It's the moments in between that matter, or so they say. Not that Fiona has ever managed to figure out who 'they' are or why she should care what they say or think; at the moment, though, she isn't doing much about thinking, snuggled instead up against a blue and white chest with her head pillowed comfortably against a pectoral. Her eyelids have drifted partially closed, and one hand is curled, palm upwards, against your stomach.
     Mmm... Davy ...
     It's sweetly 'murmured', the pink little smile that's on her face all but blowing kisses in the endearment of it. She nuzzles her cheek against your chest, and then her fingers trail lazily down against your stomach to skim to your thigh. My darling ... my poor sweet husband ... I'm afraid I'm abusing you shamefully tonight. How do you feel?
     It's a turnaround, in some ways - her asking you this, instead of the other way around. Fiona opens one eye, shifting slightly in order to peek at you through strands of hair that have fallen along that cheek. She wets her lips with her tongue, then draws herself upright to lean on you, folding her arms on your stomach like a bench so that her breasts are supported by them and by you.
     "You're not having much luck getting used to things... are you."

     "I can't feel anything in my lower extremities," he murmurs after a clearing swallow, his accent lilting and dragging a bit more than usual with his half-sleeping state. "You're closer," comes the sudden rumble and growl, "... are they still there?"
     Now these Them you know all too well, the coiled dragons and clumps and clusters of mistletoe lying nearby.
     A smile quirks up, a bit slower than normal, and long-lashed eyes crack ajar to the accompaniment of cocking eyebrows. A fingertip lands on the tip of your nose and Davydd winks. "I feel like I could sleep for a thousand years," he rolls out. "How are you?" he wonders. Yes, how was I?
     He taps your nose again and exhales. "So much has happened, I don't know what things you're talking about. It's been... universe altering. I guess..."

     "Mmmm... I'm wonderful." The words are purred at you, and her hand slips down to palm along your groin. "No feeling in your lower extremities whatsoever? Oh, do tell me that isn't true, Davy." You receive a coy pout and then a burbling laugh as she pulls herself upright and straddles your chest, both small hands folding on your chest in front of her as she peers down at you amidst the wild rag-taggle of her hair.
     "No sleeping for a thousand years," she commands, leaning down to kiss you suddenly, her lips presented to you in a forceful smack before she swings back upright. Where is she getting all this energy from? She draws it from the air as plants do from sunlight, some sort of inverse-photosynthesis at dusky eveningtide. "All things. Everything. Davy, it isn't just me. Everything's changed and gone right on changing, it's alright not to know what's going on. I haven't known since I got knocked to my arse on the cement."
     She has not been this punk in a long time. And it is that punk attitude turning back up, though it isn't the punk you met - there's a dearth of anger, a laughing mischief that makes her lips pucker so that she can chew on them, her eyes crinkle in a puckish, fey mischief. Her hair is wild and tangled, caught in spiraling waves that almost give the impression of there being leaves and vines tangled in them. Her youth glimmers in those grey eyes, but also knowledge.
     She swings her legs as she balances on your waist, pressing down on your stomach. "I came into your life - no, that's wrong," Fiona decides, looking down at you. "We came into each other's lives and it tore everything apart. Nothing could ever be the same again. It was like punching holes into an aquarium's glass - not big enough to let more than a trickle of water out at first, but the pressure built up along the cracks. I do feel badly about that, but - neither of us asked for it. It wasn't deliberate - for the most part, anyway." Fiona pulls a horrible face at you. "Which reminds me."
     Her hand comes up, aimed in a hard slap at your face. Hormones and revenge - you had to bring it into her mind, didn't you? "Bastard. THAT'S for Scotland."

     This time, he's not prepared for it. When you swung at him in anger a few years back, he was faster than you were. Fucked out as he is, and trapped with you on top of him, he's a sitting duck... dragon...
     "Fuck, what? Jesus," he says, his face going red -- and not just where you slap it. "What do you mean 'That's for Scotland'? Jesus fucking Christ, Fiona," ah the vagaries of a vampire's mind. Some things are simply not... kept. His eyes are hard, the points of the holly found in their glare as he lifts his hand and touches his face. Shite, you better not have drawn blood.
     "Well, for whatever the fuck I did, I'm sorry, shite... how long have you been waiting to do that? All fucking night? And aren't you supposed to, I don't know, fucking be on my side? I mean, isn't it the least you can fucking do?"
     Now that you've put a quarter in him, how will you ever shut him up?

