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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Siamus is home for a brief visit on October 2nd, to see to some of the most important business matters that require his attention. The very first order of business, however, is not a ledger or a contract, it's seeing to his wife (who one might suspect he missed while at sea). Part ONE of FOUR of A Second Brief Homecoming. 14k~ words. |
| Rating: | A for Adults Only 18+ |
Chain: Siarenne
At Nearly 5:15am
October 2nd is ushered in by a soft haze of autumn fog rising over the grounds of Fallon House; the chill blue air is vague, the world fading into smudged unreality at its edges. The cliffs and the sea beyond, the western road past the drive: these are all invisible. The sky is a darker layer of blue, fading to warmer lilac in the east. The silence is near-perfect; the faint, distant sound of the surf seems sourced from the same vague, dreamlike realm as the fog.
It is at this improbable hour that a horse comes cantering out of that fog in a Gothic swirl — too bad Isla isn't awake to see it — and reins in before the house. The animal is unfamiliar, a Stormwind livery hire perhaps, because the rider in his woolen greatcoat and tricorne hat is very familiar indeed.
Siamus Fallon swings down from the saddle. Against the hushed and drowsy backdrop, every sound seems magnified: the horse's hooves on the gravel and the crunch of Siamus' own footsteps are shocking in the early air.
Siamus takes hold of the horse's bridle and waits. After a delay, the door to the gatehouse opens and a bleary-eyed groom shuffles out, squinting. He straightens at once, abruptly and sharply awake when he sees who the arrival is, and hurries to take the horse. Siamus nods at him and turns toward the house.
Vane is not at his post at this hour; butlers need sleep too. Lamps burning dimly on the first floor suggest that some of the staff are about, and indeed, when Siamus opens the door quietly to let himself in, it is Lyra who comes hurrying down the hall into the foyer to greet the intruder, brandishing a feather duster warily just in case. She halts and hides the duster behind her back when she sees who it is, her cheeks stained red. "M'lard," she whispers, and bobs a curtsey.
Siamus laughs softly at her. "Don't let your brother know ye mean to fend off villains with a duster, Lyra," he tells her low-voiced. Her blush deepens and she drops her gaze, but she's smiling.
Siamus looks toward the stairs. "Her Grace?"
"Still abed, I expect," Lyra whispers, a little reproachfully. Proper non-sailor and non-maid people are still abed in this house, sir.
Lyra's expectations are correct, as Her Grace takes the much lauded advice of those with baby expertise to "sleep when the baby sleeps," (it should be noted that it's a piece of advice she can take as well as she does because she pays a great deal of other people to be awake to manage a great deal of things) still asleep in the early morning in her room, in her own bed, curled up on her side (not only a habitual position, but these days the only comfortable position to sleep in), her hands tucked up under her chin, and her hair, long and golden, tossed chaotically across the pillow and the bedclothes, as if a wind had blown in at some point in the night and scattered the strands out in a fit of excitement, then promptly left the Duchess to her sleep.
The seastalk case rests on the nightstand closest to her, set in its holding dish, and nestled alongside it is a new, elegantly pretty golden pocket watch, and guarding these two treasured objects is Siamus — well, a portrait of Siamus, portable in its glass frame, set to smile faintly and seriously looking out at the viewer. Somewhere in her dressing room, a chosen dress and accompanying jewelry have been likely laid out, her choice made days, maybe even weeks or months before knowing the Lady Fallon, but at this particular moment, she wears only a thin, silken shimmering gold nightgown, sleeveless and scandalously short, coming up only to her thighs, wrapped caressingly close over her body.
Of that, there is also a change from the last time Siamus saw her, just a week or so shy of two months before, the time during which she's had the task of growing not one, but two, babies from scratch and all joking fruit visuals aside, it has very much begun to truly show; she's not that far off from the size she was when he saw her in labor, and still with another two and a half, three maybe, months to go. She probably isn't going to explode, but one might wonder.
The door to her room eases open quietly, and Siamus steps in, closing it gently behind him. His coat is unbuttoned and he is carrying his hat beneath his arm, but he still has both; he did not stay long enough in the foyer to divest himself. He may have taken the stairs two at a time.
He stands by the door gazing at Avrenne for a long moment, and then he steps to the side to lay his hat on her desk. He approaches the bed.
At her bedside, he pauses again to appreciate the picture, his dark gaze tender. He bends over her to touch the golden spread of her hair across the pillow, stroking the silken strands with light fingertips, and then he straightens and sits down carefully on the edge of the bed. He touches one of her tucked hands. "Avrenne," he says softly. "Baile mo chroí. I'm home."
Before she even opens her eyes, one of her hands slides over his, covering it partially with her own much smaller one, as she tilts her head to the side, smooshing her cheek into the back of his hand like a much beloved mini-pillow, making a sound low and mumbly that might have been his name. Her eyes drift open slowly, her dark eyes still soft with hazy sleeping wanderings, as she looks up at him with a dreamy smile. "Mm. Siamus," she sighs against his hand, brushing her cheek against him, breathing in the scent of him, as she gazes lovingly upon him with drowsy heavy-lidded eyes. Is it the touch, or the scent, or the pressure of his weight on the bed that is real enough to send the jolt? Maybe all three.
Because she blinks, eyes widening, startled into truer awakening. "Siamus?" His name is punctuated by a gasping delight, a bubbling spring of her laughter, as she tries to sit up to him and simultaneously pull him down to her in an unusual clumsiness of eager joy knowing only that he's momentarily too far away.
Siamus laughs softly and fits an arm beneath her to help her sit up, since pulling him down seems the awkwarder of the two solutions. He shifts so that he can draw her close against him, and drops his face to breathe the scent of her hair. He smells himself of that faint, familiar vetiver and oakmoss, the touch of sea salt, and, this morning, the autumn chill that still clings to his coat.
"Are ye surprised?" he murmurs against her hair, laughter in his voice. "I couldn't wait. I hope I didn't spoil any plans." His hand slides down and he spreads his palm over her belly. "Look at ye, my joy. It can't have been so long, can it?"
Avrenne, her own hands moving under his coat in eager, greedy search of the warm skin beneath, and her lips seeking places to kiss, pauses for this thought, as she looks down to his hand.
"It's been, oh, nearly two months, now, with only two and a half to go, as I understand it. My physician assures me that I'm entirely normal sized for a second pregnancy, and for two babies that are, she says, measuring a little on the smaller side compared to Ery at the same time, which is likely for the best given my own size, and well within standard norms," she assures Siamus in a voice still husky with sleep, tipping her head up again, so that she can gaze at him, studying his face like she intends to describe it to a portrait artist in just a few hours, a bright smile on her own that would mean any portrait of her just then would need be private. "The only thing spoiled is me, to have you just that much sooner."
"It is October the second," Siamus observes, and takes his silver watch from his pocket to consult. "Nearly 5:15. I left the Lady Blanche near the end of the middle watch, around 3:30. Officially October the second, and I declined to wait more than those three and a half hours to come home to ye." He's smiling down at her, his gaze roving her face like he's memorizing her all over again.
He drops the watch back into his pocket and bends to kiss her.
Oh. He was going to say something else in a moment, but that's distracting. He's distracted now.
If Avrenne was going to say something, and she looked as though perhaps she might have, the wheels in her mind speedily turning as it grasped onto the numbers, a distraction coming into her eyes as some part of her mind checked the times against an internal ledger, perhaps wondering at their significance if they could mean a thing (a sure sign that she has spent too long working in codes), her mouth opening to ask a question, maybe, to wonder if the numbers were meant to be taken straight as Entry:Page for 30 and 3 of Columbine (white) (Folly) and 15 and 5 of Bittersweet Nightshade (Truth), but all such thoughts fly off to a little corner of her mind where numbers and codes live, allowing the bulk of thoughts that remain to simply be the mental equivalent of Siamus' name written in large looping letters interspersed with heart bubbles.
