![](http://cobalt-company.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/writing:2024-01-19-tiragarde-moonshine/style="margin:/medium.jpg) |
| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | After Siamus spends a night out on the water with the one-eyed footman Shine, he returns back to his mermaid. He is gonna get that tattoo with her initials in it, see if he doesn't. Romance and personal character plots RP. 6300-ish words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Chain: Siarenne
It is past midnight when Siamus returns to his own room, entering quietly and kindling a single lamp by the bed before he begins undressing. It isn't a complicated process tonight; he's dressed simply, in his old sailing clothes, and he hangs his coat over the back of his desk chair and begins stripping off his loose shirt over his head.
He smells of sea salt and whiskey, and there is a slight looseness to his movements that suggests he's perhaps had a decent quantity of the latter.
The connecting door between the Fallon's bedroom has been, of late, closed, but tonight it's open, if only partially. Avrenne's own small desk light is still on, the lady of the House awake for her own reasons. It might not be the light in the other room that actually alerts the pregnant woman at her desk though, so much as a scent in the air.
She stands, crosses the room to the door between them, and knocks on it even as she opens it a little wider, her eyes going immediately to her husband, a smile already curling her lips. "Siamus."
He glances over his bare shoulder at her and his gaze warms, his answering smile reflexive. "Mo chroí. You're still awake? Or did I disturb ye?" He drops his shirt casually on the floor, so yes, this is definitely not-quite-sober Siamus.
"Any such disturbance would be welcome, but no, I was awake still. The books will take time to properly balance once more with all the disruptions, the lines of trade and expected yields," she says, and it has that little distracted tone to it. Her attention is much more on Siamus' bare torso in open appreciation.
The light in her room goes out — as if by magic, which it probably was — and she leaves the door to cross to him. She's only wearing the golden iridescent robe, nothing else, and it flutters a little around her legs in her haste ordinary pace to him, her hands coming up to touch him as soon as she's within reach.
He takes her by the elbows and smiles down at her. "Ye look a vision in that gown, have I told ye?"
Gown, robe, whatever: ladies' clothing does not need strict taxonomy, it is mostly there to be removed.
It's not like Avrenne cares what he calls it. What matters is that he likes her in it. And out of it. There's a humming sound of a trapped laugh as she leans into him, a brighter smile on her face. "You have," she confirms. Her tone's shifted into playful but sultry already, as she sets her nose against his chest and inhales deeply. It's still ladylike and not at all like a pig searching for truffles, and that's the story we're telling the Russian Judge. "You smell wonderful — like the sea and wind and whiskey." A considering moment, and another delicate inhale. "Not your usual though. I don't recognize this one." She can tell? That might be the pregnancy nose. Or maybe just Avrenne's attention to detail.
He laughs and wraps his arms around her. "For the best — it's no'one a lady ought recognize. Cheap Tiragarde rotgut, 've no'had a bottle of the stuff in… going on ten year, I expect." His speech has slackened a little as well with the effects of the alcohol.
Avrenne tips her head up, an arm sliding up his chest to set her fingers lightly against the back of his neck and encourage him downwards, her voice warmer and eyes glittering dark jewels in the lowlight of the room. "Mm. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the Tiragarde varieties. But I find myself wondering at the differences of taste all the same, if a gentleman would oblige a lady in satisfying her curiosity?"
"Now, mind," says Siamus seriously — mock-seriously — "there are fine whiskies out've Tiragarde. But this isna' one of 'em." He bends to offer her a deep and thorough taste of cheap whiskey.
She seems to be enjoying it all the same, or maybe that's just Siamus, but she takes her time in it, lingers in the moment of lips and tongues long enough that by the time she does finally release him, she seems half drunk herself, rosy cheeked and drowsy eyed.
"Mm. I have no complaints about the taste. But, perhaps every whiskey is improved when it's exported to Stormwind by way of Stormsong," she teases, but her tone is gentler, and she strokes her fingers along his cheekbone, as she looks up, studying him. "Was there an occasion?"
"Ah," Siamus says, and sobers a little. Not from the alcohol, mind; just his apparent mood. "I took Shine out. S'been a while since we did, we two. The whiskey was… a bit've nostalgia for the both've us. To remind him."
