[ CLOSED ]

[aenseidhe]

WHO: Iorveth, Thranduil and Gwen
WHAT: Arguing, naked people
WHEN: Directly after this.
WHERE: The Gallows, Thranduil's office
NOTES: Bad words and life choices, also Gwen's boobs.

[ Thankfully, no Templars get in Iorveth's face on the way to Thranduil's office, and he makes it to the door with no blood on his hands. However, he's no less enraged, paranoid, and ready to bolt from this shithole of a city, possibly without a left hand, thanks, Casimir.

Or possibly with all the left hands of all the Rifters. He really shouldn't have mentioned that part.

Shoving the door open, Iorveth marches in looking entirely like the officer that carved vengeance out of men's bodies, claimed trophies from human officers, and burned men alive. There hasn't yet really been cause for him to get so up in arms, until another set of foreign negotiations made rules over his will. It compounds - the thoughts he'd had in wondering what the consequences to telling the Inquisition 'no' would be, how long the Inquisition's insignia will keep him from being cornered into an alienage as well, all the people standing still while things something disgusting occurs and calling it civility, or politics.

It makes his skin crawl. So here he is, because Thranduil called, and somehow he has the respect to obey that when very few else would win it, but today that's been pushed too. ]

What?

Comments

[elegiaque]

( gwenaëlle lets not tonight pass without comment because—he's probably right, and it's a subject on which they rarely see anything like eye to eye. that conversation has all the hallmarks of an argument, even if it's a familiar enough retread by now.

no, instead, she puts a hand on his wrist, restraining: )

I think, ( carefully, ) that there's something you might do first that might make that more palatable.

( because she saw that hesitation of fingers. the gesture that probably wasn't going to be what it became, at the start. she's spent enough time teaching herself to look in the mirror of other people's eyes without flinching; how much worse must it be, when the injury is so immediate?

much, she could guess from thranduil's smooth, unbroken glamour. )

I was lucky enough rage demons apparently respect 'not my pretty face', ( dry as the hissing wastes, ) and Iorveth's seen mine, but maybe if you want to see his, he sees yours first.

[rowancrowned]

[ he is grateful enough for her easy assent to leaving it be, and so when she puts the plan to him, he does not flinch, physically or mentally, away from her suggestion. ]

If you think it best, [ he says, and submits to her better judgement although it has him uneasy. the glamour drops in a ripple across his skin, withdrawn slowly. putting it away all at once feels too much like being made to, and he loathes that feeling.

and then it is there for iorveth's inspection: unseeing eye, a cheek with the flesh burned down to the muscle underneath, a web of healed burns across shoulder and arm that speak of it being lifted to cover from some sort of fire, as if he had expected a shield to raise when his arm had.

(no, he had dropped it, when they had called the retreat.)

he holds still, and steady. ]

[aenseidhe]

[ Iorveth had his lips already parted to give another excuse to keep the headscarf on, but gwenaëlle has a dreadfully keen perception for things others aren't saying, any facade of polite smiling melting as she hits the nail on the freaking head. The way she does, though, brings up something curious - talk of scars, of Thranduil's, as if he has something similar. on his face, no less, and it starts to click in his mind.

he realizes it must be something like the sorceresses do to stay looking young, even before the glamour starts to ebb away, and the damage to the one side of his face looks painfully extensive. nothing iorveth flinches from, but much more than he's been expecting. it's half-mesmerized, the way he reaches a hand up gingerly touching at the scarred edges of Thranduil's skin, soft, like a caress. ]

You'll have to teach me that trick some time. [ Iorveth murmurs, a small smile on his lips, already feeling a good deal more comfortable, and a little raw from the honesty of the moment. ] Seems much more comfortable than wrapping a rag over it.

[ he's not really sure he should, but Iorveth knows the distinct shame of being an elf that's had their beauty taken from them, and the idea of wanting it to disappear. how difficult this must be even for a elven king of 7,000. by means of thank you, and reassurance, he eases forward, pressing a short kiss to thranduil's lips - chaste and momentary, to make a point, and not looking to start more things than they're wanting to.