     "I'd forgotten about it," Fiona admits, folding her arms under her breasts and glowering at you with her lower lip trembling. "But ... that brought it all back." She sniffs, and there's evidence that her eyes are - well, you know how it is - beginning to leak, great big watery tears of pent-up hurt that'd been shoved resolutely to sit by itself in the corner. "I AM on your side, you stupid git! I was on your side then, too, only you wouldn't let me be! All you did was poke at me for the entire trip, you treated me like total shite on a stick, like I wasn't g-good enough to even feed your dogs, and you humiliated me in front of - in front of Sandrine, and Marta, and Donal, and - and then you tried to make me take the train back from Scotland on top of it all! I didn't even ask to go on that trip and all you did was make me feel - small, and not just unimportant, but as if - as if, if you saw me being auctioned off into white slavery, you'd not only not put a stop to it, you'd ask the bidders if anyone needed a tenner to close the deal!"
     The look on her face is one of hurt - it happened more than a year ago, but it may as well have been yesterday. The pain is suddenly new again, just as fresh and sharp, and the tears spill and flow down her cheeks, dripping onto her breasts before finally splashing onto you. "I love you, Davy," Fiona finishes, voice softening. She sounds as if her throat hurts, now. "I loved you back then, I just - didn't let myself know. Because I didn't have a chance, and I knew it, on some level, and I - I looked up to you. You know? And that was before everything changed. Maybe things'd started, but you never even apologized for it. You never even stopped and thought ... how it felt for me. And I know you love me now," now that the moment of insanity's past, anyway, "but you're hurting yourself. And it seems as if I can't get through to you. Don't you know who we are?"

     Your tears are a stop sign to every tirade. He doesn't dare interrupt it (not for fear of his remaining beauty at risk of another slap!), and eventually the mercurial red of Mars drains from his face. Sighing, Davydd frowns a bit. "Is it too late for me to say I'm sorry? I'm sorry," he says it anyway, his hand lifting to brush against your cheek and wipe away the tears. "I was crass and cruel. And..." reminded as he is of what you speak, "... I deserved that slap across the face. Go ahead, slap the other side." He nudges you. Go on...
     Davydd braces himself for another slug. He knows he deserves it. "I was ... trying to find you someone else who could care for you. I had... a secret to protect then. But I was a real shitter that trip. So..."
     He goes quiet and ...
     ...waits for it...

     Your face isn't slapped. Instead, she takes your face between her hands with a little sobbing gasp; it's hard to cry and speak at the same time, especially when you need to breathe to live. "I don't want to hurt you. Sometimes it feels like that's all I do, anyway. It's hard - being the balance. I've never been good at balancing anything, and now..."
     Her lips brush your own, parted as hers are, and she crumples down against you, curling on you as if you were another mattress. Her knees draw up towards her chest (though not very far towards), one hand remaining caressing your face while the other drops against your shoulder. "Think about it... think beyond the symbolism for a minute, Davy. I know sometimes it's hard for you," Fiona whispers, nestling her still wet face in the crook of your other shoulder. "Think about this. If you're the Holly King... and Rhodri's the Oak King... here as in London, in fact as well as metaphor..."
     "Then what does that make me..."
     "And what does it make us..."
     "And what does it make you?"

     His mouth moves beneath the press of your own, gentle kiss given, the subtle scratch of stubble. His hand lands gently on your golden head, lightly massaging your scalp. I am fucking self-centered. I wish... I knew how to look beyond myself. I guess... it's a bad habit of an old bachelor...
     "You're not hurting me," Davydd quietly insist. "I do that good enough for both of us." His arms wrap around you, securely, sheltering you from the storm. Only, he's the thunder and lightning. You're the torrential downpour.
     "That puts you in a tight spot," he exhales. "Having to be in the middle. You've... been handling it all so well, or seemed to be, so...I guess it never occurred to me to ...ask. I'll try to be better about recognizing where you sit between us." The Oak King and I.
     What does it make me? "I'm not sure what you mean... what does it make me..."