Avrenne's smile fades into a softer look of concern, as she brushes her fingers up to his hair. "Oh," she sighs. "It was very good of you. The poor man. I can't imagine what he must have been trapped in all this time."
Siamus nods heavily. After a moment, he steps back to settle into his desk chair to address the problem of boots and socks. "Aye. He'd'no' want to talk on it much, so we talked on home and other things."
She moves with him to set a hand on his shoulder as he works at his boots and accessories. "Where is he originally from in Kul Tiras?"
"Bridgeport," says Siamus. After a moment he glances up. "On Tiragarde Sound. To the south, on the water. We met in Boralus, at th'Academy."
Avrenne has that attentive look to her, solemnly curious, and filing the details away into some internal ledger. "The Academy? Will you tell me of it?"
He gets one of his boots off, decides that's a good place for a break, and sits back. "Proudmoore Academy, in Boralus. S'where officers train. Some've'em — the noble lads, mostly — come in dry, never spliced a rope or reefed a sail before they turn up for training. Shine and I, we'd both done our muster before we e'en began. He's a ferryman's son, no' gentry, but he and I, we got on well from the start. We were skipped ahead in our courses because of time asea already, which some've the higher-nosed lads didn't like in Shine's case because a commoner, but he could handle himself."
Avrenne listens without interruption, a quiet audience. "He seems to be a very capable man, in whatever he does," she remarks at the pause.
"Aye," says Siamus, with a fond and absent smile. Then he remembers he was taking his boots off, and bends to the second one. "My lieutenant aboard the Wind-wise, by the end. But in the day, we raised some hell. A fine marine, a better brawler."
Avrenne's own smile forms in small mirror, her fingers stroking along his back as he works on his other boot. Her brows lift for a moment at brawler, but it doesn't seem to startle her. She saw how Siamus had been restraining him before. "And a fine man above all, to judge by your regard for him, and his character now. You stayed good friends, then?" She doesn't ask if they were awfully good friends, but then again, she hasn't ever really asked him about any past or present lover. Either she isn't curious — unlikely given her nature — or she assumes a certain level of privacy on the matter.
"Aye," Siamus says again, and wrests his second boot off. He sits back, and then looks up at Avrenne with abrupt and unwonted seriousness. "Shine ye can trust absolutely, Avrenne. Should — anything happen to me, or when I'm no'here. Shine will see to it."
She nods slightly. "Of course. I have no doubt of it. I trust your judgment, Siamus. If he was not of that sort of character, you would not have him in his position here as he is," she says. There's enough of a frown to cause a faint line on her forehead, as she searches his expression, looking at the angles of the words as though wondering where it's coming from. "Is there concern we might look at him differently after the past few days? I know it was not him. I would never hold a man to account for what he does while insensible and driven by some force."
He gives her a slight, tired smile in return. "I know. Ye're a good woman, mo ghrá." He offers a hand out to her, to draw her down onto his lap.
She goes very willingly to a favorite spot, settling in against him as best she can, a hand rubbing her belly idly for a moment — the baby has decided now is a good time to work on her brawling skills, perhaps now knowing the competition will be fierce — as her arm goes around his shoulder for balance.
"He does know in turn that I would never polymorph him without cause? It's not a magic I use lightly, for many reasons. I do realize how unsettling it can be, especially when one is not accustomed to mages. It was only exceptional circumstances."
"No, no, never fret, joy. He was more concerned he'd hurt or frightened someone than he was wi'anything might've been done to him. The man feels a keen conscience." Siamus lays a hand on Avrenne's belly. Hello, little brawler. "I expect we'll be feeling some effects of all this among the staff for a time yet."
The brawler aims some decent kicks out, front kicks only. Roundabouts will have to wait until she's older, and out of her uterine cage. Shine can show her.
"It's always the way of it. After the plague — " A strange little hitch, covered quickly. "Came to Stormwind last year, it was difficult on all of us." For obvious reasons. "Returning to normalcy as soon as is reasonable will help. Routine and familiarity, and a reminder that we are still here. It was very good of you to see to Mr. Shine," she says again, stroking her hand along Siamus' hair. "I wish I knew more of them to help. I did what I could with Catrin, to tell her of what she missed of Phoebe while she was afflicted. A mother does like to know of her children when she has not seen them for a time." Well, some mothers anyway. Avrenne might have a biased impression of mothers and motherhood, though.
Siamus has been gazing with slightly tipsy tenderness at her face as she speaks, but his expression flattens slightly at that last observation, the smile fading.
"That was good of ye, mo chroí. They're very fond of ye, all the staff."
Avrenne's own expression alters in turn, as she searches Siamus' face. "Mm. And I am fond of them," she says in response to the words, but she lifts her hand from her belly to his face, tracing a line at his brow as if she might pluck the thought from it with her fingers. "What is it? Something wrong?"
Siamus blinks, returning to the present. "Hm? No, no." He smiles at her. "What a brilliant mother ye'll be yourself, pet." He clasps her closer against himself and lays his cheek on her hair. "It isn't every lady, aye? I've made a blessed choice."
Avrenne's quiet for a moment, a hand on his chest. "Nor is it every man," she says. "Priscilla once asked me, after she learned of my decision to base a marriage by my head and not my heart, about the children of such a union. I was well prepared, I thought, that if it should be that cold that the man might take no interest whatsoever with such issue, that it would not matter. They would have at least one parent who loved them, and that," she says, quieter, "I know from experience, is enough.
"But I believe now that I was wrong. That I had mistaken barely adequate for plenty, as though in my acclimation to a poverty of such a father myself, I had not thought to dream of riches. Now I have it." She turns her cheek a little more to press a kiss to his chest. "All that I have ever wished for a father to be — to be attentive no matter an absence, to take a true interest, to be kind without overindulgence, to be decisive without any cruelty, to cherish in his protection without stifling all they are — I have found in you. And my children will never know the poverty of their mother of only one parent to love them well."
Siamus is silent for a moment and then exhales. "They'd be rich all the same wi'a mother like yourself. But — I know what a father can mean for a child. I know how mine shaped me." This may not mean what you think it means, Siamus, but okay. "But I saw what his… reserve did to Ta. I tried to be halfway a father to her myself, where I could. I've always wanted — "
There's a ruminative silence, and he adds more quietly, "When things were… difficult, when we were small, Ta and I had only each other. I want any child of mine to be… surrounded."
"A dozen," she says, and although the words are almost teasing of a reference to another time, her tone is not. "I did not have eleven siblings, but I grew up with a thriving house, filled with people, dozens upon dozens of those I knew that had allegiance to the House, those I could rely on if I had need. I had my sister, and my mother, my uncles, my friends." There's that thread of grief and nostalgia woven into her voice. "No matter how many times we must rebuild, we will. They won't be alone. We'll give our children that."
He squeezes her gently. "Two parents who cherish every one o'them — who'll fight for all o'them — and none who'll be set aside."
He can feel her smile against him, the pressing of her cheek, and hear it in her voice. She seems content to rest on the thought for a time, tracing the shapes of his muscles in more precise geometric figures, rectangles everywhere.
Avrenne tips her head up, speaking more directly to Siamus from under his chin. "And someday, they'll all know their motherlands properly. They will know the seas and rivers and lakes, all the waters and winds, that flow through their veins, the legacy of their parents, and their connection to the mother of the world." They can have like, four mothers, between motherlands and tidemothers and biological mothers. Can't go wrong with more mothers.
Siamus is quiet again himself for a time, and then he says low-voiced, "I was just talking of it wi'Shine. Home. Taking ye both — you and little Ery — to see it. Sailing into Boralus. Ye've never seen a city like it, Avrenne. And all the places I could show ye — " There is a powerful undertow of emotion in his voice, and he trails off before it can carry him any farther.
Hers picks it up instead, longing and desire audible as she traces her rectangles on him. "Boralus and the seawall of the harbor where the Windward sailed. Stormsong, and the heart of the Fallons. Tiragarde, and the place of the Westrys of the Ashvanes. Bridgeport and Tiragarde Sound and the Academy." Wait, has she been compiling a list of places Sintha and Siamus have mentioned all this time? "Drustvar, Candle Rock, and — at a respectable distance, of course — the haunted northwestern point with the lighthouse Waypoint Light with Mardon's Watch. I really am still curious, you know, if the hauntings were caused by unnatural arcane disturbances." Yeah, she's been compiling a list.
