The man can't pass through the bar without, one, being hailed, two, being given drinks, or, three, puffing on a cigarette. With a pint in his hand, a cigarette shoved between his lips, and a paper under the crook of his arm, Davydd takes his keys out of his jacket pocket and unlocks the bachelor pad deluxe.
     The jingle-jangle is his announcement, his Honey, I'm Home! and instantly his gaze scans the dining room and living room for any signs of life. No one's home. Well, it's early for all that. Six in the evening, which is barely evening, but nigh on night enough for him to get vertical and roam the streets. Pausing on his way to the living room, Davydd cranes a look down the hall that leads to the three bedrooms then, with a quirk of his eyebrows and a bit of a shrug, he heads to the sofa.
     Suits him fine if he has a bit more quiet...
     Pint on the table, burning fag in the ashtray, he's twisting out of the suit coat, leaving the button-down cobalt shirt and navy trousers to compliment him. He's a hell of a man sitting there, his burnished bronze-copper hair fiery in color, more fiery when kept short. The darkness of his clothing merely offsets the pallor of his complexion. Heading toward the full of the moon, he is at the ebb of appetite. There's no blood-borne blush in his cheeks, though the beer does give some slight rise of color out of pleasure. Davydd sits forward, thighs wide and cigarette back to his mouth. He watches it burn.
     Much like the words in his brain. It is a wonder that smoke isn't coming out of his ears. In a private moment, with no one to be around to have to impress, he allows himself to appear as what he is. Tired. With an exhalation of perturbation, Davydd half-frowns and stamps out the cigarette prematurely.
     If only he could escape the notion of seeing an omen in everything...

     Waiting is so often the hardest part. The floor has been paced, the beds have been made, television watched and rejected - the remote control narrowly avoiding being pitched in the toilet as its logical home - and books picked up and set back down. At the last moment possible, Fiona examined her outfit and decided that it wouldn't do.
     It wouldn't do at all...
     The sound of the homecoming penetrates to the guest bedroom, catching her with her shirt pulled down over her shoulders and her arms half-trapped by the fabric. Hurriedly, she finishes pulling it on - a dark purple button-up which is loose and comfortable and flowing in a swirl of muslin, gold thread stitching a pattern of delicate leaves of ivy around cuffs and collar. It's paired with white trousers cut to resemble riding trousers, and black boots with floppy cuffs. Her hair is pulled back in an elaborate, thick single braid, a ropelike plait tied at the end with black elastic. The Rock rests upon her hand, slender golden hoops in both ears. A final examination is given in the mirror and comes up as a C-; it passes, but only just.
     The door opens, and her presence is known, felt even before she's seen as she calls out. "Davydd? Are you - it is you, right?" Fiona comes round the edge of the door and down the corridor, stopping at the edge of the living room, cheeks going ruddy suddenly. "It's you. I'm ... glad." Despite the turmoil of the world, the fear, the uncertainty, the conflict and confusion, that is the simple Truth, inasmuch as Truth can ever be simple. And slowly, a little bit hesitantly, she smiles. "Hello."

     "It better be, or some other man is wearing my jockeys. I'll have to burn them," he teases in a gruff. It's a rough sound that carries down the hall, though he doesn't move at all. He's looking up at you as you come into view. He takes a moment for the outfit, tilting his head to the side to regard it and you, and his eyebrows both arch upward, the semi-circular paths of slow-burning comets.
     His eyes are dark, the holly-green of them far more gleaming for the lack of color in his face. Everything seems brighter, everything seems more -- more intense, more otherworldly, more Him. "Glad," he says, "Glad?" he chuckles finally, sitting back. He crooks his finger at you: come here, girl, what are you waiting on? "What's with the blushing awe? Am I that dashing?" he teases out again. He is, in fact, glorious. His son had to get it from somewhere, didn't he? "...that you're stuck in place, left gaping like a guppy against aquarium glass?"
     The smirk that was once a frown turns to a quicksilver grin. "Imagine that, I've left you downright speechless. If I were to live another thousand years, I'll never be more shocked as I am now..." I'm sorry I couldn't call... were you worried?
     Davydd leans in quick-like (very quick, in fact, he moves between moments these nights) and he takes a hearty swallow of the beer before you can swallow him in a hug. Or anything else.

     Moving slowly forward and then more quickly, Fiona's smile is unfeigned and brilliant as she enters the living room, coming up to you and reaching down for your hand. "I wasn't sure if it really was you. I know it's only been a few days, Davydd, but it's felt like a lifetime." Several lifetimes - eclipses and equinoxes passing in the span of just a few days.
     She holds onto your fingers with her own, looking at the strength in your hands, and then she drops heavily onto your lap. I was worried, but I kept busy. I missed you much, much more than you could possibly have been missing me, I know.
     There is no judgment in the flavour of her thought, just seriousness and the undeniable relief that she feels. You're alive, you're well, and you're here with her, at least in this Moment.
     "You're that dashing, yes, and then some," Fiona retorts, "as you well know. I'm glad you're in one piece and not in pieces. The king's men haven't caught up with you yet after all." Her tone is light, but just a little bit strained, and she lowers her cheek to your shoulder, arms slipping around your waist to hug you as tightly as she can. And while she's no power lifter, there is that desperate relief that fuels the hug, even as she turns her face to bite the join of your neck and shoulder. For making me worry.

     A few days ago, certainly a week ago, that bite would have landed you on some handy surface, most likely the Welshman himself. Today, it earns you the wrapping around of his arms and the laying of his hand upon your head. "It's been a long few nights for me, too. But... before we get into that..."
     Before we get into all of that, let there be a little peace...
     He holds you, his arms thick coils around your waist. He could be a power-lifter, if he so desired, by the squeeze you get even from the slightest of embraces. "I haven't met the king yet who could catch me..." Queens -- queens are another matter entirely. His hand finds your hair again, tugging tresses of it to lift your face to his, a greeting kiss placed.
     "I did miss you," he confirms. With you in his lap, the way to his beer is lost. Davydd cranes his neck to look past you to his glass. "Mind?" he asks, hand patting your leg. "...a reach-around," ha, "... for the beer there, darlin'? So... did Kelly fill you full of stories while you were here? Busy downstairs. I asked him for privacy for the next night or two," he murmurs. So no fear of him walking in.
     You're doubly glad to hear that, are you not?

