Tell me a story
12-26-2006 (Issa, Reyce):
Issa's Weyr
Sumptuous warmth counters the bitter cold of a High Reaches winter, delicious browns and flushed bronzes cloaking the drab stone of the walls. Rich russet curtains cover the arched entrance from the ledge, either hanging heavily to keep out the cold or pulled back with a strong rope. Immediately to the right from the ledge, is a hearth, surrounded by a small sitting area. As for seating, there's two choices: a long couch, worn to a faded rust color, placed at an angle with the hearth, and a chair, high-backed and upholstered in smooth copper. The rug beneath them is an intricate weaving of sand and sage, forming a tangle of vines that culminate in the center, where a large wooden chest conceals the most convoluted loops.
The hearth itself is a meager one, tiny in the large stone wall, dominated by the tall tapestry that hangs above it. On the tapestry, a light green, rather disproportioned shape that resembles a dragon sinuously flames at nothing in particular, locked in by a scrolling knot pattern around the edges.
The entirety of the wall opposite the hearth is taken up by the dragon couch, with flattened furs and riding straps strewn across it, infringing on the center space of the already cramped and cozy weyr.
The last splash of color comes from a curtain concealing the deeper alcove, mirroring the larger curtains across the entrance in color and position. Through it, a glimpse of a tall bed can be seen, covered in a pile of disheveled furs and pillows dyed to a deep mahogany.
Wine, couch and low fire all are thoroughly neglected tonight after Issa's hoisted the straps into place; she's gotten it into her head that they've put off the cutting of Reyce's hair long enough and has insisted that tonight she's going to finally sit him down. And so it's toward the back alcove she heads when she's done, stepping over Oshisyth's tail, left slung across the walkway as the green settles into her grooming habit, without a second thought. Once past that minor barrier, she pivots to walk backwards a few steps, grinning back at him. "Back here," she instructs quickly, a jerk of her head urging him to follow her. As soon as it's said, she turns back around and shoves the curtain aside and steps through into the dimly lit space.
Reyce has accepted his fate and Issa's insistence quietly, waiting patiently off to the side while she puts away the straps. He has his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his eyes cast at the ground to follow the woven patterns of the rug with absent attention while she and Oshisyth move about the room. He's already past the obstruction that is Oshisyth's tail, so when Issa summons him at last he need not step over it: lifting his eyes to her, he acknowledges her instructions with a sniff, then removes his hands from his pockets and follows them. He stops as soon as he's inside the back alcove, raising an expectant look to her while he awaits her next command in silence.
With the wooden thunk that normally accompanies such an action, Issa opens the wardrobe door and lifts up onto her toes to rummage around the upper shelf. When she falls back to her heels again, the door shutting more quietly with a slight click, there's a large towel tucked under her arm and a pair of scissors clasped in her hand. Smiling with new delight at what's become just another game to her, she slips back over to the shelves. Only then does her next command come, wordless but still just as assertive. After slipping her tools down onto the empty space of shelf, she lifts a finger and crooks it at him, one corner of her smile lifting higher as she waits for him to obey.
While she digs through the wardrobe, Reyce leans against the entrance to the room, pushing the curtain even further back with his shoulders as he settles in. Edges of the curtain, those he's not leaning on, sweep out from behind his shoulders and flap inwards, concealing him just a touch; to judge by his expression, Reyce doesn't care at all, but it's nevertheless a dramatic motion when he moves, emerging from the curtain's wrap in a sweep of motion that carries him towards her. With as little light as the alcove provides, it's not until he gets closer that he can really make out that smile on her face, and on seeing it (and processing it in silence), he raises a brow.
Wordless still, Issa gives only a slight, sideways nod at the ewer and basin sitting on the shelf next to her, the only clue as to what's to come. For there's something else that must precede it: stripping. First his jacket and then his shirt fall under her hands, both peeled away with equal eagerness and left to drift to the floor as they will. Briefly she leans, hands stilling against his chest as she falls against him, a tease of further contact before she pushes away again. Those same hands spring into action again, maneuvering him to bend over the basin then lifting away to take the pitcher herself. "It's going to be cold," is the only warning he gets once he's positioned. And then she pours, one hand ruffling the rivulets deeper with one hand while the other handles the pitcher. A decisive, "There," indicates her satisfaction with the dampened curls and she tosses the towel onto his shoulders and leaves him to deal with it, slipping back around behind him on some other errand.
Reyce is taken in by the tease, his arms wrapping around her waist and drawing her further into that lean. If he knows that the haircut must still come, eventually, at least he has some hope of a more comfortable pause beforehand. Hope that goes unrealized, for his arms slide apart when she moves back, leaving an Issa-sized gap in his circle. That space soon fills as he steps up to the basin, positioning his hands on either side of it while he leans his head forward obediently. Even with the warning, though, the cold water takes him by surprise: a loud snort startles out of him and he shifts back, fighting down his desire to jerk away with the knowledge that he must stay in place over the basin lest he get her floor wet. The end result is a win for knowledge, although his shoulders bunch up high and from time to time he gives a restless snort or blows water off his lips. He's up as soon as she frees him, swiping an arm across his face before he realizes there's a towel there and uses that instead.
Issa makes a trip to his side of the bed and drags away the chair that normally sits there, tossing the errant bra she finds draped over the back of it onto the bed instead. The scraping sound of the wooden legs against the floor brings her back over to Reyce again and she pauses next to him only long enough to wait for an opportunity to grab his wrist. Fingers wrapping around it, she begins to drag him, along with the chair, back into the main room. The chair clatters into place just to the right of the curtained doorway, facing the ledge, and she drops his hand, letting him take the seat on his own as she rushes back to retrieve the scissors she's forgotten. "I normally do this on the ledge," she says, returning more leisurely than she dashed away, "but I can't have you catching cold and getting me sick." Her teasing smile makes an appearance, but only the scissors get treated to it, as she inspects the tiny blades and the snipping noises they make as she works them.
