open | if language were liquid

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: The Irrepressible Lady Lexie and You
WHAT: Catch-all for January
WHEN: Mostly current, may be some time travel in prompts
WHERE: Kirkwall/Gallows
NOTES: Come at me

[ This is the open, specific prompts will be in comments! Feel free to make your own. ]

Office Hours

Rather than share her time between the Jeshavis office and the library Alexandrie has had an additional bookcase (exactly matching the first, of course) brought in, and has a number of tomes on what is essentially permanent loan to join those from her personal library. An array of dictionaries, linguistic texts, and books on histories and noble families in the languages of their countries—books in Antivan, Nevarran, Rivaini, Tevene, Ander, and one on the Memories and their runic inscriptions sit alongside those from Orlais and Ferelden—have joined the publicly available project reports; she has moved her translation work in its entirety to her office. Perhaps it's for privacy, perhaps for easier availability to anyone who might be seeking her out.

The desk itself is covered in three books, half stacked atop each other, and a small sheaf of papers. At the moment, however, she's taking lunch at a small table brought in for the purpose of holding the silver tray and its contents. Despite the development of 'team spirit' that inspired her to seek the position in the first place, apparently she hasn't got enough of it to enjoy the common fare available a few floors below.

The lady is in.

Comments

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie startles, quickly twisting to look back over her shoulder at Loki with the slightest hint of guilt.

"Late? No," she replies, although the reassurance is a bit uncertain, as if the concept of time has temporarily eluded her. "It was not found so much as it found me; an acquaintance I renewed whilst we were in Val Royeaux sent it, and it only just arrived." Recovered now, she unfolds from her stretch and turns on the floor to face him with an impish look, sliding the book around in front of her such that the cover remains a mystery for the moment.

"You remember we were the subject of some attention when we visited last, albeit largely the form that comes along with having made some rather unpopular decisions?"

[hwaaaitsme]

She turns her expression coquettish and Loki's interest is piqued. The book is placed outside of his line of sight and she, oh so demurely, reminds of him of their trip to Val Royeaux. It had been a dreadfully boring time, all things considered, and Loki's crooked brow arches higher.

"I recall," he admits. It was the sort of scrutiny he was used to, of course, and not exceedingly beyond the norm...but if this is to do with Val Royeaux?

[coquettish_trees]

"Well," her eyes sparkle secretively, "Apparently someone was paying an entirely different form of—" A pause, and then she draws up her knees and places the little volume against them, still hidden, and clears her throat delicately for effect before beginning to read in Orlesian.

"Another turn on the floor, and Lady Seraphine found herself in unfamiliar arms. She had danced with all at court save one, and thus she had no need to look to know with striking certainty into whose hand she had placed her own; whose hand now slid around the delicacy of her waist to press against the low curve of her back and draw her against him with all the unyielding confidence of a command, and she stifles a quiet gasp at the shudder that rises along her spine too quickly for her to will it still.

'You have been avoiding me, my lady,'" Alexandrie purrs lowly, shifting her accent to somewhere around the city of Marnas Pell, and then looks up from the page with a catlike smile, sliding the book above her knees so Loki can see the cover.

[hwaaaitsme]

At first, during her dramatic reading, Loki is just slightly uncertain as to why she is reciting Orlesian pornography to him. He is familiar with the genre, the romance and intrigue, but does not actively follow any authors who indulge in it. It takes him a moment, until she does a rather dashing rendition of his own accent, before he realizes that the couple on the page is a facsimile of them.

He is, not to put too delicate a point on it, utterly stunned and it shows on his expression. The warring look of confusion and fascination is some relative to that look he gave her when she first said she loved him. This is so absolutely beyond the pale he has no reference for how to process it.

The cover does not help.

"The Diplomacy of Desire," he repeats the title out loud and stares, still shocked, at the cover. It is clearly an artists rendition done from description and memory. The only aspects that look like either of them are his dark hair and her flaming copper hair...but yes, it is clearly them.

And, for one rare moment, he is speechless.

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie's smile blossoms further, barely containing her delight as Loki's expression abruptly shifts from polite indulgent confusion to the open flickering between surprise and disbelief and curiosity that so rarely visits it and always makes her want to pursue the advantage.

