where she walks, no flowers bloom. he's the one i see right through. Who: Redwald Vannes & Elvira Treveil. What: A birthday visit. Where: Elvira's residence, Commoners District. When: Backdated to Nov 12. Rating: PG-13. Status: Complete.
At half past two, there were three staccato raps on the door to Sir Elvira Treveil's apartment. Magpie did not make very many trips to the woman's apartment—could not, really, it was frowned upon—but no one would question a visit from Lord Redwald Vannes, as tall and knife-sharp as ever, radiating palpable amounts of arrogance. Lord Vannes could visit the home of one of his brother's friends without question. It was her birthday, after all.
He glanced down at the box in his arms, hurriedly adjusted his collar, and knocked once more.
“Coming!” A woman’s voice sang from behind the door. Seconds later, Elvira swung the door to greet the unexpected guest with her usual smile. Upon seeing his face, she stamped down any trace of irritation that might be heard in her tone as though someone else could hear them in the empty hallway.
“Lord Vannes. What a pleasant surprise. I didn’t realize Tristan’s brother would—well.” She turned on her heels, leaving the entrance swaying open behind her. Her curls bounced on her shoulders as she strode back into her apartment.
“What,” Hummingbird asked with with a pointedness that Elvira Treveil would not dare use, “are you doing here?”
“It's your birthday,” he said smoothly, stepping in and shutting the door behind him. Observant eyes took in every detail of the room, assessing and cataloguing it for later. It was well-decorated—for a commoner, at least. (He immediately cringed at the thought, but elitism was a difficult thing to shed.) An overstuffed throw pillow caught his eye: the apartment had all the makings of a warm and welcoming home, with its lush furnishings and light colors, but something prevented it from feeling cozy.
Redwald brushed the thought aside.
“And I brought you a present.” He held up in the box in question: small, pink, tied with a white ribbon. “But you're not allowed to open it 'til I leave.”
“Not allowed.” Elvira’s arms crossed as she turned to face her visitor. “I hope this isn’t anything”—inappropriate was the word—“ridiculous.”
Redwald’s mouth curled into a half-smirk. “You have such little faith in me, Ms. Treveil. It’s so…” There was a pause as he mulled over the appropriate word. “Disheartening.”
“Is that so?” There draped a veil of bitterness over her words, cloaking her trademark sweetness. Her tone was that of a schoolteacher interrogating miscreant students with questions to which she already knew the answer. The woman’s arms unfolded, falling to her sides as she dropped into an irritated silence.
Her heels clicked against polished hardwood floors until she came to a stop steps in front of him. Here they strode the delicate line, lives and backstories overlapped, knitting into a plausible story. Elvira moved her hands to her hips, elbows angled slightly to point behind her—not unlike wings. (If he was the korporal, she would have fiddled with his collar to watch the man squirm as though he had spiders crawling under his skin.)
“I can’t say it is within my purview to mind whether or not you are disheartened.” Her eyes remained on his, not deigning to look upon his present.
The orator openly drank in the sight of her, his smirk stretching into a lazy smile. Redwald’s eyes were drawn to a single golden curl, perfectly coiled; his fingers itched. He swallowed back the impulse.
“It’s nothing ridiculous, I promise.” And then, with a sarcastic little salute: “Inquisitor’s honor. Now, do I have permission to make myself at home or are you going to chase me out? And remember, I did come all this way just to wish you a happy birthday.”
Elvira rolled her eyes, fixating on ceiling when he referenced their shared job.
“If you think you want to stay,” she retorted, forcing artificial sweetness back into her voice, “then make yourself at home.” Her once-taut spine loosened. She gestures at empty chairs, as though she was a gracious host inviting in a welcome guest and not a spider playing tug of war with a fly in her web.
“You are too kind,” he replied, just barely dipping his head to give her a mocking bow. The present was neatly placed on the coffee table as he took a seat. (Red grimaced slightly; the chairs may have looked plush and comfortable, but they were surprisingly stiff.)
