RP:A Gray Lie
Frostmaw
Haakon had seen that the room was cleaned while he and Cesaria were away. He’d arranged something special for her, a private painting introduction with one of his favorite living artists that happened to specialize in oil and kept a studio in Frostmaw. It was another gift and also an excuse to slip away and attend the Titans of Winter ball. He wondered if she’d already pieced it together when he’d presented her with it. He thought she might have, as she was clever, and the times aligning were not subtle. The vampire had timed his return for a half hour before she might arrive, careful to change from his formal clothing to more casual attire suited for someone who might have spent the hours in a hotel room with an interesting book. He’d also ordered room service again, something he thought was perhaps becoming a selfish habit. Haakon had planned to spirit her away to Frostmaw and show her the city, so far he’d greedily kept her to himself behind the closed doors of the hotel suite. Even still, he had arranged for the fire to be tended, sweet scented candles to be lit. Because he was feeling romantic he’d purchased a large bouquet of winter blooming flowers to place on the vanity for her as well. With nothing left to do but wait, he draped himself over one of the chairs by the wide window and pretended to read while he listened with his heightened senses for the first sign of her return.
Cesaria was 45 minutes late, even accounting for the 30 minutes Haakon had already factored into his estimate. On her way back from the exhilarating painting lesson, she instructed the driver to take a stop at a jewelry store. The driver had been sworn to secrecy over the details of the detour, details which were benign and thus agreeable. Though Haakon’s surprise had delighted her, she had detected beneath his charm a sense of haste and manipulation. At the time, she had assumed, perhaps narcissistically, that whatever he was up to must be for her amusement and seduction, as so many other things had been. She had missed entirely the coincidence with the ball. He had balked so loudly at her suggestion that he should attend. It was the furthest thing from her mind. It was under the spell of this enamored delusion that she first learned the truth. In the lobby of the hotel there was a list of contenders and a tournament bracket that was regularly updated. It had been updated sometime after Haakon returned to the room. In the lobby she stood still before the massive bracket, staring at the words ‘Haakon Adelstein, Vailkrin’ and wondering if perhaps it was a common name in The Dark Land. She knew better. The coincidence of the timing, and his haste, suddenly clicked into place and she felt naive and deeply disappointed. Beneath those primary feelings there was something else, as stubborn as a stone in a shoe, and it nagged at her as she climbed the stairs to their room. The fire, the candles, the flowers, and his handsome figure in lionine repose seized her heart and made her swoon. “Have you been terribly bored without me?” she asked, intending to sound more teasing than inquisitorial, with limited success. She shrugged out of her coat, hung it on the rack, then crossed to him for a quick kiss, too quick, even by the limits imposed on her by her curse. She busied herself with the flowers, her back to him, though she watched him in the mirror, her reflection aglow in the warm candlelight.
Haakon grew anxious as the seconds slid slowly into minutes and threatened an hour. A single hour. Could he not contain himself for that long? Had he less control he might have twitched in his seat, perhaps paced around the room, however he held himself in place and continued the air of bored but unbothered composure. Not even alone would he allow this pretense to drop. He thought it might simply be guilt that turned the waiting into bitter poison, for he had felt a great deal of it to have been dishonest with her in this, even if she herself had suggested it. His eyes searched the pages of his opened book without seeing the words that were printed there, having long given up trying to truly read it as he’d found himself restarting the same line several times only to realize he’d been thinking of Cesaria and not retaining a single word. When at last he heard her heartbeat, several moments before she opened the door, he struggled not to toss the book aside and meet her there. Instead, he simply turned his head to greet her. “I thought several times of throwing myself out of the window to end my misery without you,” He answered in mock drama, closing the book in a snap as she neared, “But not even the pain of falling from such heights would have eased my melancholia I’m afraid. And it certainly wouldn’t have ended me.” He noted the strangeness of her tone, the briefness of her kiss, and felt his guilt return. Ah, she’d figured him out then. Sensing that she watched him through the mirror, he met her eyes there and gave nothing away. “Did you enjoy it then? Have you found a hidden talent for oils?” Haakon sat the book aside and stood with fluid grace from the chair. Crossed the room to her slowly to toy with a strand of her hair.
