^ [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

[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?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"That, too," says Susan earnestly, and with a bit of a searching look. "But also that - I trust you to tell me if something isn't to your liking. Or, I suppose, if what you want changes."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I see. That, should I want for something different or a different shape to our arrangement, I will tell thee. Yes?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes," she says, curling a hand around the back of his neck. "Good." Then she reaches out with her other arm to snag a berry and hold it up, an offering.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He smiles at her and leans in to take a bite -- carefully, though (it must be said) with a little less deliberate grace than Susan.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"If it truly is my birthday today," Susan says, watching him, warmed, "and it's not still half a year off, then I must say that so far it's a good one."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I am glad," warmly, once he swallows the strawberry. "That was my wish. And thou'rt radiant."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You always think I'm radiant."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"That's true," frankly.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I should like to find a way to truly leave you speechless."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I feel certain thou'rt capable of it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, I'm certain I am. I shall just have to consider precisely how to ensure it."