Davydd lifts a bronze cup -- the cup covered in interlocking dragons etched upon the all sides, the bronze very like the color of his own hair, burnished. With that motion comes the scent of something midway between honey and nirvana. Mead.
     Like sunlight liquified and turned into something quite intoxicating...
     Quite...
     "So," he exhales, returning to his seat, one half of the wide divan you've been sharing, "... what have you discovered in your own experiments. Apart from things like angels existing, mermaids and horny centaurs," his voice continues to roll blithely on, a skip and a lilt to go with the twist of his mouth in humor. "Oh to have been a fly on that wall," and eyebrows waggle, the sparks of a fire dancing as he settles back and grins.
     He's dressed in earth tones, honey-colored light sweater for an early spring, brown trousers, a pair of Doc Martin casuals to go with all that. Mister Gentleman's Quarterly, Davydd ap Owain.
     "With magic you have to be very specific," Davydd notes, cradling his mead against his stomach as he slouches comfortably down, "...you can't just ...throw it around for anyone who's listening to answer. God only knows what you'll get..." He pauses, then smiles a comet-streak smile. "You know... mermaids, dragons, angels, centaurs-oh-my..."

     "After that experiment gone awry," Fiona admits, sprawled back on her own half of the divan, "I didn't experiment at all for a good long while. I ... actually, I didn't do anything at all. Shut down tightly - didn't look, didn't listen, didn't say boo to a mouse. I was tempted a couple of times, but I was also scared of what I might get the next time."
     And it isn't as if she's at all tightly wound to begin with, is she.
     At the moment, she looks comparatively relaxed, dressed in sage green twill trousers in slightly nubbly, 'raised' fabric, paired with a black long-sleeved cotton t-shirt. It's scoop-necked, faint trails of silver glitter dusting over her chest and one shoulder - more as if glitter got spilled on it at one point than any innate design. The long blonde hair's caught back in a loose ponytail, tied with a hot pink elastic, and for that eclectic note, she's got on a pair of fluffy bunny slippers. Also hot pink, with ferocious black eyebrows. Well ... she's comfortable, anyway.
     "There really wasn't any magic in my life after that - not that I did deliberately, anyway - for a long time," Fiona mulls, curling up slowly and turning her head to glance across the room. "I was having some ... pretty odd dreams. Things were getting pretty tense, close to breaking, I knew I was living pretty much in a shell that I couldn't keep up. Then ... well, then you turned up at Davy's that night."

     He offers you his own cup -- and that means sommat, he never shares food -- His other hand resting on a bunny head. Oddly fitting, really. He looks down at it, smirks and then lifts green eyes to you. Not so simple as green eyes now, are they, those reflections of his kingdom.
     "The trick, sweetheart," he rumbles out quietly, "... is to have a very specific end goal and... with that in mind, intense focus. You don't have to have elements -- they're just to help you focus your mind and your energy specifically. That is, if you wanted to work some love magic, there's nothing that says you have to have pink candles, a photo of the beloved, rose petals or fuck-all. But if it helps you keep your goal in mind, then by all means use them." Davydd pauses, leaning in, hand resting on your leg, "Does that make sense?"
     Very different attitude now, isn't it. What a difference a year makes...
     Davydd settles back, giving his weight again to his half of the divan. "Now... how I differ from you is that I don't have simply a body of magic from which to draw from, though I do have an unlimited source of energy to apply to it. I have nine spells. Actually, to better state it, I am nine spells."

     There's one eyebrow quirked upwards, but Fiona accepts the cup in both hands carefully. It'd be sinful to waste it... and not the sort of sin she'd want to waste her time with.
     "I see, I think. Well, I don't, but I'm starting to bump my shins on the furniture of it," Fiona answers, taking a miniscule sip, as if to clear it with her tastebuds before committing herself, "whereas before I was so much in the dark I was missing the furniture and falling down the stairs or out a window."
     Having tasted the mead and found it good, she commits herself to a deeper swallow - a modest mouthful, and then she offers the cup back, with a small smile. "I did a lot of symbolism that time I ended up with the angel," Fiona admits. "Scared me right off of it. Oh! There's also the time I jumped off the bridge; don't know if I told you about that or not. That was pretty symbolic."
     In the sense that she did it, she survived it, and it changed her life, if nothing else?
     Fiona tips her head back against a cushion, lifting both fuzzy bunnies to rest in your lap with a bit of an impudent grin before her expression sobers again, listening. "Nine spells? I ... guess I know a little about it, but not an awful lot. You seem pretty solid for a handful of spells, though."