Her returning kiss is as fervent an embrace as her arms grasping around him to pull him closer to her, before one hand frees itself from his jacket to bury into his hair, fingernails lightly scratching as her hand opens and closes over the windblown curls in increasingly tighter grips, and the only sound she makes after all is a low needy little sound.
Siamus makes an answering sound, a soft groan, and slides his hand through her hair to grip the nape of her neck and arch her head back. He kisses her with a fervency and desire that drives him nearly breathless, and then he draws back to kiss the corner of her lips, her cheekbone, her brow. He closes his fingers in her hair, taking a fistful of it to tilt her head to one side so that he can kiss her throat. He bites gently — and then lifts his head, hazy-eyed. "Did ye say… two and a half months?" he asks hoarsely.
Did she?
What happens in two and a half months?
"What?" Avrenne asks, still caught in the pose of her head tilted to the side, half her weight already leaning into him languorously, a flush beginning to stain her cheeks deep enough rose that even in the dim light of the room it's visible for shift of color in her face. The part of mind dedicated to numbers chimes with recognition.
"Oh, yes," she says, and it's both a confirmation that she said two and a half months and also encouragement. Multitasking. "Dr. Alma says that the most common delivery time for twins is around 36 weeks, which puts me at somewhere around Winter Veil, instead of the natural course of a full term. There's no telling precisely for me though, especially since I went late with Ery." This information duly dispensed with she leans towards him like a reed bending in the wind, a bow begging to be strung.
"Winter Veil," Siamus repeats, like it's a foreign phrase. "Winter Veil." And then he laughs and drops his forehead to rest it against Avrenne's; he spreads his hand on her belly again. "We'll be parents of three by Winter Veil. All in a year, y'extraordinary woman."
He lifts his head to gaze down at her searchingly. "Ye've been taking care? Taken care of? All's well wi' ye? Tides, but ye look radiant, my star."
The smile she gives him is fond and pleased, as she stares back at him, her eyes bright with no sign of sleepiness now. "That's because you're here," she tells him, a little of a playful tease interwoven with a truth, as her fingers move lightly across his cheekbone. "I'm very well, taken care of and taking care both. It's been a quiet pregnancy, truly, as much as Ery's was."
As if in demonstration to this statement, one of the twins darts out a hard, swift kick just under Siamus' hand. The other twin, pointed in a different direction, kicks out on the other side, startling another kick from the other along Siamus' touch. Avrenne laughs at it, the warmth of the sound like a burst of sunlight from behind a cloud. "Although I admit I dread the days coming where they shall get hiccups."
Siamus is gazing down at her belly, his expression simultaneously alarmed and entranced. "They're — stars above, what are they doing in there? Tumbling?"
Avrenne laughs again, setting a motherly hand over her belly as if to try to steady the twins. It doesn't do anything, as the babies continue their kicks. "It certainly feels like it sometimes," she says, her voice dry and amused. "Arguing over space, I expect. It gets like this, one will start it up and the other joins in to not be outdone by their sibling, I suppose, and then they carry on until they both get tired or reconcile the winner of that round."
Siamus looks like he has approximately two hundred more questions and can't sort out which to ask next. Instead, after a moment, he takes the path of least resistance and pulls back from Avrenne to rise and shrug out of his coat. It goes on the floor. He sits back down on the bed and bends to deal with his boots.
"We won," he recalls abruptly, looking up. "Against the naga." Maybe should have led with that news, but: priorities. "I expect ye did hear."
Avrenne leans over to light — by match and hand, rather than magic and hand — the candle at her bedside, watching Siamus, as she waits out the twins' internal squabbling. Her brows raise with relief. "No, I hadn't yet," she says, and there's a sigh of some resignation. "I have fewer avenues of direct information of the fronts at present, as a civilian, after the loss of Lord Amadeus, the discharges of Lord Bertrand and Lord Kyris, and even with Sintha and Captain Tyrrell, the 6th E.U. grounded once more with his demotion. I didn't expect to hear clear word until your arrival."
"Well then." Siamus, now barefoot, sits up. "I'm pleased to bear the glad news myself. The naga, their kraken and their allies were driven back. A team from Cobalt went into the realm of water itself, wi' Taylor, to liberate the seat of the Tidehunter."
His hands go to the buttons of his shirt. World-shaking news or not, the man can stay on task.
When the task is of a particular sort, anyway.
Avrenne listens appreciatively, although the ratio of appreciation for the fresh news of war to appreciation for decreasing clothing on Siamus might not be leaning in the direction of war, even all things considered, made a little more apparent as she slides a hand along the base of his throat at the open collar, slipping neatly into the newly freer space of his loosened shirt, fingers stroking lightly like she's trying to absorb him through her fingertips. If she has any questions yet, they're being held for the moment.
At her touch, Siamus briefly seems to forget about War News, which is how you know he's got it bad. He puts his hand over Avrenne's for a moment, trapping it lightly against his skin as though it is some fragile creature he's caught, and then he releases her to finish unbuttoning and pull his shirt off. "Dvorek is dead — that I believe ye knew — and Taylor did a handsome job wi' what was left. He'll be for promoting, I expect. No sign of the… Old God behind it all, but we dispatched a number of its creatures along wi'the naga. We…."
What did they do? He's forgotten again, as he reaches for Avrenne to pull her back against his bare chest. His hands slide over sheer gold silk. "I like this gown," he murmurs in her ear. "I'd like it better off ye."
Avrenne laughs, a deeper, throaty sound, as she presses a slow kiss to his collarbone. "When you talk like that, I can't think of political career trajectories hardly at all," she teases. Oh no, she caught the It, Bad. She reaches a hand to the bottom of the dress, lifting it up past her thighs, revealing that she truly didn't expect Siamus that early, because she is wearing underwear, simple matching silk panties that are concealed for the moment by her belly. The nightgown has only the simple thin straps over her squared shoulders, her arms exposed and free, and slips neatly off her, sliding first onto the sheets and then dipping to the floor in a rustle of silk.
It may be still too dim to see the small progress of lightening of the scars of her arms, or to not attribute only to the soft candlelight that they seem less severe than his last sight of them.
And a man might be forgiven for a lapse of detail or attribute it to wishful thinking or false memory that her breasts seem even larger than the last time he saw them (they are). A bonus to the weight she has gained and the combination of children has left her bordering on, if not well-endowed, somewhat endowed.
"Captain Taylor is not the only one who could be better serving the Alliance with a promotion in the vacancies of naval positions, Vice Admiral," she says, a deliberate emphasis on the word. And a normal person might think that she is continuing serious talk about the war. But, no, it is not only that. This is Fallon Foreplay.
Siamus groans softly, his gaze gone ink-dark with desire. It is probably because of his naked wife, and not the way she just said Admiral. Probably. Maybe it's like 80/20.
He reaches for her again. "Tides a'mighty," he says, low-voiced. "Look at your tits." His memory has not lapsed: there are some details Siamus Fallon keeps close to his heart.
In this case both figuratively and literally, as she presses up against him, shifting her legs under and behind her so she can more easily rise up into a kneel, adjusting her weight against him. She makes an amused hum as she drapes her arms over his shoulders, balanced sideways half into his lap. "Mr. Latour has had to adjust seven of my dresses, and all my measurements again just last month. My physician says they might stop increasing once Ery is weaned, but that with the twins coming as well, they might stay this way for some time." She nips her teeth gently on his ear. "They're very sensitive, but it's a good sensitivity now, if you'd like to see for yourself."
He skims his fingertips down the outer curve of one breast, his other hand splayed at the small of her back, and then he fits his hand over it, gently cupping its weight, examining the size and shape of it in his palm. He traces a light circle around her nipple with his thumb, watching her face, and then pinches it experimentally.
(It's for science.)
