[ He lays down next to her, shifting his fingers in her hold to something a little more solid. A little more entwined. The sigh he lets out as he settles is a weary one; there'd been concerns in Antiva City about being caught, and in one or two places it had been a near enough thing.
An arm goes beneath his head, between his salt-spray-scented hair and the pillow. He lets go of her hand in order to trace a fingertip down her nose, from the point between her eyebrows all the way down to the very tip, and then comes to rest in the divot of skin above the bow of her upper lip. ]
I love you, [ Loki states quietly. That feels like something impossible, something both dangerous and delicate. It feels terrifying for it to be true, and even more, perhaps, that he believes it's been true for at least a little while now. ]
[ There had been a broadened smile for the tangle of their fingers, a look of curious concern for the sigh; there had been a crinkle at the corners of her eyes for the way he touches her, and for the wordsβ
The words.
She had heard them only at a distance, only from a stone and its glow, and even then it had made her heart flutter light and swift in her chest. Somewhere in Antiva, he had loved her. He had carried a heart that loved her home from the sea to put it in her hands.
She thinks of him walking off the ship and into the moonlit darkness of the city with his stride that eats the edges of the world and of being carried always with him where he goes, and it makes of her a thing so tender she is grateful he had said it first to her at night when things are gentler.
Her breath sighs against his hand in an oh of wonder, and then she traces the same path he had on her on him; a fingertip down his nose, over the tip of it. Changes, in that at the last it turns to the gentle pass of her thumb across his lower lip, and like itβs woven from fine threads she says ] I love you, [ too. ]
[ He bites his tongue to stop the unbidden "Why?" that threatens to spill forward from his lips; instead, he kisses her thumb and pulls his hand away from her face to settle at her side instead. ]
I have not considered myself an easy thing to love [ communicates the same idea without seeming petulant or disbelieving of what she says. He's proud of himself for those words, actually. ] There have not been many who have been inclined to try, nor I to allow for it. So this feels... [ Terrifying, straight up. He shakes his head instead of giving a voice to that. ] Like a very strange sort of miracle I'm not sure I deserve.
I am not sure one can deserve a miracle, yet they are given.
[ After all, what else could it be when a love she had only just begun to understand was gone from her came to her againβ old and newβ to hold her as she began to weep in earnest for the first?
Softly, moving her hand to settle light fingertips against his cheek. ]
Or perhaps we have not the slightest conception of what it is that we deserve.
[ She smooths a bit of hair behind his ear. ]
Either way, I thank you for allowing me to love you.
I would believe... either of those to be true, honestly.
[ He's wired to believe her, no matter how different from his lived experience the things she says are. She would know better the nature of miracles, Loki thinks; they were never his forte. He's not sure when believing her in all things happened, except it's been happening since the beginning, since he arrived here, since he met Alexandrie.
As she touches his face, his hair, he closes his eyes briefly and breathes her in as evenly as he can. In, count to three, out, count to three. Opens them again. ]
Seems like a simple thing, albeit terrifying also, to be still at times and listen; two things I have never excelled at. [ And yet, here they are. ]
[ Alexandrie shakes her head a little. It, and every movement, touch, sound of her voice when she speaks is gentle, slow, and heavy with the languor of that space near sleep, made warm by the safety of having him near again. ]
I do not think it simple. For all that we hear it sung of and lauded, for all that it is a thing all parts of ourselves so desperately yearn forβ¦
[ She shifts to settle into him, heedless of the salt-roughness of his shirt against her skin. Threads her arm around his waist, tucks her head beneath his chin and murmurs there against his throat. ]
[ He knows he is far from sleep himself and yet it is a comfort to be in her space within this moment; she's so quiet, so calm, that he can't but help feel his racing mind slow at least a little bit in the presence of that mood. ]
I told Sylvie that love is a dagger. She didn't like my metaphor, [ he says, and there's a hint of a laugh in that admission, ] but I don't think I was wrong.
[ It's different, he thinks, because he was prepared to love Sylvie without reciprocation. Does, perhaps.
Mm.
Does. She isn't here. Somewhere, she's continued on without him, as she should. There's a good chance she never will be in Thedas, and if she were to appear, he's not sure that would be better or worse for her. But Alexandrie is here, in this world he's trapped in for all intents and purposes, prepared to love him due to the nature of Thedas itself and the law of variables, perhaps. He's not sure which, if either. ]
It feels like such a risk. [ He exhales through his nose in a noise not unlike a laugh. ] I've had nightmares where your husband comes back for you. Amongst other things.