     You've had to be self-centered to survive the things you have. When someone's trying to kill you - you can't always stop and go 'now, I wonder how this makes them feel'. I know that it doesn't work that way.
     Fiona sighs as your fingers slide through her hair, and she closes her eyes, going suddenly limp. It's as if you found her off button, the magical pressure point which makes everything go loose and floppy. For the most part, I am handling it well, but I've had more time to handle it than you have. That sounds almost contradictory, doesn't it? But there is the flavour of lemons and impatience, and she continues. For you and me both, things started changing when we met - but I had no clue of anything. I had no answers. I had nothing, Davy - not even an idea of where to begin. So it was easier for me to accept things as I found them out. Magic? Okay. Fairies? I got kidnapped off to - well, here. Kingdoms? Same deal. People changing into other things - when my world changed, everything became fluid and unstable. Nothing ever stayed the same for long; I didn't solve my problems by going to a shrink, I solved my problems by midnight hunts with ancient creatures not of this - er, not of that world, by jumping off bridges and accidentally summoning angels. Change ... became natural for me. I changed my own skin as the world changed its seasons, and I became whatever I had to, and that's what I still do.
     She shifts position again, pushing herself up partially and crooking her neck as she peers down at you with sorrowful grey eyes. When she speaks, it almost seems to break the silence. "You were stuck for more than forty times as long as I've been alive, and you've been one thing for all that time. And then - bang." Fiona's palm slaps down lightly against your hip. "You've had your old title taken away and you've been handed a new crown. You've been handed a new wife - and a wife isn't something you've had since before you were handed the title that was just taken away from you. Everything you knew has been taken away, Davy."
     She touches a fingertip to your nose, her expression having gone from puckish to mournful to solemn. "There is nothing left of your old life except the bits you're still clinging to. Everything has been taken away - the bits you have now - that you'll have in the future - they aren't the old bits. They've been taken and changed from what they were. Rhodri is still your son... but now he is your rival, and always will be. He's the Oak King. You're the Holly King. The two of you can't peacefully coexist in the same place at the same time; there'll always be a frisson of your opposite natures, even if suppressed. You gave up your kingdom, and now you've got to build a new one. You had me before the change, but I hadn't become what I am now, then, either. Before, I was your lover and your wife, yes... but I wasn't the White Lady, was I."
     She's put it into words, and she watches your face, to see how you react to this. Will you accept the truth of it, will you deny it - is it something you still must struggle against, until you and she are both bloody with it.
     "You," Fiona touches her finger to your chin, "are the Holly King. It isn't a metaphor. You are the darkness and the fear, you are the warmth of the winter coals; you are the autumn leaves that crunch underfoot, and the blood spilled into bowls. You are the owl hunting on high; you are reapers in autumn's last gleam. You are the apples that fall by wind, and the the storm that swells the stream..."
     Fiona sighs, her fingertip sliding down along your chest. "I've marked you and I've claimed you and now I've named you. Davydd ap Owain, I bid you recognise what's true..."

     He doesn't want to accept it, that everything he knew is gone and he's now in a state of Becoming Something Else. He is so fucking stubborn. There he lies beneath you, digging his heels into the Past like he's clinging to the last shadow at the break of dawn. It's no doubt the same look his mother, the queen, got when she'd tell him to put away the swords and come in to supper.
     "You've a better notion of what I am now than I do," he finally gets out. The tables are turning all over the goddamned place, aren't they. But there's truth in it. Everything has changed. And his son is no longer his son. And his friends are gone. And history is wiped away and the world is wide before him, a barren future. It is unsettling, and he is unsettled.
     Davydd looks to you. "When did you get to be so smart? I'm glad one of us is," he grumps, trying to be playful. But he's not in the mood. His spirit's a dark and thorny wood, much as his own woods are, yes? Being one in the same.

     She looks down at you, and there is a mix of sorrow and humour and exasperation and tolerance and Love that welters together into an unfathomable mass behind her eyes. "I Know you," Fiona says simply, her hand coming to rest against your cheek where earlier she'd slapped you. "I recognise you, Davydd. My heart cries out for you as it does for no other. It doesn't matter whether the sun's out or not, I go looking with some part of me for my Davy. And how could I love you as well as I do, if I didn't know who you are?"
     Her palm draws slowly against your skin. "It's a difficult thing, becoming something else," she whispers. "I can tell you, because I've done it. I keep on doing it. It hurts, yes - you twist and contort inside your own skin, and you feel the old skin splitting, and pulling away, and it sticks to you and it itches unbearably, and sometimes that skin's a little too attached. It rubs raw, and you bleed. And it's frightening, that - because your old skin doesn't work anymore. It can't protect you the way it did, and the new skin's too new; it's too thin. Everything hurts, now."
     She sighs, going silent, tipping her head back to look up at the sky. "I once told you," Fiona says finally, "that there would be a war coming. You didn't believe me, then. But there will always be wars, Davy. Right now, your war is with yourself. I can't win that war for you. All I can do is promise you that I am here, and I will be here - tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after, down until the very end of Time itself. Stars will blacken and go cold and I will still love you and I will still be here. Rival or no rival, there is only one man that has the power to take me away from you - and that is if you forsake me. And even then, I will still be here, trying to hold on, until you take up your sword and you cut my hands from my wrists and call me a thief."

