[Closed Post] ..lines we're leaving behind..

[lanselos_du_lac]

He doesn't really mean to, but Lancelot keeps to his rooms for a time in the wake of the latest mansion upheaval. He doesn't disappear for days, and he mostly keeps his routines -- he does spend a little more time riding -- but he is subdued and not idly floating about for socializing.

It could have been worse. He knows this. He knows, too, that no one did this on purpose; he's grateful for Susan and Nightingale's understanding. But none of that makes it easier to regain his emotional balance. Much like that day (which felt very long), he is still grappling occasionally with that sensation of being... just outside of himself, a step removed, dizzy and longing to be even further away.

Still, he does not want to punish Susan and he knows they should talk. So this morning after he puts up Rivelin, he goes to find Susan, wherever she might be.

Comments

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Thou hast. I've also seen muskets shot, here."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I believe it came from one much more powerful than a musket, by how it felt."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Another little nod, "A wound like that-- I can imagine."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It - pulled." Susan is quiet for a moment, and then shivers. Fiercely, she says, "I'm glad it's over."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot kisses her shoulder, "As am I."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan falls quiet then, focusing more strongly on Lancelot's presence. She's genuinely unsure of whether she has more to say. She wishes they might've done this sooner - having Lancelot so close really is tremendously soothing - but there really is no point to making a fuss about it. Obviously Lancelot needed to take time in his own way.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He stays there, holding her, breathing in the scent of her -- realizing that, while he understands (mostly) why he withdrew, it might have been better for them both if he had challenged himself to find her sooner. She soothes him, calms him, and he's (still, somehow) faintly surprised to find she isn't angry with him, but understanding.

This has been true for some while, but he keeps finding that the habits he has formed out of long experience with Guinever don't serve him very well when it comes to Susan. (Perhaps, when it comes to anyone.) The way that Susan cares for him, takes care of him, seeks to understand him -- it is nothing he ever expected.

Lancelot lets his hand stroke gently over the fabric of her dress, keeping her tucked closely against him, content for now to just keep her here, with him, quiet and near.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

After a little while, Susan catches Lancelot's hand with her own and brings it up so that she might brush a kiss against his knuckles. She's breathing more steadily at this point, relaxed against him.

[lanselos_du_lac]

In answer, he kisses the nape of her neck.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

There's a minute, involuntary shiver at the feeling, and then Susan is turning in his arms, shuffling and shifting until her front is lined up flush against his. Her hair, half-pulled from its braid, tangles across her face, she twists her head so she can blow it out of the way with an impatient puff of breath without hitting his face in the process, too. "Lancelot," she says, quietly; her expression is soft, fragile, and full of that quiet, deep emotion she still can't bring herself to name.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Very softly he says, "Aye, love?"

He gives her a warm, searching look, a little hazy, but calmer and more present than he has been in some while.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She shakes her head - she'd thought to ask him if he might make love to her, but the words aren't coming. Instead, she presses her forehead against his for a long, long moment, and then kisses him, a clinging, careful thing.

[lanselos_du_lac]

His answering kiss is sweet, deep, with a kind of soft surety behind it. He strokes her hair back from her face, holding the kiss, and lets his other hand stroke down her back.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan wants - so much. She's always been a fairly independent woman, comfortable left to her own devices even when she'd rather be surrounded by people who - frankly - adore her or want her or wish she'd pay attention to them. She has, historically, chafed whenever someone has expected her to dedicate more time and energy on them than she's willing to give. For years, this was because her family came first, even when they were fighting bitterly about the existence of Narnia.

(And even before that: Lucy had always been focused on Aslan and faith and steadfast valor; Peter, on Narnia and victory and expansion; Edmund, on justice and diplomacy their neighbors; and so Susan was left to care about her siblings and, to a lesser extent, the people directly under their care. Her siblings had never asked for it, but that was because they had never needed to; they were always her responsibility, her calling, her primary concern. But she cared for them. She didn't - couldn't - need looking-after of her own.)

And so Susan is used to hitting her limit with people. When they ask too much of her, or when they infringe on the hard-won feeling of independence she's wrested from her own dedication to her family and brought with her to her time with friends and lovers. She doesn't doubt that there might be a time when she hits that limit with Lancelot - even if just for a little while, like she would with Miriam or Ingrid.

But she hasn't hit that limit with Lancelot yet. She doesn't even feel like she's approaching it. She wants more from him, more and more and more. Not just to have him here with her until they're ready for that lunch she'd prepared for them. Not even to have him here with her for the rest of the day and through the night - she wants longer, and can't even begin to say how long. And she wants things beyond his simple proximity. His body, obviously; that's been a low-grade constant since she met him. But his attention, too; his care and his time and - yes - his love. She needn't tie him to the bed and keep him there - though that might be fun, at some point; she shall have to find some rope or scarves for such a purpose eventually - she likes that he has his own life here. But, crucially, she likes that she's part of it.

She cups his cheek with a warm, trembling hand, and then runs it back along his jaw until her fingers are curved around behind his head, and lets his touch guide her closer to him, and pours all her unspeakable, undefinable feelings into the kiss.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot sighs into the kiss, relaxing warmly into it, holding her gently but with a solid, steady presence. It's unusual, he thinks, to feel Susan tremble -- he likes her strength, her independence, the way she carries herself. It's that sharpness that first led him to trust her, though he's not sure he could explain quite why. As his feelings for her have grown, that has stayed at their center; she has said that he is solid, and he knows that to be true, but so is Susan.

In these moments where she seems vulnerable, or as if she is allowing herself to be vulnerable, he feels his own certainty growing, his desire for that ebb and flow between them to strengthen. (A partnership, he realizes, with some faint kind of surprise.) There doesn't seem to be an end to how his care, need, desire, affection for her might grow.

He lets his other hand caress her jaw, her cheek; he holds the kiss.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Perhaps Susan is being silly? Perhaps there is a name for this emotion. An obvious name, a simple name, an easy name to pluck from the ether and hang on the way that she feels about Lancelot. There's a chance, however slim, that she might be overthinking everything.

But to name it is a different sort of commitment. She wants to be absolutely sure when she says it for the first time. It's nothing she's said before, in this sort of context, and Lancelot deserves her surety.

"I want you," she tells him, the words muffled against his mouth, because that much is easy. It's always true - which, in and of itself, is a marvel. Oh, Susan Pevensie likes sex; that's been well-established for years. Her drive for it is remarkably high. But Miriam notwithstanding, she'd always sort of expected she'd get tired of being with the same person over and over again. That it would lose its novelty and, subsequently, her interest. And yet the more time she spends with Lancelot - the more she sleeps with him - the more she wants to continue doing so.

Perhaps most revelatory, though, is her conviction that even if he's not in the mood, she shall want to spend the day with him. And the night, and the next as well.

She turns the word over in her mind, carefully.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"And I want thee," breathless and low. Another kiss, another careful caress. "I'd have anything that was thy wish."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Make--" Susan licks her lips, and kisses him again, close and intent and aching. "Make love to me?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Aye," softly, "I'd like to."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

So Susan lifts his hand from her face and places it deliberately at her waist, over one of the closures of her dress.

~~

After, and feeling significantly more like herself, she looks at him, long and and silent and settled.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot, too, feels more settled, more solid. He lets out a long breath, stroking her arm lightly, and smiles at her.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She kisses the corner of his mouth, and smiles back.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Softly, "I missed thee."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I was right here." It's matter-of-fact and neutral; she's not trying to lecture or punish him in any way.

[lanselos_du_lac]

The smiles softens, "I know."