I made a similar allusion to my lord the night I told him I cared for him. That him knowing felt like giving him the hilt of a dagger I held pointed to my heart such that he need not even trouble himself to aim.
I was frightened, then. These days I am happier to have such a blade in me. [ It is softly said, but the warmth is changed to something thin, fragile. Lonely. Her fingers curl into his shirt where they rest. ] βI bleed when it is gone.
[ She curls closer, too, like her fingers. Tense and still and quiet. ]
Should I have nightmares of her coming back for you?
[ He imagines the tonal shift is because she misses her husband, not because of his mentioning of Sylvie... at least, he imagines that until her question, and he realizes just what's happened, perhaps. At the very least, he has a better idea of it. ]
No, [ comes his answer, matched to her quietness. He shakes his head a little. ] I don't know what I would do if she showed up here. Help her, definitely, but the rest? She doesn't know I love her, I never... I didn't manage to tell her. I tried, in those last few moments, but the words wouldn't come and I wasn't paying attention to anything else, and it was my downfall.
It's not the sort of thing she'd expect of me. For herself, either. We're... she's different than I am, in almost every way, but she is what I would be in her place. She doesn't trust, and she's had no one, no reason to try.
If she arrived here, and I told her that I loved her, she probably wouldn't believe me at all.
[ There is nothing that releases in her at this. The opposite, in fact; she turns and curls, knees pulling towards her chest as the wretched thing that made its home in her hears its name and wakes to stretch its claws and whisper expendable to her as it turns to its work of weaving the threads spun from her amorphous fear into something real and solid. β]
But you would love her still, unerringly. And with enough time she would trust it just enough to let you love her, and if she would have you you would go.
[ It's tight, unhappy. ]
And because she would be fearful and suspicious, so recently trusting, she would need the whole of your attention, and you would give it.
[ It is a picture of herself in part, although she can't connect it. He is new to her, she is afraid of trusting because no-one ever stays. It doesn't matter that this woman isn't here, because the thing that makes her truth is saying
See, already lost. ]
I would not blame you.
[ Looks like yours, but see? Remember? Not yours. ]
You're right, [ is what he starts with, after a moment to take that all in because he doesn't know what else to say at the first. ] I would love her unerringly. I don't think I can help it. I don't think I'd want to try.
And you're probably right. With time, she could come to believe me. [ He reaches his arm up to trace along the side of her face, from her temple down to her cheekbone. ] Though, Gods, I doubt she'd ever want the whole of my attention for very long, I drive her mad enough as is. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I don't know her as well as I imagine I do.
Maybe she would ask that of me. [ Loki's fingers spread across her cheek. ]
But I don't think I could give it. Not at the cost of casting you aside.
[ This isn't a matter of... hierarchies or rankings, in his mind. A love is a love is a love; he can't measure them that way, not so soon into having this feeling. He's not sure he'd like to develop that skill at all. ]
It is not a game where there is one or there is nothing.
Perhaps you wouldn't blame me. [ He moves forward, kisses her forehead, before whispering against her skin: ] You'd blame yourself, or decide that you weren't enough and turn away from me, and I wouldn't want either.
[ Her face crumples at the kiss on her forehead; at the words that come after, because she is doing that now. Because once when she was young a Duke's son swore for a year he loved her and then made her nothing, and now she is always looking for clues to see if that is true. And she can always find them. She sews her proof from patches: a word here, a moment there, until she has a quilt that can cover her. ]
You are right, I would. I am.
[ Alexandrie leans into his lips, hand coming up to curl around his where it rests on her cheek. ]
There are a hundred ways I fear to lose you, and I cannot stop myself from living out them all.
[ Hm. His stomach does something unpleasant at her admission; he takes no joy in being right, in this case. He wants to tell her not to, but he knows a similar flavor of self-loathing well enough that demanding it to stop is not the way of things.
One merely has to outlast it. ]
I'm still here. [ Just. So she can focus on that, maybe. ]
I... remember what you smell like. I look at the portrait you drew. I look around at all the unfamiliar things and flex my fingers. I conjure an image of you and I remind myself that I would fight for you.
