multiversallogs | one of those bells that now and then rings [closed]

Entry tags:

one of those bells that now and then rings [closed]

Who: Ivan and Ilde
What: romantic evening in
Where: Ivan's flat
When: Givdi evening
Notes: No one but them thinks this is remotely a good idea.
Warnings: TBA as necessary

It wasn't surprising, that Ilde was tense. Mothers-to-be, especially for the first time, often were with much less reason. But, while their eventually future was still something that was a bit murky (and that caused Daniil to sigh in despair whenever it was alluded to), Ivan felt he could help with the stress eating at her here and now.

He hadn't said much except to arrange her clearing her evening and letting her know what time to come to his flat. He'd bought the dinner; he could cook, but was out of the habit. He'd also bought some fae wine for her, and gone to the trouble of a tasteful flower arrangement and candles. It was, he thought, a bit of a cliche but he hoped she would like it all the same. He was, of course, impeccable, but that might or might not have been for the occasion - any earlier feeding showed only in his flush of health, not in any rogue spots on his collar. He'd set it all out on the floor, with cushions for them, and it had a bit of a bohemian air to keep it from being taken too extremely seriously.

Overall, he thought as he surveyed his work, it would do. And she needed an evening off.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“Did you ever meet Isobel?” Not as much of a non sequitur as it initially appears - she remembers when Katherine had briefly mistaken her, remembers meeting Isobel herself in person. How strangely surreal it had been; how Isobel had tried and failed to compel her, and how very polite she'd been about it afterwards. “It's a bit strange, isn't it, that phenomena.”

Like people can't even be sure that their faces are their own, here; she supposes fair enough, given that hers isn't, really. Not any more.

"No, I don't believe I did." Which is probably for the best. "It's bizarre, though. At first I wondered if it was me using a pseudonym, but I think she'd have commented on the change of species." And she'd have noticed. He'd liked Alice quickly, in part because she was so evidently sharp and so unconcerned with whether she made the other person uncomfortable.

“You're sort of hard to mistake for anything else but what you are,” she observes, considering him for a moment- mistaking him at a distance, that's one thing, but it probably wouldn't take long up close to figure out that he's not human so much as human-shaped.

"If one knows what they're looking for. At home, humans don't expect anything but a human. I somehow doubt, though, she'd make the mistake." Even at home, she was probably too sharp to explain it away as something she must be imagining. "But yes. I don't bother trying to hide it here, and there I usually didn't have to."

“You'd have trouble if you did,” she predicts, speculative as she tries to imagine how Ivan might try to disguise himself. There's no ready mental image; it's hard to imagine him selling any impression other than monstrous, even if it isn't immediately clear to an ignorant onlooker exactly what kind. “You, sir, are no gentleman.”

He laughs. "What would you do with a gentleman if you had one?"

“I took Boromir to Anarchy 99,” she offers, after a moment's consideration. Boromir was inarguably a gentleman. He was probably the template on which other gentleman and/or ducklings were based. Beautiful blue birds probably combed his facial hair every morning.

Edited 2012-10-05 08:03 (UTC)

"And how did he like it?" he asks, undeterred. It sometimes strikes him how few of her other friends and acquaintances he knows. He wonders if she perceives that as her choice or his, now and then.

He's not sure which he'd say, if asked, he thought it was.

“He didn't,” with a laugh, “but I thought it was funny. Incongruous.” She'd told him to not be a baby and drink the beer, and he'd- tolerated the fact she'd taken him to listen to dwarven industrial metal played live. Boromir was an inarguably good person who'd probably not be Ivan's biggest fan, if they'd ever met when he was alive; to be fair, very few of her friends approve of her relationship, but Sonja hasn't objected, which is the only really, really important opinion.

Which is most of why she's not gone out of her way to introduce him to people. Minimizing the opportunity for people to threaten to kill him or argue with her about what a terrible idea it is- or, in the case of Jae, because vampires make him uncomfortable and she doesn't want him to be. Of course, it's never really occurred to her that Ivan would be interested in knowing many of them in the first place.

He laughs, quietly, stroking her hair. "You have a wicked sense of humour. It's one of my favorite things about you." She can probably guess some of the others.

In truth, he feels that even before the pregnancy, they've lived their lives more in each other's orbit than properly together. Partly it came from how they'd begun, partly from how he'd been burned by Daisy. He hardly thinks she'd bless him for interfering in how she spends her free time - or with whom - but it's made it easy for them to drift, too.

He's told her he's bad at casual, but he'd forgotten just how much he doesn't know how to maintain it.

Compartmentalizing her life is a habit, and in some ways, necessary; she's not going to invite Jae and Deacon on the same outings, that would be insane. But Ivan is- different, Ivan is supposed to be hers, he is supposed to be a part of her life and all of the boxes she keeps it in, even if she doesn't keep him in all of them. She tries, now and then, to more thoroughly integrate - it's just that she's never known exactly how, and her efforts have had mixed success.

This feels successful, though, this evening, and she's thinking again about their living situation, even if she isn't sure about how or when or if to bring it up. If she should, when Gomez Addams is not exactly one of his role models, but- well, she's all right with that, she's just not sure how to reconcile everything. It's complicated- less complicated is how certain she is sometimes that he does, in fact, care about her. Want her, want her to be here, enough to make an effort.

“Tell me some of the others,” she says, after a moment, because she can.

He laughs, relaxed. "Well, not your humility, clearly." But he complies anyhow. "You're observant and clever and you aren't afraid of getting your hands dirty. You, for the most part, have impeccable taste. And," with a kiss to the top of her head, "you're very lovely."