So, right, his turn.

when Iorveth tugs the scarf from his head, his hair is braided back in a few small places, but the majority of it is loose, pushed back but now falling to the side in places, at the corners of his face. raising his chin, it's easy to see the wound where his eye used to be, and it's no simple scar over it, or just the lids sealed shut. the socket is burned out, vicious and mangled, clearly something done with intent behind it, rather than a stray battle wound. the deep, jagged scar that curves a wicked trail from his temple down to the corner of his lips is secondary next to it. ]

[elegiaque]

( the restraining hand on thranduil's wrist turns gentle, finds his fingers and tangles with them; gwenaëlle presses her closed lips to his shoulder and stays there, a small solid constancy. too much else had been happening when she first saw his scars to flinch at them then, and she doesn't now—is better prepared not to do it when iorveth removes his bandana, and the brutality of what was done to him becomes apparent.

more like unto what was done to herian and her father, in its cruel deliberateness, but that's a thought she lets come and go, a story that isn't hers to tell and not made for this moment.

she doesn't let go of thranduil, but she does reach out with her free hand—not for iorveth's face. yet. he's near enough that her hand can fall on his thigh, and settle there. the only way she's ever known how to express a desire to be close to someone is just to be close to them, and it's a small thing, sometimes, but it's always felt as if it mattered. to demonstrate. to be demonstrative, in the small ways. )

Rag, ( she echoes, grimacing at that as she hadn't at his actual face. ) I'm going to make you something nicer.

( she has just decided this. )

[rowancrowned]

[ he would hiss, at the comparison, and he nearly snaps at the hand; he loathes pity or any fuss made and intended (intends) to extend the same courtesy to iorveth, but there is gwenaëlle's hand and he hardly has any room to maneuver, so submit he must. once the hand and lips are gone, neither of them finding yielding ground, up it goes again, and thranduil allows him time to remove the rag- well, gwenaëlle is very right about the situation, how poorly appointed he is, it will not do for him to look so untended- and he takes up the comb again, and shifts his leg so that iorveth is between them and more or less in his lap. ]

Good, [ thranduil says, pleased with his clever wife, already working at undoing those smaller braids iorveth had spoken of. he needs a long soak and oils for his hair, but this will have to do. ] We are courting you; are you enjoying it.

[ that is far from a questioning tone, far from a tone that expects anything other than a nod or perhaps a drowsy stretch. he will permit the fussing for a quarter of an hour more at most; thranduil will not press his luck, and then he has calls to make. ]

[aenseidhe]

[ iorveth thinks he will never stop having the urge to laugh when the word 'courting' comes up, because it brings such an unfitting imagine to his mind. even before his life as a scoia'tael, iorveth only knew of the social lives of nobles through the mocking he and his friends would do to entertain themselves.

in the slums, there wasn't courting. there was getting drunk and feeling each other up in the backs of dark taverns and alleyways. in the scoia'tael it was about the same, with a few exceptions of Possibly Actually Real Feelings that were entertained for a night or two. courting is completely behind him, and brings up romeo and juliet nonsense pictures in his head, ladies with fans and suitors making bargains for them.

what gwenaelle and thranduil are doing seems nothing like that imagining, and he's glad for it. he's never had much patience for frivolity and put upon gestures. getting high, snuggling, playing with hair in the morning sunshine. these are things he prefers. ]

You are picking at me like mother hens. [ correction. he hasn't been dotted on like this since he was a child, but the way he's slumped a little, back leaning some on thranduil's chest, his eye blinking shut after a moment, it's clear he doesn't have any complaints about it. ] But yes. I'm enjoying it.