     "You've mentioned the metaphor a couple of times," Davydd tilts his head, looking at you. His free hand grasps a toe through the pink bunny head, giving it a wiggle. Impudence is strictly encouraged here. "You... actually jumped?" Davydd quips warmly, eyebrows going up even as he tips his chin down. He leaves that for you to tell. For now...
     A pat upon the bunnied feet, a smirk still for that -- goddamn, girls are cute -- and then he rises. "Oes... nine spells whose combined energy not only makes me immortal but creates the very... energy or... raw material that one needs to cast them."
     Davydd steps a few steps away. "One," he murmurs, and he transforms from creature to creature, animate, inanimate, tree, chair, stag and then himself again. "Comes in handy when you're on the lam... or," he chuckles, "...when you want a girl to sit on you without knowing it...Two..." he murmurs again...
     With a slight pivot, he glances to a glass vase. It shatters. He reaches out with a foot and kicks the small wood table. It splinters.
     "Three..." And with a murmur of Brythonic, ancient Welsh, the vase and the table are good as new. Rather. "Very handy. It's the same spell I used on you to ...restore you that night you came over freaking out with your long hair and your pointy ears. I can return a person, object or... place... back to its original condition after some damage or other..."
     Those are three of nine. He waits before touring the other six...

     "Yes," Fiona admits, terribly matter of fact about it. "I did. I didn't know what to do, and I couldn't really see any way out except going running straight back the way I'd come or going forward on a dead end path. So instead, I jumped over the side - you know that bridge, down in the south part of London? Near the quays..."
     It isn't important, her shrug implies. One toe lifts to nudge at your hand as you rise, and she curls up to watch you and listen.
     "Nine spells... I ... remember something," Fiona admits. Then her eyes go wide, and she watches unblinkingly as you go through your paces, commenting on the 'one', "Hwyll, yes, I still owe him a kick for that."
      On 'two', she winces. Those are the eyes you use to look at her, after all. "Can you blame me," she inquires on three, "for freaking out? Though I don't know, the look's rather grown on me by now. In more ways than one. Though I still think you look good with longer hair," she adds demurely, glancing up from beneath her eyelashes.
     Ever so casually, she reaches for your mead, while still watching you.

     Four ... the gift of gab. It works as well with trees and the earth as it does with peole. Sometimes better, in fact. I can leave messages on inanimate objects for others with this skill to find. Should I wish. There is a Fifth ability that allows for greater mental magics..
     That, too, could come in handy...
     "Six, I can make my flesh as hard as oak," he grins in a slant. He resists saying it, but you know he's thinking it. "It absorbs damage," he goes on to explain, voice quiet and serious. "Seven, protection against magic not my own... Eight, immune to the ravages of time, immortal. And nine..."
     Davydd pauses there, returning to the sofa. "The reason why I made you drink all of that tea," that mouth of his twitches. "Fertility...the twitch and creation of life...Mistletoe..."

     "Greater mental magics?" The use of four gets that brief heated flush to rise into her cheeks, and she leans forward, letting her feet drop onto the floor as she sips the mead, then puts it back down. "I can see you're multi-talented. But then, I already knew that."
     She watches you, both eyebrows arched, half-amusedly, half-impatiently until you grow serious, and then she does too. "Well, I'm glad one of us is proof against physical assault - guess it's good I never landed a punch on you..."
     Seven, and eight, she just nods to, though Fiona murmurs, "I wonder if I am immortal. How do you tell? I mean, other than waiting and seeing. Seems awfully hard to undo things if you guess wrong..."
     And then she reddens, sputtering slightly. "Oh. So ... um. Oh." Fiona is just a trifle ... put off? No. Surprised? Yes. Embarassed? Hell, yes.
     This sex thing is still a bit too new...
     "So ... what tea company should I be buying stock in, then?" Since she's not about to stop having sex with you, the gaze accompanying the strawberry colouration implies. "And do you think Marti's made more rabbit pie...?"

