RP:Drow Love MAY Be Possible, and Other Revelations in the Dark
Summary: After a tumultuous break up, Gevurah reaches out to Lanlan. He sets a time for them to meet. They go into the secret meeting expecting a re-hash and, hopefully, a resolution to the cruel things they said. But lust quickens fast and they find themselves repressing their resentments and focusing on the carnal instead. It doesn’t work. Immediately after there is friction, and argument, a make up, another near argument, another willful make up. They part with a major point of contention — Lanlan’s insistence on cutting her out of his future plans — unresolved.
The Letters
Lanlan,
They destroyed my temple. They destroyed my statue.
I've been thinking about how to piece things back together.
G
Dancing Destrier. Room #7. [Time and Date]
L
The Dancing Destrier
Lanlan arrives early at the Dancing Destrier. It wasn't intentional. For unmeasured time, he forced himself to restore his rune research that was destroyed along with his house. But it was gratuitous, his understanding was almost intuitive now. But he didn't want any breathing room, any space to think about what this meeting meant. When there was barely enough time to arrive at the appointed hour, he left the Mage's guild walking. Only he forgot to measure his paces and control the speed of his gait. Without trying, he arrived in no time at all. He pulled a table to a corner, pushed the other tables away, and took a chair facing the door.
Gevurah ‘s heart beats as fast as it did the last time she stood outside Lanlan’s door. She hesitates for a moment, her gaze fixed on the wooden door as if trying to divine from the whirls and lines in the grain the future that awaits her beyond that door. Would they repeat the ugly verses they spat at each other the last time they met? Would he forgive her? Has she forgiven him? She thinks she has, but her talent for self deception rivals his. She knocks, waits to hear his voice, then enters and closes the door behind her without taking her gaze off of him. Gone from her face is her usual scowl, her anger, her pompousness. She comes to him as he’s seen her before they gave each other a reason to hate one another. Her lips part to speak but whatever she had rehearsed evaporates from her tongue.
Lanlan wondered if everyone else could sense the strangeness of the atmosphere today as he did. The gravity seemed lazy today, the air he breathed seemed more fulfilling. Something big was about to happen. On a blank page he was writing more notes. But it was the same as before, superfluous. When at last she knocks, his pen freezes and he stands. A long second passes, was she waiting for him? Then maybe it wasn't her. Did he ask for refreshments? That would've been a good idea but he doesn't think so. He jabs himself in the thigh with his fountain pen and takes a few long strides to the door. Grabs the handle, turns it, and pulls. It's Gevurah. For a moment there's just silence and standing. When Lanlan becomes aware of this, he takes a step against the door and places a guiding hand on her elbow to lead her in. That's what he thought he was doing. After the first touch of his finger on her arm, his thoughts are caged in some tiny dark place and forgotten. Instinct and feeling, that's what was left. He heard the door close, felt his arms around her back, hers around his. He closed his eyes and everything looked so dark, but felt so vibrant, how? And he tasted her lips on his, and his on her neck, and sometimes he heard a small beckoning voice in his mind asking him if this was okay? But it was so quiet, he ignored it.
Gevurah falls right into Lanlan’s arms. She succumbs to his kiss. This is not how she expected this to go. They said cruel things to each other, wounded each other, and never patched up those wounds. Could a kiss, a caress, or a grope heal the lacerations they cut into each other with their tongues? She doesn’t have the will or the experience to make a decision that runs counter to her desire. He feels too good to stop. Maybe they never have to discuss what happened. Maybe talking about what they said, apologizing for what they said, is a mistake. Or maybe she can apologize through her mouth as it forms different shapes of supplication across his body. Maybe she can petition for his forgiveness on her knees, on her back, beside him, beneath him. Whenever the memory of his cruelty bubbles up in her mind, she loves him with greater vigor, and demands he obliterate thought from her mind by loving her more vigorously too.
