Logs:Making an Effort
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| RL Date: 22 September, 2011 |
| Who: Anvori, Leova |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: The pair get away for a one night vacation and leave the seafood stew to be uneaten. |
| Where: Cottage, Tillek Area |
| When: Day 5, Month 11, Turn 26 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Jaques/Mentions, Iolene/Mentions, Emme/Mentions |
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| It's not a beach resort. Nor is it a true vacation, being only a night of respite from hers and his duties: but here it is, a tiny cothold with overgrown shrubbery and a simply furnished room. Usually lived in, its abandonment is clearly temporary, little knickknacks of the actual owners visible here and there in a sketch pinned to the walls and a chest filled with a man and woman's clothing. No children. Maybe it's not their first time here, as Anvori makes his way around the one-roomed cottage, setting a table with a burnished yellow tablecloth and place settings. He's even cooking, fancy that, with something that smells good simmering over the open hearth. It's the sort of place where Vrianth doesn't get to go in, it's so small and so breakable, except for her long nose stuck in that first time. And maybe the third time. And definitely her rider's thoughts. If there's creaking outside, it might be her. It might be the wind. The roaming is at least partly her rider, sometimes ahead of Anvori, sometimes behind him, sometimes crossing paths. She rubs her elbows with her palms, sometimes, against the aches that will plague her joints if she lives that long, instead of just the little twinges there are now. Once she tweaks the tablecloth straighter than it has to be. Another time her hand lingers about his apron string. To one of the knickknacks, an upended boat of chipped ceramic, "I'm sorry. I'm no good tonight." While she moves and fidgets, his full regard isn't favored the greenrider or Vrianth who consistently tries to come in. While she rubs her elbows and tweaks, straightens and lingers, his hazel eyes spare sidelong looks until she finally speaks. Then the spoon lifts from the stew, held carefully away in one hand so errant splatters might not stain him or her. "You need to relax," is what Anvori elects to say out of everything he might say. What he means is in the look he passes onto her, the briefest touch of a floured finger against her cheek, and the crooked smile he favors her with, one that speaks of his own wearied life. "You should relax," he amends, leaning into brush the flour he put there away with his lips. "Have a glass while I finish up dinner and tell me about it." Is that a reward for speaking, for actual words? That, for talking... when so often he deflects her into distractions with such looks, such touches, such smiles? This time, his kiss is met with a disobedient sigh, an exhalation without words. It passes. She relents. Her hand extends for the wine, belled sleeve sliding down her wrist, her fingers curved into an illusion of imperiousness. She's no Edeline, though. Her voice has dropped in pitch. "I'm glad you could take the night off. I hope they don't wreak too much havoc without you." It's a start. Anvori's smile deepens at the disobedience, the brackets about his mouth shaping and stretching in invisible lines to tug at his squinted eyes. Leaving her to the wine and her words, he'll even glance to the door as a creaking draws his attention back to the green who cannot fit in before the stew claims his attention. It bubbles nicely, with floating bits of various seafood fresh from Tillek's market in a nice tomato broth. A pinch of something else gets added and then another sip releases not only a sigh to the air, but also compels him to turn, spoon in hand to feed the greenrider a taste, with only the insistence of the spoon and his urging eyes. The door, the roof... no, that /must/ be the wind, that time, if only because Thread-withstanding stone wouldn't creak that way. It's a teasing creature, the wind, with its breathy promises and the way it angles to listen in. Vrianth could fly in it. Leova gets a taste: of the soup, too, with a breath blown lightly across the spoon first. Just in case. Those amber eyes meet hazel for forgiveness rather than permission, and half-amused at that: surely he wouldn't want her to burn her tongue. There's something irresistible in that amusement, the amber eyes that seek his forgiveness for something so small, and the spoon falls lax, drawn away after being so cooled in lieu of his lips to hers for a gentle, entreating kiss. In it is, not only the taste of the stew remnant on his tongue, but also the tremble of a laughter withheld, Anvori looping his free arm about her waist, mindless of the wine she carries and of the spoon dripping its stew onto the floor. /Hers/ press together, refusing, only to relinquish there too. She relaxes. Relapses. Bites away some of that laughter, little nips without pain that threaten to let it sprout again. It's just that his being mindless means she has to be mindful, they're not so far along for it to be otherwise, not yet. She has to keep track of the /wine/. Leova steals a sip, leans back in, /leads/ a step inward too. It's like they're dancing. He'd