(Closed) Deceuer Catch All

[mirshikar]

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.

Comments

[mirshikar]

[ He notices. Sokie, she's all about little tics and tells, from how she goes quiet in the face of truths she doesn't wish to yet acknowledge for herself (they're the sort that just want to protect others from themselves), to how she averts her gaze, stifling her observant nature when she thinks she may look to someone (a friend, a lover, a fixture in her life) and meet with judgement of a kind. But... Asura is absent any strong reaction—Sokie's walked the mortal realm for far longer than he has, and no one's past is all pleasantries, especially ones where wedding vows had soured—instead, he simply comes to stand behind the mage, his taloned fingers carding through her hair, the gesture mirroring the one the mage had used to soothe him many a time. ]

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. ]

[weirdnecro]

[With Sokie, it was all about the little things. She could present a blank page, but- not here. Not with Asura. He'd hate it, especially after all they've done together today.

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.

[mirshikar]

[ Sokie's right. Asura, he would hate it if she went shields up, denying herself her rightful wrath (her sorrow, desire, fear, and all of the emotions that went hand in hand with promising yourself to someone else) by wearing some cool veneer which neither she nor the King (not now, not after all the moments—impassioned battles and heated kitchen arguments, surprising creature comforts and little indulgences, lessons learned from one another even after several lifetimes spent wandering the world—where he'd seen her spark and come alive) would believe.

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 ear horn. ] 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? ]

[weirdnecro]

[With them it's yelling down the hall, petty arguments that really meant nothing, and talking. Sometimes evenings where they were annoying each other. She could be detached, be completely emotionless, but this wasn't the time for it.

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.

[mirshikar]

[ Giving pause in his ministrations, Asura bows his head, bringing his forehead to rest against the place between Sokie's shoulderblades with a soft thump! as though to say: hey, no more self-deprecation, okay? It isn't like her (though the idea of a family must have meant more to her than he had initially imagined when posing the question, inspiring the thought), and no one gets to disrespect Sokie Undertown on Asura's watch, least of all Sokie herself.

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.

[weirdnecro]

[Was that...was that a headbutt? That was most likely a headbutt. She huffed quietly. She's going to smack him later. Why? Because, that's why.

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.

[mirshikar]

[ For the record: if Asura had only been helping himself to a drink of whiskey from one of their 'Wilder's Reserve' canteens, it would have been spit out. All over Sokie. But as it is, Asura is otherwise occupied.

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.

[weirdnecro]

[She'd be having a rather wet back if he'd been drinking. But she hadn't thought of it. At all. It'd just been- thoughts of the two of them, together, but not with a traditional family, the picket fence.

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.

[mirshikar]

Hey, Sokie? [ W e l l, she'd flustered hard and fast, hadn't she? Asura had presented a problem, and her mage's nature had gotten the best of her—she'd analyzed and she'd deduced a solution, presenting it (and inadvertently propositioning him) all in one fell swoop. And that swoop had left her backtracking like she were fearful (but that can't be true, can it? Sokie Undertown, afraid?) she'd broken something between them. But the reality is..! Conveyed in the moment when Asura shifts his position, chest pressed flush to Sokie's back as he reaches to tweak her nose between a fore and middle finger.

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. ]