He draws back a little to gaze down at her, his eyes shining. Yeah, definitely getting that heart tattoo with her initials. "That's right," he says softly, half in confirmation and half in wonder. "That's right. And the Tradewinds Market, on the water in Boralus, and Mariner's Strand in Stormsong, where the ships are blessed, and the Shrine of the Storm. Ah, Avrenne, my star. It's the greenest country ye ever saw — Proudmoore green, and the green sails of the Fleet, Stormsong's green valleys and the green fields of Tiragarde, the rooftops in Boralus — it's beautiful, mo chroi. And all for you and Ery to see someday, tides willing."
Oh, yeah, he might get pretty homesick sometimes.
Avrenne's own eyes are shining back at him in reflection, in excitement and desire both, leaning towards him in a helpless pull caught on his eyes of a compass pointing north as he speaks. He can almost hear the scratching of a mental pen as she adds to the list. "We will. We will go there, and see it. Perhaps that is where our children will spend their summers, among their kin, finding sea glass and being tossed into the waves to ride them. We'll be there. All we need is time." She brushes her hand up to his cheek, that precious light touch. There's the playful teasing note weaving into her voice as she adds, "And possibly a ledger."
He smiles broadly back at her, caught up for a moment in the vision — and maybe the ledger — and then his smile fades a little. "Aye, possibly. Wi' time."
Avrenne's answering smile is warm, but it too fades in some thought, possibly of that kin. "And I am sorry that with the timing, with the," she pauses, her hand leave his face to trace a circle in the air, "barrier of communication with Kul Tiras at the moment, that your mother will not know of the birth of her grandchild." Avrenne is, of course, assuming that Lady Norfolk would care, that bias hard at work.
Siamus laughs a little harshly. He is drunk. "Ah, s'no matter. It's no'news to interest her. Ta told her I was marrying and she'd nowt to say on that subject either."
Avrenne searches his expression with the air of someone surprised by a sudden gust of a draft. "I didn't realize. I thought — well." She might have thought there had been more communication, with Sintha's visits, some way that Lady Norfolk kept up with her son's doings. "Is it…because of your choice to stay here? After Theramore? Did it cause a break between you?"
Siamus pinches the bridge of his nose wearily and slumps a little in the chair. "My mother broke wi' me when she packed me off first to sea and then to Starmwind wi'my father, married another man before we'd even landed in the east, and got two new sons by him. I've no' had a word direct from her in near twenty years, and I doubt she has reason to think of me much at all. She always doted on Ta, and would have kept her, but." He shrugs.
Avrenne's frown starts and grows as he speaks, and she eventually drops her eyes, fighting back what very well might be rage, to judge by the sense of faint heat from her hand on the back of his neck. "I — I'm sorry. I assumed." She raises her gaze to him, and there are those markers of anger in her, that she is not concealing from him. "I don't understand how any mother who had you for a son could be anything other than desperately proud of you, no matter how she might struggle with her own place and unable to navigate political waters. It is not at all well done of her, to have treated you so, to not have cherished the gift she was given of her extraordinary son."
Siamus squints and looks away from Avrenne, no reason. "Aye, well, I've had most my life to get over it" — his voice is a little gravelly in a way that suggests he has maybe gotten less over it than he thinks — "and I understand it's not all to do wi'her. It was her parents, Lord and Lady Westry, always hated the Admiral and couldn't wait to get shot of him, and I expect I'm too much like him. Ta and I were the undesirable grandchildren, and Lady Norfolk herself has all the backbone of a pudding. She'd no' do but what they wanted of her."
His arm tightens around Avrenne and the look he turns back on her is dark and near-plaintive. "But that's never you, mo chroí. You're a lady lioness who'll fight for every one of her children." He buries his face in the crook of her neck and breathes in the warmth of her skin, the scent of lotus, then presses a kiss there tenderly.
Avrenne's hand slips into his hair to hold him there against her, pressing a kiss to his hair. If there's something a little unavoidably motherly about it, maybe he can forgive it this once with the context. She is, at least, also still petting his naked chest, in a not at all motherly way. "I would. I will always," she promises. "But so too would I fight for their father. There is simply no power in this world, or any other, that would ever make me let go of you or our children." There is that stainless steel in her voice, that intensity of someone who would fight king, country, and gods themselves getting between her and hers.