Lanlan is ecstasy when the insidious voice posits something. He loved her, and she loved him. She wanted him to feel it and he could. The things she did to him were something he never could've asked for. It was love that inspired her. 'But she doesn't respect you.' He drowned the voice with love that was mindless and euphoric. As the voice echoed, he saw her face the day she undid him, so he closed his eyes. Now he heard her words and his. So he loved her harder, faster. And it works! He finishes rapturously and feels vindicated by an immediate catharsis. He feels amazing. He feels purged. She was the antidote to all the things that poisoned him recently. After, he stays entwined in silence and marvels, hearing only the sound of their breath.
Gevurah lays back to catch her breath. Her mind remains clear of intrusive thoughts and she mistakes the silence for absolution. It’s worked! They fixed it with their pliant bodies. How could they not? No one has ever touched her the way he does. She slinks onto her side to face him and nestles up against his side. They haven’t said a word to each other. The last words spoken between them are still those painful, lashing words. She searches her mind for new words to replace them but comes up short.
Lanlan secretly wished their meeting would go almost exactly like this. Now they could resume, now they could be happy. They said horrible things, but they could forget them and be happy. But if, for example, she confessed to saying some things that she knew weren't true, he could admit she was maybe a little bit right, but she did hurt him. Then he could tell her his regrets. Why didn't he see how she helped him then? He did now. What if she didn't have to start? He could do it. What she did for him earned her that grace. Invigorated by the idea of making this perfect, he squeezes closer to her, and pulls her against him, even though it was physically impossible to create anymore contact. Brave, that's what he is, so he allows himself the space to talk around it first. What should he say? He doesn't know. He improvises. "I didn't know you could do that," he says, so happily impressed. "Where did you learn?" His loving smile turns to plastic.
Gevurah laughs into his shoulder. “What do you mean?” She knows what he means, and who he is thinking about. The hairs on the back of her neck stand as she senses an argument coming. Don’t talk about Daath. Stop. “Oh. That.” She kisses him again to distract him from thoughts of her husband. He thinks about Daath more than she does. Then again, Daath did destroy his house. A knife twists in her heart. She pulls away from him slightly and studies his face. He’s more handsome now. “Do you need money?”
Lanlan realizes after her who he's thinking about, and what it means. That special, secret place he had in Gevurah wasn't exclusive to him anymore. But he knew that! He knew that. He tells himself especially after their last meeting, that he knew that. She loved him though, and he loved her. Maybe it was enough. Her lips were persuasive. This can still be a perfect night, it wouldn't be him that ruins it. Then he takes a deep breath, realizing he was wrong. He breaks eye contact following her question. "No." He wants to stay entangled with her. He can't. He slides his arm from under her and sits up with his back to her. He summons a small metal case from his satchel and opens it for the first time in years. One left! He appraises the small skinny cigarette. It must be so stale.
Gevurah sits up when Lanlan does. She watches the back of him as he lights up an old cigarette. Since when did he smoke? She slides on her knees towards him so that she can touch him again, smooth a hand over his back and side. “Really, Lan, tell me what you need. If it’s money, I can do that.”
Lanlan winces a little at her touch. That old familiar poison starts coursing through his veins where his blood should be, but he thinks he can control it. "No I don't need money. But I would -love- if you could find another throne to give me." He pulls on his pants and walks over to the window, leaning out and blowing out smoke.
Gevurah purses her lips at Lanlan’s biting sarcasm. The draft that blows in through the window makes her shiver, as does the ease with which he puts distance between them. The words she had rehearsed but failed to speak come back to her: words of apology and regret. They stay stuck somewhere at the back of her bitter mouth. “Fine.” She gets up and noisily gets dressed, making a performance of her impending departure. “Is that all you wanted to get off your chest? Hm?”
Lanlan takes another appraising look at his cigarette, takes one last grimace inducing drag, and drops it out the window before patiently turning around to see her again. Then he slams his back flat against the wall. What he sees is something monstrous. Her limbs are long and crooked, skin covered in a jagged obsidian exoskeleton. Her eyes are each a pitch black abyss with only a single twinkling red star, lightyears into the depth. He blinks several times. The voice isn't right. It isn't the voice of a monster. "Y-yes," he says stuttering a little. "I mean...no." He takes a deep breath, and more command over his reality. He knows what this is.
