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Entry tags:
[CLOSED] YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN
WHO: Gwenaëlle, Loxley, Abby and Derrica
WHAT: Closing a rift
WHEN: Sometime in Harvestmere
WHERE: Rivain
NOTES: OOC info is available here. Add warnings in your subject lines if applicable.
WHAT: Closing a rift
WHEN: Sometime in Harvestmere
WHERE: Rivain
NOTES: OOC info is available here. Add warnings in your subject lines if applicable.
Cutting across Rialto Bay proves to be less dramatic than feared by the crew of the Amberdine, the fleet little trade ship who had agreed to convey the four Riftwatchers to Rialto in exchange for added firepower. Despite tales of cutthroat pirate activity in the Bay, the Amberdine and her cargo of wool, furs and wood makes the crossing unmolested.
Bound for the bustling harbor of Dairsmuid, the ship makes a brief stop south of there to see Gwenaëlle, Loxley, Abby and Derrica ferried ashore. The agreement is that they will see the rift in Sanavo dealt with, and then travel north to rejoin the Amberdine in Dairsmuid a week hence. All together, with a new cargo of tea and sugar, they will make the allegedly risky sprint south again.
But in the meantime: Sanavo, a quiet village tucked in along the coast. It's immediately clear that the pearl harvest must be the only thing that sustains its existence. There are no fields for planting or grazing lands, and little visible evidence of trade that isn't somehow accessory to either pearling or fishing. Clearly, the pearl business must ordinarily be good enough to sustain the few hundred people in residence.
What quickly becomes just as obvious is that, despite the warm welcome by the village council—a trio of women of disparate ages—, the generous accommodations, and the fact that Riftwatch is here to help them, the locals are clearly wary of their guests. Children of the village have been subtly discouraged from interacting with the visitors, a number of doors have been judiciously closed, and in general there is a sense that everyone is keeping a careful eye on the four strangers.
But it's probably nothing to worry about. Maybe once the rift is closed and they have a better sense of who they're dealing with, the chilly edge will defrost…
no subject
The question of more nips at the edges of this question. Wholly undefined, perhaps even far off and uncertain, but it feels inevitable.
This is a disservice maybe, to Loxley who has never pressed her for anything.
But she worries too, for the future. Whether or not it would hurt him, when she falls short.
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A smile plays out across his face as a thought crops up, amusing enough to laugh at privately first, and he says, "Do you remember there was some nonsense on the crystals of someone asking who all was with who? And it was just Bastien in the end listing off all the couples and configurations he knew about, because everyone hates showing their hand—"
He shrugs. "It would please me if our togetherness altered itself enough that someone would reply to say oh, Derrica and Loxley, I think it's fairly serious, them. That, I'd not mind at all."
no subject
What alters to make them so visible? Derrica finds herself uncertain about what might catch attention, though in some ways trying to parse out the exact approach is only a diversion from the thing Loxley is actually proposing.
Would it bother her, to hear them spoken about that way on the crystal?
But the first question, the one that might be more pressing than the how, is put to him carefully:
"Would you mind if someone else's name were linked name with mine as well?"
There is worry pinched into her expression for it, the possibility of other names joining his and how that might be received. She tends towards discretion, though even as she thinks this she recalls the meeting in the basement before the Conclave. Not
no subject
It isn't the first time when Loxley has held his tongue against the easy thing, let it slide by. The of course not, the assurances. He goes and takes the cigarette back from her, not immediately bringing it to his mouth, gaze dipping to study the embers breaking off burned from the end as he turns it between his fingers.
Imagining, more. Finally, "Not as such," careful. "I know you've others you're close to, that way. I'd perhaps want to know better where I stood with you, among and apart from them. So that's a change, isn't it."
He's politely not asked, judging it not to be his business. How much of it is his business now is murky, but to understand a little better what Derrica has and what she wants from him—a start, anyway. He brings the cigarette up to smoke from, attention back up on her.
no subject
Loxley isn't explicitly asking a question. They are talking in hypotheticals, aren't they? Thinking of a future that might exist when they emerge from this hut in the morning, when they return to Kirkwall when the rift has been closed.
"It is," acknowledges this, even as Derrica casts around trying to fully grasp the extent of the question. Parse the answer, what can be given that isn't an intrusion of the intimacy bound up between her and someone else.
There are questions he hasn't put to her. She can feel them, hanging in the air.
But before he might ask any of them, Derrica questions: "Are there any others, for you?"
no subject
Thinks about his spoken answer before he opens his mouth again, as he adds, "No one in Riftwatch, and really only—you know, for fun." He tries to keep any tone of assurance out of his voice, mainly, not wishing to be told the same thing in return if it isn't true. That he had noticed Derrica's connections already speaks of the affection that exists there.
Rifters, mages, kin. "What we've had, it's been new for me," he says. "In a way I suspected isn't for you. I'd wanted to tell you so even before the temple and everything."
But it's very easy to just say nothing, and keep things simple.
no subject
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it would just be complicated and difficult in other ways, ways Derrica can't guess at from here. Perhaps she wouldn't have been in tears when Loxley spoke to her. Perhaps they would have settled all of this in the space of a night, rather than stretches of isolated, unsettled time between the temple and this hut.
"It's not the same," she tells him, letting the piece about his intentions prior to the temple lie for the moment. "There are others, but it's not the same from one person to another."
