; [interlude/closed post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

After a few dances -- with several attendees, but mostly with Lancelot -- Susan liberates two bottles of wine and a plate of food from the ballroom and slips off to go find Janet. Luckily, after struggling to track Lancelot down earlier in the week, she's made a point of mapping the location of everyone's rooms, and so she doesn't have to search to find Janet's.

She raps on the door with the back her hand, careful not to let the food or the wine jostle overmuch. "Diplomatic envoy for Queen Janet of Fillory," she calls.

Comments

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet settles into this. There's some heat mounting in her, arousal climbing and a slow creep of additional urgency, but she's doing a better job than she usually does of keeping herself measured. She tucks her leg up between Susan's thigh and deepens their next kiss.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan moves her hand up Janet's back again, scratching whisper-light with the blunt tips of her nails, swallowing down the urge to roll Janet onto her back and really start diving in to her kiss. This is good, as is; she lets the goodness of it wash over her.

[sorrowandsorrow]

It is good, and different enough that it feels distinct -- like something Janet's sharing with Susan only, like something she hasn't really had with anyone else, at least not in a long time. It takes her a while to eventually let one lingering kiss fade away and to put the tiniest amount of distance between their mouths. That doesn't really help; Susan's mouth is slick and obviously well-kissed. Janet bites back a smile. "Well, shit," she says, "and it's not even the third date. I think."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Alas," says Susan. Janet is so warm in front of her, and she wants - she wants -

But since they've already waited longer to fall into bed together than essentially anyone Susan has ever been with, she almost thinks she'd rather their official third date come on a night when Janet didn't start out - well, sad.

Instead of voicing this, she tucks a little strand of hair behind Janet's ear, and strokes it back, running her thumb gently over Janet's temple. She'd felt such a queer rush of feeling with Lancelot while they were dancing, such a reluctance to pull back and leave him, and now that she's in this little bubble with Janet she's feeling it again. It's a little more fragile, now, more tender, but there's an undeniable similarity in the anticipatory tightness in her chest and the way she wants to just - melt, in a way, now into Janet's touch and earlier into Lancelot's. She smiles at Janet then, small, genuine, and faintly tremulous.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Hi," Janet says, very quiet. She has her hand in Susan's hair, still; she runs her fingers through it again with a carefulness that's not usual for her. "I already said thanks, or that's what I'd be saying right now." She was prepared to spend this whole night by herself, and to put on her big girl panties and deal with it, but not having to is so, so much better.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"There's no need for all that," says Susan, in that busy way she gets when she's having an emotion. She's had a wonderful evening, all told. For a night with absolutely no sex, she's feeling fundamentally satisfied in some queer, bone-deep way.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Right," Janet says, "of course not." She's only mostly not smiling. "In that case, fuck off." She does pull away from Susan slightly then, but only to sit up and start wrestling herself out of her jeans. As she does that, as casually as she can, she asks, "Want to make this a real sleepover?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Honestly, Susan had planned on it. "I could be convinced, Your Majesty."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Even more convincing? What was all that, then?" Janet kicks her jeans across the room, relieved to be down to just her underwear.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan's gaze flicks down; she loses track of what she'd intended to say. "Good point," she says. "I'm sold."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"I thought you'd say that." Janet touches Susan's arm, then her thigh, really just because she can. "Bed's big enough for two. You don't even need a sleeping bag."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Even better." Susan shifts at Janet's touch, tugging her hair.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Okay, come here." Janet throws back the covers and slides beneath them, stretching out invitingly, or as invitingly as she knows how. She'll have to get up and brush her teeth, probably, at some point. But not just yet.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

So Susan goes, slipping between the covers next to Janet, sliding a hand down to Janet's waist once she's ensconced. Something about the warmth here has her dropping some of her airs. "You know," she says. "You really are a stunning woman."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet laughs, but it's not quite the haughty don't I know it laugh she might've once been going for. She curls in closer to Susan. "It takes one to know one."