Gevurah pauses, half-dressed, when Lanlan looks at her with horror and disgust. His expression cuts right to her core. No one has ever been so capable of hurting her with a look. She hates how vulnerable she is to his moods and affections, and hates herself for falling for someone so bitter. She fails to notice the monstrous illusion he’s (unwittingly?) cast on her. “Then just say it, Lan. Say whatever it is you’ve been wanting to say to me.”
Lanlan tries to avoid looking at her, looking at the floor instead. When he's finally close enough, he closes his eyes and attempts to feel through the illusion and touch bare skin. It's not cold and rough and spiky. It's soft and smooth and warm. He exhales, realizing he'd been holding his breath. "Thank you."
Gevurah tenses when Lanlan comes closer to her but won’t look at her. She expects more bitterness, but then his touch is kind, and his words surprising, even if perhaps a little too soft, a little too unexpected and much too cloying for her tastes. She eyes him suspiciously. Something isn’t right. He’s normally harder than this. Even when he is kind, his kindness has an edge that she’s always found attractive. Is this a lingering effect of his possession? “Right…” she says warily. “Lan, look at me.” She cups his face and searches his gaze for hints of malady. “Come,” she leads him back to bed. “Tell me. What have you been doing since… that day.”
Lanlan feels his anxiety quickly evaporate against the warmth of Gevurah's hands on his face, and he expels it in a slow exhale from his nostrils. Reluctantly he opens his eyes. Hers are there, and not so distant that they couldn't possibly see him. But what's that on her face? Concern? She couldn't know what he saw then. And she must never. "I've been busy," he lies. "I have a lot of work to do. And fewer distractions." There's too much to say, but he won't. "And you seem to be carrying on? Just as normally as ever."
Gevurah resists a frown as Lanlan keeps her on the outside of his new life. “Don’t talk to me like I’m the past,” she says in a voice more gentle than she intended. She scowls at herself for the slip. Abruptly she stands up again and walks towards the window, her back to him. What is she supposed to say now? How do these surfacers navigate these sniveling, pathetic, needy feelings? She takes a deep breath and focuses on what she is best at. After a protracted silence, she turns around to face him, leans back on the sill in nothing but her slip, and forces Lanlan to meet her gaze. “Yes, I dealt with the Razurath,” she says in the self-possessed voice by which Lanlan has come to know her best. “Both at home and in Venturil. You weren’t there,” her tone starts to slip she says ‘you’. “I wish you-” She catches herself, corrects, “You would have liked being there. You would have enjoyed yourself. It was glorious. I brewed a death curse, like the one I put on Desparrow’s castle in Cenril, but much more powerful.” She can’t help the small smile that blossoms as she shares with him her victory. “It was a beautiful slaughter, as poetic as the cleansings from ancient history books.” Her smile twists darkly as she remembers the slow, anguished deaths of the Razurath in Trist’oth. “Their bodies fell apart, scales sloughed off, bones turned brittle. Their organs turned into a sickly sludge on every street in the city. And that was just in Trist’oth.” She licks her lips excitedly as she remembers what awaited her in Venturil. “In Venturil…” She laughs breathily. “Well, first you must understand the preparation that went into this.” Without thinking, she moves back onto the bed and crawls closer to him as she tells him. “The D’Artes army and allies from... well, so. We marched on Venturil. Thousands of drow. You should have seen it, Lan. The Razurath hardly had an army at all. And their city was empty. Odd, yes? Well,” Her lips start to twitch in and out of a laugh that she does her best to resist. “It turns out they had—” She laughs suddenly, uproariously, sitting near him and unguarded the way she was the first time they laughed together in Trist’oth Arena. She takes deep breaths to calm herself and tries her best to speak through bursts of laughter. “B-before” Snort laugh! “Before the a-army even arr-IVED” Guffaw! “They had— !” she squeaks out the words. “They killed their own civilians! Be-because” Literal tears from laughing. “Because they were afraid of me.” That last line is squeaked out in a pitch high enough to clear an accompanying peal of a cackle. She laughs so hard she runs out of breath and laughs soundlessly. Laughing like this with him feels so familiar. It feels exactly like how they were before Daath. Back when she first discovered that with Lanlan she could be Gevurah, a person, and not Matron Gevurah, a figurehead. When she can finally breathe enough to speak, her sides aching from the laugh, she says, “Gods, I missed you.” She blinks, stunned at her own careless admission, and even more surprised that it felt good to say out loud. But immediately after the doubt creeps in, the fear that vulnerability can be weaponized.