asked her to talk. Each nip, only serves to tremble his body further, as if the entire cottage might be shaking and creaking for all of Anvori's restrained efforts, but when she steps back, he's left standing there, leaned forward, as if waiting for her step inward, and when she steps in, he steps back. The curve on his lips remains, broken only when that laugh surfaces to echo softly within the cottage's close walls. "Minx," then turns the spoon in admonishment to Leova before he's back to that stew with it. The tomato on the ground? It'll be cleaned later before his cousin and her husband returns. "I hope /they/ don't wreak too much havoc with /you/," is his return, the emphasis deliberate. Hopefully. /Hopefully/ the tomato won't be stepped upon. Smushed. Smeared. Not too much havoc, not here. "Mm," Leova says, in lieu of a /mmm/. She follows him, restless again in her delicate shoes, suited to dancing if only because she's the one to wear them. She drinks. She says to his back, half-hooded eyes studying the movement of his shoulder blades beneath his shirt, "They're kids. I should know better. /Do/ know better. But they think they're too good for this." She's stopped, there. She stops with words too. The awareness of her behind him is all too apparent in the slightest tension rolling about his shoulders. "Done. Grandma would be proud," is announced to the stew, Leova, the air about them, and with that heightened awareness of her placement compared to his carried in his very bones, he turns in place, on his heel, and drops his face so his nose might graze hers. "And it bothers you," he tacks onto what she says, the tonal quality very much the bartender throwing out a hook to reel out conversation word by word, "More than before." Does she need a wine refill? She /does/. She also accuses: "You're working." And, in a different tone, "Don't work me." A lazy arm reaches for the bottle of wine on the table, lucky the cottage is so small, and he gives her a blind pour, expert at this, at least. For her accusation, there's another fond brush of his lips to her accusatory nose. "Let's eat," he states, in a wicked tone that implies eating anything but the stew he's just made. "You're doing it again," Leova announces to the whole entire cottage, except somehow she's gotten herself fascinated by the way his eyebrows move, of all things. "It'll burn," she tells him. "It'll burn and it'll be a waste and those spiderclaws, they..." She aims to bump him with /her/ nose, this time. "What are you doing." She said /burn/. Devil-may-care and careless, for the world in the cottage to see and judge, "Let it burn." How much can burning hurt anyway? Only his wallet and those coffers were filled rather generously by a dead sister turns ago, even for some of Anvori's more spendthrift ways. What is he doing though? He's not holding that spoon anymore, but he is still holding the wine, but that still leaves one hand free, if the math is done right, and that hand slides about Leova's waist, a finger teasing the band and just under in its idle glide. He relents. "Eat first, drink next, burn together later?" There it is again, as it is so very often: would-be discussion becoming distraction becoming Leova's, laughing, "Let's take /it/ off the heat." As it always seems to, primal needs seem to take priority over actual ones other than breathing. Such is the way of life and in a world where survival matters, Leova and Anvori would probably not do too well if put on a deserted island together, but who needs to eat, when you've got an entire private cottage to cozy up in, right?
"So..." Leova elongates it for him, a languid sound that lingers breath along his chest: not /so what/ so much as but /so... which/. Anvori might have anything on his mind, mightn't he? Her shoulder shifts under his playing fingers, not quite ticklish, her breath not quite caught back again. She smiles, somewhere in there, hidden by the tilt of her head. "Does your back hurt?" The squishy bed. "So," is repeated, his corresponding smile that hovers about his mouth /heard/ in even that one word. "So. Oh? No." The so turns into a denial, the discomforted shift for her reminder notwithstanding as he aims for comfort. "I can survive a night on this and appreciate, all the better, what home holds for us. So." It's an evening for repetition and somehow, unable to segue this into actual conversation, he asks, in lieu, "Hungry yet? Or should we sit here and stay warm a bit longer." Home. Us. Her mouth curves in reply, as it had for the humor in his repetition, this time a little softer still. She doesn't resist patting him for his brave survival, either, and though her stomach might disagree, "Sit here." Lie here. "Stay warm." Nibble on his arm, too, to tide her over. There's a protest there, somewhere in the noise that accompanies his content sigh. Maybe that he doesn't want to stay in bed, but he does since he's clearly not moving. Maybe he's hungry, but he doesn't make a move to turn cannibal on her. No, most likely, that's a protest for his arm being gnawed on, that extension of him twitching away from her mouth as an ineffetive means of escape and coming off more like a leading tease. "Will there be anything left of me at the end of this trip?" is the verbal accompaniment to that arm's attempted