Cesaria, in spite of whatever discontentment burned in her heart like an ember, grinned at his teasing melodrama, a quirk of his character that she had noted and very much enjoyed. It amused her without fail, even as he lied to her. But the lie eventually settled on that dark ember like fuel and heat erupted from her chest to her crown. She, too, gave nothing away. He crossed towards her and she turned to meet him, her arms snaking around his waist. “I did. I’d like to do it again, though the instructor said nothing about talent.” She smiled, briefly. Her curse did not take her this time. “Sorry I was late. I must have gotten confused. Seems there’s another Haakon Adelstein in town and I got mixed up as to which of the two I was meant to return to.” Again she tried to keep her voice light, but Haakon would discover she had little talent for performance. No use sending her to a bard for acting lessons.
Haakon settled into her embrace easily, wrapping his own arms around her and tilting his face downward to give her an ignoble smile, a tease dying on his tongue as she mentioned another Haakon. There was a moment of confusion, the brief flash of it softening over him, before his face closed off again and his eyes turned cold. Untangling himself from her, the vampire stepped back. “Well, I’m certain I could arrange another.” He says, addressing her desire to learn more of painting instead of the underhanded remark on his decision to join the tournament. In frustration, at himself or her he did not know, he crossed the room and dipped into the whiskey again. Apparently, he hadn’t had enough of it yet tonight. “I’d join you, but I’ve had countless years to practice but it would seem even time is no replacement for talent.” Haakon knocked back the whiskey. “Now, would you like to discuss what has upset you or would you prefer we keep pretending you haven’t seen my name on the contenders list for the tournament? Perhaps we could quietly glare at each other over dinner and then retire to bed without touching each other like an old, unhappily married couple.”
Cesaria scoffed at his attitude in disbelief. “Really, Haakon?” She smiled without joy, shaking her head as she crossed to the closet to change out of her cold clothes into something more comfortable and warm. The door obscured her body from his view. “Since when don’t you like to pretend? You haven’t asked about my trip to Rynvale though I know you know about it. Not to mention—” She cut herself off, not wanting to go there, to that terrifying place, the subject of her mother and the plans they both pretend he doesn’t have. She emerged from behind the closet door in her kimono worn over a black negligee. There wasn’t a single modest pajama in the trunk, everything Haakon bought for her to wear in private oozed with sex. Cesaria stormed to the minibar to retrieve a bottle of wine. Saying nothing, she tried to open the bottle, but this hotel only stocks a fancy bottle opener that should in theory make bottle opening easier but Cesaria can’t figure out which way to turn the lever or spin the screw. Irritated, she turned around quickly, wielding the bottle by the neck and shoved it towards Haakon’s hands in the universal language of ‘you deal with it.’ As he did (or did not), she paced to the seat he occupied in her absence, but, still too incensed by his jab, could not sit and instead turned around in exasperation. “Are you going to pretend that you didn’t lie to me?”
Haakon controlled his expression, the face of affable bemusement even as she jabbed at him again.Yes, he’d wondered when she’d tell him of her trip to Rynvale. Had considered opening the door for that conversation a thousand times and decided against it a thousand more. To, as she’d pointed out, let her pretend he had not sunk his teeth into every waking moment of her life. “Not to mention what, Cesaria?” The vampire pressed as she moved to change, his tone obnoxiously agreeable, insidiously innocent. He watched her fume and struggle with the wine, had moved to open it for her even as she shoved it toward him and opened it easily. By the time she turned around again he was pressing a glass of it into her hand. Her accusation sank home then, his head moving back as if she’d struck a physical blow. “I did not lie.” His voice was low, thick with the anger he’d hidden. Haakon stalked away from her and to the window. He leaned near it facing her with his legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed at the chest. “What lie are you accusing me of? I signed up for a bloody tournament that means next to nothing to me and should mean less than that to you. Where is the lie in that?”
