OPEN POST; [ HERLOCK SHOLMES / TGAA ]

[retroductions]

(( hold you in my dreams ))

Comments

[velluminous]

[ soft skin. his. ]

Are you saying to me that you are lonely here? In your house of papers and baubles?

[ and no daughter. no partner of any kind. ]

[retroductions]

[No partner. No daughter. No family from across the sea. No wife.

Well.

One of those, now.]

Lonely?

[Is he that? He only ever believed his boredom to stem from a lack of direction, simulation, an outlet. His mind, an engine running itself into the ground if it can’t e rush forward.

But even talking to her, it feels… less so. Is it the opium’s doing?]

You know me as I am in the future, with someone to share my space with. What do you think?

[velluminous]

You are happier. With... more life within these walls.

[ shouldn't a place like this feel bursting with it? as chaotic as it is? yet it all seems so devoid of the true pleasure of it all.

life... ]

Hand me my pipe, lyubimy.

[retroductions]

[Happier? She seems so sure of it. The pink of Sholmes' cheeks deepens; to imagine a life like that, he truly is jealous of his older self. But to have a facet of it here, speaking with him now, lends to a strange self-awareness that transcends even the fog of the opium.

For a little bit, anyway.

Reaches for her pipe, his own hanging from his mouth lazily, and offers it just as clumsily to her. His other hand is still holding onto her wrist. She's... warm. Several degrees higher than what he would have expected. Is that normal for a devil woman?]

Lyubimy... [.......belated realization:] You speak Russian?

[velluminous]

Rashemi. [ her hand feels heavy and slow as she reaches for the pipe, and when her fingers touch his, she stays that way for a few seconds longer than she needs to. ] This... "Russian"... everyone else says this is what it is called, but for me, it is Rashemi.

[retroductions]

[And that extra small point of contact is just as noticeable as his fingers wrapped around her wrist.]

Rashemi.

[Idle curiosity. His thoughts becoming more stream of consciousness than much else, like someone pulling out long strands of taffy.]

Say something? In Rashemi.

[velluminous]

Hhm. [ a deep pull on her pipe, set languid between her lips. she holds the smoke then lets it all out in a long, slow sigh—angled gently towards Sholmes' face. ] Mne nravitsya eta muzyka.

[retroductions]

[Oh, he inhales that, happily, and exhales with a laugh.]

Fascinating…! The language sounds the precisely the same…

[His turn for another pull, and each word is articulately just-so to blow his own smoke right back.]

It’s Beethoven. A very famous composer in this world.

[velluminous]

[ she isn't sure she likes the common refrain of "your language sounds just like this other one you've never heard of", but she cannot begin to verbalize way. her brow simply knits for a moment, while she takes in his exhaled smoke with sensuous deliberation. ]

You have said before this name to me. [ the weight in her elbow, now having settled in with the languid high, may begin to feel as though it is pulling him in, towards her, by his nape. she still seems not to note it. ] ...It does not sound exactly exact, hm?

[retroductions]

[He sits up straighter, though this takes a great effort when each limb feels heavy, but it is all for the sake of putting on a performative enunciation of a Russian accent-]

Perhaps not exactly the same, but certainly close enough to make the accents indistinguishable from each other!

[Oh, he sways a little… in the direction she tilts him in. Sholmes doesn’t even think about it: he scoots closer so he can lean properly against the bottom of the chaise.]

[velluminous]

You are teasing me.

[ that moment, just now, is the closest to her husband he has come yet. not the first time he has mimicked her. well, chronologically perhaps it is. time gets so finicky like this.

eyelids low, she exhales her next lungful of smoke across his mouth, bare inches from her own. meant to tease, too. ]

You need to speak more slanting.

[retroductions]

[He tilts his head back just enough to get comfortable, and that’s precisely when she blows smoke at him, and Sholmes’ mouth falls open to reply and take it in, but…

She’s suddenly quite close, isn’t she?

Needless to say, the teasing works. He is pulled in two directions at once: the drug dictating that this closeness be consummated with further closeness and touch, and the young, baffled part of him that doesn’t really know what to do.

Heat rising properly to his face. His hand squeezing. His other… bringing his pipe to his lips.]

…Ah. Slanting.

[help]

[velluminous]

Slanting.

[ soft and matter-of-fact. the faraway awareness that he has tightened his fingers around her wrist and the lacking of any desire for him to stop. appearing once more is that pinch in her brow.

he doesn't know what she means by slanting. she can't explain it, either. it's the knowing of the mother tongue. she would have made an awful professor.

ahh. but he's blushing sincerely now. this close, the delineation between her iris and her sclera visible—if one knows to look. she roves his face, falls to his lips as he raises the pipe. then... the pretty line of his jaw up to where her fingers bury behind his ear.

she needs another toke.

slow with clumsiness, she pulls her hand from his hair, and in so doing, from his hold on her wrist, as well. bringing her lips to the pipe more so than her pipe to her lips, she snaps the fingers of her free hand beneath the bowl and conjures... a flame. ]

[retroductions]

[Slanting. He will have to listen more carefully to her speak to differentiate it — and that should be easy to do, he thinks, because his focus is so thoroughly bound around her presence right now that it should come naturally.

For instance, Sholmes is always observing. The faint difference between iris and scalera, he sees it. The fine lines in her lips. How each strand of hair falls to brush against her shoulders.

He frowns when she pulls away, feeling like he’s been deprived. Drops his hand to the edge of the chaise, instead, opening his mouth to protest in sound more than words, but then a small flame appears in his periphery. Summoned by a snap of her fingers.

Eyes widen. !!]

How…?

[hfdghff reaches for it]

[velluminous]

[ she has turned halfway onto her back, to hold the pipe and the flame more easily. in her periphery, his reaching hand.

slides her gaze towards him, but doesn't put out the light or stop his reaching. he's a grown man. if he touches fire, he shouldn't be surprised of its heat. ]

Abracadabra.

[retroductions]

This magic of yours?

[The flame flickers against fingertips as he brushes them through it, but the heat is expected and none too painful for a man who puts out candles with forefinger and thumb when he’s feeling impatient.

He doesn’t linger, anyway. Instead, with great effort and clamping down on his pipe with his teeth, he… straightens again. Gets in his knees. Turns, very wobbly, and leans forward with his elbows… against the edge of the chaise. Or her body, depending on how close she is.]

Show me how.

[velluminous]

[ close. draped—slumped—as she is upon the chaise, though the nudging of his elbows has her shuffling in place to make room.

the centre of attention. Sprezzatura lives to be the centre of attention. now those abyssal eyes flick up to his, and she smiles thinly as the flame goes out. ]

Like this.

[ she does it again: snapping her fingers together, the friction of which seems to spark as a matchstick might on the strike paper. she breathes something out in nearly a hum, the incantation necessary slurred by the drug. nevertheless, she is well versed in this. a bead of flame again at her fingertips. ]

I merely... pluck at your world's Weave. You do not realize it, but its threads are everywhere, unseen. [ inhale... hold... exhale. pushing out her lower lip to direct the smoke in gentle, sensual billows around his face. a whisper: ] It is so easy.

[retroductions]

[If he inhales more, at this rate, he might practically melt into the floor. And yet… he does, taking in her smoke, and the scent of her that isn’t related to the drug itself. It wafts around him, compels him to lift his pipe in an ask for her to heat it, too.]

Easy… and yet unknown to me. So much unknown to me.

[A land called Toril. A future with wife. Magic inherent in the air.]

Can’t you teach me? …dear girl.

[velluminous]

[ she really... loves it when he calls her that. some stirring in her, low down in her belly, but high up in her heart, too. ]

Once, I tried. [ one of the very first things he had wanted then, too. in that prison... ] Hahh! You really are so like him, even half again so young.