     "Diolch," he whispers. His eyes lock onto yours and there's a crowd of emotion in them. "I... think I needed a reminding. And... to hear that. You speak truth, girl," he murmurs. "It is painful. And I... I will admit that I don't know what I'm doing most nights. I'm not sure how... to be this... new Davydd. I started out of the gate quick, but I've pulled up lame," his mouth slants a smile. Both definitions of the word work here, he thinks. "... around the first turn of the track." Exhaling mightily, Davydd gives his body to the bed -- what part of it you don't claim that is.
     "I don't think I realized... just... how much is altered. How different Rhodri and I are with one another. You in the middle. Me, not knowing the balance...or unable to keep my balance in it..." He shrugs.
     "I don't know how to change. I wish I did..."

     "It isn't a race." She slides down against you, curling up at your side. Skin still touches to skin at all the usual points; there is no distance. Her palm splays over your chest. "I don't pretend to know everything that's gone on in your past. There's a lot you haven't told me - some of it because you couldn't, or still can't; some of it because you've forgotten, or think it's not important, and some of it because, let's face it, it quite probably is none of my damn business." Her lips quirk faintly at the words, and she looks to you.
     "Your heart stopped," Fiona explains, slowly and intently. "Everything changed. For a little while - you didn't know, then, what you were going to do. What world you'd be part of. You're still ... straddling both. It's something that's been going on ... I guess since you met me, when all Hell broke loose, I suppose. I don't blame you for not liking me, then - well, I did, but I don't. I wasn't exactly likable, with my anger and my hurt borne before me like a shield. And to you - I was dangerous. What happened with me was significant because it tore down the veils you wore - to your own eyes, if to no others. Davydd, I can't stress this enough : you had been alone. You did what you felt you had to, for more years than I can properly imagine, to stay alive. You dealt with the masks you wore, and the seasons still turned until it all became usual - a little bit more the same, and you sank a little further into the mud. And you had your friends and you had your lovers - but you've always been alone, at the heart of you, not letting anyone in..."
     Fiona offers you a faint smile, closing her eyes and reaching down to grip your hand very tightly. And then your world was cracked open by a scrawny girl, probably not legal, probably strung out on drugs, didn't have half the sense of a sparrow, right? And you didn't expect to like me. You didn't expect to love me. You didn't expect that in me you could ever find yourself not alone, not with someone who didn't know the mud and gore and sweet blessed rain of the Wales you were born to. You've lost everything and you were numb for a long time before you even lost what you have now. And now ...
     "Now the anesthetic's wearing off, isn't it? I can help you through it - but you've got to let me."

     You have him pinned beneath you. It's the only way he's been able to sit still through this. Even so, he adjusts beneath you, his arms careful to balance you and keep you safe and still. And it's possible if you weren't pregnant with his (and his rival's) children, you might have been tossed off after you slapped him...
     It is hard to listen to... it is hard to live through...
     Davydd exhales again, his hand patting your side. I will try. I can't make any promises, mind you. And... it will be ugly... in the mud with me...

     I would willingly give you the last drop of blood that flowed in my veins if I knew that you needed it to live and thrive. Fiona looks at you, all mischief gone. Davydd. You are my liege and my king as well as my husband and my lover. How many promises have I ever made? How many promises have I ever broken?
     She sits up, pulling her fingers through her hair so that it ripples and falls like corn silk, to lie against her skin before pooling in waves against the bed. "I will fight for you. I will fight to keep you, Davydd. Both against your fears and self-hatred and your doubts, as well as against anyone who might try to take you from me. I don't think you understand." And now she twists round, meeting your gaze. She speaks slowly and clearly, enunciating.
     "I don't want to live without you, Davydd. And I won't."

