trevor harper. (![]() ![]() @ 2014-07-10 08:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, *ballrooms, thalassa, trevor harper |
WHO: Thalassa and Trevor
WHAT: A discussion.
WHERE: The ballroom
WHEN: Not long after the potions plot
WARNINGS: None.
Halfway to the ballroom, Trevor’s footsteps slowed as doubt and hesitation came flooding back to him. When that wisp came, the fresh memories burned bright as hell in his mind, and he knew he wouldn’t have said no to her no matter what, but now that he was actually moving, could really think about these things, he didn’t know if it was a good idea. After all, they’d been … they’d … in the dark of the tunnel, his entire world had focused in on her and her alone. In retrospect it had been terrifying that he could lose sight of everything like that.
But it hadn’t … shit.
This wasn’t good.
He edged his way into the large, open ballroom and skulked along the edges until he caught sight of Thalassa. She looked exactly as beautiful as she had before, and looking at her, it was easy to imagine her reaching for him in the darkness, kissing him, holding him at a distance as he begged for her to --
Trevor shook his head and tried to focus on the present. He cautiously approached her, as tense as ever but with a faint flush threatening to crawl up his neck. If he focused on that for more than ten seconds at a time, he was going to have to find some fucking privacy, and that was just ridiculous.
“ … hey.” It was the best he could manage, with no idea what else to say. What did you say to someone after that?
She waited patiently on the edge of the ballroom, watching the dancers twist around each other, their movements sensual and sinuous. Her hands clasped in front of her, her gown a flowing swath of blue silk, a small, wry smile quirked her lips. This, surely, was how humans felt without a partner when at a dance.
Not that she wasn’t getting invitations to dance. Several fae had come up to her, making sweeping bows and grandiose promises in return for a turn about the dance floor. She’d turned them all down, waiting patiently for the only man she had an interest in.
Her smile grew when she caught sight of his approach but fell just a bit when she saw the look on his face.
Perhaps she was being overeager.
“Hello, Trevor.” She wasn’t surprised that he was so hesitant, so reticent. Humans never knew how to relate to a lover after the fact. So she offered him her hand, palm up. A coral bracelet grew around her wrist, right out of her skin, though it wasn’t obvious at first glance. “Dance with me?”
It should have been a command, but it became a question.
She seemed unaffected. But that was probably par the course for fae. They probably did shit like this all the time, even if some of what he’d heard from the wisps had been negative, annoyed and enraged rather than amused or otherwise. Then again, as much as Trevor wanted to be furious about this, as pissed off as he’d been about the time when they’d all been forced into the wrong bodies, all he had to do was remember what had happened in the labyrinth and the anger tended to … fizzle.
After all, nobody had shot him, or even really hurt him, phantom wounds aside. All that weakness and he’d come out the other side … mostly unscathed.
He automatically glanced down at her hand but of course it was empty, why was he expecting a weapon, a threat? Old habits. He considered the idea of dancing - hah.
As if he danced. But he doubted that made a difference, here.
“I’m bad at it,” he warned her, carefully taking her hand, as if afraid something was going to happen when he did. “Don’t expect much.”
Still so wary, her human, forever treating her like a threat. Of course, she wasa threat and he had a healthy respect for such things, even if he consistently looked in the wrong place. Her hand wouldn’t hold a weapon, though she supposed it could if she wanted to grow spines like an anemone.
“The eyes,” she said abruptly, taking his hand and leading him onto the dance floor. She kept them to the edges where any stumbling wouldn’t interrupt the more skilled dancers in the center of the floor. “You always look at my hand, but you want to look at our eyes. That’s where you’ll see the threat.”
For a moment, she considered letting her glamour drop, at least around her eyes, so he could see what she meant. Then she decided she shouldn’t do that without a proper warning.
Drawing close to him, she set one of his hands on the small of her back. The other, she held loosely in her own hand. “Lead, and I’ll follow.” Her head tipped to the side, her hair falling away from her neck. “When we’re angry enough to attack, you’ll see it in our eyes. A brief flash of…” She struggled to find the right word. “Our glamour will drop. You’ll see what our eyes really look like.”