dance away. "Mmm." She feints after it, a sudden /reach/ with her neck, though it's hardly as long as Vrianth's. She doesn't have a tail to twist around him, either, so her leg will have to do: ankle hooked around his ankle for purchase, perhaps? But Leova's also not trying too hard, and winds up just resting her possibly-pointy chin where she can smile into Anvori's eyes. "Will you regrow?" she asks dulcetly. And: "I don't /think/ I'll eat your toenails... So there's that." Her smile deepens: is he consoled? "From toenails? I'm sure the healers could figure out a way to grow a brand new Anvori. Maybe ten, since there are ten nails to grow off of." Wild science-fiction mutation musings aside, Anvori brings his arm back to that straining neck, aiming to force a roll out of the woman and scooting his own body a little away so she might curl all the more satisfactorily against his chest. "It's meatier anyway," is his, wry, explanation. "Leova. Leee-ooh-va." And because, despite all his training as a bartender, /and because/ she told him not to work tonight, he just asks forthright, in all his boyness, finally, "What's wrong." "Ten Anvoris wouldn't fit in our bed," Leova points out. "Unless we stack them. You." She gets a considering look, a /teasing/ look, one that fades with distraction: resist the roll, just for a moment, and then fine, go along with it. And fine, this might resemble cuddling. And: "Hm?" Her name, that way: something's up. "Oh." She tugs at the sheets they've wrinkled, pulls them up, for all that he so often withstands the cold. "It's just... This clutch. And the boy, of course: my cousin's worrying in her letters about his journeyman exams." His arm gets a tug too, the better to get it that much closer around her, like the blanket he doesn't need. "Don't know how to make it go right." Obligingly, the tugged arm draws her in closer, as if that's even possible at this point without someone suffocating, but it's a simple, protective gesture that accompanies his more simple question, "Why?" Then, a beat realizes clarification might be needed and Anvori elaborates with, "Why do you have to make it go right?" He watches her rearrange those sheets and drops his free hand to still that hand, holding it there briefly, long enough to hope to stay her movements, before sliding it down to her turned hip. They'll probably never eat at this rate. Why. Leova buys time through rearranging all over again, twisting despite how he'd stay her, to nudge her back up to his chest: a pair of spoons stolen from different sets. Better? He might drape his arm around her, that way. She might tuck her head under his chin. There's no scent of firestone in her rumpled hair. There's no delight in her voice. "It's my job." And: "Want to do right by them. Want them to get a good start. This'll... no matter what people were, before, now they get a fresh start, and if it goes /wrong/... it'll color the rest. Who'll want them. How they fit. Reputations. You know." It's always her hair that's a distraction for him and pressed backwards into him, he pauses, suddenly still to her maneuverings. Waiting, though not watchful, and when her movements subside, he pushes himself against her, a leg, instead of that arm, draping over her, possessive. With her head tucked beneath her chin, his face buries itself into her hair, his lips pursed into a series of kisses that trail down the side of her head to end up at her ear. It's his turn to nibble; his turn to rearrange as that warm hand finds her hip again, this time beneath the sheets. Mmmmm. Distracted. But even in this distraction, he manages to continue conversation, or at least try. "Do they know? That this is their fresh start?" "I... /oh/. /Anvori/," his name on a low exhalation. What would they think of her now, their gruff assistant weyrlingmaster gone all soft and shifting into his every touch? "I think so. Tried to say so. I... can't /think/ while you're doing that. Do you want me to think?" Mismatched spoons is about as lethal of a combination as matched forks and for a moment, Anvori seems too tempted to continue, what with the way his lips ruminate across the top of her ears. Or the way his hand curves just so down past her hip and then just stops there, teasing. "Haven't you heard? All bad boys like their girls in the unthinking variety." But he stops. Cause he's not just any bad boy, if he's even bad at all. He stops and holds his position, merely tightening everything so even mismatched spoons fit together nicely. He's not immune to the gossip that goes around, he works at the Snowasis, even if it's more in a managerial, back room type position now. So his, "Doesn't seem like a lot of them realize this is a fresh start," is probably less speculation and has more fingers in truths than gossip. "Seems like a lot of them don't realize what being a rider truly means other than more rules." But then again, as the intonation implies in its utmost dryness: neither does he. Again a sigh, wordless this time, and with reluctance all through it: /must/ he stop? Must he put her to the question? Must that subtle movement of hers, her reaction to his, toy with his control? "Tried to say," the greenrider repeats. "Not exiles. /'Reaches/. 