He kisses her neck again, and then just lets his face rest there against her skin for a time.
When at last he sits up again, he is his usual composed, faintly sardonic self, although the look in his eyes is a little softer, his smile not quite so edged. Maybe it's the whiskey. "Is it any wonder I'll stand shelter for such a lady when'er I can?" He lifts a hand to stroke her cheekbone gently with a thumb.
Avrenne smiles back at him, her own warm, and anger either cooled or set aside for the moment in affection. "My seawall, one of the great wonders of the world in himself." It's the way he described the seawall of Boralus in the story of Ery half a year ago on the terrace of Fallon House. Her hand drops to her belly again — the little brawler squirming in repeated swift three point kicks, maybe Morse code, but it's just sss; at least it isn't S.O.S. — in thought perhaps of the child with the tidesage's name.
Siamus tilts his head back and his smile widens crookedly. "My siren wi'her silver tongue." He leans in to capture that tongue for a moment in a kiss, and his hand drops to cover hers on her belly.
After a moment he laughs softly and draws back to look down. "She's no'a minnow, she's a little fighting fish."
Avrenne raises her brows, looking down at the same. At least the kicks aren't visible through her belly. Yet. "Mm. She's perhaps a bit of a sailor already. Almost every time I stay too still these days, she starts up again, and only calms if I walk, or sway in place, a bit like a ship."
He laughs again. "She's a Fallon."
He studies Avrenne again and some of the laughter leaves his expression; he grows serious. "Was it — I confess I was distracted, but will ye tell me if I imagined it? When the storm came, and I was holding ye? The child was — I could feel her moving about, aye?"
Avrenne rewinds the tape. He can see her doing it, metaphorically, as she walks through the memory of the crash of the Emerald Dream and the real world, the cleansing storm that followed. She nods, slowly. "Yes. She started moving just as you came into the room. I was setting down the teacup, and it got worse for a few moments. She was still moving when the rain started." She was, to be fair, holding still, and then with her own adrenaline. It could have been just that.
Siamus Fallon is not a man to let Female Biology stand in his way when there is a Tidemother explanation. He looks down at Avrenne's belly with a sudden glow of reverence. "D'ye think that she — was it the storm, she could feel? Did she know it as well, when it was coming?"
C'mon, kid, be a tidesage for your daddy.
"I don't know," Avrenne allows. She really doesn't. "When I looked, with the arcane, I could feel something, some power gathering and almost…twisting, and then an explosion. I could not sense it before I looked though, and she was moving before that." She studies Siamus' face, looking for math for one way or another, very likely. "Priscilla felt nothing at all, no sense of the storm in any way. I don't think anyone who had no particular sensitivity to it did. If it was not simply that I was standing still, then Ery may have sensed something at that moment."
"She may have. She may have sensed the storm." Siamus is rapt. "I'll no' — it's too early to know, I'll not hope unreasonably" — you already are, buddy, we can tell — "and I'll no'be disappointed if she's only our perfect little Lady Ery. But — she may have."
"She may," Avrenne agrees, smiling at him, caressing his hair between her fingers. "We still don't yet know what unexpected flowering in my blood and long carried gift in yours will do, but she will be ours, all the same, and it will be done properly, as befits a Fallon, tub and all." She has looked into the tub thing. It was not what she had been picturing, but that's for the best. It's just a tub with water in it. Normal stuff, presumably.
Siamus looks faintly startled by the necessity of appending this last detail. Is the tub… not normal? Is that not just How It's Done? How do mainlanders have babies? Like, dry?
"She'll be perfect, no matter," he agrees.
A thought occurs to him and his smile fades again. He draws back slightly but doesn't take his hand from her belly. "Ye'll write to me when it's near time, aye? So that I can come back for it?"
"Of course," she agrees so readily that it might seem more obvious that she had never any intention of doing otherwise. "Assuming, naturally, that you were not here already." There's a touch of a smile in her eyes, as she leans in closer to him, setting her hand lightly over his. "How near time? I had thought to send for you as soon as we could be reasonably certain she would be arriving within the day, on the express arcane mail, so as not to miss anything."