Cesaria ignored his overly sweet goading. The lies that swirled around her mother were off limits for Cesaria’s benefit, not Haakon, and he knew it. She was not about to give up the blameless delusions that made it easier for her to sleep at night. If she pretended she knew nothing of his plans, did not encourage him outright, then whatever happened to her mother could not possibly be her fault, right? “I don’t care about the tournament, and you know that!” She fixed him with a bright glare. “You’re still pretending!” Her voice rose. “You’re damn near indestructible, Haakon. You feed once and you’re back to being perfect.” She spat out the last word with quite a bit more acrimony than she intended.”You know this is about tonight.” Her hand gestured sharply before her chest. “This is about the ball, and you getting rid of me so you could sneak off. Why! Why lie to me.” Her curls shook from anger that animated her. She held the wine glass tensely, not yet having taken a sip, too focused on her outrage. But even as she accused Haakon of lying, she knew she was not in truth addressing the heart of the issue. Yes, she was upset with his subterfuge, but that’s not what had settled into her heart and weighed it down with steaming coal. In this way Cesaria was also pretending and lying.
Haakon brows winged, genuine confusion tilting him on his head again just as he thought he might have found his footing in the argument. “What?” He might have laughed at her calling him perfect if he’d been in a better mood, because while he had considerable hubris he’d never considered himself anything of the sort. A terrible realization came to him then, as she finally got to the heart of what had upset her, and the disparity of it crashed over him in a drowning wave. He stood again, crossed to her quickly. “Is that what you think of me?” His tone was lilting and filled with hurt. “Do you think so little of me that I was ridding myself of you for this thing?” He took the ignored glass of wine from her and sat it aside, took her face into his hands. “Cesaria,” Haakon exhaled her name, “Do you truly have no idea the lengths I would go to shield you from pain? What could I have done? Begged you to go? Watched as it hurt you to deny us both of it or worse, watch you suffer for trying?” His hands fell away from her, stepped back to give her space. Looking at her, so beautiful and slight. Humanly fragile and endlessly fascinating to him, bright and forbidden as sunlight. As he looked at her and felt too much, he wondered what she saw looking back into him.
Cesaria was winded as Haakon pushed on the heart of the matter. Suddenly her head bowed, doubled over, forehead pressed to the back of her glass-holding hand. She stood like that, tensely gripped by a preemptive grief she tried futilely to beat back. Haakon came to her, took away the wine, drew up her wet face. She avoided his gaze, embarrassed. It hurt so badly because she knew. She already knew his motives, his reasons, and how correct they were. He was perfect, he did everything just right. And still it hurt precisely because he had to do it this way, because this subterfuge was necessary, because she was lacking in all the ways her mother made sure she would lack. This curse may never lift. Or it may not lift soon enough. How long before the game lost its shine? Before he couldn’t content himself with cheating her demons for a stolen kiss in the dark? How long before he realized she could not accompany him on his quest for greatness and someone more suitable came along, unexpected but apt just the same? And where would this better woman be? At a ball, perhaps. At his work, maybe. Maybe even in a tournament, who knows. But he would not, could not, find her in Cesaria, not afflicted as she was, so afflicted that deceiving her was the purest way to love her. As Haakon moved away, she held onto his hands to keep him close. For a long while she couldn’t say anything, the ember having risen to her throat and choking her. Finally the acuteness of tomorrow’s grief faded just enough for her to speak. “I might never be normal again. Or…” She ran her fingers over her lips, hesitated, then said, “Not soon enough.”
Haakon could not remember a time he’d felt such shame. Her tears glistened like jewels in her dark lashes with the low candle light. He might have moved to her again to kiss them away but for the self opprobrium that told him he was no longer worthy of touching her. So he pulled his hands away from her and fisted them at his sides. Again, he thought that his selfishness was more jagged than any curse her mother had inflicted upon her. His greed, his desire. He’d taken, pushed them both farther than either of their own realities allowed and stolen every opportunity for more. For a man with such a compulsive need for control, this thing between them, and inside of him, had become something like a storm that’s destruction was as inevitable as it was devastating. Ignorant to her inner turmoil and drowning in his own, Haakon wrongly assumed her grief was born of disbelief in him and not the same self turned cynicism that rotted away at his insides. He had been the monster he ever was and she must see it now, underneath the attempted charm, the money and the gifts. It wasn’t enough to hide him or the dark, twisted truth that coiled inside. And then she spoke again, softly, and the sound of it cut through him. “Is that what you think I’m after?” Dubiousness crossed the sharp, pained lines of his face. “Normal? Cesaria, as cursed as you are there will be an end to it. You will be normal. I will promise it until it’s true. And you’ll laugh without shame, smile without hiding it from the world and the curse making it ugly. And you’ll go into sunlight, and on to worlds that you don’t have to steal glances from behind a veil or a curtain. You’ll make friends, fall in love. You’ll age and your hair will turn grey. One day you will die.” The pain of the last of it crossed him unbridled. “You’ll do many things that I cannot. That I would not keep you from. So please, don’t fall on your sword pretending any misery between us is not inflicted by my nature, my hand.”