Reyce presents the perfect opportunity to grab at his wrist when, his face dried, he takes a corner of the towel and starts prodding at his ear, swiping out the accumulated wet he finds there. He is not easily jerked away, either, yielding his wrist to her grasp but keeping the arm up, so that when she gets him (and the chair) out to their appointed places he can go right back to dabbing at his ears, delaying her from cutting his hair in the meanwhile. "You normally do this?" he repeats, pausing to glance up at her as he switches the towel to the other ear. Apparently, this one suffered less during the downpour, for it takes him only a few quick swipes to be satisfied with that one, and then to sit still.
"Myself mostly," Issa tells him, lifting her gaze from the scissors to him, then moving it further up to his hair. Sidling up next to him, her hip brushing his arm, she digs her free fingers into his curls and brushes them forcefully back. "C'los sometimes. G'bit, too," and her eyes drop again to catch sight of his face, "whenever he doesn't have a weyrmate." Shrugging, she clicks the scissor blades together a few times where they hang at her side, smile growing in the pause. "Can I do what I want with it?" she asks him, fingers sifting through his hair again as that brushing hip nudges more heavily against him.
Reyce allows his head to be dragged back along with his hair when she pulls those long curls back. His eyes roll back with the motion, but they do not find her face, choosing instead to focus on the wall behind him. His expression thins at the mention of G'bit, the corners of his lips drawn back and the muscles around his eyes tensed up, but he, as always, keeps silent on the matter of her blueriding wingmate. The second brush of her hip changes the expression, anyway, an edged corner of a smile twisting out while his fingers tap impatiently along his leg. "No," he answers. His head does not move, still arched over the back of his chair, but his eyes roll down to find her. "I want it the same."
Issa's smile purses into a playful pout, and she responds with a mildly mischievous, "Oh, that's no fun." And without promising anything, she moves around behind the chair, working her hand into the curls again to tilt his head back the other way. From behind his shoulder, she makes a grab for the towel, cloaking his shoulders with it once she has it. A focused silence falls while she settles in to study the drooping curls, then works at pulling them straight between her fingers. "Tell me a story," is her request before she begins, "while I cut." The first snip punctuates her sentence, confidently clipping away an inch of hair with a forceful stroke of the blades.
Reyce is a troublesome client: obedient to every angle she asks of him, and then some, for as soon as he becomes comfortable, he begins to lean further into the tilt. The relaxation comes to him quickly, but so does the jolt out of it. "What?" A twitch that might have been a pull sideways, to get a better look at her, draws up short when the loud snip of the scissors reminds him there are reasons for stillness. Thus unable to see her, he must content himself with a frown directed at the most convenient wall. "Don't know any," he informs her.
Issa enforces the stillness with a single finger placed alongside his chin to forestall any further twitches in that direction. Her fingernail then rakes lightly through the stubble along his jawline back to continue with the snipping. "A story about you," Issa insists, her amusement rolling through just those two words. But then there's a swift change in tone, shifting on the heels of a short snip. Apparently deceptively short, because the word that gets treated to the new, more hesitant tone is a soft, quick, "Oops." The clipping pauses, the cool metal sides of the scissors leaning up against his neck. "How short is too short?" she asks then, unable to entirely keep the mirthful roundness from breaking through the faux worry of her words; without her expression as a cue, however, the joke is more elusive.
Reyce manages, through an exercise of will, to wince without moving anything above his shoulders. Unless one counts his eyes, of course: they turn down to try to catch a glimpse of the curl she apparently snipped off too short. It has, as it happens, already slipped off the towel and fallen to the ground, so he searches in vain. "Issa..." he begins, his voice rolling with tension despite the effort towards restraint. He huffs it all out in a single, heavy breath blown from his cheeks, but it takes time to gather himself back again, once the tensions that holds him together has left. His hands lock together in lap, thumb and forefinger steepled, and his eyes slip slowly closed; there's no more mention of a story, on his part.
The fingers not firmly curled in place on the scissors find a new spot against the base of his neck, gently stroking with a lightly tickling touch. Leaning down and pressing her weight against his shoulders, Issa treats his ear to the same lightness, though it's her lips dealing it out this time. Nosing away a damp curl, she mouths a soft, "Relax," against the rim of his ear, cutting off a trickling chuckle when she seals a kiss over the same spot. "I'm just messing with you a little bit. Trust me." She plants another kiss then withdraws, her hands returning to a more useful pursuit than aimless caresses. Several moments pass marked only by the shearing clipping of the little scissors before she plaintively asks again, "Story?" Her knuckle brushes against the back of his neck, but this time it has a purpose, flicking away a few wayward strands that stick to his skin above the draped towel.
Reyce puffs out another sigh, shorter than the first, and more resigned, when she starts touching him. The injunction to hold still must still be obeyed, so that sigh and the slight prickling of his skin alone reward her efforts. Once messed with, he finds it harder to relax into the process again, so there's no undue tilting from him in those moments when she's silent and clipping. When she asks, again, about the story - well, there's just no hope for relaxation there. His eyelids lift slowly open, revealing a blank expression fixed indifferently ahead. "Are none," he says, emotionless yet stubborn.
"Bullshit." Issa pulls out the word from the vocabulary she's adopted from him, treating it with a faint imitation of the tone with which he normally uses it. She lets a few more cuts fall before continuing. "You have twenty four years of stories before I even met you. There's bound to be something I'd find interesting. Yeah?" Her words escape with a distracted tone, fighting through her focus as she peruses her work so far, shoving fingers downward through his curls to undo the tousling her efforts have wrought. With a final little snip, she moves around to his side in order to ruffle those curls into strategic disarray.
The mirror of his vocabulary takes Reyce by surprise, startling his features out of their emotionless set. He uses that word, in that tone, because it's often effective; apparently, he's not immune, either. A frown creeps up to take the place of his raised eyebrows and slightly parted lips, and the two steepled fingers in his lap fall together, folding down alongside the rest. "Pick something," he suggests shortly. "What you want. Take me less than a minute to tell it. Some story." The sniff he draws in gets a bit of a grunt mixed in, and results in a rough, low sound at the back of his throat.
Issa places the backs of her scissor-burdened fingers against the side of his head and pushes gently until his head is ever so slightly tilted to his left. Her smile appears not to have suffered for all the time spent behind him, concentrating, for she has to bite down on it to keep it from growing any wider. "Hopeless," is her teasing judgement. But that rough grunt elicits some tenderness from her, and she bends afterward to place a kiss against his upturned cheek. Turning back to her task, she muses, "Tell me... how this happened." Her left hand crosses over so that she can trace the pad of her forefinger slowly down his nose, a brief interruption to the string of snips. "Were you ever able to smell things?" she elaborates with evident curiosity.
Reyce gives her another grunt for her trouble, this one lifted from his throat to the back of his nose. Fitting, though it comes before she even mentions his sense of smell: it's an answer to 'hopeless,' albeit not a very expansive one. And surely she does not expect she can give out so many kisses without eventually eliciting a response, though a mild one; he tilts his chin sideways, making his cheek more accessible for the touch of her lips, though it requires her to angle his head back in place once she withdraws to her work. He's already moved on to her question, angles forgotten. "Didn't happen," he says. "Just born with it. So." So that answers her second question.
"Mmm." A hum that's vacant with her concentration, but still thoroughly interested. Issa doesn't say anything further than that, however; perhaps she's waiting for more, but considering her familiarity with his reticence it's more likely that she's just busy maneuvering around a whorl of his hair. "Tell me..." The same musing tone, the same drifting distraction. "What happened the day you came to High Reaches." Biting her lip again, less with amusement than with absorption this time, she clips carefully around the contour of his ear. "Your first impression."
Reyce has braced himself for more probing on that subject, a breath indrawn and his nostrils flared, but when the silence turns into a new question he must change his tack. For all that his transplantation to the Reaches must have left some impression, he has to focus to recall it correctly, more silence falling while he does. "Same as anybody's. Cold. Just been between, anyway. Benden weyrwoman came out for the rider who brought me, remember that. Picked a cot with nobody next to it and went to see the Headmaster like I'm told. Pretty pissed about all of it." This last he adds after a pause, awkwardly aware that for all her patience, and all his warnings, he's still not living up her standard for storytelling; that he feels compelled to make the effort brings out a dour, cynical tone to his voice.
Lucky for him, Issa is too engrossed to be too thoroughly disappointed. She even goes so far as to guide him along the path to a good story, prodding him with a question as she walks around in front of him to tend to the other side of his head. "And what did Sefton say?" she asks, amused at something beyond just his tone, though that surely factors. The scissors are given a few preparatory slices, blades clicking together, and then she tilts his head in the opposite direction so that she can keep cutting.
Reyce lifts his eyes to her as she passes in front, stealing one of the few glances he's been able to since she set in to cut. His foot slides back when she reaches his other side, the booted heel insisting on contact as it slides up against the arch of her near foot. Once that's settled, he can process her probing question. "Wasn't him. The old guy, harper. Didn't say anything interesting. Welcome to the Caucus. Good luck." His dour tone revives, for different reasons, and he snorts at the idea of his luck. "Talked a little about Greystones, but I don't know anything. Let me go." That this last sentence could be confused for an order, rather than part of the story, he doesn't appear to consider, but in any case he gives no further signs of restlessness to indicate it could be the former.
Issa's foot nudges into the contact he initiates, a beat taken out from her clipping to spare a glance downward for the subtle movement, smile quirking. "Oh, that's right," Issa comments quietly as he reminds her of the old headmaster. She's too concerned with fractured stories and haircuts to even consider the possibility of his wanting to interrupt either of them, and simply continues by heading down another track. "That empty cot next to yours. Who took it?" She must cut around his other ear now, careful snips following along the line marked out by the guiding fingers that sweep against his skin.
Reyce, for once, actually holds still in the angle she's set him at. Perhaps he's gotten used to it, or settled into the storytelling, or simply noticed her scissors passing so close to his ear. The answer, at any rate, is simple and takes none of his time: "Neiran." If this is a point that ought to be expanded, his storyteller's art fails him, for he offers nothing more.
"Ah," Issa says, a syllable drawn out with rounded implications that she keeps to herself; she doesn't delve further than that one sound. Instead she drifts out of conversation to attend to the curls at the top of his head, drawing them out straight between her fingers before trimming them down. That done, her foot draws away from his, but only to offer a presumably more welcome contact. She circles in front of him again and, after pushing his hands away from his lap, straddles his legs and lowers herself into the spot they vacated, sitting so she faces him. "Tell me," she begins again, initiating yet another new question as she rakes forward all of the uncut curls down over his eyes, "what happened to you and Pia." If she knows that the question is likely to make for a slightly perturbed Reyce, at the very least, she gives no indication of it, completely focused on combing down those curls, her expression giving him only a light smile to study.
It is more welcome. Reyce scoots his foot back forward when she draws away, assuming that the moment of contact has ended and giving her the space back. As luck would have it, he drops his gaze down when he does this, so he's staring at his hands when she comes around to move them out of the way. A bat from her hand sends his clasped fingers easily off to the side, unresisting, but he soon enough thinks to actually unwind them. They find a better use unwound, copping feels off her hips and ass as he guides her onto his lap, and then wrapping her up in a loose circle that swings down to her ass again. A smirk creeps onto his features, heedless of the strict attention to business she keeps in combing down his curls, full of patient mischief. And then, her question. It yields a perturbed Reyce indeed, one who tenses beneath her touch and widens his eyes in the brief second before, defensively, he hoods them. A heavy breath whisks through his nostrils, but then his breathing going silent, small, controlled. His muscles, likewise, hold him in place like a statue, inscrutably immobile while he summarizes /this/ one. Unlike the journey to High Reaches, it doesn't take him long. "I was leaving. She was fucking Curt." His tone shifts out of indifference into open coldness, the grim set of his lips not denying the hatred (and hurt) here but somehow forbidding it.
That small smile of hers gets wiped away by his summary, replaced by a frown, just as small, as Issa freezes and lets her gaze drop from his hair to his eyes. Blue eyes studying him with flicking intensity, a wincing tension thinning them ever so slightly, she allows her hands to fall to his shoulders, newly limp save for the effort it takes to keep the point of the scissors angled away from his neck. Those curls she painstakingly gathered are left half cut, her attention now fully on him. And she proves it, leaning in to cover the thin line of his lips with hers, a soft, fleeting brush of a kiss. Maybe it's a premature apology for her further prodding, for it comes then, hesitant as her kiss. She been told of one aspect of this story already, which she points out by saying, "But when you went back..." The trailing last word drifts into an empty space primed for him to fill.