Trevor flat out did not know how to dance, but he glanced at the others as they crossed to a quieter corner of the room, and it didn’t look too difficult. He’d probably fuck it up anyway, but right now, trying anything with too much effort was going to be a problem. Besides, it didn’t seem like Thalassa would mind. He tried to lead, poorly, focusing more on her words than anything else, his hands careful but still very much right where she’d put them.
The eyes. He knew you could tell a threat from the look in someone’s eyes, but usually they were reaching for a weapon before that, and it wasn’t a guarantee, anyway. Years of habit were burned into him. Hands first, then the shape of their clothes, finally up to the face and eyes. To change that …
“Right,” he said, watching her face, eyes meeting hers very briefly. “Guess that … makes sense. Why are you telling me this?” It wasn’t an accusatory question, but it was wary; she was giving him warnings about her own kind, essentially how to protect himself. He couldn’t figure out a reason she might do that. Even the idea that she did it because she liked him didn’t occur to him for a while.
They were pressed fairly close together. If it had been darker … Trevor shut his eyes briefly, tried to back those memories into a corner to deal with later.
The stumbling steps didn’t bother her. She was used to worse dancers than he. It was the ones who thought they could dance when they truly couldn’t that were the problem. They stumbled about grandly, as if she should be elated to be in their arms, when all she wanted to do was rake her nails down their faces.
Or maybe he was that bad but her affection made it less important to her.
She smiled serenely at his question, subtly turning them and moving her bare toes away from his feet at the same time. “Because I like you,” she said honestly. She had no reason to dissemble about that, at least. “Because I’d rather not see you dead at the hands of one of the other fae.” Even if it couldn’t happen, he wasn’t guaranteed a way home. Except that he was. She shoved that thought as far away as she possibly could.
Shifting closer to him to avoid hitting another couple, she frowned. “Why does it surprise you that I want to help you?”
A warning was still a warning, even if she was being nice about it. Trevor felt his jaw tighten at the idea of getting killed offhand by one of these people.
“Because people don’t,” he said, trying to make sure he didn’t run himself - or her or both of them - into the other couples. He didn’t so much have two left feet as two concrete blocks in their place. “I work alone, mostly. When people are helping, it’s because I pay them. The rest of the time, they’re either trying to kill me or they don’t give a fuck what happens.”
It had never bothered him. He did what he could on his own, and made money, and went on living. Everybody else around him did the same. If he died, well, that was just a little more money up for grabs for the next guy who came along.
“Every man for himself.” Trevor consciously tried to avoid stepping on her toes as much as he could. “And suddenly you’re offering me help and promising shit and … I’m not used to it.”
Her brows drew together even though it wasn’t an unfamiliar concept. The fae didn’t often help each other. Causing trouble was far more amusing, especially between the two courts, and political backstabbing was far more engaging. They needed to pass the centuries doing something, and ruining each other’s lives tended to be the first choice on everyone’s list.
“It’s the only way we can deal with each other.” She inclined her head toward the ballroom and a pocket of fae twirling about each other with inhuman grace. “If I didn’t promise boons and give my word, no one here would trust me. As I behave with my kind, so I do with yours.”
The fingers on his shoulder began to move in idle circles. She remembered the feel of his skin beneath her hands, rough and scarred in places, and how it had felt to lick him, to taste him. A small shiver rippled down her spine, and she turned away, not wanting him to see lust in her eyes. Not now.
He’d run, and she didn’t want him to.
“I find you fascinating, and thus worth caring about. For. Whichever.” Her expression changed into one of annoyance, all self-directed. She wasn’t used to stumbling with her words.
Trust. A funny concept. He didn’t trust, never had, unless it was to trust someone could do their job, and even then he found himself disappointed more often than not. It was why he didn’t work with people very often, and kept his back to the wall, and only believed what he could see.
