a u d i o / a c t i o n (the blue light) | back-dated to mid-afternoon.
[ There's a pause, a few footsteps that tread lighter than usual despite it being the full moon because someone's apprehensive about today's curse. ]
Lucy, Susan, I think it would be best if you stayed at home today.
All day.
Or if you've already left, then to go back.
[ He sighs, knowing full well how effective that's likely to be but he ( Read more... )
...which he sets down on said desk behind him and then busies his hands with something more interesting. The mechanics are well engrained at this point, the concerted dip one performs with a lady in a dance - some courtly and others, uh, less so. In this case it's more about the victory though as the blond dips the brunette and kisses him.
It's short-lived really, because it's curse-compelled and Peter knows it even as he's doing it, but for all its brevity there's warm familiarity there - a sharp distinction made easily by people who have kissed before, as opposed to those who are strangers (as this curse mostly seems to be affecting.)
Slightly miffed, Peter almost drops the Telmarine. Almost, not quite. He's a gentleman. Sort of.
Letting go, he sighs, brow raising. ]
Well. That's out of the way.
[ If given over to kissing, he'd rather do it minus the curse, however harmless, and dipping Caspian isn't exactly the way he'd prefer to do it anyway. ]
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[There's a word for this, a word most Narnians don't know until they meet the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve from Earth. The word is wow and by jove is the Telmarine wowed. Blink blink--HEY! He flails his arms to keep from being dropped them smooths his own clothes over and over when they're separated.]
Pardon? A chore for a chore?
[Yes, he's insinuating to Peter such a gesture is a chore but a chore completed only because Caspian's wine inventory list is without flaw.]
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How was that a chore?
[ Walking behind the desk, he opens a drawer, and slips the inventory list into a folder for later reference. Considering how he's escaped everyone else today, it makes sense that he'd be caught out at some point. The fact that it was Caspian is just...convenient, he supposes. ]
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Which one?
[Oh yes, Caspian thinks he's a clever king.]
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Both, actually.
[ He says mildly, which might as well be a return shove. He's already cheating of course, having referenced only one and now claiming both, but the rules aren't exactly strict in the sandbox. ]
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[In addition to being clever and sandboxing, please let us include poking. Caspian reaches out to poke Peter once and firm in the shoulder.]
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The kiss, possibly.
[ The half smile to his expression isn't particularly telling with the joke, but it's true he doesn't consider the inventory a chore; it's just part of the job.
He feels he is winning this round. Uh. Maybe... ]
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[When it doesn't involve beating someone down with sword and shield of course. Now for an example, the Telmarine reaches up to take the Englishman by the face and place his mouth against his most firmly.]
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[ -- well he doesn't quite finish does he? His mouth is occupied once again, and even with the desk between them it's not all that much of an obstacle. The hand opposite the one Caspian has raised goes to the side of the other king's face, because while part of him thinks of just abandoning the kiss altogether in rebuttal, the other option is much more convenient. He wonders if the faint trace of mint is entirely in his head - the creation of memory alone - or actually there. ]
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He's still something of a multitasker however, and the hand not fitting fingertips along Caspian's jaw goes out to keep any papers from being shoved literally off the desk. Those are organized, honestly. Not important enough to stop though, so maybe he's got a bit of a double standard going here. No matter.
Before Caspian left, they'd fallen in with each other in a way that was so ordinary, so privileged in being a sort of everydayness that when he was gone Peter wasn't certain how to wrap his mind around the absence. And then there was the return, and Peter didn't know how much of it was wistfulness for his time now past that he thought he could smell Narnia herself from every one of them, but Caspian especially, perhaps, he thought at the time, because he belonged solely in that world.
Whatever his end judgment was, he doesn't remember at present, bemused at the stubble - unheard of really before his departure. He wonders what made him give up the razor. Laziness doesn't really come to mind where Caspian and appearance are concerned so he figures it must be something else. They'd been at sea. He supposes it might be that simple and pulls the Telmarine forward on the desk, a hand resting on his knee. ]
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Hm.
[Caspian sounds for the shuffling of papers. How typical of him. But what's untypical is the way Peter pulls him forward. Perhaps he's listening to the Telmarine's words of advice after all. Perched on the furniture now he has to rest on bent knees to level their height. His touch is exhilarating and does not seem infused by a curse at all.]
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At sea, I suppose there wasn't much call for it. What's your reason for keeping it here?
[ Judgmental? Not...okay, a bit, but it's in good humor, a thoughtful quirk as much to Peter's mouth as his tone, as although there is a healthy hand's span between them, he otherwise stays crowded at the desk's edge in front of him. For no particular reason, his mind flashes to the Dawn Treader, to the cabin with the paintings of the Kings and Queens of Old, and how standing in front of it Peter had thought Caspian looked so Narnian he might as well have been a part of the painting himself.
Not so of course. Different times, different stories.
But the points of intersection, Peter feels, may be some of his favorite chapters. ]
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. . . . . . .
[Snort. Now these longer Telmarine legs are unbending, curling, shifting, then bending again to occupy the most space possible on top of Peter's desk.]
If you must know it's dignified. I'm sorry some of us are incapable of cultivating the proper look of a king without seasons passing.
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I'm not sorry at all.
[ He says this with all due candor and smiles, a bit dry but not unkind. ]
It does make you look older.
[ Again the judgment is neither good nor bad so much as it is factual, an indicator of time certainly but a bit more than that too. ]
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[Caspian means no harm by his remark, Peter knows that, right? He means only the beard (stubble, neatly trimmed whenever thicker) causes blue eyes to go green and not his birthright or his home.]
And I am older. [The Telmarine concludes because the observation is as simple as that.]
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