     Davydd laughs warmly, his face going golden with it. "Root tea and carrot seed," he smiles slantwise. "And lots of it, dearie..." There's a grin for the pie. "I'm sure there's a plate to be found if you want it," he murmurs.
     But he seems in no rush...
     "The combination of these powers, which do correspond to each of these," a raise of his shirt to show the tattoos you've come to know so well, "...create... power itself. Which may yet be converted to other purposes. I've just had no cause to use it. Some folks call it ... glamour... some inspiration... I usually call it energy and leave it at that. It's a little bit of all of that..."
     And then he's crawling over you, great Welsh body becoming a great Welsh sky, pushing you to lie back on the divan. "Drink a lot of that tea," Davydd murmurs. "A cup with every meal and two upon waking. Maybe even one before you go to bed..."

     "Umph." You are very much larger than she is, after all, and the solidity of the earth is difficult to resist even if she were more of a desire to resist. Still, Fiona scowls upwards at you, palms coming up to push lightly - albeit undoubtedly futilely - at your chest. "Energy seems a good word for it. You certainly seem indefatigable."
     She scrambles back a bit, not very successfully. Bunny slippers don't provide much traction, it seems...
     "What do you think you're doing, anyway?" Oh, there's a loaded question. "Anyway, why - I'm going to regret asking this, but why were you ... made?" Fiona frowns a bit, glancing to the side and then back up, the sway of her hair catching for a moment under her and making her wince, muttering something about chopping it off.
     "It seems like a lot of work and I don't imagine, with what you're saying about magic answering to specifics, to do - so why was it done? And for that matter, Old Man - why you?"

     Fiery eyebrows lift a little and his expression is blithe humor. Heavy? The mouth cuts a slant and he sits back, lording over his side of the divan. "I was chosen at a time when Cymru's future was again being cast. The Normans, King Henry II, had battled with my father, Owain, and the two had, more or less, come to a draw. We were poised, it seemed, once again to call our own fate, recapture our own nation," he answers you seriously, for it is a serious question.
     "I was chosen by three queens, for different reasons," Davydd folds hands against his stomach. "Isabel...Hafwen...and Ragnell. Ragnell had once chosen Gawain of the Arthurian legend. She wanted the return of Arthur, ultimately, victory, kingship. Hafwen... the Oak Queen," he goes on to qualify, a little softness there, "...wished a consort to join her in her summer court. And Isabel... the Queen of the Seven Towers, your ancestor," comes the Welsh explanation, "...she wanted a sword and a shield, a bow and a lance and an ally. The three of them bestowed these powers on me. Three for rulership, three for love, three for protection."
     There is a little sadness there. Perhaps one can only look that way after the passing of such time. "That is why I was chosen. I was the prince of Gwynedd, to reclaim that which was ought, to restore what was lost. Unfortunately, others also had plans. For every ... good spirit in the world, every benevolent action, there is another that is not, whose actions or ... intentions are malevolent. Such was the one who cursed me. He abducted me while I was in transit from the Welsh marches ...not far from here, actually."
     Resting his head on his hands, fingers pressed to his temple, Davydd looks at you squarely, green eyes intense. "He abducted and attacked me. I bled quite a bit. But I dispatched him in the end and returned to Powys, to my Spanish countess wife and my four, red-headed babies..."

     Looking upwards to you, she listens with as much intensity as if she were going to be woken out of a sound sleep at three in the morning to be quizzed on the information you're giving her. She absorbs it, for some reason interested beyond even her normal attention given to new details, as if memorizing your features with the news.
     "Well," Fiona says carefully, "I'm not Isabel." Does that mean she doesn't want that sword and shield, bow and lance? However, she states it with that caution, as if saying something else altogether.
     You continue speaking, and absently, she sits up, freeing the long hair from underneath her shoulder, pulling the bright pink elastic out and running her fingers through the long locks. Why cut it when she can bitch instead...
     "Only one to one?", Fiona asks, soberly. "I mean - it seems as if often people of good intent are surrounded and beset by smaller minds and by - I guess you could call it evil, though I don't know, maybe it's oversimplifying matters. Why did he attack you, anyway?"
     She starts to lean forward towards you, one hand aimed to touch your face, reaching up with the hot pink elastic around her wrist; the motion is abruptly arrested. "Spanish countess wife and four red-headed babies, huh. I assume this countess isn't immortal like you, right?"
     The blue of her eyes is unchanged, still focused on you with a faint undercurrent of uncertainty. It's all well and good to snipe and quip, but it's all the very beginnings of a world she'd thought she'd begun to understand and now is realizing how very little she knows. Slowly, her hand resumes its course to touch your cheek, briefly, gently.
     "You're from a time I only ever read about, Davydd. I've got a lot of thoughts about it. I want to know more - but I'm a bit embarrassed sometimes, by my own reactions to things."