[ She doesn't know why she can't feel it. Byerly says that tooβ I'm still hereβ as if it should make her stop being afraid. Yes, they are here, but here now is not a promise of here in the next moment, and the next moment is the one in which they might suddenly be gone.
It births a new thought: perhaps that isn't the case for everyone. Perhaps for some 'here now' does mean here in the next moment.
She sets it aside for a moment in favor of being reassured because he worries...
And then wonders why it is she feels the fear of loss is better proof of love than presence.
She turns her face into his hand to kiss his palm. Then, curious twice over now, ]
Do you think love is something that is as likely to disappear in the next moment as it is to persist?
[ He doesn't know what's caused her to ask that question but the sense of it, the shape of that query, of that fear, is too familiar. So he pulls his arm out from beneath his head and instead reaches for the hand of the arm she's laying on. This requires contact and closeness, or maybe he just wants those things for himself.
Maybe it doesn't matter which of those is true. ]
I try not to. I tell myself that there are few things that work that way. But it's there, a persistent idea, like the knowledge that I've ruined most everything I've ever cared for, so why would anything else be different?
[ The very fact that it prompts an oath, that it makes Loki shift to reach for her, tells her the new little thought was right: this is a broken thing.
It calms her to think she might be wrong.
Alexandrie inches herself closer until the space between their faces is just enough to allow for their new handhold between them. ]
His lips quirk up in one of his half-smiles. He likes it when they're close like this, even if the topic could be less fraught. ]
We're quite the matched pair.
[ When hasn't he ruined something out of fear? When hasn't he allowed his secret terrors to undermine just about any and everything good he's ever touched? ]
I would fight for you, [ he reminds her. ] Even against your fears. Even against my own.
[ She is soft again, now, having been gently disentangled from the beast of her terror by the simple truths she did not want to hear lending weight to those she does; by his hands on her, his reach for her, the new idea that perhaps I'm still here actually does mean something. ]
So shall I, for you.
[ Alexandrie lifts the hand that presses his to her cheek so she can reach for the side of his face to stroke it with light fingers. ]
I do not keep you for a placeholder, or love you only for the form and voice you share. Should my lord come back to me, he shall find himself obliged to make room.
[ A lean to touch their noses, then farther, fingertips tracing the line of his jaw as she presses her lips to his for a slow and lingering kiss. Murmured there after: ]
But I have greeted you poorly.
Shall I arrange you a bath? [ Her hand wanders from jaw down neck to spread fingers on Loki's chest. ] Or welcome you home properly?
[ The passing of the tumultuous wave in the ocean of her leaves room for her to remember in the lull that a week had been too long a time of having hands that were not on him, and she is not too sleepy to want. ]
[ He looks at her with some sort of startled awe when she tells him that he's not a placeholder, that her feelings are based in something, about something more than just his familiarity and the fact that he's a variant on a theme she already loves, a thought/fear/concern he's been careful not to express.
Because he was fine with it. It was enough. It was love, and he'd accept it, whatever it's terms.
Alexandrie kisses him, and he blinks before letting his eyes shut; Loki does kiss her back but he's clearly still processing what she's said and what it means to him for her to have said it, even after the kiss has ended and she's asking him a question. ]
Both, [ he answers, and then shakes his head a little. ] You haven't greeted me poorly.
[ Alexandrie is smiling, just beginning to pull away to slide out from between the sheets and into a dressing gown so she can see to heating water when she reaches a position where the light falls on him and she can see the whole of his expression, the way it looks like he does not seem to know how to hold that she loves him and she no longer wants to leave. Not even for the moment it would take to ring for Byron.
Without looking away she slowly settles down again, enough distance between them that she can watch his face, the hand that had half moved from his returning to the hold while her body keens with want of holding more.
[ Their fingers lace together as Loki opens his mouth to say something, draws breath, stops. He is tripping, falling over his own feelings for her, about her, and he has no idea where the bottom is.
But she does this, to him.
Maybe he should be used to it by now. ] No. [ As much a reply to that thought as it is a reply to her question.
He needs to pull himself together, here, and give her some kind of a proper answer. ] I thought... hm. [ He swallows, but doesn't break eye contact. ] That the familiarity helped, certainly, and that it didn't matter if that's what it was. All it was. Familiarity.