There's new data to be added from this exploration. It is not only size that has altered — the weight in particular is a significant difference, her breasts heavy, settling into his hand, filling it, and staying fuller in shape, closer to twin moons than sloping teardrops.
She has always been responsive, for all the smallness of her. But now, even the lightest touches bring clear sensations, soft panting sighs as her eyes half-close, a deeper sound rising from her throat, exposed in a line as her head tips back, her body arching a little tighter like the strung bow, with each stroke of his fingers. Her own hands seek purchase on his shoulders, squeezing at the muscles there. The finale of this experiment, the sharper pinch, evokes the gasping cry, and that singular writhe of her body, hips and chest straining and half-shivering, in some place caught between pain and pleasure both.
"Ah," he says softly. "That's priceless. Aren't ye, my priceless lady?" He pinches again, gentler this time, and then he shifts abruptly, twisting to lay her back on the mattress beside him.
He leans over her and puts his tongue to her nipple. One hand glides over her hip. Fingertips trace the outer line of her thigh, and then slide across to the inside; the backs of his fingers stroke the soft skin there.
Siamus might not be able to part the waters of the sea these days, but he certainly can part the thighs of his wife, who opens eagerly at his touch, feet sliding in closer to bend her knees, back arching to try to press up closer to him, hands stroking up his shoulders into his hair to hold him closer. Each touch of her breast sending a wave of pleasure through her.
"Oh, yes," she encourages, the slightest shake to her breathy inhales, some emotion caught up around her throat alongside the lust, her eyes unusually squeezed shut instead of wide open and watching him.
"Baile mo chroí," he says, and then his lips and tongue are warm and hungry on her breasts again for a time.
"Avrenne, mo ghrá, my star." He kisses his way up the side of her throat and then his mouth is on hers once more; his fingertips tease gently between her thighs.
He draws back to kiss each of her eyelids lightly. "My joy. Is something amiss?" There is soft concern in his tone and in his gaze, but his fingers don't stop their delicate, coaxing movement.
The soft material covering her center is already damp, and growing slicker by the moment, lifts of her hips seeking more pressure, greater friction, that ever impatient need for his touch. But there it is, that unsteadiness in her breaths, more than only pleasurable exhales.
Her eyes open, dark and glistening like black jewels, to look at him there, his hair burnished in backlight from the candle flame, and she shakes her head in tiny movements, her eyes flicking over his face in light touches of her gaze. "No," she whispers, her voice smoke filled and quiet. "It's only that it's truly you. You're really here." She nods now, brows drawing in, caught in some painful joy as she smiles at him, her voice gathering some strength from the words that she's spoken, pulling something into a greater truth in doing so.
"I missed you so much." The tremble around her mouth betrays a little more of how much so can be, from a self-described undemonstrative woman. "I'm so glad you're home, that's all. There's nothing amiss now." Her hands are tight on his shoulders, some grip as though she fears he will be swept off and away from her like a morning mist dreaming meeting the harsh reality of the sunlight. "Don't stop, please."
"Ah, my pet, my love. Ye knew I'd come back to ye, I know ye knew. Tides, but I know the waiting can be hard — it's a hundred times a day I had a thought I wanted to tell ye, or I missed your laugh or the smell of your hair, or I wished I could talk a thing through with ye to untangle it." He kisses her tenderly, lingering over her lips. "Ye haunt me like a ghost, Avrenne, and I never want ye to stop."
She stares up at him, her breath a light touch against him. "You leave your heart here with me, a home in my chest, and I know it. I feel you all the time, such memories of touch that they seem real for a moment. Your hands on my hands. The lean of you to bend that distance down and caress with me your voice at my ear for something you would say. And there are times when I think of you so clearly at night that when I wake, for this fragile time, I can feel you there, the weight of you in the bed, the press of your body, and then it's gone again, and there's only — "
Her gaze flicks over to the seastalk case, her eyes wide, not quite tears glistening in them as she stares in that direct line, as strong as if she'd reached for it with a hand. "I feel as though I can't breathe until I look. I have to believe that you're coming back, I hold my faith in it, or I could never close the case again. But to see it, to know it, that 0.472 intact bloom, and not know what it meant…" She pulls at Siamus, trying to urge him closer. "I need you, Siamus. I need you desperately, all of you. Please."
"I'm here, anamchara," he tells her forcefully. "I'll always come to ye." He kisses her again hard.
He draws back from her to rise again at the bedside; he bends to slide away that little scrap of damp silk that is in his way, then divests himself of his trousers. He watches her the whole time with a strange, black-eyed intensity, as though he is himself afraid that if he looks away from her she'll vanish, and he is holding her in place with his gaze and his will.
He joins her on the bed again, stretching beside her, and without further preamble pushes two fingers deep inside her. He kisses her ear softly and traces its outer edge with his tongue as if to apologize for this haste. "I want ye astride, pet," he tells her hoarsely. "I want to watch ye take it. I'll have ye on your knees after."
Because there will definitely be an 'after.' Avrenne knows how this works: Give him like twenty minutes.
Give her like twenty seconds. But she can wait twenty minutes. She's a patient woman. Sometimes.
However, this is not one of those times, and she's been waiting almost two full months. That's a lot of minutes. She probably could know the math of them in another mindset, but not this one.
Avrenne's gasp is loud enough to border on a crying out, her feet sliding on the sheets, writhing up to meet him. She's wet enough already to ease his passage, but she's precious tight, gripping onto him with the clinging heat of her rising to those unusual heights, the fire in her veins pulsing against him.
"Yes, please," she agrees, readily, eagerly. She also doesn't move to do so immediately, not out of a wish to disobey, but it seems an inability to do more than just grind back against his hand in a greedy wanton desire, that flush of hers building with each passing second. "Anamchara. Vice Admiral. Siamus. Please." It doesn't seem to be directed in a specific way, except, perhaps to leave the lead to him, of how she will be for him, a sweet surrender to her movements already.
He laughs, a rough and breathless sound, and pushes his fingers deeper, his knuckles pressed hard against her. "My pet, my good girl, best girl. Tides, but I've missed this greedy little cunt." He leans over her to put his mouth to one of her breasts again as his fingers work within her.
Then he lifts his head and withdraws his hand slowly, watching her face with that same peculiar intensity. He takes hold of her hip, urging her over. "Come on. Come to me, then. Ye can have it right now, my heart, my precious tight girl. I need inside ye, Avrenne."
She needs no additional encouragement, letting him set this course for her leg to stretch over him, bracing a hand against the headboard behind him for her balance, staring back at him with dark, limpid eyes, the familiarity of his body and how she fits to it her guide, sinking down on his cock with a shudder, pressing down slowly, rising again, and sinking deeper as he grows slick with her.
Only when she's caught the entirety of him within her does she pause, breathing harder in whimpers, one hand on his shoulder now. This would be when she would ordinarily show what he saw many long months and several fantasies ago, that she is an exceptional rider. Instead, she holds there, swallowing thickly, and her attention is pulled away from him as if by some magnet — to the seastalk case again. A blink of her eyes resets her, and this time she fixes her gaze to his as if anchoring herself, reaching for his left hand, his wedding ringed hand, and urging it up to her neck, pressing his fingers against her throat, not asked and not waiting, as she never has before.
He groans as she sinks down onto him, lifting his hips to meet her impatiently, his grip on her thighs bruising. His look is near-plaintive with need.
When she reaches for his hand, he yields it at once, though his expression falters slightly with clear uncertainty of her design.
He catches on quick, though.
The moment those fingers touch that soft column of her throat, he knows something releases in her — or perhaps it might be said that something releases the grip it has had on her — in the way she moans helplessly, eyes fluttering, head tipping back in a euphoric relief filled ecstasy, a languor in her limbs, and a shuddering tightening in her cunt.