… which was making this place a pile of conflicting confusion, but whatever. Trevor twisted his mouth a little at the idea. His expression shifted, though, when her fingers moved on his shoulder, reminding him of how she’d held onto him before, while at the same time denying him any of that. How intense it had been. How much he’d --
No, for fuck’s sake. No. Not here, not now, there was time to deal with that later.
“I - what?” Fascinating was a bad word as far as he was concerned, but the way she said it, and the fact that she looked annoyed about it, threw him off. He stumbled a little but managed to keep from tripping. “That’s … I don’t hear that much. Anything like that.” More than true enough. He’d been called interesting once, and it had bothered him so much he never worked for that group again. “Uh … ” And he didn’t even know how to respond without being mind-blowingly awkward.
She looked back at him in time to see the flicker of want, and she wondered if she was disconcerting him. Since he was already upset enough, though by what she couldn’t possibly guess, she stilled her fingers and laid them flat on his shoulder.
When he stumbled, Thalassa moved with him, turning what was graceless and doomed into an elegant sweep. “Fascinating,” she repeated. “I could promise you the world, and you’d still back away from me. You’d still put up walls between us. Instead of ingratiating yourself to me, to do your best to run at every opportunity.”
Which made him desirable, not just fascinating, but he still didn’t need to know that.
“And yet you want to go home. The path of least resistance would be to tell me what I want to hear, to flatter me and give in to my desires. But you have the strength of character to refuse that. You are uncompromising.” A little smile turned up the corners of her lips. “As I said: fascinating.”
Her explanation should have helped matters. It didn’t. Well, not much. Trevor couldn’t take a compliment but he could appreciate being told when he was doing things right; having strength of character to resist, to be said he was uncompromising in a positive way … especially in a situation like this, it settled a few raised hackles.
But that didn’t stop her from finding him fascinating, apparently. The path of least resistance was usually what he took, but here, it required him to throw out his pride, to do things that he’d never forgive himself for. He didn’t pretend to like people. He couldn’t. Even knowing it was the fastest way out of here, he kept his walls up and refused to give these people what they wanted. Was it stupidity? Probably. And arrogance, and pride. It might damn him to stay here forever.
But he couldn’t bring himself to stop and try to play nice.
“I don’t deal with unfamiliar situations very well.” To put it lightly. And this was the least familiar thing he’d ever run into in his life. “I get defensive and it’s hard to stop.” Until the labyrinth, he’d been nothing but defensive. Problem was, it hadn’t come back fully yet. He was still on guard, yes, but there was a weakness in him, driven by the recollections of what he’d done, that he couldn’t get rid of. “First time anyone’s thought it was anything but a pain in the ass, though.”
Well, that was putting things lightly.
Thalassa’s lips twitched with humor, but she didn’t laugh at him, and she managed to smother any real smile for fear it might be read as mockery.
“You forget that I’m the ocean.” Her tone was light, almost playful, like the warm currents that swirled through tropical beaches on a lazy afternoon. “And that I’m fae. I’m used to being patient.” She stopped herself from saying more, doubting he’d enjoy being reminded how short a human lifespan was to her. Nor did she feel any pressing need to point out that the ocean happily hammered away at cliff faces for years and scoured great, ripping gouges in the earth to form rivers.
The fact that he wasn’t falling into her bed at that moment made him even more desirable. He’d had her, had the overwhelming pleasure of a fae lover, and he wasn’t tripping over himself for more. Her pride was a little bruised, but not so much that she couldn’t appreciate this new challenge.
“And I think you’re worth being patient for. Am I wrong?”
Trevor opened his mouth to respond but couldn’t find any words. He shut it, teeth clenched together hard, looking at the world past her shoulder in a sort of withdrawn, startled thoughtfulness.
It was a compliment. It was … more than that, honestly. She wanted him - he knew that, had known it from the moment she approached him when he arrived - and still did, even though she’d had him, and he’d had her, in that dark tunnel. Her desire hadn’t faded, and here she was, telling him she’d wait for him again, that he was worth it. For someone with cripplingly low self-esteem, it was both a balm and an affront.