[ She has told him she's wished to know him, separate and individually from her husband and all their myriad similarities, and yet he's realizing he never fully internalized that concept until now. The idea that it could mean her husband returned and he was more than just a person Alexandrie shared history with?
He'd convinced himself that even if he did nothing wrong, that there was a possibility that was how it was going to shake out in the end. She'd get her husband back and he'd be extraneous, then. ]
Every time you offer me more than I expect and I... You say you've greeted me poorly and all I can think is that you've never done anything in the slightest poorly by my measure.
[ It's close but not an exact mark of what he's thinking and feeling in the moment. Mostly his brain is furiously trying to find the crack in what she's said, the place where he can resettle into his understanding of how he ends up alone anyway.
The misery of this thought process combined with the fact that they're close enough for him to still smell her perfume in the space between them go at war with one another in the line of his shoulders unhappily curling inward. ]
[ Pleasant words, for such a movementβ that she has done nothing poorlyβ but in them, and in the ones that came before...
The only reason Alexandrie can think of that would make it not matter if she only loved the echo of her missing lord in him, that any else she offers is more than he expects, is that what Loki has learned to expect is famine. That he has lived by picking the pockets of love and slipping moments of warmth into his sleeves as he passes it and rather than railing at the ache of its loneliness he has come instead to believe this is his due.
Never. β
Never, never, never againβ she will never let this thing be truth again. The force of the feeling is in her body, the swift sure way she moves higher on the pillows so she can hug his head and shoulders to her chest and curl around them to press her nose and lips into the salt spray smell of his hair.
Surely there are words for this; she doesn't know them yet beyond an urgent whisper of ] That is not all it is.
[ There's no hesitance as he's pulled towards her, settling his head against her chest and letting out a noisy, shaky breath. The hand not in hers settles somewhere in her lap, fingers splayed out against the fabric of her nightgown. He feels so unsettled, so upset by this that it all feels foolish. He feels foolish, annoying beyond that, and tired of it all besides, but taking breaths and reminding himself that they are both here in the now helps, a little.
Her tone helps to an even greater degree.
He wants to say I don't know what's wrong with me, but that is not entirely true. He knows himself to be a broken and complicated sort of thing. There's a feeling of regret that instead of being happy like any normal person here he is... doing whatever this is. Feeling sorry for himself, perhaps, or being afraid of the very thing he wanted. ]
I believe you, [ seems like an important distinction to make right now. ] But part of me doesn't understand why.
[ Not why he believes her, but why it would be true to begin with. ]
[ Asked softly, still, although without the urgency of her first words. Her free hand is in his hair, patiently working through wind-tangles as she strokes her fingers through the strands.
The shake in his breath had made her heart squeeze unhappily in her chest, had burned away everything but the desire to cover him as a blanket might: keeping what warmth there was safe from the cold that snatched at it, whatever that cold might be. She doesn't know the whole of it, but she knows some; knows his birth father had left him to die, knows the long shadow his adoptive brother had cast, the lengths he had gone to in order to emerge from it...
And she knows the sharp and incredulous way her lord had laughed at the idea of her loving him, his uneasy ungainly softness when she had persisted.
Even in the middle of her own terrified fluttering it had broken her heart then, too. ]
I could tell you, [ she speaks against his hair. ] I could tell you down to the way you still when you are thinking, the way your fingers spread as if you could hold what you speak of when it excites you; but it will only be so much breath if you cannot understand for yourself why what I love in you should be worth loving, and you must understand in order to be loved.
That part of him would like to be indulged, surely, but. What would be the end result? Disbelief, probably, or an assurance that he has no control over whether or not she finds these parts of him worthy of love.
He could just trust her, instead. Terrifying, truly, but that emotion has rarely stopped him before. ]
Must I? [ Loki asks instead. ] Can't I just accept it? [ A strange miracle but a miracle nonetheless, surely. For a god who never practiced them. For a man who feels undeserving. He shuts his eyes and leans into her touch, the rhythmic pattern of her fingers in his hair. ] I don't want to ruin this, [ he whispers. It means so much more than he can hope to craft pretty words about. ]
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An arm goes beneath his head, between his salt-spray-scented hair and the pillow. He lets go of her hand in order to trace a fingertip down her nose, from the point between her eyebrows all the way down to the very tip, and then comes to rest in the divot of skin above the bow of her upper lip. ]
I love you, [ Loki states quietly. That feels like something impossible, something both dangerous and delicate. It feels terrifying for it to be true, and even more, perhaps, that he believes it's been true for at least a little while now. ]
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The words.