Reyce does not move when she kisses him, either to kiss back or to push her away. The shadows that mask his eyes do not quite hide their steady tracking, fixed on her eyes but holding still, with no back and forth scans however slow. "I didn't know then." If the further probing has upset him more than he already was upset, his steadily cold, factual tone gives no sign. "I knew she was fucking around. She told me that. She didn't say who until later." That his pause is not the end of this part of the story is evidenced only by the fact that his small, just barely present breathing stops entirely, caught in while he stares at her and mulls over his words. "Until I told her about you." Now he moves, if ever so slightly at first: one of his hands unwinds from the sling about her waist. It's gentle at first, rising to brush hair off her cheek, but as it digs through to the back of her curls it becomes suddenly fiercer, pushing her in for a close-lipped kiss that lasts a good half-minute. His eyes remain squeezed shut when it's finished, but his hand drops away, falling like a dead thing to be picked up by the other one where it's still wrapped around her.
"Oh." The word flinches out of her, just like the muscles that twitch, with a sudden tension, under his touch as soon as she finds out her part, however removed, in that revelation. Issa melts into him for the kiss, following willingly along with his fierce urging, her hands swinging around his neck in a loose hold as she meets his lips. That hold lingers even after they break, so that she can try, in vain, to make eye contact. That failing, she seeks contact of a different sort, the tip of her nose sweeping against his before she leans forward to put her cheek up to his, nuzzling once, lightly, into his stubble before falling still. She indulges in a beat of sighing silence, her breath stirring over the ear she's just bared with her cutting. "Some story," she comments drily, attempting humor if not succeeding terribly well. Then she pulls back a fraction to flick her eyes back to his, her gaze held there waiting as long as it takes for him to meet it.
Reyce arches his neck into the nuzzling touch of her cheek, his breath coming more regularly now, if only by the slightest increase. A hard breath drops from his nose when she sighs, signalling a true return to normality of breaths no longer hidden nor over-wheezed. His eyes flick open sharply at her dry comment, and are waiting for her as soon as she pulls back. "You asked," he points out softly, though the gentle ease of his tone finds no reflection in his overly bright and alert stare. The failed humor in her words goes unremarked.
Issa blinks slowly and allows just the half of her smile to return, lips tipped lopsided. "I did," she replies, her amused tone finding more of a hold this time around. Her sketched hug loosens further then unwraps completely, the handles of the scissors dragging along with the warm press of her fingers as they trail back around in front of him. "I'm almost done, by the way," she informs him, prodding no more, her eyes lifting to the uneven stairstep his hair forms where she left her snipping unfinished. In no time, she's trimmed away the rest, making a final check by drawing down both sides and making a flicking comparison before she combs all of it back from his face. "There," she announces, eyes finding his again as her scissor-free hand makes one last sweep, from forehead to the nape of his neck, then falls, running down his shoulder and onto his chest before drifting down to lay across her leg. "What do you think?" she asks, rubbing at her nose with the back of her right wrist, scissors pointed carefully down. The curls at the back have been left slightly thicker than his last, more severe haircut had them, but, considering Issa tends to prefer toying with those in particular, that's to be expected. Other than that small liberty, she's adhered to his restriction and it's the same, only shorter.
Reyce explores his hair carefully, both hands on her ass yielding to do so. Bending his neck down yet further, he pats at his hair, running his nails through and flicking the curls up at the same time he judges its length. Whether or not he recognizes that she didn't cut the back as much as he usually has it done, his fingers barely pause there and his final judgment is, "Seems fine." He pauses, hand still on his head, and then reaches out to find her, patting around her shoulders as though, like his hair, they needed to be checked. They, too, must pass the inspection, for wraps his arms around her and looks up with a dull, wry glint of humor. "What happened to I get to use your mirror, though?" he wonders. The glint works its way down, twisting up the edge of his lip in a smile that will turn swiftly to a smirk if she tries to fetch said mirror, for his arms will only hold tight around her and try to prevent her leaving his lap.
Issa watches his inspection idly, but has her own inspection to do, gaze passing down to the scissors as she gingerly wipes away any lingering moisture with the edge of her sleeve. Then they're deposited, dropped that short distance to the ground where they land with a mild clatter. She looks up to find his smile and answers it with the curling of her own, pushing deeper and brightening for even the slightest inching of his. "I believe," she replies, not even making a token attempt to stand, "I said /morning/." A glance is tossed over her shoulder, as if to confirm the lack of light coming from around the curtain concealing the ledge. "You can use it in the mornings." Playful, her eyes return to him, and she reaches up to remove the towel that's already been shifted back with her movements, sliding it to the ground to cover the scissors. Then she goes about flicking away the bits of hair still lingering on his skin, her touches brushing down only to flit away again.
Reyce becomes the troublesome client again, his shoulders moving while she tries to brush away the bits of hair. He begins with a stretch, yanking them back as his arms loosen off her back. As the stretch pulls in to its conclusion, one of his hands feels compelled to check the back of his hair again (perhaps he did notice), but only to give it a few short scratches and then drop back down. It doesn't drop all the way, though, stopping at the bottom of her shirt and (along with its mate) slide under, so that now his shoulders are rippling as his touch slides all up and down her bare back. "Try to remember that," he murmurs, using the press of a hand on her back to push her closer to him, his mouth at her ear, regardless of whether or not she's finished brushing off all the hair. "Tomorrow."
Issa's breath catches as his hands sneak under her shirt and gains a heaving quality as it rushes out of her again, huffing against his shoulder as she leans her cheek down against the side of his neck. Her hands on his shoulders reach back again, fingers shoved up into those back curls, grasping hastily, motivated by more than just appreciation for her handiwork. "Mhmm," she agrees, distracted again, though it's safe to say it's not by his hair this time. Turning her face down, she lets idle kisses drift up his collarbone until she reaches the fleshy part of his shoulder; there, she sinks her teeth into a pulling nibble. She lifts her lips away from him to say just one final word, undercurrents of flirting mischief and a more raw craving in her tone necessitating silence afterward. "Tomorrow."