Cesaria shook her head softly as Haakon spoke of a future bereft of him. “No,” she said barely above a whisper. He continued to self-flagellate in the name of nobility, a martyrdom that exposed the lie in his self narrative. Haakon the damned, the villainous, the devil who would cut out his own heart and sacrifice it at the altar of his love in the name of her glory. At no point did she doubt the ardor of his love, which burned so intensely and nakedly for her to see. But it was precisely because his passion burned so hot that she doubted its longevity, like a fire that burns too quickly through its fuel. She was sure that if the curse were lifted, then and only then did a future yawn before them endlessly to the horizon and beyond (albeit, their definitions of ‘forever’ sat on very different timescales.) “Haakon, stop,” she said softly as she took his fist in both her hands and gently coaxed his hand open, slipped her fingers through his, pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I yield to you control over many things in my life. I like it, even. But you cannot control what makes me happy. I already know what does and what will, and I’m looking at him right now.” Through lashes still wet she beheld him, her gaze revealing the depths and heat of her own love for him. “I know who you are, and I am not dismissing your violence or your bloodlust. I am not being precious about your condition like some ingenue in one of your horror novels. Which,” she smiled a little, their easy ability to joke with each other never far away, “You have a very particular taste, darling. Lots of romantically and sexually repressed monsters.” The smile blossomed into a knowing grin and the curse briefly disfigured her lips. “But, Haakon, no amount of tortured vampire talk will convince me of your fiction. You were more convincing when you said you near jumped out a window from missing me.”
Haakon opened his hand to her with little resistance. He could deny her nothing. He knew the argument had lost its bite, both of them losing the taste for it as they revealed themselves and were left raw from it. Normal? No, he could have never been satisfied with normal. It might have been amusing to him, if it weren’t for the tears that still wet her face, that they seemed to inspire such dramatics in each other. He might have felt embarrassed but for the way she seemed to not only accept but embrace this part of him, even as she spoke of accepting his constant battle for control. And he opened to her again, forever unable to resist her, with clever teasing. “And what do you know of my bloodlust? My taste?” He stepped forward again, “You’re no ingenue,” He pulled her toward him now, hands fisting in the silk at her waist. “But certainly repressed.” Haakon devoured her then, pressing his lips against hers to take, to taste, until he sensed the hard line that separated him from true exploration of her lips, of satisfaction for either of them. He pressed his lips to her forehead as he gave her space to breathe. After a moment of silence beat between them he added, “I might have done it you know. Another few minutes and you would have been scraping me off the pavement.”
Cesaria felt drunk on him and exhausted from this overwrought fight that felt a long time coming, even though they had not known each other that long, just a few short months. In retrospect she would realize that Haakon had cracked her open, had deliberately applied pressure to expose the tenderness inside her until he felt sated that she was his. She would not resent him this possessiveness. She enjoyed it, blissfully unaware that this night would mark the true beginning of her willful descent into his darkness. She finally ate and drank wine, asked him about the ball. Did he meet the Queen of Frostmaw? And who else? Who was he competing against first? Did he meet her? What was she like? Can he beat her? Of course he can. As the night progressed, they moved from the table to the shower to the bedroom, torturing each other with the limits of her pro-abstinence curse. She reminded him of the hex hound curse, said she had it all planned out, that’s why she was late today. Everything was ready. They fell into the familiar pattern of stolen touches and kisses. The drunker she got, the less control she had over her curse, but she recoiled from him a little less each time. No, she didn’t want to be unattractive to him, but by now he’d seen the worst of it, he was still here, and most importantly, she believed him. In the heady haze of love, she believed he would succeed in lifting her curse. How can a man who looked at her the way he did fail? At length she fell asleep against him and dreamt of romantically and sexually repressed monsters, seeing herself among the pack of beasts.