"There are," she says, "two responses to scandal in Orlais. Snide and cutting gossip," she shuts the book and waves it gently back and forth, "and odes to its eroticism."

She flutters her eyelashes at him, sets it down, and rises from the floor with a languid stretch once standing before tilting her head and making innocent inquiry: "Shall we practice?"

[hwaaaitsme]

She rises to join him but, despite himself, Loki cannot seem to look away from the book she's set aside. It's a grim sort of horror, knowing that he had been poorly imitated and immortalized in a romance novel. The very idea--the sheer lunacy of that--is something he has not yet managed to process. Had anyone he knew read this? Did it matter if they had? Thor can't read Orlesian can he? It would be just Loki's luck if he could.

Ah, but he is distracted.

His wife is speaking to him and expects their normal sparring practice and he promptly obliges her.

"What--? Yes, of course," he says quickly and gathers his wits about him. He tears his eyes from that cover and, with a reflexive, dashing smile, stands tall and inclines his head.

"Now where were we?"

[coquettish_trees]

"Hand-to-hand, should I find myself disarmed," Alexandrie replies sweetly, the corner of her smile twitching as Loki pulls his attention from the book with obvious effort.

She, having been born of the country that interminably produces such things (and an avid reader of them), is far less bothered.

[hwaaaitsme]

"Yes, of course," Loki agrees, still distracted by that book, despite it being cast aside and out of sight. As a show of good faith, and it is that, a show, he twists his hands and the knives he had stowed in his sleeves appear in his fingers. It is a deft flick of fingers, only, that produces them.

"Now, of course, you should never be fully disarmed, but you already know that much," Loki says, more for himself than her, and sets his knives aside on the floor, outside of their sparring area.

He also knows that were she armed she is clever enough not to tell her opponent.

[coquettish_trees]

It doesn’t matter how many times he does it; Alexandrie is delighted, ever and always, by the smooth easy nonchalance of Loki’s legerdemain. In a moment, before they begin, she’ll reach to catch one of his hands and brush her lips affectionately across its fingertips—but first she waves her own hand illustratively back towards where she’d been stretching and the telltale wink of sunlight off the twinned hilts of her own set on the floor there.

He is, of course, still armed—as is she—but they’ll pretend for a little bit that it’s otherwise for the sake of the lesson.

“Oui, bien sûr,” she agrees, before making further inquiry in the sort of entirely innocuous tone that implies mischief as she takes her place across from him, “but what if I have been caught unawares by a visiting Magister whilst swimming in a moonlit pool I thought was private?”

[hwaaaitsme]

Loki looks confused but only very briefly. His eyes dart, briefly, back to that book, and his expression takes on just the edge of an unguarded reaction. It is somewhere between pained embarrassment and morbid curiosity. The latter is common on his face, the former, far less so. He turns his attention back to her and shrugs just so.

"I would first suggest escaping the water," Loki says in a matter-of-fact way that is not at all flirtatious, a knee-jerk reaction to that book and the scene she has proposed that he is honestly certain is in it. "But, once you were free of it...it might behoove you being...so disarmed."

And yet, he cannot avoid flirting. Not entirely.

[coquettish_trees]

If you love something hard enough, for long enough, you begin to know it in the smallest ways. Farmers who roll a pinch of soil between their fingers and know if it comes from the north field or the south. Sommeliers who hold wine in their mouth and then tell you what the weather was like just before the grapes were harvested that year. Sailors who squint at the horizon and begin to prepare for a storm that won’t come for another two days.

Alexandrie was already good at watching the slope of a shoulder, the shift of balance, the reading of faces that didn’t want to be read before she had loved Loki with reckless abandon. Now, the split second flickers of feeling in her husband that would be invisible to anyone else unfold for her like the sky.

And so she collects that moment of embarrassment for later and bounces lightly on her toes, her eyes flitting across him looking for the tells that might tell her of more combative movement before returning them to his face and smiling coyly, “Might it?” she inquires innocently, “I am still learning about such things—do teach me how.”