All things considered, she has nothing to complain about in that litany of her virtues, and yet-

“What do you mean, 'for the most part'?”

(It's definitely not her humility that attracts anyone.)

He shakes his head, with another quiet laugh. "Not to do myself discredit, of course, but you could do better than me if aesthetics were your only defining factor." She could also date someone less likely to accidentally kill her, but that's a minor detail.

“Well, that's true, I could think of people.” Best girlfriend. “But I happen to like the way you look, you know, among other salient features. Although, that might be narcissism,” as she shifts a little so she can better examine him, giving it all due consideration. “Because if you squint we look a little bit like we could be related.”

And yet that's still not the most troubling aspect of their relationship.

"We'll hope no one is squinting," he says, amused. "I am glad you find me attractive, regardless of my faults, it's very generous of you."

Now he's just teasing her.

“I have to say, Ivan, that of the many things you are to me, 'charity fuck' is not one of them,” she says, earnestly, shining guileless sincerity from every pore. If she wasn't slightly perverse in her displays of affection, he'd no longer know what to do with himself, probably. “Probably,” with studied nonchalance, “because of how I love you.”

She could probably have come up with a less romantic way of pipping him at the post with the l word, but she'd have had to put real thought into it.

He's surprised, but not as much as he could have been. It feels like a turning point in the truest sense - from here, they should fish or cut bait, and it seems like she's long ago made her choice.

So he says, "I love you too," as if they've been saying it to one another for years, as if it's the only natural response. It's why he took her dog, when she was gone. It's why he's willing to try this, even with her pregnant. Acting a bit mad is preferable to losing her. And that, on some level, is that.

It might not be the smart choice and it's certainly not the convenient choice, but it is Ilde's choice and she's not going to let go of it in a hurry. She realized a little while ago that they've been together more than a year, not counting the time she spent in New York convinced that she'd never see him again - she remembers smothering how much she'd hated the idea he wouldn't ever know that she loved him. Convincing herself that if she were with him again, then she'd tell him immediately, because he should know, and then she...hadn't, because studied nonchalance is the most natural way she can manage those words that do not, in fact, come anywhere near as naturally to her as they seem to do for him. It's never going to be something she drops casually into conversation on a day to day basis, but it's there, now, and however unwisely true.

There's something very satisfying to her about his lack of hesitation.

“Well, good, because you give excellent head and I don't have any intention of sharing-” Ilde.

He laughs and kisses her lightly. "I'm glad to hear I've given no cause for complaint." At least in that particular area. "You don't have to share me."

“Good, because I wouldn't, I'd make you castrate yourself, it'd be terrible and messy and not even a little bit fun-” and that's an alarmingly earnest bit of feelingsbabble, but for all her quietness she is not a creature that loves gently or wisely. She lacks the knack for it, replaced instead by private wish that she could stitch her name into the inside of someone else's skin.

A moment later, momentum shuddering into slowness, she says, “I suppose a year isn't very long to you.” Relative life expectancy isn't the point (hers is centuries, easily), but relative age- that hers is centuries is still something unreal, an abstract idea she has yet to fully inhabit. She's twenty-two (sometimes going on seventeen) and a year is a landmark, still. They don't really have an anniversary, but if they did, it was two months past.

He looks at her, a bit more thoughtful. "It isn't," he says, finally, "but that doesn't mean it's unimportant." It had been a very eventful year, after all. "A day becomes something disposable, when you have so many, but that doesn't mean there aren't days that matter to me. That I don't remember, in particular."

Longer than he'd have expected he could, sometimes.

“Days like which?” And she might like to hear something about herself, because that's natural and because she likes reaching out for reassurance and getting it, but she'd be equally interested in unrelated anecdotes; he has so much history and she is curious, even if she's rarely inclined to poke at him with questions. Most of the time she waits for things to unfold, but sometimes...they just don't, and he isn't someone given to volunteering his background information.

She has no idea where he's from, although given he's named Ivan and he has a friend named Daniil and he does speak very good Russian, she could make a slightly educated guess. She doesn't know if Ivan is actually his given name or one he assumed. She doesn't know if he chose what he is or if it were thrust upon him. She doesn't know a great many things, but she doesn't think that's...bad, per se, just that not knowing and not disliking it doesn't mean not being at all curious.

He shifts, almost reclining against the pillows and settling her against him. He seems to be sifting through, selecting what he'd like to show her.

"The first time you came to my flat, how frank and bold you were about what you wanted. I remember that night extremely well." It had been funny, and almost touching in hindsight, how it was meant to just be that he appealed to her and that she'd like to shag him if he were up for it.

"I remember the day I died," he adds, after a quiet moment. "...both days, I suppose. Vividly. Firsts, often, and lasts. Those tend to linger, if they matter." And even sometimes when they don't, in the wider scheme, at least to him. He remembers Saigon falling. He remembers being in Paris for the end of the First World War. He remembers the night he met Daisy, though that seems impolitic to say.

She wonders if he thinks of his last day before Baedal as the day that he died again or the last day that he was married to Daisy; Ivan's wife is still a vague and abstract concept to her, and the further away they get from her, the less she's inclined to be worried or threatened by it. He's allowed (how generous of her) to have cared about other people before he knew she existed, that's all right. As long as she's most important now, and she questions that less and less.

(Not 'not at all', but- less.)

If she were older, she supposes, she might recount something of her own in return, but- she'd been a child before Prometheus, and the passage of time in captivity was blurry and painful. He knows, at least in the broad strokes, about most of the days since Prometheus, especially since increasingly he's been around for more of them than he hasn't. So instead, she says, “I was very pleased with myself.”

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject