^ [open post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan doesn't believe in the mansion spirits, but she is being followed by something in a way that makes little sense.

It begins when she wakes up. Opening the drawer to the sideboard in her room to retrieve tea, she finds another gold chess piece wrapped neatly in ribbon. Lancelot didn't put it there - it hadn't been there when she made her pre-sleep cuppa the night before, and she woke up when he did and sleepily saw him off to his training; he hadn't gone near the drawer. She shuts the chess piece firmly away, makes her tea, and dresses blearily for her own archery practice.

There's a new bow in the closet, too. To her pleasure, it's a heavier one that requires a stronger pull - she's quite got used to the draw of the ones the closet first supplied to her.

After her shooting routine, she finds a lipstick in the precise shade Ingrid used to wear on the bathroom vanity. When she's showered and dressed for the rest of her day, she finds her favorite pastry - a sort of breakfast roll she used to get from the shop by the tube station she'd walk past on her way to work, back in London - on a platter in the kitchen.

It's when she opens one of the closets in the hall off the library to return a pile of laundered wash-cloths that she receives both some clarity and a deepening of the mystery: a jumble of assembled balloons tumbles out, made of some queer material and filled with a gas that keeps them afloat. The writing on them reads: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSAN PEVENSIE.

She stares at them, perplexed.


Susan's birthday post! Three days (by our reckoning) and eight months (by her reckoning) early! Feel free to have your puppets run into her in any reasonable location at any point during the day; she's just going to be accumulating more Stuff she can't get rid of as the day goes on.

Comments

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Yes, that's true." He pulls out a strawberry, holding it up with a silly flourish. "Hence our outing today."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"And when we started out, we agreed to see how things might evolve, with little expectation but to be honest with each other." She pauses then, both to collect her thoughts and to await her strawberry.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot hesitates, his expression not dimming too much, but definitely a touch wary. He works past that, though, and brings the strawberry to Susan's lips. "Aye, I recall that agreement."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan, who of course notices the flicker of Lancelot's expression, bites delicately into the strawberry, letting its tart-sweet juice spread over her tongue and licking a droplet away from the corner of her mouth. Her second bite finishes the berry, and she lets her lips drag against the pads of Lancelot's fingers with it.

Then she says, with a carefully-constructed blitheness, "I think we've done quite well on that front, don't you? Before I met you, I couldn't fathom wanting to live with anyone else, and now I can't imagine ever again wanting to live apart - I credit that, at least in part, to our arrangement; I'm so pleased you thought to ask whether we ought to keep on. I find--" she tilts her chin up, watching his expression "--When we started, I knew only that I liked you and wanted to see what might happen between us. I believe I might've been stumbling, at least a little." Possibly a lot. "You know how I'd not been in anything defined as a relationship before." If the phrasing on this last is unclear, it's because she's still not entirely certain how to characterize what Miriam was to her, back in London. "And now I find what we've got has surpassed my every expectation and then some. I'm so pleased you've got Laertes and Grantaire, and I've got Janet and my little flings, and most of all I'm pleased we've got each other."

She isn't being terribly successful at getting to the point, is she? She clears her throat and says, "I suppose what I'm trying to ask is, what would you like our future to hold?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

His first thought is to tell her that he is happy as they are. If she is happy, that's his only concern. But that would not be entirely true -- he wants himself to be happy, as well. More importantly, he wants them to be happy with one another.

Everything Susan has said is positive. There's no reason to placate or worry he might have the wrong response. He brushes the corner of her mouth, lightly, and strokes her hair, looking down at her and taking in the loveliness of her face, the warmth in her eyes even when she herself might be a little nervous about raising the question. She is telling him that he can choose -- that they can choose together.

"I think," he says, quietly and slowly, the caution now more of the sort that he wants to get his words just right. He pauses. "I have been terribly happy with thee. I would like for us to continue to come to know one another, and watch one another grow as we learn more of each other and ourselves. I suppose that isn't very... definitive, is it?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No," says Susan. "But I expect it needn't be. I just--" She gazes up at him, and a thoughtful quiet descends as she takes in his expression and considers her own phrasing. "When we started out, I must admit that I wasn't certain how I might fare in a relationship. I'd never sought one before. You'll recall it took several months for me to even name it as such. I knew I shouldn't want to hurt you at all, but I also wasn't certain how long I might want to pursue things. But now..."