     "No," he says with a slight shake to his head. There was the lifting and lowering of bronze eyelashes to acknowledge the touch, and then finally the shifting of his hand to cover yours. "She died a long time ago. And my two sons and my two daughters from our marriage, after long lives and many children of their own. The Morgan and Llywelyn clans of Gwynedd and the Herberts of Powys can thank her for their occasional dash of dark hair and deep eyes. She was a very challenging woman, and I don't know that I loved her per se. I think I did, but only when I ferried her to safety, out of England and out of Wales. I thought I was dead...or dying. It burned to stand in the sun even for a brief time. We had to travel at night, which was smarter at any rate."
     Davydd lifts your hand from his cheek, bringing the belly of your wrist to his mouth and letting his mouth part warmly there for a moment. "I know you're not Isabel, I wouldn't want you to be. You're Fiona Arundel, her great-many-times-over-granddaughter. And ... don't be embarrassed," he rolls out with warmth, "... and don't punish yourself too harshly. We'll have time to get to your questions. And the universe is somehow balanced," getting back to your earlier statements, "... the science of physics describes it. It is a simplification, I think. The world's never as easy as words make it seem to be, or as simple."
     Davydd draws you to him, his torso and chest to serve as your divan. "He wanted me to be... as he was. One of ...his kind. There are...many different creatures in the world, Fiona." Davydd looks down along himself and to where you lie. He smiles a tender smile. "As you know..."

     She listens with the same intent expression, catching her lower lip for a moment between her teeth and chewing on it a bit in some sort of thought. You capture her hand, and she smiles, lip freed by the gesture.
     And is she your great-many-times-over-granddaughter? The thought doesn't appear to worry her; she murmurs instead, "You've weathered the years well. I mean, you're almost sane - I can't imagine what it must be like, watching things change, die, be born, while being in some ways removed from it because you're apart from that cycle in so many ways yourself. I - hope I'll find out, in a way." She still isn't sure.
     You draw her close, and this time, she is unresisting, allowing herself to be drawn up over you as if a coverlet, hair spilling to the side again. "I'm glad he didn't succeed," Fiona answers, shifting on top of you to look down into green eyes intently. "I don't know - maybe we'd have ended up here like this. Who knows? I sure as hell don't. But Davydd, I know it's been at least two years for us to get here. I want to know everything. I want," she pauses, frowning, trying to figure out how to answer, "to crawl inside your skin and /know/ you. I don't think I'll ever get that close - but you've redefined my world a number of times now, you know..."
     Loss of virginity being only one of them...

     "Oh," comes the roll and the rumble of the dragon's voice, that one you've come to know so well, and it comes with a smile as Davydd tilts his head to look at you. "It's a scary place in there, darlin'," he chuckles. I know what you mean he thinks, the voice pressing beneath your skin and in your senses, warm in the soul and sweet in the ear.
     "Diolch," he says with a grin, "... I'm as sane as a man can be and nearly be 900. But," serious again, "... it was hard at first, yet isn't that the way of the Wheel? What goes around, comes around. Seasons change. Men and women love, they live, they die, they are reborn, sweet. It hasn't gotten easier, really. I've simply grown accustomed to the changing of the seasons." He leans in and leaves a kiss on your forehead.
     His mouth remains there for a time and there he murmurs...
     "He succeeded a little," Davydd murmurs. "I am consigned to darkness as once was he," always the past tense with Mithras. "... and the sunlight of this world sets me on fire. Still, at least I am able to feel the warmth of the true sun without perishing. I am fortunate, though I am sleeping. When I wake, it is night there and night here, usually."
     Davydd settles back, hand in your hair again, again that same curl and uncurling tide of his fingers, stroking. "Whatever you ask, Fiona, I will answer, truthfully, without trickery... and without recompense." No geas, no bargain, no sass.

