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| Details |
| Author: | Alli |
| Summary: | Emerine and Aszera are sharing a room in the inn at Highbank, during the Red-String mission. That may not be all they share. ~3000 words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Arc: The Red String Game
Aze seems a little uneasy, walking alone through the upstairs hallway of the new inn at Highbank. To all appearances, she's ready for work, wearing her usual black leather and red-lined cloak. The hood is pulled down low over her face, but anyone who knows their Azerothian races could likely guess she's some kind of elf from her slighter frame. Still, she moves with purpose, to a known destination. Her room in the inn, with Emerine.
She reaches the appointed door and tries the knob first, freezing when there's a faint jingle from inside. She raises her hand and knocks instead.
The room is square and effectively divided into two halves. Each half has a double bed with two nightstands, a desk, and a dresser. In the center, between the nightstands, is a small table with two chairs, and over that is the only window in the room. The curtains are drawn. It is quite dark in the room, for people who need light to see.
The left half of the room is entirely untouched, left in its default state.
On the right half of the room, a bag sits on the ground next to the inner nightstand. Leather armor is arranged neatly on the desk.
Tied to the doorknob is a string with numerous small bells knotted into it.
Inside the room, Emerine sits up abruptly in bed. She is wearing a belt with two knives sheathed in their holsters and literally nothing else. Her underarmor is folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The covers are only slightly disturbed - she was sleeping on top of them.
Emerine vanishes, for all intents and purposes, to people with eyes. "Come in."
Aze opens the door, and steps into the room, dropping a bag by the wall inside and closing the door behind her with another jingle. She lets out a breath of relief, but there's still a tension in her frame as she pushes back the hood of her cloak.
"It's just me," Aze says, and there's a slight twitch in her shoulders towards where Emerine waits invisible, but she doesn't turn toward her. "From before, Aszera. I was told we'd share a room — I hope they told you, too. If it's a problem, I'm sure I can find somewhere else."
"Oh, Aszera," Emerine says. There's a shift of fabric as the bag by the nightstand opens, and Emerine pulls a too-large short-sleeved sleep shirt over her head. It hits at mid-thigh. She undoes the belt, does it up again over the shirt, and reappears. (To people with eyes.) "It's certainly no problem for me. I hope the bell didn't spook you - I was taking a nap just a moment ago, but I didn't want to lock you out."
"No, I just thought it was an alarm," Aze says, pulling off her cloak and starting to fold it. Beneath the cloak, she wears small swords sheathed on a belt at her waist. Aze doesn't show any flicker of surprise at Emerine's emergence, but she does orient herself towards the now-visible kaldorei. "Which I guess it was, but maybe not because… never mind. Anyway, I didn't mean to wake you. Would you rather I go somewhere else for a while?"
Emerine chuckles and leans back on her hands, stretching her long legs out in front of her and crossing them at the ankle. "It was a general sort of alarm, yes. I'm a light sleeper. It'll serve us both, while we're here. Highbank may be safe from the Dragonmaw, but the Twilight's Hammer has human members." She looks in Aze's direction. "You needn't make yourself scarce unless you'd rather be elsewhere. I don't bite unless you're into that, in which case I will absolutely bite upon request. I could use a little more sleep, but as long as you don't suddenly take out a musical instrument and start playing it, I should probably be able to get it."
"Not a bad idea," Aze says, un-cinching her sword belt to set it by the cloak and relaxing a touch more. "The alarm, I mean, not a musical instrument. I didn't bring any of those this time, don't worry. And I don't have anywhere else to be immediately, so…" she moves over to the bed pressing it with one hand to check for softness before sitting down. She takes in a breath and aims a playful smile at Emerine. "And you know, you don't need to dress different on my account."
Emerine grins back. "Wonderful. This thing itches." She wiggles right back out of the shirt in record speed, but folds it neatly and places it into her pack like someone accustomed to taking good care of her belongings. She stretches out on top of the covers again, rolling on her side to face Aszera. "How much can you see?"
"Of you?" Aze asks, relaxing onto her side on the covers of her own bed and propping her head on one hand. "Maybe less than I'd like, but more than you'd guess from the blindfold. They did…" she pauses, "…tell you about me, right? I've been used to people being pre-warned lately."
"You're welcome to come over and see more after I've had another two to three hours of sleep," Emerine offers smoothly. "Which 'they' was supposed to warn me about you? Fallon? Lysander? Hartrim? I haven't been pre-warned of anything, but if you tell me you're also covered in tattoos I'll have a pretty good guess."
"Yeah, one of them," Aze gestures vaguely with her free hand. "As for tattoos, maybe you could check, if I decide to match the dress code later." Aze's voice is light and playful, but the way she drapes her arm over her torso is almost defensive. "But no, I'm not hiding, I… don't think you said how you got mixed up in all this? For me it was dancing with Elle, for the most part."
"It was Hartrim who wrote to me," Emerine says, and yawns. "I first met Dinnsfield in Southshore. I was Ralaea's bodyguard for a time, twice, stayed at Fallon House during the Nightmare. Harvey and Roper hired me to make sure she was safe in Northrend. On Ally's recommendation. You know what Ally said about you? 'She's fun, you'll like her.' Not much of a warning."
Aze lets out a breath and seems to rest a little more easily into the curve of the bed at the mentions of Roper and Ally. "Hartrim seems nice, but I've only talked with him the once. Ally — I like her, she's brilliant. If you're a friend of Ally's, and she didn't think you needed to be warned…" Aze lifts her protective hand, trailing it through her own hair to draw it back from her face, "…maybe I can show you later, the tattoos. How was it, bodyguarding Ralaea?"
Emerine hums approvingly. "It was much more enjoyable the second time, when I was able to introduce myself," she says, chuckling. "The first, she was heading into Northrend, and I stowed away on her ship."
Aze winces sympathetically. "Stowing away is not very fun, I have to admit. Then again, you probably planned it better than I did, knowing you were going in advance. That's how I got to Northrend, myself, but it was kind of a spur of the moment sort of thing."
Emerine hums and closes her eyes. "Let's get to know each other a little later, mm?" she suggests.
"Right, sleep," Aze says, and reclines back on the bed. She turns restlessly to one side, then the other. For some reason, she seems a little distracted, like there's something in the room that she just can't draw her focus away from.
Finally she gets up and murmurs quietly, "I'll be back later." There's a faint jingle at the door as she heads out of the room.
Emerine stirs at the bell, and wiggles her fingers in a tired wave before settling back down.
Time Passes
Several hours later the door bells jingle again. This time, the intruder does not hesitate or knock, she just slips into the room and closes the door behind her.
Aze looks much as she did when she left, black leather and boots, though maybe a little more loose-limbed and at ease. She doesn't speak right away, waiting to see if Emerine is wakened.
Emerine snaps to alertness at the sound of the bell, and this time Aze gets to witness the speed with which Emerine goes from asleep to invisible, reaching for her knives. "Ah," Emerine says, and dismisses the Shadowmeld as she recognizes that her roommate is back. "Aszera, hello again." She has not put on any more clothes since Aze left.
Aze raises her hands in a surrender-like gesture as Emerine goes for her weapons, her eyebrows rising at how quickly she reacts.
"I'm glad I'm not an actual intruder," Aze says lightly. "Though to be fair I would've been more stealthy coming in, if I were. Maybe we could try each other out that way sometime, but not while we're on a job. Am I too early coming back? Still tired?"
Emerine sits up and stretches, clasping her arms over her head. "I think I'm well-rested. Would you lock the door while you're over there?"
Aze makes a small sound of agreement, and locks the door before moving over to sit on the other bed, facing Emerine. "Just unlocked for me, then?"
"As it happens, yes." Emerine chuckles. "It didn't seem very hospitable to lock you out."
"I appreciate it," Aze says, leaning towards Emerine with her forearms on her thighs. "So… Dinnsfield, Hartrim, Harvey, Roper, Ralaea, Ally… it sounds like we have a lot of friends in common." There's a faint tension in the stressed word, maybe a touch of paranoia rubbing off on her from Roper.
"And no one mentioned, but you guessed when you saw me," Aze continues casually, turning her blindfolded face up to Emerine. "Was that guess… before or after you decided I might be fun?"
"We do," Emerine says. "I guessed when I saw you navigate the room. You don't move like most blind individuals do. Even if you had already been familiar with the space, some of the furniture had been moved to accommodate guests."
"Well-spotted. Sometimes I pretend I can't make my way," Aze admits with a shrug, and a lock of hair falls forward over her ear. "I mean, at first it was true. It was just… too much to make any fucking sense of at all. The Fallons didn't want me to hide what I was, so I didn't. But I also know… your people, a lot of them have particular feelings about people like me." Blood elves? Illidari? Both?
Emerine shrugs. "Well, it's a dangerous line you walk, isn't it?" She smooths down the covers idly with one hand. "The Fel is innately a dangerous force of corruption. But I'm sure you know that, and you're far beyond the point where a sternly-worded lecture would change anything."
"No, it's already done," Aze says, and then she smiles, a sudden change of expression like clouds clearing. She tilts her head, considering Emerine. "That's the risk I run with you, then, is it? A sternly-worded lecture? I could probably survive that."
"Ugh, no, that would be tiresome," Emerine says, and she sounds like she's mocking many millenia's worth of sternly-lecturing kaldorei before the warmth returns to her voice. "We're allies, Fallon vouches for you. There's no risk at all."
Aze laughs, rolling her shoulders back as she straightens. "That's good, then. No risk from me, either. I've said my vows to the Alliance, and I'm not going to turn into a demon on you. And I don't have any lectures planned up for anybody."
Casually, Aze reaches up to start unfastening her top. "Humans get so stressed about being naked sometimes. I'd say it's a cultural thing, but I know exceptions both ways. My sister is so uptight about stuff like that, for instance. But I… I've only ever worried about it after, you know. When I don't know if somebody wants to gawk at a monster, or if they want to see me."
Emerine's eyes fix on her immediately. "The world has plenty of monsters to gawk at," she says, dismissing that idea with a flick of her hand. "But only one Aszera Sunstrike."
"Then Aszera Sunstrike is here to be seen, if the world's only Emerine Nightvine is interested," Aze says, smiling, as she shrugs out of the leather armor.
There's a moment's pause while she pulls the black underarmor over her head, revealing pale flesh with the telltale markings, dark blue jagged tattoos running down her arms and up to her collarbone, then down her torso to nearly the waist. She halts a gesture, almost of modesty, except her hands were going to cover the marks on her torso, not her breasts.
"I'm… lucky," Aze ventures. "No scales. No tail. Not yet."
"Oh, absolutely," Emerine says. She removes her own belt with its knives and lays it out on her nightstand so that the knives are both readily accessible to be drawn should she be nearby, all without looking away from Aze.
Aze stands to start unbuckling her own belt, her actions taking on a little more urgency. "I can't really see you, not exactly like I would have been able to before. Fel, I wish I could. But I could feel you. I feel just like I always have."
"Would you like some help with that?" Emerine offers, rising smoothly to her feet.
"How could I say no?" Aze says, her smile widening. "I'm still a little overdressed for this party."
Time Passes
Aze rests, lazily content, curled against Emerine. A little drowsily, she says, "This expedition keeps getting better and better."
Emerine chuckles. "It's only day three. Well, day one, for you." She has an arm wrapped around Aze's shoulders, and she idly traces a line down the other woman's arm and back up again as she speaks. "You can sleep here if you'd prefer, as well. It's easier to guard one bed than two."
"That sounds nice," Aze says, smiling. "I prefer not to sleep alone. This is not going to make anything awkward, is it? I mean, it won't on my side, but I don't know… I don't, um… I knew some kaldorei in Shadowmoon Valley, obviously, but they might not have been a good representation of the culture."
"As long as you don't have any particularly jealous lovers, it'll be fine," Emerine says, patting her shoulder soothingly. "I take plenty of lovers in general, though I'll never bring anyone back to our shared room without your enthusiastic permission, of course. I don't really do 'awkward'." She kisses Aszera on the forehead. "I don't mind taking the sheets down to the staff for cleaning if you'd prefer not to be the one."
"Oh," Aze says, relaxing again, resting her head against Emerine's shoulder. "That's good, then. I have… less lovers, these days. With the whole demon thing, and then joining the Alliance. Not by choice. And none of them jealous, I usually try to avoid that."
She curls an arm around Emerine's waist, and adds, "I like groups, if that's what you meant. If there's anyone you want to invite, who might be in for it… I mean, I'd like to know who in advance, of course. And I'll do the same, I wouldn't invite someone to join us unless you agreed. As for the sheets, I don't mind."
Emerine leans her head against Aze's. "If you have suggestions, I'm all ears. I'll handle the sheets when I go out."
"Mm, okay," Aze says sleepily. "And I don't have many suggestions for here. I mean, Siamus, if he's interested, but he might be too busy with all the… curse… cultist… business."
"That sounds fun," Emerine says, curling comfortably around Aze. "You seem tired. You can rest, it's safe."
"Safe," Aze repeats, with a faint chuckle, but she seems perfectly comfortable curled up with Emerine. "What about you, any suggestions?"
"One of the worgen could be interesting," Emerine says absently. "I haven't properly scoped them out yet. You drew my attention first."
"Oh, worgen, hmm. I sort of thought… I probably smell too strongly," Aze shrugs a little. "Perfume and the fel, and their sensitive noses."
"Who's to say?" Emerine hums quietly. "Not a priority."
"Not a priority," Aze agrees. "Priority is keeping our friends and allies safe. Finding Solari Farrens. But there's nothing wrong with a little pleasure along the way."
"Agreed," Emerine says, pleased. "I knew we'd get along."
Aze laughs softly. "I was a little less confident, but I hope you didn't take it personally. I swore myself to the Alliance and I meant it, but the Wardens… what they did to Illidan Stormrage, to the others. Whenever kaldorei seem interested in me, my first thought is always… maybe now it's my turn. I'm glad you wanted me and not… all that."
"Oh, I don't take it personally," Emerine says a little airily. "You've got to look out for yourself. I respect that."
"Yeah, I try," Aze says, letting out a breath in a happy sigh. "And for the people I care about. If anyone does break into this room, you don't need to worry about me. Just, we can make sure we work together, and don't get in each other's way. From experience so far, I don't think that'll be a problem. We read each other pretty well — maybe better with practice."
"I think so too," Emerine agrees. She is not likely to sleep again so soon, but she closes her eyes regardless, like a predator that feels safe enough to do so.