She had heard them only at a distance, only from a stone and its glow, and even then it had made her heart flutter light and swift in her chest. Somewhere in Antiva, he had loved her. He had carried a heart that loved her home from the sea to put it in her hands.
She thinks of him walking off the ship and into the moonlit darkness of the city with his stride that eats the edges of the world and of being carried always with him where he goes, and it makes of her a thing so tender she is grateful he had said it first to her at night when things are gentler.
Her breath sighs against his hand in an oh of wonder, and then she traces the same path he had on her on him; a fingertip down his nose, over the tip of it. Changes, in that at the last it turns to the gentle pass of her thumb across his lower lip, and like itβs woven from fine threads she says ] I love you, [ too. ]
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I have not considered myself an easy thing to love [ communicates the same idea without seeming petulant or disbelieving of what she says. He's proud of himself for those words, actually. ] There have not been many who have been inclined to try, nor I to allow for it. So this feels... [ Terrifying, straight up. He shakes his head instead of giving a voice to that. ] Like a very strange sort of miracle I'm not sure I deserve.
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[ After all, what else could it be when a love she had only just begun to understand was gone from her came to her againβ old and newβ to hold her as she began to weep in earnest for the first?
Softly, moving her hand to settle light fingertips against his cheek. ]
Or perhaps we have not the slightest conception of what it is that we deserve.
[ She smooths a bit of hair behind his ear. ]
Either way, I thank you for allowing me to love you.
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[ He's wired to believe her, no matter how different from his lived experience the things she says are. She would know better the nature of miracles, Loki thinks; they were never his forte. He's not sure when believing her in all things happened, except it's been happening since the beginning, since he arrived here, since he met Alexandrie.
As she touches his face, his hair, he closes his eyes briefly and breathes her in as evenly as he can. In, count to three, out, count to three. Opens them again. ]
Seems like a simple thing, albeit terrifying also, to be still at times and listen; two things I have never excelled at. [ And yet, here they are. ]
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I do not think it simple. For all that we hear it sung of and lauded, for all that it is a thing all parts of ourselves so desperately yearn forβ¦
[ She shifts to settle into him, heedless of the salt-roughness of his shirt against her skin. Threads her arm around his waist, tucks her head beneath his chin and murmurs there against his throat. ]
It is not an easy thing to let oneself be loved.
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I told Sylvie that love is a dagger. She didn't like my metaphor, [ he says, and there's a hint of a laugh in that admission, ] but I don't think I was wrong.
[ It's different, he thinks, because he was prepared to love Sylvie without reciprocation. Does, perhaps.
Mm.
Does. She isn't here. Somewhere, she's continued on without him, as she should. There's a good chance she never will be in Thedas, and if she were to appear, he's not sure that would be better or worse for her. But Alexandrie is here, in this world he's trapped in for all intents and purposes, prepared to love him due to the nature of Thedas itself and the law of variables, perhaps. He's not sure which, if either. ]
It feels like such a risk. [ He exhales through his nose in a noise not unlike a laugh. ] I've had nightmares where your husband comes back for you. Amongst other things.
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I was frightened, then. These days I am happier to have such a blade in me. [ It is softly said, but the warmth is changed to something thin, fragile. Lonely. Her fingers curl into his shirt where they rest. ] βI bleed when it is gone.
[ She curls closer, too, like her fingers. Tense and still and quiet. ]
Should I have nightmares of her coming back for you?
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No, [ comes his answer, matched to her quietness. He shakes his head a little. ] I don't know what I would do if she showed up here. Help her, definitely, but the rest? She doesn't know I love her, I never... I didn't manage to tell her. I tried, in those last few moments, but the words wouldn't come and I wasn't paying attention to anything else, and it was my downfall.
It's not the sort of thing she'd expect of me. For herself, either. We're... she's different than I am, in almost every way, but she is what I would be in her place. She doesn't trust, and she's had no one, no reason to try.
If she arrived here, and I told her that I loved her, she probably wouldn't believe me at all.
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But you would love her still, unerringly. And with enough time she would trust it just enough to let you love her, and if she would have you you would go.
[ It's tight, unhappy. ]
And because she would be fearful and suspicious, so recently trusting, she would need the whole of your attention, and you would give it.