What she and Kostos have arranged between them is entirely unique. The way she cares for Kostos is a very different kind of love, and it will never see either of them initiating a conversation like this. And Ellie—
Is complicated. But even taking that into account, Derrica still is left to tell him—
"It's new for me too. I didn't expect it," she tells him, one likely more obvious than the other.
no subject
Tenderness and care and worry and making those spaces for them both, in general or in bed. The kinds of things Loxley finds himself coming back to rather than leaning away from, as he might have done if it was all written out on paper in front of him.
The cigarette is a little bit going to waste, burning down where Loxley holds it, smoke rising and gathering when the breeze from the shore doesn't immediately disperse it through the shutters.
"What about you?" he asks, allowing a glimmer of humour back into his voice. "Would you want me all to yourself?"
no subject
Yes, the tenderness and care and affection are not new. What is new is that it ran alongside all the other intimacies they have kindled together. It feels new. It stands apart in a way she had thought could be ignored, or explained away.
At the question, she lifts a hand to cup his cheek. Broach the space between them she has so carefully imposed.
"I think, if I wanted that, it would be terribly unfair."
How could she keep him all to herself when she wants what she wants still?
No, it is not the same as it was. Less and less partners from within Kirkwall, people who come and go from her life in the span of a night. There is instead people who she cares for, who see her and know her.
Her thumb is gentle as it strokes along his cheek, watching his face. The near-perfect match of his eyes.
"I don't think it's in me, to hold on to someone that way."
To the exclusion of everything else.
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More to prolong contact than to stop or slow or change it. There's been lots, in the past, that they've managed to communicate in touch alone. But just as much to obscure, he thinks.
"Then," he says, instead, "let's not expect that of one another. I think," and he pauses, to determine what he thinks. His hand slips from hers, slides along the outside of her arm.
Looking for words that aren't the most correct, but feel most true. "I think that if I were to ask it of you, and if you were moved to give it, it would be terrible pressure," finally. "You know, being the only person who is that, this."
It's not about being a rifter, really, when it probably should be. But how frightening, even the faintest prospect of being so central to a person.
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Which is unclear. She amends, "That I love in this way, I think."
It is bigger than she has words for. It is a different kind of intimacy, she knows. It has nothing to do with what they might do in bed. There is nothing in common here with what she might share with the pretty barmaid at the Bronze Spear or the sailor who comes flying off the Illustria every four months. There have been less and less tangles with sailors, or barmaids, or passing travelers, but even if that weren't the case, it wouldn't change any part of this.
This is what familiarity brings. A shape so specific to Loxley that there will be no twin to it. It is singular, as Kostos is singular, as Dionysia had been singular, once.
"I don't want to be a shackle, or a limitation. I know how a person could make their love into that, whether they meant to or not."
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"I meant, to be more plain," he says, "that I wouldn't want to volunteer myself as the only person you're intimate with, of any sort. It'd have to be something you'd want and we'd have to see how we fare, and that you have others—others you care for, that's fine, I think. I think it'd be fine. But you should know—"
Another flicker of a smile, as if it's working on a delay. "I like that, too. The word 'only', when it's like this. There's no shackling, and. I mean. I didn't think that I'd ever get to say that to someone, that I love, too, without it sounding like a nonsense word. But it doesn't, and I'm just very glad.
"And I don't want you to worry," he adds, with a half-chuckle. "Or sound half so apologetic."
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It is all part and parcel of what had weighed on her in the temple, isn't it? Loving him so much that the thought of losing him becomes too painful. What is there to do but flinch from it?
Her fingers lace through his, link them more securely. She is thinking of him in her room, looping her own pendant around his neck. A gift, protection. Maybe she should have known then, when giving Loxley something of hers was so easily done, felt necessary.
Derrica runs her thumbs over his knuckles, looking down at their hands. All these things he's said, they are the right things. What she wants to hear. Loxley giving her this reassurance, this autonomy. The smile when he talks about the application of only.
"You're so good to me," she tells him, softer. "I'm afraid that I won't be able to be as good to you as you deserve."
That he's spent this unlikely, lovely thing on her when it might have been better placed elsewhere.
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Lifting her hand, a flash of a broader smile that disappears in time to kiss her knuckles, a glimmer of qunari fang. "But it shouldn't be understated how good you are to me, right back," he says, once that's done. "You oughtn't be afraid of not doing something you've done so well. As easy as breathing."
A more truthful reply might be that he isn't sure he's that good to her, but gods save them from getting into a circular pattern of mutual reassurance and self-effacement. And besides, if she says he is good, then he supposes he mustn't be all bad.
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The warmth of his kiss is as good a reassurance as what he's saying to her. She is quiet, for a long moment. Turns her hand in his at his mouth, so she might run her thumb across his lips.
"I love you," she repeats, earnest and sincere, even with all the conflicting emotion that comes rising along with it. Testing, measuring the ease of it against all these other things. "Promise we'll be alright?"
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He is still, first, beneath the touch to his mouth, a simple gesture that nonetheless inspires a glimmer of heat, his lingering hand gently squeezing around the heel of her palm. It maybe does an even better job than him saying, "I promise," or at least is as intent in feeling. "Because I love you too."
And they are, he thinks, not terrible at making things alright.
Or good, even.
"Promise me back," he suggests.
are we in bow territory
Derrica takes his face in her hands, looking him over. The eye that she knows to be false, the soft glow in its partner, the fall of his curls and the expression on his face, all these parts and pieces that she is so very fond of. Her thumbs are soft where they wing over his cheeks.
"I promise."
bow time
Where he'd felt some kind of intangible resistance before, some kind of self-imposed perception of the boundaries set, Loxley feels the distance between them better as a pull. Moves in nearer, pressing his mouth to hers in a kiss as if to seal the conversation better.