There is a flash of something hot and electric in his gaze, and he smiles up at her, his dark eyes alight. "That's what ye want, my pet?" he whispers. "Is it this?" His thumb strokes the flutter of her pulse at the side of her throat, and then his grip tightens inexorably.
There is no threat in it, no sense of menace, just a sure and unrelenting hold. His fingers press strongly at the sides of her throat, leaving her airway untouched. "I have ye," he tells her, still a whisper. "I have ye, good girl. I won't let go."
He moves again beneath her, savoring the hot constriction of her body, her helpless, wanton response.
The look in her eyes is one that would be more expected from someone deeply intoxicated, a look he sees far more in this particular context of pleasure than any involving alcohol given the duchess' drinking habits. That she is on his lap and likely to sing for him is consistent with the drunken look, although this is another sort of song. She seems to be somewhere beyond speech, left only the ability to nod, her lips moving yes, please of words without voice for them in answer.
What does emerge from her throat is a breathy, high pitched moan, as she begins at last to move on him, a rising up and falling back down of slow swells, her thighs flexing in tight control, letting him feel the grip of her, one hand tight on his forearm, and the other on the headboard to keep her balanced. She doesn't speed up, she intensifies, driving him harder, deeper within her with each stroke, rocking herself against him with each pass, that shuddering shiver of pleasure gaining strength inch by inch, the drugged sensuality of her expression suffusing and transforming her ordinarily composed face into something hedonistic, her mouth open and moving with her breaths as if begging to be filled with something.
"Ah, tides," he breathes. "Tides and stars and mother of all, look at ye, my love, my pet." His own gaze is full of a hot, devouring wonder; she is the only thing in the room he is aware of, and he is rapt, entirely consumed by his awareness of her.
It's a feast for the eyes to enjoy. It's still dark, sunrise an hour off, but the light of the candle flickers and burns, showing that rise of color in her, red corals springing to life over her skin, that harkening of her release. The drape of her hair slips over her shoulder as her head lists to the side into his grip on her neck, spilling over her chest, catching lightly on the sweat forming on her skin, over her full breasts that bounce and sway with each swell of her hips, sweet curling tendrils of gold clinging to her like an artistic rendering of a mermaid's teasing half cover of hair on her sea wet skin as she sits upon her rock beckoning sailors temptingly closer, the portrait come to life.
Her breaths begin those telltale hitches, those high pitched whimpers, and he feels the grip of her tightening, the pulses of her hips growing less measured, more frantic, harder, faster, desperate as she kicks up into a gallop on him, pressing against his hand enough to cause her eyes to unfocus at times, her nails digging into his arm enough to leave half-moons behind.
And there it is, that moment when she achieves her crisis, her voice releasing a cry of his name, her body squeezing him, urging him deeper into her, the arch of her back drawing taut, and her eyes on his held there as if this is all that keeps her tethered to the world.
Barely a moment later, Siamus gives a hoarse, strangled cry, and with his free hand seizes her thigh again. He strains upward as though he might push himself deeper still, as if there were some way to anchor himself in her body, to this sensation. A powerful tremor runs though him, an almost electrified release, and he gasps and subsides, his cock pulsing inside her.
He lies still for a moment, limbs slack, and his eyes drift shut. Not in weariness: he exhales a deep contentment and opens them again to meet and hold her gaze. He lifts his hand carefully away from her thigh; the hard imprint of his fingers is already faintly visible against soft rose-gold skin.
"Baile mo chroí," he says roughly, and lets his hand trail down from her throat, draws a finger down between her breasts, rests it there. "My heart," he tells her. "Right there. Tides, how I wait to be home to ye whenever I'm not. It eats me up wi' wanting you."
She leans forward, head bowed, her hair drifting down to filter the light of the candle through the gold curtain draping onto his shoulder, the rise and fall of her chest pressing against his finger in slower, heavier draws of breath, and her heart racing, pounding beats beneath. The signs of the real woman, in flesh and blood, and no ghost of memory any more than he is a morning mist about to evaporate as soon as the light of day touches him.
He can see the way the words touch something inside her, some inner core laid bare and sensitive in this moment of afterglow, a vibration of joy so sweet that it almost hurts. "Siamus." It's that statement of his name containing more than only a way of indicating him, some deep satisfaction within it. Her hand moves lightly now over his arm, over the half-moon indents left behind, skimming across the surface in that way of hers, that sense of something precious and beloved beneath her fingertips.
"If you had asked me, before," she says, her voice that dark, warm smoke that curls around him. "I would have said with full certainty and absolute surety that I was a whole person, independent of any other, that I needed nothing but myself to be so. Now, I would swear that somehow there is this part of me that you take with you when you go, that I feel it so keenly as something stretching between us like a taut line, unbroken but the absence of it makes me ache." Her fingers come to rest over his own heart. "My twin soul. My heart kept with you. I can't imagine a world without you in it, not without feeling as though it would break me."
He lifts her hand from his chest to his lips and kisses it fervently, presses the back of it against his cheek, gazing up at her with that same strange, starved intensity as before. "Anamchara. My anchor, my lighthouse. I am always coming back to ye, wherever I am. Always coming back." He lifts his own hand to brush his knuckles across her cheek, an echo of the gesture he just made with her hand. "It would damn me, to leave ye."
He hesitates, and then says in a quieter, halting way, "I was afraid, mo chroí. I was afraid, in the storm. Not of… going to the sea. But of leaving you. Leaving Ery, leaving this. I couldn't bear it, not to come back to ye." He smiles, but it doesn't quite chase the shadows from his gaze. "So I did. I came back." He presses another kiss to her hand and then laughs softly. "I came back at half-past three in the morning, like a madman, because I couldn't bear waiting a minute more."
She leans against his hand, her own smile a reflection of his, that look in her eyes as she's purposefully made him a fixed point. "If all it took was wanting enough to open a portal outside the natural leylines of power, you would see me every day, unable to help myself from crossing the world in a blink just to see you, even if for only a few minutes, like an equally mad woman. If that alone could give me the power of it, I would be always by your side in body as well as soul. As it is, I am always there waiting for you, as you are always coming back. It's the principle I keep certain in me, as immutable a truth as there can be. The sun will rise in its orbit. The tides will come in and go out. Siamus Fallon will come back."
Her smile dims though, as she bends closer, her fingers in his hand moving lightly against his cheek. "I can bear to hear it now, to ask — what happened in that storm, Siamus? How far have you gone to come back to me now? What happened to kill the blossom by 0.528 of a whole?" That's the second time she's referred to the blossom in such exacting math terms, that part of her that has to quantify a thing mathematically and exactingly, as a means of controlling something beyond her real control, and that reveals just how often she must have looked at it, to have it measured so.
His gaze slides away into unfocus, looking back toward recollection in the distance. "It came up… out of nowhere," he says. "It felt like. There'd been no sign in the sky, the barometer was steady. I'd had the helm from sunrise and my watch was over — when the wind changed." He is silent for a moment, staring at the memory. "She began to back — Avrenne, ye've never known a natural wind to change so fast and strong. And the barometer dropped out from under us all of a sudden. Steady for two days and then she just… dropped like all the mercury'd run out of her." Another silence.
"So I stayed at the helm," he says. "Rather than yield to the next watch. I knew what was coming, and Blanche is my ship and my crew. And I knew I had to get back to ye." He takes a deep breath. His gaze flicks toward her and then away again. "The waves were — twenty, thirty feet and we were taking on green water when I sent most of them below. We'd reefed sails but I didn't like to strike them entire because I wanted to keep her moving with everything I could, and then it was too late to strike — I had men falling out of the rigging, I had to send them down. And the waves still rising. We nearly got rolled by one, went right to beam-ends. Mac almost washed over the side, and broke his ankle catching himself."