     "I'm not scared of you - or not like that." Fiona's very serious - perhaps inordinately so, without her usual sarcastic bite to things. "Some ways, you do scare me a little - but it's usually more me scaring myself. I ran away from you as hard as I could for this entire time until I pretty much fell smack into you."
     She shivers slightly at the unspoken words, murmuring, "And it's entirely unfair how well you do that. How much it gets to me." She'll not likely admit to it verbally again for some time, without a kick or a bite...
     One hand lifts to run fingers through your hair, watching the shift of light over copper strands with a half-curious blue glance. "You're an utter madman. But that's okay, really, Davydd. I'm not exactly all normal - if I was to begin with, by now I'm half-cracked." Women who jump off bridges generally get locked away for their own good, after all.
     The kiss is accepted as a benediction, her eyes closing as she goes silent, listening to you speak, her palms sliding to curl and brace gently on your shoulders.
     "When I met you, I was avoiding daylight and living at night because I didn't want to see myself. I was ashamed of who I was, where I came from, and I didn't believe in my own worth. It took me a long time to realize I had anything of value to offer anyone in any sense. You helped, in a way. So we won't go on vacation to Aruba. I think I can put up with it..."
     Every relationship needs a bit of flexibility and compromise, right?
     She opens her eyes again, smiling lopsidedly down at you, settling her chin on fingers now interlaced. "I don't know what to ask. I want to know everything, and I'm impatient - but the only questions I can think of to ask, I don't know that this is the right time to ask them, or if they're even the right questions. I can tell you this much, Davydd..." Fiona pauses, adding weight to the words with a quirk of her eyebrows, a pursing of her lips. "I know some of it is because it's new... and I don't want to be in such a hurry that I lose sight of who we are, or - make you think poorly of me. But I do love you, and I do think I know you well enough for it to be you I love, not ... some surface image."

     The rascal in him can't help the grin. Oes? What if I started complimenting you... or saying shite that mattered... like how well you look when you're beneath me, spread out on the linens... The laughter is audible, warm and earthy, hand in your hair. There's a bit of an exhale for that. Apparently, he means it.
     Large arms come to wrap themselves around you, holding you against the solid earth of him, warm as he is. The man does conduct heat that's actual and physical, not simply metaphysical. He's quiet as he listens to you, his eyebrows quirking up and his eyes opening a bit more as you smile down at him. "I'll tell you now," he murmurs, "...you've a good heart in you, and you've never done a thing askew against anyone I've seen you with, apart from the fellow whose nose you broke, deservedly. Don't need to run away from yourself. You're a good-hearted young woman. Talented." He grins. "Nubile and flexible..."
     Though he grins, there's weightiness in his eyes, something of meaning, and the sunlight on the leaves of his many trees. "I love you, too." Even though I get accused of tossing that around too much, too frequently, too quickly. What if it's true? "There's no need to run anymore. Your life's here for you, and a man who not only cares for you, but who can understand you... and you him. And I'll help you with your magic, your control, as much as I can. There's much to teach," Davydd smiles as his mouth brushes over your eyes, finally your mouth. "In all manners of things."
     I could stay here forever. Does he mean at your mouth? Beneath you? On the divan? He suckles your lips like a peach for a moment, then lies back. "I wasn't sure how you'd react to the curse business. But there's no need for you to fear it. It's ... nothing to fear, merely something to bear..."

     "Don't make me hit you," Fiona murmurs comfortably, digging her chin into your shoulder for a moment, closing her eyes. "At least with you, I'll never need an electric blanket - I'll just glue myself up against you when we're sleeping. And stop with all the compliments - I'd like there to be enough room for both of us on this sofa, my ego doesn't need the extra portion." One hand absently beats a rhythm against your shoulder for a moment, very lightly - tapTAPtap, tapTAPtap...
     Fiona's cheeks grow ruddy as you answer her. Nubile and flexible, indeed. "I don't know. I don't feel like running, now - and it's the first time in a long time. But now I'm a little afraid to invest too much in some ways," she answers in a low voice, "because ... I don't want to be weak, Davydd. I mean, I do love you. I want to be with you - I'm finding myself thinking all sorts of things and rushing in my head to all sorts of conclusions. But I don't know... we're both wild ones."
     She subsides under the kisses, with a low sigh, murmuring, "La belle dame sans merci, Davydd? Closing my eyes with kisses four?" You capture her mouth, and that ends that reference, not unwillingly; her palms flatten on your shoulders, then knead at the muscles there, then push to sit up a little, propping herself up on elbows on top of you, glancing down.
     "Forever's a long time. You might get tired of me yet. But I'm not going anywhere - if I do go somewhere, I'll always come back." One fingertip lifts to touch your cheek, drawing a gentle line across to the tip of your nose, then up to your forehead, smoothing along to your hairline and sliding her fingers into the copper. "As for the curse - at its heart, what it means is you can't go out during the day. That's fine, I never was much of a one for a tan myself - how is it, really, any different from finding out you're a vegan, or allergic to penicillin? It's magic, not science - but it's you."
     There's a lopsided grin, and she adds quietly, "You know, if you weren't who and what you are, if you didn't come from when and what you did - I probably wouldn't have given you more than a second glance."

