closed | put your good face on, you're not fooling no one

[rowancrowned]

WHO: Thranduil, Gwenaëlle Vauquelin
WHAT: After this, a more in-depth conversation.
WHEN: Firstfall 4th
WHERE: Vauquelin residence in Hightown
NOTES: Discussion of family planning, etc.

Her sleep schedule was such that he could run errands in the morning, and even stop by the Gallows to gather his mail with enough time to return to the estate in Hightown before she woke. There was a package alongside the correspondence from the ravens and the internal reports, and he’d secreted it away in his sleeve alongside the rapidly growing baby nug he’d taken charge of before heading back to Hightown.

He had fought her, at first, about using the main entrance to the estate, but on the quiet near-afternoons of the weekends, it was less work to sneak in the side way, going through the kitchen and up to her bedroom. She was still asleep, and he sat gently on the corner of her bed. He stole a few minutes of simply watching her—the rise and fall of her chest, how her hair spread out over her pillow, how soft and peaceful she looked.

The wet nose pushing at his wrist broke his reverie, and he gently coaxed the small nug out, setting him on the bedspread. No boots today, just a soft ribbon around his neck. He made for Gwenaelle nearly immediately across the bed, determined to smell everything. He sniffed at her hand first, nudging it intently, little hands pawing at her own.

(Thranduil hoped that the nug will be blamed rather than he for the awakening.)
 

Comments

[rowancrowned]

"Are you lonely?" He risks a touch to her hair, tucking strands behind her ear. "I know you have Lady Morrigan, and I imagine Kieran requests much of your time, and Ser Coupe, and your writing."

'Can I help?' can sit between them, the promise of more comfort and a way to spend more night at her side, sneak her into the Gallows, perhaps. She is not a young lady who would seek to fill up her calendar. Detests it, even, but her loneliness, if she has any, is his to try and soothe away.

He is interested in what goes on in her house.

[elegiaque]

“Coupe is as much a cure for loneliness as removing one's head is a cure for a headache,” is the first, sour remark - sure, you don't have a headache any more, but you've just replaced one problem with a worse one. A moment later, turning her cheek against his palm; “No, I'm fine.”

The fact she might say as much with an open wound notwithstanding.

“I grew accustomed to you being here, that's all.” Now she would grow accustomed to his absences- complaining of them too loudly seemed out of turn, after everything. (Her numerous exhortations to make himself bloody useful, for a start; not for the first time she thinks of feigning ignorance when he prodded her on her writing's lack of elves, pointedly suggesting in turn that he make himself a member of the Inquisition and not merely an ally. Only look, now, at where they stand.)

[rowancrowned]

He did, perhaps, take her suggestion to the extreme, once he had decided upon following it. He does not let go of things easily, once he has sunk his claws into them.

"As I grew accustomed to waking to you next to me," he says, growing bolder, fingers brushing the shell of her ear. One hand, one touch, above her collarbone. He is strength and patience and ages eternal, but his fëa cries out to be bound and his hroa is weak to it, weakened by the Veil and the imminence of the truth.

She tempts him, calls him to her, it is not something poets have not written about before.

"I hung your gift in my office."