'Reaches riders. Their dragons' riders. More rules, different rules, a beast in their head, rules to keep it from all going haywire. Weyrlings chafe at rules, we did, they do. This, it's different." "Tell me," he coaxes, unable to /not/ work her in his working way. Anvori'll even keep his fingers still, though the tremble of them speaks of the great restraint he's taking by doing this. If she decides to move, much of those paper thin chains might crumble. "Different." He gives her a starting point with that word. She has to move, doesn't she? She has to breathe. This time, it's not a sigh, but it's an inhalation that's deeper than it really needs to go. But the exhalation, it's part of an answer. "They're... some of them, not all of them... it's not even the rules most of all, it's that they got this /gift/, not only a chance but a chance that came /true/, and they don't want to be part of us." She shifts again, but it's less a happy wiggly move than a rattle of her heel against his ankle. "Dragon's not /good enough/." Anvori might be able to stave off his appetite for a little while longer, though each successive move and wiggle on her part is crumbling his resolve fast. His hands find happier distractions roaming, exploring those curves he knows too well by now, drawing outlines with a delicate finger that turns into a warmer palm flat against her skin. His nose drops from behind her ear to her shoulder and the nook of her neck. He asks her neck, so unlike Vrianth's, "What do you think they want then?" If dragons aren't good enough. As for that draped leg? It rises to pin her hip beneath his weight and crooks, moving that heel-rattled ankle away. "They're. Different." He agrees in the interim while he gives her time to think on his question. "Not like anyone I know." He can't see the way her lashes flutter closed as his palm eases the nerves he's tickled, though there's the way her neck can't help but arch: if it /were/ like Vrianth's, he'd be getting a ridge up his nose. But it's not. "To be happy?" she supposes. The syllables are getting ragged around the eges. "To be a ranking harper /and/ a rider. To not have to change his name. To be back in charge, big fish-in-waiting in a tiny pond. To get the extra training she should have, that we're not allowed to give her. To turn down an opportunity he wasn't going to get anyway. To not have to obey the rules. To get told over and over how important they are. To /whine/. Incessantly." She pushes her breath through her teeth, then, but doesn't take it back. Instead: "What do you make of them." "They seem-," Anvori, perhaps realizes the precipice he stands on: to say one thing and risk not getting what he'd really like, or say another, and still not get what he'd really like. The question without the question part she poses to him in return pauses him again, as he ruminates and considers in such a fashion, that if she were looking /at/ him rather than allowing him to play blindly along her body, she'd realize he's likely not thinking altogether about them, but himself. But, his response? It's purely them. "They seem lost. The few of them that come through. Lost. I kind of get it. Coming to the Weyr turns ago was different for me." And he knew what Weyrs were about. Ultimately, he surmises, "Lots of them seem to want their tiny pond back more than the ocean they might have instead." "Aye. And for them... those who're that way, not all of them... it's not their dragons I hear them talk about, not the Weyr, helping the Weyr, it's always about themselves." Leova's voice lapses. She seeks out his hand where it's roamed, seeks to touch her lips to each fingertip, tiny brushed kisses. When she speaks again, it's to say, "They could make marvelous pairs, you know. They could. And it hurts when I know... I know there are these other people who would be amazing too, who would think of their dragons and build their lives around them, who would have wanted, really wanted the chance... and they never got to." Some people, in distant lands. Some people, and one of them perhaps right behind her. "We don't always get what we want." What he says and what he means? Entirely two different things, particularly when she reaches his hand and claims each with her lips. When she's done with them, it remains closer to her face, curving blind about her chin to cheek. His other arm remains steadfast wrapped from underneath her, the hand splayed against her chest. He doesn't want her to think anymore and this position is as good as any to distract her from such overrated things. "Sometimes," he murmurs, with all the droll humor the realization of his cheese brings, into her ear, "What we get ends up better than we could imagine." "Anvori." She says it back, delicately, tenderly for the humor he gives her and that she can return. Humor, and not just humor. "As long as we don't whine about it, hm?" And with that, Leova tilts her head into the curve of her lover's palm, seeks out the tip of his thumb this time: to kiss it as she had before, and then to draw him between her smiling lips, across the soft scrape of her teeth, along her forgiving tongue. If he'd have her distracted, then let them be distracted: let the fire burn out and the stew grow truly cold. There aren't any starving children on the island, after all, anymore, to eat it. |
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