Issa's Weyr
Sumptuous warmth counters the bitter cold of a High Reaches winter, delicious browns and flushed bronzes cloaking the drab stone of the walls. Rich russet curtains cover the arched entrance from the ledge, either hanging heavily to keep out the cold or pulled back with a strong rope. Immediately to the right from the ledge, is a hearth, surrounded by a small sitting area. As for seating, there's two choices: a long couch, worn to a faded rust color, placed at an angle with the hearth, and a chair, high-backed and upholstered in smooth copper. The rug beneath them is an intricate weaving of sand and sage, forming a tangle of vines that culminate in the center, where a large wooden chest conceals the most convoluted loops.
The hearth itself is a meager one, tiny in the large stone wall, dominated by the tall tapestry that hangs above it. On the tapestry, a light green, rather disproportioned shape that resembles a dragon sinuously flames at nothing in particular, locked in by a scrolling knot pattern around the edges.
The entirety of the wall opposite the hearth is taken up by the dragon couch, with flattened furs and riding straps strewn across it, infringing on the center space of the already cramped and cozy weyr.
The last splash of color comes from a curtain concealing the deeper alcove, mirroring the larger curtains across the entrance in color and position. Through it, a glimpse of a tall bed can be seen, covered in a pile of disheveled furs and pillows dyed to a deep mahogany.
Wine, couch and low fire all are thoroughly neglected tonight after Issa's hoisted the straps into place; she's gotten it into her head that they've put off the cutting of Reyce's hair long enough and has insisted that tonight she's going to finally sit him down. And so it's toward the back alcove she heads when she's done, stepping over Oshisyth's tail, left slung across the walkway as the green settles into her grooming habit, without a second thought. Once past that minor barrier, she pivots to walk backwards a few steps, grinning back at him. "Back here," she instructs quickly, a jerk of her head urging him to follow her. As soon as it's said, she turns back around and shoves the curtain aside and steps through into the dimly lit space.
Reyce has accepted his fate and Issa's insistence quietly, waiting patiently off to the side while she puts away the straps. He has his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his eyes cast at the ground to follow the woven patterns of the rug with absent attention while she and Oshisyth move about the room. He's already past the obstruction that is Oshisyth's tail, so when Issa summons him at last he need not step over it: lifting his eyes to her, he acknowledges her instructions with a sniff, then removes his hands from his pockets and follows them. He stops as soon as he's inside the back alcove, raising an expectant look to her while he awaits her next command in silence.
With the wooden thunk that normally accompanies such an action, Issa opens the wardrobe door and lifts up onto her toes to rummage around the upper shelf. When she falls back to her heels again, the door shutting more quietly with a slight click, there's a large towel tucked under her arm and a pair of scissors clasped in her hand. Smiling with new delight at what's become just another game to her, she slips back over to the shelves. Only then does her next command come, wordless but still just as assertive. After slipping her tools down onto the empty space of shelf, she lifts a finger and crooks it at him, one corner of her smile lifting higher as she waits for him to obey.
While she digs through the wardrobe, Reyce leans against the entrance to the room, pushing the curtain even further back with his shoulders as he settles in. Edges of the curtain, those he's not leaning on, sweep out from behind his shoulders and flap inwards, concealing him just a touch; to judge by his expression, Reyce doesn't care at all, but it's nevertheless a dramatic motion when he moves, emerging from the curtain's wrap in a sweep of motion that carries him towards her. With as little light as the alcove provides, it's not until he gets closer that he can really make out that smile on her face, and on seeing it (and processing it in silence), he raises a brow.
Wordless still, Issa gives only a slight, sideways nod at the ewer and basin sitting on the shelf next to her, the only clue as to what's to come. For there's something else that must precede it: stripping. First his jacket and then his shirt fall under her hands, both peeled away with equal eagerness and left to drift to the floor as they will. Briefly she leans, hands stilling against his chest as she falls against him, a tease of further contact before she pushes away again. Those same hands spring into action again, maneuvering him to bend over the basin then lifting away to take the pitcher herself. "It's going to be cold," is the only warning he gets once he's positioned. And then she pours, one hand ruffling the rivulets deeper with one hand while the other handles the pitcher. A decisive, "There," indicates her satisfaction with the dampened curls and she tosses the towel onto his shoulders and leaves him to deal with it, slipping back around behind him on some other errand.
Reyce is taken in by the tease, his arms wrapping around her waist and drawing her further into that lean. If he knows that the haircut must still come, eventually, at least he has some hope of a more comfortable pause beforehand. Hope that goes unrealized, for his arms slide apart when she moves back, leaving an Issa-sized gap in his circle. That space soon fills as he steps up to the basin, positioning his hands on either side of it while he leans his head forward obediently. Even with the warning, though, the cold water takes him by surprise: a loud snort startles out of him and he shifts back, fighting down his desire to jerk away with the knowledge that he must stay in place over the basin lest he get her floor wet. The end result is a win for knowledge, although his shoulders bunch up high and from time to time he gives a restless snort or blows water off his lips. He's up as soon as she frees him, swiping an arm across his face before he realizes there's a towel there and uses that instead.
Issa makes a trip to his side of the bed and drags away the chair that normally sits there, tossing the errant bra she finds draped over the back of it onto the bed instead. The scraping sound of the wooden legs against the floor brings her back over to Reyce again and she pauses next to him only long enough to wait for an opportunity to grab his wrist. Fingers wrapping around it, she begins to drag him, along with the chair, back into the main room. The chair clatters into place just to the right of the curtained doorway, facing the ledge, and she drops his hand, letting him take the seat on his own as she rushes back to retrieve the scissors she's forgotten. "I normally do this on the ledge," she says, returning more leisurely than she dashed away, "but I can't have you catching cold and getting me sick." Her teasing smile makes an appearance, but only the scissors get treated to it, as she inspects the tiny blades and the snipping noises they make as she works them.