"Aye, that will do. Assuming we're no' storming the Citadel, I'll be home as soon as." He smiles wryly. "I'll have to write to Lady Alwynneria tomorrow and learn how quickly we can have Morningdew's trial, now that the dream business is resolved. I know ye couldn't have expected me around so long when I came down to meet wi' Demasco, and if I'm to come back for the child, I'd no' like to wear out my welcome before it."
Avrenne doesn't pull back, but she does halt, blinking as she makes a faint I — sound, as though he has said something mathematically impossible, with such confidence, and now she is rapidly attempting to find how he's arrived to his conclusion. She can't, after a moment or two of searching, find it within her own formula, so she says, "What? I don't…I don't understand." Her eyes are searching his, her own dark and unsure. "What do you mean, 'wear out your welcome?' With me? I didn't expect you would remain here, no, but for all of the unfortunate reasons for it, the unexpected benefit of having you here is enough to make one feel conflicted about such political difficulties, to be made so happy with your continued presence. Have I… have you felt as though you aren't welcome, that I am not pleased with every moment I have of the time with you, your company and your conversation?" There's a touch of anxiety now in her voice, that different look as she starts to try to find her own possible error.
Siamus knits his brows; this was not precisely the reaction he'd expected, clearly. "No, pet, no."
He lifts a hand to cradle the side of her face. "Ye've been the sweetest and most generous of ladies, and I'm glad and grateful for every minute in your company. But I hate to think of wearing on ye wi' so much time spent, and I'd rather be off to sea than have ye tire of me. I told ye before, aye? Ye'd soon tire, but never fear." His smile is deprecating… and a little tired itself. "It's going on five months of me ye've had now."
Yes, he's been counting.
So has Avrenne, but that's probably not a surprise by now. Avrenne counts everything.
She is also, obviously by that faint sound of whirring going on her head, attempting to recalculate things, put them in order that makes sense. She is unsmiling, her eyes a little wider. "'A season or two,'" she says, and it has that sound of something remembered. "You said in the carriage, after the engagement. 'A season or two before you find my company wears and be glad to see me off to sea again.' But I had thought — " A breath, and she struggles with holding his gaze, her eyes dropping for a moment before she forces them back up. "I had thought you meant it the other way around, that you had been trying, as a gentleman might, to say it like that to not say so directly that you expected to tire of me, to set the expectation for me. I thought it a generous amount of time, that I might hold your attention so long. It would be one of the longer times any man had found my company so.
"And I have been aware that we have been nearing that timeline, that you might have been finding my company dulling, that you would soon rather be at sea than here with me, and I had been dreading the moment when it might come, but I had thought you seemed pleased still, and… I didn't realize you meant it literally. You meant yourself. Oh, Siamus." She can't really hold either his gaze or the emotion behind her own, and she throws herself forward into him, for an embrace, shaking her head adamantly. It's not far to go admittedly, being in his lap. Still, the urgency of the motion is there. "No, no. I could not be tired of you anymore after five months than if you stayed for fifty years. I love you."
He wraps his arms around her; she cannot see his face, but he looks utterly bewildered. "'As a gentleman might?' What sort of gentleman would tell a lady he'd tire of her, and tell her slant, no less? Avrenne, I'd no' — I was aware ye were marrying as a lady in straits, no' by choice, and that I'd no' been your first candidate, and of the advantages I offered ye, my person wasn't one.
"I'm no' — Avrenne, mo ghrá, ye know I'm a man who comes back, a loyal man. And I've been left lightly enough by ladies who wanted a little sport, a sailor who'd no' trouble them for more than weeks out of the year. But I've never left — I don't leave, Avrenne, no' like that. And I'm no' — "
He draws back, searching for her face, to take it between his hands and hold her gaze. "I can't imagine tiring of ye, my brilliant and lovely Lady Fallon. I said it to ye before, that I married ye for a dozen reasons, and ye've given me a hundred more since. Ye settle me and ye're a joy to me, and when I am off to sea again, I'll miss ye every day in a way I didn't expect myself until it happened. I'm no' tired of ye, my star, I'm nowhere near tired of ye, I can't imagine having enough of ye."