[ It is a picture of herself in part, although she can't connect it. He is new to her, she is afraid of trusting because no-one ever stays. It doesn't matter that this woman isn't here, because the thing that makes her truth is saying
See, already lost. ]
I would not blame you.
[ Looks like yours, but see? Remember? Not yours. ]
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And you're probably right. With time, she could come to believe me. [ He reaches his arm up to trace along the side of her face, from her temple down to her cheekbone. ] Though, Gods, I doubt she'd ever want the whole of my attention for very long, I drive her mad enough as is. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I don't know her as well as I imagine I do.
Maybe she would ask that of me. [ Loki's fingers spread across her cheek. ]
But I don't think I could give it. Not at the cost of casting you aside.
[ This isn't a matter of... hierarchies or rankings, in his mind. A love is a love is a love; he can't measure them that way, not so soon into having this feeling. He's not sure he'd like to develop that skill at all. ]
It is not a game where there is one or there is nothing.
Perhaps you wouldn't blame me. [ He moves forward, kisses her forehead, before whispering against her skin: ] You'd blame yourself, or decide that you weren't enough and turn away from me, and I wouldn't want either.
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You are right, I would. I am.
[ Alexandrie leans into his lips, hand coming up to curl around his where it rests on her cheek. ]
There are a hundred ways I fear to lose you, and I cannot stop myself from living out them all.
[ She shakes her head a little, whispersβ ]
What do you do, with your nightmares.
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One merely has to outlast it. ]
I'm still here. [ Just. So she can focus on that, maybe. ]
I... remember what you smell like. I look at the portrait you drew. I look around at all the unfamiliar things and flex my fingers. I conjure an image of you and I remind myself that I would fight for you.
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It births a new thought: perhaps that isn't the case for everyone. Perhaps for some 'here now' does mean here in the next moment.
She sets it aside for a moment in favor of being reassured because he worries...
And then wonders why it is she feels the fear of loss is better proof of love than presence.
She turns her face into his hand to kiss his palm. Then, curious twice over now, ]
Do you think love is something that is as likely to disappear in the next moment as it is to persist?
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[ He doesn't know what's caused her to ask that question but the sense of it, the shape of that query, of that fear, is too familiar. So he pulls his arm out from beneath his head and instead reaches for the hand of the arm she's laying on. This requires contact and closeness, or maybe he just wants those things for himself.
Maybe it doesn't matter which of those is true. ]
I try not to. I tell myself that there are few things that work that way. But it's there, a persistent idea, like the knowledge that I've ruined most everything I've ever cared for, so why would anything else be different?
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It calms her to think she might be wrong.
Alexandrie inches herself closer until the space between their faces is just enough to allow for their new handhold between them. ]
I ruin things too, when I am afraid.
[ A tiny smile, a kiss for his hand in hers. ]
I promise I shall speak to you instead.
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That doesn't, for the record, mean that it isn't.
His lips quirk up in one of his half-smiles. He likes it when they're close like this, even if the topic could be less fraught. ]
We're quite the matched pair.
[ When hasn't he ruined something out of fear? When hasn't he allowed his secret terrors to undermine just about any and everything good he's ever touched? ]
I would fight for you, [ he reminds her. ] Even against your fears. Even against my own.
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So shall I, for you.
[ Alexandrie lifts the hand that presses his to her cheek so she can reach for the side of his face to stroke it with light fingers. ]
I do not keep you for a placeholder, or love you only for the form and voice you share. Should my lord come back to me, he shall find himself obliged to make room.
[ A lean to touch their noses, then farther, fingertips tracing the line of his jaw as she presses her lips to his for a slow and lingering kiss. Murmured there after: ]
But I have greeted you poorly.
Shall I arrange you a bath? [ Her hand wanders from jaw down neck to spread fingers on Loki's chest. ] Or welcome you home properly?
[ The passing of the tumultuous wave in the ocean of her leaves room for her to remember in the lull that a week had been too long a time of having hands that were not on him, and she is not too sleepy to want. ]
Both?
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Because he was fine with it. It was enough. It was love, and he'd accept it, whatever it's terms.
Alexandrie kisses him, and he blinks before letting his eyes shut; Loki does kiss her back but he's clearly still processing what she's said and what it means to him for her to have said it, even after the kiss has ended and she's asking him a question. ]
Both, [ he answers, and then shakes his head a little. ] You haven't greeted me poorly.
