breath taking, but ultimately, not long. It's not the same as that first electric kiss, but nothing can match it.
It's after, as she's preparing grilled cheese and hearthside tomato soup, hair rumpled and her body feeling both relaxed and sore-she listened as he spoke, still attending to the fire and putting more wood on it- that she's likely to tense.
She doesn't exactly. Tense, that is. Instead, her shoulders slump, and she sighs.]
Of course you saw. It's one of those side effects from doing so much divination magic.
[Like how some witches are toasty warm, or how she can seem solid, more then she is. She rubbed at her neck (feeling a bite mark from their tryst) wincing a little. It was easier. Physical pain, slight as it was.]
You mean my first husband. That is, if he had a jawline for days?
[She says it lightly enough, but it's telling in how she didn't turn around to talk to Asura about it. Sometimes she doesn't, but she usually peeks-to see what he's doing, what his reaction will be.]
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That's the one. Chiseled to high hell and with flaxen hair that'd put a damn storybook prince to shame.
[ Far more delicate and deft than most would give him credit for, with gentle motions, Asura ceases to brush and card, instead massaging intricate filigrees and pattern against the nape of Sokie's neck, before...! His fingers sweep over that bitemark which he'd given the mage in exchange for the rake of her nails down his shoulderblades. The sting had been pleasurable, after all, and a gift should always be answered with another.
But the massage continues, as Asura recalls further— ]
His eyes were the blue-grey of steel, and the look he wore was adoring... [ Of you, he doesn't need to say. ] But he didn't last long, did he, if he was only your first.
[ Because from the way she'd said it, first, there's no doubt in Asura's mind that there had been more to come afterward. ]
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But it's sweet, how he goes to comfort her-and even makes that little touch on her neck to go with it. Possessive, but subtle. Well. Subtle for Asura at least, as he tried to coax more out of her.
It helped, more or less. Though her mind was less on the food she was tending to, now, and more on the image that came to her mind. The eyes; the way he laughed. How he first held her hand and their first dance.
What a bunch of sentimental slop.]
You say that as if I haven't lived long enough to have more then one marriage. How hurtful.
[She says it lightly enough, and made a soft noise, wincing a bit. The muscle under his hand had been harder then she thought, due to stress.]
But it didn't last long. He divorced me. He was allowed to by the Church due to infertility. My infertility.
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But... it's still something largely unexpected, when she entrusts him with something that's so very weighty and yet so fragile at once. More than how her marriage had ended, it's that she had wanted children. Had tried. Found out only through the process that she'd been infertile. And at that time (Asura's no great historian of human civilization, but he's versed enough to know that it had been centuries ago, when the institution marriage had still been considered so sacred that it could only be severed under ordained circumstance), Sokie had been the one hurt by Prince Charming, the union they'd forged together dashed upon the rocks and all because that asshole Goldilocks felt entitled to more and couldn't look past it. Couldn't see Sokie for who she was. ]
You're quiet. [ Fingers kneading the muscle at the base of Sokie's neck, he finds the tension there and works to undo it, his voice not without it's even, rhythmic cadence as he speaks: ] Would've expected you to scream and shout something like that into the fire, letting it burn away.
You still can, if you want. [ Catharsis, in the form of flame and Asura's
earhorn. ] It feels like you've been holding onto that for centuries, [ with how rigid the muscle of her back is beneath his hands] give or take a few years.The idea of him. Of a family. [ The question which Asura asks next, it's absent of anything but a desire to know the woman who's chosen the name Sokie Undertown; to see her clearly: ] Does it mean something to you, still?
[ Or is it simply the bitter taste of a memory soured at the back of the mouth? ]
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After all, she offered him something precious. Information that was rarely offered, unknown to others other then well- now him.]
It's a generous offer Asura. But I don't need to shout it. Not now.
[She feels too...tired? To be truly angry right then. As for the question...she shrugged.]
I tried, a few more times. Consulted. Nothing could be done.