     "I don't mind. I'm just ... I missed you." Fiona repeats it. Beer? Go ahead. Dancing girls? Feel free. Car wrecks directly outside? Who cares? It banishes many of her concerns, if for this one span of time. A little peace, indeed...
     She kisses you, then pulls back to look at you, then kisses you again, emphatically. "Drink all the beer you want. Are you hungry? I can cook if you want. If I can figure out where Rhodri keeps everything. He told me a few things," and more than she wanted to know, in some ways, "but I'm glad you're back. Drink your beer, Old Man."
     Let's relax... without thoughts of affairs of the heart or crimes of passion or infidelity to disturb the surface of glad waters...
     Fiona shifts, leaning against your shoulder so you can reach for your drink the more easily. "And I'm glad you missed me. Serves you right."

     Rhodri, is it? The two of you have been talking...
     He accepts the kisses, even returns them gently, but there's no ripping off of clothing, popping of buttons or any other such acts to which you've become accustomed. Davydd makes a sound as he leans in, dipping you further and taking his beer, the sound fading into a sigh. "Hmm... no, no food, darlin'... I'm not hungry." For anything at the moment.
     Well, apart from hops and barley...
     Davydd takes another long swallow and the pint's half-gone. His free hand pats you as you continue talking, his other busied by holding the beer. "I'm glad you had a good visit, kept your mind off of things I hope," he says seriously. "Meetings ran long. And they were of sufficient... intensity... that I took rest when I could get it."
     He doesn't delve into what Rhodri told you, not even the fact that he told you his name. That he leaves between you and Rhodri. Davydd settles back, thighs widening beneath you as he becomes One with the sofa. And one with his beer. Boddingtons for the son; Guinness for the father.
     "If you're hungry, we can go somewhere, or if you want to cook I'll try to have something. For the first time ... well, the first time I can remember... I'm actually... ambivalent," it surprises him, "...about food. Maybe that'd pass once I actually smelled something on the burner..." Davydd tips his head back, looking at you. "Nice outfit..."

     The lack of clothes disappearing in haste is not immediately remarked upon; her own burden of guilt that she has to wrestle with is still with her enough that perhaps racing to the bedroom would seem almost sinful. She holds you, content to feel your strength, to respond to it, to feel the tide of emotion that swirls and eddies in its currents and slowly begins to calm.
     "Like I said, I kept busy. I figured the meetings were running long." Fiona doesn't immediately pepper you with questions, watching you instead. "I'm not really hungry yet, but I'll get there. And I'd rather not go anywhere right now. Too many people - I'm feeling suddenly a little antisocial." She smiles, a small parting of the lips. "Except for you."
     She lifts a hand to lightly tug at a lock of your hair, then lets her hand fall and settle in her lap. "Like it? Good. You bought it. I took you at your word, you know." And the damage will undoubtedly be remarked upon, later.

     There's a smile for that. "Rubbed the numbers clean off it, did you?" He seems pleased by that, suddenly. The smile is quicksilver again, comets in the upraised curves of it. His legs give you a bit of a bounce. "I hope you didn't stop at one outfit, or I'll feel cheated," Davydd remarks. "I trust there's something frilly in my future..."
     It's not a question. A definite assumption.
     There's definitely something unspoken. As with Rhodri and you, when he was the Great Pink Elephant in the Corner, there the beast is again, parading around in silence, thundering unheard as it strolls around the room. It's reflected in his eyes. There's a seriousness there, even a weariness there. His energy is certainly at a lower place than you have ever known. But is it merely sorrow? Or is it physical?
     "I'm feeling a bit antisocial as well. I think a few nights here would be good. I've put Rhodri up at Claridge's. He's basking in style, no doubt. He does like style," he notes, a glance given around to the ultramodern surroundings.
     Davydd finishes the beer with a sigh of relief and he leans in, putting the empty aside on the coffee table. "We do need to talk about it. I'm just not sure I want to do it tonight. I do have good news. I also have bad news. It's a bit of a mixed bag, darlin," he exhales. "But," Davydd's hand gives your thigh a pat again, "...we don't have to go into it now. I just ... don't want us here stewing in silence over the Great Unspoken Thing crowding the room at the moment."

     "Not quite clean off - you weren't gone long enough for that. But they're certainly lower than they were." Fiona lifts a hand to your face, tracing the curve of your mouth with a fingertip, then up along your jaw. "And of course there's frills. Frills, and silk, and lace, and even some leather and latex and spandex and PVC and ... well, you told me to go to town. I did."
     Her attention is focused upon you as she speaks, and it's plain she sees the tiredness in you. She is certainly aware of the Momentous Tide waiting to wash over the beach, lovers notwithstanding. From Here To Eternity, indeed.
     "I'm sure he'll like Claridge's, though how Claridge's will feel about him, I wouldn't care to guess," Fiona agrees. "His place is a little ... too modern for me, but I suppose he makes up for it by being almost as much of an antique as you are." It's light, it's not quite glib, but it's light. And then she pauses before she responds to your next words.
     "I've felt the weight of something coming," Fiona says quietly, voice lowering. Her hands both go to cover yours, pressing for a moment and then releasing. "Waiting is hard, sometimes." All the time. Patience is a virtue, and she has it not. "But ... sure. It's waited this long. Shall I go start cooking?"
     There is the return of that fear, sticking its blunt booted feet into the pit of her stomach again. Fiona suppresses it as best she can, squashing it down and into silence but not out of being...

     His hands come to cover your own, and he lifts your hands to his mouth, closing his eyes in the kiss. "Holding it isn't any better," he notes. No, it isn't easy for him either. "I'll put your mind to ease with the obvious, at least. There's not another woman." His mouth makes a self-effacing smirk. You were thinking it. Come on. Admit it.
     "Let's leave it be for the now. We'll have dinner," he nods, giving you another bounce. He does like that. "And then we'll talk, hmm? There's much to talk about. I'm ...going to try to ...break it up in reasonable bits so neither of us drowns in it..." There's a sigh for that and he rakes his hand through very-short hair.
     There's a look and a smirk for the 'antique' comment. "I don't move like an antique now, do I? As much as I may seem to now." He knows he is not at this most energetic. Gone too is the sexual force of nature. "But last week... oh, remember it," he teases in a whisper. "You and me on the banquet table. Me, spilling the wine over your skin and sipping it from your navel, among other locales..." He sighs again and pats you on the hip. Go ahead, then...
     "How about raiding Kelly's fridge as well, hmm? Does he have any more beer? By now, I'm sure you know where all his little secret hiding places are," he grins, "... well, where he keeps the booze anyway..."

     She was, and it shows, in the flicker of her eyelashes, in the blush that she isn't able to suppress. "Well, can you blame me?", Fiona asks tartly. "After your constantly talking about how you can't be faithful, and then going off and me not hearing from you for days and days! But it's okay, Davydd. I'm over that, a bit." Funny how having an affair yourself lifts that suspicious anger to a small extent, even while adding a heavier burden of guilt. "I love you. I'm glad I don't have to throw things at your head."
     She jerks slightly as you bounce her, lifting one of your hands to her mouth, kissing the side of one of your fingers, then lowering it to her lap again. "Whatever works, my love. I'll try not to react until I've heard you out. Or not too much, anyway. Or not ... well, I'll try not to kill the messenger until he's finished talking."
     Ah, compromise.
     "You don't move like an antique, and, I haven't forgotten last week." Fiona's reddening as she rises from your lap, turning away. "I wouldn't, I suspect, be half as interested in you if you were only as old as you look. There's something to be said for experienced older men." Which includes you and Rhodri both, doesn't it? "Let me see what he's got. I know where he keeps his booze, I got thoroughly sozzled on vodka the other night."
     Dead Russian soldiers, one might say, but she doesn't. She enters the kitchen, pausing to snag a couple of bottles of Guinness and sets them on the counter before popping open the refrigerator and peering inside. "How does a ham and cheese omelette sound? Or do you want something meatier and more manly?"

     "I'm not sure I'd feel it right now even if you did," he cracks out, his voice earthy rough and warm. Davydd scoots down on the sofa, legs going wide, his hands on his belly, his eyes close but he's not falling asleep. It's a kind of meditation. "Ham and cheese omelette is fine. I don't need much, my appetite's still a bit off." All or nothing, he is, the Holly King.
     His eyes open after another moment, and another and he's rolling to a rise, Mount Snowdon that he is, and he comes into the kitchen to join you while you cook, hand taking a Guinness. "I'm confident in my manhood that I don't need my food to be macho," he rolls out in heavily accented English, consonants tripping and vowels lyrical. To most it might be a muddle, maybe even to you.
     "And no, girl, I can't blame you," he exhales after a long swallow of the Guinness from the bottle. "I didn't mean to... get you on your heels about my ...past history." Great shoulders roll slightly. "It just...is what it is, you know?" He looks at you, a corner of his mouth lifting a little, then he takes another swallow of the beer. "It's not about romance or sex or love at all," Davydd begins to explain. "It's about me... doing what I'm here to do. The double-edged sword of being a king..."

     The fridge opens and the eggs extracted, followed by cold ham, followed by milk, followed by a package of cheese. These are all lined up on the counter and stared at for a moment with a narrow-eyed intensity, as if suspicious that one of the items might come suddenly to life with a crackle of electricity. "Your appetite? Off? Well, then, I'll just have to make only enough for three, then." Fiona takes a loaf of bread, setting it down with the other items, then reaches up on tiptoe to the cupboard and extracting a bowl.
     "Take the marbles out of your mouth when you're talking," she advises absently, finding a whisk and then picking out half a dozen eggs. These are cracked into the bowl one at a time, six yellow eyes staring up in a sea of albumen. Carefully, she tips the milk forward to spill into the albumen and around the yolks, surrounding them in a cloudy ocean of little golden islands. Then she picks up the whisk again and sets to with a will.
     "You've got a lot of history. More than I do. I don't know, Davydd - I've got my insecurities. I suppose we all do, even you, but it's just that it made me ... it made me feel small." She doesn't look up as she beats the eggs, watching the semisolids combine into a dense soup. "As if my own experiences didn't really matter - and as if my loving you didn't much matter, either. I mean, well, hell, if there's nothing I can do, what's the point? Not like I hadn't been turned away from before." She glances up quickly, briefly, sidelong. "So what are you here to do? Since ... that sentence doesn't sound like a prelude to screw a lot of other women."

     He looks at you for a long while. He measures you with that look, as you crack eggs and then beat them within an inch of their lives, and their descendants. "I'm sorry," he says, and he says it seriously. "I didn't mean to cut you off at the knees." A pause. "Being as you're short as it is," he winks a bit after that, but the humor doesn't last long.
     A hand comes up and rakes through fiery bronze-copper hair, making the short locks stand up in thick disarray. "I've spent most of my time... most of my life... running around like I was on fire," he admits it softly, taking up the bottle of Guinness. "And I've... just recently stopped and taken a look around me, at what I have and what I haven't done. The curse lifting was like... it was like waking up, like someone parted the curtains, you know... and I could see the world. It's a strange thing to happen after so many years."
     He takes another swallow of the blessed brew. "The Holly King's journey is one of self-sacrifice, that's the nature of it. My task is to help those who, like me, are wandering around in this world asleep to themselves and to Life. My choice was to die now for nothing, or to give myself to something greater. I have chosen the latter. Eight-hundred years and nearly too late." Davydd frowns suddenly. "It sounds a bit vague, doesn't it? I wish I could explain the details. But I can't, Fiona..."
     Davydd snorts a laugh. "No... I'm not saying I want to 'see other people'," he rolls out, his fingers making quotation marks mid-air. The laugh fades, and the smile with it, into a look of serious thought. "I think that's the last thing I need is more women in my life. I can't handle the one I have now..."

     Bending down to find a pan isn't too difficult, even if it makes her briefly all the shorter. She takes it out and sets it on the stove, turning back to the fridge and rooting around until she comes up with butter, and from a drawer, a knife. She presses the edge of the blade to the butter, leaning down on it to press it through rather than saw at it or give it a great whack like a butcher's knife, and the resulting clean lump is deposited in the pan, the heat turned on, and Fiona turns to the ham to begin slivering it.
     "I didn't figure you meant it." She glances over her shoulder to you, then back to the pan, watching the butter begin to melt into opaque liquid. "That's why I didn't give you a fight. I knew if I - just opened my mouth, then whatever came out wouldn't be good for us. I don't like hurting, Davydd, but I don't want to hurt you, either. And for all that you're a big, strong, tough, independent man with centuries of life more than me... that doesn't mean that you're invulnerable, I don't think. I didn't want to take that chance and damage any 'us'."
     Fiona shrugs, scooping up handfuls of ham and dropping it into the bowl with the rest, smiling with a certain irony to the expression. "I guess you could say I'm every once in a while able to think before I speak. It only happens once in a blue moon, better mark it on your calendar. So your curse is lifted and you want to help other people, and to do so you're committing yourself to something greater, and the details of it you can't go into. You sound like you've joined a cult, you know. You're not about to ask me if I've ever considered Amway, are you?"
     She moves to the cheese, unwrapping it and whacking off a chunk which she begins to crumble by hand into the mixture, turning to watch you as she does so. "Damn straight you can't handle me," Fiona retorts. "I only let you get away with as much as you do because you make me go weak at the knees." She smiles, but there's an echo of something melancholy in it, and she drops her gaze as she drops the last of the cheese into the bowl. "So..."

     "Technically speaking, I think it would be a cult," he remarks. "Well, at least in the Pope's estimation. But I never cared for what Il Papa had to say, nominally Catholic as I was...once..." He moves in behind you, a kiss placed upon your neck and he sighs there. Then steals a bit of the cheese. Rhodri isn't the only one in this family with quick fingers...
     "Want ... it's part of it. But it's less want and more Need. Duty," Davydd notes. "Destiny," he says a bit more softly as he steps away, cheese and Guinness finished. Without as much as a sound of effort or movement, Davydd is sitting on the counter. "Big words, I know," a little self-incrimination. "This gets back to our conversation by the river, on the meaning of kings and queens." And things that change?
     He slides off the counter and opens the fridge, taking out another bottle of Guinness. He opens it with a twist, even though the caps are the kind most others have to pop or pull off. "How's the omelette coming?" he wonders quietly, giving the Matter-at-Hand a pause for now.

     There's a quiet sigh for the kiss, and for a moment, she leans up against you, eyes closed for the contact, for the warmth. The solidity. Then she stands on her own again, moving to the pan and pouring the mixture into the pan and watching the eggs begin to hiss and bubble. "My family hasn't been Catholic for a good couple-few hundred years. I've never had much use for the Pope."
     The bowl's carried to the sink, and she then twists open the loaf of bread, neatly extracting six slices, putting two into the toaster and depressing the slide. "If you have a duty to fulfill, Davydd," Fiona speaks carefully, gaze flickering to you and then away, "I don't know. What am I supposed to say? I know something's changed... I'm not blind to it." You move from floor to counter, and she blinks, then settles back on one heel, folding her arms defensively over her chest. "I'm pretty sure I know where this is going, too, at least... in some ways."
     She turns back to the omelette abruptly, sliding a spatula out of its home and lifting up one edge so the more liquid ingredients can flow underneath a bit. "It's coming along," she mumbles, shrugging and making her braid thump against the small of her back. "I'll have to fold it in a few minutes. Change out the bread when it pops up, will you?"

     "Aye," he says, looking over to the bread in the toaster. He is a great fan of mechanical things. "It took me a few years to get used to bread popping up out of a can," he rolls out gently. "Airplanes, the telephone, automobiles -- I picked those up quickly. Taught myself to fly," he glances to you. And then William.
     The bread pops up and he plucks it out with a soft Welsh curse for the heat of it, and he puts the slices on a plate and pops another two in. "Butter?" he asks. These'll be for you most like. It's a moment of mundanity.
     "Something has changed. Not my heart, but everything else. When I went to London that week, I ... just didn't foresee things progressing in this way, or so quickly." Dark green eyes flicker toward you. "It did change my plans a bit." He pauses. "A lot, actually. But not irreparably."
     With a deep breath and exhalation Davydd leans against the refrigerator, arms folding against the broad chest. "I need to stop prancing around about it." He comes behind you again, watching you cook, watching the eggs pop and sizzle. Davydd tilts his head and looks to you. "I know the life you want," he murmurs there. "I know the marriage you want. And I want to give it to you, Fiona. You deserve that happiness. You deserve to have your dreams and your life in its fullness. Right now, I have to give everything of myself elsewhere. It would be unfair of me to ask you to wait. I'm not going to do that. Here... stop with the omelette for a moment..."
     His hands gently move to turn you around so he can face you.

     "I wouldn't mind learning how to fly. Without turning myself into a bird, I mean - that I already know how to do. I figured it out that time when you ... went away. When I was in Belgium and then in France." Fiona's eyes are lowered as she folds the omelette over, though one hand comes up to wipe a palm against her eyelids - first one, then the other, as if just a bit tired. "Not so sure I could do it ordinarily though. Or turn back if I did. So I haven't ever gone that far. So if it weren't for the entire sunlight thing and you exploding if you go out in it, you could actually get a job? Fancy that."
     There's a faint sarcastic bite to the words, though she glances up with a small smile to take away some of the sting of it. "Butter, yes. And I'll get out some jam if I can find any - not really necessary, I suppose, but may as well do things right." She goes back to the fridge again, taking out a jampot once she's found it and then moving back to her station in front of the stove. Leaning forward over the pan, Fiona takes up the spatula and expels a breath. "I felt things changing. I ... it doesn't matter."
     So quickly dismissed; she doesn't want to think about it. She doesn't know at what moment she felt things change, she doesn't want to know. Maybe it was while your son had her tied to his bed and was eliciting moans and cries from her. Maybe it was while she was washing the marks of that passion off her body in preparation for your return. No, she really doesn't want to think about it...
     She turns the omelette over with a blank-eyed attentiveness, glass forming the window over her eyes in a liquid sheet waiting to spill as she hides in her task. "Almost done," Fiona murmurs, to you and to herself. Who knew eggs could hold such pathos? The spatula's set down, teeth clamping down on her lower lip as she holds herself in, holds everything in, listening to you speak but not responding. You turn her, but she doesn't look up, even though she has to blink and that sends salt and water down her cheeks despite her intention not to. "What."

     "My time on this earth... my time away from my kingdom is drawing to a close. We are not yet... where we can be together as we want. But this does not mean that I do not love you. It would be easier if I did not. It would be easier if I loved you neither as lover or as this girl-woman-daughter aspect I can't seem to shake. But my time on this earth... is coming to its natural culmination... and my time must be spent not on personal matters but on the matters of the world at-large. I know that's hardly a consolation, but ... if I told you that ... in a hundred years...that you could have me and marry the kingdom of Avalon... that you for the next hundred years shall be my queen if not yet my wife...would you still be in agreement?"
     His hand lifts to your face and he touches the watery cheek. "I want you to live your life on this plane to its fullest degree. Husband, children, grandchildren -- to grow old, if that's what you choose...and... I believe from what you've intimated that ...it is your choice." Fiery eyebrows arch upward slightly. Davydd sighs, leaning in to kiss your mouth, then your cheeks. "You are and will be my queen, but not, my dear, for a while yet. I can't do that just now. I can't give you that life right now. This is a journey that I have to make alone. And I believe this to be true: when the time is right, when you and I are truly ready for one another, the way to one another will be made to open."

     "I love you." The words are whispered, her eyes closed as you lift her face, the tears still coming as if linked in her grief to the ocean. "The one thing I've never been able to give you has been to let you go. From the first time, at the tree - do you remember?" Fiona forces her eyes open, looking at you through the distorted haze of her tears, one hand on her opposite wrist. "I went back to the tree while you were gone, Davydd. I was looking for answers."
     She gulps, swallowing a sob and adding in half of a hiccup, shoulders jerking once before she regains her self-control to some limited degree. "I didn't find answers I recognized. Not really. But now..."
     Words are given up as useless, insufficient, unable to be spoken as she smothers another sob by lifting her hand to her mouth. I can't hold you against your will. Even if I could, I wouldn't - if you would give up your own path to be with me, Davydd, that speaks pretty poorly of you as an individual, not just as a king. But I can't give you up completely. If it takes a hundred years, then it takes a hundred years, and I have nobody to blame but myself.
     Her thoughts are heavy as lead and flavoured with sadness, a wistful mixture of coffee and mint and pecans. Fiona suddenly wraps her arms around your neck, hanging there as if her legs won't support you as the tears overwhelm her with shaking shoulders. Even her thoughts fade into fuzz, a blanket of mental white noise before she again regains some semblance of self.
     I knew, on some level, that you would go. I was afraid it was ... to someone else, yes, but I wanted to give you what you haven't had. I know I didn't manage it, but ... I wanted to. It's almost coherent, despite the tears making your shoulder soggy, the beginnings of an overdone smell of eggs behind her suggesting that they might burn if someone doesn't do something soon. It's ignored or perhaps not even noticed. I won't grow old, Davydd. My clock's stopped. But if I can't have you - like that - then I guess I'll have to wait until I can, won't I?

     With you draped against him, he leans forward. One arm surrounds you and holds you flush to him; the other reaches out, moving the pan off the burner and then, with another reach turns the burner off. "We'll order take out," he murmurs, ignoring the other pair of toast as they pop free of their fiery box.
     Both arms surround you and he lifts you, heading into the living room. "I don't want you to give me up," Davydd smiles. "But there's no blame, darlin', don't blame yourself for it. For us, it's just a matter of timing. And in a hundred years, the timing will be different. And... I want you to keep the ring. You don't have to wear it for now... but it's yours, I gave it to you." Davydd stands at the sofas with you and he kisses you again. "And... I want you to be my queen when it's time. You have given me something that no one has before you." He smiles a bit at that. "One, a hard time. Two, a kick in the shins. Three, a near-on punch to the jaw. Four, your devotion. Five, your virginity. Six, your love. And ...seven... your patience and understanding." Davydd lifts you in his arms and takes a seat, you coming with him.
     "You're not losing me, love. In fact, I'm going to need your help, I think. I'm not sure how, yet, and I'm sure it'll be clear soon enough. But you offered it to me, and ... I do think you have a lot to offer this world. And me. So... it's not an end, okay? It's... a pause. I'm... willing to negotiate a few things. Conjugal visits maybe," he murmurs at your ear. "But ... you know... I don't want you not loving for a hundred years. I want you to have ... a complete life, Fiona. I can content myself knowing you'll be mine eventually..."
     His hand comes beneath your chin, tilting your face upward to him. The kiss is sweet and slow. Not chaste, but not lascivious. "So... I know this is a lot to swallow," Davydd murmurs. "...and it's ...coming out of nowhere. If you want to kick me, you can. I'm man enough for it. If you want to make some demands of me... I'll see what I can do..."

     She sniffles, acutely aware of how pathetic it must seem (and to her, it does indeed), but she's just feeling wretched enough that she doesn't care. You lift her, and she holds onto you, eyes closed to dam the tide that rises without seeming ever willing to cease. "I hate wasting food," Fiona mutters as you sit with her, though she leans in to each kiss as if expecting it to be the last - expecting you to turn into no more than a puff of wind and blow away. She is listening, even if with faint reluctance. She isn't good at this. But then, is anybody?
     "I don't believe noone else has ever given you a hard time. Or that I'm the first virgin you ever had," Fiona mutters. She can't really argue with the violence - or the devotion, or even the patience. That much credit she'll give herself. "Although it's difficult to believe noone's ever kicked or punched you before."
     Her fingers curl into the front of your shirt, tugging for a moment with a seeming impatience and then releasing again. "You say you need my help, and I just - I don't know how much I believe that. There's nothing I'm really inherently good at, other than fucking things up. Or not good to the point of being better at than anyone else, you know." Fiona's voice is softer now, made moreso by the tears that have escaped, by the surfeit of strong emotion. Whiskey makes people hoarse. Emotion makes her quieter. "...You'd better be willing to negotiate. You broke me in, you can't expect me to just do entirely without you for a hundred years. I'd rather die."
     Extreme words, aren't they? But perhaps they're the Truth, rather than exaggeration. And perhaps not. She's young yet...
     She takes a deep breath, holding it, holding it inside herself as if the feeling of her lungs being stretched will mitigate the other pain, just as real even if not so physical. Her heart is being pulled about inside her chest. "Waiting for you doesn't mean ... I'd give up having a life. It just means that I'm not going to stop loving you - or stop marking down the passing of days into months and years. I love you," Fiona says simply. "I warned you, way back when this started that if I sat down with you as anything more than a friend, that it'd be like this for me. I don't know what I'll do. Maybe I'll - have different lovers every week for a year. Maybe I'll just take a decade off the idea of sex - I don't know. I have this need to ... punish myself, sometimes, and I..."
     It trails off, becoming obscure, kisses making her sigh, making her wind her arms around your neck, press herself to you, needing to feel you. This is real, this is happening, neither dream nor nightmare but something in between. "I was expecting something. I could smell it." Fiona blinks, then lifts a hand to rub at her face, as if to do so would erase her tears, erase the lump in her throat and in her chest. "I didn't know what - and I'm glad I was a little bit wrong, but not so glad at being a little bit right. But I do have some demands." She raises both hands now to frame your face, looking at you with that childlike solemnity she sometimes displays. "You sure you're up for this, Davydd?"

     "When you believe in yourself and what you are capable of doing," he notes, "... but you need to spend some time finding and fulfilling your own path, becoming stronger and, yes, more mature -- about your capabilities and what you have to offer the world. I know you don't know this yet. You'll learn it with time. Trust me... hmm? It's only taken me eight centuries," his eyes widen. "I'm sure you'll be able to break that curve, dove..."
     His arms yet around you, a hand lifts to brush at your hair. "Don't punish yourself too much if you can help it. One, it doesn't help and, two, the only person you hurt when you do this is you. And who needs that, right? So... don't do that. Choose something else, Fiona. Choose to see your strength, for you have it. Choose to see your talent, your beauty, your wicked sense of humor...something, anything, in that moment when you feel as though you are your own worst enemy." His hand moves over your hair again. "I don't want you to give up having a life. I want you to live," he repeats it again as he has through this night. "I want you to be happy, to be loved, to have a wealth of experience. That's how you will gain experience, that is the way you will gain confidence. And with that, when we come together again, think of how much greater it shall be..."
     You put your hands to his face and he mock-blanches, his expression soon turning serious. "I have to be up for it, Fiona," he whispers. "So," he leans in and kisses you again, his words forming those kisses at your lips, "... name your demands. I will hear them and... we will go from there, yes?" Davydd leans back a little to listen.

     "I'll try. It's just hard." Small words, simple words - she isn't sure how well she can escape that trap of self-punishment. After all, Drancy was born out of that trap - it's a part of her, deep-rooted and to the core. She leans into your kisses, kissing back and nipping at your lips as if to punish you instead, only not so hard as all that. "I can believe in you - you're solid and real. But no matter how real things feel to me inside, there's so much that's happened since I met you... no, scratch that. It started before I met you. And I don't want to think I've gone mad, but so much of it just doesn't fit together in any way I understand."
     She turns in your arms, settling up against you so that she's draped across your lap with her cheek to your shoulder, eyes closing as if she might just sleep. But no; her lips part and instead of a snore (however delicate and ladylike or not), she speaks, tension slowly ebbing a little bit from her. "I'll try to see these virtues you insist that are mine to share with the world. Funny how many of them other people'd think of as flaws, you know. But I'm not going to die. I'll ... probably feel sorry for myself, and I'll probably do something stupid because of that, because that's part of how I grow from things. But I won't be killing myself, or - or locking myself into a cloister. I can't."
     Her eyes open, and now she scowls at you. "And it's your fault I can't, but since I wouldn't need to do it if it weren't for you, I'm pretty much locked up, aren't I? I'll live. I promise. I'll try to be happy, but - you'll forgive me, I hope, if I ... I don't think I'll be able to immediately go into delighted joy for a while." Some wounds are a bit too raw, no matter what promises they come attached to.
     Her hands slide along your shoulders, grey eyes focusing in upon you, eyebrows drawing together fiercely as she attempts to memorize your face, to imprint you on the skin of her mind for a long moment. "My demands. One - and this will sound greedy and materialistic, but that's not quite how I mean it - the haircombs. If you mean it about my being your queen, even if we can't ... be married for a hundred years ... then they're mine. I don't - well, I can't say I won't care if you have other women in your bed. I'm sure I'll feel each and every one of them keenly, but I won't stop you and I won't punish you for them. But I don't want them having them, and I don't want them having as much of you as I have of you. I am a jealous goddess," she smiles faintly at you, a melancholy light in her eyes, "to paraphrase the Old Testament. Not so vengeful when it comes to those I love, but - I want to be important to you."

     "They belong to you," Davydd notes easily, "...even as I do...I would not keep them from you. They will hold your hair when I cannot," and he does enjoy holding your hair, especially when he has you bent over a chaise lounge. It almost gets a rise out of him, that thought, that nip of his lips as you make your demands. He closes his eyes. The hunger you have become accustomed to smolders but does not burn.
     "I want you to have them," Davydd insists. "Pearl and gold, platinum and ruby, they belong to my queen." He kisses you soundly for that pledge, then looks to you as you speak of other women. "I ... can't say as I like the idea of you being with another, but that's the reality of it. I don't expect, and wouldn't want, you to be chaste and waiting like some Medieval tragedy," his voice rolls out warm and earthy once more. "There will be no other wife for me. No other woman who will hold my heart or my... spirit. That's already been given away. The rest," he shrugs. Sex may happen. "I will be busy, Fiona. If I had time for women, I'd have time for you, right?" He has a point. "We will both try not to kill ourselves with jealousy, and remember our pledge to one another. That's the only way, love. I want you to fall in love. I want you to have... everything you want in that regard. The big wedding to a man who can give himself over to you, who can marry you in this world. I .... am patient when something matters to me. And you matter to me. Just," his mouth slants a smile, "...don't give me the dirty details. I couldn't stand it..."
     Davydd turns his head, his mouth brushing against your forehead. "Anything else, my jealous goddess? Just the haircombs? I cannot believe that will be all..."

     There's a small smile of satisfaction at the energy in you, even if it doesn't leap into flame. Fiona leans in to your kiss, soothed somewhat, perhaps. "We'll both be jealous, but ... this is life, right? It never goes quite as planned." Her voice is husky for a moment, and she blinks away any return to tears in order to focus on the conversation, to focus on you. She reaches for and takes one of your hands between her own, rubbing her thumb lightly against your skin. "You got yourself involved with a modern girl, and I wouldn't be able to do more than meet you halfway anyway. I need too much."
     She reaches up now with one hand, brushing her palm over your hair and then sighing again as she curls into you. "Visits. I want to see you - not too much, from what you say you'll be busy and I think seeing you too much would just hurt too much, knowing I've got to wait. But ... a few times a year, for certain. Christmas or New Year's. My birthday. Your birthday. The first day of spring. Things like that. I want you to still have some presence in my life - it isn't right that you should just slide out of it, or me out of yours. And yes, that's going to include making the beast with two backs, my king. You got me started. You can't seriously expect me to just stop wanting you."
     She runs the edges of her fingernails down along the back of your neck, then settles her hands both primly in her lap. What do you want for Christmas, little girl? "For the rest... well, really, there's one other thing I need you to promise me. And it's something which will hurt us both a little, but - I think we both need it. Everything's got a price, Davydd. I don't know that I'll ever ask you for anything other than this, but ... these're the prerequisites."
     Fiona leans back, looking up to your eyes, gaze steady. She reaches over her shoulder to pull her braid forward, running the thick plaited rope of it between her palms. "If I do end up getting married, I want you to be there at the wedding - or at least the reception. I want you to dance at my wedding, Davydd - do you know, you've never danced with me, not even once? We had that entire ballroom at Powis and never..." She twists out a smile, though there is that sadness still in her eyes. "So there's my price. You'll have to watch me dance with another man - because you've got your purpose, but that'll keep you busy enough that you won't feel a hundred years the way I will. I'm just a woman. On that night, at least, I want to be able to dance with you and make you feel it too. If things work out in the end, you can pay me back for it when it's over."

     He tilts his head, his eyes scanning across the joining of hands. His fingertips steeple momentarily with your own, then slide to interlace. Rolling the embrace of hands over, he lifts yours to his mouth, kissing the belly of your wrist, before letting them slide together between you. "I did, indeed, but then... for a man of my age, I'm a bit modern myself..."
     His arms surround you as you curl into him. Davydd looks to you, his mouth brushing at the crown of your head. "I would love to visit," he whispers. "I would miss you. It will have to be at the dark of the moon, or the waning quarters if you want that sort of attention," he chuckles. It sounds in his chest, deep and earthy. "And think how hot it will be when it becomes secretive and illicit," he teases. "Sneaking around on your potential new men... hmmm..." He closes his eyes to the scratch and bite of nails and unseen canines distend behind the veil of his closed mouth. "We will have conjugal visits... this I promise you..." He's better at that anyway.
     Davydd tilts his head back as you look to him squarely, his own fiery eyebrows cocking upward. "That's a pretty steep price," he mulls out, his look as direct, keen attention piercing like light through the dense forest color of them. "A whole dance?" Then his mouth pulls a wicked slant. "I will attend the reception, you'll have to have it in the evening," he says as a reminder. "And I will dance with you," Davydd continues in a whisper, leaning in, his mouth plucking at your own. "I am a wicked dancer, the king of the Lindy. Very well," he exhales, "... I agree to your terms, my queen. I ask nothing more of you. I dare not push my luck," comes the finishing gruff and grin.

     Grey eyes close against your words, not as if closing her ears but as if reaching with her imagination forward in time to those moments when you and she will be able to closet yourselves together again. "You shouldn't have any difficulty being secretive. You're the most secretive man I know." Fiona lifts a hand to touch your cheek gently again, then opens her eyes to look at you, take you in.
     "I don't like having to do this. I know this is how it's got to be - how it's going to be, and I'm only giving in to it because I've felt it coming for a while." The words are soft, uttered in a moment of blank despair mirrored with resignation. "Fighting it wouldn't get either of us anywhere we'd like to be - if I fought it, it ... it'd get messy, and ugly, and painful, and then we'd just have that much more horse shit to work through on our way to what's got to be. If I loved you less, maybe I'd have gone down that road. But I'd like to think that it's that I love you more than that. We both know it can't be that I've learned better, right?"
     There's a lean and a kiss, pressed gently to your cheek where her hand had skimmed. "You can put a brave face on it, but I know you better, Davydd," Fiona murmurs, reaching up to nip your earlobe sharply. "You'll be jealous. But you'll get through it by knowing that even though you get to hold me then, if that day comes, that in time... assuming we both live so long... it'll come round again. I know your darkness is in you. I like it when you get possessive. I don't have much use for constant summer suns..."