She catches his hand in her own and gives it a squeeze. "I haven't got those concerns any more. This place is ever so unpredictable, don't you think? It's hard to imagine what the future might hold. My sense of how I might like my life to unfold is so much less clear than it was in London. But I do know one thing: Whenever I envision what I should like my life to be like, a year from now, or five, or ten, I know that I want you to be part of it."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot smiles, lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses her knuckles. "Sweet, thou'rt so important to me, and I love thee so well. I promise that I ever shall be."

It's his turn to pause thoughtfully. Then, with only a little hesitation, he says, "Forgive me but-- I do not think this to be a test, but is there something else thou wast expecting to hear?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No," says Susan, also thoughtful. "No, I wouldn't say I was expecting any sort of answer in particular. Beyond, of course," with a soft smile that could easily also be described as sappy or affectionate or overwhelmingly pleased, "some sort of reference to your love. Why?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot smiles softly at that look of hers. "I know," quietly, "that I was upset and unsettled after the day we were children. I had hoped I did not alarm thee, or make thee worry that I was unsatisfied."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

At this, Susan sits up, rearranging herself so that her legs, rather than her head, are draped over Lancelot's lap. Then she takes his both of his hands in hers. The purpose of the shift is twofold: it takes a little time, and it allows her to meet his eyes more directly. "You mean when you spoke of the sort of future you set aside when you took up with Guinever." A pause; she runs her thumbs over his knuckles. "I didn't worry you were unsatisfied. I trust you to tell me if something isn't to your liking. I wouldn't necessarily say I was alarmed, either. ...Surprised, perhaps."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Ha chuckles, looking down, "As was I."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Surprised to find I felt so strongly," he admits.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"About the absence of choice you experienced?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Yes," he rubs her fingers gently, as if to soothe himself.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She leans in to kiss his cheek. "In retrospect, I do believe it makes a great deal of sense that you'd feel strongly about such things, particularly if you've been just made to confront certain elements of the feelings," she says.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He smiles at her, then leans in to kiss her properly.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She wraps her arms around him, shifting more squarely onto his lap as she returns the kiss.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He tugs her close, the fingers of one hand trailing through her hair, and deepens the kiss, leisurely.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

It's always so shockingly easy to let herself get lost in Lancelot's mouth. Susan can vaguely remember their first kisses; how she spent so much of the time debating just how much to show off, how much control to take. She almost never thinks about such things with him anymore. Instead she lets him distract her from herself, gives in to the urge to just feel, and touch, and taste. This is no different. There's more she intends to say, but she lets it fall away as his hand slips through her hair.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot is happy to let the kiss go on. He is happy with Susan, happy that she has enjoyed the outing -- happy that he can make her happy. So his fingers move gently through her hair, and he lets her decide what is enough.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Nothing is ever enough, of course. Susan has her lengthy to-do lists and the jobs she's assigned herself, but she's never once minded when when her day gets waylaid by Lancelot, and honestly sometimes she seeks him out, seduction on her mind, because she likes the feeling of putting aside her self-appointed duties for a diverting afternoon with the man she loves. She likes to lose herself in him, to get carried away. Oh, she's got her sense of propriety, and they are in the middle of the outdoors, but - he did set up that tent. It would be so intoxicatingly easy to let herself get carried away right now, before they've eaten more than a single strawberry.

When she does eventually pull back, it's for a breath, and before she can catch it she breathlessly laughs. "I've got lipstick all over your face," she says, wiping away a smudge at the edge of his mouth with her thumb. "It's quite --" she kisses him again, briefly, firmly, joyously "--the look."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"It cannot be that bad," laughing. "It's happened before."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No, but it's particularly striking in this light," she says, wiping another smudge away. With it she gives him a searching look. "I mean it, you know."

[lanselos_du_lac]

His eyebrows go up, "Mean what? That thou wishest to keep me at thy side, ever and always?"