In short: he had no idea what to do about it. Par the course for him, really.
“I don’t … ” Trevor slowed, stopped, unable to keep up the attempt at grace he’d been failing. He didn’t look at her, but his hands stayed where they were, one loosely holding to her own, the other resting against her back. “ … you might be. I don’t know what you’d wait for. In this.” Even if it had been incredible, she’d be disappointed now that they were free from the potions, now that his body was back under the burdened, cumbersome control of his own brain.
She slowed with him until they stood beside the tables, on the very opposite side of the dancefloor from where the bedrooms were. It was, she thought, the place she would have chosen to reply to him.
Here, there could be invitation without pressure or presumption. Those doors were still an almost ever-present shadow over the whole of the ballroom, but there was a turbulent swirl of dancers between the two of them and the many rooms. More than a deterrent to fly across the ballroom and drag him to bed. Not that she was about to do that.
“In you.” She put a subtle emphasis on the second word, not liking that he devalued himself so readily. “Perhaps you’re recalcitrant, difficult, stubborn, and prideful. But between the two of us?” she leaned a bit closer, her smile impish. “I can be, too.” She returned his space to him, drawing back to a proper distance.
“I’d wait for you, Trevor, with the hope that you’d come to me without the potions, so we can simply enjoy each other.” Her fingers flexed against his shoulder, not quite a squeeze or a caress, but wanting to be both.
There was a moment of an empty smile, pulling at the corner of his mouth, when Thalassa made her point about him. As far as he and most of the world was concerned, he was a pile of useful skills in a potentially worthwhile body; that was about where his value began and ended. People occasionally admitting otherwise was something he took at face value and nothing else. Even if it was her saying it.
Knowing what he’d learned of the fae so far, there was still a part of him that suspected this was just a little diversion for her: that as soon as he gave in, she’d lose interest. Even if she still gave him a way back, he’d have given in, and the dismissal, the knowledge of it all, would burn him until he died.
“You’d be disappointed.” Probably best not to try and elaborate on why; talking about past failures always got him angry, and incredibly embarrassing when it came to his sex life. “What happened there was … different, I guess. Don’t know how, but I’m … not … ” Great. Now he’d gotten himself into a sentence with no end. The flush from before came back in full force, making its way up his neck, into his face, and he couldn’t hide it this close to her. “Look, you’d be waiting for something with no result.”
Expression shuttered, she drew her hand away from his and removed the one on his shoulder. The icy chill of the arctic oceans swirled through her veins, twined around the blue-black currents of the deeps, leaving her cold and frustrated.
“I don’t like being told how I’d feel.” Her voice was rough, waves crashing against rocks. That she couldn’t hide. Nor could she hide the water collecting around the hem of her dress, frothing white. “What happened there happened, and if you don’t want to sleep with me again, I won’t press you.” She was persistent, but she wasn’t vulgar.
Drawing away from him, she clasped her hands together, linking her fingers in an effort to keep still. The surf of her dress thrashed around her feet anyway. “But tell me again what’s so important to you there that you’d want to abandon the endless possibilities of what’s here.”
Automatic defensiveness came leaping up to the fore as she pulled away, as the wall came up between them - he could practically see it as he watched her dress shift and thrash - but Trevor was, if nothing else, very good at knowing when to keep his mouth shut. The words no that’s not it were firmly caught behind grit teeth, swallowed back into the pit of his stomach as he watched her face. What a surprise: he’d royally fucked something up again.
The tension crept into his shoulders, into his face, but he just let his arms fall at his sides. If he drove her away here, he was losing the only chance at getting out without dying or having to suck up to someone else. He was probably going to manage that no matter what he said.
Especially because he was starting to wonder at the answer he had to that question of hers.
“ … it’s my life,” he said, eyes fixed on the floor again, the sounds in the ballroom starting to crowd in on his ears. “I managed to fix a shitty situation and make it into something halfway worthwhile. With nobody’s help. I’m … ” Useful? But that was admitting things he’d always kept secret. Trevor tried to find a better word. “ … shit I do, people can depend on it. On me. It’s all I’ve got. Even if I don’t know how long I’ll even … have it.” How long I’ll even live.
