The Shiny Happy Comment Ficathon!
Winter is coming; daylight is fleeting; for the students among us, end-of-semester hell is just about to rear its ugly head. What better way to combat such woes than with a super-cheerful comment ficathon?
Ergo:
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Ergo:
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Lolling on his back with red on his collar and heat in his belly, he gazes up at the moon of her face, clean and white and flushed red in the lip, broken pince-nez borrowed and now perching on her nose. She sits enthroned atop a heap of volumes, drowning them in her skirts, fingernails slicing idly through the pages of an open book under her fingers. His hand catches her ankle, touches the sheer stocking above her dainty boot. "Sated, love?" he asks.
She parts her lips. "The air in here is crawling. Like ants under my tongue."
"Magic?"
"No, my sweet. Not quite." She reaches out; he leans in, rests his cheek against her gloved fingers. "Only words, jumping about like impractical cats. I think I will never be sated until you tell me a thousand and one stories, my William."
"A thousand and one?"
"If you hurry," she says with an ephemeral teasing smile, her thumb grazing his lips, "I won't have to cut off your head." Her fingers flick against his neck, nails sharp even beneath fabric. "Chop chop."
"Anything for my dark Sappho," he says, thinking of breasts of immortal fire. He catches her finger in his mouth. "Make the air settle," she says, and he pulls her discarded book toward him, freshly cut pages ruffling. Not Byron, and habit makes this a disappointment, for an old piece of him remembers the unseemliness of the poems in the face of seeming, always seeming to fit ill in his skin. Before. Lord Byron with his words and desires, all fine and black and good, now, but none so well-evoked as the sheer divine fact of Drusilla. He looks at her, looks and looks, and he forgets that disappointment, for there is no poem of Byron's about this, all though he's quite sure all his poems are about her.
The book instead is Lewis Carroll's; he reads it, half-acquainted with its words, with as much regard as he can manage with her hands so close to him, so constantly touching. Beware the Jabberwock, tricks played by the syllables catching in his mouth which is still half-stopped with her finger. She laughs and twists with serpentine pleasure and there, there again, he is halted from the page. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch, and her fingers coil like claws, teeth snapping teasingly toward him. There is no verbal justice done to her, he thinks, here or anywhere, to her beauty, to her, her, impossible her. He spares a moment of regret that he didn't take a moment to find Byron-but sod Lord George Gordon, he thinks, with a rush of adrenaline sharp as desire, same as desire, for he has no reason to envy poets, not with the Dark Lady herself nearly sprawled atop him.
One finger inches up the side of his neck like a caterpillar.
He throws the book to the side and pulls her toward him, hands free and clasping her waist, crushing down to the hourglass bite of her corset. Sod the pages, he thinks, as she chortles in her joy, as the little spectacles knock to the floor among the crumpled pages and away from her unimpedimented eyes when she presses the tip of her nose to his-darkness has no need of aid from words when she's the Universe, he thinks, and kisses that very Universe on her grinning lips.
In the time it takes even to remove just one of her gloves, he's lived a hundred frabjous days of his own already.
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Perfect closing line. These kids, so sweet.
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& thank you!
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I love that he chooses Lewis Carroll to read to her. I think she would love the story of the Jabberwock, personally. And then the metaphor of her finger being like a caterpillar as he reads her that particular work? Guh. Such a tiny detail but such a great one. And I love how much you focus on their hands and touching, because there's so much physicality to them as a couple, and you capture it beautifully. And I just realized as I reread it, she says she'd chop of his head, and then he chooses Carrol's work. Guh. Guh. Yes.
Thank you so much. This was a great thing to read before getting ready for bed :)
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You're so welcome. Thank you.
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Brb, saving this and rereading it forever.
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This is my favorite ship in the entire world in large part because they live on the same metaphor wavelength. They're constantly embodying both pieces of stories and the way stories are told. (I mean, they bond over a word. In a poem she hasn't read. Favorite favorites forever.)
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1) If you reference Lewis Carroll, I am going to love you.
If you use the word frabjous well, I'm going to dry hump your fricking leg.
So you know, get ready for that.
2) You do gorgeous repetitive things, my love. Yours is like a piece of poetry.
darkness has no need of aid from words when she's the Universe, he thinks, and kisses that very Universe on her grinning lips. UNF. UNF.
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These kids are so steeped in poetry, they bring out my literary-allusive tendencies like no other.
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(Perfect, literate, perfect ship is never not a delight to write.)
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THIS IS SO AWESOME I THINK IT HAS MADE ME GIDDY. JUST, WONDERFUL. (Hahaha, I loved the little detail of Dru putting the shopkeeper's pince-nez on. And I also loved everything.)
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