Reyce presents the perfect opportunity to grab at his wrist when, his face dried, he takes a corner of the towel and starts prodding at his ear, swiping out the accumulated wet he finds there. He is not easily jerked away, either, yielding his wrist to her grasp but keeping the arm up, so that when she gets him (and the chair) out to their appointed places he can go right back to dabbing at his ears, delaying her from cutting his hair in the meanwhile. "You normally do this?" he repeats, pausing to glance up at her as he switches the towel to the other ear. Apparently, this one suffered less during the downpour, for it takes him only a few quick swipes to be satisfied with that one, and then to sit still.
"Myself mostly," Issa tells him, lifting her gaze from the scissors to him, then moving it further up to his hair. Sidling up next to him, her hip brushing his arm, she digs her free fingers into his curls and brushes them forcefully back. "C'los sometimes. G'bit, too," and her eyes drop again to catch sight of his face, "whenever he doesn't have a weyrmate." Shrugging, she clicks the scissor blades together a few times where they hang at her side, smile growing in the pause. "Can I do what I want with it?" she asks him, fingers sifting through his hair again as that brushing hip nudges more heavily against him.
Reyce allows his head to be dragged back along with his hair when she pulls those long curls back. His eyes roll back with the motion, but they do not find her face, choosing instead to focus on the wall behind him. His expression thins at the mention of G'bit, the corners of his lips drawn back and the muscles around his eyes tensed up, but he, as always, keeps silent on the matter of her blueriding wingmate. The second brush of her hip changes the expression, anyway, an edged corner of a smile twisting out while his fingers tap impatiently along his leg. "No," he answers. His head does not move, still arched over the back of his chair, but his eyes roll down to find her. "I want it the same."
Issa's smile purses into a playful pout, and she responds with a mildly mischievous, "Oh, that's no fun." And without promising anything, she moves around behind the chair, working her hand into the curls again to tilt his head back the other way. From behind his shoulder, she makes a grab for the towel, cloaking his shoulders with it once she has it. A focused silence falls while she settles in to study the drooping curls, then works at pulling them straight between her fingers. "Tell me a story," is her request before she begins, "while I cut." The first snip punctuates her sentence, confidently clipping away an inch of hair with a forceful stroke of the blades.
Reyce is a troublesome client: obedient to every angle she asks of him, and then some, for as soon as he becomes comfortable, he begins to lean further into the tilt. The relaxation comes to him quickly, but so does the jolt out of it. "What?" A twitch that might have been a pull sideways, to get a better look at her, draws up short when the loud snip of the scissors reminds him there are reasons for stillness. Thus unable to see her, he must content himself with a frown directed at the most convenient wall. "Don't know any," he informs her.
Issa enforces the stillness with a single finger placed alongside his chin to forestall any further twitches in that direction. Her fingernail then rakes lightly through the stubble along his jawline back to continue with the snipping. "A story about you," Issa insists, her amusement rolling through just those two words. But then there's a swift change in tone, shifting on the heels of a short snip. Apparently deceptively short, because the word that gets treated to the new, more hesitant tone is a soft, quick, "Oops." The clipping pauses, the cool metal sides of the scissors leaning up against his neck. "How short is too short?" she asks then, unable to entirely keep the mirthful roundness from breaking through the faux worry of her words; without her expression as a cue, however, the joke is more elusive.
Reyce manages, through an exercise of will, to wince without moving anything above his shoulders. Unless one counts his eyes, of course: they turn down to try to catch a glimpse of the curl she apparently snipped off too short. It has, as it happens, already slipped off the towel and fallen to the ground, so he searches in vain. "Issa..." he begins, his voice rolling with tension despite the effort towards restraint. He huffs it all out in a single, heavy breath blown from his cheeks, but it takes time to gather himself back again, once the tensions that holds him together has left. His hands lock together in lap, thumb and forefinger steepled, and his eyes slip slowly closed; there's no more mention of a story, on his part.
The fingers not firmly curled in place on the scissors find a new spot against the base of his neck, gently stroking with a lightly tickling touch. Leaning down and pressing her weight against his shoulders, Issa treats his ear to the same lightness, though it's her lips dealing it out this time. Nosing away a damp curl, she mouths a soft, "Relax," against the rim of his ear, cutting off a trickling chuckle when she seals a kiss over the same spot. "I'm just messing with you a little bit. Trust me." She plants another kiss then withdraws, her hands returning to a more useful pursuit than aimless caresses. Several moments pass marked only by the shearing clipping of the little scissors before she plaintively asks again, "Story?" Her knuckle brushes against the back of his neck, but this time it has a purpose, flicking away a few wayward strands that stick to his skin above the draped towel.
Reyce puffs out another sigh, shorter than the first, and more resigned, when she starts touching him. The injunction to hold still must still be obeyed, so that sigh and the slight prickling of his skin alone reward her efforts. Once messed with, he finds it harder to relax into the process again, so there's no undue tilting from him in those moments when she's silent and clipping. When she asks, again, about the story - well, there's just no hope for relaxation there. His eyelids lift slowly open, revealing a blank expression fixed indifferently ahead. "Are none," he says, emotionless yet stubborn.
"Bullshit." Issa pulls out the word from the vocabulary she's adopted from him, treating it with a faint imitation of the tone with which he normally uses it. She lets a few more cuts fall before continuing. "You have twenty four years of stories before I even met you. There's bound to be something I'd find interesting. Yeah?" Her words escape with a distracted tone, fighting through her focus as she peruses her work so far, shoving fingers downward through his curls to undo the tousling her efforts have wrought. With a final little snip, she moves around to his side in order to ruffle those curls into strategic disarray.
The mirror of his vocabulary takes Reyce by surprise, startling his features out of their emotionless set. He uses that word, in that tone, because it's often effective; apparently, he's not immune, either. A frown creeps up to take the place of his raised eyebrows and slightly parted lips, and the two steepled fingers in his lap fall together, folding down alongside the rest. "Pick something," he suggests shortly. "What you want. Take me less than a minute to tell it. Some story." The sniff he draws in gets a bit of a grunt mixed in, and results in a rough, low sound at the back of his throat.
Issa places the backs of her scissor-burdened fingers against the side of his head and pushes gently until his head is ever so slightly tilted to his left. Her smile appears not to have suffered for all the time spent behind him, concentrating, for she has to bite down on it to keep it from growing any wider. "Hopeless," is her teasing judgement. But that rough grunt elicits some tenderness from her, and she bends afterward to place a kiss against his upturned cheek. Turning back to her task, she muses, "Tell me... how this happened." Her left hand crosses over so that she can trace the pad of her forefinger slowly down his nose, a brief interruption to the string of snips. "Were you ever able to smell things?" she elaborates with evident curiosity.