What would there be for him here? Other than … Thalassa, who was a very convincing point all by herself. How useful could he be in a place where magic gave you everything?
She shifted, suddenly restless but unwilling to pace. It was too human a thing, pacing, and the only way for her to alleviate this kind of restlessness was not to be human at all. She needed space where she could surge against rock walls and rage against stone and sand. Had she really expected an easy victory? Had she really expected him to fall willingly into her bed? Foolish.
Of course she was restless, almost furious in the depths of herself, a roiling storm of water. Miscalculation with Trevor could mean she’d never have him, and that--
And that was petty and juvenile. She was acting petty and juvenile, a minnow trying to keep pace with a whale. Because he’d said no. Again. For the first time in her considerably long life, the rejection didn’t excite her. It hurt. Contrary to what the mortals thought, the fae did feel. Just... differently.
Smoothing her hands down the front of her dress, she willed the hemline into a quiet pool. When she lifted her eyes to his, there was only a base appreciation for him in her eyes. “I can understand why you’d want that.” Humans always wanted the things they’d built with their own hands, the sweat and the toil of their labor. “It has so much more intrinsic value.”
He hadn’t expected her to say something like that. As if she really understood. It caught him unexpectedly, put a moment of unguarded surprise in his eyes that made the tension in him vanish, took some of that weathered wariness off his face. Did she understand, he wondered? Or was she just saying the words that she thought might pull him off his pride?
If she was doing that, she would be touching him, he realized. Trying to lure him in closer, trying to make him remember the darkness, their hands, his desperate need to do whatever she wanted so long as she stayed close to him. Instead the wall between them was still standing, enough distance there to allow him to step away without her catching him.
“It … yeah.” He couldn’t add to it, could only agree. She was right. “I don’t have anything else.” He paused, words fighting to find a way out when normally they waited, quiet and patient, for their turn. Until I got here. Until things started escaping out from under the doors in his psyche. Until she’d turned to him and said things he’d never heard, put a strange fear in him he didn’t know how to deal with. “Other than you, there’s … this place … I - ”
Other than you. It had gotten out without him even realizing it. Trevor kept trying to find the right words without catching even one.
“Other than me?”
He valued her. On some level, he valued her enough to consider her something to have. Or maybe she’d simply pushed herself so far into his life he had to admit she was there. She wasn’t sure she cared either way. No, she definitely didn’t.
Other than you. Three words and her entire mood shifted again. Vaguely, she thought she must be the world’s most exhausting person.
“I want you,” she said simply. Directness tended to be the best with him, after all. “I want you, and you apparently want me. There’s nothing wrong with wanting.” Even if his human moores said there was. “There’s nothing wrong with taking what you want.” She wondered if it was pride that kept him refusing her, or if it was something like shame.
“Why not enjoy ourselves in the time we have? At the end of the feast, you’ll go home, and all you’ll have of me is a warm memory. Is that so terrible?” She wondered, too, if he understood what she just promised him, if he’d realize that her promise came with no strings attached. She’d send him home, if that’s what he wanted, regardless of whether he wanted her. And it turned her insides cold and desolate, like the ocean trenches.
Trevor looked up, looked at her, surprised, startled, on-guard again as her mood turned from distant and maybe a little angry to something soothing, direct, friendly and … well, direct again. I want you. It wasn’t as if he’d never heard those words before, but never like this. Never like someone meant it, really meant it, wasn’t just saying it to get him in the mood.
“Will I go home?” he said, wary, because no, he hadn’t understood the promise in those words, was still doubting that he was ever going to get the opportunity. He focused on that to the exclusion of what else she’d said, the words that had the redness still making its way up his neck and onto his face. “Everything I’ve heard says it’s impossible, or almost impossible.”