Lanlan felt as though he must've been misunderstood. Or was he too convincing? "Hold on..." His hand reached out to hers, to stop her before she walked away. It missed only by inches. His eyes don't leave her. After a second of consideration, he stands up abruptly, hesitates for another moment, then sits back down. He can listen. Is there anything else he can do? As soon as she begins her story she can't help but imagine it, as if he was there. "Mm. I couldn't have been though. You know that." He shuts his eyes to see the reptilian humanoids rapid putrefaction, the look on their faces watching their family melt. The look on Gevurah's face watching them suffer. Did she laugh? Smile? "They must've been -terrified-," he says giddily. He dizzily falls back on his hands, lost in the dream. Then he feels the bed shake, and is a little startled to see her in front of him, completely animated. It draws him in. He grabs her hands in his. "So odd," he confirms. He shakes her hands in his gently. "Tell me," he says sharing a chuckle he didn't understand. But seeing her continue to laugh for no apparent reason was hilarious by itself! He contained his laughter as best he could. "Yes? Yes??? Tell me!" Then he chokes a little. "N-no they didn't," he asserts, but he knows they did. "a-HAAA!" Almost his entire pent up laugh is released all at once before he can help it, and he holds it in again. But it's no use its coming out. High pitched, like a hyena, the way he only does when he can't avoid it. Then she says...she missed him? And he's suddenly quieted. He tilts his head perplexed. Wanting to smile but afraid to. He looks down at his hands holding hers, and then back to her eyes, and then her mouth, and he leans forward and kisses her.
Gevurah sighs a small, contented moan through her nose as she leans into his kiss and returns it. She straddles him and holds his head in both hands as they finally kiss the way they did the first time, before everything started breaking all at once. Her hair falls loosely like a curtain around their private, smitten faces. She’s content to just kiss him for a long time and attempt to express in that way everything they still haven’t said. But when the night grows old the reality of their situation sets in. Gevurah is the a matron of a city from which Lanlan is exiled. Were he to violate that, his transgression would be punishable by death, a sentence that would be meted out by her husband. Then again, Gevurah firmly squeezes that city in her fist. If she wanted her lover close, she could clear a path for him, a cushy path lined with gold and slaves. Daath wouldn’t be happy, but it’s a consideration she can’t quite account for when she’s in Lanlan’s arms. “Lan,” she says breathlessly, “What will you do now? We can find a way to bring you back to Trist’oth, clear out a new house for you. It will be easy, even after all the casualties - it’s chaos in the houses. Stavret will fall any minute now.”
Lanlan pulls her waist against his to feel as much of her body against his as he can, while he can. After the last time they met, Lanlan was sure the next time they met, she would be his enemy. Maybe he thought it was better. Maybe he thought he wanted that. As soon as he saw her letter, he knew he just wanted her in his life. But not how she was before. Even before her husband. Something needed to be different, and he didn't know what, so he didn't stop kissing even when she started talking. His lips plot a haphazard route from hers, to her cheek, to her ear, neck, and collar bone. Gevurah will always be his matron though, so he can't procrastinate like this forever. He plants one more on her shoulder and exhales slowly through his nose before turning up his gaze into hers. Frankly, he admits: "I don't know." Then he holds her hands in his. She might want to use them against him soon. "I'm not returning to Trist'oth. Whatever I decide to do, I'm doing alone." His words did have a certain bite to them, as he unconsciously geared up for a fight.