Reyce gives her another grunt for her trouble, this one lifted from his throat to the back of his nose. Fitting, though it comes before she even mentions his sense of smell: it's an answer to 'hopeless,' albeit not a very expansive one. And surely she does not expect she can give out so many kisses without eventually eliciting a response, though a mild one; he tilts his chin sideways, making his cheek more accessible for the touch of her lips, though it requires her to angle his head back in place once she withdraws to her work. He's already moved on to her question, angles forgotten. "Didn't happen," he says. "Just born with it. So." So that answers her second question.
"Mmm." A hum that's vacant with her concentration, but still thoroughly interested. Issa doesn't say anything further than that, however; perhaps she's waiting for more, but considering her familiarity with his reticence it's more likely that she's just busy maneuvering around a whorl of his hair. "Tell me..." The same musing tone, the same drifting distraction. "What happened the day you came to High Reaches." Biting her lip again, less with amusement than with absorption this time, she clips carefully around the contour of his ear. "Your first impression."
Reyce has braced himself for more probing on that subject, a breath indrawn and his nostrils flared, but when the silence turns into a new question he must change his tack. For all that his transplantation to the Reaches must have left some impression, he has to focus to recall it correctly, more silence falling while he does. "Same as anybody's. Cold. Just been between, anyway. Benden weyrwoman came out for the rider who brought me, remember that. Picked a cot with nobody next to it and went to see the Headmaster like I'm told. Pretty pissed about all of it." This last he adds after a pause, awkwardly aware that for all her patience, and all his warnings, he's still not living up her standard for storytelling; that he feels compelled to make the effort brings out a dour, cynical tone to his voice.
Lucky for him, Issa is too engrossed to be too thoroughly disappointed. She even goes so far as to guide him along the path to a good story, prodding him with a question as she walks around in front of him to tend to the other side of his head. "And what did Sefton say?" she asks, amused at something beyond just his tone, though that surely factors. The scissors are given a few preparatory slices, blades clicking together, and then she tilts his head in the opposite direction so that she can keep cutting.
Reyce lifts his eyes to her as she passes in front, stealing one of the few glances he's been able to since she set in to cut. His foot slides back when she reaches his other side, the booted heel insisting on contact as it slides up against the arch of her near foot. Once that's settled, he can process her probing question. "Wasn't him. The old guy, harper. Didn't say anything interesting. Welcome to the Caucus. Good luck." His dour tone revives, for different reasons, and he snorts at the idea of his luck. "Talked a little about Greystones, but I don't know anything. Let me go." That this last sentence could be confused for an order, rather than part of the story, he doesn't appear to consider, but in any case he gives no further signs of restlessness to indicate it could be the former.
Issa's foot nudges into the contact he initiates, a beat taken out from her clipping to spare a glance downward for the subtle movement, smile quirking. "Oh, that's right," Issa comments quietly as he reminds her of the old headmaster. She's too concerned with fractured stories and haircuts to even consider the possibility of his wanting to interrupt either of them, and simply continues by heading down another track. "That empty cot next to yours. Who took it?" She must cut around his other ear now, careful snips following along the line marked out by the guiding fingers that sweep against his skin.
Reyce, for once, actually holds still in the angle she's set him at. Perhaps he's gotten used to it, or settled into the storytelling, or simply noticed her scissors passing so close to his ear. The answer, at any rate, is simple and takes none of his time: "Neiran." If this is a point that ought to be expanded, his storyteller's art fails him, for he offers nothing more.
"Ah," Issa says, a syllable drawn out with rounded implications that she keeps to herself; she doesn't delve further than that one sound. Instead she drifts out of conversation to attend to the curls at the top of his head, drawing them out straight between her fingers before trimming them down. That done, her foot draws away from his, but only to offer a presumably more welcome contact. She circles in front of him again and, after pushing his hands away from his lap, straddles his legs and lowers herself into the spot they vacated, sitting so she faces him. "Tell me," she begins again, initiating yet another new question as she rakes forward all of the uncut curls down over his eyes, "what happened to you and Pia." If she knows that the question is likely to make for a slightly perturbed Reyce, at the very least, she gives no indication of it, completely focused on combing down those curls, her expression giving him only a light smile to study.
It is more welcome. Reyce scoots his foot back forward when she draws away, assuming that the moment of contact has ended and giving her the space back. As luck would have it, he drops his gaze down when he does this, so he's staring at his hands when she comes around to move them out of the way. A bat from her hand sends his clasped fingers easily off to the side, unresisting, but he soon enough thinks to actually unwind them. They find a better use unwound, copping feels off her hips and ass as he guides her onto his lap, and then wrapping her up in a loose circle that swings down to her ass again. A smirk creeps onto his features, heedless of the strict attention to business she keeps in combing down his curls, full of patient mischief. And then, her question. It yields a perturbed Reyce indeed, one who tenses beneath her touch and widens his eyes in the brief second before, defensively, he hoods them. A heavy breath whisks through his nostrils, but then his breathing going silent, small, controlled. His muscles, likewise, hold him in place like a statue, inscrutably immobile while he summarizes /this/ one. Unlike the journey to High Reaches, it doesn't take him long. "I was leaving. She was fucking Curt." His tone shifts out of indifference into open coldness, the grim set of his lips not denying the hatred (and hurt) here but somehow forbidding it.
That small smile of hers gets wiped away by his summary, replaced by a frown, just as small, as Issa freezes and lets her gaze drop from his hair to his eyes. Blue eyes studying him with flicking intensity, a wincing tension thinning them ever so slightly, she allows her hands to fall to his shoulders, newly limp save for the effort it takes to keep the point of the scissors angled away from his neck. Those curls she painstakingly gathered are left half cut, her attention now fully on him. And she proves it, leaning in to cover the thin line of his lips with hers, a soft, fleeting brush of a kiss. Maybe it's a premature apology for her further prodding, for it comes then, hesitant as her kiss. She been told of one aspect of this story already, which she points out by saying, "But when you went back..." The trailing last word drifts into an empty space primed for him to fill.