He still wasn’t willing to give in and play nice to one of the fae for a chance to escape. He wouldn’t throw out his pride, wouldn’t do what he was told and submit even if it meant spending the rest of his life fighting for a chance at freedom. It never occurred to him that Thalassa might not expect that of him. The realization would hit him eventually, but right then and there, flustered and confused and unsure, he automatically assumed the worst.
Her mouth opened, and for the first time in centuries, nothing came out.
She was at war with herself, with the beautiful coral reefs that wanted to tell him she’d give him her boon and with the dark depths that wanted to keep him locked in fairy forever. It would be easy to lie to him, to lead him in a merry, teasing dance until everything that might hold his favor in the mortal realms was dead and gone. But then he’d hate her, and she’d be little better than Etain.
Thalassa didn’t do forever, and she didn’t deliberately set out to hurt people. Often.
“You’ll go home, if that’s what you want,” she said softly, meeting his eyes just long enough that he could see the truth there. “You have my word.” The words scalded her tongue. Her word was her life, a brand on the very fabric of her being. Once given, she couldn’t take it back. “At the end of the feast, my boon is yours.”
He didn’t know the full weight of what she’d just said. He probably never would. But he did understand what he’d just heard, and when he did, Trevor went very still, someone trying to hide in plain sight as he came to terms with the words she’d spoken. She could be lying, he thought, promising with no intent to carry through - he’d known enough people like that. But the look in her eyes wasn’t deceptive. It was honest, absolute: she meant it.
He had a way home now. A way home. The realization drained the color from his face, left it blanched and surprised. He looked years younger for it.
“ … you mean it?” But she did, he could tell she did. She hadn’t even made him promise anything. He didn’t need to keep digging through back halls, fighting with the garden, arguing with people who wanted to stay or who he didn’t get along with. He just had to bear with this place until the feast was over. It was a tremendous burden lifted from his shoulders, and it was visible as the tension eased its way from him. “I … ”
There was no proper way to thank her, he knew that much. Words meant nothing in the face of it. As he fought to find the right thing to say, a traitorous little thought in the back of his mind suddenly popped up with: and what if you don’t want to go?
She forestalled any further attempts at speech with a hand. “I mean it, and you don’t need to say anything in response. My boon is yours, and I will swear it before the Queen if that sets your mind at ease. If you want it to go home, it will be done. If…”
Dare she present him with alternatives? She couldn’t think of any that could possibly compare to building one’s own life from nothing. The universe and all its mysteries couldn’t measure up to the human ability to create.
“Well.” She gave him a smile. “If you want anything else, as long as it’s in my power, I’ll grant it for you.” And she’d even adhere to the spirit of his wish instead of the letter. Humans were always getting into trouble with that, wishing they were rich but not stipulating the means to the end.
With a slight shake of her head, she glanced around the ballroom. “The feast is halfway over. I should let you go. Enjoy what you can while you can. Your trip home is guaranteed.”
If there was nothing to say, then he wouldn’t say anything. Trevor watched Thalassa, a little lost. He’d expected this to be impossible. That he’d have to almost get himself killed finding a back door out that didn’t exist, then have to swallow his pride and give in and play nice to one of the fae until they decided he was worth their time. Instead here she was, telling him even before the night had come that she would give him his way home, offering to swear on it.
If you want anything else …
He blinked away the thoughts that slithered unbidden into his head and nodded, blindsided but, for once, not in a bad way. Enjoy what you can, she said. There was still nothing he wanted to enjoy. This place was still just as bad as it had been, even if he could bear with it now, but all those traitorous thoughts were making their way through now, hinting, tempting, dragging at him. Trevor ran a hand down his face to try and clear his thoughts.
“ … thanks.” It was all he could manage, hoarse and whispered, as he looked at her one more time with something like gratitude and still a careful measure of wariness. He didn’t know what it really meant to get a boon. Would this make him a target of someone else? He’d have to keep it under wraps.
With a very brief moment of a smile, another attempt at a thank-you, he moved away from Thalassa, heading out of the ballroom to find somewhere to think about everything that had just happened.