     "I'll try not to kill anyone," he notes matter-of-factly, his eyes closing at the sharp bite. There is sudden movement -- his hand in your hair, the very definition of Possession, and he tilts your head back with it. Glimmering eyes, like skimming moonlight across the pointed leaves of the holly tree, fix upon your face, to feed both upon the surprise and the pose itself. Davydd bends his head, his mouth brushing against your neck, parting at your throat. But he only breathes there, then speaks: "Or drink myself into a total fucking stupor over it. Let's both agree not to flaunt anything...hmm..."
     His hand lets your hair slip free, and his eyes leave your face to look at the arching line your body makes. "I think if I have too many images of another man with his hands and mouth on my prize, you will be hard-pressed to make it to a wedding day with a living groom..."
     Still, that energy smolders, smoky, resonant, not quite rising to volcanic action. It is simmering, however. It most certainly is that. Sitting back, Davydd lets his gaze move along you to your stomach and legs. "It's not my preference, either... but it is what must occur. Sad to say. But... in the end, it will not matter. In the end, we will be better than we are. Stronger, and freer to love as we see fit."
     Dark green eyes at last lift to your face once more, and the handsome Celtic countenance... beautiful he has become with this transformation of his, smoothened cheeks unmarred by the scars of battle and the ravages of a Medieval middle age. Fiery eyebrows arch their trajectory. "I will visit as often as I may," he informs you, "...and remind you why I am the king of your bed..." His fingers have sneaked their way, crooking at the waistband of your pants and tugging you to him for a kiss.
     Claiming thing that it is, deep and tangling like thick forest full of twisting vines, there are thorns you may feel there as well, sharp incisor teeth that draw a droplet of your tongue's blood.

     "Mmm..." There's a gasp of surprise, but the sound is definitely pleased, even self-satisfied. Eyebrows are arched in startlement, but the rounded o of her lips flattens as she smiles up at you, her hands sliding over your scalp and then down along your shoulders. "Most weddings tend to be ruined by murders. If it helps, I'll try to arrange for some pretty bridesmaids as consolation."
     Unspoken is the smugness, the 'got you' of her response to your reaction. Her cheeks flush as you look her over, as you speak, as you both promise and threaten her with your visitations. You pull her close, and she watches you as the distance between you recedes - the tide coming in to kiss the shore for one lingering span of time before the changing moon's influence drags the two apart again.
     Professor Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle, you were. But while I like you a bit professor-ish, I like you wild... Fiona sends the thought on a wave of cinnamon, the blood of the earth rising in heated thoughts as you kiss her. What's a little blood on her tongue after all this? She whimpers in the back of her throat, nails digging into your shoulders as if to deny the need to let go, the requirement of giving you up. I love you, Davydd ap Owain. By any name and in any country and nowhere at all.

     "To sir, with love," he whispers, the kiss released and his arms come around you once more. The embrace is strong, swallowing. "I love you, too," he says it plainly, but there's emotion there. "And ... well... this has gone so much better than I thought it would," he croons suddenly. "I thought for certain I'd fuck it up as usual, go on like a bit of a prat and then pull my amazing swallowing foot technique. But it wasn't half bad now, was it?"
     There's a trace of a smile, finding humor in the moment -- he would not be Davydd if he did not. "No thanks on the bridesmaids," he says, his hands at your hips, massaging. "If I have time for such things... it certainly wouldn't be at my queen's own mortal wedding. I do have some couth," Davydd quips out. "Not much, but at least that much. But maybe," he grins, "...I can slip into the bride's dressing room and give her a ...hearty Welsh congratulation once her dress is on..." The way he bounces you on his lap suddenly, there's no mistaking his meaning.
     "And wear the combs in your hair so I can undo them. There's nothing better in this world than taking apart a woman's architecture after it has been so carefully built." He closes his eyes and exhales, the weariness departing somewhat but still his energy is lower than it was last week. Much lower from that frenzy of power and sensuality.
     "I think we are agreed on all parts," he murmurs, head resting back on the sofa cushion. "Unbelievably."

     "Sir." Fiona considers the word, wrinkling her nose as she rests against the broad expense of your chest. "You're not a sir. You're a king and you are a prat at times. But no - I think this is one of the first times we've been this open with each other in a long time. Though maybe it's my imagination." Oh, she is making herself comfortable, luxuriating in the warmth, in the feeling of your strength, bittersweet sentiments rolling along her thoughts to pour out through her skin. This may be the last time for a long time...
     You speak of the bridesmaids, and lazily Fiona reaches up to tap your nose. "Drat. No drag queens at the wedding, then. But since you've got couth, I won't draw red herrings across your path." You bounce her, and she squeezes up against you. "No teasing, brute. Don't start anything you don't intend to finish."
     She shifts, changing position so that she can face you, straddling your lap with her knees to either side of your hips, propping her elbows against your shoulders. "Hair combs and jewelry and makeup, hm? Maybe I should show you the things I bought on your money. Not all of it's lingerie, even if a good bit of it was. And that way we might be able to continue this unnerving streak of agreement. Or maybe you should take me into the bedroom and I'll cradle your head in my lap and massage your temples until you fall asleep. You seem exhausted, my king."

     Dark forest eyes open and he turns his head against the sofa cushion to look at you, eyebrows quirking upward. That apparent, is it. "I have had an exhausting few nights," he admits. "...and this... pull of the moon, like this... it is new for me. And I am still getting used to it. Power fluctuations..."
     He closes his eyes briefly. "Hmm...save them for my first visit. The suspense will be good for me," his mouth twists a smile. Davydd opens his eyes again and sits forward. "I wish I could tell you everything, but..." he exhales, "...it is enough that I simply tell you the truth as much as I can explain. So... that is ... what I decided to do. And I am sorry for underestimating you. Eventually, I will...learn not to do that."
     Bedroom is good. Horizontal is good. Davydd's mouth pulls at your own and his hands slide beneath your rear, bracing and balancing you as he rises with you in his arms. "Start with the temples, maybe it will inspire the rest of me," he grins.

     "Maybe I should start at the other end," Fiona retorts lazily. "If I start with your temples, you'll fall asleep, Llywellyn. If I start with the bit between your legs, though..." You lift her, and her lips curve into a brief smile as she turns in your arms to press her lips to your ear. "You won't underestimate me again, Davydd," she whispers. "Get me into that bedroom and I'll prove it to you. Phases of the moon might affect you, but I'm female, and there's a little bit of moon magic in all women. Care to place your bets?"

Posted by rowan at November 06, 2004 07:56 PM