Background Challenge: Quirk Who: Aria and her husband. What: Dance Party (Part I) and Joke Telling (Part II) When: Over one hundred years ago. Warnings: None. Prompt: Quirk
Part I “What are you doing?”
His voice was heavy with amusement, and when she whirled around to face him she was taken aback, as she always was, by the effortless grace of her husband’s body as it leaned against the doorway. Husband… the word was so new and shiny that even the thought of it caused a giddiness to rise in her chest and bubble out of her like champagne fizz. “I’m going to put a bell on you,” she pouted, her initial surprise fading as she fondly beheld him, tracing her eyes over the face, the body, the smile that were now so familiar to her. “How is it that one so large moves so quietly?”
“I think you were just distracted,” he replied, his laugh warm and genuine, a sound she wished to bottle and keep forever. So many years of misery and horror, and yet this man, this spirit, this creature that was rightfully worshipped as a God, brought a smile to her lips so easily by simply being… it was like having cool water after a drought.
“Just how long were you watching me?”
“Long enough,” he admitted, and pushed from the doorway to cross the room to her, enveloping his small bride in his arms and stooping to press a kiss against her lips. She leaned easily into the caress, her arms raising to embrace his shoulders and play along the golden hair that curled at the nape of his neck. “Do you always do that?”
A pretty flush rose in her cheeks and she nodded, sinking her teeth into the corner of her bottom lip. It was true… it was just another thing she had only started up again since being with him.
“A beautiful lady should never have to do that alone,” he said, his suggestive tone causing the hairs on her arms to stand erect.
“Oh? But I do it so well.” She was being coy, and he knew it.
“What if I asked to join you?”
She tilted her head back to look into his unguarded gaze, his eyes as ever-changing as the colors of the sky- stormy gray one moment and crystalline blue the next. She gently touched the side of his face and wondered at the way he leaned into her caress. “You could try to keep up,” she teased, and with a playful growl he swept her from her feet and kissed her again, longer and more deeply this time. When they parted, he rested his forehead against hers and swept some of her golden hair back from her face with both hands. “Do we need music?”
“Oh no. Part of the fun is making it up as you go,” she told him, and like that she began to lead him in a dizzying, spinning dance through the living room. They leapt, they wiggled, they shimmied. They made up dance moves that left the other in stitches. They waltzed until whirlwinds circled their feet. It was a long time later that they finally collapsed in a breathless, giggling heap against the fireplace. Nuzzling his face against her neck, he sighed his contentment.
“You never have to dance alone again, Aria,” he told her softly. She nodded and did not explain herself when tears pooled in her eyes despite her brilliant smile, blinking them quickly away before he could see. Moments later she was laughing again, though, when he playfully added, “I could get used to these impromptu dance parties.”
"Consider yourself formally invited to the next one, then."
Part II The Vanir rested his chin in his palm, his eyes half-lidded and his mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Let me try one more time!” his wife pleaded, wiping tears of mirth from her lashes with her fingertips. The tiny sylph was all but gasping for air around her hysterical giggling, a stark contrast to the flat silence of her husband.
“Aria, this is the fifth time,” he told her calmly, unable to hide some amusement at the woman’s lack of composure. “I think it’s just time to give up.”
“Never!” she cried, and gulped down her laughter long enough to compose herself once again, though there were visible cracks in her straight face. “Ok. Ok. Here we go.” She drew a deep breath, released it, and in her most serious voice asked her husband, “What do you call a Selkie with a tooth ache?”
He sighed heavily, defeated. “What.”
She opened her mouth to respond. “A… A…” And she sputtered into another peal of giggling while the tall viking leaned back in his chair and ran his palms over his face. He wordlessly rose from the table and crossed around it, kissing the top of Aria’s head where it was planted face down against her crossed arms. Her shoulders shook with soundless, gasping merriment. “You are, by far, the worst joke teller on the planet,” he informed her fondly.