     "Hey, you know what they say: once you have an immortal, Welsh prince from the Middle Ages, you never go back," Davydd rumbles. "Eh, well, the divan's comfortable," he chuckles. "I can't help that. So you like big, hunky men who killed other men in battle. I've done my share, I suppose. Hell of an archer, Duw's own truth. We'd camouflage ourselves with leaves and limbs. When we moved, the forests moved with us..."
     You've read about that sort of thing in books and plays, Macbeth not the least of which.
     "Don't miss it though," Davydd murmurs. "It was a harsh way to live, even if the air was cleaner and more stars were visible. Short lives for most, though a king led a good life in comparison. But even then, even the mightiest picked weevils out of their breakfast..."
     His voice trails off at your fingertip's trailing, eyes close with the fingers in his hair. And that's not all. Davydd tilts his head to the touch, lets his eyes stay closed, and he goes oaken beneath you, solid as that hardwood, no pun intended -- however appropriate. "You can keep doing that, by the by," he murmurs. "I suppose it's... not a lot different from an acute allergy," Davydd says after a while. "Very acute," he smiles. "There may be ways to lift it yet... but first, the end of my Exile... one foot in front of the other, dearie... that's how a body gets in motion and things are done..."

     "It's not that you've killed, though that's I suppose part of it - it's part of you, so, really... but what you're capable of. Tcht," she murmurs, half to herself, "never thought of myself as the sort to be attracted to blokes based on a macho attitude, but there you have it. You're capable of a lot - and you're hard, even if you're tender. You could pick me up and throw me over your shoulder, and you did, and in a way which didn't make me want to cut your throat for you. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't want to..."
     Fiona smiles again, almost wistfully, then shifts position slightly, supporting her weight on top of you with one hand to your collarbone, drifting the fingertips of her other hand through your hair in feather-light touches along your temples, to the edge of your cheek; the rim of your ear, the nape of your neck.
     "I don't intend to stop," she murmurs in answer. "As for your curse - well, if I can help, of course, but I'll be here whether or not you're under a curse - after a while, you know, you might end up thinking I'm part of your curse. I've read enough history to know it wasn't moonlight and roses, by the way. I ... don't want to have lived then. But ... you're not a product of the modern age, even if you've managed to slide under radar."
     She grins crookedly again, bending down to kiss your left eyebrow. "Must seem awfully dull to you, though, being with me," Fiona teases lightly. "...My life was pretty dull by your standards up until I met you. I sat up shivering all night in a stalled car in a deserted train depot in France once, convinced I could hear the voices of the dead. Spent a lot of time being angry and self-destructive and fancying I knew a lot. Not much magic to it - but maybe a little bit of poetry. I'm a rotten poet, aren't I? But turnabout's fair play, Davydd - I've still got questions, about you, magic, everything. Have you got any questions for me?"

     "Yeah, yeah, I know," that voice rolls on, "... it's like dating the captain of the football team. You hate yourself for it but you go all girly," the image amuses him, and the joke. Well, if he's not going to laugh at his own humor... who would? The laughter is a drifting, held in the throat sort that turns so easily thereafter into a kind of purred growling sound.
     "I wouldn't want you to answer them all in one night," Davydd murmurs, green eyes opening, sparkling countrysides. "But maybe sometime you can tell me what you were fighting so hard to get out of. Normalcy? Control? You were fighting pretty hard when I met you," he smiles, "...and, darlin', you couldn't be dull if you sold Tupperware. Never a dull moment, I assure you. You drive me crazy too much for that. Sometimes I wanted to throttle you. I either want to spank you or kiss you same as looking at you," Davydd lilts, words transforming to lifting laughter.
     Among other things, that is... He leaves off speaking for now, rolling you on the divan with all the deftness of a well-practiced divan-sitter, until you and he are crowded, tangled on your sides. Why did you choose the name of the French city... I'm not sure I've heard that explanation. What it meant to you really, at the time. Not the political bullshite. I fought in the war, you know. I was a pilot for the RAF. Me and William. He's a brave boyo, that one. And Edward off in the Alps.