Gevurah delights in the way Lanlan feasts upon her body as she plots the fall of noble houses. Before Lan, the co-mingling of power and lust was not interesting to her, but he taught her the joy in making bad plots the epicenter of bad love. With him it feels natural to whisper wicked plots between soft moans. And so it comes as a shock, and a betrayal to their dynamic, that he refuses to plot with her for the first time in their multi-year history. “What?” She eyes him incredulously, her lips twisting into her usual scowl. “What will you do then? And where will you go? And what do you mean by ‘alone’?” She air quotes with the inflection of her voice, because he won’t let go of her hands. His grip telegraphs the fact he’s bracing himself to disappoint her. Her temper, and nose, flares.
Lanlan sees his prophecy fulfilled in the souring of her face. He knew she would react like this! He didn't hear the resentful edge in his voice, or the slightly tense grip on her hands that likely precipitated it. "I told you. I don't know. Whatever it is, wherever I go, you can't help me." He's taken all he can of her face right now, so he turns his eyes away and looks at nothing. An exasperated sigh. "You should know why."
Gevurah pulls her hands free from his grip and crosses her arms. Still sitting in his lap, she leans back slightly to glare at Lanlan in silence as she mentally wills him to look at her. Seconds stretch into a long minute, and all she gives off is the heat of her simmering temper. Finally, she says, “How exactly do I fit into your plans? You won’t involve me in your life, and you won’t live in Trist’oth. So what now. What about-” She gestures between them.
Lanlan lets her hands slide out as soon as she tries to free them. Now that his are empty, he doesn't know what to do with them anymore. He leans on one and the other rubs the back of his neck.Then it rests on her thigh. In his peripherals he can see her looking at him expectantly. He resists looking back, not wanting to even seem aware of it. At least until his conviction returns. He rolls his eyes at this entire situation and then smoothly turns his head back to her until his eyes 'just happen' to be resting on hers. He doesn't repeat himself. All these questions are the same to him. Except the last one. Suddenly he grins evilly. "That's what you're worried about?" Suddenly he grabs her shoulders and twists his hips, planting her under him on her back and him on top now (If he can, she was known to be so good at riding she couldn't fall off her mount unless she wanted to). "Maybe I can return to Trist'oth sometimes...and you'll have to come visit me up here."
Gevurah grins a little when Lanlan does, despite her anger. The carnal way he looks at her and the lust with which he moves her body quickens her arousal and sedates her temper. It’s a dangerous power for a drow to wield over a matron, but she’s thrilled under this particular spell nonetheless. “Mmm, every day, then,” she whispers near his ear as she writhes beneath him until they slip into the jigsaw configurations of pleasure. They kiss again, touch, lose track of the time, forget to breathe. They get hungry, fetch food from the inn, and wine. Although many questions, grievances, and regrets remain unresolved, Gevurah doesn’t have the will to fight him again. Not tonight. Instead they lay in bed, a little drunk and getting drunker by the glass. Before they gave in to their desires, when they were friends but not yet lovers, they spoke a little of their personal lives, but not in great detail. Since they’ve became lovers, their history has been fraught and pockmarked by a spiritual possession and a break-up. Finally, tonight, they can get to know each other a little more intimately the way surface lovers do, by talking about nothing in particular and revealing pieces of themselves along the way. Did Lan know Gevurah tried to cook once? Mhm. When she was still in priestess training. It was horrible. “And it was a soup too. You would think, being able to brew potions, I could manage that, but no! If it isn’t dead or rotting, I don’t know what to do with it.” She laughs. The real reason she hates going to surfacer parties, aside from the surfacers themselves, is that they have all those coordinated dances and she gets second-hand embarrassment just watching those losers waltz, or whatever it’s called. Her first sexual experience was with a low-born mage, an illusionist actually, from a lower house (the obvious similarity between that experience and this one goes unremarked). Here’s a secret: She went through an adolescent rebellion where she tried to defy her father by worshipping the spider goddess in secret. That’s where she picked up her transmutation tricks. She winks at that. It’s a harmless secret these days (she’s near untouchable). But in her youth, it could have cost her many advantages if she fell out of favor with her father. And on and on they swap stories until the birds begin to chirp before the sun’s first rays. “Damn. I have to get back.”