[ after a moment of soaking it up, he looks to gwenaëlle, motioning her to come closer, to sit between his legs like he is thranduil's, because his hands are idle and he wants them closer. ]

Come here. I haven't gotten to put real braids in long hair in years. [ and by real braids, he means elf braids. ]

[elegiaque]

What are we calling 'real' braids, exactly—

( as if she can't guess, yes, but she's already moving to oblige him (patting thranduil's side absently as she moves away from it, casually and familiarly affectionate), sweeping her hair down her back for him and settling between his knees, cross-legged, comfortable. it is long hair, falling to her waist and showing signs of the curl she rarely lets go untamed.

there is something very comforting about someone else's hands in her hair. still. )

I don't think we actually did, you know, ( after a moment. ) You and I, I mean, Thranduil. We didn't have a courtship, we just fought for two years and eventually realised why.

[rowancrowned]

I courted you, [ thranduil says, affronted. ] I brought you gifts, hair-ribbons, a hound to keep you safe for when I could not be with you. I gave you a portrait-- charcoal only, but I would replace it with another, had you asked. You bade me defend you, and invited me into your home.

[ these are, to him, the mark of courtship, or so he insists, in between braiding iorveth's hair into something like order, a few strands left to fall artfully outside of the borders of the head-covering, the rest braided back and behind his ears without being too tight. it is quick work, there is not much of it, and he thinks he will need to leave them abed and start his own work sooner rather than later. ]

They were good Sinda and Silvan courting gifts, even if I did not know it at the time.

[aenseidhe]

You'll see.

[ Is all Iorveth answers Gwenaelle, when asked about the braids he plans to weave into her hair, content to listen to the bickering going on around him with a impish kind of grin. even if he weren't involved with the two of them in the way they're proposing, it's enough of a joy just being around them. companionship and familiarity is a thing he hadn't realized he'd missed so much from home.

He has no idea what Thranduil's doing with his hair, but doesn't particularly care one way or another. It's definitely not as soft or long as either of theirs, but the man seems contented with it, and Iorveth enjoys the feel of his fingers slipping through the strands. ] But, can they really be called courting gifts if that wasn't the intention at the time?

[ leaning his head back, he peers at Thranduil upside down, a mischievous smirk on his lips, while his hands still work at gwen's hair, braiding up one side of a much more complicated design, but one he knows well. for reasons. ] What else counts as good Sinda and Silvan courting gifts?

[ do decapitated human heads count? because he's got that one down. ]

[elegiaque]

( oh, she'll see, very well. with nothing to occupy her hands, she snaps her fingers absently until leviathan trots obigingly up into her lap, and settles there. thranduil's objections and iorveth's clarification have her laughing, trying not to jostle busy fingers— )

I don't think they can. Not when you told my mother so specifically you most certainly weren't.

( the gift that kept on giving, that one brief exchange with guenievre; dutifully repeated to gwenaëlle, and heard later by katell, and passed to luwenna coupe, and speculated on by morrigan. iorveth seems like the sort of strapping fellow who's in no need of owl beaks, at least. )

Alistair bought me hair ribbons, everyone bought me hair ribbons until I told them to stop. And half of Orlais has portraits of me in various states of undress.

( all right, maybe not half of orlais. but there's a few of them floating around, two in kirkwall. )

[rowancrowned]

I thought myself impotent, [ he protests, and would it really have been that different if he had been in a situation to find himself able? if being elven meant different things, if he'd realized that the flesh and fëa here were not one and the same with the one he had possessed in arda? perhaps, perhaps not, perhaps the truth would have come to light while her mother was still alive and they would have had something other than what they have now.

he likes what they have now. he likes the idea of what they might have with iorveth, too. iorveth, who will keep her safe as well as thranduil does. ]

Mm. We count kills, in hunting or in war. Trophies from that are not uncommon. Arrowheads, if your intended is an archer, or feathers. Useful, clever, beautiful things.

[ the noldor mostly do jewelry, but greenwood and mirkwood have both tended towards the common. but if your wife was a jewelsmith, then a gift of white gems would not have been out of place.

that thought, he does not keep. ]

Iorveth may buy you hair ribbons, and have a portrait, [ he grants, generously. ]