Avrenne's eyes are too bright with tears — it's the pregnancy, okay, it's always the pregnancy's fault now, that's the story she's sticking to — but she seems caught in between crying and smiling both, as she sets a hand lightly against one of his, tilting her face up. "Well then we are that well matched, because I cannot imagine having enough of you either." Her voice lacks its purer note, warbling in emotion. "When I agreed to a marriage of a man not likely to be present at home for much of the year, it was for the reason that I knew I could manage, and it strengthened my own bid for what I might offer him in trade, not because I was hoping he would not be there, particularly not when that man was you. It's an accepted necessity, not a…benefit.
"Siamus, you may always stay, as long as you will, as long as you can. It's true that I won't ask you to stay forever, but it's not because I don't want you here, but because I know you have reasons to go that your conscience bids you to fulfill, and I won't keep you from them, or from your lady love of the sea. But you must know — come home whenever you wish. Stay for as long you like. When you can, take me with you when you go. I will never be tired of you. I will always be glad to see you, happiest with you with me, and never wishing to see you go. And I will always miss you when you are gone."
He stares at her for a moment, his expression alight with that air of slightly baffled wonder again. "Ah, I missed ye so, Avrenne, and didn't feel half a fool for doing it. I'm no' in a habit of pining. But I tell ye I was glad of that little portrait, I was. And I'd take ye — mo ghrá, I'd take ye wi'me to sea in a heartbeat. I'd love nothing better than to have ye wi'me there, and ye don't know what it meant when ye asked me to. I'll be spoiled by ye, pet. And never, never tired. Mo ghrá go deo." He leans to kiss her, still cradling her face in his hands like something precious.
He can see her mouth moving silently as she repeats the words to herself, for safe keeping in her memory, to ask him for a translation. In a moment. She'll get there eventually, but first order of business at present is to take another long, deep drink of her beloved sailor with his sea salt and whiskey.
He savors her in turn, his grip softening, his hands sliding back into her hair so that he can tip her head back farther. He draws back until the kiss is just a teasing soft play of lips and breath, and then his mouth claims hers again. How do you write kissing? IDK, man.
Avrenne's a math girl, don't ask her. Addition is addition, more kisses good. Although, she might not be counting at this point, depending on how much residual whiskey she's picking up. If she starts singing and napping, we'll know.
She does seem less sober, with her head tipped back languorously, flushed and smiling sweetly with heavy lidded eyes, but that isn't likely to be actual intoxication in her case (see: napping). She is, however, in increasing danger of losing the thought, or at least the vague pronunciation, and so she draws back enough to ask him, breath warm on his lips, "What does that mean? Mo ghrá…go deo?" She mangles the last part a little almost beyond recognition, but it's late at night, and he's very distracting. He knows what he said. Probably.
He nuzzles beneath her jaw, kisses her throat. "My love forever," he murmurs against her skin. "Never tired of ye, my joy, my pet, and even glad as I am to go back to the sea, I'll never be glad in leaving ye behind. Tá mo chroí istigh ionat." He lifts his head, smiles, lays a hand between her breasts. "My heart is in you."
His heart's beating hard and fast, under the rise and fall of her chest, as she smiles brightly back at him, and mirrors the same gesture on his own chest. "And so, there is mine, in you. I'm always with you, no matter how far you, no matter how long you are gone. I will not tire of you, I will not ever want less of you, and I will not ever forget you. You must remember that it is true:
"If you are Siamus Fallon, then I will always love you. If and only if you were Not Siamus Fallon would I no longer love you. Siamus Fallon cannot be Not Siamus Fallon. And therefore, it is always true that I will always love Siamus Fallon." Did…did she just declare her undying love in the form of a contrapositive logical mathematical proof? So it would seem. It's her version of poetry, probably.
The gleam in his gaze is as much laughter as lust now. "I cannot find fault in Your Grace's mathematics — but then, I never could, and thus was I seduced." He bends to kiss her throat again.
Avrenne laughs, looking inordinately pleased, a slow, sweet honey sound spinning out from her, leaning back for his kiss. It is, after all, one of the highest compliments a gentleman can pay to a lady. Well, maybe this lady.