I haven't tried to adopt. Not formally. I'd likely be a shitty mother.
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When he speaks, next, his words are thoughtful, drawn from what little he knows of the subject: ]
Think that's one of the main criteria of being a parent. Being shitty, in one way or another. I've never heard of any one person excelling at that job. [ The Vallanzasca patriarch and his wife included. How many times had their pint-sized brats clung to Asura's legs, asking him why it hadn't been safe to accompany their parents outside? If Asura could protect their mother and father, why couldn't he do the same for them? Why, why, why were they sheltered all the time, and why did their parents seem like strangers after being away at night? ] And from the outside looking in? It's always seemed like there's a lot of touch-and-go involved.
[ The could be no master-plan for rearing someone up, making sure they were safe, that they were always able to learn and to grow—or so Asura's of the mind. It's no different from the way he shepherds Hedgefresh recruits: no single person flourishes under the same circumstances, the same passage and rites. ]
But... if anyone's got something to offer to a munchkin, it's you Sokie Undertown. [ He smiles and as he does he presses his lips to her skin, letting her feel the gesture for herself before he begins the massage again, thumbs working pressure into her lower back to loosen the muscle there. ] You see the world in ways no one else does, and...
[ Even if it is not passed down to a child— ] That, at the very least, is worth showing someone else. It doesn't matter who it is.
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She's quiet though, listening to what he's saying. If there's anyone who's had a chance to babysit and rise kids, it'd be Asura- if only as King, he had to watch over his Court who were little more then babes born again in a not so mad world.
He also mentioned babysitting kids before too, and accidentally taking away a nightmare, so. But...it makes her wonder something.]
Have you ever thought about it?
[Thought about what, but she clarified as she leaned into the massage:]
Us having kids.
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So instead: ]
I have thought about us many times. [ —he starts after a lengthy bout of silence, surprise causing the King's words to catch in his throat because, Sokie, that had come straight out of left field, all right? But the pause had been distinctly lacking in tension, and the massage had continued all the while (where was that spot, the one which would cause Sokie to thoroughly melt into his hands and sigh?), allowing Asura to gauge three important facts: the first, that Sokie did not ask him the question in jest. The second, that the thought (the question, the idea of them as parents) had just now occurred to her. And the third? Well, it's his own answer: ] I have imagined us as protectors and as warriors, and even as one of those damn couples from the romance novels you read to me. But...
Not about kids. Maybe because my kind, we can't have them. [ Inhuman as he is and will always be. ] Or maybe because I'm like you, and didn't think I was cut out for the job.
[ And yet, yet he'd always been a glorified babysitter for an absentee mafioso power-couple, and he had made it his life's work to take tender-footed and green Changelings into Summer's scarred and open arms. ]
But now? Yeah, you bet your ass that I'm thinking about it. [ Read: it's her fault for mentioning it to begin with. ] And I know that, hypothetically, if it were you and me, we could take on a brat or two together no problem.
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But she wasn't joking either. Maybe that's why he was able to answer at all.]
You seemed to really like that last romance book. It made you really...vigorous.
[To put it lightly. But she listened.]
You realize that if we really wanted a child, one of our own, we could make that happen, right? It'd just take a bit of research on my part, and finding donors.
That is, if you wanted children. With me. Or at all.
[This is awkward.]
Shit. This is weird. I shouldn't have brought this up.
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And as though it were some great secret, his voice falls hushed (if not vigorously so) when he murmurs into her ear: ] I want everything with you.
[ Fitting together every which way. Family defined on their terms. Storied battles. Reenactments of bad romance novels. Everything. And hey, they've got ten(s) of lifetimes to figure out the timing. There's nothing so awkward about that, right? Any blunder, any strain, is banished in its entirety by the King's avid, true, and unabashed proclamation. The only thing is...
He'd used Sokie's trademark move (the nose tweak!!) against her, and there's not a single soul to save the King from the mage's retribution out here in the depths of the Wilde. ]