He shakes his head at the memory, and then closes his eyes. "Ye can tell how fast a wind is going — did ye know? — by the sound it makes in the rigging. People will talk of a wind shrieking as though that makes it a bad one. But a wind will only shriek up to thirty-five, forty knots. When it drops to a moan, it's crossed that limit. And once it hits seventy knots or so, the sound it makes —" He shudders reflexively. "It's barely a sound at that point. It's something so low ye can feel it in your marrow." Another pause. "At ninety knots, there's no ship on the tides could hold herself together. The wind itself would break her up."
He runs his thumb across her knuckles gently, tenderly. "Seventy knots was when Kettering tied me to the wheel. We were taking so much water by then, aye? Between the wind and the wash, a man could hardly stand on his own. I was trying to keep Blanche stern-to, the waves behind her, moving us on, but the waves wanted to swing us beam-on and roll us over; I was fighting every minute. Blanche was fighting every minute. And then we came to the hole in the sea."
He focuses again, brings his gaze back to Avrenne's. "When a great wave… well, ye saw it, aye? When a great wave is building, the water runs out from the shore first, because the water to build the wave has to come from somewhere. It's the same at sea. When ye meet a monster wave out there, there's a chance that what ye meet next is the bottom of the trough it raised itself out of." His thumb moves on her knuckles again. "The wave was… fifty feet, maybe, on its back. When we crested it, the pit below was —" He shakes his head. "I couldn't even tell ye. And I knew there was no way — even if we survived the drop, there was no way we'd have speed enough to climb the one ahead of it. One way or another, we were going under." He doesn't take his eyes from her. "But I thought, if I could keep her stern-to, just so, wi' that monster sea driving behind us, and if she kept her rudder and we both kept our nerve, well."
He's silent for a longer time now, still fixed on her. "We went straight through it, Avrenne. Into the black and out again, straight through and back into the air. It was… a mad thing to hope for, a mad thing to try, and it shouldn't have worked. But it was either that or go down, and I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that."
She listens with that attentiveness he knows to expect, that quiet stillness of patience to hear a story laid out, as she has listened to him since that night on the wave-destroyed terrace swept off into the sea that exists now only in memory and rebuilt brickwork. He knows the exact moment fear sparks within her — tied to the wheel — and how it rises and falls between his words and his touch, heating, cooling, heating, cooling.
She shivers at the last, as if cold, even with the warmth of the fire in her veins, the grip of her thighs around him tightening, as if to ward off him being swept out from underneath her like a riptide. She lowers her hand from the headboard, to set it on his shoulder instead, to have him as her balance, and to grip him tighter. She leans in as close as she can, her pregnancy halting her, and the way she yearns towards him suggests that it's not close enough to him, not pressed tightly together enough, even with him still inside her.
"Oh, Siamus," she breathes, fingers stroking along his in his hold on her. "My brave, bold sailor. My tidesage. I said it before to Shine, that you are the sort of man that would fight against even a 0 of chance and probability. You will never cease to amaze me, my wonder of a man. I am so proud of you, thankful and proud of you." She swallows hard, brows twisting in that place between pain and joy, gazing at him as if upon a miracle of the world. "You were in the black," she repeats, a whisper, as if to speak it too loudly could possibly invoke it here in her bedroom to swallow him back up once more, a scorned sea seeking out a quarry that escaped unlawfully from her grasp.
"In it," he agrees. "And then out of it." He smiles crookedly, a spark of the daredevil showing through again. "But I couldn't let her keep me, could I? When I've another lady at home waiting so faithfully? She can have me when you're done wi' me, and not a moment before it." He kisses the back of her hand, black eyes gleaming.
Her smile curls back to life, the sun coming out from behind a cloud, and she moves her head in a slow shake that brushes the ends of her hair back and forth across his chest. "Then we shall hope she's patient, for that will not be for a very, very, very long time," Avrenne tells him. "If it happens at all, because I may be greedy enough to lay claim to you even across the Veil, and she might never truly have you."
He runs the side of his thumb across her cheek. "If ye should want me so long and that far, then ye will have me. I'll come to ye wherever you are, be assured, my star. And if I should set out ahead of ye, you may find me waiting."
She sighs against his hand, staring into his eyes for a moment longer, her own caught with something, an emotion complex and layered, until she lets her lashes close on it, opening her eyes once more to study the rest of him, her hand moving off his shoulder, tracing down his body now with some purpose, touching down along the orc-given scar across his ribs, stroking the back of her fingers on the kvaldir's mark on his leg, with the sense of someone taking a walk along well-loved, familiar roads, noting what might be changed. "I haven't seen your back yet," she says, raising her eyes to his. "Any new scars this time?"
"None," he assures her solemnly. "Whole and hale and just as ye sent me off. Will ye search me?"
He doesn't move, though, reaching instead for a lock of her hair to trail it through his fingers. "Look how long it's grown, aye? A very perfect mermaid."
He watches her face as he toys with her hair. At length he asks, "Pet?"
She hums a laugh in her chest at the suggestion of searching him, doing just that with her eyes, drinking him in, smiling wider at the touch to her hair. She looks back to his face at the question. "Yes?"
He lets go of her hair and lifts his hand to touch her throat again, sliding gentle fingertips around one side of it. "Ye took a thing for yourself," he observes, watching her. "I'm glad. Ye've not done that before, and it makes me glad. Anything that might please ye, I'll give, but some I wouldn't think to do without ye ask me to. Like that one. I'd not have liked to frighten ye by it." He's silent for a moment and then adds, more softly. "It makes me glad that ye knew you could ask me, though. And that I'll be safe with ye. Aye? Anything ye like I'll do, except harm ye. Never that."
There's a flutter of her lashes at the touch, that leap of her pulse, not in fear — he is sure of it, the temperature of her hands as cool as they ever should be — a sinking down of her body onto his in relaxation. "I would never ask you to, nothing that would be true harm," she reassures him. A few light squeezing bruises and love bites don't count.
She breathes in, rolling her head in his grip. "I needed this," she explains, that husky thread woven back into her voice. "When I opened the case the first time and saw the blossom, it felt as though some dark, unseen hand had reached out with cold fingers and gripped me tight, squeezing every time I would go to open it once more. I haven't felt its like since, well, since over a year ago, when I read the letter informing me that my engagement had been broken, and my prospects were so deeply uncertain as to rock the foundations of my future." There's no hurt left in her voice as she speaks of it, the words coming easily, as she holds his gaze with dark eyes, soft and warm. "It was you that broke that hold then, the moment I finished signing my name to our marriage contract. It released me, and I knew that you would break it again. No fear can hold me so long as you do."
His own expression melts into softness, something of that stricken tenderness in his face again. "Ah, my heart. I'm glad, always glad, to stand your sea wall."
He hesitates and then trails his fingertips down to the hollow at the base of her throat. "I remember when — at the harbor last year. When ye saw Green. And when I took ye away from him, ye —" He does a light, fingertip impression of her gesture against the base of her throat.
It says something of what standout moments remain in Avrenne's memory of that day because she frowns in thought, the gears of her mind whirring as she rewinds and then plays it out, tracing his words to the moment. As soon as she sets her mind on what he speaks of, she breathes out an oh.
"That was… I can hardly remember that walk. I know we must have left the harbor, but I did so in a daze, entirely dependent on your arm as the only thing I could really feel. All I could think was that I had to get away from him, and I knew, as I had asked you to do so, that you would see me away. It was like a dream, this moment where you were at my side, and nothing could touch me with you there to hold it back. Then you spoke, something of the townhouse, and I — reality came crashing back."
There it is, that telltale tone of hers, a distancing as if she's speaking of someone else, not herself, where memories of Mr. Green's betrayal did not bring it, this now does.