Lanlan is grateful for the chance to focus only on what's in front of them. Their bodies. Then Lanlan, in his estimation, did get a little carried away. It wasn't often at all he drank alcohol. Him being drunk as actually unheard of, unless he was acting. Yet infinitely more unbelievable was Gevurah. "Right, right, righrighrigh. And the soup was sooo amayy--! No! It was bad!?" He moans with mock sadness, "I'm so sorry. Very resourceful of you to have kept it all this time. Came in handy with that Razurath curse didn't it?" Then he drags her out of bed for a drunken waltz and first hand embarrassment. But Lanlan's dexterity is gone, and Gevurah should never think she can waltz after this lesson. "Hmm? Weird..." His first sexual experience was with a half-elf, half-human wizard. "I know, I know! Stop I was young." They drifted apart, their ideals shifted. Some years after Lanlan left the forest, she was blamed for a series of murders in which there was no wound of any kind. He shrugs innocently. "I admit nothing." They executed her "too quick". Not like the day Nymh died. "The day I realized: Love isn't only for surfacers who need to explain away embarrassing behavior," and he dramatically caresses Gevurah's face. "And when I was really small, I, umm, started 'poisoning' my parents' food." Harmless mischief. Swap out a spice for a medicinal herb. They'd sleep for hours. "Anyway I knew how to cook by that time, but I cooked this funny looking lizard, got lost in a strange part of the forest I never saw. For three days!" He mouthed it again for emphasis. Three days! "I couldn't find my way back to -anything- familiar. Oh I was hallucinating obviously. Finally I came to my senses. I was in my bed, tangled up in blankets. Never even made it to the damn woods." He nods in admiration regarding her secret spider goddess worship. "I've always wondered how you managed to keep that from him. Reckless. So reckless." When morning came, she said she had to leave. Which he expected, but still dreaded. "You're Matron D'Artes," he reminds her, "You don't have to get anywhere." Inevitably, that could never be enough to persuade her. "If you leave now," he warns, "you won't get to hear the story you want to hear the most." He flicks a bouncy eyebrow enticingly. "Hmm?"
Gevurah rarely has reason to get drunk too, but a night in with Lan seemed like a good enough reason. (Quick hits: 1. Hallucinating is a common part of priestess rituals and she’s had some C.R.A.Z.Y. trips. Hallucinating while astral projecting and in a communal trance with your god? Mind melting. But it’s how they unlock their powers. 2. She never poisoned her parents, but she often fantasized that her mother would die prematurely. She hated her. It’s the first time Gevurah has ever spoken about her mother, the pixie, and it may well be the last. 3. Gevurah does not miss the fact that Lanlan used the word love to describe how he feels about her. She can’t quite bring herself to say it back, but she does kiss the hand that caresses her face.) The sun’s rays begin to stretch over the horizon. “And what story is that?” She’s already searching the sheets for her dress, a corset, an undergarment - shoot, where’s that bracelet?
Lanlan moves some blankets around to help and pushes some pillows half-heartedly. This was inevitable but still terrible. Also Lanlan didn't say he loved her, just that he believed it was possible. Everyone stay calm. "Actually I don't think you have time to hear this story. It's a lot. Besides I'm," he yawns, "Starting to sober up. You can't take advantage of me anymore." Since she -is- leaving, Lanlan dispels an illusion of just plain old wood floor that hovers over the actual wood floor, and a certain bracelet.