     "I fear you must, Queen Fiona," the king speaks at last. Turning his head on his pillow he rolls over onto his side, taking you with him. "For now you are a queen of your own stretch of dreams and inspiration. For now you are the wife of another man. For now you are the mother of two children. You will have to life, and thrive, on your own, regardless of what happens to me. And that... that you must promise me, Fiona," Davydd whispers.
     "Hopefully... we won't have to see that promise fulfilled," he says, smiling a little. "I love you. I need you. And there is nowhere for me but here ... and no one for me but you." Leaning in, he kisses you to seal that vow.
     "I will fight for you, too," he whispers. "I'll try not to kill him, my rival. His mother would come back from the grave and fucking haunt me." He winks. "Let alone you. I'd never hear the end of it..."

     "I won't make that promise." Fiona glares at you stubbornly. "Davydd, if I have to descend into Hell and drag you back by the scruff of your unwashed neck, I will. Whatever it takes. You aren't allowed to give up. You aren't allowed to make yourself into a martyr. You aren't allowed to leave me, dammit! I was yours first, and I promised you everything, then. You don't remember, do you? But I did. I said it and I meant it."
     That stubborn expression - it is, for a moment, familiar, isn't it? Seen in a mirror, perhaps, or somewhere else. The grey eyes that scowl at you as ferociously as your own scowl can be.
     "You can't brush me off onto a shelf like a china doll. Remember this, ap Owain. If you turn your back and walk away, I will follow, and you will have to hack off my hands to keep me from holding on."
     And then she sighs, suddenly deflating, wrapping her arms around you and kissing you where you have kissed her, cuddling in close. It seems almost another vale of tears that awaits - but she doesn't cry. "You need plans," Fiona murmurs. "What is it that you're trying to accomplish, these days? Do you know?"

     "Where do you think I'm going?" he chuckles suddenly. "I mean, when I die on earth, I'll be coming here, knocking on your door, sitting on your furniture, wrinkling your taffeta. I'm not going anywhere else," Davydd whispers, planting a kiss upon your stubborn lips. Sweet Jesus, you're as bad as I am... there's no hope for our children, you realize. Or us either...
     His arms surround you, naked form pressed to yours, warmth to warmth, blue dragons to your creamy complexion. Slowly, his hand begins to wander. "I haven't had time to formulate a plan," he gruffs. "I don't know what I'm doing, really. I need to sort it out. And ... I need to start building..."

     She sighs, some of the tension easing out of her a bit. Someone's got to be here to be stubborn on your behalf, Old Man. Otherwise, you'd end up talking yourself into giving up.
     But you're kissing her, and it's as if she suddenly realizes there's nothing she'd rather be doing. Your kiss and wandering hands are responded to - enthusiastically. She sucks on your lower lip, then nips it, arching into your flesh as she runs her tongue along your teeth, slyly seeking out your fangs. She does so like to play dangerously. Formulate a plan. Kingdom-building - here and there. Decide what you wish to achieve, then decide what resources you need to achieve it.
     Her body arches, and Fiona almost purrs under the petting caresses. She breaks the kiss with a gasp for air, subsiding against you like a whale beaching itself. "You distract me," she accuses you, reaching down to grab your cock. "How am I supposed to help you plan if you distract me?"
     Pot, kettle...

     "My brain is full," Davydd complains, "...can I not think anymore tonight? I'm tired, hey... hey hey..." his complaining converts to throaty laughter as you grab him. "I'm not your Young Mister Fancypants, now. I have to rest, woman..."
     Oh really. Tell that to his body...
     Humming, his laughter ends in a swirl around your tongue. It's all been too much. He needs to turn down the volume of the bees in his head. Kissing you moves the bees to...other places. Fingers pad against your skin, sliding at the side of a breast to your hip. "Only now," Davydd whispers at your mouth as he tugs at your lips, nipping them until they blush, "... with all this talking... I'm not tired..."
     His hand lowers, you feel it join your own around him. Pot, kettle, Black Jack....

     Your lips are smiled against by Her Majesty, her hand still grasping your rod of rulership. "Funny how that works, darling," Fiona breathes out. "Plans can wait until tomorrow night. Tonight..."
     She squirms against you, a laugh moaned out at you as she rocks against your side. "Tonight, you need to love me. You need to remind me that even if you're an old man," she mimics you, this time, on the words, "that you're still a king, and my king. Go on, Holly King."
     Fiona grasps you, even as she sprawls over onto her back, turning her head to grin at you and stick out her tongue for a moment in playful mockery. "...care to see if you can conquer me? It can be your first act of your new lease on life."

Posted by rowan at August 16, 2005 09:12 PM