     "You never saw me as I was in school," Fiona answers wryly, though not without a certain edge of humour at your joke. Even so, she draws her hand back to lightly smack the side of your head. "Bastard," she says affectionately. "I was very girly. I wasn't bad-looking, but I wasn't really all that trendy in some ways - very conservative, really. Rode on weekends, went shopping with the other girls, wrote silly poetry and drew hideous sketches and had all sorts of terribly sanitized fantasies..."
     She leans in to nip at your ear for a moment, then shifts slightly downwards, looking up with her chin down on her wrists, hands flattening just under your chin. "When everything - happened," meaning her finding out about first love's betrayal or whatnot, "I didn't want to be that person anymore. It hadn't worked awfully well, had it? And it got pretty well wrapped up in the entire package. If who I was turned out not to be good enough, well, I was who I was because of where I was from and all of it. So I took a long hard look at who and what that was... didn't necessarily make the wisest decision, but I had to change or I was going to strangle in it all. I'm not," Fiona adds wryly, "very good at suffering in silence. Being nice and sweet and a good girl didn't work. So I - swung to the opposite extreme, I suppose."
     There's a return of colour into her cheeks, and she sits up, sitting on your stomach as if you were part of the divan, one pink bunny slipper brushing against the floor as she looks down at you. "You drive me bloody well insane, Llewellyn," she retorts. "Every time I'd just about put you from my mind, you'd pop up again! And I didn't know what to do about it at all. You didn't want me, you see."
      Or so she'd thought at the time, anyway...
     "And I ... I had no idea what to make of you. Didn't want to admit you'd gotten so well and thoroughly under my skin - after what'd happened, I didn't want anyone that close again." Absently, she runs her hands through her hair, twisting it back from her face, then settling back on top of you to sprawl - until you roll over, rolling her with you with a slight grunt of expelled breath. "Bastard," she mutters again, still with the affectionate tone to it.
     There's a brief pause as she adjusts to the voice in her head, the combination of serious questions and intimacy the more unsettling. "Were you? I ... well ... it isn't entirely my story, I guess you could say, but ... it's a bit of a family thing. Are you sure you want to know?" The blue eyes lift, searching for your forest landscapes, suddenly shy and half-wary, the timid animal back in her expression.

     Eyes close tight and he screws up his expression, as if bracing against a pummeling when you barely slap his head. Such a protest he makes. Davydd peeks at you, then grins in a slant, "I can understand the need to rebel," he notes, his hand upon your cheek, lightly stroking. "I like the sounds you make. All that ruckus, all that fight. The fight's the thing about you that... first attracted me to you. You were all guff and spit and fuss -- just like me..."
     Davydd's hand goes off wandering, side of your neck, his head tilting to watch it. "I was. I battled against the big Blitz. Explosions over London, me flying a Spitfire in a night sky lit with the phosphorus from bombs. I flew missions over France later...as the lines of the war began to move...I want to know," he says again, "...even if I'm a bastard," he murmurs, using your inflection, your tone.
     "If your family suffered," Davydd murmurs suddenly, if quietly, "... I am very sorry, Fiona..." The forests are there. You can walk in them if you like. Dark and soothing in their shade, comforting in their brightness, some promise of soft green grass. There's shelter there, if you need it.

     She's saving the violence for later, no doubt, when scenes from Monty Python might better be re-enacted. "I'm not likely to turn round and suddenly become docile," Fiona grumbles, though she tilts her face towards your hand, eyes drifting half-closed as she continues looking down at you. "If anything, knowing me, there's times when I'll be a complete and utter bitch to you just because I want my own way... but we can negotiate, mmm? Even if it takes swords and daggers..."
     Hopefully not literally...
     "All well before I was born," she responds blandly, arching her neck quite deliberately to reveal the clean line of it, letting her hair fall away again. "And I've never doubted your bravery. That's - you've never seemed to be compensating in -that- way." Which just leaves it open in what ways she'd thought or thinks you are, eh?
     It's followed up by a small smile and a shake of her head. "Davydd, I'm not upset. You haven't been a particular -bastard- right now, and ... it's something which I don't necessarily mind telling you - I'm not directly hurt by it. I'm just not sure how to tell... how to explain. I'll try, if you're sure you want to know. Otherwise, well - it can wait, right?"
     The grin is back, lopsided but genuine, and she leans forward to press a kiss to your lips, brushing her mouth softly against yours. "You've seen more darkness than I have. You've got a curse to deal with, and you're strong enough that you've dealt with it without me to help, so far. I don't need to avoid talking about it. I just ... don't know what you'll think."