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Without looking away she slowly settles down again, enough distance between them that she can watch his face, the hand that had half moved from his returning to the hold while her body keens with want of holding more.
She doesnβt yet. She wants to see. ]
No?
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But she does this, to him.
Maybe he should be used to it by now. ] No. [ As much a reply to that thought as it is a reply to her question.
He needs to pull himself together, here, and give her some kind of a proper answer. ] I thought... hm. [ He swallows, but doesn't break eye contact. ] That the familiarity helped, certainly, and that it didn't matter if that's what it was. All it was. Familiarity.
[ She has told him she's wished to know him, separate and individually from her husband and all their myriad similarities, and yet he's realizing he never fully internalized that concept until now. The idea that it could mean her husband returned and he was more than just a person Alexandrie shared history with?
He'd convinced himself that even if he did nothing wrong, that there was a possibility that was how it was going to shake out in the end. She'd get her husband back and he'd be extraneous, then. ]
Every time you offer me more than I expect and I... You say you've greeted me poorly and all I can think is that you've never done anything in the slightest poorly by my measure.
[ It's close but not an exact mark of what he's thinking and feeling in the moment. Mostly his brain is furiously trying to find the crack in what she's said, the place where he can resettle into his understanding of how he ends up alone anyway.
The misery of this thought process combined with the fact that they're close enough for him to still smell her perfume in the space between them go at war with one another in the line of his shoulders unhappily curling inward. ]
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The only reason Alexandrie can think of that would make it not matter if she only loved the echo of her missing lord in him, that any else she offers is more than he expects, is that what Loki has learned to expect is famine. That he has lived by picking the pockets of love and slipping moments of warmth into his sleeves as he passes it and rather than railing at the ache of its loneliness he has come instead to believe this is his due.
Never. β
Never, never, never againβ she will never let this thing be truth again. The force of the feeling is in her body, the swift sure way she moves higher on the pillows so she can hug his head and shoulders to her chest and curl around them to press her nose and lips into the salt spray smell of his hair.
Surely there are words for this; she doesn't know them yet beyond an urgent whisper of ] That is not all it is.
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Her tone helps to an even greater degree.
He wants to say I don't know what's wrong with me, but that is not entirely true. He knows himself to be a broken and complicated sort of thing. There's a feeling of regret that instead of being happy like any normal person here he is... doing whatever this is. Feeling sorry for himself, perhaps, or being afraid of the very thing he wanted. ]
I believe you, [ seems like an important distinction to make right now. ] But part of me doesn't understand why.
[ Not why he believes her, but why it would be true to begin with. ]
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[ Asked softly, still, although without the urgency of her first words. Her free hand is in his hair, patiently working through wind-tangles as she strokes her fingers through the strands.
The shake in his breath had made her heart squeeze unhappily in her chest, had burned away everything but the desire to cover him as a blanket might: keeping what warmth there was safe from the cold that snatched at it, whatever that cold might be. She doesn't know the whole of it, but she knows some; knows his birth father had left him to die, knows the long shadow his adoptive brother had cast, the lengths he had gone to in order to emerge from it...
And she knows the sharp and incredulous way her lord had laughed at the idea of her loving him, his uneasy ungainly softness when she had persisted.
Even in the middle of her own terrified fluttering it had broken her heart then, too. ]
I could tell you, [ she speaks against his hair. ] I could tell you down to the way you still when you are thinking, the way your fingers spread as if you could hold what you speak of when it excites you; but it will only be so much breath if you cannot understand for yourself why what I love in you should be worth loving, and you must understand in order to be loved.
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[ Does it?
That part of him would like to be indulged, surely, but. What would be the end result? Disbelief, probably, or an assurance that he has no control over whether or not she finds these parts of him worthy of love.
He could just trust her, instead. Terrifying, truly, but that emotion has rarely stopped him before. ]
Must I? [ Loki asks instead. ] Can't I just accept it? [ A strange miracle but a miracle nonetheless, surely. For a god who never practiced them. For a man who feels undeserving. He shuts his eyes and leans into her touch, the rhythmic pattern of her fingers in his hair. ] I don't want to ruin this, [ he whispers. It means so much more than he can hope to craft pretty words about. ]
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