[ what a bolstering feeling that is. her tail, up until now lying very limp over her hip and thus the edge of the chaise lounge, sways once. back, forth. Sprezzatura holds the flame beneath his pipe.

she wants... something. more than the slow, suffusing warmth the opium imparts.

something...

ah. she knows. the tiniest raising of her brows, here, and a muscle twitching her lips at each corner. barely notable at all. ]

This... is good.

[ the opium. ]

[retroductions]

[What’s it like to know that you make the same decisions and express the same curiosities now as you will in the future? Well, maybe it’s comforting, to know that he will always seek knowledge — a bit like her own ambitions, or so it would seem.

Her tail. It… sways. His eyes drift to the movement, like prey drawn to the s-curves if a cobra. She heats his pipe and he nearly forgets about it.]

Hmm? …Ah.

[Puts more of his weight onto his elbows, exhaling. His lips do twitch into a smile when he realizes what she’s talking about, and his cheeks are still flushed despite the segue into magic.]

Mm, the opium? It certainly overcomes, doesn’t it?

[Nerves, worries, the will to move one’s limbs.]

Do you feel… better now?

[velluminous]

Da. It overcomes me...

[ another gentle sway. every limb is full of warmth and heaviness, it's true; she can yet lift her head, but only in moments, and her tail does not want to lift even when she wills it to. her heartbeat now slow, yet her lungs tingling.

she curves towards her side again, facing him, craning her face closer to his—lips nearly touching his cheek on her passage to his ear.

breathes into it, ] Do you feel better?

[retroductions]

[There’s something about that movement that passes by—so close and pausing at his ear—that stills him. Sholmes tries to focus on not overheating his pipe, to not let it linger for so long beneath her magical flame, yet once more does she make the gears in his mind grind to a halt. And he knows not what to attribute it to other than her breath fanning against him, knowing that he’s never been so salaciously close to a woman like this before. Realizing that a future version of himself has been, though, and likely even closer. Has felt those lips. Has, if he considers it rationally, felt even more as husband and wife.

Oh.

Ultimately, that’s really what does it.

He is a very bright shade of red, indeed, suddenly. And just as suddenly takes a long, long pull of his pipe, then exhales so quickly that he surely could not have enjoyed it. But this titillating realization has somehow surmounted even his blanketing high.]

I feel…

[Warm. Very warm.]

I don’t know if I should say.

[velluminous]

You don't?

[ the damp heat of Sprezzatura's breath curling around his ear and down the cut of his collar. but she feels his, too; his drag on the opium pipe suddenly deep and his exhale hard.

he has thought of something. several things, if she knows him as well as she should. she sneaks an eager look beneath her lashes—they tickle his cheek—at pale skin turning... the most rewarding candy-pink.

please say. ]

Mmh. I am thinking I might know.

[ a sigh, one which wreathes them in the last of her smoke. she can't focus on the flame anymore. only— ] Herlock?

[retroductions]

[His spine is ramrod straight to keep him unmoving, though the rest of him feels as if his muscles are loose clothing just hung onto his bones.

She thinks she knows? Then their thoughts so easily align on this matter, which mean they must do so with ease in the future — how simultaneously confounding and also a bit... He doesn't know what this is. Exciting? The knowledge tantalizing, like it's something he shouldn't have access to just yet?]

My thinking is uncouth, Ms Sapione. Tell me... do you consider me your husband now, or only the man as you will know him, in the future?

[velluminous]

[ there it is: uncouth. through her courses the satisfaction of being exactly right, which the high and its hazy grip makes molasses-thick and thus deeply pleasurable.

she is so close to his ear that he will both hear and feel her exhale and its undercurrent of a laugh. ]

Wherever in his time I may be, this world is having only one Herlock Sholmes. [ the nuance to this is infinite, and were she actually sober then almost certainly that would be enough to quell her urges. instead, the opium dictates she tread deeper into these waters. to do so naked, so to speak. ] You will be my husband. Herlock Sholmes is my husband. You are Herlock Sholmes. All three are true. Why should you need to wait? Tell me what troubles you.