"I was keenly aware that I was in a precarious position, with no prospect at all, alone in the empty sea that Mr. Green had left me in, the water closer than ever to pulling me under. You were not mine to stand so with your honor at stake, and I was leaning on you in my weakness without a right to it. It was only a fantasy that I was yours then, a fragile bubble that popped, and I knew the truth. So in that moment, I could not breathe, that hand crushing my throat to suffocate me, and nothing I did could free its hold on me. That's all it was," she says, that habitual dismissive phrasing.
But the distancing tone drops away as she reaches her hand up to stroke a light touch along the band of his wedding ring. "I don't think I shall ever be able to convey to you in words how desperately I wanted to be your wife, even then."
Siamus looks, of all things, pained by this revelation.
"Mo ghrà," he says softly. "I was already planning to offer for ye then. Did ye not guess it? When I asked ye to meet the very next day? I had your papers, had been through all but the trebuchets contract, and knew then already that I'd be asking for ye. It just wanted the proper proposal."
You know. Like a proposed business merger.
"If I'd known I could have — perhaps I ought to have said something then. But as I said, I meant to prepare the thing right; I had to present myself well, make my own case to a canny businesswoman, and I was still drawing up my terms." He touches her cheek. "Will ye forgive me? For delaying? It seems I wasn't half the shelter to ye that I might have been in that moment."
Avrenne smiles warmly at him, setting her hand over his, her eyes bright with affection. "Oh, Siamus, no. There's nothing to forgive. I would not trade that proposal for anything, not for the saving of a single moment's distress that came before it, not that day in the Stormwind Harbor or any before it. The joy of that proposal day blots out the one before it in my memory, so that I hardly ever think of that time, that moment where I would walk away, instead spending all my savoring of recollection to think of you there in your office, telling me that we had, in fact, been starting negotiations on two very different shores, with Sintha's playing, and that you were intending to discuss our betrothal.
"In that moment, it was all clear, the reasons why you had my contracts — that could not have been easy to obtain — the details examined, the thoroughness of the origin of my loans, the questions prepared ahead of time. It was all revealed that it had been no spur of the moment choice from some rise of sentiment, and no offering made out of obligation of honor. I had been considered precisely as I had wanted to be, with all due respect given accordingly for what I was offering, and I felt treasured that day. It made me love you even more, as I noted in the ledger." You know, the Accounting Ledger. There's a stirring of a laugh in her chest, one that echoes through her body, a gentle pulsing. "How could I not love a man even more dearly who understands how very seriously I take my wood."
Siamus smiles back at her, arching a brow. What he says, though, is, "Tides but I was vexed with Ta. After all the preparing, to not even mention to ye —" The laughter in his gaze says that he didn't hold it against his sister for long. "Monster," he says wryly.
"No, she said just the right thing to get me out of the door. I asked her, you know, if it had something to do with the day before, so concerned I was that it might have given you cause to summon me, and had she given any indication of a proposal, I would have gone into that meeting ready to argue you down, and it would have been a very different conversation until I could be convinced that it had nothing to do with an obligation of offering. As I recall, she said something of it being of your business, which was true, and then allowed me to make my own assumptions based on that phrasing, a bit of conversational cleverness," she says, fondness in her voice.
She guides his fingers back to her throat, setting them there. "But you must know how I enjoy this, each time you do so. I don't need to have any terrible lingering fear to feel it as a comfort. You could never frighten me, not ever. The way you hold me, touch me, even in the wildest of your storms, I know I am completely safe. It feels…" She breathes in deeply, and exhales in a helpless sigh of a loss for words. "I don't know that I have the words to describe it. The sweetest of surrenders that makes me feel powerful all at once, a deep relaxation of my choice to give in to your lead, put myself entirely in your hands. There aren't words strong enough for the ecstasy of it."
She can feel the stirring of his renewed arousal within her as his breath catches. His hand tightens at her throat again, as if by irresistible reflex, and then he lets go of her to sit up carefully beneath her; her pregnancy is still a slightly awkward obstacle between them. He fits his hands beneath her thighs to urge her wordlessly up from his lap. "I'm going to have ye again," he tells her. "On your knees for me, pet. Ha' mercy, woman, what ye do to me. I'll never not be starved for ye."
Avrenne needs no additional Direction, this one is clear enough, and there's a sigh of pleasure already at the anticipation. It isn't entirely elegant, the way she moves off him and into place, but there's something sensual to it all the same in the eagerness of her movements, the restless shifting of her hips as she rises up, sliding her leg over one side of him to the other side to join her other leg even as she readjusts to spread herself for him, both hands grasping out for the headboard to grab it, back arching as she bites her bottom lip, head turned to look at him over her shoulder with dark, begging eyes.
Siamus rises on his knees behind her and takes her roughly by the hips. He arranges the angle of her body and then pushes himself into her slowly, savoring the sensation of her body's yielding to him.
When he has buried himself as deeply as she will take him, he stays for a moment, unmoving. A faint tremor runs through him; it is clearly an effort of will. He bends over the curve of her back to cradle her newly-heavy breasts in both hands, and kisses the point of her shoulder. Then he fits a hand around her throat instead. "Let go the headboard," he tells her. "Here." He skims the fingers of his left hand down her upper left arm. "Give me your arm."
She yields it immediately, swaying with the resetting of her balance as she reaches back for him, pressing up and back into him harder as she lifts her head up in an arch, her breath already soft whimpers he can feel as well as hear.
"Good girl," he whispers in her ear. He takes her by the wrist and bends her arm up behind her back, holding it there. His fingers tighten — just a suggestion, just a reminder — at her throat, and in her ear he says softly, "I have ye. I have ye now."
There's that shivering pulse of her cunt at good girl, one that gets even stronger at the tightening hand around her throat. A fluttering moan is her agreement — yes, he has her.
He straightens again, and his hold on her neck draws her a little further upright as well, moving with him of necessity. The arm pinned behind her back maintains the arch of her spine as her position shifts.
He begins to move within her: a slow withdrawal, followed by a swift, hard thrust.
She cries out with the first real thrust, her pinned hand flexing in some desperate grasping, and the ends of her hair sweeping in soft touches along one side of her. The muscles of her back are tense, the almost-Circinus constellation winking with the movement of her writhing back against him, encouraging in her impatience for even harder, faster, that greedy desire for more, that tempting of encouraging him into the storm for her.
He does his best to keep control; holding her by throat and wrist, he continues that rhythm: the long, slow slide out, the jolting drive in. After a time, his breathing changes, and then he makes a quiet, involuntary sound as he thrusts himself into her once more, and it is suddenly unclear which of them he is teasing by this restraint.
At last his resolve falters. His grip on her neck tightens again as he hauls her further upright to speak in her ear. "Avrenne," he whispers. "Ye precious cunt, ye priceless fucking —"
There are more words there, but whatever they are may be unintelligible even to him as the whisper drops away to a harsh rasping breath — and then a groan, as his restraint fails and he begins simply to fuck her fast and savagely, arching her body hard between his holds on her wrist and throat.
She makes a high pitched sound that catches in her throat, followed closely by breathy pleading half-syllable too unclear to parse as either his name or please, and he can feel the change in her body diverging into two equal parts: one into such a deep languor of yielding that she's nearly boneless as a ragdoll who can do nothing but receive openly, and the other tightening into something so taut that it edges into the wonder if it will snap and break with the tension of pleasure, her legs shaking and her breath halted in her throat.
There is only the briefest of warnings that she is near her peak — the heat of her cunt rising higher, the pressure growing into a vice — and then she's shuddering, something deeply primitive in the release as she screams, breaks beneath him, head thrown back as her body jolts and bucks with each pulse of her cunt, her entire body swept by it.
He makes a sound that might be laughter — a drunken, triumphant sort of laughter, a wild delight at that scream, in the violence of her response — and then he cries out hoarsely and releases her wrist, hauling her all the way upright by her neck, pulling her back against his chest and wrapping his other arm around her, cradling her belly with a splayed hand as he empties himself shuddering into her.
He drops his head to put his face against the side of her neck, in the crook of her shoulder, and moans.
He remains like that, holding her back against him, his head bowed, breathing in the scent of her hair and skin. She can no doubt feel the gallop of his heartbeat in his chest.
Each breath she takes is a shivering inhale and half-voiced exhale, the occasional tiny jolt of an aftershock evoking a sound from deep in her throat, her weight entirely supported by him, as she hangs there in his grip, loose limbed, floating back against him like she would on the sea. She seems dazed, inarticulate still, her lashes fluttering over mostly closed eyes as if she's dreaming there, her head lolling in his grasp.
He lets go of her throat, and his hand slides down her body to cradle one of her breasts again. He doesn't lift his head; he kisses the crook of her neck, then kisses it again. "I have ye," he murmurs against her skin. "Avrenne, love, I have ye."
There's a sigh at the kiss of her neck, and it's his voice that seems to anchor her back deeper into her body as her eyes open, a smile curving her lips as she first makes a low sound of contentment before she raises her arm up in slow arc, threading her fingers into his hair to hold onto him.
"Siamus." Her voice is husky, deeper, and soft with satisfaction. He can feel the way she moves, muscles engaging once more as she gathers herself back, the shift from full surrender to his strength to hold her to holding herself in his embrace, pleased to have been caught. "'Tuberose' and 'vervain.'" Dangerous pleasures and intoxication. She hums a laugh in her throat. "You always deliver on your bouquets."
He exhales a soft laugh against her neck, kisses her there again, and lifts his head, pausing only for a moment to turn his face into her hair and inhale deeply. He sits back on his heels, drawing her with him onto his lap. "I am nothing if not a man of my word," he tells her with a smile in his voice. He lets go of her breast to touch his fingers lightly to the hollow at the base of her throat again; his other hand remains spread on her belly. "And you are a lady a man would promise the moon."
She curls up against him, settling there into his lap as she tips her head back, exposing the line of her slim throat. The lack of movement reawakens the twins, one of them moving with swift, hard heeled kicks outward, while the other takes a shot inwards along her ribs that causes a sharp intake of breath that has her setting a futile calming hand over her belly alongside Siamus', moving her lightly over the swell in a soothing circle over the large curve of her.
"These days I certainly look, and feel, like I was given the moon and then promptly swallowed it much to its dismay," she says drily.
Siamus laughs, delighted. "But ye're already my White Lady , and Ery the Blue Child, so I wonder what these lot will be." He strokes her belly. "I'd say they're sure to be boys, wi' that rumpus, but then again our Ery's a little hellraiser, so."
Thump, thump goes at least one of the twins, like a rider impatiently and inexpertly trying to kick a horse up into a faster stride. Avrenne shifts her weight with a sigh of discomfort, looking down at her body for a moment, before she turns her head towards Siamus, laughing quietly and warmly. "Oh, Siamus, wait until you see her. She's been trying to crawl, and she's impatient with it, all scowls and tiny fists pounding, and you can tell she's in a fit of rage about it because the wind just blows up from nowhere." Avrenne raises a hand, fingers closed and then sent outwards in mime of this poof of air. "Emelia says, based on her experience, that she wouldn't be surprised if Ery starts crawling and pulling herself up to a stand within the month, by the strength and coordination she's showing now. She might even be walking by the times the twins arrive."
Siamus' whole expression lights like a second sunrise — a first? what time is it? who's paying attention? — at the prospect of seeing his daughter. "Ah, that's my starfish," he says proudly. "Walking within the month." He may have conflated the two things Avrenne just said, or he may genuinely believe that his extraordinary child is going to prove herself extraordinary yet again. "I can't wait to see her. I wouldn't like to miss — all of it. The growing."
He glances down, his smile fading, and strokes Avrenne's belly in silence for a moment. "Shhhh, shh shh," he tells the fractious twins. "Ye must be gentle with your mother. She's the jewel of the House. Ye must be good to her when I'm away."
Technically, Siamus isn't away at the moment, so they're not exactly being disobedient getting their rioting on now. And riot they do, morning workouts getting done, and it's definitely leg day. It's enough that after another few seconds and kicks by the twins, and restless shifts by their mother, Avrenne heaves herself up into a kneel, and then continues to move to get to the edge of the bed to prepare to rise to a stand, needing to stretch out her body to lessen the impacts in her small frame.
"Crawling by the end of the month, and possibly walking by December, when the twins might arrive, as I understand it," Avrenne corrects, adjusting expectations, as she perches on the edge of the bed. "They shouldn't be here any sooner, Tides willing. I only look as though I must surely be nearly done with it soon."
Siamus shifts as well, to settle from his knees to a proper seated position, and watches her with a shadow of concern over his expression. "I can't think how ye'll grow any bigger, pet. There's not so much of ye to begin with." His brows draw down and he studies her. "Are ye terribly uncomfortable?"
Could have thought of that like five months ago, buddy, but okay.
Avrenne rises to a stand with a muffled grunt of effort. From the back, you can't tell at all how pregnant she is, a slim column of few bends and curves. She turns her head over her shoulder to look at him with a reassuring smile as she reaches a hand to lightly lift her pocket watch up, opening it delicately. "I have been far more uncomfortable than this," she says, which is not really the same thing as not being uncomfortable now. "And as Dr. Alma says, my body does know what it's doing, and I need only to trust that it will grow and alter accordingly with or without my thinking of it."
She checks the time, her hair swinging down her back with the movement in a long straight fall. "Ery wakes at around 6:53am by standard these days, although she has been fluctuating significantly, with the expectations of her teeth coming in. It's 6:25 now." Just information presented, for the amount of time to freshen up and ready for the day.
Siamus sighs and, rather than rising, stretches out full-length on the bed again, lacing his hands behind his head. "Will ye be chasing me off, then? I could help ye dress," he offers. That sounds bound to be unproductive. "I don't need but five minutes myself to be ready."
(It's actually eight minutes when he's dressing at home as a Gentleman, rather than at sea as a sailor, as Avrenne probably knows.)
Then he lifts his head to peer at her. "Is that the watch Shine made for ye?"
"Yes," she answers, setting a hand on the bed as she leans over it to hold the watch out on an open palm for him to see, an unspoken invitation to pick up and inspect it for himself. "Isn't it just perfectly lovely?" Her smile is sweet and inviting. "I'm afraid that an hour and ten minutes of your company falls far too short for me to even think in the slightest of shooing you, Vice Admiral. I'm much more likely to keep you to myself until the last possible minute. You might even be late to the start of the day, bound to the indulgences of your greedy wife," she teases, a playful twinkle in her eyes.
Siamus lifts the watch carefully from her hand and flashes her a glinting smile. "A gentleman's first duty is to his lady. I am at your service. And as you are the one who has the agenda for the day in hand, I don't believe I can be accounted late unless ye say it so yourself."
He sits up to examine the watch. "It's a beautiful piece of work, aye?"
"Yes. You know, it's the first I have ever owned for myself," she tells him, as she straightens, leaving the watch in his care as she makes her way towards her en suite bathroom. "My father didn't believe in ladies wearing watches, it was improper, and I suppose I simply never took up the habit even after…" She moves a hand in the air in a vague circle, disappearing into the other room. The sound of water fills the space for a moment or two as she fills an ewer.
"I didn't expect you so early, so I had the anticipation of the set schedule of the normal hours of the morning," she tells him, her voice carrying through the room. "I will see to Ery's first waking and feeding at 7 o'clock. She's always fussy first thing, but I bring her down to the breakfast room now that she's begun eating other food, so we shall join you there as her mood improves. Ralaea is a little unpredictable, whether she will eat first thing or linger in her room or take to the stables, but she is always awake by no later than 7:30. I expect that by 9 o'clock all should be in order for the signing of her paperwork. Lady Alwynneria has prepared it all, and Miss Curran stands ready to notarize accordingly. Dr. Alma and her assistant shall be here at 10:00 o'clock, and it will leave us the rest of the afternoon to address any other business, and the evening for celebration, if that will suit you."
"It will suit me very well," says Siamus absently, still studying the watch, and then he looks up and toward the bathroom door. "It will suit me very well," he repeats more definitely this time. "So long as I have my time with you and the starfish before I go back, aye? Miss Coit's to summon me tomorrow around eight, but I can send word if that needs to be changed."
He looks down at the watch again. "Beautiful work," he repeats. "Is he home?"
"Yes. He has been out some days for work with Cobalt Company, but he always makes his way back home," she answers, re-emerging a few moments later from the bathroom with her hair neatly brushed into a sheen, the rest of her freshened up with lotus oil scented water, the perfume now clinging just a little stronger to her skin. She pauses there in the doorway to openly admire the sight of him on her bed. She takes her time with it, gaze traveling up and down slowly, that bright look in her expression, the light that shines for him.
The candlelight is no longer the only source of light in the room, the start of daybreak peeking through the edges of the curtains covering her windows. She makes no move to open them wider to let in more light of the early day, however, only reaches out a hand in an elegant line, fingers beckoning to him. "Come help me dress?" The curl of her smile suggests she knows very well that this is the least efficient possible course, and she has her priorities in a different order than efficiency.
Siamus is up and off the bed with a haste unseemly in a gentleman, but perhaps only slightly above average for a sailor. He moves toward Avrenne, realizes belatedly that he is still holding her watch, backpedals to set it gently on her bedside table again, and then resumes his course toward her. At no point does he stop moving.
Until he reaches her, that is, when he stops to gaze wordlessly down at her: a slow, appreciative survey. He has That Look in his eyes again.
He slides his hands into her hair to tilt her head back so that he can bend to kiss her. Siamus, she just brushed that.
She doesn't seem to mind the prospect of redoing it at all, as she willingly bends with him, rising up on her toes, arms looping around his shoulders. One might even think that she plans to simply drape him over her for dressing, with the way she presses herself to him, returning his kiss thoroughly.
It's only that nature of hers, that setting of a path that she follows even with some reasons to perhaps reconsider, that has her breaking the kiss with a soft mm, and pulling away to guide them both the few steps towards the dressing room, her eyes on him rather than watching where she needs to go.
The dress she intends to wear is, indeed, already prepared, and the gold drop dill earrings and a new necklace of bathtub sapphires shaped into a lotus bloom have been set aside from the jewelry box, waiting for the duchess to put on. The dress is one she cannot put on herself, the cut of the mermaid silhouette a tailored fit, the twenty buttons in the back sturdy enough to carry the shape, and several hidden ones under a draping cape that can be undone to free her breasts for nursing. A structured bra with looped buttons at each cup awaits. There is no sign of any other underwear already out. She has her priorities of access, after all.
Siamus notices neither the clothes nor the jewelry; all of his attention is on Avrenne. "Ye smell so good," he tells her. "When I'm gone, I think I remember, but when I come back it's ten times sweeter." He reaches out idly to catch a lock of her hair and trail it through his fingers.
The man might have missed his wife.
The light of the room — an indulgent electric — is switched on, banishing the darkness. Avrenne reaches up a hand to lightly trace the angle of his cheekbone, over to his jawline, stroking his skin like she's trying to absorb him through her fingertips for later. "Mm. I know the feeling. I have portraits and I have letters, I even your bedroom here still caught in places with you, and it's simply never quite enough, missing so many pieces of the real you. The change of your eyes, and the movement of your face." Her fingers dip down across his throat, gliding along his collarbones to his shoulders, circling the scar and the tattoo on each upper arm, and then brushing back over to his chest, her hands flattening out over his pectorals.
"The sound of your voice, and the heat of your body. I look at you every day, the first thing I see when I wake and the last one before I sleep, and yet it's not enough, so much held in memory of the whole of you, and the real you beyond compare to what I can recall. I miss you so much when you're gone, Siamus. If I —." She halts the sentence in its place with a breath, shaking her head, smiling wistfully up at him. She seems much daintier here, the illusion of her size nowhere to be found standing next to him. "I'm glad you're home, and that you came home early," she says instead of whatever other sentence might have formed.
He slides both hands into her hair again, cradling her head, but does not move to kiss her this time, only tips her face up and studies her intently. "I'm glad too," he says. His tone is almost stern, as though he thinks she might doubt him, or dispute it. His eyes search hers.
Abruptly, he gives a short laugh, and smooths his thumbs back along her cheeks. "If I went back," he says, "a year and a half ago, and told myself on my wedding day, 'Fallon, ye're going to love that woman better than your life, and every minute ye spend at sea, ye'll be counting the minutes back to her,' I'd have wondered what the hell I'd been drinking." He pauses, tilts his head to consider. "And also where the hell I'd come from and how, and what was — it's beside the point."
He does bend now, to kiss the tip of her nose lightly. "And what did ye mean to say to me, pet?"
The way she listens to him, that soft vulnerable expression on her face, so caught with sweetness, the laugh that bubbles up from her like a merry mountain spring at the bafflement of this hypothetical past Siamus wondering at his time traveling, that it begs the question how this woman ever manages to seem so cold and utterly impervious.
She's still smiling at him, that lambent glow to her, even as she shakes her head ever so slightly in his grip. "It's only the meeting of contradictory proofs. On one side, you have promised to give me all that I might ever ask of you. On the other, I have promised you that I will not ask of you to alter yourself to be other than who and what you are, to ask you to stay against your nature. And you must know that I truly don't want you other than exactly as you are, that's it's more than enough for me, and that I am not resentful or unhappy. I love you not in spite of the impetuses that send you away from me, honor and duty, and love and nature all, but because of them. I don't ever want you different from yourself. It's only that small, selfish, foolish part of my heart that sometimes, when I am missing you so, wishes against the rest of all my judgement, that I might do so, and ask to keep you always with me, to stay."
Her eyes are dark, intense on his, the smile faded into solemnity. "But it would never make me happy to see you pare yourself down to do so, to give up parts of yourself for me, like a selkie giving up a pelt coat to be caught on land, trapped. I'd rather the heartache of missing you in weeks and months, than the pain of seeing you altered to stay when your soul needs to go. I meant what I said: all I need is you to come back." She sighs. "It doesn't mean I don't want you always. But, wanting is not always terrible, for the way it makes the having once more all the sweeter."
Now he does kiss her, bending to claim her mouth fiercely, his fingers tightening in her hair.
When he lifts his head at last, he says, "You're right, I can't leave the sea, my heart. Tides, but I wish I could take ye with me." He shakes his head, still gazing at her, his hands still in her hair. "I can't leave the sea, and I can't take ye with me. But it kills me to miss ye like I do, and it kills me not to be able to give ye a thing ye ask of me, either. We'll… sort it out, aye? Two of the best minds in the kingdom — that is to say, you're a hundred and forty percent of the two best minds, and I'm sixty percent — and we can sort something out, wi' time. I know it."
She gazes back up at him, laughter in her eyes alongside a longing, her lips a little fuller, that flush creeping back into her cheeks from his kisses. "Someday at least I will go with you. I have my marker to claim, after all." She looks down at her belly, setting a hand over it, sweeping it across the taut surface. There are faint pips of movement under her skin, the twins still actively working their legs. "When I am not actively with child, of course. And when I can leave the babies for a few weeks at least. Or when the seas are calm without an active war that it would be reasonably safe to bring them along. Or, well." She raises her head again, wistful once more. "Someday." But not today.
She casts her attention back to her task, getting dressed and ready for the day. "There aren't so many buttons on this one, but they are in the back," she tells him.
He steps back and nods dutifully. "I'm very good wi' buttons," he informs her, his tone solemn and his gaze bright.