Reyce does not move when she kisses him, either to kiss back or to push her away. The shadows that mask his eyes do not quite hide their steady tracking, fixed on her eyes but holding still, with no back and forth scans however slow. "I didn't know then." If the further probing has upset him more than he already was upset, his steadily cold, factual tone gives no sign. "I knew she was fucking around. She told me that. She didn't say who until later." That his pause is not the end of this part of the story is evidenced only by the fact that his small, just barely present breathing stops entirely, caught in while he stares at her and mulls over his words. "Until I told her about you." Now he moves, if ever so slightly at first: one of his hands unwinds from the sling about her waist. It's gentle at first, rising to brush hair off her cheek, but as it digs through to the back of her curls it becomes suddenly fiercer, pushing her in for a close-lipped kiss that lasts a good half-minute. His eyes remain squeezed shut when it's finished, but his hand drops away, falling like a dead thing to be picked up by the other one where it's still wrapped around her.
"Oh." The word flinches out of her, just like the muscles that twitch, with a sudden tension, under his touch as soon as she finds out her part, however removed, in that revelation. Issa melts into him for the kiss, following willingly along with his fierce urging, her hands swinging around his neck in a loose hold as she meets his lips. That hold lingers even after they break, so that she can try, in vain, to make eye contact. That failing, she seeks contact of a different sort, the tip of her nose sweeping against his before she leans forward to put her cheek up to his, nuzzling once, lightly, into his stubble before falling still. She indulges in a beat of sighing silence, her breath stirring over the ear she's just bared with her cutting. "Some story," she comments drily, attempting humor if not succeeding terribly well. Then she pulls back a fraction to flick her eyes back to his, her gaze held there waiting as long as it takes for him to meet it.
Reyce arches his neck into the nuzzling touch of her cheek, his breath coming more regularly now, if only by the slightest increase. A hard breath drops from his nose when she sighs, signalling a true return to normality of breaths no longer hidden nor over-wheezed. His eyes flick open sharply at her dry comment, and are waiting for her as soon as she pulls back. "You asked," he points out softly, though the gentle ease of his tone finds no reflection in his overly bright and alert stare. The failed humor in her words goes unremarked.
Issa blinks slowly and allows just the half of her smile to return, lips tipped lopsided. "I did," she replies, her amused tone finding more of a hold this time around. Her sketched hug loosens further then unwraps completely, the handles of the scissors dragging along with the warm press of her fingers as they trail back around in front of him. "I'm almost done, by the way," she informs him, prodding no more, her eyes lifting to the uneven stairstep his hair forms where she left her snipping unfinished. In no time, she's trimmed away the rest, making a final check by drawing down both sides and making a flicking comparison before she combs all of it back from his face. "There," she announces, eyes finding his again as her scissor-free hand makes one last sweep, from forehead to the nape of his neck, then falls, running down his shoulder and onto his chest before drifting down to lay across her leg. "What do you think?" she asks, rubbing at her nose with the back of her right wrist, scissors pointed carefully down. The curls at the back have been left slightly thicker than his last, more severe haircut had them, but, considering Issa tends to prefer toying with those in particular, that's to be expected. Other than that small liberty, she's adhered to his restriction and it's the same, only shorter.
Reyce explores his hair carefully, both hands on her ass yielding to do so. Bending his neck down yet further, he pats at his hair, running his nails through and flicking the curls up at the same time he judges its length. Whether or not he recognizes that she didn't cut the back as much as he usually has it done, his fingers barely pause there and his final judgment is, "Seems fine." He pauses, hand still on his head, and then reaches out to find her, patting around her shoulders as though, like his hair, they needed to be checked. They, too, must pass the inspection, for wraps his arms around her and looks up with a dull, wry glint of humor. "What happened to I get to use your mirror, though?" he wonders. The glint works its way down, twisting up the edge of his lip in a smile that will turn swiftly to a smirk if she tries to fetch said mirror, for his arms will only hold tight around her and try to prevent her leaving his lap.
Issa watches his inspection idly, but has her own inspection to do, gaze passing down to the scissors as she gingerly wipes away any lingering moisture with the edge of her sleeve. Then they're deposited, dropped that short distance to the ground where they land with a mild clatter. She looks up to find his smile and answers it with the curling of her own, pushing deeper and brightening for even the slightest inching of his. "I believe," she replies, not even making a token attempt to stand, "I said /morning/." A glance is tossed over her shoulder, as if to confirm the lack of light coming from around the curtain concealing the ledge. "You can use it in the mornings." Playful, her eyes return to him, and she reaches up to remove the towel that's already been shifted back with her movements, sliding it to the ground to cover the scissors. Then she goes about flicking away the bits of hair still lingering on his skin, her touches brushing down only to flit away again.
Reyce becomes the troublesome client again, his shoulders moving while she tries to brush away the bits of hair. He begins with a stretch, yanking them back as his arms loosen off her back. As the stretch pulls in to its conclusion, one of his hands feels compelled to check the back of his hair again (perhaps he did notice), but only to give it a few short scratches and then drop back down. It doesn't drop all the way, though, stopping at the bottom of her shirt and (along with its mate) slide under, so that now his shoulders are rippling as his touch slides all up and down her bare back. "Try to remember that," he murmurs, using the press of a hand on her back to push her closer to him, his mouth at her ear, regardless of whether or not she's finished brushing off all the hair. "Tomorrow."
Issa's breath catches as his hands sneak under her shirt and gains a heaving quality as it rushes out of her again, huffing against his shoulder as she leans her cheek down against the side of his neck. Her hands on his shoulders reach back again, fingers shoved up into those back curls, grasping hastily, motivated by more than just appreciation for her handiwork. "Mhmm," she agrees, distracted again, though it's safe to say it's not by his hair this time. Turning her face down, she lets idle kisses drift up his collarbone until she reaches the fleshy part of his shoulder; there, she sinks her teeth into a pulling nibble. She lifts her lips away from him to say just one final word, undercurrents of flirting mischief and a more raw craving in her tone necessitating silence afterward. "Tomorrow."