Drumming his fingers on his thigh, he looked up and fixed his gaze on her, his eyes bright with amusement. “I know you must be disappointed I’m not here offering birthday sex, Ms. Treveil, but you’re a strong woman. You’ll soldier on.”
“Why, thank you, Lord Vannes, for sparing me of—” She bent over to straighten a glass candy dish beside the present, her hair sweeping over one shoulder, fingers tensing as they reached past the box. “—that with you.”
Elvira turned to the window, taking a deep breath before affording her guest attention again. Though other inquisitors knew of her (and their) need to juggle masks, only Magpie knew how to reach underneath porcelain, to peel off her face, to reveal raw flesh.
Or flaming cheeks.
Red considered the color rising in her cheeks a victory, and his rakish smile widened. “No, going to bed together—or at least to that lovely couch you have there—is completely out of the question. Frowned upon for reasons that escape me.” He tilted his head slightly, narrowed his eyes. Now it was time to get to the point.
He opened his palm, revealing a single gil. Then he closed his hand into a fist, fluttering the gold coin across his knuckles; it vanished around his thumb. “One kiss, on the other hand, would be acceptable, I think.”
The orator held the coin up between his fingers. “Heads, we kiss. Tails, I leave. What say you?”
“Aren’t you a bit too old for party games?”
He shrugged. “No. But a two person game of spin the bottle could be fun.”
Elvira pursed her lips. In her youth, kissing games were never allowed at her parties. It was for business that she had begin to use sex as a last-resort bargaining tool; growing out of adolescence, never did it bother her. But this, now, Magpie’s casual mention of the physical intimacy, however serious he wasn’t, had her reeling for other options.
“If I play this game with you,” she began, attempting to bargain, “we can forget about that favor.”
The woman’s words hung in the air for the moment as Red frowned, considering. He enjoyed having Elvira indebted to him; giving that up for a fifty percent shot at a kiss would be foolish. Very foolish. But his eyes swept over her face of their own accord, taking in her eyelashes, her cheekbones, her throat. She would be so irritated if she had to kiss him.
He smiled again. “Very well.” One flick of his thumb sent the coin flying; he snatched it from the air during its descent. “And now for the moment of truth…”
Redwald opened his palm. The golden profile of King Weyland was facing up.
“Heads it is,” he announced, and the orator couldn’t have looked more pleased with himself.
The knight on the other hand looked onto the coin with a slight frown, clicking her tongue once with disapproval. A moment to pull herself together, to asses her options. “Heads it is,” she chirped back at him. Heads, we kiss.
She brushed her hands on her skirt, pretending to straighten wrinkles. “Well, there’s your game. You flipped the coin. I think your business here is done?”
Redwald’s mask was the one slipping now—he stiffened in his chair, legitimate annoyance and surprise flickering across his face before he could school his expression into something more neutral. “What,” he began, his voice crisp, “are you talking about, Elvira? We had a deal.”
“You’re done with your coin trick, Redwald,” the woman clarified in Hummingbird’s light and breathy voice, mirroring his stiffness. “I don’t quite recall saying yes to the kiss, if that is what you mean by our ‘deal’.”
“How clever of you,” he snapped, undignified and petulant. Magpie could pretend to be a gracious loser, but Lord Vannes could not. He rose to his feet, fighting to swallow back most of his irritation. The corners of his mouth twitched into a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes. At least he had the pleasure of towering over her. “Very well. My business here is done, as you say.”
Red was back at the door in a few quick strides. When he turned to face her again, his annoyance was replaced by his usual carefree arrogance. “A pleasure as always, Ms. Treveil.” He bowed deeply, mockingly, but the smile on his face was now genuine.
“Happy birthday.”
Elvira followed in his shadow to escort him out of her home. One hand on the knob, she bit her bottom lip and returned his smile.
“I’ll see you at work,” she whispered curtly, before clicking the door shut behind him.