     "Compensate," he says, voice lifting in that uniquely Welsh way when excited, or feigning excitement. "Compensate for what? I'm bloody perfect, I am," he rolls on, "...there's nothing small about me!" Leave it to a man to go there directly. He flares the nostrils a little, he lets the eyes go sharp -- as if he's really offended.
     And then the shite grins...
     "Nah, you don't have to get into it now. Probably a bit heavy. The transformation from ... fox-hunting debutante to magenta-haired queen of the streets is ...something I'd like to hear about. I can't imagine you horseriding, though... I thought I detected equestrian thighs,"
     He is a bastard...
     "I don't want you docile. I want fingernails to scratch," Davydd says against your neck, "...words to sting...hands to clutch. It makes it so much the sweeter, you see," he says at your mouth, "...when you turn to honey on my tongue. When you stop fighting and let yourself melt. There's nothing finer than that."
     Green eyes move over you, to the slight space between you now crowded with his hands. "We have nights to fill with things such as this. Histories and stories to go with the new ones we make. And nights to experiment with magic... among other things... there's no need to rush. No need for you to have to go into it now..."

     "Compensate," Fiona answers sweetly, "for everything that's happened in the past, whether between us or between you and others or between you and yourself. I know about the weight of history, Old Man, even if I've got a lot less of it than you."
     She said she'd challenge you...
     That doesn't mean the grin doesn't help, though.
     "Perfect arse," she grumbles even so, not quite prepared to give even an inch. "As for the transformation ... well, you can blame my friends, a bit - remember Dot?" Fiona grins, despite herself. "She wanted a change, and was a bit of a rebel - more in the sort of way which might get her laid, though. Me, I looked around for what would be the most different from what I was, and ... well, you have to admit, chopping my hair short and wearing a dog collar is pretty different."
     The comment on her thighs earns another smack, a little harder. "One track mind, Llewellyn," she murmurs, soothing the smack with a nuzzle, her eyes drifting closed as you speak against her, as you touch her. "I'll fight you tooth and nail," she half-promises. "I don't like -letting- you win, you know..."
     Even if she enjoys the eventual surrender herself...
     "I'm not," Fiona adds, a bit bemusedly, "awfully good at going slow, though... I don't mind telling you, Davydd - but yes, let's save it for a heavier night than this. It's too warm in here," translation: you're too warm, "...for cold stories."

     "Diolch!" the great shite exclaims. "I do have a perfect arse! Oh," he rolls out, "...you mean I am a perfect arse. Well..." As if he's going to argue that fine point. "And I said scratch me, not knock me out," he rumbles after a moment, words tumbling into laughter. "That's no way to treat your elders, little missy..."
     Davydd turns, looking over a shoulder to the divan and how much space -- none, in fact -- he has to shift about. "If you think I'm bad now," he mulls, "... just wait for May ... and June...and July... and August..." Nearly half a year, worse than this?
     Davydd looks back to you then, propping his head up on the heel of his hand, his elbow to the surface of the divan. "How about some cool mead," as if that'll help, "... there's nothing like good cool mead on a hot summery night..."

     "I didn't hit you that hard, but hold still and I'll kiss it better. Or bite you. One of the two." Fiona's fairly relaxed as she retorts - after all, this is ground she knows and understands, and she reaches up to tweak your nose lightly. "But I scratch too," she assures...
     Fiona grins lazily, her hand sliding from where she's slapped to soothe indignant skin, sliding her fingers through the copper of your hair one last time before she starts trying to struggle her way upright. As if you'd let her.
     "You're not bad, you're just ... made this way," she admits, with a small laugh that escapes her despite herself. "But I'll take that mead..."
     "And," Fiona adds, subsiding, "I'm going to hold onto you, even if you are a perfect arse... Perfection of any sort is hard to come by."

Posted by rowan at March 11, 2004 05:02 PM